Free King of the World by Celia Fremlin Page B

Diana, it was all coming back to her with painful vividness; all the more painful because the events were now seen in the lurid light of hindsight; of knowing how it would all end.
    “How awful for you,” Diana was saying. “And so what happened after that?”
    After the episode of the seventeen-times tables, she meant; and Norah tried to think. What exactly had happened next?”
    Certainly, during the following summer, Christopher had become increasingly silent and moody – but wasn’t that typical of adolescents everywhere? But there hadbeen frightening episodes now and then. Norah recalled one that had happened in the summer holidays that year – August it must have been, late August. Christopher had spent the whole morning and afternoon buried in his studies; and Norah, having tried in vain to get him at least to bring his books out into the garden and get some fresh air, had finally given up and settled herself in a garden chair on the patio, from where she could see the late-blooming roses and hear the bees humming in and out of the michaelmas daisies. She was reading, deeply immersed in her book, and so wasn’t sure quite when it was when the sound of hammering began, nor how soon it was when she began to realise that it wasn’t one of the neighbours engaged on some piece of “Do-it-yourself,” or “Do-it-your-selfishness,” as Louise used to call it when it was her husband strewing sawdust all over the carpet. No, it wasn’t a neighbour this time; the noise was coming from her house. Norah was at once pricked with unease, though she couldn’t quite have said why. Surely it would be a good thing, not a sinister one, if for once Christopher had abandoned his books in favour of something practical?
    She hurried indoors.
    At first, she couldn’t quite make out what he was doing. With hammer and nails he seemed to be fixing a huge wooden board, about two feet wide and five feet high, to his bedroom wall, while all around lay scattered chunks of plaster.
    “ Chris top her !” she cried from the doorway “What are you doing ?Where did you get that great piece of …”
    And then she realised where he had got it. It was simply the reverse side of the full-length mirror whichhad been a fixture on his bedroom wall ever since they’d moved here. With chisel and claw-hammer, he had wrenched it from its moorings, regardless of the damage to the wall, and was now savagely nailing it up again, with the glass facing inwards, against the wall.
    “ Christopher !” she shrieked, forgetting that she was a psychiatrist’s wife, and giving way to blind fury, “How dare you! Just look what you’ve done!” – gesturing at the mess of scattered plaser.
    And when he said nothing, paid no attention to her whatever, but just went on hammering, Norah plunged across the room, snatched the hammer from his hand, and demanded an explanation.
    All this was entirely the wrong thing to do, as Mervyn was to point out in no uncertain terms when he arrived home that evening; but at the time it had seemed to be what anyone would have done.
    And indeed, more or less, it had worked. It at least got the boy talking, giving a careful and considered explanation that, unless you had been listening closely, might have made his bizarre action seem almost sane.
    “I don’t like that mirror,” he said, eyes narrowed. “I’ve never liked it. I don’t like that boy who lives in it. I don’t like the way he looks at me, sometimes he seems quite mad. He has mad eyes. He’s always there, getting in the way, when I want to look at myself, and so I’ve decided to give him a lesson. He’ll just be looking out at a blank wall now. That’ll teach him!”
    Diana was listening, rapt and spellbound, as indeed anyone might be.
    “Whatever happened then?” she asked. “I mean, when your husband came home? Surely he realised then that the boy was mentally ill?”
    “But he didn’t, Diana. You won’t believe it, but he still didn’t. When he