Cynthia Manson (ed) (61 page)

“I’m sorry I was so slow,” she said.
“You must forgive me, but I am not very young.”

“I’ll say,” remarked the younger
boy, staring. He thought he had never seen anything as old as this old geyser.

“You shut up,” said the girl next to
him, and the tallest one said, “Don’t be rude.”

“You sing very nicely,” said Mrs.
Fairlands. “Very well indeed. Did you learn at school?”

“Mostly at the club,” said the older
boy, whose voice went up and down, on the verge of breaking, Mrs. Fairlands
thought, remembering her brothers.

She held out the half crown. The
tallest of the four girls, the one who had the piece of paper with the words of
the carols on it, took the coin and smiled.

“I hope I haven’t kept you too long,”
Mrs. Fairlands said. “You can’t stay long at each house, can you, or you would
never get any money worth having.”

“They mostly don’t give anything,” one
of the other girls said.

“Tell us to get the ’ell out,” said
the irrepressible younger boy.

“We don’t do it mostly for the money,”
said the tallest girl. “Not for ourselves, I mean.”

“Give it to the club. Oxfam
collection and that,” said the tall boy.

“Don’t you want it for yourselves?”
Mrs. Fairlands was astonished. “Do you have enough pocket money without?”

They nodded gravely.

“I got a paper round,” said the
older boy.

“I do babysitting now and then,” the
tallest girl added.

“Well, thank you for coming,” Mrs.
Fairlands said. She was beginning to feel cold, standing there at the open
door. “I must go back into my warm room. And you must keep moving, too, or you
might catch colds.”

“Thank you,” they said in chorus. “Thanks
a lot. Bye!”

She shut and locked the door as they
turned, clattered down the steps, slammed the gate of the forecourt behind them.
She went back to her drawing room. She watched from the window as they piled up
the steps of the next house. And again she heard, more faintly because farther
away, “Once in Royal David’s City.” There were tears in her old eyes as she
left the window and stood for a few minutes staring down at the dull coals of
her diminishing fire.

But very soon she rallied, took up
the poker, mended her fire, went to her kitchen, and put on the kettle. Coming
back to wait for it to boil, she looked again at her Christmas tree. The
diamond brooch certainly gave an added distinction to the star, she thought.
Amused once more by her originality, she went into her bedroom and from her
jewel box on the dressing table took her two other valuable pieces, a pearl
necklace and a diamond bracelet. The latter she had not worn for years. She
wound each with a tinsel string and hung them among the branches of the tree.

She had just finished preparing her
combined tea and supper when the front doorbell rang again. Leaving the tray in
the kitchen, she went to her own front door and opened it. Once again a carol
floated to her, “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” this time. There seemed to be
only one voice singing. A lone child, she wondered, making the rounds by
himself.

She hurried to the window of her
drawing room, drew back the curtain, peeped out. No, not alone, but singing a
solo. The pure, high boy’s voice was louder here. The child, muffled up to the
ears, had his head turned away from her towards three companions, whose small
figures and pale faces were intent upon the door. They did not seem to notice
her at the window as the other group had done, for they did not turn in her
direction. They were smaller, evidently younger, very serious. Mrs. Fairlands,
touched, willing again to defeat her loneliness in a few minutes’ talk, took
another half crown from her purse and went out to the main hall and the big
door.

“Thank you, children,” she said as
she opened it. “That was very—”

Her intended praise died in her
throat. She gasped, tried to back away. The children now wore black stockings
over their faces. Their eyes glittered through slits; there were holes for
their noses and mouths.

“That’s a very silly joke,” said
Mrs. Fairlands in a high voice. “I shall not give you the money I brought for
you. Go home. Go away.”

She backed inside the door, catching
at the knob to close it. But the small figures advanced upon her. One of them
held the door while two others pushed her away from it. She saw the fourth, the
singer, hesitate, then turn and run out into the street.

“Stop this!” Mrs. Fairlands said
again in a voice that had once been commanding but now broke as she repeated
the order. Silently, remorselessly, the three figures forced her back; they
shut and locked the main door, they pushed her, stumbling now, terrified,
bewildered, through her own front door and into her drawing room.

It was an outrage, an appalling,
unheard-of challenge. Mrs. Fairlands had always met a challenge with vigor. She
did so now. She tore herself from the grasp of one pair of small hands to box
the ears of another short figure. She swept round at the third, pulling the
stocking halfway up his face, pushing him violently against the wall so his
face met it with a satisfactory smack.

“Stop it!” she panted. “Stop it or I’ll
call the police!”

At that they all leaped at her,
pushing, punching, dragging her to an upright chair. She struggled for a few
seconds, but her breath was going. When they had her sitting down, she was
incapable of movement. They tied her hands and ankles to the chair and stood
back. They began to talk, all at once to start with, but at a gesture from one,
the other two became silent.

When Mrs. Fairlands heard the
voices, she became rigid with shock and horror. Such words, such phrases, such
tones, such evil loose in the world, in her house, in her quiet room. Her face
grew cold, she thought she would faint. And still the persistent demand went
on.

“We want the money. Where d’you keep
it? Come on. Give. Where d’you keep it?”

“At my bank,” she gasped.

“That’s no answer. Where?”

She directed them to the bureau,
where they found and rifled her handbag, taking the three pound notes and five
shillings’ worth of small change that was all the currency she had in the flat.

Clearly they were astonished at the
small amount. They threatened, standing round her, muttering threats and
curses.

“I’m
not
rich,” she kept
repeating. “I live chiefly on the rents of the flats and a very small private
income. It’s all paid into my bank. I cash a check each week, a small check to
cover my food and the wages of my daily help.”

“Jewelry,” one of them said. “You
got jewelry. Rich old cows dolled up—we seen ’em. That’s why we come. You got
it. Give.”

She rallied a little, told them
where to find her poor trinkets. Across the room her diamond brooch winked
discreetly in the firelight. They were too stupid, too savage, too—horrible to
think of searching the room carefully. Let them take the beads, the dress
jewelry, the amber pendant. She leaned her aching head against the hard back of
the chair and closed her eyes.

After what seemed a long time they
came back. Their tempers were not improved. They grumbled among themselves—almost
quarreling—in loud harsh tones.

“Radio’s worth nil. Prehistoric. No
transistor. No record player. Might lift that old clock.”

“Money stashed away. Mean old bitch.”

“Best get going.”

Mrs. Fairlands, eyes still closed,
heard a faint sound outside the window. Her doorbell rang once. More carol
singers? If they knew, they could save her. If they knew—

She began to scream. She meant to
scream loudly, but the noise that came from her was a feeble croak. In her own
head it was a scream. To her tormentors it was derisory, but still a challenge.
They refused to be challenged.

They gagged her with a strip of
sticking plaster, they pulled out the flex of her telephone. They bundled the
few valuables they had collected into the large pockets of their overcoats and
left the flat, pulling shut the two front doors as they went. Mrs. Fairlands
was alone again, but gagged and bound and quite unable to free herself.

At first she felt a profound relief
in the silence, the emptiness of the room. The horror had gone, and though she
was uncomfortable, she was not yet in pain. They had left the light on—all the
lights, she decided. She could see through the open door of the room the
lighted passage and, beyond, a streak of light from her bedroom. Had they been
in the kitchen? Taken her Christmas dinner, perhaps, the chicken her daily had
cooked for her? She remembered her supper and realized fully, for the first
time, that she could not open her mouth and that she could not free her hands.

Even now she refused to give way to
panic. She decided to rest until her strength came back and she could, by
exercising it, loosen her bonds. But her strength did not come back. It ebbed
as the night advanced and the fire died and the room grew cold and colder. For
the first time she regretted not accepting May’s suggestion that she should
spend Christmas with her, occupying the flat above in place of Dorothy. Between
them they could have defeated those little monsters. Or she could herself have
gone to Leatherhead. She was insured for burglary.

She regretted those things that
might have saved her, but she did not regret the gamble of refusing them. She
recognized now that the gamble was lost. It had to be lost in the end, but she
would have chosen a more dignified finish than this would be.

She cried a little in her weakness
and the pain she now suffered in her wrists and ankles and back. But the tears
ran down her nose and blocked it, which stopped her breathing and made her
choke. She stopped crying, resigned herself, prayed a little, considered one or
two sins she had never forgotten but on whose account she had never felt
remorse until now. Later on she lapsed into semiconsciousness, a half-dream
world of past scenes and present cares, of her mother, resplendent in low-cut
green chiffon and diamonds, the diamond brooch and bracelet now decorating the
tree across the room. Of Bobbie, in a fever, plagued by itching spots, of
Dorothy as a little girl, blotched with measles.

Towards morning, unable any longer
to breathe properly, exhausted by pain, hunger, and cold, Mrs. Fairlands died.

The milkman came along the road
early on Christmas morning, anxious to finish his round and get back to his
family. At Mrs. Fairlands’ door he stopped. There were no milk bottles standing
outside and no notice. He had seen her in person the day before when she had
explained that her daughter and family were not coming this year so she would
only need her usual pint that day.

“But I’ll put out the bottles and
the ticket for tomorrow as usual,” she had said.

“You wouldn’t like to order now,
madam?” he had asked, thinking it would save her trouble.

“No, thank you,” she had answered. “I
prefer to decide in the evening, when I see what milk I have left.”

But there were no bottles and no
ticket and she was a very, very old lady and had had this disappointment over
her family not coming.

The milkman looked at the door and
then at the windows. It was still dark, and the light shone clearly behind the
closed curtains. He had seen it when he went in through the gate but had
thought nothing of it, being intent on his job. Besides, there were lights in a
good many houses and the squeals of delighted children finding Christmas
stockings bulging on the posts of their beds. But here, he reminded himself,
there were no children.

He tapped on the window and
listened. There was no movement in the house. Perhaps she’d forgotten, being
practically senile. He left a pint bottle on the doorstep. But passing a
constable on a scooter at the end of the road, he stopped to signal to him and
told him about Mrs. Fairlands. “Know ’oo I mean?” he asked.

The constable nodded and thanked the
milkman. No harm in making sure. He was pretty well browned off— nothing
doing—empty streets—not a hooligan in sight— layabouts mostly drunk in the
cells after last night’s parties—villains all at the holiday resorts, casing
jobs.

He left the scooter at the curb and
tried to rouse Mrs. Fairlands. He did not succeed, so his anxiety grew. All the
lights were on in the flat, front and back as far as he could make out. All her
lights. The other flats were in total darkness. People away. She must have had
a stroke or actually croaked, he thought. He rode on to the nearest telephone
box.

The local police station sent a
sergeant and another constable to join the man on the beat. Together they
managed to open the kitchen window at the back, and when they saw the tray with
a meal prepared but untouched, one of them climbed in. He found Mrs. Fairlands
as the thieves had left her. There was no doubt at all what had happened.

“Ambulance,” said the sergeant
briefly. “Get the super first, though. We’ll be wanting the whole works.”

“The phone’s gone,” the constable
said. “Pulled out.”

“Bastard! Leave her like this when
she couldn’t phone anyway and wouldn’t be up to leaving the house till he’d had
plenty time to make six getaways. Bloody bastard!”