Nightmare

by Lynn Brock

  They were sitting there together on the third morning when the gramophone began to play. The sound was very faint, barely audible above the rustle of the newspaper and the gentle crackle of the fire, and they went on reading until an abrupt movement behind them turned their heads towards the bed. Whalley had raised himself on an elbow and was listening.

  The two men glanced at one another and then rose hurriedly.

  ‘It’s all right, old chap,’ said Mr Knayle. ‘They’re leaving today, damn them. Don’t trouble about it. Come on—lie down. That’s it—that’s it.’

  Agatha Judd, very smart in a bowler and a long black coat which accentuated the curves of her now, she feared, not so slim figure, stood in the passage of the top flat, waiting for the taxi which was to carry her and her trunk to her new situation. Her face was flushed beneath its powder, her breathing was quick, and one toe tapped the passage-carpet. She had just told Ma Prossip what she thought about her bed. But she had forgotten a lot of things.

  Her eyes fell upon the gramophone. It had not been played for several weeks and Mr Prossip had strictly forbidden that it should be played. Well, just to annoy the old rotter, she would play it before she went.

  Mr Prossip heard the gramophone while he was taking off his plus-fours and, as soon as he could button up his trousers—his hands were always slippery and fumbling now—he came to the bedroom door and scowled out into the passage:

  ‘Oh, it’s you, is it? Now then—stop that damn thing.’

  Agatha stuck her arms akimbo.

  ‘Stop it yourself, you old blighter. Don’t give me any more orders. I’m not your servant any longer. And look here—don’t you forget what I said to you last night on the steps. Don’t think, because you’re going to Guildford, that you’re going to wriggle out of it. If you don’t—’

  ‘Sh, damn you,’ hissed Mr Prossip, advancing in his socks along the passage, his face turned towards the door of the sitting-room. ‘She’s in there. I told you I’d send you the money.’

  The hall-door bell rang and Agatha picked up her bag and her umbrella.

  ‘All right, old cock. The sooner the better. You have my address. Ta-ta. Be good.’

  When her trunk had been carried out, she followed it, slamming the hall-door. Well—that was that. No more Prossips. She was fed up with them—fed up with their barging and their nagging and their tinned food and their ugly faces and that rotten old fiddle and their rotten little flat, stuck up there, away from everything. She had had two and a half years of them and she was sick of them. No matter what happened, she was going to have a change—change—have a bit of fun—anyhow, for a while. Perhaps, after all, she was mistaken—just had the wind up. She had often missed a month before—though never two running. Anyhow, what did it matter? It happened to other girls—let it happen to her. It was worth trying it on with the old blighter, at all events. Other girls she knew had pulled it off all right—why shouldn’t she? He was properly frightened, the old sneak, with his bad breath—he’d pay something, anyhow. But, anyhow, she was done with the Prossips and that rotten little bed you could never turn over in without all the clothes slipping off. There were three man-servants at this new place …

  She whistled blithely as she went down the outside steps and caught sight of Chidgey, who had just brought back the car from the repair-garage and had come to report the fact to his employer. Since the guv’nor had caught him canoodling with her in the car that night, Chidgey had avoided her, and now he feigned solicitousness as to the condition of one of his tyres, bending down so as to avoid seeing her. It occurred to her suddenly that it would be a bit of a lark to give Bert a jolt-up too, just to see what he would say.

  She stopped beside him.

  ‘Hullo, my pet. Very rude to turn your back on a lady. Got a puncture or something?’

  ‘A bit soft, that’s all.’

  She prodded his bent back with the handle of her umbrella.

  ‘Look here, Bert. I can’t talk to you here, with that old Hopgood watching us from behind the curtains. But there’s something I want to tell you about. You know the place I’m going to—the Grevilles’. Old Knayle goes there often, you told me. You’d better come over there some night soon and we’ll have a talk about it. I’ll send you a p.c. to say what night, when I know.’

  He raised a gloomy, uneasy face to her, still stooping over the tyre.

  ‘What do you want to talk about?’

  She lowered her tone, and cast down her eyes. ‘Well—you remember that day you took me the sharrybang trip to Cleeveham?’

  ‘Yes. Well?’

  ‘Well—I’m afraid there’s going to be consequences.’

  ‘Consequences?’

  It had given Bert a proper old jolt-up, she saw. He had gone white, and his mouth was open like a fish’s.

  ‘Yes. Anyhow, we’ve got to have a talk about it. I’ll send you a postcard. And, look here, Bert—can you lend me ten bob? I’m stony till I get my wages. I owe every red the Prossips gave me.’

  He laughed, half in fear, half in anger.

  ‘Ten bob? Like that? What do you take me for, my girl? You go and ask old Prossip for ten bob—and talk to him about consequences.’

  His anger angered her. He got good wages, Bert—three pounds a week. She wouldn’t just give him a jolt-up for a joke—she’d try it on with him, too, the mean little skunk. Her eyes darted venomous hate at him, while her scarlet lips smiled contemptuously. She made every curve of her body a threat—cunning, vicious, and experienced.

  ‘You come over, Bert. You and me’s got to talk business, see? Ta, now.’

  Chidgey stood kicking the tyre gloomily until two taxis drove up and came to a halt behind the car. In these the Prossips departed presently with their luggage. Before he went, Mr Prossip ran in to say farewell to Mr Knayle.

  ‘Well, we’re off, old chap—and jolly glad I am of it. Many thanks for kind assistance and so forth. Oh, look here—I wonder if I might leave one of the latchkeys with your chap, so that he could round up occasionally and see that everything’s going on all right, I mean, until the flat’s let. There’s been a lot of breaking into flats in Rockwood lately.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Mr Knayle, stiffly, accepting the key. ‘You’re letting your flat furnished, then?’

  ‘Going to try to, anyhow. I hear you’ve got Whalley staying with you. A bit knocked out by his missus’s death, I suppose.’ Mr Prossip smiled. ‘We’re not taking our gramophone with us. Any time he wants to cheer himself up with a little tune, you can lend him the key. All the best, old sport.’

  He held out his hand; but Mr Knayle was busy opening the door and did not see it.

  4

  Two days later Whalley was up and able to discuss his plans for the immediate future with a calm matter-of-factness which at once relieved Mr Knayle and made him a little uneasy. One expected self-control—manful acceptance—the stoicism due to oneself and to others. But one hardly expected a man who had just lost—well, even the most ordinary of wives—to sit down and make out a neat list of things to be done—to haggle over the telephone as to the charge to be made for the lorry which was to bring in a load from Camphill—to remember that chimneys wanted to be swept and windows cleaned—to think of giving Hopgood sixpence for the messenger who would bring up a suitcase from the nursing-home. Whalley’s calmness struck Mr Knayle as being too calm, somehow—his matter-of-factness too deliberate. Whalley knew that he had known her all her life. He might have made some little reference to her—not tried to keep all the sorrow to himself—as if he was the only person in the world who had any right to be sorry. But when one tried to lead the conversation towards her, he began immediately to talk about something else—the General Election, or the Prossips, or so on. Oddly enough, he seemed to have no feeling at all about the Prossips now—had been quite interested to hear how it was that they had decided to move to Guildford. ‘We lived at Guildford,’ he had begun. But, because the ‘we’ had included her, he had stoppe
d there, and gone off to ring up the house-agents’ and ask them to send up the key of his flat.

  Mr Knayle was hurt by his exclusion. It had seemed that so tremendous an event should have produced some tremendous sequel. But there was no sequel. The stone which had fallen with such tragic violence into the placid pool of his life had sunk. The ripples that had been stormy waves for a moment were slowing into sluggishness. The whole dreadful, poignant thing was ending in flat dullness. Already she was being forgotten. Whalley had begun to eat heartily; Mr Knayle’s own appetite had been unusually good during the past few days. There was no help for it—one just went on living and forgetting until one forgot.

  On the third morning after the Prossips’ departure he accompanied Whalley to the foot of the outside staircase and stood there until he heard the door of the first-floor flat shut. Then he went back into his flat and looked into his bedroom, which Hopgood had already rearranged for his own use. The smaller bedroom in which he had been sleeping was rather draughty and dark in the morning; it would be pleasant to get back to his own bedroom again, with the compactum, and the dressing-table in a good light, and the new reading-lamp over the bed. But the obliteration of Whalley’s tenancy of the room seemed to him the end of his brief and, after all, futile romance. Some friends of his were to start a few days later upon a month’s pleasure-cruise to the Mediterranean; he went to the telephone and arranged to join the party, taking Hopgood with him. Hopgood looked as if he wanted a change too. During the last few days he had developed a rather trying habit of sighing as he moved about.

  5

  The letter-box had overflowed. When Whalley opened the hall-door, it pushed back a little mound of envelopes addressed to him in unfamiliar handwritings. He stared at them in surprise for a moment, then, realising that they were letters of condolence from Elsa’s friends, stooped and picked them up. They would all have to be answered—fifty or sixty of them. But there was plenty of time. He stacked them neatly on the landing and then went up the little flight of stairs, set down the two suitcases which he had carried up with him, and stood looking at the closed doors of the rooms. The last time he had looked at them had been when Bogey-Bogey was running from door to door, whimpering. He hadn’t wanted to leave. They had had to carry him out, struggling and whimpering.

  What had she said—there, at the hall-door—‘Good-bye, little flat. Coming back.’

  Well … now …

  Now he was shut in there in the stillness—alone again. He could sit down and plan it out, without Knayle’s silly babbling and curious smile to disturb him.

  He opened the door of the sitting-room and looked across at the small oval table by the windows. There—he would sit there and plan it all out and pat it into shape. No more weary, useless strugglings. No more tricking with words—no more faking and padding. That was all done with. No plot to invent. This plot was ready-made, with only its four chapters to arrange. He moved towards the table, but turned back. There was plenty of time. No hurry. He must guard against hurry.

  And, first of all, everything must look as she had always seen it—everything must be done as if she was in there in the kitchen, busy with her pots and pans, moving about swiftly in her gay overall. He moved from room to room, opening the windows and then, having unpacked some old clothes from his suitcase, changed into them and set to work upon the tidying of the flat.

  In a week everything was spick-and-span. Everything had been brushed and dusted and washed and polished, the sitting-room chimney had been swept, all the windows cleaned, all the curtains taken down and shaken, every corner visited. The brasses shone like gold, the linoleum was perilous to walk on. The lorry had brought in its load from Camphill; Camphill, locked up and sodden with the October rain, was finished with. Every item on that neat list of which Mr Knayle had disapproved a little unreasonably, had been ticked off.

  All the letters of condolence had been answered save one. Mr Loxton, who had interrupted the negotiations for an important contract to return for his niece’s funeral, had returned, a day too late, to discover to his horror and indignation that there had been no funeral. He would refrain now from useless protests. But it must be understood that he could never forget or forgive the deplorable—he might say, the outrageous—slight which had been offered to his niece, himself, his family, and every person of decent and religious feeling in Rockwood. There would be certain matters to be discussed with his solicitors in reference to his niece’s estate. Whalley would please communicate with them at his convenience; but any personal meeting with Mr Loxton himself, he must please understand, was and would remain out of the question. Whalley threw the letter into the rubbish-bin. Mr Loxton, too, was done with. And the Canynges, and the Sunday dinners. There would be all Sunday to think and plan—pat it into shape …

  At seven the scream of the factory-sirens down in the city awoke him. For a moment he lay, paralysed by the horror that surged back into his brain. It was not an evil dream—he was awake, back in it. He sprang up and bent down over the pillows of the other bed. ‘Good-morning, dear.’ There must be no moment of the day in which she was not remembered.

  In the mornings he worked about the flat. The bedroom was done every day—both beds aired and re-made—all the little trifles on her dressing-table dusted and replaced exactly. The other rooms were done in rotation. He worked calmly and methodically, scarcely ever looking at his watch or a clock. The days seemed endless.

  From Elsa he had picked up sufficient skill in cookery to prepare the simple food which supplemented his daily ration of liver. He cooked and ate the liver now without any repugnance; it was part of his rite of remembrance—part of his plan. The click of the switches when he turned on the electric-cooker always vividly evoked her gay overall. Though it hung behind him from a hook on the kitchen door, he saw it there by the cooker, bent a little forward.

  One day he saw her. He was busy in the kitchen when he heard her voice call ‘Si.’ He hurried to the door and saw her in the darkness of the passage, close to the balusters enclosing the little landing, looking, not towards him, but towards the bathroom. The illusion was so vivid that he went along the passage and touched the balusters. He went back to the kitchen, looking over his shoulder. She had stood just there, he remembered, that afternoon of the thunderstorm in June. There had been something that had attracted his attention, so that he remembered her standing there that afternoon. Something about the light. But he couldn’t remember.

  Some trick of his nerves. He must be careful about his nerves—there would be strains for them to meet; they mustn’t be allowed to play tricks—cause any oddnesses of look or manner or movement that might attract attention. He must try to make his body as efficient as it could be made now—eat more—take exercise—get out into the open air—learn to move about amongst people without looking as if he was alone. That attracted attention.

  Unconsciously, however, whenever he passed along the narrow passage, he left a space between him and the balusters, as if someone stood there.

  Mr Loxton’s solicitors wrote to him in reference to his wife’s will. He wrote back saying that she had made none and formally renouncing inheritance of the fifty pounds a year which had been paid to her in quarterly cheques signed by Mr Loxton, her trustee. He received an acknowledgment and heard no more of the matter.

  Mr Ridgeway came up one afternoon to see how he was getting on. It was a raw afternoon and, before he rang the bell, the caller blew his nose. As he did so his attention was attracted by some sounds within the flat—the same sound repeated several times rapidly, as if a cushion or a pillow, he thought, were being beaten with great energy. When Whalley opened the hall-door he appeared somewhat out of breath.

  ‘Hope I haven’t disturbed you,’ said Mr Ridgeway, in his gruff, abstracted way. ‘You seem to have been indulging in rather violent exercise. Not overdoing things yet, I hope. By the way—while I think of it—I wonder if you’ve seen anything about this new method of absorbing liver? Intravenous—inj
ections of liver extract. Saves having to eat the beastly stuff. You find it rather an ordeal, don’t you?’

  They went into the sitting-room and talked about pernicious anæmia for a little while, and then Mr Ridgeway held out the small brown-paper parcel which he had brought up. He had debated anxiously as to how he should speak of her, and for a moment or two he resumed the debate. Finally he said, very gently:

  ‘I brought back some books which your wife lent me.’

  But Whalley merely thanked him and put the brown-paper parcel aside. They went for a walk on the Downs, now deserted and melancholy in the October twilight. Mr Ridgeway found it difficut to keep up with his companion’s stride and, observing that Whalley’s wind appeared to be perfectly normal, surmised that he was keeping himself fit by using a punching-ball.

  CHAPTER VII

  1

  HIS determination had been formed in the flash of a thought. It had been an inspiration—a revelation; he had not considered it or reasoned about it. It had stated to him, once and for all, an unchangeable sequence. They had killed her—he would kill them. They had driven her out of the flat—driven her out to Camphill—driven her to her death. They were for him now the incarnation of the malign spirit which, blow by blow, had beaten down her happiness and crushed her laughing spirit to dust. They had killed her—he would kill them. She had died in pain and fear; her lips had been twisted in bitter agony; they would die in pain and fear. All four. One by one they would pay their debt to her. His momentary vision had seen four figures standing in space waiting to be struck down—then three—then two—one—none. The thing had been already accomplished.