Someone Like You Read online

  ‘Edna!’ he shouted. ‘Edna!’

  ‘Oh go to hell.’

  He began to move slowly up the stairs, treading quietly, touching the stair-rail for guidance, up and around the left-hand curve into the dark above. At the top he took an extra step that wasn’t there; but he was ready for it and there was no noise. He paused awhile then, listening, and he wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear the guns starting up again far away down the valley, heavy stuff mostly, seventy-fives and maybe a couple of mortars somewhere in the background.

  Across the landing now and through the open doorway – which was easy in the dark because he knew it so well – through on to the bedroom carpet that was thick and soft and pale grey although he could not feel or see it.

  In the centre of the room he waited, listening for sounds. She had gone back to sleep and was breathing rather loud, making the slightest little whistle with the air between her teeth each time she exhaled. The curtain flapped gently against the open window, the alarm-clock tick-tick-ticked beside the bed.

  Now that his eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark he could just make out the end of the bed, the white blanket tucked in under the mattress, the bulge of her feet under the bedclothes; and then, as though aware of the presence of the man in the room, the woman stirred. He heard her turn, and turn again. The sound of her breathing stopped. There was a succession of little movement-noises and once the bedsprings creaked, loud as a shout in the dark.

  ‘Is that you, Robert?’

  He made no move, no sound.

  ‘Robert, are you there?’

  The voice was strange and rather unpleasant to him.

  ‘Robert!’ She was wide awake now. ‘Where are you?’

  Where had he heard that voice before? It had a quality of stridence, dissonance, like two single high notes struck together hard in discord. Also there was an inability to pronounce the R of Robert. Who was it that used to say Wobert to him?

  ‘Wobert,’ she said again. ‘What are you doing?’

  Was it that nurse in the hospital, the tall one with fair hair? No, it was further back. Such an awful voice as that he ought to remember. Give him a little time and he would get the name.

  At that moment he heard the snap of the switch of the bedside lamp and in the flood of light he saw the woman half-sitting up in bed, dressed in some sort of a pink nightdress. There was a surprised, wide-eyed expression on her face. Her cheeks and chin were oily with cold cream.

  ‘You better put that thing down,’ she was saying, ‘before you cut yourself.’

  ‘Where’s Edna?’ He was staring at her hard.

  The woman, half-sitting up in bed, watched him carefully. He was standing at the foot of the bed, a huge, broad man, standing motionless, erect, with heels together, almost at attention, dressed in his dark-brown, woolly, heavy suit.

  ‘Go on,’ she ordered. ‘Put it down.’

  ‘Where’s Edna?’

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Wobert?’

  ‘There’s nothing the matter with me. I’m just asking you where’s my wife?’

  The woman was easing herself up gradually into an erect sitting position and sliding her legs towards the edge of the bed. ‘Well,’ she said at length, the voice changing, the hard blue-white eyes secret and cunning, ‘if you really want to know, Edna’s gone. She left just now while you were out.’

  ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘I’m just a friend of hers.’

  ‘You don’t have to shout at me,’ he said. ‘What’s all the excitement?’

  ‘I simply want you to know I’m not Edna.’

  The man considered this a moment, then he said, ‘How did you know my name?’

  ‘Edna told me.’

  Again he paused, studying her closely, still slightly puzzled, but much calmer now, his eyes calm, perhaps even a little amused the way they looked at her.

  ‘I think I prefer Edna.’

  In the silence that followed they neither of them moved. The woman was very tense, sitting up straight with her arms tense on either side of her and slightly bent at the elbows, the hands pressing palms downward on the mattress.

  ‘I love Edna, you know. Did she ever tell you I love her?’

  The woman didn’t answer.

  ‘I think she’s a bitch. But it’s a funny thing I love her just the same.’

  The woman was not looking at the man’s face; she was watching his right hand.

  ‘Awful cruel little bitch, Edna.’

  And a long silence now, the man standing erect, motionless, the woman sitting motionless in the bed, and it was so quiet suddenly that through the open window they could hear the water in the millstream going over the dam far down the valley on the next farm.

  Then the man again, speaking calmly, slowly, quite impersonally:

  ‘As a matter of fact, I don’t think she even likes me any more.’

  The woman shifted closer to the edge of the bed. ‘Put that knife down,’ she said, ‘before you cut yourself.’

  ‘Don’t shout, please. Can’t you talk nicely?’ Now, suddenly, the man leaned forward, staring intently into the woman’s face, and he raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s strange,’ he said. ‘That’s very strange.’

  He took a step forward, his knees touching the bed.

  ‘You look a bit like Edna yourself.’

  ‘Edna’s gone out. I told you that.’

  He continued to stare at her and the woman kept quite still, the palms of her hands pressing deep into the mattress.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I wonder.’

  ‘I told you Edna’s gone out. I’m a friend of hers. My name is Mary.’

  ‘My wife,’ the man said, ‘has a funny little brown mole just behind her left ear. You don’t have that, do you?’

  ‘I certainly don’t.’

  ‘Turn your head and let me look.’

  ‘I told you I didn’t have it.’

  ‘Just the same, I’d like to make sure.’

  The man came slowly around the end of the bed. ‘Stay where you are,’ he said. ‘Please don’t move.’ And he came towards her slowly, watching her all the time, a little smile touching the corners of his mouth.

  The woman waited until he was within reach, and then, with a quick right hand, so quick he never even saw it coming, she smacked him hard across the front of the face. And when he sat down on the bed and began to cry, she took the knife from his hand and went swiftly out of the room, down the stairs to the hall, where the telephone was.

  My Lady Love, My Dove

  It has been my habit for many years to take a nap after lunch. I settle myself in a chair in the living-room with a cushion behind my head and my feet up on a small square leather stool, and I read until I drop off.

  On this Friday afternoon, I was in my chair and feeling as comfortable as ever with a book in my hands – an old favourite, Doubleday and Westwood’s The Genera of Diurnal Lepidoptera – when my wife, who has never been a silent lady, began to talk to me from the sofa opposite. ‘These two people,’ she said, ‘what time are they coming?’

  I made no answer, so she repeated the question, louder this time.

  I told her politely that I didn’t know.

  ‘I don’t think I like them very much,’ she said. ‘Especially him.’

  ‘No dear, all right.’

  ‘Arthur. I said I don’t think I like them very much.’

  I lowered my book and looked across at her lying with her feet up on the sofa, flipping over the pages of some fashion magazine. ‘We’ve only met them once,’ I said.

  ‘A dreadful man, really. Never stopped telling jokes, or stories, or something.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll manage them very well, dear.’

  ‘And she’s pretty frightful, too. When do you think they’ll arrive?’

  Somewhere around six o’clock, I guessed.

  ‘But don’t you think th