Act of Darkness

by Francis King

  It was the smell of old age; but Sophie, who had become used to far worse smells in the settlement in the East End, was puzzled. ‘Smell, dear? Oh, it only needs the window open.’ It was then that she noticed the look of anxiety, almost panic, on her niece’s face. ‘But you don’t have to move up here. Not if you don’t want to. I mean, if you’d rather share with me – if it’s not too crowded and uncomfy for you …’

  Helen gave herself a little shake, as though to dislodge herself from some imprisoning daydream. ‘Yes, I think I’d really rather do that.’

  Sophie was delighted. ‘Lovely! Well, that settles that. I’ll tell Signora Rossi. It’ll be a little economy for us, won’t it?’

  Helen said softly: ‘ We don’t have to think about economies, Aunt Sophie. Daddy’s making me an enormous allowance. You know that.’

  ‘Oh, but that’s for you – that’s your pocket money. So that you can buy some gorgeous frocks and go to theatres and concerts and parties and altogether have a lovely, lovely time.’

  Sophie had a large income from the money which she and Helen’s mother had inherited from their father; but, so generous with others, she was frugal with herself. Typically, when old Mr Lawrence had either forgotten or deliberately omitted to settle with her for the food which she had bought for him during the weeks of his illness, she never reminded him; and when, on the second day of Helen’s stay, a one-armed ex-soldier in cloth cap and muffler had begun to play a barrel-organ in the centre of the square, she first had cried out in delighted recognition ‘A wandering minstrel I!’ and then, having plucked a pound note from her purse, had run out, leaving the front door open, to give it to him. People, as cruelly transformed by the smell of her innocence as animals by the smell of blood, would often overcharge her; but if Helen protested: ‘Oh, Aunt Sophie, apples can’t possibly cost as much as that!’ or ‘Four shillings for that tiny amount of gristly mince!’ she would reply, shocked and hurt: ‘Oh, but dear, they would never dream of cheating me! I’ve been going to them, week in, week out, for years and years.’ Helen would then feel that it was she, not the shopkeeper concerned, who had fallen below expectations.

  Though a heavy sleeper, Sophie would often be woken, in the night by a sudden cry. She would prop herself up on an elbow, her hand to the switch of the bedside lamp between them, preparatory to putting it on, and would then stare through the near-darkness at the face of her niece. The face looked untroubled, the girl was clearly sleeping. Could she have dreamed that cry? But one morning, as she was returning from the bathroom, towel over an arm and sponge-bag in hand, she came face to face with the middle-aged secretary who lived in the room next door, and the secretary, having said good morning, asked: ‘ Is it you or your niece who has the nightmares?’ ‘The nightmares?’ Sophie was disconcerted, but for a moment only. Then she smiled apologetically: ‘ Oh, dear, am I disturbing you? I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I’ve had this silly habit of calling out in my sleep ever since I was a child. I’m never even aware that I’ve done it.’ Pulling open the front door, the secretary said: ‘Ah well, never mind. It can’t be helped, I suppose.’

  Helen rarely left the house alone. Indeed, she rarely left it at all. Seated in a deckchair by the French windows which opened out on to a grimy paved yard – at the bottom of it, there was a concrete shed in which Signora Rossi’s son kept his motorbike and the tenants their dustbins – she could feel safe; but once she was out in the street, she felt that anything could befall her – a building might topple, a bus might veer off the road and pin her to a wall, a maniac might emerge from the crowd, an axe in his hand.

  Sophie was at first reluctant to leave her to herself; but, if she stayed, Helen would show little inclination to talk. ‘Would you like to come to the settlement with me? They’re such a splendid lot – though their lives have been so awful. It might be an interest for you.’ But Helen did not seem to want an interest. Or Aunt Sophie would coax her, as though she were a fractious child: ‘Do come with me to my meeting. Ouspensky has made such a difference to my life. He’s given me, oh, such perspectives. I was never religious in the conventional sense, as your mother was, but I always felt that there was a part of me – a spiritual part – waiting to be developed. This young man is quite remarkable. He gets impatient with me from time to time – I’m terribly slow and silly about understanding what he tells us – but, yes, yes, one does feel that he lives his life on a totally different plane from an earthling like myself.’ The young man, though she did not tell Helen this, was another recipient of her money. ‘Do come with me, dear!’ But Helen shook her head, sighed and held up her library book: ‘I think I’ll get on with this.’

  Letters arrived from Toby, occasionally for Sophie, regularly for Helen. Sophie would at once open hers, so excitedly that she would usually manage to tear the sheets inside as well as the envelopes. Then she would read passages out to Helen, with wondering interpolations of ‘ Fancy that!’ or ‘Would you believe it?’ about the most ordinary of happenings. Helen, on the other hand, would place one letter, unopened, on the table by her bed; and then, a week later, she would place the next letter, also unopened, on top of it. The letters would accumulate. Sophie would tidy them from time to time, holding them in her hands and barely restraining herself from urging Helen to read them. Then, at last, she would burst out: ‘Aren’t you going to see what your father has to say?’ ‘Some time.’ Finally, after a number of such verbal nudges and shoves, Helen would at last put down the library book of the moment with a sigh and begin systematically to read through four or five letters in sequence.

  Before the letters, a telegram had arrived. It was addressed to Sophie, not to Helen, and it read: ‘ ISABEL HAS HAD GIRL STOP BOTH DOING WELL AFTER DIFFICULT DELIVERY STOP WRITING TOBY.’

  ‘Isn’t that lovely?’ Sophie cried out. ‘Old Mrs Thompson was so afraid she’d lose it. When we heard nothing, I began to think that no news was bad news. Do you think Toby has sent his mother a cable too? Or do you think I ought to put through a trunk call to Sussex? Oh, he must have told her!’

  Helen did not answer. She picked up the cable between thumb and forefinger from the table where Sophie had laid it down, as though it were a handkerchief inadvertently dropped by one or other of them. Then she carried it over to the waste-paper basket, of the same barbola work as the screen – one of the girls at the settlement, a hunchback, so clever with her fingers, had made both, Sophie had once explained – paused a moment and then let it flutter down on top of a fuzz of grey combings from Sophie’s hair, the peel of a tangerine and a circular about a new restaurant in Kensington High Street which Sophie and Helen would certainly never enter.

  After the arrival of the telegram and many times subsequently Sophie would urge, a puzzled frown drawing her brows together, so that she looked like an over-sized schoolgirl faced with an equation beyond her ability to solve: ‘Oughtn’t you to send your father a line? I’ve written to him, of course, but I’m sure he’d much rather hear from you. He’s such a wonderful correspondent, though so busy. Through all these years since your mother’s death he’s never failed to keep in touch with me – heaven knows why.’ Usually, her gaze fixed on the page before her, Helen ignored all such promptings; but sometimes, with a wearily patient smile – ‘ Oh, all right then!’ it seemed to say – she would rise, get down from the top of the wardrobe the crocodile-leather writing case which had once been her mother’s, take out a pad, and write a brief, uninformative, undemonstrative note.

  One day Helen did not get out of bed. Sophie was off to the settlement, where, that afternoon, they were going to hold a Rummage Sale. For several weeks, she had been badgering friends, neighbours and even the local shopkeepers to make their contributions, with the result that one corner of the room now contained a sour-smelling stack of worn, misshapen shoes, cardigans fretted by moth, rusty saucepans with blackened accretions inside them, cracked cups often without either handles or saucers, a dinner jacket bottle green with age, some stays trailing grubb
y laces. Dear Mr Kearney, a young bachelor who also worked voluntarily at the settlement, was going to transport all these objects in a van borrowed from a friend. Sophie had asked Helen if she would like to take a hand, telling her: ‘Oh, it’s going to be such fun! And it’s in such a good cause! For a new handicrafts shed. Do come, dear! You’ve never met Mr Kearney, have you? Like you, he’s a tremendous reader. Folklore’s his thing. He knows everything there is to know about folklore. I’m sure you’d find lots and lots to talk about together.’ But Helen had refused.

  Now, as Sophie first vigorously sponged herself all over with cold water from the basin on the wash-stand – baths were extra – with no sense of shame and then began to dress, Helen, who usually got up before she did, lay on her side, watching her from her bed with wide, vacant eyes. Sophie felt vaguely troubled; something was not quite right.

  ‘I’m afraid that Mr Kearney will have to come in here. I don’t think I can carry all these things by myself.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. I don’t mind.’

  Sophie wondered if Mr Kearney would mind. He was such a proper young man, spending all his time on his folklore, the settlement or visits to the Roman Catholic Church in Farm Street, near where he lived. But that vague unease expanding within her, like some ill-digested meal, she said nothing more about Mr Kearney. ‘You will have some breakfast when you feel like it, won’t you?’ Helen did not answer. She had refused even a cup of coffee when, in her dressing-gown, her hair still in curlers, Sophie had eaten her own breakfast seated on an edge of her bed, the ‘old MG’ open before her. Again Helen did not answer. Just as when the girls at the settlement mocked at her or teased her, Sophie now ran on, as though words, however foolish or unnecessary, would somehow make things all right again. ‘There’s plenty to choose from for your lunch. Baked beans. That cold gammon – I don’t think it’s gone off but make sure, dear, won’t you? Cheese – some of that Derbyshire Sage you so much like, as well as some mousetrap. Oh, and tomatoes – I got them for almost nothing at a stall in the Mile End Road. Such a nice man, who last year spent months and months in prison for a burglary he never committed. And then, if you feel really ambitious, you could always do something with that chuck steak which I was too lazy to cook for us last night …’

  She would have continued to enumerate possible items, if Helen had not said: ‘Yes, Aunt Sophie, yes,’ in a tone of extreme weariness and then turned away to the wall.

  ‘My niece is feeling a little off-colour, so she’s lying in this morning. You won’t mind going into the room with her in bed, will you, Mr Kearney? I’m sure you’ll understand.’

  Mr Kearney, prudish and fastidious, did, in fact, mind; but fortunately, as he went back and forth, his pointed chin balanced on armful after armful of junk, all that he could see of Helen was the outline of what might merely have been a bolster under the bedclothes.

  ‘Goodbye, Helen dear!’ Sophie called when everything had been cleared. ‘ I’ll try not to be too late home. But there’ll be a lot of clearing up to do afterwards – there’s bound to be.’

  Mr Kearney stood out in the hall, shifting his weight from one stork-like leg to another and thinking, as he often did at the settlement: ‘ How can people live like this?’ His pretty little Mayfair house, inherited from a bachelor uncle, always made him feel guilty. That was why he spent so much time at the settlement or in the Farm Street Church.

  When, yet again, Helen made no response, Sophie, who was carrying her last load – a Pye wireless cabinet, a rising sun fretted on it, empty of any wireless – edged towards the bed. She peered round the cabinet, which she had refused to allow Mr Kearney to take from her – ‘No, it’s terribly dusty. You don’t want to spoil that lovely pinstripe suit’ – and ventured: ‘You are feeling all right, aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you. Yes.’

  ‘It’s not your period, is it?’

  Outside in the hall, Mr Kearney flinched. What a loud voice that woman had! It was the one thing which, devoted to her though he was, he simply could not take (as he put it to his sister, who simply could not take anything about poor Sophie). He did not hear Helen’s answer, which was a low: ‘Good heavens, no! That was last week.’

  When Sophie returned that evening, her usually clear and rosy complexion muddied by fatigue and her feet and calves aching from so much standing, it seemed as if Helen had not stirred since she had left her some ten hours previously. In all that dealing with people looking for bargains where few bargains existed, in pouring out innumerable cups of strong, stewed Indian tea from an urn that constantly dripped on to her shoes, in jovially stiffening Mr Kearney whenever, like a plant bereft of a stake, he suddenly began to droop, in separating two girls who, squabbling over a pair of downtrodden feather mules, had begun to bite and claw at each other, and in sweeping up – all but one or two of her helpers vanished – the debris afterwards, Sophie had forgotten her unease; but now, as she peered down, her round face tilted, at the humped form shrouded by bedclothes, it flooded back into her, bitter and strong.

  ‘Haven’t you been up today?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Had something to eat?’

  Sophie sat down on her own bed, so close to Helen’s that she had only to put out an arm to touch her, and began to unlace and tug off her shoes. She massaged her aching feet – they seemed at least one size larger than when she had set off or else the shoes had shrunk by a size – with a dreamy pleasure, screwing up her eyes.

  Helen was silent. Then she murmured, long after Sophie had ceased to expect any answer: ‘I didn’t want anything.’

  ‘Shall I give Dr Spencer a ring?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘I thought you might be seedy.’

  ‘I’m perfectly all right.’

  ‘Good. Oh good.’ Sophie rose briskly, in her stockinged feet, and, putting two hands behind her back, unfastened her brassière. She had been longing to do that all through the long, exhausting day. ‘Well, let’s have something to eat. What’s it to be?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Oh, come along, dear! I’ll make you some scrambled eggs as you always like them – in the double-boiler, runny, with some chives chopped up in them, those chives that Mr Kearney gave me from his pot. How about that?’

  ‘I’ve no appetite.’

  ‘Well, try to eat something for my sake.’

  ‘The thought of food, just the thought, revolts me.’

  ‘I hope you’re not going down with jaundice. There’s a lot of it about. That’s exactly how I felt when I had it in Calcutta.’

  ‘I’m not ill, Aunt Sophie.’

  ‘Well, then make a little effort to get something down – just to please me. To make me happy. Will you?’

  Helen wanted to make her aunt happy; and so, when the scrambled eggs had been ladled out from the double-burner on to the squares of buttered toast – they were curdled, not runny, since Sophie, rushing to stop the toast from burning, had left them unstirred – and the plate had been carried over to her on a small tray of Benares brass, also a present from Toby, she forced herself to swallow mouthful after mouthful.

  ‘That’s a good girl!’ Sophie cried out. ‘Now how about a piece of that fudge I brought back from the sale? Mr Kearney’s sister made it, so it ought to be good.’

  But by now Helen felt that she had done her duty.

  Chapter Three

  Listlessly, Helen lay in her bed day after day. She would get up to wash herself perfunctorily at the wash-stand behind the barbola screen, finding a degraded pleasure in the odours of her own body. (It was usually Sophie, not she, who went along to the bathroom, enamel jug in hand, to fetch the water, and who later returned there with the brimming slop pail.) When she had to go to the lavatory, she would hurry down the corridor in dressing-gown and slippers, dreading an encounter with Signora Rossi, her son or one of the other tenants. ‘You all right, lo
ve?’ Signora Rossi asked in her Italian-Cockney accent, hurrying past, dustpan and brush in hand after a sweeping of the stairs. Her handsome, hulking teenage son, with his luxuriant, brilliantined hair falling to his collar and his large hands soiled with engine-grease, merely looked away when he and Helen came face to face at the lavatory door. ‘ Better, are we?’ The secretary, already late for work, did not wait for an answer, as she slammed the front door behind her.

  Helen no longer read, rarely talked. Sophie, going out, would switch on the wireless for her. ‘ There’s something nice! Melodies from ‘‘Merrie England’’. Your grandfather knew Edward German – did you know that? They belonged to the same club, I think.’ But as soon as Helen heard the front door close and the heavy feet thumping down the steps, she would extend an emaciated arm and switch off the set again.

  ‘No, I don’t want to see a doctor, I’ve told you, there’s nothing wrong with me.’

  ‘But, darling, it’s not natural for a girl of your age to want to spend all her time in bed. Now is it? And Dr Spencer is such a kind, good woman. Impatient sometimes, but that’s because she has so much to do. She’ll give you something. You’ll see. She’ll put the stuffing back into you in no time at all.’

  ‘I don’t want to see Dr Spencer!’ Helen’s was the fretful tearfulness of a patient debilitated by a long and serious illness. ‘I’ve told you and told you.’

  ‘Very well, dear. As you think best.’

  Helen felt a sudden love for this absurd, clumsy, saintly woman, and a sudden contrition. For her sake, she yearned to get out of bed, have a bath, put on her clothes, go out, do something; but it was the hopeless yearning of the victim of a paralysing stroke. She wanted; she couldn’t.

  ‘At any rate, will you allow me to get you a bottle of Metatone?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Metatone. A tonic. It worked wonders for me last winter, when I had no energy. Or Sanatogen – that’s a pick-me-up said to be awfully good.’