The Long Shadow (13 page)

Searching for writing materials in the whitely-shrouded house was a frustrating business. Where the bureau should have been, there was now a pile of folded curtains; and in the table-drawer under the window there was nothing left but a drawing-pin and some bits of fluff.

And on top of all this, the light was already beginning to go. She must have been here quite a time, and by now the sunlight had quite gone, and the shadowy beginnings of evening were at hand. She had already tried to switch on the sitting-room light, but without avail; either the bulbs were gone, or the electricity had been turned off at the main. And it was as she stood debating all this that she became aware that the dust-sheet shrouding the settee at the far end of the room was beginning to move. Not very much—in fact, for the first moments she fancied that was a trick of the dying light; next, that it must be Minos.

But it wasn’t Minos, it couldn’t be, he was in the kitchen. No cat ever born or thought of could create that sudden billowing heave of whiteness, that convulsion of skidding sheets, that
lurching
upwards against the darkening wall….

I
T WAS YEARS
since screams like that had been heard in this decorous road, and of course they all loved it, especially at Number 36 and at Number 32, which were nearest to the scene of the action. Along they surged, like beggars to a soup-kitchen, all agog to snatch for themselves some small share of whatever excitement it was that was going. One of the husbands, indeed, arrived armed with a poker, and, full of nostalgia for his Home Guard days, tried to organise the thing so as not to have everyone chattering, and running up and down stairs, and tripping over things.

But it was uphill work. While one party foraged for candles and matches, another succeeded in fusing what were left of the lights, and in the resultant noise and confusion a dozen burglars could have got away unnoticed. Presently, though, a degree of order was restored. Someone fetched some fuse-wire and got the lights going again, and soon the whole house had been explored from top to bottom. By the time everyone had been in and out of every room at least twice, tweaking up the
dust-sheets
and commenting on Dot’s choice of bed-linen and furniture fabric, the thing was beginning perceptibly to pall.

No corpses. No burglars. Imogen was aware of her drop in status. Although they were still being very sympathetic and nice to her, she knew she had become a nuisance and a disappointment.

Besides, there were dinners to cook by now, and children to be ferried to and from Brownies: what with one thing and another, they were only too glad, by six o’clock, to lend Imogen a cat-basket and get her out of the place. Their enthusiasm even ran to getting someone’s nephew to drive her and Minos to the station twenty minutes too soon for the train.

They were travelling in the opposite direction from the
rush-hour,
and so the platform was almost deserted. The pair of them
sat on a solitary bench at the far end, gusts of damp January wind whipping at them out of the darkness, piercing through the thin wickerwork to where Minos crouched, unsurprised as always, but certainly not pleased.

“Well, well! Look who’s here!”

The voice, the tone of factitious surprise, were unmistakable. Imogen jerked round, clutching the cat-basket closer to her stomach, whether protectively or as a shield between herself and the
newcomer
, it would have been hard to say.

“Teri! What on earth are
you
doing here?”

“Waiting for the 6.48, Mrs B., just like you,” he answered equably. “Mind if I sit here?”—and without waiting for an answer, he slid on to the bench beside her.

“Funny, running into you like this again,” he began, still on the familiar mocking note. “Or maybe not so funny? I had a feeling you wouldn’t be able to keep away from that house much longer. Bit of a risk, though, wasn’t it, visiting it by daylight?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Imogen retorted. She found herself drawing away from him along the bench, and not only from fear. His thinness, his spots, his smell of ingrained cigarette smoke, repelled her.

“What business it is of yours I can’t imagine,” she continued, “But in fact I’ve been fetching my step-daughter’s cat….”

“A
cat…
?”
He gave a little yelp of startled laughter. “So
that’s
what you call it—a
cat
?”
He flicked the basket lightly with his forefinger.

“Puss, puss, puss! Wotcher, puss,” he squeaked, in a
contemptuous
falsetto. “Hiya, puss …” to which series of indignities Minos naturally made no response.

“Puss, puss … Hey, Mrs B., whassimatter with it? It’s not moving. ’S it dead, or something?”

“He’s frightened—you’re frightening him—” Imogen was
beginning
, when Teri interrupted with another spurt of laughter.

“Come on, Mrs B., stop kidding!
I
know what you’ve got in there. It’s what you went for, isn’t it? And very sensible, if I may say so. It wouldn’t be very nice, would it, Mrs B., if they
discovered that the Prof, wasn’t alone in the car when he crashed it? That there was a woman with him … a woman who jumped out just before he went into that skid?

“How did you do it, Mrs B.? Jog his elbow? Whisper a sweet nothing into his ear just when he was least expecting it? Or”—here he gave a sort of exultant cackle—“did you, Mrs B., by any chance have a
cat
with you? Do you always keep a cat handy when you’re travelling, just in case…? A sensible precaution, I’m sure, pity more people don’t do it. But … a
cat
…!”

The joke, whatever it was, must have been exquisite, for he sat rocking with silent laughter, the bench shuddering beneath him, long after Imogen had gathered up her gloves, her cat, and her handbag, and strolled, with what she hoped was icy dignity, towards the other end of the platform. She had expected him to follow her, but when she looked back a minute later he was still there, a hunched silhouette in the darkness; surprisingly small. Then the train came in, and she lost him.

The warmth of the compartment, the somnolent faces of her fellow-passengers, and the soporific rhythm of the wheels, were not conducive to clear thinking. She found her thoughts, such as they were, going round and round in the same useless circles.

Had Teri followed her to Twickenham? Or had he
encountered
her by chance, and decided to make the most of it? And if by chance, then what was
he
doing in Twickenham? Though of course Twickenham is a big place, people do all sorts of things in it….

If he
had
followed her, then what for? To catch her out at something which would provide further “evidence” against her, and add verisimilitude to this blackmail pantomime?

Could he actually be serious about it? Did he himself really believe these preposterous charges he’d been launching against her, up to and including this latest absurdity about her having been in the car with Ivor on the night of the accident?

And if he
didn’t
believe these things, then what
was
he up to? Making the whole thing up just for the hell of it? Just for the fun of upsetting her?

It didn’t upset her, of course. How could it, when it was all such complete and utter nonsense, and so easily disproved? All the same, the mere idea that someone should
want
to upset her so much was in itself a little unnerving; and that they should be prepared to go to so much tedious and time-consuming trouble over it, too, travelling all the way to Twickenham….

It all seemed so motiveless and stupid. Ignoring it had not brought it to an end; should she, then, try taking it seriously? Go to the police? That sort of thing?

“‘What would my dear husband have done?’”—this,
according
to Edith, was the criterion by which a widow should make her decisions; and now, with her thoughts bumbling on in time to the train wheels, Imogen tried it out.

Faced by Teri’s threats and malice, what
would
Ivor have done?

He’d have made it ten times worse, of course. He’d have loved the outrageousness of it, and would have encouraged it, at least to start with, as he always encouraged outrageousness in the young, thereby displaying his own broad-mindedness and youthful spirit. And then, when he began to get bored with the thing, or when it began to inconvenience him in some way, he’d have expected someone—most likely Imogen—to make the whole thing not have happened.

This was the trouble with nostalgic musings about Ivor, they were always barking up against this sort of thing. She felt a sudden, reluctant little surge of envy for Edith, with her endless, uncomplicated grief. Darling Desmond’s posthumous advice was always so sensible, and so exactly in accordance with what Edith actually intended to do—why couldn’t Ivor be like that, now that he was dead?

Imogen didn’t know, of course, what sort of a husband Darling Desmond had made when he was alive; but certainly, he made a marvellous dead one.

*

Maybe there
is
some sort of telepathy that makes one so often run into the person one has recently been thinking of? Or maybe
(thought Imogen) Darling Desmond really does go sneaking around the ether, spying into people’s inmost thoughts and telling tales on them, as his wife’s discourse would sometimes lead one to suppose? Whatever it was, the fact remains that the first thing she saw as she toiled with Minos up the dark road towards her home, was Edith, standing in her gateway. No—in
Imogen’s
gateway—silhouetted in a blaze of light from the open front door.

“Imogen!—Oh, thank goodness you’re back!” she cried as soon as Imogen, hugging the cat-basket, came in sight under the street lamp. “Oh, Imogen, my dear I’ve been so worried. I thought of calling the doctor, but I didn’t like …”

Before she could finish the sentence, another figure had burst into the arc of light, its halo of fluffy hair almost ashen in the yellow glare.

“Imogen … Imogen …!” Cynthia shrieked as she stumbled forwards. “He’s back! Ivor’s back! I tell you, he’s
back
!”

T
HERE ARE FEW
widows who have had vouchsafed to them one whole, clear, uninterrupted second in which to know exactly what their feelings would be if their dead husband were miraculously to return.

The utter dismay, like a black, incombustible stump right at the centre of the leaping flame of joy. The terrifying sense of inadequacy, of inability to measure up to such a moment. The blank, guilty panic at being caught out.

Not caught out
at
anything in particular. Blameless months of mourning may be all a woman has been engaged on ever since her husband’s death, but all the same she knows, in that moment of truth, that she has let him down: that ever since she lost him, she has been doing something irrevocable, irreversible, to the relationship which once existed between them. Already, she is subtly unfitted to be his wife … four months … six months … away along a path he cannot follow. The very process of recovery is, itself, a process of destruction….

At this point, mercifully, disbelief intervened, and Imogen realised that what Cynthia was saying was nonsense. Ivor was dead beyond any doubt or question; never for a moment had his identity or the fact of his death been in doubt. Cynthia must be hysterical.

As calmly as she could, Imogen led the sobbing woman indoors, sat her down at the kitchen table, and tried to get out of her what exactly had happened. Edith came in too, cried a little, and said she knew just how Cynthia was feeling—a shot in the dark if ever there was one, because so far she had no more idea than Imogen had of what had actually happened—but presumably the assertion was based on the general assumption that anything you
could feel, she could feel better: she could feel anything better than you.

And in fact, her presence at this juncture
did
have a calming effect, if only because she was someone you could make tea for. It is the making of tea, not the drinking of it, that soothes nerves and gives the beverage its reputation, simply because it is all so complicated. Water exactly at the boil … the ceremonial
warming
of the pot … and then the soft, boring little argument about milk in first, last, or not at all … the proffering and refusing of sugar … very soon the strange, stereotyped ritual had brought Cynthia to the point where she was able to give a very-nearly coherent account of the events of the evening.

*

It had started, innocently enough, with Dot and Herbert deciding on a night out and asking Cynthia if she would baby-sit. Herbert was making amends, it seemed, for several weeks’ accumulation of assorted misdemeanours, by taking his wife out to dinner; and off they had gone, in fine style, she with her beaded evening bag and long jade earrings, and he dapper and uncomfortable in his evening clothes, but pleased as Punch at having done the right thing for once.

And so from six-thirty onwards, Cynthia had been left alone. Piggy was out—sorting out her current boy-friend troubles,
presumably
, or maybe laying the foundations for new ones—and as for Robin, he hadn’t been in all day, not so far as Cynthia was aware, anyway.

It had seemed very quiet after a while, sitting there all by herself doing her embroidery, with the boys sound asleep
upstairs,
and nothing good on television: and so, after a while—nine o’clock, was it, or maybe a little later?—she had grown restless, and decided to look around the house and make sure that everything was all right.

All right? Why shouldn’t it be all right?—and at this Cynthia bridled a little, and pointed out that after all she
had
been left in charge. And no—No, she hadn’t felt scared, not at that stage. She’d just felt
restless,
for Heaven’s sake, couldn’t they
understand
?
Which of course Edith at once proceeded to do, with many a little nod of the head, and a tentative sniff or two just in case it turned out to be something to do with the family bereavement.

Mollified by these small tributes to sensitivity in general and to her own in particular, Cynthia resumed her story.

Feeling restless, as just established, she had naturally enough found herself, after a while, wandering into poor Ivor’s study and idly opening the drawers of his desk, one after another.

Searching for something? No, of course not. Looking through his papers? What an idea! Just thumbing through them idly, for Heaven’s sake, just for something to
do:
couldn’t they
under
stand
?—and once again Edith, like a soldier leaping to attention, instantly did so.

Imogen wasn’t quite so quick; and her insensitive curiosity rapidly brought Cynthia up against some kind of a block, and she was unable to go on.

She’d come across some letter? Some document that had
upset
her? With this business of idly thumbing through someone else’s private papers, you can never tell, can you?

But no … no…. She kept shaking her head at all these
suggestions
; and then, rather disturbingly, she was seen once more to be crying—a kind of helpless, watery sobbing, with the
lamplight
glistening on her wet cheeks and on her pale froth of hair. It was no use going on at her like this, she sobbed, she just couldn’t bear it … couldn’t bear to talk about it. It had been such a shock, you see; and it would be even more of a shock for Imogen: she wished she’d never said a thing about it, she wished she’d kept it to herself.

“And it’s not even as if I
believe
in ghosts,” she burst out, feebly indignant. “I’ve never even been to one of those meetings where they …”

“Of course you haven’t. As if you would …” Edith was all over her now, patting, hand-squeezing, stroking in a way that Imogen (shoddy, inadequate mourner that she was) had never allowed. “Of course you haven’t, dear, and of course you don’t believe in ghosts, neither do I; that would be blasphemy, and Spiritualism,
and that sort of thing. But we do know, don’t we, dear, that our dear ones haven’t really left us. They are still here, watching over us day and night…. Darling Desmond, and dear Ivor too; right now they’re …”

*

Cynthia’s screams rang terrifyingly through the quiet room. They echoed up and down and back and forth in the large empty house—it was a miracle, Imogen thought afterwards, that the boys hadn’t been awakened—scream after scream, beyond all human control: she seemed to be in a veritable paroxysm of terror.

“Hysterics,” diagnosed Imogen, shakily. “Water, Edith. Cold water …” and Edith, pausing only long enough to say, with a touch of triumph, “You see?—I
knew
I should have called the doctor” (just as if anyone had stopped her), hastened to the tap.

With wet flannels, soothing words, and brandy, they managed at last to quieten the panic-stricken woman; bit by bit the screams were replaced by broken, exhausted sobbing.

“I—I’m sorry—” Cynthia managed to gasp once or twice; and “It was silly of me … I didn’t mean …”

She was still trembling, and clutching both of Edith’s hands for support, and Edith, in her element at last, took command of the situation, and led the distracted victim gently, and with
murmured
words of consolation, up the stairs to her room. Imogen felt, for once, truly grateful to her next-door-neighbour. Edith could be a very real comforter of sorrow, she now realised, if only one had the knack of sorrowing in the right way.

Meantime, as became her inferior aptitude for this kind of scene, Imogen applied herself to the ancillary services of grief—hot-water-bottles; extra blankets; unearthing Cynthia’s pale-green tranquillisers from under the table-mats in the sideboard;
phoning
the doctor—

Or not phoning the doctor? Was Cynthia ill, or had she really come upon something terrible in Ivor’s desk? If the latter, then a doctor would merely be a further complication….

Leaving the kettles on a low gas, Imogen tiptoed across the
hall—tiptoed, because she was supposed to be engaged on a work of mercy, not of investigation, and Edith’s ears were very acute for this kind of thing.

The study door was wide open, just as Cynthia must have left it when she fled, and the light was on. The desk drawers, on the other hand, were all neatly shut, without even a corner of paper protruding. Presumably, Cynthia had slammed the drawer shut on whatever it was she had seen … almost as if it might be going to spring out at her …?

*

Income-tax forms. Circulars about the new rating-system. More income-tax…. Imogen moved on to the next drawer, and the next.

Receipts. Bills. University business. It was only when she came to the bottom drawer of all that she became aware that her hands were trembling, and that she was in the grip of a terrible feeling of reluctance to go on. Afterwards, she wondered if it had been some kind of a premonition; but of course it wasn’t. It was just that whatever it was that had frightened Cynthia
must
be in this drawer, simply because it wasn’t in any of the others. This was the last one.

Gingerly, Imogen gave a half-hearted little tweak to the handles; but of course the drawer didn’t budge. She pulled harder … harder … it was heavier than she remembered. Then, with sudden, noisy defiance, she put forth all her strength and yanked it wide open.

*

The thing stared her in the face: just as it must have stared Cynthia in the face when, already guilty and on edge from her illicit prying, she’d furtively peeped into this last drawer of all.

“
PLEASE LEAVE MY THINGS ALONE
” it said, in Ivor’s bold, unmistakable handwriting.

*

That such a notice should still exist was not, of course, so very extraordinary—though how it could have got into this drawer, on top of all the other papers, was still a puzzle. And you could well
imagine the effect it must have had upon Cynthia, coming upon it unawares, and being less familiar (presumably) than Imogen with Ivor’s habit of writing just this kind of notice whenever his work happened to have put him in a bad mood. Maybe he hadn’t done it in Cynthia’s day; but certainly ever since Imogen had been married to him, such a notice as this lying on top of his papers had been virtually a message telling her that the work in question wasn’t going too well. She understood very well that these peremptory and superfluous orders to the world at large (because no one would ever have dared to touch any of his papers anyway) gave him a compensatory feeling of power, and also the vague feeling that the obstacles he was encountering had
somehow
been someone else’s fault.

All this hard-won understanding was useless now. Obsolete. Finished. It would never be needed again. Staring down at the familiar, sharply-worded missive, Imogen ached with longing for those fits of truculent ill-humour, of unreasonable accusations, that she alone knew how to soothe. Blinking back the tears, she picked up the paper, and held it under the light.

*

She blinked again. She stared, and felt bewilderment growing monstrous within her. Her brain was maybe a little slow in
grasping
the significance of what she saw, but already her stomach knew. She felt it contract; and she felt the hair on the back of her neck rising.

The paper in her hand was new paper, not paper four months old. The writing on it was new writing—written today or
yesterday
, not last summer. The ink was bright and fresh, it couldn’t—not possibly—be four months old or more.

*

You can’t be sure, she told herself. You need proof.

You shall have proof. There, lying on the desk, was the
writing-pad
she’d bought herself only yesterday. It was open, the top sheet had been ripped hastily off, leaving a narrow, ragged triangle of paper still adhering to the binding. That slanting, uneven edge of paper would exactly fit—wouldn’t it—against the slanting, uneven
edge of the “
PLEASE LEAVE MY THINGS ALONE
” notice that she still clutched between finger and thumb.

Or would it?

Only one way not to find out, and that was not to try. Not to lay those two torn edges alongside one another, like bits of a jigsaw …
not
to find out if they exactly fitted. At the moment, they only
looked
as if they did.

It was easy, really. Couldn’t be easier. All she had to do was to throw away this sheet of paper just as she had thrown away that whisky bottle, washed-up that glass, and put that Lexicon back on the shelf.

*

The embers of the dining-room fire would still be red, if she carried the thing in there right now, and poked it deep, deep in among the dying coals. She could stand there and watch the brief flame leaping, living out its tiny life-span, and then harmlessly dying.

It would be over. The whole thing wouldn’t have happened.

That had often been the job of Ivor’s wife—to make things not have happened. She would merely be doing it once more—for one last time.

*

The two edges fitted exactly. For a moment, she stood numbly, marvelling at the perfection of it, as if it was the work of some fabulous master-craftsman.

Then, like Cynthia, she began to scream.