even to speak to him, the darkness about him grew thicker … it was spreading … the whole cafeteria was in twilight now, as if night was already falling. And already the man was not quite there any more…. Onlythe raincoat, sitting there, upright and empty, still breathing, and somehow this, too, seemed perfectly natural, and not in the least surprising. What else would a raincoat do if its wearer was suddenly no longer there?
“A figment of knives!”
The senseless words leapt into Katharine’s brain with that strange, precise clarity, that more than natural importance, that meaningless phrases sometimes acquire in dreams. The phrase seemed to explain, to answer everything—the vast room, her own presence there, and even the alert, near-living raincoat … which now, after all, lay limp and ordinary over the back of the chair. Only the great, encroaching darkness seemed unexplained … the vast, swift twilight swooping …
Katharine woke with a feeling of having been roused by a wild storm blowing round the house; a sense of roaring wind, of rattling window frames, of strange, howling hollow sounds in all the boarded-up fireplaces in all the upstairs rooms.
But everything was still, and in darkness. The stillness forced itself upon Katharine’s waking mind with strange emphasis; with a shock of sudden stillness like the shock of sudden sound. She lay very still, alert, the dream running out of her, full consciousness swiftly taking over.
And then, clear and unmistakable, there came through the open window the sound of the dustbin lid being replaced on the bin. Quickly, and very quietly, Katharine was out of bed, out on the landing, and peeping, automatically and absurdly, and from an instinct too deep to question, into each of her children’s rooms. She knew it was absurd herself; for why in the world should the sound of a dustbin being tampered with outside in the back garden mean that some disaster was being enacted in one of the upstairs bedrooms?
Reassured that all her three children were sleeping peacefully , Katharine set off down the stairs to investigate. Lightly, tensely, she tiptoed down, with feelings more akin to exhilaration than to fear.
The back door was unlocked—was it she or Stephen whohad forgotten to lock it?—and in a moment Katharine was standing on the soft, spongy grass of the lawn, the wetness already soaking through her slippers, and the damp, windless air chill and soft about her face. The dustbin stood at the entrance to the side passage; its battered curves shone greyly in the shaft of moonlight that speared through the narrow gap between the houses. Katharine approached it gingerly, wondering what, exactly, she meant to do? What did she hope to discover by lifting the lid and peering into the confusion below?
It was a newspaper parcel, right on top of everything else—but had she put it there herself, last night? There were heaps of things she might have wrapped in newspaper during her hurried evening chores—potato peelings—ashes—the contents of the sink tidy. No—those were still visible just below the newspaper—egg-shells, orange-peel, and a mass of sodden tea-leaves gleaming in the moonlight like seaweed in silvery shallows.
Katharine softly replaced the lid. She would have another look in the morning, when she would be able to see properly. Or—it suddenly occurred to her—had she been mistaken in thinking that the sound came from her own dustbin at all? Didn’t the Prescotts keep theirs in almost the same place, just across the dividing wall? It was rather odd of them, of course, to be emptying rubbish at three o’clock in the morning, but it was harmless, and certainly none of her business.
Just to satisfy herself that their dustbin was where she was imagining it, and that the noise might therefore have come from their garden and not from hers, Katharine moved softly across the lawn towards the wall, meaning to look over.
But how was it that these few
“A figment of knives!”
The senseless words leapt into Katharine’s brain with that strange, precise clarity, that more than natural importance, that meaningless phrases sometimes acquire in dreams. The phrase seemed to explain, to answer everything—the vast room, her own presence there, and even the alert, near-living raincoat … which now, after all, lay limp and ordinary over the back of the chair. Only the great, encroaching darkness seemed unexplained … the vast, swift twilight swooping …
Katharine woke with a feeling of having been roused by a wild storm blowing round the house; a sense of roaring wind, of rattling window frames, of strange, howling hollow sounds in all the boarded-up fireplaces in all the upstairs rooms.
But everything was still, and in darkness. The stillness forced itself upon Katharine’s waking mind with strange emphasis; with a shock of sudden stillness like the shock of sudden sound. She lay very still, alert, the dream running out of her, full consciousness swiftly taking over.
And then, clear and unmistakable, there came through the open window the sound of the dustbin lid being replaced on the bin. Quickly, and very quietly, Katharine was out of bed, out on the landing, and peeping, automatically and absurdly, and from an instinct too deep to question, into each of her children’s rooms. She knew it was absurd herself; for why in the world should the sound of a dustbin being tampered with outside in the back garden mean that some disaster was being enacted in one of the upstairs bedrooms?
Reassured that all her three children were sleeping peacefully , Katharine set off down the stairs to investigate. Lightly, tensely, she tiptoed down, with feelings more akin to exhilaration than to fear.
The back door was unlocked—was it she or Stephen whohad forgotten to lock it?—and in a moment Katharine was standing on the soft, spongy grass of the lawn, the wetness already soaking through her slippers, and the damp, windless air chill and soft about her face. The dustbin stood at the entrance to the side passage; its battered curves shone greyly in the shaft of moonlight that speared through the narrow gap between the houses. Katharine approached it gingerly, wondering what, exactly, she meant to do? What did she hope to discover by lifting the lid and peering into the confusion below?
It was a newspaper parcel, right on top of everything else—but had she put it there herself, last night? There were heaps of things she might have wrapped in newspaper during her hurried evening chores—potato peelings—ashes—the contents of the sink tidy. No—those were still visible just below the newspaper—egg-shells, orange-peel, and a mass of sodden tea-leaves gleaming in the moonlight like seaweed in silvery shallows.
Katharine softly replaced the lid. She would have another look in the morning, when she would be able to see properly. Or—it suddenly occurred to her—had she been mistaken in thinking that the sound came from her own dustbin at all? Didn’t the Prescotts keep theirs in almost the same place, just across the dividing wall? It was rather odd of them, of course, to be emptying rubbish at three o’clock in the morning, but it was harmless, and certainly none of her business.
Just to satisfy herself that their dustbin was where she was imagining it, and that the noise might therefore have come from their garden and not from hers, Katharine moved softly across the lawn towards the wall, meaning to look over.
But how was it that these few
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