I first saw the boy on the day of the funeral. I had travelled down by car after an early start and meant to go back again before dark, for I had no desire to stay the night.

I had only been to the house once before but it was all much as I remembered it; the thatched roof  and the sunken walls; the ancient, dark timbers and the low ceilings; the casement windows looking (as it all did) like something out of an official, glossy guide to a famous building; and then there was the decorative garden with its fountain and rose beds. Certainly they had never wanted for money - and never would from what I could gather.

Anita was there to receive me before we went off to church for the service. There were a few others already at the house who had travelled there the same day just as I had, and I got on well enough with them I suppose, in much the way you hope to on that sort of occasion.

Anita was friendly and seemed almost relaxed. She had never struck me as the crying sort and certainly there were no red rims about her eyes, no extra furrows across the forehead - not even a loss of colour to denote the grief she might have suffered. As always her appearance was immaculate - nails varnished, hair carefully set, face made up with skill and delicacy. Her father-in-law and her husband might be in their graves, but she would not allow herself to show that her courage had been at all dented. I heard one or two of the spiteful ones say later that Anita had no feelings, but personally I admired her. She treated me courteously at all times and I felt there could be no cause for complaint. You could always trust Anita, I felt, to tell you what she thought to your face, that is if she thought it worth having any opinion of you. I assumed that many of the people who came to the funeral that day were money conscious first and class conscious second, the type who resented criticism of any sort and, for that reason, disliked or envied Anita. Incidentally, I say ‘came to the funeral’ rather than, for example, ‘came to pay their respects’ because I got the impression that the only things most of them respected about the old man was his money and his ability to hang on to it. They did not seem to like either the fact that he had wisely hung on to most of it and then left his fortune to Anita. Anyway, no one should have suggested that she lacked feelings; she had only come to inherit wealth after a severe test of her nerve.

“Did you know him?” one of her uncles asked me as we walked back through the graveyard to the waiting car.

I explained that I had seen him once or twice on my only other visit.

“But even then he was a sick man,” I said, “and he didn’t come down from his room to be with company.”

“What were you here for? You don’t look like a racing man.”

“I’m not. In fact, I’d never seen a race horse until I came here.”

“What do you do then ?”

“I make and sell golf clubs.”

My nosy companion remembered then. I saw the light of understanding in his eye.

“You’re the one they met on that golfing holiday in Scotland, aren’t you? Where was it? Saint Andrews?”

“Gleneagles. I offered Joe the use of a new putter. You’d have thought I’d given him the Derby winner.”

The uncle was well acquainted with Joe’s golf mania. Incidentally we were discussing Joe, the son. He had inevitably inherited his father’s name.

“So, you came all this way to be at his funeral?”

I nodded. We had reached the cars by then and I was in a different vehicle to this relative. He tried to ask me, in an ill-concealed whisper, what I made of Anita and her apparent cheerfulness in adversity. He clearly wanted to discuss her.

“She certainly scooped the jackpot, old boy!” he told me. But there was no time for more. He was telling me, of course, that she cared only for the money that her husband and his father had left her. I wasn’t impressed by this man’s manner. He might have played the role of an uncle more caringly.

 

*

 

I cannot remember clearly who first talked to me about the boy. He had been just seven years old at the time of his father’s death, and now seven years and three months at his grandpa’s going. When I met them all on their golfing holiday, the boy was the delight of the old man’s life and even Joe junior, though not given to showing much affection in public, was ready to tell how much he loved his little boy.

“We decided there must be a boy to continue the family tradition,” Anita admitted to me, “and the trouble I had bringing him into the world meant he was to be the only one - I made that clear enough !”

Perhaps because the child was the only one, he had been spoilt; but I think they would all have loved him just as much had they been parents to a dozen children. Anyway, it was this little boy who caught the attention of several people on the day of the funeral. No doubt it was because of his attractiveness and his ‘old-fashioned’ manner; but I cannot help believing that it was also because the people there wondered about this child in the way that I was forced to wonder myself.

I had arrived at the cottage an hour early and I had decided to kill time by having a stroll in the woodland that skirted the far end of the garden.

“If you see Neil there, tell him he must come in and get changed immediately,” Anita told me. She complained that the boy was full of mischief and would be the death of her and I saw then how what she had just said made her flush. He had after all given her a hard enough time arriving in the world and her words had a grim, and perhaps not unintentional, irony.

The undergrowth and the woodland were tinder dry. Even so I was careful to stay on the pathway and so avoid getting any dirt on my suit.

I must have walked no more than fifty yards, though in the trees the distance was deceptive. I never expected to see the boy, nor did I expect to get much fresh air on that stuffy day. My purpose had been to get out of a house where the sense of bereavement was pervasive.

Such a hot day! But the foliage was thick and colourful and it provided enough shade to make me glad that I had come for my little stroll; and I came to see the boy too, though at first he saw nothing of me. There he sat in the glade sitting astride a collapsed tree where the grass had grown up more freely and the light made patterns of green and yellow.

Something had caught the child’s attention as he sat there in his elevated position on the overturned tree trunk. His hands were placed before him on the wood, close together, and his head was bent in concentration, his eyes focused on something which, from my position, I could not see.  Whatever it was it had his fullest attention, though perhaps he would not have noticed me anyway as I stood among the shadows. In any case I was in no hurry. I was happy enough to stand and watch and remain unobserved. I did not consider myself a spy for I made no effort to hide, though there were plenty of trees to screen me had I wanted to make use of them.

As I stood there it made me think of how closely this little boy with the mop of brown hair resembled his father. The boy had the kind of personality that had won him admiration on all sides - a little chatterbox really, forever saying things with that naivety that always amuses adults and wins their affection - the kind of chatter that never becomes insolent or offensively precocious. It made me think of the two dead men, the father and the grandfather and of their enormous affection for this little boy. They had made so many great plans for him and everyone said that the boy had none of Joe’s brashness or lack of compassion, none of Joe junior’s callousness; how everyone hoped that money would not ruin the child, that he would inherit his mother’s charms and have an attractiveness untainted.

What was he doing there in the woodland? What had he found that had kept his eyes so firmly fixed on the table top he had made of the tree trunk? There could be no doubt that he found much in the world about him to keep him alert and absorbed. I remembered seeing some of his drawings. He had an extraordinary gift for being able to copy pictures and the boy had, too, a memory for recitation - repeating by heart whole passages from his favourite story books. He had, it seemed, everything in his favour - health, intelligence and a sensible, caring mother; only that solitary problem loomed up in all of this to menace the family’s future prosperity. The grandfather and the father, who had died within such a short time of each other, had always tried to ignore what they did not want to talk about - pretend it wasn’t there. Anita was different; there could be no pretending with her, so she must surely have a good deal on her mind.

I watched him for a minute or so longer and admitted again that he was a truly striking child. They all called him Neill, though he had been baptised Joseph Neill, to distinguish him from the two Joes who had died. Then I stepped forward to announce myself.

He made no fuss about coming in to get dressed.

“What were you looking at?” I asked.

“O, nothing,” he replied in an off-hand way.

 

*

 

Later, when the service was finished, I sat with the company for a while and ate a sandwich for the sake of good manners, though I was not at all hungry. Anita had gone to a lot of trouble to get the food ready. What I did enjoy was a glass of iced squash. There were too many of us in the house and it was uncomfortably hot. I kept wanting to repeat my stroll into the woodland but it was difficult to get away. My new acquaintance, the uncle, contrived to sit next to me; he wanted to continue the conversation we had begun in the churchyard. He was much taller than me, a big-framed man sagging with late middle age. In a sense he was easy company for he had plenty to say and seemed happy to go ahead without too much come-back from me. He seemed anxious to impress me with his knowledge of the family, especially what he knew about Joe junior and Joe’s father, the old man whose funeral we were attending.

“Funny, really, how each of them contrived to have just one son apiece: Joe senior having Joe and then Joe having this little lad, Neill Joseph. Just the one son and heir each time.............”

I got the idea that he was jealous; it was an opinion I had formed earlier. Clearly Anita and the boy were the only true beneficiaries from the will. The uncle no doubt felt left out - as though he were entitled to anything anyway! You could surmise easily enough what he was thinking.

“Such a fine boy, too! Don’t you think so?”

We were both looking at young Neill at the time and all of the charm was there for us to see afresh.

“Looks a lot like his dad, don’t you think?”

Yes I did. Joe had been handsome enough to make a good partner for someone as beautiful as Anita. They had made a very photogenic family. You couldn’t help but notice it. I had thought it that first time on the golf course when someone had introduced me to Joe. He had the kind of looks that go down well on American T.V. promotions; that was somehow the right place for him to be; not that he hadn’t been a brilliant success at training winners.

It was therefore inevitable that the son would inherit the beauty of the parents and the fortune created by the grandfather - and yet there would always be that element of doubt, that question mark remaining.

I looked away from the little boy who, of all the people there, had the healthiest and most willing appetite. I turned now to Anita and admired again her immaculate face and beautiful hair; and I wondered what she thought of her son’s prospects.

“He looks a lot like both of them,” I told my companion.

“Such a shame about Joe,” observed the uncle, speaking with what I took to be sham concern. He was the type who liked to be heard - paying compliments, saying fulsome things - but I doubted whether there was much friendliness below the surface.

“Yes, it was a great shame,” I replied. My words were no more than a mumble. I wanted to leave this man and all the others and walk once more in the woods and look into the glade again and re-examine the place where the youngster had been.

“You know what I heard, don’t you?” my companion said. “Not that you must breath it to a soul (It was easy to see that the news was already common gossip) I did hear (his voice had become very quiet) that Joe had several - turns - before ever they put him into that place. O, yes, it’s true! Looking at Anita over there, you’d never believe what she’s had to put up with.”

For a moment he went no further so I asked him what exactly she had been forced to put up with.

“I see you really don’t know. Well, the fact is - he attacked her.”

My eyes narrowed.

“…….with a poker apparently. She was lucky to keep out of the way. He’d not even been drinking - or losing. There was no reason for it; no other explanation than the one they were forced to accept. The signs were there. Joe always had a cruel streak in him; he could be quite sadistic. You remember how he strangled that dog? No? Anyway, it was a harmless thing really - just not used to the horses - bound to scare ‘em if it got near. Take it from me, Joe gave everybody a scare or two. It broke the old man’s heart, you know - when they took his son away - and then, when Joe went for that evening stroll, it finished the old boy off. He was never the same. That’s why there’s only been three months between the two of them.”

I had never heard the fine particulars, nor had I truly wanted to, but he had begun to sound authentic.

“Yes, you’ve got to sympathise with the old boy,” continued the uncle in the same hushed, confidential tone. “After all, there seemed to be so much about Joe - he was admired - but the signs were there. It makes you wonder what Anita must have suffered.”

I did wonder; I had thought of her quite a lot already; and yet she seemed as composed as anyone there. Had it been like this three months earlier when they had held Joe’s funeral? It made me grateful to have been out of the country all through that time.

Had she been as composed that day as she had during this one? Could she have been as calm when they told her how her husband had slipped away from the asylum one night and hanged himself? It had broken the old man’s heart - to have to face the dreadful truth that the hereditary problem (apparently missing from his own blood) was as much alive as ever.

Certainly Anita did preserve an awesome calm and I hoped it was not because she was now the mother of a child who had just inherited a fortune. I did not want my notions of her beauty ridiculing.

It was the same with the little boy. His appearance and personality testified to something attractive and worth keeping. How on earth had they ever told him the news of what his father had done?

It became imperative, therefore, for me to return to the wood.

Eventually an opportunity presented itself. The uncle went to re-fill his plate at the table and got talking to somebody else. I stood up and strolled towards the french windows which Anita had thoughtfully opened to keep the air circulating. Once out in the sunlight it was a simple matter to cross the lawn and return to the woodland path. A man and a woman were already outside sitting by the ornamental fountain. I would have chosen not to notice them, but the woman called to me. She was one of Joe’s relatives who remembered me from my other visit. Was it his sister? She was very pretty and full of life; if it were the sister, you would never suppose she were at her father’s funeral. The man with her looked very serious. I got the impression she was giving him a difficult time.

“Come and sit with us if you like,” she said.

“No thanks. I must get some air. A walk will do me good.” 

I was afraid she might invite herself along, but she was content to stay there. If she felt I had been too abrupt, it was too bad.

And so to the shade of the woodland where I had found the little boy earlier in the day.

There was no difficulty in finding the fallen tree where I had seen him playing. It was only a short walk - a matter of a few minutes - but I could not settle until I had revisited the spot. I had to look again to be sure of the secret of the wood.

You will remember he had straddled the fallen tree-trunk using the wrinkled, sun-baked bark as a work table. There was in fact a branch jutting out from the trunk just to the right of where his hands had been. He had tied his string to this ready-made support and allowed it to dangle down on the same side - the side furthest from where I had stood.

I had seen the string earlier when I had asked what he was doing and I had noticed that something was suspended from it; but the string had been lowered on the far side of the trunk, so far that I could not see what he had tied there. It had been on my mind during the funeral service itself, during the time given to the buffet and during my time spent talking to Anita’s uncle. What on earth had the boy tied there? Why should it have bothered me so much?

At last the time of discovery! I leaned across the tree trunk, but the weight on the end of the string was down in the thick grass that was growing there. I had to pull it up to see properly.

What I saw made me release the string with an involuntary shudder and it quickly became taut once more, its load pulling down from the jutting branch.

Then I was annoyed with myself for letting such a silly thing make me jump. I also decided it was time for me to go. Soon after I said good-bye to Anita and offered condolences for the umpteenth time. She was certainly a beautiful woman. I really should have expected that she was bound to call over her little boy and tell him to be polite and say good-bye.

“Bye,” he said cheerfully and I was reminded again - just once more - of that radiant personality and pretty face - a blend of all that was best in two handsome parents.

I was glad to get away. It is always difficult to know what to make of a funeral. I could not treat it as a social occasion. I suppose the boy and I were of one mind in trying to keep out of the house and keep ourselves occupied as best we could. I told myself that he was just being imaginative staging his own funeral out there in the wood before going to the real one. Had I not interrupted him, he would surely have buried the mouse he had caught. Instead he had only got as far as the execution; having caught his mouse, he had hanged it with the piece of string and weighted it with a stone so that there could be no mistake.

1986