The eyes flickered; the scar shifted. "Who, Phillips? G.o.d, man, I never did know what you meant half the time. He"ll be wondering where I am-I"ll have to think up a story to satisfy him."
"I think you"ll be able to do that." Cold with fear as he was, Rice was still warmed by fulfilment as he sensed that he had the upper hand, that he was able to taunt as had the man on the cliff-top before the plunge. He plunged into the fog, knowing that now he would be followed.
The grey fields were abruptly blocked by a more solid anonymity, the streets of Lower Brichester, suffocating individuality, erasing it through generations. Whenever he"d walked through these streets with Jack on the short route to the pub each glance of Jack"s had reminded him that he was part of this anonymity, this inertia. But no longer, he told himself. Signs of life were spa.r.s.e: a postman cycled creaking by; beyond a window a radio announcer laughed; a cat curled among milk-bottles. The door was rolled down on a pinball arcade, and a girl in a cheap fur coat was leaping about in the doorway of a boutique to keep herself warm until the keys arrived. Rice felt eyes finger the girl, then revert to him; they had watched him since the beginning of the journey, although the figure seemed to face always forward. Rice glanced at the other; he was gazing in the direction of his stride, and a block of ice grew in Rice"s stomach while the glazing of the pavement cracked beneath his feet.
They pa.s.sed a square foundation enshrining a rusty pram; here a bomb had blown a house asunder. The next street, Rice realised, and dug his nails into the rubber of the torch in his pocket. The blitz had almost bypa.s.sed Brichester; here and there one pa.s.sed from curtained windows to a gaping house, eventually rebuilt if in the town, neglected in Lower Brichester. Was this the key? Had someone been driven underground by blitz conditions, or had something been released by bombing? In either case, what form of camouflage would they have had to adopt to live? Rice thought he knew, but he didn"t want to think it through; he wanted to put an end to it. And round a corner the abandoned house focused into view.
A car purred somewhere; the pavement was faintly numbered for hopscotch. Rice gazed about covertly; there must be n.o.body in sight. And at his side the figure did the same. Terrified, Rice yet had to repress a nervous giggle. "There"s the house," he said. "I suppose you"ll want to go in."
"If you"ve got something to show me." The scar wrinkled again.
Bricks were heaped in what had been the garden; ice glistened in their pores. Rice could see nothing through the windows, which were shuttered with tin. A grey corrugated sheet had been peeled back from the doorway; it sc.r.a.ped at Rice"s ankle as he entered.
The light was dim; he gripped his torch. Above him a shattered skylight illuminated a staircase full of holes through which moist dust fell. To his right a door, one panel gouged out, still hung from a hinge. He hurried into the room, kicking a stray brick.
The fireplace gaped, half curtained by a hanging strip of wallpaper. Otherwise the room was bare, deserted probably for years. Of course the people of the neighbourhood didn"t have to know exactly what was here to avoid it. In the hall tin rasped.
Rice ran into the kitchen, ahead on the left. Fog had penetrated a broken window; it filled his mouth as he panted. Opposite the cloven sink he saw a door. He wrenched it open, and in the other room the brick clattered.
Rice"s hands were gloved in frozen iron; his nails were shards of ice thrust into the fingertips, melting into his blood. One hand clutched towards the back door. He tottered forward and heard the children scream, thought once of Harriet, saw the figures on the cliff. I"m not a hero! he mouthed. How in G.o.d"s name did I get here? And the answer came: because he"d never really believed what he"d suspected. But the torch was shining, and he swung it down the steps beyond the open door.
They led into a cellar; bricks were scattered on the floor, bent knives and forks, soiled plates leading the torch-beam to tattered blankets huddled against the walls, hints of others in the shadows. And in one corner lay a man, surrounded by tins and a strip of corrugated metal.
The body glistened. Trembling, his mouth gaping at the stench which thickened the air, Rice descended, and the torch"s circle shrank. The man in the corner was dressed in red. Rice moved nearer. With a shock he realised that the man was naked, shining with red paint which also marked the tins and strip of metal. Suddenly he wrenched away and retched.
For a moment he was engulfed by nausea; then he heard footsteps in the kitchen. His fingers burned like wax and blushed at their clumsiness, but he caught up a brick. "You"ve found what you expected, have you?" the voice called.
Rice reached the steps, and a figure loomed above him, blotting out the light. With studied calm it felt about in the kitchen and produced a strip of corrugated tin. "Fancy," it said, "I thought I"d have to bring you here to see Harriet. Now it"ll have to be the other way round." Rice had no time to think; focusing his horror, fear and disgust with his lifetime of inaction, he threw the brick.
Rice was shaking by the time he had finished. He picked up the torch from the bottom step and as if compelled turned its beam on the two corpses. Yes, they were of the same stature-they would have been identical, except that the face of the first was an abstract crimson oval. Rice shuddered away from his fascination. He must see Harriet-it didn"t matter what excuse he gave, illness or anything, so long as he saw her. He shone the beam towards the steps to light his way, and the torch was wrested from his hand.
He didn"t think; he threw himself up the steps and into the kitchen. The bolts and lock on the back door had been rusted shut for years. Footsteps padded up the steps. He fell into the other room. Outside an ambulance howled its way to hospital. Almost tripping on the brick, he reached the hall. The ambulance"s blue light flashed in the doorway and pa.s.sed, and a figure with a grey sock covering its face blocked the doorway.
Rice backed away. No, he thought in despair, he couldn"t fail now; the fall from the cliff had ended the menace. But already he knew. He backed into something soft, and a hand closed over his mouth. The figure plodded towards him; the grey wool sucked in and out. The figure was his height, his build. He heard himself saying "I can always help to look after the children." And as the figure grasped a brick he knew what face waited beneath the wool.
Napier Court (1971).
Alma Napier sat up in bed. Five minutes ago she"d laid down Victimes de Devoir to cough, then stared round her bedroom heavy-eyed; the partly-open door reflected panels of cold October sunlight, which glanced from the flowered wallpaper, glared from the gla.s.s-fronted bookcase, but left the metronome on top in shadow and failed to reach the corner where her music-stand was standing. She"d thought she had heard footsteps on the stairs. Beyond the brilliant panel she could see the darker landing; she waited for someone to appear. Her clock, displayed within its gla.s.s tube, showed 11.03. It must be Maureen. Then she thought: could it be her parents? Had they decided to give up their holiday after all? She had looked forward to being left alone for a fortnight when her cold had confined her to the house; she wanted time to prove herself, to make her own way-she felt a stab of misery as she listened. Couldn"t they leave her alone for two weeks? Didn"t they trust her? The silence thickened; the darkness on the landing seemed to move. "Who"s there? Is that you, Maureen?" she called and coughed. The darkness moved again. Of course it didn"t, she said, willing her hands to unclench. She held up one; the little finger twitched. Don"t be childish, she told herself, where"s your strength? She slid out of the coc.o.o.n of warmth, slipped on her slippers and dressing-gown, and went downstairs.
The house was empty. "You see?" she said aloud, What else had she expected? She entered the kitchen. On the window-sill sat the medicine her mother had bought. "I don"t like to leave you alone," she"d said two hours ago. "Promise you"ll take this and stay in bed until you"re better. I"ve asked Maureen to buy anything you need while she"s shopping."
"Mother," Alma had protested, "I could have asked her. After all, she is my friend."
"I know I"m being over-protective. I know I can"t expect to be liked for it any more"-and oh G.o.d, Alma thought, all the strain of calming her down, of parting friends; there was no longer any question of love. As her mother was leaving the bedroom while her father b.u.mped the last case down to the car, she"d said: "Alma, I don"t want to talk about Peter as you well know, but you did promise."
"I told you." Alma had replied somewhat sharply, "I shan"t be seeing him again." That was all over. She wished everything was over, all this possessiveness which threatened to erase her completely; she wished she could be left alone with her music. But that was not to be, not for two years. There was the medicine-bottle, implying her mother"s continued influence in the house. Taking medicine for a cold was a sign of weakness, in Alma"s opinion. But her chest hurt terribly when she coughed; after all, her mother wasn"t imposing it on her, if she took it, that was her own decision. She measured a spoonful and gulped it down. Then she padded determinedly through the hall, past the living-room (her father"s desk reflected in one mirror), the dining room (her mother"s flower arrangements preserved under gla.s.s in another), and upstairs, past her mother"s Victorian valentines framed above the ornate banister. Now, she ordered herself, to bed, and another chapter of Victimes de Devoir before Maureen arrived. She"d never make the Brichester French Circle if she carried on like this.
But as soon as she climbed into bed, trying to preserve its bag of warmth, she was troubled by something she remembered having seen. In the hall-what had been wrong? She caught it: as she"d mounted the stairs she"d seen a shape in the hall mirror. Maureen"s coat hanging on the coat-stand- but Maureen wasn"t here. Certainly something pale had stood against the front-door panes. About to investigate, she addressed herself: the house was empty, there could be nothing there. All right, she"d asked Maureen to check the story of the house in the library"s files of the Brichester Herald-but that didn"t mean she believed the hints she"d heard in the corner shop that day before her mother had intervened with "Now, Alma, don"t upset yourself" and to the shopkeeper: "Haunted, indeed! I"m afraid we grew out of that sort of thing in Severnford!" If she had seemed to glimpse a figure in the hall it merely meant she was delirious. She"d asked Maureen to check purely because she wanted to face up to the house, to come to terms with it. She was determined to stop thinking of her room as her refuge, where she was protected by her music. Before she left the house she wanted to make it a step toward maturity.
The darkness shifted on the landing. Tired eyes, she explained-yet again her room enfolded her. She reached out and removed her flute from its case; she admired its length, its shine, the perfection of its measurements as they fitted to her fingers. She couldn"t play it now-each time she tried she coughed-but it seemed charged with beauty. Her appreciation over, she laid the instrument to rest in its long black box.
"You retreat into your room and your music." Peter had said that, but he"d been speaking of a retreat from Hiroshima, from the conditions in Lower Brichester, from all the horrid things he"d insisted she confront. That was over, she said quickly, and the house was empty. Yet her eyes strayed from Victimes de Devoir.
Footsteps on the stairs again. This time she recognized Maureen"s. The others-which she hadn"t heard, of course -had been indeterminate, even s.e.xless. She thought she"d ask Maureen whether she"d left her coat in the hall; she might have entered while Alma had slept, with the key she"d borrowed. The door opened and the panel of sunlight fled, darkening the room. No, thought Alma; to enquire into possible delusions would be an admission of weakness.
Maureen dropped her carrier and sneezed. "I think I"ve got your cold," she said indistinctly.
"Oh dear." Alma"s mood had darkened with the room, with her decision not to speak. She searched for conversation in which to lose herself. "Have you heard yet when you"re going to library school?" she asked.
"It"s not settled yet. I don"t know, the idea of a spinster career is beginning to depress me. I"m glad you"re not faced with that."
"You shouldn"t brood," Alma advised, restlessly stacking her books on the bedspread.
Maureen examined the t.i.tles. "Victimes de Devoir, Therese Desqueyroux. In the original French, good Lord. Why are you grappling with these?"
"So that I"ll be an interesting young woman," Alma replied instantly. "I"m sure I"ve told you I feel guilty doing nothing. I can"t practice, not with this cold. I only hope it"s past before the Camside concert. Which reminds me, do you think I could borrow your transistor during the day? For the music programme. To give me peace."
"All right. I can"t today, I start work at once. Though I think-no, it doesn"t matter."
"Go on."
"Well, I agree with Peter, you know that. You can"t have peace and beauty without closing your eyes to the world. Didn"t he say that to seek peace in music was to seek complete absence of sensation, of awareness?"
"He said that and you know my answer." Alma unwillingly remembered; he had been here in her room, taking in the music in the bookcase, the polished gramophone-she"d sensed his disapproval and felt miserable; why couldn"t he stay the strong forthright man she"d come to admire and love? "Really, darling, this is an immature att.i.tude," he"d said. "I can"t help feeling you want to abdicate from the human race and its suffering." Her eyes embraced the room. This was security, apart from the external chaos, the horrid part of life. "Even you appreciate the beauty of the museum exhibits," she told Maureen.
"I suppose that"s why you work there. I admire them, yes, but in many cases by ignoring their history of cruelty."
"Why must you and Peter always look for the horrid things? What about this house? There are beautiful things here. That gramophone-you can look at it and imagine all the craftsmanship it took. Doesn"t that seem to you fulfilling?"
"You know we leftists have a functional aesthetic. Anyway-" Maureen paused. "If that"s your view of the house you"d best not know what I found out about it."
"Go on, I want to hear."
"If you insist. The Brichester Herald was useless-they reported the death of the owner and that was all-but I came across a chapter in Pamela Jones" book on local hauntings which gives the details. The last owner of the house lost a fortune on the stock market-I don"t know how exactly, of course it"s not my field-and he became a recluse in this house. There"s worse to come, are you sure you want-? Well, he went mad. Things started disappearing, so he said, and he accused something he thought was living in the house, something that used to stand behind him or mock him from the empty rooms. I can imagine how he started having hallucinations, looking at this view-"
Alma joined her at the window. "Why?" she disagreed. "I think it"s beautiful." She admired the court before the house, the stone pillars framing the iron flourish of the gates; then a stooped woman pa.s.sed across the picture, heaving a pram from which overflowed a huge cloth bag of washing. Alma felt depressed again; the scene was spoilt.
"Sorry, Alma," Maureen said; her cold hand touched Alma"s fingers. Alma frowned slightly and insinuated herself between the sheets. "...Sorry," Maureen said again. "Do you want to hear the rest? It"s conventional, really. He ga.s.sed himself. The Jones book has something about a note he wrote - insane, of course: he said he wanted to "fade into the house, the one possession left to me", whatever that meant. Afterward the stories started; people used to see someone very tall and thin standing at the front door on moonlit nights, and one man saw a figure at an upstairs window with its head turning back and forth like clockwork. Yes, and one of the neighbours used to dream that the house was "screaming for help"-the book explained that, but not to me I"m afraid. I shouldn"t be telling you all this, you"ll be alone until tonight."
"Don"t worry, Maureen. It"s just enjoyably creepy."
"A perceptive comment. It blinds you to what really happened. To think of him in this house, possessing the rooms, eating, sleeping-you forget he lived once, he was real. I wonder which room-?"
"You don"t have to harp on it," Alma said. "You sound like Peter."
"Poor Peter, you are attacking him today. He"ll be here to protect you tonight, after all."
"He won"t because we"ve parted."
"You could have stopped me talking about him, then. But how for G.o.d"s sake did it happen?"
"Oh, on Friday. I don"t want to talk about it." Walking hand in hand to the front door and as always kissing as Peter turned the key; her father waiting in the hall: "Now listen, Peter, this can"t go on"-prompted by her mother, Alma knew, her father was too weak to act independently. She"d pulled Peter into the kitchen-" "Go, darling, I"ll try and calm them down," she"d said desperately-but her mother was waiting, immediately animated, like a fairground puppet in a penny arcade: "You know you"ve broken my heart, Alma, marrying beneath you." Alma had slumped into a chair, but Peter leaned against the dresser, facing them all, her mother"s prepared speech: "Peter, I will not have you marrying Alma-you"re uneducated, you"ll get nowhere at the library, you"re obsessed with politics and you don"t care how much they distress Alma-" and on and on. If only he"d come to her instead of standing pugnaciously apart! She"d looked up at him finally, tearful, and he"d said: "Well, darling, I"ll answer any point of your mother"s you feel is not already answered"-and suddenly everything had been too much; she"d run sobbing to her room. Below the back door had closed. She"d wrenched open the window; Peter was crossing the garden beneath the rain. "Peter!" she"d cried out. "Whatever happens I still love you-" but her mother was before her, pushing her away from the window, shouting down: "Go back to your kennel!"... "What?" she asked Maureen, distracted back.
"I said I don"t believe it was your decision. It must have been your mother."
"That"s irrelevant. I broke it off finally." Her letter: "It would be impossible to continue when my parents refuse to receive you but anyway I don"t want to any more, I want to study hard and become a musician"-she"d posted it on Sat.u.r.day after a sleepless sobbing night, and immediately she"d felt released, at peace. Then the thought disturbed her: it must have reached Peter by now; surely he wouldn"t try to see her? But he wouldn"t be able to get in; she was safe.
"You can"t tell me you love your mother more than Peter. You"re simply taking refuge again."
"Surely you don"t think I love her now. But I still feel I must be loyal. Is there a difference between love and loyalty?"
"Never having had either, I wouldn"t know. Good G.o.d, Alma, stop barricading yourself with pseudo-philosophy!"
"If you must know, Maureen, I shall be leaving them as soon as I"ve paid for my flute. They gave it me for my twenty-first and now they"re threatening to take it back. It"ll take me two years, but I shall pay."
"And you"ll be twenty-five. G.o.d Almighty, why? Bowing down to private ownership?"
"You wouldn"t understand any more than Peter would."
"You"ve returned the ring, of course."
"No." Alma shifted Victimes de Devoir. "Once I asked Peter if I could keep it if we broke up." Two weeks before their separation; she"d felt the pressures-her parents" crush, his horrors-misshaping her, callous as thumbs on plasticine. And he"d replied that there"d be no question of their breaking up, which she"d taken for a.s.sent.
"And Peter"s feelings?" Maureen let the question resonate, but it was m.u.f.fled by the music.
"Maureen, I just want to remember the happy times!"
"I don"t understand that remark. At least, perhaps I do, but I don"t like it."
"You don"t approve."
"I do not." Maureen brandished her watch; from her motion she might have been about to slap Alma. "I can"t discuss it with you. I"ll be late." She b.u.t.toned herself into her coat on the landing. "I suppose I"ll see Peter later," she said, and clumped downstairs.
With the slam Alma was alone. Her hot-water bottle chilled her toes; she thrust it to the foot of the bed. The room was darker; rain patted the pane. The metronome stood stolid in the shadow as if stilled forever. Maureen might well see Peter later; they both worked at Brichester Central Library. What if Maureen should attempt to heal the breach, to lend Peter her key? It was the sort of thing Maureen might well do, particularly as she liked Peter. Alma recalled suggesting once that they take Maureen out- "she does seem lonely, Peter"-only to find the two of them ideologically united against her; the most difficult two hours she"d spent with either of them, listening to their argument on Vietnam and the rest across the c.o.c.ktail-bar table: horrid. Later she"d go down and bolt the door. But now-she turned restlessly and Victimes de Devoir toppled to the floor. She felt guilty not to be reading on-but she yearned to fill herself with music.
The shadows weighed on her eyes; she pulled the cord for light. Spray laced the window like cobwebs on a misty morning; outside the world was slate. The needle on her gramophone was dulled, but she selected the first record, Britten"s Nocturne ("Finnegan"s Half-Awake" Peter had commented; she"d never understood what he meant). She placed the needle and let the music expand through her, flowing into troubled crevices. The beauty of Peter Pears" voice. Peter. Suddenly she was listening to the words: huge sponges, huge sea-worms-She picked off the needle; she didn"t want it to wear away the beauty. Usually Britten could trans.m.u.te all to beauty. Had Peter"s pitiless vision thrown the horrid part into such relief? Once she"d taken him to a concert of War Requiem and in the interval he"d commented: "I agree with you-Britten succeeds completely in beautifying war, which is precisely my objection." And later he"d admitted that for the last half-hour he"d been pitying the poor cymbal-player, bobbing up and down on cue as if in church. That was his trouble: he couldn"t achieve peace.
Suppose he came to the house? she thought again. Her gaze flew to the bedroom door, the ma.s.sed dark on the landing. For a moment she was sure that Peter was out there; wasn"t someone watching from the stairs? She coughed jaggedly; it recalled her. Deliberately she lifted her flute from its case and rippled a scale before the next cough came. Later she"d practice, no matter how she coughed; her breathing exercises might cure her lungs. "I find all these exercises a little terrifying," said Peter: "a little robotic." She frowned miserably; he seemed to wait wherever she sought peace. But thoughts of him carried her to the dressing-table drawer, to her ring; she didn"t have to remember, the diamond itself crystallized beauty. She turned the jewel but it refused to sparkle beneath the heavy sky. Had he been uneducated? Well, he"d known nothing about music, he"d never known what a cadenza was-"what"s the point of your academic a.n.a.lysis, where does it touch life?" Enough. She snapped the lid on the ring and restored it to its drawer. From now on she"d allow herself no time for disturbing memories: downstairs for soup-she must eat-then her flute exercises followed by Victimes de Devoir until she needed sleep.
The staircase merged into the hall, vaguely defined beneath her drowsiness; the Victorian valentines seemed dusty in the dusk, neglected in the depths of an antique shop. As Alma pa.s.sed the living-room a stray light was caught in the mirror and a memory was trapped: herself and Peter on the couch, separating instantly, tongues retreating guiltily into mouths, each time the opening door flashed in the mirror: toward the end Peter would clutch her rebelliously, but she couldn"t let her parents come on them embracing, not after their own marriage had been drained of love. "We"ll be each other"s peace," she"d once told Peter, secretly aware as she spoke that she was terrified of s.e.x. Once they were engaged she"d felt a duty to give in-but she"d panted uncontrollably, her mouth gulping over his, shaming her. One dreadful night Peter had rested his head on her shoulder and she"d known that he was consulting his watch behind her back. And suddenly, weeks later, it had come right; she was at peace, soothed, her fears almost engulfed-which was precisely when her parents had shattered the calm, the door thrown open, jarring the mirror: "Peter, this is a respectable house, I won"t have you keeping us all up like this until G.o.d knows what hour, even if you are used to that sort of thing-" and then that final confrontation-Quickly, Alma told herself, onward. She thrust the memories back into the darkness of the two dead rooms to be crushed by her father"s desk, choked by her mother"s flowers...
On the kitchen windowsill the medicine was black against the back garden, the grey gra.s.s plastered down by rain: it loomed like a poison bottle in a Hitchc.o.c.k film. What was Peter doing at this moment? Where would he be tonight? She fumbled sleepily with the tin of tomato soup and watched it gush into the pan. Where would he be tonight? With someone else? If only he would try to contact her, to show her he still cared-Nonsense. She turned up the gas. No doubt he"d be at the cinema; he"d tried to force films on her, past her music. Such as the film they"d seen on the afternoon of their parting, the afternoon they"d taken off work together, Hurry Sundown; it hadn"t been the theme of racism which had seemed so horrid, but those scenes with Michael Caine sublimating his s.e.x-drive through his saxophone-she"d brushed her hair against Peter"s cheek, hopefully, desperately, but he was intent on the screen, and she could only guess his thoughts, too accurately. Perhaps he and Maureen would find each other; Alma hoped so-then she could forget about them both. The soup bubbled and she poured it into a dish. Gas sweetened the air; she checked the control, but it seemed turned tight. The dresser-there he had stood, pugnaciously apart, watching her. She set the medicine before her on the table; she"d take it upstairs with her-she didn"t want to come downstairs again. In her mind she overcame the suffocating shadow of the rooms, thick with years of tobacco-smoke in one, with lavender-water in another, by her shining flute, the sheets of music brightly turning.
A dim thin figure moved down the hall toward the kitchen; it hadn"t entered by the front door-rather had it emerged from the twin vista in the hall mirror. Alma sipped her soup, not tasting it but warmed. The figure fingered the twined flowers, sat at her father"s desk. Alma bent her head over the plate. The figure stood outside the kitchen door, one hand on the doork.n.o.b. Alma stood; her chair screeched; she saw herself pulled erect by panic in the familiar kitchen like a child in darkness, and willed herself to sit. The figure climbed the stairs, entered her room, padded through the shadows, examining her music, breathing on her flute. Alma"s spoon tipped and the soup drained back into its disc. Then, determinedly, she dipped again.
She had to fasten her thoughts on something as she mounted the stairs, medicine in hand; she thought of the Camside orchestral concert next week-thank G.o.d she wouldn"t be faced with Peter chewing gum amid the ranks of placid tufted eggs. She felt for her bedroom light-switch. Behind the bookcase shadows sprang back into hiding and were defined. She smiled at the room and at herself; then carefully she closed the door. After the soup she felt a little hot, light-headed. She moved to the window and admired the court set back from the bare street; above the roofs the sky was diluted lime-and-lemon beneath clouds like wads of stuffing. ""Napier Court"-I see the point, but don"t you think that naming houses is a bit pretentious?" Alma slid her feet through the cold sheets, recoiling from the frigid bottle. She"d fill it later; now she needed rest. She set aside Victimes de Devoir and lay back on the pillow.
Alma awoke. Someone was outside on the landing. At once she knew: Peter had borrowed Maureen"s key. He came into the room, and as he did so her mother appeared from behind the door and drove the music-stand into his face. Alma awoke. She was swaddled in blankets, breathing through them. For a moment she lay inert; one hand was limp between her legs, her ear pressed on the pillow; these two parts of her felt miles distant, and something vast throbbed silently against her eardrums. She catalogued herself: slight delirium, a yearning for the toilet. She drifted with the bed; she disliked to emerge, to be orientated by the cold.
Nonsense, don"t indulge your weakness, she told herself, and poked her head out. Surely she"d left the light on?
Darkness blindfolded her, warm as the blankets. She reached for the cord, and the blue window blackened as the room appeared. The furniture felt padded by delirium. Alma burned. She struggled into her dressing-gown and saw the clock: 12.05. Past midnight and Maureen hadn"t come? Then she realized: the clock had stopped-it must have been around the time of Maureen"s departure. Of course Maureen wouldn"t return; she"d been repelled by disapproval. Which meant that Alma would have no transistor, no means of discovering the time. She felt as if she floated bodiless, disorientated, robbed of sensation, and went to the window for some indication; the street was deserted, as it might be at any hour soon after dark.
Turning from the pane she pivoted in the mirror; behind her the bed stood on her left. Something was wrong; it should have been on the right. Or did it reverse in the reflection? She turned to look but froze; if she faced round she"d meet a figure waiting, hands outstretched, one side of its face incomplete, like those photographs from Vietnam Peter had insisted she confront- The thought released her; she turned to an empty room. So much for her delirium. Deliberately she switched out the light and padded down the landing.
On her way back she pa.s.sed her mother"s room; she felt compelled to enter. Between the twin beds shelves displayed the Betjemans, the books on Greece, histories of the Severn Valley. On the beds the sheets were stretched taut as one finds them on first entering a hotel room. When Peter had stayed for weekends her father had moved back into this room. Her father-out every night to the pub with his friends; he hadn"t been vindictive to her mother, just unfeeling and unable to adjust to her domestic rhythm. When her mother had accused Alma of "marrying beneath her" she"d spoken of herself. Deceptively freed by their absence, Alma began to understand her mother"s hostility to Peter. "You"re a handsome b.u.g.g.e.r," her mother had once told him; Alma had pinpointed that as the genesis of her hostility-it had preyed on her mother"s mind, this lowering herself to say what she thought he"d like only to realise that the potential of this vulgarity lurked within herself. Now Alma saw the truth; once more sleeping in the same room as her husband, she"d had the failure of her marriage forced upon her; she"d projected it on Alma"s love for Peter. Alma felt released; she had understood them, perhaps she could even come once more to love them, just as eventually she"d understood that buying Napier Court had fulfilled her father"s ambition to own a house in Brichester-her father, trying to talk to Peter who never communicated to him (he might have been unable, but this was no longer important), finally walking away from Peter whistling "Release Me" which he"d reprised the day after the separation, somewhat unfeelingly she thought. Even this she could understand. To seal her understanding, she turned out the light and closed the door.
Immediately a figure rose before her mother"s mirror, combing long fingers through its hair. Alma managed not to shudder; she strode to her own door, opened it on blackness, and crossed to her bed. She reached out to it and fell on her knees; it was not there.
As she knelt trembling, the house rearranged itself round her; the dark corridors and rooms, perhaps not empty as she prayed, watched pitilessly, came to bear upon her. She staggered to her feet and clutched the cord, almost touching a gaping face, which was not there when the light came on. Her bed was inches from her knees, where it had been when she left it, she insisted. Yet this failed to calm her. There was more than darkness in the house; she was no longer comfortingly alone in her warm and welcoming home. Had Peter borrowed Maureen"s key? All at once she hoped he had; then she"d be in his arms, admitting that her promise to her mother had been desperate; she yearned for his protection-strengthened by it she believed she might confront horrors if he demanded them.
She watched for Peter from the window. One night while he was staying Peter had come to her room-She focused on the court; it seemed cut off from the world, imprisoning. Eclipsed by the gatepost, a pedestrian crossing"s beacons exchanged signals without meaning; she thought of others "flashing far into the night on cold lonely country roads, and shivered. He had come into her room; they"d caressed furtively and whispered so as not to wake her parents, though now she suspected that her mother had lain awake, listening through her father"s snores. "Take me," she"d pleaded-but in the end she couldn"t; the wall was too attentive. Now she squirmed at her remembered endearments: "my nice Peter"-"my handsome Peter"-"my lovely Peter"-and at last her halting praise of his body, the painful search for new phrases. She no longer cared to recall; she sloughed off the memories with an epiliptic shudder.
Suddenly a man appeared in the gateway of the court. Alma stiffened. The figure pa.s.sed; she relaxed, but only for a moment; had there not been something strange about its long loping strides, its trailing shadow? This was childish, she rebuked herself; she"d no more need to become obsessed with someone hastening to a date than with Peter, who was no longer in a position to protect her. She turned from the window before the figure should form behind her, and picked up her flute. Half-an-hour of exercises, then sleep. She opened the case. It was empty.
It was as if her mother had returned and taken back the flute; she felt the house again rise up round her. She grasped an explanation; last time she"d fingered her flute -when had that been? Time had slipped away-she hadn"t replaced it in its case. She threw the sheets back from the bed; only the dead bottle was exposed. She knelt again and peered beneath the bed. Something bent above her, waiting, grinning. No, the flute hadn"t rolled. She stood up and the figure moved behind her. "Don"t!" she whimpered. At that moment she saw that the dressing-table drawer was open. She took one step toward it, to her ring, but could not look into it, knowing what was there-a face peering up at her from the drawer, its eyes opening, infinitely slowly, the lashes parting stickily-Delirium again? It didn"t matter. Alma"s lips trembled. She could still escape. She went to the wardrobe-but nothing could have made her open it; instead she caught up her clothes from the chair at the foot of the bed and dressed clumsily, dragging her skirt round to reach the zip. The room was silent; her music had fled, but any minute something else would take its place.
Since she had to face the darkened house, she did so. She trembled only once. The Victorian valentines hung immobile; the mirrors extended the darkness, strengthened its power. The house waited. Alma fell into the court; from the cobblestones, the erect gateposts, the street beyond, she drew courage. Two years and she"d be far from here, a complete person. Freed from fear, she left the front door open. But she shivered; the night air knifed through the dangerous warmth of her cold. She must go-where? To Maureen"s, she decided; that was not too far, and she knew Maureen to be kind. She"d forget her disapproval if she saw Alma like this. Alma strode toward the orange fan which flared from the beacon behind the gatepost, and stopped.
Resting against the beacon was a white bag, half as high as Alma. She"d seen such bags before, full of laundry. Yet she could not force herself to pull back the gates and pa.s.s. Suddenly the gates were her protection against the shapeless ma.s.s, for deep within herself she suppressed a horror that the bag might move toward her, flapping. It couldn"t be what it appeared; who would have left it there at this time of night? A car hissed past on the glittering tarmac. Alma choked a scream for help. Screaming in the middle of the street-what would her mother have thought? Musicians didn"t do that sort of thing. Besides, why shouldn"t someone have left a bag of washing at the crossing while she went for help to heft it to the laundry? Alma touched the gates and withdrew, chilled; here she was, risking penumonia in the night, and for what? The panic of delirium. As a child she"d screamed hoa.r.s.ely through her cold that a man was bending over her; she was too old for that. Back to bed-no, to find her flute, and then to bed, to purge herself of these horrid visions. Ironically she thought: Peter would be proud of her if he knew. Her flute-need the two years any longer be meaningful? Still touched by understanding, she couldn"t think that her parents would hold to their threat, made after all before she"d written to Peter. What must have been a night-breeze moved the bag. Forcing her footsteps not to drag, Alma left the orange radiance and closed the door behind her; her last test.
In the hall the thing she had thought was Maureen"s coat shifted wakefully. Alma ignored it, but her flesh crept hot and cold. At the far end of the hall mirror, a figure approached, arms extended as if blindly. Alma smiled; it was too like a childish fear to frighten her: "enjoyably creepy"-she tried to recapture her mood of the morning, but every organ of her body felt hot and pounding. She broke and ran to her room; the light, oddly, was still on.
In the rooms below her father"s desk creaked; the flower arrangements writhed. Did it matter? Alma argued desperately. There was no lock on her door, but she refused to barricade it; there was nothing solid abroad in the house, nothing to harm her but the lure of her own fears. Her flute-she wouldn"t play it once she found it; she"d go to bed with its protection. She moved round the bed and saw the flute, overlaid by Victimes de Devoir. The flute was bent in half.
One tear pressed from Alma"s eyes before she realized the full horror. As she whirled, completely disorientated, a mirror crashed below. Something shrieked toward her through the corridors. She sank onto the bed, defenceless, wishing all were over. Music blasted from the record player, the Nocturne; Alma leapt up and screamed. "In roaring he shall rise," the voice bawled, "and on the surface-" A music stand was hurled to the floor. "die!" The needle sc.r.a.ped across the record and clicked off. The walls seemed on the point of tearing, bulging inward. Alma no longer cared. She"d screamed once; she could do no more. Now she waited.
When the figure formed deep in the mirror she knew that all was over. She faced it, drained of feeling. It grew closer, arms stretched out, its face inflated grey by gas. Alma wept; it was horrid. She knew who it was; a shaft of truth had pierced the suffocating warmth of her delirium. The suicide had possessed the house, was the house; he had waited for someone like her. "Go on," she sobbed at him, "take me!" The bloated cheeks moved in a swollen grin; the arms stretched out for her and vanished.
The house was empty. Alma was surrounded by a vacuum into which something must rush. She stood up shaking and fell into the vacuum; her sight was torn away. She tried to move; there was no longer any muscle to respond. She felt nothing, but utter horror closed her in. Somewhere she sensed her body, moving happily on her bedroom carpet, picking up her ruined flute, breathing a hideous note into it. She tried to scream. Impossible.
Only in dreams can houses scream for help.
The Franklyn Paragraphs (1973).
Errol Undercliffe is a Brichester writer whose work has only recently begun to reach a wider public. Apparently a recluse, he often wrote for the Brichester fanzine Spirited, whose editors, however, never met him. Rumour has it that he spoke on a literary panel at the Brichester Fantasy Convention in 1965, but a photograph taken of him on that occasion has yet to be traced. In 1967, aged about 30, he disappeared after an attempt at amateur psychical research. His stories, most of them contemporary treatments of traditional macabre themes, have been edited into an omnibus collection, Photographed by Lightning, and the Korean film director Harry Chang, an Undercliffe admirer of long standing, has completed a triptych film of his stories, Red Dreams.