NIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE Read online

  ‘For a moment Ethel was disconcerted. To do her justice, she had not the remotest idea of the harm she was doing, or one might blame her more bitterly; the fact that the child remembered her remark surprised her, and for a moment she hesitated. Then she remembered how well Tony had recently behaved, and was reluctant to admit she had invented the whole thing, lest her authority over him be weakened. . . . Hastily she picked him up and set him on her knee, a belated compunction catching at her heart.

  ‘“Now that’s all right, Master Tony! I told you he only came for naughty boys, and you bin as good as gold these days—he won’t come after you as long as you’re good and do what Ethel tells you!”

  ‘The child surveyed her intently for a minute, but he was obviously not listening. He nodded brusquely in the direction of the cupboard door. “He . . . what’s he like?” His voice was tiny and hushed, and the little cold hand on hers shook.

  ‘A secretly pricking conscience making her irritable, Ethel retorted snappishly as she dumped her charge down on the rug again, and stood shaking her apron into place.

  ‘“Lor, how you do bother me, Master Tony! I told you not to go on so, silly . . . he won’t bother you if you’re a good boy. Now have a nice game with your new puzzle bricks, there’s a lamb.”

  ‘The child’s dark eyes searched her face still with an intentness that made her both angry and uneasy; going to the toy cupboard she pulled out the bricks, spilling them on the hearthrug in a brightly-coloured heap.

  ‘But there was a steel-like pertinacity about the child, and he was not to be distracted.

  ‘“What’s he like, Ethel? Is he—black?”

  ‘“Bless you, yes, I expect so!”

  ‘The puzzle bricks were a new form of jigsaw, and Ethel, suddenly engrossed in the interest of trying to piece them together, answered more or less at random. “Black as my hat, that’s what he is, and a pair of great Big Eyes . . . that stare and stare . . . now drat it, wherever does that bit fit in?” She pored over the puzzle, and the quiet little voice went on at her side:

  ‘“Ethel . . . what’s his name . . . has he got a name?”

  ‘The quietness of the voice was deceptive, and Ethel was no sensitive soul to catch the hard-held quiver in it, to see the tenseness of the small hands clasped round the sturdy knees. She answered blithely, her eyes on the puzzle, one red hand poising a kidney-shaped block of painted wood above the board.

  ‘“Name. . . . Oh, I d’no, Master Tony. Everything’s got a name, I s’pose—I know!” Triumphantly she fitted in the last piece but one. The name of the makers glimmered up at her in the firelight from the cover of the box—“Woozell and Merriman’s, Gracechurch Street”. She giggled as she sat back to hunt for the last piece among the long fronds of the white sheepskin rug. “The Woozle’s his name, Master Tony—and he’s a one-er for naughty boys, he is, I tell you! Now what’s gone with that bit, I do wonder—must have dropped out when I got it out of the cupboard. . . .” She moved, grumbling, over to the door of the dreaded cupboard. Tony’s eyes followed her, widening in growing terror—the Woozle’s cupboard! He didn’t come till it was

  Dark—but it was growing dark now, quickly, quickly, and inside the cupboard it would be dark already. Opening the door Ethel dived into the shadows, and suddenly sprang back with a shriek that was echoed gruesomely by a second and terribly shrill scream from the fireplace. The girl turned with a flash, forgetting the stray mouse that had occasioned her own momentary fright, and beheld Tony flat, rigid against the wall, his little face frozen with terror, white as paper, his bulging eyes glaring at the open door of the dark cupboard, from which any moment the Horror might emerge! . . .

  ‘For once the child’s claim outweighed the temptations of an evening with good-looking Tom Sheppard, and that night Ethel did not leave the flat, but lay listening nervously, repentantly, to the gradually quieting breathing of her little charge. She was thoroughly startled and frightened at the alarming result of her random talk, and had done her affectionate, ignorant best to obliterate its effects, but, had she only known it, without much result. True, she had succeeded, by dint of coaxing, petting, not a few tears, and many hugs and kisses, in soothing away the dreadful mask-like look from the little face, the rigidity from the tight-strung small body. She had rushed to him, taken him in her arms, and amid kisses and tears, and assurances that it was all right, “only a mouse, nothing else . . .” led him shaking to the cupboard, shown him the familiar contents, and that no lurking terror hid amongst the heaped books and toys—but she dimly felt that all was not well yet. Neither was it, in truth.

  ‘With the uncanny insight of a child Tony knew instantly that she was deliberately now trying to “back down” on her previous statements, but unfortunately read into this his own interpretation, not that the Woozle did not exist—had he not seen her jump back from him?—but that she now wished she had never told him anything about it. Thinking back, he remembered that she said “It” only appeared at night—in the dark—when normally he was instantly and blissfully asleep—therefore what was the use of assuring him there was nothing there and taking him to the cupboard and putting a light inside it. Of course on the advent of the light the Woozle would somehow slip away, but he had the profoundest inner conviction that the closing of the cupboard, somehow, closed in, with its inner darkness, the Terror that Ethel had surprised crouching in the darkest corner when she shrieked and sprang back . . . for, of course, he had not the smallest belief in her story of a mouse.

  ‘Mice? That was silly. He knew mice. Cousin Angus had lots of them, white and brown, and there was nothing like that in the cupboard—besides, what was there to scream at in a mouse? Certainly Ethel had begged him not to say anything about “It” to his mother . . . but if the Woozle was only a story as she said, why should it matter his mother knowing that she had just made up a story out of her head? Why, mother used to make up stories out of her head, lots of them, for Tony, once, before Daddy Fred came along and took her out to so many parties . . . but poor Ethel, she thought that Mummy would be cross if she heard about the Woozle, and send her away. . . . Horrible thought—if Mummy heard about the Woozle, she would be frightened too, and that simply couldn’t happen. Daddy Neil always said gentlemen must look after ladies, and do whatever they asked them, and Ethel had cried and begged him not to tell Mummy . . . certainly he had better not say anything about it. . . .

  ‘So definitely, stealthily, Fear stole into the nursery, and the great toy cupboard, once the nicest place in the room, crammed to bursting with fascinating toys, games and picture-books, became a place to pass with caution even during the daytime, and at night—well, the nights were times to be dreaded more and more as the days passed on. To Ethel’s astonishment, but secret delight, bedtime, once a long period of protest, arguments, pleadings in the usual little-boy fashion for “just another hour”, became suddenly easy; the child’s dread of the shadows, the oncoming night, made him welcome the shelter of the comforting bedclothes, and he would dive beneath them, like a rabbit into its burrow, instantly the lights were lowered, pulling them feverishly over his head. Released, the nurse promptly left the flat, as usual, shutting the door behind her.

  ‘Who knows what agonisings, what self-imagined terrors that child went through all alone in the shadow-crowded nursery, where the firelight flickered stealthily on chair and table, loose curtain moving quietly in a passing draught, cupboard door ajar, showing a long strip of blackness within?

  ‘As soon as the flat door closed behind his nurse Tony would push away the clothes from his face, and leaning up on one small elbow, stare affrightedly round the silent room. With the fascination of fear he always avoided looking at the sinister door of the toy cupboard, generally ajar, as it had warped and was difficult to keep shut, yet in the end he knew he must look at it, and keep on looking, wondering, dreading, his heart pounding like a drum, his terrified eyes fixed, self-hypnotised, on the door behind which crouched that dreadful Shadow, watching, alw
ays watching him. True, Ethel had declared the Woozle only wanted naughty boys, and he was good now, she said; indeed, the poor little soul, consumed by a growing dread and terror of which her bovine peasant soul had absolutely no conception, became so unnaturally “good”, as she termed it, that that alone, to a seeing eye, would have been a danger signal.

  ‘All the usual healthy, childish rompings and impulsive mischief seemed to be dead in him; he obeyed her with almost pitiful eagerness and promptitude, and when, as sometimes happened, Ethel was peevish and snapped at or shook him, the child’s agitation became utterly pitiable, terrified as he was at those times lest he might have been “naughty” in one of the myriad mysterious ways in which a small boy may be naughty, from the point of view of one of the Olympian “grown-ups”, without the least intention of being so. His instinct abject pleas for pardon, pathetic endeavours to find out his fault and remedy it, the almost hysterical eagerness he displayed at those times to be forgiven and taken back into favour, far from warning Ethel of danger ahead, filled her in her ignorance with the satisfaction of having “made him mind her properly—a spoilt young limb he was at first, and so I tell you!”

  ‘Certainly Tony had been an ordinarily healthy, obstreperous, and quite exasperatingly naughty small boy when she took over the care of him from his young mother, but that accusation could scarcely be levelled at him now, for it was a very quiet little boy that trotted about the nursery, playing mechanically with his toys, his childish noise and mischief entirely quenched.

  ‘Mrs Redmayes now noticed the change in the boy, and the loss of colour from the apple-cheeks, the lightness of the little body, began to worry her a little, but the doctor said there was nothing wrong, prescribed a tonic, and as she was in a whirl of seasonal gaieties, she left it at that. The memory of the little serious face disquieted her at times though, and she, dimly realising her selfishness even through her preoccupations, promised herself vaguely that “when this batch of invitations was done, she’d really see more of Tony”.

  ‘One night before she went out she ran in to the nursery, a delightful vision in a wonderful silver gown, her blue velvet cloak lined and collared with ermine, diamonds starring her pretty arms and throat. Tony looked up at her adoringly as she drew him to her side—laughing as she pinched his cheek with a perfumed hand and kissed him.

  ‘“Well—has Tony been a good boy today—has he, Ethel?”

  ‘The child’s small body stiffened curiously as he listened for the girl’s answer, and when it came relaxed with sudden exquisite relief.

  ‘“Oh yes, Master Tony’s a good boy generally now. Not half the Turk he used to be,” Ethel hastened to assure her mistress. Her post was well paid and easy, and had Tony really been the Turk she described, she would scarcely have said so.

  ‘Mrs Redmayes regarded her son with an odd little feeling of almost shyness; he seemed curiously aloof and quiet—a totally different being to the noisy, demonstrative mischief-loving baby of a year ago. A faint frown of perplexity creased her pretty forehead. Putting up a grubby little hand, Tony stroked it away.

  ‘“Mummy’s making wiggles in her forehead,” he explained. “Daddy Neil didn’t like Mummy to make wiggles—don’t, Mummy.”

  ‘The frown increased. This unexpected introduction of Neil Hurst’s name jarred on Mamie Redmayes like the sudden opening of a sore place; not that she was callous, but she did not want specially to be reminded of her first marriage, its crazy happiness, dire poverty, wonder and misery, in this delightful, cushioned content of her second. Also, she was genuinely fond of her second husband and understood him as she had never understood Neil Hurst, poet and dreamer, whose deep instinctive knowledge of life was as far above her charming, foolish little suburban head as the stars are above their reflections in a wayside pool.

  ‘Tony had not spoken of his father for fully two years, certainly not since her marriage with Redmayes, and she had thought, like Ethel, that with the cheerful nonchalance of the usual child, he had grown to accept Redmayes as his father. Holding the boy between her knees she stared down at him rather uncertainly.

  ‘“Daddy Neil?” The boy’s baby name for Hurst. “What makes you talk about Daddy Neil, Tony?”

  ‘“I wiss Daddy Neil was back here again.” The child’s voice was wistful, and Mamie Redmayes winced a little.

  ‘“Yes . . . but that can’t be, sonny boy. God sent Daddy Fred to comfort Mummy and Sonny when Daddy Neil had to go away . . . you must love Daddy Fred instead.”

  ‘Tony’s stubborn little jaw was set; young as he was, the possessive male was potent. . . . Daddy Fred meant to him the loss of his mother’s precious company, and he was frankly jealous.

  ‘“Don’t like Daddy Fred. . . .”

  ‘Mamie Redmayes, already rather ruffled, bit her lip angrily.

  ‘“Tony—what do you mean? You know how good Daddy Fred is to you. Look at your lovely toys and the pony and all the good times he gives you. Don’t you remember the pantomime, and going to see the Waxworks? How can you say you don’t love Daddy Fred when he’s so good to you?”

  ‘The child hesitated, his sullen mood on the verge of breaking, when Fred Redmayes’s voice came from the hall downstairs, cheerful, bluff, insistent.

  ‘“Mamie—coming? Pack the kid off to bed and hop along!”

  ‘The latent masculine jealousy boiled over in the little breast, and Tony’s eyes glowered as his mother sprang to her feet, releasing him . . . here again it was! For once Mummy had come to be with him, perhaps to play with him, to tell him a story as she used to do—and now she had to go again because Daddy Fred called her! The dark eyes, so deep, so embarrassingly like Hurst’s, stared up at Mamie, morosely angry.

  ‘“I hate Daddy Fred!”

  ‘Mamie, her temper already a little frayed, lost it completely.

  ‘“Tony, how dare you? You naughty, wicked little boy, I never heard such a thing! Ethel, put Master Tony to bed at once, and don’t give him any supper but bread and water. The idea of your daring to say such a wicked, ungrateful thing about Daddy Fred, who’s so good to you! Now I shan’t say good night to you, since you’re so naughty. I shall leave you all alone till you’re sorry. . . .”

  ‘The door shut behind her pretty, indignant back, and Ethel, her sympathies more than a little with Tony, peeped over the banisters to watch her go.

  ‘“Shan’t give him the bread and water, anyway,” she muttered. “Poor kid, he doesn’t see too much of his Ma these days. Not that she’s much loss, I say. . . .”

  ‘But she didn’t reckon on the stubborn sense of justice in Tony’s make-up. Bread and water he insisted on, also on going to bed instanter, though the easy-going Ethel was inclined to let this instruction slide also, helped by the fact that Tom would not be able to meet her till rather later than usual. Tony sat with compressed lips, staring into the fire, while she prepared his bath. Beneath his enforced, unchildish calm his already pitiably over-strained little mind was in a tumult. From the seething mass of emotions that reached him arose one thing, stark and terrifying—he was naughty. He had been naughty, irretrievably, unforgivably naughty; nay more, Mummy had called him “wicked”, and surely wicked was what those people in the Bible were that Daddy Neil used to tell him about, people who were thrown out into “outer darkness”, that was it.

  ‘Darkness—always the dark! That was where wicked people went, and he was wicked—Mummy said he was wicked. . . . Was it wicked to want Mummy back again, Mummy in her little old frocks that were all darned and plain, the frocks she hated so and used to cry about? But then, Mummy made toast at the bright fire, and roasted chestnuts and apples for Tony, and told wonderful stories that peopled the dark with friendly goblin and elf and fairy, not . . . Furtively his eyes flickered to the tall cupboard and winced away in acute terror; the dark was coming—and already it was dark inside the cupboard! . . .

  ‘Ethel, pinning on her hat before the glass after supper, glanced sideways at the set little face that star
ed at the fire so steadfastly. Filled with a vague solicitude for the child’s silent haggardness, the girl half made up her mind to relinquish her usual evening’s flirtation, and stood hesitating at the door, staring at the little figure that sat upright in the bed, its sombre eyes on the fire.

  ‘“You going to sleep like a good boy, Tony?”

  ‘A smile that held a most unchildlike dash of cynicism touched the boy’s lips—good? She did not know! He answered with a funny little dignity:

  ‘“I’m all right, Ethel, if you want to go out.”

  ‘As the door closed behind her hesitating figure a shudder shook the little frame, and he closed his eyes. She was gone—he had sent her away, and he was shut in with It! It was too late to try and run away from It any longer—he must face It, and whatever It meant! With a mental strength astounding in so young a child, he forced himself to remain sitting steadily up in bed, his small face set hard, his clammy hands twisted together, lost in the midst of the swirling terrors that now stormed their way relentlessly into his shrinking soul. He would not hide under the bedclothes—he would face It now, like Daddy Neil said soldiers did.

  ‘By his own act he had delivered himself into the hands that awaited naughty boys—those grim black, claw-like hands that, to his terrified eyes, seemed even now to be stealing furtively round the crack of the half-open cupboard door. . . . “Naughty, wicked boy!—Naughty, wicked boy!” dinned itself ceaselessly into his ears, stretched to bursting with the agonised strain of listening for that stealthy sound that would mean the gradual opening of the door. It would be a trailing, ominous, velvet sound, direfully soft and stealthy. . . . Through the gathering mists of terror the child yet found a ghastly fascination in trying to picture the Occupant of the Cupboard, whose softly gruesome name “The Woozle” seemed to sing itself like a menacing chant in his brain. The Woozle—who lay in wait for naughty boys—The Woozle, stooping and shadowy and horrible, with eyes like lamps in the dark, eyes that never blinked . . . eyes like Timmy the cat’s, green lambent circles centred with a black slit, that glowed from the sheer blackness of the night like witch-lights. . . .