Kowalski, she learned, was only a version of his name. The real one had fewer vowels and more of the lesser- used consonants in proximity. He had learned English from the World Service, picked up on his illegal receiving set; latterly, from the instructions on packets of frozen food.
For some years Mr. K. had been a shift worker at the sausage-and-cooked-meats factory. His shift was permanent nights; he preferred it that way. He had a grey skin, for he never saw the daylight, and sad nocturnal pupils to his eyes. His moustache was ragged and bristly, and he wore trousers of some thick coarse fabric like railway workers used to wear, held up with a thick leather belt; he wore an undershirt without a collar, and over this in extremely cold weather a sagging pullover of an indeterminate grey-green-blue shade. His figure was gross, his steps were slow, he mumbled as he walked, and shifted his little eyes this way and that. He dreamed of dugouts and barbed wire, of the rat-tat-tat of the machine gun and of corpses that came to light with the April thaw; of partisans, of decimated villages, of pine forests where wolves and wild boar ran. He did not know whether the dreams were his, or those of novelists, or of the long-slaughtered school-teachers who had taught him to sing folk songs and turn somersaults on a polished floor.
At Fulmers Moor the patients had minded pigs. The pigs stared out across the furrowed ground at the traffic going by to the city. Mothers would point them out to their children: look, darling, pigs. At the back of the field stood the men, loose-mouthed, their boots encrusted with clay and muck, the feed buckets swinging from their great red hands. When the children pointed to them, excitedly, their mothers pulled them away from the car windows.
When Muriel saw Mr. K. he reminded her powerfully of these men. And perhaps he has tenants, she thought. She noticed how he tapped the walls, rattled the doorknobs as he perambulated about the four floors of his house; how he peered into dark corners, how he kept a knobkerrie within reach when he sat down to his bread and marmalade at the kitchen table. Home from home, she thought.
Inside Mr. K.’s kitchen, time had stood still. Modern conveniences were few or none. There was an old porcelain laundry sink in the corner, with a cold tap. There was a kitchen range, and most of Mr. K.’s leisure hours were spent in tending it, tipping in coal and riddling it with the rake and pulling out the dampers. It was exhausting work, and filmed his forehead with sweat, but it did not seem to have any effect on the temperature.
“You want work?” Mr. K. enquired gruffly. “Poor old woman, you too sick to work.”
He was in his way a kindly man. “Sit down,” he invited her. “Brew of tea for you.”
When the tea was poured out and the sugar bowl passed, Mr. K. reached across the table. He snatched his lodger’s mug from between her hands, and deposited his own before her; sat back to watch the effect, his eyes scouring her face. She picked it up and tasted it. “More sugar,” she said, helping herself. Mr. K. seemed satisfied. He blew on his own tea and took a sip, and dabbed at his moustache.
“Go to hospital,” he advised. “Old folks’ hospital. She’s crying out for staff.”
His lodger shook her head. “They’ll never take me on. A poor old woman like me.”
“Temporary they take you on,” Mr. K. said. “Temporary, subject to union. You try. You see. You get a nice job, my dear old lady. Bring the bedpans, wash the floors, for those of greater age.”
“I’m used to hospitals,” she said, “I could give it a try. Course, I could go charring as well. If I saw a nice ad for a private house. You’d have to write me a letter to apply, I’m not ever so good at writing. Course,” added Poor Mrs. Wilmot, “I could put my own signature.”
Later that week Mr. K. stopped her on the stairs.
“I heard a voice,” he said accusingly.
She stopped, caught her breath, coughed a little. “My poor side,” she said, rubbing her ribs. “What voice was this then?”
“Female voice. You get visitors?”
“I’m all alone in the world. Course,” she suggested, “it could be her from the top floor.”
“Miss Anne-Marie? That’s a quiet female! Goes out for her giro, comes in, no trouble, no cooking smells.”
“Well, you ought to ask her, that Miss Anaemia. I expect she’s got a high-pitched boyfriend.”
Mr. K. passed a hand over his eyes. “I don’t sleep for worry. A parcel of my clothes have appeared, mysteriously laundered.” He saw her watching him. “Left dirty,” he explained, “come out clean.”
“That’s no cause for consternation. I wish we all could say as much.”
“But Wilmot, I have heard movements in the cellar. Perhaps they have caught up with me.”
“Oh yes? Who’s that then?”
“You have a day to spare?”
“Needs so long, does it?”
“If I say, the gentlemen from Montenegro? If I say, the boys from Bialystok?”
“There’s worse than that, where I come from.”
“Where is this?” A shadow of fresh apprehension crossed his face. “Yorkshire?”
“Oh, come off it,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “You’re all right now. This is a free country, haven’t you heard?”
“But I carry my countries around with me,” said Mr. K., “here, inside.” He smote his pullover. “I will never be free. I am an exile by profession, Mrs. Wilmot. I am a badly wanted man.”
“And you’ve been hearing voices, have you?”
“Noises, and human speech.” He hugged himself, one stout forearm locked over the other. “A voice cried out in the pantry: Let us pray.”
The winter passed. One day, Poor Mrs. Wilmot—who only worked an evening shift—went into town for a day’s shopping. She went into Boots the Chemist to get a bottle for her cough; shuffling away from the pharmacy counter, she saw the most amazing sight.
