Room Upstairs (26 page)

‘Gramma! Gramma!' Music was playing below. She would not hear.

‘What is it, child?' The face swam palely below. The mouth fell open as she saw Jess lying against the rail of the stairwell. ‘I'll come up.'

‘Get Mont. The hospital—' She heard herself begin to scream.

The next time she opened her eyes, Sybil was sitting beside her on the floor, her back against the railing, legs straight out, very composed, cradling her to her sparse bosom.

‘He's coming,' she said matter-of-factly.

‘Soon?' It came out as a moan.

‘I know, I know. Hang on, child. I know what it's like,' she said very sensibly. ‘Gramma's here. Hang on.'

‘She fell,' Sybil said. ‘I found her on the floor. “Help me”, she said, “help me”.'

It made a good story, with herself as heroine. She had already told it half a dozen times to Mrs Thatcher, who was taking care of her while Jess was in the hospital, and would
tell it again, if she so pleased. The woman was paid to listen to her.

Mrs Thatcher was a nurse, though it was years since she had been part of a bustling hospital routine. She had her name written on a blue and silver plaque over her breast pocket: Mrs Thatcher, in case you were a crazed old lady and could not remember who she was.

She wore white overalls, buttoned high at the neck like a dentist, and as flat in the front as a dentist, which was a change from Dorothy's pouter pigeon architecture. She had white stockings which had caught a few patches of blue dye in the washing machine, and great white shoes like South Sea liners, with little portholes round the toes to let out the sweat.

Sybil rather liked her. She was kind, in a businesslike way, for old lashes were her business, rather than her cross. She did not make Sybil feel a nuisance. That was a change too. She had been cluttering up people's lives for so long that it was a relief to be with someone who had all the time in the world for Sybil, and nothing else to do.

It was a little dull for Mrs Thatcher at Camden House, so from time to time Sybil livened things up by hiding in the garden, or locking herself in the bathroom and pretending she could not open the door.

Mrs Thatcher did not lose her temper. Her bull moose face had been set on patient planes years ago, and could not tilt towards emotion. Her patience was limitless. You could not disconcert her. She said Yes dear and, No dear and Holy Mother Church. Conversationally she was very poor.

But the Dorothy bird made up for that. It was talking more than ever these days, and if Sybil did not open the door of the cage as soon as she came downstairs, it would rattle the bars with its strong hooked beak until Mrs Thatcher remarked without raising her head that the ceiling would come down.

The bird spent most of the day either perching upon Sybil or near her. Sometimes it messed on her dress, and Mrs Thatcher would bring a warm wet sponge, before it left a mark. It was handy to have someone like that around, dressed as a dentist, to take care of those little jobs that Sybil used to leave
for weeks, or forget for ever, before she had Mrs Thatcher to wait on her and the bird.

With the fire lighted in the first cool evenings, it was cosy sitting in her own chair, with a glass of tonic wine Mrs Thatcher prescribed, the bird on her shoulder, making kissing sounds and whispering familiar nonsense in her ear. Where's the money get the telephone bedtime Sybil Sybil Roger kiss Mother. Just as cosy as it used to be sitting here with Dorothy when the day had gone well and she was in a good mood. The bird was always in a good mood, which was an improvement. It still coughed, and Sybil would say: ‘You've got to cut down on those cigarettes, Dot,' and laugh indulgently, for she never would.

*

‘Don't think I'm complaining,' Mrs Thatcher said to Jess, although it would not matter if she was, since she was leaving next week, and had another old lady lined up. ‘I've heard some weird fancies in my life - well, it's my job, see - but never yet the transmigration of souls.'

‘The bird?'

Mrs Thatcher nodded, just her chin, since the high collar held her neck at right angles to the floor. ‘I don't want to worry you, just out of hospital and all, but she seems to think a friend of hers … I mean, she actually talks to it as if it were a person, if you know what I mean.'

‘Oh, that's nothing. We've lived with that for ages.' Jess laughed, and sat down quickly, for she suddenly found she could not stand up any longer.

‘Holy Mother Church,' said Mrs Thatcher. ‘No wonder you had a prem.' The seven-months baby girl was still in the hospital, where she would have to stay for another month. Laurie was taking Jess away for a few days, which was all the firm would allow him, and when they came back, costly Mrs Thatcher would go, and Sybil—

‘How are we going to tell her?'

‘Tell her while I'm in here,' Jess had said in the hospital, but he could not. Sybil still thought that they would all go on living at Camden House together, as they had before. No
one had told her that Jess and Laurie would be going back Boston, and the house shut up for the winter. Jess had sobbed, even before Laurie had seen the tiny baby in the incubator: ‘I can't live there. I won't.'

‘Hush, hush.' Young and restless and colourful in the negative room, he made soothing noises at her, as if she were the newborn one. ‘Not now, darling. We'll talk later.'

He stroked her limp hair, but she kept on: ‘I can't stay there. Don't make me.'

She murdered Dorothy. She murdered Dorothy. She murdered Dorothy. The voice beat like drums in her head. She starëd at him, surprised that he could not hear.

‘I saw a ghost.'

‘Hush love, it's all right. It's all over now. It was a dream. You must have fallen and passed out. Sybil said—'

‘I saw a ghost Mont knows. He believes me. Ask him.'

After it was finished, the terror and the pain, and Mont was no longer the God figure, sole saviour, but just Mont with a bit of hair sticking up at the back, lifting his big feet carefully into the room to see if she was awake, he had said: ‘Well, I won.'

She nodded. It would be easy to cry.

‘I told you I'd deliver your baby, though I didn't plan it quite like that. What happened, Jess? Sybil said she found you on the floor. What happened?'

‘I saw a ghost.'.

He pushed his mouth down sideways, considering this.

‘I saw a ghost of myself.' He did not seem to think she was raving, so she told him about the image which belonged to her and yet had its own being. She told him about the bickering voices, and about the thing that glimmered beside her through the meadow.

‘How long has this been going on?'

She shook her head. It did not matter. ‘Where's Laurie?'

‘On his way. They couldn't find him at first. I wanted to head him off from going home and having his grandmother meet him with tales of disaster.'

‘She was very good.'

‘She would be. That old lady has guts.'

β
Uled Dorothy, you know.'
f
_^Jts,' Montgomery said. ‘Though I'll bet there were Güines when she wanted to/

*

The day after they came back to Camden House, Dorothy's sister arrived without warning, at lunchtime.

‘What do you want?' Laurie blocked the doorway, holding half a sandwich.

‘I want to come and talk to you.'

‘I'm sorry. My wife is just out of hospital. It's not convenient.'

‘It's convenient to me,' said Mrs Hubbard, and he had to step aside for her, or she would have pushed him flat and walked right on in over his chest and face.

Sybil was in the kitchen. Mrs Hubbard nodded to her, and Sybil nodded back pleasantly, and said: ‘If it's the church collection, I—'

‘I'd like to talk to you in private, Mr Brookes.' Dorothy's sister went through the room without a word to Jess. Behind her back, Laurie shrugged and spread his hands, and followed her through to the front of the house.

Jess went upstairs and stayed there until Laurie came to find her.

‘What did she want?'

‘Trouble.' He made a face. ‘She's been on to the police again, though I don't think they'll bother with her. It's an obsession. She won't believe that Dorothy killed herself.'

‘What will you tell the police if they come here?'

‘The truth.'

‘Would you lie in court?'

‘As a defence counsel, I might push facts around a bit. In the witness box, no. It's not worth it.'

‘Would you tell me to lie?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Suppose she knows something. Suppose she goes on with it. Gets lawyers, forces the thing into court. Would you let me stand up and tell everybody your grandmother was a murderer?'

‘Now don't you start.'

She jumped up and faced him with her fists clenched. ‘She is! She did it! She killed her. She made those pills. She told me.'

‘Nonsense,' Laurie said. ‘You're making it up.'

Why did they all think that? ‘It's true, she killed her.'

‘I don't believe you,' he held her wrists, for she looked as if she were going to hit him.

‘Ask her then. Go on down and ask her.'

‘All right.' He let her go, pushing her backward on to the bed and she lay there with her fist in her mouth and thought: Oh God, what have I done?

*

They did not know she had the key to Emerson's room. They did not know she was that smart. But if they were not smarter than to hang it with all the others which fitted nothing on the back of the cellar door, labelled E's Room, then they had it coming to them.

A magpie, Mrs Thatcher called her, when she found all the candy and buttons in her handkerchief drawer, with the pieces of clamshell the gulls had dropped. She did not find Dorothy's tinkly earrings. She was quite a stupid woman, although she gave a dandy pedicure.

No one knew that she went into the front room at night and made the several faces of a witch at the cars. On the Friday of the Labour Day weekend, the cars went by in an endless last chance stream, and Sybil spent what seemed like most of the night kneeling at the window sill. There was no companionable breathing at her back. They had taken away the bed. She had got into trouble for telling them about Emerson, and they had taken away the bed so that she could not tell it any more.

Dorothy's bed. Where was she sleeping now? Dorothee, where are you
sleeping
now? If I didn't kill ho-, who did? It's vary distressing. Laurie shouldn't make me talk about it. It's over. All troubles fade when the day is done, sink into peace with the setting sun.

They'll send me away, you'll see, she told the chain of headlights that made a funnel of day on the highway and
swept the trees incessantly awake. But I shan't go. I'll run away.

The next day, she ran, limping and falling and cutting her knees, over the beech-tree roots and down through the pasture, running to the barn where there was peace and the sweet wet breath of cattle.

‘Where are you going, love?' Laurie came up casually behind her, a foxtail grass in his mouth.

‘To the barn.'

‘Come on.' He took her arm. ‘I'll take you round there in the car.' He helped her back slowly, and they got in his car and drove over the bridge and down the cart track to the red barn, but all the cows were out at pasture, and there was no one there she knew.

*

‘When is she going?' Mont asked.

‘Tomorrow.'

‘Does she know?'

‘You can't tell. Sometimes she only pretends to forget.'

‘You know it's the right thing, Laurie.'

‘I don't want to talk about it.'

‘I didn't come to talk about it anyway,' Mont said. ‘I came to talk about the ghost.'

‘No.' Laurie glanced at Jess and shook his head.

‘Yes. I went into the Medical Library yesterday and looked something up. Want to hear about it?' he asked, as they were both silent.

‘I don't think—'

‘It explains a lot of things. Autoscopic phenomena, they call it. It's commoner than you'd think. I had heard of it vaguely, but never of an actual case. What you saw, Jess - it was always yourself, right?'

‘I told you. Just a face once. Then more of the ghost. And then—'

‘It wasn't a ghost. It was you, outside yourself. You project a double image of yourself. A sort of escape, peopling the world with you. Same with the voices, and when you heard the breathing. You were hearing yourself. There was a case
of a man who lost his leg and then saw himself coming through a door without a limp. A woman who saw her double when she came back from her husband's funeral, because she didn't want to be alone.'

‘But why me? I'm not like that. I'm sane. I'm normal. I'm not a case.'

‘But you'll have to admit,' Mont said, not looking at either of them, ‘you have been unhappy, and desperately upset at times this last year.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Oh, listen—'

‘We were both unhappy,' Laurie said slowly. ‘There were clouds of anger. I couldn't break through them.'

‘It was Dorothy.' Jess glanced round, as if she might be the room. ‘Evil came in. I told you, Laurie. Evil came in with—'

Slashing through the steady background roar of the weekend traffic, the shriek of tyres brought them all to their feet.

*

Sybil looked at the bird and the bird looked down at her, sideways, first with one eye, then hopping round on his perch to view her with the other.

The door was open, but he had not been out of his cage for two days. ‘Come on, come to Sybil then.' But he would not speak. He had not spoken for two days.

‘Did I dream it?' she asked him, but he was just a budgerigar. Roger, was his name. The Dorothy bird was gone. She had killed Dorothy, and they had all gone away and left her. Laurie and Jess and Montgomery had gone off in the front room and shut the door, bang, just as she was starting through the hall to join them.