Break of Dark

by Robert Westall

  He looked at her. ‘Drop it, Angel. It’s got nothing to do with you.’

  She still felt absolutely safe with him, because she knew he loved her. But it suddenly struck her that he did not love everybody. That perhaps not everybody was as safe as she was . . .

  The second card came in the middle of January. From Blackpool. It said:

  Just having a few days winter break. Weather is quite bracing. Wish you were here. Will call soon.

  Love,

  Fred, Alice and Aunty Lou

  The front was a picture of Blackpool Prom., with a row of hotels. One window of one of the hotels was marked with an X in blue biro.

  ‘You could check on that,’ suggested Peter.

  ‘I did,’ said Roger. ‘I phoned. They were registered. Mr and Mrs F. Brown. And a Mrs Louise Brown, booked into an adjoining room. I drove up there – and I wish I hadn’t. I saw the register; the hotel staff thought I was barmy. It was the same handwriting – I took a photocopy for the police. The address they gave was 26 Brannen Street, Flamborough.’

  ‘And?’ asked Peter.

  ‘The whole of Brannen Street is derelict – empty. They’re demolishing it next week to build a factory for the Japs.’

  ‘Didn’t you make enquiries?’

  ‘No one to ask.’

  ‘Get any description from the hotel staff?’

  ‘It was one of those cheap, pensioner block-bookings. They couldn’t remember a thing.’

  ‘So you wished you hadn’t gone,’ Peter said gently.

  ‘Oh, that’s not why I wished I hadn’t gone,’ replied Roger grimly. ‘On the way home down the motorway, a bloody juggernaut crossed the central reservation and came straight at me. I shouldn’t be alive. The Jag’s a write-off.’

  There was a long pause, then, before Biddy asked Peter how the latest book was going.

  Angela and Biddy were sitting in the kitchen of Mission Control having coffee. It dawned on Angela after half an hour that, every so often, Biddy was giving a surreptitious sniff.

  ‘Got a cold coming?’ asked Angela sympathetically. Biddy did look rather under the weather.

  ‘No, why?’ asked Biddy with a manufactured burst of brightness.

  ‘You keep sniffing.’

  ‘There seems to be a smell,’ said Biddy. ‘Can you smell anything?’

  Angela sniffed in turn. The idea of any smell in Mission Control was almost sacrilege. There were things for dealing with smoke and fumes (in their little white containers like knights’ helmets), not just in the kitchen and loo, but in every room. Angela had noticed that since her marriage, Biddy too had gone completely odourless, like water with the faintest hint of pine. Now, in the deodorized bleakness of Mission Control, there was a faint odour, obvious as a distant lighthouse at sea on a dark night.

  ‘Yes, I can smell something,’ said Angela.

  ‘I’ve changed all the air-fresheners twice this week,’ said Biddy fretfully. ‘But they don’t seem to be working. I couldn’t get Roger to bed until two o’clock this morning. He kept wandering round and round, snatching open doors and looking under cushions over and over again, like a mad thing. Threatening to call the police.’

  ‘Why, for heaven’s sake?’

  Biddy shrugged despairingly. ‘That smell you can smell – what’s it a smell of?’

  Angela drew in deeply through her finely-flaring nostrils. Finally she said, ‘An old lady. Mints and . . . and . . .’

  Biddy nodded grimly.

  ‘But surely you’ve had old people here?’ The Jungle saw a fair number of elderly relatives from time to time, including Peter’s father, who smoked a pipe that smelled like the corporation incinerator.

  ‘Never a one,’ said Biddy. ‘We go to them – when we have to – twice a year. I miss my gran a lot. Roger can’t stand old people.’

  ‘Oh.’ Angela sniffed again. She was rather proud of her sense of smell. She got up and moved around the room.

  ‘Not you as well,’ protested Biddy, weakly. But Angela was hot on the scent, keen as a schoolgirl with a new game.

  ‘It seems to be coming more from the lounge.’ On and on she went, quite lost to the world, giving a grand impression of Sherlock Holmes’ bloodhound, finally going down on her knees and sticking her bottom in the air.

  ‘Eureka!’ She pulled back one of the cubic cushions on the cubic settee, pushed her hand down the crack at the back and said, ‘I think there’s something here.’ Then she pulled out a tiny tangle of cloth and metal with sharp points.

  It was a wretched piece of knitting; the beginnings of a scarf, grey and maroon. Angela heard an odd sound behind her, and looked up to see Biddy, face white, eyes staring and knuckles held to her mouth. She grabbed her arm. ‘What is it, love, what is it?’

  ‘Smell it,’ ordered Biddy. Angela did; the aroma of old woman was almost overpowering.

  ‘Aunty Lou,’ whispered Biddy. ‘She’s leaving things everywhere.’ She led Angela on tiptoe to a drawer in the cubist room-divider. There was no smell there; only a wrinkled, dirty knitting pattern for a scarf, dated 1954; little ends of grey and maroon wool, and endless wrappers from Mentholyptus sweets, tightly screwed up. ‘I’ve been finding them for a week; I get up first in the morning, to get to them before Roger does. If he knew, he’d go crazy.’

  ‘But someone’s leaving them there,’ shouted Angela. ‘Someone’s leaving them around deliberately.’

  ‘Who do we know that sucks Mentholyptus sweets, or knits?’ said Biddy hopelessly, and began to cry.

  When Angela had finally calmed her down, she gathered all the evidence up into her handbag and went back home to Peter, with a look on her face that had never been there before. She burst into the Haunted Mansion like the wrath of God. Straight to his study. He had been working; there was a half-finished page in the typewriter, a smouldering fag-end in the full ashtray and a number of fresh breadcrumbs on the floor. But he wasn’t there. She searched the house; nothing. Went back to his study, anxious now as well as angry. She looked out of the window, and nearly screamed.

  He was only two yards away, outside the window. But so still, she hadn’t noticed him. He was standing studying a rose tree, the one with red roses that he alleged had once telepathed to him. Telepathed ‘I love you’. But he wasn’t telepathing this morning; he was watching the slow progress of a small green caterpillar up a leaf, with a look of infinite affection on his face. The white cat was crouched, equally attentive, on his shoulder. It was clear what she would like to do to the caterpillar, but Peter had a gently restraining hand on her back. He often stood like this for ten minutes on end; as if time didn’t matter. The first time she had caught him like that was the moment she fell in love with him. But she didn’t feel the least in love with him now. She stormed up to him and opened her handbag. His eyes swam up to her, as out of a faraway dream. He smiled, and said:

  ‘You have had a good morning’s shopping. That knitting must have been a real bargain—’

  ‘Don’t you treat me like a child!’ she shouted. ‘And don’t you lie to me!’

  He looked gently hurt; she’d never had cause to shout at him before.

  ‘What am I supposed to have done?’

  ‘You know damn well what you’ve done. Poking these things down the back of Biddy’s furniture, dropping them under the settee every time we go. And writing those revolting cards. And that stupid business at Blackpool . . . You’ve got Biddy frightened out of her wits, and Roger.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Biddy,’ he said slowly. And meant it. ‘But as for Roger—’

  ‘What has Roger ever done to you?’

  ‘Tried to get me into shape,’ said Peter, pulling a fold of flesh out from his paunch. ‘And getting me called “Hairy Ape” from the first day I went to Flamborough Grammar. And keeping me off the cricket team for a year, after he was made captain. And trying to scare me that his rotten little adding-machines are going to take over the world. Will that do?’

  ‘Don’t be s
o bloody childish!’ she shouted. Then she saw the look in his eyes, and had to steel herself to say:

  ‘Either you go and tell them the truth. Or I will.’

  ‘Thank you for your loyalty . . .’

  ‘Well, at least I came back and told you. If you don’t tell them, I’m not sure I shall have anything I want to be loyal to.’

  That brought him up sharply. He thought for a moment, then shrugged.

  ‘It was only a joke.’

  ‘Well, the joke’s over now. We’ll go and tell Biddy straight away.’

  ‘We will go and tell Biddy tomorrow; I have work to do today.’

  ‘Like watching bloody caterpillars.’

  ‘Like watching bloody caterpillars.’ She knew there would be no further moving him; and she suddenly found all her courage gone. She went and made a very light lunch, which they ate in mutual bad-temper and silence. After he had eaten his share, Peter went and ostentatiously helped himself to several more chunks from the bread bin.

  Next morning, bright and early, they drove round to Mission Control together. Roger’s new Daimler was still on the drive, though he was normally away to work by eight. Some of the curtains were still drawn; the others were pulled back wildly. The milk was still outside the door. Somehow, it made Angela irrationally afraid, so she pushed the bell-push longer and harder than usual, to drive her fear out.

  Biddy answered the door in a house-coat, her hair screwed back in an elastic band. She wore no make-up, and she looked dreadful. She led them into the big through-lounge. The half-open curtains made a harsh diagonal streak of bright sunlight across the floor, leaving the rest of the room dramatically dark. Roger was sitting with a coffee mug in his hand, without shoes or tie. His usually-immaculate shirt and trousers looked as if they’d been slept in. They sat down awkwardly, as if this were a house of bereavement. Roger silently held a card out to Angela. It was a view of Flamborough; the half-timbered Moot Hall. On the back, in the same awful writing, it was addressed to Mrs Louise Brown. At the address of Mission Control itself. It said:

  Dear Aunty Lou, Hope you are getting nicely settled in for your little stay with our Roger and his lady-wife. We will be looking in in a day or two, to see how you are getting on.

  All the best,

  Fred and Alice

  Angela looked up at Biddy and Roger, as they sat side by side opposite her. She smiled.

  ‘Don’t worry. We can explain everything.’

  ‘Can you?’ said Roger listlessly.

  Angela looked nervously at Peter. He gave a quick nod of permission, from where he was hunched darkly in an armchair.

  ‘It was all a practical joke,’ said Angela, with a failed laugh that didn’t lift the atmosphere an inch. ‘Peter thought it up to – to amuse you. The cards, the sweet-wrappers, the knitting. Everything. It was just Peter, having a . . . lark.’

  Roger turned to look at Peter; it was impossible to see either of their faces, in the semi-dark.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ said Roger, with a savagery that took Angela’s breath away.

  ‘Can’t you even take a little joke?’ relied Peter, with equal savagery. ‘Anyway, it’s all over now.’

  ‘Is it?’ shouted Roger. ‘Is it? Haven’t you got a sense of smell either?’

  And Angela suddenly realized the other thing that was making the room so dreadful. The sweet smell of sick old age filled it; the smell of dirty underwear and bedpans, camphor and aniseed, and hopelessness. It took her back nearly all her twenty-four years to when Grandad had died.

  ‘How are you managing this effect, clever-dick?’ shouted Roger. ‘Throwing crap around by the bucketful? Look!’ He pointed to the rows of air-fresheners and aerosols that stood on every shelf; they heard the extractor fans roaring in the kitchen and bathroom, sounding as loud, suddenly, as aero-engines.

  For the first time, Peter looked genuinely put-out. ‘Sure it’s not the drains?’ he asked, feebly.

  ‘There’s not a trace of this smell upstairs,’ said Biddy tightly. ‘Nor in the garage or the utility-room. It’s all in here. She’s only in here.’

  ‘How did you know about her?’ shouted Roger, straight through Biddy’s voice. ‘How did you know she existed?’

  ‘Who?’ asked Peter, stupidly.

  ‘Aunty Lou,’ said Roger. ‘Oh yes. You see, there really was an Aunty Lou. There really was a Fred and Alice. I lived with them for three months, when I was five. My parents had to go abroad and left me with my grandmother. But my grandmother got ill and had to go into hospital, and I was left in the charge of her cook and gardener, Alice and Fred. And the moment she’d gone into hospital, they imported this ghastly Lou creature, into my grandmother’s bedroom. And there she stayed, till my grandmother got better. And I had to fetch and carry for her – she was bedridden – and the morning before my grandmother came back, she grabbed me by my arm and made me give her a kiss. Then she made me promise to come back and see her, when I was a famous man. She said, “You won’t forget your old Aunty Lou, will you, dear?” And she pinched my cheek. God, I’ve never loathed anybody so much in my life. But I never told anybody about her. Nobody in Flamborough. I’d have died rather than tell anybody. So how did you know?’ He leaned across and grabbed Peter by his coat.

  They all looked at Peter.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Peter. ‘I just made the names up, when we were sitting round the dining table that night. The names just came into my head . . . they were the vulgarest names I could think of. A little newsagent I know wrote the cards for me. William Short in the Bullring, ask him.’

  ‘I never saw their writing,’ said Roger. Then, suddenly, alarmingly at a tangent, he shouted, ‘Can’t you hear anything?’

  There was a silence, while they all listened.

  ‘Two extractor fans,’ said Peter, with false flippancy. He was never normally flippant. Angela could tell how shaken he was, and it frightened her. Suddenly the thing was no longer funny old eccentric Peter. Biddy walked out stiffly and switched off the fans. They listened again. Angela said:

  ‘Will you all stop breathing a minute. Please!’ She listened till her lungs threatened to burst, then let her breath out in a great rush, gasped, choked, and then said, ‘I thought I could hear somebody breathing.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Roger bitterly. ‘Somebody breathing. Somebody with a bad chest – somebody with asthma.’

  ‘Ye . . . es,’ said Angela.

  ‘And nobody here’s got asthma – not even our nicotine-stained friend there, though he deserves to have. Well, Aunty Lou had asthma. And how.’

  Biddy gave a shudder, and clutched her arms across her bosom. They were all four silent again, listening to the noise of the asthmatic breathing. Or was it? Angela’s mind rebelled. Surely it was traffic on the main road, or some monotonous industrial plant, far away. Or the swish of blood in her own ears. It was so much everywhere, so soft and so regular, you couldn’t tell. The human mind is infinitely suggestible, she told herself.

  But she had mentioned ‘breathing’ before anyone had said a word . . .

  After a while, Roger began to speak in a curiously flat voice. As if everything that was happening at this moment had happened long ago in the past.

  ‘The card came yesterday lunchtime, after you’d gone, Angela. By the time I got home, Biddy was in quite a state, going on about sweet papers. Then she told me you’d taken all the evidence and, well, we’re not fools . . . I think I relaxed for the first time in days. Had a few whiskies, watched the telly and planned just exactly what I would do to his lordship there when I finally caught up with him.

  ‘I must have dozed off – slept, in fact, slept quite a long time. I must have half come round about midnight, because the weather-man was mouthing on over his troughs of low pressure, and the fire was very low, and it was bloody cold. I remember thinking that Biddy must have turned the central-heating thermostat down, and I think I called out to her to go and turn it up, but I didn’t get any reply; and I sort of dozed off a
gain. Then I heard somebody moving very softly round the room, and I thought it was Biddy seeing to things for the morning and not wanting to wake me. I think I said something to her, but again she didn’t reply. But the moving about went on. Then I thought, she’s moving very oddly, like an old woman, like an invalid. Has she hurt herself? And then I smelt that smell, really strongly for the first time, and I knew who it reminded me of – I’d been trying to remember for days, only the smell was fainter then – and I must have had a dream because I was back in Grandmother’s house with that . . . thing, and it was saying to me, “You will come back and see me when you’re rich and famous.”

  ‘And I felt a hand on my cheek.

  ‘Then I woke up, and the room was icy and my legs were all pins-and-needles so I could hardly walk. I was reeling about calling, “Biddy, Biddy, I’ve had such a horrible dream.” But she was nowhere about. I staggered to the bedroom, and there was Biddy, snoring – obviously been snoring for hours. I couldn’t even waken her.’

  ‘The doctor’s given me some pills,’ said Biddy. ‘They knock me out like a light. I’d gone to bed and left Roger at ten, I felt so tired.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll not say I didn’t mean to upset you; but nothing like this.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Roger savagely. ‘You might have thought you were using them, but actually, they were using you. To get hold of me again. You must be a sort of medium, or something.’

  ‘There’s a bit of it in our family – my mother’s got a bit. But–’ and he looked round as if he was speaking at the walls– ‘I don’t like being used.’ He wandered off, touring the house. They could hear him saying, from time to time:

  ‘I don’t like being used.’

  Angela grinned at Roger and Biddy in weak apology. They grinned back at her, in weak apology. Biddy got up and pulled back the curtains fully. Light flooded into the room, and they shook themselves like dogs shaking off water after a swim.