Miss Dewey stood vigil at her door for another thirty minutes or so until the woman from upstairs appeared, passing Miss Dewey on her way outside, looking straight ahead.
“You kept me up half the night,” Miss Dewey snarled as she stood at her doorway, arms tightly folded, her pointed chin jutting out. After standing there for so long, her temper was strained, and her legs ached. She would have to put on her orthopedic hose when she was finished with this interview, that much was certain.
The woman from upstairs stopped and stared blankly in Miss Dewey’s direction. “Pardon me?”
“I said you kept me awake last night with that bumping sound. I’ll give you to know that I don’t tolerate noise of any kind, and I expect you will be more solicitous of my need for quiet in future.” Miss Dewey’s skinny hands were planted on her bony hips; she stood her ground solidly.
The woman did not apologize.
“You don’t remember me, do you, Miss Dewey?”
She supposed the woman upstairs could have learned her name from Mr. Trainor or from the letter boxes, but she didn’t like it when she used it so familiarly.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. We haven’t met, until now, that is.”
“Oh but we have, Miss Dewey,” the woman smiled coolly. “You were a schoolmistress at the primary school I attended, and I was one of your pupils.” She rattled off her name, but Miss Dewey didn’t recognize it and quickly forgot it.
“I’m afraid I don’t remember you.” Miss Dewey had scarcely remembered her students’ names when she had them in her classroom, so she certainly couldn’t be expected to remember them now. She had always referred to them as a whole rather than individually. They were all so bloody unremarkable.
Miss Dewey cleared her throat before continuing. “But anyway, I must speak with you about the noise.”
The woman upstairs ignored her last remark and went on in the same level, unemotional tone of voice. “I’m not at all surprised you don’t remember me. I was a rather plain child.”
Miss Dewey noticed that she was still quite plain, nondescript even. Her long, straight hair was an artificial blonde (capped by suspicious dark roots), her eyes a vacant blue, and her complexion pasty. Her figure was thin and undeveloped.
“You didn’t notice me then, so I could hardly expect you to remember me now, could I?”
Miss Dewey supposed that she would be expected to ask the woman what she’d been doing since she left school, the sort of thing which she couldn’t have cared less about but which was part of polite conversation. Then she promptly reminded herself that she had given up polite conversation since she retired. It was no longer required. There had been too many times in the past when she had to pretend she actually liked her students just to keep her position, but in reality she could not befriend her pupils and teach them at the same time. She taught them the necessary curriculum so they could pass their exams, because if they failed she might lose her position. In retrospect, she supposed that many of them hadn’t enjoyed school, but that was of little concern to her. It wasn’t necessary that they enjoy themselves, for heaven’s sake. She certainly hadn’t.
“Back to last night. I think it was very rude of you to make such a racket, and then to avoid answering your door like a coward when you surely must have heard me banging on it.”
“Oh, were you? I didn’t hear anything, I’m afraid. It was a bat, actually.” She paused for dramatic effect. “When I’m feeling a bit out of sorts, I hit the floor with it.” She stared placidly at Miss Dewey, the watery blue eyes unwavering.
“A cricket bat?” Miss Dewey asked uncertainly.
The woman nodded calmly. “It relieves my anxiety. Stops me from doing something much worse with it.”
Miss Dewey blinked her eyes and straightened her thin neck, trying to decide whether the woman was putting her on. “I’ll thank you to stop doing it, especially at night. Or I’ll... I’ll telephone the police,” Miss Dewey threatened, with considerably less spirit than before, however.
The woman from upstairs, still unruffled, smiled unpleasantly and strode out the front door without an apology.
Miss Dewey was highly dissatisfied with their interchange. The woman from upstairs didn’t seem to care at all that her neighbor was so upset, and she even seemed vaguely pleased about it. Miss Dewey tried to recall her name but couldn’t. It was just as well, really, because she wasn’t about to occupy her mind with such an insignificant person. She had cleaning to do.
Later that afternoon Miss Dewey bumped into Mr. Trainor when she carted her garbage out to the dustbin. She descended upon him with a vengeance. “I can tell you I didn’t get any sleep last night. If you won’t speak with that woman, I’m going to call the police.”
Mr. Trainor considered briefly the inanity of such a claim. The coppers wouldn’t give Miss Dewey any serious attention over it, but he still didn’t want policemen hanging about. It might cause him some inconvenience. “I’ll speak with her about it, Miss Dewey. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble again.”
“Well, it’s easy for you to be so sure about everything. You’re not the one who has to endure all this irritation. I rue the day when I came upon Waverly Mansions.”
Mr. Trainor rued it, too, for without Miss Dewey to complain, his life would be quite pleasant. Tonight he could have settled down for an evening of the telly and a kidney pie, followed by a gooseberry fool, perhaps. He’d put on a stone or two in the past couple of years, but what other pleasures did he have? He deserved some enjoyment, after all.
But this evening such delights would have to be postponed because Miss Dewey had made sure he had another absurd task to complete for her. He couldn’t see that this situation would ever end, and it made him inordinately tired. He sat down heavily in the armchair in his comfortable flat and took a long nap.
The following day Miss Dewey went out for her daily constitutional, but when she returned she found that Jane Austen was in the T section. She discovered with horror that all her books had been disarranged. E. M. Forster was mixed up with the Brontës, and D. H. Lawrence now accompanied Dorothy Sayers. Miss Dewey had never actually read any of her books, other than the Dorothy Sayers, but she did like to see them sitting there intelligently upon the shelf, organized and easily located.
She whined to Mr. Trainor but to no avail, because he was still decidedly skeptical about the truth of her claims. For the next few days, when she went out for her walk or to the shops, she always returned to find something disturbed. The artificial flowers strewn on the floor, the cooker turned on, little things that were slowly driving Miss Dewey to distraction. Mr. Trainor kept insisting that she might have done these things herself, unwittingly, of course, but his theory brought her no comfort.
There was only one solution. She’d stay at home.
This plan worked for a few days, until one night when Miss Dewey again awoke to the sound from above. It soon became intolerable, so she repeated the useless trek upstairs. The thumping conveniently stopped as soon as she left her own flat, but Miss Dewey rapped long and loud on the woman’s door anyway. Predictably, there was no answer.
She trudged slowly back downstairs, heading to the back of the building where Mr. Trainor’s flat was. She reconsidered knocking at his door, however. He’d be no help at all. When she finally returned to her own flat at the front of the building, exhausted with her efforts, she noticed with alarm that her door was open. Had she forgotten to shut it?
She closed the door tight behind her and locked it. As she walked into her bedroom, something swung down from the door frame and hit her squarely in the face, causing her to cry out.