The Collected Short Fiction Part 13

It was a depressing investigation, but I persisted.

The second floor gave the appearance of having been originally one room, reached from a small landing. There was marked evidence of unskilled cuttings and botches, aimed, it was clear, at part.i.tioning off this single vast room in order to form a bathroom and lavatory, and a pa.s.sage giving access thereto. Could the house have been originally built without these necessary amenities? Anything seemed possible. I remembered the chestnut about the architect who forgot the staircase.

But there was something here which I found not only squalid but vaguely frightening. The original door, giving from the small landing into the one room, showed every sign of having been forcibly- burst open and from the inside (characteristically, it had been hung to open outwards). The damage was seemingly not recent (although it is not easy to date such a thing), but the shattered door still hung dejectedly outward from its weighty lower hinge only and, in fact, made it almost impossible to enter the room at all. Gingerly I forced it a little more forward. The ripped woodwork of the heavy door shrieked piercingly as I dragged at it. I looked in. The room, such as it had ever been, had been finally wrecked by the introduction of the batten part.i.tion which separated it from the bathroom and was covered with blistered dark-brown varnish. The only contents were a few decaying toys. The nursery, as I remembered from the exterior prospect, Through the gap between the sloping door and its frame, I looked at the barred windows. Like everything else in the house, the bars seemed very heavy. I looked again at the toys. I observed that all of them seemed to be woolly animals. They were rotted with moth and mold, but not so much so as to conceal the fact that at least some of them appeared also to have been mutilated. There were the decomposing leg of a teddy bear, inches away from the main torso; the severed head of a fanciful stuffed bird. It was as unpleasant a scene as every other in the house.

What had Sally been doing all day? As I had suspected, clearly not cleaning the house. There remained the kitchen quarters, and, of course, the late doctor's library.

There were odd sc.r.a.ps of food about the bas.e.m.e.nt, and signs of recent though sketchy cooking. I was almost surprised to discover that Sally had not lived on air. In general, however, the bas.e.m.e.nt suggested nothing more unusual than the familiar feeling of wonder at the combined magnitude and c.u.mbrousness of cooking operations in the homes of our middle-cla.s.s great-grandfathers.

I looked round for a candle with which to illumine the library. I even opened various drawers, bins, and cupboards. It seemed that there were no candles. In any case, I thought, s.h.i.+vering slightly in the descending dusk, the library was probably a job for more than a single candle. Next time I would provide myself with my father's imposing flashlight.

There seemed nothing more to be done. I had not even taken off my coat. I had discovered little which was calculated to solve the mystery. Could Sally be doping herself? It really seemed a theory. I turned off the kitchen light, ascended to the ground floor, and shutting the front door, descended again to the garden. I eyed the collapsed front gate with new suspicion. Some time later I realized that I had relocked none of the inside doors.

Next morning I called at the Cottage Hospital.

"In a way," said Miss Garvice, "she's much better. Quite surprisingly so."

"Can I see her?"

"I'm afraid not. She's unfortunately had a very restless night."

Miss Garvice was sitting at her desk with a large yellow cat in her lap. As she spoke, the cat looked up into her face with a look of complacent interrogation.

"Not in pain?"

"Not exactly, I think." Miss Garvice turned the cat's head downward towards her knee. She paused before saying, "She's been weeping all night. And talking too. More hysterical than delirious. In the end we had to move her out of the big ward."

"What does she say?"

"It wouldn't be fair to our patients if we repeated what they say when they're not themselves." "I suppose not. Still-"

"I admit that I cannot at all understand what's the matter with her. With her mind, I mean, of course."

"She's suffering from shock." "Yes... But when I said 'mind,' I should perhaps have said 'emotions.'" The cat jumped from Miss Garvice's lap to the floor. It began to rub itself against my stockings. Miss Garvice followed it with her eyes. "Were you able to get to her house?"

"I looked in for a few minutes." Miss Garvice wanted to question me, but she stopped herself and asked, "Everything in order?"

"As far as I could see."

"I wonder if you would collect together a few things and bring them when you next come. I am sure I can leave it to you."

"I'll see what I can do." Remembering the house, I wondered what I could do. I rose. "I'll look in tomorrow, if I may." The cat followed me to the door purring. "Perhaps I shall be able to see Sally then."

Miss Garvice only nodded.

The truth was that I could not rest until I had investigated that back room. I was afraid, of course, but much more curious. Even my fear, I felt, perhaps wrongly, was more fear of the unknown than of anything I imagined myself likely in fact to find. Had there been a sympathetic friend available, I should have been glad of his company (it was a job for a man, or for no one). As it was, loyalty to Sally sent me, as before, alone.

During the morning it had become more and more overcast. In the middle of lunch it began to rain. Throughout the afternoon it rained more and more heavily. My mother said I was mad to go out, but I donned a pair of heavy walking shoes and my riding mackintosh. I had borrowed my father's flashlight before he left that morning for his business.

I first entered the sitting room, where I took off my mackintosh and saturated beret. It would perhaps have been more sensible to hang the dripping objects in the lower regions, but I think I felt it wise not to leave them too far from the front door. I stood for a time in front of the mirror combing my matted hair. The light was fading fast, and it was difficult to see very much. The gusty wind hurled the rain against the big bay window, down which it descended like a rippling membrane of wax, distorting what little prospect remained outside. The window frame leaked copiously, making little pools on the floor.

I pulled up the collar of my sweater, took the flashlight, and entered the back room. Almost at once in the beam of light, I found the switch. It was placed at the normal height but about three feet from the doorway, as if the intention were precisely to make it impossible for the light to be switched on-or off-from the door. I turned it on.

I had speculated extensively, but the discovery still surprised me. Within the original walls had been laid three courses of stonework, which continued overhead to form an arched vault under the ceiling. The grev stones had been unskillfullv laid, and the vault in particular looked likely to collapse. The inside of the door was reinforced with a single sheet of iron. There remained no window at all. A crude system of electric lighting had been installed, but there seemed provision for neither heating nor ventilation. Conceivably the room was intended for use in air raids; it had palpably been in existence for some time. But in that case it was hard to see why it should still be inhabited as it so plainly was...

For within the dismal place were many rough wooden shelves laden with crumbling brown books, several battered wooden armchairs, a large desk covered with papers, and a camp bed, showing, like the bed upstairs, signs of recent occupancy. Most curious of all were a small ashtray by the bedside choked with cigarette ends, and an empty coffee cup. I lifted the pillow: underneath it were Sally's pajamas, not folded, but stuffed away out of sight. It was difficult to resist the unpleasant idea that she had begun by sleeping in the room upstairs but for some reason had moved down to this stagnant cavern, which, moreover, she had stated that her father had never left.

I like to think of myself as more imaginative than sensible. I had, for example, conceived it as possible that Dr. Tessler had been stark raving mad and that the room he never left would prove to be padded. But no room could be less padded than this one. It was much more like a prison. It seemed impossible that all through her childhood Sally's father had been under some kind of duress. The room also-and horridly-resembled a tomb. Could the doctor have been one of those visionaries who are given to brooding upon the End and to decking themselves with the symbols of mortality, like Donne with his shroud? It was difficult to believe in Sally emulating her father in this... For some time, I think, I fought off the most probable solution, carefully giving weight to every other suggestion which my mind could muster up. In the end I faced the fact that more than an oubliette or a grave, the place resembled a fortress, and the suggestion that there was something in the house against which protection was necessary, was imperative. The locked doors, the scene of ruin on the second floor, Sally's behavior. I had known it all the time.

I turned off the bleak light, hanging by its kinked flexible cord. As I locked the library door, I wondered upon the unknown troubles which might have followed my failure of yesterday to leave the house as I had found it. I walked the few steps clown the pa.s.sage from the library to the sitting room, at once preoccupied and alert. But, for my peace of mind, neither preoccupied nor alert enough. Because, although only for a moment, a second, a gleam, when in that almost vanished light I re-entered the sitting room, I saw him.

As if, for my benefit, to make the most of the little light, he stood right up in the big bay window. The view he presented to me was what I should call three-quarters back. But I could see a fraction of the outline of his face, entirely white (a thing which has to be seen to be believed) and with the skin drawn tight over the bones as by a tourniquet. There was a suggestion of wispy hair. I think he wore black, a garment, I thought, like a frock coat. He stood stooped and shadowy, except for the glimpse of white face. Of course I could not see his eyes. Needless to say, he was gone almost as soon as I beheld him, but it would be inexact to say that he went quite immediately. I had a scintilla of time in which to blink. I thought at first that dead or alive, it was Dr. Tessler, but immediately afterwards I thought not.

That evening I tried to take my father into my confidence. I had always considered him the kindest of men, but one from whom I had been carried far out to sea. Now I was interested, as often with people, by the unexpectedness of his response. After I had finished my story (although I did not tell him everything), to which he listened carefully, sometimes putting an intelligent question about a point I had failed to illuminate, he said, "If you want my opinion, I'll give it to you."

"Please."

"It's simple enough. The whole affair is no business of yours." He smiled to take the sting out of the words, but underneath he seemed unusually serious.

"I'm fond of Sally. Besides Miss Garvice asked me."

"Miss Garvice asked you to look in and see if there was any post, not to poke about the house."

It was undoubtedly my weak point. But neither was it an altogether strong one for him. "Sally wouldn't let the postman deliver," I countered. "She was collecting her letters from the Post Office at the time she was run over. I can't imagine why."

"Don't try," said my father. "But," I said, "what I saw? Even if I had no right to go all over the house."

"Mel," said my father, "you're supposed to write novels. Haven't you noticed by this time that everyone's lives are full of things you can't understand? The exceptional thing is the thing you can understand. I remember a man I knew when I was first in London...

He broke off. "But fortunately we don't have to understand. And for that reason we've no right to scrutinize other people's lives too closely."

Completely baffled, I said nothing.

My father patted me on the shoulder. "You can fancy you see things when the light's not very good, you know. Particularly an artistic girl like you, Mel."

Even by my parents I still liked occasionally to be called a girl.

When I went up to bed, it struck me that again something had been forgotten. This time it was Sally's "few things."

Naturally it was the first matter Miss Garvice mentioned.

"I'm very sorry. I forgot. I think it must have been the rain," I continued, excusing myself like an adolescent to authority.

Miss Garvice very slightly clucked her tongue. But her mind was on something else. She went to the door of her room.

"Serena!"

""Yes, Miss Garvice?"

"See that I'm not disturbed for a few minutes, will you please? I'll call you again."

"Yes, Miss Garvice," Serena disappeared, shutting the door.

"I want to tell you something in confidence."

I smiled. Confidences preannounced are seldom worthwhile.

"You know our routine here. We've been making various tests on Sally. One of them roused our suspicion." Miss Garvice sc.r.a.ped a match on the composition striker which stood on her desk. For the moment she had forgotten the relative cigarette. "Did you know that Sally was pregnant?"

"No," I replied. But it might provide an explanation. Of a few things.

"Normally, of course, I shouldn't tell you. Or anyone else. But Sally is in such a hysterical state. And you say you know of no relatives?"

"None. What can I do?"

"I wonder if you would consider having her to stay with you? Not at once, of course. When we discharge her. Sally's going to need a friend."

"She won't come or she wouldn't. I've already pressed her."

Miss Garvice now was puffing away like a traction engine. "Why did you do that?"

"I'm afraid that's my business."

"You don't know who the father is?"

I said nothing.

"It's not as if Sally were a young girl. To be perfectly frank, there are things about her condition which I don't like."

It was my turn for a question. "What about the accident? Hasn't that affected matters?"

"Strangely enough, no. Although it's nothing less than a miracle. Of one kind or the other," said Miss Garvice, trying to look broad-minded.

I felt that we were unlikely to make further progress. a.s.suring Miss Garvice that in due course I should invite Sally once more, I asked again if I could see her.

"I am sorry. But it's out of the question for Sally to see anyone." I was glad that Miss Garvice did not revert to the subject of Sally's "few things," although, despite everything, I felt guilty for having forgotten them. Particularly because I had no wish to go back for them. It was out of the question even to think of explaining my real reasons to Miss Garvice, and loyalty to Sally continued to weigh heavily with me, but something must be devised. Moreover I must not take any step which might lead to someone else being sent to Sally's house. The best I could think of was to a.s.semble some of my own "things" and say they were Sally's. It would be for Sally to accept the subst.i.tution.

But the question which struck me next morning was whether the contamination in Sally's house could be brought to an end by steps taken in the house itself, or whether it could have influence outside. Sally's mvsterious restlessness, as reported by Miss Garvice, was far from rea.s.suring, but on the whole I inclined to see it as an aftermath or revulsion. (Sally's pregnancy I refused at this point to consider at all.) It was impossible to doubt that immediate action of some kind was vital. Exorcism? or, conceivably, arson? I doubt whether I am one to whom the former would ever strongly appeal: certainly not as a means of routing something so apparently sensible to feeling as to sight. The latter, on the other hand, might well be defeated (apart from other difficulties) by that stone strongbox of a library. Flight? I considered it long and seriously. But still it seemed that my strongest motive in the whole affair was pity for Sally. So I stayed.

I did not visit the hospital that morning, from complete perplexity as to what there was to do or say, but instead, during the afternoon, wandered back to the house. Despite my horror of the place, I thought that I might hit upon something able to suggest a course of action. I would look more closely at those grimy papers, and even at the books in the library. The idea of burning the place down was still by no means out of my mind. I would further ponder the inflammability of the house, and the degree of risk to the neighbors... All the time, of course, I was completely miscalculating my own strength and what was happening to me.

But as I hoisted the fallen gate, my nerve suddenly left me, again, something which had never happened to me before, either in the course of these events or at any previous time. I felt very sick. I was much afraid lest I faint. My body felt simultaneously tense and insubstantial.

Then I became aware that Mr. Orbit's delivery boy was staring at me from the gate of the dentist's house opposite. I must have presented a queer spectacle, because the boy seemed to be standing petrified. His mouth, I saw, was wide open. I knew the boy quite well. It was essential for all kinds of reasons that I conduct myself suitably. The boy stood, in fact, for public opinion. I took a couple of deep breaths, produced the weighty bunch of keys from my handbag, and ascended the steps as steadily as possible.

Inside the house, I made straight for the bas.e.m.e.nt, with a view to a gla.s.s of water. With Mr. Orbit's boy no longer gaping at me, I felt worse than ever, so that, even before I could look for a tumbler or reach the tap, I had to sink upon one of the two battered kitchen chairs. All my hair was damp, and my clothes felt unbearably heavy.

Then I became aware that steps were descending the bas.e.m.e.nt staircase.

I completed my sequence of new experiences by fainting.

I came round to the noise of an animal, a snuffling, grunting cry, which seemed to come, with much persistence, from the floor above. I seemed fo listen to it for some time, even trying, though failing, to identify what animal it was, before recovering more fully and realizing that Sally was leaning back against the dresser and staring at me.

"Sally! It was you."

"Who did you think it was? It's my house."

She no longer wore the stained grey slacks, but was dressed in a very curious way, about which I do not think it fair to say more. In other ways also, the change in her had become complete: her eyes had a repulsive lifelessness; the bone structure of her face, previously so fine, had altered unbelievably. There was an unpleasant croak in her voice, precisely as if her larynx had lost flexibility.

"Will you please return my keys?"

I even had difficulty in understanding what she said, although doubtless my shaky condition did not help. Very foolishly, I rose to my feet, while Sally glared at me with her changed eyes. I had been lying on the stone floor. There was a bad pain in the back of my head and neck.

"Glad to see you're better, Sally. I didn't expect you'd be about for some time yet." My words were incredibly foolish.

She said nothing, but only stretched out her hand. It too was changed: it was grey and bony, with protruding, knotted veins, I handed her the big bunch of keys. I wondered how she had entered the house without them. The animal wailing above continued without intermission. To it now seemed to be added a noise which struck me as resembling that of a pig scrabbling. Involuntarily I glanced upwards to the ceiling.

Sally s.n.a.t.c.hed the keys, s.n.a.t.c.hed them gently and softly, not violently; then she cast her unblinking eyes upwards in parody of mine, and emitted an almost deafening shriek of laughter, "Do you love children, Mel? Would you like to see my baby?" Truly it was the last straw, and I do know quite how I behaved.

Now Sally seemed filled with terrible pride. "Let me tell you, Mel," she said, "that it's possible for a child to be born in a manner you'd never dream of."

I had begun to shudder again, but Sally clutched hold of me with her grey hand and began to drag me up the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs.

"Will you be G.o.dmother? Come and see your G.o.dchild, Mel."

The noise was coming from the library. I clung to the top of the bas.e.m.e.nt bal.u.s.ter. Distraught as I was, I now realized that the scrabbling sound was connected with the tearing-to-pieces of Dr. Tessler's books. But it was the wheezy, throaty cry of the creature which most turned my heart and sinews to water.

Or to steel. Because as Sally tugged at me, trying to pull me away from the bal.u.s.ter and into the library, I suddenly realized that she had no strength at all. Whatever else had happened to her, she was as weak as a wraith.

I dragged myself free from her, let go of the bal.u.s.ter, and made towards the front door. Sally began to scratch my face and neck, but I made a quite capable job of defending myself. Sally then began to call out in her unnatural voice: she was trying to summon the creature into the pa.s.sage. She sc.r.a.ped and tore at me, while panting out a stream of dreadful endearments to the thing in the library.

In the end, I found that my hands were about her throat, which was bare despite the cold weather. I could stand no more of that wrecked voice. Immediately she began to kick, and the shoes she was wearing seemed to have metal toes. I had the final, awful fancy that she had acquired iron feet. Then I threw her from me onto the floor of the pa.s.sage, and fled from the house.

It was now dark, somehow darker outside the house than inside it, and I found that I still had strength enough to run all the way home.

I went away for a fortnight, although on general grounds it was the last thing I had wanted to do. At the end of that time and with Christmas drawing near, I returned to my parents' house: I was not going to permit Sally to upset my plan for a present way of life.

At intervals through the winter I peered at Sally's house from the corner of the cul-de-sac in which it stood, but never saw a sign of occupancy or change.

I had learned from Miss Garvice that Sally had simply "disappeared" from the Cottage Hospital.

"Disappeared?"

"Long before she was due for discharge, I need hardly say."

"How did it happen?"

"The night nurse was going her rounds and noticed that the bed was empty."