by John Wyndham
‘Just a man,’ said Matthew. ‘He wanted to know how Polly is after yesterday. He said he’s got a little girl just like her, so he was interested.’
It did just cross my mind that the stranger looked a little young to be a family man of ten or eleven years’ standing, but then you never know nowadays, and by the time lunch was finished I had forgotten about the incident.
During the next few days Matthew developed such a passion for swimming that he could scarcely be kept away from the water.
Then the holiday was over. Colonel Summers dropped in on the last evening for a drink, and to assure me that he had already written to The Royal Swimming Society commending Matthew.
‘Plucky youngster of yours. Good reason to be proud of him. Could just as easily have looked after number one: many would. Funny thing his pretending he couldn’t swim; unaccountable things, boys. Never mind. Damned good show! And good luck to him.’
The following Monday evening I got home late and tired after a busy day catching up with the accumulation of work at the office. I was vaguely aware that Mary was a little distrait, but she had the tact to keep the cause to herself until I had eaten my supper. Then she produced a newspaper, much folded for post, and handed it to me.
‘Came this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Front page.’ Her expression as she watched me unfold it and read MERIONETH MERCURY across the top was disquieting.
‘Further down,’ she said.
I looked at the lower half of the page and saw a photograph of Matthew looking back at me. Not at all a bad photograph either. I looked at the headline to the story beside it. It said:
BOY-HERO TELLS OF ‘GUARDIAN ANGEL’ RESCUE. My heart sank a little. I read on:
‘Matthew Gore (12) of Hindmere, Surrey, on holiday at Bontgoch has been nominated to receive a medal for his bravery in saving his sister Polly (10) from drowning in the estuary of the Afon Cyfrwys at Bontgoch last Monday.
‘Matthew and his sister were playing on a light wooden jetty not far from the Bontgoch Yacht Club when a motor-cruiser belonging to Mr William Weston, a local resident, was torn from its moorings by the force of the ebb tide, and crashed into the jetty, demolishing ten feet of it, and hurling both children into the swirling current.
‘Matthew immediately struck out, and, seizing his sister, supported her head above water as the flood bore them away. The alarm was given by Mr Evan Evans, a familiar figure in Bontgoch, whereupon Colonel Summers, a well-known local resident, hastened to the scene and lost no time in giving chase in his motor-cruiser.
‘Colonel Summers was compelled to pursue the two children nearly two miles down the treacherous waters of the estuary before he was able to manoeuvre his boat alongside them so that they could be safely grappled aboard.
‘Said the Colonel: “Matthew undoubtedly saved his sister’s life at the risk of his own. England could do with more boys like him.”
‘Most astounding fact of all: Matthew did not know he could swim.
‘Interviewed by our reporter he modestly denied any claims to heroism. “Polly could not swim, and when I found I could, the obvious thing was to help her,” he said. Questioned about this, he told our reporter that he had taken swimming lessons, but had never been able to learn to swim. ”When I was suddenly thrown into the water I was terrified,” he acknowledged, ”but then I heard a voice telling me to keep calm, and how to move my arms and legs. So I did as it said, and found I could swim.”
‘There seems to be no doubt that Matthew is telling the truth. Our reporter was unable to find anyone who had seen him swimming before that, and it was generally thought that he could not swim.
‘Asked if he was not astonished to hear a voice speaking to him, he replied that he had often heard it before, and so did not find it very surprising.
‘When our reporter suggested that it could be the voice of his Guardian Angel, he admitted that it might be that.
‘However unlikely the prospect of “instant swimming” taught by a spiritual instructor may seem, there can be no doubt that Matthew performed an heroic action by the bravery he showed in saving his sister’s life at the risk of his own, and it is to be hoped he will be awarded the medal he so richly deserves.’
I looked up at Mary. She shook her head slowly. I shrugged.
‘Shall we…?’ I began to suggest.
Mary shook her head again.
‘He’ll be fast asleep by now. Besides, what’s the point? It’s done now.’
‘It’s only a local paper,’ I said.’ But how on earth…?’ Then I remembered the young man who had been talking to Matthew on the shore…
‘They’ve got Hindmere,’ Mary pointed out. ‘They’ve only got to look in the telephone directory.’
I was determined to be hopeful.
‘Why should they bother? It reads like a pretty phoney sensation worked up by a local reporter, anyway.’
I don’t think either of us was quite certain just then whom we meant by this off-stage ‘they’, but it did not take long for me to discover that I was underestimating the enterprise of modern communications.
I have fallen into the bad habit of switching on the radio as a background to shaving – bad because untroubled shaving is itself a good background for thinking – however, that’s modern life, and the next morning I turned on ‘Today’ as usual, and listened patiently while a professor from the latest Midland university explained how his excavations proved that the Kingdom of Mercia had at one time encompassed the town of Montgomery. Then, when he had finished, Jack de Manio said: ‘ The time is exactly twenty-five and a half minutes past eight – no, hang it, I mean past seven. Well now, from the influence of ancient Angles to the incidence of a modern Angel. Young Matthew Gore while on holiday from his home at Hindmere, recently, and gallantly, saved his still younger sister from drowning, and the peculiar thing is that young Matthew had never swum before. Dennis Clutterbuck reports:’
The quality of the transmission changed. A voice said:
‘I am told that when an accident flung you and your sister into the fast-flowing river Cyfrwys at Bontgoch you immediately went to her rescue and supported her in the water until you were picked up more than a mile downstream. Is that so?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Matthew’s voice. He sounded a little doubtful.
‘And they also tell me you had never swum before?’
‘Yes – I mean, no,’ said Matthew, in some confusion.
‘You hadn’t ever swum before?’
‘No,’ said Matthew, definitely now. ‘I’d tried, but it wouldn’t happen…’ he added.
‘But this time it did?’
‘Yes,’ said Matthew.
‘I am told you heard a voice telling you what to do?’
Matthew hesitated. ‘Well – sort of…’ he conceded.
‘And you think this must have been the voice of your Guardian Angel?’
‘No,’ said Matthew indignantly. ‘That’s a lot of rot.’
‘But you told the local reporter…’
Matthew interrupted him.
‘I didn’t. He said it, and I didn’t know he was a reporter, anyway.’
‘But you did hear a voice?’
Matthew hesitated again. Once more he could manage no better than:
‘… Sort of.’
‘And after you had heard it, you found you were able to swim?’
A grunt from Matthew.
‘But now you don’t think it was your Guardian Angel that told you how to do it?’
‘I never said anything about Guardian Angels – it was him.’ Matthew sounded exasperated. ‘All that happened was that I got into a flap, and Chock.…’ He stopped abruptly. I could almost hear him bite his tongue. ‘I just found I could swim,’ he ended lamely.
The interviewer started to speak again but was cut off in the middle of the first syllable.
Jack de Manio said:
‘Swimming in one easy lesson. Well, whether there was a Guardian Angel involved, or not, congratu
lations to Matthew on the way he put the lesson to use.’
Matthew came down to his breakfast as I was finishing mine.
‘I’ve just been listening to you on the wireless,’ I told him.
‘Oh,’ said Matthew. He did not seem disposed to follow that up, and attended to his cornflakes, rather apprehensively.
‘When did it happen?’ I inquired.
‘A man rang up, when Mummy was out. He said was I Matthew, and I said I was, and he said he was BBC, and could he come round and see me. I said I supposed it’d be all right, because it seemed rude to say no to the BBC. So he came; and he showed me a bit about me in the paper. Then he turned on his recorder, and asked me questions. And after that he went away again.’
‘And you didn’t tell Mummy, or anyone else, that he’d been?’
He dabbled his cornflakes.
‘Well, you see, I thought she’d be afraid that I’d told him about Chocky – though I didn’t. And I didn’t think it would be interesting enough to get broadcasted, anyway.’
Not very valid reasons, I thought. Probably he was feeling guilty over letting the man into the house at all.
‘H’m. – It can’t be helped now,’ I said. ‘But if there are any more would-be interviewers, I think you’d better refer them to Mummy, or me, before you talk to them. Will you do that?’
‘Okay, Daddy,’ he agreed, and then added, with a frown. ‘It’s a bit difficult though. You see, I didn’t know the man at Bontgoch was a reporter; and the BBC one – well, it didn’t seem like an interview exactly.’
‘Perhaps the simplest way would be to treat any stranger as a suspected interviewer,’ I suggested. ‘You might easily make a slip, and we don’t want them getting on to Chocky, do we?’
Matthew’s mouth was now too full of cornflakes to let him speak, but his nod concurred very decisively.
Eight
A young man representing, as he put it, the Hindmere and District Courier turned up that afternoon. Mary dealt with him briskly. Yes, she had seen that rubbish about a guardian angel, and was surprised that a paper had printed such nonsense. Matthew had had swimming lessons, but had lacked the confidence to trust himself to the water. What had happened was that in the emergency he had known what he ought to do to swim; he had made the motions he had been taught to make, and discovered that he could swim. He had been very brave in going to the rescue of his sister, and very fortunate, but there was nothing miraculous about it. No, she was sorry he couldn’t see Matthew; he was out for the day. And, in any case, she preferred not to have him troubled about it. After considerable persuasion the reporter went away, ill-satisfied.
The same day Landis rang me up at the office. He had, he said been thinking about Matthew, and a number of questions had occurred to him. My first thought was that he was about to offer to come down again, which would not please Mary; fortunately, however, that was not his idea, at the moment, at any rate; instead, he suggested that I should have dinner with him one evening. It crossed my mind to ask him if he had heard Matthew on ‘Today’ that morning, but I had no wish to get involved in a lot of explanation in the middle of a busy day, so I did not mention it. In the circumstances I could scarcely refuse his invitation, and it also occurred to me that he might have thought of a suitable consultant. We agreed to meet at his Club the following Thursday.
I got back to find Mary preparing our dinner with grim resolve and a heavy hand, as she does when she is put out. I inquired why.
‘Matthew’s been talking to reporters again, she said, punishing the saucepan.
‘But I told him…’
‘I know,’ she said bitterly. ‘Oh, it isn’t his fault, poor boy, but it does make me so wild.’
I inquired further.
Reporters, it seemed, was a manner of speaking. There had been only one reporter. Matthew, on his way home, had encountered him at the end of the road. He had asked if he was speaking to Matthew Gore, and introduced himself as the representative of the Hindmere and District Courier. Matthew told him he must speak to his mother first. Oh, of course, agreed the young man, that was only proper, naturally he had called on Mrs Gore to ask her permission. He had been hoping to have a talk with Matthew there at the house, only he had not been at home. But it was very fortunate that they had met like this. They couldn’t really talk, standing here on the corner, though. What about some tea and cakes in the cafe” over there? So they had adjourned to the café.
‘You must write to the editor at once. It’s disgusting,’ she told me.
I wrote a suitably indignant letter, without the least hope that it would be heeded, but it helped to reduce Mary’s feelings to a mere simmer. Rather than risk raising the temperature again I refrained from mentioning Landis’s call.
Wednesday passed without incident – well, when I say ‘without incident’, there was a letter in the morning post addressed to Matthew and bearing a printed inscription in the left-hand corner: ‘The Psychenomenon Circle’, which I thought it judicious to abstract, and pocket.
I read it in the train later. The writer had heard on the radio a very brief reference to Matthew’s unusual experience, and felt convinced that a more detailed account was likely to be of great interest to the members of his circle who were interested in psychic experiences and phenomena of all kinds. If Matthew would care to – etc., etc…
But, if Wednesday was undisturbing, Thursday made up for it.
I was in the act of transferring my attention from The Times personal column to the leader page, an almost antisocial exercise in a full railway compartment, when my eye was caught by a photograph in the copy of the Daily Telegraph held by the man in the opposite seat. Even at a glance it had a quality which triggered my curiosity. I leant forward to take a closer look. Habitual travellers’ develop an instinct which warns them of such liberties. My vis-à-vis immediately lowered his paper to glare at me as if I were committing trespass and probably worse, and ostentatiously refolded it to present a different page.
The glimpse I had had, brief though it was, disturbed me enough to send me to the Waterloo Station bookstall in search of a Telegraph I could rightfully read. They had, of course, sold out. This somehow helped to convince me that my suspicions were well founded, and on arriving in Bloomsbury Square I lost no time in sending a message round the office requesting the loan of a copy of today’s Telegraph. Eventually one was unearthed, and brought to me. I unfolded it with a sense of misgiving – and I was right to feel it…
Half a page was devoted to photographs of pictures on display at an exhibition entitled ‘Art and the Schoolchild’. The one that had caught my eye on the train caught it again, and reduced the rest to scribbles. It was a scene from an upper window showing half a dozen boys laden with satchels jostling their way towards an open gate in a wall. The boys had an angular, spindly look; curious to some no doubt, but familiar to me. I had no need to read the print beneath the photograph, but I did:
‘ “Homeward” by Matthew Gore (12) of Hinton School, Hindmere, reveals a talent and power of observation quite outstanding in one of his age.’
I was still looking at it when Tommy Percell, one of my partners came in, and glanced over my shoulder.
‘Ah, yes,’ he told me.’ Spotted that on the way up this morning. Congratulations. Thought it must be your youngster. Didn’t know he’d a gift for that kind of thing. Very clever – but a bit queer, though, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, with a feeling that the thing was slipping out of my hands. ‘Yes, it is a bit queer…’
Landis drank half his sherry at a gulp.
‘Seen the papers?’ he inquired.
I did not pretend to misunderstand him.
‘Yes, I saw today’s Telegraph,’ I admitted.
‘But not the Standard? They’ve got it, too – with a paragraph about a child-artist of genius. You didn’t tell me about this,’ he added, with reproach.
‘I didn’t know about it when I last saw you.’
‘Nor
about the swimming?’
‘It hadn’t happened then.’
‘Both Chocky, of course?’
‘Apparently,’ I said.
He ruminated a moment.
‘A bit rash, wasn’t it? Putting this picture in for exhibition, I mean.’
‘Not rash – Unauthorized,’ I told him.
‘Pity,’ he said, and ordered a couple more sherries.
‘That picture,’ he went on.’ The figures have a curious, attenuated, not to say scrawny look. Is that characteristic?’
I nodded.
‘How are they done?’
I told him what Matthew had told Mary and me. It did not appear to surprise him, but he fell into rumination again. He emerged from it to say:
‘It’s not only the figures. All the verticals are exaggerated. It’s almost as if they were seen by someone accustomed to different proportions – to a broader, squatter view so that it seems.…’ He broke off, staring expressionlessly at his glass for a moment. Then his face took on a look of sudden illumination. ‘No, it isn’t, by God. It’s like looking through slightly distorting glasses, and painting what you see, without compensation. I bet you that if you were to look at that picture through a pair of glasses which diminished the verticals only it would appear to have normal proportion. – It’s as if Chocky’s perception can’t compensate adequately for the characteristics of Matthew’s eyes…’
‘I don’t follow that,’ I said, after a moment’s thought. ‘The eyes that are seeing the view are also seeing the picture. Surely the two distortions ought to cancel out?’
‘It was an analogy – or nearly – and maybe I was oversimplifying,’ he conceded, ‘but I’ll be surprised if it isn’t something along those lines. Let’s go and have dinner, shall we?’
Over the meal he inquired in detail into the swimming incident. I told him as much as I could, and he clearly found it no less significant than the painting. What astonished me most of the time, and still more on later reflection, was his lack of surprise. It was so marked that I almost had a suspicion for a time that he might be humouring me – leading me on to see how far I would go in my claims for Matthew, but I had to abandon that. I could detect no trace of scepticism; he appeared to accept the fantastic without prejudice.