The Ocean at the End of the Lane(40)

I wished I had brought a book with me, even though it was almost too dark to read. I said the Mouse’s pool of tears poem again, in my head. Come I’ll take no denial we must have a trial for really this morning I’ve nothing to do …

‘Where’s Ursula?’ asked my sister. ‘She went up to her room, but she isn’t there any more. She’s not in the kitchen and she’s not in the loo-lahs. I want my tea. I’m hungry.’

‘You can make yourself something to eat,’ I told her. ‘You’re not a baby.’

‘Where’s Ursula?’

She was ripped to shreds by alien vulture-monsters and honestly I think you’re one of them or being controlled by them or something.

‘Don’t know.’

‘I’m telling Mummy and Daddy when they get home that you were horrible to me today. You’ll get into trouble.’ I wondered if this was actually my sister or not. It definitely sounded like her. But she did not take a step over the circle of greener grass, into the ring. She stuck her tongue out at me, and ran back towards the house.

Said the mouse to the cur such a trial dear sir with no jury or judge would be wasting our breath …

Deep twilit dusk, all colourless and strained. Mosquitoes whined about my ears and landed, one by one, on my cheeks and my hands. I was glad I was wearing Lettie Hempstock’s cousin’s strange old-fashioned clothing then, because I had less bare skin exposed. I slapped at the insects as they landed, and some of them flew off. One that didn’t fly away, gorging itself on the inside of my wrist, burst when I hit it, leaving a smeared teardrop of my blood to run down the inside of my arm.

There were bats flying above me. I liked bats, always had, but that night there were so many of them, and they made me think of the hunger birds, and I shuddered.

Twilight became, imperceptibly, night, and now I was sitting in a circle that I could no longer see, at the bottom of the garden. Lights, friendly electric lights, went on in the house.

I did not want to be scared of the dark. I was not scared of any real thing. I just did not want to be there any longer, waiting in the darkness for my friend who had run away from me and did not seem to be coming back.

I’ll be judge I’ll be jury said cunning old Fury I’ll try the whole cause and condemn you to death.

I stayed just where I was. I had seen Ursula Monkton torn to shreds, and the shreds devoured by scavengers from outside the universe of things that I understood. If I went out of the circle, I was certain, they would do the same to me.

I moved from Lewis Carroll to Gilbert and Sullivan.

When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache and repose is taboo’d by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety …

I loved the sound of the words, even if I was not entirely sure what all of them meant.

I needed to wee. I turned my back on the house, took a few steps away from the tree, scared that I would take one step too far and find myself outside the circle. I urinated into the darkness. I had just finished when I was blinded by a torch beam, and my father’s voice said, ‘What on earth are you doing down here?’

‘I … I’m just down here,’ I said.

‘Yes. Your sister said. Well, time to come back to the house. Your dinner’s on the table.’

I stayed where I was. ‘No,’ I said, and shook my head.

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘I’m not being silly. I’m staying here.’

‘Come on.’ And then, more cheerful, ‘Come on, Handsome George.’ It had been his silly pet name for me, when I was a baby. He even had a song that went with it that he would sing while bouncing me on his lap. It was the best song in the world.

I didn’t say anything.

‘I’m not going to carry you back to the house,’ said my father. There was an edge starting to creep into his voice. ‘You’re too big for that.’

Yes, I thought. And you’d have to cross into the fairy ring to pick me up.

But the fairy ring seemed foolish now. This was my father, not some waxwork thing that the hunger birds had made to lure me out. It was night. My father had come home from work. It was time.

I said, ‘Ursula Monkton’s gone away. And she’s not ever coming back.’

He sounded irritated, then. ‘What did you do? Did you say something horrible to her? Were you rude?’

‘No.’

He shone the torch beam on to my face. The light was almost blinding. He seemed to be fighting to keep his temper under control. He said, ‘Tell me what you said to her.’

‘I didn’t say anything to her. She just went away.’

It was true, or almost.

‘Come back to the house, now.’

‘Please, Daddy. I have to stay here.’

‘You come back to the house this minute!’ shouted my father, at the top of his voice, and I could not help it: my lower lip shook, my nose started to run, and tears sprang to my eyes. The tears blurred my vision and stung, but they did not fall, and I blinked them away.

I did not know if I was talking to my own father or not.

I said, ‘I don’t like it when you shout at me.’

‘Well, I don’t like it when you act like a little animal!’ he shouted, and now I was crying, and the tears were running down my face, and I wished that I was anywhere else but there that night.