The door closed softly behind us.
The room was as the gardener had described it: a table, two chairs, and a glass vessel filled with water. The railway ticket lay beside the vessel. There were no windows, no pictures, no clock.
The woman placed the brass key on the table.
I picked up the ticket.
ONE JOURNEY.
Beneath it, in smaller letters:
PLEASE LEAVE THE HOUSE AS YOU FOUND IT.
I turned it over. The reverse was blank.
“What do you think it means?” I asked.
The woman drew out a chair and sat down.
“I think it means we should leave the house as we found it.”
“But we didn't find it like this. We found it in the garden.”
“Perhaps the garden is part of the house.”
I looked at the walls.
“And perhaps the room is part of the garden?”
She nodded.
“Or perhaps we haven't found the house yet.”
I sat opposite her.
The water in the glass vessel was perfectly still. Its surface reflected the ceiling, the lamp that wasn't there, and the two of us sitting at the table. I leaned closer.
Our reflections were looking at each other.
The woman beside me was looking at the water.
I straightened.
“Did you see that?”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
I looked again.
This time the reflections behaved as reflections should.
The woman took the ticket from me and placed it beside the key.
“Do you remember the postcard?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
“That you'd arrived yesterday. That the place was exactly as you remembered it.”
She looked down at the table.
“I don't remember writing it.”
“But you recognised the handwriting.”
“Yes.”
“Could you have written it before you came here?”
She considered this.
“Perhaps.”
“Or after?”
She smiled.
“Perhaps.”
I was beginning to understand why she had stopped answering questions directly. It wasn't that she knew more than I did. She had simply become less willing to pretend that the questions had only one direction in which they could be answered.
A faint sound came from the wall behind her.
Three knocks.
We turned.
The wall was unbroken.
The woman rose and placed her palm against it.
“Is someone there?” I asked.
“I don't know.”
She knocked three times in reply.
From somewhere inside the wall came a single knock.
She stepped back.
The glass vessel trembled on the table. A thin ripple crossed its surface, and the reflection of the room began to change. The walls grew taller. The table receded. The chairs became smaller, then larger, then smaller again.
The room was contracting.
Or perhaps we were growing.
I grasped the edge of the table.
“What's happening?”
The woman was watching the water.
“Something is leaving.”
The words were familiar, but this time I understood less than ever what they meant.
The room continued to change. The table became a narrow strip of wood stretching into the distance. The glass vessel expanded until its rim was level with my shoulders. Inside it, the water had become a vast, dark lake.
On the far shore stood a railway station.
A green train waited at the platform.
The woman moved towards the vessel.
I caught her arm.
“Don't.”
She looked at me with surprise.
“Why not?”
“Because we don't know what's on the other side.”
She smiled.
“Neither did you.”
She pulled free and leaned over the glass.
The lake was no longer in the vessel. The vessel was no longer on the table. The table was no longer in the room.
We stood on a shore.
The water stretched before us, dark and still. Across it, the station stood in the mist, its platform extending in both directions until it vanished from sight.
The green train was waiting.
The woman looked down at her hand.
The brass key lay in her palm.
“Where did that come from?” I asked.
She closed her fingers around it.
“I think I've been carrying it for a long time.”
“Do you know what it opens?”
She looked across the water.
“No.”
The train gave a single whistle.
On our side of the lake, a door appeared in the air. It stood upright on the shore, without a wall or frame, its brass handle catching the dim light.
The woman approached it.
I followed.
There was a small brass plate fixed to the door.
It bore no instructions, no warning, no name.
Only a date.
I recognised it as the date on the postcard.
Yesterday.
The woman touched the plate.
For a moment, the lake, the station, and the train became transparent. I could see the room in the house, the table, the glass vessel, and two chairs. One chair was occupied by a woman writing on a postcard.
The other was empty.
The woman beside me withdrew her hand.
“I remember now,” she said.
“What?”
“I was waiting for someone.”
She turned towards me.
“But I don't remember who.”
I looked through the door.
The woman at the table finished writing. She folded the postcard and placed it beside the glass vessel. Then she stood, walked towards the door, and disappeared through it.
The chair remained empty.
A moment later, the woman appeared on the far side of the lake, standing beside the train.
She looked across the water at us.
The woman beside me raised her hand.
Her counterpart raised hers.
Then the train doors opened, and the woman on the far shore boarded.
The doors closed.
The train departed into the mist.
I turned to the woman beside me.
“Which one are you?”
She looked at the empty tracks.
“I don't know.”
For the first time, she sounded afraid.
I took her hand.
It was cold.
“Does it matter?”
She looked at me, and slowly her expression changed.
“No,” she said. “I don't think it does.”
The door on the shore began to close.
I put my foot against it.
“Wait.”
Beyond the narrowing gap, I could see the room in the house. The table stood beneath the lamp that wasn't there. The glass vessel was full of water. The ticket lay beside it.
And on the other side of the table sat a man.
He was writing on a postcard.
He looked up as the door began to close.
He had my face.
I pushed against the door, but it would not move.
The man finished writing. He folded the postcard and placed it on the table.
Then he looked directly at me and smiled.
The door shut.
The lake vanished.
We stood in the garden of the white house, beside the washing line. The afternoon sun had not moved. The red sweater stirred in the breeze.
The gardener was kneeling beside her flower bed.
She looked up.
“Oh, there you are,” she said.
The woman beside me released my hand.
“Have we been gone long?” she asked.
The gardener frowned.
“Gone?”
She glanced at the house.
“You were only in the room for a moment.”
The woman looked at me.
Neither of us spoke.
We walked back towards the station.
At the gate, I turned to look at the house.
The upstairs window was open.
On the sill stood a glass vessel filled with water.
And beside it lay a postcard, addressed to someone whose name I could not read.
The postmark was dated tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment