Compulsory Games

by Robert Aickman

  There was something almost evangelical in her tone and choice of words. There was also something wild and fantastical: which seemed infectious.

  “Even people?” I asked, smiling no doubt, but really asking under some compulsion that remained elusive.

  “You’re making game of me,” she replied on the instant. Her pink cheeks had darkened, and I noticed that she, for her part, was not smiling at all.

  “Lay off, you fool,” said Munn, really quite sharply, and speaking almost for the first time since entering the car. “Let’s change the subject. We haven’t even started looking for the land as yet.”

  “That’s right,” said Vi. “Though we’re going to, aren’t we, Leonard?” She left little doubt that they were.

  And we did manage to talk of something else. As a matter of fact, we talked of how beautiful the wedding had been: a compulsory theme, needless to say, for all such moments of time, regardless of objectivity.

  Munn had been preposterously rude; but I had observed such quick gripings of rage in him before, notably when he thought about the Inland Revenue and how they had treated him.

  •

  A few weeks later, the Munns did invite me round one evening, “after supper.” It was a remarkably formal visit: I must acknowledge that I found it difficult to keep the word “wooden” out of my mind. Munn’s capacity to talk at large about this and that seemed entirely to have shrivelled, as happens so often to a man after marriage, sometimes immediately after; and Vi’s sole interest appeared to be her own family and their conversationally equivocal trade.

  Inevitably, no doubt, she took the line that there was nothing whatever to be frightened about, and that the details were most interesting when encountered from the inside. The expression “from the inside” did not appeal to me. And, with Vi, it was difficult even to make a feeble joke about it; or, I thought, about anything.

  I learned that the constructions in which her father took so much pride, and she on his behalf, were passed off, at least within the family firm, as “boxes.” It was not that this usage was specially defined to me. It was simply that the words “box” and “boxes,” with various other special expressions, were lightly thrown about by Vi, and sometimes by Munn too; so that I quickly realised what was meant, as when one grasps a foreign idiom through contact with those to whom it is habitual.

  Thus Vi remarked “Daddy’s already made our boxes”; as one might lightly describe the planting of two saplings by way of commemoration.

  It was impossible not to perceive that Munn seemed already to be completely involved; to be seriously and sincerely interested in the gruesome business. Again it is something one commonly notes: that very speedily the husband is all but totally englutinated into the wife’s life-pattern.

  •

  Perhaps in the present case, a kind of clue was offered—or re-offered.

  “As soon as I set eyes on those daffies Leonard made,” observed Vi, her round blue eyes almost alive, “I knew.”

  And, this time, suddenly, I knew too. Munn’s reference to something of the same kind, when he was asking me to be his best man, had left me groping after some mere folksiness, some rural witchery and magic, which one could only hope was white. Now I realised that, at least for Vi, Munn’s journeyman imitations of men (if I may cite Hamlet) were surrogates for those other imitations of men that were put into her father’s boxes. (For what, at the end, is man but ravelled straw?)

  Munn’s cups and plates, or Mrs. Hextable’s, had all disappeared, and we ate little square sandwiches, with pink stuff inside, off smooth wooden platters, and drank tea out of mugs that had been not thrown but hollowed out. In the end, when Vi was out of the room, Munn offered me a whisky, and whipped out a single glass tumbler from the back of the cupboard.

  He drank nothing himself, though before he had customarily exceeded me.

  “I’ve been looking around,” he said, in a confidential voice. “The daffies won’t keep two of us, nor will my measly blood money.” It struck me that it was the first time that evening he had referred, even indirectly, to the King Charles’s head which previously had floated at almost all times, before his angry gaze.

  “And soon there’ll be three of us.”

  “Indeed?” I replied. I reflected, in a vulgar way, that it seemed quick work. “I congratulate you both.”

  “Vi sets great store by our having a child immediately. And so do her people.”

  “I see what you mean,” I said. “And have you found anything?”

  “No, damn it, I haven’t. It’s not easy at our age. But I have something in the back of my mind.”

  “And what is that? If you wish to tell me, of course.”

  “Not just yet, old man.” I could hear Vi approaching from the next room. “Only if it materialises.”

  The door opened. “If what materialises, Leonard?” enquired Vi, in her unpleasant voice, her head on one side, like the head of a toy bird.

  “If Marley’s ghost materialises,” said Munn; with more authority than I had observed in him during the whole of the earlier evening.

  Vi projected her straight red tongue at him from her round red mouth.

  “All things come to him who waits,” said Munn with apparent vagueness. Married couples quickly learn to fill in with such utterances.

  But I never really like drinking alone, so I soon made my excuses, and walked home to my cottage on the outskirts of the community.

  •

  I had a strong suspicion of what the something was at the back of Munn’s mind.

  And soon we walked into one another outside one of the branch banks. Not that either of us ran an account there: if one knows one’s onions, one does not bank in one’s own gossipy village.

  “We’re off,” Munn said, “Vi and I. Next week, in fact: Wednesday, I’m told. The old man’s sending one of his wagons. It’s the only day he can spare one.”

  “Wagons” in the patois of the Pell family had an implication similar to that of “boxes”; so that the symbolism behind Munn’s remarks seemed greatly too oppressive.

  But Munn continued the theme. “I doubt whether we shall meet again, you and I.”

  For a moment I could find nothing at all to say, even though words were my trade.

  Munn eased matters. “Not that I shan’t send you a change of address,” he said. “Of course, I shall.”

  “In that case,” I observed, smiling, “I am sure we shall meet. I shall make a point of looking you up.”

  “Don’t speak too soon. You don’t know what I shall be doing.”

  “I think I do know.”

  “I’m going into the old man’s trade.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m to serve a quick apprenticeship, to learn from the bottom up, so to speak. And, after that, there’s a partnership offered. . . . So you’ll hardly want to know me any more.”

  “Nonsense,” I responded, as brightly as I could manage. “Not see that charming girl you’ve discovered for yourself! Miss seeing your child! Not likely.” To so many married men, one has to say such things. One feels it is the least one can do; and that it is expected.

  “You’re a good chap,” said Munn, “but, for God’s sake, don’t feel in the least obliged. I know what I’m doing and what the consequences are.”

  “All bosh,” I rejoined, in the same spirit as before. “You’re taking up one of the safest money-spinners there is, and I look to enjoy some pickings from the rich man’s table.”

  •

  I received a card bearing Munn’s new address (it also bore a faint fringe of acorns), from which for the first time I learned the name of the settlement where the Pells did their work; and, as it happened, I also saw Pell’s “wagon,” an outsize model, looking all the blacker for its bulk, as it bore away such of the trappings as were Munn’s, and Munn himself on the seat in front, with the sably accoutred driver at the other end, and little Vi wedged between them. It was evening at the time, and rapidly sinking into dusk
. I reflected that public use of a “wagon” for such an uncanonical purpose as this might attract adverse comment if done during the hours of full daylight. As for me, at that moment, I too had a particular reason for sliding about inconspicuously. Indeed, I drew far back into a convenient hedge as the huge “wagon” sped smoothly by.

  •

  I did not go after the “wagon” that week, or the following week; that month, or the following month; that year, or the following year. The place where the Pells had proved to live was a small industrial town, built, in remote East Anglia, as a single entity during the nineteenth century. Though high ideals lay behind its founding, it had little current reputation for beauty of architecture. Of course, standards change remarkably in such contexts, but, at the time I am talking about, the town was represented as a place more to avoid than to visit. Nor did I receive a specific invitation from the Munns. I had not expected one. Indeed, I received no further communication at all from them; not even an undertaker’s Christmas card.

  Some years later, none the less, I drifted over, and so acquired some idea of what ultimately became of Munn.

  By then I had acquired a small, second-hand motor; a two-seater so-called roadster. For some time, I had had a commission to catalogue all the churches in Suffolk. It was no light or brief task, as Suffolk has many churches. Moreover, the prospect of a similar assignment relating to Norfolk was held before me. As far as pleasure went, I should greatly have preferred to travel by train and on foot, which was then perfectly possible; but my employers pressed. I am not sure that by the end, time had been saved; because my second-hand roadster was always breaking down and leaving me helpless, as I have no gift with machines and no love for them.

  I acknowledge that for some time I omitted consideration of the town which housed the Pells (and which I had taken to thinking of always in that way). After all, it was agreed that the place had little to offer the connoisseur of beaux arts; such as was expected to study my careful lists. I was even ignoring the district around it; which, indeed, was still, in the main, open heath, with few churches, and hardly more houses. (Now it has been utilised in familiar ways: varying from an “open prison” to a large mineral development.) But, in the end, necessity called, and, picking a rainy day, I set out. I should have preferred to disguise myself.

  In the town itself, all went perfectly well, even though the rain inconveniently ceased to fall while I was doing my duty in the church. I recalled that the same had happened during Munn’s inauspicious nuptials. The church, paid for entirely from the pocket of the founding industrialist, was splendidly ornate; after the fashion then in the 1920s, deprecated, but now once more respected. The town, as a whole, duly seemed more of sociological than aesthetic interest. But my obligation was exclusively ecclesiastical; and though, as I edged along the streets, I kept half an eye open for the name PELL surmounted by plumes or the staring eyes of black horses, I saw nothing of the kind, and in the end even plucked up courage for a coffee and cake in an anomalous tea-shop, half gentlewoman’s chintz and half charge-hand’s lincrusta. In those days, it was easier to “park” one’s car; though, on the other hand, one’s car could therefore stand out more conspicuously.

  It was on a low ridge to the south of the town, as I drove homewards, that I came upon Munn’s new abode. Curiously enough, I was deliberately avoiding any kind of main route, and weaving my way through lanes by the use of the map. This was not easy to combine with driving the roadster, but fortunately the lanes carried very little traffic in those days. Possibly there was some finger of fate which pointed my way to the house. I seemed conscious all along of such an element in my relationship with Munn; and what happened next perhaps confirms it.

  It was hard to believe that it had been necessary to pay money for the “plot” on which the house stood. The tiny black structure recalled what one had heard of “squatters” and their “rights.” It stood on a sandy, scrubby, nondescript waste, like a thrown-away cabin trunk; or perhaps like a house built by the little people, there one day, gone the next. I am sure I should have known at once that it was the house built by Munn’s father-in-law for his chicks with his own hands; but, as it happened, Vi, in her bright colours, was at work in the front garden as my open roadster snorted laboriously up the ridge. At the same time, rain began to fall once more, this time heavily. I saw Vi go back into the little house; from the other side of which Munn emerged, already clad in heavy oilskins. I suppose it was natural enough for the frail female to withdraw from the inclement weather and for the stouter male to take her place; but there seemed to be something odd and automatic about it, all the same. Moreover, on the instant two flaps opened in the house’s single black gable, and a quite life-size wooden cuckoo jumped out, shouting its head off four times. I looked at my watch: it was indeed four o’clock. It seemed odd to have a clock outside a tiny private house, as if it were a town hall; but there could be no doubt about the hour of day being audible over a wide area.

  By this time, Munn had looked up and seen me seated there, grinding slowly uphill. To speak plainly, I doubt whether, if I had been travelling faster, I should have stopped; though this may make me sound a cad. With Munn’s gaze upon me, I had no alternative. Also, I should have to raise the hood; always a lengthy and injurious undertaking.

  I brought the motor to a standstill. Munn just stood there staring at me, silent and motionless. His clothes had never appeared particularly to fit, as I believe I have indicated; but the oilskins seemed to belong to another and much larger man altogether. Munn held a hoe with a very long handle; but it was hard to see what he was doing with it, or what Vi had been doing before him. I have spoken of “a front garden,” but when I stopped the car, I realised that there was nothing: no cultivation of any kind, but only the sparse and stony heath, no different in front of the house from elsewhere.

  “Excuse me,” I shouted, “I must put up my hood.” By now the rain was bucketing down; what people call a “cloudburst,” though no one knows exactly what that is. Raising the hood was always a fearful ploy, but I dashed at it and did better than usual under the continued pressures of the situation. All the same, the job took a minute or two, so that it became rather noticeable that Munn was not offering to help.

  When I had adjusted the last screw (car hoods were more elaborately devised in early days), I realised that Munn was no longer there at all. Obviously, instead of coming to my aid, he had returned to the house for shelter.

  I think I should almost certainly have proceeded therewith upon my way, though no doubt with qualms. But what happened was that the car refused to start; which was all too customary.

  I sat there for some time with the downpour beating on the hood. I daresay I fiddled around a bit with the levers and buttons and so forth, but I had little hope in that direction.

  Then I noticed that the glass in the front window of Munn’s house was broken. They were narrow French windows; narrow, but a pair of them. And it was not just a matter of the glass being cracked, but of actual black holes. From the whole look of the place, it dawned on me that no one could seriously live there. And yet, without doubt, I had seen both Munn and Mrs. Munn. The former had stared, quite unmistakably, at me, for an appreciable period of time.

  Hitherto I had spent the day (and long before that) beating around the bush in one way and another precisely in order not to re-encounter these Munns and Pells. It now occurred to me that the tribe of them had perhaps so weighed upon my mind that I was seeing members of it where they were not. The little black house was so exactly what I was both looking for and avoiding, that the notion of an hallucination seemed slightly more plausible than it commonly does. I had even heard or read that hallucinations are most likely at just such moments between dark and light as, with the heavily gathering clouds, I had lately passed through.

  Perhaps for reasons such as these, perhaps for obscurer, and less resistible reasons, at which I have hinted, I resolved to have a closer look round. I was wearing a motorist�
�s overcoat, substantial even against such weather as this. I climbed down from the car and walked over to the broken windows. There was no hedge, gate, or boundary of any kind.

  I looked in, with some caution, through one of the holes in the glass; while the rain from the wide gable above dripped down my neck. Despite the two French doors, there appeared to be only a single room within, stretching from side to side of the house; and with the inside walls painted in the same black as the outside. There were some vague items of litter lying about the floor, but no real furniture that I could see. All the same, I could hear the huge cuckoo clock ticking above my head; and some one, I reflected, had to wind it. . . . Or perhaps not. Perhaps Mr. Pell could make entirely wooden clocks that required no winding.

  I was not yet exactly frightened, but, rather, puzzled. I pushed away at both the French windows, but succeeded only in dislodging further portions of glass, which fell to the black floor inside with astonishingly much noise. I half expected the life-size cuckoo upstairs to croak in protest.

  I imagined that there might be a door at the back of the structure; through which, as I could not help thinking, one “got at the works,” in little houses and little artefacts made of wood. I walked round in the rain, and such a door there was. This time, I dragged it open. It stuck and shrieked, but by now I meant business and I pulled hard.

  The first thing I saw inside was a child seated on a shelf with both arms extended. It was presumably clutching something out of sight at each side; as its whole posture suggested strain and effort; but I realised that it was a figure in wood of remarkable liveliness. I even managed to extend my hand and touch it. It felt like wood too.

  The little house was divided into two chambers by a wooden partition which, painted in the usual black, now confronted me, and against which the child’s shelf was set on wooden brackets. This rear chamber was six or eight feet deep. The door I had opened, was a large one and admitted a considerable amount of light, except into the further corners; but there was no window, and the carefully painted, elaborately lifelike figure of the child had been sitting there, it was impossible to guess for how long, in complete darkness. All things considered, it was surprisingly well preserved and spruce.