Deep Sleep

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘Well,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘Give her a chance. To get wherever she was going. She’s probably been ringing you while you’ve been wasting your time here. Go on home. I’ll check in with you later.’

  There was a mocking, cheerful quality to Duncan’s salute.

  Bailey wondered as he often did about the true parameters of responsibility. Or, more precisely, whether he should have told his constable that Kimberley Perry had not met her son outside school: they had not gone home to be turned away from the street where they lived, herded to safety with the rest. The nagging unease which had afflicted him ever since he had waited outside the school gates, grew into alarm, and he wished he could trust Duncan enough to tell him he had made an assignation of sorts with his wife, without provoking hostility and suspicion. Duncan, if he thought at all, had long since concluded there was little enough reason to preserve his own safety; he was brave at the worst of times, and running into a street threatened by a bomb would not have troubled him in the slightest. Bravery. Duncan had always been content to act as the battering ram because he never foresaw that anything untoward might follow. Life was a joke to Duncan, the man who laughed until he cried, nothing between the extremes, but still he deserved to know something that might affect his family. There was no time for these considerations. Bailey knew he might regret what he said or did: he felt the prospect of regret like a breath on his face, and all the same, kept silent.

  ‘Go home,’ he repeated. ‘I’m sure she’s safe as houses.’ And realised as he spoke what a bad analogy this was in the face of a ton of explosive poised to destroy whole streets. Duncan, who knew nothing of such subtleties, went, and in watching his progress out into the dark, Bailey’s irritation was greater than his conscience. Duncan had nothing else to do with his evening. He could have stayed to help with the other volunteers: they needed people simply to talk, could have done with a troupe of entertainers. Thinking of one of Helen’s opinions, Bailey smiled to himself. Not all policemen are born philanthropists, while those who are get it driven out of them.

  ‘Scuse me, sir.’ A voice at his elbow, literally from that level, the woman behind the voice tiny and bent, plucking his sleeve like a child, gentle but insistent. ‘Scuse me, but where can I make a phone call? Got to tell my daughter …’ He used his portable phone for her, watching the colour rise in the excitement of yet more novelty. Then, as an afterthought, he dialled Kimberley Perry’s number. Bailey logged almost any phone number he had used in the last week into the bank of his memory, and pressed out the numbers without the slightest trouble. The line was engaged. He stood still, ignoring another plucking at the sleeve, his mind distracted but clinging to words. What did a man mean when he said there was no reply? Did he mean the phone rang without response, or did he mean the phone was engaged? What would a literal man like Duncan have meant? A man of Duncan’s ilk would have meant what he said; no reply meant no reply, not any other sort of signal, however innocent. Bailey ran from the hall to see if Duncan might have delayed his departure, failed to start his damned car. The road outside was full, parked vans, well-meaning people, but no Duncan.

  Kimberley Perry was not aware of having knocked the bedside phone to the floor in that last removal of her reluctant body back to bed, might not have cared if she had known. The shining eyes of Philip Carlton, so at ease with the interior of this place he could function in the semi-dark, raked the half-covered body from one exposed foot to the tip of the head, failing to notice the cream receiver on the old carpet below within touching distance of two outstretched fingers. There was sufficient light in the room from the window: Kimberley liked daylight: she was overlooked by nothing other than the crane and her curtains were rarely drawn. In some token gesture to her mother’s principles, there were nets, saving nothing from anyone’s gaze, but obscuring her own view very slightly, as if she cared. Kimberley kept her place clean and that was all she did. Tom kept his room cluttered to make his home there. Philip Carlton looked at his assistant’s tidy room, sighed for no reason at all. Play your cards right, girl, and I’ll see you do better. Don’t wake, let me look at you.

  He pulled back the duvet, dropped it as if the material were red hot as she stirred, then opened and closed her mouth, silent words forming in sleep. Her head moved restlessly from one side to the other and with one abrupt heave, she turned on to her back, one arm protectively across her breast, fingers splayed over the nipple, an ineffective covering. Then she lay as still as before, but although he knew how much any human being will move in sleep, he had not bargained for the shock. Pip’s store of scientific knowledge intervened into his mesmerised mind, posing questions and answers. Does a woman partially anaesthetised turn or toss? Had she neglected any of the tea her politeness had obliged her to drink? Could she, in the meantime, have been sick, discharging with the vomit that which made her sleep deeper? He removed himself to the door of the room, came back inside noisily, walking with the businesslike step of an innocent man in case she should wake. Kimberley remained as she was. A slight snore escaped from her perfectly receptive throat. He considered that.

  All the impedimenta were in the same kind of white polythene bag they used for heavier prescriptions. So prosaic, he had always thought, to sniff the stuff of dreams from a household duster kept in a polythene bag. He withdrew a bottle labelled dry cleaning fluid from the bag, unscrewed the top and poured a little on to the folded duster which glowed bright in the dim room. There was no other colour apart from the reflected glory of the Christmas crane. Pip did not notice the tiny buzzing sound from the phone, tempted as he was to raise the chloroform cloth to his own nostrils. Instead he bore the cloth towards her face, kept it there for her to breathe. Then paused again, lost in a kind of wonder, put the cloth on the coverlet, squatted by the side of the bed and began to stroke her. A tentative stroking at first, his hand hovering above the warmth of her belly, the palm skimming skin, his fingertips amazed by the texture. Then he inserted his whole hand between her thighs, shocked at the heat of her, stunned into the awareness of where he was and why. A little more on to the cloth, held above her face, not touching such a perfect face with the cheeks as flushed as if she had come in from the cold. Deep sleep, my lovely, and quiet breathing.

  Something in the scent afflicted her; the young body warned her sleeping brain not to ignore it, waking her in time for a brief but terrifying protest. The hand which had lain on one breast joined the other to push away the smell, fluttering weakly while her back arched in a spasm of disgust, her knees bent to raise themselves so that her feet were inches from her torso and trembling. Futile protest. Pip adjusted himself on the bed, held her firmly by the hair and kept the duster over her mouth.

  ‘Shhhh, darling, shhhhh. Sweet sleep, sleep tight.’ Strange murmurings emerged from his own throat, reminding him of Margaret, their various stores of non-consequential words and revolting endearments. Kim’s automatic protest faded as abruptly as it had begun. One hand fell on the pillow alongside her hair: the other jerked back towards the floor. Her legs flopped open with the heels still close. Pip sniffed the cloth. With automatic care, he placed it on top of the polythene bag, felt the rising of manhood in his trousers, touched himself briefly, looked down at Kimberley and at himself with enormous pride. He thanked God there was time to contemplate the wonder of both. Silence and time. Sweet sleep, my lovely. There is more of this.

  Tombo’s legs were numb. The gravel embedded in the one knee that was slightly less frozen than the other was a relic of an earlier playground struggle which had not hurt at the time. The silence was even more profound: he felt he could lean out and cut the darkness with a knife. The comforting mumble of traffic on the distant Whitechapel Road was so much a part of his breathing as to offer nothing. Quite suddenly, out of the emptiness came the bravery of desperation, because all the things which had seemed to matter in the halcyon late afternoon did not matter now. Such as being caught. Such as being the only person left alive. Such as Mum clutching the bom
b or having gone somewhere else, or Dad never coming to look for him. Piglets, bums, bastards, shit shit shit: there did not seem anything to lose. Tom expressed his contempt for his own immobile cowardice by standing straight and directing the stream of his urine on to the bin which had sheltered him. Amazing how far the flow travelled: he could have won any competition with that and impressed many eyes, yes he surely could, and the sound was amazing too, like a steaming waterfall which fell to earth with a hiss. No one came near. No one could bear to come near a performance like that, but apart from manifold other needs, he needed to do the big stuff too. Nothing urgent, but his own fastidious habits forbade him to relieve himself here. Even in the privacy of a clean toilet equipped with copious quantities of paper, he could not bear the evidence of his own crude digestion.

  Well, go home then, silly billy. You’ve got a key, all you have to do is wait. If anyone else is alive, they’ll phone, but I hope Uncle Pip is dead. Why anyone as remote and disliked as Uncle Pip should swim into his mind was beyond him. There were a few others whose disappearance from the scene would not have disturbed a night’s sleep either: Pip was simply the one whose demise was most devoutly wished. Even against large Larry of the playground, Mrs Beale and the Parade mob, and quite a gang otherwise, Pip was foremost as an object of hate. Tombo wished he had been pissing on Pip, dismissed that thought as more than faintly shameful, the joke better than the doing, stood even straighter and emerged from his hiding place. He tried to shout, but the shout refused to arrive. He looked up at the crane and dimly remembered some story about a star in the east, Christmas legends watered down at school because of his Pakistani contemporaries’ lack of interest. He wondered if he should behave like the three kings and follow the crane on to the building site which he and Daniel had so admired. He would have company there. He went into the middle of the service road instead and tried to whistle in the dim hope that something, even a dog, would emerge and claim him. There was a cat, Mrs Kennel’s mangy moggy, which emerged in a distinct black and white streak, howling in abandonment. For the first time in their few encounters, Tom knew what the cat meant and wanted to embrace it. She sat for a moment, distant from him, level with his own house, gesturing contempt from forty paces, and, using her as his guide, he walked towards home. The satchel with the frayed strap was carried across his chest, red satchel, plain as a pikestaff, but nobody saw. At both ends of the road, tapes flickered neon yellow. Not all of the windows were dark: some rooms had been left lit. Tom was grateful for the lights: he had not known they were there or he might have looked sooner for that stray comfort, but he knew the rooms behind those benign electric eyes were as empty as his pockets. The steps he took were solid and slow: he felt for the handrail announcing the stairs to the flat, paused to kick a stone under his foot. The flat was dark as pitch, but, from indoors, he imagined he could see the flickering light of a torch.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HELEN was aware of becoming a nuisance, and did not care. The operation scar gave small stabs of recrimination for being ignored, nothing important. She had decided on the way across the city that being a nuisance, even being branded ‘interfering cow’, was better than the guilt which always attended indifference and felt like cowardice. Bailey’s caution was another matter: he would often advocate doing nothing; if in doubt, do not buy, or move: impetuosity makes a good target for a sniper. You do not always achieve much by your addiction to movement. But in movement was comfort; in self-restraint, none.

  It was not, of course, quite as unpremeditated as that. She had phoned the number given on the news, found out where some of the refugees from Herringbone Parade might possibly be and in another injudicious call where she had been content for once, to pose as Mrs Bailey, gained some clue from a sergeant as to Bailey’s whereabouts. He was with the men, three St John Ambulance, two of his own, loading tins of soup from a van into the kitchen of a new community hall ugly enough for this patched part of the world. Helen slung her bag across her chest and joined the queue, so inconspicuous that Bailey had passed her a box before he noticed. He sighed in exasperation, relieved her of the burden, and walked into the hall without a word. She followed him.

  ‘Anything I can do?’ A careless invitation with a shrug of the shoulders. Take it or leave it.

  ‘Probably. Quite a few things other than carrying heavy stuff three weeks after your operation. Why did you come?’

  ‘I don’t know. What a pointless question. Because it was Herringbone Parade. Because you were here. Coincidentally, because of that damn chemist and doctor talking about war. Is this the only shelter?’ She was looking round, alert and interested. He usually responded better if she was very casual and she liked to pretend he could be fooled.

  ‘Nope, just the largest. Most of them have gone to relatives. No sign of the chemist. Or his assistant or her son.’

  ‘And the bomb?’

  ‘Very dangerous indeed, possibly the biggest ever. Crazy, after forty-five years. Area isolated, no patrol cars, no uniform, no nothing at the moment. I’d like to go and look for Kimberley Perry. It doesn’t make sense.’ He was talking half to himself and Helen recognised the symptoms. Signs of unease, that reserve before action she so loathed but still admired. Fretful signs of involvement in a Bailey more familiar than the manager he had become.

  ‘What doesn’t make sense?’

  ‘Kimberley Perry. She didn’t answer her phone to Duncan soon after they’d all been herded out. When I tried half an hour ago, the phone was engaged.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Go and look, as soon as I’m allowed. Got to wait: I’m not in charge. In a minute or two.’

  ‘No,’ said Helen. ‘You will not, do you hear me? You’ll do no such thing.’

  ‘Helen …’

  ‘No. You’d make a lovely corpse, but no, not that kind of corpse. All smashed up. Don’t go.’

  ‘I’ll think about it. I can’t immediately. Listen, if you want to be useful, go on. The practical angles are all covered here, enough food, etcetera. Go and talk to some of these old ones. Tell them their cats and dogs are going to be all right. That’s what we need, someone to chat, reassure. Lie as much as you like.’

  ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  There was a clear division of labour then. Men did the practical things, providing beds, blankets and food; women offered the succour. No one was dying. There was a sense in the hall of absolute safety while Helen, the easy talker, joined the women and did as she was told. Warmth seeped in and out of old bones and into the air. Once in a while, she stepped out into the cold in order to remember what cold was and to check, like an anxious hen, for Bailey. Heard with her sharp ears what the evacuees were not supposed to hear. About steam being used on a bomb, and no one, but no one being allowed to move.

  Pip was aware of a faint hissing sound from outside. Half an ear registering some unfamiliar sound which was neither threatening nor any more alien then the kettle boiling in the dispensary for yet another cup of tea. His hands were still playing and he had no sense of time. Winter nights stretched from the middle of the afternoon until the morning beyond, a time of almost unbroachable darkness, making all thought of time irrelevant. Nothing moved but the bosom of his beloved, rising and falling, insensitive to his touch as he stroked her nipples and felt them harden, a sensation beneath his hands which made him laugh. So strange, so shaming: a woman would remain on heat even in the grave. This part of them never died, and something in this made him think of her as animal. So different from the wizened, black-dressed mother he had buried with such relief, hoping the interment was a route to freedom. Sweet dreams and quiet breathing, and then, dear God, she moved again. Pip was so shocked this time at Kimberley’s violent stirring, he did not know for a moment whether what lay before him was indeed a sleeping beauty or a corpse. He leapt up from his knees where he had been praying by the bed, and swore softly and obscenely in a manner which would have made his mother faint. The
n he seized the duster in a trembling hand, draped it over the wire mask, placed the whole ensemble over Kim’s head, and held it there while he dripped more chloroform from the bottle. She had stopped moving before these manoeuvres were complete; the heave had been no more than an aberration, nothing real; no indication of intolerance. After a minute or two, Pip removed the mask and placed it on the floor. His trembling ceased and his smiling resumed. He began to stroke her hair, crooning to himself, stopped for a moment and raised the yellow duster to his face. He had come to love this perfume, breathed deep, fondled himself inside the unzipped trousers, gasped. A roaring in his ears, now, now, now. This is the time to discover. Now. Oh, my love.

  Tom had intended to let himself into the flat with as much noise as possible, whistling, singing and banging to make himself heard, ensuring that he would be greeted if there was anyone there, detected if there was anyone nearby, and, in any event, make himself bold by striking back at the weird silence. But the stillness had defeated him: more complete a silence than he had ever known, even with the hissing; an awesome stillness which demanded a respect which he had found himself unable to defy with his clattering footsteps. Instead he had tiptoed up the steps, holding his breath, and stood on the balconette under the light of the crane. He paused to see what he could see in the building site and found there was nothing but the glow, a shh-ing sound, the generator which was always alive. There were no voices, no indication of human life, as if someone had left the machinery and run away. Tom turned from the light in disappointment, put the key in the lock and entered his own house like a careful thief. Put his satchel down on the kitchen floor, stood for a minute, feeling foolish. The flat was small: kitchen merged into living-room, their own rooms fanning away. Both bedroom doors were open. Mummy’s white overall glowed on the sofa, visible in the light from the Parade which let him see since his eyes, used to the greater dark, adjusted easily.