Convalescence

by Maynard Sims

  “Well, I’m sure you don’t want to sit here listening to an old woman prattle on. Get on to the library with you and read your book.”

  I started to rise from the table, but she laid a hand across my arm. “Thank you, Jimmy, for sitting with me. My son, Hughie, and I used to take all our meals together. Much nicer than dining alone. Come and see me for your tablets before you turn in for the night.”

  “Yes, yes I will. I won’t be too late.” I feigned a yawn and left the dining room.

  I left Bannermere in my room and took the Eagle annual down to the library. There was no sign yet of Amy and so I sat down in my uncle’s wingback chair to wait for her.

  About thirty minutes later the library door opened and Amy slipped into the room.

  “Sorry I took so long. Mrs. Ebbage had me tidying up the pantry. It seemed to take forever.” She pulled up a footstool and sat down next to me. “So tell me, what did Michael say?”

  “He didn’t say anything. He just did this.” I handed her the Eagle annual.

  She took the book and rested it on her knees.

  “Go on, open it.”

  She opened the book and started flicking through it, glancing at me every now and then, her eyes growing wider with each turn of the page. She reached the end of the book. “But why would he do such a thing?”

  “Go back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I reached down and started flicking back through the annual until I found the pages he had written on. “You see? TB. He’s written TB—tuberculosis. Do you think he knows that’s why I’m here?”

  She stared down at the pages for a long moment.

  Eventually she said, “Did you look at the pages he’s written on? I mean really look at them. Not at the letters, but what’s underneath them.”

  I took the annual back from her. On the pages Michael had written was an article, “Sporting Heroes of Our Time”. It pictured various sportsmen—Billy Wright, England’s soccer captain from a few years back, John Surtees, the racing driver, and a few others—all had been scored through with the crayon. All except one. “That one hasn’t been scribbled on,” I said.

  “That’s what I meant,” she said.

  The picture left unscathed was of the England cricket player Dennis Compton. An action shot of Compton at the crease, bat raised, striking the ball for four. The caption underneath the picture had been scribbled out.

  “Your uncle played cricket, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and for England once.”

  “So maybe TB has nothing to do with your illness,” Amy said. “TB, Jimmy. Maybe he’s trying to show you your uncle—Thomas Bentley.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me before. “You might be on to something,” I said. “Perhaps Michael’s trying to get a message to him. Perhaps he’s in danger of some kind. But why would he try to make contact with him through me? Why not try to contact uncle directly?”

  I thought about this for a moment. “Maybe he can’t. Maybe I’m the only one he can make contact with.”

  “It could be that you’ve been so ill, so close to death,” Amy said. “I’ve been racking my brains about it since you first told me about him appearing to you. As I told you, we were very close, so why hasn’t he appeared to me before?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll tell you. It’s because I’m fit and strong, that’s why. Perhaps your illness has made you susceptible, more open.”

  We tossed theories around for another half an hour.

  Finally I said, “I’m going to have to go up, or Mrs. Rogers is going to come in here to see what I’m doing.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” she said and got to her feet. “I’m going to turn in myself.”

  She leaned forward and pecked me on the cheek. “Good night, Jimmy. Sleep tight,” she said.

  I felt myself blushing. “Yeah,” I said, “you too.”

  And then she had gone, leaving me rubbing my cheek and wishing I were older.

  Despite the questions racing around my mind, sleep came easily, probably the result of having lain awake the night before.

  When the music woke me, I roused so suddenly it took several minutes before I could get my bearings. I finally sloughed of the last vestiges of sleep, got out of bed and threw on some clothes—tee-shirt, shorts and plimsolls. I grabbed my penlight and shoved it into my pocket, and then I left the room.

  The music that seemed so loud in my bedroom was strangely muted out here on the landing. I walked towards the end of the landing and the corridor, but the farther I moved away from my room, the quieter the music became.

  It had almost become inaudible before I turned and retraced my steps.

  Back in my room the music was back at its original volume. Stupidly I checked my transistor radio, but it was switched off and there was nothing coming from its speaker. The music was coming from the window.

  It was a sultry night and I had opened the window before I went to bed. Now there was a slight breeze rippling the net curtains. I went across, pushed the nets aside and stuck my head out into the night. As the music continued to play, my gaze swept the garden, finally alighting on the summerhouse.

  It looked as it had looked earlier, with one difference. Coming from the inside I could see a faint glow of milky light.

  I left my bedroom and crept downstairs to the dining room. The French doors were locked but the key had been left in the latch. I twisted it sharply and pushed open one of the doors. Seconds later I was out in the garden and padding across the grass to the summerhouse.

  As I entered the building the music stopped.

  “Right, I’m here,” I said. “Now tell me what you want.”

  The light was brighter inside the summerhouse, but I couldn’t see its source. There were no lamps—no lights of any description—but it was bright enough to see every inch of the summerhouse’s interior.

  My deck chair was where I had left it, as was the bamboo table. Apart from those, the summerhouse was empty. I looked about me for the source of the music but there was nothing.

  Outside, a summer storm was approaching. I had already heard one distant peal of thunder, and now a wind was starting to stir the flowers in the beds, blowing the lupins over to one side and rippling through the ornamental grasses.

  A fierce gust blew through the doorway of the summerhouse, blowing over the table and making the canvas of the deck chair billow. Then it lifted the rush mat into the air and sent it spinning across the summerhouse, to fall in a heap at the base of one of the windows. It tore at the cotton of my tee-shirt and blew my hair across my eyes.

  I pushed my hair back from my face and waited for the next gust. It was only then that I saw it. In the center of the floor, where the mat had been, was what looked like some kind of trapdoor.

  I crouched down to take a closer look.

  It was about two feet square with a hinge on one side. On the other, set into a recess in the door, was a metal ring. There was a small indentation in the recess and I stuck my fingers into it and wiggled them until I could grasp the ring. And then I started to lift the trapdoor.

  I was expecting there to be some kind of resistance, but the trapdoor lifted easily, and I noticed that the hinge had been recently oiled. I lifted the trapdoor and let it fall backwards onto the floor, and I found myself staring into a square black void.

  Fumbling in the pocket of my shorts, I found my penlight and switched it on, shining it into the blackness below.

  The first thing the beam picked out was a ladder with metal rungs, set into the wall just inside the opening. I shone down it and watched as the light washed over the metal rungs until it settled about twelve feet below.

  Taking a breath, I gripped the penlight with my teeth, swung my legs into the opening, found the ladder with my feet and started to climb down. I reached the
bottom and stood for a moment, trying to get my breath back. I grabbed the penlight and swung its beam to and fro.

  It was a room about twelve feet square, built from concrete blocks, with a floor of beaten earth. It was also completely empty. Apart from a few cobwebs hanging from the concrete walls, there was nothing to see.

  I had been in a room similar to this before at my grandmother’s house. She was my mother’s mother, and as a child, before she died, I’d often been sent to spend a few days with her at her house in London’s Crystal Palace. One particular vacation she introduced me to the Second World War air-raid shelter in her garden, prior to it being filled in, and it was a room very much like this one. Not somewhere to live, simply a place to go to, to escape the almost-nightly Luftwaffe bombing raids.

  This room in my uncle’s back garden looked to have a similar purpose, though I doubted that rural Dorset was as much of a bombing target as London. But it still stood, and instead of filling it in, they had simply built the summerhouse on top of it. I assumed they had used it as some kind of storage facility in the past, hence the trapdoor, but it was empty now.

  I turned back to the ladder and started to climb. I had only climbed two rungs when Michael’s voice whispered in my ear.

  “Damn it!” I said, swinging the penlight beam back into the room. “Where are you?”

  The beam ran over the walls again, and then illuminated the figure of Michael standing in the middle of the room—not a mist-boy, but a boy as substantial as I was, wearing a shirt and denim jeans smeared with mud, and the fair hair still swooping over one eye. The other eye was staring at me, watching me steadily.

  My heart was thumping in my chest, and my mouth was suddenly and impossibly dry. I tried to swallow but it was as if all my saliva had been sucked away.

  “I’m here,” he said. No time delay now. Michael’s mouth moved and the words came out.

  I steadied myself on the ladder. “I want to help you,” I said. “I saw what you wrote in my book. Are you trying to contact my uncle? Is he in some kind of danger?”

  His mouth opened and a single word filled the dank air of the room.

  “Noooooooooooo!”

  The sound was earsplitting, erupting into the room like a sonic blast.

  Above me the trapdoor lifted and slammed down hard into the opening, the impact making the ladder shake and causing me to lose my grip on the penlight. It fell to the floor. I heard something crack, and its light was extinguished, plunging the room into total darkness.

  Panicking, I turned back to the ladder and started to climb blindly. My head cracked against the wood of the trapdoor and I reached up with one hand, trying to push it open, but it wouldn’t budge—it seemed wedged in the opening. I tried to gather myself, and took three deep breaths before trying again.

  This time it opened easily. I looked up and a blinding light glared into my eyes. I felt a hand grip my wrist and then I was being hauled through the trapdoor and back into the summerhouse.

  “That was a close call,” my uncle said and let go of my wrist.

  “But how did you know?”

  “I saw you from my bedroom window, scurrying across the lawn like a thief in the night. It’s a good job I came down to see what you were up to.”

  I stood there waiting and expecting his anger, but he was smiling benignly. “Come on, let’s get you back to the house. I dare say you could use a cup of cocoa before going back to bed.”

  He rested his hand on my shoulder and gently guided me back towards the house.

  All the lights were on in the kitchen and Mrs. Rogers was standing at the stove, stirring a saucepan with a wooden spoon.

  “Two cocoas, Daphne, if you please,” my uncle said as we took our places at the kitchen table.

  She was dressed in a plaid dressing gown secured at the waist with a blue cord. Her hair was free from its pins and clips and hung in a gray plait to the middle of her back.

  Mrs. Rogers took the saucepan from the stove and filled two large enamel mugs with delicious-smelling cocoa. She brought them across to the table and placed one in front of my uncle and one in front of me.

  “Drink up,” she said brightly. “And then it’s back to bed. I don’t know…all this gallivanting around in the middle of the night. It’s the kind of thing I’d expect from you, Jimmy, but, Thomas, you should know better, a man of your age.”

  “Consider my knuckles rapped, Daphne,” my uncle said.

  “Yes, well, I should think so too. You’re supposed to set an example.” I was looking for the anger in her face to mirror her words, but her eyes were twinkling mischievously, and she noticed me watching her and her face broke into a smile.

  She shook her head. “Men,” she said, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

  A silence settled over the table. I sipped my cocoa.

  Eventually I said, “I’ve seen him, you know.”

  “Seen him, James?” my uncle said. “Who have you seen?”

  “Michael,” I said. “Michael. Michael O’Herlihy. He used to come and stay here.” I yawned.

  My uncle was looking at me quizzically. “Daphne, does the name Michael O’Herlihy mean anything to you? James, where have you seen him?”

  “In that room under the summerhouse and upstairs in the room that was once the boys’ dormitory.”

  Uncle Thomas’s eyebrows arched. “Now, who told you about that?”

  “It will be that Amy. I told you, Jimmy, not to listen to her,” Mrs. Rogers said.

  I ignored her comment. “But I did see him. Are you saying he didn’t come here to stay?”

  “Oh, he was here,” Mrs. Rogers said. “But he was trouble. Couldn’t get on with the others.”

  “But Amy said…”

  “And I told you not to listen to that foolish girl and her flights of fancy.” Mrs. Rogers cut across my words.

  Without warning, a wave of tiredness washed over me and I yawned again. My vision was starting to blur, and all I wanted to do was close my eyes. My head fell forward until it was resting on the table and my eyes eventually closed.

  As sleep rushed in to claim me, I heard words, snatches of conversation.

  “How many did you give him?”

  “Four.”

  “How long will he be out?”

  “He’ll sleep the clock round.”

  Sleep was winning, and I felt myself slipping down into its comforting blackness.

  “…have to do something about her.”

  “…I’ll have a word…”

  “…carry him up…”

  I felt myself being lifted, and I had a vague sense of someone carrying me and, then, nothing more.

  I was awoken by Amy vigorously shaking my shoulder.

  “Jimmy, wake up.”

  Gradually I surfaced. The sunlight in the room was burning my eyes, my head was splitting and my mouth felt like a hamster had nested in it overnight. I reached for the glass of water on the bedside cabinet and look a long gulp.

  “What time is it?” I said once I had lubricated my tongue.

  “Three…in the afternoon. You’ve got to come to my room…now,” she said.

  “What? Why?”

  “Now, Jimmy.” She walked to the door and turned back. “And don’t let Mrs. Rogers see you. I’m in enough trouble with her as it is.” She left the room, closing the door behind her.

  A few minutes later I got dressed and crept furtively along the landing to her room. As I climbed the stairs to her bedroom I heard her talking.

  I tapped on her door. “It’s me.”

  The door was pulled open almost immediately. “Quick, come in.”

  I walked into the room and did a double take. Amy was not alone.

  Sitting on the bed was a young man I’d never seen before. He was dressed in denim and had a shock of unruly black
hair that curled over the collar of his shirt.

  “This is him,” Amy said, but not to me.. “Jimmy.” And then to me. “Jimmy, this is Hughie, Hughie Rogers.”

  “Mrs. Rogers’s son?” I said rather stupidly. “Why’s he here?”

  “I called him,” Amy said.

  “I thought you didn’t know where he was.”

  The young man on the bed spoke. “Don’t blame Amy,” he said. “She’s been keeping my whereabouts secret since I left.”

  “But why? Your mother’s been missing you…”

  “Don’t give me that shit,” he said abruptly. “My mother would prefer it if I was lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Your uncle would like that too, for that matter.”

  “But why?” I said.

  “Come and sit down on the bed, Jimmy,” Amy said, patting the counterpane beside her. “Hughie’s got something he needs to tell you.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, but I did as Amy suggested. I sat down on the bed, about as far away from Hughie Rogers as I could get.

  “Go on, Hughie,” Amy said.

  “Okay,” he said. “Amy tells me you’ve had contact with Michael O’Herlihy.”

  I looked at Amy, and she nodded her head encouragingly. “Just tell Hughie what you’ve seen and heard, just as you told it to me.”

  So I did.

  I told him about the crying, the music, the mist-boy, my ruined copy of Bannermere, and I told him about the defaced Eagle annual, his Eagle annual.

  He listened attentively without interruption. When I’d finished he said, “Anything else?”

  So I told him about the room under the summerhouse.

  “You didn’t tell me about that,” Amy said.

  “It happened in the middle of the night. I haven’t seen you since then.”

  “Did you know about the room, Hughie?” Amy said.

  He nodded. “But I didn’t know it was still there. I thought it was sealed up when they built the summerhouse. I certainly didn’t know about any trapdoor.” He turned to me. “What did Michael say to you when you went down there?”

  “‘I’m here.’ That’s all he said. He just stood in the middle of the floor and said, ‘I’m here’.”