Authors: Tanith Lee
“Look, I’m sorry to bother you,” I said,
“I forgot to ask you for the receipt.”
“What receipt?”
“When you paid for the garment, they
gave you a receipt. That one.”
“I threw it away,” she said.
“Oh. Oh well, never mind.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“No, it’s all right. Really.” I pulled
air down into me like the drag of a cigarette, or a reefer. “How’s Daniel
today?”
She looked at me, her face unchanging.
“He’s all right.”
“I hoped I hadn’t—well—upset him. By
being there,” I said.
“He doesn’t notice,” she said. “He didn’t
notice you.”
There was a tiny flash of spite when she
said that. It really was there. Because of it, I knew she had fathomed me, perhaps
from the beginning. Now was therefore the moment to retreat in good order.
“I was wondering,” I said, “What you
told me, that you find it difficult to make the time to get to the town centre.”
“I do,” she said.
“I have to go shopping there today. If
there’s anything you need I could get you.”
“Oh no,” she said swiftly. “There’s local
shops on The Rise.”
“I don’t mind,” I said.
“I can manage.”
“I’d really like to. It’s no bother. For
one thing,” I added, “the local shops are all daylight robbers round here, aren’t
they?”
She faltered. Part of her wanted to slam
the door in my face. The other part was nudging her: Go on, let this stupid girl
fetch and carry for you, if she wants to.
“If you want to, there are a few things.
I’ll make you a list.”
“Yes, do.”
“You’d better come in,” she said, just
like last time.
I followed her, and she left me to close
the door, a sign of submission indeed. As we went into the back room, the
adrenalin stopped coming, and I knew he wasn’t there. There was something else,
though. The lights were on, and the curtains were drawn across the windows. She
saw me looking, but she said nothing. She began to write on a piece of paper.
I wandered to the red chair, and rested
my hands on the back of it.
“Daniel’s upstairs,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“But he’s—he’s well?”
“He’s all right. I don’t get him up
until dinner time. He just has to sit anyway, when he’s up.”
“It must be difficult for you, lifting
him.”
“I manage. I have to.”
“But—”
“It’s no use going on about home-helps
again,” she said. “It’s none of their business.”
She meant mine, of course. I swallowed,
and said, “Was it an accident?” I’m rarely so blunt, and when I am, it somehow
comes out rougher from disuse. She reacted obscurely, staring at me across the
table.
“No, it wasn’t. He’s always been that
way. He’s got no strength in his lower limbs, he doesn’t talk, and he doesn’t
understand much. His father was at sea, and he went off and left me before
Daniel was born. He didn’t marry me, either. So now you know everything, don’t
you?”
I took my hand off the chair.
“But somebody should—”
“No they shouldn’t.”
“Couldn’t he be helped—?” I blurted.
“Oh, no,” she said. “So if that’s what
you’re after, you can get out now.”
I was beginning to be terrified of her.
I couldn’t work it out if Daniel was officially beyond aid, and that’s where
her hatred sprang from, or if she had never attempted to have him aided, if she
liked or needed or had just reasonlessly decided (God’s will, My Cross) to let
him rot alive. I didn’t ask.
“I think you’ve got a lot to cope with,”
I said. “I can give you a hand, if you want it. I’d like to.”
She nodded.
“Here’s the list.”
It was a long list, and after my boast,
I’d have to make sure I saved her money on the local shops. She walked into the
kitchen and took a box out of a drawer. The kitchen windows were also
curtained. She came back with a five-pound note I wasn’t sure would be enough.
When I got out of the house, I was
coldly sweating. If I had any sense I would now, having stuck myself with it,
honourably do her shopping, hand it to her at the door, and get on my way. I
wasn’t any kind of a crusader, and, as one of life’s more accomplished actors,
even I could see I had blundered into the wrong play.
It
was one o’clock before I’d finished her shopping. My own excursion to the launderette
had been passed over, but her fiver had just lasted. The list was quite
commonplace; washing powder, jam, flour, kitchen towels... I went into the pub
opposite the store and had a gin and tonic. Nevertheless, I was shaking with
nerves by the time I got back to Number 19. This was the last visit. This was
it.
Gusts of white sunlight were blowing
over the cliff. It was getting up rough in the bay, and the no-swimming notices
had gone up.
She was a long while opening the door. When
she did, she looked very odd, yellow-pale and tottery. Not as I’d come to
anticipate. She was in her fifties, and suddenly childlike, insubstantial.
“Come in,” she said, and wandered away
down the passage.
There’s something unnerving about a big
strong persona that abruptly shrinks pale and frail. It duly unnerved me,
literally in fact, and my nerves went away. Whatever had happened, I was in
command.
I shut the door and followed her into
the room. She was on the settee, sitting forward. Daniel still wasn’t there.
For the first time it occurred to me Daniel might be involved in this collapse,
and I said quickly: “Something’s wrong. What is it? Is it Daniel? Is he OK?”
She gave a feeble contemptuous little
laugh.
“Daniel’s all right. I just had a bit of
an accident. Silly thing, really, but it gave me a bit of a turn for a minute.”
She lifted her left hand in which she
was clutching a red and white handkerchief. Then I saw the red pattern was
drying blood. I put the shopping on the table and approached cautiously.
“What have you done?”
“Just cut myself. Stupid. I was chopping
up some veg for our dinner. Haven’t done a thing like this since I was a girl.”
I winced. Had she sliced her finger off
and left it lying among the carrots? No, don’t be a fool. Even she wouldn’t be
so acquiescent if she had. Or would she?
“Let me see,” I said, putting on my firm
and knowledgeable act, which has once or twice kept people from the brink of
panic when I was in a worse panic than they were. To my dismay, she let go the handkerchief,
and offered me her wound unresistingly.
It wasn’t a pretty cut, but a cut was
all it was, though deep enough almost to have touched the bone. I could see
from her digital movements that nothing vital had been severed, and fingers
will bleed profusely if you hit one of the blood vessels at the top.
“It’s not too bad,” I said. “I can
bandage it up for you. Have you got some TCP?”
She told me where the things were in the
kitchen, and I went to get them. The lights were still on, the curtains were
still drawn. Through the thin plastic of the kitchen drapes I could detect only
flat darkness. Maybe the prison wall around the garden kept daylight at bay.
I did a good amateur job on her finger.
The bleeding had slackened off.
“I should get a doctor to have a look at
it, if you’re worried.”
“I never use doctors,” she predictably
said.
“Well, a chemist, then.”
“It’ll be all right. You’ve done it
nicely. Just a bit of a shock.” Her colour was coming back, what she had of it.
“Shall I make you a cup of tea?”
“That’d be nice.”
I returned to the kitchen and put on the
kettle. The tea apparatus sat all together on a tray, as if waiting. I looked
at her fawn fizzy head over the settee back, and the soft coal-fire glows
disturbing the room. It was always night time here, and always nineteen-thirty.
The psychological aspect of her accident
hadn’t been lost on me. I supposed, always looking after someone, always
independently alone, she’d abruptly given way to the subconscious urge to be in
her turn looked after. She’d given me control. It frightened me.
The kettle started to boil, and I arranged
the pot. I knew how she’d want her tea, nigrescently stewed and violently
sweet. Her head elevated. She was on her feet.
“I’ll just go and check Daniel.”
“I can do that, if you like,” I said
before I could hold my tongue.
“That’s all right,” she said. She went
out and I heard her go slowly up the stairs. Big and strong, how did she, even
so, carry him down them?
I made the tea. I could hear nothing
from upstairs. The vegetables lay scattered where she had left them, though the
dangerous knife had been put from sight. On an impulse, I pulled aside a
handful of kitchen curtain.
I wasn’t surprised at what I saw.
Somehow I must have worked it out, though not been aware I had. I let the
curtain coil again into place, then carried the tea tray into the room. I set
it down, and went to the room’s back window, and methodically inspected that,
too. It was identical to the windows of the kitchen. Both had been boarded over
outside with planks of wood behind the glass. Not a chink of light showed. It
must have been one terrific gale that smashed these windows and necessitated
such a barricade. Strange the boarding was still there, after she’d had the
glass replaced.
I heard her coming down again, but she
had given me control, however briefly. I’d caught the unmistakable scent of
something that wants to lean, to confess. I was curious, or maybe it was the
double gin catching up on me. Curiosity was going to master fear. I stayed
looking at the boarding, and let her discover me at it when she came in.
I turned when she didn’t say anything. She
simply looked blankly at me, and went to sit on the settee.
“Daniel’s fine,” she said. “He’s got
some of his books. Picture books. He can see the pictures, though he can’t read
the stories. You can go up and look at him, if you like.”
That was a bribe. I went to the tea and
started to pour it, spooning a mountain of sugar in her cup.
“You must be expecting a lot of bad
weather, Mrs Besmouth.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes. The windows.”
I didn’t think she was going to say
anything. Then she said, “They’re boarded over upstairs too, on the one side.”
“The side facing out to sea.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you build the wall up, too?”
She said, without a trace of humour, “Oh
no. I got a man in to do that.”
I gave her the tea, and she took it, and
drank it straight down, and held the cup out to me.
“I could fancy another.”
I repeated the actions with the tea. She
took the second cup, but looked at it, not drinking. The clock ticked
somnolently. The room felt hot and heavy and peculiarly still, out of place and
time and light of sun or moon.
“You don’t like the sea, do you?” I
said. I sat on the arm of the red chair, and watched her.
“Not much. Never did. This was my dad’s
house. When he died, I kept on here. Nowhere else to go.” She raised her
elastoplasted hand and stared at it. She looked very tired, very flaccid, as if
she’d given up. “You know,” she said, “I’d like a drop of something in this. Open
that cupboard, will you? There’s a bottle just inside.”
I wondered if she were the proverbial
secret drinker, but the bottle was alone, and three quarters full, quite a good
whisky.
She drank some of the tea and held the
cup so I could ruin the whisky by pouring it in. I poured, to the cup’s brim.
“You have one,” she said. She drank, and
smacked her lips softly. “You’ve earned it. You’ve been a good little girl.”
I poured the whisky neat into the other tealess
cup and drank some, imagining it smiting the gin below with a clash of swords.
“I’ll get merry,” she said desolately. “I
didn’t have my dinner. The pie’ll be spoiled. I turned the oven out.”
“Shall I get you a sandwich?”
“No. But you can make one for Daniel, if
you like.”
“Yes,” I said.
I got up and went into the kitchen. It was
a relief to move away from her. Something was happening to Daniel’s mother,
something insidious and profound. She was accepting me, drawing me in. I could
feel myself sinking in the quagmire.
As I made the sandwich from ingredients
I came on more or less at random, she started to talk to me. It was a ramble of
things, brought on by the relaxations of spilled blood and liquor, and the fact
that there had seldom been anyone to talk
to
. As I buttered bread,
sliced cheese and green cucumber, I learned how she had waited on and borne
with a cantankerous father, nursed him, finally seen him off through the door
in a box. I learned how she weighed meat behind the butcher’s counter and did
home-sewing, and how she had been courted by a plain stodgy young man, a
plumber’s assistant, and all she could come by in an era when it was essential
to come by something. And how eventually he jilted her.