Cold Hand in Mine: Strange Stories

There was one more incident before they had left the area behind them.

As they returned up the gently sloping, sandy track, Hilary kept his eyes on the ground, carefully not looking at the yellow wall on his left, or looking at it as little as possible, and certainly not looking backwards over his shoulder. At the place where the wall bore away leftwards at a right angle, the track began to ascend rather more steeply for perhaps a hundred yards, to a scrubby tableland above. They were walking in silence, and Hilary's ears, always sharper than the average, were continuously strained for any unusual sound, probably from behind the wall, but possibly, and even more alarmingly, not. When some way up the steeper slope, he seemed to hear something, and could not stop himself from looking back.

There was indeed something to see, though Hilary saw it for only an instant.

At the corner of the wall, there was no special feature, as one might have half-expected, such as a turret or an obelisk. There was merely the turn in the hipped roofing. But now Hilary saw, at least for half a second, that a man was looking over, installed at the very extremity of the internal angle. There was about half of him visible, and he seemed tall and slender and bald. Hilary failed to notice how he was dressed: if, indeed, he was dressed at all.

Hilary jerked back his head. He did not feel able to mention what he had seen to Mary, least of all now.

He did not feel able, in fact, to mention the sight to anyone. Twenty years later, he was once about to mention it, but even then decided against doing so. In the meantime, and for years after these events, the thought and memory of them lay at the back of his mind; partly because of what had already happened, partly because of what happened soon afterwards.

The outing must have upset Hilary more than he knew, because the same evening he felt ill, and was found by Mrs Parker to have a temperature. That was the beginning of it, and the end of it was not for a period of weeks; during which there had been two doctors, and, on some of the days and nights, an impersonal nurse, or perhaps two of them also. There had also been much bluff jollying along from Hilary's father; Hilary's brothers being both at Wellington. Even Mrs Parker had to be reinforced by a blowsy teenager named Eileen.

In the end, and quite suddenly, Hilary felt as good as new: either owing to the miracles of modern medicine, or, more probably, owing to the customary course of nature.

'You may feel right, old son,' said Doctor Morgan-Vaughan; 'but you're not right, not yet.'

'When can I go back to school?'

'Do you want to go back, son?'

'Yes,' said Hilary.

'Well, well,' said Doctor Morgan-Vaughan. 'Small boys felt differently in my day.'

'When can I?' asked Hilary.

'One fine day,' said Doctor Morgan-Vaughan. 'There's no hurry about it. You've been ill, son, really ill, and you don't want to do things in a rush.'

So a matter of two months had passed before Hilary had any inkling of the fact that something had happened to Mary also. He would have liked to see her, but had not cared, rather than dared, to suggest it. At no time had he even mentioned her at home. There was no possibility of his hearing anything about her until his belated return to school.

Even then, the blowsy teenager was sent with him on the first day, lest, presumably, he faint at the roadside or vanish upwards to Heaven. His heart was heavy and confused, as he walked; and Eileen found difficulty in conversing with a kid of his kind anyway. He was slightly relieved by the fact that when they arrived at the school, she had no other idea than to hasten off with alacrity.

The headmistress (if so one might term her), who was also part-proprietor of the establishment, a neat lady of 36, was waiting specially for Hilary's arrival after his illness; and greeted him with kindness and a certain understanding. The children also felt a new interest in him, though with most of them it was only faint. But there was a little girl with two tight plaits and a gingham dress patterned with asters and sunflowers, who seemed more sincerely concerned about what had been happening to him. Her name was Valerie Watkinson.

'Where's Mary?' asked Hilary.

'Mary's dead,' said Valerie Watkinson solemnly.

Hilary's first response was merely hostile. 'I don't believe you,' he said.

Valerie Watkinson nodded three or four times, even more solemnly.

Hilary clutched hold of both her arms above the elbows. 'I don't believe you,' he said again.

Valerie Watkinson began to cry. 'You're hurting me.'

Hilary took away his hands. Valerie did not move or make any further complaint. They stood facing one another in silence for a perceptible pause, with Valerie quietly weeping.

'Is it true?' said Hilary in the end.

Valerie nodded again behind her tiny handkerchief with a pinky-blue Swiss milkmaid on one corner. 'You're very pale,' she gasped out, her mouth muffled.

She stretched out a small damp hand. 'Poor Hilary. Mary was your friend. I'm sorry for you, Hilary.'

'Did she go to bed with a temperature?' asked Hilary. He was less unaccustomed than most children to the idea of death because he was perfectly well aware that of late he himself was said to have escaped death but narrowly.

This time Valerie shook her head, though with equal solemnity. 'No,' she said. 'At least, I don't think so. It's all a mystery. We haven't been told she's dead. We thought she was ill, like you. Then Sandy saw something in the paper.' Sandy Stainer was a podgy sprawling boy with, as one might suppose, vaguely reddish hair.

'What did he see?'

'Something nasty,' said Valerie with confidence. 'I don't know what it was. We're not supposed to know.'

'Sandy knows.'

'Yes,' said Valerie.

'Hasn't he told?'

'He's been told not to. Miss Milland had him in her room.'

'But don't you want to know yourself?'

'No, I don't,' said Valerie, with extreme firmness. 'My mummy says it's enough for us to know that poor Mary's dead. She says that's what really matters.'

It was certainly what really mattered to Hilary. He passed his first day back at school looking very pallid and speaking no further word except when directly addressed by Miss Milland or Mrs Everson; both of whom agreed, after school hours, that Hilary Brigstock had been sent back before he should have been. It was something to which they were entirely accustomed: the children often seemed to divide into those perpetually truant and those perpetually in seeming need of more care and attention than they were receiving at home. That it should be so was odd in such a professional and directorial area; though Mrs Cartier, who looked in every now and then to teach elementary French, and was a Maoist, said it was just what one always found.

Hilary had never spoken to Sandy Stainer, nor ever wanted to. The present matter was not one which he would care to enquire about in such a quarter. Moreover, he knew perfectly well that he would be told nothing, but merely tormented. Sandy Stainer's lips had somehow been sealed in some remarkably effective way; and he would be likely to find, in such a situation, clear conscience and positive social sanction for quiet arm-twisting and general vexing of enquirers, especially of enquirers known to be as vulnerable as Hilary. And Mary had been so much to Hilary that he had no other close friend in the school — probably no other friend there at all. Perhaps Hilary was one of those men who are designed for one woman only.

Certainly he had no little friends outside the school; nor had ever been offered any. Nor, as usual, was the death of Mary a matter that could be laid before his father. In any case, what could his father permit himself to tell him; when all was so obscure, and so properly so?

Within a day or two, Hilary was back in bed once more, and again missing from school.

Doctor Morgan-Vaughan could not but suspect this time that the trouble contained a marked element of 'the psychological'; but it was an aspect of medicine that had always struck him as almost entirely unreal, and certainly