Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

John Julian grew apace in the months that followed, but no quicker than a natural child would have. Leonard was strict about that. As he grew his picture became sharper in his father’s mind: how much hair he had at birth, and what colour it was; how quickly he acquired more; the precise shape of his snub nose; how he looked when he smiled. Naturally there were setbacks and worries: Len would sometimes enliven a long car journey on business by imagining bouts of colic or the worries of teething. The great landmark joys he usually kept for some business trip which would involve a night away from home. Then, as on that first occasion, he would slip away as early as he decently could from whatever function or meeting he was obliged to attend, shut himself in his hotel room and recreate his mental world around the son that had been born to him. The pictures were so vivid — of Marian breast-feeding their boy, of his first words and first tentative steps — that they became part of his existence, the most cherished part.

Sometimes it was quite difficult to make the transition from the imaginary to the real world. He would come through his front door with memories still crowding around him and expect to see Marian cradling John Julian in her arms, or playing with him on the floor by the fire. Then he would have to drag himself down to earth and enquire about her day rather than John Julian’s, tell her what he’d been doing, not what he’d been imagining. For Marian remained the common-sense, slightly drab woman who reserved her greatest intensity for their love-making, while the Marian of his imagination had blossomed with motherhood, had become altogether more sophisticated and curious about the world. She had given up her job in the chain store to be with their boy, but Len never resented sharing him with her because certain times and certain duties were by common agreement his and his alone.

He was a healthy boy, that was a blessing. He played well with the other children in the street, and on the one morning in the week when he went to play-group, the leader commented on his nice disposition. Len started to imagine futures for him, though all the time with the proviso in his mind that of course John Julian would do exactly what he wanted to do when the time came for him to choose. He was an active, open-air child, but Len didn’t want him to be a professional athlete. It was too short and too limiting a life. But he’d be a very good amateur. Len always said when the Olympic Games were on that it was a pity the facilities weren’t used afterwards for a Games for real

amateurs. Perhaps by the time John Julian was a young man they would be, and he would compete — maybe as a middle-distance runner, or perhaps a pole-vaulter.

His real work would surely be something where he could use his brain. There was no disputing that he had one, he was so forward. Len didn’t fancy his becoming a doctor, as so many parents hoped for their children, and certainly he didn’t want a surgeon son. Still, he would like something that involved a degree of prestige. He finally settled on Oxford and a science degree, with a fellowship to follow, and a succession of brilliant research projects.

But that was what he hoped for. The boy’s future was for him to decide, though he knew John Julian would want to talk it through with both his parents before he made his decision.

Meanwhile there was a real highlight in his life coming up: his first day at school. Marian had agreed — the Marian in his mind had agreed — that he should take him on his first day. She would be taking him day in, day out after that, she said: that would be her pleasure. It was only right that Len should have the joy of the first day. One of the firm’s confectionary factories was near Scarborough, and Len usually visited it once a year. He arranged to go in early September — Tuesday the fourth, the day that school started for five-year-olds in his area. He booked a good hotel in the upper part of the town, near where Anne Bronte had died, and he went off with a head brimming with happy anticipation.

He got through the inspection and consultations well enough. He had had to train himself over the past five years not to be abstracted, not to give only half his attention to matters of that kind: after all, it would never do for John Julian’s father to be out of a job. When he was asked by one of the local managers to dinner with him and his wife that evening, Len said with every appearance of genuine regret that unfortunately he was engaged to visit “a relative of the wife’s.” In fact, when the day’s work was done, he went back to the hotel, then took the funicular railway down to the sands. In a rapturous walk along the great stretch of beach he imagined what his day would have been.