Report on Probability A (10 page)

Hanging on a level with his chest was a hammock made of canvas, its two ends threaded with ropes that ran out to two of the low cross-beams, looping through two thick metal rings that hung over two nails knocked into the first and second of the three cross-beams. Drooping over the two sides of this hammock were the corners of two grey blankets, their edges bound up with red wool, and an arrangement of sacks strung or stitched together with garden twine. Placing his two arms inside the hammock, S bent his knees and sprang upwards, hauling himself into the hammock.

When he was in the hammock, and it had ceased to swing, he sat up and untied the laces of his shoes. Removing first the left shoe and then the right, he dropped them down onto the floor, where the indentations on the planking formed an arrangement of shades, some almost straw-coloured, some more of a dark sienna shade where dirt had rubbed into the wood; the effect to an unfocused eye was reminiscent of a woman's hair. The two shoes rolled and lay together, their toecaps touching, at an angle of ninety degrees; the left shoe lay with its sole exposed. The sole was worn in the middle and frayed round the sides. The toecap of the right shoe was battered. The two shoes lay together. They formed a chance arrangement on the floor. Underneath them ran the tawny planks of the floor. They touched the floor at a number of points; they touched each other at the toes. The shoes lay directly below the downward-directed eye of the man, until he turned away and lay down.

Beneath his head, S arranged more comfortably a small body that served him as pillow. This body, which was beige in colour, had attached to it a head made to represent a species of bear. The representation was less exact than it had been when the animal was newly fashioned, since it lacked both ears and an eye. The body also had undergone a change with age; not only had its contours been flattened and softened; its arms and legs were lost, their former positions being indicated by four holes in the beige material through which woody and fibrous stuffing protruded. The man arranged this object to serve as a pillow, pressing his head back against the flaccid stomach of the bear, so that its head nodded above his own, and appeared to stare into the room with its one remaining brown glass eye.

The man's gaze rested upon the roofing above him, where many parallel rough hewn beams ran down from the thick centre beam to the side walls, supporting curling orange tiles. Some of the tiles were chipped; some had slipped from their original position. Light spread between the tiles, coming in the cracks and widening into bands of bright whiteness that tended to obscure the tiles.

The man's gaze became more diffused. His eyelids descended over his eyes and he slept.

Once he moved in his sleep, turning his head towards his right shoulder. The movement caused the bear to move its head slightly too. His breathing became slower and more grating as it passed over his dry palate; its susurration was audible in the silent room.

When he woke, his gaze took in a stove that stood near the central cross-beam. It was black, although on its grills, vents, slides, spinwheels, patent pokers, and other protrusions rested a thin film of dust that was light grey in colour.

S swung two stockinged feet over the side of the hammock and slid to the floor, planting his feet on the planking a few centimetres from his shoes. He sat on the floor and put the shoes onto his feet. He laced the shoes. He stood up and went to the front of the room, where a round window, intersected by four strips of wood placed two one way and two another dividing the circle into nine segments, the middle one square, was let into the brickwork of the wall. Stooping, he peered out of this window.

Below and in front of this window was an asparagus bed, made up into three long mounds which were bare now except for a number of weeds growing on them, fringed on one side by a gravel walk and on the other by a dirt path. The gravel walk was fringed on its other side by a low privet hedge. Along the gravel walk was strutting a pigeon known as X which thrust its neck and head forward with each step it took. Beyond the asparagus bed lay a strip of lawn that led, in its north-westerly continuation, towards the vegetable and fruit garden and, in its south-easterly direction, towards the flower garden. Beyond this strip of lawn, built on ground slightly higher than the ground on which stood the old brick building that had once been called a coach house by property holders of an earlier epoch, was the plain square house with some of the panes of glass in its windows gleaming in the sunshine. On the first floor, the window on the right belonged to the bathroom. Through this window only a blankness could be seen; it was a light blankness since the bathroom had two windows, the one unseen being round the corner of the south-east side of the house. To the left of the bathroom window were two windows belonging to two spare rooms. There was no movement in them. S blinked his eyes, yawned, and surveyed the windows on the ground floor. Below the left of the two spare room windows was the kitchen window. Resting on the sill inside the middle portion of this window was a can that threw off a gleam in the sunshine; the two side portions of the window were open. No movement could be detected in the kitchen. The back door stood next to the kitchen window. A cat covered with black and white fur lay sunning itself on the step beneath the door; the door was closed. To the right of the back door was the dining-room window, a long window reaching to the ground which could be opened to admit people to the garden. Like the bathroom above it, this room also possessed a second window, concealed from view round the corner on the south-east wall of the house. In the light received through these two windows, it was possible to make out a figure garbed at least partially in white moving round a table only partly in view and doing something with or to the table.

Turning away from the round window, S walked to the other end of the room, avoiding the three low cross-beams and moving between the black iron stove and the hammock. Set in the floor at the other end of the room was a trapdoor made of the same sort of wood as the floor, though less worn than the floor. S lifted this trapdoor and climbed down the steps that were revealed beneath it. He emerged into a dim and dusty room, the cobbled floor of which was encumbered by a variety of objects. As S passed a work bench on his left, he passed on his right a stack of old timber, a lawn mower, a number of boxes of varying shapes and sizes, some broken pieces of furniture, including an old wash-hand stand with a cracked marble top, a tin trunk with a domed lid on which had been painted the initials H.S.M., a garden roller, a large kitchen mangle of an obsolete variety, a rusty bird cage, and various other objects, including a row of garden tools standing or leaning against the wall. S advanced to two old timber doors that formed the north-east side of the old building; they had slumped on their hinges, so that their lower edges touched the ground; some of their panels had shrunk, so that chinks of light could filter through horizontal and vertical cracks.

In the left hand of these two doors was set a smaller door, which S now opened slightly. Thrusting his head forward, he peered out towards the south-east corner of the building, close to which ran the course of a dirt path leading from further up the garden to a rubbish tip set behind trees. At that point grew a thin and gnarled trunk, rising from the ground to branch out higher up into a voluminous ivy partly covering that side of the old building. Close to the gnarled trunk stood a rusty storm lantern.

Opening the small door further, S stepped through it, putting his feet on the ground and moving towards the storm lantern; as he went, he looked across his left shoulder up at the house. In the dining-room window, he saw a movement. Someone was watching him from behind the dining-room curtains.

Without reaching the lantern, S turned round and moved back to the small door; he climbed through it without hesitation and moved back through the dismal coach house with its forsaken objects grouped mainly on his left hand. Against the rear wall, a sturdy wooden staircase led to the room above. S ran up the stairs, climbed into the room, and let down a trapdoor over the stair well. Ducking his head, he moved forward again, avoiding three low beams that ran across the space from wall to wall, passing on his left an old stove bearing on its lid an inscription wrought from the iron that read Stentorian 1888 (these words almost encircled the lid) and on his right a hammock secured from two of the low beams.

A round window, crossed by two horizontal and two vertical bars so as to divide it into nine panes, the centre pane of which was square, was set in the front wall of the building. Dropping down onto his knees, S pressed against the brickwork to the right of the round window. At that point, a recess gave into the wall; plunging his hand into the recess, S drew from it a folded telescope some fifteen centimetres long and bound in leather. The leather was worn and soft. Pulling at this telescope with both hands, S extended it until three brass sections appeared. In the smallest section was an eyepiece. Placing the telescope so that it pointed unobtrusively out of one of the small side panes of glass, S applied his right eye to the eyepiece.

Moving his left hand, which held the telescope by the leather binding, S trained the telescope's circle of vision onto the house. Its brickwork appeared, red and fuzzy. After a slight pressure on the end of the instrument, the fuzziness dissolved into a pattern of oblong bricks surrounded by broken vertical and continuous horizontal lines of concrete. The circle of vision moved across the pattern until from the darkness outside it emerged the long windows of the dining-room.

Inside the dining-room could be seen the corner of a table spread with a white cloth; objects could be distinguished lying on the cloth. A good deal of light filled the dining-room, flowing into it not only from this window but from a second window round the corner on the southeast side of the house. By this light it was possible to distinguish that the long drapes hanging on either side of the two windows which could be opened onto the garden were of a green colour. It could also be distinguished that from behind the left of the two drapes protruded, at the lower part, a shoe and a section of leg clad in some dark suiting, and at the middle part, a shoulder, clothed in the same dark suiting, and, possibly, murkily, just above the shoulder, the left side of a face. The circle of vision became unsteady. In consequence, definition of detail became more difficult, but it seemed as if fingers—something of the lightness of flesh—clutched at the drape on a level with a protruding shoulder.

The circle of vision took on a flutter, so that as it travelled involuntarily in a small arc it also encompassed brief glimpses of the bathroom window above, and of the grass below the long dining-room window. The left-hand drape inside the window did not move.

Removing the telescope from his eye, S steadied his left arm by resting the elbow on the brick ledge beneath the round window and by pressing the wrist against the brick at the side of the window. He applied his eye once more to the eyepiece of the optical instrument, in time to catch a movement in the dining-room window. The left-hand drape had been released. It settled back into position. No other movement could be seen in the room.

S removed the telescope from his right eye and placed it on the flooring directly under the round window, almost touching the wall.

“Oh, Vi, if you've been telling him.…”

S rose to his feet. He patted his knees, then sank until he was on them. Ensuring that his body was not exposed to the window, he looked out of one of the side panes towards the house.

“I don't know what I'd do …”

Blue sky interspersed with cloud was behind the house. The roof of the house was covered with grey-blue slates, while the angles of the roof were capped by lines of stone. The roof tree was capped by a similar line of stone and was terminated at each end by an ornamental stone urn that stood out against the sky. A wide chimney stack containing six tubby pottery chimneys rose from this side of the roof. Below the line of the roof ran a rain gutter. At the two visible corners of the house, drainpipes met this guttering and ran down straight to the ground. The brickwork of the rear of the house was interspersed by five windows and a door. Three of these windows were on the first floor, the right-hand window belonging to a bathroom that possessed a second window round the corner on the south-east wall of the house. Beneath the visible bathroom window was a window comprising two long doors which could be opened by anyone inside the room, to give them access to the garden. On either side of this long window hung long curtains; the curtains did not move. Neither the curtain on the left nor the curtain on the right of the long window stirred, nor could any movement, nor any figure or part of a figure be discerned in the room. The room was a dining-room; the part of it visible to the watcher seemed to be empty. Nothing animate appeared in it. The two long glass doors were divided in all into sixteen panes; through none of the panes could any person or any part of any person be detected.

The other window set in the lower storey of the house belonged to the kitchen. Unlike the other windows, it had a steel frame, divided into three sections. The two outer sections were open. Within the kitchen, a predominantly white figure could be seen moving about.

“I don't know what I'd do.”

The white figure was not always visible. Most of the time she was poorly visible at the back of the kitchen, when her presence was more inferred than seen; at other times she moved to a part of the kitchen where she could not be observed at all. Once she bent down so that she could not be seen in a part of the room where she was normally visible.

S blinked his eyes.

His legs were doubled under him, so that he sat on the tawny planking with the following parts of his anatomy touching it: some of his right buttock, the outer side of his right thigh, his right knee, the outer side of his right calf, his right ankle, and his right foot, while his left leg copied the attitude of his right one, overlapping it so that from the knee down it also touched the planking and the tip of the left shoe pressed against the heel of the right shoe. The shoes were dusty. His right shoulder and a part of the right-hand side of his body pressed against the brickwork beside the round window.