My mother murmured an assent, but I recalled a discussion in the classroom. “One of the boys at school doesn’t think we should be ruled by a woman.”
“He hadn’t better let his mother hear him say that. We don’t mean you either, Mary,” my father said with a wink, and then he grew more serious. “Who does he want in charge, a Greek? It’s not long since we saw the Jerries off. Let the British rule the British, and we can run a lot of other people too.”
The festive sherry was talking, and not too coherently either. “He said it was in the Bible,” I told him.
“So is it? You should know if he does.”
“I think it is.”
“Maybe you should read the Bible a bit more and your space books a bit less.” My father gave them—the interplanetary novels that were my favourite presents that year—an imprecise blink. “If it’s in the Bible it has to be right,” he said and appeared to grapple with a contradiction before he said triumphantly “But that tells us to respect the monarch.”
I wondered how this would have fared in the classroom, where O’Shaughnessy had reminded Mr Noble “It says a woman shouldn’t have authority over a man.”
“Have you had your nose in one of the apostles, Mr O’Shaughnessy? Perhaps we shouldn’t take quite everything they wrote as gospel.”
While O’Shaughnessy looked shocked, I suspected that I wasn’t alone in feeling some exhilaration. “It’s the word of God, sir,” he protested.
“Perhaps what you read is more like—” I could have thought Mr Noble rejected the first word that came to mind. “Let’s call it a commentary,” he said with a smile too faint to betray any meaning. “And I don’t know if you realise the queen is the defender of the faith.”
“Not our faith, sir.”
“They really aren’t so different if you look at them in perspective. Beliefs keep on developing, you know. Evolving, if you like,” Mr Noble said, and his smile grew almost reminiscent. “You’d be surprised what you would find if you traced them to their source.”
In a tone close to a challenge O’Shaughnessy said “You’d find Almighty God.”
“I wonder how you would cope with the revelation.” I was hoping Mr Noble was about to say more on the subject, but he seemed to remember where and who he was. “Don’t start dismissing women,” he said, and not just to O’Shaughnessy. “They’re how we’re made or we wouldn’t be here.”
“I still don’t think she ought to be the ruler, sir.”
“Let me tell you a secret, Mr O’Shaughnessy, and the rest of you as well. Whoever’s on the throne won’t matter much. You’ll learn it’s just a symbol. There’s no power there to affect your lives.”
I had a vague idea that he was talking about politics, and I knew some of my classmates wouldn’t be too happy if he started preaching any kind of radicalism. Instead he murmured mostly to himself “There are greater powers to come.”
Any of us other than O’Shaughnessy might have been embarrassed to ask “Do you mean Jesus, sir?”
“The second coming.” The teacher’s gaze had grown distant, but now it reverted to us. “A return, Mr O’Shaughnessy,” he said, “such as the world has never seen.”
I saw O’Shaughnessy take this for confirmation, but even then I wasn’t sure that Mr Noble had endorsed his belief. I kept the rest of the discussion from my parents, and soon my father heaved himself out of his chair. “I’ll give you a game of footy,” he said. “A real one if you like.”
I fancy he was trying to work off some Christmas clumber. We’d hardly started kicking the ball outside the house, where the entire street boasted just a few cars, when boys and their fathers came out to expand the game. On Boxing Day most of us had a return match, having regained our excess weight, and in other ways too that day resembled a rerun of Christmas. The third day wasn’t so traditionally defined, and my mother sent me to invite Mrs Norris over and take Winston for a walk.
At first I couldn’t make out how her house had changed. I was at the gate when I saw both the bay windows were uncurtained. I thought she’d pulled the curtains down to let in all the light she could, and then I realised they were bunched thin at the very edges of the outer panes. A framed photograph lay face down on top of the album on the sofa, and now I wonder how often Mrs Norris may have used it to cling to a memory. Otherwise the room was empty; even Winston’s basket was. I lifted the knocker on the front door, only to appreciate how ominous the two slow blows that were the code of the Tremendous Three might sound to Mrs Norris. Instead I tapped “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”. The dull echoes made the house sound hollow and roused Winston to bark. “Who’s that?” Mrs Norris cried, and then she pleaded “Don’t scare them.”
I had a nervous fancy that she might not be talking to the dog. “I’m coming,” she called, and a door shut, muffling Winston’s barks. “I’m coming now. Don’t go away.”
Was she desperate for company? She’d repeated her appeal by the time she opened the door. “Oh, Dominic, it’s you,” she said.
She wasn’t bothering to hide her disappointment. No doubt she was hoping for someone who might have made her feel safe—the insurance man, perhaps, or the rent collector, in fact any adult at all. I wondered if she’d slept in her blue suit, which looked not much less rumpled than the blanket in Winston’s basket always was. Some of her greying curls had started to unravel. I thought she meant to improve on her welcome by asking “Did you have a lovely Christmas?”
“It was good, thanks.” I could see no way to avoid enquiring “How was yours?”
“I wasn’t on my own.” As I tried to think that she was talking about visitors or even merely Winston, she said “What can we do for you, Dominic?”
Sometimes people referred to themselves plurally even if they weren’t the monarch, and I wanted to believe she had. “My mum and dad say come and see them,” I said, “and I can look after Winston.”
“Look after him.” Some notion—perhaps the thought of leaving me in her house—made her eyes flutter in their sockets. “Take him for a walk, you mean,” she was anxious to confirm.
“You said I could.”
“There’s a good boy,” Mrs Norris said, and I tried not to feel she was commenting to someone besides me. “Wait and I’ll fetch him.”
As she made for the kitchen I caught sight of her husband’s overcoat on a hook opposite the stairs. It looked emptied, but not quite vacant enough. It was buttoned from the collar to nearly the hem, and the chest seemed to be partly inflated, as if it had taken a breath. Were the dangling sleeves not as flat as they should be, as if they contained limbs, however thin? When Mrs Norris passed the coat without a glance I was afraid of seeing fingers grope out of the cuffs while her husband’s face swelled out of the collar. She opened the kitchen door, and as pallid December light spilled into the hall I stifled a cry with my hand, because the coat had stirred wakefully on the hook. Had a draught shifted it, or had only shadows moved? It was displaying its innocence now, flattening itself against the wall like a creature determined not to be noticed, and it stayed quiescent while Mrs Norris led the dog on his leash along the hall. “See who’s here to take you in the park,” she said. “You behave yourself for Dominic.”
She halted just short of the threshold, relinquishing the leash as though it were a lifeline. Before I reached the gate she closed the front door, and I heard her start to talk. Though she’d lowered her voice, I thought she said “Just be there. Don’t come close.” I might have lingered to hear more if I hadn’t been afraid she would see me from the front room. Winston had lifted his ears, but timidly. When I said “Walkies” they wavered higher.
I was setting out for the park when a passing car made him flinch, nearly tripping me up. When had he started reacting to traffic like that? While we were unlikely to encounter much of it along Cherry Lane, there would be more on Walton Lane, the main road I’d meant to follow to the park. Usually I wouldn’t have taken a dog in a graveyard, but now the short cut se
emed to be the best route.
Winston insisted on cocking his leg against the edge of the arch at the nearest entrance to the cemetery. I glanced around for fear we’d been caught desecrating the place, but couldn’t see anyone watching. I didn’t know how he might behave if a train thundered over the arch while we were underneath, and I urged him through it almost at a run. Beyond it a broad straight path led to a chapel. Just a few people were tending graves beneath the wide pale sky. I was glad the nearest graves and trees beside the path were too distant for Winston to reach, even when he strained at the lead. We reached the chapel without too many struggles on the way, and I was turning along a path that would take us to a gate opposite the park when I saw someone ahead.
He was pushing a pram, and I recognised him from the back as soon as he stooped in his usual fashion to address the child. Now that the chapel wasn’t in the way I could hear him. “What can you see, Tiny Tina?” he was saying. “What can you see?”
I only just managed to suffocate a giggle of embarrassment, and would have liked to retreat behind the chapel. I was trying to coax Winston out of sight when Mr Noble said “What can you hear, Tiny Tina? What can you hear?”
I could hear nothing apart from his voice and the rubbery murmur of pram wheels, but Winston pricked up his ears, the way he had when Mrs Norris began talking in her supposedly empty house. A small high voice came out of the pram. “Dem,” it said.
“Not dem, Tiny Tina, them. The, the, the. Say them.”
“Dhem.”
“That’s very good. That’s excellent. Them, them, them. Now can you tell me what they’re called?”
I strained my ears for an answer. Curiosity made me follow, willing the dog to stay as quiet as I was. “No need to be afraid, Tiny Tina,” Mr Noble said.
“Fray.”
“A, a, a. Frayed, frayed, frayed. We’ll never be the ones who are afraid.”
“Frayed.”
“That’s the smile your daddy likes to see. You know you can be proud, don’t you? Proud not to be afraid. Now can you talk to them?”
“Lo.”
“Lo and behold, and people will. What else are you going to say? Speak and more will come.”
I wanted to believe he was talking about language, telling his daughter that words would bring more words, but I’d begun to suspect that he was training her to perform like him at the spiritualist church, though surely not until she was much older. “Lo,” she said again.
“Not just hello. If you can see them tell them. Tell them what you see and hear.”
I felt as if I were being urged to do so. Mr Noble’s repetitions had started to feel hypnotic if not ritualistic. I was peering about at the graves when Tina said “Like race.”
“You like a face, do you? No, you mean it’s like a face. Where is it, Tiny Tina? Show your daddy where.”
As I stared around me my gaze snagged on an evergreen bush among the graves to the left of the path. The bush was overgrown with ivy, and I wondered if the bush itself had grown around a monument—a shape that was caged by the twigs. If it had a face, I was unable to make out how much of the shape the features occupied, but the object was taller than me. I had to think that the shadows of the twigs were making it appear to be composed of a multitude of filaments. I strained my eyes to grasp its shape, which seemed to make the filaments creep forwards, as if its substance was rising to the surface of the bush. Before I could distinguish anything further Winston let out an unhappy bark.
Mr Noble rose to his full daunting height but didn’t immediately turn. The time he took felt ominous, though perhaps he was simply preparing an expression. “Why, it’s Mr Sheldrake,” he said as though he was just as politely surprised as his look. “How long have you been there?”
“Only just now, sir.”
This was so precisely true that it did duty as a lie. I was growing up fast, though in ways my parents wouldn’t have approved of. I glanced at the bush to see that it was nothing but a shrub. I put my odd glimpse down to a change in the light, since there was no monument inside the bush or behind it either. “Well,” Mr Noble said, “I don’t think you’ve met the little watcher.”
For a mortified moment I thought he meant me, and then I gathered he was referring to his daughter. “Tina,” he said, “this is Mr Sheldrake.”
I knew adults were expected to enthuse over the occupants of prams, but this was the first time I’d felt invited. As I stepped forward I had to tug at Winston’s lead to make him follow. I almost faltered too, because the girl in the pram was gazing straight at me. Though her head was done up in a pink woollen hood, this didn’t lessen her resemblance to her father; it simply made the long thin smooth oval face look like a miniature vignette of his. Her eyes were practically black, and I could have thought they were even keener than her father’s. “Ache,” she said.
I wondered if Mr Noble was about to take my name apart and reiterate the bits, not to mention whether I’d be able to suppress my mirth if he did, but he only said “Mr Sheldrake, my daughter Tina.”
I couldn’t help feeling that he should have started with this introduction, since I was so much older. Was it yet another case of giving females special treatment? One reason Bobby belonged to the Tremendous Three was that she never wanted to be treated like a girl. Perhaps resentment made me incautious, and I said “Why is she a watcher, sir?”
“Because young eyes are the best. Young ears as well. In fact, every sense. You might try extending yours, Mr Sheldrake.”
This seemed to be my cue to ask “What was she watching, sir?”
Mr Noble turned to the pram, and I had the unsettling fancy that he and the infant exchanged a look. His pause led me to expect him to say a good deal more than “Birds.”
“Birds, sir?”
“That’s what I said, Mr Sheldrake. Creatures of the air. You may even have heard me encouraging the little one to strike up a conversation with them.”
All that I’d overheard let me dare to ask “Which birds, sir?”
As he swung his head around to hold me with his gaze the pram came to rest, and Tina started to wave her arms almost vigorously enough to dislodge her pink mittens. “Star thing,” she cried.
“Hear that, Mr Sheldrake. You recognise the starling, surely. It’s among our commonest birds.”
I might have wondered if Tina had meant something else until I heard a succession of rattles and equally harsh squeaks from a treetop. “There it is,” I said and pointed to establish that I wasn’t guessing.
“Well spotted, Mr Sheldrake,” the teacher said, though I wasn’t sure how ironically. “What else can you find? Can you beat my daughter at the game?”
I hadn’t realised we were playing one, and I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with doing so in a graveyard. Besides, the challenge felt like a pressure for my senses to grow more acute than I might care for. I could have imagined that the place had begun to tug at them, if less substantially than Winston was tugging at the lead. The graveyard had started to remind me of one of those puzzles where you had to find shapes hidden in a picture. I was looking not much less than desperately for a mundane sight to report to Mr Noble when Tina said a word, and I saw movement at once.
She hadn’t meant a spirit, I tried to tell myself. Just the same, the activity was in front of a headstone in the midst of a ragged patchwork rug composed of dead leaves. A brownish object was fumbling among them, though surely not from beneath the earth. Surely their rustling wouldn’t grow louder as more of the restless presence groped into view. “I’m afraid she triumphs,” Mr Noble said. “Can’t you even see a sparrow, Mr Sheldrake?”
Of course, I thought, that was what she’d named, however precocious it proved her to be. The object rummaging among the leaves was indeed a sparrow. “What can you tell us about sparrows, Mr Sheldrake?” the teacher said.
I felt as if I’d been singled out in class and had no answer worth standing up for. “It’s a common bird, sir.”
“I’d
have thought the Holy Ghost would give us more than that.” As I concluded that he meant the school he said “What does the Bible say? God’s supposed to care for every one of them. He must have a lot on his mind, you might think.”
I had a sense that Mr Noble was going further than he would have dared in class. I was feeling special, close to conspiratorial, when he said “What do they find to eat here, do you suppose?”
“They’ll be insects, sir.”
“Worms, I shouldn’t wonder. What do you imagine those feed on?” Before I could respond—I would have tried so as to save his daughter from thinking of an answer—he murmured “Maybe you have to dine on something of the kind if you want to take to the air.” He was gazing ahead, surely at the gate, not at the pram. “I think we’ve seen what’s to be seen,” he said. “Your dog must have scared them off, Mr Sheldrake.”
I would have said that Winston wasn’t mine if I hadn’t realised Mr Noble might have asked whose he was. I followed the teacher through the gate and saw a lorry bearing down on us. “Sit, Winston,” I said.
“If only everything were so obedient,” Mr Noble said as the dog squatted by the kerb. “What a lot of traffic there’s starting to be, Tina. By the time you’re my age you’ll hardly be able to cross the road.”
The Searching Dead Page 5