The If Game

by Catherine Storr

  Stephen recognized this as the sort of game he played in his own mind. The wishing game. He said, ‘What would you be like?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? It’s a sort of game I play with my mum. Don’t you ever do it with your dad?’

  Stephen said, shortly, ‘No, I don’t.’ He looked up and down the road to show that he meant to be on his way.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Going to look at a house.’ Stephen was not pleased by the question.

  ‘Mind if I come with you?’

  ‘What about your mum? Won’t she expect you to be back home?’

  ‘She won’t for ages. She’s cooking supper for Uncle Joe. It’s going to take her years, because she never knows where he’s put things, and she has to look all over for them. In funny places.’

  Like keys in a chutney jar, Stephen thought. ‘What sort of funny places?’

  ‘Last time she wanted to find the tomato sauce, he’d put it in the bathroom.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘No idea. He couldn’t remember. So there’s no hurry.’

  ‘Is he crazy?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘Not specially. So you see, my mum won’t mind. But not if you’d rather I didn’t.’

  Stephen would very much have rathered that he didn’t, but he didn’t know how to say so. He said, ‘All right. Let’s have a look.’

  As they walked the length of the road, Stephen looked sideways at Alex and tried to guess what he was really like. He couldn’t tell much from the face. An ordinary face above an ordinary body. Alex was almost a head shorter than Stephen and a great deal thinner. He had eyes that very slightly slanted upwards at the outer corners, and he seemed to be using them all the time, constantly turning his head this way and that. But he did not speak until they were opposite Number One, Bridge Street. Stephen slowed down.

  ‘Which house did you want to look at?’ Alex asked.

  ‘That one.’ Stephen pointed.

  ‘Is there something special about it?’

  ‘I can’t make out whether it’s real or not.’

  ‘What d’you mean, real?’

  ‘It’s too thin, see? The way the road slopes off, there isn’t room for a proper house. I mean, one that’s got a real inside.’

  ‘Let’s ring the bell and ask whoever lives there,’ Alex said, and before Stephen could stop him, he had leapt across the road and pressed the dim brass bell button beside the door.

  Stephen waited to see if any angry householder opened the door. But nothing happened. Rather slowly, he crossed the road and stood beside Alex. Alex pressed the bell again.

  ‘If they catch you . . .’ Stephen said. Alarmed.

  ‘I don’t think there’s anyone in there,’ Alex said.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a real house,’ Stephen said again.

  ‘I wish we could get in, then. I’d like to see the inside that you say isn’t really there.’

  Stephen hesitated.

  ‘It’s a pity we haven’t got a key. There’s a whopping great keyhole down there,’ Alex said.

  Stephen didn’t want to admit that he had a key that might fit. Although he still had that urgent feeling that he must open this door, he didn’t want to do it with this unknown boy beside him. But the need to know what was the other side of this door was stronger than his reluctance to see it with anyone else. Without speaking, he put his hand into his pocket and took out the key.

  ‘Fantastic! Where’d you get it?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Found it.’ He wasn’t going to explain.

  ‘I like its top. And look at the wards!’

  Stephen did not know what he meant. Wards? Like in prisons? He said, ‘What about the wards?’ Alex put out a finger and touched the key. Stephen realized that ‘wards’ was the name for the complicated, maze-like shapes on the key which would match whatever lock it had been made for.

  ‘Think it’d fit?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Don’t know.’ He squatted down in front of the door and tried the key in the keyhole. It fitted perfectly and turned as smoothly as if the lock had been oiled.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Alex asked, as Stephen still hesitated.

  ‘I’m not sure there’ll be anything inside.’

  ‘You won’t find out unless you look,’ Alex said, and without waiting, he pushed the door open. Stephen was standing inside before he’d had time to think.

  3

  Stephen was astonished to see what looked like a path leading away from where he stood. A long path. He hadn’t supposed there could be anything like so much space between the front of the house and the back, which overlooked the railway line below. He took a step forward and stood inside the open door. Then, impelled by curiosity, he walked a yard or so further.

  The door suddenly banged shut behind him. He turned, and saw that Alex wasn’t with him. He must have been shut out. Perhaps it had been Alex who had shut the door and had purposely stayed outside. Stephen was annoyed. It had been Alex who had egged him on to enter this house, and now had left him alone to face whatever it contained.

  He looked around. He was relieved that no one appeared to ask him what he was doing there, or to complain that he was trespassing. It was very odd. What was still odder was the length of the path before him. He had always thought of this house as being nothing but a front wall. He knew, or thought he did, that the angle at which the roads met at the railway bridge must mean that there was no room for a proper house to exist; and yet, here he was, apparently inside it, with the path leading away into the distance. And, stranger still, it wasn’t a passage inside a house, it was an outdoor path with fences each side and trees overhanging the fences. There was grass growing at the bottom of the fences and little climbing plants clinging to the wood. The trees were unfamiliar. They were tall and they still had all their leaves, of an unfamiliar bluish green, and what was even more extraordinary, Stephen realized that he was far too hot, as if it was summer instead of the middle of winter. He thought that the front door must have opened directly into the glasshouse of the sham house’s garden. That made sense. But if there was not room for a real house, how could there be room for a garden of the size that this one appeared to be? He had never noticed, from the train windows, anything like a garden just here. To find out how he could have been so mistaken, he moved forward along the path.

  There were benches between the fences and the path, and on one of them, just ahead, an old man was sitting, with a newspaper in his hands, which he was looking at without much interest. Stephen wondered if he could ask him how there came to be so much space behind the sham house, and as he approached the bench, he slowed down. The old man lifted his head and looked at Stephen. He smiled as if they knew each other, though Stephen wasn’t aware that they’d ever met. He said, ‘Back already?’

  ‘Back?’ Stephen said, puzzled.

  ‘You’ve not been long gone.’

  ‘Where from?’ Stephen asked, confused. The conversation didn’t seem to make sense.

  ‘From your aunt’s. I thought you were staying for tea.’

  It was clear that he’d been mistaken for someone else. Stephen said, ‘I don’t think you do really know me.’

  ‘Weren’t you going to your aunt’s? Someone said you were.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ Stephen said. He never went to see Aunt Alice by himself. He went sometimes, unwillingly, with Dad.

  The old man suddenly grew angry. ‘Don’t you try to trick me! I may be old and forget things sometimes, but I know you were going there.’

  The old man must be mad. Stephen said, ‘I think you’ve made a mistake. Perhaps I look like someone you know.’

  The old man became angrier still. ‘Don’t tell me I don’t know you! I’ve known you since you were so high.’ His hand indicated the height of a small child.

  ‘All right! Who am I then?’ Stephen said.

  He was expecting the old man to come up with some name he’d never heard of. But the old man did not answer.
Instead, he said, ‘Now, stop this nonsense and come back home.’ He got slowly up from the bench and began to walk along the path away from the house.

  Stephen did not follow him. He said, ‘I don’t know you, and you don’t know me.’ It seemed important to make this clear, to get the old man to agree that some monstrous mistake was being made.

  The old man turned back and took Stephen’s sleeve and began trying to pull Stephen to go with him. He was surprisingly strong and Stephen had to dig his heels in to resist him. He had no intention of getting caught up in the web of the old man’s imagination. Finally, after they had wrestled for a short time, neither of them gaining any ground, Stephen succeeded in tearing his sleeve from the man’s grasp. He did it so violently that he felt the sleeve rip, and the old man tottered and fell back on to the bench he’d been sitting on. Stephen had a moment’s fear that he was really hurt, but he wasn’t going to risk being caught again. He turned back towards the house and he ran. Before him, he saw the other side of the house, as flat and unreal as its front had been. But there was the door through which he’d come to this strange place. He still had the big key in his hand. He forced it into the keyhole, turned it and the door opened. He almost fell through.

  4

  He looked at the road below him and was grateful for its ordinariness. He also saw Alex, apparently waiting for him. He was not pleased. He did not feel ready to talk to anyone about the disturbing experience he had just had.

  ‘Well?’ Alex said.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘What is it like in there? Is there any house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just a drop down to the railway line?’

  ‘Not exactly. There’s a sort of path.’ He wasn’t going to explain how long and unlikely that path had been.

  ‘You don’t sound as if you liked it.’

  Stephen said, ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s ... funny.’

  ‘Funny ha-ha? Or just peculiar?’

  ‘Peculiar,’ Stephen said. He had no words to describe how peculiar it had seemed. First, there being a long straight path were there should only have been the falling ground above the railway line, and second, the old man who had mistaken him for someone else.

  He had turned to walk home and found that Alex was walking beside him. He wasn’t best pleased by this, but as the boy was there, he thought he might as well try to get some reassurance from him. He said, ‘Do people often have doubles?’

  ‘Doubles how? What do you mean by doubles?’

  ‘Other people who look exactly like them.’

  ‘When they’re not twins, you mean? Twins can look exactly like each other.’

  ‘When they’re not twins.’ But a horrible thought now struck Stephen. Suppose, without knowing it, he had a twin? Since you can’t remember being born, how would you know, if your parents didn’t tell you? He had read somewhere a story which he’d always found upsetting, about a man who thought he was seeing himself in a mirror, but had really seen a twin brother he’d never heard of, on the other side of a glass door. It was a spooky story which had haunted him for weeks after reading it.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Alex was saying. It took Stephen a moment to realize that this was an answer to his question. Alex went on, ‘I know we’re all supposed to have a double somewhere else in the world. But it would have to be around where we live, wouldn’t it? I mean, we couldn’t have a double in China. Or Africa. Or anywhere where people don’t look anything like us.’

  Was that comforting? Or not? Stephen didn’t know.

  ‘Why do you want to know? Did you meet your double the other side of that door?’ Alex asked, and Stephen, taken by surprise, cried out, ‘No!’ so loudly that people passing them in the street turned to look at him.

  ‘It’s all right. You don’t need to shout. I didn’t say you did,’ Alex said.

  ‘I didn’t, anyway.’

  ‘Something happened, though. Didn’t it?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re upset. As if you didn’t like whatever it was.’

  Stephen was not going to tell him anything. He wanted to get rid of Alex. He said, ‘Why don’t you go home?’

  ‘You mean you don’t want me with you?’ Alex asked, and Stephen, who wasn’t usually as rude as this, said, ‘No, I don’t.’

  Alex turned red. He said, ‘I don’t want to be with you, either,’ and turned away. Stephen, feeling bad, said, ‘I didn’t mean . . .’ but Alex was out of hearing, or pretending that he hadn’t heard. Either way suited Stephen. He needed to be by himself. They were just at the point where Bridge Street crossed the High Street, so he turned into the High Street instead of continuing directly towards his home street. As he’d hoped, Alex went straight on towards his uncle’s house, without saying another word.

  Stephen went into the nearest newspaper shop and bought himself a magazine. When he thought that he’d given Alex time to get indoors he also went home.

  His dad was sitting in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea and reading the paper. Stephen felt the teapot, found it was still more hot than warm, and poured himself out a mug of only slightly stewed tea. He reached for a biscuit from the red tin which held sweet biscuits—the savoury biscuits were in a round green tin—and waited. He knew by experience that it was no good asking Dad an important question while he was engrossed in the paper. He wouldn’t get a serious answer.

  It seemed that he had waited a long time before Dad began folding the paper in the way that meant he’d read almost all he wanted. Then Stephen began.

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘What?’

  He didn’t know how to ask. It would sound so funny. He wished he could find some way of leading into the subject, but he couldn’t think of anything. He said, ‘Dad, was I a twin?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Was I one of twins when I was born?’

  His dad was scornful. ‘You, a twin? No! Whatever made you think that up?’

  ‘Someone I was talking to today was talking about doubles. Said lots of people have them.’

  ‘First I’ve heard of it. There being many of them. Doesn’t seem sense.’

  ‘But there could be doubles? I mean, there could be someone who looked exactly like me. Somewhere.’

  ‘Let me know when you see him,’ Dad said, uninterested, and opened his paper again.

  Stephen was relieved to know that he hadn’t got a twin somewhere or other. It would have been an uncomfortable feeling. He considered the idea that Dad hadn’t told him the truth, but he had to dismiss it instantly. Dad was difficult, liked his own way, could be maddeningly silent, wouldn’t argue, never expressed any feelings, but he wasn’t a liar. Then he thought about the old man. He decided that the old man was confused, as old men sometimes are. Probably Stephen looked like a boy he knew, which wasn’t unlikely. Stephen could think of several other boys at his school who weren’t very different to look at. It was quite possible to mistake one for another, especially when they all wore much the same sort of clothes. And probably the old man’s sight wasn’t good. Had he been wearing spectacles? Stephen thought not. He consoled himself by thoughts along these lines. All the same it had been a nasty experience. He hoped he wouldn’t meet that man again.

  ‘Who was it told you about doubles?’ Dad’s voice interrupted his musings.

  ‘Alex. The boy next door.’

  ‘What boy next door?’

  ‘He doesn’t live there. His mum’s Mr Jenkins’s niece. I was talking to him through the fence one day, and then I met him again this afternoon, in the street.’

  Dad laughed.

  ‘What are you laughing at, Dad?’

  ‘Because you’ve got it wrong. It isn’t a boy. It’s a girl.’

  Stephen stared. ‘He can’t be! He doesn’t look like a girl!’ But didn’t he? It was true that Alex’s hair was rather long, but a lot of boys now had quite long hair, and most of the gir
ls he knew wore trousers as often as skirts.

  ‘So you’ve seen her? As well as spoken through the fence?’ his dad was saying.

  ‘Saw him this afternoon. Are you sure? I mean ... is he really a girl?’

  ‘That’s what her mum says, and she ought to know.’

  Stephen didn’t know what he was feeling. Annoyed, furious even, that he’d been taken in. He’d talked to Alex as if she’d been a boy, an equal. If he’d known she was a girl, he wouldn’t have talked like that. He wasn’t sure what difference it would have made, but still, he felt cheated. He also felt that if she was only a girl, he needn’t take anything she said seriously.

  ‘You don’t look pleased,’ his dad said.

  Stephen didn’t answer this.

  ‘I don’t see that it makes that much difference. If you liked her when you thought she was a boy.’

  ‘I didn’t say I liked her.’

  ‘Anyway, you don’t have to see her again if you don’t want,’ his dad said.

  ‘I shan’t. Ever,’ Stephen said.

  ‘We’ll be having supper in half an hour. About,’ his dad said.

  Stephen said, ‘Right.’

  But he was no longer hungry. He was more upset than he could explain to himself. He had somehow lost dignity by being involved with a girl. If he met her again, he’d pretend not to know her. At the back of his mind there was also a faint regret that he’d lost a possible friend. He’d thought of things that the boy Alex and he could do together. He certainly wasn’t going to make a friend of a miserable girl.

  5

  Stephen never knew for certain how Sundays were going to turn out. There were black Sundays, when he and Dad had to visit Dad’s mother, Stephen’s gran. This was something neither of them enjoyed, and the thought of what they were going to do in the afternoon made the mornings heavy and depressing. But on this particular Sunday, which was unexpectedly fine after a horribly wet week, after Stephen’s dad had written the letter which occupied most of his Sunday mornings, he wanted to go for what he called their country walk. It wasn’t quite real country, you were never out of sight of the town’s chimneys and tall blocks, but the lane soon left its bordering houses behind, and wandered up and down small hills as it had done ever since it had been the path along which shepherds drove their sheep and, perhaps, geese, which were taken to the goose fair, miles away, walking in little web-shaped shoes, made for them by kind shoemakers out of soft leather left over from proper people’s footwear. It was still muddy, and was bounded on one side by a hedge, and on the other by ragged trees, which now had fat green and brown buds and the beginnings of leaves.