Everything was very still, and I strained my ears to hear the creaking of my father’s bed as he rose out of it for his nightly journey across the floor.
I remember lying on my side and clenching my fists as I was frightened that I’d fall asleep, or, that on this night of all nights, he wouldn’t walk at all.
Then they began: the footsteps, just as before. They were very slow and halting, back and forth, back and forth, from the window to the fireplace, I judged, though I could not be sure.
Shuffle—drag … shuffle—drag … shuffle—drag … accompanied, as always, by the thin, drifting sighs, and the faint jingling of medicine bottles.
‘A—a—ah! … A—a—ah! … A—a—ah!’ as if the walker himself was reckoning up how far he’d walked, and how much further he still had to go.
Although I’d longed to hear it, now it came I found it to be the most melancholy sound in the world.
‘A—a—ah! … A—a—ah! … A—’
They stopped! Suddenly, and without any warning, the sighing and the walking had come to an end.
I waited, thinking it was just a longer pause than usual. I listened fiercely and desperately for the footsteps to begin again. But there was nothing. The room underneath and its occupant stayed as quiet as the grave.
It had happened! Just as I’d always dreaded, it had happened in the middle of the night. My father was dead, and I was the only one who knew!
I sat up. The fire was out and the room was cold. I felt horribly frightened and thought of going to tell my mother. Then I remembered my Uncle Turner and thought of how he’d push everybody out of the way, and go inside my father’s room, and come out looking grim and say:
‘I don’t want any tears or snivelling. I want you to be a man, my boy. Your father is dead.’
I got out of bed. I couldn’t bear the thought of his taking this last discovery on himself and shutting me out altogether. I left my room and crept downstairs in a state of panting excitement.
I reached my father’s door. I stopped. I recollected that I had never seen a dead man before; and the prospect of being alone with one—and my own father into the bargain—filled me with a strong desire to be somewhere else. I pictured his dead eyes staring at me; and his freezing hand falling, suddenly and inexplicably, upon my back.
The firelight was shining under the door and streaming through the keyhole. I bent down and looked through, fully expecting another eye to be doing the same, from the other side.
I could make out only part of the window and most of the table with its loading of medicine bottles. I stood up, thinking how much better it would be to waken the household and let my mother go in first. Then my Uncle Turner came back to me, and the thought of his bullying face and shouting voice gave me courage. I’ve often noticed that the best in me is brought out by a strong dislike, and has nothing to do with virtue at all.
I opened the door and breathed:
‘Pa!’
I’d been ready to see him lying on the floor by the window, in a quiet heap; and was prepared for it. He was not there. I looked at his bed. It was empty.
I took a very cautious step into the room, and the warm, sweetish smell of illness engulfed me. As I moved, all the medicine bottles jingled, as if they’d seen something I hadn’t, and were knocking together in fright. I stopped, till they stopped. I could hear the rapid ticking of my father’s gold watch that was on a mahogany stand by his bed. It sounded frantic and uncanny, and I remember thinking that I ought to stop it somehow.
The fire was burning brightly, and my father’s chair, with its high back towards me, was drawn up close. I knew that he was sitting in it, dead.
I moved towards it. The bottles set up their frightful jingling again and the watch ticked madly, as if everything in the room, like me, was consumed with terror.
I fixed my eyes on the arms of the chair, for his arms; and on the feet, for his feet.
He was not there. The chair was empty.
I felt sick with bewilderment and dread. I knew he was somewhere in the room; but where?
I turned round. My father was standing bolt-upright behind the door. He was fully dressed, as if to go out; and he was glaring at me!
2
I DID NOT utter a word. The breath had not so much been knocked out of me as sucked out, in one dreadful gulp, as if the whole room had suddenly been taken short in the article of air and was getting back what it could.
I stood, holding on to the back of the chair, feeling sick with fright and guilt.
I felt frightened and guilty because my father must have known why I was there, that I’d thought he was dead and had come down to see. I felt frightened and guilty because he must have been watching me creeping about his room and looking at his gold watch.
He put out his hand and shut the door.
‘What—do—you—want?’ he demanded harshly.
‘I—I thought I heard you, Pa,’ I said at length.
To my immense relief he seemed to accept this as sufficient reason for my presence, and came down a little from the gaunt height to which he’d ascended against the wall.
He was, as I’ve said, fully dressed; although emptily would have been nearer the mark, as his clothes hung on him in so huge and hopeless a fashion. I remember wondering if he’d actually been meaning to go outside, or whether he always dressed himself when he walked by night, as if he expected company.
‘I’ll go back now, Pa,’ I said.
He made no effort to stop me until my hand was actually on the doorknob; then he said:
‘Wait, wait. What—what was it that you heard?’
‘I heard you walking, Pa.’
He made a most curious noise, which I can only describe as being like the ashy whisper of my fire upstairs; it was as if he’d swallowed coals and they were shifting somewhere in the bottom of his throat. He put out his hand again.
‘Help me—help me to my chair.’
I gave him my shoulder and he laid his hand on it; and I was astonished by how light and frail he was, like a bird. I didn’t want to support him with my arm, as, to be honest, I was afraid to touch him.
We got to the chair and he sank down into it. Once more I said I’d go, and once more he said, wait, wait. I waited, while he rustled away somewhere in his chest. Then he said:
‘So … you heard me walking?’
‘Yes, Pa.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘I—I thought I heard you sighing, Pa.’
Again the ashy whisper, and he looked accusingly at the fire, as if that had done it.
‘So you came down … to see.’
I didn’t answer, and waited uneasily for him to get angry. Instead, however, he only asked if I’d told my mother or anyone else? I shook my head; and he asked me if I’d ever heard him before?
I said no, because I didn’t want him to think I’d been spying on him, and because I always find it easier and more natural to deny things rather than to admit them; but when he asked me again (as if he hadn’t heard me the first time), I thought it best to own up.
‘And you’ve told no one, no one at all?’
I swore I hadn’t; and he lapsed into such a gloomy silence that I wondered if I’d done the wrong thing by keeping quiet.
His watch seemed to have acquired a louder tick, as if it was anxious to draw attention to some peculiarity of itself. I looked and saw that the time was one o’clock; and I remember thinking how thin the dial looked to be telling so small an hour.
‘Give it to me,’ said my father.
‘What, Pa?’
‘The watch, the watch.’
I fetched it and he began to fiddle with the back, and then tried to insert the key.
‘Do you know how to wind a watch?’ he asked. ‘You must give it six turns, morning and night. Never more than that. You—you must be careful. It—it cost a great deal of money.’
My heart beat excitedly. Was he meaning to give it to me?
‘Here, take
it,’ he said; and when I hesitated, he added, ‘William,’ as if to show there was no mistake, that he recollected me perfectly, and even knew my name.
I took it and thanked him as warmly as I could. He smiled faintly.
‘Sit down, William,’ he said. ‘Here, next to me, in front of the fire.’
I sat, staring into the fire and feeling awkward as I didn’t know what to say.
Nor, I think, did he. He began asking me questions about my school and what I was learning, as if I was a stranger. Then, before I could answer, he began to talk about my mother and sisters. He said he hoped they’d always be careful about their appearance as he didn’t like to think of their being shabby and careless after he was gone. I couldn’t see what business this was of mine, but I nodded understandingly and said, ‘Yes, Pa’; and he went on again about winding up the watch at the proper times. At last he came out with:
‘You’re sure, William, that you’ve told no one about … about what you’ve heard? The—the walking …’
Suddenly I felt that the watch had been a reward for my silence and a bribe to continue with it. There was an overwhelming sense of secrecy and it was suffocating. Desperately I wanted to be out of that room and as far away as possible. I didn’t want to hear any more about the nightly walking, as I felt there was something in it far more horrible than I’d supposed.
But it was too late. All at once my father began to jump and jerk in his chair with frightful violence, as if he was being shaken and worried by an enormous invisible dog. He clapped his hand to his mouth and his eyes were dreadful; then, when it was over and he was quiet again, he took his hand away, and I noticed that he kept it tightly clenched, as if there was money in it.
I wanted to run and get my mother; but he wouldn’t let me leave him. I asked if I could get him some medicine; but he didn’t want that, either. I didn’t know what to do, so I held on to his hand—not the clenched one, which he hid from me, but the other that was clasping the arm of the chair.
He began to talk, or, rather, to whisper, and it was like dead leaves. At first I thought he was delirious, because it was all about foxes being caught. Then I understood that he hadn’t meant the animals, but a place—a place called ‘Foxes Court,’ which was near Holborn, in London. Also he mentioned somebody called ‘K’Nee,’ several times, always pronouncing the K as if it was a cough.
‘But it was all a—a long time ago,’ he mumbled, shaking his head as if to rid himself of the memory. ‘Before you were born … nothing to do with you. Before your mother … nothing to do with her. Before—before everything …’
He stopped, and I thought he was going to jump and jerk again, as his eyes had got the same dreadful look. But it was something else.
He had begun to whisper about a man called ‘Diamond, Alfred Diamond.’ Over and over again, he kept saying, ‘Diamond … Diamond … Diamond!’ until I hated that Mr Diamond with all my heart; for I could see the grief and misery his very recollection caused.
Suddenly he turned over the hand I’d been holding, and gripped my wrist as hard as he could.
‘Mr Diamond was my friend and partner,’ he said. ‘He trusted me and I cheated him. If Alfred Diamond is dead, I killed him. If he is alive, it is only to curse me with every breath he draws. Now, now you know why I walk and sigh, walk and sigh … Your father, my son, is nothing but a scoundrel and a thief.’
He didn’t say any more. He sat, staring into the fire as if he was quite alone. He had let go of my hand and I wondered if that meant I could go back to bed.
I had an odd feeling that he wanted me to say something, perhaps even to comfort him; but I couldn’t. I got up.
‘Good night, Pa,’ I said.
He lifted his head.
‘Good night, William.’
There was an anxious, almost pleading look on his face, as if, now he had told me his secret, he hoped everything was all right. He looked sunk and feeble; and nothing like my father at all.
I left the room and went back upstairs. As I was about to get into bed, I saw that I still had the watch. I wanted to throw it out of the window, or to stamp it into fragments. I hated my father, too.
I felt utterly deceived. My father had cheated me just as he had cheated Mr Diamond. My father, that stern and upright man, whose praise I’d longed for, and for whose friendship I would have given the world, was nothing but a swindler and a thief!
I put the watch on my chest of drawers, meaning to give it back in the morning. I got into bed; and then I heard him begin to walk again. I tried to shut out the noise, but the footsteps seemed to be right inside my head. Back and forth, back and forth he dragged, as his crime continued to haunt him—and me!—though he walked ten thousand miles.
If only, I thought, he’d been dead when I’d first gone down! Then, the secret would have stayed a secret, and been well worth the keeping.
When I woke up, the sun was shining and a good deal of my anger was gone. I hadn’t changed my mind; I still meant to return the watch; but I had decided to tell my father that I had forgiven him, that it was all right, and there was no further need for him to walk by night.
I dressed, put the watch in my pocket and went downstairs. My uncle met me in the hall.
‘You are not to go to school today,’ he said.
He clasped his hands behind his back as if to restrain his natural desire to pinch my cheek and make me cry.
‘Now, no snivelling, my boy. I want you to be a man. I am sorry to have to tell you that your father is dead.’
3
THE DAYS IMMEDIATELY after my father’s death were very strange, like a solemn holiday—a kind of Black Christmas. Candles were kept burning in broad day, and the curtains drawn, so that the winter sunshine strained at every window and made the rooms rickety with bright chinks and slits, as if the house was leaking darkness at every joint.
My mother and my sisters seemed to have come out in black so suddenly that it was as if they’d been caught in a shower of soot; and a black ribbon was tied round my sleeve to mark me out as an object of especial tenderness and concern.
My mother repeatedly embraced me and said tearfully that she hoped I would be a good, kind boy; and Cissy, my older sister, told me that I was now Mr Jones and that, when the time came, it would be my duty to give her away in marriage. Rebecca, the other one, who was excessively virtuous and plain, came up to my room and sat on the bed and cried officiously; and even my uncle went about as if his feet hurt.
It was, in an odd way, quite a cheerful time, as there were always visitors sitting in the best parlour and drinking Madeira wine.
Dr Fisher came once; but after that it was the parson who took his place and always called me ‘young man’ and put his hand on my shoulder as if he was going to hit me and was steadying me while he took aim.
‘Now that your dear father has been taken from us, young man,’ he would begin; regardless of the fact that my father had not yet been taken anywhere, but was still in his room and with a strong smell of vinegar and aromatic herbs.
I had not been allowed to see him until after the undertaker’s people had been and put him in his coffin.
I tried to find out, from Mrs Alice, who’d found him that morning, whether he’d been sitting in his chair, or lying on the floor, or back in his bed. I wanted to know if he’d got undressed again after I’d left him.
I still thought that he’d been meaning to go outside, and, from what he’d told me, to go to Foxes Court and find Mr Diamond. I wanted very much to think that he’d given up that idea and, after my visit, had decided to die in peace. I regretted bitterly that I hadn’t said more to him in the way of comfort, and Mrs Alice’s warnings of waking up one morning and finding it was too late haunted me badly.
‘Was he in his bed, Mrs Alice?’
‘Never you mind,’ said she; and poured me out a glass of raisin wine, and said I was a poor, fatherless boy, and began to cry, which made her look more like an ancient baby than ever.
It wasn’t until later that I discovered why my father had been fully dressed; and that the journey he’d been proposing to make was a good deal further than London and Foxes Court.
I overheard my uncle talking about it to the parson on the day before the funeral. Although it was the law that you had to be buried in a woollen shroud on account of helping the wool trade, my father had hated the idea of it and insisted that he was to be laid to rest in his best clothes. It was his last solemn vanity, even if he was fined for it.
When I heard this, and understood, I felt cold with dread. My father must have known he was going to die that night; and had made himself ready. He’d known that he’d never see me again, and that the words he spoke to me would be his last. Consequently those words now became immensely important; and the scene between my father and me burned in my mind as if it would never go out.
The funeral marked the last day of the weird holiday, and the ending of the daytime candlelight. I wore undertakers’ gloves and a huge black weeper round my hat, that kept blowing out in the wind by the graveside, like a pirate’s flag.
My mother’s family from St Albans came down in three carriages, and there was an old lady with a mannish face, who was supposed to be a distant relation of my father’s, and the only one he had. When the St Albans people went away, they must have taken the old lady with them, by mistake, I supposed, as I never saw her again.
I wondered if Foxes Court had heard about the funeral, and I looked round the church for people who might have come from my father’s old life. But there were only neighbours and people from Hertford who I knew.
I remember, afterwards, how pitifully empty the house seemed; and my father’s room, with its door left open, his bed as smooth as marble, and all the medicine bottles gone, made me feel, for the first time, that he had really gone, and would never, never come back.
My uncle told me, quite gently for him, to bear up and be a man, and that my father would not have been pleased to see me blubbering like a girl.
We were at dinner: a late, sad, leftover meal. I had been staring mistily at the leg of mutton Mrs Alice had put on the table, and remembering Mrs Small, the nurse, to whom human beings, male and female, had meant no more than butcher’s meat might have meant to Mrs Alice; and I’d been wondering if Mrs Alice had been feeling the same, only the other way round, of course.
John Diamond (Vintage Childrens Classics) Page 2
