Collected Stories (4.1)

by R. Chetwynd-Hayes

  “Not while that girl encourages it,” Mother stated. “Not while she moons around it, like a lovesick puppy.”

  “Keep away from it,” warned Father.

  Brian punched her thigh with his small fist.

  “Keep away from it.”

  Days passed without an appearance from Mr. Miss-One. Julia wondered if her Mother’s anger had built a wall through which he could not pass, and mourned for him, as though for a loved friend who had recently died. Sometimes, when she escaped from the vigilance of her parents, she went looking for him; roamed the garden, or suddenly opened a door, hoping to see him leaning against the mantelpiece, or lounging in a chair. But he had become a shadow that flees before sunlight. Even Father commented on his nonappearance.

  “Six days now, and we haven’t seen hair or hide of it. What did I tell you? The atmosphere dispelled.”

  “Stuff and nonsense,” Mother snapped. “Atmosphere indeed. Lack of encouragement, more likely. I’ve been keeping an eye on someone I could touch with a very small stick.”

  Three pairs of eyes were turned in Julia’s direction and she blushed. Brian kicked her ankle under the table.

  “Keep away from it.”

  “I am of the opinion,” Mother went on, “that he must have been a bad character. I mean to say, respectable people don’t go haunting places after they’re dead. They go to wherever they’re supposed to go, and don’t keep traipsing about, making a nuisance of themselves. He probably murdered someone and can’t rest.”

  “No.”

  All of Julia’s reticence, her lifelong submission to her parents’ opinions, disappeared in a flood of righteous anger. A part of her looked on and listened with profound astonishment to the torrent of words that poured out of her mouth.

  “He was not bad. I know it. He was sad, and that’s why he walks... I know... I know... Perhaps once he was happy here, or maybe it is sadness that chains him to this house, but he’s not evil... he’s not... You’re bad, small, stupid... and you’ve driven him away... I’ll never forgive you... ever...”

  Mother was so shocked that for a while she was incapable of speech. Father stared at the rebel with dilated eyes. Finally Mother’s tongue resumed its natural function.

  “I always said the girl was mad, and at last I have proof. I feel quite faint. Heavens, did you see her eyes? Really, Henry, are you just going to sit there while she insults us? Do something.”

  “What? Yes.” Father rose as though he were about to deliver a speech.

  “That’s no way to talk to your parents, particularly your mother...”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Mother pointed with dramatic emphasis toward the door. “Get out... go on... go to your room, and I don’t care if I never see your face again.”

  But the earthquake was still erupting, and Julia shouted back, her brain a red cavern of pain.

  “I hate you... hate... hate...”

  Mother screamed and fell back in her chair, while Father so far forgot himself as to stamp his foot.

  “How dare you speak to your mother like that? Go to your room.”

  Remorse flooded her being and she craved forgiveness like a soul in torment.

  “I didn’t mean it. Please...”

  But Father had eyes and ears only for Mother, who was gasping and writhing in a most alarming fashion. Brian watched the ingrate with joyous excitement.

  Julia ran to her room. She flung herself face down on the bed and sobbed soundlessly, her slender shoulders shaking, her long fingers clutching the bedclothes. Presently the storm abated and she became still. Her eyes opened and her sixth sense sent out invisible fingers. All at once—she knew.

  She sat up and spun around. Mr. Miss-One was standing in the recess by the side of the fireplace. As usual he was busy, but it took some minutes for her to understand what he was doing. A hand drill! He appeared to be making holes in the wall, although of course the pink-flower-patterned wallpaper remained unmarked. Julia got up and walked cautiously toward him, joy blended with curiosity. He slipped little cylinders of fiber into the wall then drove screws into the invisible holes. Light illuminated the darkness of Julia’s ignorance.

  “He’s fitting a bookshelf. How sweet.”

  She moved a little nearer so as to observe his actions with more clarity. His face was a study in concentration. The teeth were clenched, the muscles round the mouth taut, and once, when the screwdriver slipped, the lips parted as though mouthing a silent curse. She spoke her thoughts aloud, even as a penitent unburdens his soul to an invisible priest.

  “Mother is right. I shouldn’t be thinking of you all the time. Look at you, fixing a shelf that probably moldered away years ago. If only I could talk to you, hear your voice, most of all, make you realize I exist.”

  Mr. Miss-One lifted the Formica-covered shelf and fitted it into position. It immediately disappeared but he continued to work, seemingly content that all was well.

  “You are more real to me than Mother or Father and I feel I ought to tell you all manner of things. But there’s no point when you ignore me. Is there no way I can reach you?”

  Mr. Miss-One took up a hammer and began to tap the wall. Julia moved one step nearer. She could see a small cut on his chin.

  “You cut yourself shaving. How long ago did that happen? Ten... twenty... thirty years ago? Oh, you must know I am here. Can’t you feel something? A coldness—an awareness? Surely there must be something; a certainty that you are not alone; the urge to look back over one shoulder... Look at me... look... turn your head... you must... must...”

  The hammer struck Mr. Miss-One’s thumb and he swore.

  “Blast!”

  The solitary word exploded across the room and shattered the silence, making Julia shrink back. She retreated to the opposite wall, pressed her shoulders against its unrelenting surface and watched him. He dropped the hammer which fell to the floor with a resounding crash, sucked the afflicted thumb, then stared in Julia’s direction. For a period of five seconds, he was a statue; a frozen effigy of a man; then his mouth popped open, the hand dropped away and his eyes were blue mirrors reflecting astonishment—disbelief—fear.

  “You can see me!” Julia’s joyous cry rang out, and she took two steps forward to find he had vanished. Man, hammer, plus the assortment of tools, disappeared and Julia was left banging her fist against the recess wall. Her voice rang out in a shriek of despair.

  “Why... why... ?”

  Mother, Father, even the carefully tutored Brian, treated her to the silence reserved for the outcast. Some speech was unavoidable, but this was delivered in ice-coated voices with impeccable politeness.

  “Will you kindly pass the salt,” Mother requested on one occasion, “if it is not too much trouble.”

  Father appeared to be applying the sanctions with some reluctance but he was forced to obey a higher authority.

  “More tea... ?” His hand was on the teapot, then he remembered his ordained line of conduct and pushed it toward her. “Help yourself.”

  Brian was more direct.

  “I mustn’t talk to you.”

  This isolationist treatment created comfort when it was designed to produce misery. She was no longer the target for admonishing barbs, corrective slaps, or stinging words. She could fidget, sulk, slouch, or spend hours in her room without a single rebuke, although on occasion Mother was clearly sorely provoked, and once or twice her silence policy almost collapsed.

  Free from supervision she was able to continue her pursuit of Mr. Miss-One, but once again he seemed to have gone into hiding. The hum and roar of speeding cars drifted across the sleeping meadows. The roar of an overhead jet could be heard above the wind in the trees. Yet the living had no place in Julia’s heart, or for that matter, in any place in the house or garden.

  Of late a dream had taken root in her imagination. Now it dominated her waking and sleeping life. The seed had first been sown when she saw Mr. Miss-One cleaning his car.

  “Suppose,”
whispered her imagination, “you were to get into the car and let Mr. Miss-One drive you out into the world. Let him rescue you, carry you off, and never—never come back.”

  The voice of reason, a nasty, insinuating whisper, interrupted with, “But he is dead. A ghost.”

  Reason was hoist by its own petard.

  “If he is dead—if he is a ghost, then there is only one way in which I can join him.”

  The twin daggers of shock and horror became blunt as the dream grew. It was the solution to all problems, the key to open the door to Mr. Miss-One. She began to consider ways and means.

  Poison! She had no means of obtaining any. Cut her throat? Slash her wrists? She shied from such grim prospects like a horse from a snake. Rope—hanging? That would be easy and should not be too painful. There was a length of plastic clothesline in the garage and a convenient beam. If she jumped from the car roof, the leap would be completed in the space of a single heartbeat. It was all so very simple and Julia wondered why she had not thought of it before.

  She began to make plans.

  From two to four o’clock in the afternoon would be best, for it was then that the family took their after-lunch nap. Mother undressed and went to bed; Father, weather permitting, stretched himself out on a garden hammock, or if wind or rain confined him to the house, he lay prostrate on the sitting-room sofa. Brian slept anywhere. Like an animal, he shut off his consciousness whenever his elders set the example. Without doubt the time to die was between two and four in the afternoon.

  The situation was somewhat complicated by Mother suddenly relaxing her rule of silence and making overtures for peace. She actually smiled and said sweetly, “Good morning, dear,” before cracking her breakfast egg. “You’re looking quite pretty this morning,” she went on to remark, an obvious untruth, that suggested a desire to please. Julia was near despair. How could one die with an easy conscience when the enemy spiked their own guns and flew the white flag? Fortunately, Mother had a relapse with the cutting remark, “Pret-tiness without grace is like a wreath without flowers,” and instantly Julia’s resolve became a determination. She would die when the sun was high, take the fatal step in full daylight, and refuse to be diverted by smile or insult.

  However, she made one last effort to contact Mr. Miss-One, creeping from room to room and searching the garden, praying that he might appear and acknowledge her existence with a smile. For she could not deny the unpalatable fact that on the one occasion when Mr. Miss-Offe had seen her in the bedroom, his reaction had been one of fear. At least this established him as an intelligent personality, instead of the mindless time image Father so glibly dismissed, but it was, to say the least, a little disconcerting to know one’s appearance inspired fear in a ghost. Of course, once she had assumed the same status, there would be no reason for him to fear her at all. Like would appeal to like. She waited with burning impatience for the hour of two.

  At the lunch table, all signs indicated that normality had returned.

  “Don’t slouch,” ordered Mother.

  “Sit upright,” Father chimed in. “Try to be more like your mother.”

  Brian displayed signs of budding brilliance.

  “You’re not pretty, you’re not ugly. You’re pretty ugly.”

  The fond parents smiled.

  “He takes after me,” pronounced Mother. “I could always turn a phrase.”

  Julia’s impatience to be gone grew and destroyed her last lingering doubts.

  Father had intended to take his nap in the garden, but just before two o’clock the first cold needles of rain began to fall, so he retreated to the sitting room and was soon prostrate on the sofa. Mother climbed the stairs; the bedroom door slammed, and Julia murmured an inaudible good-bye. Brian lay down on the dining-room hearthrug and appeared to fall asleep, but Julia wondered if this was not a pretense put on for her benefit. Fortunately, the door had a key in the lock, so she turned it before leaving the house.

  A rising wind drove a curtain of rain across the lawn. It forced proud trees to bend their heads in submission, and turned Julia’s dress into a wet shroud. She ran for the garage, water splashing up her legs, dripping down her nose and chin, but it did not feel cold or even wet and she marveled at the sense of well-being.

  The garage doors were open and there was no time to consider why this was so, for there, standing in the gloomy interior, was a large red car. Julia stood within the entrance and stared at this stranger with wide-eyed astonishment. There should have been an ancient black family Austin; instead a sleek, rather vicious-looking red monster occupied the entire floor. A creation of highly polished red enamel, gleaming chromework, black tires and bulging mudguards, it seemed to be a thing of latent power, just waiting for the right finger to touch a switch, to send it hurling along straight roads, across the barriers of time and space into a million tomorrows.

  The off-side door was open and Julia, her plans for self-destruction forgotten, slid onto the red, plastic-covered seat and feasted her eyes on the complicated switchboard, the black steering wheel, the gleaming gear levers. Curiosity turned to wonderment, then ripened into pure joy.

  “A ghost car!”

  It must be, of course. This was the vehicle Mr. Miss-One had been cleaning, only then it was invisible, due undoubtedly to the base thoughts of Mother, Father, and that little beast, Brian. Now she could see it, feel it, and heavens be praised, actually smell it. This must be the result of suffering, loving him with all her being. She giggled, clasped her hands, and waited with joyous anticipation.

  Mr. Miss-One entered the garage limping, carrying a small overnight bag. He was plainly prepared for a journey. A terrible fear struck Julia: “Please don’t make it all disappear. Let me go with him—wherever he goes. Anywhere at all.”

  He opened the right-hand door, slung his bag onto the back seat, then climbed in. He closed the door, turned a key on the switchboard, and the engine roared with instant, pulsating life.

  “Don’t let it all disappear. Let me go with him.”

  The car slid out of the garage. The garden and house swept by the windows and Julia spared a thought for Mother, Father, and Brian, blissfully asleep, unaware that the despised one was passing out of their lives forever.

  “It’s happening. I’m going out At last... Oh, merciful God—going out.”

  The main gates, new, glossy with black paint, were open, and Mr. Miss-One swung the car out onto a country road.

  They were away at last, speeding along under an arcade of trees, flashing by meadows, snarling past lovely, red-bricked houses, while windshield wipers made neat half-moons in the driving rain.

  Mr. Miss-One suddenly reached over and opened a narrow flap in the switchboard. His hand was a bare inch from Julia’s breast, and she wanted to touch it, clasp the strong fingers, but was afraid that this wonderful dream might dispel. He took out a packet of cigarettes, adroitly popped one into his mouth, then replaced the carton and shut die flap. He lit the cigarette with a strange contraption from the switchboard, then inhaled, letting the smoke trickle down through his nose.

  By the time they had reached the main bypass, the novelty was wearing off, and Julia permitted herself a measure of confidence. The dream, if such it was, displayed no signs of breaking down. The car was solid. She could feel the seat beneath her, hear the muted roar of the engine, smell the smoke from Mr. Miss-One’s cigarette, see the road sliding away under the car wheels.

  The bypass was straight, a gray ribbon that stretched out into infinity as their speed built up. Sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour. Julia watched the needle climb on the speedometer. Then she turned her head and looked at Mr. Miss-One.

  Poor ghost, entirely oblivious in his ghost car, he did not know she was there. How was she to declare her presence and break through the wall that still separated them? She began to talk, spilling out her thoughts in a jumble of low spoken words.

  “Mr. Miss-One—I’m sorry I don’t know your real name, but Brian, the horrible littl
e beast, first called you Mr. Miss-One because of your limp. You sort of miss a step. Please, don’t think it’s meant unkindly, at least by me. In fact, the limp adds to your appearance; makes you more romantic. I guess that sounds silly, but I am silly—I can’t help it. I’ve been in love with you ever since that day when you first walked across the dining room and Mother went screaming under the table. She did look funny. I remember you took something we couldn’t see from the sideboard, then disappeared by the kitchen door. Can’t you see, or at least hear me?”

  It might have been imagination, but Mr. Miss-One did appear to be a little uneasy. He slid down the window to throw away his half-consumed cigarette. Julia sighed.

  “I wonder where we are going? Is this your world? Are the people out there wandering shadows left over from yesteryear, or are we racing, invisible, through today? Please try to see me.”

  She could see his left wrist. His jacket sleeve had slid up and the wrist was bare. Sun-tanned, muscular, covered with fine hair. It was also covered with goose pimples. She gasped, then gave a little cry.

  “Oh, you’re cold. My poor darling, you’re cold.”

  She had not meant to touch him—not yet—but there was no controlling the automatic impulse. Her hand flew to his wrist. For a brief moment she touched warm flesh, actually felt the fast beating pulse, then the car swerved, and’ Mr. Miss-One jerked his head round and stared straight at her.

  His face was a mask of pure, blood-chilling terror, and his mouth opened as he screamed. His hands clawed at the steering wheel, as though some part of his brain were trying to right the skid, and the scream erupted into isolated words, like black rocks crashing through a sheet of ice.

  “Dead... family... burned... dead... fifty... years... dead... dead... dead...”

  The screech of tortured rubber mingled with the screaming words. Outside the gray road was spinning around and around. A black shape came hurtling through the rain. There was a mighty, soul-uprooting crash, then for a brief second-nothing. A heartbeat of total oblivion.