As Shaffer exited the flat and walked up to the ground floor the lights were turned off on the timer, but then came back on before he could reach out for the switch. He could hear footsteps up on the top floor landing and for a moment it seemed quite natural that somebody was starting to come down the stairs. Then he remembered that the other tenant, Mr Miles, had recently moved out.
He immediately wondered if Miss Simpson hadn’t been attacked by an intruder? Whoever it might have been could still be in the building. The footsteps in what should be an empty house caused him to run up to the ground floor and open the front door so that he could make a quick exit.
Standing on the threshold, Shaffer watched nervously for someone to arrive at the first floor landing and start to come down towards him. The man who appeared did not inspire confidence; he was unshaven, his face ravaged by wrinkles and he had wild, unruly hair. He had to be in his sixties and was wiry, with an oddly weasel-like face. He continued to descend, looking relaxed, and Shaffer stayed in the open door, not sure what to do. His heart-rate increased for the second time that evening.
‘Hello,’ the man said, noticing Shaffer only as he was half way down the final flight. He slowed, but continued. He seemed to take a great deal of thought before he said, ‘You must be the teacher?’
‘Yes,’ came the automatic, if uncertain reply. ‘Philip Shaffer.’
‘I’m called Terrance Cope,’ the man said, coming across the hall and putting out his hand. Shaffer automatically moved forward and shook his hand. He had to let go of the door, allowing it to close. The older man noticed that Shaffer was clutching a handbag and he grinned.
‘It’s Miss Simpson’s,’ Shaffer explained hastily, still worried. ‘She’s had a fall and’s gone off to hospital. I said I’d take it in to her.’
‘The poor old girl!’ he considered. And then, as if he had only just realised it, he said, ‘I was only talking to her a couple of hours ago.’
‘Really?’
‘I’m the new tenant. I’ve taken the top flat.’
‘Oh, okay.’
‘Will she be alright?’
‘I hope so.’
‘So do I. If she dies I might get thrown out, and that would be bad luck.’
‘Hopefully it won’t come to that. When are you moving in?’
‘I settled it all this morning. I’ve already moved my stuff up there.’
‘That was quick.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t have much. I’ve spent my whole life moving around, looking for the right place. I’ve a funny feeling that this is it, you know?’
‘Well, the rent on that flat’s reasonable because it gets hot and stuffy up there in the summer,’ Shaffer said, calmer now. ‘The man who was there before you, Mr Miles, he used to complain about that. And the fact that it gets so cold in winter.’
‘Miss Simpson warned me. She’s a funny old girl, isn’t she?’
‘In what way?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a bit like she’s not quite in the room with you.’
‘She can be a bit vague,’ Shaffer admitted, thinking that this man, Cope, was probably worse than their landlady. If Miss Simpson could seem a little vacuous at times, then Cope appeared to be a little simple. The children at school would have said that he ‘wasn’t all there’.
‘Well, give her my best wishes,’ he said.
Shaffer stood aside and let the man go out the front door. Then he went up and saw that his bags of schoolbooks were still on the landing. He put them inside his flat and found a carrier bag for the handbag. He didn’t want to be seen wandering around the city with it.
It was an hour later that Shaffer arrived and was told to wait in the relatives’ room. A doctor appeared after ten minutes and told him that Kathy Simpson was conscious and would be fine. They weren’t sure what had caused her collapse, apparently, and she would be staying in for observation.
A nurse then appeared and asked if he had ‘Kathy’s’ keys. He produced the handbag.
‘They’re inside,’ he explained. Again, the use of his landlady’s first name by somebody who didn’t know her seemed disrespectful.
‘I’ll take the bag to her, but you’d better keep the keys yourself,’ the nurse said. She opened it up and took them out. The doctor took the opportunity to leave.
‘She’ll need some things brought in, if you don’t mind,’ explained the nurse. ‘Can you get her washing things? You know, toothbrush, flannel, hairbrush etc? And her nightdress. She’ll also need a change of clothes for when she’s up and about again, and probably her make-up.’
‘I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I can. I mean, it’s awkward.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I’m just a tenant in one of her flats. I happened to find her earlier this evening.’
‘Oh, I assumed you were a relative. That’s what the paramedics said when they explained you were coming along with her keys.’
‘Really?’
‘They thought you were her son? You’re not? Oh well. Do you know if she has any family we can get in touch with?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t.’
‘Well, the Friends of the hospital can probably find her most of the things she’ll need, but I’m sure she’d prefer her own. Let me go and talk to her.’
Shaffer was left alone again. The nurse’s tone made him feel as though he was a disappointment to her, inadequate even. He knew he was making too much of it; probably she was simply disappointed that he was making more work for them. When she returned she was friendlier.
‘Kathy asks if you wouldn’t mind taking her keys after all. You’ll need to feed her cat. And she says she’d be grateful if you were able to bring in her dressing gown from the back of her bedroom door. And there should also be a pink cardigan in her bedroom.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he promised.
Shaffer let himself into Miss Simpson’s flat the following morning. He had risen earlier than usual so that he could collect what she needed and take it into the hospital before he carried on to school.
The cat leapt off the old woman’s chair when he entered her front room and ran to the kitchen. By the time he had followed it in there the animal was once again out of the cat flap. He looked in a couple of the cupboards near the empty bowl on the floor and found some food for it.
Shaffer went back out and crossed the living room to the bedroom door. If he had felt awkward walking around her flat before, his discomfort increased immeasurably when he entered the woman’s bedroom. He felt that he had no right to be in there and he was annoyed that he was under the obligation.
His landlady’s room was very feminine, but not in a chintzy way, which surprised him. It was also a little less shabby than her front room. Somehow it seemed to have been frozen in time, in the 1960s, he decided. It was a reflection of the date when the photographs of the young woman on the walls and on the chest of drawers had been taken. The studio portraits that were on display all over the room were of the same model dressed in the high fashion of the time. She wore mini-dresses and was stick-thin, with huge hair and incredibly heavily made-up eyes. In several pictures her mouth was open as if in surprise, as though she had just been told something shocking. Shaffer wondered if they were meant to have been slightly risqué at the time; she was showing a lot of flesh. She also looked oddly androgynous. He couldn’t quite understand why the photos were there; the model was so utterly unlike big old Miss Simpson.
And then Shaffer remembered why he was in the room. The dressing gown was on a hanger on the back of the door and he stuffed it into the carrier bag he had brought with him. Behind it was a voluminous green dress with a dainty lace trim at the neck. He wasn’t sure if he had seen Miss Simpson wearing it in the past, but it looked very familiar. Then he realised that it was similar to the dress worn by the model in the photograph on the chest of drawers. It was at that moment he understood the significance of the photos.
Shaffer walked over and picked up the photogra
ph. Then he took the time to look more closely at the others on the walls. If they hadn’t been in Miss Simpson’s bedroom then he would never have thought there was any similarity between the younger and older women. He returned again to the photo on the chest of drawers and it struck him as strange that Miss Simpson would now own a dress that was a gross parody of the model’s stylish mini-dress; the one from the sixties would have been made with significantly less material.
‘Hello?’
Shaffer jumped as though he was a thief who had been caught in the act.
‘Hello?’ enquired the voice again. It came from the living room and Shaffer went to the door warily. In the middle of the room was the tenant from the attic rooms.
‘What you doing in here?’ he interrogated Shaffer good-naturedly.
‘Miss Simpson asked me to collect a few things for her. She’ll be in hospital for a few days yet.’
‘Oh?’ the older man said nonchalantly, looking around the room. ‘Do they know what happened to her yet? Pooh, it stinks in here; old lady, cheap perfume and something else.’
‘Cat?’
‘Yeah, that’s it.’
Terrance Cope had walked to the window and picked up a book.
‘They don’t know why she collapsed,’ said Shaffer. ‘How would you know it’s cheap perfume?’ he asked, annoyed by the man’s assurance. As soon as he had asked the question he recognised its irrelevance.
‘I wouldn’t know, but it’s been sprayed around liberally and you wouldn’t do that with the expensive stuff.’
‘I suppose not.’
Having read the spine of the book Cope tossed it onto a chair and picked up an ornament which he put back down immediately and with an almost equal disdain.
‘I’m paying £250 a month,’ he said. ‘What does she charge you for your rooms?’
‘A little more,’ Shaffer replied non-committally, annoyed at the man’s attitude. ‘I don’t have the low ceilings you’ve got up there under the roof.’
‘No, I suppose not. Or the seasonal temperature fluctuations.’
‘Quite.’
The man had crossed the room and tried to walk past Shaffer into Miss Simpson’s bedroom.
‘I was about to leave and lock up.’
‘Really? Give me a chance to have a quick nose around, would you. I’d like to see what kind of person my landlady is. For some reason I find her quite fascinating.’
‘That’s hardly fair.’
‘No, but she’s not here to know,’ he said, and then, once he had disappeared from Shaffer’s view he said, ‘Blimey.’
Annoyed, Shaffer went back into the bedroom and found the man staring at one of the photos.
‘What a looker.’
‘I assume it’s Miss Simpson when she was younger.’
‘That old whale?’
‘She’s let herself go a bit.’
‘I should say. But blimey, she was amazing in her day.’
‘Look, I’ve got to go. Come on out, will you, so I can lock up?’
‘Hold on, there’re more photos. They’re from my era, you know. I don’t recognise her, but then, if you remember the sixties, they say, you couldn’t’ve been there.’
The man had moved on to the next photo and was equally appreciative.
‘Please, I want to lock up,’ Shaffer repeated.
‘So, what are you taking her?’ he asked. Shaffer knew the question was a ploy so that he could continue to examine the photographs.
‘Her dressing gown,’ he replied. ‘Oh, and a cardigan.’
He saw it draped over the arm of a chair and stuffed it into the bag.
‘What else? She hasn’t got you taking in her underwear for her?’
‘No!’
The man put down the photo and looked around the room. He walked to the chest of drawers.
‘Look, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,’ Shaffer insisted, but the man ignored him. He opened up the top drawer.
‘Either you leave now…’ Shaffer threatened, but the new tenant laughed, closed the drawer and raised his eyebrows. He waited to see what the threat might be but then, almost instantly, he laughed again and started to walk out.
‘I was only interested,’ he said, ‘just like you.’
The episode upset Shaffer. He was angry at the casual way that the man had behaved in Miss Simpson’s flat, and especially in her bedroom. It had been rude and intrusive. Shaffer was also irritated by the suggestion that he was just as interested in looking around as the man had been.
Shaffer told himself that he was annoyed because he was in a position of trust and should not have allowed the new tenant inside the flat. On the other hand, he argued, the man should not have behaved as he had done. It was because he didn’t want to have to mention the episode to Miss Simpson that he decided not to go into the hospital that morning. He left the visit until the afternoon, after school. He was able to walk the short distance, and hoped that perhaps he could just drop the clothes off without seeing Miss Simpson.
The hospital corridors were labyrinthine, but he found the women’s ward. Going up to the desk he couldn’t see any nurses, but Miss Simpson had already noticed him arriving from her bed at the far end. She beckoned him over, but he decided that he had to talk to a member of staff first. When the nurse appeared, looking suspicious, he explained who he was and why he was there. She took the bag from him and walked ahead, over to where Miss Simpson was sitting up in her bed.
‘Thank you Mr Shaffer,’ his landlady said at once. ‘They told me that you found me, and called the ambulance. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. And thank you for feeding my cat and collecting my things for me.’
They both watched the nurse disdainfully pull the cardigan out of the bag and smooth out the creases before folding it properly. She then shook out the crumpled dressing gown, shaking her head.
‘I’ve really got nobody else,’ Miss Simpson said quietly, making Shaffer’s stomach fall in an unpleasant way that he didn’t want to analyse.
‘Are you going to be all right?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. You see, the doctors can’t say why I collapsed. Modern medicine is all very clever…’
‘But if they don’t know what it is they’re treating?’
‘They’ll get to the bottom of it,’ said the nurse abruptly.
‘Of course,’ said Miss Simpson carefully. She turned to Shaffer but her attention was on the nurse. ‘It is a little presumptuous of me to ask you do these things.’
‘It’s no trouble at all,’ he repeated.
‘The staff here were concerned when I said you could go into my flat. I assured them that I’ve known you for twenty years and you’re completely trustworthy.’
‘Have I been your tenant that long?’
She assured him that he had, and that Mr Miles had been there for longer before his recent departure. Shaffer was aware that they were waiting for the nurse to finish at the bedside cupboard. When she had left Miss Simpson lowered her voice and said:
‘Something did happen in my flat, just before I passed out. I mentioned it to the doctors but they said that I was probably going in and out of consciousness; hallucinating. I got the impression it was best not to mention it to them again.’
Shaffer was about to ask if it was something to do with the new tenant, but she surprised him by asking, ‘Do you know what it means to see your doppelgänger, Mr Shaffer?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I read somewhere that it portends death.’
‘I wouldn’t know. Why do you ask?’
She looked around theatrically and said in a whisper that was as loud as her usual speaking voice, ‘Because I think I saw mine just before I passed out. My doppelgänger was there, in my house, just as though I was looking in a mirror.’
‘Goodness.’
‘So you don’t believe me either?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
To Shaffer’s relief another nurse came over an
d said that she had to take a blood sample. She explained to Shaffer that he was welcome to stay and wait, but he was pleased to use her as an excuse to leave. He assured Miss Simpson that he would check on her cat daily, and hastily retreated. He was relieved to retrace his path through the maze of corridors and told himself that at least Miss Simpson’s strange delusion meant that they had kept away from the subject of the new tenant.
Miss Simpson was discharged from hospital on the Saturday afternoon, after three days. It was as his clock chimed two that Shaffer heard the car draw up and looked down from his window to see it parked outside on the double yellow lines. He could see his landlady get out, clutching her handbag. She waited while the driver went to the boot and brought out another small bag for her.
Shaffer had replaced the bottle of milk in Miss Simpson’s fridge that morning before taking the keys back to her in the hospital. Ever since his return home he was meant to have been preparing lessons for the following week, but he was feeling restless. He decided to give Miss Simpson a couple of hours to settle in and then would go down and make sure she didn’t need anything else.
He listened out for any movement upstairs. For a couple of days he had heard nothing and he wasn’t sure if anybody was up there at all. In the past Shaffer had been able to hear Mr Miles moving about in his flat, going from room to room. He was always fairly quiet and Shaffer had found the little sounds vaguely reassuring. He had been listening out for the new tenant, ready to be irritated by the slightest sound, but none had come. As he sat marking homework he strained to hear the slightest sound and was still annoyed that nothing was forthcoming. He found himself being unforgiving of the mistakes that he found in the exercise books before him. After twenty years of teaching it suddenly seemed to him a personal affront that his pupils were still making the same stupid errors; he was unable to see them as a progression of young people who were learning, albeit slowly. He pictured them as an unmoving, dull mass that, if not wilfully ignorant, was at least intent on being that way just to annoy him personally.
Eventually Shaffer got up from his work. He couldn’t shake the idea that Terrance Cope was so quiet upstairs because he was waiting for something. Shaffer imagined that he might have been waiting for the return of Miss Simpson and he suddenly felt worried about her. He also felt strangely proprietorial; he didn’t want the other tenant to get any credit for being the first to check on her.
Leave Your Sleep Page 22
