Tales from the Dead of Night

by Cecily Gayford

  Then I remembered that the bedroom window was open. What was I to do? Wild horses wouldn’t have dragged me into that house again unaccompanied. I made up my mind to go to the police station and tell them everything. I should be laughed at, of course, and they might easily refuse to believe my story of Mrs Caleb’s commission. I had actually begun to walk down the lane in the direction of the town, when I chanced to look back at the house. The window that I had left open was shut.

  No, my dear, I didn’t see any face or anything dreadful like that … and, of course, it may have shut by itself. It was an ordinary sash window, and you know they are often difficult to keep open.

  And the rest? Why, there’s really nothing more to tell. I didn’t even see Mrs Caleb again. She had had some sort of fainting fit just before lunchtime, my aunt informed me on my return, and had had to go to bed. Next morning I travelled down to Cornwall to join mother and the children. I thought I had forgotten all about it, but when three years later Uncle Charles suggested giving me a travelling clock for a twenty-first birthday present, I was foolish enough to prefer the alternative that he offered, a collected edition of the works of Thomas Carlyle.

  E. F. BENSON

  (1867–1940)

  The novelist Edward Frederic ‘Fred’ Benson is best known now for his ‘Mapp and Lucia’ series. The son of the fearsome Archbishop of Canterbury Edward White Benson, as a young man he was a friend of Oscar Wilde, a keen archaeologist – at one point accompanying Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, on a trip to the pyramids – and a champion figure skater. During the First World War he was sent to Capri to report on the morale of the Italian civilians; the Foreign Office described his reports as ‘preposterous’. Written near the end of his life, ‘Pirates’ is set in a version of Lis Escop, the Bensons’ family home in Truro (where a young M. R. James often visited his school friend, Benson’s older brother Arthur). Benson’s fond memories of his childhood gave way to sadness in adulthood: two of his siblings died young, while another two struggled with a family tendency to severe depression. It is perhaps not surprising that ‘Pirates’ so powerfully evokes a desire for reconciliation and the simplicity and joy of youth restored in age.

  PIRATES

  FOR MANY YEARS this project of sometime buying back the house had simmered in Peter Graham’s mind, but whenever he actually went into the idea with practical intention, stubborn reasons had presented themselves to deter him. In the first place it was very far off from his work, down in the heart of Cornwall, and it would be impossible to think of going there just for weekends, and if he established himself there for longer periods what on earth would he do with himself in that soft remote Lotus-land? He was a busy man who, when at work, liked the diversions of his club and of the theatres in the evening, but he allowed himself few holidays away from the City, and those were spent on salmon river or golf links with some small party of solid and like-minded friends. Looked at in these lights, the project bristled with objections.

  Yet through all these years, forty of them now, which had ticked away so imperceptibly, the desire to be at home again at Lescop had always persisted, and from time to time it gave him shrewd little unexpected tugs, when his conscious mind was in no way concerned with it. This desire, he was well aware, was of a sentimental quality, and often he wondered at himself that he, who was so well-armoured in the general jostle of the world against that type of emotion, should have just this one joint in his harness. Not since he was sixteen had he set eyes on the place, but the memory of it was more vivid than that of any other scene of subsequent experience. He had married since then, he had lost his wife, and though for many months after that he had felt horribly lonely, the ache of that loneliness had ceased and now, if he had ever asked himself the direct question, he would have confessed that bachelor existence was more suited to him than married life had ever been. It had not been a conspicuous success and he never felt the least temptation to repeat the experiment.

  But there was another loneliness which neither married life nor his keen interest in his business had ever extinguished and this was directly connected with his desire for that house on the green slope of the hills above Truro. For only seven years had he lived there, the youngest but one of a family of five children, and now out of all that gay company he alone was left. One by one they had dropped off the stem of life, but as each in turn went into this silence, Peter had not missed them very much: his own life was too occupied to give him time really to miss anybody and he was too vitally constituted to do otherwise than look forwards.

  None of that brood of children except himself, and he childless, had married, and now, when he was left without intimate tie of blood to any living being, a loneliness had gathered thickly around him. It was not in any sense a tragic or desperate loneliness: he had no wish to follow them on the unverified and unlikely chance of finding them all again. Also, he had no use for any disembodied existence: life meant to him flesh and blood and material interests and activities, and he could form no conception of life apart from such. But sometimes he ached with this dull gnawing ache of loneliness, which is worse than all others, when he thought of the stillness that lay congealed like clear ice over these young and joyful years when Lescop had been so noisy and alert and full of laughter, with its garden resounding with games, and the house with charades and hide-and-seek and multitudinous plans. Of course there had been rows and quarrels and disgraces, hot enough at the time, but now there was no one to quarrel with. ‘You can’t really quarrel with people whom you don’t love,’ thought Peter, ‘because they don’t matter.’ … Yet it was ridiculous to feel lonely; it was even more than ridiculous, it was weak, and Peter had the kindly contempt of a successful and healthy and unemotional man for weaknesses of that kind. There were so many amusing and interesting things in the world, he had so many irons in the fire to be beaten, so to speak, into gold when he was working, and so many palatable diversions when he was not (for he still brought a boyish enthusiasm to work and play alike), that there was no excuse for indulging in sentimental sterilities. So, for months together, hardly a stray thought would drift towards the remote years lived in the house on the hillside above Truro.

  He had lately become chairman of the board of that new and highly promising company, the British Tin Syndicate. Their property included certain Cornish mines which had been previously abandoned as non-paying propositions, but a clever mineralogical chemist had recently invented a process by which the metal could be extracted far more cheaply than had hitherto been possible. The British Tin Syndicate had bought the patent and, having acquired these derelict Cornish mines, were getting very good results from ore that had not been worth treating. Peter had very strong opinions as to the duty of a chairman to make himself familiar with the practical side of his concerns and was now travelling down to Cornwall to make a personal inspection of the mines where this process was at work. He had with him certain technical reports which he had received to read during the uninterrupted hours of his journey and it was not till his train had left Exeter behind that he finished his perusal of them and, putting them back in his dispatch case, turned his eye at the swiftly passing panorama of travel. It was many years since he had been to the West Country and now, with the thrill of vivid recognition, he found the red cliffs round Dawlish, interspersed between stretches of sunny sea beach, startlingly familiar. Surely he must have seen them quite lately, he thought to himself, and then, ransacking his memory, he found it was forty years since he had looked at them, travelling back to Eton from his last holidays at Lescop. The intense sharp-cut impressions of youth!

  His destination tonight was Penzance and now, with a strangely keen sense of expectation, he remembered that just before reaching Truro station the house on the hill was visible from the train, for often on these journeys to and from school he had been all eyes to catch the first sight of it and the last. Trees perhaps would have grown up and intervened, but as they ran past the station before Truro he shifted across to the
other side of the carriage and once more looked out for that glimpse … There it was, a mile away across the valley, with its grey stone front and the big beech tree screening one end of it, and his heart leaped as he saw it. Yet what use was the house to him now? It was not the stones and the bricks of it, nor the tall hay fields below it, nor the tangled garden behind that he wanted, but the days when he had lived in it. Yet he leaned from the window till a cutting extinguished the view of it, feeling that he was looking at a photograph that recalled some living presence. All those who had made Lescop dear and still vivid had gone, but this record remained, like the image on a plate … And then he smiled at himself with a touch of contempt for his sentimentality.

  The next three days were a whirlwind of enjoyable occupation: tin mines in the concrete were new to Peter, and he absorbed himself in these, as in some new game or ingenious puzzle. He went down the shafts of mines which had been opened again, he inspected the new chemical process, seeing it at work and checking the results, he looked into running expenses, comparing them with the value of the metal recovered. Then, too, there were substantial traces of silver in some of these ores, and he went eagerly into the question as to whether it would pay to extract it. Certainly even the mines which had previously been closed down ought to yield a decent dividend with this process, while those where the lode was richer would vastly increase their profits. But economy, economy … Surely it would save in the end, though at considerable capital expenditure now, to lay a light railway from the works to the railhead instead of employing these motor lorries. There was a piece of steep gradient, it was true, but a small detour, with a trestle bridge over the stream, would avoid that.

  He walked over the proposed route with the engineer and scrambled about the stream bank to find a good take-off for his trestle bridge. And all the time at the back of his head, in some almost subconscious region of thought, were passing endless pictures of the house and the hill, its rooms and passages, its fields and garden, and with them, like some accompanying tune, ran that ache of loneliness. He felt that he must prowl again about the place: the owner, no doubt, if he presented himself, would let him just stroll about alone for half an hour. Thus he would see it all altered and overscored by the life of strangers living there, and the photograph would fade into a blur and then blankness. Much better that it should.

  It was in this intention that, having explored every avenue for dividends on behalf of his company, he left Penzance by an early train in order to spend a few hours in Truro and go up to London later in the day. Hardly had he emerged from the station when a crowd of memories, forty years old, but more vivid than any of those of the last day or two, flocked around him with welcome for his return. There was the level-crossing and the road leading down to the stream where his sister Sybil and he had caught a stickleback for their aquarium, and across the bridge over it was the lane sunk deep between high crumbling banks that led to a footpath across the fields to Lescop. He knew exactly where was that pool with long ribands of water-weed trailing and waving in it, which had yielded them that remarkable fish: he knew how campions red and white would be in flower on the lane-side, and in the fields the meadow-orchis. But it was more convenient to go first into the town, get his lunch at the hotel, and to make enquiries from a house agent as to the present owner of Lescop; perhaps he would walk back to the station for his afternoon train by that short cut.

  Thick now as flowers on the steppe when spring comes, memories bright and fragrant shot up around him. There was the shop where he had taken his canary to be stuffed (beautiful it looked!): and there was the shop of the ‘undertaker and cabinetmaker’, still with the same name over the door, where on a memorable birthday, on which his amiable family had given him, by request, the tokens of their goodwill in cash, he had ordered a cabinet with five drawers and two trays, varnished and smelling of newly cut wood, for his collections of shells … There was a small boy in jersey and flannel trousers looking in at the window now, and Peter suddenly said to himself, ‘Good Lord, how like I used to be to that boy: same kit, too.’ Strikingly like indeed he was, and Peter, curiously interested, started to cross the street to get a nearer look at him. But it was market day, a drove of sheep delayed him, and when he got across the small boy had vanished among the passengers. Further along was a dignified house front with a flight of broad steps leading up to it, once the dreaded abode of Mr Tuck, dentist. There was a tall girl standing outside it now, and again Peter involuntarily said to himself, ‘Why, that girl’s wonderfully like Sybil!’ But before he could get more than a glimpse of her, the door was opened and she passed in, and Peter was rather vexed to find that there was no longer a plate on the door indicating that Mr Tuck was still at his wheel … At the end of the street was the bridge over the Fal just below which they used so often to take a boat for a picnic on the river. There was a jolly family party setting off just now from the quay, three boys, he noticed, and a couple of girls, and a woman of young middle-age. Quickly they dropped downstream and went forth, and with half a sigh he said to himself, ‘Just our number with Mamma.’

  He went to the Red Lion for his lunch: that was new ground and uninteresting, for he could not recall having set foot in that hostelry before. But as he munched his cold beef there was some great fantastic business going on deep down in his brain: it was trying to join up (and believed it could) that boy outside the cabinetmaker’s, that girl on the threshold of the house once Mr Tuck’s, and that family party starting for their picnic on the river. It was in vain that he told himself that neither the boy nor the girl nor the picnic party could possibly have anything to do with him: as soon as his attention relaxed that burrowing underground chase, as of a ferret in a rabbit hole, began again … And then Peter gave a gasp of sheer amazement, for he remembered with clear-cut distinctness how on the morning of that memorable birthday, he and Sybil started earlier than the rest from Lescop, he on the adorable errand of ordering his cabinet, she for the dolorous visit to Mr Tuck. The others followed half an hour later for a picnic on the Fal to celebrate the great fact that his age now required two figures (though one was for nought) for expression. ‘It’ll be ninety years, darling,’ his mother had said, ‘before you want a third one, so be careful of yourself.’

  Peter was almost as excited when this momentous memory burst on him as he had been on the day itself. Not that it meant anything, he said to himself, as there’s nothing for it to mean. But I call it odd. It’s as if something from those days hung about here still …

  He finished his lunch quickly after that, and went to the house agent’s to make his enquiries. Nothing could be easier than that he should prowl about Lescop, for the house had been untenanted for the last two years. No card ‘to view’ was necessary, but here were the keys: there was no caretaker there.

  ‘But the house will be going to rack and ruins,’ said Peter indignantly. ‘Such a jolly house, too. False economy not to put a caretaker in. But of course it’s no business of mine. You shall have the keys back during the afternoon: I’ll walk up there now.’

  ‘Better take a taxi, sir,’ said the man. ‘A hot day, and a mile and a half up a steep hill.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Peter. ‘Barely a mile. Why, my brother and I used to often do it in ten minutes.’

  It occurred to him that these athletic feats of forty years ago would probably not interest the modern world …

  Pyder Street was as populous with small children as ever, and perhaps a little longer and steeper than it used to be. Then turning off to the right among strange new-built suburban villas he passed into the well-known lane, and in five minutes more had come to the gate leading into the short drive up to the house. It drooped on its hinges, he must lift it off the latch, sidle through and prop it in place again. Overgrown with grass and weeds was the drive, and with another spurt of indignation he saw that the stile to the pathway across the field was broken down and had dragged the wires of the fence with it. And then he came to the house itself, and
the creepers trailed over the windows, and, unlocking the door, he stood in the hall with its discoloured ceiling and patches of mildew growing on the damp walls. Shabby and ashamed it looked, the paint perished from the window sashes, the panes dirty and in the air the sour smell of chambers long unventilated. And yet the spirit of the house was there still, though melancholy and reproachful, and it followed him wearily from room to room – ‘You are Peter, aren’t you?’ it seemed to say. ‘You’ve just come to look at me, I see, and not to stop. But I remember the jolly days just as well as you.’ … From room to room he went, dining room, drawing room, his mother’s sitting room, his father’s study: then upstairs to what had been the schoolroom in the days of governesses, and had then been turned over to the children for a playroom. Along the passage was the old nursery and the night nursery, and above that attic rooms, to one of which, as his own exclusive bedroom, he had been promoted when he went to school. The roof of it had leaked, there was a brown-edged stain on the sagging ceiling just above where his bed had been. ‘A nice state to let my room get into,’ muttered Peter. ‘How am I to sleep underneath that drip from the roof? Too bad!’

  The vividness of his own indignation rather startled him. He had really felt himself to be not a dual personality, but the same Peter Graham at different periods of his existence. One of them, the chairman of the British Tin Syndicate, had protested against young Peter Graham being put to sleep in so damp and dripping a room, and the other (oh, the ecstatic momentary glimpse of him!) was indeed young Peter back in his lovely attic again, just home from school and now looking round with eager eyes to convince himself of that blissful reality, before bouncing downstairs again to have tea in the children’s room. What a lot of things to ask about! How were his rabbits, and how were Sybil’s guinea pigs, and had Violet learned that song ‘Oh ’tis nothing but a shower’, and were the wood pigeons building again in the lime tree? All these topics were of first importance …