The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

She lit up again, with a slight frown. “What was it I heard first, that first time? I suppose, the silence. So I must have stopped whistling, mustn’t I? I was lying there in my bath, with the door open behind me, when the silence suddenly made me sit right up. Then I said to myself, ‘My girl, there’s nothing queer about that. What else would you expect to hear, in an empty house?’ All the same, it made me heave the other way round in my bath, in order to keep one eye on the door. After a minute I heard what wasn’t a silence – which immediately made me think that Neville had come in early, and I don’t mind telling you I said ‘Damn’.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a bore being asked where one is going, though it’s no bother to say where one has been. If Neville was in he’d be certain to search the house, so I put a good face on things and yelled ‘Hoi’. But he didn’t answer, because it wasn’t him.”

“No?”

“No, it wasn’t. And whatever was in my bedroom must have been in my bedroom for some time. I thought, ‘A wind has come up and got into that damned chintz!’ Any draught always fidgets me; somehow it gets me down. So I got out of my bath and wrapped the big towel round me and went through to shut the windows in my room. But I was surprised when I caught sight of the may trees – all their branches were standing perfectly still. That seemed queer. At the same time, the door I’d come through from the bathroom blew shut, and the lid fell off one of my jars of face cream on to the dressing-table, which had a glass top.

“No, I didn’t see what it was. The point was, whatever it was saw me.

“That first time, the whole thing was so slight. If it had been only that one evening, I dare say I shouldn’t have thought of it again. Things only get a hold on you when they go on happening. But I always have been funny in one way – I especially don’t like being watched. You might not think so from my demeanour, but I don’t really like being criticized. I don’t think I get my knife into other people: why should they get their knife into me? I don’t like it when my ear begins to burn.

“I went to put the lid back on the jar of cream and switch the lights on into the mirror, which being between the two windows never got the sort of light you would want. I thought I looked odd in the mirror – rattled. I said to myself, ‘Now what have I done to someone?’ but except for Neville I literally couldn’t think. Anyway, there was no time – when I picked up my wrist-watch I said, ‘God!’ So I flew round, dressing. Or rather, I flew round as much as one could with something or somebody getting in the way. That’s all I remember about that first time, I think. Oh yes, I did notice that the veil on my white hat wasn’t all that it ought to be. When I had put that hat out before my bath the whole affair had looked as crisp as a marguerite – a marguerite that has only opened today.

“You know how it is when a good deal hangs on an evening – you simply can’t afford to be not in form. So I gave myself a good shake on the way downstairs. ‘Snap out of that!’ I said. ‘You’ve got personality. You can carry a speck or two on the veil.’

“Once I got to the restaurant – once I’d met him – the whole thing went out of my mind. I was in twice as good form as I’d ever been. And the turn events took . . .

“It was about a week later that I had to face it. I was up against something. The more the rest of my life got better and better, the more that one time of each evening got worse and worse. Or rather, it wanted to. But I wasn’t going to let it. With everything else quite perfect – well, would you have? There’s something exciting, I mean, some sort of a challenge about knowing someone’s trying to get you down. And when that someone’s another woman you soon get a line on her technique. She was jealous, that was what was the matter with her.

“Because, at all other times the room was simply a room. There wasn’t any objection to me and Neville. When I used to slip home he was always asleep. I could switch all the lights on and kick my shoes off and open and shut the cupboards – he lay like the dead. He was abnormally done in, I suppose. And the room was simply a room in somebody else’s house. And the mornings, when he used to roll out of bed and slip-slop down to make the coffee, without speaking, exactly like someone walking in his sleep, the room was no more than a room in which you’ve just woken up. The may outside looked pink-pearl in the early sunshine, and there were some regular birds who sang. Nice. While I waited for Neville to bring the coffee I used to like to lie there and think my thoughts.