I was not alone.
I stopped and turned round. I knew there was somebody there, somebody following, somebody who did not want to be seen, somebody shy.
Well, all right, so there was nobody there. Maybe it was just my imagination … again.
I lit a cigarette, pausing beneath a street lamp. Maybe it was nerves, maybe I had been doing too much, maybe now was the time to do something about it. I’m not made of iron. Time to take a rest. I walked on up the avenue, mechanically counting my paces between the trees that flanked it.
Harcourt could do it … no doubt about that. He was able, he knew the ropes. Nothing would go far wrong with Harcourt in charge. There was no need to actually go away. I could stay at home … where I would be on hand if anything happened.
The feeling again, the feeling that somebody was watching me. I fought against it, unavailingly. I turned round.
Nothing.
A quiet road, trees and bushes, an odd friendly light winking over the top of the hedge, only not so many now as there usually were because now it was getting late, or early, depending on the way you look at it. One-thirty a.m., a cool morning, not unpleasant. The way I like it … the best way for relaxing; not lying in bed, getting up and walking. Not far, just along the road and back, makes the thoughts stand still, makes things insignificant. People, too many people all day … nobody at night … usually.
So I quickened my pace. Maybe it would be better to get home, get to bed. This feeling … this was bad. Feet on the ground … people with feet on the ground don’t start imagining things, not this way … this rustling on the road behind me.
Turn around … again? All right … don’t turn around. So what about the rustling on the road … a dog?
Glad to get home just the same. I unlatched the gate, turned up the path. Thirty yards, feet scraping on the gravel. Keys … groping for the keys, fumbling for the lock.
Someone was standing at the gate, something. A shape … colourless … then it was gone, faded. Imagination … or not imagination? I went back down to the gate. Nothing. Always nothing.
Or was there? Nothing tangible … but there was something. A feeling in the air … a fondness … the only way to describe it. Something personal about the night.
Then there wasn’t. There was only night, impersonal. Time to go inside to have a drink, to go to bed. To fix it with Harcourt tomorrow for a rest … a real rest.
Back into the house … a drink … to calm things down.
Looking through the window … there is nothing at the gate.
There is nothing at the gate.
There is something at the gate … someone. A someone … waiting at the gate. Last night … I don’t know about last night. Maybe there wasn’t last night. Tonight there is someone, or something – I don’t know – at the gate. Curiously there is no feeling of anxiety about it in my mind … curiosity yes … that much good the day’s rest has done.
This thing at the gate … It still isn’t there when I look directly. Just now and then … a glance through the curtains and there it is, glowing faintly in the light from the road.
Harcourt is coming tonight. That ought to be the test. I can see it clearly now … inside the gate. Never close … but inside the gate standing at the foot of the garden in the darkness.
It’s not so shy now … it lets me look at it. I’m not afraid. Maybe it is imagination … maybe not. If not, then I should be afraid. But I’m not … just rather happy. I’m not afraid … maybe it is, or shy, or something.
Harcourt didn’t see it. It was near to him, close to him in the darkness, but he didn’t know. I didn’t ask him. I couldn’t ask him because he would have thought … well, it’s obvious what he would have thought – wouldn’t anybody?
You can’t talk to a man like Harcourt about a thing like … the thing. Can you call a thing a person? Harcourt has his head firmly screwed on. You can talk to him about budgets and schedules and items for procedure … my sort of man, a man who doesn’t need an imagination.
We talked. We sat by the window and talked. I kept the curtains back … I wanted to see if he would see it. I didn’t want him to see it … not really. If he saw it, then it wasn’t an it … it was something that could be classified and boxed away in his orderly mind … if he didn’t see it, it was part of my imagination, or strain from overwork or nerves.
Well … he didn’t see it.
It saw him.
He must have seen it, if it was there to see. It came right out into the light as it has never done before, right up the garden towards the window.
I know more about it now. It looks like a woman … a girl, not a woman. Too slight for a woman, too soft in its movements. It never actually seems to move. One minute it is in one spot, the next a little farther on. But coming towards the house, definitely. White … or perhaps not really white. Colourless, like water formed into a shape, like rain frozen into a pattern on glass.
“You know your way?” I asked Harcourt at the door.
“Down to the station … Yes.”
I held the door open for him.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
He walked down the path.
I stood in the door. He must have thought I was watching him particularly; he made a gesture of farewell at the gate.
The thing was standing against the hedge. It had the most wistful, sad little face I have ever seen. It stood as high as my shoulder, still, more than is implied by still … motionless, its fingers clasped against its cape. It had turned its face aside so that I could not look directly upon it. It wore high old-fashioned shoes, a long, plain-cut dress, a cape draped over its shoulders.
I waited at the door. It did not move.
“Come in,” I said out loud. “You can come in.”
I stepped forward, and it was gone.
“You mustn’t be afraid of me,” I said, standing in the garden in the darkness. “You mustn’t be afraid.” My voice sounded shrill, uncertain. I was trying to be sincere. It was afraid, and cold and lost, wherever it was, whoever it had been.
I waited a minute, two, three … till there was no point in it. I turned back to the house, pausing at the door. “You don’t have to be afraid of me,” I said again, softly.
I went back into the sitting-room. I sat by the window, looking out, in my favourite chair, where it would expect to see me. I waited. I went to sleep.
Morning … and the sun shining through the glass. I awoke slowly, comfortable, taking my time like a tabby cat. Plenty of time … all the time in the world.
Only it was running short of time … it had not found what it needed, it was still searching, with all the time in the world, but short of time.
In the moisture on the window pane it had traced with its finger, LOVE ME, LOVE ME, LOVE ME.
Tonight Harcourt walked through it. It was waiting by the door when I let him in, and he moved through it. Just for a moment its face mingled with Harcourt’s smart black suit, then I was looking at it over his shoulder … and it was looking at me.
“You look pale,” Harcourt said, as I closed the door. “You were right to take a rest.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m beginning to wonder if it was such a good idea.”
“Oh?”
I looked at his face. He wasn’t really interested. Fair enough … he wasn’t paid to be interested.
“Gets a bit lonely out here,” I said. “You know the way it is.”
“Go off somewhere then,” he said, settling in his chair by the table, spreading the papers from his briefcase before him. “Nothing to hold you here is there?”
“No,” I said. “I suppose not.”
We went on to other things then … Harcourt’s sort of things. But I went on thinking about it … and it wasn’t right. There was something to hold me here … there was that thing in the garden for a start.
Just how long was it going to stay in the garden?
Not long. She was waiting in the hall when I showed Harcourt to the door. The same frozen stance, the same fragile hand clutching the edge of her cape.
I let Harcourt out, closed the door, turned round. She was still there, standing at the foot of the stairs, her eyes upon me.
“Well, you’re in at last,” I said. “What do you want?”
For a wraith she wasn’t very forthcoming. Just the eyes, soft and sad, trying to say something. A fragile little thing.
“I don’t know how to get through to you,” I said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want.”
She smiled. It was the first time I had actually seen her make any movement. It was a nice smile, wistful maybe, but nice. Then she started to fade. One minute she was standing against the banister, the next she wasn’t.
“You mustn’t be afraid,” I said, hopefully.
There wasn’t much point in waiting about in the hall for a timid spectre, so I abandoned the idea. Maybe she couldn’t stay in one place very long? She was gone, anyway.
I waited round a bit that night, just to see if she would put in an appearance. Nothing happened. Once or twice there seemed to be a shade, a movement in the firelight, but she didn’t let me see her.
So it went on for a day or two. She would turn up at odd spots round the house, just standing there smiling. Once she reached out towards me, dainty fingers uncoiling. I moved towards her … too quickly … she faded away. That was the way it always was … she wanted me … she wanted to contact me, to try me, but she was afraid.
Harcourt still came each night. She didn’t pay any attention to him. Once or twice she appeared in the room while we were talking, once standing by the window, frowning, again seated in the large leather armchair, her hands folded coyly on her lap. She was watching me, all the time, so that it was hard to keep my mind on what Harcourt was saying.
“This can’t go on,” I said one night, after Harcourt had left. She was still there in the armchair, still smiling. “We’re not getting anywhere.”
I came towards her, slowly this time, so as not to scare her. I had learnt my lesson. I stopped, two or three feet from the chair. I extended my hand.
“It’s all right,” I said. “All right.”
She pushed away from my hand, so that, just for a moment, her body faded into the back of the armchair … but she was learning too; she did not fade away.
“It’s all right. You’re all right,” I went on saying.
Then her hand stretched out and touched my right shoulder. A shock of cold ran down my arm. A withering, stinging sensation. I snatched my hand back, involuntarily. She faded away. I was left clutching my right arm, my cold arm, with my left hand.
That was the beginning … the real beginning, I suppose.
For the first time I was afraid. I was afraid because I wanted to touch her, I wanted to stroke that face, to hold that tiny chill hand. I knew she knew it … I knew that was what she wanted … that the other, the talking, the searching for communication, had all been to her the by-play of love. This was what she had come for, this was the meaning of the words she had traced on the window: Love me, Love me, Love me.
It was easy. There was no one to come between us. Harcourt came, but he came only at night and he did not stay for long. She came to me … she came at odd times, there was no rhyme or reason. She came, and she would sit there smiling, and I would come to her and reach out and take her in my arms and press her cold little nothingness of a body to mine, and the chill would run through me.
“You don’t look well,” Harcourt said, gathering his papers together. For once there was a note of genuine concern in his voice.
“I feel well enough in the circumstances.”
“Your accident, of course.” His voice trailed off. He was looking at my arm, the white edges of bandage that showed beneath my sleeve.
“A scald,” I said, “rather more severe than I thought.”
“You’ve had the doctor, of course.”
“Of course.”
He believed me. He has been trained to believe me and not to question.
Then he left. I went back into the room and she was standing by the window, watching him go. But she turned to me again, and I came to her, and the short sharp chill ran down the side of my face as her formless fingers stretched out to me.
She touches me now, strokes me. I know that where she strokes me the flesh will wither and peel, the tissue will rot, the blood will dry. She strokes me now. I cannot draw myself from her because I love her, but soon … soon it will be over.
Harcourt came again tonight. He let himself in … I have given him a key. He came up to the bedroom and we talked. I kept the room dark so that he could not see … what there was to see. I told him it was my eyes … but he will know soon enough.
She was watching. She sat at the foot of the bed and watched him. Once or twice I saw his eyes flicker towards the place where she sat as though he saw something, a half-shape in the darkness. But then he has a rational mind.
He said goodbye and he got up to leave. She stirred. He went out. She stood at the foot of the bed. She smiled at me, and she turned her head away and glided from the room and I knew that she was going, too.
I watch them from the window. He strides down the road, she glides behind him. He turns suddenly, as though he senses something there. He stops. He lights a cigarette. He shakes his head, he walks on.
A scrap of withered flesh falls from my face on to the carpet as I turn, to grope my way back to the bed.
She was mine … she was mine …