He said he’d try his luck again. Maybe another fisherman would take him out. Maybe the first fisherman wouldn’t have told all the others. We had breakfast together. Mrs Gallagher asked how we wanted our eggs. He said he wanted his fried, but runny. I said I’d have mine poached. She brought me a plate of sausage, bacon, and a poached egg. She brought George a plate of fried eggs, and nothing but fried eggs, the yolks all broken and pooling thickly into one another. George stared at the plate, and didn’t say a word.
Mrs Gallagher asked me my name. I hesitated, and she saw I hesitated – but then I told her my name anyway, the real one, not the one George liked me to use.
“Mine is Nathalie,” she said.
“Natalie?”
“Nathalie. It’s French.” She didn’t look very French. Her arms were big and thick, her face rough like sand; in years to come I’d think that sand must have blown off the beach and got stuck deep in her skin and she hadn’t been able to scrub it out. Not my idea of French at all; George’s mother had shown me some fashion magazine, back in the days we were allowed to visit, and there were French women inside, and Nathalie Gallagher was nothing like them. “You’re in trouble,” Nathalie Gallagher said.
“No, I’m all right.”
“You’re in trouble. I could help you. You could stay here with me. I can run this place alone if I have to do, but I could use an extra pair of hands. I couldn’t pay much, but you’d get bed and board.”
“And George?” I said.
She didn’t say anything to that.
“George wouldn’t like it,” I said. I knew all he wanted to do was get his own job, and be able to look after me.
“I had a disappointing husband too,” said Mrs Gallagher. She told me that her husband had brought her back to England after the war. She didn’t say which war, and I presumed it was the last one, but it was so hard to tell how old she might be. I didn’t like to ask. “He said he had some property, I thought he must be a duke or something. Turned out he owned a hotel. I had to spend my days learning how to make full English breakfasts. Yes, he was a disappointment.”
“Where is your husband?” I asked. “Is he dead?” The words seemed so blunt, I could have bitten my tongue.
Mrs Gallagher didn’t seem offended though. Indeed, she gave my question some thought. “No, I don’t think so,” she said at last. “He’s probably still alive.”
I kept the job offer in my head, turned it over and gave it a good prod whenever things were bad. Things were bad a lot that week. I thought I would tell George when he was in a good mood, maybe he’d see the value in it, even if it were just short-term, even if it could just tide us over a while and give us some sort of home – but George was never in a good mood, there was no work out there, and the mood just got worse and worse, so I decided I’d just have to tell him quickly and get it over with and trust to luck.
He didn’t shout, that was good. He turned from me, and lit a cigarette, and stared out of the window down upon the cliffs and the sea, as if in deep thought, as if giving it actual consideration.
“It’s time we left,” he said.
“So soon?”
“There’s nothing for us here. We’ll go tonight.”
We packed our stuff, waited until it was dark. Past midnight I said to George that we should get going, but he shook his head impatiently, it wasn’t time yet, he had a feeling for these things. We sat there on the bed, side by side, in silence, and George listened out for noise. At last he took my hand, and squeezed it, and that was the signal, and I think it was done in affection too.
It was pitch black. George carried the bags, he told me to walk ahead of him. I clung on to the banister rail. I counted the steps downwards, one, two, three, four, and at five the staircase curled around towards the final descent to the front door. Now, we both knew about the extra step that was waiting down there, and neither of us mentioned it, and I dare say we’d both factored it into our calculations, sixteen stops until we reached the bottom. But now I was in the dark I thought of it only with dread – and I mean that, a hard, heavy dread – I didn’t want my feet to touch that step – I didn’t want any part of my body to come into contact with something so cold and so inexplicable – and here I was, inching further towards it, another step down, then another, then another, as if I were falling somehow, as if I were falling and there was no way to climb back up, I couldn’t change my mind, I couldn’t turn around, my husband was behind me blocking my way and he would never let me free. And another step, and another – and I wondered if I’d miscounted already, were there two steps to go, or three? Three before … ? I didn’t want to reach that step but I didn’t want to get past it either – and it sounds silly but it suddenly seemed to me that step was a dividing line between all of my sorry past and all the future before me – and if I got past the step, then that was it, the future waiting there in the darkness was just more of the same, just more of the same. Two steps. One. I had miscounted, but there was no delaying it now, that step in front of me had to be the extra one. And then there was light from up above, and the darkness was spoiled, so there was no extra step at all, and the relief I felt was so overwhelming that it took me a moment to realize we must have been discovered.
The candle didn’t give much light, but it was enough. Mrs Gallagher stared down at us.
George said, “We’re leaving. We don’t want any trouble.”
Mrs Gallagher said nothing.
George said, “We’re not going to give you any trouble. We’ll just leave, and be on our way.”
Still nothing.
He said, “When I get a job, I’ll come back. I’ll pay you then. I’m not thieving.”
Mrs Gallagher said, “Just go. But don’t you ever come back.”
“Well then,” said George. “Well! Then I won’t. You bet I won’t.” And he actually grinned at her, and doffed his hat.
I wanted to say I was sorry. I couldn’t find the words, as easy as they were. I tried to smile at her, something, but she didn’t look at me, not the whole while. That’s what hurt.
George opened the front door, and we stepped out into the wind, the night, our future together.
I thought maybe he wouldn’t come looking, maybe he just wouldn’t care, and would let me be. I thought maybe he might even be relieved, one less mouth to feed, I wouldn’t slow him down any more. But still I’d keep checking behind me as I walked on, still I’d keep off the main roads, hide sometimes in bushes – because whether he wanted me or not, of course he’d come looking. He had his pride. That’s all he had.
I didn’t even know which direction I was headed in. And so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I reached the coast, but I was. I thought we’d travelled so much further than that, that the coast was weeks behind us. But there it was, the cliffs at my back, the sea in front, and I trudged my way along the beach squashed between the pair of them.
I certainly hadn’t expected to find Mrs Gallagher again. If I had looked for her house I’m sure I wouldn’t have found it. But I gazed up, and there it was ahead of me, it was the only place in miles that seem to give off any light, maybe I fancied the only place in the world.
I knocked at the door.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“You’re in trouble,” said Mrs Gallagher. And at last I understood what she meant. Because I was in trouble, and I hadn’t quite dared believe it until then – but of course I’ve known, that’s why I’d run away, wasn’t it? Because it was all right, my being trapped with George for the rest of my life. Maybe that’s all I deserved. But not my child. Not my child. Never.
“You’d better come in,” Mrs Gallagher said.
I arrived just before the holiday season, and there was a lot to learn.
I learned how to make beds, not in the ordinary way, but in the hotel way.
I learned how to clean a room quickly, so that you could give the impression everything was spick-and-span on the surface, and not
draw attention to the real dirt underneath.
I learned how to make a proper cooked English breakfast. I got quite good at them, but Mrs Gallagher was always better, so she stayed in charge of the kitchen. “My husband taught me, said he cooked the best fry-ups in Yorkshire,” she said. “His only promise that was worth a damn.”
I was given a room on the ground floor, and at first I was happy about that, it meant I didn’t have to use the staircase at night. But I was never very comfortable there. The little window looked out on to the street, you could hardly tell we were by the sea at all. And sometimes in the night, I could hear noises under the floorboards – like distant footsteps, shuffling about beneath the ground. I told Mrs Gallagher about them, but she just shrugged, said she’d never heard of that before. But she moved me upstairs to the box room. There was that whispering sound in the box room, but it was just the wind and the ocean spray, and I liked it, and soon I found the strange echo it made in the darkness very comforting, like the elements were trying to send me to sleep.
When the hotel packed out, and it did most of July and August, even the box room had to be let. Then I would share a bed with Mrs Gallagher. It was a large bed, and quite comfortable, and there was plenty of room – and I was a little afraid at first that a big woman like Mrs Gallagher would snore, George snored something chronic and he wasn’t half her size. But she slept so still, sometimes it was though she was hardly beside me at all.
I want you to know nothing untoward ever happened between me and Mrs Gallagher. And when August was over, somehow I just didn’t move out from the room, and I just stayed with her. It meant there was one less bed to make.
And when the pregnancy was full on and I couldn’t do much work, Mrs Gallagher never minded. She said I could stay in bed, or sit downstairs, whatever made me most comfortable, and she’d bring me cups of tea, and slices of cake, anything I wanted. “It’s nearly time,” she said to me one day, and I asked whether I should go to the hospital. “You don’t need a hospital,” she said, “I can do this. Do you trust me?” And I did trust her, and I was glad, I hadn’t wanted to leave.
She fetched hot water and towels, and you came out, and it was easy, I think your birth was the easiest thing I had ever done. You were the simplest, most natural thing in my entire life. “It’s a boy,” said Mrs Gallagher, and she looked happy, but I think she may have been a little disappointed. She helped me name you. Did you know that? Do you like your name? It was Mrs Gallagher who picked it.
She told me that I shouldn’t call her Mrs Gallagher, I should call her Nathalie. And I did so, from time to time, just to make her smile. But I thought of her as Mrs Gallagher, and I liked her that way – not formal, you understand, but protective, and strong, and better than me.
*
I started in my sleep, I couldn’t breathe. I opened my eyes and saw a figure was standing over the bed, and I was held down, there was a hand tight across my mouth. I couldn’t call out.
“Hello,” whispered George, genially enough.
I opened my eyes wide, and blinked, in what I hoped he’d take as a fond greeting.
I didn’t know how he’d found me, and I never did know. I suppose he might have broken into all the bed and breakfast establishments across the country until he’d got the right one. That seems quite likely.
He said to me, “I’ve got a job! It’s all going to be all right. I’ve got lots of money, and it’s all going to be as it was, and you can come back with me now, and you’ll never be hurt again!” That sounded fine, but his hand was still on my mouth, and pressing down hard, and his fingernails had curved round and were digging painfully into my face.
You started to cry. You didn’t care about being quiet, I don’t know whether you were disturbed by the intruder, or just hungry – I’m guessing it was hungry, you were always hungry. George hadn’t even seen the cot, I think; then he whirled around, and he let me go.
“He’s yours,” I whispered.
“Mine,” he said. And he sounded amused, he seemed to like the sound of that.
“You’re both mine,” he said. And he wasn’t bothering to whisper any more, and that was bad, it meant he didn’t feel the need to be secret any more.
Mrs Gallagher didn’t stir. “Is she dead?” George asked bluntly, and laughed.
“No,” I said.
“I want to talk to her.”
Mrs Gallagher’s eyes opened at that. She was already awake.
“I didn’t steal from you,” George said. “I didn’t steal from you.”
Mrs Gallagher didn’t say anything to that. Neither did I. George considered.
“Get up,” he said. “Both of you.”
“I’ll come with you, George,” I said. “But you don’t need her, let’s just go.”
He slapped me around the face then, and it wasn’t especially hard, but I hadn’t been slapped for a long while and it hurt.
“We’re all going outside,” he said.
“What are you going to do with her, George?”
“I don’t know,” said George, “I don’t know.” And he sounded genuinely worried about that. I thought he was going to cuff me again, but he didn’t bother.
Mrs Gallagher got out of bed. She struck a match, and lit a candle. And it was brighter than I expected, too bright, surely; and I saw two things that startled me. One was George himself – his clothes were torn, and he had a ragged beard that seemed in the flickering light like a scar across his face. And I realized he had no pride in anything any more. And the second thing – that was the ugly little knife he was carrying.
“Get moving,” he said.
We walked down the stairs ahead of him. Both of us were in our nightdresses, and I thought how cold it would be out there in the dark, and that maybe that was the least of our concerns; the shag carpet was at my bare feet; and you were in my arms, and bless you, you’d gone back to sleep, you weren’t scared of anything, you were with mummy and you felt safe.
I asked George once again what he was going to do, and I tried to find the right things to say that had always made him feel better, the ones that calmed his rages – but it’d been too long ago, I couldn’t remember any. George didn’t reply, and that was just as well, because it meant I heard Mrs Gallagher plainly when she hissed at me: “Jump.”
We were in sudden pitch black. She must have blown out the candle.
And I felt her then leap into that black, and I didn’t know how far off the ground we were, I couldn’t judge it at all – I couldn’t tell how many steps there might be, or what was waiting for us at the bottom. And I didn’t care, I leaped too.
George gave a cry of – what? Surprise? Anger? Probably a mixture of both, and he started down the stairs after us, and then he shouted out again, and this time it was fear.
Mrs Gallagher struck another match. She lit the candle. The glow seemed to take an agonisingly long time to reveal anything.
George had hit the sixteenth step. And then had carried on going downwards. He had found a seventeenth, maybe an eighteenth too. The floor was up just around his knees. It looked as if his legs had been severed, and he was balancing his body on two unbloodied stumps; no, it looked like the downstairs floor had become a lake, and he had sunk below the surface. And Mrs Gallagher and me, we, we were walking impossibly upon water.
“Help me,” he said. The light seemed to give him some courage, he even dared show impatience. “Get me out of this.”
He grunted, tried to turn himself about, but there was nowhere for his body to go – nowhere, but onwards. And so doing, he took another step.
For a moment I thought his body was in free fall, but it came to a stop, the line of the floor now was across his chest. He looked so frightened. He grunted again, his face contorted with effort, and he pulled one of his arms free, and waved it at us. At me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Please. Help me. Please.” He reached out to me. And I think I would have gone had it been for my sake alone. I would have pulle
d him out. Or he would have pulled me in, more likely, in and under, just as he had done over and over for all those years. I loved him. But there was more than my love to think about now.
He saw that I wasn’t going to help. And I thought he might threaten me. I thought he’d tell me he’d kill me. I think that would have been better. But his face just fell, that’s all, and he looked so very sad.
He tried to pull up his second arm. He couldn’t. He put his free hand flat upon the ground, tried to use it to prise himself out. It was no good.
One more step forward. And now only his head was peeking out, and he had to tilt his face toward the ceiling so he could speak. He said, so softly, as if in awed wonder – “The steps are so steep. Oh God. Oh God. They’re so steep.”
Mrs Gallagher stepped out. He looked at her with such hope. He thought she might want to save him, even now, in spite of all. I knew she wouldn’t.
She stood right beside his head. If he’d wanted to, he could have bitten her feet. If he’d wanted to. He looked up at her, and she looked down on him, and she didn’t gloat.
He opened his mouth to say something, and she shook her head, and he closed it again.
She blew out the candle.
When the guests came, we’d tell them of the noises in the attic, and the cold chill in the breakfast room, and of the extra step the staircase would grow in the dark. We didn’t talk of the strange footsteps under the house, the ones you could hear just sometimes, when the sea was quiet and the wind was at lull. They didn’t need to know everything.
I said that nothing untoward ever happened between me and Mrs Gallagher, and nor it did. But I wouldn’t have minded.
I told her too late. She was dying, and fading so fast – she’d started the holiday season with the same no-nonsense energy as always, but then she’d got so slow, and so tired, and eventually we just asked our guests to leave and closed the doors on them. She lay in the bed, and I gave her all the space I could, I’d have moved to another room, but she told me she wanted me to stay by her in the night. I said that I loved her. I said that I had loved her for so long, and wanted to show her, wanted to do anything to her that would make her happy.
Best New Horror, Volume 25 Page 31