The passage perilous of the landing was relieved by the crack of light from the door at the other end. Laurie padded up to it, and looked in.
His father was packing. This was no new sight to Laurie, who had often helped pack; yet he knew, at once, that it was different. Not only had his father got down the big suitcase that he used only for going abroad, not only was every drawer open and the cupboard as well, but there was something different too about the way his father stood and moved. As Laurie looked, he took a file of papers out of a drawer, flipped it through, took out a few sheets, and tore up everything else the file contained. The pieces he threw down in a corner, on the floor, and simply left them there. Laurie had never in his life seen a grown person do this. He went in.
He was halfway across the room before his father noticed. He had picked up another file, and now turned with it in his hand. His face altered. There was something startled in it, shocked and strained. This frightened Laurie. He knew he was committing an enormity by being out of bed in the middle of the night; but he knew too that the look in his father’s eyes was not adjusted to his offense. It was private and personal. It recalled the unknown fears of the day.
“Hello,” said his father, staring at him. “What do you want?” He spoke quite kindly; but the feeling of difference grew.
Laurie made the emergency known at once. “I can’t go to sleep.”
“Never mind.” His father drew his thick dark brows together; his eyes glancing at his wristwatch looked narrow and blue. He said absently, “It’s not eleven yet.”
Laurie perceived that his father didn’t think he would die. But this fear had dropped away of itself as soon as he entered the room. The fear which returned in its place had, for all its doubtful shape, a dreadful solidity.
“Daddy,” he said in a tight, casual voice, “where are you going?”
“Now look,” said his father quickly, “this is no time at all to be running all over the house. You’ll catch cold. Straight back to bed now and not another word out of you. D’you hear?”
“Yes,” said Laurie slowly. The cold was striking through his pink-striped flannel pajamas. He waited for his father to pick him up and carry him back to his own room. But his father stared at him in silence for several seconds, then said in a quick, different voice, “Away with you, now.” He began to smile at Laurie, but that was worse, for the smile had something wrong with it. Suddenly his father turned away, and began throwing things into the suitcase from the bed.
At this moment the undertones, the gradual gathering of some days’ uncomprehended dread, coalesced for Laurie into a terrible certainty. He didn’t attempt to speak. The absolute impotence of childhood crushed him like the weight of the pyramids. His throat swelled; his face, squared like his father’s under his mother’s hair, grew crimson; the first silent tears burst out, followed by the first, most painful sob. The pressure rose in him, working toward the raging rebellious grief of the man-child who seeks in sound and fury for the strength of a man.
“Mother of God!” said his father. All other considerations swamped momentarily by dread of the approaching noise, he caught Laurie up into his arms, and smothered the convulsed face against his shoulder. The unfamiliar words and the rough gesture increased Laurie’s panic. He tried to scream, and, when his father held him more tightly, fought him, rigid, seeking space to thrash about and open his lungs. Dimly sensing this need, his father slackened his grasp, which now felt firm and reassuring. Laurie’s screams sank to sobs, to hiccups; he was quiet. Father and son gazed for a moment, with an equal anxious uncertainty, into one another’s eyes. Laurie gulped softly, his throat swollen from crying; and his father’s hard grip softened into tenderness. He freed one of his hands and began to ruffle Laurie’s hair. “Sure,” he said softly, “it’s a terrible thing then, so it is.”
The door opened wide. Laurie, looking over his father’s shoulder, saw his mother standing on the threshold.
“Michael!” she said quietly. “Oh, how could you?”
Laurie’s father said, “He woke up and came in.”
There was a pause. Still held in his father’s arms, Laurie looked around and saw his parents confronting one another. With a sense of profound shock, which altered the meaning of everything, he realized that his mother didn’t believe his father was telling the truth.
So dreadful a misunderstanding couldn’t last for more than a second. But, when he looked at his father’s face, he perceived that his father was accepting it. In some larger, unknown way beyond Laurie’s scope, the accusation had struck him home. He didn’t argue. He just lowered Laurie gently down, and set him on his feet on the floor.
As the firm, warm, supporting strength withdrew, Laurie was seized with a panic sense of insecurity and loss. He rushed blindly forward, sobbing, into his mother’s arms. Now all was familiar, immutable, sure. Cozily patted and smoothed, he pushed his wet cheek into her shoulder, and felt the final, absolute reassurance of her soft breast. Dimly he was aware of footsteps, and of a door shutting. When he looked up again his father had gone.
Tucked into bed with the rabbit hot-water bottle, a fresh night-light lit, he cuddled his mother’s hand, testing the favor and privilege he had sensed already. Tonight she wouldn’t say, “I must go and get dressed now, darling, I’m going out with Daddy.” Tonight and always she belonged to him. His mind felt beaten and aching, he would soon be sinking into exhausted sleep; but he knew also, with a triumph too profound to recognize itself, that after all it was he whom she loved the best.
“Go to sleep now,” she said, echoing his thought. “Mummie loves you. Mummie will always be here.”
He said drowsily, “Mummie. When I’m ten, will I be grown-up?”
“Not quite, darling.”
“When I’m grown-up, I’m going to marry you.”
“No, darling, but never mind. You’ll always be kind to Mummie, won’t you, and never do anything to make her cry?”
He pressed his flushed cheek against her hand, feeling its familiar shape, and the warm hardness of her rings. A vast and beautiful emotion filled him. He said, “I won’t ever be unkind, Mummie. I promise faithfully”; repeating it to make the beautiful feeling last. She stroked the curls back from his forehead. “That’s my darling boy. Now you must go to sleep. Shall I tell you St. George again?”
He said, “Yes, please,” to keep her beside him, but he only half listened to the familiar words. He had made, as he lay looking at the night-light’s quivering circle on the ceiling, a strange and solemn discovery. It had come to him that no one would ever look from these eyes but he: that among all the lives, numerous beyond imagination, in which he might have lived, he was this one, pinned to this single point of infinity; the rest always to be alien, he to be I.
“… So when St. George had untied her, he said, ‘Why have they left you all alone?’ And the princess said, ‘They were too much afraid of the dragon to stay with me, they ran away.’ Then St. George pulled out his sword, and he said …”