Listening in the Dusk

by Celia Fremlin

  The driver turned his head slightly, as if checking that he’d heard her directions rightly.

  “No, dear, not Victoria. I’m taking you the whole way, right down to Medley Green,” and now, as he turned further round towards her, she recognised the face — the bland, heavy face, scored by lines of aging adolescence — of the man at the supermarket. The man who had been watching her, had spoken to her at the check-out, and had been waiting outside on the pavement when she finished work. So proud of herself had she been for not suspecting him of any evil intent; for having mastered her paranoia at last!

  “No … No!” she cried, struggling with the locked door; but he wagged his finger at her with menacing playfulness.

  “Hush, dear, hush! You want the whole street to hear you? To hear that you’re the notorious Imogen Gray, sister of the Monster? Because if you create a scene, getting them running out and rescuing you, that’s what I shall tell them. Try not to make me do that, dear, because it would be a shame, wouldn’t it, a pretty little girl like you to turn out to be the sister to the Monster? They won’t feel so good about you, will they, these cosy new friends of yours, once they know who you really are? That nice young man won’t, for a start. I doubt if any young man will, once he knows. Imogen Gray … Imogen Gray … It’s become kind of a nasty name, hasn’t it, just lately? Not at all a nice name for a pretty little girl like you, I’d hate people to know about it, I really would.

  “So come along, there’s a good girl, I’ll drive you down to Medley Green, and after that you can direct me. You know bloody well where your brother’s hiding, you must do, that’s what this jaunt of yours is all in aid of; aren’t I right? And let me warn you, darling, not to start telling me lies and giving me the run-around. I don’t like little girls who behave like that to me, I really don’t, and I know just how to make them very, very sorry. So just remember …

  “How do I know it’s you? Listen, dear, your picture was in all the papers, remember? And on TV too, scuttling in and out of doorways, trying to hide your face. But it didn’t work, did it, it never does, one can always get the glimpse, and for a pretty little glimpse like that, one’s going to be extra attentive, naturally. I’ve been keeping the old eye out for you ever since, and so have one or two other chaps in the trade … Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Did you really think you’d get away with it, holing up and giving yourself a false name? Listen, darling, you’re worth the best part of half a million to the gutter press, there was never a hope in hell we wouldn’t track you down in the end; and right now, with your brother scarpering like this, the price is going to hit the roof. And you know, if you’d been a good little girl right from the start, co-operative, you know, something might have come your way. But you were naughty, dear, really naughty, refusing to speak to the boys, dodging the cameras: stand-offish, toffee-nosed: that’s not the way to win friends in this game, it really isn’t. And then all those lies you told about the diary! We knew you’d bloody got it, stashed away somewhere … And by the way, I’ve got it now, thanks to your dear kind landlady; she knew just where you’d hidden it, wasn’t that lucky? I could hand it to the police any minute I choose, and explain how you’ve kept it from them all this time. I won’t, though, if you’re a good girl. I might even let you have it back, if we could come to some arrangement …

  “No, darling, don’t be a silly girl, don’t keep fighting with that door, it won’t be the slightest use, d’you think I’m stupid? You’ll only damage your nails; even your fingers, they might get damaged if you provoke me too far, and I’d simply hate that to happen …

  “What paper do I write for? Darling girl, I don’t write for any paper, that’s a job for the other boys. I’m just the little rat who digs up the big stories; I rake among the kind of muck the gentlemen of the press won’t soil their hands with, but they’re not too proud that they can’t recognise a good thing when I show it to them. And this is going to be the scoop of the year. It’s got everything: a bloodthirsty criminal; a top-security break-out; a pretty girl with a secret … Wow!

  “But listen; time’s going on, you know. I’ve enjoyed our little chat, but we have to be on our way.” Glancing out of both windows to make sure the street was still empty, of pedestrians as well as cars, he started the engine.

  Well, empty to all intents and purposes; just a young kid idling along, bouncing a tennis-ball or some such as he went. But, annoyingly, just as the car began to move, the wretched child muffed a catch, and the ball dribbled gently out into the centre of the road, right in front of the car, and with the child, of course, darting right out after it, the way kids do, never a thought for looking where they’re going.

  He gave two irritable little hoots on the horn; but instead of leaping out of the way as might be expected, the boy merely glanced up for a moment and stayed where he was, examining his ball meticulously, and brushing little bits of mud off it as if to test its quality.

  Another, sharper hoot — the driver dared not make too much noise and so rouse the curiosity of the neighbours. Still no reaction. The boy was now dreamily bouncing the ball, up and down, up and down, on the road right bang in front of the car.

  Violently, the window was wound down.

  “Get out of my fucking way!” yelled the occupant; but without result. The boy went on playing his game, apparently oblivious: tossing the ball in the air now, first with one hand and then the other.

  The kid must be deaf, or daft, or something. Angrily reversing a few yards, the driver edged the car forward to the other side of the road, thus by-passing the idiot child.

  But no sooner was he on course than — would you credit it? — the boy had moved across to that side of the road, and was once more slap in front of the car, playing his same futile game, this time with a little smile on his face.

  Twice more the manoeuvre was repeated, with the same result; and now, maddened almost beyond endurance, the driver decided to turn around and make his exit in the opposite direction.

  The boy had stopped playing with his ball for the moment, and was watching with interest while the car executed its U-turn; but no sooner had this been achieved than there he was again, right in front, bouncing his ball as nonchalantly as ever. The car drove savagely toward him, stopped with a jerk barely a foot away, but he stood his ground. His demeanour, though, was beginning to change; he was no longer cool and casual, you could see now his delight in exercising such effortless power over the clumsy great vehicle; all its speed, all its enormous horse-power locked up and useless in competition with his own slight, childish limbs. The thing had gone to his head: higher and higher he tossed the ball, smiling at each perfect catch … And now he was almost dancing, skipping and leaping as he reached and tossed; mocking, challenging, making an utter fool of the furious man behind the wheel.

  Of course, by now Mary could see exactly what Cyril was trying to do; he had seen she was in trouble, was being taken somewhere against her will, and he was engineering her escape. Sooner or later the maddened driver would fling himself from the car and go for his tormentor; and in that moment Mary would be able to escape. She saw just how it was meant to go, and she was grateful — admiring, too, of his audacity — but she was also frightened. A man as angry as this one was becoming might do anything. She clutched her handbag to her breast, tightened every muscle ready for the moment of escape … and waited.

  But for how long? Cyril could go on like this for ever, he was loving it; but what about her? How long could she stand it, sitting here every nerve poised for instant action, and feeling, like a tangible thing, the towering masculine fury building up to explosion point only inches away from her? How long would he put up with it? How long would any motorist put up with it?

  With a roar of ungovernable rage he wrenched open the door and flung himself into the road. Her moment had come: she was out and away, streaking down the dark street while her captor was charging at the boy, fists raised, breath rasping with primitive, uncontrollable fury.

 
; And this was the moment when Cyril overreached himself. Glorying in the feel of his light, agile limbs, and supremely confident in his ability to out-dodge and out-distance this heavy, aging, out-of-condition assailant, he indulged for just one half-second too long in a final, mocking little skip, and his enemy was upon him: a huge arm, thick as a ham, powerful as a piston, swept across his vision, and he was flying through the air. The crack of his head against the kerbstone sounded like a pistol-shot in the empty street, and then there was silence.

  Chapter 31

  The last train from Victoria reached Medley Green just after midnight, and, as often happened, there was no ticket-collector on duty, no staff of any kind. Mary was the only passenger to alight, and the sound of her boots was loud on the empty platform. She walked through the silent, brilliantly lit-up booking office, leaving her ticket for someone to find in the morning. Or not. Or whatever the system was for these late hours of the night.

  There were no taxis any more, but Mary didn’t mind. It was less than two miles, and every inch of the way was so familiar to her that she could hardly believe that when she arrived she wouldn’t find everyone still there, just as they used to be: her mother in the big chair under the lamp, sewing; her father, not yet ill, poring over the accounts of whatever firm he was working for just then; and Julian, a young schoolboy still, sprawling on the carpet with his homework, idly massaging the dog’s contented ears while he studied …

  Once away from the dazzle and glare of the deserted station, Mary found that the darkness lightened, brightened, filled itself with shapes and shadows by which to steer her swift familiar course.

  Swift it had to be, though already she felt a curious and not quite rational certainty that she would be there before him.

  “C’mon, Midge, race you!” Again she seemed to hear the long-ago voice, filling with its faint echoes this stretch of road by which they had walked to school through all the years of their childhood.

  The moon was rising now, but only just; a dizzy, lop-sided creature it looked tonight, sprawled on its back just above the dark line of the trees at an awkward, uncomfortable-looking angle, and giving less light, almost, than the unimaginably distant stars.

  What had she expected? She had known, vaguely, that the house was up for sale: when she and her mother had both fled, beaten down by shame and horror, an agent had taken over, and it looked, now, as if he had done absolutely nothing; broken windows, sagging porch, and the garden a dark tangle of overgrown vegetation. Perhaps it had proved impossible to find a buyer for so haunted a dwelling, pictured on television night after night, with little crosses helpfully marked on it to show viewers where this or that awful thing had happened, or been suspected, or marked off by the police with lengths of tape. A house that no one would want to live in, ever again, one-time residence of a family that no one now would ever want to know.

  She pushed open the garden gate, now lurching drunkenly on its hinges, and made her way slowly up the path to the front door, the huge dank weeds, heavy with wetness, brushing against her at every step. Now that she was here, within yards of the thing she’d so frantically rushed to reach, all the hurry seemed to have drained out of her; she wanted to be slow … slower. To know nothing … to find nothing … to go away leaving everything unresolved.

  “Pull yourself together,” Alice had said: a very wrong thing to say (as any psychologist will tell you), but all the same it had been useful, somehow, at that one particular moment.

  “Pull yourself together!” she now repeated to herself, experimentally; and for one of her training it had all the force of blasphemy, and the adrenalin leaped accordingly, enabling her to face the next move.

  She looked up at the broken windows, all out of reach. She would have to break yet another, one on the ground floor.

  The crash and the glitter of the flying splinters took her breath away for a moment, like a plunge into ice-cold water; and while she stood recovering, it occurred to her that this was actually a good sign: if Julian had got here before her, surely she would have found a ground-floor window already broken?

  Or maybe not. You couldn’t tell. Someone who could do the things Julian had done, and break out of a top-security prison into the bargain, wasn’t going to be daunted by a climb through the broken glass of an upstairs window.

  In she crawled, over the now rotting window-sill, and lowered herself into what had once been the sitting-room. It still was; nothing had been changed. In the oppressive darkness, she could make out the looming shapes of all the old familiar furniture, each item exactly where it had always been. No one had done anything. Even the books were still there, sinking into dust and decay, each one still in its proper place, no doubt, exactly as her father had arranged them while he was still able to arrange things.

  The lights wouldn’t go on. She tried each of the familiar switches in turn; but it didn’t matter, she didn’t really need them, so familiar was every step of the way across the room, through the hall, and up the stairs.

  Julian’s room, of course, was greatly changed; the to-ing and fro-ing of the police, and their intermittent searches, had made that inevitable. There was very little left that she recognised.

  But the alcove was still there; the alcove at the back of the room, facing the windows. And not only was it there, but by some small, happy chance the moon had moved around to shine right into it at this very moment; the poor lop-sided thing was now well up above the trees, and the light, to her dark-adapted eyes, was almost bright.

  Down on her knees, gently lifting the lino, pliable from long use, she felt eight years old again, no, six. This had been hers and Julian’s secret, sacred place. It was their magic chest, their witches’ strong-room, their deepest dungeon below the castle moat; and though of course it was much too small to get into themselves, their toys had all managed to get into it: soldiers, teddies, sugar-mice, turn and turn about, playing out their variegated roles in many a long-forgotten drama. And as they grew a little older, it had become a storehouse of secrets, of all precious things unfit for adult eyes: code messages, magic spells, bits of rock that might have been brought on a flying saucer from Mars.

  Gently, with infinite care, Mary eased up the board from under the lino, and pulled it free. Awash in the pool of moonlight, she bent down and peered deep, deep, into the dusty darkness that wasn’t quite darkness.

  The gun wasn’t there.

  The shock was so great that Mary thought for a moment that she was going to faint: so sure had she been, so absolutely certain, that this was where he would have hidden it.

  So he had arrived before her! This, at first, was the only thing she could think of. He had got here first, had gone straight to the secret place, and now he was off and away, once more at large with a loaded gun. New horror — new tragedy — and she was powerless to prevent it.

  Too late! Too late! Maybe only minutes too late!

  Slowly, common sense began to seep back. Perhaps it wasn’t like that at all. Perhaps the second gun had been found long ago. Even with the actual murder weapon safely in their hands, their investigations had continued for many dreadful days.

  Or had the gun never been here in the first place? What was it that had made her so certain — so suddenly, overwhelmingly certain — that it would be? Until she’d read the diary, she hadn’t even known that there was a second gun.

  She must have been crazy. And yet, crazy or not, this irrational sense of certainty was still with her: it would not go away.

  She peered again into the dusty hollow under the floor; she tried, as well as she could, to examine the loose board, the curl of the lino, to see if they showed signs of recent disturbance; but of course it was impossible to tell. If only she had a light!

  Well, that mightn’t be impossible. It could be that the electricity had been turned off at the main. Or — just as likely — that the current was on all right, but most of the bulbs broken. In that case, there might easily be one or two still working in one or other of the
rooms; she could bring one up, fix it in the socket here, and really see what she was doing …

  It was even easier than that. The very first light she tried, the kitchen one, went on immediately and dazzlingly; and there on the floor, deeply etched in the thick dust, were footprints, a man’s footprints, and almost certainly fresh ones. She traced them out through the kitchen door, along the passage, and even up the stairs so far as she could see before the darkness of the upper regions took over.

  The only thing was, all these prints were going in the same direction, up the stairs. None were returning.

  Chapter 32

  Footsteps leading away into the darkness, and none returning. This is one of the archetypal terrors of mankind, and it was several minutes before Mary could summon up the courage to search the house.

  It didn’t take long. Several of the light sockets, as it turned out, had live bulbs in, and it was soon evident that there was no one there. Mary was on her own in the deserted house.

  And the footprints? Well, no mystery really, now that her first moment of panic had subsided. As a result of some small alarm he could have made his exit by one of the back windows upstairs; or — for some similar reason — he could have taken his shoes off for extra quietness, his stockinged feet making no discernible mark on the dusty surfaces. Anything.

  The essential fact was that he was no longer here. And so he must be somewhere else. Once again, Mary had that strange sense of absolute certainty. She knew, already, just where he would be.

  *

  She had already traversed three or four miles, some of it at a run, but somehow she wasn’t in the least bit tired. All the way, she had been peering tensely ahead, straining her eyes into the uncertain light, imagining, every now and then, that she could indeed glimpse a slender, swinging figure, now here, now gone, in the feeble half-light of the waning moon.