The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

undo.

“While the bath ran in I used to potter about and begin to put out what I meant to wear, and cold-cream off my old make-up, and so on. I say ‘potter’ because you cannot hurry a bath. I also don’t mind telling you that I whistled. Well, what’s the harm in somebody’s being happy? Simply thinking things over won’t win this war. Looking back at that month, I whistled most of the time. The way they used to look at me, at the depot! The queer thing is, though, I remember whistling but I can’t remember when I happened to stop. But I must have stopped, because it was then I heard.”

“Heard?”

She lit up again, with a slight frown. “What was it I heard first, that first time? I suppose, the silence. So I must have stopped whistling, mustn’t I? I was lying there in my bath, with the door open behind me, when the silence suddenly made me sit right up. Then I said to myself, ‘My girl, there’s nothing queer about that. What else would you expect to hear, in an empty house?’ All the same, it made me heave the other way round in my bath, in order to keep one eye on the door. After a minute I heard what wasn’t a silence – which immediately made me think that Neville had come in early, and I don’t mind telling you I said ‘Damn’.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a bore being asked where one is going, though it’s no bother to say where one has been. If Neville was in he’d be certain to search the house, so I put a good face on things and yelled ‘Hoi’. But he didn’t answer, because it wasn’t him.”

“No?”

“No, it wasn’t. And whatever was in my bedroom must have been in my bedroom for some time. I thought, ‘A wind has come up and got into that damned chintz!’ Any draught always fidgets me; somehow it gets me down. So I got out of my bath and wrapped the big towel round me and went through to shut the windows in my room. But I was surprised when I caught sight of the may trees – all their branches were standing perfectly still. That seemed queer. At the same time, the door I’d come through from the bathroom blew shut, and the lid fell off one of my jars of face cream on to the dressing-table, which had a glass top.

“No, I didn’t see what it was. The point was, whatever it was saw me.

“That first time, the whole thing was so slight. If it had been only that one evening, I dare say I shouldn’t have thought of it again. Things only get a hold on you when they go on happening. But I always have been funny in one way – I especially don’t like being watched. You might not think so from my demeanour, but I don’t really like being criticized. I don’t think I get my knife into other people: why should they get their knife into me? I don’t like it when my ear begins to burn.

“I went to put the lid back on the jar of cream and switch the lights on into the mirror, which being between the two windows never got the sort of light you would want. I thought I looked odd in the mirror – rattled. I said to myself, ‘Now what have I done to someone?’ but except for Neville I literally couldn’t think. Anyway, there was no time – when I picked up my wrist-watch I said, ‘God!’ So I flew round, dressing. Or rather, I flew round as much as one could with something or somebody getting in the way. That’s all I remember about that first time, I think. Oh yes, I did notice that the veil on my white hat wasn’t all that it ought to be. When I had put that hat out before my bath the whole affair had looked as crisp as a marguerite – a marguerite that has only opened today.

“You know how it is when a good deal hangs on an evening – you simply can’t afford to be not in form. So I gave myself a good shake on the way downstairs. ‘Snap out of that!’ I said. ‘You’ve got personality. You can carry a speck or two on the veil.’

“Once I got to the restaurant – once I’d met him – the whole thing went out of my mind. I was in twice as good form as I’d ever been. And the turn events took . . .

“It was about a week later that I had to face it. I was up against something. The more the rest of my life got better and better, the more that one time of each evening got worse and worse. Or rather, it wanted to. But I wasn’t going to let it. With everything else quite perfect – well, would you have? There’s something exciting, I mean, some sort of a challenge about knowing someone’s trying to get you down. And when that someone’s another woman you soon get a line on her technique. She was jealous, that was what was the matter with her.

“Because, at all other times the room was simply a room. There wasn’t any objection to me and Neville. When I used to slip home he was always asleep. I could switch all the lights on and kick my shoes off and open and shut the cupboards – he lay like the dead. He was abnormally done in, I suppose. And the room was simply a room in somebody else’s house. And the mornings, when he used to roll out of bed and slip-slop down to make the coffee, without speaking, exactly like someone walking in his sleep, the room was no more than a room in which you’ve just woken up. The may outside looked pink-pearl in the early sunshine, and there were some regular birds who sang. Nice. While I waited for Neville to bring the coffee I used to like to lie there and think my thoughts.

“If he was awake at all before he had left the house, he and I exchanged a few perfectly friendly words. I had no feeling of anything blowing up. If I let him form the impression that I’d been spending the evenings at movies with girl friends I’d begun to make at the depot, then going back to their flats to mix Ovaltine – well, that seemed to me the considerate thing to do. If he’d even been more interested in my life – but he wasn’t interested in anything but his work. I never picked on him about that – I must say, I do know when a war’s a war. Only, men are so different. You see, this other man worked just as hard but was interested in me. He said he found me so restful. Neville never said that. In fact, all the month we were in that house, I can’t remember anything Neville said at all.

“No, what she couldn’t bear was my going out, like I did. She was either a puritan, with some chip on her shoulder, or else she’d once taken a knock. I incline to that last idea – though I can’t say why.

“No, I can’t say why. I have never at all been a subtle person. I don’t know whether that’s a pity or not. I must say I don’t care for subtle people – my instinct would be to give a person like that a miss. And on the whole I should say I’d succeeded in doing so. But that, you see, was where her advantage came in. You can’t give a . . . well, I couldn’t give her a miss. She was there. And she aimed at encircling me.

“I think maybe she had a poltergeist that she brought along with her. The little things that happened to my belongings . . . Each evening I dressed in that room I lost five minutes – I mean, each evening it took me five minutes longer to dress. But all that was really below her plane. That was just one start at getting me down before she opened up with her real technique. The really subtle thing was the way her attitude changed. That first time (as I’ve told you) I felt her disliking me – well, really ‘dislike’ was to put it mildly. But after an evening or two she was through with that. She conveyed the impression that she had got me taped and was simply so damned sorry for me. She was sorry about every garment I put on, and my hats were more than she was able to bear. She was sorry about the way I did up my face – she used to be right at my elbow when I got out my make-up, absolutely silent with despair. She was sorry I should never again see thirty, and sorry I should kid myself about that . . . I mean to say, she started pitying me.

“Do you see what I mean when I say her attitude could have been quite infectious?

“And that wasn’t all she was sorry for me about. I mean, there are certain things that a woman who’s being happy keeps putting out of her mind. (I mean, when she’s being happy about a man.) And other things you keep putting out of your mind if your husband is not the man you are being happy about. There’s a certain amount you don’t ask yourself, and a certain amount that you might as well not remember. Now those were exactly the things she kept bringing up. She liked to bring those up better than anything.

“What I don’t know is, and what I still don’t know – why do all that to a person who’s being happy? To a person who’s living the top month of her life, with the may in flower and everything? What had I ever done to her? She was dead – I suppose? . . . Yes, I see now, she must have taken a knock.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I know now how a knock feels.”

“Oh . . .?”

“Don’t look at me such a funny way. I haven’t changed, have I? You wouldn’t have noticed anything? . . . I expect it’s simply this time of year: August’s rather a tiring month. And things end without warning, before you know where you are. I hope the war will be over by next spring; I do want to be abroad, if I’m able to. Somewhere