I was still patrolling, almost suffocated by self-disgust, when the porch lit—like a refrigerator, I thought distractedly—and Rebecca emerged. I dodged out of sight, back towards the village. She was alone, and looked determined; perhaps she was going to my house.
I appeared from a lane. “Oh, hello,” I said. “I didn’t know you were back. I’ve been walking.”
Was her start of pleasure or dismay? She didn’t sound as glad to see me as I thought she should, but didn’t resist when I took her hand. “Where are you going?” I said.
“Walking, like you.”
Perhaps that was a riposte; I thought it best to gain an advantage. “Did you like your record?”
“Yes, very much.” But I’d expected her at least to squeeze my hand. Surely she must be grateful not to be alone on the dark road; shouldn’t I make the most of her gratitude? But when we reached the square I had to say “You didn’t tell me you were going on holiday.”
“No.” Her voice sounded as though it was trying to hide in the blustery wind.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because of the way I felt.” Her hand jerked in mine. “Don’t make me worse.”
I hurried her past the antique shop, before I could grow too irritable to keep quiet, towards the green. The night we’d sat there, we had been closest. Perhaps the muted glow of the grass would calm us now.
Was it the tension between us that made the place seem too vivid? Large bruises blackened the green where the rides of the fair had stood. Around them the sparse grass looked oily with traces of rain. The glimmering blades were lurid as green wires, and when I gazed at them they seemed to flicker like dying neon. There was no peace here, for in the clump of trees at the edge of the green, someone was croaking.
Should I have guided Rebecca away, since she was growing more tense? Ultimately it would have made no difference between us. I crept towards the trees, but faltered before she did, my hand tightening inadvertently on hers. In the dark beneath the trees, Mr Ince was standing upright in a coffin.
Of course it was the theatre. The back of the stage, which concealed him from the audience, was gone. His head appeared above the ledge, dwarfing the performers. Though the puppets were croaking at each other as they nodded back and forth, in the dimness his mouth seemed not to be moving. Only his eyes rolled in their sockets like marbles in a fairground mask, watching the puppets.
Rebecca was trying to drag me away, but I wanted to hear what the voices were saying, all the more so since they sounded vicious almost to the point of incoherence. I could make out some of Judy’s phrases now, though they seemed to ebb and flow like wind in trees: “…living like an animal…nobody to look after you…can’t look after yourself…” The croaking rose almost to a shriek. “…might as well dig yourself a hole and live in it…that’s where you’re going anyway…deep in the dirt…”
I might have heard more if Rebecca hadn’t held me back. Was he repeating accusations that had been levelled at him? I couldn’t see how, since he had always lived alone. Was part of him accusing himself? “Come on,” I said irritably to Rebecca, “don’t be stupid. Nothing’s going to hurt you.”
“No, I won’t.” Her voice was so cold that it stopped me. “You watch by yourself if you want to. I don’t enjoy watching people suffering.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Her tone had already made it clear. “You told me how you enjoy listening to people in your father’s surgery.”
I thought this ridiculously unfair, so much so that I followed her away from the green. “Well, so would you,” I said.
“No, I would not. Perhaps I was brought up differently.”
“Yes, well,” I said ominously, “maybe you’d better leave your parents out of this.”
“Don’t you dare say anything against my parents.”
I felt possessed by an atrociously banal script. “Oh, don’t they ever say anything against me?”
“Stop it. Let’s talk about something else. I don’t know what,” she said miserably.
We were outside the antique shop; I was tempted to kick in the window. “I want to hear what they said,” I persisted. “Go on. Go on, let’s hear it.”
“All right, you shall hear. The way I feel now, it doesn’t matter.” She was staring into the dim maze of antiques. “They say you’re not like them or my friends. They say you’ve never tried to get to know them, and that you’re a drunkard, and that you’d make me go out to work.” As though to drive me away for good she added defiantly “And they think you’re probably a sadist.”
I hadn’t fully realised that she must have told them everything when I snarled “If their opinion means so much to you, you’d better go to Alan.”
“I was on my way to see him when I met you.” When I froze, she added dully “At least I feel peaceful with him.”
“Well,” I said and wondered momentarily if I would be able to say anything so final, “you’d better piss off then, hadn’t you?”
She gazed at me, then fled sobbing. I managed to leave the antique shop without committing any of the crimes that were seething in my head. As I stalked towards the green, I thought bitterly that the Punch and Judy show summed up our relationship. I was ready to enjoy it on that level, but the clump of trees was deserted. No doubt the creaking on the hedged path was Mr Ince’s barrow. As I passed his cottage he was stumbling in, and for a moment I thought two birds were riding on his shoulders—but no wonder my perceptions were disordered.
I spent the next day brooding over how much of the fault was mine. If I hadn’t sworn at her, would she have run away? During my last few days in the village, I managed occasionally not to brood; there was packing to be done before I left for University, trees to be kicked in Delamere Forest, a whole string of curses it took me a quarter of an hour to shout one afternoon amid the fields, a kind of exorcism that didn’t quite work. All week I avoided the village square. When I had to pass near it, I turned my face away.
Yet I was realising that our relationship had been a bad mistake. That was why, on the night before I left, I strolled past Rebecca’s house: to prove that I could. Beyond the ranks of trees her father was pounding the piano, a dark oppressive sound. I was turning away when Rebecca’s violin began to sing. It sounded far more inspired than before.
I wasn’t quite adjusted after all. How dare she forget me so easily? Gusts of wind helped me storm towards the village; trees woke shouting, one after the other, beside the road. By the time I reached the square I was determined to speak to her.
Wind slammed the door of the telephone booth for me, and ruffled the directory. Had the wind also interfered with the line, or had the workmen left a fault? I couldn’t rouse Rebecca’s phone; beyond static vague as wind there was only a squabbling of faint squeaky voices. “Hello? Hello?” I demanded, and the voices seemed to parrot my words.
When I stepped out of the box I was free of Rebecca. Speaking to her could only have prolonged the unpleasantness. I gazed round the square, at the antique shop cramped by the other cramped buildings. I was free of the village too. Wind soared across the fields.
As I crossed the green, the wind made me feel I was sailing. Tomorrow I would be somewhere new. The clump of trees at the edge of the green lashed convulsively back and forth; I thought of a bird caught by the tail, unable to fly. Nothing stood among the trees.
The hedges were rocking, trying to erase the path with splashes of thicker dimness. The leaves sounded like rain, and seemed to scintillate like a million fragments of breaking glass. Large bluish patches raced through the clouds. Beyond the fields I thought I heard Delamere Forest, a deafening choir made faint by distance.
As I reached Mr Ince’s cottage, the sky was clearing. Nevertheless I almost passed by, having observed casually that the trees were creaking, the grass of the unkempt garden was hissing. Had his tour exhausted him that he’d let the grass grow so long? Why, he had even left the theatre standing beside the garden path—wedged
there, as far as I could see, by a couple of large stones.
The theatre wasn’t deserted. Though there was no sign of Mr Ince within the proscenium—I craned over the hedge, which pushed and clawed at me—Punch and Judy were onstage. Were they nailed to the ledge and moving in the wind? Certainly their nodding and gesturing looked lifeless, all the more so when I made out that the paint of their faces and fixed eyes was peeling, yet I had a hallucinatory impression that they were actually fighting the wind. Apart from the rattle of wooden limbs on the ledge, they made no sound.
I was still peering, determined to make out exactly what I was seeing, when the wind dropped and the figures continued to move.
Perhaps there was still an imperceptible breeze; it wouldn’t take much to make the figures totter and nod. But how could a breeze make Punch’s cap writhe while failing to stir the miniature curtains? A moment later the edge of the cap gaped, and a snail crawled out down the face, leaving its trail across one flaking eye. The snail dangled from the set lips like a lolling tongue, then fell.
As I recoiled, a gust of wind rushed over the hedge and hurled the theatre down so violently that the frame collapsed, leaving a canvas shape flattened on the grass. Above the wind I heard something, two things, fleeing through the long grass and scrabbling past the door of the cottage, which I now saw was open.
I should have fled, and then the village would have no hold on me, not even when I wake at four in the morning. But I was determined to find out what was happening—not least because Rebecca would never have let me.
I opened the gate, which had to be lifted on its crumbling hinges, and ventured up the path. Cold wet grass spilled over my ankles. A tree root bulged the path, a swollen muscle beneath cracked stone skin. The trees seemed to have closed even more oppressively about the cottage; I was unable to distinguish them from its walls.
I could see nothing through the small blackened windows. Though the entire cottage seemed to be creaking—no doubt that was the tossing of trees overhead—I made myself go to the door. It was stuck ajar, but when I pushed it, it swung wide.
It opened directly into a room. On the bare stone floor, beside a low table, Mr Ince sat with his back to me, his legs splayed straight out before him, his hands gripping his thighs. He was facing a cold fireplace. Though the door had banged against the wall, he didn’t stir.
Perhaps it was concern for him that made me enter, but still I was nervous enough to tiptoe quickly, ready to flee. Before I reached him I glimpsed the conditions under which he had been living—for how long? Both his clothes and the table were spattered with mouldy food; the fireplace and the surrounding wall seemed to be trembling with soot; sagging wallpaper revealed cracks in the walls like the bulging crack in the path. Then I saw his face.
Was he alive? Barely, perhaps, but I hoped not when I realised why his face was more visible than the rest of the room; it was patchily whitish, like an old tree. How could he bear that if he were conscious? Still, that wasn’t why I was backing away, too panicky to realise that I was retreating from the door. Two small things had crawled rattling from his pockets and were tugging, like terrified children, at his hands.
It was only wind that slammed the door, but I flinched back still farther. Perhaps the same wind moved Mr Ince; perhaps I didn’t really see his whitish mouth grimace in a parody of senile impatience—but he fell forward on his hands, splintering the objects within them.
My brain felt like a lump of metal. I couldn’t grasp what was happening; I knew only that I had to get out of that room, from which the crowd of trees seemed to have drained all but a glimmer of light. Certainly the room was too dark for me to be sure that Mr Ince had swayed upright again, that his arms were reaching out bundles that moved spasmodically. Nevertheless I grabbed a poker, which felt rotten with rust, from beside the fireplace before making for the door.
Did Mr Ince stagger to his feet? Were his eyes gleaming like those boils of sap that sometimes swell on trees? Amid the roar of foliage I thought something responded to his glare: something in a cupboard near the door. It sounded large and uncompleted, no longer much like falling brooms.
Perhaps the cottage door was wedged shut now. I fled to the farthest window and smashed the grimy pane. Panic helped me clamber through without wasting time in glancing back. As I tore myself free of a shard of glass, I thought I glimpsed a moist object swaying stiffly and laboriously out of the cupboard and across the room.
Next morning, after a sleepless night that seemed alive with creaking, I left home. A week later my mother’s first letter gave me the news that Mr Ince’s cottage had burned down. The villagers thought he must have been careless with the fire; I suspected vandals might have seen the broken window. In any case I was glad, as glad as I could be while I was still so nervous. I hoped the trees had been destroyed too—for as I’d fled past the eager tree root and the sprawled theatre, I was sure that the branches had begun to twitch like the web of a spider robbed of its prey.
Calling Card
Dorothy Harris stepped off the pavement and into her hall. As she stooped groaning to pick up the envelopes, the front door opened, opened, a yawn that wouldn’t be suppressed. She wrestled it shut—she must ask Simon to see to it, though certainly not over Christmas—then she began to open the cards.
Here was Father Christmas, and here he was again, apparently after dieting. Here was a robin like a rosy apple with a beak, and here was an envelope whose handwriting staggered: Simon’s and Margery’s children, perhaps?
The card showed a church on a snowy hill. The hill was bare except for a smudge of ink. Though the card was unsigned, there was writing within. A Very Happy Christmas And A Prosperous New Year, the message should have said—but now it said A Very Harried Christmas And No New Year. She turned back to the picture, her hands shaking. It wasn’t just a smudge of ink; someone had drawn a smeary cross on the hill: a grave.
Though the name on the envelope was a watery blur, the address was certainly hers. Suddenly the house—the kitchen and living-room, the two bedrooms with her memories stacked neatly against the walls—seemed far too large and dim. Without moving from the front door she phoned Margery.
“Is it Grandma?” Margery had to hush the children while she said “You come as soon as you like, mummy.”
Lark Lane was deserted. An unsold Christmas tree loitered in a shop doorway, a gargoyle craned out from the police station. Once Margery had moved away, the nearness of the police had been reassuring—not that Dorothy was nervous, like some of the old folk these days—but the police station was only a community centre now.
The bus already sounded like a pub. She sat outside on the ferry, though the bench looked and felt like black ice. Lights fished in the Mersey, gulls drifted down like snowflakes from the muddy sky. A whitish object grabbed the rail, but of course it was only a gull. Nevertheless she was glad that Simon was waiting with the car at Woodside.
As soon as the children had been packed off to bed so that Father Christmas could get to work, she produced the card. It felt wet, almost slimy, though it hadn’t before. Simon pointed out what she’d overlooked: the age of the stamp. “We weren’t even living there then,” Margery said. “You wouldn’t think they would bother delivering it after sixty years.”
“A touch of the Christmas spirit.”
“I wish they hadn’t bothered,” Margery said. But her mother didn’t mind now; the addressee must have died years ago. She turned the conversation to old times, to Margery’s father. Later she gazed from her bedroom window, at the houses of Bebington sleeping in pairs. A man was creeping about the house, but it was only Simon, laden with presents.
In the morning the house was full of cries of delight, gleaming new toys, balls of wrapping paper big as cabbages. In the afternoon the adults, bulging with turkey and pudding, lolled in chairs. When Simon drove her home that night, Dorothy noticed that the unsold Christmas tree was still there, a scrawny glistening shape at the back of the shop doorway. As soon a
s Simon left, she found herself thinking about the unpleasant card. She tore it up, then went determinedly to bed.
Boxing Day was her busiest time, what with cooking the second version of Christmas dinner, and making sure the house was impeccable, and hiding small presents for the children to find. She wished she could see them more often, but they and their parents had their own lives to lead.
An insect clung to a tinsel globe on the tree. When she reached out to squash the insect it wasn’t there, neither on the globe nor on the floor. Could it have been the reflection of someone thin outside the window? Nobody was there now.
She liked the house best when it was full of laughter, and it would be again soon: “We’ll get a sitter,” Margery promised, “and first-foot you on New Year’s Eve.” She’d used to do that when she had lived at home—she’d waited outside at midnight of the Old Year so as to be the first to cross her mother’s threshold. That reminded Dorothy to offer the children a holiday treat. Everything seemed fine, even when they went to the door to leave. “Grandma, someone’s left you a present,” little Denise cried.
Then she cried out, and dropped the package. Perhaps the wind had snatched it from her hands. As the package, which looked wet and mouldy, struck the curb it broke open. Did its contents scuttle out and sidle away into the dark? Surely that was the play of the wind, which tumbled carton and wrapping away down the street.
Someone must have used her doorway for a waste-bin, that was all. Dorothy lay in bed, listening to the wind grope around the windowless side of the house, that faced onto the alley. She kept thinking she was on the ferry, backing away from the rail, forgetting that the rail was also behind her. Her nervousness annoyed her—she was acting like an old fogey—which was why, next afternoon, she walked to Otterspool promenade.
Gulls and planes sailed over the Mersey, which was deserted except for buoys. On the far bank, tiny towns and stalks of factory chimneys stood at the foot of an enormous frieze of clouds. Sunlight slipped through to Birkenhead and Wallasey, touching up the colours of microscopic streets; specks of windows glinted. She enjoyed none of this, for the slopping of water beneath the promenade seemed to be pacing her. Worse, she couldn’t make herself go to the rail to prove that there was nothing.
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