The Dark and What It Said Page 5

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  John Merewether, heir to the estate on his uncle’s decease, could scarce credit the shameful family secret played out by the dolls’ house discovered in its place of concealment on the demolition of Ilbridge House. He eventually secreted it away in the lumber room of his own residence where it remained until sold many years later and thankfully by his descendants to a travelling buyer of antiques.

  Who, after watching the hideous pantomime one, two, and three nights running, sold it for a quick ten pounds to an antiques dealer named Mr Chittenden.

  Who, professing he needn’t waste money on the picture palace when he and his wife could view a drama of the olden times performing in their own household every one o’clock in the morning, sold it on without warning or explanation to an avid collector, Mr Dillet, the owner of a motor car, a fine house and a keen eye for bargains.

  Who, frightened into a disquieting state of nerves requiring sea air medically prescribed, had the dolls’ house covered with a sheet and conveyed to the loft.

  John Merewether sees his late uncle and aunt in murderous conversation in the dining room, lit by a single candle.

  The antiques buyer sees the man in blue satin shake a fist at the upper window.

  Mr Chittenden and his wife watch the old man start up in his bed, face flushed, eyes glaring, hands at his heart, foam at his lips.

  Mr Dillet sees a coach with flambeaux pulling up before the front door, a white-wigged man all in black alighting.

  A figure, wrinkled, toad-like with scant white hair about its head, peers into the dolls’ house windows as in the nursery a figure, wrinkled, toad-like and with scant white hair about its head, looms a deliberate moment above the truckle beds so that their occupants may see and cry out before cold and wrinkled hands reach down to work among the pillows …

  Chinese Whispers

  The waiters had come and gone, taking away the dessert dishes and bringing in the liqueurs and coffee. Somehow the after-dinner talk got around to party games and someone, possibly Harry, suggested Chinese Whispers.

  Which was just as well. They were not the sort of men to want to play postman’s knock, and were all too middle aged for pin the tail on the donkey.

  Chinese Whispers. Adrian, sitting at the end of the long table, volunteered to start. He fished in his pocket for a pencil and a business card to create a message which would, with any luck, come out hilariously mangled after being passed on many whispered times. But what to write? A classic Chinese Whisper, he knew, had come out of a British dispatch in the First World War, which had started as We are going to advance. Send reinforcements, but had arrived at H.Q. after many relays as We are going to a dance. Send three and four pence.

  He tapped the pencil against his teeth, wondering if he could top that. The hubbub from the restaurant below came faintly up the stairs and through the doors of the private function room. But this hardly intruded on his thoughts as he pondered the problem. Much depended on the original line, its ability to be twisted into similar sounds of nonsense. Around the table, Harry, Charlie, Lew, Douglas and the rest of the monthly dining club, were shuffling their chairs closer together, ready for the game – all except George. He was standing by his chair, looking decidedly uncomfortable. Noticing this broke Adrian’s concentration. George was a recent addition to the dinner gatherings, but even in that short time he’d proved himself something of a shy personality in some ways, not terribly voluble and not one to stand out from the rest. But now here he was acting very differently to the others, glancing now at Adrian, now at the door, now at the windows which looked out onto the night street. Then, quite abruptly, he strode up the length of the table.

  Adrian watched his approach in something of that empty-brained manner a rabbit watches on-coming headlights.

  “Adrian,” George said in a quiet but firm way, “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “What’s not a good idea?” said Adrian, puzzled.

  “Chinese Whispers.”

  “Sorry, George. Don’t follow.”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “Chinese Whispers?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s only a parlour game.”

  “So are ouija boards to some, but you wouldn’t get me near one.”

  “Are you ready, Adrian?” Harry called from the other end of the table.

  “Just about,” he lied. He still had no notion what sentence they were to start with, and George’s interruption wasn’t helping. Without really knowing it Adrian lowered his voice, saying, "What's this about ouija boards, George? I don’t see the connection.”

  “The connection is a very subtle one.”

  “How so?”

  “Such things are invitations.”

  “To whom?”

  “Things.”

  “Talk sense.” Adrian started pencilling a line on his card.

  “Adrian!” George made a grab at the pencil.

  Adrian pulled away, frowning. “What are you doing?”

  George leaned across the table and read the words scribbled on the card. “Do you know what you’re writing?”

  “Of course I know what I’m writing. I’m not being controlled by anything, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s –“ He stopped. They stared at each other a moment, neither really understanding the other. “Adrian, we’re too old to be playing children’s games.”

  “I’m too old to believe that’s what you mean. What’s your real problem?”

  “Would you listen to a story instead?”

  “What sort of story?”

  “A strange story.”

  “Adrian!” said Lew at the end of the room.

  “Sorry, chaps. The game’s postponed. George here has a story to tell us first.”

  Adrian held up his hands to quieten the ensuing noise of disapproval. “Now then, give the fellow a chance. It’s a ghost story, and I know how you fellows like to be spooked.”

  The noises changed to murmurs of appreciation. Charlie and Douglas and one or two others thumped fists upon the table, chanting, “Ghost story! Ghost story!”

  “I didn’t say it was a ghost story,” said George.

  “Didn’t you?” Adrian got up and moved to George’s empty seat.

  “No. I said it was a strange story.”

  “Sorry, George. Must’ve misunderstood. But then that’s what Chinese Whispers is all about, isn’t it.”

  George sat down in Adrian’s place. The chanting and thumping died away.

  “This happened at my old school when I was about ten or eleven,” he began in a clear though slightly nervy voice. “One day during a rather dreary mathematics lesson the Headmaster came blustering in, all very red about the face and with his whiskers bristling. Of course we all thought someone was ‘for it’. Instead, with scant apologises to our teacher, he asked if he might borrow the class for a demonstration of – to use the Head’s own words – ‘the fragility of human communications’.

  “Ten boys and girls were picked from the class and all but one boy were sent out into the corridor. The Headmaster then said to us, ‘I am going to give this boy a message. One of the children in the corridor will then come back in and have the message whispered to him or her. This boy will then return to his seat while another child comes in and is whispered the message in turn from the child who just received it. The process will be repeated until the last.’ He then said to the boy, ‘Here is the message: We may go to the zoo if you behave.’

  “That was all. A prosaic sentence clipped out in a flat tone; a bit authoritative, perhaps, but then that was typical of our Headmaster. He didn’t want to know if the boy had got it straight nor tell him to repeat it, but simply went to the door and called in a child from outside. And so it went with one child after another coming and receiving the message in the same whispered manner. As this was going on I had a sort of idea of what had happened to make the Head do what he was doing. I distinctly remember sitting at my desk at the
back and snickering to myself over the mental picture of him receiving some message that had been garbled to nonsense over many relays and repeats, then going all red and bristling and rushing into the nearest classroom to prove to all just how incapable people are of accurately repeating a simple sentence.

  “Now the last came in, a dark girl with her hair in braids. After she was whispered the message by the second last child, the Head told her to remain where she was while he chalked up his original words on the blackboard: We may go to the zoo if you behave. He then turned to the girl and told her to repeat aloud the message she had just received.

  “In a big, clear voice, she said, ‘Lee says she does not forgive you.’

  “The words seem to hang there in the air of the classroom like something on display that should have been decently buried. There was a long silence, broken only by a sharp tap of the chalk falling from the Headmaster’s hand. He grew red again and you know sitting there watching all this happen I thought he was going to have a heart attack. Then he seemed to recover himself, made an odd sort of noise in his throat and slunk out of the room while we and our teacher just stared after him. And yes, ‘slunk’ is the only word for it: a very sad and ashamed shamble with head hung down.

  “Well, what it all meant we never did find out. We were just children, not to be consulted. By the way, we never saw the Headmaster after that day. He had retired – so we were later told.”

  “Is that your only objection to the game?” Adrian said in the succeeding quiet. “That your old Headmaster once reacted strangely to a Chinese Whisper?”

  “Don’t you see?” said George. “Don’t any of you get it? We all have our secrets, our black marks against the conscience … shallow graves in our past we’d prefer to remain undiscovered.”

  At those words there was an uneasy stirring among some of the others, downcast eyes, odd expressions which were as quickly gone.

  “Do you have secrets?” Adrian asked George.

  “We all have.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Douglas, one of those who’d squirmed.

  “Yes,” said Harry, sounding defensive.

  “It happened again,” said George, so sharp and abrupt that further grumblings immediately ceased. “I was sixteen and at a party at a country house. A bit of a posh do really, rather staid in a way: girls in frocks, boys in suits. No strong drink, certainly no drugs. God! The mix was potent enough without those additions! Someone suggested we play Chinese Whispers, just as you did tonight.”

  “And did you object then as well?” asked Douglas, rather boorishly.

  “No. I didn’t. More fool me. I only wish I had. We played the game. In fact we played it three times. The first two times the sentence came out twisted but not particularly funny. There’s silly-funny and there’s just plain silly. All we were getting was gibberish. We were on the verge of trying some other amusement – and remembering what had happened at school I was certainly all for that – when Beatrice Crispin said, ‘Maybe if we kept trying.’ I was very keen on Beatrice. She’d recently moved to the area, taking a flat in the town nearby. She was eighteen, with the looks of an angel and, what was more, independent – no family, just all by herself out of the blue – which to me was a burning attraction and a fascination. You know how it is when you’re that age. So we tried the game one more time because Beatrice Crispin had asked us to. On impulse I wrote down what she’d said as the beginning phrase: Maybe if we kept trying.’ An innocuous enough statement, wouldn’t you say?

  “I whispered it to Beatrice, excited at putting my lips so close to her ear. She giggled at the use of her own words and sent it down the line. At the end was a girl in a blue dress – I forget her name. I only remember she had a blue dress and that the boy beside her had to lift her dark curls to give her the message. She wrote it out, then read it aloud.”

  George gave a heavy sigh and for several seconds said nothing.

  Sensing the problem Charlie poured out a glass of whisky and pushed it across. George took it in two swigs, then said, “The message came out as: Baby Effy kept crying. Beatrice stared at the girl in the blue dress in a dazed sort of way, her mouth hanging open like a hooked fish. Then there came a slow change in her eyes and it seemed as if Beatrice wanted to kill her. There was a sudden silence in the room, very cold and awkward, and what I remember most of that horrible moment is the silly frozen smiles on everyone’s face. Beatrice stuttered, ‘She wouldn’t stop crying! I was only eight!’ She shrieked and grabbed her hair and ran from the room. I heard the front door crash open and slam shut.” He paused for a long moment, then added, “Later that night she stepped in front of a truck, and that was the end of my very beautiful Beatrice Crispen.”

  For several seconds no one spoke. There was a shuffle of feet beneath the table and hands among the cutlery and glasses.

  Many of those around the table looked decidedly uncomfortable.

  Lew leaned across to Adrian. “What do you say to a story like that?”

  Adrian nodded in a non-committal way.

  Then Douglas said, “You better buck up your ideas, George.”

  “Yes, thank you for your jackboot sympathy, Douglas,” said Adrian. Then to George, “Perhaps you have some sort of fixation. How can Chinese Whispers be so dangerous? Children – even adults – play this game all the time and no harm comes of it.”

  “They play it without me.”

  “That smacks of solipsism,” Douglas put in, his tone not having altered, “and that’s a dangerous frame of mind. It leads straight through the gates of the mad house.”

  “George,” said Adrian, ignoring Douglas, “play this game with us and you’ll see there’s no harm in it. Because if you leave now it will haunt you for ever.”

  “Are you calling me mad?” said George, sounding not so much belligerent as defeated.

  “No.” Adrian said. “You are. Saying things like that hangs a sign about your neck that reads Loony.”

  The others laughed, especially Douglas.

  “Confront those ghosts,” Adrian continued quickly, regretting his last remark. “Play Chinese Whispers with us.”

  George sat silently for a moment, then waved a hand as if to say, “Whatever.”

  Lew started the game with What’ll it be tonight? This came out as What’ll be the fright?

  That was the sort of nonsense expected, though not particularly humorous; and the laughter that followed had an uneasy tone.

  Charlie began the next round with A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds which came out as The fool’s convention is the mind of the hobgoblin.

  “That was almost funny,” said Douglas. His own There is no fireside however so defended, but has one vacant chair, a quote from Longfellow, came out as There is no fair defence, you were there.

  More than one of those about the table noticed how both the original and the distortion made George wobbly.

  With hobgoblins still in mind, Harry started the next round with a quote from a Shakespearian sprite: Over hill, over dale. Thorough bush, thorough brier which somehow came out as You pushed her, desire.

  Adrian looked to George for a reaction, but George only stared hard at his empty whisky glass.

  Adrian’s turn now. He looked at his business card bearing the line he’d begun while talking to George earlier: Things invited. A little self-consciously he added don’t come here and whispered the whole to Harry on his right.

  Away it went on its breathy circle of the table. It passed through Douglas who snorted and Charlie who shrugged. It came and went by George with barely a twitch. Around it went until it was whispered to Lew on Adrian’s left. Lew wrote it down.

  Adrian read out his original sentence: “Things invited don’t come here.”

  Lew read out what he had heard: “She was invited, coming near.”

  All at once George jumped up.

  “George!”

  He froze, a tableau of tilted chair and confused young man leaning awkw
ardly against the table.

  “You’re letting your anxieties rule you!” said Adrian.

  “You’ve heard what’s come out so far,” said George. “All of you.”

  “You’re reading things into jumbles of words. This is nothing more than what your Headmaster called it: a fragility of human communications.”

  "Come on, George," said Douglas. "Don't be such a piker. You start this time."

  George turned a momentary glare on Douglas then sat down with a thump. Pencil and a piece of card were passed. He scribbled for a moment, then placed it face down on the table.

  He leaned over and whispered into Charlie's ear.

  Charlie leaned across and whispered what he'd heard or what he'd thought he'd heard, to Lew who whispered it on, and so it went around the table until it was whispered to Harry. Harry wrote it down.

  They waited for George to read out the original sentence from his card. Instead he sat quite still, for a long time looking at the card. Then suddenly he snatched Harry’s card out of his hand, stared at it for a moment then dropped it to the floor.

  He got up, pushed back his chair and left the room, without a word, without a backward glance.

  Several seconds went by before an exclamation broke the stunned silence, followed by another. Lew picked up George’s card and saw he had pencilled only squiggles which on closer squint might’ve been a line of stick-figure girls in the act of falling, each one further and further down. To one side was a single stick-figure boy.

  Harry retrieved his card from under George’s chair and read: “Being excited you saw her later.”

  Charlie went to the still open doors. A crowd noise, louder than before, rose up the stairs to meet him. He glimpsed milling activity in the restaurant below. But before he could make head or tail of it Adrian was calling from the window.

  Down in the night street, in the uncertain light, two figures were moving along the pavement, one half leading, half dragging the other, stepping in and out of shadow. Though they could not be sure, many thought the reluctant follower was George, while that which tugged at him had one side of its head oddly flattened.