Break of Dark

by Robert Westall

  ‘Maybe if you got away for a few days . . .’ said Angela.

  Roger shook his head. ‘Have you smelt inside my Daimler?’ he asked. ‘Have you smelt inside Biddy’s Mini?’

  They drove back home.

  ‘Well, what do you make of it?’ asked Angela.

  ‘I don’t like being used,’ said Peter. He sounded more angry than he had been with Roger in the beginning.

  ‘But surely there’s some explanation . . . is it Roger’s mind, taking over where you left off? Did you upset him and . . . the human mind’s a funny thing.’

  ‘Who do you think he is?’ said Peter, rudely. ‘Uri Geller? I’ve never smelt a smell like that in all my life.’

  ‘Don’t be so cross.’

  ‘I don’t like being used,’ Peter repeated. And he stalked off to his study, where he sat for about five hours, with the brindle cat on his knee and the white cat draped luxuriously over his shoulder.

  Angela, feeling she must do something, went to see William Short, Peter’s ‘little newsagent’. He was a ginger-moustached man, self-important but eager to please Mr Wingfield’s wife. Yes, he had written the Christmas card for Mr Wingfield. Yes, he had gone on the pensioners’ outing to Blackpool, with his missus and her mother. Yes, they had forged false names. But they’d had a lovely time, thanks to Mr Wingfield. All that expense, too, just for a joke. Mr Wingfield mustn’t be short of a penny.

  He dutifully wrote her some words on a postcard, plucked from a bundle in his fly-blown window. My constant desire is to give the best possible service to all my customers at all times, signed, best regards, William Short.

  Angela took the Blackpool card from her handbag, and compared them. The handwriting was similar, typical, elderly, working-class writing. But it was not the same.

  ‘That’s not my writing,’ said William Short. ‘It’s my biro and it’s the card I used, but it’s not my writing. Hey, what’s the game?’ He took a lot of getting rid of; especially as Angela herself was on the verge of hysterics.

  As she opened the front door of the Haunted Mansion, the phone was ringing. Ringing in a violent way in a darkened house; ringing in a way that could only mean bad trouble. Angela picked it up, trembling.

  It was Biddy, calling from a hospital in Birmingham. Crying so much she could hardly speak. Finally, she got it out. Roger had determined to carry on with his day, in spite of everything. He had driven up to Birmingham for an afternoon conference; gone mad on the M1, driven across the central reservation at eighty miles an hour, been slowed by the central barrier, but finally rolled over it into the path . . . It had been, again, a miracle he had got out alive. He had a fractured pelvis and two broken legs, and had been in the operating theatre three hours. The surgeons had been sure they had saved his life, but his whole system was not responding.

  ‘He’s giving up,’ said Biddy, dully. ‘And the room he’s in is full of that smell. The surgeon gave the intensive-care sister a rocket about it, and she’s going frantic . . .’

  There was nothing Angela could find to say, till Biddy rang off. Then she looked up and gave a little scream. Peter had come up to her softly in the dark.

  ‘I heard,’ he said. ‘I heard it all on the extension.’

  ‘We must do something.’

  ‘It’s too late.’

  Something in his voice made her say, ‘Too late for what, Peter?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  But somehow she knew. ‘I’m going round to Mission Control,’ she said.

  ‘What the hell for?’ There was panic in his voice. She groped round desperately for an excuse.

  ‘Biddy asked me to feed her budgie.’

  ‘Biddy hasn’t got a budgie. Roger won’t have a pet in the house.’

  ‘It’s in her sewing-room. He lets her do what she likes in there.’

  He reached to stop her going, but she had fled out through the still-open door and was running to her car. Luckily the keys were still in her hand. She swung out of the drive with the driver’s door ajar.

  She didn’t drive fast; Peter would have to get the garage open, and get his own car out. And she didn’t want to arrive at Mission Control one second before he did.

  She saw his yellow Volkswagen Beetle turn into the road as she turned into Biddy’s drive. She had just time to lift up the plant pot in the garage, where Biddy – without Roger’s knowledge – always left a key. As she walked up to the front door, Peter screeched to a stop behind her, throwing up gravel clumsily in all directions.

  She put the key in the lock, and hesitated. There was a flickering blue light from Biddy’s lounge. The flicker of a black-and-white television. And there was the sound of raucous studio laughter. A stupid, brainless, hateful programme, the kind that nobody who knew Roger and Biddy would ever watch.

  She heard Peter’s step just behind her, and swung open the front door and ran for the lounge, knocking her thighs painfully into things as she ran. She opened the door. The smell was overpowering, choking. And they were there, sitting, turning their faces in the blue flicker, out of the dark, to look at her.

  Fred, Alice and Aunty Lou. They were exactly as Peter had described them. Of course. And she noticed that where they sat, the cushions were deeply dented. They said nothing, just stared at her; Alice’s spectacles reflected the shape of the telly, a glowing white rectangle, so that she seemed to have goat’s eyes. Aunty Lou had a shawl round her head, so you couldn’t see her face at all. There was a little table beside her, laden with medicine bottles.

  Fred gestured for Angela to sit down, and she found she could not refuse. She sat down on the settee next to him; felt his weight respond on the other end of it as she sat. Felt the cold radiating out of his body. On the floor all round his slippers, and on the cushions of the couch, she could see little crumbly crumbs of black stuff. The sharp smell of earth came to her, through the smell of Aunty Lou.

  She had to touch him; she didn’t want to, and yet she had to. She had to know. She reached out a trembling finger, and poked as in a dream.

  He was solid, damp and icy cold. She wanted to scream, but couldn’t; the scream filled her head till she thought her head was going to burst.

  Peter came in. Then she knew why he had taken so long. He was carrying the white cat in his arms, and the little brindled cat sat on his shoulder. They both looked electrified, backs plumed and tails bushed, so they looked twice their normal size. Their huge eyes, like black marbles, never left Fred, Alice and Aunty Lou. Angela sensed, dimly, that the struggle had already begun.

  Peter walked across to the set; it was the twenty-four-inch colour set that Roger had always had; but, in a black-and-white flicker, something called The Army Game was just ending. Peter turned a switch and stared rudely at Fred, his beard stuck out, which was Peter at his most aggressive. Immediately, the black-and-white image on the screen flickered and faded, then regained strength. Then faded again.

  Then the real colour came on – Robin Day, mouthing silently. Then black-and-white, colour, black-and-white, colour. In some ways, the colour was worse, for its brighter reflected light showed up the colours that Fred, Alice and Aunty Lou really were. Which did not bear thinking about. And the mounds of black soil round their feet . . .

  Finally, Robin Day was established; his voice came through loud and clear, giving stick to some shadow-cabinet minister. Angela closed her eyes, and for the first and last time in her life, sought refuge in the bosom of Robin Day. But she could still feel the conflicts raging round her; the laden cold clouds that were Fred, Alice and Aunty Lou; the burning, growing, slow anger that was Peter, and the lightning-stabbing eyes of the two cats.

  To think, thought Angela, far away, that those two cats have slept all night on my bed . . .

  Someone was splashing water on her face.

  Why was Peter splashing water on her face? Come to that, why was she lying on the floor? Was it one of Roger’s rather superior, spiteful party games?

  Then she remembered Roger was i
n Birmingham, dying. It all came back to her in a terrible flood. She sat up, making her head spin, and stared round wildly.

  The lounge was fully-lit; every movable spotlight in the place was on. The telly was off, and the whole place looked quite normal; immaculate, except for the drying crumbs of soil on the carpet and couch where— The two cats were sniffing them, then scratching round them, as if trying to bury them. A lot of nylon carpet-tufts were flying; the sound of ripping claws was horrendous.

  Immediately a door slammed in her mind. Fred, Alice, and Aunty Lou had never existed. Not here, in this tidy, rational, luxurious room . . . Then the door in her mind began to drift open again: memories of the feel of them.

  ‘It’s all right, they’ve gone,’ said Peter. He looked pale and there were beads of sweat on his upper lip.

  ‘For good?’

  ‘As far as we’re concerned.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We were losing, especially after you conked out – you were helping, you know, just by being here. If it hadn’t been for the cats, they’d have had me, for sure – you’d have wakened up to find me dead, probably, and them still there, grinning at you as you came round.’

  Her very mind retched.

  ‘All right,’ said Peter. ‘You’re all right now. I knew it would be rough; why d’you think you had to force me to come? God, I never want to go through anything like that again. Anyway, I knew they’d used some part of my mind, to manifest themselves in the first place. If only I could find that part of me, and cut the wire, so to speak, we’d be OK. Like opening and defusing a bomb. But which part of my mind? I just couldn’t seem to find it, and they were getting colder and heavier on me all the time. I remember thinking, Poor old Rog has had it . . . and then the three of them just went pop like balloons.’

  ‘Compassion,’ said Angela. ‘You were sorry for Rog, you didn’t hate him any more; they were using your hate.’

  ‘Shan’t hate him again in a hurry,’ said Peter. ‘For my sake.’

  Out in the hall, the phone was ringing. ‘I’ll get it,’ said Angela, scrambling to her feet.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Peter, and sat down heavily among the crumbs of soil.

  It was Biddy on the phone, ringing from Birmingham, gabbling with relief. ‘He’s rallied. They say he’s rallied. They say he’s going to make it.’

  ‘Thank God,’ said Angela, and many other soft, soothing, thankful, meaningless phrases, until Biddy said she must go back to the ward. Then a thought occurred to Angela. ‘How did you know we’d be here?’

  ‘Well,’ said Biddy, ‘I tried to ring you at home . . . and the smell suddenly went, when Roger started to rally. I knew Peter had managed it somehow. Isn’t he wonderful?’

  ‘Hmmmmm,’ said Angela. She was by nature tactful.

  As she put down the phone, she suddenly realized that the whole house reeked of pine air freshener.

  St Austin Friars

  The church of St Austin Friars stands in an inner suburb of Muncaster. It is huge for a parish church, beautiful in the Perpendicular style, and black as coal from the smoke of the city. It stands on a hill, amidst its long-disused graveyard, and its only near companion is the Greek Revival rectory, like a temple with chimneys, also coal-black. It is really St Margaret’s, but Muncastrians always call it St Austin Friars, in memory of the Augustinian canons who had their monastery there in the Middle Ages.

  Then, it stood in fair countryside, amidst its own rich demesne. Muncaster was no more than the houses of the monastic servants. But the Industrial Revolution came to Muncaster and it grew, covering all the green fields and hills with soot and sweat and money. By the time that the Reverend Martin Williams was appointed rector in 1970, the only traces of the monastery, apart from the church, were a mean street called Fishponds and another called Cloister Lane.

  Martin Williams came when the Industrial Revolution was departing, having had its way with Muncaster. The day after he moved into the rectory, the houses of Fishponds were being demolished. The dust from falling brick and the smoke from the scrap-wood fires were so engulfing that the demolition foreman, a decent man, came up to the rectory to apologize.

  ‘You’ll soon be shot of us,’ he said, sitting down to a mug of tea that Sheila, as a well-trained clergy wife, immediately laid before him. ‘Trouble is, you’ll soon be shot o’ your parish, too. It’s all going, you know!’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Martin, sticking his hands into the pockets of long thin trousers, and staring out of the window. ‘It’s a shame.’

  ‘Shame nothing!’ said the foreman. ‘Seen a mort o’ suffering, this place. Bringing up fo’teen bairns on a pound a week in a room no bigger nor your pantry. Beggin’ yer pardon, missus. But me dad an’ me grandad told me about it. Had an evil name, round here. Cholera – typhoid – afore they got the drains right. Four hundred dead in one week, they say; one long hot summer. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.’

  ‘Aren’t they going to build multi-storey flats instead?’ asked Sheila.

  ‘Not that I heard,’ said the foreman. ‘Not that they tell the likes of us anything. Other parts, people are crying their hearts out ’cause they’re having to leave, but not in Fishponds. They can’t wait to get out to the overspill. What you aiming to do wi’ yersel, then?’

  Martin gave a violent start; he still could not get used to the sudden bluntness of the North, after his last curacy in Kent. Here, people asked you the most intimate questions the moment they’d shaken hands. This chap would be asking next when they were going to start a family.

  ‘What am I going to do with myself? Well, it just so happens that the city centre is also part of this parish. So I’ll be down there a lot . . .’

  ‘They’re a right queer push an’ all,’ opined the foreman, drinking deep into his mug and, to Sheila’s fascination, actually wiping his moustache with the back of his hand. ‘Pimps, prostitutes, homosexuals, actors – what’s the difference? Beggin’ yer pardon, missus.’

  ‘Jesus mixed with prostitutes and sinners,’ said Martin, giving him a look of sharp blue charity that had the foreman on his feet in a second.

  ‘Thank you for the tea, missus. And–’ he gave Martin a sharp look in return– ‘best o’ luck wi’ the city centre. Yer might just do something down there – wi’ luck. All the best.’ And he wiped his hands on the seat of his trousers, shook both their hands, and departed. His boots, crunching down the long drive, left that peculiar silence that lay like the black dust all over the rectory, and that Martin and Sheila were to come to know so well.

  ‘I don’t like this place,’ said Sheila, washing up the mug to break the silence.

  ‘I know you don’t,’ said Martin. ‘But it’s a good living, and a good city – think of all the concerts we can go to. And you’ll be out teaching most of the time. And out in the evenings. We’ll hardly be in the place – just camping out.’

  The kitchen was large and fully-fitted. Equipped down to a Kenwood mixer, and not a thing in it was theirs. Pity the main areas of formica were in a spirit-lowering shade of browny-purple . . .

  All the many rooms were the same: beautifully decorated, beautifully furnished. The sitting-room had leather settees and couches, hardly touched. The whole house was recently wired, totally weatherproof and structurally immaculate. There wasn’t a bit of do-it-yourself for Martin or Sheila to lay their fingers on.

  ‘Canon Maitland must have been awfully well-off, to afford all this,’ said Sheila. ‘And no one to leave it all to when he died.’

  ‘He was very old,’ said Martin. ‘Ninety-four.’

  ‘But they’re supposed to retire at seventy.’

  ‘This place was special. Very little work, even before the demolition. The Bishop told me.’ The Bishop had told him many things.

  The Bishop was an old-school-tie friend of Martin’s previous bishop in Kent. The Bishop had wanted a bright young man, willing to try unorthodox methods in a city-centre parish. And to be one of the Bisho
p’s chaplains, which mainly involved marking high-level clergy exam-papers. And to be a one-day-a-week lecturer in Christian Social Work at the Church of England college. ‘Plenty of interesting things to fill your week, young man. Don’t you worry your head about Fishponds and Cloister Lane,’ the Bishop had said, hand on Martin’s shoulder, when Martin finally accepted the job, without consulting Sheila first (a sore point).

  But in spite of this, for a year they were happy. Sheila enjoyed her school, and Martin his college. Three days a week he worked his city-centre parish, using the back rooms of ornate Edwardian pubs such as The Grapes, drinking half-pints of shandy carefully, and eating a lot of curious pub-grub. He knew enough to wear a sports-coat and cover his clergyman’s dog collar with a polo-neck sweater (except when a clergyman was actually required, when he would roll down the neck of the sweater to reveal all). By the time the pimps and prostitutes, actors and homosexuals found out he was a clergyman, they’d also found out that he was a good sort, a good listener, a good shoulder to cry on, and good for a bed for the night in a crisis. He was quite wise, but he was very nice; he helped a number of people to avoid committing suicide, simply because, in the moment of the act, they thought how upset he would be, how disappointed if they really did it. A lot of the men kept his card and phone number in their jacket; a lot of the girls brought him home-knitted sweaters and jars of jam their mums had made. A certain number of girls tried to persuade him into bed with them, in the cause of the New Theology, but he always got away by saying, ‘Not while on duty.’ He was always on duty. Sheila stored the pullovers (most of which didn’t fit, but none of which he would throw away) in a large cupboard, and lined the shelves of the pantry with the jars of jam. They weren’t for eating, Martin said, they were for looking at. Sheila was pretty philosophical; anybody who married Martin would have had to be philosophical.

  They went to lots of concerts; threw lots of parties, full of drunken radical social workers, militant black leaders, manic-depressive pimps and nymphomaniac Liberal debutantes. The isolated rectory kept their secret; there was no complaint to the Bishop. But when the last of the guests had gone, the rectory returned to its own secrets.