The Night Following Read online

  If I could ask your permission to read it I would. I don’t see it makes a difference now. Also I’m not getting out to the library so it’ll pass the time.

  Arthur

  THE COLD AND THE BEAUTY AND THE DARK

  1932

  Chapter 1: Beats Working In’t Mill, or So They Say

  At six a.m. on the 18th of January 1932, the blast of a dozen factory sirens over the roofs of Aldbury in Lancashire signalled the end of the night shift. A few moments later a crowd of chattering women and girls poured out from the Brightaglow Electric Apparatus factory into the raw winter morning. Among them was Evelyn Leigh. Slightly built, her girlish dimples and rosy complexion were offset by abundant dark curls that belied her twenty-nine years. She moved as if she were afraid of being jostled and her shoulders stooped with tiredness. But these days her dimples came and went more often, in private half-smiles. As the two hundred night workers clattered through the gates, their scarved and shawled heads bowed under the icy rain, Evelyn drew herself away from the tide and paused, looking up at the sky and letting her eyes adjust to the daylight.

  It’s like a dirty leaky ceiling up there, she thought to herself, trying to focus. It did seem to be raining grey, as if an upstairs pipe had burst and the clouds were wads of wet newspaper stuffed into the dripping cracks. She screwed up her eyes but still she couldn’t make out anything clearly. The dirty rain just went on dripping down all around her, mucking everything it landed on. The walls of the factory were a wet dark blur, and beyond the gates nothing could be seen except for the mass of people moving through the street. Evelyn turned up the collar of her coat and walked slowly on towards the tram stop, blinking through the rain. She was tired and already her headscarf was soaked through.

  Her eyes were stinging as they always did following the nine-hour shift in the Testing Division as a bulb checker, making sure that all sets of fancy lightbulbs were in working order before they were packed. It wasn’t onerous work but in the eighteen months she had been there Evelyn had found it increasingly exhausting. Still, there was no choice, you worked where there was work, and at least it was quieter than the weaving sheds in the mills, and you didn’t choke on the cotton dust.

  The work wasn’t heavy. First she had to assemble a box from the pile of flat cardboard sheets at her feet, folding and fitting the tabs in a matter of seconds. Then she would take a set of lights from the never-ending supply, regularly topped up by the lads from Assembly, in a carton on the floor at her side. She would hold the bare end of the brown snake of flex and touch it against the socket on the bench, and as long as the whole string of bulbs flared in a blaze of coloured light, she would wind it around her crooked arm as she had been taught and pack it neatly in the box. The duds went into another carton for adjustments and retesting.

  Every half hour, another lad from Dispatch would come along wheeling a deep basket on castors, and take the stack of packed boxes from the other side of her bench. A note would be made on her work sheet of the number of packed boxes she achieved and the supervisor’s beady eye would peruse those sheets at the end of each shift, so it was just as well she had mastered the folding and packing quickly so that she could do it without really looking. Dazzled by each flash, she could see nothing for several moments afterward, except a starry afterimage.

  Not until the end of her shift would Evelyn look up from her work and notice the shimmering, glassy air of the Testing shed and the strange, hard, salty smell of electricity. The space above her head seemed laden with tiny shocks that sparked against the white glazed bricks lining the walls and glanced back like arrows. Like a headache waiting to happen, Evelyn thought. Then she would rub her eyes and long for the fresh air. Every one of the hundreds of bulb flashes would smoulder on in her vision for hours afterward, erasing detail as if they had made ragged red and grey holes like cigarette burns across the surface of her eyes.

  Today, out in the freezing rain, she marched on briskly. She had more important things to think about than sore eyes. She would not let even the most dismal January she could remember interfere with her good spirits. After all, it would soon be spring, and she would be getting married. Then there would be the baby and so what if a few people talked? It wasn’t unheard of, a honeymoon baby coming early, most folk wouldn’t probe. The fuss wouldn’t last. It would be a shock for Mam, and Evelyn hated the thought of upsetting her, but she would make her understand and she’d come round in time. Stan would settle down fine and there would be nothing more to worry about.

  As she walked, a voice from behind interrupted her thoughts. “Oy, Evelyn Leigh, hang on, can’t yer!” She turned and waited for her friend, Daphne Baker, to catch up. “Heck, you’re in a hurry!” she puffed. “Where’s the fire?”

  A grinning Daphne came lumbering towards her in her shapeless coat and tight stockings, careless as always of her lack of elegance. She had inherited, as she said herself, “me Dad’s build and me Mam’s legs, worse luck.” It was true that she had his strong, square shoulders and short arms, and her legs were, like her mother’s, almost elephantine below the knee. There was a medical name for it that Daphne had told Evelyn once and she’d forgotten, but a medical name didn’t mean there was a remedy. Daphne laughed it off, as the only girl in a family with three teasing brothers, Paul, Colin, and Jem, had learned to do. “I’m as strong as an ox,” she said. “And who looks at your legs if you’ve got a nice friendly face?”

  The two friends linked arms and made their way to the tram queue where they stood patiently. There was no letup in the weather. The tram came, a dark shape appearing out of greyness, and it struck Evelyn that it too had lost its colour, as if the rain had washed off its dark green paint and it had soaked away down the street drains. On board they had to stand as usual for the first few stops, but once past Coronation Mills they found spaces to sit. The motion and noise of the tram made talking difficult. Daphne brought out her cigarettes.

  “Fancy one of mine?” she said, offering the pack to Evelyn.

  “Oh, no, not for me, ta all the same,” she said.

  “Please yourself. Still off the cigs, are you?” Daphne lit one for herself and blew out the match with her first exhalation of smoke.

  Evelyn turned away, trying to take her mind off feeling sick. She knew every bend and halt of the tram route by now and she didn’t need to see through the grimy windows to know where they were. Soon they would be at Canal Street, the stop where occasionally the odd woman got on. Not that she was all that odd, not at first glance, she was just what Evelyn thought of as “different” and what Daphne called “not all there.” She blended in all right as far as clothes and general appearance went but you could tell she wasn’t from Unsworth’s, where the other people getting on at Canal Street worked. For one thing, she wasn’t regular enough, only boarding the tram on maybe two days in every six. Evelyn supposed the woman worked casual hours, maybe as a char. Daphne said she’d heard from somebody that she’d lost a son and had funny turns. She was generally considered to be harmless but definitely not all there. Nobody seemed to know her name.

  Not that she drew attention to herself, rather the opposite. On the tram, whether she was standing or sitting, she would close her eyes and a smile would settle on her lips. She’d stay like that for the entire journey. The tram would creak along, jolting at every stop and juddering on again.

  Now and then somebody might address a remark to her. “Mind if I get past you?” or “ ‘Scuse me, is anybody sitting there?” and the woman would usually reply quite sensibly. But not once would her eyes open or her smile falter.

  Today she got on and took the seat opposite Evelyn. Her eyes weren’t closed in sleep or obvious tiredness, or squeezed tight against something unpleasant. As usual they were just shut and smooth, though her face was blotchy with cold. Her smile, even on her wintry, pinched face, made Evelyn think not for the first time that she knew well enough where she was, in a smoky tram surrounded by drab, glum passengers, and had just decided t
o spare herself the sight of it.

  But today as Evelyn watched, all at once the smile vanished and the woman’s eyes flew open in agitation. She blinked round the tram for a moment, her mouth working furiously. Evelyn was ashamed in case the woman had seen her staring. She tried to look away, but it was too late.

  “Bloody look at it! I tell yer! Bloody look at me!” the woman suddenly shouted. She waved a greyish frozen hand towards the rain-streaked window. “Look! It’s enough to make you, make you… it’s enough to make you…”Her voice tailed off and the hand dropped in her lap. Her lips were trembling. People exchanged glances. Composing herself, she sighed and spoke again, quite calmly this time, and to nobody in particular.

  “I’ll tell you. Look at it. It’s enough to make you go to bed New Year’s Eve and not get up afore Easter.” Apparently satisfied, she surveyed the carriage, smiled, folded her hands together, and closed her eyes.

  A few people looked around nervously and one or two, including Evelyn, nodded. A gruff voice further down the tram muttered,“Aye, don’t blame you, missus.”

  Daphne nudged Evelyn. “Only sensible thing she’s ever said. She most definitely is not all there,” she whispered. “Look. Get her now. Butter wouldn’t melt!”

  “Maybe she feels better for getting it off her chest.”

  “Maybe. Wouldn’t mind it myself, sleeping New Year till Easter. Wouldn’t be missing anything, would I?”

  Evelyn smiled. “Rum kind of Sleeping Beauty you’d make, Daphne Baker.”

  Daphne laughed wryly. “Aye, but I’d catch up on my sleep, wouldn’t I? You’d die of old age waiting for Prince Charming round here. I’m past all that, anyway. Getting too old, me.”

  “Do you mind? I’ll thank you to remember I’m two years older than you, young lady.”

  “Aye, but you don’t look it. And you’ve got your Stan. You’re not stuck on’t ruddy shelf like me, not that I’m bothered. They’re all the same, men.”

  “Oh, Daphne Baker, you are not over the hill. You’ll see. Somebody’ll be along and sweep you off your feet. Mr. Right.”

  Daphne grunted. “I’m not worried. I’m better off. At least you won’t catch me at a man’s beck and call. I’m nobody’s unpaid skivvy. You’re a fool, Evelyn Leigh, getting married. Come on, this is us.”

  After they’d clambered off the tram at Station Road, Daphne had said “Ta-ta” and set off on the short walk to her home in Chadderton Street. Evelyn let out a deep sigh. Daphne could be so tactless. And she only pretended not to care. To hear her talk you’d think she’d seen a hundred Januarys, not twenty-seven. She was too young to come out with half the things she said, but that was what Daphne was like nowadays, bitter. She was becoming a bitter old spinster, a type all too recognizable since the terrible Great War, which had taken so many of the young men of their generation. Now there were simply too few to be the sweethearts and husbands of all the women who remained, many of whom were now resigned to spinsterhood, all their hopes of youthful romance and wife and motherhood dashed. Evelyn knew she was one of the lucky ones.

  She turned to gaze in the direction Daphne had taken but she couldn’t see her. After only a few yards the walls and pavements of Station Road melted into a thick blur. She rubbed her eyes and set off towards Roper Street, protesting inwardly at Daphne’s words that were still echoing in her head.

  It wasn’t true that getting married meant ending up somebody’s unpaid skivvy. She wouldn’t. It wasn’t true that men were all the same. Stan was different. Stan didn’t want a skivvy. He was principled. He believed in equality and the rights of the working man. And this January was different from other Januarys, not freezing and colourless at all if you only looked a little deeper, beneath the cold, ashy surface of the world.

  27 Cardigan Avenue

  The whateverth May

  Dear Ruth

  I’m not sure these letters are right. Carole says there isn’t a right or wrong, the idea is I just write what I want, whatever I’m thinking. I can express anything I feel. Including anger, she added.

  Write what I want? What does that mean? I said to her, You don’t appreciate the situation, Ruth’s the one for the words, not me. I’m no good with words. Not the letter writing kind, anyway. Oh, give me rainfall bar charts for Derbyshire since the second world war or an ornithological distribution map of the British Isles and I’ll bore for Britain on those, I said. I’m on safe ground there. But as I told Carole, you were the English teacher, I was only Geography. I looked out some Overdale photos and showed her. Even found some Overdale poems your kids did.

  Carole won’t let it go though, she says of course I don’t have to if I don’t find it helpful, but she’d like me to persevere with the letters. Just write whatever I’m thinking, express anything I’m feeling. It’s well known, she said, to be a useful tool in grief management.

  Huh, I can’t even think straight so how can I feel straight? Let alone write it down? I told her, Ruth’s the one with the words, or aren’t you listening, I said.

  Maybe you are angry, she says. You don’t need qualifications or special language to say you’re angry. Or to write to your wife. Just use ordinary words.

  Use ordinary words to say what? I don’t see how telling you about window cleaner, pressure cooker etc can be a useful tool for anything. I never was the writer. Nor the talker. You were. What would the listener have to say after all this time?

  Carole says whatever I write it’s for you, not her, but I asked her to read this just the same. She thinks it’s a start. I asked her to leave. Told her I was tired.

  Well, no more for now.

  Arthur.

  Ps later-STILL no sign of pressure cooker yet.

  I would rather omit this. I observe it now only reluctantly and without hope of forgiveness, because nothing should be omitted. Though I have braced myself time and again to go back over it, as I might make myself watch a film with shocking scenes that I thought I ought to try to understand, I don’t remember, to begin with, that I did actively decide to close the garage doors behind the wrecked car. Until that day I had always left the garage doors open for Jeremy’s return in the evening, but this day was unlike any other, and certainly I was now quite unlike myself. So I can’t know if my reason for closing them was to conceal my shame, or the evidence of the collision, or because some part of my mind had already planned what was to happen next. Was I at that point angry or frightened, rational or deranged? I must in some way have chosen to do what I did next but I have no idea if I was in control of my actions or not. I can’t locate a memory of anything as deliberate as motivation, so any finer distinction such as the shading between compulsion, intention, calculation, and desire simply has no meaning for me in this instance.

  I was aware nevertheless of a single swift moment of puzzlement, and intense regret, that I should be reaching up to pull a hammer, a crowbar, and a heavy chisel from their hooks on the garage wall at roughly the same time as I would ordinarily have been lifting this or that delicate paintbrush-a tiny, fairylike bunched tail of sable, itself so exquisite-and stroking another smoky, barely pigmented sweep of colour across one of my diluted studies of petals and stamens, or butterflies. But that was all. I did not pause. I did not consider, let alone reconsider. I wasn’t thinking at all.

  I didn’t stop until the bonnet was hammered in, the doors were smashed, and my feet were crunching through the orange and red chips of glass littering the floor from the busted lights. The front bumper was split and hanging off, the grilles were shattered, the tyres ripped. The windows and windscreen had gone except for a frill of broken glass. I was gasping and sweating, and when I paused to rest I caught my reflection in the window in the back wall. I could see I had changed. My eyes were larger and brighter but I wasn’t sure if that made me look younger and prettier, or just insane. Then I noticed a smell of fruit and petrol, and a chinking sound, quieter than silence, as a few bits of glass dripped from the windscreen like little cubes of melting ice and land
ed on the bonnet and dashboard and shopping bags. I took a deep breath and thought, Oh, thank God. It’s over, thank God. Whatever it is, it’s all done now. It’s all stopping.

  I was wrong. I raised the crowbar in my hand and lowered it gently, gently. Then I heard myself scream. I lifted the bar again and smashed it down hard again on the bonnet, a number of times, and I followed that with several blows of the hammer. Then I doubled over and yelled, but I couldn’t hear myself above the din I’d made. It was like standing inside a splitting bell. I straightened and tossed the bar and the hammer onto the roof of the car. They banged across it, slithered off, and clanged on the floor. Then I reached in through the ragged passenger window, opened the glove compartment, found the condom wrapper, and placed it carefully in the center of the pitted roof. I could hardly see. After a few moments the noise changed into a kind of fuzzy echo that set my skull vibrating and shivering under my hair. A distant ringing started up from even deeper and lower inside me. I stood watching the loose bits of glass hanging in the windscreen until they stopped swaying and glinting.

  When all was still and quiet again, I wheeled from the corner of the garage an old barbecue we hadn’t used for years (too basic for Jeremy now, just a metal basin on legs) and brought it to the middle of the floor. I returned to the shelves and rummaged until I found what I needed and then, using some sticks of kindling and a slosh of liquid lighter fuel, I set a small fire going in the barbecue.

  Then I reached into the back of the car and gathered up the pages I’d picked off the road. I began automatically to put them in order, as if my destroyed, methodical self was struggling obstinately to discover some system at work in all this mayhem. I concerned myself only with the numbers. Whatever the words were about, I didn’t have a complete set. The beginning was missing; the first page I had was number 94 and was headed Chapter 15: 1962 Christmas Eve.