A Book at Bedtime

by Barrie Shore

  It’s a room, nothing more. A glory hole, filled with overspillings from the rest of the flat, crammed together in the small space: dressing table, washstand, bookcase, double divan; boxes and bags piled one on another, bursting at the seams, filled with who knows what… ‘Lot of old rubbish if you ask me.’ No threat in it, no ghost. So why, as he inches his way into the room, is there a tremble in his hand and in his heart?

  Oh, memory…

  ‘“O Memory, where is now my youth,

  Who used to say that life was truth?”’

  The Great Man is leaning against the wardrobe behind the door, looking about with a relishing air.

  ‘“I saw him in a crumbled cot

  Beneath a tottering tree…”’

  ‘Don’t, please don’t…’

  ‘“That he as phantom lingers there

  Is only known to me.”’

  ‘Please, I beg you, don’t quote me poetry now.’

  ‘My dear fellow,’ says the Great Man, ‘you are clearly troubled in heart and mind so I offer you the only solace I know. “I saw him by an ageing shape, Where beauty used to be…”’

  Eva starts chanting again as if inspired by his verse, not loud and demanding, low and soothing, like a memory of a nursery rhyme.

  ‘Ba, ba, back sleep…’

  ‘“That his fond phantom lingers there

  Is only known to me.”’

  ‘Abba eddy woo…’

  ‘“O Memory…”’

  ‘Oh, shut up.’ The two of them are driving him mad. ‘Just go now, for pity’s sake, leave us alone.’

  ‘Well, I will, I most certainly will.’ The Great Man moves away from the wardrobe. ‘You’ll find what she wants in there,’ he says, uppish, offhanded. ‘Top shelf, under the hats.’ And off he goes, intoning his verse.

  ‘“O Memory, where is now my love

  That rayed me as a god above?”’

  A wardrobe, a door and a dusty mirror, in which are reflected an old man in his dressing gown and tea-stained pyjamas, who seems to have shrunk since his earlier mirror appearance, no bewhiskered Lothario now; whereas the old woman in the wheelchair is bright with expectation and seems to have grown younger than she was before. She sits upright, alert and perfectly silent, watching his every move, as he shuffles to the wardrobe door and opens it cautiously with a creak to its hinge that startles them both; as he stands and stares at the melancholy secrets hidden within and dreads the moment of their uncovering.

  ‘That wardrobe of yours, for a start. I mean, not being funny, Mr C, but it’s full of old tat.’ And mothballs and must, and another smell hidden beneath, a faint trace of the Eva that was: in her clothes, hanging useless and limp, clothes she hasn’t worn for years, too small, too faded, too torn, too sad; blouses, cardigans, dresses, skirts; boots, shoes, handbags on the floor, hats on the shelf above. Beneath them, a suitcase, battered old suitcase, with a label tied to its handle, lettered in faded ink, Eva’s long-ago ink, shaky with tears.

  Evelyn Higgs,

  St Swithin’s School,

  Tring,

  Hertfordshire,

  The World,

  The Universe,

  Infinity,

  The End.

  He fetches the suitcase down with a grunting sigh and places it on top of a cardboard box; wipes the lid with the sleeve of his dressing gown, thin dust and a rime of mould; clicks the catches, stiff with unuse; opens the lid. And stares at the newspaper that’s waiting beneath.

  The Castlebridge Echo, Friday, 7th April, 1961

  Oh, memory.

  An inside page folded back on itself.

  Announcements.

  Births.

  Carter, William John. Saturday, 1st April.

  Deaths.

  Carter, William John. Saturday, 1st April. Peacefully.

  No, not peacefully. Hideously, unstoppably, incomprehensibly, fatally.

  Oh, my son, my son.

  She gives a moaning little cry and holds out her arms. The suitcase is as heavy as his heart; he lifts it again and rests it on the arms of the wheelchair. And, as he watches her rifling through, he’s dimly aware of the telephone ringing distantly like a portent of danger.

  She doesn’t waste time on The Castlebridge Echo, on the letters and diaries, the faded photographs, curled at the edges; on school reports and certificates. She casts everything aside, littering the floor with sad remainings, pausing a moment to frown at a pressed primrose the colour of rust, and at a length of blue silk, crumpled and torn that she drapes round her neck, until she finds what she’s looking for.

  A shoebox. A teddy bear. Dressed in a hand-knitted matinée jacket, once white, now yellow with age, a bonnet, a pair of mittens and matching bootees neatly threaded with faded blue ribbon.

  She clasps the teddy bear to her breast and her face is lit with glory.

  ‘Will,’ she says.

  Saturday, 1st April, 1961

  William John Carter lived for three hours.

  The hospital chaplain, rumpled with sleep, arrived just in time to baptise the child. He was wearing striped pyjamas, red and white striped pyjamas, so homely those striped pyjamas, so endearing, peeping out from under the hem of his cassock, making him seem, not a man of God performing his duty, trying his best to suppress his yawns, but an old family friend. Jack was bereft when he left, as if by the priest’s prayerful presence, the baby might take new heart and live.

  Eva was in hospital for two weeks after the hysterectomy. When she came home she was thin and bleached as if she too had lost the will to live. Sometimes she sat propped up on her pillow, arms curved into a cradle, head bent, gazing in wonder at the tiny infant she imagined fed at her breast. Sometimes she lay on her side with her knees drawn up to her chest, as if the baby were still in her womb and by curling him round she could keep him safe. Sometimes she writhed, like a snake in torment, beating her pillow and sobbing wildly, on and on until she was spent. Sometimes she lay on her back, pale and still, letting out a long, low wail of despair, a keening sound whose note never varied or seemed ever to stop.

  There were visitors at first. The doctor, the rector, old friends from the brewery and Temperance Terrace, the neighbouring traders in Verity Alley. Well-wishers all, who had brought gifts when the child was expected and afterwards laid flowers for sorrow on the tiny grave. They arrived with consoling words and compassionate faces, but she refused to see them. Jack accepted their offers of help and condolence with a fixed smile and a heart of stone, till they took their unwanted sympathies away and didn’t trouble to call again.

  He closed the shop. Sat at her bedside for hours at a time. She permitted him to take her hand or to stroke her hair. She seemed not to mind when he knelt by the bed and laid his head against hers, or to notice his tears as they fell on her cheek. But when he spoke, with whispered words of love and regret, she withdrew her hand and turned her face to the wall.

  He stopped trying to comfort her in the end. Left a tray at her bedside, food and drink that she barely touched. She took a morsel of bread every now and again, a few sips of water, like an injured bird. Little bird Eva waiting to die.

  He made up a bed for himself on the sofa in the living room; crouched through the long hours of the night, shifting from side to side, sleeping fitfully, his wild dreams disturbed by her low moaning; till at last he could bear the sound no longer and took his makeshift bed downstairs to the storeroom, where her cries faded to a distant sound, like the soughing of wind in distant trees.

  And still couldn’t sleep. Like an anxious mother, alert to the least stirring of her sick child, he started up at the creak of her door, counted her footsteps as she slipped like a wraith along the landing and into the bathroom; waited for the returning footfalls, heavier, hurrying, as she ran to the nursery, flung open the door with a joyful cry; held his breath
in the silence that followed and let it out with a groan of despair when the singing began.

  He’d watched her once through a crack of the doorway as she bent with a tender smile to pick up the small figure that lay in the cot. And, as she cradled the teddy bear in her arms and crooned to it softly, he felt that his heart would break and he crept away.

  Sunday, 3rd December, 2006

  Jack is suspicious of the telephone at the best of times and has only recently been persuaded by Margaret to get an extension installed upstairs.

  ‘Now listen, Mr C, I’m painting what’s called a scenario here.’

  ‘Yes, Margaret.’

  ‘You see what I’m saying, you get the picture?’

  ‘Yes, Margaret.’

  ‘So, let’s say there was an accident happened in the middle of the night and you needed to call the emergency services. What would you do?’

  ‘I’d go down to the shop.’

  ‘You might not get the chance, Mr C. What if you went and fell out of bed and broke your leg? What would you do then, I might ask?’

  ‘Why would I fall out of bed? I’m not a child.’

  Margaret’s expression begs to differ. ‘All right, say you were overcome by the fumes and passed out on the landing.’

  ‘What fumes?’

  ‘The fumes from the fire. There could be a wall of flame at the bottom of the stairs that you couldn’t get past, no matter how much you tried.’

  ‘There isn’t going to be a fire.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it.’

  Margaret has a seemingly endless supply of unfortunate family, friends and acquaintances who have been seriously injured, or actually perished, by means of fire, famine, flood or, in at least one case, the falling of heavy masonry on their unsuspecting heads. Jack is by turns amused and irritated by the relish with which she relates her tales, recognises it as a form of bullying which he is powerless to resist; for Margaret, despite her gory stories, has logic on her side, whereas he has nothing but obstinacy.

  ‘You don’t seem to realise the danger you’re in, Mr C. Just one kettle left to boil dry, one cigarette butt left to smoulder…’

  ‘But I don’t smoke.’

  ‘That’s beside the point. The point is, that shop of yours is an accident waiting to happen, the whole place could go up with a whoosh like a firework factory. And I’m telling you, Mr C, I won’t be responsible.’

  Jack wouldn’t put it past her to turn arsonist herself in order to prove her point, almost wishes she would, that he and Eva might go up in flames to satisfy her lust for unspeakable tragedy. Added to which it would solve the problem of which of them died first. Which, as it happens, is another of Margaret’s favourite topics of conversation.

  ‘I hope you won’t mind me mentioning it, Mr C, but say, like, you go and go first.’

  ‘What, die, you mean?’ He enjoys seeing her flinch at the word but disenjoys being reminded about the worst of his nightmares. The church, the coffin, the catafalque, the banks of flowers. Eva in the wheelchair, bowing and smiling at the little group of mourners. Margaret dabbing a tear from her eye. ‘I did tell him. Put her in a home, that’s what I told him. But did he listen? And now what’s going to happen to her?’

  He can only pray to the God he no longer believes in, that Eva will be the first to die. And, more immediately, that the blasted phone will stop ringing.

  He hovers over the instrument, willing it to stop. Which it does, blessedly, as if prayer has been answered, only to start again the minute he turns his back. Who the devil would ring him on a Sunday morning? He pulls his dressing gown about him as if it were armour, reties the cord and picks up the phone.

  ‘Hello?’ He means to be brusque and off-putting, aware that he sounds tentative and appeasing, not wanting to offend the inevitable salesman disturbing his peace.

  ‘Where the devil have you been? I’ve been ringing for hours.’

  ‘Ah, Dodie.’

  ‘I’m coming over this afternoon,’ says Dodie, brooking no argument.

  ‘But it’s Sunday,’ says Jack. Or is it? Can it be Monday? Or Thursday? Or the second Tuesday of Lent? Can Margaret be right after all, he’s losing the plot and doesn’t know the days of the week any more? ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Jack, it’s Sunday today.’ Exasperation crackles down the line.

  ‘But you never come on a Sunday, it’s my day off.’

  ‘I can come and see my oldest friend whenever I like, surely to God? Especially now.’

  ‘What do you mean, now?’

  A pause. A Dodie pause. Not hesitating, not reconsidering her point of view, Dodie pausing for maximum effect.

  ‘Margaret rang me this morning.’

  ‘Margaret who?’

  ‘Margaret Last.’

  ‘Oh, that Margaret.’

  The phone sighs, a Dodie-shaped sigh. How many Margarets does he know?

  ‘I told her to ring me whenever she’s worried. And she is. She says Evie’s going downhill.’

  He hates the way that she calls Eva Evie, as if to emphasise the special relationship that excludes him. He stands a little straighter, pulls his shoulders back, the better to withstand her. ‘Margaret hasn’t said anything to me.’

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t, would she? She knows what you’re like.’

  Oh, does she. No, she does not, she doesn’t know him at all.

  ‘Margaret watches too much television,’ he says. ‘She’s a spinner of tales and I’m sorry to say, sometimes she tells downright fibs. There’s no change in Eva at all.’

  Except that she’s nursing a teddy bear at her breast. And she thinks it’s a baby. And she’s singing a lullaby. ‘Idabaroo, idabaree…’

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  ‘She’s singing.’

  ‘Idababy, idabaloo.’

  ‘Singing? Whatever for?’

  ‘Because she’s happy.’ He tries to swallow the lump in his throat and doesn’t succeed. ‘She’s singing because she’s happy.’

  It’s quite clear from the silence on the phone, from the little hiss that follows, that Dodie doesn’t believe him, that he too is a spinner of tales. ‘I’m on my way.’

  ‘But…’

  But nothing. ‘But’ isn’t a word in Dodie’s vocabulary. And anyway, she’s already hung up.

  Damn the woman.

  Now he’s got to get washed and dressed.

  EVA

  Sunday, 3rd December, 2006

  I am sunny and large because of my baby. Such a blunkety, beamish boy he is, with his furry feet and buttony nose, his breath beats in time with my heart.

  The Man made the baby and gave him to me, which is an excellent thing for a man to do. I shall ask him to marry me on a day. On a day with a daisy and a silver delight.

  Now, baby dear, you mustn’t be frightened by the Man when he comes, he doesn’t mean harm. I don’t know who the Man is but he’s been in my way for a long and a time and I’m in a use to him now. He sleeps in the bed next beside mine but sometimes he noddles off in his chair. His chin falls down on his chest and his mouth dribbles into its corner and he snores in a loudly growl, but it sounds like a purr so I’m not in a minding. I like to watch the Man when he’s in a sleep because he looks like a lion. An old sort of lion with lines on his face. I count the lions, but the puzzlement is they’re never the same, I suppose it depends on the moody he’s in. Once on a day I made twenty-three but another day came and there were eighty-nine, so it must have been his birthday. A lion for every line of his life.

  You’ll know when the Man’s in a dreaming, dear baby of mine, because his eyelids are in a flicker like a candlesniff. No, not a flick like that, a flicker like… like a something that I can’t remember just now. It isn’t any odd of importance. The man does a muttersome in his sleep when he dreams, and som
e of a time he smiles as if he’s telling a story that puts him in a pleasing. But mostly he frowns because of the dreams, and the tears roll out under the lids of his eyes. Eyelids. That’s what they’re called. I wipe the tears away with my mind and I kiss them, but he isn’t in a notice, he just makes a twitch of his cheek.

  I wonder why he is so unhappy?

  I wish I could tell you what is the name of the Man because he has a kind kind of face in spite of the lions. Lines. Because of the lines. He looks like a someone I used to know, but I’m not a remember who it was. Something to do with a picture. And a primrose.

  The Man is in a surprise to see me when he wakes. I don’t know why because I’ve been here for an hundred years. And a day. And a longer than that. I’m waiting for the prince in the briars to battle and kiss me, kiss me, kiss me into a waking, but he hasn’t turned up yet. Perhaps he got tracked into a sideway. By shops and mothers and wives and things.

  I had a mother once but she went off and away when the bombs came down, so it’s not a matter any more. She used to call me her darling and dear, and so did the Man once on a time, but he doesn’t any more because that’s what the women say, the ones who fluff me and floss me and put me to bed. My love, they say, my sweetheart, my darling. I think they think I’m somebody else but I won’t tell them just now, I’ll wait till their backs are in a turn. The Man calls me his chap, his fruit, his inkling, his pudding and pie, his piglet. I’ve got no idea what he means, not a clue, not a jot, not a jam, not a plum, not a pudding, not an inkle, not a piggle or plot. But I don’t mind, and neither does he, that’s why I know he isn’t a harm.

  You mustn’t be in a worry about the women who come, they’ll never hurt you, baby dear, because I won’t let them. They don’t notice me in a most of the time. They push me about and swing me and wipe my bottom and pinch my hair till I’m in a poisoning with them. And I wish they wouldn’t fluff me because it gives me a sneeze and then they laugh and God bless me. They talk to each and another over my head because they think I’m not of a hearing of them. Oh, but I do in a loud and a clear, I just don’t bother to be in a listen. They put their faces close up to mine and show me their teeth, they’re trying to smile but they don’t know how because they’ve only got learned respondings. They clap their hands on their mouths to show when they’re shock and scratch their heads if they’re in a confusion, and they say, oh, love her, and make to believe they’re in a sorrow for me. But they’re not, they’re only making a pretend to be.