Compulsory Games

by Robert Aickman

  Jessica could only shake her head; but she was trying to think. She noticed that Bunty was very pale, and seemed as if under a spell.

  “Mr. Honeyman!”

  At the elderly woman’s call, the remaining door in the room opened for the first time and disclosed a small bent figure in working clothes. Occasional long grey locks hung from under his black cloth cap and his trousers were strapped beneath the knees. His face was old and yellow, but he was smiling like Mr. Punch. His hands were shiny with beeswax. He nodded affably to each of the land girls in turn, then beckoned.

  “I should have a look,” advised the elderly woman.

  Neither of the girls moved.

  “I don’t want to have to use the darbies.” Jessica saw that she held two pairs of heavy handcuffs.

  The old man beckoned again. “Easy does it,” he said in a voice like a small cracked bell. They went in.

  The inner room was lighted by four tallow candles, the bases of which had been liquefied and stuck on the floor. Placed so that there was a candle on each side of them, were two open coffins. They seemed made of the same dark wood as the rest of the place, and they were deeply and newly padded with glossy, blood-red satin. Set upright behind them stood their tops, each with a polished and engraved silver plate, which reflected rectangles of light from the candles on to the wooden walls of the room. The elderly woman was again in the doorway behind the two land girls.

  “Do you know what this is?” Mr. Honeyman was holding out a very long, very thin knife which conjured the reflections on the walls to harlequin activity. “This is a coffin maker’s knife. There’s only one place I know where you can get them.”

  “Shall I prepare them, Mr. Honeyman?” enquired the elderly woman.

  “I’m quite agreeable, Hagan,” said Mr. Honeyman. “After all, I only work on Christmas Day.”

  It was beginning to thunder.

  “Look at this,” cried Mr. Honeyman in his cracked triumphant voice. He had laid down the knife and was bringing up a wheeled object from the dusky corner of the little room. It was heavily though tastelessly carved in the same dark wood.

  “You don’t see a thing like that every day.”

  He was standing behind the cabinet, so that only his head and yellow face appeared above it.

  “It’s full of live silkworms. They’re necessary in my business.”

  As he spoke he was unrolling a bale of soft white silk.

  The two land girls were clinging together.

  “I should take off your ties,” suggested the elderly woman. Jessica saw that she had put down the handcuffs, and held in one hand a tiny piece of thin red string, such as chemists use for small parcels.

  Still as if spellbound, Bunty began to comply. She took off her tie, and unbuttoned her shirt to the waist.

  Suddenly Jessica’s hands, rough from the fields, were round the old man’s throat. In a moment the long thin knife was hers.

  Instantly the elderly woman was blowing her police whistle. She blew rendingly, mercilessly, until it seemed that the elements outside the tiny dark cabin picked up the alarum. There was a screaming, cleaving crash and a bright white light. The storm had struck the exposed hut. Or perhaps it had not been thunder but guns.

  •

  Jessica awoke in what she took to be a hospital. Certainly there was a nurse standing by her bed.

  “Where’s Bunty?”

  “I should rest, if I were you.”

  Jessica was not in pain, but, on the contrary, felt wholly and completely numb. Outside they were faintly singing “Auld Lang Syne.” Perhaps it was New Year’s Eve.

  “Where have I got to?”

  “You’ll soon learn.”

  The woman, Jessica reflected drowsily, must be not a nurse but a sister, as she was middle-aged and wore a dark blue dress buttoned to the chin. She held a hypodermic syringe, larger then Jessica had ever seen; but it appeared to be empty.

  LETTERS TO THE POSTMAN

  THE SITUATION at home had left Robin Breeze entirely free to choose what he did with his life.

  His father, the doctor, had never been particularly successful in his vocation, and had from the first taken care not to influence Robin even to think of following in his footsteps. Indeed, he always referred to medicine in disrespectful terms, even though he himself seemed noticeably adroit with cases that he took seriously, as Robin surmised. Dr. Breeze’s main public complaint appeared to be the usual one that so little was now left to the individual practitioner, or given to the individual patient. Robin’s mother had been simply a summer visitor, with whom the lonely young doctor had scraped up a flirtation. There were few summer visitors at Brusingham, which was six or seven miles from the coast. At that time, Robin’s father had been the youngest partner in the practice. Now more and more of the patients were going a little further afield.

  None the less, money had been found to send both Robin and his elder sister, Nelly, to non-coeducational private schools within the county. Little had been offered there in the way of “vocational guidance.” Options continued to be left fully open. Nelly had soon found a niche in helping her mother, as the problems of running the house intensified year by year. Nelly could see for herself that she was invaluable, probably indispensable; and her mother was generous and sensible enough to confirm this daily. The family way of life would have collapsed in a moment, had it not been for Nelly. Nelly, therefore, had little ambition to type all day in a congested Midlands office, or to spend her life cauterising farm animals, as assistant to a boozy young vet: to name two other options that offered. Robin remained less decided. One day he noticed an advertisement in the local weekly, which the doctor took in for professional reasons, though it was perennially in danger of folding finally or being taken over by a national syndicate and neutralised.

  The advertisement stated that Lastingham was in need of a provisional postman. It was slightly more than a temporary postman. The exact background to the announcement was not stated, doubtless in order to economise on the number of words; but Robin divined that it might be something slightly special and unusual.

  Lastingham was the community on the coast; hardly a village any more, owing to the erosion of the low cliffs. Even the church had gone, except for the very west end. Dr. Breeze sometimes spoke of coffins and bones projecting from the cliff face as the churchyard fell away, but Robin and Nelly had never seen anything, often though they had been on their bicycles to look. The living had been merged with those of Hobstone and Mall. What had happened of late was that the fisherman’s cottages and the little shops of Lastingham had been replaced by holiday shacks and inexpensive bungalows for retired persons; scattered at random over the landscape, and challenging permanence. None the less, the one filling station that had been attempted had failed almost immediately, perhaps from insufficient working capital. There remained a cabin for selling ice cream, meat loaf, and crisps, though it was usually closed and padlocked. Robin and everyone else knew that the post office had been at last designated unsafe; so that all business was being transacted from the former lifeboat station.

  Robin laid down the local weekly on a glass case of his father’s specimens, mounted his bicycle, and rode off without a word to anyone.

  •

  As so many who undertake the job have discovered, the postal round was far more interesting than laymen would ever suppose. The overhanging threat, which made Robin’s position permanently provisional, was that technological advance might at a moment’s notice lead to delivery by impersonal van direct from Corby or Nuneaton or some place even more remote. Dispatch from such spots would alter all the postmarks into names entirely misleading. The availability of Robin’s own bicycle might help, though perhaps it was too much to hope. At the outset, Robin was told that a retired postman would go round with him and show him the ropes. Robin could only wheel his bicycle, as the old man was past riding anything. The retired postman proved also to be a retired fisherman, and was always talking of the sea and the
village market; the latter long closed.

  They were in a region of unadopted roads, underdefined boundaries, random structures at uncoordinated angles.

  Robin pointed to a small house at the very far corner, where the ground fell away. The road thither had been made but once and for all; doubtless in the chicken-farming period after the First World War.

  “What about that one, Mr. Burnsall?”

  “There’s no post there,” said the old postman and old fisherman. He was rubbing his left knee with his right hand. He had to stoop a quite long way to do this.

  “You mean the house is empty?”

  “Not empty, but there’s no post.”

  “Who is it lives there exactly?”

  “Miss Fearon lives there. She’s said to be pretty like. Lovely as a linnet. But she gets no post.”

  “Have you ever seen her, Mr. Burnsall?”

  “No I never have properly seen her, Robin.”

  “How do people know she exists?”

  “Take a good look!” said the old postman, patiently, though he was not in a position to point.

  Robin, as trainee, looked much harder than before. A wisp of smoke was rising from the distant house’s chimney. Robin fancied that he would not have seen it, had not this been a pale and windless day.

  “Likes to keep warm, does Miss Fearon. It’s always the same, winter and summer.”

  “Women are like that,” Robin said, smiling.

  “Some women, Robin,” responded the old postman, at last upright once more.

  “I shall hope to set eyes upon Miss Fearon. Perhaps I could go after her for a Christmas Box when the time comes.”

  “We don’t do that with people like Miss Fearon. They receive no post, so there’s nothing due from them.”

  “Has the house a name?” asked Robin.

  “No name,” replied the old postman. “Why should it have?”

  “To deliver the coal,” suggested Robin, still idly more or less.

  “If she burns coal. Maybe she walks out at night and helps herself to the peat.”

  “I didn’t know there was peat,” said Robin, though all his life he had dwelt only six or seven miles away.

  But the old postman had said enough on random topics for that morning and was already a few yards homeward, while Robin had been continuing to stare. If Robin really wished to glimpse pretty Miss Fearon, the old man had at least propounded a possible hour. As, pushing his bicycle, he followed the sturdy old figure, he felt manhood almost surging within himself. It could be a difficult sensation to cope with, as educationists are agreed.

  Difficult in particular was the decision as to whether the nocturnal project would be seriously worthwhile. Six or seven solitary miles each way through the mist on the bicycle; a long, cold wait; the obvious unreliability of the old man’s tale—put forward, moreover, even by the old man, merely as a surmise; above all, the extreme unlikelihood of picking the right night or nights. So far Robin had not even set up the scene with his father about the key.

  In some ways, it would be far more sensible, at least as a start, to move in closer to the small house by full daylight; but Robin was deterred by his official prominence. Comment would almost certainly be made if at broad noon the postman were to ride so noticeably far from his paper round. People could complain quite justly that thereby the delivery of their own letters and parcels had been frivolously delayed; and that might be only the start of it. In the second place, Robin did not wish to be suspected by the house’s occupant of mere snooping and spying. In the third place, Robin, if he were to be honest with himself, had no inclination to be suddenly sprung upon from within. What defence could he make? What excuse?

  Problems, if meant to be solved, solve themselves more effectively than we can solve them. After Robin had been in the job for only seven and a half weeks, a packet appeared plainly addressed to “Miss Rosetta Fearon.” It was a questionnaire from the rating authority, and all the world would be receiving one sooner or later. The old man, who had accompanied Robin everywhere for the whole of this first week, had thus been proved right about three important matters: the name, the sex, and, it would appear, the unmarried status. There was reason, therefore, to suppose that he might probably be right about the fourth and most important thing. A wave of new confidence bubbled through Robin. On the other hand, the precise name, “Rosetta,” strongly suggested an older person. Dr. Breeze had once taken his children to view the Rosetta Stone, clue to so many matters. It had been quite near the museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which had been the primary object of the expedition. They had seen the bust of Julius Caesar at the same time; since removed.

  “She never gets anything,” confirmed young Mrs. Truslove, who ran the temporary post office on a part-time basis.

  It was quite true that the official envelope bore no address more precise than “Lastingham.” The old man seemed to have been right too about the house being unnamed. But the Rating Authority knew that the detective department of the post office was one that could be relied upon. Everybody knows.

  •

  When he reached the place, Robin saw at once that the name of the house had simply fallen off. Very possibly the single letters could still be found among the long grass. Patterned curtains were drawn together in all the windows that Robin could see, downstairs and upstairs. He hesitated to prowl through the weeds to the rear of the structure, where the living room overlooked the sea. The familiar trail of smoke from the familiar chimney was rising, faintly green or greenish yellow, against the azure, and soon losing itself. Robin could see that this could hardly be coal smoke, trusty and dependable. He did not know in what hue peat burned. There was no other sign at all of the little property being tenanted. Robin had laid his bicycle carefully against the rough hedge, before giving the gate a stout push. Now he was clasping the packet.

  The letter box was not in but alongside the front door. It appeared to be a box indeed, a distinguishable capacious object built into the brickwork and removable en bloc with a hacksaw. The flap was unusually wide. Postmen suffer everywhere from the smallness of orifices, and so does the correspondence they handle.

  As it was an almost ceremonial occasion, comparable, perhaps, to the service of a writ, Robin pushed back the flap with his left hand, proposing to insert the communiqué with his right. But as soon as he touched the flap, something white erupted from it and fell at Robin’s feet.

  It was a letter, folded tightly in upon itself, and quite skilfully. It was boldly superscribed “To the Postman.” Robin pushed the effusion from the Rating Authority back into his satchel, and proceeded to read. He might be receiving special instructions concerning delivery. The handwriting continued large and legible:

  Something strange has happened to me. I find that I am married to someone I do not know. A man, I mean. His name is Paul. He is kind to me, and in a way I am happy, but I feel I should keep in touch. Just occasional little messages. Do you mind? Nothing more, for God’s sake. That you must promise me. Write to me that you promise.

  ROSETTA. ROSETTA FEARON

  Robin examined, as best he could, the mechanism by which the missive had been expelled. The flap of the letter box proved not to be attached to the top, but to swing upon a lower axis which made it just possible for a letter to be placed in position so that, with good fortune, it would fall outwards as soon as the flap was touched. Miss Fearon had been in luck that the house had been built in that way. Or perhaps she had made a personal alteration.

  Robin drew a Packet Undeliverable form from his pocket. He took his official pencil from inside his cap and wrote: “I promise. Back next week. POSTMAN.” He had been told always to sign “Postman”; never to give an actual name. He thrust the form into the house. He realised that he could be standing at the gateway to romance. Even though, as might now appear, a romance with a married woman.

  His heart joined the larks everywhere overhead. He began to hum “Nearer, my God, to The
e,” his mother’s special hymn tune. The waves were crumbling against the low cliffs with a new impulsion.

  Not until he had mounted and departed did he realise that Miss Fearon’s rating questionnaire was still in his haversack. Properly, he ought to ride back, but that would attract more comment than anything he had so far contemplated. He shoved the questionnaire into his jacket pocket among the various forms. After all, he thought, he was still an apprentice.

  “You’re smiling,” said Mrs. Truslove, when he arrived back at the temporary post office. It was half a cry of surprise, half an accusation.

  That night in his room, Robin read Rosetta Fearon’s odd letter again and again, and even deposited it under his pillow. In the morning, he realised from the state of the paper that this could not be done with the same letter every night. No matter. There would be further letters. They were as good as guaranteed.

  •

  Robin made no attempt to press. He had a long and treacherous road before him, but he saw that to rush things might be to lose all. He said nothing to anyone; not to Mrs. Truslove, not to his father or mother, not to Nelly, who was his mother’s second voice, and her first voice more and more noticeably. The old postman and fisherman was rigid with lumbago. Bob Stuff, Robin’s best friend, had gone to Stockport as a door-to-door insurance salesman. Not that Robin would have told Bob a thing like this, or Bob, Robin.

  The seven days passed sooner or later, and Robin was leaning his bicycle against the rough hedge once more, but: this time the bell was jingling and tingling as the rider trembled. The trouble was the cold rain of late April. It soaked and chilled everything. Robin was wearing official oilskins that had either survived from earlier postmen or been found in the disused lifeboat station. Mrs. Truslove never seemed to know which it was.

  Robin picked up the second letter and stood holding it. The house offered no protection: not a veranda; not a porch; not an outhouse even. All the larks were holed that day. The waves moaned and clawed.