Whole School Reading

Here at The Derby High School reading is an integral part of our day to day practice. We provide many opportunities to encourage reading for pleasure and to support our students in becoming expert readers in all of their subjects. On this page you will find a range of support to help with reading, and an outline of some of our whole school initiatives.

Short Stories Read by Staff

Please find below a selection of short stories which have been read aloud by members of staff in school. Click the audio file first, then click the corresponding extract and read along with your teachers!

Listen to audio below

I Believe In Unicorns

The Landlady

The Man With The Yellow Face

My Father Is A Polar Bear

My Polish Teacher's Tie

When the Wasps Drowned

Wish You Were Here

Click to open a text extract to read along to the recorded audio

Supporting Your Child with Reading

Please find here a video for parents and carers on how you can support your child with their reading at home.

Curriculum Wider Reading

In this section you will find a range of recommended texts to compliment your studies in school. These will support the curriculum you follow in each subject and many of them can be found in the school library.

French
Music
IT & Computing
Maths
RE
Art
Science
Food Studies
English
PE
Dance
Drama
Geography
History
Design & Technology

French

le Petit Prince by De Saint-Exupery

Asterix and Obelix comics

Poetry by Jacques Prevert

Music

The AB Guide to Music Theory Vol 1

Oxford Dictionary of Musical Terms (Oxford Quick Reference)

The Oxford Dictionary of Music 6/e

Music Genre Demystified: An easy guide to understanding genre types

Music Practice: The Musician’s Guide to Practicing and Mastering your Instrument like a Professional

http://www.opentextbooks.org.hk/system/files/export/2/2180/pdf/Understanding_Basic_Music_Theory_2180.pdf

IT & Computing

Bill Gates: The Life, Lessons & Rules For success

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography By Walter Isaacson

Maths

Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time by Mark Haddon

The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat by Theoni Pappas

Life of Pi by Yan Martel

The book thief by Marcus Zusak

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Out of Egypt by Anne Rice

Art

Kingfisher Young Knowledge of Birds by Nicola Davies

Color Theory – An essential guide to color by Patti Molllica

Drawing Projects by Mick Maslen and Jack Southern

Splat! The most exciting artists of all time by Mary Richards

Science

Is there anybody out there? – Dara Obriain

The Body: a guide for occupants – Bill Bryson

Horrible Science series – Nick Arnold

Limitless – Tim Peak

Astrophysics for young people in a hurry – Neil Degrasse Tyson

Food Studies

Food: the science of cooking by Stuart Fammond

Toast by Nigel Slater

Cooked a natural history of transformation by Michael pollan

Nose dive: A field guide to the world’s smells by Harold Mcgee

Home cookery year: Four seasons by Claire Thomson

Sugar changed the world by Aronson

The cooking gene by Michael Twitty

Salt, fat, acid, heat: Mastering the elements of good cooking by William Visser

English

Shakespeare on Toast by David Crystal

Mother Tonge by Bill Bryson

The Poet’s Craft by Sandy Brownjohn

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

1984 George Orwell

Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson – Fictional book aimed at KS3 girls

Sneaker Wars by Barbara Smit

You Are Awesome by Matthew Syed

Teen Health, Nutrition and Physical Activity by McGraw Hill

Sportopedia: Explore more than 50 sports from around the world’ by Adam Skinner

Dance

The Nutcracker the Four Realms

The Maddie Diaries: My Story, Maddie Ziegler

Peril en Pointe, Helen Lipscombe

Ballet, DK

Drama

Darwood Manor

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Little Shop of Horrors by Robert Egan

Blood Brothers by Willy Russell

Geography

A life on our planet – David Attenborough

Bear Grylls adventures – Bear Grylls

Call of the Wild by Jack London

The Wanderer by Sharon Creech

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

History

Story of a Secret State by Jan Karski

Autobiography of Martin Luther King

Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

Design & Technology

The Genius behind Apples greatest products by Jony Ive

Isambard Kingdom Brunel: A Life From Beginning to End by Hourly History

Against all Odds: An Autobiogrphy by James Dyson

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Vivienne Westwood by Vivienne Westwood, Ian Kelly

On request, information on the website can be provided as a paper copy. Please send your request using the details on the ‘Contact’ page.

Certain links on this website go to external websites. You can view our Linking Statement here.

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A Vendetta

by Guy de Maupassant

The widow of Paolo Saverini lived alone with her son in a poor little house on the outskirts of Bonifacio. The town, built on an outjutting part of the mountain, in places even overhanging the sea, looks across the straits, full of sandbanks, towards the southernmost coast of Sardinia. Beneath it, on the other side and almost surrounding it, is a cleft in the cliff like an immense corridor which serves as a harbor, and along it the little Italian and Sardinian fishing boats come by a circuitous route between precipitous cliffs as far as the first houses, and every two weeks the old, wheezy steamer which makes the trip to Ajaccio.

On the white mountain the houses, massed together, makes an even whiter spot. They look like the nests of wild birds, clinging to this peak, overlooking this terrible passage, where vessels rarely venture. The wind, which blows uninterruptedly, has swept bare the forbidding coast; it drives through the narrow straits and lays waste both sides. The pale streaks of foam, clinging to the black rocks, whose countless peaks rise up out of the water, look like bits of rag floating and drifting on the surface of the sea.

The house of widow Saverini, clinging to the very edge of the precipice, looks out, through its three windows, over this wild and desolate picture.

She lived there alone, with her son Antonia and their dog “Semillante,” a big, thin beast, with a long rough coat, of the sheep-dog breed. The young man took her with him when out hunting.

One night, after some kind of a quarrel, Antoine Saverini was treacherously stabbed by Nicolas Ravolati, who escaped the same evening to Sardinia.

When the old mother received the body of her child, which the neighbors had brought back to her, she did not cry, but she stayed there for a long time motionless, watching him. Then, stretching her wrinkled hand over the body, she promised him a vendetta. She did not wish anybody near her, and she shut herself up beside the body with the dog, which howled continuously, standing at the foot of the bed, her head stretched towards her master and her tail between her legs. She did not move any more than did the mother, who, now leaning over the body with a blank stare, was weeping silently and watching it.

The young man, lying on his back, dressed in his jacket of coarse cloth, torn at the chest, seemed to be asleep. But he had blood all over him; on his shirt, which had been torn off in order to administer the first aid; on his vest, on his trousers, on his face, on his hands. Clots of blood had hardened in his beard and in his hair.

His old mother began to talk to him. At the sound of this voice the dog quieted down.

“Never fear, my boy, my little baby, you shall be avenged. Sleep, sleep; you shall be avenged. Do you hear? It’s your mother’s promise! And she always keeps her word, your mother does, you know she does.”

Slowly she leaned over him, pressing her cold lips to his dead ones.

Then Semillante began to howl again with a long, monotonous, penetrating, horrible howl.

The two of them, the woman and the dog, remained there until morning.

Antoine Saverini was buried the next day and soon his name ceased to be mentioned in Bonifacio.

He had neither brothers nor cousins. No man was there to carry on the vendetta. His mother, the old woman, alone pondered over it.

On the other side of the straits she saw, from morning until night, a little white speck on the coast. It was the little Sardinian village Longosardo, where Corsican criminals take refuge when they are too closely pursued. They compose almost the entire population of this hamlet, opposite their native island, awaiting the time to return, to go back to the “maquis.” She knew that Nicolas Ravolati had sought refuge in this village.

All alone, all day long, seated at her window, she was looking over there and thinking of revenge. How could she do anything without help–she, an invalid and so near death? But she had promised, she had sworn on the body. She could not forget, she could not wait. What could she do? She no longer slept at night; she had neither rest nor peace of mind; she thought persistently. The dog, dozing at her feet, would sometimes lift her head and howl. Since her master’s death she often howled thus, as though she were calling him, as though her beast’s soul, inconsolable too, had also retained a recollection that nothing could wipe out.

One night, as Semillante began to howl, the mother suddenly got hold of an idea, a savage, vindictive, fierce idea. She thought it over until morning. Then, having arisen at daybreak she went to church. She prayed, prostrate on the floor, begging the Lord to help her, to support her, to give to her poor, broken-down body the strength which she needed in order to avenge her son.

She returned home. In her yard she had an old barrel, which acted as a cistern. She turned it over, emptied it, made it fast to the ground with sticks and stones. Then she chained Semillante to this improvised kennel and went into the house.

She walked ceaselessly now, her eyes always fixed on the distant coast of Sardinia. He was over there, the murderer.

All day and all night the dog howled. In the morning the old woman brought her some water in a bowl, but nothing more; no soup, no bread.

Another day went by. Semillante, exhausted, was sleeping. The following day her eyes were shining, her hair on end and she was pulling wildly at her chain.

All this day the old woman gave her nothing to eat. The beast, furious, was barking hoarsely. Another night went by.

Then, at daybreak, Mother Saverini asked a neighbor for some straw. She took the old rags which had formerly been worn by her husband and stuffed them so as to make them look like a human body.

Having planted a stick in the ground, in front of Semillante’s kennel, she tied to it this dummy, which seemed to be standing up. Then she made a head out of some old rags.

The dog, surprised, was watching this straw man, and was quiet, although famished. Then the old woman went to the store and bought a piece of black sausage. When she got home she started a fire in the yard, near the kennel, and cooked the sausage. Semillante, frantic, was jumping about, frothing at the mouth, her eyes fixed on the food, the odor of which went right to her stomach.

Then the mother made of the smoking sausage a necktie for the dummy. She tied it very tight around the neck with string, and when she had finished she untied the dog.

With one leap the beast jumped at the dummy’s throat, and with her paws on its shoulders she began to tear at it. She would fall back with a piece of food in her mouth, then would jump again, sinking her fangs into the string, and snatching few pieces of meat she would fall back again and once more spring forward. She was tearing up the face with her teeth and the whole neck was in tatters.

The old woman, motionless and silent, was watching eagerly. Then she chained the beast up again, made her fast for two more days and began this strange performance again.

For three months she accustomed her to this battle, to this meal conquered by a fight. She no longer chained her up, but just pointed to the dummy.

She had taught her to tear him up and to devour him without even leaving any traces in her throat.

Then, as a reward, she would give her a piece of sausage.

As soon as she saw the man, Semillante would begin to tremble. Then she would look up to her mistress, who, lifting her finger, would cry, “Go!” in a shrill tone.

When she thought that the proper time had come, the widow went to confession and, one Sunday morning she partook of communion with an ecstatic fervor. Then, putting on men’s clothes and looking like an old tramp, she struck a bargain with a Sardinian fisherman who carried her and her dog to the other side of the straits.

In a bag she had a large piece of sausage. Semillante had had nothing to eat for two days. The old woman kept letting her smell the food and whetting her appetite.

They got to Longosardo. The Corsican woman walked with a limp. She went to a baker’s shop and asked for Nicolas Ravolati. He had taken up his old trade, that of carpenter. He was working alone at the back of his store.

The old woman opened the door and called:

“Hallo, Nicolas!” He turned around. Then releasing her dog, she cried: “Go, go! Eat him up! eat him up!”

The maddened animal sprang for his throat. The man stretched out his arms, clasped the dog and rolled to the ground. For a few seconds he squirmed, beating the ground with his feet. Then he stopped moving, while Semillante dug her fangs into his throat and tore it to ribbons. Two neighbors, seated before their door, remembered perfectly having seen an old beggar come out with a thin, black dog which was eating something that its master was giving him.

At nightfall the old woman was at home again. She slept well that night.

All Summer in a Day

by Ray Bradbury

“Ready?” “Ready.” “Now?” “Soon.” “Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today, will it?” “Look, look; see for yourself!” The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.

It rained.

It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.

“It’s stopping, it’s stopping!” “Yes, yes!” Margot stood apart from them, from these children who could ever remember a time when there wasn’t rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering gold or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone.

All day yesterday they had read in class about the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small stories or essays or poems about it: I think the sun is a flower that blooms for just one hour. That was Margot’s poem, read in a quiet voice in the still classroom while the rain was falling outside.

“Aw, you didn’t write that!” protested one of the boys.

“I did,” said Margot. “I did.” “William!” said the teacher. But that was yesterday. Now the rain was slackening, and the children were crushed in the great thick windows.

Where’s teacher?” “She’ll be back.” “She’d better hurry, we’ll miss it !” They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes. Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass.

“What’re you looking at?” said William. Margot said nothing. “Speak when you’re spoken to.”He gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather she let herself be moved only by him and nothing else. They edged away from her; they would not look at her. She felt them go away. And this was because she would play no games with them in the echoing tunnels of the underground city. If they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched windows. And then, of course, the biggest crime of all was that she had come here only five years ago from Earth, and she remembered the sun and the way the sun was and the sky was when she was four in Ohio. And they, they had been on Venus all their lives, and they had been only two years old when last the sun came out and had long since forgotten the color and heat of it and the way it really was.

But Margot remembered.

“It’s like a penny,” she said once, eyes closed.

“No it’s not!” the children cried.”It’s like a fire,” she said, “in the stove.”

“You’re lying, you don’t remember!” cried the children.

But she remembered and stood quietly apart from all of them and watched the patterning windows. And once, a month ago, she had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her ears and over her head, screaming the water mustn’t touch her head. So after that, dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was different and they knew her difference and kept away. There was talk that her father and mother were taking her back to Earth next year; it seemed vital to her that they do so, though it would mean the loss of thousands of dollars to her family. And so, the children hated her for all these reasons of big and little consequence. They hated her pale snow face, her waiting silence, her thinness, and her possible future.

“Get away!” The boy gave her another push. “What’re you waiting for?”

Then, for the first time, she turned and looked at him. And what she was waiting for was in her eyes.

“Well, don’t wait around here!” cried the boy savagely. “You won’t see nothing!”

Her lips moved.

“Nothing!” he cried. “It was all a joke, wasn’t it?” He turned to the other children. “Nothing’s happening today. Is it?”

They all blinked at him and then, understanding, laughed and shook their heads.

“Nothing, nothing!”

“Oh, but,” Margot whispered, her eyes helpless. “But this is the day, the scientists predict, they say, they know, the sun…” “All a joke!” said the boy, and seized her roughly. “Hey, everyone, let’s put her in a closet before the teacher comes!”

“No,” said Margot, falling back.

They surged about her, caught her up and bore her, protesting, and then pleading, and then crying, back into a tunnel, a room, a closet, where they slammed and locked the door. They stood looking at the door and saw it tremble from her beating and throwing herself against it. They heard her muffled cries. Then, smiling, the turned and went out and back down the tunnel, just as the teacher arrived.

“Ready, children?” She glanced at her watch.

“Yes!” said everyone. “Are we all here ?” “Yes!” The rain slacked still more. They crowded to the huge door. The rain stopped.

It was as if, in the midst of a film concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, something had, first, gone wrong with the sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of the blasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film from the projector and inserted in its place a beautiful tropical slide which did not move or tremor. The world ground to a standstill. The silence was so immense and unbelievable that you felt your ears had been stuffed or you had lost your hearing altogether. The children put their hands to their ears. They stood apart. The door slid back and the smell of the silent, waiting world came in to them.

The sun came out.

It was the color of flaming bronze and it was very large. And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile color. And the jungle burned with sunlight as the children, released from their spell, rushed out, yelling into the springtime.

“Now, don’t go too far,” called the teacher after them. “You’ve only two hours, you know. You wouldn’t want to get caught out !”

But they were running and turning their faces up to the sky and feeling the sun on their cheeks like a warm iron; they were taking off their jackets and letting the sun burn their arms.

“Oh, it’s better than the sun lamps, isn’t it?”

“Much, much better!”

They stopped running and stood in the great jungle that covered Venus, that grew and never stopped growing, tumultuously, even as you watched it. It was a nest of octopi, clustering up great arms of flesh like weed, wavering, flowering in this brief spring. It was the color of rubber and ash, this jungle, from the many years without sun. It was the color of stones and white cheeses and ink, and it was the color of the moon.

The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them resilient and alive. They ran among the trees, they slipped and fell, they pushed each other, they played hide- and-seek and tag, but most of all they squinted at the sun until the tears ran down their faces; they put their hands up to that yellowness and that amazing blueness and they breathed of the fresh, fresh air and listened and listened to the silence which suspended them in a blessed sea of no sound and no motion. They looked at everything and savored everything. Then, wildly, like animals escaped from their caves, they ran and ran in shouting circles. They ran for an hour and did not stop running.

And then –

In the midst of their running one of the girls wailed.

Everyone stopped.

The girl, standing in the open, held out her hand.

“Oh, look, look,” she said, trembling.

They came slowly to look at her opened palm.

In the center of it, cupped and huge, was a single raindrop. She began to cry, looking at it. They glanced quietly at the sun.

“Oh. Oh.”

A few cold drops fell on their noses and their cheeks and their mouths. The sun faded behind a stir of mist. A wind blew cold around them. They turned and started to walk back toward the underground house, their hands at their sides, their smiles vanishing away.

A boom of thunder startled them and like leaves before a new hurricane, they tumbled upon each other and ran. Lightning struck ten miles away, five miles away, a mile, a half-mile. The sky darkened into midnight in a flash. They stood in the doorway of the underground for a moment until it was raining hard. Then they closed the door and heard the gigantic sound of the rain falling in tons and avalanches, everywhere and forever.

“Will it be seven more years?” “Yes. Seven. “Then one of them gave a little cry. “Margot!”

“What?”

“She’s still in the closet where we locked her.”

“Margot.”

They stood as if someone had driven them, like so many stakes, into the floor. They looked at each other and then looked away. They glanced out at the world that was raining now and raining and raining steadily. They could not meet each other’s glances. Their faces were solemn and pale. They looked at their hands and feet, their faces down.

“Margot. “One of the girls said, “Well…?” No one moved. “Go on,” whispered the girl.They walked slowly down the hall in the sound of cold rain. They turned through the doorway to the room in the sound of the storm and thunder, lightning on their faces, blue and terrible. They walked over to the closet door slowly and stood by it.

Behind the closet door was only silence.

They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and let Margot out.

Charles

Shirley Jackson

The day my son Laurie started kindergarten he renounced corduroy overalls with bibs and began wearing blue jeans

with a belt; I watched him go off the first morning with the older girl next door, seeing clearly that an era of my life was ended, my sweet-voiced nursery-school tot replaced by a longtrousered, swaggering character who forgot to stop at the corner and wave good-bye to me.

He came home the same way, the front door slamming open, his cap on the floor, and the voice suddenly become raucous shouting, “ Isn’t anybody here?” At lunch he spoke insolently to his father, spilled his baby

sister’s milk, and remarked that his teacher said we were not to take the name of the Lord in vain.

“How was school today?” I asked, elaborately casual.

“All right,” he said.

“Did you learn anything?” his father asked.

Laurie regarded his father coldly. “I didn’t learn nothing,” he said.

“Anything,” I said. “ Didn’t learn anything”

“The teacher spanked a boy, though,” Laurie said, ad – dressing his bread and butter. “For being fresh,” he added,

with his mouth full.

“What did he do?” I asked. “Who was it?”

Laurie thought. “It was Charles,” he said. “He was fresh.

The teacher spanked him and made him stand in a corner. He was awfully fresh.”

“What did he do?” I asked again, but Laurie slid off his chair, took a cookie, and left, while his father was still saying,

“See here, young man.”

The next day Laurie remarked at lunch, as soon as he sat down, “Well, Charles was bad again today.” He grinned enormously and said, “Today Charles hit the teacher.”

“Good heavens,” I said, mindful of the Lord’s name, “I suppose he got spanked again?”

“He sure did,” Laurie said. “Look up,” he said to his father.

“What?” his father said, looking up.

“Look down,” Laurie said. “Look at my thumb. Gee, you’re dumb.” He began to laugh insanely.

“Why did Charles hit the teacher?” I asked quickly.

“ Because she tried to make him color with red crayons,”

Laurie said. “Charles wanted to color with green crayons so he hit the teacher and she spanked him and said nobody play with Charles but everybody did.”

The third day— it was Wednesday of the first week— Charles bounced a see-saw on to the head of a little girl and made her bleed, and the teacher made him stay inside all during recess. Thursday Charles had to stand in a corner during storytime because he kept pounding his feet on the floor. Friday Charles was deprived of blackboard privileges because he threw chalk.

On Saturday I remarked to my husband, “Do you think kindergarten is too unsettling for Laurie? All this toughness,

and bad grammar, and this Charles boy sounds like such a bad influence.”

“It’ll be all right,” my husband said reassuringly. “Bound to be people like Charles in the world. Might as well meet them now as later.”

On Monday Laurie came home late, full of news. “Charles,” he shouted as he came up the hill; I was waiting anxiously on the front steps. “Charles,” Laurie yelled all the way up the hill, “Charles was bad again.” “Come right in,” I said, as soon as he came close enough.

“Lunch is waiting.”

“You know what Charles did?” he demanded, following me through the door. “Charles yelled so in school they sent a boy in from first grade to tell the teacher she had to make Charles keep quiet, and so Charles had to stay after school. And so all the children stayed to watch him.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

“He just sat there,” Laurie said, climbing into his chair at the table. “Hi, Pop, y’old dust mop.”

“Charles had to stay after school today,” I told my husband.

“Everyone stayed with him.”

“What does this Charles look like?” my husband asked Laurie. “What’s his other name?”

“He’s bigger than me,” Laurie said. “And he doesn’t have any rubbers and he doesn’t ever wear a jacket.”

Monday night was the first Parent-Teachers meeting, and only the fact that the baby had a cold kept me from going; I wanted passionately to meet Charles’s mother. On Tuesday Laurie remarked suddenly, “Our teacher had a friend come to see her in school today.”

“Charles’s mother?”my husband and I asked simultaneously.

“Naaah,” Laurie said scornfully. “It was a man who came and made us do exercises, we had to touch our toes. Look.”

He climbed down from his chair and squatted down and touched his toes. “Like this,” he said. He got solemnly back

into his chair and said, picking up his fork, “Charles didn’t even do exercises.”

“That’s fine,” I said heartily. “ Didn’t Charles want to do exercises?”

“Naaah,” Laurie said. “Charles was so fresh to the teacher’s friend he wasn’t let do exercises.”

“Fresh again?” I said.

“He kicked the teacher’s friend,” Laurie said. “The teacher’s friend told Charles to touch his toes like I just did

and Charles kicked him.”

“What are they going to do about Charles, do you suppose?” Laurie’s father asked him.

Laurie shrugged elaborately. “Throw him out of school, I guess,” he said.

Wednesday and Thursday were routine; Charles yelled during story hour and hit a boy in the stomach and made him cry.

On Friday Charles stayed after school again and so did all the other children. With the third week of kindergarten Charles was an institution in our family; the baby was being a Charles when she cried all afternoon; Laurie did a Charles when he filled his wagon full of mud and pulled it through the kitchen; even my husband, when he caught his elbow in the telephone cord and pulled telephone, ashtray, and a bowl of flowers off the table,

said, after the first minute, “Looks like Charles.”

During the third and fourth weeks it looked like a reformation in Charles; Laurie reported grimly at lunch on Thursday, “Charles was so good today the teacher gave him an apple.”

“What?” I said, and my husband added warily, “You mean Charles?”

“Charles,” Laurie said. “He gave the crayons around and he picked up the books afterward and the teacher said he was her helper.”

“What happened?” I asked incredulously.

“He was her helper, that’s all,” Laurie said, and shrugged.

“Can this be true, about Charles?” I asked my husband that night. “Can something like this happen?”

“Wait and see,” my husband said cynically. “When you’ve got a Charles to deal with, this may mean he’s only plotting.”

He seemed to be wrong. For over a week Charles was the teacher’s helper; each day he handed things out and he picked things up; no one had to stay after school.

“The P.T.A. meeting’s next week again,” I told my husband one evening. “I’m going to find Charles’s mother there.”

“Ask her what happened to Charles,” my husband said. “I’d like to know.”

“I’d like to know myself,” I said.

On Friday of that week things were back to normal. “You know what Charles did today?” Laurie demanded at the lunch table, in a voice slightly awed. “He told a little girl to say a word and she said it and the teacher washed her mouth out with soap and Charles laughed.”

“What word?” his father asked unwisely, and Laurie said,

“I’ll have to whisper it to you, it’s so bad.” He got down off his chair and went around to his father. His father bent his head down and Laurie whispered joyfully. His father’s eyes

widened.

“Did Charles tell the little girl to say that?” he asked respectfully.

“She said it twice,” Laurie said. “Charles told her to say it twice.”

“What happened to Charles?” my husband asked.

“Nothing,” Laurie said. “He was passing out the crayons.”

Monday morning Charles abandoned the little girl and said the evil word himself three or four times, getting his mouth washed out with soap each time. He also threw chalk.

My husband came to the door with me that evening as I set out for the P.T.A. meeting. “Invite her over for a cup of tea after the meeting,” he said. “I want to get a look at her.”

“If only she’s there,” I said prayerfully.

“She’ll be there,” my husband said. “I don’t see how they could hold a P.T.A. meeting without Charles’s mother.”

At the meeting I sat restlessly, scanning each comfortable matronly face, trying to determine which one hid the secret of Charles. None of them looked to me haggard enough. No one stood up in the meeting and apologized for the way her son had been acting. No one mentioned Charles.

After the meeting I identified and sought out Laurie’s kindergarten teacher. She had a plate with a cup of tea and a

piece of chocolate cake; I had a plate with a cup of tea and a piece of marshmallow cake. We maneuvered up to one an – other cautiously, and smiled.

“I’ve been so anxious to meet you,” I said. “I’m Laurie’s mother.”

“We’re all so interested in Laurie,” she said.

“Well, he certainly likes kindergarten,” I said. “He talks about it all the time.”

“We had a little trouble adjusting, the first week or so,” she said primly, “but now he’s a fine little helper. With occasional lapses, of course.”

“Laurie usually adjusts very quickly,” I said. “I suppose this time it’s Charles’s influence.”

“Charles?”

“Yes,” I said, laughing, “you must have your hands full in that kindergarten, with Charles.”

“Charles?” she said. “We don’t have any Charles in the kindergarten.”

Death by Scrabble

by Charlie Fisher

It’s a hot day and I hate my wife.

We’re playing Scrabble. That’s how bad it is. I’m 42 years old, it’s a blistering hot Sunday afternoon and all I can think of to do with my life is to play Scrabble.

I should be out, doing exercise, spending money, meeting people. I don’t think I’ve spoken to anyone except my wife since Thursday morning. On Thursday morning I spoke to the milkman.

My letters are crap.

I play, appropriately, BEGIN. With the N on the little pink star. Twenty-two points.

I watch my wife’s smug expression as she rearranges her letters. Clack, clack, clack. I hate her. If she wasn’t around, I’d be doing something interesting right now. I’d be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. I’d be starring in the latest Hollywood blockbuster. I’d be sailing the Vendee Globe on a 60-foot clipper called the New Horizons – I don’t know, but I’d be doing something.

She plays JINXED, with the J on a double-letter score. 30 points. She’s beating me already. Maybe I should kill her.

If only I had a D, then I could play MURDER. That would be a sign. That would be permission.

I start chewing on my U. It’s a bad habit, I know. All the letters are frayed. I play WARMER for 22 points, mainly so I can keep chewing on my U.

As I’m picking new letters from the bag, I find myself thinking – the letters will tell me what to do. If they spell out KILL, or STAB, or her name, or anything, I’ll do it right now. I’ll finish her off.

My rack spells MIHZPA. Plus the U in my mouth. Damn.

The heat of the sun is pushing at me through the window. I can hear buzzing insects outside. I hope they’re not bees. My cousin Harold swallowed a bee when he was nine, his throat swelled up and he died. I hope that if they are bees, they fly into my wife’s throat.

She plays SWEATIER, using all her letters. 24 points plus a 50 point bonus. If it wasn’t too hot to move I would strangle her right now.

I am getting sweatier. It needs to rain, to clear the air. As soon as that thought crosses my mind, I find a good word. HUMID on a double-word score, using the D of JINXED. The U makes a little splash of saliva when I put it down. Another 22 points. I hope she has lousy letters.

She tells me she has lousy letters. For some reason, I hate her more.

She plays FAN, with the F on a double-letter, and gets up to fill the kettle and turn on the air conditioning.

It’s the hottest day for ten years and my wife is turning on the kettle. This is why I hate my wife. I play ZAPS, with the Z doubled, and she gets a static shock off the air conditioning unit. I find this remarkably satisfying.

She sits back down with a heavy sigh and starts fiddling with her letters again. Clack clack. Clack clack. I feel a terrible rage build up inside me. Some inner poison slowly spreading through my limbs, and when it gets to my fingertips I am going to jump out of my chair, spilling the Scrabble tiles over the floor, and I am going to start hitting her again and again and again.

The rage gets to my fingertips and passes. My heart is beating. I’m sweating. I think my face actually twitches. Then I sigh, deeply, and sit back into my chair. The kettle starts whistling. As the whistle builds it makes me feel hotter.

She plays READY on a double-word for 18 points, then goes to pour herself a cup of tea. No I do not want one.

I steal a blank tile from the letter bag when she’s not looking, and throw back a V from my rack. She gives me a suspicious look. She sits back down with her cup of tea, making a cup-ring on the table, as I play an 8-letter word: CHEATING, using the A of READY. 64 points, including the 50-point bonus, which means I’m beating her now.

She asks me if I cheated.

I really, really hate her.

She plays IGNORE on the triple-word for 21 points. The score is 153 to her, 155 to me.

The steam rising from her cup of tea makes me feel hotter. I try to make murderous words with the letters on my rack, but the best I can do is SLEEP.

My wife sleeps all the time. She slept through an argument our next-door neighbours had that resulted in a broken door, a smashed TV and a Teletubby Lala doll with all the stuffing coming out. And then she bitched at me for being moody the next day from lack of sleep.

If only there was some way for me to get rid of her.

I spot a chance to use all my letters. EXPLODES, using the X of JINXED. 72 points. That’ll show her.

As I put the last letter down, there is a deafening bang and the air conditioning unit fails.

My heart is racing, but not from the shock of the bang. I don’t believe it – but it can’t be a coincidence. The letters made it happen. I played the word EXPLODES, and it happened – the air conditioning unit exploded. And before, I played the word CHEATING when I cheated. And ZAP when my wife got the electric shock. The words are coming true. The letters are choosing their future. The whole game is – JINXED.

My wife plays SIGN, with the N on a triple-letter, for 10 points.

I have to test this.

I have to play something and see if it happens. Something unlikely, to prove that the letters are making it happen. My rack is ABQYFWE. That doesn’t leave me with a lot of options. I start frantically chewing on the B.

I play FLY, using the L of EXPLODES. I sit back in my chair and close my eyes, waiting for the sensation of rising up from my chair. Waiting to fly.

Stupid. I open my eyes, and there’s a fly. An insect, buzzing around above the Scrabble board, surfing the thermals from the tepid cup of tea. That proves nothing. The fly could have been there anyway.

I need to play something unambiguous. Something that cannot be misinterpreted. Something absolute and final. Something terminal. Something murderous.

My wife plays CAUTION, using a blank tile for the N. 18 points.

My rack is AQWEUK, plus the B in my mouth. I am awed by the power of the letters, and frustrated that I cannot wield it. Maybe I should cheat again, and pick out the letters I need to spell SLASH or SLAY.

Then it hits me. The perfect word. A powerful, dangerous, terrible word.

I play QUAKE for 19 points.

I wonder if the strength of the quake will be proportionate to how many points it scored. I can feel the trembling energy of potential in my veins. I am commanding fate. I am manipulating destiny.

My wife plays DEATH for 34 points, just as the room starts to shake.

I gasp with surprise and vindication – and the B that I was chewing on gets lodged in my throat. I try to cough. My face goes red, then blue. My throat swells. I draw blood clawing at my neck. The earthquake builds to a climax.

I fall to the floor. My wife just sits there, watching.

Don’t Ask Jack

By Neil Gaiman

Nobody knew where the toy had come from – which great-grandparent or distant aunt had owned it before it was given to the nursery. It was a box, carved and painted in gold and red. It was undoubtedly attractive and, or so the grown-ups maintained, quite valuable – perhaps even an antique. The latch, unfortunately, was rusted shut, and the key had been lost so the Jack could not be released from his box. Still, it was a remarkable box, heavy and carved and gilt.

The children did not play with it. It sat at the bottom of the old wooden toy box, which was the same size and age as a pirate’s treasure-chest, or so the children thought. The Jack-in-the-box was buried beneath dolls and trains, clowns and paper stars and old conjuring tricks, and crippled marionettes with their strings irrevocably tangled, with dressing up clothes (here the tatters of a long-ago wedding dress, there a black silk hat, crusted with age and time) and costume jewellery, broken hoops and tops and hobbyhorses. Under them all was the Jack’s box.

The children did not play with it. They whispered among themselves, alone in the attic nursery. On grey days when the wind howled about the house and rain rattled the slates and pattered down the eaves they told each other stories about Jack, although they had never seen him. One claimed that Jack was an evil wizard, placed in the box as punishment for crimes too awful to describe; another maintained that he had been placed in the box as guardian to prevent the bad things inside it from coming out. They would not even touch the box, if they could help it, although when, as happened from time to time, an adult would comment on the absence of that sweet old Jack-in-the-box, and retrieve it from the chest, and place it in a position of honour on the mantelpiece, then the children would pluck up their courage and, later, hide it away once more in the darkness.

The children did not play with the Jack-in-the-box. And when they grew up and left the great house, the attic nursery was closed up and almost forgotten.

Almost, but not entirely. For each of the children, separately, remembered walking alone in the moon’s blue light, on his or her own bare feet, up to the nursery. It was almost like sleepwalking, feet soundless on the wood of the stairs, on the threadbare nursery carpet. Remembered opening the treasure chest, pawing through the dolls and the clothes and pulling out the box.

And then the child would touch the catch, and the lid would open, slow as a sunset, and the music would begin to play, and Jack came out. Not with a pop and a bounce: but deliberately, intently, he would rise from the box and motion to the child to come closer, closer, and smile.

And there in the moonlight, he told them each things they could never quite remember, things they were never able entirely to forget.

The oldest boy died in the Great War. The youngest, after their parents died, inherited the house, although it was taken from him when he was found in the cellar one night with cloths and paraffin and matches, trying to burn the great house to the ground. They took him to the madhouse, and perhaps he is there still.

The other children, who had once been girls and now were women, declined, each and every one, to return to the house in which they had grown up; and the windows of the house were boarded up; and the doors were all locked with the huge iron keys.

Years have passed and the girls are old women, and owls and bats have made their homes in the old attic nursery, rats build their nests among the forgotten toys. The creatures gaze uncuriously at the faded prints on the wall, and stain the remnants of the carpet with their droppings.

And deep within the box within the box, Jack waits and smiles, holding his secrets. He is waiting for the children. He can wait forever.

Ex Poser

Paul Jennings

There are two rich kids in our form. Sandra Morris and Ben Fox. They are both snobs.
They think they are too good for the rest of us. Their parents have big cars and big
houses. Both of them are quiet. They keep to themselves. I guess they don’t want to mix
with the ruffians like me.

Ben Fox always wears expensive gym shoes and the latest fashions. He thinks he is
good-looking with his blue eyes and blond hair. He is a real poser.
Sandra Morris is the same. And she knows it. Blue eyes and blonde hair too. Skin like
silk. Why do some kids get the best of everything?

Me, I landed pimples. I’ve used everything I can on them. But still they bud and grow
and burst. Just when you don’t want them to. It’s not fair.
Anyway, today I have the chance to even things up. Boffin is bringing along his latest
invention – a lie detector. Sandra Morris is the victim. She agreed to try it out because
everyone knows that she would never tell a lie. What she doesn’t know is that Boffin and I
are going to ask her some very embarrassing questions.

Boffin is a brain. His inventions always work. He is smarter than the teachers.
Everyone knows that. And now he has brought along his latest effort. A lie detector.

20 He tapes two wires to Sandra’s arm. ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he says. ‘But it is deadly accurate.’
He switches on the machine and a little needle swings into the middle of the dial. ‘Here’s a
trial question,’ he says. ‘Are you a girl?’

Sandra nods.
‘You have to say yes or no,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ replies Sandra. The needle swings over to TRUTH. Maybe this thing really

works. Boffin gives a big grin.
“This time tell a lie.” says Boffin. ‘Are you a girl?’ he asks again.
Sandra smiles with that lovely smile of hers. ‘No,’ she says. A little laugh goes up but

then all the kids in the room gasp. The needle points to LIE. This lie detector is a terrific
invention!
‘OK,’ says Boffin. ‘You only have seven questions, David. The batteries will go flat after
another seven questions.’ He sits down behind his machine and twiddles the knobs.
This is going to be fun. I am going to find out a little bit about Sandra Morris and Ben

Fox. It’s going to be very interesting. Very interesting indeed.
I ask my first question. ‘Have you ever kissed Ben Fox?’
Sandra goes red. Ben Fox goes red. I have got them this time. I am sure they have

something going between them. I will expose them.
‘No,’ says Sandra. Everyone cranes their neck to see what the lie detector says. The
needle points to TRUTH.
40 This is not what I expected. And I only have six questions left. I can’t let her off the

hook. I am going to expose them both.
‘Have you ever held his hand?’
Again she says, ‘No.’ And the needle says TRUTH. I am starting to feel guilty. Why am I

doing this?
I try another tack. ‘Are you in love?’ I ask.

A red flush starts to crawl up her neck. I am feeling really mean now. Fox is blushing like

a sunset.

‘Yes,’ she says. The needle points to TRUTH

I shouldn’t have let the kids talk me into doing this. I decide to put Sandra and Ben out

of their agony. I won’t actually name him. I’ll spare her that. ‘Is he in this room?’ I say.

She looks at the red Ben Fox. ‘Yes,’ she says. The needle points to TRUTH.

‘Has he got blue eyes?’ I ask.

‘No,’ she says.

‘Brown?” I say.

“No,’ she says again.

I don’t know what to say next. I look at each kid in the class very carefully. Ben Fox

has blue eyes. I was sure that she loved him.

This thing doesn’t work,” I say to Boffin. ‘I can’t see one kid who doesn’t have either

blue eyes or brown eyes.

‘We can,’ says Boffin. They are all looking at me.

I can feel my face turning red now. I wish I could sink through the floor but I get on with

my last question. ‘Is he an idiot?’ I ask.

Sandra is very embarrassed. ‘Yes,’ she says in a voice that is softer than a whisper.

‘And he has green eyes.’

©Paul Jennings
Reprinted with the kind permission of the
publishers Penguin Books (Australia)

Examination Day

By Henry Slesar

The Jordans never spoke of the exam, not until their son, Dickie, was twelve years old. It was on his birthday that Mrs Jordan first mentioned the subject in his presence, and the anxious manner of her speech caused her husband to answer sharply.

‘Forget about it,’ he said. ‘He’ll do alright.’

They were at the breakfast table, and the boy looked up from his plate curiously. He was an alert-eyed youngster, with flat blond hair and a quick, nervous manner. He didn’t understand what the sudden tension was about, but he did know that today was his birthday, and he wanted harmony above all. Somewhere in the apartment there were wrapped, beribboned packages waiting to be opened, and in the tiny wall-kitchen, something warm and sweet was being prepared in the automatic stove. He wanted the day to be happy, and the moistness of his mother’s eyes, the scowl on his father’s face, spoiled the mood of fluttering expectation with which he had greeted the morning.

‘What exam?’ he asked.

His mother looked at the tablecloth. ‘It’s just a sort of Government intelligence test they give children at the age of twelve. You’ll be getting it next week. It’s nothing to worry about.’

‘You mean a test like in school?’

‘Something like that,’ his father said, getting up from the table. ‘Go read your comic books, Dickie.’

The boy rose and wandered towards that part of the room that had been ‘his’ corner since infancy. He fingered the topmost comic of the stack, but seemed uninterested in the colourful squares of fast-paced action. He wandered towards the window, and peered gloomily at the veil of mist that shrouded the glass.

‘Why did it have to rain today?’ he said. ‘Why couldn’t it rain tomorrow?’

His father, now slumped into an armchair with the Government newspaper, rattled the sheets in vexation. ‘Because it just did, that’s all. Rain makes the grass grow.’

‘Why, Dad?’ ‘Because it does, that’s all.’ Dickie puckered his brow. ‘What makes it green, though? The grass?’

‘Nobody knows,’ his father snapped, then immediately regretted his abruptness.

Later in the day, it was birthday time again. His mother beamed as she handed over the gaily –coloured packages, and even his father managed a grin and a rumple-of-the-hair. He kissed his mother and shook hands gravely with his father. Then the birthday cake was brought forth, and the ceremonies concluded.

‘Dad,’ he said, ‘how far away is the sun?’ ‘Five thousand miles,’ his father said.

Dick sat at the breakfast table and again saw the moisture in his mother’s eyes. He didn’t connect her tears with the exam until his father suddenly brought the subject to light again.

‘Well, Dickie,’ he said, with a manly frown, ‘you’ve got an appointment today.’

‘I know, Dad. I hope—‘

‘Now it’s nothing to worry about. Thousands of children take this test every day. The Government wants to know how smart you are, Dickie. That’s all there is to it.’

‘I get good marks in school,’ he said hesitantly.

‘This is different. This is– a special kind of test. They give you this stuff to drink, you see, and then you go into a room where there’s a sort of machine—‘

‘What stuff to drink?’ Dickie said.

‘It’s nothing. It tastes like peppermint. It’s just to make sure you answer the questions truthfully. Not that the Government thinks you won’t tell the truth, but this stuff makes sure.’

Dickie’s face showed puzzlement, and a touch of fright. He looked at his mother, and she composed her face into a misty smile.

‘Everything will be alright,’ she said.

‘Of course it will,’ his father agreed. ‘You’re a good boy, Dickie; you’ll make out fine. Then we’ll come home and celebrate. All right?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Dickie said.

They entered the Government Educational Building fifteen minutes before the appointed hour. They crossed the marble floors of the great pillared lobby, passed beneath an archway and entered an automatic elevator that brought them to the fourth floor.

There was a young man wearing an insignia-less tunic, seated at a polished desk in front of Room 404. He held a clipboard in his hand, and he checked the list down to the Js and permitted the Jordans to enter.

The room was as cold and official as a courtroom, with long benches flanking metal tables. There were several fathers and sons already there, and a thin-lipped woman with cropped black hair was passing out sheets of paper.

Mr Jordan filled out the form, and returned it to the clerk. Then he told Dickie: ‘It won’t be long now. When they call out your name, you just go through the doorway at that end of the room.’ He indicated the portal with his finger.

A concealed loudspeaker crackled and called off the first name. Dickie saw a boy leave his father’s side reluctantly and walk slowly towards the door.

At five minutes of eleven, they called the name of Jordan.

‘Good luck, son,’ his father said, without looking at him. ‘I’ll call for you when the test is over.’

Dickie walked to the door and turned the knob. The room inside was dim, and he could barely make out the features of the gray-tunicked attendant who greeted him.

‘Sit down,’ the man said softly. He indicated a high stool beside his desk. ‘Your name’s Richard Jordan?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Your classification number is 600-115. Drink this, Richard.’

He lifted a plastic cup from the desk and handed it to the boy. The liquid inside had the consistency of buttermilk, but tasted only vaguely of the promised peppermint. Dickie downed it, and handed the man the empty cup.

He sat in silence, feeling drowsy, while the man wrote busily on a sheet of paper. Then the attendant looked at his watch, and rose to stand only inches from Dickie’s face. He unclipped a pen-like object from the pocket of his tunic, and flashed a tiny light into the boy’s eyes.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come with me, Richard.’

He led Dickie to the end of the room, where a single wooden armchair faced a multi- dialled computing machine.

There was a microphone on the left arm of the chair, and when the boy sat down, he found its pinpoint head conveniently at his mouth.

‘Now just relax, Richard. You’ll be asked some questions, and you think them over carefully. Then give your answers into the microphone. The machine will take care of the rest.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll leave you alone now. Whenever you want to start, just say “ready” into the microphone.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The man squeezed his shoulder, and left. Dickie said, ‘Ready.’ Lights appeared on the machine, and a

mechanism whirred. A voice said: ‘Complete this sequence. One, four,

seven, ten…’

Mr and Mrs Jordan were in the living room, not speaking, not even speculating.

It was almost four o’clock when the telephone rang. The woman tried to reach it first, but her husband was quicker.

‘Mr Jordan?’

The voice was clipped; a brisk, official voice.

‘Yes, speaking.’

‘This is the Government Education Service. Your son, Richard M Jordan, Classification 600-115, has completed the Government examination. We regret to inform you that his intelligence quotient has exceeded the Government regulation, according to Rule 84, Section 5, of the New Code.’

Across the room, the woman cried out, knowing nothing except the emotion she read on her husband’s face.

‘You may wish to specify by telephone,’ the voice droned on, ‘whether you wish his body interred by the Government or would you prefer a private burial place? The fee for Government burial is ten dollars.’

The Haunted Space Suit

Arthur Clarke

The space suits we use on the station are completely different from the flexible affairs men wear when they want to walk around on the moon. Ours are really baby space ships, just big enough to hold one man. They are stubby cylinders, about seven feet long, fitted with low-powered propulsion jets, and have a pair of accordion-like sleeves at the upper end for the operator’s arms.

As soon as I’d settled down inside my very exclusive space craft, I switched on power and checked the gauges on the tiny instrument panel. All my needles were well in the safety zone, so I lowered the transparent hemisphere over my head and sealed myself in. For a short trip like this, I did not bother to check the suit’s internal lockers, which were used to carry food and special equipment for extended missions.

It was at that moment, as I launched myself out into the abyss, that I knew that something was horribly wrong.

It is never completely silent inside a space suit; you can always hear the gentle hiss of oxygen, the faint whir of fans and motors, the susurration of your own breathing — even, if you listen carefully enough, the rhythmic thump that is the pounding of your heart. These sounds reverberate through the suit, unable to escape into the surrounding void; they are the unnoticed background of life in space, for you are aware of them only when they change.

They had changed now; to them had been added a sound which I could not identify. It was an intermittent, muffled thudding, sometimes accompanied by a scraping noise, as of metal upon metal.

I froze instantly, holding my breath and trying to locate the alien sound with my ears. The meters on the control board gave no clues; all the needles were rock-steady on their scales, and there were none of the flickering red lights that would warn of impending disaster. That was some comfort, but not much. I had long ago learned to trust my instincts in such matters; it was their alarm signals that were flashing now, telling me to return to the station before

it was too late…

It was no longer possible to pretend that the noise disturbing me was that of some faulty mechanism. Though I was in utter isolation, far from any other human being or indeed any material object, I was not alone. The soundless void was bringing to my ears the faint, but unmistakable, stirrings of life.

In that first, heart-freezing moment it seemed that something was trying to get into my suit—something invisible, seeking shelter from the cruel and pitiless vacuum of space. I whirled madly in my harness, scanning the entire sphere of vision around me. There was nothing there, of course. There could not be — yet that purposeful scrabbling was clearer than ever.

Despite the nonsense that has been written about us, it is not true that spacemen are superstitious. But can you blame me if, as I came to the end of logic’s resources, I suddenly remembered how Bernie Summers had died, no further from the station than I was at this very moment?

It was one of those “impossible” accidents; it always is. Three things had gone wrong at once. Bernie’s oxygen regulator had run wild and sent the pressure soaring, the safety valve had failed to blow — and a faulty joint had given way. In a fraction of a second, his suit was open to space.

I had never known Bernie, but suddenly his fate became of overwhelming importance to me, for a horrible idea had come into my mind. One does not talk about these things, but a damaged space suit is too valuable to be thrown away, even if it has killed its wearer. It is repaired, renumbered — and issued to someone else….

What happens to the soul of a man who dies between the stars, far from his native world? Are you still here, Bernie, clinging to the last object that linked you to your lost and distant home?

As I fought the nightmares that were swirling around me—for now it seemed that the scratchings and soft fumblings were coming from all directions—there was one last hope to which I clung. For the sake of sanity, I had to prove that this wasn’t Bernie’s suit—that the metal walls so closely wrapped around me had never been another man’s coffin.

It took me several tries before I could press the right button and switch my transmitter to the emergency wave length.

“Station!” I gasped, “I’m in trouble! Get records to check my suit history and —”

I never finished; they say my yell wrecked the microphone. But what man, alone in the absolute isolation of space, would not have yelled when something patted him softly on the back of the neck?

The Hitchhiker by Roald Dahl

I had a new car. It was an exciting toy, a big BMW 3.3 Li, which means 3.3 litre, long wheelbase, fuel injection. It had a top speed of 129 mph and terrific acceleration. The body was pale blue. The seats inside were darker blue and they were made of leather, genuine soft leather of the finest quality. The windows were electrically operated and so was the sunroof. The radio aerial popped up when I switched on the radio, and disappeared when I switched it off. The powerful engine growled and grunted impatiently at slow speeds, but at sixty miles an hour the growling stopped and the motor began to purr with pleasure.

I was driving up to London by myself. It was a lovely June day. They were haymaking in the fields and there were buttercups along both sides of the road. I was whispering along at 70 mph, leaning back comfortably in my seat, with no more than a couple of fingers resting lightly on the wheel to keep her steady. Ahead of me I saw a man thumbing a lift. I touched the brake and brought the car to a stop beside him. I always stopped for hitchhikers. I knew just how it used to feel to be standing on the side of a country road watching the cars go by, I hated the drivers for pretending they didn’t see me, especially the ones in big cars with three empty seats. The large expensive cars seldom stopped.

It was always the smaller ones that offered you a lift, or the old rusty ones or the ones that were already crammed full of children and the driver would say, “I think we can squeeze in one more.” The hitchhiker poked his head through the open window and said, “Going to London, guv’nor?” “Yes,” I said. “Jump in.” He got in and I drove on.

He was a small ratty-faced man with grey teeth. His eyes were dark and quick and clever, like rat’s eyes, and his ears were slightly pointed at the top. He had a cloth cap on his head and he was wearing a greyish-coloured jacket with enormous pockets. The grey jacket, together with the quick eyes and the pointed ears, made him look more than anything like some sort of a huge human rat.

“What part of London are you headed for?” I asked him.

“I’m goin’ right through London and out the other side” he said. “I’m goin’ to Epsom, for the races. It’s Derby Day today.” “So it is,” I said. “I wish I were going with you. I love betting on horses.” “I never bet on horses,” he said. “I don’t even watch ’em run. That’s a stupid silly business.” “Then why do you go?” I asked.

He didn’t seem to like that question. His little ratty face went absolutely blank and he sat there staring straight ahead at the road, saying nothing.

“I expect you help to work the betting machines or something like that, ” I said.

“That’s even sillier,” he answered. “There’s no fun working them lousy machines and selling tickets to mugs. Any fool could do that.”

There was a long silence. I decided not to question him any more. I remembered how irritated I used to get in my hitchhiking years when drivers kept asking me questions. Where are you going? Why are you going there? What’s your job? Are you married? Do you have a girl friend? What’s her name? How old are you? And so forth and so forth. I used to hate it..

“I’m sorry,” I said “It’s none of my business what you do. The trouble is I’m a writer, and most writers are terribly nosy.” “You write books?” he asked “Yes.” “Writing books is okay,” he said. “It’s what I call a skilled trade. I’m in a skilled trade too. The folks I despise is them that spend all their lives doin’ crummy old routine jobs with no skill in ’em at all. You see what I mean?” “Yes.” “The secret of life,” he said “is to become very very good at somethin’ that’s very very ‘ard to do.” “Like you, ” I said “Exactly. You and me both”.

“What makes you think that I’m any good at my job?” I asked. “There’s an awful lot of bad writers around” “You wouldn’t be drivin’ about in a car like this if you weren’t no good at it,” he answered “It must’ve cost a tidy packet, this little job.” “It wasn’t cheap.” “What can she do flat out?” he asked “One hundred and twenty-nine miles an hour,” I told him.

“I’ll bet she won’t do it.” “I’ll bet she will.”

“All car-makers is liars,” he said. “You can buy any car you like and it’ll never do what the makers say it will in the ads.” “This one will.” “Open ‘er up then and prove it,” he said. “Go on, guv’nor, open ‘er right up and let’s see what she’ll do.” There is a traffic circle at Chalfont St. Peter and immediately beyond it there’s a long straight section of divided highway. We came out of the circle onto the highway and I pressed my foot hard down on the accelerator. The big car leaped forward as though she’d been stung. In ten seconds or so, we were doing ninety.

“Lovely!” he cried. “Beautiful! Keep goin’!” I had the accelerator jammed right down against the floor and I held it there.

“One hundred!” he shouted. “A hundred and five! A hundred and ten! A hundred and fifteen! Go on! Don’t slack off!” I was in the outside lane and we flashed past several cars as though they were standing still -a green Mini, a big cream-coloured Citroen, a white Land Rover, a huge truck with a container on the back, an orange-coloured Volkswagen Minibus. . . .

“A hundred and twenty!” my passenger shouted, jumping up and down. “Go on! Go on! Get ‘er up to one-two-nine!”

At that moment, I heard the scream of a police siren. It was so loud it seemed to be right inside the car, and then a cop on a motorcycle loomed up alongside us on the inside lane and went past us and raised a hand for us to stop.

“Oh, my sainted aunt!” I said. “That’s torn it!” The cop must have been doing about a hundred and thirty when he passed us, and he took plenty of time slowing down. Finally, he pulled to the side of the road and I pulled in behind him. “I didn’t know police motorcycles could go as fast as that, “I said rather lamely.

“That one can,” my passenger said. “It’s the same make as yours. It’s a BMW R90S. Fastest bike on the road. That’s what they’re usin’ nowadays.” The cop got off his motorcycle and leaned the machine sideways onto its prop stand. Then he took off his gloves and placed them carefully on the seat. He was in no hurry now. He had us where he wanted us and he knew it.

“This is real trouble,” I said. “I don’t like it one little bit.” “Don’t talk to ‘im more than is necessary, you understand,” my companion said. “Just sit tight and keep mum.” Like an executioner approaching his victim, the cop came strolling slowly toward us. He was a big meaty man with a belly, and his blue breeches were skin-tight around his enormous thighs. His goggles were pulled up onto the helmet showing a smouldering red face with wide cheeks.

We sat there like guilty schoolboys, waiting for him to arrive, “Watch out for this man,” my passenger whispered, ‘e looks mean as the devil.” The cop came around to my open window and placed one meaty hand on the sill. “What’s the hurry?” he said.

“No hurry, officer,” I answered.

“Perhaps there’s a woman in the back having a baby and you’re rushing her to hospital? Is that it?” “No, officer.” “Or perhaps your house is on fire and you’re dashing home to rescue the family from upstairs?” His voice was dangerously soft and mocking.

“My house isn’t on fire, officer.” “In that case,” he said, “you’ve got yourself into a nasty mess, haven’t you? Do you know what the speed limit is in this country?” “Seventy,” I said.

“And do you mind telling me exactly what speed you were doing just now?” I shrugged and didn’t say anything.

When he spoke next, he raised his voice so loud that I jumped. “One hundred and twenty miles per hour!” he barked. “That’s fifty miles an hour over the limit!” He turned his head and spat out a big gob of spit. It landed on the wing of my car and started sliding down over my beautiful blue paint. Then he turned back again and stared hard at my passenger. ” And who are you?” he asked sharply.

“He’s a hitchhiker,” I said. “I’m giving him a lift.” “I didn’t ask you,” he said. “I asked him.” ” ‘Ave I done somethin’ wrong?” my passenger asked. His voice was soft and oily as haircream.

“That’s more than likely ,” the cop answered. ” Anyway, you’re a witness. I’ll deal with you in a minute.

Driver’s license,” he snapped, holding out his hand.

I gave him my driver’s license.

He unbuttoned the left-hand breast pocket of his tunic and brought out the dreaded book of tickets.

Carefully, he copied the name and address from my license. Then he gave it back to me. He strolled around to the front of the car and read the number from the license plate and wrote that down as well. He filled in the date, the time and the details of my offence. Then he tore out the top copy of the ticket. But before handing it to me, he checked that all the information had come through clearly on his own carbon copy. Finally, he replaced the book in his breast pocket and fastened the button.

“Now you,” he said to my passenger, and he walked around to the other side of the car. From the other breast pocket he produced a small black notebook.

“Name?” he snapped.

“Michael Fish,” my passenger said.

“Address?” “Fourteen, Windsor Lane, Luton.” “Show me something to prove this is your real name and address,” the policeman said.

My passenger fished in his pockets and came out with a driver’s license of his own. The policeman checked the name and address and handed it back to him.

“What’s your job?” he asked sharply.

“I’m an ‘od carrier.”

“A what?”

“An ‘odcarrier.”

“Spell it.” “H-o-d c-a-”

“That’ll do. And what’s a hod carrier, may I ask?” ” An ‘od carrier, officer, is a person who carries the cement up the ladder to the bricklayer. And the ‘od is what ‘ee carries it in. It’s got a long handle, and on the top you’ve got bits of wood set at an angle . . .” ” All right, all right. Who’s your employer?” “Don’t ‘ave one. I’m unemployed.” The cop wrote all this down in the black notebook.

Then he returned the book to its pocket and did up the button.

“When I get back to the station I’m going to do a little checking up on you,” he said to my passenger.

“Me? What’ve I done wrong?” the rat-faced man asked.

“I don’t like your face. that’s all,” the cop said. “And we just might have a picture of it somewhere in our files.” He strolled round the car and returned to my window.

“I suppose you know you’re in serious trouble.” he said to me.

“Yes, officer.”

“You won’t be driving this fancy car of yours again for a very long time, not after we’ve finished with you.

You won’t be driving any car again, come to that, for several years. And a good thing, too. I hope they lock you up for a spell into the bargain.” “You mean prison?” I asked alarmed.

“Absolutely,” he said, smacking his lips. “In the clink. Behind the bars. Along with all the other criminals who break the law. And a hefty fine into the bargain. Nobody will be more pleased about that than me.

I’ll see you in court, both of you. You’ll be getting a summons to appear.” He turned away and walked over to his motorcycle.

He flipped the prop stand back into position with his boot and swung his leg over the saddle. Then he kicked the starter and roared off up the road out of sight.

“Phew!’. I gasped. “That’s done it…

“We was caught,” my passenger said. “We was caught good and proper…

“I was caught you mean…”

“That’s right,” he said. “What you goin’ to do now, guv’nor?” “I’m going straight up to London to talk to my solicitor,” I said. I started the car and drove on.

“You mustn’t believe what ‘ee said to you about goin’ to prison,” my passenger said. “They don’t put nobody in the clink just for speedin’.”

“Are you sure of that?” I asked.

“I’m positive,” he answered. “They can take your license away and they can give you a whoppin’ big fine, but that’ll be the end of it.” I felt tremendously relieved.

“By the way,” I said, “why did you lie to him?” “Who, me?” he said. “What makes you think I lied?” “You told him you were an unemployed hod carrier.

But you told me you were in a highly skilled trade.” “So I am,” he said. “But it don’t pay to tell everythin’ to a copper.” “So what do you do?” I asked him.

“Ah,” he said slyly. “That’ll be tellin’, wouldn’t it?” “Is it something you’re ashamed of?” ” Ashamed?” he cried. “Me, ashamed of my job? I’m about as proud of it as anybody could be in the entire world!” “Then why won’t you tell me?” “You writers really is nosy parkers, aren’t you?” he said. “And you ain’t goin’ to be ‘appy, I don’t think, until you’ve found out exactly what the answer is?” “I don’t really care one way or the other,” I told him, lying.

He gave me a crafty little ratty look out of the sides of his eyes. “I think you do care,” he said. “I can see it on your face that you think I’m in some kind of a very peculiar trade and you’re just achin’ to know what it is.

I didn’t like the way he read my thoughts. I kept quiet and stared at the road ahead.

“You’d be right, too,” he went on. “I am in a very peculiar trade. I’m in the queerest peculiar trade of ’em all.

I waited for him to go on.

“That’s why I ‘as to be extra careful oo’ I’m talkin’ to, you see. ‘Ow am I to know, for instance, you’re not another copper in plain clothes?” “Do I look like a copper?” “No,” he said. “you don’t. And you ain’t. Any fool could tell that.” He took from his pocket a tin of tobacco and a packet of cigarette papers and started to roll a cigarette.

I was watching him out of the corner of one eye, and the speed with which he performed this rather difficult operation was incredible. The cigarette was rolled and ready in about five seconds. He ran his tongue along the edge of the paper, stuck it down and popped the cigarette between his lips. Then, as if from nowhere, a lighter appeared in his hand. The lighter flamed. The cigarette was lit. The lighter disappeared. It was altogether a remarkable performance.

“I’ve never seen anyone roll a cigarette as fast as that,” I said.

“Ah,” he said, taking a deep suck of smoke. “So you noticed.” “Of course I noticed. It was quite fantastic.” He sat back and smiled. It pleased him very much that I had noticed how quickly he could roll a cigarette.

“You want to know what makes me able to do it?” he asked, “Go on then.” “It’s because I’ve got fantastic fingers. These fingers of mine,” he said, holding up both hands high in front of him, “are quicker and cleverer than the fingers of the best piano player in the world!” ” Are you a piano player?” “Don’t be daft. ” he said. “Do I look like a piano player?” I glanced at his fingers. They were so beautifully shaped, so slim and long and elegant, they didn’t seem to belong to the rest of him at all. They looked more like the fingers of a brain surgeon or a watchmaker.

“My job,” he went on, “is a hundred times more difficult than playin’ the piano. Any twerp can learn to do that. There’s titchy little kids learnin’ to play the piano in almost any ‘ouse you go into these days. That’s right, ain’t it?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Of course it’s right. But there’s not one person in ten million can learn to do what I do. Not one in ten million! ‘Ow about that?”

“Amazing,” I said.

“You’re dam right it’s amazin’,” he said.

“I think I know what you do;” I said. “You do conjuring tricks. You’re a conjuror.” “Me?” he snorted. ” A conjuror? Can you picture me goin’ round crummy kids’ parties makin’ rabbits come out of top ‘ats?” “Then you’re a card player. You get people into card games and you deal yourself marvellous hands.” “Me! A rotten cardsharper!” he cried. “That’s a miserable racket if ever there was one.” “All right. I give up.” I was taking the car along slowly now, at no more than forty miles an hour, to make quite sure I wasn’t stopped again. We had come onto the main London-Oxford road and were running down the hill toward Denham.

Suddenly, my passenger was holding up a black leather belt in his hand. “Ever seen this before?” he asked. The belt had a brass buckle of unusual design.

“Hey!” I said. “That’s mine, isn’t it? It is mine! Where did you get it?” He grinned and waved the belt gently from side to side. “Where d’you think I got it?” he said. “Off the top of your trousers, of course.” I reached down and felt for my belt. It was gone.

“You mean you took it off me while we’ve been driving along?” I asked flabbergasted.

He nodded, watching me all the time with those little black ratty eyes.

“That’s impossible,” I said. “You’d have had to undo the buckle and slide the whole thing out through the loops all the way round. I’d have seen you doing it.

And even if I hadn’t seen you, I’d have felt it.” ” Ah, but you didn’t, did you?” he said, triumphant.

He dropped the belt on his lap, and now all at once there was a brown shoelace dangling from his fingers.

“And what about this, then?” he exclaimed, waving the shoelace.

“What about it?” I said.

“Anyone around ‘ere missin’ a shoelace?” he asked, grinning.

I glanced down at my shoes. The lace of one of them was missing. “Good grief!” I said. “How did you do that? I never saw you bending down.” “You never saw nothin’,” he said proudly. “You never even saw me move an inch. And you know why?” “Yes,” I said. “Because you’ve got fantastic fingers.” “Exactly right!” he cried. “You catch on pretty quick, don’t you?” He sat back and sucked away at his home-made cigarette, blowing the smoke out in a thin stream against the windshield. He knew he had impressed me greatly with those two tricks, and this made him very happy. “I don’t want to be late,” he said.

“What time is it?” “There’s a clock in front of you,” I told him.

“I don’t trust car clocks,” he said. “What does your watch say?”

I hitched up my sleeve to look at the watch on my wrist. It wasn’t there. I looked at the man. He looked back at me, grinning.

“You’ve taken that, too,” I said.

He held out his hand and there was my watch lying in his palm. “Nice bit of stuff, this,” he said. “Superior quality. Eighteen-carat gold. Easy to sell, too. It’s never any trouble gettin’ rid of quality goods.” “I’d like it back, if you don’t mind,” I said rather huffily.

He placed the watch carefully on the leather tray in front of him. “I wouldn’t nick anything from you, guv’nor,” he said. “You’re my pal. You’re givin’ me a lift.” “I’m glad to hear it,” I said.

“All I’m doin’ is answerin’ your question,” he went on. “You asked me what I did for a livin’ and I’m showin’ you.” “What else have you got of mine?” He smiled again, and now he started to take from the pocket of his jacket one thing after another that belonged to me, my driver’s license, a key ring with four keys on it, some pound notes, a few coins, a letter from my publishers, my diary, a stubby old pencil, a cigarette lighter, and last of all, a beautiful old sapphire ring with pearls around it belonging to my wife. I was taking the ring up to a jeweller in London because one of the pearls was missing.

“Now there’s another lovely piece of goods,” he said, turning the ring over in his fingers. “That’s eighteenth century, if I’m not mistaken, from the reign of King George the Third.” “You’re right,” I said, impressed. “You’re absolutely right.” He put the ring on the leather tray with the other items.

“So you’re a pickpocket,” I said.

“I don’t like that word,” he answered. “It’s a coarse, and vulgar word. Pickpockets is coarse and vulgar people who only do easy little amateur jobs. They lift money from blind old ladies.” “What do you call yourself, then?” “Me? I’m a fingersmith. I’m a professional fingersmith.” He spoke the words solemnly and proudly, as though he were telling me he was the President of the Royal College of Surgeons or the Archbishop of Canterbury.

“I’ve never heard that word before,” I said. “Did you invent it?” “Of course I didn’t invent it,” he replied. “It’s the name given to them who’s risen to the very top of the profession. You’ve ‘eard of a goldsmith and a silversmith, for instance. They’re experts with gold and silver. I’m an expert with my fingers, so I’m a fingersmith.” “It must be an interesting job.” “It’s a marvellous job,” he answered. “It’s lovely.” “And that’s why you go to the races?” “Race meetings is easy meat,” he said. “You just stand around after the race, watchin’ for the lucky ones to queue up and draw their money. And when you see someone collectin’ a big bundle of notes, you simply follows after ‘im and ‘elps yourself. But don’t get me wrong, guv’nor. I never takes nothin’ from a loser. Nor from poor people neither. I only go after them as can afford it, the winners and the rich.” “That’s very thoughtful of you, ” I said. “How often do you get caught?” “Caught?” he cried, disgusted. “Me get caught! It’s only pickpockets get caught. Fingersmiths never.

Listen, I could take the false teeth out of your mouth if I wanted to and you wouldn’t even catch me!”

“I don’t have false teeth,” I said.

“I know you don’t,” he answered. “Otherwise I’d ‘ave ‘ad ’em out long ago!” I believed him. Those long slim fingers of his seemed able to do anything.

We drove on for a while without talking.

“That policeman’s going to check up on you pretty thoroughly,” I said. “Doesn’t that worry you a bit?” “Nobody’s checkin’ up on me,” he said.

“Of course they are. He’s got your name and address written down most carefully in his black book.” The man gave me another of his sly ratty little smiles.

“Ah,” he said. “So ‘ee ‘as. But I’ll bet ‘ee ain’t got it all written down in ‘is memory as well. I’ve never known a copper yet with a decent memory. Some of ’em can’t even remember their own names.” “What’s memory got to do with it?” I asked. “It’s written down in his book, isn’t it?” “Yes, guv’nor, it is. But the trouble is, ‘ee’s lost the book. ‘He’s lost both books, the one with my name in it and the one with yours.” In the long delicate fingers of his right hand, the man was holding up in triumph the two books he had taken from the policeman’s pockets. “Easiest job I ever done,” he announced proudly.

I nearly swerved the car into a milk truck, I was so excited.

“That copper’s got nothin’ on either of us now,” he said.

“You’re a genius!” I cried.

“’Ee’s got no names, no addresses, no car number, no nothin’,” he said.

“You’re brilliant!” “I think you’d better pull off this main road as soon as possible,” he said. “Then we’d better build a little bonfire and burn these books.” “You’re a fantastic fellow!” I exclaimed.

“Thank you, guv’nor,” he said. “It’s always nice to be appreciated.”

I Believe in Unicorns

by Michael Morpurgo

My name is Tomas Porec. I was seven years old when I first met the unicorn lady. I believed in unicorns then. I am nearly twenty now and because of her I still believe in unicorns.

My little town, hidden deep in its own valley, was an ordinary place, pretty enough but ordinary. I know that now. But when I was seven it was a place of magic and wonder to me. It was my place, my home. I knew every cobbled alleyway, every lamp post in every street. I fished in the stream below the church, tobogganed the slopes in winter, swam in the lake in the summer. On Sundays my mother and father would take me on walks or on picnics, and I’d roll down the hills, over and over, and end up lying there on my back, giddy with joy, the world spinning above me.

I never did like school though. It wasn’t the school’s fault, nor the teachers’. I just wanted to be outside all the time. I longed always to be running free up in the hills. As soon as school was over, it was back home for some bread and honey – my father kept his own bees on the hillside – then off out to play. But one afternoon my mother had other ideas. She had to do some shopping in town, she said, and wanted me to go with her.

“I hate shopping,” I told her.

“I know that, dear,” she said. “That’s why I’m taking you to the library. It’ll be interesting. Something different. You can listen to stories for an hour or so. It’ll be good for you. There’s a new librarian lady and she tells stories after school to any children who want to listen. Everyone says she’s brilliant.”

“But I don’t want to listen,” I protested.

My mother simply ignored all my pleas, took me firmly by the hand and led me to the town square. She walked me up the steps into the library. “Be good,” she said, and she was gone.

I could see there was an excited huddle of children gathered in one corner. Some of them were from my school, but

they all looked a lot younger than me. Some of them were infants! I certainly did not want to be with them. I was just about to turn and walk away in disgust when I noticed they were all jostling each other, as if they were desperate to get a better look at something.

Since I couldn’t see what it was, I went a little closer. Suddenly they were all sitting down and hushed, and there in the corner I saw a unicorn. He was lying absolutely still, his feet tucked neatly under him. I could see now that he was made of carved wood and painted white, but he was so lifelike that if he’d got up and trotted off I wouldn’t have been at all surprised.

Beside the unicorn and just as motionless, just as neat, stood a lady with a smiling face, a bright flowery scarf around

her shoulders. When her eyes found mine, her smile beckoned me to join them. Moments later I found myself sitting on the floor with the others, watching and waiting. When she sat down slowly on the unicorn and folded her hands in her lap I could feel expectation all around me.

“The unicorn story!” cried a little girl. “Tell us the unicorn story. Please.”

She talked so softly that I had to lean forward to hear her.

But I wanted to hear her, everyone did, because every word she spoke was meant and felt, and sounded true. The story was about how the last two magic unicorns alive on earth had arrived just too late to get on Noah’s ark with all the other animals. So they were left stranded on a mountain top in the driving rain, watching the ark sail away over the great flood into the distance. The waters rose and rose around them until their hooves were covered, then their

legs, then their backs, and so they had to swim. They swam and they swam, for hours, for days, for weeks, for years. They swam for so long, they swam so far, that in the end they turned into whales. This way they could swim easily. This way they could dive down to the bottom of the sea. But they never lost their magical powers and they still kept their wonderful horns, which is why there are to this day whales with unicorn’s horns. They’re called narwhals. And

sometimes, when they’ve had enough of the sea and want to see children again, they swim up onto the beaches and find their legs and become unicorns again, magical unicorns.

After she had finished no one spoke. It was as if we were all waking up from some dream we didn’t want to leave. There were more stories, and poems too. Some she read from books, some she made up herself or knew by heart.

Then a hand went up. It was a small boy from my school, Milos with the sticky-up hair. “Can I tell a story, miss?” he asked. So sitting on the unicorn he told us his story.

One after another after that they wanted their turn on the magical unicorn. I longed to have a go myself, but I didn’t dare. I was frightened of making a fool of myself, I think.

The hour flew by.

“What was it like?” my mother asked me on the way home.

“All right, I suppose,” I told her. But at school the next day I told all my friends what it was really like, all about the unicorn lady – everyone called her that – and her amazing stories and the fantastic magical storytelling power of the unicorn.

They came along with me to the library that afternoo afternoon. Day after day as word spread, the little group in the corner grew until there was a whole crowd of us. We would rush to the library now to get there first, to find a place close to the unicorn, close to the unicorn lady. Every story she told us held us entranced. She never told us to sit still. She didn’t have to. Each day I wanted so much to sit on the unicorn and tell a story, but still I could never quite

summon up the courage. One afternoon the unicorn lady took out from her bag a rather old and damaged-looking book, all charred at the edges. It was, she told us, her very own copy of The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen. I was sitting that day very close to the unicorn lady’s feet, looking up at the book. “Why’s it been burnt?” I asked her.

“This is the most precious book I have, Tomas,” she said. “I’ll tell you why. When I was very little I lived in another country. There were wicked people in my town who were frightened of the magic of stories and of the power of books, because stories make you think and dream; books make you want to ask questions. And they didn’t want that. I was there with my father watching them burn a great pile of books, when suddenly my father ran forward and plucked a book out of the fire. The soldiers beat him with sticks, but he held on to the book and wouldn’t let go of it. It was this book. It’s my favourite book in all the world. Tomas, would you like to come and sit on the unicorn and read it to us?”

I had never been any good at reading out loud. I would always stutter over my consonants, worry over long words. But now, sitting on the magic unicorn, I heard my voice strong and loud. It was like singing a song. The words danced on the air and everyone listened. That same day I took home my first book from the library, Aesop’s Fables, because the unicorn lady had read them to us and I’d loved them. I read them aloud to my mother that night, the first

time I’d ever read to her, and I could see she was amazed. I loved amazing my mother.

Then one summer morning, early, war came to our valley and shattered our lives. Before that morning I knew little of war. I knew some of the men had gone to fight, but I wasn’t sure what for. I had seen on television tanks shooting at houses and soldiers with guns running through the trees, but my mother always told me it

was far away and I wasn’t to worry.

I remember the moment. I was outside. My mother had sent me out to open up the hens and feed them, when I looked up and saw a single plane come flying in low over the town. I watched as it circled once and came again. That was when the bombs began to fall, far away at first, then closer, closer. We were all running then, running up into the woods. I was first frightened to cry. My father cried. I’d never seen him cry Hidden high in the woods we could see the tanks and the soldiers all over the town, blasting and shooting as they went. A few hours later, after they had gone, we could hardly see the town any more for the smoke. We waited until we were quite sure they had all

gone, and then we ran back home. We were luckier than many. Our house had not been damaged. It was soon obvious that the centre of town had been hardest hit. Everyone seemed to be making their way there. I ran on ahead hoping and praying that the library had not been bombed, that the unicorn lady and the unicorn were safe.

As I came into the square I saw smoke rising from the roof of the library and flames licking out of the upper windows. We all saw the unicorn lady at the same moment. She was coming out of the library carrying the unicorn, staggering under its weight. I ran up the steps to help her. She smiled me her thanks as I took my share of the weight. Her eyes were red from the smoke. Between us we set the unicorn down at the foot of the steps, and she sat down exhausted, racked with a fit of coughing. My mother fetched her a glass of water. It must have helped because the coughing stopped , and all at once she was up on her feet, leaning on my shoulder for

support.

“The books,” she breathed. “The books.”

When she began to walk back up the steps I followed her without thinking.

“No, Tomas,” she said. “You stay here and look after the unicorn.” Then she was running up the steps into the library, only to reappear moments later, her arms piled high with books. That was the moment the rescue began. People seemed suddenly to surge past me up the steps, and into the library, my mother and father amongst them.

It wasn’t long before a whole system was set up. We children made two chains across the square from the library to the café opposite, and the books everyone rescued went from hand to hand, ending up in stacks on the floor of the café. The fire was burning ever more fiercely, the flames crackling, smoke billowing now from the roof. No fire engines came – we found out later the fire station had been hit. Still the books came out. Still the fire burned and more and more people came to help, until the café was filled with books and we had to use the grocer’s shop next door.

The moment came when there were suddenly no more books to pass along and we all wondered why. Then we saw

everyone coming out of the library, and last of all the unicorn lady, helped by my father. They came slowly down the steps together, their faces smudged and blackened. The unicorn lady sat down heavily on the unicorn and looked up at the burning building. We children all gathered around her as if waiting for a story.

“We did it, children,” she said. “We saved all we could, didn’t we? I’m sitting on the unicorn so any story I tell is true because we believe it can be true. We shall build our library up again just as it was. Meanwhile we shall look after the books. Every family can take home all the books they can manage and care for them. And when in one year or two or three we have our new library, then we shall all bring back our books, and we shall carry the magic unicorn inside and we shall all tell our stories again. All we have to do is make this story come true.”

So it happened, just as the unicorn lady said it would. Like so many families in the town we took home a wheelbarrow full of books and looked after them. Sure enough the library was rebuilt just the same as the old one, only by now everyone called it the Unicorn, and we all brought our books back just as the unicorn lady

had told it in her story.

The day the library opened, because I had helped carry the unicorn out, I got to carry him back up the steps with the unicorn lady, and the whole town was there cheering and clapping, the flags flying, the band playing. It was the proudest and happiest day of my life.

Now, all these years later, we have peace in our valley. The unicorn lady is still the town librarian, still reading her stories to the children after school. As for me, I’m a writer now, a weaver of tales.

And if from time to time I lose the thread of my story, all I have to do is go and sit on the magic unicorn and my story flows again. So believe me, I believe in unicorns. I believe in them absolutely.

‘The Landlady’ by Roald Dahl

Billy Weaver had travelled down from London on the slow afternoon train, with a change at Reading on the way, and by the time he got to Bath, it was about nine o’clock in the evening, and the moon was coming up out of a clear starry sky over the houses opposite the station entrance. But the air was deadly cold and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but is there a fairly cheap hotel not too far away from here?”

“Try The Bell and Dragon,” the porter answered, pointing down the road. “They might take you in. It’s about a quarter of a mile along on the other side.”

Billy thanked him and picked up his suitcase and set out to walk the quarter-mile to The Bell and Dragon. He had never been to Bath before. He didn’t know anyone who lived there. But Mr. Greenslade at the head office in London had told him it was a splendid town. “Find your own lodgings,” he had said, “and then go along and report to the branch manager as soon as you’ve got yourself settled.”

Billy was seventeen years old. He was wearing a new navy-blue overcoat, a new brown trilby hat, and a new brown suit, and he was feeling fine. He walked briskly down the street. He was trying to do everything briskly these days. Briskness, he had decided, was the one common characteristic of all successful businessmen. The big shots up at the head office were absolutely fantastically brisk all the time. They were amazing.

There were no shops on this wide street that he was walking along, only a line of tall houses on each side, all of them identical. They had porches and pillars and four or five steps going up to their front doors, and it was obvious that once upon a time they had been very swanky residences. But now, even in the darkness, he could see that the paint was peeling from the woodwork on their doors and windows and that the handsome white facades were cracked and blotchy from neglect.

Suddenly, in a downstairs window that was brilliantly illuminated by a street lamp not six yards away, Billy caught sight of a printed notice propped up against the glass in one of the upper panes. It said BED AND BREAKFAST. There was a vase of yellow chrysanthemums, tall and beautiful, standing just underneath the notice.

He stopped walking. He moved a bit closer. Green curtains (some sort of velvety material) were hanging down on either side of the window. The chrysanthemums looked wonderful beside them. He went right up and peered through the glass into the room, and the first thing he saw was a bright fire burning in the hearth. On the carpet in front of the fire, a pretty little dachshund was curled up asleep with its nose tucked into its belly. The room itself, so far as he could see in the half darkness, was filled with pleasant furniture. There was a baby grand piano and a big sofa and several plump armchairs, and in one corner he spotted a large parrot in a cage. Animals were usually a good sign in a place like this, Billy told himself; and all in all, it looked to him as though it would be a pretty decent house to stay in. Certainly it would be more comfortable than The Bell and Dragon.

On the other hand, a pub would be more congenial than a boarding house. There would be beer and darts in the evenings, and lots of people to talk to, and it would probably be a good bit cheaper, too. He had stayed a couple of nights in a pub once before and he had liked it. He had never stayed in any boarding houses, and, to be perfectly honest, he was a tiny bit frightened of them. The name itself conjured up images of watery cabbage, rapacious landladies, and a powerful smell of kippers in the living room.

After dithering about like this in the cold for two or three minutes, Billy decided that he would walk on and take a look at The Bell and Dragon before making up his mind. He turned to go.

And now a queer thing happened to him. He was in the act of stepping back and turning away from the window when all at once his eye was caught and held in the most peculiar manner by the small notice that was there. BED AND BREAKFAST, it said. BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST. Each word was like a large black eye staring at him through the glass, holding him, compelling him, forcing him to stay where he was and not to walk away from that house, and the next thing he knew, he was actually moving across from the window to the front door of the house, climbing the steps that led up to it, and reaching for the bell.

He pressed the bell. Far away in a back room he heard it ringing, and then at once —it must have been at once because he hadn’t even had time to take his finger from the bell button—the door swung open and a woman was standing there.
Normally you ring the bell and you have at least a half-minute’s wait before the door opens. But this dame was like a jack-in-the-box. He pressed the bell—and out she popped! It made him jump.

She was about forty-five or fifty years old, and the moment she saw him, she gave him a warm, welcoming smile.

“Please come in,” she said pleasantly. She stepped aside, holding the door wide open, and Billy found himself automatically starting forward. The compulsion or, more accurately, the desire to follow after her into that house was extraordinarily strong.

“I saw the notice in the window,” he said, holding himself back.

“Yes, I know.”

“I was wondering about a room.”

“It’s all ready for you, my dear,” she said. She had a round pink face and very gentle blue eyes.

“I was on my way to The Bell and Dragon,” Billy told her. “But the notice in your window just happened to catch my eye.”

“My dear boy,” she said, “why don’t you come in out of the cold?”

“How much do you charge?”

“Five and sixpence a night, including breakfast.”

It was fantastically cheap. It was less than half of what he had been willing to pay.

“If that is too much,” she added, “then perhaps I can reduce it just a tiny bit. Do you desire an egg for breakfast? Eggs are expensive at the moment. It would be sixpence less without the egg.”

“Five and sixpence is fine,” he answered. “I should like very much to stay here.”

“I knew you would. Do come in.”

She seemed terribly nice. She looked exactly like the mother of one’s best school friend welcoming one into the house to stay for the Christmas holidays. Billy took off his hat and stepped over the threshold.

“Just hang it there,” she said, “and let me help you with your coat.”

There were no other hats or coats in the hall. There were no umbrellas, no walking sticks—nothing.

“We have it all to ourselves,” she said, smiling at him over her shoulder as she led the way upstairs. “You see, it isn’t very often I have the pleasure of taking a visitor into my little nest.”

The old girl is slightly dotty, Billy told himself. But at five and sixpence a night, who cares about that? “I should’ve thought you’d be simply swamped with applicants,” he said politely.

“Oh, I am, my dear, I am, of course I am. But the trouble is that I’m inclined to be just a teeny-weeny bit choosy and particular—if you see what I mean.”

“Ah, yes.”

“But I’m always ready. Everything is always ready day and night in this house just on the off chance that an acceptable young gentleman will come along. And it is such a pleasure, my dear, such a very great pleasure when now and again I open the door and I see someone standing there who is just exactly right.” She was halfway up the stairs, and she paused with one hand on the stair rail, turning her head and smiling down at him with pale lips. “Like you,” she added, and her blue eyes travelled slowly all the way down the length of Billy’s body, to his feet, and then up again.

On the second-floor landing she said to him, “This floor is mine.”

They climbed up another flight. “And this one is all yours,” she said. “Here’s your room. I do hope you’ll like it.” She took him into a small but charming front bedroom, switching on the light as she went in.

“The morning sun comes right in the window, Mr. Perkins. It is Mr. Perkins, isn’t it?”

“No,” he said. “It’s Weaver.”

“Mr. Weaver. How nice. I’ve put a water bottle between the sheets to air them out, Mr. Weaver. It’s such a comfort to have a hot-water bottle in a strange bed with clean sheets, don’t you agree? And you may light the gas fire at any time if you feel chilly.”

“Thank you,” Billy said. “Thank you ever so much.” He noticed that the bedspread had been taken off the bed and that the bedclothes had been neatly turned back on one side, all ready for someone to get in.

“I’m so glad you appeared,” she said, looking earnestly into his face. “I was beginning to get worried.”

“That’s all right,” Billy answered brightly. “You mustn’t worry about me.” He put his suitcase on the chair and started to open it.

“And what about supper, my dear? Did you manage to get anything to eat before you came here?”

“I’m not a bit hungry, thank you,” he said. “I think I’ll just go to bed as soon as possible because tomorrow I’ve got to get up rather early and report to the office.”

“Very well, then. I’ll leave you now so that you can unpack. But before you go to bed, would you be kind enough to pop into the sitting room on the ground floor and sign the book? Everyone has to do that because it’s the law of the land, and we don’t want to go breaking any laws at this stage in the proceedings, do we?” She gave him a little wave of the hand and went quickly out of the room and closed the door.

Now, the fact that his landlady appeared to be slightly off her rocker didn’t worry Billy in the least. After all, she not only was harmless—there was no question about that—but she was also quite obviously a kind and generous soul. He guessed that she had probably lost a son in the war, or something like that, and had never gotten over it.

So a few minutes later, after unpacking his suitcase and washing his hands, he trotted downstairs to the ground floor and entered the living room. His landlady wasn’t there, but the fire was glowing in the hearth, and the little dachshund was still sleeping soundly in front of it. The room was wonderfully warm and cozy. I’m a lucky fellow, he thought, rubbing his hands. This is a bit of all right.

He found the guest book lying open on the piano, so he took out his pen and wrote down his name and address. There were only two other entries above his on the page, and as one always does with guest books, he started to read them. One was a Christopher Mulholland from Cardiff. The other was Gregory W. Temple from Bristol.

That’s funny, he thought suddenly. Christopher Mulholland. It rings a bell.

Now where on earth had he heard that rather unusual name before?

Was it a boy at school? No. Was it one of his sister’s numerous young men, perhaps, or a friend of his father’s? No, no, it wasn’t any of those. He glanced down again at the book.

Christopher Mulholland
231 Cathedral Road, Cardiff

Gregory W. Temple
27 Sycamore Drive, Bristol

As a matter of fact, now he came to think of it, he wasn’t at all sure that the second name didn’t have almost as much of a familiar ring about it as the first.

“Gregory Temple?” he said aloud, searching his memory. “Christopher Mulholland? . . .”

“Such charming boys,” a voice behind him answered, and he turned and saw his landlady sailing into the room with a large silver tea tray in her hands. She was holding it well out in front of her, and rather high up, as though the tray were a pair of reins on a frisky horse.

“They sound somehow familiar,” he said.

“They do? How interesting.”

“I’m almost positive I’ve heard those names before somewhere. Isn’t that odd? Maybe it was in the newspapers. They weren’t famous in any way, were they? I mean famous cricketers7 or footballers or something like that?”

“Famous,” she said, setting the tea tray down on the low table in front of the sofa. “Oh no, I don’t think they were famous. But they were incredibly handsome, both of them, I can promise you that. They were tall and young and handsome, my dear, just exactly like you.”

Once more, Billy glanced down at the book. “Look here,” he said, noticing the dates. “This last entry is over two years old.”

“It is?”

“Yes, indeed. And Christopher Mulholland’s is nearly a year before that—more than three years ago.”

“Dear me,” she said, shaking her head and heaving a dainty little sigh. “I would never have thought it. How time does fly away from us all, doesn’t it, Mr. Wilkins?”

“It’s Weaver,” Billy said. “W-e-a-v-e-r.”

“Oh, of course it is!” she cried, sitting down on the sofa. “How silly of me. I do apologize. In one ear and out the other, that’s me, Mr. Weaver.”

“You know something?” Billy said. “Something that’s really quite extraordinary about all this?”

“No, dear, I don’t.”

“Well, you see, both of these names—Mulholland and Temple—I not only seem to remember each one of them separately, so to speak, but somehow or other, in some peculiar way, they both appear to be sort of connected together as well. As though they were both famous for the same sort of thing, if you see what I mean—like . . . well . . . like Dempsey and Tunney, for example, or Churchill and Roosevelt.”

“How amusing,” she said. “But come over here now, dear, and sit down beside me on the sofa and I’ll give you a nice cup of tea and a ginger biscuit before you go to bed.”

“You really shouldn’t bother,” Billy said. “I didn’t mean you to do anything like that.” He stood by the piano, watching her as she fussed about with the cups and saucers. He noticed that she had small, white, quickly moving hands and red fingernails.

“I’m almost positive it was in the newspapers I saw them,” Billy said. “I’ll think of it in a second. I’m sure I will.”

There is nothing more tantalizing than a thing like this that lingers just outside the borders of one’s memory. He hated to give up.

“Now wait a minute,” he said. “Wait just a minute. Mulholland . . . Christopher Mulholland . . . wasn’t that the name of the Eton schoolboy who was on a walking tour through the West Country, and then all of a sudden …”

“Milk?” she said. “And sugar?”

“Yes, please. And then all of a sudden . . .”

“Eton schoolboy?” she said. “Oh no, my dear, that can’t possibly be right, because my Mr. Mulholland was certainly not an Eton schoolboy when he came to me. He was a Cambridge undergraduate. Come over here now and sit next to me and warm yourself in front of this lovely fire. Come on. Your tea’s all ready for you.” She patted the empty place beside her on the sofa, and she sat there smiling at Billy and waiting for him to come over.

He crossed the room slowly and sat down on the edge of the sofa. She placed his teacup on the table in front of him.

“ There we are,” she said. “How nice and cozy this is, isn’t it?”

Billy started sipping his tea. She did the same. For half a minute or so, neither of them spoke. But Billy knew that she was looking at him. Her body was half turned toward him, and he could feel her eyes resting on his face, watching him over the rim of her teacup. Now and again, he caught a whiff of a peculiar smell that seemed to emanate directly from her person. It was not in the least unpleasant, and it reminded him—well, he wasn’t quite sure what it reminded him of. Pickled walnuts? New leather? Or was it the corridors of a hospital?

At length, she said, “Mr. Mulholland was a great one for his tea. Never in my life have I seen anyone drink as much tea as dear, sweet Mr. Mulholland.”

“I suppose he left fairly recently,” Billy said. He was still puzzling his head about the two names. He was positive now that he had seen them in the newspapers—in the headlines.

“Left?” she said, arching her brows. “But my dear boy, he never left. He’s still here. Mr. Temple is also here. They’re on the fourth floor, both of them together.”

Billy set his cup down slowly on the table and stared at his landlady. She smiled back at him, and then she put out one of her white hands and patted him comfortingly on the knee. “How old are you, my dear?” she asked.

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen!” she cried. “Oh, it’s the perfect age! Mr. Mulholland was also seventeen. But I think he was a trifle shorter than you are; in fact I’m sure he was, and his teeth weren’t quite so white. You have the most beautiful teeth, Mr. Weaver, did you know that?”

“They’re not as good as they look,” Billy said. “They’ve got simply masses of fillings in them at the back.”

“Mr. Temple, of course, was a little older,” she said, ignoring his remark. “He was actually twenty-eight. And yet I never would have guessed it if he hadn’t told me, never in my whole life. There wasn’t a blemish on his body.”

“A what?” Billy said.

“His skin was just like a baby’s.”

There was a pause. Billy picked up his teacup and took another sip of his tea; then he set it down again gently in its saucer. He waited for her to say something else, but she seemed to have lapsed into another of her silences. He sat there staring straight ahead of him into the far corner of the room, biting his lower lip.

“That parrot,” he said at last. “You know something? It had me completely fooled when I first saw it through the window. I could have sworn it was alive.”

“Alas, no longer.”

“It’s most terribly clever the way it’s been done,” he said. “It doesn’t look in the least bit dead. Who did it?”

“I did.”

“ You did?”

“Of course,” she said. “And have you met my little Basil as well?” She nodded toward the dachshund curled up so comfortably in front of the fire. Billy looked at it. And suddenly, he realized that this animal had all the time been just as silent and motionless as the parrot. He put out a hand and touched it gently on the top of its back. The back was hard and cold, and when he pushed the hair to one side with his fingers, he could see the skin underneath, grayish black and dry and perfectly preserved.

“Good gracious me,” he said. “How absolutely fascinating.” He turned away from the dog and stared with deep admiration at the little woman beside him on the sofa. “It must be most awfully difficult to do a thing like that.”

“Not in the least,” she said. “I stuff all my little pets myself when they pass away. Will you have another cup of tea?”

“No, thank you,” Billy said. The tea tasted faintly of bitter almonds, and he didn’t much care for it.

“You did sign the book, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“That’s good. Because later on, if I happen to forget what you were called, then I could always come down here and look it up. I still do that almost every day with Mr. Mulholland and Mr. . . . Mr. . . .”

“Temple,” Billy said, “Gregory Temple. Excuse my asking, but haven’t there been any other guests here except them in the last two or three years?”

Holding her teacup high in one hand, inclining her head slightly to the left, she looked up at him out of the corners of her eyes and gave him another gentle little smile.

“No, my dear,” she said. “Only you.”

The man with the yellow face

Anthony Horrowitz

I want to tell you how it happened. But it’s not easy. It’s all a long time ago now and even though I think about it often, there are still things I don’t understand. Maybe I never did. Why did I even go into the machine? What I’m talking about is one of those instant photograph booths. It was on Platform One at York station – four shots for £2.50. It’s probably still there now if you want to go and look at it. I’ve never been back so I can’t be sure. Anyway, there I was with my uncle and aunt, waiting for the train to London and we were twenty minutes early and I had about three pounds on me, which was all that was left of my pocket money. I could have gone back to the kiosk and bought a comic, another bar of chocolate, a puzzle book. I could have gone into the café and bought Cokes all round. I could have just hung on to it. But maybe you know the feeling when you’ve been on holiday and your mum has given you a certain amount to spend. You’ve just got to spend it. It’s almost a challenge. It doesn’t matter what you spend it on. You’ve just got to be sure it’s all gone by the time you get home. Why the photographs? I was thirteen years old then and I suppose I was what you’d call good-looking. Girls said so, anyway. Fair hair, blue eyes, not fat, not thin. It was important to me how I looked – the right jeans, the right trainers, that sort of thing. But it wasn’t crucial to me. What I’m trying to say is, I didn’t take the photographs to pin on the wall or to prove to anyone what a movie star I was.

I just took them.

I don’t know why.

It was the end of a long weekend in York. I was with my uncle and aunt because, back in London, my mum and dad were quietly and efficiently arranging their divorce. It was something that had been coming for a long time and I wasn’t bothered by it any more but even so they’d figured it would upset me to see the removal men come in.

My father was moving out of the house and into a flat and although my mother was keeping most of the furniture, there was still his piano, his books and pictures, his computer and the old wardrobe that he had inherited from his mother. Suddenly everything was his or hers. Before it had simply been ours.

Uncle Peter and Aunt Anne had been drafted in to keep me diverted while it all happened and they’d chosen York, I suppose, because it was far away and I’d never been there before. But if it was a diversion, it didn’t really work. Because while I was in York Minster or walking around the walks or being trundled through the darkness of the Viking Museum, all I could think about was my father and how different everything would be without him, without the smell of his cigarettes and the sound of the out-of-tune piano echoing up the stairs.

I was spoiled that weekend. Of course, that’s something parents do. The guiltier they feel, the more they’ll spend and a divorce, the complete upheaval of my life and theirs, was worth plenty. I had twenty pounds to spend. We stayed in a hotel, not a bed and breakfast. Whatever I wanted, I got. Even four useless photographs of myself from the photo booth on Platform One.

Was there something strange about that photo booth? It’s easy enough to think that now but maybe even then I was a little … scared. If you’ve been to York you’ll know that it’s got a proper, old station with a soaring roof, steel girders and solid red brickwork. The platforms are long and curve round, following the rails. When you stand there you almost imagine that a steam train will pull in. A ghost train, perhaps. York is both a medieval and a Victorian city; enough ghosts for everyone.

But the photo booth was modern. It was an ugly metal box with its bright light glowing behind the plastic facings. It looked out-of place on the platform – almost as if it had landed there from outer space. It was in a strange position too, quite a long way from the entrance and the benches where my uncle and aunt were sitting. You wouldn’t have thought that many people would have come to this part of the platform. As I approached it, I was suddenly alone. And maybe I imagined it but it seemed that a sudden wind had sprung up, as if blown my way by an approaching train. I felt the wind, cold against my face. But there was no train.

For a moment I stood outside the photo booth, wondering what I was going to do. One shot for the front of my exercise book. A shot for my father – he’d be seeing more of it now than he would of me. A silly, cross-eyed shot for the fridge … Somewhere behind me, the tannoy system sprang to life.

‘The train now approaching Platform Two is the ten forty-five to Glasgow calling at Darlington, Durham, Newcastle …’

The voice sounded far away. Not even in the station. It was like a rumble coming out of the sky.

I pulled back the curtain and went into the photo booth.

There was a circular stool which you could adjust for height and a choice of backgrounds – a white curtain, a black curtain, or a blue wall. The people who designed these things were certainly imaginative. I sat down and looked at myself in the square of black glass in front of me. This was where the camera was, but looking in the glass I could only vaguely see my face. I could make out an outline; my hair falling down over one eye, my shoulders, the open neck of my shirt. But my reflection was shadowy and, like the voice on the tannoy, distant. It didn’t look like me.

It looked more like my ghost.

Did I hesitate then, before I put the money in? I think I did.

I didn’t want those photographs. I was wasting my money. But at the same time I was here now and I might as well do it. I felt hemmed in, inside the photo booth, even though there was only one flimsy curtain separating me from the platform. Also, I was nervous that I was going to miss the train even though there were still fifteen minutes until it arrived. Suddenly I wanted to get it over with.

I put in the coins.

For a moment nothing happened and I thought the photo booth might be broken. But then a red light glowed somewhere behind the glass, deep inside the machine. A devil eye, winking at me. The light went out and there was a flash accompanied by a soft, popping sound that went right through my head.

The first picture had caught me unawares. I was just sitting there with my mouth half-open. Before the machine flashed again

I quickly adjusted the stool and twisted my features into the most stupid face I could make. The red eye blinked, followed by the flash.

That one would be for the fridge. For the third picture, I whipped the black curtain across, leant back and smiled. The picture was for my father and I wanted it to be good. The fourth picture was a complete disaster. I was pulling back the curtain, adjusting the stool and trying to think of something to do when the flash went off and I realised I’d taken a picture of my left shoulder with my face – annoyed and surprised – peering over the top.

That was it. Those were the four pictures I took.

I went outside the photo booth and stood there on my own, waiting for the pictures to develop. Three minutes according to the advert on the side. Nobody came anywhere near and once again

I wondered why they had put the machine so far from the station entrance. Further up the platform, the station clock ticked to 10.47.

The minute hand was so big that I could actually see it moving, sliding over the Roman numerals. Doors slammed on the other side of a train. There was the blast of a whistle. The 10.45 to Glasgow shuddered out of the station, a couple of minutes late.

The three minutes took an age to pass. Time always slows down when you’re waiting for something. I watched the minute hand of the clock make two more complete circles. Another train, without any carriages, chugged backwards along a line on the far side of the station. And meanwhile the photo booth did … nothing. Maybe there were wheels turning inside, chemicals splashing, spools of paper unfolding. But from where I was standing it just looked dead.

Then, with no warning at all, there was a whirr and a strip of white paper was spat out of a slot in the side. My photographs.

I waited until a fan had blown the paper dry, and then prised it out of its metal cage. Being careful not to get my fingers on the pictures themselves, I turned them over in my hand.

Four pictures.

The first. Me looking stupid.

The second. Me out of focus.

The fourth. Me from behind.

But the third picture, in the middle of the strip, wasn’t a picture of me at all.

It was a picture of a man, and one of the ugliest men I had ever seen. Just looking at him, holding him in my hand, sent a shiver all the way up my arm and round the back of my neck. The man had a yellow face. There was something terribly wrong with his skin which seemed to be crumpled up around his neck and chin, like an old paper bag. He had blue eyes but they had sunk back, hiding in the dark shadows of his eye sockets. His hair was grey and string-like, hanging lifelessly over his forehead. The skin here was damaged too, as if someone had drawn a map on it and then rubbed it out, leaving just faint traces. The man was leaning back against the black curtain and maybe he was smiling. His lips were certainly stretched in something like a smile but there was no humour there at all. He was staring at me, staring up from the palm of my hand. And I would have said his face was filled with raw horror.

I almost crumpled up the photographs then and there. There was something so shocking about the man that I couldn’t bear to look at him. I tried to look at the three images of myself but each time my eyes were drawn down or

up so that they settled only on him.

I closed my fingers, bending them over his face, trying to blot him out.

But it was too late. Even when I wasn’t looking at him I could still see him. I could still feel him looking at me.

But who was he and how had he got there? I walked away from the machine, glad to be going back to where there were people, away from that deserted end of the platform. Obviously the photo booth had been broken. It must have muddled up my photographs with those of whoever had visited it just before me. At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself.

My Uncle Peter was waiting for me at the bench. He seemed relieved to see me.

‘I thought we were going to miss the train,’ he said. He ground out the Gauloise he’d been smoking. He was as bad as my father when it came to cigarettes. High-tar French. Not just damaging your health. Destroying it.

‘So let’s see them,’ Aunt Anne said. She was a pretty, rather nervous woman who always managed to sound enthusiastic about everything. ‘How did they come out?’

‘The machine was broken,’ I said.

‘The camera probably cracked when it saw your face.’ Peter gave one of his throaty laughs. ‘Let’s see …’

I held out the strip of film. They took it.

‘Who’s this?’ Anne tried to sound cheerful but I could see that the man with the yellow face had disturbed her. I wasn’t surprised.

He’d disturbed me.

‘He wasn’t there,’ I said. ‘I mean, I didn’t see him. All the photographs were of me – but when they were developed, he was there.’

‘It must have been broken,’ Peter said. ‘This must be the last person who was in there.’

Which was exactly what I had thought. Only now I wasn’t so sure. Because it had occurred to me that if there was something wrong with the machine and everyone was getting photographs of someone else, then surely the man with the yellow face would have appeared at the very top of the row: one photograph of him followed by three of me. Then whoever went in next would get one picture of me followed by three of them. And so on.

And there was something else.

Now that I’d thought about it, the man was sitting in exactly the same position that I’d taken inside the photo booth. I’d pulled the black curtain across for the third photograph and there it was now. I’d been leaning back and so was he. It was almost as if the man had somehow got into the machine and sat in a deliberate parody of me.

And maybe there was something in that smile of his that was mocking and ugly. It was as if he were trying to tell me something. But I didn’t want to know.

‘I think he’s a ghost,’ I said.

‘A ghost?’ Peter laughed again. He had an annoying laugh. It was loud and jagged, like machine-gun fire. ‘A ghost in a platform photo booth?’

‘Peter …!’ Anne was disapproving. She was worried about me.

She’d been worried about me since the start of the divorce.

‘I feel I know him,’ I said. ‘I can’t explain it. But I’ve seen him somewhere before.’

‘Where?’ Anne asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘In a nightmare?’ Peter suggested. ‘His face does look a bit of a nightmare.’ I looked at the picture again even though I didn’t want to. It was true. He did look familiar. But at the same time I knew that despite what I’d just said, it was a face I’d never seen before.

‘The train now arriving at Platform One …’

It was the train announcer’s voice again and sure enough there was our train, looking huge and somehow menacing as it slid round the curve of the track. And it was at that very moment, as I reached out to take the photographs, that I had the idea that I shouldn’t get on the train because the man with the yellow face was going to be on it, that somehow he was dangerous to me and that the machine had sent me his picture to warn me.

My uncle and aunt gathered up our weekend bags.

‘Why don’t we wait?’ I said.

‘What?’ My uncle was already halfway through the door.

‘Can’t we stay a little longer? In York? We could take the train this afternoon …’

‘We’ve got to get back,’ my aunt said. As always, hers was the voice of reason. ‘Your mother’s going to be waiting for us at the station and anyway, we’ve got reserved seats.’

‘Come on!’ Uncle Peter was caught between the platform and the train and with people milling around us, trying to get in, this obviously wasn’t the best time or place for an argument.

Even now I wonder why I allowed myself to be pushed, or persuaded, into the train. I could have turned round and run away.

I could have sat on the platform and refused to move. Maybe if it had been my mother and father there, I would have done but then, of course, if my mother and father had only managed to stay together in the first place none of it would have happened. Do I blame them?

Yes. Sometimes I do.

I found myself on the train before I knew it. We had seats quite near the front and that also played a part in what happened. While Uncle Peter stowed the cases up on the rack and Aunt Anne fished in her shopping bag for magazines, drinks and sandwiches, I took the seat next to the window, miserable and afraid without knowing why. The man with the yellow face. Who was he? A psychopath perhaps, released from a mental hospital, travelling to London with a knife in his raincoat pocket. Or a terrorist with a bomb, one of those suicide bombers you read about in the Middle East. Or a child killer.

Or some sort of monster …

I was so certain I was going to meet him that I barely even noticed as the train jerked forward and began to move out of the station. The photographs were still clasped in my hand and I kept on looking from the yellow face to the other passengers in the carriage, expecting at any moment to see him coming towards me.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ my uncle asked. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

I was expecting to. I said nothing.

‘Is it that photograph?’ Anne asked. ‘Really, Simon, I don’t know why it’s upset you so much.’

And then the ticket collector came. Not a yellow face at all but a black one, smiling. Everything was normal. We were on a train heading for London and I had allowed myself to get flustered about nothing. I took the strip of photographs and bent it so that the yellow face disappeared behind the folds. When I got back to London, I’d cut it out. When I got back to London.

But I didn’t get back to London. Not for a long, long time.

I didn’t even know anything was wrong until it had happened.

We were travelling fast, whizzing through green fields and clumps of woodland when I felt a slight lurch as if invisible arms had reached down and pulled me out of my seat. That was all there was at first, a sort of mechanical hiccup. But then I had the strange sensation that the train was flying. It was like a plane at the end of the runway, the front of the train separating from the ground. It could only have lasted a couple of seconds but in my memory those seconds seem to stretch out for ever. I remember my uncle’s head turning, the question forming itself on his face. And my aunt, perhaps realising what was happening before we did, opening her mouth to scream. I remember the other passengers; I carry snapshots of them in my head.

A mother with two small daughters, both with ribbons in their hair.

A man with a moustache, his pen hovering over the Times crossword.

A boy of about my own age, listening to a Walkman. The train was almost full. There was hardly an empty seat in sight.

And then the smash of the impact, the world spinning upside down, windows shattering, coats and suitcases tumbling down, sheets of paper whipping into my face, thousands of tiny fragments of glass swarming into me, the deafening scream of tearing metal, the sparks and the smoke and the flames leaping up, cold air rushing in and then the horrible rolling and shuddering that was like the very worst sort of fairground ride only this time the terror wasn’t going to stop, this time it was all for real.

Silence.

They always say there’s silence after an accident and they’re right. I was on my back with something pressing down on me. I could only see out of one eye. Something dripped on to my face. Blood.

Then the screams began. It turned out that some kids – maniacs – had dropped a concrete pile off a bridge outside Grantham. The train hit it and derailed. Nine people were killed in the crash and a further twentynine were seriously injured. I was one of the worst of them. I don’t remember anything more of what happened, which is just as well as my carriage caught fire and I was badly burned before my uncle managed to drag me to safety. He was hardly hurt in the accident, apart from a few cuts and bruises. Aunt Anne broke her arm.

I spent many weeks in hospital and I don’t remember much of that either. All in all, it was six months before I was better but ‘better’ in my case was never what I had been before.

This all happened thirty years ago.

And now?

I suppose I can’t complain. After all, I wasn’t killed and despite my injuries, I enjoy my life. But the injuries are still there. The plastic surgeons did what they could but I’d suffered third-degree burns over much of my body and there wasn’t a whole lot they could do. My hair grew back but it’s always been grey and rather lifeless. My eyes are sunken. And then there’s my skin.

I sit here looking in the mirror.

And the man with the yellow face looks back.

My Father is a Polar Bear

Michael Morpurgo

This story is a tissue of truth – mostly. As with many of my stories, I have woven truths

together and made from them a truth stranger than fiction. My father was a polar

bear – honestly.

Tracking down a polar bear shouldn’t be that difficult. You just follow the pawprints –easy enough for any competent Innuit. My father is a polar bear. Now if you had a father who was a polar bear, you’d be curious, wouldn’t you? You’d go looking for him.

That’s what I did, I went looking for him, and I’m telling you he wasn’t at all easy to find. In a way I was lucky, because I always had two fathers. I had a father who was there – I called him Douglas – and one who wasn’t there, the one I’d never even met – the polar bear one. Yet in a way he was there. All the time I was growing up he was there inside my head. But he wasn’t only in my head, he was at the bottom of our Start-Rite shoebox, our secret treasure box, with the rubber bands round it, which I kept hidden at the bottom of the cupboard in our bedroom. So how, you might ask, does a polar bear fit into a shoebox? I’ll tell you.

My big brother Terry first showed me the magazine under the bedclothes, by torchlight, in 1948 when I was five years old. The magazine was called Theatre World. I couldn’t read it at the time, but he could. (He was two years older than me, and already mad about acting and the theatre and all that – he still is.) He had saved up all his pocket money to buy it. I thought he was crazy. ‘A shilling! You can get about a hundred lemon sherbets for that down at the shop,’ I told him. Terry just ignored me and turned to page twenty-seven.He read it out: ‘The Snow Queen, a dramat – something or other – of Hans Andersen’s famous story, by the Young Vic company.’ And there was a large black and white photograph right across the page – a photograph of two fierce-looking polar bears baring their teeth and about to eat two children, a boy and a girl, who looked very frightened.

‘Look at the polar bears,’ said Terry. ‘You see that one on the left, the fatter one? That’s our dad, our real dad. It says his name and everything – Peter Van Diemen. But you’re not to tell. Not Douglas, not even Mum, promise?’

‘My dad’s a polar bear?’ I said. As you can imagine I was a little confused.

‘Promise you won’t tell,’ he went on, ‘or I’ll give you a Chinese burn.’

Of course I wasn’t going to tell, Chinese burn or no Chinese burn. I was hardly going to go to school the next day and tell everyone that I had a polar bear for a father, was I! And I certainly couldn’t tell my mother, because I knew she never liked it if I ever asked about my real father. She always insisted that Douglas was the only father I had. I knew he wasn’t, not really. So did she, so did Terry, so did Douglas.

But for some reason that was always a complete mystery to me, everyone in the house pretended that he was.

Some background might be useful here. I was born, I later found out, when my father was a soldier in Baghdad during the Second World War. (You didn’t know there were polar bears in Baghdad, did you?) Sometime after that my mother met and fell in love with a dashing young officer in the Royal Marines called Douglas Macleish. All this time, evacuated to the Lake District away from the bombs, blissfully unaware of the war and Douglas, I was learning to walk and talk and do my business in the right place at the right time.

So my father came home from the war to discover that his place in my mother’s heart had been taken. He did all he could to win her back. He took her away on a week’s cycling holiday in Suffolk to see if he could rekindle the light of their love. But it was hopeless. By the end of the week they had come to an amicable arrangement. My father would simply disappear, because he didn’t want to ‘get in the way’. They would get divorced quickly and quietly, so that Terry and I could be brought up as a new family with Douglas as our father. Douglas would adopt us and give us Macleish as our surname. All my father insisted upon was that Terry and I should keep Van Diemen as our middle name. That’s what happened. They divorced. My father disappeared, and at the age of three I became Andrew Van Diemen Macleish. It was a mouthful then and it’s a mouthful now.

So Terry and I had no actual memories of our father whatsoever. I do have vague recollections of standing on a railway bridge somewhere near Earl’s Court in London, where we lived, with Douglas’ sister – Aunt Betty, as I came to know her – telling us that we had a brand new father who’d be looking after us from now on. I was really not that concerned, not at the time. I was much more interested in the train that was chuffing along under the bridge, wreathing us in a fog of smoke.

My first father, my real father, my missing father, became a taboo person, a big hush hush taboo person that no one ever mentioned, except for Terry and me. For us he soon became a sort of secret phantom father. We used to whisper about him under the blankets at night. Terry would sometimes go snooping in my mother’s desk and he’d find things out about him. ‘He’s an actor,’Terry told me one night.

‘Our dad’s an actor, just like Mum is, just like I’m going to be.’

It was only a couple of weeks later that he brought the theatre magazine home. After that we’d take it out again and look at our polar bear father. It took some time, I remember, before the truth of it dawned on me – I don’t think Terry can have explained it very well. If he had, I’d have understood it much sooner – I’m sure I would. The truth, of course – as I think you might have guessed by now – was that my father was both an actor and a polar bear at one and the same time.

Douglas went out to work a lot and when he was home he was a bit silent, so we didn’t really get to know him. But we did get to know Aunty Betty. Aunty Betty simply adored us, and she loved giving us treats. She wanted to take us on a special Christmas treat, she said. Would we like to go to the zoo? Would we like to go to the pantomime? There was Dick Whittington or Puss in Boots. We could choose whatever we liked.

Quick as a flash, Terry said, ‘The Snow Queen.We want to go to The Snow Queen’. So there we were a few days later, Christmas Eve 1948, sitting in the stalls at a matinee performance of The Snow Queen at the Young Vic theatre, waiting, waiting for the moment when the polar bears came on. We didn’t have to wait for long. Terry nudged me and pointed, but I knew already which polar bear my father had to be.

He was the best one, the snarliest one, the growliest one, the scariest one. Whenever he came on he really looked as if he was going to eat someone, anyone. He looked mean and hungry and savage, just the way a polar bear should look.

I have no idea whatsoever what happened in The Snow Queen. I just could not take my eyes off my polar bear father’s curling claws, his slavering tongue, his killer eyes. My father was without doubt the finest polar bear actor the world had ever seen. When the great red curtains closed at the end and opened again for the actors to take their bows, I clapped so hard that my hands hurt. Three more curtain calls and the curtains stayed closed. The safety curtain came down and my father was cut off from me, gone, gone for ever. I’d never see him again.

Terry had other ideas. Everyone was getting up, but Terry stayed sitting. He was staring at the safety curtain as if in some kind of trance. ‘I want to meet the polar bears,’ he said quietly.

Aunty Betty laughed. ‘They’re not bears, dear, they’re actors, just actors, people acting. And you can’t meet them, it’s not allowed.’

‘I want to meet the polar ears, ’Terry repeated. So did I, of course, so I joined in.

‘Please, Aunty Betty,’ I pleaded. ‘Please.’

‘Don’t be silly. You two, you do get some silly notions sometimes. Have a Choc Ice instead. Get your coats on now.’ So we each got a Choc Ice. But that wasn’t the end of it.

We were in the foyer caught in the crush of the crowd when Aunty Betty suddenly noticed that Terry was missing. She went loopy. Aunty Betty always wore a fox stole, heads still attached, round her shoulders. Those poor old foxes looked every bit as pop-eyed and frantic as she did, as she plunged through the crowd, dragging me

along behind her and calling for Terry.

Gradually the theatre emptied. Still no Terry. There was quite a to-do, I can tell you. Policemen were called in off the street. All the programme sellers joined in the search, everyone did. Of course, I’d worked it out. I knew exactly where Terry had gone, and what he was up to. By now Aunty Betty was sitting down in the foyer and sobbing her heart out. Then, cool as a cucumber, Terry appeared from nowhere, just wandered into the foyer. Aunty Betty crushed him to her, in a great hug. Then she went loopy all over again, telling him what a naughty, naughty boy he was, going off like that. ‘Where were you? Where have you been?’ she cried.

‘Yes, young man,’ said one of the policemen. ‘That’s something we’d all like to know as well.

’I remember to this day exactly what Terry said, the very words: ‘Jimmy riddle. I just went for a jimmy riddle.’ For just

a moment he even had me believing him. What an actor! Brilliant.

We were on the bus home, right at the front on the top deck where you can guide the bus round corners all by yourself – all you have to do is steer hard on the white bar in front of you. Aunty Betty was sitting a couple of rows behind us. Terry made quite sure she wasn’t looking. Then, very surreptitiously, he took something out from under

his coat and showed me. The programme. Signed right across it were these words, which Terry read out to me:

‘To Terry and Andrew, With love from your polar bear father, Peter. Keep happy.’

Night after night I asked Terry about him, and night after night under the blankets he’d tell me the story again, about how he’d gone into the dressing-room and found our father sitting there in his polar bear costume with his head off (if you know what I mean), all hot and sweaty. Terry said he had a very round, very smiley face, and that he laughed just like a bear would laugh, a sort of deep bellow of a laugh – when he’d got over the surprise that is. Terry described him as looking like ‘a giant pixie in a bearskin’.

For ever afterwards I always held it against Terry that he never took me with him that day down to the dressing-room to meet my polar bear father. I was so envious. Terry had a memory of him now, a real memory. And I didn’t. All I had were a few words and a signature on a theatre programme from someone I’d never even met, someone who to me was part polar bear, part actor, part pixie – not at all easy to picture in my head as I grew up.

Picture another Christmas Eve fourteen years later. Upstairs, still at the bottom of my cupboard, my polar bear father in the magazine in the Start-Rite shoebox; and with him all our accumulated childhood treasures: the signed

programme, a battered champion conker (a sixty-fiver!), six silver ball-bearings, four greenish silver threepenny bits (Christmas pudding treasure trove), a Red Devil throat pastille tin with three of my milk teeth cushioned in yellowy cotton wool, and my collection of twenty-seven cowrie shells gleaned over many summers from the beach on Samson in the Scilly Isles. Downstairs, the whole family were gathered in the sitting-room: my mother, Douglas, Terry and my two sisters (halfsisters really, but of course no one ever called them that), Aunty Betty, now married,

with twin daughters, my cousins, who were truly awful – I promise you. We were decorating the tree, or rather the twins were fighting over every single dingly-dangly glitter ball, every strand of tinsel. I was trying to fix up the Christmas tree lights which, of course, wouldn’t work – again – whilst Aunty Betty was doing her best to avert a

war by bribing the dreadful cousins away from the tree with a Mars bar each. It took a while, but in the end she got both of them up on to her lap, and soon they were stuffing themselves contentedly with Mars bars. Blessed peace.

This was the very first Christmas we had had the television. Given half a chance we’d have had it on all the time. But, wisely enough I suppose, Douglas had rationed us to just one programme a day over Christmas. He didn’t want the Christmas celebrations interfered with by ‘that thing in the corner’, as he called it. By common consent, we had chosen the Christmas Eve film on the BBC at five o’clock.

Five o’clock was a very long time coming that day, and when at last Douglas got up and turned on the television, it seemed to take for ever to warm up. Then, there it was on the screen: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The half-mended lights were at once discarded, the decorating abandoned, as we all settled down to watch in rapt anticipation. Maybe you know the moment: Young Pip is making his way through the graveyard at dusk, mist swirling around him, an owl screeching, gravestones rearing out of the gloom, branches like ghoulish fingers whipping at

him as he passes, reaching out to snatch him. He moves through the graveyard timorously, tentatively, like a frightened fawn. Every snap of a twig, every barking fox, every aarking heron sends shivers into our very souls.

Suddenly, a face! A hideous face, a monstrous face, looms up from behind a gravestone. Magwitch, the escaped convict, ancient, craggy and crooked, with long white hair and a straggly beard. A wild man with wild eyes, the eyes of a wolf.

The cousins screamed in unison, long and loud, which broke the tension for all of us and made us laugh. All except my mother. ‘Oh my God,’ she breathed, grasping my arm. ‘That’s your father! It’s him. It’s Peter.’

All the years of pretence, the whole long conspiracy of silence were undone in that one moment. of silence were undone in that one moment. The drama on the television paled into sudden insignificance. The hush in the room was palpable.

Douglas coughed. ‘I think I’ll fetch some more logs,’ he said. And my two half sisters went out with him, in solidarity I think. So did Aunty Betty and the twins; and that left my mother, Terry and me alone together.

I could not take my eyes off the screen. After a while I said to Terry, ‘He doesn’t look much like a pixie to me.’

‘Doesn’t look much like a polar bear either,’Terry replied. At Magwitch’s every appearance I tried to see through his make-up (I just hoped it was make-up!) to discover how my father really looked. It was impossible. My polar bear father, my pixie father had become my convict father.

Until the credits came up at the end my mother never said a word. Then all she said was, ‘Well, the potatoes won’t peel themselves, and I’ve got the brussel sprouts to do as well.’Christmas was a very subdued affair that year, I can tell you.

They say you can’t put a genie back in the bottle. Not true. No one in the family ever spoke of the incident afterwards – except Terry and me of course. Everyone behaved as if it had never happened. Enough was enough. Terry and I decided it was time to broach the whole forbidden subject with our mother, in private. We waited until the furore of Christmas was over, and caught her alone in the kitchen one evening. We asked her point blank to tell us about him, our ‘first’ father, our ‘missing’ father.

‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ she said. She wouldn’t even look at us. ‘All I know is that he lives somewhere in Canada now. It was another life. I was another person then. It’s not important.’We tried to press her, but that was all she would tell us.

Soon after this I became very busy with my own life, and for some years I thought very little about my convict father, my polar bear father. By the time I was thirty I was married with two sons, and was a teacher trying to become a writer, something I had never dreamt I could be.

Terry had become an actor, something he had always been quite sure he would be. He rang me very late one night in a high state of excitement. ‘You’ll never guess,’ he said. ‘He’s here! Peter! Our dad. He’s here, in England. He’s playing in Henry IV, Part II in Chichester. I’ve just read a rave review. He’s Falstaff. Why don’t we go down there and give him the surprise of his life?’

So we did. The next weekend we went down to Chichester together. I took my family with me. I wanted them to be there for this. He was a wonderful Falstaff, big and boomy, rumbustious and raunchy, yet full of pathos. My two boys

(ten and eight) kept whispering at me every time he came on. ‘Is that him? Is that him?’Afterwards we went round to see him in his dressing-room. Terry said I should go in first, and on my own. ‘I had my turn a long time ago, if you remember,’ he said.

‘Best if he sees just one of us to start with, I reckon.’

My heart was in my mouth. I had to take a very deep breath before I knocked on that door. ‘Enter.’ He sounded still jovial, still Falstaffian. I went in.

He was sitting at his dressing-table in his vest and braces, boots and britches, and humming to himself as he rubbed off his make-up. We looked at each other in the mirror. He stopped humming, and swivelled round to face me. For some moments I just stood there looking at him. Then I said, ‘Were you a polar bear once, a long time ago in London?’

‘Yes.’

‘And were you once the convict in Great Expectations on the television?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I think I’m your son,’ I told him.

There was a lot of hugging in his dressing-room that night, not enough to make up for all those missing years, maybe.

But it was a start.

My mother’s dead now, bless her heart, but I still have two fathers. I get on well enough with Douglas, I always have done in a detached sort of way. He’s done his best by me, I know that; but in all the years I’ve known him he’s never once mentioned my other father. It doesn’t matter now. It’s history best left crusted over I think.

We see my polar bear father – I still think of him as that – every year or so, whenever he’s over from Canada. He’s well past eighty now, still acting for six months of every year – a real trouper. My children and my grandchildren always call him Grandpa Bear because of his great bushy beard (the same one he grew for Falstaff!), and because they all know the story of their grandfather, I suppose.

Recently I wrote a story about a polar bear. I can’t imagine why. He’s upstairs now reading it to my smallest granddaughter. I can hear him a-snarling and a-growling just as proper polar bears do. Takes him back, I should think. Takes me back, that’s for sure.

My Polish Teacher’s Tie

By Helen Dunmore

I wear a uniform, blue overall and white cap with the school logo on it. Part-time catering staff, that’s me, £3.89 per hour. I dish out tea and buns to the teachers twice a day, and I shovel chips on to the kids’ trays at dinner-time. It’s not a bad job. I like the kids.

The teachers pay for their tea and buns. It’s one of those schemes teachers are good at. So much into a kitty, and that entitles them to cups of tea and buns for the rest of the term. Visitors pay, too, or it wouldn’t be fair. Very keen on fairness, we are, here.

It was ten-forty-five when the Head got up to speak. He sees his staff together for ten minutes once a week, and as usual he had a pile of papers in front of him. I never listen to any of it as a rule, but as I was tipping up the teapot to drain I heard him mention Poland.

I am half-Polish. They don’t know that here. My name’s not Polish or anything. It was my mother, she came here after the war. I spoke Polish till I was six, Baby Polish full of rhymes Mum taught me. Then my father put a stop to it. “You’ll get her all mixed up, now she’s going to school. What use is Polish ever going to be to her?” I can’t speak it now. I’ve got a tape, a tape of me speaking Polish with Mum. I listen, and I think I’m going to understand what we’re saying, and then I don’t.

`… long-term aim is to arrange a teacher exchange – several Polish teachers are looking for penfriends in English schools, to improve their written English … so if you’re interested, the information’s all here …’

He smiled, wagging the papers, and raised his eyebrows. I wrung out a cloth and wiped my surfaces. I was thinking fast. Thirteen minutes before I was due downstairs.

The meeting broke up and the Head vanished in a knot of teachers wanting to talk to him. I lifted the counter-flap, tucked my hair under the cap, and walked across. Teachers are used to getting out of the way of catering staff without really seeing them.

`Excuse me,’ I said, pushing forward, `excuse me,’ and they did. Then I was in front of the Head. `Excuse me,’ I said again, and he broke off what he was saying. I saw him thinking, trouble. The kids chucking chips again. He stitched a nice smile on his face and said, `Oh, er – Mrs, er – Carter. Is there a problem?’

`No,’ I said, `I was just wondering, could I have that address?’

`Address?’

`The Polish one. You said there was a Polish teacher who wanted an English penfriend.’

`Oh. Ah, yes. Of course.’ He paused, looking at me as if it might be a trick question. `Is it for yourself?’ `I’d like to write to a Polish teacher.’

`Oh,’ he said. `Yes. Of course, Mrs Carter.’

I took the address and smiled at him.

When Steve’s first letter came I saw he’d taken it for granted I was a teacher. The person he had in his head when he was writing to me was an English teacher, a real professional. This person earned more money than him and had

travelled and seen places and done things he’d never been able to do. He was really called Stefan, but he said he was going to call himself Steve when he wrote to me.

Jade saw the letter. `What’s that, Mum?’

`Just a letter. You can have the stamp if you want.’

In the second letter Steve told me that he wrote poetry.

`I have started a small literary magazine in our department. If you want, I am happy to send you some of our work.’

I told him about Jade. I told him about the songs my mother taught me in Polish, the ones I used to know but I’d forgotten. I didn’t write anything about my job. Let him think what he wanted to think. I wasn’t lying.

The first poem he sent me was about a bird in a coal mine. He sent me the English translation. This bird flew down the main shaft and got lost in the tunnels underground, then it sang and sang until it died. Everyone heard it singing, but no one could find it. I liked that poem. It made me think maybe I’d been missing something, because I hadn’t read any poetry since I left school. I wrote back, `Send me the Polish, just so I can see it.’ When the Polish came I

tried it over in my head. It sounded a bit like the rhymes my mother used to sing.

At first we wrote every week, then it was twice. I used to write a bit every day then make myself wait until the middle of the week to send it. I wrote after Jade was in bed. Things would suddenly come to me. I’d write, `Oh, Steve, I’ve just remembered …’, or `… Do you see what I mean, Steve, or does it sound funny?’ It

made it seem more like talking to him when I used his name.

He wrote me another poem. It was about being half-Polish and half-English, and the things I’d told him about speaking Polish until I was six and then forgetting it all: `Mother, I’ve lost the words you gave me. Call the police, tell them there’s a reward … I’ll do anything …’

He was going to put it in the literary magazine, `if you have no objection, Carla’. That was the way he wrote, always very polite. I said it was fine by me. One day the Head stopped me and said, `Did you ever write to that chap? The

Polish teacher?’

`Yes,’ I said. Nothing more. Let him think I’d written once then not bothered. Luckily, Mrs Callendar came up to talk about OFSTED.

`Ah, yes, OFSTED. Speaking of visitors,’ said the Head, raising his voice the way he does so that one minute he’s talking to you and the next it’s a public announcement, `I have news of progress on the Polish teachers’ exchange. A

teacher will be coming over from Katowice next month. His name is Stefan Jeziorny, and he will be staying with Mrs Kenward. We’re most grateful to you for your hospitality, Valerie.’

Mrs Kenward flushed. The Head beamed at nobody. Stefan Jeziomy, I thought. I had clicked, even though I was so used to thinking of him as Steve. Why hadn’t he said he was coming?

I dropped Jade off to tea with her friend. There was a letter waiting when I got home. I tore it open and read it with my coat still on. There was a bit about my last letter, and poetry, and then the news.

`You will know from your school, Carla, that I will come to England. I am hoping to make many contacts for the future, for other teachers who will also come to English schools. I hope, Carla, that you will introduce me to your colleagues. I will stay with an English Family who offer accommodation.’

I felt terrible. He sounded different, not like Steve. Not just polite any more, but all stiff, and a bit hurt. He must have thought I’d known about his visit from the other teachers, and I hadn’t wanted to invite him to stay with me. But what was worse was that he was going to expect to meet me. Or not me, exactly, but the person he’d been writing to, who didn’t really exist. `I have been corresponding with a colleague of yours, Carla Carter,’ he’d say to the other teachers. Then he’d wait for someone to say, `Yes, of course, Carla’s here, she’s expecting you.’

Colleagues don’t wear blue overalls and white caps and work for £3.89 an hour. Somebody’d remember me asking the Head for his address, and there’d be a whisper running all round, followed by a horrible silence. They’d all look round at the serving-hatch and there I’d be, the big teapot in my hand and a plate of buns in front of me. And Steve’d look too. He’d still be smiling, because that’s what you do in a foreign place when you don’t know what’s going on.

He’d think I was trying to make a fool of him, making him believe I was a teacher. Me, Carla Carter, part-time catering assistant, writing to him about poetry.

I could be off sick. I could swap with Jeannie. She could do the teachers’ breaks. Or I could say Jade was ill.

No. That wouldn’t work. Steve had my name, and my address. I sat down and spread out his letter again, then I went to the drawer and got all his other letters. I’d never had letters like that before and I was never going to again, not

after Steve knew who I really was.

I didn’t write, and Steve didn’t write again either. I couldn’t decide if it was because he was hurt, or because he knew he’d be seeing me soon anyway. The fuss Valerie Kenward made about having him to stay, you’d think the Pope was

coming for a fortnight. I never liked her. Always holding up the queue saying she’s on a diet, and then taking the biggest bun.

`If you’re that bothered,’ I said, `he can come and stay in my flat, with me and Jade.’ But I said it to myself, in my head. I knew he’d want to be with the other teachers.

I couldn’t stop looking for letters. And then there was the poetry book I’d bought. It seemed a shame to bin it. It might come in for Jade, I thought.

A week went by, eight days, ten. Each morning I woke up and I knew something was wrong before I could remember what it was. It got worse every day until I thought, Sod it, I’m not going to worry any more.

The next morning-break the buns were stale. Valerie Kenward poked them, one after another. `We ought to get our money back,’ she said. But she still took one, and waited while I filled the teapot from the urn.

`How’s it going?’ Susie Douglas asked her.

`Hard work!’ stage-whispered Valerie, rolling her eyes.

`He’s not got much conversation, then?’

`Are you joking? All he wants to talk about is poetry. It’s hell for the kids, he doesn’t mean to be funny but they can’t keep a straight face. It’s the way he talks. Philippa had to leave the room at supper-time, and I can’t say I blame her.’

You wouldn’t, I thought. If ever anyone brought up their kids to be pleased with themselves, it’s Valerie Kenward.

`And even when it’s quite a well-known writer like Shakespeare or Shelley, you can’t make out what he’s on about. It’s the accent.’

`He is Polish. I mean, how many Polish poets could you pronounce?’ asked Susie.

`And his ties!’ went on Valerie. `You’ve never seen anything like them.’

I looked past both of them. I’d have noticed him before, if I hadn’t been so busy. He was sitting stiffly upright, smiling in the way people smile when they don’t quite understand what’s going on. The Head was wagging a sheaf of papers in front of him, and talking very loudly, as if he was deaf. Steve. Stefan Jeziorny. He was wearing a brown suit with padded shoulders. It looked too big for him. His tie was wider than normal ties, and it was red with bold green squiggles on it. It was a terribly hopeful tie. His shoes had a fantastic shine on them. His face looked much too open, much too alive, as if a child Jade’s age had got into an adult’s body.

`Isn’t that tea made yet?’ asked Valerie.

I looked at her. `No,’ I said. `It’s not. Excuse me,’ and I lifted the counter-flap and ducked past her while her mouth was still open. I walked up to where Steve was sitting. He looked round at me the way a child does when he doesn’t know anyone at a party, hoping for rescue.

`Hello,’ I said. He jumped up, held out his hand. `How do you do?’ he asked, as if he really wanted to know. I took his hand. It was sweaty, as I’d known it would be. He was tense as a guitar string.

`I’m Carla,’ I said.

`Carla?’ He couldn’t hide anything. I saw it all swim in his eyes. Surprise. Uncertainty. What was he going to do? And then I saw it. Pleasure. A smile lit in his eyes and ran to his mouth.

`Carla! You are Carla Carter. My penfriend.’

`Yes.’

Then he did something I still can’t quite believe. He stood there holding on to my hand right in the middle of the staffroom, his big bright tie blazing, and he sang a song I knew. It went through me like a knife through butter. A Polish song. I knew it, I knew it. I knew the words and the tune. It was one of the songs my mother used to sing to me. I felt my lips move. There were words in my mouth, words I didn’t understand. And then I was singing, stumbling after him all the way to the end of the verse.

`Good heavens. How very remarkable. I didn’t realize you were Polish, Mrs … er …’ said the Head as he bumbled round us flapping his papers.

`Nor did I,’ I said. But I wasn’t going to waste time on the Head. I wanted to talk about poetry. I smiled at Steve. His red tie with its bold green squiggles was much too wide and much too bright. It was a flag from another country, a better country than the ones either of us lived in. `I like your tie,’ I said.

The Necklace

by Guy de Maupassant

The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of being known, understood, loved, married by any rich and distinguished man; so she let herself be married to a little clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction.

She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was unhappy as if she had really fallen from a higher station; since with women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind are their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies.

Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries. She was distressed at the poverty of her dwelling, at the bareness of the walls, at the shabby chairs, the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her despairing regrets and bewildering dreams. She thought of silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, illumined by tall bronze candelabra, and of two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the oppressive heat of the stove. She thought of long reception halls hung with ancient silk, of the dainty cabinets containing priceless curiosities and of the little coquettish perfumed reception rooms made for chatting at five o’clock with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they all desire.

When she sat down to dinner, before the round table covered with a tablecloth in use three days, opposite her husband, who uncovered the soup tureen and declared with a delighted air, “Ah, the good soup! I don’t know anything better than that,” she thought of dainty dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry that peopled the walls with ancient personages and with strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy forest; and she thought of delicious dishes served on marvellous plates and of the whispered gallantries to which you listen with a sphinx-like smile while you are eating the pink meat of a trout or the wings of a quail.

She had no gowns, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that. She felt made for that. She would have liked so much to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after.

She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, who was rich, and whom she did not like to go to see any more because she felt so sad when she came home.

But one evening her husband reached home with a triumphant air and holding a large envelope in his hand.

“There,” said he, “there is something for you.”

She tore the paper quickly and drew out a printed card which bore these words:

The Minister of Public Instruction and Madame Georges Ramponneau request the honour of M. and Madame Loisel’s company at the palace of the Ministry on Monday evening, January 18th.

Instead of being delighted, as her husband had hoped, she threw the invitation on the table crossly, muttering:

“What do you wish me to do with that?”

“Why, my dear, I thought you would be glad. You never go out, and this is such a fine opportunity. I had great trouble to get it. Every one wants to go; it is very select, and they are not giving many invitations to clerks. The whole official world will be there.”

She looked at him with an irritated glance and said impatiently:

“And what do you wish me to put on my back?”

He had not thought of that. He stammered:

“Why, the gown you go to the theatre in. It looks very well to me.”

He stopped, distracted, seeing that his wife was weeping. Two great tears ran slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth.

“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” he answered.

By a violent effort she conquered her grief and replied in a calm voice, while she wiped her wet cheeks:

“Nothing. Only I have no gown, and, therefore, I can’t go to this ball. Give your card to some colleague whose wife is better equipped than I am.”

He was in despair. He resumed:

“Come, let us see, Mathilde. How much would it cost, a suitable gown, which you could use on other occasions–something very simple?”

She reflected several seconds, making her calculations and wondering also what sum she could ask without drawing on herself an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical clerk.

Finally she replied hesitating:

“I don’t know exactly, but I think I could manage it with four hundred francs.”

He grew a little pale, because he was laying aside just that amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre, with several friends who went to shoot larks there of a Sunday.

But he said:

“Very well. I will give you four hundred francs. And try to have a pretty gown.”

The day of the ball drew near and Madame Loisel seemed sad, uneasy, anxious. Her frock was ready, however. Her husband said to her one evening:

“What is the matter? Come, you have seemed very queer these last three days.”

And she answered:

“It annoys me not to have a single piece of jewellery, not a single ornament, nothing to put on. I shall look poverty-stricken. I would almost rather not go at all.”

“You might wear natural flowers,” said her husband. “They’re very stylish at this time of year. For ten francs you can get two or three magnificent roses.”

She was not convinced.

“No; there’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among other women who are rich.”

“How stupid you are!” her husband cried. “Go look up your friend, Madame Forestier, and ask her to lend you some jewels. You’re intimate enough with her to do that.”

She uttered a cry of joy:

“True! I never thought of it.”

The next day she went to her friend and told her of her distress.

Madame Forestier went to a wardrobe with a mirror, took out a large jewel box, brought it back, opened it and said to Madame Loisel:

“Choose, my dear.”

She saw first some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian gold cross set with precious stones, of admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the mirror, hesitated and could not make up her mind to part with them, to give them back. She kept asking:

“Haven’t you any more?”

“Why, yes. Look further; I don’t know what you like.”

Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb diamond necklace, and her heart throbbed with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it round her throat, outside her high-necked waist, and was lost in ecstasy at her reflection in the mirror.

Then she asked, hesitating, filled with anxious doubt:

“Will you lend me this, only this?”

“Why, yes, certainly.”

She threw her arms round her friend’s neck, kissed her passionately, then fled with her treasure.

The night of the ball arrived. Madame Loisel was a great success. She was prettier than any other woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling and wild with joy. All the men looked at her, asked her name, sought to be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wished to waltz with her. She was remarked by the minister himself.

She danced with rapture, with passion, intoxicated by pleasure, forgetting all in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness comprised of all this homage, admiration, these awakened desires and of that sense of triumph which is so sweet to woman’s heart.

She left the ball about four o’clock in the morning. Her husband had been sleeping since midnight in a little deserted anteroom with three other gentlemen whose wives were enjoying the ball.

He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought, the modest wraps of common life, the poverty of which contrasted with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this and wished to escape so as not to be remarked by the other women, who were enveloping themselves in costly furs.

Loisel held her back, saying: “Wait a bit. You will catch cold outside. I will call a cab.”

But she did not listen to him and rapidly descended the stairs. When they reached the street they could not find a carriage and began to look for one, shouting after the cabmen passing at a distance.

They went toward the Seine in despair, shivering with cold. At last they found on the quay one of those ancient night cabs which, as though they were ashamed to show their shabbiness during the day, are never seen round Paris until after dark.

It took them to their dwelling in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly they mounted the stairs to their flat. All was ended for her. As to him, he reflected that he must be at the ministry at ten o’clock that morning.

She removed her wraps before the glass so as to see herself once more in all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry. She no longer had the necklace around her neck!

“What is the matter with you?” demanded her husband, already half undressed.

She turned distractedly toward him.

“I have–I have–I’ve lost Madame Forestier’s necklace,” she cried.

He stood up, bewildered.

“What!–how? Impossible!”

They looked among the folds of her skirt, of her cloak, in her pockets, everywhere, but did not find it.

“You’re sure you had it on when you left the ball?” he asked.

“Yes, I felt it in the vestibule of the minister’s house.”

“But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it fall. It must be in the cab.”

“Yes, probably. Did you take his number?”

“No. And you–didn’t you notice it?”

“No.”

They looked, thunderstruck, at each other. At last Loisel put on his clothes.

“I shall go back on foot,” said he, “over the whole route, to see whether I can find it.”

He went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, without any fire, without a thought.

Her husband returned about seven o’clock. He had found nothing.

He went to police headquarters, to the newspaper offices to offer a reward; he went to the cab companies–everywhere, in fact, whither he was urged by the least spark of hope.

She waited all day, in the same condition of mad fear before this terrible calamity.

Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale face. He had discovered nothing.

“You must write to your friend,” said he, “that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you are having it mended. That will give us time to turn round.”

She wrote at his dictation.

At the end of a week they had lost all hope. Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:

“We must consider how to replace that ornament.”

The next day they took the box that had contained it and went to the jeweller whose name was found within. He consulted his books.

“It was not I, madame, who sold that necklace; I must simply have furnished the case.”

Then they went from jeweller to jeweller, searching for a necklace like the other, trying to recall it, both sick with chagrin and grief.

They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string of diamonds that seemed to them exactly like the one they had lost. It was worth forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six.

So they begged the jeweller not to sell it for three days yet. And they made a bargain that he should buy it back for thirty-four thousand francs, in case they should find the lost necklace before the end of February.

Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He would borrow the rest.

He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another, five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, took up ruinous obligations, dealt with usurers and all the race of lenders. He compromised all the rest of his life, risked signing a note without even knowing whether he could meet it; and, frightened by the trouble yet to come, by the black misery that was about to fall upon him, by the prospect of all the physical privations and moral tortures that he was to suffer, he went to get the new necklace, laying upon the jeweller’s counter thirty-six thousand francs.

When Madame Loisel took back the necklace Madame Forestier said to her with a chilly manner:

“You should have returned it sooner; I might have needed it.”

She did not open the case, as her friend had so much feared. If she had detected the substitution, what would she have thought, what would she have said? Would she not have taken Madame Loisel for a thief?

Thereafter Madame Loisel knew the horrible existence of the needy. She bore her part, however, with sudden heroism. That dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their servant; they changed their lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof.

She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, using her dainty fingers and rosy nails on greasy pots and pans. She washed the soiled linen, the shirts and the dishcloths, which she dried upon a line; she carried the slops down to the street every morning and carried up the water, stopping for breath at every landing. And dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, a basket on her arm, bargaining, meeting with impertinence, defending her miserable money, sou by sou.

Every month they had to meet some notes, renew others, obtain more time.

Her husband worked evenings, making up a tradesman’s accounts, and late at night he often copied manuscript for five sous a page.

This life lasted ten years.

At the end of ten years they had paid everything, everything, with the rates of usury and the accumulations of the compound interest.

Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become the woman of impoverished households–strong and hard and rough. With frowsy hair, skirts askew and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down near the window and she thought of that happy evening of long ago, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so admired.

What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? who knows? How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!

But one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the Champs Elysees to refresh herself after the labours of the week, she suddenly perceived a woman who was leading a child. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still charming.

Madame Loisel felt moved. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she would tell her all about it. Why not?

She went up.

“Good-day, Jeanne.”

The other, astonished to be familiarly addressed by this plain good-wife, did not recognize her at all and stammered:

“But–madame!–I do not know—- You must have mistaken.”

“No. I am Mathilde Loisel.”

Her friend uttered a cry.

“Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you are changed!”

“Yes, I have had a pretty hard life, since I last saw you, and great poverty–and that because of you!”

“Of me! How so?”

“Do you remember that diamond necklace you lent me to wear at the ministerial ball?”

“Yes. Well?”

“Well, I lost it.”

“What do you mean? You brought it back.”

“I brought you back another exactly like it. And it has taken us ten years to pay for it. You can understand that it was not easy for us, for us who had nothing. At last it is ended, and I am very glad.”

Madame Forestier had stopped.

“You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine?”

“Yes. You never noticed it, then! They were very similar.”

And she smiled with a joy that was at once proud and naive.

Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her hands.

“Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was fake.! It was worth at most only five hundred francs!”

The Pedestrian

Ray Bradbury

To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o’clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do. He would stand upon the corner of an intersection and peer down long moonlit avenues of sidewalk in four directions, deciding which way to go, but it really made no difference; he was alone in this world of A.D. 2053, or as good as alone, and with a final

decision made, a path selected, he would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the

smoke of a cigar.

Sometimes he would walk for hours and miles and return only at midnight to his house. And on his way he would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind

the windows. Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was

still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomblike

building was still open.

Mr. Leonard Mead would pause, cock his head, listen, look, and march on, his feet making no

noise on the lumpy walk. For long ago he had wisely changed to sneakers when strolling at night, because

the dogs in intermittent squads would parallel his journey with barkings if he wore hard heels, and

lights might click on and faces appear and an entire street be startled by the passing of a lone figure,

himself, in the early November evening.

On this particular evening he began his journey in a westerly direction, toward the hidden sea. There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow. He listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction, and whistled a cold quiet whistle between his teeth, occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.

“Hello, in there,” he whispered to every house on every side as he moved. “What’s up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?”

The street was silent and long and empty, with only his shadow moving like the shadow of a hawk in midcountry. If he closed his eyes and stood very still, frozen, he could imagine himself upon the center of a plain, a wintry, windless Arizona desert with no house in a thousand miles, and only dry river

beds, the streets, for company.

“What is it now?” he asked the houses, noticing his wrist watch. “Eight-thirty P.M.? Time for a dozen assorted murders? A quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the stage?”

Was that a murmur of laughter from within a moon-white house? He hesitated, but went on when

nothing more happened. He stumbled over a particularly uneven section of sidewalk. The cement

was vanishing under flowers and grass. In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he

had never met another person walking, not once in all that time.

He came to a cloverleaf intersection which stood silent where two main highways crossed the

town. During the day it was a thunderous surge of cars, the gas stations open, a great insect rustling and

a ceaseless jockeying for position as the scarabbeetles, a faint incense puttering from their exhausts,

skimmed homeward to the far directions. But now these highways, too, were like streams in a dry

season, all stone and bed and moon radiance.

He turned back on a side street, circling around toward his home. He was within a block of his

destination when the lone car turned a corner quite suddenly and flashed a fierce white cone of light

upon him. He stood entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination, and then drawn

toward it.

A metallic voice called to him:

“Stand still. Stay where you are! Don’t move!”

He halted.

“Put up your hands!”

“But-” he said.

“Your hands up! Or we’ll Shoot!”

The police, of course, but what a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only one police car left, wasn’t that correct? Ever since a year ago, 2052, the election year, the force had been cut down from three cars to one. Crime was ebbing; there was no need now for the police, save for this one lone car wandering and wandering the empty streets.

“Your name?” said the police car in a metallic whisper. He couldn’t see the men in it for the bright light in his eyes.

“Leonard Mead,” he said.

“Speak up!”

“Leonard Mead!”

“Business or profession?”

“I guess you’d call me a writer.”

“No profession,” said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.

“You might say that, ” said Mr. Mead. He hadn’t written in years. Magazines and books didn’t sell any more. Everything went on in the tomblike houses at night now, he thought, continuing his fancy. The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead, the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces, but never really touching them.

“No profession,” said the phonograph voice, hissing. “What are you doing out?”

“Walking,” said Leonard Mead.

“Walking!”

“Just walking,” he said simply, but his face felt cold.

“Walking, just walking, walking?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Walking where? For what?”

“Walking for air. Walking to see.”

“Your address!”

“Eleven South Saint James Street.”

“And there is air in your house, you have an air conditioner, Mr. Mead?”

“Yes.”

“And you have a viewing screen in your house to see with?”

“No.”

“No?” There was a crackling quiet that in itself was an accusation.

“Are you married, Mr. Mead?” “No.”

“Not married,” said the police voice behind the fiery beam, The moon was high and clear among

the stars and the houses were gray and silent.

“Nobody wanted me,” said Leonard Mead with a smile.

“Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to!” Leonard Mead waited in the cold night.

“Just walking, Mr. Mead?”

“Yes.”

“But you haven’t explained for what purpose.”

“I explained; for air, and to see, and just to walk.”

“Have you done this often?”

“Every night for years.”

The police car sat in the center of the street with its radio throat faintly humming.

“Well, Mr. Mead,” it said.

“Is that all?” he asked politely.

“Yes,” said the voice. “Here.” There was a sigh, a pop. The back door of the police car sprang wide. “Get in.”

“Wait a minute, I haven’t done anything!”

“Get in.” “I protest!”

“Mr. Mead.”

He walked like a man suddenly drunk. As he passed the front window of the car he looked in. As he had expected, there was no one in the front seat, no one in the car at all.

“Get in.”

He put his hand to the door and peered into the back seat, which was a little cell, a little black jail

with bars. It smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clean and hard and

metallic. There was nothing soft there.

“Now if you had a wife to give you an alibi,” said the iron voice. “But-”

“Where are you taking me?”

The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint whirring click, as if information, somewhere, was

dropping card by punch-slotted card under electric eyes. “To the Psychiatric Center for Research on

Regressive Tendencies.”

He got in. The door shut with a soft thud. The police car rolled through the night avenues, flashing its dim lights ahead.

They passed one house on one street a moment later, one house in an entire city of houses that were dark, but this one particular house had all of its electric lights brightly lit, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness.

“That’s my house,” said Leonard Mead.

No one answered him.

The car moved down the empty river-bed streets and off away, leaving the empty streets with the empty side-walks, and no sound and no motion all the rest of the chill November night.

Sredni Vashtar

By H. H. Munro

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. De Ropp, who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin’s cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things–such as illnesses and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.

Mrs. De Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him “for his good” was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked out–an unclean thing, which should find no entrance.

In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were ready to open with a message not to do this or that, or a reminder that medicines were due, he found little attraction. The few fruit-trees that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking, as though they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an arid waste; it would probably have been difficult to find a market-gardener who would have offered ten shillings for their entire yearly produce. In a forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its walls Conradin found a haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a playroom and a cathedral. He had peopled it with a legion of familiar phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from his own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet. Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. This was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small silver. Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion. The Woman indulged in religion once a week at a church near by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was an alien rite in the House of Rimmon. Every Thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret. Red flowers in their season and scarlet berries in the winter-time were offered at his shrine, for he was a god who laid some special stress on the fierce impatient side of things, as opposed to the Woman’s religion, which, as far as Conradin could observe, went to great lengths in the contrary direction. And on great festivals powdered nutmeg was strewn in front of his hutch, an important feature of the offering being that the nutmeg had to be stolen. These festivals were of irregular occurrence, and were chiefly appointed to celebrate some passing event. On one occasion, when Mrs. De Ropp suffered from acute toothache for three days, Conradin kept up the festival during the entire three days, and almost succeeded in persuading himself that Sredni Vashtar was personally responsible for the toothache. If the malady had lasted for another day the supply of nutmeg would have given out.

The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar. Conradin had long ago settled that she was an Anabaptist. He did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable. Mrs. De Ropp was the ground plan on which he based and detested all respectability.

After a while Conradin’s absorption in the tool-shed began to attract the notice of his guardian. “It is not good for him to be pottering down there in all weathers,” she promptly decided, and at breakfast one morning she announced that the Houdan hen had been sold and taken away overnight. With her short-sighted eyes she peered at Conradin, waiting for an outbreak of rage and sorrow, which she was ready to rebuke with a flow of excellent precepts and reasoning. But Conradin said nothing: there was nothing to be said. Something perhaps in his white set face gave her a momentary qualm, for at tea that afternoon there was toast on the table, a delicacy which she usually banned on the ground that it was bad for him; also because the making of it “gave trouble,” a deadly offence in the middle-class feminine eye.

“I thought you liked toast,” she exclaimed, with an injured air, observing that he did not touch it.

“Sometimes,” said Conradin.

In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the hutch-god. Conradin had been wont to chant his praises, tonight be asked a boon.

“Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.”

The thing was not specified. As Sredni Vashtar was a god he must be supposed to know. And choking back a sob as he looked at that other empty corner, Conradin went back to the world he so hated.

And every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom, and every evening in the dusk of the tool-shed, Conradin’s bitter litany went up: “Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.”

Mrs. De Ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not cease, and one day she made a further journey of inspection.

“What are you keeping in that locked hutch?” she asked. “I believe it’s guinea-pigs. I’ll have them all cleared away.”

Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his bedroom till she found the carefully hidden key, and forthwith marched down to the shed to complete her discovery. It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin had been bidden to keep to the house. From the furthest window of the dining-room the door of the shed could just be seen beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there Conradin stationed himself. He saw the Woman enter, and then be imagined her opening the door of the sacred hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw bed where his god lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod at the straw in her clumsy impatience. And Conradin fervently breathed his prayer for the last time. But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe. He knew that the Woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, but a simple brown ferret in a hutch. And he knew that the Woman would triumph always as she triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her pestering and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be proved right. And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:

Sredni Vashtar went forth,

His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.

His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.

Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the window-pane. The door of the shed still stood ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping by. They were long minutes, but they slipped by nevertheless. He watched the starlings running and flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door. A sour-faced maid came in to lay the table for tea, and still Conradin stood and waited and watched. Hope had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful patience of defeat. Under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he began once again the pæan of victory and devastation. And presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat. Conradin dropped on his knees. The great polecat-ferret made its way down to a small brook at the foot of the garden, drank for a moment, then crossed a little plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes. Such was the passing of Sredni Vashtar.

“Tea is ready,” said the sour-faced maid; “where is the mistress?” “She went down to the shed some time ago,” said Conradin. And while the maid went to summon her mistress to tea, Conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and proceeded to toast himself a piece of bread. And during the toasting of it and the buttering of it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it, Conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick spasms beyond the dining-room door. The loud foolish screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of wondering ejaculations from the kitchen region, the scuttering footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and then, after a lull, the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of those who bore a heavy burden into the house.

“Whoever will break it to the poor child? I couldn’t for the life of me!” exclaimed a shrill voice. And while they debated the matter among themselves, Conradin made himself another piece of toast.

The Tell-Tale Heart

By Edgar Allen Poe

TRUE!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded—with what caution—with what foresight—with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it—oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly—very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man’s sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this? And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously—oh, so cautiously—cautiously (for the hinges creaked)—I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights—every night just at midnight—but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.

Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch’s minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers—of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back—but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.

I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out—”Who’s there?”

I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening;—just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.

Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief—oh, no!—it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself—”It is nothing but the wind in the chimney—it is only a mouse crossing the floor,” or “It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp.” Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel—although he neither saw nor heard—to feel the presence of my head within the room.

When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little—a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it—you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily—until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye.

It was open—wide, wide open—and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness—all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man’s face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.

And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense?—now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man’s terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment!—do you mark me well I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me—the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man’s hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once—once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.

If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.

I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye—not even his—could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out—no stain of any kind—no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all—ha! ha!

When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o’clock—still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart,—for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.

I smiled,—for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search—search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.

The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct:—It continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness—until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.

No doubt I now grew very pale;—but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased—and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound—much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath—and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly—more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men—but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed—I raved—I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder—louder—louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now—again!—hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!

“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks! here, here!—It is the beating of his hideous heart!”

Three Questions

Leo Tolstoy

It once occurred to a certain king, that if he always knew the right time to begin everything; if he knew who were the right people to listen to, and whom to avoid; and, above all, if he always knew what was the most important thing to do, he would never fail in anything he might undertake.

And this thought having occurred to him, he had it proclaimed throughout his kingdom that he would give a great reward to any one who would teach him what was the right time for every action, and who were the most necessary people, and how he might know what was the most important thing to do.

And learned men came to the King, but they all answered his questions differently.

In reply to the first question, some said that to know the right time for every action, one must draw up in advance, a table of days, months and years, and must live strictly according to it. Only thus, said they, could everything be done at its proper time. Others declared that it was impossible to decide beforehand the right time for every action; but that, not letting oneself be absorbed in idle pastimes, one should always attend to all that was going on, and then do what was most needful. Others, again, said that however attentive the King might be to what was going on, it was impossible for one man to decide correctly the right time for every action, but that he should have a Council of wise men, who would help him to fix the proper time for everything.

But then again others said there were some things which could not wait to be laid before a Council, but about which one had at once to decide whether to undertake them or not. But in order to decide that, one must know beforehand what was going to happen. It is only magicians who know that; and, therefore, in order to know the right time for every action, one must consult magicians.

Equally various were the answers to the second question. Some said, the people the King most needed were his councillors; others, the priests; others, the doctors; while some said the warriors were the most necessary.

To the third question, as to what was the most important occupation: some replied that the most important thing in the world was science. Others said it was skill in warfare; and others, again, that it was religious worship.

All the answers being different, the King agreed with none of them, and gave the reward to none. But still wishing to find the right answers to his questions, he decided to consult a hermit, widely renowned for his wisdom.

The hermit lived in a wood which he never quitted, and he received none but common folk. So the King put on simple clothes, and before reaching the hermit’s cell dismounted from his horse, and, leaving his body-guard behind, went on alone.

When the King approached, the hermit was digging the ground in front of his hut. Seeing the King, he greeted him and went on digging. The hermit was frail and weak, and each time he stuck his spade into the ground and turned a little earth, he breathed heavily.

The King went up to him and said: ‘I have come to you, wise hermit, to ask you to answer three questions: How can I learn to do the right thing at the right time? Who are the people I most need, and to whom should I, therefore, pay more attention than to the rest? And, what affairs are the most important, and need my first attention?’

The hermit listened to the King, but answered nothing. He just spat on his hand and recommenced digging.

‘You are tired,’ said the King, ‘let me take the spade and work awhile for you.’

‘Thanks!’ said the hermit, and, giving the spade to the King, he sat down on the ground.

When he had dug two beds, the King stopped and repeated his questions. The hermit again gave no answer, but rose, stretched out his hand for the spade, and said:

‘Now rest awhile—and let me work a bit.’

But the King did not give him the spade, and continued to dig. One hour passed, and another. The sun began to sink behind the trees, and the King at last stuck the spade into the ground, and said:

‘I came to you, wise man, for an answer to my questions. If you can give me none, tell me so, and I will return home.’

‘Here comes some one running,’ said the hermit, ‘let us see who it is.’

The King turned round, and saw a bearded man come running out of the wood. The man held his hands pressed against his stomach, and blood was flowing from under them. When he reached the King, he fell fainting on the ground moaning feebly. The King and the hermit unfastened the man’s clothing. There was a large wound in his stomach. The King washed it as best he could, and bandaged it with his handkerchief and with a towel the hermit had. But the blood would not stop flowing, and the King again and again removed the bandage soaked with warm blood, and washed and rebandaged the wound. When at last the blood ceased flowing, the man revived and asked for something to drink. The King brought fresh water and gave it to him. Meanwhile the sun had set, and it had become cool. So the King, with the hermit’s help, carried the wounded man into the hut and laid him on the bed. Lying on the bed the man closed his eyes and was quiet; but the King was so tired with his walk and with the work he had done, that he crouched down on the threshold, and also fell asleep—so soundly that he slept all through the short summer night. When he awoke in the morning, it was long before he could remember where he was, or who was the strange bearded man lying on the bed and gazing intently at him with shining eyes.

‘Forgive me!’ said the bearded man in a weak voice, when he saw that the King was awake and was looking at him.

‘I do not know you, and have nothing to forgive you for,’ said the King.

‘You do not know me, but I know you. I am that enemy of yours who swore to revenge himself on you, because you executed his brother and seized his property. I knew you had gone alone to see the hermit, and I resolved to kill you on your way back. But the day passed and you did not return. So I came out from my ambush to find you, and I came upon your bodyguard, and they recognized me, and wounded me. I escaped from them, but should have bled to death had you not dressed my wound. I wished to kill you, and you have saved my life. Now, if I live, and if you wish it, I will serve you as your most faithful slave, and will bid my sons do the same. Forgive me!’

The King was very glad to have made peace with his enemy so easily, and to have gained him for a friend, and he not only forgave him, but said he would send his servants and his own physician to attend him, and promised to restore his property.

Having taken leave of the wounded man, the King went out into the porch and looked around for the hermit. Before going away he wished once more to beg an answer to the questions he had put. The hermit was outside, on his knees, sowing seeds in the beds that had been dug the day before.

The King approached him, and said:

‘For the last time, I pray you to answer my questions, wise man.’

‘You have already been answered!’ said the hermit still crouching on his thin legs, and looking up at the King, who stood before him.

‘How answered? What do you mean?’ asked the King.

‘Do you not see,’ replied the hermit. ‘If you had not pitied my weakness yesterday, and had not dug those beds for me, but had gone your way, that man would have attacked you, and you would have repented of not having stayed with me. So the most important time was when you were digging the beds; and I was the most important man; and to do me good was your most important business. Afterwards when that man ran to us, the most important time was when you were attending to him, for if you had not bound up his wounds he would have died without having made peace with you. So he was the most important man, and what you did for him was your most important business. Remember then: there is only one time that is important—Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!’

When the Wasps Drowned

Clare Wigfall

That was the summer Therese stepped on the wasps’ nest and brought an end to our barefoot wanderings, when the sun shone every day and everybody commented upon it. Old ladies on park benches, fanning themselves with well-thumbed issues of Woman’s Own, would sigh, ‘Oh, isn’t it hot?’ And I, hungry for conversation, would sit tall on the wooden seat and smile as I agreed, eyes darting to see if they might say

anything more. The heat was all anyone ever seemed to speak of, and I knew that when the weather changed we’d still be talking of the same thing, only then we’d be blowing at our hands and complaining of the cold.

The chemist sold out of after-sun that summer, and flower beds dried up, and people had to queue to get into the swimming pool. With towels hung over their arms or squashed into carrier bags, we’d see them waiting along the wall outside, listening to the shouts echoing on the water within, envious of those who emerged coolly with hair slicked damp and eyes pinkened by chlorine, carrying bags of crisps from the

vending machine.

It was the first time the garden walls seemed confining, when finally I was tall enough to peer over their mossy tops and look across the line of gardens and see sheets, dried out in the heat, listless in the still air, and hear the tinny music of distant transistor radios, and the ache of cars moving slowly in the hot sun, their

windows wide as if that might change anything.

That was the summer they dug up Mr Mordecai’s garden.

We heard her screams from inside. I was standing at the sink, barefoot on the lino, washing up the breakfast dishes, soaping them lazily as I watched the light play on the bubbles. Tyler was curled under the kitchen table pushing a toy truck back and forth, smiling at the rattle of its metal wheels. Her screaming, the way it broke the

day, so shocked me that I dropped a glass, which smashed on the tap and fell into the dishwater below. She was running in circles round the garden, shrieking, a halo of angry wasps blurring her shape, her pigtails dancing.

For the first few moments I just stood, mouth agape, watching her through the grime of the kitchen window not wanting to go anywhere near Therese or all those wasps. As I ran to the back door, Tyler rose and toddled after me. I remember him laughing as I turned the hose on her – he thought it all a joke. Dripping with water, her sundress clinging to a polka-dot of red welts, Therese continued to scream into the afternoon. Around her on the grass, wasps lay dark on their backs, legs kicking, wings too sodden to fly.

Mum was out at work all day. She left us to our own devices. Sometimes I’d take them out, Therese picking at her scabs, Tyler strapped in the buggy. We’d walk down to the park and I’d sit by the swings and watch the boys. They’d stand in a huddle by the public loos, puffing on cigarettes. Other days we’d just lie in the garden and absorb the heat. I’d fashioned a bikini from a pair of pink knickers and an old vest which I’d cropped just below my nipples. I had a pair of green plastic sunglasses I’d bought at the corner shop and the yellow

flip-flops Mum now insisted we wear. I’d sunbathe while Therese scoured the grass for wasp corpses. When she found one she’d place it on a paving slab and, using a stone, pound its body to dust. Tyler would squat sagely beside her. I’d watch them idly, lift an arm perhaps to point out another dead wasp lodged between blades of

grass.

It was maybe early August when she and Tyler started to dig under the garden wall. Sitting in its shadow, they scratched away with sticks, collecting the dry earth in a plastic bucket. ‘Help us, Eveline,’ they’d say, ‘we’re digging to Australia,’ but I’d just roll my eyes and turn the page of my magazine. The task would occupy them

for a while and then they’d come and loll next to me, Tyler flat out on his stomach, snuffling as the grass tickled his nostrils, Therese plaiting together thin strands of my hair.

So we’d lie and wait for Mum to come home, her uniform sweaty round the edges. Then she’d sit, her legs up on one of the kitchen chairs, complaining how her feet were swollen, watching as we prepared the fish fingers or chicken nuggets.

In that heat, everything seemed an effort. There was a day I remember; I was lying on my side, eyes closed. Therese, finished her digging, was flopped next to me. One plump arm was curled in a damp embrace around my knee. She was breathing hotly against my hip. I opened my eyes in a slow squint against the sun. Therese’s other arm was flung out above her head.

It was the glint that caught my eye. I only saw it as she jerked her hand at the buzz of a fly. Wedged on her thumb was a thin gold ring, studded with small diamonds. There was dirt lodged between the stones, but still they caught the sunlight and glimmered. At first I didn’t react. I just lay there, watching.

‘Therese,’ I said finally, ‘where’d you get that ring?’

‘Found it,’ she sighed.

I heaved myself up by one elbow and took her hand in mine to look more closely atthe small piece of jewellery. ‘Where?’ I asked.

Therese yawned before rolling onto one side and up. She walked me to the hole they’d been digging. It was deep and long now, tunnelling under our wall and into Mr Mordecai’s garden. We knelt down and peered into its depths. It was too dark to see much. Therese took my hand and guided it into the hole. Straight away I knew what it was I could feel, but I told Therese to run in and fi nd the torch. She came back a

moment later and we angled the light. At the end of the tunnel, a pale hand reached

towards us.

We said nothing as we looked. The skin was mauve in places, the fingernails chipped and clogged with soil. Suddenly the day around us seemed unbearably quiet, as if everything was holding its breath.

‘Therese,’ I said eventually, ‘I think we’d better fill up the hole.’

We collected the plastic bucket and shunted the piles of earth back where they came from, patting the ground fl at with our hands.

Leaning across to her, I took the ring from Therese’s thumb and slipped it onto my right index finger. She didn’t protest. And so the digging stopped. We ignored the bald patch of earth by the fence, the mark of the aborted Australia project. The ring I cleaned with an old toothbrush and wore sometimes, but only ever while Mum was at work.

The long days continued to melt into one another. Mum would put us to bed and it would still be light outside. Beyond the curtained windows the world continued and we could hear it all, even clearer than winter nights when it was dark. Tyler and Therese were too hot and tired to feel they might be missing anything but I would

lie awake under the sheets, listening to the street and the muffle of Mum’s radio downstairs. One night Therese woke crying from a bad dream. She padded through to Mum’s room and I could hear them across the landing, Mum’s voice comforting and sleepy, Therese’s diluted by her tears, ‘and I was watering the garden, Mum, with a blue watering can, and it started to grow …’

‘Sleep now, my love, shhh.’ I wanted Mum’s gentle shush in my own ear. When I closed my eyes I could see Therese’s dream, the arm growing up through the soil.

The holidays began finally to peter to a close. The days were still stifled by the heat and, at a loss as to how we might fill them, we’d even begun to miss going to school.

Very occasionally, Mum would leave sweet money. Then we’d buy Smarties, lick the shells of the red ones, and rub swathes of scarlet food colouring across our lips. That’s what we were doing when we heard the doorbell ring. I flip-flopped through the cool of the house to open the front door. A man and a woman stood on the step.

‘Is Mum or Dad in, love?’ As she asked the question, he peered over our shoulders into the hallway.

I blinked up at them through my sunglasses. Therese and Tyler were both clinging to my bare legs, Tyler fingering the elastic of my bikini bottom. Pouting Smartie-red lips, I told them Mum was at work, wouldn’t be home until six. I held my right hand behind my back.

The woman bent towards us and smiled. I tried to stand taller. ‘Maybe you can help us then. We’re from the police; we just want to ask a couple of questions.’ She held out a photograph of a late-teenage girl. A holiday pic. The girl was sun-browned, smiling at something beyond the camera lens. ‘Do you think you might have seen

this girl?’

We all looked, then shook our heads.

‘Are you sure?’ She held the photo closer. ‘You wouldn’t have seen her on the street or anything?’

We all shook our heads again. The man loosened his collar, wiped a trickle of perspiration from his forehead. He caught my glance and smiled. I didn’t smile back.

‘Well, that’s all then,’ said the woman, lowering the picture to her side. ‘You’ve been very helpful, thank you.’ She stretched out a hand to ruffle Tyler’s curls. He pressed closer against my leg.

I shut the door and we waited a while, heard them walking down our garden path and unlatching Mr Mordecai’s gate next door. My fingers, fiddling unconsciously, played with the ring for a moment as we stood together in the dark hallway. None of us said a thing. Taking Therese and Tyler by the hand, I turned, and we stepped

back out into the sunlight of the garden.

Wish You Were Here
Frank Jones

Lawn ornaments are not capable of writing postcards from faraway places. Or are they?
They were walking towards the car when Dorothy noticed him. “Isn’t he darling, Norah,” she said, stopping and pointing. On the way home from Norah’s cottage they had made their usual stop at the doughnut shop and, coming out, Dorothy’s eye had been caught by an object in the garden centre next door.
“Kinda cute,” her friend agreed. “If you like that sort of thing.”
“But I do,” said Dorothy. “And I know exactly the place for him. You know that spot alongside the irises in the rockery-sort of an arbor?”
Norah nodded.
“Well, can’t you just see him perched there? Come on, Norah. Let’s see how much they want.”
The sign said “Van Houten”, and it wasn’t hard to place the ruddy-faced man taking off his leather gloves as a Dutchman. “Can I help you ladies?” The rolling L-sound was a dead giveaway.
“I was interested in that gnome,” said Dorothy. “How much are you asking?”
“He’s a cute little rascal, isn’t he,” said the nurseryman. “Well, he’s marked at twenty-five dollars.” He seemed to be thinking. “Look, I’ll tell you what happened. I sold him once already, but the people brought him back for credit. Didn’t suit their garden, I guess. I’ll let you have him for twenty dollars.”
“Do you really want it?” Norah asked in an undertone. “Don’t you think it’s a bit, well, corny?”
Dorothy walked around the gnome, admiring the red and white toadstool on which he sat and the mischievous expression on his face. “Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, I really want him. Norah, you don’t mind, do you, if we put him in the trunk? Will you put him in the back of the car for us?” she asked the nurseryman.
When they got to Dorothy’s place, Norah went to give her a hand lifting the gnome. “Wait, I’ll get the wheelbarrow. He’s heavier than I thought,” said Dorothy. They trundled him across the lawn and then, bracing their feet against the rocks, lifted him into position.
“Doesn’t he look just perfect there?” Dorothy bubbled. “As if the spot had just been waiting for him.”
“Not bad,” said Norah.
“Ted, when he was alive, never liked ornamental things in the garden, but now there’s only myself to please. No,” she said, putting her hand on Norah’s arm, “I’ll put the wheelbarrow away later. Come inside and I’ll put the kettle on for tea.”
When Norah had gone home, Dorothy went out again and swiveled the gnome until his lop-sided grin was directed towards the living-room picture window. “There, Mr. Gnome, now I’ll be able to enjoy you winter and summer.” she said. The gnome, one eye half -closed in the beginnings of a wink, seemed to be agreeing with her.
“He sure looks cute, Mrs. Graham.” She gave a start and turned around. It was only Norman, the mailman, standing there with his empty bag, but she felt her cheeks flush at the thought that he might have heard her talking to herself.
“Just puts a nice finishing touch to the garden,” he said, flicking back the lick of hair that always got behind his glasses. Norman was only in his mid-twenties, but he took an almost fatherly interest in the older people on his route. If he didn’t see one of his customers for a couple of days, he’d make a point of knocking to make sure everything was all right.
“That’s just what I thought,” said Dorothy gratefully. “The spot seems made for him.”
She had her housecoat on and was having breakfast in the kitchen next morning when the doorbell rang. Through the window the side door she could see it was Norman, and she wondered who would be sending her a registered letter this time of year. “Morning, Mrs. Graham,” he said. “Thought I better tell you some kids have been up to mischief again. Look what they did to your dwarf.”
“Gnome, Norman,” she said, stepping out onto the porch. The gnome had been tipped from his perch and was lying face-down among the sweet william.
“I’ll put it up again for you,” he said, resting his bag on the steps. “Maybe it was those Allen boys.” He and Dorothy had talked before about the random incidents of petty vandalism that seemed to plague the neighborhood in cycles. “For sale” signs would be pulled up in the night and stuck in front of other houses, lawn chairs would be tipped over, and flowerbeds trampled. Dorothy realized it wasn’t fair to blame the Allen boys, but sometimes when they went down the street shouting obscenities with their friends and hitting every road sign they passed, it was hard to believe they were not behind the mischief.
“Well, thank you, Norman. It was very kind of you,” she said as he picked up his bag after righting the gnome.
After breakfast she took a damp cloth out to the garden and wiped away the earth staining the gnome’s face. “There you are, old fellow,” she said. “Feel better now?” He smiled his slightly conspiratorial smile.
For a couple of days nothing more happened. Then one morning, when she went to the window, she was surprised to see that he had been pushed over again. “This is too much!” she said furiously. “Too much! I’m going to put a stop to it right now.”
She put on her shoes and, not even bothering to lift the gnome up again, strode up the street to the slightly run-down bungalow were the Allens lived. Old yellowed newspapers clung to the fence and a tired-looking dog rolled off the step and sniffed Dorothy’s leg half-heartedly.
“Look, Mrs. Allen,” she said when the pasty, somewhat overweight woman she knew only by sight opened the door, “I don’t want to make any trouble, but I’m afraid those boys of yours have been causing damage in my garden.”
“My boys?” She grabbed the elastic of her underwear and yanked it up under her stained yellow dress.
“Yes,” Dorothy went on. “Someone keeps pushing over my garden ornament, and I’m sure they know something about it.”
“My boys, eh? Well, let me tell you something, you snoopy old bat. My Tom’s gone out to Calgary to visit his uncle, and Fred’s working up north with the forestry. So don’t be so bloody quick to blame people what ain’t done nothin’.” And she slammed the door.
Dorothy stood for a moment at a loss. Her face was hot with embarrassment as she turned and walked down the path, not daring to turn around in case Mrs. Allen was watching her from the window.
Next morning the gnome was gone. At first Dorothy thought he must be concealed among the clump of day lilies at the foot of the rockery, but when she went out to the garden there was no sign of him. This time her anger was mixed with other feelings. She was a little bit afraid, she realized. She looked up and down the empty street, but no curtain moved. Most of the people were at work. She went inside, found the number she kept handy by the phone, and called the police.
“We’ll get someone around as soon as we can,” said the police operator when she explained there’d been a robbery. He didn’t seem to be giving it very high priority. She made herself a cup of coffee and noticed that her hand was shaking as she poured it. She drew the living-room curtains halfway to. When a car pulled up outside she was relieved to see it was Norah, and then she remembered that her friend was leaving that afternoon to visit her sister in Charlottetown and had said she would drop by to say goodbye.
“What a dirty trick!” Norah said when Dorothy told her what had happened, and they went to look at the empty spot where the gnome had stood. A few moments later a young policeman arrived, but he seemed to lose interest when Dorothy explained that it was a garden ornament that had been stolen. “Okay, ma’am,” he said, taking out his notebook with a resigned air. “Let’s get the particulars. ”
As he was going out of the door afterwards, he stopped. “Frankly, ma’am, I wouldn’t get my hopes up about seeing your gnome again. There’s been a lot of vandalism going on, and it’s probably kids who’ve chucked it somewhere now.”
“Norah,” said Dorothy after closing the door, “would you help me? That’s exactly what I was thinking before you arrived. That maybe some kids threw the gnome down the ravine. I know I won’t be able to sleep tonight for wondering. But down there’s not a place I’d dare to go on my own.”
“Well … ” said her friend looking at her watch. “If we’re not too long, because I have to do some things before I catch my plane.”
The two women went cautiously down the steep stairs that aj1, over-optimistic parks department had sign-posted “Nature Trail”. “Booze Trail” is more like it, Dorothy thought to herself as they picked their way past the beer bottles discarded by teenagers and the empty wine bottles left by the decrepit men in bulging raincoats whom she had seen emerging from the ravine.
“It’s just that I’d feel better knowing,” said Dorothy as they reached the viaduct. “Even if he’s smashed into fragments by now.”
Pigeons rattled up noisily at their approach, and as they probed the undergrowth, a man lying on a pile of newspapers startled them by suddenly snorting in his sleep.
“Just don’t let this affair get to you,” Norah said after they had climbed panting back up the steps. “Look, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Next time you come to the cottage, after I get back, we’ll go into the garden centre and see if they’ve got another one.”
Back home, Dorothy put on a cheerful front as Norah started her car. “Have a safe trip, dear,” she said. “Don’t make too much of a pig of yourself at those lobster suppers!”
Walking up the path she couldn’t help looking sadly at the vacant spot in the rockery. It became a routine every morning for her. First thing she’d pull back the living-room curtains, half-expecting to see him back there. Darn it, she missed him, just as if he’d been a person. She’d shrug it off and after breakfast get out her gardening gloves and tools and busy herself with the weeding.
The first postcard arrived the following Wednesday. Finding it in the box, she assumed it was from Norah. But instead of a picture of Prince Edward Island, it had a photograph of the Rockies. It was postmarked Calgary, and the message, in a neat, round, almost childish hand, said, “Dear Dorothy, Having a great time. Saw a rodeo yesterday. Wild! Love, Mr. Gnome.”
She sat down on the chair in the hallway. Her heart was racing. A trick. It had to be a trick. But who would go to such lengths to scare her?
Two days later there was another postcard in the box, this time from Vancouver. She didn’t even bother looking at the picture. “Dearest Dorothy,” said the message. “What a wonderful city! You really should see it. Just spectacular! See you soon, Mr. Gnome.” The handwriting was the same. Angrily she tore it into pieces until her fingers hurt trying to reduce it to smaller and smaller scraps. She took them into the living room, put them in the fireplace and, lighting a match, watched the blue flame dance until the little heap was reduced to ashes.
She didn’t tell Norman about it, but each morning she watched for him to come, sometimes giving him a cheerful greeting, then anxiously going through her mail. To her relief no more cards arrived, except one from Norah. A week went by and she was beginning to forget the whole thing, when one morning a card with a foreign stamp turned up in the mailbox. Without even reading the caption she recognized the picture as that of the flying full wings of the Sydney Opera House. “Dear Dorothy,” she read. “Here I am in Sydney. Never thought I’d make it this far. Australians super-friendly. Love, Mr. Gnome.” She walked unsteadily into the dining room, got out the bottle of brandy, and poured herself some in a wine glass. Australian brandy, she noticed with a tiny shudder. Now she knew for certain there would be more cards.
The next one arrived a couple of days later. “Norman!” she called as he walked across the lawn towards next door. “Would you mind coming here a minute?”
“What’s the matter, Mrs. Graham?” he said, flicking back his hair. “You look pretty shaken. Bad news?”
“Well, it’s not that. But would you mind reading this card for me?”
He gave her a funny look. “Sure, Mrs. Graham. If you want me to.” Maybe her eyes were playing up.
“Dear, dear Dorothy,” he read in a monotone. “Please don’t worry, but I’m laid up with some sort of bug. I’ll keep you posted. Love, Mr. Gnome.” Norman shook his head. “That’s what it says, Mrs. Graham. Funny sort of message. Why is it signed like that?”
She asked him if he wouldn’t mind coming inside and, sitting at the kitchen table, she showed him the first card she’d received.
“Look, Mrs. Graham, I don’t know who would do a rotten thing like that, but what you’ve got to do is pay no mind to it. You hear me? It’s just someone trying to scare you, eh? Well, don’t think about it.” He slung his bag over his shoulder as he got up to go. “This is what I’ll do. I’ll keep an eye open and if any more cards come like that, I’ll knock and give it to you so you don’t get a scare, like. I mean finding it in the box.”
That night Dorothy had a strange, mixed-up dream in which she looked outside and the gnome had come back. Only when she looked again it wasn’t the gnome at all, but Ted who was sitting in the middle of the rockery in his pajamas. “Come on inside, Ted. You’ll catch your death,” she called. “I can’t, Dorothy,” he replied. “I’m too ill. Help me, please!” Then he got smaller and smaller, and his voice became squeaky until she could no longer hear or see him.
In the morning Norman met her at the door looking worried.
“Fact is, Mrs. Graham, there’s another card,” she said, handing it to her. It was another view of Sydney. She turned it over quickly. “Dorothy,” it said, the handwriting spidery and sprawling now. “So ill. Miss you.” The signature was almost illegible, but she knew well enough what it said.
“This really is beyond a joke,” she said, leaning her head against me doorpost. “Norman, I think I’m going to call the police about t.”
It was an older officer who came this time. She told him her story and showed him the postcards, except for the one she’d burned. “I can see how you’d be upset, ma’am,” he said in a kindly voice. “It’s a very unpleasant thing to have happen. Is there anyone you can mink of who has a grudge against you?” She couldn’t, and finally he left with the same sort of reassurances Norman had given her. “If anything unusual happens, if you see any strangers hanging about the street, anything like that, you just be sure and call us,” he said.
Norman looked almost shamefaced when he brought her the postcard next day. “I’ve read it. I suppose I shouldn’t have. But you mustn’t get upset,” he said handing it to her. “Would you like me to stay while you read it?”
She shook her head. “I’ll be okay. Thanks, Norman,” she said, and took the card with her other mail into the kitchen. She sat down dully at the table and studied the picture of Sydney harbour for several moments before turning the card over. “Dorothy. Doc says operation my only hope. Pray for me. Feel so bad.” The writing trailed off and this time there was no signature. She felt her eyes stinging. She took off her glasses, and put her head down on her arms. “Oh, please,” she sobbed. “Leave me alone. Whoever you are.”
She worked in the garden most of the day to distract herself, then went out to dinner at the little French restaurant that had just opened at the shopping mall. Coming home, she turned on the television and then, unusual for her, watched not only the eleven o’clock news, but a late movie that didn’t end until one. Even then she couldn’t sleep when she finally went to bed, so she turned on the light and read a biography of Catherine the Great. It wasn’t until three in the morning that her eyes drooped and she reached out sleepily to turn off the bedside light. It seemed as if she ·hadn’t been asleep more than a few minutes when the phone rang. The red glow of the clock radio told her it was 5: 14 a.m. Dorothy grabbed her robe from the foot of the bed and, bumping her shoulder on the door, stumbled down the hallway to the phone table.
“Yes, hello,” she said.
“Is that Mrs. Dorothy Graham?” It was a male voice, official sounding and faintly bored.
“Yes, who’s calling?”
“This is CNCP Telecommunications. We have a telegram for you. Shall I read it to you?”
“Yes, yes. But just a minute please while I turn the light on. I’ll get a pen.”
It was unlike Dorothy not to be home at breakfast. Norah let the phone ring a few more times then put down the receiver. She had thought of calling the night before but it had been rather after when she had arrived home from the airport, so she’d waited until the morning. Perhaps Dorothy had taken ill. Norah got her handbag from the bedroom, picked up the car keys from the mantelpiece, and went out to the garage.
She passed the ambulance as it pulled out of Dorothy’s street. It didn’t seem to be rushing, and there was no siren. Probably dropping someone off, coming home from hospital, Norah thought.
As she walked up the path she was surprised to see a young man in a mailman’s uniform sitting on the steps with his head in his hands. “Where’s Mrs. Graham?” she asked.
He looked up startled. “They just took her away. Are you Mrs. Graham’s friend, the one that was in P.E.I.?”
Norah nodded. “She told me about you,” he said. “I’m Norman.”
“Well, where on earth did they take her?” she said sharply. ‘What’s the matter?”
“It’s terrible really,” he said, almost as if he hadn’t heard her. “I found her, see. I had another one of those cards for her and I knocked on the door but she didn’t come. Well, like, I looked in the window and I could see her lying there on the living-room floor, right in front of the big window. She wasn’t moving, eh? So, well, went round the back and smashed open the window.
“She just looked sort of blue. I gave her mouth-to-mouth,” he went on quickly. “I tried everything, but it wasn’t no good. So I called the ambulance. She was gone.”
Norah steadied herself against the wall. “Gone?”
“You look pretty shook up. You better come inside and sit down,” said Norman. “I’m not feeling too good myself.”
They went around to the back, and Norman showed her where he’d broken the window and put in his hand to open the back door. Norah walked through the empty rooms, then back to the kitchen where Norman was making them instant coffee.
“I figure the postcards must have had something to do with it,” he said. “That was a dirty trick.”
“What postcards?”
“Didn’t she write to you about them?” He looked around the kitchen then reached up on the shelf above the sink. “Here they are. Someone took her gnome then started sending her postcards from all over. They’re signed ‘Mr. Gnome’. Pretty weird, eh?”
Norah read the cards then laid them out on the table in front of her. “This one came only today,” said Norman, pulling another card from his pocket and handing it to her. The picture was of Adelaide. “Dear Dorothy. Just here for a couple of days before returning Sydney. Beautiful spot. Love, Mr. Gnome,” the message read.
Norah compared the date marks. “It must have been held up. It was written before some of the later ones,” she said. Norman had put his cup in the sink. “Anyway, I better get back to work. I’m way behind.”
“Look Norman,” said Norah, making up her mind. “This is all pretty fishy. I think we should call the police. How do we know something didn’t happen here last night? You carry on with your route, but I’ll stay here for the police. Where can they reach you if they need to?”
“I’ll give you my number at home as well as my work number,” he said, pulling a red pen out of the holder in his shirt pocket. He looked around for a piece of paper, then pulled over one of the postcards and wrote in an empty space. “See, that’s my name, Norman Stannard,” he said, handing her the card. “Bye now.”
Norah went into the hall to phone, the card still in her hand. As she dialed her eye caught a message scribbled on the pad by the phone. “The gnome died today,” it said.
She put the receiver back. Her heart was pounding. She looked at the card in her hand. “Beautiful spot,” she read. Something tickled at the back of her brain. Two things trying to come together. She looked at the card again, at the round, childish handwriting. Then she noticed. The writing in which the name and phone numbers had been written above the address.
She got up and went to the front window. Norman, his bag slung over his shoulder, was walking down the street. She could hear him whistling. The tiny hairs on the back of her hands tingled. She knew someone was watching her. She didn’t know how it was that she hadn’t noticed before: the gnome was back in his old place. His smile had the same insolence she had noticed when she had first seen him at the nursery.

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Wish You Were Here
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