UNIT 16 When Shadows Fall

Cobwebs hang lazily from the cracked plaster ceilings.
Dust has piled thickly on the paper.
Books are placed everywhere:
on tall shelves and low shelves,
in unsteady stacks on floor, coffee table,
lounge and piano,
in boxes, cupboards and wardrobes.
A reading lamp casts a single bright circle
on the green cloth of the dining table,
and a woman's head bent low over them.
Her hair crinkles like tarnished metal.
As she writes,
her brown arm moves slowly
across the circle of light,
the faint scratching of her pen
is the only sound in the room.
Loud strikes at the front door shatters the calm.
The writer sighs,
starts to lay down her pen,
but with a shake of her head resumes writing.
The over-enthusiastic knocking at the door is repeated.
The house is vibrated:
millions of tiny dust particles shiver
and twirl chaotically through the air,
fragments of plaster tremble along the cracks,
spiders hurry to their corners.
She hears footsteps pass the curtained window
in front of her,
the frail and dusted back gate opens
with only a brief creak.
Pushing back her chair,
she stands rigidly,
revealing the red glow of a heater
in the dark cave under the table,
and walks slowly through the cold kitchen to the back door.
As she opens the back door,
she finds there stands a young man on her threshold,
who is from the flats across the road.
He's storing things in her garage.
"Hi, Mrs Embley.
I just want to ask you
if you'd mind if I put up a few shelves in the shed?"
Shelves...timber...nails...hammering...noise!
"Uh, no, I don't think that's a good idea:
Donald wouldn't like it."
"Oh, Donald is back, isn't he?"
"Of course.
I told you he has just gone up the street."
"Yeah, haven't seen him, but OK.
It doesn't matter. See you."
"Wait! It really would be best
if you didn't disturbus in the house.
Donald needs peace and quiet for his work, you see.
Just come and go to the garage,
as you want, no need to ask. Alright?"
"Fair enough,"
he nods, and disappears down the side path.
She shivers a little,
glancing briefly at the vaguely familiar wildness
of the yard before shutting
and bolting the door.
Donald used to look after it,
but she no longer remembers how long since he went,
nowhere he said he was going.
Last winter? Or the one before?
A cup of tea, she thinks,
then on to that troublesome chapter five.
Searching vainly for biscuits,
she curses gently.
Such a waste of time, shopping.
Perhaps she'll just go to the petrol station
on the corner again;
they have a few things,
and they certainly have biscuits.
She fetches her coat from the wardrobe.
The hat she wears on her head is an old gardening one,
but the mirror door,
hanging by a hinge,
shows only a haggard and lanky sight of her figure,
and she leaves the house.
Returning ten minutes later with her stopgap shopping,
she remembers to clear the mailbox.
She skims through the pile of letters
and finds that most are sent to her for manuscripts.
These publishers can be so pushy.
She'll deal with them later.
Now for chapter five!
Tea and biscuits at her hand, the heater at her feet,
silence and the night screen like a protective curtain
all around her.
She turns to the beginning to reread
what she has finished and regain the imagined world.
The first paragraph is only a working one,
but it has, she feels, a good title to it:
When Shadows Fall, by Donald Embley.