Death of a Dormouse

She turned. Astrid stood in the doorway, her hand on the light switch, her face amazed.

‘Trudi, was gibt’s? What are you doing?’

‘It’s Trent: he’s there in the garden. I can see him! I can see him!’

The other woman moved swiftly across the room. Even at this juncture her slim athleticism seemed a reproach to Trudi’s neglected dumpiness. Grasping the window frame, she thrust it upwards and leaned out into the dark night air.

‘See Trudi, there is nothing. There is nobody. See!’

Trudi looked. The trees moved in a gusty breeze, the shrubbery rustled and the long grass on the uncut lawn rippled like the sea. But of any human figure there was no sign.

‘I saw him!’ she insisted. ‘I saw him!’

‘Keep looking, Trudi,’ said Astrid peremptorily. ‘Strain your eyes. Soon you will see anything your mind wants you to see!’

It was true. As she looked the shifting trees and shrubs began to take strange shapes, living, threatening, but none of them human.

Shaken, she turned away from the window.

‘Oh, Astrid,’ she said. ‘I was so certain. I was so certain.’

‘Yes, I know, I know,’ said the Austrian gently. ‘Now you must sleep. Come to bed, come to bed. No, liebchen, do not be afraid. I will not leave you.’

She helped Trudi into bed, then started to slip off her own clothes. She was still fully dressed.

‘I too have been restless, not able to sleep,’ she said. ‘I sat downstairs, listening to the radio. Perhaps it is I who disturbed you. I’m sorry, but now you will sleep. Now you will be safe.’

Stripped to bra and pants, she switched off the light and got into bed beside Trudi whose body tensed at the thought of contact. But Astrid lay quietly on her own side of the bed with a safe space between them. And eventually Trudi fell asleep.

4 (#ulink_6cceb9bf-72bb-5eb8-aa48-b2de632c657e)

Trudi woke the next day to broad daylight and the certainty that something inside her was dead. She must have given an impression of normality for she observed Astrid slowly relax as the morning wore on. The Austrian woman said she would have to go that evening, but meanwhile she offered her services in getting things sorted out. Trudi agreed, for it was easier than not agreeing.

Swiftly and efficiently, Astrid went through Trent’s papers, discovered the name of the solicitor who had arranged the lease on the house, rang him up, made an appointment for that afternoon. Trudi gave thanks, but felt no gratitude. It all seemed to her mere charade, shadow activities in a shadow world.

The solicitor, who was called Ashburton, was almost a parody of his profession. Small, sharp-nosed, birdlike of movement and voice, he wore a disproportionately large pair of spectacles whose round blanks reflected light like Perseus’s shield. He looked to be close to retiring age, but he seemed efficient enough, taking charge of the papers Astrid gave him and assuring Trudi he would put everything in train instantly.

Trudi thanked him indifferently, shook his hand indifferently, and later kissed and thanked Astrid with the same massive indifference. Only for a brief moment, as the little red car turned out of the drive and Astrid raised her arm beside the fluttering pennant in a gesture of farewell, did Trudi feel something stir in that vast ocean of indifference. Then it was still again.

She went back into the house, sat unmoving for four hours, then rose and went to bed.

Up to the funeral her nights had been dreamless, or at least when she woke up from her unrefreshing sleep she could remember no dreams.

Now instantly she was in the living room of their luxurious flat in Vienna. Trent was standing by the window, gazing out towards the distant view of the great plant-house in the Schönbrunn gardens. She knew he was dead. He slowly turned and reached out his hands to her and she knew if she took them they would be chill and stiff and clammy. He began to move forward with slow dragging steps and she fled to their bedroom, slamming the heavy oak door and turning the key. But she knew it could be no barrier to that relentless pursuer and she crouched helpless on the bed as the slow footsteps approached and the handle began to turn.

She awoke in terror, lay in a straining silence, then slowly wrapped the pain-dulling gauze of her waking indifference around her once more.

This rapidly became the pattern of her existence. Waking, she was safe, but dead. She stayed in or went out as the fancy took her. Outside she felt invisible, anonymous. Inside she sat and watched flickering images on the television screen, drank whisky, ate next to nothing, then went to bed to the only real experience left to her.

One day, Mr Ashburton’s secretary rang and asked her if she could come to see him that afternoon at three o’clock. She said yes, but didn’t go. Ashburton himself rang. She listened to him twittering about wills, pensions, insurance policies – or rather the lack of these things. ‘… just over four thousand in your husband’s current account … nine months’ lease on the house but when this runs out … case for compensation …’

She said thank you and put the phone down.

She could have told him Trent was rich, had always been rich, was not the kind of man to be anything but rich. Everything she had wanted she had had, except that there was not really anything she wanted, except to be safe …

Next day a letter came with the firm’s name on its envelope. She let it lie unopened with all the other mail, mainly junk, which had dropped through the letter box. That day the phone rang at regular intervals from morning to night. In the end, she picked it up and let it dangle over the edge of the table without putting it anywhere near her ear.

That night the dream came as usual. Trent turned, she fled, he followed. She crouched on the bed and watched the door handle slowly turn.

She awoke, and lay bathed in sweat, waiting for the terror to recede and the dull, deadening silence to rise around her.

But this time there was a noise, a real noise. Like a door opening below. Still savouring the relief of escape from her dream, her first reaction was to treat it like all the noises of this so-called real world – people talking, cars passing, wind and weather – which to her were an empty buzz.

But now there was another sound, a sound all too familiar to her straining ears, the sound of the slow tread of feet coming nearer and nearer. She knew in that instant that the ultimate horror had been born and the walking corpse of her husband had at last broken through from her sleeping world to her waking.

She lay quite still, not unable to move but unable to think of anywhere to move to. There was only the window and what help lay there? Her cries into the night air would only reach the ears of her unknown neighbours like the high wail of some restless night creature. And in any case she knew with a certainty beyond faith that when she opened the window, Trent would be there already, standing on the unkempt lawn, his pale face raised towards her.

Now the footsteps were at her door. The handle moved fractionally. She put her hands to her ears and closed her eyes and opened her mouth in a silent cry of terror.

When she opened her eyes, it was broad daylight. She had no recollection of fainting, less of falling asleep, but did anyone ever have such recollections? Anyway, it meant nothing. The crisis had come as she had known it must. Her defences had been breached, the barrier of her indifference lay in ruins. Trent had broken through into her waking life, and the consequences were unthinkable. She was not yet mad, but she could go mad. Grief, terror, guilt, she did not know how to itemize her emotions; all she knew was that she was ready now to give anything for peace. Including life itself.

She sat in the lounge and like a little girl with her birthday sweets she considered her tablets. So she had sat at her father’s feet with a teatray before her on which she counted and classified dolly-mixtures, jelly-babies and chocolate buttons.

The supply of sleeping pills she had brought from Vienna was sadly depleted, but there was a good number of Valium and an assortment of other tranquillizers from her old agoraphobia treatments. A mixture of these washed down with whisky, which she had heard intensified the effect, must surely do the trick.

She started off very slowly, thinking for some reason that she ought to savour the experience. Then a sudden fear struck her that this leisurely approach would give the tablets time to put her to sleep long before she had taken a fatal dose. Panic-stricken she began to take them in twos and threes, gulping them down with mouthfuls of raw whisky. Eventually, with most of the tablets gone, she found she could manage no more. Surely she had done enough. Now there would come that delicious, easy, drifting off into oblivion she longed for.

Time passed, perhaps a little, perhaps a lot, she couldn’t tell. Where she was, it was timeless. Something was definitely happening, some great change was about to take place. But it was not going to be easy, it was not going to be delicious! Her body felt as if it were being racked apart. She was leaving not in peace and quiet but in turbulence and agony. But she had to go. She could hear somewhere last night’s noises again: the door opening, the footsteps approaching, a voice calling her name. She looked up and saw the door handle turning and she willed herself to die.

The door opened; a last spasm convulsed her body. In the doorway stood a woman, middle-aged, strikingly good-looking with a full, sensuous figure and shoulder-length black hair framing a heart-shaped face which was wearing an expression of incredulous horror.

‘Trudi?’ she said. ‘Trudi! For God’s sake.’

‘Janet?’ gasped Trudi. The word brought relief. She double up and vomited over the carpet. Her stomach which had received practically no food for days gladly gave up its mixture of bile and whisky in which lay scattered like daisies on a summer lawn a myriad of little white pills and tablets.

Part Two (#ulink_d632c18e-0a8a-50e9-a204-1aae9d6cb08a)

Thy wee bit housie, too in ruin;Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin’!An’ naething, now, to big a new ane. O’ foggage green!An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin’, Baith snell and keen!

BURNS: To a Mouse

1 (#ulink_f680acbc-a2da-5827-a365-24170cf46223)

Frank Carter was a reasonable man; reasonably tall, reasonably tempered, reasonably good at his work in a Manchester estate agency.

He tiptoed out of the spare bedroom in which Trudi was lying with her eyes screwed up tight as if to keep out more than just the light. And he asked the reasonable question.

‘How long’s she staying?’