Late Night Story (1978) s01e04 Episode Script

Peter Morton woke with a start to face the first light.
Through the window, he could see a bare bough dropping across a frame of silver.
Rain tapped against the glass.
It was January the fifth.
He looked across a table on which a nightlight had guttered into a pool of water at the other bed.
Francis Morton was still asleep, and Peter lay down again with his eyes on his brother.
It amused him to imagine that it was himself whom he watched.
Same hair, same eyes, same lips and line of cheek.
But the thought soon palled and the mind went back to the fact which lent the day importance.
It was the fifth of January.
He could hardly believe that a year had passed since Mrs Henne-Falcon had given her last children's party.
Francis turned suddenly upon his back and threw an arm across his face, blocking his mouth.
Peter's heart began to beat fast, not with pleasure now, but with uneasiness.
He sat up and called across the table, ''Wake up!'' Francis's shoulders shook and he waved a clenched fist in the air, but his eyes remained closed.
To Peter Morton, the whole room seemed suddenly to darken and he had the impression of a great bird swooping.
He cried again, ''Wake up!'' And once more there was silver light and a touch of rain on the windows.
Francis rubbed his eyes.
''Did you call out?'' he asked.
''You're having a bad dream,'' Peter said.
Already experience had taught him how far their minds reflected each other.
But he was the elder by a matter of minutes, and that brief extra interval of light, while his brother still struggled in pain and darkness, had given him a self-reliance and an instinct of protection towards the other, who was afraid of so many things.
''I dreamed that I was dead,'' Francis said.
''What was it like?'' Peter asked.
''I can't remember,'' Francis said.
And his eyes turned with relief to the silver of day as he allowed the fragmentary memories to fade.
''You dreamed of a big bird.
'' ''Did I?'' Francis accepted his brother's knowledge without question, and, for a little, the two lay silent in bed facing each other.
''The fifth of January,'' Peter thought again, his mind drifting idly from the image of cakes to the prizes which might be won.
Egg-and-spoon races, spearing apples in basins of water, blind man's buff.
''I don't want to go,'' Francis said.
He turned his face away from Peter, his cheeks scarlet.
''What's the matter?'' Peter asked.
''Oh, nothing.
I don't think I'm well.
I've got a cold.
''I oughtn't to go to the party.
'' Peter was puzzled.
''But, Francis, is it a bad cold?'' ''It will be a bad cold if I go to the party! Perhaps I'll die!'' ''Well, then, you mustn't go,'' Peter said, with decision, prepared to solve all difficulties with one plain sentence.
And Francis let his nerves relax in delicious relief, ready to leave everything to Peter.
But though he was grateful, he didn't turn his face towards his brother.
His cheeks still bore the badge of shameful memory of the game of hide-and-seek last year in the darkened house, and of how he'd screamed when Mabel Warren put her hand suddenly upon his arm.
He hadn't heard her coming.
Girls were like that.
Their shoes never squeaked.
No boards whined under their tread.
They slunk like cats on padded claws.
When the nurse came in with hot water, Francis lay tranquil, leaving everything to Peter.
Peter said, ''Nurse, Francis has got a cold.
Hadn't he better stay in bed?'' ''We'll take him for a good walk this morning,'' the nurse said.
''Wind'll blow away the germs.
Get up now, both of you.
'' And she closed the door behind her.
''I'm sorry,'' Peter said, and then worried at the sight of a face creased again by misery and foreboding.
''Why don't you just stay in bed? I'll tell Mother you felt too ill to get up.
'' But such rebellion against destiny was not in Francis's power.
''No.
I'll get up.
''But I won't go to Mrs Henne-Falcon's party.
I swear on the Bible I won't!'' ''Now surely all would be well,'' he thought.
God wouldn't allow him to break so solemn an oath.
He had such confidence in God that, when at breakfast, his mother said, ''I hear you have a cold, Francis,'' he made light of it.
''We should have heard more about it,'' his mother said, ''if there wasn't a party this evening.
'' And Francis smiled uneasily, amazed and daunted by her ignorance of him.
The panic nearly overcame him when, all unready, he found himself standing on the doorstep with coat collar turned up against a cold wind and the nurse's electric torch making a short, luminous trail through the darkness.
He was nearly overcome by a desire to run back into the house and call out to his mother that he wouldn't go to the party, that he daren't go, that they couldn't make him go.
''Francis, come along!'' He heard the nurse's voice across the dimly phosphorescent lawn and saw the small, yellow circle of her torch wheel from tree to shrub and back to tree again ''I'm coming!'' he called, with despair.
Leaving the lighted doorway of the house, he couldn't bring himself to lay bare his last secrets and end reserve between his mother and himself, for there was still, in the last resort, a further appeal possible to Mrs Henne-Falcon.
He comforted himself with that, as he advanced steadily across the hall, very small, towards her enormous bulk.
''Good evening, Mrs Henne-Falcon.
''It was very good of you to ask me to your party.
'' ''Sweet child,'' said Mrs Henne-Falcon before, with a wave of her arm, as though the children were a flock of chickens, she whirled them into her set programme of entertainment.
Egg-and-spoon races, three-legged races, the spearing of apples, games which held for Francis nothing worse than humiliation.
He knew there was nothing to fear until after tea.
And not until he was sitting down in a pool of yellow radiance cast by the 10 candles on Colin Henne-Falcon's birthday cake, did he become fully conscious of the imminence of what he feared.
Through the confusion of his brain, now assailed suddenly by a dozen contradictory plans, he heard Joyce's high voice down the table.
''After tea, we are going to play hide-and-seek in the dark.
'' ''Oh, no,'' Peter said, watching Francis's troubled face with pity and an imperfect understanding.
And, again, the reflection of an image in another's mind, he saw a great bird darken his brother's face with its wings.
But he upbraided himself silently for his folly, encouraged by the memory of that adult refrain, ''There's nothing to fear in the dark.
'' The last to leave the table, the brothers came together in the hall to meet the mustering and impatient eyes of Mrs Henne-Falcon.
''And now,'' she said, ''we will play hide-and-seek in the dark.
'' Peter watched his brother and saw, as he had expected, the lips tighten.
Francis, he knew, had feared this moment from the beginning of the party, had tried to meet it with courage and had abandoned the attempt.
He must have prayed desperately for cunning to evade the game, which was now welcomed with cries of excitement by all the other children.
''Oh, do let's.
We must pick sides!'' ''Is any of the house out of bounds?'' ''Where shall home be?'' ''I think,'' said Francis Morton, approaching Mrs Henne-Falcon, ''it'll be no use my playing.
My nurse will be calling for me very soon.
'' ''Oh, but your nurse can wait, Francis,'' said Mrs Henne-Falcon absentmindedly.
''Your mother will never mind.
'' That had been the limit of Francis's cunning.
He had refused to believe that so well prepared an excuse could fail.
He stood motionless, retaining, though afraid, unmoved features.
But the knowledge of his terror, or the reflection of the terror itself, reached his brother's brain.
For the moment, Peter Morton could have cried out aloud for the fear of bright lights going out, leaving him alone in an island of dark, surrounded by the gentle lapping of strange footsteps.
Then he remembered that the fear was not his own, but his brother's.
He said impulsively to Mrs Henne-Falcon, ''Please, I don't think Francis should play.
The dark makes him jump so.
'' They were the wrong words.
Six children began to sing, ''Cowardy, cowardy custard,'' turning torturing faces with the vacancy of wide sunflowers towards Francis Morton.
Without looking at his brother, Francis said, ''Well, of course I'll play.
I'm not afraid.
I only thought'' But he was already forgotten by his human tormentors and was able in loneliness to contemplate the approach of the spiritual, the more unbounded torture.
Peter, too, stood apart, ashamed of the clumsy manner in which he'd tried to help his brother.
Now he could feel, creeping in at the corners of his brain, all Francis's resentments of his championing.
Several children ran upstairs and the lights on the top floor went out.
Then darkness came down like the wings of a bat and settled on the landing.
Others began to put out the lights at the edge of the hall, till the children were all gathered in the central radiance of a chandelier, while the bat squatted round on hooded wings and waited for that, too, to be extinguished.
''You and Francis are on the hiding side,'' a tall girl said.
And then the lights were gone, and the carpet wavered under his feet with the sibilance of footfalls, like small, cold draughts creeping away into corners.
''Where's Francis?'' he wondered.
''If I join him, he'll be less frightened of all these sounds.
'' These sounds were the casing of silence.
The squeak of a loose board, the cautious closing of a cupboard door, the whine of a finger drawn along polished wood.
Peter stood in the centre of the dark, deserted floor, not listening, but waiting for the idea of his brother's whereabouts to enter his brain.
But Francis, crouched with his fingers on his ears, eyes uselessly closed, mind numbed against impressions, and only a sense of strain could cross the gap of the dark.
Then a voice called, ''Coming!'' And as though his brother's self-possession had been shattered by the sudden cry, Peter Morton jumped with fear.
But it wasn't his own fear.
''If I were Francis, where should I hide?'' Such, roughly, was his thought.
And because he was, if not Francis himself, at least a mirror to him, the answer was immediate.
Between the oak bookcase on the left of the study door and the leather settee.
Peter Morton was unsurprised by the swiftness of the response.
Between the twins, there could be no jargon of telepathy.
They'd been together in the womb and couldn't be parted.
Peter Morton tiptoed towards Francis's hiding place.
Occasionally, a board rattled, and because he feared to be caught by one of the soft questers through the dark, he bent and untied his laces.
On stockinged feet, he moved silently and unerringly towards his object.
Instinct told him that he was near the wall.
And, extending a hand, he lay the fingers across his brother's face.
Francis did not cry out, but the leap of his own heart revealed to Peter a proportion of Francis's terror.
''It's all right,'' he whispered, feeling down the squatting figure until he captured a clenched hand.
''It's only me.
I'll stay with you.
'' And, grasping the other tightly, he listened to the cascade of whispers that his utterances had caused to fall.
A hand touched the bookcase close to Peter's head, and he was aware of how Francis's fear continued, in spite of his presence.
It was less intense, more bearable, he hoped, but it remained.
He knew that it was his brother's fear, and not his own, that he experienced.
The dark to him was only an absence of light, the groping hand that of a familiar child.
Patiently, he waited to be found.
He didn't speak again, for between Francis and himself, touch was the most intimate communion.
He could experience the whole progress of his brother's emotion, from the leap of panic at the unexpected contact to the steady pulse of fear, which now went on and on with the regularity of a heartbeat.
Peter Morton thought with intensity, ''I'm here.
You needn't be afraid.
The lights will go on again soon.
'' He bombarded the drooping form with the thoughts of safety, but he was conscious that the fear continued.
''The lights will go on again soon.
We shall have won.
Don't be afraid.
''Only Joyce, only Mabel Warren, only Mrs Henne-Falcon.
'' A crescendo of reassuring thought before the chandelier burst like a fruit tree into bloom.
The voices of the children rose shrilly into the radiance.
''Where's Peter?'' ''Have you looked upstairs? Where's Francis?'' But they were silenced again by Mrs Henne-Falcon's scream.
But she wasn't the first to notice Francis Morton's stillness, where he had collapsed against the wall at the touch of his brother's hand.
Peter continued to hold the clenched fingers in an arid and puzzled grief.
It was not merely that his brother was dead, his brain, too young to realise the full paradox, yet wondered with obscure self-pity why it was that the pulse of his brother's fear went on and on, when Francis was now, where he'd always been told, there was no more terror and no more darkness.