Demons by Daylight

by Ramsey Campbell

  The young man with the sports-coat turned from the exhaust and coughed; Kirk adjusted his glasses, held together for a year with tape, to focus on each detail of the vehicle, to realize memory. Through the grey fumes a girl, mysteriously glimpsed, was shoving her luggage aboard the rack, and when Kirk woke Anne was struggling with her case above him. He’d fallen asleep before the coach moved out; this girl must have arrived at Victoria after he’d dozed off, to materialize above him now as from a dream. He blinked through the windows: a country lane at speed, somewhere near Stratford; a mauve mist of flowers skimmed by. “Did I wake you?” she said. “I’m ever so sorry.”

  “Not at all,” Kirk said, and grimaced inwardly at his swift response; why must he always cap their remarks so finally, never talk to them? He stood up, tottering as the driver wrenched the wheel at a curve. “Let me help,” and he jammed the case into place.

  “Thanks, you’re awfully good,” Anne said and smiled into his eyes; he sat down beneath the smile. At last she seated herself and picked up a book.

  If only this were real! It had never returned to Kirk so vividly since he had ridden the bus down to London, abandoning Liverpool after all was over. He could feel her body warm on his, her tongue — as he’d felt it while he waited for her during their lost week, when time had seemed annihilated; for a moment Anne might have appeared on the concrete platform and run to greet him. As if to mock him, the young man in the queue leaned out and scanned the grey square for his girl; Kirk closed his eyes and reached back to Anne for consolation. What had come next? The hot coach upholstery — hushed conversation round him, laughter — pages turning —

  Anne’s reading speed astonished him. The pages passed almost as swiftly as the flowers. The book, too, fascinated him; bound in bright plastic, the corners of its pages rounded off — but his eyes strayed to her bare neck, her sleek piled blonde hair, and framed in the space between the headrests her fresh flowered cotton frock, the creases in its short sleeves flattening and sharpening as she flipped rapidly onward. If he could make her speak to him again — She put up her hand to adjust her glasses; the bus squealed to a stop at a roundabout; the book was torn from her hand. Of course it hadn’t been so satisfyingly timed; he’d shifted in his seat as with insomnia, searching for words which eluded him like a dream; but memory had edited, tightening up the cues. He almost fell into the aisle and had the book before she could stoop.

  “Oh, aren’t you good,” praised Anne. He held the book a second after she had taken it; their fingers touched. He’d read about that somewhere.

  “Lousy driver,” he said, glaring up the coach. Cars chased their tails around the roundabout. “I could do better myself. I mean really — I’m sure I could manage a bus.” God, you cretin, he snarled at himself, why should she be interested? But apparently she was.

  “Can you drive, then?” she asked as if enthralled.

  “I often drive. But I don’t have a car.”

  “Nor do we. I’d love to have one.” The driver saw a gap and rammed in the bus; Kirk almost fell. “Don’t kill yourself for me,” she implored. “Why don’t you join me?”

  Across the aisle a middle-aged couple nodded to each other like disapproving puppets, but Kirk was too contented to care. “Are you from London, then?” she asked.

  “Me? No, I’m from Liverpool. I can tell you’re London, of course.”

  “Actually I’m Southend. Why, you mean the accent? I put that on a lot because it makes me think of flower-sellers and all that sort of thing. You know — all the past. I love the past. Sometimes when I’m going to sleep I think I’ll wake up — oh, before I was born, when everything was lovely — well, not everything, there were the wars, but I don’t know, the past seems awfully romantic. Sometimes when I woke up and found I was still me I used to cry. When I was younger. But Liverpool has lots of the past still preserved, doesn’t it? That’s why I’m staying there.”

  Kirk had been basking in her monologue. Somehow she was the first girl with whom he’d felt at ease since his trauma with Shirley. Liverpool has lots of the past still preserved? He thought of the ossified spire which rose above the roof of Owen Owen’s in imitation of the GPO Tower in London, of the boutiques on Bold Street emulating Chelsea, of the garish “Meal in a Moment” hamburger cafes on Lime Street, vanguards from London of a life lived at such speed as to outdistance emotion. “There are pockets of the past round Liverpool, you’re right,” he told her, remembering lonely walks in Bidston, West Kirby, Frankby. “I’ve visited most of them. You know, in search of atmosphere.”

  “Have you honestly? How marvellous!” she cried. “You’ll have to be my cicerone!”

  This time they both saw Punch and Judy draw together. “This’ll never do,” she declared, “us sitting together and not even introduced. I’m Anne and I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “I’m Kirk,” he searched, “and I’m a student. What are you?”

  “Kirk what a lovely name,” said Anne, “like an actor. For the cinematograph. Isn’t that a wonderful word, cinematograph? Much nicer than — ” something which eluded Kirk; but he’d always been shy of asking for words to be repeated, preferring to agree or grunt intelligently. “Oh, what am I. A romantic little girl, wouldn’t you say? And in term time I’m a student too. My question. In what are you a student?”

  “French is my main subject.” Memory dashed like water in his face; Adrienne’s letter in his pocket, still to be answered. And on the cold stone bench Kirk’s fingers clutched the letter, rubbing against the other later letter he wanted still more to forget, tufted both with the fluff of decades. Somewhere in there was her photo, too; head and shoulders, a little askew, a touch of soft-focus by virtue of inexpert lens-manship, lending her long blonde hair a delicate glow and her eyes a hint of moisture above her smile. And never a photograph of Anne; he tried not to think about that. Adrienne, with whom he’d corresponded for years, promising finally to visit her in Paris if he could collect the money, Adrienne to whom he’d written with a kind of desperate passion after the Shirley incident, calling her “cherie” and “ma petite chou” and all the other words he’d learned outside the French class and believed in because he’d never been to France. Adrienne, and then he thought of Anne’s Auntie Ethel: the second time he’d killed. He shrugged them off. Anne — what’s your subject? He couldn’t think of them all the time; he’d go mad. “Anne?”

  “But we’ve been introduced. We know each other. You mean to say you can’t guess my subject? History! You knew all along, really.” She touched his arm; her skin was warm on his. “Here, look at my history book.”

  She found the plastic cover in her flowered lap. Ahead a car shot from a turning; the coach driver stood on the brake; Kirk was thrown forward as he turned to Anne and his head thudded on the seat in front. Something cracked.

  “Oh, your poor head!” cried Anne. “Are you all right, darling?”

  Was that what happened? Did she really call him “darling” so soon? Yes, he was sure she did. Perhaps there was more dialogue, but again memory was speeding up the action. Certainly he never saw her book. He sat back stunned, examining his divided spectacles.

  “My wounded Kirk!” mourned Anne, then became more serious: “Can’t you see very well? Look, let me put them in my bag. This lens has smashed. It didn’t go in your eye? Have you any others?”

  “No, unfortunately,” said Kirk, eyes closed, waiting for the rhythm to weaken. “I can’t see a yard without them, either.”

  “That’s terrible. Can’t you even see me? I’ll be so sad if you can’t.”

  “I can see that far, don’t worry,” he told her, and at once realized what he’d done. He cursed himself; Shirley had tied his tongue for ever. No doubt Anne didn’t think he cared about her now. Perhaps she’d find another cicerone. She might even have been joking, unaware of how his mind had brightened. He strained to speak: too late.

  “I think you look handsome without them, anyway,” she continu
ed. “But with them you look more studious, so either way is fine. I’ll take them to the optician’s tomorrow for you. You probably wouldn’t be able to find the door! Just think, going into a museum by mistake! They’d probably buy them: unique Victorian eyeglasses, slightly damaged. Glasses can be awfully stupid sometimes, don’t you think? I mean when you’re kissing sometimes: clink-clink! The boy I was going out with in Southend said I looked like an owl. We broke it off the other day. He seemed awfully hurt. Still,’twas but infatuation. How do I get your glasses back to you?”

  “You could bring them round.” That’s not what she means! he moaned at himself. “No, now I think about it, I’d better know how much they’re going to cost. Why don’t we meet somewhere tomorrow?”

  The young man in the coach queue — who might have been strategically placed on stage to represent Kirk’s younger self — patrolled the platform for his girl-friend, brushing from his sports-coat dust sneezed away by the exhaust, and Kirk glanced down at his sagging grey suit as he hurried toward the Pier Head. The Liver Clock above him tolled eleven. He’d taken everything he could out of the pockets to give the suit some shape — including Adrienne’s letter, now a fortnight old, which he must answer as soon as he had time — but the trousers still bulged shapelessly at the knee, his wallet still outlined a rectangle of grey on his jacket; for too long he’d had nobody for whom to dress. He plunged beneath the shadow of the long Pier Head bus station hall, pale as the bore of a blown bone; about him milled a vague crowd, prams, motorcyclists scented with petrol manoeuvring their machines to the ferry, a hive of shade and colour. A smell of hot pastry lured him to the baker’s stall. At the adjacent bookstall a figure in white moved away and blurred completely; next second it had run to him and focused. Anne smiled apologetically. “I shouldn’t tease you when you can’t see,” she apologized. “I won’t do it again, I promise. I found an optician’s near Bidston, such a lovely one, all antique! You must see it sometime. He said your glasses won’t be ready for a week, so you won’t be able to see me really at all. It’s terribly sad.”

  She was wearing a white sweater, white sharply pleated skirt, white patterned socks. Or was that the next day? It was all so long ago. He clutched the stone bench: let her be wearing these, he liked them best. “Don’t worry, I can see you,” he replied, and his toes squirmed. “You look great,” he said.

  “You’re nice. Where shall we go?”

  He hadn’t thought. “Having fun” — where did you go for that? What could you do in Liverpool on a summer morning? The art gallery, the parks, to which he’d gravitate in London, seemed a little cheerless; the cinemas weren’t open — besides, he couldn’t see. “Let’s walk down and I’ll think,” he said, and led the way down the ramp to the river, where figures fuzzed against the dazzling water. Anne took his arm: “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “On the contrary,” he responded, immediately bitter at his stock response, his inaction. “There’s always New Brighton fairground,” he said, and swore at himself: you provincial idiot, that’s not the place to take a London girl! — not London, Southend, whose fairground must long ago have earned her contempt. But Anne clutched his arm: “That’d be fabulous, I love fairgrounds, so nostalgic!”

  He couldn’t see the coloured lights above the fairground; he imagined them set in a velvet sky. Blocks of paint whirled and lifted screaming. A few couples sat on warm benches; others sought the shade of the amusement arcade, drawn by the purr of fruit machines and the infrequent rush of coins. Kirk took Anne’s hand and settled her in a Ghost Train car. They plunged into darkness; the car jerked back from death-grins — Kirk saw only luminous clothed eggs. Anne huddled closer and he put his arm around her, inhaling the scents of talc and laundered wool. Her hair lay light and warm against his cheek.

  “But ghosts aren’t really like that,” she insisted as they came to rest in sunlight. “I think they’d be just like people, and you wouldn’t know what they really were until afterward. Those things in there are straight out of a Gothic novel. Mind you, I don’t mind Gothic novels. Being carried away by a horseman in a black cloak over the mountains under the moon to a castle! — No, I’m only joking, I’d rather be with you. My turn now.” And she pulled him toward a circular platform. The car whirled about, was lifted spinning and suddenly was hurled almost from its axis. The fairground tilted, fell away. Kirk closed his eyes. The sky was swimming; he couldn’t move for fear of being thrown clear, though Anne weighed on his arm and sand rubbed between his fingers.

  “Wasn’t that marvellous?” Anne panted. “Where shall we go next? Oh, poor Kirk, don’t you feel well?”

  “Not very. Maybe because I haven’t got my glasses.”

  “Oh, dear, and I was going to buy you an ice-cream. Sorry, darling, shouldn’t have said that. Come on, I’ll get you a drink. It’ll do you the world of good.”

  Reaching the main street, they found themselves opposite the Court Cinema, dwarfed by a poster for taxis; two children ran by with propellers. “What a strange little place,” said Anne. “Vertigo, what’s that? Oh, I’m sorry, that wasn’t exactly in good taste.”

  “No it’s all right,” mumbled Kirk. “Vertigo — it’s the Alfred Hitchcock film about James Stewart becoming obsessed with Kim Novak, I should say the girl he thinks she is, and in trying to mould her into his dream of her, he causes her death.”

  “That’s awfully sad. I wish we could see it. Come on, I’m going to give you your medicine.”

  The Scotch settled Kirk’s stomach, but not his thoughts; perhaps he should suggest a visit tonight to Vertigo, even though it would be invisible to him. He felt ill at ease in the empty parlour, holding hands with Anne, watched by the barman as he polished glasses and flicked flies; he’d rather be showing Anne off to the crowds. Again the move was hers. “Do you think we could go to Ellesmere Port?” she said. “I’d so like to see the docks before they’re all demolished.” On the bus to Ellesmere Port she caught his eye. “You like my pleats, don’t you? I think you’d like to touch them. But that’d be wicked.” So that was what she’d been wearing. She’d said that on the bus that day. He was sure she had. Their visit to Ellesmere Port had faded; it jerked from image to image like an old film. The stern of a ship behind high stern grey buildings, the grey seeping into the sky; Anne waving to someone at the ship’s rail. “Now, I’m only teasing,” she told Kirk as he tensed. “Let’s go back to my auntie’s. You do know how to get to Bidston from here?” Unfortunately, Kirk couldn’t correlate the bus-routes this side of the Mersey; he suggested they walk for a while. Along the road they reached a gate into a field. “Look, marvellous, a bridle-path,” cried Anne. Kirk thought it more likely the path of tractor-treads, but let himself be led. Then the grey sky darkened and pattered on the grass; they piled beneath the shelter of a tree. Kirk’s arm was round Anne’s shoulders; she was silent, regaining her breath. He felt the bark rough against his back; he stared across the field, trying to forget that the next move was his, but the dull green was curtained by indolent raindrops against a faster distant mist, and he sensed rather than saw that the indistinct horizon was blocked off by the squat curves of an oil refinery. As if of its own accord, his hand edged round and stroked Anne’s soft warm cheek. The rain slowed. “We’d better go before it starts again,” Anne said. “I like it here,” Kirk protested weakly; he’d tried and failed, he knew. “I know, darling,” and she smiled up at him, “but it’d be nicer at home.”

  “Auntie Ethel, come and meet Kirk.” They stood in a hall bright as an aquarium; Kirk was aware of surfaces of glass and plastic, the open treads of a staircase, what seemed to his limited vision like indirect lighting. A door opened at the end of the hall; a figure in slacks moved toward them, graceful yet shy as a tropical fish, halted and said in a voice a little cracked by age: “He’s gorgeous, You’d better watch out or I’ll have him for myself. Hello, Kirk, can you see me from there? Then I’d better warn you that you may get a shock.” The face swam forward; the pr
ojectionist focused, and Kirk saw that beneath the grey hair and eyes, one side of Auntie Ethel’s lined yet lively face was covered by a purple birthmark.

  “Now why on earth should I get a shock?” he asked, shaking hands. “Unless you mean because you’re nicer-looking than your niece.” Anne kicked his ankle, but not hard.

  “There you are, men are fickle,” said Auntie Ethel. “Sorry if I embarrassed you, Kirk. I go like that sometimes. Ever since someone — well, I won’t bore you. It’s odd, you remind me of him. I know your face, I’m sure. It’s all right, Anne, I’m not trying a line.” She seemed to recollect herself. “Now you children go and get dry and I’ll make you something to eat. You’re not going to help, Annie, you’re too wet. It’s been a long time since I’ve got dinner for more than one.”

  “It is sad, Kirk,” Anne said, taking his coat and leading him into the sitting-room. “Auntie Ethel’s husband was killed in a car crash before they’d had children, and I know she so wanted children. She was ever so worried about my coming down by bus, in case — you know. Well, we’ll be her children all this week, won’t we?”

  Kirk, trying to settle himself on an odd curved couch made of cane, agreed, but his thoughts were elsewhere: how long before he had to kiss Anne? The aquarium seemed timeless, unreal; he couldn’t ponder properly. “I’ll help her set the table, anyway,” Anne said, and leaned down to kiss his cheek. He remembered Brighton Rock, more strongly than when he’d been with Shirley; Pinkie kissing a girl and missing her mouth — he couldn’t see that Graham Greene had been at his shoulder, whispering doubts. He thrust his fingers through Anne’s hair and pulled her down to him, kissed her mouth, which was scented and moist. Then he let go, waiting. “Gosh, you’re strong,” Anne said, “but let’s eat first, darling.”

  “This is a marvellous house,” Anne told Auntie Ethel. Though the latter had protested, Anne had insisted on sitting with her to keep her company, leaving Kirk facing them as at an interview. “All these lovely things,” and she looked to Kirk for confirmation; but he was still adjusting to the plates and table-cloth, both made of paper. The latest trend, he supposed, and realized that Anne was deliberately suppressing her love of the antique.