She saw Charlie and she smiled, and then abruptly stopped smiling, and Charlie knew that she had caught sight of his father standing behind him.
‘Well?’ she called.
Charlie edged past the trestle tables to reach her.
‘Well?’ she repeated.
‘We went to the pictures,’ said Charlie, ‘and we ate Chinese. I had sweet-sour and fried noodles and – and –’ (he knew he would get it wrong, because now he was nervous) ‘and – you know – shampoo boots –’
‘What?’ said his mother.
Charlie knew that he could not speak again. If he tried, then he might begin to cry.
‘Bamboo shoots,’ said his father from behind him. He said nothing else at all, but his hand touched the back of Charlie's neck and Charlie knew that meant, Goodbye until next time. And Charlie did not turn to see him go.
‘Charlie,’ said his mother, ‘I can't come away at once, but I shan't be long. You can go the rest of the way home by yourself, can't you? It's only a step. Sandra will still be there and she'll let you in.’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘All right.’ But he did not move: he stood there, his hands in his pockets.
‘Is something wrong?’ asked his mother. ‘What is it, Charlie?’
‘Nothing,’ said Charlie in a choked voice. ‘Nothing.’
Nothing in either pocket, where his hand had searched for comfort.
Nothing; and in his mind's eye he saw the Chinese tablecloth and the muddle of empty dishes and the toppled soy sauce bottle and the scatter of toothpicks, and somewhere in that confusion he had left his fir cone.
Because of the fuss about the gapoda, because his father had shouted at him, he had lost his head and forgotten all about his fir cone. Forgotten it. Left it. Lost it.
‘Charlie –’ his mother began, but Charlie had already turned away – was gone. He ran headlong for home. It seemed to him that he reached it only in the nick of time, for the sobbing was beginning. He put his finger on the bell and kept it there, so that the bell rang and rang and rang through the house.
Sandra, in the bathroom, had just finished washing her hair for her evening out. The screaming of the bell irritated her, for she was late – oh! she was always late – and it could only be Charlie down there. She wrapped her hair in a towel-turban and sailed downstairs to open the door. By now the ringing had ceased, but only because someone was hammering at the door – hammer – hammer – hammer with bare fists –
‘What on earth –’ she cried as she flung open the door; but then she staggered back, speechless, as Charlie flung himself inside in a storm of weeping. He landed up in his sister's arms, for she was too startled to remember her irritation; and he was too distraught to care about anything.
Clutching him in alarm, Sandra said, ‘What is it, Charlie? What's happened? Was it Dad? Did he say something awful?’
‘I've lost it!’ Charlie sobbed. ‘Now I shall never go there!’
‘Lost what? Go where? Oh, Charlie, what's the matter?’
‘They'll say we never went there. They'll say there's no such place. They'll say I made it all up. Dad thinks that. Mum will, too. But there was such a place. There was – there was!’
‘What place, Charlie? Try not to cry, and then you can tell me properly. Tell me about it – just tell me, Charlie!’
Charlie calmed himself enough to tell her. About the lake and the ducks and the tent-tree and the gapoda-building and the stone monsters. ‘And we went there by train and all the time Dad was singing a little song he'd just made up about queuing to get in and Mum was laughing – and we didn't have to queue, anyway. We just paid some money and walked in.’
Sandra had been listening very attentively. Now she asked, ‘Were there greenhouses, Charlie? Big ones – enormous?’
‘Yes, I forgot about those. We went into one, but it was too steamy-hot and full of huge plants right up to its roof. I liked it better outside.’
‘Charlie, this is important. Think carefully about the song Dad made up about queuing: what exactly did he sing?’
Rather fretfully, Charlie said, ‘I've just told you.’
‘Try to remember the exact words. The exact words, Charlie.’
‘Well… He sang over and over again: “We'll be queueing – queueing – queueing –” No, it wasn't quite that. He sang: “We'll have to queue – to queue – to queue –” Something like that.’
‘You're sure it wasn't “We're going to…” instead of “We'll have to…”?’
‘That's it,’ agreed Charlie. ‘It's easier to sing, isn't it? “We're going to queue – to queue – to queue –”’ He broke off suddenly: ‘But it doesn't matter, all that.’ His tears began to fall again.
Sandra clutched him and shook him, to make him listen. ‘It does matter, Charlie – it does! Because on the other side of London there's a place called Kew, with gardens – the most enormous gardens, with huge trees and huge glasshouses and a lake with ducks and a Chinese pagoda – not a gapoda, Charlie! – and you get to Kew Gardens by a special railway – the North London Railway. Oh, and the stone monsters are from the Queen's Coronation, ages ago. And that's where you went – that's what Dad was singing: “We're going to Kew – to Kew – to Kew –”’
Charlie stared at her, angrily. ‘How do you know all that? You've just made it up. It's not true.’
‘It is true. Because I went. There was a school expedition for the Infants. Just to Kew Gardens.’
‘Why didn't Bill ever go with a school expedition to Kew?’
‘He did, when he was an Infant.’
‘Then why didn't I go when I was an Infant?’
‘Because you were having chicken-pox. They didn't tell you what you were missing. But when you were all right again, I suppose Mum and Dad thought they'd take you anyway, all on your own.’
‘So the place is really there…’ He believed her now. ‘So I could go with them again some day.’
‘Well, no,’ said Sandra.
‘No?’
‘Charlie, you know perfectly well they wouldn't take you, not the two of them together. Dad would take you, or Mum would. But not both of them together. Not now. Never again.’
‘Never again…’ said Charlie.
While they were speaking, the front gate had clanged and footsteps hurried to the front door, which Charlie had not closed behind him. Bill now flung it wide as he rushed in, dishevelled, excited by his afternoon, and roared up the stairs. He shouted back to them that he'd only come to collect something, then he was off again with his mates. They must tell Mum what he was up to.
‘Up to!’ Sandra murmured satirically, as she began to unwind her turban to shake out her damp hair. ‘Charlie, I must go. I'm late already. Mum'll be back any minute now. Then you'll be all right.’ She went back upstairs.
Charlie was left standing by the front door, while upstairs buzzed with blithe preparations for departure.
He was still grieving at loss: he had lost his fir cone… (Bill roared past him again on his way out: ‘Eer chup, Misery! It may never happen!’ Charlie easily worked out what that was supposed to mean. Only the stale old tease.)
But at least he had gained knowledge. There was a song – only a little song, but now it made sense: the Kew song. And it had power in it, too. A chant, an incantation, a spell… (Sandra swept down the stairs: ‘You OK now?’ She did not wait for an answer but was through the hall and out through the front door, calling back to him: ‘Wait in for Mum, remember!’ The front door clicked shut behind her.)
Abruptly the house was silent. Empty except for Charlie.
He stood there, thinking for a while. Then he shut his eyes, and opened his mouth to whisper: ‘I'm going to Kew – to Kew – to Kew –’
He stood on soft green turf and the gardens lay before him: the glasshouses (he did not forget them this time) and the Queen's Beasts and the Chinese pagoda and the lake and the ducks and the great green tent-trees. And the people – all visitors to the gardens, an
d among them a little boy being jumped along between his parents. All three were laughing, and, when the child was set down, he stooped and picked up a fir cone and put it into his pocket…
‘That's me,’ said Charlie aloud, and was amazed to think how small – how very young – he had been. He might go to Kew again; but he could never be that age again, and do those things again that a little boy could do with his mum and his dad. With his mum and his dad who had been happy to be together with him. Sandra had said, Never again. And he saw now why she had said that.
He opened his eyes, and stood for a moment, thinking. His mother would be back any moment; he hadn't much time. He moved swiftly from the hall into the kitchen and then out by the back door to where the dustbins stood.
When Mrs Waring walked in, the hall was empty. She called anxiously up the stairs: ‘Charlie?’
‘Here!’ The answer was from downstairs. She pushed open a door, and there he was, kneeling in front of his old toy-cupboard with the big TV carton beside him. He was packing it with objects from the cupboard.
‘Oh, Charlie!’ His mother sounded as if she might begin to cry.
He couldn't bear more of that. Without turning round, he said in a voice that he made cruel: ‘Of course, you realize it's all far too late for your jumble sale? You realize that?’
‘Oh, no, it isn't, Charlie – at least, it's too late for the school one, but there are lots of jumble sales going on all the time, every Saturday. I can always take good jumble somewhere useful.’
Still packing the carton, still not looking at his mother, he asked lightly: ‘Mum, do you remember when I was very little I had chicken-pox?’
‘Of course. Why?’
‘Afterwards, you took me to Kew Gardens. You and Dad. We had a lovely time.’
The expression on her face had changed; she said coldly, ‘Oh?’
‘A really lovely time. Don't you remember?’ He had turned round to search her face with his gaze.
‘With your father?’ Mrs Waring would have liked to deny any such memory; but – just as a promise is a promise – truth is truth. She sighed. ‘Yes, just the three of us – I do remember; and we did have a lovely time. But that's in the past, Charlie, and –’
He interrupted her impatiently: ‘I know all that stuff about you and Dad nowadays. You've explained before. But I just wanted to know that you remembered that time. Because at least it really happened. It did.’
‘Of course it did,’ said his mother, and had the feeling – which she did not always have – that she had said a good thing as well as a correct one.
‘So that's all right,’ said Charlie. He got up from his knees. ‘I can finish the cupboard after tea.’ With a deep sigh he stretched his arms to their utmost, as though he had been cramped for a long, long time.
Then, comfortingly: ‘What's for tea, Mum?’
Nutmeg
The little black dog called Peppercorn died of old age at last, and the children of the family – Lydia and Joe and little Sam – buried him. The first that their neighbours, the Copleys, knew of all this was the doleful sound of ‘Abide with Me’ coming in through Margaret Copley's bedroom window. She urged her husband to go out into the garden to see what the Tillotsons were up to.
The Tillotsons' garden had a neglected patch at the bottom, overrun with ivy, where snowdrops came up at the end of winter. Here the children had buried the body and were just setting up a home-made wooden cross, with ‘Pepper’ scratched on its horizontal. (‘Peppercorn’ was too long and, anyway, the little dog had always been called Pepper for short.)
George Copley peeped cautiously over the fence, but the children's father, also a spectator, spotted him at once. He waved his hand towards the little group of mourners. ‘All the fun of a funeral!’ he whispered.
Mr Copley was elderly. He and his wife had no children. He stared over the fence, wonderingly. ‘You mean, they don't really care?’
‘Oh, Lyddy does – just for now. The other two are too young, anyway.’
Lydia had heard him. She had been crying. Now she turned and shouted at her father: ‘It's not just for now! And I hate you!’
‘Temper!’ said Mr Copley from over the fence, and then, alarmed at his own boldness, withdrew and went indoors to tell his invalid wife about the strange customs of the Tillotson family.
Meanwhile, Mrs Tillotson was calling everyone in for tea. The children ran in ahead of their father. As Lydia passed him, she said savagely: ‘And you needn't think I'll ever want another dog after Pepper. Ever.’
Her father laughed, amused, tolerant.
Lydia had loved Pepper.
But later that same year old Mr Copley observed Lydia and the others playing in their garden with a new puppy. Mr Copley was no more used to dogs than to children, so only one question seemed safe over the fence. He asked, ‘What are you going to call it?’
‘Not it,’ said Joe. ‘Him. This is a boy dog, Mr Copley.’
‘And we haven't decided what to call him,’ said Lydia. She picked up the puppy, soft and plump, and cuddled him almost under her chin. At the sight, Mr Copley was reminded of many years ago, of the child – the only child – he and his wife had had. He remembered how his wife had held the baby against her breast, bending her head low and lovingly. Their child had died in infancy.
‘Let me have him!’ clamoured Sam, and Lydia lowered the puppy into the little boy's arms. There he wriggled and bit with needle-teeth until Sam squeaked with pain, but he would not give the puppy up. ‘I want to call him Cuddles,’ he said.
‘Salt,’ said Joe. ‘To match Pepper.’
‘No!’ cried Lydia; and then: ‘He's not the colour of salt, anyway.’ The puppy was a rather unusual brown colour.
‘Cuddles,’ said Sam.
‘We'll let you know, if you like, when we've decided,’ Lydia told Mr Copley.
Later, indoors, their father explained to Sam: ‘You have to choose a dog's name that you can call. You couldn't really call “Cuddles”.’ He raised his voice, deliberately comic: “Cuddles! Cuddles! Come here, Cuddles!” Lydia and Joe laughed; Sam sulked, but he knew he was beaten.
It was their mother who had the brainwave. ‘He's just the colour of ground nutmeg. Why not call him Nutmeg? It's a kitchen name, like Peppercorn.’
The two boys liked the idea; Lydia hesitated.
‘Meg for short,’ said Joe, and Sam agreed.
‘That's really a girl's name,’ objected Lydia.
‘Come on, Lyddy!’ said her father. ‘Why on earth should that matter, for a dog?’
So Lydia gave way, and the Tillotsons began training their new dog, Nutmeg – house-training him and training him to come when he was called. Their garden rang with the new name: Meg – Meg – Meg –
Margaret Copley, in her invalid's bedroom, managed a weak laugh as she listened to the children's voices distantly calling. George Copley did not even smile, because his wife's illness frightened him: he suspected that she was dying. His wife knew that she was.
Before the end of that summer, Margaret Copley had died.
Mr Copley's niece came to the funeral and afterwards tried to persuade the old man to come and live with her family. He would not budge.
‘He simply won't budge,’ Mrs Tillotson reported to her husband. She had been chatting with Mr Copley's niece. ‘Well, he's lived all his married life in that house. Nearly fifty years.’
‘It's a big change for him to get used to,’ agreed Mr Tillotson. ‘He'll just have to put the past behind him. Forget.’
Lydia noticed that her mother said nothing, but looked doubtful.
The Tillotson children, out in the garden all day with their new puppy, spared hardly a thought for their bereaved neighbour. These were the school holidays: there was all the time in the world for playing with Nutmeg – playing with him and training him. ‘Meg! Meg! Meg! they called, getting him used to his name.
One afternoon when they had been calling, scolding and coaxing, Mr Copley stuck his head
over the fence to address them. He was white-faced and wild-haired. ‘Would you mind, please – I'm sure you wouldn't – not calling your dog all the time? Just don't use that name over and over again. Please.’
All three of them stopped what they were doing – even Nutmeg stopped racing round; they stared at the old man. Then Lydia said, ‘But we need to call him, Mr Copley. We're training him to come when he's called.’
‘There's no need about it!’ said Mr Copley, suddenly loud-voiced. He struck the top of the fence with his walking-stick. ‘Stop that calling, I say! Stop it!’
Then, astonishingly, the walking-stick came sailing over the fence towards them, unmistakably thrown with ill-will. It missed the little group, but the Tillotson children snatched up their puppy and scurried indoors to safety and to report what had happened.
Sam was crying, but Lydia and Joe were more startled than frightened.
Their mother was startled and also alarmed for Mr Copley himself. ‘The poor man sounds half out of his mind,’ she said, and resolutely made a Victoria sponge and took it round to his house. She rang the front-door bell, but Mr Copley saw her through a side-window and would not come to the door. As she had seen him seeing her, Mrs Tillotson left the sponge-cake on the front doorstep, hoping that he would recognize it as a peace-offering.
The children's father, when he heard the story, was furiously angry about the walking-stick. He hurled it back over the fence, and shouted in the same direction that he would call the police if there were more trouble. Meanwhile, he told the children to play in the garden with their puppy whenever they wanted and make as much noise as they liked. After a certain timidity, they began playing with Nutmeg again, and ‘Meg – Meg – Meg!’ resounded as before.
The sponge-cake stayed on the Copley front doorstep until the birds had pecked it into ruin. Mrs Tillotson watched with disappointment and increased misgiving. She hesitated, but at last telephoned Mr Copley's niece. The niece came down a second time to urge Mr Copley to leave. ‘But he won't,’ she told Mrs Tillotson. She had dropped in to return the cake-plate, and found Mrs Tillotson in the middle of cooking, and Lydia mixing the puppy's tea. ‘He won't leave that house; yet he can't bear living there. Everything, every minute of the day, reminds him of Auntie Margaret. Things prey on his mind – drive him crazy. He says he hears voices – voices calling…’
The Rope and Other Stories Page 4
