I wasn't prepared—I couldn't have been. A ground-floor room with wardrobe, dressing-table complete with cob-webbed mirror, a bed beneath the window, piles of women's magazines, some thick with dust, and a cat chained to the leg of a chair in the middle of the floor; it wasn't a sense of evil or fear that choked me, it was a sense of something locked away, forgotten and gone bad. The cat padded up to meet me; its chain gave it freedom of the room, but it couldn't quite reach the door.
'Pussy likes you,' said Mrs Franklyn, closing the door and sinking into a chair amid a haze of dust; her dress drew up her thighs, but she didn't pull it down. 'That could be a good sign, but don't they say only effeminate men can make friends with cats? Why are you looking at me like that?' I hadn't realized I was looking like anything in particular; I was carrying the cat, chain and all, to the chair I took opposite her. 'Don't like the chain, is that it? But me and my cat, we're all we've got—I'm not letting her out so they can carry her off and sacrifice her. They would, you know, on their nights. I take her in the garden, that's all; wouldn't trust them further than that.' I remembered the flies. 'What do you write?' she demanded.
In this context it seemed a little pale to say 'Stories of the supernatural.'
'Stories, eh? Yes, we all like stories,' she mused. 'Anything's better than the real thing. Do you want some tea? I'm afraid that's about all I have to offer.'
'It's all right, thank you,' I refused; I could see cracked cups in the kitchen behind her head. She caught my eye; she was always doing that, damn her.
'Oh, I can't blame you for thinking,' she said. 'But it gets you down after a while. After he took the house over—you didn't know that, did you?—yes, he did, Re married me and then he encroached on every room, keeping things I wouldn't touch all over the house, until I took this room and the kitchen and I told him if you try anything in my rooms I'll kill you!' She thumped the chair-arm and dust flew out.
'But why did you put up with it?' I had to ask.
'Why? Because I married him!' The cat fled, knocked over a pile of magazines, sneezed and jumped back; she reeled it in and fondled it. 'Now, pussy's not scared of mummy,' she soothed and put it down. It began to scratch at her shoe. 'Lie down with you, for God's sake,' she hissed. It came to me for comfort.
'When I married him,' she returned to me, 'he promised I'd have all this house to entertain, to do all the things I never could. I believed him. Then I found out how he really was. So I waited. Every day I wished him dead, so I'd have my house, what was left of my life. I haven't spoken to him for years, did you know that?—hardly even seen him. I used to leave his meals outside his room on a tray; if he didn't eat them that was up to him. But when he didn't touch them for three days I went into his room. No, I didn't go in—all those filthy statues and lights and books—but I could see he wasn't there. He was in his stupid little printing press room. He was dead all right. There was a book—he must have been going to copy something—but I didn't read it; the way his face looked was enough. I threw it in the bin. Didn't touch him, though—oh, no, they're not going to say I killed him after all the years I've suffered.'
'But how did you stand it?' Of course the answer was— she didn't.
'Oh, he made me long ago. We met when we were students—I was impressionable then, I thought he was a good man, the best—and later we got married. I ought to have known; there was a rumor he'd been expelled from the University even then, but when he swore he hadn't I trusted him. Then his parents died and left him this house and we got married. My husband—' Her face contorted as if she'd put her hand in something foul. 'He took me down to Temp-hill and made me watch those things dancing on the graves. I didn't want to but he said it was for a book he was writing. He held my hand, then. And later we went down the steps below Glotton—oh, you may write, but you'd never dare to write about ... I don't want to think about it. But it hardened me. It made me tough when he began his mummery back here, trying to stop me destroying all his muck...'
That sounded like a cue. 'If you haven't thrown away all his books do you think I could look them over? Purely from a writer's viewpoint,' I tacked on, why I'm not sure.
'But you're a nice young man, you don't want to become another of his,' she said, and sat down on the bed; her dress rose again like a curtain. She began to clear piles of magazines festooned with dust away from the bed; atop one was a vase of dandelions—'Just a touch of color, what's it matter what they are, no-one ever comes,' she explained, though the petals had curled and dulled in the flecked light. 'Did you ever write from experience? How could you, you've never had what I'd had to put up with. The things he's doing even now to hinder me— Only yesterday I picked up one of his books to throw it out and it went sticky and soft things started pushing between my fingers—God!' She wiped her hands down her dress. 'I used to lie awake listening to him going to the bathroom and wishing he was dead— and last night I heard him flopping round his room, beating on the walls. And this morning I woke early, I thought the sun was coming up—but it was his face floating over the rooftops ... It came to the windows, filled them, it followed me from room to room, mouthing at me—God! You'd never write about it, you'd never write about anything again. But he can't get me down, and he knows it. He was always scared of me. That's why he kept me here, to keep me quiet. But he can't have left many of his little tricks behind him. He knows I'll win. But you don't want to get mixed up with the wrong things. You're a nice young man.'
She swung her legs up and lay back on the pillow, where I could see imprints of hair-dye.
For some time now I'd had the impression that my short story was taking over its own writing; now we seemed to be building to a climax I hadn't foreseen. I had to be direct. 'Your husband was buried, wasn't he?' I asked. 'Didn't he want to be cremated?'
She seemed to take an age to sit up; her eyes were on me all the while. 'How did you know that?' she demanded softly. 'You gave yourself away there, didn't you? You are one of his! I knew it before you got to the door! Yes, he's buried, where you all should be. Go on, go up and be with him, I'm sure he'd like you to be. He must be able to feel them coming by now—I hope he can. Yes, he was always on about his Eihort, but he doesn't like it when they come for him. You go and look after him, you—'
I didn't know what she might be capable of; I retreated hastily, seeing her watching in the mirror and sneering when she caught my eye. Somehow I dislodged a heap of magazines and buried the cat, which fought its way out and tangled my feet in its chain. 'Don't you touch my cat!' she screamed. 'She's worth a million of you! What is it, darling, come to mummy—' and I escaped, running down the hall, an inflamed intestine, and through the grass, careless of what I might tread in unseen.
Suddenly I was on solid pavement. Down the street an ice-cream van was playing Greensleeves. This time the intrusion of mundanity didn't seem so tasteless. I walked home.
By the time I reached the typewriter I'd glimpsed the paradox. Even the supernatural-story writer who believes what he writes (and I'm not saying I don't) isn't prepared for an actual confrontation. Quite the reverse, for every time he fabricates the supernatural in a story (unless based on experience) he clinches his skepticism; he knows such things can't be, because he wrote them. Thus for him a confrontation would be doubly upsetting. It would at least force him to re-think all his works. Is this desirable? From the self-completion angle I suppose it is. At any rate, I'm going. 'Go up and be with him' she said—it must be the cemetery on Mercy Hill.
Tomorrow.
EU
(Undated, unaddressed)