PAINTING IN THE DARK

She recognised the sound but couldn't place it: heavy cleaver on wooden block. Meat in a butcher's shop. Crunch of bone, squelch of flesh, thunk of wood. But she and Paul were walking in a forest, nine o'clock at night, and the wide pathway curved before them green and damp beneath a moon-filled sky. Trees hung darkly on either side.

Paul stopped. She felt his hand quiver and stop. They glanced at each other and Paul frowned: whoever was making the sound was round the curve ahead.

Cool air clung at her ankles.

When Paul glanced at her she shook her head, and with a sideways nod indicated they should turn back. He smiled absently. On the cold mossy ground she stepped away from him, but he held her hand more tightly and raised his other to signal silence. In the growing gloom she couldn't read his face.

Laura tugged his hand but he did not react. The sound stopped. As they waited motionless on the wooded path it seemed to her that every tree was waiting with them. A subdued sigh came from the leaves.

She heard the clang of metal against stone. Before she could say anything, she heard a new sound - the chop of spade on forest floor. She heard a grunt. Laura's voice was barely audible: "Let's go back."

But Paul had moved ahead of her, was peering through the tangled trees to see around the bend. She pulled at him. "I don't like it."

He let go her hand. Incredulously she watched Paul walk forward, as if drawn by some mad male imperative which drew him on a dare towards the sound. Her feet seemed to sink into cold ground. When she reached toward his back she was like a sapling rooted in mud, one thin branch extended, shivering in the air.

No choice. She couldn't stay like this; neither could she turn back and go to the car. She had to follow him.

She scurried along the mossy path. The only sound was someone digging. She caught Paul at the sharp curve of the path where cold grey gloom lurked between the trees.

The digging stopped. So did they. The unseen man cursed, threw his spade to the ground and muttered words they could not catch. Laura reached for Paul's hand but when she laced her fingers in his, Paul's hand was cold as stone. Perhaps he would change his mind. As they hesitated on the silent path she stretched up to whisper in his ear, "I'm frightened. Please take me home."

Then came that sound again, that sickening crunch they had heard earlier, the butcher's cleaver - but closer now. Each blow accompanied by a grunt.

"No," she whispered. "We must go back."

The sound seemed to pull Paul forward. He walked steadily along the dim moonlit path, round where the curve bent back on itself, and Laura followed as if in a dream. They were in an s-bend. Moonlight illuminated the shadowed path and the chopping sound grew louder. Whoever was there was not chopping wood. The sound was muffled, dampened. The snake bend straightened, then they saw him.

Barely ten yards away a man stood chopping downwards onto a stump. Something glistened beneath his axe - something like meat. With a start she realised the man was tiny - a dwarf, she thought. She must not scream.

But he had seen them. The dwarf stood feet apart, half crouched, the large axe heavy in his hand. Suddenly he bounded at them. Laura stepped back - and tripped.

She screamed, and as she landed on her backside the dwarf shrieked, "Get out! Get out - if you know what's good for you." She squirmed in the dirt and saw Paul facing him. The dwarf was closer now, six feet away, his axe raised. Dimly lit, his face seemed distorted with hate and fury - it was distorted, there was something wrong with it. "Go away!" he shrieked, swinging the axe. He lunged at Paul.

But Paul foolishly did not back off. Laura sat helpless as he stood his ground. "No!" she shouted as Paul stepped forward. "No!" again. The dwarf waved his axe.

"No!"

Paul's hand shot out. The dwarf turned and ran - like a spider, his jerky sideways run taking him back toward the tree stump. He scrabbled on the ground for a pad of material but as Paul approached he straightened and lifted the axe above his head. This time he'd throw it. His body stiffened. His short arm tensed.

"Move back!" he spat.

Paul hesitated.

"Back!"

The axe quivered in the dwarf's hand, and Paul gave ground.

"Further. Go past the girl."

Paul would not retreat beyond her. But he was far enough. The dwarf snatched up a filthy sack and swung it across his shoulder. There was something heavy in it. Laura sat staring at him, too scared to move. He must be a dwarf. Perhaps he was a little larger than a dwarf, but his misshapen face was not made of flesh. Was it a mask?

"Get up," he snarled.

She started clambering to her feet. Paul helped her. "Are you OK?"

She nodded.

The dwarf rasped, "Can you walk - you? Try your ankle. Walk that way - back where you came."

Laura tugged Paul's arm. "Come on. Please."

"That's right - please," jeered the little man.

She and Paul began to edge away. While he held that axe they would not risk turning their backs on him. Paul stopped again, and Laura clutched at him: "Come on."

Suddenly a missile flew out at them - not from the dwarf, but from the trees beside them, hitting Paul on his side before it fell. A piece of wood - a branch. The dwarf leered. "See? There's more of us. You're surrounded now."

Paul peered into the trees. Another branch flew out, but missed them. They saw someone move between the trees, but it was too dark. The dwarf yelled, "Start running!" as from between the trees came an unearthly howl. Laura was pulling at Paul's arm. "I saw one of them," he said. Another branch flew past his face.

He let her drag him slowly away. When they reached the bend they saw the dwarf bend quickly to collect his spade, but when he tucked it beneath his arm the spade tangled with the sack across his back. He cursed, raised the spade in fury but then lowered it and shook the axe: "Keep going! Round the corner."

Paul muttered, "I'm going to get that - "

"Not now," she whispered. "We'll call the police."

The dwarf waved his axe. "Go on!"

They heard that howl again. Whoever was out there was moving through the woods. They could hear him. They almost saw him. Suddenly, the little man had slipped away. Paul ran after him. Desperately, Laura called for Paul to stop - and at the tree stump Paul did stop. The little man could be heard crashing through the undergrowth, cursing loudly and clanking his spade. Paul glared after him, then glanced down. He bent closer to the ancient tree stump, then stood up.

When Laura reached him he was standing by a shallow hole. Laura didn't want to look inside. But perhaps the dwarf had been burying gold. Dwarves did that, didn't they - bury gold beneath a tree?

Laura stood at the rim and peered inside. She saw no gold glinting in the moonlight, only something that looked like meat trampled in the dirt. The grubby flesh looked pink and fresh. Human. Where the axe had smashed the bones their inner cores looked black with blood. The fresh dug pit held broken limbs and a piece of torso.

Laura glanced away, wondering why she did not feel sick. In the movies this was the moment when someone turned away to vomit into a handkerchief. But she felt calm. In the cool night air she lifted her face and glanced around. She saw, on the broad stump where the dwarf had been working, the lump of meat he had left behind. Almost a yard long, including fingers. The dwarf must have meant to halve its length to fit the hole. The unreal white arm lay across the chopping surface, broken at a peculiar angle, almost cut through. There was little blood. In the feeble moonlight the dead flesh seemed as white as candlewax, and the hairs on the surface appeared so delicate that the slightest breeze might blow them away.

She listened. There were no night sounds except shivering leaves. As he stood beside her, Paul muttered, "There doesn't seem to be a head."

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- Chapter One -

Despite the Spring sunshine they talked of snow. In two reclining chairs on the veranda outside her summerhouse they sat with teacups in their laps. The low cane table between them bore a plate of biscuits, a simnel cake, an elegant teapot, with a jug of milk for him, lemon for her, and sugar in a matching bowl. In the afternoon sun her grey hair glinted like snow at dusk. His face had reddened out of doors.

"Eighteen months I'd been in London but I'd not seen snow - which seemed uncanny, after Edinburgh. The winter before, you see, had been so mild. I had seen snow falling - but only twice, and each time it came with rain. The soft flakes fell like scraps of paper battered by the droplets. Snowflakes fluttered down in a barrage of dirty water, melting to nothingness before they touched the streets. That previous winter, London had seemed to me a dark sodden city - not cold, certainly not cold enough for snow - but a wet and watery town."

"It has its seasons," Sidonie murmured. She sat with her head tilted to catch the sun.

As he leant forward to reach for his tea, Murdo winced. Though he found the long low chairs comfortable they were ruinous for his back. In recent years he had come to prefer harder, more upright chairs, and sometimes now he walked with a stick. When visiting Sidonie he made a show of fitness - he was ten years younger than her, after all. He hadn't brought his stick today.

She watched him raise the cup and saucer in trembling hands. His eyes were still attractively dark blue but the flesh around them was loose and wrinkled, a pale brown mauvish colour, like an old bruise.

She said, "We remember snow and rain and sunshine, but never the grey days."

"Not memorable enough." His chair scraped on the wooden deck. "Only extreme weather - storms and heat waves - can cut through our gloomy self-obsession - "

Sidonie laughed. "I'm not gloomy, Murdo."

"But from time to time real life leaps up and smacks us in the face - smacks us back to life - makes us notice things like the weather."

Sidonie was watching the way today's dappled sunlight tinted the red cedar of her summerhouse. She could hear birds calling territory in the trees. "I've seen enough dramatic events."

"You have a sunny nature." His blue eyes twinkled in their folds of flesh.

"And you have a flirtatious one. You never change."

He leant forward carefully, picked up the teapot and refilled their cups. "When I first came down to London I was not at all flirtatious. I was a sombre lad."

"I bet."

"Presbyterian upbringing, you see."

"No one says Presbyterian quite like you."

Murdo smiled. "Aye, well. I was lucky enough to join the army when the war was ending, and they never really knew what to do with me. I served most of my time in Scotland, three hours from home. I never felt like a real soldier."

"London must have seemed a big adventure."

"Oh yes. I had been warned that it was sinful, and so it was - though it took me a year or two to discover the sin. I wandered about in all my Presbyterian sobriety - " He twinkled at her. "And the weather gave back a reflection of my face: resolutely glum."

"It refused to snow?"

"Aye. Then one morning I woke up early - very early, dawn light barely discernible behind the street lights - and from my attic window I saw the whole city mantled with snow."

"Typical of you to live in an attic, Murdo."

"I could afford nothing else. That day, I remember thinking the snow had manifested itself to welcome me. Snow meant home to me, d'you see? It lay on the pavements, collected on sills, and if there had been trees outside my window the snow would have weighed their branches down."

"Oh, were there really no trees, Murdo?" She chuckled. "Did you live in a slum?"

"Opposite where I lived was a bomb site, walls and rubble, and during the night, drifts of snow gathered in the gaping holes to purify them. The ugly landscape had been made clean."

He finished his tea and sat back in his chair. When the old lady lifted the teapot he waved it away. "I've had my fill. Aye, well, I went down the stairs and slipped out the front door to walk in the snow. I was utterly alone, because as I say, it was barely dawn."

"London. A cold morning."

"But I didn't feel alone. Every snowflake kept me company - "

"Oh Murdo, really! You're courting me with cheap poetry."

"No, no, words can't convey the feeling. There was magic there. When I looked up into the glowing streetlamps I saw each separate snowflake dancing in the light. Snowflakes settled soft as dust upon my shoulders and I felt for the first time that London belonged to me. Remember that?"

"A book was it, or a song?"

"I've forgotten now. Do you remember those novelty glass balls we shook to make a snowstorm - what did we call them? They held a little scene, perhaps a Father Christmas on whom snow fell. Though the man was alone, he was secure in his compact globe."

"That's how you felt?"

Sidonie smiled lazily, her eyes half closed in the warm afternoon sun.

"I felt alive. After a while I went back inside the house, up to my chilly attic, and I looked again at the street below. The bomb site seemed even softer - it could have been a park, a walled garden deep under snowdrifts. But d'you know what struck me most?"

"Tell me."

"My footprints in the snow. Everywhere was white and smooth except for those two clear tracks of feet, walking out and walking back. At the end of the tracks was a little island where I had stood and trampled, that patch totally distinct, the only blemish in all the whiteness, and it seemed for the first time that I had left my mark on the huge city." Murdo chuckled. "Not an easy thing to do."

"You're an incurable romantic. When was that - forty-eight?"

"1947. London was a crippled city then."

"I remember."

"Bomb sites everywhere, and scars across every building which still stood. Nothing in the shops."

"And no gaiety. The dogged drabness of it all. Fifty years ago. You came down and I returned. But like you, in a way, Murdo, I felt lost. The London I'd known before had been full of life. Handsome shops - "

"Handsome men, no doubt?"

"London before the war was elegant and delightful - I mean genuinely delightful, full of delight."

Murdo shrugged. "I'd stroll through the West End and catch occasional glimpses of privileged folk like you. You stood out even more than you had in the Thirties - still the only ones who could afford a car."

"Or could acquire petrol coupons. No, the people you saw were probably spivs and black marketeers. Don't give me that nonsense, Murdo, about rich and poor - you'll outstay your welcome."

"I mustn't do that."

His smile seemed strained now. Shakily, he rose to his feet and stood on the wooden flooring beside the table like a weary waiter for whom the last guest would not go home. "I don't know why I remembered snow. That wasn't what I meant to say at all. I was going to ask you - " He grimaced. "1947. About Naomi - "

He looked suddenly aghast, as if he had inadvertently blurted out an indiscretion. His hand rose to his chest and he staggered, gasped, and fell crashing to the ground. As he fell he upended the table - teacups arcing through the air, milk, sugar, the simnel cake, all cascading to the wooden floor. He collapsed in a disappearing puddle of steaming tea. Sidonie rushed to kneel beside him, her hands tugging at his clothes - but Murdo seemed so heavy, so hard to move. When she rolled him on his back the lurching movement caused a slight flicker beneath the surface of his eyelids. His lips twitched and for a moment she thought he might try to say something, but the only sound he produced was a short rasping sigh like the whisper of wind in a rusty pipe.

"Don't, dear, don't."

The old lady heaved his white head into her lap and stroked his cheek. Then she loosened his tie and with some difficulty undid the collar button to his shirt.

"Murdo, please."

Helplessly, she looked around the garden, knowing there was no one there. No neighbours overlooked. No one lived with her in the house. In the greening trees beyond the flower borders, birds continued to sing. She heard a bee hum. Afternoon sunlight lay patterned across her lawn and the scent of blossom hung in the air

After a while she lifted Murdo's head from her flowing skirt and lay him prone on the summerhouse veranda. Tea had soaked into the planks, leaving a faint blurred stain that would soon disappear. A broken line of splattered milk ran to the edge and a dusting of sugar lay around his body like dry snow. Even as she watched, the first ant appeared from a crack in the wooden floor.

She bent towards Murdo and straightened his tie. His hair had become disarranged and she used her fingers to smooth it back in place. In life, Murdo had been so proud of his looks and dignity.

To stand up from the hard floor Sidonie used the fallen table for support. She seemed old and frail. Once on her feet she paused a moment to regain her breath. After one final glance at the unmoving Murdo she set off slowly across the sunlit lawn to telephone for an ambulance.



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