The Hours Before Dawn (4 page)

‘The woman must be mad,’ muttered Mark; but his voice was perceptibly mellowed as he asked: ‘And what did you think of
her,
Louise? Do you think she’ll do?’

‘Yes – oh, yes!’ said Louise, with a misleading enthusiasm which stemmed more from her relief at having successfully changed the subject than from any liking for the new tenant. ‘Yes, I think she’s just what we want. And I think she must be quite fond of children – she simply rushed to pick up Christine when she thought something was wrong. Or’ – Louise’s brief enthusiasm waned – ‘do you think it just means that she’s interfering?’

‘More likely it means she was trying to strangle the brat,’ said Mark with gloomy relish. ‘For two pins I’d have done it myself. But listen, Louise, seriously, we
must
see that there is less uproar in the house now that someone else is living here. Particularly at night. You’ve
got
to see that Michael stops crying at night. You can’t expect anyone else to put up with it. I’ve had just about all I can stand myself.’

Louise was conscious of an aching, helpless weariness; and as she glanced at her husband’s face, the tired lines more deeply drawn in the lamplight, she felt a tiny stab of fear. For the first time, she wondered: Does it sometimes happen like this? Do men sometimes stand up in the divorce court, tired and
bewildered
, and say simply ‘Yes, I still love my wife; yes, I still love my children; no, there isn’t another woman; it’s just that I can’t go on any longer without any sleep.’ Do they? And why does it never get into the papers …?

Scream upon scream from upstairs. Louise was at Margery’s bedside and with her arms round the little girl before her
conscious
mind had even registered which child it was that called her. And, after all, it was only one of Margery’s dreams.

‘The Rubbish Room!’ sobbed Margery, as soon as she could speak. ‘I dreamed I went to the Rubbish Room, and there was a horrid brown lady in it, and she was looking for
something
, and when she turned round I saw she had enormous hands. Oh, Mummy, they were
enormous!
Like – like great
flapping cardigans. And I couldn’t move, and she came at me—’

It was half an hour before Margery was soothed and sleepy again; and by that time Michael was demanding his ten o’clock feed. Another night was beginning.

‘O
i!’ The syllable used by Mrs Morgan was not exactly ‘Oi.’ It was something so discreet, and at the same time so peremptory, that it defies transcription. But it was sufficient to make Louise set down the basin of steaming nappies on to the grass, and go to the wall over which Mrs Morgan’s small brown eyes glinted excitedly. It was barely eleven o’clock, and so Mrs Morgan had not yet made herself up ready for her daily shopping expedition, and the wisps of untidy grey hair protruding from her hairnet added to the air of illicit conspiracy with which she beckoned Louise to the wall.

‘She’s come, then?’ Mrs Morgan spoke in a penetrating
undertone
, at the same time glancing cautiously to right and left.

‘Who’s come?’ asked Louise, who was always rather slow at switching her mind off the problem of what to cook for lunch that would be ready if Mark was early; wouldn’t spoil if he was late; and wouldn’t matter if he didn’t come at all. Besides, conversations with Mrs Morgan nearly always started off at cross-purposes because of Mrs Morgan’s habit of referring to everyone as ‘
She
’ – with a nervous backward glance as if the subject of her remarks might be lurking unseen among the wisps of London Pride by her back door.

‘
She.
Her,
’ explained Mrs Morgan obligingly. ‘Her that’s took your top room. I saw her come up last night. In a taxi. Not wanting to be nosey, it’s not my business of course, but she didn’t bring much with her, did she? Isn’t she stopping long?’

‘Why – yes, I think so,’ said Louise. ‘At least, I suppose she will, if she likes the place. She didn’t say anything about it being temporary.’

‘Ah!’ Mrs Morgan allowed the significance of this observation to sink in. Then: ‘Well, it’s none of my business, but you’re only young, dear, and I wouldn’t like to see you took advantage of. Where did you say she come from?’

‘Why, I – well, to tell you the truth, Mrs Morgan, I never thought of asking her. I suppose from some other lodgings somewhere.’

‘Ah.’ You could tell that the conversation was taking the turn that Mrs Morgan was hoping for. ‘You didn’t have no references, then?’ she proceeded, moving in for the kill.

‘No. Why, should I have?’ asked Louise, settling her elbows less painfully on the roughness of the brick wall, ready for the drama that was to follow. By rights, she supposed, she should have felt bored and restive at being thus cornered by such an old gossip. Other intelligent women did. They sighed and
fidgeted
, and bemoaned the impossibility of getting away without giving offence. But Louise felt as if she was waiting for the curtain to go up at the theatre. All sense of hurry and overwork left her; the wet piles of washing seemed to dwindle, and the bitter spring wind felt suddenly warm on her bare, damp arms as Mrs Morgan began, in hoarse, conspiratorial tones: ‘Well, I don’t want to upset you, dear, but…’

This time it was even more absorbing than usual. It appeared that Mrs Morgan had a friend, and a very good friend she’d always been, too, who had once let a room without asking for a reference, Two very nice ladies they had seemed, respectable
you know, nicely dressed. They had paid a week’s rent right away, and had said they would come back that evening. And back that evening they came, this time carrying between them a very long, heavy-looking parcel, which they had hurried upstairs and into their room without so much as a word. Well, Mrs Morgan’s very good friend hadn’t wanted to be nosey, just like Mrs Morgan herself never wanted to be nosey, but all the same she felt it was her duty to know if anything was going on. So the next morning, when the two ladies had gone out to business – Mrs Morgan’s friend never took in ladies that weren’t business ladies, it was just asking for trouble – well, after they’d gone, she felt it her duty to slip into their room, seeing she
happened
to have an extra key. Just slip in for a moment, see, just to make sure that everything was as it should be. And when Mrs Morgan’s friend went in the door, what did Louise think she found?

‘A corpse,’ said Louise promptly, though a little sorry for thus robbing Mrs Morgan of her climax. But apparently she had robbed Mrs Morgan of nothing of the kind, for the grey head only shook triumphantly.

‘No – that’s just where you’re wrong, dear. Of course, that was what my friend – though she was never one for throwing no aspersions at anybody, you understand – that was just what my friend had it in mind that she might see. But she didn’t. She saw worse than that. She saw an imbecile. Lying there on the bed, gibbering and rolling its eyes something horrible, and not even the wits to move hand or foot! That was the parcel what they brought in, their sister, see. They couldn’t get no one to take her in, poor thing, not like she was, so they’d schemed it up like I told you, to bring her into my friend’s house done up like a parcel, and leave her there. It was a great shock to my friend, of course, and after that she always asked for references from her ladies. Because as she said, you never know.’

This seemed to Louise a rather tame sort of moral to be drawn from such a horrific experience; however, she admitted that perhaps she should have asked Miss Brandon for
references
, adding: ‘But I’m sure she’s all right. She teaches at the grammar school, you know, so I could always find out about her from them if I wanted to, she knows that. Besides, you saw yourself that she didn’t bring much luggage. Not enough to include a corpse,
or
an imbecile sister!’

But Mrs Morgan would not smile. ‘You never know,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘There might be other things what you haven’t thought of. And she’s a funny age, too,’ she added darkly, as was her habit when the victim of her discourse
happened
to be a female anywhere between the ages of thirty and sixty-five. ‘You can’t never be certain, not when a woman gets to a funny age.’

‘What
does
worry me,’ Louise went on, ‘is Michael. He still cries every night, you know. He didn’t stop till five o’clock this morning, and I know it disturbed her. I heard her door opening and shutting softly two or three times – you know, as if she was thinking of coming down to complain, and then thought better of it. I don’t know what to do about it. I
can’t
get him to settle.’

‘Don’t you worry,’ said Mrs Morgan, just as Nurse Fordham had said, and Mrs Hooper had said – as everyone, in fact, said, who didn’t actually have to live through those weary hours before the dawn. ‘Don’t you worry, duck, he’s cutting his teeth on the cross, see? My Herbert, he cut his teeth on the cross, and he was a proper terror. I never got a wink of sleep for three years. Not a wink.’

For a moment Louise seemed to glimpse, beyond the young, pinched leaves of the lilac, beyond the grey, scudding clouds, a far-off time in which she, too, would be able to lean at peace on someone else’s wall, and talk with comfortable reminiscence of the long-ago days when she never got a wink of sleep. How
trivial the phrase sounded, even a little farcical. How little it described the gnawing, relentless weariness that could suck every joy out of body and mind … could batter to pulp all the contentment in a marriage….

‘Did your husband mind?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Did he complain?’

‘Oh.
Him
!
’ Into Mrs Morgan’s voice was gathered forty rewarding years of putting the male sex in its place. ‘
Him!
I should worry! The men get it easy all the way, dear, don’t you worry about them! Let me tell you—’

But already the church clock was chiming the half hour. Louise eased her elbows, deeply patterned by the brickwork, off the top of the wall.

‘I must go,’ she said. ‘They’ll all be back for lunch in an hour, and I haven’t even finished the washing yet!’ She hurried back to her basin of clammy garments, and began pegging them out in hasty, uneven loops, while Mrs Morgan shook her head in pitying tolerance.

‘There, dear, don’t fluster yourself,’ she admonished,
radiating
the philosophical calm which is born of not having anyone expected back for lunch. ‘Don’t worry. What I always say is, the work’ll still be there when you’re gone.’

Like other, more eminent philosophers, Mrs Morgan
managed
to deliver her pet aphorism with such conviction that it was some moments before her hearer realised that it had no meaning. And yet, somehow, the senseless, irrational optimism of it was like the spring itself; it was a part of this gay, sharp wind which was already billowing out the nappies into lovely, glittering curves; filling Louise’s soul with that unrehearsed, unsolicited joy which comes so strangely and so unfailingly as the wind first catches a line of washing.

It was nearly six before Louise had occasion to think about her new tenant again. The gusty, chilly morning had worsened,
and now a steady, hopeless rain was falling. Louise shifted Michael to her other breast, and stared out at the almost colourless garden, where the nappies she had forgotten to bring in hung still and sodden on the line. The dull, relentless
daylight
of a wet spring evening was still undiminished; it seemed to go on – and on – and on. Would it never be time to switch on the lights, draw the curtains, and let it slip back into firelit winter again?

‘Never mind, my precious – only two hundred more
scrubbing
days till autumn!’ said Louise, addressing Michael with unguarded idiocy. ‘And then we can both—’ She stopped, embarrassed, realising that she and Michael were no longer alone. Miss Brandon was standing in the doorway, her brown costume dark with damp, her neat school case dripping.

‘Oh – good evening. Won’t you come in by the fire for a bit?’ exclaimed Louise, with awkward hospitality, conscious of the extreme social disadvantage of the noisily-sucking Michael still clamped to her. ‘You must excuse me – the baby – he’s nearly finished—’ She waved her free hand in an ambiguous gesture of apology, explanation and invitation.

Miss Brandon approached, with a reassuringly bright smile.

‘But of course – I understand – thank you so much. Perhaps I
will
dry off a bit before I go upstairs, since you are so kind. That little electric fire in my room – it’s more for the summer, isn’t it?’

Now it’s coming, thought Louise. She wished she had had more experience as a landlady, Was it usually at the end of only twenty-four hours that tenants came to lodge their first complaints? And was one expected to take a firm, take-it-or-leave-it sort of attitude? (Well really, Miss Brandon, I’m sorry you’re not satisfied, but you must realise that at the rent you’re paying …’) Or did one meekly, ineffectively, promise to put everything right …?

But, to Louise’s surprise, Miss Brandon did not pursue the subject of the one-bar electric fire which, according to Mark, was all that the wiring in that part of the house would stand. Nor did she embark on the other dangerous topic – that of the baby’s crying in the night. She merely moved closer to the fire, and, standing with her back to the warmth, she gazed with interest at Louise and Michael. Louise felt a little embarrassed under this scrutiny. She drew the shawl more closely around Michael, and said, to break the silence:

‘A dreadful evening, isn’t it?’

Her visitor started a little, as if her mind was elsewhere. Then she answered:

‘Why – yes. Most unpleasant. More like winter again.’

Clearly the conversation was not going to prosper. Michael drew away with one final, smacking suck, and his head, heavy with the sudden sleep of satiation, flopped against Louise’s shoulder. If only he would sleep like this at night! thought Louise, shifting him higher on to her shoulder, so that the dead weight of his head lay warm and with lovely trustfulness against her neck. From now until half past nine or ten he would sleep as if drugged; as if stunned; no power on earth would wake him. But after that …

‘He’s a lovely baby. Very big and forward for his age, is he not?’

Louise looked up to meet Miss Brandon’s civil, enquiring gaze.

‘Why, yes,’ she answered, pleased both at the compliment and at the breaking of the uneasy silence. ‘I suppose he is. He’s quite different from my other two. They were both quite small babies: Harriet was barely six pounds when she was born.’

‘Indeed?’ Miss Brandon was clearly making an effort to keep the conversation going. ‘But then, you’re not so very big yourself are you? I suppose this one takes after your husband?’

‘Well – no – I don’t know that he does, really,’ said Louise, squinting round towards the pouting, unconscious little face so close to her own. ‘He’s so much darker, for one thing. Now Margery, when she was a baby, she was the image of her father. Some people say she still is—’

Louise stopped, uneasily conscious that she was beginning to run on about her children in just the kind of way that up-
to-date
mothers must be so careful to avoid. To talk shop if you are a mother is not socially permissible as it is if you are a typist or a bus conductress.

But to her relief, Miss Brandon did not look bored at all. On the contrary, she pursued the subject of her own accord:

‘Margery? That’s the older one, isn’t it? Yes, I suppose she
is
like her father – she has his colouring, anyway. That shade of red hair – most unusual.’

Louise was a little surprised that Miss Brandon should already have noticed so exactly the colour of Mark’s hair. Last night Mark had been working late, and had not encountered Miss Brandon at all; and the evening before – the evening when Miss Brandon had come to look at the room – she and Mark had only met for that few moments on the doorstep, in the
deepening
dusk, before Mark had bolted so unceremoniously into the kitchen.

It’s nice of her, though, thought Louise, to try to take an interest in my family like this. Or perhaps, she reflected more cynically, this is just a rather cultured way of making me put a two-bar fire in her room. I expect she believes that the way to a woman’s heart is through her children. Of course, she doesn’t know that it isn’t a matter of my heart at all; it’s a matter of the wiring on the top floor.