Grinny Read online

  Grinny was drinking all this in. Once or twice her lips moved as if she were about to say ‘But –’. She asked several more questions about When, Where, How Long, but we managed to answer them without giving the game away. She was getting more and more tensed up.

  In the end, Mum shouted for Beth to lay the table so she got up and I said, ‘Oh, I suppose I’d better help,’ and went with her. This was just as well, because Grinny would soon have forced us to say we saw all these wonderful spacecraft in a TV programme called LONESPACE. As it was, we left her looking very worried indeed.

  I am worried too. It is the same old problem. Here is an old woman who can be told by two children that they have often seen things in the sky – elaborate spacecraft of various sorts – and take it all seriously. Very seriously. She was worried. I remember that she was particularly worried when we said we had been seeing them for years – that was when she said, ‘But that is impossible!’ She looked really worked up then.

  Continued tomorrow, too tired tonight.

  March 11

  The other trick we played on Grinny worked so well that it means the end of GCG. It worked too well.

  This one did not happen by itself, Mac, Beth and I arranged it to test Grinny’s reaction to electricity. You will remember that she has always been peculiar about electricity and we wanted to find out more.

  So Mac brought a Wimshurst machine to our house. This is the antediluvian device with two big contra-rotating wheels and sticks with knobs on the end of them sticking out. You wind the handle, the two wheels turn, static electricity is generated – and you get exciting blue sparks zipping about between the two knobs. My father was delighted when he saw it, he said they had one at his school when he was a boy, it was supposed to teach the lads about electricity. He chuckled a lot and wound the handle faster and faster trying to get bigger and better sparks. He said he was amazed to know that such a load of old nonsense still existed, where did we find it, etc. Mac told him that it was mouldering away in a storeroom in the school, which is quite true.

  Anyhow, we waited until Father and Mum were somewhere else and carted the ridiculous contraption into the drawing room, where Grinny was. Then we started turning the handle slowly and chattering to each other, hoping to attract Grinny’s attention.

  Sure enough she started asking all the right questions and we gave her some rather wrong answers. Mac said it was a bacon-slicer. I said, ‘It’s not, don’t be such a fool. Have you ever seen a bacon-slicer like this, Grinny? Really …!’ She said no she never had. Beth then said, as arranged, ‘What does a bacon-slicer look like, Grinny?’ and Grinny gave an evasive answer. I don’t think she has ever noticed a bacon-slicer in her life, which is odd, because big shiny slicers used to be a focal point of grocery shops – we still have a beauty in our shop.

  I then piped up and said, ‘Don’t be such morons, it’s a Wimshurst machine. It generates electricity.’

  Grinny looked uneasy. I added, ‘The voltages are very high – thousands of volts.’

  Grinny looked still worse.

  I said, ‘Wind her up and see if we can’t get a spark or something.’

  Grinny said, ‘Please, children, I would prefer that you took that machine elsewhere.’

  We pretended not to hear and wound away like mad. Soon we had long snaky sparks going and Grinny was trying to look blank. The sparks were reflecting in the wainscoting, the whole corner of the room was flickering blue.

  As arranged, Mac said, ‘There must be some power behind all that! I mean, just look at the sparks!’

  I said, ‘Nonsense, no power, just volts.’

  He said, ‘Well, I bet you wouldn’t put your hand through the spark!’

  I pretended to be half afraid but boastful. In the end, after a lot of ‘I will!’ and ‘You won’t’, I did put my hand in the spark and got the tickling I expected. I then made a great song and dance about it – jumped up in ‘agony’ but said, ‘Told you so, didn’t hurt a bit, couldn’t hurt a flea,’ etc. – and eventually made Mac and even Beth be as ‘brave’ as I had been. Grinny was getting very uneasy all this time. I saw her put her hand to her face in an uncertain dabbing sort of way, get half up in the chair, open her mouth without saying anything, etc. She never changed colour, however. She never does.

  We pretended to become boisterous and over-excited. We pulled the machine about on the floor so it got closer to her, I then lifted it on to a table in the middle of the room and started twirling the handle again. Then we began whispering and at last Beth said, ‘I bet she would! You would, wouldn’t you, Grinny?’

  Grinny said, rather jerkily, ‘I would what?’

  ‘Put your hand in the spark! It feels super! All tingly and funny!’

  Grinny said, ‘Certainly not, no, no. Certainly not.’

  But Beth was well into her enthusiastic TV Kiddie routine and was saying, ‘Oh, but it’s marvellous, it’s fantastic, we all did it, oh do be a sport, I told them you would! –’ and Mac and I lifted the machine off the table and brought it to a table next to Grinny’s chair. She stood up and made a sort of noise but Mac pretended not to notice and wound the handle to make the sparks come and Grinny backed away and fell back in her chair again.

  At this moment, Father came in.

  What happened next is obvious enough without being. written out in full. The words Yob, Brat, Yahoo, Bloody Impertinence, etc., etc., resounded freely through the ancestral halls. Mum came in. She sized up the situation in an instant by forcefully mentioning the word teasing, which is precisely what we had been doing. We had been teasing Grinny in an attempt to get an indicative response.

  When Mum had quite finished with us (Father standing behind her, jetting in the occasional expletives) we were feeling not only thwarted – for we had never finished our experiment – but also humiliated. It was Grinny who came to the rescue.

  She said, ‘I don’t think they were teasing so much as testing! Don’t you think that possible, my dear? An old lady like me … No, I’m sure they meant no harm. And no harm is done, none at all.’

  ‘There are a few tests I can think of myself,’ said Father. ‘How strong is a walking stick? How flexible is a slipper? How sensitive is a backside?’ This sort of talk means that he is beginning to enjoy a situation: it is when he is too choked to do anything but utter monosyllables that you run risk of lasting physical damage.

  Beth now rounded things off neatly and with excruciating bad taste by saying, in effect, ‘Oh! We are truly repentant! And all too conscious of shortcomings! We are but little children weak, not born to any high degree, forgive us our trespasses and never again shall we stray from the path of rectitude,’ etc., etc., etc. ad nauseam. Not that she spoke these words, all she needs is her eyelashes and a voluntary compression of the tear glands. What she did say was something about us not teasing, just testing (weally and twuly) and if Grinny wanted to test us right back, that was only fair.

  To our surprise, Grinny took this up. She said that would be fun, she would like to test us, was there a game called Memory or something?

  From then on, the evening became a sort of Mental Agility Olympic Games. We played that stupid game with a tray – someone goes out and loads the tray with mixed things, all listed, then the tray is brought in and everyone tries to remember as many things as possible. Father always wins at this.

  Grinny won.

  Next we played the card game in which the cards are put on the table any old how, face up – then turned face down – and each person tries to name, from memory, the card he chooses to pick up. If you’re right you just keep going, and the person with most cards wins.

  Grinny won.

  When I write ‘Grinny won’, I don’t merely mean that she won. She decimated – obliterated – smashed us. Her performance was not merely outstanding but phenomenal. Her memory wasn’t just retentive, it was Total Recall.

  March 12

  When you think back on it, these memory games we played – in fact everything
that happened that evening – proved yet again that Beth was right. The trick with the electricity is no longer important; we expected her to be frightened, she was frightened, QED.

  But the memory games are another matter. What I think happened is that she simply was not aware of her extraordinariness when she infallibly got the right card or remembered each and every item on the tray. To her, it was just normal practice, just as it is normal for a cat to leap from floor to mantelpiece and land up there without disturbing a single object. Humans can’t jump five or six times their own height and land like a computer-programmed feather: very few humans could compete with Grinny when it comes to remembering things.

  But now look at Grinny’s contradictions! Here is a person who cannot remember conkers – but can remember every card in the pack.

  You can go on like this forever – contradiction after contradiction in the things she can do and can’t do.

  Add all the rest of the extraordinary things about Grinny (including my parents’ relationship with her – why do they never question her about leaving, about our grandmother, about anything?) and you come to this:

  Beth is right – Grinny isn’t real.

  But you also come to another thing or two.

  IF SHE IS NOT HUMAN, WHAT IS SHE?

  WHY IS SHE HERE?

  WHAT IS SHE FOR?

  * * *

  1 Muscle Beach – the Carpenters’ swimming pool, built by Mr Carpenter. It has a removable glass roof and is heated for winter use. The pool is Mr Carpenter’s greatest luxury, the only item, he says, on which he has ever spent more than he can afford – and the only thing, his work apart, about which he is somewhat fanatical and insistent. He uses the pool daily and makes it plain that he expects the family to follow his example at week-ends, even in darkest winter.

  The Author

  Diary

  Book Two

  April 10

  It’s late at night and perhaps that has something to do with it. But I’ve been re-reading my diaries, looking back to those days in late Feb and early March and thinking – well, what have I been thinking? ‘Cor!’ just about sums it up. Cor, fancy being so nice-minded about Grinny. Cor, fancy not seeing more clearly just how right Beth has been all along with her WAW sort of reasoning. Cor, fancy sitting down and solemnly writing out all the things that make Grinny different from us – and still avoiding coming to the point, coming out with it by saying, ‘Grinny! You’re a freak and I forgive you for that. But you’re a dangerous freak. You’re a threat, a menace, a monster with a capital M, like Movie Monster, Murdering Monster, Man-eating Monster.’

  No, it’s worse than that. You’re here for something. At the moment, you’re just a sort of suitcase and nobody notices the ticking noise. Later – WHOOMPF! – and people screaming and bleeding, broken glass and blood on the pavement. ‘Oh yes, Officer, I saw this feller with the suitcase sure enough, I saw him plain so I did, but how was I to know …!’

  But I can’t say that, I can’t pretend any more. I have-seen Grinny plain. I’ve seen her for a long time. I’ve seen my own parents not see her, so to speak. I’ve listened to Beth, but not listening properly because she’s just my kid sister. I’ve been going around pretending to myself that it’s all perfectly OK, mustn’t make a fuss, doncherknow, not British. Like that story Father tells about the war, during the Blitz. When the raid started they could actually hear the bombers overhead so they all went into the hotel shelter – the story happened in a London hotel. But even in the shelter they could hear the bombers overhead going VOOM-er VOOM-er, VO O M-er, and then they heard bombs falling. Everyone in the shelter was very quiet. Then there was the most colossal bang and plaster fell. Then there was another bang, even worse, the lights went out, they could hear the building falling down above them. Still nobody said anything. At last an American woman’s voice, thoroughly bad-tempered and disgusted, yelled out, ‘For chrissake, WHY DOESN’T SOMEBODY SCREAM?’

  As Father says, it was funny at the time, but the really funny thing was that the woman was right. It’s not natural not to react.

  And it’s the same with Grinny. It’s not natural for us just to sit here and say, ‘Oh, isn’t it strange, here’s this sinister freak come to stay with us for ever and ever, she lights up at night and seems to have something to do with unidentified flying objects, please pass the muffins.’ We’ve got to get at her, find out more, look for her weak spots, discover what she’s all about.

  Talking about muffins, that song keeps going through my mind. I can’t remember it properly. It’s on an old record of Father’s, it starts off something like

  The King of the Cannibal Islands

  Invited me to tea.

  And there at the top of the menu

  Was ME!

  That’s the position we’re in here. At the top of the menu, waiting to be eaten. But whether we’re going to be served boiled, fried or just docile, I don’t know. We must find out, we must.

  I suppose I’m writing all this strong-arm stuff just to nerve myself for what’s ahead. It’s so still and cold and calm tonight. You look out into the garden and there it is, quite still and bleached by the moonlight. Nothing moves. Everything seems to be waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting for what? For lights in the sky and a thundering noise and lots of little green men getting out of a spaceship, then walking up the garden, very fast and determined? I’d believe that, I’d believe anything at this moment. But, there’s nothing out there, nothing at all, not even a cat or two. Not a thing moves.

  It’s the same in my room. I mean, I’m here, I can move. I stood in front of the mirror a minute ago and pulled faces at myself. I winked one eye, then put out my tongue, then raised an imaginary hat to my reflection. They used to do a gag on that in the old silent movies, you’d have the villain feeling very suspicious – he thinks he’s being watched and of course he is; the chief comic, made up to look just like the villain, is in the room with him – so the villain goes up to an open space, a connecting door for instance. He takes it for a mirror. He starts going through all sorts of ridiculous motions. And the comic, pretending to be his reflection in the ‘mirror’, imitates everything he does. It gets funnier and funnier because you’re sure the comic can’t keep it up. And in the end he doesn’t, he makes a wrong move. It really is very funny, terrific.

  And yet when I was doing it just now – making faces at my reflection – it didn’t seem funny at all, just sort of frozen and waiting. The whole room feels like that. The whole house does. As if something was going to happen, not now, not just yet, but soon enough. The house has felt like that ever since Grinny came. No, that’s not true – ever since Beth started her hate act. If Beth hadn’t come out and said it, wouldn’t anyone else have done so?

  I wonder what Grinny’s doing now? I wonder if she really does sleep in some way, like we do? Or is she just lying there on the bed, ticking over like my clock? It makes a hell of a racket, no wonder I can’t sleep. If you can’t sleep, it’s better to get up and do something, lying in bed listening to your pulses doesn’t do any good. So I got up and wrote in my diary. In the morning, of course, everything will be the same as ever – Mum yelling the time at me and sending Beth up to get me out of bed and Father losing things and the trees moving again in the garden.

  But even in the morning, there’ll still be Grinny.

  We’ve got to do something about her or to her. It isn’t just the night and the quietness, I’ve got this feeling that there isn’t much time. We must think of something to do.

  April 13

  Tried ‘Eyes Right’ on Grinny. It worked. Could be the breakthrough…?

  April 14

  We tried it again today – Eyes Right – and it worked just as well as before. It works on Grinny just the same way it works on anyone normal, only more so. I remember Mac and I once made Beth almost hysterical when we kept Eyes Right up for a whole afternoon. The effect on Grinny is even more dramatic: it doesn’t just upset her, it seems to throw her right of
f her tracks. Even I would call the effect sinister.

  The beauty of Eyes Right is that no outsider can really be positive you’re doing it. So you cannot be accused of anything. Not that I would mind much if someone did accuse me. I am sick and tired of the whole Grinny situation and the sooner we can bring it out into the open the better. Beth was right all along. It only remains to find out just what she was right about.

  Mac wanted to make what he called an Elegant Variation and do it to the left instead of the right, but I said no, we’ll stick to Eyes Right. It must always be done the same way so that the effect builds up.

  So after dinner, when we were alone with her, we gave her the treatment. We all stared at a point just one foot to the right of Grinny’s head whenever we spoke to her, instead of looking her in the eye in the usual way.

  We opened the proceedings by a minute or so of silent Eyes Right. Then Beth said, ‘I did like the pudding, didn’t you, Grinny?’

  As before, Grinny was shifting in her seat, trying to get into our line of sight. She was twitching towards the place where our eyes were all focused. She said, ‘I have a slight headache. I am not well tonight.’

  Mac said, ‘Can I get you an aspirin?’ She tried to catch his eye, but couldn’t of course. She bobbed to the right and said, ‘Oh no, it is nothing serious.’

  ‘Let me get you one,’ said I. She tried to focus me but couldn’t.

  Beth said, ‘Is it very bad, Grinny?’ and Grinny was obliged to look at Beth … who was looking where Grinny wasn’t. Anyhow, it went on and on until she started dabbing her hand towards her face as if trying to reassure herself that she was there.

  Then the next stage set in. She began to lose her temper. She became waspish, just like the last time. She said something about ‘behaving oddly’ which was a mistake – Beth got to her feet and went nearer Grinny, still looking one foot to the right of her eyes, and said, ‘O Grinny, do let me get you an aspirin, you must have such a bad headache.’ Of course, the nearer you get to the person, the worse the effect is. Grinny started to twitch her mouth and shift her head. But as usual she never changed colour. Nor did she breathe faster.