Herbert van Thal: The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories

'Maisie's the baby, you can tell by her dimple,

And also because she's a teeny bit simple!'

Simple? Simple? What did they mean by it? But whatever they meant, they couldn't deny that not one of them was as happy as she herself was. Father always said so, Father was always right; so it must be so. Which meant that she in turn could be sorry for her sisters, poor miserable wretches who, no matter how good their eyesight might be, could never any of them see all the joyous things in life.

Like the river: the waters gliding and glimmering over the reflected trees plunged down deep in the river's depths, far more fascinating and mysterious than those so much more substantial trees always upright on the banks. The long grass: the best bed of all, and with stems to chew and make whistles from, and sometimes shaking seeds into her hair and down the neck of her dress to — to tickle . Insects to study: ants always so methodically busy, poor things, just like her sisters; ladybird beetles, like herself, opening their little red carapaces with the black polka-dots to spread their wings and half flutter, half totter, from one stalk of grass to another, blissfully without method or purpose at all. Birds skimming over the water and arrowing among the trees, alighting on branches, plucking at their plumage with quite shameless vanity, and pausing, stiffening now and again, to take watch around them — something they'd heard? or smelt? or just sensed without really knowing, like she herself did? Calling to each other, always so happy. Except crows, carping and cavilling their endless complaints, and black, like her sisters had been for months, in mourning when their mother had died. The old grey-white horseijjith the shaggy lock of mane hanging forlorn over his eyes and his look of mild reproach, just like their father's. Crickets itchy in the grass. O the grass, the grass! How she always loved just to lie there in its luxury. Especially today, for today was a very special day, a very special day indeed…

Today was her birthday. Seventeen years ago today she had been born in the house just over her shoulder of the mother whom she had never seen because, so sadly, so tragically, she had died shortly after she herself, Maisie Jane Matthews, had been born; and consequently she had never known a mother's love and maternal ministrations, no matter how much her five elder sisters might proclaim that they all of them were 'little mothers' to their poor baby Maisie. For Maisie, try as she might, could not look upon any one of them as a replacement for the mother she had lost, and consequently had been acutely aware all her life of a profound and sometimes insupportable feeling of 'being deprived'. Her sisters could all remember their mother; she could not. And no sense of reality could seep through to her from the one daguerrotype photograph of her which their father kept on the large walnut desk in his study.

But today was her birthday. She did not want to think any sad thoughts today. Today she was happy, and happy she would stay, even if to remind her she must occasionally wriggle her body full-length through the languorous grass till she could peer through the water's gently sliding surface (to where did it go? and why should it want to leave the peaceful loveliness of this place?) to where spears of sunlight revealed the rocks and sands beneath; until the water became too dark to see through any more, but would still occasionally gleam with sudden if minute brilliance from the bellies of minnows as they would abruptly turn in their otherwise leisurely yet mysterious errands. Would she see a tortoise? Today, of all days in the year, being her birthday, she could expect to see almost anything.

Turning on her back she gazed up at the incredibly immense blue reaches of sky with its flocks of near-luminous clouds scudding from horizon to horizon like herded sheep. She hoped they wouldn't turn malicious and mggce her birthday with rain. Perhaps if she turned on her stomach again, would they all go away? She would try it anyway; and this time when she turned, her body complained with an ache and a creak from, she told herself, lying a little too long in the grass. And she said to herself: That's how old people must get to feel, with their grey hair and wrinkled skin sometimes flecked all over with death-freckles. And as though thinking of old people had invoked a manifestation before her very eyes, there, deep down in the water, and yet not quite so deep as the rocks and sand and little clouds of underwater dust, the face of an old woman appeared suddenly in the depths to peer sinisterly up at her, the mouth leering uglily, and the eyes — the eyes — relentlessly seeking her own. She started back in fright, and wished she had stayed on her back looking up at the sky. Yet when she searched around her, there was no one to be seen, certainly no old woman with hideous face. There were only the birds and the horse across the river and no, not even the punt and the jetty. Ah, but the house was still there, craning to assure comfort.

What would that house provide for her tonight? she wondered. A birthday dinner, of course. Flora and Elsie, perhaps even Mabel, would cook it; Grace would set table. None of Annie's 'good plain cooking' tonight; her sisters would give the cook a night off. They had promised. But Bridget would still serve; her father would insist on that. And perhaps, tonight, having turned seventeen, she might be allowed a glass of wine? But no, that might be too much to expect. Fruit punch as usual, she supposed, and pulled a little moue. Girls, she opined, should be allowed to drink wine, even sherry, when they first put up their hair. Hers had been up for a year now, but the only wine she had tasted, she giggled to herself, had been drunk surreptitiously down in the dark of the cellar. Somehow, perhaps because it was forbidden, it had seemed all the more delicious.

And for dinner? Chicken, she supposed; the last of the turkeys had been eaten for Christmas. Flora's vegetable soup first, and then almost the same vegetables fresh from the garden to go with the main course. Unless, unless — unless Father remembered how she adored Brussels sprouts and brought some home from the city. Dared she hope? Dared she hope, also, that he might give her the gold watch he had given each of his daughters when they had turned eighteen — 'My daughters are all becoming little women,' he was always saying — or would he still refuse to make an exception of her and she must wait yet another year for her very own watch? O the agony of it all! She could almost guess what would come from her sisters: a scarf, handworked handkerchiefs, a pair of gloves that might or might not be of silk, a pair of stockings that certainly wouldn't be, a book on housekeeping from Flora when she just longed for a novel by Marie Corelli. O well…

But afterwards , that was the main thing. Games in the parlour? Would they ask anyone in? The Jackson girls and — O the wickedness of her! — maybe the Whittaker boys? Which would mean. and she writhed in the grass at the sheer wilfulness of her craving, sucking in her bottom lip and giving it a nip with her teeth, as though it had already been guilty of inviting a kiss. which would mean that they would have to invite — dared she mention his name? — the Whittaker boys's cousin Septimus. There, she had said it! Dancing, Mabel at the piano, Milly on the violin, Flora always frowning! But she wouldn't care, she wouldn't care! She'd dance all she wanted to on her birthday, especially, especially — dared she say it again? — especially if Septimus should be the one who would ask her.

Ah, how she could dream here, deep in the grass and with the river whispering conspiracies.

That ache again, the cramp and creak in her back. Flora was always saying that she'd give herself rheumatism, lying like that in the grass. But she didn't care, she didn't care! All that she did care about now was that, incredible as it seemed, she must have fallen asleep; for now, when she lurched up suddenly into a sitting position, she found the sky waned into golds and greys and the clouds scudding faster and thicker and the wind chill on her cheeks. Lord, what time was it! Then the blasphemy made first her hand fly to her mouth, then her offending mouth require the stifling of a titter. As if anyone could hear! But she must hurry, she must run, or else she would be late for her own birthday, and there was her new white muslin frock for her to change into.