The Dying of the Light

by Michael Dibdin

  Favouring them both with a smile, he walked out.

  CHAPTER 5

  The light outside seemed to have faded completely, yet when the fluorescent ceiling strip suddenly died the darkness turned out to be hollow. There was still an afterglow of radiance, too faint to compete with the synthetic glare but enough, once their eyes had widened to take it in, for Rosemary and Dorothy to make out, if not everything, then quite as much as they had any real need or wish to see.

  “That’s better,’ murmured Dorothy.

  The bed springs squeaked as she snuggled down.

  ‘Much,’ Rosemary replied from her chair by the window.

  Each was aware of the other as a vague, benevolent presence in the dimness, barely visible but very definitely there. The electricity on the first floor was switched off at nine thirty every night, except when Anderson and his sister were too drunk to remember, but this abrupt transition had never felt so welcome before.

  Dorothy’s room was ugly enough in itself, its proportions mutilated by the partition, the original features badly dilapidated and the new ones scruffily utilitarian, but tonight its charmlessness was intensified almost unbearably by their shared, unspoken knowledge that it would never again be Dorothy’s room. This was the last time they would sit there in the darkness, adding yet more strands and complications to the murderous web of intrigue they had woven around themselves. Next day the room would be locked, like those of the residents who had died.

  Under the pitiless glare of the neon light these facts had been impossible to evade or ignore, but the darkness arrived as a balm, waiving the imperatives of space and time. In that dimensionless obscurity there was only here and now, an endless present and everything within reach.

  ‘Aren’t you going to drink your cocoa?’ Rosemary suggested gently.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘It’ll get cold.’

  ‘It already is. All those people. Still, it was nice, wasn’t it?’

  Rosemary said nothing. The phrase seemed so far from the mark, so grossly inadequate to the situation, that she might have suspected Dorothy of irony if she hadn’t known that her friend was literal-minded to a fault. Whatever else it might have been, the incident certainly hadn’t been nice. It had been bizarre, embarrassing, unpleasant, sad, and finally rather moving. But Rosemary’s most vivid impression, both at the time and now, was of utter astonishment that it had ever taken place.

  The scale of the transgression involved had been made clear when Miss Davis burst into the room, having been tipped off by Belinda Scott. By that time they were all there. Mavis Hargreaves had been the first to arrive, having ‘just popped in on the way back from the loo’. While she was standing there at rather a loss, wondering what to say next or how best to leave, there was a timid knock at the door, followed by Weatherby’s voice asking if Dorothy were ‘presentable’. Grace Lebon and Charles Symes appeared next, accompanied by Alfred Purvey, and it was at this point that Belinda Scott put her head round the door, gasped, and promptly disappeared. Rossiter, who arrived shortly afterwards, reported having met her running along the corridor calling for Miss Davis.

  This news might have been expected to break whatever spell had descended on the residents that evening, but-much to their mutual surprise-it did not. Not only did they all stay, but on the face of it they seemed less flustered by the risks they were running than by the embarrassment of bidding Dorothy goodbye. It thus initially came as something of a relief when the door flew open and Miss Davis stormed in, with Belinda Scott at her heels.

  ‘Right, back to your rooms!’ she barked at them. ‘No fraternisation permitted! Contrary to fire regulations! Break it up, break it up!’

  But against all expectations the party refused to be broken up. Perhaps it was their very terror which impelled them to the unprecedented step of defying Miss Davis. The thought of what she might do if she were to get them alone merely increased their determination not to be separated. The outcome was equally startling. Never having had to face a situation like this before, Miss Davis proved to be at a loss as to how to deal with it.

  When threats and orders had no effect, she tried hitting one or two of the nearer residents, but was at once disabled by the others. No word was spoken, yet all seemed to understand what they must do. Aged and frail as they were, they could not offer active opposition, but they could and did very effectively get in the way, hampering the younger woman’s freedom of action, pushing her off balance, holding her back and hemming her in, until with a cry of mingled rage and panic she broke free and forced her way back to the door.

  ‘Very well, then!’ she shouted furiously. ‘Go ahead and wish your precious chum goodbye before she’s packed off to the abattoir. But just remember this! She’ll be strip-searched before she leaves, and if I find any begging letters, billets-doux or other foreign matter concealed in her cracks and crevices, the person responsible will get it for lunch, with the rubber gloves as afters!’

  Belinda Scott tried to say something, but Miss Davis slapped her across the face and stalked out, leaving her rejected acolyte to run off in tears. The others remained, the awkwardness which had briefly been dispelled now returning in full force. To Rosemary, the scene appeared increasingly grotesque and disgusting, a hideous caricature of everything hateful about their lives: the cruel light, the sordid room, the men and women variously disabled in mind and body, strangers both to themselves and to each other, reciting their impotent good wishes and empty formulas of farewell.

  Then everything changed. Exactly how and when was something Rosemary was not sure of even now. Perhaps it had been when Purvey stumbled against the bedside table, spilling some of the cocoa, and everyone rallied round to help with the clean-up. Or it might have been when Dorothy, her face flushed and her eyes brilliant with tears, thanked them all for coming and urged them to give her friend all the help she would need in the coming days.

  Rosemary had found it hard to repress a disdainful scowl at this. Under the circumstances Dorothy could of course say what she liked without fear of contradiction, but she was stretching her privilege to the limit in suggesting that this crew of decrepit geriatrics might conceivably be of any help to Rosemary Travis. She would come to terms with Dorothy’s absence in her own way and in her own time. All she asked of the others was that they should leave her alone.

  To her dismay, however, the effect of Dorothy’s words was exactly the opposite. The other residents all turned to Rosemary as though seeing her for the first time, and smiled or nodded, murmured something, said her name. It wasn’t what they did or said that mattered, it was what came with it, a wave of emotion that engulfed them all, filling the room, bringing them together.

  Rosemary managed to stand her ground, but she felt cruelly betrayed. She and Dorothy had spent their whole time taking their distance from these people, turning them into cardboard characters whom they manipulated to suit their whims and the twists and turns of the story. Now Dorothy had made them real, given them depth and feeling, turned them into human beings united in this mindless warmth like a litter of animals in a burrow. It wasn’t fair, Rosemary reflected bitterly. Dorothy had broken the unwritten rules of their friendship.

  She kept her thoughts to herself, of course, even once the visitors eventually trooped out, leaving them alone together again. Dorothy was putting a brave face on it, but Rosemary knew how she must dread the ordeals and indignities which awaited her at the hospital. If her chosen way of coping was by patronising Rosemary, that was something she was just going to have to accept in silence. In the event, neither of them spoke until the fire-alarm clattered briefly and, thirty seconds after this warning, all the lights went out. It had been this imposed curfew which had first given rise to the stories. They flourished in the dark, running riot, proliferating wildly, unrestrained by anything but the absolute and eternal rules of the genre.

  ‘Have they told you what time you’re leaving?’ Rosemary asked.

  The figure in bed stirred slig
htly.

  ‘They don’t know themselves.’

  Rosemary pondered this for a moment.

  ‘Surely they have to organise transport?’

  ‘It’s all taken care of.’

  There was a disjointed quality to this exchange which Rosemary found irritating, as though they weren’t talking about quite the same thing.

  ‘Well, if and when you find out, perhaps you would be kind enough to let me know,’ she replied a trifle waspishly. ‘I have my own arrangements to make, you know.’

  The darkness secreted something which sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

  ‘You lead such a busy life, Rose.’

  Rosemary pointedly said nothing.

  ‘I expect you’ll be wanting to get some sleep,’ Dorothy added quietly.

  At once, the reality of the situation came home to Rosemary with redoubled impact, and she felt dreadfully ashamed of her petulance.

  ‘Do you want me to go?’ she asked tremulously.

  Again there was a hint of laughter.

  ‘Go? You’re not the one who’s going, Rose.’

  Rosemary felt her irritation flare up once more, but this time she managed to keep it under control.

  ‘Precisely,’ she replied. ‘I remain here, to try and solve the mystery of these murders as best I can alone.’

  ‘Oh Rose.’

  Rosemary was glad to note that Dorothy sounded suitably contrite.

  ‘I don’t ask for sympathy,’ Rosemary went on, ‘but any help you might feel able to offer would be most gratefully received.’

  There was a brief detonation of bedsprings.

  ‘Do you want me to send in the police?’ whispered Dorothy.

  Now it was Rosemary’s turn to laugh.

  ‘Good heavens no! What earthly use would the police be in a case like this? They would simply go clomping about, obscuring all the clues and falling for every red herring in sight. What I was hoping was that I might continue to be able to count on your own invaluable assistance, Dot.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘How… how do you mean?’ Dorothy inquired guardedly.

  ‘Well, we might write to each other.’

  After a moment, Dorothy laughed again, openly this time.

  ‘I don’t know if that will be possible,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘It would mean a great deal to me if you could manage even a few lines occasionally, setting out your ideas,’ Rosemary went on. ‘There’s no one here that I can possibly confide in.’

  Rosemary congratulated herself on her tone, which contained just the right amount of self-pity to suggest that she was asking Dorothy a favour rather than throwing her a lifeline. She was therefore the more surprised to find the response so grudging and constrained.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Dorothy repeated. ‘I mean, I’ll do what I can, of course, but we can’t be sure that it’s going to be possible for me to remain in touch on any sort of regular basis. All the evidence, indeed, seems to suggest the opposite.’

  The residual glimmer from the window had now completely faded. To her dismay, Rosemary found that she was suffering from the delusion that the darkness had started to swirl slowly around the room like a nascent whirlpool. The motion was as yet almost imperceptible, but the sense of what it might become was almost as disturbing as the fact that she could not seem to shake off the idea. If she could have switched on the light, the power of the illusion would instantly have been broken, but that was no longer possible.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Dot!’ she snapped irritably. They’re bound to let you send and receive letters. The problem is going to be this end, but I have a few ideas about that which I’ll tell you in the morning.’

  She rose to her feet.

  ‘I’d better be going. I feel a bit…’

  She broke off, ashamed of speaking of her own feelings at such a moment.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Dot.’

  Dorothy’s voice was calm and steady.

  ‘There’s nothing whatever to be sorry for.’

  She sighed.

  ‘I just wish I could tell you, Rose.’

  Tell me what?’

  The winding darkness was drawing her across the room, towards the bed where her friend lay. Dorothy’s arms encircled her neck, pulling her down. Their embrace was longer and harder than Rosemary quite cared for, putting a tremendous strain on her detachment and self-control, for she was determined not to blubber.

  At last she managed to free herself, and stand up.

  ‘See you in the morning, then!’ she said briskly.

  As she was about to turn away, her wrist was seized in a grip so intense it was painful.

  “The poppies,’ she heard Dorothy utter. ‘Where do they come from?’

  ‘Poppies?’ she echoed lamely.

  The fingers clamped about her wrist tightened.

  “They used to be everywhere in spring. The fields were full of them. All the soft shades, red and blue and violet. You never see them now, do you? They killed them off with sprays and chemicals…’

  ‘You’re hurting me!’ Rosemary complained.

  What she found most disturbing about her friend’s incoherent ramblings was that it sounded as though Dorothy thought she was making perfect sense. She was relieved to feel the grip on her wrist slacken.

  ‘Sleep well, Dot,’ she murmured soothingly I’ll come and wake you in the morning as usual.’

  She tried to withdraw her hand, only to find that the tenacious grip was suddenly renewed.

  ‘Yet whenever they break the ground to build a road or a housing estate, there they are again, in their hundreds, as though they’d never ever been away! And at other times you never see them. So where do they come from, Rose? Where do they come from?’

  Dorothy’s voice was raucous with what might have been either terror or triumph, but which in either case Rosemary felt an urgent need to dispel.

  ‘I really couldn’t say, Dot,’ she replied deliberately. ‘But I have no doubt that there’s some perfectly logical explanation. What does it matter, anyway?’

  The grip on her wrist abruptly ceased.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Dorothy replied in a dull voice. ‘It doesn’t matter in the slightest.’

  Rosemary remained standing there awkwardly for some time. Once again, she felt that she had unjustly been put in the wrong.

  ‘Good night, then,’ she said, a trifle coolly.

  ‘Goodbye, Rose.’

  Rosemary turned and moved cautiously across the room towards the door. As she reached it, she seemed to hear her friend’s voice in the darkness behind her, saying what sounded very much like, ‘I love you.’ But the words were very faint, and it was perfectly feasible for Rosemary to spare them both further embarrassment by pretending not to have heard.

  CHAPTER 6

  She awoke with a sensation of having just left a room in which some terrible scene was taking place. The door had slammed shut behind her, and the voices raised in fury or fear were now just a fading memory. For an instant she seemed to hold the whole thing clear in her mind: she knew who had done what, to whom, and why. No sooner did she examine it, however, than this seemingly inexorable logic revealed itself to be no more than a string of feeble contrivances, rather like the plots of the detective stories with which she had used to read herself to sleep. But while those stabbings, shootings and poisonings had generated only a pleasing drowsiness, the anonymous voices in her dream had raised a terror which was still real.

  The sunlight which had wakened her streamed in through the window, making even the worn rug and stained wallpaper look fresh and gay. Brusquely shaking off the torpor which was the legacy of her shallow, broken sleep, Rosemary got out of bed and went to the handbasin in the corner to douse herself with cold water. She had enough real problems on her plate, heaven knew, without indulging in that sort of nonsense!

  The air was still chilly, and her breath flared in the beams of sunlight as she scrubbed and towelled. She had deli
berately not drawn the curtains before going to bed the night before. Dorothy was not by nature an early riser, and it had become their habit for Rosemary to go to her room and rouse her. Never had it been more essential for Rosemary to be at her friend’s side than this morning, when Dorothy awoke to the reality of her imminent departure.

  Although Rosemary had been heartened by the show of composure which Dorothy had put on the night before, she had no great hopes that the effect would last. It was one thing to be brave in advance, she knew, but quite another to retain that equanimity when the moment of truth finally arrived. Which was where she came in, as she always had. As long as Dorothy remained at the Lodge, Rosemary would be with her every instant-and even once they were separated, she would be with her in spirit!

  The idea she had thrown out the night before as though it were an inspiration of the moment was in fact something to which Rosemary had devoted a considerable amount of thought. She knew it would prove a huge challenge, but that merely gave her a further incentive to bring it off. Such a challenge was just what she was going to need to see her through the weeks and months ahead. It would distract her attention from the anguish she could do nothing about, and focus it on a problem entirely of her own making and subject to her control.

  There would be no time to brood on her own loneliness or indulge in gloomy speculations about what might be happening to Dorothy. Each moment of every day would be dedicated to working out the next episode of the murderous events at Eventide Lodge, a story so effortlessly complex, so endlessly fascinating, so flawlessly spellbinding, that reality would pale by comparison. Even the ordeals which Dorothy had to endure would be reduced to the status of a minor irritation, an annoying distraction when you are trying to read. This time, at least, the tyranny of the real would not prevail. Rosemary’s alternative account, tight and compelling, never losing its thread or disappointing the expectations it had created, would triumph in the end. She would answer for that!