by Nina Bawden
Smiling and well-nourished, she stood at the gate of her comfortable, shabby house and looked down the hill towards the town. From where she stood she could see the beach, the flags on the roof of the bandstand, and the long finger of the pier pointing out to sea. The sea was calm and blue, the blue sky swept down to meet it: it was a beautiful day.
As she watched, a tiny, toy bus left the pier and crawled slowly along the front. It was the four o’clock bus, the one the children usually caught when they had been on the beach. In a moment or two it would reach the foot of the hill and she could telephone Charles, tell him that the children were safe and go out to tea.
She hoped that the children had heard nothing of the trouble in the town. She must warn Janet to say nothing to them. Peregrine would not understand what had happened but Hilary was precocious and excitable: she would see at once the dramatic possibilities in the situation and use them to the full. Once she knew about the murder, she would be impossible for weeks.
The bus stopped at the bottom of the hill. She saw Janet and the children get out, three small, distant figures in cherry-coloured cardigans. She went into the house.
Miss Hubback answered the telephone. She sounded breathless. “Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Bray. I’m afraid Mr. Bray’s busy. We’ve got a traveller in. Would you like him to ring you back? You know,” she ended archly, “how he hates to be disturbed.”
This familiarity annoyed Alice. She wished that Charles would find an assistant who was a lady. Miss Hubback had a common accent and Alice was sensitive to accents.
She said coldly, “I’m in a hurry.”
Miss Hubback was breezy. “Oh dear. I’d better get him then, hadn’t I?”
There was a chink as she laid the telephone down. Alice could hear her humming softly as she left the tiny office. Then Charles’s voice said, “Are they all right?”
“Of course they are, dear. They’ve just got off the bus.”
“Good. I’m sorry if I worried you.”
“That’s all right, dear. But I’m late for my little tea-party now, so would you do a small errand for me? I ordered a lobster from Goring and I haven’t had time to pick it up. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. Why lobster?”
“The Wallaces are coming to dinner. Now don’t say this is the first you’ve heard of it because I told you last week.” She put on a soft, coaxing voice. “And, sweetheart, I know they’re not really your sort of people but they really are such an interesting creative couple. So do try and be nice to them, won’t you?”
“I’ll be polite, I hope.”
“Of course you will. You always are, dear. But I want you to be more than polite, really friendly.”
His voice was suddenly testy. “Wallace is in advertising, isn’t he? What’s creative about that?”
“He’s a very clever artist, dear. And Erna Wallace is so clever with her hands. She makes pots. Really interesting, modern ones.”
“Does she now? Well, well….” He cleared his throat. “All right, dear. I’ll come home with the lobster. Enjoy your tea.”
She put the telephone down. There was a thumping noise on the floor above. The ceiling shuddered and, in the dining-room, the glasses on the sideboard danced against each other with a sound like little bells. Auntie was getting up after her rest. Her massive footsteps trod across the upstairs landing to the bathroom. It was like a mountain moving. She turned on the bath and began to sing in her strong, melodious voice, “When I survey, the Wondrous Cross.” Mingling with the splashing water, her voice rose painfully to the high note beyond her range and sank, gladly, to a swelling contralto. “On which the Prince of Glo-ry di-ed.”
“Stupid old fool,” said Alice loudly. Auntie had been living at Peebles for over a year and Alice felt she would never become used to her presence. Since her arrival, a distinct musty smell had hung about the bedroom floor and the old woman made unpleasant noises in the bathroom. Although she was rich, she never offered to contribute towards the household expenses. Alice had, on several occasions, discussed the rising cost of living in her presence but she had not taken the hint. On the other hand, Charles was her favourite nephew….
“Mummy,” Hilary called. “Mummy.” Her voice was high and eager. She ran in at the gate but when she saw her mother she stopped abruptly and stood uneasily still, rubbing one dusty sandal up and down the back of her leg. Her face took on an expression of dumb idiocy.
Alice knew that Hilary was pleased to see her and too shy to show it, nevertheless she was irritated, as always, by the child’s inability to express an attractive emotion.
She said, “What a mess you’re in. Surely you don’t have to get so dirty?”
Hilary squirmed her shoulders and did not answer. Peregrine came up to Alice, carrying a pail full of shells.
“Look,” he said, “I’ve got lots of pink ones. I’m going to make a necklace for your birthday.”
There were dark rings of tiredness round his eyes. His cheeks were flushed with a pale, delicate colour.
“Are you, love?” Alice kissed him lightly on the top of his head. Feeling Hilary’s smouldering eyes upon her, she said, “Did you collect any shells, darling?”
“Yes. I threw them away, though. Nasty, dirty things.” Hilary exaggerated her disgust. “Dead fish’s houses.”
Janet said, “She emptied them all over the promenade. It was a filthy mess, all mixed up with sand and seaweed. And I had to clean it up.” She looked hot and cross, her mouth was sullen. Alice felt annoyed: surely it wasn’t too much for the girl to take the children out occasionally? She did nothing else except her silly, part-time job as secretary to the local dentist: she had no particular talents.
Alice said sweetly, “What a bore for you. You won’t mind giving them their tea, will you? It’s all ready. I expect Hilary will be a good girl and help, won’t you, Hilary?”
Hilary scowled and squinted down her nose.
“For heaven’s sake, child, take that look off your face.”
Hilary gave her mother a bitter glance and hopped on one foot into the house, leaving a trail of damp sand behind her. Following, Peregrine carried his pail tenderly, like a chalice.
Janet said in a detached voice, “Hilary is much fonder of you than Peregrine is. You wouldn’t think it, would you?”
Alice wondered if this was intended as a reproach (she knew she was often harsher with her daughter than with Peregrine because she loved her more) but decided at once that it was unlikely. Janet was much too anxious that Alice should approve of her to be critical: sometimes her evident devotion had touched Alice’s intelligence though it never had, and never could, touch her heart. Still, the knowledge of it had softened her exchanges with her stepdaughter and made it easier for her to tolerate her stupidity and lack of grace. Lately, however, Alice had fancied that Janet’s attitude towards her had curiously changed: her manner had become a good deal less humble, and, at the same time, almost excessively considerate. Occasionally she would fuss over Alice as if she were someone quite old and frail: with gentle autocracy she forbade her to sit in draughts. Alice had been amused, but only to a point. That point was reached on the day that she surprised a look of pity on the girl’s face. She had told herself that it was inconceivable that Janet should be sorry for her. Nevertheless the fleeting expression had affected her like an insult. From that moment, a new tartness had crept into their relationship.
Now Janet said, “I’m sorry. That was a beastly thing to say to you.” The clumsy apology implied condescension.
Alice said coldly, “Please do not trouble to explain my own child to me.”
The unfairness of this remark worried her briefly after Janet had gone, silent and rebuked, into the house. Then she looked at her watch, saw that she was really very late, now, and went out to tea.
It was nearly closing-time. Charles brought in the trays of secondhand books from their position on the narrow pavement outside the shop. Turfed out from cobwebbed attics, novels, tr
avel books, Christmas annuals, the sermons of forgotten Victorian vicars, jostled each other in their dusty jackets, offered for sale at sixpence each. He picked up a bound volume of Chatterbox and lingered over the lovingly tattered pages. There had been a copy, he remembered, in his preparatory school library—a dignified term for the rough rows of shelves in one corner of the room where they kept their play-boxes.
The shop bell tinkled and he thrust the Chatterbox on one side. Miss Hubback had come back with the lobster.
“Look, it’s a beauty. Fresh caught this morning. Are you having a dinner party, Mr. Bray?”
The lobster, unwrapped from its newspaper, had a curiously exotic air.
Charles thought of Erna Wallace, a trivial, eager woman, twittering in endless, flowing scarves, trying hard to live up to Alice’s idea of her as a contemporary potter.
“Well, yes … or rather, my wife is.” He smiled. It was difficult not to smile at Miss Hubback. Although she was in her thirties, she was as clumsy and engaging as a very young girl. Her face was almost quite round and artless as a child’s first drawing. Her features, which were small and elegant, rather like those of a china doll, seemed lost in the middle of it. Good will shone out of her like innocence in a tired world.
She said, “I think your wife is lovely, Mr. Bray.”
“Oh?” Though used to her sudden, bursting confidences, Charles was surprised.
Her eyes glistened shyly behind her spectacles. “I shouldn’t say that, should I? I mean it was sort of personal, wasn’t it?”
“I’ve always found you can be as personal as you like, provided what you say is flattering.”
She gave a high, neighing laugh, “Oh, Mr. Bray, you are cynical.” She gazed at him admiringly. “Honestly, I wasn’t being flattering. I know you’ll laugh at me, but that evening I came to dinner was the most wonderful experience of my life.”
“I wouldn’t dream of laughing at you,” he said, “what was so special about the party?”
She beamed. “It was all so lovely. The way your wife talked about important things, not just small talk. It was like being at a university. Your home is lovely, too. I thought the lounge was like something out of House and Garden”
“I’m glad you liked it.” And he was glad, he told himself. But sorry, too, that she had been taken in by something so second hand.
He said, “We’d better lock up.”
“Already? It isn’t quite time….” She looked at him doubtfully.
“It’s all right. I’ll do it. You run along home early for once.”
As she fetched her coat, she said, “Isn’t it dreadful? About the poor little girl?”
“What? Oh … yes.”
“They were talking about it at the fishmonger’s. I hope they catch him soon. Hanging’s too good for a man like that,” she ended savagely.
He was shocked. “Poor devil. I don’t suppose he’s responsible for his actions.”
“You’re sorry for him?” she cried. “But aren’t you worried? I’m sure poor Mrs. Bray must be. Your lovely, lovely babies.” Her tiny mouth quivered sentimentally.
He said, evading the issue, “My wife is very sensible. She doesn’t worry unnecessarily.”
When Miss Hubback had gone, clipping on her run-over heels along the cobbled passage that smelt of herring and salt to the broad, main street with its bright, light shops, Charles put up his green wooden shutters and locked the heavy iron bars into place.
The exertion made his head swim: he rested, leaning against the counter. Then the dizziness passed and he flexed his muscles cautiously, feeling for the pulse in his wrist with tender hypochondria. Reassured, he smiled. It was nothing. Nothing to worry about, the doctor had said, just a timely warning that he must take things easily. The plain truth was that we were none of us as young as we used to be. But with care, a monthly check-up, there was no reason why he should not make old bones. The old heart—the doctor spoke with a blunt, dismissing cheeriness—was a bit coked up like the cylinders of an old car engine. They had both smiled at the professional joke and, when the interview was over, shaken hands.
At first, Charles had been dismayed. Then, as the months passed and his condition grew no worse, he began to treat the doctor’s diagnosis with light contempt. Talking with his friends, he frequently led the conversation round to the inefficiency of the medical profession. He was delighted whenever he discovered an instance when they had been proved wrong. He did not worry overmuch about himself. Nevertheless, he did not tell Alice about his monthly visits. He did not wish to spare her, but himself: once told, she would be brave on his behalf and insist that he face up to it. She was a very courageous woman.
In the middle of the night, Peregrine woke and screamed. Hilary got out of bed and went to him. His hands, clutching at her nightdress, were sticky and hot.
“It’s all right,” she crooned, “all right. Hilly’s here.”
Pushing her arm aside, he stared into her face with dark, glittering eyes, words stumbled out between great, hiccoughing sobs. “The Devil came and sat on the end of my bed. He was black. There were wings round his head.”
Hilary looked round the nursery and saw the chipped, white-wood furniture, unearthly in the moonlight but unmistakeable. Their flannel dressing-gowns hung, grey and shapeless on the back of the door; their clothes, draped baggily over their separate chairs, were only clothes. The painted, gleaming eyes of the rocking-horse gave her a lurching moment of fear, but she spoke soothingly.
“There’s nothing here. Only the toys and things and me. Go to sleep.”
His eyelids drooped. She hugged him maternally and said, to comfort herself, now, “If there had been anyone here, I’d have seen him too.”
She felt a shudder go through him. He stiffened and sat bolt upright, beating the bedclothes with clenched fists.
“He was here, he was. I didn’t see him with my eyes. I saw him out of the back of my head. He was awful.”
There was nothing to be said to that. She pressed him with delicious fearfulness but he either would not, or could not, answer. Nothing else that he said was at all lucid. The fearful vision was fading fast and there was nothing left but terror. When she tried to make him lie down he resisted her with wiry strength and cried for his mother.
She tried to comfort him. “It’s all right now. If you like, you can come into my bed. If you promise not to wet it.”
He fought her off frantically. “Mummy.” His voice rose wildly. In moments of disaster, he always turned to his mother, believing that once he reached her, he would be safe. Hilary would have liked to think that this was true but knew it was not: this was the difference the years had made between them.
Peregrine got out of bed and hobbled across the linoleum, his pyjama trousers round his ankles, his small behind gleaming. Hilary got back into her own bed and tried to warm her feet by wrapping her nightgown round them.
She heard Peregrine’s voice on the landing, outside their mother’s door. It was raised in a loud, formless wail, a cry of lamentation. No words could be distinguished. A door opened and there was a rush of voices. Peregrine’s cries died as he was carried into the room and the door was closed.
Hilary dozed, her head on the cold pillow. Distantly, she was aware that the whole household was awake. Someone had closed the nursery door but the landing light shone in a streak beneath it. She heard her father’s voice, then Janet’s.
A little later, the door opened and a shaft of light sprang across the room. Peregrine was carried in, limp in his mother’s arms. His legs and arms dangled loosely, he made no sound. Alice’s hair, out of its braid, hung gloriously to her waist. Lying on her side, Hilary watched her with one jealous eye, the other being pressed into the pillow.
Janet said, from the doorway, “Will he sleep now?” Hilary could only see her by moving her eye so far round in its socket that it hurt.
Alice made a shushing sound. Then she bent over Peregrine, tucking him up. She turned towards Hilary’s
bed and Hilary closed her eyes tightly. She felt her mother’s breath like a small cold wind on her skin, but the kiss she expected did not come.
Alice left, rustling, and Hilary heard her whispering on the landing. “She’s asleep, anyway. Did you hear him, crying about the Devil?”
Janet muttered. Then she said more loudly, “… all Hilary’s fault. I expect she was trying to frighten him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” said Alice, exasperated. Hilary raised her head from the pillow and listened. Grownup anger, except when it was directed against herself, excited her.
“It didn’t seem important. I forgot about it. She said Peregrine had seen the Devil. I thought—some story of Nanny’s. You know what she was.”
“She’s a naughty little girl.” Their voices grew softer. They both laughed.
Then Janet said, gruffly, “You ought to go to bed. You’ll catch cold.”
The light was switched off. A little later the lavatory cistern flushed with a sound like baying wolves. A door closed and the house was silent.
Hilary lay in the dark and listened to the sea. It was loud and angry to-night. She pictured it, crawling up the crumbling cliffs and sweeping in through the doors and windows, drowning them all in their beds.
Peregrine was whimpering in his sleep, now and again he gave a short, yapping sound like a dreaming puppy. Hilary rolled on to her tummy and stuffed the edges of the pillow against her ears. Anger possessed her. Why should she be blamed because Peregrine had seen the Devil? It was unfair. She squeezed out a few, hot tears and tasted them with her tongue. She would pay Peregrine out, she decided. To-morrow she would think of a way to punish him.
Chapter Three
In his caravan on Grey’s Field, the man slept, fully clothed, beneath an army blanket. In his dream was a beautiful, laughing child. He loved her and stretched out his hands but her face twisted with ugly fear and she ran away. Then his mother was angry with him. He became frightened and restless and began to mutter in his sleep.
