Nightmare

by Lynn Brock

  ‘He looks better, don’t you think?’ said Mr Ridgeway. ‘He’s able to bang a punching ball about, at all events. Everything passes.’

  ‘Oh no, no, no, no,’ laughed Mr Knayle cheerily as he turned towards his own door. ‘Everything that has been is for ever.’

  He was a little dejected by Mr Ridgeway’s platitude, and a little interested to hear that Whalley was using a punching-ball to keep himself fit. He had wondered as to the explanation of some peculiar sounds which he had heard occasionally over his head during the past week or so.

  CHAPTER X

  1

  ON the morning on which he went up to Guildford Whalley’s preparations for his journey were all completed an hour too soon. His old suitcase stood in the passage; his old overcoat hung over the balusters. He wandered from room to room slowly; but there was nothing to do—everything was spick-and-span. While he was straightening the mat outside the sitting-room door, the hall-door bell rang. He went down the stairs slowly; the whirr of the hall-door bell still tautened his muscles and made the movements of his numb legs and feet stiff and difficult.

  But it was only Penfold, endeavouring to look friendly and sympathetic as he held out his hand.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Whalley. I just happened to be up this way and thought I’d drop in and see you for a moment. I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had a bereavement.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I know what it is. I’ve been through it myself. I lost my own wife last year, and … well, the way it is, it’s only when people are gone that you know what they were to you. Yes. Well, what I wanted to see you about, Mr Whalley, was about that bit of papering and painting you wanted done a while back. Perhaps I might have a look round, just to see what’s necessary—’

  ‘No. I don’t think you need bother about it, Mr Penfold. My tenancy has only a year to run. I’m quite satisfied to let the flat go on as it is.’

  Mr Penfold was rather hurt. He was not in the habit of offering people something for nothing and money was precious tight just now. Number 48 would have to be done up in the spring. It had taken him a fortnight to decide that he would offer to do that bit of papering and painting—after all, for no more reason than that this chap Whalley, who had been damned overbearing and cocky with him, had lost his wife too. It would cost a tenner, at least. Not a word of thanks.

  ‘Well, yes, I know,’ he said, tilting his bowler to the back of his head. ‘But of course there’s the question of keeping the property up. I got to consider that. Do I understand that you intend giving up the flat at the end of the year?’

  ‘I don’t know at all.’

  Mr Penfold tilted his hat forward again. ‘Well, but—how it is, you’ll have to give me notice in June what you intend to do. I’ll be wanting to find a new tenant for it. It’ll have to be put in good order before June, you see, so that when people come to look at it— I suppose you wouldn’t think of terminating your tenancy now? It can’t be very agreeable for you now. I’d agree to that, if you had any idea that you’d like to have it off your hands. In fact, I believe I could find a new tenant for it tomorrow. Anyhow I had better have a look round and see what’s to be done.’

  He stuck at it, edging his way in, determined now to do that bit of papering and painting, gradually resuming his normal surly truculence. When at last he went away, sniffing and hostile, Whalley went up the stairs and stood looking about him, disquieted. His solitude—the hiding-place in which he had been able to shut himself in with all that was still his—was threatened. Already they were trying to drive him out of it—thinking of a time when he and his thoughts and his secrets and his plans would be gone from it, when the very last trace of her would have been swept away. Already they were preparing for the time when there would be nothing left of her or him and what they had been and loved and suffered and lost. They were trying to drive him out into the open—where he couldn’t think and plan—where everyone would see him. Already the bell was whirring, eagerly, peremptorily; but they could do nothing. For a whole year his hiding-place was his. A year—that was for ever. Long before that it wouldn’t matter whether the bell whirred.

  He opened the door of the sitting-room, looked in, and shut it again, thinking of the set of Crown Derby on the Welsh dresser. What would become of it when they had forced their way in? What would become of all the things that had been hers and his? There would be no one to claim them—no one with the right to sell them. Perhaps Mrs Canynge would claim the Crown Derby set—it had come to Elsa from her mother. And Elsa’s jewellery … Some time he must make a will. St Dunstan’s … The things wouldn’t fetch much, but St Dunstan’s would be glad to get a few pounds. But even then her things would still go on being—scattering, wandering into all sort of queer alien places—handled by people who did filthy things with their hands—

  He strayed into the bathroom and looked round it doubtfully. It had always been the eyesore of the flat, and Elsa and he had discussed many times the advisability of having it repapered and repainted, like the bedroom and dining-room and kitchen, at their own expense. Now, with the new wallpaper, despite the dinginess of the paint and the cracks in the ceiling, it looked bright and cheerful. She would have liked it so. But he regretted now that he had repapered it; it was no longer as she had known it. His eyes fell on the geyser which had dulled a little, and he glanced at his watch desultorily. There was plenty of time to do it.

  The polishing of the geyser had always been a troublesome business—one of those small jobs which had taken up a lot of time and whose useless, endless repetition had at times produced in him an actual physical nausea. Now, however, the intricacies of the pilot-jet and the tap, the difficulty of getting at the back of the cylinder owing to its proximity to the wall, and the impossibility of removing altogether the small marks on the lacquer, produced in him no emotion whatever save in so far as the mechanical movements of his hands formed part of the purpose for which his consciousness still continued. He stepped back to look at the results of his polishing critically, tidied away his cleaning things, put on his hat and coat and, picking up his suitcase, let himself out into the tepid colourless morning. Its greyness pleased him a little; his old overcoat had grown so shabby that people looked at it sometimes as they passed. But he had decided that it wasn’t worth while buying a new one now.

  During the last stage of his journey, from Reading to Guildford, he was alone in his fusty smoker and he resumed his dispassionate musings upon the enterprise which lay before him, peering out occasionally through the fogged windows to discover the train’s whereabouts.

  There had been no Deepford Residential Hotel, so far as he could recall, when Elsa and he had lived in Guildford, all but ten years before. Knayle’s description of it, however, had fixed its position fairly definitely in a limited area of quiet residential roads lying some little distance outside the town, along the rising ground which ran up towards Merrow Down. His recollections of the eastern outskirts of Guildford had grown vague; but he recalled that many of the roads in that particular area had then been newly made and that along some of them building had not yet been begun. He saw a typical quiet, newly-made suburban road, with widely-spaced villas, tree-bordered footpaths, a car standing outside a gate, a straying dog, an elderly man prodding a piece of paper into the gutter with his walking-stick before he strolled slowly on. Somewhere along it was the Deepford, a large, quiet, dull-looking house standing in from the road, beyond a lawn dotted with small trees and shrubs. The quiet road led into other quiet roads; it was all quiet out there. He saw only this limited area of quietness ignoring all the rest of Guildford, its busy streets, its thirty thousand inhabitants, and all the complicated organisation which watched over their safety. Along that quiet road one could pass and repass a dozen times slowly without meeting the same person twice—loiter—stop to read a newspaper. After dark it would be almost as deserted as Abbey Road. All the difficulties to be contended with, all the advantages that would help, were contained within a
patrol as limited as that which he had kept, for two nights only and for an hour only each night, outside the Grevilles’ gates. The advantages lay uppermost in his detached calculation of chances; difficulties would be dealt with as they had been, simply and with complete success. It was merely a matter of patience—adjustment of small working details. No hurrying. This time everything would be as sure and sharp and accurate as the snap of a lock.

  At Guildford station his confidence received a sudden shock.

  His carriage was at the end of the train and, when he rose to leave it, his legs, as always when they had remained for any length of time in one position, were cramped and painful. As he passed along the platform, left behind by the rapidly-moving stream of passengers making for the exit, two men, who had been standing with their backs towards him, laughing as they looked up at a poster representing a bottle of stout, turned, still laughing, and looked at him. There was no resemblance between them either in face or figure, but both pairs of eyes made the same guarded, deliberate scrutiny of him—took in his hat, his face, his overcoat, his suitcase, his trousers, his shoes, his stiffness and slowness of gait, and then left him, as something judged and noted provisonally. At once he had recognised one face vaguely. Someone, he concluded, who belonged to ten years ago—probably one of the tradespeople (he looked like a shopkeeper) with whom Elsa had dealt when they had lived in Guildford. But, as he gave up his ticket, an abrupt realisation turned his head over his shoulder. The face belonged to now. It was the face which he had seen by the light of a match—coming out of the darkness suddenly.

  He stiffened as if the hall-door bell had whirred.

  The police-inspector who had visited Knayle—who had waited at the foot of the steps in the darkness—here—at Guildford, waiting. A Dunpool police-inspector here in Guildford. The Dunpool police-inspector here in Guildford—waiting to look at him the moment he got out of the carriage.

  But at once an obvious explanation suggested itself—became the only possible explanation. Naturally the Dunpool police would hope that the Prossips might be able to furnish some information concerning Agatha Judd which would help them—and naturally the Dunpool inspector in charge of the affair would come up to Guildford where the Prossips were. Whalley decided completely that the encounter had been a mere coincidence. By no possibility could anyone have known that he himself was coming to Guildford. The man had looked at him attentively, but, he felt sure, had not recognised him. Probably he was merely waiting for a train to take him back to Dunpool. Certainly, if he was not already on his way back there, he would return there in a day or two. There would be nothing to keep him in Guildford once he had interviewed the Prossips. For a day or two it would be necessary to expect to meet him unexpectedly. But he was a big man. One would recognise him easily some little distance off.

  He waited near the wicket, pretending absorption in the time-tables, and saw the two men shake hands and separate. The Dunpool inspector disappeared down a subway, reappeared on another platform, and was carried away in a train from which he waved a farewell to his friend. Whalley picked up his suitcase and left the station, smiling grimly. What was it the fellow had said? ‘… I don’t think you can help me …’

  He decided to postpone the selection of lodgings until the exact position of the Deepford had been ascertained. When he had engaged a room at a small hotel in North Street, he hurried out again, anxious to avail himself of the last chill light of the afternoon; but the roads along which he strayed, unwilling to ask direction, were absolutely familiar. When at last he found the Deepford, standing at one angle of a busy cross-roads, darkness had fallen and two powerful arc-lamps guarded the gate-pillars of its entrance. Two more guarded the wide steps leading up to a revolving door inside which a liveried hall-porter stood in a blaze of light. The short drive and the strips of bare lawn that flanked it were flooded with light. All the four rows of windows were lighted up. In the bay of the drive a noisy party of young people stood clustered by two large cars whose headlamps glared out at him defiantly. There were lights everywhere. From the brightly-lighted cross-roads four brightly-lighted roads ran away, bordered on either side by small new houses of the villa type, whose lighted windows made of them avenues of cheerful, confident vigilance. The pathways were not crowded, but there were always figures arriving at all the angles of the cross-roads, pausing, looking to right and left, and then hurrying to escape from the lights of a car. A policeman passed the gates of the Deepford, looked in, went on to stand at the angle to watch the crossing of the traffic. Whalley turned away and went back to his hotel, disconcerted. The Prossips lived in the town—in daylight.

  Next morning he transferred himself to lodgings near the London Road station and began the difficult task of keeping the Deepford under observation. It was a fatiguing and monotonous business, involving an immense amount of walking and, for some days, complete disappointment. Twenty times a day he passed the entrance of the hotel, halted a little way up the road, then went on slowly to stray along the adjoining roads until he judged his last passing forgotten by anyone who might have noticed it. Too frequent goings and comings would have aroused the curiosity of his landlady; he was on his feet for hours at a stretch, returning to his lodgings too exhausted to eat the tepid chops which a slatternly maid slapped down in a dingy table-cloth with a curt ‘Yer dinner.’ At the end of a week he had discovered merely that Prossip went off most mornings about ten o’clock in the direction of the town and returned to the hotel a little before two. Of Mrs Prossip and her daughter he had seen nothing.

  Then, however, a slight alteration in the hour at which he returned to his uninviting midday meal brought Marjory Prossip into view. He had breakfasted late that morning and it was a quarter-past two when he reached the entrance of the Deepford for what he had decided should be the last time that day. Marjory Prossip drove out through the gates in a small car, passing suddenly so close to him that he could have touched her. Her attention was divided, however, between the traffic of the road and her violin-case, which stood upright on the seat beside her. She had not seen him.

  On three afternoons during the following week he saw her drive off at the same hour towards the town, always with her violin. He arrived at the conclusion that these regular departures pointed to some regular objective—presumably at some distance away. Possibly, he conjectured, she was giving violin lessons somewhere in the neighbourhood. He decided to return to Rockwood and bring up his own car. His plan had now abandoned the Deepford and was following a blue Baby Austin with a crumpled wing, which went off towards the town on alternate afternoons a little after two o’clock and returned a little before half-past seven.

  And in a car one could wait anywhere, sitting.

  In a chemist’s shop one morning a hand touched his sleeve and a voice said, ‘Mr Whalley, isn’t it?’ He had given the name ‘Webster’ at his lodgings and the sound ‘Whalley’ whirred an alarm. But in the end he decided to turn. It was the buxom, cheerful landlady of the lodgings of ten years ago, so shrunken and so forlorn that only her timid ‘Mrs Rankin’ enabled him to recognise her. Probably he had passed many people who had remembered him, but whom he had failed to recognise. Twice, between his lodgings and the Deepford he met the man who had seen the Dunpool inspector off at the station. And in the High Street, one afternoon, outside a tobacconist’s shop, he had a curious meeting with Prossip.

  He was standing, looking in at the gay window-display, debating the purchase of a pipe, when an alteration in the light reflected from a long mirror attached to the wall beside the door of the shop attracted his attention to it. Prossip’s image stood there, attired in a new, tightly-waisted overcoat, smoking a cigar as if he hated it, and regarding him with an intent scowl. He had been aware that someone had stopped outside the window, just behind him but, it had seemed to him, casually; but now, as he realised that it was Prossip who had stopped, the stopping appeared suddenly to have been deliberate and of definite purpose. For a long time Prossip’s reflec
tion glared and then the strip of mirror was empty and bright again. There had been no sign of recognition in the glare; but the incident was disquieting. The doubt would always remain.

  In half an hour he was completely certain that Prossip had not recognised him. His purpose was a Juggernaut which rolled over all doubts and left them behind, flattened and squeezed of all threat. No one was aware of him, or knew what his curlimacews were planning and patting into shape. Sometimes he smiled at the stupidity of the people who jostled him along the narrow, crowded footpaths of the High Street.

  He went out to Puttiford that afternoon by ’bus, timing his arrival so as to reach the cottage just after darkness had fallen. The little red-curtained windows might be lighted up; a stout motherly figure might stand silhouetted in the porch. But the lane which had led to Myrtle Cottage was now a road and a row of ugly little houses passed over the place where, astoundingly, it was no longer. It had been burnt down, he heard in the village, a good bit back—getting on for two years now.

  Another encounter which disquieted him a little occurred on the last afternoon of his stay in Guildford. He had gone up on to Merrow Down by the Leatherhead Road and struck across the golf-links towards a seat on which Elsa and he had often sat and discussed their plans for a future which had already begun to threaten. The seat stood at a high viewpoint on the crest of a long slope, some distance off the fairway of the course and sheltered by a high hedge which enclosed it on three sides; no one had disturbed their talks. They had sat there, he remembered vividly, the morning on which it had been decided definitely that he should abandon playwriting and try his luck with a novel; his tongue had been very sore just then and he hadn’t been able to smoke. As he neared the seat—it had stood there all those days of those years—a young woman came along the path which passed in front of it and, after a frigid glance in his direction, sat down on it.