It was because he had never been alone in the house before, that was why his imagination was so active. What was that noise that sounded like footsteps in the kitchen? It was not the scurrying of rats; he knew that sound quite well, and it was always overhead, and at night, quite comforting in its familiarity. No cats or terriers seemed able to get rid of the rats under the roof at Hinkley. He had often teased Violet about the inefficiency of her ratters, but really he was quite proud of the rats for not going. They were Hinkley rats; this was their home more than his, had been in their families for generations before the Norths came. People in whatever sort of nightgowns the Elizabethans wore—he pictured them full and long-sleeved, with a ruff at the neck like Muffet’s blue dress—had probably lain and listened to just the same noise. At breakfast—steak, would it be? and three eggs each and buttermilk and parkin—they had said, as the Norths were to say, three hundred years later: “We must get some more cats and keep them hungry. This house won’t last fifty years if we let the rats overrun it.” Three hundred years hence, perhaps people would be still saying that. Unless an atom bomb had done what the rats had failed to do.
He tried to read again. It was odd that when he was alone and conscious of himself he could feel his heart beating. He almost fancied he could hear it, as, by straining his ears, he could hear the leisurely tock of the grandfather clock, swinging its pendulum like a censer in the hall. Supposing a burglar got in, having heard that the house was defended only by a helpless crock—what would the crock do? Unless his mother had secretly removed it, his revolver was in the drawer of the table by the window. Would he be able to get to it, and having got there, could he load it, and somehow, propping himself against the wall perhaps, could he go in search of the man? He might surprise him among the silver in the dining-room, but would he be intimidated by the pale, weedy figure, with one pyjama leg flapping and an Army revolver wavering in one bony hand? He looked at his hands. By Jove, they were thin too. Made the knuckles look knobbly; not attractive that. Hugo had promised him he would lose that bluish tinge round the nails when he was up and about.
Looking down at his hands, he noticed that his heart was pushing his pyjama jacket gently up and down. So it had not been his imagination that he could feel it beating. It was going in for one of its obtrusive, laboured spells. The breathlessness that he felt presently and the little gasp that he gave were not caused by the fact that he thought he heard this footstep in the kitchen again. It was just that darned heart. All the same, and he felt the skin along his spine creeping as he admitted this to himself: there was someone in the house.
He had heard a stealthy tread in the passage. Was this a dream? His imagination had become pretty vivid since it had so often to deputise for actual experience. Had all this conjecturing about what he would do if a burglar came made him unable to distinguish between reality and fancy, as sometimes when he felt himself walking across the room so vividly that he was quite surprised to find, on opening his eyes, that he was still in bed? Like that time when he had thought he was dancing with Heather, and nearly had a heart attack? Supposing he was in for another go like that, ought he to try and get out now, while he still felt all right, and get his pills? Fool that he was not to have told Elizabeth to leave them by his bed, and fool she, not to have thought of it. Dammit, she was his nurse; she should not have gone off so gaily in her blue linen suit, looking very sweet, he must admiit, but caring so little what became of her patient. Oh, she had offered to stay all right, but she had been easily persuaded to go. If she was as uninterested in this wedding, in everything to do with his family, as she had always appeared, why did she have to go jaunting off with them? He had at least thought she was interested in him as a patient. Had she not said: “I mean to stay and see this case through?” If she was interested enough to put off getting married, one would have thought she was interested enough to forfeit the doubtful excitement of hearing Vi and Fred stammer: “I will.”
He suddenly sat bolt upright and forgot about Elizabeth. Someone was moving about in the dining-room, and what was more, someone had coughed, a muffled cough, as if they did not want to be heard. He had read about people’s hair standing on end and not believed it. Now he knew that it did happen. His scalp was creeping. His heart thumping in his chest felt enormous. It was like a melon there, hampering his breathing. How long would he have to wait before he heard the feet creep down the passage—nearer and nearer? How could he bear the fumbling fingers on the latch, not knowing what was on the other side of the door, like the old couple who waited in The Monkey’s Paw? God, why did he have to think of that story now, of the Thing that waited in the street for its father to let it in, the Thing that never got in, so that you never knew what it looked like? How had Jacobs imagined it? Did he see it, as Oliver always did, as he had seen that soldier who fell back from the garret window in the Arnhem house, with the side of his face laid open and the jawbone and back teeth gleaming white under the running blood? Joe had lain still though, only twitching a little, but the Thing that waited outside the door in the street had walked down the street with half its grinning head blown away.
This, of course, was only a burglar. It had gone almost at once to the dining-room, as a burglar would. So they thought they could do what they liked in the house because it was only in charge of a cripple. Where the devil were the dogs? Of course, they were already at Martin’s cottage, where they were to stay until Vi returned from her honeymoon. They might have left them in the house just while he was alone. Still, he could manage. This was going to be a pretty big thing, this getting out of bed when he had never done more than be helped into a chair a few inches away; this going to get his revolver, tackling the burglar singlehanded and keeping him covered until the others returned. There they would find him when they came back, and he would be a hero, and they would all reproach themselves and each other with having left him alone. Elizabeth would fuss over him, but how guilty she would feel and how she would sweat to think of what might have happened to the patient under her responsibility.
Well, if he was going after that burglar, he must go before he got away with all the North family silver. Not that the silver was all that valuable, and perhaps not even worth the effort it was going to cost him, but how would it sound to bleat: “I heard someone rifling the house, so I lay here and sweated till he’d gone away”?
Good thing he’d kept that revolver—more as a souvenir than anything else. Now that he had made up his mind what he was going to do he felt calmer, although as he lay in bed planning out each move, his heart knocked more at the thought of each impossible effort. Well, and if he never got there, and they found him stretched out on the floor in a faint, at least he would have done his best. Of course he could do it. He had not once felt faint sitting out in the chair; he was good for more than they gave him credit. Impulsively, because he knew that if he thought about it much longer he would not do it, he flung back the bedclothes and paused, his mouth slightly open, as he heard the tiny cough again, nearer this time—definitely at the sideboard.
What was he going to look like? He pictured him like a cartoon burglar, scarf knotted round his throat, cap pulled down, a sack for the swag. A black mask perhaps? No, not an amateur like this, who came after small stuff and betrayed himself by coughing. Probably some old tramp who had got the cough from sleeping in hedges; he would be dirty and stubbled and ragged—rather a revolting figure. He would be easily cowed by the sight of a gun. Inch by inch, lifting his buttocks and his stump round on his hands, he got his leg over the edge of the bed, bent it, and stretched down until his bare toes touched the rug. Still keeping his hands behind him on the bed, he lowered himself until his foot was standing flat. His stump quivered as though it longed to help. He tried, putting a little weight on the leg, but immediately he toppled, twisting round and saving himself with both hands on the bed. His balance was all wrong. The M.O. had said a leg weighed about thirty pounds. No wonder he was topheavy with all that gone from one side. H
e pushed himself round again until his back was against the bed, leaning on it. He would never be able to hop, that was quite clear; it would have to be crawling. All fours would be best, so that his stump could swing clear of the floor—all threes, in fact. Bending his leg, he let himself down to his knee and then fell forward onto his hands. Testing this position and finding it satisfactory, he started off towards the table in the most ridiculous gait ever seen. He remembered that he was wearing a pyjama jacket and trousers that did not match. He had not thought it would matter, since the visitors would only see him from the waist up; he had not known then that he was going burglar hunting.
Painfully, yard by yard, pausing now and again to hear if the burglar were approaching, for he must get to the gun before that, he hitched himself towards the desk. He toppled over once and took quite a time to get up. The pain in his unsupported stump was considerable. Well, if he burst the wound and had to start his illness all over again, with transfusions and penicillin and all the trimmings, it would be their fault, and this time he would have a private room, please. He could never face a ward again after this solitary illness under the open window. They never had enough windows open in a ward, unless it was blowing a gale from the side where the windows were. When his head felt hazy and dizzy he had to stop and hang it down between his arms and shake the blood back into it. It had not been bad going over the rugs, but there was a stretch of boards on the last lap. When he reached the table, with his heart hanging in his jacket like the onions he had carried in his battle blouse from Arnhem, he let go of the floor with one hand, grasped the table top and, with breaking back, pulled himself up on his knee until his eyes looked along the bloom of the table top. He was at one side of the drawer; cunning that, because he could never have opened it otherwise. Holding on with one hand, he opened the drawer with the other.
He had not thought yet about what he would do if the gun was not there.
It was there. God bless Ma. God bless A-mer-ica, tum, tum, te tum. The gun was there, but where were the bullets? He rummaged about, in growing feverishness, but there was nothing else in the drawer but a ball of string, some papers and some packets of cigarettes he never knew he had. So that was Ma’s game! Trust her to take the dangerous part of the gun away. He knew the bullets had been there, because he had seen Sandy put them in when she unpacked his things. He remembered the affected shudder with which she had dropped the gun and bullets into the drawer as if they would bite her and then looked round at him giggling, as if to say: “Aren’t I feminine?” Only he was much too far gone after that long ambulance ride to play up to the poor old horse.
Well, a revolver without ammunition was good enough. He would not have shot at the man, anyway, and he could threaten him just as well with an empty magazine. Criminals had been held up with pipes before now—or was that only in books? Feeling his way down the table leg, he got to his all-threes position again, and swivelling on his knee, started off on the long trek to the door. There seemed to be acres of carpet before him. Halfway across, he glanced at his bed and thought it had never looked so inviting. His head came round again quickly, as he heard the footsteps go stealthily across the passage into the drawing-room. As he listened, he realised he was making a point, like a gun dog, the hand that held the revolver slightly raised, head on one side, eyes fixed.
Thank Heaven the man had not come in here first. He was not ready for him yet. There was not much in the drawing-room, except his silver tennis cups, but it would take him quite a time to search round. Oh God, the party! All the food and drink would be laid out. By the time he got there at this rate, the man would be quite tight. He would join him in a glass of champagne, probably several after this trip, and what a charming picture that would make for the returning wedding party: a one-legged man in odd pyjamas and a dirty old tramp with a sack full of silver sitting on the floor with their arms round each other’s necks singing “The Red Flag.” Not that he knew “The Red Flag,” but the tramp would be sure to. Tramps were cultured these days, and wrote letters to the New Statesman.
Violet and John, glad to be released from the tension of waiting, had gone out in such a hurry that they had not shut his door properly. Good thing. He could never have coped with the latch, balanced on one quivering knee. He put his hand round the edge of the door, pulled it towards him, and started off along the passage. This was easier, because he could lean against the wall all the way, on the topheavy side. He was travelling on the heel of his right hand, pushing the revolver before him along the carpet. Funny how he had never properly seen the pattern of this carpet until he got down to its level. The drawing-room door was before him like a challenge, five yards away. Could he make it? And if he did, would he have breath enough to accost the man? Surely he would hear him panting long before he got there. He stopped and tried to swallow down the dryness in his throat, that was as raw as playing football on a foggy November day. When he started again the panting started too, independent of his control, like something accompanying him down the passage. His face was running with sweat, and he could feel it trickling down under his jacket. He probably looked ghastly enough to give the man quite a shock.
“Hands up!” he was going to say, and find a bit of furniture—the seat of a chair or something—on which he could rest the gun. Unless they had moved it, there was an armchair just inside the door. Leaning on the arm of that, he could keep the man covered until the party returned. They couldn’t be long now. He had been ages making this trip. They’d better not be long, because he could not keep going much longer. I bet my lips are navy blue, he thought, with some satisfaction. Here was the drawing-room door at last. A creak sounded on the other side. Good, he could place where the man was—over by the window, probably at his mother’s desk. He would not find much there except neat files of receipted bills and all Oliver’s letters from the Army tied up in a bundle, and every photograph of her family that had ever been taken, because she had a lurking fear that people would die if you threw away their photograph. Well, he might die, after all this trouble he’d taken to live since he was wounded. God knows he felt like it.
He did not put his hand round the door, in case the man turned and got warning of his coming. He pushed it with his shoulder like a dog, crawled round the edge, saw the armchair, plunged forward, missed it and fell flat on his face with a feeble croak that no one would have taken for “Hands up!”
Elizabeth, who had been doing something to the plates of food on one of the cloth-covered tables, turned, with her eyebrows in her hair and her mouth open. He saw her, just before his face hit the floor.
Now that he was lying down he felt much better. He lay recovering his breath, with his face turned to one side so that he could grin at her. It was so damn funny. His chest shook, too weak to make the sound of laughter. “I thought you were a … I thought you were a …”
“Don’t try and talk,” she said, kneeling by him in the crisp linen suit that was the colour of cornflowers. “Just lie there and rest. It’s all right; I’ll help you back to bed.”
“I don’t want to get back to bed.” He could not tell whether it was hysterical tears or sweat pouring down his face. “Prop me up against that chair so that I can laugh.” He had always been surprised to find that she was so much stronger than she looked. She was very strong now. He was a limp weight, but she hauled and turned him until he was sitting like a doll against the side of the armchair, with his chin on his heaving chest, his leg stretched straight out in front of him and his stump blessedly at rest on the floor.
“And now,” she said, sitting back on her heels, “tell me what on earth you’re playing at. And why the gun?” He raised his eyes without lifting his chin and saw that she was pale and that her hand was trembling slightly as she picked up the revolver. He had given her a scare. Serve her right for leaving him. Half a minute though, she hadn’t left him. “What are you playing at,” he said, “when I thought you were at the church? Gave me the fright of my life. Damned inconsiderate.”
“I came back in the car that fetched Violet. Nobody knew. I didn’t go into the church with the others, and I sneaked in at the back door here before John and Violet came out. I didn’t like leaving you, and I see I was right. I might have known you’d get up to some crazy trick.”
“Crazy trick be damned. I thought I was a hero, saving the family silver. Why on earth didn’t you tell me you’d come back, instead of creeping about like that?”
“I wanted you to think you were on your own. I thought it would be a good test for your nerves.”
“You planned this?”
“Days ago. That’s why I didn’t insist when you told me not to stay. I knew what I was going to do. How on earth did you get here? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Oh, I crawled,” he said airily. “It was nothing.”
“It was a pretty good effort. Shows you’re fit for more than we think.”
The Happy Prisoner Page 25