Chocky

by John Wyndham

  ‘What sort of things?’ Polly wanted to know.

  I grew conscious of Mary beside me taking no part.

  ‘Well, if she’s not here let’s forget all about her for a bit,’ I suggested.

  Polly put her head out of the window and looked up and down the stationary line of cars.

  ‘We aren’t ever going to move. I shall read my book,’ she announced. She dug it out from beside her, and opened it. Matthew looked down at the illustration.

  ‘What’s that supposed to be – a circus?’ he inquired.

  ‘Pooh,’ Polly exclaimed in contempt. ‘It’s a very interesting story about a pony called Twinklehooves. He was in a circus three books ago, now he wants to be a ballet dancer.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Matthew with quite commendable restraint.

  We arrived at a vast car park charging five shillings a time, collected our things and went in search of the sea. The pebbly beach near the park was crowded with groups clustering around contending transistor sets. So we made our way further along and down the pebbles, until all that separated us from the shining summer sea was a band of oil and ordure about six feet wide, and a fringe of scum along the water’s edge.

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Mary. ‘You’re not going to bathe in that,’ she told Matthew who was beginning to unbutton his shirt.

  Matthew looked at the mess more closely; even he seemed a little dismayed.

  ‘But I do want to swim now I can,’ he protested.

  ‘Not here,’ said Mary. ‘Oh, dear. It was a lovely beach only a few years ago. Now it’s…’

  ‘Just the edge of the Cloaca Britannica?’ I suggested.

  ‘Let’s go somewhere else. Come along, we’re moving,’ I called to Matthew who was still staring down at the mess in a fascinated, dreamy way. I waited for him while Polly and Mary began to pick their way up the beach.

  ‘Chocky’s back, is she?’ I asked as he came up.

  ‘How did you know?’ he inquired, with surprise.

  ‘I recognized the signs. Look, do me a favour will you? Just keep her under cover if you can. We don’t want to spoil Mummy’s day – at least,’ I added, ‘not more than this place has already.’

  ‘Okay,’ he agreed.

  We went a little inland and found a village nestled in a cleft at the foot of the Downs. It was peaceful. And there was an inn which gave us quite a passable lunch. I asked if we could stay the night, and found that by good luck they had rooms to spare. Mary and I lazed on deck-chairs in the garden. Matthew disappeared, saying vaguely that he was going to look round. Polly lay on the lawn under a tree, and identified herself with the ambitions of Twinklehooves. After an hour or so I suggested a stroll before tea.

  We found a path which followed the contour across the side of the hill and walked it in a leisurely fashion. After about half a mile we rounded a shoulder and came in sight of a figure working intently on a large sketch-pad supported by his knees. I stopped. Mary said:

  ‘It’s Matthew.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, and turned to go back.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Let’s go on. I’d like to see.’

  Rather reluctantly I went forward with her. Matthew seemed quite unaware of us. Even when we drew close he remained utterly absorbed in his work. From a box of crayons on the grass beside him he would select what he wanted, with decision, and apply it to the paper with a deftness I could not recognize in him. Then, with a curious mixture of delicacy and firmness he smudged, blurred, and softened the line using his fingers, or his thumb, or a part of a grubby handkerchief on which he wiped his hands before adding the next stroke and rubbing that skilfully into the right tone and density.

  The painting of a picture seems to me at any time a marvel, but to watch the Sussex landscape taking form on the paper from such crude materials under such an unfamiliar technique held me completely fascinated, and Mary, too. We must have stood there almost unmoving for more than half an hour before Matthew seemed to slump slightly as he relaxed. Then he lifted his head, sighed heavily, and lifted the finished picture to study it. Presently he became aware of us standing behind him, and turned his head.

  ‘Oh, hullo,’ he said, looking at Mary a little uncertainly.

  ‘Oh, Matthew, that’s beautiful,’ she exclaimed.

  Matthew looked relieved. He studied the picture again.

  ‘I think Chocky’s seeing things more properly now, though it’s still a bit funny,’ he said judicially.

  Mary asked tentatively:

  ‘Will you give it to me, Matthew? I promise to keep it very safely, if you will.’

  Matthew looked up at her with a smile. He recognized a peace overture.

  ‘Yes, if you like Mummy,’ he said, and then added on a cautionary note.’Only you’ll have to be careful. This kind smudges if you don’t spray them with something or other.’

  ‘I’ll be most careful. It’s much too beautiful to spoil,’ she assured him.

  ‘Yes, it is rather beautiful,’ Matthew agreed. ‘Chocky thinks that, except where we’ve spoilt it, this is a very beautiful planet.’

  We arrived home on Sunday evening feeling much the better for our week-end. Mary, however, was not looking forward to Monday.

  ‘These newspaper men are so pushing. Foot in the door and all that,’ she complained.

  ‘I doubt if they’ll trouble you much – not the Sundays, anyway. It’ll have gone stale by next week-end. I think the best thing would be to get Matthew out of the way. It’s only one day; he starts school again on Tuesday. Make him up some sandwiches and send him off with instructions to keep clear until six o’clock. See that he has enough money to go to the pictures if he gets bored. He’ll be all right.’

  ‘It seems a bit hard on him to be turned out.’

  ‘I know, but I think he’d prefer that to interviewers badgering him about guardian angels.’

  So next morning Mary shooed him out of the place – and just as well. Six callers inquired for Matthew in the course of the day. They were, our own vicar, another vaguely concerned clergyman, a middle-aged lady who confided with some intensity that she was a spiritualist, a member of the regional Arts-Group which she was sure Matthew would want to join, another lady who considered the dream-life of children to be a disgracefully neglected field of study, and an instructor at the local baths who hoped that Matthew would give a demonstration of life-saving at the next swimming gala.

  I arrived home to find Mary quite exhausted.

  ‘If ever I questioned the power of the press, I retract. I now just think it a pity that most of it seems to be exerted in the lunatic fringe,’ she told me.

  Apart from that, however, Monday was uneventful. Matthew appeared to have enjoyed his day out. He came back with two pictures, both landscapes from the same viewpoint. One was unmistakably Chocky-directed, the other less good, but Matthew was proud of it.

  ‘I did it all myself,’ he told us. ‘Chocky’s been telling me how to look at things, and I’m sort of beginning to see what she means.’

  On Tuesday morning Matthew went off to school to start his new term. On Tuesday afternoon he returned home, with a black eye.

  Mary regarded it with dismay.

  ‘Oh, Matthew. You’ve been fighting,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I haven’t,’ Matthew told her, indignantly. ‘I was fought at.’

  According to his account he had been simply standing in the playground during break when a slightly older boy called Simon Ledder had come up to him, accompanied by three or four henchmen, and started jeering about guardian angels. Matthew’s disownment of a guardian angel went unheeded, and somehow a situation had been reached in which Simon proclaimed that if Matthew’s guardian angel could guard him from his, Simon’s, fists he was willing to believe in guardian angels, if not it proved that Matthew was a liar. Simon had then put his postulate to a practical test by landing Matthew a punch in the face which had knocked him down. Matthew was not quite clear about the next minute or two. He admitted he might have b
een dazed. All he remembered was that he was on his feet again, and instead of facing Simon and his companions he found himself looking at Mr Slatson, the headmaster.

  Mr Slatson very decently took the trouble to ring up at dinner-time, and inquire about Matthew. I was able to tell him that he seemed quite himself, though he did not look pretty.

  ‘I’m sorry it happened,’ Mr Slatson said. ‘The provocation was all on the other boy’s part. We’ve settled that, and I don’t think he’ll try it again. A curious incident. I happened to see it though I was too far off to interfere. When the boy had knocked Matthew down he waited for him to get up again, with the obvious intention of following it up. But, when Matthew did get up, instead of stepping forward he took a pace back, so did his companions, they stared for a moment and then all turned and ran away. I asked the ring-leader what had happened. All he could tell me was that Matthew “looked so fierce”. Odd that, but I think it means there’ll be no more trouble of the kind. By the way…’ And he went on to congratulate us, though with some detectably puzzled undertones, on Matthew’s natatory and artistic achievements.

  Polly was interested in Matthew’s appearance.

  ‘Can you see out of it?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Yes,’ Matthew said shortly.

  ‘It does look funny,’ she told him. ‘Twinklehooves nearly lost his eye once,’ she added, reminiscently.

  ‘Got kicked by a ballet dancer?’ suggested Matthew.

  ‘No. It was in the book before that – when he was a hunting pony,’ Polly explained. She paused. ‘Did Chocky do it?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘Now then. Break it up,’ I told them. ‘Matthew, what did Miss Soames say about “Homeward”. Was she pleased to see it in the papers?’

  Matthew shook his head.

  ‘I haven’t seen her yet. We didn’t have Art today,’ he said.

  ‘Miss Pinkser from our school saw it,’ Polly put in. ‘She thought it was lousy.’

  ‘Really, Polly, what an expression,’ Mary protested. ‘I’m sure Miss Pinkser didn’t say anything of the kind.’

  ‘I didn’t say she said it. But she thought it. You could tell.… She wanted to know if Matthew had something called stig – stigmatics, or something, and whether he wears glasses. And I told her no, he didn’t need them because it wasn’t really his picture, anyway.’

  I exchanged glances with Mary.

  ‘Oh dear, what have you started now, I wonder?’ she said, with a sigh.

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ Polly protested.

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Matthew. ‘It is my picture. Miss Soames watched me do it.’

  Polly sniffed.

  When we had got rid of them I gave Mary my news of the day. Landis had rung me up in the morning. He had, he told me, managed to see Sir William who seemed quite hopefully interested by his account of Matthew. Sir William’s time was, of course, rather closely booked, but he had suggested that I ring up his secretary, and see if an appointment could be arranged.

  So I did that. Sir William’s secretary also told me that Sir William was very much booked-up, but she would see. There was a sound of riming papers, then, on a gracious note, she informed me that I was fortunate; there had been a cancellation, two o’clock Friday afternoon if I cared to take it, otherwise it might be a matter of weeks.

  Mary hesitated. She seemed, during the last two or three days, to have lost the fine edge of her antipathy to Chocky; also, I fancy, she had an instinctive reluctance to entrusting Matthew in other hands, as if, like the beginning of schooldays, it marked the end of a phase. But her commonsense asserted itself. We arranged that Matthew should come up on Friday, and I would escort him to Harley Street.

  On Wednesday I had an uninterrupted day. Mary was obliged to fend off only two personal callers and two telephone callers wanting Matthew, and his school gave a short dismissal to a would-be interviewer from the Psychic Observer. Matthew himself, however, had a brush with Mr Caffer.

  It arose, apparently, from Mr Caffer’s assertion during a physics lesson that the speed of light was the limit; nothing, he dogmatically stated, could travel faster than light.

  Matthew put up his hand. Mr Caffer looked at him.

  ‘Oh,’ he said,’ I might have expected it. Well, young Gore, what is it you know that Einstein didn’t?’

  Matthew, already regretting his impulse, said:

  ‘It doesn’t matter, sir.’

  ‘But it does,’ said Mr Caffer. ‘Any challenge to Einstein is most important. Let’s have it.’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s just that the speed of light is only the limit of physical speed.’

  ‘Indeed. And perhaps you can tell us what travels faster?’

  ‘Thought, sir,’ said Matthew.

  Mr Caffer regarded him.

  ‘Thought, Gore, is a physical process. It involves neural messages, synapses, chemical changes in the cells among other things. All that takes time. It can be measured in micro-seconds. I assure you you will find it is considerably slower than light. If it weren’t, many nasty road accidents could be avoided.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘But what, Gore?’

  ‘Well, sir. Perhaps I wasn’t really meaning thought. I was meaning mind.’

  ‘Oh, were you? Psychology isn’t really my subject. Perhaps you will explain to us.’

  ‘Well, sir, if you can sort of throw your mind – ’

  ‘ “Sort of throw – ”? would “project” be the word?’

  ‘Yes, sir. If you can project your mind, space and time sort of don’t count. You can go right through them at once.’

  ‘I see. A most interesting proposition. Perhaps you yourself can perform this feat?’

  ‘No, sir, I can’t – ’ Matthew dried up, suddenly.

  ‘But you know someone who can? I’m sure we should find it most instructive if you were to bring him along some time.’ He gazed sadly at Matthew, and shook his head. Matthew dropped his eyes to his desk top.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Caffer, addressing himself to the class once more, ‘now that we have established that nothing in the universe – with the possible exception of Matthew Gore’s mind – can exceed the speed of light, let us return to our lesson…’

  On Friday I met Matthew off the train at Waterloo. We had lunch and arrived in Harley Street with five minutes to spare.

  Sir William Thorbe turned out to be a tall, clean-shaven man with a rather high-bridged nose, fine hair just greying, and a pair of dark, perceptive eyes under thick eyebrows. In other circumstances I should have thought him a barrister rather than a medical man, his air, appearance, and carriage gave a first misleading impression of familiarity which I later ascribed to his resemblance to the Duke of Wellington.

  I introduced Matthew, exchanged a few words, and was then shown out to wait.

  ‘How long?’ I asked the secretary.

  ‘Two hours is the minimum with a new patient,’ she told me. ‘I suggest you come back at half-past four. We’ll look after your boy if he’s through before that.’

  I went back to the office, and returned on time. It was after five before Matthew emerged. He looked at the clock.

  ‘Gosh,’ he said. ‘I thought it was only about half an hour.’

  The secretary bustled up.

  ‘Sir William asks me to make his apologies for not seeing you now. He has an urgent consultation to attend. He will be writing to you in a day or two,’ she said, and we were shown out.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked Matthew when we were in the train.

  ‘He asked me some questions. He didn’t seem at all surprised about Chocky,’ he said, and added: ‘Then we listened to records.’

  ‘Oh. He runs a discotheque?’ I inquired.

  ‘Not that sort of record. It was all soft and quiet – musical kind of music. It just went on while he asked the questions. And then when it stopped he took another record out of a cupboard and asked me if I had ever seen one like that. I said no, because it was a funny looking re
cord with black and white patterns all over it. So he moved a chair and said: “Sit here where you can see it,” and he put it on the record-player.

  ‘It made a queer humming noise, not real music at all, though it went up and down a bit. Then there was another humming noise, a sort of sharper one. It came in on top of the other humming, and went up and down, too. I watched the record going round, and all the pattern seemed to be running into the middle – a bit like bathwater running out of the plug-hole, only not quite because it didn’t go down, it just ran into itself and disappeared to nowhere, and kept on doing it. It was funny watching it because I began to feel as if the whole room was turning round, and I was falling off the chair. Then, quite suddenly it was all right again and there was an ordinary record with ordinary music coming out of it.

  ‘Well, then Sir William gave me an orange drink, and asked some more questions, and after a bit he said that’d be all for today, and good-bye, and I came out.’

  I duly reported to Mary.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Hypnosis. I don’t think I like that very much.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘But I suppose he’d use whatever method seemed appropriate. Matthew can be pretty cagey about Chocky. I know he opened up with Landis, but that was exceptional. If Sir William was having to fight for every answer he may well have felt that hypnosis would make it easier for both of them.’

  ‘M’m,’ said Mary, ‘well, all we can do now is to wait for his report.’

  The next morning, Saturday, Matthew came down to breakfast looking tired. He was low-spirited, too, and listless. He refused Polly’s invitation to dispute with such gloomy distaste that Mary dropped on her heavily, and shut her up.

  ‘Are you not feeling well?’ she demanded of Matthew, who was toying uninterestedly with his cornflakes.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ He told her.

  Mary regarded him, and tried again.

  ‘It’s not anything to do with yesterday? Did that man do something that upset you?’

  ‘No,’ Matthew shook his head. ‘I’m all right,’ he repeated, and attacked his cornflakes as if in demonstration. He got them down as if every leaf were threatening to choke him.