The If Game (3 page)

The old man turned back and took Stephen's sleeve and began trying to pull Stephen to go with him. He was surprisingly strong and Stephen had to dig his heels in to resist him. He had no intention of getting caught up in the web of the old man's imagination. Finally, after they had wrestled for a short time, neither of them gaining any ground, Stephen succeeded in tearing his sleeve from the man's grasp. He did it so violently that he felt the sleeve rip, and the old man tottered and fell back on to the bench he'd been sitting on. Stephen had a moment's fear that he was really hurt, but he wasn't going to risk being caught again. He turned back towards the house and he ran. Before him, he saw the other side of the house, as flat and unreal as its front had been. But there was the door through which he'd come to this strange place. He still had the big key in his hand. He forced it into the keyhole, turned it and the door opened. He almost fell through.

He looked at the road below him and was grateful for its ordinariness. He also saw Alex, apparently waiting for him. He was not pleased. He did not feel ready to talk to anyone about the disturbing experience he had just had.

‘Well?' Alex said.

‘Well what?'

‘What is it like in there? Is there any house?'

‘No.'

‘Just a drop down to the railway line?'

‘Not exactly. There's a sort of path.' He wasn't going to explain how long and unlikely that path had been.

‘You don't sound as if you liked it.'

Stephen said, ‘I didn't.'

‘What's wrong with it?'

‘I don't know. It's ... funny.'

‘Funny ha-ha? Or just peculiar?'

‘Peculiar,' Stephen said. He had no words to describe how peculiar it had seemed. First, there being a long straight path were there should only have been the falling ground above the railway line, and second, the old man who had mistaken him for someone else.

He had turned to walk home and found that Alex was walking beside him. He wasn't best pleased by this, but as the boy was there, he thought he might as well try to get some reassurance from him. He said, ‘Do people often have doubles?'

‘Doubles how? What do you mean by doubles?'

‘Other people who look exactly like them.'

‘When they're not twins, you mean? Twins can look exactly like each other.'

‘When they're not twins.' But a horrible thought now struck Stephen. Suppose, without knowing it, he had a twin? Since you can't remember being born, how would you know, if your parents didn't tell you? He had read somewhere a story which he'd always found upsetting, about a man who thought he was seeing himself in a mirror, but had really seen a twin brother he'd never heard of, on the other side of a glass door. It was a spooky story which had haunted him for weeks after reading it.

‘I've no idea,' Alex was saying. It took Stephen a moment to realize that this was an answer to his question. Alex went on, ‘I know we're all supposed to have a double somewhere else in the world. But it would have to be around where we live, wouldn't it? I mean, we couldn't have a double in China. Or Africa. Or anywhere where people don't look anything like us.'

Was that comforting? Or not? Stephen didn't know.

‘Why do you want to know? Did you meet your double the other side of that door?' Alex asked, and Stephen, taken by surprise, cried out, ‘No!' so loudly that people passing them in the street turned to look at him.

‘It's all right. You don't need to shout. I didn't say you did,' Alex said.

‘I didn't, anyway.'

‘Something happened, though. Didn't it?' Alex asked.

‘Why?'

‘You're upset. As if you didn't like whatever it was.'

Stephen was not going to tell him anything. He wanted to get rid of Alex. He said, ‘Why don't you go home?'

‘You mean you don't want me with you?' Alex asked, and Stephen, who wasn't usually as rude as this, said, ‘No, I don't.'

Alex turned red. He said, ‘I don't want to be with you, either,' and turned away. Stephen, feeling bad, said, ‘I didn't mean . . .' but Alex was out of hearing, or pretending that he hadn't heard. Either way suited Stephen. He needed to be by himself. They were just at the point where Bridge Street crossed the High Street, so he turned into the High Street instead of continuing directly towards his home street. As he'd hoped, Alex went straight on towards his uncle's house, without saying another word.

Stephen went into the nearest newspaper shop and bought himself a magazine. When he thought that he'd given Alex time to get indoors he also went home.

His dad was sitting in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea and reading the paper. Stephen felt the teapot, found it was still more hot than warm, and poured himself out a mug of only slightly stewed tea. He reached for a biscuit from the red tin which held sweet biscuits—the savoury biscuits were in a round green tin—and waited. He knew by experience that it was no good asking Dad an important question while he was engrossed in the paper. He wouldn't get a serious answer.

It seemed that he had waited a long time before Dad began folding the paper in the way that meant he'd read almost all he wanted. Then Stephen began.

‘Dad.'

‘What?'

He didn't know how to ask. It would sound so funny. He wished he could find some way of leading into the subject, but he couldn't think of anything. He said, ‘Dad, was I a twin?'

‘A what?'

‘Was I one of twins when I was born?'

His dad was scornful. ‘You, a twin? No! Whatever made you think that up?'

‘Someone I was talking to today was talking about doubles. Said lots of people have them.'

‘First I've heard of it. There being many of them. Doesn't seem sense.'

‘But there could be doubles? I mean, there could be someone who looked exactly like me. Somewhere.'

‘Let me know when you see him,' Dad said, uninterested, and opened his paper again.

Stephen was relieved to know that he hadn't got a twin somewhere or other. It would have been an uncomfortable feeling. He considered the idea that Dad hadn't told him the truth, but he had to dismiss it instantly. Dad was difficult, liked his own way, could be maddeningly silent, wouldn't argue, never expressed any feelings, but he wasn't a liar. Then he thought about the old man. He decided that the old man was confused, as old men sometimes are. Probably Stephen looked like a boy he knew, which wasn't unlikely. Stephen could think of several other boys at his school who weren't very different to look at. It was quite possible to mistake one for another, especially when they all wore much the same sort of clothes. And probably the old man's sight wasn't good. Had he been wearing spectacles? Stephen thought not. He consoled himself by thoughts along these lines. All the same it had been a nasty experience. He hoped he wouldn't meet that man again.

‘Who was it told you about doubles?' Dad's voice interrupted his musings.

‘Alex. The boy next door.'

‘What boy next door?'

‘He doesn't live there. His mum's Mr Jenkins's niece. I was talking to him through the fence one day, and then I met him again this afternoon, in the street.'

Dad laughed.

‘What are you laughing at, Dad?'

‘Because you've got it wrong. It isn't a boy. It's a girl.'

Stephen stared. ‘He can't be! He doesn't look like a girl!' But didn't he? It was true that Alex's hair was rather long, but a lot of boys now had quite long hair, and most of the girls he knew wore trousers as often as skirts.

‘So you've seen her? As well as spoken through the fence?' his dad was saying.

‘Saw him this afternoon. Are you sure? I mean ... is he really a girl?'

‘That's what her mum says, and she ought to know.'

Stephen didn't know what he was feeling. Annoyed, furious even, that he'd been taken in. He'd talked to Alex as if she'd been a boy, an equal. If he'd known she was a girl, he wouldn't have talked like that. He wasn't sure what difference it would have made, but still, he felt cheated. He also felt that if she was only a girl, he needn't take anything she said seriously.

‘You don't look pleased,' his dad said.

Stephen didn't answer this.

‘I don't see that it makes that much difference. If you liked her when you thought she was a boy.'

‘I didn't say I liked her.'

‘Anyway, you don't have to see her again if you don't want,' his dad said.

‘I shan't. Ever,' Stephen said.

‘We'll be having supper in half an hour. About,' his dad said.

Stephen said, ‘Right.'

But he was no longer hungry. He was more upset than he could explain to himself. He had somehow lost dignity by being involved with a girl. If he met her again, he'd pretend not to know her. At the back of his mind there was also a faint regret that he'd lost a possible friend. He'd thought of things that the boy Alex and he could do together. He certainly wasn't going to make a friend of a miserable girl.

Stephen never knew for certain how Sundays were going to turn out. There were black Sundays, when he and Dad had to visit Dad's mother, Stephen's gran. This was something neither of them enjoyed, and the thought of what they were going to do in the afternoon made the mornings heavy and depressing. But on this particular Sunday, which was unexpectedly fine after a horribly wet week, after Stephen's dad had written the letter which occupied most of his Sunday mornings, he wanted to go for what he called their country walk. It wasn't quite real country, you were never out of sight of the town's chimneys and tall blocks, but the lane soon left its bordering houses behind, and wandered up and down small hills as it had done ever since it had been the path along which shepherds drove their sheep and, perhaps, geese, which were taken to the goose fair, miles away, walking in little web-shaped shoes, made for them by kind shoemakers out of soft leather left over from proper people's footwear. It was still muddy, and was bounded on one side by a hedge, and on the other by ragged trees, which now had fat green and brown buds and the beginnings of leaves.

‘Smells like spring,' Stephen's dad said.

‘You can't smell spring,' Stephen said, wanting vaguely to be disagreeable. He was bored with this walk. They did it too often and it annoyed him that his dad liked it.

‘You may not be able to, but I can,' his dad said.

‘And it's not proper country here.'

It's the best we've got.'

‘I wish we could live right out in the country. Or by the sea. Miles from anywhere.'

‘Oh yes? And where'd you go to school? And where would I get work?'

‘I could fish. And we could grow vegetables and sell what we didn't want for ourselves.'

‘Sounds fine, but I don't think we'd better try it just yet.'

‘Why not?' But he knew, quite well, why not. They hadn't got enough money to buy a cottage in the country or by the sea. They had just enough to stay where they were, in a flat that didn't cost much because it was dark and dilapidated, where the garden wasn't much bigger than the headmaster's study at school, and which was near enough for them to walk to their daytime occupations. Stephen to school and Dad to the garage where he worked.

After the usual Sunday midday meal, scrambled eggs on toasted cheese and sausages, Dad sat down with his paper in front of the television. Stephen sat too, until he could forget the full feeling in his stomach. Then he went to his own room and sat on the side of the bed in order to think.

He looked at the jar which held the three keys and he wondered. The big one, what he thought of as ‘the castle key', had opened the door of that mysterious non-house. He wondered if he'd go back and see if the path was really there, or if, as he'd expected, there would be nothing but the railway embankment.

He wondered if he could have dreamed that encounter with the old man. He thought not. After all, he'd met Alex again immediately afterwards and he hadn't felt sleepy. It had all seemed absolutely real. And it was possible that he'd been mistaken in thinking that there couldn't be any ground behind the house. There really had been a path and
he'd walked along it. It must have been the garden of the house. He knew he ought to go back and look again, but for some reason he was extremely unwilling to do this. So he continued to sit on his bed and try to invent reasons for what had happened. At last, he decided that the only sensible thing to do was to ask Dad again about the possibility of there being someone who looked like him.

He would have to wait for just the right moment. If Dad was thinking about something else, or was in a hurry, there was no way he'd ever answer a question which didn't seem to him important. But the moment seemed to have come that evening, when they were sitting together in the kitchen, having had their supper, waiting for the television programme they both enjoyed. Stephen summoned his courage and began.

‘Dad?'

‘What?'

‘Aunt Alice is the only aunt I've got, isn't she? There aren't any more?'

His dad sat up suddenly and looked across the table at him in a way that Stephen didn't like. As if he'd done something dreadful.

‘What makes you ask that?' Dad said.

‘I just wondered. Because of something someone said.'

‘Who said?' Dad asked.

‘No one. I mean, there was an old man . . .'

‘Where? Who?'

‘I met him. On a bench.'

‘Round here, was it?'

Stephen didn't know how he could explain. He said, ‘Along Bridge Street.'

‘What did he tell you?'

‘He didn't tell me anything. He thought I knew people he knew. He talked about someone being my aunt.'

‘Did he say what she was called?'