Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume Three

by Simon Strantzas

  “But that’s only because of something that’s happened to the person.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Something that’s been done to her.”

  “Men always think that.”

  I looked at Aster as steadily as I could.

  “But have you ever before heard of anything like what I’ve told you?”

  “Yes,” said Aster.

  “Not in a movie or in a magazine, I mean, but in real life?”

  “Yes.”

  I continued to gaze at her. I daresay I clutched hold of something or other. Before my next question, it was necessary.

  “You don’t mean, Aster, that you yourself―?”

  “No.”

  I could hardly continue. The most appalling nightmare had opened and then closed before my eyes, all in seconds; a nightmare that might well have included almost everyone and everything, as will be seen by all.

  Aster was gazing into her very empty goblet. “If I were you,” she said, “I shouldn’t take Clarisse’s appeal entirely at its face value.”

  “Clarinda,” I corrected, before really thinking. Probably it was all I could say.

  “The name is secondary,” remarked Aster.

  I must admit that there was another pause. I could hardly wonder that Aster was beginning to look bored. What with one thing and another that evening.

  “Then your opinion is that I should do nothing?” I asked in the end. I thought that it might as well be spelt out. I had probably lost Aster as well as Clarinda.

  “I should get another job. Out of London perhaps. You’re in bad company generally.”

  Aster was indeed lost to me; at least in the absence of very special and sustained efforts on my part.

  “I shouldn’t like not to go on seeing you.”

  Aster said nothing. What else could have been expected?

  “Apart from everything else,” I said, “you just rendered me a very great service.”

  “I’m glad,” said Aster.

  I knew even in those days that whereas men expect to be thanked again and again, women do not care for it. Thanking a woman for anything that matters is often in the worst of taste.

  People were milling round us, and making comments upon our slowness. It was incredible, but I had forgotten all about the other customers. One forgot the popcorn-eaters when the feature film was absorbing.

  “Don’t you think we’d better go?” enquired Aster.

  “I said we’d have coffee.”

  Aster graciously accepted it, and also the rather special liqueurs I had promised, but even the most superficial of conversations had become difficult. We had seemingly fallen as silent as Ronnie and Clarinda. I daresay I looked very nearly as pale too, though Aster looked as normal as when I had first met her, at the battered telephone box.

  It was raining outside, and quite hard. Aster did permit me to kiss her again, but this time only on the cheekbone, as if she had been one of the girls in the office. I said, as firmly as always, that I looked forward to our next meeting, and she of course said nothing.

  Within three minutes of our parting, I found myself in two minds, which is an upsetting condition for any man. For days I had been cursing the pure goodwill and friendly feeling that had made me go to Mrs Z―’s party in the first place. We all know how little profit to anyone normally comes from goodwill on any occasion. It is perfectly true, almost always, that goodness has to be its own reward. That may of course be the main point about goodness.

  It seemed likely that Aster’s view of my situation was based upon considerably more than she had admitted to. Though I had almost certainly succeeded in conveying to her what that situation was, we had both found it nearly impossible to use the right words, to call things by their names. As no-one will be surprised to learn, the trouble now was that I found it quite impossible to ignore Clarinda, as Aster had recommended. It was difficult for me not to respond to the apparent desperation of Clarinda’s plea to me; when I had been considerably in love with her even before that. Desperation in a woman can advance a man’s feeling for her marvellously.

  I was travelling that night on the Underground to Trotters Park, where I then lived, and trying to think it all out; not giving way to feeling more than I could help. The train was very full, as it always was in those days, and almost everyone was soaking wet, many being at least half-drunk as well. I gave up my seat to a pretty young mother in a slinky mackintosh, and tried to continue thinking on my feet, put off my stroke by the girl’s grateful smile and eyelash drooping. I had no settled stroke in any case.

  One simple problem was how best to help Clarinda even if I made up my mind to it. Some weeks before the same thing had been my trouble with Ronnie. Naturally, Clarinda did not work in the office. She had been specially brought in for that festivity at which I had met her. Since then, Caius Julius Ladywell had never seemed to make the slightest objection to my going to see her at his house, either by day or night; but I had always felt myself there on a peculiar kind of sufferance, none the less. In those days possibly this was mere inferiority complex on my part, when confronted with rich people. Clarinda’s present situation, on the other hand, might have something to do with her having no parents. I had always understood that they had died at the same time somewhere, somehow, when Clarinda had been a baby. One hardly asked questions, especially when no-one in the office knew any of the answers. There was absolutely no direct inter-mediary between Clarinda and me. Girls like Clarinda used to have maids whom men took aside at critical moments. I could hardly attempt a frank talk with old Caius Julius. And also of course there was Ronnie, not merely standing in the light, but the entire cause of all the trouble, unlikely though this would once have seemed. I hated Ronnie. I had every reason to hate him.

  Neither in the tube train nor on the wet walk from the station did I come to any decision whatever. In primary matters, one seldom does, of course, or can. But later that night something happened. Something often does.

  I am glad to say that trouble of any kind normally sends me to sleep. It must be terrible to be kept awake by it. I am sure the insoluble problems of that evening had me snoring in no time. I could hear the rain lashing against the windowpanes, and that is always soothing too. It was an early nineteenth-century house, as I could tell for myself, though not nowadays in the best of decorative condition. I was awakened by a gentle throbbing noise. I knew that I had been half-listening to the sound for some time in my sleep, as one does.

  My back was to the window, though I was pretty certain that I had been facing it when I had dropped off. To consider further what was happening, I had to turn right over. I slowly did so.

  I had a surprise. The figure of Clarinda stood outside on the sill. She was trying to speak to me.

  She was not in the dress she had worn at Romulo’s, but in what I took to be a nightdress. Of course I had never before seen Clarinda in a nightdress. It was in pale grey and what I can only call flowing―and rather vague, too. But perhaps that was an effect of the rain streaming down the window. I am sure it was a costly nightdress, because all Clarinda’s clothes were costly. She was the most expensively dressed young woman I had ever actually spoken to.

  Clarinda’s white face was pressed as hard as possible against the glass, flattening the nose and widening the lips. Her pale hair seemed to shine a little. It must have done. I do not see how else, in the middle of the night, I could have seen her whole face so clearly. Her eyes seemed much larger than usual, and I suspect that they were shining also. She did not seem to be holding on to anything, as one would have expected. On the contrary, her two white hands were turned upwards and pressed flat against the panes, like her face. I had always thought them the most beautiful hands I had ever seen. I am sure they were.

  Clarinda still looked frightened, as when I had glimpsed her in the hallway at Romulo’s, but there was something else in her face too. I can only say that I thought at once, immediately, that she looked as though she loved me
. I quite see that, with all the other circumstances, this is unlikely, and I can well believe that I only fancied it. I could well believe that at the time.

  I sprang out of bed, hurting my ankle as I did so. All the same, I managed to take a step or two across the carpet towards the window.

  I could see well enough that Clarinda was mouthing some message to me; trying to propel the shape of the words through the glass, as the boys used to do at the Grammar School, when forbidden to speak in detention. I stopped; trying to make out what the message was. I had never been very good at this game, even at school. I realised how unsatisfactory I must look, stuck in the middle of the worn carpet in pyjamas which were striped and far from expensive; not at all like a scene on the Cote d’Azur.

  I could still hear the throbbing which had awakened me, but, in some manner, it seemed to be dying away. The rain was heavier even than before I had slept. I did not think I had ever seen or heard such heavy rain.

  Clarinda’s flattened lips were making bigger and bigger circles on the glass, which gleamed with water. Again, it was exactly like the boys in detention, as they grew desperate for Mars bars to be bought on their behalf, or incriminating pictures and cribs to be hidden.

  It was impossible to hold on for a moment longer to Aster’s advice, wise though I thought it was, and best for me psychologically. I went one crucial step further, and threw up the bottom sash. There were nine panes in each sash; taller than they were wide. The windows had not then been messed about. It will be deduced that, at that date in my life, my bedroom was not large.

  On the instant, my striped pyjamas were soaking wet, all round the midriff, and all over the thighs. The rain seemed to be driving horizontally at that front of the house. It was as if it had held Clarinda against the window by its force.

  And now of course it had wafted her into the room. Certainly her shape was no longer visible against the outer glass. Wringing wet, I slammed the window shut, making far too much noise; so much that I could not but stop still from force of habit, and wait for an enquirer, or a thumping on the floor. Nothing happened, and I looked around in the darkness for Clarinda.

  I could not see her. It was very black, but I knew the room very thoroughly, and it was a small room, as I have said. She could hardly be hiding. It would not have made sense, and there was nowhere to hide, not even a proper wardrobe. And what about that faint incandescence?

  I took a pull on myself, as, earlier that evening, I had done at Romulo’s. Obviously, I had been dreaming. Who would not think that?

  I threw off my saturated pyjamas, and took out a replacement from the drawer. I had no need to turn on the light for such transactions. I rubbed my middle with the bath towel, and reassembled myself. I left the wet pyjamas on the floor. I went back and stared out at the night, pressing my face against the glass, as Clarinda had done on the other side in my dream. The rain was rippling down the window in a single sheet. I had seen the same effect in our big aquarium tank at home, when something had gone wrong. As I gazed, I could see nothing at all but rain. I realised that I could hardly now have seen Clarinda at all, not even in a dream.

  I returned to my bed, and it seemed to me that there was someone already in it.

  “Richard!”

  Clarinda’s voice was very small.

  I think I tried to draw back. It hardly matters; because instantly Clarinda’s arms were round me and drawing me to her with surprising strength for someone so fragile. It would have been flattering to think that it was the extra allowance accorded to the passionate, as, supposedly, to the insane.

  “Protect me, Richard!” murmured Clarinda. “Save me, Richard! Help me, Richard!”

  She and her garment were perfectly dry. So I knew that I was dreaming still. In a certain sort of way, all was provisionally well.

  It was the more necessary to make the best of the situation as swiftly as possible. One learns how commonly one awakens from a dream of that kind at exactly the wrong moment―or how commonly it seems so at the time. Dreams can be every bit as mischievous as life.

  ###

  When I really did awake, the deluge had declined into drizzle, and the pyjamas on the floor were merely clammy. I felt tireder than before I slept, and also rather sick, as at Romulo’s; but such things were only to be expected. For years on end, I felt more or less like that almost every morning. In later years, I have felt differently in the mornings, but assuredly no better.

  At that moment, I had only the haziest memories of the night’s later excitements. Dreams are hard to recall in their particulars.

  Perhaps that was just as well, because the first thing I had to do was make my way to the office as usual. I went by the Underground from Trotters Park to Old Street. It was what I did on most days, but I still remember that particular journey, the journey itself.

  What happened when I arrived was perhaps the biggest shock yet.

  There was a knot of us workers on the pavement outside, despite the bad weather, and they called my attention to a little hand-written notice stuck on the closed outer door, and very damp. As far as one could read it, it was to the effect that the office would not open that day as Mr Caius Julius Ladywell had to attend to the affairs of his ward, who had suddenly passed from this life.

  “When was it?” I asked.

  There was a hand at my throat, but it was not my hand.

  “They say late last night.”

  I could hardly ask exactly how late. They would not know in any case. No-one in the office knew much about the life of the partners outside it. I myself knew more than most.

  “How did it happen?”

  “Something to do with snow.”

  “But it was rain last night. Not snow. Besides, it’s only the middle of October, after all.”

  “They say it was snow.”

  “It couldn’t have been.”

  “That’s what they say. I don’t know anything about it.”

  The group, which had been quietly chattering, had begun to dissolve. Heavier rain was starting once more, as if to prove what I had said. I looked cautiously around me.

  “Have you seen Ronnie Cassell? Has he arrived yet?”

  “Couldn’t tell you. We’re not in the same section.”

  “What happens to us tomorrow?”

  “How do I know?”

  I was doubtful whether I should come back tomorrow, or ever. I felt that I needed a rest―perhaps a rest cure. I have no idea how I even managed the tube journey home. Of course most of the passengers were still travelling in the other direction. That must have made things easier.

  I did not care at all for what I took to have been a prophetic dream, or for one single other thing that had happened since that night I had gone to Hilltop, still only about a month before. That wretched night was already proving to have been the turning point in my life.

  I decided to telephone my mother; which of course is exactly what most of us do at such times. In my childhood, we had all lived in a quite small house to the west of the main road at Cowholt, near the golf course; but a sort-of uncle of ours had died, and bequeathed to my father his much bigger house, right on the other side of London, at Suddington. This happened after I had left the nest, so to speak, though not as yet for Messrs. Bream & Ladywell; and my parents moved across immediately. There is a long, steep hill at Suddington, quite similar to the one at Hilltop, which I knew so well; but I never quite managed to regard the new house as my home. It was an artefact of the 1850s or thereabouts, and in what is known as the eclectic style. I always found it a heavy house, although my father had retired a year or two earlier than he otherwise would have done, in order to put it to rights and live in it. Whatever I might think about it, it would be a haven just at the moment, and I was lucky to have one.

  I had to make up my mind how much to tell my mother; now, on the telephone, or, later, in the games room or in her bedroom. I decided to confine myself to the plain facts that Clarinda had jilted me and had since actually died. For m
y mother that would suffice for drama. It made a story sad enough to explain why I needed looking after for a short time. My mother had, in any case, never yet heard about Clarinda. The details of Clarinda’s tragic life and of how wonderful she had been would occupy some of the time to be allotted to explanation. My father always preferred to talk about my accountancy, and to ask searching questions. He took little stock, one way or the other, in anyone’s emotional life. He himself had captained a tight, neat, little ship of a business with fine results, until he retired, a little prematurely, as I have said. He still spent much of his time, when at home, reading The Financial Times, The Investor’s Chronicle, Stock Exchange Calculus, and papers like that. Business had always been in my blood, even though my father’s particular line of business had never appealed to me; and I have always been glad of it. Looking on at people, men or women, with no business sense is terrible. But it was reassurance I needed now, not balance sheets. My mother had been wonderful when my nose had been broken by a bigger boy at the nets. This was another such occasion.

  As I toiled up from Suddington Hill railway station, I could well hope for the very best from my comparatively novel homestead. I see no reason why I should not mention its name. It was Scarsdale. I had never as yet passed one actual whole night in the house, not even at Christmas. The rain became steadily heavier, as it so often does when one walks uphill.

  “Richard!” cried my mother. “My poor soaked lambkin: would you like to go straight to bed? Whatever happens, don’t disturb your father. He’s entertaining some cronies in the snug. They’ve got the machine out.”

  At any other time, I should of course have ventured to tap at the snug door, because, given patience, there might quite easily have been something to learn. But now I settled for bed, and I must say that my dear mother simply excelled herself for hours and hours on end.

  She even added soup made from essence of beef, from a new bottle of it, to my small tray of meat supper.

  All the same, I soon found that I was so worn out and upset as to be unable to close my eyes against it all. That night the horror of insomnia had come upon me at last. The rain was not merely dense but noisy. One heard the rain more at Scarsdale, which stood high and completely exposed to the prevailing wind. Also my father’s calculating machine was clattering away as he played about with it on his own. Always he was left with problems which he felt able to solve only if entirely by himself for most of the night. One never quite knew how the ultimate solution had affected our fortunes, but at least as a family we had so far survived and even risen. The bigger house proved it.