A Game of Hide and Seek (6 page)

‘That you had tomatoes and potatoes and peas. And bread.'

‘Suppose she says why only that?'

‘You will say “We thought you wouldn't like us to have meat”.'

Deirdre rehearsed this under her breath.

‘Then you will be telling the truth,' Vesey said, with his careless smile.

‘I didn't have any bread,' Joseph said, coming away from the window which was all steamed over with his breath.

Caroline was back from her meeting in time for high tea.

‘My poor little boy!' she said to Joseph, smoothing his cropped head. ‘Harriet, don't run away.'

‘I ought to go,' Harriet said, sitting down.

‘This is prison fare,' said Deirdre casually, looking at her salad.

‘I said I could have bread any day,' Joseph reminded them.

‘I wonder,' said Vesey, staring at the children, yet at the same time spreading butter with a cynical deliberation, ‘I wonder if Harriet and I will be playing hide-and-seek with you tonight.'

‘The meat has over-excited them,' Harriet thought. She had always heard that it inflamed the baser instincts.

‘I liked you-know-what,' said Joseph.

‘We had ice-cream. I hope that was all right,' Harriet said quickly.

‘There was money over from the shoes,' Vesey explained.

‘But there could not have been,' Caroline said. ‘The money was your mother's. You should not exceed what you are allowed.'

‘The ice-cream was not the best part of the day,' said Joseph.

‘He was a good boy having his hair cut,' Harriet said hurriedly.

‘I was a good boy eating my din-din,' Joseph said in a baby voice.

‘Mother,' said Deirdre, ‘we save a lot of money being vegetarians, don't we?'

‘Only in doctors' bills,' Caroline replied. ‘Why do you ask?'

‘I noticed macaroni-cheese was only eightpence.'

‘And here was I feeling sorry for you that they had no vegetarian dish,' Caroline said, and laughed.

‘Vesey bought some nice shoes,' Harriet interposed.

‘Yes, we must look at them after tea.'

‘They are grey,' Deirdre said.

Caroline frowned. ‘How do you mean – grey?'

‘They are grey suede,' Vesey said quietly. He looked down sideways at the tablecloth, leaning back in his chair as if fatigued.

‘Grey suede,' said Caroline.

‘Yes.'

A little silence fell; or rather, was drawn down. Caroline picked up her cup and drank tea steadily. Her cheekbones were scarlet.

‘Aren't grey shoes nice?' Joseph asked.

Caroline smiled as she replaced the cup very quietly in its saucer.

‘Nice?' she repeated in her amused, indulgent voice. ‘I don't think “nice” or “nasty” enter into it.'

Vesey flicked a crumb across the table, then another.

‘More salad, Joseph?' Caroline asked.

‘I'm not hungry.'

‘What did you say?'

‘I'm not hungry.'

‘No,
thank
you.'

‘Only a little bit then,' he said. He lifted up his plate innocently.

Vesey, his eyes half-closed, nodded, as if at some private thought, which pleased him.

‘That was touch and go,' said Deirdre as they strolled through the fields.

‘Only because you made it so,' Harriet said coldly.

‘You want to have your cake and then blame others that you have eaten it,' Vesey added.

‘Only it was meat,' Joseph said.

‘And you find the danger of blaming more exciting than the other part,' said Vesey.

‘As if I care,' Deirdre said, wiping tears away with her fingers.

‘You are not to be out of our sight until you go to bed,' Vesey said. ‘Since you are not to be trusted. If you go off on your own without a responsible person – either Harriet or me – the consequences will be such that I could not answer for.'

‘You can't be with us for the rest of our lives,' Joseph muttered.

‘Speak up, Joseph,' Vesey said. ‘I am afraid that we didn't have the pleasure of hearing what you said.'

‘I said you can't be with us for ever,' Joseph said bravely, staring ahead as he walked across the field.

‘Ah, correct! Time will part us; other commitments will engage me. Yet no matter where you are, you will be continually reminded of me, feel my presence as strongly beside you as you feel it now. Strange, that! Very, very strange! Remember, my dear Joseph.'

‘I don't believe you.'

Deirdre put her arm across her brother's shoulders. They walked unevenly over the bumpy stubble, awkwardly entwined.

‘Don't tease them,' Harriet implored him; for the sight of the two children plodding on together touched her painfully; but what touched her more painfully was Vesey's mood from which the teasing sprang. His face was whiter than ever; his words fell like the strokes of a whip. For Caroline had shown distaste; now Harriet disapproval.

‘Every time you go for a walk you pick flowers,' he said. ‘Like a bloody little cockney.'

Harriet stared at her bunch of bleached chicory as if she could not believe her eyes, or her ears.

‘I shall tell mother you said “bloody”,' Deirdre said, turning round.

‘
That
wasn't very sensible of him, was it?' Vesey said lightly, in Caroline's voice.

‘When you are hurt, you lay waste all around you,' Harriet said quietly. ‘No one is safe.'

She was dismayed at loving someone imperfect. She tried to think of Vesey that day at lunch cutting Joseph's meat for him. She could not believe that anyone so loved could be flawed by spitefulness, the quality above all others which distressed her, or that tenderness and cruelty could inhabit the same person, dwell side by side, one sometimes intensifying the other.

‘Hurt?' Vesey repeated. It was the one charge he would not have brought. ‘Bored you mean, perhaps?'

‘Yes, I expect you are bored as well,' said Harriet sadly.

All through the long winter and the spring, she would not have him near her; yet, now, standing so close beside him, the moment which should have been so precious was worse than useless: it shrank, and stopped and curdled. These blue flowers she carried in her hand she would surely hate for the rest of her life.

The children, feeling themselves no more the chief butt of Vesey's bad humour, loosened and drifted apart, hopped in and out of the furrows, singing, and when Joseph turned again it was seen that all was forgotten, or forgiven.

‘We could go in to Hardy's Farm,' he said to Vesey, and he smiled hopefully, as if their relationship had always been amiable, and might be more so.

‘I doubt if Harriet here would care to,' Vesey said.

‘Could we, Harriet?'

‘It is trespassing, ‘ Vesey said, glancing at her, then at the sky.

‘How can we trespass on someone who is dead?' Deirdre asked.

‘Harriet would jib even at that.'

The farmyard to which they came had the derelict look of after an auction-sale; bills were stuck to the walls and littered the ground; there was a smell of dried cow-dung and trampled grass, and going in through a creaking gate they disturbed pigeons who seemed not to have been disturbed for a long time. Empty barns and stalls enclosed the yard. Along one side, the house with its blank windows faced them.

It was easy to climb in through the pantry window. Then the cold and silence of the empty house lay before them, the cavernous dark kitchen with its broken stone floor and cobwebbed plate-racks and mossy sink.

‘It smells like the tomb,' said Deirdre.

‘I don't like it,' Joseph whimpered.

‘Harriet and I are going upstairs to the haunted room,' said Vesey.

‘Rooms can't be haunted,' Deirdre said in a terrified voice.

‘There's my sensible girl,' said Vesey.

‘Harriet is afraid,' Joseph observed.

‘Harriet is a ninny,' Vesey told him. He spoke as if Harriet herself were no longer there. ‘She lets words break her bones. She hides her face at the slightest thing. She picks all these flowers to comfort herself because her hands are trembling.'

The children, not understanding, opened a cupboard and looked in. A mouse ran out and they drew back into one another's arms. Now that Vesey's voice had stopped echoing round the walls, they could hear a tap dripping dismally into the sink.

Harriet walked out of the kitchen and down a brick passage into the hall. She tried to steady herself by breathing slowly and deeply, hoping her tears would recede. It was a physical struggle, for her mind seemed empty. At the crest of each breath, weeping threatened her. Far away now the voices of the children sounded, as if at the bottom of a well. When she thought she heard footsteps coming after her, she sped silently up the stairs, for though she had kept back her tears, she felt she would not if she were made to speak.

Doors stood ajar on the landing, and on this floor sunlight streamed in. From the window, she could see the blond stubble and the dark elm-trees, gnats in the golden light and, below, a tangled garden with purplish roses upon sagging arches.

In the largest room a carved canopy jutted out where once a bed had stood, torn hangings still drooped from it. On the window-sill was a broken wine-glass and a box of pills. ‘I suppose the old man died in here,' she thought, but it was the living she feared and the footsteps of the living pursuing her. She was cornered in this room and had nowhere to hide.

‘Harriet!' said Vesey, but she would not turn away from the window. ‘Don't go on being silly, there's a good girl! My God, what a funny room. I suppose he died here.' He opened the box of pills and offered them to her. ‘I dare you to take these and see what happens. Ah, come, Harriet! Don't sulk. If you don't speak to me, I shall cut my artery.' He held the jagged wine-glass to his wrist. ‘You see, I mean it.' A little bead of blood grew larger on his white skin.

‘Don't be absurd, Vesey!'

‘That's better. I don't mind what you say as long as you speak to me. Only the
looks
I get I can't abide.' He threw the wine-glass into a corner, where it splintered with a frail sound against the wall.

‘Where are the children?' Harriet asked.

‘They went out again. The mice frightened them. Do mice frighten you, Harriet?'

‘No.'

‘What does frighten you?'

She turned away from him and put out her hand to the carved canopy-post, steadying herself.

‘I think you are at the end of your tether,' he said.

She leant her head against the post, her arm crooked above it.

‘Sometimes I feel that I am, too,' he added.

He put his hand out and touched her hair, but she only buried her head deeper against her arm. The moment he began to caress her, she felt weakness besetting her. It transgressed her stubborn intention; like a slow stain it spread across her self-defence; visible, she feared, as it gathered and overtook her.

When she looked at him, he could see the mark of the carved wood dented quite deeply across her brow: at first it was white, then slowly reddened. He gathered her up close to him and kissed her. He felt her warm hands in his hair and saw himself very tiny in her eyes. This time, she returned his kiss. Their hearts knocked and raced. Rigidly together, flesh against bone, they stood without moving, undergoing a sense of being not in their right element.

At the back of her extreme tension was a feeling of disbelief and unreality, for she had never reached this limit in all her dreams about him, and all her vague yearnings, dissatisfactions, disturbances, were resolved so suddenly that she felt goaded and overthrown.

And now they seemed no longer alone. A third presence was sensed – their own passion, to which they were answerable. He laid his hand against her beating throat, smoothed her polished shoulder.

She became passive, but conscious of waiting, of being only delightfully checked.

‘Darling, did anyone do this to you before?'

‘Of course not, Vesey.'

‘Promise?'

‘But I can't promise the past.'

She had no coquetry; his was merely an absurd question.

‘Did
you
?' she asked suddenly and fearfully. She dreaded the answer, as if he were some old roué.

‘Did I what?'

‘This.'

‘Hundreds of times.'

‘No. Truthfully.'

He took her close to him again. ‘No, I never did,' he said in a hurried voice. He swayed with her in his arms and shut his eyes. The weakness of their legs seemed a sly trap of nature. But there was nowhere in this empty room; only the dusty floor.

‘If only,' said Vesey, ‘the bed was still here. We could lie down together and draw the curtains round.'

Feeling he should not have said that, she was none the less elated that he had. She imagined them lying there side by side; secret, blissful, entranced.

When Joseph's voice was heard calling, both started with the shock. They remembered the children. Harriet put one hand to her blouse, the other to her hair; the gesture of a much older, much guiltier woman. She had never looked so grown-up.

‘Where are you?' Joseph wailed from the garden.

When Vesey looked out, he saw him standing below with a bunch of roses in his hand.

‘So you have stolen as well as trespassed?' Vesey called down, his voice still wavering and hurried.

‘Coo-ee! Vesey!' shouted Deirdre, coming out from some trees and wandering across the lawn towards the house.

Vesey turned back from the window and looked at Harriet. She was picking up her flowers which were scattered on the floor.

‘Are you all right, Harriet?'

‘Yes.' She smiled.

‘We had better go.'

‘Yes.'

He hesitated a moment longer, watching her; then he turned back to the window and leaned out.

‘Coming!' he yelled, his hands cupped to his mouth, for the children were drifting away. The sound flew back into the room and echoed round the walls. ‘Coming! Coming!'