Listening in the Dusk (9 page)

“‘The essential qualifications for the new technological age,’” he quoted in a clear childish treble, whose innocent tone very nearly cancelled out the underlying impertinence of the
interruption
. “Science and Maths are the gateway to tomorrow’s world.” Here he stopped quoting, looked straight at Alice and spoke in his own, slightly less child-like voice: “But you see I don’t specially want to live in tomorrow’s world. I don’t think I’m going to like it. But I
do
like Greek, especially Plato and Herodotus, and I want to learn to read them properly.”

“So I’ve got
two
jobs!” Alice announced that evening as she, Brian and Hetty gathered round the kitchen table for a midnight feast of doughnuts and the remains of a jumbo packet of crisps, washed down by the much-stewed pot of tea with which Hetty had been regaling all comers ever since ten o’clock. “And pretty well paid, too,” Alice continued. “At least one of them is. It’s funny you know, the mother doesn’t really seem to approve of the boy learning Greek at all, and yet she’s quite happy to pay the earth for it.”

“It figures, though, doesn’t it?” Brian suggested. “I’ve had mothers like that too. Having tin ears themselves, they have no idea of what music is for, or why anyone should want to spend time on it, but on the other hand they’re dead scared that their kid might miss out on something, or be traumatised by the sound of the word No — that kind of thing. So what they can’t provide in understanding and intelligent support, they fall over themselves to provide in money. Paying off their own guilt-feelings. Inadequacy-feelings, rather. For lots of people it’s the same thing. Anyway, congratulations, Alice! Long may Mrs Whats-it’s guilt feelings screw her up, and long may Master Whats-it —”

“Cyril, actually,” Alice interposed. “Rather a prissy name, isn’t it, for nowadays, but then they’re rather prissy people, what I’ve seen of them. Anyway, I start this Saturday as ever. Oh, and I’ve got a dear old chap as well, not so much money, of course, but he’s dead keen. He’s coming to me, thank goodness, so if you run into a slightly Worzel Gummidge sort of figure on the stairs on Wednesdays and Saturdays —”

“Which reminds me,” Hetty broke in, “figures on the stairs, I mean. There’s a piece of good news! This fellow, quite a
nice-looking
fellow actually, well, not too bad, anyway. A bit yellow, perhaps, unless it was the light; that one without a shade, you know at the turn of the landing, puts years on anyone that light does. So maybe he was fairly young, really; on the
old
side of fairly young, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I’ve always said that an age difference doesn’t really matter all that much, provided there’s common interests … Presentable he was, anyway, quite neat and all that. A bit on the small side maybe, still, you mustn’t go by that, there’s plenty of short men who —”

“Hetty, darling, the suspense is terrible!” Brian interrupted. “This yellow dwarf in his natty suiting — what
about
him? You’ve told us everything, in splendid detail, except what the hell you’re talking about.”

“I was just coming to that, and just you keep your mouth shut, young Brian, and let me tell it my own way. It’s a boyfriend, I do believe! A boyfriend for our Mary at last! You know how worried I’ve been about that girl, how she never goes out, never has anyone in. Well, it’s happened at last! I’m so relieved! And I don’t think it can be his first visit, either, because when he got up as far as her room, he just pushed the door open and walked in. Well, you wouldn’t do that, would you, if it was a first visit? You’d knock on the door, wouldn’t you? And he didn’t: nothing like that. I know he didn’t, because I was watching up through the banisters.”

“And what happened?” Brian had quite dropped his
bantering
tone. “Did Mary …? I mean, did she say anything? Did you hear how she sounded?”

Hetty bridled, putting on what Alice thought of as her
“tut-tut”
look.

“Really, Brian! How should I know how she sounded? I didn’t stay to listen, what do you take me for? I just hurried off down the stairs as fast as I could go to leave them their privacy. All I do know is that everything seemed very quiet up there, and I really began to hope — you know — that they might be … Well, I mean, it would do her a power of good, wouldn’t it, poor child? Just what she needs to cure her of the megrims.”

“
When
was all this? Is he still there?”

Brian was leaning forward over the table, poised as if to spring to his feet at Hetty’s slightest word. But Hetty merely flapped her hand at him.

“Relax, boy, relax! Hours ago it happened, not long after lunch it must have been. He wasn’t here above half an hour, I heard the door go when he left. Still, it’s something isn’t it, to know that she’s got a friend at all. It could be the start of something. And Brian, don’t look like that. You’ve no call to look like that, all the chances you’ve had up there on the same landing all these weeks, and you’ve never taken advantage … Oh no you haven’t, Brian,
I
can tell, you can’t deceive me … And so now when another chap comes along, well, you’ve brought it on yourself, is all I can say. Right dog-in-the-manger, I’d call it if you start complaining now.”

“I’m
not
complaining!” He sounded quite angry. “I’m just simply worried: is she
all
right
? Have you seen her since? I mean, you don’t know if she knew him at all. He might have been a total stranger. A rapist! A murderer! Anything! This leaving the front door swinging open day and night is all very fine and dandy, but —”

“‘Swinging open’ is a lie, and well you know it. Just I put the latch up now and again, that’s all, and so would you if you were the one who had to be up and down all day long answering the bell to every Tom, Dick and Harry —”

“Seeing that the bell doesn’t even work,” Brian retorted, “I don’t see how —”

“And whose fault is that, I’d like to know!” Hetty crowed triumphantly, delighted at being dealt so unsolicited a trump card. “Who promised he’d fix it? Days ago it was! And the geyser, too! All these tepid baths, I’m just about fed up with it, and so is Miss Dorinda. And Alice too, aren’t you, Alice? We all are. And the fridge as well, while we’re on the subject, the funny noise it makes when you shut the door too hard, and the light inside has gone on the blink too. All those bits of milk going sour, or will do if you don’t get on with it. And it’s no good saying give them to Hengist, he won’t touch sour milk, as you well know —”

“That cat won’t touch anything except best steak and breast of chicken, if you ask me,” Brian retorted, recovering something of his usual tone under the reassuring onslaught of familiar
reproaches
.
“Ever tried giving him the chips from the fish-and-chips parcel? The look he gives you fairly burns a hole in the paper!” And then, turning to Alice: “Look, Alice, couldn’t you come up with me and check that Mary’s all right? I know it’s late, but you could just peep round the door, see if she’s safe in bed sort of thing? Obviously, I can’t because we aren’t … I mean she doesn’t …”

Alice got the point, and together they set off up the stairs. On the third landing Brian retreated tactfully into his room, leaving Alice alone outside Mary’s door.

A minute later she rejoined him, shaking her head.

“Her door’s wedged on the inside again,” she reported. “And there’s no light under it. But at least it means she must be
there.
I mean, wedging her door — she’s always doing that, isn’t she? It doesn’t mean anything’s wrong.”

So there’s nothing to worry about, Alice would like to have added, but it wouldn’t have been true. There
was
something to worry about. She knew it, and so did Brian.

He was having trouble with his voice. His habitual, jokey style had collided head-on with something beyond its scope.

“
Why
the
hell
can’t she
tell
me!” he burst out at last, in a sort of whispered shout. “She
knows
how I care about her, she
must
know. I could help her, I know I could.
Whatever
it is, I’d fix it for her … I’d go to the ends of the earth … I’d fight whoever it is … Little bloody yellow dwarfs, the lot! If only she’d
tell
me! Oh, Alice, she’s in some dreadful trouble, I
know
she is. How can I find out …? She’s so cold, so distant, it’s like I’m her worst enemy … Why? Why?”

“Me too. She’s like that with all of us, not just you,” Alice pointed out reassuringly, aware even while she spoke of how totally non-reassuring the fact actually was. Then, on a sudden impulse: “Look,” she said. “We’ve got to get to know her better. In general, I mean; not delving into her secrets whatever they are. Bring her into things; get her to join in a bit of harmless fun sometimes. There’s not much
you
can do, Brian, the way things are between you, it’d be misinterpreted. But why don’t
I
give a little party? Up in my room, for the whole household? A sort of attic-warming? Now that we’ve finished painting the motor bike
— I did the gold this afternoon, you know, you haven’t seen it yet, it looks kind of splendid with the dark blue spokes. We’ll have candles instead of that awful glaring light, and I’ll bring in some pork pies and some beer —”

“
I’ll
bring the beer!” exclaimed Brian, his spirits miraculously reviving at the prospect of some action. “And Hetty can bring up the rest of that long-life bacon joint she’s been on at us to finish, it can go out in a blaze of glory. That’s a super idea, Alice. But we must make sure Mary knows it’s a
party,
not any kind of a
tête-à-tête
, which would frighten her off, I’m sure. Let’s get out some invitation cards and push them under everyone’s door,
JUNK
ROOM GALA NIGHT
— something like that? With a picture of a motor bike sitting in an armchair holding a beer-glass in one handle-bar and a pork pie in the other. Look — I’ll show you. Pass me that old envelope. No, the big one …”

The danger seemed to be over, for the time being. All the same, Mary lingered just inside her door to make sure that her barricade was securely in position under the handle; then she tiptoed warily back to the bed on which she spent so many of the long days, and even longer nights.

Just as if she was ill.

Well, a shock
is
an illness, of a sort, especially a bad shock like the one she’d had this afternoon. It would have been a shock to anyone, however normal. A man, a perfectly strange man marching into one’s room as if he had a right to do so. For a moment, she’d thought he was a plain-clothes policeman; and then, even more terrifyingly, that he wasn’t, that he must be bent on darker business. It had happened at last! She’d been sussed out, hunted down, finally cornered, in spite of all her desperate precautions …

What a fool he must have thought her! Standing in the doorway, blocking his path, choking and stammering, bracing herself to lie and lie, to fend off his questions with one fabrication after another — when all he wanted, actually, was to find Alice! He’d mistaken the room … Was full of apologies for
intruding …

Her relief at finding that the visitor wasn’t for her at all had been so overwhelming that she’d been barely able to speak; had simply waved him on up the further flight of stairs, and then slammed the door in his face. Well, that was what it amounted to. And then she had listened, as she always seemed to be listening; had heard him stumbling about up there, first into the cistern loft, and then, yes, she heard him cross the bare boards of that attic landing towards Alice’s room. This time, he’d knocked — presumably having learned his lesson — and then had knocked
again; but whether Alice was out, or simply not answering the door, of course she could not tell.

And here it suddenly occurred to Mary that maybe the man’s visit was giving Alice just as big a fright as Mary herself had suffered! Well, and serve her right too! And really, it was quite likely. It seemed obvious, by now, that this new lodger had something to hide. Why else would a well-heeled, well-educated woman, barely middle-aged, be fetching up in a dump like this?

But
what
was she hiding? This was what concerned Mary. The irrational conviction that it must be something that had to do with herself once more took over, obliterating any sensible weighing-up of probabilities. In her over-stretched imagination, the scenario grew more and more horribly clear the more she allowed herself to dwell on it. It went like this: the strange man had tried Mary’s door first not because he’d made a mistake, as he’d alleged, but because he’d wanted to make sure that she was indeed living here, before going on upstairs to discuss with Alice their next move. They were in league together, the two of them, of course they were. Alice had been planted here as a spy to watch over Mary’s movements, to note her comings and goings, to record her every careless word. And above all, to search for the thing hidden in the attic. On the pretext of “arranging the room”, this Alice woman had given herself an excuse for searching every nook and cranny. She would find it in the end. She was bound to. Had she, indeed, already found it? Was that why she had sent for this man, her fellow-conspirator, to share the revelation? Were they, at this very moment, staring
wild-eyed
at the dreadful secret …?

The absolute silence from above had been hardly in keeping with this scenario. Nor, come to that, were the footsteps — the stranger’s footsteps — tramping heavily down the stairs barely five minutes later, right past Mary’s door without a break in their rhythm, on and on, down and down, until the slam of the front door betokened final departure.

Lying on her bed with eyes tight closed against the outside world, Mary weighed up all these bits of data and could see that they were reassuring. But something inside her refused to be
reassured. “The Impact on Paranoia of the Rational Assessment of Data” — this would have been a good essay title once. To do well in that exam, to qualify in psychology, you had to know absolutely everything about feelings, except what they felt like.