Hare Sitting Up Page 7

  ‘Did it have secret passages?’ Alabaster Two asked suddenly.

  ‘Well, no – but there were very deep cellars.’

  ‘My grandfather’s place has secret passages,’ Alabaster Two said. And added modestly: ‘But, of course, it’s a sort of castle, and you’d expect them.’

  ‘Secret passages are best, I agree,’ Judith said. ‘But having several staircases is important too. With two staircases you can have very decent hide-and-seek. But with three staircases–’

  ‘Splaine has three staircases,’ the boy who had first encountered Judith interrupted.

  ‘Has it really?’ Judith seemed not to have made herself aware of this fact. ‘Well, with three staircases you can play Chinese Torturers.’

  There was a moment of impressed silence. Judith’s credit had mounted perceptibly. She might perhaps be a person really entitled to that sort of laugh.

  ‘Chinese Torturers?’ Piglet asked with interest. He was a pleasant lad, Judith thought, but with a mental age probably a good deal below U-Tin’s. ‘I don’t think it’s in the Weekend Book.’

  ‘It certainly isn’t.’ Judith rejected this suggestion with civil scorn. ‘It’s the sort of game that is known only in a very few families. It was known in mine. We also knew Hungry Tigers. And Heads Off Quick. But Chinese Torturers was the best.’

  Miss Grimstone alone seemed to react unfavourably to this. ‘The title,’ she said, ‘fails to commend itself to me, I confess. I hope it was not a game that carried any suggestion of cruelty, or gave scope for bullying.’

  ‘Well, of course, you have to imagine the most frightful things.’ Judith was concerned to be fair-minded. ‘And there is lots of rough and tumble.’

  ‘I would suppose,’ Miss Grimstone said drily, ‘that Kevin and Jerry would not care for it at all. Although it is a family game.’

  ‘And it’s the most splendid exercise’ – Judith ignored this shaft – ‘for a wet day. You rush all over and over the house. That’s where the staircases come in.’

  ‘It sounds tremendous fun,’ Pooh said. He looked cautiously at Judith, plainly indulging a callow vision of the fun that a little rough and tumble in her company might produce. Judith smiled at him brightly. Not so nice as Piglet, she was thinking. He reads too many modern novels, full of accessible women and inexpressible men.

  ‘Could you tell us the rules, please?’ U-Tin said politely.

  ‘Well, of course, there are two sides: victims and executioners.’ Judith frowned. ‘I’m afraid it’s rather hard to explain. But if I could just show you–’

  It was a suggestion perfectly timed. The remaining mugs of milk from the special cows were drained at a gulp and amid general clamour. Even Miss Grimstone made no protest when Judith – by what she thought was her most brilliant stroke – suggested that the secretary’s office should be the den.

  Not very surprisingly, Chinese Torturers proved to be very hard work – the more so as Judith had the task of improvising the rules as they went along. But at least she had one perfectly clear guiding principle: everybody must go rushing about everywhere, and in sufficient excitement not to notice that her own rushing about was on more systematic lines. When she had explained that she herself was the crucial personage called the Mandarin, that the Mandarin hurried around all the time, and that sundry penalties attended this dread figure’s spotting either executioners or victims, she found that she had got the situation pretty well under control. Even Pooh was no difficulty, since his libidinousness was unsupported by the resolution necessary to the making of any progress from fantasy towards fact. Nor was the game hampered, as she had feared might be the case, by any disposition to regard parts of Splaine Croft as sacrosanct or out of bounds. The boys romped as cheerfully in the drawing-room or in Miles Juniper’s study as they did in their own dormitories or day-rooms. It was a genuinely uninhibited place. Rather more surprising was the fact that Miss Grimstone proved uninhibited too – to the extent of appointing herself Chief Executioner out of hand and stumping short-sightedly about with a great deal of gusto.

  It took Judith more than an hour of Chinese Torturers to feel that she had been thoroughly all over the place. A modern preparatory school, it seemed, had to make provision for other activities than Latin, Maths, and Cricket. There was quite an elaborately fitted out theatre. There was a large art room, crammed with materials for painting, modelling, and carving, and with a surprising collection of plaster casts of nondescript Roman emperors and classical gods and goddesses. There was a full-sized horse that came to bits for the purpose, it appeared, of anatomical study. Television sets, radios, gramophones, tape-recorders, and cinematograph apparatus lurked in corners and cupboards. Education seemed to have become very complicated. And it must be decidedly expensive.

  The outbuildings constituted a distinct problem – and this might have remained insoluble if it had gone on raining. But in fact the rain had stopped and only the thunder was growling a little nearer, with now and then a flicker of lightning against an overcast sky. Judith began to feel curiously uneasy. Either it was the electricity in the air, or there was an element of strain she hadn’t at first recognized in all this scampering about in the vague expectation of hitting upon something sinister. Could there really be a living man lurking in the house, unknown to all these lively and curious children? She was almost sure there couldn’t be, and that she had eliminated what was an improbable speculation from the first. But, of course, a live man didn’t exhaust the possibilities. And she really must manage to do the outbuildings. They were extensive, but all grouped more or less together to form a large stable-yard.

  Her problem was solved by the boys themselves. Quite suddenly, as if they possessed some paranormal means of communication such as is said to govern the evolutions of a flock of birds, they had abandoned the game she had invented for them, and poured out into the open air. They were now playing a game of their own, which somebody told her in a shout to be Cowboys and Red Indians. As she now had no share in directing their proceedings, she had correspondingly no further plausible status among them; and she saw that she couldn’t, without blank eccentricity, continue for more than a few minutes longer to wander gamesomely around. Pooh and Piglet had disappeared. Perhaps it was an hour at which their university studies claimed them. Miss Grimstone had returned to her more settled character as school secretary, and would certainly be expecting Judith to clear out, It was quite a long run back to London, and by this time Kevin and Jerry ought to be wondering what had happened to Mummy.

  But she could cover the remaining ground in ten minutes, if she simply walked firmly and frankly from building to building and briskly raked through each. And the moment was suddenly favourable – for Miss Grimstone was called away to the telephone, and had excused herself with a hint of understandable impatience. Judith went rapidly to work.

  The largest building had been converted into a gym. She had already stuck her head into it when being shown round; it was perfectly reasonable that she should have a better look now. And this didn’t take two minutes. It had once been a stable with a loft above. But the floor of the loft had been removed and it was open to the roof, with ropes and rope-ladders hanging from the exposed beams. Finding this totally unrewarding, Judith emerged again into the open air. For an August early evening it had gone strangely dark, so that a flicker of lightning that met her as she came out was almost theatrically effective. Somewhere she could hear some of the boys shouting, and among them she thought she could distinguish the particularly precise tones of U-Tin. But the yard itself was now deserted. She walked past a row of empty stalls, peering in. They no longer kept ponies at Splaine Croft, she had been told. Riding must be an ‘extra’ that no longer much commended itself to small boys. Which was, of course, deplorable –

  Judith found that she had halted abruptly, and with a quickened pulse. For a moment she had no idea why. Then she realized that it was because she had heard a low moan. A growl of thunder, a low moan, and then a growl of
thunder again… Only the moan wasn’t a moan; it was nothing more out of the way than a half-open door on one of the stalls turning on a rusty hinge.

  It was absurd. It was absurd that, hard upon romping round with all these children, she should be abruptly playing nervous tricks with herself. Partly, no doubt, it was the sudden solitude – for now the voices were quite far away, as if everybody had moved off across the playing fields. If they had, they might get soaked at any time, for certainly anything could come tumbling out of that extraordinary sky. She herself would probably have to drive home through a tremendous storm. And the sooner the better. For she did now very much want to get away from Splaine. It was, beyond almost any suspicion, a thoroughly harmless place. Indeed, it was a genuinely jolly place – which made her own spuriously jolly act only the more uncomfortable in retrospect. But she would have a look at the last remaining building, all the same.

  It was almost the twin of the one that had been turned into a gym. For a moment she thought the door was locked – which was odd, since at Splaine locks and keys seemed virtually not to exist. But it was only stiff. She pushed harder, and found herself looking into a large dark, empty space. Or almost empty. It was used as a store for miscellaneous sports equipment. Rugger posts, waiting to be put up again for next term. A pile of hurdles. Some coils of rope. A sight screen, dismantled and in need of repair. She could just distinguish these objects as her eyes got accustomed to the gloom. Then suddenly, as if directly behind her, there was the first really vivid flash of lightning. It served simply to reveal the place definitively as entirely innocent.

  She was about to turn when it occurred to her to look upwards. There was a murky plaster ceiling here, which meant that there must be some sort of loft or garret up above. But nothing seemed to give access to it, and she supposed there must be an outside staircase on the farther side of the building. Then the lightning came again. And she saw a large square hole in the ceiling, close to the opposite wall. She moved cautiously through the near-darkness that followed the flash. Yes – there must have been a wooden staircase going up that way. But it had been removed. She explored more carefully. The signs of something of the kind were obvious. The staircase had been rather roughly torn down.

  There was really nothing suspicious, she thought, about that. Probably it had become unsafe, and had been cut away to keep the boys from getting into mischief on it. Judith hesitated. It was almost certain that up there she would find nothing but cobwebs, unless indeed it was an owl or a colony of bats. And yet, that loft was unique. It was the only place in Splaine that was not entirely accessible to anybody who cared to wander about.

  She went back into the yard. Everything was warm and steamy and still, and there was a long lull in the thunder. She glanced towards the gym. She knew very well what she was looking for: a ladder that she had noticed out of the corner of her eye. Yes, there it was, lying on the ground not twenty yards away. It would probably reach. And it looked reasonably light.

  She was burning her boats as any normal sort of visitor. If Miss Grimstone returned and found her stumping across the yard carrying a ladder, she would probably judge her so mad that it would be advisable to send for the police. Which would be embarrassing – particularly for John. Judith was still meditating this when she found that she had in fact secured the thing and was staggering back with it. This part of the proceeding was fairly easy. Getting the ladder more or less perpendicular and so up to the hole in the ceiling was another matter. But she remembered how to do it. You got one end above your head and then walked towards the other end, shifting your hands from rung to rung.

  This proved not too difficult either. It seemed only a couple of minutes before she was actually climbing. Would there – she wondered – be a skylight? She hadn’t a torch. Not even a box of matches. Which was inefficient. She should have taken thought.

  But now her head was through the hole. And there was light – of sorts. It seemed to come from a single narrow window at a gable-end, and was almost negligible, with the sky as it now was. She climbed the remaining rungs and stepped cautiously on to the floor. For there was a floor. And it seemed to support every variety of junk. The place was precisely what one might expect it to be: a very large lumber-room. And the lumber was of an order so utterly useless that the staircase had been dismantled with no thought to it. Judith had just decided that this was the particular anticlimax to this part of her adventure when the lightning came again – and this time there was a terrific clap of thunder straight above her head.

  Afterwards, she blamed that thunder a good deal. It was so immensely louder than anything that had preceded it that it took her entirely by surprise. It had never in her life occurred to her to be frightened by thunder – and now she was uncertain that she wasn’t suddenly weak at the knees. It’s absurd, she told herself again. I don’t behave like this. And suddenly she told herself: There’s a horrible smell.

  Feeling her way past packing-cases full and empty, past a grotesque hatstand, past mouldering trunks, empty picture frames, an old hip-bath – feeling her way past these, moving desperately forward simply so that she shouldn’t ignominiously bolt, she said to herself: Things do die in places like this. And she added, trying to get it definite: Even a pigeon doesn’t always just shrivel up.

  She turned a corner – round some shapeless stuffed affair that might have been an abandoned vaulting-horse. It was darker. It was quite dark. Her actions had become senseless. She wasn’t conducting a hunt any more. She wasn’t sure she wasn’t being hunted. And suddenly she stumbled – perhaps it was over a curtain rod or a hockey stick. Falling forward, she put out her hand to save herself – and suddenly knew that she had clasped another hand. But the hand returned no grip of its own; it was rigid and cold. Then there was a long instant of blinding light and she was looking at a man’s face: cold and rigid and very, very white. This time, when the thunder crashed, it seemed to be actually inside the loft with her and rattling at the roof in a maniacal effort to get free.

  She struggled up from hands and knees – to realize that somebody was standing close behind her. It was a man. She made a tremendous effort to turn and face him. But before she could manage it, the man spoke.

  ‘Oh, I say, Lady Appleby, what awful fun!’

  It was the young man the boys called Pooh. His voice was trembling, and for a moment she thought that he too must have seen. Then she realized it wasn’t that. The wretched youth was still pursuing his amorous fantasy. And of course he was scared stiff.

  ‘Have you a torch – a match?’ Judith was surprised to hear a voice that was entirely matter-of-fact, and to recognize it as her own.

  ‘Well, yes – I have.’ Thankful to do something non-committal, Pooh was fumbling in a pocket.

  ‘Then shine it, please – just here.’

  There was a long moment while he fumbled still. Then the beam shot out. ‘On that?’ she heard Pooh say. ‘You’re interested in that? There’s a crowd of them in the art room. Didn’t you notice?’

  Judith stared at the recumbent figure. The river Nilus, perhaps. Anyway, a heathen divinity in dirty plaster – and there was the very hand her hand had clutched. ‘Doesn’t it look absurd?’ she heard herself meaninglessly say – and even more meaninglessly add: ‘I adore idiotic things like that. That’s why I came exploring here. Lumber-rooms – don’t you think? – are such heavenly fun?’

  Pooh made an inarticulate noise. He must have laboriously trailed her here. And now he was trying to say something he conceived as relevant to the situation – perhaps that any lumber-room would be heavenly fun with Lady Appleby in it. But all the wretched lad managed was a mutter.

  Judith dusted her knees and laughed. This time it was a genuine laugh and not a jolly one. Something had certainly died here and decomposed – and presumably it could only be a bird. But it was far from making the atmosphere insupportable. Nor did even Pooh do that. He was far too frightened to be other than rather touchingly absurd. And – of course – h
e could be useful.

  ‘I’m so glad you have a torch,’ Judith said. ‘Do you know? Before I go home I’m quite, quite determined to peep at all this fascinating junk. Do you mind?’

  Pooh didn’t seem to mind. Like a man who knows his dream has faded, he obediently attended Judith as she poked about. She found, of course, nothing at all. But at least she had completed her assignment – and at no greater cost than that of a single moment of panic that it was already a little embarrassing to remember.

  The thunder growled harmlessly in the middle distance. The storm had passed over Splaine Croft.

  4

  It was after dinner when Judith gave her husband a full account of her adventure. Although he was looking more careworn than she had known him for years, he professed to find a great deal of entertainment in it. She didn’t take this too well.

  ‘It was pretty futile, anyway,’ she said. ‘The place, after all, is a small estate. There’s a lodge, and probably several cottages. Naturally, I couldn’t get round to them. And your missing scientist might be lurking in any of them.’

  ‘Yes – I suppose he might.’ Appleby fiddled tiresomely with his empty coffee cup. ‘Still, you got quite a lot of fun out of it.’

  ‘I’m glad you feel I had a lovely time.’ Judith looked at him wrathfully. ‘What a strain it must be, having to find me lovely things to do, and lovely ladders to climb, and lovely puppies to be pestered by, and lovely smells to smell.’