The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories

STREET OF THE BLIND DONKEY By Rosemary Timperley

I cannot believe that I am really here, that I really had the courage to do it — to pack a bag and board a train, and then a boat, and another train, and then a taxi, and to say, quite calmly, in broken French: 'Please can you recommend an hotel where I can stay? Not too expensive.' 'Certainly, Madame. I take you to a nice hotel.' And so here I am, in 'nice hotel'.

It is still only ten at night, less than twelve hours since I left that house. That is how I shall always think of it now — not as 'home' or 'my house' but 'that house' — that house where I was more unhappy than I had thought it possible to be — where unhappiness was so intense that it seemed like a sickness, made me feel physically ill, so that I felt well only when away from that house. Now I am away from it for ever. He will not find me here. The thought of never having to see him again is like a deep breath of clear air, a long draught of fresh water, a sensation of wind in my hair.

Yet this is an odd room in which to find freedom. It's rather old-fashioned, almost musty. It's meant for two people, so the bed is double and the wardrobe enormous. On the plain walls are a few bad pictures representing country scenes. An advertising calendar hangs over the table, also picturing country scenes, and beneath them are scraps of verse, French on one side and Flemish on the other. For this is Belgium.

Why did I come to Belgium in my headlong flight? Because a child waits for me here, a child who was myself long, long ago, when I came here on my first Continental holiday with my parents. It was before the war, before the Nazis, before the abscess of evil formed over the countries of Europe, that we came here, to Bruges. And I was happy. Afterwards, in my mind, I retained the picture of canals like green mirrors, swans like fairy-tale swans, all of them surely princes or princesses in magic disguise, and black-robed nuns with snow-white faces in sunshine. I have a memory too of a marble Madonna in one of the churches, strikingly beautiful with her long, straight nose and the reserved, almost sulky expression of a woman who has protested a truth and not been believed.

What am I going to do now that I am free? I begin to realise that when you have built your life for years on hope of escape, and have achieved it, a desert opens out, a desert without signposts. Right up to the moment of my arrival, I thought how clever I was being to escape from him, how cunning the way I'd worked out the obtaining of my passport without his knowing, the packing of my things, the waiting until he was sleeping at the far end of the garden, the ringing for the taxi — and then the journey. The arrival had been the end of the story, the purpose fulfilled — 'and so she escaped and was free for ever after.' But what to do now in the ever after?

A knock on the door. Suppose he is there! Suppose he followed me!

He looms in the doorway, a heavy shadow of pursuit and capture — the broad shoulders — the heavy jowl — the hard, shining eyes — but why a white coat?

It is not he at all. The swift illusion passes. It is the hotel proprietor, white-coated, carrying a tray of coffee, bread, butter and cheese. I arrived too late for dinner, so he brings this light meal to my room. How pleasant to have a meal brought to me. If I were still at that house I would just have finished washing up the dinner things by now.

'Goodnight, Madame. Sleep well.'

The proprietor goes. Alone again. Always alone now. But then it's years since I had any friends. He saw to that. He had a most efficient way of dealing with any friends from my premarriage life: the men he regarded with such suspicion and jealousy that in time they avoided us both, and the women he made passes at, so that they either stayed away out of loyalty to me, or had affairs with him, so naturally didn't want to see me. Why did I marry him? Love, of course. Amazing that love takes such a long time to kill. But it's dead now, for ever and ever. I will build my life on loneliness now. I will learn to be self-sufficient. I will be the happy child again. I have come back.

And now I will eat my bread and cheese — my first bread of freedom.

The bells wake me next morning. The Belfry is just across the Market Square. I open my big window and step out on to the little balcony. I can see the Belfry on my right. It looks too slenderly tall for safety in the morning light. It plays a tune and then strikes eight — yet it's only half past seven. A memory returns: that the Belfry clock strikes the hour quietly half an hour before the hour, then, on the hour, it strikes again, loudly. So I have lived a lifetime but the habits of the old clock have not changed.

Already the Market Square is busy. Stalls are being put up in the centre and goods laid out. Everywhere is movement and colour. This sort of scene gives one a sense of proportion, makes one realise how insignificant are one's own tiny actions. Yesterday I was the brave adventurer. Now I am no more than a tiny alien shadow moving across the Belgian day. Lovely to be so irresponsible. This is true freedom. I wonder how soon it turns into loneliness.

In the hotel dining-room I breakfast alone. It is out of season so I am the only guest. Tn May, not many people,' the proprietor explains, 'except at weekends, then many people, much hard work.'

'But it's the weekend now.' For it is Saturday.

'Later this morning, big tourist party of children,' he says. 'Depart on Monday, then you alone again, Madame,' And he leave me alone now to get on with my roll, butter, strawberry jam, and some of the best coffee I have ever tasted.

This dining-room is impressive. It makes me feel small. There is an atmosphere of mingled grandeur and decay — heavy red curtains, elaborately arranged greenery on the ornate mantelpiece and round the gilt-framed mirror, chandeliers hanging heavily from inadequate-looking supports. Either this place has known better days, or it gears itself grandly for the summer season.

He wouldn't think to look for me here, would he? Did I ever mention Bruges to him? Perhaps I did, long ago, in the early days of love before the nights murdered love. Did I ever tell him that if ever I were in despair and needed a refuge, this is where I would come? No, I never told him that. This has been my secret place always.

Strange to be living in the secret place, the last resort.

After the last resort, what?

The Green Quay. I remember it. You walk along the Street of the Blind Donkey, cross the bridge, turn to your left — and you're there. This was the very first walk I took when I came here as a child. I left my parents unpacking at the hotel and came out by myself. I decided to follow the canal, so that I wouldn't get lost. And I started from here, at the Green Quay. The water is green because of the reflection of overhanging trees. It is dappled with silver and the pattern changes constantly —

'Delia!'

Someone is calling my name. But it's impossible. No one knows I'm here. Is it he? — did he follow me? — then where is he? — the green water — the empty sky — Oh, God —

'Delia! Delia!'

The cry seems to be coming from the water. There are several boats full of schoolchildren on the canal. A man stands up in one of the boats and waves. I am too shortsighted to see who it is. But it can't be he — of course it can't be — he hates children — he wouldn't let me have children —

I run back along the Street of the Blind Donkey, back to the hotel. For the rest of the day, I stay out of sight.

That evening, as I sit alone at my table in the dining-room about fifty schoolchildren troop in and take their places. Four adults are with them, two men and two women. One of the men crosses to me. 'Delia! Itis you. I saw you this morning, on the Green Quay.'

It's Rupert Harman, a schoolmaster who lives not far from that house. We grew quite friendly when first I went to live there, then I had to avoid him.

'Hello, Rupert. So it was you. I heard you call my name.'

'I didn't call. I waved,' he says.

'But I heard you.'

He smiles. 'You must have been dreaming. Where's Garder?'

'He's not here. I'm alone.'

'Alone? You astonish me. Garder must be slipping,'

'I've left him. When you go back, please, please don't tell him that you saw me here. Don't tell anyone.'

'Look, Delia, I've got to see to the kids for the next hour or so, but I hope to get them bedded down by ten. Let's meet then for a drink and a coffee. We could go to one of the cafes in the Square.'

He returns to the school party. The children cast sly glances in my direction. My hands are shaking. Of all the appalling luck! You come to your secret place and the man from next door but three turns up.

Shall I be able to trust him? Will he keep quiet?

Rupert and I sit and drink wine at a small table just inside one of the Market Square cafes. It is too cold to sit outside.

'What's been happening to you?' he asks.

'I left Garder yesterday. I couldn't stand it any longer.'

'You were right to leave,' Rupert says decisively. He is on my side. But then he won't have forgotten the way Garder spoke to him several years ago, when he came up to Rupert and me as we walked along the street, having met when we both got off the same bus at the corner. Garder said: 'I'll thank you to leave my wife alone in future. I know your sort. And Delia's the sort of bitch who makes eyes at every man she meets.' Rupert had been too astonished to speak. Garder had hustled me back to that house.

Now Rupert asks: 'Why did you choose Bruges?' 'Because I was a happy child here.'

'And how shall you live?'

'By writing.'

'You were a writer before your marriage, weren't you?'

'Yes.'

'Why did you give it up?'

'Garder was jealous of it. If ever he found me writing, he'd fly into a rage, as if he'd found me in the arms of another man. But I can start again now that I'm free. Oh —'

A man comes toward the cafe. He pauses in the doorway. Only his silhouette can be seen, short, stocky, with powerful shoulders. His face is in shadow.

'Delia, what's the matter?'

All I can do is stare at the man. He enters now and sits at a table. And it isn't Garder at all.

'What's the matter?' Rupert repeats.

'Nothing. I thought that man was Garder. It isn't.'

'You mustn't let him haunt you.'

'No, I mustn't.'

But as we walk back across the Square to the hotel, a broad-shouldered man passes us and, for a second, I think it is Garder. I say so to Rupert, who exclaims: 'That man? But he isn't even like Garder! You must come back to earth, Delia.'

I am afraid.

The following day, Sunday, is the tourists' day in Bruges. They arrive in huge coaches which crov/d the cobbled streets. They cram into the cafes and eat ice-creams. They buy dolls dressed in Bruges lace. They go for rides in the horse-drawn broughams.

They are mostly Belgian, from the surrounding towns and villages, but there are also French, English, Italian, American and Japanese visitors. The Market Square, its market section now turned into a huge car park, becomes a nightmare of traffic. Yet many people sit happily at the tables outside the cafes, breathe in the dust and petrol fumes and watch the traffic go by. Presumably the residents, unless they are cashing in on the tourists, go into hiding. And the Belfry

bells continue to play their little tunes every quarter just as if the world far below had not gone crazy.

I decide to join those superior bells by climbing the Belfry tower. It is over four hundred steps up and most of the tourists are obviously far too fat to attempt the climb, so I am solitary as I branch off from the crowds in the Square, buy a ticket for the tower and begin to climb.

At first the steps of the spiral staircase are wide and there is a bannister to hold on to. Then, as one climbs higher, they become narrower and the only hand-support is a thick, greasy rope wound round the central pillar. The atmosphere is dank. The air is rather dark. When one looks ahead one sees only the next few spiral stairs, and behind only the few stairs just trodden. The effect is claustrophobic. My heart begins to beat suffocatingly fast. I wish I hadn't come. I feel trapped. Yet I've climbed so far now that it would be worse to go back than go on. I am dreading the journey down. Going up is easier.

Suppose I met someone coming down. One of us would have to go back up or down. At intervals there are small landings where one person could squeeze past another, but this would not be possible on the stairs. Suppose I met Garder on these stairs! The thought fills me with such terror that momentarily I can't go on. I lean against the stone wall and try to breathe normally. Now why on earth should Garder be on the Belfry stairs at Bruges?

Because he is everywhere, that's why.

At last I reach the top. Bruges stretches out below, an elaborate carpet of red roofs, green trees, silver canals. The people are so tiny that one feels arrogant as airmen or gods who are forever looking down. In my quest for a sense of proportion I could not have come to a better place than this. The wind is clear and cool.The sun shines. Life is worth living and just to be alive is enough. Who cares about success and failure, hope and disillusionment, love and hate? These are human inventions to while away the emotional living-time. All that really matters is to breathe deeply the cool, clear air, to feel the sun on bare arms, to feast the eyes on a beautiful scene.

Only the living may have these pleasures, and so there is no such thing as a fate worse than death. That is why those who truly hate, kill. For to take away a person's life is the only way you can really reach and hurt him. The only way. Any other sort of revenge is trivial by comparison. The only way Garder could really get his own back on me would be by killing me, and that he cannot do. So I have nothing to fear from him.

But if he knew where I was he would be aiming to kill me now. If Garder were up here with me now, he would put his arm round my shoulders, then give me a hard push over the parapet. Down and down I'd fall, crashing at last among the parked cars below. If I stand here long enough, and look down long enough, I can almost believe that Garder is standing just behind me — that his arm is across my shoulders — that he is pushing me — harder — harder —

A huge booming noise, like the crack of doom, makes the Belfry shudder and sends me staggering back from the parapet. The big bell is chiming the hour.

I think it saved my life.

Down the stairs again, down and down, round and round, dizzy with going down and round, feet-muscles hurting with the unaccustomed nature of the movement, down and down and down — and at last the big grey entrance hall, cool and empty but for the souvenir shop and ticket window. I step out into the open air again, among the people. But the open air has changed since I began to come down. The sky has filled with clouds. The air has grown strangely still. This stillness seems to quell traffic noises and people's voices.

I make my way down the Street of the Blind Donkey again, but instead of turning left to the Green Quay, turn right, along the Dijver, cut through the cobbled streets, past the Beguin-age, and so to the Lac d'Amour, which I remember from my childhood as a place of perfect beauty and peace.

Stillness hangs like an invisible cloud over the Lac d'Amour. The quietness is tangible-seeming. The air is difficult to breathe. Limbs feel heavy. Nerves are tense. I sit on a bench under the trees and wait for something to happen. I feel half-strangled.

Everything grows darker. The many mingled greens about me grow a shade denser, richer, and the water of the lake turns grey-brown. Darker still and darker. No one else is about. This is the end of the world and I am the only person left on it, the last and only witness. Wind shifts the leaves on the trees, just a little. Stillness again. And then, suddenly, sheet lightning fills the sky. Everything is white lit. As a child I was told that lightning is the glance of God, and He never stops to do more than glance because his gaze would burn us right up. Now the light goes out. Thunder cracks. Rain falls, heavily, rushingly, and so closely that to my short-sighted eyes, which cannot see the separate drops, it looks like mist.

It is through this rain-mist that he comes. He comes closer and closer. I am too frightened to run away. I simply cover my face with my hands so that I shall not see what happens. And after I have sat there for a long time in deliberate dark, I take my hands from my eyes, and find that the storm is over, the sun is shining again, and there is no sign of Garder anywhere.

So this time he let me off. But now I know for certain that he is here.

That evening, at the same cafe in the square, Rupert says: 'Where were you during the storm this afternoon?'

'By the Lac d'Amour. I saw Garder.'

'You mean he's followed you? What did he say?'

'Nothing. He went away again.'

'That doesn't sound like Garder.'

'It was Garder.'

'You must have dreamed it, Delia.'

'No.'

'When you say he went away again — what exactly happened?'

'I didn't see. I hid my eyes.'

'Delia, I don't think you're well.'

'You think I'm round the bend? I'm not. When I was living with Garder, I was afraid of going mad, but as soon as I escaped from him that desperate feeling evaporated. I felt calm and clear-minded. He was driving me out of my mind, but I got away in time.'

A girl comes into the cafe and sits at a table behind Rupert. She is about thirteen, slender and big-eyed, wearing a white blouse and dark skirt. She stays very still and does not order anything to eat or drink. I feel as if I have seen her before and presume she is one of Rupert's party.

'Do you let your charges come out alone at night, Rupert?'

'Not after ten. They're supposed to go to bed then, although in fact they stay chattering in each other's rooms till all hours.'

'What about the girl there?'

He looks round, but the table is empty now.

'Maybe she recognised the back of my head and fled,' he says. 'What was she like?'

'Thin, dark, big black eyes.'

'You must pick her out for me at breakfast tomorrow/

'I shall do no such thing.'

But next morning at breakfast I do look among the schoolchildren for the girl I saw in the cafe, but cannot find her.

Rupert comes to my table. 'Well, which is the culprit?'

'She's not there.'

He laughs. 'Whose side are you on?'

'The children's, always.'

'Come back with us all instead of staying here, Delia.*

'I can't.'

'My wife and I would help you. We'd protect you from Garder if necessary.'

'No one can protect me from Garder.'

'But the hotel will be empty when we've gone.'

'It was like that before your party came.'

'All those echoing corridors and empty rooms,' he says, then returns to his party. A few minutes later he is involved in the turmoil of departure and a coach bears them all the way to Ostend, from where they will go home by water.

Home. Where is home?

In the afternoon, I see the girl again. So she wasn't one of

Rupert's party after all. She is sitting on the parapet of the Green Quay. She is obviously so happy within herself, so caught up by the magic of the place, that I can't bear to break the spell by saying anything trivial to make her acquaintance. So I pass by, over the difficult cobblestones, and sit on the parapet much farther along.

Later I go to the Beguinage, where the houses of the Benedictine nuns surround an area of grass and trees. Once a man called Beguine started a religious order here. Nuns have prayed here for seven centuries and something of their serenity has seeped into the atmosphere.

A high wall encloses this little town within a town. The only entrance is through an arched doorway at the foot of a bridge across one of the canals.

Once through the gate, one seems to feel the quietness falling through the air. No sound comes from the houses. One would think they were unoccupied. And such silence is curiously anti-life — no child cries, no dog barks, no voice is raised in impatience, and there is no laughter. Distantly I see one black-robed, white-coiffed figure walking along a path. She goes into the church. And she might have been any nun in any century. This place breathes timelessness. It is a place where paths of time surely cross.

Suddenly I see the girl again. She is sitting on the grass, leaning against the trunk of a tree, her legs stretched out in front of her. As I pass her, I smile and say: 'Hello.'

'Hello.'

'I've seen you several times before.'

'Have you?'

'At first I thought you were with the school party at my hotel.'

'No, I'm here with my parents. They let me come out alone if I want to.'

'Do you like this place?'

'Yes. I'll come back one day.'

'How do you know?'

'I'm sure of it.' She adds: 'I wouldn't mind being a nun.'

' "Wouldn't mind" isn't enough. You must have a vocation.'

'That means you have to feel called, doesn't it? Well, I do feel sort of called to this place. I shall come back. Maybe not to be a nun. Maybe just for a refuge.'

And I feel as if I have had this conversation before.

A voice calls: 'Madame — Madame —' A woman is standing outside one of the houses and beckons me. Thinking she is in distress, I hurry across, to find only that the house is open to visitors and she wants to show me round. Deciding to take the young girl with me, and pay the small fee for both of us, I turn to where she was sitting. But she isn't there any more. I must have frightened her away. And I recall now that I myself was scared away from this place years ago when a middle-aged woman began to make conversation with me, and I felt there was something odd about her, so fled the moment her back was turned. I remember she was wearing a black dress and had dark hair with a white streak in it. She was very thin and her eyes were strange. I had sensed that she was slightly mad, yet had felt an affinity with her…

'This way, Madame.' The woman urges me into the beguine's house. I wander through the kitchen with its big range, then out into a cloister, a beautiful little enclosure with a well in the middle of the richly green lawn, and a covered corridor leading to the bedroom. I try to walk into the bedroom where once a nun slept, but Garder stands in the doorway and prevents me. At least, I think it is Garder, before I have had time to pull myself together and know that it can't be. Then I realise it is only a strange shadow cast by a pillar supporting the roof of the covered way. All the same, I don't go into the bedroom. I just stand in the doorway and look. Then I turn so icily cold in that doorway that I hurry back to the kitchen, the front door, the trees and grass outside.

I am cold with sweat and shaking with nameless terror.

There is a small bar near the Chapel of the Holy Blood. Bright window-boxes beckon. The inside seems dark because of the brightness in the street. To fill in time before dinner, I go in for a glass of wine. There are few customers and what with the dimness and my bad sight, they are no more than shapes to me. I sit in the window seat and look over the window-box flowers at the people passing by.

Then something makes me turn my head. Accustomed to the poor light now, I see the customers' shapes more clearly. One of them, sitting only three tables away from me looks like Garder — the broad shoulders, the square jaw, the dome of a brow. He is staring at me. I leave my wine unfinished and hurry out.

Yet it is foolish to run away from him. Now that he knows I am here, he can in fact walk up to me and claim me any time. Why doesn't he? Why this cat-and-mouse game? Is he trying to break me down so that I will one day walk up to him and say: 'You win. Take me back to that house.'

But I will never do that. He can go on following me until I die of exhaustion, but I will not go back.

Is he following me now? I'm not sure. There are so many people in the Market Square at this time of evening, and the slanting rays of the sun make the pavements a bewilderment of long shadows.

Back at the hotel, I collect my key from the rack which is full of the keys of unoccupied rooms and go upstairs. I remember what Rupert said about echoing corridors and empty rooms. My room is right at the end of an echoing corridor.

If Garder came, no one would hear me cry out.

So far I have managed to quell overpowering fear. But now it comes down upon me, like a kidnapper's cloak flung over my head, blinding my eyes, stealing my voice, catching my breath. I sit on the edge of my bed, paralysed with this fear. I know that my flight is a mockery, that I have been living in a dream, trying to make the dream so vivid that it would be more real than reality.

Outside, the Belfry bells play gay little tunes before the big bell booms seven times. Dinner time.

Suppose, when I go down to dinner, to that big dining-room with the red velvet curtains and hothouse greenery and dazzling chandeliers, Garder sits waiting at my table….

Yes. He is there. He rises as I come.

'Ah, Madame —' And it's not Garder at all. It's the proprietor, resting his feet. He and his family have worked day and night since Saturday afternoon. Now they have the weekdays to get over it before the next onslaught of tourists next weekend. Where shall I be next weekend?

I hurry through dinner to set the proprietor free for the evening, then return to my room. It is very quiet. I sit on the bed and stare in front of me. Time passes. The room darkens. I cross to the window and look down at the Square, deserted now and cold. Then I see the girl walking, slowly, by herself. A shadow moves alongside one of the buildings, approaches her, walks beside her. Then everything happens so quickly that I have no time to cry out. The shadow turns into a man — a man with familiar broad shoulders, thick neck, heavy jowl. He seizes the girl, flings her to the ground, pinions her arms, holds her down. He rapes her, with fantastic speed and precision. Then he puts his hands round her little neck and strangles her. And then I scream — and scream — and scream —

The proprietor comes while I am still screaming from my agonised throat —

'Madame, what has happened?'

'A murder — down there — look —'

He looks out of the window. The Square is quiet and empty.

'Madame was dreaming, I think,' he says, and goes away.

And all I can do is lie on the bed and shake and weep. For now I know who the girl was, or is. I know that there is no hope of returning to the world of childhood, even in the beautiful city of Bruges. For the child is dead. Garder killed her. I cannot bring her back to life again. She was the only part of me that did not belong to Garder, body and soul, and as long as he was alive in the flesh, he could not reach her. I left him sleeping at the end of the garden of that house, sleeping deeply after the cup of coffee which I gave him, the cup with death in it. Hoping to escape from him, I succeeded merely in giving all of myself to him, for the murderer belongs in all eternity to the victim, and the victim to the murderer.

Tomorrow I will go back to that house where Garder, who possesses me, is waiting.