by Louise Welsh
“Do you know what I think you should do to put your mind at rest?”
“What?”
“Take Chris along to see old Dr Webster tomorrow. Let him have a little talk with her.”
“Do you think she’s ill – in her mind?”
“Good heavens, no! But when we come across something that’s a bit beyond us, it’s as well to take professional advice.”
Next day I took Chris to see Dr Webster. I left her in the waiting-room while I told him briefly about Harry. He nodded sympathetically, then said:
“It’s a fairly unusual case, Mrs James, but by no means unique. I’ve had several cases of children’s imaginary companions becoming so real to them that the parents got the jitters. I expect she’s rather a lonely little girl, isn’t she?”
“She doesn’t know any other children. We’re new to the neighbourhood, you see. But that will be put right when she starts school.”
“And I think you’ll find that when she goes to school and meets other children, these fantasies will disappear. You see, every child needs company of her own age, and if she doesn’t get it, she invents it. Older people who are lonely talk to themselves. That doesn’t mean that they’re crazy, just that they need to talk to someone. A child is more practical. Seems silly to talk to oneself, she thinks, so she invents someone to talk to. I honestly don’t think you’ve anything to worry about.”
“That’s what my husband says.”
“I’m sure he does. Still, I’ll have a chat with Christine as you’ve brought her. Leave us alone together.”
I went to the waiting-room to fetch Chris. She was at the window. She said: “Harry’s waiting.”
“Where, Chris?” I said quietly, wanting suddenly to see with her eyes.
“There. By the rose bush.”
The doctor had a bush of white roses in his garden.
“There’s no one there,” I said. Chris gave me a glance of unchildlike scorn. “Dr Webster wants to see you now, darling,” I said shakily. “You remember him, don’t you? He gave you sweets when you were getting better from chicken pox.”
“Yes,” she said and went willingly enough to the doctor’s surgery. I waited restlessly. Faintly I heard their voices through the wall, heard the doctor’s chuckle, Christine’s high peal of laughter. She was talking away to the doctor in a way she didn’t talk to me.
When they came out, he said: “Nothing wrong with her whatever. She’s just an imaginative little monkey. A word of advice, Mrs James. Let her talk about Harry. Let her become accustomed to confiding in you. I gather you’ve shown some disapproval of this ‘brother’ of hers so she doesn’t talk much to you about him. He makes wooden toys, doesn’t he, Chris?”
“Yes, Harry makes wooden toys.”
“And he can read and write, can’t he?”
“And swim and climb trees and paint pictures. Harry can do everything. He’s a wonderful brother.” Her little face flushed with adoration.
The doctor patted me on the shoulder and said: “Harry sounds a very nice brother for her. He’s even got red hair like you, Chris, hasn’t he?”
“Harry’s got red hair,” said Chris proudly, “Redder than my hair. And he’s nearly as tall as daddy only thinner. He’s as tall as you, mummy. He’s fourteen. He says he’s tall for his age. What is tall for his age?”
“Mummy will tell you about that as you walk home,” said Dr Webster. “Now, goodbye, Mrs James. Don’t worry. Just let her prattle. Goodbye, Chris. Give my love to Harry.”
“He’s there,” said Chris, pointing to the doctor’s garden. “He’s been waiting for me.”
Dr Webster laughed. “They’re incorrigible, aren’t they?” he said. “I knew one poor mother whose children invented a whole tribe of imaginary natives whose rituals and taboos ruled the household. Perhaps you’re lucky, Mrs James!”
I tried to feel comforted by all this, but I wasn’t. I hoped sincerely that when Chris started school this wretched Harry business would finish.
Chris ran ahead of me. She looked up as if at someone beside her. For a brief, dreadful second, I saw a shadow on the pavement alongside her own – a long, thin shadow – like a boy’s shadow. Then it was gone. I ran to catch her up and held her hand tightly all the way home. Even in the comparative security of the house – the house so strangely cold in this hot weather – I never let her out of my sight. On the face of it she behaved no differently towards me, but in reality she was drifting away. The child in my house was becoming a stranger.
For the first time since Jim and I had adopted Chris, I wondered seriously: Who is she? Where does she come from? Who were her real parents? Who is this little loved stranger I’ve taken as a daughter? Who is Christine?
Another week passed. It was Harry, Harry all the time. The day before she was to start school, Chris said:
“Not going to school.”
“You’re going to school tomorrow, Chris. You’re looking forward to it. You know you are. There’ll be lots of other little girls and boys.”
“Harry says he can’t come too.”
“You won’t want Harry at school. He’ll –…” I tried hard to follow the doctor’s advice and appear to believe in Harry – “He’ll be too old. He’d feel silly among little boys and girls, a great lad of fourteen.”
“I won’t go to school without Harry. I want to be with Harry.” She began to weep, loudly, painfully.
“Chris, stop this nonsense! Stop it!” I struck her sharply on the arm. Her crying ceased immediately. She stared at me, her blue eyes wide open and frighteningly cold. She gave me an adult stare that made me tremble. Then she said:
“You don’t love me. Harry loves me. Harry wants me. He says I can go with him.”
“I will not hear any more of this!” I shouted, hating the anger in my voice, hating myself for being angry at all with a little girl – my little girl – mine –
I went down on one knee and held out my arms.
“Chris, darling, come here.”
She came, slowly. “I love you,” I said. “I love you, Chris, and I’m real. School is real. Go to school to please me.”
“Harry will go away if I do.”
“You’ll have other friends.”
“I want Harry.” Again the tears, wet against my shoulder now. I held her closely.
“You’re tired, baby. Come to bed.”
She slept with the tear stains still on her face.
It was still daylight. I went to the window to draw her curtains. Golden shadows and long strips of sunshine in the garden. Then, again like a dream, the long thin clear-cut shadow of a boy near the white roses. Like a mad woman I opened the window and shouted:
“Harry! Harry!”
I thought I saw a glimmer of red among the roses, like close red curls on a boy’s head. Then there was nothing.
When I told Jim about Christine’s emotional outburst he said: “Poor little kid. It’s always a nervy business, starting school. She’ll be all right once she gets there. You’ll be hearing less about Harry too, as time goes on.”
“Harry doesn’t want her to go to school.”
“Hey! You sound as if you believe in Harry yourself!”
“Sometimes I do.”
“Believing in evil spirits in your old age?” he teased me. But his eyes were concerned. He thought I was going “round the bend” and small blame to him!
“I don’t think Harry’s evil,” I said. “He’s just a boy. A boy who doesn’t exist, except for Christine. And who is Christine?”
“None of that!” said Jim sharply. “When we adopted Chris we decided she was to be our own child. No probing into the past. No wondering and worrying. No mysteries. Chris is as much ours as if she’d been born of our flesh. Who is Christine indeed! She’s our daughter – and just you remember that!”
“Yes, Jim, you’re right. Of course you’re right.”
He’d been so fierce about it that I didn’t tell him what I planned to do the next day whi
le Chris was at school.
Next morning Chris was silent and sulky. Jim joked with her and tried to cheer her, but all she would do was look out of the window and say: “Harry’s gone.”
“You won’t need Harry now. You’re going to school,” said Jim.
Chris gave him that look of grownup contempt she’d given me sometimes.
She and I didn’t speak as I took her to school. I was almost in tears. Although I was glad for her to start school, I felt a sense of loss at parting with her. I suppose every mother feels that when she takes her ewe-lamb to school for the first time. It’s the end of babyhood for the child, the beginning of life in reality, life with its cruelty, its strangeness, its barbarity. I kissed her goodbye at the gate and said:
“You’ll be having dinner at school with the other children, Chris, and I’ll call for you when school is over, at three o’clock.”
“Yes, mummy.” She held my hand tightly. Other nervous little children were arriving with equally nervous parents. A pleasant young teacher with fair hair and a white linen dress appeared at the gate. She gathered the new children towards her and led them away. She gave me a sympathetic smile as she passed and said: “We’ll take good care of her.”
I felt quite light-hearted as I walked away, knowing that Chris was safe and I didn’t have to worry.
Now I started on my secret mission. I took a bus to town and went to the big, gaunt building I hadn’t visited for over five years. Then, Jim and I had gone together. The top floor of the building belonged to the Greythorne Adoption Society. I climbed the four flights and knocked on the familiar door with its scratched paint. A secretary whose face I didn’t know let me in.
“May I see Miss Cleaver? My name is Mrs James.”
“Have you an appointment?”
“No, but it’s very important.”
“I’ll see.” The girl went out and returned a second later. “Miss Cleaver will see you, Mrs James.”
Miss Cleaver, a tall, thin, grey haired woman with a charming smile, a plain, kindly face and a very wrinkled brow, rose to meet me. “Mrs James. How nice to see you again. How’s Christine?”
“She’s very well. Miss Cleaver, I’d better get straight to the point. I know you don’t normally divulge the origin of a child to its adopters and vice versa, but I must know who Christine is.”
“Sorry, Mrs James,” she began, “our rules…”
“Please let me tell you the whole story, then you’ll see I’m not just suffering from vulgar curiosity.”
I told her about Harry.
When I’d finished, she said: “It’s very queer. Very queer indeed. Mrs James, I’m going to break my rule for once. I’m going to tell you in strict confidence where Christine came from.”
“She was born in a very poor part of London. There were four in the family, father, mother, son and Christine herself.”
“Son?”
“Yes. He was fourteen when – when it happened.”
“When what happened?”
“Let me start at the beginning. The parents hadn’t really wanted Christine. The family lived in one room at the top of an old house which should have been condemned by the Sanitary Inspector in my opinion. It was difficult enough when there were only three of them, but with a baby as well life became a nightmare. The mother was a neurotic creature, slatternly, unhappy, too fat. After she’d had the baby she took no interest in it. The brother, however, adored the little girl from the start. He got into trouble for cutting school so he could look after her.”
“The father had a steady job in a warehouse, not much money, but enough to keep them alive. Then he was sick for several weeks and lost his job. He was laid up in that messy room, ill, worrying, nagged by his wife, irked by the baby’s crying and his son’s eternal fussing over the child – I got all these details from neighbours afterwards, by the way. I was also told that he’d had a particularly bad time in the war and had been in a nerve hospital for several months before he was fit to come home at all after his demob. Suddenly it all proved too much for him.”
“One morning, in the small hours, a woman in the ground floor room saw something fall past her window and heard a thud on the ground. She went out to look. The son of the family was there on the ground. Christine was in his arms. The boy’s neck was broken. He was dead. Christine was blue in the face but still breathing faintly.”
“The woman woke the household, sent for the police and the doctor, then they went to the top room. They had to break down the door, which was locked and sealed inside. An overpowering smell of gas greeted them, in spite of the open window.”
“They found husband and wife dead in bed and a note from the husband saying:
“I can’t go on. I am going to kill them all.
It’s the only way.”
“The police concluded that he’d sealed up door and windows and turned on the gas when his family were asleep, then lain beside his wife until he drifted into unconsciousness, and death. But the son must have wakened. Perhaps he struggled with the door but couldn’t open it. He’d be too weak to shout. All he could do was pluck away the seals from the window, open it, and fling himself out, holding his adored little sister tightly in his arms.”
“Why Christine herself wasn’t gassed is rather a mystery. Perhaps her head was right under the bedclothes, pressed against her brother’s chest – they always slept together. Anyway, the child was taken to hospital, then to the home where you and Mr James first saw her… and a lucky day that was for little Christine!”
“So her brother saved her life and died himself?” I said.
“Yes. He was a very brave young man.”
“Perhaps he thought not so much of saving her as of keeping her with him. Oh dear! That sounds ungenerous. I didn’t mean to be. Miss Cleaver, what was his name?”
“I’ll have to look that up for you.” She referred to one of her many files and said at last: “The family’s name was Jones and the fourteen-year-old brother was called ‘Harold’.”
“And did he have red hair?” I murmured.
“That I don’t know, Mrs James.”
“But it’s Harry. The boy was Harry. What does it mean? I can’t understand it.”
“It’s not easy, but I think perhaps deep in her unconscious mind Christine has always remembered Harry, the companion of her babyhood. We don’t think of children as having much memory, but there must be images of the past tucked away somewhere in their little heads. Christine doesn’t invent this Harry. She remembers him. So clearly that she’s almost brought him to life again. I know it sounds far-fetched, but the whole story is so odd that I can’t think of any other explanation.”
“May I have the address of the house where they lived?”
She was reluctant to give me this information, but I persuaded her and set out at last to find No. 13 Canver Row, where the man Jones had tried to kill himself and his whole family and almost succeeded.
The house seemed deserted. It was filthy and derelict. But one thing made me stare and stare. There was a tiny garden. A scatter of bright uneven grass splashed the bald brown patches of earth. But the little garden had one strange glory that none of the other houses in the poor sad street possessed – a bush of white roses. They bloomed gloriously. Their scent was overpowering.
I stood by the bush and stared up at the top window.
A voice startled me: “What are you doing here?”
It was an old woman, peering from the ground floor window.
“I thought the house was empty,” I said.
“Should be. Been condemned. But they can’t get me out. Nowhere else to go. Won’t go. The others went quickly enough after it happened. No one else wants to come. They say the place is haunted. So it is. But what’s the fuss about? Life and death. They’re very close. You get to know that when you’re old. Alive or dead. What’s the difference?”
She looked at me with yellowish, bloodshot eyes and said: “I saw him fall past my window. That’s whe
re he fell. Among the roses. He still comes back. I see him. He won’t go away until he gets her.”
“Who – who are you talking about?”
“Harry Jones. Nice boy he was. Red hair. Very thin. Too determined though. Always got his own way. Loved Christine too much I thought. Died among the roses. Used to sit down here with her for hours, by the roses. Then died there. Or do people die? The church ought to give us an answer, but it doesn’t. Not one you can believe. Go away, will you? This place isn’t for you. It’s for the dead who aren’t dead, and the living who aren’t alive. Am I alive or dead? You tell me. I don’t know.”
The crazy eyes staring at me beneath the matted white fringe of hair frightened me. Mad people are terrifying. One can pity them, but one is still afraid. I murmured:
“I’ll go now. Goodbye,” and tried to hurry across the hard hot pavements although my legs felt heavy and half-paralysed, as in a nightmare.
The sun blazed down on my head, but I was hardly aware of it. I lost all sense of time or place as I stumbled on.
Then I heard something that chilled my blood.
A clock struck three.
At three o’clock I was supposed to be at the school gates, waiting for Christine.
Where was I now? How near the school? What bus should I take?
I made frantic inquiries of passers-by, who looked at me fearfully, as I had looked at the old woman. They must have thought I was crazy.
At last I caught the right bus and, sick with dust, petrol fumes and fear, reached the school. I ran across the hot, empty playground. In a classroom, the young teacher in white was gathering her books together.
“I’ve come for Christine James. I’m her mother. I’m so sorry I’m late. Where is she?” I gasped.
“Christine James?” The girl frowned, then said brightly: “Oh, yes, I remember, the pretty little red-haired girl. That’s all right, Mrs James. Her brother called for her. How alike they are, aren’t they? And so devoted. It’s rather sweet to see a boy of that age so fond of his baby sister. Has your husband got red hair, like the two children?”