Blackground

by Joan Aiken

  And five minutes later she was up at Number 2 holding a series of prolonged conversations over the telephone, which stood on the kitchen windowsill. Elspeth at first did her best to ignore these, pottering in and out with cuttings in jam-jars and bowls of washing, hung out in the damp air to get damper; but, despite herself, could not avoid hearing a good deal of them.

  “Darling Tig, yes, I’ll be in tomorrow with some of the drawings — I’m afraid I’ve only done four or five, there were so many other pressing commitments — time? Yes, darling, of course there will be time — yes, it’s a funny little house — primitive to a degree — but still, beggars as you know cannot be choosers . . .” “Dearest Swit — I had to leave London in a rush — but I’ll be in touch very soon—could you be a dove and collect a packet of transparencies for me from Nonpareil and post them down to me here express registered — yes, I’m in the back of beyond in Dorset—they’ve put me in a funny little Greek villa — and, Swit, could you be a first-class angel and go round to Lexham Gardens and see if there’s an electric bill and if so could you be another dove and pay it — as well as anything else that looks at all ominous? I’ll refund you as soon as they pay me down here — oh, not bad, yes — Swit, do you happen to know if Mars Timlo’s show is still on at the Walden? If so, I wonder if you’d be a real honey and go round and perhaps get a few transparencies made — could you?”

  Elspeth began to be sorry for the unknown Swit and to feel that he/she was being made to pay quite dearly for all those terms of endearment.

  “How about a cup of tea or coffee?” she inquired presently when Olga was between calls — coffee being her own unvarying habit around three-thirty of an afternoon.

  “Oh, wonderful, yes, thank you,” Olga replied inattentively, and was off into another round of one-sided conversations. When presented with a cup of Elspeth’s inky instant coffee she took one sip, grimaced, and pushed the cup a short distance away along the windowsill. The accompanying scone she ignored.

  Elspeth acknowledged this piece of behaviour with a slight nod to herself, eyebrows raised, as if marking squares on an imaginary form.

  “Right, dearest Gretl, then I’ll be hearing from you very soon,” concluded Olga, and finally replaced the receiver giving Elspeth, as she did so, a mournful smile. “Everything takes so long to arrange, don’t you find? But now I’ll slip away and leave you in peace.”

  Shuna, lessons completed, had been spending the afternoon down with the Greeks on the harbour front, watching them erect a boat-shed. At this moment, pink, damp, and slightly spangled with sawdust, she returned for her tea.

  “Aha!” exclaimed Olga, her eyes lighting up as if someone had pressed a switch marked Main Beam, when the child came through the door. “And whom have we here?”

  “This is Shuna,” said Miss Morgan shortly. “Shuna lives with us at present. Shuna, this is Mrs Pendennis.”

  “Oh, good heavens no, not any more, don’t call me that I beg you! I went back to Miss Laszlo long, long ago. But in any case I hope you will call me Olga! And will you be my little friend and show me all over the village? I expect you know every nook and cranny of the place, don’t you?” Olga said, fixing little Shuna with that headlamp gaze.

  Elspeth longed to say, “Shuna has her lessons to get on with,” but with an effort kept silent. Shuna replied matter-of-factly, “Yes, I will, but it’s not at all complicated. Just a street down to the bottom. And won’t you be very busy? Aunt Elspeth said so, with your work at the theatre.”

  “Yes, of course I shall, but I always have time to make a new friend.”

  Olga divided equally between them the slightly tragic smile which suggested that she had hardly a friend in the world and that friends in her estimate were valued above front-row seats in the auditorium of Heaven. On the evidence of her recent telephone conversations this hardly seemed the case.

  “‘Bye —” she breathed, gave a conspiratorial wink at the child, and left, pulling on her brown scarf.

  Shuna sat down, without comment, to her tea.

  V

  I WAS SPARED any need for sensations of sorrowful memory on our late arrival at Caundle Quay, for the night was pitch-dark, and rain, sluicing over the windscreen of the Rolls, was swept off it in great opaque swathes by the wipers: nothing could be seen at all.

  “They don’t seem to go in for lavish street lighting around here,” I remarked, when our headlights finally located a sign that said GLIFONIS—RESIDENTS’ PARKING ONLY, and Parkson pulled to a halt beneath it. There weren’t many other cars to be seen in the largish dark space — two or three perhaps.

  Parkson made no answer to my remark. He had not been at all enthusiastic about this assignment and had made no secret of the fact that he considered his duty was to Lord Fortuneswell, not to me. Being obliged to grope round a steep, muddy village in the dark, in a downpour, was going to be the last straw for him, I could see.

  “You’d better stay there while I go to the house and unlock it,” he said. “Then I’ll carry down the luggage and stuff. Then I’ll unfold your wheelchair and take you down.” He picked a hamper off the back seat.

  I made no demur to this proposal, in view of the utter absence of welcoming committee, curtseying peasants, smiling tenantry prepared to carry me on their shoulders to my abode. It was, after all, eleven o’clock on a very nasty evening. Not a light showed; the inhabitants of Glifonis were all abed.

  Accordingly I waited in the car, feeling sorry for Parkson, who was presently going to have to drive back to London, so as to catch an early-morning flight to Paris.

  After several minutes a small light sprang out, downhill, past a corner of road. More time passed, then Parkson returned, without comment took my bags from the boot, and vanished again into the rainy dark.

  This time I had a lengthier wait. There were two food hampers, besides my luggage; he was probably unpacking them.

  By and by he materialized again, got out the wheelchair, which had travelled in the back of the car, and set it up. Then, still in silence, he helped me from the front seat. This was an awkward process. I have played scenes with actors whom I disliked, or who disliked me; the physical contact is always hard to handle.

  He had a good deal of difficulty pushing the wheelchair over the soft surface of the car park, a mixture of mud and builders’ rubble; I heard him grunt. Next we came to a sloping paved way which presented its own problems; twice he slipped and muttered something under his breath. “Take it easy, Parkson,” I said, wondering if we were both going to hurtle all the way down to the harbour foot.

  “It’s this — — marble,” he muttered. Then he jolted the chair down a step. Not having expected this, I let out a yelp, as the bump jarred my ankle and wrist. Parkson made no apology. “Take it easy,” I said again. “How many more of these steps are there?” He pretended he hadn’t heard and strode on. There were five or six steps, I found, spaced at perhaps twelve-foot intervals. Though I tried to relax, and clutched the chair arm with my good hand, each step found me unprepared and wrenched my injured joints. Also the icy downpour was working its way through my raincoat and, no doubt, beginning to soak the plaster on my wrist. Still it must be much worse for Parkson, who had been out in it, now, for over twenty minutes.

  Soon he turned aside from the paved track and hauled the chair, backwards, up some more steps towards a lighted doorway.

  “Here you are, then,” he said curtly, adding, “Lucky the chair goes through the door,” in a morose tone, as if that amount of luck was wholly undeserved, in his opinion, by anybody idiotic enough to have thought up such a plan as this.

  I blinked in the dazzle of light, which was not in fact particularly bright, but seemed so after the inky darkness outside. We were in a plain little front room with a tiled floor and the minimum of Spartan simplicity in its furnishings: small couch by the door, a table, two chairs.

  “Kitchen’s th
rough there,” said Parkson with a nod. “I put your stores in the fridge. Right? Bathroom to the left, bedroom behind. Okay?”

  He made motions of imminent departure.

  “Wait, wait a minute,” I said hastily. “Won’t — won’t you have a cup of tea — or something — before you drive all the way back?”

  He shook his head. “No time. I have to be on my way.”

  “Hey but — wait just a minute!” He turned, impatiently, already halfway through the door. “This chair — how exactly does it work?”

  The chair, compact, elaborate, and heavy, was electrical and capable of self-propulsion. No doubt it would serve me well. Though not, I feared, in Glifonis, which seemed to be all steps. But I had met the chair for the first time two hours ago at Gatwick Airport.

  “Controls on the armrest,” said Parkson with patience. “Here, see? Switch on. That lever’s forward motion.” I tried the switch and shot with startling speed across the room.

  “Wow!”

  “Other lever is backward,” said Parkson. “That’s your steering handle for the wheels. That’s neutral. Brake here. Okay?” And then he really was gone, without a goodbye, obviously feeling that he had done his duty and more than his duty by me.

  I took ten minutes or so getting the measure of the wheelchair. Useful preparation for disability in later life, I thought wryly, as I did my best to control and forestall its wayward dashes; both of us receiving sharpish knocks in the process. (It was a lucky thing, quite providential really, that the little house was so sparsely furnished.) By and by I managed the delicate passage through the doorway into the kitchen, which proved to be about the same size as the front room, and equipped with a refrigerator the size of St Paul’s, an electric cooker spacious as a rugby field, a lot of empty shelves, a capacious sink, a counter, and a stool. A plate, knife, fork, spoon, bowl, cup and saucer had been hastily ranged along the counter. A new kettle and saucepan stood on the cooker. A glass french-door by the sink led out to some kind of yard or terrace.

  Feeling a strong need for alcohol, I looked in a drawer below the counter for a corkscrew. The drawer was empty. But, fortunately, I remembered, there had been some bottles of champagne in those hampers lugged to the house by Parkson. They must now be in the fridge. I manoeuvred myself over to its door and, after a number of tries, managed to work the chair into a position from which the door could be opened and the bottle removed. This struggle brought back painful recollections of my equitation lessons for the part of Rosy. A lot of lesson-time had been devoted to the business of opening and closing field-gates while astride a horse; people who ride horses are very preoccupied by gates. The wheelchair was quite as stupid and unco-operative as any horse, and very much more volatile. Having at last successfully extracted a bottle of Veuve du Boulanger, I accidentally jolted the Forward lever with my elbow while shutting the fridge door, shot precipitately across the kitchen, in panic pressed the Backward lever, and nearly smashed myself and the bottle against the sink. The fizz, by the time I poured it, was almost pure gas, but welcome just the same; hours seemed to have passed since my last meal on the plane. Hours had passed. It was now after midnight, definitely time for bed. But would I be able to sleep? Ankle and wrist now ached in deep, sharp throbs. I drank another glass of champagne, then, become a little more adept, edged the wheelchair with exquisite care into the bedroom which, Spartan as the other rooms, contained a low flat bed, Grecian-style, on a platform railed off by a low wooden balustrade. There was also one chair, and a clothes-closet. My crutches had been left leaning against the rail. On the bed, curled in a ball, was a large wet tabby cat, which raised its head upon my entry, and howled at me.

  “Good God,” I said, startled, “where did you come from?”

  A foolish question. Outside was where it had plainly come from, judging by the condition of its sodden fur, which stood out in spikes of wet.

  “Okay, okay, puss, keep your fur on, I’m not going to throw you out in this deluge. I wouldn’t put a dog out in such a downpour — certainly not a cat.”

  I am fond of cats. Don’t keep one, because where would it live? But Masha always had some cat — most of those rectories were mouse- and rat-infested; the cat was there for strictly utilitarian reasons and simply addressed as “you cat” but it was well fed and had a place on the hearth beside Masha, who would occasionally rub its ears.

  This tabby stood up hastily (leaving a damp muddy hollow, lined with hairs, on the white coverlet) as if unsure of its welcome; so I found a towel and rubbed some of the wet off its fur. That established better relations between us. Into the single saucer I then poured some long-life milk, which was accepted.

  After that, doing my best to ignore the steady, painful throb from wrist and ankle, I levered myself out of the wheelchair, up the platform step, and hoisted myself, still dressed, on to the bed. Undressing, washing, all that must wait for daylight. Just now, I had had all I could take.

  After three minutes I felt a thud beside me on the bed. The cat had arrived, and proceeded to use me as a backrest, propping itself against me and washing vigorously.

  “Stop that!” I snarled. “Can’t you just go to sleep?”

  To my surprise, it complied. Outside, the rain continued to fall, pattering steadily on the roof. If it were not raining, I wondered, would it be possible to hear the sea? Which must be quite close?

  I’ve always longed for a house near enough to the beach so that one could lie and listen to the sound of waves; Masha had the same longing. But all our rectories were inland.

  Presently, despite pain and the heavy bulk of damp cat propped against me, I slept.

  I was woken, some time further on into the night, by the cat’s anguished and raucous howling.

  “Oh, do shut up!” I muttered, and then, as it continued to howl, even louder and more steadily, “What is it? Do you want to go out?”

  Plainly, it did. The howling went on and on. “Oh damn, damn,” I said, realizing also that I was afflicted by a stuffed-up nose. This condition, even when it is one nostril only, invariably wakes me up at dead of night, engulfing me in dark awful thoughts about face cancer, mastoid, and meningitis. Both nostrils have to be completely clear before I am able to go back to sleep; sometimes I am obliged to sit crosslegged for hours, rotating my head and massaging my sinal cavities, before the problem abates. (Perhaps fortunately, this condition had not troubled me in Venice.) At present both nostrils were blocked and I was breathing through my mouth like a landed fish; I switched on the bedside lamp, wondering miserably where Parkson had dumped my essential small travel-bag which contains inhalant, Vit. C tablets, wintergreen ointment, Vicks, antiseptic cream, Vit. E cream, ear-drops, nose-drops, Alka-Seltzer, gauze, Band-Aid — but why go on?

  I could not see the small travel-bag. I could hardly see the bedside lamp. I couldn’t see the cat. But its howling was louder than ever. The room seemed to be packed full of thick, fawn-coloured smoke, which was steadily darkening in colour. As if, I thought vaguely, the fog of Venice had been packed and despatched after me . . .

  Plainly this was quite an emergency. The cat evidently thought so. It wanted out. Out, indeed, seemed essential for both of us.

  Gingerly I slid off the bed on to my good foot, worked my way down the steps, grasping the rail, and reached for my crutches. This seemed no time for the niceties of the wheelchair. One crutch had been fitted with a strap, so that I could use my elbow for support instead of the broken wrist. Blundering, lurching, doing my best not to breathe, I made for the sound of the cat’s clamour, assuming that was where the front door must be — I really could see nothing and had quite lost my sense of direction. The howls grew louder, the smoke thicker. I was in the front room by now — I could tell, because at one point I banged into the table. Then my shin caught against the low couch which, I recalled, stood just to the left of the front door as you entered. This wall in front of me then — I
felt it with my good hand — must, if I groped along it to the left, contain the door.

  It is difficult to grope when you have only one functioning hand, are supported by crutches, and have a frantic cat interweaving itself continually between the crutches and your legs. “Okay, okay,” I muttered, “just keep calm, the door handle’s got to be here somewhere.”

  At last I found the knob and turned, pulled, but the door wouldn’t open. Had I locked it? I could not recall taking such a prudent measure, but my last waking minutes had been veiled in a mist of champagne. Perhaps I had. Sliding my fingertips over the surface of the door I found a keyhole, but there was no key in it. Damn again!

  Could the key have fallen out on to the floor? Could I have knocked it out myself, during my gropings?

  I tried to search on the floor, dropped a crutch, had a hard time retrieving it, got a frightful lungful of smoke — which seemed to be issuing from the couch — and beat a hurried retreat into the kitchen, or where I thought the kitchen had to be, hoping the smoke in that room might be thinner. And by the sink there was a back door, I remembered.

  I put up a prayer to Saint Catherine, my patron saint, goddess of fireworks, that the back door would be unlocked.

  Saint Catherine must be out of town, on holiday. The glass door was immovable, shut, locked, and no key in the keyhole.

  By now the cat was becoming desperate. Its howls had taken on that hollow, coyote ring that cats only give out when engaged in combat, or when they feel the human race has really let them down.

  I was becoming fairly desperate myself, running out of options. It is not a moment I care to remember. I tried thwacking the back door with a crutch, but, supported on one foot only, was unable to muster up sufficient force to break it. The glass was plainly very strong, double-thick, burglar-proof.

  Well, chum, I thought, you are continually expecting death, and here it damn well is. What did H. James say? Here it is at last, the distinguished thing. As if it were some kind of superior family pet. Not a bit the way you had anticipated. Quite a joke on you, really.