After Sundown

by Mark Morris

  “Please,” it said, the tone more pleading, less authoritative than on the last two mornings, “Please, Nadja. Please just come along.”

  There was an incoherent shout, then a burst of tears. I walked down a couple of steps, looked left – and saw the blonde of the last couple of mornings.

  She was gazing down at something, impotently, shoulders bowed. She heard my feet on the path and closed her eyes – feeling the shame of having another adult witnessing her powerlessness and rage. The final straw.

  I took a gamble and walked further down the path.

  At the gateway I could see that the woman’s son stood to one side, with his scooter. The daughter was lying full length on the ground, screaming histrionically while she tugged off one of her shoes. The other had already been thrown into the road.

  “Yikes,” I said. “You look like you’re having exactly the same kind of morning we did.”

  The woman looked at me gratefully. “Really?”

  “Oh yes. I had to carry our kid out to the car. No shoes, no socks. Screaming. Before that, I had to brush his teeth while my wife literally held him down.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Most of the time he’s lovely. But the mornings... the clothes, the shoes and socks. It is... not fun.”

  “I worry it’s us,” the woman said. “Sometimes my husband and I sit staring at each other at the end of the day and wonder what we’re doing wrong.”

  “It’s how they keep us on our toes. That, and once in a while being so wonderful that you realise without them your life would now be nothing.”

  She smiled, a little, and the two of us watched as her daughter took her socks off, and threw them away too.

  “My feet are cold!” she wailed, immediately.

  “Well, yes,” her mother said, patiently. “That would be because you’ve taken your shoes and socks off.”

  “They’re cold,” she screamed. “It’s your fault.”

  “Well, if you put your socks and shoes back on,” her mother said, calmly, pleasantly, sweetly, “maybe they’ll warm up. Shall we try that?”

  “No!” she shouted. “It doesn’t feel right.”

  “So. You’re upset that your feet are cold because you took your socks and shoes off, but you won’t consider putting them back on again, is that it?”

  The kid just wailed.

  “Good luck,” I said, and retreated back to our pathway. This wasn’t due to lack of courage. It’s what you do. You can’t get involved helping discipline someone else’s child. It’s not the done thing, and you can’t let children see adults appearing to gang up against them (nice though it would be, every now and then, to feel you were part of the superior forces, for a change).

  You have to let other parents do their thing: give them the space and privacy to snarl rude words under their breath, to tug their child a little harder than they’re supposed to. It’s all very well banning physical chastisement, but that’s like entering a war zone and disarming yourself on the way in. If one of your fellow grunts occasionally lets off a harsher word than they’re supposed to, while under heavy enemy fire, you turn your head and let it go.

  She eventually got the girl to her feet, still snuffling, still ranting. She coaxed her off down the street, the mother’s back straight, and head held high.

  And just before they got to the corner and left my sight, her daughter did something odd.

  She turned her head, looked back at me.

  And smiled.

  * * *

  And then it was Friday.

  I had high hopes. Tim had come back from school in a lovely mood the afternoon before. Instead of watching TV we played with Lego and did some drawing together. I made him the pasta dish that he appears to like and he ate a lot of it without having to be constantly reminded to follow one mouthful with another. He went up to his bath fairly promptly, denied himself the traditional splashing spasm which sends water up over the MDF surround and will eventually ruin it completely, and got out after only ten minutes’ token resistance. He didn’t even shout for us much after I’d read him his stories and turned out the light. In general it was what passes for a textbook evening, and when Helena and I crashed out on the sofa in front of Valium television afterwards, it was with a feeling of a job moderately well done.

  But then, Friday.

  He wrong-footed me by being extremely good for the first forty minutes. He ate his egg. He didn’t ask for a Ben 10. He acquiesced – like some pampered Restoration nobleman – to being put into his school uniform, while humming an odd tune to himself.

  By 8:10 it was looking like plain sailing, which always, in a pathetic way, makes me want to cry.

  And then it span off into the woods.

  I approached, smiling, holding his toothbrush – already laden with the toothpaste he prefers. I handed it to him thinking that things were going so swimmingly this morning that he might even wield the implement himself.

  He threw it back at me.

  “Uh, Tim, no,” I said. “We don’t throw things at people, do we.”

  He ran past, heading upstairs. I took a deep breath and decided to leave him to it, hoping the moment would pass (as it does sometimes, to be replaced with eerie calm and helpfulness). Meanwhile I retrieved the toothbrush, wiped the toothpaste off the carpet, and calmed myself down. When I started – oh so very calmly – up the stairs in the direction he’d run, I saw first his sweater, then the tie, then the shirt...

  He’d taken it all off.

  He was back down to his pants.

  It took twenty minutes to corner him and get it all back on. While we were brushing his teeth he pulled Helena’s hair hard enough to make her eyes water, and refused to let go. It got so out of hand that in the end I rapped him on the back of his hand, barely a slap, but enough to show things were in danger of going critical.

  He stared up at me, eyes suddenly full of tears and dismay. “You didn’t warn me,” he wailed.

  “I don’t have to,” I said, through teeth that were gritted half in anger, and half with appalled guilt at having struck him. “You know you don’t pull people’s hair, especially Mummy’s. It hurts. How would you like it if I pulled your hair?”

  He wailed.

  The socks came off again.

  It was bad. It was a really bad one.

  It kept getting later and later and he kept getting louder and louder and closer to hysterical and the worst of it was, as always, that every now and then, through all the crap and the shouting, I kept getting glimpses of my son when he was not like this, when he was sweet and lovable and my child, instead of this uncontrollable creature – and all I wanted was the best for him, and for him to be nice enough, for long enough, for me to show him how very much I loved him.

  In the end, a full half hour behind schedule – late enough that he was likely to get written up in a book at school, and his parents called to account – I carried him out to the car.

  He wasn’t shouting anymore, however. Not wailing, nor crying. He was silent. I put him not too roughly into his car seat and stepped back.

  “You haven’t done my seat belt,” he said.

  “Do it yourself,” I snapped.

  It was a mistake.

  He’s perfectly capable of doing his belt up by himself – just as he’s capable of dressing himself, and brushing his teeth, and eating his boiled egg without having to be motivated on every sodding mouthful – but yes, it was a mistake.

  I heard Helena saying something irritably, but I’d had enough. I slammed the door (making sure, of course, that his fingers were nowhere near; you get used to taking that kind of care even when the red mist is descending), and stomped away up the path.

  * * *

  By the time I’d got to the front door I’d realised it had been a stupid thing to do. In his current mood Tim simply
wouldn’t do the seat belt up. Helena would have to get out of the car and come around to do it, which was the last thing she needed. I was turning round to go back and set things right when I stopped in my tracks.

  We were so far behind schedule that it was around the time I’d normally be having my cup of tea and a cigarette, and I saw both the red-haired and the brown-haired mothers on the other side of the road.

  Both their little boys were shouting, one lying on his back on the pavement, kicking his feet, pulling off his shoes.

  Then I heard a voice.

  The blonde woman’s voice.

  She sounded desperate, near tears.

  I walked quickly back down the path, my mind on going to put Tim’s seatbelt on, but then saw the blonde woman’s daughter was lying on her back on the pavement too. Her feet were bare. She was silent, staring up at her mother with an expression that was hard to interpret.

  “Please,” her mother said, kneeling next to her to try to help, to be loving, to do whatever it took to break this deadlock. “Please, darling. I’ve got to get to work. Please just put your socks back on. Please.”

  Still the girl looked up at her.

  And then a shape came running from behind me.

  Tim had leapt onto the woman’s back before I even realised it was my son I was watching. His weight was enough to knock her forward so that her face smacked into the cold pavement, very hard.

  Her daughter was immediately in movement, grabbing her mother’s face in both hands and pulling it towards her, or her face towards her mother’s, I couldn’t be sure.

  Tim looped his arm around the woman’s neck and started beating at the back of her head with his other fist. The woman’s little boy stood neatly beside his scooter and watched – as his sister lunged forward and took a bite out of their mother’s cheek.

  I shouted something incoherent.

  Then I saw that on the other side of the street the brunette woman was sprawled face-down in the gutter, three children on top of her, beating, biting.

  The red-haired mother was trying to run, but a crowd of five children had appeared from around the corner and were after her. None of them wore any shoes or socks.

  All were running very fast.

  I started towards the blonde woman, who was screaming, a ragged strip of cheek hanging down off her face, her daughter and my son pulling at her hair and gnawing at her throat.

  But then I saw the windscreen of our car, and the blood splatter across the inside, and the shape of Helena’s head slumped over the steering wheel.

  I shouted. Something. I don’t know what.

  The three kids on the other side of the road raised their heads from the body of the brown-haired woman, and looked at me.

  I backed away up the path. Then turned and ran.

  I got the door shut behind me, put on the chain, drew the bolt.

  Their bodies hit the door half a second later.

  * * *

  You know the rest.

  Or if you don’t, you soon will.

  It is dark now. The sound of sirens has died away for the moment. If the experience of the last fourteen hours is anything to go by, it will get louder again soon. I’m still in my dressing gown. I’m smoking, inside the house. I don’t know what I’m waiting for, or what I’m going to do. I do know what I’m hearing, however, beyond the windows, and I know whose small, dark shape is moving restlessly out there, crawling around the house, trying to find a way in.

  I love that shape. I have nurtured it, tried to do the right thing by it, for five long years. I’d know that shape even if it didn’t keep saying the same thing.

  “I love you, Daddy,” it says, in a voice that is not cracked with hysteria now, just low and hard and cold. “But it doesn’t feel right.”

  Creeping Ivy

  Laura Purcell

  6th June 1892

  My dear Professor Cooper,

  I believe I told you when last we met that I would shortly be undertaking excavation work on the abandoned and dilapidated Hindhead Manor. It is a project that has proved challenging, to say the least, particularly owing to the fact that the vegetation has been allowed to grow unchecked for years. Among our many discoveries was the enclosed volume, which we unearthed in an area believed to have once been the greenhouse. Although we found it tangled and constricted among a variety of weeds, you will see that the binding is mainly intact with only superficial damage. The pages have fared rather worse. Aside from mould and dirt smears, the ink itself is partially washed away. It appears to be a journal of some sort. To my untrained eye, the handwriting is not legible even at the commencement, but you will observe that it becomes increasingly erratic and scrawled as the pages progress. However, if you can decipher the contents even in part, it would prove a matter of great interest to us as we seek to establish the social history of the house.

  Yours with thanks

  E.F. Owens

  27th October

  It is done.

  It is done!

  See how my pen skitters across the page! Relief has made me giddy. No one can share in this tempest of joy, no one must ever know, but if I do not express these thoughts I fear they will burst from my head. This book shall be my confidant, securely locked away inside my desk – although I am not so wary of discovery now. The servants have all been dismissed and she is firmly below ground.

  She ought to be happy, there.

  I played the role of dutiful husband until the end, standing trussed up beside her grave in my black gloves and weeper hatband. I daresay my expression was ideal: frozen, although not in grief, but in a kind of superstitious dread. I fancied that the corpse might bleed when I came near; I envisaged red tides gushing from the cracks in the coffin and floating it like a boat; I saw her push the lid back and sit up, pointing a long, gnarly finger at me. Of course, none of that happened. She was lowered in the usual fashion and her coffin hit the earth with a satisfying thud.

  I had let her maid go to town on the funeral arrangements – although the hag always begrudged me money, I would not be mean-spirited and give tit for tat. It really was embarrassing to see the excess her loyal servant deemed necessary: profusions of lilies sprawled over the freshly packed dirt. Their sickly, waxy scent overpowered me. I was obliged to put my handkerchief to my mouth; it resembled sorrow as the clergyman approached.

  “It is a hard blow for you, Mr. Blackwood,” he commiserated.

  I lowered my eyes, afraid that my agitated nerves might spill over into a laugh. “Yes. A blow indeed. Still, my wife attained a good age, and led a full life, which is a comfort to me.”

  Wind soughed through the gravestones and set the flower heads bobbing.

  “That she did, sir. We must be thankful for the many joyful years. Yet somehow, such a loss always comes too soon.”

  Then I did give a gasp, but fortunately it passed for a sob.

  Too soon! The thankless aeons I have spent chained to that woman... The age difference was severe, I was never blind to that, yet during courtship she gave the impression that she would be a sweet old lady, readily coaxed into giving up the fortune her first spouse had left, not the imperious harridan that she truly was: a woman with no affection save for her precious plants.

  Well, she will feed the grass now, and I wish her joy of it.

  My eyes skimmed over the marble slab, read the engraving ‘Ivy Blackwood’. Although the erection was brand new, it seemed to me that lichen had already begun to spot the edges. Mud had worked its way into the chiselled numbers of the dates – if one glanced too quickly, they might mistake it for dried blood.

  “Mrs. Blackwood would be pleased with all these tributes,” the clergyman went on, indicating the floral explosion. “They are just to her taste. And of course we can find succour in the fact that she died doing what she loved best. It was in the greenhouse, I belie
ve, that they found her?”

  “Yes.” He did not notice the way my fingers clenched at the handkerchief. “She would insist on pottering around in there. The physician could not tell us if it was simply a fall, or an apoplexy that caused her to swoon, yet either way, her poor head...”

  I saw it again, cracked open, the juices flowing out like wine. Then the fragment of a shattered earthenware pot, trembling in my hand.

  “Quite, quite,” the clergyman smoothed over, clearly uncomfortable with the direction we were taking. “Her passing would have been instant. Painless.”

  I knew that it was not.

  On the way back to the house, I noticed her maid watching me intently below the dark brim of her hat. Does she suspect the truth? Perhaps she does, but she can prove nothing. Nobody saw the altercation, and no one would take the word of a recently dismissed servant over that of a gentleman.

  As I write, she is packing her things in the attic. Come morning, they will all be gone: the butler, the housemaids, even the footmen.

  I have stripped myself of the hypocritical necktie and hatband to sit here comfortably before the fire in the study, with my journal and a glass of brandy. It is like Christmas. I cannot remember a day when I felt so happy.

  Tomorrow I will be alone. Free. I am lord of Hindhead Manor at last.

  28th October

  A wild, holiday spirit has overtaken me. I am a child again. The home that has resembled a prison in recent years has assumed new colours and shapes. I do not even mind raking the ashes from the hearths or preparing my own food – it is worth any inconvenience to be at complete liberty.

  Today I smoked cigars in the parlour, while I took down her portrait and replaced it with a watercolour of a fine chestnut hunter. I let the dogs out of their kennels to roam about the chambers and climb up on the furniture as they pleased.

  Even the weather has cheered with the force of my mood. The air is crisp and bracing, the sky a bright stretch of pristine blue. I walked outside with my hands thrust into my pockets and surveyed the grounds as if for the first time. They were strangely beautiful: hills rolling wild and free in the distance; the old, venerable oaks hosting a treasury of golden leaves. The great curtain of ivy that climbs the south side of the house is starting to blush a deep red, from the bottom to the top, as though lit by a flame.