The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories (9 page)

“Yes, thank you, David. I’m quite all right now. I just went a bit farther than I intended. I’m a little tired, that’s all.”

She glanced back into Old Nick’s Court. It was empty: empty and silent. The flares had gone out.

“Well, come on then, Miss Lestrange, just you follow me and I’ll take you back to the other lady’s car. You can hold on to my anorak if you like,” he suggested.

“That’s all right, thank you, David, I can manage now.”

So he skated slowly ahead and she walked after him, and a little way in the rear Hope followed, trotting silently in the shadows.

When they came within view of the car—it took a very short time, really—David said, “I’ll say goodnight then, Miss Lestrange. See you Thursday.”

“Good night, David, and thank you.” Then she called after him: “Practise hard, now!”

“Okay, Miss Lestrange.”

There was an ambulance drawn up behind the car.

“Wait there!” she said to Hope. He sat down in the shadows of the alley-mouth.

As Miss Lestrange crossed the road, the ambulance rolled off. Dr. Smith stood looking after it.

“Sorry to be such a time,” she said. “
That poor man
—I’m afraid he’s not going to make it.”

“You mean—Tom Rampisham?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if he dies on the way in. Oh—excuse me a moment—I’ll have to lock up his flat and give the key to the porter.”

Without thinking about it, Miss Lestrange followed her ex-pupil. She walked into the untidy room that she had last entered—how long? thirty years ago?—and looked at the table, covered with scrawled sheets of paper.

“
I don
’t know who ought to take charge of this,” Dr. Smith said, frowning. “I suppose he has a next-of-kin somewhere. Well—I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Come along—
you
must be starving and exhausted—let’s go.”

Miss Lestrange was looking at the top sheet, at the heading HOPE, which was printed in large capitals. Halfway down the page a sentence began.

“
It was on a clear, frosty November evening, not many years ago . . .
”

The words trailed off into a blob of ink.

Dr. Smith led the way out. “It’s terribly late. We can still get a meal at the Chinese place, though,” she was saying. “And afterwards I’ll phone up Rumbury Central and find out how—and find out. I really am sorry to have kept you so long. I hope you weren’t frozen and bored.”

“
No . . . No. I
—I went for a walk.”

Miss Lestrange followed the doctor along the echoing concrete passage. And as she went—“
I do hope,
” she was thinking, “
oh, I do
hope
that Hope will still be there.”

Humblepuppy

Our house was furnished mainly from auction sales. When you buy furniture that way you get a lot of extra things besides the particular piece that you were after, since the stuff is sold in lots: Lot 13, two Persian rugs, a set of golf-clubs, a sewing-machine, a walnut radio-cabinet, and a plinth.

It was in this way that I acquired a tin deedbox, which came with two coal-scuttles and a broom cupboard. The deedbox is solid metal, painted black, big as a medium-sized suitcase. When I first brought it home I put it in my study, planning to use it as a kind of filing cabinet for old typescripts. I had gone into the kitchen, and was busy arranging the brooms in their new home, when I heard a loud thumping coming from the direction of the studio.

I went back, thinking that a bird must have flown through the window; no bird, but the banging seemed to be inside the deedbox. I had already opened it as soon as it was in my possession, to see if there were any diamonds or bearer bonds worth thousands of pounds inside (there weren’t), but I opened it again. The key was attached to the handle by a thin chain. There was nothing inside. I shut it. The banging started again. I opened it.

Still nothing inside.

Well, this was broad daylight, two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, people going past in the road outside and a radio schools programme chatting away to itself in the next room. It was not a ghostly kind of time, so I put my hand into the empty box and moved it about.

Something shrank away from my hand. I heard a faint, scared whimper. It could almost have been my own, but wasn’t. Knowing that someone—something?—else was afraid too put heart into me. Exploring carefully and gently around the interior of the box I felt the contour of a small, bony, warm, trembling body with big awkward feet, and silky dangling ears, and a cold nose that, when I found it, nudged for a moment anxiously but trustingly into the palm of my hand. So I knelt down, put the other hand into the box as well, cupped them under a thin little ribby chest, and lifted out Humblepuppy.

He was quite light.

I couldn’t see him, but I could hear his faint inquiring whimper, and I could hear his toenails scratch on the floorboards.

Just at that moment the cat, Taffy, came in.

Taffy has a lot of character. Every cat has a lot of character, but Taffy has more than most, all of it inconvenient. For instance, although he is very sociable, and longs for company, he just despises company in the form of dogs. The mere sound of a dog barking two streets away is enough to make his fur stand up like a porcupine’s quills and his tail swell like a mushroom cloud.

Which it did the instant he saw Humblepuppy.

Now here is the interesting thing. I could feel and hear Humblepuppy, but couldn’t see him; Taffy apparently, could see and smell him, but couldn’t feel him. We soon discovered this. For Taffy, sinking into a low, gladiator’s crouch, letting out all the time a fearsome throaty wauling like a bagpipe revving up its drone, inched his way along to where Humblepuppy huddled trembling by my left foot, and then dealt him what ought to have been a swinging right-handed clip on the ear. “Get out of my house, you filthy canine scum!” was what he was plainly intending to convey.

But the swipe failed to connect; instead it landed on my shin. I’ve never seen a cat so astonished. It was like watching a kitten meet itself for the first time in a looking-glass. Taffy ran round to the back of where Humblepuppy was sitting; felt; smelt; poked gingerly with a paw; leapt back nervously; crept forward again. All the time Humblepuppy just sat, trembling a little, giving out this faint beseeching sound that meant: “I’m only a poor little mongrel without a smidgeon of harm in me.
Please
don’t do anything nasty! I don’t even know how I came here.”

It certainly was a puzzle how he had come. I rang the auctioneers (after shutting Taffy
out
and Humblepuppy
in
to the study with a bowl of water and a handful of Boniebisk, Taffy’s favorite breakfast food).

The auctioneers told me that Lot 12, Deedbox, coal-scuttles and broom cupboard, had come from the Riverland Rectory, where Mr. Smythe, the old rector, had lately died aged ninety. Had he ever possessed a dog, or a puppy? They couldn’t say; they had merely received instructions from a firm of lawyers to sell the furniture.

I never did discover how poor little Humblepuppy’s ghost got into the deedbox. Maybe he was shut in by mistake, long ago, and suffocated; maybe some callous Victorian gardener dropped him, box and all, into a river, and the box was later found and fished out.

Anyway, and whatever had happened in the past, now that Humblepuppy had come out of his box, he was very pleased with the turn his affairs had taken, ready to be grateful and affectionate. As I sat typing I’d often hear a patter-patter, and feel his small chin fit itself comfortably over my foot, ears dangling. Goodness knew what kind of a mixture he was; something between a spaniel and a terrier, I’d guess. In the evening, watching television or sitting by the fire, one would suddenly find his warm weight leaning against one’s leg. (He didn’t put on a lot of weight while he was with us, but his bony little ribs filled out a bit.)

For the first few weeks we had a lot of trouble with Taffy, who was very surly over the whole business and blamed me bitterly for not getting rid of this low-class intruder. But Humblepuppy was extremely placating, got back in his deedbox whenever the atmosphere became too volcanic, and did his best not to be a nuisance.

By and by Taffy thawed. As I’ve said, he is really a very sociable cat. Although quite old, seventy cat years, he dearly likes cheerful company and generally has some young cat friend who comes to play with him, either in the house or the garden. In the last few years we’ve had Whisky, the black-and-white pub cat, who used to sit washing the smell of fish-and-chips off his fur under the dripping tap in our kitchen sink; Tetanus, the hairdresser’s thick-set black, who took a fancy to sleep on top of our china-cupboard every night all one winter, and used to startle me very much by jumping down heavily on to my shoulder as I made the breakfast coffee; Sweet Charity, a little grey Persian who came to a sad end under the wheels of a police-car; Charity’s grey-and-white stripey cousin Fred, whose owners presently moved from next door to another part of town.

It was soon after Fred’s departure that Humblepuppy arrived, and from my point of view he couldn’t have been more welcome. Taffy missed Fred badly, and expected
me
to play with him instead; it was very sad to see this large elderly tabby rushing hopefully up and down the stairs after breakfast, or hiding behind the armchair and jumping out on to nobody; or howling, howling, howling at me until I escorted him out into the garden, where he’d rush to the lavender-bush which had been the traditional hiding-place of Whisky, Tetanus, Charity, and Fred in succession. Cats have their habits and histories, just the same as humans.

So sometimes, on a working morning, I’d be at my wits’ end, almost on the point of going across the town to our ex-neighbours, ringing their bell, and saying, “Please can Fred come and play?” Specially on a rainy, uninviting day when Taffy was pacing gloomily about the house with drooping head and switching tail, grumbling about the weather and the lack of company, and blaming me for both.

Humblepuppy’s arrival changed all that.

At first Taffy considered it necessary to police him, and that kept him fully occupied for hours. He’d sit on guard by the deedbox till Humblepuppy woke up in the morning, and then he’d follow officiously all over the house, wherever the visitor went. Humblepuppy was slow and cautious in his explorations, but by degrees he picked up courage and found his way into every corner. He never once made a puddle; he learned to use Taffy’s cat-flap and go out into the garden, though he was always more timid outside and would scamper for home at any loud noise. Planes and cars terrified him, he never became used to them; which made me still more certain that he had been in that deedbox for a long, long time, since before such things were invented.

Presently he learned, or Taffy taught him, to hide in the lavender-bush like Whisky, Charity, Tetanus, and Fred; and the two of them used to play their own ghostly version of touch-last for hours on end while I got on with my typing.

When visitors came, Humblepuppy always retired to his deedbox; he was decidedly scared of strangers; which made his behavior with Mr. Manningham, the new rector of Riverland, all the more surprising.

I was dying to learn anything I could of the old rectory’s history, so I’d invited Mr. Manningham to tea.

He was a thin, gentle, quiet man, who had done missionary work in the Far East and fell ill and had to come back to England. He seemed a little sad and lonely; said he still missed his Far East friends and work. I liked him. He told me that for a large part of the nineteenth century the Riverland living had belonged to a parson called Swannett, the Reverend Timothy Swannett, who lived to a great age and had ten children.

“He was a great-uncle of mine, as a matter of fact. But why do you want to know all this?” Mr. Manningham asked. His long thin arm hung over the side of his chair; absently he moved his hand sideways and remarked, “I didn’t notice that you had a puppy.” Then he looked down and said, “Oh!”

“He’s never come out for a stranger before,” I said.

Taffy, who maintains a civil reserve with visitors, sat motionless on the nightstore heater, eyes slitted, sphinxlike.

Humblepuppy climbed invisibly on to Mr. Manningham’s lap.

We agreed that the new rector probably carried a familiar smell of his rectory with him; or possibly he reminded Humblepuppy of his great-uncle, the Rev. Swannett.

Anyway, after that, Humblepuppy always came scampering joyfully out if Mr. Manningham had dropped in to tea, so of course I thought of the rector when summer holiday time came round.

During the summer holidays we lend our house and cat to a lady publisher and her mother who are devoted to cats and think it is a privilege to look after Taffy and spoil him. He is always amazingly overweight when we get back. But the old lady has an allergy to dogs, and is frightened of them too; it was plainly out of the question that she should be expected to share her summer holiday with the ghost of a puppy.

So I asked Mr. Manningham if he’d be prepared to take Humblepuppy as a boarder, since it didn’t seem a case for the usual kind of boarding-kennels; he said he’d be delighted.

I drove Humblepuppy out to Riverland in his deedbox; he was rather miserable on the drive, but luckily it is not far. Mr. Manningham came out into the garden to meet us. We put the box down on the lawn and opened it.

I’ve never heard a puppy so wildly excited. Often I’d been sorry that I couldn’t see Humblepuppy, but I was never sorrier than on that afternoon, as we heard him rushing from tree to familiar tree, barking joyously, dashing through the orchard grass—you could see it divide as he whizzed along—coming back to bounce up against us, all damp and earthy and smelling of leaves.

“He’s going to be happy with you, all right,” I said, and Mr. Manningham’s grey, lined face crinkled into its thoughtful smile as he said, “It’s the place more than me, I think.”

Well, it was both of them, really.

After the holiday, I went to collect Humblepuppy, leaving Taffy haughty and standoffish, sniffing our cases. It always takes him a long time to forgive us for going away.

Mr. Manningham had a bit of a cold and was sitting by the fire in his study, wrapped in a shetland rug. Humblepuppy was on his knee. I could hear the little dog’s tail thump against the arm of the chair when I walked in, but he didn’t get down to greet me. He stayed in Mr. Manningham’s lap.

“So you’ve come to take back my boarder,” Mr. Manningham said.

There was nothing in the least strained about his voice or smile but—
I just hadn
’t the heart to take back Humblepuppy. I put my hand down, found his soft wrinkly forehead, rumpled it a bit, and said,

“
Well
—I was sort of wondering: our old spoilt cat seems to have got used to being on his own again; I was wondering whether—by any chance—you’d feel like keeping him?”

Mr. Manningham
’s face lit up. He didn’t speak for a minute; then he put a gentle hand down to find the small head, and rubbed a finger along Humblepuppy’
s chin.

“
Well,
” he said. He cleared his throat. “Of course, if you’re
quite
sure
—”

“Quite sure.” My throat needed clearing too.

“I hope you won’t catch my cold,” Mr. Manningham said. I shook my head and said, “I’ll drop in to see if you’re better in a day or two,” and went off and left them together.

Poor Taffy was pretty glum over the loss of his playmate for several weeks; we had two hours’ purgatory every morning after breakfast while he hunted for Humblepuppy high and low. But gradually the memory faded and, thank goodness, now he has found a new friend, Little Grey Furry, a nephew, cousin, or other relative of Charity and Fred. Little Grey Furry has learned to play hide-and-seek in the lavender-bush, and to use our cat-flap, and clean up whatever’s in Taffy’s food bowl, so all is well in that department.

But I still miss Humblepuppy. I miss his cold nose exploring the palm of my hand, as I sit thinking, in the middle of a page, and his warm weight leaning against my knee as he watches the commercials. And the scritch-scratch of his toenails on the dining-room floor and the flump, flump, as he comes downstairs, and the small hollow in a cushion as he settles down with a sigh.

Oh well. I’ll get over it, just as Taffy has. But I was wondering about putting an ad into
Our Dogs
or
Pets’ Monthly
: Wanted, ghost of a mongrel puppy. Warm, welcome, loving home. Any reasonable price paid.

It might be worth a try.