Free MASQUES OF SATAN by Reggie Oliver

know?’
    ‘ Of course they do, you ass,’ said Hal. ‘Anyway, what’s it got to do with you? Mind your own beeswax!’ Mind your own beeswax . It was a piece slang I had heard once or twice at my school, but even there it had seemed dated, culled perhaps from a reading of Billy Bunter or Stalky & Co .
    Hal asked me about my school, in particular about games. I boasted as much as I could about my distinctly average abilities, and my exploits in the third eleven at cricket. He kept his eyes fixed on me, but I wondered how much he was taking in.
    He said: ‘When I grow up I’m going to be a cricketer, like Wally Hammond.’
    ‘Who’s Wally Hammond?’ I asked.
    ‘Crikey, don’t you know who Wally Hammond is? You are of blockheads the most crassly ignoramus.’
    ‘Is he a cricketer?’
    ‘Is he a cricketer? Of course he’s a cricketer, you utterly frabjous oaf! Don’t you know anything?’ As I was one of those boys who had learned by heart the names of the entire England cricket team together with their bowling and batting averages, I took great offence at this. Later in our conversation I slipped in a reference to Geoffrey Boycott. Hal said: ‘Boycott what?’ I did not reply, but I felt vindicated.
    It was not long after this that I began to feel that my company was no longer a pleasure to Hal. Something about his eyes were not quite right. They seemed to be darker than when I had first seen them, not only the irises and pupils, but the whites had turned a greyish colour. Perhaps it was a trick of the fading light which may also account for the fact that he was beginning to look even smaller.
    Suddenly he said: ‘Who are you anyway?’
    ‘Who are you for that matter, and what are you doing here?’ I said, taking a step towards him.
    ‘Go away!’ he shouted. ‘Private Property!’
    The sound of his cry rang in my ears. I turned from him and ran up the path to the top of the slope. When I had reached it I turned again and looked back. Hal was still sitting there on the lip of the old well, his heels banging against the stones. He was facing in my direction but I could not tell whether he was looking at me or not. The light, which was not quite right in that strange garden, had turned his eye sockets into empty black holes. I turned again and ran: this time I did not look back.
    For some time I found that I was lost. In that dense foliage I could not tell which way was the sea and which way the Villa Monte Rosa. I remember some agonising minutes during which I could not stop myself from going round in a circle. I kept coming back to the same small stone statue of a cat crouching on a plinth. It was perhaps the tomb of a pet, but there was no inscription. I began to panic. The cat looked as if it were about to spring. I decided that the only way of escape was to ignore the paths and move resolutely in one direction.
    Surprisingly enough this worked, and in a matter of minutes I found I was walking across the little lawn towards the terrace where my parents were.  I was about to set foot on the steps to the terrace when I saw Mrs de Walter at the top of them, scrutinising me intently. She came down to meet me.
    ‘So you’ve found your way back,’ she said. ‘We were beginning to wonder if you were lost.’
    I shook my head. She laid her thin hand lightly on my shoulder.
    ‘Did you meet anyone on your travels?’ she asked. It was a curious way of expressing herself, and I was wary. ‘You did, didn’t you?’
    I nodded. It seemed the course of least resistance.
    ‘A little boy?’
    I nodded again.
    ‘An English little boy?’
    I gave her the same response. The pressure of her hand on my shoulder became so great that I imagined I could feel the bones in her fingers through my thin shirt, or was it the cords of her strange crocheted mittens? She said: ‘We won’t mention the little English boy to anyone else, shall we? Not even our parents. This shall be our personal secret, shan’t it?’
    I was