The Collected Short Fiction Part 4

Immediately she had groped into the pitch-dark bed, a train which seemed of an entirely new construction went past. This time there was no blasting of steam and thundering or grinding of wheels: only a single sustained rather high-pitched rattling; metallic, inhuman, hollow. The new train appeared to be descending the bank, but Margaret for the first time could not be sure. The sound frightened Margaret badly. 'It's a hospital train,' her mother had said to her long ago on an occasion of which Margaret had forgotten all details except that they were horrible. 'It's full of wounded soldiers.'

In a paroxysm of terror, as this agony of her childhood blasted through her adult life, Margaret must have pa.s.sed into sleep, or at least unconsciousness. For the next event could only have been a dream of hallucination. The room seemed to be filling with colourless light. Though even now this light was extremely dim, the process of its first appearance and increase seemed to have been going on for a very long time. As she realised this, another part of Margaret's mind remembered that it could none the less have been only a matter of minutes. She struggled to make consistent the consciousness of the nearly endless with the consciousness of the precisely brief. The light seemed, moreover, the exact visual counterpart of the noise she had heard made by the new train. Then Margaret became aware of something very horrible indeed: it began with the upturned dead face of an old woman, colourless with the exact colourlessness of the colourless light; and it ended with the old woman's crumpled shape occultly made visible hanging above the trap-door in the corner of Margaret's compartment-shaped room. Up in the attic old Miss Roper had hanged herself, her grey hair so twisted and meshed as itself to suggest the suffocating agent.

Margaret's hands went in terror to her own bare throat. Then the door of the room opened, and someone stood inside it bearing a light.

'I don't think you heard me knock.'

As when she and Mimi had arrived she had noticed in Roper's first words the echo of the man at the Guest House, so now was another echo of Beech's cool apology for that bedroom contretemps which had so fired Mimi's wrath. To Margaret it was as if a nightmare had reached that not uncommon point at which the sufferer, though not yet awake, not yet out of the dream, yet becomes aware that a dream it is. Then all was deep nightmare once more, as Margaret recalled the shadow woman on the stairs, and perceived that the same woman was now in the room with her.

Margaret broke down. Still clutching her throat, she cried repeatedly in a shrill but not loud voice. 'Go away. Go away. Go away. Go away.' It was again like her childhood.

The strange woman approached and, setting down the lamp, began to shake her by the shoulders. At once Margaret seemed to know that, whoever else she was, she was not the dead Miss Roper; and that was all which seemed to matter. She stopped wauling like a terror-struck child: then saw that the hand still on one of her shoulders wore a dull coal-black ring; and, looking up, that the face above her and the thick black hair were Beech's, as had been that indifferently apologetic voice. Nightmare stormed forward yet again; but this time only for an adult speck of time. For Margaret seemed now to have no doubt whatever that Beech was indeed a woman.

'Where's your friend?'

'I left her downstairs. I came up to bed early.'

'Early?'

'What's the time? I have no watch.'

'It's half-past three.'

The equivocal situation returned to life in Margaret's mind in every detail, as when stage lights are turned on simultaneously.

'What business is it of yours? Who are you?'

'Who do you think I am?'

'I thought you were the manservant.'

'I looked after old Miss Roper. Until she died.'

'Did that mean you had to dress like a man?' The woman now appeared to be wearing a dark grey coat and skirt and a white blouse.

'Wendley could hardly live alone in the house with a woman he wasn't married to. Someone he had no intention of marrying.'

'Why haven't you left, then?'

'After what happened to Miss Roper?'

'What did you do to Miss Roper?' Margaret spoke very low but quite steadily. All feeling was dead in her, save, far below the surface, a flickering jealousy of Mimi, a death-wish sympathy with the murdering stranger beside her. So that Margaret was able to add, steadily as before, 'Miss Roper was mad, wasn't she?'

'Certainly not. Why do you say that?'

'Her father preventing her marrying. The bars on the windows.'

'You can be crossed in love without going mad, you know. And madhouse windows are not the only ones with bars.' The large white hand with the black ring on the engagement finger had continued all this time to rest on Margaret's shoulder. Now with a sharp movement it was withdrawn.

'So this was simply a prison? Why? What had Miss Roper done?'

'Something to do with the railway. Some secret she had from the old man and wouldn't tell Wendley. I never asked for details. I was in love. You know what that means as well as I do.'

'What sort of secret? And why did it have to be a secret?'

'I don't know what sort of secret. I don't care now. She wanted to keep it secret from Wendley because she knew what he would do with it. She spent all her time trying to tell other people.'

'That's why...' Margaret was about to say 'that's why she waved', then stopped herself. 'What would Wendley have done with it?'

'Your friend should have some idea of that by this time.' This unexpected remark was delivered in a tone of deepest venom.

'What do you mean? Where is Mimi?' Then a sudden hysteria swept over her. 'I'm going to find Mimi.' She struggled out of the crib-like bed, bruising herself badly on the ironwork. The trains seemed to have long ceased and everything was horribly quiet in the Quiet Valley.

The woman, approaching the cheap little bedroom chair on which Margaret's clothes lay tumbled where she had dropped them, picked up Margaret's tie, and held it between her two hands twelve inches or so apart.

In the negligible light of one oil lamp there began a slow chase down the long narrow room.

'You're not on his side really,' cried Margaret, everything gone. 'You know what's happening downstairs.'

The woman made no answer, but slightly decreased the distance between her hands. Margaret perceived how foolish had been her error in deliberately selecting the bed furthest from the door. None the less, a certain amount of evasion, as in a childhood game of 'Touch', was possible before she found herself being forced near the end wall, being corralled almost beneath the trap-door in the ceiling above. If only she could have reached the other door, the door of the room! Much would then have been possible.

As they arrived at the corner beneath the trap, Margaret's heel struck Mimi's open rucksack, dropped there by its casual owner, hitherto forgotten or unnoticed by Margaret, and concealed by the dim light. Margaret stooped.

Three seconds later her adversary was lying back downwards on the floor, bleeding darkly and excessively in the gloom, Mimi's robust camping knife through her rather thick white throat. 'Comes from Sweden, dear,' Mimi had said. 'Not allowed to sell them here.'

It did not take Margaret long, plunging into the pockets in the dead woman's jacket, to find Beech's bunch of keys. This was fortunate, as the scream of the murdered woman, breaking into the course of events below, was followed by running footsteps on the murky stairs. The agile Mimi burst into the room crying, 'Lock it. For G.o.d's sake lock it'; and Margaret had raced the length of the Rafters Room and locked it before Wendley Roper, heavy and unused to exercise, had arrived at the landing outside. The large key turned in the expensive, efficient lock with a grinding snap he could not have mistaken. The railway hotel door was enormously thick, a beautiful piece of joinery. Margaret waited, her body drooping forward, for Roper to begin his onslaught. But it was a job for an axe, and nothing whatever happened; neither blows on the door, nor a voice, nor even retreating footsteps.

Mimi, ignorant that the room had a third occupant, was seated on the side of her bed with her hands distending her trousers' pockets. She was panting slightly, but her hair was habitually cut too short ever to show much disorder. Margaret had previously thought her manner strident; it was now beyond bearing. She began to blow out a stream of curses, particularly horrible in the presence of the dead woman.

'Mimi, my dear,' said Margaret gently. 'What are we going to do?' Still in her pyjamas, she was shivering spasmodically.

Mimi, keeping her hands in her pockets, looked round at her. 'Catch the first departure for h.e.l.l, I should say.'

Though she was not weeping, there was something unbearably desolate about her. Margaret wanted to comfort her: Mimi's experiences had been unimaginably worse even than her own. She put her cold arms round Mimi's stiff hard body; then tried to drag Mimi's hands from her pockets in order to take them in her own. Mimi, though offering no help, did not strongly resist. As Margaret dragged at her wrists, one of her own hands round each, a queer little trickle fell to the floor on each side of her. Mimi's pockets were tightly stuffed with railway tickets.

Dropping Mimi's wrists, Margaret picked up one of the tickets and read it by the light of the strange woman's lamp: 'Diamond Jubilee Special. Pudsley to Ha.s.sell-wicket. Third Cla.s.s. Excursion 2s. 11d G.o.d Save Our Queen.' Mimi's fists were clenched round variegated little bundles of pasteboard rectangles.

It was impossible to tell her about the dead woman.

'I'm going to dress. Then we'll get out.' Margaret began to drag on the clothes she had worn for dinner. She b.u.t.toned the collar of her shirt, warm and welcome about her neck. She looked for her tie, and could just see it in one hand of the dead woman as she lay compact on the floor at the end of the room behind Mimi's back.

'I'll pack our rucksacks.' Fully dressed, Margaret felt more valiant and less vulnerable. She groped at the feet of the corpse for Mimi's rucksack and a.s.sembled the scattered contents. But, though feeling the omission to be folly, she did not go back for Mimi's knife. In the end, she had packed both rucksacks and was carefully fastening the straps. Mimi had apparently emptied her pockets of tickets, leaving four small heaps on the dark carpet, one from each fist, one from each pocket; and was now sitting silent and apparently relaxed, but making no effort to help Margaret.

'Are you ready? We must plan.'

Mimi gazed up at her. Then she said quietly, 'There's nowhere for us to go now.' With the slightest of gestures she appeared to indicate the four heaps of tickets.

No argument that Margaret used would induce Mimi to make the least effort. She just sat on the bed saying that they were prisoners and there was nothing they could do.

Feeling that Mimi's reason might have been affected, though of this there was no sign, Margaret began to contemplate the dreadful extremity of trying to escape alone. But apart from the additional perils to body and spirit (there was no knowing that Roper was not standing outside the door), she felt that it would be impossible for her to leave Mimi alone to what might befall. She set down her rucksack on the floor beside Mimi's. When filled, she always found it heavy to hold for long.

'Very well. We'll wait till it's light. It should be quite soon.'

Mimi said nothing. Looking at her, Margaret saw that for the first time she was weeping. Margaret once more put her arms round her now soft body, and the two women tenderly kissed. They came from very different environments and it was the first time they had ever done so.

The desperate idea entered Margaret's mind that help might be obtained. Surely there must be visitors to the house of some kind sometimes; and neither she nor Mimi was a powerless old woman. Margaret's eyes unintendingly went to the knife in the victim's throat.

For a long time the two women sat close together saying little.

Margaret had not for hours given a thought to the railway outside. Since that strange and dream-like new train, nothing had pa.s.sed. Then, from the very far distance, came the airy ghost of an engine whistle: utterly impersonal at that hour and place, but, to Margaret, filled with promise.

She rose and drew back the curtains from one of the queer barred windows.

'Look! It's dawn.'

A girdle of light was slowly edging over the horizon, offering a fine day to come, unusual in such mountainous country. Margaret, aflame for action, looked quickly about the room. She herself was wearing colours unlikely to stand out in the yet faint light. Mimi's grey was hardly more helpful. There was only one thing to be done. Leaping across the room, Margaret ripped a large piece of material from the dead woman's white blouse patched with blood. Then as in the growing radiance Mimi turned and for the first time saw the body. Margaret, throwing up the narrow window, waved confidently to the workmen's train which was approaching.

Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen (1953).

It was on the third night that the trouble with the telephone started. Edmund St. Jude had been a light sleeper for years; but the previous day had been occupied with steady and unwonted domestic tasks, and when the telephone began to ring he was slumbering heavily and dreaming vividly. For some time, indeed, it was in this dream that the bell rang: then he found that he was sitting crouched in bed, shuddering a little, and totally uncertain how far the dream had ended. Moonlight drifted in through the gla.s.s mansard of the studio north light, but the telephone, being on a low table immediately beneath the sill, was in darkness. In the absence of other sounds to m.u.f.fle or compete, the peals of the bell were thrown back and forth from wall to wall, icy and imperative.

Clutching his personality, jeopardised by the dream, about him, Edmund resolved not to answer. At that hour it could only be a wrong number... or a friend of Teddie's, he suddenly thought. The bell continued to ring. What time was it? His beautiful hunter, symbol of his former life, lay on a chair by the bed. It was twenty-five minutes past five. That the caller could be for Teddie seemed improbable. The bell continued to ring.

In the end, Edmund, who was an amiable man, always yielded to importunity. He crawled out into the autumnal November moonlight and lifted the instrument from its black bed. His aunt, with whom he had previously resided for a number of years, had contrived to retain an instrument of the earlier candlestick pattern; to which Edmund's reflexes were accordingly accustomed, especially in the middle of the night. He fumbled slightly, almost dropping this newer contraption. Now the silence was as disconcerting as the former noise.

'Hullo.'

There was no answering sound of any kind.

'Hullo.'

After a silence of seconds, there was a loud sharp click. It was as if the caller had counted one, two, three, and then, as if by premeditation, rung off.

'Hullo,' said Edmund futilely. But nothing happened. It was not an hour for the operator forthwith to ask what number he wanted.

Edmund replaced the telephone and sped back to bed. He slept again, but now lightly and brokenly, as he usually did.

The episode amounted to little, and Edmund, had he been permitted, would probably soon have forgotten it, especially among the many other nuisances of which his new life seemed largely composed. But during the next few weeks the incident was repeated again and again. Almost always it happened if not during the hours of daylight, which now were daily shrinking, then at least during the hours when Edmund was up and about; although there were further night alarms on at least two occasions.

One of these night calls was especially curious. The telephone rang almost immediately after Edmund had got into bed. Suspecting, with a sinking of his already low spirits, that it was one of the unaccountable calls, but knowing that for him there was no escape in letting the bell go on ringing (two minutes and fifty seconds had proved his maximum period of endurance to date, counted out upon the second-hand of his hunter), he at once switched on the weak bedside light, rose, and answered.

'Hullo.'

There was the usual silence.

'Hullo.'

Not for the first time, he was permitted to speak thrice.

'Hullo.'

There came the click; and then a sound which was new. Edmund heard it before he put back the telephone, but that it came after and not before the dismissive click he was sure. It was a sound which could be nothing but a light short laugh. It seemed to mock his certainly derisory plight. It upset him very much. But no such quirk, additional to the mischief of the calls themselves, occurred again.

There appeared no method or regularity about the calls. Several days would pa.s.s without one; then there would be three in twenty-four hours. The apparent chanciness of the calls played its part in for long dissuading Edmund, who always delayed such approaches, from communicating with the Exchange. He was also deterred by the extreme rarity of his other calls, received or initiated. He felt that this put him in a weak position to complain, and would make his complaint seem ridiculous. The whole telephone installation was only a survival from Teddie's occupancy, and it was one of several with which he would have dispensed.

Another was a habit which seemed common to many of Teddie's friends of calling without previous announcement. The callers consisted of rather commonplace young women, obviously in great need of a good gossip, and of well-set-up young men with the wrong kind of haircut and few overt stigmata of imagination. Edmund, who could afford few friends of his own, had known few of Teddie's. He was now much surprised by the implications with regard to Teddie's nature and character which these stray visitors conveyed. As he was engaged to marry Teddie, he was also somewhat concerned.

On one occasion, when Edmund was standing at the studio door trying to ward off a large youth who said his name was Toby, the telephone rang. It proved to be one of the mysterious calls, but by the time Edmund had heard the usual click and had replaced the instrument, he perceived that his visitor had followed him into the studio.

'Nothing wrong, I hope?'

With each successive call, Edmund was becoming fractionally more irritated, and also perturbed; so that the young man's question was as unwelcome as his presence.

'Nothing,' said Edmund stonily. Then he thought. He was beginning to need a confidant. 'Nothing wrong,' he continued. 'But perhaps something unusual. The telephone rings. I answer it. And then the person at the other end rings off. That's all. But it happens again and again.'

'Nothing unusual about that,' said Toby, failing to grasp the essence of the matter. 'We all get it.' His manner was insensitive and insufferable. 'Now tell me, St. Jude.' He was also over-familiar. 'How long has Teddie had T.B.? I never knew she had it at all.'

'No one knew,' replied Edmund. 'But I'm sorry. I was working. I must get on, you know. I'll tell Teddie you called.'

'OK.' Toby had evidently given Edmund up. He shrugged his bulging shoulders and departed without further comment. Edmund had to shut the door behind him.

Annoyance with Toby seemed to imbue Edmund with the small increment of aggression required for him to complain to the Exchange.

'It must have happened more than thirty times now,' he concluded. 'I mean since I arrived here, about three weeks ago.'

'Are you the subscriber?' asked the Exchange.

'No, Miss Taylor-Smith's the subscriber. But I'm her subtenant.'

'Have we been notified?'

'I don't think so. The arrangement's only temporary.'

'Please send us full particulars or we may have to discontinue the service.'

'I'll write to you. But these calls '

'I'm sorry, but if you don't tell us when there's a new subscriber '

'That's nothing to do with it.'

'If you'll complete a new Application Form, we'll go into the matter further.'