by James Carnac
Later on, after a somewhat sketchy meal, my father left the house despite the earnest pleas of my mother, and as he had not returned by nine o’clock I was then sent up to bed. It must have been past mid-night when he was brought home speechlessly drunk by a patient. I was awakened by the disturbance and, creeping from my room, viewed over the banisters the (to me) entertaining sight of my father being hauled upstairs by my mother and the neighbourly Samaritan.
In this way my father entered into his inheritance.
—
It was some time before my father was able to handle his fortune. His first state of excitement and geniality gradually faded into one of irritation as the weeks and months went by and nothing was heard from the executors. I gathered that a thing called “probate” was responsible for the delay, and that this probate was some piece of legal machinery designed for the convenience of lawyers who, being by nature dilatory, if not actually dishonest, were glad to avail themselves of it as a means of keeping an inheritor out of his just rights for as long as possible. Finally my father, in a sudden fit of exasperation, took his hat and dashed off to Town “to see what they meant by it.” He succeeded in wringing from the executors (or someone involved in the business of clearing up the estate) the sum of five hundred pounds on account of his legacy; to me this sounded an enormous sum.
At once my father began spending with a casual prodigality which delighted and excited me but which filled my mother with alarm. He entirely re-furnished our drawing-room, bought several appliances for the surgery—including a new set of glistening dissecting scalpels in a leather case—half a dozen suits for himself and as many dresses for my mother, a new suit and two pairs of boots for myself and a number of cases of whiskey and wine. I had never before seen cases of wine—in the past drink had been more or less smuggled into the house—and I assisted with enthusiasm in unpacking the bottles from their straw coverings and arranging them according to my father’s directions in a cupboard under the stairs.
Next I was removed from Dr. Styles’s academy and sent to the grammar school as a kind of provisional step until a better school could be decided upon. Lastly the small, slatternly day-girl, who had up till then assisted my mother in the house, was dismissed and a general servant to “sleep in” was engaged. My mother, poor woman, was gratified at this step; she had always felt keenly the social inferiority entailed by her inability to keep a “regular servant,” and her realization of a modest ambition was doubtless untinctured by any prescience of the sinister events to come. For it is one of the alleviations of this earthly existence that we are none of us able to foresee what the future holds for us.
The name of the new-comer to our household was Mary; I cannot recall her second name. She was about twenty years of age I should imagine, and was of the type usually referred to as “buxom,” being a well-developed young woman of rosy complexion and by no means ill-looking. It is very difficult for an old man of sixty-nine to recall and describe accurately his feelings and reactions as a youth to another person, particularly when those early feelings have been, at a later stage, strongly influenced by a particular series of events. When a certain thing has come to pass, it is easy to recall the series of events and manifestations of character which led up to it as a logical conclusion; to blame ourselves for the lack of insight which would have allowed us to perceive the trend of things. In the same way I can, in the light of after events, form a fairly accurate idea of the character of this girl Mary, but it is difficult to separate from it my first estimate of her.
I know that I took a sort of furtive interest in the girl from the start, mainly, I think, because she was the first personable young woman with whom I had come into any sort of close contact, and to have her living in the house with us was something of a novelty. She was a country girl with none of the fresh innocence fallaciously ascribed to the average country girl, but on the contrary all the coarse, dirty knowingness which is far more common in the country girl than in her town-bred sister. Her attitude towards me, after the first few days, was a blend of what I might call lip-serving respect and a sort of knowing familiarity as though we shared in common a somewhat salacious secret. Both to my parents, and to myself in their presence, her manner was reserved and respectful, and I have no reason to suppose that my mother had any doubts as to the wisdom of employing Mary in a household which contained an adolescent son and a husband whose habits were open to criticism.
As for myself I found Mary a source of slight embarrassment for I was afflicted by the shyness common to my age; not only was I fully aware of that shyness but I felt that it afforded Mary a certain amount of amusement. I avoided her as much as possible and it was, perhaps, as well that my mind at that time was fully occupied by the interests of my new school and with my hobby of drawing, with which I was making considerable progress.
Before dealing with the climax of this period of my life, I must try to convey, so far as my lack of practice as a writer will allow, a general picture of myself and my environment. For myself I was then a youth of sixteen, on the whole fairly quiet and well-behaved, considerably exercised by brooding thoughts on half-understood matters and of a type of mind tending distinctly towards the morbid. My taste in literature was for the unhealthy and bizarre and found ample food in my father’s extensive collection of books, of which he was unwise or irresponsible enough to allow me the free run. Many of these books were of the kind referred to in booksellers’ catalogues as “curious”; amongst them I recall two volumes: Roberts’s Treatise of Witchcraft and John Cotta’s Triall of Witchcraft, both of which, published in the seventeenth century, must have been fairly valuable and the contents of which fascinated me extremely. He also possessed a large tome whose name I have forgotten which contained many plates portraying the administration of various ingenious forms of torture. The only books in connection with which a half-hearted and ineffectual censorship was exercised were my father’s medical works; and, on the whole, my favourite author was Edgar Allan Poe of whose works my father had the complete edition, published in 1875. Over these volumes I would pore for hours.
Apart from reading and “home-work,” practically my whole spare time was given up to drawing, though I must admit that in the home circle this occupation obtained very little encouragement. My mother was quite incompetent as a critic and my father was frankly indifferent. On one occasion when, during the course of a Sunday morning walk, my father asked me suddenly whether I knew what I would like to be when I left school and I replied, without hesitation, “An artist,” his only comment was, “Oh my God!” He did not then pursue the conversation and to this day I have no idea what his plans for me were or if, indeed, he had any.
My father’s accession to comparative wealth (though since he had not yet handled the bulk of his legacy it was only potential wealth), had certainly effected no improvement in his character. He was fast becoming a confirmed drunkard and had lost all interest in his professional practice. This practice had fallen steadily away since the evening on which one of his patients had assisted him home following the celebration of his inheritance; and the advent of a patient at the surgery was rather an event and, to him, a boring event. He drifted through his days in a casual, indifferent manner varying between a hectic geniality and a petulance which, on occasion, flared into a ferocity in which he would actually smash furniture. In one of these fits I recall that he deliberately swept from the mantelpiece in the sitting-room the whole of the useless jumble of knick-knacks with which it was garnished, and then passed out of the house, leaving my weeping mother to gather up the fragments in a dust-pan—for she was too proud to allow “the girl” to do this for her in the circumstances. On a more serious occasion my father, returning home drunk after my mother had retired to bed and being presumably incensed by her remonstrances as to his condition, flung open a bed-room window and pushed out as much of the furniture as would go through it. Most of the bed-room crockery was smashed to atoms in the fro
nt garden below, together with the dressing-table mirror which my father succeeded in tearing from its fastenings. When my mother, dressing herself hastily and summoning me, passed down to the front garden in a pathetic attempt to salvage the goods before daylight revealed her shame to the neighbours, the entire grass-plot was littered with splintered furniture and fragments of china. Unfortunately for my mother’s remaining shreds of pride the disturbance had not passed unheard by our neighbours, and two of them kindly came out in a half-dressed state and assisted us to carry in the wreckage. I think that in all my mother’s shame of the night’s work her greatest embarrassment was caused by the fact that a chamber had lodged on the top of a small tree in the garden where, by a miracle of equipoise, it hung jauntily in full view. The helpful neighbours were tactful enough to ignore the shameful object, but after they had retired to their respective houses my mother again crept into the front garden and, with great difficulty, dislodged the article and carried it indoors.
The next day my father went out and bought a complete suite of bed-room furniture, which was delivered the same evening.
It may be assumed that my mother failed to maintain even a semblance of happiness in the circumstances which now obtained in the household. The few little luxuries which resulted to her from my father’s legacy were more than offset by the state of harassment in which she lived. She degenerated into a shabby, weeping, almost slinking figure, seldom leaving the house except to attend church meetings in the evenings, and leaving all shopping expeditions to the care of the girl Mary who, in that connection, showed herself to be honest and capable. Had my mother been of stronger character she might have fought my father’s habits and averted the tragedy which followed, but evidently she lacked the force to do so. Her self-pity was stronger than her desire to save something from the ruins, and she sought refuge in “the consolations of religion.” She became a regular attendant at the local church and a rabid participant in the several vapid activities of that body; and so by her frequent absences from home in the evenings she unconsciously collaborated in the series of events which I am now about to relate.
Chapter 5
My first intimation of something unusual going on in our house—unusual, I mean, apart from the state of affairs I have outlined—came to me on one evening near my seventeenth birthday. My mother was absent at one of her church meetings and I was alone in the sitting-room. I had completed my home-work and was engrossed in my drawing when Mary entered the room with my light supper. I looked at the clock and saw that it was nine; it was hardly likely my mother would return before ten or ten-thirty and I usually retired to bed before that time. Mary set down her tray, and laid my meal on one end of the table at which I was working; as she finished I glanced up and caught a sly smile and a curious sidelong glance as she left the room. A few minutes later I heard the creaking of the stairs; apparently she had gone up to bed.
As I was eating my supper I heard my father’s steps in the hall and then the loud slam of the street door. I was paying no particular attention, as I was eating and drawing at the same time; I merely registered the impression that my father had gone out and it was only later that I recalled I had not heard his steps continuing down the front garden path. At about nine-thirty, feeling tired, I went up to bed.
My parents occupied a front bed-room on the first floor. My room was immediately above this and next to that occupied by Mary. As I undressed I heard a sudden giggle from this adjoining room and, a few moments later, a few words spoken in a low tone. And, in the silence of the evening, the dividing wall was not thick enough to prevent the character of the voice filtering through. I knew instantly that it was not Mary’s voice; it was that of a man and in the light of probability could be no other than my father’s. I think I felt surprise more than any other emotion; I remember standing there with my collar in my hand, staring at the dividing wall and straining my ears for further sounds. It occurred to me then that on other occasions recently I had, as I thought, overheard Mary talking to herself at about this time. Pondering, I finished undressing and slipped into bed which creaked loudly, as usual, under my weight.
In a few minutes I heard the door of the next room softly opened and the sound of footsteps on the stairs; hardly footsteps, in fact, but simply one or two creaks. The sounds were almost imperceptible and I am sure I should never have heard them had I not been listening intently. Then came the rattling of a key in the lock of the street door, followed by an ostentatious scraping of feet on the door-mat and a loud slam. I was not deceived by these noises; I knew now with certainty that my father had never left the house. He had pretended to do so and was now pretending to return. I lay thinking hard for some twenty minutes, after which I heard the return to the house of my mother.
Now I could write pages on the subject of my thoughts and feelings following this nocturnal incident, but I shall not do so. Can I be expected to enter into a long self-analysis, or even remember with sufficient clearness the exact trend of my thoughts as a lad of seventeen? Such a procedure may be right and proper enough in the popular novelist; but I am not a novelist. I am an old man working more or less against time to set down a series of events, and already experiencing distaste for the physical labour involved in writing. I must concentrate on events—at least for the early part of this history.
Shortly after the revelation above alluded to (for it certainly was a revelation of my father’s turpitude), the Providence which is said to shape our ends took on the aspect of a malicious demon—an aspect from which I have never been able to disassociate it in my mind. It arranged that my mother should be absent from the house for several relatively long periods. Religious piety had drawn her from the house on several evenings in each week and so allowed ample scope for the sowing of the seed. And now that the dreadful harvest was ripe, Sisterly Piety was the card played. In short her sister fell seriously ill and my mother was called away to nurse her. Had that illness not occurred exactly when it did, I believe that the thing that turned out a tragedy would have ended in no more than a vulgar scandal.
My mother’s sister visited us only on rare occasions, for she had disgraced herself in my mother’s eyes by marrying a bookmaker. This man, whose name was Evans, had called at our house in my aunt’s company, and although he was received by my mother with cold politeness, I had taken to him at once; and I know that my father thought him excellent company. I shall have more to say later about this excellent man, and need not therefore enter into a description of him at this stage.
Now my aunt lay ill at her bookmaker-husband’s house at Peckham and my mother felt it incumbent upon her to go there and take charge. I think she experienced some doubts as to the propriety of leaving my father and me alone in the house with a young female, for I overheard scraps of an argument in which the phrases “doesn’t seem the thing,” “what may people think!” “silly convention,” “won’t the boy be here” and so forth led me to gather that this subject of propriety was under discussion. Ultimately my mother presumably decided that I might be regarded as a sufficient chaperon for my father (or he for me) and she departed for Peckham.
Within a day of her departure things began to happen. I found myself on several occasions interrupting discussions between my father and Mary, discussions which almost bore the appearance of arguments and which dropped to whispers upon my approach. On one occasion Mary was weeping noisily and unrestrainedly while my father appeared to be bullying her. On another he took her boldly into the surgery and was closeted with her for half an hour. And always Mary went about her household duties white-faced, red-eyed and with a look of what I could only analyse as “funk.” And yet, despite the scraps of sexual knowledge I had garnered from the dirty hints of school-fellows and my catholic reading, I was not sufficiently experienced to realize at that time what was actually the matter.
After a fortnight’s absence my mother returned suddenly to the house, gave a hasty account of her sister’s illness (wh
ich account she had already conveyed in a series of letters) deposited in Mary’s charge a bundle of soiled linen and, packing a fresh supply, set off again for Peckham. She was too distressed by her sister’s condition (I learned that the illness was cancer) to exercise much discernment, and she appeared to miss anything unusual in the appearance of Mary or of my father.
On the day following this fleeting visit I returned from school to find my father looking rather more harassed than he had appeared even of late, and a strange and particularly offensive old woman in charge of the household. Mary was not to be seen, and my father told me abruptly that she was in bed seriously ill.
The next two days seemed to be a kind of blur. I could not gather what was going on, but it seemed that the old woman was acting as a nurse to Mary; both the old woman and my father appeared to be labouring under extreme excitement, and in my father’s case, an additional emotion which I analysed as fear. Was he afraid that Mary might die? Such a theory hardly seemed to meet the case, for I knew that many of his previous patients had died and he had never before manifested any particular distress at the occurrences.
To this strange, sinister atmosphere I returned from school at mid-day and in the evening, to partake of a wretchedly cooked meal hastily served to me by the old woman, spending my evenings alone in the sitting-room in futile attempts to grapple with home-work while my ears were strained to catch the sounds occasionally filtering down from the upper floor. Sometimes I could hear muffled cries; once I was aware of a continuous gabbling. Was Mary in a fever? Then would come an outburst from my father muffled by the dividing walls but sounding to me like the declaiming of a tipsy man. And whispered colloquies between my father and the old woman outside the surgery door.