Dark Companions Read online

  At first I was reminded of a sailor’s parrot. “Aye aye,” it was croaking. The distorted voice sounded cracked, uneven, almost too old to speak. “You know what I mean, son?” it grated triumphantly. “Aye aye.” I was growing uneasy, for my mind had begun to interpret the words as “Eye eye”—when suddenly, dreadfully, I realised Mark hadn’t brought his radio.

  There might be someone in the shelter with a radio. But I was terrified, I wasn’t sure why. I ran towards the pool, calling “Come on, Mark, they’re here!” The lamps dazzled me; everything swayed with my running—which was why I couldn’t be sure what I saw.

  I know I saw Mark at the shelter. He stood just within, confronting darkness. Before I could discern whether anyone else was there, Mark staggered out blindly, hands covering his face, and collapsed into the pool.

  Did he drag something with him? Certainly by the time I reached the margin of the light he appeared to be tangled in something, and to be struggling feebly. He was drifting, or being dragged, towards the centre of the pool by a half-submerged heap of litter. At the end of the heap nearest Mark’s face was a pale ragged patch in which gleamed two round objects—bottle caps? I could see all this because I was standing helpless, screaming at the girls “Quick, for Christ’s sake! He’s drowning!” He was drowning, and I couldn’t swim.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I heard Lorna say. That enraged me so much that I turned from the pool. “What do you mean?” I cried. “What do you mean, you stupid bitch?”

  “Oh, be like that,” she said haughtily, and refused to say more. But Carol took pity on my hysteria, and explained “It’s only three feet deep. He’ll never drown in there.”

  I wasn’t sure that she knew what she was talking about, but that was no excuse for me not to try to rescue him. When I turned to the pool I gasped miserably, for he had vanished—sunk. I could only wade into the muddy water, which engulfed my legs and closed around my waist like ice, ponderously hindering me.

  The floor of the pool was fattened with slimy litter. I slithered, terrified of losing my balance. Intuition urged me to head for the centre of the pool. And it was there 1 found him, as my sluggish kick collided with his ribs.

  When I tried to raise him, I discovered that he was pinned down. I had to grope blindly over him in the chill water, feeling how still he was. Something like a swollen cloth bag, very large, lay over his face. I couldn’t bear to touch it again, for its contents felt soft and fat. Instead I seized Mark’s ankles and managed at last to drag him free. Then I struggled towards the edge of the pool, heaving him by his shoulders, lifting his head above water. His weight was dismaying. Eventually the girls waded out to help me.

  But we were too late. When we dumped him on the concrete, his face stayed agape with horror; water lay stagnant in his mouth. I could see nothing wrong with his eyes. Carol grew hysterical, and it was Lorna who ran to the hospital, perhaps in order to get away from the sight of him. I only made Carol worse by demanding why they hadn’t waited for us at the shelter; I wanted to feel they were to blame. But she denied they had written the message, and grew more hysterical when I asked why they hadn’t waited at the island. The question, or the memory, seemed to frighten her.

  I never saw her again. The few newspapers that bothered to report Mark’s death gave the verdict “by misadventure”. The police took a dislike to me after I insisted that there might be somebody else in the pool, for the draining revealed nobody. At least, I thought, whatever was there had gone away. Perhaps I could take some credit for that, at least.

  But perhaps I was too eager for reassurance. The last time I ventured near the shelter was years ago, one winter night on the way home from school. I had caught sight of a gleam in the depths of the shelter. As I went close, nervously watching both the shelter and the pool, I saw two discs glaring at me from the darkness beside the bench. They were Coca-Cola caps, not eyes at all, and it must have been a wind that set the pool slopping and sent the caps scuttling towards me. What frightened me most as I fled through the dark was that I wouldn’t be able to see where I was running if, as I desperately wanted to, I put up my hands to protect my eyes.

  Napier Court

  Alma Napier sat up in bed. Five minutes ago she’d laid down Victimes de Devoir to cough, then stared round her bedroom heavy-eyed; the partly open door reflected panels of cold October sunlight, which glanced from the flowered wallpaper, glared from the glass-fronted bookcase, but left the metronome on top in shadow and failed to reach the corner where her music stand was standing. She’d thought she had heard footsteps on the stairs. Beyond the brilliant panel she could see the darker landing; she waited for someone to appear. Her clock, displayed within its glass tube, showed 11:03. It must be Maureen. Then she thought: could it be her parents? Had they decided to give up their holiday after all? She had looked forward to being left alone for a fortnight when her cold had confined her to the house; she wanted time to prove herself, to make her own way—she felt a stab of misery as she listened. Couldn’t they leave her alone for two weeks? Didn’t they trust her? The silence thickened; the darkness on the landing seemed to move. “Who’s there? Is that you, Maureen?” she called and coughed. The darkness moved again. Of course it didn’t, she said, willing her hands to unclench. She held up one; the little finger twitched. Don’t be childish, she told herself, where’s your strength? She slid out of the cocoon of warmth, slipped on her slippers and dressing gown, and went downstairs.

  The house was empty. “You see?” she said aloud. What else had she expected? She entered the kitchen. On the windowsill sat the medicine her mother had bought. “I don’t like to leave you alone,” she’d said two hours ago. “Promise you’ll take this and stay in bed until you’re better. I’ve asked Maureen to buy anything you need while she’s shopping.” “Mother,” Alma had protested, “I could have asked her. After all, she is my friend.” “I know I’m being overprotective, I know I can’t expect to be liked for it any more,” and oh God, Alma thought, all the strain of calming her down, of parting friends; there was no longer any question of love. As her mother was leaving the bedroom while her father bumped the last case down to the car, she’d said “Alma, I don’t want to talk about Peter, as you well know, but you did promise—” “I’ve told you,” Alma had replied somewhat sharply, “I shan’t be seeing him again.” That was all over. She wished everything were over, all this possessiveness which threatened to erase her completely; she wished she could be left alone with her music. But that was not to be, not for two years. There was the medicine bottle, incarnating her mother’s continued influence in the house. Taking medicine for a cold was a sign of weakness, in Alma’s opinion. But her chest hurt terribly when she coughed; after all, her mother wasn’t imposing it on her, if she took it that was her own decision. She measured a spoonful and gulped it down. Then she padded determinedly through the hall, past the living-room (her father’s desk reflected in one mirror), the dining room (her mother’s flower arrangements preserved under glass in another), and upstairs, past her mother’s Victorian valentines framed above the ornate banister. Now, she ordered herself, to bed, and another chapter of Victimes de Devoir before Maureen arrived. She’d never make the Brichester French Circle if she carried on like this.

  But as soon as she climbed into bed, trying to preserve its bag of warmth, she was troubled by something she remembered having seen. In the hall—what had been wrong? She caught it: as she’d mounted the stairs she’d seen a shape in the hall mirror. Maureen’s coat hanging on the coat stand—but Maureen wasn’t here. Certainly something pale had stood against the front-door panes. About to investigate, she addressed herself: the house was empty, there could be nothing there. All right, she’d asked Maureen to check the story of the house in the library’s files of the Brichester Herald—but that didn’t mean she believed the hints she’d heard in the corner shop that day, before her mother had intervened with “Now, Alma, don’t upset yourself” and to the shopkeeper: “Haunted, indeed! I’m afra
id we grew out of that sort of thing in Severnford!” If she had seemed to glimpse a figure in the hall it merely meant she was delirious. She’d asked Maureen to check purely because she wanted to face up to the house, to come to terms with it. She was determined to stop thinking of her room as her refuge, where she was protected by her music. Before she left the house she wanted to make it a step towards maturity.

  The darkness shifted on the landing. Tired eyes, she explained—yet again her room enfolded her. She reached out and removed her flute from its case; she admired its length, its shine, the perfection of its measurements as they fitted to her fingers. She couldn’t play it now—each time she tried she coughed—but it seemed charged with beauty. Her appreciation over, she laid the instrument to rest in its long black box.

  “You retreat into your room and your music.” Peter had said that, but he’d been speaking of a retreat from Hiroshima, from the conditions in Lower Brichester, from all the horrid things he’d insisted she confront. That was over, she said quickly, and the house was empty. Yet her eyes strayed from Victimes de Devoir.

  Footsteps on the stairs again. This time she recognised Maureen’s. The others—which she hadn’t heard, of course—had been indeterminate, even sexless. She thought she’d ask Maureen whether she’d left her coat in the hall; she might have entered while Alma had slept, with the key she’d borrowed. The door opened and the panel of sunlight fled, darkening the room. No, thought Alma; to inquire into possible delusions would be an admission of weakness.

  Maureen dropped her carrier and sneezed. “I think I’ve got your cold,” she said indistinctly.

  “Oh dear.” Alma’s mood had darkened with the room, with her decision not to speak. She searched for conversation in which to lose herself. “Have you heard yet when you’re going to library school?” she asked.

  “It’s not settled yet. I don’t know, the idea of a spinster career is beginning to depress me. I’m glad you’re not faced with that.”

  “You shouldn’t brood,” Alma advised, restlessly stacking her books on the bedspread.

  Maureen examined the titles. “Victimes de Devoir, Therese Desqueyroux. In the original French, good Lord. Why are you grappling with these?”

  “So that I’ll be an interesting young woman,” Alma replied instantly. “I’m sure I’ve told you I feel guilty doing nothing. I can’t practice, not with this cold. I only hope it’s past before the Camside concert, Which reminds me, do you think I could borrow your transistor during the day? For the music programme. To give me peace.”

  “All right. I can’t today, I start work at one. Though I think—no, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I agree with Peter, you know that. You can’t have peace and beauty without closing your eyes to the world. Didn’t he say that to seek peace in music was to seek complete absence of sensation, of awareness?”

  “He said that and you know my answer.” Alma unwillingly remembered; he had been here in her room, taking in the music in the bookcase, the polished record-player—she’d sensed his disapproval and felt miserable; why couldn’t he stay the strong forthright man she’d come to admire and love? “Really, darling, this is an immature attitude,” he’d said. “I can’t help feeling you want to abdicate from the human race and its suffering.” Her eyes embraced the room. This was security, apart from the external chaos, the horrid part of life. “Even you appreciate the beauty of the museum exhibits,” she told Maureen.

  “I suppose that’s why you work there. I admire them, yes, but in many cases by ignoring their history of cruelty.”

  “Why must you and Peter always look for the horrid things? What about this house? There are beautiful things here. That record-player—you can look at it and imagine all the craftsmanship it took. Doesn’t that seem to you fulfilling?”

  “You know we leftists have a functional aesthetic. Anyway—” Maureen paused. “If that’s your view of the house you’d best not know what I found out about it.”

  “Go on, I want to hear.”

  “If you insist. The Brichester Herald was useless—they reported the death of the owner and that was all—but I came across a chapter in Pamela Jones’ book on local hauntings which gives the details. The last owner of the house lost a fortune in the stock market—I don’t know how exactly, of course it’s not my field—and he became a recluse in this house. There’s worse to come, are you sure you want—? Well, he went mad. Things started disappearing, so he said, and he accused something he thought was living in the house, something that ‘used to stand behind’ him or mock him from the empty rooms. I can imagine how he started having hallucinations, looking at this view—”

  Alma joined her at the window. “Why?” she disagreed. “I think it’s beautiful.” She admired the court before the house, the stone pillars framing the iron flourish of the gates; then a stooped woman passed across the picture, heaving a pram from which overflowed a huge cloth bag of washing. Alma felt depressed again; the scene was spoiled.

  “Sorry, Alma,” Maureen said; her cold hand touched Alma’s fingers. Alma frowned slightly and insinuated herself between the sheets. “… Sorry,” Maureen said again. “Do you want to hear the rest? It’s conventional, really. He gassed himself. The Jones book has something about a note he wrote—insane, of course: he said he wanted to ‘fade into the house, the one possession left to me,’ whatever that meant. Afterwards the stories started; people used to see someone very tall and thin standing at the front door on moonlit nights, and one man saw a figure at an upstairs window with its head turning back and forth like clockwork. Yes, and one of the neighbours used to dream that the house was ‘screaming for help’—the book explained that, but not to me I’m afraid. I shouldn’t be telling you all this, you’ll be alone until tonight.”

  “Don’t worry, Maureen. It’s just enjoyably creepy.”

  “A perceptive comment. It blinds you to what really happened. To think of him in this house, possessing the rooms, eating, sleeping—you forget he lived once, he was real. I wonder which room—?”

  “You don’t have to harp on it,” Alma said. “You sound like Peter.”

  “Poor Peter, you are attacking him today. He’ll be here to protect you tonight, after all.”

  “He won’t, because we’ve parted.”

  “You could have stopped me talking about him, then. But how for God’s sake did it happen?”

  “Oh, on Friday. I don’t want to talk about it.” Walking hand in hand to the front door and as always kissing as Peter turned the key; her father waiting in the hall: “Now listen, Peter, this can’t go on”—prompted by her mother, Alma knew, her father was too weak to act independently. She’d pulled Peter into the kitchen—“Go, darling, I’ll try and calm them down,” she’d said desperately—but her mother was waiting, immediately animated, like a fairground puppet by a penny: “You know you’ve broken my heart, Alma, marrying beneath you.” Alma had slumped into a chair, but Peter leaned against the dresser, facing them all, her mother’s prepared speech: “Peter, I will not have you marrying Alma—you’re uneducated, you’ll get nowhere at the library, you’re obsessed with politics and you don’t care how much they distress Alma—” and on and on. If only he’d come to her instead of standing pugnaciously apart! She’d looked up at him finally, tearful, and he’d said “Well, darling, I’ll answer any point of your mother’s you feel is not already answered”—and suddenly everything had been too much; she’d run sobbing to her room. Below, the back door had closed. She’d wrenched open the window; Peter was crossing the garden beneath the rain. “Peter!” she’d cried out. “Whatever happens I still love you—” but her mother was before her, pushing her away from the window, shouting down “Go back to your kennel!” … “What?” she asked Maureen, distracted back.

  “I said I don’t believe it was your decision. It must have been your mother.”

  “That’s irrelevant. I broke it off finally.” Her letter: “It would be impossible to
continue when my parents refuse to receive you but anyway I don’t want to any more, I want to study hard and become a musician”—she’d posted it on Saturday after a sleepless sobbing night, and immediately she’d felt released, at peace. Then the thought disturbed her: it must have reached Peter by now; surely he wouldn’t try to see her? But he wouldn’t be able to get in; she was safe.

  “You can’t tell me you love your mother more than Peter. You’re simply taking refuge again.”

  “Surely you don’t think I love her now. But I still feel I must be loyal. Is there a difference between love and loyalty?”

  “Never having had either, I wouldn’t know. Good God, Alma, stop barricading yourself with pseudo-philosophy!”

  “If you must know, Maureen, I shall be leaving them as soon as I’ve paid for my flute. They gave it to me for my twenty-first and now they’re threatening to take it back. It’ll take me two years, but I shall pay.”

  “And you’ll be twenty-five. God Almighty, why? Bowing down to private ownership?”

  “You wouldn’t understand any more than Peter would.”

  “You’ve returned the ring, of course.”

  “No.” Alma shifted Victimes de Devoir. “Once I asked Peter if I could keep it if we broke up.” Two weeks before their separation; she’d felt the pressures—her parents’ crush, his horrors—misshaping her, callous as thumbs on plasticine. And he’d replied that there’d be no question of their breaking up, which she’d taken for assent.

  “And Peter’s feelings?” Maureen let the question resonate, but it was muffled by the music.

  “Maureen, I just want to remember the happy times!”

  “I don’t understand that remark. At least, perhaps I do, but I don’t like it.”