The Rope and Other Stories Read online

  When she went, Mr Copley's niece left a spare key to his house. ‘Just in case,’ she said to Mrs Tillotson. ‘I'd be so grateful. In case Uncle gets worse in some way…’ Rather unwillingly (as Lydia saw), Mrs Tillotson took the key. She put it on the top shelf of the kitchen dresser, out of sight.

  In what way could Mr Copley be expected to get worse? There was no more banging or throwing of walking-sticks over the fence, although the children still played outside with Nutmeg, calling to him constantly by name. Lydia paused sometimes to listen by the fence: she was aware of someone treading the paths in the Copley garden next door. Someone who never spoke.

  Mrs Tillotson listened to her children playing in the garden and thought of things that Mr Copley's niece had told her – of one thing in particular. Perhaps it was an unimportant thing; perhaps her family would laugh at her for speaking of it. Yet she did speak of it at last, beginning in a rather roundabout way.

  ‘Do you know what the name was – the first name – of poor Mrs Copley?’

  They all looked blank, until Lydia said, ‘When we were new here, Mrs Copley – she was nice – asked me what my name was, and I said Lydia; and then I asked her what she was called, and I think she said Margaret.’

  ‘Margaret!’ said Mr Tillotson. ‘Of course, that was it! It was said at the funeral.’

  ‘Yes, Margaret,’ said Mrs Tillotson. ‘I just wondered if you'd realized: Margaret. All her family – and his family – called her that, except for Mr Copley. His niece told me he had a pet name for her. He always called her Meg.’ Mrs Tillotson repeated, ‘He always called her Meg.’

  ‘So?’ asked Mr Tillotson, as though puzzled; but Lydia thought he knew what her mother was driving at. He must remember, as they all remembered, that name – Meg – being called and shouted over and over again in the Tillotson garden. It would have been heard all over the Copley garden and even in the house of mourning itself.

  ‘So?’ Mr Tillotson repeated, angrily this time; but his wife would say no more. Joe and Sam looked confused and rather scared; Lydia was not confused. She stroked Nutmeg and wished that they had given him another name.

  Nothing more was said on the subject.

  At about this time there must have been a great deal of telephoning between old Mr Copley and his niece. One day the Tillotsons heard that, after all, he had decided to move: he had agreed to live with his niece's family.

  So one Sunday morning there was old Mr Copley, white-faced and wild-eyed, waiting at his own front gate with a small suitcase. When his niece's car at last drew up, he bundled himself and his suitcase into it at once. The Tillotsons could see that there was some kind of quite violent argument in the car between uncle and niece, that delayed their departure. In the end, they drove off; and that was the last that the Tillotson family ever saw of old Mr Copley.

  Later, on the telephone, the niece explained that Mr Copley had been adamant about leaving the house at once and for good, there and then, and never going back inside it. That was what the argument in the car had been about. Of course, the niece would have to come down again in a week or so to clear the house of its contents and put it up for sale. (That was when she would call on the Tillotsons to reclaim the spare key.)

  Meanwhile, the Tillotson family had its own worries: the puppy had disappeared. He had a dog-sized cat-door from the house into the garden, so that he could come and go as he pleased. The garden itself, including the front garden, had been completely dog-proofed against escape. Yet he had gone.

  Nutmeg had vanished between their all going to bed – rather late – on Saturday night and their coming down for breakfast on Sunday morning. That was the very Sunday of Mr Copley's going, so, for a short time, suspicion fell on him. ‘Mr Copley's stolen our Nutmeg!’ Joe had cried. ‘He's taken him with him.’

  ‘Don't be ridiculous!’ Mrs Tillotson said. ‘He got into that car with a suitcase, nothing else.’

  ‘Perhaps Nutmeg was inside the suitcase,’ suggested Sam, who seemed to think this possibility would cheer everyone up.

  ‘Alive or dead?’ their father inquired sarcastically.

  Sam burst into tears; and their mother forbade them to say or think any more about Mr Copley and his suitcase.

  One thing was certain: if Nutmeg had not escaped, he must have been taken. That would have been quite easy if the family were not about. For the puppy would always come, wagging his tail, to anyone who appeared at the front gate. A thief had only to lean over and scoop the puppy up.

  The Tillotsons told the police of their loss, and put ‘Lost’ notices (with mention of ‘Reward’) all around the neighbourhood. But nobody brought news of Nutmeg.

  That was on Monday; and by Monday night the Tillotson family were grieving as if for the puppy's death. Mrs Tillotson tried to cheer them: ‘He may still be brought back, you know.’ Everyone tried to believe that.

  Everyone except Lydia. She went to bed without feeling the hope that her mother had suggested, and fell into a blackness of sleep. She did not exactly dream, if dreams are seen. In blackness she saw nothing, only heard voices – Tillotson voices shrieking, ‘Meg – Meg – Meg!’ and old Mr Copley's frantic voice when he threw the walking-stick, and then another voice, very quiet and calm, that she thought at first was the voice of Mrs Copley talking pleasantly to a little girl. But no – it was not that. It was not a particularly pleasant – or unpleasant – voice: it was just an extraordinarily close voice. A voice that seemed to come from inside herself, to be herself. The voice, calm, unhurried, told her that there was no time to be lost. She knew what she had to do.

  Lydia woke.

  She switched on the light and saw from her clock that there was plenty of time yet before her parents would rouse. She got out of bed and drew back the curtains: outside was dark, but she knew that that was probably the effect of the electric light. She turned out the light and looked again: sure enough, outside was now a grey half-dark that would gradually become the dawn. There was already just enough light outside to see by.

  She dressed and crept downstairs. In the kitchen she reached up to the top shelf of the dresser where she had seen her mother hide the Copley front door key, and took it. Very quietly she let herself out of the house, and then out through the Tillotson front gate, and then in through the Copley front gate and up to the Copley front door, and then a turning of the key in the lock and she stepped into the Copley hall.

  Here she paused, half-frightened, half-triumphant at what she had already achieved so easily. And what did she mean to do next?

  She was going to do what her parents would certainly not have approved of: she would search the house from top to bottom for Nutmeg, and she must begin at once. Ahead of her were the stairs, and she must climb them to search bedroom after bedroom. She would come to the bedroom where Mrs Copley had died: she must search that too.

  She had set off across the hall towards the stairs before she noticed the stair-cupboard. Its door stood open, and there was a muddle of something lying on the hall floor that seemed to have come from inside the cupboard. It looked perhaps like someone lying there, half inside and half outside the cupboard, and swathed or piled with clothing. That was a horrid idea, so Lydia very quickly and firmly went closer, and there was enough daylight by now to see that the muddle was of clothing only – clothing that came from inside the cupboard.

  She peered inside the cupboard.

  It was very dark inside, and she wished she had brought a torch with her. But if this stair-cupboard were like their own cupboard – and all the houses were built alike – it had its own electric light. But would the electricity have been cut off by old Mr Copley before he left? She felt up and down just inside the door, where their own light switch would have been. She found a switch, pressed it, and the inside of the cupboard was glaring at her.

  Lydia found that she was standing at the foot of a mountain of clothes – all women's clothes, as far as she could see: blouses and jerseys, and a sparkly party dress that glittered
in the bright light, and underwear and tights, and a dressing-gown, and skirts, and high-heeled shoes, and a lacy nightdress, and silk scarves – all piled high in an enormous heap of garments that someone had hurled higgledy-piggledy into this stair-cupboard, not managing to get quite everything in anyway, leaving some half-outside – and then perhaps rushing away.

  Surely the only person who could have done this strange thing must have been old Mr Copley himself?

  Lydia gazed in wonder, then was about to turn away to begin her proper search, when she heard a tiny sound like a mouse scratching the floor-boards. It came from inside the cupboard.

  She stood quite still. Listened.

  Dared to hope.

  The feeble sound came again. She whispered: ‘Meg?’ and saw the slightest movement among the clothing towards the edge of the heap.

  Then she was on her knees, scrabbling at the pile, burrowing into it, her fingers tangling in folds of clothing and the snares of ribbons and belts. She fought her way through everything until her fingers found something small and warm – and also bony – that moved, although feebly: ‘Meg!’

  The little dog had been tied by someone with a string to one of the pipes at the back of the stair-cupboard; and then that same someone – old Mr Copley, two days ago – had frenziedly thrown over the puppy all the contents of dead Mrs Copley's wardrobe and chest-of-drawers.

  Lydia untied the string and, with both hands round the puppy's body, picked it up gently and cuddled it to her. It still lived. She carried it into the kitchen and ran a teaspoonsful of water into the palm of her hand. She held her hand under the puppy's muzzle, and it licked.

  ‘Darling Nutmeg,’ she whispered, ‘you're safe now. You're all right now.’

  She was beginning to cry, her tears falling on the puppy's head and settling among the hairs of his fur.

  She heard, without bothering, the sound of footsteps hesitating at the open front door and then coming into the hall, and then stopping again. ‘Lydia?’ Her father's voice sounded anxious and at the same time angry.

  She could not answer him, but he heard some sound from the kitchen and found her there. Now he was truly furious – until he saw the puppy.

  ‘What on earth –!’

  She told him about the stair-cupboard, the burial mound of Mrs Copley's clothes, the string tied to the pipe.

  Her father said, ‘No – oh, no!’ as though he could not bear to believe what he was hearing. He covered his face with his hands.

  ‘But, Dad,’ said Lydia, ‘Nutmeg's going to be all right. I'm sure he is. There's no need to tell the police or anything.’ She was remembering her father's rage at the time of the thrown walking-stick. ‘We can take him to the vet just to make sure he's going to be all right. But he is going to be.’

  Her father took his hands from his face, and said: ‘Poor, poor creature…’ At first Lydia thought he meant the puppy, but he went on, always to himself: ‘Poor crazy old man… poor crazy old creature…’

  He pulled himself together. ‘Come on, Lyddy. Your mum's already worried to death about where you might be. Bring the dog and we'll go home.’

  Lydia held the puppy close, and her father put an arm round them both. So they left the Copley house together, locking up behind them as they went.

  Only a little later that morning the whole Tillotson family took Nutmeg to the vet. Lydia had been sure that Nutmeg was going to be all right, and the vet confirmed that. He gave them exact instructions on how they should feed him and exercise him: at first, very carefully until he was strong again.

  In due course, Mr Copley's niece came to clear the house. (The Tillotsons said nothing about what had happened.) The house was sold to a young couple with a baby, with whom the Tillotsons were immediately on first-name terms. The baby would love playing with Nutmeg when it was older.

  Nutmeg kept his full name, but Mr Tillotson did not want him to be called Meg any more. He forbade it. He would not discuss his reasons, and Mrs Tillotson stayed out of any argument.

  So the puppy's name was shortened in the opposite direction, to Nuts, or Nutter, or Nutty. This was confusing for the puppy at first, but he soon got used to his new name. And, after all, as Lydia said, the new name suited him very well. He was a little dog easily excited to madness, barking at the top of his voice, quite crazy with the joy of being alive.

  Bluebag

  My great-aunt – Aunt Carrie – simply loved our washing-machine. She'd sit by it while it hummed and thundered, and tell stories of her youth, when there weren't such things. In those days there were huge coppers for boiling clothes and tubs for lesser washes and also dollies and mangles and great bars of yellow soap and bluebag.

  The story of bluebag and Spot was one of my Aunt Carrie's favourites. Spot had been her dog when she was a girl, and bluebag – well, it almost describes itself. It was the size of a very large lump of sugar, solid blue, and you bought it tied up in a white cotton rag. It was dipped into the water when white things were being washed: the blueness seeped out into the water, and so the white things washed whiter. Aunt Carrie's mother always kept bluebag for laundry-work, and for a second purpose, ‘to which’ (my Aunt Carrie liked mysteriously to say) ‘I will come later in my story.’

  One sunny summer's day, long ago, Aunt Carrie was at a loose end. She looked thoughtfully at Spot, who was one of those dogs mostly white but with a few spots of brown and black. He was a small dog, and usually very fond of my Aunt Carrie.

  My aunt addressed him: ‘Now, Spot, you'd like to be nice and clean and white and fluffy, wouldn't you? Of course you would!’

  If Spot could have spoken, he would have answered, ‘Carrie, no!’

  He disliked water, except for drinking. He was suspicious even of the fish-pond at the bottom of the garden, and that was what a dog might call natural water, clear at the top and deep mud at the bottom, where the water weeds rooted themselves. As for a large quantity of clean tap-water gently steaming in an old tin bath out on the lawn – that horrified him. He knew what it meant.

  And that was exactly what my aunt Carrie had in mind. She chose the longest dog-lead, clipped it to Spot's collar and then tied the other end to an apple tree on the edge of the lawn. Escape for Spot became impossible.

  My Aunt Carrie fetched the tin bath and filled it with warm water, transported in jug after jug from the house. Spot sat and watched her. His ears drooped.

  She fetched the soap and a scrubbing-brush; also the bluebag. My aunt's reasoning was that people used bluebag to wash white clothes whiter; so why not use it in washing Spot?

  The sun was hot, but it's always best to give a dog a brisk rubbing down immediately after a bath. My aunt needed some kind of towel. Her mother was fussy about the family towels, so her father, who occasionally washed Spot if he were muddy or smelly, always made do with a clean sack. There were plenty of those, my aunt said. Her father used them in the apple-room in the old part of the house: in winter, he spread them over the harvested apples to keep the frost off. As the family ate its way through the apples, the sacks were taken up, one by one, shaken, folded loosely, and stored on top of each other in a neat pile.

  So Aunt Carrie went along to the apple-room to fetch a sack. By now, of course, all the apples were eaten and the apple-room was empty except for the mound of sacks in one corner. The room, so cold in winter, was now stuffily hot. The one window had jammed shut long ago, and the only ventilation was through a broken pane of glass. A wasp – obviously the apple-room was a pleasant place for them, even empty – sailed out through the hole as Aunt Carrie was looking, and another sailed in.

  The topmost sack of the pile looked newish and clean, but – to be on the safe side – my Aunt Carrie decided to shake it to get rid of any leafy, apple-stalk dust there might be. She took a good grip of the sack, yanked it off the pile and, with the same movement, gave it a quick, strong shake.

  At this point my Aunt Carrie, who prided herself on her grasp of suspense in storytelling, would pause to ask �
��

  How long does it take to give a quick, strong shake to a folded sack?

  One second?

  Two seconds? Perhaps three?

  For one of those seconds she had turned her head away, to avoid getting any apple-dust into her eyes. But something warned her – there was something odd, perhaps, in the feel of the sack – even before the end of that second. She turned her head quickly to look, and – even as she looked – flung the sack from her.

  For the shaking open of the folded sack had in one instant both shown and shattered a thing that had been built within the concealment of the folds – a rounded, dun-coloured structure about the size of a child's head. As the sack shot from her fingers across the apple-room, torn pieces of papery walls and roofings broke from it, and in the ruined chambers and passageways she glimpsed living things no longer than her thumbnail – some smaller – moving and squirming and crawling. And some had wings and began to fly…

  Yellow and black-barred, they began to fly, and she knew them. Wasps and wasps and more wasps – more and more wasps than she had ever seen together before in her whole life.

  Never before or since (said my aunt in a kind of horrified wonder) had she seen a lived-in wasps' nest so close, so open to her inspection; and she hoped never to see one so again. Within the seconds of revelation the sack went flying, she went flying, and the wasps came flying after her. Before she was fairly out of the apple-room – and she was moving fast, fast – two or three of the quicker-witted wasps had caught up with her and stung her. She was wearing only a sleeveless dress and her legs were bare, so it was easy for them.