Voices in the Dark

by Catherine Banner

  The snow began to fall again, robbing the city of all colour. I turned and went back inside. I wandered about the shop performing Leo’s usual tasks – sweeping the floor and turning down the stove and bolting the doors and windows. I counted up the day’s takings and took them to the safe. I never usually opened it, but it could not be helped today. I turned the dials to the combination Leo had set and hit the side to shake the broken lock free. It let out a mournful clang when I did it. I put the money into the case on the top shelf.

  As I pushed the door closed again, I noticed something. On the bottom shelf, under a dusty box of jewellery and the parcel from Aldebaran marked To the baby, there was a pile of papers in Leo’s writing. I pulled them out and held them close to the lamp. Half of them were the story I had already seen, stapled to the other pages so that they formed a makeshift book. And there was more, several pages, and the word FINISH at the end. The sheets were bound together neatly with string.

  ‘Anselm,’ sniffed Jasmine from the doorway, making me start and turn. ‘What’s that you’re holding?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Let me see.’

  I handed the pages to her. ‘It’s something Papa wrote,’ I said.

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘A story. I don’t know.’

  ‘Read it to me?’ she said. ‘Please. Then it will be like Papa is here.’

  ‘Oh, Jas.’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s that kind of story.’

  She sniffed and handed it back. Perhaps that was worse than anything. On any ordinary day, Jasmine would have snatched the papers out of my hand and begged me to read them to her until I gave in. But tonight she just trailed back upstairs with her blanket wrapped around her and went to her bedroom and put out the light. I closed the safe again.

  I left the papers on my desk while I lay awake in the dark; they gleamed palely under the moon. Every time I drew near to sleep that night, it escaped me. But I must have slept eventually, because when I did, I dreamed. I could see Leo struggling through the blizzard at a grey stone port and the sea foaming white with the snow that troubled it. And then it was another man, a man with reddish hair like my own, who turned and walked away into the night. I started and sat up. After that dream, I could not sleep again. I was more and more haunted by him, my real father. Perhaps it would be worse now that Leo was gone.

  There was nothing I could do, and the night stretched away from me in all directions. I lit the lamp and began to read those papers. It was a strange story, and I did not understand it. It began with the lord Rigel and his daughter and Aldebaran and England. But at least it kept the dark at bay.

  MORNING,

  THE FOURTH OF JANUARY

  Mr Hardy shook his head after I finished telling him that story. It was ten o’clock, and the coach was about to leave. He went on shaking his head. A muscle twitched under his eye with a flickering movement, making him look very old and frail suddenly. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I am all right.’ He coughed. ‘Go on. Tell me what happened next.’

  But we were leaving now. The others were already climbing up into the coach. He could not get to his feet, so I helped him, and we crossed the yard like that. ‘Go on with the story,’ he said again. ‘As soon as we reach the next inn, you must tell me.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘But, sir, I don’t understand. Why are you so interested?’

  He just shook his head.

  I gave him those papers to read instead. I could tell from the way his eyes moved restlessly that something troubled him, and I knew them almost by heart anyway. I knew how the story went on. I stared out at the dark moorland, towards the black line that must be the sea beyond the snow-covered cliffs.

  ‘Here,’ said the woman then, touching my shoulder. She was handing round biscuits and cold tea.

  We had hardly spoken a word to her since we set out. Mr Hardy smiled and took a biscuit, and I took one, and she gave us a nervous smile and hid herself behind her little boy again, making much of stroking his hair and checking if his hands were cold. But the boy was looking up at us both now with interest.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked me.

  ‘Anselm,’ I said.

  ‘I’m Matthew,’ he said.

  ‘Esther,’ whispered his mother.

  The little boy looked up at Mr Hardy. ‘Harlan,’ said the old man after a minute.

  ‘Harlan?’ I said. He gave me a quick glance. He must have got it from our talk of Harlan Smith and that book, but I did not know why he had given a false name.

  The woman and her son were watching us curiously. Mr Hardy met my eyes, then turned away and drank his tea carefully. The tin cup rattled in his hand, which was shaking badly. He seemed to be growing weaker on this journey. I watched the line of the sea draw close to us, then run alongside the coach road, its waves breaking close and very black against the edge of the snow. After a while, Mr Hardy went on reading. I knew the words he read, and I repeated them in my mind. It was something to drive out the cold.

  Juliette woke because she was troubled by strange dreams. Outside, the orange London darkness showed no sign of lifting. She rested her head against the window frame, and her heart felt cold in her chest, as though she was still in the dark beside a strange river and did not know what was ahead.

  Richard was out. She did not know where the offices of his solicitors’ firm were, but she supposed that was where he was now. The clock on the mantelpiece stood at twelve. Juliette threw a dressing gown around her shoulders and crossed the carpeted landing to her father’s door. The study was darkened, but she thought she would go in and wait for him. It was what she often used to do when she was small.

  Richard had always had a study, though he never worked in it. Juliette stood in front of the desk and spun the old-fashioned globe, and stared at it and made it go on spinning longer than was possible. She pretended she was a great woman, and the globe was enchanted to go on spinning for ever. She could not remember how she had learned these tricks. She had tried to ask Richard about them once, but he had shaken his head and refused to see the paper that was crumpling in her hand. Afterwards, she did not dare to tell him again. That was just after he’d told her about their old country and her mother dying. Ever since then, she had been able to do impossible things.

  Juliette put one finger on the globe to stop it spinning. Beside it was a stack of old volumes of Shakespeare. Her father thought there was no English writer higher and read and reread those old plays. Juliette turned over the pages, looking for the quote about the charmed life, then gave up and put the volumes back on the pile. Standing on the desk in front of them was what looked like an antique typewriter, with a blank page in it so old that dust dulled the edges of the paper. It must be something her father had picked up in an antiques shop. Juliette bent close to the machine and made out each ornate letter, standing out in shiny metal. She brushed the dust from the keys, then frowned and tried to make them move by themselves. She had no reason for doing it, except to make something speak to her out of the lonely silence. She knelt in front of it and fixed her eyes on each key. She tried to make her mind become the old metal and the ink and the page between its rollers. Outside, a car door slammed and broke her concentration. She went on staring at it. She felt herself go outwards, through the empty air and into the dead metal of the machine, and give it life. The letter R sprang up and printed itself on the paper.

  Juliette started. The other letters were clattering now. ‘R-I-G-E-L’, typed the machine, and fell silent again.

  Juliette fought the wish to run out of the room and slam the door behind her. Instead, she bent down and examined the printed page. Then she went to the table beside the sofa and poured out a glass of water from a plastic bottle. She watched her hand shake as she drank. Her head ached, and she wished she had never tried to make the typewriter move. It was a long walk back to the desk. The room was too big and too white and cold. It must be so
mething about the rich, thought Juliette, that made them colour their houses every shade of white. Perhaps it was to prove that dirt and dust were no object. She could never see herself as wealthy, though she knew it for a fact. She always felt like an impostor in this house.

  Juliette went back to the desk, took down the English dictionary, and turned over the pages, looking for the word Rigel. Something about it was already imprinted in her memory. But the word was not there. And yet there was something about the dictionary that made sense to Juliette. Every word, even andand but, was defined for her within its pages, as though it was made for someone who could never see the world as familiar. And this was how she understood her life. As something she could never get used to.

  It was while she was still studying the dictionary that the machine came to life again. It rattled so loudly that she dropped the book. ‘Rigel,’ it was typing. ‘Rigel. Rigel. Rigel.’ The rattling was enough to wake the servants. Juliette tried to hold the keys down, but they were dancing now, forming new words on the yellow paper. ‘Rigel, are you there?’ wrote the machine. ‘Help me.’

  Juliette watched the machine type, and she knew she was not the one who was making those letters move. ‘Help me,’ the machine wrote again. ‘They want to kill me. Rigel, you promised not to let me down.’

  Juliette backed away and slammed the door behind her. As she did it, she heard her father in the hallway.

  ‘Juliette?’ he said quietly, bending his head to peer up the stairs. ‘Are you awake?’ He threw off his coat, unwound his scarf, and came bounding up the steps two at a time. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘You look like you have seen a spirit. What’s that noise?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He opened the study door and stopped. The machine was spilling a ream of paper, still writing frantically. ‘Juliette, have you been playing about with that?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to do anything.’

  He crossed to the desk and knelt down, trying to unjam the paper. And then he stopped. He was studying the words that still unreeled themselves line by line. ‘Go back to bed,’ he said then, very quietly. ‘Go back to bed at once. I want you to stay in your room.’

  Juliette went out, but only as far as the corridor. She stood in the alcove at the top of the stairs and listened. The typing went on, unevenly, then stopped. Then she heard a violent smashing sound, somewhere down in the garden. She ran to the bathroom and pushed up the window. The typewriter was lying in the low yard outside the cellar, smashed into several pieces with its keys around it on the ground. Richard had thrown it from his study window.

  Juliette went to her room and sat on the edge of the bed, shivering. James Salmon went and stood outside the door, and she could tell from the shape of his coat that he had a gun. She did not usually like her father to let his bodyguard patrol outside the house with a gun; she was sure it was not legal here in England. But tonight she was almost glad of it, because the whole world seemed suddenly hostile. She sat awake until dawn rose over London and extinguished the orange light of the streetlamps. At six o’clock, Richard tapped on her door.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. He came in slowly and sat down on the bed beside her and rubbed his eyes. His glasses slid precariously down his nose. Richard looked older and tireder this morning. ‘Listen, Juliette,’ he said. ‘I think we might have to go away.’

  ‘What do you mean, go away?’ she said.

  ‘Move to another house. Maybe another country.’

  ‘Back to our old country?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand—’

  ‘I can’t explain. I can’t explain, but I have decided. We are going.’

  ‘What are we running away from?’ said Juliette.

  Richard started and looked up at her. She did not know why she had asked it; it was the first thing that came into her mind. ‘What are we running away from?’ she said again. ‘What did those words mean? Why did you break the typewriter?’

  Richard shook his head. He went on shaking it.

  ‘I’ll find out,’ said Juliette. ‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll still find out.’

  ‘Juliette, I’m trying to protect you.’

  ‘I’ll still find out.’

  ‘I don’t want to tell you.’

  ‘You told me about my mother, that other time.’

  ‘I know.’

  Juliette watched his face. He got up and went to the window. The London dawn had almost reached its height. The fenced garden in the middle of the square was illuminated, like a window into some promised land. ‘Those words,’ said Richard, ‘were from my old employer. The man who sent me on this mission, the man I broke with ten years ago. He has now been assassinated. And now that they know I’m alive, I’m afraid they are coming for me.’

  Juliette listened for a long time in silence, but no more words came. Then she went with her father silently through the house, helping to pack up their most valuable possessions and burn every paper that bore their names. They went two miles across the city to a drab hotel beside the railway. James Salmon came with them, carrying his gun. Juliette did not dare to ask any questions. But after that, she could not sleep without the nightmares returning to her.

  EVENING,

  THE FOURTH OF JANUARY

  ‘That was the night Aldebaran died,’ said Mr Hardy as soon as we were alone that evening. ‘The night when Rigel and his daughter left their house; it was the same night.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think so.’

  He handed the papers back to me. The sea crashed outside. This inn stood right on the cliff edge, facing out across the black water. Snow spiralled down and was lost among the waves. ‘How did Leo know these things?’ said Mr Hardy. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘I never asked him,’ I said.

  He looked up at me. ‘What happened after he left?’

  ‘Shall I finish telling you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  In truth, I had almost given up on my story. It was still less than half written, and the pages lay abandoned in the inside pocket of my coat. I did not know how to tell what came after. But Mr Hardy still wanted to hear, and I felt a strange kind of duty to him now, as though I had to go on telling it until the bitter end.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Just as before. I want to know what happened.’

  NOVEMBER

  I never understood, until that night when Leo left, how the truth gets swallowed. But after that night, when the early snow melted and the winter mists invaded the city and the cold grew less bitter and yet ran deeper into my bones, I never once thought about the man with the gun. He had been about to shoot Leo, and we had both known it, but I tried not to even consider it. And I never let myself think about Leo killing someone, though he had told me quite clearly that he had done it. But what could I do? And who was there to tell? I was the only person who knew, and so those things stopped being true, because I wanted them to. They had happened once, like a story, but not to me.

  After Leo left, my grandmother moved in, with her carpetbags and strict rules of conduct, and took up residence in Jasmine’s room. And my mother, as if to prove her justified, fell ill. She went to work the first day, looking sick and pale. On the second day, the merchant banker and his wife sent her home. We sat up by the fire, the two of us, after Jasmine and my grandmother had gone to bed. My mother kept stirring to put on more coals, and I tried to get up before her each time and stop her from tiring herself out. She looked very young in the firelight, like a girl expecting a baby, not a woman of thirty-one. I wondered if that was how she had looked in the months before I was born. I had never much thought about it before, but my real father and those years I could not remember were haunting my thoughts now more and more.

  Someone coughed down in the street and made us both glance up. I went to the window. The gas lamps gave no light at all, but when I frowned, I could see a man pacing up and down in front of the house opposite.

 
‘What is it?’ said my mother.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. He was a police officer; I could make out his red uniform. I rested my forehead against the glass. The man paced and turned smartly, a thin man with a cigarette jammed in his mouth. ‘Nothing,’ I said again, and drew the curtains across. The fact that they had taken Leo’s wish seriously made me almost more anxious than if they had ignored it. I wondered what it was they were defending us from.

  ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘are we staying here for good?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are we going to stay in the shop? We haven’t even opened since Leo left; we are not making money. And next month’s rent—’

  She ran her hands through her hair and kept them there, and I wished I had not asked.

  ‘Leo wanted us to go and stay with Grandmama,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, we are not doing that. There is no space in that house. We will kill each other before a month is out. We will manage here. All right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, like a scolded child. ‘All right.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘we might be forced to leave, and we can think about it then.’

  ‘Forced to?’ I said, thinking of the Imperial Order.

  ‘Leo left us in a bad way,’ she said. ‘Did you have any idea? I’ve been looking through the accounts book. We are so far in debt that I don’t think we can recover.’

  I did not know what to say, so I listened in silence. I’d had some idea.

  ‘So when Doctor Keller loses his patience, we’ll have no choice,’ she said. ‘Unless we think of something to do, and I can’t, Anselm. I really can’t. I’ve tried.’

  ‘So we’ll end up at Grandmama’s anyway,’ I said. ‘Is that what you mean?’

  ‘I want the baby to be born here,’ she said. ‘I want to stay here. This is our home. Leaving seems like a bad omen.’