The Dark House

The cigar was a large one and Robert Stonehouse was small. At the precise moment, in fact, when he leant out of the upstairs bedroom window, instinctively seeking fresh air, he became eight years old. He did not know this, though he did know that it was his birthday and that a birthday was a great and presumably auspicious occasion. His conception of what a birthday ought to be was based primarily on one particular event when he had danced on his mother's bed, shouting, "I'm five-I'm five!" in unreasonable triumph. His mother had greeted him gravely, one might say respectfully, and his father, who when he did anything at all did it in style, had given him a toy fort fully garrisoned with resplendent Highland soldiers. And there had been a party of children whom, as a single child, he disliked and despised and whom he had ordered about unreproved. From start to finish the day had been his very own. Soon afterwards his mother disappeared. They said she was dead. He knew that people died, but death conveyed nothing to him, and when his father and Christine went down to Kensal Green to choose the grave, he picked flowers from the other graves and sent them to his mother with Robert's love. Christine had turned away her face, crying, and James Stonehouse, whose sense of drama never quite failed him, had smiled tragically; but Robert never even missed her.