Peter wanted to protest: No! I wasn’t stealing anything. I came because you beckoned me; you invited me. I came straight to you. I’ve damaged nothing, taken nothing. Nothing.
But still something prevented his speaking.
Mr. Fawcett continued to stare at him—glare at him. He muttered a word that sounded like robbery. His eyelids closed then; he turned his head aside on the pillow, as if he had seen enough, spoken enough.
Peter remained where he was, staring. For seconds. For minutes. Would he have been there still an hour later perhaps—the figure of a boy at the foot of Mr. Fawcett’s bed, waiting for Mr. Fawcett to reopen his old, blurred eyes and see him again?
The house was so quiet that even a slight noise from downstairs resounded: the fumble of a key in the lock of the front door. If he heard, old Mr. Fawcett paid no attention, but Peter heard and fled. But by the time he had reached the top of the stairs, he could already distinguish footsteps on the tiling of the hall floor; he realized that if he went down now, he would unavoidably come face to face with—whom?
He turned back, opened the first door he came to, and slipped inside; he was in a bedroom evidently long disused. He closed the door to a crack and then peeped through the crack. Somebody was now toiling up the stairs: Mrs. Pugh, in her apron and carrying her cleaning tools. Studying her through the crack, Peter saw what his mother meant by “one foot in the grave”: Mrs. Pugh looked almost as old and tired as old Mr. Fawcett himself.
Once Mrs. Pugh had passed and gone into Mr. Fawcett’s bedroom, Peter could escape. As he tiptoed down the stairs, he heard Mrs. Pugh dolefully asking Mr. Fawcett whether he’d used the commode in the night and telling him the weather was bad and so was her sciatica. He heard no more. Back downstairs and through the French windows he went, and across the garden, skulking behind shrubs as much as possible, in case either Mr. Fawcett or Mrs. Pugh might be looking through the bedroom window. So to the wall, and over it.
He was late for school that day.
For the rest of that day—and for many days after—Peter turned over in his mind what had happened at Fawcett’s. He couldn’t understand it; he couldn’t even understand what there was to understand. Beckoned in and then: “robbery” … It didn’t make sense. …
He wondered if Mr. Fawcett would tell Mrs. Pugh about his visitor, Peter. He wondered if he could tell Mrs. Pugh, since his voice seemed so weak, and she was stone-deaf. He asked his mother.
“I believe the old man writes notes,” she said. “Although that must be hard for him, because he’s half blind by now, they say.” She snorted. “The stone-deaf looking after the half blind! And that daughter willing and able to look after her father and not allowed into the house!”
Peter could hardly imagine Mr. Fawcett’s writing a note to Mrs. Pugh about a visit as strange as his own, and he could certainly not imagine Mrs. Pugh’s understanding it. He put anxiety about himself out of his mind.
Then, when Peter had begun to shelve the whole subject, the surprise came. He was fooling about as usual with his friends in the playground of the housing development, against Fawcett’s wall. He had not been over that wall since his encounter with old Mr. Fawcett; he did not intend ever going again. But he sometimes looked speculatively at the wall, and today he saw a boy climbing it—climbing out of Fawcett’s. He was the new boy, Davy Taylor, who had arrived at school in the middle of term. A small, quiet boy, pleasant enough, but he had climbed out of Fawcett’s, and Peter, who had been in the playground nearly an hour, had not seen him climb in.
“Here!” said Peter. “Where’ve you been?”
“Home to tea,” said Davy Taylor.
“Where?”
“Fawcett’s.”
“You don’t live there; old Fawcett lives there.”
“I know he does; he’s my granddad.”
Peter stared stupidly. “Old Fawcett lives alone.”
“Not now. He sent for my mum to come and look after him, so we all live there now.”
“Sent for you—why?”
“Dunno.” Impatient of the conversation, Davy Taylor slid away into the game being played. Peter was left unanswered.
He believed Davy Taylor; he had to. Yet it was odd. …
Peter decided to get to know Davy Taylor better. That was easy, because Davy was new and wanted acquaintances and friends. It turned out that he kept gerbils. So did Peter. They swapped information and anecdotes, and they swapped a gerbil or two. Peter found that he liked Davy, anyway, so that he was in no hurry to press the friendship to a useful conclusion. In that, he turned out to be wrong; time was short after all. Peter asked Davy to his house to see his gerbils, and Davy came.
Then Davy asked Peter to Fawcett’s to see his gerbils, and Peter was going, all agog, when old Mr. Fawcett died.
His dying was really no surprise to anybody, Peter discovered: Mr. Fawcett was nearly ninety, and the district nurse had expected him to pop off any day, she said. He made a good end: he had his daughter with him, and he was glad of it.
Sometime after the funeral, Davy renewed his invitation to Peter to come and see his gerbils. There was no longer the same point in the visit, of course, but Peter went.
They went from school together. When they reached Fawcett’s, Davy led the way at breakneck speed through the front door, across the hall, up the stairs to his own room.
“No!” cried Peter, alarmed. Davy’s hand was on the knob of the door of old Mr. Fawcett’s bedroom. But of course, Davy paid no attention; he flung the door wide, and there was a room newly painted in buttercup yellow, with Davy’s narrow bed pushed in one corner, and the rest of the floor space covered with trains and airplanes and gerbil cages and gerbils. And that was all.
Except that over the bed was spread something dark striped, silkily warm-looking, that Peter recognized.
“That,” he said.
“What?”
“That stripy thing. That dressing gown.”
“It’s not a dressing gown. It’s a bedspread, sort of.”
“It’s a dressing gown. It must be.”
“It’s not.” Davy was cross. He picked the thing up; and Peter could see that it really was not a dressing gown. On the other hand, it was a very odd bedspread: not large enough, not rectangular, and made up of odd-shaped pieces, with the stripes going all ways. Davy said, “My granddad used it on his bed. Over the bottom, to keep his feet warm.”
“He used it as a dressing gown, too,” said Peter. “He must have, somehow. When he went downstairs, he wrapped it round him. Just a few weeks ago.”
“Don’t be silly. He never went downstairs. Not for years. And what do you know about my granddad, anyway? Honestly…” Davy was exasperated. “Honestly…”
Peter dropped the subject. They looked at the gerbils and took them out of their cages and played with them, and after a while Mrs. Taylor called them down to tea. The other Taylor children were there: Davy’s elder brother and sister. Mrs. Taylor had toasted crumpets for everyone and made sausages and mashed potatoes and a big pot of tea. Mrs. Taylor had hardworking hands and a plain face with a nice smile. When the elder children had gone off to do their homework, she kept Peter at the table, asking about his gerbils and also about his family, whom she remembered a little from long ago. Then Peter and Davy helped her clear the tea things to the sink, after which Davy said, “Let’s go to the playground, Pete. Everyone’ll be there by now.”
Peter cleared his throat. “You go,” he said. “I’ll come in a bit. I’ll help your mother with the washing up first.”
Davy goggled at him, and even Mrs. Taylor was too astonished to be able to look grateful.
“Honestly …” said Davy. “Honestly …”
“You go with Davy, Peter,” said Mrs. Taylor. “I can manage. I always do. It’s a pity to miss the last of the daylight.”
“No,” said Peter. “I’ll help. But Davy can go.”
Davy hesitated uneasily, then went. Mrs. Taylor began washing up; Peter began dr
ying.
For the second time since tea, Peter cleared his throat. “That stripy thing on Davy’s bed—it’s nice, but it’s a funny thing, isn’t it?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Taylor, “it was my mother’s dressing gown—her winter dressing gown, of a beautiful warm stuff. When she died, it was too good just to let go, but my father wouldn’t wear it—a woman’s dressing gown, you know—although it would have fitted him. My mother was a big woman. Anyway, Mrs. Pugh was younger in those days, and she unpicked it all and made a half bedspread of it. It’s odd-looking, but warm.”
Peter said, “It was your mother’s dressing gown. …”
“She was a remarkable woman,” said Mrs. Taylor. “She could manage most things, and she was patient. She needed to be. My father was difficult. You’ll have heard tales. …”
“Yes,” said Peter. Then, as Mrs. Taylor did not go on, he added, “Mum said you had a brother, much younger, and he died, and then your father…”
“Yes. When he was killed—he was only a boy—my father turned me out of the house, I’m afraid. He swore that he’d not see me in this house again before he saw him, his dead son, I mean. My father prided himself on being a man of his word.”
“He meant never to have you here?”
“Yes. My mother fought him, but it was no good. She said she’d never rest, in this life or the next, till her daughter could come home. It made no difference.”
Peter did not contradict. Changing the subject a little, he asked, “What was your brother called, that died?”
“Robert.”
“Just Robert?”
“We called him Rob for short. Or Robbie.”
“Yes,” said Peter. “I see. Now I see.”
Gently Mrs. Taylor took the drying-up cloth from his hand. “You’ve been drying the same plate over and over again, Peter. You go now. I’ll finish.”
“Yes,” said Peter. “Thank you—thank you very much.”
“I’m glad Davy has such a good friend,” said Mrs. Taylor. “Take our shortcut to the playground, Peter. Through the dining room—I use it for my dressmaking—and through the French windows and across the garden to the wall. That’s the way Davy always goes.”
Peter went that way. When he reached the far side of the lawn—hacked short by a mower, since the Taylors had moved in—he stopped to look back at the house. He half expected to see a tall figure through the French windows, with hand raised for the last time in salutation, in acknowledgment, in thanks.
But nobody.
He went over the wall, into the scrum of boys in the playground, with Davy Taylor in the middle of them.
The Dear Little Man with His Hands in His Pockets
When I was little, our next-door neighbor was Mr. Porter. To begin with, we didn’t know him very well; perhaps we never knew him very well. I still wonder about him sometimes.
Mr. Porter was a widower, with one married daughter who lived the other side of London. She wanted her father to live with them, but he wouldn’t. He preferred to live alone. He wouldn’t have even a dog or cat for company.
Mr. Porter didn’t go out much because he had a bad leg. He said that a lion had chewed it long ago in Africa. He’d certainly spent nearly all his life in Africa—his skin was browned and dried with years and years of sun—but you never knew how much to believe of his stories. He had an eyelid that twitched fairly regularly, and you couldn’t be sure whether he was winking or just twitching when he said certain things.
Sometimes his chewed leg was painful, and then he had to put it up to rest it. When my mother realized that, she offered to do his shopping for him. Mr. Porter accepted her offer very gratefully, and so we got to know Mr. Porter better. My mother and father liked Mr. Porter. He was always grateful to them, and when we were away on holiday, he fed Tibby, our cat, and kept an eye on the house. His married daughter, when she visited him, always called on us and said what a comfort it was to know we were just next door, and she used to give me the most enormous bags of sweets.
I was so little then that wherever my mother went, I went. I used to go with her when she called in to see how Mr. Porter was; he’d given her a house key so that he didn’t need even to hobble to the door to let her in. The inside of Mr. Porter’s house was rather dull, except for one or two African curios.
“Look, Betsy!” said my mother one day, when I’d been fidgeting at the time she was talking with old Mr. Porter to make out his shopping list. “Look, Betsy! A big dolly. Look, just behind the door!”
I looked into the shadows behind Mr. Porter’s sitting room door, and someone was standing there, about two feet tall, silent and still.
“Not a dolly,” I said.
My mother peered. “A dear little man with his hands in his pockets,” she said.
“Bring him over here, Betsy,” said Mr. Porter, who was sitting with his leg up on a stool.
I wouldn’t touch the manikin, but my mother picked him up for me. Since he had his hands in his pockets, as she put it, his arms formed jug handles, one on each side of his body. Using one of these handles, my mother carried him over to Mr. Porter. He was easy to carry, but evidently quite heavy.
My mother left me with Mr. Porter while she went into the kitchen to see what vegetables he had and whether they were fresh enough.
Mr. Porter showed me the little man. I think he was made of wood, but the whole of his body, except for his head, was covered in a kind of closely knitted string, rather dirty. He had a face, of sorts, but the most remarkable thing about him was a crown—or perhaps it was meant to be a bush of hair—made of chicken feathers, also rather dingy and broken at the tips.
“Don’t you like him?” asked Mr. Porter.
“No,” I said.
“But he makes a true friend. A loyal and determined friend, Betsy. So they used to say in that part of Africa where I got him.” And he said the name of a place so strange-sounding that I paid no attention to it at all; I rather wish now that I could remember it.
“You must realize, Betsy,” said Mr. Porter, “that my friend’s not quite as he should be. The shabbiness doesn’t matter, but he should have a pair of goat horns, and if you wanted him to set off and do your work for you, you’d have to pour a special liquid into him through the feathers on top. See if you can find the hole among the feathers.”
My curiosity got the better of my fear. I parted the feathers here and there and peered down among them but could see nothing. So I felt with one hand, and sure enough, there was a hole in the top of the head.
My mother had come back by now with the shopping list, to which she was adding some vegetables. She began to talk to Mr. Porter, and he answered her, but he kept his eyes on me.
My hand was still very small in those days, and I put it right into the hole that I had found. The hole went surprisingly deep, and then, at the bottom, my fingers touched a sticky wetness. I drew my hand up again quickly and began wiping it on my jacket.
Mr. Porter was watching me all the time, and now he said, “You never asked me, Betsy, what work such a friendly little chap can do when he gets his stuff inside him.”
“What does he do?”
“Well, you can send him walking off to deal with any enemy you may have.” His eyelid twitched, or he winked.
“What does he do?”
“He kills that enemy.”
I stared at the fingers I had been scrubbing at. “Is it poison then—the liquid? Does he shoot it out of himself at the enemy?”
“Oh, no, no, no,” said Mr. Porter. “The liquid is only like the petrol that makes a car go—although it’s much more special and difficult to come by than petrol. No, there are more ways of killing an enemy than by poison, you know. …”
I think he might have been going to tell me exactly how the little man did his work, but my mother said briskly, “What a very interesting African curio, Mr. Porter. Come, Betsy, or we’ll never get all the shopping done.” I could tell from her voice that she didn’t think Mr. Port
er was being good for me.
Perhaps my mother was right, for that night I had a nightmare about Mr. Porter’s little man. I saw him in the distance, walking toward me. I tried to escape him, but his walk broke into a run, swift and steady. In Mr. Porter’s house I had seen that the little man’s hands weren’t really in pockets; they just disappeared into his body. But I supposed that he could pull them out of his body, and in the nightmare, coming toward me, he was going to pull them out. What would they be like? Would they be grasping some weapon or weapons? Would they be ordinary hands at all? Or would they be, say, paws, like a lion’s paws, only smaller, with deadly claws sheathed in them? Just as he was close to me and pulling them out, I woke.
I didn’t tell my mother about the nightmare, of course, and you might have thought I would have avoided Mr. Porter and his friend after that. But there was one way in which Mr. Porter—and only Mr. Porter—could reassure me about the little man, and so I went with my mother on several further occasions to Mr. Porter’s house. At last it happened that for a few minutes my mother left us alone together.
I said baldly, “That man couldn’t really kill anybody. He’s too small. He couldn’t even reach.”
Mr. Porter understood me at once. “Reach? Consider your own cat, Betsy. I’ve seen Tibby at the foot of the garden wall, which is many times her own height—say, five or six feet high. I’ve seen her look up, crouch, and then spring vertically—vertically, Betsy—to the top. With ease. Right?” I nodded miserably, seeing what he was getting at. “Now imagine some enemy of mine as tall as six feet. His throat—a very vulnerable part—would be less than that from the ground. My friend has only to walk, or perhaps run, up to him—”
This was so like my nightmare that I closed my eyes. I had to hear Mr. Porter’s voice going on, but at least I needn’t listen to the words he was saying. Then there was another sound. I opened my eyes again, and my mother was reentering the room from wherever else in the house she had been.
“And so,” Mr. Porter was saying, “just like your Tibby, my friend can easily do what he wants to do. His little job of work, I mean.”