The Day the Call Came

by Thomas Hinde

  For thirty seconds we went like this. I was sure from the way she didn’t mention it that Molly had seen it and was also astonished. By the time we reached the lawn I’d realized it was Dan’s light.

  I hurried ahead up the stairs. He was in bed reading.

  ‘Hallo.’

  ‘Hallo,’ he said. He was lying on his stomach, propped by his elbows, his chin in his hands.

  ‘You reading?’ I said.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  It was better than I deserved.

  ‘Been reading long?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, turning his head to look at me. His conversation seemed odd, as if he was adjusting it to the curious things, by daylight standards, which adults seemed to say at one in the morning. I thought this might be frightening him.

  Molly came past me and began to tell him we were home. I saw how she distracted him while gently taking and closing his book.

  I wondered what had made him wake and read. I guessed he had been doing it for a long time, waiting for us. I went to Peggy’s room. The door was open and the foot of her bed was lit by the landing light. She was asleep.

  She was low in the bedclothes, not much of her showing. Because of this her head was tipped back and her face turned up, suggesting a fish coming to the sur­face. I bent and kissed her and she took a startled breath and let it out in a sigh.

  All next morning I wondered what I should do. I walked about the house. I walked about the overcast garden. I went down the path to the orchards. Half-way, I stopped and came back. What alarmed me was the single day that was now left and the idea that I had had all the instructions I was going to have.

  I had imagined that as the time came near I would be kept in closer touch. The opposite was happening. My head was bad again, and it wasn’t the drink. The sense of swelling was acute and it seemed to half close my eyes. I didn’t like to bend.

  By the afternoon I knew what I must do. I waited till Molly was cooking, then took a trowel and trug. I crossed the lawn, sunny now after the dull morning, to a small herbaceous bed between the front drive and the tennis court. It was one Molly didn’t attend to much. By the time she discovered – if she ever did . . .

  I dug four roots of Michaelmas daisies, put them in the trug and smoothed the earth. I hid the trowel in the bushes.

  After tea when Molly and the children were having a bonfire on the hillside I took the trug and went down the New Lane to Mrs. Willis’s house.

  I’d never been in it. Occasionally she’d come to our parties but she’d not invited us back. I guessed that she never invited anyone – if you didn’t count her bridge parties. I had counted them, of course, that had been so clever. Her house was one of the ugliest in the lane, with grey stucco and chocolate paint and rectangular bay windows. It was unpretentious. It made no pre­tence to have been built at any other time than the thirties.

  I stood on the porch, between windows edged in red glass, facing a front door of panels of frosted glass, and rang the bell. It was one of those bells which ring loudly immediately inside the door, making the bell push shudder.

  There were steps in the house and the door opened. Inside were two girls. One was an ordinary girl standing several yards back in the passage. I saw her first because the other, holding the door, was a dwarf, so that I had to look a yard lower than I’d expected.

  I remembered the art-student lodgers. Why hadn’t Molly told me that one of them was a dwarf?

  ‘Hallo,’ I said.

  ‘Hallo,’ they said together.

  ‘Is Mrs. Willis in?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ the dwarf girl said. She had a strong foreign accent. She didn’t move out of the doorway or offer to fetch her.

  ‘Could I speak to her?’ I asked.

  The dwarf turned to the other girl. If some message passed between them I missed it. ‘We don’t think so,’ the other girl said.

  I understood. Though it was now five o’clock she still wasn’t dressed. I cursed myself for my impatience – or was this something they had been trained to say, whatever the time of day?

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I’ll call back.’

  I wasn’t going to hand them the trug though I’d seen their eyes straying to it. To think of one reason for calling had been hard enough. ‘I expect she’s not up yet.’

  ‘It isn’t that,’ the girl said.

  Again the dwarf looked at her, as if anxious about what she might say.

  ‘We think she’s ill.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said, politely interested. I was more than that.

  ‘When we took her tea . . .’ the girl said, and hesitated. ‘She wouldn’t answer the door. She couldn’t speak properly.’

  I watched them sharply, but now they both looked at me.

  ‘You should call a doctor,’ I said.

  ‘We were discussing,’ the dwarf said.

  ‘When you rang,’ the girl said.

  At this point I would have taken a step forward but the dwarf stayed in the doorway.

  ‘We couldn’t find her nightdress,’ the girl said.

  ‘You mean she was dressed?’ I said.

  Without saying anything or nodding they seemed to agree.

  ‘She may not have one,’ the girl said.

  ‘I doubt that,’ I said.

  ‘It could be at the laundry,’ the girl said, but not hope­fully.

  ‘She would haaf two,’ the dwarf said. ‘Two more,’ she said, making herself clear.

  ‘Certainly,’ I said, becoming increasingly worried by this discussion which I seemed unable to stop.

  I put down my trug. ‘You must call the doctor at once,’ I said. ‘It may be urgent.’

  They still hesitated, the dwarf holding the door with one hand raised from her shoulder to about the level of my stomach. Her hand was adult size. In the darkness of the hall, beyond the other girl, I could now see the telephone with its money box.

  ‘Haaf you pennies?’ the dwarf said.

  ‘She charges us fourpence,’ the other girl said, as if it was a mild grievance, though she was unsure whether this was the moment to mention it.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ I said, stepping forward. The dwarf took her arm down and let me come. I noticed how indefinitely they were behaving, as if we had reached an unrehearsed part of the scene.

  I was close to the other girl before she started and held out her hand. I counted the pennies into it. Even then she hesitated, but I didn’t move till she had turned to the telephone and lifted the receiver.

  At once I went past her and climbed the stairs. In three long strides I reached the top. Below I could see the dwarf coming after me. She climbed with enormous muscular effort, jerking her body backwards to lift her feet as high as her thighs. It was as if she were getting up a series of four-foot terraces.

  I opened two doors on empty bedrooms and then the right one.

  I’d noticed the smell when I’d stood on the porch, coming out at me in startling breaths, and then strong and choking as soon as I was in the hall. It was cat, I thought, but so fresh that there was ammonia with it. The door I now opened let out the same smell, but warmer and mixed with other things like mothballs. I hesitated, reluctant to go in unless I could take a deep breath and hold it. I might be sick.

  The room was a grey confusion. Garments which I couldn’t identify and didn’t want to look at lay about the floor. One curtain was drawn, making it dark even on this sunny afternoon.

  Mrs. Willis lay on the bed. She was flat on her back except her head, which was propped forward at forty-five degrees by a pillow. A blanket covered her to the chest and her hands were holding the edge of this. They looked grey. Her eyes were open and they watched the door.

  They seemed to watch the door – it wasn’t till I’d moved a pace forward into the room, my stomach rising, that I noticed they hadn’t followed. I saw the cunning of that: they could see but pretend never to have seen.

  ‘Mrs. Willis,’ I sai
d.

  The third time I said it she groaned.

  ‘I’ve brought you some daisies,’ I said. ‘Michaelmas,’ I added quickly.

  Watching her closely I thought her eyes took on a look of incomprehension.

  ‘They’re from my wife,’ I went on. ‘Molly.’ I wasn’t taking any chances. If she could be cunning, so could I. ‘I left them downstairs when I heard from your lodgers . . .’

  The door behind me was opening. The dwarf stood there. She didn’t speak, as if she might be out of breath from her ascent. She stood as she had stood at the house door, one hand stretched up, but this time set against the door post, like some small-scale giant pausing before she shoved it over. It was the room’s only door.

  I had to get out of that horrible room. Soon something would happen to make this impossible. In one or perhaps two seconds . . . I pushed roughly past her and reached the landing.

  She made no attempt to stop me. Perhaps she knew she couldn’t – or saw that I had recognized my danger in time. I began to drop down the stairs in threes.

  So quickly had it happened that I could hear below me the girl in the hall still trying to reach the doctor. ‘Hallo,’ she was saying. ‘Are you there?’ As I came drop­ping towards her I was aware of the stairs growing darker and saw beyond her the front door of the house closing. I understood why the dwarf hadn’t moved.

  I jumped the last six stairs. I gripped at the door’s edge with my fingers, but I had underestimated its strength. The strong spring tore it from them and it slammed.

  One thing saved me, the belief that I still had that second of advantage when I had seen my danger before they’d expected. I turned back into the hall and bounded past the girl at the telephone.

  I saw her startled face. ‘Oh, doctor,’ she had begun. She stopped, stood upright, but didn’t leave the telephone. The next moment I was beyond the bend, had passed through a door and turned the key behind me.

  I stood panting. There wasn’t a sound in the house, that was the most alarming thing. It was as if the door I had locked was perfectly insulated. Then, faintly, I could hear voices. I thought they might be close on the door’s far side.

  I was in the kitchen. I took off my shoes and crossed between kitchen table and cooker. I passed through the scullery and tested a door. It opened. That open door frightened me more than anything yet, but there seemed no choice. I went quickly through it and stood against the outside wall.

  I was on a small shaded piece of path. The bushes were twelve feet away. I braced myself for the dash I must make. I glanced at the ground, looking perhaps for a good push-off. I saw a flash of white. I bent and snatched it.

  I read, ‘One pint today please. Then none till saturday.’

  I said it to myself three times. I set it back where I had found it. Things were happening so fast that I only then realized that it had been held in place by three square, green gin bottles.

  I launched myself across that gap with its single ray of yellowing sunlight and in two seconds was on my knees, breathless among the laurels. I noticed that I was still holding my shoes. There was no time to tie them now. I made a fast low crossing behind her house and struck the New Lane thirty yards above her gate.

  I was still carrying them when I came into my back drive. Something must have slipped in my mind. I hesitated.

  ‘Hallo,’ a voice said. I looked here and there but could see nothing. Sweat drenched me. Terrifyingly, it was a voice I recognized. A child’s voice . . .

  ‘Where have you been?’

  It was Dan. He came down a low tree, where I suppose he’d been playing by himself at Indians. He stood up to his knees in heather, watching me.

  I stared at him. As if by instinct, I raised a finger to my lips, winked and went quietly up the drive. I could feel him watching me.

  Half an hour later as I stood in the veranda, the late evening sunlight coming in a yellow glare through the window at one end, I saw someone approaching up the front drive. Perhaps it was the sunlight which prevented me seeing at once who it was. They were close before I recognized the art student girl and saw that she was carrying my trug of Michaelmas daisies.

  She stopped on the lawn. ‘You left this,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks.’ I hurried forward and took it.

  I wished she’d go, but she stood there as if she hadn’t finished. Behind me, through the sitting-room, I heard a door slam. To my right Molly was coming round the corner of the house.

  ‘He’s been,’ the girl said.

  ‘The doctor?’ I said, hurrying her. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ she said. ‘That’s the trouble.’

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ Molly said, but instead of looking at the girl she began to stare in a fixed way at my trug.

  ‘If only he’d tell us,’ the girl said.

  ‘It’s Mrs. Willis,’ I explained to Molly. ‘She’s ill.’

  ‘Who’s ill?’ Peggy said from behind me at the sitting-room french windows.

  ‘Whatever have you got there?’ Molly said.

  I was worried by the way she wouldn’t take it casually, but went on staring at it as if she found it very disturb­ing, as if she would have liked to treat it as a joke but didn’t dare.

  ‘A present,’ I said vaguely.

  ‘We’re doing our best to look after her,’ the girl said. She seemed about to cry.

  ‘Who?’ Peggy said, in that nervous insistent way she used when she scented an adult secret about illness or death.

  ‘No one,’ Molly said. ‘Mrs. Willis,’ I said, both at the same moment.

  While we were saying these things Dan had come round the other corner of the house to stand on the lawn. He stared at my shoes, which I was now wearing, and then at me. He gave several large winks. He hadn’t learnt to wink easily and did them in sudden jerks, screwing up his mouth and most of one side of his face.

  I turned and went into the sitting-room. Between the sofa and armchair I stopped. I was still carrying my trug. ‘Wasn’t that the telephone,’ I said desperately. I put down the trug and went straight through the house and out by the back door.

  I went down the pathway to the low lands and my orchards.

  Those were the last calm moments I had, down there among my fruit trees. The fruit was heavy on them and hung undisturbed in the quiet summer evening. The sun was on their tops though I was walking in shadow. Far away I could hear noises, twice of car engines and once of children shouting.

  As I climbed again I met our cat on the path. It stood by itself, watching me, and when I came close it arched its back to rub itself against my shins. I didn’t want to let it. Then I let it.

  The sun was setting when I reached the house. From the back drive I could see it, a great red ball between the pines low over the hills. I went through the sitting-room – the trug had gone – and upstairs. I could hear them having supper in the kitchen. I went into our bed­room. It had been searched.

  It hadn’t been done violently or hurriedly but care­fully and thoroughly. Everything was a little different. If I hadn’t been looking for it I might not have noticed.

  To start with, three of the drawers were half an inch from fully shut. Inside the top left one my pile of hand­kerchiefs was on its side. The pillows were disturbed, and the telephone had been set with the dial facing the bedside mat, not the bed, as I always kept it. And several rolls of dust had come from under the furniture on to the carpet, as if they had been blown there when the bed was stripped or remade.

  I stood at the top of the stairs and shouted as loud as I could, ‘Who’s been up here?’ I could hear my voice echoing about the house. I could hear how it sounded frightened as well as angry.

  I wanted to go away and pretend I hadn’t done it but that wasn’t possible now. I had to stand there, imagining their shock, hearing their chairs go back in succession as they started to come, thinking I must be playing some game. I heard Molly tell them to stay. That would frighten them more.

&nbs
p; Then she was in the hall. ‘What is it?’ Their heads followed her round the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. I turned as if I’d had some more important idea. ‘I wondered if the children had been messing around,’ I said, still facing away.

  ‘In our bedroom?’ she asked.

  After a pause I said, ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I changed up there,’ she said.

  It was true, she was wearing a skirt instead of slacks. At once I realized how clever they had been. The drawers not fully closed, as she often left them; the telephone turned from the bed as if she’d made a call; the pillows and the dust.

  I should never have let my shock show. There was nothing in the bedroom they could find. I moved away from the stairhead. Below I heard her go back to the kitchen. ‘Your supper’s waiting.’

  I think I’d been shocked to realize that they could come inside, too. I’d never imagined that.

  I didn’t sleep that night. After several hours my mind began to drift into fantasy as it often did when I was near to sleep. At that moment I remembered meaning to put my .38 with the silencer between the mattresses on the night there’d been someone in the garden. I hadn’t thought of it since.

  I could remember the moment of meaning to do it. I could remember thinking there was still time to fetch it. I couldn’t remember what I’d done.

  I could remember the problem of how far to push it under, so that it wouldn’t fall out but would be easy to reach; or was that only a problem I’d foreseen?

  Very carefully I worked my hand out between the sheets, then back between the mattresses. It wasn’t there.

  I was wide awake now, my heart pounding. But I had to lie still. While I was feeling I’d heard Molly move. I listened for her breathing but couldn’t hear it. When she was asleep it grew regular and a little louder. As I listened, by association I had a panic about my own breathing and at that moment felt my heart stop. I had time to wonder whether it would start again before it was thumping fast as if to make up what it had lost. Though I lay only under a sheet I was soaked.

  There had been no cooling at sunset. The night felt airless, as if the soft clouds of the morning had come back after dark and wrapped in the heat. Tomorrow the moon would be full, the harvest moon, and it should have been bright moonlight, the brightest of the year; but the grey square of window didn’t seem like that.