No Way Of Telling (4 page)

“What now?”

“There should have been more footsteps—going-away ones too.”

Her grandmother said, after a pause:

“But those may very well have been the going-away ones, Amy—how can we tell?”

“Then where were the coming-here ones?”

This silence seemed to last for much longer. Amy tried to sense in the dark whether her grandmother was thinking it over, or had simply dropped asleep.

“Why, Amy,” said Mrs Bowen at last, “they could have been anywhere—we didn’t look for them, specially.”

But Amy turned towards the old woman, clutching at her for comfort, whispering loud and fast:

“I know why we didn’t see his going-away footsteps—they were so close up to the house, that’s why. And that noise
was
him, Granny, and I think he’s in our shed this very moment. He’s there—
now.
He never went away at all.”

Mrs Bowen sat up. There was the scrape of a match and then Amy saw her, bending sideways to light one of the candles. She wore a white cotton nightgown made by herself, as all her nightgowns were, with a high neck and long sleeves, and her hair fell forward over her shoulders in two thinnish grey pigtails.

When she was sure the candle was properly alight, she reached for a shawl and wrapped herself in it, and then she arranged the bolster and pillow behind her for greater support. These preparations calmed Amy. It was a relief to know that her grandmother was fully awake. It was even more a relief to see her, and to see the room appear round her, conjured out of the black void by one small wavering flame. Amy lay, covered to the tip of her nose by bedclothes, and allowed her eyes to rest gratefully on the chest-of-drawers which, although invisible, had been there all the time, exactly the same as usual.

“Well, Amy,” said Mrs Bowen, finally, “this is what I think—if he’s there, then that’s where he is, and there’s nothing we can do about it. There’s no one can hear us if we shout, and the two of us put together aren’t so strong as that man’s little finger. We might as well know it—we’re on our own. And if this snow keeps on it’ll be a good few days before we see another face. It’s no
use
for us to be frightened—that won’t help us one little bit—and besides, it’s a feeling I don’t enjoy. So now—I don’t mean to bother any more tonight about where he is.”

Amy kept her eyes on the chest-of-drawers and counted the knobs. A slight sensation of sleepiness crept over her. There were eight knobs. Her grandmother’s words went round and round in her head: they were sensible words.

“Granny? How long are you going to stay awake?”

“Longer than you.”

“What about the candle?”

“I’ll blow it out, later.”

“I don’t understand—” said Amy, struggling to disentangle a thought, a picture, some remembrance, from the yellow knobs of the chest-of-drawers going round and round in her head.

Amy overslept. She opened her eyes with a feeling of vague disquiet. Something was wrong. Why was she in her grandmother’s bed and where was her grandmother? Then she heard the clock downstairs begin to strike, and it struck nine times instead of seven, twice too often. Horrified, she sprang out of bed. She had overslept and Mrs Rhys would have gone long ago. But when she pulled the curtains apart there was no view at all: the panes of glass were blocked in, a solid white. Snow! And then she remembered yesterday, and all that had happened—everything.

Her grandmother was calling to her from below.

“Amy! Come along down. Don’t stop to put your clothes on —I’ve made the tea. You can have my shawl to keep warm in.”

Bare-footed, half-awake, half-asleep, Amy pattered downstairs. Mrs Bowen was just stooping to put the pot of tea on the hob in front of the fire which burnt with the loud crackle and fuss of a fire only recently lit. Mick came to meet her, wagging his tail. Queenie had already settled herself for the morning in Mrs Bowen’s well-padded basket-chair. Except for the time on the clock everything had the appearance of being the same as usual. Yawning, Amy sat back submissively in the cushioned rocker and allowed her grandmother to tuck the shawl round her and even, as though she were once again a very little girl, to pull on the stockings that had been hanging since she came home yesterday on the string over the fire.

“I didn’t see the sense in rousing you any earlier, Amy—it’s not as though we’ve got a very busy day ahead of us. Mind, there’s any amount of mending if it’s work we’re after, and the brasses can always do with an extra polish.”

Amy listened without replying. She was letting herself get used to the idea that today was really, in spite of appearances, different from most days: up late, no school. There was another difference too; but this she averted her mind from, feeling not yet quite ready to think about it.

“I heard the news at eight o’clock,” said Mrs Bowen, “and it was all the same—tales of snow, far and wide. It seems it’s the heaviest fall we’ve had for years, and there’s more on the way, so that’s a fine prospect. Here’s your tea now, Amy—drink it up and then you can get yourself dressed and see to the chickens, and time you’ve done them I’ll have the breakfast ready.”

The more her grandmother continued to talk and behave as though nothing strange had taken place the night before, the more Amy found that she could not exclude the happening from her own thoughts. She drank her tea in silence, frowning, and with every sip the possibility of there being something else besides chickens outside in the shed intensified. She tried to persuade herself that her fears were nonsense. It was morning now. The sun was shining. And yet, just
supposing
when she opened the side-kitchen door and stepped out—she put her cup down hurriedly.

“I’m going to get dressed, Granny, and—and then I’ll see to the chickens. I believe it’s stopped snowing—it looks quite bright outside.”

Had her grandmother really forgotten what horrid surprise the shed might hold in store? Amy longed to remind her and yet it was impossible for her to mention the subject while her grandmother remained so unconcerned.

“I don’t suppose it’ll last,” said Mrs Bowen, measuring porridge. “Take that kettle, Amy—it’s your water for washing. And make haste—it’s too cold for you to be loitering about with no clothes on.”

Amy took the kettle and went slowly up the narrow twisting boxed-in stairs. There was no passage in their cottage, or even landing. A partition divided the top floor in two halves, with the stairs emerging directly into Mrs Bowen’s bedroom, which Amy had to cross in order to reach her own room beyond it.

In each bedroom there was a marble-topped washstand and on each washstand a matching set of china jug, basin and soap-dish. Amy’s jug and basin were small, made on purpose for a child. They were white, decorated with wide rings of pink and gold, and they had been bought for her by her father before he had emigrated to Australia, long before she could remember. Amy thought them very pretty.

She mixed the hot water from the kettle with cold water from the jug and rapidly soaped her face and neck, with a dab or two at the ears. Having washed the soap off with a flannel she scrubbed herself dry on a rough towel. Resolved now to do what there was to do quickly, and yet still dreading to do it, she scrambled into her clothes at top speed and ran down the stairs and into the side-kitchen.

As she pulled on her wellingtons and overcoat she eyed the door that she was going to have to open. And then, suddenly, she realised that her grandmother must have been out already: the bolts had been drawn back. Amy flushed warm all over with relief. So that was all right! She lifted the lid of the corn-bin and filled a scoop with grain; but after a moment or so of consideration she put the scoop down and went into the front-kitchen.

Mrs Bowen was stirring the porridge. She glanced up. “Why, Amy,” she said, “whatever makes you so solemn, child? You can’t surely be imagining that man’s out there in the shed, can you?”

“Did you go outside when I was asleep and have a look?” Mrs Bowen moved the pan off the fire. She took Amy’s scarf from the string where it was dangling ready and tied the two ends of it firmly underneath her chin.

“Of course we did, me and Mick, first thing. You don’t suppose I’d have left that for you to find out? There’s only the chickens waiting for you in the shed, Amy, nothing else, and it’s late so you’d better make haste—they’ll be wanting their breakfast as much as you want yours.”

“Weren’t you afraid, Granny? Supposing you’d opened the door and he’d been there?” Her grandmother laughed.

“Well, to tell you the truth I didn’t stop to think too much. There’s times when it’s better to do a thing straight off, when it’s got to be done, and think about it after.”

Amy was silent, pondering the matter while she watched her grandmother stirring. Finally she said:

“You’re braver than me, Granny. You’re older, of course, but I don’t know if that’s why. Is it?”

Mrs Bowen too was silent a moment or so before she answered.

“I’d say brave isn’t mostly what people are, Amy, it’s what they decide to be—and if there’s no choice, then they can’t very well decide any other, can they? You don’t have to fret about it—you’ll find you’re brave enough whenever the time comes that you’ve got to be.”

“Shall I?” said Amy, with an anxious sigh. “I hope you’re right, Granny. Come on then, Mick.”

She opened the side-kitchen door. Snow had blown up against it and frozen, making a low barricade which she stepped over.

The morning was flawless. There was no wind. Amy’s breath steamed on air that was clear and cold and still. Nothing broke the silence, nothing moved. She stood in the shed with the scoop of corn in one hand, marvelling at how a world so white and so smooth could have been created by anything as rough and dark as the storm of the previous night.

Their shed was formed by a roof sloping out from the west wall of the cottage, supported on oak posts. It was wide open to the hillside except for its north end, which had been closed in by sheets of corrugated tin. Against this closed end, at right angles to it, was the chicken-house, raised above ground-level on blocks of stone so as to preserve it from dampness and rats. A narrow space existed between the chicken-house and cottage wall, screened on its third side by the corrugated tin, and in this convenient nook they kept their few garden tools, empty flower-pots and similar odds and ends. The rest of the shed was used mainly for chopping sticks and sawing up logs. In summertime swallows built their nests under the sloping roof, and Amy used to sit on the chopping-block during late warm afternoons, her feet on a carpet of accumulated wood-chips, watching the birds dart in and out. Now it was not summer and there were no swallows; snow had covered the chippings and the chopping-block, she suddenly noticed, had gone.

It had gone!

But that was impossible! How could a great chunk of wood, immensely heavy, all at once have gone? The chickens were rustling inside their prison, impatient to be let out, but Amy could only stare at the place where the chopping-block always was, and where it now was not. Then her eye fell on Mick, snuffling away busily in the corner, and then she saw the chopping-block: there it was, removed as though by magic, and brown and dry although everything else in the shed had at least a speckling of white. It was brown and dry because he must have been sitting on it, squeezed between the chicken-house and the wall of the cottage, while the storm battered the thin shield of corrugated tin at his back and eddies of snow whirled under the roof to settle in every cranny, every crack, covering the blankets he was wrapped in, and the sack at his feet, and the sieve and the hank of twine hanging above his head. The picture was so vivid to Amy that she stood petrified in front of the chopping-block, as though the ghost of his awful presence still crouched upon it.

“He was here, Mick, in our shed, like I said he was.”

Mick came out from underneath the chicken-house and wagged his tail at her.

“And then, when it stopped snowing, he went away.”

She dumped the scoop on the ground and floundered out from the shelter of the shed to scan the white slope beyond. Plain as print, there they were, the missing footsteps, the ones that had worried her last night, leading uphill behind the cottage in the same direction as Mr Protheroe had taken—so long ago, it seemed—when she waved him goodbye yesterday afternoon. She stared at those footsteps as though by staring she could force them to tell her something more, something finally reassuring, but all they told her was the way that he had gone.

In a sort of a dream Amy took hold of the shovel and scraped a patch of ground clear of snow. She tipped the grain on to the bare patch and then undid the door of the chicken-house, and the chickens came crowding out, a wild commotion of squawks and ruffled feathers. Amy watched them pecking for a few moments. Then she cleared away the snow piled in front of the side-kitchen door. When that was done she leaned her shovel against the wall and went inside.

“Granny,” she said, “he was in our shed all night, just like I thought he was.”

Mrs Bowen was pouring porridge into their two bowls. She stopped pouring.

“He was?”

“Tight up in the corner he must have been—that’s where I found the chopping-block. It’s what he sat on. You didn’t happen to notice it was gone when you went out with Mick, did you?—I didn’t either, at first. He moved it.”

“You’re a lot sharper than me, then, and that’s a fact, for I never saw a mite of difference. Though to be honest with you, Amy, I didn’t give much more than just a glance to the shed, enough to see he wasn’t there, and for this reason—which I don’t mind telling you now it’s all over and done with. What I had fixed in my head was that he might have passed the night in our toilet. Don’t laugh at me—he could have done. It would have been shelter for him. So that’s why I wasn’t too particular about the shed.”

“Did you look in the toilet?”

Mrs Bowen gave a brief nod.

“I didn’t stop to clear a way to it, neither—there was snow so high it all but came over the top of my wellingtons. And I can’t tell you the relief to my heart it was, Amy, to find that toilet empty. I was afraid he’d be there for sure—I was afraid he’d be dead, died of the cold.”