I’ve brought you a sandwich,” called the voice of Mrs. Deering through the door. “Put that light on again. You needn’t pretend you’re asleep. I saw it go out a second ago round the crack.”
“Go to hell,” said Terrapin.
“Nice way to talk. And me taking the trouble to come all the way up here with me heart.”
“I thought you said it was a sandwich. Don’t move,” he said into my ear in the dark, “Don’t breathe.”
“Is it locked?” I whispered.
“No.”
“You know what I mean. You know me heart. I’m puffed to death. ’Ere. Let me come in for a sit down. It’s stairs does it the doctor says. I feel it on the stairs.”
Terrapin called, “It’s all right Mrs. Deering. I’m not hungry. I’m going to sleep. I’ve been working.”
“Working, Working. Always working—Half Term holidays an’ all. Unnatural sort of life. In my day young folks enjoyed theirselves. You ought to be out finding a nice girl.”
“Just leave it, Mrs. Deering.”
“Eh?”
“The sandwich. Just leave it by the door.”
“Ont’ doorstep? The rats’d get it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’ll eat it meself. I like a sandwich.”
“o.k. That’s fine. I got some soup.”
“I saw you ’ad. And left t’pan. I saw it when I got in from me Club.”
“Sorry.”
“Come on now Tom, let us in. Let’s have a natter. I been to me daughter’s. Dint you ’ear t’car? I thought you’d a bin down when you eared t’car.
He said nothing. We were lying side by side now and a good bit apart. The paper people rustled in the dark above our heads.
“All right then,” she said. “Just as you like. You’ve a nasty streak in you Tom Terrapin. So had your Gran. And your Ma—not to mention your Pa if there ever was one. I don’t know why I stop on.”
“Neither do I,” he yelled out back. “You can go to hell.”
“Go to hell yourself.”
Her footsteps, very slow and creaky and her wheezing breath grew fainter down the turret staircase. In time, a long way off a door slammed.
“I must go now,” I said. I swung myself out of bed and felt around for my shoes, got my arm back into the dress. Terrapin found the light string and pulled it and we looked at each other. I began to shiver. He stood by the bed with his hair all in tufts and his eyes bright. His shoes and socks seemed to have disappeared. Quite a lot of his clothes seemed to have disappeared. His feet looked very endearing. Never in my life had I so loved anyone. “I’m going now,” I said.
He said, “Bilge—stay. She’s gone. She’ll not come up again. She won’t even see me in the morning. We scarcely meet. She’s hardly ever been up here in her life. It was just terrible luck.”
I’d got my shoes on and picked up the coat and swathed myself in it. “Please,” I said, “could you take me back? It wasn’t just bad luck.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just have to go.”
“So you didn’t mean it?”
“I did. I love you.”
“Then stay.”
“Oh Terrapin, take me back.”
“To lovely Daddy Green and Prissy Paula?”
It was then easy. “No,” I said quite steadily, “I can’t do that. I’m afraid you’ll have to get me back to Jack Rose.”
“Bilge!”
“I’m afraid so,” I said going to the table and putting on my glasses.
“Bilge. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said that. I like your father and Paula. I owe them a hell of a lot. Look, luvvy—stay with me.”
“And what are the Roses going to say when I’m not there in the morning?”
“What were they going to say anyway? You weren’t thinking of that when you came running to me an hour ago.”
“I didn’t know you were here. It was Mrs. Deering. I had no idea you lived here—I told you. It was coincidence.”
“Bilge do you honestly expect me to believe that?”
“It’s true.”
“Fate leading you to my door?”
“If you like.”
“And Fate in the person of Mrs. Deering rescuing your virginity—Mrs. Deering messenger of the gods? Mrs. Hermes. Mrs. Eumenides.”
“Shut up.”
“You’re a coward.”
“I’m not. I’m telling the truth. Anyway it’s as possible as a father who dresses up in ballet clothes and thinks he’s the reincarnation of Punch and Judy.”
He said, “We’ll go.”
His face had gone still. He pulled on his clothes and the coat from the back of the door, wound his House scarf round and round his neck. I pushed my stockings down the front of the dress, fastened up my shoes and buttoned up the sable coat. He opened the door and without even putting out the fire or the light or making the slightest effort to be quiet went clattering ahead of me down the stone stairs. I hovered a minute—switched off the fire, looked all round the room once and saw for the first time clearly what I had seemed to see from the corner of my eye and rejected, soon after I had arrived—Terrapin’s latest puppet. It was not yet finished but already very dreadful and good. It was different from the rest—gross, balloon-like and rubbery with a greedy, ugly, impertinent head; a head so confident and powerful that it held more horrors than anything more ordinarily nasty—any devil or goblin—and it was of course Mrs. Deering.
She had been hanging there unfinished in the dark all the time we had been together in bed. Overhead the rest of Terrapin’s company swung and whispered in the air the open door was letting in from outside. I shut it quickly and went down towards the sound of Terrapin wheeling out his motor-bike. All the way back through the miserable dark I heard the sound of the puppets laughing and murmuring quietly together.