And Afterward, the Dark

by Basil Copper

  Mr. Appleton thought ruefully of the turmoil in his affairs over the past year; the demolition of the block of London flats in which he had spent more than half a lifetime had upset all his working habits. It was responsible too for the long delay on the work which was to crown more than three decades of achievement in scholarly literature. He had been lucky, he supposed, in making such a drastic break with town life, to find such a haven as Dotterells and the village in which it was situated. Only thirty minutes from Charing Cross and the wider world of publishing, yet it might well have been in the farthest depths of the West Country.

  Mr. Appleton frowned. He was daydreaming again. He glanced at his watch. Already an hour had passed and it would soon be time for lunch. He could hear the clink of utensils as Mrs. Grice laid the table in the dining-room. He shook his head and bent over the typescript again. It was true, he had noticed, after more than a week in the house, that he was not producing as much as in the past. He attributed it to the upsets of the past months and the newness of his unfamiliar routine in the country, but it was a fact also that the house was relaxing in the most delightful way. It was almost too comfortable in its assurance and cheerfulness and Mr. Appleton realized that this new malaise of inertia would have to be energetically fought against.

  He pressed on with his corrections for another ten minutes and then found Mrs. Grice at his elbow.

  "Lunch, sir, in a quarter of an hour, if you please.''

  "Thank you, Mrs. Grice."

  He looked up, grateful for the woman's quiet efficiency, the well-bred gentility of her manner. With her neat clothes and the touch of white at throat and wrist she would have passed muster in almost any company. He wondered idly what her past history had been; but Mrs. Grice never volunteered any information and he had always been too polite to ask.

  "I shall be in directly," he added, as she continued to hover in the background. He waited until the door had clicked to behind her before he made the last one or two corrections in his neat, precise hand and then capped his pen. As he rose to leave the room he was suddenly conscious of something offensive to his neat sense of order. Glancing back towards the window, through which the sun poured in benevolent serenity, he realized what it was.

  The inner window sill which was of some old, dark wood, possibly oak he supposed, was made of a single beam six inches thick. It was obviously much older than the house of which it formed a part. But it was not this which was responsible for Mr.

  Appleton's temporary irritation. The whole sill, he now found on closer inspection, was coated with a thick film of dust.

  The sight was so at variance with the neatness of the rest of the room that Mr. Appleton felt it might possibly be an optical illusion; but no, as he tested it tentatively with the tip of one finger, he felt its gritty texture on his skin and there was the pallid imprint of his touch on the sill's surface. He clicked his teeth in positive annoyance. This was unlike Mrs. Grice and he would have to speak to her about it; Mr. Appleton was pathologically obsessed with the cleanliness and order of his surroundings and the state of the sill was an obvious breach in the otherwise carefully ordered household arrangements.

  But Mrs. Grice was such a pleasant and normally efficient woman that he would have to be tactful in the way he mentioned it. He resolved to tackle the matter after lunch. It was such a trivial thing, really, but it would be as well to make his views known.

  In the event Mr. Appleton waited until after dessert had been served, and he was appreciatively stirring the depths of his first cup of coffee before he mentioned the matter. Mr. Appleton's eyesight was not what it was, but he thought he detected a slight paling of Mrs. Grice's face. But she only drummed softly with her fingers on the back of one of the dining-room chairs.

  "I wouldn't have mentioned it normally, Mrs. Grice, apart from the fact that it isn't like your way of going about things. I have no objection to a little dust here and there, from time to time, but the study must be kept in impeccable order. And the sun strikes across that sill so strongly that it makes it worse.''

  Mrs. Grice bit her lip and Mr. Appleton felt that perhaps he had been a little too harsh. And he hadn't meant to upset such a conscientious and pleasant worker.

  So he added swiftly, before she could reply, "If you think I'm being unfair...."

  "It's not that, Mr. Appleton," said Mrs. Grice. "I'm annoyed with myself, really. I could have sworn that I attended to the sill when I dusted the room yesterday.''

  "Well, it's no great matter," said Mr. Appleton cheerfully, glad at having won his point without a scene. How he hated scenes

  "Perhaps you could give it your attention when it's convenient. I thought it best to make my views known straight away."

  "Certainly, Mr. Appleton," said Mrs. Grice in a subdued voice. "You are entitled to have the house as you want it and I'm only sorry you had cause to complain."

  All the same there was a strange look on her face as she hurried out and once again Mr. Appleton regretted having spoken so sharply. After all, he could have cleared the sill himself with a few strokes of a duster; though in that case, why employ a housekeeper? He drank his coffee, poured a second cup from the silver pot, and banished the petty annoyance from his mind.

  Back in his study that afternoon Mr. Appleton rapidly forgot the incident and found he was able to concentrate much more firmly on the work in hand. He was barely conscious of Mrs. Grice leaving his tea and biscuits at his elbow and it was almost dusk before he had finished typing and had gathered up the mass of completed sheets with suddenly aching hands. When he had stapled the chapters together and placed them ready for checking, he stood at the window for a while, conscious of the beauty of the dusk, the faint outlines of trees and bushes visible against the light from the road beyond.

  Moved by a shadowy impulse he stepped to the casement and opened the window wide. He stood for almost a quarter of an hour lapped in the peace which came with the cool, damp air.

  The following day was an unusual one in the familiar context of Mr. Appleton's life. He had a visit from the people who owned the manor house, whose boundaries abutted his back hedge, and who were in fact his next-door neighbours but one; the large timbered house flanked the road about a hundred yards from Mr. Appleton's own property. The visitors were a youngish couple, the man in his mid-forties, the woman about a decade junior, and they brought with them two children in their early teens.

  Mrs. Grice was kept running to and fro with tea and cakes and while Mr. Appleton made polite talk with their elders, the youngsters could be heard exclaiming with pleasure as they wandered from room to room and discovered their host's treasures. Mr. Appleton had tea served in the study and he and his guests sat round a table abutting a circular window at the end of the big room. Despite Mr. Appleton's fears, the children were well behaved and an agreeable hour passed before the visitors departed, urging him to visit them the following week.

  The host went with them to the gate and when he had returned to his own garden, musing agreeably on the small details of the not unwelcome interruption, his feet took him, somewhat of their own volition, down the flagged path at the side of the house. The sun shone fiercely, though it was long past five in the afternoon, and Mr. Appleton could hear the rasp of a saw from the orchard beyond. He noted, as he paused near the hedge, that a party of workmen were engaged in lopping or felling a group of trees about a hundred yards away from his own boundary. He stood watching for a few minutes, lulled by the soft country voices, and then presently, as the dull bite of an axe began to reverberate through the garden, went back indoors.

  Mrs. Grice had already cleared the tea-things and he bent to resume his seat at the desk when he let fall an exclamation that was normally foreign to his lips. The sun shone brightly through the casement and there once again was the sill thickly coated with dust. Mr. Appleton felt rage beginning to choke his throat; he was thinking mainly of what his visitors must have thought of his standards of tidiness but the emotion was so unlike him th
at he resumed his seat, shocked at his own reaction. When he looked at the window again he saw that someone or perhaps some blunt object had scribed a pattern in the dust.

  He stooped to look closer and found, albeit its crooked formation, an unmistakable word. TREE the sill said, in wavering writing. Mr. Appleton's annoyance was increased twofold. He guessed that his visitors' children had seen the dust and were making their own pert, juvenile comments. Another gust of irritation swept him. He turned on his heel and quit the study. As he got near the kitchen he heard Mrs. Grice give a stifled scream. There were muffled exclamations from the garden beyond and a single loud report, like an explosion. Mr. Appleton ran into the garden to find Mrs. Grice before him; the two of them hurried towards the hedge.

  The cause of the explosion was soon obvious. A large branch of a tree which the men in the orchard were lopping, had fallen. A ladder lay tumbled in the long grass and a figure was pinned beneath a tangle of branches. Mr. Appleton forced his way through the hedge with an energy that surprised himself. He saw that the tree was an elm and that the branch was a big one. A groaning noise came from out the boughs and the small knot of men had their shoulders beneath and were lifting and pulling in a kind of compassionate chaos that Mr. Appleton found touching. He panted his way up to the group, conscious that he could really do little to help. A rope dangled uselessly from the tree. Easy to see how the little tragedy had happened.

  A thickset man turned a white face to him as Mr. Appleton touched his shoulder.

  "Can I help?" he said. And added, before the other could reply, "Is it bad?"

  "Bad enough," said the thickset man shortly. He turned again to get his beefy shoulder under the branch. Mr. Appleton stood back and found Mrs. Grice behind him. She twisted her thin hands nervously but her eyes were bright and steady. Mr. Appleton was surprised to hear her say, "Let me have a look. I was a nurse...."

  The thickset man gave way readily to her and she had wriggled in beneath the mass of boughs to make her inspection. She came out and brushed some leaves off her skirt.

  "It looks like a broken shoulder," she said, speaking to nobody and looking fixedly between Mr. Appleton and the thickset man.

  "I'll telephone for an ambulance," said Mr. Appleton, glad of something to do.

  It was an hour or more before the injured man was removed, and the ambulance was no sooner gone and he and Mrs. Grice enjoying a welcome cup of tea together in the kitchen than a shy young constable knocked at the side door with some questions. It was dark before Mrs. Grice left and Mr. Appleton made a makeshift dinner of cold meat and pickles in the kitchen nook, pondering on the events of what had been for him an extremely momentous day.

  Mr. Appleton was actually reaching for his book, on the verge of stepping into bed, before he remembered the inscription on the window sill. The single cryptic word took on an undue significance in his brain. On a sudden impulse he flung on his dressing-gown. The house was silent except for the tick of a clock as he opened the study door. The soft lamplight shone on the calm appointments of the room. Shone too on a window sill that was gleaming and bare of dust.

  A month passed away and the summer continued in a blaze of blue and gold. One afternoon Mr. Appleton had been down to the lower orchard; the season was reaching its full height and even the long grasses of the paddock appeared to be wilting with the heat. Their stems looked flaxen and of the consistency of metal in the baking air, which made the far distance of the hills which surrounded the village vibrate and dance in the haze. It was cool and fresh in the house after the almost tropical brilliance of the garden and Mr. Appleton paused momentarily on the tiled surface of the hall. When he had taken a glass of iced mineral water from the kitchen refrigerator he went through into the study; Mrs. Grice was out shopping and he had the place to himself.

  He sat not at the desk today but in one of the large brown leather armchairs which flanked the hearth and sipped gratefully, conscious of the sensuous coolness of the glass's chill lip against his mouth and tongue. It was dark after the garden, but as Mr. Appleton's eyes gradually adjusted themselves to the change of light he was again conscious of the feeling of irritation which he was beginning to experience in this room. He glanced over towards the window and saw with a sense of familiarity that the sill was blurred with a fine coating of dust.

  He pulled himself out of his chair, uncomfortably aware of the sweat trickling down inside his shirt. He leaned forward, half expecting what he found. It was just the one word, scraped into the dust, with the same crooked finger. This time it spelled out: WELL.

  Mr. Appleton sat down abruptly in his chair again, aware that the perspiration which started from every pore was not entirely engendered by the heat of the day. He stared fixedly in front of him at the familiar contours of the stone fireplace, thinking deeply for perhaps twenty minutes. Then he got up heavily and sought a duster. He grimly wiped the sill clean of its enigmatic message and went back into the garden again. His steps took him towards the front gate this time and he became aware of a blue light which was flashing in the distance.

  He turned out of the gate and walked aimlessly towards it. He then saw that the light came from the top of a grey-painted ambulance belonging to the County Council. There was a knot of people in the garden beyond and then in a moment or two a small group detached itself; men in dark uniforms carrying something on a sheeted stretcher. A child's limp arm dangled below the sheet like a broken doll. The face was covered.

  The ambulance door slammed and the engine murmured into life. Still Mr. Appleton lingered, listening to broken fragments of conversation. His eyes went beyond the garden wall to a stone parapet, half-hidden among roses and honeysuckle. Mr. Appleton recognized the Vicar, his arm about a woman's shoulder. He felt faint suddenly and looked wildly about him. He pushed into the throng of people, glancing this way and that. A pink-faced constable was listening to three conversations at once, his sympathetic face knotted in concentration over his notebook.

  "The child was playing and fell in the well," said an elderly man in front of Mr. Appleton. "You can see where the cover gave way.

  The voices began to recede in Mr. Appleton's ears in a most peculiar manner; he became aware that he had stumbled. Someone helped him up. Consciousness faded and he knew nothing more until he came around in his own kitchen to find Mrs. Grice's solicitous face before him. The constable was hovering by the table and Mr. Appleton's own doctor, a thickset, middle-aged character was saying, "Nothing serious. Just the effect of the heat, I think.''

  Mr. Appleton was relieved to hear the doctor's verdict but he was seriously shaken nevertheless. He refused Mrs. Grice's kind offer to stay the night. She lingered curiously when her usual time came for departure. Mr. Appleton sipped gratefully at his second small brandy and kept his gaze lowered at the floor of the dining-room. He was in pyjamas and dressing-gown but the heat still seemed to rise in tangible waves from the floor. Mr. Appleton felt words come awkwardly to his lips. He continued to keep his eyes lowered.

  Then he said, "How did the previous owner of the house die?"

  The words came out in a stumbling rush and Mrs. Grice looked startled, as well she might.

  She stood shifting from one foot to the other and Mr. Appleton thought again how graceful and cool she looked. Her answer came at last.

  "Heart, I believe, Mr. Appleton."

  And then, when he had long given up any thought of further enlightenment, she added gently, standing in the dining-room doorway against the soft lamplight, "He was very old, you know."

  It was a comforting thought and Mr. Appleton was oddly touched. He felt grateful and he rose to express his thanks. When he had bolted the door behind Mrs. Grice he crossed to the study and locked it for the first time since he had come to Dotterells. He lay awake thinking for a long time that night.

  It was nearly three days before Mr. Appleton used the study again. He had been to London in the interim and had made some enquiries about the village, but as he was never able to
speak clearly of the matters which so deeply troubled him, his researches achieved little. He walked round the house in the early afternoon before entering the study; he glanced through the window, conscious of the absurd figure he must have cut to any watcher, and nervously examined the sill on the inside. So far as he could make out it was completely free of dust.

  He went in and sat down at his desk and started to write; there was silence for a long time, broken only by the brittle scratching of his nib. Presently Mr. Appleton paused, put down his pen, and rested a moment, one hand on his head. He was conscious of a subtle change in the room and at first was at some difficulty in placing it. Then he became aware, absurdly it seemed, that the scratching of his pen had continued after he had laid it down. And as soon as he became outwardly conscious of it, the sound ceased.

  There was a fearful silence, worse than the minute interruption. Mr. Appleton moved his head ever so slowly towards the window. He saw quite without surprise that the sill was thickly coated with dust. Saw too the scraggly outline of something scratched into the gritty surface. He went over heavily and read what it said. The same distorted writing spelled out APPLE, followed by part of another letter. Mr. Appleton at first thought in terms of the orchard but then, on reflection, saw that the upright of the next letter was an obvious continuation; the addition of a crosspiece would make it a T. It was the first part of his own name.