His eyelid twitched, or he winked. He also smiled at my mother in his grateful way.
I took care never to enter into conversation with Mr. Porter again on the subject of his friend. If I had to go into Mr. Porter’s house, I never looked behind the sitting room door. But I was sure the little man was there. And I used to wonder about the hole among the chicken feathers: whether there was still a sticky wetness at the bottom or whether it had dried up. Or whether Mr. Porter renewed it sometimes. My hand was growing bigger, and I doubted that I could have squeezed it in, as I had done in the first place, to find out.
I don’t know how many years passed before the time of the burglaries in our neighborhood. Certainly Mr. Porter seemed much, much older. There were several burglaries, and the burglary of Mr. Porter’s house was the last.
Mr. Porter still lived alone. Although he wasn’t exactly bedridden, he’d had his own bed moved downstairs into his sitting room, and he spent most of his time lying in it or on it. His married daughter made more fuss every time she came to see him. But Mr. Porter pointed out that he had the telephone by his bed, and he’d promised to ring us at once if he were taken ill or needed help in any way.
One night I was woken by the sound of voices, near and far. The near voice was my mother’s in the bedroom next to mine, shouting at my father, who slept soundly: “Get up, get up! Can’t you hear?”
I could hear. From further away, out in the street, came the sound of another voice—or other voices. There was a most terrible screaming and shouting—but not words, at least that one could distinguish—and a deep grunting. Once I did think the screaming was for help.
By now I was in my parents’ room. They didn’t notice my coming in because they had thrown the window up and were looking out of it. You couldn’t see anything; it was one of those times when the streetlights were on all day and off all night, and there was no moon. (I believe that is the kind of night that burglars usually choose.)
My father said, “It’s a fight.”
“It’s a murder!” said my mother. And she dashed at the telephone and began ringing the police.
What was going on out there sounded like a fight and a murder. And then, abruptly—just when my father had found his big flashlight, which was also heavy enough to be a weapon—whatever had been going on was over. There was the sound of running feet—one pair of running feet—and a kind of choking, howling crying that died away with the sound of the feet.
Through all this, by the way, I managed to avoid being noticed by my mother, who would have tried to send me back to bed. I stuck close to my father and was just behind him when he reached the front gateway to our house and flashed his flashlight up and down the street. The whole street had been aroused by the screaming. Windows had been flung up. Many front doors were now open, and silhouetted figures peered out or, like my father, shone flashlights.
The flashlights, crisscrossing over the street, showed nobody—and no body, either.
My mother came rushing out from the house behind us and brushed past my father, crying, “Mr. Porter! What about old Mr. Porter?” She had a sixth sense about things, sometimes.
My father turned his flashlight beam onto Mr. Porter’s house. The front door had swung open, and we could see a gaping, jagged hole in the glass of the upper paneling, just above the lock. There was no sign of Mr. Porter.
My mother gave a little cry and came back to my father—she must have looked straight at me but never saw me—and he put his arm round her shoulder, and together they went quickly into Mr. Porter’s house. I began to follow at a distance when out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something lying in the darkness of the gutter. I hurried then to catch up closely with my parents. I was very scared indeed.
There was no light in the hall of Mr. Porter’s house, but there was a light beyond, in the sitting room, where—as you may remember—Mr. Porter now slept. The sitting room door was open, but only just. (It had a spring on it, so that it was self-closing against drafts.) My father gave a push to the door, and we all walked into the sitting room.
And there was Mr. Porter sitting on the side of his bed in his pajamas, with the telephone receiver in his hand. He was glittering with excitement. Also in his expression was an eagerness, which I didn’t at first understand.
As soon as he saw us, he called out, “Come in, come in! I’ve just been ringing the police, and then I was trying to ring my kind next-door neighbors, as I’ve always promised.”
My mother said, “Oh, Mr. Porter! We thought you’d been murdered in your bed.” Tears began to run down her cheeks.
“There, there!” said Mr. Porter. “Only a burglar—not even a very brave one. Didn’t expect to find me in the first room he tried. Didn’t expect to find me ready for him.” His eyelid twitched, or he winked. “Shock of his life. Ran for it.”
Behind us other neighbors had begun trickling into the house. Mr. Porter appealed eagerly to this little crowd: “Well, did he get right away, or did someone—I mean, one of you, of course—catch him? No? No sign of him?”
But everyone agreed that the burglar had got clean away, and according to Mr. Porter, he had taken nothing with him from the house.
“Except this.” Another neighbor pushed through the rest of us to reach Mr. Porter. “Isn’t this one of your African ornaments, Mr. Porter? It was lying in the gutter, just along the street.” He held out the little man with the jug handle arms.
“Well, fancy a burglar taking my little man!” said Mr. Porter, staring. The little man was filthy with mud from the gutter, and with a lot of blood on him. My mother, returning from the kitchen with a cup of tea for Mr. Porter, exclaimed in disgust at the sight.
My father said, “The blood must be from the burglar’s cutting himself on broken glass. He broke the glass in the front door so that he could reach in and open the door from the inside. The police will certainly want to see this thing.”
He took the little man and, not realizing that he was able to stand on his own two feet, leaned him temporarily against the wall. I wondered if Mr. Porter would tell the police, when they came, that the little man usually stood behind the sitting room door, and whether they would think it odd that a burglar, coming in, should reach right round the door to take him.
But when the police came, very soon afterward, we heard nothing because we were all turned out of the house while they talked to Mr. Porter. We left Mr. Porter in bed, sipping his tea and looking as peaceful and contented as our cat, Tibby, when she suns herself on the top of the garden wall. A policeman sat by the bed with his notebook open, asking questions. I suppose you might say that Mr. Porter was helping the police with their inquiries.
My father said the police’s best clue would be the blood. He said they would ask all the hospitals to look out for a man coming in with severe glass cuts on hands, wrists, or arms. They may have done so; but the burglar was never caught. Moreover, nobody was ever able to explain what all the screaming had been about in the street. Nor why there was blood in the gutter and in the street, but not by the front door where the glass had been broken.
When Mr. Porter’s married daughter heard of the burglary, she said this settled it and her father was coming to live with them. Mr. Porter was surprisingly meek and agreed. So there had to be a big clear-out of Mr. Porter’s house because he couldn’t take all his things with him to his daughter’s home. And then one day Mr. Porter went off in his daughter’s car, and we never saw him again, although my mother had a nice letter from him, saying how kind we’d been and how much he missed us. For several years we had Christmas cards, and then they stopped coming. I suppose he died. He was very old.
I don’t know what happened to the little man with his hands in his pockets when the police had finished with him. He was so filthy with mud and blood that perhaps Mr. Porter’s daughter burned him; the chicken feathers would have made a terrible smell. Or perhaps she cleaned him up and let Mr. Porter stand him behind the door of his new bedroom.
When my father said that about the hospitals looking out for a man with wrist cuts from broken glass, I thought they would have done better to look out for a man suffering from severe throat wounds. I know we were Mr. Porter’s friends, not his enemies, but all the same, I was quite glad when we weren’t next-door neighbors anymore.
The Dog Got Them
When Captain Joel Jones retired from the sea, he was persuaded by his wife to buy a handy little bungalow in the middle of nowhere in particular. Here the two of them lived very quietly—but with a certain amount of mystery. At least, to Andy Potter, their grandnephew, there was mystery.
Andy knew Aunt Enid fairly well—really, she was Great-aunt Enid, of course: she used to visit her relations while the captain was at sea. She was kind but very prim. She liked to help with the washing up, mending of clothes, ironing—anything—but she and the captain had had no children, and she exclaimed a good deal at the noisiness of Andy’s friends and the language that young people used nowadays.
Captain Joel was another matter altogether. Andy had met him only rarely, on his return from voyages: a big, red-faced, restless man with a loud voice. (Andy’s mother complained privately about his language.) When he drank tea, he picked up and set down the cup with a good deal of rattling of china against china. In excuse, he said that he was rather unfamiliar with tea as a beverage. He liked to carry Andy’s father off for an evening at the pub. He was always sociable and said that the Potters must all come and stay in the new bungalow when they had moved in. There would be two bedrooms: He and Aunt Enid would use one, of course, but Andy’s parents could have the other, and Andy himself, being still a little boy, could sleep on the sofa in the sitting room. Andy could even bring his terrier puppy, Teaser, if he were careful about the Joneses’ cat.
They moved in, but oddly, the invitation to the Potters was never renewed.
Mrs. Potter said, “It’s not as if I particularly want to stay, but all the same I wonder they don’t press us to go. Aunt Enid’s so often stayed here, and the captain, too—and I could have done without the smell of whiskey in the bedroom cupboard afterward.”
Mr. Porter said, “It’ll take some time for them to settle down. Especially for Joel: no sea, no shipmates, no pub near, no company of any kind except Aunt Enid’s.”
“You make it sound a bad move for them.”
“Well…”
Andy listened, without paying much attention.
Over a year later, on their way back from a holiday by car, the Potters found that they would be passing quite close to the new bungalow. They decided to drop in—and not to telephone ahead about the visit in case, as Mrs. Potter said, the answer was, “Not at home.”
They parked the car outside the bungalow, and all got out—all except Teaser. He was left in the car, chiefly because of the Joneses’ old tabby. In a harmless way, Teaser was always on the lookout for cats. He loved any chase—no doubt, would have loved any fight, too. He came of a breed once specialist in ratting.
They rang the doorbell. From inside they could hear some exclamation of dismay (was it Aunt Enid’s voice?) and a much louder, violent exclamation, undoubtedly in the captain’s voice. There was the sound of light footsteps, and the front door was opened.
“Oh, dear!” cried Aunt Enid, on seeing them. “Oh, dear, oh, dear! How very nice to see you all!”
She did not move from the doorway.
Mrs. Potter said, “We were just passing, Aunt Enid. We thought we’d call to see how you’d settled in. Just a very brief visit.” As Aunt Enid said nothing, Mrs. Potter added for her, “Just time for a quick cup of tea, perhaps, and a chat.”
“Of course!” said Aunt Enid. “How very nice! But it’s not at all suitable, I’m afraid. The captain is in bed with influenza. Severe influenza.”
There was a roar from inside the bungalow: “Enid! I say, Enid!”
“There’s my patient calling!” cried Aunt Enid. “Perhaps another time, when he’s stronger… But telephone first.” To everyone’s astonishment, she began to close the door.
Mr. Potter put his foot in the doorway. “Aunt Enid,” he said, “we don’t want to come where we’re not wanted for any reason, but—you’re all right, aren’t you?”
“Oh, perfectly, perfectly!” cried Aunt Enid. “I’m perfectly all right, and so is the captain. He is in perfect health. It’s just that, with infection in the house, I simply cannot—cannot risk having visitors. I admit only the doctor, ever.” She stooped and put her hands round Mr. Potter’s leg to lift it from the doorway. He withdrew it to save her trouble.
Aunt Enid was in the act of shutting the front door. Mrs. Potter said quickly, “Aunt Enid, promise to let us know at once if we can help you at any time, in any way.”
Aunt Enid’s face still showed in the gap of the doorway. Her eyes filled with tears. “My dear, you are truly kind,” she said. Then: “But no help is required. I have the captain, you know.” This time she finished shutting the front door. They heard her good-bye from the other side.
They went back to the car in silence. As they were driving off, Andy’s mother said, “She looked so worried and miserable. It couldn’t be just the captain’s flu.”
“She didn’t even seem certain that he was ill,” said Andy’s father.
And Andy said, “He wasn’t in bed. I looked past Aunt Enid when you were talking. I saw him. He wasn’t even in pajamas.”
“What was he doing?”
“Just walking about, in a wandery sort of way. Waving something about in the air.”
“Waving what?”
“I think it was a bottle.”
Later, when they got home, Mrs. Potter wrote to Aunt Enid, and then she began writing regularly, once a fortnight. Occasionally she had a reply. She would pass it to Andy’s father to read but never read it aloud to them all. Andy wondered.
Then, after many months, Aunt Enid wrote to say that Captain Joel had died.
“What did he die of?” asked Andy.
His parents looked at him thoughtfully, sizing him up, Andy knew. Was he old enough to be told whatever it was?
“Yes,” said his mother, “you’re old enough to know, and it should be a warning to you all your life: Captain Joel drank.”
“So does Dad,” said Andy. “You mean, more than that?”
“He drank much more,” said his father. “He drank much, much too much. He died of it.”
“Oh,” said Andy. There was a mystery gone, it seemed.
After the funeral, which Mr. and Mrs. Potter attended, Aunt Enid came to stay for a bit. She was pale, thin, and apt to burst into tears for no clear reason. Andy’s mother gave her breakfast in bed during her stay and would not let her help as much as usual with the housework. She had long private talks with her, after which they both seemed to have been crying.
“Poor woman,” said Andy’s mother when Aunt Enid had gone. “It was a perfectly dreadful time when the captain was dying. Appalling.”
“DTs?” asked Andy’s father.
His mother nodded.
Andy asked what DTs were.
“Delirium tremens,” said his mother. “A particularly awful kind of deliriousness, from drinking too much for too long. You see things. It’s a waking nightmare, according to Aunt Enid.” She shuddered. “Horrible.”
In due course a letter arrived from Aunt Enid thanking them all for her stay and saying that she felt much better as a result. She had the energy now to start getting the house to rights again after the captain’s death. She had already changed his sickroom back into a spare room. “But,” she said, “I’m not sure that they’ve faded yet.”
“They?” Andy’s mother queried, passing the letter to her husband.
“Mistake for if, I suppose,” said Mr. Potter, studying the letter. “It being the smell of booze, or something like that.”
“Her letter says ‘they’ quite clearly,” said Andy, also looking.
“Makes no sense,” said his father, and the subject was
dropped.
In the next letter Aunt Enid was very much upset because the cat had died. The cat had grown very old and poor in health, but mysteriously, Aunt Enid seemed to blame herself for its death. She said that it had had a shock which she ought to have been able to spare it, and she thought this shock had caused its death. She had not closely enough supervised where the cat had gone in the house. “But you don’t supervise where a cat goes about indoors, to spare it shock,” said Andy’s father.
The next letter was written from hospital. Aunt Enid had fallen and broken her hip, running too fast on the polished floors in the bungalow. She explained briefly: “I was afraid of not getting the door shut in time.”
“Why should she be running to shut doors in time?” Andy’s father asked crossly. He foresaw upheavals, if Aunt Enid were in hospital.
He was right. Mrs. Potter telephoned to the hospital to suggest a visit, and they had an express letter from Aunt Enid to say that she was looking forward to seeing them at the weekend and suggesting that they stay overnight in the bungalow. Andy’s father and mother could sleep in the double bed in Aunt Enid’s room; Andy himself could sleep on the sofa in the sitting room. If they had to bring Teaser, she did not advise that he came indoors at all; could he not sleep in the car and be exercised from there? She was sorry that the spare room was not yet habitable; she did not think they had faded yet. The key to the bungalow would be in the milk box by the back door.
“This fading,” said Andy’s father. “What is she talking about?” He was exasperated. However, he agreed that they should all go down, as Aunt Enid had suggested, and they did.
The bungalow was neat and clean, as one would have expected of Aunt Enid’s home, but it seemed empty and lifeless with even the cat dead. They decided to leave Teaser mostly in the car, as Aunt Enid had wished it. Andy’s parents would sleep in Aunt Enid’s own room, but what about Andy? It was all very well for Aunt Enid to suggest the sofa; she had forgotten how time had passed—how much older Andy was, how much bigger. So they discussed the suitability of Aunt Enid’s spare room, after all.