The Happy Prisoner (32 page)

“Vi, you look grand!” said Oliver, glad that he could speak truthfully. He had been afraid they were going to guy her up like a pantomime dame. “I've never seen you look so stunning.”

Somehow, one expected this different-looking Vi to speak with a different voice. “Oh, shut up assing, Ollie,” said the old Vi, however. “I look like something the cat brought in, and I feel an absolute twerp.”

“Honestly, Ollie,” said Heather, who was looking prettily overdressed in a flower hat, a frilly blouse and every bit of jewellery she possessed, except the charm bracelet, “the old horse doesn't look too bad, does she?” She stepped out of line to admire her handiwork and Violet stuck out her tongue at her, said “Here, I'm sick of being a peepshow,” and retired to a corner to put on her glasses. The children, who normally wore dungarees and jerseys, were excited by their clothes and ran shrilly in and out of people's legs, showing off, making faces and screaming with laughter at each other. Miss Smutts, heavy as a thundercloud in her braided wine frockcoat, said more than once: “It'll only end in crying.” Susan, in Heather's arms, wore a stiff white dress like a fairy doll and a quilted satin jacket to match the Dutch cap which kept falling askew over her primrose-coloured curls, as she fought with Heather for the right to play tug-of-war with her pearls.

“The car's there! The car's there!” yelled Evelyn, streaking in from the hall and out again.

“Ve car! Ve car!” echoed David, streaking after her, falling down, waiting for a moment to see if he was hurt, finding he was not and bellowing all the same.

“Why, it's my dear Mr. Steptoe!” Lady Sandys waved to him through the open doorway, and Oliver saw with a sinking heart that she was still wearing the charm bracelet. He tried to catch Miss Smutts' eye, but she had gone to make sure of the front seat of the car, because she was always sick at the back.

After the others had gone, John and Violet waited in Oliver's room for Mr. Peploe to come back for them. John, looking burly and handsome in a dark suit with a white carnation buttonhole, his curly hair greased into little waves, seemed to be more nervous than Violet. She slumped, creasing her skirt, with her glasses on, in an armchair, ejaculating at intervals: “God, I wish it was all over.” John moved his long legs about the room, talking jerkily about nothing at all. His forehead was like a harrowed field. He had cut his chin shaving for the second time that day and kept dabbing his handkerchief on a tiny spot of welling blood.

At last the returning car was heard, and Violet, with a “Here goes, chaps!” pushed herself out of the armchair, pulled up her stockings like a schoolgirl and grasped her posy like a police
man's baton. “'Bye, Ollie,” she said gruffly. “Wish you could come. Sure you're all right?”

“It seems awful leaving you,” said John anxiously. Oliver waved them away with his blessing and leaned forward with his arms on his knee to watch them get into the car. At the last moment Violet turned to wave to him, bumped her head on the roof turning back, and got in, rubbing at the turban. Oliver hoped that Heather would be at the bottom of the church to put it straight for her.

He watched the car go round the little green button of lawn and out of his sight and leaned back to explore the feeling of being alone in the house. Everyone in turn had volunteered to stay with Oliver, but he had resolutely refused, and to quiet them had even written to Dr. Trevor for his permission to be left on his own. He had never been quite alone here since his illness and he was looking forward to the experience.

The Cowlins were at the church. So were most of the people who worked on the farm, although by leaning out of the window and twisting his neck, he could see a man with a tractor making patterns on a sloping field at the eastern boundary of the land. He was quite alone in the house and the stillness was so complete that he fancied he could hear all the clocks ticking, and even the kitchen range whispering, with a hiss now and then as the kettle lid lifted and a drop of water skidded over the hot old iron. All alone in the house. He felt perfectly well, so well that it was amusing to speculate idly on what he would do if one of his waves of dizzy faintness attacked him, or if he had the heart attack which Dr. Trevor was always holding over him as a warning against doing too much.

For interest's sake, what would he do? The man with the tractor would never hear him. Could he get out of bed and hop or crawl to the corner cupboard where his pills were? He could never get to the telephone in the next room, and if he did, whom should he ring up? They would not be long, of course; they would be back before anything serious could happen to him. Elizabeth would be back. She would know what to do. But he was perfectly all right today. He had wanted so much to be feeling his best that it was quite surprising to find that he was.

He took up his book and began to read. Pity they were not going to be away longer, really. It was pleasant being on his own after the hurly burly of the last few days. He needed this solitary respite before the influx of the horde, who would all come in to see him whatever his mother said. Some of whom
did not know him very well and would be embarrassed because he had lost a leg and they did not know whether they ought to talk about it. He must make the most of this peace before they came, enjoy it consciously, as an active rather than a passive state.

The wind banged a door somewhere in the direction of the kitchen, then it banged again, more gently. Oliver cursed, and, listening for it to bang a third time, could have sworn he heard a footstep. Something bubbling on the stove probably. How easy it was to imagine things when you were alone in a house and helpless. There it was again, and a creak—that was the stairs, of course. They did that sometimes at night—creak, creak, creak, just as if someone was walking up, when really it was the old boards relieving themselves of the imprint of the feet that had trodden them down during the day. A different sort of creak, long drawn-out. That must be another door opening in the wind. Why the hell couldn't they latch the doors on a windy day? Had they no imagination? He was not nervous, but angry. How would they like to be left alone and unable to move in a house where all the doors were kicking up the shindy of souls in torment? He lowered his book—he had been reading the same paragraph for the last five minutes—and waited for the door that had creaked open to bang shut. Why couldn't it shut itself properly and have done with it, so that it couldn't open again?

It was because he had never been alone in the house before, that was why his imagination was so active. What
was
that noise that sounded like footsteps in the kitchen? It was not the scurrying of rats; he knew that sound quite well, and it was always overhead, and at night, quite comforting in its familiarity. No cats or terriers seemed able to get rid of the rats under the roof at Hinkley. He had often teased Violet about the inefficiency of her ratters, but really he was quite proud of the rats for not going. They were Hinkley rats; this was their home more than his, had been in their families for generations before the Norths came. People in whatever sort of nightgowns the Elizabethans wore—he pictured them full and long-sleeved, with a ruff at the neck like Muffet's blue dress—had probably lain and listened to just the same noise. At breakfast—steak, would it be? and three eggs each and buttermilk and parkin—they had said, as the Norths were to say, three hundred years later: “We must get some more cats and keep them hungry. This house won't last fifty years if we let the rats overrun it.” Three hundred years hence, perhaps people would be still saying
that. Unless an atom bomb had done what the rats had failed to do.

He tried to read again. It was odd that when he was alone and conscious of himself he could feel his heart beating. He almost fancied he could hear it, as, by straining his ears, he could hear the leisurely tock of the grandfather clock, swinging its pendulum like a censer in the hall. Supposing a burglar got in, having heard that the house was defended only by a helpless crock—what would the crock do? Unless his mother had secretly removed it, his revolver was in the drawer of the table by the window. Would he be able to get to it, and having got there, could he load it, and somehow, propping himself against the wall perhaps, could he go in search of the man? He might surprise him among the silver in the dining-room, but would he be intimidated by the pale, weedy figure, with one pyjama leg flapping and an Army revolver wavering in one bony hand? He looked at his hands. By Jove, they were thin too. Made the knuckles look knobbly; not attractive that. Hugo had promised him he would lose that bluish tinge round the nails when he was up and about.

Looking down at his hands, he noticed that his heart was pushing his pyjama jacket gently up and down. So it had not been his imagination that he could feel it beating. It was going in for one of its obtrusive, laboured spells. The breathlessness that he felt presently and the little gasp that he gave were not caused by the fact that he thought he heard this footstep in the kitchen again. It was just that darned heart. All the same, and he felt the skin along his spine creeping as he admitted this to himself: there was someone in the house.

He had heard a stealthy tread in the passage. Was this a dream? His imagination had become pretty vivid since it had so often to deputise for actual experience. Had all this conjecturing about what he would do if a burglar came made him unable to distinguish between reality and fancy, as sometimes when he felt himself walking across the room so vividly that he was quite surprised to find, on opening his eyes, that he was still in bed? Like that time when he had thought he was dancing with Heather, and nearly had a heart attack? Supposing he was in for another go like that, ought he to try and get out now, while he still felt all right, and get his pills? Fool that he was not to have told Elizabeth to leave them by his bed, and fool she, not to have thought of it. Dammit, she was his nurse; she should not have gone off so gaily in her blue linen suit, looking very sweet, he must admiit, but caring so little what became of
her patient. Oh, she had offered to stay all right, but she had been easily persuaded to go. If she was as uninterested in this wedding, in everything to do with his family, as she had always appeared, why did she have to go jaunting off with them? He had at least thought she was interested in him as a patient. Had she not said: “I mean to stay and see this case through?” If she was interested enough to put off getting married, one would have thought she was interested enough to forfeit the doubtful excitement of hearing Vi and Fred stammer: “I will.”

He suddenly sat bolt upright and forgot about Elizabeth. Someone was moving about in the dining-room, and what was more, someone had coughed, a muffled cough, as if they did not want to be heard. He had read about people's hair standing on end and not believed it. Now he knew that it did happen. His scalp was creeping. His heart thumping in his chest felt enormous. It was like a melon there, hampering his breathing. How long would he have to wait before he heard the feet creep down the passage—nearer and nearer? How could he bear the fumbling fingers on the latch, not knowing what was on the other side of the door, like the old couple who waited in
The Monkey's Paw
? God, why did he have to think of that story now, of the Thing that waited in the street for its father to let it in, the Thing that never got in, so that you never knew what it looked like? How had Jacobs imagined it? Did he see it, as Oliver always did, as he had seen that soldier who fell back from the garret window in the Arnhem house, with the side of his face laid open and the jawbone and back teeth gleaming white under the running blood? Joe had lain still though, only twitching a little, but the Thing that waited outside the door in the street had walked down the street with half its grinning head blown away.

This, of course, was only a burglar. It had gone almost at once to the dining-room, as a burglar would. So they thought they could do what they liked in the house because it was only in charge of a cripple. Where the devil were the dogs? Of course, they were already at Martin's cottage, where they were to stay until Vi returned from her honeymoon. They might have left them in the house just while he was alone. Still, he could manage. This was going to be a pretty big thing, this getting out of bed when he had never done more than be helped into a chair a few inches away; this going to get his revolver, tackling the burglar singlehanded and keeping him covered until the others returned. There they would find him when they came back, and he would be a hero, and they would all reproach
themselves and each other with having left him alone. Elizabeth would fuss over him, but how guilty she would feel and how she would sweat to think of what might have happened to the patient under her responsibility.

Well, if he was going after that burglar, he must go before he got away with all the North family silver. Not that the silver was all that valuable, and perhaps not even worth the effort it was going to cost him, but how would it sound to bleat: “I heard someone rifling the house, so I lay here and sweated till he'd gone away”?

Good thing he'd kept that revolver—more as a souvenir than anything else. Now that he had made up his mind what he was going to do he felt calmer, although as he lay in bed planning out each move, his heart knocked more at the thought of each impossible effort. Well, and if he never got there, and they found him stretched out on the floor in a faint, at least he would have done his best. Of course he could do it. He had not once felt faint sitting out in the chair; he was good for more than they gave him credit. Impulsively, because he knew that if he thought about it much longer he would not do it, he flung back the bedclothes and paused, his mouth slightly open, as he heard the tiny cough again, nearer this time—definitely at the sideboard.

What was he going to look like? He pictured him like a cartoon burglar, scarf knotted round his throat, cap pulled down, a sack for the swag. A black mask perhaps? No, not an amateur like this, who came after small stuff and betrayed himself by coughing. Probably some old tramp who had got the cough from sleeping in hedges; he would be dirty and stubbled and ragged—rather a revolting figure. He would be easily cowed by the sight of a gun. Inch by inch, lifting his buttocks and his stump round on his hands, he got his leg over the edge of the bed, bent it, and stretched down until his bare toes touched the rug. Still keeping his hands behind him on the bed, he lowered himself until his foot was standing flat. His stump quivered as though it longed to help. He tried, putting a little weight on the leg, but immediately he toppled, twisting round and saving himself with both hands on the bed. His balance was all wrong. The M.O. had said a leg weighed about thirty pounds. No wonder he was topheavy with all that gone from one side. He pushed himself round again until his back was against the bed, leaning on it. He would never be able to hop, that was quite clear; it would have to be crawling. All fours would be best, so that his stump could swing clear of the floor—all threes, in fact. Bending his leg, he let himself down to
his knee and then fell forward onto his hands. Testing this position and finding it satisfactory, he started off towards the table in the most ridiculous gait ever seen. He remembered that he was wearing a pyjama jacket and trousers that did not match. He had not thought it would matter, since the visitors would only see him from the waist up; he had not known then that he was going burglar hunting.