Hindsight

by Peter Dickinson

  ‘Not my lucky day. Mr Boyce promised he’d let me have some—after all, it was my idea having a shoot in the first place—but then he rang up in a bit of a huff to say that your tiresome old Mr Smith had come out and stopped the hunt when they’d hardly begun. I’m going to write to Lord Orne and tell him.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What do you mean, oh?’

  ‘Well … you see, the men who came to do the shooting … some of them, anyway … they weren’t … I mean, they did it all wrong. They weren’t killing them cleanly because they were trying to shoot them from behind. Mr Smith was right to stop them. And he’s written to Lord Orne already about it. I don’t think …’

  ‘You have to shoot some of them, Rogue. Every year.’

  ‘Anyway, they killed quite a lot in the end—twenty-seven so far, I think, besides the ones that aren’t dead yet.’

  ‘Twenty-seven? What have they done with them?’

  ‘They’re up in one of the garages. A lorry’s coming tomorrow.’

  ‘Rogue, when I’m Queen of England you shall be my head spy. I am going to have a word or two with our Mr Boyce.’

  Molly gave a sort of whining purr as she crouched looking at the stove, then rose to take the buttered crumpets round. She did enjoy things so, Paul thought. She would have a lovely time bullying Mr Boyce, and serve him right if he was the fat man in green. It was bad luck she’d been the one who really started the hunt, but she couldn’t have been expected to know what a mess they’d make of it. And living in her bubble how could she understand the way the deer had suffered before they died?

  There weren’t enough people at tea to play Grandmother’s Footsteps afterwards, just two officers from Exmouth besides Molly, Daisy and Annette. And in fact there was never really an afterwards because Molly trapped one of the sailors into a tea-drinking contest which dragged on through several fresh pots. Paul, remembering what Annette had said about the gin-contests, watched to see if she was cheating and decided yes. The teapot stood to keep warm on one of the fat iron hot-pipes that ran along the back wall by the drinks table. Molly took the cups over to the table to re-fill them, screening what she was doing with her body. When she came back she made a point of showing the sailor that her cup was full, but later she stood up to empty it, throwing her head back as if draining the last drops but standing so that it was difficult for him to see the real angle of her cup. No doubt he’d have enjoyed a gin-contest more. He was a stodgy, pale man, and after a bit Paul guessed he was longing to go round the corner.

  So tea was not truly over before Daisy went mad. Molly was still dashing around, filling up cups, teasing everyone, making what they said sound funny just by laughing at it, or copying it in her clever way. Everybody seemed happy—or, in the case of Daisy and Annette, no unhappier than usual. Nothing made much difference to Daisy, but the more Molly sparkled, the jumpier Annette seemed to become. Paul saw her watching Molly like a cat which has been made to share a room with a boisterous puppy.

  ‘Is she always like this?’ whispered the officer who hadn’t got trapped into the tea-drinking. He was new, and seemed to think that Molly was deliberately trying to amaze him.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Paul, and had started to tell the story about Molly pushing the girls into the pond, when without any warning it began.

  Daisy had stopped talking to the other officer about how lovely it was that he would soon be killed, and for some time had just been sitting nodding to herself as if she’d fallen asleep with her eyes open. When Molly brought her a fresh cup she’d gulp it down and go back to nodding. She was breathing so heavily that Paul wondered if she wasn’t going to start snoring. Once, staying with Uncle Charles, he had gone to look for Fison and found Mrs Fison asleep in front of her stove, purple and snorting in her chair. It had been a ghastly moment. He had never told anyone. Now, not wishing to be reminded of it, he twisted round so that he didn’t have to look at Daisy and could concentrate on toasting the last few crumpets. He didn’t see her stand up. The first he knew was the sound of a chair falling over and a strange voice, deep as a man’s, shouting, ‘I want to play the game. I want to play the bloody game.’

  ‘Not now, darling,’ said Molly, not looking round from talking to Annette. ‘There aren’t enough of us.’

  ‘That’s your bloody fault,’ shouted Daisy. ‘You stopped them coming. You don’t like being beaten, that’s why you stopped them. You know I can beat …’

  Molly had put the officer she’d been cheating on the pouffe, so that he should see her from as low an angle as possible. As Daisy now lurched towards him he half rose, but Daisy gave him a stiff-armed shove which caught him off-balance and sent him sprawling. His cup smashed on the tiles. She took another step and kicked him hard in the thigh. He cried, ‘Ouch!’ and tried to roll away, but she got another kick in. She was wearing heavy country shoes.

  The other officer had stopped listening to Paul and was staring at Daisy with his mouth half open. As she turned towards him he sprang to his feet and backed away down the aisle between the palms. She was still holding her cup, and she threw it at him. It tinkled into bits beyond him. The sound seemed to excite her. She snatched up the shovel from the coke-hopper and charged at him.

  ‘Lâche, toi!’ she screamed. ‘Va batter le boche, poltron!’

  ‘Oh, Daisy!’ said Molly, putting her hands over her face and shaking with laughter. Daisy whirled the shovel back over her head and slung it at the officer as he ducked round behind the camellia bush at the corner of the aisle. The shovel sailed on and through the glass. Everybody except Daisy froze at the sound. Paul saw Molly staring, suddenly alert, in the exact pose of a deer the instant after it has spotted some danger.

  ‘Daisy! Stop it!’ she shouted in a voice Paul hadn’t heard before. She dashed up the aisle.

  Daisy was at the far end of it by now. On the shelf below the glass wall stood a row of ferns and other small plants in pots. She snatched one of these, found it too heavy to heft one-handed, so lifted it over her head and threw it like a footballer throwing in from touch. The officer must have dodged. At any rate the pot missed him and there was another crash of breakage and tinkle of falling glass.

  When Molly was almost on her Daisy swung, seeming to know the instant the way she did when she was playing Grandmother’s Footsteps. She charged, arms up and elbows bent to make a chest-high ram. Molly reeled off sideways, tripped on the kerb of the paving and fell among the bushes beneath a palm. Daisy stood still for an instant, so that for the first time since the madness had begun Paul could see her whole face. It was bright red, with purplish blotches, and contorted like a snarling dog’s, all the muscles hard. By this time Annette was half-way up the aisle towards her and Molly was struggling free of the bushes. Daisy turned again, picked up another pot and simply slung it at the glass, shrieking in French as she did so. She got two more pots off before the women reached her and grabbed her arms. A moment later the officer she had started by throwing things at joined them and the struggle lurched out of sight behind the camellia.

  All this while—though it had only been about twenty seconds—the officer Daisy had kicked had been standing by the stove, rubbing his bruise, muttering to himself. Paul looked at him for orders but the man looked away, so he swallowed and walked warily up the aisle. The fight surged back into view, Daisy stilt screaming. The officer had one arm held tight and Annette was struggling with the other, while Molly was behind with her own arm, thin and bony, locked round Daisy’s throat. It may have been the tightness of this hold that made Daisy’s face seem almost black now, and so contorted that it didn’t even look like an animal’s, more like the grimacing Indian demon that stood on the landing in Uncle Charles’s house and which Paul had so dreaded having to make his way past when he was small, climbing the shadowy stairs to bed. The demon stared straight at him now, with live eyes. He was all it saw. It wanted him. Him.

  ‘Rogu
e, door!’ called Molly.

  He jumped, pulled himself together, ran back to the stove, up the other aisle and round by the wall to the door in the corner that led to the cottage. He held it open, flattening himself against the wall to let the three of them drag and shove Daisy past him and on down the short corridor. They lurched out of sight through the open door of the little room Molly called her snug. He heard a crash. It sounded like a table being pushed over. He hesitated, hoping he couldn’t be any help, realised that was true and blocked the sounds of struggle out by closing the door.

  At once he was aware of a change, something badly wrong, even out in the conservatory. The air was usually still, warm, a bit too moist for comfort, but now an icy draught was fingering through it. On the curved glass wall straight in front of him were jagged dark shapes that did not glimmer with reflections of the lights inside. They were holes. The blackness of the night sky seemed thick and close, brimming level with the glass like water in the broken ice of a pond. Daisy had broken the bubble, and let the night in.

  He went back to the stove and started to pick up cups and plates and gather them on to the tray—it was a way of being helpful without involving himself with the madwoman. The other officer seemed to have disappeared, but Paul heard the splash of a jet of water on the ground outside and realised what he was doing. He had carried the tray over to the drinks table and was nerving himself to open the door in order to take it through to the kitchen when Annette slipped quickly out, looking pale and hurried.

  ‘Oh, Rogue,’ she whispered. ‘Quick. Can you do something for me?’

  ‘Yes. Well … yes, of course.’

  ‘You’ll have to go back to school alone.’

  ‘All right. Now?’

  ‘Yes. Look, here’s the torch. You can give it me … no, you’ll have to bring it back here soon as you can.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘But listen. On your way, go to the Temple. Chris is there. Tell him I can’t come for at least an hour. But I’ll come.’

  ‘You know it’s out of bounds.’

  ‘Please, Rogue.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Please, please, don’t tell anyone else.’

  She had dropped her voice even further during the last exchanges. Paul hadn’t heard the officer come back from outside, but now, perhaps attracted by the muttering, he came strolling round into sight.

  ‘Anything I can do?’ he said.

  ‘It’s all right. Really,’ said Annette, picking up the tray.

  ‘Brr,’ he said. ‘Bit of a draught through these holes now. Find some newspaper or something to bung them up, shall I?’

  ‘Oh, yes, please.’

  ‘Don’t want the frost getting in, uh? You might remind Michael we’re supposed to be back at base by nineteen hundred. If it’s an emergency, of course, but well … there’s a war on, as they keep telling us.’

  ‘I’m sure we can manage. Hold the door for me, will you, Rogue?’

  From down the corridor Paul could hear Daisy’s voice, shouting but not screaming any more. There was a thud, a mild one. He found his coat, scarf and cap, said goodnight to the officer, and left.

  Though it was almost pitch night he unconsciously chose to switch the torch off for the last few yards down among the trees. Only the clank of the gate behind him reminded him why he had done it. He stood still, just inside the park, letting his eyes get used to the dark.

  It was really not too bad out in the open, although there was no moon, only the mass of frosty stars. He could see blacker blacknesses which were trees, and mottlings, which were clumps of bracken, and even—though perhaps only because he knew it so well—the line of the path. He could manage quite well without the torch here; there were no roots to trip over or branches or trunks to run into. He could just walk quietly along, not signalling his presence to any lurker or watcher. It was much better like that. Anyway, it was stupid to be afraid. Nothing could happen. It was only stories.

  Yet he was afraid, so much so that he only realised when he saw the dark loom of the chestnut grove that he must have passed the track to the Temple. The thought of the darkness beneath the trees had halted him. He didn’t want to go there. That was where he had first met Daisy. Going back by the Temple was a good excuse to himself, as well as being what Annette had asked.

  Fear makes itself. It is like valley mist which, because it is there, chilling the still air, causes more mist to form. The idea that he was afraid, combined with the idea of Daisy, made Paul more afraid. However much he told himself he was behaving like a small child he felt fear closing round him, thickening, filling the park. It was as if the image of Daisy gave the mist something to collect around. Thinking of childishness only made it worse, bringing back those long self-nervings on the stairs in order to make the dash past the Indian statue or creepings back down to wait outside the door beyond which the adults were having their cocktails … Uncle Charles’s voice, ‘Honestly, Norah, you’d much better make him face it by himself. He’s got to learn. He’s not a baby any more.’ Daisy with the statue’s face. Wanting him.

  The track was difficult to spot. It was only grass, after all, visible by day because of being shorter and greener than elsewhere. He started up in the wrong place and ran into a dead-end of bracken. Next time, to make sure, he switched the torch on for an instant. Yes, here …

  But the instant was deadly. It showed them all where he was. As he started up the track the idea came back to him of the spirit of the park gathering itself for vengeance. In a way he had not been surprised by Daisy going mad, not just because she was so odd anyway, but because of a sort of feeling that it was somehow meant to happen. The park-demon hadn’t got a body of its own. It had to take one over. It had got into Daisy and made her mad, yelling and screaming …

  Why couldn’t he hear her now? The night was very still. From far across the lake he had caught the quavering cry of an owl, but there was no noise from the gardens which were much closer. She’d got out! She was coming!

  Without even willing himself to do so he switched on the torch again and swung round. The beam swept across silvery tussocks and brown bracken. Nothing there, and the night blind-black when he switched off. The sort of terror that only ought to come when you are fast asleep, dreaming, gripped him. It was no use running. It never was. Your legs wouldn’t work. She was coming. He could hear. Hide, hide, though they always found you … Oh, if only I had brought my gun …

  He was actually huddled down, sidling to crouch by a patch of bracken, when the terror went by like a breeze, leaving him gasping. Perhaps it was his own movement, real motion of muscles in a real world, that had done the trick. Perhaps it was the talismanic image of the gun. He stood straight and started up the hill again. Mr Wither was up at the Temple, of course. That made it a base—safe ground.

  He managed now to keep moving, to stay just in control of himself, to keep at bay the sense of the real world losing its rules and going over to the unknown rules of the dark things. He put the torch in his pocket so that he shouldn’t be tempted to switch it on again, and the nature of his longing for his gun became more sensible; just having it in his grip would help, not because it was magic. Really it could only shoot imaginary bullets and kill imaginary enemies, but if you used it to hit with, you could hurt someone. He was sure that the threat of it had saved him from the stag which had attacked him … Oh, perhaps that stag would be in the same place now, in the little arena between him and the Temple. If so, without the gun, what would he do?

  It helped to think about a real danger. The deer had not been roaring nearly so much during the past couple of weeks, so it looked as though the rutting period must be almost over. In any case, if Mr Wither was there, he would probably have driven the stag away. He had a walking stick, too, though it wouldn’t be as good as a gun. But just in case …

  Paul had achieved what he felt was a sens
ible, daytime state of mind by the time he reached the short steep rise to the arena. He climbed it as silently as he could until his head was level with the rim, and peered over, half expecting to see the grass hummocked with sleeping shapes, and perhaps the stag itself standing sentinel, black against the stars. The space seemed empty, but was too dark really to be sure. On the mound beyond rose the Temple. Nothing moved between its pillars. Surely, if Mr Wither was there, expecting Annette, he would be standing quite clear, looking out towards the lake. But then, Annette had seemed to make a great secret of it, so perhaps Mr Wither would be careful not to show himself until he was sure who was coming.

  He called softly, ‘Mr Wither!’

  Silence. No change of shape between the pillars. He was drawing breath to call again when the words became a creak in his throat as the waking nightmare surged back over him. Mr Wither wasn’t there.

  It had all been arranged to get him here! It was a trick, a trap! They’d driven him, the way the deer had been driven towards the guns. They were all in it, all three. Ever since that first moment in the chestnut grove … Daisy going mad, the fight, Annette coming whispering into the conservatory … Daisy went mad because she needed a death, it was time, the hour was on her. She used to weep because she knew she would go mad unless somebody died, and they hadn’t. That was why she lived with Molly, to be looked after … But they were all in it together. They were there, waiting in the night, with a rope … trip him, snatch him, strip him, tie him naked to a pillar and Daisy, weeping, would slit his throat with a small knife while Annette watched expressionless and Molly laughed at the fun of it and the blood ran down over the white skin …

  He started to run, not back down the path but away to the left, along a twisting deer-track through the bracken which would take him round to the path that led down to the drive. The drive, somehow, was now the first safe ground. If he could get down there … As in sleeping nightmares there was illusory hope—he knew the ground, and they didn’t know he knew. They had expected him to go back down the path or on up to the Temple. They thought he’d need the torch … He stumbled, slithered on tussocks, almost tripped, but floundered on. The deer-track emerged on to the stone platform below the steps on the north side of the Temple. As he reached it he accelerated, unthinkingly, to take advantage of the better surface, but there was something large lying near the edge of the paving. He caught his foot and went sprawling.