Compulsory Games Read online

  He dragged her down the uneven path. “Beautiful place. Peaceful. Silent as the grave.”

  And, indeed, it was quiet now: singularly different in small ways from when Millicent had been there with Winifred. Not only the owls but all the hedgerow birds had ceased to utter. One could not even detect an approaching aircraft. The breeze had dropped, and all the long grass looked dead or painted.

  “Tell me about the architecture,” said Nigel. “Tell me what to look at.”

  “The church is shut,” said Millicent. “It’s been closed for years.”

  “Then it shouldn’t be,” said Nigel. “Churches aren’t meant to be shut. We’ll have to see.”

  He propelled her up the path where earlier she had first seen the glove. The hand that belonged to it must be very nearly the hand of a child: Millicent realised that now.

  In the porch, Nigel sat her down upon the single, battered, wooden bench, perhaps at one time borrowed from the local school; when there had been a local school. “Don’t move, or I’ll catch you one. I’m not having you leave me again, yet awhile.”

  Nigel set about examining the church door, but really there was little to examine. The situation could be taken in very nearly at a glance and a push.

  Nigel took a couple of steps back, and massed himself sideways. Wasting no time, he had decided to charge the door, to break it down. Quite possibly it was already rickety, despite appearances.

  But that time, Millicent really did scream.

  “No!”

  The noise she had made seemed all the shriller when bursting upon the remarkable quietness that surrounded them. She could almost certainly have been heard in the erstwhile rectory, even though not by poor Lettice. Millicent had quite surprised herself. She was an unpractised screamer.

  She had even deflected Nigel for a moment.

  She expostulated further. “Don’t! Please don’t!”

  “Why not, chicken?” Almost, beyond doubt, his surprise was largely real.

  “If you want to, climb up outside and look in through the window, first.” The volume and quality of her scream had given her a momentary ascendancy over him. “The other side of the church is easier.”

  He was staring at her. “All right. If you say so.”

  They went outside without his even holding on to her.

  “No need to go round to the back,” said Nigel. “I can manage perfectly well here. So can you, for that matter. Let’s jump up together.”

  “No,” said Millicent.

  “Please yourself,” said Nigel. “I suppose you’ve seen the bogey already. Or is it the black mass?” He was up in a single spring, and adhering to nothing visible, like an ape. His head was sunk between his shoulders as he peered, so that his red curls made him resemble a larger Quasimodo, who, Millicent recollected, was always clinging to Gothic walls and descrying.

  Nigel flopped down in silence. “I see what you mean,” he said upon landing. “Not in the least a sight for sore eyes. Not a sight for little girls at all. Or even for big ones.” He paused for a moment, while Millicent omitted to look at him. “All right. What else is there? Show me. Where do we go next?”

  He propelled her back to the path across the churchyard and they began to descend towards the river.

  It was, therefore, only another moment or two before Millicent realised that the pile of wreaths was no longer there: no sprays, no harps, no hearts, no angelic trumpets; only a handful of field flowers bound with common string. For a moment, Millicent merely doubted her eyes yet again, though not only her eyes.

  “Don’t think they use this place any longer,” said Nigel. “Seems full up to me. That would explain whatever it is that’s been going on in the church. What happens if we go through that gate?”

  “There’s a big meadow with cows in it, and then a sort of passage down to the river.”

  “What sort of passage?”

  “It runs between briars, and it’s muddy.”

  “We don’t mind a little mud, do we, rooster? What’s the river called, anyway?”

  “Winifred says it’s called the Waste.”

  “Appropriate,” said Nigel. “Though not any more, I hasten to add, not any more.”

  It was exactly as he said it that Millicent noticed the headstone. Nigel Alsopp Ormathwaite Ticknor. Strong, Patient, and True. Called to Higher Service. And a date. No date of birth: only the one date. That day’s date.

  The day that she had known to be a Thursday when Winifred had not.

  The stone was in grey granite, or perhaps near-granite. The section of it bearing the inscription had been planed and polished. When she had been here last, Millicent had been noticing little, and on the return from the picnic the inscription would not have confronted her in any case, as was shown by its confronting her now.

  “Not any more,” said Nigel a third time. “Let’s make it up yet again, henny.”

  At last, Millicent stopped. She was staring at the inscription. Nigel’s hands and arms were in no way upon or around her or particularly near her.

  “I love you, chickpeas,” said Nigel. “That’s the trouble, isn’t it? We got on better when I didn’t.”

  Seldom had Nigel been so clear-sighted. It was eerie. Still, the time of which he spoke was another thing that had been long, long ago.

  “I don’t know what to say,” said Millicent. What other words were possible? No longer were they children, or young people, or anything at all like that.

  They went forward a few paces, so that the headstone now stood behind Millicent. She did not turn to see whether there were words upon the back of it.

  Nigel went through the second kissing gate ahead of her. “Don’t you bother,” he said. “I expect you’ve been down to the river with Winifred. I know you won’t run away now. I’ll just take a quick peek at the fishing.”

  However, there seemed by now no point in not following him, and Millicent pushed back the gate in her turn.

  “Please yourself,” said Nigel.

  But Millicent had become aware of a development. The animals formerly in the far and upper corner were now racing across the open space towards Nigel and her, and so silently that Nigel had not so much as noticed them; “cows,” she had described them, when speaking of them to Winifred; “stock,” as her step-father might have termed them. There is always an element of the absurd about British domestic animals behaving as if they were in the Wild West. Still, this time it was an element that might be overlooked.

  “Nigel!” exclaimed Millicent, and drew back through the gate, which clanged away from her.

  “Nigel!!”

  He went sturdily on. We really should not be frightened of domestic animals in fields. Moreover, so quiet were these particular fields that Nigel still seemed unaware of anything moving other than himself.

  “Nigel!!!”

  The animals were upon him and leaving little doubt of their intentions, in so far as the last word was applicable. In no time, on the grass and on the hides, there was blood; and worse than blood. Before long, there was completely silent, but visibly most rampageous, trampling. Tails were raised now, and eyes untypically stark. But the mob of beasts, by its mere mass, probably concealed the worst from Millicent.

  Seek help. That is what one is called upon to do in these cases. At the least, call for help. Millicent, recently so vocal, found that she could make no noise. The grand quietness had taken her in as well.

  “Oh, Nigel, love.”

  But soon the animals were merely nuzzling around interestedly. It was as if they had played no part in the consummation towards which they were sniffing and over which they were slobbering.

  Millicent clung to the iron gate. Never before that day had she screamed. Never yet in her life had she fainted.

  Then she became aware that the churchyard had somehow filled with women: or, at least, that women were dotted here and there among the mounds and memorials; sometimes in twos, threes, and fours, though more commonly as single spies.

/>   These women were not like the Wilis in Winifred’s favourite ballet. They were bleak, and commonplace, and often not young at all. Millicent could not feel herself drawn to them. But she realised that they were not merely in the churchyard, but in the meadow too; from which the tempestuous cattle seemed to have withdrawn while for a second her back had been turned. In fact, at that moment the women were just about everywhere.

  Absurd, absurd. Even now, Millicent could not overlook that element. The whole business simply could not be worth all this, and, in the world around her, everyone knew that it was not. Sometimes one suffered acutely, yes, but not even the suffering was ever quite real, let alone the events and experience supposedly suffered over. Life was not entirely, or even mainly, a matter of walking round a lake, if one might adopt Miss Stock’s persuasive analogy.

  None the less, it must have been more or less at this point that Millicent somehow lost consciousness.

  •

  Winifred was looking from above into her face. Winifred was no longer pale, but nearly her usual colour, and renewed in confidence.

  “My dear Millicent, I should have put you to bed instead of taking you out into the country! How on earth did you come to fall asleep?”

  “Where are the cows?”

  Winifred looked through the ironwork of the gate into the field behind her. “Not there, as far as I can see. I expect they’ve gone to be milked.”

  “They’re not really cows at all, Winifred. Not ordinary cows.”

  “My dear girl!” Winifred looked at her hard, then seemed more seriously concerned. “Have you been attacked? Or frightened?”

  “Not me,” said Millicent.

  “Then who?”

  Millicent gulped, and drew herself together.

  “It was a dream. Merely a dream. I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Poor sweet, you must be worn out. But how did you get down here? Have you been sleepwalking?”

  “I was taken. That was part of the dream.”

  “It was shocking that Stock woman going on as she did. You should have closed your ears.”

  “And eyes,” said Millicent.

  “I expect so,” said Winifred, smiling. “It was a hideous place. If you’re fully awake now, I expect you’d like to go? I’ve made a mess of the whole day.”

  “I couldn’t see the car. I was looking for it.”

  “I moved it. I wanted to be out of sight. You couldn’t have supposed I’d driven it through the churchyard.”

  “Anything seems possible,” said Millicent, as they walked up the slope. “Anything. For example, you saw all those flowers. You saw them with your own eyes. Where are they?”

  “They’ve been taken off to some hospital. It’s what people do after funerals nowadays.”

  “And the mushrooms down by the river?”

  “They were there from the first, as I told you.”

  “And Miss Stock’s stories?”

  “She just needs a man. Oh, I’m sorry, Millicent.”

  “And the inside of the church?”

  “That was really rather nasty. I’m not going to talk about it, I’m not even going to think about it, and I’m certainly not going to let you look at it.”

  “Oughtn’t whatever it is to be reported somewhere?”

  “Not by me,” said Winifred with finality.

  •

  As they had passed for the last time through the gate leading out of the churchyard, Winifred had said, “We’re going home as quickly as possible, I’m taking you to my place, and I’m putting you to bed with a sedative. I don’t really know about this kind of trouble, but I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and what you need in the first place is a good, long sleep, I’m sure of it.”

  Millicent herself knew that grief, especially repressed grief, was said to induce second sight, let alone second thoughts.

  None the less, Millicent woke up at just before half-past eleven. Long ago, in the early days with Nigel, one of them had each night telephoned the other at that time and often they had conversed until midnight, when it had been agreed that the closure be applied. Such simplicities had come to an end years and years before, but on no evening since she had given up Nigel had Millicent gone to bed before that particular hour.

  There was little chance of Nigel even remembering the old, sentimental arrangement, and less chance of his now having anything easeful to say to her. Still, Millicent, having looked at her watch, lay there sedated and addled, but awake; and duly the telephone rang.

  An extension led to the bedside in Winifred’s cosy spare room. Winifred herself could not relax in a room without a telephone.

  Millicent had the receiver in her hand at the first half-ping of the delicate little bell.

  “Hullo,” said Millicent softly to the darkness. Winifred had drawn all the curtains quite tight, since that was the way Winifred liked her own room at night.

  “Hullo,” said Millicent softly, a second time. At least it could hardly now be a call for Winifred. It was all the more important not to waken her.

  On the line, or at the other end of it, something seemed to stir.

  There could be little doubt of it. It was not a mere reflex of the mechanism.

  “Hullo,” repeated Millicent softly.

  Third time lucky, because at last there was a reply.

  “Hullo, feathers,” said Nigel.

  In all the circumstances, Millicent could not possibly just ring off, as rationally she should have done. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “What a sight you look in Winifred’s nightwear. Not your style at all, crop.”

  Every inch of Millicent’s flesh started simultaneously to fall inwards. “Nigel! Where are you?”

  “I’m right outside your door, gizzard. Better come at once. But do wear your own pyjamas. The scarlet ones. The proper ones.”

  “I’m not coming, Nigel. I’ve told you that. I mean it.”

  “I’m sure you mean it since you left me to be trodden upon by a lot of bloody heifers without doing one thing except grin. It makes no difference. Less difference than ever, in fact. I want you and I’m waiting outside your door now.”

  She simply couldn’t speak. What could she possibly say?

  “You come to me, three toes,” said Nigel, “and wearing your own clothes. Or, make no mistake, I’m coming to you.”

  The receiver fell from Millicent’s hand. It crashed to the bedroom floor, but the carpet in Winifred’s guest bedroom was substantial. And Winifred heard nothing. In any case, Winifred herself had just passed a trying day also, and needed her rest, before the demands of life on the morrow, the renewed call of the wild.

  •

  A group of concerned friends, male and female, clustered round Winifred after the inquest; for which a surprising number had taken time off.

  “I have never been in love,” said Winifred. “I really don’t understand about it.”

  People had to accept that, and get on with things, routine and otherwise. What else could they do?

  MARRIAGE

  HELEN BLACK and Ellen Brown: just a simple coincidence, and representative of the very best that life offers most of us by way of comedy and diversion. A dozen harmless accidents of that kind and one could spend a year of one’s life laughing and wondering; and ever and anon recur to the topic in the years still to come.

  Laming Gatestead met Helen Black in the gallery of a theatre. The only thing that mattered much about the play or the production was that Yvonne Arnaud was in it; which resulted in Helen adoring the play, whereas Laming merely liked it. However, the topic gave them something to talk about. This was welcome, because it was only in the second interval that Laming had plucked up courage (or whatever the relevant quality was) to speak at all.

  Helen was a slightly austere-looking girl, with a marked bone structure and pale eyes. Her pale hair was entirely off the face, so that her equally pale ears were conspicuous. She might not have been what Laming would have selected had he been
a playboy in Brussels or a casting director with the latest Spotlight on his knees; but, in present circumstances, the decisive elements were that Helen was all by herself and still quite young, whereas he was backward, blemished, and impecunious. Helen wore a delightfully simple black dress, very neatly kept. When they rose at the end of the applause, to which Laming had contributed with pleasing vigour, Helen proved to be considerably the taller.

  Secretly, Laming was very surprised when she agreed to come with him for a coffee; and even more surprised when, after a second cup, she accepted his invitation to the gallery of another theatre, this time with Marie Tempest as the attraction. A night was firmly settled upon for the following week. They were to find one another inside. Helen had appreciated how little money Laming might have, and being entertained to coffee was quite enough at that stage of their acquaintanceship.

  He took her hand: only to shake it, of course, but even that was something. It was, however, a dry, bony hand; more neutral, he felt, than his own.

  “Oh,” he said, as if he had been speaking quite casually. “I don’t know your name.”

  “Helen Black.”

  “Perhaps I’d better have your address? I might get a sore throat.”

  “Forty-two Washwood Court, North West six.”

  Of course his Chessman’s Diary for that year had been carefully though unobtrusively at the ready: an annual gift from his Aunt Antoinette.

  “I’m Laming Gatestead.”

  “Like the place in the North?”

  “Not Gateshead. Gatestead.”

  “So sorry.” Her eyes seemed to warm a little in the ill-lit back street on to which the gallery exit romantically debouched.

  “Everyone gets it wrong.”

  “And what an unusual Christian name!”