Mr Jenkins sighed again. ‘No doubt your mother wants to believe that your father is coming home, Meg. Very well, I can’t do anything else with you. Go on back to study hall. Try to be a little less antagonistic. Maybe your work would improve if your general attitude were more tractable.’
When Meg got home from school her mother was in the lab, the twins were at basketball, and Charles Wallace, the kitten and Fortinbras were waiting for her. Fortinbras jumped up, put his front paws on her shoulders, and gave her a kiss, and the kitten rushed to his empty saucer and mewed loudly.
‘Come on,’ Charles Wallace said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Where?’ Meg asked. ‘I’m hungry, Charles. I don’t want to go anywhere till I’ve had something to eat.’ She was still sore from the interview with Mr Jenkins, and her voice sounded cross. Charles Wallace looked at her thoughtfully as she went to the refrigerator and gave the kitten some milk, then drank a mugful herself.
He handed her a paper bag. ‘Here’s a sandwich and some cookies and an apple. I thought we’d better go see Mrs Whatsit.’
‘Oh, golly,’ Meg said.’ Why, Charles?’
‘You’re still uneasy about her, aren’t you?’ Charles asked.
‘Well, yes.’
‘Don’t be. She’s all right. I promise you. She’s on our side.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Meg,’ he said impatiently, ‘I know.’
‘But why should we go see her now?’
‘I want to find out more about that tesseract thing. Didn’t you see how it upset mother? You know when mother can’t control the way she feels, when she lets us see she’s upset, then it’s something big.’
Meg thought for a moment. ‘Okay, let’s go. But let’s take Fortinbras with us.’
‘Well, of course. He needs the exercise.’
They set off, Fortinbras rushing ahead, then doubling back to the two children, then leaping off again. The Murrys lived about four miles out of the village. Behind the house was a pine wood and it was through this that Charles Wallace took Meg.
‘Charles, you know she’s going to get in awful trouble — Mrs Whatsit, I mean — if they find out she’s broken into the haunted house. And taking Mrs Buncombe’s sheets and everything. They could send her to jail.’
‘One of the reasons I want to go over this afternoon is to warn them.’
‘Them?’
‘I told you she was there with her two friends. I’m not even sure it was Mrs Whatsit herself who took the sheets, though I wouldn’t put it past her.’
‘But what would she want all those sheets for?’
‘I intend to ask her,’ Charles Wallace said, ‘and to tell them they’d better be more careful. I don’t really think they’ll let anybody find them, but I just thought we ought to mention the possibility. Sometimes during vacations some of the boys go out there looking for thrills, but I don’t think anybody’s apt to right now, what with basketball and everything.’
They walked in silence for a moment through the fragrant woods, the rusty pine needles gentle under their feet. Up above them the wind made music in the branches. Charles Wallace slipped his hand confidingly in Meg’s, and the sweet, little-boy gesture warmed her so that she felt the tense knot inside her begin to loosen. — Charles loves me at any rate, she thought.
‘School awful again today?’ he asked after a while.
‘Yes. I got sent to Mr Jenkins. He made snide remarks about father.’
Charles Wallace nodded sagely. ‘I know.’
‘How do you know?’
Charles Wallace shook his head. ‘I can’t quite explain. You tell me, that’s all.’
‘But I never say anything. You just seem to know.’
‘Everything about you tells me,’ Charles said.
‘How about the twins?’ Meg asked. ‘Do you know about them, too?’
‘I suppose I could if I wanted to. If they needed me. But it’s sort of tiring, so I just concentrate on you and mother.’
‘You mean you read our minds?’
Charles Wallace looked troubled. ‘I don’t think it’s that. It’s being able to understand a sort of language, like sometimes if I concentrate very hard I can understand the wind talking with the trees. You tell me, you see, sort of inad — inadvertently. That’s a good word, isn’t it? I got mother to look it up in the dictionary for me this morning.’
Ahead of them Fortinbras started barking loudly, the warning bay that usually told them that a car was coming up the road or that someone was at the door.
‘Somebody’s here,’ Charles Wallace said sharply. ‘Somebody’s hanging around the house. Come on.’ He started to run, his short legs straining. At the edge of the woods Fortinbras stood in front of a boy, barking furiously.
As they came panting up the boy said, ‘For heaven’s sake, call off your dog.’
‘Who is he?’ Charles Wallace asked Meg.
‘Calvin O’Keefe. He’s older than I am. He’s a big bug.’
‘It’s all right, fella. I’m not going to hurt you,’ the boy said to Fortinbras.
‘Sit, Fort,’ Charles Wallace commanded, and Fortinbras dropped to his haunches in front of the boy, a low growl still pulsing in his dark throat.
‘Okay.’ Charles Wallace put his hands on his hips. ‘Now tell us what you’re doing here.’
‘I might ask the same of you,’ the boy said with some indignation. ‘Aren’t you two of the Murry kids? This isn’t your property, is it?’ He started to move, but Fortinbras’s growl grew louder and he stopped.
‘Tell me about him, Meg,’ Charles Wallace demanded.
‘What would I know about him?’ Meg asked. ‘He’s a couple of grades above me, and he’s on the basketball team.’
‘Just because I’m tall.’ Calvin sounded a little embarrassed. Tall he certainly was, and skinny. His bony wrists stuck out of the sleeves of his blue sweater; his worn corduroy trousers were three inches too short. He had orange hair that needed cutting and the appropriate freckles to go with it. His eyes were an oddly bright blue.
‘Tell us what you’re doing here,’ Charles Wallace said.
‘What is this? The third degree? Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to be the moron?’
Meg flushed with rage, but Charles Wallace answered placidly, ‘That’s right. If you want me to call my dog off you’d better give.’
‘Most peculiar moron I’ve ever met,’ Calvin said. ‘I just came to get away from my family’
Charles Wallace nodded. ‘What kind of family?’
‘They all have runny noses. I’m third from the top of eleven kids. I’m a sport.’
At that Charles Wallace grinned widely. ‘So ’m I.’
‘I don’t mean like in baseball,’ Calvin said.
‘Neither do I.’
‘I mean like in biology,’ Calvin said suspiciously.
‘ A change in gene,’ Charles Wallace quoted, ‘resulting in the appearance in the offspring of a character which is not present in the parents but which is potentially transmissible to its offspring.’
‘What gives around here?’ Calvin asked. ‘I was told you couldn’t talk.’
‘Thinking I’m a moron gives people something to feel smug about,’ Charles Wallace said. ‘Why should I disillusion them? How old are you, Cal?’
‘Fourteen. And I’m bright. Listen, did anybody ask you to come here this afternoon?’
Charles Wallace, holding Fort by the collar, looked at Calvin suspiciously. ‘What do you mean, ask?’
Calvin shrugged. ‘You still don’t trust me, do you?’
‘I don’t distrust you,’ Charles Wallace said.
‘Do you want to tell me why you’re here, then?’
‘Fort and Meg and I decided to go for a walk. We often do in the afternoon.’
Calvin dug his hands down in his pockets. ‘You’re holding out on me.’
‘So’re you,’ Charles Wallace said.
‘Okay, old sport,’ Calvin said,
‘I’ll tell you this much. Sometimes I get a feeling about things. You might call it a compulsion. Do you know what compulsion means?’
‘Constraint. Obligation. Not a very good definition, but it’s the Concise Oxford.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Calvin sighed. ‘I must remember I’m preconditioned in my concept of your mentality.’
Meg sat down on the coarse grass at the edge of the woods. Fort gently twisted his collar out of Charles Wallace’s hands and came over to Meg, lying down beside her and putting his head in her lap.
Calvin tried now politely to direct his words towards Meg as well as Charles Wallace. ‘When I get this feeling, this compulsion, I always do what it tells me. I can’t explain where it comes from or how I get it, and it doesn’t happen very often. But I obey it. And this afternoon I had a feeling that I must come over to the haunted house. That’s all I know, kid. I’m not holding anything back. Maybe it’s because I’m supposed to meet you. You tell me.’
Charles Wallace looked at Calvin probingly for a moment; then an almost glazed look came into his eyes, and he seemed to be thinking at him. Calvin stood very still, and waited.
At last Charles Wallace said, ‘Okay. I believe you. But I can’t tell you. I think I’d like to trust you. Maybe you’d better come home with us and have dinner.’
‘Well, sure, but — what would your mother say to that?’ Calvin asked.
‘She’d be delighted. Mother’s all right. She’s not one of us. But she’s all right.’
‘What about Meg?’
‘Meg has it tough,’ Charles Wallace said. ‘She’s not really one thing or the other.’
‘What do you mean, one of us?’ Meg demanded. ‘What do you mean I’m not one thing or the other?’
‘Not now, Meg,’ Charles Wallace said. ‘Slowly. I’ll tell you about it later.’ He looked at Calvin, then seemed to make a quick decision. ‘Okay, let’s take him to meet Mrs Whatsit. If he’s not okay she’ll know.’ He started off on his short legs towards the dilapidated old house.
The haunted house was half in the shadows of the clump of elms in which it stood. The elms were almost bare now, and the ground around the house was yellow with damp leaves. The late afternoon light had a greenish cast which the blank windows reflected in a sinister way. An unhinged shutter thumped. Something else creaked. Meg did not wonder that the house had a reputation for being haunted.
A board was nailed across the front door, but Charles Wallace led the way round to the back. The door there appeared to be nailed shut, too, but Charles Wallace knocked, and the door swung slowly outwards, creaking on rusty hinges. Up in one of the elms an old black crow gave its raucous cry, and a woodpecker went into a wild ratatat-tat. A large grey rat scuttled around the corner of the house and Meg let out a stifled shriek.
‘They get a lot of fun out of using all the typical props,’ Charles Wallace said in a reassuring voice. ‘Come on. Follow me.’
Calvin put a strong hand to Meg’s elbow, and Fort pressed against her leg. Happiness at their concern was so strong in her that her panic fled, and she followed Charles Wallace into the dark recesses of the house without fear.
They went into a sort of kitchen. There was a huge fireplace with a big black pot hanging over a merry fire. Why had there been no smoke visible from the chimney? Something in the pot was bubbling, and it smelled more like one of Mrs Murry’s chemical messes than something to eat. In a dilapidated rocking chair sat a plump little woman. She wasn’t Mrs Whatsit, so she must, Meg decided, be one of Mrs Whatsit’s two friends. She wore enormous spectacles, twice as thick and twice as large as Meg’s, and she was sewing busily, with rapid jabbing stitches, on a sheet. Several other sheets lay on the dusty floor.
Charles Wallace went up to her, ‘I really don’t think you ought to have taken Mrs Buncombe’s sheets without consulting me,’ he said, as cross and bossy as only a very small boy can be. ‘What on earth do you want them for?’
The plump little woman beamed at him. ‘Why, Charlsie, my pet! Le cœr a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.’
‘But that’s not appropriate at all,’ Charles said crossly.
‘Your mother would find it so.’ A smile seemed to gleam through the roundness of spectacles.
‘I’m not talking about my mother’s feelings about my father,’ Charles Wallace scolded. ‘I’m talking about Mrs Buncombe’s sheets.’
The little woman sighed. The enormous glasses caught the light again and shone like an owl’s eyes. ‘In case we need ghosts, of course,’ she said. ‘I should think you’d have guessed. If we have to frighten anybody away Whatsit thought we ought to do it appropriately. That’s why it’s so much fun to stay in a haunted house. But we really didn’t mean you to know about the sheets. Auf frischer Tat ertappt. German. In flagrante delicto. Latin. Caught in the act. English. As I was saying —’
But Charles Wallace held up his hand in a peremptory gesture. ‘Mrs Who, do you know this boy?’
Calvin bowed. ‘Good afternoon, Ma’am. I didn’t quite catch your name.’
‘Mrs Who will do,’ the woman said. ‘He wasn’t my idea, Charlsie, but I think he’s a good one.’
‘Where’s Mrs Whatsit?’ Charles asked.
‘She’s busy. It’s getting near time, Charlsie, getting near time. Ab honesto virum bonum nihil deterret. Seneca. Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honourable. And he’s a very good man, Charlsie, darling, but right now he needs our help.’
‘Who?’ Meg demanded.
‘And little Megsie! Lovely to meet you, sweetheart. Your father, of course. Now go home, loves. The time is not yet ripe. Don’t worry, we won’t go without you. Get plenty of food and rest. Feed Calvin up. Now, off with you! Justitiae soror fides. Latin again, of course. Faith is the sister of justice. Trust in us! Now, shoo!’ And she fluttered up from her chair and pushed them out of the door with surprising power.
‘Charles,’ Meg said. ‘I don’t understand.’
Charles took her by the hand and dragged her away from the house. Fortinbras ran on ahead, and Calvin was close behind them. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t either, yet. Not quite. I’ll tell you what I know as soon as I can. But you saw Fort, didn’t you? Not a growl. Not a quiver. Just as though there weren’t anything strange about it. So you know it’s okay. Look, do me a favour, both of you. Let’s not talk about it till we’ve had something to eat. I need fuel so I can sort things out and assimilate them properly.’
‘Lead on, moron,’ Calvin cried gaily. ‘I’ve never even seen your house, and I have the funniest feeling that for the first time in my life I’m going home.’
3
Mrs Which
In the forest evening was already beginning to fall, and they walked in silence. Charles and Fortinbras gambolled on ahead. Calvin walked with Meg, his fingers barely touching her arm in a protective gesture.
— This has been the most impossible, the most confusing afternoon of my life, she thought, — yet I don’t feel confused or upset any more; I only feel happy. Why?
‘Maybe we weren’t meant to meet before this,’ Calvin said. ‘I mean, I knew who you were in school and everything, but I didn’t know you. But I’m glad we’ve met now, Meg. We’re going to be friends, you know.’
‘I’m glad, too,’ Meg whispered, and they were silent again.
When they got back to the house Mrs Murry was still in the lab. She was watching a pale blue fluid move slowly through a tube from a beaker to a retort. Over a Bunsen burner bubbled a big, earthenware dish of stew. ‘Don’t tell Sandy and Dennys I’m cooking out here,’ she said. ‘They’re always suspicious that a few chemicals may get in with the meat, but I had an experiment I wanted to stay with.’
‘This is Calvin O’Keefe, Mother,’ Meg said. ‘Is there enough for him, too? It smells super.’
‘Hello, Calvin,’ Mrs Murry shook hands with him. ‘Nice to meet you. We aren’t having anything b
ut stew tonight, but it’s a good thick one.’
‘Sounds wonderful to me,’ Calvin said. ‘May I use your phone so my mother’ll know where I am?’
‘Of course. Show him where it is, will you, please, Meg? I won’t ask you to use the one out here, if you don’t mind. I’d like to finish up this experiment.’
Meg led the way into the house. Charles Wallace and Fortinbras had gone off. Out of doors she could hear Sandy and Dennys hammering at the fort they were building up in one of the maples. ‘This way.’ Meg went through the kitchen and into the living-room.
‘I don’t know why I call her when I don’t come home,’ Calvin said, his voice bitter. ‘She wouldn’t notice.’ He sighed and dialled. ‘Ma?’ he said. ‘Oh, Hinky. Tell Ma I won’t be home till late. Now don’t forget. I don’t want to be locked out again.’ He hung up, looked at Meg. ‘Do you know how lucky you are?’
She smiled rather wryly. ‘Not most of the time.’
‘A mother like that! A house like this! Gee, your mother’s gorgeous! You should see my mother. She had all her upper teeth out and Pop got her a plate but she won’t wear it, and most days she doesn’t even comb her hair. Not that it makes much difference when she does.’ He clenched his fists. ‘But I love her. That’s the funny part of it. I love them all, and they don’t give a hoot about me. Maybe that’s why I call when I’m not going to be home. Because I care. Nobody else does. You don’t know how lucky you are to be loved.’
Meg said in a startled way, ‘I guess I never thought of that. I guess I just took it for granted.’
Calvin looked sombre; then his enormous smile lit up his face again. ‘Things are going to happen, Meg! Good things! I feel it!’ He began wandering, still slowly, round the pleasant, if shabby, living-room. He stopped before a picture on the piano of a small group of men standing together on a beach. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Oh, a bunch of scientists.’
‘Where?’
Meg went over to the picture. ‘Cape Canaveral. This one’s father.’
‘Which?’
‘Here.’
‘The one with glasses?’
‘Yup. The one who needs a haircut.’ Meg giggled, forgetting her worries in her pleasure at showing Calvin the picture. ‘His hair’s sort of the same colour as mine, and he keeps forgetting to have it cut. Mother usually ends up doing it for him — she bought clippers and stuff — because he won’t take the time to go to the barber.’
Wrinkle in Time Page 3