Castle Of Bone (9 page)

It was very early, well before breakfast. Hugh got up and went to the park and walked by himself in clear, cool sunlight; shadows important, light significant. Sight and sound were quite separate experiences – the roads were full of cars, but the noise they made was not all related to the engines that made them. It was a calm, a whole, yet disjointed world, empty of anyone save Hugh himself. The people in cars were part of the machines, and so did not count, he thought, as people.

He walked for much longer than he meant and came back late even for his mother’s breakfast, meeting Penn and Anna at the gate. Both looked cross, appeared to be arguing – they stopped when Hugh arrived and smiled at him, but the smiles might have been to spite each other rather than welcome him, he thought.

The house smelt of sausages and shaving soap, among other familiar things harder to define, because they were always there, and well amalgamated. But as they went down the basement stairs, another smell met them, strong, unpleasant, all too recognizable.

“Cat,” said Penn, disapprovingly.

“But our cat . . .” said Hugh.

“Perhaps Humbert’s come back,” Anna said.

But there was in the kitchen no full-grown Humbert, only a black kitten regarding gingerly a saucerful of milk. On the other side of the saucer Jean knelt, looking at the kitten.

“He’s sweet,” she said. “He was sitting outside the cat door, just as if he wanted to come in.”

“He’s peed. It stinks,” Penn said.

“Perhaps we could keep him even if Humbert does come back. He looks a bit like Humbert . . .”

“Black all over,” Anna said.

The moment he had seen the kitten Hugh knew what had happened; what the kitten was. Anna knew too. He looked at her quickly, found her looking at him – both hastily removed their eyes from each other. Anna scratched her nose and chewed her tongue, and seemed not particularly concerned. Hugh, decidedly shaken, looked at the table and considered unenthusiastically a cold sausage and two elderly slices of toast.

“Is that my breakfast? Where’s Ma?”

“Upstairs, cross, gone to get you out of bed.”

“I’ve been for a walk. God almighty, we usually have to get
her
up,” said Hugh indignantly.

“She was in that sort of mood this morning. You know, energetic.”

“For once,” said Hugh.

“Your ma
energetic
?” Penn asked.

“Shut up,” said Hugh furiously. “It’s none of your business.”

“Isn’t your room still in a mess?” asked Jean.

The kitten was actually lapping now; lapping milk slowly, with deliberation.

“Humbert,” Hugh said. And felt Anna nod.

“We can’t call him Humbert. Humbert might come back. It’s still only one night after all.”

“He won’t come back,” said Hugh, but to himself.

Anna paused when they started up the stairs, waiting for Hugh who was scavenging for food.

“Do you remember what we said yesterday?” Hugh ate the end of a sausage and considered the question. He could see Penn looking down at them with some hostility.

“Immortality,” hissed Anna eagerly.

“I don’t think much of an immortal cat,” said Hugh.

“The Egyptians thought cats were immortal, sacred anyway. We’ve got a postcard on our mantelpiece.”

“What are you talking about. What’s got into you, Ann?” shouted Penn from the top of the basement stairs.

“Nothing, except my brother,” Anna said coldly.

They met Hugh’s mother in the hall, still in her dressing-gown and very indignant. All the time she was shouting she looked at Hugh’s toast and marmalade, as if wondering whether to eat a slice of it herself.

“Why can’t you have your breakfast at the same time as everyone else?”

“There isn’t a time in this house . . . Just because you woke up for once . . .”

She let it pass. It was his room she was really concerned about, working herself up into a greater and greater rage as she went along, having started relatively calm. She stood in the middle of the stairs, blocking the way up – Penn tried to dodge past her, but without seeming to notice she moved when he did, so preventing him.

Anna was giggling, a silly schoolgirl giggle, at Penn, annoying him, at Hugh’s mother, annoying and confusing Hugh, who did not know which of them to turn on first, his mother for attacking him, or Anna for attacking his mother. His anger mounting, though undirected, he scarcely took in anything that was said, knew only that the abuse was centred on his room, its chaos. On the empty, apparently unused cupboard.

Shock was delayed when it came. Hugh heard the words clearly, but did not take them in. It was like this morning, seeing an action at a distance and hearing it fractionally later, except that this time it was the other way about. The sound came first; seconds later arrived the blow.

Penn’s mouth was open. Hugh at first could not imagine why. Then he saw that Anna’s expression was curious too, amused, perhaps triumphant, and yet alarmed.

Since Hugh had been so slow to put his clothes away, well she had done it for him, his mother had said.

“
Jesus
,” said Hugh those seconds later, diving past her, up the stairs. His mother’s voice floated angrily after him, but he scarcely heard it, tearing breathlessly up the red-carpeted stairs, his step never matching the tread or two treads he was trying to take – too long, too short, his pace disjointed, the very fall of his feet knocking the breath from him. His mind seemed to burst with the dangers and possibilities.

“You won’t have any clothes left for a start.” Penn behind Hugh did not sound even out of breath. Anna appeared to be laughing; Jean puzzled, frightened, uncomprehending. “What’s happened, someone tell me?” she went on and on, all the way upstairs, more and more breathlessly.

But when Hugh at last flung open the bedroom door there was nothing. The room looked much as he had left it earlier, his pyjamas on the floor, his bed unmade. The only difference was that some of the untidy piles of clothes had been removed from the chest-of-drawers and placed in still untidier piles on the cupboard shelves. But clothes they remained and nothing else. For his mother, typically, had failed to shut the door. Pants, vests and shirts, were still pants, vests and shirts, not collections of miscellaneous materials, or blunderous frightened animals.

Hugh and Penn collapsed simultaneously, laughing, and rolled together across the floor, punching each other, laughing again and punching again, to the ribs or face or chest, punches not serious, scarcely felt, shadow-boxing like young animals.

But when they stopped, as suddenly as they had begun, climbing to their feet, dusting each other down, Hugh saw Anna by the window, unsmiling.

“Come on, better get this lot cleared up a bit,” said Penn officiously. “Come on, Anna, get moving, girl.”

But she did not move. She did not seem to hear. For the first time Hugh began to take it in, the atmosphere here, in the room.

Outside, the clarity and glitter of the early morning had vanished. The sky had not so much clouded over as thickened to a grey haze, not dark but sullen, emphasizing the heaviness of late summer foliage, its lack of bloom and life. Hugh imagined autumn with relief.

But it was more than that. Outside the ash tree blocked the window and there was a constant procession of holiday aircraft, flying low because of the haze, the haze itself trapping the roar of their engines, bringing it right into the room, thunderous, oppressive, heavy. Yet the centre of the power that oppressed Hugh so utterly came from within the room itself. It came from the cupboard; engulfing, enormous and quite impersonal, so that Penn’s efficient activity taking clothes from shelves and hangers seemed merely busy and insignificant. The black kitten strolling into the room, its tail pointing to the ceiling, looked more important, curiously. Yet it was ridiculously small.

Jean fell on the kitten with relief, but it twisted from her hands and settled calmly by the window, with all the assurance and indifference of an adult cat.

“I wonder where Humbert is,” said Jean.

“This is Humbert.”

“A kitten. Don’t be idiotic, Ann.”

“It
can’t
be Humbert.” Jean did not even want to believe it.

“It is Humbert, isn’t it, Hugh? Hugh and I talked about it yesterday. This sort of thing.”

“Why didn’t you talk to me?” asked Penn.

“You wouldn’t have listened. You’re pigheaded, Penn. You tell him, Hugh.”

Hugh reluctantly tried to explain. But it was difficult, Penn intrigued but not wanting to believe out of pride and Jean not wanting to believe out of fear. Anna’s self-righteous look made Hugh wish he could disbelieve it himself, but in the face of the black kitten’s presence, and the mysterious and unprecedented absence of the black Humbert, the explanation did seem all too probable.

“He must have got into the cupboard while we were out yesterday.”

“But how could he have shut the door?”

“Well that is a bit odd, I know,” admitted Hugh, but it did not affect his certainty.

“It turned other things back, didn’t it?” Anna pressed; the harder it was to disbelieve her, the angrier Penn grew.

“We’ll have to shove you in to make sure, Ann.”

“Oh no
you
, Penn. You were such a sweet little boy, everybody said.”

“Well you looked like the back end of a bus. So everybody said.”

“You were so pretty, you looked just like a girl.”

The angrier Penn got, the sillier the insults; Hugh had hardly seen him so angry before. He started throwing clothes on to the bed, furiously, as if they were weapons. His anger made him powerful, almost as powerful as the cupboard itself, but the fury appeared to bounce off Anna. She stood calmly watching him in the middle of the room.

“I can show you. Ma has those photographs of when you were little. I’ll show you the one of Penn without any clothes on, Hugh. He looked sweet.” Anna’s voice rose. “Suppose we put him in the cupboard and he came out like that?”

Hugh and Jean might have been in a different world. Watching Penn and watching Anna, Hugh felt wholly remote from them. He could look away, and it would not be happening. It was like a picture flickering on a screen that you could turn off with a switch. Only there was no switch, and he could not look away, and it went on happening.

“You’d be much much nicer, Penn. I could cuddle you.”

Anna was no longer cool, but laughing, a little hysterically. And when Penn, the cupboard emptied, turned on her, lashing out blindly, she took the excuse to lose her temper too. Penn lashing out, she jumped at him. Penn stepped back from her, and taken off balance lurched, stepped back again, swayed awkwardly and fell into the cupboard. It was almost as if, voluntarily, he folded himself up in it, because Anna was able to slam the doors on him – Hugh would have expected the furious Penn to push them open instantly but he did not. The cupboard remained shut.

It was so sudden. First this had not happened, then it had. Anna covered her face, looking small, thin, childish. She took her hands away and stared helplessly at Hugh, horrified, yet dazed as if she had suddenly woken from a sleep. She stood alone beside the cupboard door, but it was Hugh who took the four long, creaking steps across the room and opened it, noticing as he did so his sister Jean, mouth open, eyes open, totally startled, almost a caricature of surprise, like someone drawn in a comic strip.

He stood, holding open the cupboard door. His eyes descended. Looking at first for the boy Penn, his vision had to adjust itself to the proper scale, to find at last no Penn he knew, but a baby in T-shirt and dungarees, with reddish curly hair, holding a brass button out to him, and smiling unconcernedly.

He was so nice, that was the trouble. For it only made this still more horrible.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“It can’t be Penn. It can’t be.” Jean’s voice shook miserably. The baby waved his arms up and down, giggled, and crawled out of the cupboard.

Hugh dragged his mind back, tried to force the presence of this baby towards the earlier presence of Penn, to make himself understand properly that this could be Penn.

“Who else could it be.” He spoke as much to convince himself.

“We must put him back in the cupboard quickly. Quickly.”

“Don’t be stupid. What good would that do?” Hugh felt weary; a lethargy came over him at the thought of trying to resolve this. At the thought that he had to; Penn having left him to decide alone.

A wave of furious anger came over him as well; that Penn should have so abandoned him. He touched a chair, could have thrown it across the room, but the anger faded, left him void and cold.

“What are we going to do?” he said.

“Look after him, obviously.” The immediate and pressing practical problems began to have the effect of calming Jean. When the baby, crawling for a chair, almost pulled it down upon his head and began to wail, she moved quickly, picked him up, cuddled him, murmuring.

“Shut him up
quick
,” Hugh said. “Or Ma will hear.”