'Good evening,' he said, 'You here again?'
In the quiet that followed he could hear the wind moving the leaves in the hedge.
'Are you going my way?' he said.
Then he turned and walked on, the dog still pulling ahead, and the footsteps started after him again, but more softly now, as though the person were walking on toes.
He stopped and turned again.
'I can't see you,' he said, 'because it's so dark. Are you someone I know?'
Again the silence, and the cool summer wind on his cheeks, and the dog tugging on the leash to get home.
'All right,' he called. 'You don't have to answer if you don't want to. But remember I know you're there.'
Someone trying to be clever.
Far away in the night, over to the west and very high, he heard the faint hum of an aeroplane. He stopped again, head up, listening.
'Miles away,' he said. 'Won't come near here.' But why, when one of them flew over the house, did everything inside him come to a stop, and his talking and what he was doing, while he sat or stood in a sort of paralysis waiting for the whistle-shriek of the bomb. That one after dinner this evening.
'Why did you duck like that?' she asked, 'Duck?'
'Why did you duck? What are you ducking for?'
'Duck?' he had said again. 'I don't know what you mean.'
'I'll say you don't,' she had answered, staring at him hard with those hard, blue-white eyes, the lids dropping slightly, as always when there was contempt. The drop of her eyelids was something beautiful to him, the half- closed eyes and the way the lids dropped and the eyes became hooded when her contempt was extreme.
Yesterday, lying in bed in the early morning, when the noise of gunfire was just beginning far away down the valley, he had reached out with his left hand and touched her body for a little comfort.
'What on earth are you doing?'
'Nothing, dear.'
'You woke me up.' m sorry.'
It would be a help if she would only let him lie closer to her in the early mornings when he began to hear the noise of gunfire.
He would soon be home now. Around the last bend of the lane he could see a light glowing pink through the curtain of the living-room window, and he hurried forward to the gate and through it and up the path to the front door, the dog still pulling ahead.
He stood on the porch, feeling around for the door-knob in the dark.
It was on the right when he went out. He distinctly remembered it being on the right-hand side when he shut the door half an hour ago and went out.
It couldn't be that she had changed that over too? Just to fox him? Taken a bag of tools and quickly changed it over to the other side while he was out walking the dog?
He moved his hand over to the left—and the moment the fingers touched the knob, something small but violent exploded inside his head and with it a surge of fury and outrage and fear. He opened the door, shut it quickly behind him and shouted 'Edna, are you there?'
There was no answer so he shouted again, and this time she heard him.
'What do you want now? You woke me up.'
'Come down here a moment, will you. I want to talk to you.'
'Oh for heaven's sake,' she answered. 'Be quiet and come on up.'
'Come here!' he shouted. 'Come here at once!'
'I'll be damned if I will. You come here.'
The man paused, head back, looking up the stairs into the dark of the second floor. He could see where the stair-rail curved to the left and went on up out of sight in the black towards the landing and if you went straight on across the landing you came to the bedroom, and it would be black in there too.
'Edna!' he shouted. 'Edna!'
'Oh go to hell.'
He began to move slowly up the stairs, treading quietly, touching the stair-rail for guidance, up and around the lefthand curve into the dark above. At the top he took an extra step that wasn't there; but he was ready for it and there was no noise. He paused awhile then, listening, and he wasn't sure, but he thought he could hear the guns starting up again far away down the valley, heavy stuff mostly, seventy-fives and maybe a couple of mortars somewhere in the background.
Across the landing now and through the open doorway—which was easy in the dark because he knew it so well—through on to the bedroom carpet that was thick and soft and pale grey although he could not feel or see it.
In the centre of the room he waited, listening for sounds. She had gone back to sleep and was breathing rather loud, making the slightest little whistle with the air between her teeth each time she exhaled. The curtain flapped gently against the open window, the alarm-clock tick-tick-ticked beside the bed.
Now that his eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark he could just make out the end of the bed, the white blanket tucked in under the mattress, the bulge of her feet under the bedclothes; and then, as though aware of the presence of the man in the room, the woman stirred. He heard her turn, and turn again. The sound of her breathing stopped. There was a succession of little movement-noises and once the bedsprings creaked, loud as a shout in the dark.
'Is that you, Robert?'
He made no move, no sound.
'Robert, are you there?'
The voice was strange and rather unpleasant to him.
'Robert!' She was wide awake now. 'Where are you?'
Where had he heard that voice before? It had a quality of stridence, dissonance, like two single high notes struck together hard in discord. Also there was an inability to pronounce the R of Robert. Who was it that used to say Wobert to him?
'Wobert,' she said again. 'What are you doing?'
Was it that nurse in the hospital, the tall one with fair hair? No, it was further back. Such an awful voice as that he ought to remember. Give him a little time and he would get the name.
At that moment he heard the snap of the switch of the bedside lamp and in the flood of light he saw the woman half-sitting up in bed, dressed in some sort of a pink nightdress. There was a surprised, wide-eyed expression on her face. Her cheeks and chin were oily with cold cream.
'You better put that thing down,' she was saying, 'before you cut yourself.'
'Where's Edna?' He was staring at her hard.
The woman, half-sitting up in bed, watched him carefully. He was standing at the foot of the bed, a huge, broad man, standing motionless, erect, with heels together, almost at attention, dressed in his dark-brown, woolly, heavy suit.
'Go on,' she ordered. 'Put it down.'
'Where's Edna?'
'What's the matter with you, Wobert?'
'There's nothing the matter with me. I'm just asking you where's my wife?'
The woman was easing herself up gradually into an erect sitting position and sliding her legs towards the edge of the bed. 'Well,' she said at length, the voice changing, the hard blue-white eyes secret and cunning, 'if you really want to know, Edna's gone. She left just now while you were out.'
'Where did she go?'
'She didn't say.'
'And who are you?'
'I'm just a friend of hers.'
'You don't have to shout at me,' he said. 'What's all the excitement?'
'I simply want you to know I'm not Edna.'
