I remember, as I jumped from the carriage and crashed among roadside bushes, and began to run and run towards Mr K’Nee’s sunset, that all I wanted was to kill John Diamond, and to tear him to pieces. In my heart of hearts I was certain that those I loved best were burned and dead.
‘They’re dead! They’re dead! They’re dead!’
Lights in the church, lights in the inn, lights in the cottages … but they were nothing to the dreadful light that streamed and roared from my home!
The gate was wide open and a host of black figures, lit at the edges, crowded the grass and the gravel path. All Woodbury was there! All Woodbury, in its curl-papers, shirtsleeves, blankets and nightcaps, jostling each other and pointing and gaping at my flaming house!
Where was he? Was he among the crowd? Was he leaning against the great tree in the middle of the lawn?
‘Stop shoving, boy! Take your turn!’
‘Let me through! Let me through!’
‘Get out of the way!’
Suddenly all Woodbury’s children set up a shriek of excitement as a piece of my roof came flaming down, like a bad angel, and smashed into a million sparks in front of my door. In the increase of light, I thought I saw him, grinning and pointing!
Then the wind changed and a gust of smoke rushed outwards from all the windows, as if the house had given up the ghost, and there was a gasping and a coughing and a general falling back and all Woodbury’s eyes streamed with crocodile tears.
‘WILLIAM!’
Somebody shouted my name! The smoke shifted. Figures stumbled.
‘WILLIAM!’
It was Rebecca! It was my sister Rebecca! Had anybody told me, a month before, that I would have wept for joy at the sight of Rebecca, I would have been outraged. But I wept.
She had a coat over her nightgown and her arms were full of books. She was alive! In an instant I divined she was the only one who’d been saved! In an instant I foresaw that it would just be Rebecca and me. I would look after her forever She would never marry; she was much too plain for that. She would keep house …
‘WILLIAM!’
Cissy! A walking mountain of hats and gowns. Soot all over her face and her feet were bare. But alive! Rebecca sank into insignificance. I’d always preferred Cissy …
‘WILLIAM!’
My mother! They were all alive! They rushed upon me; and I rushed upon them. And there was Mrs Alice, carrying saucepans like iron babies. She dropped them and clutched me and my head went into her apron and rebounded like a football!
Even my Uncle Turner was safe. He was at the back of the house, commanding a bucket chain from the fishpond. The Hertford engine had been sent for, but there wasn’t much hope. Everything had happened so quickly that everybody was lucky to get out alive. If Mrs Alice hadn’t imagined she’d heard somebody whistling and gone downstairs …
‘What’s the matter, William? We’re all alive, dear. What is it?’
I was looking for him, for John Diamond. I knew he was there. He was in the crowd! He was watching us! But where?
‘Look out! Look out there!’
All Woodbury’s children shrieked again. The shutters over the window of my father’s room had blazed and fallen away like bright curtains. At the same time, the glass exploded with a bang; and all Woodbury shrieked louder than ever.
Somebody was inside the room! A face as greyish white as ash—really like ash!—had stared out! Then it vanished as if it had been blown away.
‘Did you see that?’
‘Yes—yes! What—who was it?’
‘I don’t know—’
It was John Diamond! The madman was still in the house! I stared at the window. Veils of flame were coming up from the fallen shutters. Veils of flame must have been coming up from him, too.
I’d wanted him to die; and now he was about to. He was burning up in his own hatred. I tried to be pleased; but it wasn’t possible. There’d been such a frightful look on his face, such a wild, wild despair that he hadn’t looked like John Diamond at all. He’d looked more like my dead friend, Shot-in-the-Head. I’d thought of that instantaneously; and then he’d gone.
He hadn’t seen me. He’d been staring in quite a different direction. He’d seen something that had had a great effect on him; and it had been that something that had driven him back from the window and into the fire. It had been something that had frightened him more than the prospect of death.
It had been his father! Old Mr Diamond was running and stumbling and shrieking:
‘John! John! John!’ and Mr K’Nee and Mr Seed were running after and trying to hold him back.
The dwarf had got hold of his coattails and Mr K’Nee was shouting: ‘Leave him! Leave him!’ meaning John Diamond, who was beyond helping, and there was a fearful commotion going on all round them.
‘My son! It’s my son!’ screamed the old gentleman, struggling to fight everybody off.
But even if he’d managed to get free, he wouldn’t have been able to do anything. He wouldn’t have got past the bucket chain that was slopping hopeless water along the front of the house They’d have stopped him easily. There were about a dozen of them—huge people—and they’d have caught him up like a baby. And anyway, he’d never have been able to climb through the window …
It was hard enough even for me, and I cut my hands badly on the broken glass.
I forgot to tell you, by the way, that while everybody had turned to stare at the shouting old gentleman, I’d gone off, like a dog after a cat, straight at the house.
It had struck me, very uncomfortably, that John Diamond wasn’t perishing in his own hatred but in mine; and that, even if nobody else knew it, Mr Diamond would have known it, and after all that had happened, that would have been the worst thing in the world.
Somebody threw a bucket of water at me—not the whole bucket but just the water—in mistake for the fire, and then I was inside the room and people outside were shouting that I was mad and would be killed and I couldn’t help agreeing with them.
It was absolutely frightful inside that room. Everything was smouldering: my father’s bed, the floorboards and the very walls! And the noise! It sounded as if the whole house had flown into a violent temper with itself, and no longer wanted to be a house and be lived in, and was trying to stamp itself flat!
Crash—crash—crash! Down came ceilings and the old winding passages! Crash—crash—crash! Down came blazing doors, melted off their hinges! Crash—crash—crash! Footsteps with a vengeance—enormous, world-sized footsteps!
I remember thinking, in a mad haste, that this was where it had all begun—in this very room—and this was where it was all going to end.
John Diamond was still there. He was standing, pressed up against the wall by the door and smoke was pouring up all round him. He was so still and stiff that I thought he was already dead, and was just propped up, like a broom.
I shouted for him to come over to the window. He wouldn’t move. He just glared at me through the smoke; and then he began coughing violently. There were people at the window behind me, throwing water to try and put the blazing shutters out.
I ran and got hold of John Diamond’s sleeve. It felt harsh and charred and I burned myself on one of his buttons. I dragged at him. He came quite easily and I saw that the smoke that had been clinging to him detached itself and seemed to form another figure, pressed up against the wall. It was a gaunt, wasted figure in a suit that hung as loosely as grave-clothes.
I think, by that time, somebody else had got inside, because I can remember John Diamond being hoisted through the window like a bundle of dirty washing; then it was my turn and the world outside looked weird and wonderful in our house-light, and all the trees leaped out of the night as if caught unawares by such an unnatural day.
There was a tremendous cheer. I thought it was for me, but it was for the Hertford engine that had just arrived. It was being dragged up to the front of the house and all Woodbury’s children were in pursuit.
&nb
sp; I remember feeling a pang of annoyance that the Hertford engine should have stolen my cheer, and wished that it might have waited.
John Diamond had been laid on the grass and his father and Mr K’Nee were kneeling beside him; but before I could reach him, my mother and sisters, overflowing with worry, fondness and hats, clasped me to their various bosoms with the news that I was scorched and soaked, that my eyebrows were singed and that I was BLEEDING.
It was only from my hands, but I must have wiped them across my forehead and left great streaks of blood.
Then my mother let me go, and I went to see John Diamond, in whom I felt I had a proprietary interest as I’d saved his life. He was in no state to thank me, even if he’d wanted to; but his father did, and it seemed to me that Mr Diamond’s thanks were worth more than the lost ten thousand pounds.
Even Mr K’Nee forsook enough of his sternness to declare that I’d done very well and that David Jones would have been proud of me. He went so far as to tell my mother and sisters so; and my mother nodded vigorously, even though she didn’t know Mr K’Nee or Mr Diamond from Adam. It wasn’t until later that everybody was introduced and the wild tale of my London adventures was properly related.
One thing, however, stays firmly in my mind. It was Mr Seed. He kept pointing at old Mr Diamond kneeling next to his son. Then, unable to contain his satisfaction, he hobbled about and turned discreet cartwheels under the impression that nobody was noticing. Each time he performed one, he looked around fiercely and importantly; and then did it again.
‘Good for the circulation,’ he explained, when he saw me watching. Then, pointing once more to the reconciled father and son, he said mysteriously:
‘I rather fancy, young Mr Jones, that you won’t be hearing any of them sighs and footsteps anymore.’
21
IT MUST HAVE been nearly three o’clock in the morning before the fire was quite put out—and then only with the help of a change in the wind and a downpour of freezing rain.
You never saw such a melancholy sight as my two soaked sisters, wandering among the charred ruins looking for lost possessions, like a pair of girl phantoms at a tragic wedding.
The old part of the house and the part with my father’s room and mine, together with the kitchen and stables, were completely gutted; but the rest was still standing.
Of course it wasn’t safe to go inside as there was always a danger of the fire breaking out again. Smoke was still coming up from the embers and, from time to time, when the wind blew, a thousand bright red worms winked and wriggled among the fallen beams.
The Hertford engine, which was a red-painted box on wheels with a short leather snout, as if there was a dead elephant inside, stood pointing at the defeated fire with a general air of daring it to show so much as another flicker.
I went up to have a look at it and was joined by a boy from Woodbury I went to school with. I waited for him to ask me where I’d been and was ready with a full version of my amazing experiences to flatten him. He never asked. Instead he insisted on telling me about everything I’d missed at school and that it was a great pity that I’d been away when they’d broken up for Christmas as somebody had written something rude on the blackboard and they’d all been kept in and had smashed up a desk and a couple of windows.
I gazed at him in melancholy amazement as he rattled on about the usual fights and beatings and of how somebody had made fulminating powder in a spoon and it had gone off with a report like a cannon and frightened our master’s wife out of her wits.
It never occurred to him that my news was a good deal more interesting than his. I felt weary and remote and wondered how I could ever tolerate going back to school again. I felt, as Mr Seed would have said, four times as old as my friend, and forty times as clever. And I was sad.
So much, then, for my homecoming. I didn’t even have the satisfaction of receiving my Uncle Turner’s abject apology for having misjudged me. In fact, I didn’t see that detestable man anywhere when I was being heroic. He’d kept well out of the way as if he knew that the spectacle of my nobility would have choked him with mortification.
The first I really saw of him was in the parlour of our village inn where we sat out the rest of that terrible night, talking and dozing in front of a kinder fire than the one that had raged outside.
I sat for a while between my two sisters; but they were hard and bony and kept fidgeting, so I transferred myself to Mrs Alice and rested my head on the bosom of the deep, which was where her apron swelled like a wave.
‘Ah! He’s asleep,’ said she, peering down at me with her round, wrinkled face that seemed, like her bosom, to have gone into the floating business. ‘He’s fast asleep!’
I denied it and continued to take an intelligent interest in the conversation, which was about how John Diamond had got inside our house. Mrs Alice thought it must have been through the kitchen door, which she always left open in case I came back in the middle of the night.
Here I saw my Uncle Turner’s face light up with grim satisfaction, as if he’d known all along that the calamity had been something to do with me.
‘I could have climbed through a window,’ I said, meaning to exonerate myself.
‘Ssh! Ssh! Little pitchers!’
Nobody knew why John Diamond had been in my father’s room, but it was supposed he’d hidden there when he’d heard Mrs Alice. She remembered shutting all the doors to prevent the fire spreading, and she might have bolted them, too, but she couldn’t be sure. Anyway, she was thankful that the young man hadn’t been burned alive as she wouldn’t have wanted his death on her conscience.
I could hear her heart thumping away as she thought about it, and the bosom of the deep rose and fell awfully.
John Diamond had been put to bed upstairs and Dr Fisher from Hertford had been with him for about half an hour, and so had Mrs Small who kept coming and going and saying things about raw meat.
‘Ssh! Mrs Small! Little pitchers!’
‘Ain’t he asleep then?’
‘He keeps waking.’
‘The crafty thing!’
Mr Seed came over to have a look at me, and he twisted up his large face until he looked like Punch after he’d demolished Judy, the hangman, and Death.
‘No more footsteps, Mr Jones …’
‘He’s asleep, poor thing!’
‘He’ll be all right now,’ said Mrs Small, who had mysteriously bandaged up my hands without my having been in the least aware of it.
My fingers, coming out of a nest of bandages, didn’t look as if they belonged to me. In fact, they looked rather like toes.
‘William, dear,’ said my mother.
‘Now don’t spoil him, Rose,’ said my Uncle Turner, as if I was in a state of precarious perfection that couldn’t possibly last, and that any praise at all would ruin me.
‘And how is our young hero?’ said Dr Fisher, who seemed to have come down through the ceiling.
My Uncle Turner looked daggers at him.
‘He’s asleep.’
‘Just as well. Nature knows best.’
‘I doubt that!’ said Mr K’Nee.
His voice sounded dry and sharp and his fistical face seemed to punch the air. ‘And how is the—the other one?’
‘Not to be moved.’
‘Will he recover?’
‘There’s a good chance. He has everything to live for. His father, you know. I never saw such love between a father and son.’
‘It wasn’t always like that.’
‘So I understand.’
‘Will it last?’
‘God willing.’
‘I hope so. I don’t want him to be disappointed. It would kill him.’
‘Kill who?’ I said.
‘Ssh! Ssh!’
‘I want to know!’
‘The old gentleman, dear. That’s all. Mr K’Nee was …’
‘Is he asleep again, Mrs Alice?’
‘Like an angel, ma’am.’
I hovered, with
beating wings.
‘I don’t believe the young man could be so unnatural as to go back to his old ways,’ said my mother. ‘I just don’t believe it, Mr K’Nee.’
‘It wouldn’t be unnatural, Mrs David Jones,’ said the lawyer wearily. ‘Far from it. In my experience nature goes more easily to the bad than in any other direction. Wrong breeds wrong more readily than right breeds right.’
‘I don’t agree with you, Mr K’Nee!’ said Mr Seed abruptly. ‘I don’t agree at all!’
‘I’m surprised to hear you say that, Mr Seed,’ said the lawyer coldly, as if he was annoyed to be contradicted by his own doorkeeper. ‘I’m very surprised to hear you, who work in Foxes Court and see a good deal of human nature, take such a kindly view of it.’
‘I’m sure there’s good in everybody,’ said my mother. ‘It only needs bringing out.’
‘That’s it, dear lady. It needs bringing out. And that’s why we have the law. Leave it all to nature, and the bad flourishes like the bay tree.’
‘Very true,’ said my Uncle Turner, sensing an ally. ‘Particularly with boys.’
‘Leave one rotten apple in a barrel of sound ones,’ said Mr K’Nee, ignoring my uncle, ‘and what happens? They all go bad. Put one good apple in a barrel of rotten ones, and what happens? Do the bad apples reform themselves? Do they become good? No. The good one goes to the bad with the rest.’
Ah! He’s right!’ sighed Mrs Alice. ‘Apples is just like that!’
‘Let me put it another way, Mrs David Jones. It is natural, is it not, to take what you want … a loaf of bread, say. But it is not natural to pay for it. Yet pay we do, and pay we must. That is the law. And the law, ma’am, is the most unnatural thing in the world!
‘What could be more unnatural than twelve good men and true deciding on the innocence or guilt of a perfect stranger? What could be more unnatural than a gentleman in a full-bottomed wig sentencing that stranger, who he’s never seen in his life before, for a crime that can only have injured another total stranger?
‘It’s quite against nature, ma’am. And thank God for that! I tell you, if Mother Nature, with all her sloppy ways, was to come up at the Old Bailey, she’d be clapped into Newgate directly, and loaded with chains!’
John Diamond (Vintage Childrens Classics) Page 14
