Too Near the Dead

by Helen Grant

  “Nae need for anyone else to be seeing that,” she mutters in a disapproving tone.

  The footsteps of the younger woman come pattering back. She has brought the mirror. The two of them huddle close together and put the glass close to my face. It is a hand mirror, a silver-backed one. I can see the rim of chased silver around the oval glass. The old woman is breathing heavily – I can hear her wheezing – but I do not think I am breathing. They put the glass very close to my lips, but no breath mists the surface of it. They tilt the mirror, trying different angles, and suddenly I see a reflection in it. My reflection. Only it isn’t me, Fen, with my dark hair and dark eyes and still smooth skin. It’s someone older, her faded skin creased with fine wrinkles, the hair that frames her face streaked with grey. The eyes that stare back at me, unblinking, are pale and filmy. The mouth sags open, dark and cavernous. For a brief moment we gaze at each other, and then the mirror is angled away.

  Inside, I am screaming. But it is as though the part of me that is screaming is at the bottom of a dark well, hundreds of feet deep, so far below the surface that nothing can be heard. My lips don’t make a sound; I cannot so much as flutter my eyelids. My face is absolutely immobile. No matter how hard I try, however much I strain to move, I cannot achieve so much as a tremor in those dead features.

  If I can’t let out the scream that is building up inside me, I feel as though I will shatter into little jagged pieces. I will myself to scream aloud; I strain with every part of my spirit to do it, until something seems to burst inside me and the world turns dark.

  It is still pitch dark. It takes me a few moments to realise that I can hear myself breathing, taking in great gulps of air and hacking them out again in ragged sobs. I can feel a textured surface under my hands. Fabric. The arms of a chair. My fingers curl over the ends of them. I am not lying in my bed; I am sitting up.

  Am I still in that place? I strain my eyes, gazing into the blackness. Gradually the room takes form around me, dimly at first, and then more clearly as my sight adjusts to the dark. I know this room. It’s across the downstairs hallway from James’s study – it’s one of the rooms I’m considering for my own study. Currently, though, it’s full of boxes and furniture that we’re storing while we finish decorating Barr Dubh House. The chair I’m sitting in is a spare armchair that doesn’t match the other things in the living room. It’s an old-fashioned high back wing armchair, upholstered in shabby tapestry. We just dragged it in here and left it, so it isn’t facing the window or the fireplace, just a blank wall. I could touch that wall with my bare foot if I stretched my leg out. But I don’t. I shrink back into the chair, and for a long while I huddle there, shuddering, and listening to my own breath going in and out in little hisses. I put my hands up to my face and explore my own features in the darkness, running my fingertips along the familiar curve of my cheekbones, touching my lips and my eyelids. I put my hands in my hair and pull strands of it over my face, seeking the scent as well as the texture of it, reassuring myself. I am me, Fen Munro, my own self, and not that hideous reflection I glimpsed in the glass. I convince myself of this at last, but it’s not enough.

  Why am I down here, huddled in a chair we never use, in a room we hardly ever enter? The last thing I remember was going to bed upstairs, in our own room. I know that’s what I did. I can remember it perfectly clearly. James was still in the bathroom when I climbed into bed; the door was ajar and light was spilling out of it. I could hear the tap running. I meant to stay awake until he came to bed, but I was very drowsy. I must have fallen asleep with that bar of light across the bed and the sound of running water in my ears. So how did I get here? Did I sleepwalk? I can’t think of any other explanation, but I can’t believe I really made it all the way out of our room and downstairs and in here without waking James or breaking my neck on the stairs.

  I want to think that I’m imagining this too, that if I close my eyes again I’ll wake up safe in my own bed, pressed up against James’s warm sleeping body. But I’m cold. The room is freezing – the radiator is turned off because we never come in here. I was shivering with shock before, but now I’m shivering with cold. All I’m wearing is a thin nightdress, and my arms are bare. It doesn’t matter how much I hug myself, I’m bleeding out warmth with every passing moment.

  I force myself to get up, uncoiling myself with difficulty from the chair, my body stiff with sitting for so long. I stagger a little as I feel my way to the door. Under my bare feet the floor is as cold as a butcher’s block. The door is closed – did I really do that in my sleep? It takes me a few moments to find the handle and open it.

  The hallway is dark. It seems my sleepwalking self could open and close doors, but not turn on lights. I don’t step out of the doorway immediately. Instead I stand there, looking into the darkness, and listening. There is a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach and the skin of my arms prickles in the chill air. I should hurry back to the warmth of the bedroom, but I am unnerved; I cannot hurl myself precipitately into the hallway. It is so quiet that the tiniest sounds are audible if I listen carefully. There is a faint hum from the kitchen, where the dishwasher is still running. The ticking of a clock. An occasional soft scratching of twigs on glass: a bush planted too close to the window, moving gently in the night breeze. I can hear nothing untoward and yet suddenly my heart is thumping.

  I step into the hallway, feeling for the light switch on the wall outside the door. Before I turn the light on, I close my eyes, not wanting to be dazzled. There is a click, and I open them slowly. There are still no lamp shades here, and the bright artificial light is both brutal and comfortless. I pad along the hall towards the kitchen. I could cut through the living room, where at least there is a rug underfoot instead of cold boards, but I don’t do that. I’m still too shocked from that dream, and from finding myself somewhere I didn’t expect to be; my nerves can’t stand up to the thought of passing those huge plate glass windows with their view out into the night. Supposing I looked towards them and saw – what? I imagine a white face looking in, dark holes for eyes, pale hands pressed to the glass. I chide myself silently for my childish fears, but at this moment I think the merest thing – a tree moving in the wind, or a night bird fluttering close by – would be too much to bear. So I go along the passage instead and whenever I pass an open door I keep my gaze fixed straight ahead; I don’t look in through any of them, towards the windows. There is a big window near the bottom of the stairs and I turn my face right away from that. I don’t turn off the downstairs lights either. I go up leaving them all blazing.

  There is just enough faint light to see my way into the room James and I share. James is breathing softly, deep in slumber. Clearly, when I got out of bed and went downstairs it didn’t wake him. Would he have slept on until morning, not noticing I’d gone?

  It’s warmer in here than it was on the ground floor, but by now my teeth are chattering. I lift the edge of the duvet carefully and do my best to slide into bed without rousing James. It’s no use. I’m so cold that I can’t resist moving close to him for warmth, and the moment I touch him he wakes with a yelp.

  “Jesus, Fen,” he says, pulling me into his arms. “You’re like a corpse.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I remember the first time I woke up next to James. It was a very bright morning in June and the room was very light, even though it was early. The cheap curtains were too thin to keep out the sunshine; the sun’s rays poured around and right through them, illuminating the room with brutal clarity.

  When I opened my eyes, the first thing I did was shield them with my hand, and when they adjusted to the strong light, I found that I was looking straight up at a stain on the ceiling. It was the remnant of an old leak, a spreading splotch that reminded me of a map of some rambling island. My gaze slid from that to the yellow light shade suspended from the middle of the ceiling. It was the landlord’s, not mine, so I wasn’t responsible for its insolent ugliness, but
the continuing presence of the drooping cobweb attached to it was down to me. I felt a twinge of guilt, but not a very strong one. The flat was so depressing that it cried out not to be dusted; its natural state was grim and apathetic.

  I was further over than I normally was, because James was lying next to me. I could feel the wall against my shoulder. On the other side, the back of my hand was lightly touching James’s warm skin. I heard him give a long sigh in his sleep.

  For a while I just lay beside James without turning my head to look at him. I was almost afraid to do it, as though the prince might have turned back into a frog during the night. I had wanted him for such a long time that it seemed impossible that it had actually happened.

  Instead I lay there, thinking about the night before. Every year, the company threw a summer party at which staff and authors were supposed to mingle. It was always at a venue cunningly chosen for its “originality”: once they held it on a houseboat, and this time it was in a converted church, lit up with red and blue lights which rather jarred with the Gothic arches. As usual, there was a lot of alcohol, inadequately soaked up by small but elegant canapés, and as usual, everyone crowded around the bestselling authors.

  It was like being at a high school dance, watching the cool kids partying in the middle of the dance floor. I doubt I would have been able to get close enough to James to speak to him at all, except he was somewhat eclipsed by the writer of the spy thrillers. The first of the terrible thrillers had sold spectacularly well, and now someone was going to make a film of it. I really hoped the thriller writer wasn’t going to do the screenplay. At any rate, he was enjoying his moment of glory. I could see his bouffant head of hair above the cluster of publicists and envious fellow authors; I had never seen anyone so blow-dried in my life before.

  While I was observing this, James was deep in conversation with his editor in another part of the room. Then I looked away from the mesmerising sight of publicists swarming around the thriller writer, back towards the spot where James was, and he had gone.

  A moment later he appeared at my elbow, so suddenly that I almost jumped.

  “Fen,” he said, and I said, “James,” trying not to look too embarrassingly lovelorn. It was a struggle. I had seen James exactly three times since the evening in January when he had followed me out of the restaurant. Each time he had been in London for a daytime meeting of some sort, and we had met briefly before he caught the train home. Twice we had had coffee together, and on one occasion we had managed lunch in a restaurant deemed safe from interruptions because it was not cool enough for the publicity department. None of these meetings was long enough; it was like trying to sate a ravenous hunger with the tiny canapés currently being carried round. After the lunch, I had gone to the station to see James off and he had kissed me goodbye, so lingeringly that it was agonising when we had to peel ourselves apart.

  Now, however, it was seven thirty in the evening and James, like quite a few of the other authors, was staying in London overnight. This knowledge was so fraught with interesting possibilities that it made me feel quite lightheaded. I had to force myself to concentrate on what James was saying.

  “I had to talk to Jennifer. She’s trying to tell me in the nicest possible way that I need to get my arse in gear and finish another book.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I’ve promised her all sorts of improbable things,” James said. “Anyway, now you’ve got me all to yourself.”

  “Good,” I managed to say. After that, I can’t really remember what I said; probably the most inconsequential things. The canapés were, as usual, a hopeless replacement for an actual meal, so we waited until the point in the evening when the Managing Director began a long speech about the magic of literature, and while everyone else was listening, cradling their glasses of Prosecco in their hands, we sneaked out and went to a restaurant. I didn’t eat much there, either; I was too much on edge, like a gambler on a winning streak who knows the odds may go against them at the last. I toyed with my main course and barely touched the pudding; I kept thinking about what was going to happen at the end of the meal.

  Eventually the waitress came over and said, “Would you like coffee?” and I spent so long thinking about it that she said, “I’ll give you a moment, okay?” and went off again.

  James and I looked at each other.

  “You could come and have coffee at my hotel,” he suggested.

  “Everyone’s staying there,” I said, imagining the pair of us running into a gaggle of his fellow authors. For a moment there was silence. Then I said, “You could come back to mine for coffee. If you like,” I added.

  Once we were in the taxi on the way back to the flat, I said, rather guiltily, “I don’t actually have any coffee, you know. I mostly drink tea.”

  James looked at me and then he looked out of the cab window. A moment later, he tapped on the glass separating us from the driver.

  “Can you pull over here for a moment?”

  The taxi veered sharply toward the kerb, and James got out. He was briefly silhouetted against the lighted shopfront behind him, and then he was gone. I stared after him in dismay.

  The cabbie looked over his shoulder at me. “Do you want to wait?”

  “I...” I stared at him. “I don’t know.”

  He shrugged. “Give it a minute, then. As long as you know the meter’s running.”

  I sat alone in the back of the cab and fidgeted. Was it possible that James had thought I was genuinely offering coffee and after dinner mints? That seemed wildly unlikely, but as the seconds ticked by I began to feel more and more uncertain. Perhaps it wasn’t that. But what if it was something else?

  Then the door opened and James climbed back inside, clutching a jar of coffee. I couldn’t help it. I laughed, more from relief than anything.

  “You really can’t do without coffee?”

  He grinned. “I could probably manage without it at this time of night. But I’m like a bear with a sore head without my cup of coffee in the morning.” Then he said, “I mean–” and stopped short, with the grace to look slightly embarrassed.

  I bit my lip, turning my head to hide my smile.

  After that we didn’t speak until we got to my flat. Small talk was absolutely impossible and anything else risked being overheard by the cabbie. But my hand was on the seat and I felt James’s fingers covering mine. My heart was so full that I hardly dared look at him; I thought the naked desire would be visible on my face. The streets slid past in a blur of lights and all I could feel was his touch; all I could think about was the journey’s end.

  For once, astoundingly, the ground floor flat was dark and silent and there was nobody hanging about in the stairwell. Our footsteps rang out loudly as we climbed the stairs to the top floor. I opened the front door with James at my shoulder. We stepped inside and James set down the jar of coffee on the tiny table that stood in the hallway. I had a lightweight summer coat on and I had begun to take it off when James put his arms around me and I simply let it fall to the floor. We kissed each other for a long time, there in the hallway, until my heart was racing and I was dizzy with the desire to go further. I knew James was, too. When we came up for air I could hear how rapidly he was breathing. Still I wondered why he made no attempt to move until I realised that he had never been here before; he didn’t know the layout of the flat at all. So I pushed back the hair that was falling over my face, took his hand and led him to the bedroom.

  I kicked off my shoes and then we fell onto the bed. I tried – I think we both tried – to take things slowly, to savour every moment, but I was struggling against myself. I think I had known almost from the first time I met James that I wanted him, and we had spent far too much time waiting. We undressed each other in such violent haste that I actually pulled one of the buttons right off James’s shirt. When my dress was off, I heard James draw in a breath with a sharp little hiss. “
Oh, Fen,” he said, and I gasped as his lips touched my skin.

  We made love twice that night, the first time in a frenzy: I think I astonished him with my energy. The second time, in the small hours of the morning, we moved slowly and thoughtfully. I lay there in the darkened room with the light from the street lamps below seeping around the edges of the curtains and the rattle of the window frame when the night bus passed by, and the hands that had written the books I loved so well traced out their own tale of love and longing on my bare skin.

  I remembered all this the following morning, as I lay there beside James, gazing at the ceiling of my shabby room. After a while I did turn my head to look at him. James was confident in sleep: he lay on his back, his face exposed. His dark hair was rumpled. That made me wonder what I looked like: a panda, very probably, with eyeshadow smeared all over the place.

  It was difficult getting up without waking James, but I managed it, by pushing back the duvet on my side and climbing out of the bottom of the bed. I put on my robe and went through into the bathroom to inspect the damage. Gruesome, I decided. I didn’t feel properly human until I’d cleaned my teeth and wiped off the remains of my makeup and dragged a brush through my hair. After I’d finished in the bathroom, I padded down the hallway to get the jar of coffee, which was still standing forlornly on the little table.

  I was waiting for the kettle to boil when James came into the kitchen in his boxer shorts and his crumpled shirt; he was still doing the shirt up and I saw him look down when he came to the missing button. I turned back to the tea and coffee, biting my lip to hide my smile.