A Fragment of Fear

“Look, a few moments ago, it was you who was worrying.”

“I know, darling. I was silly. I’m better now.”

“Why?” I asked abruptly. “Why are you better? You can’t be worried sick one moment, and not the next-not without some reason.”

“I just think it will all peter out. After all, this is a civilised country, like you said, Jamie.”

“And the Lucy Dawson story?” I said as casually as I could. “What about the Lucy Dawson story?”

She didn’t answer for a few seconds. They were the sort of seconds which make a mockery of man-made methods of recording time. I stared out of the car window into the blackness of some gardens, waiting for the answer I dreaded. A gust of wind blew a wet leaf against the car window, splat, and I jerked my head back, thinking it was a moth. I hate moths.

In the end, she gave the answer I feared.

“I should go ahead with it, darling. But don’t work too hard. Promise?”

“I promise I won’t work too hard.”

I repeated her words automatically, staring at the wet leaf on the window.

“Why not chuck it for a bit, my love-come back to it with a fresh mind? Perhaps after our wedding, and after another holiday in the sun?”

“I have already told you I don’t know how to get in touch with them.”

I had spoken the words before I realised the futility of them, in view of what I knew she was thinking.

“They’ll get to know somehow,” she answered uneasily.

I turned the ignition key, preparatory to starting the engine.

“I know what you’re trying to tell me, Juliet.”

Across the road the door of her house suddenly opened. I saw in the light above the door the figure of old snuffly Stanley and two other men. One was the grey superintendent, and the other, shorter, I guessed to be the sergeant, though his back was turned to me.

“There they are,” I said. “There they are, the Scotland Yard types, who’ve got so much experience about so many things. Tidying up the loose ends, so to speak.”

I leant across her and opened the car door for her.

“Good night, darling. I should go and have a word with them. Compare notes about people who have nervous breakdowns, and think they’re being persecuted. You’ll have a lot to talk about, won’t you?”

I heard her sob as she got out of the car, without a backward glance. They were bitter and cruel words, and I regret them now.

CHAPTER 9

I returned to my flat, and went to sleep at about one-thirty in the morning, or possibly a little later.

Until that time I sat in an easy chair, the curtains drawn, looking at the empty grate, and finally lay in bed staring into the darkness.

Once, before I went to bed, I walked to the windows and drew the curtains aside and gazed down into the deserted street. Opposite, the dark windows of the houses stared back, disinterested, negative and lifeless.

I guessed that I had hardly moved from the windows before somebody was writing in a notebook: At ten minutes past midnight subject came to the windows and looked out. At twenty minutes past midnight subject switched off the lights in the living-room, and appeared to have retired for the night.

Did he then, having scribbled his little notes, take a few minutes off, scuttle to a gas-ring and brew himself a cup of tea or instant coffee, before settling down to another long vigil? Or did some mate, fellow worker, joint- operator, or whatever he called himself, take over? Did they work four-hour shifts, or two-hour shifts, or what?

At one stage, I was tempted to leave the flat and go for a walk. What would happen? Would somebody attempt to follow me, unnoticed in the deserted streets? And if I challenged him what innocent story would he produce?

I guessed they would make no such attempt. They must know I would do nothing worth observing at that time of night. It was they, not I, who had need of concealment in the hours of darkness.

It was not the peasant who had need to lurk in the undergrowth.

Nevertheless, at one point I was tempted to put the matter to the test. It was after a moment of panic after I had gone to bed and put the lights out.

While I had the light on, I was sure of myself and of my facts, as I had been most of the time up to the present. But in the darkness one feels alone and unsure.

It was Juliet’s volte-face which made me now feel hot and frightened. I was not afraid of attempted assassination. It was the need to know if my mind was in all truth working normally.

In a situation of apparent unreality and confusion, you need one person to lean on, one person to say, “Other people are wrong, but I know that what you say is the truth; not merely the truth as it appears to you, but the real truth. These things have happened, and you have not imagined them. You are not suffering from nerve troubles, you are mentally sound.”

I had been, first, hurt and resentful, and then, as one does with those you love, I had begun to rationalise in her favour. I told myself that she was eager to take the police point of view, because although it conjured up temporary difficulties, at least it meant that my life was not in danger. She had jumped at the lesser of the two evils, and though, like the police, she had not patted me on the head, she had, in effect, said, “There, there, just take it easy, and when we are married mummy will look after you, and nobody’s going to hurt you.”

In the light, it was a consolation; in the darkness, with the blackness pressing in, and now and then the sound of rain beating against the windows, I realised how alone I now was in this matter.

“You are one,” he had said on the ’phone, and he had proved his point. I could almost hear him, distantly, in the darkness, laugh like a green woodpecker, high, undulating, and mocking. And now, in a half-asleep condition, I began to wish for strange things to happen so that I could triumphantly come into physical touch with reality.

I imagined “Sergeant Matthews” calling again, on some pretext, and myself, ludicrously, tearing off a uniform button and retaining it as proof of his existence; or the same man handing back the message Bunface had given me, saying I could keep it as a souvenir; and there it would be, a proof for me, if for nobody else, that I had not been imagining things; indeed, I wished at one moment that even the telephone might ring in the darkness.

The telephone remained silent, but a board creaked somewhere. My first instinct was to reach for the bedside lamp, yet I hesitated.

If my mind was normal, and it was a man, then for better or for worse I could cope with him and be glad to do so. But if such were not the case, then what would I see? What heraldic animal, what figure from the past, what spirit from another world?

I lay for a few seconds, sweating, struggling back to full consciousness, before I pressed the light switch and saw that the room was empty.

It was at this moment that I was tempted to dress again, and go out into the wet streets, in the strange hope that after some minutes, glancing back, I would see a figure following at a distance.

I gave up the idea, because the experiment would prove nothing. If I could imagine other things, I could imagine that I was being followed; and if, lurking around a corner, I suddenly retraced my steps and tackled the man, he would deny that he was following me. It would be his word against mine. What was mine worth?

Nevertheless, one thing now was clear: if I could reason as logically as that, there was nothing wrong with my mind. The reasoning might have been faulty, but it satisfied me.

I switched off the light, and went to sleep without difficulty.

All that night I was left in peace.

It was almost as if, having inserted the yeast, they were leaving it to ferment the mixture. And in the morning, as I was having my breakfast, I saw an item in the newspaper which finally obliterated all doubts about