Short Shockers: Collection One

Dead on the Hour (originally published by the Mail on Sunday)

The hour before dawn is the deadliest. The silent, ethereal period when the air is filled with an indefinable stillness; the darkness is spent but the new day has not yet begun. It is the hour when human resistance is at its lowest, when the dying, exhausted from the sheer effort of clinging to life, are most likely to slip their moorings and drift quietly away into that good night.

Sandra held her mother’s hand; it was no bigger than a child’s, soft and fragile with leathery creases. And sometimes she imagined there was still a pulse, but it was merely the beat of her own pulse coming back at her.

A tear rolled down her cheek, chased by another as she reflected on her past, her memory in selective mode, retrieving and presenting to her only what was good. She delved back into her childhood, when it was she who had been weak and her mother who had been strong, and thought about how the wheel had turned, as relentless and impersonal as the cogs of the grandfather clock downstairs. Strong. Yes, she had been strong these past months, spoon-feeding her mother an increasingly infantile diet. Supper last night had been pineapple jelly and a glass of milk. At 7 p.m. precisely.

The clock was quiet; it seemed a long time since it had last chimed. She looked at her watch. A whole hour had passed, gone. Like the hour that ceases to exist or vanishes during the night when the clocks go forward to British Summer Time. It was three o’clock in the morning and then suddenly it was four o’clock. Sandra’s mother was alive and suddenly she was not.

And now, equally suddenly, there was no hurry. Sandra clung to the thought as the one consolation through her grief. No hurry at all. She could sit up here for hours if she wanted. Sure, she would have to call the doctor eventually, and — she shuddered — an undertaker. She would have to get the death certificate. The vicar would make an appearance. There were relatives to be phoned. Probate. Her mind whirred as she remembered all the arrangements when her sweet father had died six years back. Escaped, she had sometimes thought, and felt guilty about that as she stared at her mother’s pitifully atrophied body.

It was Tony who always made that joke. He said it was the only way her father had been able to get safely away from her mother. If he’d merely left her, she’d have tracked him down and turned up, pointing angrily at her watch, asking if he realized what the hell the time was.

Yes, she had been a difficult woman, a tyrannical clock-watcher, selfish, petulant, unreasonable and, in her last years, spoilt and paranoid. Her brother, Bill, had emigrated to Australia. Escaped, as Tony put it. And her sister, Marion, had gone to America; also escaped, according to Tony. So the duty of looking after their mother fell to Sandra.

Tony had always criticized her for that. She was too weak with her mother, he warned. She had always allowed the older woman to walk all over her, to dominate her, forcing her to live at home to look after her until she was past the age when she could have children of her own. It was not a bond of love, he told her, but of fear. He was right. Her mother had hated Tony for taking Sandra away, and she had hated him even more for not allowing Sandra to let her come and live with them until these last two years when she had been dying.

Now, as Sandra sat clutching her mother’s lifeless hand, she realized that for the first time she was free. She would no longer have to set the alarm for six-fifteen in order to take her mother a cup of tea in bed at six-thirty precisely — as her father had always done. She would no longer have to bring her breakfast up at seven-fifteen precisely, or bath her every morning at eight o’clock precisely. She would no longer have to set her mental clock to call her every hour, on the hour, whenever she was out of the house, and no longer have to suffer the abuse when she was late with a call, or came home later than she had stated, or was late with the afternoon tea tray or the supper tray or the cup of warm milk at eleven o’clock.

Slowly, half reluctantly, half anticipating her new freedom, she prised away the lifeless fingers one at a time, then laid her mother’s skeletal arm down. She turned out the light, closed the door, walked slowly to her own bedroom and slipped, exhausted, into bed beside Tony’s sleeping frame.

No need to wake him. It could wait. A few hours of sleep and she would be better able to cope with the grim business ahead — choosing the coffin, the hymns, the wording for the death notices in the papers. She lay still, drained after her weeks of vigil, her eyes wet and her heart hollow with grief.

She dozed fitfully, listening for the chimes of the grandfather clock, but heard only the rising, then abating, dawn chorus. Finally, she got out of bed, pulled on her dressing gown, closed the door and stood for a moment on the landing. Bitumen-black shadows rose out of the darkness to enfold her. She stared at the door of her mother’s room and felt a tightness grip her throat. Normally she would have been able to hear the clock ticking, but it was silent. Puzzled, she went downstairs into the hall. The hands of the grandfather clock pointed to three o’clock. It had stopped, she realized, her eyes sliding to her own wristwatch. It was six-forty-five.

Then she felt a deep unease. Three o’clock. She remembered now; it was coming back. She remembered what grief had made her forget earlier. Three o’clock. She had glanced at her watch to imprint it on her mind. Information the doctor might want to know: her mother had died at three o’clock precisely.

A tiny coil of fear spiralled inside her. The clock had been her mother’s wedding present to them. Stark, institutional, rather Teutonic, it dominated the small hall, stared her in the face each time she came in the house as if either to remind her it was time to call her mother or to reproach her for forgetting. Tony disliked it, but he had been trying, in those early days, to make friends with her mother. Thus the clock had stayed and had been given pride of place. He had taken to joking that there was no need to have a portrait of her mother in the house — the clock was a near perfect likeness of her.

Sandra turned and walked into the kitchen. As she went in, a blast of cold air greeted her, making her shiver. Startled, she wondered if the freezer door was open. The daylight seeping through the blinds was grey and flat, and the only sound was the rattling hum of the fridge. Then, as she reached for the light switch, something brushed past and she felt a rustle of fabric. She stood, absolutely rigid, goose pimples breaking out all over her body.

Her mother had come into the room.

Sandra stared at her in disbelief and terror. The old woman was standing, in her pink dressing gown, angrily tapping her watch. ‘Where’s my tea? What kind of a daughter are you that you forget to bring your dying mother her cup of tea?’

‘M-M-Mummy!’ she stammered finally. ‘You... you died... dead... you...’

The room was getting colder and the light was dimming perceptibly. Yet her mother seemed brighter, more vibrant, more alive in contrast with it. Relief momentarily flooded through Sandra’s confusion. ‘Mummy... you’re OK. I... I...’ her voice tailed off. Her eyes told her that her mother was standing in front of her, but her brain told her that was impossible. She reminded herself that only a few hours ago there had been no pulse, her mother had been turning cold, rigor mortis had begun to set in.

‘You and Tony can’t wait for me to go so you can be rid of me, can you?’

‘Mummy, th — that’s not true. It isn’t... I...’

Her mother stepped towards her, with her hand raised in the air. ‘You bitch! You slut! You tramp!’ She swiped her hand ferociously and Sandra flinched, stepping back out of her way with a startled cry.

‘Who are you talking to?’

Sandra turned. Tony, bleary-eyed, wrapped in his towelling dressing gown, stood behind her in the doorway. When she looked back, her mother had vanished. Her heart was hammering and she was gulping air in shock. ‘Mummy,’ she blurted. ‘I... I...’ She pushed past him, ran stumbling upstairs and threw open the door of the spare room.

Her mother lay there, exactly as she had left her. Slowly, hardly daring to breathe, Sandra walked across and touched her cheek. Her flesh was cold, like putty. Her eyes were still closed and there was the faintest hint of a rictus grin that lent her a smugness even in death, as if she were enjoying some final private joke.

Shaking with fear and confusion, Sandra hurled herself into the arms of Tony who had followed her. He held her tightly, and she pressed her face against the soft towelling and began to sob.

‘She’s cold,’ Tony said quietly and baldly. ‘She must have gone in her sleep.’

The following morning Sandra sat bolt upright in bed, wide awake. The bedside clock said six-fifteen. Fifteen minutes! She hurried downstairs, spooned tea into the pot and, while the kettle boiled, set her mother’s cup and saucer on the tray.

As she was pouring the water into the pot, she stopped.

What the hell am I doing?

Her mother was in the chapel of rest in a funeral parlour. The funeral was all arranged for next Tuesday.

Angrily, she threw the contents down the sink, walked back into the hall, glared defiantly at the hands of the clock still stuck on three o’clock and got back into bed. She nestled closely to Tony, slipped her hand inside the fly of his pyjamas and gently aroused him. Then she straddled him and they made harsh, savage love.

‘You’re free,’ Tony said as they luxuriated in their first Saturday lie-in for as long as they could remember. ‘You can get a life of your own now, of our own. We can go on holiday. And get rid of that damned clock.’

‘The man’s coming this morning to fix it,’ she said.

‘Christ, why spend any money on it? Let’s just bung it in the first auction we can find.’

‘I want it fixed first,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave it the way it is.’

‘Nothing wrong with the movement, Mrs Ellis. I’ve given it a good cleaning; could have been the dust that stopped it.’

Sandra thanked the man and paid him. As he was leaving she said, ‘I don’t suppose you know anyone who might be interested in buying it?’

‘Ah.’ He looked pensive. ‘Yes, well, it’s a fine piece. Try Atherton’s in Lewes High Street.’

Sandra closed the door. The hall was once again filled with the relentless tick of the grandfather clock and, as she watched it, she saw the minute hand jerk forward to eleven minutes past two.

Tony was playing golf and was not due back until late afternoon. She would arrange the sale now, she thought. The sooner the clock was out of the house the better. It might be disrespectful to get rid of it before the funeral, but Sandra no longer cared.

Tony arrived home shortly before five and was surprised to see Sandra’s Toyota wasn’t in the drive.

As he let himself in, he noticed the hands of the grandfather clock were again pointing to three o’clock and there was no tick emanating from the case. Strange, he thought; Sandra had told him the repairer would be coming at midday. Then a sound from the kitchen caught his attention.

It was Sandra.

‘Hallo, darling,’ he said, walking through. ‘I didn’t think you were home.’

Tea was laid on a tray on the table. ‘Mummy wanted her afternoon tea,’ she said. ‘I had to come back.’

He gave her a strange look. ‘Your mother’s dead — and where’s the car?’

The doorbell rang before she could reply. Sandra turned towards the kettle as if she had not heard either the question or the bell.

Tony opened the front door. Two policemen stood there, grimfaced, holding their caps in their hands.

‘Mr Anthony Ellis?’ asked one, his voice quavering slightly.

‘Yes,’ Tony replied.

‘Your wife has had an accident, sir. She was hit by a car as she was crossing Lewes High Street. She was taken to the Royal Sussex County Hospital but I’m afraid she was dead on arrival.’

Tony shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, you must have made a mistake — she’s here. Come in and see for yourself.’

He led them through into the kitchen. ‘Sandra, you’ll never guess...’ His voice dried up. She was not in the kitchen. There was no tray on the table.

He ran upstairs, calling her name, but only empty silence greeted him. Slowly, ashen, he walked back downstairs. ‘Wh-what... when... when did this happen?’

‘A little earlier this afternoon, sir,’ said the second policeman, who was eyeing the grandfather clock with a strange expression. ‘About three o’clock.’