Stories of the Strange and Sinister (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (19 page)

‘You know where we live, up to Kitto’s field – Lupin Cottage – tell me, do you remember who was living up there ten years ago, this time of year?’

The answer was unequivocal. ‘Why, old Miss Trewhella. She had that place for years before you took it over a month or so back.’

‘You’re dead sure about that? There was never a young married couple living there, with a baby?’

‘No. The old woman lived there nigh on twenty years.’

And now he was hurrying back, bursting with the excitement of new knowledge, desperately anxious to impart his news to his wife and convey its full meaning to her.

Its full meaning? In the lane, looking up to the moon where clouds soared in massive sinister shapes, he felt baffled and cheated. What was the meaning? He would never properly know. Never now be able to swear that on that first walk across the field he had indeed seen that family who was himself, his wife and his son. And all that would now happen – he would find his wife tired and irritable, angry with him for being out so long, the food she had cooked spoilt, her spirit wounded by his thoughtlessness (as she would naturally interpret it). It was something he knew he would not be able to defeat unless she herself came out with willing arms to meet him.

The lane was full of ghosts; the damp earth pressed into the air the mists of the sorrows and joys of many men and women; the sycamore leaves drifted willingly from their naked stems to join the trampled leaves of older years, and a straight pillar of thin smoke rose from the cottage chimney. Against the back wall which faced the lane the little ash tree stretched its long branches.

A window above the stairs showed a small light through a thin curtain. Who was in this house? His love, or emptiness? He felt that he did not know, that he might open the gate upon nothing more than memory. There was the long trunk of the apple tree waiting to be sawn. But it might remain there many years, the cottage empty and falling to decay, and nobody would touch that piece of wood. Was he approaching a place where he had once lived with his wife and child? Had all this beauty gone, and was he left alone to remember it?

But there, in the long bright rays of the moon, leaning against the stone lintel of the door, was the woman who loved him.

He did not like to go near her: he could not say anything. And she smiled and stretched out her hands.

‘What a lovely night!’ she said.

‘Yes. You look so beautiful standing there. This evening I saw you writing at the table. And I couldn’t come in.’

‘Couldn’t you, love? Why?’

She smiled, and he came nearer to her, unwilling to touch her, to break the austere beauty of this moment. He almost prayed that she would not move for a long time, not ask him any questions. So he replied, in an indifferent tone, ‘Oh, I don’t know; just a mood.’ And he stood very near her, still not touching her, and thinking again, ‘A day will come when this cottage will be empty and the weeds will grow up in the path.’

Then her arms were round him, her head lay on his shoulder and she was stroking his hair. There was nothing, he suddenly realized, to tell her. For she was a person who had reached a strange unconscious union with the mystery of time, and his own doubts would only infect her with bewilderment.

No – there was nothing to say. It was only necessary to remember that his happiness, even though it might be assaulted by the weight of past and future sadness, stood eternally graven upon the tablets of time. In their quiet room where the fire still burnt and the candles were alight he ate the food she brought him and listened to her as she talked of the day’s events. They were both very happy. And presently, as they lay in their bed, he took her right hand in his and clasped it, and fell, with her, into sleep. While they slept the west wind rose and the small rain scudded to the window-panes. Autumn was blown away and winter came and in their sleep many seasons passed and came again. The day came when they had to leave this cottage, and that day too passed, becoming one amongst their many shared memories.

Once, in another autumn, this man walked alone across that wide field to a cottage that he knew was empty. And climbing in through one of the windows he stood in the pitch darkness of the large bedroom where ivy trailed down through holes in the roof. He was neither sad nor happy; yet contented; and he knew that he had entered the cottage for the last time.

When his son was a young man his father told him much about their earlier days and quoted the words of the Trevelyan motto. ‘There’s a very great deal of wisdom in those three words,’ he said, ‘and I’d like you to remember them.’

The son did not forget them – for who could? And one day with a girl he loved, he found himself in that part of the West country where he had lived for a short while as a child. They walked across a cornfield on a September evening when the sun went slow and red and large down the sky; and climbing a wall lost in brambles and thorns they looked at the crumbling ruins of the cottage. Masses of yellow lupins had spread over the ground.

‘This is the place,’ said the boy. ‘And this is my first memory – do you want me to tell you? It’s not really interesting.’

The girl, being in love with him, was interested in everything about him. So he told her.

‘I don’t really remember the cottage at all. I can’t have been more than three and it’s all gone from me. But I know we lived here for a time. It was called Lupin Cottage – and there are the lupins – see?’

He stood on the hedge, suddenly growing excited, and taking her hand helped her down to the other side. ‘There’s something I’m trying to remember,’ he said. ‘But from here – no, I can’t.’ He paused and battered his fist impatiently against his forehead. ‘We must go inside,’ he told her. ‘Come on. I shall remember then.’

The padlocked door was choked by a mass of willow herb and nettles. But the glass in the windows was broken and it was easy enough to climb in. Smashing a way through the nettles, he encouraged her to one of the windows. She was not happy about it.

‘It doesn’t look safe. Need we go in?’

‘Yes, we must. Come on.’

Now he was through the window and leaning over to help her inside.

‘I don’t want to come,’ she cried. ‘It’s horrible in there – dark and smelly and full of spiders.’

‘Please – please come. I’m here, aren’t I? You can’t come to any harm. It’s important to us. You must come.’

Suddenly she realized that if she wanted to retain his love for her she would have to follow him wherever he went. Shivering and trembling with fear, she climbed over the sill and joined him inside.

They went upstairs, all the time the boy filled with an excitement she could not properly understand. Then they went into a room where some of the boards were rotted away and the sky showed through the fallen roof. Taking her hand, he led her carefully to the window-seat where great chunks of plaster and slates and laths of worm-dried wood had fallen. He looked through the window to the wide field where the sun shimmered in the corn. And then he gave a great sigh and tears were in his eyes as he clutched her hand tighter.

‘Yes, this must have been my room,’ he said. ‘This is the view I’ve always wanted of that field. The first thing I can remember, seeing that field from here one evening, about this time, when the sun was setting. Something odd happened, which probably hasn’t got any significance; but it’s very clear in my memory. I must have got out of bed and stood on this window-seat. I had something in my hand and was tapping the window and looking at the field. It seemed immense – like the whole world. I could see my father in the garden, standing down there with a saw in his hand. And I tried to attract his attention, but he wouldn’t look up. I called, I think; but he didn’t hear me. Then something happened – what was it?’

He rubbed his left fingers across his eyes and with his right hand still held hers. ‘Yes, I remember. It was only this. A man suddenly appeared on the top of the hedge. He was a very old man, or so I remember him; with a grey beard. And he looked terribly tired and miserable. But suddenly he looked up to this window and smiled at me. I remember that smile – it was very sweet and trustful; the sort of way a child would smile. But I was very angry. I wanted my father to look up and smile at me and he wouldn’t do so. Then the old man turned and jumped back again into the field; and suddenly my father dropped his saw, climbed over the wall, and started to follow the old man right across the field. I watched them both. The old man was hurrying as though he was scared; and my father was chasing him. I believe he was running. You see right across the field – by those fir trees?’

The girl followed his pointing finger.

‘Over there, I could hardly see them, the sun was so bright – my father caught the old man by the shoulders and swung him round and stared at him. Then they disappeared together. That’s all I can remember. Doesn’t it sound silly?’

The girl looked at him. ‘No, it doesn’t. Nothing that you tell me about yourself seems silly.’

By the window, overlooking the broad field, these two plighted their troth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frank Baker
was born in London in
1908
. From a young age, he had a deep interest in church music, serving as a chorister at Winchester Cathedral as a boy from
1919
to
1924
. From
1924
to
1929
, Baker worked as a marine insurance clerk in the City of London, an experience that he later fictionalized in
The Birds
(
1936
). He resigned in
1929
to take on secretarial work at an ecclesiastical music school where he hoped to make a career of music; during this time he also worked as a church organist.

He soon abandoned his musical studies and went to St. Just, on the west coast of Cornwall, where he became organist of the village church and lived alone in a stone cottage. It was during this time that he began writing; his first novel,
The Twisted Tree
, was published in
1935
by Peter Davies after nine other publishers rejected it. It was well received by critics, and its modest success prompted Baker to continue writing. In
1936
, he published
The Birds
, which sold only about
300
copies and which its author described as ‘a failure’. Nonetheless, after the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s popular film of the same name in
1963
,
The Birds
was reissued in paperback by Panther and received new attention. Baker’s most successful and enduring work was
Miss Hargreaves
(
1940
), a comic fantasy in which two young people invent a story about an elderly woman, only to find that their imagination has in fact brought her to life.

During the Second World War, Baker became an actor and toured Britain before getting married in
1943
to Kathleen Lloyd, with whom he had three children. Baker continued to write, publishing more than a dozen more books, including
Mr. Allenby Loses the Way
(
1945
),
Embers
(
1946
),
My Friend the Enemy
(
1948
) and
Talk of the Devil
(
1956
). Baker died in Cornwall of cancer in
1983
.