Christmas Tales of Terror (6 page)

Aubrey was about to correct her when his father spoke instead.

‘What are you drawing so intently, Arthur?’ said the vicar, looking over the boy’s shoulder.

Arthur shrugged. He was clearly annoyed at being interrupted but said, after a pause, ‘Just drawing.’

‘Just drawing?’ said the vicar with a chuckle. ‘Well, now. May I have a look?’

Aubrey squirmed a little. He hated watching his father try to ingratiate himself with his parishioners. It was embarrassing. Arthur gripped his pencil tightly and pursed his lips. Lips and knuckles turned white.

‘Come along, Arthur,’ said his aunt. ‘Show the vicar what you’re up to.’

Arthur did not move.

‘Show him!’ she snapped. ‘Or so help me I’ll . . .’

Aubrey moved a little further away from Mrs Barker. Reverend Baxter held his hand in a plea for calm.

‘Mrs Barker, please,’ said the vicar. ‘There is no need for that. It is Christmas Day, after all. Peace and goodwill and so on.’

Mrs Barker’s face skittered uneasily between scowl and smile as she looked from vicar to nephew.

‘If Arthur does not want to show me his drawing of a ship, that’s absolutely fine.’

‘’T ain’t a ship,’ muttered Arthur. ‘’T ain’t nothing like a ship.’

Aubrey’s father leaned forward to ward off the slap that he could see Mrs Barker preparing to launch.

‘I’m terribly sorry, dear boy,’ he said. ‘I thought it was a ship. I didn’t have much of a view. I can see now that it’s a railway engine. It’s rather good, isn’t it, Aubrey?’

‘A railway engine?’ said Arthur with genuine outrage. ‘A railway engine! Do you think that’s a railway engine?’

Arthur slid the paper across the table towards the vicar. Reverend Baxter turned the crumpled page round to look at it while, snake-like, Mrs Barker’s arm shot out behind him.

‘Ow!’ cried Arthur as her hand connected with his ear. ‘That hurt, that did!’

‘You’ll be getting a few more of those before –’

‘Mrs Barker, Mrs Barker,’ said Reverend Baxter. ‘I must insist.’

‘You don’t know what he’s like, Reverend,’ she said. ‘He’s a proper devil, he is.’

Aubrey was surprised to see his father staring at the boy’s drawing, speechless.

‘Reverend?’ said Mrs Barker. ‘Are you all right? What have you done to the vicar, Arthur? What have you drawn there? It better not be something –’

‘This is The Grange, isn’t it, Arthur?’ said Reverend Baxter.

‘Yeah,’ said Arthur. ‘Course it is.’

‘Take a look, Aubrey,’ he said, passing the drawing to his son. ‘We’re on our way there now.’

‘You’re going there?’ said Arthur. ‘Don’t. Don’t go there. It . . . It’s not nice there, sir.’

Aubrey, like his father, found himself utterly fascinated by Arthur’s drawing. For although the paper was creased and crumpled and grubby, and the drawing quite crude in many ways, still there was an astonishing attention to detail about it.

‘I’m afraid I have to go,’ his father was saying. ‘I’d much rather stay here with you, Arthur, but there we are . . .’

There was a hypnotic realism to the work, which the odd quirks of perspective and scale only served to make more intriguing. It was real and yet not real, like a dream. Aubrey considered himself something of an artist, but he could never have achieved anything like that.

And added to all this was the fact that Arthur had chosen to draw the main hall of The Grange decked out for Christmas and full of local dignitaries, as it presumably would be at that very moment. There were Major and Lady Harcourt, and the Bishop; everyone was instantly recognisable.

But stranger still was the fact that Arthur had drawn the house as though every window and door had been opened on the coldest day of the year. The roaring fire that always burned on winter days in the great hearth was extinguished and in its place were glowing embers of blue frost.

Icicles hung from the chandeliers and from the very mantelpiece that ran above the fireplace. Aubrey had taken the stance of the guests in the picture to be stilted drawings, but he saw now that Arthur intended them to look frozen.

‘But how do you know the house so well, Arthur?’ said Aubrey’s father.

‘I don’t,’ said the boy with a shrug. ‘Only been there twice.’

Aubrey shook his head in wonder. How could the boy have gleaned so much information in two visits – and remembered every scrap?

‘Yes,’ said Reverend Baxter. ‘We went there together last year, didn’t we?’

Aubrey remembered the visit, for he had gone along as well, though he had no recollection of Arthur. The Sunday school had been invited to The Grange by Lady Harcourt during her short-lived enthusiasm for charitable works, following the death of her father the previous winter.

‘But when have you been otherwise?’ asked Aubrey’s father.

Nephew and aunt exchanged glances.

‘He’s a disgrace, Reverend,’ said Mrs Barker. ‘Brings me nothing but shame.’

‘We was just collecting firewood,’ said Arthur, folding his arms and glowering. ‘It’s not like they ain’t got plenty to spare!’

‘Do you see?’ said Mrs Barker, putting a hand to her chest. ‘Do you see how he talks about his betters?’

‘What happened, Arthur?’ said Reverend Baxter gently.

Arthur scowled at his aunt. Aubrey tried to stop himself smiling.

‘We went up there,’ said Arthur. ‘Me and George, and Billy with the lip. We went up there, cos we’d seen all that firewood when we went with you and all that. We says to ourselves, “We’ll have some of that, thank you very much.”

‘So we went up there on the quiet, like, and we was loading it into George’s barrow – his dad works down the market, you know. He’s got that funny hand what got stuck in a –’

‘Yes,’ said Reverend Baxter. ‘Let’s hear the story, shall we?’

‘Well,’ said Arthur. ‘Ain’t much more to tell. We was just about to get off home and then that great big monster of a gardener spots us and comes after us. George and Billy scarper and it’s meself what takes all the blame.

‘The gardener, he picks me up with one hand and takes me into the house. The butler was about to give me a clip round the ear when his lordship wanders through. He was a bit the worse for drink –’

‘Arthur!’ cried his aunt. ‘Really! As if!’

Aubrey hoped his smirk had not been seen.

‘He was!’ muttered Arthur. ‘I could smell it on his breath. Stank of it, he did.’

Aubrey did not share Mrs Barker’s incredulity about the Major’s drinking habits. He was a brutish man, and Aubrey did not like him at all.

‘Anyway,’ said Arthur. ‘He says if there was any beating to be done, then he’d do it, don’t you know, and so he drags me into this room where there’s a huge fire burning – you know the one, sir. The one that’s as big as the mouth of hell –’

‘Arthur!’ shouted his aunt.

‘Yes,’ said Reverend Baxter. ‘And he beat you? Put you across his knee and smacked you?’

Aubrey saw Arthur shake his head bitterly.

‘No, sir,’ he said after a pause. ‘He took down a riding crop from the wall and said that when he was in India he used to use it on servants who stole from him. But I ain’t his servant, sir, and I ain’t no Indian neither.’

‘And he flogged you with it?’

Arthur nodded.

‘Again and again,’ he said. ‘The butler had to stop him, sir, else he would have carried on for good. He steps in, all polite and everything, and says in that posh voice, “Beg your pardon, sir, but I think the boy has had enough.”

‘So the Major, he stops and I take me chance and scrabble over to hide behind the sofa. When I peeped out again, I saw the Major all red in the face and sweating like a pig. The way he was looking at the butler, I thought he was gonna kill him, sir. But then the Major says in this quiet voice, “Very good, Matthews. See to him, then.”’

Aubrey looked at his father and could tell that he was genuinely very angry and trying hard not to show it. He was breathing out slowly through clenched teeth.

‘And what happened then, Arthur?’ he said.

‘Well,’ said the boy. ‘The butler chap takes me by the hand and leads me off to the front door. He tells me to be sure and never come there again. ’E wasn’t such a bad sort, though. He gave me sixpence and smiled and that. I think he felt sorry for me. I was crying a bit, if you want to know the truth of it, sir.’

‘I’m sure you were, Arthur,’ said Reverend Baxter, ‘after such an ordeal.’

‘’T ain’t right, sir,’ said Arthur, through gritted teeth.

‘Well, you shouldn’t ought to have been there!’ said the boy’s aunt.

‘Perhaps I’ll draw you in a minute!’ said the boy, turning on her with wild eyes.

Aubrey was surprised to see that this odd outburst received no punishment. Mrs Barker’s face went very pale, twitched a little, but she made no response.

‘I don’t say I didn’t deserve a clip round the ear or some such,’ continued Arthur. ‘But he’s a bully, sir. A nasty, horrible bully. I don’t care if he’s the king of China!’

And with that speech, Arthur jumped down from the table and ran out of the room, his feet thundering up the stairs until, with the slam of a door, all was silent.

‘I’m so sorry, Reverend,’ said Mrs Barker. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with him.’

‘That’s quite all right, Mrs Barker.’

‘Let’s have a nice cup of tea, eh?’

‘Thank you,’ said Aubrey’s father with a shiver. ‘That would be most welcome. And could I ask one favour?’

‘What’s that, then?’ said Mrs Barker.

‘Could you ask Arthur if I might purchase his drawing?’

Aubrey stared at his father. So did Mrs Barker.

‘Purchase?’ said Mrs Barker. ‘Buy, you mean? Don’t be daft, Reverend. You can have it if you want it. Here.’

Mrs Barker picked up the drawing from the table and handed it to him.

‘All the same,’ said Reverend Baxter. ‘I must insist.’

Mrs Barker yelled up the stairs and, after a pause, Arthur reappeared in the front room. Aubrey could see the boy had been crying. He could also see that he did not appear to possess a handkerchief.

‘How much you gonna give me for it, Reverend?’ said Arthur, wiping his shiny upper lip on his sleeve.

‘How much?’ said Mrs Barker. ‘I’ll give you “how much”, you little –’

‘How does ten shillings sound to you, Arthur?’ said Aubrey’s father.

Mrs Barker looked as though she might faint, and Arthur’s eyes all but popped out of his head. But very quickly he collected himself.

‘I’ll sell it to you on one conviction,’ said Arthur.

Aubrey’s father smiled.

‘And what might that be?’ he asked.

‘That you don’t go to The Grange,’ said Arthur.

After a short pause, Aubrey’s father nodded.

‘Very well, Arthur,’ he said. ‘You have a deal.’

When they finally left the house, Aubrey was somewhat dismayed to see that his father seemed to be heading towards The Grange, as originally planned, rather than back to the vicarage.

‘Father?’ said Aubrey. ‘I thought you –’

‘A white lie,’ said Reverend Baxter with a wink.

Aubrey sighed. He’d been so relieved when he’d thought they were to forgo their annual visit to The Grange, he’d been willing to forget the issue of the price his father had paid. But not now.

‘Ten shillings, Father?’ said Aubrey. ‘Really?’

‘Well, now,’ said his father. ‘It is a very good drawing. And I think they might use that extra cash.’

Extra cash?
thought Aubrey. Did they have extra cash to throw about? How could his father waste money on that boy’s drawing when he’d insisted that they must have the most frugal Christmas possible? He wished he had stayed at school.

‘Besides,’ continued his father, ‘I intend to confront the Major about the punishment he dished out to poor Arthur and show him this drawing. I think if he sees the kind of sensitive soul that’s housed in that undernourished little body, he might show some remorse about treating him so badly.’

Aubrey was not so sure. He had a master at school who liked to beat boys for any small infringement of the rules. That sort never felt guilt.

‘It’s fascinating, isn’t it?’ continued Aubrey’s father. ‘This drawing is the boy’s way of responding to that flogging. Do you see? The Major beats him for stealing firewood and the boy punishes him by drawing him as though frozen in his own house. Absolutely fascinating.’

Aubrey had to admit it was, but he still wasn’t sure it was worth ten shillings. The boy would have been pleased enough to receive a halfpenny piece. Aubrey was certain that he could have found much better ways of spending such a sum. The boy’s awful aunt would probably take it from him in any case.

Aubrey and his father arrived at The Grange and shortly thereafter found themselves standing in the very hall Arthur’s drawing depicted.

Aubrey saw that not only were the details of the tree and the decorations just as Arthur had shown, but so was the make-up of the guests, all of whom Arthur had portrayed in his drawing. It made it seem even more extraordinary.