Compulsory Games

by Robert Aickman

  Until now, Robin had been unable to find any particular use for the box. Never had he dared to surmise a use so ideal as this one. The box was now a casket. Robin covered Miss Fearon’s last letter with kisses; every moment kissing the woman he had seen amid the listless throngs of Lastingham. The promise in the different letters was indeed by implication only, perhaps even remote implication; but Robin knew that this was how attractive women proceeded. For a woman to speak plainly was an admission. Robin hid away the casket amid the worn-out pyjamas and running gear in his tuckbox and turned the key twice. He then changed out of his uniform.

  All the time he could hear his mother singing. She was cooking his supper, as best she could without Nelly. Nelly was holidaying for a week or two on the shores of The Wash with a girlfriend who was slightly crippled.

  Say . . . Goodbye . . . to Daddee.

  He’s . . . gwine away to . . . the War.

  •

  The heavily accentuated dance tune was her favourite air. She came back to it always. She seemed to have been singing it since Robin had been in his cradle, which had once been her cradle also, and of course Nelly’s, in between the two of them.

  Robin’s father was out that night, professionally or merely by way of a change.

  As the two of them ate together, Robin’s mother talked about the different men who had admired her before she married. It was her invariable topic when she was alone with Robin; which, after all, was not very often. In those days, she had worked in a pharmaceuticals factory near the Thames, and had been promoted several times. Pharmaceuticals had been a common interest with Robin’s father when they had first found one another. If Robin’s father were present, Robin’s mother seldom said anything in particular, and neither did he. It is acknowledged officially that medical practitioners are greatly given to gloom. More of them actually kill themselves than anyone else. Nelly could be depended upon nowadays to do most of the talking at meals, and at other times.

  Robin had been through a particularly hard day, physically and emotionally. He might well have been unable to eat very much, especially as it was still so hot, and as his mother hated an open window. But, surprisingly, he devoured all that was set before him, and then requested a further helping. His mother beamed nostalgically as he ladled it forth.

  “Rex had such soft hands,” she said.

  Robin nodded. His mouth was once more too full for words.

  “And the most lovely arms.”

  “Good for him,” responded Robin, with articulation still impaired.

  “Right up to the shoulders.”

  “Not like my arms,” said Robin, now able to grin.

  “You have lovely arms, Robin boy. You too,” affirmed Robin’s mother. “I often wonder about them. I wonder. I wonder.”

  “They carried a very heavy parcel today, Mum.”

  “It’s a shame you have to work so hard.”

  “I see the world, Mum.”

  “It’s time you had a nice girl and a home of your own. I must think what I can do. I’ve had experience, you see.”

  In the end, Robin rubbed wedge after wedge of sliced bread round the heavy gravy which nothing else would remove from the plate.

  “Hungry hunter!” exclaimed his mother affectionately.

  “I’ve got responsibilities, Mum.” He felt quite differently about his mother when, occasionally, they were allowed to be alone together.

  •

  Without a word to anyone, Robin, in plain clothes, set out the next afternoon to look for a room to let in Jimpingham. It was one of his rest periods, and Mrs. Truslove had let him change in her toilet. She had also undertaken to look after his uniform until the evening. She had even winked at him.

  Jimpingham was a village much like Brusingham, though a little further from the sea: possibly nine or ten miles away. Between Brusingham and Jimpingham was Horsenail, much like both of them. Robin thought, or rather hoped, that in Jimpingham no one would have a very precise idea who he was. His father’s understanding with the partnership excluded him from ministering in that direction. With the other partners, much older men, a chance would have to be taken. From Miss Fearon’s house, one could reach Jimpingham with hardly an inhabited structure en route, though the rotate was not very direct.

  As will be seen, Robin had considered long and carefully. If Rosetta were to cast herself upon him, he could not bring her home to his parents and Nelly. A room in Lastingham would hardly avail: he himself was known by now to everyone, and marked out by his uniform; Rosetta seemed to flit about there almost all the time; the rent would be based upon holiday values. Least of all did he see himself trying conclusions with Paul for possession of the existing hearth. Moreover, the need might arise upon an instant. If there were no place reasonably near for Rosetta to lay her head, she might fly at once to London or somewhere.

  Possession of the little house might of course come about later, supposing that Robin was really prepared to live with Rosetta where Paul had lived with her; but in the interim somewhere entirely unobtrusive was required, and not too demanding, in that the harbouring of a beautiful wounded blue bird was the primary intention. Fortunately, there had been talk all the time among the boys at Robin’s non-coeducational school about love nests in the different villages: over one kind of honest habitat; under another; behind a third; within a fourth, though with no proper window. It is probable that little of the talk derived from first-hand experience, but Robin was confident that he knew the basic ropes. Shyness was not precisely his problem, in any case; but something less definable.

  Robin looked around Jimpingham for some time before making a first plunge. There was plenty for visitors to look at without their being called upon to explain themselves: the remains of an ornamental pump and a pale green pond, upon which perhaps the pump had once drawn; a milestone said to be linked with King Charles II; a black-smith’s forge now selling comb honey and souvenirs; the fair maid’s grave in the old part of the churchyard; Dr. Borrow’s grave in the new. Dr. Borrow had been a prominent local mathematician and preacher; descended collaterally, it was claimed, from Lavengro himself. Not all of these things had Robin previously inspected with any care.

  Robin’s first choice of a possible tenancy led almost at once to an embarrassing conversation of a character he had not allowed for, though he realised that he should have done. He had been warned often enough. He brought the conversation to an end by affecting to be simple; a device that still has its uses in the less sophisticated parts of the countryside.

  True courage was required to try again; within minutes; within only a certain number of yards. But Robin would not have said that courage was what he lacked, and this time his choice was better, for he lighted upon the helpful Mrs. Gradey, a refugee from Dublin itself, with no proper man behind her and her living to make. There were seven children, away just then at school, but Mrs. Gradey said that they would make no sound of a noise. Mrs. Gradey was most accommodating about the rent and about every other matter that Robin could think to raise, such as the whereabouts of a bathroom. She even promised to cook steaks and french fried potatoes for the poor blue bird, if the need arose, and if the costs and so forth could be settled in advance.

  Robin stated that at this point he would like to rent the furnished room by the month only, as he did not quite know when the blue bird would be free to move in. He implied that only a little later, he and she might well book a suite, a penthouse, the entire grand edifice.

  •

  After his last experience at Rosetta’s house, Robin saw no reason why he should visit her only once a week, or when there was a heavy parcel in need of delivery. There might never be another parcel. On the morning after he had driven his bargain with Mrs. Gradey, he sat writing to Rosetta while his mother repeatedly summoned him to piping hot breakfast below. In Nelly’s absence for a few more days, he had taken from her room a sheet of her pink writing paper, and had meticulously cut off the vertical heather sprig, using the official sci
ssors with which every postman is theoretically equipped.

  “Linger no longer,” he wrote. But that sounded like one of his mother’s songs, and Robin cut away a horizontal strip also.

  “Come away at once.” At times like these, Robin, as everyone else, proved not to have been taught Shakespeare for nothing.

  “Come away at once. I await you respectfully. Here is the address. Take a taxi, if necessary. Act now. Have trust. POSTMAN.” Robin knew that a woman in Rosetta’s position would fly more readily to the protection of another woman, even an unknown one. He had therefore fully particularised Mrs. Gradey’s identity and whereabouts. He could not offer a telephone number, because Mrs. Gradey could not manage a telephone. However, there was plainly no telephone at Rosetta’s house either: nothing but a wisp of greenish smoke, tiny but undying; that and silence. Robin subjoined no little cross. The moment was too serious for that.

  He folded his letter into its matching pink envelope, but made no attempt to stick it up, as he might easily think of something to add. Since it was even possible that he might wish to rewrite the whole thing, he also helped himself to a spare sheet. He put the cut-off heather into the pocket of his shirt for good luck. It would lie near to his heart until Rosetta came to him.

  He tore downstairs, now rampant for breakfast, albeit belated.

  “Your father didn’t come home last night.”

  “Nothing new about that.”

  Robin’s mouth was full of scrambled egg, bacon, half-a-beef-sausage, grilled tomato, pigsfry. On such a morning, what did it matter that piping hot was meaningless? All the easier to get down as things were.

  “I sometimes worry about him.”

  “Nelly will be back soon.”

  “I sometimes worry about all of you.”

  “No need to worry about me, Mum.”

  Robin’s mother glanced quickly at him as he fed. He should have been on his bike ten minutes ago; clean out of Brusingham; pedalling hard; remembering his round. Robin’s mother began to weep.

  She was always doing that, but, when, infrequently, they were alone together, just the two of them, he loved her none the less because of it.

  “Oh, Robin.”

  He chucked down his knife and fork. He had almost cleaned the busy plate, in any case; surely with record speed? He laid aside his heavy cup, not bothering with the saucer. He scrambled round the faded but familiar room, and pressed himself against his mother’s deep bosom.

  “You’re mine, anyway,” said Robin’s mother, crying all the more profusely. “Mine. Mine.”

  Robin laid his left cheek, newly shaven as the regulations stipulated, against his mother’s bare throat and front. He looked downwards at her tight black petticoat.

  “It’s such a struggle,” said Robin’s mother, dissolving anew.

  “One day you’ll get away from it all.”

  She stopped crying for a second, and looked at her son hard and seriously.

  “Do you really think so? Do you believe it?”

  “Of course I do, Mum.” He gave her an extra hard and special squeeze. “Now I must go. All those letters. All those parcels. Etcetera.”

  Before finally releasing him, she gave him a serious and deliberate kiss. Tears were rolling all over her. She said nothing more.

  “Bye, Mum.”

  He raced to unlock his bike. Every moment, his left hand was on the packed but unsealed letter, and on the spare sheet of heathered paper beside it.

  When the time came, it seemed the merest trifle to wander off course and make his delivery. Who cared that morning about the cracked old telescopes, half rusted-up and with whole lenses missing; about the battered Brownie cameras; about the hearts dry as boleti when their season is over? All were well lost if this were love.

  Robin strode along the fragmented path as if he had every right to be there, and official business to do. He struck up his letter and persuaded it through the idiosyncratic flap as if it had been a Last Demand. For the first time, nothing dropped out as he did so. He gave hardly a look to the house as he rode away, though he did check the timid green effluvium. There it was, and there, he could not but suppose, was the snail on the thorn, and all things like it! Quite unconsciously, as he pedalled he began half to sing another of his mother’s favourites: “Dreamy bridegroom. Dreamy bride. She’s the sweet one by his side. Father’s darling. Mother’s pride.”

  •

  Four days later Robin was sitting alone in the room he had rented.

  He had managed to take in Rosetta’s abode each morning, but each morning he had gently tilted the funny flap without result. He did not need to be told that Rosetta must be in inner turmoil. He no longer even noticed her skipping blithely from shop to shop in Lastingham. She was facing the crisis of her life. There might not be another such crisis for her until he himself had a sudden heart attack or total nervous breakdown. If all went well, that is.

  Robin was not merely alone in his room. He was alone in the house. Mrs. Gradey and all her brood were out scavenging. They seemed to do it every evening, when the weather permitted. They brought back objects amazing in their variety, which Mrs. Gradey spent much of each day sorting through and rendering marketable.

  Mrs. Truslove had told Robin that the old man had died the day before. Something fearful had set in finally, and the end had come as a release. “When people begin to go, they crumble like trees,” Mrs. Truslove had remarked poetically. She had been sorting out postal orders as she spoke.

  The bell rang: long and loudly. Robin remained fairly calm. Mrs. Gradey had visitors at many hours, and so did her two eldest daughters, and her eldest son, whose name was Laegaire. Robin was schooled already in discounting all expectation.

  However that might be, he was greatly surprised this time. At the door was Nelly, back from the coast, brown as a seadog (or female equivalent), firm as a rock.

  “I’m coming up,” were her only words at that stage.

  Robin stood in the middle of the carpet he had rented, partly fawn, partly woodnut. Nelly wore a flowered travelling costume.

  “It’s all I can afford,” said Robin, smiling around. “For the present, that is.”

  “I hope she’s got short legs,” said Nelly, looking at the bed, which might well have been in fumed oak.

  “I don’t really know,” said Robin, smiling still.

  “Who is it, Robin? Better come clean with me. Then we’ll be in it together.”

  “Her name is Rosetta Fearon. It won’t mean anything to you.”

  “Won’t it just! She’s that piece who prances round Lastingham getting in everywhere first.”

  Robin’s heart, and much else within else, turned right over. Only then did he realise how very far from sure he had so far been. It would take two or three minutes for him to regain confidence. Still, yet again the old and invalid postman and fisherman had been confirmed in his words.

  “You are simple!” said Nelly; much as she had addressed Robin from his very earliest days.

  “You won’t tell people, Nelly?”

  “No. But you’ll never get that one into bed. Not into this bed or any other.”

  “It’s not the point, Nelly. It’s not the only thing there is.”

  “No,” said Nelly. “Not the only thing.”

  Robin glanced at her. She was at such an advantage with everybody, and always had been; starting with their mother, let alone their father. Nelly had simply been born like that.

  “Sit down, Nelly,” said Robin gravely, “and please tell me just what you mean about Miss Fearon.”

  Instinctively, Nelly seated herself on the only chair that was fully sound. She had not needed even to shake or test the others. Nelly pulled down her skirt sharply, as if she were with a stranger. There was a sense in which Nelly was always with a stranger. Robin sat upon the floor, drawing up his legs to his chest.

  “She’s not the kind for anything like that,” said Nelly. “For one thing look at the way she’s dressed. Clothes like
that aren’t meant to take off.”

  “I think she dresses beautifully.”

  “A woman knows,” claimed Nelly. “Besides, there’s something funny about her.”

  “Such as?”

  “She knows nobody and doesn’t want to.”

  Robin let his legs stretch themselves a little. “Nelly! Can you honestly blame her?”

  “And nobody wants to know her. I can tell you that.”

  “They wouldn’t know what to say.”

  “She holes herself up and no one knows what she does.”

  Robin stared upwards at Nelly from the floor. “Nelly, how can you or anyone else possibly know, when no one even speaks to her?”

  “I’m talking to you, Robin. You can take it or leave it.”

  Robin reflected for a moment. “Tell me,” he said. “How did you find out about me? About this place?”

  Nelly smiled for the first time—and quite affectionately, Robin thought.

  “Everything you do or think about is an open book to me, Robin. Always has been, and always will be. You must know that.”

  Robin reflected once more. Nelly had not even set eyes on him since he had moved in.

  “There are times when I’m frightened by it all. I admit that.”

  “Robin,” said Nelly earnestly, or seemingly so, “I advise you to give it up and return home.”

  “I think most chaps are frightened for some of the time,” said Robin, following his line of thought, and remembering his chums, squared up in memory, jumbled together in the break.

  “It’s not for you, Robin,” said Nelly; softly, and therefore perhaps even more in earnest. “Come back home.”

  “I’ve not left home, Nelly.”