The Hours Before Dawn (19 page)

‘However, they have managed in spite of themselves to give me a clue. The mother who has stolen my strong, dark baby is likely to be a woman with ginger hair. Or her husband is likely to have ginger hair. By that very clue, perhaps, I will track her down. Tomorrow I am officially an “Up” patient, and on one pretext or another I will prowl from ward to ward, from bed to bed, until I find her. I shall listen to the shrill, timorous gossip:
“Never again, my dear.” “Eleven hours of agony….” “Too weak even to sip the tea she gave me….” I shall listen to it all, and its thin cowardice will be threaded through with facts; with names; with times of births. I shall listen; I shall learn. And wherever that woman is, she will see me passing through her ward, up and down, on this or that innocuous errand, and she will not know that a pursuit more relentless than that of any bloodhound is beginning.’

And, of course, Louise had not known. But then, like many of the mothers, she had gone home on the fifth day, when the pursuit could hardly have been begun. She could not recall the dark, agonised figure that must have roamed like a ghost between the beds in her ward; but everything else became clear to her. The blue suitcase, with all its bold, foreign labels that had looked so out of place among the heavy, apprehensive young mothers in the Receiving Ward…. The brief glimpse Mark must have had of Miss Brandon as he hurried past at some visiting hour, scarcely registering on his mind at all at the time….

So clear was the whole story becoming that Louise scarcely knew now how much of it she was wresting from the gathering darkness of the pages before her, and how much was unfolding of its own accord in her own mind. She saw the list of names and addresses slowly, painfully assembled from ward gossip – from cautious questioning. She saw one name after another eliminated as it became clear that the baby was born too long before or after; or that it resembled one or other parent so closely as to rule out any doubt. She saw the short list of parents one or other of whom had the right coloured hair – ‘Red or Sandy’ it was headed. ‘
RE DORSANDY
’ – of course. She saw the bitter search intensified as Vera Brandon left the hospital, and felt the precious milk drying irrevocably in her breasts; she saw the visits to different homes; the desperate pretexts resorted to
in order to stay long enough to study both baby and parents. The sham application for a job at Frances Palmer’s, and the hope that was abruptly ended by the sight of the photographs in the bedroom, which proved beyond all argument the likeness between father and child. The pilgrimage to Mortlake Mansions, and the instant rejection of the doughy, unintelligent-looking infant displayed in the arms of Em. The meetings at Mrs Hooper’s, where Christine’s dirty but brightly intelligent little face had roused a spark of hope. Several other homes she had visited; and then, when hope seemed dim indeed, there came the discovery of the Hendersons. Vera Brandon had known that there was a ginger-haired husband whom she had not yet traced – she had noticed him in a blank unseeing way one evening before she had begun to suspect that her baby was still alive. Later, she could find out nothing about him. Louise had left the hospital by then, and neither she nor her husband seemed to have left any traces on the ever-dissolving annals of ward gossip. Vera Brandon could only remember that this
redheaded
father had been in the company of another man – a man whose tall, stooping figure and intellectual face had caught her attention. It was by a wonderful chance that, six months later, she had caught sight again of this stooping figure at a
lecture
. Cautiously she had scraped acquaintance with him, learned that his name was Dr Baxter, and extracted as much information as she dared about his redheaded friend. Further enquiries about the Hendersons in their own neighbourhood had revealed the fact that they were actually seeking a tenant for their top room. Here was a ready-made entrée into their house, with an opportunity to stay and study parents and child for as long as she pleased.

And then, oh then, how hope had piled on hope! A lovely dark baby boy, big and strong; unlike his parents and sisters; a mother who seemed unable to understand and manage him as
a real mother would surely have done. And, of all things, his name was Michael! Not that that had any logical bearing on the matter; and yet it seemed, somehow, like the hand of Fate.

And then the planning, the considering. Would it be best to challenge the Hendersons outright, to convince them that he was not theirs? Perhaps some detail on his birth certificate would incriminate them, if it could be found? Search their papers, then, while they are out. But it seems in order. What next? A direct challenge, without proof? But if that fails, then there will no longer, ever, be any hope of taking the child by stealth. His future disappearance would at once and inevitably be traced to Vera Brandon, and there would be no corner of the world where she could hope to hide him. But if no one knows that Vera Brandon feels any interest in the child…. If no one suspects…. If no one has the slightest inkling….

‘
April
6th.
But
does
she suspect?
Has
she any inkling?

‘I heard her talking to herself this morning in the kitchen, and it sounded, somehow, as if it might be about me. All day today I will sit in my room, silent, never scraping a chair, never creaking a board, for I feel certain that if she suspects anything she will come and search my room today. She thinks I am out. I have told her I am going to Oxford today – told her with so much circumstantial detail that she cannot but believe it. Though it seems I was wasting my time – she didn’t even know that our term was over – she thought I was going off to school as usual! Subterfuge is wasted on fools – I must remember this in future.

‘I will leave my door unlocked. I would like her to just walk in.

‘And if she does? If I find out that she does indeed suspect something of what I intend? Why, then, I shall confront her with my certainty – and who knows, she may simply give in! She gives in to everyone else, after all – “Yes, Mrs Philips,” “I’m sorry, Mrs Philips”…. Why not “Yes, Miss Brandon,”
“Here he is, Miss Brandon”? Why, it’ll be child’s play! I could reduce her to pulp in thirty seconds!

‘Reduce her to pulp! What a lovely phrase. It lingers on my pen. I watched her clumsily delving in that attic the other night, puffing and worrying over one of her footling little incompetencies. I stood in my doorway and watched her, and I thought how easily her little skull could be crushed – crushed like an ant in the midst of her joyless scurrying, and her snivelling little suburban life snuffed out.

‘For I watched her, that first evening, feeding my baby from her dreary, insensate breasts, with no joy in her face; while I stood there watching, my breasts seemed to tingle again even after all these months with a return of milk. The next night I tried to feed him, for I felt my milk had miraculously returned. But it was too late. He turned from my dry breast, sobbing and crying, and I too ran sobbing and crying up the stairs.

‘
April
7th.
She did not come. Once I fancied I heard the stairs creak but no one tried the door. I think she is not
suspicious
after all. I must be careful for a little longer, till after I have started my housekeeping job. I have told them that I have a baby; I must manage somehow that they see him soon.

‘I am glad now that I never went to the hospital authorities and accused them outright. What would they have done? Given me another sedative? No, that is the panacea for people in bed. What is the panacea for people who come bothering round the offices?

‘A form, of course. They’d have given me a form to fill in. “How many babies have been stolen from you?” “On what dates?” “What was your grandfather’s occupation?” …

‘No I am well clear of them, and my concerns are such as can find no place in their filing system. Black hatred need not be listed in Column A. Revenge need not be filled in in block capitals. Murder need not be stated in triplicate and countersigned
by a responsible householder, I have stepped tonight into a world that is still free.

‘
April
9th.
Such a fool for an enemy; such an incompetent fool! Once I thought it was hard to fight a fool – for who can calculate how or when they will fight back? But now she has played right into my hands. The whole neighbourhood knows that she sits up with the baby half the night and is so dazed with sleep that she scarcely knows what she is doing; and now I have seen to it that the police know it, too. She took Michael out in the pram last night. I watched them, I followed them, for I was afraid of what crazy thing she might do with him. But she only fell asleep on a park bench, and I might have taken Michael then and there; but I cannot risk him and myself
disappearing
at the same time. I have a better plan than that, a plan which will divert suspicion entirely. So I simply wheeled him home and put him to bed! What a fool she must have made of herself when she made all that outcry about him, and then he was found safe at home! Who will ever trust her
testimony
after this? What will the police think when, in a few days’ time, she claims that her baby has disappeared again? I have dropped a hint to her husband, but he is an odd,
inattentive
sort of fellow; I doubt if he took in my real meaning. So I had recourse to Mrs Morgan – an inspiration, that! Just a word about poor Mrs Henderson and her nerves … about her being found by the edge of a lake gabbling about a drowned baby. Good Mrs Morgan – I couldn’t leave it in better hands!

‘My little Michael; he must never know of all this. And yet, in my heart I hope that when he is a grown man he will
somehow
read these words, and know how his mother outwitted the whole fumbling, insensate lot of them!’

S
lowly it dawned on Louise that these last paragraphs, at any rate, were not the recollections and deductions of her own brain. She had been
reading
them. Reading them, though the light through the slates had faded to almost nothing half an hour ago. Reading them with no trouble at all, clear and black on the white paper….

How long, then, had the sharp yellow light been shining up through the hole in the plaster? Not, certainly, the whole time she had been here. When she had first reached for the diary, the hole had been a jagged blackness by her elbow. While she had been crouching here, absorbed – maybe half dreaming in the grip of that accursed drowsiness – someone had switched the light on in the room below. Someone had opened the cupboard door; had peered, perhaps, right up into Louise’s unconscious face; and had then silently crept away, leaving the cupboard door open, the light on.

Or had she crept away? Could she still be there, silent as a beast of prey, somewhere in the blaze of light below?

Louise lay very still. A few minutes ago she had been feeling such an ache of pity for this woman, it was odd that now she should be feeling such fear. Or was it odd? It’s something to do with her feeling she is so strong, thought Louise, with a confused
sense of having hit upon some eternal truth; and then a little flutter of falling dust made her check all further thought; as if even the movements of her brain might make a sound that could be heard from the room below.

For the room below was so quiet. Quiet as it would be if someone waited there, alone and purposeful. But quiet, too, as it would be if no one was there at all. As it would be if the occupant had simply gone away; gone downstairs to Michael’s room, and was even now wrapping him furtively in a blanket….

But when Louise reached his room, panting and half-choked with dust, she found Michael still in his cot, asleep. Beautifully, arrogantly, asleep, an utter abandonment of trust displayed in every outspread limb.

Dare she leave him, even for a moment, to go downstairs – to find Mark? But suppose Mark didn’t believe her – as he hadn’t believed her about the lost pram? Suppose he thought she had been dreaming again? Was overwrought – crazy? What a fool she had been not to have brought the diary with her as she clambered back over the rafters; but at the time there had been only one thought in her mind: to get to Michael.

Footsteps. Voices. Vera Brandon and Mark walking upstairs together.

‘Isn’t it a bit late?’ Louise heard Mark say; and then Vera Brandon’s voice, too low for Louise to hear her words, though the mounting, barely suppressed excitement was unmistakable.

Louise’s first impulse was to rush out on to the landing and pour out the whole story to Mark then and there, regardless of his companion. But even as she moved towards the door; she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Plaster in her hair. Black streaks of dust all over her white face and rumpled dress; her eyes wide with fear. She looked like a mad woman. Whatever doubts Miss Brandon was instilling into Mark’s mind about his
wife’s sanity would be reinforced a thousandfold by such an apparition. She hesitated….

They had reached the landing now.

‘Oh – well – just a few minutes, then.’ Mark’s voice came clearly to her. ‘Your coffee is something I can’t resist’; and a second later the footsteps had begun to mount the attic stairs. Miss Brandon’s door closed behind them.

Well, it was too late now. Anyway, it was far better to wait for a chance to talk to Mark alone. It would be well-nigh impossible to make the story sound plausible, let alone convincing, in Miss Brandon’s hostile presence.

Indeed, it was beginning to seem implausible even to Louise herself, now that the first shock was wearing off. Could she, somehow, have made some idiotic mistake about it all …?

She caught sight of herself once again in the mirror. Clearly, the first thing to do was to make herself fit to be seen; to wash her face, take off these dusty, plastery clothes. In fact, she might as well get into her nightdress and wait for Mark in bed. Their bedroom was right underneath Miss Brandon’s, so she would hear at once when Mark came out of her room. She could straight away run out and call to him. They would fetch Michael and settle him in the safety of their own bed, and then, secure from Miss Brandon’s denials and explanations, they could decide what to do.

Louise felt suddenly at peace as she reached this decision; and it was only after she had got into bed to wait for Mark that it dawned on her to wonder what, exactly, Vera Brandon would do now.

For she knew, now, that Louise had read the diary, there could be no doubt about that. Would she simply destroy the document, and then hope to convince Mark that Louise had made up or imagined the whole thing? That it was all part and parcel of her odd behaviour lately? But Mark surely would not
simply take her word for it against Louise’s without at least some sort of investigation? Besides, how could she destroy the diary – a stout, sturdy little volume – either now, with Mark up in the room with her, or later in the night when, having heard the story, he would certainly be asking and searching for this vital proof?

Well, what
would
she do, then?

As Louise lay there, listening to the murmur of voices and the faint padding of footsteps above her head, she felt a curious stiffening of her muscles – a something less than a throbbing in her head, and she knew that she was afraid.

But it was silly to be afraid. Soon Mark would know the whole story, and they could act together. Meantime, nothing could happen, not while he was himself upstairs with Vera Brandon. All the while she could hear voices through the ceiling, she was safe, and Michael was safe. There was nothing to worry about at all.

And the talk from up above showed no signs of ceasing. On and on it went … rising … falling … jolting up and down … up and down … like a carriage on a stony road….

Louise woke with a curious roaring in her ears, and her first thought was that there was a storm, and she was listening to the dying away of thunder. But no; it was only Mark, snoring beside her in the darkness. Snoring heavily – noisily – it was most unusual for him, and Louise lay listening stupidly,
half-dreaming
, and wholly forgetful of what had passed before she fell asleep. Forgetful and yet still somehow uneasy … what could be the matter?

Michael crying, of course. Michael crying because it was two o’clock in the morning, and the long night’s ritual must begin.

Dressing-gown. Stairs. Feed. Scullery. Louise had gone through the whole performance almost in her sleep before she
began, slowly, to recall the events of the previous evening. Her feet propped on the mangle, the tap dripping behind her, she began gradually to realise not only the danger, but also the absurdity of her situation. Upstairs, her avowed and deliberate enemy was planning who knew what; and here was she blindly, mechanically putting herself to great trouble to ensure that enemy a good night’s sleep! For that was the original point of these kitchen vigils – not to disturb the new tenant!

Ridiculous, then, to sit in this dank, tealeafy cold. She would take Michael upstairs at once, and soothe him in warmth and comfort….

Louise’s head had fallen forward a little as she reached this decision. Her shoulder, leaning against the draining-board, twitched slightly as she fancied herself reaching out for the banisters with her free hand. Her foot on the mangle stirred as she dreamed she set it on the first step of the stair. The tap dripped; the dim square of the barred window outlined the mistier darkness of the night; and if there was a sound from beyond the kitchen door; if there was the faintest whisper of an indrawn breath, then Louise did not hear it; for by now she was deep in her dream, the dream from which it seemed there could be no waking.

For the stairs went on and on. Flight after flight, winding up into a darkness that was not quite darkness, bringing her nearer and nearer to a nightmare that was not quite a nightmare; for even in her dream, she knew that this time the nightmare would be real.

The face would be there, its great teeth shown in tears or laughter; it could make no difference which, for the noise would be the same. A hissing noise, so faint, at first, that you might think it was your own weary breath as you plodded round the bends of the stairs. But soon you knew it was not so. It was another breath, and it was coming from above … hissing
through the bared teeth with a hatred that went beyond human speech. Louder it came, and louder; it was coming in coils now, in spirals, winding, pulling, dragging at your arms, your
shoulders
, loosening your fingers on the banister and smothering you in the sickly smell that you knew, now, was the smell of death; death, which would be a crashing for ever back down those thunderous stairs….

Louise gave a great cry as she woke, and jumped to her feet. But somehow it went wrong; for as she jumped the scullery floor swooped to meet her, and she heard the blow of stone against her skull.

She lay for a moment, wondering that she felt no pain. If you dream of falling, then you must wake before you hit the ground, or you will wake up dead! Which jovial uncle had it been who had stored her infant mind with this particular piece of lore? But he must have been right. That would explain why she felt no pain.

No, but this wasn’t a dream. The dream was over, she was back in the scullery, the place of wakening. But if she was awake, then why was there still the hissing and the roaring; why still the sickening, deathly smell…?

‘I’m being gassed!’

The suddenness of the realisation seemed to revive her, for she struggled to a sitting position; and in the same moment she knew that Michael was gone.

If only this thundering in her head would stop, then she would know how to find him. She staggered into the kitchen, and began to look for the door. Yes, to look for the door, although the light was on bright and full. All this tangle of chairs was the trouble; this whirl of legged and cornered wooden objects, banging, jabbing, twining round her ankles as she tried to move.

‘Mark!’ she tried to cry; but her voice seemed hoarse and
dream-like. ‘Mark!’ she cried again, louder; and this time a hand came over her mouth and she was pushed, light as a toy balloon, backwards into a chair.

Vera Brandon’s face swayed before her like a face deep down beneath rippling water.

‘It’s no use calling Mark,’ – the words came to Louise’s ears with a curious lilting quality, as the ringing in her head rose and fell: ‘It’s no use calling, I’ve seen to it that he will sleep soundly tonight – Oh, very soundly. No one will be surprised. You’ve done some very odd things lately, they all know that.’

‘Mark!’ screamed Louise again; ‘Mark! Mark!’ – and her voice seemed to gain strength as she fought with the hands that restrained her: ‘
MARK
!’

And then there came a tapping on the wall. Mrs Philips had been woken up again.

‘It will surprise no one,’ the relentless voice went on. ‘Drugging your husband, doing away with your baby, and then gassing yourself – it’s only what they’re all expecting!’

‘Doing away with my baby – what have you done?’ screamed Louise; and the tapping on the wall began again, more peremptorily. Vera Brandon laughed into her face.

‘Even while you’re being murdered, you’re still scared of annoying Mrs Philips!’ she mocked; and then: ‘He’s not your baby. He’s mine. You know that now.’

‘He isn’t! You’re crazy! Where have you got him? It’ll kill him – all this gas!’ Louise tried once more to get to her feet, but again the hard hand pushed her back.

‘Stay there, you poor little rat!’ hissed the voice above her. ‘I shall hold you here till you’re dead! It won’t take long to kill you, you poor, feeble thing. Gosh, it’s like drowning a kitten!’ …

Afterwards, Louise learned that the explosion had been heard from many streets away. She herself heard no sound. She
only saw the sheet of flame that leapt like a radiant blind across the window curtains, and then roared upwards and outwards into the night.

And then she was out in the hall … she was up the stairs…. The other woman was behind her … in front of her … behind her again, and there was a shouting and a crying, and Mark, half stupefied as he was, was out of bed, bundling the little girls downstairs.

Louise could not remember how she guessed that Michael would be in his cot. But he was there, rather white, and deeply sleeping.

Round and round in a great blanket she rolled him; and it seemed to her that other arms were rolling another blanket, right beside her, helping in some queer way. And the weight was nothing … nothing! She could float, she could skim with him through the smoke and down the stairs; so wonderful a thing is fear.

They were all out, all five of them; and the dressing-gowned neighbours were gathering like bees to listen to the crackling, to watch for the little spurts of flame.

‘Miss Brandon! Is she out? Has anyone seen her?’ cried Louise; and at the same moment they all saw her. Slowly, clumsily in the flickering light she was clambering over the sill of the attic landing window. In seconds, it seemed, a group of neighbours had a blanket outstretched.

‘Jump!’ they shouted. ‘Jump for it!’

But Miss Brandon would not jump. She seemed to be wrestling with some burden … something that would not come easily through the window….

‘Jump!’ yelled the crowd again. ‘Jump! Jump!’

But again the dark figure paused … struggled … and by now, by the flaring light from within, everyone could see with what she was struggling.

It was a bundle of bedclothes. Cot blankets – eiderdown – pillow.

‘Baby’s here! He’s safe!’ yelled Louise; and the crowd took up the cry:

‘He’s here!’ ‘He’s safe!’ ‘It’s only blankets!’ ‘Leave it!’ ‘Drop it!’ ‘Jump!’

Had Vera Brandon not heard? Or had she failed to understand the words? Or had she, in this last moment of her life, gone back to a time where speech has as yet no meaning; a time where the smell, the warmth of a baby’s sleeping place
is
the baby, for no words, no reason, have yet drawn lines this way and that across the material world?