Familiar and Haunting

  Standing in the spare room, looking around, they could see nothing against its use. Like the rest of the bungalow, it was neat and clean, with a single bed and a bedside lamp that worked. The room had no special features. There was a chiming clock on the mantelpiece; at least, Andy’s mother said that it used to chime, but it had stopped working altogether by now. (Andy tried to wind it, in vain.) There was a cactus in a pot on the windowsill, and a white china rabbit heading a procession of little white china rabbits on a dressing table.

  “Why didn’t she want us to use the room?” Andy’s mother asked suspiciously. They had a good look round. Nothing odd, and absolutely no trace left of the late Captain Joel, except for an empty whiskey bottle that Andy spotted, poked up the chimney.

  Andy decided for himself by unrolling his sleeping bag on the single bed.

  After supper they all went to bed.

  Andy woke up in what seemed the middle of the night, but the room was not really dark. He thought he had been woken by a noise, a squeaking, perhaps. Now he was almost sure there was a soft scrabbling sound from the floor beyond the bottom of the bed. Very quietly he raised himself on his elbow to look. Against the far wall, heads together as if conferring, were two rats. They must be rats, and yet they were much, much larger than any ordinary rat, and their color was a gray-white splotched with chestnut brown. He disliked their coloring very much. They seemed to have heard the slight creak of Andy’s bedsprings, for now they turned their heads to look at him. They had pink eyes.

  Then they began creeping to and fro against the wall and then running, in an agitated kind of way, almost as if they were getting their courage up. Each time they ran in the direction of the bed, they ran nearer than they had done the last time. Especially the bigger of the two rats, which Andy assumed to be the male. The female lagged behind a little, always, but still, she ran a little nearer to the bed every time.

  The male rat was scurrying closer and closer, and suddenly the knowledge came to Andy that it was going to attack. He was appalled. Frantically he prepared to ward off its attack with his naked hand. The rat sprang, launching its heavy body through the air like a missile and sank its teeth into his hand.

  Andy was already on his feet on the bed. He knew the female rat would attack next. The male hung from his hand as he slapped it violently, madly, repeatedly against the wall so that the body of the iron-teethed monster banged again and again and again against the wall. It seemed to him that almost simultaneously the body of the rat suddenly flew from its head, still teeth clenched in his flesh, and he himself flew from that dreadful bedroom. He slammed the door behind him against the female rat and rushed into his parents’ room. They had already put on the light, roused by his screaming.

  Andy was still screaming: “Look! The rat, the rat!” He held out his hand for them to see the horror hanging from it.

  They all looked at his hand: Andy’s brown right hand, just as it always had been, entirely unmarked except where he had once scarred himself with a saw long ago. No rat.

  “You’ve been dreaming,” said his mother. “You were asleep, and you had a nightmare.”

  “No,” said Andy, “I was awake.” And he told them everything.

  They went back into the spare room with him. There were no rats of course, nor any sign of one.

  Staring round, Andy’s father said at last, “They weren’t your rats, Andy; they were the captain’s. And as your great-aunt said, they haven’t faded yet.”

  They shut the door fast on the spare room and made up a bed of sorts for Andy in the sitting room, with cushions on the floor and his sleeping bag on top. Then they all went back to bed.

  But—not surprisingly, perhaps—Andy could not get to sleep. He found that he was listening for sounds behind the door of the spare room. In the end he got up quietly and went out of the bungalow and brought Teaser in from the car for company. Teaser was delighted.

  Andy had begun to fall asleep with the comforting weight of Teaser on his feet when the dog left him. He was slipping out of the sitting room, whose door had been deliberately left ajar. Andy called softly, but Teaser paid no attention. Andy got up and followed him. By now Teaser was across the hall and at the spare room door. His nose was at the bottom crack, moving to and fro along it, sampling the air there. His tail moved occasionally, stiffly, in pleasure or in pleasurable anticipation.

  Andy thought he heard a squeak from the other side of the door, two squeaks, the squeaks of two different rat voices.

  “No, Teaser,” whispered Andy. “Oh, no!”

  But Teaser looked over his shoulder at Andy, and his look spoke. On impulse Andy opened the spare room door a few inches, and at once Teaser had pushed past it into the room.

  Instantly there was tumult—a wild barking and the rush of scuttering feet and objects falling and crashing and breaking and the clock that never went now chiming on and on in horological frenzy. Above all, the joyous barking of chase and battle.

  Andy held the door to, without clicking it shut, in case Teaser might want to get out in a hurry. But Teaser did not want to get out; he was in a terrier’s paradise.

  By now Andy’s father and mother were out of bed again, with Andy, and he explained what he had done. Mr. Potter was of the opinion that they should wait outside the room until Teaser had finished doing whatever he was doing. Mrs. Potter insisted that in the meantime Mr. Potter should fetch the poker from the sitting room. Then they waited until the barking and worrying noises grew less frequent. A kind of peace seemed to have come to the spare room.

  Mr. Potter flung wide the door, at the same time switching the light on.

  The room was in a terrible mess: the bedspread had been torn off the bed, and the floor rugs were in a heap in one corner; the china rabbit and its litter were smashed and scattered all over the room; the cactus stood on its head in the middle of the floor, with earth and potsherds widely strewn round it; and the clock had been hurled from the mantelpiece and lay face downward on the floor in a mess of broken glass, still chiming. On the bed stood Teaser, panting, his mouth wide open with his tongue hanging out, his tail briskly wagging, his eyes shining. He was radiant, triumphant. The night of his life.

  After a silence, “They won’t come back,” said Mr. Potter, “ever.”

  They tidied the bedroom as best they could. They repotted the cactus and threw away the remains of the rabbits and put the clock back on the mantelpiece. It would need a new glass, of course, but it had stopped chiming and was ticking quite sensibly. Mrs. Potter set it to the right time—nearly breakfast time.

  Later that day, visiting Aunt Enid in hospital, Andy apologized for Teaser about the rabbits and the clock glass. He did not explain things. His mother had said that it would be best not to burden the invalid with the whole story.

  Aunt Enid was not as prim as she used to be. She was naturally confused about what had been going on in the bungalow, but pleased. “I’m pleased that you and the dog had such a nice romp, Andy dear,” she said. “And when I’m home again, it’ll be a great convenience that the clock really goes. I can easily get a new glass.” She hesitated. “You had no trouble from—from them?”

  Andy’s father said quickly, “The dog got them.”

  Mrs. Chamberlain’s Reunion

  This is a tale of long ago. I was a little boy, and our family lived—no, resided—among other well-off families in a residential neighborhood. All those neighbors were people like ourselves, who thought well of themselves and also liked to keep themselves to themselves.

  Except for one neighbor. That’s where my story starts.

  On one side of us had lived for many years the Miss Hardys, two spinster sisters, very ladylike. Our two gardens were separated by a trellis fence with rambler roses, a rather sketchy, see-through affair. So our family had at least an acquaintance with the Miss Hardys, and my sister, Celia, knew them quite well. As a little girl she had played with their cat, Mildred, until it died of old age.

  Of course, we
had neighbors on the other side, too, but on that side a thick laurel hedge grew so high that these neighbors—to us children, anyway—seemed hardly to exist.

  In all the years that we lived in our house (and it had been bought by my father from a family called Chamberlain, just before my birth), neighbors may have come and gone beyond the laurel hedge, but we never noticed.

  Then one day there was a new neighbor, and suddenly things were different. The new neighbor cut down the hedge—not to the ground, of course, but to shoulder level. He thus revealed himself to us: Mr. Wilfred Brown, retired and a widower.

  He was a well-built man with an inquiring nose. His eyes, large and prominent, looked glancingly, missing nothing, yet his gaze could settle with close attention. My mother said he stared.

  My mother snubbed Mr. Brown’s attempts at conversation over what remained of the hedge. She had decided that he was what she called “common.” She remarked to my father that Mr. Brown had been a butcher, and my father, in rare joking mood, pointed out that he had indeed butchered the hedge. But my father was no more ready than my mother for a friendly chat with Mr. Brown.

  We three children, however, had been strictly taught to be attentive and polite to our elders. In the garden, therefore, we were at Mr. Brown’s mercy. He hailed us, talked with us, questioned us. We had to answer. Thus Mr. Brown discovered that, in our well-ordered family way, we would be off on our fortnight’s summer holiday, starting—as always—on the second Saturday of August.

  The date was then the thirtieth of July.

  The next time that my mother went into the garden, to cut flowers for an arrangement, Mr. Brown accosted her over the hedge. He begged to be allowed “to keep a friendly and watchful eye” on our house while we were away at the seaside.

  My mother answered with instant refrigeration: “Too kind, Mr. Brown! But we could not possibly put you to such trouble. We shall make our usual arrangements.”

  Mr. Brown asked, “How good are these arrangements, Mrs. Carew? What are they exactly?” He gazed earnestly, and his inquiring nose seemed to quiver.

  My mother was flustered by Mr. Brown’s stare. She was forced into explaining in detail that the Miss Hardys would be left with the key to the house, as well as with our telephone number at the seaside. But all this was only for use in case of emergency.

  Mr. Brown shook his head. “The Miss Hardys, you say? Oh, dear me! Ladies are prone to panic in an emergency.”

  By now my mother had recovered herself. She retorted quite sharply: “The Miss Hardys are never prone to anything, Mr. Brown.”

  Mr. Brown smiled and shook his head again. So there the matter was left. My mother could hardly forbid a neighbor to focus his eyes sometimes on our house, now so very visible over the low hedge. So, for the first time since we had lived there, our empty house would be overlooked not only by the Miss Hardys but also by our new neighbor on the other side, Mr. Brown.

  Meanwhile that second Saturday in August was drawing nearer and nearer.

  I was the youngest child and excited at the thought of the sea and the seaside. The other two were much calmer; they remembered so well other fortnights beginning with that second Saturday in August. Celia told me privately that Robert, the eldest of us, had said (but not in our parents’ hearing, of course) that family holidays got duller and duller.

  Celia herself would probably be too preoccupied with her white mouse, Micky, to be bored on the holiday. There was nothing at all remarkable about Micky, except that neither of our parents knew of his existence. They had never liked animals. They hadn’t really approved of Celia’s playing with the Hardys’ cat; they were relieved when Mildred died. Disappointingly for Celia, the Hardys did not get another cat; Mildred had only been inherited from their old friend and neighbor Mrs. Chamberlain when she died. Celia missed a pet and at last—most daringly and, of course, secretly—had acquired Micky. She would take Micky on holiday with her, and his very private companionship would console her during her seaside fortnight.

  At the seaside we always stayed in the same guesthouse and did the same things; that was one of Robert’s complaints. My father played golf and did some sea fishing, and whatever the weather, he swam every morning before breakfast, taking Robert with him. Sometimes he shared with my mother the duty of supervising our play: we were allowed to paddle and trawl in rock pools with nets and to make sand castles and sand pictures. Sometimes we went for long walks inland, all five of us. Of course, there were wet Augusts, but my father never allowed rain to keep us indoors for even half a day. One could walk quite well in mackintoshes and Wellington boots, he said, and our landlady, Mrs. Prothero, was obliging about the drying out of wet clothes.

  Our return from these holidays was always the same. As the car turned into our quiet, treelined street, there was our house, but first my mother had to collect the key from the Miss Hardys.

  “All has been well, I hope, Miss Hardy?”

  “Nothing at all for you to worry about, Mrs. Carew.”

  The younger Miss Hardy, from behind her sister in the doorway, would ask, “And you had a restful holiday, Mrs. Carew?”

  “Restful and delightful,” said my mother. “Perhaps a little rainy, but that never kept us indoors. And now it’s good to be home.”

  Having recovered the key from the Miss Hardys, my mother would rejoin the family as we waited at our own front door. She handed the key to my father. He unlocked the door, and we entered. We brought with us the salty smell of the seaside rising from our hair and skin and clothing and from the collections of seashore pebbles and shells in our buckets. That saltiness, together with fresh air from newly opened windows, soon began to get rid of the stuffy, rather unpleasant smell of an empty house shut up for a whole fortnight. Soon our home was exactly as it had always been, and so it would remain for another year, until another second Saturday in August.

  But this particular year our seaside holiday could not possibly have been described as restful and delightful, even by my mother, and our homecoming was to be very different.

  From that second Saturday in August rain fell without stopping; this we had had to endure on holidays before now. What was new was Robert’s sullen ill temper, as continuous as the rain and as damping. He said nothing openly, for my father could be very sharp with a child of his ungrateful enough not to enjoy the holiday he was providing. My mother tried to soothe and smooth. She gave out that Robert was probably incubating some mild infection.

  As if to prove her point, Robert developed a heavy cold after one of our wet walks and sneezed all over Mrs. Prothero’s paying guests’ sitting room. He had to borrow his father’s linen handkerchiefs, and Mrs. Prothero had to boil them after use and dry them and iron them. Mrs. Prothero complained about the extra work, and we all caught Robert’s cold. In spite of this, my father continued to play golf and to fish, until one morning he embedded a fishhook in the palm of his right hand. He came out of the local hospital with his hand bandaged and in a bad temper. No more golf or fishing for the rest of the holiday.

  This all happened in our first week. We were still, however, expecting to remain at the seaside, enjoying ourselves, to the end of our fortnight.

  Then came the telephone call.

  We had returned from a moist morning’s walk to be told that a Mr. Wilfred Brown had telephoned. He had urgently asked that Mr. or Mrs. Carew should telephone him back as soon as possible.

  “What’s the man on about?” my father demanded fretfully. “Telephone him back, indeed! Does he think I’m made of money?”

  “Perhaps something’s wrong at home,” faltered my mother. She was remembering Mr. Brown’s “watchful eye.”

  “Rubbish!” said my father. “One of the Miss Hardys would have telephoned us; not this Brown fellow.”

  He was so enraged with Mr. Brown that when during lunch, the telephone rang again for Mr. or Mrs. Carew, my mother had to deal with it. She went most reluctantly; she returned clearly shaken. “Mr. Brown was surprised that w
e hadn’t rung back.” My father snorted. “He thinks there’s something wrong at home. He’s been on the watch, and he’s sure there are goings-on (as he puts it) inside our house. He’s sure that ’something’s up.’”

  “Inside our house!” cried my father, throwing aside his napkin. “Then why on earth hasn’t the fool got the police? Burglars! And he just… Oh, the idiot, the juggins!”

  “No,” said my mother. “Nobody’s broken in; he was quite positive about that. This is different, he says. Something wrong inside the house.”

  My father stared in angry disbelief. Then he gave his orders. “Go and telephone the Miss Hardys.” My father felt that as a general rule, ladies should communicate with ladies; men with men. “Tell them what Brown says, and find out—oh, just find out something”

  My father bade us all go on with our lunch, as he himself did, and my mother went to the telephone again. She came back after a while, still troubled. “I told them, dear, and they’re sure there’s nothing at all for us to worry about. They insist that’s so. But they’re upset by Mr. Brown’s suspicions. I didn’t tell you at the time, dear, but he asked me on the telephone whether we’d empowered—that was his word: empowered—the Miss Hardys to use the house in our absence. But they say they’ve never set foot over the threshold in our absence. Ever. It’s all rather strange and horrid. …”

  We three children listened, appalled—delightfully appalled. If the Miss Hardys were other than they had always seemed—if they were liars, trespassers, thieves—if all this, then houses might come toppling about our ears and cars take off with wings.

  My father had risen from his carving chair. “There’s only one thing to be done: we go home. Now. At once. We catch them red-handed.”

  “Red-handed?” my mother repeated faintly, thinking no doubt of the towering respectability of the two Miss Hardys, and: “Now? When we’re only halfway through our holiday?”

  “Damn the holiday!” cried my father, who never swore in the presence of his family. “We’re going home. There are hours yet of daylight. If we leave now, we can be there before dark. Everyone pack at once.”