'That's different, as well you know, my dear,.' said his father. 'I hope you are not comparing my esteemed colleagues with that . . . that . . . odious beggar. He has no respect for such things. No respect at all. It is sacrilege, pure and simple.'
Thomas was surprised to find that despite the fact that he did not in any way share his father's interest in antiquities, he could not get the image of the bench end out of his mind. Long after his parents had moved on in their conversation, Thomas kept seeing in his mind's eye the hideous, leering face of the carved demon.
After lunch they walked past the venerable old colleges and out of town, through Newnham, out on to the river path back to Grantchester. Summer was coming to an end, but it was still warm and the countryside around them was bathed in September sunshine.
Thomas's parents walked the high bridleway, but Thomas himself kept close to the river, searching the weed-tangled waters for pike and excitedly watching a kingfisher flash by, exotically iridescent, like a jewel from a pharaoh's tomb.
Some rough village boys were clambering about in the branches of a tall tree on the opposite bank and stared at him sullenly as he walked past before renewing their games - one of them jumping from a dizzying height with a great splash in the middle of the river.
Further along, punts glided by, piloted with varying degrees of competence. Thomas looked at a group of laughing students sailing by and dreamed of the day that he might go to one of the colleges, whose high walls and guarded gateways he longed to breach.
But, once again, into the dreamy haze of these idyllic scenes the demon's grinning face returned and haunted him from every shadow and dark pool, until he retreated from the riverside and joined his parents on the ridge, craving company and the wide, bright view.
The following day Thomas was sent by his mother to take a note to the vicar about a musical evening she had been organising for some months. He had just walked past the church when he noticed the tinker's barrow they had seen in Cambridge.
Thomas felt a strange tightening in his chest. His hands suddenly felt a little numb and he flexed his fingers. Slowly, as if guided by a puppeteer, Thomas walked towards the rickety barrow.
The monkey sat at the back atop a pile of rolled-up rugs and eyed him with a haughty familiarity, as if he had expected to see him. But of the tinker there was no sign whatsoever.
Thomas edged towards the barrow, keeping a wary eye on the monkey all the time. He had seen the creature's teeth and he did not relish getting bitten. All the same, Thomas was unable to keep himself from looking for the carved bench end.
Sure enough, he saw the polished horns of the demon's head poking out from under a moth-eaten carpet bag. He looked around him. The street was as quiet as the nearby graveyard. All he had to do was reach out his hand and the bench end would be his. After all, this filthy tinker probably stole it himself. Stealing from a thief was hardly a crime at all.
But if he had no fear of the stain on his immortal character, then Thomas certainly had a very real fear of the monkey, who now seemed to regard him with utter disdain, as if he sat in judgement.
Thomas leaned forward, extending his arm and reaching his fingers towards the bench end. The monkey made no move to prevent him but sat looking straight into his face the entire time, until Thomas clutched the bench end to his chest. Feeling pleased with himself, he turned to walk away and came face to face with the tinker, who grabbed him by the arm.
The monkey suddenly let out a horribly loud and chattering laugh. Or at least Thomas had thought it was the monkey. But looking now, he could see that the monkey's mouth was firmly closed, despite the din. The tinker stared at him.
'I was just looking at it,.' said Thomas. 'You can have it back!'
'Not likely, my friend,.' said the tinker as the chattering grew in volume.
'Let me go or I shall call my father!'
'I'm sorry, my boy,.' said the tinker. 'Very sorry. I mistook you for your pa. I never thought to be passing it on to a young fellow like yourself. But I don't make the rules. You'll see. When your time comes you'll be the same. You'll pass it on to your own mother if you have to.' An exhausted smile broke out across his face and he was panting as if he had just laid down a huge burden. Sweat was trickling down his forehead.
The noise was roaring through Thomas's ears. It sounded like a hundred thousand people talking at once: whispering, muttering, shouting and taunting. They talked over each other and drowned each other out, so that they blurred into one long stream of grating noise. Thomas was finding it difficult to hear what the tinker was saying.
'There are things you need to know, boy,.' the man shouted over the babble of voices. 'So listen well.' He gripped Thomas's arm even tighter.
'You can't sell it,.' he shouted. 'You can't give it away and you can't throw it away. Someone has to take it. They have to come to you. You have to make it as difficult for them as you can or it won't go.'
'What are you talking about?' yelled Thomas. 'Where is that noise coming from?' But even as Thomas asked he realised the truth. The noise was coming from the demon bench end.
'I found the damnable thing in the Kasbah in Tangiers twenty-two years ago,.' continued the tinker, raising his voice even louder. 'I threatened to kill the fellow who had it if he didn't give it to me, and I killed him afterwards for passing it on to me, knowing what it was. But, of course, I know now that the demon will drive a man to do almost anything.' He stared at the bench end, his eyes flickering, wincing at memories he wished he could erase.
'I can't say why I ever wanted it in the first place, but it seems to choose us. I just knew I had to have it. I hope you get rid of it sooner than I did, lad, I really do.' Something like regret flickered across his weathered face, but only for an instant. He leaned closer to Thomas, but even so, Thomas had to strain to hear his words above the din coming from the demon. The voices were starting to synchronise now, as if they had all been saying the same thing all along, but out of kilter. Random words and phrases loomed in and out of the general cacophony.
'Don't listen to . . .'
'Weak, weak, weak . . .'
'Kill him . . .'
It made concentrating on the tinker's words increasingly difficult.
'If you love your family, then leave now,.' he said. 'You'll hear things you won't want to hear. You won't know if they're true or not, but it won't matter; it will have poisoned everything. If you love them, get away - far away. He'll make you hurt them if you stay.' He stepped back, cocked his head sideways, making his neck click. 'Now if you'll excuse me, I must be on my way before that devil changes its mind.'
'Go on!' shouted the demon. The voices had now become one echoing whole. 'Run! Yes, run, you filthy, disgusting maggot! Run while you have the chance!'
The tinker turned and walked away, leaving the barrow where it stood. After a few moments, the monkey jumped down and scampered after him, scrabbling up and sitting on his shoulder, casting a backward glance at Thomas as he retreated into the distance.
Thomas looked down at the demon bench end as it screamed some disgusting accusation about his mother and Mr Reynolds from the library. Yet even as Thomas flinched at the creature's words, he was aware that he had always suspected something of that sort, though he could never have brought himself to voice it.
'You know it's true!' screamed the demon with a rattling laugh. 'But you could teach them a lesson. You could make them sorry. Those mouths that kissed, those lips that lied. You make them sorry, Thomas. They deserve to be punished. They deserve to choke on their filthy lies!'
Thomas put his hands over his ears but it made no difference. Old Mrs Patterson emerged from the porch of her cottage, blinking at the sunlight. She peered over the gate at Thomas. At first he thought her attention had been caught by the demon's screaming, but he quickly realised that she could no more hear it than Thomas or his parents could when the tinker was the victim of its torturous ranting.
It must have been the tinker's shouting that had brought Mrs Patterson to her garden gate and Thomas could see her concernedly mouthing something to him, but he could not hear her above the demon screeching about Mrs Patterson and a baby born out of wedlock - a child abandoned at a workhouse to die, neglected and unloved.
'Look at her, Thomas!' shouted the demon. 'She stands there like a saintly old maid, but she's just like the rest. I've been among people for hundreds of years and they are all the same, Thomas. They are all appearance, like an apple that hides the bloated maggot within.'
'No!' shouted Thomas, to Mrs Patterson's evident confusion. 'That's not true!'
'Thomas?' called Mrs Patterson. 'Are you quite well?'
'Listen to the putrid old sow!' shouted the demon. 'Why doesn't someone shut her up?'
Thomas turned away and ran helter-skelter out of the village and down the steep meadow that led down to the river, where cows lifted their heads and watched him with dull indifference.
When he reached the river he gripped the bench end in both hands, his arms outstretched. Its voice suddenly changed to a hideous whine as it pleaded with Thomas not to drop him in the water.
'Thomas,.' it simpered. 'Please. I was jesting, that was all. That tinker was crazy, you could see that. I'm begging you not to drown me. Ple-e-e-ease.'
The wheedling tone was even more sickening to Thomas than the earlier sneering and he allowed himself a half-smile at his newfound power and at the realisation that the tinker had been plagued by this creature for over twenty years when all he needed to do was threaten to drown it.
Thomas relaxed his grip and the bench end fell, hitting the water with a satisfying splash. It floated down in a rocking zigzag path, disappearing into the darkness between the swaying weeds.
The braying voice of the demon likewise disappeared and Thomas was left with a deeper appreciation of the subtlety of the sounds that now greeted his ears: the rustling of the willow leaves, the flitter of dragonflies, the distant call of a magpie.
He looked about him and he felt a great swell in his spirits, as if he had been long confined in a cold grey cell and was now released, blinking and tearfully appreciative of the September sunshine and the beauty of the English countryside.
A light breeze played among the willows and far away in the distance he heard the whistle of a train. He took a deep breath and looked down at the dark untroubled waters of the river. It was as if the beauty of the place had closed around the ugliness of the bench end.
Then, as Thomas watched, there seemed to be a movement among the weed fronds - an eel, perhaps, or a pike? There was something about its twitching and erratic movement that sent a shiver through Thomas's body and he turned away and began to walk back up the hill, speeding up as he did so, until he was quite out of breath when he reached the top. He looked back down at the river and smiled. Whatever the thing was, he was free of it.
It was then that he became aware of a noise - the sound of stifled giggles. Had some child been watching him? He must have appeared fairly ridiculous. He was about to call out for the child to show itself when he became horribly aware that his left hand was cold and wet.
With mounting horror he looked down and saw that he was holding the dripping bench end in his hand, a lime green strand of river weed draped about its neck like a scarf.
The demon could contain himself no longer and burst into a volley of cackling laughter. Thomas dropped it and ran, but he as he did so he was aware of the laughter getting louder and closer and he could once again feel the weight of the carving in his hand. You cannot throw it away, the tinker's voice echoed in his head.
'Oh, that's very good!' shouted the demon. 'That's well thought out, you brainless moron!' He chuckled throatily. 'Do you seriously think our rancid old friend the tinker would have suffered my presence for all those years if he could simply have thrown me in the nearest ditch? Oh no, little man. You don't get shot of me that simply, I'm afraid. The time must be just right. The next pilgrim who will have the gift of my company must be in place and ripe for the experience.'
'But why me?' cried Thomas.
'Do you know, they all say that?' said the demon. 'Why does the flea choose to bite one man and not another? How does the tapeworm choose one gut over another? Why not you? Would you prefer it to be your father, perhaps?'
'Yes!' shouted Thomas on the verge of tears.
'That's it!' shouted the demon triumphantly. 'Good boy! Why not that pompous old windbag? He is stealing from the university and yet he still has the effrontery to humiliate you in front of your mother over every trifling matter . . .'
'I never took that tobacco,.' said Thomas.
'Of course not,.' said the demon. 'But he wouldn't believe you, would he?'
'Is he really stealing from the university?' asked Thomas.
'Been doing it for years. But even that can't make him interesting. No wonder your mother is running off to disgrace herself with that reptile, Reynolds. But I am afraid that it does not work that way. I am yours and you are mine, and never the twain shall part; until a new host comes along. It is a curse, you see, and a curse must have rules or where would we be? Where would we be?'
Again the demon bellowed with laughter.
Thomas shook his head, closing his eyes and trying to shake off the dizzying effect of the constant noise. He was suddenly gripped by a steely resolve. Whatever the demon might say, Thomas was determined he would not share the fate of that broken and beaten tinker. This vile creature was not going to ruin his life. Of course he would say it was impossible to prevent it. Surely that was just what an evil hobgoblin like this would say.
Thomas strode off towards his house, ignoring the shrieks of the demon. He entered the back garden by the arched door in the high perimeter wall. Smokey, their cat, ran towards him across the lawn, but stopped in her tracks and hissed, fluffing out her long grey fur, as she saw the sinister bench end in his hand.
The demon launched into a screaming attack on the cat and its disgusting habits, gloating at the cancer it said was already growing in its neck. Thomas marched towards the shed, outside of which Benson, the gardener, had left his axe jammed into a huge hunk of beech.
The demon guessed where Thomas was heading and also his intent as he pulled the axe free. He screamed and goaded Thomas as he placed the bench end on the beech log and lifted the axe above his head.
'Go on!' it screamed. 'Go on! You haven't the nerve, have you, you spineless piss-in-the-bed? Look at you! Your hands are shaking! You're pathetic! Pathetic!'
Thomas took a deep breath and slammed the axe head down with all his might, closing his eyes as it struck home.
But instead of silencing the demon, Thomas's blow had merely resulted in more raucous laughter. When he opened his eyes it was not the bench end that lay split by his axe, but Smokey's body, and he dropped the axe as if it were on fire and turned his face away in horror, tears welling in his eyes.
'Oh, diddums!' shouted the demon. 'Is little Tommy's pussy-wussy broken, then? Do you know I think you may have taken her head right off? That's one catnap she won't be waking up from!' The demon cackled and Thomas found that the bench end was back in his hand.
'Leave me alone!' shouted Thomas, bursting into tears.
'Oh dear, oh dear,.' said the demon. 'I can't do that I'm afraid, Tommy boy.'
Thomas sobbed.
'Come on,.' said the demon. 'I can't believe you are crying over that damned cat. Good riddance to the nauseating fleabag. You never even liked her, admit it!'
'I did!' yelled Thomas. 'I loved her!' But even as he said it, he wasn't sure.
'No, you didn't,.' said the demon with a chuckle.
'Not really. Not at all. The truth is, you don't really love anyone, do you, Thomas? Not really. Not even yourself. Isn't that true?'
'Stop it!' yelled Thomas.
'Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,.' said the demon. 'Calm down. It's all a shock to you, I know. You want your old life back, I understand that. But it's gone. It's gone for good.' The demon's voice dropped to a hiss. 'And why? It's all that filthy tinker's fault, isn't it? He tricked you. If it wasn't for him, everything would be as it was. He's the cause of everything! He ought to pay and pay dearly. Why people are hanged for less - much less - and yet he gets away with ruining your life. Anyone would understand if you took the law into your own hands and taught that filthy old man a lesson . . .'
Thomas nodded slowly. The demon was right about that at any rate. That pig had ruined his life. He would work out some way of ridding himself of the demon later.
'He's slow. He's weak,.' screeched the demon. 'You can catch up with him in no time.'
'I don't even know which way he went,.' said Thomas.
'Yes, you do,.' said the demon. 'Of course you do. He's walking the green lane to Trumpington. You can cut across the fields. It's a quiet route. There will be no one about.'
After a moment's pause, Thomas began to move towards the garden door.
'You're going unarmed?' screamed the demon incredulously. 'A boy like you against a crazy old man like that? He has a knife, remember. Didn't you see it hanging from his belt? You need some protection. He's killed before, you know.' The demon laughed. 'Oh yes - many times, many times. I've seen him do it.' The demon chuckled.
Thomas looked at the axe.
'Good, good,.' screeched the demon. 'That's good thinking. Come on! Come on! He's getting away.'
'I can't carry you and the axe,.' said Thomas.
'The gardener has a canvas bag in the tool shed.
Put me in that!' cackled the demon.
Thomas's ears were stinging from the demon's onslaught. The demon's voice had wormed it's way into his brain and Thomas found it difficult to distinguish which were his thoughts and which were the demon's promptings. He found it hard to think about anything but the tinker and the heavy axe that he now held in his hands as he ran, head bowed and teeth clenched, towards the open fields.
I took a sharp intake of breath when my uncle finished, as if I had been underwater for a little too long.
'I wonder what the demon would say to me, Uncle,.' I said, expecting my uncle to say something comforting along the lines of, 'Those without secrets or wicked desires would be safeguarded from its attentions.' Instead he leaned forward and held both my hands in his. His face was ashen and there was a haunting earnestness about his expression.
'Pray that you never know, Edgar,.' he said, his eyes fixed on mine. 'Pray that you never know.'
'Yes, Uncle,.' I said, prising my hands gently from his grasp and getting to my feet once more. I must confess that at this point I had begun to have some concerns about my uncle's mental state. He seemed to be in danger of losing his ability to distinguish between the real and the imaginary.
I walked across to the framed engraving again and took another look. Having heard Uncle's story, the grotesque features and leering expression of the wooden demon seemed even more sinister than before, if that were possible.
At that very moment, I heard the faintest of creaks and, looking round, saw that the door handle was slowly turning.
'Go away,.' said my uncle, so quietly and matter-of-factly that at first I thought he might be talking to me.
The door handle stopped and then, after a pause, began to turn again.
'Leave us!' said my uncle with more force this time. The handle rattled as it was released.