‘My dear Mr Evening,’ Mrs Owens said, her voice materially altered once Pearl had disappeared.
He had put down the 1910 cup, perhaps because it seemed unthinkable to drink out of anything so irreplaceable, and so delicate that a mere touch of his lips might snap it.
‘You can’t possibly now go out of my life.’ Mrs Owens half-stretched out her hand to him.
He supposed she had false teeth, they were too splendid for real, yet all of her suddenly was splendid, and from her person again came a succession of wild fragrance, honeysuckle, jasmine, flowers without names, one perfume succeeding another in enervating succession, as various as all her priceless heirlooms.
‘Winter, even to a Southerner, dear Mr Evening, can offer some tender recompense, and for me, whose blood, if I may be allowed to mention it again, is incapable of thinning.’ Here she turned down the bedclothes clear to his feet. The length of his feet and the beautiful architecture of his bare instep caused her for a moment to hesitate.
‘I’m certain,’ she kept her words steady, placing an icy hand under the top of his pajamas, and letting it rest, as if in permanent location on his breast, ‘that you are handsome to the eye all over.’
His teeth chattered briefly, as he felt her head come down on him so precipitously, but she seemed content merely to rest on his bare chest. He supposed he would catch an awful cold from it all, but he did not move, hearing her say, ‘And after I’m gone, all – all of it will be yours, and all I ask in return, Mr Evening, is that all days be Thursday from now on.’
He lay there without understanding how it had occurred, whether a servant had entered or her hands with the quickness of hummingbirds had done the trick, but there he was naked as he had come into the world, stretched out in the bed that was his exact length at last and which allowed him to see just what an unusually tall young man he was indeed.
John Keir Cross
MOTHERING SUNDAY
John Keir Cross (1914-1967) was best known for his radio and TV work for the BBC, which included adaptations of classic horror stories by writers like M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, and Bram Stoker, and he also wrote a number of science fiction and fantasy novels for young readers. His major contribution to the horror genre is the volume The Other Passenger (1944), a collection of eighteen tales ranging from traditional ghost stories to contes cruels, black humor, tales of dark fantasy and surreal nightmare, and arguably the finest horror story about a ventriloquist and his dummy ever written, ‘The Glass Eye’ (later adapted for one of the best episodes of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series). Keir Cross also edited several important anthologies of horror stories (cited by Ramsey Campbell as a major influence on his own career), including Best Black Magic Stories (1960), in which the following tale first appeared.
‘There is something,’ said Mrs Carpenter with finality, ‘ – there is something quite dreadful about that boy.’
Her small, screwed, selfish eyes probed over the farmyard to where the children were playing in the first soft fall of the snow.
Apart from them a little, watching the game with a curious detached avidity, was the boy she had referred to: very pale, very thin, an angular white rag of a child at that distance, with a head that seemed almost bald so nearly white itself was the growth of scruffed hair on it. His black eyes, like buttons, were intent on the activities of the Gaywood children as they rolled and scuffled; his hands, dangling down by his sides, were sticklike and frigid.
‘He gives me the creeps, the positive creeps,’ Mrs Carpenter went on. ‘I’m peculiarly sensitive to people, Mr Bell – quite peculiarly. I am aware of the auras we all carry about with us. You, for instance, are very comfortable and sanguine, I’d suggest: a person to whom one might cheerfully confess one’s sins . . . but that boy, that boy now: I’d say of that boy—’
She hesitated with a small grimace, sipping her sherry. Andrew Bell watched her with a smile, curling himself in the warmth of the great farm kitchen.
‘You’d say of him what, Mrs Carpenter?’
‘That he’ll come to a bad end – something quite remarkably beastly, which even the Sunday papers will hardly dare to print. One likes to be charitable – as I think you’ll agree, Miss Patillo? – but such deep instincts are not to be laughingly tossed aside, oh no. I remember, many years ago, meeting a man at Bournemouth, in a delightful hotel I found there and which I must recollect to recommend to you, Miss Patillo – I remember meeting a man who positively made me contract, but contract, the instant he came into the room.’ (The vision of Mrs Carpenter contracting occupied Andrew quite unpleasantly for a moment.) ‘He was extremely handsome – the younger and more gullible guests were quite “mad about him”, as the foolish fashionable phrase then had it; but I knew at once that his heart was arid – and the heart is all, Miss Patillo, as you will learn. I was aware of a black halo about his head.’
‘Like a gramophone record,’ thought Andrew. ‘What unimaginable music might it have played?’
‘Two days later,’ said Mrs Carpenter, leaning forward portentously and lowering her voice, ‘ – two days later, Mr Bell, that man was arrested for a singularly brutal murder. It was one of those trunk cases, in Notting Hill or Paddington – as they always are, of course: I can hardly ever bear to set out on a journey from Paddington – certainly, if ever I must, I avoid the left-luggage office.’
‘And has Master Moore, the boy there,’ asked Andrew solemnly, ‘ – has he a black halo?’
Mrs Carpenter leaned more closely still, spoke more portentously still.
‘He has none, Mr Bell – just none; and that is what is wrong. That boy has no halo, no aura. Shall I tell you that I firmly believe that if one could bear to look at those dreadful hands of his one would find no life-line on them? When was he born, do you know? – what month?’
‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ said Andrew quietly. ‘In September, eleven years ago.’ And Mrs Carpenter barked triumphantly.
‘September! I might have known. An appalling month, Miss Patillo. That man in Bournemouth was a September birth – I asked especially when I learned the truth about him . . . What about the boy’s mother, Mr Bell? – did you know her, by any chance?’
‘Very well,’ said Andrew, setting his own sherry glass down. ‘Very well indeed. She was—’ But he hesitated for a long serious moment.
‘She was what?’
‘Nothing. It is very difficult to say. She loved the boy very much, very much. But she is dead now.’
‘And the father?’ Mrs Carpenter spoke more quietly herself, impressed by something in Andrew’s tone.
‘I . . . did not know the father,’ he said, after another brief pause. And then a curious silence fell on the little group by the window, and all three, in their different ways, looked out again towards the children. The boy still stood apart from the others, quite motionless. He was a waxy small figure in the puffs and swirls of the falling snow, some flakes of it clinging to his round head, making it seem whiter than ever. The others, shouting, their voices drifting in flat echoes over the fields, were rolling a gigantic snowball, its track a winding green serpent. One of the Gaywood girls, with a laugh, suddenly scooped up a handful of the snow and threw it at their silent companion. But still he did not move – only smiled in a forlorn way as the snow struck his cheek, adhering to it strangely.
‘The lovely snow,’ murmured Patsy Patillo. ‘How nice to have it for our Christmas visit. So good for the children. And it makes Paul’s farm look like a Christmas card,’ – with a flurried little smile of self-consciousness.
‘Is the father dead too?’ asked Mrs Carpenter, ignoring the girl’s remark. And this time Andrew’s pause was so long that she looked at him sharply and made as if to repeat the question.
‘I think so,’ he said at last. ‘I . . . think so.’
‘Why does Paul Gaywood have him to stay here? Where does he live? – the boy, I mean. I’m sure he can’t be good for the others.’ The inexorable voice was
now almost petulant.
‘Paul has old loyalties, Mrs Carpenter,’ said Andrew patiently. ‘He was very fond of Viola – Viola Moore, the boy’s mother. He was – as we all were in the old days – he was sorry for her. He feels that the boy is lonely. He’s at school somewhere in Switzerland. Viola had a little money and was able to put it in trust for the boy. Paul has him for the holidays – at least,’ and again he paused strangely, ‘at least for the Christmas holidays.’
Now, as they watched, the children abandoned the snowball and ran towards the other end of the field where some neighbouring youngsters had appeared and were building a snowman. Stiffly, as if, almost, he were unaccustomed to walking, the gaunt small boy who was the subject of the speculation limped after them. The falling snow intensified – the gusts of it hid the little figure from sight as he plodded on towards the far-off shouting voices.
Mrs Carpenter shivered melodramatically.
‘Well,’ she said, with finality again, ‘there’s something very strange about it all, and that I will insist. Some day I may know the truth – and whatever it is it will be unpleasant.’
She stirred and expanded, with a pronouncement that she proposed to go to lie down before Paul returned from superintending the milking and could give some attention to his guests. And a moment later she had swept from the room, which strangely seemed to sigh, almost, and relax; and Andrew, settling himself in his seat again, smiled very oddly, Patsy thought.
‘She won’t,’ he murmured. ‘She never will, Patsy – know the truth, I mean.’
‘Is it unpleasant?’ asked the girl.
‘I don’t know. In fact, I’m not even sure that I know the truth myself . . . I wonder why Paul ever invited that abominable woman down? If I’d known I might have refused his invitation – except,’ and he stretched out his hand to touch hers, ‘ – except that I knew you’d be here, Patsy, and that would have made me face anything.’
‘I suspect his old loyalties again,’ said Patsy with a smile, returning the pressure of his hand. ‘Mrs Carpenter was an aunt of his wife’s, I think. At least we must bear with her, darling – we shall steal away as often as we can. But tell me,’ and her tone changed, ‘ – you were so serious, Andrew, so very serious. Is the story of that boy so strange? – I’ve heard of Viola Moore before somewhere—’
‘The story,’ said Andrew, his thin face contracting in a frown, ‘the story, Patsy, is hardly a story at all. It’s a kind of dream, I think – or even a parable. It’s absurd – all quite absurd: it’s only something half-formed and a speculation in the night . . . I know nothing, you know – just nothing. Except, perhaps, that prayers are answered sometimes – sometimes. I’m not sure that I wouldn’t go even further and say that prayers are answered . . . always. Pour me more sherry, darling.’
She did, then took his hand again. Outside, the first dusk was settling, the thickening snow falling through it in increasing gusts. They sat on in the gloom, the rising flicker of the great fire sending their shadows high against the old walls and crooked beams of the ancient place. And Andrew’s voice was very quiet through the silence. Patsy listened, half in a dream herself. And Mrs Carpenter, far away, mountainous beneath her eiderdown, snored on and on . . .
That year (said Andrew) there was also snow at Christmas. I’d gone down for the vacation to Korder’s place in Berkshire. I was barely out of adolescence, I suppose – there was something immensely exciting about being the guest of so famous a man, with so many other nearly-famous people there also.
The house was huge – a magnificent place; but even it seemed crowded there were so many of us. Korder used to love to surround himself with young people. I should think that we were all on the best side of twenty-five – except for Korder himself, of course, and . . . Viola.
You said you thought you had heard of Viola Moore. She’s forgotten now, but in those times she was quite celebrated in a strange, insubstantial way. She painted – curious, tenuous watercolours that had about them something of the forlorn air she always somehow wore herself. It’s the one word, the only word – forlorn . . . as you even must have seen it in the boy out there.
Viola was – what? Thirty-seven – thirty-eight . . . perhaps even over forty. She wore clothes that were tragically out-of-date – loose, straight-waisted; somehow out of the late ’twenties, one might guess, or the early ’thirties, from pictures one had seen – old snapshots of lost aunts. There was an indescribable essence of those faded days all round and through her – in tangible things like the clothes and the way she did her hair, but more subtly still as a kind of . . . aura, almost, but in a different way from Mrs Carpenter’s.
She was oddly out of place among us all – and yet, you know . . . and yet, although one would never have expected it, from her whole appearance and flavour – and yet she threw herself into all our activities with an almost bitter intensity – yes, almost bitter. She was queerly . . . hungry, I’d nearly say – hungry to be one of us, to be part of us, to . . . to how shall I put it? – to salvage something.
In a group like that, all young, all still self-consciously a little bohemian, in the old word, since we were most of us just embarking on our various artistic careers, there was naturally a great deal of amorous pairing off – encouraged, of course, by Korder: it was, I think, in his old age, why he loved to have so many of us round him. He used to sit back in his musty corner with a great glass of brandy, watching us through a queer edged smile: you would suddenly, in the midst of a swift grapple with someone or other, find him regarding you from the shadows of a stairway or a hidden window-embrasure. I suppose, looking back now, that it’s all very dated itself and rather unpleasant even; but it was quite delirious and wonderful at the time, you know – we were emancipated and venturesome – we wore Mrs Carpenter’s black haloes, if some of us, as I see now, had to sit up o’ nights painting over their pristine white.
But the snow, the snow. We arrived at the house in snow, driving and plunging through great drifts of it, some of us hours late and with immense adventures to recount. And it still fell for almost a week after we had assembled – we were cut off from the village absolutely. There was much foraging in old store-cupboards for food, and someone found some yeast and we made our own bread – a great deal of that kind of thing. But Korder had a gigantic and subtle cellar, so we didn’t need to eat so very much – not in the overall mood.
And through it all went Viola, always avid, with wilder suggestions for games and subjects for conversation than anyone else – almost drugged, you might think, almost feverish from the pervading young vicarious boisterousness of it all. And Korder always sitting back and watching – watching her particularly, I thought: always watching her, with that quiet damnable smile of his . . .
He was the devil, that old man – and I don’t mean the ancient mountebank with a tail and a smell of sulphur, but the real Devil, the evil that is abroad. Yet in another sense perhaps I do mean the goat with the cloven hooves – as an expression of it all, as the Goat only ever was, of course, even back in the Middle Ages. The Church has its rituals – so has the Church that is no Church.
We none of us knew his age. Behind that awful freshness of his long classical face there was another face, which we only occasionally glimpsed – and comprehended according to our capacities. But we are back to Mrs Carpenter and her auras again: it was his aura that was almost the full curse of him – an essence he somehow exuded that almost was a smell. One hears of the odour of sanctity, whatever that might mean; but his was the odour of unsanctity – of unholiness – of the decay in that bleak corner of the Cosmos, wherever it is, to which God sweeps away His rubbish.
You know how he made his money – at least one way; from those impossible sentimental novels he wrote under some absurd name and which brought him a fortune from the hidden callow lechery in them. He wrote only two books as himself, both printed privately and circulated only among friends. I read one and was offered the other; but I couldn’t stomach it �
�� I was beginning to grow up.
It was whispered, among other things, that he did indeed study necromancy, was a conjurer in the old sense. There was one room, certainly, in that house – like Bluebeard’s – that we were never permitted to enter. And sometimes, you know, as we rambled past it, there was a queer high whining out of it, a kind of breathless incantation of some wicked sort – and a true smell of brimstone after all beneath the black door. Mummery, of course; but it was hideously impressive when you knew him – it was easy in those times to see it all as some kind of gesture, something abandoned and lost and magnificent. We were susceptible – on the brink of the larger romance; which is not love, you know, my dearest Patsy, but hate. Growing up is losing hate and finding love – it is only the older men whose thoughts turn lightly in the spring, not the younger. And Korder had never grown up, for all his age.
But the mummery . . . So pointless, you know – a kind of parlour magic after all, that might easily be contrived with hidden wires and a simple chemical or two. But always with an edge of silly small cruelty to it that was also pointless – childish; yet gave pain.
For instance: In the huge drawing-room where we used to foregather there was a large crooked porcelain vase on an ebony pedestal. An antique of some kind, one supposed – at least old, quite incalculably old; but with its age adding somehow no grace to it, but increasing its unpleasantness. Its shape was unpleasant in some way indefinable – like Mrs Carpenter’s shape: what simple Chesterton called ‘the wrong shape’. Across it were crude intaglio designs of an unequivocal obscenity, and round the belly of the thing an inscription of some sort in an unknown language.
Somehow the conversation had centred on it that evening. Esther Colebrook had asked what the inscription meant – I remember her leaning forward to the fire a little, that dark lovely delicate face of hers and the fall of her hair. And Korder smiled.
The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories Page 17
