Listening in the Dusk

by Celia Fremlin

  But this evening, there’d been no time for anything of the sort, and of course he hadn’t been invited to stay for supper either. True, Alice had told him, before she left, that he was welcome to go down to the kitchen and help himself to anything in the fridge that was labelled ‘A’, but this was a pretty gloomy prospect, all on his own. ‘A-level’ food: but what was the point of making a silly pun inside your own head when there was no one there to laugh at it?

  Oh well. He might as well stay for a bit, and get on with some homework. There was no point in going home, his parents were out playing Bridge again, so there wouldn’t be a proper meal there, either, merely another bleak instruction — just like Alice’s — about the contents of the fridge. Also, the baby-sitter would be there, the new one with the round stupid face and a ridiculous froth of yellow hair that seemed to need fiddling with all the time. Cyril found her terribly boring. She wouldn’t even watch television, this one, she preferred to sit fiddling with her hair and making him feel that he ought to be talking to her.

  Languidly, he reached down for his school bag, and pulled out his geometry book. Might as well get that over with; but while he was scrabbling in the further depths for his protractor, which seemed to have detached itself from the main box of instruments, he became aware of voices on the stairs. Hetty’s voice, eager as always, bubbling over with sympathetic concern for someone else’s business, and also another voice, a man’s voice new to Cyril. He might be anyone.

  On the landing just below, the footsteps came to a halt, and the voices too. There was a sharp ‘rat-tat’ on a door, the door of that sad girl, Mary something, it must be. A short silence followed, then the resumption of voices. By now, Cyril could hear what they were saying.

  “I’m afraid she doesn’t seem to be in,” Hetty was apologising. “She works now, you know, a nice little job, but I don’t know when she finishes. But I’ll tell you what, I think I know where she keeps it, up in the other lady’s room. She’s out too, but I’m sure she won’t mind …” and now the footsteps started up again, really loud this time, on the uncarpeted stairs leading up to the attics.

  Neither flight nor fight being a viable option, Cyril froze into immobility. He didn’t feel like socialising, certainly not with whoever this was, and so he kept his head down and his shoulders hunched against whatever was going to happen.

  Nothing much did; or nothing that concerned him, anyway. They seemed slightly surprised to find him there. Well, naturally, since they’d walked in without knocking they’d had no warning of his presence, but that was their look out. At least they didn’t try to engage him in conversation, beyond a “Well, my goodness!” from Hetty and a perfunctory and dismissive “Good evening” from the visitor, a large, ugly man with bent shoulders, roughly the age that adults usually were, and intent to the point of rudeness on his immediate purpose.

  “It’s under here,” Hetty was saying, bending over the box-built sofa. “I saw they’d got it out of here when they were sorting it all out, and I know she wants you to have it, because she told me she was doing it for a friend who was in a hurry for it, his thesis or something … She told me you’d be calling … Ah, here we are,” and in triumph she dragged out the cardboard box that supported one end of the couch. “Here, you take it, it’s a bit heavy for me …”

  The man barely thanked her. Greedily, he stooped for the box, and grabbing it in both arms made for the door. Here, remembering his manners as one might remember to step over an annoying obstacle, he did throw a hasty word of thanks to Hetty over his shoulder, and then set off down the stairs with clumsy haste, easily outdistancing Hetty who stumbled in his wake, clutching the banisters and trying hospitably to delay his departure by such inducements as she could think up on the spur of the moment, from a nice cup of tea to the possibility that Mary — “‘Imogen’ as you call her, I’ll never remember to call her that myself, I’m sure” — might well be back any minute, and would be awfully disappointed to have missed him …

  But he only hurried on the faster. Cyril heard Hetty’s hospitable voice fade into an uneven wailing towards the lower regions of the house; and then the front door slammed and that seemed to be that.

  Cyril was growing hungry. He waited for a few minutes to make sure that the commotion, whatever it was, had completely died down, and then set off for the kitchen to see what he could find. Rather to his annoyance, he found Miss Dorinda still at the cooker, stirring this and that in little pans, although it was already twenty to eight. Wasn’t she supposed to be finished by half past seven? Evidently, the same thought must have crossed her mind, too, for she had whipped round in righteous indignation as he came through the door, had opened her mouth on a reprimand, and had then caught sight of the time. By a bare ten minutes, the bottom had fallen out of her grievance. It was maddening. Surely there was something she could tell him not to do …?

  But no; for by now Hetty had arrived too, and Hetty hardly ever allowed anyone to be told not to do things, certainly not Cyril, who by now was rather a pet of hers. Seeing him now, rummaging in the fridge for such oddments of cheese, bacon scraps and margarine as might turn out to be Alice’s, she immediately put her foot down and urged him, if he didn’t mind the bones, to share with her the remains of a delicious Irish stew.

  Delicious it was; and of course Cyril didn’t mind the bones. Actually, there were some rather interesting ones, the upper neck vertebrae, which looked exactly like faces when you’d picked them clean of meat and stood them up on end; but when he held one up for admiration, pointing out the eyes, the mouth, even the little projections that looked like ears, Miss Dorinda made a face of such disgust and aversion as quite took him aback. And not only this, but at almost exactly the same moment Hetty, too — most uncharacteristically — gave a little cry of dismay.

  “Your hand, Cyril! Whatever have you done to your hand?”

  He’d grazed it, that was all. Nothing to make a fuss about. Falling off a bike, he explained nonchalantly, and anyway it had stopped hurting.

  All the same, a fuss was made. Hetty insisted on iodine, or, rather, tried to insist on it, the force of her insistence being sadly weakened by the fact that she couldn’t find any, search as she would. Weed-killer, worm-pills, mango chutney, nasal spray; you name it, she had it, every damn thing except iodine.

  In counterpoint to all this, Miss Dorinda was setting herself to improve the occasion.

  “You see, Cyril?” she admonished. “You see what happens? Didn’t I tell you you’d get hurt one of these days, going around with those awful boys? I know those flats; you’ll get blood-poisoning, I wouldn’t be surprised, cutting yourself on those filthy stairs … You ought to see a doctor, get one of those injections, tetanus and that …”

  And then, as the search for the iodine continued, and Cyril resumed picking at his delectable bones as if nothing had happened, she felt provoked to continue with her theme:

  “It’s bad company you’re getting into, Cyril, one of these days you’ll be sorry. It’s got a bad name, that estate, that’s where the muggings go on, and the robbings and the stabbings. Myself, I wouldn’t go there, not even by daylight, not if they paid me!”

  They wouldn’t pay her of course, it was just a silly turn of speech. What they paid her for was to go back and forth, back and forth, day after day, month after month, year after year, along the same safe streets at the same safe hours to the same safe job; never any change, never anything different, all the time getting older and older and greyer and greyer and more and more disapproving. This, then, was the ultimate reward for not getting into bad company …

  The front door slammed, and a few seconds later Mary was in the room, brandishing a frozen quihe which had come her way in the course of her duties, and asking who would like to share it? It was too large, she said, just for her.

  Cyril, despite the Irish stew, was by no means unwilling to help her out; and while it heated up in the oven, Mary regaled them all with an account of her day; about the cu
stomers who never had their money ready, and even worse ones who wanted to pay by credit-card for one tin of cat-food and a tube of toothpaste; and the puzzling fact that so very few of them ever counted their change, or gave even a glance at the detailed and accurate receipts spewed out so patiently by the machine …

  The quiche was OK; not as good as the Irish stew, though of course he wouldn’t say so, and by the time they’d finished, it was nearly time for the nine o’clock News. Hetty particularly wanted to watch it, she said, because of that actress, what was her name, getting some sort of an award for whatever her part was in that film, what was it called, that there’d been some kind of a fuss about.

  The TV set, being rather a nuisance in the kitchen, had found its way into the absent Mr Singh’s room on the ground floor, and thither Hetty made her way, followed, for lack of anything better to do, by the rest of the party. Mary had hesitated a moment — she had some washing to do, she said — but urged by Hetty, she came along with the others; as did Cyril, not because he cared about the News particularly, but because it was a way of putting off the time when he would have to return home to the boring baby-sitter. Miss Dorinda came because she always enjoyed a nice sit-down after her long day on her feet, and also, in the case of TV, there was always a chance of being shocked by something.

  It was a cosy little gathering. The splendid two-bar electric fire that actually worked was fetched from Brian’s room — he was out playing at a concert, or something, and so couldn’t possibly mind — and the four of them had just managed to settle themselves in a comfortable circle round the set by the time the News was to begin.

  Chapter 29

  “Alice! Thank goodness you’re back! Oh, thank goodness! They’ve gone mad, Alice, every last one of them, they’ve gone absolutely raving bananas … That poor girl sobbing her heart out, and the boy pounding up and down the house, calling out to her, and the telephone never stops going, and everyone on about a package gone missing … And now she’s gone off in a mini-cab in floods of tears, and no money on her I wouldn’t be surprised … I don’t know, nobody tells me anything. And now there’s that boy’s mother ringing up asking where is he, why isn’t he home yet, and I don’t know, how should I? I don’t even know why he’s here, do I, let alone why he isn’t! And on top of all this, as if all this wasn’t enough, someone’s been helping themselves to Miss Dorinda’s yoghurt and left her a strawberry-flavour one instead, and if there’s one thing Miss Dorinda can’t stand it’s flavoured yoghurt … Oh, Alice, what a mercy you’re home at last, now we’ll get a bit of sense hammered into it!”

  It seemed an optimistic prediction. Rushing home through the rainy night, just failing to flag down taxis, just missing departing buses, Alice had been preparing herself either to break the frightening news to Mary, or, if she had already heard it, to offer what consolation and support it was in her power to give.

  Well, Mary had heard the news, that was beyond doubt. But what then? Where had she gone? And why? What did she think she could do in the face of this alarming new development? What could she even want to do, so repeatedly had she asserted that her brother was out of her life for ever, that the whole tragedy was something she intended to turn her back on and try to escape?

  What had changed her mind, if changed it was? Assuredly, tonight’s revelation was startling and disturbing in the extreme, but surely a lesser tragedy, by any standards, than the original crimes themselves …

  “A cup of tea,” Hetty was saying now, in something more like her normal voice; and Alice, aware suddenly of how cold and wet she was — her hair, her scarf, her shoes all soaked — roused herself to follow Hetty down to the warm kitchen. Not that she wanted a cup of tea — she was wondering already how she would manage to get it down — but there was something obligatory about it, which she and Hetty both recognised. It was bigger than both of them, this ritual cup of tea, this seal set on disaster, recognised by all, from broken-hearted widows to earthquake victims dragged out of ruins.

  Under the harsh kitchen light, Alice could see that Hetty had been crying. Her plump, kindly face, usually so contented and full of all-purpose benevolence, was strained and streaky with uneven pallor; her hair, never very tidy, was standing up all ways as if she really had been “tearing her hair”. Usually looking young for whatever her age was, tonight she looked old, for whatever it was.

  “If only she’d said something!” Hetty wailed, slamming the kettle down noisily on to the gas-ring. “There we were, all sitting cosily round the telly, as snug as can be, and all of a sudden she leaps up as if she’d been shot, and rushes upstairs. Then Cyril, he rushes up after her … I heard their voices … something or other, I don’t know. He was telling her something, or she was telling him … Anyway, down she came, in floods of tears, and grabbing the telephone. I wish now I’d … but how could I, not knowing anything? It’s set her right back, you know, whatever it is, that’s the shame of it. Just when she was getting so much better — haven’t you noticed? — a different girl these last few days. Only this evening I was noticing it, it did my heart good, it really did, watching her enjoy that bit of pastry stuff this evening. And a bit of colour in her face too, and having a laugh about that job of hers … And now this has to happen! I could’ve cried when I saw her face as she went out the door, all white and pinched again, like it was right at the beginning …

  “I couldn’t get a word out of her, not a word. If only she’d said something, Alice, if only she’d told me. But such a state she was in, I can’t help wondering if she knew herself what she was doing, where she meant to go …”

  Chapter 30

  Mary knew where she meant to go all right. The problem was, how to get there before Julian. For she knew already where he would be going, and why he would be going there. How he had succeeded in escaping from his top-security prison she could not imagine, except that prisoners do escape sometimes, somehow or other. It must need a range of skills quite beyond her imagination, including a dauntingly high intelligence, applied intensively to the assessing of weak spots in the security system and the moments of relaxed vigilance during the day’s routine. It must need also unshakeable nerve, iron will-power, and a reckless disregard of consequences, all of which he had, my God how he had them …!

  *

  Speed … Speed …! She had a sort of start on him, that was one thing, setting off as she did from London instead of from the bleak northern county where he was serving his sentence. What time would he have set off? “This evening,” they’d said on the News, but of course evening starts early in institutions, the last meal of the day taking place much earlier than in most households. About six, perhaps? That was probably when they’d missed him, but how much earlier might he have actually got away? How many hours along his dark and rainy route had he come by now? Hitching lifts, perhaps? Slinking along black verges as the water splashed waist-high from the wheels of passing cars? Seeking short cuts sometimes across sodden fields of dead winter grass and black ploughlands?

  “C’mon, Midge, race you!” The young voice, breathless with ambition to win, came to her across the years: but this time, the race was for real, and no way could he be allowed to win it. She had got to win this time. Somehow, some way, she had got to get there first.

  It wasn’t difficult to find out the times of the late-night trains from Victoria; for a wonder, the Enquiries people had answered almost at once when she’d phoned. Nor was it difficult to order a mini-cab, though unfortunately they couldn’t come at once. Twenty minutes it would be, the girl reckoned. Thus there was nothing for Mary to do but to wait, biting her nails or not, as her self-control waxed or waned. There was no packing to do; she would not be taking an overnight case. Whatever was going to happen to her this night, going to bed would assuredly form no part of it.

  Hetty was fluttering like a mother hen, getting in her way, bombarding her with endless futile questions: it was unbearable. The only way not to be downright rude to her — and even in her distraught
state, Mary was dimly aware of the kindness and concern implicit in these flutterings — was to get out of the house; to wait for the mini-cab outside, and never mind the rain.

  The street was empty, and very silent. It was that hour of the evening when comings and goings have almost ceased; too late for anyone to be still setting off to anywhere, too early for them to be returning.

  So Mary had the rainy darkness all to herself. To save time, she walked a little way along the street, in the direction from which the mini-cab would be coming; also, she wanted to get well away from the windows of number seventeen, lest Hetty, peering worriedly out from one of them, would realise that she had not yet gone.

  Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes isn’t for ever, but it can seem very like it in these sort of circumstances, so Mary braced herself for a long and nerve-racking wait. Her relief was enormous when, long before the twenty minutes were up — it couldn’t have been much more than ten — she saw the black car nosing along the street towards her. It seemed to be having some difficulty in locating the right house, most of the numbers being so badly marked, and the streetlighting so poor. Thankfully, Mary waved, ran towards it, and as the driver swung the rear door open for her, she leaped inside.

  “Victoria Station, please,” she panted, flopping down gratefully on the back seat.