The Hours Before Dawn (11 page)

A familiar tingling warmth in her limbs warned Louise that she was nearly asleep again. Hurriedly she drew back into the room and finished making the girls’ beds. Why did Harriet have to have
nine
soft toys in bed with her every night? And, not content with that, why did she have to feed them all on biscuits under the bedclothes, scattering crumbs far and wide?

The house was still quiet. Scolding herself for such
fancifulness
, Louise nevertheless walked with unnatural softness down to the kitchen. The washing-up was waiting for her, and, really, it could be a delightful job if you were really tired. Plunging your arms into the blessed hot water, the next best thing to sleep, you could allow your thoughts to wander.

But they didn’t wander. Like homing pigeons they flew straight back to Miss Brandon and her visit to the kitchen that morning. Was it just Louise’s fancy that there had been
something
odd about that visit? That Miss Brandon’s conversation had been somehow forced and over-casual? Miss Brandon was not a naturally garrulous woman; so why all those unsolicited details about her plans for the day? Wasn’t there something too careful about the way she had brought them all in, one after another? Something purposeful, premeditated …?

Those shining, steaming teacups were still hot to the touch and would be a joy to dry; but Louise was scarcely aware of them as her imagination gathered speed. Wasn’t that just the sort of conversation one would engineer if one was trying to
create
an alibi? Tomorrow – next week – would Louise find herself saying to some police inspector: ‘Oh, yes, she was here in the kitchen with me just at that time…. Yes, I remember it was exactly 9.35. It happened that she looked at her watch and remarked on it, and I noticed that the kitchen clock said the same…. Yes, it was certainly 9.35….’ And meantime some ticket collector or porter at Paddington would be confirming that a lady answering this description had got on to the 10.45 to Oxford – some ever-so-accidental little incident had fixed her in his mind. And, therefore, she couldn’t possibly have been …

Been where? Doing what? To whom? All Louise’s fears came surging back and the water wildly gurgling down the plug hole transfixed her with a senseless, babyish terror. This was how Margery must have felt when she made all that fuss about her
bath a few years ago. For one second Louise could have wept for her lack of sympathy with the child at the time – could have wept and sobbed, knowing all the time that her tears were not tears of remorse or sympathy, but tears of fright – fright for herself, for her own skin, here and now in this grease-spattered scullery, with the spring sun wavering through the steam at the barred window.

Perhaps it was all nonsense. Perhaps this ridiculous panic was simply hysteria brought on by lack of sleep. But all the same, weren’t you supposed to humour hysterical women; and since there was no one else to do it, she would have to humour
herself
. Humour herself to the extent of going up to Miss Brandon’s room – now, this moment, while Miss Brandon was out – and nosing around like any music-hall landlady ‘to see if anything was going on what shouldn’t be going on’ as Mrs Morgan had put it.

She thought again about Mrs Morgan’s gruesome little story. An imbecile done up in a parcel – was that what she expected to find? What absurdity! What fantastic nonsense! She was simply curious to find out what (if any) papers Miss Brandon had taken from Mark’s desk. She had a perfect right – indeed, a
duty
–
to recover his property for him. Full of the courage of righteous purpose, she straightened herself and prepared to march boldly up the stairs – only to find that almost without noticing it she had already removed her shoes, and was
tiptoeing
guiltily, like a burglar in her own house. Irrelevantly, she remembered Tony’s tip: ‘Always walk with the flat of your foot, you’re not so likely to creak a board. It distributes the weight, see …?’

But perhaps it only distributes your weight properly if that weight is light, and irresponsible, and only nine years old. For Louise, the boards creaked at every step, and she was thankful when she reached the top landing with the door to Miss
Brandon’s room on her right, and the door to the lumber room on her left. At least there were no more creaking steps to climb.

And it was only as she reached out to try the handle of Miss Brandon’s door that she suddenly knew why she had been creeping, tiptoeing about her own house in broad daylight. It was because Miss Brandon was still there. She was not
conscious
of having heard any sound inside the room; and yet, as clearly as if the door had been thrown open in front of her, Louise seemed to see the whole scene, just as she had seen it a few days before when she and her mother-in-law had burst in uninvited. Miss Brandon sitting at her table, motionless, with no books, no papers, no sewing. Just sitting there, waiting. Then, as now, Miss Brandon had elaborately and unnecessarily sought out Louise in the morning to tell her she was going to be out for the day. Then, as now, the front door had slammed with unnecessary violence….

What could it all mean? Could there be some reasonable, sensible explanation? Could Miss Brandon have planned to go out for the day, and then, with quite extraordinary suddenness, have changed her mind? Have gone to the front door – opened it – set her foot across the threshold – and then drawn back? Have shut the door with a noisy slam, and then tiptoed back up to her room? Yes – tiptoed – her usual confident stride could not possibly have gone unnoticed.

Her confident stride. Yes, Miss Brandon’s movements were always confident. And firm, and powerful – even graceful in a large-scale sort of way – but they were not noisy. Not noisy like those heavy, over-loud footsteps that had come stumping down the stairs this morning. Why would anyone come down a flight of stairs as noisily as that? Because they wanted to be heard, of course. Because they wanted to be heard, and also because they wanted to emphasise in their own mind the
contrast
between this ostentatious descent and the silence and
stealth with which they planned, a minute later, to creep back up that self-same flight of stairs….

Louise’s hand never reached the handle of Miss Brandon’s door; she did not even try to peer through the keyhole to
confirm
her suspicions. For a while she stood there on the little attic landing, her heart thumping, her mind clear as glass and boundlessly receptive, it was not a suspicion at all; it was a
certainty
. Her very bones knew that Miss Brandon was sitting silently inside that room, and the bones do not ask for
confirmation
. It was only long after she had fled downstairs on stockinged feet (on tiptoe or distributing the weight? – she never knew which) that it dawned on her that confirmation might be required.

‘M
y dear, how thrilling! Of
course
I’ll try and find out for you. What sort of things do you want to know?’

Louise hesitated. She hadn’t meant it to sound thrilling at all. In fact, she was already regretting the impulse that had made her rush to telephone Beatrice. Her panic was subsiding fast at this contact with a human voice – particularly a voice as voluble and insistent as Beatrice’s, and as shrill with unsatisfied curiosity. Louise tried to remember exactly what she had first said after snatching up the receiver and dialling Beatrice’s
number
in blind and ill-considered determination to find out something – anything – about this woman she believed to be lurking upstairs. She had hoped to say, calmly and with
half-humorous
detachment, something like – ‘Oh, by the way, Beatrice. That Vera Brandon we were talking about last night. I wish you’d tell me a little more about her. You’re always so good at getting the low-down on everyone—’ with a little laugh, of course, to show that this was meant as a compliment, and that anyway the whole matter was quite trivial….

But little laughs don’t always travel well down telephone wires. They can sometimes sound more like gasps of terror…. Beatrice’s unslaked curiosity twanged again down the line:

‘Listen,’ she seemed to splutter, though that may have been a fault at the exchange, ‘listen, why not pop round right away and tell me all about it? I don’t really know anything, but when you’re upset there’s nothing like talking it over with a friend.’

So she
had
given the impression that she was upset. Perhaps even that she was frightened. For a moment Louise
contemplated
confiding to Beatrice the whole story, even at the risk of making an utter fool of herself. To learn that you are being an utter fool can sometimes be very comforting.

She hesitated. She moved the mouthpiece nearer. She hesitated again.

It was the ghost of the Upper Fourth that tipped the balance. Already she seemed to hear Beatrice telling and retelling the story: (‘Have you seen poor old Louise lately? My dear, when I last spoke to her she was in an awful state! No no, worse than that. My dear, she’s positively seeing spooks!—’) Mavis would hear it. Janice would hear it. That freckled little beast Pamela something would hear it. Yes, and the still unidentified Muriel sitting at her breakfast table somewhere in Bristol would lap it all up in her morning’s post….

‘No, no. It’s perfectly all right, really—’ she began; but it was not as easy as all that. Once upset always upset – or at least until Beatrice had at her fingers’ ends the truth, the whole truth, and that satisfying little bit more than the truth. And it all ended in Beatrice and Humphrey’s being invited to supper that night. If only Louise had been less preoccupied, she would have seen from the start that the telephone call could only end in this way. Since it was impossible for her to leave her children, her washing, and her stewing neck of lamb in order to pop round on the two-hour journey to Acton, then what more natural than that Beatrice should pop round to her? And since you can’t ask people to pop that distance without offering them a meal at the end of it, and since you can’t ask a wife to a meal without asking
her husband too, if you know that he exists – well, it was clear to Louise (too late) that a full-scale supper-party had all along been the logical and only outcome. Perhaps, she reflected, the philosophers of Predestination had first been set on their heretical paths by just such humble episodes. Except that philosophers were nearly always men, and men just don’t find themselves in these predicaments. If a man doesn’t want people to supper, he merely doesn’t invite them – it must be one of those few fields in which male supremacy has so far never been challenged.

Louise rang off, and began to think about the evening meal. The neck of lamb wouldn’t do now. There wouldn’t be enough, and anyway, it wasn’t just Beatrice and Humphrey that she would be catering for. The whole of the Upper Fourth would be there in spirit; she could almost see them now – Janice – Winnie – Pamela – all the lot of them, hanging on to the ends of their telephones and listening to Beatrice’s quite
unnecessarily
amusing account of the meal she had had with poor old Lou: ‘Irish stew, my dear, and there couldn’t have been more bones if she’d fished out the family skeleton for us!’ …

Well, she’d have to get some mince and make one of those Italian-type dishes that are really the same as Shepherd’s pie, only you serve them with macaroni all round instead of with mashed potato on top. They usually seemed to go down very well with one’s middle-brow friends. Unless, of course, one had produced that very dish for those very same middle-brow friends the last time they came. And the time before that. Louise tried hard to remember what she had given Humphrey and Beatrice at their last visit. It was nearly a year ago now, and all she could remember of the evening was that the pair of them had missed their last train home, and had reappeared just before midnight to argue endlessly in the draughty hall about whether to ring up a taxi. Since they both appeared to be
whole-heartedly in favour of the taxi, Louise did not see why the argument should have gone on so long. But then Humphrey and Beatrice always talked to each other like that, and
apparently
very happily. Like many husbands and wives, they never noticed how often and how closely they agreed with one another on almost every subject.

If the avowed purpose of the visit was to calm Louise’s fears about her mysterious tenant, then it succeeded admirably. It had, in fact, already succeeded before it began; for while Louise, with Michael on one arm, stirred the mince and onion mixture, watched for the macaroni to boil over, and simultaneously tried to convince Harriet and Margery that it would be
much
more fun to have supper by themselves tonight instead of sitting up with the grown-ups – while she attended to these duties, it seemed to her that Miss Brandon’s identity was no longer of any importance whatever. Let her be a spy – a lunatic – a murderess –
anything,
provided only that it didn’t lead her to come into the kitchen at this moment to ask questions or argue.

Beatrice and Humphrey arrived a little before seven, in a brand-new car for which Beatrice at once began apologising. It was not, she explained, a
new
car at all, but one that they had picked up second-hand, incredibly cheap, and actually they hadn’t paid for it yet, they were so absolutely broke.

Humphrey looked a little bewildered at this recital, as well he might, seeing that he had the receipt from the makers in his pocket at this very moment; but before he had time to spoil the story, Louise hastened to agree with Beatrice that it was
impossible
to afford
anything
nowadays. She understood better than Humphrey that Beatrice, with her flair for contemporary values, was grimly determined to be as bankrupt and poverty-striken as a prosperous husband and a substantial private income would allow her; though her fur coat and diamond earrings sometimes made the role difficult to sustain. Louise tactfully bundled the
fur coat away among the mackintoshes in the hall; admired the earrings in order to give her guest the opportunity, if she wished, of claiming that they came from Woolworths, and then left her visitors to Mark’s reluctant care in the sitting-room while she hastened back to the kitchen.

The meal was a success – enough of a success, Louise hoped, to quieten the shades of Janice, Winnie, Hope and Pamela; though the total effect was somewhat marred by Harriet’s four appearances for drinks of water – (‘Nice little things, of course, but poor old Lou has
no
idea of controlling them. She never could, you know. D’you remember that time when she first went on cloakroom duty after she was made a prefect …?’)

It was just as they were returning to the sitting-room that the telephone rang. It was Mrs Henderson senior, who, after
enquiring
with grandmotherly solicitude whether the children would be out of the way by half past eight, announced her intention of dropping in at about that hour.

‘But only for a few moments, dear,’ she apologised. ‘I have to go round to Hugh’s, you know, he absolutely
insists.
He’s
entertaining
some tiresome creature about a contract, and as it’s bringing a wife, Hugh says I’d better be there too. I don’t see that, do you?’

‘No,’ agreed Louise discouragingly; and then, relenting, she added warmly: ‘But do come round. We’ve got some friends here actually, a Dr and Mrs Baxter. Do you remember them? – Anyway, they’d love to meet you.’

‘Why are you talking like that? Do you mean they’re in the room listening?’ enquired Mrs Henderson cautiously; and then, less cautiously: ‘What are they like? Are they as extraordinary as most of your friends?’

Louise found this a little difficult to answer. Mrs Henderson’s voice was a carrying one, and it was quite likely that Beatrice and Humphrey had heard what the question was to which
Louise would be saying ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ Were people more likely to be offended if you said they were extraordinary, or if you said they weren’t?

‘I believe you’ve met them here before,’ she compromised and rang off hastily before she should find herself launched on one of those descriptions which can only be sufficiently
complimentary
to one party by being incomprehensible to the other.

Whether Mark’s mother had in fact met the Baxters was debated for some minutes; and the lady’s arrival half an hour later did nothing to dispel the uncertainty. Both parties, to be on the safe side, assured the other that its face was familiar, indeed unforgettable, and that they had undoubtedly met
somewhere
; and with a certain blankness behind the eyes, each went through the motions of trying to identify the occasion.

Humphrey gave it up first. He was charmed by this new arrival, for not only was she old enough (despite earrings and eyeshadow) for him not to feel obliged to flirt with her (always an effort after a good supper); but she had the additional charm of possessing a car with which the very thing had recently gone wrong which he (Humphrey) knew how to put right. Knew better than any garage, and far, far better than the particular garage which had dealt with it for Mrs Henderson. Now, when
his
car had developed the same symptoms – not his present car, of course, but his dear old Vauxhall—

‘Now he’ll be happy for hours,’ said Beatrice contentedly, as Louise came to sit by her on the sofa. ‘That is, if your
mother-in
-law will put up with it. He loves talking about the inside of his car. It’s a sort of substitute for talking about his operation,’ she added vaguely.

Louise laughed. ‘Oh, she’ll enjoy it,’ she assured Beatrice. ‘Though I expect she’ll soon get him on to his operation. She doesn’t believe in substitutes—’ Louise was talking at random,
to fill in time. Out of the corner of her eye she had seen Mark sidle from the room with that air of belonging to a different planet with which men so effectively evade the visitors who bore them. Six months ago, thought Louise, I’d have winked at him as he left the room, and he’d have winked back. But now my eyes – my eyelids are too stiff, too sleepy. Sleep has captured me – is parting me from him – as ruthlessly as any lover….

Beatrice’s voice caught her attention again. It had dropped to that piercing whisper which both shows proper respect for your secrets and also allows everyone else in the room to enjoy them:

‘The first thing I did,’ she hissed, ‘was to pump poor old Humphrey about the woman, but you know what he is. She impressed him tremendously, except that he can’t recall her name; he had a wonderfully interesting talk with her, except that he can’t remember what it was about; he thought she was exceedingly attractive, except that he doesn’t know what she looked like; he was determined to keep in touch with her, except that he never asked for her address; in fact, if he only knew her from Adam, he’d be having an affair with her right now!’

Louise laughed. ‘I know – that’s all very well,’ she said. ‘But he must have known more than that to start with. Didn’t he tell you
anything
?
–
At the time, I mean?’

‘Only her name,’ said Beatrice thoughtfully. ‘He’d written it down, you see, in his pocket book. He always writes people’s names down in his pocket book – he gets into the way of it because of the new students each year. And the name stuck in
my
mind because, as I told you, the Brandon-Smiths – Besides – well – names just
do
stick in my mind.’

This was perfectly true. Beatrice could still recite the names of every girl in every class that she and Louise had ever been through – with the addition, now, of the said girls’ employers, children, husbands, ex-husbands, and co-respondents. Her
mind, reflected Louise, must be like a telephone directory, only with little notes appended to each name:

‘… And so all I can
definitely
get out of him,’ Beatrice was saying, ‘was that it was she who picked
him
up, and not the other way round. She came up to him after the meeting, and congratulated him on something he’d said in the discussion – no, don’t ask me what, it cramps my style if I have to talk in words of more than six syllables – and how she led the
conversation
round to
you,
Louise, I can’t imagine, since all the rest of it seems to have been about terribly intelligent subjects—’

‘It was
me
then, not Mark, that she asked for the address of?’ asked Louise quickly, wondering why this point had never struck her before.

‘Why, yes – that is—’ Beatrice hesitated. ‘I
think
that’s what he said. Or did he? Did he say “Them” perhaps? Oh dear, if only Humphrey wasn’t such a fool!’