Chaz Brenchley - The Keys To D'esperance

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The Keys to D'Espérance

a short story by

Chaz Brenchley

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Actually, by the time the keys came, he no longer believed in the house.

It was like God, he thought; they oversold it. Say too often that a thing

is so, and how can people help but doubt? Most facts prove not to be the

case after all, under any serious examination. Even the Earth isn't round.

One day, they said, D'Espérance will be yours. You will receive it in

sorrow, they said, and pass it on in joy. That is as it is, they said, as

it always is, as it should be.

But they said it when he was five and he thought they meant for Christmas,

they'd never make him wait to be six.

When he was six they said it, and when he was seven and eight and nine.

At ten, he asked if he could visit.

Visit D'Espérance? they said, laughing at him. Of course you can't, you

haven't been invited. You can't just visit. You can't call at D'Espérance.

In passing, looking at each other, laughing. You can't pass D'Espérance.

But if it was going to be his, he said at twelve, wasn't he entitled?

Didn't he have a right to know? He'd never seen a painting, even, never

seen a photograph...

There are none, they said, and, Be patient. And, No, don't be foolish, of

course you're not entitled. Title to D'Espérance does not vest in you, they

said. Yet, they said.

And somewhere round about fifteen he stopped believing. The guns still

thundered across the Channel, and he believed in those; he believed in his

own death to come, glorious and dreadful; he believed in Rupert Brooke and

Euclidean geometry and the sweet breath of a girl, her name whispered into

his bolster but never to be uttered aloud, never in hearing; and no, he did

not believe in D'Espérance.

-------------------

Two years later the girl was dead and his parents also, and none of them in

glory. His school would have no more of him, and the war was over; and that

last was the cruellest touch in a long and savage peal, because it took

from him the chance of an unremarked death, a way to follow quietly.

Now it must needs be the river, rocks in his pockets and thank God he had

never learnt to swim. There would be notice taken, that was inevitable; but

this would be the last of it. No more family, no one more to accuse or cut

or scorn. The name quite gone, it would simply cease to matter. He hoped

that he might never be recovered, that he might lie on the bottom till his

bones rotted, being washed and washed by fast unheeding waters.

Quite coldly determined, he refused to lurk withindoors on his last long

day. At sunset he would go to the bridge, rocks in my pockets, yes, and no

matter who sees, they shan't stop me; but first he would let himself be

seen and hissed at and whispered about, today as every day, no craven he.

It was honour and honour only that would take him to the river; he wanted

that clearly understood.

So he walked abroad, returning some books to the public library and

settling his accounts with the last few merchants to allow him credit. He

took coffee in town and almost smiled as the room emptied around him, did

permit himself the indulgence of a murmured word with the cashier on his

way out, "Please don't trouble yourself, I shan't come back again."

And so he went home, and met the postman at the door; and was handed a

package, and stood on his doorstep watching as the postman walked away,

wiping his hand on his trousers.

-------------------

The package was well wrapped in brown paper, tied with string and the knots

sealed. It was unexpectedly heavy for its size, and made softly metallic

noises as he felt its hard angles shift between his fingers.

Preferring the kitchen in his solitude to the oppressions of velvet and

oak, of photographs and memories and names, he went straight through and

opened the package on the long deal table under the window.

Keys, three separate rings of keys: brass keys and bronze and steel, keys

shorter than his thumb and longer than his hand, keys still glittering new

and keys older than he had ever seen, older than he could believe, almost.

For long minutes he only held them, played with them, laid them out and

looked at them; finally he turned away, to read the letter that had

accompanied them.

An envelope addressed to him in neat copperplate, nothing extravagant;

heavy laid paper of good quality, little creased or marked despite its

journeying in with the keys. A long journey, he noted, unfolding the single

sheet and reading the address at the top. His correspondent, this remitter

of keys was apparently a country solicitor; but the town and the company's

name were entirely unfamiliar to him, although he had spent two months now

immersed in his parents' affairs, reading everything.

My dear lad, the letter said - and this from a stranger, strange in itself

- I believe that this will reach you at the proper time; I hope you may

learn to view it as good news.

In plain, you are now the master of D'Espérance, at least in so far as such

a house may ever be mastered by one man. The deeds, I regret, you may not

view; they are kept otherwhere, and I have never had sight of them. The

keys, however, are enclosed. You may be sure that none will challenge your

title, for so long as you choose to exercise it.

I look forward to making your acquaintance, as and when you see fit to call

upon me.

Yours, etc.

-------------------

His first impulse was to laugh, to toss the letter down, his resolution

quite unchallenged, quite unchanged. Just another house, and what did he

want with it? He had one already, and meant to leave it tonight and

forever.

But he was a boy, he was curious; and while he would welcome death, while

he meant to welcome it, come, sweet Death, embrace me, he was very afraid

of water.

His hands came back to the keys and played upon them, a silent music, a

song of summoning. Death could surely wait a day, two days. So could the

river. It was going nowhere; he'd be back.

-------------------

And so the train, trains, taking him slow and dirty into the north country.

Soon he could be anonymous, no name to him, just a lad too young to have

been in the war, though he was old enough now. That was odd, to have people

look at him and not know him. To have them sit just across the compartment

and not shift their feet away from his, not lour or sniff or turn a cold,

contemptuous, ostentatious shoulder.

One woman even tried to mother him, poor fool: not knowing what a mother

meant to him, bare feet knocking at his eyeballs, knocking and knocking,

knock knock. He was cold himself then, he was savage, gave her more reason

than most had to disdain him, though still she wouldn't do it.

And at last there were sullen moors turned purple with the season, there

was a quiet station with a single taxi waiting and the locals hanging back,

no, lad, you take it, it's only a ten-minute walk into the town for us and

we know it well, it's no hardship.

He wouldn't do that, though. Their kindness was inappropriate, born of

ignorance that he refused to exploit; and he had no need of it in any case.

It was after six o'clock, too late to call on the solicitor, and he didn't

plan to seek lodgings in town. His name was uncommon, and might be

recognised. Too proud to hide behind a false one, he preferred to sleep in

his blanket roll under whatever shelter he could find and so preserve this

unaccustomed anonymity at least for the short time he was here.

-------------------

Leaving the station and turning away from the town, he walked past a farm

where vociferous dogs discouraged him from stopping; and was passed in his

turn by a motor car, the driver pausing briefly to call down to him, to

offer him a ride to the next village. He refused as courteously as he knew

how, and left the road at the next stile.

Rising, the path degenerated quickly into a sheep-track between boulders,

and seemed to be taking him further and further from any hope of shelter.

He persevered, however, content to sleep with the stars if it meant he

could avoid company and questions. Whenever the path disappeared into bog,

he forced his way through heather or bracken until he found another; and at

last he came over the top of that valley's wall, and looked down into an

unexpected wood.

He'd not seen a tree since the train, and here there were spruce and larch

below him, oak and ash and others, secret and undisturbed. And a path too,

a clear and unequivocal path, discovered just in time as the light faded.

He followed the path into the wood, but not to its heart. He was tired and

thirsty, and he came soon to a brook where he could lie on his stomach and

draw water with his hands, fearing nothing and wanting nothing but to stay,

to move no more tonight.

He unrolled his blankets and made his simple bed there, heaping needles and

old leaves into a mattress between path and brook; and only at the last,

only a little before he slept did he think he saw the girl flit between

trees, there on the very edge of vision, pale and nameless as the light

slipped.

Pale and nameless and never to be named; nor seen again except like this, a

flicker of memory and a wicked trick of the light. He closed his eyes, not

to allow it passage. And breathed deeply, smelling sharp resins and the

mustiness of rot, and so cleared his mind, and so slept.

-------------------

Slept well and woke well, sunlight through trees and a clean cool breeze

and no fear, no anger, nothing but hunger in him. With the river's

resolution to come, all else was resolved; there was, there could be

nothing to be afraid of except that last great terror. And why be angry

against a town he'd left already, a world he would so shortly be leaving?

Breakfast was an apple from his backpack, eaten on the march: not enough

for his belly, but that too was no longer the driving force it had been. He

had higher considerations now; with time so short, a grumbling gut seemed

less than urgent.

Oddly, with time so short, he felt himself totally unhurried. He would walk

back the way he had come, he would find his way into the town and so to the

solicitor - but not yet. Just now he would walk here, solitary among trees

and seeking nothing, driven by nothing...

-------------------

Which is how he came to D'Espérance, called perhaps but quite undriven:

strolling where others before him had run, finding by chance what was his

already, though he meant to take only the briefest possession.

The path he took grew wider, though no better cared for. Tree roots had

broken it, in places the fall of leaves on leaves had buried it; but logic

and light discovered its route to him, not possible to lose it now. It

turned down the slope of the valley and found the brook again, and soon the

brook met something broader, too shallow for a river, too wide for a

stream. The path tracked the water until the water was suddenly gone,

plunging through an iron grid into a culvert, an arch of brick mounded by

earth. Steps climbed the mound, and so did he; and standing there above the

sound of water, he was granted his first sight of D'Espérance.

-------------------

Never any doubt of what he saw. He knew it in that instant, and his soul

sang.

The house was dark in its valley, built of stone washed dark by rains and

rains. Even where the sun touched, it kept its shadow.

A long front, with the implication of wings turned back behind, though he

couldn't see for certain even from this elevation, with the house full-face

and staring him down. A long front and small windows, three storeys and

then a mansard roof with dormers; in the centre a small portico sheltering

a high door, and he wasn't sure even the largest of his keys would open

such a door. Wasn't sure that it deserved to.

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摘要：

TheKeystoD'EspéranceashortstorybyChazBrenchley------------------------------------------------------------------------Actually,bythetimethekeyscame,henolongerbelievedinthehouse.ItwaslikeGod,hethought;theyoversoldit.Saytoooftenthatathingisso,andhowcanpeoplehelpbutdoubt?Mostfactsprovenottobethecaseaft...

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Chaz Brenchley - The Keys To D'esperance

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