Don't Go to Sleep in the Dark Read online

  The crash of splintering wood and a shout recalled Frances to her situation. It was quite dark now. She ought to be making her way home. If only I’d been hurt! she thought suddenly. If only I was being carried to hospital, dangerously injured, then Michael would be sorry! Then he’d wish he hadn’t neglected me all these months! She gazed almost longingly at the black hulk of the wrecked train; and in that moment, as if it had crawled out from under the carriage as a worm crawls from under an upturned stone, an idea crept guiltily into her mind.

  That would show him! All I have to do is—nothing! If I don’t telephone … don’t go home … just disappear for the evening, then perhaps he’ll be sorry for the way he’s treated me!

  For, of course, Michael was sure to hear of the accident. He was sure, too, to realize that she must have been on that train—when she went to her sister’s for the afternoon she always came back on the 6.25. She pictured Michael frantically telephoning one hospital after another … dashing to the station … to the scene of the accident…. The picture brought tears to her eyes, and yet filled her with a warmth and peace she had not known for months. The thought of it was like food and drink to her, like fire and shelter on a stormy night. For one evening at least Michael’s attention would be riveted on her, and on her only. His anxiety, his fear, they would be nothing more than a measure of his love. She would know at last—and he would know—that she was needed—missed; that he loved her—could not do without her.

  Frances stirred uneasily. An opportunity like this would not occur twice in a lifetime. And it would be so easy, so temptingly, irresistibly easy. Just walk away into the darkness. And in the morning she would return home and bask in Michael’s joy at her safety, his remorse, his tenderness, his renewed willingness to do everything she wanted for evermore.

  But what about the questions she would have to answer? Why, if she wasn’t hurt, hadn’t she come straight home? Frances hesitated, but only for a moment. Why, she could say she had been stunned—lost her memory—anything. All sorts of things could happen to people involved in a Railway Accident. Already the phrase had taken on the quality of a charm—a talisman. “I’ve been in a Railway Accident”—it was like a badge one could wear as some women wear their beauty—a badge exempting them from all ordinary rules and standards.

  Concussion! The world flashed into her mind like an inspiration. You behaved in all sorts of queer ways when you had concussion, and there need not be any mark to prove you had it. Some friend of her sister’s—hadn’t she had concussion once from falling off her bicycle, and not even a bruise to show for it? And that man—the one who was hit on the head by a falling ladder, and then walked several hundred yards without knowing anything about it before he collapsed?

  Yes, that was the thing. She would let them think she had had concussion, and had just managed to stagger a little of the way home before she collapsed in some unfrequented spot where no one had happened to find her. And when she returned with her story in the morning Michael would be so tender … so solicitous. She would be surrounded by his protective love once more as she had been when they first married. He would realize how he had neglected her … he would give up all this painting nonsense, and that black-haired woman with her jangling jewellery would never come to the house again….

  The bank was steep, the dry autumn grass slippery, and more than once Frances was afraid that she would be seen before she reached the top. But she need not have worried. Everyone was far too busy to look up and notice the small figure creeping away into the darkness….

  *

  Houses. Rows of houses. The accident must have taken place just outside the station, then. Her own station? The one just before hers? Frances slowed her hurrying steps and tried to think. What was the last station they had passed before…? She couldn’t remember—had probably not even noticed, for throughout the journey, throughout the afternoon her mind had been filled with angry, resentful thoughts which shut out everything else. Michael’s voice at lunch-time, casual, indifferent, his thoughts already on the half-finished canvas in the corner:

  “All right, you go to Emily’s if you want to. I’ll keep an eye on Sue and give her some tea. But for goodness sake be back in time for me to get to my class at eight!” Nothing about missing her—nothing about wishing that she would stay at home with him on his one free afternoon in the week. And urging her to come back early not because he wanted her, but simply because he wanted to go to his class!

  The thought stiffened Frances’ resolution, and she walked on more firmly along the hard, tiring pavement. A warm triumph flowed through her. This evening he would not be going to his class; this evening he would not be bringing that woman back for one of their interminable talks. She pictured him waiting, the hated easel folded under his arm, his eyes on the clock, first irritable … then uneasy … then….

  But how cold it was! It must be getting late. A little wind had sprung up, damp with autumn, and played spitefully round her bare head, making her ears ache, her eyes sting, her whole head throb. She was tired too, terribly tired. She must have walked a long way along these dreary streets of poorly lighted houses, all exactly the same. This surely couldn’t be her home town, or she would have come across something she recognized long ago. Where could it be? Which of the towns on the branch line from Emily’s would have these miles and miles of mean streets on the outskirts, all the same, and so poorly lit?

  For the first time Frances began to feel doubts about her decision. Not about its rightness—that was a question she had chosen not to face just yet—but about its practicability. Easy enough to decide to stay out all night and give your husband a fright—but where do you stay, what do you do? Sit on a bench? But she hadn’t bargained for this treacherous damp cold eating into her very bones. Keep walking about? But already Frances was tired—achingly tired.

  A doorstep, temptingly sheltered from the wind, loomed in front of her, and without further thought Frances sat down to rest her aching limbs. If only she could find her way to the main shopping centre of this dreary place she might find a café where she could sit and at least be warm. Then she remembered that her handbag was lying somewhere buried under the wreckage of the train. She had no money—not even the price of a cup of coffee. She shivered, and drew her inadequate summer jacket more closely round her. How silly of me, she thought, to go off to Emily’s in summer things on a September afternoon. But then it was so lovely and sunny when I started, and I couldn’t have known that—well, that I was going to stay out all night…. A tent and a sleeping-bag would have been the things to bring if only I’d known….

  *

  Frances started awake, stiff and shivering. How long had she been asleep? She had a momentary wild hope that it might be morning, that the long vigil was over and it was time to rush home to Michael’s warm, repentant arms, to bask in his sympathy.

  But no. No flicker of dawn had crept into the black, starless sky, and Frances felt alone as she had never felt alone before. And as she sat, waiting for the mists of sleep to clear, she became conscious of a great fear. At first she could not place it. No stealthy footsteps approached along the silent street: no rustling in the dusty privet bushes at her side could account for her straining ears, her suddenly beating heart.

  Like a searchlight, the fear quivered up and down the silent street and then settled, it seemed to Frances, right beside her … on top of her … blazing into her very soul.

  She knew now what she was afraid of. She was afraid of this woman, sitting here on the doorstep. This woman who, to bolster up a childish pride, could condemn her husband to a night of tormented anxiety; could make capital out of a public disaster; and who, well and strong, could scheme to go home and extract sympathy for invented injuries….

  What kind of punishment would the Fates have in store for such a woman? The irony of fate. Where would that irony lead them to strike, and strike with all their age-old pagan power?

  Susan? Michael? Frances did not doubt that the Fates
knew her vulnerable spots; but which? or both? Oh God, what will happen to them? she moaned; perhaps what has happened? Out of the dark street the little cruel wind whipped past her face again, like the first messenger of a cold and ancient power, inexorable.

  What could have happened? Her mind raced wildly over the possibilities, and then pounced. Of course! That was the punishment that the Fates would have chosen for her; a punishment so neat, so fitting to the crime…. They would have arranged that Michael, distracted with worry, should dash out to some hospital—to the scene of the accident—somewhere—leaving Susan alone. And Susan, left alone—well, what are the things that can happen to an eighteen-month old baby left alone in the house? She would have fallen downstairs? Or into the fire? Pulled something heavy down on top of herself? There were no end to the possibilities. Frances knew only one thing for certain. She must go home—now—at once—and tell Michael everything—if it was not already too late! If only she knew what time it was; but she might have been asleep on the step for hours or only for five minutes. The black sky gave no clue, and neither did the deserted street.

  “Michael, Michael!” she moaned aloud; and the name somehow seemed to give her strength. Almost as if she was being lifted by some power outside herself, Frances found herself on her feet and hurrying through the darkness. All the stiffness seemed to have left her limbs and she was running—not at random, as she had feared in this maze of unfamiliar streets, but with a curious feeling of certainty that this was the right way home.

  And she was not deceived. Sooner than she would have believed possible, she found herself turning a corner into the familiar shopping street where only that morning she had been wheeling Susan in her push-chair. Susan, well and happy in the sunshine. Sunshine. Susan, as yet untouched by the finger of Fate moving relentlessly through the night….

  A rush of icy wind met Frances as she turned the corner into her own road, and it seemed to her like the breath of Fate itself; the breath that had blown cold, cold through the centuries, freezing and splintering the lives of arrogant mortals, until tonight it had reached this road, this house….

  Even before she could see them, Frances knew that the windows of her home would be black and silent; that no light would be shining through the fanlight of the door. Somehow she seemed to have known too of the stillness that would fill the little hall as she stood there in the darkness. A stillness like the stillness of the carriage just before it began to tilt. She could almost imagine that the floor of the hall was tilting now … rising … slanting—tipping everything she loved down some black interminable staircase into a bottomless nightmare.

  But there was not only silence in the house—the silence of a cavern where no living creature has been able to survive. There was also a faint, disturbing smell in the air. For one wild moment of hope Frances thought it was the smell of wet paint—the smell that she had always complained about, but which now would have brought her comfort past describing. A smell that meant life—that meant Michael—that meant the boyish enthusiasm, the gay vitality that had been the very light and backbone of their home, and she, Frances, had never known it! She had basked in it, lived on it, and yet never noticed it, so busy was she resenting the trifling inconveniences that went with it, grudging the tiny efforts it demanded of her as some miser might grudge the trouble of drawing aside a curtain to let in the blazing sun of June.

  Wildly, Frances reached her hand along the wall to find the light switch, but it encountered nothing; and somehow she dared not take another step in the darkness—a step that might send her headlong down that phantom staircase winding down, down, down into unimaginable blackness.

  The smell had grown stronger. It seemed to be seeping out of the darkness all round her, sweetish, sickening, tasting of doom. Surely Michael couldn’t have…? In his despair at thinking her dead could he…? Would he…? And with Susan here with him…? The strange smell grew thicker—it seemed to press upon her in the darkness like a suffocating blanket. She gasped for breath, and far away a sort of thudding sounded in her ears … louder … louder … thud … thud … THUD …

  “She’s coming out of the anaesthetic nicely now,” called a brisk voice. “You can come in and see her now if you like.”

  Frances struggled to open her eyes The thudding sound was still going on, but she recognized it now as her own heart. The sweetish smell of the anaesthetic had almost cleared, and a moment later she felt Michael’s hand in hers and his face against her cheek.

  “Michael!” she gasped hoarsely, “Are you all right? Are you alive—and Susan?”

  “Darling, of course we’re alive! It’s you who were in the accident, not us! Oh, darling, I’ve been so terrified—”

  “Michael, I know, I’ll never forgive myself! I was pretending to have concussion to make you….”

  “Darling, hush! You weren’t pretending, you did have concussion, and pretty badly too. You seem to have managed to stagger as far as the Station Cottages just by the line there—they found you unconscious on a doorstep there an hour or so afterwards.”

  “An hour? The Station Cottages? But I was walking for hours, through streets and streets of little houses, all the same.”

  Michael spoke slowly.

  “It must have seemed like streets and streets because you were so ill,” he said gently. “But actually it was only those five cottages—they are all the same. They told me that when they lifted you up you called out for me—you must have staggered along there trying to find me—Oh, dearest…!”

  Frances tried to speak. She remembered that moment of calling out Michael’s name, and the feeling of being lifted up by some outside power. But trying to find him! When the only plan in her mind had been to escape—to hide—to give him a good fright!

  And yet—and yet? Hadn’t she been trying to find him? Trying to find the love and closeness that had been missing between them? True, the way she had chosen to look for it was a twisted, dishonest way; childish, and childishly cruel. She would never look that way again. But there were other ways … honest, adult ways … shining, sunlit ways, strewn with bright canvases, with sawdust and splashes of paint … with laughter and gay discussion far into the night….

  “And all the time I did have concussion!” murmured Frances. “Talk about the irony of fate!” She was nearly asleep now, and as in a dream she heard Michael’s voice:

  “… I was getting quite frantic, and there was this confounded old buffer still in the telephone booth bellowing down the receiver. He came out muttering curses about the telephone service in this area….”

  “I’m so glad he was all right too,” murmured Frances; and it didn’t matter that Michael couldn’t understand a word she said. Already an understanding more important than words was spreading like sunlight across the bed between them.

  THE BABY-SITTER

  DAPHNE COULD NOT have told you what the play was about. Her only thought as the curtain fell after the first act was: Fifty minutes are over already; in another two hours—perhaps less—I shall be able to go home and find out what has happened. Find out if this strange premonition of disaster—this sense of dread which grows stronger with every passing minute—is just the foolish fancy of an over-anxious mother, or if …

  She stole a cautious glance at Tim as the lights went up. It had been Tim’s idea, this evening out together—the first one they had had for months.

  “This is absurd, Daphne,” he’d said, “I know it’s more difficult leaving Sally now we haven’t got your mother just round the corner, but hang it all, the kid’s nearly four. Surely by now she can be left with people she doesn’t know so terribly well?”

  And Daphne had agreed—in theory. But in practice it all seemed fearfully difficult. Most of Daphne’s friends were tied up at home with children of their own, and those who weren’t—well, thought Daphne, one can hardly ask busy, childless people to spend an evening baby-sitting when there is nothing you can offer to do for them in return.

  Tim, of course
, thought that was silly.

  “Just ask them,” he kept saying. “They can but say No.” Impossible to explain to a man the diffidence one felt about laying oneself open to such refusals; the humiliation one would feel if Sally chose just that night to “play up” and keep the baby-sitter running up and down stairs with glasses of water, extra blankets, and reassurances about goblins, wolves, and “The Hen with Great Big Eyes.”

  The Hen with Great Big Eyes was Sally’s pet terror. What had first put the idea into her mind Daphne could never find out—whether it was a dream, a picture, some story Sally had heard at her nursery school—or whether it was simply Sally’s own rather over-active imagination. Whatever it was, the nights for several months past had been broken periodically by wild screams from Sally’s room.

  “The Hen, Mummy! The Hen with Great Big Eyes!” and Daphne would rush upstairs to find Sally sitting up in bed, flushed and shaking—sometimes the terror would even make her sick—and only after many minutes in Daphne’s reassuring arms would the trembling cease and Sally settle peacefully to sleep again.

  “Enjoying yourself, darling?”

  Tim’s hand laid caressingly on her own filled Daphne with compunction. What a fool I am! she thought angrily; spoiling the evening by worrying like this when he’s taken all this trouble, and got these marvellous seats, and even found a baby-sitter for us himself.

  “Of course, darling, I’m loving it,” she said; but even while she was speaking her mind still followed relentlessly its single uneasy track.