no, I suppose that’s not absolutely correct,’ said Abson, nervously smiling. ‘I was, as a boy, I remember, once given the part of a tree in some play or other.’
‘Yes?’ came the boy’s voice, quick and serious. There was unusual power in this young man. By split-second timing, by the sheer force of his expression and tone of voice, he had prevented a burst of laughter from the rest of the room.
‘Well, I suppose you wouldn’t really call it a play – it was probably a kind of ballet,’ said Mr Abson, still smiling, though there were no answering smiles from the others. ‘It didn’t, you’ll agree, need great dramatic gifts.’
‘On the contrary,’ said the young man at once.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Abson looked surprised.
‘On the contrary it would need rather special dramatic gifts to express this.’
‘Well, hardly human ones.’
‘Superhuman, then. Did you enjoy it?’
‘I think I did, now that you remind me. I’d really absolutely forgotten the experience.’
‘Perhaps there were others.’
‘Others?’
‘Perhaps there were other parts?’
‘I don’t think so – unless you count noises off. Anything I was asked to do was strictly non-human or background.’
‘To do a tree you’ve got to be more human, not less. You’ve got to be so human you can reach people and even go beyond them. That way you might just hope to arrive at your trees and rocks. Isn’t that so?’
‘Yes, that’s an interesting point,’ said Mr Abson.
‘What kind of tree was it?’ asked the young man.
‘An apple tree,’ said Abson. There were still no smiles.
‘In blossom or with apples?’ asked the young man.
‘Just leaves,’ said Mr Abson, remembering so much now that his face was warm for once. His eyes stared from a nucleus of shadowy, scalloped green. ‘And an interesting thing I remember – it was not to be a tree in the wind. That was definitely ruled out. Yet you’d have thought they’d have insisted on wind to make absolutely sure people knew what they were looking at.’
‘No, too obvious. All that thrashing and swooshing about, as though all trees must be in perpetual gales to show they really are trees. What rot!’
‘Well, maybe you’re right. Anyway, I had to make only the smallest movements – a kind of microscopic growing.’
‘Oh God – that’s difficult enough!’
‘Not much more than a vibration – I’m not sure about this.’
‘Your producer was a master then?’
‘He was quite a talented young man, I think,’ said Abson mildly. ‘A vibration, or was it perhaps the dry bark cracking a bit in the sun?’
‘God knows!’ exclaimed the young man, at last permitting himself to smile. At once the rest of the group released themselves from his control. The red-haired girl put her head back on to the knee of the man behind who after simply lifting up strands of the long hair and letting them drop, began plunging his fingers up from the roots, tugging so roughly through the knots that the girl had her eyes screwed up each time his hand came down. It looked like torture but when her eyes were open the expression was blissful. Mrs Imrie put the cup she had been holding all this time down on to its saucer. Neither the ghost nor the tree had exactly electrified the atmosphere for her. She decided that at a suitable moment she would give them the roof crashing in the night with the sparks flying off, and the butcher bent double over his bloody trembling knife.
‘Well, I suppose I should be getting up now,’ said Mr Abson. ‘I’ve very much enjoyed … but I think I’d better …’
‘With your early start in the morning …’ Mrs Imrie agreed, rising briskly to accompany him to the hall. But the boy who sat at the fire was before her. It was now almost an acrobatic feat to cross the room over the outstretched legs but he was up and out at the same moment as Mr Abson started to go slowly up, one hand on the banister. Through the open door they saw the young man go round to the side of the staircase and walk down the passage, sliding his own hand up the banister as far as it would go. For the last few inches he had to stand on his toes reaching out, his long fingers stretched hard against the wood, his body, straight and tense from head to foot, leaning forward at an angle along the banister. This sight gave the one or two who were watching a strange frisson of dread or elation. They watched a contact missed by inches, an effort to reach still further, doomed. Mr Abson’s hand moved smoothly on up the banister. He disappeared round the bend of the stairs without looking back. For a few moments longer the boy remained stretched out. Then his arm dropped like a weight. Mrs Imrie’s daughter joined him in the hall.
‘Poor ghost,’ said the young man, turning slowly from the stairs. ‘One of you should take a look at him now and then. Just once in a while – look at him, will you?’
‘I do. Honestly I do. Before you all arrived we were having a long talk.’
‘Or he’ll fade out. He’ll absolutely fade out.’
‘Don’t you think we look after him well?’
‘Look after – yes. Look at him!’
‘Why should he fade out? I see him as a sort of dark spark. He can be brought to life all right. But it takes constant fanning. Bellows even.’
‘Use them then!’ He went quickly past her into the room where Mrs Imrie had already started the conflagration. Chimneys were crashing in the street, red, green and orange flames unravelled from window to window, and from one a white bundle dropped, then another, to the gasping crowd below. Great swirls of living sparks were being blown for miles along the rooftops. No gush of water could quench these. No hosepipe, however long, catch up with them.
Mr Abson stayed with the Imries for two months more and then his work, whatever it was, took him to a neighbouring town where he remained another three months. And there he died. Three months ago. They had almost forgotten him. Or at any rate his face was not absolutely clear any more. But the manner of his death which they found in a newspaper, hearing further details from an acquaintance who lived in that town, jolted their memory in a peculiar way. He had failed to get out of the way of a lorry, the paper said. He had stepped out, said a witness, and stood still.
‘No, it was not deliberate, if that’s what you mean,’ said Mrs Imrie to a friend who had come in. ‘If it says “failed to get out of the way” then that’s exactly what it means. I wouldn’t say, now I come to think of it, that I ever saw him do anything exactly deliberately, would you, Brenda?’
‘Never. It would be that he didn’t know whether to put his feet backwards or forwards. I’ve seen him do just that on the thresholds of doors.’
‘You will never really know, will you?’ said the friend.
‘Never know what?’
‘Nothing.
