The Midnight Side

by Natasha Mostert

  And the years went by. And every year over Christmas they’d tell each other that yes, this was the year they really had to get together. But they never did. And now she hadn’t seen Alette in five years. And now it was too late.

  The tiny black gate stood wide open. Isa walked through and pushed it shut. It creaked dismally and she shivered slightly at the wet feel of the wrought iron against her palm. She walked up the small front garden, tripping a little over some broken flagstones: her suitcase dragging in her hand. As she climbed up the two shallow steps leading to the front door, she started to rummage in her shoulder bag for the keys, which the super-efficient Mr Darling had sent to her in South Africa via courier.

  The locks were oiled and the keys turned without any trouble. The door swung open into darkness. Keeping the door open with her shoulder so that the entrance hall could be lit by the light of an outside lamp post, Isa groped against the wall in search of a light switch.

  She found it and blinked in the sudden, bright-edged glare. Moving away from the door, she allowed it to swing softly shut behind her.

  As in most London houses, the hall was narrow, opening up immediately into a balustraded staircase leading to the second storey. A rear door, which she assumed led to the kitchen, was directly ahead of her. On the console table flanking the left wall was a bamboo tray with some unopened letters. On the right-hand wall were mounted hooks from which hung an array of scarves, hats and jackets.

  One hook only was empty. Isa thought of Alette running down the stairs: casually pulling a coat from that hook, selecting a matching scarf. Then stepping outside and closing the door behind her. And never thinking that she would not again return to her house.

  Cold; it was bone-chillingly cold. Isa placed her hand against a wall-mounted radiator. It was icy to the touch: the central heating had been switched off. She reached for the round knob of the thermostat that was set into the wall and turned it all the way up. Ignoring the closed door to the rear, she mounted the stairs.

  Her feet made no sound on the dark blue carpeted runners. Alette loved comfort. She craved thick carpets, soft rugs, cashmere throws: opulence and luxury. Isa’s own taste was more minimalist. But as she walked through the tall, graceful doors of Alette’s living room, the chandelier bursting into a shower of gold above her head, she had to admit that Alette’s love of lavishly layered patterns and textures made the room appear like some exquisite jewel box.

  The down sofas were covered in an overblown rose-printed fabric. Throws in a muted mossy green were draped over the backs and arms of the deep-buttoned chairs. Seagrass mats, ruggedly tactile, rubbed against a soft-piled Oriental rug. An eye-catching lacquer screen with a wild profusion of birds and flowers gleamed in the one corner of the room. On the mantelpiece was a charming, enamelled carriage clock and next to it a big ten-by-six studio photograph of Alette.

  And there were books. Books everywhere. Books lining the walls; books piled on every available surface. Novels. Non-fiction. Volume upon volume of poetry. Each of those books, Isa knew, would bear in its margins evidence that Alette had pored through its pages. Alette never read a book without a pencil in her hand. She scribbled in the margins, underlined and circled words: annotated every book she read with her own private thoughts. There was a time when she had stopped borrowing books from Alette, because reading a book of Alette’s made for a very different experience than reading it in its virgin form—simple black on white—unsullied by any of Alette’s scribbles and asides.

  A soft, thudding sound—more felt than heard—made Isa turn her head to one side and listen. She walked out of the room and onto the landing and peered over the balustrade to the floor down below.

  After a few moments she straightened slowly. It was probably just an echo from one of the radiators. Since turning on the heat, she had been aware of the odd, clanging noise as the radiators throughout the house started to fire up.

  She suddenly noticed the bleak stare of the uncurtained windows at the end of the passage. But when she tugged at the elaborately swagged curtains, they remained fixed. These curtains were for show, they would not close. Feeling oddly exposed, she turned around and walked up the last flight of stairs.

  The door to Alette’s bedroom was shut and the catch was stiff. She had to rattle the handle and put her shoulder to the door before it would open.

  The first thing she noticed was the scent in the air: rose and patchouli. Rosa abyssinica, to be precise. A fragrant rose from Ethiopia. Alette used it for potpourri. ‘To remind me of Africa,’ she had once written to Isa in a letter. ‘I am surrounded by all these English beauties, but I need an African rose to remind me of home.’

  Isa moved to where she could see the outline of a table lamp in the gloom. Her fingers searched; found the switch. Soft light reached out and touched the walls.

  This room was unabashedly romantic. A huge four-poster bed, extravagantly hung with some soft, white, diaphanous material, dominated the room. The bed was made, but she could see the imprint of a body on the subtly textured fabric of the bedspread. One of the pillows had been removed from underneath the bedspread and placed on top. The soft down was dented in the middle where a head had rested.

  On the bedside table stood many, many photographs in silver frames, but Isa did not allow her eyes to more than skim over the images. She recognized herself in two of the pictures, but she wasn’t yet ready for a full inspection. She would leave that for the next day when there was sunlight in the room and fewer shadows.

  An old-fashioned dressing table stood in the corner. The silvered texture of the mirror was flattering to the viewer—it smoothed out imperfections, muted bruises under the eyes. But to Isa the sight of her own face seemed wrong inside that gleaming reflection. The face of another woman used to look out from its depths: a face surrounded by red curls; long tendrils like the hair of those sublimely feminine figures in a Burne-Jones or Rossetti painting. Proserpine; Lady Lilith. Isa imagined Alette sitting on this kidney shaped stool, impatiently twisting her thick hair into a French twist, her mouth full of pins. And then picking up the heavy embossed hand mirror to examine her profile; the long-lidded eyes softening contentedly.

  In this room, too, there were books. One entire wall filled with them. But the books in this room reflected Alette’s preoccupation with mystical phenomena. There were books on tarot reading, the interpretation of tea leaves; books on premonitions, omens, symbols, psychic powers. Books on the occult and paranormal. Books on African rituals and mystical ceremonies.

  Spreadeagled on the seat of the one armchair in the room was a book, which Alette must have been in the process of reading. Isa was just leaning forward to pick it up, when the indefinable feeling of being watched prickled the skin on her arms.

  She turned her head and looked out of the back window. On the top floor of the apartment block opposite, a figure—a male figure—was clearly outlined against the yellow light streaming through the window. He was looking straight at her. Just as her brain registered the figure, the light in the window was abruptly extinguished. But she had the feeling that the figure was still there, still watching from within that dark oblong.

  At least Alette’s bedroom had curtains that could be drawn tight. Isa yanked the drapes closed, shutting out the presence of the watcher outside. But she felt unnerved. She looked towards the other end of the room. She might as well close the curtains in those front windows as well.

  This window looked out onto the street where the taxi had dropped her off earlier tonight. The houses opposite were one storey shorter than Alette’s house and she was able to see clear over their roofs to where the spires of a church stood elaborately fretted against the night sky. There was a light on inside the church and the stained-glass windows glimmered with purple-and-green prisms and diamond squares of ruby. It should have been comforting: the dark, patient shape of the church—black against the lesser blackness of the sky—but it wasn’t. As she watched it seemed to her as though the windows were
starting to glow with a demented energy. Even after she had drawn the curtains; even after she had remade the bed with some fresh linen she had found in the closet and had slid between the cool sheets, even then; the image of that glittering window stayed with her: a bloody jewel invading her dreams.

  FOUR

  Yet Lord, instruct us so to die,

  That all these dyings may be life in death.

  Mortification

  George Herbert (1593–1633)

  ISA WOKE UP feeling disoriented. She struggled upright from amid the welter of pillows and grabbed for the alarm clock, suddenly panicked that she had missed her appointment with Mr Darling. But it was only eight A.M.

  She padded barefoot to the back window and drew away the drapes to find that it had stopped raining and the sky was a watery blue. Isa looked up at the corner window on the top floor of the small apartment block across the street. She almost expected to see the same figure staring at her from the window but all she saw was a lofty ceiling and some brightly coloured curtains tucked to the side. In the light of day her apprehensions of the night before seemed silly.

  Her suitcase lay open, its contents spilling out in disarray. She had been so tired the previous evening that she hadn’t bothered unpacking but had simply grabbed her toiletries and nightdress after a quick shower in the tiny attached bathroom. But this morning she felt like taking a proper bath.

  There was another bathroom farther along the passage, and like every other room in the house, it was sumptuous. Wheat-coloured Egyptian-cotton towels were stacked neatly on top of each other on the seat of a wicker chair. Highly scented oils in silver-stoppered glass bottles were arranged on the washing table.

  Isa sank into the hot water. But as she lay looking at Alette’s silk robe hooked to the back of the door, she realized she felt like an intruder. She could never see herself living here. Alette’s presence was so strong.

  She wasn’t sure what to wear and finally settled on a grey suit with black pumps: elegant, reserved. Mourning. The solicitor would expect that. She glanced at her watch. She was going to have to hurry.

  Quickly she walked down the two flights of stairs. In the hallway she hesitated: the rear door was slightly open. She could have sworn it was closed when she arrived last night. But maybe she was mistaken. This was the one room in the house she had not yet explored. She leaned her shoulder against the door and pushed it fully open, almost tripping over a pair of mud-caked Wellingtons parked right inside the door.

  As she expected, it was the kitchen cum dining room. Or rather office. Upstairs, in Alette’s bedroom, was an exquisite, antique Regency writing desk of Coromandel wood inlaid with ivory, but it was clear that Alette had used this sturdy dining table as her real place of work. On top of the table were a closed laptop computer, stacks of papers, in- and- out- trays, a box of tissues and a telephone. An iron gimbal swung from a butcher’s hook dangling from the ceiling. Inside the window hung a wind chime, its five chimes deadened by a thin, silver restraining chain wrapped around their base.

  Isa rifled through the papers on the table. They all seemed to be letters that Alette was planning to send out to her clients: a small, select group of extremely wealthy people. Alette ran a tiny but very lucrative business of ‘interpreting the future’: fortune-telling, not to put too fine a point on it. It was all done in very good taste: no crystal balls and gypsy head-scarves, only a lightly scented piece of notepaper forwarded once a month to some very exclusive London addresses. Alette had been quite cynical about the whole enterprise. ‘I tell many of them only what they want to hear,’ she used to say. ‘That’s what they pay me for. They won’t thank me for anything else and they can’t handle anything else, anyway.’ Alette was a pragmatist, always had been. Isa remembered Alette as a young girl, reading the tea leaves for the blue-haired ladies of her mother’s knitting bee. ‘Do you really believe in all that stuff?’ Isa had asked her. Alette had answered: ‘It’s not whether I believe; it’s whether they do.’

  Isa was aware that there were people who, although admiring of Alette’s business instincts and razor-fine intuition, dismissed her as a master manipulator. Isa knew there was more to it than that. Alette had a gift. Isa had seen it at work. Catching sight of it was like witnessing that fleeting moment when flint strikes fire from stone.

  Isa pushed the letters to one side and turned away from the table. All these people would have to be contacted and informed of Alette’s death. Or maybe they already knew. She’d have to ask Mr Darling about it.

  She stepped into the kitchen area and opened the yellow fridge. There was a champagne bottle, half-full, with a ragged piece of paper towel stuck into its neck, and on the bottom shelf a Marks & Spencer ready-prepared dish still untouched in its original wrapping: duck a l’orange and well past the sell-by date stamped on the cover. Next to it was a tray of chocolates. One of the chocolates had been bitten in half and then discarded. The sight of the food was disturbing, but still she felt herself smile. The discarded piece of chocolate looked like a hard toffee. Alette had preferred soft centres.

  She straightened. She’d have to get rid of the food, but there was no time for it now. She wasn’t sure how long it would take her to reach Mr Darling’s office and she’d rather be early than late. Hoisting her handbag over her shoulder, she picked up her coat and headed for the entrance hall. As she stepped outside she carefully shut the front door and made sure to lock both the top and bottom locks.

  She managed to hail a cab almost immediately. The cab driver identified her accent without any trouble and took it upon himself to point out the sights as they drove down the Embankment. Isa dutifully nodded as he gestured at the cobwebby outlines of the Albert and Chelsea bridges, the Oxo Tower, and the supremely ugly South Bank Centre. At any other time she would have enjoyed the tour, replied to the taxi driver’s comments with more kindness and interest, but the tension inside her was rising. Up till now she had not thought too much about the upcoming meeting; had not allowed herself to speculate on what could be so sensitive that Mr Darling would not discuss it with her on the phone. But she was just about to find out.

  Once inside the warren of tiny streets close to St. Paul’s Cathedral, traffic stalled. When the cab driver finally deposited her at the entrance to a stone building, the time of her appointment was less than five minutes away. Although the facade of the building was imposing and although Isa knew that Alette would make sure of the very best legal representation, the long, dingy corridors leading to Mr Darling’s door were unimpressive. The occupants of this building were obviously united in their distaste of any ostentatious display of wealth and influence: a kind of inverse snobbery that nevertheless made a very definite statement.

  Mr Darling’s office itself was positively Dickensian in its decor, with flocked wallpaper and tired curtains edged with grime. Mr Darling, though, was a surprise. Tall, tanned and blond, he looked like an Australian surfer. His smile was easy and he used it often. His manner as he offered her a seat and a cup of coffee was decidedly laid-back despite the public school accent and meticulous phrasing. After asking her a few polite questions about her trip, he opened the drawer and took out a thick file in a green folder.

  Isa had half expected him to read the will out loud to her, as in a detective story, but he merely handed her a slim document threaded through on the spine with a blue ribbon. ‘You can read this later at your leisure,’ he informed her, ‘and then, if you have any questions I shall be happy to answer them. In short, I can tell you that Mrs Temple left you all of her possessions. You are her sole heir. It is a not inconsiderable estate, even without the house. She’s made some very shrewd investments over the years and she recently sold all her shares in her former husband’s company.’

  Isa looked at him directly. ‘When exactly did Alette draw up her will?’

  ‘She first came to my office three months ago. She was very insistent that the will be drawn up as soon as possible. I do not want to upset you, Miss de Witt, b
ut she seemed to think that there would very soon be call for the existence of such a document. It’s almost as if she had a … premonition.’ He grimaced slightly, as though he had uttered a remark in poor taste.

  ‘You said the road where she had the crash was a dangerous one?’

  ‘Certainly in bad weather, yes. And the road conditions were exceptionally poor that night. Fog. Ice on the road.’

  ‘I can’t understand what she was doing there.’

  ‘I happen to know,’ he replied unexpectedly. She told me she had … business … to discuss with her former husband. Mr Temple was visiting his mother at the time and she drove out to the north coast of Devon to meet with him.’

  The barely discernible hesitation before he uttered the word ‘business’, made her wonder, but then he continued, his voice suddenly brisk. ‘In any event, Mrs Temple left very detailed instructions for her funeral, which, I assure you, I have followed to the letter. She stipulated that she wanted to be cremated and she wished to be buried along with…’—he paused and picked up a sheet of paper from which he read painstakingly, ‘two African idols—a male and a female figure—carved from Cape Stinkwood, dating from the late nineteenth century.’ Mr Darling lowered the paper and looked at Isa. ‘She left the carvings in my possession when she came in to sign the will. I kept them in my safe.’

  Isa leaned forward. ‘These figures, were they very smooth, very polished, both about twenty inches high?’

  ‘Indeed. Are you familiar with them?’

  ‘Yes.’ Isa did not elaborate but she remembered them well. They were made from a very tough wood; darkly patinated by the touch of many hands over many, many years. The two dolls represented ‘spirit marriage partners.’ They had been a gift to Alette from Siena, Alette’s former nanny. Siena had explained that they were symbols of the perfect union between man and woman and of a love that happens only once in life. Isa had been present when Siena had given Alette the little idols. And after all these years she was still able to recall the cool gloom of Siena’s room; the smell of the Zambuk ointment that Siena used to rub on her body. Siena handing Alette the wooden carvings. The skin of Siena’s hands so black it seemed almost blue but her palms pink as a rose. She also remembered vividly, and with embarrassment, her jealousy as Siena handed the dolls to Alette while she, Isa, stood by, receiving nothing. Many years later Alette would give the dolls to Justin as her wedding gift.