Where Nothing Sleeps

by Denton Welch

  All through lunch, in spite of the frightful solemnity of the footman behind my chair, in spite of confusingly elaborate food, I felt her there in the back room on her pedestal. She wasn’t smiling, she wasn’t taking any interest; but she was there in her heavy marble folds, the frozen waterfall of lace gushing from her throat. Perhaps my concentration in some way influenced my mother, for she unexpectedly began to talk of the danger of fire. It was only some passing remark, but it was enough to make my father glance up at her anxiously. Sir Moorcalm was silent. It was impossible to tell how much he noticed. His chief concern seemed to be with the food and his guests’ enjoyment of it. He would recommend things lugubriously, as though the words were wrung from him and he would really have preferred to criticise. Once or twice he did make a faint complaint. I expected that the utterly inexpressive footmen behind our chairs would at last show some sign; but nothing changed, they might have been deaf and dumb. Their immobility began to weigh on me, so that I longed for lunch to end. The two sons kept up their Stock Exchange jokes and lively patter, but even my inexperienced ear could detect the effort behind the brightness. We were, I suppose, a very ill-assorted group, with my father as only the frailest sort of link.

  After lunch the sons excused themselves with hearty smiles and handshakes; there was business to be attended to. Although they smiled, one knew that business really only called forth solemn, almost sacred feelings in them. It was not to be trifled with, not to be set aside for a slight prolonging of the luncheon hour. The door shutting behind them brought a slight sense of relief. I felt more at home alone with old Sir Moorcalm. He took us upstairs to have coffee and to show us his collection of Persian rugs. They were everywhere. As we entered the lofty drawing-room, with its heavy cornice and long windows, a sort of breath of rugs came to meet us. They were on the walls, on the chairs, on the floor. Rugs were laid over carpets, silk rugs over woollen ones, until one had a suffocating feeling of cosiness. Sir Moorcalm stroked them, lifted them, turned them over, told us their different names. He leant over a sofa with my mother, showing her his favourite silk rug. She balanced her tiny cup precariously. I wondered what Sir Moorcalm would say if she spilt any of the treacly coffee on his rugs. I had never been allowed Turkish coffee before. I drank mine very slowly, pretending that I liked the cloudy, almost muddy liquid. The feeling of the padded cell increased. The layers of rugs seemed to grow thicker and thicker. I was growing very hot. I wished I could touch the marble bust on her marble pillar; then I remembered that the real woman had gone back into a burning building, had climbed up burning stairs. I saw the flames licking round fallen beams, the smoke belching out through cracks in the wall. She struggled on, searching blindly for the parrot’s cage. It was a nightmare of heat and agony that I had conjured up. The picture stayed with me, hung about me stranglingly. I could not bear to think of the poor charred body, and yet I had to.

  I stood very still, hoping that no one would notice my face. If I did not even move an eyelid, perhaps I would grow calmer and be able to endure the stifling snugness of the drawing-room for a little longer. I prayed for my mother to be quick. ‘Be quick, be quick, be quick,’ I said, staring out of the window, with my eyes so wide open that they felt they would never shut again. At last my mother noticed me. She could see in an instant that something was wrong. She was at my side, asking me in a low voice if I felt unwell. I could only glance away without answering. She had turned to Sir Moorcalm now and was saying, ‘I think we ought to take him back. You gave us such a splendid lunch; he may have had too much to eat!’ She was trying to pass the situation off lightly by pretending that I had been greedy. I did not mind; I only wanted her to get me out of the house.

  Sir Moorcalm looked at me mournfully, with very little love. ‘Poor boy,’ he said, using an ancient, oriental, humbugging tone; ‘we must send him back in the car.’

  My mother began to protest.

  ‘No, no,’ Sir Moorcalm held up his hand like a prophet; ‘I won’t hear of a refusal. The man can be round at the front door in five minutes.’ He went to the wall and pulled the richly painted Victorian china bell. As he did so, he tried to smile at me benignly, but his pale lips seemed to find it easier to form themselves into a sort of snarl or sneer.

  I let myself be led from the room, still holding my head very stiffly. No one had said anything, but I felt vaguely that I had not been a credit to my parents. If I had been iller, I might not have felt so guilty. It seemed to me that my enormous lunch and the Turkish coffee …

  THE PACKING-CASE HOUSE AND THE THIEF

  When I was ten years old, my mother had a little house made for me out of a large packing-case. The packing-case had held an old lacquer chest for fifty years and was very well made and strong, and the carpenter who converted it was clever. He cut a small door and window, then thatched the roof with straw. Inside he made a miniature dresser, corner cupboard and window seat. That was all he did. The painting and decoration were left to me, as I had asked for them to be.

  I made the door red, and the window-frame and inside paintwork white, but when I came to the walls I hesitated, because they had been papered. The sides of the packing-case were too rough and furry for paint.

  I was afraid that I should never be able to do the cutting and pasting neatly, and the job was put off day after day. The house stood in a far corner of the garden on the edge of a clump of evergreen bushes, rather like a miniature dark wood. When I came in from it in the evening, I would say to my mother, ‘I haven’t dared to begin papering yet.’

  At last she said, ‘We’ll do it together.’

  Even then I had misgivings. I was still afraid that we should spoil the sprigged paper she had chosen so carefully, but she seemed quite confident, so one autumn afternoon we began in earnest. We made a huge basin of paste on the kitchen stove, then carried it, with the rolls of paper, two pairs of scissors, and two large brushes, across the sun-spotted, leaf-strewn lawn.

  Being the smallest, I stood inside the house, while my mother, half in, half out of the door, cut the paper carefully, and passed it to me, telling me to use as little paste as possible.

  The rulers, the measurements, the endless patience. But how rewarding to see at the end of the day, just before the light faded, smooth fresh walls where there had been only splintery wood; to touch it with your fingers and to see how perfectly it fitted, with only the slightest smear of paste round the shelves and the window-frame!

  I was so delighted with our work that in the night, after my father had read to me and I had eaten my milk and bread and butter supper, I ran out into the garden, instead of going upstairs to bed, as I should have done. The dewy grass made my felt bedroom slippers feel as if they were made of soaking moss. The bottoms of my pyjama trousers were wet through.

  I undid the little padlock on the door and peered in. For a moment I was spellbound, because the moon had suddenly come out, and real moonlight was falling through the real, opening window on to the real dresser. The thought that this little house was mine gave me the purest pleasure that I had known.

  I ran my fingers from sprig to sprig, enjoying the satin feeling of the paper. I planned in my mind the little fence I would make round the house, the brick paths, and the flowers I would plant. At last I made myself leave it, and climbed back to the verandah, where I slept winter and summer.

  In the morning I was up long before breakfast to collect my valuables together; my mother’s old toy tea-set, which she said I could use in my house; some leather books, some beautiful fossils and shells, and some coins. Then I went round the house looking for a very small rug. Outside a bedroom door I found a grey one that pleased me. I rolled it up and went out to the house. There was the final clearing up to be done after the papering. I hummed to myself, swept, dusted, rubbed, polished, unrolled the carpet on the floor and admired it from every angle, then went outside and looked first through the shut window, then through the open one. The effect with the wall-paper was indeed lovely, and all that wa
s needed now were curtains for the window.

  At breakfast, over scrambled eggs, I implored my mother to make curtains for me as soon as possible. Would she begin as soon as she had finished her coffee?

  My mother laughed and said that she must see to her own house first, so after long ordering of meals, making of laundry lists, instructions for turning out rooms, I dragged her to the chest where the scraps of material were kept, and asked her which I could have.

  I chose in the end some yellow striped cotton, very pretty to my eyes. We went to the house with the work-box and my mother began to sew it, while I arranged my things on the dresser.

  My mother sat at the door of the house, in the still warm sunshine. She was not an experienced needle-woman, and she did things like making knots and licking the cotton. As my mother worked she smiled. I sat at her feet and began to try to stitch the rings on while she was doing the bottom hem. There was pulling and laughing and grumbling. We were very happy together.

  When the curtains were nearly finished, I got up secretly, and took the doll’s tea-set to the kitchen. I made the tea, filled the milk jug and sugar basin, cut sponge cake into miniature fingers, and chocolate biscuits into dice. I tried, too, to make toy sandwiches, but these were less successful.

  With the tea things on a tray, I walked back to the house, where I found my mother just hanging up the curtains. The yellow stripes, the pink and green sprigs on the walls, the cream paint, the grey rug, the books and my collections of objects—could anything be more satisfying? We gazed at the delightful thing we had completed. Then I insisted on shutting the door and having tea inside the tiny house.

  After the house was finished, I spent nearly all my spare time in or near it. I would have slept in it, of course, if there had been room, but only my dog could lie down; I had to sit or stand.

  My dog seemed to be very fond of the house too. He would be curled up on the grey rug, keeping an eye on me through the open door as I tended the small garden I was making.

  One evening, perhaps a month after the finishing touches had been put to the house, I left it, as usual, when called in to have my bath. I snapped the little padlock together, then flattened my face against the window, as I nearly always did, to have another look at the inside. Someone had just given me a small spirit kettle and oil lamp, and these were the things I looked at most of all.

  I was not to know anything was going to happen to the house, but I always left it and went indoors reluctantly, as though there was some chance of my never seeing it again.

  When supper was over and I was in bed on the verandah, I flashed my torch through the iron railings to where my house stood. The beam was not very strong and I only caught a dull gleam on the window, and then the shaggy fringe of the thatched roof. The house was in utter stillness, which gave me the feeling that it was waiting for somebody. Because it was night and I was alone, I imagined ghosts; ghost animals as well as humans, going into my house, sitting on the window seats, drinking out of the cups, pretending to read my books, cackling and muttering in their own particular ghost way. I was half frightened, half excited, by these imaginings.

  Then I must have fallen asleep, for I then knew no more until it was daylight. My mother was calling me, telling me to come in and have my fruit while she drank her early morning tea. Before I ran in to kiss her good morning, I only had time to give my house a hurried glance. It looked as it should have done from the distance of the verandah. I noticed nothing.

  I had just settled myself on my mother’s bed and was cutting an orange in half, when my father came in rather slowly and said in his bored voice, the one he put on when he didn’t want anyone to know what he was thinking:

  ‘My dear, there have been burglars. They’ve left their filthy boot-marks and burnt matches all over the dining-room and drawing-room. Slip on a dressing-gown and come down; it’s quite a sight.’

  ‘But, Arthur!’ my mother said, ‘what have they taken? Have you looked? Is the silver still in the sideboard?’

  ‘The cupboard doors seemed to be open, darling,’ my father said, even more drawlingly, ‘but you’d better come down and look for yourself.’

  I jumped out of the bed and ran downstairs at once. My mother quickly followed. We stood by the glass folding doors leading from the hall to the drawing-room, and gazed for a moment at the trail of matches and garden mud all over the polished floor. It was as if some giant snail had been crawling here and there about the room, visiting every piece of furniture. All the drawers of the cabinets and chests were open, and some of the things that had been in them were on the floor, as if the thief, enraged to find them only porcelain or bronze, not precious metal, had abandoned them.

  My mother said nothing. She covered her sadness and her anger by going quickly to work. She had soon made a list of all the missing objects in the drawing-room. I helped her a little, but I was too excited to be methodical. I kept running in to other rooms to discover what had happened there. I found the forks and spoons that my mother was so fond of, because they had belonged to her family for a long time. By some marvellous chance they had been taken into the pantry the night before. They were saved, because the thief had not gone in there, but the old boat-shaped salt-cellars, the tall pepper-pot and mustard-pot were gone from the sideboard cupboard, also the Sheffield candlesticks from the mantelpiece.

  The thief had got in the house by chipping the putty away round a pane of glass in one of the French windows. He had then lifted out the pane, slipped in his hand and unfastened the latch in the usual burglar’s way. While I was gazing at the empty frame, admiring this cleverness, my father strolled into the room and said:

  ‘Of course that dog of yours never raised a squeak. He only barks at me and at our best friends. Oughtn’t you to find out if he’s still alive and snoring?’

  My father always taunted me in this way, pointing out how useless, greedy, and badly trained my dog was. I know that my father quite liked him, but he never showed it, so I had always to be protecting my dog’s character from him.

  ‘If you didn’t make him sleep in the downstairs cloak-room, he would have heard everything,’ I said. ‘He would have bitten the thief and woken us all up with his barking. How can he hear through two thick doors?’

  I threw this last sentence at my father as I ran to let my dog out. I had forgotten all about him in the excitement, and now I had the fear that the thief might have drugged him or even killed him.

  I was relieved when I opened the cloakroom door and saw him still curled up in his basket on the coloured tiles. He came towards me crabwise, with his tail tucked under, and his ears flat to his head. He was shy and sleepy and wanting to please me and be loved.

  ‘Did you hear nothing, Taff?’ I asked rather sadly, feeling that my father would never forget this lapse.

  Taff only wagged his lowered tail, did a little curving dance, and finally woke up and ran into the front rooms.

  Of course the smell of the burglar was fascinating to him; he sniffed, greedily following the trails from room to room. I watched him for a moment, wondering what to do next. Then it rushed on me that as I had forgotten Taff, so had I forgotten my little house.

  Calling Taff to follow me, I ran across the lawn in my dressing-gown. Not until I was quite near could I see that anything had happened. The first thing I noticed was the gaping padlock, then I saw that part of the fence had been trampled down. I hardly dared to look inside, and waited for a moment with my hand on the door.

  Before I pulled it open, I had hardened myself a little, and I don’t think my face showed anything when I saw most of the toy tea-set smashed on the floor, the beautiful shells and fossils swept roughly together, my books gaping and splashed with the tea left in the pot. The wall-paper was splashed too, and the thief had smeared it with his black hands. He had even torn down one of the curtains. At first I thought this the most stupid, wanton act of all, but I was soon to discover his reason.