Hillman's Imp - Ian Critchley

I had been abroad for the best part of twenty years, most recently in South Africa, but after my latest business venture failed, I began to think about retirement and decided to return to England. It seemed a very different place to the one I’d left all those years ago. I didn’t recognise most of it, and wondered if I would ever be able to make it a home again. 

Perhaps it was this feeling of rootlessness that made me reach out to people I’d once known. I wrote to my old friend Peter Hillman at the last address I had for him. I had no idea if it was still current, but I included my mobile number, plus the name of the hotel I was staying at, and expressed the wish that we might meet.

When it came, the response was not from Peter himself. I was out for a walk on Primrose Hill one hot, humid afternoon when my phone rang. The caller’s number was unrecognised but as soon as I answered and heard her voice, I knew it was Louise, Peter’s daughter.

‘Felix,’ she said, ‘it’s so good to hear your voice.’

‘Likewise,’ I said, then faltered, lacking practice in the ways of English small talk. I decided it would be best to get straight to the point. ‘Is everything OK?’

‘Dad’s not well, I’m afraid. Not well at all.’

Although she spared me the details, she left me in no doubt there was little that could be done for him.

‘He’s struggling,’ she went on. ‘He’s lonely, although he won’t admit it. He doesn’t see many people these days. It would be wonderful if you could visit. Please say you’ll come.’

***

Peter and I had once been inseparable. We met in the first week of our first term at Bristol, both of us having opted to study Geography. He’d attended a minor public school and was smarting from parental disapproval because of his failure to get into Oxford. By contrast, my parents had seemed surprised I’d even made it as far as higher education. Peter’s background couldn’t have been more different to mine, and we had contrasting temperaments too – I was introverted, painfully so, while Peter was noisy and gregarious and always ready to joke – but we bonded over a shared love of cricket and books. He had a car and even this seemed to have been chosen as a source of comic potential – it was a Hillman Imp, which he liked to claim had been made especially for him. The 1970s were a bleak time in so many ways – what with the seemingly never-ending rounds of strikes and blackouts – but Peter brought fun and laughter wherever he went. He was colour where everything else was grey.

After graduating we both moved to London, sharing a flat in Tufnell Park. Through family connections, Peter got a foot in the door at the BBC. I was aimless for a long time. Increasingly broke, I took the first job offered to me: working in admin at a shipping firm. It was tedious stuff, far removed, so I thought, from the glamour Peter must have been experiencing in television, but to his credit he never boasted or made me feel inferior. Our evenings and weekends together were a continuation of our student days. I could put up with work because I knew I would be returning each day to our shabby but homely flat and putting the world to rights with Peter over a drink or three.

It’s strange looking back and realising how inevitable the changes were. At the time I struggled to cope with life’s transitions. They took me by surprise, though now I realise it’s just the way things go in everybody’s life. I was naïve, I guess, unschooled in the ways of reality.

Peter met Gemma at a party. The daughter of a QC, she was beautiful, beguiling. He was utterly captivated by her. They were engaged within a year, and although I was delighted to be best man at their wedding – a grand affair at her family home in Berkshire – part of me was also worried about practicalities, about what I would do without him. My concerns proved well founded, as after Peter moved out I went through a succession of disagreeable flatmates. Oh, I suppose none of them were terrible people (except Ned Booth, who stole cash as well as several bottles of wine). But none of them could match up to Peter. 

We still saw each other, of course. I was a dinner guest at their Highgate home many times. But already I sensed that we were drifting apart. One evening, Peter joined me in their garden for a cigarette. I remember it clearly still: a hot night brilliantly lit by a full moon and thousands of stars. Peter and I stood silently for a while, enjoying the peace away from the raucous, argumentative crowd of media types in the dining room. Then Peter stubbed out his cigarette, turned to me and said, ‘No matter what happens, Felix, we’ll always be friends.’

Even then, I wasn’t sure I believed him.

***

He still lived in the Highgate house, though it was far too big for his needs. Perhaps he couldn’t bear to leave it, to lose that connection with Gemma. 

When his nurse led me into the sitting room, I barely recognised him. It wasn’t only because I hadn’t seen him for more than two decades. He was a sunken husk, a pallid, crippled being, hunched over in his wheelchair as if trying to minimise contact with the outside world. When he looked up at me, I wasn’t certain he knew who I was. Of course, I was changed too, though surely not as dramatically. This was a man not even seventy yet, but he seemed much, much older. There was a long pause after I greeted him, and he looked up at me with an expression so vacant I wondered if he had lost control of his mind as well as his body. But then he uttered my name in a voice barely above a whisper. 

I perched on the edge of a sofa opposite him. ‘How are you, Peter?’

‘Fine, fine,’ he croaked. ‘Never better.’

His lips cracked into a smile, and for a moment I caught a glimmer of his old self, the joker, the mischief-maker. But the smile soon faded. He was trying to study my face, I thought, but his eyes seemed to lack focus. Desperately, I sought something to say. It was summer and the County Championship was in full swing, and although I had lost track of the players during my time abroad, I thought it might still provide a connection, a branch I could hold out to this drowning man.

‘I see Middlesex are doing well,’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Middlesex. The cricket?’

He shook his head, as if he had never heard of the sport. Then he turned sharply and shouted, ‘It’s here!’

I stood, shocked by the sudden rise in his voice, the vehemence in it.

‘What?’ I said, bewildered. ‘What’s here?’

‘Do you not see it?’ He pointed towards the fireplace. I followed his finger, but saw nothing except a candlestick and an empty vase. 

‘I don’t know what you mean, Peter.’

‘There!’ he shouted. ‘There! It’s there!’

His voice sounded panicky now, and I went over to him, intending to try and reassure him. But when I reached down to his shoulder, he batted my hand away. 

‘You’re lying! You do see it. You’re a liar!’

The sound of his raised voice brought the nurse rushing into the room. She cast me a look full of venom, as if Peter’s agitated state was my fault.

‘You mustn’t excite him,’ she said.

It was pointless arguing with her, and besides she was so busy fussing around her patient that she soon seemed to forget I was there. I made to go, but as I passed his wheelchair, Peter shot out a hand and grabbed my wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong.

‘You will come again,’ he said.

I gave a brief nod, but said nothing. My gesture appeared to satisfy him, and his grip loosened so I could pull myself away.

As I walked down Southwood Lane towards the Tube, I thought back to his last words. They were more like a command than an entreaty. But I soon shrugged off the bizarre moment that had brought our encounter so abruptly to an end. Clearly Peter was struggling mentally as well as physically. I felt a mix of emotions. Horror at how diminished my old friend had become. Devastation too. There was another feeling, though – one I didn’t like very much and tried hard to suppress but which was nonetheless forcefully present: a sense of relief, of gratification that I was not like him.

***

Over the next few days I was so caught up with my own problems, trying to sort out the loose ends of my old life abroad, that I gave little further thought to my meeting with Peter. In the back of my mind I decided I would definitely go and see him again, but there was nothing so concrete as a date when it would happen.

I wasn’t expecting to hear from Louise again, but around a week after my trip to Highgate, she called me and asked if we could meet for lunch. I booked a table at Rules. If she remembered this was where I’d taken her for her eighteenth, she didn’t mention it. She was approaching forty now, but still looked so young. In fact, she still looked very much like her mother, so much so that for a split second when she came through the restaurant door I thought it was Gemma as she had been the last time I saw her. 

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch more,’ I said after the waiter had handed us the menus. ‘I’ve been a terrible godfather.’

‘You owe me a lot of birthday and Christmas presents, that’s for sure,’ Louise said, smiling.

‘I’ll make it up to you. Starting with lunch.’

‘In that case,’ she said, studying the menu. ‘I won’t hold back.’

It was good to see her again. As we ate our starters, she gave me a brief summary of her life – her husband and two children, her job in publishing – but the conversation soon turned to her father, and I knew this was the real reason she’d suggested lunch.

She asked me what I thought of his condition.

‘His nurse seems to have everything under control,’ I said.

‘That’s not what I asked.’

I told her about my visit, about the thing he had seen that wasn’t there.

She nodded. ‘I should have warned you. It’s because of his poor eyesight. Charles Bonnet Syndrome, it’s called. Sufferers hallucinate creatures out of the corner of their eye.’

‘Creatures?’

‘Usually miniature humans, but also other things. Elves, what have you. The doctor has told him to expect it. Rationally, he knows they’re just hallucinations. But I’m not sure he’s always thinking rationally.’

‘So he believes these creatures are real?’

‘Absolutely. And that’s what really worries me. I’m afraid he’s going to get lost in this strange world he’s seeing, that it’ll take over from the real world. The visions might become his reality, if that makes any sense.’

It did make sense. I thought of poor Peter, stuck in that house, trapped in a wheelchair, with only a nurse for company. It would probably be enough to drive anyone mad.

I promised Louise I would visit him again soon.

She seemed relieved. ‘Thank you. The doctor said that people with Dad’s condition need constant reassurance that what they’re seeing isn’t real. It comforts them. I’ve tried my best, I really have, but I don’t think I’m getting through to him. But you, Felix – he’ll listen to you.’

I wasn’t sure about that. I feared my presence might have the opposite effect, pushing him further into his delusions. I had made a promise, though, and one of the things I was determined to do from now on was keep my promises. 

***

My second visit to Highgate took place on a grey autumn day. Despite the chill in the air, Peter insisted on going into the garden, and after a long argument with his nurse, she conceded that I could push Peter in his chair. This proved to be no easy task – the garden had been long neglected, and the ground was full of ruts and mud. But Peter seemed oblivious to the bumps as I tried to steer a course towards the end of the lawn. He was silent at first, resisting all my attempts at conversation, but then out of nowhere he started talking. His voice was lucid and strong – the voice of his youth. Our youth.

‘I know you think it’s nonsense,’ he said. ‘But I know what I’m seeing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The creature. The spirit. The doctors can talk all they like about syndromes and mental fatigue and failing eyesight, but they have no real idea what’s going on. I know.’

Despite what Louise had said, I thought it best not to contradict him. He was so fragile, antagonising him would only make things worse. Perhaps an opportunity would arise later to impress on him that the doctors were the experts. 

‘I know,’ he went on, ‘because I conjured it.’ Peter looked up at me, grinning. His once perfect teeth were stained a deep yellow, and there were several gaps. ‘It’s at my command. It does whatever I tell it.’

‘And is it here now?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes. Can’t you see it?’

‘What does it look like?’

‘Do you know, Felix,’ he said, ‘it looks a bit like you.’

The wheelchair caught in a rut, tipping forward and almost upending Peter into the mud. I changed my mind about the risk of antagonising him.

‘It’s not real, Peter,’ I said. ‘You’re hallucinating.’

He was chuckling now, as if this was all some big joke. 

‘It’s you who’s deluded, Felix,’ he said. ‘You and Louise and everybody else. You’ll see.’

I didn’t stay long after that. I didn’t exactly feel welcome. I tried to be charitable. Peter was sick, dying. And surely I was at fault too. My long absence had meant that most of my friendships had withered. Even my sister was now a stranger. She had long accused me of not facing up to my responsibilities. We’d argued and had come to what seemed an unspoken agreement that we wouldn’t talk to each other again. I was angry at her, but there was the nagging feeling that she was right. After all, I’d been abroad throughout the last illnesses of our parents. But even before that, one of the things I’d enjoyed most about living elsewhere was the fact that it wasn’t England, with all its associations. 

And now? Had I come back because subconsciously I’d decided to face up to all I’d done? To atone for my failings?

***

It was the middle of the night when Louise rang for the third time.

‘I’m sorry to wake you, Felix.’

I told her it was fine. I didn’t tell her I hardly slept these days anyway.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked, though I thought I could guess.

‘Dad’s in hospital. The doctors say—’

‘I’ll be right there.’

I was living now in Shepherd’s Bush, but the taxi had no trouble on the night-time roads and we got to Archway without delay. The Whittington had always struck me as a forbidding place, parts of it more like a prison than a hospital, and that was even before you considered all the illness and death that went on inside it. And I’d only ever been inside because people I knew were dying. I’d never been there for a birth. 

It took me a while to find the right ward. Louise was sitting on a plastic chair, staring at the floor, a cup gripped tightly in both hands. I called to her and she put the cup down before springing up and enveloping me in a long embrace. She wasn’t crying, though her eyes were red, and once she let me go she reached for a tissue and held it to her nose. 

‘He’s been asking for you,’ she said. ‘But I should warn you – he’s been lashing out at everybody. Some of the things he’s been saying – well, don’t take it personally, that’s all.’

She waited outside while I went into his room. Peter was wired up to various machines, kept alive by technology. 

‘I hoped you’d come,’ he said as his eyes slowly focussed on me. ‘I wanted you to come. I demanded it, and here you are.’

I took hold of his hand, thinking he might appreciate the human contact, but he yanked it away.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Sorry?’ he queried. ‘For what? Sorry that I’m on my last legs? Sorry that I’m going to cop it before you? What are you sorry for?’

I didn’t know what to say, so said nothing. 

‘You’re not sorry,’ he said, twisting his head around.

I stood there, thinking back over the years, the times we’d shared. I pictured the laughing student driving recklessly through the Somerset lanes. I saw the drunken groom. The stunned new father, the grieving husband. All of those images rose up before me, memories brought into the present, so vivid I felt I was experiencing them all over again. 

He turned back towards me, and now he did take my hand. He began to pull me down, forcing me to lower my head towards his. For a brief moment I thought he was going to kiss me, but his lips stopped a few inches from my ear. I felt his hot breath, then heard his slow, deliberate whisper.

‘I know what you did, Felix,’ he said. ‘I know.’

***

The day of the funeral was cold and blustery. Highgate Cemetery looked bleaker than ever. The service passed me by. There were two eulogies, but they talked about the Peter I didn’t know, the one who had lived for decades after I left the country. Louise had asked me if I wanted to say something, but I’d told her I couldn’t trust myself to talk in public about Peter without breaking down. 

Outside, beside the open grave, I stood staring at my feet, determined not to look at the nearby headstone, though the words were etched on my memory. ‘Gemma, beloved wife of Peter’. And the death date the same as Louise’s birthday. 

As the coffin was lowered, something caught my eye. There was a movement off to my left, somewhere in the trees. I tried to follow it, but it was too quick. An animal, I decided. A fox.

I didn’t go to the wake. I made my excuses to Louise, who in any case was busy with other guests. I needed to talk to her, but there would be plenty of time for that in the coming days. We had a lot to talk about. 

I knew something was different as soon as I got home. It was like a change in the air, heavy and humid, as if we were in the middle of a heatwave. I thought at first I must have left the heating on, but the radiators were cold. I went round the flat opening the windows, and it was as I moved out of the kitchenette into the living room that I saw it. Or rather, I half-saw it, for initially it flickered in my peripheral vision, refusing to come into focus. I blinked, glanced away, looked back. And there it was, still shadowy, still unfocussed, but undeniably there.

  A creature. No more than a foot tall, squatting on the mantelpiece, as if it was some kind of ornament. 

I backed against the wall. Maybe I cried out, I don’t know. I wanted to get out of the flat, run away, but I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to look at this thing, but I couldn’t stop myself. It was forcing me to look at it. And as it slowly came into focus, I began to make out more of its features. 

It looked familiar. It looked like Peter.

***

It’s still here. It’s here now as I write this. He’s here.

The funeral was a week ago. It’s been seven days since we buried my old friend, my former friend. But he hasn’t left me. Every minute of the day he’s here, by my side. Closing my eyes makes no difference. His image is there on my eyelids. I don’t sleep. There’s no escape. This is my punishment. A constant reminder. I haven’t left the flat because what would be the point? I can’t run away this time because it will only come with me.

This is what he has bequeathed to me. His creature. His demon. What does it want from me? A confession? Fine, I’ll put it down in black and white. 

I loved Gemma. If I hadn’t loved her, there would have been no Louise. And if there had been no Louise, Gemma wouldn’t have died. So yes, I suppose you were right, Peter, when you hissed at me in the hospital. It was my fault she died. I killed her.

Is that what you want to hear? Will that be enough to satisfy you? To make you leave me alone?

What are you waiting for, Peter?

What are you waiting for?

This story was shortlisted in the 2020 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition and subsequently published in the prize anthology Visions, 2020.

Ian Critchley is a freelance editor and journalist. His fiction has been published in several journals and anthologies, including Neonlit: Time Out Book of New Writing, Volume 2, The Mechanics Institute Review #15, Structo, The Fiction Desk, Lighthouse and Litro. He has won both the Hammond House International Literary Prize and the HISSAC Short Story Prize. His story ‘Removals’ is published as a chapbook by Nightjar Press.