Read Online The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill - Free Book Online

those times I went to stay with them. You knew how I loved itthere, how I always asked when I could go next. I wanted to live there. I loved the bungalow, because it was a bungalow, there were no stairs. I loved the breakfast she cooked for me every morning, and the small bookcase againstthe wall beside the telephone where I sat on the floor and read ‘Your Body in Health and Sickness’ by Dr Roberts. I learned so much from that book. It helped to shapemy destiny.
    I loved opening the door of my bedroom slightly and listening to the murmur of talk in the sitting room just along the short corridor, and the voices from the radio.
    That was how I first heard of Arthur Needham. I heard his name on the radio, and then, them talking about him, so that he became a mysterious figure in my dreams.
    ‘Who is Arthur Needham?’ I asked one morning in themiddle of my scrambled egg.
    Aunt Elsie and Uncle Len looked at one another. I can see that look now. He frowned and I was sent to clean my teeth. But later, she said, ‘You’ll hear about it soon enough, so I’m going to tell you. You’re quite old enough to know.’
    The tone of her voice seemed to change, to go lower into her throat, though she wasn’t whispering. I caught an excitement in it. Shewas enjoying this, behind the solemn expression.
    Arthur Needham was a small draper who had married a widow with a bit of money and, a year later, murdered her. When he discovered that she had in fact left the money not to him, as she had made out, but to her only daughter, he had murdered the daughter too.
    I was interested at once.
    ‘Where is Arthur Needham now?’
    ‘In the condemned cell.’
    I wanted to know, I wanted to know everything. Aspark from her excitement had touched me and lit something inside me that would never go out.
    ‘He’s a wicked, evil man, and I’ll be there, watching and waiting until I know he’s been punished and justice has been done.’
    ‘What will happen?’
    ‘He’ll be hanged by the neck until he is dead.’ Her face had changed too now; her eyes were bulging slightlyand her mouth was thin and tight and bloodless.
    ‘You can come with me,’ she said.
    Four days later, when she was seeing me to bed, and after she had heard my prayers, she said, ‘It’s tomorrow morning. If you still want to come.’
    ‘To the hanging prison?’
    ‘You can change your mind and no shame.’
    ‘I’m coming with you.’
    ‘It’ll do you good to see evil vanquished.’
    I didn’t understand, of course,but I knew that I wanted to be there.
    ‘I’ll be waking you,’ she said, ‘early. And now you have to make me a solemn promise.’
    ‘I promise.’
    ‘That you never breathe a word to a living soul about this coming with me tomorrow, where you go, what you see. Your mother’d never forgive me. So you promise. Never a word.’
    ‘Never a word.’
    ‘To a living soul.’
    ‘To a living soul.’
    I remember that I added,‘Amen.’
    My aunt went out of the room and I lay on my back, thinking that I would never sleep for wantingto go to the hanging prison. And not wanting to. ‘To a living soul,’ I promised.
    I kept my promise. But it’s all right now, isn’t it? I can tell you at last and the promise is still not broken.
    It was as dark as tar when Aunt Elsie woke me before six the next morning, but there was a cupof hot, sweet tea for me before I had to set foot out of bed and then a fried egg tucked into a thick fried-bread sandwich.
    If I close my eyes, I can smell the air now, the smoke from all the chimneys thick in my mouth, mingled with the sharp cold. I can still feel Aunt Elsie’s hand in mine and the hardness of her rings bedded in the soft plumpness of her fingers.
    We walked down Pomfrey Streetand then Belmont Road, to the tram stop, and now the streets were busy with women walking to the factories, arm in arm and three or four in a row, all wearing headscarves, and the men in caps, a lot of them on bicycles. The smoke from their