They didn’t leave him to find his own way up through the dark shrouded house; they went with him, turning on lights, touching each other’s fingers on the switches. Floor after floor they drove the night back. They spoke softly among the covered chairs. They watched him undress, they didn’t make him wash or clean his teeth, they saw him into bed and lit his night-light and left his door ajar. He could hear their voices on the stairs, friendly like the guests he heard at dinner-parties when they moved down the hall, saying good night. They belonged; wherever they were they made a home. He heard a door open and a clock strike, he heard their voices for a long while, so that he felt they were not far away and he was safe. The voices didn’t dwindle, they simply went out, and he could be sure that they were still somewhere not far from him, silent together in one of the many empty rooms, growing sleepy together as he grew sleepy after the long day.
He just had time to sigh faintly with satisfaction, because this too perhaps had been life, before he slept and the inevitable terrors of sleep came round him: a man with a tricolour hat beat at the door on His Majesty’s service, a bleeding head lay on the kitchen table in a basket, and the Siberian wolves crept closer. He was bound hand and foot and couldn’t move; they leapt round him breathing heavily; he opened his eyes and Mrs Baines was there, her grey untidy hair in threads over his face, her black hat askew. A loose hairpin fell on the pillow and one musty thread brushed his mouth. ‘Where are they?’ she whispered. ‘Where are they?’
4
Philip watched her in terror. Mrs Baines was out of breath as if she had been searching all the empty rooms, looking under loose covers.
With her untidy grey hair and her black dress buttoned to her throat, her gloves of black cotton, she was so like the witches of his dreams that he didn’t dare to speak. There was a stale smell in her breath.
‘She’s here,’ Mrs Baines said, ‘you can’t deny she’s here.’ Her face was simultaneously marked with cruelty and misery; she wanted to ‘do things’ to people, but she suffered all the time. It would have done her good to scream, but she daren’t do that: it would warn them. She came ingratiatingly back to the bed where Philip lay rigid on his back and whispered, ‘I haven’t forgotten the Meccano set. You shall have it tomorrow, Master Philip. We’ve got secrets together, haven’t we? Just tell me where they are.’
He couldn’t speak. Fear held him as firmly as any nightmare. She said, ‘Tell Mrs Baines, Master Philip. You love your Mrs Baines, don’t you?’ That was too much; he couldn’t speak, but he could move his mouth in terrified denial, wince away from her dusty image.
She whispered, coming closer to him, ‘Such deceit. I’ll tell your father. I’ll settle with you myself when I’ve found them. You’ll smart; I’ll see you smart.’ Then immediately she was still listening. A board had creaked on the floor below, and a moment later, while she stooped listening above his bed, there came the whispers of two people who were happy and sleepy together after a long day. The night-light stood beside the mirror and Mrs Baines could see there her own reflection, misery and cruelty wavering in the glass, age and dust and nothing to hope for. She sobbed without tears, a dry, breathless sound, but her cruelty was a kind of pride which kept her going; it was her best quality, she would have been merely pitiable without it. She went out of the door on tiptoe, feeling her way across the landing, going so softly down the stairs that no one behind a shut door could hear her. Then there was complete silence again; Philip could move; he raised his knees; he sat up in bed; he wanted to die. It wasn’t fair, the walls were down again between his world and theirs, but this time it was something worse than merriment that the grown people made him share; a passion moved in the house he recognized but could not understand.
It wasn’t fair, but he owed Baines everything: the Zoo, the ginger pop, the bus ride home. Even the supper called to his loyalty. But he was frightened; he was touching something he touched in dreams; the bleeding head, the wolves, the knock, knock, knock. Life fell on him with savagery, and you couldn’t blame him if he never faced it again in sixty years. He got out of bed. Carefully from habit he put on his bedroom slippers and tiptoed to the door: it wasn’t quite dark on the landing below because the curtains had been taken down for the cleaners and the light from the street washed in through the tall windows. Mrs Baines had her hand on the glass door-knob; she was very carefully turning it; he screamed: ‘Baines, Baines.’
Mrs Baines turned and saw him cowering in his pyjamas by the banisters; he was helpless, more helpless even than Baines, and cruelty grew at the sight of him and drove her up the stairs. The nightmare was on him again and he couldn’t move; he hadn’t any more courage left, he couldn’t even scream.
But the first cry brought Baines out of the best spare bedroom and he moved quicker than Mrs Baines. She hadn’t reached the top of the stairs before he’d caught her round the waist. She drove her black cotton gloves at his face and he bit her hand. He hadn’t time to think, he fought her like a stranger, but she fought back with knowledgeable hate. She was going to teach them all and it didn’t really matter whom she began with; they had all deceived her; but the old image in the glass was by her side, telling her she must be dignified, she wasn’t young enough to yield her dignity; she could beat his face, but she mustn’t bite; she could push, but she mustn’t kick.
Age and dust and nothing to hope for were her handicaps. She went over the banisters in a flurry of black clothes and fell into the hall; she lay before the front door like a sack of coals which should have gone down the area into the basement. Philip saw; Emmy saw; she sat down suddenly in the doorway of the best spare bedroom with her eyes open as if she were too tired to stand any longer. Baines went slowly down into the hall.
It wasn’t hard for Philip to escape; they’d forgotten him completely. He went down the back, the servants’ stairs, because Mrs Baines was in the hall. He didn’t understand what she was doing lying there; like the pictures in a book no one had read to him, the things he didn’t understand terrified him. The whole house had been turned over to the grown-up world; he wasn’t safe in the night nursery; their passions had flooded in. The only thing he could do was to get away, by the back stairs, and up through the area, and never come back. He didn’t think of the cold, of the need for food and sleep; for an hour it would seem quite possible to escape from people for ever.
He was wearing pyjamas and bedroom slippers when he came up into the square, but there was no one to see him. It was that hour of the evening in a residential district when everyone is at the theatre or at home. He climbed over the iron railings into the little garden: the plane-trees spread their large pale palms between him and the sky. It might have been an illimitable forest into which he had escaped. He crouched behind a trunk and the wolves retreated; it seemed to him between the little iron seat and the tree-trunk that no one would ever find him again. A kind of embittered happiness and self-pity made him cry; he was lost; there wouldn’t be any more secrets to keep; he surrendered responsibility once and for all. Let grownup people keep to their world and he would keep to his, safe in the small garden between the plane-trees.
Presently the door of 48 opened and Baines looked this way and that; then he signalled with his hand and Emmy came; it was as if they were only just in time for a train, they hadn’t a chance of saying good-bye. She went quickly by like a face at a window swept past the platform, pale and unhappy and not wanting to go. Baines went in again and shut the door; the light was lit in the basement, and a policeman walked round the square, looking into the areas. You could tell how many families were at home by the lights behind the first-floor curtains.
Philip explored the garden: it didn’t take long: a twenty-yard square of bushes and plane-trees, two iron seats and a gravel path, a padlocked gate at either end, a scuffle of old leaves. But he couldn’t stay: something stirred in the bushes and two illuminated eyes peered out at him like a Serbian wolf, and he thought how terrible it would be if Mrs Baines found him there. He�
�d have no time to climb the railings; she’d seize him from behind.
He left the square at the unfashionable end and was immediately among the fish-and-chip shops, the little stationers selling Bagatelle, among the accommodation addresses and the dingy hotels with open doors. There were few people about because the pubs were open, but a blowsy woman carrying a parcel called out to him across the street and the commissionaire outside a cinema would have stopped him if he hadn’t crossed the road. He went deeper: you could go farther and lose yourself more completely here than among the plane-trees. On the fringe of the square he was in danger of being stopped and taken back: it was obvious where he belonged; but as he went deeper he lost the marks of his origin. It was a warm night: any child in those free-living parts might be expected to play truant from bed. He found a kind of camaraderie even among grown-up people; he might have been a neighbour’s child as he went quickly by, but they weren’t going to tell on him, they’d been young once themselves. He picked up a protective coating of dust from the pavements, of smuts from the trains which passed along the backs in a spray of fire. Once he was caught in a knot of children running away from something or somebody, laughing as they ran; he was whirled with them round a turning and abandoned, with a sticky fruit-drop in his hand.
He couldn’t have been more lost, but he hadn’t the stamina to keep on. At first he feared that someone would stop him; after an hour he hoped that someone would. He couldn’t find his way back, and in any case he was afraid of arriving home alone; he was afraid of Mrs Baines, more afraid than he had ever been. Baines was his friend, but something had happened which gave Mrs Baines all the power. He began to loiter on purpose to be noticed, but no one noticed him. Families were having a last breather on the doorsteps, the refuse bins had been put out and bits of cabbage stalks soiled his slippers. The air was full of voices, but he was cut off; these people were strangers and would always now be strangers; they were marked by Mrs Baines and he shied away from them into a deep class-consciousness. He had been afraid of policemen, but now he wanted one to take him home; even Mrs Baines could do nothing against a policeman. He sidled past a constable who was directing traffic, but he was too busy to pay him any attention. Philip sat down against a wall and cried.
It hadn’t occurred to him that that was the easiest way, that all you had to do was to surrender, to show you were beaten and accept kindness . . . It was lavished on him at once by two women and a pawnbroker. Another policeman appeared, a young man with a sharp incredulous face. He looked as if he noted everything he saw in pocket-books and drew conclusions. A woman offered to see Philip home, but he didn’t trust her: she wasn’t a match for Mrs Baines immobile in the hall. He wouldn’t give his address; he said he was afraid to go home. He had his way; he got his protection. ‘I’ll take him to the station,’ the policeman said, and holding him awkwardly by the hand (he wasn’t married; he had his career to make) he led him round the corner, up the stone stairs into the little bare over-heated room where Justice lived.
5
Justice waited behind a wooden counter on a high stool; it wore a heavy moustache; it was kindly and had six children (‘three of them nippers like yourself’); it wasn’t really interested in Philip, but it pretended to be, it wrote the address down and sent a constable to fetch a glass of milk. But the young constable was interested; he had a nose for things.
‘Your home’s on the telephone, I suppose,’ Justice said. ‘We’ll ring them up and say you are safe. They’ll fetch you very soon. What’s your name, sonny?’
‘Philip.’
‘Your other name?’
‘I haven’t got another name.’ He didn’t want to be fetched; he wanted to be taken home by someone who would impress even Mrs Baines. The constable watched him, watched the way he drank the milk, watched him when he winced away from questions.
‘What made you run away? Playing truant, eh?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You oughtn’t to do it, young fellow. Think how anxious your father and mother will be.’
‘They are away.’
‘Well, your nurse.’
‘I haven’t got one.’
‘Who looks after you, then?’ The question went home. Philip saw Mrs Baines coming up the stairs at him, the heap of black cotton in the hall. He began to cry.
‘Now, now, now,’ the sergeant said. He didn’t know what to do; he wished his wife were with him; even a policewoman might have been useful.
‘Don’t you think it’s funny,’ the constable said, ‘that there hasn’t been an inquiry?’
‘They think he’s tucked up in bed.’
‘You are scared, aren’t you?’ the constable said. ‘What scared you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Somebody hurt you?’
‘No.’
‘He’s had bad dreams,’ the sergeant said. ‘Thought the house was on fire, I expect. I’ve brought up six of them. Rose is due back. She’ll take him home.’
‘I want to go home with you,’ Philip said; he tried to smile at the constable, but the deceit was immature and unsuccessful.
‘I’d better go,’ the constable said. ‘There may be something wrong.’
‘Nonsense,’ the sergeant said. ‘It’s a woman’s job. Tact is what you need. Here’s Rose. Pull up your stockings, Rose. You’re a disgrace to the Force. I’ve got a job of work for you.’ Rose shambled in: black cotton stockings drooping over her boots, a gawky Girl Guide manner, a hoarse hostile voice. ‘More tarts, I suppose.’
‘No, you’ve got to see this young man home.’ She looked at him owlishly.
‘I won’t go with her,’ Philip said. He began to cry again. ‘I don’t like her.’
‘More of that womanly charm, Rose,’ the sergeant said. The telephone rang on his desk. He lifted the receiver. ‘What? What’s that?’ he said. ‘Number 48? You’ve got a doctor?’ He put his hand over the telephone mouth. ‘No wonder this nipper wasn’t reported,’ he said. ‘They’ve been too busy. An accident. Woman slipped on the stairs.’
‘Serious?’ the constable asked. The sergeant mouthed at him; you didn’t mention the word death before a child (didn’t he know? he had six of them), you made noises in the throat, you grimaced, a complicated shorthand for a word of only five letters anyway.
‘You’d better go, after all,’ he said, ‘and make a report. The doctor’s there.’
Rose shambled from the stove; pink apply-dapply cheeks, loose stockings. She stuck her hands behind her. Her large morgue-like mouth was full of blackened teeth. ‘You told me to take him and now just because something interesting . . . I don’t expect justice from a man . . .’
‘Who’s at the house?’ the constable asked.
‘The butler.’
‘You don’t think,’ the constable said, ‘he saw . . .’
‘Trust me,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’ve brought up six. I know ’em through and through. You can’t teach me anything about children.’
‘He seemed scared about something.’
‘Dreams,’ the sergeant said.
‘What name?’
‘Baines.’
‘This Mr Baines,’ the constable said to Philip, ‘you like him, eh? He’s good to you?’ They were trying to get something out of him; he was suspicious of the whole roomful of them; he said ‘yes’ without conviction because he was afraid at any moment of more responsibilities, more secrets.
‘And Mrs Baines?’
‘Yes.’
They consulted together by the desk. Rose was hoarsely aggrieved; she was like a female impersonator, she bore her womanhood with an unnatural emphasis even while she scorned it in her creased stockings and her weather-exposed face. The charcoal shifted in the stove; the room was over-heated in the mild late summer evening. A notice on the wall described a body found in the Thames, or rather the body’s clothes: wool vest, wool pants, wool shirt with blue stripes, size ten boots, blue serge suit worn at the elbows, fifteen and a half cellul
oid collar. They couldn’t find anything to say about the body, except its measurements, it was just an ordinary body.
‘Come along,’ the constable said. He was interested, he was glad to be going, but he couldn’t help being embarrassed by his company, a small boy in pyjamas. His nose smelt something, he didn’t know what, but he smarted at the sight of the amusement they caused: the pubs had closed and the streets were full again of men making as long a day of it as they could. He hurried through the less frequented streets, chose the darker pavements, wouldn’t loiter, and Philip wanted more and more to loiter, pulling at his hand, dragging with his feet. He dreaded the sight of Mrs Baines waiting in the hall: he knew now that she was dead. The sergeant’s mouthing had conveyed that; but she wasn’t buried, she wasn’t out of sight; he was going to see a dead person in the hall when the door opened.
The light was on in the basement, and to his relief the constable made for the area steps. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to see Mrs Baines at all. The constable knocked on the door because it was too dark to see the bell, and Baines answered. He stood there in the doorway of the neat bright basement room and you could see the sad complacent plausible sentence he had prepared wither at the sight of Philip; he hadn’t expected Philip to return like that in the policeman’s company. He had to begin thinking all over again; he wasn’t a deceptive man. If it hadn’t been for Emmy he would have been quite ready to let the truth lead him where it would.
‘Mr Baines?’ the constable asked.
He nodded; he hadn’t found the right words; he was daunted by the shrewd knowing face, the sudden appearance of Philip there.
Twenty-One Stories Page 14
