The Devil Walks

by Anne Fine

  Another wry look crossed the doctor’s face. ‘As much, perhaps, from the curiosity of people passing by as from the icy draughts?’

  I’d never realized it until that moment. But he was right, of course. That was the reason why, the moment I was grown enough to pull myself up at the window, my mother had moved me into that tiny, sunless back room.

  And why she would not let me back again.

  Strange that a little detail like that could have such a ring of truth. Now, suddenly, the idea that my mother might be mad no longer seemed quite so preposterous. It was a sickening feeling, as if my already unsettled world had shifted yet again. I think that I felt dizzy. But Dr Marlow was still staring at me gravely. And we were alone. So now that the idea had finally forced its way through all the barriers I’d carefully put up against it, I had to ask him.

  ‘Please, Doctor Marlow, is it true what people in the town are saying about my mother?’

  He reddened with vexation. ‘The people of this town should keep their opinions to themselves!’ He tried to calm himself. ‘But if they’re gossiping out of turn, perhaps you should tell me what is being said.’

  I hung my head. ‘That she is …’

  Now that I feared it might be true, I couldn’t say it.

  He prompted, ‘Is …?’

  I found that I could barely whisper it. ‘That she is quite insane.’

  The silence seemed to last a hundred years. And then the most that he could offer was, ‘Your mother is not well at all.’

  My tears began to fall. I felt such guilt. What could I have been thinking? How could I possibly have spent so many of the hours since we were parted laughing and learning new card games, and chasing Sophie up and down the stairs? I should have been beside my mother through all the days – and all the nights if need be. How could I blandly have assumed that she’d recover from the shock of my removal as quickly and easily as I’d recovered from my change of circumstance? What had I thought? That she would weep for a while to have her strange plan to raise me as an invalid thwarted by neighbours’ cunning, then dry her tears and agree that it would be more sensible to let me enter the world?

  Had I believed our problem would be swept away by this short time apart? I was a fool.

  Flushed with the closest I had ever come to anger, I hissed at Dr Marlow, ‘What have we done? My mother must be mad with grief to have lost sight of me! Why have you let me abandon her like this?’

  He stretched out a hand to calm me. ‘Daniel, don’t think this way.’

  I reared back out of reach. ‘No! You must take me with you to the hospital! I have to see her!’

  ‘Not yet. She isn’t ready.’

  But I was burning with frustration. ‘She must be ready! She cannot be so crazed she wouldn’t be cheered to see me.’

  He was adamant. ‘Daniel, her mind is hectic. It’s on a tightrope. Take my word for it, this way is better. If you love your mother – as I know you do – then you must trust me, and you must be patient.’

  He was a doctor. And he and his family had been good to me. I tried to calm myself. ‘You promise me that she’ll be well again?’

  He took his time to answer. And even then all he would say was, ‘You’re a smart boy – certainly smart enough to understand that’s not a promise I can offer you. What I will say is that as soon as I’m confident that seeing you will not disturb her even more I’ll take you with me.’

  It was the most I could get out of him. And so I settled for that. And maybe I was a shallow and ungrateful son. But I was younger then, and must forgive myself for letting all the comforts and amusements of the doctor’s house, and the kind thoughts and care of its inhabitants, quickly distract me till, once again, all of the townspeople who saw me clambering over fences with Sophie, or whispered behind their hands about me as I walked around the town with Mrs Marlow, carrying her parcels, could easily be forgiven for thinking me a happy and untroubled boy.

  A few days passed, and then a fever swept across our town. All the next week we hardly saw anything of Dr Marlow except for his tailcoat as he hurried from the house, or his wan face as he came home to snatch a meal. For safety’s sake he ate alone. ‘Don’t you come near me, girls! No, nor you, Daniel! Not for a moment. I am a walking pest house!’

  I thought him very brave, and wondered if, when I was old enough, I’d study to be a doctor. It would seem odd to switch from spending the first part of my life being an invalid to spending the rest of it working to cure them. But since Cecilia and Mary’s tutor had thrown up his hands at what he called ‘the yawning gaps’ in my poor education, and Mrs Marlow herself had started me on daily lessons, I’d come to realize that one day soon I’d have to earn my living.

  So next time I saw Dr Marlow snatching up his bag, I leaned over the banisters and called to him, ‘Can I come with you? Can I be of help?’

  He turned his face up and laughed. ‘I tell you, Daniel, if anyone could go round the town this week in perfect confidence, it would be you.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Look at yourself!’ he told me. ‘If there’s a sturdier constitution within twenty miles I’d be astonished. How many children could grow to your age with no fresh air or exercise without their mother even once having to send for a doctor to try to keep them from death’s door?’

  I’d never thought of things that way. While I was mulling it over he added, ‘If you’ve a mind to be useful, then help my poor wife keep Sophie amused while she’s cooped up away from this infection. I’m told the child’s already half wild with boredom, and Mary and Cecilia are complaining that they can’t read more than a page, or sew a stitch, before she bothers them.’

  I thought back to the long and empty hours that I’d once had to fill. ‘Suppose the doll’s house was carried here?’

  ‘Your doll’s house?’ He beamed. ‘You would allow that?’

  ‘If it would help.’

  ‘Then I’ll arrange its carriage here this very afternoon!’

  With a wave he was gone. And less than two hours later I heard the rattle of a wagon in the street. I hurried down the stairs and held the door while two men in green smocks brought in their burden, shrouded by its faded green dustsheet.

  Gently they set it down on the tiled floor and whipped off the cover.

  Behind me, I heard a squeal of delight. ‘A doll’s house?’ Already Sophie was rushing across the hall towards it. ‘Oh, wonderful! What joy!’ She skidded to a halt. ‘Oh, look! It’s perfect! Do the windows open? Oh, Daniel, is it really yours? And are there dolls inside?’

  Mary ran after her to pull her back. ‘Sophie! Perhaps Daniel would prefer you not to poke your fingers into the only token he has of his old home.’

  I’m sure she didn’t mean so brutally to remind me of how I’d been uprooted. Still, her words came as a shock. I stared at the doll’s house. Here, out of the night shadows, it looked less like the miniature world that it had always been to me and more like the plaything of a child.

  Sophie kept pestering. ‘Oh, Daniel. It’s a darling little home! Look at the tiny painted rosebuds around the door. May I just peep inside? Oh, Daniel, please!’

  I stepped back, giving her room to drop to her knees in front of it. She lifted the latch that swung the front open. ‘Look! Here’s a whole tumble! A sailor and a milkmaid and two princesses. A sweet boy clown. Two swarthy brigands!’ Clearly the men in smocks had tipped the dolls they found beside the small house into it before they carried out their load. Sophie was squealing with glee. ‘And here’s a little bald dog! Poor thing. I’m going to call him Popsy!’

  ‘His name is Topper,’ I corrected her.

  She looked up, mortified at her presumption. ‘Oh, Daniel. I’m so sorry. Of course you’ve already given them names.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. They are only here so you can play with them.’

  ‘But you must teach me who they are.’

  So I ran through their names, and left her opening all the doors and pee
ring into the tiny papered bedrooms. ‘This is Hal’s room! No! It’ll be where Rubiana sleeps. I’ll put her in the bed right now. She’s tired after her journey.’ If Sophie’s quick inventions could help her pass the hours, then I was glad. And when Mrs Marlow came back from her own errands of mercy round the stricken town, I told her I’d be happy for the doll’s house to be put anywhere Sophie chose.

  And so the doll’s house was put by the bay window in the morning room. Could Sophie have been more content? All through the last busy days before those strong enough to triumph over the fever had started to recover, Sophie played with the dolls she had found tumbled in the little house. Hearing her make the worn dog Topper bark in a fury at pretty Rubiana’s teasing, or uncrowned Hal knock fiercely at a door, I’d think how often I myself had crouched in moonlight inventing the very same sorts of silly plots and childish conversations, and I was glad that only spiders had been close enough to blush on my behalf.

  If Sophie caught me passing the open door she’d call to me to take a turn with one of the dolls. One morning there was no escape. ‘Now, you be Topper.’ She thrust him into my hand, and waved the stiff peg doll towards him. ‘And Topper must growl horribly because he has a deadly fear of Mrs Hawthorn here.’

  ‘Mrs Golightly,’ I corrected her.

  Her cheeks went pink. ‘I’m sorry, Daniel. That was stupid of me.’

  She seemed so flustered I was curious. ‘How is it stupid, Sophie?’

  ‘Because – because …’ Panicking, she fell upon my mercy. ‘You see, we only saw her over the garden gate. We didn’t know her real name.’

  I couldn’t think what she was talking about. The dolls had never been outside.

  Sophie pressed on. ‘We meant no disrespect. We simply saw your mother walking in the garden, and since your house is known as Hawthorn Cottage we called her Mrs Hawthorn to ourselves. We didn’t know your name was Cunningham.’

  I was still baffled. ‘Sophie, who are we talking about? My mother, or a peg doll?’

  ‘Well, both, of course,’ she said.

  ‘Both?’

  She looked surprised that I myself could be so stupid. ‘Well, look! She is the mirror image.’

  I looked at the peg doll and saw it for the very first time: that same tense, upright look; the same dark eyes that drilled out from a lean face; a studied carefulness about the dress. I suppose I’d thought that all the peg dolls in the world must look this way. (If there’d not been so many illustrations in my story books, I might have thought that all the mothers in the world did too.)

  But it made sense. For, if the doll’s house had been designed to look exactly like the home in which she’d been raised, what was so strange about the dolls inside it resembling people in the family? Perhaps my mother had, over the years, grown to look just like one of the grandmothers I must have had – though this was something that I might have learned only through brutishness, since any question to my mother about her childhood or her family was met with floods of bitter tears, or long pale silence.

  Sophie was staring at me with such anxiety that, simply to tease her back to confidence, I asked, ‘And did you and your sisters spend many hours peeping over our garden gate? Perhaps you should have ventured down the alley and spied at your Mrs Hawthorn much more easily through the hole Mrs Parker bored in our hedge.’

  Giggling, Sophie reached for my hand to pull it down. ‘Come, Daniel. Act your part. How can a dog put his full mind to barking when he is floating in the air?’

  And so I joined her in the game and I enjoyed it. But the mere mention of Mrs Parker had set young Sophie’s mind on a fresh tack. Over the next couple of hours her tongue ran loose. She told me how the ladies of our town had always found my mother strange – a woman alone, who kept no company and clearly sought none. But after I’d been spotted in the garden, the whispering began afresh. The butcher’s boy had sworn that there was far more meat in his deliveries than would suit just one widow—

  ‘Not just one widow,’ I interrupted Sophie solemnly. ‘One wooden, peg-thin widow.’

  ‘Oh, don’t torment me!’ Sophie squealed, and went on to tell how Mrs Parker and Miss Gott had drummed up a deputation to speak to her father and insist he go to see the pale young invalid who’d been seen sitting in the wicker chair. ‘Perhaps his family can’t afford a visit from a doctor,’ they’d said. ‘But you mustn’t mind that, because the two of us will undertake to pay the bills if you think you can help the child.’

  So Dr Marlow had knocked on our door and doffed his hat. It seemed my mother had been graciousness itself until she finally understood who Sophie’s father was and why he’d come. Then her eyes flashed and she’d closed the door in his face.

  ‘Truly? My mother shut the door in Dr Marlow’s face?’

  ‘It was the talk of the town! And after that, of course, people began to wonder if she was in her senses. It was a matter of days before the plan was hatched to lure her from the house for long enough for Papa to sneak inside and take a peep at you.’

  I felt a flurry of conflicting thoughts. I cannot say that I was sorry I had been – what was the word? Rescued? Set free? – from my confinement in that tiny room. And yet I knew my mother’s sense of deep intrusion. Feeling so much for her, I couldn’t help but think myself disloyal. That’s probably why I tried to make a joke of something so important it had derailed my mother’s life. ‘Sophie, you are a perfect mine of information. If I should ever want to know anything at all about myself, I shall know where to turn.’

  ‘You’re teasing me again. Back to the game!’

  Not all her gossip was as orderly as on that afternoon. Since she was kept inside as strictly as the rest of us during those weeks of sickness, most of her news came fresh from the kitchen, where she would spend long hours haunting poor Kathleen as she cooked, or pestering Molly to let her sweep the floors or lay the fires. We’d play for half an hour or so, and then she’d tell me, ‘Today there were mandarin oranges in the market. And we shall have one each after our lunch.’ Or, ‘There’s a collection to buy Mr Mackay a wooden leg after his accident.’

  One morning she flew through the green baize door between the kitchen and the hall as if she were on skates. ‘Daniel! Kathleen has told me that your house is taken!’

  ‘Taken?’ I had a vision of Hawthorn Cottage being lifted onto a carriage and wheeled away. ‘How, taken?’

  ‘It’s let again. It has been rented out to a new family. And Mrs Parker says there are four children, one for each year of the marriage.’

  Crossing the hall with a vase of fresh blooms, Mrs Marlow broke step. ‘Sophie!’

  Sophie said stubbornly, ‘But it is true. And Mrs Parker swears she has already seen the whole tribe tumbling around the garden.’

  I couldn’t understand what she was telling me. While she rushed off to pass the news on to Cecilia and Mary, I took the chance to follow Mrs Marlow into the conservatory. Shutting the door between ourselves and the rest of the family, I said, ‘How can the house belong to others now? It is my home.’

  Mrs Marlow drew breath and shook her head at me sadly. ‘No, Daniel. Not if your mother has failed to pay the quarter’s rent.’

  ‘But I thought I’d live there for ever. I thought that I was only staying here until my mother was well again, and then we’d—’ My knees began to falter in the old, old way. I tried so hard to finish. ‘And then together she and I would—’

  I saw the pity in Mrs Marlow’s eyes and I broke off. So many warning signs and gentle hints – all stubbornly ignored. I had been stupid. My mother could no longer keep a roof over our heads. Not only was my old life over, but it would never return, and for the first time since I’d been led from Hawthorn Cottage into the Marlows’ home, I truly realized what was happening.

  Then I burst into noisy, jerking sobs. What sort of fool was I? Up till that moment I’d been doing little more than play a part, like one of the dolls in my imagined stories. My mother had been carried off, and over and
over I had set my face against all possible grim futures. Blandly, I’d sunk back into waterlogged calm. I might have had bad dreams, but waking each morning, I’d clearly found some way to bundle up the fright and the anxieties – the storms of grief I felt – and tidy them away as if they were no more than nightclothes to be neatly tucked beneath my pillow.

  I lay in Mrs Marlow’s arms and wept. The girls crept in and were sent out again, first to fetch blankets to wrap around my shoulders, and then again to leave the two of us in peace while Mrs Marlow stroked my head and wiped my tears and tried to hug me back into some sense that there was comfort in the world.

  I cried until I couldn’t cry a single tear more. Then I was led to bed, and tucked in tight, and Mrs Marlow stayed in the chair beside me until I slept.

  Why did I set myself in front of the doll’s house next morning? Sophie was not yet pestering me to play a part. Could it have been because I felt back in my former skin: unsteady on my feet, light-headed from my hours of weeping?

  There was a tap on the door. Sophie peeped in and, with a gentleness that I can only think must have been laid on her as a charge by her kind mother, asked me, ‘Shall I leave you to yourself? Or would you like company?’

  ‘I don’t know what I want.’

  But still I patted the rug beside me. Sophie crept in and reached for Topper, still her favourite. I picked up Hal, and off we went into some spiralling adventure of Sophie’s invention. Lost fortunes and a kidnapped brother? I can remember little of the story until the moment Sophie walked one of the brigands through each room in turn, in search of some hidden will she was insisting would make young Hal rich.