The Hours Before Dawn

by Celia Fremlin

  Then there was the fewness of Miss Brandon’s possessions – already remarked on by Mrs Morgan. No pictures – no ornaments – no souvenirs of her many travels. And no books to speak of, apart from school books – this seemed extraordinary in a woman who was obviously cultured, and who claimed to be a scholar of some distinction. There was the puzzle of the suitcase, too, and of Mark’s feeling of recognition – which he had mentioned just once, and then never again. And now the address, so inexplicably sought from Humphrey. Didn’t it all add up to something disturbing enough to be laid before Mark, as the responsible householder?

  And if only the responsible householder had succeeded, even at this late stage, in finding a shirt with the full complement of buttons, Louise might have told him of her fears. As it was, the next five minutes were devoted entirely to Louise’s shortcomings as a housekeeper, beginning with shirt buttons and ending with her having forgotten to get the mower repaired, and including en route the disciplining of the children, the losing of the spare front door key, and the repeated serving of cold meat and fried potatoes for lunch. At the end of it all Louise slunk off to prepare the breakfast full of rather blurred resolutions, such as: ‘Always sew on your husband’s buttons before starting an argument’ and ‘Never ask him questions before breakfast’ and ‘If he didn’t agree the first time you said it, he certainly won’t agree the second.’

  Nor the third, of course. Mark would have to be left out of it for the time being. The obvious thing to do was for Louise to make some enquiries about Miss Brandon for herself.

  Yes, that’s all very well, she mused. ‘Make enquiries’ – it’s a nice business-like phrase, but how do you start? Do you march into the headmistress’s study at the grammar school and say: ‘You’ve got a teacher here who calls herself Vera Brandon, and please is it an assumed name, and is there a Mystery in her Life?’

  No, you have to find out where your subject used to live, and go and see her old landlady. It couldn’t be difficult to find out the address – one might even get it tactfully from Miss Brandon herself without any direct question. ‘How are you liking this neighbourhood, Miss Brandon? It must be a big change for you.’ ‘Oh no, Mrs Henderson [or ‘Oh yes, Mrs Henderson,’ as the case might be] I come from XYZ.’ ‘Oh, how funny, I’ve got a friend living in XYZ, I wonder if you were anywhere near her? …’

  Yes, it could probably be done that way. Casually, the next time they met on the stairs. So long as Michael wasn’t crying at the time, or Harriet asking questions, or something boiling over in the kitchen….

  Bother! All the eggs would be hard by now, and Margery was the only one who liked them hard. Harriet liked hers soft, and Mark liked his very soft. As to Louise herself, she had long forgotten which way she liked them. It made the housekeeping that much easier if there was one person out of the five whose tastes didn’t have to be considered. To neglect one’s own tastes was more labour-saving than any vacuum cleaner, and it was a form of neglect about which no one would call you to account. Your husband wouldn’t demand buttons on it – your children wouldn’t hurt themselves on it, or be made late for school by it. It wouldn’t pile up against you, like the dirty nappies….

  Or would it? Louise set the saucepan with a clatter on to the draining-board, and as she did so the years of her future seemed to rattle menacingly about her ears. If you went on neglecting your own tastes like this, did you, in the end, cease to have any tastes? Cease, in fact, to be a person at all, and become merely a labour-saving gadget around the house? Less and less labour-saving, of course, as the years went by – (‘My mother? – Oh, you mean that thing that used to do the washing-up so well? Daddy’s thinking of getting a new one….’)

  ‘A new what, Mummy?’

  With dismay Louise realised that she must have spoken the last sentence out loud as Harriet came into the kitchen. This was just what was liable to happen when one was half asleep like this.

  ‘What’s Daddy going to get new?’ repeated Harriet inexorably, and Louise tried quickly to think of something reasonably likely – or, better still, something so utterly uninteresting that Harriet would forget the whole episode.

  ‘A new washer for the tap,’ she lied; an inspiration which fulfilled this last requirement so thoroughly that Louise herself as well as Harriet rapidly lost interest in the whole business. For at this time Louise had no reason to suppose that more than the last sentence of her thoughts had been spoken aloud. Still less could she have supposed that anyone but Harriet could have overheard.

  The house was strangely quiet after the children had gone; and it seemed to Louise that the quietness was something more than that familiar tide of peace and relaxation which flows over any home when the door slams for the last time as the last member of the family departs for work or school, leaving the housewife to reign alone over her suddenly tranquil kingdom. Perhaps it was that Louise herself was sitting so quietly, her elbows resting on the kitchen table among the dirty breakfast things, her limbs heavy with the longing for sleep. Her eyes wandered distastefully over the unwashed floor, over the dresser littered with papers, plasticine, and miscellaneous woollen garments waiting to be put on, put away, or mended. And those eternal bits of broken crayon sprinkled all over the house like petals in spring-time; every time you tried to do anything one rolled off something on to something else. Strange that in the midst of such muddle it could still be so quiet.

  So quiet that when Louise heard the heavy, measured footsteps on the stairs she gave a great swallow and jumped to her feet. Even as she did so, she knew that her alarm was foolish – it could only be Miss Brandon setting off for school – rather late for some reason, and walking more heavily than usual. The steps reached the foot of the stairs – moved nearer, and a moment later Miss Brandon was standing in the doorway, her small leather case in her hand, and a pleasant, unrevealing smile on her face.

  Louise stood there beside the unwashed breakfast things looking – and feeling – as guiltily startled as if she had been one of Miss Brandon’s own pupils caught red-handed with a crib to Thucydides; though what, exactly, she felt caught red-handed at, she would have found it hard to define. Her discomfort was increased by the knowledge that this was probably the ideal moment for that casual remark: ‘How are you liking this neighbourhood’ – etc. But how idiotic it would sound! How stilted – how carefully rehearsed! How on earth did real actresses manage to make their carefully rehearsed speeches sound natural? Well, for one thing, of course, a real actress would be playing opposite someone who had carefully rehearsed the appropriate answer. That must make it a whole lot easier….

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, Mrs Henderson, but I just thought I’d better let you know that I’m going out now and I won’t be back till late. I have to go down to Oxford for the day, and then, in the evening, I’m giving a talk to the Archaeological Society. Quite a small affair, of course,’ she interposed modestly. ‘But the secretary tells me they were most interested by my article on Mycenaean architecture. And, of course, the recent finds have added to the interest. Perhaps you’ve read about them in the papers?’

  Louise gaped at her visitor helplessly. Not because she knew nothing of the Mycenaean finds – nor, indeed, of anything else that had been in the papers during the last six months, except that headline about a woman who complained that her husband made her eat dog biscuits. No, her blankness was due not to ignorance but to bewilderment. Why should Miss Brandon be telling her all this – and have come into the kitchen specially to do so, too? Louise had an odd feeling that the whole speech had been rehearsed – just like her own still undelivered speech that began: ‘How are you liking this neighbourhood?’ A sudden absurd rush of fellow-feeling made her rack her brains for the appropriate response.

  ‘I hope you have a nice time,’ she said feebly; and was immediately aware that anyone playing opposite the Senior Classics mistress should do better than this. She tried again:

  ‘Have you broken up already?’ she asked, and knew a
t once that this was worse than ever. Obviously Miss Brandon’s school had broken up, or how could she be going to Oxford today?

  But it was plain that Miss Brandon, like Nurse Fordham, had taught herself to suffer fools gladly. She answered patiently: ‘Why, yes, we finished yesterday. Didn’t your little girls—? Oh, no, of course; the Primary Schools go on longer, don’t they? Right up till Easter, isn’t it, this year? Her voice, though civil, was preoccupied. She glanced first at her watch and then at the kitchen clock.

  ‘I must hurry,’ she said. ‘It’s twenty-five to ten. My train …’

  She backed out of the kitchen, closing the door gently behind her. Louise again heard the heavy footsteps crossing the hall, and then the slam of the front door – a really terrific slam. The cups quivered on their hooks, and a fork rattled noisily from the draining-board into the sink.

  Then silence. The same uneasy, waiting silence that had filled the house before. Louise went upstairs to make the beds with an odd feeling that she should be going on tiptoe. Should be pulling up the sheets slowly … slowly, not to make the slightest stir…. The thud of Margery’s velveteen pig as it slithered from among the blankets made her jump as if another door had slammed.

  But it hadn’t. Everything was quiet. Even Michael hadn’t stirred, though it was past ten o’clock. Louise had put him out in his pram early this morning to catch the first glory of the April sun. Through the window she could see him now, his covers kicked off, his arms akimbo in such utter abandonment of sleep that the tranquillity of it seemed to fill the garden like the scent of some new, miraculous flower. The sunlight flickered through the leaves onto the magical texture of his skin – that texture which in a few months would be gone for ever, gone with the baby roundness of his cheeks and the plump, enchanting folds of his thighs.

  Odd that she should be staring thus, with something near to worship, at her tormentor of so many nights. Odd, too, that she should just now feel that sweet and sudden pang of protective fear. He lay there so utterly relaxed, so utterly exposed and defenceless. What made him so certain that only the kindly warmth of the sun would be allowed to spread over him? Couldn’t evil, too, pour down from above; flicker like sunshine through the young spring leaves?

  Not from above. Evil traditionally comes from below. Doesn’t it? Isn’t that right? But what about the Evil Eye? ‘Overlooking’ – that must be done from above, the very word implies it. Why, it could be done by someone looking out of a window, with her elbows on the sill, just like this….

  A familiar tingling warmth in her limbs warned Louise that she was nearly asleep again. Hurriedly she drew back into the room and finished making the girls’ beds. Why did Harriet have to have nine soft toys in bed with her every night? And, not content with that, why did she have to feed them all on biscuits under the bedclothes, scattering crumbs far and wide?

  The house was still quiet. Scolding herself for such fancifulness, Louise nevertheless walked with unnatural softness down to the kitchen. The washing-up was waiting for her, and, really, it could be a delightful job if you were really tired. Plunging your arms into the blessed hot water, the next best thing to sleep, you could allow your thoughts to wander.

  But they didn’t wander. Like homing pigeons they flew straight back to Miss Brandon and her visit to the kitchen that morning. Was it just Louise’s fancy that there had been something odd about that visit? That Miss Brandon’s conversation had been somehow forced and over-casual? Miss Brandon was not a naturally garrulous woman; so why all those unsolicited details about her plans for the day? Wasn’t there something too careful about the way she had brought them all in, one after another? Something purposeful, premeditated …?

  Those shining, steaming teacups were still hot to the touch and would be a joy to dry; but Louise was scarcely aware of them as her imagination gathered speed. Wasn’t that just the sort of conversation one would engineer if one was trying to create an alibi? Tomorrow – next week – would Louise find herself saying to some police inspector: ‘Oh, yes, she was here in the kitchen with me just at that time…. Yes, I remember it was exactly 9.35. It happened that she looked at her watch and remarked on it, and I noticed that the kitchen clock said the same…. Yes, it was certainly 9.35….’ And meantime some ticket collector or porter at Paddington would be confirming that a lady answering this description had got on to the 10.45 to Oxford – some ever-so-accidental little incident had fixed her in his mind. And, therefore, she couldn’t possibly have been …

  Been where? Doing what? To whom? All Louise’s fears came surging back and the water wildly gurgling down the plug hole transfixed her with a senseless, babyish terror. This was how Margery must have felt when she made all that fuss about her bath a few years ago. For one second Louise could have wept for her lack of sympathy with the child at the time – could have wept and sobbed, knowing all the time that her tears were not tears of remorse or sympathy, but tears of fright – fright for herself, for her own skin, here and now in this grease-spattered scullery, with the spring sun wavering through the steam at the barred window.

  Perhaps it was all nonsense. Perhaps this ridiculous panic was simply hysteria brought on by lack of sleep. But all the same, weren’t you supposed to humour hysterical women; and since there was no one else to do it, she would have to humour herself. Humour herself to the extent of going up to Miss Brandon’s room – now, this moment, while Miss Brandon was out – and nosing around like any music-hall landlady ‘to see if anything was going on what shouldn’t be going on’ as Mrs Morgan had put it.

  She thought again about Mrs Morgan’s gruesome little story. An imbecile done up in a parcel – was that what she expected to find? What absurdity! What fantastic nonsense! She was simply curious to find out what (if any) papers Miss Brandon had taken from Mark’s desk. She had a perfect right – indeed, a duty – to recover his property for him. Full of the courage of righteous purpose, she straightened herself and prepared to march boldly up the stairs – only to find that almost without noticing it she had already removed her shoes, and was tiptoeing guiltily, like a burglar in her own house. Irrelevantly, she remembered Tony’s tip: ‘Always walk with the flat of your foot, you’re not so likely to creak a board. It distributes the weight, see …?’

  But perhaps it only distributes your weight properly if that weight is light, and irresponsible, and only nine years old. For Louise, the boards creaked at every step, and she was thankful when she reached the top landing with the door to Miss Brandon’s room on her right, and the door to the lumber room on her left. At least there were no more creaking steps to climb.

  And it was only as she reached out to try the handle of Miss Brandon’s door that she suddenly knew why she had been creeping, tiptoeing about her own house in broad daylight. It was because Miss Brandon was still there. She was not conscious of having heard any sound inside the room; and yet, as clearly as if the door had been thrown open in front of her, Louise seemed to see the whole scene, just as she had seen it a few days before when she and her mother-in-law had burst in uninvited. Miss Brandon sitting at her table, motionless, with no books, no papers, no sewing. Just sitting there, waiting. Then, as now, Miss Brandon had elaborately and unnecessarily sought out Louise in the morning to tell her she was going to be out for the day. Then, as now, the front door had slammed with unnecessary violence….

  What could it all mean? Could there be some reasonable, sensible explanation? Could Miss Brandon have planned to go out for the day, and then, with quite extraordinary suddenness, have changed her mind? Have gone to the front door – opened it – set her foot across the threshold – and then drawn back? Have shut the door with a noisy slam, and then tiptoed back up to her room? Yes – tiptoed – her usual confident stride could not possibly have gone unnoticed.

  Her confident stride. Yes, Miss Brandon’s movements were always confident. And firm, and powerful – even graceful in a large-scale sort of way – but they were not noisy. Not noisy like those heavy, over-loud foo
tsteps that had come stumping down the stairs this morning. Why would anyone come down a flight of stairs as noisily as that? Because they wanted to be heard, of course. Because they wanted to be heard, and also because they wanted to emphasise in their own mind the contrast between this ostentatious descent and the silence and stealth with which they planned, a minute later, to creep back up that self-same flight of stairs….

  Louise’s hand never reached the handle of Miss Brandon’s door; she did not even try to peer through the keyhole to confirm her suspicions. For a while she stood there on the little attic landing, her heart thumping, her mind clear as glass and boundlessly receptive, it was not a suspicion at all; it was a certainty. Her very bones knew that Miss Brandon was sitting silently inside that room, and the bones do not ask for confirmation. It was only long after she had fled downstairs on stockinged feet (on tiptoe or distributing the weight? – she never knew which) that it dawned on her that confirmation might be required.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘My dear, how thrilling! Of course I’ll try and find out for you. What sort of things do you want to know?’

  Louise hesitated. She hadn’t meant it to sound thrilling at all. In fact, she was already regretting the impulse that had made her rush to telephone Beatrice. Her panic was subsiding fast at this contact with a human voice – particularly a voice as voluble and insistent as Beatrice’s, and as shrill with unsatisfied curiosity. Louise tried to remember exactly what she had first said after snatching up the receiver and dialling Beatrice’s number in blind and ill-considered determination to find out something – anything – about this woman she believed to be lurking upstairs. She had hoped to say, calmly and with half-humorous detachment, something like – ‘Oh, by the way, Beatrice. That Vera Brandon we were talking about last night. I wish you’d tell me a little more about her. You’re always so good at getting the low-down on everyone—’ with a little laugh, of course, to show that this was meant as a compliment, and that anyway the whole matter was quite trivial….