The darkness shifted on the landing. Tired eyes, she explained-yet again her room enfolded her. She reached out and removed her flute from its case; she admired its length, its shine, the perfection of its measurements as they fitted to her fingers. She couldn't play it now-each time she tried she coughed-but it seemed charged with beauty. Her appreciation over, she laid the instrument to rest in its long black box.
"You retreat into your room and your music." Peter had said that, but he'd been speaking of a retreat from Hiroshima, from the conditions in Lower Brichester, from all the horrid things he'd insisted she confront. That was over, she said quickly, and the house was empty. Yet her eyes strayed from Victimes de Devoir.
Footsteps on the stairs again. This time she recognized Maureen's. The others-which she hadn't heard, of course -had been indeterminate, even sexless. She thought she'd ask Maureen whether she'd left her coat in the hall; she might have entered while Alma had slept, with the key she'd borrowed. The door opened and the panel of sunlight fled, darkening the room. No, thought Alma; to enquire into possible delusions would be an admission of weakness.
Maureen dropped her carrier and sneezed. "I think I've got your cold," she said indistinctly.
"Oh dear." Alma's mood had darkened with the room, with her decision not to speak. She searched for conversation in which to lose herself. "Have you heard yet when you're going to library school?" she asked.
"It's not settled yet. I don't know, the idea of a spinster career is beginning to depress me. I'm glad you're not faced with that."
"You shouldn't brood," Alma advised, restlessly stacking her books on the bedspread.
Maureen examined the titles. "Victimes de Devoir, Thérese Desqueyroux. In the original French, good Lord. Why are you grappling with these?"
"So that I'll be an interesting young woman," Alma replied instantly. "I'm sure I've told you I feel guilty doing nothing. I can't practice, not with this cold. I only hope it's past before the Camside concert. Which reminds me, do you think I could borrow your transistor during the day? For the music programme. To give me peace."
"All right. I can't today, I start work at once. Though I think-no, it doesn't matter."
"Go on."
"Well, I agree with Peter, you know that. You can't have peace and beauty without closing your eyes to the world. Didn't he say that to seek peace in music was to seek complete absence of sensation, of awareness?"
"He said that and you know my answer." Alma unwillingly remembered; he had been here in her room, taking in the music in the bookcase, the polished gramophone-she'd sensed his disapproval and felt miserable; why couldn't he stay the strong forthright man she'd come to admire and love? "Really, darling, this is an immature attitude," he'd said. "I can't help feeling you want to abdicate from the human race and its suffering." Her eyes embraced the room. This was security, apart from the external chaos, the horrid part of life. "Even you appreciate the beauty of the museum exhibits," she told Maureen.
"I suppose that's why you work there. I admire them, yes, but in many cases by ignoring their history of cruelty."
"Why must you and Peter always look for the horrid things? What about this house? There are beautiful things here. That gramophone—you can look at it and imagine all the craftsmanship it took. Doesn't that seem to you fulfilling?"
"You know we leftists have a functional aesthetic. Anyway—" Maureen paused. "If that's your view of the house you'd best not know what I found out about it."
"Go on, I want to hear."
"If you insist. The Brichester Herald was useless—they reported the death of the owner and that was all—but I came across a chapter in Pamela Jones' book on local hauntings which gives the details. The last owner of the house lost a fortune on the stock market—I don't know how exactly, of course it's not my field—and he became a recluse in this house. There's worse to come, are you sure you want—? Well, he went mad. Things started disappearing, so he said, and he accused something he thought was living in the house, something that used to stand behind him or mock him from the empty rooms. I can imagine how he started having hallucinations, looking at this view-"
Alma joined her at the window. "Why?" she disagreed. "I think it's beautiful." She admired the court before the house, the stone pillars framing the iron flourish of the gates; then a stooped woman passed across the picture, heaving a pram from which overflowed a huge cloth bag of washing. Alma felt depressed again; the scene was spoilt.
"Sorry, Alma," Maureen said; her cold hand touched Alma's fingers. Alma frowned slightly and insinuated herself between the sheets. "…Sorry," Maureen said again. "Do you want to hear the rest? It's conventional, really. He gassed himself. The Jones book has something about a note he wrote - insane, of course: he said he wanted to 'fade into the house, the one possession left to me', whatever that meant. Afterward the stories started; people used to see someone very tall and thin standing at the front door on moonlit nights, and one man saw a figure at an upstairs window with its head turning back and forth like clockwork. Yes, and one of the neighbours used to dream that the house was 'screaming for help'-the book explained that, but not to me I'm afraid. I shouldn't be telling you all this, you'll be alone until tonight."
"Don't worry, Maureen. It's just enjoyably creepy."
"A perceptive comment. It blinds you to what really happened. To think of him in this house, possessing the rooms, eating, sleeping-you forget he lived once, he was real. I wonder which room-?"
"You don't have to harp on it," Alma said. "You sound like Peter."
"Poor Peter, you are attacking him today. He'll be here to protect you tonight, after all."
"He won't because we've parted."
"You could have stopped me talking about him, then. But how for God's sake did it happen?"
"Oh, on Friday. I don't want to talk about it." Walking hand in hand to the front door and as always kissing as Peter turned the key; her father waiting in the halclass="underline" "Now listen, Peter, this can't go on"-prompted by her mother, Alma knew, her father was too weak to act independently. She'd pulled Peter into the kitchen-' "Go, darling, I'll try and calm them down," she'd said desperately—but her mother was waiting, immediately animated, like a fairground puppet in a penny arcade: "You know you've broken my heart, Alma, marrying beneath you." Alma had slumped into a chair, but Peter leaned against the dresser, facing them all, her mother's prepared speech: "Peter, I will not have you marrying Alma-you're uneducated, you'll get nowhere at the library, you're obsessed with politics and you don't care how much they distress Alma—" and on and on. If only he'd come to her instead of standing pugnaciously apart! She'd looked up at him finally, tearful, and he'd said: "Well, darling, I'll answer any point of your mother's you feel is not already answered"-and suddenly everything had been too much; she'd run sobbing to her room. Below the back door had closed. She'd wrenched open the window; Peter was crossing the garden beneath the rain. "Peter!" she'd cried out. "Whatever happens I still love you—" but her mother was before her, pushing her away from the window, shouting down: "Go back to your kennel!"… "What?" she asked Maureen, distracted back.