by Joan Aiken
‘Just one minute more! We might see the coach because somebody is sending the image of it to us?’
‘Yes, people have done experiments along those lines, and got quite positive results. Sending images of screwdrivers and things like that. Some people are very strong Senders. There was a man in Chicago who could actually put a mental image on to a Polaroid film.’
‘Okay, let’s wash the dishes,’ said Cosmo jumping up.
He went to sleep that night as soon as his head hit the pillow. He was really tired out. But next day he hammered in his last piton, and began the construction of a platform in the walnut tree.
He had no glimpse of little Con all day – which was a considerable relief, he couldn’t help admitting to himself – but, over and over, had the feeling that he was being watched, as he had in the island camp.
On Monday morning, just as he was getting into the Rolls to go off with Eunice, Lob, who was sitting on the big stone slab outside the front door, suddenly let out a low growl and retired into the house.
‘What’s up, Lobby?’ said Eunice, who was checking in her briefcase that she had her lecture notes and Mrs Tyding’s shopping list. ‘It’s only the post. Good morning, Tad.’
‘Morning, Miss Eunice. There’s a letter for the young feller from Australia.’
‘Reward for starting late,’ said Eunice. ‘Five minutes earlier and you wouldn’t have had it till Friday.’
Cosmo was happy to have his father’s letter but didn’t open it right away.
‘Eunice,’ he said, ‘can you see anybody in the cart shed?’
She glanced over her shoulder – she was in the middle of backing and turning the car. ‘No, why?’
‘Nothing – I thought – but it’s gone.’
He had seen a boy about his own height – fair – angry-looking, as if he were annoyed that they were going off without him. He was holding a hayfork and had a pile of sacking or tarpaulin over his arm. Then he moved and vanished; Cosmo remembered the description of the needle turning endways in Flatland. It was a similar process. He turned sideways and disappeared, as if into a vertical crack in the air beside him. As he did so, Cosmo realized why his face seemed so familar – he was the boy who had come to help with damming the brook, all those years ago. That was who he was! Only then he had seemed bigger – perhaps because Cosmo himself had been smaller …
‘Sorry,’ he said, stirring himself free from his thoughts and jumping out to open the gate. He waited till the Rolls had slipped through, then shut it again.
But was that boy the same as yesterday’s hateful little four-year-old? They had a resemblance. Was Cosmo getting glimpses of him at different ages? Was he growing?
And, if so, what size would he be by next weekend?
‘What does Dick have to say?’ asked Eunice, skirting round one of the many potholes.
‘Hopes to get here some time in July. He’s found somebody to take over the practice and buy the house –’ Cosmo gulped a little, thinking of that house. It had been nothing out of the common, built of wood, with a corrugated roof, but it had been spacious and comfortable, they had lived in it for six years, collected a lot of things together, played games, learned lessons, talked and argued. It had been their home. Now strangers would be living in it who knew nothing about them – looking out of Ma’s kitchen window, leaning on the wall that Mark had built.
‘That’s fine,’ Eunice said. She asked no more questions, and Cosmo decided to leave the rest of his father’s letter until later in the day. It was hard reading in the car. Richard’s writing was spiky and difficult to decipher.
Cosmo had been apprehensive that there might be a reception committee there on the steps ready to greet him with groans, and Eunice with cries of ‘Dracula’s aunt’, but of course on Monday morning everybody was in too much of a rush for anything of that kind.
He said, ‘Goodbye, thank you for a lovely weekend.’
‘See you on Friday,’ she called, and had slipped over the turnaround and out into the Woodstock Road traffic before he was up the front steps.
4. Big Con
School that week was nasty, but not unbearable. For one thing, some of the lessons were turning out to be downright interesting. And then, though Cosmo’s form were still ostentatiously ostracising him, he had at least plenty to be thinking about. Also he had invented a method for keeping calm during the break period when he had to walk round the garden by himself. This was to imagine that his brother Mark was with him, and that he was filling Mark in on all that had happened to him since he came to England.
‘Seeing ghosts?’ he imagined Mark saying rather sceptically. Mark had never been one to believe anything unless the proof of it was demonstrated right under his nose.
Or had he?
‘Well, you ran off into the desert because of a curse,’ Cosmo retorted. ‘What’s the difference between that and seeing ghosts?’
‘I chose to go off into the desert because I didn’t choose to die in some stupid war,’ Mark answered haughtily. ‘Wars are an outdated way of settling problems.’
Father had written something of the kind in his letter.
‘You and I are faced with the same enigma, Cosmo,’ he had written. ‘Eunice phoned me that she had told you about the family ill-wish thing. Whether it really works or not isn’t the point. Obviously if someone believes that it is going to work, it will, for them. And it’s plain that Mark and your mother did believe; or, at least, they weren’t taking any chances. Now you and I have got to try to forgive them for making that decision – for going off without us. And that may be terribly hard, but it’s crucially necessary. It’s no use having bitter feelings against people – specially people who are gone – it’s as bad as going round all the time hitting yourself over the head with a brick. Anyway I hope the school Eunice chose for you is providing plenty of interesting distraction. And I’m glad to think of you at the mill house with Eunice and old Mrs T. That place, and those two, should help you to feel better about your problems.’
‘And may provide a few more,’ Cosmo couldn’t help thinking.
He folded up the letter – which he had been reading for the seventh time – and turned to go into the school building. A bell was ringing for the end of break.
Climbing the iron steps, he was just ahead of a black-haired boy from the Senior class – the same one who had been sent on his first day to fetch him to the headmaster’s study. Cosmo now knew that he was one of the two head boys and that his name was Roger Maugham.
‘Hullo,’ he greeted Cosmo with easy friendliness. ‘Getting settled in, are you?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘Getting a bit of a runaround from your form, I see.’ Evidently Maugham’s quick-glancing dark eyes were observant. He went on without waiting for Cosmo to answer. ‘Don’t worry, it always happens at first. I can remember going through it too. The main thing is to keep calm about it, don’t go howling to old Gabby. That doesn’t help, it only puts people’s backs up.’
‘Yes, that’s what I thought.’
‘Good lad. Actually – here’s something else to cheer you up – the brighter you are, the worse you get it. Nobody bothers to give hell to boringly dull stick-in-the-muds.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Cosmo said.
‘I expect you are quite bright, aren’t you? Isn’t your father in research, and Professor Doom your aunt or cousin or something? My father says she has a theory that space comes round in a circle and overlaps with itself and she’s bound to get the Nobel Prize one of these years. Hey, would you like to be in a play, young Curtis? I’m going to put one on next term – All Aboard the Wooden Horse, or, Tales of the Trojan War. Lots of sword-fighting. You like acting?’
‘Yes, very much.’ He and Mark and Ma had improvised dozens of plays.
‘Okay, that’s a date then.’ Maugham went whistling round the corner to the Senior common room. Cosmo climbed the coconut-matted stairs and noticed brown-ringletted Tansy just ahead
of him. She had obviously caught some of his conversation with Maugham.
‘Just fancy!’ she addressed the Remove form room at large. ‘Our esteemed head boy says Dracula’s aunt is in line for the Nobel Prize. How about that, then? If that happens, there’ll be no holding our Wonder Boy. He’ll really be too big for his boots.’
‘Well, old Maugham ought to know,’ Chris said. ‘His dad’s a physicist at Nuffield. Mannering Professor of Astrophysics.’
‘I am surprised that you know what the Nobel Prize is, Tansy dear,’ Moley drawled gently.
Cosmo suddenly realized something he felt he had been a fool not to notice earlier – Moley did not like the silly spiteful Tansy in the least. In fact, gradually, the form’s flat façade of hostility was beginning to break up under his quiet scrutiny of it; now he could distinguish the different people, see the light and shade around them. Tansy, for instance, at age six – he’d be ready to bet she’d have been just like horrible little Con, jumping up and down, bawling, ‘Tansy come too, Tansy come too!’ He chuckled a little at the thought, and caught a quick glance from Moley – not exactly friendly, but not unfriendly either – a measuring, interested glance.
Mr Cheevy shot into the room. ‘Why isn’t everybody sitting down, may I ask? And why do I only see five books on the desk in front of me? Ah, about time, too –’ as six more people hastily handed in their homework. ‘Right, now today we are to consider circles. Tansy, how do you suppose that circles differ from triangles?’
‘They’re round, sir,’ Tansy said giggling.
‘Round.’ Mr Cheevy’s small, red-rimmed eyes rested on Tansy with dislike. ‘Can anybody expand on that somewhat self-evident answer? You, Cosmo.’
‘Well, sir: triangles are all different from each other. But circles are all the same. You could put them all inside each other and they’d fit.’
Mr Cheevy’s eyebrows shot up. ‘We are to go all over the world collecting circles and stacking them inside each other? Like hoop-la hoops?’
Everybody giggled sycophantically. Mr Cheevy scowled.
‘Well – as it happens – Cosmo is perfectly right. You could stack the circles. You couldn’t stack triangles. Now let us get down to basics …’
On Friday Cosmo saw the Rolls arrive with slightly mixed feelings. Would he have been happier to stay at school? It wasn’t that members of his form were condescending to speak to him yet – or, at least, if they did, it was only in derisive questions:
‘Well, Cosmic, how are your three dear pals at home? Percy, Bert, and charming Oscar? Did they enjoy their Mars bars? And has Dracula’s aunt been robbing any tombs lately?’
‘You can’t wonder that Cosmic knows all about the difference between circles and triangles. Dracula’s aunt probably keeps him busy all weekend proving Pythagoras while she gets on with her knitting. “Oh, Cosmic dear, just come here and hold the square on the hypotenuse while I cast off, will you, there’s a good little chappie.” ’
He was wearily used to such tedious stuff by now and able to endure it with calm. However: it was not that he would actually prefer to stay at school over the weekend – but he couldn’t help wondering about the big fair-haired boy – Con. Whether he would put in an appearance. How large he would be if so. What he would be doing.
If Eunice had phoned to say that she and Mrs Tydings were going off to Brighton for the weekend and he must stay in Oxford, he would not have been exactly appalled. But she did not.
After lunch on Friday Cosmo went to Miss Gracie at the store and bought three bars of plain nut chocolate. ‘For your friends again?’ she said smiling at him.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘For dear Percy, dear Bertie, and dear Ossie,’ murmured Charley, behind him in the queue.
‘I’ve never noticed you buying chocolate for your friends,’ Miss Gracie rather tartly remarked, and Charley looked a little abashed.
Cosmo put the chocolate in his duffel bag and was ready for Eunice when she arrived.
She gave a gracious bow to the reception committee that called ‘Goodbye, Dracula’s aunt!’ as they left.
‘I’m going to drop you at home,’ she said when they were out of Oxford, ‘and get changed and then drive back into town. I have to dine in Hall tonight because a distinguished Viennese mathematician is visiting the college. You won’t mind my not being there, will you? I’ll be back by midnight and Emma is just across the way – or you can sleep in her house if you feel at all nervous.’
‘No, no, I’ll be quite all right,’ Cosmo assured her. None the less he did feel a slight sinking as Eunice, having put on a long white dress and some silver jewellery, took off again.
‘Ain’t she smashing with her hair done so posh,’ said Mrs Tydings fondly, and Cosmo noticed that Eunice had her hair drawn up in a great silver-yellow sweep and looked quite like a model or a film actress – not in the least like a possible Nobel Prize winner.
‘See you later!’ she called and waved.
‘I’ll come too to open the gates,’ Cosmo shouted on a sudden impulse, and sprinted and jumped on to the running board of the Rolls. ‘I can walk back. Then you won’t get your dress dusty.’
Strolling slowly back along the farm track he wondered if he was a coward. And, if so, whether a coward was such a shameful thing to be. Was it possible not to be afraid? There was the mill house, rosy and smiling among its dark trees, in the last rays of the sun. What might be inside it, or lurking near by?
It still lacked an hour to suppertime (‘Cheese pudding,’ Mrs Tydings told him. ‘I always have that when Miss Eunice goes out, because she don’t like cheese pudding’). Cosmo decided to make a start on his platform in the walnut tree. First he had to construct a rope pulley to raise his planks from the ground. And then he had to measure the length of the planks that he would need.
The work went ahead steadily. Four planks were cut to the right length, hauled up, and nailed into place, supported by chocks of wood. About two more – maybe three – would finish that part of the job. Then he’d have to fix a guard rail round his platform – he thought he had better consult Mr Marvell about that. He had a notion that smallish logs or posts would be better than planks; a guard rail ought to be fairly strong. But if he used posts he would need extra-long nails to hold them in place.
Looking down the trunk at this point he started, and nearly dropped his hammer. For the fair-haired boy was standing down below, gazing up at him, hands on hips, with a measuring, frowning stare.
‘What are you doing there?’ Cosmo called. ‘What do you want?’
The boy didn’t answer.
Mrs Tydings came to the kitchen door.
‘Cosmo? Are you up there? The cheese pudding will be ready in five minutes exactly! So just you come down now and wash your hands. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s to see a cheese pudding spoil because somebody’s late.’
‘Okay, okay, I’m coming!’
When Cosmo reached the foot of the tree the boy had gone. So, Cosmo later discovered, had the three chocolate bars out of his duffel bag.
He went to bed in a very thoughtful frame of mind.
He hadn’t been asleep more than half an hour when he was abruptly woken by somebody shaking him hard.
‘Wake up! Wake up, lazybones! And hurry up about it!’
‘What’s the big rush? What’s going on? Is there a fire?’ Startled out of his first heavy sleep, Cosmo was not fully awake yet; he was back in Australia, where bush fires had always been their great fear; he thought it was Mark waking him.
But it was the fair-haired boy.
A slip of moon shone in at the window so that the room was not wholly dark. Cosmo saw the light shine on the boy’s eyes, and on something he wore round his neck; it gleamed as Eunice’s silver necklace had done.
‘What do you want?’ Cosmo demanded again. He was very much afraid, but tried not to show it. Until now, he had encouraged himself with the thought that, although the boy could be seen – at least by Cos
mo and perhaps by Lob – he was not really solid, but just dangled in the air like a mirage or a rainbow. There had been no question, though, as to the solidity of those thin muscular hands that had pulled him out of bed.
‘Put on your clothes. Hurry!’
‘Why should I? First you steal my chocolate and then you wake me – I don’t know who you think you are –’
‘I am Con,’ the fair boy said simply.
‘Was that you, last week, then? Why are you so much bigger this week? Or are there two Cons?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Why did you take my sweets?’
‘The sweet food? Because if I eat something that is yours, then we are part of one another, and you must help me. Also it makes me strong.’
Cosmo did not fancy the sound of this, but at least it must mean that Con was not precisely hostile to him – not if he needed help – though he did not seem friendly, either; he stood watching with an impatient expression as Cosmo pulled on jeans and sweater.
‘Why do I have to get up in the middle of the ruddy night?’
‘Because I have very little time. You can do as you please all day,’ Con said, looking at him with what now seemed angry scorn. ‘You can play or learn from books or amuse yourself, but I have to work. I am a slave, I must do as my master tells me.’
‘A slave?’
‘What do you think this is?’ Con touched the ring round his neck. Cosmo saw that it was a metal collar, fastened with a lock.
‘But why are you a slave?’
They were now slipping quietly down the shallow polished stairs. Mrs Tydings had gone to her own house long ago. They crossed the brick-floored main room to the outer door. Lob, by the glowing ash-heap which was all that was left of the fire, rumbled a growl in his throat, but, when he saw Cosmo, stayed lying down.