Short Stories 1927-1956 (62 page)

He undid a button of his jacket and pulled out from underneath it a pinch of an old green silk dressing-gown.

‘Why, that’s mine!’ said Philip. ‘I’ve had it for ages.’ He stared at it
censoriously
, as if dubious whether or not to ask for it back. ‘But I don’t think I want it now, because it’s miles too small for me. My grandmother gave it me for a Christmas present donkey’s years ago. She’s so rich she doesn’t mind
what
things cost – when she gives me anything. That’s real Spitalfields silk, that is; you can’t get it anywhere now. You’ll crumple it up and spoil it if you wear it stuffed in like that.’ He peered closer. ‘What have you got on underneath it? You’re all puffed out like a turkey-cock.’

Dick promptly edged back from the investigating finger, a sly look of
confusion
passing swiftly over his face. ‘That’s my other clothes,’ he explained.

‘What
I
say,’ said Philip; still eyeing his companion as if only a constant vigilance could hope to detect what he might not be up to next, ‘what
I
say is, your mother’s jolly lucky to get expensive things given to her – good things, even if they
are
left-offs. Most of our old stuff goes to the Jumble Sales. I bet,’ he suddenly broke off, ‘I bet if your
real
father found you skulking here, he’d whack you hot and strong.’

The alert and supple body beside his own had suddenly stiffened, and the dangling spindle legs beneath the pew ceased to swing.

‘No, he wouldn’t,’ Dick hardly more than whispered.

‘Why not?’

‘For one thing he just wouldn’t. He knows he’s nothing to do with me;
not now; and leaves me alone. For all that, I went out rabbiting with him one night last summer. And nobody knew. It was warm and still and
pitch-dark
– not like this; and when the moon began to come up over the woods, he sent me home. I know
he
wouldn’t either. Besides,’ he drew in his chin a little as if the words were refusing to come out of his throat, ‘he’s dead.’

‘Dead! Oh, I say! I like that! Oh no, he isn’t;
that’s
not true.
He
isn’t dead. Why, I heard them reading out about him in the newspaper only a few weeks ago. That’s what you
say.
I know what has become of him; and I bet your tongue is burning. What’s more, if your other father hadn’t been Chapel you would never have had
any
father – not to show, I mean. Your mother would have been just like any other woman, though I don’t suppose she could have gone on living in the village. But as he
is
Chapel, and, according to what you say, sits up as late as this reading in the Bible, I can’t understand why he lets you sing in our choir. I call
that
a hypocrite. I’d like to see my father letting
me
go to Chapel. He must be just a hypocrite, Bible or not.’

Dick made no attempt whatever to examine this delicate moral question. ‘Oh no, he isn’t,’ he retorted hotly. ‘He’s as good as yours any day. He goes by what my mother says: if you are Chapel, keep Chapel.
She’s
not a
hypocrite
. And you’d better not say so, either.’

‘I didn’t say it. I didn’t say that your mother was a hypocrite; not a
hypo
crite
.
I like your mother. And nobody’s going to prevent me from going with you either, if I want to. Not if I want to. Your mother’s been jolly decent to me – often. Mrs Fuller sneaks:
she
doesn’t.’

‘So is your mother to me – when you aren’t there. At least she talks to me sometimes then. And I’m glad you’re my friend, Philip. The other day she gave me a hunch of cake, and she made me share a sip of wine from my mother’s glass. Because it was her birthday. Some day I’m going to be a sailor, and going to sea. She had been crying, because her eyes were red; and
your
mother said that crying was no use at all – because I’m growing up more and more like her every day, and shall be a comfort to her when I’m a man. And so I will; you
see
!’

‘“Wine”! Did she just? But that was only because she’s always kind to people – to everybody. She doesn’t mind
who
it is. That’s why she likes being liked by everybody. But after what my father read out in the
newspaper
, he said he entreated her to be more careful. She must think of
him,
my father said. He didn’t want to have the village people talking. He tapped his eyeglasses on the paper and said it was a standing scandal. That’s what he said. He was purple in the face.’ His voice rather suddenly fell silent, as if, like a dog, he had scented indiscretions. ‘But I say:
if
your real father is just dead, he would be the very person according to you to be coming here tonight.
Then
you’d look mighty funny, I should think.’

Dick’s legs, like opposed pendulums, had begun very sluggishly to swing again. ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t, because that’s just what doesn’t happen; and I told you so. It’s the people who are going to die soon – next year – who come:
their
ghosts. Wouldn’t they look white and awful, Philip, coming in under the yew tree … I expect its roots go down all among the coffins. Shall we go out now and watch? It’s as bright as day; you could see a bird
hopping
about.’

‘“Ghosts”!’ was the derisive reply. ‘I like that!
You
can. I’m not. How can they be ghosts, silly, if they’re still alive? Besides, even if there are such things, and even if what your mother told you is really true, you said
yourself
that they would come
into
the church. So if any
should
come and we keep here and hide and peep over the edge, they can’t possibly see us – if ghosts do see. And then we shall be near the door in there. They would be surprised to find that one open, I should think. But even if they were, and ghosts don’t mind doors, they wouldn’t come in at a potty little door like that.’

He paused as if to listen, and continued more boldly. ‘Not, mind you, that I believe a single word of anything you’ve said – all that stuff. Not really. I came …’ he faltered, turning his head away, ‘only just for a game, and
because
you dared me to. Why you asked me to come
really
is because you were frightened of being here alone. You wait and see, I’ll dare
you
in a minute. Besides, how do you know anybody
is
going to die in the village next year – except old Mrs Harrison? And she’s been dying ever since I can remember. She takes snuff, but she can’t stir a foot out of her bed. I bet she hasn’t any ghost left.
She
wouldn’t come.’ The sentence suddenly concluded in a prodigious shuddering yawn. It reminded him that he was cold and that the fatal moment was rapidly nearing. ‘Did they say, before, or after, the clock strikes?’

Dick paused a moment before replying, and then piped up confidently: ‘It’s the very second while the last clump of the bell is sounding. That’s when they get to the church. Because it’s midnight. And all the ghosts begin to walk then. Some come up out of their graves. But’ – he sighed, as if
saddened
at the poverty of his expectations – ‘only very seldom. The people who go to heaven wouldn’t want to, and the Devil wouldn’t let the others out. At least that’s what I think.’

‘What
you
think! And yet,’ retorted Philip indignantly, ‘you talk all that stuff about ghosts; and believe it too. I’d just like to see your ghost. That’d be a skinny one if you like – like a starved bird. Would
you
come back?’

Dick leant his body forward; he was sitting on his hands; and at this his black, close-cropped head nodded far more vigorously than a china Mandarin’s. ‘I don’t
know,’
he said; ‘but I like being out at night. I like –
oh, everything … If ghosts can smell,’ he began again in small matter-of-fact tones, ‘they’d soon snuff
us
out. Look at it smoking.’

The two boys sat mute for a while, watching the tiny slender thread of sooty smoke from the lantern wreathing up in the luminous air; and in the silence – which, after their tongues had ceased chattering, immediately flooded the church fathoms deep – they stayed, listening; their senses avid for the faintest whisper. But the night was windless, and the earth coldly still in the deathly radiance of the moon. And if the Saints in their
splendour
were themselves assembled in the heavens to celebrate their earthly festival, no sound of their rejoicings reached these small pricked-up human ears.

‘If,’ at last Dick exploded, gazing up into the vaporous glooms of the roof above his head, ‘if any more light comes in, the walls will burst. I love the moon; I love the light …
I
’m going to have a peep.’

With a galvanic wriggle he had snatched his arm free from Philip’s grasp, had nimbly whipped out of the pew, and vanished behind the curtain that concealed the vestry door.

Philip shuffled uneasily in his seat, hesitating whether or not to follow him. But from a native indolence and for other motives, and in spite of his
incredulity
, he decided to stay where he was. It seemed safer than the
churchyard
. From a few loose jujubes in his great-coat pocket he chose the cleanest, and sat quietly sucking, his eyes fixed on the monument that not only dominated but dwarfed the small but lovely chancel. The figure of its angel was now bathed with the silver of the moon. With long-toed feet at once clasping and spurning the orb beneath them, it stood erect, on high. Chin out-thrust, its steadfast sightless eyes were fixed upon the faded blue and geranium red of the panelled roof. Its braided locks drawn back from a serene and impassive visage, its left hand lay flat upon its breast, and with the right it clasped a tapering, uplifted, bell-mouthed, gilded trumpet, held firmly not against but at a little distance from its lips.

Unlike Dick, Philip was not a chorister. He was nonetheless his father’s son, and as soon as he had learned to behave himself, to put his penny in the plate and to refrain from babbling aloud, he had been taken to church every Sunday morning. This had been as natural an accompaniment of the Sabbath as clean underclothes, Etons, and hot sausages for breakfast. Thus he had heard hundreds of his father’s sermons – sermons usually as simple as they were short. If only he had listened to them he might by now have become well founded in dogma, a plain but four-square theologian. Instead of listening, however, he would usually sit ‘thinking’. Side by side with his mother, his cheek all but brushing her silks, with their delicate odours, his fingers – rather clammy fingers when the weather was hot – lightly clasping
hers while he counted over and over the sharp-stoned rings on her dainty fingers, he had been wont to follow his fancies.

Morning service had been the general rule. During the last few years however his mother had become the victim of periodical sick headaches, of
lassitude
and palpitations, and had been given strict injunctions not to overdo things, to rest. Occasionally too she had worldly minded visitors, including a highly unorthodox sister, whom it would be tactless even to attempt to persuade to spend her Sundays as, usually, she felt dutifully impelled to spend her own. All this she would confide to Philip. She must on no account, she repeatedly admonished him, be alarmed or worried, distressed or disturbed. As for his stout and rubicund father, who was at least ten years her senior, he adored every bone in her body. But though by nature placable and easy-going, he was also subject to outbursts of temper and fits of moroseness as periodical as her attacks of migraine. It was therefore
prudent
, if only for her sake, to avoid anything in the nature of a scene. ‘So Philip,’ she would cajole him, ‘you will
promise
me to be a good boy, and you’ll go to church this evening, won’t you – instead of now? And you won’t make any fuss about it? You know your father wishes it.’

Philip might demur, and, if it was practicable, bargain with her; but at heart he much preferred this arrangement. It meant that on these particular Sundays he was safe from interference, and could spend the whole morning as he pleased. It was too the darkening evenings about the time of the
equinox
, when it was not yet necessary to light the brass oil-lamps that hung in the nave, and two solitary candlesticks alone gleamed spangling in the pulpit – it was these he loved best. Only the village and farm people came to evening service, and not many even of them. Philip would sit in his pew, and, absorbed in his secret cogitations, enjoy the whole hour. The church changed then its very being. It welled over with mystery. Even in the joy of a Harvest Festival, when he could admire the flowers and vegetables and the gigantic loaf of bread under the lectern, the bloom of grapes and apples, the minute sheaves of wheat and barley gently nodding their heads to the more impulsive strains of the organ, there was still a faint tinge of
sadness
. And the unheeded sermon drowsed his senses like an incantation. His father’s honeyed pulpit voice rose and fell like that of some dulcet Old Man of the Sea; and he himself, though not, like Dick, sporting and whispering noiselessly with his surpliced choir-mates out of sight of the preacher, was at any rate beyond any direct scrutiny. Meanwhile the bulky family cook, his mother’s usual proxy on these occasions, would settle down beside him into a state of apathy so complete, her cotton-gloved hands convulsively clasped over her diaphragm, that it was only by an occasional sniff he could tell that she was perhaps leading as active an internal life as he was, and was neither asleep nor dead.

Now and then he had himself been wafted away in sleep into regions of the most exorbitant scenery, events and vagaries; to be aroused suddenly by, ‘And now to God, the Father …’, blear-eyed, lost, and with so violent a start that it had all but dislocated his neck. The most beguiling and habitual of these reveries had been concerned with the angel. How and when his
speculations
on it had originated, what random bird had dropped this
extravagant
seed of a hundred daydreams into his mind, was beyond discovery now. But it was to the cook that he had confided his first direct questions concerning it.