I called “Anyone there?” not so much expecting a reply as seeking the reassurance of my own voice. Silence followed. Feeling bolder I mounted the stairs.
Dim light filtered into the stairwell from above and below—halfway up was particularly dreary—yet at no time did I feel any sense of foreboding. This was merely an abandoned building that had served its purpose and was waiting to be scrapped. At the first landing a corridor stretched to the rear. On one side open doors revealed a work-room extending over most of the first floor. Iron pillars at intervals supported the floor above. Rough outlines indicated where machinery had once been fixed. There were other indications of more recent occupation. I soon had my handkerchief pressed to my nose: at least that kept out the worst of the stench.
It was probably this that drove me up to the top floor. Here the pattern of the floors below was repeated: on one side of the corridor another workroom (mercifully not yet used as a lavatory) and on the other side several closed doors. I opened them one after the other, peering into rooms that had been stores or offices. One still had shelving in place. But the last door along the corridor would not open.
At first I assumed it had jammed. Stains down the walls suggested a roof in need of attention, and damp could have caused the woodwork to swell. However the door resisted all my pushing and after some wasted effort I had to admit that it must be locked. Ridiculous. Why lock up one room in a building as wide open as this?
Given time I could have doubtless thought of half a dozen explanations, but there was no time for putting theories to the test. I had to be on my way back to the office.
There were stairs at the end of this corridor, too. I hoped they might lead down to the ground floor, avoiding the unpleasantness at the end of the first floor work-room.
As I reached the last few steps I thought I heard a slight scuffle. Rats? The notion brought me to a temporary halt. We all have our phobias, and rodents happen to be one of mine. I silently swore for not taking the possibility into account sooner, especially having seen those food wrappings lying about. I froze while all the data I had ever encountered concerning attacks by vermin flickered through my brain. Did they really make instinctively for the groin? Wasn’t that why navvies tied the bottoms of their trousers with string?
But a move had to be made one way or the other. As quietly as possible I peeped round the corner to make sure no gray furry beastie was lying in wait for me. There was nothing.
Only a door almost opposite the stairs slowly edging shut.
Rats, no matter now intelligent, do not close doors with excessive caution. A surge of irritation now replaced my instinctive panic, almost reaching the point of equally irrational fury. I had just made a fool of myself and needed to blame somebody. I bounded forward and booted the door with all the force I could muster. The blow was violent enough to thrust the person on the other side across the room; while, thrown off balance by such feeble resistance, I executed a miniature pirouette before steadying myself. A girl, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, sagged against the wall opposite.
My first impression was of tatters and patches. Even her hair was a dirty yellow-and-brown skewbald—not deliberately so, but the result of inexpert dying half grown out. Her clothes were a jumble of rummage—jeans with one knee out, grubby jumper and torn anorak. She obviously belonged in the dump more than I did. I guessed her age as late teens. Young and frightened I suppose she ought to have aroused my sympathy, but affronted dignity crowds out finer feelings. I wasn’t sure what sort of figure I was presenting, but I had a suspicion it must have been fairly ridiculous.
We stared at each other without a word. Until she sniveled and whimpered. At least that broke the ice, and I felt free to bawl, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I ain’t done nothing,” she whined, like a rabbit appealing to the better nature of a stoat. Not that I ever thought of myself as a predator; but that please-don’t-hit-me-when-I’m-down attitude inevitably provokes the opposite effect.
“You realize you’re trespassing,” I snapped; which was as near as I could ever get to putting the boot in.
“I ain’t done nothing,” she repeated forlornly.
A badly tied brown paper parcel lay in one corner. Near it on the dusty floor were an unopened can of fizzy drink and a packet of crisps. A half-eaten meat pie appeared to have been dropped when she was disturbed.
“Yours?” I asked unnecessarily.
“I ain’t done nothing,” she whispered. What else was there to say? She was lunching at home today. As far as she was concerned this bleak hole was home. Temporary accommodation, no doubt, but with the only alternative a doss under one of the nearby canal bridges, who was I to frighten her away?
“Have you been upstairs?”
She shook her head.
“Liar.”
“I ain’t done nothing.” She slid down the wall and sat in an attitude of huddled resignation.
“I’ve just been upstairs,” I said, and left the implication to register. She looked up at me dumbly. The grubby little creature wasn’t even intelligent. Her only attraction lay in her vulnerability. Suddenly I wanted to get away without losing too much face.
“Oh, go to hell,” I growled, turned abruptly and left her. I may only have imagined she cried, “I ain’t done nothing.”
Luckily I found a rear door, also unfastened, so I was spared the embarrassment of blundering about looking for an exit. I didn’t even look back at the factory, and only hoped nobody spotted me recrossing the waste ground.
A fleeting memory of the girl came between me and my work a couple of times during the afternoon. In particular I recollected that pathetic half pie; but by then I was feeling hungry myself.
I stayed in town for a meal before going home, making up for my missed breakfast and lunch by indulging in a half carafe of plonk: so I passed the old Marlow factory about the same time as the night before.
It was all dark. At any rate there was now an explanation of yesterday’s light. A girl on the premises could have been responsible for almost anything. It occurred to me that the window in question must have belonged to the locked room. More mystery? Whatever it was had nothing to do with me. By now I had convinced myself that whatever I may have imagined last night had been uneasily compounded of overwork, slight fever and rum. There would be no rum tonight. In the first place because there would be no need for it, and in the second place because there was none left at my place.
All the same I felt that early retirement was called for. Just an hour perhaps listening to music before a milky nightcap. There was a cassette already in the deck waiting for a press of the “play” button. Had I been listening to Allegri when ...? Did it matter? I could always find pleasure in Allegri. I pressed the button and sat back at ease.
The soaring treble of the “Miserere” usually has me feeling that the world is a better place than it is usually given credit for, and that I am probably a better person than I am generally given credit for. Self-indulgence maybe, but even an accountant needs some illusions.
Then, as the music took over, a picture began to form. Yes, I must have been listening to Allegri earlier, because the picture was as before—a lighted window high up on a dark wall. Only this time I seemed drawn toward the patch of brilliance. Then I was inside the upper room.
It was as bare as any I had seen in the factory that day, bare as a monk’s cell: but unlike the others these bare boards had been spotlessly scrubbed and walls and ceiling freshly whitewashed. There was a man on his knees in the middle of the floor, his back toward me, his curling hair and broadcloth coat stark black against all that white. With head bowed he appeared to be praying.
Did music alone have the power to suggest all this?
What is more, the figure seemed to be aware that I stood behind him. He raised his head and started to get up without looking round. He did not need to look round. Whoever he might be, he knew who I was.
Then a click as the music ended and the tape-deck
switched itself off. Jerked back into my present surroundings I was staring at the mirror on the opposite side of my own room. Potent stuff the Allegri “Miserere” if it could conjure such impressions. I made no attempt to change the tape, but sat on, half under the spell. I did not want to move. I wanted a little time for contemplation.
Had the imagined room been part of the Marlow factory? However intangible, it had seemed more real than any of the others I had seen earlier in the day; just as the dreamed-up man had seemed more vital than the wretched girl I had actually encountered. The white room was the same size and shape as her miserable refuge. I found myself mentally comparing the two ...
The girl’s ground-floor squat for instance—so dimly lit that shapes could barely be made out in it. The slight effulgence from a frosty moon made its way through holes in corrugated sheeting fastened over the window space. The girl lay on the floor, using her paper parcel as a pillow. Her knees were drawn up and her hands tucked underneath her arms, no doubt for some slight protection against the cold. Was she asleep? She sniffed and then coughed. Automatically I stepped back, encountering the door with a slight thud. It must have been just off the latch, clicking as I pushed back.
The girl raised her head. “Who—?” she murmured. “Whosere?” She peered hazily in my direction, then suddenly sat up. I imagine she was about to scream, but I heard nothing.
Why should I? After all, I was sitting in my own chair. I had never left it. But if I had never left it, where had the thick smear of dust on the back of my hand and sleeve come from?
Although the rum was all gone the cupboard yielded the last of a bottle of gin and some abominably sweet sherry, bought long ago for a forgotten female guest.
Mixed in a tumbler they made a nauseating but necessary cocktail. Did I need the drink to help me to think—or to keep me from thinking? I wasted little time on such hair-splitting. I drank.
After a while my teeth stopped chattering and I tried to make connections. Nobody can be in two places at once, can he? Could I? Delirium! If I believed that, I’d soon have myself believing that I could bend forks. I was an accountant, not some fakir. I believed in facts. I had to. Flights of fancy could lead to trouble with the Inland Revenue Department. Normal people do not move across town instantaneously and unaided. So put aside the delusion that I had just returned to the factory.
Likewise the man in the Victorian frock-coat had been no more than a figment of the imagination. Of that I was certain. After all, it was my own imagination. What more natural than to suppose old Marlow had been such a person. Not so old either in the years when the factory had been turning out highly profitable goods for the Africa trade. Ruthless exploitation after a bright start made him a fortune by the time he was my age. About 1850 wasn’t it? Hadn’t I heard somewhere that skinning workers here and fleecing customers abroad had actually paid for the building of a Nonconformist chapel? How adroitly the solid citizens of that period manipulated their consciences, somehow contriving to serve both God and Mammon. In Marlow’s case Mammon appeared to have been the more influential, because there was no trace left of the chapel, while at least the shell of the factory remained. But what part of its begetter lingered with it?
No doubt that had been Marlow kneeling in the bare white sanctum, locked against inquiring eyes. Praying perhaps to be spared the lusts of the flesh. Not so easy to curb animal instincts when one is master of several hundred souls—and the bodies that come with them. What did they say of him in the workshops? Why did some of the young minxes cock a speculative eye when he passed?
Not that such cattle offered temptation. More dangerous were the timid ones with frightened eyes, trying not to attract attention; because only token resistance was permissible in days when the rule was work or starve and dismissal meant the workhouse or the streets. With the door of the whitewashed room locked there had been prayers and prayers. Neither sort had been answered. Afterward there had been occasional accidents (conveniently bestowed elsewhere) and even a suicide (believing the river better than a bastard). And inevitably agonies of remorse. Never again. Never, never—until the next time. He could no more resist than she—whoever may be next in the whitewashed room. In spite of all his prayers.
How could I be so certain? The man in the black coat turned to face me. It was like looking into the mirror again. His face was mine. There had been bastards, and after three generations who can be sure of his family tree?
I was certain. After all, an accountant ought to be aware of elementary mathematics. The Marlow factory was the lowest common denominator—for me, for him, for the girl. My grandfather had been conceived in that place where the spirit of old vice lingered.
Into which place that fool of a destitute girl had wandered. Whatever remained there wanted her. That helpless attitude, those familiar frightened eyes had roused him—it. Marlow had at least been a man: what was left was no longer human, and she was no more to it than tethered bait for a tiger. What justification did I have for reaching such a conclusion? An accountant is at least able to add up: even after a half-carafe of house wine and a gin-based concoction. There was enough of my great-grandfather’s blood in me to know what he/it intended.
I felt I had to warn her. To explain. If absolutely necessary to pay for other lodgings for her. She must not stay where she was. I did not know what the thing in the black broadcloth might attempt, but I did know what it was still capable of. I had looked into its eyes and I knew. The time for prayers was past.
I stumbled out toward my car, even though I suspected I was in no condition to drive. As it happened I did not have to. I was thinking of the room with the blocked window. By now I should have known better ...
The room was empty, but the door was open. There was a litter of newspaper on the floor. Perhaps she had been trying it as bedding. The paper-wrapped parcel had not been moved. I picked it up. It was very light. I wondered vaguely what she might keep in it. Then she was in the doorway, looking at me.
I found my voice first. “Get out of here,” I said.
Her reply was a half-stifled wail. She shook her head, not so much saying “no” as in disbelief at my appearance.
“Get out,” I repeated. “Now.” Then in frustration at making no progress with the little idiot, shouted, “Get out!” I thrust her parcel toward her, intending her to take it and go. She must have misunderstood the gesture, because she backed into the corridor with a series of short moans. Then she turned and fled empty-handed.
She might so easily have found that rear exit. Instead she scampered up the stairs. I had no choice but to follow her. She had to be brought down. Upstairs in the Marlow factory was no place for her.
The staircase had been dim enough in daylight, by night I was climbing blind, feeling my way along the wall. I knew she was ahead of me by her frightened sobs. At the top of the stairs there was just enough of a gray glow for illumination. She was nowhere to be seen, but could only have ducked into one of the rooms off the corridor or into the empty workspace. As the door to the latter was flung wide I tried that opening first. I was right. She had stepped just inside, and stood with her back pressed against the wall, I suppose silently beseeching that I might not notice. When she saw me she gave a cry that echoed through the building and scuttled to the other end of the workroom.
I might have caught up with her then, but skidded on something repulsive underfoot. While I was recovering my balance she was on her way up the next flight of stairs.
It was then that I began to call to her. “Not up there. For God’s sake, not up there.” I doubt if my words made any sense to her. They were merely an alarming clamor that she answered with panic-stricken squeaks.
From the light into the dark, and into the light again. Always upward. I was driving her toward the one place where she should not be; but what else could I have done? I had to catch up with her before she reached that upper room.
Its door was open now. The moonlight shining full on that side of the factory spilled
from the room into the corridor.
As I emerged, panting at the head of the last flight of stairs, she was already half-way toward the open door. I had given up shouting. I needed the breath. Instead I made cooing and clucking noises as though trying to calm a terrified animal. I remembered with irrational clarity how when a boy I had once picked up a shrew and seen it die of fright on my hand. I think I murmured “There now. There now.” But she backed away from me without a word.
Slowly, one step at a time, we edged toward the other end of the passage. Her eyes were wide and unblinking. She sniffed regularly, and the end of her tongue was constantly moistening her lips.
Desperately, I took one stride longer than the others.
“No,” she whispered, and increased her backward shuffle.
Abandoning caution I lunged. She fled. She reached the open door seconds before I could, and it slammed in my face. Like a trap snapping shut, the light was cut off.
For one of those instants that stretch toward eternity I faced the dark panels. Then from inside the room came a feebly despairing wail.
Expecting to encounter the lock, I pushed furiously, but met no resistance and stumbled into his presence. The radiance of the full moon was reflected from the white walls, filling the room with an unearthly brilliance. Black from curling hair to immaculate boots, with only his face a pale oval, he contrasted starkly against the shining background.
She stood trembling between us, repeatedly looking from one to the other—apart from our clothes alike as twins. She was caught between devil and deep.
As he smiled, I realized this was no chance encounter. I had done what I had always been intended to do. Brought her to him.
At least he was on the far side of the room and I was the one between her and the way of escape. I cleared the way to the door and pointed. Words would not come, but at least she could see what I meant. So why didn’t the spineless young fool take her chance? Why waver until history repeated itself?
As he moved, as silent and regardless of obstacles as a shadow, I stepped between them. From him I expected the rage of a patriarch denied, from her some final burst of activity. Neither reacted. It was like finding myself in the frozen frame of a film.
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