Familiar and Haunting Read online

  “Don’t thank me,” said Dan.

  Who’s Afraid?

  “Hill my cousin Dicky be there?”

  “Everyone’s been asked. Cousins, aunts, uncles, great-aunts, great-uncles—the lot. I’ve told you: it’s your great-grandmother’s hundredth birthday party.”

  “But will Dicky Hutt be there?”

  “I’m sure he will be.”

  “Anyway, Joe, why do you want to know?”

  Joe’s mother and father were staring at Joe. And Joe said, “I hate Dicky.”

  “Now, Joe!” said his mother, and his father asked, “Why on earth do you hate Dicky?”

  “I just do,” said Joe. He turned away, to end the conversation, but inside his head he was saying: I’d like to kill Dicky Hutt. Before he tries to kill me.

  When the day of the birthday came, everyone—just as Joe’s mother had said—was there. Relations of all ages swarmed over the little house where Great-grandmother lived, looked after by Great-aunt Madge. Fortunately, Great-grandmother had been born in the summer, and now—a hundred years later—the sun shone warmly on her celebrations. Great-aunt Madge shooed everyone into the garden for the photograph. The grown-ups sat on chairs or stood in rows, and the children sat cross-legged in a row in the very front. (At one end, Joe, at the other, Dicky, and Dicky’s stare at Joe said: “If I catch you, I’ll kill you. …” There was a gap in the center of this front row for a table with the tiered birthday cake and its hundred candles.

  And behind the cake sat Great-grandmother in her wheelchair, with one shawl over her knees and another round her shoulders. Great-aunt Madge stood just behind her.

  Great-grandmother faced the camera with a steady gaze from eyes that saw nothing by now; she had become blind in old age. Whether she heard much was doubtful. Certainly, she never spoke or turned her head even a fraction as if to listen.

  After the photograph and the cutting of the cake, the grown-ups stood around drinking tea and talking. (Great-grandmother had been wheeled off somewhere indoors for a rest.) The children, if they were very young, clung to their parents; the older ones sidled about aimlessly—aimlessly, except that Joe could see Dicky always sidling toward him, staring his hatred. So Joe sidled away and sidled away. …

  “Children!” cried Great-aunt Madge. “What about a good old game? What about hide-and-seek? There’s the garden to hide in, and most of the house.”

  Some of the children still clung to their parents; others said yes to hide-and-seek. Dicky Hutt said yes. Joe said no, but his father said impatiently, “Don’t be soft! Go off and play with the others.”

  Dicky Hutt shouted, “I’ll be He!” So he was. Dicky Hutt shut his eyes and began to count at once. When he had counted a hundred, he would open his eyes and begin to search.

  Joe knew whom he would search for with the bitterest thoroughness: himself.

  Joe was afraid, too afraid to think well. He thought at first that he would hide in the garden, where there were at least grown-ups about, but then he didn’t trust Dicky not to be secretly watching under his eyelashes, to see exactly where he went. Joe couldn’t bear the thought of that.

  So, after all, he went indoors to hide, but by then some of the best hiding places had been taken. And out in the garden Dicky Hutt was counting fast, shouting aloud his total at every count of ten. “Seventy!” he was shouting now, and Joe had just looked behind the sofa in the front room, and there was already someone crouching there. And there was also someone hiding under the pile of visitors’ coats—“Eighty!” came Dicky Hutt’s voice from the garden—and two children already in the stair cupboard, when he thought of that hiding place. So he must go on looking for somewhere—anywhere—to hide—and “Ninety!” from outside—anywhere to hide—and for the second time he came to the door with the notice pinned to it that said: KEEP OUT! SIGNED: MADGE.

  “A hundred! I’m coming!” shouted Dicky Hutt. And Joe turned the handle of the forbidden door and slipped inside and shut the door behind him.

  The room was very dim, because the curtains had been drawn close, and its quietness seemed empty. But Joe’s eyes began to be able to pick out the furnishings of the room, even in the half-light: table, chair, roll-top desk, and also—like just another piece of furniture, and just as immobile—Great-grandmother’s wheelchair and Great-grandmother sitting in it.

  He stood, she sat, both silent, still, and Dicky Hutt’s thundering footsteps and voice were outside, passing the door and then far away.

  He thought she did not know that he had come into her room, but a low, slow voice reached him: “Who’s there?”

  He whispered, “It’s only me—Joe.”

  Silence, and then the low, slow voice again: “Who’s there?”

  He was moving toward her, to speak in her very ear, when she spoke a third time: “Who’s there?”

  And this time he heard in her voice the little tremble of fear; he recognized it. He came to her chair and laid his hand on hers. For a second he felt her weakly pull away, and then she let his hand rest but turned her own, so that his hand fell into hers. She held his hand, fingered it slowly. He wanted her to know that he meant her no harm; he wanted her to say: “This is a small hand, a child’s hand. You are only a child, after all.”

  But she did not speak again.

  He stood there, she sat there, and the excited screams and laughter and running footsteps of hide-and-seek were very far away.

  At last, Joe could tell from the sounds outside that the game of hide-and-seek was nearly over. He must be the last player not to be found and chased by Dicky Hutt. For now Dicky Hutt was wandering about, calling, “Come out, Joe! I know where you’re hiding, Joe, so you might as well come out! I shall find you, Joe. I shall find you!”

  The roving footsteps passed the forbidden doorway several times, but—no, this time they did not pass. Dicky Hutt had stopped outside.

  The silence outside the door made Joe tremble. He tried to stop trembling, for the sake of the hand that held his, but he could not. He felt that old, old skin-and-bony hand close on his, as if questioning what was happening, what was wrong.

  But he had no voice to explain to her. He had no voice at all.

  His eyes were on the knob of the door. Even through the gloom he could see that it was turning. Then the door was creeping open—not fast, but steadily; not far, but far enough.

  It opened far enough for Dicky Hutt to slip through. He stood there, inside the dim room. Joe could see his bulk there. Dicky Hutt had always been bigger than he was; now he loomed huge. And he was staring directly at Joe.

  Joe’s whole body was shaking. He felt as if he were shaking to pieces. He wished that he could.

  His great-grandmother held his shaking hand in hers.

  Dicky Hutt took a step forward into the room.

  Joe had no hope. He felt his great-grandmother lean forward a little in her chair, tightening her grip on his hand as she did so. In her low, slow voice she was saying: “Who—” And Joe thought, He won’t bother to answer her; he’ll just come for me. He’ll come for me. …

  But the low, slow voice went on: “Whooooooooooooo—” She was hooting like some ghost-throated owl, and then the hooting raised itself into a thin, eerie wailing. Next, through the wailing, she began to gibber, with effect so startling—so horrifying—that Joe forgot Dicky Hurt for a moment and turned to look at her. His great-grandmother’s mouth was partly open, and she was making her false teeth do a kind of devil’s dance inside it.

  And when Joe looked toward Dicky Hurt again, he had gone. The door was closing, the knob turning. The door clicked shut, and Joe could hear Dicky Hutt’s feet tiptoeing away.

  When Joe looked at his great-grandmother again, she was sitting back in her chair. Her mouth was closed; the gibbering and the hooting and the wailing had ceased. She looked exhausted—or had she died? But no, she was just looking unbelievably old.

  He did not disturb her. He stood by her chair some time longer. Then he heard his parent
s calling all over the house for him; they wanted to go home.

  He moved his hand out of hers; the grasp was slack now. Perhaps she had fallen asleep. He thought he wanted to kiss her good-bye, but then he did not want the feel of that century-old cheek against his lips.

  So he simply slipped away from her and out of the room.

  He never saw her again. Nearly a year later, at home, the news came of her death. Joe’s mother said, “Poor old thing …”

  Joe’s father (whose grandmother Great-grandmother had been) said, “When I was a little boy, she was fun. I remember her. Jokey, then; full of tricks…”

  Joe’s mother said, “Well, she’d outlived all that. Outlived everything. Too old to be any use to herself—or to anyone else. A burden, only.”

  Joe said nothing, but he wished now that he had kissed her cheek, to say good-bye and to thank her.

  Still Jim and Silent Jim

  Old James Heslop came to live with his daughter-in-law when young Jim was still a baby. By then Mrs. Heslop was a widow with four children, young Jim being the last. She was glad to take in old Jim to live with the family. It was true that he overcrowded an already crowded little house, and since he could not get up and down stairs, he had to have the downstairs room which had the television set in it. On the other hand, he gave his daughter-in-law nearly all his old age pension, as his share of the housekeeping expenses. Besides, Mrs. Heslop, hard-worked and harassed and sharp-tongued even to her children, had a kind heart. “When you’re old, you need a real home,” she said. “This is Granddad’s as long as he wants it.”

  Old Jim was less trouble than might have been supposed. Take the television set, for instance. He was not at all interested in watching television, but as he was stone deaf, he did not mind the rest of the Heslop family having it on in his room. Indeed, as long as his chair was turned so that he need not look directly at the screen, he enjoyed it. “That makes a flickering on the walls, like firelight,” he would remark. “And you don’t always get the chance of an open fire to sit by these days.”

  Another convenience of old Jim’s deafness was that he did not mind the noisiness of the three elder Heslop children, and of young Jim, who never said much, anyway, he was very fond. It was a mutual affection. As soon as he could crawl, young Jim crawled around his grandfather’s chair, and he first stood upright, rocking on unsteady legs, the better to listen to the deep, booming voice that was all the louder for old Jim’s never hearing it himself. Young Jim listened before ever he could have understood what was being said; even later he very rarely attempted a word in reply. In summer, old Jim’s chair was put out into the front garden, and he sat in the sun, with his hands motionless on the rug over his knees, statuelike except for his jaw, which moved when he spoke, and young Jim roamed about the flower borders, listening but silent. That was how the pair got their nickname from the neighbors: Still Jim and Silent Jim.

  Young Jim was so silent that the neighbors said privately that he must be simpleminded, but when he went to school, he proved otherwise. He still spoke as little as possible, but he learned as well as anyone.

  Even before young Jim had learned to read properly, he began bringing books home to show to his grandfather. The old man’s eyesight was still good, and he read the text and looked at the pictures and told Silent Jim what he thought. Old Jim enjoyed books of history especially. He sighed and shook his head over them. “Ah! Those days!” he said, and it cannot always have been very clear to young Jim whether those days had been his grandfather’s or days of long, long before his grandfather’s birth. Old Jim pored over illustrations of the earliest motorcar and the penny-farthing bicycle, and before that the stagecoach, and the packhorse, and the Roman chariot. “Ah! Those days, those days! And the men that lived then! Why, they were giants on the earth in those days!” The neighbors, overhearing the old man, would smile and tap their foreheads, for they were sure that if Silent Jim were not simpleminded, Still Jim had become so—at least a little. The rest of the Heslop family did not believe it of their grandfather, but they paid no attention to him—that is, all except for young Jim. He listened closely, staring with eyes just the blue of his grandfather’s but not yet faded with extreme age.

  Old Jim had been over eighty when he moved into the Heslops’ television room, so he must have been over ninety when young Jim was about ten. By then young Jim would occasionally—if necessary—start a conversation. One day he planted himself in front of his grandfather and said: “If you’re over ninety, Granddad, you must be over sixty as well.” He did not shout—that would have been of no use—but he used an oddly still voice that seemed to creep into old Jim’s ears in a way that no bawling could have done. Besides, he stood where the old man could watch his lips, and he shaped them very distinctly in speaking.

  “Aye,” said old Jim.

  “Then you could belong to the Over Sixties’ Club up the village,” said young Jim, and cocked his head at him. Old Jim cocked his head back, and they stared at each other for a while.

  “There’s a boy at school,” said young Jim, “his granddad goes. They play dominoes, they do, and whist. They have cups of tea, they do, and birthday parties. It’s in the Church Hall.”

  “How’d I get there?” said old Jim.

  “Oh!” said young Jim, and stared and pondered, and at last wandered away. This was before the time that the eldest Heslop girl took up with nice young Steve from the garage, who could hire a car very cheaply for his friends.

  A day or two later young Jim came to his grandfather and said: “There’s wheelchairs that belong to the Over Sixties’ Club.”

  Old Jim nodded, as though to congratulate young Jim on a fine piece of investigation.

  “They cost nothing,” said young Jim.

  Old Jim nodded and stared at young Jim. This time young Jim nodded back.

  No more was said on the subject, but the following Friday young Jim pushed a wheelchair up to the Heslops’ house and as near to the front doorstep as it could be got. Then he went in to fetch his grandfather. Mrs. Heslop came running, in agitation. “Whatever are you thinking of, Jim!” she cried. “You’re never going to get your granddad into that chair—not with his heart, not with his joints, not at his age!”

  “I’m going to the Over Sixties’ Club,” said old Jim. He threw aside his rug, and with a stick in one hand and the other hand on his grandson’s shoulder, he struggled up out of his armchair.

  When old Jim stood up, you saw that he was a tall old man—“six foot, even allowing for shrinkage,” he always said, and then would add: “And my father was well over six foot, and my grandfather—that lies in the churchyard over in Little Barley—he was seven foot. You can see his tombstone there, like a giant’s. Ah! Those days!”

  Now, seeing him determinedly on his feet, Mrs. Heslop cried: “And look at yourself, Granddad! You’re a big, heavy man, even if you are skin and bone! Young Jim can never push you all through the village to the Over Sixties’ Club!”

  “I can,” said young Jim.

  Old Jim reached the wheelchair and let himself down into it; young Jim lifted his legs in after him and put the rug over them. Then they set off.

  “Anyway, you’re to be careful!” Mrs. Heslop called after them. “You’re to mind all that traffic on the London road!”

  Great Barley, where the Heslops lived, was a busy, built-up village, with a main stream of traffic running through it on the way to London. “Not like the old days,” said old Jim. “Great and Little Barley, they were both quiet then.” Little Barley, being several miles away and quite off the main road, was still quiet. Hardly anyone went there.

  Fortunately, to reach the Over Sixties’ Club at the other end of Great Barley village, Silent Jim and Still Jim never had to cross the main road at all. They arrived safely.

  The chief organizer welcomed them. She smiled in a kindly and congratulatory way at young Jim. “That must have been a long, hard push for a boy of your size. Now you must run off, and come b
ack at five o’clock to take your grandfather home again. Children can’t attend the club.”

  Young Jim stared at the chief organizer, answered nothing, and stood his ground. She said in a low voice to the other organizers, “I don’t think he can understand.” She turned to old Jim. “Your grandson …” she began.

  Slowly he moved his hand up to cup it around his ear and looked inquiring. “I’m deaf,” he explained, “deaf as a post, deaf as a stone.”

  “Your grandson …” shouted the chief organizer.

  Old Jim shook his head. “No, I shall never hear.” He looked at her pleasantly. “But you mustn’t think I’m unhappy. I’m very happy. If I have young Jim with me, I’m all right. Never you mind us.”

  The chief organizer gave up, and young Jim remained with his grandfather—the only child regularly to attend the Over Sixties’ Club. He sat by old Jim, watching him play at dominoes, holding his saucer for him when he drank tea, and picking the cake crumbs off his waistcoat. Young Jim himself drank tea and ate cake, but old Jim always paid for both of them, so that you could not say that the club was cheated of anything. Moreover, young Jim kept the wheelchair (they always used the same one) in apple-pie order, brushing out the bottom, where old Jim put his feet, polishing the metalwork, and oiling the little wheels in a vain attempt to get rid of their squeak. After a while the chief organizer said the wheelchair might be kept in the Heslops’ outhouse, which was done.

  At about this time Maisie Heslop began her friendship with young Steve from the garage. He suggested that one summer Sunday he should take the family on a day’s outing to the seaside; he would hire the car and drive.

  All the Heslops went. Mrs. Heslop sat at the front with Steve, and Maisie sat between them; she did not seem to mind being squeezed up a little. The other three children traveled at the back, and right across the backseat, underneath them all, traveled old Jim. It seemed hard on the old man—it was hard for them, too, because he was very bony—but he found it was the only way he could go in a car at all. “That’s not a patch on a wheelchair,” he whispered to young Jim, but what old Jim thought to be a whisper was something quite loud and clear. Everyone heard it, and Steve laughed, and Maisie went red with indignation.