The Daydreamer

by Ian Mcewan

  ‘It was of great sentimental value!’ Mrs Goodgame wailed when she came round to tell the news to Peter’s mother. ‘It travelled round the world three times in the nineteenth century. And my soap, my precious soap!’

  ‘I’m glad he took that stinking stick,’ Peter said to Kate after Mrs Goodgame had left. ‘I hope that burglar breaks it over his knee.’

  Kate nodded fiercely. ‘I wish he had taken her teeth!’ The fact was that Mrs Goodgame, even though she had a name that made her sound fun, was not liked by the children in the street. She was one of those rare unhappy grown-ups who are profoundly irritated by the fact that children exist. When they played out, she shouted at them from her front window for ‘gathering outside my house’. She believed that all the litter that blew on to her patch was put there by mischievous children. If a ball or a toy landed in her garden, she darted out and confiscated it. She was always in a bad mood, and things were made worse for her because the children teased her. Making her angry was something of a sport. Peter’s parents said she was a little mad and deserved pity. They always tried to be pleasant to her. But for the children it was hard to feel pity for a grown- up with yellow fangs who was chasing you up the street.

  So Peter did not mind so much when Mrs Goodgame’s soap and stick were carried away. He was beginning to feel some respect for this burglar. He decided to call him Soapy Sam. What a daredevil he was to take on a whole street, house after house, in ascending order. He seemed to be asking to be caught!

  The months passed, a few more houses were done. Numbers fifteen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-seven. There could be no doubt about it. Soapy was heading Peter’s way, number thirty-eight.

  Peter had spent much time making calculations with pencil and paper. As far as he could tell, there was no pattern to the house numbers the burglar chose. But if he came at all, the burglar would be due in their house in less than two weeks. Perhaps it would be missed out. Peter knew he would be disappointed if that happened. Without telling anyone, he had resolved that he was going to be the one who was going to catch Soapy Sam.

  The weekend before Soapy was expected, Thomas and Viola Fortune made preparations. Thomas Fortune fastened shut the windows by drilling long screws through the frames. He installed stronger locks on the front and back doors and he padlocked the gate round the side of the house. He tried to put in a do-it-yourself burglar alarm, but he hit his thumb with a hammer while tacking electric wire to a wall, which put him in a terrible mood. Worse still, the alarm didn’t work. There was no time to get a proper one in place, and besides, it wouldn’t stop Soapy Sam.

  Viola Fortune carried her favourite gardening tools indoors. She went from room to room gathering up paintings, ornaments, lamps and valuable books and locked them in a cupboard at the top of the house. Peter and Kate hid their favourite toys under their beds. It was as if what was coming up the street was a hurricane, a whirlwind, a typhoon that would snatch away everything they had. In fact, it was just one little old thief who was rather clever at his job. But was he cleverer than Peter?

  Peter began to plan his campaign. His first problem was this: if he was going to catch the thief he was going to have to be at home, and that meant getting off school. He could fake an illness, but he had to be careful. He had to pitch it exactly right. If he pretended too hard, one of his parents would take time off work to look after him. Soapy Sam would see there were people in the house and move on up the street. On the other hand, if Peter didn’t appear ill enough, he would be sent to school with a note excusing him from sports. If he got it right, he would be allowed to stay at home by himself, with Mrs Farrar, their kindly old neighbour, popping in every hour or so to check on him.

  In the afternoons, home from school, he locked his bed- room door and practised looking droopy. Wanting to make himself look pale, he dusted his face with flour. In the mirror he resembled a corpse come to life. He chewed peppercorns to raise his temperature. It worked too well. His mouth and throat seemed to catch fire, and his temperature soared. He would have been rushed to hospital. He wondered if a sprained ankle might suit him better. He limped up and down the tiny floor space of his bedroom. He looked more like a boy who was turning into a crab.

  He was still perfecting his illness three days later when he heard the news from his mother. Mr and Mrs Baden-Baden at number 34 had been burgled. Only two months before they had spent thousands on the very latest alarm system with red and blue warning lights, sonic intruder devices and a whooping siren. Soapy Sam seemed to have melted through the walls of their house and stolen a four-hundred-year-old tennis-racket in a glass case, and a worm-eaten piano stool that Mozart was supposed to have sat on for two minutes at the age of five.

  ‘Isn’t that shocking?’ Viola Fortune said.

  ‘It’s outrageous,’ Peter agreed.

  But when his mother had gone, he punched the air in excitement. Soapy Sam was on his way! Peter had no reason to believe that his own house, number 38, would be next. He had made up his mind because he wanted it to happen, and somehow that seemed enough. Nor could he possibly know when the next break-in would be. But he had made a guess and decided that Soapy Sam would be visiting in four or five days’ time.

  Now, while Peter was making arrangements to be ill, he was also wondering how he was going to trap the thief. He day- dreamed his way through trap-doors, a net that fell from the ceiling, a gold ingot covered in super glue, electric cable wired to door handles, imitation guns, poisoned darts, lassoes, pulleys and ropes, hammers, springs, halogen lights and fierce dogs, smokescreens, laser beams, piano wire and a garden fork. But Peter was not a fool. He knew perfectly well that all these ideas could work, but he also knew that, for an eleven-year-old, making them work was almost impossible.

  That Saturday morning he lay on his bed thinking. He found himself staring at the old mouse-hole in the skirting board near his bed. There were no mice in there these days, and the hole seemed to go on for ever under the wall, and down below the floorboards. Then he stared up at the shelf where he kept his most valuable possessions and suddenly he saw the solution. Whatever he did, it had to be simple. There was the mouse- hole, and up there was last year’s birthday present, appearing to look at him and say, ‘Use me! Use me!’

  He sat at his table, took a sheet of paper and with a trembling hand wrote a short letter, perhaps the most important letter he had ever written. Then he sealed it in an envelope which he wrote on and took down stairs to the desk where all the household bills were kept. He tucked it away, just out of sight, but easily found. Written in block capitals on that envelope were the words ‘To be opened in the event of my sudden death’.

  Viola Fortune prided herself on her deep understanding of her children. She knew their moods, their weaknesses, their worries and everything else about them far better than they knew them- selves. For example, she knew when Peter or Kate were tired, long before they actually felt tired. She knew when they were really in a bad mood, even if they thought they were in a good one. That Sunday evening, she quietly observed that Peter was rather slow in coming to the supper table when called, that he finished his plate, but with an effort that he could conceal from anyone but her, and that when he was offered seconds, his upper lip quivered in disguised disgust. And this was steak and crinkle-cut french fries under a half litre of ketchup.

  ‘Peter darling. You don’t look well,’ she said at last.

  ‘I feel great,’ he said, and sighed and ran his hand across his face.

  ‘I think you might need an early night,’ Viola said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Peter said, but his mother noted wisely that he didn’t say it with the usual force. When he was ordered into his pyjamas after supper, he put up only token resistance. When she peeped into his bedroom twenty minutes later, he was already asleep. He couldn’t fool me, she thought as she tiptoed away. He really isn’t well.

  Peter lay awake until midnight making his plans. In the morning his mother could see for herself how pale a
nd droopy he looked. She took his temperature. Nothing too serious, but it was clear he could not go to school, however much he pleaded. He was well enough to read and watch TV, so arrangements were made with Mrs Farrar. Peter was set up on the living-room sofa.

  ‘No bad thing if the house looks occupied,’ his father said when he came in to say goodbye. ‘Turn the TV volume right up. You’ll keep the burglar out at least.’

  Everybody left. Peter turned off the TV and stretched out under the blanket, listening to the creaks and murmurs of a house settling into silence. He did not expect a break-in just yet, not at half past nine in the morning. He was sure burglars did not get out of bed early. Soapy Sam probably slept until midday, and ate a long slow breakfast, planning his next move over cups of strong coffee, and reading the papers for news of the arrest of old friends.

  Sure enough, the morning was uneventful. Mrs Farrar came by with some homemade biscuits. Peter watched TV, read books, checked his equipment and went about the house turning out one or two lights and drawing the living-room curtains so that he could not be seen from the outside. From the street the house looked empty. He was beginning to feel restless. He ate the lunch that had been left him, even though he was not hungry. He was bored with television and books, and most of all, he was bored with waiting. He prowled through the rooms. He crept up to the windows and peeped out. The street was quiet, dull, thiefless. Perhaps this was all a stupid mistake. Perhaps he should be at school with his friends.

  Taking care to bring his anti-burglar equipment with him, he went upstairs to his room. By leaning out of the window he had a good view of the street in both directions. No one, nothing, not even a single passing car. He lay down on his bed and groaned. Catching burglars was supposed to be exciting, and this was the dullest emptiest day he had ever spent. Pretending to be ill and doing nothing all morning had made him feel weary.

  He closed his eyes and drifted away. It was not a sleep exactly, more of a light doze. He was aware of himself on the bed, and he could hear sounds from outside, through the open window. Footsteps first, approaching from a long way off and coming closer. Then a scraping, dragging sound, sharp and dry, like metal being dragged over stone, and that too grew louder and louder, then stopped. Peter was awake enough to know that he really ought to try to open his eyes. He ought to get off the bed and close the window. But he was comfortable where he was, his body was heavy and soft, like a balloon filled with water. It was an effort to move his eyelids. Now there was another disturbance outside, just below his window, a soft rhythmic padding, like footsteps, but slower, as though someone was coming up a ladder. And the sound of difficult bad-tempered breathing that grew louder by the second.

  Peter came to his senses and opened his eyes. The open window filled his vision. He could see the end of an aluminium ladder propped against the window sill, and a hand, an old wrinkled hand, followed by another, groping over the ledge. Peter shrank back into the pillows. He was too terrified to remember his carefully thought-out plans. All he could do was watch. A head and shoulders appeared in the window frame. The face was obscured by a check scarf and a tight black cap. The figure held still for a moment, staring into the room without seeing Peter. Then it began to climb through the window with irritable grunts and murmurs of ‘Blasted stupid thing!’ until it was in and surveying the room, still without noticing Peter who lay so still he must have looked like part of the pattern on the bedspread.

  The burglar reached into a pocket, pulled out a pair of black gloves and pulled them on quickly. Then he unwound the scarf and pushed the cap clear of his face. But it wasn’t a he at all. Peter couldn’t help himself. He let out a cry of astonishment. The burglar looked straight at him without surprise.

  ‘Mrs Goodgame!’ Peter whispered.

  She smiled her yellow smile at him and arched her eyebrows. ‘Yes. I saw you there just as I was climbing in. I wondered when you were going to recognise me.’

  ‘But you were burgled last week …’

  She gave him a look, pitying his stupidity.

  ‘You made it up, so no one would suspect it’s you … ?’

  She nodded cheerily. She seemed much happier as a burglar. ‘Now, are you going to let me get on with my work, and keep your mouth shut afterwards. Or am I going to have to kill you?’

  Even as she was asking this important question, she was advancing into the room, looking around. ‘Not much here, really. But I will have that.’

  She plucked from a shelf a scale model of the Eiffel Tower that Peter had bought in Paris once on a school trip. She slipped it into her pocket.

  It was at this moment that Peter remembered his plan. He picked up his camera from the bedside table. ‘Mrs Good- game?’ he said mildly. As she turned from her study of Peter’s toys the flash went off in her face. And then again, flash … flash. Immediately after the third, Peter began rewinding the film.

  ‘Hey, give me that camera, boy. Straight away.’ Her voice rose to a shriek on these last two words. She stretched out a hand that shook with anger.

  Peter slipped the film free. As he handed the camera to her, he leaned over the edge of the bed and rolled the canister of exposed film into the mouse-hole.

  ‘Boy, what are you doing there? This camera is empty!’

  ‘That’s right,’ Peter said. ‘The pictures of you are right down there. You’ll never get them out.’

  With a creak of knee joints, Mrs Goodgame crouched down and looked. Then with short, ill-tempered gasps she got to her feet. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, absent-mindedly. ‘You’re right. It looks like I will have to kill you after all.’ And with these words she pulled out a gun and pointed it at Peter’s head.

  He pressed himself back against the wall. ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ he said. ‘But if you insist, there’s something you ought to know first. It’s only fair I tell you.’

  Mrs Goodgame gave a yellow, humourless smile. ‘Make it quick then.’

  Peter spoke quickly. ‘Somewhere in this house is an envelope marked “To be opened in the event of my sudden death”. Inside, it says that in this mouse-hole are pictures of the burglar who is also a murderer. They’ll need a crowbar and a sledgehammer, but I’m sure they’ll take the trouble.’

  It took at least a minute for all this information to be digested by Mrs Goodgame, and all the while she kept the gun levelled at Peter’s head. Finally she lowered the gun, but she did not put it away.

  ‘Very clever,’ she snapped. ‘But you haven’t worked it out very well at all. If I shoot you, the photos will be discovered and I’ll be caught. But if I don’t shoot you, you’ll hand the pictures over to the police and I’ll still be caught. So I might just as well shoot you for the fun of it. And as a punishment for making my life so difficult.’

  She released the catch on the gun with a loud click and raised it once more towards Peter. He was scrambling off the bed while trying to hold his hands above his head. It was not easy. He really did not want to be shot. His birthday was only weeks away and he was hoping for a new bike.

  ‘But Mrs Goodgame,’ he stuttered. ‘I’ve thought about all that. If you’ll promise to stop thieving, and to return all the things you’ve taken, I’ll try and fish the photos out and give them to you. Honest, I will.’

  Her eyes narrowed as she considered. ‘Hmm. Getting all this stuff back won’t be easy, you know.’

  ‘You could go round in the middle of the night, and leave it on people’s doorsteps.’

  Mrs Goodgame put her gun away. Peter lowered his arms. ‘You know,’ she said in a wheedling voice, ‘I was hoping to get all the way to the end of the street. Couldn’t I just …’

  ‘Sorry,’ Peter said. ‘It’s got to stop now. That’s my offer. If you don’t like it, then go ahead and shoot me.’

  She turned and seemed to hesitate and for one anxious moment Peter thought she would do just that. But she took out her scarf and wound it over her mouth, and pulled her cap down tight. She crossed to the window and began to cl
imb out.

  ‘You know, I’ve had an awful lot of fun these past few months. Now I’ll have to go back to shouting at children.’

  ‘Yes,’ Peter said kindly. ‘You can’t get arrested for that.’ She flashed him one last yellow smile, and then she was gone. Peter heard the creak of her tread on the rungs, and the scrape of the ladder being pulled away from the wall. He sat down on the edge of his bed and put his head in his hands and sighed. That was very very close.

  He was still sitting in this position when he heard footsteps thundering up the stairs. The door flew open and his father rushed in and crouched at Peter’s side and took his hand.

  ‘Thank God you’re all right,’ Thomas Fortune said breathlessly.

  ‘Yes,’ Peter said. ‘It was very very …’

  ‘You’ve been up here asleep,’ his father said. ‘That’s just as well. You didn’t hear a thing. He took the TV, and the blanket, and all the soap from the bathroom. Cut a hole in the glass of a side window and undid the screws …’

  While his father went on talking, Peter was staring at the mouse-hole. During the days that followed, he was to spend hours on his stomach, searching in that hole with a length of straightened-out wire coat-hanger. Whenever he passed Mrs Goodgame in the street, she pretended not to know him. She never kept her word and returned the stolen goods, and mean- while the burglaries continued right to the end of the street. She would go to jail if he could just find those photographs, so he kept on jiggling and poking with his piece of wire. But he never found that roll of film, and nor did he ever find his model of the Eiffel Tower.

  Chapter Six

  The Baby

  One afternoon in spring, when the kitchen was filled with sun- light, Peter and Kate were told that their Aunt Laura and her baby, Kenneth, would be coming to live for a while. No reason was given, but it was clear from their parents’ solemn looks that not all was well with their aunt.