Where Nothing Sleeps

by Denton Welch

  It was difficult to return the gaze of those sulky eyes. The thick red lips were set as though carved out of wood and painted. The whole face had the relentless quality of some Polynesian image or African juju. I felt that the only protection was for me to make my face as mask-like as her own. I tried to do this, and when she saw that I had nothing to say, she began speaking again herself.

  ‘Of course, it’s not much fun, you can’t really swim, it’s too shallow; I just splash about.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid of being seen?’ I asked, as colourlessly and casually as possible.

  ‘Oh, the trees make it quite private, but I wouldn’t care much if one of the gardeners did come along. He wouldn’t tell. Even if he did, Mello would only be a bit angry at first about his fish. I could get round him; he lets me do what I like.’

  This was spoken as we climbed the last few steps to the house. I was afraid that Mr Mellon might hear through the open window, but Phyllis did not even trouble to lower her voice.

  My father and Mrs Slade had sunk down on one of the stone seats on the terrace, and when Mr Mellon saw how hot my father was from the climb, he called out, ‘You’ll want something instead of tea, I can guess!’

  My father laughed and shook his head; but I think he was very pleased to see whisky and soda appear with the tea-tray.

  As soon as everything had been brought and we were left to ourselves once more, I turned to Mrs Slade and asked what had happened to the Indians.

  A bright stare came into her eyes, she held her neck so stiffly that barely perceptible tremors ran up to her head.

  ‘Oh, we had to get rid of them,’ she said, with careful smiling unconcern; ‘they were good at first, but we found that the cook was awfully extravagant—then we had trouble with one of the others.’

  There was a sudden gleam of fierceness in the soft brown eyes, as if some memory had stung her; the next moment it was drowned in smiles which asked me to believe that the Indians had been nothing but an amusing trivial episode. I wondered why the thought of the Indians should have excited Mrs Slade; I guessed that she had been worsted in some scene with one of them, and that her Eurasian blood still felt the outrage. I had never seen her angry before; there had been a sort of quenched anxiety and a preoccupation with the details of the day, but her attitude to other people had seemed unchanging. In public at least she treated her daughter and Mr Mellon with the same brittle sociability that she accorded to little-known guests. I remembered how as a child I had been disquieted both by her Eastern appearance and her mechanical smiles, and now a little of the uneasiness returned. I saw her as a woman who hid so much that when a spark of feeling did escape, it flashed with all the rage of the fire within. This rather sensational picture of her made me want to turn away from the long oily eyes, and the creamy cheeks that were too soft. I wanted the reassurance of my father’s sleepy good nature; even Mr Mellon’s embarrassing heartiness and Phyllis’s silences were refreshing.

  We sat long over tea—my father and Mr Mellon had begun to talk about the past; and so little time was left for our inspection of the house. I felt disappointed as we hurried down a wide gallery, glancing into room after room almost without pausing.

  I remember chiefly the various patterned rubber floors, the monotonous primrose and chromium of every fitting in the kitchen, and the fantastic decoration of the bedroom which Mrs Slade laughingly said should be mine when I came to stay, since I was fond of ‘artistic’ things.

  The modern four-post bed had a pagoda roof with little wooden bells under the curling eaves; it was painted in dull blue, pale meat-red and yellow ochre, and all the mouldings were picked out in gold. On the dusty mauve walls large dragons coiled towards each other ferociously; their claws and teeth and scales were also gilded. The chairs had elaborate latticework backs. Everything was so new, so matt, so European in spite of all Chinese hankerings, that I was reminded at once of some painted backcloth for Aladdin which I must have seen as a child; the furniture and walls had the same powdery distemper bloom, and the designs the same coarseness as the bold scene-painting.

  Here, as in every other room, I looked for the little ivory carving of the starving man that had so horrified me on my first visit to Mr Mellon, but it was nowhere to be seen. I doubt if it could have been found, even if I had not been so hurried; for everything was changed in this new house. Nearly all the floors, walls and hangings were in the pale shades associated with babies, powder-puffs and sugared almonds, just as the shrubs in the drive had the light feathery leaves that I had never seen at the villa. There everything had been rigid and glistening and tough; here all was downy, almost scented—even the fantastic things were in pastel colours. But in spite of all changes, something of the villa’s atmosphere remained. As we walked back to the octagon room to say goodbye to Mr Mellon, I tried without success to define what spirit it was that still lingered under the soft prettiness.

  Mr Mellon was gazing out of his huge window and taking snuff; I saw him for a moment through the crack of the door before he was aware of us. His face was quite blank and empty, more than ever like a peeled trunk of wood. The welcoming smile that suddenly puckered all the features gave me a stab of discomfort, so that I wished I had not caught him as he was alone.

  ‘Seen most things?’ he called out with rowdy boyishness. There was a flash of light as he put his jewelled box away.

  ‘Pity you hadn’t more time. All the more reason why you must come again.’

  He put his hand up to my shoulder to say goodbye; then, perhaps because he could no longer treat me as a child and hug me, he stretched out his other arm and caught Phyllis, who was moving towards the terrace. She allowed herself to be drawn to him with her usual seeming ill grace; he encircled her waist, swung her gently on her feet and gave her stomach a loving pat or two.

  ‘We’ll want to see him again very soon, won’t we, Phyl?’ he said.

  Phyllis grunted.

  I was becoming more and more uncomfortable, when the opening of the door created just the slight diversion necessary for a not too unnatural escape. As soon as the heavy hand was taken from my shoulder, I turned, to see a new face hovering in the doorway.

  ‘Yes, what is it, Bob?’ asked Mrs Slade, brightly.

  ‘Oh, excuse me, madam, I came to see if Mr Mellon was ready for his massage; it’s his time.’

  ‘In a minute, Bob, in a minute,’ Mr Mellon called from the other end of the room.

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ Bob said, and shut the door.

  There had just been time for me to take note of Bob’s curling fair hair, pink-brown colouring, and pursy cheeks. These last gave to his face the cast of an earlier century. His eyes seemed to stare a little, as though the lids were not quite full enough to cover them. He was near enough to my own age to make me conscious of his body under the white coat and dark trousers. It was as if I were asking myself, ‘Will I look anything like that in four or five years’ time? Will I have thick legs, thick arms, deep chest? Will I look so well-fed and strong?’

  He appeared to be a favourite of Mrs Slade’s, for she turned to me and said, ‘You’ve not seen Bob before, have you? He’s a very nice boy; he first came only as a valet; then we had him trained as a masseur, and now, although he’s only nineteen, he does everything for Mr Mellon. It is an excellent arrangement.’

  Mrs Slade might have been talking to herself, or to an intimate woman companion, instead of to a young boy; I realised that my appreciation of Bob would not satisfy. She wanted real enthusiasm.

  Mr Mellon held Phyllis till the last moment; then, as we were leaving the room, he released her with a playful spank, saying, ‘Off you go, Phylly, to wave goodbye.’

  But Phyllis did not run forward to escort us to the car; she ambled along, some way behind her mother.

  My last picture was of her leaning against the open door, while, in the hall behind, Bob hurried back to the octagon room to begin his master’s massage as soon as possible. Mrs Slade was showering us with busy smiles
and hand-wavings. The car started, we turned and were quickly lost in the feathery trees.

  Once more Mr Mellon, Mrs Slade and Phyllis disappeared from my life; I did not even hear of them, or if I heard, I quickly forgot the slight mention of some unimportant detail. But when I was nineteen, a new friend at the art school asked me to his parents’ home for Easter, and I accepted impulsively.

  So one grey evening I found myself in a little Sussex village, standing on an unknown doorstep, feeling very reluctant about ringing the bell.

  I need not have been anxious about my visit, for the house was comfortable and my friend’s mother seemed really pleased to see me.

  She had just returned from Egypt; it was clear that her husband and son had not listened to her experiences with nearly enough interest; she was delighted to be able to pour all her stories into a new ear, to have a listener who paid attention and seemed to want to know more.

  When asking me to stay, my friend had said rather brutally, ‘My mother’s an awful fool, you know.’ Perhaps she did show more capriciousness and wilfulness than is quite acceptable; but in spite of these slight signs of childish whining or petty tyranny, we were soon on very good terms, even going off together to explore churches and a ruined abbey, while the others stayed at home.

  When we came back from these expeditions, my friend would look at me as if he were wondering how I could have borne his mother’s company for a whole morning, or afternoon. I imagined that the father also flashed glances at me sometimes; he seemed to be looking for signs of weariness or irritation, and because he could not find them, he was grateful, more polite than ever, yet somehow less friendly. It was as if he were relieved to see my easiness with his wife, but felt cut off from real communication with me just because of it. I had the vague notion, perhaps quite fanciful, that both father and son would have preferred it if I had appeared to enjoy myself less.

  On the fourth or fifth day of my visit, John’s mother announced at breakfast that there was to be a tea-party in the afternoon. Extravagant groans came from John and his father, and once more they made me feel that I too ought to be pulling some sort of disapproving face instead of wearing the ridiculous smile of the perfect guest, pleased at any suggestion, however inane.

  Both John and his father had threatened to go out; but as the time for the guests to arrive drew near, I noticed that they were looking trim and fresh, as though their faces had been dipped in cold water, their hair brushed vigorously and their ties straightened.

  Tea for so many people had been laid on the long dining-room table, and I was placed next to my hostess.

  ‘Come and sit near me and help me with the teacups,’ she had called in her soft screech; ‘John is no use, he only thinks about his own stomach.’

  At first I had little time to listen to conversation because I was walking round the table with cups of tea and plates of buttered toast and scones; but when I came back to my place, the fluting, warbling tones of the woman on the other side of John’s mother caught my attention. There was the faintest suggestion of the electric guitar about her voice.

  ‘But, my dear,’ she was saying, ‘you should have been there; it was fantastic, but quite fantastic! In all our eighteen months of house-hunting we’ve never come across anything like it. All the floors were rubber; I had the awful feeling that I was trapped in a gigantic lavatory; it was terrifying. One room was fitted up as a sort of tea-house in Chinatown, another was sexagonal, I think, if there is such a word, and it doesn’t sound too rude; anyhow, all these six or more walls seemed to close in on one, and there was an enormous window which just screamed out for one of those horrible dentist’s chairs.’

  At first her words floated in a void, but as the description grew, they seemed to link up with something in my own experience; I began to listen intently.

  She was talking of the garden now.

  ‘Darling, even the plants were weird, and there were the most enormous rocks—rather marvellous really, if they hadn’t seemed so completely out of place. The money that must have been poured into that garden!’

  Surely there could be no more doubt? It was Mr Mellon’s house and garden that were being so cruelly described. I realised for the first time that, since we were so close to the border, Mr Mellon’s place in Kent could only be five or six miles away at the most. Feeling angry with this unknown woman for laughing at tastes that I myself had always thought strange, I decided to go over to see Mr Mellon as soon as possible; then it came back to me with a shock that she had been talking of a house that was to let or for sale, an empty house, whose key, decorated with a large label, must hang on one of the local house-agent’s hooks.

  Where had Mr Mellon gone? Was he at this moment building another house somewhere else? I suddenly wanted to know all that had happened since I last saw him.

  While the woman was describing the house and garden, John’s mother had not spoken, but her eyes had danced. Now the words came pouring out.

  ‘But Dulcie, didn’t you know? Didn’t anyone tell you about that house?’

  ‘Oh no, do tell me, I haven’t heard a word. Is it haunted by some horribly unclean spirit? Or has the most atrocious murder been committed there? I can believe anything, anything.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t a murder, but the place is quite possibly haunted by now,’ said John’s mother with satisfaction, her eyes dancing more than ever. A faint flush had come into her cheeks.

  She was in no hurry to reach the climax of her story; she seemed to wish to savour both her own excitement and the suspense of her audience.

  ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t have heard of it,’ she mused; ‘perhaps it is rather a local tragedy.’

  ‘Darling, stop maundering! I’m mad to know what happened.’

  ‘Well, you remember the rock garden?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the path leading down to the stream?’

  ‘Yes, yes, pet, don’t be so ponderous, I remember it all perfectly.’

  ‘Well, one day the housekeeper ran down the path, jumped into the stream and drowned herself.’

  The words seemed to tumble over each other, as if John’s mother had suddenly grown tired of trying to unfold her story skilfully. For a moment I could not grasp their full meaning, then the exclamation, ‘It’s Mrs Slade, she means Mrs Slade!’ kept ringing in my head like some battle-cry or line from a famous poem.

  ‘But why did she drown herself?’ the woman was asking. ‘We must know everything.’

  John’s mother beamed gratefully.

  ‘Of course I didn’t know them myself, but I’ve heard little bits from people who did; they’ve all said that it was the queerest household. The man was an invalid. He seems to have been very good indeed to this housekeeper, who was half-Japanese or something of that sort; he had even adopted her daughter.’

  The woman called Dulcie raised her bald-looking eyebrows.

  ‘Yes, I thought that rather an interesting point too,’ said John’s mother, ‘but anyhow, when this daughter suddenly eloped with the chauffeur, the mother was so upset that she just flung herself into the stream; and I’m told it’s only quite shallow. One of the gardeners found her later.’

  Something had mounted from my stomach to my heart, to my head. Perhaps I had turned very red. I looked at my hostess’s bright chirpy smile and understood why her son thought her so silly. Now that she had told her story she was like a bird waiting for crumbs. Her head was cocked a little to one side; she seemed to be contemplating her own winsomeness, to be modestly disclaiming any credit for the suicide which had interested us so much.

  Through the surge and tingle in my head, I found myself asking her if she was sure that the daughter had run away with a chauffeur.

  ‘Someone like that,’ she said, a little piqued to have her story questioned; ‘actually, now you ask me, I believe I did hear later that he was more the personal servant of the old man, the sort of valet-nurse.’

  ‘Was he called Bob?’ I asked, unable to stop myself.


  ‘How should I know?’

  John’s mother was staring at me curiously. She was about to ask if I knew the family. I picked up a plate of little cakes and started to pass them round the table. When the question came, I pretended not to hear, but I answered it under my breath, to myself, ‘Yes, I knew them, but not very well. She wasn’t half-Japanese, she was half-Javanese—I expect it was Bob who ran away with Phyllis; I only saw him once for a moment, but I can imagine it so easily with him. It must have been Bob.’

  People were already beginning to leave the table, to wander into the other room or talk in groups near the windows. I decided to put down my cakes on a side-table and escape into the hall.

  I was out, and nobody had called my name or appeared to notice me. I could hear the chatter and smell the cigarette smoke creeping under the door. It was still quite light outside; I opened the front door and let myself into the garden.

  I walked behind hedges until I came to the old stables; there I found John’s bicycle and began to pump the tyres. I tried the lamp and saw that the battery was fairly new. That was good. I would need it.

  By great good fortune I found my way without a mistake to the village nearest Mr Mellon’s house; after that my progress was more difficult. But at last someone directed me down the right lane; I came upon his drive, and had almost passed it before something told me to look again. Yes, that was the drive; the trees and bushes were bigger, but I could recognise them.

  It was dusk now; objects were beginning to lose their colour and sink into each other, like lead soldiers melting on the nursery fire. I saw an orange square of light somewhere through the trees and wondered if a caretaker lived there. I was suddenly afraid of being discovered in Mr Mellon’s grounds. What explanation of my prowling could I give? I remembered my mother saying, ‘Darling, don’t prowl so.’

  Pushing my bicycle into the shrubs, I walked swiftly down the drive till I came to the point where it turned and one saw the long squat house. I stood still, shocked by the blankness of the windows; they were oblong eyes over which a terrible fungus of nothingness was growing. And the porch was a great black mouth, the jaws of the whale that swallowed Jonah, the gates of Hell in an ancient wall-painting. I could not walk into the yawning cadaverous blackness under that plain brick arch; I could not even look through those neat metal casements, now that they had been turned into horrible eyes filmed with cataract. I stood back from the house, staring through its walls, picturing Phyllis and Bob as they prepared for flight. Phyllis would be packing everything of value into a small soft suitcase, while Bob waited rather desperately by the door. She would put in all the jewels and trinkets Mr Mellon had ever given her. She would be methodical, heavy, placid; but Bob would be pulling at his collar and jerking down his sleeves. His large eyes would roll from her to the door and back again. She would take no notice of his longing to be off, until the last object had been fitted in.