The Hours Before Dawn (3 page)

‘Well, I don’t think this woman will be like that. She’s a schoolteacher, and she sounded very respectable on the phone. In fact, I expect the trouble will be that she’ll think
we
aren’t quiet enough for
her.
I told her we’ve got children – but, well, you do see, don’t you, that I don’t want an extra baby around just when she’s coming to look at the room? I mean,
two
prams in the hall – it’ll make the place look like a day-nursery.’

‘Let her put up with it,’ advised Mrs Hooper airily. ‘Let her
see you as you really are. Why should you be always putting yourself out for other people?’

Before Louise had thought of a suitable reply to this a screech of ‘Mummy!’ put an end to the discussion. Two little girls had detached themselves from the squealing crowd round the school gates and were running towards her. Margery, the elder, ran clumsily, heavily, a bulging satchel with a broken strap banging her ankle at every step; and even as Louise watched, one of the gym shoes clutched in her other hand
skidded
to the ground, followed by a crumpled paper bag of crayons, spilling this way and that among the hurrying feet. Harriet, smaller, darker, carrying nothing, free as air, flew past her woebegone sister, skimming like a dryad across the crowded pavement and into Louise’s arms.

I
t would, of course, happen that the new tenant should arrive at exactly the moment when Mark got back from work, tired and irritable. And it was equally inevitable that this moment should be the very one when Louise had at last decided to bring the howling Christine indoors, and both prams were now wedged across the narrow hall, locked by their mud-guards in a dismal and indissoluble embrace. This was the moment, too, chosen by Margery to sit on the bottom step of the stairs and pick bread and jam off her socks – the result of Harriet’s Teddy bear’s tea having been laid out in its usual place – on the floor just inside the kitchen door. What with one thing and another, Louise could hardly wonder that Mark should give her one hunted glance, and disappear headlong into the kitchen. She had only time for a fleeting, desperate hope that he had not landed, as Margery had done, in the middle of Teddy’s bread and jam, before she had to turn and greet the tall figure silhouetted in the doorway.

‘Mrs Henderson?’ the figure was saying, in the clear, decisive tones of one used to commanding attention. ‘I’m Vera Brandon. I telephoned yesterday—’

‘Yes. How nice. I mean, do come up. Come and see the room—’ Exerting what felt like a degree of physical strength
equal to throwing a sack of coal across the hall, Louise radiated silent will-power in four directions at once: to Margery to get herself and her jammy socks off the stairs without any of that laboured discussion with which Margery always liked to surround herself and her doings: to Harriet to keep her shrill argument with her father well behind the closed kitchen door: to Michael to slobber over his sodden rusk for a few minutes longer before dropping it through the bars of the playpen and screaming: and to Christine to remain in the state of stunned silence to which the appearance of so many strangers at once had fortunately reduced her.

The will-power worked – as it always does, thought Louise, when you put every ounce of strength you’ve got into it, and leave yourself weak and empty – and she conducted the visitor upstairs to the vacant room – the Rubbish Room as the
children
still persisted in calling it, in spite of the fact that it had been cleared out some days since and furnished in readiness for its new occupant. And, as it happened, this title turned out to be a good deal more appropriate than Louise could have wished, and she began to apologise to her rather disconcertingly silent visitor:

‘I’m sorry we haven’t quite got the shelves cleared yet,’ she explained nervously. ‘Those are my mother-in-law’s books, she’s fetching them at the week-end. And of course the dolls’ pram will be gone, too, and that – that—’ Louise sought for the right word to indicate the swaying structure of cardboard grocery boxes in which Harriet had spent a happy afternoon last week being a Tiger in its Den. Mark had been quite right, of course. He had always said that she shouldn’t let the children come up here and play while there was no tenant. They’d only get into the habit of it, he’d said, and there’d be an awful job keeping them out after the room
was
let. But it was such a temptation, especially at week-ends, when Mark himself wanted some peace
and quiet in the sitting-room. And she’d been so sure that she would remember to clear everything away before anyone came to look at the room. She
would
have remembered, too, if only it hadn’t been for Mark dashing home unexpectedly for lunch, today of all days, just when she had to be at the clinic by half past one. And then Christine this evening…. Oh, well, it couldn’t be helped now; and if this woman didn’t like it, there were plenty of other people looking for rooms nowadays.

But Miss Brandon didn’t seem to care at all; nor did she show any dismay at learning that there was only a gas ring to cook on, and that she would have to do all her washing-up at the minute hand-basin on the landing. Louise was a little
surprised
. Miss Brandon, in both voice and appearance, gave the impression of being a successful woman of the world, both critical and self-assured; not at all the sort of person whom one would expect to choose for her home an inconvenient, ill-equipped attic in someone else’s house. Louise felt suddenly ill at ease. She had expected a different kind of applicant altogether – a young art student, perhaps, who would giggle happily about her hardships, and boast to her friends that she was
starving
in a garret. Or one of those silent young men whom you never see on the stairs, who never have any washing, and who have all their meals out. Or maybe someone elderly – this was what Louise had visualised when this woman had spoken to her on the phone, and told her that she was a schoolteacher. Someone past middle-age, Louise had thought, perhaps on the verge of retiring. Someone who had learned slowly and painfully – or maybe proudly, and with undefeated courage – to accept without complaint all the numerous small discomforts that life brought her way.

But Miss Brandon did not fit this picture at all. As to her age, it was difficult to tell. She could hardly be much past forty, Louise thought, watching her visitor glancing round the room
with an odd sort of impatience; not so much as if she thought the room was inadequate, but rather as if she was completely indifferent to it, and was irritated only by the necessity for making a decision.

‘I’ll take it,’ she said brusquely, without either prodding the bed for broken springs or peering under it for spider-webs – actions which Louise had always understood tenants to perform before they rented rooms. ‘When can I come in?’

‘Well – that is – of course—’ Louise stammered a little under Miss Brandon’s clear, commanding gaze – ‘just as soon as you like. Except that my mother-in-law won’t be fetching her books till the week-end, and so—’

‘Never mind about that,’ said Miss Brandon, still with this air of restrained impatience. ‘I shan’t need those shelves. I haven’t a lot of books of my own just now. Tell your mother-in-law she can fetch them whenever it suits her. I shall have no objection.’

The remark, still more the manner of it, struck Louise as a trifle arrogant – rather like the mistress of the house giving instructions to her housekeeper. Then she remembered that Miss Brandon was, after all, a schoolteacher, and the giving of instructions probably occupied the greater part of her waking life, and this manner had no doubt become habitual. All the same, it was odd that a woman so self-assured should display so little interest in the amenities (or lack of them) in the place she proposed to make her home. With almost perverse honesty, Louise began pointing out the disadvantages of the room: the low, sloping ceiling; the lack of storage space – the only built-in cupboard being shallow and inconvenient, with a jagged hole in the plaster at the top which the men still hadn’t come to mend.

But Miss Brandon seemed quite unperturbed – or, rather, uninterested. Indeed, she seemed to find Louise’s frankness merely irritating, and she brushed it aside impatiently, simply
repeating that she wished to take the room. Her only concern seemed to be that she should come in
soon
–
say tomorrow evening?

This being agreed, the two set off down the stairs again, Louise making rapid calculations about how to fit in the
cleaning
and preparing of the room tomorrow. Mark would definitely be home for lunch, which meant extra cooking; and the scullery and passage simply
must
be scrubbed – they couldn’t go another day….

At the foot of the stairs, Miss Brandon seemed suddenly to lose her air of restive indifference. ‘Good God!’ she exclaimed.

Louise really couldn’t feel surprised at the exclamation. Anyone other than a mother must surely be horrified at the sight of a baby in the position in which Christine Hooper had managed to get herself. There she lay, sound asleep, her head hanging over the edge of the pram, and her spine bent
backwards
at an angle which must surely have resulted in instant death to anyone much over seven months old. Louise, of course, recognised these symptoms as indicating merely that Christine was all set to sleep peacefully for hours; but she
appreciated
that to a less experienced eye the situation might look alarming.

‘It’s all right,’ she began hastily; but Miss Brandon was already bending over the pram, rearranging the outraged Christine into the comfortable position which babies so detest. ‘She’s all right, really,’ repeated Louise, as Miss Brandon, her strong features flushed with stooping, straightened herself, and looked accusingly at Louise.

‘This isn’t
your
baby, is it?’ she said.

‘Why – no,’ answered Louise, rather taken aback. ‘I’m just looking after her for a friend of mine—’ She stopped rather awkwardly, realising that ‘looking after’ must seem to her
listener
something of an exaggeration. It was true that she had
abandoned Christine and her pram rather unceremoniously in the middle of the hall when the visitor arrived; but what else could she do, with the doorbell ringing, and Mark arriving home, and such pandemonium everywhere? And anyway, hadn’t Mrs Hooper assured her that Christine could be left in her pram indefinitely, anywhere, anyhow?

‘Don’t worry about her, my dear,’ Mrs Hooper had said. ‘
I
never do. Just leave her anywhere – out in the front, if you like. I’ll be back in time for her feed.’ And then, as if conferring a great favour, she called over her shoulder: ‘If you like, you can give her a bottle when you give Michael his. Any milk mixture will do.’

But, of course, Miss Brandon didn’t know Mrs Hooper and her methods. And anyway, it occurred now to Louise that the accusing stare which was fastened on her so uncomfortably probably had no reference to her neglect or otherwise of the superfluous Christine, but simply to the fact of her owning a baby at all. After all, she had only said three
children
on the phone, and who would choose to come and live in a house with a baby in it if they could possibly live elsewhere? Apologetically, she plunged into explanations:

‘Actually, I
have
got a baby about that age. And two older girls. I thought I told you when you rang up. But I don’t think they’ll bother you at all, your room is right up at the top, on a floor by itself—’

Miss Brandon seemed in some indefinable way to have relaxed, and her voice was noticeably less hostile as she spoke again:

‘Yes, yes,’ she reassured Louise. ‘I remember now, you did tell me. Dear little things, I’m sure, I’d love to meet them. And your husband, too, of course,’ she added, as if in afterthought. She hesitated a moment, almost, thought Louise wonderingly, as if she really
did
want to meet them all, here and now. Not
that Louise had any intention of ushering a stranger in to her family without warning at this hour of the evening. Not one of them would have their shoes on, not even Mark. Harriet would giggle, and bury her head ostentatiously in a cushion, displaying a large expanse of torn knicker which Louise still hadn’t found time to mend. Michael would go red in the face and roar – not, as everyone would fondly suppose, because he was shy of strangers, but because the sight of his mother coming into the room would remind him that she hadn’t been there all this time. Margery would stare in ill-concealed and speechless horror, and so, in all probability, would Mark. Louise firmly escorted her visitor to the front door.

Mark was still scowling when Louise rejoined her family, and she could guess at the withering comments hovering on the tip of his tongue. It was something of a relief to know that he would have to postpone them while she fed and changed Michael and put him in his cot; while she dished up supper; while she wrestled with the children’s table manners, tooth-brushing, and finally got them to bed; while she washed up supper, finished the ironing, and ran upstairs to see how it could be that Margery’s eiderdown should have slipped off her bed and vanished without trace in the space of half an hour.

It was nearly half past nine by the time all this had been lived through and Louise could throw herself wearily into the armchair opposite to Mark. For a minute she watched the
unresponsive
back of the evening paper in silence, wondering dejectedly whether quarrels were improved or worsened by being left to simmer like this for three and a half hours? Did a husband’s anger fritter itself away as one interruption succeeded another and prevented its expression? Or did it gather itself together into one bitter spurt of rage? Or did the delay merely leave him defeated, bewildered, as weary as oneself …?

Louise woke with a start, and opened her eyes to find that the evening paper had been flung aside, and that Mark was already half way through a sentence:

‘… Why, on top of everything, you had to have that wretched Hooper brat here just when you knew someone was coming to look at the room?
Why
?’

Louise fought back the drowsiness which always, now, lay in wait for her, ready to pounce; she tried to gather together her rather scattered defences.

‘Well, you see,’ she began, ‘I couldn’t really avoid it. I mean, Mrs Hooper simply dumped her on me – you know what she is.’

‘Of course I know what she is!’ exploded Mark. ‘And that’s just exactly why I can’t understand why you’re eternally putting yourself out to oblige her. And putting
me
out, too – that’s the point. Do you know that damn kid was yelling without a break the whole time you were upstairs?’

‘No, she wasn’t,’ contradicted Louise, conscious even as she spoke of the childish folly of such an appeal to accuracy in an argument of this nature. ‘She couldn’t have been. She was sound asleep when I came down.’ Fortunately Mark paid no attention to this ill-judged appeal to facts, and went on as if she had not spoken:

‘As if it wasn’t bad enough to have to come home to my own kids’ yelling! God, what a shambles! I’m surprised that woman didn’t turn straight round and walk out again!’

‘Well, she didn’t,’ retorted Louise; and then, in an attempt to change the subject, she continued: ‘She really seemed to like the room, you know. She wants to come in tomorrow. She doesn’t mind about your mother’s books, or anything.’