Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  There came a sudden crkkk and the squeak as of a boot. The boy bit hard on his lip. Yet another slow sliding step forward; the kitchen door was ajar. A spear of yellow light warned the intruder. But light – spear or no spear – was as vitalizing as a sip of wine. Red-capped, pock-marked faces, all sorts and conditions of criminals, buccaneers and highwaymen, gore and glory, flocked back again into the boy’s fancy. An icy delicious shiver ran down his spine, for now Jacobs, tied with a tape round the middle, in his green baize apron, must be sitting at not much more than arm’s-length from the door. Or if not, who?

  Inch by inch, courage restored, he slid on soundlessly, his stockinged foot first pushing forward into the light, then the white edge of his night-shirt. He pressed skin-close to the further side of the passage, and was actually half past the door ajar, when through a narrow chink he glanced into the kitchen, and so – suddenly found himself squinting full into the eyes of the fat woman in the black bonnet. Crouching a little, stiff and motionless, her eyes bolting out of her face, she stood there full in the light of the gas jet over her head, the faded brown hair that showed beneath her bonnet wreathing it as if with a nimbus. The boy stood frozen.

  Not for an instant did he imagine he could be invisible to such a stare as that, to eyes which, though they were small and dark showed as round and shining as the silver locket that rose and fell jerkily upon her chest. His mouth opened – mute as a fish; every sinew in his body stiffened in readiness for flight. But the woman never so much as stirred. Every fibre and muscle in her body was at stretch to aid her ears. It looked as if she might be able to hear even his thoughts moving. So would a she-wolf stand at gaze under a white moon, with those unstirring eyes; famished and gaunt. And yet, what in the world was there for her to be afraid of? If anybody else was there she would have spokcen. She was alone, then? His fingers suddenly relaxed, the scabbard of his poniard rattled against the wall behind him, and there slipped off his tongue the most unlikely question that would ever else have come into his mind. ‘I say; where’s Jacobs?’

  The lids over the little black eyes fluttered and the woman’s lips opened in a squawk. Her two rough red hands were suddenly clapped on either side of her mouth. For a moment he thought she was going to scream again, and was thankful when only a shuddering sob followed. ‘Oh, sir, how you did startle me. Mr Jacobs, sir, why just as you was coming – he’s gone, sir; he’s gone.’

  The boy pushed open the door and stood on the threshold. He had supposed it impossible that so stout a woman could speak in so small a voice. Sheer curiosity had banished all alarm. Besides, if Jacobs was out, there was no immediate danger. He looked about him, conscious that he was being closely watched from between those square red fingers, and that the forehead above them was deeply wrinkled almost as if the woman were helpless with laughter.

  ‘Why, lor,’ she was muttering as if to herself, ‘it’s only the little boy. My! I thought he was his pa, I did; God bless him. He’s come down for a drink of water. That’s what he wants. And all in his pretty night-gown too.’

  Tears were now gushing down her round cheeks and gurgling in her voice. She walked in angles to a chair and sat there rocking her body to and fro and smiling at him – an odd contorted smile of blandishment and stupidity sicklied over with fear. He blushed, and stared back at her as hot and angry as when in days gone by bent-up wrinkled old ladies used to stop his nurse in the street to ask questions about him, and had even openly kissed him.

  This end to his adventure, which seemed to be leading him into difficulties he had never dreamed of, was a bitter disappointment. A drink of water! He resented the presence of this fat woman in the kitchen. He resented even more his own embarrassment. He wriggled under his night-shirt, and was profoundly relieved when those flabby florid cheeks suddenly faded to a mottled mauve, the rocking ceased, and two heavy eyelids slowly descended upon the small black terrified eyes. Even if she were going to faint, she would at any rate have to stop staring.

  But his troubles were only begun; ugly grunts were proceeding from that open mouth, and the woman’s head was twitching oddly. Still, he had had experiences of this kind before. He knew what was to be done, and a scientific callousness gave his remedy zest. On the kitchen table beside some empty bottles of beer and a decanter stood a tumbler half full of water. This he liberally sprinkled on the woman’s face and trickled a few drops, not without waste, between her teeth. Grunts expostulated, and the silver locket almost danced. She was coming to. Success stimulated him to fresh efforts; he snatched a scrap of brown paper from among the spoons and climbing up on to a chair lit it at the gas, and thrust it under her nose. It was enough. Such a smother would have stupefied an apiary.

  But though the cure was now complete, and worthy of being proudly recorded, one pretty keepsake had been degraded for ever – the memory of his mother, lying on a sofa, and two blue eyes like dawn shining up amid the dewdrops sprinkling her fair cheeks. This fat stranger’s petticoat was of coarse red dingy flannel. She was clammy and stupid and ridiculous. Nevertheless, the absurd fear of him or whatever it might be that had brought her to this pass seemed for the moment to be clean forgotten. For when her dazed eyes rolled down from under their lids again and looked out at him, precisely the same expression had come into her face as he had seen on it when he had watched her smiling mawkishly at Jacobs himself.

  ‘Are you better now?’ he asked coldly, flourishing the smouldering paper.

  The woman smiled again, and nodded.

  ‘I’m afraid I may have burnt you. But there’s no other way, you see, though the smell’s pretty beastly.’ The woman went on vacantly smiling. Not that this stupid wrinkling up of her mouth and cheeks seemed to mean anything. She might have been made of wax. Further parleying, he decided, would be wasted.

  ‘You needn’t mention it to Jacobs, you know,’ he began. ‘I shan’t say anything. You see, I just happened to notice you through the door. I think I’ll be going back now. Jacobs is a bit of a …’ Nothing very conciliatory could come after that ‘bit’. At all events he decided to keep back the word that had so nearly slipped out. The silver locket began to jolt again, and clumsy fingers fumbled at it. The smile was beginning to crystallize into the familiar wrinkled stare.

  ‘You look better, much better,’ said the boy uneasily, edging towards the door. ‘I remember once my mother …’ but his tongue refused for shame to say what he remembered. Also he found it difficult to turn his back on the woman, though when at last he reached the door he whipped round quickly.

  ‘Little boy,’ called the woman in a fulsome voice, ‘come back! I say! – little boy!’

  He frowned. Her eyes were now searching his face intently and suspiciously. She had begun to think again. And at sight of their hostility his own underlip drooped into a sullen obstinacy. He didn’t mind her. If she decided to sneak to Jacobs, that was her look out; meanwhile he could easily manage her alone.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘I was took ill, wasn’t I? The heat’s something awful. Phh! But there isn’t any need to stare, little boy. I shan’t eat you.’ Cunning peeped out of the unctuous face, and he merely waited for the trap. ‘Not me; and what a pretty belt he’s got on,’ she continued, rolling her dingy handkerchief into a ball; ‘and ain’t he got a nice new dagger!’

  But even such flatteries as these produced no response. The dagger wasn’t new, and the belt was not meant to be pretty. ‘I must be going now, thank you,’ he repeated. ‘Besides, I suppose he’ll be back in a minute?’

  Her hands stayed motionless; her head had suddenly jerked a little sideways like a thrush’s intent on the stirrings of a worm.

  ‘Going,’ she repeated, ‘why, of course, he must be going, poor lamb: he’ll get his death of cold. And wasn’t he good to me; good to me he was. And that clever! You’d have thought he was a doctor!’

  Her glance meanwhile was roving in confusion into every corner of the room as though she were looking for something, and was a
fraid of what she might find. He could hardly keep his own from following her. ‘That kind and gentle he was! Just like a doctor he was!’ And again a menacing silence swallowed up her words. The boy’s face reflected a distrust deepening into hostility. Was the whole thing a cheat then? Was Jacobs as usual playing the sneak? Would he suddenly leap out on him? In any case he knew he was only being cajoled, if not ridiculed.

  ‘There, now!’ she suddenly broke out, ‘if he isn’t thinking again. That’s what he’s doing. He’s thinking about what I was saying to meself when that funny dream came over me. That’s what he’s doing. And why not, I should like to know. Eh?’ She shot him a searching, ogling glance.

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ he answered. ‘Your eyes looked rather queer, with the whites gone up, and your skin twitched just as if the water burnt it. But I didn’t mind.’

  ‘How long was you there, then? Tell me that?’ Her nails were now gripped uncomfortably sharp on his arm. ‘You stand there frowning and sulking, my young soldier. And by what rights, may I ask? Just you tell me how long you was there!’ Her face had grown hard and dangerous, but he shut his mouth tight and returned sullenly stare for stare. ‘So help me,’ she half whispered, releasing him, ‘now I’ve been and frightened him again. That’s it. He thinks I’m angry with him. Lord love you, my precious, I didn’t mean anything like that. Not me. P’raps you just came down for a bit of fun, eh?’

  She fixed her eyes on the dagger, and shuddered. ‘What was I saying? Ah, yes. How long – how long was – you – there?’ She stamped her foot. ‘That’s right, saucer-eyes, stare, stare! Didn’t I say I’m old and ugly! Ain’t he said it too? Oh, oh, oh! What shall I do, what shall I do?’ She hid her face in her hands and her tears gushed out anew.

  The boy stood stiffly at her side. This unexpected capitulation unnerved him, and his heart began to heave menacingly.

  ‘I’m sorry; but I must go now,’ he repeated, trying with as little obvious aversion as possible to drag his hand from her hot wet cheek. ‘And I don’t see what good crying will do.’ As if by magic the snuffling ceased.

  ‘Good! Who said, what “good”? It’s me who must be going, my young man, and don’t you make any mistake about that!’She shook out her skirts, and searched in vain for the bonnet on her head. He nearly laughed out, so absurd was the attempt – for the bunched-up old thing was dangling by its strings, behind her back. But this retrieved, she drew it on, pushing under it stragglings of her iron-grey hair. Then she opened a fat leather purse, stuffed with keys and dirty crumpled papers.

  ‘Now what have I got here?’ she began wheedlingly, as she pushed about with her finger and took out a sixpence. ‘What have I got here? Why, a silver sixpence. And who’s that for? Why, for any nice little boy what won’t spy and pry. That’s what that’s for.’ She stooped nearly double, holding it out to him with bolting eyes in her purpled face. ‘What? He won’t take it? Shakes his head? Too proud to take it. Oh, very well, very well.’

  She opened her purse again and with shaking fingers pushed the sixpence back. She was not crying now, but her face had gone a deathly grey, and a blank, dreadful misery had crept into it. This woman was a very strange woman. He had never met anyone who behaved in such a queer way. He watched her as she went waddling off out of the kitchen and over the stone floor into the darkness beyond. Her footsteps ceased to sound. She was gone, then? And she must have left the garden door open behind her; the wind was bellying in his night-shirt and icy under his arms. Here was the cat come in, too, rolling in its sodden fur on the oilcloth at his feet. ‘Puss, Puss,’ he said. Where had he been to get in such a state? The boy stood dismayed and discomfited, while the cat rubbed its body and its purring jaws against his stockinged legs.

  A stark unstirring silence had spread into the kitchen, though the gas was faintly singing – high and from very far away. And, as if to attract his attention, a wisp of hair was patting his forehead under his ridiculous cap-brim. The silence entangled his thoughts in a medley of absurd misgivings productive only of chicken-skin and perplexity. Something had gone wrong – the house was changed; and he didn’t know how or why. He glanced up at the clock, which thereupon at once began to tick. His eyes dodged from side to side of the familiar kitchen and then it was as if a stealthy warning finger had been laid upon his thoughts, and chaos became unity.

  His roving glance had fallen on the cupboard door. For there in the crack at the bottom of it, shut in and moving softly in the wind, showed a corner of green baize. Jacobs was there, then; bunched up there, then; smiling to himself and waiting, and listening in there, then? The boy stood appalled, his bright black eyes fixed on this flapping scrap of green baize apron. The whole thing was a trap. And yet, as he tried hard to keep his wits, he had known instantly there was something wrong – something he couldn’t understand. That was just like one of Jacobs’s jokes! – jokes that usually had so violent and humourless an ending. And yet … Suddenly the hinges of the outer door had whinnied; he jerked round his head in alarm. It was the woman again. She had come back. Bead-bright raindrops glittered on the black of her jacket, on her bonnet, in her hair. That rigid awful stare of horror had come back into her face. He could move neither hand nor foot; could only stare at her.

  ‘Eh, eh, now!’ she was choking out at him. ‘So you’ve seen now, my fine young gentleman, have you? That’s what you’ve done. Then what do I say; me! Keep a civil tongue in your head, that’s what I say. And tell me this —’ The face thrust so close down to his had grown enormous and unspeakably dreadful. Her hot breath enveloped him. ‘Where’s the gate? Where’s the gate, I say? I got lost there among them bushes. I can’t get out. D’ye see? I’ve lost the gate. It’s dark. It’s come on raining. Where’s the gate?’

  Tiny beads of blood stood on her skin – she must have stumbled into the holly hedge at the foot of the garden by the cucumber frames. She smelt not only of her old clothes but of the night and the rain. And still he made no answer. He had been driven back by that awful and congealed look on her face – beyond fear. He was merely waiting – to find his way: this mystery, this horror.

  ‘Eh, now’; she had turned away, her heavy head crooked down over one shoulder, and was speaking this time to herself: ‘quiet and silly, that’s what he is. Nothing much anybody could get out of him. But see you here!’ She had twisted round. ‘It’s no good you playing the young innocent with me. You’ve seen and you know. That’s what you’ve done. And you just tell me this. How could I have done it? how should I have done it? That’s what I’m asking. Just you tell me that. Haven’t I come of honest people? And didn’t he promise me and promise me? And nothing but lies. And then, “You ain’t the first,” he says. And me as I am! “You ain’t the first,” he says. Ay, and meant it. “What, what!” I says. And then he hit me – here, with his clenched-up fist, here. “I shan’t leave you,” I said, “and you can’t make me.” And all I wanted was just to keep body and soul together. “And you can’t make me,” that’s what I said. “That’s all,” I said. And then he laughed. “You ain’t the first,” he says, laughing. And me as I am! … Oh, my God, he won’t understand. Listen, little boy. I didn’t know what I was doing; everything went black and I couldn’t see. And I put out my hands – to push him off, and my fingers went stiff and a smudge of red came over my eyes, and next thing he fell down like a bundle and wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t speak. Mind you, I say this, if I hadn’t drunk the beer, if I hadn’t drunk the beer, if I hadn’t – done – that …’ She faltered, her face went blank as she swayed.

  Her listener was struggling hard to understand. These broken words told him little that was clear and definite, and yet were brimming over with sinister incomprehensible meanings. He frowned at the contorted, dark-red moving face and loose lips. One fact and one fact alone was plain. He had nothing to fear from Jacobs. Jacobs was not going to pounce out on him. Simply because Jacobs was gone. Then why …? He twisted about, and kneeling down on the floor by the cupboard beside the coo
ling kitchen range – with scarcely a glint of drowsy red now in its ashy coals – he struggled with the metal tongue that held back the door. Usually loose, it now turned stiffly and hurt his fingers. Then suddenly it gave way.

  And the boy’s first quick thought was: Why, he’s quite a little man! And the next was one of supreme relief that all this wild meaningless talk was now over. He leaned forward and peered into the puckered-up clay-coloured face, with its blackened lips and leaden-lidded eyes. The chin was dinted in with the claw pin in the cravat. A gallipot stood near – a trap for crickets – touching one limp hand, still smeared with pink plate powder. The door-tongue was stiff, the boy supposed, because the corner of the baize apron had got stuck to the varnish of the frame. You’d have hardly thought, though, there’d be room in the cupboard. But the important thing, the illuminating, inspiring, and yet startlingly familiar thing was the gallipot!

  It had touched a spring, it had released a shutter in his mind and set his thoughts winging back to a sooty, draughty chimney where only a few minutes ago – minutes as vast and dark and empty as the sea – he had hidden a book with a wedge of pie-crust on top of it. In that book he had read of just such a gallipot as this – not as a trap for crickets – but a gallipot with a handful of spade guineas in it, which had belonged to an old man who had been brutally strangled in the small hours by his two nephews. They had never been caught either; nobody had even suspected them. They had planned a means of escape – so vile and fantastic that even to watch them at it had made his skin deliciously creep upon him and his hair stir on his head. But it had succeeded, it had worked. To the dead old man’s four-poster bed they had strung up the body of their victim, and until one of them, on his death-bed, had made confession, the old man’s bones had lain beneath the tramplings of the cross-roads. For everybody, even his own relatives, believed that he had hanged himself. This evilly romantic picture had flamed up with an ominous glow in the boy’s imagination as he stood there contemplating his quiet enemy. The woman had become utterly unimportant. She was standing by the table, twisting, now up, now down, her dark-green bonnet-strings.