The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

Deborah lay on her back behind the summer-house, wondering what would happen if Jesus and Buddha met. Would there be discussion, courtesy, an exchange of views like politicians at summit talks? Or were they after all the same person, born at separate times? The queer thing was that this topic, interesting now, meant nothing in the secret world. Last night, through the turnstile, all problems disappeared. They were non-existent. There was only the knowledge and the joy.

She must have slept, because when she opened her eyes she saw to her dismay that Roger was no longer in the bath but was hammering the cricket-stumps into the lawn. It was a quarter-to-five.

“Hurry up,” he called, when he saw her move. “I’ve had tea.”

She got up and dragged herself into the house, sleepy still, and giddy. The grandparents were in the drawing-room, refreshed from the long repose of the afternoon. Grandpapa smelt of eau-de-Cologne. Even Patch had come to and was lapping his saucer of cold tea.

“You look tired,” said Grandmama critically. “Are you feeling all right?”

Deborah was not sure. Her head was heavy. It must have been sleeping in the afternoon, a thing she never did.

“I think so,” she answered, “but if anyone gave me roast pork I know I’d be sick.”

“No one suggested you should eat roast pork,” said her grandmother, surprised. “Have a cucumber sandwich, they’re cool enough.”

Grandpapa was lying in wait for a wasp. He watched it hover over his tea, grim, expectant. Suddenly he slammed at the air with his whisk. “Got the brute,” he said in trumph. He ground it into the carpet with his heel. It made Deborah think of Jehovah.

“Don’t rush around in the heat,” said Grandmama. “It isn’t wise. Can’t you and Roger play some nice, quiet game?”

“What sort of game?” asked Deborah.

But her grandmother was without invention. The croquet mallets were all broken. “We might pretend to be dwarfs and use the heads,” said Deborah, and she toyed for a moment with the idea of squatting to croquet. Their knees would stiffen, though, it would be too difficult.

“I’ll read aloud to you, if you like,” said Grandmama.

Deborah seized upon the suggestion. It delayed cricket. She ran out on to the lawn and padded the idea to make it acceptable to Roger.

“I’ll play afterwards,” she said, “and that ice-cream that Agnes has in the fridge, you can eat all of it. I’ll talk tonight in bed.”

Roger hesitated. Everything must be weighed. Three goods to balance evil.

“You know that stick of sealing-wax Daddy gave you?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Can I have it?”

The balance for Deborah too. The quiet of the moment in opposition to the loss of the long thick stick so brightly red.

“All right,” she grudged.

Roger left the cricket stumps and they went into the drawing-room. Grandpapa, at the first suggestion of reading aloud, had disappeared, taking Patch with him. Grandmama had cleared away the tea. She found her spectacles and the book. It was Black Beauty. Grandmama kept no modern children’s books, and this made common ground for the three of them. She read the terrible chapter where the stable-lad lets Beauty get overheated and gives him a cold drink and does not put on his blanket. The story was suited to the day. Even Roger listened entranced. And Deborah, watching her grandmother’s calm face and hearing her careful voice reading the sentences, thought how strange it was that Grandmama could turn herself into Beauty with such ease. She was a horse, suffering there with pneumonia in the stable, being saved by the wise coachman.

After the reading, cricket was an anticlimax, but Deborah must keep her bargain. She kept thinking of Black Beauty writing the book. It showed how good the story was, Grandmama said, because no child had ever yet questioned the practical side of it, or posed the picture of a horse with a pen in its hoof.

“A modern horse would have a typewriter,” thought Deborah, and she began to bowl to Roger, smiling to herself as she did so because of the twentieth-century Beauty clacking with both hoofs at a machine.

This evening, because of the heat-wave, the routine was changed. They had their baths first, before their supper, for they were hot and exhausted from the cricket. Then, putting on pyjamas and cardigans, they ate their supper on the terrace. For once Grandmama was indulgent. It was still so hot that they could not take chill, and the dew had not yet risen. It made a small excitement, being in pyjamas on the terrace. Like people abroad, said Roger. Or natives in the South Seas, said Deborah. Or beachcombers who had lost caste. Grandpapa, changed into a white tropical jacket, had not lost caste.

“He’s a white trader,” whispered Deborah. “He’s made a fortune out of pearls.”

Roger choked. Any joke about his grandfather, whom he feared, had all the sweet agony of danger.

“What’s the thermometer say?” asked Deborah.

Her grandfather, pleased at her interest, went to inspect it.

“Still above eighty,” he said with relish.