The Wrong Dark House

The cigar was a large one and Robert Stonehouse was small. At the precise moment, in fact, when he leant out of the upstairs bedroom window, instinctively seeking fresh air, he became eight years old. He did not know this, though he did know that it was his birthday and that a birthday was a great and presumably auspicious occasion. His conception of what a birthday ought to be was based primarily on one particular event when he had danced on his mother's bed, shouting, "I'm five-I'm five!" in unreasonable triumph.

His mother had greeted him gravely, one might say respectfully, and his father, who when he did anything at all did it in style, had given him a toy fort fully garrisoned with resplendent Highland soldiers. And there had been a party of children whom, as a single child, he disliked and despised and whom he had ordered about unreproved. From start to finish the day had been his very own.

Soon afterwards his mother disappeared. They said she was dead. He knew that people died, but death conveyed nothing to him, and when his father and Christine went down to Kensal Green to choose the grave, he picked flowers from the other graves and sent them to his mother with Robert's love. Christine had turned away her face, crying, and James Stonehouse, whose sense of drama never quite failed him, had smiled tragically; but Robert never even missed her. His only manifestation of feeling was a savage hatred of Christine, who tried to take her place. For a time indeed his mother went completely out of his consciousness. But after a little she came back to him by a secret path. In the interval she had ceased to be connected with his evening prayer and his morning bath and all the other tiresome realities and become a creature of dreams. She grew tall and beautiful. He liked to be alone-best of all at night when Christine had put the light out-so that he could make up stories about her and himself and their new mystical intimacy. He knew that she was dead but he did not believe it. It was just one of those mysterious tricks which grown-up people played on children to pretend that death was so enormously conclusive. Though he had buried the black kitten with his own hands in the back garden, and had felt the stiffness of its pitiful body and the dank chill of its once glossy fur, he was calmly sure that somewhere or other, out of sight, it still pursued its own tail with all the solemnity of kittenhood.

One of these nights the door would open and his mother would be there. In this dream of her she appeared to him much as she had done once in Kensington High Street when he had wilfully strayed from her side and lost himself, and, being overwhelmed with the sense of his smallness and forlornness, had burst into a howl of grief. Then suddenly she had stood out from the midst of the sympathetic crowd-remote, stern and wonderful-and he had flung himself on her, knowing that whatever she might do to him, she loved him and that they belonged to one another, inextricably and for all time.

So she stood on the threshold of his darkened room, and at that vision his adoration became an agony and he lay with his face hidden in his arms, waiting for the touch of her hand that never came, until he slept.

Christine became his mother. Every morning at nine o'clock she turned the key of the pretentious mansion where James Stonehouse had set up practice for the twentieth time in his career, and called out, "Hallo, Robert!" in her clear, cool voice, and Robert, standing at the top of the stairs in his night-shirt, called back, "Hallo, Christine!" very joyously because he knew it annoyed Edith, his father's new wife, listening jealously from behind her bedroom door.

And then Christine scrubbed his ears, and sometimes, when there were no servants, a circumstance which coincided exactly with a periodical financial crisis, she scrubbed the floors. Robert's first hatred had changed rapidly to the love he would have given his mother had she lived. There was no romance about it. Christine was not omnipotent as his mother had become. He knew that she, too, was often terribly unhappy, and their helplessness in the face of a common danger gave them a sort of equality. But she was good to him, and her faithfulness was the one sure thing in his convulsed and rocking world. He clung to her as a drowning man clings to a floating spar, and his father's, "I wish to God, Christine, you'd get out and leave us alone," or, "I won't have you in my house. You're poisoning my son's mind against me," reiterated regularly at the climax of one of the hideous rows which devastated the household, was like a blow in the pit of the stomach, turning him sick and faint with fear.

But Christine never went. Or if she went she came back again. As James Stonehouse said in a burst of savage humour, "Kick Christine out of the front door and she'll come in at the back." Every morning, no matter what had happened the night before, there was the quiet, resolute scratch of her latch-key in the lock, and when James Stonehouse, sullen and menacing, brushed rudely against her in the hall, she went on steadily up the stairs to where Robert waited for her, and they fell into each other's arms like two sorrowful comrades. Ever afterwards he could conjure her up at will as he saw her then. She was like a porcelain marquise over whom an intangible permanent shadow had been thrown.

He knew dimly that she had "people" who disapproved of her devotion, and that over and over again, by some new mysterious sacrifice, she had staved off disaster. He knew that she had been his father's friend all her life and that his mother and she had loved one another. There was some bond between these three that could not be broken, and he, too, was involved-fastened on as an afterthought, as it were, but so firmly that there could be no escape. Because of it Christine loved him. He knew that he was not always a very lovable little boy. Even with her he could be obstinate and cruel-cruel because she was so much less than his mother had become-and there were times when, with a queer unchildish power of self-visualization, he saw himself as a small fair-haired monster growing black and blacker with the dark and evil spirit that was in him. But Christine never seemed to see him like that. There was some borrowed halo about his head that blinded her. It did not matter how bad he was, she had always love and excuses ready for him. And she was literally all he had in the world.

But even she had not been able to make his birthday a success. Indeed, ever since that one outstanding day all the celebrations had been failures, though he had never ceased to look forward to them. For days before his last birthday he had suspected everyone of secret delicious plottings on his behalf. He had come down to breakfast shaking with anticipation. All through the morning he had waited for the surprise that was to be sprung on him, hanging at everyone's heel in turn, and it was only towards dusk that he knew with bitter certainty that he had been forgotten. A crisis had wiped him and his birthday out altogether. And then he had cried, and James Stonehouse, moved to generous remorse, had rushed out and bought a ridiculously expensive toy having first borrowed money from Christine and scolded her at the top of his booming voice for her heartless neglect of his son's happiness.

Christine had argued with him in her quiet obstinate way.

"But, Jim dear, you can't afford it--"

There had been one of those awful rows.

And Robert had crept that night, unwashed, into bed, crying more bitterly than ever.

But this time he had really had no hope at all. Yesterday had seen a crisis and a super-crisis. In the afternoon the butcher had stood at the back door and shouted and threatened, and he had been followed almost immediately by a stout shabby man with a bald head and good-natured face, who announced that he had come to put a distraint on the furniture which, incidentally, had never been paid for. Edith Stonehouse, with an air of outraged dignity, had lodged him in the library and regaled him on a bottle of stout and the remnants of a cold joint, and it was understood that there he would remain until such time as Christine raised 40 pounds from somewhere.

These were mere incidents-entirely commonplace-but at six o'clock James Stonehouse himself had driven up in a taxi, to the driver of which he had appeared to hand the contents of all his pockets, and a moment later stormed into the house in a mood which was, if anything, more devastating than his ungovernable rages. He had been exuberant-exultant-his good-humour white-hot and dangerous. Looking into his brilliant blue eyes with their two sharp points of light, it would have been hard to tell whether he was laughing or mad with anger. His moods were like that-too close to be distinguished from one another with any safety. Christine, who had just come from interviewing the bailiff, had looked grave and disapproving. She knew probably, that her disapproval was useless and even disastrous, but there was an obstinate rectitude in her character that made it impossible for her to humour him. But Edith Stonehouse and Robert had played up out of sheer terror.

"You do seem jolly, Jim," Edith had said in her hard, common voice.

"It's a nice change, you bad-tempered fellow--"

She had never really recovered from the illusion that she had captured him by her charms rather than by her poor little fortune, and when she dared she was arch with an undertone of grievance. Robert had capered about him and held his hand and made faces at Christine so that she should pretend too. Otherwise there would be another row. But Christine held her ground.

"The butcher came this afternoon," she said. "He says he is going to get out a summons. And the bailiff is in again. It's about the furniture. You said it was paid for. I can't think how you could be so mad. I rang up Melton's about it, and they say the firm wants to prosecute. If they do, it might mean two years'--"

Robert had stopped capering. His knees had shaken under him with a new, inexplicable fear. But James Stonehouse had taken no notice. He had gone on spreading and warming himself before the fire. He had looked handsome and extraordinarily, almost aggressively, prosperous.

"I shall write a sharp note to Melton's. Damned impertinence. An old customer like myself. Get the fellow down into the kitchen. The whole thing will be settled tomorrow. I've had an amazing piece of luck. Amazing. Met Griffiths-you remember my telling you about Alec Griffiths, don't you, Christine? Student with me at the University. Got sent down together. Wonderful fellow-wonderful. Now he's in business in South Africa. Made his pile in diamonds. Simply rolling. He's going to let me in. Remarkable chap. Asked him to dinner. Oh, I've arranged all that on my way up. Gunther's are sending round a cook and a couple of waiters and all that's necessary. For God's sake, Christine, try and look as though you were pleased. Get into a pretty dress and join us. Must do him well, you know. Never do for a man like that to get a wrong impression. And I want him to see Robert. He knew Constance before we were married. Put him into his best clothes--"

"He hasn't got any," Christine had interrupted bitterly.

For a moment it had seemed as though the fatal boundary line would be crossed. Stonehouse had stared at his son, his eyes brightening to an electric glare as they picked out the patches of the shabby sailor-suit and the frantic, mollifying smile on Robert's face had grown stiff as he had turned himself obediently about.

"Disgraceful. I wonder you women are not ashamed, the way you neglect the child-I shall take him to Shoolbred's first thing to-morrow and have him fitted out from top to toe--" The gathering storm receded miraculously. "However, he can't appear like that. For God's sake, get the house tidy, at any rate--"

So Robert had been bustled up stairs and the bailiff lured into the kitchen, where fortunately he had become so drunk that he had had no opportunity to explain to the French chef and the two waiters the real reason for his presence and his whole-hearted participation in the feast.

From the top of the stairs Robert had watched Christine go into dinner on his father's arm, and Edith Stonehouse follow with a black-coated stranger who had known his mother. He had listened to the talk and his father's laughter-jovial and threatening-and once he had dived downstairs and, peering through the banisters like a small blond monkey, had snatched a cream meringue from a passing tray. Then for a moment he had almost believed that they were all going to be happy together.

That had been last night. Now there was nothing left but the bailiff, still slightly befuddled, an incredible pile of unwashed dishes and an atmosphere of stale tobacco. James Stonehouse had gone off early in a black and awful temper. It seemed that at the last moment the multi-millionaire had explained that owing to a hitch in his affairs he was short of ready cash and would be glad of a small loan. Only temporary, of course. Wouldn't have dreamed of asking, but meeting such an old friend in such affluent circumstances--

So the eighth birthday had been forgotten. Robert himself could not have explained why grief should have driven him to his father's cigars-box. Perhaps it was just a beau geste of defiance, or a reminder that one day he too would be grown up and free. At any rate, it was still a very large cigar. Though he puffed at it painstakingly, blowing the smoke far out of the window so as to escape detection, the result was not encouraging. The exquisite mauve-grey ash was indeed less than a quarter of an inch long when his sense of wrong and injustice deepened to an overwhelming despair. It was not only that even Christine had failed him-everything was failing him. The shabby plot of rising ground opposite, which justified Dr. Stonehouse's contention that he looked out over open country, had become immersed in a loathsome mist, greenish in hue, in which it heaved and rolled and undulated like an uneasy reptile. The house likewise heaved, and Robert had to lean hard against the lintel of the window to prevent himself from falling out. A strange sensation of uncertainty-of internal disintegration-obsessed him, and there was a cold moisture gathering on his face. He felt that at any moment anything might happen. He didn't care. He wanted to die, anyhow. They had forgotten him, but when he was dead they would be sorry. His father would give him a beautiful funeral, and Christine would say, "We can't afford it, Jim," and there would be another awful scene.

In the next room Edith and Christine were talking as they rolled up the Axminster carpet which, since the bailiff had no claim on it, was to go to the pawnbroker's to appease the butcher. The door stood open, and he could hear Edith's bitter, resentful voice raised in denunciation.