William Sansom


　　Strange weather! A warm morning, with all the windows open and the sunlight making a pale fool of the big log fire. Wet and warm in the garden outside, muddy and fresh: and inside the Christmas cards looked like invitations to a summer rout, the holly and mistletoe hung like the morning after some May-Day-night-before, cotton-wool snow looked particularly like cotton-wool and nothing like snow, the tinsel glittered in the sun with the tarnished tang of old seaside souvenirs. Two or three flies Hoovered a Monday buzz about the ceiling; and in the garden a red-hot robin stamped its dislike of such an unseasonable Christmas Morning.
　　Snow and ice are seldom to be hoped for. The least that might be expected is a touch of the magic of frost , a winter glitter and a brisk raw bite in the air, something to match the glowing coals and the good rich food. However . . . on that morning there was no hope left, and as Lesseps went to look out over the garden it was in a mood of ill-ease—he felt that he ought to be scrambling the deck-chairs out for an early airing, not thinking of sherry and turkey and the rest of whatever conviviality lay ahead. There was a steam in the air, no wind, and across the hedge at the garden's end the steam thickened to mist above the warm mysterious depths of the Chine. Beyond this lay a wilderness of trees and the ivyclad walls of Waltham.
　　The sun struck gold on the topmost windows of this great Victorian house that then belonged to the lady we only knew as "Miss Amery"—and it was perhaps the sudden illumination of a turreted and gabled edifice so in keeping with the idea of an old-fashioned Christmas that led Lesseps once again that morning to wonder about this Miss Amery. The sun struck the topmost windows—and even these had their white blinds drawn—but he knew that in the shadowed wilderness of dripping and overgrown trees and ivy below all the rest of the house would lie in a kind of dead shuttered dusk cut off absolutely from this wide-lit morning. Within the padlocked gates, up the bough-hung drive and under the peeling gables lay a darker world: Miss Amery was what they call a recluse. She had not left the house for fifteen years.
　　Many the theories. But only one thing is certain about such a secret life, and that is a final uncertainty of anyone getting to know exactly how it is lived. The houses of such solitaries have been examined after death—a litter of filth, a wilderness of papers, hoards of money have been found: and once even a house within a house, corridors and rooms lined with the empty tins of a decade, each immaculately shined. But whatever is found, people can only suppose how life was actually lived: nobody knows, the germ of the bitter or the radiant secret dies with its conceiver.
　　So with Miss Amery. But she still lived, and the theories with her. Some said the war. Others that she had always been queer, from a young girl. Others spoke of something that had happened in her childhood. But nobody knew. And few people ever saw her. There were tales that she had occasional guests—once a schoolgirl had been seen in the park: but that might have been any apple-happy intruder of the afternoon.
　　At all events she was no terrifying figure. No pig-faced woman suffering within her black veil; no wild-eyed brooder over dark religions: no tall soured chatelaine with the big hands of a stranger. None of these. The few who saw or had seen her, like the postman, talked simply of a little "frail" old lady. Pale eyes, white skin, fragile, timid; a very ordinary picture of lavender and lace.
　　Yet a vague picture. And on that Christmas morning, thinking of her all alone somewhere beneath her sunblinded tower—Lesseps suddenly felt a longing to visit her. Don't be a fool, he told himself, she'd hate it. You're just restless. You're just lonely yourself for your white snow and frost.
　　But the idea persisted. And late that afternoon he excused himself from warm port on the veranda and "went for a walk". As he passed over the Chine bridge he pretended: I'll just get into the grounds and look around. I won't disturb the old girl.
　　But he never really hesitated; and certainly not on that giddying thin iron bridge that overhung such a sudden rocky drop and its weird wet growth of fern far beneath.
　　Then the wall of Waltham faced him. Higher than a man, it leaned its old red brickness for as far as he could see to either side: it came from mist and vanished into mist, and this made it seem to go on for ever. It was old, silent, decayed—it kept the eyes from seeing what was beyond, it sat there saying as all walls say: "Keep out". The only sound was the dripping of trees. He felt uneasy. But nevertheless measured its height, the crumbling of its mossed bricks, the inward tilt it took from the roots of trees that would one day overturn its foundation. Would it take his weight? He heard the crash of brick, a sudden thunderclap dying again into the wet silence of the trees. He took his left foot in a crevice, pulled himself up and over, dropped soundlessly on to thick black leaves the other side.
　　Over. When he had put his foot up, he had felt as guilty and small as a child: now, the deed done and in forbidden territory, he was suddenly instead big as a child feeling itself big as a man, on its mettle. In that deserted overgrown wilderness, even in such quiet, he held his breath and listened. What a different world inside! The sun was sinking—it must have been nearly four o'clock; but those trees were already dark with moss and age, everything creaked and dripped and hung at broken levels, and as he now walked forward in the direction of the house the sky seemed to disappear altogether in a depth of long-fingering arms interlaced above. It was like entering the gloom that masses before a fog in a great town; the air peculiarly still, no fog yet, but all light gone. Yet in its way, at that time, it was preferable to the world outside—this darkness and mistery more matched the mood of Christmas.
　　He walked on. No twigs snapped, everything too old, rotten, wet. Beneath the trees a thick undergrowth of elder and nettles had grown; he had to snake his way through—once he stopped suddenly, holding his breath: a statue, an eyeless youth in Greek drapery, was watching him from the thicket; mossed and in half-shadow, it stood still as life. He coughed—no echo—and went on. He came up against a huge high bank of overgrown laurel. He had to walk some way to skirt it, it was like a high green wall within the walled garden: but at last he rounded it—and there suddenly was the house itself. He drew back against the laurel. The house accused him with its immense, sudden presence. But then he saw how utterly dead it was—or how deeply asleep. White blinds were drawn over all the upper windows. Creeper hung thick about the lower reaches, a gabled porch and Gothic buttresses, tall stone-framed downstairs windows. From where he stood he could see the rusted bellpull—and wondered how it could possibly work. Wondering, he found himself going towards it—and then quickly ran the last few yards across the open, weed-grown gravel.
　　Now he stood in the porch, among wind-blown leaves and littered paper, as if in a deserted wind-shelter on a sea-front, and looked at that bell-pull. It was dead with rust. Thick spider webs, heavy with rotted seed, hung across it. Suddenly he thought, and his stomach dropped—perhaps the old lady was dead? Perhaps no one knows? But then he remembered how groceries and food were still delivered, probably at a back door. They would soon have known in the village. Yet this was a holiday; Christmas is a busy time, the shops had been shut a day already. At the thought again of Christmas it passed absurdly through his mind that if anyone caught him there in the porch he could start singing a carol; but at the same time he decided to go round the house and see if there was a back door that might look more used. But—his mind whispered—with a pile of groceries never taken in?
　　He never went round.
　　He held his breath, wondering what so suddenly had happened. Sound? Movement? Something had happened: and everything was changed. But there was no sound, nothing had moved in the porch. What. . . ? And then he realized. The most obvious thing, so obvious that it had passed his notice. All the lights of one of the rooms facing the drive had been turned on—the great dark bank of laurel was now a high pale emerald mass, leaf upon leaf of green and gold, a high theatrical screen of leaf, and across the gravel itself the tall garden windows had thrown their giant rectangular shapes.
　　Yet no shadow crossed this great new light, no sound echoed its muffling from within the house. It was like an empty theatre lit by a dead man's hand.
　　Lesseps hardly waited.
　　He moved quickly out of the porch and in again to the wall, creeping like a thief, turning his coat collar up to hide his white shirt, sprung on the toes of his shoes that made no sound on such wet mould, rounding the big buttress until he could squeeze against the stone window-frame and peer carefully round, using one eye.
　　Every chandelier in that room was lit. The windows reached nearly to the ground and all inside, as in a huge glass-case, was light. The floor had been freshly polished and shone with light: tall mirrors on all the walls reflected it farther, and the twists and coils of their gilt frames winked and glittered: and then the mirrors reflected each other, one mirror within another within another, until the room receded for ever in corridors of mirror on every side: in each mirror shone a crystal wealth of chandelier, and, wherever it struck, either in a leaping of shadows or or a red-gilt flaming tongue, there rose and fell the effigy of a great log fire blazing to one end of the room in a richly marbled fireplace. Heavy curtains hung undrawn by the windows. Lessep's one eye came round by a large gilt tassel. It must have been the old ballroom.
　　But old? It was as alive as it had ever been. And in its very centre stood a tall Christmas tree bright with yellow candles. Coloured globes caught the fire-shadow, tinsel laced its sparkling snow about the dark branches, and all danced with light; the yellow candles burned steadily upwards, yet sometimes shuddered—it must have been a draught from the fire—leaning afraid all one way, and then as suddenly resuming their solid upward flame.
　　He stood there, held with wonder. It was a magical scene—all polish, wealth, and warmth . . . but empty, no sign of a single person.
　　And the minutes passed. The last of the red evening sun fell down through the black wet trees outside. Lesseps thought: How exactly like the coloured plates in a book of fairy-stories, there is no difference, the old red sun casts its strarge winter light and the trees become huge, you can still see the drip and drab of ordinary life, but it recedes, light and shadow are really in charge, you're more in an old book than anywhere else. Then he smelled life again, as the sun flashed down and the first sharp nose of a winter's chill envigoured the night. Soon he would see his breath.
　　He peered back into the window. Nobody had come. Nothing had moved but the candles, the fire flames and the shadows that were always moving. And this motionless moving, this empty liveliness, gave the room more death than if the house had been shut and dark and truly dead; as with a ghost ship, all sails set, all lights ablaze—empty on an empty ocean; or the shop-window stage of a room, playing the dead life of dummies, and never-used furniture, all lights on and nothing, nothing ever to happen. But behind the doors of such rooms people wait: the doors hold back unbelievable crowds waiting to burst in.
　　And that, then, was what actually happened, unbelievably, exactly in front of Lesseps' one peering eye. So startling him that he drew this back behind the window-frame.
　　Abruptly the room had poured full of children!
　　A dam of children had burst, it was like that moment in the empty street when a morning of children breaks out of the cinema and the street is stopped with arms and legs and voices whirling and screaming over every inch. He quickly drew back. Where? How? How did they get there. . . ? And all those children had been little girls! Ten, twenty, thirty little girls in white party-dresses flooded in through the door! And all had been dressed, he thought, surely alike? All in white, all in sashes alive in the light, blue bows bobbing in each head of curls; all dancing.
　　He peered round the window-frame again. With the air chilling, the window-glass was beginning to mist: safe enough, he would never be seen now.
　　He saw instantly what mistake he had made—this was after all no room full of girls, it was of course one child only, one child reflected in a dozen mirrors.
　　And now that one pretty little child, so small and alone among her dozen glittering shadows in so large-lit a hall of a room—the one little child approached on tiptoe the Christmas tree and gravely, beautifully, dropped a curtsy.
　　All alone she began to dance.
　　Lesseps watched charmed and fascinated through the pale mist beading the window. It was growing much colder with the sun down, it was dark now and he shivered out there among the dripping trees—but he only remembered feeling a sense of great gladness and warmth, that after all, in that huge lonely shuttered house, the old lady did have her secret friends. Who they might be, he hardly considered—the scene was so warm, friendly, well-lit, a picture of festive content.
　　Then, as he told us afterwards, a sense of uneasiness grew upon him. He could not say what it was, he tried to push it aside. He thought it was some previous association with the house. Or even his lowered spirits out there in the chill garden. But the feeling persisted, and he began to wonder: had it something to do with such a little girl all alone in so great a room? For as the minutes passed, no one came to be with her—and it began to seem that she, the little one, was the only life in that huge house. A dreaful notion came to him, which he put quickly aside—had the old lady died upstairs and was this child who had come to stay, simply, in her innocence thinking her grand-aunt asleep, dancing on with the fun?
　　For she never stopped dancing. To and fro, up to the great fireplace, down the polished wood to the mirrors, pirouetting, pointing a toe, weaving her arms into some pretty arabesque, greeting the image of herself in a dozen long mirrors—and always returning, for it was the most special place, to the Christmas tree.
　　Lesseps grew more aware—perhaps because it was the central point of her dancing—of that Christmas tree. It seemed in presence to become taller; and it held now a quiet imminence of movement, the feeling tall wardrobes have, standing so very still and forbidding, that they might at any moment move . . . He thought: Nonsense. This is only the uneasy memory of old Christmases, old toys, as garish toys can terrify: the nightmare quality of toys and trees that some children carry with them for ever. And of course, Lesseps concluded, I was such a child. Puppets, golliwogs, even the Happy Family cards, frightened me.
　　But he felt a sudden wish to get away, to get back behind that bank of wet laurels bathed in their high golden light.
　　He did the opposite.
　　He went straight forward and pressed his face against the window.
　　It was misting now beyond the brightness of the light. He thought he would never be seen. He was holding his breath to see.
　　But he was seen.
　　Almost instantly, the little girl, in the middle of a pirouette, stopped, stared into his eyes, screamed a hand up to her mouth, and fled back straight into that Christmas tree.
　　In a second her dress was blazing.
　　He had his boot off and was smashing through the glass. The draught of sudden air fanned the flame higher—but he got to her quickly and muffled her in his coat and rolled this poor little bundle on the floor. Then he picked her up and quietly held her in his arms.
　　She was not badly burned. But she was dead. She must have died of shock.
　　And then, Lesseps said, his voice was raised to cry for help, to hoarse his wretched stupid sickened heart out—but he never breathed a word . . . for only then did his eyes realize, slowly, the thin blue-veined leg in his hand, the gray-gold hair, the old enamelled face . . . and a mouth set now not in anguish but in sleeping peace,the shade of a smile of childhood dreams on her thin shrivelled lips.