An Evening at Home

Roy Stead

Copyright (c) 1991

Doctor Gloucester sat in his room, reading a novel by Marcel Proust. `It is a very good novel,' thought the good doctor, `with not too many long words in it.' Idly, Gloucester thumbed the edge of a page, as though about to turn to the next one. Then his thumb, sweat stained and tarnished by newsprint, paused perceptively on the cusp of page-turning. The doctor hesitated a moment. A bead of perspiration rolled from the side of his forehead, threatening to wander along his nose then drip, slowly onto the page -- as if to see what all the fuss was about -- but it, too, halted awhile to watch the doctor in his deliberations.

Firmly, Doctor Gloucester slammed A La Recherche de Temps Perdu closed, but not before the moist bead, its mind made up at the last, had had a chance to zip down onto the page, providing a single greasy bookmark to remind Gloucester where he had got to in the novel.

Doctor Gloucester glanced about him, and paused awhile once more, in contemplation of what he saw. `A War!' he thought. `A Bore. Such a bore is war, a sore bore, yet not so torn as an apple corn. Which lies, forlorn as though drawn upon a paper.' Drawn, as they were, to the window, the doctor's eyes took in the exterior scene.

A carriage went by. Another followed it.

`Something wrong here,' thought Gloucester. `Something definitely wrong. But what? But what?'

`No horse!' the thought screamed out, but none heard it as none were there to hear. `No horse!' it cried again, but louder this time. Again, none heard its wail -- but more clearly this time.

The doctor's eyes rose up, maintaining their position on his face as it -- too -- was raised. This last was caused, as 'twere, by the movement of the good doctor's head, which responded in characteristic fashion to a change in the angle at which his neck was held. So it goes.

A cloud drifted by, as clouds have been known to do, as the doctor stared from his window. A tendril of cloud caressed another cloud, pulling from it -- gently, oh so gently -- a wisp of likewise cloudy material. A swirl, a whirlpool in the skies, then gone, and only cloud remained.

The doctor stared.

A crick, a cricket, a cricket neck caused Doctor Gloucester to turn away momentarily from the cloudy landscape, and his eye alighted upon a picture beside his desk. The picture showed a herd of sheep, a flock of cows and a shepherd's crook. Around the crook was draped a cobweb, fine as cobweb in the early morning light. The doctor raised his arm, and thereby his hand, to stroke the web, which broke.

A strand of cobweb fell, slowly, drifting to the floor of the doctor's study. He watched it swirl, a whirlpool in the air, then land and come to rest upon the bare floorboards which cushioned Doctor Gloucester's feet from the bare air beneath.

`Oh shit,' thought the doctor.

A creak, a crack, a racket. A cracket of sound disturbed the good doctor's contemplation of the webby fibres, and caused him to turn to the door. The door was opening, slowly, its hinges shrieking as a hundred knife-wounds of rust buried themselves to the hilt in their vulnerable metal bodies. A chink, a chunk, a clank of light shone through, outlining three sides of the door as it swung wider, wider, and wider still, in answer to the hingey cries.

`Oh shit,' thought the doctor.

The door now open, a figure emerged, and entered the room with a tray in one hand and a knife in the other. "Who's there?" cried the doctor, his voice betraying the terror he felt in his heart at the sound of the door, and the clank of the light, and the screams of the hinge, "Who's there?"

And a voice, soft and low, whispered across that room, "'Tis eye."

The doctor stood up, the better to walk, and crossed 'cross the room, he crissed crassly crossed 'cross that room, to greet with his voice the bearer of tray and of knife -- which the reader has yet to learn more of. The doctor addressed that strange apparition with words from his throat, ushered soft from his mouth, though hoarsened by sounds uttered early in panic 'gainst that very shape, "Who is 'I'?"

"'Tis I, kindly doctor, who bringeth thy supper for you to partake of now daylight has finished."

The doctor spun round, with a complex manouver, and glared at the window to see the last streaks of the daylight descending like icicles melting beyond the horizon and sighed, like a river, in pain at the passing of a friend.

"Who is `I'?" he repeated, since last time he uttered those words he had got no reply from the figure, bearing knife and a tray which it claimed was his supper. That figure whose entrance had startled the doctor and caused him to miss the moment of passing of day. "Who is `eye'?"

The person who stood, a-framed in the doorway, looked on to the doctor and noticed his face, and noted his expression, and formed her opinion of what the poor doctor had done all that evening, and looked for the book, the sweat-stain-ed novel, by Marcel Proust, which the doctor was reading, and said to the doctor, "I'm Mary."

The doctor was shocked. `Oh shit,' thought the doctor.

Mary stalked forward, she storked t'ward the table, deposited tray and placed there the knife, which she had been carrying, onto the tray. Placed she it. Mary turned now to Gloucester, and stared at his face, expressions of pity vieing for place on her features with shades of expressions of anger that Gloucester had noticed the clouds once again.

`Oh shit,' thought the doctor.

The table groaned lightly.

`Oh shit,' thought the doctor.

Then, Mary walked to the doorway, and turned to the doctor, "Goodnight," as the door was closed from the outside, leaving doctor alone with the tray and the table. And the knife. The window was open. Doctor Gloucester left it open, reached for the knife then stabbed his hand downwards to capture a cockroach that crawled 'cross the table t'ward the tray which bore his supper. Gloucester raised the cover and unveiled his meal.

`Oh shit,' thought the doctor.

Roy Stead is a research assistant in quantum astrophysics at the English University of Sussex. His hobbies include water skiing, Zen Buddhism and searching for cats. His collection of cats is reputed to be amongst the largest in the Western world, though none have ever been seen by reliable witnesses. "Iggy," a grey-green Persian once did not appear on BBC Television's "Tomorrow's World."

roys@cogs.sussex.ac.uk