The Trouble-Makers (8 page)

“Even to me, just for practice!” laughed Katharine; and it was with a feeling of enormous relief—of pride in a job well done, in an important victory gained—that she hurried back to her office that afternoon.

T
HAT NIGHT
Katharine had a curiously vivid dream. Once again she seemed to be in the deserted cafeteria, but this time it was not Mary who was her companion, but a dark man in a raincoat. The raincoat was lightish in colour, shabby, and hung shapelessly from his sloping shoulders; and the man himself was dark, not merely in the sense of having dark hair and complexion, but more as if his whole face was enveloped in darkness; as if a deep shadow was thick upon him, hiding his features. At the beginning of the dream, Katharine was not paying much attention to the man; it seemed natural that he should be there. Her attention was wholly taken up with anxiety about the time. For before she could go back to the office, she must clear these tables; pile on to trays all those dirty cups and plates, and wipe away the crumbs, the flakes of pastry, and the sugary spills of tea. Not just from her own table, but from all the tables—dozens, scores, hundreds of them, scattered in derelict emptiness all over this great, echoing room. And it was then that she noticed that not a single other customer remained—no waitresses—nothing. Just herself and this man. And for some reason, inexplicable to the ordinary waking mind, she knew that she could not start on her task of clearing up while the man was still sitting there. She was impatient for him to go—to leave her—to get out of her dream: for somewhere, already, long before waking, there was growing in her brain a flickering awareness that all this was only a dream.

But the man would not go: and as Katharine turned to look at him more closely, perhaps even to speak to him, the darkness about him grew thicker … it was spreading … the whole cafeteria was in twilight now, as if night was already falling. And already the man was not quite there any more…. Only
the raincoat, sitting there, upright and empty, still breathing, and somehow this, too, seemed perfectly natural, and not in the least surprising. What else
would
a raincoat do if its wearer was suddenly no longer there?

“A figment of knives!”

The senseless words leapt into Katharine’s brain with that strange, precise clarity, that more than natural importance, that meaningless phrases sometimes acquire in dreams. The phrase seemed to explain, to answer everything—the vast room, her own presence there, and even the alert, near-living raincoat … which now, after all, lay limp and ordinary over the back of the chair. Only the great, encroaching darkness seemed unexplained … the vast, swift twilight swooping …

Katharine woke with a feeling of having been roused by a wild storm blowing round the house; a sense of roaring wind, of rattling window frames, of strange, howling hollow sounds in all the boarded-up fireplaces in all the upstairs rooms.

But everything was still, and in darkness. The stillness forced itself upon Katharine’s waking mind with strange emphasis; with a shock of sudden stillness like the shock of sudden sound. She lay very still, alert, the dream running out of her, full consciousness swiftly taking over.

And then, clear and unmistakable, there came through the open window the sound of the dustbin lid being replaced on the bin. Quickly, and very quietly, Katharine was out of bed, out on the landing, and peeping, automatically and absurdly, and from an instinct too deep to question, into each of her children’s rooms. She knew it was absurd herself; for why in the world should the sound of a dustbin being tampered with
outside
in the back garden mean that some disaster was being enacted in one of the upstairs bedrooms?

Reassured that all her three children were sleeping
peacefully
, Katharine set off down the stairs to investigate. Lightly, tensely, she tiptoed down, with feelings more akin to
exhilaration
than to fear.

The back door was unlocked—was it she or Stephen who
had forgotten to lock it?—and in a moment Katharine was standing on the soft, spongy grass of the lawn, the wetness already soaking through her slippers, and the damp, windless air chill and soft about her face. The dustbin stood at the entrance to the side passage; its battered curves shone greyly in the shaft of moonlight that speared through the narrow gap between the houses. Katharine approached it gingerly, wondering what, exactly, she meant to do? What did she hope to discover by lifting the lid and peering into the confusion below?

It was a newspaper parcel, right on top of everything else—but had she put it there herself, last night? There were heaps of things she might have wrapped in newspaper during her hurried evening chores—potato peelings—ashes—the contents of the sink tidy. No—those were still visible just below the newspaper—egg-shells, orange-peel, and a mass of sodden tea-leaves gleaming in the moonlight like seaweed in silvery shallows.

Katharine softly replaced the lid. She would have another look in the morning, when she would be able to see properly. Or—it suddenly occurred to her—had she been mistaken in thinking that the sound came from her own dustbin at all? Didn’t the Prescotts keep theirs in almost the same place, just across the dividing wall? It was rather odd of them, of course, to be emptying rubbish at three o’clock in the morning, but it was harmless, and certainly none of her business.

Just to satisfy herself that their dustbin was where she was imagining it, and that the noise might therefore have come from their garden and not from hers, Katharine moved softly across the lawn towards the wall, meaning to look over.

But how was it that these few steps should have set her heart beating in this way? Why should she suddenly feel so weighed down by dread that it was almost impossible to raise herself on tiptoe sufficiently to look over the wall? Was there indeed such a thing as premonition? Or had the misty autumn moon, now shining full across her face, triggered off some ancient fear of leaving cover … of showing oneself defenceless in the
open … a target for watchers in the surrounding darkness?

Slowly, clutching with both hands on the damp, rough surface of the brickwork, Katharine raised herself on tiptoe, and found herself staring into a face so hideous, so motionless, that for a moment her wits completely left her. Just as in her dream, the shabby fawn raincoat drooped from sloping shoulders; but now the wild, mad eyes stared straight into hers with crazed expectancy; the whole figure sagged and drooped against the wall in an attitude of dreadful, senseless leisure. It was a dream again. It could only be a dream because there was Stephen’s old frayed yellow scarf knotted round the creature’s throat.

It was this final touch of horror that brought Katharine to her senses. It was not madness, after all, which lay behind those expectant cardboard eyes; it was not even sense, nor life of any kind. It was just Jane’s and Angela’s guy that they’d been making yesterday evening, over in Angela’s playroom. They must have brought it outside to work out some way of propping it up on the bonfire, and left it here. It would spoil, left out like this all night. Those painted eyes would run in black and orange streaks; the cardboard cheeks would warp and buckle; it should be brought in at once.

And I wouldn’t touch it for a thousand pounds.

Katharine amazed herself with the suddenness and
definiteness
of this conclusion. After her surge of relief at finding the thing was only a guy, why should she still feel this repugnance—yes, this sickening fear—at the very thought of touching it?

Katharine crept softly back into the house, fastening the back door behind her, bolting it, putting up the chain—locking out the moonlight, and the guy, and her own strangely beating heart as she had stared into its eyes.

But when she crept back to her darkened bedroom, tiptoeing, holding her breath so as not to wake Stephen, she suddenly knew that Stephen wasn’t there.

“Stephen!” she cried sharply, and switched on the bedside light “Stephen——!”

“What is it? Hush Katharine, you’ll wake everyone!”

Stephen, blinking in the sudden light, was standing in the doorway behind her.

“Where have you been?” they both asked simultaneously—then both laughed a little, uneasily. And then a sort of paralysis descended on them, which took the form of a halting stilted sort of conversation. Katharine, it seemed, had thought she heard a noise in the garden and had gone to investigate: Stephen, it seemed, had woken and found her gone, and had been looking for her. As simple as that. And with this simplicity they both had to be satisfied, and, much later, in the far, fag-end of the night, to fall asleep.

“I
THINK YOU OUGHT
to discourage Jane from playing with Angela Prescott,” pronounced Stephen; and Katharine felt as if he had pushed her roughly out of the way. For when she had started telling him all this recent gossip about Mary and Alan Prescott, it hadn’t been with any intention of asking his advice, or indeed of reaching any practical conclusion of any sort. She had simply been saving it as a possible topic of
conversation
with which to break the terrible ice of Saturday morning breakfast. This habit of saving up snippets of conversation was one which had been growing on her of late. As her relationship with Stephen deteriorated, she found herself storing up remarks and anecdotes that might form the basis of a conversation with him; hoarding them, like shillings for the gas-meter, furious to see any of them wasted on any other purpose. For one of the most intractable features of a tottering marriage is the swift, relentless narrowing of the range of subjects that can be discussed without causing a row. Months ago it had begun to be impossible to discuss the children in any aspect whatever without starting a row about either Stephen’s irritability with them or Katharine’s spoiling of them; and not long after, in quick succession, it had become impossible to discuss anything about holidays, or new equipment for the house, or Katharine’s job. By now it seemed impossible even to comment on an item in the paper without disaster. Only the other day Katharine had read out a bit about the high rents in the district, and Stephen had commented wearily: “Well, it
is
depressing for a man to feel he’s paying out four-fifths of his income to maintain an establishment in which he’s never even comfortable, let alone happy.” Even the weather was taboo; if Katharine
remarked
on its being a cold morning, the chances were great
that Stephen would start all over again about why couldn’t she light the fire
before
she went to work, and leave it banked up. Like
other
women, of course; and that, however hard she tried to prevent it, would bring the resentful look back into
Katharine’s
face….

But amid all these encroaching conversational perils, Katharine had thought that gossip about the neighbours was still safe. Particularly gossip about the Prescotts, since nearly every story about that pair served to underline the pleasing fact that Katharine wasn’t nearly such an ineffectual wife as Mary, and that Stephen wasn’t nearly as forbidding a husband as Alan. Thus they each tended to emerge from a Prescott
anecdote
a little mollified; a little better pleased with themselves and with each other. This was precisely why Katharine had saved her story for the difficult Saturday morning breakfast. She was therefore disconcerted in the extreme that Stephen should take her narration not as a pretext for a little
much-needed
mutual admiration, but as an occasion for positive and disruptive action: action which could only precipitate tears, scenes, recriminations and offence in every direction.

“It sounds to me,” pursued Stephen, “as if the atmosphere next door must be very—peculiar. I don’t like the sound of it; and I don’t want Jane mixed up with it.”

Katharine could not allow herself to see that there might be some truth in what Stephen was saying. All she could see was the trouble and upheaval that would be caused in the two families if his suggestion was taken seriously: trouble and upheaval so monstrous, from her point of view, as to swamp all other considerations.

“But Stephen, I
can’t
!”
she protested. “Jane and Angela have played together, in and out of each other’s houses, ever since they can remember. I
can’t
break it up—make it different—suddenly. And Mary would be so dreadfully hurt. Besides, whatever
for
?
After all, anyone can have a burglar breaking in….”

So engrossed was Katharine in making her point, that she almost forgot that there
hadn’t
been a burglar. She scarcely
remembered even to feel thankful that she hadn’t told Stephen the whole truth—and naturally she hadn’t. How could she when Mary had made her confession in confidence, to
Katharine
alone? By the time she had convinced Stephen that nothing had occurred next door that could be classed as “peculiar”, she had nearly convinced herself also. Her only anxiety now was that Jane shouldn’t parade her friendship with Angela under her father’s nose for a while: not until it had all blown over.

It was lucky, from this point of view, that Jane wasn’t down to breakfast yet—she’d be sure to have been chattering about the guy at Angela’s house last night. But of course you couldn’t expect Stephen to see how lucky it was; he was already looking at the clock irritably and asking where were they all? Stephen hated the children’s habit of getting up late on Saturdays—or, to put it more fairly, Katharine’s habit of letting them. He seemed to set great store by sitting down to breakfast punctually with his family round him, and he apparently didn’t notice that this happy family scene nearly always ended in rows, or tears, or both. It must be, thought Katharine, that he had eternally in mind some other, more biddable, family than he actually possessed. He must ever and again be picturing himself sitting down to the breakfast table with three pleasant,
well-behaved
girls who would ask him (one at a time) intelligent questions that he knew the answer to, like: How high is the Eiffel Tower? Girls who would listen with eager but quiet interest while he explained to them about the inside of a termites’ nest.

That this improbable morning vision of his family should still be sustaining her husband after more than a decade of evidence to the contrary, would have seemed unbearably pathetic to Katharine, if only it hadn’t been so inconvenient. If only Stephen would accept, once and for all, that breakfast with the children was absolutely frightful, and would avoid it as sedulously as she tried to avoid it for him, life would be much simpler. But no: he was continually urging her to make the girls get up at a proper time at week-ends; and she, not
exactly disagreeing with him, was continually compromising by calling them at the proper time and then doing nothing more about it. The net effect of this, of course, was that they didn’t get up, and it wasn’t exactly her fault, nor yet exactly theirs; and this, she supposed—rather shocked when she actually faced it—was the whole purpose of the manœuvre.

Oh, well, she reassured herself, most wives probably balance the domestic peace on a series of such evasions and subterfuges, you couldn’t always be worrying about these trifles, analysing your motives; and anyway, this Saturday it would have been more awful than usual because of its being Curfew’s birthday. She stole a cautious look at her husband. No; he was in no mood to be subjected to Curfew’s birthday. Bits of wilting lettuce were probably at this very moment being wrapped messily up in tissue paper on Jane’s eiderdown, while Flora lay reading comics in the adjoining bed, and saying “Shut up!” at intervals. And Clare, in the next room, would still be sound asleep. It
was
disgraceful, really, at a quarter-past nine in the morning.

But of course it was worse when they actually came down; arguing, tramping about the kitchen, fishing about in cupboards for packets of cornflakes, warming up rashers of bacon and making toast at the cooker, where Katharine was already trying to put on a stew for lunch. And now Jane was wailing because the grape she’d left wrapped in silver paper ready for Curfew’s birthday had disappeared.

Heaven send that Stephen didn’t hear her from the sitting-room, where he was now sitting scowling—Katharine could feel it through the solid wall—over the morning paper.

At last even the late breakfast was over to the last scatter of toast crumbs, and what Katharine always thought of as the Saturday Hover began.

“Mummy,” began Flora, hovering over her mother’s chair and helping herself to a sliver of carrot from the knife, “what are we doing today? Can we go out somewhere?”

“I’m afraid not—at least
I
can’t take you,” said Katharine. “I’ve got to get this stew on, and do the shopping, and I
must
catch up with the ironing today.”

“When can we start Curfew’s birthday?” demanded Jane, leaning over Katharine on the other side. “He’s getting terribly impatient. He——”

“Not till I’ve got the stew on,” repeated Katharine patiently. “Not till this afternoon, really, Jane, because this morning I’ve got to——”

But of course Jane wasn’t listening to what Katharine had to do this morning—nor, indeed, was Katharine herself, for even while she recited her list of tasks, she was simultaneously preparing to parry Clare’s request to be shown how to pick up the stiches for the neck of her jumper. It was a shame, really, not to be able to drop everything and help her at once; for Clare had been working for months and months at that piece of knitting: slowly, doggedly, without even any hope, apparently, of ever finishing it, she had been going on, and on, over every obstacle, like a tearful but indefatigable tank. It was a miracle, really, that she should ever have reached the point of needing to pick up the stitches for the neck. But all the same, the stew
must
go on—and any moment now Stephen would be wandering back into the kitchen, folded newspaper in his hand, and saying “Well, what are the plans for today?” All of them, one after another, dumping their week-end leisure in her lap like so many bundles of washing, taking it for granted that it was her job to deal with it.

“Not till after lunch, dear” “Not till after tea, dear” “Not till tomorrow, dear”—could she extract from her harassed programme nothing but these negative responses? Katharine took refuge in her usual inadequate solution:

“I’m going shopping in a few minutes,” she announced. “Would any of you like to come?”

The response was exactly as she had expected. A
long-drawn
-out “Uughgh!” from Flora; a blank, slightly
disheartened
look from Clare as she let her knitting slither into a chair; and a squeal of joy from Jane.

“Oh, yes, Mummy!” she cried, still young enough to see shopping as a magic gateway to unfathomable delights in the way of minor personal possessions; and her delight suddenly
lit the morning for Katharine with familiar yet always unexpected radiance. Jane skipped about the house getting ready as if she was preparing for some wonderful holiday; and as the two of them set forth in the golden stillness of the October sunlight, Katharine felt herself sharing Jane’s mood. For her, too, Jane’s two sixpences shone like newly discovered planets shedding their glory even across the buying of six lamb chops and two and a half pounds of scrag end.

There were four overdue library books to be returned, which together had amassed fines of 2
s.
4
d
.; and as she fumbled for change, the Librarian gave Katharine that look which always made her feel that they should either raise the fines to a point where they actually enjoyed taking then in, and smiled over it, or else lower then to a point where you felt they were entitled to look as disagreeable as they liked. As things were, you seemed to be getting the worst of both worlds.

Jane loved the library. She always darted instantly and incomprehensibly to the Reference section, dragged out some mighty volume apparently at random, opened it, and pored with catholic enthusiasm over whatever met her eye until Katharine was ready to go.

It was a pity that today Jane should have picked on a particularly gigantic tome, with particularly tiny print, and that she should be positively frowning over it just as Stella came into the library and dumped her pile of books on the counter. None of them had fines, of course—Stella always said that to accumulate fines on library books showed an
unconscious
resistance to reading them at all; though it always seemed to Katharine that a conscious resistance to making a special trip with them in the rain had exactly the same effect financially.

Stella watched Jane pityingly for a moment, and then hurried over to Katharine.

“It’s funny how you can always tell the grammar school children here,” she whispered gaily and noisily into Katharine’s ear. “Their heads are always bent
downwards,
looking at
books.
It’s funny—the children from freer schools always have their heads
up
,
looking at
people
.”

It seemed to Katharine that here was a single accusation masquerading as a multiple one. After all, to read a book at all—particularly one of the size Jane had chosen—you would have to bend your head, unless you had quite extraordinarily strong arms for holding it in front of your face; and to look at people you’d have to look straight ahead, unless you were very strangely positioned, somewhere up in the rafters. But it would be difficult to get all this across satisfactorily in a hoarse whisper, so Katharine contented herself with
murmuring
that Jane wasn’t at a grammar school yet, and very likely (would Stella take this as modesty or boasting?) never would be.

“Ah, but she’s on the
treadmill
already!” hissed Stella. “You can see it, just from the line of her shoulders! Now, when
Mavis
comes to the library——”

“She chooses books from the two upper shelves, I suppose,” murmured Katharine pleasantly—and glanced anxiously across at Jane to see if she
did
look over-studious compared with other children. Was she going to be shortsighted, perhaps, peering and frowning like that, or was it just that the table was rather high and her chair rather low?

“I’ve just been in to see Mary Prescott,” Stella was
whispering
eagerly. “She seems—don’t you think?—in a bit of a state?”

There was an uncharacteristic hesitation in Stella’s manner; and it flashed across Katharine’s mind that perhaps Stella knew everything that Katharine herself knew—but wasn’t sure if Katharine did. Perhaps Mary was one of those maddening people who confide their innermost thought in absolute confidence to absolutely everybody, leaving a trail of
gossip-hungry
victims who have all promised faithfully not to breathe a word of it to each other, and yet who are all
almost
sure that each other already know.