The Dumb House

by John Burnside

  She was prettier than I had first imagined, almost beautiful, but there was something disconcerting about her. She could have been twenty, but she could as easily have been thirteen. While she allowed me to look at her, I had the idea that something was building silently between us, a kind of pleasurable tension, an expectancy, as if it would take only the slightest of signals for something to begin. There was something exciting about this, and dangerous too, like flirting with a child. For one long, dizzying moment I thought she was about to look up, to turn to me and speak. But nothing happened. Perhaps she was waiting for me to speak, perhaps I was imagining the whole thing, but that day, I had no opportunity to find out. I was still casting around, trying to think of something to say, when Miss Patterson appeared with a pile of books in her arms, and I quickly returned to my research – though not before she had caught my eye, and let me know, by her look, that she had read, or thought she had read, what was in my mind.

  A few minutes later, a man appeared and stood across the table from the girl. When she looked up and saw him, her face was transformed to a white mask of fear and dismay. The man was dishevelled and unkempt, in black tennis shoes and a crumpled, powder-blue suit that must have come from a charity shop. His hands were thrust into his jacket pockets, as if to hide something, and he looked as if he hadn’t washed or shaved in a couple of days. I could see Miss Patterson was gathering herself, waiting for something to happen that would give her an excuse to eject them both, but there was no need: as soon as she saw the man, the girl stood up, leaving her books spread out on the desk and, when he turned to leave, she followed, her arms hanging by her sides, her head bowed. I remember I was disappointed that she did not look back. Miss Patterson watched them out, then, as soon as the main door had closed behind them, came to my table.

  ‘Dreadful people,’ she said.

  I nodded.

  ‘I hope they didn’t disturb you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I answered. ‘Who are they, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know the man,’ Miss Patterson replied. ‘The girl’s been in a few times. I imagine she only comes here to keep warm.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I don’t think she can even read,’ she continued. ‘She just looks at the pictures. I asked her once if she wanted to join, but she didn’t even answer.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s shy,’ I ventured. I wanted to bring the conversation to an end, so I could leave, and perhaps find out where the girl had gone.

  ‘No.’ Miss Patterson looked determined. ‘Did you see the way that man looked at her? I think she was hiding from him. That’s why she was here. She wanted somewhere warm to go, where he wouldn’t find her.’

  I nodded vaguely and began gathering up my things.

  ‘Are you leaving already?’ Miss Patterson asked, almost in alarm.

  ‘I’m afraid I must,’ I answered. ‘I have an appointment.’

  She smiled tightly and nodded.

  ‘We’ll see you next week, then,’ she said, and returned to her desk.

  Outside, it was brighter than I had expected. I was sure the girl would be long gone, and I was kicking myself for having allowed Miss Patterson to detain me. Then, on the pavement, in front of Trinity Church, I saw them, the man and the girl and two other men, standing in a tight huddle, like a group of conspirators. The man from the library was talking and the other men were listening and nodding in agreement; they seemed to defer to him and I concluded that he was the leader of the group. Only the girl appeared to be paying no attention to what he was saying. The other men, who were both taller and slightly younger than the man from the library, were dressed in similar clothes and looked even dirtier and more unshaven than he did. After a few moments, they seemed to reach an agreement. One of the younger men handed a banknote over to the leader, with obvious reluctance. The older man pocketed the note, took the girl by the arm and led her across the road to the King’s Head pub. The others tagged along behind them. I waited till they were inside, then I crossed the road and followed them into the bar.

  The man who had come into the library was ordering drinks. Close to, he looked shorter: thin and wiry, around thirty-five, I thought, with a slight curve to his shoulders and long, greasy hair. His hands were grimy and chapped, but this did not disguise how small, or how oddly feminine they were, narrow across the palm, with delicate tapering fingers, and tiny, birdlike knuckles. The other men had taken seats at a table by the window, one on either side of the girl, who sat with her head bowed, her hair hanging over her face, her hands clasped in her lap.

  When his drinks arrived, the man turned to me and raised his glass of lager. His voice was the most unpleasant I had ever heard: slightly high-pitched, calculatedly soft and insinuating.

  ‘I don’t know whether to drink this, or just look at it,’ he said.

  I nodded, but I did not speak. He smiled and shook his head slightly, then moved away, carrying three pint glasses between his hands, spilling a trail of drops across the wooden floor as he went. I noticed there was no drink for the girl.

  I ordered a coffee and sat down at a table near the bar.

  A moment later, the man was up again and walking towards me with a faint, fixed smile on his face. I thought he was going to speak again, perhaps even to ask for money, but he passed by and began feeding a handful of coins into the fruit machine, a few feet away. The man who had handed over the banknote got up and stood beside him watching, but the first man didn’t seem to notice, he was so intent on the game. He seemed to be having some luck: with each stage of his success the machine sounded a peal of bells, then warbled out a fairground organ version of ‘We’re in the money’. Then, when a crisis loomed, it hurtled through the opening of the William Tell overture, and spat out handfuls of chunky gold tokens, which the older man scooped up greedily and fed back into the machine. His companion began to grow restless.

  ‘Come on, Jimmy,’ he said. ‘You’re going to lose it all again.’

  Jimmy shook his head, but did not look up from the machine. He pressed a button several times with his hand, and William Tell sounded, followed by a deluge of tokens. He turned to his companion and grinned.

  ‘The milky bars are on me,’ he said, as he scooped up his winnings and made his way back to the bar.

  I glanced across at the table by the window. The girl was still sitting with her head down, hands clasped, listening to something, some voice or sound only she could hear, far in the distance. The third man, who was younger and better-dressed than the other two, asked her if she wanted a drink, but she seemed not to hear. In all the time I had been in the pub, she had kept her head down, yet I was certain she knew I was there. Watching her, I imagined it was me she was listening for, as if my thoughts could travel across the lit space of the pub, and reach her without the others knowing – and for a moment, I thought she really could hear my thoughts, that she had listened in to me when we were in the library, and she was listening in now, as I sat watching her, only she was unable to acknowledge the fact, afraid of what her companions might do. Jimmy and his friend were still at the bar; Jimmy was ordering lager and whisky, offering to buy the barman a drink, laughing and spilling coins on to the polished wooden counter. It might have been the noise of the tokens, spilling out of Jimmy’s pockets, or perhaps it was something the young man beside her had said but, all of a sudden, the girl looked up and saw me, watching her across the room. I sat perfectly still and held her gaze. I was trying to tell her with my thoughts that she could leave these people and come with me – and I was sure she understood, because she smiled slightly, sadly, and shook her head almost imperceptibly.

  I stood up. The third man had noticed me now, and he looked at the girl, puzzled.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  The girl resumed her former position immediately, with her head down, her hair hanging over her face. The third man looked at me suspiciously, then glanced towards the others at the bar. They had finished their order and Jimmy was standin
g, with a drink in one hand, watching him.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ he asked and, before the third man could answer, I stood up, finished my coffee and went outside. I waited several minutes, to see if the girl had followed, but she did not appear, so I walked slowly back to my car, and drove home.

  For the next several days I had the same dream, with minor variations, once, sometimes twice a night. I was walking in the evening, on a path through a leafy wood. It was that time of day when the light has softened – evening-time in late June, say. I half-recognised the wood: it was spacious and open, with tall beech trees and field maples on either side. Cow parsley grew thick and white along the path; the grass was long and necked with cuckoo-spit; everything was still warm from the day’s heat. There were blue shadows under the trees, but the light was mostly green – green with a suggestion of water, and traces here and there of that smell you can find in old bottles and cans. It was that time of the evening when you sometimes feel you are being Watched, when something moves, a few feet away in the undergrowth, and you turn to almost see what must have been an animal, or a bird, vanishing amongst the leaves. I felt calm in the dream. I was walking slowly, enjoying the near-silence, the smell of the cow parsley, the cooling air. I felt calm and I had the sense of going to meet someone, keeping a long-planned appointment, somewhere further along the track. I think I had been walking for a long time when the dream began, content at first, then – quite suddenly – a little anxious, for no reason that I was aware of – anxious, or perhaps concerned, not unhappy, not afraid, nothing so extreme. After a time, I realised that what had disturbed me was the absence of birdsong, at that time of day when the birds should have been loudest, and I tried to remember whether I had heard them before, when I first set out. I thought I had, but I could not be sure; at the same time, the path widened and led me into a wide meadow. The grass had been cut here, it was dry and stubbled underfoot; at the far edge of the meadow I could see an old-fashioned wooden house, dark and vacant-looking, and in need of some repair, with a broken roof and a wide veranda at the front.

  I began walking towards the house, convinced there was no one there, but curious to see inside. I was more aware of the quiet with each step I took till, as I stood at the foot of the veranda, the silence was total and oppressive. The windows at the front of the house were dusty and almost black, and a few were broken, giving on to a deeper blackness within. An old wheelbarrow stood in the yard. It had once been painted green, but now the paint was flaking away and the wood that showed was black and streaked with mildew.

  I had been so sure that no one was there, it was some time before I noticed the man, sitting on a rickety wooden chair on the veranda. Even when I did see him, I thought at first that he was a model of some kind, a sculpture perhaps, or a shopfront dummy. My next thought was that he was dead, that he had died long ago, when the house was still intact, and he had sat there for years, waiting for me to find him. I concluded that he must have died of old age, because his skin was wrinkled and dark, and his grey hair and beard were long and matted, yet his clothes were clean, as if they had been newly laundered and replaced, some time recently. I wasn’t afraid. I climbed the steps and stood on the veranda, looking at what I thought was his lifeless body. I noticed there was something familiar about the face, but I couldn’t have said what it was. The eyes were closed, thin-lidded and wrinkled, like a bird’s eyes, and his mouth was thin too, thin and small, smiling a little, I thought, as if he had thought of something funny and probably a little bitter, or sad perhaps, during his last moments. I could see that the teeth were brown with decay.

  I was trying to think who he was, when his eyes opened, suddenly large and blue as robin’s eggs, bright, alive, a little dangerous, and I stepped back, half-expecting him to reach out and grasp me with a long bony hand, like one of those monsters in Mother’s fairy tales. He remained perfectly still. I understood then that he could not move his body at all, only his eyes. He was quite powerless.

  It was this knowledge that decided my next move. As if I had known they were there all along, I took two small, bright-blue pebbles from my pocket and held them up to his face, so he could see. He seemed to be straining to keep his eyes open, as if even that small effort was too much for him, but he saw the stones, and he nodded, with what appeared to be a look of resignation. I reached out with my right hand, cradling the stones in my left, then plucked the right eye from his head and put it in my pocket. His body stiffened slightly; otherwise, he did not move. With the stones growing moist and warm in my left hand, I removed the other eye and placed it in my other pocket. The man’s sockets were black now, and empty, like the old house behind him. There was no blood, and he remained still, as if he had felt no real pain. Then, slowly, and with great care, as if the whole world depended upon it, I took my pebbles, dropped them into his skull and watched as the eyelids closed and settled upon them. For a moment, I thought they were lost, that they were falling forever into that blackness; that the eyes would never be opened again, and I would have to stay there, with this blind old man forever – but, after a moment, the eyelids rose, slowly and with great difficulty. Now, the man did seem to be in pain; nevertheless, his eyes opened and now they were brighter and more blue than ever, joyful-seeming, empowered. There was no other change: his body remained in the rickety chair, his mouth was still thin and decayed, yet I could feel his happiness flooding me, just as I had felt his pain and dismay before. At the same time, I realised he was dismissing me, signalling with his new eyes that I was released from my obligation to him, that the spell that had held us both there was now broken. I took one last look at those brilliant eyes, then I turned, descended the steps of the veranda and began walking back across the meadow, the way I had come.

  Each time I woke from this dream, I remembered the girl from the library, and I remembered how she looked at me that day, across the bar room of the King’s Head. There was something about her that was important, I knew, but I couldn’t work out what. All I knew was that I would find her again some day, because that was what was intended.

  Several weeks passed before I saw the vagrants again. As the days hinted at autumn, I still visited the library, driving in across the hills, watching the woods as they turned gold and crimson. Miss Patterson continued to take an interest in my work; occasionally, that interest became intrusive. As a matter of fact, I think she had begun to develop an unhealthy interest in me. She would put aside whatever she was doing whenever I arrived and ask if there was anything I needed, anything special. I remained polite, but I made it clear that I wanted to be alone to concentrate on my work. Not that it made any difference. If anything, my remoteness only attracted her more.

  One evening, as I was walking back to my car through Trinity churchyard, I saw the man Jimmy and the younger of his two friends, sitting on a bench at the far end of the garden, by the gate that led out to Cuthbert Street, where I would have to pass them, to get to the car park. It had rained earlier, and the bench must have been wet, but they didn’t seem to care. They were sharing a bottle of cider, and smoking cigarettes; when they saw me, the young man stood up and lurched forwards with one hand outstretched.

  ‘Spare us some change?’ he asked, his voice a little slurred from the drink.

  I shook my head and kept walking towards the gate. Jimmy was still seated, but he looked up at me as I approached and gave me a hard smile.

  ‘Spare us some change, mister,’ he said, quietly, insinuatingly.

  I shook my head again.

  ‘I know you, don’t I?’ he said more loudly, getting to his feet and peering into my face.

  I stopped as he blocked my way.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I answered. ‘Now, let me pass.’

  It was a mistake, of course. He was looking for confrontation. Somewhere, at the deepest level of his being, there was an expectancy of contempt, a desire to be confirmed in the belief that the world was against him. He was looking for an opponent; he was looking for
the first indication of repugnance or disgust, so he could strike back, and show his defiance. Not that I was concerned. I had carried small weapons and tools in my coat for years, for use in just such a situation. I had no intention of becoming a victim, especially the victim of vermin like these. That evening, I had a Stanley knife in my pocket, and I was ready to use it.

  ‘No need to be like that,’ he said.

  The other man had turned back and stood behind me, watching, waiting for his cue.

  ‘You could show people some respect,’ Jimmy continued, and the other man echoed him, quietly, gloatingly. ‘That’s all I ask. It’s not too much to ask, is it?’