Act of Darkness

by Francis King

  On the train back to London, Sophie said: ‘How wonderful you were with Joan’s brood! I never knew you had that gift for children.’

  Helen said nothing, as she traced her initials ‘HT’ in the grime of the window beside her. She had come to hate the grime of things left too long unattended and uncleaned. She was always remarking on it in the hospital – net curtains grey and greasy, window-sills encrusted with pigeon droppings, linoleum stained, scuffed and cracked – to be asked ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’

  ‘I’ve never been any good with children,’ Sophie went on. ‘ Which is odd,’ she added with a flash of percipience, ‘ because I sometimes think I’m still a child myself.’ She turned to Helen in the crowded railway carriage, a dishevelled, dumpy woman in a dirndl skirt and embroidered peasant blouse, standing with a holdall between her legs, not caring who might hear her. ‘Do you ever feel any older, Helen?’

  ‘Older?’ Helen spoke in a lowered voice, conscious of the eyes and ears around them. ‘Of course I do. There are times when I feel, oh, ancient.’

  ‘I don’t feel I’ve aged at all. People look at me and they see a woman with grey hair and a lined face who must, obviously, be approaching sixty – if she’s not past it. And yet to myself I seem no different from the little girl who was terrified the first time she ever travelled on a railway train.’

  Helen was silent, hoping that Sophie would now be silent too.

  But Sophie went on: ‘You must have children, Helen.’

  ‘I don’t want children. I don’t like children.’ Again those eyes, those ears, all round them.

  ‘You’ve such a gift for them. As I said.’

  It was a relief to Helen when they had bundled themselves out of the overcrowded train at Victoria Station.

  On the bus, where they once again had to stand, people pressing against them, Sophie suddenly said: ‘I didn’t offend you, did I?’

  ‘Offend me? How?’

  ‘With what I said about children – that you must have them.’

  Helen shook her head. ‘Of course not.’ The elderly man next to her, his briefcase digging into her thigh, was clearly listening, his beak-like nose lowered to give him the appearance of a moulting bird hungry for a titbit.

  ‘Oh, good! Because I thought you looked, well, cross with me for saying it.’

  Helen did not answer.

  Toby sent food parcels, which took weeks to reach them, if they ever arrived at all.

  Sophie, now grown so thin that she had to pin together the necks of many of her blouses and frocks to make them, as she put it, ‘half-way decent’, would say to Helen something like: ‘Do you want these dried eggs, dear?’ and Helen would answer ‘ Why?’ Then Aunt Sophie would explain that there was someone – the milkman, a colleague at the shelter, that poor little widow in the one-room flat above them – who was looking terribly pale and undernourished and for whom the dried eggs (or dried milk or dried fruit or sugar or tea) would do a world of good. Helen would sigh and acquiesce in a generosity which both touched her with its selflessness and irritated her with its gullibility.

  Those were terrible meals that Sophie now prepared for Helen on her return from the hospital. Exhausted, she would want only to fall on to her bed and draw an eiderdown over her head, to shut out the world; but Sophie would come into the bedroom, a saucepan or frying pan in her hand, and, holding its contents out for inspection as though that would tempt, instead of destroy, the appetite, would urge: ‘Do look what I’ve prepared for you. Mr Bellamy let me have some whale meat and there was that rice left over from yesterday and I cut up some carrots. You need the carrots when you’re walking home in the blackout. They say they help one to see in the dark.’

  One evening, when the ‘poor little widow’ in the flat above had delivered to them one of Toby’s parcels taken in by her in their absence, Sophie pounced on a slab of fruit-and-nut chocolate. ‘Oh, I must take this across to Mrs Wadman. She’s been laid up with shingles – I told you, didn’t I, dear? – and I know it’ll cheer her up. You don’t mind, do you? You’re not all that keen on chocolate, are you?’

  Helen longed to bite into the slab, to devour it all in a single session; but she knew that, if she did so, it would be as cruel as if she had snatched it away from a hungry child. So she said quietly: ‘Yes, do take it if you’d like to.’ But she could not help adding: ‘Isn’t Mrs Wadman that disagreeable woman who made all that fuss because you had hung some washing in the area and she could see it from her bedroom window?’

  Sophie looked pained. ‘ Oh, she’s not really disagreeable, dear. She’s really awfully nice. One has to make allowances – her husband leaving her for someone so much younger, her son in the Air Force, now this painful go of shingles.’

  Helen watched Sophie as, blithe and sturdy, she marched down the corridor, the slab of chocolate clasped unwrapped in a hand, pulled open the front door and then slammed it behind her. Sophie seemed always to slam any door through which she had passed.

  Mrs Wadman, who lived in the maisonette on the opposite side of the street, at once remarked, on taking the slab, that it was melting. ‘You must have been carrying it in your hand and your hand must have been hot,’ she scolded, as though Sophie were a child. She put the slab in a drawer and shut it decisively. ‘Anyway, thank you,’ she said. She did not invite Sophie to sit down but, instead, asked her, as so often, to do something for her. Her Tinkerbell had been out ever since breakfast, and that was so unlike him – usually he whisked out through his little door, did his business and at once came back in again – that she was getting anxious. If the doctor had not told her that she must on no account move around more than was absolutely necessary, she would have gone out long ago to look for him. But, as it was, would Sophie be an angel and …?

  Sophie agreed at once, she would be only too delighted. Then she asked: ‘Where do you think he might have got to?’

  ‘Well, he might be at number seven. Where that Frenchman lives, he often tries to lure him away with titbits. Or he might be in the garden of number twenty-two – it’s so overgrown that it’s like a jungle to him. I don’t know, I just don’t know.’

  Sophie said cheerily: ‘Now don’t you worry yourself. You just sit down and listen to the six o’clock news and I’ll wander round and look for him.’ She turned as she was letting herself out of the front door: ‘ Oh, by the way, what do you call him?’

  ‘Call him?’ Mrs Wadman, who had once again seated herself and was drawing a rug up over her knees, was sharp. ‘Tinkerbell, of course!’

  ‘I mean what do you call him when you’re calling him.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mrs Wadman gave that some thought. ‘Tinkers,’ she eventually said. ‘Or Tinkles. Or Tinkertoes. It depends.’ She did not specify on what it depended.

  Sophie zigzagged down the street, in a wide skirt which she herself had run up on the machine from an Indian bedspread sent to her by Toby, sandals and a cartwheel straw hat, peering over walls and into areas while she called out: ‘Tinkerbell! Tinkers! Tinkles! Tinkertoes! Where are you? Where are you?’

  A group of children, returning from school, began to prance along behind her, chanting out in ragged unison: ‘Tinkerbell! Tinkers!

  Tinkles! Tinkertoes! Where are you? Where are you?’ At each ‘are you’, they raised their voices to a piercing falsetto shriek.

  Sophie decided, as she always decided when people behaved badly to her, that it would be better to take no notice. But then one of the children, a girl, with what looked like the scabs of impetigo encrusted around her mouth, touched her sleeve, with a hissing ‘Miss, miss, miss!’ Somehow no one, despite her age, ever called Sophie ‘Missus’.

  Sophie turned. A pretty little scamp, she decided, despite those nasty sores of hers. ‘ Yes, dear?’

  The girl pointed. ‘Is that what you’re lookin’ for?’

  ‘Why, yes, I believe it is! Oh, thank you, dear!’

  Number six had been hit by a bomb, which had sliced diagonally
through it, to expose room after room empty of everything but scattered fragments of wood and glass. At the very top of the house, a tiny, black-and-white figure was marching up and down the edge of masonry which separated half of an unroofed room from the abyss into which the rest of it had tumbled.

  ‘Can’t you ’ear it?’ the girl asked; and ‘Must be bloody deaf’, the boy beside her commented, so loud in his contempt that even someone deaf could have heard him. And yes, now that she strained, Sophie could hear Tinkerbell’s piteous mews.

  ‘Better get the firemen,’ another boy suggested; but Sophie, thinking of all the far more important tasks which the Fire Service had to perform at a time like this, approached the house herself.

  Rolls of rusty barbed wire, like giant balls of knitting wool, filled up the entrance; but she managed first to climb and then to squeeze past, with no more injury than a tear to her skirt and a slight scratch to her thigh beneath it. The staircase seemed to be intact; but it hung on one side from the still standing portion of the house, unsupported on the other. She supposed that it was safe. One could never be sure. Ah, well, in for a penny, in for a … Precariously, pressing as close to the wall as she could, with one hand moving up the damp, crumbling plaster as though for a hold that was not there, she began the ascent. Oh, how sad it all was, how sad! That lovely old William Morris paper, revealed now in patches where the paper overlaying it had shredded away! Her father’s drawing room in the country had had that same paper of giant peacocks on a gold ground. She paused, stumpy fingers to breastbone. She felt quite done in. That must be a lavatory; but there was nothing there now but a cistern, hanging askew, high up on the wall, and a lavatory-paper holder with some grimy paper in it. On she climbed, and now she could hear that frantic mewing, louder and louder.… A nursery, yes, those pieces of wood, painted pale blue, one of them with a fragment of a picture, yes, it was one of Mickey Mouse’s ears and some whiskers, yes, that must have been a cot. Oh, she did hope some poor little mite had not been killed in it. And then, all at once, she was thinking of that other poor little mite out in India. But she musn’t think of him, mustn’t, mustn’t… A maid’s room. Another maid’s room. Would people ever live in houses like this again? Or had that way of life, like the house itself, gone for ever and ever?

  Now, at last, panting, the sweat glistening on her forehead, she entered the doorless attic and there, facing her, was Tinkerbell. But, instead of welcoming her presence, he arched his back, drew so near to the far edge of the floor with the abyss beyond it that she let out an anguished, involuntary ‘No, Tinkerbell, no!’ and opened his mouth and spat at her.

  You little devil, she thought; and for a moment, as he glared at her, his tail twitching from side to side, she really thought of him as some devil and felt an icy fear slither, snake-like, round her heart.

  Ridiculous! She knelt and then, putting her hands on the dusty, gritty, splintered floorboards, went down on all fours, her rump high, as though in an attempt to dupe the cat into believing that, for all the disparity between their sizes, she was of the same species as himself. In a clear, high-pitched voice she called: ‘Tinkerbell! Tinkers! Tinkles! Tinkertoes!’ She was unaware that, far below her, the children and the passers-by who had now joined them were all turning up their faces to gaze at the spectacle of a large, elderly woman crouched ingratiatingly before a tiny and furious cat.

  ‘Now, don’t be silly, Tinkerbell!’ She admonished him in the same tone, at once severe and placatory, which she had previously used to girls at the settlement and now used to tramps at the shelter, when her patience had been tried beyond endurance. ‘ I’ve come to fetch you home. Come! Come, come! Good boy …’ She began to crawl forward, the brim of her straw hat bobbing up and down and her skirt rapidly becoming stained with the grime off the floor.

  ‘Tinkers!’ She sang it out, as she extended a hand.

  The cat withdrew to an even more perilous position, tiptoe, its back arched.

  ‘It’s only me, darling! I’m your mummy’s friend! You know me!’ Again she reached out and again the cat drew away. Devil, devil! She felt a sudden dread of him, far more intense than of the abyss above which he stood.

  ‘Tinkertoes!’

  Unless he descended into that abyss, the cat could go no further.

  Sophie again put out her hand. The cat squawked, bared its teeth, shot out a barbed paw.

  ‘Oh, you fiend! You little fiend!’

  But Sophie had him, first by the scruff of his neck, as he impotently twisted his body and scrabbled with his paws, and then, all resistance having suddenly subsided, cradled in her arms. ‘Good boy,’ she crooned ‘That’s a good, good boy.’ She began the slow descent.

  ‘Your arm’s bleeding,’ the girl told her in a matter-of-fact voice, when she and the cat emerged into the street.

  ‘You’d better put something on that,’ one of the passers-by, a middle-aged woman with a number of shopping bags, advised.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing.’

  Mrs Wadman also thought that it was nothing. She thanked Sophie perfunctorily, without even asking her if she would like to sit down or wash her scratched arm, and then said that she must see to Tinkerbell’s horsemeat. He must be hungry after an adventure like that. Tinkerbell had already jumped into the best armchair, where he had begun systematically to clean himself, a wary eye on Sophie, to whom he felt as little gratitude as his mistress.

  ‘Well, I’d better be on my way,’ Sophie said.

  Mrs Wadman made no attempt to detain her.

  ‘What have you been doing?’ Helen was appalled. Sophie’s straw hat was cocked over an ear, there were two moist, black patches on the Indian bedspread skirt, there was a smudge, like a bruise, under an eye, and she was covered in a greyish dust. Beads of dried blood encrusted an arm.

  Laughing, Sophie explained: ‘ It was quite an adventure, dear. Particularly for me, since I’ve such a terrible head for heights, as you well know. If I’d let myself look down just once, then I’d certainly have fallen.’

  ‘But why, why, why? Why do something so silly?’

  ‘Why not? Fun.’ She twisted her shapeless body round, to examine the scratch. ‘The little devil did that to me.’ Again she laughed. ‘And the funny thing is – I just hate cats, don’t I?’

  ‘Perhaps he realized that.’

  Helen washed the scratch and put iodine on it; but the next day it looked sullen and inflamed. Each day it worsened. Now it was Helen who urged Sophie to consult Dr Spencer and Sophie who resisted, instead of the other way about. ‘Well, then, come to our casualty department. Or let me get you some M and B. Please!’

  Finally, when the whole arm was so swollen that she could no longer use it, Sophie agreed reluctantly to accompany Helen to the casualty department of the hospital.

  ‘I hate to worry them with something so trivial,’ she said, not for the first time, as she and Helen walked through the devastated streets to the complex of grimy Victorian buildings and Nissen huts which made up the hospital. ‘It seems selfish, when they’ve so many more important things to deal with. It’s only a scratch that’s gone septic. I’m sure that with a few more fomentations …’

  ‘Fomentations are no good!’ Helen’s anxiety made her irritable, even angry; and it was because of that that Sophie added in contrition: ‘And I hate to waste your time. You’ve so much to do as it is, poor dear.’

  ‘You’re not wasting my time! For God’s sake!’

  It was a long time before anyone examined Sophie’s arm. Then she was told that she must enter the hospital for a course of sulphanomides.

  Suddenly she was frightened; and that alarmed Helen, who had never once seen her frightened before. ‘Oh, do you really think it’s necessary for me to stay here, Helen? I’ve never been a hospital patient. Never in my life. Oh, Helen, please … I’ve such horrid memories of that hospital in Calcutta.’

  But Helen was adamant. ‘This hospital isn’t in the least bit like that one. This is one of the best hospital
s in the world, even if it does look so grotty. That arm needs careful treatment. And, frankly, I just haven’t the time to look after it for you.’

  At that, Sophie changed. ‘Yes, dear, you’re right. Of course you’re right. I’d only be a burden to you at home. Yes, I’d better do what they tell me.’ Although she was still frightened, she never again showed it.

  Slowly she deteriorated, her skin yellowing, her voice growing faint and husky, the flesh melting from her. She smiled up at Helen, told her that she must not come to visit her so often, held her hand in the hand which was not swollen, said little else, other than that everyone was so good, so good to her.

  One of the consultants, whose lectures Helen attended, asked her to go and see him. Fatigue made it seem as if he himself were terminally stricken. Lack of time made it seem as if he were in a state of constant irritation.

  ‘Your aunt must have been ill for a long time.’ It sounded like an accusation.

  Helen was astonished. ‘ Oh, I don’t think so.’

  He stared intently at her across his desk. Then an eyelid flickered involuntarily and he looked down, embarrassed by a physical weakness over which he had no control. ‘Didn’t she run low-grade temperatures?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Complain of feeling tired?’

  ‘Nothing ever tired her. Nothing.’

  ‘Not want to eat?’

  ‘She didn’t eat much. But that was because she would give her rations away to others.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s little to be done for her. I’m afraid – she’s

  on the way out.’

  He began to explain, in technical detail which Helen was already

  qualified enough to follow, that Sophie was dying of a blood disease

  common enough among children but rare in people of her age.