by Nina Bawden
“How dreadful,” said Janet automatically. She was neither amused nor shocked. She glanced at Alice, her hands twisting awkwardly together. “Shouldn’t we …”
“Pray for him, if you want to,” said Alice.
Janet coloured deeply. She blushes like a spinster lady, thought Alice, all over her body. “I don’t know … I just thought…. Do you believe in it?” she asked. Her dark eyes entreated Alice.
“In prayer?”
“No.” She’s embarrassed, thought Alice, as if she’d been caught in a street accident without her knickers on. “In God,” the girl finished, unhappily.
Alice could bear no more. Her body ached as if she had been beaten with rods. She did not mean to be unkind but she longed for the cool whiteness of the spare room bed.
“I don’t believe in God,” she said loudly, finishing the matter.
There was a sound outside the bedroom door and they both turned and stared. Then Alice moved swiftly but when she opened the door, the landing was empty. In the nursery, Hilary lay face downwards in her bed, breathing steadily.
“It must have been the cat,” said Alice, and turned out the light.
When Janet and her mother had been to the bathroom, when their doors were safely closed for the night, Hilary slid from her room and went into her father’s room. There was no light in the room but she could see the bed and the hump of his body beneath the bedclothes by the light of the street lamp in the road outside.
She did not dare go near the bed. She said, “Daddy.” in a low, fearful whisper, and remained, shivering, by the door. She did not expect him to answer. She was acting a part and was aware of this herself. She did not move until the clock in the hall struck the hour with a low, theatrical boom. Then she fled from the room, back to the nursery where she stood at the window, parting the curtains and peering out into the dark.
She did not cry. She stood, tearless and still. There was nobody to help her, not even God. No Jesus to keep you safe till morning light. It was a story for babies like Father Christmas. A dream that fell to pieces when you were old enough and when that happened, only the Devil was left, waiting for you in the ruins, biting his nails and dragging his cloven hoof.
After a little, she ceased to be afraid and began to luxuriate in the drama of her lonely position. She turned on the light and stared at herself in the looking-glass, assuming an expression of suffering nobility. Then she yawned heavily, turned out the light and lay on Peregrine’s bed, dragging the rough blankets over her. This was where his head went. His feet came higher up than hers because he was smaller; she curled her body slightly so that she could fit into his shape. If she lay quite still, she could almost feel the hollow his body made in the mattress, she could imagine that she was Peregrine. She closed her eyes and fell asleep swiftly and healthily.
Chapter Eight
Hilary was playing in the garden with Wally. Mrs. Peacock had brought him to work with her because he was wearing his new school clothes. The evening before, he had been caught robbing an orchard by an angry market gardener and although he had successfully made his escape, he had been badly frightened and fallen into a flooded ditch. When he returned home, late and soaked to the skin, Mrs. Peacock had not been angry about the robbery. She knew that Wally was not a delinquent but had merely been experimenting to see what he could get away with. She was, however, very angry about his clothes which could not be dried overnight in the caravan. There was no alternative but to put him in his best clothes and, knowing that he would find it impossible while engaged upon his usual activities to keep them clean, she decided to keep him under her eye.
At first, he was surly with Hilary. He could not be friendly with her because she reflected, too painfully, his own, crippling disadvantages. Like him, she was too fat and too clever: this similarity which should have formed a bond between them, established her in Wally’s mind as someone to be avoided.
Hilary was still too young to dislike Wally for this reason. Although she often wondered, with secret terror, why she had no friends, she did not know she was clever and her feelings for Wally were so blinding that she did not see him as fat.
Once they were alone and unobserved, her loving admiration disarmed Wally entirely. He even indulged her by playing Hide and Seek, a game which he would normally have considered beneath his dignity. When they were puffed, they sat on the steps of the wooden summer house at the bottom of the garden and ate squashed-fly biscuits— a term hastily invented by Wally to discourage Hilary from eating the currants of which he was extravagantly fond. She picked them carefully out of the biscuits and handed them to him.
“I’m going to the Fun Fair this afternoon,” he said grandly. “It’s the last day. And it’s my last day, too. I’m going to school to-morrow. To my new school.” He said this proudly but Hilary was unaware of the significance of his achievement and merely said, “I wish I could go to the Fun Fair,” and sighed.
“I could’ve gone to the pictures. My Mum gave me five shillings.” He plunged his hands deep into his pockets, rattled the coins and scratched himself.
“Would you take me?” she said ingratiatingly. “I’ve got some money in my Pig.”
He shook his head. “Your Mum wouldn’t let you go. Not now your father’s dead. Have you seen him?” he asked curiously.
“I looked last night. But it just looked as if he was asleep. I didn’t go close,” she admitted honestly.
“I saw a dead man once. In the street. He was run over.”
“Was he bloody?”
“No,” he said, his voice tinged with regret. “He was sort of yellow. His head was hanging off the edge of the pavement. He looked all loose, like a Guy Fawkes.”
“It must be funny to be dead,” said Hilary in a speculative tone. “I suppose we were dead before we were born.”
This idea surprised Wally. He picked his nose reflectively.
“I dunno. I suppose we can’t have been really. I mean we weren’t there, were we?”
“You aren’t when you’re dead. You rot away.”
“Yes, but it’s different.”
“You go to heaven.”
“That’s what they say” said Wally significantly. They both stared in front of them for a short space, absorbed in this difficult problem. Finally Hilary said, “I’m sorry Daddy was horrid to you yesterday. It was all my fault.”
“It wasn’t nothing.” Wally was appalled that she should have mentioned the matter. He rose from the step, whistling casually and began to kick at the rotten wood of the summer house.
Hilary felt his coldness towards her and said ingratiatingly, “He spanked me. On my bare skin.”
Wally was comforted by this admission. “Did you have any marks?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see. I expect I was black and blue.”
“Let’s see.”
Hilary drew away from him. “No. It’s rude,” she said pnggishly.
Wally flushed to the roots of his hair. “Soppy,” he shouted angrily.
“I’m not.” Wally began to walk away and she ran after him pleadingly. “I’ll let you if you like.”
“Think I want to?” he sneered. “I bet it isn’t worth seeing. My Dad once went for me with a belt. It had a buckle on the end and it cut me right open. The people next door sent for the Cruelties. There was an awful row.”
“Did he go to prison? Your father, I mean.”
“Nope. It was the first time. I’d pinched some apples off a barrer and he was learning me. I deserved it, all right,” he ended righteously.
“Well, I didn’t,” Hilary burst out indignantly. “I hadn’t stolen anything. I only threw one stone. And after all, it was the Devil. It wasn’t wrong to throw stones at him:”
Wally saw her earnest expression and his face became serious. “See here, kid,” he said in a suddenly assumed American accent, “that wasn’t the Devil, you might as well get it straight. It was only Dotty Jim. He lives in a caravan in our field. He’s just ordinary, l
ike everyone else, only a bit soft in the head. He sweeps the roads.”
“Peregrine says he’s the Devil,” she cried, and he laughed at her.
“I shouldn’t listen to him. He’s only a little kid. Little kids get funny ideas sometimes.”
She frowned crossly and stuck out her lower lip. “He said you could tell he was the Devil because he’s got a cloven hoof, so there.” She glared at him and he smiled in a superior manner.
“That’s his club foot.” He saw that she did not understand and began to explain to her with an air of condescension. “You see, some people are born sort of wrong.”
“Have you seen his foot?” she broke in triumphantly.
“No …” he conceded, “but …”
“Then you can’t know, can you?” Drunk with the power of her own logic, she turned a somersault in the wet grass.
“Seeing isn’t always believing,” he said loftily. She saw his sulky look and jumped hastily to her feet.
“Anyway, he’s a bad, horrible man,” she temporised.
“Oh, don’t be daft.” Bored and irritated, he turned away from her, wriggling inside his clothes and jerking his hips. She caught his arm. “He is. He was in the paper. He’s the man who took the little girl away.”
“What d’you mean? The one who done her in?” His expression was blank and incredulous; behind it, he was dismayed. Hilary pushed her round, obstinate face close to his.
“He was sitting next to us at Uncle Jack’s. Afterwards he talked to the little girl on the beach and they went away and after that I saw her picture in the paper.”
Wally was too well acquainted with the boastful lie not to recognise the truth when he heard it. He also knew enough about the world to know that Dotty Jim might easily be that kind of murderer. His heart shrank inside him. His maturity dropped away and he looked, suddenly, small and frightened.
“Have you told anyone?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
Hilary saw the change in him with dismay. “They didn’t believe me,” she said helplessly.
“Grown-ups.” The scorn in his voice lacked conviction. He began to bluster. “You can’t ’ave told them proper. You should have told someone important, like a policeman.”
“Oo, I daren’t.”
“Well, you got to do something, haven’t you?”
“I can’t.” Tears trembled in her eyes. At this sign of childishness, Wally recovered some of his composure. “Stop bawling and let me think, can’t you?” he said roughly. “I’ve gotter think what to do.” He sat down on the steps of the summer house, gazing sternly in front of him, his chin in his his hands. His pose did not deceive Hilary.
“You can’t do anything, you’re only a boy,” she accused.
“I’m bigger than you,” he argued, hurt. “Besides, I’ve got a scholarship.” For once, this fact did not help his self-esteem. “You’ve made it all up,” he said, not believing this for a moment but unable to think of anything else to say.
“I didn’t.” Hilary licked her finger and drew it across her throat. “Cross my heart.”
“You did.”
“I didn’t. Oh, you’re no good” she screamed at him and ran round the side of the house. Wally sat, scraping at the earth with the heel of his boot, scowling fiercely. Then he got up, retreated a few yards and began to throw stones at the summer house. One of them cracked the small, dusty window and he glanced round guiltily, scarlet in the face. Thrusting his hands in his pockets, he followed Hilary. He found her, crouching by the front gate, a kitten in her lap. It was dead and covered with dust; its small head hung over her knee at an unnatural angle.
“Coo,” he said, “where did you get that? You’d better put it down or you’ll catch something. Germs,” he ended impressively.
She looked at him coldly. She was not crying and this filled him with awe and admiration. “It’s mine,” she said and her mouth set in a thin, obstinate line. “It was in the hedge. He killed it and threw it there.”
He knew to whom she referred. “Oh, come off it,” he said concerned, and squatted down beside her. She stood up, the kitten clutched against her dress. “You …” she breathed contemptuously and, pushing past him, ran into the house.
The Fun Fair was crowded. At some of the resorts along the coast the fairs had closed down already and the car park was full of charabancs, motor-scooters and family cars. The dusty ground was covered with blowing paper; children buried their exultant faces in the pink glory of candy floss. Coveys of middle-aged women, squeaking like partridges, patrolled the ground wearing paper hats labelled Kiss-me-quick, Don’t-look-now and Oh-boy-oh-boy. The lights were lit on the roundabouts and on the stalls; music blared from the Tannoy high above the Scenic Railway which towered like a neolithic skeleton against the dying sky.
Hilary, clutching her purse in the pocket of her frock, was filled with a wild and splendid happiness. It seemed a miracle that she was here at all, a piece of staggering luck. She did not connect it with the kitten’s death. Once it was buried, decently coffined in a shoe box, beneath the laburnum bushes at the bottom of the garden, its death had ceased to trouble her. She had had plenty of pets and was accustomed to their dying: it was not nearly so painful as when they escaped from their match boxes or jam jars or, like the caterpillars, turned into butterflies and flew away. But the grown-ups had surrounded her with sad and solemn faces, given her sweets and asked her if there was anything special she would like to do. “Such a dreadful shock for the child at this time,” Alice had said in an undertone to Janet. Auntie had given her a necklace of moonstones in a Victorian silver setting to wear with her party dress. Hilary, bewildered by this sudden rush of attention, had not lost her head. She seized, without much hope, on the one concrete offer. “I want to go to the Fun Fair,” she said in a whining voice. She did not expect her request to be granted— it came into the category of unattainable joys like the full-size bicycle or the pony she asked for every Christmastime. But she did not show her astonishment when, after a hushed discussion she was told that she might go, just this once, and was given some money to spend.
Janet took her on the Scenic Railway. They climbed, on the creaking cable, to the top of the last, highest dip and rushed gloriously down through the pale, cold air, shrieking against the wind. Hilary saw the world turn and topple, change into fantastic shapes; she saw people with legs like pins and enormous, gaping faces. When they lurched into the wooden platform and the ride was over, she felt sick and her legs were trembling.
They played Bingo. Hilary was bored because only two of the numbers on her card came up but when the game was over and Janet abruptly left her seat, Hilary ran after her, shouting, “But I wanted another go.”
“Then Want must be your master,” said Janet in a cold, school-mistressy voice. Her unfriendliness sobered Hilary. She tugged at her sister’s hand and gave her an ingratiating smile but Janet jerked her hand away and stared into the distance in an offended way.
“What’s the matter?” asked Hilary in a fretful voice.
Janet gazed at her bitterly and said, “You stole my letter.” Hilary was startled by the trembling anger in her voice. She could not remember the incident. She stared at Janet, open-mouthed, a stupid expression on her face.
“It was a beastly thing to do,” continued Janet, two red spots appearing on her sallow cheek-bones, “a nasty, deceitful, sneaky thing to do.” With each adjective, she gave Hilary’s shoulder a little push. The child looked down at her feet, bewildered, her happiness temporarily destroyed by this manifestation of dislike. “And I have to drag you round with me,” went on Janet, giving her another push. “It’s poor Hilary, poor Hilary, never poor Janet.” Her words increased her vindictiveness towards her sister.
“Poor Janet,” said Hilary in a placating voice. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re not, you never are, nasty, spoiled little beast,” said Janet viciously. Then her expression changed. She smiled. Surprised, Hilary saw the smile and essayed one of her own
before she saw that Janet was not smiling at her but at Aubrey, who was coming towards them with long strides, his open, worsted jacket showing a brightly coloured, cotton shirt.
“There you are,” he said, pressing Janet’s hand and looking down at her lovingly. They walked across the fairground, talking in low tones. Hilary trailed after them. They stopped outside the Big Laugh.
Hilary said loudly, “I want to go into the Big Laugh. It’s full of funny mirrors and it’s a maze. Sometimes people get lost in there for days and days and no one finds them till they’re dead and their bones are sticking out like matches.”
“Silly child,” said Janet indulgently and smiled upon her for Aubrey’s benefit.
Aubrey said, “Why such a fat child should have fantasies of starvation bewilders me.” Janet laughed, a high, ringing laugh as if he had said something surpassingly witty. The man in the pay box of the Big Laugh shouted, “Come along, ladies and gentlemen, see yourselves as you really are. In some cases, people find it an improvement.”
“It’s like another world,” said Aubrey in his sad, parsonical voice, “not just a reflection of this one.” He stared deep into Janet’s eyes as he said this and Janet looked uncomfortable. He murmured something in her ear and, in the mirror, two fat midgets held hands. Hilary scuffed the toe of her sandal along the ground. A deep disappointment invaded her: nothing was ever so wonderful as she expected it to be.
“I want to go on the Roller Coaster,” she groaned.
“It’s too fast. It would make you sick. You were nearly sick on the Scenic Railway.”
“I wasn’t. Anyway I don’t care if I’m sick. I want to go. More than anything in the world.”
“The roundabout is better, dear.” Aubrey smiled in a patronising manner and patted her on the head. “Look, see the horses….”
She was perched high on a galloping horse with flaring red nostrils and golden stirrups. She clutched at the brass pole in front of her and the roundabout began to move. In the middle, a mechanical drummer banged his drum and nodded his head. The world flew past her, a mad panorama of colours and light: in the middle of the world, Hilary swooped and soared like a creature of the air. “Lovely,” she screamed and kicked at her horse’s sides. Briefly, she closed her eyes and it was like the moment of flying in a dream just before you wake.