No Way Of Telling (3 page)

“Mick—what is it?”

He glanced at Amy and wagged his tail, but immediately afterwards growled again, staring at the red chenille curtain that hung over the front door to keep out draughts. They all stared at the red chenille curtain. Hidden by it were bolts, one at the top of the door, one at the bottom, which they very well knew had not been pushed into place.

“It’s just an old ewe, I daresay—there were those five missing—”

“He wouldn’t growl for a sheep, Granny.”

They looked at each other.

“Oh, Granny—” whispered Amy, and at that moment Mick sprang to his feet and ran across the room, barking. There was a tremendous but muffled thump at the front door, as though something had fallen heavily against it. Mrs Bowen stood up.

“It’s all right, Amy,” she said. “Who is it?” she called. “Who’s there?”

The door burst open and in an instant the storm had rushed inside, filling the room, destroying its peaceful inviolability and bringing instead confusion, a turmoil of Mick barking and barking, the lamp guttering, the tablecloth lifting, and snow blowing across the floor as though it were blowing across a field. In the doorway, half blocking it, was a shape so big and bulky that to Amy it appeared to be not so much a man as a monster leaning there glaring at them with eyes more felt than seen, while Mick snarled and barked, and they by the fire looked on in amazement and fear. Then whoever it was stepped across the threshold into their cottage and slammed the door behind him. The tablecloth sank down; the calendar fell back against the wall.

Neither Amy nor her grandmother had ever in their lives before been confronted by such a person. He was huge, and whether he had a black beard or only bristles on the way to becoming a beard it was hard to be sure. The collar of his short navy-blue coat was turned up. He wore a curious navy-blue wool cap on his head with a peak and ear-flaps. One arm was held across his chest by some kind of tattered rag or scarf knotted round his neck. And there he stood, fantastic but real, in their own front-kitchen: a bad dream, except that Amy and Mrs Bowen knew they were both awake.

Gripping the back of her chair, panting a little, Mrs Bowen said:

“It’s a terrible night for anyone to be out. Did you lose your way?”

She might as well not have spoken for all the notice he took of her. With legs apart he balanced himself, and while his head remained sunk and unmoving his eyes went searching round the room from corner to corner, lingering on the door into the side-kitchen and the door that closed off the stairs with a dark brooding gleam that terrified Amy. Too stiff with fright almost to stir, she yet managed to reach her grandmother one step off and take hold of her arm. But Mrs Bowen said, quite sharply:

“Put on the kettle, Amy. He’s frozen, I daresay, poor man. Mick, come here! Mick, lie down! If you’ll wait just a minute I’ll make you a cup of tea,” she said, raising her voice. “Will you come by the fire now and warm yourself?”

This time when she spoke he turned his head and looked at her, but still he said nothing, not a word. Several seconds passed. No one moved, not even Mick, crouched at their feet, as tense as a set trap. Then the head, like the head of a great animal, swung away, and they felt as though some danger had passed by. He crossed the room with a tread that shook the china on the shelves and flung open the door of the side-kitchen and was gone out of sight.

“Who is he, Granny?” whispered Amy, in agonised entreaty. “What does he want? Will he hurt us, Granny? What’s he going to do?”

“He’s just a man,” said Mrs Bowen. She put another log on the fire and gave it a knock with the poker, and moved the kettle over. Amy saw that her hands were trembling. “Now Amy, it’s all right. We shall be quite all right. You mustn’t mind about him.”

“Oh, Granny—”

“There’s no need to be afraid. You just stand by me. You mustn’t be afraid, Amy,” she said again, firmly, like someone giving an order. “I’ll see you come to no harm.”

Amy wound her fingers into the thick wool of her grandmother’s old brown cardigan, and so they waited.

They could hear him on the other side of the wall, blundering about. There was the clatter of tins falling, followed by the smash of glass. Then he reappeared, carrying a sack in one hand and in the other a hurricane lamp, lit. He paid no further attention either to Mrs Bowen or to Amy. As though to remind him of their existence, Mick growled.

“Quiet, Mick.”

The fire blazed. No one made the tea, in spite of steam beginning to issue like a signal from the spout of the kettle. They watched him dump the lamp and the sack on the chest under the window before wrenching open the staircase door. He was so big and so thickened by his heavy coat they thought he would never be able to squeeze his way upstairs, but he did, and they heard his footsteps cross above their heads. Almost at once he was down again, half-falling into the room and trailing an armful of blankets which he thrust inside the sack. Then clumsily, as all his movements were clumsy, he hoisted the sack to his shoulder, and picked up the lamp. They kept as still as stone. He turned to go. The hand looped in a scarf was already fumbling for the latch when he seemed to recollect that somewhere or other there had been an old woman and a little girl, and very slowly he turned to look for them.

“It’s all right, Amy,” said Mrs Bowen once more, but softly this time, hearing the catch of breath and feeling the fingers tighten convulsively on her cardigan.

They thought that he was going to speak at last, but he only thrust his face forward as though to see them better—as though they were out of focus, or a long way off; almost as though they puzzled him. In that agonizing pause when all they heard was the slow tick of the grandfather clock and the gentle hiss of the kettle, they had no means of knowing what he might be making up his mind to do. But then, with a sudden inexplicable gesture, he turned away again and jerked the door open. They glimpsed him in the shelter of their porch, a massive black shape with the sack on his shoulder, the snow whirling down beyond him, and then the door banged shut and they were alone. Amy sprang across the room, snatched the curtain clear, and shot the bolts. As she did so the clock struck eight.

“Granny—do you think he’ll come back?”

“No—he’s gone now. Quiet Mick, quiet!” For Mick had broken into a frenzy of barking.

“Oh, don’t hush him, Granny—I know just how he feels,” said Amy, bursting into tears.

“There now, he’s gone—it’s over,” said Mrs Bowen, putting her arms round Amy and patting her. “You make the tea, Amy child. A cup of tea is what we both of us need. And I’ll just slip the bolts across on the side-kitchen door so as to be sure, though indeed I don’t believe he’ll trouble us any more. I think we’ve seen the last of him.”

Amy heard her in the next room exclaiming aloud; then the rasp of the bolts.

“The mess in there!” she declared on her return. “Goodness knows how many of our bottling jars he’s knocked off the shelf, and there’s paraffin all over the floor! I shan’t clean it up tonight, though—time enough tomorrow. There now, you’ve made us the tea—so we’ll just stay by the fire a bit, nice and quiet, and get our breath back. You bring the stool over here, Amy, and sit up against my chair. There we are! Now we’ll be all right! I’m going to put an extra lump of sugar in your cup of tea—they do say sugar’s good for shock,” she went rambling on.

“Who was he, Granny?” said Amy, desperately interrupting her.

Mrs Bowen’s reassuring chatter died away. It was no use pretending: they had both been very much frightened. She put her hand, rather apologetically, on Amy’s shoulder.

“I don’t know, Amy, any more than you do. Except he was too big and black to be a snowflake, I’d have said he fell out of the sky.”

“But where was he going? It’s not as if we’re on the way to anywhere. We’re miles from the road—we’re right off the track, even.”

“He must have been lost, Amy.”

“Then why didn’t he say so when you asked him? Why didn’t he speak?”

“I don’t know, indeed,” said Mrs Bowen again. “All I know is, it was me that guided him here, though I never intended any such thing.”

“You,
Granny?”

Mrs Bowen nodded. “As soon as I saw him with that lamp in his hand, I knew it. You remember how it was I went out to the shed, late, after tea, because I couldn’t be sure in my mind if I’d turned the catch of the hen-house door?”

“It’s my job usually—that’s why you weren’t sure.”

“And when I came inside again I put the lamp on the window-ledge while I was getting off my boots—and then you called me for something. What was it you called me for?”

“To hear the weather forecast.”

“That was it! Well—and I never went back after to blow out the lamp. I forgot. So there it stayed, shining out through our side-kitchen window for all the world like a beacon calling him on. How could he ever have found his way here else—or known there was a house, even? I can’t get over the strangeness of it, Amy—that I should have left a lamp at the window this one night of all nights. I keep thinking of what it must have been for him, seeing that light and making towards it, and keeping on, and keeping on, through all the storm and darkness.”

Amy shuddered. They drank their tea, half-expecting with every sip to hear once again that awful thud against the door. Mick dozed uneasily, raising his head often to listen. Sometimes he growled and sometimes he whimpered.

“There’s no one there, Mick,” Amy told him, trying to believe it herself. “Granny, what makes you so sure he won’t come back?”

“Well, he didn’t seem to want to stop—I never saw a man in more of a hurry. He stayed for just so long as it took to help himself to a bit of bedding and Molly Protheroe’s leg of mutton.”

“He took our leg of mutton?” cried Amy.

“It’s gone.”

“But it wasn’t cooked—he can’t eat it raw!”

“I daresay if a person’s hungry enough he wouldn’t trouble himself too much was it cooked or raw.”

“Do you think he was hungry—as hungry as
that?”
asked Amy, dubiously. “I don’t think so—I think he was
wild!
Like one of those animals they bring round with the circus, only he’d got out of his cage. Oh, Granny—can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

“You may have to,” replied Mrs Bowen, “if you want to keep warm. Those were your blankets he took.”

“And he never asked us, even. He never spoke—he never said one word to us, not one word. Oh Granny, he was
horrible!
”

Mrs Bowen raked the fire and put the guard in front. She looked round the room absently, as though she were seeing it fresh in the way a stranger might see it. Then she sighed and shook her head and gave her eyes a rub, like someone very tired.

“Well, yes—he gave us a big fright. But Amy—he never harmed us. He could have done. There was none to stop him.”

She took a taper to light the two candles standing ready on the mantelpiece. Then she hesitated and laid the taper down. Picking up the lamp instead she crossed to the front door.

“You surely don’t mean to open that door, Granny?”

“I’ve got to let Mick out for his run, Amy, same as we always do.”

“Not tonight—it wouldn’t matter for just this once. He’d manage all right, wouldn’t you, Mick?—he’d understand.”

“I must, Amy. If I don’t open this door tonight we won’t either of us sleep for thinking what may be outside it.”

They looked at each other solemnly: it was true, Amy realised.

“Do you mean to go right properly outside yourself, Granny? —not just let Mick out?”

“I was thinking I’d maybe have a breath of fresh air while I was about it.”

“Then I’ll come with you. Yes, I will—I want to.”

Amy held away the red chenille curtain while Mrs Bowen drew back the heavy bolts. Then with a thundering heart she opened the door just sufficiently wide for both of them and Mick to squeeze through, closing it instantly behind them; and there they were, outside, partly protected by the porch from weather, but not at all from anything else. They could hear the wind roaring away in the bare trees at the bottom, but round their own cottage there was for a moment a comparative lull. Mrs Bowen lifted the lamp high for them to see into the night as far as they could. All they could see was snow, steadily falling. The nearer flakes, dropping casually down across the beams of the lamp, looked wonderfully white and slow. But a little further off these drifting fragments seemed to alter, to draw closer together and quicken and darken until the spread of lamplight was confined by moving walls, hurrying down and down in endless descent.

A staggered line of footprints, deep shapeless holes, led up to the porch, but already they were beginning to be blurred and softened by new snow and Amy, seeing this, was glad, for she felt that in blotting out his marks the snow was blotting out their visitor as well. Then they heard the wind roar up the hill towards them. In a fine cloud the fallen snow lifted and whirled. The lamp went out.

“Quick, Amy—inside!”

They snatched the door open and were through in a flash.

“Granny—where’s Mick?”

He was missing. But it was easier now to open the door a crack and shout:

“Mick! Mick!”

He came in a flurry of snow and excitement, and leapt round the room wagging his tail and sneezing. The bolts were triumphantly shot into place. They stamped their feet and laughed, exhilarated by their own daring.

“I’m glad we went out, Granny—you were right. Now we
know
he’s not there.”

But later on, in bed, it was hard to be quite so certain.

“Granny?”

“Yes?”

“What was that noise? Didn’t you hear it?”

“I heard a bit of snow fall off.”

Amy lay still, considering this explanation.

“There’s all sorts of noises go on every night,” said her grandmother’s voice, reasonably. “We don’t hear them mostly on account of we’re not mostly listening.”

Amy shut her eyes, hoping to be able to shut her ears as well, and so to shut out all anxiety, but at once clear in her mind she saw that single line of footsteps filling up with snow. Her eyes flew open.

“Granny!”