The Japanese Girl (28 page)

It was the following day that he had the idea. Agnes, with her passion for cleanliness, was scouring his room as she did every day, and when she moved the basket chair to vacuum under it he suddenly called to her not to put it back.

Frowning she switched off the vacuum and listened.

‘Don't put the chair back there. Put it – put it just by the dressing-table, just to the left of the dressing-table. I think I fancy it over there.'

She did not move. ‘What's the matter. Uncle? Doesn't the furniture suit you? I do my best, you know.'

‘You do very well,' he said. ‘I'm not complaining, but if you move the chair by the dressing-table it will give me a better view of the fire.'

She stared. ‘ I don't see how it can. The fire …' She stopped and shrugged. ‘Oh, well, it makes no difference to me. If that's your fancy.
Where
d'you want it?'

‘Over there. A bit farther. That's a good place for it there, I think.'

‘D'you want me to move this other chair over? Make more room for the commode.'

‘Er – no. No, just leave that. Thank you, Agnes.' He began to say something more but she had switched on the vacuum again.

He didn't really mind because he was counting the steps. At the most the chair was now seven from the door.

‘An experiment,' he wrote in his diary. Possibly nothing will come of it. Possibly I shall have interfered with the ‘‘possession'' altogether. Or possibly the footsteps will reach the door and something will
go out
.'

He spent the rest of the day quietly reading an old book on the Great Western Railway which Roy had brought him. This, he thought, was one of the sagas of our time. The wonderful Castle locomotives that set up records seventy years ago which have never been broken. The 4-4-0's that preceded them. The Cities and the Kings … He wished he could concentrate. He wished, perhaps, that he had agreed to pay the expense of having that old film over, even though it dealt with French railways and French engines. They were indeed majestic in their own right. The great snorting locomotives of the Train Bleu, of the Orient Express, with their strange pulsating beat even when they are at rest … He wished he could concentrate.

Roy was out that evening at a social affair, Masonic or Rotary or something, so he did not see him. Agnes came up as usual, and, in spite of its uncustomary position, she sat in the basket chair. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her not to; but again he refrained, partly because he was afraid of her uncomprehending stare, with its half implication that Uncle must be going a bit peculiar, and partly because her having been in the chair had not affected the manifestation on earlier nights.

She stayed longer than normal, talking about some work she was doing for refugees, and he listened impatiently, longing for her to be gone. She stayed in fact until Roy came in, by which time it was nearly midnight; then she gave the fire an unsympathetic poke, thumped his pillow, saw that he had enough water for the night, gave him her perfunctory kiss and was gone.

Roy had come straight upstairs, and the house soon settled. Whiteleaf's heart was thumping. To try to ease it, he began to compose the article he would write for one of the psychic papers on his experiences with a basket chair. One of the psychic papers? But possibly
The Guardian
would print it, or even
The Times
. It all depended upon the end, upon the resolution. It all depended on what happened tonight. In a way it was a triumph, that a man so involved as he had been all his life in paranormal phenomena, should at this late stage
experience
it in the most personal way. To steady himself, he tried to look on it as if it had already happened. He was recounting the most exciting moment of his life. The trouble was it wasn't over yet; he was in the middle of it; and the final experience, if there was one, was yet to come.

The fire was burning a little brighter tonight; Agnes had forgotten to bring up as much slack as usual, and this, with the help of the clock, gave adequate light – though dim. He could see all but the corners of the room. The chair in its new position was not so clearly outlined as it had been by the fire: it looked taller, still more hump-backed, like a man without a head. It cast a faint shadow on the wall behind that did not look quite its own.

The creaking was late coming tonight. He had thought it might not come at all. Always it began with a fairly definite over-all creaking such as would occur when Mrs Covent first sat in it. Then it would be silent except for the faint creaks that broke out whenever she moved. There was no sign of her struggling, as she must have struggled before she became too weak. Perhaps it was her dying that one heard. And the footsteps were the release of her spirit, moving away.

Yet always towards the door. Now they would reach the door. Perhaps – who knew – he would see something go out.

They began. They were slower and heavier tonight. Every step was distinct, seemed to shake the room, measured itself with a thumping of his heart. He sat up sharply in bed, straining to the darker side of the room to see if he could see anything. A flickering flame from the fire, just like that other night, brought shadows to life in the silent room.

The footsteps reached five, reached six and appeared to hesitate. They were at the door. A seventh and then the fire did play tricks, for he saw the door quiver and begin to open. He screwed up his eyes, one hand pulling at the skinny flesh around his throat.

But there was no mistake. He
was
seeing something. The door was literally
opening
to allow something to go out. He could feel the difference in the air. The door was wide and something must be going out.

Then he twisted round in the bed, clutching at the rail behind him, trying to get up, to move away, to get out of bed and scream. Because round the door a hideous deformed face was appearing, with one eye, and the flesh drawn up and scarred, and a gash where the mouth should have been, and no recognizable nose.

It was clear then – quite clear – that moving the chair was not enabling Mrs Covent to go out. Captain Covent was coming in.

FIVE

‘It was always a possibility, of course,' said Dr Abrahams. ‘The pulmonary oedema was an added complication. But I'm disappointed. He gave one the impression of great tenacity – great physical tenacity, I mean; such men can often endure more than ordinary people and yet recover and live to a great age.'

‘Well, I can tell you it gave me the shock of my life,' said Agnes, drying her eyes. ‘I came in at half past seven as usual, and
there
he was half out of bed and clutching his throat. He seemed all right when I left him. We were a bit later than usual – about twelve it would be. I never heard a thing in the night. But he'd such an
expression
on his face.'

‘He's been dead some hours. He probably died soon after you left him. I think the expression is due to the nature of the complaint: a sudden great pain, shortness of breath, no doubt he was trying to call you.'

‘He had a bell there,' said Roy. ‘It was on the table. Just there on the table. I'd have heard if he'd rung. I always sleep light.'

‘Yes, well, there it is, there it is. His condition had been vaguely unsatisfactory all this last week, without there being anything one could necessarily pick on. I take it you're his nearest relatives?'

‘His only relatives,' said Agnes. ‘But he was well known in his circle. I think there will be a fair number of people at the funeral.'

SIX

There was a fair number of people at the funeral. Representatives of societies with long names and short membership lists, club friends who had known Whiteleaf for a long time, one or two newspaper men, nominees from charities which had benefited in the past, some of Agnes's friends. It was a fine day, and the ceremony passed off well. After it, after a discreet interval, after a quiet period of mourning, Agnes and Roy burned the diary which had first put the idea into their heads. By discreetly opening it each afternoon while Uncle Julian was asleep, Agnes had been able to keep in touch with the progression of his thoughts.

At the same time they burned a rubber mask of humorously unpleasant appearance which Roy had bought in the toy department of a big store and painted and altered to look more hideous. There seemed no particular reason to burn the mop with which Agnes had bumped nightly on the ceiling beneath Uncle Julian's bedroom. Nor did they bother to burn the basket chair which Agnes had bought in a jumble sale and whose cane had the peculiarity of reacting with creaks and clicks about fifteen minutes after a person had been sitting in it, a peculiarity they had not noticed until Uncle Julian had drawn attention to it in his diary. It seemed a pity, Agnes said, to destroy a useful chair.

That spring they had their first real holiday for ten years. They went to the South of France for two weeks, Roy had considered giving up his railway job, but for the moment he was keeping it to see how much Uncle Julian's invested income brought in. On the way back from the South of France they spent two days in Paris, and Roy made inquiries about the film he was interested in. Later that year in Swindon he intended to give a private showing to his interested friends of
La Bête Humaine
.

My grandfather was called Jacka Fawle. He used to tell this story, often he would tell this story, and often-times you could not stop him; but it did not matter so much because it was true. He lived into old age, and we children would know if any stranger came by that he would take the first opportunity of telling this story, you could rest assured, so that, hearing it so often, we knew it all by heart and would chime in if he left out a detail. But it was all true.

My grandfather, he was born in Helston in Cornwall in 1853 and went down a mine before he was twelve. At eighteen he married Essie Penrose and in the next twelve years they had eight children, my mother youngest of them all. In 1883 the mining slump came to its worst, and Wheal Marble, where he was working, closed down. So like many of his friends, he thought he would go to America to make his way. There was work there and opportunities there, money to be made. It was a long way and a hard journey, but men wrote home that they were doing well out there. Some even sent home money so that their wives could go out and join them.

Well, it was a hard parting for Jacka and Essie, but there was little chance of her going with him with all the little children crying around her feet. Not that she showed much sign of wishing to go, for, like many women born within sight of the sea, she really feared it and trembled to set foot upon it. So she moved with her young brood of chicks into her father's tiny cottage and bade a tearful farewell to Jacka as he left home. With a Bible in his pocket and a bundle on his shoulder he set off one wet day in March, and they all stood in the doorway in the rain watching while his short sturdy figure grew smaller and smaller trudging down the lane. He walked west on the old coaching road, to Truro, to Mitchell, and thence to Padstow, where he took ship for San Francisco.

It was a terrible voyage – four months it took them around Cape Horn in villainous seas and then all the way up the western seaboard of the New World. Scurvy and seasickness and dysentery and bad food. Seven months passed near to the day when my grandmother opened her first letter from him. It was full of good cheer and good heart and he never mentioned the hardships, for he still hoped she would join him in a year or two. But in fact he had been little enough time in California, casting around as you might say, before he changed his trade. Mines there might be, but much of it was more like prospecting than what he belonged to do. Chance of riches and chance of nothing at all. While building opportunities were everywhere. Houses, churches, factories, all were going up like mushrooms on a damp evening. And bricklayers were in short supply.

So he became a bricklayer, my grandfather became a bricklayer, and his wages were good and steady.

He too was good and steady because he had been reared in the Primitive Methodist Connexion; and many times, he said, in those early years he was thankful for his careful upbringing. San Francisco was a wild and wicked place, where any man could go to Hell for the price of a few weeks' wages. Indeed all California was the same: a lost continent where lust and strong drink and greed and vice were raging. So he made few friends and those were strictly of his own kind. There were other Cornishmen in the city and he tended to be drawn to them because of memories of home. And he attended chapel every Sunday.

Each month, on the first of the month, he wrote a letter home, and each month, regular as a clock, he sent home a small sum of money to help support his family. Each letter ended: ‘Hopeing that soon dear wife you will be able to joyne me your ever loving Husband.'

But the months turned into years and she did not join him. The children were all well and all growing, she wrote, but so slow. And Essie
could
not face the sea …

If there had been any work at home Jacka would have returned, given up his regular well-paid work and gone home, for he was a family man, and it fretted him that all his children would be strangers to him. Sometimes too he could not help but cast his eye upon another woman; yet by grace he saw this as a lure of Satan and hurriedly dismissed carnal thoughts from his mind. Even his memories of Essie were fading. She wrote him: oh yes, she wrote him, telling him homely details of life in Helston; but she was no handy one with the pen, far worse than he; and the cost of the post was so high that often she missed a month.

All this time he was saving, was Jacka. He lived quiet and he lived frugal and some he sent home and some he saved. But it was tedious work. First it was $500, then it was $800 then $1000. By the time he was thirty-seven, he had saved $ 3000 and had not seen his wife and family for seven years. Seven long years. It seemed a lifetime. But in all things he was canny, and he kept his money deposited in different banks to lessen the risk. He came to know northern California well, for all his work was not in San Francisco. He worked with Irishmen, Poles, Portuguese, Swedes, Italians, and second-generation Americans. But all the time he stayed true to himself and unchangingly Cornish. He would meet with five or six other Cornishmen every Sunday, and they'd talk of Pasties and Leekie Pie and Pilchards and the damp beautiful landscapes of home.