The Servants Read online

  They sat in silence for a while. He’d noticed the last time that she didn’t seem to mind this. Maybe that was part of being old. You could just sit, listening to the clock ticking the time away, and not feel you had to fill the spaces with words. Perhaps when you’d got to her age, you’d said everything already once. David clearly didn’t feel he’d got to that point yet, and Mark found he enjoyed the quiet.

  “What did you mean, before?” he asked eventually.

  “About what, dear?”

  “You said something about how people were like, you know”—he nodded at the back wall of the room.

  “Did I? I have no idea what I meant. I’m sorry. Sometimes I just say things to check my mouth is still working, I think.”

  He smiled.

  She nodded at the plate. “Have a custard cream.”

  He took one. “Like…Brunswick Cream,” he said.

  “That’s right,” she said, and took the other.

  They sat there eating cookies together, and listening to the sound of the clock.

  SOME time later, he woke up.

  For a long moment, he had no idea where he was, then he jerked his head and saw the old lady asleep in her chair, her face tilted slightly back.

  He blinked, disoriented. He looked over at the bedside clock and saw it was twenty-five past eight. He must have been asleep for two or three hours. He hoped she’d nodded off at the same time, or he must have looked really silly.

  He blinked again several times, hard, trying to get his head straight. He was very tired, worn out by days of walking, of falling off a skateboard, of lying in the rain and crying. Something must have woken him up, otherwise he probably would have slept on for hours more. He wasn’t sure what that something had been, though.

  A sound, perhaps? A faint knocking sound?

  Whatever it had been, it was quiet now. All he could hear were the whistle of the old lady’s breath, as it drifted in and out of her nose and mouth—sitting there so still she looked disconcertingly as if she could be dead—and the clock, still tick-tocking away to itself. The sound was threatening to send Mark off to sleep again.

  He pushed himself up out of the chair. He’d better go.

  As he stepped toward the door, his leg twisted, painfully. He must have really banged it up. It hadn’t hurt so much before, but the sleep had allowed the knock to settle into it.

  Wow, actually, it really, really hurt.

  Still bleary, moving quietly so as to not wake the old lady, Mark hobbled carefully around the front of the room, past the tiny stove. Then he stopped.

  In front of him was a narrow drawer, in the center of the unit that supported the little sink. He opened it, remembering what he’d seen put there.

  He turned, slowly. The old lady was fast asleep. Something might have woken Mark, some muffled noise, but it was silent now. She’d be asleep for hours yet. And five minutes was all he’d need.

  Just for another quick look.

  He hesitated. She’d shown it to him in the first place, so she probably wouldn’t mind, would she? It would be better, more polite, to ask her—either when she woke up, or tomorrow. Of course. But she might say no, and now that the idea had occurred to him, Mark realized he really wanted to do what he had in mind.

  Just to have another peek. It couldn’t do any harm.

  He watched the old lady sleeping for a moment longer, and then took the big key from the drawer.

  AFTER he’d carefully closed it again, he crept across the room, wincing. His back hurt, too.

  He turned the knob of the door very, very slowly, making sure it didn’t make any noise. Then opened it just as carefully, pulling it behind him again as he stepped outside. He didn’t shut it, knowing he’d have to come back to return the key, but left it half an inch ajar.

  He stood in the wide corridor, his hands turned yellow from the dim light shed by the bulb he had changed. He stepped over to the big door and fitted the key in the lock. Turned it.

  Clock, it went.

  He pushed the door open into blackness, and stepped inside.

  PART

  II

  nine

  The first thing he noticed after he’d shut the door behind him was that the hallway wasn’t as dark as he’d thought. Again there was that gray light coming from the area at the back, filtering down through the filthy panes in the skylight above the kitchen. It was nighttime now and the light was a lot softer than it had been when he’d come here before, but still seeped around the corner into the main corridor, picking out the edges of walls.

  It remained quite gloomy, however. Mark reached out and ran his fingers along the wall on the right, until he found the light switch.

  He flicked it, but nothing happened. The bulb must have gone. That was not so good. It was going to be hard to see. Not to mention that, now he was actually in here, it was a little…

  It was very quiet, that was all. It wasn’t spooky. It was like being in a ruined castle—or a church on a Thursday afternoon. Mark’s mother didn’t believe in God, but she liked stained glass, and once in a while he’d found himself wandering around some big old church while she stood and gazed up at figures made of colored light. Something lingered in the air within these places, Mark had noticed. A heaviness that said it was somewhere that had known movement and singing, and would do again, however still and quiet it might seem right now. It was like an echo. You knew something must have made the sound, even if it wasn’t there anymore. The vibration persisted and the noise reached you eventually, long after the cause of the sound had gone.

  Mark took a couple of steps down the corridor. The soft creak of his feet on the broken floorboards grounded him. It was just an empty space, less frightening even than a London side street. Someone could suddenly appear from the other end of one of those, or from an alleyway you hadn’t seen. The only way into this place was through the door Mark had just shut behind him. It was safe. Very dirty, and strange-smelling, but safe.

  He was all alone, and could explore.

  He was just about to take another step when something caught his eye. He peered more closely at the narrow door to the butler’s pantry. It was hanging open, just a little.

  Hadn’t she shut it, when they’d been in here the other day? Yes, he thought so—to show him where the wax had been, the way they sealed it in the old days. So…why would it be open now? It could be that the floor wasn’t level, and the door had fallen open the way they did sometimes. Though…when Mark pushed it lightly with his finger, it didn’t fall back to where it had been. Maybe the old lady had been in here again by herself and opened it.

  It could be that, maybe. It must be.

  Mark found he was breathing a little more shallowly than before.

  He turned from the door and took a couple more steps along the corridor. There was something else on his mind now. He’d begun to notice a quiet sound. A cooing sound, he thought. Another pigeon, or maybe even the same one, had found its way through a broken pane in the skylight and down into the kitchen. Maybe it knew, somehow, that birds had once lived there, and so thought it was okay to be there as well, even though the chickens were long gone.

  But the sound wasn’t actually quite right. It was like a pigeon, but more muffled. A pigeon went coo-coo. Or sometimes coo-coo-coo. This noise was longer and had a different rhythm.

  He leaned forward, peered cautiously around into the side corridor. It was utterly black. There was no way the dim light from the kitchen could make it around the corner, and that part had no windows to the outside. He squinted, letting his eyes adjust, trying to see if…

  Then he took a hurried step back.

  For a moment, he thought he’d seen a faint yellow flicker from the end of the corridor.

  Like a candle, far back in the shadows.

  He closed his eyes tightly. Opened them again. He couldn’t see the light anymore.

  It had probably never been there. It was just his eyes trying to make sense of the darkness, forming
something out of nothing. He heard the pigeon once more, or something like it. Now it sounded more like a quiet laugh. Not a man’s laugh, but like a young woman, or a girl, amused by something a friend had said, but trying to keep her laughter soft and low so nobody else could hear it.

  But it must just be a pigeon. He could hear a faint flapping sound now, too. That proved it.

  He’d just heard a bird. That was all.

  He took a few more steps, moving even slower. The flapping sound hadn’t stopped, and he knew that being confronted by a bird suddenly flying out of nowhere would be more than scary enough.

  Maybe he should actually stop here, go back out. He’d had another look—he didn’t need to see everything…

  The noise sounded less like flapping now, too. It was getting louder. Not as if whatever was making it was doing so more vigorously, but as if it had started off a long, long way away and was getting closer. Like a pop song coming out of a car’s windows: starting off around the corner, very quiet, then turning into the same street, then getting closer and closer…

  Mark whipped his head around quickly. The sound had jumped in volume suddenly, and it definitely wasn’t a bird.

  What was it?

  He reminded himself to blink. He was keeping his eyes open too long at a time, and they must be drying out, because the light was…The light seemed different. Whereas before it had been gray, now it was a little warmer. Perhaps he was just getting used to it, seeing some of the mottled brown of the walls, but…

  He was standing very close to the left-hand side of the corridor now, and realized there was probably someone’s apartment on the other side of the wall, in a house where all this old stuff had been done away with and turned into somewhere people could live. Was he hearing sounds from someone else’s life, or from their television?

  He heard the laugh again, but now it seemed to be coming from the end of the corridor, around the bend to the kitchen. It was lower, too, throaty. Someone passing by outside the house, maybe, the sound echoing around and through the broken glass.

  Mark found it difficult to move his feet. In the background, he could still hear the thing that had been flapping, but now it had low notes and high notes in it. Things that sounded like clanks, and clattering, and…in fact…

  It sounded like voices.

  Suddenly it got much louder, and the warmth in the shadows burst like the world’s smallest firework, seen through fog.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” a voice said, very clearly, and someone came striding out of the short corridor.

  It was a man, dressed in a suit that was black and very tight.

  He was moving quickly. He was talking fast, too, but it was hard to make out what he was saying. He walked straight past Mark and quickly into the kitchen at the end.

  Mark fell backward against the wall. He couldn’t feel his legs. His jaw was trembling. The corridor was full of noise now, and candles and oil lights flickered dimly along walls now obscured behind thin smoke.

  Someone came sweeping out of the kitchen, coming in the opposite direction to the figure Mark had just seen. She was middle-aged and short, with a bundle under her arm. She turned to shout something over her shoulder, then laughed low and hard, her face blurred—and walked past Mark as if he wasn’t there.

  Mark tried to stand up straight. The corridor was even warmer now, but his stomach felt as if it was full of ice. He could hear blood beating in his head, the pounding of his heart, but these were now just sounds among many. There were clanging, slapping, and thudding noises from the kitchen, and the harsh clamor of someone barking orders toward the front of the house. The tinkle of a bell too, somewhere, not like a doorbell in a shop down a side street, but a stern jingle-jingle-jingle—a noise designed to capture attention. Even after it had stopped, it felt as if it was ringing, as if it had become a substance more than a sound, something you could touch. Mark realized that the air itself had begun to seem thicker in texture, pressing him down. It was hard to take into his lungs, too, as if too full and hot and wet.

  Someone else went past him then, and then another, but by the time Mark had turned his head, there was nothing to see. Everything was moving so fast, and always at the corner of his eye. There were smells coming at him, too: candle wax, something sweet cooking, a hint of sweat—and a low, meaty tang hanging in the air, buffeted by the constant movement as shapes and sounds went back and forth around him, pinning him to the wall.

  The first man went by him again, more slowly now, muttering something darkly under his breath. Mark had slipped down low enough that what he mainly saw was a hand at the end of a suit sleeve, going past his face—the rustle of starched cloth, a gleam of polished shoe leather.

  Another bell jangled in the kitchen and the short woman hurried back along the corridor from behind Mark. She shouted something through to the parlor room, opposite where Mark was crouched, before darting into the kitchen. The sounds from down there were clearer than any of the others. Maybe everything was clearer down there—perhaps that was the center, where it all came from.

  Mark started to move slowly in that direction, feeling the weight of the air and the smell of smoke pushing against him. It was as if sensations were falling on him, like heavy rain, making it hard to go forward, hard to take stock of where he was. There was so much coming at him that he couldn’t think, just notice things—like the fact there was no dust here now, on either the walls or the floor. No dust, and yet it was not clean. It was as if a film of something had been laid over every surface, something sticky and earthy-smelling.

  A door slammed; a woman yelled angrily; there was a sharp hiss as something was thrown on a hot stove—and then someone came running out of the side corridor, straight at Mark.

  She was dressed in a crumpled white blouse and wore a black skirt and a white apron. Her hair was a soft red and tied up on the back of her head, and she looked eighteen, perhaps nineteen, tired but unbowed, as if she had been moving this quickly, and with this much purpose, all her life.

  She came quickly into the main corridor, and Mark noticed how she used the curve in the join of the two passageways to save a split second on the journey, scooting at top speed to fulfill whatever task had been shouted at her by the short woman as she bustled past.

  As she passed Mark, the girl’s eyes suddenly flew open wide, and for a moment they were looking at each other directly.

  And she let out a tiny little scream.

  That was enough for Mark.

  The sound of her cry cut through the swirling confusion in his head—and he was suddenly upright and running down the corridor, away from the kitchen and its thudding sounds. He hurtled past the pantry door, which was now open wide. He glimpsed shelves lined with tall bottles and short bottles and cheese, and between them, a man’s back, bent over.

  The man started to straighten and turn, as if he’d heard footsteps behind him and wondered who it might be. Half a second before his face started to come into view, Mark jumped over the threshold and shut the big door behind him as quickly and quietly as he could.

  HE was there only two seconds, panting, eyes staring wide. Then he stuck the big key in the lock with trembling hands, turning it in the same motion. By the end of the hollow clock sound, Mark’s vision had started to return to normal, scalded by the electric light above. The noises from the other side of the door fell away instantly, too, as if dropped off a cliff.

  Mark ran to the old lady’s door, pushed it wide—and saw she was still asleep in her chair. He didn’t know how that could be. She must have been able to hear all the noise, surely? The short, busy woman must have come right out here!

  He dodged over to the drawer and dropped the key back in, then quickly left the room, closing the door behind. He limped into the narrow front passage and let himself out into the cold night air.

  It hit him like a wave, washing smells and sounds out of his hair. He took a series of deep, slow breaths, bent forward with his hands on his knees.

 
; Finally, he was very, very scared.

  He ran up the narrow metal stairs, remembering only as he was about to unlock the front door of David’s house that he couldn’t go in that way. He hitched himself up onto the metal fence and slipped carefully down the other side. He was frightened of the drop. But he was more scared of being out here. He wanted to be back in his room. He wanted to be there right away.

  He jumped and landed lightly on the windowsill.

  He edged around to the front, hooked his fingers under the window, pulled it up, and hooked his head beneath the sash. Within five seconds, he was inside, the window was firmly shut, and everything was sane again. There was his bed, his television, his clothes, the packaging from his video games. There was a litter of torn-up pieces of the book. There was the plastic bag he had found it in.

  There was the chair, still wedged under the door.

  He moved over and pulled it away. Opened the door and went through to the kitchen, where he grabbed a can of Diet Coke from the fridge and drank it all in one go. His throat felt parched until he’d got halfway through another can, which, he was slightly annoyed to see, was the last—David only bought about three each time he went to the shops. But by the time he’d finished it, his chest had stopped heaving, and his breathing had returned almost to normal.

  Upstairs, everything was quiet. The low murmur of the television.

  Everything was as usual in the kitchen, too. Calm, silent.

  Nothing but the sound of him blinking.

  BY the time he was back in his bedroom, he’d realized something else peculiar. The microwave in the kitchen had a digital clock built into it. It said the time was twenty-five to nine.

  He checked the clock on the video recorder under his little television, and the watch he rarely wore but kept by the side of the bed. They said twenty-five to nine also. He watched as the numbers on his watch changed, going from 8:35 to 8:36.

  He didn’t see how that could be.

  Barely aware he was doing it, he picked up all the pieces of paper from the floor in front of the bed and put them in the plastic carrier bag. He hid this at the bottom of his suitcase.