Young Tom

by Forrest Reid

  He feared it might not be quite the remark she expected, yet she seemed pleased, and agreed at once. “Yes, goldfish, and silver fish, and water-lilies. . . . Only now you are here, you must come in and be introduced to my brothers. They are just going to have supper.”

  For an instant, at the sound of that incongruous last word, the whole garden seemed to flicker like a candle-flame in the wind—to flicker and go out. Or did it?—for he was walking up the path with her, they were entering the house.

  There, in a big bright room with many windows, the three brothers were already seated at the table, but they were much older than he had expected—short, fat men, nearly naked too, with yellow faces and thin drooping black moustaches And protruding slightly beneath each moustache were two pointed walrus tusks, very sharp and cruel-looking. That they were magicians, Tom recognized immediately, and he did not like their appearance at all. Nor, for that matter, did he now like the strangely sly and altered smile with which the girl was watching him. He had seen a cat watching a bird just like that, and with a sinking of the heart he felt he had better go away at once, and said so.

  Since he had entered the room the brothers had not opened their lips nor even looked at him, but now one of them spoke, in a smooth, expressionless voice—“Isn’t it too late to think of that?”—and instantly Tom knew it was too late, and that he would never leave that house alive.

  He made an effort to reach the still open door, and none of them moved or spoke, merely watched his struggles. For he could do nothing; all the strength had gone out from him, and his feet seemed to be glued to the floor. But at that moment, just as he realized that he was indeed lost and helpless, there came from far, far away, yet distinctly audible in the silent room, the sound of a dog barking.

  Though infinitely faint and distant, nevertheless it was Roger’s bark, and it had an instantaneous effect on the inmates of the room. The eyes of the seated brothers slid round quickly towards the windows, the power flowed back into Tom’s limbs, while the girl gave him an evil look and said contemptuously: “Now, I suppose, he must get his chance.”

  Tom hated her. He hated her even more than he hated the magicians; because it was she who had decoyed him in and betrayed him. And though she seemed so young, that, too, must be an illusion, she must really be an old hag, as old as her brothers, and all four probably had made many a meal off tender and juicy small boys whom she had entrapped—serving them up whole, very likely—and in their skins—like baked potatoes.

  All the same, his courage had revived with his strength, and above all with the certainty he now felt that Roger, wherever he was, had missed him, had divined his peril, and was at this moment trying to get back to him, to break through whatever magic barrier of intervening space the magicians had created by their spells.

  He was to have a chance, they had said: but what kind of chance? They soon told him, and he was relieved; indeed now felt very little alarm. All he had to do was to climb the three flights of steps, which would bring him out on to the roof of the tower, before the girl—who would start level with him—had climbed them three times. True, the trial also was to be repeated three times; but with such an enormous start surely he had nothing to fear.

  And it turned out to be even easier than he had expected. At the given signal, a sharp blow on a gong, they both started together from the hall, and though she was certainly quicker than he, and to gain the roof he had to hoist himself through an open trap-door, yet he had done so, and come out on to the square stone platform at the top, before she had half finished her second ascent. Looking over the parapet, he now saw far below him, not the wonderful garden, but a wide, bare landscape—stretching out and out—with, on the extreme edge of it, yet nevertheless within it, a tiny black spot which he somehow knew to be Roger.

  Well, that was over, and it had been nothing; he wasn’t even out of breath, he wouldn’t mind a dozen such races. So it was in a spirit of complete confidence that he started on the second trial. This time he did not exert himself so much—or was it, perhaps, that the girl exerted herself more? for he was a little startled when she actually passed him on her second ascent before he had reached the roof. Looking again over the parapet, he found that the landscape had greatly contracted, and that Roger was quite close—close enough to bark an excited recognition, with frantic waggings of his whole body. Tom called down to him, and braced himself, this time in dead earnest, for the final contest.

  That second trial had awakened him to the danger of over-confidence, and in the third he was determined to take no risks. At the very stroke of the gong he raced up the steps as hard as he could, but his opponent’s feet seemed to be winged. At the beginning of the second flight she passed him on her way down, her robe streaming behind her, so that he felt the wind it made; and near the top of the third flight she passed him on her second descent. Still, all he had now to do was to scramble through the trap-door on to the platform. But half-way through he stuck, and, though he struggled and twisted, his limbs seemed suddenly to have gone dead. She was still far below, but she had turned, and was once more coming up, approaching rapidly, with a sort of terrifying, screaming noise—not human, not even animal. Another effort brought him through the trap-door, all but one foot. He squirmed and wriggled over on to his stomach, he was nearly free, another twist would do it; and with that—at that last fateful moment—he felt just the tip of her long finger touch the sole of his shoe. He kicked out with his whole strength, but though he felt the full impact of his kick reach her, and she fell back and down and down, her finger still adhered to him, spinning out, thinner and thinner, longer and longer, like a spider’s thread. There came a dull thud from below as her body reached the hall, and Tom struggled to his feet. But all was changed. It was blackest night, and he could see nothing. Roger, the very house itself, had disappeared; and the platform was shrunk to a single stone, upon which he stood poised dizzily above an infinite gulf. For two or three seconds he maintained his balance—horrible, agonizing seconds—then he crashed over and down. . . .

  His own scream awakened him. He seemed to be in bed. . . . Yes, he was in bed, and now here was Mother; he heard her in the passage; and next moment his door was opened and she had turned on the light.

  “Good morning,” he said, managing a rather feeble little chuckle. “I suppose I disturbed you.”

  “It’s all right,” Mother answered quietly. “I hadn’t gone to sleep or I shouldn’t have heard you: you didn’t waken Daddy.”

  “It was just a dream,” he explained. “I dreamt I fell off a tower. You must have heard the flop.”

  Mother took no notice of this small joke, but she sat down beside his bed.

  “Is it very late?” he asked.

  “Not very. I don’t really know. . . . I was reading. . . . Your prize, you see,” and she held it up. “Would you like me to read to you for a little now?”

  He signified assent, and turned over on his side, away from the light. Presently he shut his eyes; and when he opened them again it was morning, and down in the hall Mary was ringing the breakfast bell.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “NOW boys, you’ve just ten minutes more, and then I shall collect the papers.”

  Tom, looking up at these words, encountered the passing glance of Miss Jimpson who had spoken them and who had presided over the examination from the beginning. Miss Jimpson smiled ever so little, therefore he immediately smiled back. She was nice-looking, he thought, and far younger than he had imagined schoolmistresses ever were: quite grown-up, of course, but not really much more than that: he hoped he would be in her class. That her name was Miss Jimpson he had learned when Mr. Pemberton, the headmaster, had come in a short while ago to see how they were all getting on.

  There were fourteen other boys in the class-room besides himself, and their names had been called out in alphabetical order, though they were not now sitting in that order, Miss Jimpson having allowed them to choose their own seats. Tom knew none of them, but the m
ajority appeared to know one another. From time to time he had scanned them with interest, wondering if he would like them. Macfarlane, the boy directly in front of him, had the appearance of an industrious and rather worried sheep. Macfarlane had begun to write from the very moment the papers had been handed round, and he had never stopped writing since. Tom himself had stopped only too frequently, but the whole experience was so new to him that he couldn’t help watching the others. The boy beside him—Pascoe by name—was the most out-of-the-ordinary-looking. His sturdy body and tow-coloured hair were indeed ordinary enough; what made him look different was simply a very small, prim mouth, and the unusually wide space between two extremely serious blue eyes. Twice he had turned and caught Tom’s speculative gaze fixed upon him, and the second time he had stared back with so severe an expression that the latter feared he must be offended. Thereupon a big boy seated some distance away, who had observed this brief and silent passage, winked, and then wrinkled up his nose in signal of the contempt and disgust with which Pascoe was to be regarded.

  This boy, Brown, in spite of being the biggest boy there, evidently had exhausted all he had to say about the questions in the first half hour, which left him free, and obviously prepared to welcome any form of distraction. True, shortly before Miss Jimpson’s warning that time was nearly up, he had had a further industrious period; but this had lasted only about five minutes, and from the movement of his hand, Tom suspected that art, not letters, was engaging him Returning to his own labours, he had not written more than two or three lines when a tightly-rolled-up paper ball struck him on the nose before falling on the desk in front of him. The daring of this act nearly took Tom’s breath away. Instinctively his first hasty glance was to see if Miss Jimpson had observed it, but Miss Jimpson was looking out of the window in absent-minded contemplation of her own private thoughts. Very stealthily, therefore, he unfolded the paper and smoothed it out, conscious all the time that Brown was watching him. It was, as he expected, a drawing—an extremely vulgar one too—representing, he supposed, the artist’s impression of Pascoe. Not that it was in the least like him, but underneath it was scrawled: “The silly little fool next you”; and below that again, “What’s fierté?”

  “Pride,” said Tom aloud, without thinking, and everybody looked up.

  Miss Jimpson, recalled from her daydreams, spotted the speaker at once. “You mustn’t talk, Barber,” she told him, but not very sternly. “You did say something, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Tom stammered, covered with confusion.

  Miss Jimpson said no more, but several of the smaller boys looked slightly shocked. Not so Brown; who merely grinned broadly and gave him another wink, which Tom was much too shy to return.

  The ten minutes having elapsed, Miss Jimpson now descended from the platform where she had been seated, and began to collect the papers. Everybody was ready for her with the exception of Macfarlane, who continued to write till she had practically to wrest his papers from him, and even then he seemed to relinquish them almost tearfully. “How could he have so much to say?” Tom marvelled. He looked stupid enough!

  Anyhow, the exam was at an end, and Miss Jimpson, returning to her desk, with a few words dismissed them, saying they would meet again when school reopened, and that in the meantime she hoped they would all have very pleasant holidays.

  Somebody, Tom felt, ought to have replied to this, but instead there was only the scuffle and noise of a hasty exodus, in which he joined, hanging a little behind the others. Out in the playground a general comparison of notes at once began. In this he was too shy to take part till Brown hailed him, gave him a playful poke in the ribs, and remarked genially, “Thanks for the tip, Skinny. . . . Not that it’ll do much good!”

  Brown, in fact, appeared to take the examination very lightly indeed, and his own participation in it as being more in the nature of a joke than anything else. Quite soon he mounted his bicycle, and with a farewell, “See you in September, Skinny,” rode away. The effect of his friendliness on the other hand remained; and though one tiresome result of it was that everybody thenceforth addressed him as Skinny, Tom found himself, so to speak, introduced and accepted.

  Meanwhile, in the shrill babel of conflicting opinions, of confident assertions and flat contradictions, it was extremely difficult to judge how he had done in the examination. On the whole, he thought, pretty well, for the paper had suited him, being designed primarily as a test of general knowledge, whereas he had feared there might be a lot of arithmetic. One of the questions, for instance, had consisted simply in a list of five longish words, which you had to bring into five sentences of your own composition. He had enjoyed doing this, though like everybody else, except a red-haired boy called Preston, he had been floored by the word “frugality”. Preston was the only one who had known what “frugality” meant—which just proves how much there is in luck, for he knew merely because there happened to be a picture called “The Frugal Meal” hanging above the mantelpiece in his dining-room at home. It was a Dutch picture, Preston said, and showed a Dutch family sitting down to a very skimpy-looking dinner. The sentence he had written was: “Since there was very little to begin with, and the parents each took two helpings, the children’s meal was naturally one of great frugality.”

  This was considered pretty good, but Preston’s cleverness was speedily forgotten in a general comment on the “squinty” behaviour of the parents, until it was discovered that actually there was nothing in the picture to justify the statement that they had taken two helpings. That was entirely due to Preston’s own imagination. “Shows what you’ll do when you’ve kids yourself,” Haughton said, and everybody laughed.

  Further ragging ensued, with the result that Preston, whose temper seemed uncertain, suddenly got mad. “How could it be in the picture?” he shouted, his face as red as his hair. “Lot of damned silly little fools! Here, give me back that paper, Skinny, or you’ll get a punch in the jaw.”

  Skinny, who was no warrior, and as a matter of fact had been guilty of only one very mild witticism, hastily returned the paper, which Preston thrust angrily back into his pocket. A little later they all dispersed, singly or in groups, until only Pascoe was left. Pascoe, like most of the others, had a bicycle, but he walked beside Tom, wheeling it, and it was perfectly clear that he wanted to make friends. Tom himself felt no particular desire either one way or the other, but Pascoe was the only boy who had not called him Skinny, and moreover he now declared his intention of accompanying Tom part of the way home, which settled the matter. Pascoe, in fact, seemed very nice, though rather alarmingly serious, so that if you ventured on a joke you had subsequently to explain it to him, a task dreadfully calculated to reveal its true feebleness. Before long, nevertheless, several points in common were discovered; such as that neither possessed any brothers or sisters, that Pascoe thought an aquarium would be a jolly good scheme, and that, when Tom had finished with it, he would love to read Curiosities of Natural History. “I’m going to be a scientist, you see; very likely a naturalist. Only at Miss Wallace’s, where I was at school till these hols., there was nobody to teach science. What are you going to be?”

  Tom wasn’t sure; he hadn’t thought much about it; and changing the subject, he asked what Miss Wallace’s had been like.

  “Oh, all right,” Pascoe replied half-heartedly; adding, after a pause: “Brown was there.”

  Somehow the tone in which this was uttered suggested that Brown was not among its happier memories, so Tom tactfully refrained from further questions, and it was Pascoe himself who proposed: “Couldn’t we make the aquarium together? It would be better sport than doing it alone, and it could be at your place; I can easily ride over on my bike.”

  “I haven’t a bike,” Tom admitted, “so if you’re sure you don’t mind——”

  “We’ll need a net,” Pascoe interrupted him. “I’ll get Mother to make us one.”

  “So will I; we ought each to have one. . . . They’ll need to be st
rong, too; so that the sticks won’t bend when they’re full of water. . . . When will you come?”

  Pascoe considered. “I’ll come to-morrow. Mother can make the net to-night.”

  This being arranged, he was on the point of turning back towards his own home, when Tom suddenly remembered he was going to Granny’s to-morrow. It was a nuisance, for any other time would have done just as well, but it had been definitely settled. “I can’t,” he said, “I’ve got to go and stay for a week-end with Granny But I’ll be coming home on Monday.”

  “Well then——”

  “Only I don’t know what time; so it’d better be Tuesday.”

  “All right: I’ll ride over first thing after breakfast, and I’ll bring the net and a collecting-bottle. . . . Not if it’s pouring rain, of course.”

  “Come anyway—if it’s not too bad. There’s heaps of things we can do inside. I’ve a sort of playroom up in the loft. And you needn’t bother about bringing a bottle; Phemie has tons of glass jam-pots. . . . Besides, we’ll have to fix up the aquarium itself first. I want to have it like a pond, and we’ll need to dig a place for it.”

  “See you Tuesday then,” Pascoe said, with one foot on the pedal. “And promise you won’t begin to do anything till I come.”