Familiar and Haunting

by Philippa Pearce

  I reached the lane, the fence, the slat that moved. I swung the slat aside, as I had been shown how, and squeezed myself and my little suitcase through into Mrs. Hartington ’s garden.

  The garden was even more frightening than the street and the lane, because of the dark, motionless shapes of the bushes and tall plants—or because those shapes looked as if at any second they might cease to be motionless. And here, rearing up almost to my own height, was the rubbish heap. I put my suitcase down.

  Now I had to follow my uncle’s instructions very carefully. I had to face the side of the heap where he had discharged the last load of weeds. I had to thrust my hand into the heap and count slowly to twenty. If, during that time, I did not feel anything particular, I was to try again in another place. (“What kind of particular feeling, Uncle?” “You’ll know, soon enough.”)

  The first place I tried: nothing. I moved my hand and tried again, noticing how cold my hand was and how it trembled, even inside the earthy heap. Nothing, again. I’ll try three times and then stop, I thought. Three times, and then I go back.

  How dark it was in the garden, how still, how quiet-

  By now I was shuddering all over with cold and with fear. I thrust my hand in for the third time, in a third place, and counted up to twenty, and more.

  Nothing. So now I could go home.

  But I was afraid to go back without what my uncle wanted so much. I remembered the violence of his hands on my shoulders; I remembered the glare of his blue eyes.

  I thrust my hand into the heap again and counted, and before I reached twenty, I began to feel it.

  It…

  I did not know whether I felt by touch or whether in some way I heard whatever was there, among the roots of the ground elder, clasping, twining, winding, climbing round the roots of the ground elder. Whatever it was, awareness of it flowed into me, for as long as I held my hand there. Was it pain or pleasure that I felt? Whatever it was, I ceased to be frightened, or anxious, or even conscious of what had to be done next. I stood there like a boy enchanted into a statue.

  Then some little creature—a field mouse, I think it must have been—ran over my left foot and roused me.

  I closed my hand on what it already touched inside the rubbish heap, and I withdrew a handful of roots and earth. I put the handful into my Mickey Mouse case. Then I took another handful and another and another, until the case was full. Then I shut the case and fastened it and made my way with it back through the fence, along the lane and the village street and in through the front door of my great-uncle’s house, which I had left unlatched.

  I had been told by my uncle to carry the case through to the garden at the back and leave it there. By the starlight I could just see the raw earth of the garden and, in the middle of it, an oblong blackness—a hole that was just about the size of my Mickey Mouse suitcase. My uncle had told me nothing, but I knew at once that this was a hole he had dug to receive the roots that were to grow and spread and flourish and fill this little garden.

  I left my case by the hole and went indoors again and upstairs to bed. I knew that Aunt Cass was asleep, by the particular pitch of her snore. I could not hear Uncle Percy’s snore. Of course, he could have been sound asleep without snoring, but I did not think so.

  I got into bed and put my head under the bedclothes. I gave a gasp, and then I began to cry. I cried and cried. I cried for the fearfulness of that night’s lonely, dark journey, and I cried because I had held something in my hand and then had had to let it go. I cried myself to sleep.

  The next morning—the morning of my departure—I found my Mickey Mouse suitcase waiting for me downstairs, emptied and clean. I put my space people and my monsters back into it.

  There was no oblong hole now to be seen in the middle of the back garden.

  That day I went home, and I never came back by myself again. I refused absolutely to go another visit alone to my uncle Percy and aunt Cass, and I refused to explain why I would not go. My mother guessed, I think, that something had frightened me badly, but she could never find out what it was.

  So my mother went down by herself, very occasionally, just for the day. She reported that Uncle Percy was becoming odd in his behavior—odd and oddly happy. He was always digging in the little back garden, she said—digging with his bare hands. But never weeding. The garden had become a paradise for weeds, especially ground elder. Ground elder was king there.

  When Uncle Percy died at last, my mother persuaded me to go with her to see Aunt Cass. In the end I was glad I did go. But I’ve told you all that.

  And after it was all over, Mrs. Hartington spread a cruel tale that Aunt Cass had cared so little for her husband that she never planted or even weeded his grave. She may not have weeded it, but I’m sure that she must have planted it—with roots from their own back garden. Uncle Percy would have made her promise to do that. I’m certain of it.

  Auntie

  Up to the day she died, Auntie could thread the finest needle at one go. She did so on that last rainy day of her life. And by the end of her life her long sight had grown longer than anyone could possibly have expected.

  Auntie’s exceptional eyesight had been no particular help to her in her job: she was a file clerk in a block of offices, forever sorting other people’s dull letters and dull memoranda. Boring, but Auntie was not ambitious, nor was she ever discontented.

  Auntie’s real interest—all her care—was for her family. She never married, but by the time of her retirement from work, she was a great-aunt—although she was never called that—and she liked being one. She baby-sat and took children to school and helped with family expeditions. She knitted and crotcheted and sewed; above all, she sewed. She mended and patched and made clothes. She sewed by hand when necessary; otherwise she whirred the handle of an ancient sewing machine that had been a wedding present to her mother long before.

  Unfortunately, she was not particularly good at making clothes. Little Billy, her youngest great-nephew, was her last victim. “Do I have to wear this blazer thing?” he whispered to his mother, Auntie’s niece. (He whispered because—even in his bitterness—he did not want Auntie to overhear.) “Honestly, Mum, no one at school ever wears anything looking like this.”

  “Hush!” said his mother. Then: “Auntie’s very kind to take all that trouble and to save us money, too. You should be grateful.”

  “I’m not!” said little Billy, and he determined, when he was old enough, he wouldn’t be at Auntie’s mercy anymore. Meanwhile Auntie, who doted on Billy as the last child of his generation, was perplexed by the feeling that something she had done was not quite right.

  Auntie was not a thinker, but she had common sense and—more and more—foresight. She knew, for instance, that nobody can live forever. One day she said, “I wonder when I shall die? And how? Heart, probably. My old dad, your granddad, died of that.”

  She was talking to the niece, Billy’s mother, with whom Auntie now lived. The niece said, “Oh, Auntie, don’t talk so!”

  Auntie said, “My eyesight’s as good as ever—well, better, really—but my hands aren’t so much use.” She looked at her hands, knobbling with rheumatism. “I can’t use ‘em as I once did.”

  “Never mind!” said the niece.

  “And the children are growing up. Even Billy.” Auntie sighed. “Growing too old for me.”

  “The children love their auntie!” said the niece angrily. This was true, in its way, but that did not prevent great-nephews and great-nieces from becoming irritated when Auntie babied them and fussed over their clothing or over whatever they happened to be doing.

  Auntie did not continue the argument with her niece. She was no good at discussion or argument, anyway. That wasn’t her strong point.

  Her eyesight was her strong point and yet also her worry. In old age she sat for long periods by her bedroom window, looking out over rooftops to distant church spires and tower blocks. “I don’t like seeing so far,” she said once. “What’s the use to me?
Or to anyone else?”

  “You’re lucky,” said her nephew-in-law, Billy’s father. “Some people would give their eyes to—well, they’d give a lot to have your eyesight at your age.”

  “It’s—it’s wrong,” said Auntie, trying to explain something.

  “If it happens that way, then it’s natural,” said her nephew.

  “Natural!” said Auntie, and she took to sitting at her bedroom window with her eyes closed.

  One day: “Asleep?” her niece asked softly.

  “No.” Auntie’s eyes opened at once. “Just resting my eyes. Trying to get them not to go on with all this looking and looking, seeing and seeing…” Here Auntie paused, again attempting to sort out some ideas. But the ideas and what lay behind them could not be as easily sorted and filed into place as those documents in the office where she had worked years ago.

  “Ah,” said the niece, preparing to leave it at that.

  But Auntie had something more to say. “When I’m in bed and asleep, I dream, and I know dreams are rubbish, so I needn’t pay any attention to them. But when I sit here, wide-awake, with my eyes open or even with my eyes closed, then—”

  The niece waited.

  Auntie said carefully, “Then I think, and thinking must be like seeing. I see things.”

  “What things?”

  “Things a long way off.”

  “That’s because you’re longsighted, Auntie.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that. But the things a long way off are coming nearer.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “How should I know what I mean? I’m just telling you what happens. I see things far away, and they’re coming close. I don’t understand it. I don’t like it.”

  “Perhaps you’re just having daydreams, Auntie.”

  “You mean, it’s all rubbish?”

  “Well, is it?”

  Auntie moved restlessly in her chair. She hated to be made to think in this way, but there were some things you had to think of with your mind, when you couldn’t straightforwardly see them with your eyes and then straightforwardly grasp them with your hands, to deal with them then and there.

  There were these other things.

  “No,” said Auntie crossly. “They’re not rubbish. All the same, I don’t want to think about them. I don’t want to talk about them.”

  So there was no more talk about the far things that were coming nearer, but as for thinking—well, Auntie couldn’t help doing that, in her way. Her life was uneventful, so that what she thought about naturally was what she saw with her eyes or in her mind’s eye.

  One day the married niece asked if she could use Auntie’s old sewing machine to run up some curtains; her own machine had broken down.

  “So has mine,” said Auntie. “The needle’s broken.”

  “You have several spare needles, Auntie,” said the niece. “I think I could put one in.”

  The niece went downstairs to where the ancient sewing machine was kept. When she had unlocked and taken off the wooden lid, she found that the needle was not broken after all. It did not need replacing. She sighed to herself and smiled to herself at Auntie’s mistake, and then she set to work with Auntie’s sewing machine.

  She threaded up the machine with the right cotton for her curtains, arranged the material in the right position under the needle, and began to turn the handle of the machine. The stitching began, but the curtain material was very thick, and the needle penetrated it with difficulty. …

  With more difficulty at every stitch …

  The needle broke.

  So, after all, the niece had to change the needle, to finish sewing her curtains. Later on she said to Auntie, “Your machine’s all right now, but the needle broke.”

  “I told you so,” said Auntie.

  “No, Auntie. You said the needle had broken; you ought to have said, “The needle will break.’” The niece laughed jollily.

  “I don’t want to say things like that,” said Auntie. She spoke sharply, and her niece saw that she was upset for some reason.

  So she said, “Never mind, Auntie. It was just a funny thing to have happened, after what you said. A coincidence. Think no more of it.”

  The niece thought no more of it, but Auntie did. She brooded over the strangeness of her long sight, over the seeing of faraway things that came nearer. She now kept that strangeness private to herself, secret, but sometimes something popped into a conversation before she could prevent it.

  One family teatime, when Auntie had been sitting silent for some time, she said, “It’s lucky there’s never anyone left in those offices at night.”

  “Which offices?”

  “Where I used to work, of course.”

  “Oh—” Nobody was interested, except for little Billy. He was always curious. “Why is it lucky, Auntie?”

  But already Auntie regretted having spoken; one could see that. “No reason,” she said. “Nothing … I was just thinking, that’s all. …”

  The next morning, with Auntie’s early cup of tea, the niece brought news.

  “You’ll never guess, Auntie!”

  “Those old offices are burned out.”

  “Why, you have guessed! Yes, it was last night after you’d gone to bed early. An electrical short started the fire, they think. Nobody’s fault, and nobody hurt—nobody in the building.”

  “No,” said Auntie. “Nobody at all…”

  “But you should have seen the blaze! You were asleep, so we didn’t wake you, but we took little Billy to see. My goodness, Auntie! The smoke there was!”

  “Yes,” said Auntie. “The smoke …”

  “And the flames—huge flames towering up!”

  “Yes.” said Auntie. “The whole place quite gutted …”

  “And all the fire engines wailing up!”

  “Yes,” said Auntie. “Five fire engines…”

  Her niece stared at her. “There were five fire engines, but how did you know?”

  Auntie was flustered, and the niece went on staring. Auntie said, “Well, a big blaze like that would need five fire engines, wouldn’t it?”

  Her niece said nothing more, but later she reported the conversation to her husband. He was not impressed. “Oh, I daresay she woke up and saw the fire through her bedroom window. With her long sight she saw the size of the fire, and—well, she realized it would need at least five fire engines. As she said, more or less.”

  “That’s just possible as an explanation,” said his wife, “if it weren’t for one thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “Auntie’s bedroom window doesn’t look in that direction at all. Her old office block is on the other side of the house.”

  “Oh!” said Auntie’s nephew-in-law.

  In the time that followed, Auntie was very careful indeed not to talk about her sight, long sight, or foresight. Even so, her niece sometimes watched her intently and oddly, as she sat by her bedroom window. And once her nephew-in-law sought her out to ask whether she would like to discuss with him the forthcoming Derby and which horse was likely to win the race. Auntie said she had never been interested in horse racing and disapproved of it because of the betting. So that was that.

  One afternoon in early spring—not cold, but dreary and very overcast—Auntie was restless. She went downstairs to her sewing machine and fiddled with it. She did a little hand sewing on a pair of Billy’s trousers, where a seam had come undone. (That was the last time that she threaded a needle.)

  Then she went upstairs and came down again in her coat and hat.

  “You’re not thinking of going out, Auntie?” cried her niece. “Today of all days? It’s just beginning to rain!”

  “A breath of fresh air, all the same,” said Auntie.

  “It’s not suitable for you, Auntie. So slippery underfoot on the pavements.”

  Auntie said, “I thought I’d go and meet Billy off the school bus.”

  “Oh, Auntie! Billy’s too old to need meeting off the bus nowada
ys. He doesn’t need it, and he wouldn’t like it. He’d hate it.”

  Auntie sighed, hesitated, then slowly climbed up the stairs to her bedroom again.

  Five minutes later she was coming downstairs again, almost hurriedly, still hatted and coated. She made for the stand where her umbrella was kept.

  “Auntie!” protested the niece.

  Auntie patted the handbag she was carrying. “An important letter I’ve written—and must get into the post.”

  Her niece gaped at her. Auntie never wrote important letters; she never wrote letters at all.

  “About my pension,” Auntie explained. “Private,” she added, as she saw that her niece was about to speak.

  Her niece did speak, however. She had quite a lot to say. “Auntie, your letter can’t be all that urgent. And if it is, Billy will be home soon, and he’ll pop to the letter box for you. It’s really ridiculous—ridiculous—of you to think of going out in this wet, gray, slippery, miserable weather!”

  Suddenly Auntie was different. She was resolved, stern in some strange determination. “I must go,” she said, in such a way that her niece shrank back and let her pass.

  So Auntie, her umbrella in one hand and her handbag in the other, set out.

  The weather had worsened during the short delay. She had to put up her umbrella at once against the rain. She hurried along toward the letter box—hurried, but with care, because the pavement and road surfaces were slippery, just as her niece had said.

  The letter box lay a very little way beyond the bus stop where Billy’s school bus would arrive. There was a constant to-and-fro of traffic, but no bus was in sight. Instead of going on to the letter box, Auntie hesitated a moment, then took shelter from the rain in the doorway of a gent’s outfitter’s, just by the bus stop. From inside the shop, an assistant, as he said later, observed the old lady taking shelter and observed all that happened afterward.

  Auntie let down her umbrella, furled it properly, and held it in her right hand, her handbag in her left.