Henry

Looking back, I should have known that something was not quite right.

The family seemed pleasant enough, warm, and full of life, but there was something about the way they looked at me, which made me uneasy. The grandmother, in particular, with her faded green eyes, gazed upon me with an odd mixture of tenderness and sadness. It was the kind of sadness that only the elderly can summon, a sadness decades in the making.

My arrival at the manor house was as much a surprise to me as it was to them. I had been sleeping soundly when awoken by a great tumult of angry machines. Before I could even register what was happening, I was whisked away and deposited on the doorstep without so much as a toothbrush to my name.

It was late afternoon. The sun was shining, but a cool wind blew. The door to the manor stood wide open, so I called out to announce my presence. I waited, but lacking a response, called out a second time. Still unanswered, I surmised that the wind was carrying my voice away and that my chances of a warm welcome would be improved by stepping inside.

The cavernous cold that struck me as I crossed the threshold took my breath away, but I was determined to make myself known. Gathering myself, I called out once more, but my voice only bounced about the great space of the entrance hall and dissolved into the woodwork.

With some apprehension, I set out to explore the dwelling.

As I entered the parlour, the grandmother was the first to see me. I fear that I startled the dear old woman, who had been resting in a comfortable chair, sipping tea, and enjoying the last rays of the afternoon sun.

I think that she did not hear me enter, but rather sensed my presence and turned towards me. I do not know who she had expected to see, but it most certainly was not my ragged eleven-year-old self. The teacup slipped from her hand and shattered on the parquet floor.

Next, it was my turn to be surprised, for though I did not know her, she clearly knew me.

“Henry? Oh, my word. It is you, isn’t it?” she asked, her hands trembling.

“Yes,” I replied. “It is me. I’m sorry, but I don’t…”

“I hoped you would come,” she interrupted as if I had not spoken. “We certainly have some catching up to do.”

Perplexed, I tried once again to query how she knew me, but do not think she heard.

“Marjorie! Come and see who’s here!” she called.

The door directly opposite me creaked open, and a tall woman with jet-black hair and too-red lipstick entered. Her eyes went immediately to the shattered porcelain.

“Oh, mother. What have you done?”

“Never mind that. Look who’s here”, she said, raising her bone-thin, trembling hand in my direction. “It’s Henry”.

Marjorie, busy gathering the shards of shattered ceramic, looked in my direction and smiled broadly. “Well, so it is. He hasn’t changed a bit, has he?”

Her teeth were beautifully white, framed by her too-red lips, and she was by most measures a handsome woman. She stood then, her crisp white dress neatly assembled about her. She held the remains of the tea-cup, in the perfectly formed fingers of her perfectly formed hand, as if weighing it against my soul.

For a good long minute, we stood there, staring at each other. She seemed unsure of her next move, unwilling to look me directly in the eye. I did not want to be a bothersome guest, so I held my peace. I cannot say how long we would have stood so, had not the older woman intervened.

“Well, we can’t just leave you standing there, Henry. We must set up your room at once.”

With that, she clicked her tongue, three times, clutched the arms of her comfortable chair, and with great determination raised herself to standing.

“Come now, Mother,” Marjorie said, breaking from her trance. “I can settle Henry in. There’s no need to exert yourself.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” the older woman retorted. “He’s come all this way to see me. The least I can do is find him a place to rest.”

Marjorie opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. It was clear that once the older woman had set a purpose, there was no dissuading her from her course.

“Come along, Henry,” she said, and we set out, back the way I had come.

The room I was taken to was very fine, with a large four-poster bed and a tall, arched window looking out across the grounds. The old woman fussed about, arranging the bed-linen, chirping conversationally as she worked.

“When we were young, we’d come in here and jump up and down on this bed, until Julie would rush in and chase us out waving her feather duster like a broadsword.”

I did not know who the “we” was that she referred to, but she seemed happy to tell her stories, so I left her to her work and turned my view to the window in the hope of orienting myself.

There was a small copse of trees to the west with a pond just before them. An old, derelict jetty poked out from the shore. The sun peeked through the trees and glistened on the surface of the water. A pretty scene, but something tightened in my chest to view it. There was something very familiar about those trees, that pond, something hidden, something that I did not understand. I was only half-aware of the words the old woman said as she left the room. Something about “dinner” and “the children”.

Snapping back into the present, I noticed once again the cold that seemed to fill this house.

I lay upon the bed for some time, staring at the fringed canopy above, but sleep would not come. I had not been given the run of the house, so out of politeness confined myself to the room.

The wall opposite the window had a large, inset bookshelf. I picked up a book, called “A Candle in Her Room”, and took it over to the bed. I could not get past the first page. Every time I began to read, my mind would wander, contemplating my situation, so that I simply read the same paragraph over and over without absorbing its meaning.

I surrendered my attempt at reading and surveyed the room for some other entertainment.

There were framed photos hung in a random but pleasing arrangement, on the section of wall between the bed and bookshelf. Those nearest the top were older, grainy black-and-white photos. Below these, the images took on muted colours, and those nearest the bottom exhibited an astounding level of sharpness. I peered at the generations of faces as dumbly as they peered back at me.

One of the older photos, nearest to the top, was of a family standing in front of the manor house. A small, quiet-looking woman and her stiff-moustached husband stood at the centre. Two young children stood before them. The girl held a little porcelain-faced doll and the boy a model sailing ship. On either side of the family, at a respectful distance, stood a pair of servants.

As I stared at the children, a memory started to form somewhere in the back of my mind. I reached out towards it, trying to grasp it, but the door behind me opened, and the thought receded once more across the dark waters of my mind.

“Dinner time, Henry,” came the now familiar voice of the older woman.

As we approached the dining room, I could smell the rich, earthy aroma of roasted pork. I could not remember when I had last eaten, and my stomach made a little growl of anticipation.

As we entered, Marjorie stood. She shot a meaningful glance at two children, who reluctantly did the same. All of those present were immaculately dressed, and I felt embarrassed at the state of my own clothing.

A portly older man who, from his manner of dress, I took to be the butler, pulled back the tall-backed chair at the head of the table and the grandmother lowered herself into it. He then came around beside me and pulled back the remaining vacant seat. I barely had time to place myself into it before he thrust it in towards the table.

The two children, who were seated on the opposite side, smiled nicely but seemed quite unsure of what to make of me. The girl had red hair and the same pale eyes as her grandmother. She looked at me, cocked her head to the side, and then glanced at her grandmother. She wanted to ask a question but seemed unable to find the words.

The boy had the same jet-black hair as his mother. He stared, unblinking, looking me up and down as if I were some insurmountable maths problem.

Finally, the girl spoke. “I’m Lucy!” she announced, “I’m seven. And this,” she poked a finger at the boy, “is Jeremy. He’s ten, but he’s a bit shy. Aren’t you, Jeremy?”

Jeremy smiled shyly.

“Oh. It’s nice to…” I began.

“Do you like pork?” she asked, leaning across the table and smiling broadly. “Carsten has made roast pork with apple sauce. I do… like pork I mean, but I feel sorry for the pig, don’t you? They’re more intelligent than dogs, and I certainly wouldn’t eat a dog, but then I don’t know if dogs would be as delicious as pigs, so there’s that to consider.”

The meal looked entirely delicious. Along with thick slabs of roast pork, there was apple-sauce, as promised, large potatoes in their jackets, long green beans and a gravy boat so large I could have fit my head in it. Lucy buried her pork under a mound of apple sauce, whilst Jeremy clearly favoured gravy.

Lucy filled the time between mouthfuls with an endless stream of cheerful tales and opinions, that washed over my distracted mind. It was only hearing my name that snapped me back into the moment.

“It isn’t fair, is it Henry? Who needs another silly road anyway?” she asked.

“Road? What...” I began.

“Shush now, Lucy,” interrupted her mother. “I’m sure Henry doesn’t want to think about that right now. Eat your dinner before it gets cold.”

Lucy frowned at being reprimanded but jabbed her fork into a large piece of meat and crammed it into her mouth.

My own meal sat untouched. As much as I yearned to join in the feast, I simply couldn’t bring myself to so much as lift my fork. The grandmother looked at me with concern. “Aren’t you hungry, dear?”

I looked to my food, which I longed to eat, then back to her and shook my head.

“Let him be, Mother,” said Marjorie. “I’m sure he’ll eat when he’s ready.”

Jeremy, shy with words, was the first to finish eating. He sat impatiently, his eyes flitting back and forth between his mother and myself.

She ate in tiny bites, each piece delicately removed from the fork between those perfect teeth and then chewed precisely twenty-four times before being swallowed. Her leisurely pace was a distinct source of discomfort for her son. When she finally set her cutlery neatly, side-by-side on the empty plate, Jeremy spoke for the first time, “May I be excused?”.

He was already half-way out of his seat, suspended between obedience and liberty, as his mother slowly surveyed the table. “Henry hasn’t finished eating,” she said dryly.

Jeremy grunted and lowered himself back into his seat. “Well, he’s not going to, is he?”, he retorted with more than a little petulance. “He’s not going to eat, because he…”

“Jeremy!” his mother snapped. “There’s no need to be rude.”

She turned to me with an embarrassed smile. “Oh, Henry. You must forgive Jeremy. He doesn’t… Well, he’s just excited to have someone new in the house.”

Her eyes returned to her son, “Aren’t you, dear?”

“Yes, Mother,” he replied. He was about to add something more, opening his mouth to speak, but then meeting his mother’s eyes thought better of it and closed it again.

For some minutes, a cold quiet filled the room, everyone unsure of what to say or where to look. Marjorie finally broke the silence, “Jeremy, you may be excused.”

Jeremy, not needing to be asked twice, pushed his chair back and scampered from the room. The others sat quietly while Carsten cleared the table.

The last plate had barely been cleared, when Jeremy returned, bursting into the room with a sense of triumph. He held up an old model sailing ship. “Look. This is what I wanted to show Henry”.

As soon as I saw that ship, my heart had stopped. The ship. The one from the photo. The boy. The room spun around me, and I found myself kneeling at the end of the jetty, the little sailing ship drifting on the pond, just beyond my reach. I stretched out. My fingers brushed the edge of the wooden hull, and I stretched a little further. I overbalanced. Cold water swirled around me. I tried to pull myself up onto the jetty, but the piling was slick and slippery. My muscles ached from the terrible cold. My clothes were heavy. The water engulfed me. I tried to scream, but my lungs filled with water. Everything went black, and I found myself once more, sitting in front of a plate of uneaten pork.

My body shook. I could not breathe. I thrust myself away from the table, terrified and confused. My chair clattered to the floor behind me.

For a moment, the room stood still. Everyone stared, not at me, but at the toppled chair.

Lucy screamed, Jeremy froze, Carsten dropped the platter he was carrying, and Marjorie gawked open-mouthed at her mother, who merely nodded.

“I told you,” she said. “My brother has come home.”