[5]

‘Are you there, Thomas?’ Harry’s tape begins. ‘It’s me, Harry. I want you to go back to when you were a boy with your mother and those that loved you. I want you to remember a day when you were happy and secure. You have an excellent memory. You can remember everything. What are you doing?’

‘I am sitting by the fire.’

‘Are you happy?’

‘Yes.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Eight.’

I ought to say that as I play all this back once more I am struck by the atrociousness of my Dorset accent; it is pure afternoon theatre West Country, that’s to say it could come from anywhere from South Oxford to the Scilly Isles. But then that was about as accurate a description as I could have given of where Dorset was. The other thing I detect is the great relief in Harry Vilbert’s voice. He was clearly very pleased with himself for finding Tommy young and happy and by the fire, in the full flush of cheerful, innocent boyhood. However, he was still cautious; he wasn’t counting his chickens yet.

‘Are you alone, Tommy?’

‘No.’

‘Who’s with you?’

‘My sister … and my mother.’

‘What is your sister doing?’

‘Playing.’

‘And your mother?’

‘Rocking.’

I don’t know why, but there is a long pause on the tape here. Rocking seems an innocuous enough occupation to me, but perhaps Harry was reminded of Martha Brown’s swinging – that seemed to be fairly carefree initially, also. Anyway, Harry seemed to be full of alarm.

‘How do you mean rocking, exactly, Tommy?’

‘You know, backwards and forwards.’

‘What on?’

‘Her chair.’

‘What kind of chair?’ (I think Harry was chronologically confused and had visions of the electric.)

‘Her rocking chair.’ (Or Psycho.)

‘Tommy, is your mother alive?’

‘Of course she’s alive. She wouldn’t be rocking if she was dead, would she? We’re all alive.’

Harry Vilbert fingered the amulet around his neck – it’s perfectly audible on the tape – and gave a little prayer of thanks to the forces of benevolence. ‘Good, I’m very pleased to hear that,’ he said.

But he was a mite premature. ‘All except Mr Rush, that is,’ Tommy continued.

‘Mr Rush? Who’s Mr Rush?’

‘Don’t you know? Everybody knows who Mr Rush is. He shot people.’

‘How do you know about him, Tommy?’

‘My mother tells me. She is always telling us stories about murderers and witches and curses and the Bible.’

‘And which is your favourite story, Tommy?’

‘The one about Mr Rush. He was very brave, you see. On the night before he was executed he asked for roast pig and plenty of plum sauce for dinner. And in the morning he told them to tie the noose high and to take as much time as they wanted hanging him. He said he wasn’t in any particular hurry.’

‘I suppose he wasn’t,’ said Harry, dispiritedly.

‘Mother says it was the governess who hanged him, but I don’t see how a governess could be strong enough to hang a man, do you?’