‘I’d probably better go home,’ I say miserably. ‘It must be nearly supper time.’
‘All right.’ Another moistly gleaming stripe of whiteness appears. Still I linger.
‘Are you coming out to play tomorrow?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. I’ll have to see.’
He suddenly straightens up. The whistling in the garage has ceased. I turn round, and see his father watching us from the doorway of the garage, his lips drawn back in the familiar thin, impatient smile.
‘Thermos,’ he says.
He’s talking to Keith, of course. He’s given no more sign than he ever does of noticing my presence. I look at Keith. He goes red. He’s being accused of a crime, and already he’s feeling guilty – doubly guilty, because he knows he should be able to guess immediately what the crime is, and he can’t.
His father waits. Keith goes redder still.
‘Come on, old bean,’ says his father impatiently, and I feel a lurch of fear for myself as well as Keith. ‘Thermos flask. In the picnic hamper. Anyone say you could take it?’
Keith looks at the ground. ‘I didn’t take it.’
Another little smile from his father. ‘Taking other people’s things without permission – that’s stealing. You know that. Saying you didn’t when you did – that’s lying. Yes?’
Keith goes on looking at the ground. In the silence the words ‘Mummy must have taken it’ hang in the air unsaid, audible only to Keith and me.
‘Where is it, then, old bean?’
Another silence, three syllables long: ‘In the Barns.’
‘Don’t be a blithering idiot. Some game you’re playing? Best be a man and own up.’
The silence is heavy with the same explanation – twice over, unsaid by Keith and unsaid by me.
‘I’m disappointed in you,’ says his father. The smile’s worse now; there’s sorrow and pity in it. All at once I realise what he really suspects: that I’ve taken the thermos. That Keith’s protecting me.
‘You know what you’re going to get, old bean,’ says his father. ‘Wash that stuff off your hands. Dry them properly.’
He goes in through the kitchen door, wiping his shoes on the mat.
‘You’d better go,’ says Keith to me. He’s still red in the face, still not looking at anything except the ground. He follows his father into the kitchen, also wiping his shoes on the mat, and I hear the sound of the water splashing in the sink as he washes the white cleaner off his hands to prepare them.
I’d gladly leave, as Keith told me, but I can’t, because I have to go in and confront his father. I have to stop this thing happening. I have to tell him that he’s right – that
I
took the thermos.
I did, after all. In effect. I betrayed her trust. I made her go to the Barns. Something bad’s happening there, and I’m the one who made it happen. The game’s not over. It’s simply become a more terrible kind of game.
Silence from the house. I must go and tell him.
The silence goes on and on. I must.
Keith’s father comes out of the kitchen and goes back into the garage. He begins to whistle again.
Keith reappears. The redness in his cheeks has turned blotchy. His hands are pressed beneath his armpits.
‘I told you to go, old bean,’ he says shortly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper abjectly. I’m sorry for not going, for not owning up, for seeing him like this, for going now and leaving him like this, for the stinging in his hands; for everything.
His father comes out of the garage again. ‘I’ll give you until bedtime to think about it,’ he says to Keith. ‘If it’s not back by then you’ll get the same again. And then again tomorrow. And so on every day until it’s back.’
He lingers in the doorway, looking at the ground, thinking about something else.
‘And your mother’s at Auntie Dee’s again?’ he asks finally, in a different tone. Keith nods.
The little smile comes back to his father’s lips. He goes back into the garage. The grindstone whirrs and there’s a sudden shower of sparks. I can’t see what he’s sharpening, but I don’t need to because I know. It’s the bayonet, the famous bayonet.
I start running towards the end of the road. I don’t think I have any clear idea of what I’m going to do – I just know that I have to do
something
. Something to make amends at last for all my betrayals and failures. Something bold and decisive that will save Keith from his father, and avert the catastrophe I can feel looming, though what that catastrophe might be I don’t know.
At the very least I have to get the thermos flask back in the picnic hamper before bedtime comes and Keith’s caned again. I turn the corner towards the tunnel. I suppose I’m running in the direction of the Barns. I don’t think I’m intending to go all the way there. So far as I can tell I’m intending to be lucky enough to meet her on the way.
My plan carries itself out even before I’ve had a chance to find out more precisely what it is. As I run out of the sunshine into the roaring darkness of the tunnel I collide full tilt with someone running out of it. We seize hold of each other, my face buried in a soft confusion of bosoms, and dance a precarious tango together to keep our footing on the muddy shore of the great subterranean lake. We chassé one way into the wetness of the wall, then the other way into the wetness of the water. When we recover ourselves, and struggle back off the darkened dance floor into the sunlight outside, all her tranquil dignity has evaporated.
‘Stephen!’ she cries, bending to scramble together the tumbled clothes and books that have fallen out of her basket into the mud.
‘The thermos,’ I say.
‘What did I tell you, Stephen?’ she says, as angry as she was the night she first got the slime of the tunnel on her clothes. ‘What did I ask you? Why are you doing this?’
‘The thermos,’ I repeat desperately.
‘You’re a very naughty boy, Stephen, and I’m very cross with you.’
‘The thermos flask!’
At last she takes in what I’m saying. She looks at me intently.
‘What do you mean?’ she asks in a different voice. ‘What’s happened?’
And now my tongue’s tied by a ticklish point of social semantics. I can’t get started on telling her what’s happened because I don’t know how to refer to the person concerned. Do I say, ‘Keith’s father’? I can’t talk about Keith’s father to Keith’s mother! He must have some more direct relationship to her. The word ‘husband’ comes to mind. Can I say ‘your husband’? No, it’s even more unsayable. ‘Mr Hayward’? Worse still.
She’s already guessed, though. ‘Ted said something about it?’ she asks quietly. All I have to do is nod – and already she’s guessed the rest of the story as well.
‘He doesn’t think Keith took it?’ I nod.
She bites her lip. Her brown eyes are fixed on me.
‘He didn’t punish him?’ I nod.
‘Caned him?’ I nod yet again.
She winces, as if it was her own hands that were red hot.
‘Oh, Stephen,’ she says, as she said before. ‘Oh, Stephen!’
From never saying my name at all, she’s gone to saying it more often than everybody else in the world put together.
‘And he’s told Keith to put it back?’ she asks softly.
‘By bedtime,’ I manage.
She looks at her watch, then begins to walk back into the tunnel. Her pale summer dress is streaked with green slime, and her white summer sandals squelch muddily at every step. I’ve tried to preserve her secret, and I’ve written it all over her.
She stops and turns.
‘Thank you, Stephen,’ she says humbly.
8
What’s going to happen now?
I walk to the lookout each evening after school, breathing in all the disturbing new sweetnesses that fill the air of the Close as the midsummer draws on: the light and easy innocence of the pleached limes in front of the Hardiments and the honeysuckle in front of Mr Gort’s house and the Geests; the sleepy, treacly richness of the buddleia hanging out over the pavement at the Stotts and the McAfees; the refined delicacy of feeling of the Haywards’ standard roses. Then I sit on my own, gazing helplessly at the outside of Keith’s house.
The only thing I know for sure is that I now really am shut out of that well-ordered world for ever. Never again will I hear the chiming of the clocks, or eat chocolate spread in the gleam of the polished silverware. The family has closed in upon itself. Once or twice I see a curtain twitch as it’s drawn against the afternoon sun, or Mrs Elmsley wheeling her bicycle out from the back yard and setting off home. Sometimes Keith comes past on his way home from school and wheels his bicycle in. Once Keith’s father comes round the side of the house with a hose, whistling, whistling, and waters the front garden. Of his mother there’s no sign.
Something’s going on in there, I know that. With half my mind I expect to see a policeman cycle up to the house, as he did to Auntie Dee’s. With the other half I expect nothing to happen at all.
Nothing does. So is she simply lying low, waiting to resume her activities when we get to the dark of the moon? I feel as if I’ve been left to decide the fate of the world single- handed. I realise I should tell someone about it. A grown-up. Let them sort it out. Tell them what, though? – What’s going on. – But I don’t know what
is
going on!
Tell which grown-up, anyway? Mr McAfee, as we did with Mr Gort? I imagine Mr McAfee looking at the schoolboy handwriting as he did before, even with his name spelt right this time, and at once I lose heart.
My family? I lurk about in the kitchen when my mother’s making supper, standing close to her as she works, wondering whether the words will come out.
‘What
is
it?’ she demands impatiently. ‘You’re always under my feet! What do you want?’
I retire to the bedroom, where my brother’s sitting with his homework open in front of him, trying to get the nicotine stains off his fingers with a pumice stone before our mother notices them.
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep wandering in and out,’ he says. ‘I’m trying to work. It’s hell’s own distracting.’
Or my father. I don’t even have to wait for him to come home to know what he’d say: ‘Shnick-shnack!’
And when I try to imagine the words coming out of my mouth I can hear the horrible sneaking tone they’d have. It would be telling tales. We told on Mr Gort, of course. But then that wasn’t true in the same way as this is true. Or might be true. So telling tales is worse than spying? Worse than letting someone put the lives of our soldiers and sailors at risk?
And of our airmen. I see Uncle Peter standing at the gate holding Milly and laughing, with all the rest of us crowding round to feel the hard embroidery of the leaves beneath the eagle, and the softness of the red velvet cushions in the crown, and I think, no, we shall never touch that embroidery again, or those spots of red – because I’ve allowed him to be shot down …
I tear a page out of one of my exercise books. ‘Dear Mr McAfee,’ I write, and stop. Perhaps it will be all right if I don’t make any direct accusation or insinuation – if I simply describe what I’ve seen and leave him to decide what to make of it. ‘I saw Keith Hayward’s mother,’ I write. ‘She put something in a box by the tunnel, and I looked and there was a sock inside …’ I tear it up. ‘The old tramp is back in the Barns, only it’s a German, and Keith Hayward’s mother was in there with him …’
My palms sweat. It’s telling tales, there’s no getting away from it.
So I sit in the sweet air under the bushes on my own, watching and waiting. I even call out to the Stotts’ dog as it passes, and think of ways to keep it hanging around and taking an interest in me. I’m so intent on the dog that Barbara Berrill’s inside the lookout before I realise.
‘I always know if you’re hiding in here,’ she says.
I feel too miserable even to tell her to go away. I fiddle with a dead twig while she settles herself next to me, her maddening blue school purse with the blue popper still dangling round her neck.
‘You’re on your own all the time these days,’ she says. ‘Aren’t you and Keith friends any more?’
I’ve no intention of replying to this, of course – and anyway at this very instant, with the natural contrariness of events, Keith comes down the garden path from the Haywards’ kitchen door and opens the front gate. My heart leaps twice, once for joy and once for fear.
‘Don’t worry,’ whispers Barbara Berrill. ‘He’s not coming here. He’s going shopping.’
This is plainly nonsense. Keith has never gone shopping in his life. But as he closes the gate behind him and turns, I see the basket on his arm. He walks down the road without so much as a glance at the lookout.
‘He’s always doing the shopping for his Mummy these days,’ whispers Barbara Berrill. ‘And for Mrs Tracey.’
Keith goes into Auntie Dee’s front gate and knocks at her door. I feel a ridiculous little sour spurt of jealousy. How does Barbara Berrill know about Keith’s new habits when I don’t?
Auntie Dee opens the door and smiles. She’s holding a piece of paper to show him. She was evidently expecting him.
‘I think something funny must have happened,’ says Barbara Berrill. ‘Mrs Hayward always used to be running round to Mrs Tracey’s. She never goes there now. Why not? Have they fallen out or something?’
I’ve no idea. Whatever’s happened, though, I know it’s my fault. My jealousy’s overtaken by guilt.
‘Or don’t you know what goes on at the Haywards any more?’ says Barbara Berrill. ‘You never go there now, do you?’
She’s just twisting the knife, and I refuse to let myself feel it. I keep my eyes fixed on Auntie Dee, who’s going through a list on her piece of paper with Keith, pencil in hand, amending items and adding fresh ones.
Barbara Berrill puts her hand over her mouth and giggles. ‘Perhaps Mrs Hayward’s got a boyfriend, too, like Mrs Tracey,’ she says. I can feel her looking at me to see if she’s made my face go funny again, but nothing she says can shock me any more. ‘And Keith’s Daddy’s found out, and now he won’t let her set foot outside the house.’
I keep my eyes on Keith. He takes the list, and sets out for the end of the road. Barbara Berrill puts her mouth very close to my ear. ‘And perhaps’, she whispers, ‘she makes Keith take messages to him for her. Perhaps that’s where he’s going now!’
I know perfectly well that this is just a further example of the stupid things that girls say, but even so another, still sourer tide of jealousy sweeps through my veins. Exactly where this jealousy’s directed I couldn’t say. Is it of Barbara Berrill for claiming the right to make knowing speculations about the behaviour of my friend? Or of Keith for supplanting me in his mother’s confidence? Or even of his mother herself, for having this supposed boyfriend of hers?
Another whisper in my ear: ‘Shall we follow him and see who it is?’
Now she’s trying to supplant Keith as the one who makes the plans and projects! And the plans and projects are actually directed against Keith! I turn at last to express my indignation, but before I can speak she’s laid a hand on my arm and pointed silently at Keith’s house. The front door has opened, and Keith’s mother’s coming out. She has some letters in her hand; she’s still allowed to go to the post, at any rate. We both watch intently, everything else forgotten, as she pulls the door very gently to behind her.
‘She’s
creeping
out,’ whispers Barbara Berrill.
Keith’s mother walks down the garden path to the front gate, not creeping now, but as tranquil and unhurried as ever … but then stops, and turns back towards the house. Keith’s father has appeared from the back yard, wearing his engineer’s overalls and holding a paintbrush.
‘Oh no!’ whispers Barbara Berrill.
He walks slowly towards Keith’s mother, and they talk for some moments.
‘They’re having a terrible quarrel,’ whispers Barbara Berrill.
So far as I can see they’re talking quietly and reasonably, a couple like any other couple in the street settling some small point of domestic routine.
Keith’s father goes back into the yard. Keith’s mother remains standing by the garden gate, the letters in her hand, gazing calmly up into the serene blue depths of the evening sky above her head.
‘She doesn’t know what to do,’ whispers Barbara Berrill. ‘She doesn’t know whether to go or not.’
Keith’s mother stands for a long time, searching the sky for an answer to her problems.
‘Is it because of her boyfriend that you and Keith aren’t friends any more?’ asks Barbara Berrill.
Keith’s father reappears. He’s taken off his overalls and put on a shirt and flannels. He opens the garden gate, ushers Keith’s mother through, and they stroll down the street together.
Barbara Berrill giggles. ‘Oh no! He’s even going to the letter box with her!’
Yes. This is what they were discussing – this is why he’s changed his clothes. The summer evening’s so fine that he’s been tempted into an affectionate gesture of a quite unheard-of nature. He’s torn himself away from the workbench and the garden for once to accompany her on her stroll to the post.
Barbara Berrill’s right. When Keith’s mother finally reached home that day with her white dress badged with green slime, the situation changed. There’s no slime on the way to the shops, or the post, or Auntie Dee’s house. Whatever story she told Keith’s father to explain it, that slime must have suddenly seemed to touch all her absences. So now he has turned the key on her. She has become a prisoner. All possibility of contact with the world beyond the tunnel has been destroyed.
They saunter down the street, and stop to breathe the scent of the honeysuckle in front of Mr Gort’s house. She casts a brief glance in our direction, as if wondering what any possible observer might make of all this, and all I can think is that we seem to have defeated her. Without any drama or scandal, we have brought her career as a spy to an end.
Or
I
have.
They saunter on, but at once she stops again. She steadies herself against Keith’s father’s arm and lifts one impeccable white sandal from the ground to examine the heel strap. There seems to be something wrong with it. They talk, as quietly and offhandedly as before, then she hands him the letters and walks back towards the house, stopping again on the way to ease the strap.
‘She’s just pretending,’ breathes Barbara Berrill in my ear.
He watches her until she’s gone through the front gate, then looks at the addresses on the envelopes and resumes his stroll to the corner. She stops just inside the gate, her attention apparently caught by something in the sky again.
Somehow she still seems to be holding one of the letters.
‘She’s just hiding till he’s gone. Then she’s going to …’
Going to what?
She opens the gate, casts one brief look towards the corner, and comes straight across the road towards us.
‘Oh,
no
!’ squeaks Barbara Berrill, and ducks her head. I automatically imitate her.
‘Stephen?’ says Keith’s mother quietly through the leaves. ‘May I come in?’
I have to straighten up and look at her. So does Barbara Berrill. Keith’s mother looks from one to the other, disconcerted.
‘Oh, hello, Barbara,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought Stephen was on his own.’
She starts back across the street, then hesitates and returns. She smiles.
‘I was just going to say, you must come to tea again some time, Stephen.’
She goes back to her house. At any rate her sandal no longer seems to be troubling her.
‘She wanted you to take him that letter, didn’t she?’ whispers Barbara Berrill. ‘
Would
you have, Stephen? If she’d asked you? If I hadn’t been here?’
I put my hands over my head and gaze at the dust. I don’t know what I should have done. I don’t know anything about anything.
Barbara Berrill laughs. ‘We could have found out where he lived. We could have found out who it was.’
Where he lives is the one thing I think I do know. Who it might be is something I’m not sure I want to investigate any more closely.
I suppose there’s one other thing I have such a strong foreboding of that it almost counts as knowing: she’s going to come back and try asking me again.
‘If you and Keith aren’t friends any more,’ says Barbara Berrill finally, ‘can I see inside your secret box thing?’
A little tangle of children hovers around Auntie Dee’s gate. I see them as I turn the corner on my way home from school next day, and I walk up the street to investigate with my satchel still on my shoulder.
All the younger children in the Close are there, except of course Keith, who never plays with the others: the Geest twins, Barbara Berrill, Norman and Eddie, Dave Avery – even Elizabeth Hardiment and Roger have abandoned their practice for once. They’re all reverently touching a heavy, upright bicycle that stands propped against the gatepost with a policeman’s cape looped tidily over the handlebars.
As soon as they see me, everyone starts talking at once.
‘That man was hanging round again last night!’
‘The peeping Tom!’
‘In the blackout!’
‘Barbara’s Mummy saw him!’
Poor Eddie Stott laughs in delight at all the excitement. Everyone else looks respectfully at Barbara Berrill, honouring her association with her mother’s importance. She smiles enigmatically, but says nothing, and gives me a specially significant glance to indicate that she and I share a secret understanding of who the man is and why he came.
‘He had a beard!’ resume the others.
‘He had these awful staring eyes!’
‘She couldn’t see! It was dark!’
‘She
could
see! In the moonlight!’