blackness that was not entirely of the oncoming night. There was nothing to do but make the best speed possible homewards. But though she scuttled along more swiftly than for a long time, she failed to glimpse the shape ahead of the man who had been speaking to her. The visibility was so poor as to make the rough path almost dangerous; and when Rosa at last re-entered La Wide, her good clothes and she herself were saturated more completely than ever before in her life, save perhaps once, that day in the Bois de Vincennes, of all places, with Dennis. People looked down their noses at the Bois de Vincennes, but when the rain began, it had proved astonishingly wild and shelterless. Then Rosa recalled that she was wrong. The man with whom she had shared a soaking had not been Dennis but Michael: vile, bloody, deceitful, dear old Mike.
There was no electricity at La Wide. For lighting she depended upon lamps, exactly as her new acquaintance had said; and the oil supply for them had been another of the wearing nuisances which she hoped that Mrs Du Quesne would be able to deal with better than she had. At least, she, Rosa, would not have to listen to the supplier's patronizing comments upon her backward and impoverished existence. But now, before lighting a lamp, she stripped off all her clothes in the almost total darkness and flung them about the floor.
Dennis, Michael, Oskar, Ted, Tom, Frank, Gwyn, and Elvington: those were some of the names, and what comic names they were! Rosa ignited a pair of lamps, then lined the men up in her mind. It was possibly the first time ever that she had deliberately done so, and, perhaps for that reason, some of the names had no proper faces, and certain other faces that she saw, peering and intruding from the darker areas, had no names. And after those days, during her years of respectable and responsible business life, there had been virtually no men at all; assuredly none with power over her. She took out an unused bath towel and rubbed herself vigorously. Then she put on another sweater and a pair of trousers, which she seldom wore; and over them her thick winter dressing gown. All these things felt pleasantly new, one after the other. The dressing gown she had had cleaned during the summer, so that it smelt impersonally of chemicals. The file of men had soon vanished; without even being dismissed. It was as if on their own they had marched away into life's battle and failed to return.
What had happened to them: to them as individuals? It was another thought upon which Rosa had seldom dwelt. In almost every case, her final and consuming idea had been simply to get away, and to drag her sagging heart away also. She had sought to avoid all thought of the man's continuing existence. And then when another man had appeared, it had been even more important not to reflect much upon the past. All she could now recollect was that Elvington, poor weak American boy, had destroyed himself with the contents of a killing bottle, though not on her account, but whole years later; and that big, fat Oskar had been actually killed, Scandinavian-style, in a fight, and a fight that was at least partly about her. Afterwards she had collapsed completely, very completely; and had had to be fetched back to England 'under sedation' (and as cheaply as possible) by her half-sister, Judith. Frank was supposed to have perished in a car smash outside Bolton, where he had, at rather long last, found a job of some kind. It was her room-mate, Agnes, who had told her that, and professed herself willing to swear to it; but one could not rely upon Agnes even when she probably
She realized that she had not yet rubbed her hair, except to prevent it actually dripping upon her dry clothes. The new towel was soaking wet and quite unsuitable. She took out another new towel, leaving but one more on the pile. Seated on a hard chair, she rubbed away at her head, feeling active and effective. Then she had to consider what to do with two wringing wet towels, and several very humid garments. It really was not cold enough to justify the lighting of a fire. Rosa felt so full of vigour that she almost regretted this. She settled for ranging the wet objects upon strings which she stretched round the room. Fortunately, several pegs and hooks had been left behind in odd places, to which the strings could be tied; but the total effect was unconvincing, and more than a little eerie. There were new shadows, some of them vast; and intermittent small shiftings and flappings. I feel penned in by wet vampire bats, thought Rosa; but, as a matter of fact, the feeling was far more alarming than that, and far less specific.
'This is my hour of trial,' said Rosa. 'It is like nothing that has gone before.' She realized that she was disregarding her strong resolve not to soliloquize out loud before she positively could not help herself. Perhaps, she thought, but did not say, this is where I
There were clocks, one of which struck the hours and the half-hours; there was a cricket, which, so late in the year, activated itself for astonishingly long periods; there were the two lamps, in which the oil burned evenly away.
'This is amounting to a wake,' said Rosa to herself, as the clock suddenly struck ten. 'Not to mention a fast.'
Her limbs had become a little stiff, but she was surprised that things were not far worse. She had felt herself to be slightly exalted ever since her conversation on the cliffs, and this unreasonable restlessness seemed to confirm it.
AH the same, she moved to a more comfortable chair. 'Why ever not?' she enquired vaguely, and once more aloud. She noticed that the rain had stopped. Perhaps it had stopped hours ago.
The room seemed peculiarly warm. 'Perhaps delusions are setting in.' Rosa had read about explorers marooned on icefloes who dreamed of the Savoy Grill. Ted had once worked as a waiter in a place like that, as she was unlikely to forget — though, as a waiter, Ted was understood to be rather good. Rosa cast off her dressing gown.
The clock struck half past ten, eleven, and half past eleven. Rosa was now half-asleep for much of the time. She had abandoned all idea of special preparation for what lay ahead. She lay empty and resigned.
Some time after that, the flame in both lamps began to flicker and waver. Rosa had filled the lamps herself and knew well that they held enough oil to last through two nights and more. But she rose to her feet very conventionally, in order to make an inspection. Immediately, the two lamps went out. The flame in both seemed to vanish at exactly the same moment, as if by pre-arrangement.
Rosa realized that, in the dark, her brow was covered with moisture. She was uncertain whether this was fear, or a medical consequence of her previous soaking, or simply the temperature of the room. Certainly the room was quite unaccountably hot.
Then Rosa became aware that behind the patterned curtains she had drawn across the two windows before throwing off her clothes, was now a gleam that seemed more than the contrast between the blackness of the room and the perhaps slightly more luminous night outside. Moreover, it was as if the gleam were moving. The faint light was strengthening, as, presumably, it moved towards her.
So far she had heard nothing but the ticking of the clock; and now she ceased to hear even that. She had not noted the clock's last tick. She simply realized that it was ticking no longer.
'Oh God,' said Rosa, 'please protect me.' She had not chosen either the words or the voice. She had, in fact, no idea where they had come from. She sank, not upon her knees, but in a heap on the floor, burying her face between her legs, and holding her hands over her ears. She seemed to squat, in desperate discomfort, for an appreciable time. In an earlier year, she had known something like that hopeless, inhuman posture when she had been so badly seasick — and on more than one occasion — in the Baltic.
Then there was a faint fluttering knock, not necessarily at the outer door. Rosa could not tell where it came from. It might have been made by a small creature which had been entrapped in the room with her.
It seemed worse not to know than to know. Rosa unwound herself. She looked and listened.
There was still not much to hear, but the light had grown strong enough for the shapes she had hung from strings to be dimly and strangely visible. Another new development was, however, that these distorted forms seemed no longer to be entirely within the room, but to continue outside it, as if she could see faintly through the wall. The weak light, moreover, was wanly pink and wanly blue, in a way that not even the pattern of the curtains
