By Horror Haunted

by Celia Fremlin

  “Ooozie-woozie wuzz-wuzz!” she would hear Sally crooning idiotically, above the sound of delighted chuckles and sloshing water; “Who’s a wimsy-imsy oopsy, then!”—and Tina, outside on the landing, with teeth clenched, and one eye on the clock, would listen to this drivel, and to the sounds of splashing and laughter, and would fantasize about a sudden change of the sounds to a sinister “glug-glug-glug” as the baby drowned. It was such daydreams as these, she sometimes felt, that kept her sane while Edward drearily howled, and Colin said, “When’s supper?” and the landlady called up the stairs, “Whatever’s the matter with that child, Tina? Do you want any help …?”

  Help, indeed! A fat lot they’d thought about helping her when they’d let in that promiscuous little bitch and her bastard!

  Strong language, perhaps, for a respectable young matron, even in the privacy of her own head; but it was justified. Julie was a bastard—within hours of their arrival, Tina had made a point of ascertaining Sally’s unmarried status; and within a week she had also discovered that Sally not only had a current boy-friend who came two or three evenings a week, but also an ex-boy-friend who kept ringing up and writing impassioned letters. Neither of them the child’s father! Disgusting!

  And what made it more disgusting still was that Julie did not seem to be suffering for it all in any of the proper ways. Tina had read lots of books about child-rearing, and it was clearly stated in all of them that lack of a stable father-figure did untold harm. Julie should, by rights, be backward, thumb-sucking, whiney; she should be withdrawn, negativistic, and difficult; she should throw tantrums, have feeding-problems … and all the while it was Edward who was like this … Edward, with his stable background, his two, attentive, properly-married parents! It was Edward, already turned two, who wouldn’t sit on his potty, wouldn’t say “Please”, and who threw tantrums in the hallway about taking off his red rubber boots before going upstairs. In the hallway, if you please, where the whole house could hear him!

  The unfairness of it all! It was Julie—endlessly sucking sweets and lollies between meals—who ate a good dinner every day of meat and vegetables, whereas it was Edward—to the balancing of whose diet Tina had given so much study and forethought—who threw his greens on the floor, and beat with his fists on the kitchen table, and screamed.

  “You’re a good little girl, you are!” the landlady would say, lifting Julie down from her chair, and averting her eyes ostentatiously from the whining, fidgetting Edward on the other side of the table: “You’re a good girl, your Mummy has taught you to eat up lovely, hasn’t she …?”

  “Mummy has taught you …!” What lying rubbish! As if Sally ever “taught” her child anything—always humming, and telephoning, and making-up her face, and letting the child slop around in her night-things half the morning … up and down the house, in and out of other people’s rooms, feeding her teddy-bear biscuits on the stairs …! No, it was Tina who believed in teaching; teaching manners, and considerate behaviour, and saying “Please” and “Thank you”. And after all this effort, what happened? It was Julie who was all smiles and sweetness and twisting the landlady round her little finger, while Edward just stared, and sucked his thumb, and said, “I don’t like you, you’re an ugly lady!” when the landlady asked him if he’d like to watch television.

  Unfair! Unfair! And the final, and bitterest, injustice of all was when Colin began taking the landlady’s side against his own child!

  “I wish Edward would eat like that!” he would say, wistfully, as he watched Julie polishing off her second sausage at tea in the landlady’s kitchen. “What do you do, Sally, to get her to eat so well?” And Sally, busy stirring some sort of foreign, messed-up stuff at the stove—no doubt for her boy-friend of tonight!—would turn around, smiling and preoccupied, and say: “What? Julie? Why, has she finished her sausage already?—Two sausages?—Goodness, I hope there’ll be some left for me!”—and would turn back, humming, to her cookery.

  Why, she didn’t even care what the child ate or didn’t eat—and here was Tina, giving all this attention to Edward’s needs in the way of protein and carbohydrate and the rest: really studying the matter, and shopping with vitamins and food-values in mind; putting the boy to bed at a proper time, too, so that he should get the amount of sleep a two-year-old needs, whereas Julie—four months younger—was allowed to stay up till all hours, sitting on the lap of the current “Uncle”, being given sips of Spanish wine, and tastes of prawn curry—she should have been the one with the sallow, peaky little face and dark rings under her eyes …!

  “I wish he’d put on a bit of weight, Tina,” Colin had remarked, only last night, glancing at the two children, one on each side of the kitchen table; and added—with almost unbelievable tactlessness, even for a husband—“Why don’t you get Sally to give you a few hints, darling?—look at the gorgeous specimen she’s produced!” He gave Julie’s cheek an approving little pinch; then turned to his own son, and in quite a sharp voice ordered him to stop messing with his food and eat it up.

  The ensuing howls, of course, brought the landlady back in—just in time to see fragments of chopped liver flying all over the room as Edward worked himself into a full-blown tantrum; and in the general fluster and confusion no one specially looked at Tina, or bothered to notice the look that had come into her face.

  I hope she chokes, Tina was thinking to herself, watching Julie stuffing half of a doughnut all at once into her rosy mouth. I hope she chokes, right now, with that doughnut wedged in her lungs, blocking that merry little laugh for ever. The rosy cheeks going blue, and then black … and everyone knowing, at last, what a careless, rotten mother Sally was, letting her child choke to death unnoticed, while she giggled, and tossed her head, and laughed into the telephone, saucepan still steaming in one hand as she made an assignation (no doubt) with one of her paramours.

  *

  Julie hadn’t choked, of course: but never mind, this, tonight, was the next best thing! With growing joy, Tina lay listening to the screams from the next room, praying that the landlady would hear too, and would come up in her dressing-gown and hair curlers to complain. The way she did when it was Edward who was crying. How lovely it would be to hear Sally being told off and humiliated (“Whatever’s the matter with that child? Can’t you quieten her somehow? Pick her up? … Take her into bed with you …?”).

  This, actually, was the suggestion she’d had the nerve to make to Tina once—to Tina, who had read and studied the subject so thoroughly, and knew exactly what harm it did a child to be taken into bed with his parents—even married parents! And as for Sally …! Tina here allowed her imagination to conjure up, and savour, the most disgusting possibilities imaginable: at this very moment, Sally might be lifting the screaming child out of its cot … snuggling it, teddy-bear and all, down between herself and whoever happened to be co-habiting with her tonight …! Loathsome …! Revolting …!

  How the crying was going on! Tina began to feel a little uneasy: suppose no one was disturbed by it after all! Suppose they woke up too late, when the worst was over! After all, it couldn’t go on for ever, and how awful it would be if it all subsided into hiccupping exhaustion without having annoyed anyone at all!

  Particularly, of course, without having annoyed Colin. Leaning out of bed in the darkness, Tina was on the point of reaching across to the bed where her husband slept and shaking him, when it occurred to her that she would be giving herself away. There is no way of shaking a man awake without his realising that it is the shake that has woken him; and then everything would be spoiled. It was the screaming that must wake him! Wake him, keep him awake, exhaust him and infuriate him, the way Edward’s screams always did. Show him that other mothers couldn’t always cope, either; that other children weren’t always angels—not even the blue-eyed Julie, damn her to hell….

  The screams must be made louder, that was the thing. Easy.

  Creeping silently out of bed and across the floor, Tina cautiously opened the door.

/>   That was better! The screams rang into the room gloriously now … but even so, not loud enough! Gathering her nightdress around her, lest even the faintest rustle might give her away, Tina stepped softly through the open door and out on to the landing. Slowly, warily, her bare feet making no sound on the icy lino, she moved forwards through the darkness.

  Crash! Scutter-scutter werroomph! Tina almost fainted at the thunderous shock of sound, and at the sharp blow across her shins.

  The pram! The blasted dolls’ pram, which Julie had left, as always, slap in the middle of the landing! The blasted pram in which she endlessly trundled her blasted teddy-bear, in and out and up and down! Tina could have screamed aloud in her shock and fury, she could have hurled curses to high heaven, but instead she stood absolutely still, not even breathing, while the pain in her shins gradually subsided, and the stillness of the sleeping house came rolling back.

  Actually, the noise couldn’t have been as loud as, in the moment of shock, she had imagined it. Just a dolls’ pram, empty, knocking against the banisters. Certainly (she realised now) it couldn’t have been anywhere near as loud as those screams still emanating from behind the closed door.

  Wait, though, wait! Those screams were going to be louder yet! Wait, wait!

  This was the hardest part—getting Sally’s door open without being heard. Somewhere in there in the darkness, Sally would be rocking the child—leaning over the cot—something; and only if Tina was very slow, very cautious, could she fail to notice her door softly opening in the dark….

  Up and down the panel Tina’s fingers played, until at last they encountered the door-handle … and below that the keyhole. Please God, don’t let Sally have locked it …!

  She hadn’t. The knob turned smoothly under Tina’s sweating hand, and the catch was released almost without a click.

  What a glorious crescendo of screaming! Like this, with the door wide open, it was enough to wake the dead! Aglow with joy and triumph, Tina skimmed back across the landing and into bed. There she lay, hugging herself, all a-tremble with sheer happiness as she waited for Colin to be awakened by the awful din. Waited for him to stir, to moan, to start muttering, almost in his sleep: “That bloody child …! Tina, can’t you do something? Other mothers …”

  This would be her moment of glory. The moment for which she had been waiting, it sometimes seemed, for years and years.

  “That bloody child,” she would explain sweetly, was not Edward this time, but Miss Sunshine-Blue-Eyes Julie. And as to the “other mothers” …! Already Tina was licking her lips in the darkness … it was like one of her daydreams come true!

  *

  But what was this? For a moment, she could not believe her ears. She jerked bolt upright in bed, and listened, appalled.

  The crying had stopped! But when—how? So deep had she been in gleeful reverie that she had scarcely heard the real crying, and could not tell, now, whether it had stopped suddenly or bit by bit, hiccup after exhausted hiccup.

  Anyway, stopped it had. Not a sound could be heard now, not a murmur.

  And Colin had never woken up at all!

  The disappointment was like nothing she had ever experienced in her life. He hadn’t heard a thing!—and now it was too late! What use now to talk about it in the morning … he wouldn’t be interested … wouldn’t take it in. “Give over!” he’d say, abstractedly, if she kept on about it—or perhaps even accuse her of being spiteful!

  Oh, if only he had been woken by it—heard it with his own ears! Been kept awake by it, exhausted by it, maddened by it, as he was by Edward’s crying! Or if only the landlady had come up and complained … making a commotion out there on the landing that he couldn’t have slept through…. And maybe Sally would have answered back like a fishwife, hideous in curlers and face-cream, her voice shrill and shrewish….

  Gradually, these dreams of the might-have-been turned to real dreams. Worn out by disappointment, and by futile regrets, Tina slept; and when she woke, it was morning.

  Quite late morning, too, to judge by the piercing threads of sunlight that managed to make their way past the heavy, closely-drawn curtains. A good job it was Sunday, or Colin would have been late for work!

  Funny, though, that Edward had allowed them to sleep in like this. Usually, Sunday or no Sunday, he’d be pestering around by seven or earlier, whining, grizzling, wanting to be amused. Asking for drinks of water and then not drinking them; asking for his potty, and then not using it. Never a minute’s peace, normally, once it was daylight.

  Funny he was so quiet. What could have made him sleep so late? Or what could he have found to play with that was so engrossing and so quiet? And just then, Tina heard the little pattering footsteps across the landing.

  “Mummy!” came Edward’s high little voice as he trotted into the darkened bedroom, “Mummy, look at Teddy! Teddy’s all wet …!”

  The thin, sallow little figure was right by the bedside now, thrusting a dark object at her … sodden! … Disgusting …!

  “Edward! Take it away!” she ordered; and at the same time switched on the bedside light.

  He was smiling, and covered in blood—face, hands, pyjamas—everything and in his hands—thrust towards her like a birthday gift—was Julie’s teddy-bear, soaked and dripping with blood.

  *

  How to prove that it wasn’t her—that she hadn’t done it? That her husband, in bed with Sally, must have been murdered by some other person—most probably by that ex-boy-friend, who had written all those passionate letters, and must have come round last night to see what was going on? The murderer had tried to kill Sally as well as Colin—she had been found unconscious from loss of blood, but was expected to recover. Julie had been unharmed, and seemed already (under the care of the adoring landlady) to be recovering from the shock of whatever it was she had seen.

  Tina was the one who hadn’t recovered. They weren’t giving her a chance. According to the other people in the house—including the landlady—a child had been screaming non-stop for the best part of two hours—but of course they had all thought it was Edward, and therefore nothing unusual.

  But Tina—she must have known it wasn’t Edward. She was right there, just across the landing from it all. How come she had just lain there, doing nothing, for two whole hours? Surely it must have occurred to her that something might be wrong? And how come, too, that her fresh fingerprints were all over the outside of Sally’s door, up and down and all around the door-knob and the keyhole, as if she had been feeling her way in in the dark? And the marks of her bare feet, too, on the lino outside Sally’s door? And besides all this, was Tina really asking them to believe that she hadn’t known—or guessed—that her husband might be in there with Sally? Hadn’t realised that he had been growing fond of Sally all these weeks…. Hadn’t even noticed that his bed was empty …?

  How could she convince them? How could she explain that the reason she had lain there doing nothing was that she was loving the sound of the child screaming, and wanted it to go on and on? That she had crossed the landing and opened Sally’s door not with any evil intent, but just in order to hear the screams yet louder? And as to it occurring to her that something might be wrong—why, she had been lying there hoping that something was! Hoping, praying, daydreaming, as she had done for months …!

  How do you explain this sort of thing, to people who don’t understand? Explain that you are guilty merely of malice, cruelty, spite, and an all-consuming desire to harm; but not of murder. That you are innocent, in fact?

  THE SAVAGE HEART

  “YES, LEO IS very playful. No, of course I wouldn’t rather have a puppy. No, of course I’m not frightened.”

  Rosalie knew by now what the reporters wanted of her, for was she not the lucky little girl whose Daddy kept a lion-cub as a pet in his suburban home? The local paper had heard about it first, and the front page that first Friday had carried a picture of Rosalie cheek to cheek with Leo, her straight blonde hair mingling with the soft down on Le
o’s fuzzy baby face.

  “Beauty and the Beast!”—ran the caption and underneath was quite a long piece about Rosalie, and how fearless she was, and what a wonderful affinity there was between her and the cub:

  *

  “What would you do if a lion jumped on your bed in the middle of the night?”—the writer began skittishly—“Scream the place down? Dial 999? Well, so would I. So would most of us. But not so nine-year-old Rosalie Turner, daughter of Mr J. R. Turner, amateur zoologist, of Child’s Lane, Westringham. ‘Leo always sleeps on my bed,’ Rosalie told me, ‘I think he finds it warmer.’

  “Does he purr, this extra-special outsize family kitten? ‘Sometimes,’ says Rosalie. ‘But sometimes it’s more like a sort of growling.’

  “And Mr Turner, does he worry about this strange friendship between his daughter and a lion? ‘Not a bit of it!’ says Mr Turner sturdily: ‘I have no fears for Rosalie. I believe that fear of animals is something not natural to children, it is something instilled by adults. Rosalie is fearless because she has never been taught to fear. She and Leo will grow up together, and I am confident that they will be the best of pals.’”

  *

  Rosalie remembered the pride with which she had showed the cutting round among her schoolfellows; and she remembered, too, the feel of Leo’s face against hers as she posed for the photograph: the deep softness of the baby down into which she had pressed her cheek, and the delicate, steely strength of the bones beneath; and already, deep in the pussy-soft fur, there had been that faint scent of otherness, that whiff from an alien world, for which, at the time, she could find no words.