The Night Following (22 page)

   “Grace, come and sit next to your uncle,”Evelyn said. “We’ll tackle t’washing up in a bit.”

Grace was still sitting on her chair at the dining table in the window, scowling. Uncle Les, enjoying his second cigarette after Sunday dinner, downed his glass of port and inspected his fingernails, buffing them absentmindedly against his lapel.

“Aye, come on over here, lass,”he said for the third or fourth time, patting the space next to him. “You know your old uncle doesn’t like you to sulk. Here, I’ve a bag o’chocolate éclairs somewhere.”

Grace sighed heavily but then obeyed, slipping off her chair silently. Evelyn frowned and carried on knitting. She knew Grace moved quietly on purpose, so that Evelyn wouldn’t know where she was. It was two or three years since she had allowed her mother to hug her. Grace had always been a private, reticent child, but why had she, at fifteen, grown so distant and secretive?

The settee creaked a little as Grace sat down. Uncle Les cleared his throat. The clock ticked on the mantelpiece and Evelyn’s needles clicked. Evelyn heard the whisper of clothing, then a soft squirming sound, followed by a sigh. Grace must be settling herself and relaxing. Maybe her mood would improve. She smiled.

“Anybody fancy having the wireless on?”she asked.

Uncle Les coughed and the settee creaked again. “Nay, never mind for Grace and me,”he said. “Gracie’s got her homework to do, hasn’t she?”

“I needn’t do it now,”Grace said in a low voice. “Later will do.”

Uncle Les tutted. “Now, now, lass,”he said, “if it’s there to be done, it’s best tackled, eh? While I’m here to help.”

Evelyn frowned. Grace was ungrateful. It was kind of Uncle Les to take such an interest in her education. He had bought her a desk and chair for her little bedroom, and every Sunday he would spend at least an hour with her there, going over her homework. He admitted that history and science were not his forte, but anything to do with figures and he was a dab hand.

“I don’t want to,”Grace said petulantly. “I don’t feel well. My stomach hurts. Here.”

“Eh?”Uncle Les said sharply. “What’s up?”

“You’ve had a bit too much dinner, I expect,”Evelyn said brightly. “Best ignore it, it’ll pass.”

“Mother, I’ve hardly ate anything,”Grace said, her voice tightening. “I feel sick an’all.”She suddenly burst into tears.

“Why, Grace, whatever is the matter, love?”Evelyn cried.

“There’s something bad in my stomach!”

Uncle Les stood up. “Come on, Gracie,”he said with authority. “Give over, now, you’re upsetting your mother. That’s enough excuses. Homework’s got to be done. No, Evelyn, you leave this to me. Gracie, upstairs with you. Now.”

Later, Uncle Les came down alone. He stood in front of the fire as he spoke, a sure sign that he meant to be taken seriously.

“Evelyn, love, I’ve had words with little Gracie. She is a bit under the weather.”

“Under the weather? She’s only a young lass! Maybe she could do with an iron tonic.”

“An iron tonic won’t do owt,”Uncle Les said. “Iron tonic’s not what’s called for.”

“I’ll have to get t’doctor to her, then.”

“Nay, there’s no call for that! There’s nowt wrong with her a rest won’t put right. Now, I know a nice little place just out of Blackpool. Quiet, family run. Folk go there for all sorts, you get a proper pick-me-up—a sea cure plus all your home comforts. Mrs. Hibbert used to swear by it. A week there’ll do Grace a power o’good. And it’s on me, it’ll not set you back a penny.”

Evelyn bit her lip. “But if she’s poorly she needs the doctor. And a whole week off school?”

“Well, she’s leaving anyroad come Whitsun, i’n’t she? A week won’t make a scrap of difference. Fresh air, all mod cons. Do her good.”

Evelyn considered. “Well, it does sound nice. These young girls, they do go at everthing so, these days. They outgrow their strength. Maybe she could do with a rest.”

“Aye, that’s the way to look at it. ’Course, goes wi’out saying I’d like for you to go with her, like, the both of you, treat yourselves.”Evelyn gasped with astonishment. “But another time, eh? With t’shop to mind,”Uncle Les went on, “it can’t be done.”

“Oh, well, no!”Evelyn exclaimed. “It’s right kind of you to treat our Grace. I’m ever so grateful, Uncle Les.”

Les took his leave soon afterward instead of staying on for tea. Evelyn was touched at how concerned he was about Grace and told herself again what a blessing he was. He contiued to provide them with a home even when their shop earnings were, as he told them, the poorest of all his five concerns. It worried Evelyn that Grace seemed to resent his generosity. In fact, she couldn’t get a civil word out of the girl on the subject of Uncle Les. Her shyness of him had deepened into a kind of sullen dislike, if not actual fear. Evelyn would have to talk to her about it, when she was back from Blackpool and feeling better. Grace was becoming a young woman, far too old for such bad manners.

Evelyn knitted on alone by the fire, worrying about Grace and wishing she were the kind of mother to whom a young girl would bring her troubles, as she always had to her own dearly remembered Mam.

The following Saturday evening when Uncle Les called for the earnings, Grace was no less sullen but she was ready with her case packed. Evelyn hadn’t known what to put in, not that Grace owned anything in the way of clothes for a seaside holiday, anyway. Les bundled her into the car and reassured Evelyn that she needn’t worry, Grace wouldn’t want for anything. This place in Blackpool laid on everything and at the end of the week she’d be right as rain again.

27 Cardigan Avenue
Dear Ruth
Well—couldn’t help letting Mrs. M and the nurse in on it, when they made reference to clean clothes—blank stares all round, they just can’t grasp it. Legs no bundle of laughs, by the way.
Anyway, on the face of it of course it is quite unbelievable. But I’ve got the evidence of my own eyes. Not to mention the clothes. Never thought it possible, I always was the skeptic where any kind of hocuspocus was concerned.
You were the one for all that—airy-fairy, I called you, remember? Then you’d say, We don’t know what lies beyond, can’t you just keep an open mind, Arthur?
I don’t remember you ever saying you would definitely come back if it so happened you went before me, but I don’t remember you didn’t, either. We didn’t dwell on that sort of thing, did we? I suppose I thought there would be time for that kind of talk when we got older.
Anyway there’s something in it, obviously, all this “other side”stuff. I don’t pretend to know what. Don’t need to, seeing’s believing and it improves things no end.
Thank you.
Not that I wouldn’t appreciate you leaving me a line or two, just to confirm the above.
By the way—that story of yours, it’s taken an odd turn, hasn’t it? The young girl and that old uncle (filthy animal), that’s a bit off-color surely, or am I reading too much into it?
That’s not a criticism, I just didn’t think your mind worked that way. Also, no mention of Overdale since Chapter 8, and that does seem a pity. I’ve found the whole albums of Overdale, why did they go up to the attic in the first place?
Is that all there’s to be of Overdale in the whole story? I always thought Overdale would make a very interesting setting. Still, up to you. What’s going to happen next is what I want to know.
Read on, you’d be saying…in fact I can just hear you. I
can
hear you.
Arthur

The next night was quite different, cloudy but dry and calm. When I took out the muddy clothes and sheets I’d had to wash again and put them on the line, I heard some night bird croaking not far away, a round throaty call that opened out as if it were sounding across a long, empty lake, though there was no such expanse of water anywhere nearby. That’s how still it was.

The other difference was that I entered the house knowing that I was expected. I didn’t watch from the shed or garden and wait until he was occupied upstairs. That seemed an unnecessary formality now. Besides, I had a lot to do. There was enough washing and ironing to keep me occupied and of course I was behind with the general cleaning after my blitz on the laundry. Whenever I could, I paused at the foot of the stairs from time to time and caught sometimes a moving shadow from above. I longed to be shown more. Should I be afraid for him? All that talk in the letters about his legs, and the night before there had been something abject in the set of his shoulders as he walked in pain away from me. I was desperate to know he was all right.

But the darkness that surrounded us would, in time, open other channels by which I would learn all I needed to know. In darkness I was tuned to him in ways impossible in the light. As I went about my work, I detected echoes in the rest of the house; he, too, was allowing himself the wish to find out more, to see me again, even to pine a little. As the hours passed, this desire to understand each other formed itself into a certain shy and rhythmic etiquette. The creaking above me meant that Arthur was walking the floors with consideration for what I could hear. I hummed under my breath when he was within earshot and he sighed when he sensed I was listening. When I was tired from bending to unload the washing machine and paused to stretch for a moment, I could tell he was turning from a window and inclining his head toward me in a soft gesture of thanks.

I felt no need to hurry through my tasks, so when I came across the letters I stopped and reread them carefully before tidying them into some order, which I knew would anyway be short-lived. They would be scattered everywhere again in no time, not that I minded. Parts of them seemed written by a different Arthur from mine, not my dreamy, considerate, placid Arthur. It was obvious that daylight made him crazy, too, and at the core of our night companionship was a silent agreement that all we were doing was taking sensible steps to avoid it.

Neither of us felt quite the same need for silence anymore. He was shutting and opening cupboards. If I closed a door, he closed one, too. When I started work in the hall I knew he would be loitering around the top of the stairs and picking up the forward-backward drone of the vacuum cleaner. Maybe he was able to imagine its little winking darts of green and red light sweeping across my feet, and the stiff to-and-fro reflection of my moving body, snipped into hundreds of diamonds breaking and merging in the pattern of the front door glass. Sometimes as I went about I sang, and I knew he would be catching the melody and trying to memorize it, so that one night soon he could whistle it back.

In this manner we passed through and around the house all night. He never came very close nor did I go upstairs to him, yet each of us knew the maneuvers of the other. We had become partners in a dance that kept us wordlessly apart and yearning, yet we could not keep from its magnetically sad and restive oscillations. All those imagined movements of the other, turning and returning through every mesmeric step and measure though never joining, were part of us now.

27 Cardigan Avenue
Dear Ruth
A new complexion on things altogether!
Woke up today and actually felt myself smile. Could tell by how it felt that I hadn’t done that in a long while, so went to bathroom mirror just to check I really was smiling. A test, if you like, to see if I was really here. Face quite a surprise! Who’s that old thin hairy man? Then I heard you say, It’s you, Arthur. Heard your voice clear as anything. In a manner of speaking, I mean.
You said, It’s you, dear. Don’t worry.
Don’t worry! It’s a bit late for that, I thought. Though I must have said it, because the lips in the face on the mirror were moving.
I hadn’t appreciated how long I’d let slide between shaves. But I got your message, looking in the mirror there.
A beard quite suits you, that’s what you were saying, wasn’t it? Never saw you with a beard in all these years and it’s quite a novelty, but no need to get rid of it on my account, I don’t mind it at all, dear. You had longish hair when I met you. And the sideburns! You wore them as long as the Education Authority would allow its staff to have them in those days.
I admit that just then I laughed at the mirror and wondered if I was going crazy—because wouldn’t a madman hearing voices look exactly like me? But I was wise to that in a flash—that was just me, trying to trip myself up. That old face in the mirror was having a bit of a joke with me, I could see it in
HIS
eyes. I could see myself clearly. My Self. Besides which, I’m sure I heard your voice. And why would you say you didn’t mind the beard unless that was what you meant?
I know you meant it!! I’m just double-checking.
I plan to go more carefully from now on. About how much I say about all of this. Not everybody could deal with it, could they? I do see that. To a certain kind of person it seems rather nutty—for instance the Mrs. M’s of this world. She’s not a sensible woman under that surface. She goes jumping to all the wrong conclusions—she specializes in wrong conclusions, two and two always making five.
So I’ll try harder to keep a wide berth. She seems to have got the message I’m catching up on my sleep in the daytime. None of her business if I choose to get on with things at night, I told her to her face. It’s still a free country. I’ve stood at the window often enough and watched her watching the house, though. One of these days I’ll stick my tongue out. Or worse.
Things are changing for the better. I’m feeling much more like my old self, thanks to you, dear.
Or maybe that should be new self.
Arthur

I arrived at the house the next night and went straight in. The kitchen was messy again so I began my routine clear-up, noting chocolate biscuit wrappings and a couple of empty custard cartons; I remember thinking I would have to address the matter of his diet. But I didn’t notice anything odd. Although I was quiet I was careless, reveling in the ease and naturalness of my new arrangements. I felt sure that wherever Arthur was in the house, he knew I had arrived. I loved the silence and distance of his company. I was looking forward to my next task; I planned to go upstairs and tackle the rooms there, knowing I might hear a murmur in the dark, catch a glimpse of his back through a doorway or feel the warmth of his breath at a spot where he had lingered for a moment. So the first thing I did was put on the kettle to make him some tea and then I began to go through the clean linen, sorting it into piles for the airing cupboard that I expected would be on the landing or in the upstairs bathroom. What was it that penetrated my optimistic mood? I didn’t hear a sound. But suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck rose, and I knew something was wrong.