The Collected Short Fiction

Bedtime Story (1986)

Soon Jimmy grew bored with watching his parents holding tiny saucers and sipping coffee from tinier cups. They looked awkward as grown-ups playing tea-parties. He could tell that they wanted him out of the way while they talked, and so he ventured upstairs, though he wasn't sure his grandmother would want him to. All at once he was breathless, because there was so much he hadn't seen before: an attic full of objects made mysterious by dust, polished banisters that begged to be slid down, a small room halfway up the house, that faced onto the park. Down in the rose garden paths split the lawns into pieces of a giant green jigsaw, over by the lake trees waited in line to be climbed, and suddenly he wished this was his room—but when he turned, there was already someone in the room behind him.

It was only himself in the wardrobe mirror. The dusty sheen of the glass made it stand out from the backing, made it look like a mirror into another room. He stared until his face grew flat and glary, until he felt as papery as his reflection looked, and very aware of being only seven years old. As he crept downstairs his father was saying that once he found another teaching job he was sure they'd get a mortgage, Jimmy's grandmother was saying she had friends who would bring his mother work if she learned how to sew, and Jimmy thought they'd finished wanting him out of the way.

From her look he thought his grandmother was about to tell him off for going upstairs. "Well, James, you're going to live with me for a while. Will you like that?" she said.

He could feel his parents willing him to be polite. "Yes," he said, for it was the first week of the summer holidays and everything felt like an adventure. Even living here did, especially when he found he was having the room with the mirror. It was as though finding himself already in the mirror had made his wish come true. He didn't even mind when that night his mother stayed downstairs while his grandmother tucked him into bed and gave him a wrinkled kiss. He made a face at the mirror, where he could just see himself in the light from the park road. Then she turned in the doorway to look at him, that look which made him feel she knew something about him she wished were not so, and he hid under the sheets.

Next morning he ran into the park as soon as he was dressed. It was like having the biggest front garden in the world. Soon he'd made friends with the children from the flats next door, Emma and Indira, who had to wear trousers under her skirt, and Bruce, who was fat and always sniffing and would blubber gratifyingly if they pinched him when they were bored. The children made up for being put to bed too early by Jimmy's grandmother who had somehow taken over that job, for having to be exactly on time for meals, which were formal as going to church. Then his mother started her job at the nursery, and his father kept having to go for interviews, and Jimmy realized his life had scarcely begun to change.

At first she only fussed over him and told him not to do things, until he felt he couldn't breathe. Once, when he lifted down his father's first examination certificate— the glass gleamed from her polishing it every day—she cried "Don't touch that" so shrilly that he almost dropped it. Worse, now he was forever catching her watching him as if she was trying not to believe what he was.

One day, when a downpour crawling on the windows made even the trees look gray, he went up to the attic. Behind a rusty trunk he found several paintings, one a portrait of his father as a child. Before he knew it she was at the door. "Must you always be into mischief, James?" Yet all he was doing was feeling sad that she must have taken weeks over each painting only to leave them up here in the dust.

That night he lay wondering what she'd thought he would do to her paintings, wondering what she knew. The dusty reflection reminded him of a painting, the dim figure still as paint. It was a painting, and that meant he couldn't move. By the time he managed to struggle out of bed he didn't like the mirror very much.

Downstairs his grandmother was saying, "You must say if you think I'm interfering, but I do feel you might choose his friends more carefully."

Jimmy could tell from his father's voice that he'd had another unsuccessful interview. "Who do you mean?"

"Why, the children from the fiats. The darky and the others."

"They seem reasonable enough kids to me," his mother said.

"I suppose it depends what you're used to. I'm afraid the class of people round here isn't what it was when I was young. I know we aren't supposed to say that kind of thing these days." She sighed and said, "That sort of child could make life difficult for James if they found out what he is."

Jimmy realized he'd been clinging to his bedroom door, for as he crept forward to hear better it slammed behind him. "I'll see what's wrong," his mother said sharply. "You've done enough for one day."

Jimmy hurried back to bed and tried to look as if he hadn't left it. In the dimmer bed, someone else was hiding beneath the sheets. His mother tiptoed into the room. "Are you awake, Jimmy?"

"I heard granny. What did she mean? What am I?"

"Bloody old woman," his mother whispered fiercely. "I was going to have you when we got married, Jimmy, that's all. It doesn't mean a thing except to people like your grandmother."

As she kissed him goodnight he saw her stooping to the dim face in the mirror, and suddenly it seemed more real than he was. Whatever was wrong must be worse than she'd said, for how could that make his grandmother watch him that way? After that night he could never be quite sure of Emma and her friends. He was afraid they might find out what he was before he knew himself.

One day they came into the house. His grandmother was in the park, calling "Mrs. Tortoiseshell" after a lady who appeared to be very deaf. Jimmy had grown bored with watching the chase when the others came to find him. "I've got to stay in until she comes back," he said. "You can read my comics if you like."

He led them up to his room. Bruce had to read everything out loud, though he was two years older than Jimmy, and the best he could make of Kryptonite was

"k, k, kip tonight." Jimmy laughed as loudly as the others, but he didn't like the way they were crumpling his comics. "I know where we can go," he said. "There's a great cellar downstairs."

There were mountains of coal, and a few graying mops and pails that looked stuck to the walls by shadow, and the furnace. That was a hulk like a safe, taller than his father, overgrown with pipes. Jimmy wished it were winter, because then he could open the door and watch the blaze; now there was nothing inside but a coating of soot and ash. The three of them were hiding from Bruce to make him blubber when Jimmy's grandmother found them.

"Don't you dare come in here again. Just you remember the police are only up the road." She warned Jimmy that she'd tell his parents when they came home, but they didn't seem very concerned. "I can't see what you have against his friends," his mother said.

His father clenched his forehead against a headache. "Neither can I."

"Oh, can't you? Once you could have. Anyway," she said, gazing at Jimmy's mother, "I'm afraid I insist on choosing who comes into my house."

After a painful silence his father said, "That's it, then, Jimmy. You'll have to do as your granny says."

Jimmy sensed his mother was more disappointed than he was. "Do I have to?"

"There, you see, he won't be told. What he needs is a good thrashing."

"He won't get one from us," his mother said. "And anyone else who touches him will be very sorry."

His grandmother ignored her. "Thrashing never did you any harm."

Jimmy found the idea of her beating his father so disturbing that he ran blindly upstairs. His body seemed to have made the decision to run while he tried not to think. What was he that his grandmother hated so much? He reached the landing and was suddenly afraid to open his door in case there was already someone in his bed. Yes, someone was beyond the door, creeping toward it as Jimmy went helplessly forward. Once the door was open they would be face to face, and what would happen to Jimmy then? He was fighting not to turn the doorknob, and unable to be sure that it hadn't already begun to turn, when his mother came upstairs. "That's right, Jimmy," she said, suppressing her anger. "Time for bed."

Nobody was in his room except the face that peered around the edge of the mirror. He could tell it was his own face until he got into bed. His mother seemed anxious to go downstairs—because she wanted to hear what the others were saying, he told himself, not because of anything in his room. "Don't worry, we won't let anyone harm you," she said, but he wasn't sure she knew the nature of the threat.

The night was hot as a heap of quilts. He was nowhere near sleep when his grandmother came up. She tucked in the sheets which he'd kicked off, and shook her head as if someone hadn't done her job. "You must promise me never to go near the furnace again. Do you know what happens to little boys who go near ovens?" She told him the story about the children whom the old witch lured into the gingerbread house, except that when his mother used to read him the story the children had escaped. He tried to make faces at the mirror so that he wouldn't be frightened, but couldn't be sure of the face in the other bed; it seemed to be grinning, which wasn't at all how he felt. He squeezed his eyes shut, and when she left, having given him a withered kiss, he was afraid to open them; he felt he was being watched.

His father was growing short-tempered as one interview after another proved to be fixed in someone else's favor. In the mornings he loitered near the front door until the mail arrived, and Jimmy heard him saying "Shit" when he opened his letters or when there weren't any. The house felt as if it was waiting for a storm, and it was on the day of the tea party that the nightmare began.

Usually Jimmy managed to avoid these gatherings, but this time his grandmother insisted on showing him to her friends. He stood awkwardly, surrounded by faded tasseled lamps and the smells of age and lavender water, while the old ladies dramatized appreciation of their microscopic sandwiches and grumbled about strikes, crime, Russians, television, prices, bus timetables, teachers, children. "He isn't such a bad boy," his grandmother said, holding his hand while they gazed at him. He was seeing a hairy wart, a hat like a green and purple sea urchin, mouths the color and texture of healing wounds. "He got off to a bad start, but that isn't everything. He just needs proper handling."

Jimmy felt more confused than ever, and escaped as soon as he could. As he stepped onto the sticky road, Emma waved at him from her window. "Everyone's gone out. We can play being mummy and daddy."

He and his parents had often used to wear no clothes in their flat, but now they wouldn't even let him go undressed. Sure enough, Emma suggested they take off their clothes before dressing up, and he was almost naked when Mrs. Tortoiseshell saw him. She was holding a plastic bag of ice cubes on top of her head. She stood there aghast, one hand on the bag and the other on her hip, like a caricature of a ballerina. Then she vanished, crying so loudly for his grandmother he could hear her through the two windows.

He felt infested by guilt. Mrs. Tortoiseshell must know what he was. He fled into the park, because he couldn't look at Emma, and hid behind a bush. Soon the old ladies emerged, calling "Bye-ee" like a flock of large pale birds, and his grandmother saw him. "James, come here."

She only wanted to show him an old book. That made him think of a witch in one of his comics, except his grandmother's book was for doctors. "Just you leave girls alone," she said, "unless you want this to happen to you." She seemed to be showing him a picture of a decaying log: did she mean his arms and legs would drop off? He was still trying to make it out when his mother came home and saw the picture. "What the Christ do you think you're doing? What are you trying to turn him into?"

"Someone has to take him in hand while you play nursemaid to other people's children. I never thought my son would end up married to a nanny."

Jimmy thought his mother would explode, her face had turned so mottled. Then his father came in. One look at the tableau of them, and he groaned. "What's wrong now?"

"You tell me. Tell me why she's showing him this crap if you can."

"Because he was up to no good with the little strumpet next door." When his parents demanded what she meant she said, "I should think you would know only too well."

"Don't be ridiculous. He's seven years old," his father said, and Jimmy felt as if he wasn't there at all.

"That means nothing with all this sex you're teaching them in school."

"I can't teach anybody anything with all the education cuts your bloody government is making."

"Oh, is it my fault now that you can't get a job? Well, I shouldn't say this but I will: if it were up to me I wouldn't send you to your interviews looking like a tramp."

It seemed the storm was about to break, when Mrs. Tortoiseshell appeared from upstairs in search of her hat. She was still clutching the bag of melted ice to her head, as if it were a hat someone had left in exchange for hers. "I shouldn't have taken it off," she wailed, and Jimmy imagined her wearing her hat on top of the bag. Eventually he found it, a helmet like a pink cake curly with icing. "That's a good boy," his grandmother said, enraging his parents.

The interruption had turned the row into a hostile silence. Jimmy was almost glad when bedtime came. As his mother tucked him in she said, "I don't know what you were doing with Emma but don't do it again, all right? We've enough problems as it is." He wanted to call her back and tell her what had really happened, but instead he huddled beneath the sheets: he'd glimpsed the face in the other bed, the face that looked swollen and patchy, just like the picture his grandmother had shown him. He was afraid to touch his own face in case it felt like that. He could hardly convince himself he was there in his own bed at all.

The morning was cold and wet, and so was the week that followed. He avoided his room as much as he could. It wasn't only that it seemed the darkest place in the house, its walls swarming with ghosts of rain; it was the face that peered around the edge of the mirror whenever he entered the room. He had to step in before he could switch on the light, and in that moment the puffy blackened face grinned out. When he switched on the light his face looked just as it did in any other mirror, but he'd seen in comics how villains could disguise themselves.

The day it stopped raining was the day his grandmother let him know he was a villain. The wet weather must have made her rusty, for whenever she stood up she winced. She gave him a five-pound note to buy liniment at the chemist's. He was feeling grown-up to have charge of so much when she fixed him with her gaze. "Just remember, James, I'm trusting you."

He had never felt guiltier. She expected him to steal. Since she did, he hardly paused when he saw the new red ball in the toyshop by the chemist's. It cost nearly a pound, and the wind was trying to snatch the four pound notes out of his fist; he'd only to tell her that one had blown away. Buying the ball made him feel vindicated, and he was almost at the house before he wondered how he could explain the ball.

He must hide it before she could see it. He ran in— she'd left the porch door open for him—and was halfway to the stairs when she came out of the living-room. He threw the ball desperately onto the landing above him. "Who is it?" she cried as it went thud, thud. "Who's up there?"

"I'll go and see," he said at once, and was running upstairs to hide the ball when she said, "My liniment and four pounds ten pence, please."

"I put it there." He pointed at the jar of liniment on the hall table, but she gazed at his clenched fist until he went reluctantly down and opened his hand above hers. "And the other pound, please," she said as the notes unfurled.

"I haven't got it." He realized too late that he should have said so at once. "It blew in the lake."

She made him turn out his pockets. When they proved to be empty except for a clump of sweets, her face grew even stiffer. "Please stay where I can see you," she said as he followed her upstairs.

The ball wasn't on the landing. It must be in one of the rooms, all of which were open except his. As she looked into each and pushed him ahead of her, the sky grew dark, the trees began to hiss and glisten. She pushed him into his room. The figure with the crawling blotchy face stepped forward to meet him, and the ball was at its feet, beneath the wardrobe. Yet Jimmy's grandmother hardly glanced at the ball, and it took him a while to understand she didn't realize it was new.

She said nothing when his mother came home. She was waiting for his father, to tell him Jimmy had stolen from her. "Is that what happened, Jimmy?" his father said.

"No." Jimmy felt as if he were talking to strangers—as if he were a stranger too. "It blew in the lake."

"That sounds more like it to me." When the old lady's pursed lips opened, his father said, "Look, here's a pound, and now let's forget it. I don't want to hear you saying things like that about Jimmy."

Jimmy felt strange. He could no longer recall taking the money. Someone else had stolen it: whoever had the ball. The idea didn't frighten him until he went to bed and lay there dreading the moment when his mother would leave him in the dark. He wasn't frightened of being alone, quite the opposite. "Don't switch off the light," he cried. "I don't want to live here anymore."

"We have to for a little while. Be brave. Your father had an interview that looked promising. We're waiting to hear."

He felt a hint of their old relationship. "Don't go out and leave me all day. I have to stay in with her."

"No you haven't. If it's too wet to play you can go to Emma's. I say you can. Now be a big boy and do without the light or you'll be getting us told off for wasting electricity."

Eventually he slept, praying that the noises at the end of the bed were only the stirrings of the radiator. Rain like maracas woke him in the morning, and so did a surge of delight that he wouldn't have to stay in. Emma was glad to see him, for she had a cold. They played all day, and he didn't go home until he heard his parents.

His grandmother wasn't speaking to them. Whenever she spoke to him, it was a challenge meant for them. He felt as if the burning silence were focused on him, especially when, nearly at the end of the endless dinner, they heard Emma sneezing. His mother felt his prickling forehead. "You'd better go to bed," she said at once.

He couldn't protest: something had drained that strength from him. As his mother helped him to his room, no doubt thinking it was illness rather than fear that was slowing him down on the stairs, he heard his grandmother. "I hope you're satisfied now. That's how she cares for your child."

His mother put him to bed and gave him a glass of medicine. All too soon she was at the door. "Leave the light on," he pleaded in a voice he could scarcely hear.

"You certainly can have the light on," she said, loudly enough to be heard downstairs. "Call me if you need anything."

For a while he felt safe, listening to the downpour whipping the window. When his parents came upstairs he thought he would be safer, but then he heard his mother. "You won't stand up to her at all. You as good as admitted he was a thief by giving her that money. I really think you're still afraid of her. Being near her makes you weak." That made Jimmy feel weak himself, made him think of his father being beaten. He buried his head in the pillow, and was trying to decide whether he felt hot or cold when he fell asleep.

When he awoke, the rain had stopped. There was silence except for a faint dull repetitive splashing. Everyone must be in bed. He clawed the sheet away from his face and opened his eyes. He was still in the dark. Someone had switched off the light.

Above his head the window must be streaming, for the wall and the door beyond the foot of the bed were breaking out in glistening patches. The outline of the switch beside the door was crumbling with darkness, it looked ready to fall and leave him with no hope of light, but if he could struggle out of bed it was only a few paces away. Surely he could do that if he closed his eyes, surely he could reach the switch before he saw anything else. But he was already seeing what was in the corner by the window, nearest his face: a small round shape just about the size of his head.

When he saw the blotches breaking out on it he knew it was about to grin—until he saw it was the ball. It had been sent out of the dark to him. He lay staring fearfully, alone but for the muffled regular splashing, and tried to believe he could move, could dart out of bed and out of the room. The mirror was further from the door than he was. When he tried to take deep breaths, they and his heart deafened him. He was afraid not to be able to hear.

Or perhaps he was afraid of what he might hear, for the soft dull sound wasn't quite like splashing. To begin with, it was in the room with him. It must be growing louder: he no longer had to strain to hear that it was a thumping, a patting, the sound of squashy objects striking glass. No, it wasn't at the window. It came from beyond the foot of the bed.

At last he managed to raise his head. He would be able to see without being able to escape. His neck was at an angle—a blazing pain was trying to twitch his head back onto the pillow—but now he could see over the footboard. It was terror, not pain, that made his head fall back. The dim bed in the mirror was empty. A figure covered from head to foot with blotches was standing beyond the bed, pressing its face and hands against the glass, gazing out at him.

As soon as his head touched the pillow he screamed and threw himself out of bed. A moment later he wouldn't have been able to move. He fled towards the door, but the sheets tripped him. As he fell, he twisted his ankle. The soft thumping recommenced at once, more strongly. It sounded determined to break through the glass.

He clawed at the floor above his head and hurled the ball without thinking. It was out of his hands when he realized that it was too light to break the mirror. Yet he heard the smash of glass, fragments splintering on the floorboards. The mirror must have been thin as eggshell, and now he had made it hatch. When he heard the footsteps, which sounded like pats of mud dropped on the floor, he could only shrink into a corner with his hands over his face, and scream.

Though he heard the door opening almost at once, it was some time before the light went on. He dared to look then, and saw his grandmother staring at the broken mirror. "That's the end," she said as his parents pushed past her. "I won't have him in my house."

Jimmy took that as a promise, and wished it could be kept at once, for someone else was at large in the building. It hadn't been his grandmother who had opened his bedroom door. When he heard the crash of glass downstairs, he began to shiver. His grandmother hurried down, and they heard her cry out. Soon she returned, carrying his father's framed certificate, her treasure, smashed and torn. She looked as if she blamed

Jimmy, but he couldn't be sure it was his fault. Perhaps it was.

When his grandmother went away to cry, his mother persuaded him back to bed, but he wouldn't let her leave him or switch off the light. Eventually he dozed. Once he woke, afraid that someone was lying in bed with him, but the impression faded almost at once. His mother was still in her chair by the bed. Surely she wouldn't have let anyone creep into the room.

The morning was cloudless, and everything seemed to have changed. His father had been accepted for a teaching post. Perhaps that was why Jimmy felt as if he hadn't caught Emma's cold after all. Perhaps something else had been draining him.

His grandmother said nothing. Jimmy thought she wished that she hadn't sounded so final last night, hoped they would say something that would let her take it back. But his father had already arranged for them to use a friend's flat while she was in London. Jimmy was so elated that when the removal van arrived he hadn't even parceled up his comics.

In any case, he hadn't said goodbye to Emma. He said he would stay until their friend came back with the van. "I'll stay too if you like," his mother said, but he found her concern irritating. He could look after himself.

As soon as they left, his grandmother went upstairs. He rang Emma's bell, but there was no reply. His grandmother's house was hotter than outside: she'd forgotten to turn off the furnace. He could hear her in her room, weeping as if nothing mattered anymore. He felt rather sorry for her, wanted to tell her he would come and see her sometimes. He didn't mind now, since he was leaving. He ran upstairs.

She must have heard him coming. She was dabbing at her eyes and making up at the dressing-table. He opened his mouth to promise, and heard himself saying, "Granny, there's something wrong with the furnace. I didn't go down, you said not to."

"That's a good boy." She turned to give him a brave moist-eyed smile, and so she couldn't see what he was seeing in the mirror: his face just managing to conceal its grin. For an instant, during which he might have been able to cry out, he saw how another face was hiding beneath his. He remembered the impression he'd had, fading into himself, that someone had crept into bed with him.

"You can come down with me if you like," his grandmother said forgivingly, and he could only follow. He wanted to cry out, so that she or someone else would stop him, but his face was beyond his control. He hurried down the cellar steps behind her, hearing the muffled roar of flames in the furnace, grinning.