Familiar
and
Haunting
Collected Stories
by PHILIPPA PEARCE
Contents
Part I The Stories
The Rope
Early Transparent
The Fir Cone
Nutmeg
Bluebag
The Nest Egg
Inside Her Head
What the Neighbors Did
Black Eyes
In the Middle of the Night
The Tree in the Meadow
Fresh
Who’s Afraid?
Still Jim and Silent Jim
The Great Blackberry Pick
Lucky Boy
Return to Air
Part II The Haunting Stories
The Shadow Cage
Miss Mountain
Guess
At the River Gates
Her Father’s Attic
The Running Companion
Beckoned
The Dear Little Man with His Hands in His Pockets
The Dog Got Them
Mrs. Chamberlain’s Reunion
The Strange Illness of Mr. Arthur Cook
A Christmas Pudding Improves with Keeping
Samantha and the Ghost
A Prince in Another Place
The Road It Went By
Auntie
His Loving Sister
Mr. Hurrel’s Tallboy
The Him
The Yellow Ball
About the Author
Story Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Part I
The Stories
The Rope
The rope hung from top to bottom of his dream. The rope hung softly, saying nothing, doing nothing. Then the rope began to swing very softly, very gently, at first only by a hair’s breadth from the vertical… Toward him.
Mike could not see the swing of it, but he knew that it was happening.
The rope swung a little wider, a little wider… Toward him.
The rope had no noose at the end of it, but Mike knew it was a hangman’s rope, as surely as if the rope had told him so, and he knew it was for him.
The rope swung a little wider, a lot wider. …
Wide, wide it swung … Toward him, toward him …
Mike shrieked and woke himself and found that he had only squeaked, after all. He had woken nobody, for he was sleeping alone, downstairs, on the couch in his granny’s sitting room. That was because Shirley and his mother were occupying the spare room upstairs, and of course, Gran herself was in her own bedroom.
Thankfully he lay awake, but gradually thankfulness left him. He got out of his couch bed, went to the window, and drew back the curtains to look out at the early-morning weather.
Please, please, let there be rain… or at least a heavy sky that promised—that faithfully promised—rain later.
But the sky was blue and cloudless, and there was sunshine already in Gran’s little garden and sunshine on the meadow beyond and on the trees that grew along the riverbank. The river bounded the meadow, and on the far bank several very tall trees grew. One of them was Mike’s gallows, his gibbet.
He got back into bed. He didn’t sleep again; he didn’t want to. He didn’t want the morning’s happenings to begin earlier than need be. He dozed, until he had to get up because everybody else was up and about.
At breakfast Shirley said, “Can we go to the rope this morning?”
“Of course,” said their grandmother. “You can both swim well, can’t you? If necessary, that is. When I was your age—”
It always seemed that Gran had been a bit of a tomboy at their age, a successful tomboy. You could see that Shirley liked to think she resembled her granny in this. Perhaps, thought Mike, she really did.
Their mother—Gran’s daughter-in-law, not her daughter—said uneasily, “We’re here on such a short visit, and there are other places to go to besides the river and that rope. …” The river was not deep or fast-flowing or even very wide, but it was certainly very muddy. “If either of them fell in …”
Their gran said, “Nonsense! What’s a little river water in summer to them, at their age?”
So, altogether, it had to be taken for granted that they would go to the river, to the rope.
And it certainly wasn’t going to rain this morning, but oh! Mike thought, it just possibly could in the afternoon. So he must maneuver and contrive. He said, “We can go to the river this morning and to Brown’s this afternoon. I expect there’ll still be a few comics left.” Brown’s was the newsagent’s in the village.
“Left?” said Shirley. “A few comics left?”
“They go very quickly,” said Mike.
“Oh!” said Shirley. Then: “No, let’s do Brown’s this morning, the rope this afternoon.”
“If you say so,” said Mike. He also shrugged his shoulders.
Their grandmother had given them money to buy comics, enough money to buy at least one each. When they reached Brown’s, Shirley was businesslike in her examining and choosing; Mike mooned around, flipping pages, dissatisfied. Here, in this one, was the kind of story he usually enjoyed. Mighty-righty—that was the hero’s name-was tough and fearless. He also had magic powers. In an emergency, he just pressed a button on his chest and little luminous wings sprouted from his shoulders to carry him anywhere. (The wings could be retracted by the same device.) Moreover, if he clenched his right hand once, it became a fist to knock out a champion boxer; twice, and he could knock down trees and walls. (It was possible that he could clench it a third time and so acquire even superior power, but that was only hinted at in the story.)
“I saw you yesterday,” said a voice at Mike’s elbow. “Yesterday evening. By the river.” A ginger-haired boy of about Mike’s age; he sounded friendly.
“Oh,” said Mike.
“Have you come to live in one of those houses beyond the meadow?”
“No,” said Mike. “Only staying. With our gran. Two days.”
“Have you seen the rope?” asked the ginger-haired boy.
“Yes,” said Mike.
“We’re going there later,” said Shirley eagerly.
“See you then,” said the ginger-haired boy. He left the shop with a packet of sweets that he had just bought.
Mike put Mighty-righty back on the display shelf. “I don’t want any of them,” he said. “They’re rubbish.”
Shirley, not really expecting any luck, asked if she could use Mike’s share of the money they had been given, and to her amazement, he said that she could. He was very quiet as they walked back from Brown’s, but Shirley was dipping into her comics as she went and noticed nothing. He was silent over their midday meal with the others, but no one noticed because Gran was hurrying everything today. She wanted the children to have plenty of time by the river, with the rope.
Mike offered to stay and help with the washing up, but his granny told him that she and his mother would do it. He must go off with his sister—no time like the present, for their age. So Mike and Shirley went alone across the meadow, in blazing sunshine, to the river and the trees on the riverbank.
There it hung: the rope.
A tall tree leaned over the river, and one end of the rope had been attached to a high branch of it, so that the rope hung down over the river. It hung to within a hand’s breadth of the surface of the water, almost exactly over the middle of the river.
That was how it had hung yesterday evening, when Mike and Shirley had first seen it, but already today someone had waded or swum out to the rope and caught the end of it and brought it back to the far bank—the far bank, as far as Mike and Shirley were concerned. They looked across and saw the boy who must hav
e taken the rope in this way. He was dripping with river water and shivering, and at the same time, he was laughing and talking with the friends gathered round him. Mike recognized him, in spite of the fact that his curly ginger hair was plastered down straight and dark over his wet head: Ginger.
And now Ginger saw them and recognized them. “Hi!” he shouted across the river, in his friendly way, and prepared to swing across to them on the rope.
He carried the operation out to perfection.
Four knots had been made in the rope at intervals, to suit the users of it. Ginger grasped the rope just above the third knot from the bottom, drew back from the edge of the riverbank in order to take a running leap, then ran—pushed off with both feet—and leapt forward over the water. His feet pushed and leapt and then clamped themselves about the rope just above the lowest knot, tied at the very end of it.
He came floating through the air on the rope, across the river, with the ease and grace of talent and practice. He landed faultlessly on the near bank, just beside Mike and Shirley. He steadied himself for an instant and then stood there, holding the rope.
He smiled directly at Mike; he really was a friendly boy. He said, “Like a go?”
Mike was still able to think, to speak. He said, “The others had better have their turns first. …”
“Everyone’s had a turn. It’s all yours.”
Mike was rooted to the ground; his voice had vanished. But Shirley had moved forward hopefully, and Ginger, noticing her, said, “You first, then?”
He showed her exactly where to hold on to the rope, above the particular knot that suited her height, and reminded her of the position of her feet above the lowest knot. He made her draw back from the edge of the bank, so that she could get a good run and push before swinging out and over. And he pointed out earnestly that she would need as much push from the other side to get back again. “It’s very important,” he said. “If you miss your proper push from the bank—well, you’ve had it.”
“Yes,” said Shirley, again and again. “Yes—yes—I know!” And she really did seem to understand, without more explanation. She held on to the rope just as she should and made her little run and push and leap and, gripping the rope with her feet, swung right across the river to land among Ginger’s friends, who raised a mild cheer in her honor. Then she turned to swing back but had not forgotten any of Ginger’s instructions: Holding the rope, she drew back, ran, and pushed off across the river to land where Ginger and Mike stood on the other bank.
“That’s it!” said Ginger, but before he could say more, she was off again toward the far bank.
And then, expertly, back again. This time Ginger caught her and held her, while he took the rope from her. Mike watched and knew what would happen next.
“Your turn,” Ginger said to him, and he had the same truly friendly smile as before.
Mike knew that everyone was looking at him; they were interested, but casual, knowing what they were expecting from him, not doubting they would have it from him. Only Shirley was perhaps looking at him in a different way, because she was his sister and she knew him: she knew what he might be thinking, feeling; she knew what he might do, what he might not do.
He tried to say aloud, “No, I don’t want to do it. I won’t do it.” But he could not.
And Shirley watched his fear, his fear within fear.
Ginger was still holding the rope out toward him. Mike took it and stretched his hands up above the knot that Ginger said was for him. Blindly, he was about to set off on his swing at once, but Ginger pulled him back to make the necessary run up, leap, and push.
So now he was away, swinging out from the near bank toward the far one, and one of his feet had come loose from its correct position above the bottom knot. The foot fumbled for its place again, and the rope tried to twist away from it, teasing it. And meanwhile he had left the near bank a long, long way behind and was over the middle of the river, and here came the far bank, taking him by cruel surprise. He still hadn’t got both feet into the correct position, and that almost stupefied him with anxiety. He forgot the need to land properly on the far bank before starting his return swing. He remembered only the need to push off from it. His free foot touched the bank, and at once, with all the strength of his one foot, he pushed and swung away again, rather unevenly, back toward the near bank. There was a wasteful twirl to his swing, and when he reached the other bank, where Ginger and Shirley stood, his toes only just touched it. With his toes he managed a push backward, but too weakly to carry him the whole way back; at the end of his swing, his feet never touched the far bank at all. From that far bank, the automatic swing of a pendulum movement took him back toward the near bank, but with no possibility of his even touching it with his toes, far less of making a landing.
Now he swung toward the far bank, then back toward the near. To and fro he swung across the river, with no hope of making a landing on either bank.
Each time the swing became a little narrower. Narrower and narrower.
The rope, satisfied, now swung lazily and narrowly over the middle part of the river. Soon it would be hanging still, vertical, with Mike on it.
The swinging had narrowed to nothing. Stopped.
Mike was hanging on the rope over the middle of the river, and there was only one way in which he could stop hanging there and go home from this rope and river and meadow and hateful village. He must let go. His hands—and his remaining foot—must let go of the rope. He must fall into the river, which, after all, was not deep or swift-flowing, and he could swim.
He would not mind being in the river—oh, no!—but his hands would not let go of the rope. He whimpered to them to let go, but they would not. They gripped and clung and clutched in spite of the pain in the palms and an intolerable stretching of the muscles of his arms and a feeling as if his shoulders would split open.
He hung there on the rope, twirling slowly round over the middle of the river. Now he could see the people on the far bank; there were quite a lot of them, Ginger’s friends and acquaintances, and they were all looking at him and giggling among themselves. Oh, yes! They were laughing all right! Now he couldn’t see them anymore, because he had rotated further, so that now he was facing the near bank, from which Ginger and Shirley were watching him. They watched in silence. And beyond them, coming across the meadow toward the rope, he saw two more people: his mother and his grandmother. They had finished the washing up and were coming to see how Mike and Shirley were enjoying themselves.
Suddenly, hanging there helplessly, he saw; he knew. He knew that nothing and nobody could save him now—unless he could save himself. He must do it immediately. At once. Now—now, before his mother and his grandmother reached the riverbank. His grandmother particularly.
One foot was already dangling; he detached the other from the rope, so that both feet hung free, although that made the agony in his hands and arms and shoulders even worse. He concentrated his will on letting go with his hands—of his own free will, before he was made to let go by pain and exhaustion. His will was prizing open the fingers of his hands and achieved it, and in the split second of his falling, he also achieved the shout he willed himself to make. It came out partly as a scream, but it was also quite distinctly a word: “Whoops!”
He was in the river. He was choking and drowning, but he surfaced, and it didn’t matter that he was crying because he was all over water, anyway, or that he was sobbing, too, because he had to gasp for breath. Then he was swimming clumsily toward the near bank, and then wading, and finally clambering out to where his mother and grandmother and Shirley and Ginger waited for him.
His mother began fussing at once about his wetness and coldness and muddiness. But his grandmother boomed through it all: “Well done, Mike! It doesn’t matter a scrap that you didn’t manage it first time! You were keen to have a go—that’s the spirit! That’s what I was like at your age! Well done!”
Ginger said nothing.
Shirley said nothing. She was l
ooking at Mike, and Mike knew that because she was his sister, she knew things about him that nobody else did.
He just wanted to go home—to his own home. But that was impossible; he had to go back with the others to Gran’s home, with his mother promising a hot bath and dry clothes, and his grandmother promising a tea with a very special summer treat. Apparently, while he and Shirley had been in the village buying comics, their grandmother and mother had been to a pick-your-own strawberry farm. There were strawberries and cream for tea. (The thought of it made Mike feel sick.)
Surprisingly, Ginger was coming, too. Mike supposed that his grandmother had bullied Ginger into that, or perhaps Ginger really wanted to come. Anyway, arrangements had been made about dry clothes and shoes or sandals or flip-flops for Ginger as well as for himself.
So they went home together. Shirley danced ahead in the triumph of her performance on the rope; then Gran, holding Ginger by her side in conversation; then Mum, trailing a little behind, to encourage Mike; lastly, Mike—miserable Mike.
Later Mike and Ginger were in the bath together. This had not been their idea, but by now Gran spoke of them together as “the boys.” Because of her, they lay one at either end of her large bath, relaxing into the kindliness of hot, clean water. (They needed only to rinse off the river water, they had been told.) Now and then they shifted their limbs a little to start the ripples; they did not speak to each other.
Then, slyly, Ginger splashed at Mike, and Mike splashed back, and then they fooled around with the bathwater, until Mike sat up and looked over the side of the bath and wondered whether his grandmother would be pleased at the mess. Ginger also sat up to look and said that his mother would have been furious.
Now they sat up at either end of the bath, facing each other, and Ginger said, “Your mum said you were going home tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“Will you come again?”
“Maybe.”
“I thought it was really good, that ‘Whoops!’ when you fell in. I fell in once, when I was caught in the middle, early on. I wish I’d thought of ‘Whoops!’ then.”