'Some people are coming today,' said Mr Hooper. 'Now you will have a companion.'
But his son Edmund does not want any other boy in the ugly, isolated Victorian house. It is his house, he is King there. But Kingshaw still comes, with his bright genteel mother. Hooper hates him. He is an intruder, to be subtly persecuted. Hooper learns fast how to turn the most ordinary object into a source of terror. Like a frightened animal, Kingshaw runs.
In Hang Wood their roles are briefly reversed. But Kingshaw can not win, in the last resort. He knows it, and so does Hooper. And the worst is still to come.
Equalled for poignancy and horror only in Lord of the Flies
Sunday Telegraph
Miss Hill's exploration of a juvenile ghoul and his natural prey is a brilliant tour de force.
Guardian
Three months ago, his grandmother died, and then they had moved to this house.
'I will not live there again, until it belongs to me,' his father had said. Though the old man lay upstairs, after a second stroke, and lingered, giving no trouble.
The boy was taken to see him.
'You must not be afraid,' his father said, nervously, 'he is a very old man, now, very ill.' 'I am never afraid.' And that was no more than the truth, though his father would not have believed it.
It will be very moving, Joseph Hooper had decided, with the three generations together and one upon his death bed, the eldest son of the eldest son. For, in middle age, he was acquiring a dynastic sense.
But it had not been moving. The old man had breathed noisily, and dribbled a little, and never woken. The sick room smelled sour.
'Ah, well,' Mr Hooper had said, and coughed, 'he is very ill, you know. But I am glad you have seen him.'
'Why?'
'Well - because you are his only grandson. His heir, I suppose. Yes. It is only as it should be.'
The boy looked towards the bed. His skin is already dead, he thought, it is old and dry. But he saw that the bones of the eye-sockets, and the nose and jaw, showed though it, and gleamed. Everything about him, from the stubble of hair down to the folded line of sheet, was bleached and grey-ish white.
'All he looks like,' Edmund Hooper said, 'is one of his dead old moths.'
'That is no way to speak! You must show respect.'
His father had led him out. Though I am only able to show respect now, he thought, to behave towards my father as I should, because he is dying, he is almost gone away from me.
Edmund Hooper, walking down the great staircase into the wood-panelled hall, thought nothing of his grandfather. But later, he remembered the moth-like whiteness of the very white skin.
Now, they had moved, Joseph Hooper was master in his own house.
He said, 'I shall be away in London a good deal. I cannot live here the whole time, even in your holidays.'
'That won't be anything new, will it?'
He looked away from his son's gaze, irritated. I do my best, he thought, it is not the easiest of tasks, without a woman beside me.
'Ah, but we shall be looking into things,' he said, ' I shall see about getting you a friend, as well as someone to look after us in this house. Something is soon to be done.'
Edmund Hooper thought, I don't want anything to be done about it, nobody must come here, as he walked between the yew trees at the bottom of the garden.
'You had better not go into the Red Room without asking me. I shall keep the key in here.'
'I wouldn't do any harm there, why can't I go?'
'Well - there are a good many valuable things. That is all. Really.' Joseph Hooper sighed, sitting as his desk, in the room facing the lawn. 'And - I cannot think I will be a room to interest you much.'
For the time being, the house was to be kept as it was, until he could decide which of the furniture to be rid of, which of their own to bring.
He moved his hands uneasily about over the papers on the desk, oppressed by them, uncertain where he should begin. Though he was accustomed to paperwork. But his father's affairs had been left in disarray, he was ashamed of the paraphernalia of death.
'Can I have the key now, then?'
'May...'
'O.K.' 'The key for the Red Room?'
'Yes.'
'Well...'
Mr Joseph Hooper moved his hand towards the small, left-side drawer in the desk, underneath the drawer where sealing wax has always been kept. But then, said, 'No. No, you had really much better be playing cricket in the sun, Edmund, something of the sort. You have been shown everything there is in the Red Room.'
'There nobody to play cricket with.'
'Ah well now, I shall soon be doing something about that, you shall have your friend.'
'Anyway, I don't like cricket.'
'Edmund, you will not be difficult please, I have a good deal to do, I cannot waste time in foolish arguments.'
Hooper went out, wishing he had said nothing. He wanted nothing to be done, nobody should come here.
But he knew where to find the key.
