Break of Dark

by Robert Westall

  Both their mouths dropped comically open. Both said, ‘No – I thought you did.’

  Their mutual amazement was too real to be a sham.

  ‘Let’s go and look at it again,’ said Sergeant Nice.

  There was no way the reel of film could have been faked. The movements of the motor bikers, of the by-standers, were smooth and unbroken. No sudden inexplicable jumps. The very slowness with which the helmets sank into the trough was unfakable. They watched over and over, ran it backwards, re-ran it, stopped it frame by frame. It made no difference. Frame by frame, the helmets sank; the top one of the pile tilted, fell and vanished in turn. They watched it so closely and so often, it became a meaningless sequence of coloured blurs, as if their eyes had burnt the emulsion off the celluloid. Finally, when Sergeant Nice could bear the dark, weary, claustrophobic tension no more, he switched off the projector and pulled back the lounge curtains. Full daylight outside; another lovely sunshiny day.

  ‘It’s insane,’ he said. ‘It just couldn’t happen.’

  ‘Oh, plenty of funny things happen,’ said Thomas, offhand but shifty, as if he were about to produce some dirty postcards.

  ‘What do you mean?’ snarled Sergeant Nice. The night had taken its toll; he had a splitting headache.

  ‘Like people catching fire spontaneously and burning to a cinder, and the chair they were sitting in hardly scorched.’

  ‘What the hell’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Well – the world’s full of unexplained things,’ said Thomas, lamely. ‘This magazine—’ He held up a curiously purple publication, with the image of a fabulous sea-serpent on it and the title The Unexplained.

  ‘You may have to sell that rubbish,’ shouted Sergeant Nice, ‘but you don’t have to read it!’

  ‘The world’s full of doubting Thomases,’ replied Thomas pettishly. Both of them were too angry, and too tired, to notice the pun. ‘I think this horse trough’s some kind of Mystic Portal or—’

  ‘Mystic Portal my foot!’ roared Sergeant Nice. ‘Are you sure it’s not a black hole, or a time-warp, or the Loch Ness Monster’s arse hole?’

  It was as well that the lounge door opened at that moment. Mrs Thomas thrust a head through, bristling with curlers. ‘Well, if that’s a night’s fishing, it doesn’t seem to have improved your tempers. Who’s left those stinking wellies in the sink? And I’ll remind you it’s a quarter to seven and there’s four bundles of newspapers on the front step waiting to be opened.’

  Sergeant Nice left Thomas to his troubles.

  It was no good starting with black holes. Better to start with Alderman G. G. Sharratt. Deceased, but at least real once. During his lunch break, Sergeant Nice drove to the newspaper office, where his mate the photographer, who owed him a few favours, showed him the back-editions for 1902, bound together in a faded pink volume nearly as thick as a coffin.

  ‘Who you after now, Sarge? Jack the Ripper?’

  Sergeant Nice’s grunt sent him fleeing.

  He picked up Alderman G. G. Sharratt very quickly. Opening a Charity Bazaar and Charades by the Sunday School, for the Relief of the Decayed Poor of Oldcastle. Ah, here he was again.

  RELIEF OF EQUINE DISTRESS IN PRUDHOE STREET

  FOR OUR FOUR-FOOTED FRIENDS

  And there was a photograph of Giles Gilbert Sharratt; a thin, sad face under a formal top-hat, with deep Edwardian shadows round the eyes like a clown’s make-up, and a drooping moustache over a drooping mouth. Not a villain’s face; too sensitive. A source of relief to everything but himself. Laying his slender, pale hand possessively on his horse trough.

  So much for Thomas’s Mystic Portals. But the trough had begun life in Prudhoe Street. Right across town from Front Street.

  He drove down there, and got lost. Prudhoe Street and the little Victorian terraces that had led off had been bulldozed flat. Progress had ordained a deserted three-lane by-pass, traffic islands where the long grass was reclaiming its own, and low boring factories in the distance. Only a few stumps of terrace remained on the fringes, with their long-gone neighbours’ flowered wallpaper still hanging in wind-torn streamers from their newly exposed walls. Sergeant Nice sighed, and started knocking on doors. As he did so, his personal radio informed him that there had been a new theft at the clocktower. A bag of supermarket groceries. The damned stupid thing was growing insatiable . . .

  He got no answer from the first four houses, though he had the feeling that people were at home; old people. The houses hadn’t seen a lick of paint in years. Dirty lace curtains hung torn at open windows. Front gardens were long grass. A sense of hot hopelessness took hold of him. He’d try one more house. It looked more hopeful. Huge whitewashed seashells as well as flowers in the front garden; the gate tied shut with a loop of coarse white string; the knocker had been polished.

  The half-glass door opened as soon as he knocked on it.

  Was it an old lady standing there? Or a healthy, elderly, female tank? The flowered pinafore was stretched over a powerful bust and stomach. Arms like a stevedore’s. The face was wrinkled, but the eyes were bright blue and bold.

  ‘Come in, Sergeant, come in. When I saw you through the glass, I thought you were a military man.’ It was obvious she approved of military men. He went in, wiping his shoes carefully, though the day was dry. He was a child again, arriving at his grandmother’s.

  ‘Cup of tea, Sergeant? I’ve just made a pot.’ He gave in, sitting on an ancient but clean horse-hair settee, and listening to her putting on the kettle stealthily, behind a closed kitchen door. She returned, wiping her hands on her pinny.

  ‘I’ll let it stand and mash a minute. What can I do yer for?’

  ‘Well, it’s like this, Gran . . .’

  Her eyes frosted. ‘Don’t you Gran me, young man. Me name’s Sarah Trewhitt – Mrs Trewhitt to ye.’ But there was a rough affection for all men in her voice that belied her look.

  ‘I’m looking for a horse trough, Gra— Mrs Trewhitt. A horse trough given by Alderman G. G. Sharratt . . .’

  ‘God love yer . . . that old thing. I mind the day it was dedicated. Eeh, we had many a good game in it, when we was bairns. It never done the horses much good, but we blessed it in the summer. Paper boats and plodgin’ our feet in it. Poor Gilly Sharratt, he were a well-meaning man. Very fond of all sorts of science and progress.’ She made them sound like minor male hobbies, like snooker or drinking. ‘He did many a kindness, but folk never understood him. He put a gun to his head in 1926 . . . never married, you see.’

  He looked at her sharply. But the tragedy of that death didn’t touch her; she was back plodging in the glorious summer of 1903. Again that sense of strangeness struck him; the strangeness of time. She seemed like the horse trough, indestructible.

  ‘What happened to the trough, Mrs Trewhitt?’ Then he paused; she must be well over eighty. ‘Perhaps you don’t remember?’

  ‘’Course I remember. It was there till 1968, when they wasted the ratepayers’ money building that great useless pass-by. Then the men came wi’ a bulldozer – daft name for a thing – an’ moved it.’

  He sighed softly; that explained it. Between his seaside boyhood and his seaside manhood, the council had moved it to Front Street. He had a silly thought then – a little cold tremor of fear. A vision of the restless spirit of Gilly Sharratt, not understood, passionately addicted to science and progress. Still lingering round his horse trough and purloining modern examples of science and progress, like Japanese cameras. He remembered the sad face under the top-hat, the face that had put a gun to its head. They said the souls of suicides . . .

  He shook himself; he was getting as bad as young Thomas and his bloody Mystic Portals. Afterwards, though, he would look back on the ghost of Gilly Sharratt with a sad longing; it was so much nicer than the truth.

  ‘They’ve got it in Front Street now,’ he said. ‘The horse trough.’

  She stared at him, wrinkling up her old face in incomprehension.

  ‘They m
oved the trough to Front Street, Mrs Trewhitt.’ She must be getting tired.

  ‘Have they hell!’ she said with great passion. ‘Have they hell! I’ve got it in my back garden. Full of mulch for me rhubarb. I was so fond o’ that thing that when they’d got it on the blade of their bulldozer, I asked them how much they would take for it. Give ’em a quid an’ they tipped it straight over me back fence and laid it exactly where I wanted it – that’s modern progress for you. And none o’ the bosses any the wiser.’

  He just gaped at her.

  ‘Don’t you believe me? D’you want to see it?’

  She led him down her little garden, neat with rows of cabbage, lettuce and night-scented stock. And there it lay, shiny as a new pin, but full of a glutinous mixture of dark water, rotting lettuce leaves and what looked suspiciously like horse-manure.

  ‘There’s a poor old feller still comes by wi’ a horse an’ cart an’ a few green vegetables . . . the horse is very obligin’ . . . I nip out wi’ a bucket an’ shovel, soon as he’s gone.’

  ‘Two horse troughs,’ said Sergeant Nice, thinking aloud.

  ‘No! He never had two troughs, Gilly Sharratt. He wanted more, for the horses, but people just laughed at him. There was only ever one Sharratt horse trough, an’ I’ve got it!’

  ‘But, but . . .’ said Sergeant Nice.

  And then, in that neat sunny little garden, his mouth went dry with horror.

  He had examined the horse trough in Front Street so often, he knew the pattern of fossils on it by heart. There was a place on the rim where the embedded fossils formed what looked like a twisted letter H, then a twisted letter E. H. E. HE. ‘Hee, hee, hee, hee, hee’ it had mocked him when his searches proved fruitless. Here was exactly the same pattern again, in exactly the same spot on the rim. What odds in the universe against the same thing happening twice, in exactly the same place? And the one piece of graffito the Front Street trough carried, scratched on its shining stone, the straggly initials S. T. It was here again. And he knew what the initials stood for . . .

  ‘You scratched your initials on the trough, Mrs Trewhitt?’

  ‘I did. Lucky I did, too ‘cause somebody stole it, you know. For one night. I reported it to the police. But by the time they came next morning, it was back – I felt a right fool. Only when it came back it was empty. Somebody had stolen the mulch for me rhubarb. What some folks will do . . .’

  The world reeled round Sergeant Nice in that neat little garden. What power in the universe could steal a horse trough that weighed several tons and perfectly replicate it? Am I going insane? he thought.

  ‘Are you all right, Sergeant? That sun’s very hot an’ you’ve left off your cap. You’ve mevve caught a touch o’ sun-stroke. You look like you’ve seen a ghost . . .’

  Somehow he got himself back into the Panda. Its radio was burbling on about an RTA in Saville Street and requesting an ambulance; but it fed him like a fount of sanity.

  There is a Buddhist saying that Sergeant Nice had copied out of a book. (He was fond of copying thoughts out of books.)

  Even in the worst situation, there is usually some useful action that can be performed; if there is not, gather information; if there is no information that can be gathered, sleep.

  He had not: slept last night; not a wink. He had tried putting his head under the bedclothes, but the thoughts still came. Teleporting, Thomas’s stupid magazine called it. Somebody had teleported the horse trough out of Mrs Trewhitt’s garden, made a perfect replica of it, and teleported two horse troughs back. Eight months ago, on the worst day of blizzard-chaos that Oldcastle had ever known. What power in the universe . . . ? Something out of Star Wars . . . ? And having performed this incredible miracle, they were using it for the purpose of petty theft. It was that contrast of utter power and utter pettiness that frightened Sergeant Nice.

  The Russians? What would the Russians want with a wet bathing-costume? They could buy a Japanese camera anywhere, on the easiest possible HP terms!

  That was it! They were practising! Practising for something much worse. It didn’t matter if they failed in Graymouth. But suppose they set up something similar in Aldermaston or Farnborough, or the secret underwater weapons establishment at Portsmouth?

  It was no good reporting this to the Supers. He needed . . . a scientist, of some sort. A scientist would understand; scientists had open minds . . . He reached for the phone.

  ‘University of Oldcastle, Registrar’s Office.’ A female voice, cocky. A switchboard girl . . . not a scientist. ‘Who do you want to speak to, please?’

  ‘I’d . . . I’d like to speak to a scientist.’

  ‘What kind of scientist? Which department? Biochemistry? Physics? Geomorphology? Materials Science?’ She was taking the mickey; but Materials Science sounded right.

  ‘Materials Science, please.’

  ‘Ringing!’

  It rang for a long, long time. Then another female voice answered, less promising and scientific even than the switchboard girl’s.

  ‘I’d like to speak to a scientist, please.’

  ‘There’s nobody here. It’s the middle of the long vac.’

  ‘Who’re you, then?’

  ‘I’m the cleaner.’

  ‘Is there nobody about?’

  ‘Mr Milburn was in last Thursday. But he’s only a postgrad.’ She made him sound nothing, as if she’d said ‘postcard’.

  ‘When will he be in again?’

  ‘Probably Thursday. He has to see to things.’

  ‘Is he on the phone?’

  She was silent a long time, searching, then she gave him a number. He let it ring a long time, but nobody answered. He let it go on ringing, in a kind of sleepy paralysis, before he came to with a start and hung up.

  Still, the mere idea of Mr Milburn gave him hope; perhaps he would listen, perhaps he would understand. But scientists required evidence as much as judges. He must, as the Buddhist gentleman said, gather information.

  He had to admit: he was a bit frightened of the horse trough now. He didn’t know what other powers it might have. He was certainly convinced it could read his mind. Probably control his mind. It had made the two dogs fight and the woman faint. And that Brummy’s car . . . So he approached the clocktower when it was thronged with gossipy holiday-makers. Leaned against it casually, as if his only concern was afternoon drunks and pickpockets.

  It was easy enough to get a bit of the clocktower itself. There were places where corners of stones had cracked with decades of wind, rain and frost. He wriggled a loose piece of the stonework until it came off in his hand, warm from the sun, sharp-edged. He put it into his pocket, feeling like a vandal, suddenly blushing in case some holiday-maker was watching.

  Nobody was watching; no holiday-maker, anyway. He eyed the horse trough warily. It looked genuine enough, as if it had been there for eighty years. But he was dealing with no ordinary clever-dick. It might be full of closed-circuit telly, radar, bugging devices. He sidled over to it; sat down cautiously on the edge.

  The action sent a shiver up his spine, that at first he thought was nerves. But the pain in his buttocks soon convinced him otherwise. Under the afternoon sun, the trough was icy cold. The clocktower was warm, but the trough was icy cold. Got you, he thought, got you, you clever bastard. Clever, but not clever enough. First piece of hard evidence. Elated, he took out his Swiss knife. Mrs Trewhitt had carved her initials on her horse trough. He tried to scratch a mark on his.

  It wouldn’t scratch at all, even to the point where the knife blade broke and left him with a bloody, dripping finger.

  People stared at him as he made his way casually home to get an elastoplast.

  The sharp tap of metal on metal echoed up the dark length of Front Street. Sergeant Nice swore. There was no right time to do this. If he’d done it when the pubs were open and the juke boxes masked the noise, some amiable drunk would have ambled across to see what he was up to. The sounds of a man at work are irresistible. But now, in the one
a.m. silence, the sound of hammer on cold chisel seemed as loud as the tolling of St George’s bell.

  He thought it would be easy. Two brisk taps and a piece of horse trough would be lying in his hand. Crinoidal limestone wasn’t a hard stone; not like granite. But this trough . . . he’d already been at it for ten noisy minutes, hitting harder and harder so that blue sparks flew, like those from a cigarette lighter, briefly illuminating his large hands clenched tightly round hammer and chisel. And he hadn’t even managed, as he saw when he shone his torch, to scratch the thing.

  Suppose somebody came; suppose somebody saw him.

  SENSELESS VANDALISM, SAYS MAGISTRATE

  POLICE SERGEANT REMANDED FOR

  PSYCHIATRIC REPORT

  He glanced round again, scanning the street for any onlooker. He was getting more and more nervous. But he had to have evidence, material evidence, for Mr Milburn. It was pointless even to approach him without having something to show.

  He stopped paying attention to what he was doing. The chisel slipped again on the cold stone, and the hammer nipped his finger. He threw hammer and chisel down in a rage, his eyes full of sweat. He had a sledge-hammer at home; never used for anything worse than knocking in posts at the Rotary Carnival. That would settle the bastard. He picked up the dropped tools and slipped away.

  It was as well he did. As he closed his front door, headlights turning at the end of Front Street lit up the clocktower in every Gothic detail, bright and sharp as a new pin. Panda. Constable Hughes. Hughes getting out and flicking his torch briefly over the monument. Sergeant Nice switched on his personal radio and heard Hughes reporting in to Oldcastle Police Control.

  ‘Ref telephone complaint in Front Street, nothing to report. No damage. No persons present.’

  ‘Continue to visit at half-hourly intervals,’ quacked an aggrieved female voice.

  ‘Ten-four,’ said Hughes in the forbidden American impersonation. The Panda oozed quietly away and turned left up the coast.

  Hughes had given him half an hour. But somewhere in the darkened houses of Front Street an old biddy would be sitting by her window. Old biddies, in Sergeant Nice’s experience, didn’t seem to need any sleep at all. He was in for a long vigil.