The Hours Before Dawn

by Celia Fremlin

  The bars were in front of her now, black and clear. ‘Not teeth,’ she repeated triumphantly. ‘Not teeth’ … and waited for that sweat of relief that breaks out at the moment of waking from a nightmare.

  But there was no sweat of relief. Neither were those the bars of the scullery window. They were railings, iron railings, fencing off a patch of shadowy waste ground where the newest of the discarded sardine tins gleamed faintly in the light of the street lamp.

  And yet Louise felt that she had woken up from a dream. That feeling of hostile eyes boring into the small of her back was gone now. Her knees were weak, as if she had been just roused from sleep. And now, for the first time, she realised that she did not know where she was, nor in which direction lay her home. And she was tired; so tired that she no longer had any fear of the darkened street; so tired that for a moment she thought of sitting down, here on the pavement, with her back against the railings, and falling asleep.

  Was that a footstep? No, it couldn’t have been, there wasn’t a soul in sight, up or down the street. But the sound, whatever it was, had roused Louise to a sense of absurdity. If anybody should come, what would she look like, pram in hand, lolling against the railings, aimlessly, in the middle of the night?

  She set off again, and she never knew whether it was a long time or a short time before she came to the little park. No, not exactly a park; it was just a paddling pool really, surrounded by grass and gravel paths, and a few flowering shrubs. And seats. Blessed, miraculous seats! Seats with backs! Louise bumped her pram across the soaking grass, across the gravel path, and sank gratefully on to the nearest seat. She would rest here, for just a few minutes, and collect her thoughts. A little quiet consideration would soon show her which direction to turn for home, and then she must set off at once. Why, Michael was almost asleep at last, there was not the slightest reason for staying out any longer.

  The light from a street lamp shone faintly on the dark bushes, whitening here and there the great pale clusters of blossom. Beyond the bushes the pool gleamed silently, without a ripple, still as the blade of a knife. It was quiet. Too quiet. The bushes, particularly, were too quiet. It would have been a relief to hear the faint stir or chirrup of some small night creature, or even the disembodied rustle of the night breeze.

  And yet, when there was a rustle, faint as a breath, from a dark overhanging shrub on her right, it was not relief that Louise felt. Instead, her heart began to pound, and she stared, straining her eyes into the darkness until spots and lines began to whirl in front of them, and she was obliged to look away towards the glinting water, towards the pale blossoms, to get the darkness out of them.

  How sweet the scent was from the flowering shrubs. What kind were they, those flickering dim blooms? Lilac? Too early for that – at least, the lilac in her own garden was scarcely in bud yet. She could not tell the colour of the flowers before her; they gleamed so whitely against the dark background of the leaves, but then any colour would do that – any of the soft, pastel colours of spring-time, that is to say. The scent seemed to grow stronger, and it was strangely out of place in the bleak darkness of the night. It was the scent of sunshine; of sunshine on that first day of summer when you put on a cotton dress and walk down to shops, dizzily conscious of the warmth on your bare arms. It was the scent of childhood, when you set off for school half drunk with happiness because tennis was beginning this term. And farther back still, back and back to those regions where the waking memory can never reach, it was the scent of a narrow woodland path, where the cowparsley and the great teasels almost met above your head. It was quiet in that path, and yet not quiet at all, for round your ankles, even as far as your knees, there hummed and twittered and rustled the real owners of the earth in unnamed, uncounted millions. It was good that there was a large grown-up hand to hold your own, and that a pair of heavy booted feet were clearing the way, subduing for a few moments the owners of the earth so that your own bare legs and sandalled feet could follow safely. The sun was hot, hot as it had always been on those golden, endless afternoons of childhood; hot, surely, as it could never be again. The path seemed endless, too, winding in and out among the trees, twisting into sudden clearings of parched grass and the purple glory of willow-herb….

  ‘Watch out for that child. There may be snakes.’

  The sick terror of that moment was undimmed, and the words snapped like a pistol shot across the years. Louise struggled to open her eyes, to move her body on the hard damp seat. One movement would be enough to wake her; one tiny movement. Even her little finger. If she could just move one joint of one little finger….

  But everyone knows that a snake’s eyes are hypnotic eyes. Once a snake is staring at you, you can never move again. You may hear it slithering up behind you, but if its eyes are fixed on you, you cannot move. You will feel its malignant stare boring through your spine, and from your spine travelling up the great nerves that feed the brain; and you will sit still, and wait for your brain to grow numb and senseless even as your body is numb and senseless now….

  It was the rattle of a passing lorry that woke Louise, and for a moment she stared blankly, stupidly at the lightening sky. Her coat – her shoes – her hair were drenched with dew, and she was so cold that at first she did not even wonder how she got here. Then slowly, slowly, like a hibernating creature roused from its winter sleep, her mind began to work again. Michael. She had taken Michael out because he was crying. She had lost her way. She had sat down on a seat, and must have dropped off, and now it was morning. She must get him home quickly; in that uncovered pram he must be almost as wet and chilled as she was herself.

  And it was only then that Louise saw in the growing light that the pram was gone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  At first she did not believe it. She closed her eyes quite calmly, confident that when she opened them again the pram would be there. And when it wasn’t, she still, somehow, could not take it in. I must be sitting on the wrong seat, she thought stupidly; and it was only after she had risen stiffly to her feet to peer through the icy mist at the neighbouring seats, that she realised the implications of this supposition. She might indeed be sitting on the wrong seat; but if so it meant that she, herself, either sleeping or crazily awake, had moved during the night from the right seat to the wrong one. Had moved purposelessly, without sense or consciousness, leaving her baby behind.

  Or taking her baby with her – where? For what purpose? How far might you wheel a baby as you wandered sleep-walking through the night? Where might your brainless body put him while your sleeping mind, far off in some other world, dreamed, perhaps, that it was pushing him comfortably home?

  ‘No – no! I can’t have taken him far! Just to some other seat? – Behind the next bush—?’ In mounting panic she staggered on her stiff, chilled limbs from seat to seat, from bush to bush, and stood finally in the pinkish chill of dawn at the water’s edge.

  It must be a shallow pool, surely. That steely, silent expanse of water, motionless as a slab of metal in the cold morning light, was meant for children to play in; to paddle and sail toy boats. It couldn’t – Oh, God! surely it couldn’t! – be more than two feet deep even in the middle. Far too shallow for a runaway pram to disappear in without trace. The handle would be sticking up out of the water. The hood. Or the wheels, crazily askew….

  ‘It must be shallow, I know it’s shallow!’ she muttered, and she knelt down and thrust her arm over the low stone rim.

  It was even shallower than she had expected. Not even up to her elbow. Far, far too shallow to engulf a pram. The idea had been absurd.

  Yet still the idea persisted. It was as if the idea was not her own at all, but had been forced upon her by some outside power. As if it had been left, like a booby-trap, for her to stumble into by the side of this metallic pool….

  The police! The police will find my baby! The thought was suddenly, overwhelmingly reassuring. Of course they would find him. The police were finding lost children every day. All
she had to do was to look for a policeman….

  For the second time that night it seemed that a miracle was perfectly right and natural. She had only to think of the word ‘policeman’ and, of course, a policeman would appear at her side. Naturally, a rather young and embarrassed policeman he was, who said, ‘Excuse me, Miss,’ and then seemed unable to get any further. But Louise would not have let him get any further anyway.

  ‘You’ve found my baby!’ she cried, almost incoherent with joy. ‘You’ve found him!’

  But the young policeman looked blank. His embarrassment increased.

  ‘I didn’t have no instructions about a baby,’ he said helplessly. ‘They didn’t say nothing about a baby at all,’ he proceeded, gaining confidence at the recollection of ‘Them.’ ‘They just sent me along to enquire if – well, what you was doing sitting in the Gardens at night. If you was ill – that kind of thing,’ he finished placatingly.

  ‘Who sent you? What do you mean?’ asked Louise, still convinced that all this must in some way refer to the discovery of Michael. ‘Has someone seen the pram?’

  But the young policeman, it seemed, hadn’t had no instructions about a pram, either. It appeared that up at the Station they had had an anonymous phone call from some passer-by who had seen a lady sitting alone on a seat in the small hours, and had thought, not unreasonably, that something might be wrong. But this baby business, he didn’t know anything about this baby business, and hadn’t she better come along to the Station?

  At the Station they seemed less bewildered than the young policeman, but not very much more helpful. No, the anonymous caller had made no reference to a baby, nor to a pram; the police officer who interviewed Louise was positive about this, and he seemed a little disappointed that Louise was in no way placated by this assurance, even when it was confirmed by his notes. He listened to her story with grave and kindly attention, though with an irritating air of having heard this sort of thing dozens of times before – irritating, that is to say, if she had been calm enough to notice it. Possibly he thought she was drunk; and indeed, the frantic and incoherent manner in which she related her implausible tale would have justified such a supposition.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Henderson,’ he said at last (he had asked for her name and address by this time, and had written them down in his ominous great ledger), ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t really follow your story at all. I think the best thing we can do is to telephone your husband and see what he can tell us. No – no, if you please, Mrs Henderson, don’t trouble, I would prefer to make the call myself.’

  Through the closed door Louise could hear the ping of the receiver as he lifted it; and, a long, long time later, it seemed to her, she heard his voice, muffled and expressionless. She could not hear what he was saying, but he seemed to be talking to Mark for a very long time. What could they be saying to each other? Had Mark, perhaps, some notion of what could have happened to Michael? Some clue on which to base the search—?

  Abruptly the door opened, and the police officer reappeared, a faint, pitying smile on his face:

  ‘Exactly as I thought. Your husband tells me that your baby is asleep in his cot, and the pram is just where it was last night, in its usual place.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was hardly to be expected that a young matron of this neighbourhood should be able to return home at six in the morning under police escort without rousing comment.

  Louise did not expect it. She was not surprised when, a few hours later, while she was manoeuvring her basin of washing round the dolls’ pram which was blocking up the back door, she saw Mrs Morgan’s brown wrinkled face and neck stretching out over the brick wall like a tortoise from its shell.

  Louise nearly ducked back into the house again; but two things prevented her. One was the knowledge that the longer the episode was left to Mrs Morgan’s unaided imagination the more horrific it would become: The other was the dolls’ pram, whose hood had now become entangled with the strings of Louise’s apron. Before she had managed to dissolve this ill-timed union, all hope of retreat was gone, for Mrs Morgan was already calling out, with piercing solicitude:

  ‘You feeling better, dear?’

  ‘I’m all right, thanks,’ called back Louise non-committally, wrenching at the knot in her apron.

  ‘It’s your nerves, that’s what it is, dear,’ bellowed Mrs Morgan sympathetically. ‘That’s what I said as soon as I heard, I said “It’s her nerves, poor thing, they’re all to pieces, and it’s no wonder—”’

  At this point the apron string gave way, and, with her apron dangling uselessly, Louise hurried across the grass before the three gardens on either side should enjoy any more of the story.

  ‘You’re looking proper poorly, dear,’ continued Mrs Morgan, examining Louise’s face enthusiastically. ‘Proper poorly. What you need is a real good rest. That’s what I’ve been telling everyone: I don’t want to listen to no spiteful gossip, I’ve been saying; all Mrs Henderson needs is a real good rest.’

  This was clearly Louise’s cue to contribute something to the conversation. It was her opportunity, too, to think quickly of some dull, respectable and perfectly credible reason for such a melodramatic return with the police. But it was too difficult. She could think of very few credible explanations at all, and those she could think of were neither dull nor respectable. Anyway, it was important first to find out how much Mrs Morgan did in fact know.

  ‘Why, what have people been saying?’ she asked innocently. ‘I didn’t know anyone was talking about me.’

  Mrs Morgan gave her usual precautionary glance at the tufts of grass behind her, and at the small, cheeky dandelions which by now really did seem to have an inquisitive, eavesdropping air; then she leaned forward excitedly:

  ‘I won’t mention no names,’ she began. ‘No names, no trouble, that’s what I always say. Besides, it was a wicked thing to say about anyone, and I wouldn’t be repeating it, dear, you know that, without I thought you had a right to know. That’s what I said to her, I said it’s not right to talk about Mrs Henderson like that, not behind her back it isn’t. There’s many good reasons, I told her, why a person might be paddling into a pond at four in the morning, and crying her eyes out with it. You don’t want to jump to the aspersion that she’s out to do herself in, do you, now? That’s what I told her, I told her straight: You don’t want to jump to aspersions, I told her, it’s wicked. Never mind if they do bring her back in a police van, I said, it’s none of my business, no more than it’s none of yours. A nice, respectable young woman like Mrs Henderson, I said, she wouldn’t do no such thing. It’s just her nerves, that’s all it is, I told her.’

  She paused expectantly, and Louise knew that the dull and credible story must be produced now, immediately, or the chance would be lost for ever. The possibility of telling the truth did cross her mind; but, as often happens, the truth seemed more fantastic when put into words than all the colourful inventions that were flocking into her mind.

  ‘So silly of me,’ she improvised hastily. ‘I was out at my – at some friends, you know – and I missed the last train back, so I had to walk. I lost the way, and so I asked a policeman, and he very kindly brought me back all the way. Very nice of him, I thought. Very considerate.’

  ‘Very considerate they are, some of ’em,’ conceded Mrs Morgan agreeably, and with unqualified disbelief of every word Louise had been saying. ‘Very civil. What was the pond, then, Mrs Henderson, what you stumbled in in the dark? You didn’t hurt yourself, did you? I heard you come home all wet.’

  ‘Oh, just my sleeve,’ said Louise lightly. ‘One of those paddling pools, you know. The lighting wasn’t too good.’

  Mrs Morgan considered this with tolerant incredulity.

  ‘A shame,’ she summed up at last; and, astonishingly, the phrase held in it genuine warmth and sympathy, in spite of the disbelief with which it was uttered. It was the same warm, genuine sorrow that an author can feel for his heroine when he is about to plunge her int
o yet worse disaster.

  ‘A shame,’ proceeded Mrs Morgan. ‘A proper set-to, eh? And the kiddie, and all. Must have given him a scare, didn’t it?’

  Louise was startled, Mrs Morgan’s talents were truly astonishing. Neither the police nor Mark had believed for one moment that she had really taken Michael out last night – with the child safely asleep in his cot and the pram in its usual place, why should they? The police probably assumed that she had been drunk; Mark that she had been dreaming, or sleep-walking, or both. Louise herself was by now inclined to agree with Mark. The memory of last night seemed now nothing more than a confused nightmare. How then could Mrs Morgan, even with all her skills, guess that Louise had – or had imagined that she had – taken Michael with her on her queer journey?

  ‘What kiddie?’ she asked stubbornly. ‘I was by myself. Naturally.’

  ‘Naturally,’ agreed Mrs Morgan happily. ‘That’s what I said. Mrs Henderson’d never do a thing like that, I said, not take the kiddie out with her for such a purpose. Not that time of night, giving him a chill in the night air. It’s your nerves, duck that’s all it is, you want to watch your nerves. My husband’s sister, she used to suffer with her nerves. They found her lying in the kitchen one day with the gas full on – all three of the rings, and the oven too. And the grill.’

  ‘And was she—?’ enquired Louise hesitantly. ‘I mean, did she—?’

  Mrs Morgan shook her head regretfully.

  ‘They was sharing the kitchen, see, with another young couple. Makes things difficult, you know, sharing. Two women shouldn’t try to share a kitchen, that’s what I always say, it’s bound to lead to inconvenience.’

  Louise could see that this was indeed probable, particularly if one young woman’s suicide attempts coincided with the other’s need to prepare breakfast; and she expressed guarded agreement with the principle. Then, feeling that this shifting of attention from herself to Mrs Morgan’s husband’s sister was to be encouraged, she led Mrs Morgan on to a further recital of that lady’s career, including her gentleman friends, her varicose veins and her final demise without a burial insurance.