he had to try so hard that his voice came out as loud and careful as a radio announcer’s. “It’s quite simple really,” he said. “Why don’t you all go to Scarborough and just leave me here?”
“Oh indeed?” said Uncle Bernard. “And what do you propose doing in our absence?”
“Fill the house with compost and marmalade, I expect,” said Astrid.
“No,” said David. “That was a mistake. I’d be very careful, and I’d be out all day playing cricket.” An idea came to him as he spoke. It struck him as a brilliant one. “I tell you what – you could buy me a bicycle.”
“You’ll be asking for your own car next,” said Astrid. “Will you want a Rolls, or could you make do with a Mini?”
“Out of the question,” pronounced Aunt Dot.
“No, it isn’t,” David said eagerly. “A bicycle would cost much less than going to Mr Scrum. I thought you’d leap at the idea, really. It’s three miles to the recreation ground, you see.”
“Get this clear, David,” said Cousin Ronald. “You are going to Mr Scrum for your own good, and not to any recreation ground on any kind of conveyance.”
“I don’t want to go to Mr Scrum!” David said desperately.
“Why not?” Astrid said, laughing. “He may be very nice.”
“How do you know?” said David. “How would you like to go to Mr Scrum?” Astrid’s mouth came open. Before she or anyone else could speak, David plunged on, again trying so hard to be polite that his voice came out like an announcer’s. “It’s like this, you see. I hate being with you and you don’t want me, so the best thing is just to leave me here. You don’t have to spend lots of money on Mr Scrum to get rid of me. I’ll be quite all right here.”
There was a long and terrible silence. One of the shiny green flies buzzed maddeningly three times up and down the table before anyone so much as moved. At last, Cousin Ronald, red right up to the bald part of his head, pushed back his chair with a scrape that made David jump, and stood up.
“Get out,” he said, with fearful calmness. “Leave this room, you ungrateful brat, leave your lunch and don’t dare come back until you can speak more politely. Go on. Get out.”
David stood up. He walked to the door, which had somehow moved several miles off since he last came through it, and when he finally reached it, he turned and looked at them all. Three of them were sitting like statues of themselves. Cousin Ronald was still standing up, glaring at him. David saw that he really was the same height as Cousin Ronald, and that made him feel much less frightened of him, but much more miserable.
“I took five wickets against Radley House last week,” he said to Cousin Ronald. “You couldn’t do that.”
“Get out,” said Cousin Ronald.
“And I bowled our games master. Middle stump,” said David.
“Get out!” said Cousin Ronald.
“First ball,” said David, and he went out and shut the door very carefully and quietly behind him, much as he would have liked to slam it. Mrs Thirsk was coming up the passage from the kitchen, perhaps to bring the pudding, but more likely because she had heard something interesting going on. “Thin grey pudding!” David said loudly. But he could not meet Mrs Thirsk face to face because there were now tears in his eyes. He slipped out of the side-door instead and went running up the garden with great strides, until he reached the private space between the wall and the compost heap.
It was baking hot there. The air quivered off the compost. David stripped off the ballet-skirt sweater – which served to dry his face – and squatted down anyhow in the middle of the gravel. He could not remember having been so angry or so miserable before. For a while, he was too angry and miserable even to think.
His first real thought was to wonder why he had not seen before that all his relations wanted was to get rid of him whenever they could. He supposed that was why they made such a point of his being grateful – because they looked after him when they did not want him in the least. And he wondered why he had not realised before.
His second thought was to wish he could go away and live on a desert island. Knowing that was impossible made him so miserable that he had to walk about and scrub his eyes with the back of his hand. Then he thought he would like to have the law on his relations. But they had not done anything he could have the law on them for. The judge would say they had treated him well and he ought to be grateful.
“Oh, I hate being grateful!” David said. And he wished his relations were wicked, instead of just ordinary people, so that he could do something awful to them.
Then he thought of the way they were sending him to Mr Scrum, and he wanted to do something awful to them anyway. Something to make sure that they were miserable for every moment they spent in Scarborough. Suppose he put a curse on them? Yes, that was it. He had read a rather pointless book last term, in which the boy put a curse on someone and it had worked. He would do the same to Uncle Bernard, Aunt Dot, Cousin Ronald – specially Cousin Ronald – and Astrid.
David roved up and down the hot space thinking what to put. And he had another idea. He would not curse them in English, because that was too ordinary, so ordinary that it might not even work. But he had read somewhere else that if you gave a set of monkeys a typewriter each and let them type away for twenty years or so – wouldn’t they get tired of it in five minutes? David broke off to wonder – anyway, they typed away and ended up accidentally typing the complete works of Shakespeare. In the same way, surely, if you just said any sounds that came into your head, wouldn’t you, mightn’t you, end up by reciting a real rattling good curse that would make it snow in Scarborough all next week and perhaps bring Cousin Ronald out in green spots into the bargain? And if it did, it would have the advantage of being an accident, and not truly David’s fault at all.
It seemed worth trying. For the next twenty minutes or so, David walked up and down the hot gravel, from compost to wall and back, muttering words and mouthing what he hoped were strange oaths. When he found a combination that sounded good, he stood still and recited it aloud. Each time he felt secretly a little foolish, because he knew perfectly well it had made no difference to his relations at all. But it was very satisfying all the same, and he went on.
At last he found the best combination of all. He could really almost believe it was words, fierce, terrible words. They asked to be said. And they asked to be said, too, in an important, impressive way, loudly, from somewhere high up. David climbed to the top of the compost heap, crushing baby marrows underfoot, and, leaning on the handle of the spade, he stretched the other hand skywards and recited his words. Afterwards, he never remembered what they were. He knew they were magnificent, but he forgot them as soon as he said them. And when he had spoken them, for good measure, he picked up a handful of compost and bowled it at the wall.
As soon as he did that, the wall started to fall down.
It was like an earthquake. It is a horrible feeling to have caused an earthquake. The wavering and heaving were to some extent under David’s feet, and the compost shifted and quivered like quicksand. That would have been enough to send David leaping down from it. But he could see that the wavering and heaving was stronger near the wall. He knew the wall was going to come down and that it was his fault. He tried to run towards it.
“No, no!” he said. “Stop it! I didn’t mean it!”
The solid ground came up in ripples under his feet and made him stumble. In front of him, the wall rippled too. He could hear the bricks grinding as they swayed up and down. The top of the