The Black House

4

Emma resumed her unpacking. She did not say anything immediately. She took a wool dress out of her suitcase and sniffed it, then found a hanger for it and put it in the wardrobe. Then she said, “That little charade at Waterloo.”

The incident had upset him; it was something he had tried to forget, but Emma’s words made a picture of the furry white erasure on his mind, and he saw the obliterated portion and finally the mistake.

They had been late, it was raining. He had lugged the heavy suitcases into the station—cursing the taxi driver who had made no move to help, the huddle of porters who were unloading a coach—and past the newsstand he spotted a porter wheeling an empty baggage carrier. Munday dropped his suitcases and waved to him; the porter did not see him. Munday moved closer in a spurt, jerking the cases, calling out, and when the porter hesitated, Munday ordered him sharply to hurry up. The porter, squinting, stood his ground, for both times Munday had spoken in Swahili.

Munday was berating the porter in Swahili, furious at the man’s hesitation, when Emma cut him off— “Don’t be a jackass, Alfred,” she said—and walked away. The porter, sensing that he was being mocked, wheeled his baggage carrier in the opposite direction. Alone and fearing for his heart, Munday dragged the suitcases onto the platform.

“I was confused,” said Munday. “He was black.”

“That explains it, of course,” said Emma, looking at her wrist watch with an indifference Munday believed she was pretending simply to anger him.

At half-past six, leaving Emma resting, Munday went down for a drink. He pushed open the door of the bar and set a bell jangling. It startled him, he touched his heart; and it jangled again as he closed the door. He carried his pain across the room.

“Good evening,” said Mr. Flack. He was at the bar, still in his overcoat, rubbing his hands. Behind him were shelves and shelves of bright candies in large jars, wine gums, mint humbugs, mint imperials, boiled sweets, wrapped toffees. Behind that nodding aged head a sign reading New Tooty Aniseed Chewsl “How are you getting on?”

“Just about finished,” said Munday, and he turned to take in the whole room, the bar billiards table, the hunting prints, the color print of the old brewery, Cobnut Sliced, the dusty blue sign Briggs Empire Shag, the high yellow walls, a trestle table with the ring marks of glasses, a dart board set in a scarred rubber hoop that had been filleted from a tire, the brass bell above the door, and three old men, motionless as sticks of furniture.

Two of them sat on stools by the fireplace where a low fire glowed under a smoky heaping of coal, a whitehaired one in a threadbare jacket, another in a thick dark coat which reached to his ankles. The third, in a suit jacket and clean bib-overalls, and wearing a too-small crushed felt hat, sat on a bench by the front window. Munday smiled at them, but only the third reacted: he tugged his hat brim in a negligent gesture of recognition. He might have been straightening the hat. The other two shifted on their stools, but continued to study the fire, the smoke curling from between the lumps of coal.

“What will it be?” asked Mr. Flack.

“Is that cider?” Munday pointed to a plump white barrel resting on a rack. Lettered on the barrel was the name of a brewery and Cyder.

“That’s your dry.”

“I’ll take a half of that.”

Mr. Flack bent to the barrel, twisted the wooden spigot, and drew off a plopping glassful. He placed the cloudy liquid before Munday and said, “Four-pence.”

“Very reasonable,” said Munday. An arrogance in Mr. Flack’s manner, different from the civility he had shown upstairs, urged Munday to say curtly, “Have one yourself, Flack.”

“Cheers, sir, I’ll have a tickle of this.” He took a bottle of Glenfiddich from under the bar and poured himself an expensive measure. “To your very good health.”

The two men by the fire had begun to talk between themselves. Their mutters filled the room; Munday heard “buggers.” He addressed the nearest one, the man swaddled in the long coat, “Will you have one with me?”

“Thank ee,” said the man, and placing his glass of beer on the floor next to the hearthstone, said to Mr. Flack, “I’ll have a short.”

“And you?”

The whitehaired man, who had been looking abstractedly into the fire, turned to Munday. “A Guinness, thanks,” he said gently, and brought his glass to the bar.

Munday nodded at the man with the felt hat.

“A large light,” said the man. He showed Munday his empty pint glass.

“That looks interesting,” Munday said to Mr. Flack. He had poured a tot of rum into a schooner and was now uncorking a green bottle with an engraved label.

“A short,” said Mr. Flack. “Rum and ginger wine.”

Munday passed it to the man who had been drinking beer; the others collected their drinks, and they all drank to Munday’s health.

“That’s ninety-four pence,” said Mr. Flack. He had put on a pair of loosely-hinged spectacles to search out the figure on a dog-eared Decimal Conversion Chart.

“I don’t think this is going to cover it,” said Munday showing Flack the coins in his palm. “It’ll have to be one of these.” He unfolded a pound note and handed it to Flack. Receiving his sixpence change he could not hide his disappointment.

“How do you like your cider?” asked Mr. Flack.

“Drinkable,” said Munday. He was still frowning at the sixpence.

“Careful, mister,” said the man in the felt hat

“You needn’t worry,” Munday joked. “I know my limit.”

“You don’t know that scrumpy,” said the man, turning grave.

“Poison,” said the old man in the long coat, sipping at his rum and ginger wine.

“Rots your insides,” said the man with the Guinness. He spoke as the others had, out of the comer of his mouth.

“I was under the impression,” said Munday, “that the local people drank a lot of this muck.”

The men were silent. After a few moments the whitehaired man sipped his Guinness loudly and spoke up. “The local people,” he said, “sells it.”

“Some folks drink it by the gallon,” said Mr. Flack. “Tourists and summer people, that is. Don’t have much taste for it myself.”

Munday finished his cider, a bitter mouthful, and toyed with his glass. He waited and hummed, but convention was not observed, he was not offered a drink. He turned his back on the three drinkers and ordered a gin and lime.

“You’ll have to meet Mr. Awdry,” said Mr. Flack. “He was in Africa, too. Your part.” For the others Mr. Flack said, “Doctor Munday’s lived abroad for quite a few years.”

The man in the felt hat said, “I thought he looked a bit stunned.”

The whitehaired man said, “I don’t hold with abroad.”

“I should be very pleased to meet him,” said Munday. “What is Mr. Awdry’s business?”

“This and that,” said Mr. Flack. “He’s retired, like yourself.”

And now Munday was going to say, to Mr. Flack and for the men to hear, that he was not retired at all, and that he had only come to rest his heart and write his book. He had no further interest in the village; indeed, he planned to leave the rented house when his book was finished. But he had taken a dislike to them all and objected to offering them any candor; he nodded, accepting the status Mr. Flack had assigned to him—knowing that thereafter it would be hard to dispute—and he said, “I see you’ve got a billiards table.”

“Snookerette,” said Mr. Flack. “Do you play?”

“A little,” said Munday. He believed he played well, and he was eager to beat the men on their own table. “Played on one like it in Africa.”

“Makes a change,” said the whitehaired man.

“Bit of fun,” said Mr. Flack.

The old man in the Jong coat came over to Munday’s side, close enough for Munday to smell the coat’s damp decayed wool. Munday thought the man was going to propose a game on the table, but the man reached into his deep pocket and took out a bone-handled clasp knife. He showed it, weighing it in his hand, then opened it and said, “That there knife’s fifty-six years old.”

“Older than me,” said Munday, and sought a reaction on the men’s faces.

“Look how sharp he is,” said the man. “Workmanship.”

Munday tried the blade with his thumb. “Like a razor.”

“He cost me a shilling,” said the man. “The same knife today would cost thirty bob at least.” He returned the knife to his pocket, patted the pocket, and went back to his fireside stool, his two drinks.

“The missus resting?” Mr. Flack asked.

Munday, annoyed that Mr. Flack had guessed correctly, said she was not.

“You’ll be stopping up at the Black House, will you?” asked the whitehaired man.

“Bowood House,” said Munday.

“We calls her the Black House,” said the man.

“I see,” said Munday.

“Queer place, the Black House,” said the man.

“Haunted, is it,” said Munday.

The man didn’t smile. “I’ve heard things.”

“Ghosts,” said Munday, biting on his smile. “I must tell my wife.”

“Not ghosts,” said the man in the felt hat, seeing, as Munday did, the whitehaired man grow shy under Munday’s ironic smile. It was the smile more than the words that mocked.

“Strange creatures, then?” Munday’s voice was sharp.

“Queer noises,” said the man in the felt hat.

“Noises you can’t account for, that it?”

“Not in the normal way,” said Mr. Flack.

Munday saw that he challenged them all. “Funny,” he said, “Africans say the same about things they don’t understand.”

He had gone too far, he could see it in their reaction, which was withdrawal, more extreme than silence, a tightening and thinning of the dry air. He felt assaulted by their indifference. A lump of coal in the fireplace snapped, a stool creaked, the front door rattled in the jamb.

“I’ll tell you who died,” the whitehaired man said suddenly, and Munday turned to listen. But it was a local matter and he was not admitted to the conversation about the man’s age and the speculation about the sickness which Munday knew was not fatal. This led to stories of an ailing farmer, a missing cow, a broken fence, and an extensive aggrieved tale, offered by the man in the long coat, of a laborer’s humiliation by a farmer’s rude and wrong-headed wife.

“They never learn,” said the man in the felt hat who had been addressed as Hosmer; he said it with what Munday thought was unwarranted fierceness, and there was silence again. Silent, the room seemed empty, the men like old chairs, and Munday, alert, alive, attentive to his gin, excluded. He wondered: Who are these people and why did they tell me that about the house? He briefly despised them, saw them as a ridiculous senate of pensioners who, younger, might have been his enemies, and he understood that his irony had mystified and angered them. The men grew audible again, they coughed with force, one inhaled snuff deeply from the knuckles on the back of his hand, another smoked a rolled twisted cigarette, and the drawling was renewed: the price of apples, the cost of living, a lunatic in the next village, reckless drivers, a pair of vicious dogs Hosmer said should be put down (And I know how to do it”).

“You could write a book about this place,” said Mr. Flack, who took Munday’s silence for attention.

“Me?” said Munday.

“Anyone who knew how,” said Mr. Flack.

Munday’s laughter was harsh; the four men stared at him. He waited until they began another private conversation—this one about a dead badger—before he went up to his room.