Where Nothing Sleeps

by Denton Welch

  The stone chapel with its high roof was indeed getting cold. Shadows had rounded off all the corners, and a black gloom floated above us in the rafters.

  ‘Yes, let’s light it,’ I said, ‘it’ll keep the ghosts away.’

  ‘Oogh, are there ghosts?’ the girl asked, making herself shudder all over.

  The man put his arm round her. ‘Don’t be silly, Vi,’ he said, ‘he’s only teasing.’

  Vi snuggled up to him, and for a moment I thought they were going to forget about me and the fire; then the girl broke from him, pushed back some of her curls, and said, ‘We must put some more paper under the wood.’

  She was down on her knees in a moment, crushing sheets of paper into balls and stuffing them under the branches. She held out her hand impatiently to Dan for the matches. Then she lit the pile in three places, and soon blue smoke spiralled up the chimney. Some of it came out into the room; but when the flames began to lick round the wood, the smoke subsided.

  We sat back in our chairs and watched the fire. ‘That’s more like it!’ the man Dan said. Vi went to sit on the arm of his chair, then she sank down lower and lower, until they were lying beside each other on the dirty brown corduroy cushions. He reached round her to light his pipe, crossing his eyes as he looked at the bowl.

  Now she lay with her head against his heart. He had thrown his head back and was blowing smoke up into the darkness of the ceiling.

  ‘It’s like sailing on the sea,’ she said dreamily, and I did not quite know what she meant until I realised that she was talking of the rise and fall of his breathing.

  He inflated his chest, then let the air gush out of his mouth suddenly. ‘Now there’s a stiff groundswell,’ he said, doing it again.

  Vi laughed and giggled, pretended to bite his nipple; she even put one of her hands between the buttons of his white shirt. He lay back, allowing her to do what she liked, contenting himself by only holding her against him.

  The leaping fire gained strength; it ate the twigs up greedily, making them spit and sizzle and curl. Now it was flickering on the white walls, throwing up the carved shapes of the lancets, and covering with an apricot glow the bare arms and legs of the lovers.

  They lay still for some time, until I thought that they might have fallen asleep, but at that moment the girl sat up, ready to tell me all about herself and Dan.

  Dan was a medical student in the midlands and she lived and worked nearby. They always tried to get their holidays together; then they went for these wonderful rambles in the country and returned home fit and brown and bursting with health.

  They both used the word ‘fit’ several times. ‘And may we ask what you do?’ the man said to me.

  ‘I’m an art student,’ I said nervously.

  ‘What else are you interested in?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know—history, houses and the old things inside them.’

  ‘But aren’t you interested in Nature?’ he asked incredulously. ‘Do you mean to say you like old chairs and tapestry better than woods such as we’ve been in today? Surely there’s nothing as beautiful as Nature! A fortnight like this keeps me going for the rest of the year.’

  ‘I’m more interested in things made by human beings than I am in nature, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like to walk in the country, else I wouldn’t be here, would I?’

  ‘But you probably only do it to get from one old ruin to another,’ he said vehemently.

  I hated all this nature-talk. It always brings the very worst out in people. I was silent until the girl said, ‘We want to see the College at Winchester.’ The man turned to me.

  ‘I don’t know what school you went to,’ he said, ‘but my school, although you’ve probably never heard of it, was much larger than Winchester—why, there were eight-hundred boys or more! It’s queer how small some of these well-known schools are, isn’t it?’

  ‘I saw rather a sissy boy,’ said Vi, rubbing her face against Dan’s as she spoke.

  ‘He only had a little white singlet on, and grey knickers, and he was running like anything, and his fair hair was all stuck to his face with perspiration. He was ever so thin and delicate-looking, I felt quite sorry for him.’

  She pulled Dan’s nose as she said this last sentence, hoping that he’d pretend to be jealous.

  ‘Vi always seems to like ‘wets’ so much; I often wonder why she ever took to me,’ he said placidly.

  ‘How do you know that I don’t think you’re a great big baby too?’ she asked; and she wiped his face, as if pretending that he’d been dribbling.

  ‘Oh, I say!’ he fended her off aggrievedly.

  ‘You’d better go after your Winchester boy if you want someone like that.’

  For a few moments no one spoke; the other two were content to lie together in the chair, and I was embarrassed by the talk of ‘wets’, and the playful nose-pulling. Then the man turned to me and asked:

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Eighteen,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you look about sixteen, but you talk as if you were ten years older. I’ve never met anyone like that before; it’s queer.’

  ‘Yes, I couldn’t quite make you out,’ the girl chimed in, ‘you seemed so young in some ways and quite grown-up in others.’

  I sat back, confused, wondering what they would say next. It was difficult to tell whether they were paying me compliments or merely dissecting and analysing me to my face.

  ‘Well, we’re very pleased we found you here; it’s good to have an interesting talk, isn’t it, Vi?’ She nodded her head. ‘Yes, it’s nice to have a discussion after a lovely day in the open air.’

  For one moment more they lay back; then the girl said:

  ‘Dan darling, I suppose we’ve got to go to bed. What a pity! I’ve got to go all across that dark stable-yard to the farmhouse. You must see me to the door; I couldn’t go alone in the dark.’

  He tried to struggle out of the chair, but they were too tightly wedged.

  ‘Get up, you fat lump you!’ he blustered, pretending to punch her sides. ‘You may look small, Vi, but you’re as fat as butter.’

  ‘Oh, you are a brute to insult me so,’ she wailed. She put her arms round his neck and seemed to flatten her face against his. I imagined mouths, noses, eyebrows pressed tightly together. I thought of their eyelashes tickling each other’s cheeks, when their eyes blinked.

  Vi jumped up, business-like and efficient again in a moment. She held her hand out to me. ‘Goodnight,’ she said, ‘this has been a nice evening. We’ll see you in the morning, I hope.’ Then she went out of the Gothic door on Dan’s arm. I heard her giving him instructions about the food and the bedding, as they crossed the yard. Once her voice seemed to be raised in protest. I could tell that she was managing, persuading and ordering him to do things.

  ‘Darling, what’s the good of doing anything unless you do it properly?’ floated in at the open door.

  He came back looking rather morose and cowed. We lit two candles and climbed up the spiral staircase. Our huge shadows were thrown on the curving wall.

  ‘Now is the ghostly time, don’t you think?’ I said, to start him talking.

  ‘The big shadows make it nice and creepy, don’t they,’ he answered.

  He chose a bed opposite to mine and unrolled the red blankets; then he sat down and pulled off his shoes, his socks and his shorts. His pipe rattled out on to the floor and he bent forward anxiously, to retrieve it. ‘Not broken, thank God,’ he said.

  He stuck it in his mouth, picked up his candle and started to wander round the room exploring. He looked grotesque with his bare legs and thighs, and with the pipe jutting out of his mouth. Putting his hands under his shirt, he beat a tattoo on his stomach.

  I showed him the beautiful privy and he laughed. Then we both rolled into bed and blew out our candles.

  ‘Glad there’s no one up top to lean out and be sick,’ he said. His double-decker bed swayed and creaked. ‘God, don’t they make a noi
se! You have to he pretty still in this sort of bed! They remind you of a ship though, don’t they.’

  I agreed, and then we spoke no more. Soon he was breathing very deeply and once I heard him mutter a few words in his sleep. I lay awake for some time; when I opened my eyes I saw the faint, pointed shape of light from the one lancet window.

  Vi came over from the farmhouse in the morning looking strained and anxious. She had been planning the whole day, and was terrified that Dan or some unseen force would spoil the pattern. ‘Darling, do hurry up and help me with the breakfast, else we’ll never get off; we’re missing half the day!’ she complained.

  Dan lumbered about, stuffing things into rucksacks and then taking them out again hurriedly, before she ordered him to do so.

  ‘What will it be like if they get married?’ I thought. ‘Will it all change? Will she become placid and cow-like and will he do the ranting and raving?’

  I left them snatching mouthfuls of food between kissings and cursings and grumblings. Dan had begun to look rather truculent, and he kissed her dutifully.

  I walked across to the farmhouse to pay my shilling for the night. The little mouse now lay dead in the kitchen porch. Neither the cat nor the kittens had eaten it; they paid no more attention, now that it could no longer run or scream. I found the nervous-breakdown man sitting by the empty grate in the dining-room as before. This time he did not make his escape, but contented himself by giving me a sort of skeleton grin; his mouth flashed into a fierce, square opening and remained thus for some moments.

  The lady of the manor—she had already told me that the farm should be called the manor—gave me a sweet gracious smile and asked me if, before I left, I’d like to go and see the cows being milked. She herself led me through the mud past the round pond.

  ‘That, of course, was the Knights Hospitallers’ fishpond,’ she said, throwing out her hand gracefully. ‘I expect they kept carp in it; there may even be some in it still. They live for hundreds of years, you know.’

  She looked at me closely to see if I believed her. ‘You didn’t see the lame priest last night, did you? I expect you were glad for the company when those others arrived so late,’ she added.

  We walked a few more steps through the mud. Then she said:

  ‘Just near here is the Tichborne estate. Have you ever heard of the Tichborne claimant? I remember my father telling me that he saw the great fat butcher once.’

  ‘I’ve read about it, and seen a print of the claimant in court. It was hanging up in an old pub in Kent,’ I answered. ‘Mustn’t it have been an amazing case!’

  She left me at the milking-shed, saying, ‘Ted will show you everything.’

  Ted was pouring milk into the top of the cooler and letting it dribble down. He showed me how the water coursed over the corrugated metal to cool the milk; then I left, not wanting to be shown any sights which would stop me from drinking milk for the rest of my life.

  I walked a little way down the road, under heavy trees, until I came to white park gates which I thought must belong to the Tichborne place. I wondered if the impostor had ever come down to drink and roister in the country, or whether he’d stayed in London the whole time, filling his ‘mother’s’ house with boozy friends and gamblers, while she quietly backed him up and believed in him.

  I could see no house, only lonely clumps of trees dotting the parkland. The heavy green loneliness filled me with melancholy. I turned back and decided to walk without stopping until I came to Winchester.

  The nice warden lent me the money for my fare home and I caught a train that afternoon.

  When I arrived at my grandfather’s house I found my aunt and my cousin Margaret standing in the drive. Margaret (who had evidently come to stay for a few days) smiled at me, but my aunt gaped.

  ‘I thought you were down in Devonshire,’ she said.

  ‘I was, but I ran out of money and had to get back quickly.’

  My aunt’s face clouded over; she looked worried and harassed.

  ‘We were just going out to tea. Will you come with us and sit in the car, or will you stay here?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I’ll come with you and sit in the car, or go for a walk,’ I decided hurriedly.

  I realised that my aunt did not think me presentable for strangers, but when I learnt that we were going to see my elderly cousin May, who had been ill and was recuperating near Seaford, I wondered why I was to be made to sit in the car outside. She it was who had given me refuge when I came back to London after running away from school. She had been nice to me and I liked her.

  ‘Can’t I come in with you to see May?’ I asked.

  ‘No, you’ll only upset her,’ my aunt said. ‘She doesn’t expect to see you and it will be a shock to her.’

  This was such a weak excuse that I could say no more. We drove on in silence until we came to the Downs above Seaford.

  ‘You’d better drop me here,’ I said with a certain amount of relish. ‘May would never let me sit in the car outside her house, and she’d be bound to see me.’

  My aunt stopped the car and I got out. Again she gave me an anxious, worried look.

  ‘We’ll pick you up here again at a quarter to six,’ she said, looking at her watch.

  The car started up, and I was left alone on the bare hillside. There was a little disused chalk quarry nearby; I climbed down between the miniature cliffs and sat down on a dusty ledge, sunning myself. My clothes were soon covered with white, and I began to sweat. Sheltered from the wind, the sun seemed very hot. I took off my shirt, and the jagged chalk wall pricked and tickled when I lay back. A trickle of sweat ran into one of my eyes and stung; I heard the rush of a car on the road outside, then there was silence. I wondered if the time would ever pass until a quarter to six.

  Somehow it did, for when at last I went out on to the road again, I saw a black beetle below me in the valley, which, as it came nearer, turned into my aunt’s car.

  She held open the door for me and said, ‘I hope you haven’t been bored up here.’

  I tried not to make any direct answer. I felt aggrieved. In fact, I was sulking. My cousin squeezed my hand and smiled and said something in a low gay murmur to me, something like, ‘It’s too bad!’ or ‘Never mind!’

  When we got back to the house my aunt asked: ‘Well, and what are you going to do now?’

  ‘If you’ll give me some money I’ll go off on my travels again,’ I said. This sounded evil, like a blackmailing threat, I thought.

  My aunt was talking as if, instead of saying that I would go away, I had said that I wanted to stay. ‘It’s too much for the maids with you as well as Margaret in the house, and—and I think it’s such frightful cheek just to turn up like this without giving us any warning at all.’ She had now become quite excited; the little stutter over the ‘ands’ had marked the change from normality.

  ‘Of course I can’t stay as you don’t want to have me. But will you let me have some money? If not, I can’t do anything. You can write to Daddy’s office and get it back within the week,’ I added as a rude afterthought.

  My aunt went red and I went red. She hurried up to her bedroom, and I went up to Margaret’s bedroom and sat on her bed with her for a few moments, looking at her drawings, and laughing and talking as naturally as I could.

  My aunt came in with some pound notes and gave them to me. I thanked her and left the house without even going in to the drawing-room to see my grandfather.

  Again I was setting out in the evening without knowing where I was to sleep. And again my feet led me to the river; but this time to a higher reach, to a place where the road-bridge had been washed away a hundred years ago. It had never been replaced, and now there was only a spindly black foot-bridge, high up on stilts above the water.

  I walked over the tussocky field towards it, nursing my grievance and my loneliness. Loneliness pierced into me here; everything was still as death, until the wind came to bend the grass or stroke the leaves of the trees the wrong way. B
ut when the gust stopped and the blades and the leaves fell back into place, the stillness seemed more binding than before.

  Before the bridge was a place where boys would bathe; the banks had fallen in, making a wider pool. I sat down near the crumbling edge, where bare feet had smoothed and flattened the mud.

  Looking across the water I wondered what to do. I had no plan, no looking-forward feeling. I was dead inside, with no adventurousness.

  I threw a crumb of earth into the water, and as I watched the silky rings and folds spreading over the water I became conscious of another movement, above this one, on the other bank of the river. Someone was opening the garden gate of the old plastered farmhouse, the only building in sight.

  The figure was lichen-coloured, like the stone-slab roof of the house. Although he was quite near, his outline melted into the trees and the bushes. As he crossed the spidery black bridge and I saw him against the sky, I realised that he was young. From the lichen-colour of his clothes I had expected him to be old. He came swinging towards me over the uneven ground, putting his feet down in the loose, almost swaggering way which told me that he walked all day over rough fields and ploughed land.

  ‘You going in?’ he asked pleasantly, unrolling the dirty white towel which had been tucked under his arm.

  For some reason I only smiled and shook my head. I think I must have been too surprised to speak, for, from his shining brass hair to his dung-caked boots, this was a very beautiful man. He seemed to have a liquid or varnish of life spread over his skin, his teeth, his eyes, his hair.

  ‘If there are any women round here they’re going to get an eyeful,’ he said, and started to pull his shirt over his head. He undid his belt, and his breeches concertinaed into folds round his knees. He stood there with his head and arms enveloped in the shirt, and his legs entangled in the breeches. I heard his laughing and swearing, muffled by the shirt—he seemed to be trying to undo a button with his teeth—but I did not help him. I sat looking at his body, shocked by its junket whiteness. His arms and his face had been brick-dust colour, the skin taut and shining. I could hardly believe that the rest of his body was as white and matt as oatmeal. I knew that when he pulled his head and his arms out of the shirt he would look as if he wore long tawny gloves and helmet.