‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ she answered. ‘Be quiet and come on up.’
‘Come here!’ he shouted. ‘Come here at once!’
‘I’ll be damned if I will. You come here.’
The man paused, head back, looking up the stairs into the dark of the second floor. He could see where the stair-rail curved to the left and went on up out of sight in the black towards the landing and if you went straight on across the landing you came to the bedroom, and it would be black in there too.
‘Edna!’ he shouted. ‘Edna!’
‘Oh go to hell.’
He began to move slowly up the stairs, treading quietly, touching the stair-rail for guidance, up and around the left-hand curve into the dark above. At the top he took an extra step that wasn’t there; but he was ready for it and there was no noise. He paused awhile then, listening, and he wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear the guns starting up again far away down the valley, heavy stuff mostly, seventy-fives and maybe a couple of mortars somewhere in the background.
Across the landing now and through the open doorway – which was easy in the dark because he knew it so well – through on to the bedroom carpet that was thick and soft and pale grey although he could not feel or see it.
In the centre of the room he waited, listening for sounds. She had gone back to sleep and was breathing rather loud, making the slightest little whistle with the air between her teeth each time she exhaled. The curtain flapped gently against the open window, the alarm-clock tick-tick-ticked beside the bed.
Now that his eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark he could just make out the end of the bed, the white blanket tucked in under the mattress, the bulge of her feet under the bedclothes; and then, as though aware of the presence of the man in the room, the woman stirred. He heard her turn, and turn again. The sound of her breathing stopped. There was a succession of little movement-noises and once the bedsprings creaked, loud as a shout in the dark.
‘Is that you, Robert?’
He made no move, no sound.
‘Robert, are you there?’
The voice was strange and rather unpleasant to him.
‘Robert!’ She was wide awake now. ‘Where are you?’
Where had he heard that voice before? It had a quality of stridence, dissonance, like two single high notes struck together hard in discord. Also there was an inability to pronounce the R of Robert. Who was it that used to say Wobert to him?
‘Wobert,’ she said again. ‘What are you doing?’
Was it that nurse in the hospital, the tall one with fair hair? No, it was further back. Such an awful voice as that he ought to remember. Give him a little time and he would get the name.
At that moment he heard the snap of the switch of the bedside lamp and in the flood of light he saw the woman half-sitting up in bed, dressed in some sort of a pink nightdress. There was a surprised, wide-eyed expression on her face. Her cheeks and chin were oily with cold cream.
‘You better put that thing down,’ she was saying, ‘before you cut yourself.’
‘Where’s Edna?’ He was staring at her hard.
The woman, half-sitting up in bed, watched him carefully. He was standing at the foot of the bed, a huge, broad man, standing motionless, erect, with heels together, almost at attention, dressed in his dark-brown, woolly, heavy suit.
‘Go on,’ she ordered. ‘Put it down.’
‘Where’s Edna?’
‘What’s the matter with you, Wobert?’
‘There’s nothing the matter with me. I’m just asking you where’s my wife?’
The woman was easing herself up gradually into an erect sitting position and sliding her legs towards the edge of the bed. ‘Well,’ she said at length, the voice changing, the hard blue-white eyes secret and cunning, ‘if you really want to know, Edna’s gone. She left just now while you were out.’
‘Where did she go?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘And who are you?’