Familiar and Haunting Page 10

  And Black Teddy fell from the window—no, he was thrown from the window. Thrown into the middle of the rushing, crushing, cruel traffic.

  That was his end.

  And the coach went on, out of sight.

  Of the three watchers, no one moved; no one spoke. Jane hugged and hugged her own dear teddy to her, and the yellow fur on the top of his head began to be wet with tears. Against her will, she was weeping for what had happened—for all that had happened. She wept for Black Teddy. She wept for Lucinda, too. Now, at last, she felt sorry for Lucinda, and the sorrow was like a pain inside her.

  In the Middle of the Night

  In the middle of the night a fly woke Charlie. At first he lay listening, half asleep, while it swooped about the room. Sometimes it was far; sometimes it was near—that was what had woken him—and occasionally it was very near indeed. It was very, very near when the buzzing stopped; the fly had alighted on his face. He jerked his head up; the fly buzzed off. Now he was really awake.

  The fly buzzed widely about the room, but it was thinking of Charlie all the time. It swooped nearer and nearer. Nearer…

  Charlie pulled his head down under the bedclothes. All of him under the bedclothes, he was completely protected, but he could hear nothing except his heartbeats and his breathing. He was overwhelmed by the smell of warm bedding, warm pajamas, warm himself. He was going to suffocate. So he rose suddenly up out of the bedclothes, and the fly was waiting for him. It dashed at him. He beat at it with his hands. At the same time he appealed to his younger brother, Wilson, in the next bed: “Wilson, there’s a fly!”

  Wilson, unstirring, slept on.

  Now Charlie and the fly were pitting their wits against each other, Charlie pouncing on the air where he thought the fly must be, the fly sliding under his guard toward his face. Again and again the fly reached Charlie; again and again, almost simultaneously, Charlie dislodged him. Once he hit the fly or, at least, hit where the fly had been a second before, on the side of his head; the blow was so hard that his head sang with it afterward.

  Then suddenly the fight was over: no more buzzing. His blows—or rather, one of them—must have told.

  He laid his head back on the pillow, thinking of going to sleep again. But he was also thinking of the fly, and now he noticed a tickling in the ear he turned to the pillow.

  It must be—it was—the fly.

  He rose in such panic that the waking of Wilson really seemed to him a possible thing and useful. He shook him repeatedly. “Wilson—Wilson, I tell you, there’s a fly in my ear!”

  Wilson groaned, turned over very slowly like a seal in water, and slept on.

  The tickling in Charlie’s ear continued. He could just imagine the fly struggling in some passageway too narrow for its wingspan. He longed to put his finger into his ear and rattle it around, like a stick in a rabbit hole, but he was afraid of driving the fly deeper into his ear.

  Wilson slept on.

  Charlie stood in the middle of the bedroom floor, quivering and trying to think. He needed to see down his ear or to get someone else to see down it. Wilson wouldn’t do; perhaps Margaret would.

  Margaret’s room was next door. Charlie turned on the light as he entered. Margaret’s bed was empty. He was startled and then thought that she must have gone to the bathroom. But there was no light from there. He listened carefully; there was no sound from anywhere, except for the usual snuffling moans from the hall, where Floss slept and dreamed of dog biscuits. The empty bed was mystifying, but Charlie had his ear to worry about. It sounded as if there were a pigeon inside it now.

  Wilson asleep, Margaret vanished; that left Alison. But Alison was bossy, just because she was the eldest, and anyway, she would probably only wake Mum. He might as well wake Mum himself.

  Down the passage and through the door always left ajar. “Mum,” he said. She woke, or at least half woke, at once. “Who is it? Who? Who? What’s the matter? What?”

  “I’ve a fly in my ear.”

  “You can’t have.”

  “It flew in.”

  She switched on the bedside light, and as she did so, Dad plunged beneath the bedclothes with an exclamation and lay still again.

  Charlie knelt at his mother’s side of the bed, and she looked into his ear. “There’s nothing.”

  “Something crackles.”

  “It’s wax in your ear.”

  “It tickles.”

  “There’s no fly there. Go back to bed, and stop imagining things.”

  His father’s arm came up from below the bedclothes. The hand waved about, settled on the bedside light, and clicked it out. There was an upheaval of bedclothes and a comfortable grunt.

  “Good night,” said Mum from the darkness. She was already allowing herself to sink back into sleep again.

  “Good night,” Charlie said sadly. Then an idea occurred to him. He repeated his good night loudly and added some coughing, to cover the fact that he was closing the bedroom door behind him, the door that Mum kept open so that she could listen for her children. They had outgrown all that kind of attention, except possibly for Wilson. Charlie had shut the door against Mum’s hearing because he intended to slip downstairs for a drink of water—well, for a drink and perhaps a snack. That fly business had woken him up and also weakened him; he needed something.

  He crept downstairs, trusting to Floss’s good sense not to make a row. He turned the foot of the staircase toward the kitchen, and there had not been the faintest whimper from her, far less a bark. He was passing the dog basket when he had the most unnerving sensation of something being wrong there—something unusual, at least. He could not have said whether he had heard something or smelled something; he could certainly have seen nothing in the blackness. Perhaps some extra sense warned him.

  “Floss?” he whispered, and there was the usual little scrabble and snuffle. He held out his fingers low down for Floss to lick. As she did not do so at once, he moved them toward her, met some obstruction—

  “Don’t poke your fingers in my eye!” a voice said, very low-toned and cross. Charlie’s first, confused thought was that Floss had spoken. The voice was familiar, but then a voice from Floss should not be familiar; it should be strangely new to him.

  He took an uncertain little step toward the voice, tripped over the obstruction, which was quite wrong in shape and size to be Floss, and sat down. Two things now happened. Floss, apparently having climbed over the obstruction, reached his lap and began to lick his face. At the same time a human hand fumbled over his face, among the slappings of Floss’s tongue, and settled over his mouth. “Don’t make a row! Keep quiet!” said the same voice. Charlie’s mind cleared; he knew, although without understanding, that he was sitting on the floor in the dark with Floss on his knee and Margaret beside him.

  Her hand came off his mouth.

  “What are you doing here, anyway, Charlie?”

  “I like that! What about you? There was a fly in my ear.”

  “Go on!”

  “There was.”

  “Why does that make you come downstairs?”

  “I wanted a drink of water.”

  “There’s water in the bathroom.”

  “Well, I’m a bit hungry.”

  “If Mum catches you …”

  “Look here,” Charlie said, “you tell me what you’re doing down here.”

  Margaret sighed. “Just sitting with Floss.”

  “You can’t come down and just sit with Floss in the middle of the night.”

  “Yes, I can. I keep her company. Only at weekends, of course. No one seemed to realize what it was like for her when those puppies went. She just couldn’t get to sleep for loneliness.”

  “But the last puppy went weeks ago. You haven’t been keeping Floss company every Saturday night since then.”

  “Why not?”

  Charlie gave up. “I’m going to get my food and drink,” he said. He went into the kitchen, followed by Margaret, followed by Floss.

 
They all had a quick drink of water. Then Charlie and Margaret looked into the larder: the remains of a joint; a very large quantity of mashed potato; most of a loaf; eggs; butter; cheese. …

  “I suppose it’ll have to be just bread and butter and a bit of cheese,” said Charlie. “Else Mum might notice.”

  “Something hot,” said Margaret. “I’m cold from sitting in the hall comforting Floss. I need hot cocoa, I think.” She poured some milk into a saucepan and put it on the hot plate. Then she began a search for the cocoa. Charlie, standing by the cooker, was already absorbed in the making of a rough cheese sandwich.

  The milk in the pan began to steam. Given time, it rose in the saucepan, peered over the top, and boiled over onto the hot plate, where it sizzled loudly. Margaret rushed back and pulled the saucepan to one side. “Well, really, Charlie! Now there’s that awful smell! It’ll still be here in the morning, too.”

  “Set the fan going,” Charlie suggested.

  The fan drew the smell from the cooker up and away through a pipe to the outside. It also made a loud roaring noise. Not loud enough to reach their parents, who slept on the other side of the house—that was all that Charlie and Margaret thought of.

  Alison’s bedroom, however, was immediately above the kitchen. Charlie was eating his bread and cheese, Margaret was drinking her cocoa when the kitchen door opened, and there stood Alison. Only Floss was pleased to see her.

  “Well!” she said.

  Charlie muttered something about a fly in his ear, but Margaret said nothing. Alison had caught them red-handed. She would call Mum downstairs; that was obvious. There would be an awful row.

  Alison stood there. She liked commanding a situation.

  Then, instead of taking a step backward to call up the stairs to Mum, she took a step forward into the kitchen. “What are you having, anyway?” she asked. She glanced with scorn at Charlie’s poor piece of bread and cheese and at Margaret’s cocoa. She moved over to the larder, flung open the door, and looked searchingly inside. In such a way must Napoleon have viewed a battlefield before the victory.

  Her gaze fell upon the bowl of mashed potato. “I shall make potato cakes,” said Alison.

  They watched while she brought the mashed potato to the kitchen table. She switched on the oven, fetched her other ingredients, and began mixing.

  “Mum’ll notice if you take much of that potato,” said Margaret.

  But Alison thought big. “She may notice if some potato is missing,” she agreed. “But if there’s none at all, and if the bowl it was in is washed and dried and stacked away with the others, then she’s going to think she must have made a mistake. There just can never have been any mashed potato.”

  Alison rolled out her mixture and cut it into cakes; then she set the cakes on a baking tin and put it in the oven.

  Now she did the washing up. Throughout the time they were in the kitchen, Alison washed up and put away as she went along. She wanted no one’s help. She was very methodical, and she did everything herself to be sure that nothing was left undone. In the morning there must be no trace left of the cooking in the middle of the night.

  “And now,” said Alison, “I think we should fetch Wilson.”

  The other two were aghast at the idea, but Alison was firm in her reasons. “It’s better if we’re all in this together, Wilson as well. Then, if the worst comes to the worst, it won’t be just us three caught out, with Wilson hanging on to Mum’s apron strings, smiling innocence. We’ll all be for it together, and Mum’ll be softer with us if we’ve got Wilson.”

  They saw that, at once. But Margaret still objected. “Wilson will tell. He just always tells everything. He can’t help it.”

  Alison said, “He always tells everything. Right. We’ll give him something to tell and then see if Mum believes him. We’ll do an entertainment for him. Get an umbrella from the hall and Wilson’s sou’wester and a blanket or a rug or something. Go on.”

  They would not obey Alison’s orders until they had heard her plan; then they did. They fetched the umbrella and the hat, and lastly they fetched Wilson, still sound asleep, slung between the two of them in his eiderdown. They propped him in a chair at the kitchen table, where he still slept.

  By now the potato cakes were done. Alison took them out of the oven and set them on the table before Wilson. She buttered them, handing them in turn to Charlie and Margaret and helping herself. One was set aside to cool for Floss.

  The smell of fresh-cooked, buttery potato cake woke Wilson, as was to be expected. First his nose sipped the air; then his eyes opened; his gaze settled on the potato cakes.

  “Like one?” Alison asked.

  Wilson opened his mouth wide, and Alison put a potato cake inside, whole.

  “They’re paradise cakes,” Alison said.

  “Potato cakes?” said Wilson, recognizing the taste.

  “No, paradise cakes, Wilson,” and then, stepping aside, she gave him a clear view of Charlie and Margaret’s entertainment, with the umbrella and the sou’wester hat and his eiderdown. “Look, Wilson, look.”

  Wilson watched with wide-open eyes, and into his wide-open mouth Alison put, one by one, the potato cakes that were his share.

  But as they had foreseen, Wilson did not stay awake for very long. When there were no more potato cakes, he yawned, drowsed, and suddenly was deeply asleep. Charlie and Margaret put him back into his eiderdown and took him upstairs to bed again. They came down to return the umbrella and the sou’wester to their proper places and to see Floss back into her basket. Alison, last out of the kitchen, made sure that everything was in its place.

  The next morning Mum was down first. On Sunday she always cooked a proper breakfast for anyone there in time. Dad was always there in time, but this morning Mum was still looking for a bowl of mashed potato when he appeared.

  “I can’t think where it’s gone,” she said. “I can’t think.”

  “I’ll have the bacon and eggs without the potato,” said Dad, and he did. While he ate, Mum went back to searching.

  Wilson came down and was sent upstairs again to put on a dressing gown. On his return he said that Charlie was still asleep and there was no sound from the girls’ rooms either. He said he thought they were tired out. He went on talking while he ate his breakfast. Dad was reading the paper, and Mum had gone back to poking about in the larder for the bowl of mashed potato, but Wilson liked talking even if no one would listen. When Mum came out of the larder for a moment, still without her potato, Wilson was saying: “… and Charlie sat in an umbrella boat on an eiderdown sea, and Margaret pretended to be a sea serpent, and Alison gave us paradise cakes to eat. Floss had one, too, but it was too hot for her. What are paradise cakes? Dad, what’s a paradise cake?”

  “Don’t know,” said Dad, reading.

  “Mum, what’s a paradise cake?”

  “Oh, Wilson, don’t bother so when I’m looking for something. … When did you eat this cake, anyway?”

  “I told you. Charlie sat in his umbrella boat on an eiderdown sea and Margaret was a sea serpent and Alison—”

  “Wilson,” said his mother, “you’ve been dreaming.”

  “No, really—really!” Wilson cried.

  But his mother paid no further attention. “I give up,” she said. “That mashed potato, it must have been last weekend …” She went out of the kitchen to call the others. “Charlie! Margaret! Alison!”

  Wilson, in the kitchen, said to his father, “I wasn’t dreaming. And Charlie said there was a fly in his ear.”

  Dad had been quarter listening; now he put down his paper. “What?”

  “Charlie had a fly in his ear.”

  Dad stared at Wilson. “And what did you say that Alison fed you with?”

  “Paradise cakes. She’d just made them, I think, in the middle of the night.”

  “What were they like?”

  “Lovely. Hot, with butter. Lovely.”

  “But were they—well, could they have had any mashed potat
o in them, for instance?”

  In the hall Mum was finishing her calling. “Charlie! Margaret! Alison! I warn you now!”

  “I don’t know about that,” Wilson said. “They were paradise cakes. They tasted a bit like the potato cakes Mum makes, but Alison said they weren’t. She specially said they were paradise cakes.”

  Dad nodded. “You’ve finished your breakfast. Go up and get dressed, and you can take this”—he took a coin from his pocket—“straight off to the sweetshop. Go on.”

  Mum met Wilson at the kitchen door. “Where’s he off to in such a hurry?”

  “I gave him something to buy sweets with,” said Dad. “I wanted a quiet breakfast. He talks too much.”

  The Tree in the Meadow

  There were buildings on three sides of Miss Mortlock’s meadow; on the fourth, the river. In the middle of the meadow stood the elm. There were other trees in the meadow: sycamore, ash, horse chestnut. The elm was giant among them. It had always stood there. Nobody remembered its being younger than it was; nobody remembered it less than its present immense height. Nobody really thought about it anymore. They saw it, simply.

  Then one day a branch fell from the elm tree. It seemed just to tear itself off from the main body of the tree. There was nothing to show why, except for a discoloration of wood at the torn end.

  At its thickest, the branch that fell was almost the thickness of a man’s body.

  The fall caused some surprise in the houses overlooking the meadow, but nobody thought more about the incident until—no, not the next year, but the year after that—another branch dropped. The meadow had been cut for hay, and the Scarr children had been making hay houses. They had just gone in to tea when the branch—quite as big as the previous one—fell. It fell where they had been playing, smashing and scattering their hay houses. Mrs. Scarr was very much upset at what might have happened—at what would have happened if the children had still been playing there. Mr. Scarr agreed that the possibilities were upsetting, and he now pointed out that the rooks no longer nested in the elm. They knew. Someday—one day before too long—the whole tree would fall. It would fall without warning, and the damage could only be guessed at. The elm might fall on Miss Mortlock’s house; it might fall on the Scarrs’ house; it might fall on the buildings the other side—old Mortlock stables and outhouses, no great loss if they were smashed, but a mess. Or if everyone had great good luck, the elm might fall harmlessly away from all buildings, across the meadow toward the river.