Dark Companions (17 page)

The sky was sinking beneath its burden of unshed rain. Thick fringes of grass flopped over the old man’s path. Her own garden was untidy as the blind man’s; she must take it in hand. His windows were curtained with grime. The actual curtains, drooping within, looked like fat ropes of dust.

About to knock, she halted. A stair rod wedged the front door, too timidly ajar to be noticeable from the pavement. Perhaps this was the lethal stair rod—but it meant the child was a meddler, dangerous to itself. She pushed the door wide.

A dim staircase rose from the hall, which might have been a mirror’s version of her own—except that she hoped that hers was infinitely cleaner. The woman could have done nothing but his shopping. Above the stairs, festoons of dust transformed a lampshade into a chandelier.

“Come here, please. Before you hurt yourself.” Muffled as dust, the house dulled her voice, as though she were shouting into blankets. No answer came. Perhaps the child was downstairs now. She strode towards the kitchen, unwilling to climb towards the box of secret darkness.

The house smelled of dank wallpaper. The sky’s lid allowed scant light into the kitchen. When she switched on the bulb as grey as an old pear, the light felt thick as oil. The room was empty—perhaps too empty: there was no chair opposite the old man’s at the table. Nothing else in the long cluttered room seemed worth noting, except a spillage of cans of baby food surrounding a bin beneath the sink. Beyond the window her own kitchen looked darkly unfamiliar, hardly hers at all.

Enough dawdling. She hurried back towards the stairs; her echoes seemed indefinably wrong. She halted. Had there been a high sound, perhaps an inadvertent snatch of song, among her last echoes? “Come down here, please. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The dark above her swallowed her call and kept its secret. It stood blocking the top of the stairs. Good God, was she going to let her nervousness in an empty house prevent her from saving a child? She tramped upstairs. “Come here to me,” she called.

At once there was movement in the dark. Someone came running towards her, down what sounded like an impossibly long hall. Above her the dark seemed crowded with sound, and about to hurl the source of that sound at her. The child was going to play a trick, to leap at her as she stood vulnerable on the stairs.

Her loss of dignity angered her, but she ran. Once she reached the hall she’d give the child a piece of her mind. The noise raced towards her, sounding thin, hollow, dry, and far too large—deformed by dust and echoes, of course. It was close behind her. Her clutching hand scraped a wad of dust from the banister.

The noise had halted. She gripped the banister tight as a weapon as she turned, for fear of an unbalancing prank. But the stairs were deserted.

Outside, the muddy sky gave her less light than she’d hoped. Of course, all the sounds must have come from the house beyond the old man’s. The threat of rain filled her mind like fog. She had almost reached her front door when it slammed in her face. She fumbled irritably for her key. Enough tricks for today.

La, la, la
.
Determined to ignore the sound, which seemed to have moved above her, she dined at the nearby Chinese restaurant. Mellowed by Riesling, she ambled home through streets polished by rain. Shops displayed beds, bright and deserted. Her house displayed darkness. As she climbed the stairs her echoes sounded more numerous than she thought they should, as though someone were imitating her. Of course, that was what had sounded wrong in the old man’s house. She smiled vaguely and went to bed.

Pale quick movement woke her. For a moment it hovered; it had opened the ceiling to peer down at her. She was still trying to prop her eyes open when it slid away, gliding down the wall to the floor. It must have been the stray light of a car.

Her eyelids settled shut. Then her brow tautened. She must be half engulfed in a dream, for she thought she remembered the pale oval crossing the floor and hiding beneath her bed. No car’s beam could have reached so far. Determinedly, she relaxed. Her brow was beginning to squeeze forth a headache.

She dozed amid distractions. The tick of her clock was shouting like an ignored child; a drip in the kitchen seemed eager to remind her how largely empty the house was. Something—a fly, it must have been—kept touching her face lightly, silently. Grumbling, she withdrew beneath the blankets. Somewhere in a dream she could still feel the timid touch.

She must have dreamed that it managed to pluck the blankets away and crawl in beside her face. Daylight showed her a deserted room. Perhaps the fly had fallen under the bed to die; she wasn’t looking. She ate breakfast and stared at the weeds on the yard wall; lingering raindrops made their leaves crystalline. The weeds wept on her fingers as she uprooted them triumphantly; She’d left them growing to avoid arguments with the old man—and of course he wouldn’t have noticed.

She read the Heyer. The street sounded like a schoolyard; footballs beat like irregular hearts. Later, the library was quiet until children came in for a chase. She couldn’t escape them at all, it seemed. She smiled wryly at the harassed librarian.

La ,la, la
.
Couldn’t they teach the child a few more notes, or at least to stay firmly on the one? She added her coat to the load on the hall stand, straining her ears to determine the location of the sound. It was above her, on the old man’s side. It moved slowly to the other side. But it couldn’t do that unless it was in her house.

She ran upstairs. Her footsteps filled the house, but there was no need for stealth; the child was in her bedroom, trapped. It sang on, indifferent to her. She’d smack its bottom for that as well. She flung open the bedroom door.

The bed was spread with sunlight, the room blazed. The singing persisted ahead of her, tantalisingly, as she forced her eyes not to blink; then it moved through the wall into the spare bedroom. Just an acoustic trick. She was disconcertingly unsure what she felt now she’d been robbed of the naughty child. The house walls were too thin, that was for sure. She sat downstairs, riffling through her new books. When the singing recommenced she pursed her lips. She’d been tricked once.

She woke. She was sitting in the chair, an open book roofed her knee. For a moment she forgot that it was the next day, that she’d been to bed meanwhile. Some perversity of her metabolism always exhausted her after the end of term.

No doubt the tapping of rain had wakened her; the panes looked cracked by water, the room was crowded with dim giant amoebae. But the movement, or the version of it that her sleep had admitted, had sounded heavier. Though she quashed the memory at once, she thought of the departed footsteps of her parents. The sound came again, rumbling in the cupboard in the corner of the room.

Reluctantly she tiptoed closer. Dry waves of rain flooded down the cupboard door. With one hand she switched on the standard lamp, with the other she snatched open the door. The gas meter peered up at her, twitching its indicator. There was nothing else, not even a mouse hole. It must have been the black couple, being far too noisy.

In the kitchen all the cupboards were open. Their interiors looked very dark, and more full than they should have, especially where they were darkest. Wake up! She slapped her face, none too gently. What was her mind playing, hide and seek? She slammed the doors, refusing to peer within.

Her mind tried slyly to persuade her to dine out. Nonsense, she couldn’t afford that every night. After dinner she wrote to Sue, suggesting a restaurant, then tried to read. Didn’t they ever put that child to bed? It was such a dismal sound; it made her house seem so empty.

Next day she lost patience. Never mind sitting about, moping. Who was going to put up the curtain rail, her father? This time she’d do it properly. She replenished the sockets in the plaster with filler. Replacing the screws was more tiring than she’d thought; halfway through she was prickly with sweat. “Shut up with your la, la, la,” she snarled. She’d complain if she only knew where. Gasping triumphantly, she tightened the last screw and stood gazing at her handiwork, ignoring the blisters on her palms.

The singing insinuated itself among the words of her books, it began to pick apart her thoughts. What annoyed her most was its stupidity. It sounded mindless as a dripping tap.

On Good Friday she rode a bus into unexpected sunshine, but there seemed to be an indefinable thin barrier between her and her enjoyment. Among the children who crowded the fields and the woods a tuneless song kept appearing. She returned home before she’d planned to, towards slabs of cloud.

She lay listening furiously. La, la, la. It was hours past midnight, hours since she’d tried to sleep. Tomorrow she would track down the child’s parents—except that deep in her mind she dreaded that nobody would know what she was talking about. She knew none of her neighbours well enough for a calculated chat.

On Easter Sunday she went to church in search of peace, though she hadn’t been for years. Above the altar Christ rose up, pure, perfected. She gazed in admiration, surprised how much she’d forgotten. There was a real man, probably the only one. She’d never met one like him.

The choir sang. Boyish trebles pierced the hymn: la, la, la, one sang tunelessly. Her shoulders writhed and shuddered, but she managed to stay kneeling. She’d had hallucinations with insomnia before: bushes that smiled, trees that raised their heads from grazing. The choir was in tune now. She sat back gratefully. But when the sermon mentioned spirits—ghosts—she found she was trying not to hear.

She strode into her home. Now, no more nonsense. She hooked her coat onto the stand, and at once heard it fall behind her. The fall sounded far too heavy for a coat. On the floor, whose shadows seemed thickened rather than diluted by the light that leaked beneath the door, all the coats lay in a mound—her parents’ too, which she kept meaning to give away. The mound looked as if a lumpy shape were hiding underneath.

They were coats. Nothing but coats. Good God, it wasn’t as if they were moving. But if the lurker were holding itself still, waiting to be uncovered… She stumbled forward and snatched away the coats. She stood glaring defiantly at the bare floor. The coats didn’t seem bulky enough to have composed so large a mound.

She felt strange, handling her parents’ clothes so roughly. Had she left them on the stand because she hadn’t known how to touch them? That afternoon she took them to the presbytery for the rummage sale.

Her house seemed very empty; the restless prattling made it more so. All she needed was sleep. After midnight she slept fitfully when the voice allowed her. Surely she wouldn’t need a doctor. Sometimes, when her self-control was barely equal to her job, she’d dreaded that. La, la, la.

On Monday Sue Thackeray came visiting. They returned from the Chinese restaurant companioned by a bottle of gin. Edith was glad of Sue, whose throaty laugh gave the echoes no chance to sound hollow.

Sue’s armchair wheezed as she sat back bulging, tenderly cradling her refilled glass. Her arms were almost as thick as the stuffed chair’s. Memories of her parents, whom she had recently lost, floated up on the gin. “At least you lived here with yours,” she said. “I didn’t see mine for months.”

“But the house seems so empty now.”

“Well, it will. I thought you looked a bit peaky, love.” She stared hard and blearily at Edith. “You want to get away.”

“I’m going to Minorca this summer. I can’t afford to go anywhere else as well.”

They fell silent. The silence rustled with the approach of rain. “Anyway,” Sue said, slapping her knee, beginning to grin. Edith hushed her. “Can you hear that?” she blurted.

La, la, la
.
“Rain,” Sue said.

“No, I don’t mean that.” It was so difficult to force the words past her confusion that surely the effort must be worthwhile. “Can’t you hear the child?” she demanded, almost pleading.

Sue gazed at her rather sadly before saying “No.” She thought it was Edith’s imagination, did she? She thought Edith had wished a child into her mind, did she?

“Did you ever want to adopt a child?”

“No,” Edith declared angrily, “I never did, and I don’t want one now. I have enough of them at school. I like my freedom, thank you.” Why was she shouting, with only Sue to hear?”

“All right, all right,” Sue said grumpily. “I didn’t mean—”

The crash turned her next word into a gape. Edith was already running to the door. But it had warped somehow, and refused to budge. She mustn’t lose her temper, things were like children sometimes. But she must get out to see what had happened! At the third wrench the door set her free.

The fallen rail lay tangled in its curtains, scattered with plaster. Above it, her filled sockets had been gouged. “Look at that,” she said incredulously. “It’s been torn down.”

“Don’t be silly,” Sue rebuked her. “It’s just fallen.”

When Sue left, hurrying bowed beneath rain, Edith stood staring at the dull street. The air was latticed with transparent slashes. Just fallen, indeed! How could the woman be so smug about her blindness? At least her smugness had convinced Edith that the child must exist objectively outside her own mind, however unnaturally. The gin allowed her thoughts to be comfortably vague. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t drive her out of her own house. “You’ll go first,” she shouted to her echoes.

A child was laughing. The sound seemed peaceful. Perhaps she might enjoy having a child in the house. She woke to the touch of cold rubber on her feet; the hot water bottle felt dead. No, she didn’t want a child. The hard hot poking that preceded it had been bad enough: that, and the doctor’s groping to get rid of it, and the sight of it—it hadn’t looked at all human, it had never had the chance. She had had it murdered. She could never have had a child after that, even if she had wanted to. “I want no child,” she snarled at the dark. Then she froze, remembering what she’d felt as she had awakened.

Of course, it had been a dream: the face nuzzling hers eagerly, the hand reaching playfully to touch her feet and the bottle. Only in dreams was such a reach possible. But she lay stiffly, trying to hush her breath, willing the bed to be empty, willing the dark not to nuzzle her face. Perhaps she lay thus for hours before, inadvertently, she fell asleep.