Queenie’s lips pulled back in a grimace so fierce they seemed in danger of splitting. “Either you bring the child to me or you can leave my house tonight, the lot of you. Just remember that you wouldn’t be suffering my hospitality if not for her and then perhaps you won’t be so resolved to keep her to yourself.”
“We’re grateful to you, Queenie, but you seemed glad to have a nurse in the house.”
Queenie stiffened—her knotted neck, the bony pillars of her arms, her eyes that burned like ice. “You think I’m failing, do you? I’ll show you. I’ll bring the child myself,” she said in a voice low and powerful as the wind, and pushed herself up from the bed.
She must intend to open the door. Alison moved to stop her, her nurse’s instincts telling her the strain might be too much for Queenie, whose face was already darkening. Or perhaps that was the light, which had dimmed suddenly, a dimness Alison wanted to blink away or brush from her face like cobwebs. She stooped to Queenie, stretching out her hands, and something dark and wide and suffocating surged up from the bed and flung itself at her, throwing her to the floor.
It was only the mass of bedclothes, the quilt and the blankets. They seemed to close around her as she struggled to free herself, choking on the smell of them, of old cloth and old flesh, of stale books and disinfectant. It must be her struggles that were entangling her. She managed to free one hand, and dragged herself over the balding carpet until she had wormed herself out of the tangle of cloth. She shoved herself back on her haunches and levered herself to her feet, and swung toward the bed.
Queenie lay on her back on the faded striped mattress, gasping. Her whole body seemed to be straining to make a sound. Her arms were stiff at her sides, her hands gripping her pink nightdress so hard that her ribs showed through. Her eyes stared past the dimming bulb. They looked blind, drained of colour, intent on something only she could see. A convulsion as ferocious as the one that must have flung the bedclothes heaved her body up on her elbows and heels, and she managed to speak. “Father,” she said like a desperate prayer, and then her age flooded her face, her eyes rolled lifelessly awry. As her long chin sagged and her mouth opened emptily, the light failed with a noise as if a moth had struck the glass, and darkness stormed into the room.
Chapter Two
The old couple who lived near the Freshfield squirrel reserve insisted on sharing the food from the freezer Derek had rewired. They couldn’t eat it all before it went off, they told him, and insisted on paying him in full. The storm was blustering across to Wales as he drove back along the Southport road. At Hightown, where trees grew almost parallel with the ground, a rescue helicopter whirred above the sea. The flat land was still, except for the changing of traffic lights, dropping a red coal into the blackness of the road as they changed to red above. Frozen chops and steaks shifted in the bag on the seat beside him as the car swung around the curves, and he thought he’d make it on his own if there were a few more folk like those.
He had to make it, and a year ago he’d thought he would, though less from choice than because the contractor who’d employed him had gone bankrupt. All the same, he’d wanted to work for himself since he’d met Alison while he was working at the student nurses’ hostel; she was making the most of her qualifications, and he should make the most of his. Many of the contractor’s customers had known Derek and appreciated the care he took, and quite a few had promised to support him.
Up to a point, they had—usually up to the point when he sent them his bill. Small jobs paid on time; it was the large firms that made you wait and might be using you to stave off bankruptcy, but if it weren’t for them he wouldn’t have enough work. He needed the money even more than he had a year ago. He’d needed it then so that they could move out of Liverpool, and now he needed it to take them out of Queenie’s house.
They’d stayed in the run-down flat in Liverpool for as long as they’d felt safe. The burning buildings of the eighties had stayed streets away, the street battles three storeys below. But once Rowan started school they’d realised that the National Front lurked at the schoolyard gates with racist leaflets and ten-year-olds smoked heroin in disused shops. Earlier this year a police van speeding along the pavement towards a potential riot had demolished the gateposts of the flats, where Rowan often stood to watch the street. They’d begun to work all the hours they could, desperate to save enough for the deposit on a house, their savings having dwindled constantly since Rowan’s unexpected birth—and then Queenie had invited them to come and live with her.
As soon as they’d moved in Queenie had taken to her bed. She’d read all day and had expected Alison to be available whenever she was in the house. Within weeks she was bedridden, which made her more demanding, as if she was determined to prove she still had power. Derek had supposed he would help look after her, until she’d made him realise the extent of her contempt for him. Having to rely on her, to hope they could trust her hints that she might leave the house to Alison, dismayed him almost as much as her power over Alison—almost as much as the thought of her gaining a hold over Rowan too.
He trod hard on the accelerator until he reached the suburbs. Where Crosby became Waterloo the houses crowded together, thinner and shabbier. As he turned along the side road, a buoy tolled beyond the dunes that faced the parade of nursing homes. Out past the marina, the coastguard radar cupped the movements of the night. He parked by Queenie’s house, under the last streetlamp.
The street was quiet except for water splashing from a gutter and the slow muffled beat of the sea. He lifted the gate clear of the scraped path and let himself into the house, and made for the living-room, whose window was lit. But the only sign of life in the high gloomy room with its huge cold fireplace was a Lisa Alther novel, face down on the leather settee.
That would be Hermione’s book, the kind she gasped and shook her head over. At least she’d come over from Wales to keep Alison company. He made for the kitchen by the stairs. The women weren’t in the cavernous stone-flagged room with its black iron range. He left the steaks and chops in Alison’s refrigerator and went back along the hall, pushing open doors on either side of him, but all the rooms were dark—the dining-room whose dusty chandelier chimed sluggishly, the sewing-room full of draped machines, the sitting-room with its screens and piano and framed brown photographs. He hoped the women were asleep, getting the rest they deserved. He climbed the wry stairs into the gaping hush the storm seemed to have left in the house.
Rowan was murmuring disconnectedly in her sleep. He lingered outside her room, enjoying the sound of her being herself, and then edged the door open. Hermione was sitting on the bed, one arm stretched along the headboard, her head drooping sleepily toward the child. The door creaked, and Hermione lurched up from the bed, brandishing the stick she had been clutching. “Hermione, it’s me,” he hissed at her. “Derek.”
Her features drew even closer together, and then she managed to smile. “I don’t know what I was thinking of. I came in because Rowan was calling, and I must have dozed off.”
“Where’s Ali?”
“Upstairs. She went up—” She glanced at her tiny gold wristwatch, and her features huddled together again. “More than an hour ago.”
“Don’t blame yourself, girl. I’ll go and see what’s keeping her, and how about making yourself a fresh pot of tea?”
“Making one for you, you mean.”
“If Ali could see through me like you can I’d still be single,” Derek teased her. He might have thought he’d cheered her up except for the glance of panic she gave him as he climbed the stairs. He’d rewired the lower floors without telling Queenie, so that the house would be less of a fire risk, but the top floor was darker than ever. A single bulb made the askew walls into a frame for the dark where her room was. He peered ahead, and then he realised that he couldn’t see a light beneath her door.
He went swiftly but carefully along the corridor. The door was wedged, he saw. He knocked softly on a cracked upper panel, not least to hear if Queenie was asleep. It was Alison who responded. “Is someone there? Derek, is that you?”
Her voice was low and strained, just beyond the door. “It’s me all right,” he called. “Stand out of the way while I budge this.”
As soon as he heard her move aside he gripped both uprights of the door frame, his fingertips sinking into the wood, and kicked at the lock. The door staggered inward, the doorknob split the plaster of the inner wall, and Alison dodged out at once and made for the light in the corridor, muttering “Close the door.”
He could see nothing in the room but darkness, which seemed to billow toward him as a wind shook the window. “What about—”
Alison turned as she reached the light. “Gone. I checked her pulse.”
He could tell she was smothering her feelings. He closed the door and hurried to her, put his arm round her shoulders, raised her small dainty long-cheeked face by its chin, which had a hint of her aunt’s resolve without the disproportion. Her quick smile made him want to hold her tight and stroke her straight black hair that stopped just short of her shoulders, to remind her how much he loved her and admired her. Sensing that she didn’t want to linger, he led her down to the next floor, and then the question proved too much for him. “How long was the light out, Ali?”
“A few minutes. Maybe half an hour or so. I couldn’t get the door open, and I didn’t like to shout in case it brought Rowan up there.”
“My God, why wasn’t I here?” He didn’t want to imagine how it must have felt to her, he wanted her to tell him so that he could help. He was guiding her towards their room, where he hoped she could lie down while he told Hermione not to bother them for a while, when Hermione came hurrying upstairs. “Tea’s brewing,” she said, and her voice and her face wavered. “What’s wrong?”
“Your aunt’s passed on,” Derek said.
She glanced upward more nervously than ever. “I want to see.”
“The light in there’s bust.”
“You can change the bulb, can’t you?”
She sounded close to hysteria, and he couldn’t think how to keep her away from Alison. “I’ll be cutting off the power to the top floor. It’s a wonder it kept going as long as it did.”
“It would while she was alive. You’ll let me have your flashlight, won’t you? I’ve got to see.”
“We’ll both go up while he cuts off the power,” Alison said.
She sounded reassuring, though he was sure she needed that herself. “Just let me pull the fuses,” he said, “and then I’ll take Hermione up if she really can’t wait.”
But the fuses were stuck fast in the dusty board under the stairs. He was still trying to dislodge them when the women brought the flashlight from his car. Before he could delay the women, they were overhead. He managed to jiggle one fuse loose, and then the other, and heard a muffled scream at the top of the house. He threw the cracked porcelain fuses into the kitchen bin as he ran to the stairs. He liked the silence up there even less than he’d liked the scream.
Nearly all the light on the top floor was in Queenie’s room. He was able to distinguish the women, standing just outside the door and outlined by the glow that the flashlight was casting within. The light swung toward him as he trod on a loose board, and then it fluttered back into the room.
An old woman was lying face up on the bare mattress. Death had seized her by her chin and dragged her mouth wide open, had pinched her cheeks inward as far as they could go. He knew she was Queenie, if only by the way the long pink nightdress couldn’t reach to cover her scrawny veinous shins, but she looked older than he would have imagined anyone could look. No wonder the women seemed almost hypnotised by the sight of her, until Alison murmured “Go and look if you want to, Hermione.”
Hermione stepped backward, hunching up her shoulders and shaking her head violently. “Well then,” Alison said “hold the flashlight while I cover her up.”
Hermione almost dropped the flashlight. The lit wall nodded toward them, opening its mouth that had swallowed Queenie. Derek made to grab the flashlight until he saw that Alison was trying to make sure her sister’s mind was occupied. The light did its best to fasten on the bed while Alison closed the eyes that were gazing blindly at opposite walls. She stooped to gather up the bedclothes, and the light shuddered. “Watch out for her!” Hermione screamed.
Derek thought she was talking to him. He ran into the bedroom and grabbed one edge of the bedclothes to help Alison heave them over the corpse. She insisted on smoothing them and tucking them under the mattress and under Queenie’s chin before she would come out of the room, though the flashlight was trembling so violently that it made him feel the floor shake underfoot. “Now what were you saying, Hermione?” she said gently as she stepped over the threshold.
“Didn’t you see her move? She’s only pretending. It’s another of her horrible games.”
“It must have been the light, love. She’s dead now, at peace.”
“Don’t you know her better than that?” Hermione crouched over the flashlight as if to protect it. “Look at her,” she whispered. “She’s listening to us, can’t you see? God help us, she’s smiling…”
She gripped the flashlight with both hands and poked the beam at the collapsed face. Now that Alison had closed the mouth and tucked the quilt under the chin, the corpse did appear to be smiling, so faintly it looked secretive. “She’s up to something,” Hermione cried, and then swung wildly towards the stairs, almost smashing the flashlight against the door frame. There was movement at the far end of the corridor.