The Rope and Other Stories Read online

  ‘What's she scared of?’

  ‘She's a refugee,’ said Jeremy, as though that explained everything.

  ‘But where's she a refugee from? Why's she one?’ asked Nicky.

  Jeremy was growing impatient of this conversation. ‘Some war zone abroad – civil war. It was all on telly ages ago.’

  Nicky didn't quite disbelieve his grandmother, but she could get things muddled. He asked, ‘But what happened?’

  ‘Soldiers. They burnt the village. They shot everybody. They killed all this girl's family. There was a pile of dead bodies, but the girl was underneath everybody, so she wasn't killed. People rescued her, and she was brought to this country because of the relative here. Don't you ever follow the news?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Nicky.

  ‘We do Current Affairs at my school,’ said Jeremy Gillespie.

  When they had filled their baskets, they went back to the house. Mrs Chapman weighed her share of the fruit and prepared to make greengage jam. Jeremy Gillespie took his share home, but Nicky said he would stay with his grandmother and help her with the jam. Jeremy Gillespie did not seem to mind: he said that at home he could begin to finalize his Project.

  Nicky would have enjoyed the jam-making, but he and his grandmother worked almost in silence. She refused absolutely to talk about what had happened that morning at the greengage tree. When he tried her with even one question, she wept again. He had only been wondering whether the little girl might ever come again. He would like to have said he was sorry. He would like to have said something that perhaps would make things better for her. He would like to have done something.

  He could have given her something, as a present. Perhaps even his own birthday crayons. But he knew that a present was a stupid idea – stupid! A present wouldn't make up for not having a mother or a father or anyone else any more. All your family killed and lying dead on top of you; you underneath them all, alive. Oh, a present was a stupid idea - stupid – stupid!

  He tried not to think of the little girl. He thought of the greengage jam he was helping to make. There would be a pot of it to take home to his family. And when he got home there would be planning for his birthday the next day. And the next day would be his birthday…

  He was going home tomorrow. This was his last night in his grandmother's house. Later, in bed, he thought of being at home again, and of his birthday and his birthday party and all the presents. And suddenly he was thinking again of the little girl at the Early Transparent tree and of her stare that looked at him and through him and far beyond him. It was true that nothing could ever make up for what had happened to her in that country where she had once lived. Nothing.

  In the quietness of the night he lay listening to the snoring of his grandparents in their bedroom.

  After a while he slipped out of bed and rummaged in his case until he found the birthday crayons. He decided to unwrap them, so that it would be quite plain what they were and that at least they were harmless. The rustling of his unwrapping sounded so loud that he was afraid it might waken the sleepers, but they snored on.

  Carrying the crayons, he crept downstairs and out of the house. This was truly night-time; but by starlight he could still see his way down to the Early Transparent tree. He reached the tree and set the crayons on the grass at its foot, then thought that they might look accidental – left there by mistake. So he picked fruit from the tree and heaped it on top; then thought the squirrels would take the fruit, anyway. So he reversed the heap, with the crayon pack balanced on top of the fruit.

  Then he went back to the house and to bed. There was still the same snoring from his grandparents' bedroom, one snore gently sighing, the other seeming to snatch at each rasping breath as though it were its last. As he listened, it seemed to him that probably, after all, he had just done a stupid, stupid thing. He fell asleep, half-wishing that he had not done what he had done.

  The next morning, after breakfast, the usual friend came to be with old Mr Chapman, so that Mrs Chapman could see Nicky off on the train.

  Nicky positioned himself in front of his grandfather and said his goodbye. The old man looked at him and it seemed to Nicky that his grandfather also looked through him and beyond him. But at least he spared his grandson a wintry smile. That done, and at the last moment: ‘I'd like to take an Early Transparent for the journey,’ said Nicky.

  ‘Take several from the bowl,’ said his grandmother. ‘Hurry!’ But Nicky was already on his way down to the tree itself. When he had almost reached it, he stopped. He daren't look. He so wanted this to be all right after all. Just this one little thing.

  He looked. And there was nothing at the foot of the Early Transparent tree. She had come, after all, and she had taken his gift.

  He picked his Early Transparents for the journey and rushed back to the house.

  Later, in the train, he thought of the crayons and their intense colours and what you could do with them, and he thought that perhaps – just perhaps – she really would use them, and enjoy them, as he would have done. He hoped so.

  The Fir Cone

  The door of what was now Charlie's cupboard would not shut.

  Not a crisis, you might think. Not even a tricky situation, really.

  Certainly absurd for a mother to think of a trap of any kind. So Mrs Waring reassured herself, controlling her breathing. She had to deal only with a cupboard over-full of old toys.

  She dragged forward her huge, empty cardboard box (the carton in which a new school TV had been delivered). She had supposed that she and her carton and – of course – Charlie himself would be alone together in front of the cupboard. But here were her two elder children as well: Sandra and Bill had drifted downstairs quite separately, it appeared, but as though both expected something interesting. Sandra leant against one door-jamb, attending minutely to a fingernail; Bill leant on the other side, staring and chewing in the way that particularly irritated Mrs Waring.

  She decided to ignore the onlookers.

  ‘Now, Charlie,’ she said. ‘Let's just see.’

  She laid her hand flat on the cupboard door and pressed steadily. The door went back; it even seemed to click shut for a moment. Then, the hand-pressure released, it sprang open again, gaping wider than before. Something small fell lightly from the cupboard to the floor and rolled a little.

  ‘There!’ said Mrs Waring. ‘You see what I mean? An old fir cone that one of you was hoarding. Absolute rubbish. The door won't shut because of all the stuff in the cupboard, and most of it rubbish!’

  She had stepped forward to pick up the fir cone, but Charlie was before her – picked it up and put it into his pocket. ‘Mine,’ he said. His hand remained in his pocket, round the fir cone, feeling its broken tips, its age. Long ago he had picked it up under the great green tent of its parent tree. There were ducks quacking at a little distance – they had a whole lake to swim about on. And he had picked up his fir cone and kept it ever since.

  Charlie was now standing between his mother and the cupboard, and the cupboard door was slowly swinging open to its widest.

  The inside of the cupboard became visible to them all. It was crammed. Along the front edge of the top shelf lay an exhausted doll, one arm dangling down towards the next shelf; lower, a fire-engine, unmanned; a skipping-rope frayed almost to a thread in the middle; some sea-shells in a see-through raffia bag; a climbing monkey with the remains of his ladder; a dirty Hallowe'en outfit crammed into a shoebox; several My Pretty Ponies –

  ‘Such old, old stuff!’ Mrs Waring was saying. ‘Outgrown, all of it! Now, Charlie, I promised I wouldn't throw out anything that belonged to you, without your permission. But wouldn't you like some of your better things – say, the fire-engine that you never play with now – to go into the jumble sale?’ (The school jumble sale was being held that afternoon.) ‘Wouldn't you like some other, younger child to enjoy one of your old toys? Wouldn't you, Charlie?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie, ‘I wouldn't. I just hate other youn
ger children.’

  Mrs Waring sighed. She braced herself again and took a firmer grip of her carton. ‘All right, then. We'll just get rid of the rubbishy stuff that belonged to Sandra and Bill years ago.’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie.

  ‘But Sandra and Bill don't want any of it now,’ said Mrs Waring. She turned sharply on them: ‘You don't, do you?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Sandra, and Bill said, ‘No concern of ours at all now.’ There was something about the way Bill said that last word – something in the way they both watched that made Mrs Waring feel uneasy.

  She turned back to Charlie. ‘So we'll just get rid of their stuff, anyway.’ She had the doll in mind. She stepped towards the cupboard.

  Charlie sprang in front of it, his arms spread wide in its defence: ‘No!’

  Mrs Waring remained reasonable. ‘Remember, Charlie, I've promised I won't get rid of anything that belongs to you.’ (Mrs Waring prided herself on her straightness with her children: she always said that a promise was a promise.) ‘Only Sandra's old stuff and Bill's will go –’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘You can't take anything. You haven't my permission. And it all belongs to me – all of it.’

  ‘That's not true,’ said Mrs Waring.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Charlie. ‘Because they've given me all of their stuff. So it does all belong to me.’ He added, ‘Since last night.’ He glanced at Sandra and Bill.

  Bill said, ‘Yeah. It was last night.’

  Mrs Waring tried to speak, but could not.

  Sandra looked almost sorry for her mother. She said, ‘Charlie just asked us to give him all the old toy-cupboard stuff that was ours, and we did. So you see…’

  There was what seemed a long silence, a stillness, in which they were all looking at their mother.

  Then Mrs Waring groaned; she knew that she had been beaten. Charlie was saying, over and over again, loudly, ‘You've promised – you've promised – you've promised –’

  Sandra said, ‘You needn't be so mean about it, Charlie.’ And to her mother: ‘I think I might make us some tea.’

  Bill said, ‘I'll look after the box.’ He began to drag it from the room.

  Their mother said faintly, ‘It might as well go out with the dustbins.’

  The three of them left Charlie kneeling in front of his toy-cupboard, alone in his triumph.

  For a while he gloated.

  He had wanted everything – or rather, he had wanted everything to stay there. To stay there for always.

  He remembered the fir cone in his pocket, and thought of putting it back in the cupboard, but the fir cone – the feel of it under his fingers in his pocket – made him think back to the ducks and the lake and the tent-tree. Across the grass to the great tree his mother and father had danced him between them. They were all three breathless from laughing. And he had picked up his fir cone and kept it ever since.

  This very afternoon his father would be saying to him, ‘What shall we do? Where shall we go?’ and he could answer that he wanted to go back – back to the tree and the lake and the ducks and the happiness. His father had been there, so he would know the place.

  This afternoon his mother would be at the school jumble sale, organizing.

  He could hear his mother in the kitchen, talking to Sandra – but Sandra was doing most of the talking, in a soothing sort of voice.

  He began to wish that he hadn't, perhaps, been so hard – yes, perhaps, so mean – to his mother; but, on the other hand, it had, perhaps, been necessary. And, anyway, perhaps, it wasn't too late. Thoughtfully he took the shoebox out of the cupboard and removed the Hallowe'en kit. Then he began to put into the box a few of the things he could, after all, most easily spare, perhaps: certainly the doll, and a couple of the Ponies, several of the less attractive sea-shells from their bag…

  The voices from the kitchen continued. They had been joined by Bill.

  Bill was laughing, chuckling away.

  Charlie heard his name and began to listen intently, his hands still over the partly-filled shoebox.

  Bill was saying, ‘What a kid! You have to hand it to him!’

  Sandra said, ‘It was childish – childish!’

  His mother, steady-voiced by now, said, ‘Partly I blame myself. For he is still a child, after all – very young for his age, too…’

  Charlie scooped everything out of the shoebox and thrust it back into the cupboard. His hands were trembling with anger. He left the box and the Hallowe'en stuff on the floor and the cupboard door wide open, and stamped his way out of the room and up the stairs.

  They heard him - they could not have failed to. The voices from the kitchen stopped. Then his mother called, ‘Charlie, remember: you're not to go to meet your father without Sandra.’ And Sandra said something about being ready soon. She spoke in that soothing voice that Charlie hated.

  He went on hating his sister, with fervour but in sullen silence.

  Later that morning, sitting in the Tube going across London, with Sandra beside him as escort, Charlie still hated his sister; but he was thinking ahead to the meeting with his father. Would he be there? Once he hadn't been – missed the coach, he said. Then Charlie would have been stranded, if Sandra or Bill hadn't been with him. That's what his mother had said afterwards to his father on the telephone. And his father had said back –

  Oh, Charlie thought, he was sick of them both. And of Sandra and Bill.

  All the same, he did want to be with his father again. And he thrust his hand into his pocket and felt the fir cone there and remembered the ducks and the lake and the happiness.

  And, anyway, at the coach station his father was there, just descended from the coach and looking about him – and saw Charlie – and then Sandra with him: ‘Sandy!’

  But Sandra said hurriedly, ‘Sorry, Dad –’ and then about some friends she was due to go out with. Charlie could tell that his father was really disappointed, and he asked after Bill (who was at his Saturday afternoon match). Then Sandra said goodbye and left Charlie and his father to their afternoon together.

  It was beginning to rain, and his father said they might as well start with something to eat, and Charlie chose Chinese. When the noodles and the bamboo shoots and all the rest were eaten, Charlie sat back in his chair and smiled at his father, and his father smiled back at him. The moment seemed just right, so Charlie said that what he'd really like to do next was go somewhere they'd been before – a special place; and (feeling for the fir cone in his pocket) he mentioned the tree and the lake and the ducks.

  ‘I don't know what it was called, but we went there by train. You and me and – and Mum.’ Casually he brought the fir cone from his pocket and trundled it among the bottles of soy sauce and other things.

  ‘By train?’ said his father. ‘So it was outside London?’

  ‘I don't know, really,’ said Charlie. ‘And when we got there we had to pay to get in. But there wasn't a queue to get in, although you kept saying there would be. Oh, and there were animals – strange beasts. In a row.’

  ‘It sounds like Whipsnade Zoo, if there were wild animals and it was outside London. But I don't remember us ever taking you to Whipsnade…’ His father frowned, pondering.

  Charlie said, ‘And there was a gapoda.’

  ‘A what?’

  Charlie repeated, but in a fluster, ‘A gappy-something.’ In his fright he gestured aimlessly with his hand and knocked over the soy sauce bottle and that sent flying a little bunch of wooden toothpicks. ‘A gadopa. As tall, as high as a house, and with sticky-out bits all the way up, like – like fins.’

  Suddenly his father was angry. ‘What rubbish you talk! A boy of your age! I only hope it isn't something your mother –’

  He broke off with the same suddenness. ‘Look, Charlie, we've only got the afternoon, and it's raining hard. We can't go far, and it might be better not to get too wet. Right?’

  Shakily Charlie said, ‘All right.’

  ‘So what about a cinema?’<
br />
  ‘All right.’

  ‘And I'll get us some popcorn.’

  ‘All right – I mean, thank you,’ said Charlie.

  So they went to the cinema and ate popcorn and watched a horror film that Charlie chose; and afterwards they had quite a large snack in a snack-bar. By then Charlie was rather enjoying his afternoon, after all; but by now his father was saying it was time to deliver Charlie back home, and get himself back to the coach station.

  They went home by way of the school, because Charlie said his mother might still be at the jumble sale.

  ‘All right,’ said his father.

  And so she was.

  They went in through the school gate as the last of the jumble sale shoppers were coming out. One or two said ‘Hello!’ to Charlie, but nobody greeted his father. It was so long ago that he used sometimes to be at the school gate.

  As soon as they entered the assembly hall, Charlie remembered the smell of other jumble sales. There was a dustiness, and an oldness and a kind of under-smell that Mrs Waring always said angrily was the smell of unwashed clothes. (The clothes that her children had grown out of were always washed and even ironed before she allowed them to go as jumble.)

  All the chairs usually in the hall had been packed away, replaced by big trestle tables on which the jumble – mostly clothes, some china and books and toys – had been laid out. People had queued to be first into the sale when the doors opened. Then they had stormed in and rushed at the tables and scrabbled and clawed to get whatever was worth getting before someone else reached it.

  So by now – the end of the afternoon – very little was left, and a good deal of that was on the floor and trampled on. The only person still sorting through and still haggling to buy this or that for a very few pence was the old rag-woman.

  The jumble sale helpers were still there, of course, fed up but at least satisfied because the sale was over and it was only a matter of counting the money taken. And centrally among the trestles stood Charlie's mother, who was the organizer. Her arms and hands dangled as though their muscles were exhausted with the battle against snatch-and-grab. Her hair was all over the place, and her face was tired.