Starlight (14 page)

‘“Dab-on-the-door-said-Daniel”!’ cried Gladys, flying up with her mouth full, ‘it’s them! Lucky I never went out. Morning, I call this, not afternoon. Wonder they dare.’

‘Lucky I stopped you, you mean.’ Annie was sopping a piece of bread round her plate to make sure of the last drops of gravy. But her sister was already half-way down the stairs.

The moving van and its men employed by Thomas Pearson suggested his aura of silent lawlessness.

It was a small vehicle, dinted and unobtrusive, painted a dingy grey, and the men were dirty beyond the ordinary grime of a day’s work and were almost in rags.

Gladys felt no surprise, after one glance at their faces, to learn from their mutters to one another that they were foreigners. This was how she expected foreigners to look.

One of them came up the steps and reached past her and thrust at the door she had only half opened, so that it swung back and crashed into the wall behind.

‘Here, steady on!’ exclaimed Gladys, ‘mind our paint. And you can mind me while you’re about it. Pushing like that.’

He did not trouble even to glance at her.

‘Deaf, I s’pose,’ observed Gladys to the surrounding air.

She withdrew into the back of the hall and stood watching. They carried up, in silence and with the greatest care, the new furniture and the mirrors and plump pink cushions: object after object conspicuous for bright colour and prettiness. It was a pleasure to watch, and a highly unusual sight in Rose Walk, and Gladys began to meditate getting Annie out of bed to share the treat.

‘I s’pose you know where everything’s got to go?’ she said at last, as one of the three came up the front steps leading into Lily Cottage, ‘because I don’t. Open the door, he said, never a word about where to put the things.’

Without looking at her, he held out a dirty sheet of paper, on which she could see little squares, each one filled with small circles that were numbered; then tramped on his way.

‘Oh … all right, so long as you know, before you come I was thinking how you might like a cup of tea but being deaf I s’pose you couldn’t hear me if I asked.’

The remark might not have been uttered. Gladys began to feel that she was wasting her time; a sense of importance and involvement in Lily Cottage’s fortunes that had crept into her feelings, despite her fear of the rackman and her resentment, was agreeable, but it was freezing cold with the door open. She was shivering.

‘You nearly finished?’ she called suddenly, and even as she spoke, one of the men slammed the back doors of the van. Evidently the little armchair, puffed and padded with rosy satin, had been the last of the load.

‘’Ave I got to sign a paper?’ screamed Gladys, seeing unmistakable sign of imminent departure and feeling that her part in all this had been so slight that the rackman might well come down on her. ‘Oh all right, it’s all the same to me, funny thing all three of you being deaf, s’pose that’s why you all work together, birds of a feather, as they say, well if anythink’s wrong it’s not my fault and I ’ope you’ll tell him so, if you can talk, that is, dumb as well, p’haps, it’s a great misfortune …’

The man who had given the orders and was evidently the leader turned slightly just before he climbed in beside the driver and gave her one look – coming up from such an inward furious preoccupation with God alone knew what pains and despairs that Gladys actually took a step back.

It was far more frightening than any look from the rackman himself during their recent interview, and it gave her a dreadful hint of what his powers could do to someone even more within his grasp than Annie and herself.

But she forgot it at once as she shut the door.

Unable to resist temptation, she hurried from cottage to cottage, darting through the arch in the hall and back, climbing up to marvel over the bedroom, all pink, with a curly gilt mirror above the fireplace of stepped artificial brickwork that had replaced the basket grate of a hundred years ago.

A gentle warmth, pervasive and soothing, floated night and day through Lily Cottage, the result of comings and goings by what Gladys thought of as ‘the oil officials’ some days ago. Central heating! But only in the cottage where Mrs Pearson would live.

The kitchen and another bedroom in Rose Cottage remained chilly and not luxuriously furnished; the kitchen, indeed, was an old-fashioned affair, so Gladys thought, with – could you believe it – two old rusty irons in a corner, and a rug made of old bits of rag and an old armchair and a wooden table. But there was a new electric cooker.

Mean, thought Gladys. All for Show, but Mean – oh my goodness, she inwardly shrieked, here’s Nurse! and I never put the water on!

Nurse’s knock was unmistakable; a rat-a-tat which managed to carry all the gay and sunshiny side of Ireland, and Nurse herself, standing on the doorstep in her dark blue, with her neat dark-blue car parked at the kerb, had the beautiful Irish skin and the sparkling Irish eye.

Large, solid and firm as some bonny Prize Show dahlia was Nurse, with a kind and interested manner which almost managed to conceal her daily preoccupation with the affairs of dozens and dozens of other patients.

‘Hullo, dear. All ready for me?’ cried Nurse, already across the hall because she knew from experience that Gladys Barnes was seldom all ready for her, and not a second must be wasted, ‘and how’s Annie today? New tenants moving in?’

‘Not a drop of hot water have I got!’ screamed Gladys, toiling up after the sturdy black-silk legs, ‘I clean forgot – besides it’s Tuesday, Nurse, it’s Tuesday!’

‘Coming today instead of Wednesday because of Christmas, I did tell you dear,’ said Nurse over her shoulder, crossing the landing in three strides, ‘never mind I’ll just take a look at her. Or perhaps there’s a drop hot next door. Very handy having that door in the hall – painted you up very smart, haven’t they? Nice people? You run down and see if there is a drop. Well how’s Annie today dear?’ Nurse was now in the bedroom and holding Annie’s wrist.

‘I darsent, Nurse –’ Gladys was beginning mysteriously.

‘Oh go on with you, no-one would grudge a jug of hot water, God love you, and Christmas three days away,’ interrupted Nurse, peeling off bedclothes.

‘I
darsent
, Nurse, and that’s a fact, the kitchen’s downstairs, parlour and bedroom next door, another bedroom and kitchen downstairs, here.’

‘Where’s the bathroom, then?’ interrupted Nurse, re-tucking Annie, who was vainly trying to push in a word concerning her condition between their voices. ‘I’ll fetch it.’

‘Next door. Came in this morning as bold as brass and threw ten shillings at me … I wouldn’t if I was you, really I wouldn’t, Nurse. He can be ever so nasty.’

‘Well I’ll just leave her for to-day, she’s nice and clean like she always is,’ pronounced Nurse with an approving pat on the quilt, ‘and perhaps you could manage a wash down for her on Christmas Eve,’ glancing at her watch and giving up the search for hot water with a philosophy taught her by years in her profession. ‘How’s the old gentleman these days?’

‘Oh fine,’ said Gladys instantly, with a lightning glance at Annie, ‘out and about s’usual.’

‘Well mind you let me know if he gets bad,’ said Nurse, disappearing across the landing. ‘The minute he complains you let me know. At his age you can’t be too careful. Take care of yourselves. I’ll let myself out. Merry Christmas!’

Her voice died away, and was followed by the slam of the front door.

‘Annie!’ exclaimed Gladys, clasping her hands, ‘if you could see downstairs!’

‘Nice, is it? I heard them carrying it all in and I did wish I could see …’

‘It’s fairyland!’ nodding her head. ‘That’s what it is – fairyland! I wonder – could you possibly manage to come down?’

‘I would love a peep. I get so dull up here all day on my own.’

‘You had plenty of company to-day – more than what you want, I should think,’ said her sister grimly. ‘Oh well, better not, p’raps. Just supposing he
did
come in to see how things were going …’

‘Oh don’t! Shall I ever forget seeing him come round the door! My heart’s still going from it. I did try to tell Nurse, how it’s going, but you was both jawing fit to burst yourselves –’

‘Going on about hot water, she’s always on about something, and the old gentleman, what business is it of hers, can’t even die in peace nowadays –’

‘Oh don’t talk about dying. It’s Christmas.’

‘Well, seeing it’s all in, I s’pose his lordship’d kindly give me permission, they’ll be sold out, I wouldn’t wonder and I ’aven’t got a shilling only coppers, if it goes out while I’m gone you can keep warm can’t you, shan’t be a tick, it’s starting to get dark already and not four yet, can you beat it, well I’m off.’

While she was speaking, Gladys had put on for the second time that day her mufflings and coverings and now marched out of the house.

The warmth from Lily Cottage came up faintly but agreeably to meet her as she went down the stairs, and, feeling the need for its comfort, she crossed under the arched doorway into the other house and went out by the other door.

Silent and warm, glowing in its gilt and rose, the witch’s house stood in the falling dusk, waiting for the witch.

Gladys had not been gone five minutes before faint sounds became audible to her sister. Dismissing a first terrified thought that the rackman might be stealing up the stairs, she concluded that the maker of them was Mr Fisher. But she did not call out, because the years of their mutual tenancy had taught her that Mr Fisher did not welcome being hailed by those he called the ladies.

Presently there came a faint tap at the living-room door.

‘Is that you, Mr Fisher?’ called Annie, ‘come in. You must excuse me being in bed, as usual.’

The door gently opened, and there stood the old man, so wrapped in his dead leaf-coloured clothes that he appeared shapeless, leaning against the jamb, with his face even more colourless than usual. He was breathing fast; he half raised a hand in greeting.

Annie looked at him in silence. She knew that he would want to be the first to speak.

‘Good-evening,’ he said at last, and she could hardly catch the words, ‘I was wondering … could you and your sister be so very kind as to give me the loan of a scoop of tea? It isn’t … quite … convenient for me to go out this evening.’ The sentence ended on a gasp.

Annie, who had long had her own views about Gladys’s social manner to Mr Fisher, was thankful that her sister was out. Here was the chance to deal with him in the way he would welcome.

‘Of course. Please help yourself, the canister’s on the sideboard. And please won’t you make it down here? Then p’raps I could have a cup, too.’

Annie’s simple code of manners hardly extended beyond the lavish sprinkling of her sentences with ‘please’.

‘Very kind of you,’ said Mr Fisher, with a stiff inclination of his head, and he shuffled into the room in the faded silk slippers, ‘If I may say so – neighbourly. But you … and Miss Gladys … always neighbourly …’

He began to fumble with the lid of the canister, in a way that would have set Gladys screaming offers of help.

But Annie was silent, and did not even watch, but kept her eyes fixed on the square window opposite her bed in the farther room.

The curtains were apart, and Gladys had refrained, from motives of economy, from putting on the light; behind them, the curve of Parliament Hill showed black against a sky of purple bloom and icy pink.

Mr Fisher had tottered between canister, tap and cooker for a full twenty minutes before the kettle lid began to rattle. Annie refrained from the shriek with which her sister would have greeted this event, and Mr Fisher, left unharried, dealt with it; very slowly but nevertheless safely.

At last the tea was made – and, even as the old man poured on the boiling water, the hissing of the gas-fire ceased, and the two rooms were plunged into half-darkness.

Annie did not cry out. She said gently – and she felt like talking quietly, the dusk was so silent, and the sky above the distant Heath so soft and cold – ‘Could you please switch on the light, if you’d be that kind, Mr Fisher?’ and he shuffled across the room.

But ‘the electric’ had joined the gas in what seemed a shaming conspiracy.

‘Perhaps I might draw the curtain back a little?’ he suggested.

‘Yes, please,’ Annie’s tone was touched with mortification.

Followed more tottering, shuffling and fumbling, then the curtains were drawn, fully revealing the superb fading light, and letting it shine faintly through the room.

She had wondered whether he would take his cup of tea and retreat with it up to his attic. But he first handed her her own cup on a tray, which he found, undirected, on the sideboard; then sat down in the armchair and began to sip, always in silence.

Annie considered apologizing for the behaviour of the gas and decided against it. Keep your poverty to yourself.

Darkness had fallen. Suddenly a shaft of silver light slid over the ceiling, and engines sighed to a stop outside. Annie started, to the peril of her tea.

‘That’s them – the rackman, I shouldn’t wonder,’ she quavered, and Mr Fisher, far from coming out with some manly and comforting remark, merely turned his gaze gravely towards the door, as if anticipating the monster’s immediate entrance.