The If Game

by Catherine Storr

  He said, ‘That was because I’d met some people who thought they knew me, and I don’t know them.’

  ‘Perhaps you look like someone they knew long ago. Before you can remember.’

  No. It was more peculiar than that. These people seemed to think they knew him now.

  ‘Did you see them inside that house?’

  ‘One of them I did.’

  ‘You’ve seen some more of them somewhere else?’

  He said, reluctantly, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not in that house?’

  ‘No. In a garden.’

  ‘And they thought you were someone else too? Then you must have a double. It’s funny no one else has noticed it. What are these people like?’

  ‘Ordinary. Except . . .’

  ‘Except what?’

  ‘Their voices. They’ve got some sort of weird accent. I don’t know what it is.’

  ‘You mean they’re foreigners?’

  ‘Not exactly. They talk English like we do. It’s just an accent. And some of the words they use aren’t like ours.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘They told me not to be so goofy.’

  ‘They say that in Australia,’ Alex said.

  ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘Heard it on the telly.’

  Australia! The boy in the Tower had said, ‘Sydney, Australia.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t know them? Never did?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘But they live over here? Perhaps it’s just in Australia you’ve got a double. Are they over here for a visit, then?’

  Stephen said gloomily, ‘I don’t know. None of it seems to make sense.’

  Alex said, ‘Where do you meet these people? The first was in the funny flat house, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘I told you. In a garden. In St Edmund’s Square.’

  ‘In the square! Are they very posh, then?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Because it’s only posh people with a lot of money live in the square.’

  ‘Well, they aren’t posh at all. I don’t know how they got there, anyway.’ He remembered the young woman from next door saying that the house hadn’t been occupied for months. So those people must have been trespassers, just like him.

  ‘Anywhere else?’

  It seemed ridiculous, but having started to tell her, he had to go on. ‘While we were away.’

  ‘What, by the sea?’

  ‘In a sort of tower.’

  ‘They were in a tower?’

  ‘One of them was. A boy. Quite small.’

  ‘What was he doing in a tower?’

  ‘Hiding. He said it was a game.’

  ‘And he knew you too?’

  ‘Said he did. But. . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He thought we were in Australia. He must have been crazy.’

  Alex said, ‘Wait a minute. You said those other people had funny accents. Were they Australian?’

  ‘Could have been. Yes.’ Now that she’d said it, he knew she was right.

  ‘So they’re somewhere around over here?’

  ‘That last one was in Martelsea. Where my dad and I’d gone on holiday.’

  ‘Seems like they’re everywhere,’ Alex said.

  ‘That’s show I feel.’

  ‘You don’t like them?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s not that. It’s that I don’t like them knowing everything about me and I don’t know them.’

  ‘Do they know everything about you?’

  He didn’t want to tell her that what they did know was his baby name. ‘They think they do.’

  She was thinking hard. ‘Is there anything special about the places you meet them at? Or is it just anywhere?’

  Inside the flat house. In the Square garden. Inside the Martello tower. He said, ‘No. Just seems to be anywhere.’ Then, remembering, he said, ‘It’s like as if I always have to go through a door. Then they’re there.’

  ‘You mean they’re always the other side of the door?’

  ‘It’s like that. Yes.’

  ‘Suppose the doors let you in to a different sort of life?’

  ‘You mean Sci-Fi sort of stuff?’ He wanted immediately to get rid of the idea.

  ‘Something like that. Only . . .’ She stopped, mid-sentence.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You’ll say it’s stupid.’

  ‘Never mind. Just say what you were going to.’

  She said, suddenly, in quite a different tone, ‘Do you ever play the “If” game?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She said, ‘It’s sort of wondering what you’d be doing if something different had happened. Like “What would you do if you were on a plane and there was a hijacker?” or “What would you do if you won the lottery?” or “Who would you be if you could choose to be anybody?”’

  Stephen recognized it at once. ‘I don’t play it with anyone. It’s the sort of thing my dad doesn’t like.’

  ‘Mine doesn’t either. But my mum and I play it a lot. I told you, when we were talking about Sherlock Holmes. It’s a game my mum and I play.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Australia and these people?’

  ‘I just wondered. Suppose there’s another life going on somewhere where you might have been if something different had happened?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I mean, suppose a long time ago you did something that sort of pinned you down to being here like this. Being you. And if it had happened differently, you might be in Australia with those people. And they think you are really there. It’s sort of another you.’

  ‘You mean there are two of me?’

  ‘In a way, I suppose so. Only this here is more real, so you don’t know about the other life except when you go through one of those doors. Then you find out you’re there. But of course you wouldn’t know anything about it because most of the time you’re here.’

  ‘Sounds crazy.’

  ‘I knew you’d say that,’ she said.

  He found that he did not want to hurt her feelings. ‘I don’t mean you’re crazy. Only I don’t see how it would work.’

  ‘I don’t either. Only I’ve always wondered if it couldn’t. My dad . . .’ She stopped.

  ‘Your dad what?’

  ‘He could have been in the team. Playing football.’

  ‘Which team?’ Stephen asked.

  She told him and he gasped. ‘He must have been really good.’

  ‘He was. Only he had an accident to his knee. They did an operation and they said he could go back and play again, but if he got hurt again, that’d be it. It’d be much more serious. So he had to decide what to do.’

  ‘Didn’t he go on playing?’

  ‘No. He said it wasn’t worth the risk.’

  ‘Not to play in that team? He must be crazy!’ Stephen said, hardly able to believe that it wouldn’t have been worth any risk.

  ‘No, he isn’t! You’ve no right to say that! You don’t know anything about it,’ Alex said, flaring up.

  ‘I know about football,’ Stephen said.

  ‘But you don’t know my dad.’

  Stephen nearly said, ‘And I don’t want to.’ To know a man who could have been one of those heroes and who had turned down the chance just because of a little accident to his knee? He said, ‘You don’t understand about football.’

  ‘How d’you know I don’t?’

  ‘Because you’re a girl.’

  ‘That’s all you know. Girls can know about football just as well as boys. They can play it too.’

  ‘Not generally, they don’t.’

  They stared at each other, both furious. Then suddenly, Stephen felt bad. He had no right to criticize her dad, whom he didn’t even know. He wouldn’t have liked it if she’d started telling him where his own dad was wrong. He said, ‘It must have been hard for him.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’ She wa
s still angry.

  ‘He might have been famous! He’d have made thousands of pounds! Millions, probably.’

  ‘That’s what my mum and I play the “If” game about. We say, “Where would we be now if Dad had gone on playing?”’

  ‘Where d’you think you’d be?’

  ‘No idea. We’d have a lot more money than we do now, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Don’t you wish he hadn’t decided not to?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I suppose we’d have been famous too. My mum says she wouldn’t have liked that.’

  ‘She’d have liked being rich, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Suppose so. Anyway, I only told you so you’d see what I meant. Sometimes I imagine there’s another one of me living in a huge house with lots of money, and Dad being famous. That’s why I thought perhaps there’s really another one of you living somewhere.’

  ‘In Australia, you mean?’

  ‘I suppose it could be. Do you think your dad ever thought of going out there?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’ But something Dad had said, months ago, sounded in Stephen’s mind. He’d said something about the other side of the world. Who was it he’d said it about? Not himself. Stephen couldn’t for the moment remember, and Alex was asking him something.

  ‘How do you get through the doors?’

  ‘I’ve got some keys,’ he said.

  ‘Like that big one you opened the door with in the end house you said was too thin to be real?’

  ‘That’s right. I found one when I was digging in the garden.’ He remembered that that was the day he’d first talked to Alex through the shrubs.

  ‘Did you find the others too?’

  ‘Mm. I was going to have a sort of collection. And one I was given.’

  ‘I wonder if they’d work for me? Perhaps I’d find I was in America and Dad was a millionaire.’

  Somehow he was sure his keys wouldn’t work for her.

  She stood up. ‘I’ve got to go now. If you get to that place again, please tell me.’

  ‘I might.’ But he didn’t mean to.

  ‘I’d really like to know about it.’

  ‘How long are you staying here? I mean, with your mum’s uncle?’

  Three more days. Bye. Be seeing you.’ Then she was gone.

  15

  Stephen went home. Dad hadn’t got back from work yet, so he had the flat to himself, which was good. He felt as if he had more thinking to do than he’d ever had in his life.

  Suppose Alex was right? He had not wanted to believe her when she’d explained her idea about the ‘If’ game really working, but now that he thought about it again, it did seem possible. Not likely, but just possible. Then that would mean that when he was the other side of one of those doors, he was in Australia, living the other life that he would have lived all the time—If.

  That was the question. If—what? He must find out whether Dad had ever thought of emigrating. And now he remembered what Dad had said about ‘The other side of the world’. It wasn’t about himself. It was about Stephen’s mum’s family. They were the other side of the world. That could be Australia, probably was. That made a sort of crazy sense. He, Stephen, might be living with them instead of with Dad in England. He wondered why they had gone there. He wondered if his mum had gone with them. That might explain why his dad wouldn’t talk about her. If she’d chosen to go and leave him, he wasn’t likely to be thinking of her with much affection. He’d be angry and hurt.

  Stephen knew that he had got to find out about his mum. Whatever had happened, he ought to know. If she was really dead, he wanted to know that too. He had to find out why his dad wouldn’t talk about her. That was the problem. With any ordinary dad, Stephen thought, he could have asked and been told the truth. But his dad was a clam. He couldn’t be made to talk. And Stephen’s attempt with Aunt Alice had failed. He wondered if there was anyone else who knew the truth and who would be willing to tell him.

  Suppose Alex was right? Suppose that when he went through one of those special doors, he really did find himself living another life which had somehow got bypassed in favour of this one here? The people there must be his mum’s family. All he had to do was to get back there and ask.

  He was surprised to discover how much he didn’t want to. There had been something disagreeable about the occasions on which he’d met those people—a feeling that they wanted to claim more from him than he wanted to give. They assumed that he belonged to them. But he did not belong, either to them or to the places where he saw them. It was like finding that he was wearing the wrong clothes, or even that he had the wrong kind of skin. He wanted to stay where he was, in the life he knew and understood, not to get involved in that other life, with people he felt were strangers.

  He did not have to. And even if he wanted to, he was not sure how to set about it. He would have, he supposed, to go through a door. But which door? He supposed that when he saw it, he would know. He had had the same extraordinary feelings about all three doors he’d been through before. But then he hadn’t been unwilling to go through them, he had, in fact, wanted to. Now he didn’t. He almost dreaded finding another door.

  For a long time he didn’t find it. The autumn term had begun, the pavements were covered with wet brown leaves, and the weather was getting colder. He was in a new class at school with a new teacher, whom he didn’t like as much as Mr Selsdon who had taught him before. Most of his friends had moved up with him, and life seemed to be much the same as it had always been. He began to forget. Or rather, he never completely forgot, but he was able to think about other things for quite long periods at a time. Except that when he was outside the house and the school, his eyes were constantly alert for the door which he would know he had to go through. It was half annoying, half exciting. He told himself often that it was all stupid. Alex’s explanation of what had happened in the summer couldn’t be true. Anyone could play the ‘If game, but it was only a game. It wasn’t scientifically possible to find yourself in a quite different place, living another life by just walking through a door. He didn’t believe it. And yet he was jumpy. And in a quite contradictory way, he was carrying the long dark key from the garden with him whenever he left the house.

  When he did see the door, he didn’t at first recognize it. It was the October half term holiday, a whole week with nothing particular to do. Dad was working, of course. Stephen decided that he would make a map of his part of the town, a proper map, drawn to scale, and with all the small alleyways and passages that ordinary maps left out. Because the terrain was hilly, and the town had grown out of a village, there were a lot of foot passages and secret byways which Stephen would have liked to believe were known to very few people besides himself. He went out, one cool, sunny morning, armed with pencil and paper, a spring measure, and a ball of string which he thought might help with the measuring.

  It was frustrating work. Adding up the measurements, which he was having to do all the time, was difficult, and he had a disagreeable idea that his addition was often wrong. He wished he had someone to help. But both Dan and Mick had been scornful of the whole idea. He didn’t want to ask either of them. Alex would have done as he asked, but he didn’t think she was staying with Mr Jenkins this week. However, he didn’t mean to give up until he had plotted at least one small area. Several people stopped to ask what he was doing. Some of them gave him advice, most of which was impossible to follow, since he hadn’t got the right equipment. But in spite of finding it difficult and tiring, he was quite enjoying exploring the bits of the town that he’d never seen before. He was standing in one of the small side roads, bordered with little mean houses, their front windows right on the street, when he suddenly shivered. His spine felt chilled and his heart had given a sort of hop and then beat much faster than usual. For a moment he was giddy. He put out a hand to steady himself, and found that he was leaning against a door.

  It wasn’t quite like any of the other doors in the street. They were all front doors, up a couple
of steps, to the little houses. This was a door that must lead into a covered passage between two houses, since it had no steps, and there was no muslin-curtained window next to it. Stephen looked at it for a long time. He knew that this was the door he had meant to be looking for, but now that he had found it, he did not want to go inside. But he had to know what had happened to his mum. And this might be a way of finding out. So, after a minute or two, during which he stood uncertainly in the street, he pulled the long dark key from his pocket and tried it in the keyhole of the door.

  He half hoped it wouldn’t turn. But it did, smoothly. He pushed the door open and stepped, to his astonishment, not into a narrow covered passage, but into the glare of hot sun. There was concrete under his feet and he was looking at a park, leafy with luxuriant trees and shrubs. Directly in front of him were two tennis courts. On the nearest were four women playing a doubles match.

  He stood and watched them. Not one of them was very good. Their serves were half-hearted and seldom went into the right part of the court. But they seemed cheerful, calling out encouragement to their partners and the score in loud voices, in what he was sure were Australian accents. Quite soon the game came to an end, and they all left the court, mopping red, perspiring faces and gathering together at a bench at the side of the court where they had left a pile of garments. One of them saw Stephen and called out to him. ‘Hi! Deedie! Come for a game?’

  Stephen had never played tennis. It was not one of the sports on offer at his school. He shook his head.

  ‘Wally’ll be here soon. He’d take you on,’ one of the women said.

  Stephen said, ‘No, thanks. It’s too hot.’ And who was Wally?

  ‘You’re right, there. I didn’t mean to play, but Rose persuaded me,’ the eldest and hottest of the four said. She nodded her head at the woman opposite to her. Stephen presumed that this was Rose. He looked at her with interest.

  ‘If it’s like this this early in the summer, what I say is, what’s it going to be at Christmas?’ Rose said.

  Summer? Then he was on the other side of the world. October was the beginning of the Australian summer, Stephen knew. He had got himself to the right place, but he couldn’t see how he was going to get the information he wanted. You can’t suddenly address four overheated ladies, who think you have come out for a game of tennis, to ask them questions about someone who may or may not belong to their family and who may or may not have been your mother.