Dark Companions (16 page)

He padded across the cold boards and switched off the lights, then he slid into the tangle of blankets. God, they weren’t so warm; his toes squirmed. And he’d forgotten to take out last week’s hot water bottle, damn it. He could feel it dragging at the bedclothes; it was hanging down beyond the mattress in a sack of loose blanket. He tried to hook it with his toes but couldn’t reach it. At least it wouldn’t chill his feet.

The bed drifted gently on a sea of beer. Some performances have the Oh come on, he thought angrily. He glared at the room to tire his eyes. It glowed faintly with moonlight, as though steeped in luminous paint. He glared at the glimmering wardrobe, at the dark gap above. What was that, at the back? It must be the accumulation of dust which he had to clean out, but it was pale as the moonlight, of which its appearance must be an effect. It looked like a tiny body, its head in the shadows, its limbs drawn up into a withered tangle. God, it looked like a colourless baby; he could even see one of its hands, could count the shrivelled fingers. What on earth was it? But the wardrobe was sailing sideways on his beer. He closed his eyes and drifted down, down into sleep.

A figure lay on a bed. Its face was dim, as was the dark shape crouched at the foot of the bed. Limbs—many of them, it seemed—reached for the sleeper, inching it down the bed. The figure writhed helplessly, its hands fluttered feebly as the wings of an ensnared fly. It moaned.

Ted woke. His eyes opened, fleeing the dream; the room sprang up around him, glowing dimly. He lay on his back while his heart thudded like a huge soft drum. The luminous room looked hardly more reassuring than the dream. God, he would almost have preferred Mrs Dame’s muttering to this.

And now he wouldn’t be able to sleep, because he was painfully cold. He couldn’t feel his legs, they were so numb. He reached down to massage them. His hands seemed retarded and clumsy; they touched his legs and found them stiff, but his legs couldn’t feel his fingers at all. Had he been lying awry, or was it the cold? He rubbed his thighs and cursed his awkwardness.

He couldn’t move his feet. Though he strained, the dim hump in the blankets at the far end of the bed stood absolutely still. Panic was gathering. He lifted the blankets and pushed them back. His blood felt slow and thick; so did he.

Before he had uncovered his legs, the hump in the blankets collapsed, although he hadn’t felt his feet move. Something dragged at the bedclothes, and he heard it thump the floor softly, in the sack of blankets beyond the mattress. Only the hot water bottle. At once he remembered that he had fished the bottle out of bed last week.

He managed to sit up, and threw the blankets away violently. Panic filled him, overwhelming but vague. He was swaying; he had to punch the mattress in order to prop himself up. His shadow dimmed the bed, he could hardly see his legs. They looked short, perhaps because of the dimness, and oddly featureless, like smooth glistening sticks. He couldn’t move them at all.

As he stared down, struggling feebly and frantically to clear his mind, the dim hump came groping hungrily out of the tangle of blankets.

The Little Voice

When Edith Locketty went downstairs the old man was already staring. She couldn’t draw the curtains; during the night her curtain rail had collapsed again. On the wall that divided the yards, weeds nodded helplessly beneath rain. Beyond them, through his window that was the twin of hers, the old man stared at her.

He was smiling. She pursed her lips, frowning at his baggy face and veined dome, patched with grey hair and discoloured skin as if abandoned to dust and spiders. His eyes were wide, but were they innocent? His smile looked sleepy, sated, reminiscent; reminiscent of—

She remembered her dream. Her face became a cold disgusted mask. Filthy old creature, it was written on his face what he was. But he couldn’t know what she had dreamed. No doubt his smile referred to something equally disgusting. She cracked her egg viciously, as though it were a tiny cranium.

He turned away. Good of him to let her eat in peace! Bars of rain struggled down the window; beyond them, at the edge of her vision, he was a dim feeble shifting that felt like an irritation in her eye. The downpour hissed in the back yard and the alley beyond, prattled in the gutters. Gradually, through the liquid clamour, she made out another sound. In the old man’s house the child was chattering.

She glanced reluctantly across. She knew neither its sex nor its age. Again she wondered whether he kept the child out of sight deliberately because he knew she was a teacher. Did it ever go to school? If it wasn’t old enough, what possessed him to keep it awake at all hours?

Perhaps the child was beyond his control, and kept him awake. His smile might have been weary rather than sleepy, and meant for the child rather than for her. He sat at the dim bare table, gazing into the underwater room, at the muffled childish piping.

She dropped the crushed shell into the pedal bin, glad to be ready to leave. There was something nasty about him, she’d seen it skulking in his eyes. And he couldn’t be helping the child to develop. She’d never heard the thin incessant voice pronounce a recognisable word.

The pavements glittered, bejewelled with rain and snatches of sun. The clouds had almost drained, the last shafts of rain hurried away on the wind; puddles puckered vanishing mouths. To think of leaving a child alone with him! If she had ever had a child— She halted her thoughts firmly. That was long past.

Nearing the school, she became her role: Miss Locketty the teacher. The children knew where they were with her, as they needed to. But the old man was troubling her: his stare, his sly pleasure, her recurring dream of his dry piebald flesh groping over her in bed.

She shook off the memory, squirming. How could anyone allow him near? His housekeeper might have, if that was what she was; perhaps the child was theirs. To think of his flesh jerking spasmodically like an old machine! One man had been enough to disgust her for life. She strode furiously into the schoolyard.

Mr Prince was on yard duty. His hair was longer than most of the girls’. It was his last day at this school, and he seemed not to care what the children did—although, in her opinion, he never had cared. Children sat on their wet raincoats. “Hang those up, please,” she said, and they did so at once. Others were kicking puddles at each other, but ceased when she said “You’re too old for that.” Already she felt calmer, more sure.

After assembly she led her class to their room. “You may play games quietly.” They fought pen-and-paper battles, but noise came blundering through the wall from Mr Prince’s class. On the other side, the murmur of Sue Thackeray’s children was hardly audible. At least it was Prince’s last day.

Drat it, she’d forgotten to bring the Enid Blyton book to read to her class, their end-of-term treat. At lunchtime she made for the gates. A woman was reaching through the railings as though the street were a cage. Her hand consisted of bones gloved in skin, groping for the children, beckoning. In her pocket a bottle dribbled wine around its rakish stopper. “Come away from there, please,” the teacher told the children. Poor woman; probably beyond help. As she turned away, the woman’s eyes puckered wistfully.

The teacher strode home. More rain loomed overhead; the glum sky doled out light. The book lay on the kitchen table, where she’d left it to remind her. The old man sat at his table, reaching for and talking to the obscure gloom. His hands were playing some complicated game.

When he turned to stare at her, his smile looked gloating. Somewhere near him the voice clamoured thinly for attention. “Yes, I can see you, you dirty old swine,” she said loudly without thinking. “Just you watch yourself.” She hurried away, for she thought he’d begun to tremble—though surely he couldn’t have heard her words. His staring face looked frail as shadow.

She read her book to her class, and watched their faces dull. Ranks of uniformed waxworks stared at her, drooping a little. Did they think they were too old for the story, or that she was out of date? She saw the old man trembling. Noise from next door floundered about her room like a clumsy intruder. If she didn’t act she would lose control of herself. “Talk quietly until I come back,” she said.

When Mr Prince deigned to answer his door, she said “Will you control your class, please? You’re making it impossible for me to read.”

Sandwiched in her book, her finger pointed at him. He glanced at the cover with a motion like spitting. His mouth quirked, meaning: Jesus, that’s just what you’d expect of her. “Never mind what you think of it,” she blurted. “Just do as you’re told. I could teach you a few of the basics of teaching.”

He stared incredulously at her. “Oh piss off and leave us alone.”

The head listened to her tale, sucking his pipe loudly; she could tell he’d been looking forward to a quiet smoke. “I’d have smacked a child for saying it,” she said.

“I hope you’d do nothing of the kind.” As she stared, feeling betrayed, he added more gently “Besides, it’s his last day. No point in unpleasantness. We all need a rest,” he said as though to excuse her. “It’s time we all went home.”

From her window she watched her class crossing the schoolyard, eager for freedom. “Have a good Easter,” one had said, but had that been sarcasm? She could feel only the burning knot of anger in her guts. And she was faced with two weeks of the old man’s stare.

But the house next to hers was silent. Only the dark uncurtained window gaped at her, vaguely framed by twilit brick. She immersed herself in peace. Her anger dulled and went out, or at least became a vague shadow in her mind.

She served herself dinner on the Wedgwood service, which her parents had kept for best. The window opposite reminded her of an empty aquarium, grimy with neglect; it made her kitchen feel more comfortable. Tomorrow she’d put up the curtain rail. She read Georgette Heyer until exhaustion began to disintegrate the phrases.

She was sitting at a table, gazing across it at darkness. Very gradually a shape began to accumulate twilight, scarcely more distinct than the dark: a developing foetus? It must be too dark for her eyes to function properly, for surely no foetus ever took that shape, or moved so swiftly around a table. When she woke, the silence seemed chill and very large, alive with memories. She had to urge herself to climb the stairs to bed.

Someone was knocking, but not at her door; she turned comfortably within her own warmth and slept again. It was the sounds of the crowd, of footsteps booming muffled through the house, that woke her.

They were next door, she realised, as she blinked herself aware of the midday sunshine. She peered between the curtains, annoyed that she felt guiltily furtive. A policeman was emerging from the old man’s house; a police car squatted outside.

At last she let go of the curtains. She rushed herself to the bathroom and slapped her face with water, scrubbed her armpits. What she’d said had served the old man right. Surely he hadn’t— In the mirror her face deplored her faltering. She must find out what had happened.

Her body fumbled as though to hinder her dressing. As she strode down the path, trailing grasses clung to her ankles. Her stomach clenched—but she couldn’t retreat, for the housekeeper had seen her. “What’s wrong?” the teacher called and felt forced to hold her breath.

The woman dragged her coat tighter, shivering in the April wind that fought for the parcel in her hands. “Mr Wajda has died,” she said.

He’d been a foreigner? Questions struggled half formed behind the teacher’s lips: How did he? Why did he? It seemed safest to ask “Who found him?”

“The postman. He was trying to deliver this.” The woman held out the parcel; her small eyes looked careful, limited, determined not to speculate. “He saw Mr Wajda at the bottom of the stairs.”
 

“He fell downstairs?” The teacher tried not to sound as hopeful as she felt.

“They think there was a loose stair rod. Of course, he couldn’t see it.”

She managed to keep her relief from her face. But “Of course?” she repeated, puzzled.

“Yes, of course. He was blind.”

“I see,” she lied, and retreated mumbling “If there’s anything I can do.” The housekeeper looked as bewildered as the teacher felt, and was staring at the opened parcel, which contained a skipping rope.

So the old man had been staring only at her sounds. His wide eyes hadn’t meant to pretend innocence. No doubt his hearing had been acute; he must have heard her words. Still, blindness didn’t make him innocent; indeed, it explained the way he had fumbled over her in her dreams. Enough of that. His death had been nothing to do with her, he would have fallen anyway, of course he would. She could forget him.

But she could not. He must be lying still in the dark house. His gloomy window looked ominous, as though threatening to stage an unpleasant surprise. It unnerved her from climbing up to replace her curtain rail. Instead she cleaned her house before it annoyed her further. Somewhere a child was either sobbing or laughing.

Next day the hearse arrived. Quick work: perhaps he’d had friends in the business. Now the house next door felt simply empty. She smiled at the flat blank window. No hurry now to put up the rail.

A child sang tunelessly: la, la, la. The teacher went shopping beneath a thick grey sky, and told children to leave the old man’s garden. The news must have spread that his house was no man’s land. Returning, she had to chase the children again. “Do you want the police?” she demanded and watched while they fled.

La, la, la.
She unpacked her purchases. La, la, la.
The sound was above her. In the adjoining house. The childless black couple must have a visitor, and she wished they’d keep it quiet. Just a fortnight without children, that was all she wanted.

In her bedroom it was closer. La, la, la.
She pressed her ear to the wall; a faint blurred thudding of reggae filtered through. Jungle drums, she thought automatically, and then her thoughts froze. The child’s voice was beyond the far wall, in the old man’s house.

It sounded alone and preoccupied. Perhaps it had been with the children she’d chased. If it had heard her threat of the police it mightn’t dare to venture out. Suppose the stair rod were still loose?