by Tanith Lee
Her face stayed shut, and then she shut the door too.
I walked quickly along Sea View Terrace, walking without having yet caught up to myself, an automaton. This was naturally an act, to convince Mrs. Antacid, and the unseen watchers in their houses, and the huge dark watcher of the night itself, that I knew precisely where I wanted to go now, and had no more time to squander. After about half a minute, self-awareness put me wise, and I stopped dead. Then I did what I really felt compelled to do, still without understanding why. I reversed my direction, walked back along the terrace, and into the curling alley that ran down between Number 19, and the shoulder of the cliff.
I didn’t have to go very far to see the truth of the amorphous thing I had somehow deductively fashioned already, in my mind. The back of Number 19, which would normally have looked towards the sea, was enclosed by an enormous brick wall. It was at least fourteen feet high—the topmost windows of the house were barely visible above it. I wandered how the council had been persuaded to permit such a wall. Maybe some consideration of sea-gales had come into it.... The next door house, I now noticed for the first time, appeared empty, touched by mild dereliction. A humped black tree that looked like a deformed cypress grew in the garden there, a further barrier against open vistas. No lights were visible in either house, even where the preposterous wall allowed a glimpse of them.
I thought about prisons, while the excluded sea roared ferociously at the bottom of the alley.
I walked along the terrace again, and caught the bus home.
Sunday was cold and clear, and I went out with my camera, because there was too much pure-ice wind to sketch. The water was like mercury under colourless sunlight. That evening, Angela had a party to which I had been invited. I drank too much, and a good-looking oaf called Ray mauled me about. I woke on Monday morning with the intense moral shame that results from the knowledge of truly wasted time.
Monday was my free day, or the day on which I performed my personal chores. I was loading the bag ready for the launderette when I remembered—the connection is elusive, but possibly Freudian—that I hadn’t got the pre-paid receipt back from Mrs. Besmouth. Not that it would matter too much. Such records tended to be scrappy in Angela’s department. I could leave it, and no one would die.
At eleven-thirty, I was standing by the door of Number 19, the knocker knocked and my heart was in my mouth.
I’ve always been obsessive. It’s brought me some success, and quite a lot of disillusion, not to mention definite hurt. But I’m used to the excitement and trauma of it, and even then I was; used to my heart in my mouth, the trembling in my hands, the deep breath I must take before I could speak.
The door opened on this occasion quite quickly. She stood in the pale hard sunlight. I was beginning to learn her face, and its recalcitrant, seldom-varying expression. But she had on a different apron.
“Oh,” she said, “It’s you.”
She’d expected me. She didn’t exactly show it, she hadn’t guessed what my excuse would be. But she’d known, just as I had, that I would come back.
“Look, I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “I forgot to ask you for the receipt.”
“What receipt?”
“When you paid for the garment, they gave you a receipt. That one.”
“I threw it away,” she said.
“Oh. Oh well, never mind.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“No, it’s all right. Really.” I pulled air down into me like the drag of a cigarette, or a reefer. “How’s Daniel today?”
She looked at me, her face unchanging.
“He’s all right.”
“I hoped I hadn’t—well—upset him. By being there,” I said.
“He doesn’t notice,” she said. “He didn’t notice you.”
There was a tiny flash of spite when she said that. It really was there. Because of it, I knew she had fathomed me, perhaps from the beginning. Now was therefore the moment to retreat in good order.
“I was wondering,” I said, “What you told me, that you find it difficult to make the time to get to the town centre.”
“I do,” she said.
“I have to go shopping there today. If there’s anything you need I could get you.”
“Oh no,” she said swiftly. “There’s local shops on The Rise.”
“I don’t mind,” I said.
“I can manage.”
“I’d really like to. It’s no bother. For one thing,” I added, “the local shops are all daylight robbers round here, aren’t they?”
She faltered. Part of her wanted to slam the door in my face. The other part was nudging her: Go on, let this stupid girl fetch and carry for you, if she wants to.
“If you want to, there are a few things. I’ll make you a list.”
“Yes, do.”
“You’d better come in,” she said, just like last time.
I followed her, and she left me to close the door, a sign of submission indeed. As we went into the back room, the adrenalin stopped coming, and I knew he wasn’t there. There was something else, though. The lights were on, and the curtains were drawn across the windows. She saw me looking, but she said nothing. She began to write on a piece of paper.
I wandered to the red chair, and rested my hands on the back of it.
“Daniel’s upstairs,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“But he’s—he’s well?”
“He’s all right. I don’t get him up until dinner time. He just has to sit anyway, when he’s up.”
“It must be difficult for you, lifting him.”
“I manage. I have to.”
“But—”
“It’s no use going on about home-helps again,” she said. “It’s none of their business.”
She meant mine, of course. I swallowed, and said, “Was it an accident?” I’m rarely so blunt, and when I am, it somehow comes out rougher from disuse. She reacted obscurely, staring at me across the table.
“No, it wasn’t. He’s always been that way. He’s got no strength in his lower limbs, he doesn’t talk, and he doesn’t understand much. His father was at sea, and he went off and left me before Daniel was born. He didn’t marry me, either. So now you know everything, don’t you?”
I took my hand off the chair.
“But somebody should—”
“No they shouldn’t.”
“Couldn’t he be helped—?” I blurted.
“Oh, no,” she said. “So if that’s what you’re after, you can get out now.”
I was beginning to be terrified of her. I couldn’t work it out if Daniel was officially beyond aid, and that’s where her hatred sprang from, or if she had never attempted to have him aided, if she liked or needed or had just reasonlessly decided (God’s will, My Cross) to let him rot alive. I didn’t ask.
“I think you’ve got a lot to cope with,” I said. “I can give you a hand, if you want it. I’d like to.”
She nodded.
“Here’s the list.”
It was a long list, and after my boast, I’d have to make sure I saved her money on the local shops. She walked into the kitchen and took a box out of a drawer. The kitchen windows were also curtained. She came back with a five-pound note I wasn’t sure would be enough.
When I got out of the house, I was coldly sweating. If I had any sense I would now, having stuck myself with it, honourably do her shopping, hand it to her at the door, and get on my way. I wasn’t any kind of a crusader, and, as one of life’s more accomplished actors, even I could see I had blundered into the wrong play.
It was one o’clock before I’d finished her shopping. My own excursion to the launderette had been passed over, but her fiver had just lasted. The list was quite commonplace; washing powder, jam, flour, kitchen towels... I went into the pub opposite the store and had a gin and tonic. Nevertheless, I was shaking with nerves by the time I got back to Number 19. This was the last visit. This was it.
Gusts of white sunlight were blowing over the cliff. It was getting up rough in the bay, and the no-swimming notices had gone up.
She was a long while opening the door. When she did, she looked very odd, yellow-pale and tottery. Not as I’d come to anticipate. She was in her fifties, and suddenly childlike, insubstantial.
“Come in,” she said, and wandered away down the passage.
There’s something unnerving about a big strong persona that abruptly shrinks pale and frail. It duly unnerved me, literally in fact, and my nerves went away. Whatever had happened, I was in command.
I shut the door and followed her into the room. She was on the settee, sitting forward. Daniel still wasn’t there. For the first time it occurred to me Daniel might be involved in this collapse, and I said quickly: “Something’s wrong. What is it? Is it Daniel? Is he OK?”
She gave a feeble contemptuous little laugh.
“Daniel’s all right. I just had a bit of an accident. Silly thing, really, but it gave me a bit of a turn for a minute.”
She lifted her left hand in which she was clutching a red and white handkerchief. Then I saw the red pattern was drying blood. I put the shopping on the table and approached cautiously.
“What have you done?”
“Just cut myself. Stupid. I was chopping up some veg for our dinner. Haven’t done a thing like this since I was a girl.”
I winced. Had she sliced her finger off and left it lying among the carrots? No, don’t be a fool. Even she wouldn’t be so acquiescent if she had. Or would she?
“Let me see,” I said, putting on my firm and knowledgeable act, which has once or twice kept people from the brink of panic when I was in a worse panic than they were. To my dismay, she let go the handkerchief, and offered me her wound unresistingly.
It wasn’t a pretty cut, but a cut was all it was, though deep enough almost to have touched the bone. I could see from her digital movements that nothing vital had been severed, and fingers will bleed profusely if you hit one of the blood vessels at the top.
“It’s not too bad,” I said. “I can bandage it up for you. Have you got some TCP?”
She told me where the things were in the kitchen, and I went to get them. The lights were still on, the curtains were still drawn. Through the thin plastic of the kitchen drapes I could detect only flat darkness. Maybe the prison wall around the garden kept daylight at bay.
I did a good amateur job on her finger. The bleeding had slackened off.
“I should get a doctor to have a look at it, if you’re worried.”
“I never use doctors,” she predictably said.
“Well, a chemist, then.”
“It’ll be all right. You’ve done it nicely. Just a bit of a shock.” Her colour was coming back, what she had of it.
“Shall I make you a cup of tea?”
“That’d be nice.”
I returned to the kitchen and put on the kettle. The tea apparatus sat all together on a tray, as if waiting. I looked at her fawn fizzy head over the settee back, and the soft coal-fire glows disturbing the room. It was always night time here, and always nineteen-thirty.
The psychological aspect of her accident hadn’t been lost on me. I supposed, always looking after someone, always independently alone, she’d abruptly given way to the subconscious urge to be in her turn looked after. She’d given me control. It frightened me.
The kettle started to boil, and I arranged the pot. I knew how she’d want her tea, nigrescently stewed and violently sweet. Her head elevated. She was on her feet.
“I’ll just go and check Daniel.”
“I can do that, if you like,” I said before I could hold my tongue.
“That’s all right,” she said. She went out and I heard her go slowly up the stairs. Big and strong, how did she, even so, carry him down them?
I made the tea. I could hear nothing from upstairs. The vegetables lay scattered where she had left them, though the dangerous knife had been put from sight. On an impulse, I pulled aside a handful of kitchen curtain.
I wasn’t surprised at what I saw. Somehow I must have worked it out, though not been aware I had. I let the curtain coil again into place, then carried the tea tray into the room. I set it down, and went to the room’s back window, and methodically inspected that, too. It was identical to the windows of the kitchen. Both had been boarded over outside with planks of wood behind the glass. Not a chink of light showed. It must have been one terrific gale that smashed these windows and necessitated such a barricade. Strange the boarding was still there, after she’d had the glass replaced.
I heard her coming down again, but she had given me control, however briefly. I’d caught the unmistakable scent of something that wants to lean, to confess. I was curious, or maybe it was the double gin catching up on me. Curiosity was going to master fear. I stayed looking at the boarding, and let her discover me at it when she came in.
I turned when she didn’t say anything. She simply looked blankly at me, and went to sit on the settee.
“Daniel’s fine,” she said. “He’s got some of his books. Picture books. He can see the pictures, though he can’t read the stories. You can go up and look at him, if you like.”
That was a bribe. I went to the tea and started to pour it, spooning a mountain of sugar in her cup.
“You must be expecting a lot of bad weather, Mrs Besmouth.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes. The windows.”
I didn’t think she was going to say anything. Then she said, “They’re boarded over upstairs too, on the one side.”
“The side facing out to sea.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you build the wall up, too?”
She said, without a trace of humour, “Oh no. I got a man in to do that.”
I gave her the tea, and she took it, and drank it straight down, and held the cup out to me.
“I could fancy another.”
I repeated the actions with the tea. She took the second cup, but looked at it, not drinking. The clock ticked somnolently. The room felt hot and heavy and peculiarly still, out of place and time and light of sun or moon.
“You don’t like the sea, do you?” I said. I sat on the arm of the red chair, and watched her.
“Not much. Never did. This was my dad’s house. When he died, I kept on here. Nowhere else to go.” She raised her elastoplasted hand and stared at it. She looked very tired, very flaccid, as if she’d given up. “You know,” she said, “I’d like a drop of something in this. Open that cupboard, will you? There’s a bottle just inside.”
I wondered if she were the proverbial secret drinker, but the bottle was alone, and three quarters full, quite a good whisky.
She drank some of the tea and held the cup so I could ruin the whisky by pouring it in. I poured, to the cup’s brim.
“You have one,” she said. She drank, and smacked her lips softly. “You’ve earned it. You’ve been a good little girl.”
I poured the whisky neat into the other tealess cup and drank some, imagining it smiting the gin below with a clash of swords.
“I’ll get merry,” she said desolately. “I didn’t have my dinner. The pie’ll be spoiled. I turned the oven out.”
“Shall I get you a sandwich?”
“No. But you can make one for Daniel, if you like.”
“Yes,” I said.
I got up and went into the kitchen. It was a relief to move away from her. Something was happening to Daniel’s mother, something insidious and profound. She was accepting me, drawing me in. I could feel myself sinking in the quagmire.
As I made the sandwich from ingredients I came on more or less at random, she started to talk to me. It was a ramble of things, brought on by the relaxations of spilled blood and liquor, and the fact that there had seldom been anyone to talk to. As I buttered bread, sliced cheese and green cucumber, I learned how she had waited on and borne with a cantankerous father, nursed him, finally seen him off through the d
oor in a box. I learned how she weighed meat behind the butcher’s counter and did home-sewing, and how she had been courted by a plain stodgy young man, a plumber’s assistant, and all she could come by in an era when it was essential to come by something. And how eventually he jilted her.
The whisky lay in a little warm pool across the floor of my mind. I began irresistibly to withdraw inside myself, comparing her hopeless life with mine, the deadly job leading nowhere, the loneliness. And all at once I saw a horrid thing, the horrid thing I had brought upon myself. Her position was not hereditary, and might be bestowed. By speaking freely, she was making the first moves. She was offering me, slyly, her mantle. The role of protectress, nurse and mother, to Daniel—
I arranged the sandwich slowly on a plate. There was still time to run away. Lots of time.
“Just walking,” I heard her say. “You didn’t think about it then. Not like now. The sea was right out, and it was dark. I never saw him properly. They’d make a fuss about it now, all right. Rape. You didn’t, then. I was that innocent, I didn’t really know what he was doing. And then he let go and left me. He crawled off. I think he must have run along the edge of the sea, because I heard a splashing. And when the tide started to come in again, I got up and I tidied myself, and I walked home.”
I stood quite still in the kitchen, the sandwich on its plate in my hands, wide-eyed, listening.
“I didn’t know I was pregnant, thought I’d eaten something. The doctor put me right. He told me what he thought of me, too. Not in words, exactly, just his manner. Rotten old bugger. I went away to have the baby. Everybody knew, of course. When he was the way he was, they thought it was a punishment. They were like that round here, then. I lived off the allowance, and what I had put by, and I couldn’t manage. And then, I used to steal things, what do you think of that? I never got found out. Just once, this woman stopped me. She said: I think you have a tin of beans in your bag. I had, too, and the bill. What a red face she got. She didn’t tumble the other things I’d taken and hadn’t paid for. Then I had a windfall. The old man I used to work for, the butcher, he died, and he left me something. That was a real surprise. A few thousand it was. And I put it in the Society, and I draw the interest.”