Reginald Hill: Child's Play

Death? Not much. Not then, not now. What is it? You here, I there: you stopping, I going on? Unimaginable! But I can imagine dying and the fear of it. The love of it too. I can imagine a corvette in heavy seas — a bathtub vessel in harbour, but let a gale come howling up the Tyrrhenian, then in the twinkling of a dog-star, its steel sides are changed to perilous cliffs and the dinghy far below bounces on the wild waters like a baby’s teething-ring.

I can hear what the wind sings! At home, a father’s anger and a mother’s tears; at school, nipping draughts and stumbling repetitions, dreadful doubts and tiny triumphs … the sum of the squares … Lars Porsena of Clusium … a spot on the nose … a place in the Eleven … how to mash a girl … arma virumque cano !

Now I seize the rope and feel its fibres burn my frozen palms. With what strange utterance the wind resounds against this metal cliff; arms and the man, it sings … you ‘orrible sprog! … move to the right in threes! … hands off cocks and on to socks! … squeeze it like a tit! … a pip on the shoulder … a place on a course … how to kill a man …

Italiam non sponte sequor!

And now at last the gaping O receives me and suddenly it is once more a dinghy and the wind is just a wind. Master of myself finally, and of these men who kneel around me, I give commands. Eyes gleam white as fish in sea-dark faces, paddles plunge deep, and my buoyant craft drives over the grasping waves towards the sounding but unseen, the undesired but never to be evaded Ausonian shore.

Fanciful, you say? Romantic even? Oh, but I have still darker imaginings. Time blows like mist in a wind, parting and joining, revealing and concealing, and now the wind is a wind of autumn bearing with it not the salt spume of foreign seas but the bright decay of fallen leaves and the peppery scent of heather and the dust of limestone tors.

There is noise in it too, animal noise, a breathing, a coughing, an uneasy shuffling of feet as I pass over the dew-damp grass towards the darkling house. A window stands carelessly open … reckless I enter and the wind enters with me … slowly I move across the rooms … along corridors … up stairs … uncertain, hesitant, yet driven on by a gale in the blood stronger than any fear.

I push open a bedroom door … a nightlight shines like a corpse-light … but this dimly apprehended shape is no corpse.

Who’s there? Is there someone there? What do you want?

It is time to speak into this light which shows so little.

Mother?

Who’s there? Closer! Closer! Let me see!

And now the wind is a burning wind of the desert in my veins, and it sobs and it shrieks, and the house bristles with light, and I reach for the saving darkness as the helpless, hopeless sailor embraces the drowning sea …

No one who attended Gwendoline Huby’s funeral would soon forget it.

Her eighty-year-old frame was lighter by far than the ornate casket that enclosed it, but the telekinetic weight of resentment from the chief mourners was enough to make the bearers stagger on their slow path to the grave.

She was buried, of course, in the Lomas plot at St Wilfrid’s in Greendale, an interesting specimen of late Norman church with some Early English additions and a pre-Norman crypt which the vicar’s wife (in a pamphlet on sale in the porch) theorized might have been the work of Wilfrid himself. Such archaeological speculation was far from the minds of the bereaved as they processed from the dark interior to the brilliant autumn sunlight which traced out the names on the tombstones of all but the most eroded and deepest lichened dead.

The surviving relatives were few. To the left of the open grave stood the two London Lomases; to the right huddled the four Old Mill Inn Hubys. Miss Keech, successively nurse, housekeeper, companion, and finally nurse once more at Troy House, essayed a crossbench neutrality at the foot of the grave, but her self-effacing tact was vitiated by the presence at her shoulder of the man generally regarded as the chief author of their woes, Mr Eden Thackeray, senior partner of Messrs Thackeray, Amberson, Mellor and Thackeray (usually known as Messrs Thackeray etcetera), Solicitors.

‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery,’ intoned the vicar.

Eden Thackeray, who had thoroughly enjoyed the greater part of his fifty-odd years, composed his face to a public sympathy with the words. Certainly if several of those present had their way, there’d be an extra dollop of misery on his plate shortly. Not that he minded. Misery to lawyers is like the bramble-bush to Brer Rabbit — a natural habitat. As the old lady’s solicitor and executor, he was confident that any attempt to challenge the will would only serve to put money in the ever-receptive coffers of Messrs Thackeray etcetera.

Nevertheless, unpleasantness at a funeral was not, how should he put it? was not pleasant. He hadn’t relished being greeted by Mr John Huby, nephew to the deceased, landlord of the Old Mill Inn and archetypal uncouth Yorkshireman, with a look of sneering accusation and the words, ‘ Lawyers? I’ve shit ’em!’

It was his own fault, of course. There had been no need to reveal the terms of the will until after probate, but it had seemed a kindness to pre-empt any anticipatory extravagance on the part of John Huby by summoning little Lexie from her typewriter and explaining to her the limits of her family’s expectations. Lexie had taken it well. She had even smiled faintly when told of Gruff-of-Greendale. But all smiles had clearly stopped together when she bore the news back to the Old Mill Inn.

No! Eden Thackeray assured himself firmly. This was the last time he let a kindly impulse move him off the well-worn rails of legal procedure, not even if he saw one of his own family chained to the line ahead!

‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts …’

Aye, Lord, mebbe thou dost, and if so, nivver hesitate to pass them on to that silly old bat if she happens to drift in thy direction! thought John Huby savagely.

All those years of dancing attendance! All those cups of watery tea, supped with his little finger crooked and his head nodding agreement with her half-baked ideas on Lord’s Day Observance and preserving the Empire! All those Sunday afternoons spent crammed — no matter what the weather — into his blue serge suit, the arse of which always required a good hour’s brushing to remove the thick layer of cat and dog hair it picked up from every seat at Troy House! All that wasted effort!

And worse. All those debts run up in the expectation of plenty. All those foundations already dug and equipment already ordered for the restaurant and function room extensions. His heart fell flat as a slop-tray at the thought of it. Years of confident hope, months of tremulous anticipation, and barely twenty-four hours of joyous attainment before Lexie came home from that bloodsucking bastard’s office and broke the incredible news.

Oh yes, Lord! If like the vicar says, thou knowst what’s going on in my heart, then pass it on to the silly old bat pretty damn quick, and tell her if she hangs around a bit, she’ll likely catch Gruff-of-sodding-Greendale coming up the chimney at the Old Mill after her!