Peter Dickinson - Death of a Unicorn

I crossed the room and opened the door slowly.

My mother was shuffling towards me. She had contrived to get one arm into her dressing-gown and then had given up, so that it was trailing along behind her. As usual since her stroke her head was tilted sideways, but her mouth was not hanging open. She held in front of her, as though it was the purpose of her visit, one of the small towels we use for wiping the dribbles from her face. I was appalled to see her. How on earth had she managed the stairs? Was she going to start wandering round the house at odd hours? She might have slipped and broken her neck. Oh, but if only she had!

‘Mummy, darling,’ I said in the calm, amused voice I have trained myself to use, ‘what are you up to? It’s not breakfast for an hour yet.’

She looked at me with her old sharp arrogance, but with no apparent recognition, and came shambling on. I moved to meet her, intending to turn her gently in her tracks and lead her back to bed, but she tugged her arm determinedly free of my grip and pushed on into the room. I dare say I could have had my way with a struggle, though she is still surprisingly strong—the apparent feebleness of her movements is misleading, the result, according to Dr Jackson, of lack of confidence in her own motor control. I followed her in, mysteriously relieved to have a tangible reason for not being able to do my work.

‘I just came up to make sure you were all right, Mabs, darling,’ she said.

It was her old voice, perfectly clear, but slowed. She had not spoken to me but to the room. Now she faltered, apparently perceiving that it was empty. She shuffled to my desk, pushed at the chair, patted my typewriter. Being electric it responded by printing a few meaningless letters. She nodded approvingly, then turned and looked at me.

‘Where is . . . ?’ she began.

Her eyes dulled. Her mouth dragged open.

‘Urrh? . . . Urrh?’ she mumbled.

It was the same question. Where was Mabs? Where was the child she had borne and trained, and fought for, to take Cheadle over and keep it going, and to bear and train and fight for another child to do the same in its turn?

I guessed what had happened. Long ago, when I had first come back to Cheadle to live, and get ready to take up the responsibilities of my inheritance, my mother had deeply resented the two early-morning hours in which I lived a life beyond her grasp. Her attack had not of course been direct, but had consisted of excuses for interruptions, getting up earlier than she ever used to, for instance, and losing some essential article of clothing and then coming up to try and make me help her find it. My first permanent victory over her had been to make her stop, to keep my two hours mine, untouchable:

Over the years her attitude changed, partly because like many strong-willed people she was capable of thinking her defeats into victories, of altering the past so that what had happened became what she had decided would happen; partly also because she began to realise how my books were contributing to Cheadle; also because she read and enjoyed them, though she can hardly have read a book before in her life. (Mark used to say that the real reason for my success in my genre is that I have all the time been unconsciously striving to win her affection and approval. This may be true. I hope there is more to it than that.) Over the years too she must have grown used to the sound of my typewriter, as regular as the birds’ dawn chorus. Her room is not directly below my writing room, but only the opposite side of the corridor on the floor below, and the machine is ‘silent’, not silent. She may never have heard it more than subliminally, but this morning she must have missed it. The erratic connections of her brain had functioned after their fashion—indeed the momentary clarity of her speech showed that something remarkable of that kind must have happened. She had come to see why the noise was not there. What was wrong? Where was Mabs, her Mabs? Once, almost, Mabs had escaped, ceased to be hers. Had it happened again? Was she going to have to track her down, bring her home, all over again?

She stared at me like somebody trying to make out the features of another person in a dim-lit hallway. I moved towards her. My mind was numb with the horror of her visit, but my dutiful body knew what to do—get hold of her, prevent her falling, put the dressing-gown round her shoulders, lead her back to bed. Her face changed as though the movement had brought me into the light. Recognition flooded into her eyes.

‘Darling Janey,’ she said. ‘You’re the one I can trust.’

‘Of course you can, darling,’ I said.

Her mouth drooped open. She let me cover her up and lead her back downstairs.

II

Mark had not been home for the weekend before my appointment with Ronnie—Saturday had been his fortnightly constituency visit and presumably he’d spent Sunday in Wiltshire with his Julia. I knew what his letter would say before I opened it, but it still came as a shock. Not of betrayal, not—or so I persuaded myself—of sexual jealousy, but of passing a milestone, a whole stage in one’s life officially being declared over. Knowing that he would screw himself up to a divorce fairly soon, now that his political career was at best in abeyance for the next few years, I had already decided to make things as simple as possible, though there would be no getting out of the public fuss over the divorce of an ex-minister and a best-selling novelist, with Cheadle itself as the stage. It is in my nature to prefer to get unpleasant things dealt with as quickly as possible, so the letter should have come as a relief. I was not mentally prepared for the feeling of a great door swinging shut, its key grinding in the lock, of the corridor still stretching in front of me but opening into rooms that might in themselves look pleasant enough but would become steadily smaller and barer, and be imbued with a sense of having already been abandoned by the inhabitants I should have liked to meet in them.

I read Mark’s letter twice and put it in the pile for immediate answer. The rest of the envelopes looked routine, but one contained an enormous goody, also vaguely expected but still a surprise when it actually happened. Then, Monday being the day to which everything gets put off because in theory I shall have time for it then, I was too busy to pine or rejoice and certainly had no leisure to fret about Ronnie’s visit.

He was waiting for me in the Satin Room, a stooped and somehow wavery silhouette standing at the window. He turned as I closed the door and came towards me with uncertain steps. The lenses of his spectacles were as thick as bottle-glass and his walking-stick was painted white. In other respects he had aged heavily too. I imagined he was a bit over sixty-five but he looked nearer eighty. Despite that, I felt an extraordinary flush of delight at meeting him. Nervousness too, not about what he was going to ask me or anything rational, more a superstitious knowledge that I was doomed to say or do something that would burst the bubble. He took my hand and held it like a long-forsaken lover. He peered.

‘Less changed than you sound on the telephone,’ he said.

‘I have to be a dragon in working hours, but this is time off. Sorry I’m late. Did you have any trouble getting here?’

‘Fred drove me. I have a sort of arrangement with him so that I can get about at all. He’s gone on to visit some cousins in Nottingham.’

‘Nottingham seems to be entirely inhabited by Indians these days.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Oh, Ronnie, you’ve brought the champagne after all! I should have realised . . . you see, if you aren’t having any and I’ve got to work this afternoon . . .’

With a trembling hand he took from his pocket a brass gadget on which a rubber washer nestled between two flanges.