Fireside Gothic

by Andrew Taylor

  He was very brisk and businesslike on that first meeting – I felt that my plight deserved a little more sympathy than he gave it. He showed me over the house, with Mr Treadwell hovering behind us and making the occasional clucking sound designed to express approval and gratitude.

  The tour didn’t take long. Downstairs, at the front, there was a sitting room dominated by a grand piano which occupied almost half the floor space. The air was stuffy with pipe smoke, which filled the air with a fine, blue-grey fog. There were books everywhere. They were shelved in the orthodox manner along the walls. They stood in piles under the piano and on the piano. They lined the mantelpiece and colonized the shadowy corners.

  A tortoiseshell cat was asleep on one of the chairs. It opened one eye, looked at us, and shut it again.

  ‘That’s Mordred,’ Mr Ratcliffe said, looking directly at me for the first time. ‘I’d be careful with him, if I were you.’

  ‘Mordred?’ Mr Treadwell said. ‘An unusual name for a cat.’

  ‘In Le Morte d’Arthur,’ Mr Ratcliffe said, ‘Mordred betrays his uncle the King. Not a nice man. I regret to say that Mordred is not nice either, hence the name.’

  ‘In that case, I’m surprised you keep him.’

  ‘I’ve had him since he was very young. I must make the best of him now, just as he must make the best of me.’

  Apart from the sitting room, the other rooms downstairs were a kitchen and dining room, dark little rooms with small windows, heavily barred, overlooking the bustle of the High Street.

  ‘One washes here,’ Mr Ratcliffe said, gesturing towards the kitchen sink. ‘I am afraid there’s no bathroom. The lavatory is outside in the yard. If I need a bath, my neighbours kindly let me use theirs. I have had a word with them, and they have no objection to extending their hospitality to you. Of course, I try not to trouble them very often if I can possibly help it.’

  ‘Splendid!’ Mr Treadwell said.

  Upstairs there were only two rooms. The door of the one at the front remained closed – ‘My bedroom,’ Mr Ratcliffe explained, with an odd, apologetic twitch of his face.

  The one at the back was mine. Like the kitchen and dining room below, it overlooked the High Street. It was low-ceilinged with two beds and a quantity of dark furniture designed for less cramped quarters. The window was small and barred, like the ones downstairs. It faced north and let in very little daylight. The air smelled damp.

  Mr Treadwell poked his head into the gloom. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Splendid.’ He withdrew and clattered downstairs.

  ‘I – er – I hope you’ll be comfortable.’ Mr Ratcliffe glanced round the room. ‘Mrs Thing made up the bed on the left. She must have thought you would be more comfortable there.’

  ‘Who’s Mrs Thing, sir?’ I asked, and my voice emerged as a loud croak.

  ‘The woman who does – she comes in three times a week to clean. And so on.’ He frowned, as if trying to recall what she did do. ‘I stay out of her way myself.’

  ‘Is she really called Mrs Thing?’

  Mr Ratcliffe appeared to give the matter serious consideration. ‘Well, no. Or not that I know of. But I can never remember her name. Indeed, I cannot be sure that I ever knew it. So I call her Mrs Thing instead.’

  We went back downstairs. Mr Treadwell was waiting in the hall and frowning at his watch.

  ‘I haven’t mentioned your meals,’ he said. ‘Mr Ratcliffe makes his own arrangements. But you will find bread and milk in the kitchen, I understand.’

  ‘And tea,’ Mr Ratcliffe put in. ‘And butter and jam. Help yourself.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Mr Ratcliffe.’ Treadwell turned back to me. ‘You will take your lunch and tea at Mr Veal’s house. You know where that is? Beside the Porta.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The Porta was the great gateway at the far end of the College. Mr Veal was the head verger of the Cathedral, a tyrant who waged an endless war against the boys of the King’s School.

  ‘I am sure Mrs Veal will look after you.’ Mr Treadwell retreated towards the door. ‘It only remains for me to wish you both a very happy Christmas. Goodbye – I must rush.’

  With that, Mr Treadwell was gone. The door slammed behind him. I never saw him again, as it happens, a circumstance I do not regret. Not in itself.

  Mr Ratcliffe led the way into the sitting room, saying over his shoulder, ‘A train, no doubt. They wait for no man, do they?’

  I followed him into the room and stared about me. I dare say I looked a little forlorn.

  ‘You could read a book, I suppose,’ he suggested. ‘That’s what I generally do. Or perhaps you would like to unpack. You mustn’t mind me – just as you please.’

  I was standing near the chair on which Mordred lay. The first I knew of this was when I felt an acute pain in the back of my left hand. I cried out. When I looked down, the cat had folded its forelegs and was staring up at me with amber eyes, flecked with green. There were two spots of blood on my hand. I sucked them away.

  ‘Mordred!’ Mr Ratcliffe said. ‘I do apologize.’

  Freedom is an unsatisfactory thing. I had longed for the end of term, to the end of the chafing restrictions of school. But when I had freedom, I did not know what to do with it.

  Mr Ratcliffe set no boundaries whatsoever on my conduct. In this he was perhaps wiser than I realized at the time. But he made it clear – wordlessly, and with the utmost courtesy – that he and Mordred had their own lives, their own routines, and that he did not wish me to disturb them if at all possible.

  On that first day, I went into the town during the afternoon. During term time, we boys were not allowed to leave a College except when specifically authorized – to walk to the playing field, for example, or to visit the home of a dayboy, or to go to one of the few shops that the school authorities had licensed us to patronize. We were allowed to go shopping only on Saturday afternoons, and only in pairs.

  So – to ramble the streets at will on Christmas Eve, to go into shops on a whim: it should have been glorious. Instead it was cold and boring. The hurrying people making last-minute purchases emphasized my own isolation. Everywhere I looked there were signs of excitement, of anticipation, of secular pleasures to come. I had a strong suspicion that Mr Ratcliffe would not celebrate Christmas at all, except perhaps by going to church more often than usual.

  I tried to buy a packet of cigarettes in a tobacconist’s, but the man knew I was at the King’s School by my cap and refused to serve me. I had a cup of tea and an iced bun in a café, where mothers and daughters stared at me with, I thought, both curiosity and pity.

  In the end, there was nothing for it but to go back to the College, to Mr Ratcliffe’s. At the Sacrist’s Lodging, his door was unlocked. I hung up my coat and cap and went into the sitting room.

  Mr Ratcliffe wasn’t there. But a boy was sitting in Mordred’s chair, with Mordred on his lap. He had a long thin head, and his ears stood out from his skull. His front teeth were prominent and slightly crooked.

  The cat was purring. They both looked at me.

  ‘Hello,’ said the boy. ‘I’m Faraday.’

  3

  That was the start of my acquaintance with Faraday. It’s strange that such a brief relationship should have had such a profound effect on both of us. He was very thin – all skin and bone – but there was nothing remarkable in that. The school food was appalling and few of us grew fat on it. Some people called him ‘Rabbit’ because of his teeth.

  The front door opened. Mr Ratcliffe came into the house. ‘Ah – there you are. I see you’ve met Faraday. But perhaps you two are already friends?’

  I shook my head. Faraday continued stroking the cat.

  ‘As you see, he has already established a friendship with Mordred. How long it will last is another matter.’ Mr Ratcliffe sat down and began to ream his pipe. ‘Mrs Thing is making up the other bed.’

  ‘He’s staying here?’ I said. ‘But—’

  ‘I’m not in the choir any more,’ Faraday i
nterrupted. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  I noticed two things: that Faraday’s face had gone very red, and that his voice started on a high pitch but descended rapidly into a croak.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Ratcliffe said, tapping his pipe on the hearth to remove the last of the dottle. ‘Poor chap. Faraday’s voice has broken. Pity it should happen just before Christmas, but there it is. Dr Atkinson decided it would be better not to take a chance: so here he is.’

  Even then I knew there must be more to it than this. The brisk jollity of Mr Ratcliffe’s voice told me that, and so did Faraday’s face. Even if Faraday’s voice had reached the point where it could not be trusted, they could have let him stay with them, let him walk with the choir on Christmas morning with his badge of honour around his neck.

  Faraday looked up. ‘They chucked me out,’ he said. ‘It’s not fair.’

  At the time I pitied only myself. Now I realize that all of us in that house deserved pity for one reason or another.

  Faraday’s voice had betrayed him. His greatest ally had become the traitor within. He had lost not just his place in the choir but also his sense of who he was. Mr Ratcliffe must have loathed the necessity to share his house with two boys, disturbing his quiet routines and upsetting his cat. It didn’t occur to me until much later that he was probably very poor. He must have received some money from the school for housing us. Perhaps he had felt in no position to refuse. After all, he was old and alone; he lived a grace-and-favour life in a grace-and-favour house.

  Faraday and I went to the verger’s house at six in the evening, where Mrs Veal gave us Welsh rarebit, blancmange and a glass of milk. We ate in the Veals’ parlour, a stiff little room smelling of polish and soot. On the mantelpiece was a mynah bird, stuffed and attached to a twig, encased in a glass dome.

  On that occasion we saw only Mrs Veal, apart from near the end of the meal when Mr Veal came in from the Cathedral, still in his verger’s cassock; he wished us good evening in a gruff voice and opened the door of a wall cupboard. I glimpsed two rows of hooks within, holding keys of various sizes.

  ‘Enjoy your supper,’ he told us, and went into the kitchen, where we heard him talking to his wife.

  Faraday rose from his chair, crossed the room to the cupboard and opened the door.

  ‘Dozens of keys,’ he whispered. ‘And all with labels. It’s the keys for everywhere.’

  I pretended not to be interested. ‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Or he’ll catch you.’

  That night I heard Faraday crying.

  I remember in my first term at school I would lie in bed, listening for other boys crying and stuffing my handkerchief in my own mouth in an attempt to muffle my tears. There were about twenty of us huddled under thin blankets in a high-ceilinged dormitory, the windows wide open winter or summer. Sometimes one of the older boys would round on one of the weeping children.

  ‘Bloody blubber,’ he would whisper, and the rest of us would repeat the words over and over again, like an incantation, lest we be accused of blubbing as well. Little savages.

  But that had been years ago. I wasn’t a kid any more and nor was Faraday.

  ‘Faraday?’ I murmured.

  There was instant silence.

  ‘Are you crying?’

  ‘I’ve got a cold.’

  It was the usual excuse, transparently false.

  ‘What is it?’ I said. And waited.

  ‘Everything. Bloody everything.’

  We lay there without speaking. The room was not quite dark – the curtains were thin and the light from a High Street lamp leaked into the room.

  ‘But it’s my bloody voice really,’ he went on. ‘Everything would have been all right if it hadn’t been for that.’

  ‘That’s rot,’ I said, with the loftiness of fourteen to thirteen. ‘Everyone’s voice has to break sometime, unless you’re a girl. You don’t want to be a girl, do you?’

  This was an attempt at comfort but it seemed only to make Faraday start crying again.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You can’t just blub.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I was going to sing the Christmas anthem. There’s a solo, you see, and it’s usually the head chorister that does it, and the Bishop gives him a special present afterwards. Some money.’

  ‘How much?’ I said.

  ‘Five pounds.’

  I whistled. ‘For a bit of singing? That’s stupid.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ Faraday’s voice rose in volume and, suddenly, in pitch. ‘It’s a tradition. They’ve been doing it for hundreds of years. Some old bishop left money in his will for it. And now Hampson will do it instead.’

  ‘Don’t talk so loud. The Rat will hear you.’

  ‘It’s lovely, too,’ Faraday whispered.

  Lovely was not a word we used much. ‘What is?’

  ‘The anthem. It’s for Christmas Day. It’s called “Jubilate Deo”, and we only sing it on Christmas morning.’

  Rejoice to God. Both of us had enough Latin to translate that.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘It’s beastly to lose five quid. But is it that bad? I mean, it was never yours in the first place.’

  Faraday started crying again. I was spending Christmas with a cry-baby. I curled myself into a ball to conserve heat and thought how perfectly miserable everything was. Or rather, how perfectly miserable I was. Boys are selfish little brutes. While I was wallowing in self-pity, however, my curiosity was still stirring.

  ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I can see it’s a shame your voice is broken and all that. But why are you like this about it? And why are you here?’

  The snuffling continued. It was getting on my nerves.

  ‘Why aren’t you still at the Choir House? Or why didn’t Dr Atkinson send you home to your people?’

  ‘My parents are dead,’ Faraday said, and the waterworks increased in force.

  That jolted me out of my own misery. I knew what it was to miss your parents, you see, and even I could imagine how infinitely worse it would be if you could never, ever see them again. Or not until after you died and went to heaven, assuming heaven was real, which in those days I still considered to be a sporting possibility.

  ‘So where do you go in the holidays?’

  ‘To my guardian’s, in Wales. But this year he’s had to go away. So I was going to stay with the Atkinsons until he comes back.’

  This deepened the mystery. ‘Then why aren’t you there now?’

  ‘It’s because of Hampson Minor. Bloody Hampson.’

  ‘Yes, you said – he’ll get the five quid because he’s going to sing the anthem, and I suppose he’s the new head of the choir, too.’

  Faraday’s bed creaked. ‘It’s not that. He had a postal order from his uncle. Ten bob.’

  I whistled softly in the darkness. Not in the same league as the Bishop’s five pounds, but still pretty decent. I wished my aunt would give me ten shillings sometimes.

  ‘He was swanking about it all the time. The postal order and being head of the choir and the Bishop’s money. He just went on and on and everyone was sucking up to him. He said he was going to buy a big cake from Fowler’s for everyone. I just wanted to kick him. You know what he’s like.’

  I only knew Hampson Minor by sight. He was a fat, pink-faced boy with small delicate features and prominent lips. When he sang, he made his lips into a perfect O.

  ‘He left the postal order on the floor. It must have fallen – it was with his exercise book. So I – I picked it up and put it in my pocket.’

  ‘You stole it?’

  ‘No,’ Faraday wailed. ‘I was just going to keep it for a bit, until he found he had lost it, and then give it back. To teach him a lesson. That’s all. Honestly.’

  I didn’t know whether he was telling the truth. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now.

  ‘But he told Dr Atkinson it was gone, and Dr Atkinson made us all empty our pockets and open our boxes.’ Faraday paused for a long moment. ‘And they found it.’
<
br />   I didn’t know what to say. Stealing was a sackable offence at the King’s School.

  ‘I was going to give it back, I swear it. I didn’t know he’d tell old Atky straight away. The rotten sneak.’

  ‘What will happen?’ The scale of the offence awed me. ‘Will they chuck you out?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Faraday whimpered. ‘I just don’t know. And even if they let me stay, everyone will know. So that’ll be almost as bad. And then there’s Hampson’s brother. I’d be in the senior school.’

  I was beginning to take a warped pleasure in having a ringside seat to the tragedy which was unfolding on such a grand scale. Faraday, the golden boy, had lost his singing voice, his five pounds and his pre-eminent role as head choirboy. He was now faced with a hideous pair of alternatives: if he was expelled from school he faced a lifetime of shame and whatever punishment his guardian cared to mete out; if he was allowed to stay, his remaining years at the school would be made a living hell, particularly by Hampson Major, a gorilla of a boy who played second row forward in the First XV, and who had a well-deserved reputation for brutality verging on sadism. He was bad enough as a casual tyrant over anyone smaller than himself. He would be a figure of nightmare if he chose to persecute you seriously.

  ‘God,’ I said as the full horror of Faraday’s situation hit me. ‘You poor bloody kid.’

  He was crying again, softly, continuously, a sort of moaning and sobbing that at last moved me to pity, and even to a desire to help.

  ‘Look here, Rabbit,’ I said. It was the first time I called him by his nickname. ‘Perhaps it won’t be as bad as you think.’

  The crying stopped. I heard Faraday’s ragged breathing.

  A sense of power filled me. He believed I might be able to help, and that almost made me believe it too.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘We’ll think of something. I promise.’

  4

  For every child, I think, there must be a day when Christmas loses its magic. By ‘magic’ I don’t mean an unquestioning belief in Father Christmas or a foolish attachment to improbable ideas about reindeer and chimneys and so on. Nor does the magic I mean reside in the religious connotations of the day, though of course, for many people, the one cannot be separated from the other and Christmas is always the birthday of Jesus. I envy them.