He retraced his steps: down to the landing, down one flight to the closed door; and he stood in the stale cold air of the hall, taking shallow breaths.
My son is there, he thought. He had touched the doorknob. He was saddened by the chipped paint and the scars, the chill of the porcelain knob. His sadness turned to shame, and it was physical, an infirmity: his arm went dead, his fingers wouldn’t work. His soul rebelled, restraining him with a tug of timid dignity. It was wrong; the place was private. The front door was unlocked: the house had to be empty. It was anyone’s, but not his. For the first time in years he thought of his father and mother in a chastening way, as if when he went home they would stop him and ask him where he had been, what he had done. He had his reply. He withdrew his hand and straightened himself, and as he descended the stairs — softly, to make no noise — he thought: But my son is dead.
She heard his slow descent on the stairs. The front door banged shut, and she shuddered, the nervousness overtaking her now when she was out of danger. It had not been Hood; it was a cautious tread, someone checking the house, a curious neighbour, the gas-man, a meter-reader, a stranger. The keyhole on the bathroom door was sealed, and she had not had the courage to risk a peek. She had shot the bolt and stayed there, where she’d hidden when he entered the house. She cursed herself for not locking the front door, and starting down the stairs she reproached herself for wanting to go and lock it now. The absurdity of it. It was too late; whoever it was had come and gone, and she was safe again.
She climbed back to the landing, where she had been stopped when the front door opened, and she went up the second flight to the top floor. The front bedroom looked no emptier than it ever had. She scanned it for differences, for any change. This was the way it had always been. But the family was ended, he would never return: so emptiness was this knowledge that no particle remained, and only she could know how hollow it really was.
She looked for more, because the day before she remembered how firmly he had said, Don’t come back here. She had half-expected to find him propped on one of those Indian cushions, studying the painting he had begun to covet. She was dispirited; she had nerved herself for a scene and was glad when the bell rang and the door opened; but that gentle step going up and down the stairs was not his.
Dust flew as she rifled the closets. She found the newspapers she had put on the shelves. She wrenched the dented mattress aside. Fur-balls, a button, hairpins, a foreign coin: they aggravated her distress. And as she went through the room, searching for her painting, she could not recall anything of the lovely thing but its thick coat of yellow varnish, its coarsely woven backing, the configuration of cracks that lay over a face she could no longer see. That had always been the way: each time she saw it, it was new to her and she marvelled as if it was just made before her eyes, existing only when she looked at it. Out of sight it was a blank in her mind, and as she searched she prepared herself for the fresh shock of being amazed by the face again. She was certain it was in the house. Don’t come back here: that was proof.
But she had stopped searching. She had opened a low drawer and, on her knees, was reading the old newspaper that lined it. She was calmed, and she remained in this position for a long time, reading effortlessly a large plain story on a browning front page. Old news. It held her, fixed her, as no book ever had.
Downstairs a door opened. She registered the sound, but it vanished without meaning into her depthless mood, and she was so absorbed in the newspaper she did not start until she heard voices: ‘Nothing’ and ‘Better make sure.’ She stood and staggered as if she had been hit, dizzy from her kneeling. She went to the door and listened. They were on the ground floor. She crept along the wall to the landing and made for the place where she had been safe before, the bathroom halfway down the stairs. But she heard them climbing.
‘There’s no one home.’
‘I’ll look up here.’
‘Check all the rooms.’
‘I’ll kill that bastard.’
The voices were loud, careless, shouting back and forth. Not Hood. Obscure rowdy men. Their accents alarmed her; she was afraid, just hearing their brutish mispronunciations. They moved quickly through the house. She padded down the hall, her eyes aching, looking for a place to hide: not a room, a closet — or out the window?
‘Smells like’ — the voice ran ahead of the feet tramping the uncarpeted steps — ‘like someone died here.’
And noises, kickings, downstairs.
‘I don’t see nothing.’
Nuffink: she quailed. She was at a back window. It was painted shut; she struggled to free it from the casement, and as she did — not knowing what lay below here, not caring that it was thirty feet down to a paved alleyway behind the house — she was linking the visit of the first man to this one and seeing how it fit. He had been making sure the house was empty, preparing for the others, and when he left, when she had felt safest, she was in the most danger. Her thoughts moved as clumsily as carpentry. She could not open the window. She had told Murf to paint it, and he had done it like he did everything, with stupid sloppy care. She fought with it, and even as she heard the man in the hall she was blaming Murf and hating the thought of his pinched face, his ugly ears.
‘Well, well, well. I don’t believe it.’
The man, tall, with a killer’s face and strings of hair to his shoulders, stood in the doorway.
‘I’m leaving,’ she said, and still tried to work the window open.
‘Don’t move.’ He was pale, his skin like a sausage casing. He leaned backwards and yelled, ‘Rutter!’
‘You find something?’ It was the man on the ground floor calling into the stairwell.
‘A bird!’
‘What?’
She said, ‘I don’t know what you’re looking for. The house is empty.’
‘Really.’
He was mocking her. She said, ‘I used to live here. There’s no one here now.’
‘Except you.’
‘I thought I left something behind. I —’
‘Who are you?’ It was the second man, shorter, darker, in an overcoat and a small neat hat. He shook out a pair of glasses and used them to look at her. They softened his appearance: she almost trusted him for those glasses.
‘She thinks she left something behind.’
Finks, somefink. The chewed words scared her.
‘Says she used to live here.’
She appealed to the smaller man, whom she could see was in charge: ‘This is my own house. You won’t find anything.’
‘Up against the wall, chicky.’
‘I have a right to know who you are. If you’re policemen you have to tell me.’
‘That’s right, chicky. Flying-squad.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You heard what he said.’ The taller man stepped towards her. ‘Get over. Palms against the wall, legs apart.’
‘I don’t care what you’re doing here,’ she said, and tried to sound friendly. ‘Just let me go. No one will know.’
‘What’s your name?’
She hesitated. She said, ‘Sandra.’ And it was as if, admitting it she became that person, one she hated. She said, ‘Don’t touch me, please.’
‘We’re not going to hurt you.’
She turned and saw that the smaller one had taken out a pistol.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Please —’
‘Don’t worry,’ said the man. ‘This ain’t for you. This is for him.’ He jerked the pistol at the other man. ‘I don’t trust him with birds, see. I’ll make a hole in him if he starts anything.’
‘I wouldn’t mind and all,’ said the taller man. ‘Let’s do her and get out of here. The place is empty.’