Past Perfect, Present Tense Read online

  “We’re Mike and Mark,” the twins said. “You can’t tell us apart. This is Clem. He’s the baby. He’s only seven.”

  Then Ben did a fantastic thing. He reached down and shook hands with all of them, even Clem. So it wasn’t like having a baby-sitter at all. Ben’s hands were ice cold, but at sixteen you probably don’t even have to wear gloves.

  In the living room he towered over them, gazing around almost like he was surprised to be here. “We could run some movies,” Mike said. “You ever see Nightmare on Elm Street?”

  Ben looked down at them. “I’ve seen something scarier than that.”

  “What?” Clem said, hugging himself.

  “You guys!” Ben said, and they all yelled and started punching one another because Ben was great.

  They didn’t even turn on the TV. They got out their baseball cards to show. Clem brought out the plastic dinosaur skeleton he’d put together from a kit. They had hot chocolate and a big bag of pretzels. Ben hadn’t taken off his flight jacket. He said he couldn’t seem to warm up, so they decided to have a fire in the fireplace. He showed them how to lay it and let Clem light it.

  They were all hunkered down on the hearth, so now it was like a campfire. Mike said, “You know any stories? They got to be scary.” Ben thought about that, rubbing his chin. He shaved.

  “All my stories are too scary for you guys,” he said, so they all yelled and pounded on one another until Ben began, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

  “Heard it,” Clem said.

  But they got him quieted down, and Ben told a story about a ghost in a tower somewhere in England. In life, the ghost had been a knight, so in stormy weather you could hear his armor rattle.

  Clem’s eyes got round.

  A beautiful young girl came to visit this castle, and she started having these nightmares about a suit of armor. It was empty armor standing over in a corner. But in the dream she’d seen the finger on one of the chain-mail gloves move. Her nightmare drew her nearer and nearer. Something urged her to release whoever was inside.

  Her dream hand came out to lift the helmet’s visor. There within, staring back at her, were the empty eye sockets of an ancient skull. Black beetles glittered in the sockets, but all other life had long fled. Her screams echoed down all the corridors you get in nightmares.

  The twins and Clem were sitting closer to Ben now.

  The dream returned until the girl was no longer able to sleep. One night she threw back the bedcovers. Wide awake, she was drawn up the turning steps, higher and higher into the tower. Holding a flickering candle aloft, she came upon a heavy door that swung open. In the corner stood the suit of armor she’d known from a dozen nightmare nights. She moved nearer. Her hand reached out. Hoping against hope that seeing the skull would rid her of her terrible dreams, she lifted the visor.

  Inside the helmet a young man’s piercing eyes met her gaze, but his voice was hollowed by the years. “I died too young, before I could love,” he said. “Will you redeem me? Come away to share my lonely exile in a world beyond this one.”

  * * *

  Ben’s voice died out, and the crackling fire burned low. Clem’s eyes were perfect circles. It was an okay story until the end.

  “Ben, you know any stories without girls in them?” Mike asked.

  Then behind them, the front door banged open. Feet stamped out in the hall. The twins and Clem jumped a foot.

  Melanie stalked into the living room, jerking at her stocking cap and unzipping her down jacket. “Me and April had a major fight. She’s such a—”

  Ben was climbing to his feet, turning toward her. Melanie froze. “Oh, wow,” she said, looking all the way up at him.

  “I’m Ben.” He put out a big hand.

  The stocking cap fell from Melanie’s grasp.

  “Hey, Melanie, clear out,” Mike said. “We’re telling stories. No girls allowed.”

  “We’ve been having a great time,” Ben said, just to her.

  “Yeah,” she said in a voice nobody had ever heard from her. “They’re nice little boys.”

  She and Ben were shaking hands, very slow.

  “You’re in high school?” Melanie said in this new voice of hers. She seemed to be a bug caught in the beam of Ben’s gaze.

  “I was,” he said.

  “Better yet,” Melanie murmured.

  “You want to go out for a little while?” Ben asked her.

  “Hey, no fair,” Mark said.

  “Why not?” Melanie said. “Before my parents get back.” Then in her regular voice she said to the twins and Clem, “You creeps don’t even think about getting into trouble, okay? Like make my day, right?”

  Ben reached down, swept up Melanie’s stocking cap, and handed it back to her. They turned, very near each other, and walked out of the house without a backward glance.

  Silence fell. Mike said, “I knew when he put that girl into the story, things were going to turn out stupid.”

  The three of them sat slumped before the dying embers of the fire. “What could he see in Melanie?” Mark wondered.

  “It’s a mystery,” Clem said.

  They forgot how long they sat there, watching the fire flicker out. Then they heard the sound of a car, and right away the front door banged open again. Their mother and then their dad raced into the living room, coats flapping. They didn’t wipe their feet or anything. Their mother dropped to her knees and tried to get her arms around all three of them.

  “Are you all right?” she gasped, trying to pull Clem closer. “What have you been doing all this time? We just got word from the Hutchinsons.”

  “Who are they?” Mike asked.

  “Ben’s aunt and uncle. Oh, it’s too terrible. Ben . . . I shouldn’t even tell you.”

  Their mother’s hand covered her mouth. “Boys,” Dad said, “the reason that Ben didn’t come to sit for you tonight is that he had an accident. On his way here, he was struck by a hit-and-run driver. They found his body by the side of the road. He was dead before your mother and I ever left home tonight.”

  Now the eyes of all three of them, Mike and Mark and Clem, were perfect circles.

  “And where’s Melanie?” their mother asked, looking around. “Isn’t she home yet?”

  Waiting for Sebastian

  Oh how I love the evening. Long summer evenings when the shadows of the trees creep in silent shapes across the lawn until they merge with night. I watch from this high window, framed by the old curtains held back by silk cords. I toy with the cords and watch the world dim.

  When I was very small, too small to climb up on this windowseat, I didn’t like being put to bed when the window was still bright with summer light. I fought sleep and woke again to velvet dusk, hearing the sounds of the house beneath my cot. Only a cot then for my infant self—not like the proper grown-up bed in the room now.

  The whole house and I listened to the parties Mama and Papa gave, the crystal sounds of the dinner table floating up the flights. The bark of the men’s laughter and the rising scent of their cigars after the silken sound of the ladies retiring. I love summer evenings because they take their time, dangling the dark before you.

  But winter evenings warm my heart. I don’t feel the cold. I watch from this window as the sun drops like a blazing penny through the bare branches, and darkness comes like a surprise.

  It’s winter now, the shortest day, and the sun is hurrying into the earth. This is the evening I wait for all through the year. I am curled in the windowseat at the top of the house with the cat alert in my lap. This cat is a tortoiseshell, up from the barn and quite wild, but she likes me. She gazes up, perplexed and admiring. Nanny used to say that I too had been born in a barn, when I was smaller and naughtier. “Born in a barn,” when I forgot to close the door behind me or grew tiresome in the bath.

  From here the cat and I can see right to the end of the drive now the leaves have fallen. Even the house around us waits. The statues in the lawn turn all their strange faces to t
he distant point where the drive meets the road. We all wait, breathless. Nothing trembles but my heart.

  We get very little snow here, but in winter we are apt to get gales. They whip off the sea and cry in the attics and bend the trees double. This old window clatters in its frame, and the curtains billow, and the cord coils. Then the next morning the sky is scoured clean, and the gardener—Abel or whatever he is called—is out dragging the branches and lifting the twigs.

  But this evening is still as a painting. This is the evening when my brother will be brought up from the station, home from school. The world waits for the car to turn in at the foot of the drive.

  My brother Sebastian is coming home for his Christmas holidays, and I won’t breathe or smile till he is here and this house is ringing with him. My brother Sebbie is coming home. But no. Wait. He says that Sebbie is a nursery name, and now that he is at school it would be a great crime if any of his friends knew. He is Sebastian now, and even Mama must call him by that name, when she remembers. My name is Charlotte, and I think I will keep it.

  When my brother first went away to school, they thought I was too young to mind. How wrong they were, how very wrong. This house is always as empty as my heart when Sebastian isn’t here, though it is full of people coming and going. Sebastian went away to school at seven. Boys do.

  As Papa says, “Nothing good happens at home to a boy past the age of seven.” Of course he is right. At seven boys need to live with one another in large, drafty brick places where they learn Latin verbs and tell one another terrifying tales. They eat cold cabbage and mashed potato with the eyes left in. And they are beaten when they are bad, which teaches them to be careful.

  There are schools for girls to go away to, but Papa wouldn’t hear of it. They play field hockey at such places, and it ruins their complexions and thickens their ankles. Papa says so. In the village there is a school where boys and girls go together, but Mama put her foot down. “When you are married, Charlotte, you will see quite enough of the opposite sex,” Mama said. “I have.”

  So I learn at home. After Nanny retired to a cottage, a lady came to teach me German. She wore ribbed stockings and liked country walks, but she grew homesick for her Alpine valley. The vast front of her frock was awash with her tears, and she went away (Auf Wiedersehen, Fräulein).

  After her, a lady came to teach me French. She was very pretty, and the scent of a rose garden followed where she went. She had vivid red lips, though she didn’t paint them. Governesses mustn’t. Because Nanny was gone by then, I forgot to close the door behind me. I saw Papa kissing the French governess. She didn’t mind, so I wasn’t worried, but I knew it was a secret. And so I told nobody but Mama. Soon after, on the very next day, that governess left too (Au revoir, mademoiselle).

  Now I am quite on my own. But wait. Are those the headlamps of a car just turning up the drive? My forehead would be freezing, pressed against this frosty pane, if I felt the cold. Yes, the car that brings people from the station is coming up the drive. And I smile—too soon, but I can’t help myself. The car takes forever, but now it’s turning in the circle of gravel before the house. I peer down over the cat’s ears to see—

  But no. I know already it isn’t Sebastian because he always bursts out of the back door before the car rolls to a stop. Sebastian with his necktie jerked round under his ear and his scarf in the school colors flying and his socks collapsing over his shoe tops . . .

  Unless, of course, it is Sebastian—later. I turn away, hoping not to see him climb manlike out of the car, unfolding his great legs and planting his snub-nosed boots on the ground. Sebastian grown and firm-chinned under his braided cap, reaching back into the car for his kit. This is not the Sebastian I long for through the long year.

  I make myself look, and it is neither of the Sebastians, nor anyone like them. It’s other people, the nameless sort who come to stay and then go away. You can tell by their odd clothes and odd ways that they are foreign. Not proper visitors at all, and I can’t think why Papa allows them. Perhaps we are poor now, and they pay to come here. I’ve thought of that. I’ve thought we might be poor and Mama and Papa don’t want me to know—a secret to keep me from worrying. After all, what would a family be without secrets? We would be like strangers meeting in the train, telling one another everything about ourselves.

  Yes, I suppose we must be poor now. I can’t think when I last saw Mama ride, and I believe she has given up her horse. From this window I used to watch her descend the steps in her riding clothes, snapping the crop against her gathered skirts, stepping into the groom’s hand to swing herself onto her hunter. And Papa doesn’t shoot now. I have not heard the woods explode in gunfire or seen the birds rise in a panic for ages.

  The driver comes round to lift the strangers’ luggage down. A great mound of it rises on the gravel. I watch, and so does the cat, its ears like two tiny pyramids, motionless in an ancient Egyptian night. Two people, a man and a woman, climb out of the car. They are dressed any old way, with things on straps slung round their necks. My hand reaches for the silk cord as I watch them stalk up the steps as if they had every right.

  Then, worse, someone steps out of the front door to greet them. Some perfect stranger welcomes them into our house.

  Still, I am at my post like a sentry standing guard, though we have already been invaded. I don’t know how long I cradle the uncomplaining cat, who thrusts out a paw and kneads my knee with its bunched claws. It might have been moments or hours we sat there. Time means nothing to me when Sebastian is not here.

  Then the door of my nursery bursts open with a sound that stings me like a slap. I make quite certain to keep my door shut, now I am older. But it is banged back now, and the driver staggers in under the load of luggage from the car. I shrink behind the curtain, and the cat stands, arching its back, thinking of flight.

  Like a dream one can’t stop having, the strangers enter my room, the two from the car and the other who let them into our house. Here behind the curtain I can’t see them and don’t want to, though the room is flooded with sudden light.

  “Why, what in the world!” someone says. “Some kind of kid’s room?” She is foreign but not blind. She can see the dollhouse Papa gave me, and the rocking horse painted in the colors of Mama’s hunter.

  “That’s right,” says another voice, just as common but local. “This was Miss Charlotte’s room.”

  Was and is.

  “It’s precious!” the foreign voice proclaims. “Isn’t it precious? This stuff should all be in a museum, most of it. Shouldn’t it?”

  But her husband says nothing. He is still gasping from the climb. Six flights to reach my room up here beneath the roof, six flights with a turning at the top.

  “And of course it was Mr. Sebastian’s too, when they were both in the nursery. They had a nanny, nursery maids, governesses. Oh, you can’t imagine the way people lived back then.”

  “No,” the foreign woman murmurs. She is scanning the clutter of my room now. My dolls, propped in corners, gaze with their unblinking buttons at these intruders. The bear I loved to baldness fixes the invaders with his single eye. “But I don’t know if—”

  “Well, you see, as a rule we don’t let this room. But just at the moment, we’re expecting quite a large party. Perhaps in a day or so we can find you something on a lower floor.”

  I am always shy at the first sight of strangers. I edge back and the curtain moves, and they may have seen, so I brush the cat off my lap. It leaps down, below the hem of the curtain, and streaks in the direction of the door.

  The foreign woman shrieks.

  “Oh, I can’t think how that cat got in,” she is told. “I opened the window to air the room at midday. Perhaps it climbed the ivy on the walls. Cats do, pesky creatures.”

  She can’t wait to leave the strangers in possession of my room, hoping they will settle. She shows them the device beside the bed that will make their tea, and she opens the cupboard where more blankets are. Then she is go
ne.

  I listen, still as the statues, whilst the strangers make themselves at home, complaining of the cold, remarking on every lump in the bed. “It’s not what I had in mind,” the foreign woman says, but I hear them opening their valises, and I listen whilst they wander up and down the hall outside in search of the bathroom. The car has gone, and night has fallen. They won’t stir themselves short of morning. They take a great liberty, it seems to me, but I suppose I must put up with them.

  But no. They have confused me, and I had almost forgotten that this is the longest night, the night when Sebastian is expected and never comes. Now I must remember again what this night means, and what I must do.

  At last the bed wheezes beneath the intruders. Then he must rise again and cross the room on freezing feet to turn off the light.

  “I don’t think I can figure out how that tea thing works,” the woman says in the dark. But then they doze. He does. I can hear him, but it is fitful sleep in a strange bed in a place that does not want them.

  The moon appears from behind a scudding cloud, and that suits me well enough. White light plays through the branches of the trees, and moonbeams shatter in the frost on the windowpane. Bright as day, as the saying goes. Now I must remember the meaning of this night, and who I am, and what I must do.

  For this is the night we learned that we would not see Sebastian again. Oh, I don’t mean he didn’t come home. Nothing could have kept him away. They brought him home, and he is sleeping now, in the churchyard. Cold there, of course, but he feels it no more than I do. Oh yes, Sebastian came home, but not to me, who lived for his look, who died to be near him.

  They did not notice how I grieved. Mama rode out, over the hedgerows and through the woods, letting the branches whip her face. She rode like a madwoman who hopes never to heal. Papa shut himself up in his study to pore over the maps of the place where Sebastian fell, as if the maps might be redrawn.

  And I was all alone up here, wedged in the windowseat, watching for a car in the drive. Until on the longest night of the year I saw the answer plain before my face. The cord that held the curtains.