Familiar and Haunting

by Philippa Pearce

  The ladder reached comfortably to the branch of the sycamore they had decided on, and its foot was held steady by Lizzie, while her father climbed up. He carried the rope—nylon, for strength—in loops over his shoulder. He knotted one end securely round the chosen branch and then let the other end drop. It fell to dangle only a little to one side of where Con held the old motor tire upright on the ground. Really, of course, there was no need for the tire to be held in that position yet, but something had to be found for Con to do, to take his mind off the cows in the meadow. He was nervous of animals, and cows were large.

  Their father prepared to descend the ladder.

  And then—how exactly did it happen? Why did it happen? Was Con really the first to notice the knothole in the tree trunk, as he later claimed? Or did Lizzie point it out? Would their father, anyway, have reached over sideways from the ladder—as he now did—to dip his fingers into the cavity?

  “There’s something in here. … Something stuck …” He teetered a little on the ladder as he tugged. “Got it!”

  And as he grasped whatever was in the hole, the air round the group in the meadow tightened, tautened with expectancy.

  Something was going to happen. …

  Going to happen …

  To happen …

  “Here we are!” He was holding aloft a dingy, spherical object. “A ball—it’s a ball! A chance in a thousand. Someone threw a ball high, and it happened to lodge here! No, a chance in a million for it to have happened like that!”

  He dropped the ball. Lizzie tried to catch it but was prevented by the ladder. Con tried but was prevented by the tire he held. The ball bounced, but not high, rolled out a little way over the meadow, came to rest.

  And something invisibly in the meadow breathed again, watchful, but relaxed. …

  The two children forgot the ball, because their father was now down from the ladder; he was knotting the free end of the rope round the tire, so that it cleared the ground by about half a meter. It hung there, enticingly.

  While their father put his ladder away, the children began arguing about who should have first go on the tire. He came back, sharply stopped their quarreling, and showed them how both could get on at the same time: they must face each other, with both pairs of legs through the circle of the tire, but in opposite directions. So they sat on the lowest curve of the tire, gripping the rope from which it hung, and their father began to swing them, higher and higher, wider and wider.

  As they swung up, the setting sun was in their eyes, and suddenly they saw the whole of the meadow, but tilted, tipped, and they saw the houses on the other side of the meadow rushing toward them, and then as they swung back again, the houses were rushing away, and the meadow, too.

  Swinging, swinging, swinging, they whooped and shrieked for joy.

  Their mother came out to watch for a little and then said they must all come in for tea. So all three went in, through the little gate from the meadow into the garden and then into the house. They left the tire still swaying; they left the dirty old ball where it had rolled and come to rest and been forgotten.

  As soon as he had finished his tea, Con was eager to be in the meadow, to have the tire to himself while there was still daylight. Lizzie went on munching.

  But in a few moments, he was indoors again, saying hesitantly, “I think—I think there’s someone in the meadow waiting for me.”

  Their father said, “Nonsense, boy! The cows will never hurt you!”

  “It’s not the cows at all. There’s someone waiting. For me.”

  Their mother looked at their father. “Perhaps…”

  “I’ll come out with you,” he said to Con, and so he did, and Lizzie followed them both.

  But Con was saying, “I didn’t say I was afraid. I just said there was someone in the meadow. I thought there was. That’s all.” They went through the garden gate into the meadow.

  “Man or woman?” Con’s father asked him. “Or boy or girl?”

  “No,” said Con. “It wasn’t like that.”

  His father had scanned the wide meadow thoroughly. “No one at all.” He sighed. “Oh, Conrad, your imagination] I’m going back before the tea’s too cold. You two can stay a bit longer, if you like. Till it begins to get dark.”

  He went indoors.

  Lizzie, looking beyond the tire and remembering after all, said, “That ball’s gone.”

  “I picked it up.” Con brought it out of his pocket, held it out to Lizzie. She took it. It was smaller than a tennis ball, but heavier, because solid. One could see that it was yellow under the dirtiness, and it was not really so very dirty after all. Dirt had collected in the tiny, shallow holes with which the surface of the ball was pitted. That was all.

  “I wonder what made the holes,” said Lizzie.

  Con held out his hand for the ball again. Lizzie did not give it up. “It’s just as much mine as yours,” he said. They glared at each other, but uneasily. They did not really want to quarrel about this ball; this ball was for better things than that.

  “I suppose we could take turns at having it,” said Lizzie. “Or perhaps you don’t really want the ball, Con?”

  “But I do—I do!” At the second “do” he lunged forward, snatched the ball from his sister, and was through the gate with it, back toward the house—and Lizzie was after him. The gate clicked shut behind them both.

  Suddenly they both stopped and turned to look back. Oh! They knew that something was coming-High, and over—

  They saw it—or rather, they had seen it, for it happened so swiftly. A small, dark shape, a shadow had leaped the shut gate after them—elegant as a dancer in flying motion—eager.

  Con breathed: “Did you see him?”

  “Her,” Lizzie whispered back. “A bitch. I saw the teats, as she came over the gate.”

  “Her ears lifted in the wind. …”

  “She had her eyes on the ball—oh, Con! It’s her ball! Hers! She wants it; she wants it!”

  Though nothing was visible now, they could feel the air of the garden quivering with hope and expectancy.

  “Throw it for her, Con!” Lizzie urged him. “Throw it!”

  With all his strength Con threw the yellow ball over the gate and out into the meadow, and the shadow of a shape followed it in another noble leap and then a long darting movement across the meadow, straight as an arrow after the ball, seeming to gain on it, to be about to catch up with it, to catch it.

  But when the ball came to rest, the other movement still went on, not in a straight line anymore, but sweeping to and fro, quartering the ground, seeking, seeking.

  “It’s her ball. Why doesn’t she find it and pick it up?” Con asked wonderingly. “It’s there for her.”

  Lizzie said, “I think—I think it’s because it’s a real ball, and she’s not a real dog. She can’t pick it up, poor thing; she’s only some kind of ghost.”

  A ghost! Con said nothing but drew closer to his sister. They stood together in the garden, looking out into the meadow, while they accustomed their minds to what they were seeing. They stood on the solid earth of the garden path; behind them was their house, with the lights now on and their father drinking his cups of tea; in front of them lay the meadow with the sycamore tree; in the far distance, the cows.

  All real, all solid, all familiar.

  And in the middle of the meadow—to and fro, to and fro—moved the ghost of a dog.

  But now Con moved away from his sister, stood stalwartly alone again. An ordinary ghost might have frightened him for longer; a real dog would certainly have frightened him. But the ghost of a dog—that was different!

  “Lizzie,” he said, “let’s not tell anyone. Not anyone. It’s our private ghost. Just ours.”

  “All right.”

  They continued gazing over the meadow until they could no longer see through the deepening dusk. Then their mother was rapping on the window for them to come indoors, and they had to go.

  Indoors, their parents as
ked them, “Did you have a good swing on the tire?”

  “The tire?” They stared and said, “We forgot.”

  Later they went into the meadow again with a flashlight to look for the yellow ball. They were on the alert, but there was now nobody, nothing that was waiting—even when Con, holding the ball in his hand, pretended that he was about to throw it. No ardent expectation. Nothing now but the meadow and the trees in it and the unsurprised cows.

  They brought the ball indoors and scrubbed it as clean as they could with a nailbrush, but there would always be dirt in the little holes. “Those are tooth marks,” said Con.

  “Hers,” said Lizzie. “This was her own special ball that she used to carry in her mouth when she was alive, when she was a flesh-and-blood dog.”

  “Where did she live?” asked Con. But of course, Lizzie didn’t know. Perhaps in one of the houses by the meadow; perhaps even in their own, before ever they came to it.

  “Shall we see her tomorrow?” asked Con. “Oh, I want to see her again tomorrow!”

  The next day they took the yellow ball into the meadow before school, but with no result. They tried again as soon as they got home: nothing. They had their teas and went out to the tire again with the yellow ball. Nobody—nothing—was waiting for them. So they settled themselves on the tire and swung to and fro, but gently, and talked to each other in low voices, and the sun began to set.

  It was almost dusk, and they were still gently swinging, when Lizzie whispered, “She’s here now, I’m sure of it!” Lizzie had been holding on to the nylon rope with one hand only, because the other held the yellow ball; it was her turn with it today, they had decided. Now she put her feet down to stop the swinging of the tire and stepped out from it altogether.

  “Here, you!” she called softly, and, aside to Con: “Oh, I wish we knew her name!”

  “Don’t bother about that,” said Con. “Throw the ball!”

  So Lizzie did. They both saw where it went; also, they glimpsed the flashing speed that followed it. And then began the fruitless searching, to and fro, to and fro. …

  “The poor thing!” said Lizzie, watching.

  Con was only pleased and excited. He still sat on the tire, and now he began to push hard with his toes, to swing higher and higher, chanting under his breath, “We’ve got a ghost—a ghooooost! We’ve got a ghost—a ghoooost!” Twice he stopped his swinging and chanting and left the tire to fetch the ball and throw it again. (Lizzie did not want to throw.) Each time they watched the straight following of the ball and then the spreading search that could not possibly have an end. But when darkness began to fall, they felt suddenly that there was no more ghost in the meadow, and it was time for them to go indoors, too.

  As they went, Con said, almost shyly, “Tomorrow, when it’s really my turn, do you think if I held the ball out to her and sort of tempted her with it, that she’d come close up to me? I might touch her. …”

  Lizzie said, “You can’t touch a ghost. And besides, Con, you’re frightened of dogs. You know you are. Else we might have had one of our own—a real one—years ago.”

  Con simply said, “This dog is different. I like this dog.”

  This first evening with the ghost dog was only a beginning. Every day now they took the yellow ball into the meadow. They soon found that their ghost dog came only at sunset, at dusk. Someone in the past had made a habit of giving this dog a ball game in the evening, before going indoors for the night. A ball game—that was all the dog hoped for. That was why she came at the end of the day, whenever a human hand held the yellow ball.

  “And I think I can guess why Dad found the ball where he did, high up a tree,” said Lizzie. “It was put there deliberately, after the dog had died. Someone—probably the person who owned the dog—put it where no one was ever likely to find it. That someone wanted the ball not to be thrown again, because it was a haunted ball, you might say. It would draw the dog—the ghost of the dog—to come back to chase it and search for it and never find it. Never find it. Never.”

  “You make everything sound so sad and wrong,” said Con. “But it isn’t, really.”

  Lizzie did not answer.

  They had settled into a routine with their ghost dog. They kept her yellow ball inside the hollow of the tire and brought it out every evening to throw it in turns. Con always threw in his turn, but Lizzie often did not want to for hers. Then Con wanted to have her turn for himself, and at first she let him. Then she changed her mind: she insisted that on her evenings, neither of them threw. Con was annoyed (“Dog in the manger,” he muttered), but after all, Lizzie had the right.

  A Saturday was coming when neither of them would throw, for a different reason. There was going to be a family expedition to the zoo, in London; they were all going on a cheap day excursion by train, and they would not be home until well after dark.

  The day came, and the visit to the zoo went as well as such visits do, and now at last they were on the train again, going home. All four were tired, but only their parents were dozing. Con was wide-awake and excited by the train. He pointed out to Lizzie that all the lights had come on inside the railway carriage; outside, the view was of darkening landscapes and the sparkling illumination of towns, villages, and highways.

  The ticket inspector came round, and Lizzie nudged their father awake. He found the four tickets of the family, and they were clipped.

  “And what about the dog?” said the ticket inspector with severity.

  “Dog?” Their father was still half asleep, confused.

  “Your dog. It should have a ticket. And why isn’t it in the baggage compartment?”

  “But there’s no dog! We haven’t a dog with us. We don’t own a dog.”

  “I saw one,” said the inspector grimly. He stooped and began looking under the seats, and other passengers began looking, too, even while they all agreed that they had seen no dog.

  And there really was no dog.

  “Sorry, sir,” said the ticket inspector at last. His odd mistake had shaken him. “I could have sworn I saw something move that was a dog.” He took off his glasses and worried at the lenses with his handkerchief and passed on.

  The passengers resettled themselves, and when their own parents were dozing off again, Lizzie whispered to Con, “Con, you little demon! You brought it with you—the yellow ball!”

  “Yes!” He held his pocket a little open and toward her, so that she saw the ball nestling inside. “And I had my hand on it, holding it, when the ticket man came to us. And it worked! It worked!” He was so pleased with himself that he was bouncing up and down in his seat.

  Lizzie said in a furious whisper, “You should never have done it! Think how terrified that dog must have been to find herself on a train—a train! Con, how could you treat a dog so?”

  “She was all right,” Con said stubbornly. “She can’t come to any harm, anyway. She’s not a dog; she’s only the ghost of one. And anyway, it’s as much my yellow ball as yours. We each have a half share in it.”

  “You never asked my permission about my half of the ball,” said Lizzie. “And don’t talk so loud; someone will hear.”

  They talked no more in so public a place, nor when they got home. They all went straight to bed, and all slept late the next morning, Sunday.

  All except for Lizzie; she was up early, for her own purposes. She crept into Con’s room, as he slept, and took the yellow ball from his pocket. She took the yellow ball down the garden path to her father’s work shed, at the bottom. She and the yellow ball went inside, and Lizzie shut the door behind them.

  Much later, when he was swinging on the tire in the morning sunshine, Con saw Lizzie coming into the meadow. He called to her, “All right! I know you’ve taken it, so there. You can have it today, anyway, but it’s my turn tomorrow. We share the yellow ball. Remember?”

  Lizzie came close to him. She held out toward him her right hand, closed; then she opened it carefully, palm upward. “Yours,” she said. On her flattened pa
lm sat the domed shape of half the yellow ball. She twisted her hand slightly, so that the yellow dome fell on its side; then Con could see the sawed cross section—black except for the outer rim of yellow.

  For a moment Con was stunned. Then he screamed at her, “Wherever you hide your half, I’ll find it! I’ll glue the halves together! I’ll make the yellow ball again and I’ll throw it—I’ll throw it and I’ll throw it and I’ll throw it!”

  “No, you won’t,” said Lizzie. This time she held out toward him her cupped left hand; he saw a mess of chips and crumbs and granules of black, dotted with yellow. It had taken Lizzie a long time in her father’s workshop to saw and cut and chip and grate her half ball down to this. She said flatly, “I’ve destroyed the yellow ball forever.” Then, with a gesture of horror, she flung the ball particles from her and burst into a storm of sobbing and crying.

  Only the shock of seeing Lizzie crying in such a way—she rarely cried at all—stopped Con from going for her with fists and feet and teeth as well. But the grief and desolation that he saw in Lizzie made him know his own affliction; grief at loss overwhelmed his first rage, and he began to cry, too.

  “Why did you have to do that to the yellow ball, Lizzie? Why didn’t you just hide it from me? Up a tree again—I might not have found it.”

  “Somebody would have found it, someday. …”

  “Or in the earth. You could have dug a deep hole, Lizzie.”

  “Somebody would have found it. …”

  “Oh, it wasn’t fair of you, Lizzie!”

  “No, it wasn’t fair. But it was the only way. Otherwise she’d search forever for something she could never find.”

  “Go away,” said Con.

  Lizzie picked up the half ball from the ground, where she had let it fall. She took it back with her to the house, to the dustbin. Then she went indoors and upstairs to her bedroom and lay down on her bed and cried again.

  They kept apart all day, as far as possible, but in the early evening, Lizzie saw Con on the tire, and she went out to him, and he let her swing him gently to and fro. After a while he said, “We’ll never see her again, shall we?”

  “No,” said Lizzie, “but at least she won’t be worried and disappointed and unhappy again, either.”