Authors: Celia Fremlin
“That poor kid.” He’d said it just once too often. Just like she’d known he would.
They were through central London now, and into the further suburbs, cruising through quiet, tree-lined streets; detached houses with neat lawns in front of them, and tall shrubs throwing
shadows of inky blackness across the silent, moonlit road.
“Recognise where we are now?” Iris remarked nonchalantly, with barely a glance at her companion: but Miranda made no answer. Only her eyes grew wider and wider, with incredulous terror, as they coasted quietly onwards, through ever more and more familiar streets, towards their destination.
I
RIS WAS CAREFUL
to park at the far end of the road in order not to attract the attention of any nearby neighbours who might, for one reason or another, be peering out of their darkened bedroom windows at this dead hour. Probably none were, but you couldn’t be too careful.
It was a windless night, and in the well-kept front gardens on either side of the road not a leaf stirred. There was no need, any longer, to urge Miranda to be silent; her fear of drawing attention to herself, in this place, at this hour, was by now as great as Iris’s own. Only when they came to a halt outside one of the dark houses looming against the moon-washed sky, did Miranda’s sharp intake of breath make a tiny whiplash of sound on the still air. Her lips formed, silently, the words “No! No!” as Iris’s hand reached towards the latch of the front gate; but she dared take her protest no further. Meek as a shadow, she followed Iris across the square of lawn, past the familiar display of late summer flowers—dahlias, hollyhocks, geraniums, all grey together under the moon—and into the shadows beyond.
The side gate was unlocked, as always. Neither Mr nor Mrs Field believed very much in burglars; the long years of referring to them as “Victims of Society” had blunted their sense of the reality of these beings; and so far, they’d been lucky. Or was it, perhaps, that burglars, just as much as ghosts, tend to manifest themselves to believers rather than to sceptics? To be treated as if you don’t exist is no boost to any ego, supernatural or otherwise, and it may well be that burglars actually
need
a few barred windows, the odd mortice lock, to give them a sense of identity, and hence the courage to pursue their calling.
Be that as it may, the side gate was not only unlocked, it was
ajar, and so the two intruders—for thus Miranda, too, felt herself to be—were enabled to slip through without so much as the creak of a hinge.
The side entrance between the two tall houses was dark as any dungeon, very narrow, and lit only by a tiny strip of night sky far above. Iris, fearful of stumbling, inched her way along, hands outstretched against unpredictable obstacles. Miranda, of course, had no need of such precautions; without even thinking, she knew exactly where the dustbins were, and the bundle of raspberry canes, and the disused water butt, and the sacks of peat, of fertiliser, and the special stuff for the tomatoes…
The light of the full moon, when they emerged from the dark passage into the back garden, was almost blinding. Miranda caught her breath. It was as if she was seeing the garden for the first time—her own garden, whose every stone, every contour was as familiar to her as her own body. Here she had played as far back as she could remember; had worked, and read, and built tree-houses; had dawdled away long summer afternoons dreaming, giggling, writing poetry, growing from babyhood to girlhood under the shade of those grand trees, or sprawled out in the sunshine on that smooth, spacious lawn that now lay before her like a silver sea, lapping to her very feet. Had she never, in all these years, seen the garden under a full moon before, that it should look so strange to her now, so magical, like a garden in a dream? And as they moved forward softly, inexorably, across that expanse of shining grass, it was like paddling in a sea of light.
But the grass was somehow not quite what her feet had been expecting. It was longer than usual … rough … uncared-for; and as the soles of her feet registered this small change, she experienced a stab of such grief, such shock, as was quite beyond her comprehension. She gave, involuntarily, a tiny gasp of surprise and dismay … and immediately felt Iris’ hand on her shoulder, hard.
“Quiet!” whispered the older girl, peremptorily; or, rather, formed the words silently with her lips, grey as the grass in this unearthly light; and Miranda, tense with unimaginable dread and foreboding, obeyed.
On, on they went, across the silver, dew-soaked grass, until at last they waded out of the light and into the darkness cast by the great trees at the end of the garden.
Here, under the spreading branches, where the sun never reached, it was already autumn. The tang of dead leaves from the compost heap was in Miranda’s nostrils—and another smell, too—fungus was it, or the damp, lichened bark of the great copper beech which filled half the sky, breaking up the moonlight into tiny slivers of uncertain light, scattered here and there on the dark earth like dropped silver coins? Beneath her feet, the soil was dank and lumpy, as if recently dug over; and a little way ahead the wavering pillar of darkness that was Iris came to a halt. In the flickering shreds of moonlight she, too, could have been a tree, rooted in its chosen spot, motionless.
“Here!” breathed Iris, beckoning, and speaking in a voice no louder than the stir of a snake gliding through tall grass towards its prey. “Here, where I’m standing… No, not
that
way, you little fool!
This
way! As if you didn’t know…! Ah, that’s better; that’s more like it! But nearer, please. Nearer…!”
Miranda, shuddering from head to foot with a terror and revulsion for which she could find no words, tried to obey, for she knew in her bones, now, that there could be no escape. The moonlit garden was a dream garden no longer, but a nightmare from which she was never going to wake; and as she took one more dragging, reluctant step forward, she seemed to feel the horror emanating from the very soil beneath her feet… and now Iris’s hand was on her arm again, vice-like, and her voice, thick with hatred, issued its final warning:
“
Tim!
” it whispered, “if you’re scared, then I’ll bring Tim here instead, and
he
can help me! How about that, eh?”—and at once Miranda, obedient as any robot, moved quickly across the remaining foot or two of space and stood on the required spot, blankly, as if waiting further instructions about the conduct of her own execution.
“Hold out your hand!” whispered Iris, her voice quivering, now, with impending triumph: and as if this was a children’s party game, in which some delightful little surprise was about to
be popped into her white, upturned palm, Miranda did as she was told.
A trowel it was that she got, sharp-edged and clean, its brand new blade ever so faintly gleaming in the flickers of moonlight that came and went with the trembling of her hand.
“Dig!” commanded Iris, in a whisper low as ever, and yet somehow shrill through her clenched teeth. “Go on—
dig
!
No, not
there,
you little fool—here!
Here!
As if you didn’t know! Of course you know, you know the exact, precise spot, even better than I do! So stop fooling and get on with it! Dig, I say!
Dig!
”
Miranda’s hand was trembling so much that she could scarcely wield the tool. She tried one last, desperate plea for mercy:
“Oh, Iris…! Oh, please… If you’d only
tell
me…! That is… I mean…!”
“
Tell
you?—Tell you what? There’s no need to tell you anything, the answer’s right there, under your feet. You just have to dig for it, that’s all!
“So
dig,
you little monster! Dig…! Dig…!”
And sure enough, as though hypnotised, brain-washed, pixilated under the moon, Miranda dug. Dug into the clayey, heavy soil which ordinarily would have been heavy work indeed, but tonight it was light and effortless as a dream, so recently and so thoroughly had it been dug over already, the thick clay broken and loosened.
Down through the surface Miranda dug, the new shiny trowel sliding easily among the newly-broken clods; deeper and deeper into the damp soil, the speckles of moonlight moving ever so faintly hither and thither across her work, like the ghosts of little hopping white birds, so that sometimes she could get a glimpse of what she was doing, and sometimes could only wildly and desperately guess.
A whitish gleam against the dark soil … a curious muffling obstacle to the next thrust of the trowel… something, some alien object, was coming to light. In the faint, uncertain moonbeams it looked, at first, like some monstrous toadstool, greyish, bulbous, and oddly shaped: but toadstools do not have tiny pearl buttons sewn two-and-two across their width; nor do they have grubby
nylon ribbon dangling like a long white worm from a filthy gathered neckline.
“Dig! Dig!” The excitement in Iris’ voice was almost out of control… And now a small knitted sleeve was appearing, gathered at the wrist … a vague, whitish tangle of flannelette … more pearl buttons … and below that … what
was
this, bigger than all the rest, and harder to shift? Yes, a pair of knitted leggings, bulging, bulky, difficult to pull free. There was something inside them … something heavy, soft, resistant: was it just an accumulation of damp clay and soil that had worked their way inside the garment: or was it…? Was it …?
Miranda’s fingers sprang back from that soft, mysterious heaviness as if of their own volition.
For a moment, her throat seemed to close up completely, as if she was going to die.
Then, suddenly, it opened, and the cry that came from it was the most ancient cry in the world. It is the cry that comes from tiny children waking in a dark room; from soldiers mortally wounded on the battle field; and even from the cracked, ancient lips of old, old women in geriatric wards, so far gone in senility that all other power of speech has left them. When all else has faded from their dying brains, this one word they can still scream out, loud and clear, out of the dark backward of eighty, ninety, or a hundred years ago:
“Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!”
*
Miss X. was jerked wide awake, and at first she could not make out what it was that had roused her. Could it be that damned radio, which she kept on, softly, softly, all the hours of the day and night, so that she could turn up the volume to its ear-splitting maximum at a moment’s notice whenever it became necessary?
Was it necessary now? Could this be what it was that had woken her—a sleepy, hiccuppy whimper from the improvised cradle, warning her that it was once again time for a feed, and that a bottle must yet again be hastily, furtively prepared?
She hadn’t intended to fall asleep at all, it was too dangerous: but weariness, the utter, bone-piercing weariness of these past
days and nights, had once more caught up with her, and she must have dropped off, right here in this straight-backed wooden chair.
Perhaps she’d dreamed the sudden sound? She’d been dreaming
something
, certainly, just before she’d been startled awake, but what it was she could no longer recall. She felt sure, now, that the whole thing had been triggered off by that endlessly muttering radio, yap, yap, yap, just below the threshold of consciousness. Perhaps the barely audible voice had switched suddenly to barely audible pop music, or vice versa, thus recalling to her subconscious …?
Yes! That was it!
That
was what she’d been dreaming of, and not for the first time, either. It all came back to her now, just as it had been at the very beginning; the bland, reassuring radio voice of that psychiatrist, on the very evening after she’d committed her crime. How wise he’d sounded, how benevolent, how full of understanding! With such sympathy had he described her, Miss X.’s, predicament, exactly as if he had known her, getting it all magically, exactly right: the aching, desperate need for a new love object to replace the one that had gone; the blank hostility and incomprehension of those nearest and dearest to her; the alienation from the family which had once been close and loving; the sudden, overwhelming trauma, the guilt, the shattering realisation that the person she loved most in the world, the person to whom she had given fifteen years of total, unconditional loyalty and love, and for whose sake she had faced the most difficult, the most painful decision of her whole life—to realise, after all this, that this person was turning upon her not with gratitude, but with hatred, bitterness and contempt.
“I hate you. I hate you!” had been the parting message, on a torn-off scrap of paper, the sole memento, now, of all those happy years of love and closeness. “I hate you. I hate you!”
She half wished, now, that she’d taken him at his word, that radio psychologist, had given herself up as he’d urged, and had thrown herself on his mercy—or on the mercy of his doubtless equally sympathetic and understanding colleagues. She’d have been dealt with leniently, as he had promised, and he would have helped her, sustained her, lavished upon her all the sympathy and
wisdom of his calling: well, of course he would, for was not her case the exact replica of the one he’d been describing with such compassion and understanding?
An exact replica, that is, except in just one all-important, and wholly damning, respect. Because throughout his whole talk, in all its wisdom and tolerance, he’d been labouring under an awful misapprehension; he’d been assuming, all along, that the unhappy perpetrator of this “crime of love” (as he called it) was someone
young
, and therefore entitled to feelings of loss, and abandonment, and desperate longing for love. In an older woman, like Miss X., a middle-aged mother of teenage children, these exact same feelings are called possessiveness.
From the improvised cardboard box cradle, there came a small whimper, a stir of awakening: and like a flash, Miss X. was reaching out to turn up the radio to its fullest volume so that the blast of pop music might drown the noise of the infant’s crying while she hurriedly prepared the bottle. But before she could reach the knob, the sound which had awakened her came for a second time through the closed window, from the far end of the garden: words that she had never thought to hear again, in the voice of her own true daughter, not the little pretend daughter in the imitation crib:
“Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!”