Wyndham, John – Chocky

I could see Mary’s fingers fidgeting, but her mask of impersonal interest remained unaltered. I said:

`I think I understand what you mean, Matthew. You sort of hand over to Chocky, But I should think that feels a bit funny, doesn’t it?’

`Only the first time or two. Them I felt a bit like – well, no brakes. But after that it gets more like. He paused for some moments searching with furrowed brOW for a simile. His expression cleared shightly. `… it gets more like riding a bicycle, no hands.’ He frowned again, and amended: `Only not quite, because it’s Chocky doing the steering, not me – sort of difficult to explain,’ he added apologetically.

I could appreciate that it would be. To give Mary some reassurance I asked:

`I suppose it doesn’t ever happen when you don’t want it to? By accident, I mean?’

Matthew shook his head emphatically

`Oh no. I have to make it happen by thinking of nothing. Only now I don’t have to keep on thinking of nothing all the time it’s happening. The last few times I could watch my bands doing the pictures – so ahh the real doing them is mine. It’s just the seeing wwhat to do that isn’t.’

`Yes, dear,’ Mary said. `We understand thmat, but …’ she hesitated, searching for a gentle way to make her point, … but do you think it is a good thing to do?’

Matthew glanced at the pictures.

`I think so, Mummy. They’re much better pictures than I do when they’re all mine – even if they do look a bit funny,’ he admitted candidly.

`That wasn’t quite what I, Mary began. Then she changed her mind, and looked.at the clock.

`It’s getting late,’ she said, with a glance at me.

`That’s right. It is,’ I backed her up. `But just before you go, Matthew, have you shown these to anyone else?’

`Well, not really shown,’ he said. `Miss Soames came in one day just after I’d done that one.’ He pointed to the view of the playground through the window. `She said whose was it, which was a bit awkward because I couldn’t pretend it was anyone else’s, so I had to say it was mine, and she looked at me, the way people do when they don’t believe you. Then she looked at the picture, and then back again at me. “All right,” she said, “let’s see you do a – a racing car, at speed.” So then I had to explain that I couldn’t do things that I couldn’t see – I meant that Chocky couldn’t see for me, but I couldn’t tel her that. And she looked at me hard again, and said: “Very well, what about the view through the other window?”

`So I turned the easel round, and did that. She.took it off the board and stared at it for a kong time, then she looked at me very queerly, and said did I mind if she kept it? I couldn’t very well say I did, so I said no, and, please, could I go now? And she nodded, and went on staring at it.’

`It’s funny she said nothing about it in your report,’ I told him.

`Oh, it was right at the end of term; after reports,’ he explained.

I felt a premonitory twinge of misgiving, but there was nothing to be done about it. Besides, it was, as Mary had said, getting late.

`Well, time you were off to bed now, (*) Matthew,’ I said. `Thanks for telling us about the pictures. May we keep them down here a bit so that we can look at them again?’

`All right, but please don’t lose them,’ he agreed. His eye fell on the famine-victim portrait. `That isn’t a bit like you, Daddy. It really isn’t,’ he assured me. Then he said his good-nights, and ran away upstairs.

We sat and looked at one another

Mary’s eyes slowly brimmed with tears.

`Oh, David. He was such a lovely little boy …’

Later when she was calmer she said:

`I’m afraid for him, David. This – this whatever it is, is getting more real to him. He’s beginning to let it take control of him … I’m afraid for him …’

I shook my head.

`I’m sure you’ve got it wrong. It Isn’t like that, you know. He was pretty emphatic that he is the one who decides when and whether it shall happen at all,’ I pointed out

`Naturally he’d think that,’ she said..

I looked in on him on my way to bed. He was asleep, with the light still on. A book he had been reading lay as it had dropped from his hands, face down on his chest. I read the title, then bent a little closer to make sure I had read aright. It was my copy of Lewis Mumford’s Living in cities. (*) I picked it up, and in doing so woke Matthew.

`I don’t wonder you fell asleep. A bit heavy for bed time reading, isn’t it?’

`Pretty boring,’ he acknowledged. `But Chocky thinks it’s interesting – the parts of it I can understand for her.’

`Oh,’ I said. `Well … well, time to go to sleep now. Goodnight, old man.’

`Goodnight, Daddy.’

7

For our holiday that summer we took a cottage jointly with Alan and Phyl Froome. They had married a couple of years after we did, and had two children, Emma and Paul, much of an age with our own. (*) It was an arrangement, we thought, which would give the adults opportunities to go off duty for a bit, and have some holiday themselves.

The place was Bontgoch, a village on an estuary in North Wales, where I bad enjoyed several holidays in my own childhood. It was an ideal place for boating, and now it even had a painted-up shed with a bar at one end the Yacht Club.

We did not have a boat, but we still enjoyed the place. The sands are still there for children to dabble around On at low tide and catch shrimps and flat fish. So, too, on both sides of the estuary are the not-too-steep mountains on which one can climb and explore the pockings of old workings that are known to have been gold mines. It was good to be able to go off in the car for the day and leave Phyl and Alan in charge of the children – and quite good, too, to take charge when it was their turn for freedom. Everything was, in fact, a great success until the Monday of the second week …

On that day it was Mary and I who were free. We drove almost off the map (*) by very minor roads, heft the car, walked along a hillside amd picnicked by a stream with the whole Irish Sea spread out below us. In the evening we had a good dinner at a roadside hotel and dawdled back to Bontgoch about ten o’clock. We paused a moment by thc gate to admire the serenity of a superb sunset, and then went up the path.

One had only to set foot on the threshold of the cottage to know that something had gone wrong. Mary sensed it at once. She stared at Phyl.

`What is it?’ she said. `What’s happened?’

`Its all right, Mary. It’s quite all right,’ Phyl said.

`They’re perfectly safe and sound. Both upstairs in bed now. Nothing to worry about.’

`What happened?’ Mary said again.

`They fell in the river. But they’re quite all right.’

She and Mary went upstairs. Alan reached for a bottle and poured a couple of whiskies.

`What’s been going on?’ I said as he held a glass towards me.

`It’s quite all right now, as Phyl said,’ he assured me.

Near thing, (*) though. Shook us to our foundations, I can tell you. Not stopped sweating yet.’ He pressed a handkerchief to his brow as if in evidence, said `Cheers’, * and downed half is glass.

I looked at him, and looked at the bottle. It bad been untouched that morning, now it was three-quarters empty.

`But what happened?’ I insisted.

He put down lis glass, shook his head, and expolained:

`Pure accident, old man. They were all four of them playing around on that rickety landing stage. The tide was a bit past the turn, (*) and running out fast. That hulking motor-boat of Bill Weston’s was moored about fifty yards up-stream. According to old Evans who saw the whole thing its mooring line must have broken. The boat hit the landing-stage at full speed, and the far end of the damned thIng collapsed. My two happened to be standIng back a bit, so they were only knocked down, but your two went straight into the water…’

He paused, exasperatingly. But for the repeated assur – ances (*) that they were quite all right I could have shaken him. He took another swig at his glass.

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