by Louise Welsh
“What did – her brother – say?” I asked faintly.
“He didn’t say anything. When I spoke to him, he just smiled. They’ll be home by now, I should think. I say, do you feel all right?”
“Yes, thank you. I must go home.”
I ran all the way home through the burning streets.
“Chris! Christine, where are you? Chris! Chris!” Sometimes even now I hear my own voice of the past screaming through the cold house. “Christine! Chris! Where are you? Answer me! Chrrriiiiiss!” Then: “Harry! Don’t take her away! Come back! Harry! Harry!”
Demented, I rushed out into the garden. The sun struck me like a hot blade. The roses glared whitely. The air was so still I seemed to stand in timelessness, placelessness. For a moment, I seemed very near to Christine, although I couldn’t see her. Then the roses danced before my eyes and turned red. The world turned red. Blood red. Wet red. I fell through redness to blackness to nothingness – to almost death.
For weeks I was in bed with sunstroke which turned to brain fever. During that time Jim and the police searched for Christine in vain. The futile search continued for months. The papers were full of the strange disappearance of the red-haired child. The teacher described the “brother” who had called for her. There were newspaper stories of kidnapping, baby-snatching, child-murders.
Then the sensation died down. Just another unsolved mystery in police files.
And only two people knew what had happened. An old crazed woman living in a derelict house, and myself.
Years have passed. But I walk in fear.
Such ordinary things make me afraid. Sunshine. Sharp shadows on grass. White roses. Children with red hair. And the name – Harry. Such an ordinary name!
THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME
Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark (1918–2006) was born Muriel Sarah Camberg in Edinburgh, to a Jewish father and Presbyterian mother. Spark married Sydney Oswald Spark in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). He was unstable and the marriage quickly ended. She worked in intelligence during World War II and afterwards pursued her writing. Her novels include The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Driver’s Seat. She left Britain in 1963. Spark received an OBE in 1967 and was made a DBE in 1993. She died in Italy.
It was just gone quarter past six when I left the office.
“Teedle-um-tum-tum” – there was the tune again, going round my head. Mr Letter had been whistling it all throughout the day between his noisy telephone calls and his dreamy sessions. Sometimes he whistled “Softly, Softly, Turn the Key”, but usually it was “The Girl I Left Behind Me” rendered at a brisk hornpipe tempo.
I stood in the bus queue, tired out, and wondering how long I would endure Mark Letter (Screws & Nails) Ltd. Of course, after my long illness, it was experience. But Mr Letter and his tune, and his sudden moods of bounce, and his sudden lapses into lassitude, his sandy hair and little bad teeth, roused my resentment, especially when his tune barrelled round my head long after I had left the office; it was like taking Mr Letter home.
No one at the bus stop took any notice of me. Well, of course, why should they? I was not acquainted with anyone there, but that evening I felt particularly anonymous among the homegoers. Everyone looked right through me and even, it seemed, walked through me. Late autumn always sets my fancy towards sad ideas. The starlings were crowding in to roost on all the high cornices of the great office buildings. And I located, among the misty unease of my feelings, a very strong conviction that I had left something important behind me or some job incompleted at the office. Perhaps I had left the safe unlocked, or perhaps it was something quite trivial which nagged at me. I had half a mind to turn back, tired as I was, and reassure myself. But my bus came along and I piled in with the rest.
As usual, I did not get a seat. I clung to the handrail and allowed myself to be lurched back and forth against the other passengers. I stood on a man’s foot, and said, “Oh, sorry.” But he looked away without response, which depressed me. And more and more, I felt that I had left something of tremendous import at the office. “Teedle-um-tum-tum” – the tune was a background to my worry all the way home. I went over in my mind the day’s business, for I thought, now, perhaps it was a letter which I should have written and posted on my way home.
That morning I had arrived at the office to find Mark Letter vigorously at work. By fits, he would occasionally turn up at eight in the morning, tear at the post and, by the time I arrived, he would have dispatched perhaps half a dozen needless telegrams; and before I could get my coat off, would deliver a whole day’s instructions to me, rapidly fluttering his freckled hands in time with his chattering mouth. This habit used to jar me, and I found only one thing amusing about it; that was when he would say, as he gave instructions for dealing with each item, “Mark letter urgent.” I thought that rather funny coming from Mark Letter, and I often thought of him, as he was in those moods, as Mark Letter Urgent.
As I swayed in the bus I recalled that morning’s excess of energy on the part of Mark Letter Urgent. He had been more urgent than usual, so that I still felt put out by the urgency. I felt terribly old for my twenty-two years as I raked round my mind for some clue as to what I had left unfinished. Something had been left amiss; the further the bus carried me from the office, the more certain I became of it. Not that I took my job to heart very greatly, but Mr Letter’s moods of bustle were infectious, and when they occurred I felt fussy for the rest of the day; and although I consoled myself that I would feel better when I got home, the worry would not leave me.
By noon, Mr Letter had calmed down a little, and for an hour before I went to lunch he strode round the office with his hands in his pockets, whistling between his seedy brown teeth that sailors’ song “The Girl I Left Behind Me”. I lurched with the bus as it chugged out the rhythm, “Teedle-um-tum-tum. Teedle-um…” Returning from lunch I had found silence, and wondered if Mr Letter was out, until I heard suddenly, from his tiny private office, his tune again, a low swift hum, trailing out towards the end. Then I knew that he had fallen into one of his afternoon daydreams.
I would sometimes come upon him in his little box of an office when these trances afflicted him. I would find him sitting in his swivel chair behind his desk. Usually he had taken off his coat and slung it across the back of his chair. His right elbow would be propped on the desk, supporting his chin, while from his left hand would dangle his tie. He would gaze at this tie; it was his main object of contemplation. That afternoon I had found him tie-gazing when I went into his room for some papers. He was gazing at it with parted lips so that I could see his small, separated discoloured teeth, no larger than a child’s first teeth. Through them he whistled his tune. Yesterday, it had been “Softly, Softly, Turn the Key”, but today it was the other.
I got off the bus at my usual stop, with my fare still in my hand. I almost threw the coins away, absentmindedly thinking they were the ticket, and when I noticed them I thought how nearly no one at all I was, since even the conductor had, in his rush, passed me by.
Mark Letter had remained in his dream for two and a half hours. What was it I had left unfinished? I could not for the life of me recall what he had said when at last he emerged from his office-box. Perhaps it was then I had made tea. Mr Letter always liked a cup when he was neither in his frenzy nor in his abstraction, but ordinary and talkative. He would speak of his hobby, fretwork. I do not think Mr Letter had any home life. At forty-six he was still unmarried, living alone in a house at Roehampton. As I walked up the lane to my lodgings I recollected that Mr Letter had come in for his tea with his tie still dangling from his hand, his throat white under the open-neck shirt, and his “Teedle-um-tum-tum” in his teeth.
At last I was home and my Yale in the lock. Softly, I said to myself, softly turn the key, and thank God I’m home. My landlady passed through the hall from kitchen to diningroom with a salt and pepper cruet in her crinkly hands. She had some new lodgers. “My guests”, she always called them. The new guests
took precedence over the old with my landlady. I felt desolate. I simply could not climb the stairs to my room to wash, and then descend to take brown soup with the new guests while my landlady fussed over them, ignoring me. I sat for a moment in the chair in the hall to collect my strength. A year’s illness drains one, however young. Suddenly the repulsion of the brown soup and the anxiety about the office made me decide. I would not go upstairs to my room. I must return to the office to see what it was that I had overlooked.
“Teedle-um-tum-tum” – I told myself that I was giving way to neurosis. Many times I had laughed at my sister who, after she had gone to bed at night, would send her husband downstairs to make sure all the gas taps were turned off, all the doors locked, back and front. Very well, I was as silly as my sister, but I understood her obsession, and simply opened the door and slipped out of the house, tired as I was, making my weary way back to the bus stop, back to the office.
“Why should I do this for Mark Letter?” I demanded of myself. But really, I was not returning for his sake, it was for my own. I was doing this to get rid of the feeling of incompletion, and that song in my brain swimming round like a damned goldfish.
I wondered, as the bus took me back along the familiar route, what I would say if Mark Letter should still be at the office. He often worked late, or at least, stayed there late, doing I don’t know what, for his screw and nail business did not call for long hours. It seemed to me he had an affection for those dingy premises. I was rather apprehensive lest I should find Mr Letter at the office, standing, just as I had last seen him, swinging his tie in his hand, beside my desk. I resolved that if I should find him there, I should say straight out that I had left something behind me.
A clock struck quarter past seven as I got off the bus. I realized that again I had not paid my fare. I looked at the money in my hand for a stupid second. Then I felt reckless. “Teedle-um-tum-tum” – I caught myself humming the tune as I walked quickly up the sad side street to our office. My heart knocked at my throat, for I was eager. Softly, softly, I said to myself as I turned the key of the outside door. Quickly, quickly, I ran up the stairs. Only outside the office door I halted, and while I found its key on my bunch it occurred to me how strangely my sister would think I was behaving.
I opened the door and my sadness left me at once. With a great joy I recognized what it was I had left behind me, my body lying strangled on the floor. I ran towards my body and embraced it like a lover.
POOR GIRL
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor (1912–1975), née Coles, was born in Reading, Berkshire. Her novels and short stories are understated, witty examinations of middle-class English life and manners. She married John Taylor, the director of a sweet factory, and the couple had two children. Taylor wrote her first novel, At Mrs Lippincote’s (1945) while her husband was serving in the RAF. She gave the impression of a life more domestic than literary, telling an interviewer that she worked her novels out, ‘when I am doing the ironing’.
Miss Chasty’s first pupil was a flirtatious little boy. At seven years, he was alarmingly precocious, and sometimes she thought that he despised his childhood, regarding it as a waiting time which he used only as a rehearsal for adult life. He was already more sophisticated than his young governess and disturbed her with his air of dalliance, the mockery with which he set about his lessons, the preposterous conversations he led her into, guiding her skilfully away from work, confusing her with bizarre conjectures and irreverent ideas, so that she would clasp her hands tightly under the plush tablecloth and pray that his father would not choose such a moment to observe her teaching, coming in abruptly as he sometimes did and signalling to her to continue the lesson.
At those times, his son’s eyes were especially lively, fixed cruelly upon his governess as he listened, smiling faintly, to her faltering voice, measuring her timidity. He would answer her questions correctly, but significantly, as if he knew that by his aptitude he rescued her from dismissal. There were many governesses waiting employment, he implied – and this was so at the beginning of the century. He underlined her good fortune at having a pupil who could so easily learn, could display the results of her teaching to such an advantage for the benefit of the rather sombre, pompous figure seated at the window. When his father, apparently satisfied, had left them without a word, the boy’s manner changed. He seemed fatigued and too absentminded to reply to any more questions.
“Hilary!” she would say sharply. “Are you attending to me?” Her sharpness and her foolishness amused him, coming as he knew they did from the tension of the last ten minutes.
“Why, my dear girl, of course.”
“You must address me by my name.”
“Certainly, dear Florence.”
“Miss Chasty.”
His lips might shape the words, which he was too weary to say.
Sometimes, when she was correcting his sums, he would come round the table to stand beside her, leaning against her heavily, looking closely at her face, not at his book, breathing steadily down his nose so that tendrils of hair wavered on her neck and against her cheeks. His stillness, his concentration on her and his too heavy leaning, worried her. She felt something experimental in his attitude, as if he were not leaning against her at all, but against someone in the future. “He is only a baby,” she reminded herself, but she would try to shift from him, feeling a vague distaste. She would blush, as if he were a grown man, and her heart could be heard beating quickly. He was aware of this and would take up the corrected book and move back to his place.
Once he proposed to her and she had the feeling that it was a proposal-rehearsal and that he was making use of her, as an actor might ask her to hear his lines.
“You must go on with your work” she said.
“I can shade in a map and talk as well.”
“Then talk sensibly.”
“You think I am too young, I daresay; but you could wait for me to grow up, I can do that quickly enough.”
“You are far from grownup at the moment.”
“You only say these things because you think that governesses ought to. I suppose you don’t know how governesses go on, because you have never been one until now, and you were too poor to have one of your own when you were young.”
“That is impertinent, Hilary.”
“You once told me your father couldn’t afford one.”
“Which is a different way of putting it.”
“I shouldn’t have thought they cost much.” He had a way of just making a remark, of breathing it so gently that it was scarcely said, and might conveniently be ignored.
He was a dandified boy. His smooth hair was like a silk cap, combed straight from the crown to a level line above his topaz eyes. His sailor-suits were spotless. The usual boldness changed to an agonised fussiness if his serge sleeve brushed against chalk or if he should slip on the grassy terrace and stain his clothes with green. On their afternoon walks he took no risks and Florence, who had younger brothers, urged him in vain to climb a tree or jump across puddles. At first, she thought him intimidated by his mother or nurse; but soon she realised that his mother entirely indulged him and the nurse had her thoughts all bent upon the new baby; his fussiness was just another part of his grownupness come too soon.
The house was comfortable, although to Florence rather too sealed-up and overheated after her own damp and draughty home. Her work was not hard and her loneliness only what she had expected. Cut off from the kitchen by her education, she lacked the feuds and camaraderie, gossip and cups of tea, which make life more interesting for the domestic staff. None of the maids – coming to light the lamp at dusk or laying the schoolroom-table for tea – ever presumed beyond a remark or two about the weather.
One late afternoon, she and Hilary returned from their walk and found the lamps already lit. Florence went to her room to tidy herself before tea. When she came down to the schoolroom, Hilary was already there, sitting on the window-seat and staring out ov
er the park as his father did. The room was bright and warm and a maid had put a white cloth over the plush one and was beginning to lay the table.
The air was full of a heavy scent, dry and musky. To Florence, it smelt quite unlike the eau de cologne she sometimes sprinkled on her handkerchief, when she had a headache, and she disapproved so much that she returned the maid’s greeting coldly and bade Hilary open the window.
“Open the window, dear girl?” he said. “We shall catch our very deaths.”
“You will do as I ask and remember in future how to address me.”
She was angry with the maid – who now seemed to her an immoral creature – and angry to be humiliated before her.
“But why?” asked Hilary.
“I don’t approve of my schoolroom being turned into a scented bower.” She kept her back to the room and was trembling, for she had never rebuked a servant before.
“I approve of it,” Hilary said, sniffing loudly.
“I think it’s lovely,” the maid said. “I noticed it as soon as I opened the door.”
“Is this some joke, Hilary?” Florence asked when the girl had gone.
“No. What?”
“This smell in the room?”
“No. You smell of it most, anyhow.” He put his nose to her sleeve and breathed deeply.
It seemed to Florence that this was so, that her clothes had caught the perfume among the folds. She lifted her palms to her face, then went to the window and leant out into the air as far as she could.
“Shall I pour out the tea, dear girl?”
“Yes, please.”
She took her place at the table abstractedly, and as she drank her tea she stared about the room, frowning. When Hilary’s mother looked in, as she often did at this time, Florence stood up in a startled way.
“Good-evening, Mrs Wilson. Hilary, put a chair for your mamma.”