by Nevil Shute
“He’s out still on his rounds. I couldn’t get hold of him.”
“Don’t worry, Mummy,” said the girl. “I’ll go over there and give you a ring when I’ve seen the nurse. We’ll fix up something between us.”
“What time will you be telephoning, dear?”
“It may be very late, if I’ve got to hurry to catch trains,” the girl said. Her grandmother was not on the telephone. “It may be after midnight when I get back here.”
“That’ll be all right, Jenny. I always hear the bell.”
“All right, Mummy. I’ll go over right away and ring you back tonight, probably very late.”
She did not wait for supper, but started for the station straight away. She travelled across London to the other side and came to Ealing Broadway station about two hours later. It was raining here in earnest, great driving gusts of rain blown by a high wind down the deserted, shimmering, black streets. Her stockings and her shoes were soaked before she had been walking for three minutes.
Her grandmother lived in a four-bedroomed house called Maymyo, built in the somewhat spacious style of fifty years ago, a house with a large garden and no garage. Her husband had bought it when they had retired from Burma in 1924; he had bought it prudently because he had an idea even then that he would not survive his wife, and so he had avoided an extravagant establishment. In fact he had died in 1930, comfortable in the knowledge that her widow’s pension, her small private income, and the house in perpetuity would render her secure until she came to join him.
There she had lived, surrounded by the treasures they had gathered up together in a life spent in the East. A gilded Buddha sat at the hall door, a pair of elephant tusks formed a hanger for a great brass dinner gong. Glass cases housed Indian dolls, and models of sampans and junks, and imitation mangoes out of which a wood and plaster cobra would jump to bite your finger, very terrifying. There were embossed silver and brass Burmese trays and bowls all over the place; on the walls were water-colour paintings of strange landscapes with misty forests of a bluish tinge unknown to Jennifer, with strange coloured buildings called pagodas and strange people in strange clothes. Ethel Trehearn lived on surrounded by these reminders of a more colourful world, more real to her than the world outside her door. Nothing was very interesting to her that had happened since she got on to the ship at Rangoon Strand, twenty-six years before.
Jennifer came to the house in the wet, windy night; it was in total darkness, which seemed most unusual. She pushed open the gate and went up the path through the little front garden, and now she saw a faint glimmer of light through the coloured glass panels let into the front door in a Gothic style. She stood in the porch in her wet shoes and raincoat, and pressed the bell.
She heard nothing but the tinkling of water running from a stackpipe near her feet.
She waited for a minute, and then pressed the bell again. Apparently it wasn’t working. She rapped with the knocker and waited for a couple of minutes for something to happen; then she tried the handle of the door. It was open, and she went into the hall.
A candle burned on the hall table, held in a brass candlestick from Benares. Jennifer went forward and pressed the electric switch for the hall light, but no light came. She thought of a power cut, unusual at night, and stood in wonder for a moment. In any case, there was no electricity, and it was no good worrying about the cause.
She stood in the hall, listening to the house. It was dead silent, but for the tinkling of the rain. She raised her head and called, “Granny! It’s me—Jennifer. Are you upstairs?”
There was no answer.
She did not like the empty sound of the house; it was full of menace for her. She did not like the lack of light, or the long, moving shadows that the candle cast. She was a level-headed young woman, however, and she took off her coat and laid it on a chair, and picked up the candle, and went into the drawing-room.
There was nothing unusual about that room; it was clean and tidy, though stone-cold. She would have expected on a night like that to see a fire burning in the grate, but the fire was not laid; apparently her grandmother had not used the room that day. Jennifer went quickly through the dining-room and kitchen; everything was quite in order there. A tin of Benger’s Food and a half empty bottle of milk stood on the kitchen table.
She turned, and went upstairs to the bedrooms. The door of her grandmother’s room was shut; she stood outside with the flickering candle in her hand, and knocked. She said again, “Granny, it’s me—Jennifer. Can I come in?” There was no answer, so she turned the handle and went into the room.
Ethel Trehearn lay on her back in the bed, and at the first glance Jennifer thought that she was dead, and her heart leaped up into her throat because she had never seen a dead person. She forced herself to look more closely, and then she saw that the old lady was breathing evenly, very deeply asleep. With the relief, Jennifer staggered a little, and her eyes lost focus for an instant and she felt a little sick; then she recovered herself, and looked around the room.
Everything there seemed to be in order, though her grandmother’s day clothes were thrown rather haphazard into a chair. The old lady was evidently quite all right, in bed and asleep; if she had had a fall a sleep would do her good. It looked as if somebody had been in the house looking after her, possibly the district nurse who had telephoned to Jennifer’s mother. It seemed unwise to wake the old lady up, and presently Jennifer tiptoed from the room, leaving the door ajar in order that she might hear any movement.
The time was then about nine o’clock, and she had eaten nothing since lunch except a cup of tea and a biscuit at the office. She had a young and healthy appetite, and she had the sense to realise that her momentary faintness in the bedroom had a good deal to do with the fact that she was very, very hungry. She went down to the kitchen, candle in hand, to get herself a meal.
In a few minutes she had made the extraordinary discovery that there was no food in the house at all. The half bottle of milk and the tin of Benger’s Food upon the kitchen table seemed to be the only edibles, except for a few condiments in a cupboard. The larder—her grandmother had no refrigerator—was empty but for a small hard rind of cheese upon a plate and three cartons of dried fruits, candied peel and sultanas and glacé cherries, open and evidently in use. There was a flour-bin, but it was empty, a bread-bin that held only crumbs. There were no tinned foods at all, and no vegetables.
Jennifer stood in the middle of the kitchen deeply puzzled, wondering what her grandmother had been eating recently, and where she had been eating it. Had she been having her meals out, or was there something blacker waiting here to be uncovered? She had been down to visit the old lady one Sunday about a month before and her grandmother had given her a very good lunch and tea, a roast duck with apple sauce with roast potatoes and cauliflower, and a mince pie to follow; for tea there had been buttered scones and jam, and a big home-made cake with plenty of fruit in it. She thought of this as she stood there in the kitchen in the flickering candlelight, and her mouth watered; she could have done with a bit of that roast duck.
One thing at least was evident; that she would have to spend the night in the house. She could not possibly go back to Blackheath and leave things as they were. Whoever had lit the candle and left the door open had done it in the expectation that some relation would arrive, and the unknown person would probably come back that night because her grandmother was clearly incapable of looking after herself. If Jennifer was to spend the night there, though, she felt she must have something to eat. Ealing Broadway was only a few hundred yards away and there would probably be a café or a coffee-stall open there; she could leave a note upon the hall table and go out and have a quick meal.
She went upstairs again, and looked in on the old lady, but she was still deeply asleep. Thinking to find a place in which to sleep herself she opened the door of the guest bedroom, but it was empty. Pictures still hung upon the wall, but there was no furniture in the room at all, and no carpet on the
bare boards of the floor. Unfaded patches on the wallpaper showed where bed and chest of drawers and wash-hand stand had stood.
This was amazing, because Jennifer had slept in that room less than a year before; it had been prim and neat and old-fashioned and very comfortable. What on earth had the old lady done with all the furniture? The girl went quickly to the other two bedrooms and found them in a similar condition, empty but for the pictures on the wall. There was no bed in the house except the one that her grandmother occupied; if Jennifer were to sleep there that night she would have to sleep on the sofa in the drawing-room. There did not seem to be any bedding, either; the linen cupboard held only a pair of clean sheets, a couple of towels, a table-cloth or two, and a few table-napkins.
The shadows began to close in upon Jennifer as she stood in the empty bedrooms with the flickering candle in her hand. It seemed incredible, but the old lady must have sold her furniture. And there was no food in the house. The darkness crept around her; could it be that Granny had no money? But she had a pension, Jennifer knew that, and she had always been well off. More likely that she was going a bit mental with old age, and that she had deluded herself into the belief that she was poor.
She went downstairs and found a piece of writing paper in her grandmother’s desk, and wrote a note to leave on the hall table with the candle; then she put on her raincoat and went out to get a meal. She found a café open in the main street and had a sort of vegetable pie. It was dull and insipid with no meat, but she had two helpings of it and followed it up with stewed plums and coffee. Then she bought a couple of rolls filled with a thin smear of potted meat for her breakfast, and went back to the house in Ladysmith Avenue.
In the house everything was as she had left it; her note lay beneath the candle unread. She took the candle and went up to her grandmother’s room, but the old lady was still sleeping deeply; she had not moved at all. The girl came out of the bedroom, and as she did so she heard movement in the hall, and saw the light from an electric torch. She came downstairs with the candle, and in its light she saw a middle-aged woman standing there in a wet raincoat, torch in hand.
The woman said, “Are you one of Mrs. Trehearn’s relations?”
Jennifer said, “I’m her granddaughter.”
“Oh. Well, I’m the district nurse. You know she had an accident?”
“I don’t know very much, except that my mother got a telephone call asking somebody to come here. She rang me.”
The nurse nodded. “I rang your mother at Leicester as soon as I could get the number out of the old dear. I’d better tell you what it’s all about, and then you can take over.”
Jennifer moved towards the door. “We’d better go in here—in case she wakes up.”
“She won’t wake up tonight—not after what the doctor gave her.” However, they went into the drawing-room and stood together in the light of the one candle. “She had a fall in the street this morning, just the other side of the bridge, between here and the Broadway. She didn’t seem able to get up, so the police got an ambulance and took her to the hospital. Well, they hadn’t got a bed, and anyway there didn’t seem to be much wrong with her except debility, you know. So as she was conscious and not injured by her fall they rang me up and sent her home here in the ambulance. I put her to bed and got in Dr. Thompson. He saw her about five o’clock.”
“What did he say?”
The nurse glanced at her. “When did you see her last?”
“About a month ago.”
“How was she then?”
“Very much as usual. She doesn’t do much, but she’s seventy-nine, I think.”
“Was she eating normally?”
“She gave me a very good meal, roast duck and mince pie.”
“She ate that, did she?”
“Of course. Why?”
“She doesn’t look as if she’s eaten anything since,” the nurse said shortly. “She’s very emaciated, and there’s not a scrap of food here in the house except some dried fruits. She vomited at the hospital, and what came up was raisins and sultanas. She couldn’t be expected to digest those, at her age.”
Jennifer said, “I simply can’t understand it. She’s got plenty of money.”
The nurse glanced at her. “You’re sure of that?”
“Well—I think so.”
“I rang up the electricity,” the nurse said, “and told them that the power had failed and they must send a man to put it right because I’d got a patient in the house. They said they’d disconnected the supply because the bill hadn’t been paid. You’d better see about that in the morning if you’re going to keep her here.”
“I’ll go round there first thing.”
“I had to go and get a candle of my own,” the nurse said. “I brought another one around with me now.” She took it from her pocket. “I looked for coal to light a fire, but there’s not a scrap. I got a tin of Benger’s Food and some milk, and I got the people next door to let me boil up some hot milk for her, and fill the hot-water bottles. I’ll take them round there and fill them again before I go.” She glanced at Jennifer. “You’re staying here tonight?”
“I wasn’t going to, but I’d better. Will you be here?”
The nurse laughed shortly. “Me? I’ve got a baby case tonight, but she’s got an hour or two to go so I slipped round here to see if anyone had come. I’ll have to get some sleep after that. I’ll look round here about midday to see how you’re getting on. I said I’d give the doctor a ring after that.”
Jennifer nodded. “I’ll see you then. Is she in any danger, do you think?”
“I don’t think she’ll go tonight,” the nurse said. “Whether she’ll pull round or not depends a lot on her digestion. I couldn’t say. When she wakes, give her another cup of the Benger’s. She can have as much of that as she’ll take—I’ll show you how to make it. But don’t let her have anything else till the doctor’s seen her. And keep the bottles nice and warm—not hot enough to scorch, you know, just nice and warm.”
Practical, hard-headed, and efficient, she whisked through her duties, showing Jennifer what to do, and was out of the house in a quarter of an hour. The girl was left alone with all the Indian and Burmese relics, with one candle and no fire and nowhere much to sleep.
She gave up the idea of going out in the rain at ten o’clock at night to find a public telephone to ring up her mother; that would have to wait till morning. She went up to her grandmother’s bedroom and took off her wet shoes and stockings and rubbed her feet with a towel; then she found a pair of her grandmother’s woollen stockings and put them on, and her grandmother’s bedroom slippers, and her grandmother’s overcoat. She found a travelling rug and wrapped it around her and settled down to spend the night in an arm-chair by her grandmother’s bedside, chilled and uncomfortable, dozing off now and then and waking again with the cold. In the middle of the night she ate her breakfast rolls.
In the grey dawn she woke from one of these uneasy dozes, stiff and chilled to the bone. She looked at the bed and saw that her grandmother was awake; she was lying in exactly the same position but her eyes were open. Jennifer got up and went to the bedside. The old lady turned her head upon the pillow and said in a thin voice, “Jenny, my dear. Whatever are you doing here?”
The girl said, “I’ve come to look after you, Granny. They telephoned and told us that you weren’t so well.”
“I know, my dear. I fell down in the street—such a stupid thing to do. Is the nurse here still?”
“She’ll be back later on this morning, Granny. Is there anything you want?”
She told her, and Jennifer entered on the duties of a sick-room for the first time in her life. Presently she took the hot-water bottles and the remains of the milk and went to the house next door, where a harassed mother was getting breakfast for a husband and three little children. As she warmed the milk and filled the water-bottles the woman asked her, “How is the old lady this morning?”
“She’s staying in bed, of
course,” said Jennifer, “but she’s not too bad. I think she’s going to be all right.”
“I am so sorry,” the woman said. “I wish we’d been able to do more for her, but everything’s so difficult these days. I’d no idea that she was ill. She’s been going out as usual every morning. It was a terrible surprise when she came back in an ambulance yesterday.”
Jennifer was interested. “She goes out every morning, does she?”
“That’s right. Every morning about ten o’clock. She goes down to the Public Library in the Park to read The Times. She told me that one day.”
Jennifer thanked her for her help, and went back with the hot milk to make a cup of Benger’s, and took it up to the bedroom with the hot-water bottles. She propped her grandmother up in bed with the pillows and helped her while she drank, but she could not get her to take more than half the cup. “I don’t want any more, my dear,” she said. “I think I’m better without anything.”
The hot drink had stimulated her a little. “Jenny,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. Haven’t you got to go to work?”
The girl said, “That’s all right, Granny. I’m going out presently to ring up Mummy to tell her how you are, and I’ll ring up the office then. I’ll stay with you for a few days until you’re better.”
“Oh, my dear, that isn’t necessary at all.”
“I’d like to, Granny. It’ll be a bit of a holiday for me.”
“But Jenny, dear, you can’t stay here. There isn’t anywhere for you to sleep. Where did you sleep last night?”
“I’ll be all right here, Granny,” the girl said. “I’ll fix up something in the course of the day.”
“But there isn’t any electricity. You can’t stay here.” A facile, senile tear escaped and trickled down the old, lined cheek. “Oh, things are so troublesome.”
“That’s all right, Granny,” the girl said. “I’ll go and see about the electricity this morning, and get them to turn it on.”
“But it’s seventeen pounds, Jenny—they came and turned it off. Such a nice man, but he had to do his job. I’ve been getting on quite well without it.”