THE DEMON FALTERING
The nursery curtains toyed with the cool draught.
"How do you cope?" asked one who was on the floor.
"The demon has to cope, not me," answered the other who rocked in her chair.
"The demon?"
"Yes, the demon. He takes the children under his wing and tells them that if they misbehave, he'll conjure HIMSELF up to make them behave."
The girl on the floor, the girl with the trip-switch questions made hardened cheeks with her tongue. The other replaced the smelling-salts phial inside her sloping blouse pocket.
Gradually falling quiet, one upright, the other slumped, they abandoned any further opportunities for conversation - not that there was much to say to each other in the first place. From outside, in the recently wettened street, the pointed echoes of high-heels enhanced loneliness with their clipping and return clopping.
One enjoyed the luxury of hesitation and began to dream without sleeping at all. The other yawned in her floor-bound slumber and saw a whip snaking like a fault on celluloid. It stung like ice fire. Breath was too deep to allow crying out. Even in pain, anguish could not be mimicked.
Only yesterday, the visit had again been enacted as if there was somebody actually there in the rocking-chair.
"Hello, Aunt. How are you today?"
"I'm fair to middling, fair to middling."
"How many children have you got to look after these days?"
"Seven, dear. Fourteen darling little eyes darting about the nursery like firefly wishes."
"How do you cope, Aunt?"
"Well, I've told them of a demon who'd come as soon as he hears mischief afoot. A demon with a long long tail..."
"Does that scare them?"
"I don't know, dear, but it really scares ME."
"The children sound quiet tonight, Aunt. Almost too quiet to be true."
"Well, the demon's here now, organising games."
"What games? Can I join in and help?"
"You'll NEVER find any of them when they're playing Hiding-Seek. Wait until you hear their voices again. It's as if they return from somewhere that's not real."
"Does the demon find them, Aunt?"
"No, the demon's the one that hides them."
"So, who finds them?"
"I'm the one supposed to seek. But I know all the time I'll never succeed. It's so much a waste of time, I fancy. Still, they do enjoy it. And it keeps them so VERY quiet."
"I remember when I was young enough to play such games, Aunt. But Hide-and-Seek always made us more noisy than when we weren't playing it."
"The demon was very shy about coming those days. You children had to be VERY bad before it plucked up enough anger to come."
"Wasn't I ever VERY bad?"
"Yes, I think you were, dear ... once."
"What did I do, Aunt?"
"You pretended to be a grown-up person, inviting your niece for tea, and sharing grown-up talk. It lasted all day and most of the night, till the demon came ... but are you comfy down there?"
The listening-shape on the floor wrapped itself round into a black pussy-cat flower, and did not answer, leaving the one called Aunt to continue:
"Sometimes, one has to be cruel to be kind ... or kind to be cruel."
A long wiry arm was withdrawn from the Aunt's empty sleeve, having hesitated only a single moment.
Across night's fault-line, the clicking of heels eventually faded. The walker of the night - one who was a mere faltering stranger - naturally continued to be unaware of the pangs with which the nursery's concealing curtains coped.
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