‘I think,’ said Francis Morton, approaching Mrs Henne-Falcon, his eyes focused unwaveringly on her exuberant breasts, ‘it will be no use my playing. My nurse will be calling for me very soon.’
‘Oh, but your nurse can wait, Francis,’ said Mrs Henne-Falcon, while she clapped her hands together to summon to her side a few children who were already straying up the wide staircase to upper floors. ‘Your mother will never mind.’
That had been the limit of Francis’s cunning. He had refused to believe that so well prepared an excuse could fail. All that he could say now, still in the precise tone which other children hated, thinking it a symbol of conceit, was, ‘I think I had better not play.’ He stood motionless, retaining, though afraid, unmoved features. But the knowledge of his terror, or the reflection of the terror itself, reached his brother’s brain. For the moment, Peter Morton could have cried aloud with the fear of bright lights going out, leaving him alone in an island of dark surrounded by the gentle lappings of strange footsteps. Then he remembered that the fear was not his own, but his brother’s. He said impulsively to Mrs Henne-Falcon, ‘Please, I don’t think Francis should play. The dark makes him jump so.’ They were the wrong words. Six children began to sing, ‘Cowardy cowardy custard,’ turning torturing faces with the vacancy of wide sunflowers towards Francis Morton.
Without looking at his brother, Francis said, ‘Of course I’ll play. I’m not afraid, I only thought . . .’ But he was already forgotten by his human tormentors. The children scrambled round Mrs Henne-Falcon, their shrill voices pecking at her with questions and suggestions. ‘Yes, anywhere in the house. We will turn out all the lights. Yes, you can hide in the cupboards. You must stay hidden as long as you can. There will be no home.’
Peter stood apart, ashamed of the clumsy manner in which he had tried to help his brother. Now he could feel, creeping in at the corners of his brain, all Francis’s resentment of his championing. Several children ran upstairs, and the lights on the top floor went out. Darkness came down like the wings of a bat and settled on the landing. Others began to put out the lights at the edge of the hall, till the children were all gathered in the central radiance of the chandelier, while the bats squatted round on hooded wings and waited for that, too, to be extinguished.
‘You and Francis are on the hiding side,’ a tall girl said, and then the light was gone, and the carpet wavered under his feet with the sibilance of footfalls, like small cold draughts, creeping away into corners.
‘Where’s Francis?’ he wondered. ‘If I join him he’ll be less frightened of all these sounds.’ ‘These sounds’ were the casing of silence: the squeak of a loose board, the cautious closing of a cupboard door, the whine of a finger drawn along polished wood.
Peter stood in the centre of the dark deserted floor, not listening but waiting for the idea of his brother’s whereabouts to enter his brain. But Francis crouched with fingers on his ears, eyes uselessly closed, mind numbed against impressions, and only a sense of strain could cross the gap of dark. Then a voice called ‘Coming’, and as though his brother’s self-possession had been shattered by the sudden cry, Peter Morton jumped with his fear. But it was not his own fear. What in his brother was a burning panic was in him an altruistic emotion that left the reason unimpaired. ‘Where, if I were Francis, should I hide?’ And because he was, if not Francis himself, at least a mirror to him, the answer was immediate. ‘Between the oak bookcase on the left of the study door, and the leather settee.’ Between the twins there could be no jargon of telepathy. They had been together in the womb, and they could not be parted.
Peter Morton tiptoed towards Francis’s hiding-place. Occasionally a board rattled, and because he feared to be caught by one of the soft questers through the dark, he bent and untied his laces. A tag struck the floor and the metallic sound set a host of cautious feet moving in his direction. But by that time he was in his stockings and would have laughed inwardly at the pursuit had not the noise of someone stumbling on his abandoned shoes made his heart trip. No more boards revealed Peter Morton’s progress. On stockinged feet he moved silently and unerringly towards his object. Instinct told him he was near the wall, and, extending a hand, he laid the fingers across his brother’s face.
Francis did not cry out, but the leap of his own heart revealed to Peter a proportion of Francis’s terror. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered, feeling down the squatting figure until he captured a clenched hand. ‘It’s only me. I’ll stay with you.’ And grasping the other tightly, he listened to the cascade of whispers his utterance had caused to fall. A hand touched the book-case close to Peter’s head and he was aware of how Francis’s fear continued in spite of his presence. It was less intense, more bearable, he hoped, but it remained. He knew that it was his brother’s fear and not his own that he experienced. The dark to him was only an absence of light; the groping hand that of a familiar child. Patiently he waited to be found.
He did not speak again, for between Francis and himself was the most intimate communion. By way of joined hands thought could flow more swiftly than lips could shape themselves round words. He could experience the whole progress of his brother’s emotion, from the leap of panic at the unexpected contact to the steady pulse of fear, which now went on and on with the regularity of a heart-beat. Peter Morton thought with intensity, ‘I am here. You needn’t be afraid. The lights will go on again soon. That rustle, that movement is nothing to fear. Only Joyce, only Mabel Warren.’ He bombarded the drooping form with thoughts of safety, but he was conscious that the fear continued. ‘They are beginning to whisper together. They are tired of looking for us. The lights will go on soon. We shall have won. Don’t be afraid. That was someone on the stairs. I believe it’s Mrs Henne-Falcon. Listen. They are feeling for the lights.’ Feet moving on a carpet, hands brushing a wall, a curtain pulled apart, a clicking handle, the opening of a cupboard door. In the case above their heads a loose book shifted under a touch. ‘Only Joyce, only Mabel Warren, only Mrs Henne-Falcon,’ a crescendo of reassuring thought before the chandelier burst, like a fruit-tree, into bloom.
The voices of the children rose shrilly into the radiance. ‘Where’s Peter?’ ‘Have you looked upstairs?’ ‘Where’s Francis?’ but they were silenced again by Mrs Henne-Falcon’s scream. But she was not the first to notice Francis Morton’s stillness, where he had collapsed against the wall at the touch of his brother’s hand. Peter continued to hold the clenched fingers in an arid and puzzled grief. It was not merely that his brother was dead. His brain, too young to realize the full paradox, wondered with an obscure self-pity why it was that the pulse of his brother’s fear went on and on, when Francis was now where he had always been told there was no more terror and no more darkness.
1929
THE HISTORY OF VINTAGE
The famous American publisher Alfred A. Knopf (1892–1984) founded Vintage Books in the United States in 1954 as a paperback home for the authors published by his company. Vintage was launched in the United Kingdom in 1990 and works independently from the American imprint although both are part of the international publishing group, Random House.
Vintage in the United Kingdom was initially created to publish paperback editions of books acquired by the prestigious hardback imprints in the Random House Group such as Jonathan Cape, Chatto & Windus, Hutchinson and later William Heinemann, Secker & Warburg and The Harvill Press. There are many Booker and Nobel Prize-winning authors on the Vintage list and the imprint publishes a huge variety of fiction and non-fiction. Over the years Vintage has expanded and the list now includes great authors of the past – who are published under the Vintage Classics imprint – as well as many of the most influential authors of the present.
For a full list of the books Vintage publishes, please visit our website
www.vintage-books.co.uk
For book details and other information about the classic authors we publish, please visit the Vintage Classics website
www.vintage-classics.info
www.vintage-classics.info
THE HISTORY OF VINTAGE
The famous American publisher Alfred A. Knopf (1892–1984) founded Vintage Books in the United States in 1954 as a paperback home for the authors published by his company. Vintage was launched in the United Kingdom in 1990 and works independently from the American imprint although both are part of the international publishinggroup, Random House.
Vintage in the United Kingdom was initially created to publish paperback editions of books acquired by the prestigious hardback imprints in the Random House Group such as Jonathan Cape, Chatto & Windus, Hutchinson and later William Heinemann, Secker & Warburgand The Harvill Press. There are many Booker and Nobel Prize-winning authors on the Vintage list and the imprint publishes a huge variety of fiction and non-fiction. Over the years Vintage has expanded and the list now includes great authors of the past – who are published under the Vintage Classics imprint – as well as many of the most influential authors of the present.
For a full list of the books Vintage publishes, please visit our website
www.vintage-books.co.uk
For book details and other information about the classic authors we publish, please visit the Vintage Classics website
www.vintage-classics.info
www.vintage-classics.info
Twenty-One Stories Page 21
