Dark Night in Toyland

by Bob Shaw

  “Willett,” she said in tones of wonderment, “why is the little watering-can lit up?”

  He closed his eyes in exaggerated disbelief. “What did you just say?”

  “Are you going deaf? Why is the little watering-can lit up?”

  “Are you by any chance,” he ground out, “referring to the oil pressure warning light?”

  “I don’t care what you call it,” she snapped. “Why is it lit up?”

  Willett kept his eyes shut. “Muriel, are you telling me—after all the hours I’ve spent explaining the workings of the car to you—that you think the oilcan symbol is meant to be a watering-can?”

  Muriel giggled. “How was I to know? It looks just like the little green one I use for the house plants.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Willett said, a painful acidity welling in his stomach.

  “There’s no need to blaspheme,” Muriel said angrily. “And I don’t care about your rotten old warning lights if you don’t.” She switched on the engine, released the hand-brake with her customary struggle and silent mouthings, put the car into gear and made a take-off so violent that it would have resulted in a stall had not the back wheels spun on the loose surface of the drive. Willett winced as the gravel spattered through his dwarf dahlias like grapeshot. On reaching the avenue Muriel turned left and drove towards the Bath Road, and now, suddenly, she was in an airy good humour.

  “For goodness’ sake try to relax, Willett,” she said. “I don’t want you having a heart attack on me.”

  Don’t you? Willett thought, then realised he was in danger of becoming as paranoid as Hank had been at the end. For a moment his thoughts strayed towards his deceased friend…

  Hank had refused point blank to have anything to do with his own wife’s driving tuition—“That’s sticking your head into the lioness’s mouth, old son.”—and had been fond of pointing out that it had been when he was teaching Beryl that Edward Cookson’s silted-up cardiovascular system had finally clenched him out of existence.

  “Beryl could have learned to drive ages ago, but she waited till Edward’s health wasn’t up to the strain. It was her ultimate weapon, you see—and that’s why she refused to go to a driving school.”

  “Cobblers,” Willett had said comfortably.

  “You’ll see I’m right! Just pray that Muriel never uses the same tactic against you, old son. If she ever asks you to give her driving lessons, don’t hang around! Emigrate to Australia—that’s what Edward should have done!”

  Willett remembered Edward Cookson as an unnecessarily gloomy man, but he had redeemed himself to some extent by producing one beautifully mordant line concerning his experience with Beryl at the wheel. Every time she stalled the engine she gave me an accusing look and switched on the windscreen wipers. Willett and Hank had often smirked into their lunchtime pints as they savoured the amount of sheer bitterness, frustration and male misery distilled into that single sentence.

  “He’s letting her get to him,” Hank had once predicted—accurately, as it turned out—while staring into the malty oracle of his tankard. “He’s going to go the same way as old Clive. Mark my words!”

  “But where’s the sense in it?” Willett had protested humorously. “Why should middle-aged women want to do away with their husbands?”

  “We become redundant, old son. You see, after a man has fathered the children a woman wants and has burned himself out in providing financial stability for the family he isn’t needed any more. He’s actually in the way. It’s insurance policy time.”

  “So he gets murdered!”

  “Murdered isn’t too strong a word for it, though in most cases it’s an instinctive thing. In the battle of the sexes women have observed that men are susceptible to stress, so that’s the preferred weapon to be used against us, and they employ it effortlessly and naturally.”

  “Sometimes I think you’re serious about all this,” Willett had said. “Don’t women ever suffer from stress?”

  “They’re built to withstand its—physically and mentally. Nature has given them the upper hand, old son. They can go on for ever.” Hank had lowered his voice in case the inquisitive barmaid at the Rifleman’s was trying to eavesdrop. “Look how easy it is for them in bed.”

  “Bed! I don’t get you.”

  “When a man gets on a bit in years it’s harder for him to do the jobs—and, what’s more, it’s obvious that he is having difficulties. Therefore it’s a stressful situation for him, but not for the woman—no matter how old she is. All she needs is a crafty squirt of that K-Y jelly and for all intents and purposes she’s as good as an eighteen-year-old.

  “I tell you, Willett,” Hank had concluded dolefully, “the cards are stacked against us.”

  Willett remembered having laughed aloud at that one, and he still thought of it as a prime example of Hank’s quirky humour, perhaps because Hank had died a few days later…

  Some four hundred yards ahead of the car the brake lights of a lorry beaconed a warning, their ruby brilliance enhanced by the shade of the avenue’s overhanging trees. Willett glanced at his wife. Her face was calm, her eyes intent on the road. Reassured, Willett sent relaxation commands down through his body and waited for Muriel either to slow down or drift the car to the right. It continued in the left-hand lane, speed unchecked as it headed straight for the stationary lorry’s tailgate, with Muriel staring directly ahead and looking as coolly professional as an airline captain.

  How long dare I wait? The question yammered in Willett’s head as diplomacy battled with the urge for self-preservation. The lorry’s brake lights swam apart as their range decreased. Willett opened his mouth to shout a warning and in the same instant the lights went out, showing that the lorry driver had eased up on the brake pedal. The disappearance of the ruby suns somehow galvanised Muriel into belated action. She stamped on the brake and the car dipped to a halt with its nose almost below the lorry’s mud-streaked tailgate.

  “Did you see that?” Muriel turned to Willett with a scandalised expression.

  “I certainly did,” he said, over the clamour in his nervous system. His forehead and cheeks tingled coldly and he felt ill.

  “No lights! No signals! I’ve a good mind to report that maniac to the police.” Muriel backed the car a short distance and drove past the lorry, her head turned and tilted in an effort to spear the driver with a look of outrage. Willett considered telling her what had actually happened, but quickly relinquished the idea. Muriel would have been both disbelieving and furious, and another row would have a bad effect on her driving. He remained silent as she took the car to the end of the avenue and manoeuvred it into the Bath Road with an overt display of safety consciousness. Willett’s heart rate was returning to normal, but his spirits sank when he saw that the out-of-town traffic was already building up. He had been hoping to get the excursion over and done with before the rush hour got under way.

  “We were looking at brochures today,” Muriel said, deciding to chat just when the greatest demands were about to be made on her concentration.

  “How nice.” Willett had no need to enquire about the content of the brochures. Gina Sturmey and the three daughters who had become widows were planning to go on an extended cruise next winter, and the planning of it was already taking up much of their time. Muriel sat in on all the sessions even though finances precluded her going on the voyage, and the others had not thought of making her their guest. Willett was not sure if it was because possessing a living spouse set her apart from them to some extent, or if they were simply being tight with their inherited money. He had noticed that, no matter how unified by mutual love the Sturmey women were, when it came to matters of hard cash there was very little give and take. It was only natural, he supposed, that anybody who had killed her husband to get hold of his savings and insurance was not going to…

  Stop it! he told himself. You’re straying into Hank’s old fantasy too often these days.

  “Yes,” Muriel went on, “the four-berth cabins on
the Minora seem fabulous.”

  “Four berths? That’s not so good, is it?”

  “Why?”

  “I thought the whole point of those ocean cruises was a spot of the old shipboard romance. All four in one room is going to be a bit awkward, unless they’re thinking of group sex—and your mum is a bit too old for that.”

  “Willett!” Muriel looked at him with disgust and, as always happened when she took her eyes off the road, the car immediately veered from its proper line.

  “Watch that cyclist,” Willett said urgently.

  “You watch what you say about my mother. You’ve got a filthy tongue, Willett Morris.”

  “It was only a joke,” he said, vowing never again to distract his wife while she was at the wheel. Muriel had once possessed a strong sex drive, and he knew she had had several affairs after their marriage cooled, but—like her mother and sisters—she was ultra-prudish in her speech. He still remembered the occasion when he had been describing a machine and had aroused her curiosity with a reference to a female component. When he had explained it was so called because a male component slid into it she had accused him of being sex-crazed and had flatly refused to believe that the terms were standard throughout the engineering world. After he had proved the point with the aid of a parts catalogue her opinion of men in general had sunk to a new low.

  In the remaining fifty minutes of the driving lesson Muriel punished Willett to the full for the tasteless remark concerning her mother and sisters. Her tactics included making near-homicidal raids on pedestrian crossings; performing dangerous right turns in the face of looming heavy goods vehicles; refusing to dip the head-lights after dark, thus instigating beam duels with a half-dozen other drivers; repeatedly switching on the starter motor when waiting at traffic lights, even though the engine was running, thereby whipping up the whole motive system into a humming frenzy; and—as a final masterstroke—loftily assuring him that he could cure a squeaking windscreen wiper by spraying it with UB40.

  By the time the car had crunched backwards into the drive at home Willett had an invisible steel band around his chest, a giant Jubilee clip whose screw tightened with every word Muriel spoke. There was a brief respite for him after the car had stopped, because—in accordance with her own imponderable rules—Muriel remained in the vehicle to check her appearance in the mirror and to change her shoes for the ten-yard walk to the house. The delay gave him time to get to the whisky decanter in the sitting-room and gulp a half-tumbler of Bell’s. He braced himself for the inevitable accusations of alcoholism, and was scarcely able to believe his luck when he heard the telephone dial whirring in the hall. Muriel was reporting in to her mother or one of the sisters, and—mercifully—he had time for another drink. He poured a second bumper, equivalent to about four pub measures, and was getting the last of it down him as Muriel came into the room.

  “You’re an alcoholic,” she said briskly, but without concern. “I want you to pop over to Mum’s house and borrow a bag of icing sugar. Not ordinary sugar—icing sugar. Can you remember that?”

  “I think my brain can cope with that mammoth task,” Willett said. “When do you want me to go?”

  “Now, of course. You’ve nothing better to do, have you?”

  Willett had been looking forward to reassembling the carburettor of his lawn mower before dinner, but consoled himself with the thought that going to Gina’s would enable him to have another drink in the guilt-free atmosphere of the Rifleman’s. “Nothing that can’t wait,” he said. “Have I time to walk? I feel like stretching the old legs.”

  “Just don’t be late for dinner—we eat at seven.” Muriel went upstairs to change out of her driving outfit, leaving Willett alone in the sitting-room. He glanced at the whisky, decided there would be little to be gained from another furtive drink, and set off on his errand. The air was mild and scented with greenery, and the trees in the avenue seemed to be artfully screening the streetlights, contriving new patterns of illumination for his benefit as he walked.

  This is more like it, he thought, taking deep and pleasurable breaths. Relax, relax, relax! That’s the way to fight back against the K-Y warriors.

  He had two more glasses of Bell’s in the orange-spangled cosiness of the Rifleman’s and by the time he had completed the half-mile walk to Gina Sturmey’s house was feeling reasonably fit and capable of dealing with his mother-in-law. Her house was a large detached affair, well over a century old, but although Gina was in her seventies she somehow managed to keep it clean and in good repair with very little outside assistance. A hall light shone through the leaded glass of the front door, suggesting that he was expected, but there was no response to his ringing of the bell. He rang twice more, then turned the door’s ceramic handle and went inside. Faint illumination seeped from the upper reaches of the panelled stairwell and the rear of the house, where the kitchen was situated, was augmented by a whiter glow.

  “Gina?” Willett called out. “Are you home?”

  Feeling uncomfortably like a law-breaker, he went along the hall, through the unlit dining room and into the fluorescent brilliance of the empty kitchen. Reflective cupboards and counters reproached him for having entered their presence unbidden, warning him not to try searching for icing sugar without their owner’s consent.

  “Gina!” Willett shouted in aggrieved tones. He now felt like a prisoner in his mother-in-law’s kitchen, because were he to venture into another part of the house he might startle her or—unthinkably—surprise her in a state of undress. Muttering disconsolately, he glanced around the square room and in that strange moment of isolation memory cells fired off a salvo in his brain, thus recreating a scene from the past.

  Grandma Gina’s fridge runs without being plugged into the electricity, little Tommy Beveridge had said one day last summer.

  The notion was as ridiculous as ever, but it prompted Willett to take special notice of the refrigerator. It was rather large and old-fashioned, with rounded edges which made it look like something from a 1940s Hollywood movie. It hummed faintly, introspectively. Willett moved past it, bringing a wall socket into view, and saw at once that the refrigerator was not plugged in. The electrical flex from it trailed down to a narrow strip of flooring between the fridge and adjacent cupboard, terminating in a three-pin plug. Bemused, Willett hunkered down, picked up the plug and found its top to be loose. He selected an appropriate screwdriver from the four in the breast pocket of his jacket and opened the plug. The fuse was missing.

  Willett stood up and looked behind the refrigerator, expecting to see alternate wiring leading to some other power source, but there was nothing of that nature visible. He opened the refrigerator’s curvaceous door and the internal light came on, wanly illuminating glass shelves of jars, bottles and plastic boxes. Cold air flowed downwards over his ankles.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Willett muttered. He knelt on the floor and—using his pen-light—looked underneath the refrigerator, hoping to find evidence that some untutored maverick of an electrician had brought a power cable up through the floor, but again there was nothing to fulfil his expectations.

  “There’s something bloody haywire here,” he said in a louder voice as he stood up and returned the flashlight and screwdriver to his pocket. He left the kitchen, returned to the hall and was about to shout up the stairs when he heard a movement on the landing. A moment later Gina Sturmey came into view wearing a tangerine jump-suit which had been designed for a younger generation, but which looked right on her trim 75-year-old figure. In the soft light she appeared no older than any of her daughters, and for an instant Willett was unaccountably afraid of her.

  “Hello, Willett,” she said, descending the staircase towards him. “I heard you at the door, but I was in the middle of varnishing my nails.” She held up her hands and displayed nails the exact colour of her suit. “How are you these days?”

  “I’m…”

  “I’ll fetch you the sugar,” Gina cut in. “Muriel says she feels so sil
ly over having forgotten to buy icing sugar, especially as we were looking at it in Sainsbury’s only last week, but it was on Friday afternoon and the place was so crowded we could hardly move. I’m always telling her it’s much better to shop early in the morning, but she says you can go too early and then the shelves haven’t been properly restocked from the day before and you can…”

  “There’s something not right about your fridge,” Willett said loudly. “Has some clever dick been working on it?”

  Unexpectedly, Gina gave the classic Sturmey giggle. “Here I am talking about Muriel’s bad memory—and mine is even worse! I meant to tell her to tell you to bring a fuse over with you, and it flew right out of my head. Be a darling, Willett, and take the fuse off the Hoover for me. I can do without the cleaner till tomorrow, but…”

  “You don’t understand,” Willett interrupted. “Your fridge is running without being plugged into the mains.”

  “But that’s impossible.”

  “You don’t have to tell me it’s impossible,” Willett said. “But it’s happening just the same—come and see for yourself.”

  Gina’s expression was a blend of caution and concern. “Is this a joke?”

  “Come into the kitchen!” Willett turned and strode towards the rear of the house, with Gina following. No sooner had he entered the kitchen’s cloud-white brilliance than he realised the refrigerator had fallen silent, and a premonition told him it was no longer working. He pulled open the door and the convenience light did not come on, making the interior seem dim and cavernous.

  “It was working a minute ago,” Willett said, more baffled than ever. “I swear to you—it was!”

  “You reek of whisky, Willett. How much have you had today?”

  “Whisky has nothing to do with it. Put your hand inside the fridge—it’s still cold in there.”

  “Of course it is,” Gina said gently, as though instructing a child. “The insulation will keep it cold for hours after the power is lost.”

  “Spare me the elementary physics, you…” Willett stifled an insult, realising the incident was getting out of hand. The trouble was that he knew the refrigerator had been working without being connected to the mains, and the fact that Gina was so firm in her denials was an invert proof that she knew too. Why would she not admit it? What was it to her if a piece of domestic equipment had behaved freakishly? She knew next to nothing about machinery, and would probably have believed a technological fairy tale about the fridge’s cooling-grid picking up energy from the nearest radio station—so why was she giving him no argument?