Nightmare

by Lynn Brock

  Then there was Chidgey. It had been necessary to speak sharply to Chidgey about the Prossips’ maid. Mr Knayle had happened to require his car late one night and, when he had gone round to his garage, had come on Chidgey and the Prossips’ maid sitting in the car, smoking cigarettes. The car had not been running at all well lately, and sometimes had not been cleaned. Chidgey had been rather impertinent when spoken to, and would probably have to be dismissed.

  A number of his friends had died during the past twelve months—one of them had shot himself in a public lavatory in Dunpool at the beginning of August. Also, some of his July dividends had been seriously reduced this year; three of them had been passed. He had sold his two hunters and had decided not to go abroad. Although he had felt no least inclination to go abroad this year, this departure from the habit of twenty-five summers had been upsetting. For the first time in his life he had had to consider seriously the spending of money and refrain from doing something which he considered himself entitled to do. This year many of his friends had not gone away for the summer. But he found people of his own age preoccupied now and, somehow, flattened—their young folk inanely boisterous. An afternoon party at the Edwarde-Lewins’ had developed suddenly into a pillow-fight, in the course of which Edwarde-Lewin’s youngest girl had assaulted him with maniacal violence and broken his dental plate. Everyone—Edwarde-Lewin and his wife included—had screamed with delight as he had extracted the broken pieces of the plate. Since this episode he had spent most of his time in his flat, reading desultorily and thinking about things. The club was deserted. The men who dropped in to see him all said the same old gloomy things; he did not press them to stay.

  He read a number of depressing books about Russia, and, in an omnibus volume dealing with recent movements in scientific thought, he came on things called hormones and four-dimensional continuums which somehow made it seem quite an unimportant thing to be a Knayle.

  After some weeks of this seclusion he made three discoveries. He was getting old. He didn’t matter in the least to anyone. And there was nothing whatever he wanted to go on living for. It was about this time that he began to sing in his bath and hum as he moved from room to room. And for some little time he took a vegetable laxative every second night.

  Despite the noise of the traffic the house was extraordinarily quiet. Since the departure of the Whalleys the gramophone had not played; Miss Prossip’s violin practice had dwindled to an odd half-hour. No sound whatever rose from Mr Ridgeway’s flat. Mr Knayle was undisturbed—save by the silence over his head.

  Sometimes he thought he heard footsteps moving about up there, and listened. The silence became very loud then, until, gradually, the noise of the traffic blotted it out and, gradually, Mr Knayle’s eyes returned to his book.

  Oddly, he always pictured her up there—never in her new surroundings, though with these he was in some measure familiar.

  Shortly after his return from Wales he had met Mrs Canynge and had learned that the Whalleys were living in a hut out at Camphill. He had shot over Camphill many times before the war, and had often lunched, he believed, on the very slope on which their piece of land lay. Sometimes he was tempted to run out there. But the distance was just too great—the place itself just too isolated; an uninvited visit would seem, not a casual friendliness, but a deliberate intrusion. After all, his acquaintance with Whalley was very slight. And, after all, what was the use? They wanted to be alone. They were probably quite happy out there, with one another. Probably she had never even thought of him since she had left Downview Road. The temptation always faded into the most depressing of his three discoveries. He didn’t matter in the least to anyone.

  He joined a flying-club and in a fortnight became an expert if somewhat reckless pilot. One of his first solo flights took him over the little enclosure at Camphill, and he saw the Whalleys erecting a fence of wire netting round a patch of freshly-dug ground. They were absorbed in their work and did not raise their eyes towards the plane, though it was flying so low that Mr Knayle could see a bundle of small shrubs lying on the ground close to them.

  He met Mr Prossip in the garden on the last day of August and learned that Mrs Prossip had had a rather bad heart-attack on the preceding afternoon while ascending the outside staircase.

  ‘We shall have to leave that damned flat,’ said Mr Prossip. ‘Those cursed steps are too much for her. I told her all along that they would be. But you can’t argue with my wife. She’s as obstinate as a mule. She’s got angina, you know. Not the ordinary angina, but something—I forget the damn name. I shan’t be sorry to get out of that rabbit-hutch up there. I’ve lived in dignified houses all my life. I can’t stand these pokey little flats. Fact is, that flat up there’s got on my nerves since this infernal row with the Whalleys. This whole place has got on my nerves. Why, my God, you never see a man in Rockwood dressed like a gentleman now. Present company excepted, of course. But you know what I mean. I want to get somewhere near London—not in London—but somewhere you can run up from in half an hour when you feel like it. What I have in my mind is one of those good-class residential hotels—sort of place where you’ll come across decent people and see a bit of stir and life. You know the sort of thing I mean …’

  Mr Knayle disliked Mr Prossip—had disliked all the Prossips so acutely since the flight of the Whalleys that he had taken pains to avoid meeting them. But, as he looked at Mr Prossip’s twitching lips and glaring eyes (the beggar reeked of it—at ten o’clock in the morning) an idea occurred to him, and he became brightly helpful. He knew exactly the sort of thing Mr Prossip wanted and thought that he knew where Mr Prossip could find it. Some friends of his had spent part of the preceding winter at a delightful residential hotel outside Guildford, run by an aged naval officer and his wife, and had found it very gay and smart and comfortable. At the moment Mr Knayle could not recall the exact name of the place, but, at Mr Prossip’s request, undertook to procure it without delay.

  ‘Reason I’m in such a hurry, ole chap,’ explained Mr Prossip, patting him on the shoulder, ‘is that I’m afraid the Missus’ll try to rush me into another flat here in Rockwood. I’ve had enough of Rockwood, and enough of flats. Lucky I only took this one for a year. I’ll have it on my hands for the balance of the term, of course; but I’d pay twice the money to get out of it. You’ll let me have that address, then, Knayle? Right. I’ll run up and take a squint at the place.’

  2

  About a fortnight later Mr Knayle went down the little flight of steps leading to Mr Ridgeway’s hall-door, one afternoon after lunch, and rang the bell. Since that early morning handshake of two months back, they had not met half a dozen times and had never stopped to speak. But Mr Knayle had news which, as he ate his cutlets, he had decided Mr Ridgeway should share.

  After a prolonged delay Mr Ridgeway, collarless and wearing his seedy old dressing-gown, opened the door, yawning.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I thought it was the laundry. Hope you haven’t been ringing long. My char goes at one. I was asleep. Come in.’

  Mr Knayle followed him into a dark, untidy sitting-room, apologising for his intrusion.

  ‘I thought it might interest you to hear that the Prossips are leaving,’ he explained. ‘They’re going to Guildford, I believe, in a very few weeks.’

  Mr Ridgeway yawned.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘No, no, thank you,’ said Mr Knayle. ‘As a matter of fact I’m going out to Camphill—the Whalleys are living out there, you know—to tell them about it. I don’t know what their plans are, of course, but I don’t suppose they contemplate spending the winter out there. It’s a bleak place, and they’ve only got a wooden hut. I should think they’ll be very glad to come back to a comfortable flat in October.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ yawned Mr Ridgeway again. ‘Do sit down.’

  Mr Knayle sat down. ‘I wondered if you’d care to run out there with me this afternoon and see them. It’s quite a pretty run. We can get back easil
y before five.’

  A little flush spread over Mr Ridgeway’s sagging cheeks. His tired eyes brightened. He made an effort to subdue the excited eagerness of his voice.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Knayle. Very kind of you indeed to have thought of it. When do you want to start? Now? I shall have to change. I shall have to shave. Can you wait?’ He hurried out of the room, peeling off his dressing-gown as he went.

  Mr Knayle lighted a cigarette and waited for half an hour, smiling sometimes as he looked round the comfortless, shabbily-furnished room. On a dusty table lay some dusty newspapers and after some time he strayed over and, picking one up, saw that it was an old number of the British Medical Journal. A cutting had been made from one of the pages which lay open. A little surprised by Mr Ridgeway’s taste in literature, he returned to his chair and continued to wait until Mr Ridgeway reappeared, freshly shaven, resplendent in a light-grey suit smelling strongly of naphthalene, and ten years younger. Curiously, as he re-entered the room, his eyes went first to the table on which the newspapers lay—a little uneasily, Mr Knayle fancied. But he hurried on to an aged escritoire and picked up a small brown-paper parcel which lay on it, then put it down again.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t bother about that. Some books which Mrs Whalley lent me. I had thought of taking them out to her. But if they’re coming back to their flat … I shan’t want gloves, shall I? Perhaps I had better take them. I must say, Knayle, it’s extremely kind of you to have thought of it. No. I won’t take gloves. Does this suit look very creased? I haven’t worn it for eleven—for some years.’

  They were very gay as they drove along in the sunshine. They had bought a large box of chocolates and some illustrated newspapers in Rockwood and Mr Ridgeway held these tightly in his gloved hands—he had decided, after all, to bring his gloves—while his eyes remained fixed on the furthest visible point of the road. Mr Knayle began several little things of his own but was too happy to finish any of them.

  Half-way along the track through the woods, they met a rough-looking fellow with a couple of terriers, and stopped to enquire the exact position of the Whalleys’ huts.

  ‘’Bout a mile on, sir—right at the end of this track. I just been down there now, helping Mr Whalley to look for his dog. It got lost last night. So when I heard about it this morning I thought I’d go down and give them a hand to look for it with these two dogs of mine.’

  ‘You found it, I hope?’ Mr Knayle asked. ‘I know that Mrs Whalley sets great store by that little cocker of hers.’

  ‘Yes, we found it all right,’ said the man. ‘The dogs found it in the wood. It was dead, though. Must have gone for a stoat, I reckon. Its head was et off. The gen’lman and me just buried it near their huts—where it used to sit, the lady said. She’s in a bad way about it.’

  With considerable difficulty, Mr Knayle turned the car round and drove back to Rockwood. He took Mr Ridgeway into his flat and there, over a whisky and soda, they composed a telegram to a well-known dog-breeder at Whanton.

  ‘Wanted immediately, handsome thorough-bred male black cocker dog, 10 mos. over distemper; write tonight sending photos if possible, go to twenty guineas.—Knayle, 47 Downview Road, Rockwood.’

  Mr Knayle perused his draft. ‘I wonder,’ he mused. ‘Perhaps we had better wait a little.’

  ‘They won’t stay out there now,’ said Mr Ridgeway.

  ‘I don’t know about that. Perhaps they will stay out there—now.’

  They discussed the matter for a little while over another whisky and soda and finally the draft was torn up. When Mr Ridgeway went away, Mr Knayle opened the windows of the sitting-room to let out the smell of naphthalene and his eyes fell on the garden path. To his horror, he had a vision of a little black satin-coated thing. He turned away from the windows, humming and poured himself out another little whisky.

  No. She wouldn’t come back now—she’d stay out there. Of course old Ridgeway couldn’t understand that. Funny old beggar, Ridgeway. Quite badly cut up about the dog. Must be five or six and fifty. Rather amusing, this subterranean tendresse of his. She had been lending him books, then. What on earth did he do down there all day? Funny to think of him sitting down there, in that filthy old dressing-gown of his—thinking about her. Thinking what about her? For that matter, what did one think, oneself, about her? Anyhow, what did anything matter? She would stay out there, now.

  Mr Knayle finished his drink and went off to the ærodrome.

  Mr Ridgeway let himself into his flat and, without stopping to take off his hat, entered his sitting-room and went straight to the table on which the newspapers lay. He stood looking down at them, frowning; he was almost certain that there was some slight change in the position of the BMJ, although the two Lancets appeared not to have been disturbed. Every day for two months now, he had intended to get rid of them; but they had continued to lie there, so long that now the slightest alteration in their appearance would, of course, catch his eyes at once. Some slight alteration had caught his eye, when he had returned to Knayle, after changing, he had noticed it immediately he had entered the room. Knayle must have moved the BMJ. Probably he had looked about for something to read while he waited, and had seen the newspapers.

  But, after all, Knayle would think nothing about it. He was not that sort. He might have been a little surprised to find medical journals lying about; but he would think nothing about it—forget it at once. A curious, jumpy little chap. Never spoke two sentences about the same thing—kept changing the subject. Not a bad sort of little chap in his way. Cut up about the dog. Rather annoying, that way he had of smiling when he spoke about her, as if he knew something about her that no one else knew. No. He would think nothing about the papers. There was nothing to be uneasy about. They must be got rid of, though—taken out and put in the rubbish-bin. It was only a few yards away. But not now. Presently. There was plenty of time.

  A filthy business about the dog. Everything ended that way. In the end the stoat pulled you down …

  She’d never stay out there now. Of course, Knayle couldn’t understand. A funny, insensitive little chap—limited—probably had never suffered anything worse than a toothache in his life. Two false teeth; his plate wobbled sometimes. But she’d never stay out there now; she’d come back. And when she did, it must be done. It must be got over. She must be told.

  Presently Mr Ridgeway took off his grey suit and put it away in a travelling trunk, packing its folds with naphthalene balls. Then he went back to his sitting-room and lay down on the sofa in his old dressing-gown, covering his face with his handkerchief.

  3

  He had left them. They had been working in the dusk, finishing the fencing round Elsa’s garden, and had not seen him go. Something had called him—perhaps that enemy which his liquid eyes had watched so long. He had been found quite a long way off in the woods. He had left them—that was the worst bitterness of it.

  He was gone; no trace of him was left. Everything that had belonged to him—his basket, his pillows and cushions, his collar and lead, his two dishes, his brush and comb, his ball—had been buried with him. He might never have been.

  And yet they had never been so aware of him, never seen him so vividly. He was always lying there, near the door of the hut, watching, listening, sometimes scratching his ear, wagging his tail when one or other of them passed near and chirruped to him or said, ‘Hullo, old chap,’—too busy to stop. It would have been so easy to stop and pat his little satiny head, throw his ball for him, make a fuss of him for a moment or two. But there had been so many other things to do.

  It would pass. They decided not to speak of him and found that there was nothing else to speak about. The little enclosure had become intolerably desolate. There was no spot in it, however bare, from which something had not gone for ever—save the jungle of thorn-bushes at its further end. This had always been forbidden territory for Bogey-Bogey, and after supper, now, they took two camp-chairs up there and sat, waiting until it was time to go
to bed.

  One evening in the second week of September Whalley decided to cut down the thorns and, having procured a bill-hook from the garage, set about this formidable task forthwith, Elsa aiding him to withdraw the severed tendrils after each sweep of the hook. Considerable force was necessary to free them and their hands suffered severely. Ultimately they decided to postpone the work until hedging-gloves had been procured from the village stores.

  Two days later Elsa complained of slight pain in the centre of her right hand. They examined the hand, somewhat perfunctorily, extracted several thorns with a needle, but could find none at the painful spot, which, however, looked a little angry. She washed the floor of the hut that day and, growing accustomed to the slight discomfort, thought no more of the matter until the following morning when, on awakening, she saw that the hand had swollen noticeably. They painted it with iodine, but by evening it had swollen so much that it seemed incredible that so ungainly and shapeless a thing should belong to her fine slenderness. They walked down to the village and interviewed a harassed elderly doctor whose telephone bell rang three times while he examined the hand with grubby fingers, recommended hot fomentations, made up a little package of boracic powder, and got rid of them with the assurance that there was nothing whatever to worry about. Elsa passed a feverish night and was awakened by shooting pains in her right arm, which had also begun to swell.

  Whalley grew a little uneasy. The village doctor had assured them that, at that time of the year, swollen hands were as common in the neighbourhood as blackberries. It seemed, however, prudent to have the hand inspected by less cursory eyes and, after lunch they drove into Rockwood and had a suddenly disquieting talk with the kindly practitioner who had attended Whalley during his own illness. Mrs Whalley would have to go into a nursing-home at once. A small operation—probably with a local anæsthetic, merely would be necessary. There was no need to be unduly alarmed. But the matter was serious; the hand ought to have been attended to at the first symptom of trouble.