by Thomas Hinde
The hours he spent down there, the digging and concreting – my mind was confused by the possibilities. The way he’d discouraged visits till it was done, the time it had taken. It had been happening literally under my eyes, for I could see the grey shapes and piles of sand through the treetops from my attic window. And except that once when he’d escorted me, I’d made no attempt to investigate it.
I stopped dead. I was shivering again. And the only thought in my mind, it cannot be. Surely I am playing some dangerous game with myself.
But how could I know? I had again an overpowering urge to hunt in my real memory for something which would prove to me that my whole life was not – nonsense. The word terrified me. I half understood that the terror I now felt about not believing was like the terror I had once felt about believing, half understood because I would not let myself recognize the parallel. I began as I had not for years to try to remember what had really happened. In my search I seemed to reach a peak of assurance when I held a memory in its original genuineness, a memory of those first answering signals I had had when I bought and learned to use my transmitter. They were something I knew had really happened. Immediately I suffered the greatest doubt. Real doubt? Or doubt I had trained myself to feel? How could I tell?
At that moment, with a force that I had not felt before, I knew that I really didn’t know. I understood for the first time that the muddle in my memory was such that I could never sort it out. I was close to tears. I wanted to cry out to someone for help. There wasn’t anyone.
Just the Brightworths’ house ahead down their drive. A step at a time, my knees shaking, I began to move on towards it. To the right of its white concrete façade, in its own white concrete box, I saw the chrome bumpers and polished boot of Jim’s Jaguar. A second later Jim was at the door. That was my first surprise.
I hadn’t realized how my feelings for him had changed. When I saw him there I was filled with hate. Of course this was partly anger at the way he had deceived me for so many years. But it was also anger with him as a person, a mock person, someone who stood for all I hated most. I hated him for the way he reduced conversation to animal noises – or animal buffetings. I hated his ostrich-head digging and burrowing. I hated him as much for what he pretended so successfully to be as for what he really was – the full implications of that I was still guessing.
‘Hallo, there,’ he shouted.
‘So you’re in,’ I said foolishly.
‘That’s it,’ he shouted. ‘Didn’t expect that, did you?’ Though he watched me as he said this I had the idea that he was thinking about something else.
‘It’s normal,’ I began.
‘Normal!’ Jim said. ‘Never met him. Ha ha, caught you there.’
‘I mean . . .’ I began.
‘Trying to get out of it, aren’t you,’ he said, taking my hand. Instead of letting go when he’d shaken it he pulled me towards him, so that I stumbled up the steps right past him into the house. It gave me a moment of panic.
‘That’s the way,’ I heard him shout behind me. ‘Come right in. Don’t wait to be asked.’ I realized that it was his new joke. Janie was in the hall.
‘Well, hallo,’ she cried, coming towards me with spontaneous warmth.
‘Wo ho, there,’ Jim shouted behind me. ‘Give a chap a chance. Wait till he’s out of his own front door.’
I didn’t laugh or turn. If I’d turned I might have hit him.
‘Come right in,’ Janie said, taking me by the hand to the sitting-room. ‘Bring us some drinks, dearest.’
‘Look at them,’ Jim said. ‘Caught red-handed and this is what they do.’
‘Go away, you noisy brute,’ Janie said. She led me to the sofa and we sat together. ‘Tell me all about it,’ she said.
The question appalled me. I had an increasing sense of not understanding what was happening. For perhaps a minute I couldn’t speak.
I forced myself to answer. ‘Well,’ I began. It was a dry croak. I cleared my throat and pretended to choke. For several minutes I spluttered and she patted my back. As I sat with my hand to my mouth, recovering, I saw, through the mauve glass of an irregular hexagonal window, Hubert on the lawn. The glass distorted him so that by moving my head a fraction of an inch I could make his grey trousers expand and contract several feet, but for some reason I could never reach his shoes. He was kicking at something on the lawn but this too was out of sight.
Jim brought a tray with glasses and a jug full of Pimms and submerged green leaves with a silver Pimms strainer.
‘Well, I don’t know!’ he shouted. ‘Comes to the door. More or less passes out from shock when I open it. Then goes right ahead.’
‘Bring some ice, there’s a dear,’ Janie said, but she took her arm off the sofa above my back.
I pulled myself together. I was getting nowhere. ‘I came to ask if you’d give me a golf lesson,’ I said.
I watched him narrowly. He was putting ice into the glasses with a silver spoon. ‘I’ve heard it called some funny things,’ he said. He stood up to give me a stare of mock astonishment. ‘Well!’ he said as if increasingly amazed. He gave several high and I thought slightly hysterical laughs.
‘Why did I marry this vulgar man?’ Janie said.
I laughed a bit. ‘If it’s a trouble . . .’
‘Trouble!’ Jim said. ‘No trouble, except I don’t play.’ He drank with his elbow lifted high and stared.
I listened hard. Was I imagining it or had Janie on the sofa beside me also started to listen hard.
‘Last time I lifted a club was way back, let me see, way back . . .’
‘Oh what a liar he is,’ Janie said.
‘Liar!’ Jim said. ‘Who said that?’
Unfortunately my attention was distracted by a movement in that mauve hexagonal window. It was Hubert who had come much closer on the lawn so that I could only see him from the chest up, though it occurred to me that the glass might be magnifying him and he was really farther away. Now he was looking directly towards me through his big spectacles, but I had the impression that he couldn’t see me, as if the glass was one way. By moving my head the smallest amount I could reduce his chest to a couple of inches or expand it three feet.
‘You don’t call that golf!’ Jim was saying, and I realized with fury that I’d missed the vital seconds. ‘That was to prove I could wake up before midday. That was because Charlie said I’d never seen any dew. Now Charlie, he’s a real golfer. Ask Charlie.’
I’d barely time to guess at the implications of this when a bell rang. I was closer to the room door than Janie sitting beside me, or Jim bending over her glass, pouring Pimms, holding back leaves with the silver strainer. ‘I’ll go,’ I said.
I was out of the room in a second, so that I had no chance to judge their alarm. I had to hurry, in case their Spanish maid came from the kitchen. I turned the latch soundlessly and opened the front door suddenly. It was Wilfred Draycott.
His hands were still heavily bandaged, though his left one was no longer in a sling. He still had the plaster on his nose. The consternation on his face was funny. It seemed the clearest piece of evidence I’d yet had. It was typical that Wilfred should provide it.
‘You here?’ he said.
I checked myself, quickly realizing that he had a good reason for showing surprise when the wrong person opened the wrong front door. Perhaps he hadn’t been so foolish.
‘Could be,’ I said. ‘You bringing the post?’
He was carrying a slim envelope of unfolded foolscap size. ‘Oh, that,’ he said, glancing at it, smiling casually.
What he didn’t realize was that I’d noticed the instinctive movement of his bandaged hand to hide it behind him the moment he’d seen me at the door. He’d checked it, of course, but not soon enough.
‘Yes, that,’ I said.
He glanced at it again. When I didn’t get out of the doorway, he began to stare at me as if surprised by my rude curiosity. He didn’t stare me in the
eyes but in the middle of my chest. ‘That’s something I’ve been doing for Jim.’
It was well judged. It would have been suspicious if he’d told me more. I let him pass. Unfortunately he blocked my view as he went into the sitting-room so that I could see no sign which may have passed between them.
‘I’ve brought you the designs,’ I heard him say. He put the envelope on the triangular table, with the ebony top and brass tube legs.
‘Thanks,’ Jim said. ‘Have a drink. It’s a party. Didn’t you know?’
But I was hardly listening, too amazed by Wilfred’s careless words. Either their self-confidence was colossal, or, still more alarming, it no longer mattered what I guessed. I watched closely when Jim poured me more Pimms. I watched his hand for any powder he might feed from below it into my glass.
I saw nothing, but before I drank I passed behind the settee and casually held it to the light. There was a mush of fruit at the top and bubbles rising from the sides but the bottom seemed clear. I sipped.
‘Come on then, don’t hold back,’ Jim said. It made me jump badly. A second later I realized he was talking to Wilfred about his envelope. I shut my mouth, which had fallen open.
‘I don’t want to be a bore,’ Wilfred began.
‘Aw, come on,’ Jim said. He made a move towards the envelope. The telephone rang.
I hadn’t noticed it before. It was ivory, with red number sockets. It purred on an ivory shelf. ‘Hallo there,’ Jim called into it. Putting his hand over the mouthpiece he stage-whispered to us, ‘C. Quorum, Esq.’
But I could scarcely attend for, to add to my astonishment that I should have chanced to walk in on this gathering, I was now amazed to see Wilfred Draycott reapproaching his envelope, lifting it from the table.
‘Come on over,’ Jim was shouting. ‘Haven’t they told you? It’s a party.’ He was opening the flap. He was peering in. He was inserting a bandaged hand.
‘Aw, forget it,’ Jim called. ‘You’ve got a convert. Thought he’d come to seduce my wife. Not a bit of it. Only interested in the life of sport. The tee, the fairway, the green. We can hardly hold him. His hands keep twitching. His eyes have that faraway look.’
Whenever he paused I could imagine Charlie being dryly witty, or allowing dryly witty silences. I could imagine how Jim was missing these. But all the time my eyes were on that thin sheaf of foolscap sheets which Wilfred had extracted and was now looking at, as if wondering for the first time how they might seem to someone else.
When Janie asked he showed them to her. She held them, looking at the top sheet, but neither she nor Jim, when he held them, showed the slightest curiosity about the undersheets which they were also holding.
Looking past their arms I saw four ink sketches, each in a different way showing a bird of prey perched on a box.
‘Smashing,’ Jim said. ‘Aren’t they good?’ He turned to me. ‘Don’t you like them? Be honest. Which do you like? Which stinks least?’
Suddenly I understood: Jim’s business, The Peregrine Packaging Company Limited. They were Peregrines sitting on packages. It was some new crest or trademark.
A hint at a time, Jim told me.
‘Never pay if you’ve got a friend.’
‘In due course . . .’ Wilfred began.
‘He thinks he’s going to catch my account,’ Jim said. ‘Put me under a moral obligation. What’s that? Ever heard of it?’ He gave me a huge wink. ‘Here, drink up.’ He advanced on me with the Pimms jug.
‘No really, thanks.’
‘What are we then? A bunch of Sabattarians?’
‘I didn’t want a second,’ I said. ‘Sorry to waste it. Unless you . . .’ I began, holding it towards him.
‘What, me!’ Jim said. ‘I wouldn’t dare.’
‘Wouldn’t dare?’
‘Didn’t you know?’ Janie called. ‘Jim’s got a suspected ulcer.’
I had to leave. I was sure I’d seen him drinking a moment before, though when I looked for his glass I couldn’t see it. I had again that horrible sense that I was being laughed at. My head was swelling, swelling.
‘Don’t go, you there,’ Janie said, holding my hand.
‘I must.’ I forced it free and hurried out. I was escaping but I felt no triumph. I felt like a victim of their charity.
As I left the room I heard Wilfred say modestly, ‘There’re a few more.’ Turning my head, I caught a glimpse of lifting sheets. On the lower sheets I saw more box designs.
I must have been a bit dazed as I walked home. Perhaps it was the bright hot sunlight after their house. It wasn’t till I reached the New Lane that I realized what had disturbed me about those under sheets. They’d had boxes but there’d been no birds on them. I was almost certain.
Boxes. It was the sight of my house and the memory of what had last happened there that morning which gave me the clue. What else could be kept in wooden boxes? At once I was making sense of the whole vicious plan. What better and more innocent way to distract and sabotage me than to arrange in these vital days for me to be preoccupied with some stupid police prosecution?
I had been right. There had been no rabbits in my orchard – till a few days ago.
Suddenly I was reassessing that absurd story about Wilfred and the cucumber frames, remembering that hanging cupboard, so obviously his own horrible handiwork, that moment in the dusk when he had held up what looked like a saw. Wilfred had been carpentering. Converting wooden boxes. Adding doors with wire netting, and solid fronts for nesting compartments. And I was seeing new sense in that strange early-morning golfing expedition along the edge of the course which bordered my land. It was an inspection of their releasing grounds. I was still testing these ideas when I met Molly.
She was ten yards from the gate of our drive, coming towards me.
‘I couldn’t find you,’ she said.
‘I was calling on Jim,’ I said. ‘I wanted him to give me some golf lessons.’
‘Does he play?’ she said.
‘Not much,’ I said.
I could tell from the way she didn’t answer that she’d already forgotten her question. We started to walk together.
‘The telephone rang,’ she said.
‘Who was it?’
‘No one.’
‘They weren’t there?’ I asked.
But again her mind had hurried away in some frightening direction where I couldn’t follow.
‘They do that, don’t they?’ she said.
‘Burglars?’ I said. ‘To see if you’re out?’
She nodded impatiently.
‘So we’re told,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if I believe it.’
She didn’t answer.
‘Was there any sound?’ I asked.
‘Just a click,’ she said. ‘The second I lifted it. Then the dialling tone.’
That was a bad day. My head got worse.
Why had she come to find me? Or had she been on her way to the Brightworths’ house, like so many other people that morning? What had she really thought when the telephone had rung, then clicked and buzzed? Or had that really happened at all?
Before lunch I hurried down my hillside. In the orchard nearest to the golf course there were many small scrapings of the sort rabbits make when pursuing a tasty root. True I hadn’t looked for them lately, but I was sure I’d have noticed. I hunted in the hedges but could find no holes. I hurried back to the house.
All that afternoon I listened for the telephone.
PART FIVE
I heard it that evening. I was in the back drive, looking north. I ran.
I took it in the office. I lifted the receiver and at once I heard the disconnecting click. I worked the rest, giving the ready-to-receive flashes. There was a second’s pause, then the steady buzz began. I could hear nothing else. As I sat at the office desk, holding the receiver to my ear, looking out through the open door at the sunlit lawn, I heard steps and Molly was coming past.
‘What is it?’ She stopped at the doorwa
y, staring in. Her eyes were frightened.
Perhaps what frightened her was the look of drawn worry which I had allowed to come on my face. I relaxed it quickly. I made a sign for her to be quiet, as if I was listening. I put my hand over the mouthpiece and said, ‘I’m not sure.’ I took it away and went on listening. I was starting to hear things.
For a second more she stared in, then went away.
As when they’d given me the escape procedure I was hearing them through the dialling tone which never stopped. The difference was that they were fainter, as if they had gone much farther away.
They were so faint that I wondered if they’d been there all the time but I’d not been listening with enough care. At first I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then I caught it. ‘Beware H.Q. Beware H.Q. Beware H.Q.’
They went on like that for perhaps a minute and then without warning stopped. I gave the receiver a shake, I can’t think why. I said, ‘Are you there?’ Again I flashed the ready-to-receive combination. Nothing happened. I was worried and frightened.
I went into the garden. I showed myself to Molly as I went, as if with purpose, across the lawn towards the tennis court.
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, going on towards the tennis net which I lowered.
Passing her more slowly on the way back I said, ‘Perhaps it’s out of order.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Could be.’
‘Then why does it ring?’
‘Some fault which disconnects us as soon as it’s lifted.’
She wasn’t convinced, but she thought I might believe it.
I went from place to place in the garden, trying to work it out. Who or what was H.Q.? It wasn’t our word for the central organization. It stood for no local place I could think of.
I tried not to let Molly see how I was moving restlessly about with nothing to do, but twice she noticed me and I think she guessed. I went into the house. Perhaps I should go to my attic, but at that time of day it would be unusual.