see also Paul's web page www.paul-davidson.co.uk
Green King
© by Paul Davidson
From the start the old man had been uneasy about the house. The letting agent's photograph had shown a short cul-de-sac flanked by telegraph poles and pollarded limes, with the house itself at the far end, directly facing him. It was a squarish building in typical 1930s suburban style, sandtexed, slightly set above and apart from its neighbours, with bargeboards of a nondescript greenish colour and a large double-glazed window which took up the entire first floor. It was the window which made him most uneasy. Even then it seemed to reflect more light than it let in, while its size and position gave it a paused, watchful quality.
An initial drive south to Bexhill to view the property did nothing to ease his misgivings. Truth to tell, he did not want to move at all. But his son and daughter-in-law had just given birth to their second child, and their London home was simply running out of space. The old man knew he couldn't stay there forever, though he had hoped to at least find somewhere nearby. His son, however, had taken charge of things as usual, and decided his father needed fresh air and the company of people his own age. ''And besides, Dad,'' he had added, ''you'll have your jigsaws; and we'll visit you…whenever we can.''
And so he found himself, one still, clear day in early January, standing somewhat lost in the back garden of his new home, with its thick damp mass of leaves, watching the line of ash trees and dour little stream beyond the back fence, and the clouds turning away across the chalk downs, the house like a poised cold shadow behind him.
His first few weeks were spent in a state of enforced stillness. As his son's promised visits failed to materialise, and the space between phone calls grew longer, he felt himself becoming detatched – from his family, from the neighbouring houses with their drives and tall hedges, even his own surroundings. Time drew on, and still the jigsaws sat unpacked in the back bedroom, while the radio took on the faraway aspect of voices from another room.
Throughout this time, the inside of the house remained closed to him. He was unwilling to use either the front upstairs room with its watchful window, or the lounge, where the furniture remained in its dust sheets. Instead, he spent his time in the kitchen with its lino and old gas boiler, and the back room with its french windows, white wooden panelling and alcove into the hall. At nights, he slept there on a camp bed. During the day, he sat on the bed, watching the ash trees and the movement of clouds over the downs, but hardly ever venturing out.
* * *
February came, and with it rain, and a smell of dampness and salt water which pervaded the house. Outside, the wind whipped the remaining leaves from the ash trees and piled them against the french windows. The drift of leaves soon became so deep that it started to block out the light. The whole place began to feel colder, more closed in.
Although still in a state of inertia, it was clear to the old man that he couldn't let the leaves pile up indefinitely. And so, at last, after a day spent listening to the incessant rain, he found a rake in one of the hall cupboards and went outside to tackle the garden.
As soon as he stepped through the back door, he regretted it. The leaves had that slick, dirty look that comes with the end of winter, and the air felt spiteful. Nevertheless, he pulled his coat tight about his shoulders, took a balaclava from his pockets, and set to work, while over the loose wooden fence at the back of the lawn, the line of high, bare ash branches moved slowly under cloud.
After an hour's work, the brine was beginning to work its way into his bones, and he sat down for a moment beside a bedraggled holly bush next to the french windows. As his right hand nestled among a pile of leaves for support, his fingers alighted on something wooden which turned slightly under his weight. When he raised his hand again, his fingers were stained a dull red through the dirt.
For a minute he sat watching his fingers, rubbing at the red stains, unsure of what to do next. Then, coming suddenly to a decision, he began brushing away the pile of leaves, to reveal a circular object, pockmarked, caked with earth. The red, to his relief, was no more than old paint, still clinging to the wood's surface in patches. Wondering vaguely if the thing might be of some value, he decided then and there to dig it up, and went inside to fetch a trowel.
In the end, extricating the object from its nest of leaves and soil proved more difficult than he had expected, and unpleasant in some way he could not quite define. Each time he managed to get his hands round the base of it, it kept slipping and snagging as though on its own roots. And when he finally started hacking at the tangle of growth which held it, he felt as though he was decapitating the thing. And all the time he was working at it the wind gusted in the eaves of the ash trees behind him, while closer to he was aware, as always, of the house's watchfulness. Eventually, though, the object came away with a curious flinty sound, trailing braids of root and earth with it.
Back inside the house, as he washed the remaining soil off, the shape of the thing became apparent. It was a face, disc-shaped and delicately carved, though otherwise unlike any other face he'd seen. Weighing it in his hands, gently, examining every detail, he was reminded at first of the wind in the ash trees, or of hacking through brambles on a long walk under low skies. The word ‘hacking' seemed to describe the face as well as anything, from the way he'd hacked it from the earth in the first place to the violent corkscrew of leaves emerging from each side of its mouth. He could not tell how old it was. He only knew that there was something intensely fierce and ancient about it – the flakes of green paint on the folds of its hair and beard, like the remnants of colour on a church wall, and the eyes, a dull red, like splinters.
At first, he was unsure of what to do with his find. He was certain it was older than the house. He was even more certain that it was worth something. But despite its appearance, he was unwilling to give it up. It was the first thing he'd discovered in the house that did not remind him of his family, or of the outside world. It was, in a sense, his own – a piece of him in a place he did not feel part of. So he finished cleaning it, took one last look, and placed it in a drawer beside the kitchen sink.
When he went back to check on it later that night, he noticed a small damp patch underneath; but he put this down to the general dampness of the house, and thought no more about it.
* * *
Weeks passed, and the cold began to lose its edge. There was a sudden gloss of green among the remains of winter, in the clothes of fields and woods, and in the first new leaves of the ash trees. From the french windows, he could see the shadows of clouds diminishing on the downs.
As the weather changed, he became aware of a change within himself. The house still seemed aloof, watchful - a box of staircases and white panelled rooms far too big for him. Only now, since finding the face, it seemed that something in him had become watchful too, forever paused in the kitchen or the back room, listening, waiting for something.
On 21st March he woke to find the wind gusting heavily outside, and a large, brown parcel waiting for him in the hall, resting on the pile of junk mail which had been spreading slowly over the carpet. Unused to receiving anything, he picked it up, examining it first. The address was written in what looked like green felt pen, in large, uneven letters as though someone right-handed had been trying to write with his left. The stamp had an unfamiliar north country postmark, and there was a tangle of penstrokes before his name which suggested the parcel had originally been intended for someone else. Nevertheless, he took it through to the back room to unwrap it.
As he finished opening it, a number of small photographs fell out onto the camp bed. Intrigued, he took one at random and peered closely at it for several minutes. At first he could make no sense of it – only a white vertical line slightly left of centre surrounded by blurred half-shapes. As far as he could make out, most of the half-shapes were grey or green or earth-coloured, the colours of weeds or hedge banks taken slightly out of focus.
The sense of foliage became clearer as he started to look through the other photos. Most were similar to the first, but some contained glimpses of things – shadows mostly, or dark serrated curves like the edges of leaves. As a whole, the effect was slightly disconcerting. For some reason, the image of someone peering through leaves at an unknown quarry came to him.
This feeling was enhanced by the anonymity of the sender. He stood there, for several more moments, thinking about it. It occurred to him that his name had been written on the package by mistake, and for a moment, he thought of sending it back. But there was no return address, and he was unwilling to let it languish in the nearest sorting office. Moreover, like the face, it seemed somehow personal to him, a keepsake, no matter how odd the contents. In the end, though, he could not tell exactly why he decided to keep it. There was only a sort of certainty in him, that the inclusion of his name was more than chance; that there was a deliberation on the part of the sender; and that he should therefore treat it as a gift, from person or persons unknown.
Having decided to keep the photographs, he picked the whole pile up, intending to find something to tie them with. At the same moment a sudden flurry of wind shook the french windows and, startled, he dropped a couple. Cursing himself, he bent down to retrieve them; then paused. The photos had landed half on top of eachother, at an angle, and, where their edges met, each of the strange white lines matched exactly.
For some time he stood peering at the two photos intently. Then he switched his gaze to the others, wondering if they matched as well. At this point, looking at them scattered across the bed, it was impossible to tell; but neither did it seem so unlikely. After all, the practice of using several photos to make a single picture was by no means new.
It would be like doing a jigsaw, he thought, remembering for some reason his son's parting words to him, as if from a distance, and the lounge, with its dustsheets and his own unwrapped puzzles.
But a jigsaw for whom? Again he stood there, thinking. It was true that the handwriting and postmark on the parcel were unfamiliar. In that sense, the sender was unknown to him. But that did not necessarily mean he was unknown to the sender. For one thing, people did move, and there were friends he'd known in the past whom he'd long since lost touch with. Something told him all that was unlikely in this case, but again that sense of deliberation on the part of the sender came to him, that he was somehow meant to attempt the puzzle (if in fact that was what it turned out to be).
Like a jigsaw, he thought again, but with identically-shaped pieces and no clues. One which could only be solved through the exercise of time and patience.
He had both. And nothing to disturb him save the wind and the radio and the need for sleep. As yet, he had no sense of compulsion about the thing, and therefore no particular reason for refusing the task; and besides, he told himself, even if his name did prove to be a mistake, there was surely no harm in attempting it. So he set to work, glad to have something to hold his interest after so long.
At first, he found the similarity of the photos bewildering; and the rustle of the radio increasingly distracting. After a few hours in bed with the photos spread across the sheets in groups, he got up and, for the first time in months, turned the set off.
The silence was something of a shock to him. He sat there, forgetting the photos for a moment, his gaze wandering around the room as if noticing it for the first time. Then slowly he began sorting through the photos again, concentrating hard, letting time pass.
Again, it took him longer than he expected to complete the puzzle. And when, after two days, he finally finished it, he was a little disappointed. Admittedly, the size of the thing was impressive. There had been more photos than he had realised, and together they made an image nearly his own height. However, the finished picture contained several gaps of various sizes, as though some of the pieces had been lost in the post. Moreover, he could make little more sense of it now than when he had first opened the parcel.
As far as he could tell, what the whole thing amounted to was a set of narrow uprights, more irregular than he had first thought, the colour of stripped willow wood, upon which a mass of foliage had been twined or clumped. The uprights had a luminosity which reminded him of the weather outside, of wet chalk or the sun's low paintwork; of the house itself, with its white wood always half in shade.
The thought of wood and shade gave him an idea, though. Finding some sellotape in the kitchen, he began sticking the backs of the photos together. Then, he took a nail and some string, fixed the string to the back of the picture, and with the nail hung the work in the alcove which opened out onto the hall, where he could see it in the half-light from his camp bed.
Later that night, looking at the picture, his initial disappointment slowly started to dissipate. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more suited it seemed – for the house, for that particular spot in the back room – a blurred framework of foliage between the room's light and hall's darkness.
* * *
The next couple of months saw a further period of stillness for the old man and for the house itself. But it was a stillness that gave birth to its own sense of sound, of unseen movement. As the lawn began to turn green in strips under the ever present leaf litter, and as the wind and rain left their colours in the canopy of ash behind the back fence, it seemed to him that the house was absorbing wood and weather; or, to be more precise, that he was becoming attuned himself to the silence, to the inner weather of the house.
At first, it was just obvious things – the wind in the ash trees, or the small scrape of the holly bush against the french windows, or the way the shadows of ash and holly loomed across the paintwork like clouds. But there were other things, things beneath the surface of paint and panel – the house's wooden structure moving, creaking slightly in bad weather, on warm days slowly breathing light from far off, watchful.
May turned to June. As he sat there, watchful himself, the wind began to soften, and through the ash trees he felt the first blush of light on the downs, the ripening of grass and barleycorn. From his bed he could sense a dryness seeping through the wood of the house, the rustle of leaves turning.
For some reason, the sound of leaves reminded him of the face. He had not so much as looked at it since the day he had found it – he had been so absorbed in his surroundings – but as soon as he remembered, he pulled on a shabby dressing gown and shuffled into the kitchen to fetch it.
As he opened the drawer where he had kept it, however, he was aware of a pervasive damp smell like rotten leaves. As he pulled the drawer further out, the first thing he noticed was that the patch of dampness he had noticed earlier had spread across the entire base of the drawer, warping and cracking the surface. The second thing was the face itself. On each side, where the carved foliage emerged from its mouth, a small crack had opened, and from these cracks small roots had sprouted, as though the foliage had been trying to work its way free of the wood and into the surrounding darkness.
Presuming it was his own fault for not cleaning the thing properly, he took a knife and managed to slice the roots off, though he was unwilling to prize the blade into the cracks in case he damaged the object. After a while it occurred to him that things could not grow without air; so he found an old Christmas biscuit tin, checked it was dry, and put the face inside, sealing the lid with sticky tape. The tin he placed in a cupboard opposite the sink, in the coolest part of the kitchen.
Time passed. The weather continued to turn dry. The back room became increasingly suffused with the sun's heat.
* * *
Later in June, he woke to find another brown parcel lying on the hall floor, his name written in the same green felt pen, though this time with a Lancashire postmark. Puzzled, he took it through to the back room, as before. And as he opened it, another pile of photos fell out.
Sitting on the camp bed, turning the photos over in his hands, the arrival of a second parcel seemed to him more than a little disconcerting. But the more he thought about it, he realised that, over recent weeks, as he listened in to the sounds of the house and the weather changing, he had in fact been in the process of waiting for something. As though his name had been spoken softly by someone infinitely distant. The thought intrigued him.
At first, he thought the photos must be the missing pieces. But after an initial attempt to fill in the gaps, it soon became clear that this puzzle was going to prove as difficult as the first. Although some of the photos did fit into the empty spaces, others seemed to overlay the picture he had already completed.
And the photos themselves were quite different from those he'd already received. Like the first photos, these contained foliage, but in detail and sharply focused. As he sat on the bed, arranging them in piles, his fingers traced the outlines of stalk and stem, petals and seedheads, the cracked pale surfaces of mushrooms, like old wallpaper.
As before, the work of matching the photos took days. And it was done in the same silence, his mind centred partly on the photos themselves, partly on the house, breathing slowly, its shadows turning in a hushed white space without visitors or clocks. It was during midday when he finally finished; but when he had attached the photos to eachother and to the first picture, he was immediately struck by the look of the whole thing.
Unlike the damp luminosity of the earlier photos, the new set seemed to have been taken in a place without rain or weather. There was a remorseless midsummer look to them that reminded him of pressed flowers or, more uncomfortably, of being caught outside short of breath. Later, as he sat on the bed taking in the afternoon, he noticed for the first time just how breathless the down's looked in the day's heat, and felt something like a thrill run down the back of his neck.
He suppressed it. Nevertheless, that evening, as he sat on the bed watching the picture, he was reminded again of the air's heat and stillness, and the house, like an old lung, the spores of its breath slowed to a whisper.
Later at night, he switched on the portable lamp beside his bed, and was struck this time by the shape of the picture. In the semi-darkness he could just make it out – not so much a figure (the outline was too vague for that) – more the suggestion of a figure, or its framework.
The idea brought back the same small thrill of unease. Again he suppressed it. But as he lay on the bed in the early hours, just on the edge of sleep, the idea remained. He drifted off at last into dreams of something just on the edge of his vision, a framework of wooden uprights like a skeleton, half in shadow, or an anatomical sketch made of foliage. By the following morning, though, the image had faded, leaving only the sight of summer outside, the inside movement of light and heat, and an ambilevence towards the picture he could not quite explain.
* * *
As summer drew on, little changed. But as summer drifted into autumn, the weather began to deteriorate, inside and out. Behind the garden fence, the line of ash trees took on the grey of low cloud, while the leaves on the lawn began to turn ripe and rotten. In the kitchen, the cold tap sprang a leak, and he was forced to place a metal cup under the pipe to catch the water. Without the tools to repair it, the dripping continued, and was gradually absorbed into the house's weather.
At the same time, something in him also started to deteriorate, imperceptibly. As the wet weather seeded itself in his thoughts, in the renewed patter of rain and the trickle of salt under paint and floorboards, he began to sense in himself the running down of his own year, a tiredness working its way through his joints like water. Sleeping more, washing and venturing outdoors less frequently, gradually doing less, he was aware vaguely of himself becoming autumnal, of a damp smell, dirt toughening his clothes, the first grey hair spreading on his chin.
Ignoring these changes, he spent his time focused on the house, and the weather, and the picture in its alcove, eating and sleeping only when he had to.
* * *
Towards the end of September, a third parcel arrived, addressed to him, this time with a Cheshire postmark. Again, for some time, he had been feeling increasingly watchful, so the parcel's arrival was not quite as unexpected as the others. Besides, in his autumnal state, it did not at first occur to him that there was anything that strange about it.
Taking it eagerly into the back room, half dulled, half impatient to start work, he emptied its photos onto the camp bed. Unsurprisingly, they were of foliage; only this time they showed leaves – ash leaves, the exact shade of the leaves on the ash trees behind the back fence, cloud-coloured, fierce and cold as the north wind.
The third puzzle proved the most challenging so far. Each photo contained much the same details, with only the briefest hints of background to help him. As usual, he worked with his mind focused on the sounds of wood and weather – the approach of rain clouds over fields, the green paint on the barge boards flaking and falling like leaves. And when he had finished it, he stuck the photos together as usual and hung them over the work in the alcove.
For a while, he stood looking at it, not quite sure what to think. The thing by now was huge, dwarfing the doorway next to it. And this time the shape of it was only too apparent. It was a man, or the impression of a man, in broad outline, the ash leaves forming a kind of skin or loose cloak over the framework beneath.
He decided to take a closer look, approached the figure, then paused. There was something about it which made him somehow unwilling to go too close. It was less the size or shape of it, more its stance. It appeared to be standing half side-on, as though turning in mid-stride. This sense of movement was compounded by glimpses of the colours from earlier photos through its cloak of leaves – greys and browns mostly.
Like someone walking out on the downs under rain and low cloud, the old man thought to himself, later, uneasy for the first time since receiving the second parcel; though at the same time compelled. There was in the figure something that demanded his attention. The fact that it was headless only increased the anonymity of the thing, adding to its mystery. Like the mystery of whoever was sending the parcels, it seemed to him, as the two were linked in some sense previously unthought of.
That night, he dreamed of an enclosed space made of small stones, the sound of something working its way through roots and earth and emerging under stars and running water, intent, breathing heavily. When he woke, it was to the clatter of footsteps on bare rock somewhere far off.
* * *
The presence of the figure, in the shadows, always on the verge of moving, made him nervous about leaving the room. As the next few months passed, he found himself washing less, eating only when he had to, taking his food from tins which he kept beside the bed. As the weather turned colder, and the cold ate into him, he became ever more bed-ridden, unwilling to move.
With the approach of winter the house seemed to grow darker. Outside, the grass withered, rain turned to sleet, and the ash leaves began piling up in thick drifts. In the back room, his mind fixed on the figure in the alcove, or on the house, sensing the cold damp rotting in the wood, the old man gradually let go any awareness he had of hunger or the need for sleep. He had become consumed by a single need – to watch, and to wait, listening out for the next parcel.
* * *
It arrived a few days before Christmas, though by then he had all but lost his sense of time. It was smaller than the others, but with the familiar green writing, and his name printed in the same ragged scrawl. This time, though, the postmark was from somewhere in north Sussex.
The old man sat on the bed for a while, the package in his lap, unopened, the same cold thrill working its way down his neck. Nearly there, he thought to himself. Just the other side of the downs. He looked out through the french windows, at the chalk hills under approaching sleet, and was reminded somehow of the clatter of footsteps.
In a sudden fit of compulsion, he tore open the parcel and let the photos fall across the bed. Then he exmained them, as before. Like the downs, they were predominantly grey or grey-brown. Most of them showed surfaces of carved wood, the shadowy edges of leaves. When at last he had finished matching them, he sat there, shivering with cold and with the stress of concentrating.
The resulting image was not entirely unexpected. It was the figure's head, turned towards him, larger by far than his own. What was less pleasant and somewhat less expected, though not entirely so, was the likeness of the thing. It was an image, in photos, of the face he'd found in the garden.
As what it was became apparent, he sat looking at it for some time, trying to make sense of it, a strange dry taste in the roof of his mouth. He was aware of himself sweating slightly, the same salt smell in the air of the house, breathing.
At length, though, habit took over, and, still shivering, he managed somehow to stick the pieces together. Then, he dragged the camp bed into the alcove, stood on it to fix the head on the figure's shoulders, then dragged it back to the middle of the room, where he could see the thing more clearly.
By now, there was no mistaking the figure's presence. With its head attached, it was nearly as tall as the room itself, and despite the rents in its covering of leaves, there was a strength about it which seemed to emanate from the face – from its twist of leaves, from the massive disc of wood. There had been other photos in the package too, which had overlain the leaves in places – small dark edges of metal which made it seem somehow invulnerable.
After staring at the figure for what seemed like hours, as night fell, he realised with a start that something obvious was missing. The face itself, the original. The final piece in the jigsaw, he thought, feeling his heart quicken slightly.
He was not at all sure about having to walk past the figure in the semi-darkness, with its head towering over him, looking towards him even in mid-stride; but he forced himself nonetheless past it into the hall and through to the kitchen.
Not bothering to switch the light on, he fumbled about until he found the cupboard he'd left it in months before. Then, taking the Christmas tin down, he unpicked the tape, prized the lid open, and felt inside with his right hand.
As he did so, something crawled over his fingers and scuttled off into the recesses of the kitchen. He withdrew his hand quickly, stifling a small cry. Then, steeling himself once more, he turned on the light.
What he saw made him wish he'd remained in darkness. The face was just visible, its eyes staring up at him from the base of the tin. Most of it, though, was covered with what he could only describe as growth – leaves mostly, and clumps of earth choked with leaves. But there were other things – things moving about in the earth, things he was afraid to touch, even in light.
At last, without knowing how, he found the nerve to pick up the tin and tip the face out. As it hit the kitchen surface the mass of earth fell off, leaving only the leaves attached, thankfully motionless. These he hacked off with a knife. Then, shutting the kitchen door behind him, shaking now more than ever, he took the thing into the back room and hammered it into place directly over the photographed version.
The wooden face was slightly smaller than the one made of photos. But nailed there in the shadows it took on the effect of a mask, the split, twisted lips and skin of leaves in some sense more than huge or invulnerable. There was a definite movement about it, a barely suppressed violence – like a dark wind raging through woods, or a storm approaching.
The thing scared him. More than he would have admitted, had he been able to think that clearly. But, after everything, he was exhausted, and the need for rest consumed him above all else. Soon, he collapsed onto the camp bed, the portable light still shining as he fell asleep.
* * *
He slept for over two days. He awoke on Christmas Eve from a dream of footsteps and water running, and of a clean sharp sound like metal. The bulb in the portable light had gone, and the room was in darkness.
Immediately, he knew that something was wrong. It was the silence that alerted him first. It was a silence utterly without sense or sound – airless, as though the house was unwilling to draw breath.
In his bed, in the sudden dark, the old man listened for the familiar sounds of things growing under paint and wood. There was nothing. Only an emptiness which pervaded everything, diminishing him, making the room seem somehow immense.
There was something in the silence that made him, for no good reason, afraid to move or make a sound himself. After a while, though, he made himself turn his head slightly, breathing hard, his breath condensing in the cold. Through the french windows, the garden was as silent as the house, windless, the thick drifts of leaves undisturbed. In the damp sharp half-light of stars and frost, the ash trees were bone white, hushed, entirely still.
In the darkness, his breath seemed suddenly harsh, the skin on his neck and shoulders crisp with sweat. As though the winter's weather had gathered itself in him. He could hear a salt rush emerging under his breath, like the wind gusting.
The thought that the house's silence had something to do with the figure came to him unbidden. But he knew it as surely as he could feel the cold or the dark. He also knew that he could not lie there in his own stillness indefinitely. For a moment, though, the thought of crossing the room's space to turn on the light, under the gaze of the figure with its leaves and mask face, was too much for him. The whole thing had dwelt on his mind for too long already. Nevertheless, he forced himself out of bed at last and off into the dark, shuffling blindly.
His pace as he crossed the room, hands held out in front of him, seemed to slow perceptibly the further he went. Months without proper food or sleep had weakened him without him knowing, and there was a cold seep in his joints which made walking almost impossible. After some time, he paused. From far off, beyond the room's dark space, he fancied he heard a sound – like flint, or the faint squeal of a blade being sharpened. It faded almost as soon as it began, but all the same there was something in it which made him only too glad when his fingers touched the opposite wall. It took him another minute or so to find the light switch, and when he turned it on his hands were shaking.
For a few moments afterwards, he stood leaning against the wall, breathing hard, feeling slightly foolish for being afraid of the dark. Then, his eyes alighted on the alcove and for an instant he stopped breathing altogether. The figure was gone, leaving only nails and string, and a strange damp patch which covered the wall, warping and cracking the paint underneath.
He stood watching the blank space, unable to move, searching for some kind of explanation for the thing's disappearance.
There was no explanation; only a vague mounting sense of apprehension, a cold weight in the pit of his stomach. He remained standing there. Then, after a while, he heard it. In the kitchen. A sound in the dark like chains and foliage. Then a single footstep. The weight of it sent a shudder through the wood and silence of the house.
There was another paused, awful moment as the sound faded, punctuated by the old man's breathing and the sudden storm of blood pounding in his head. From around the corner, in the stillness, he caught the faint slow smell of damp growth.
After what seemed like an age, he heard the kitchen door creak open, followed by another period of silence, in which the sound of it remained, unpleasantly suggestive of something about to come after. The old man peered out into the semi-darkness, like a boy through a crack in his fingers, waiting for the next thing to happen, his heart still pounding.
When it did, he felt his strength give out completely. As the sound of leaves and footsteps began again, heading towards the back room with a terrible sense of deliberation, he willed himself into some kind of movement, but instead his legs buckled under him. At the same moment, a pain took root in his chest and he toppled forwards, calling out in a voice through which no sound came.
He lay there in the middle of the back room floor, beside the camp bed, the rotten clothes and unwashed dishes covered with mould, eyes half-open, refusing to look up, while behind him something huge and fetid entered the room, drawing inexorably closer, its breath rustling in the enclosed space like foliage.
Somewhere East of Kansas
© by Paul Davidson
"You know, Toto," said Dorothy, looking down at the furry bundle in her arms, "something tells me we're not in Kansas any more."
On the television, the other Dorothy was speaking the same words, slightly out of synch with her. On the screen, the dusty greys and browns of Kansas were at the same time being replaced by a blaze of colour, as though of flowers opening. And Dorothy loved it. As she had always loved it. She was still young, but to her the other Dorothy's adventures in the land of Oz had over the past few years become just as much a part of Christmas as tinsel and holly and mince pies.
Of course, Dorothy had no real idea just where Kansas was. She knew she lived in a place called Essex, and that somewhere nearby but at the same time too far away to see lay the remote expanse of marsh and seawall and still, cold water that her father had taken her to a long time ago. She had tried imagining Kansas; she knew the fields were bigger there, and that the people spoke strangely, and that they had things called 'twisters' that carried away whole houses. But, for all she knew, it could be just beyond the other horizon. "Somewhere over..." as the other Dorothy put it.
Watching the fIlm, she was vaguely aware of the presence of her parents on the opposite side of the room, strange and distant, like old clothes hung up just out of reach. Though she was still not old enough to fully understand age or time, something told her that the fIlm too was very old. Older than her. Older even than her parents. It was the way the other Dorothy sang; that, and the accompanying crackle that reminded her of winter time and the first frost. It was the sound also of her parents talking in quiet tones downstairs or behind closed doors.
Today, as usual, she was wearing the pair of silver ballet shoes she had found in the fancy dress box upstairs one late summer evening. They were her favourites - her glass slippers. When she put them on, she would click her heels tWice, as the good witch had told her, and just wish. Sometimes, she would wish for ordinary, everyday things. Sometimes, she would wish that she had a real dog, like the other Dorothy - not a piece of white fur lined with cotton. Mostly, though, she wished she was in Kansas.
Playing on her own outside, with nothing but the house to look at, with its red brick and metal windows, its low, harsh, straight lines, or the cabbage fields edged with elm trees beyond it, she would click and click, and imagine herself surrounded by pigs and chickens, and smiling brothers and uncles dressed in overalls. At other times, she would look out of one of the little windows that lined the upstairs passage, and watch the sky darkening. Then, she would press her face against the glass, intently, hoping to catch a glimpse of all those strange things that happened in Kansas - the garden fence carried up into the clouds, Mrs. Massey, her form teacher, cycling or flying past the window, still reciting the alphabet or ten-times-table. And, oh, the moment she craved most of all - to see the elm leaves suddenly stirred up, the tell-tale looming dark funnel on the skyline, and her parents running outside, yelling "twister! twister!"
She had wanted to go outside after the fIlm, but even as the other Dorothy clicked her heels and returned to Kansas, the skies above her own house suddenly darkened, and the windows were dowsed with a rain that soon turned to sleet.
It wasn't long before the whole afternoon took on the same slushy consistency. It was already Christmas Eve, but for Dorothy it felt as though Christmas Day itself was weeks away. For a few minutes, she got up and wandered around the room in a darkness broken only by the light from the television and the low, metal-framed window. The Christmas tree candles hadn't been lit yet, but she was aware of the tinsel and glass baubles hung in its shadows, too high for her to reach. Across the room, she saw her mother get up to make some tea, while her father adjusted his newspaper., The paper made a dry cold sound, like the rustle of dead leaves.
At last, then, and unnoticed, she crept out of the lounge, up the enclosed flight of wooden stairs, and emerged on the top floor of the house. The 'sleepy bit' she liked to call it, and definitely it had a kind of tired look. It was divided into two halves. On one half was the bathroom, the study which she was never allowed into, and the three bedrooms. The other half was the passage, its right wall made up of the dark slant of the roof. The passage never looked properly lit, though Dorothy liked to think this was just a matter of cheering the place up - a new coat of wallpaper, a vase of flowers, perhaps. Anyhow, she never felt at all frightened there, even with the lights out.
In the inset under one of the windows was the very thing she had come for - the fancy dress box - in reality, an old tea chest left behind by the removal men the year before. The box was brim-full of old clothes, but for her they were not just clothes. They were characters, each one brought to life when she put on their particular costume. Here was the Wicked Witch of the West; Glorinda, the Good Witch; the Tin Man (an old grey soldier suit); and the scarecrow (one of her father's old jackets, one of the few things that was too large for her).
She rummaged around in the box until her hands alighted on something torn and furry and slightly rough. The lionskin. This was the only costume she didn't like. She had tried it on a couple of times when they'd first found it, left hung up in one of the bedrooms from before they moved in. But, like her father's jacket, it was far too large for her. And it hadn't made her feel at all like the Cowardly Lion. The Cowardly Lion danced and quivered and said all sorts of silly things that made her laugh. She couldn't imagine anyone putting on this costume and laughing, or dancing, or anything. It was more tired-looking even than the tired top part of the house, and when she had put it on the inside had seemed full of loose threads and staples which scratched and nicked at her skin. She had thought then that it had obviously been a bad skin made for a nasty kind of person. She had never worn it since then.
For now, though, she was content enough just to try on costume after costume, as the sky darkened, and the sleet slid against the window pane, and till her mother's voice wandered up from below, calling her down for dinner.
It was while she was sitting at the dinner table, watching her father's head over the top of his paper, and while her mother was out in the kitchen brewing coffee, that the idea of making Christmas lists for each of her characters came to her. She had long since run out of anything interesting to ask for herself. Besides, most of the toys she had been given needed plugging in somewhere; either that, or she could only play them on her own.
So she started asking herself, "what would the other Dorothy do if she was me?" And the answer came to her almost as quickly as she had asked it. She would go back upstairs to the fancy dress box, take out each character's costume in turn, click her heels twice, and wish something for them for Christmas morning. And this she did, until she came to the lionskin at the bottom of the box.
Usually, she would have left it lieing there. But the passage lights were all on, and after all, it was Christmas Eve, and she was in just the right mood for wishing. So she hauled out the costume, leaving the head (which was too heavy for her to lift) in the box. And she thought, long and hard, while outside night fell around her.
At length, it occurred to her that, while she was forever trying on the other costumes, it had been perhaps too long since the lionskin itself had been worn, though she had no intention of putting it on again. Nevertheless, she forced herself to hold it up in front of her like a thick, overstitched piece of curtain, and said, in as low and serious a voice as she could manage:
"Cowardly Lion. My wish for you is that this Christmas you'll find someone to wear your skin again." And she added: "someone who doesn't mind your pins and stains and stitches. Or how itchy and tough you feel." So saying, she clicked her heels twice, and, just for a moment, it seemed that the glow from the window blazed more intensely around the costume, edging its fur like light around a storm cloud.
That night, she seemed quite unable to sleep. Long after her parents had passed her door on the way to their own room, and after the muffled drift of their voices had died, she lay there in a state of nervous anticipation, one ear pressed to her pillow, the other alert for any sounds from the direction of the chimney stack. But the only sound she heard was the wind outside, rising steadily, and the sleet, now turned to snow, which fluttered against her window like leaves, or (and the thought passed through her with a delightful shiver) the finger tips of winged monkeys from the Witch's dark castle way beyond the clouds.
Eventually, she managed to close her eyes, and fell into a short sleep during which she dreamed of Kansas and the land of Oz - of rusty windmills; of gnarled trees and winged monkeys; and the other Dorothy, singing in that cracked, old voice of her's: "somewhere...; somewhere..."
She woke to the sound of something passing her bedroom door. Immediately, and without even thinking about it, a thrill of excitement coursed through her. It was the night before Christmas, after all, she reminded herself, and who else should be creeping about the house after her parents were in bed, if not...'him'. The excitement froze her for a moment. If 'he' should come into the room and find her awake...
She lay there, listening, hardly daring to breathe, for what seemed like hours. But there was no more sound, only the wind and the snow falling. After a while, she found the courage to get out of bed, tiptoe across to her door, and place her ear to the bare wood. Nothing. Only the creak of the floorboards under her feet. Surely, now, the coast had to be clear.
Putting on her silver shoes, opening the door as quietly as she could, she stepped outside. The passage was almost pitch dark, save for the slant grey shafts of snowy light fIltering in through the windows. To the left, she could see the stairs close to. The far end of the passage was completely hidden. The sight of movement from somewhere to her right made her suddenly catch her breath, but the sound that emerged from the darkness, a kind of muffled sobbing, told her instantly that this was not Father Christmas.
Having ascertained that much, she felt all her apprehension slip away again. Now she was only curious about what was making the sound. It certainly didn't sound like either of her parents. So, stopping only to collect Toto from under her bedclothes, she went out into the passageway to investigate.
It was when she reached the fancy dress box under the second window, and saw the clothes strewn across the floorboards, that she saw the figure, filling the slant height of the passage ahead of her, and at the same time realised just what it was.
"Cowardly Lion!" she gasped, taking a step forward, only able to believe what she was seeing because it was undeniably 'there' - the lionskin, its back to her, its head bowed in the darkness above them both. Outside, the wind and the snow were rattling at the window frame, blurring everything.
Slowly, her heart beating against her chest, she held out her piece of fur like a playmate.
"Cowardly Lion," she called out again, still softly. "Cowardly Lion. It was my wish. I wished you, and you came true.
Taking another step forward, she reached out and stroked the lean, huge mass of fur and stitching with one hand. For a delicious, drawn out moment, she stood there, feeling herself transported at last, into something stranger by far than fIlms, and fancy dress, and cabbage fields under the snow.
Then, the figure turned round, bending down as it did so, and the first doubts crept into her mind. At first, she told herself that whoever had put the skin on had forgotten to take the head. Then, as it stepped forward itself, into the light from the window, and as she looked up at it in a mixture of childlike wonder and mounting horror, she realised that there was no-one inside it. Only the skin itself, shabby and filthy, and looming out of the dark with an awkward, shuffling motion; and, where the head should've been, only a deep, ragged space surrounded by tatters of fur. And from the hollow of the thing's neck came the sound she had heard earlier - not the sobbing she had imagined, but something incoherent, like a rage or blunt madness.
For a moment, as it approached, she found herself clicking her heels and wishing desperately for some spell to take her to Kansas. Then, suddenly, the thing in the lionskin stooped, and all she felt were threads and staples, and something dirty smothering her face. And she knew for certain that she was not going to Kansas after all.
Temple
© by Paul Davidson
Harrison woke with a start. He had been dreaming of waves moving under floorboards, and the sound of someone crying far off.
For a moment he felt disorientated. Then his room resolved itself – high ceilinged, smelling of heat and aftershave. It was just after 7.30, late August, and the net curtains were billowing in the bright dust like canvas.
If Harrison had been asked to describe himself he would have used the word dust. Dust had coloured, or discoloured, his life throughout the ten years since he had moved to London; dust in all its forms – from old brick and concrete, cigarette ash, his own skin and hair shedding themselves in flakes. He could taste it, in the back of his throat, like a permanent cough; smell it on the stale air of the Underground on the way to and from work. In recent years even his clothes had begun to take on the same smells and colours; a sort of drabness in which he felt complicit, as though his body had become as dust itself.
Even his bedsit in Manor Park seemed to regard him less as a lodger, more a ghost, motionless and attenuated behind the net curtains, the damp walls with their stripes and postcards. He had spent his time in London moving from bedsit to bedsit, leaving some greater part of himself in each, all the time existing, unnoticed, his days stretched out like smoke.
And yet there are few lives passed entirely without colour. Harrison was an inveterate daydreamer, and the drabness of his life was punctuated with small snapshots from a long discarded boyhood; many fleeting and faded – the smell of salt and caramel, an outdoor swimming pool with concrete high board, waves churning through the underbellies of piers. Some of these were accompanied by names – Clacton or Dovercourt; Southend-on-Sea; but most lacked even the consistency of memory. Nevertheless they held a continuing fascination for him, especially those involving water.
He had a strange aversion to the stuff. He had never learned to swim, and still remembered with some discomfort an incident when his father had tried to teach him. It was seawater, though, which invoked the most unpleasant feelings – the endlessness of it without form or feature, the way it brooded behind all the postcard kitsch of those Essex resorts, surging in its own dark.
Harrison had taken the day off work to attend a postcard sale by Temple Underground station on the Embankment (the collection of postcards had started months ago as an attempt to brighten up the walls of his bedsit but had developed and dulled into a kind of ritual). He had set his alarm for 6 o'clock but had overslept. So it was after 9.30 by the time he reached the Circle Line platforms at Liverpool Street.
Liverpool Street for him epitomised dust. He was used to the short wait on the way to work, the overheated air and colour of nicotine. But this long after the rush hour the effect of dust was increased by the sudden space and harsh lighting. Within five minutes the dirt of the place had embedded itself under his collar and in the gaps between his fingers. Harrison was not particularly given to strong feelings of any kind, but before his train arrived, clattering out of the dark, the dirt and heat and his own lateness had combined to make him feel more than a little put out.
This feeling deepened as he made his way onto the last carriage, only to find the seats taken. Faced with a twenty minute standing journey he was about to get off and wait for the next train; but then the doors closed and at the same time he noticed a spare seat about half way down, between a tall Asian woman in a tweed suit and a smaller figure to her right, its head hidden by a battered fedora.
Squeezing himself into the seat between them, he spent the first few moments as the train entered the tunnel staring at his reflection in the opposite window. Then, as they picked up speed, he began checking the reflections of those around him, picking through them like photographs, disinterested. A few minutes later the train slowed into Aldgate and the reflections were replaced by a low curved lattice of ironwork.
The train spent about five minutes at Aldgate with the doors open, letting the dust and the light in from outside. At the same time the small figure started clearing its throat repeatedly, its whole body seeming to shake with the effort. The sound had a solid quality to it, like wet sand, and for a few seconds Harrison shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
The sound continued as the doors closed and the train accelerated into the tunnel. As it faded at last Harrison glanced at the figure furtively, catching a glimpse of an old-fashioned coat under the fedora, the low, hunched shoulders patched with what looked like sacking. Of the figure's face he could see only a crescent of skin, crumpled, like cellophane.
Again the figure cleared its throat, then let out a kind of groan or exhalation. At the same time a smell emanated from under the brim of its hat, a mixture of salt and wet cigarette ends that made Harrison turn his face away.
The smell passed, and the train clattered into and out of Tower Hill, followed by what for Harrison were a familiar litany of stations – Monument with its carousel of lights, Cannon Street with its dingy vanilla tiling, and Mansion House, where he sat looking out at the pillars opposite, their yellow-green name bands like tidemarks.
Throughout the journey he continued to stare at the reflections of his fellow passengers with the same disinterest, while beside him the figure cleared its throat repeatedly, shifting about on its seat. Harrison tried his best to ignore it.
Meanwhile, watching the line of darkly reflected faces, his face among them, he was struck suddenly by how alike they all were, and of his own anonymity. Once again, he was reminded of the bedsit, of himself standing ghostlike behind the curtains.
'The dead travel fast', he thought to himself without knowing why or where the words came from. At the same time the figure made a low, gurgling noise, as if chuckling to itself, then sighed again. This time the smell reminded Harrison disconcertingly of salt water.
Between Blackfriars and Temple the train crossed a particularly rough section of track. The air outside was momentarily lit up by a series of gaps in the tunnel roof, revealing a line of brick arches. Turning slightly, the figure produced a packet of Woodbines from inside its coat and pulled out a battered-looking cigarette. For a moment Harrison thought it was going to light it, but instead it sucked on the thing, slowly and noisily. For some reason Harrison was reminded of a fly sucking. The image remained with him as they pulled into Temple station.
Harrison watched the train (and its occupant) leave with a sense of some relief. But as he stood there on the westbound platform under the curve of lights, surrounded by candy coloured pillars in narrow cast iron, he became gradually aware of a creeping sense of dislocation, as though the journey had taken place within its own time frame. The feeling deepened as he realised that he was alone on the platform. For a moment the image of a fly sucking came to him again, and he made his way hurriedly out of the station, emerging under a dry summer sky where the clouds were drifting like sailcloth.
The postcard stalls were something of a disappointment. The usual London dealers had arrived early, leaving only scraps, and Harrison's throat was feeling dry and irritable. It was getting progressively hotter and the stalls were quickly becoming packed with passing tourists.
After an hour he realised he was searching the boxes more from a sense of duty than anything else, and decided to cross back to Temple station, on the roof of which was a mobile refreshment kiosk. And so late morning found him sitting on the flat concrete expanse on top of the station, on a wooden bench between a set of air vents and a stone balustrade from where he could look down on the Embankment and the river beyond.
For a while, as he stirred his tea, he found himself day dreaming, eyes half-focused on the brown swell of water and the passage of shadows across the pavement. Then, with the same sense of detachment, he gazed at the air vent, making out the shapes of pillars and dark, slowly turning blades beneath the wire mesh. It occurred to him, rather lazily, that there was an almost coastal quality to the station – like an old submarine with florid Victorian detailing. Kelp and candy, he thought, but the image faded as his attention turned elsewhere.
He sat sipping his tea for another half an hour, concentrating mostly on trying to ignore the heat or the accompanying dusty itch between his shoulders. It was only as he finished his first cup and began to pour the second that he noticed something odd among the crowds in the street below him – a flattened shape, moving slowly away from the station in a sort of half-crouch; like a crab. This impression was increased by the object it was carrying on its back; a large, shabby rectangle which seemed to dwarf it but did not visibly impede its progress. For a moment, Harrison lost sight the shape as it crossed the road. Then, it emerged briefly from behind a group of tourists on the far side, moving towards the stalls opposite where it disappeared completely.
The shape was not enough in itself to stir Harrison. But as he sat drinking he became aware of a sizeable crowd forming at roughly the place where he had lost sight of the shape, and telling himself that he might feel cooler beside the river anyway, he finished his tea and made his way down from the station roof.
When he reached the other side of the road he saw the crowd gathered at a respectful distance from an upright object almost his own height made of dimly-coloured canvas, with a protruding slat of wood about half way up and two sheets of cloth pulled shut above it. The majority of the crowd, children no older than nine or ten, were sitting silent and cross-legged, staring up at the thing. Others, mainly adults, were sitting or standing behind them
Harrison knew what the object was immediately – a Punch and Judy booth. The crowd and the look of the thing was enough to tell him that; though he had never heard of the show being performed in London before. Intrigued despite of himself, he strolled up to the front of the booth, where a small cardboard notice was dangling lopsidedly. 'Next show in 10 minutes' the sign read. Harrison decided to brave the heat and wait.
After five minutes there was still no sign of activity from within the booth, so he made his way closer, slowly, so as not to appear too curious. Instead of the usual red and white stripes, the canvas was a drab grey-brown colour. As he approached to within yards of it, though, the greys and browns resolved themselves into separate areas and he realised that the whole canvas was a huge montage composed of Punch and Judy posters, pictures and photographs. He spent a few more minutes trying to make sense of it all, at first finding the sheer number of images bewildering. The posters were tobacco-stained, the names of characters flecked over them like ash, while the photographs seemed to be copies (mainly) of old postcards with striped booths surrounded by acres of sand and Victorian beach huts. There was a small black and white photograph, however, on the near side which seemed to stand out for some reason. It showed a pantomime backdrop of mountains and pine forest flanking a wooden stage o
n which a Punch-like figure was walking, its arms held out loosely, its face, grinning, turned slightly towards the camera. One of its feet seemed to be dragging against the stage floor as if limping. But it was not this that caught Harrison's attention. It was the fact that the figure was actually, or appeared to be, walking without any mechanical aid. The whole effect was so disquieting that he found himself staring at it repeatedly just to remind himself that it was a puppet. He was still staring at it when the sheets of cloth drew back and the show began.
Harrison hurriedly found himself a space at the back of the audience, leaning against the Embankment wall. It was soon apparent, though, that the performance was going to be different to the shows he had been used to as a child. Instead of the usual painted interior he found himself looking into a blank space against which the cloths hung like cobwebs. Out of this space, slowly, as if from a great distance, his head turning back and forth, emerged Punch, then Judy, carrying her baby like an afterthought. Both puppets were far less lurid than he remembered. Punch was dressed in a loose-fitting bag with slits for his arms (the costume reminded Harrison of the wallpaper in his flat), while Judy's face was layered in dirty linen. The strangest thing, though, was that the show appeared to have no dialogue. Harrison watched, increasingly fascinated, as the puppets bounced and bobbed on the stage like dancers.
His attention was broken by the sight of a man pushing steadily through the crowd. After a minute or two the man found a place next to him, on his right, produced a packet of Woodbines from his shirt pocket and lit one. Harrison wondered idly if there was some kind of promotional drive on the brand. The man meanwhile stood slouched against the wall, taking short heavy puffs on the cigarette, cupping it under his palm. He was about Harrison's height but more heavily built, with tight, slightly shabby beige trousers and a white dress shirt open to the chest; bearded, with a back-combed lacquered mane of hair. Both hair and beard were tobacco-stained.
“What do you think of it”, the man said as he finished his cigarette, flicking the butt away and lighting another. Harrison's attention had been so taken up with the newcomer that he had not even looked at the show since it had started. He gave the stage a quick glance. Punch was swaying to and fro on one side above the baby, stroking it disinterestedly.
“I don't know”, he answered. “It seems very quiet”.
“It is an old show”, the man said.
They stood in the heat and silence for a while. On the stage, Punch had picked up the baby and was spinning round with it in slow motion. Once again Harrison was reminded of a dance. After a few spins Punch flung the baby over his shoulder and off the stage, then sat on the wooden slat, his head cocked downwards like a bird's.
“Do you have any money?” the man asked suddenly. Harrison was about to answer “no” when he noticed the large red Punch cap dangling from the man's belt. When he shook it there was a metallic jingle. Harrison fumbled in his pockets and threw some change into the hat, hoping it would persuade the man to move on; but the other merely nodded and took another long series of drags on his cigarette, clearing his throat loudly afterwards.
Harrison was about to excuse himself when the man thrust his hand deep into the Punch cap and produced a rusty brown thermos, and, as if from thin air, two plastic cups. “Tea”, he said. It was more a statement than a question.
Harrison took one of the cups, staring at it stupidly for a moment, conscious of the old admonition never to accept things from strangers.
“Sugar?” the man asked and Harrison found himself taking a paper sachet, pouring it and stirring the tea with a dirty-looking teaspoon. On the stage, as if at an increasing distance, Punch was bent over Judy, smacking her head soundlessly against the wooden slat.
Harrison glanced at the man again as he lit his third cigarette, this time struck by the colour of his skin, like cracked brown toffee. His skin and the dress shirt gave him a slightly seedy look, like an out of work seaside actor. The man drew on his cigarette again, coughed, and ran his fingers through the back of his hair thoughtfully.
“This fit up is part of an old family”, he said, his expression clouding for a moment. “Drink”, he added, and Harrison took a sip of the tea, gagging slightly, It tasted uncomfortably of seawater. He looked up, found the man staring down at him, and forced himself to take another sip. In the booth, far off, he saw Punch receding into the dark while something sinuous and hooded emerged onto the stage in turn.
“It has its roots in the deep damp places”, the man continued. Harrison finished the tea and immediately began to feel queasy. He waited for the man to say something else, but instead there was another long, uneasy silence punctuated by continual puffs of smoke.
After what seemed like an age, the man leaned over to him conversationally, lit a cigarette from the butt of the last, and said, “the best shows are on the coast. They are somehow sweeter. All those houses, peeling like coffin wood; and beyond that, the sea. “Again, the same clouded expression. “Yes, the sea…It's where we come from”.
Harrison blinked slowly. He could feel himself growing sleepier all of a sudden. At the same time, he realised, he was becoming acutely aware of the heat, and the smoke, and the dust at the back of his neck. The booth seemed almost infinitely distant now, and the figures on it drab and colourless, still moving round each other in slow motion. He could no longer make any sense of the performance.
“We all come from salt and from water”, the man went on, wheezing slightly, ”but we fear to go back”. He paused, it his fifth cigarette, then added, “so much sea…I wonder…”
Again his expression was unreadable. Harrison caught him looking towards the front of the audience, where a woman in a cheap dress was leaving, manoeuvring a push chair around the booth. They both watched as she disappeared; then the man straightened visibly, sniffed the air, and turned back to him.
“Time to finish the collection”, he said and left, stopping only to flick his cigarette butt into Harrison's tea cup. Minutes later, after pausing here and there to collect money, he had vanished behind the back of the booth himself. On the stage, Punch, surrounded by a heap of his victims, turned his head as if to follow him.
Harrison sat there, nonplussed, feeling hot and dizzy, the taste of salt and dust on his throat. The thought of meeting the man again was somehow unpleasant (though he could quite not say why); but the sensation was enough to force him away from his place by the wall, across the street and back onto the roof of Temple station. He did not feel up to travelling (though he supposed the feeling would pass), and he needed something that at least tasted of tea. Taking his usual seat, he sat stirring his tea listlessly. Then, as the heat and queasiness overcame him, he fell into a doze.
He woke up about an hour later, saw that the Punch and Judy show, and the crowd, had gone. If anything, he felt hotter and dirtier than before, and wondered vaguely if he was in the early stages of a summer cold. He tried drinking some cold tea but his hands started shaking as soon as he picked up the cup. Looking up for some assistance, but finding the roof space empty, he lapsed into a kind of part day dream, part sleep, his head full of smoke and sand, of distant figures moving in slow motion. At length he lapsed into a deeper sleep and into dreams of immense seas, dull and formless.
He woke with a start and in darkness. The roof was still deserted, and from the street he could hear the traffic moving ponderously. His first reaction was to check his watch, and then to recheck it. It was 11.30. By some stroke of luck he had managed to sleep for ten hours without anyone waking him. Nevertheless, his earlier queasiness had gone, though he still felt tired, and he was able to stand up, getting his bearings. It occurred to him for one brief instant that the station might be closed. Then he remembered that the trains ran well after midnight, and made his way down the back of the station building, through the entrance, over the footbridge and onto the eastbound platform.
The platform was deserted, though he could see a couple of people on the westbound side. Harrison wasn't sure if it was the time or the emptiness of the station, but the glow from the curve of strip lights overhead seemed somehow harsh and sickly at once. In the shadow of the brick arches the pillars had a serried appearance, like spearheads. At the far end of the platform a pile of bin liners had been dumped.
He stood under one of the pillars while a westbound train came and went. The hiss of it on the rails as it pulled out reminded him distantly of the sound of water moving over sand. He remained standing there for a few more minutes, watching people gathering on the opposite platform again (though his own remained empty). Then his tiredness threatened to overcome him once more and he decided to look for a bench further down the platform.
It was as he turned to his right that he saw a familiar grey-brown box half-hidden by a pillar further down the platform, and recognised it immediately as the Punch and Judy booth. He paused for a second as he saw it and took an instinctive step back. There was something distinctly out of place about it - that much was obvious. But there was something else. In the dim pillared silence the booth had a sidelong watchful look to it, as though waiting for someone. Deciding to return to the middle of the platform, he turned round only to find his way back blocked by a young man, little more than a teenager, dressed in a shabby-looking suit and drawing unhurriedly on a cigarette. Harrison thought he ought to ask him to put it out, but there was something impassive in the other's expression which made him think better of it.
A sense of nervousness stole up on Harrison suddenly and he made his way back along the platform until he reached the booth. When he looked back the young man was still standing there, smoking, watching him, his face unreadable.
Harrison stopped just short of the booth as he got closer, listening for any signs of movement. When he was satisfied that there was no-one else about, he sidled up to it and sat down, back against the adjoining pillar, suddenly too tired to give more than a passing thought to the young man, to the whereabouts of the Punch and Judy show men, or what the booth was doing there in the first place.
Once again, a train pulled into the opposite platform and pulled out again. He watched as it clattered away into the dark, lighting up the low rectangle of the far tunnel briefly. Then he turned his gaze downwards and saw the booth's puppets piled in a heap on the floor beside him.
Sat there, alone, in the semi-darkness, the sight was disconcerting. At first, he was aware only of lips and teeth. Then, a mass of lace and sacking, improbably bent limbs, hints of red paint like blood or lipstick.
“They're like characters in a Penny Dreadful, don't you think”, came a toffee-coloured voice from behind him. He looked round and saw the young man sitting on a bench only a few yards away, still smoking. The smell of the smoke in the dull light was thick, almost saline.
“Take Mr. Punch”, the young man continued. “I wonder what twisted race thought him up”. He blew a long stream of smoke into Harrison's face, cleared his throat, and unwrapped a new packet of Woodbines. The smell of the smoke filled Harrison's own nose and throat. He found himself looking towards the mouth of the near tunnel, catching a hint of clay dust and pale light further back in all the darkness. It occurred to him that the tunnel mouth was very much like the stage of the Punch and Judy show.
He began to feel dizzy again, overcome by his tiredness and the salt smell of the smoke. For a while he felt himself dozing off. Then he woke to find the young man crouching beside him, his eyes bright under the booth's shadow. There was a familiar smell to him that Harrison could not quite put a name to.
“These tunnels run deep”, the young man whispered. “There are rooms here older than you can imagine. There is a darkness in them which is the dark of deep waters”.
The thought appalled Harrison. Again, he was overcome by queasiness and something akin to breathlessness, like drowning in smoke and salt. As a third train pulled out of the opposite platform, his strength drained out of him completely. He turned his head helplessly in the hope of attracting the attention of someone further down the platform, but the platform was still deserted.
“Salt water”, the young man said. He drew on his cigarette, then added in a low voice, “I know you fear it. In it you are insignificant; like dust”.
Harrison heard the words as though from an immense gulf. He tried to get to his feet, but seemed to have lost even the will to move. In the dim light he was distantly aware of an insistent itch on his right ankle, and the sound of something rustling close to. He wondered if a train was approaching.
“It is alright, though”, the young man went on, from the bench this time. “The collection is finished”. He lit another cigarette and turned his face towards the tunnel. Meanwhile Harrison's head cleared enough for him to notice, with a sort of blank, sinking feeling, a set of push chair wheels protruding from among the bin liners. At the same time he noticed the itch on his ankle again. He looked down, his whole body moving infinitely slowly, and saw Punch's puppet slumped over his foot, its wooden arms clasped around the base of his legs. From the ankle itself a line of blood was trickling.
The sight filled Harrison with a feeling not of fear but somehow of immense regret. His thoughts returned to the bedsit, and of himself haunting it. All of a sudden he realised just how faded his life had become, and worse, that there was no-one at all to miss him should anything happen to him.
Dimly, he looked across at the booth and found his attention drawn once more to the Punch figure he had seen earlier, with the twisted foot and curious sideways grin, moving across stage by itself.
“He is coming”, said the young man, watching him and nodding. For the first time, he smiled at Harrison, knowingly.
Harrison made a final effort to get up, but could do no more than cock his head towards the tunnel. At first all he could hear was a dark surging sound, like seawater. Then, gradually, from inside the dusky half-light, he began to make out the damp, dragging echo of something approaching; something slow and deliberate, with a distinct limp. Something moving closer of its own accord without the aid of rods or strings.