The If Game (2 page)

But, of course, nothing like that would happen.

Stephen thought that if this was the beginning of a proper collection, he should keep his keys in a special place. He would have liked a wooden box with compartments inside. Or, better still, a little chest of tiny
drawers. Specimen Chests, they were called. But he hadn't a hope of getting either of those. For want of anything better, he found an old chutney jar with a wide mouth, filled with odds and ends. Trinkets from crackers, half a packet of matches, a whistle that didn't work, a single earring he'd found at school. He emptied them out and, with rare courage, threw them away. Then he made a label saying KEYS and stuck it on the side of the jar.

It was a week or two later that the extraordinary thing happened.

It was another Sunday. They'd had their Sunday dinner and Stephen's dad had sat down to watch television. Stephen watched too, for five minutes. Then he lost interest and saw that Dad had too, because his eyes kept closing and soon he had started a gentle snore. Stephen thought perhaps he'd go round to see if Mike was home. They could kick a football around in Mike's garden, which was a lot bigger than Stephen's.

When he found that Mike was out, he was annoyed, and not sure what to do next. He'd have to fill in a lot of time before it began to get dark and he could go home for supper. Then he thought of something he'd been meaning to do for months. He would go to Bridge Street, which was more or less on his way home. Bridge Street backed on to the local railway line, and ended at the railway bridge. It ended in a sharp point, so that the last house in the row must be shaped like a triangle, if, indeed, it had any inside at all. Stephen had an idea that the front of the house, which was just like all the others in the street, wasn't real. He meant, by this, that it wasn't a real house, but was no more than a screen of bricks and pretend windows. A fraud, a forgery, a flim-flam.

Somehow he found this a slightly frightening idea. He didn't like things that looked solid and real and were disguised to hide the fact that they were not. They reminded him of an old historical story he'd read, in
which a husband had wanted to get rid of his wife. He had opened the bolts of a trapdoor above a deep shaft in their castle. She had stepped on what she had supposed would be firm ground, and it had given way under her feet and precipitated her down to her death. An oubliette, the device was called, and Stephen never trod on one of those bolted wooden doors set into pavements outside pubs without remembering her and feeling unsafe himself. He felt as if this sham house might conceal the same sort of horror.

When he reached Bridge Street he looked at the front of this house, Number One, with a mixture of fascination and doubt. It could be real. He wished someone would look out of one of the windows, so that he could be sure. But the more he looked, the more it seemed impossible that anyone lived there. The glass in those windows didn't shine in the sun and it was so dim that you couldn't see if there were curtains behind the glass. His eyes fell to the front door, which had been painted when the doors of the sister houses had been painted, but the paint on Number One was dirtier than the others, and the brass knocker had not been polished for years.

As he looked at it, he was overcome by an extraordinary feeling. His heart seemed to give a hop, then to miss a beat, then to knock urgently on his chest wall. At the same time, he felt muzzy. Everything around him seemed to be moving faster than he could understand. He wondered if he could be going to faint. Was this what fainting felt like? Then it passed, and he was standing steadily on the opposite side of the road and gazing at the door. He knew, without a shade of doubt, that he had to go through that door. There was no reason in the feeling, but it was as compulsive as the need to drink when you are parched, or the impulse to hit back if someone attacks you. He crossed over so that he was at the bottom of the
three shallow steps leading up to the door. Now he saw that it had a large keyhole. A huge keyhole, like a mouth open to swallow something. He was sure that it was waiting for his key.

He stood there for some time before he turned and went home. Luckily Dad must still be asleep. No voice challenged him as he went across the passage to his room. He took the big key out of the jar and put it in his pocket. Then he began the return journey. He wanted to hurry, as if the big keyhole in the door might disappear. It was when he turned into Bridge Street that he saw the boy.

He was a boy of about his own age, with brown hair, worn rather long, in shabby jeans and an amazing shirt, bright turquoise coloured, with yellow dragons. The sort of shirt Stephen might have admired in a shop window, but which he'd never have had the courage to wear.

When the boy spoke to him, he was surprised. ‘Hi!' the boy said.

Stephen said ‘Hi!' too, though he didn't like being spoken to by this stranger.

‘You're Stephen,' the boy said.

‘So what?'

‘I'm Alex. Remember? You were in your garden. Weeks ago. We talked through the fence. I was there with my mum. We were visiting her uncle.'

Stephen did remember. ‘How did you know me?'

‘You came out of next door. And you were whistling the same tune.'

‘Holmes, you are wonderful,' Stephen said.

The boy said, ‘I wouldn't want to be Sherlock. I'd be Mycroft.'

‘Mycroft?'

‘He was Sherlock's brother who was cleverer than Sherlock.'

‘But you're not either one of them,' Stephen said, and
thought he sounded just like his dad, squashing any sort of play of the imagination.

‘I know I'm not. But it doesn't hurt anyone if I think about what I'd be like if things were different. I mean, if I was very rich or one of those people who are brilliant at something like tennis.'

Stephen recognized this as the sort of game he played in his own mind. The wishing game. He said, ‘What would you be like?'

‘I don't know, do I? It's a sort of game I play with my mum. Don't you ever do it with your dad?'

Stephen said, shortly, ‘No, I don't.' He looked up and down the road to show that he meant to be on his way.

‘Where are you going?' Alex asked.

‘Going to look at a house.' Stephen was not pleased by the question.

‘Mind if I come with you?'

‘What about your mum? Won't she expect you to be back home?'

‘She won't for ages. She's cooking supper for Uncle Joe. It's going to take her years, because she never knows where he's put things, and she has to look all over for them. In funny places.'

Like keys in a chutney jar, Stephen thought. ‘What sort of funny places?'

‘Last time she wanted to find the tomato sauce, he'd put it in the bathroom.'

‘Why?'

‘No idea. He couldn't remember. So there's no hurry.'

‘Is he crazy?' Stephen asked.

‘Not specially. So you see, my mum won't mind. But not if you'd rather I didn't.'

Stephen would very much have rathered that he didn't, but he didn't know how to say so. He said, ‘All right. Let's have a look.'

As they walked the length of the road, Stephen looked sideways at Alex and tried to guess what he was really like. He couldn't tell much from the face. An ordinary face above an ordinary body. Alex was almost a head shorter than Stephen and a great deal thinner. He had eyes that very slightly slanted upwards at the outer corners, and he seemed to be using them all the time, constantly turning his head this way and that. But he did not speak until they were opposite Number One, Bridge Street. Stephen slowed down.

‘Which house did you want to look at?' Alex asked.

‘That one.' Stephen pointed.

‘Is there something special about it?'

‘I can't make out whether it's real or not.'

‘What d'you mean, real?'

‘It's too thin, see? The way the road slopes off, there isn't room for a proper house. I mean, one that's got a real inside.'

‘Let's ring the bell and ask whoever lives there,' Alex said, and before Stephen could stop him, he had leapt across the road and pressed the dim brass bell button beside the door.

Stephen waited to see if any angry householder opened the door. But nothing happened. Rather slowly, he crossed the road and stood beside Alex. Alex pressed the bell again.

‘If they catch you . . .' Stephen said. Alarmed.

‘I don't think there's anyone in there,' Alex said.

‘I don't think it's a real house,' Stephen said again.

‘I wish we could get in, then. I'd like to see the inside that you say isn't really there.'

Stephen hesitated.

‘It's a pity we haven't got a key. There's a whopping great keyhole down there,' Alex said.

Stephen didn't want to admit that he had a key that
might fit. Although he still had that urgent feeling that he must open this door, he didn't want to do it with this unknown boy beside him. But the need to know what was the other side of this door was stronger than his reluctance to see it with anyone else. Without speaking, he put his hand into his pocket and took out the key.

‘Fantastic! Where'd you get it?' Alex asked.

‘Found it.' He wasn't going to explain.

‘I like its top. And look at the wards!'

Stephen did not know what he meant. Wards? Like in prisons? He said, ‘What about the wards?' Alex put out a finger and touched the key. Stephen realized that ‘wards' was the name for the complicated, maze-like shapes on the key which would match whatever lock it had been made for.

‘Think it'd fit?' Alex asked.

‘Don't know.' He squatted down in front of the door and tried the key in the keyhole. It fitted perfectly and turned as smoothly as if the lock had been oiled.

‘What's the matter?' Alex asked, as Stephen still hesitated.

‘I'm not sure there'll be anything inside.'

‘You won't find out unless you look,' Alex said, and without waiting, he pushed the door open. Stephen was standing inside before he'd had time to think.

Stephen was astonished to see what looked like a path leading away from where he stood. A long path. He hadn't supposed there could be anything like so much space between the front of the house and the back, which overlooked the railway line below. He took a step forward and stood inside the open door. Then, impelled by curiosity, he walked a yard or so further.

The door suddenly banged shut behind him. He turned, and saw that Alex wasn't with him. He must have been shut out. Perhaps it had been Alex who had shut the door and had purposely stayed outside. Stephen was annoyed. It had been Alex who had egged him on to enter this house, and now had left him alone to face whatever it contained.

He looked around. He was relieved that no one appeared to ask him what he was doing there, or to complain that he was trespassing. It was very odd. What was still odder was the length of the path before him. He had always thought of this house as being nothing but a front wall. He knew, or thought he did, that the angle at which the roads met at the railway bridge must mean that there was no room for a proper house to exist; and yet, here he was, apparently inside it, with the path leading away into the distance. And, stranger still, it wasn't a passage inside a house, it was an outdoor path with fences each side and trees overhanging the fences. There was grass growing at the bottom of the fences and little climbing plants clinging to the wood. The trees were unfamiliar. They were tall and
they still had all their leaves, of an unfamiliar bluish green, and what was even more extraordinary, Stephen realized that he was far too hot, as if it was summer instead of the middle of winter. He thought that the front door must have opened directly into the glasshouse of the sham house's garden. That made sense. But if there was not room for a real house, how could there be room for a garden of the size that this one appeared to be? He had never noticed, from the train windows, anything like a garden just here. To find out how he could have been so mistaken, he moved forward along the path.

There were benches between the fences and the path, and on one of them, just ahead, an old man was sitting, with a newspaper in his hands, which he was looking at without much interest. Stephen wondered if he could ask him how there came to be so much space behind the sham house, and as he approached the bench, he slowed down. The old man lifted his head and looked at Stephen. He smiled as if they knew each other, though Stephen wasn't aware that they'd ever met. He said, ‘Back already?'

‘Back?' Stephen said, puzzled.

‘You've not been long gone.'

‘Where from?' Stephen asked, confused. The conversation didn't seem to make sense.

‘From your aunt's. I thought you were staying for tea.'

It was clear that he'd been mistaken for someone else. Stephen said, ‘I don't think you do really know me.'

‘Weren't you going to your aunt's? Someone said you were.'

‘No, I wasn't,' Stephen said. He never went to see Aunt Alice by himself. He went sometimes, unwillingly, with Dad.

The old man suddenly grew angry. ‘Don't you try to trick me! I may be old and forget things sometimes, but I know you were going there.'

The old man must be mad. Stephen said, ‘I think you've made a mistake. Perhaps I look like someone you know.'

The old man became angrier still. ‘Don't tell me I don't know you! I've known you since you were so high.' His hand indicated the height of a small child.

‘All right! Who am I then?' Stephen said.

He was expecting the old man to come up with some name he'd never heard of. But the old man did not answer. Instead, he said, ‘Now, stop this nonsense and come back home.' He got slowly up from the bench and began to walk along the path away from the house.

Stephen did not follow him. He said, ‘I don't know you, and you don't know me.' It seemed important to make this clear, to get the old man to agree that some monstrous mistake was being made.