Starlight

by Stella Gibbons

  She could almost put aside all frightening thoughts, on this calm sunlit morning. Fear had retreated to the dimmest depths of her mind. She was not even touched by a suspicion that her own illness bore, in its slow secret current, the occasional sign, like a dark rock seen for an instant in the sweep of a grey stream, that pointed towards death; that Erika had seen these signs, and was awed.

  The ringing had stopped. Thank goodness, thought Mrs Pearson luxuriously. But, even as the thought arose, she became aware of something crouching on her body’s threshold, waiting and intent, as it had not done for many days; not since the prayers of those kind people had, as you might say, begun to work … Her large eyes widened as if she saw the approach of something dreaded, and then she turned them towards the blank pink surface of the door, on which a faint knock had sounded.

  ‘Who’s that? Come in.’

  Annie’s small old face peeped round the crack. Mrs Pearson raised herself on one elbow. ‘What is it, dear? Is something wrong?’

  She asked this because of Annie’s expression.

  ‘Not as I know of. I’m sure I hope not. But it’s a lady. Says she must speak to you. It’s very important, she says.’ She paused, staring in vague alarm.

  ‘Didn’t you say I’m ill, dear? Not that it’s true, really, this morning, I feel almost my old self.’ She laughed, a little laugh. But as she laughed she felt the watching, waiting thing move very slightly nearer. One part of her could laugh, but another felt unmistakably, on some unnamed threshold, the stealthy, almost imperceptible, advance.

  ‘I said you was better, Mrs Pearson.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, then perhaps …’ She hesitated, still resting on her elbow, veiled in rosy nylon and lace. How pretty her room was. Her little plastic and glass creatures gleamed and glowed in the reflection of the outside world’s sunlight, and the many vases of summer flowers breathed their scents into the quiet, warm air.

  ‘All right, Annie. Will you ask her to hold on? I’ll …’

  ‘She said to say it’s about Peggy,’ Annie blurted, and at once Mrs Pearson sat upright, her smitten heart pumping blood in a rush to all the drowsing cells in the delicate skin of her face.

  ‘I wasn’t goin’ to upset you. But she did say …’

  ‘All right, all right, go and tell her I’m coming.’ She scrambled from the bed, pushed her thin, pretty feet into slippers, tied her girdle, distractedly moved her heavy hair about as if to gather it into order, then let it fall again and hurried, moving unsteadily, out of the room. Annie had just finished giving the message when she reached the telephone. Mrs Pearson snatched it.

  ‘Hullo? Who is it?’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Pearson. I’m so glad to hear you’re better. This lovely weather is enough to make us all feel better, isn’t it? I really rang up to congratulate you – it’s Mrs Lysaght speaking. You remember me, don’t you? Dear old Gladys used to work for me. I sent you some flowers.’

  ‘Congratulate …? Yes, I remember … but …’

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Mrs Lysaght could hardly keep the note congratulating herself out of her voice. ‘About … but you must have.’

  ‘I haven’t – I haven’t – heard anything. What do you mean?’

  ‘What a naughty girl she is. About Peggy –’

  ‘Oh do please tell me. I haven’t heard from her for five weeks. I don’t know where she is –’

  ‘My dear, she’s in Fez. In Morocco. And she’s married.’

  ‘Who to?’ said Mrs Pearson, after a pause just long enough to lessen Mrs Lysaght’s enjoyment slightly. Her voice was exhausted and quiet.

  ‘To Arnold Corbett. Mrs Corbett’s son. He – hasn’t she told you about him?’

  ‘She hasn’t told me anything,’ said the mother. ‘She never did, not from a little thing.’

  ‘Well, he’s in the middle forties and really very nice. Quiet, you know, and plays a lot of golf. And – though of course, I hope dear Mrs Corbett will be with us for many years yet – one day he will be a rich man. Very, very rich. He’s more than comfortably off now … I’m astonished you hadn’t heard. Really astonished. But it’s good news, isn’t it? Such a comfort to think of one’s girl being settled. One doesn’t want to be material-minded but money is always useful. And the cost of living nowadays … I’m so glad you’re feeling stronger.’

  ‘Do you think she loves him?’ Mrs Pearson asked pitifully, and received in answer a tinkling laugh.

  ‘Oh I’m sure I don’t know. I only knew them both very slightly. Of course, all that wealth – a girl wouldn’t be human if she didn’t find that tempting. One thing I must warn you about, Mrs Pearson – his mother isn’t at all pleased.’

  ‘Isn’t she?’

  ‘No. (I don’t think I’m telling tales.) I thought it only kind to tell you.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  Shock, and the special pain reserved for mothers, now overwhelmed Mrs Pearson, throwing down the slight barriers built up by peace and hope. Peggy had not told her; she never told her anything. What was the use of a blue sky and a sunny morning, with their whispers of some far-off happiness that should last for ever? They were only a blue sky, only a sunny morning.

  The invader, pushing apart the cracked barriers, crept in agilely over their fragments, spurning them, smiling in triumph. I’ll help you. I always have, haven’t I? Don’t you remember the old days? I’ll help you. I’ll give you my strength and help you.

  ‘Now that you’re feeling so much better,’ Mrs Lysaght was saying brightly, ‘how about keeping your promise and giving me a sitting?’

  34

  It had been arranged that Gerald should come one evening and burn what Gladys had begun by calling ‘Mr Fisher’s papers’ and speedily came to referring to as ‘all that old rubbish’; a bonfire was to be made in the yard at Lily Cottage. Gerald was glad of the plan: he wanted to see Mr Fisher’s life-work turned into pure red and yellow flame. The card with its earnest legend was in his pocket-book, and he meant to find some private occasion and give it to Annie Barnes, whose quiet grief had not gone unobserved.

  The sisters had been cheered by the postcard from their nephew, inviting them to spend a day with him and see his new bungalow at Osney.

  There had been a suggestion that they might spend the night, but this of course was unthinkable, though it was discussed at such length that anyone might have been excused for supposing it wasn’t; the discussion added to their pleasure, giving a sensation of luxurious freedom and power of choice. There had been the stimulating surprise of discovering that the coaches didn’t go there; it was all trains; and the wondering whether it would be fine, and the two-day examination of the question whether Annie could make the journey.

  It had all ended in unflawed enjoyment; the train-ride, the meeting with Georgie, after eighteen months, at the station in his car; the drive through the countryside shimmering in June’s brilliant green under a smiling sun; and then, best of all, the bungalow and its comforts. The museum had been ever so interesting, too, when they could take their minds off the gas cooker and the television. And Georgie in charge of it all!

  But on this evening Gladys opened the door to Gerald and looked at him in scared silence, every trace of the cheerfulness bestowed by the memory of their visit gone from her face.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Is Mrs Pearson worse?’ he exclaimed, alarmed.

  He went into the hall, and she shut the door. It was a very beautiful evening; Midsummer Eve, he suddenly recalled, as if the reflected light in the hall, neither pink nor gold, and the silence, had brought the fact into his mind.

  The light came in through the small curved transom of the door, barred with a lead device; a falling light, and soft. The silence, he noticed, the characteristic silence of Lily Cottage, seemed deeper this evening.

  Gladys was standing staring at him, in a most unwonted quiet, twisting her hands about in the flowered stuff of her overall.

  ‘Oh yes,
dreadfully bad this evening. There’s been ever such an upset. He … he’s … upstairs now, he is. With her. I was wondering … I don’t like young Erika being here, I don’t, straight. I wondered would Mrs Geddes have her?’ The words came out in a kind of slow distracted way, so unlike her usual manner that he began to feel a faint alarm; her hands continued to twist, twist, among the gaudy flowers.

  ‘But she was so much better! Do you think she’ll want to see me? Or perhaps Mr Pearson …’ He paused, with a foot on the first stair, also speaking very quietly. A hush at the top of the stairs seemed to flow down to them.

  ‘Oh I know – I know. She was getting on ever so nicely, we all said so. The praying, I reckon. And then that Peggy getting married so sudden and not telling her – and then Mrs Lysaght come along this afternoon, and would have her fortune told. I opened the door. Came in a taxi, with a lovely bunch of roses. I used to work for her.’ She paused. A little of her usual manner was returning.

  ‘Had a bit of a chat but wild to get upstairs and see Mrs P. Erika and me helped Mrs P. get ready, wasn’t like herself, I noticed. Didn’t seem the same at all. Ever so sharp with us. (I don’t mind telling you, I had a bit of a cry. Annie said I was soft.)’

  Gerald murmured something. He was beginning to feel disagreeably disturbed. The atmosphere in the house was insistent; he was not imagining it; the divine steady light pouring in through the transom seemed outside and apart from the cold silence snaking down from the landing. He compelled himself to listen.

  ‘So I took her up … we thought we’d made sure he was out. My Gawd, you ought to have seen Annie’s face when he walked into the kitchen. I was just making Mrs P.’s tea and young Erika was going to take it up. Put two cups, and a bit of a cake I’d made, hasn’t been so mad lately on boys and that, let’s hope … didn’t shout at us or anything. But such a face! You never saw anythink like it. I was that upset I couldn’t say a word. Grabbed hold of my arm, if you please, and then I did speak up. Said I’d have the police on him if he laid his dirty hands on me. Didn’t take a bit of notice. Kep’ on saying who’s in there with her, who is it, as if he’d gone mental. So I told him. Off he goes, like something had stung him, flying off with not a word of beg your pardon and the next thing there was him shouting and banging the door upstairs enough to bring the house down and Mrs Lysaght hollering out, “Gladys, Gladys, get me a taxi, quick,” and I says to Erika and Annie, “Now don’t you stir one step from this kitchen,” and runs out and there she is, in the hall, crying and carrying on and saying she was frightened and I don’t know what, and there was an evil spirit in the bedroom and we must get a priest – as if she’d gone mental as well. As if I knew where to get a taxi!’

  She paused. Her voice had been running on in a hushed current, rapid as usual, but exhausted; even the small bursts of indignation lacked force.

  Gerald had listened with sensations that were quite unfamiliar to him. It was the chill emanating from the shut door on the landing that reinforced each word of Gladys’s, loading them; colouring them ominously. He could feel it on his face and hands now, and through the thick old clothes he had put on for the burning of the papers. It was as if he were standing in a steady wind that was streaming off a glacier.

  ‘I made her get the taxi. Looked it up in the phone book, and then it took ages coming and she was carrying on all the while – crying and saying she’d never seen anything so horrible in her life and praying to God to protect her – she made me downright wild. Only … when …’

  Gladys paused, looking downwards as if in some strange kind of shame at confessing what she had seen.

  ‘See, I went and had a peep round the door, after she’d gone, it was so dead quiet and I thought … and … and … he was lying on the bed. Holding her hand. And crying. Crying he was. Didn’t see me. She did, though. Looked right at me – and her eyes – I can’t tell you – and says somethink. Spitting – like. I don’t mind telling you, I fair ran. It’s … it’s awful, sir … hadn’t we better get the Vicar?’

  ‘I don’t know … I’d better go up.’ He thought of putting his hand comfortingly on her shoulder, but did not; his alarm, and the desire to help, and the feeling that a climax was approaching, were not yet strong enough to overcome his dislike of making gestures. ‘Now try not to worry,’ he said, ‘we’re here – the Church, I mean – and we’ll see to things. It will … be all right.’ He smiled, briefly and stiffly.

  ‘Thank God, someone’s ’ere,’ said Gladys. She turned away.

  Shivering in the cold, Gerald knocked. There was no answering voice, and in a moment he knocked again; then, after another pause, opened the door.

  The room looked as usual: the colours and the prettiness were as they had always been; the cheap wood of the furniture, shaped into debased contemporary curves, had its usual chemical sheen and the grotesques on mantelpiece and dressing table smiled their pert smiles. The electric fire glared, the glow of pink walls and ceiling mastered the more delicate pink of the sunset. And it was all stilled: checked: a mask, covering the real room. It was a room reflected in a looking-glass.

  His eyes went straight to the figures on the bed. Mrs Pearson’s body was lying with open eyes, the mass of her hair spread on the pillow. It was only her body; that was the one thing he knew. Her spirit had gone somewhere else, and something, another, was smiling out of her eyes, and their colour had changed to iridescent green, and their shape had lengthened, and slitted, and tilted at the corners. The smile on the lips and in the eyes was not mad or in any way linked, even distortedly, with the smiles of the race of man; it could only be called a smile because there was no other word that could be used for it. Somewhere else, perhaps, there was a word, or a sound, that was used.

  Pearson lay sprawled across the foot of the bed, face downwards, with one palm flat against the curve under the bedclothes. Gerald drew back, with an indrawn breath, and shut the door slowly to give himself time to force his courage and his thoughts back into control. The desire to do the right thing, the thing that should succeed, was overwhelming; it was stronger than horror or fear and it instantly replaced them. He prayed, as he raced down the stairs.

  The sisters were in the kitchen, talking subduedly together; Erika was sitting by the table, with bent head, in silence. All three turned pale faces to him as he came in.

  ‘She’s very ill indeed,’ he said quietly, ‘and we must get Mr Geddes – no –’ as Gladys began to say, ‘There’s the phone’ – ‘no, that’ll make a noise. I want to keep things absolutely quiet. Go along, all three of you, it’s better you should be out of the way. Go on, Gladys, there’s … a dear …’ for she was hesitating, and again starting to speak, ‘you see, I don’t know what’s going to happen.’ He broke off. ‘You’d better take night things. And tell Mr Geddes to come at once – at once.’

  He hardly thought of them from that moment, but raced back up the stairs, pausing again at the door to pull himself together.

  He thought, vaguely, that until this moment he had always thrust anyone thought of as being deadly ill in body or mind into the hands of the experts. Now, he was the expert. Thank God, another would soon be on the way. He opened the door.

  The two had not moved. He shut the door and went across to a chair beside the fire and sat down – to wait.

  At first, he tried to pray, and then to fix his thoughts upon something holy – a line from the Psalms, some remembered painting of the Crucifixion – but it was useless; he could hear the words and see in his mind’s eye every detail of the painting, but he did not possess enough spiritual technique necessary for keeping them in his thoughts.

  He began to experience nothing but a detached curiosity. His moral sense told him that it was evil; yet he could feel nothing else, and the cold, crawling out from somewhere beyond the warmth of the summer evening, slowly burned into his flesh inside his clothes and began to seep inwards, in the form of this passionless curiosity, threatening his spirit.

  There had never been a
ny clock in the room, he realized, and he glanced at his wrist-watch, seeing, without thoughts, that it was … The glow was fading to a clear yellow; he watched the seemingly interminable change through the net veils at the window, and saw the colour die off the slate of the roofs, leaving them a dull warm grey; it was early yet … and it was Midsummer Eve, of course, Midsummer Eve … he gave a violent start.

  Pearson was weeping, without lifting his face from the surface of the bed, moving his shoulders shudderingly. A shock of horror struck Gerald, like a sudden blaze of heat: the creature beside Pearson on the bed had started up, Mrs Pearson’s beautiful hair falling about the face it had usurped, and was silently laughing.

  He could bear no more. He too sprang up, as the door opened, quickly but silently, and Mr Geddes came in, his pale face one question. Instantly, the triumphing creature, awkwardly turning Mrs Pearson’s head towards him, became quiet. It sank back, coiling into its hollow in the bedclothes.

  35

  Mr Geddes looked across at Gerald and beckoned, and Gerald got up and went over to the bed; on another gesture, he stationed himself on the other side.

  Stillness began to creep into the air. Pearson’s lamentations had ceased. Gerald noticed that Mr Geddes’s veined hands, clasped about a small Bible in a red cover, were trembling.

  It was a shock when he spoke: Pearson lifted his face, swollen and wet, from his arms to stare; and yet the sound was not impressive; Mr Geddes’s attempt to put sternness into it only emphasized a lack of strength in his ageing vocal chords.

  Gerald had expected a prayer, or some invocation. But he asked:

  ‘What is your name?’

  Silence. The thing neither moved nor made any sound. Pearson remained motionless, staring at Mr Geddes across his outflung arms; once he swallowed a sob, but did not move his eyes from the priest’s face.