Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls - And Other Stories

“Let’s see what he wants.” Martin gets to his feet.

Madeleine says, “Do not let him in.”

Her husband pauses. “I’m not sure sitting here watching him is a long-term option.”

“Perhaps we should call the police,” says Madeleine.

“And say what?” asks Gavin. “ ‘There’s a black chap knocking on the French windows’?”

“In the absence of any better ideas…” Martin unlocks the door and swings it open. A great belch of snow and freezing air enter the room. A couple of cards fall from the mantelpiece, clattering softly onto the log basket and from there to the floor.

“What can we do for you, sir?”

“Are you not going to ask me in?” The man has a breathy tenor voice. They’d expected Trinidad or Hackney but the accent is from some less obvious third place.

“I wasn’t planning on it, no.”

“It’s bitter weather out here, and I’ve come a good distance.”

“I’m less interested in where you’ve come from,” says Martin, “and more interested in what you’re doing in my garden.”

“That is a poor welcome on a cold night.”

“I think it’s a pretty decent welcome in the circumstances,” says Martin.

“This is freaking me out quite a bit,” says Sarah.

“Better than listening to Leo reading Seamus bloody Heaney again,” says Gavin, just loud enough for Leo to hear.

“Do you want money?” asks Martin.

“I was hoping for hospitality.”

“Let the chap in,” says Gavin.

“Gavin, for God’s sake,” whispers Madeleine.

“Give him a glass of brandy and a mince pie so he can warm up and tootle off on his merry way,” says Gavin. “Spirit of the season and so forth.”

Leo says, “Gavin, I am really not sure that’s a good idea.”

Anya shifts her chair next to her mother’s chair and squirrels under her protecting arm.

“Five minutes,” says Martin.

The stranger steps inside. He wipes his feet in the same slow, deliberate way in which he knocked on the glass, like someone demonstrating the wiping of feet to people who have not seen it before. Martin closes the door behind him. The stranger takes off his woolly hat and dunks it into a pocket.

They can smell him now, more agricultural than homeless. Leather, dung and smoke, something very old about it, Mongol horses on the high steppe. Yurts and eagles. His greatcoat is Napoleonic, scuffed black serge with actual brass buttons and a ragged hem. Snow melts on his shoulders.

“Compliments of the season.” Gavin hands him the promised victuals. “Made by my mother’s own fair hand. Five stars. Lots of fruit in the mincemeat.”

“Please, Gavin,” says Leo quietly, “don’t be a twat.”

The stranger sips the brandy, savours it and swallows. He takes a bite of the mince pie. He closes his eyes. To an outside observer it might look as if the family were waiting for a score out of ten.

Martin is turning over old memories. If the man had shorter hair and no beard…

The stranger nods. The mince pie is good. The room relaxes. He takes a second sip of the brandy and steps forward to put the glass and the mince pie down on the table. Emmy and Sofie scootch their chairs back a little to avoid being touched. The damp hem of the stranger’s coat brushes Emmy’s knee. He steps back into the centre of the room. There are pastry crumbs in his beard. “Who wants to play a game?”

“None of us want to play a game,” says Martin firmly. “We want to get on with the pleasant evening we were having before you arrived.”

The stranger ignores, or perhaps fails to hear, the edge in Martin’s reply. “Surely someone wants to play a game.”

“You’ve had something to drink,” says Martin. “You’ve had something to eat. I think that now it might be a good idea if you were to continue with your travels.”

“I was on my way here,” says the stranger.

There is a short silence while everyone digests this, then Gavin says, “Stop dicking us around, all right?”

“Gavin,” hisses Sarah. “Jesus Christ.”

The stranger opens his greatcoat. There is a deep poacher’s pocket on the left-hand side which sags open with the weight of a sawn-off shotgun. Anya’s intake of breath sounds like a hiccup. David says, “Wow.” The stranger lifts the gun out of the pocket, pushes the After Eights and the cheese plate to one side, slides the spare wicker mat into the cleared area and lays the gun gently on top of it so that it doesn’t scratch the polished walnut veneer.

“Oh my God,” says Madeleine.

Leo’s mouth hangs open.

Anya begins to cry.

“Is that a real gun?” asks David.

“Let’s assume it is, shall we?” says Martin.

But David’s question is apposite, because there is something odd about the gun, a hint of steampunk about it, the faintest possibility that it could be a theatrical prop, despite the weight everyone could sense when it touched the surface of the table.

“Oh my God,” says Madeleine again. She is hyperventilating. “Oh my God.”

“Someone really, really needs to call the police,” says Sofie.

“Have we met before?” Martin asks the stranger. He has decided that this is, ultimately, a medical problem and this has allowed him to step back into a role he hasn’t filled for a long time and which feels very comfortable indeed.

“Surely one of you wants to play a game,” says the stranger.

Emmy gets to her feet.

“Stay with us,” says the stranger.

Emmy sits down again. Gavin pats her hand reassuringly.

“I’m afraid you need to leave,” says Martin, “and you need to leave now.”

“Are we in a hostage situation here?” asks Gavin. “Just out of interest.”

“Are none of you brave enough to play my game?” asks the stranger.

“Fucking hell,” says Gavin. “This is not about being brave. This is about you interrupting our hitherto very enjoyable festive family meal and assuming that we want to take part in some deranged pantomime of your own creation.”

“Gavin?” says his father calmly, meaning, I’ll take it from here. He turns to the stranger. “Time’s up, I’m afraid.”

The stranger smiles. He looks slowly around the room, as if assessing each of them in turn.

Sofie squeezes Anya’s hand and says, “It’s going to be OK, darling.”

“That’s it,” says Gavin, getting to his feet, irked not just by the stranger’s intrusion but by the way his father’s relaxed competence has placed him in a subordinate position.

“Gavin,” Sarah half growls under her breath.

Gavin picks up the gun.

“No,” says Emmy. “Gavin, please.”

Gavin steps away from the table and pushes his chair back under.

“Holy fuck,” says Leo, putting his face in his hands.

Gavin himself has not thought about what he will do with the gun, only that it is the source of power in the room, the sceptre, the conch. Now that it is in his hands, however, he is less sure about this. Should he hand the gun back to the stranger and order him to take it away? Should he confiscate it? Should he use it to threaten the man? “Time to go, I’m afraid.”

Martin has been wrong-footed. The most dangerous person in the room is now his older son. He was not expecting this and is not immediately sure what to do about it. Family has always been so much more complex than work.

The stranger smiles. “So you are willing to play my game?”

“What, precisely, is this game you want us to play?” Gavin does not want to be asking questions, he wants to be giving orders, but he is being outplayed.

“Shoot me,” says the stranger.

Madeleine yelps, the kind of noise you might make if you fell down a flight of stairs.