House of Small Shadows

THIRTY-ONE

There would be no lunch or wine. Not even a sip of water. The village was deserted. Under closer inspection Magbar Wood was not much more than two streets with tired, perhaps empty, terraced houses slouched on either side of the narrow footpaths.

She’d driven through the main street at least four times, but never taken much notice of the place in her car. The solitary cul-de-sac that led to a small church had not even registered with her before today. Fixated on not getting lost while being aware of the expanse of rare meadowland, or watching her phone screen for a signal, was all she’d had the mental capacity for when driving through.

Now, not a single sound issued from the buildings as she walked its length. Beyond the main street, at either end, were more uncultivated fields and meadows, defined by hedgerows and broken by distant hills tufted with copses of black trees. She imagined she was trapped inside a painting of a dead grey town in an idyllic landscape.

Enough.

She turned around and walked back between the flat-fronted tenement cottages made from a muddy-red brick. The slate roofs were weathered, the gutterings comprised of iron and rust. All of the street-facing windows were dark and begrimed with an accumulation of dust. Either that or the shadowing sky thinned the light and overcast the colours.

The first shopfront she looked at had once been a clothes shop. Yellow cellophane was still taped inside the window panes to protect the displays of ‘High Street Fashion for Men, Women, Boys and Girls’. The plastic made the shopfront look like the lenses of cheap sunglasses sold to children on holiday. She pressed her hand and face to the glass, but stepped away quickly. Beyond the crinkled protective screen stood a row of dressed figures.

She waited for them to move. Then sighed with relief and felt foolish. Mannequins. She returned to the window and peered inside. Old mannequins with nylon toupees and painted plastic faces. The man wore what looked like khaki shorts and a khaki shirt, matching socks were pulled up to his knees. The female figure was naked. It was too dim inside to see what the boy and girl wore, and they had tilted or been leant against empty shelves inside the door. Their arrangement suggested the children were holding hands. Behind the dummies, the shop floor was concealed in darkness.

Further along the main lane she found a second store. A small convenience store, also closed. It didn’t look to have been open or restocked for years. Fake plastic grass lined white trays in the window display. The trays had once stored meat. Half-a-dozen bluebottle flies crawling inside the foot of the window explored old habits.

A faded decal on the main window promised FRESH BREAD EVERY DAY. There were stickers for local newspapers she’d never heard of, stuck to the inside of the door, as well as a sun-bleached Walls ice-cream poster she remembered as a child: a boy and girl sat back to back against a vanilla background. The room beyond the window was unlit, but she could see a carousel of postcards, a fridge cabinet and one wall lined with tinned goods.

As she turned away, she stopped, and crouched down. Behind the lower half of the front door, as if peering through the stickers, was the solitary effigy of a small boy wearing shorts. Callipers were attached to each of his plastic legs. He held a money box with a slot in the top. The weather he was now protected against had worn most of his face away, as well as the name of the charity for whom he once collected. Beside one foot in a large brown boot, a rain-smoothed spaniel pup beseeched with too large eyes.

She’d not seen one of these effigies since childhood. After not thinking of these little figures for years, she’d been made to consider them twice in as many weeks. The coincidence made her sad, but uneasy.

The existence of the plastic charity boy and the derelict shops suggested there had been no life in the village since the early eighties, if not longer, which could not be right at all. The distant sound of a car would have provided immediate reassurance, which made her realize she was desperate for any sign of life.

Outside one of the cottages, she leant over and looked through the solitary casement window set beside a grubby front door. The net curtains were yellowing like icing on an old Christmas cake. A tear in the nets above the window sill allowed her to press her nose against the glass and squint into the gloom.

The room resembled a vintage photograph taken in poor light. There was evidence of the space being cramped with heavy furniture. The walls were bare, the ceiling light without a shade. When she failed to detect a door in the plain walls she suffered an irrational fear that a person could become trapped inside the room. The feeling was even worse than the unwelcome idea that the room was not, as she had suspected, unoccupied. And that whoever was hidden in there amongst the clutter was now staring back at her.

Catherine continued along the sloping footpath, the curb steep as if the village was accustomed to heavy rains and gouts of floodwater. A flicker of motion drew her eyes across the road.

She thought, but wasn’t sure, that a yellowy net curtain had just moved behind a ground-floor window.

She then looked up quickly, directly above herself, and had to clutch at the wall to keep her balance. She may have been mistaken again, but from the corner of her eye she was sure she’d seen the dark outline of a head rear backwards, away from the window into what must have been the darkness of a bedroom.

Afraid she had misjudged the village, and had been nosing through the windows of occupied buildings, she briskly turned the corner and entered the cul-de-sac.

And now it was as if her very presence had disturbed the place into some semblance of furtive activity. Because she was certain she had just seen another face, this time a pale smudge withdrawing from a downstairs window of the house no more than a few feet before her. She didn’t suffer the impression the face had been watching her, but that the person inside the house had been waiting for her approach. Which felt worse than being watched.

Cocking her head to one side, she made the pretence of rummaging inside her handbag outside of the building in which she had seen movement, number 3, while sneaking glances at the window. There were no nets here. The houses in the cul-de-sac were even shabbier and more neglected than those on the main lane.

And yes, there was someone inside a front room that opened onto the street. A figure, close to the window, but with their back turned away from the street. A small woman, she thought, wearing something long, maybe a dark dress. Their posture implied a wall was being studied, or perhaps the woman simply stared into the murky fireplace that Catherine could barely make out.

The pale head was thickly haired, but looked tatty. It was hard to see much more, and if she lingered any longer her scrutiny would become intrusive. But what did stand out in the light entering the dirty window, was the hand upon the back of a chair placed against the window sill. The hand was so pale the person must have been wearing gloves. Catherine moved on, quickly.

Before she reached the street, concluding at the church grounds, she found one other storefront and crossed the road to look inside it.

The store was empty. There was no security shutter or grille across the broad window front. What the shop once sold eluded her. The wooden awning had been painted over with a thick brown emulsion the colour of creosote. Bizarrely, the sign on the door indicated OPEN. But the lights were off and nothing was for sale. In one corner of a broad wooden tray inside the window, a large moth fluttered its last. Against one wall she could see an ancient sewing machine and some bolts of cloth.

Deeper inside the empty shop was a counter, an open serving hatch, and a broad pane of clear glass fitted behind the counter, as if to invite customers to see a hive of reassuring activity behind it. Now, there were only shadows and indistinct items of office furniture back there. But as she turned away from the dirty window, movement became apparent.

The motion was beyond the second pane of glass, and continued while she squinted into the murk. Someone was standing up, but incredibly slowly. They were not fully upright, or could not get upright. And the vague silhouette, deep within the dusty gloom of the shop’s interior, remained hunched over, the head bowed and crowned with unhealthily thin hair. But what were they doing? Staring at the floor, or at her?

The nape of her neck prickled as if she stood in a draught. She peered around herself in the street, took in as many of the other windows as she could, looking for faces.

Nothing. Just more of the sombre house fronts with old net curtains, most without.

She looked back into the empty store. Whoever she had disturbed was no longer visible, but her reluctance to see them again hurried her up to the church.

A small Anglo-Saxon building, and the place where Mason had once preached, proved to be another disappointment. It was no bigger than a cottage and had water-stained wooden boards in place of stained-glass windows. The cemetery and grounds were waist-deep with weeds and grass. The main doors were padlocked and the noticeboard in the porch was empty. Like the town, the church’s congregation had faded away. She wondered if the village lost its faith when M. H. Mason did.

Beside the church, occupying the last plot of land before the low stone wall of the cemetery, stood the only other evidence that communal gatherings had ever occurred in Magbar Wood. A long wooden bungalow with a rust-red roof, the doors padlocked with chains. Flaking signage above the double doors read: SE SC UTS.

Inside the cabinet mounted on a post before the little gate, a yellowing piece of paper hung to a corroded pin behind a pane of grubby glass. It advertised events within the building, but gave no dates, or even any indication of what year they had occurred. It looked like a programme of performances. There were no explanatory details, or footnotes.

THE BLIND BEGGARS OF BETHNAL GREEN

THE CHILDREN OF THE WOOD

FAUSTUS

THE BIRTH OF HARLEQUIN

THE BOTTLE IMP

When the first cold drop of rain struck her forehead Catherine began her journey back to the Red House. But never made it past number 3 in the cul-de-sac. She saw the house’s front door open at the same time she heard a voice come out of it. An old voice, reduced by its years, but still thick with the local dialect said, ‘You sin ’er? Eh? Eh? ’Scuse me. Scuse-meeeee. You sin ’er?’

Catherine stopped walking, though she wanted to carry on because the voice didn’t promise the kind of interaction she wanted, or even craved by this time. For a moment, still flustered and coming down from the brief fright the voice had caused, she was sure the person was asking her if she was a ‘sinner’. Then realized the speaker, whom she could not see, was asking if she’d seen someone. This ‘er’ being referred to was a her.

She approached the door, now ajar but ready to close. ‘Sorry? Were you talking to me?’

‘Yous’ll wake them up, you go knockin’ them up. It’s too early.’

‘Pardon?’

Through the lightless gap between the door and its frame, she heard a muffled retreat, followed by scrapes on the inside of the wooden door, as if the figure had pulled itself behind the door to hide in fear of her. Though the little squeal she heard also made her suspect the unseen person was excited, which was worse than them being afraid.

She didn’t get too close. ‘Are… do you need help?’ she was going to say ‘ma’am’, but wasn’t certain of the speaker’s gender. It must be the elderly person wearing the white gloves she had seen through the living-room window. A woman then?

An odour of damp, musty fabric drifted from the building and across the narrow footpath. The house was wet inside and virtually lightless. How could anyone see in there?

‘You been up the house? You seen her, who went up the house?’

‘Who? Sorry, I’m not sure what you’re asking me.’

‘Fings must turn a bit more, you fink? Not time yet for our lady.’

In the same spirit of her tour of the dismal village, communication with the only inhabitant she’d found was futile. But there was a surety and earnestness in the voice that made her linger. Catherine sensed this person believed that she was entirely aware of a set of facts upon which the speaker wanted a conversation to be based. Only she wasn’t aware of these facts, but to walk away would be rude. ‘Sorry. I don’t understand. I don’t think I can help.’

‘Here, here. Yous’ll want this. Run down that shop and get us half a pound of it.’ A thin arm came around the edge of the door. Some way above the limb, what looked like artificial greyish hair indicated the position of the mostly hidden head. But the person must have been small as the tuft of hair was no higher than her own shoulders and the threshold of the house was raised one step off street level.

Catherine recoiled from the arm, tightly clad in dusty black cloth that ended in a small and bloodless hand. There was no glove. The skin was papery and almost transparent, the nails yellow and uncut. The woman must have been elderly, perhaps mentally ill, terribly neglected, and had mistaken her for some fragment from her failing memory. If offering money had been the aim, the proffered fingers were empty.

‘The shop is closed. I thought the village was empty.’

‘Half a pound, and some of them biscuits he does.’

She wondered if there were neighbours or relatives she could call for the woman. ‘Sorry. I said it’s closed. The shop. Everything. Here. It’s all closed. Can I help you? Get someone?’

‘Ain’t seen her since she went up that house, is all. Going all black over them roofs now, dunnit eh? Still some turning to go. Turning, arr, afore the sliding in and the sliding out.’

Catherine walked away without another word.

The door never closed on the disappointed silence that seemed to swell behind her. In the empty store across the road, she was half aware of someone waving to her from deep inside the building behind the dirty glass. The arm appeared too thin, but that effect must have been caused by the angle at which she moved to ignore the motion, combined with the dim light.

She kept on walking, but more quickly now.