by Nevil Shute
Jennifer went to Leicester for her week-end once a month, but there was never very much for her to do there. She could not help her mother very much without breaking through routines that she was not familiar with; unless the water jug was on a certain spot upon the kitchen shelf, unless the saucepans were arrayed in a certain order, her mother became fussed and unable to find things, and very soon made the suggestion that Jennifer should go and sit with her father, who was usually deep in the British Medical Journal if he wasn’t out upon a case. She came to realise that in her case the barrier of the generations was higher than usual in families because her father and her mother were so complementary; she accepted the situation philosophically, and found the interests of her life away from home.
Those interests were not very startling. She had been mildly in love when she was twenty, soon after the war, but he had gone to a job in Montreal and gradually the correspondence languished; when finally she heard that he was married it was just one of those things. She was friendly with a good many men, for she was an attractive girl, with auburn hair that had been bright red as a child, and the grey eyes that go with it, but she had been inoculated and never fell seriously in love. She knew a good deal about the London theatres, and she saw most of the films worth seeing, including the Continental ones; she could speak a little French, and she had spent two summer holidays in France with a couple of girls from her office. Now she was planning a trip to Italy for her next holiday, but that was nine months ahead, for it was October. She had bought three little books by a gentleman called Hugo, and she was teaching herself Italian out of them.
That week-end was like all the others, only more so. Though it was only October her mother was coughing as if it were January; she had not been out of doors for a week, but she had her household organised so that she could order from the shops by telephone, and what could not be done that way the daily woman did. Her father was more overworked than ever; he seemed to spend most of his time writing certificates for patients of the nationalised Health Service, who stood in queues each morning and afternoon at the surgery door. There was nothing Jennifer could do to help them and no place for her; she left them late on Sunday afternoon and travelled back to London, and so by the electric train from Charing Cross down to her own place at Blackheath. She got back to her room at about ten o’clock, made herself a cup of cocoa, washed a pair of stockings, did an exercise of Hugo, and went to bed.
She worked all next day, as usual, at her office. She left at five in the evening, and walked back through the suburban streets in the October dusk to her boarding-house. Very soon now it would be dark when she came out from work; for two months in the winter she would not walk home in daylight. She was beginning to dread those two months; in mid-winter she got a sense of suffocation, a feeling that she would never see the sun and the fresh air again.
It was raining a little that evening, and she walked back with her blue raincoat buttoned tightly round her neck. She had intended to go out to the pictures with a friend from the boarding-house after tea, but now she thought that she would stay at home and read a magazine and do her Hugo. There wasn’t much joy in going to the pictures and then walking home in the rain.
She went up the steps of the shabby old brick house that was her home, spacious with its eight bedrooms, its four reception-rooms, and its range of basement kitchens, and she let herself in at the front door with her latch-key. As she took off her wet coat her landlady climbed up the stairs from the kitchen.
“There was a telephone call for you about an hour ago,” she said. “A personal call. I told them you’d be back about five-thirty.”
Jennifer looked up in surprise. “Do you know who it was from?”
The woman shook her head. “They didn’t say.”
Jennifer went to the telephone booth and told the exchange that she could take the call, and learned that it was a call from Leicester. She hung up, and stood uncertain for a moment, hoping there was nothing wrong at home. Presently she went up to her room on the first floor and changed out of her wet shoes, and then she stood looking out of the window at the glistening lamplight in the wet suburban street, waiting and listening for the call. In the yellow lamplight the plane trees in the street waved a few stray leaves that still held to the twigs.
The call came through at last, and she hurried downstairs to take it. It was her mother, speaking from their home. “Is that Jenny? How are you, dear?”
“I’m all right, Mother.”
“Jenny dear, listen to this. We had a telephone call from the district nurse, at Ealing. She said that Granny’s ill. She had a fall in the street, apparently, and they took her to the hospital, but they hadn’t got a bed so they took her home and put her to bed there. The nurse said somebody would have to go there to look after her. Jenny, could you go to Ealing and see what’s the matter, and then telephone us?”
Jennifer thought quickly. Ealing was on the other side of London; an hour up to Charing Cross if she were lucky with the trains, and then an hour down to Ealing Broadway, and a ten minutes’ walk. She could get something to eat on the way, perhaps. “I can do that, Mummy,” she said. “I’ve got nothing fixed up for tonight. I could be there by about half-past eight.”
“Oh, my dear, I am so sorry. I think you’ll have to go. She oughtn’t to be living alone, of course, but she won’t leave the house. We’ll have to fix up something better for her, after this. You’ll be able to get back to Blackheath tonight, will you?”
The girl hesitated. “I think so, Mummy. If I leave by about half-past nine I should be able to get back here. It sounds as if somebody ought to stay the night with her, though, doesn’t it?”
There was a worried silence. “I don’t know what to say,” her mother said at last. “You’ve got to be at work tomorrow. Oh, dear!”
“Has Daddy heard about this yet?”
“He’s out still on his rounds. I couldn’t get hold of him.”
“Don’t worry, Mummy,” said the girl. “I’ll go over there, and give you a ring when I’ve seen the nurse. We’ll fix up something between us.”
“What time will you be telephoning, dear?”
“It may be very late, if I’ve got to hurry to catch trains,” the girl said. Her grandmother was not on the telephone. “It may be after midnight when I get back here.”
“That’ll be all right, Jenny. I always hear the bell.”
“All right, Mummy. I’ll go over right away and ring you back tonight, probably very late.”
She did not wait for supper, but started for the station straight away. She travelled across London to the other side and came to Ealing Broadway station about two hours later. It was raining here in earnest, great driving gusts of rain blown by a high wind down the deserted, shimmering, black streets. Her stockings and her shoes were soaked before she had been walking for three minutes.
Her grandmother lived in a four-bedroomed house called Maymyo, built in the somewhat spacious style of fifty years ago, a house with a large garden and no garage. Her husband had bought it when they had retired from Burma in 1924; he had bought it prudently because he had an idea even then that he would not survive his wife, and so he had avoided an extravagant establishment. In fact he had died in 1930, comfortable in the knowledge that her widow’s pension, her small private income, and the house in perpetuity would render her secure until she came to join him.
There she had lived, surrounded by the treasures they had gathered up together in a life spent in the East. A gilded Buddha sat at the hall door, a pair of elephant tusks formed a hanger for a great brass dinner gong. Glass cases housed Indian dolls, and models of sampans and junks, and imitation mangoes out of which a wood and plaster cobra would jump to bite your finger, very terrifying. There were embossed silver and brass Burmese trays and bowls all over the place; on the walls were water-colour paintings of strange landscapes with misty forests of a bluish tinge unknown to Jennifer, with strange coloured buildings called pagodas and strange people i
n strange clothes. Ethel Trehearn lived on surrounded by these reminders of a more colourful world, more real to her than the world outside her door. Nothing was very interesting to her that had happened since she got on to the ship at Rangoon Strand, twenty-six years before.
Jennifer came to the house in the wet, windy night; it was in total darkness, which seemed most unusual. She pushed open the gate and went up the path through the little front garden, and now she saw a faint glimmer of light through the coloured glass panels let into the front door in a Gothic style. She stood in the porch in her wet shoes and raincoat, and pressed the bell.
She heard nothing but the tinkling of water running from a stackpipe near her feet.
She waited for a minute, and then pressed the bell again. Apparently it wasn’t working. She rapped with the knocker and waited for a couple of minutes for something to happen; then she tried the handle of the door. It was open, and she went into the hall.
A candle burned on the hall table, held in a brass candle-stick from Benares. Jennifer went forward and pressed the electric switch for the hall light, but no light came. She thought of a power cut, unusual at night, and stood in wonder for a moment. In any case, there was no electricity, and it was no good worrying about the cause.
She stood in the hall, listening to the house. It was dead silent, but for the tinkling of the rain. She raised her head and called, “Granny! It’s me — Jennifer. Are you upstairs?”
There was no answer.
She did not like the empty sound of the house; it was full of menace for her. She did not like the lack of light, or the long, moving shadows that the candle cast. She was a level-headed young woman, however, and she took off her coat and laid it on a chair, and picked up the candle, and went into the drawing-room.
There was nothing unusual about that room; it was clean and tidy, though stone-cold. She would have expected on a night like that to see a fire burning in the grate, but the fire was not laid; apparently her grandmother had not used the room that day. Jennifer went quickly through the dining-room and kitchen; everything was quite in order there. A tin of Benger’s Food and a half empty bottle of milk stood on the kitchen table.
She turned, and went upstairs to the bedrooms. The door of her grandmother’s room was shut; she stood outside with the flickering candle in her hand, and knocked. She said again, “Granny, it’s me — Jennifer. Can I come in?” There was no answer, so she turned the handle and went into the room.
Ethel Trehearn lay on her back in the bed, and at the first glance Jennifer thought that she was dead, and her heart leaped up into her throat because she had never seen a dead person. She forced herself to look more closely, and then she saw that the old lady was breathing evenly, very deeply asleep. With the relief, Jennifer staggered a little, and her eyes lost focus for an instant and she felt a little sick; then she recovered herself, and looked around the room.
Everything there seemed to be in order, though her grandmother’s day clothes were thrown rather haphazard into a chair. The old lady was evidently quite all right, in bed and asleep; if she had had a fall a sleep would do her good. It looked as if somebody had been in the house looking after her, possibly the district nurse who had telephoned to Jennifer’s mother. It seemed unwise to wake the old lady up, and presently Jennifer tiptoed from the room, leaving the door ajar in order that she might hear any movement.
The time was then about nine o’clock, and she had eaten nothing since lunch except a cup of tea and a biscuit at the office. She had a young and healthy appetite, and she had the sense to realise that her momentary faintness in the bedroom had a good deal to do with the fact that she was very, very hungry. She went down to the kitchen, candle in hand, to get herself a meal.
In a few minutes she had made the extraordinary discovery that there was no food in the house at all. The half bottle of milk and the tin of Benger’s Food upon the kitchen table seemed to be the only edibles, except for a few condiments in a cupboard. The larder — her grandmother had no refrigerator — was empty but for a small hard rind of cheese upon a plate and three cartons of dried fruits, candied peel and sultanas and glacé cherries, open and evidently in use. There was a flour-bin, but it was empty, a bread-bin that held only crumbs. There were no tinned foods at all, and no vegetables.
Jennifer stood in the middle of the kitchen deeply puzzled, wondering what her grandmother had been eating recently, and where she had been eating it. Had she been having her meals out, or was there something blacker waiting here to be uncovered? She had been down to visit the old lady one Sunday about a month before and her grandmother had given her a very good lunch and tea, a roast duck with apple sauce with roast potatoes and cauliflower, and a mince pie to follow; for tea there had been buttered scones and jam, and a big home-made cake with plenty of fruit in it. She thought of this as she stood there in the kitchen in the flickering candle-light, and her mouth watered; she could have done with a bit of that roast duck.
One thing at least was evident; that she would have to spend the night in the house. She could not possibly go back to Blackheath and leave things as they were. Whoever had lit the candle and left the door open had done it in the expectation that some relation would arrive, and the unknown person would probably come back that night because her grandmother was clearly incapable of looking after herself. If Jennifer was to spend the night there, though, she felt she must have something to eat. Ealing Broadway was only a few hundred yards away and there would probably be a café or a coffee-stall open there; she could leave a note upon the hall table and go out and have a quick meal.
She went upstairs again and looked in on the old lady, but she was still deeply asleep. Thinking to find a place in which to sleep herself she opened the door of the guest bedroom, but it was empty. Pictures still hung upon the wall, but there was no furniture in the room at all, and no carpet on the bare boards of the floor. Unfaded patches on the wall-paper showed where bed and chest of drawers and wash-hand stand had stood.
This was amazing, because Jennifer had slept in that room less than a year before; it had been prim and neat and old-fashioned and very comfortable. What on earth had the old lady done with all the furniture? The girl went quickly to the other two bedrooms and found them in a similar condition, empty but for the pictures on the wall. There was no bed in the house except the one that her grandmother occupied; if Jennifer were to sleep there that night she would have to sleep on the sofa in the drawing-room. There did not seem to be any bedding, either; the linen cupboard held only a pair of clean sheets, a couple of towels, a table-cloth or two, and a few table-napkins.
The shadows began to close in upon Jennifer as she stood in the empty bedrooms with the flickering candle in her hand. It seemed incredible, but the old lady must have sold her furniture. And there was no food in the house. The darkness crept around her; could it be that Granny had no money? But she had a pension, Jennifer knew that, and she had always been well off. More likely that she was going a bit mental with old age, and that she had deluded herself into the belief that she was poor.
She went downstairs and found a piece of writing paper in her grandmother’s desk, and wrote a note to leave on the hall table with the candle; then she put on her raincoat and went out to get a meal. She found a café open in the main street and had a sort of vegetable pie. It was dull and insipid with no meat, but she had two helpings of it and followed it up with stewed plums and coffee. Then she bought a couple of rolls filled with a thin smear of potted meat for her breakfast, and went back to the house in Ladysmith Avenue.
In the house everything was as she had left it; her note lay beneath the candle unread. She took the candle and went up to her grandmother’s room, but the old lady was still sleeping deeply; she had not moved at all. The girl came out of the bedroom, and as she did so she heard movement in the hall, and saw the light from an electric torch. She came downstairs with the candle, and in its light she saw a middle-aged woman standing there in a wet raincoat, torch in hand.<
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The woman said, “Are you one of Mrs. Trehearn’s relations?”
Jennifer said, “I’m her granddaughter.”
“Oh. Well, I’m the district nurse. You know she had an accident?”
“I don’t know very much, except that my mother got a telephone call asking somebody to come here. She rang me.”
The nurse nodded. “I rang your mother at Leicester as soon as I could get the number out of the old dear. I’d better tell you what it’s all about, and then you can take over.”
Jennifer moved towards the door. “We’d better go in here — in case she wakes up.”
“She won’t wake up tonight — not after what the doctor gave her.” However, they went into the drawing-room and stood together in the light of the one candle. “She had a fall in the street this morning, just the other side of the bridge, between here and the Broadway. She didn’t seem able to get up, so the police got an ambulance and took her to the hospital. Well, they hadn’t got a bed, and anyway there didn’t seem to be much wrong with her, except debility, you know. So as she was conscious and not injured by her fall they rang me up and sent her home here in the ambulance. I put her to bed and got in Dr. Thompson. He saw her about five o’clock.”