Happy Name

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This short story by Anna Kavan originally appeared in the December 1954 edition of The London Magazine.

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It had never occurred to Miss Letty that her father was tempting providence when he gave the name Letitia to his only child. But she preferred the abbreviation, which was used by everybody at her old home. And now, though for a long time she hadn’t heard it, it was definitely as Miss Letty that she entered her dream … bringing in from the garden a basket of summer flowers, which she would arrange like exploding rainbows in the dark old formal rooms.

The door shut behind her, hiding the bright day, and was itself hidden behind a gloomy tapestry hung from a halberd. In the mirror across the dim hall, Miss Letty faced the tall pale girl with her basket, her height accentuated by the long skirt, her thin neck elongated by the stiff stand-up collar, so that she had a little the look of a solitary long-necked bird, wading and peering out warily from the shadows. Narrow windows and panelled walls, nearly black, made this hall a dark cave, even at midday in midsummer. Like all the surrounding rooms, it was full of shadows, and of large heavy dark ancient things that seemed to have grown there, like stalactites: huge immoveable pieces of blackish furniture and faded brocades; massively framed indistinct portraits lowering from the walls; antique weapons; and the dusty disintegrating heads of strange beasts, only resembling nature in their staring, baleful or sad or accusing eyes. But where a stranger would probably have found all this moribund and forbidding, Miss Letty saw only the changeless familiarity of her ancestral home. Here, and nowhere else in the world, was where she belonged; she was at home and at one with her surroundings, as she looked from one door to another, considering which room to decorate first.

Not her father’s study, of course: the master of the house did not care for her kaleidoscopic floral arrangements; or indeed, for flowers at all, except in the garden, their proper place. If flowers must be brought indoors – and, with indulgent male superiority, he conceded the point, humouring the feminine whim – at least let there be dignity in their arrangement, a congruity of kind and colour; not a mad riot of brilliance, only appropriate in a gypsy’s caravan.

Miss Letty glanced down guiltily at her basket, overflowing with a bright unseemly jumble of poppies and larkspurs, columbines, marigolds, zinnias, peonies, canterbury bells – overflowing literally, she observed; an obstreperous tangle of cornflowers and scabious had fallen on to the floor, and she snatched the flowers up hurriedly. But as fast as she put them back in the basket, others escaped, flamboyantly declaring their presence, deliberately trying to draw attention to themselves, and so give her away.

Suddenly nervous, she glanced about, half expecting to see her father emerge from the shadows, though he seldom left his own rooms. Suddenly there was an atmosphere of repression and disapproval. Hundreds of times before, she had filled the house with flowers of every colour under the sun, only avoiding his special precints, and seen no harm in it. But now she felt ashamed as if she’d done so behind his back, remembering her childhood and his fulminations against deceit, that craven sin of the low-born, unthinkable in a person of breeding. The contents of her basket, no longer innocent, had become an embarrassment, to be disposed of without delay … but somehow this seemed beyond her powers. …

Again she met the pale mirrored face, all eyes, poised warily on the thin neck; suddenly, apprehensively, it darted aside. The study door opened: and she, caught in the senseless panic of dreams, could neither speak nor move. She was the culprit, caught in the underhand act, with her flaring basket. She did not dare to look at the tall finely-built man, somewhat formidable in his aspect of stern authority, but kept her eyes on the mass of flowerheads, some of which shattered, and spilled their vivid incriminating petals about her feet. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she knelt to gather them up, sweeping them together clumsily, crushing the silky frivolous shreds in her unsteady hands, made more awkward by her acute awareness of the tall figure towering over her like a symbol of rectitude. There she crouched, like a humble suppliant before him. …

‘What a baby she is still … playing with pretty flowers. …’

Was it possible that she’d heard aright? That he wasn’t angry? That after all she had not offended … ? Could her severe undemonstrative father have spoken so mildly and playfully? She really didn’t dare to believe in the fantastic moment, as, still more incredible, his hand fell and lingered in vague paternal benevolence on her hair.

‘Pretty hair, Letty. … Fine soft hair. …’ The hand, faintly lemon-scented, shaped itself to her skull, the fingers gently putting aside the controlling ribbon, feeling the bony shape through the thick auburn waves. ‘And a good head … a well-bred little head. … l’m proud of my girl. …’

Now there could be no more doubt; no possibility of mistake. All of a sudden her love surged up out of the improbable guilty moment, while she knelt at his feet. Like a djinn magically released, it swelled enormously, towering above them both, tremendous and overwhelming. Miss Letty kept still as a mouse, never stirring, in case a movement should break the miraculous fragile bubble-moment and its treasure be lost – the precious rarity of his displayed affection.

‘But you’re not really my little girl any longer, are you? You’re a grown-up young lady … soon you’ll forget your old father – go off and leave him. …’

The not-quite-genuine playfulness of his voice did not, and was not meant, to disguise the underlying reproach. And this was too much for her. The whole implication that it was in her power to assert herself independently, even to hurt him, was too much for her to accept immediately … coming so suddenly and unexpectedly into her lifetime of humble childish obedience; too disturbing. His signet ring caught in her hair; she gasped, putting up her hand, using the barely perceptible pain as a pretext for breaking away from a too-confusing emotion.

Her father, however, still persisted, perhaps experiencing an unimaginable moment of loneliness, saying with a smile: ‘Promise you’ll stay, then … promise not to leave your old father alone. …’

The quick adjustment already made now, she could accept the splendid advancement to the responsibility of a near-equal, as love mounted in cloudlike waves, filling the world with its instantaneous blinding architecture, leaving no room for doubt. He needed her. … This was her magnificent prize … for which she gladly exchanged childhood’s carefree protection and privilege. ‘Never. … Of course I’ll never leave you. …’ Suddenly she felt a woman’s indignation because he had thought it necessary to exact a promise. The djinn subsided tamely, once more under control: the incredible moment was over.

But for a little longer Miss Letty remained entranced by her new status, which gave her, as she grew accustomed to it, a sense of adult importance. She couldn’t help gloating over it a little, until she noticed that in the meantime her father had disappeared.

He had only gone back to his study, she told herself several times, but was not reassured. An unaccountable uneasiness suddenly possessed her; she repeated that he must be in one of his rooms as if she were afraid that he might not be in the house at all. … ‘I’ll go and find him,’ she decided, to settle the matter. At once she took a few steps forward, cautiously surveying the shadows ahead, like a heron exploring a pool … then paused uncertainly, darting quick nervous glances in all directions. Impossible as it was for change to break into this house, something seemed different; she was no longer entirely at ease. During the brief period of her preoccupation, something seemed to have happened, irrevocable, by which everything else was effected … nothing was, or ever could be, quite the same as before. Attempting to comfort herself by recalling her father’s display of affection, she could only remember him as aloof and severe; all she could hear was the voice of terrifying politeness he used in anger. She must find him: only his actual presence could banish these vague alarms. But what if he’d really gone … left the house, without telling her where he was going? In spite of the extreme improbability of such an act on the part of one whose comings and goings had an almost ritual fixity, she couldn’t get rid of the unnerving idea.

Pivoting on her thin neck, her head twisted and turned in bird-like attitudes, then suddenly froze, listening intently. Not a sound could she hear. But this only made more disturbing her fixed conviction that something had entered a distant part of the house – something frightening. Fear itself had come in, and was coming towards her. … A sequence of quickly dissolving views passed before her mind’s eye: the wings and turrets, all the odd bays and excrescences, added at different epochs, with their labyrinthine connecting passages, their anterooms, steps up or down; all the complicated geography of the outlying parts of the mansion, in use, or crumbling into decay. It wasn’t easy to find the way through: it took time. Long before whatever had entered came anywhere near her, she would be safe with her father, in whose presence fear could not exist.

Timid but resolute now, she resumed her advance, as if to storm the black wall of shadows under the gallery. She could no longer see the doors, for suddenly twilight had fallen; here, in the depth of the hall, it was already dark. Her outstretched hand, gliding over the panels, met a doorknob and turned it: it wasn’t the right room, so on she went to the next … afterwards opening several doors in succession. Like a row of loyal retainers, each door conscientiously promised protection, closing against all intruders with a reassuringly final thud. But none of the thick old heavy doors led to the study; though each in turn revealed a room which at the first glance seemed the one she wanted … each room was almost the right one. …

An indescribable unsureness had come upon her; a sensation which, in her own home, seemed both baffling and very sad. All the rooms were alike in the deepening dusk, hushed and immense, their solemn monumental furnishings presided over somewhat menacingly by brooding chandeliers. In some she heard clocks ticking. And once a twig scratched on the window pane like a conspirator’s nail – she hurried out of that room, shutting the door upon its unheard message. The next she recognized by its majestic size as the drawing-room, and was on the point of retiring again, when a graceful shape like a gondola’s gilded prow swam out of the shadows, thrusting towards her as if it had something to say; it was the harp her dead mother had played. No one had played on it since, the neglected strings hung down loose and broken; and they twanged so lugubriously when she touched them in vague sympathy, that she fled from their sound also.

‘Hurry! Don’t waste any more time!’ she suddenly whispered, with a new urgent sense of the threat of that unknown thing, still far off, but coming steadily nearer … closer to her every second … moving shadowless through the house … with soundless relentless tread … the abstraction of fear. ‘I must make haste,’ she told herself, pushing the blouse into her belt with a schoolgirl’s gesture that stood for defiance. The folds of her skirt flew out like spread wings as she sped away.

Breathless, coming to a door which should not have been there, she paused to get her bearings. Of course she couldn’t be lost in her own home … it was too absurd. Yet somehow she couldn’t quite make out where she was … which door could be opening in front of her, inviting her in. Unsure of her ground, she went forward dubiously, poised hesitant, ready for instant flight, on the threshold. A man’s silhouette stood against the dusk-filled window: as she saw it, all her nervousness vanished, and she went in eagerly, holding out both her hands: ‘Father!’

It was, however, a very much younger man, who came to meet her so quickly that before she could drop her hands he had clasped them tight. With the dim light behind him she hadn’t seen his face; and now it was hidden, bent over her hands as though he wanted to kiss them. She pulled away. But he wouldn’t release her, talking urgently, fast, in argument or persuasion.

Miss Letty didn’t listen to what he was saying. She refused to hear, or to look at him, only wanting to go to her father. It made no sense in the world that a young man should try to persuade her to do something, go somewhere, with him. She felt the ominous pressure of memories she refused to admit. She would not remember him, recognize him. He was nothing to her. She waited simply to be allowed to go. Only, when the sound of his desperate pleading brought home to her the fact that he really was deeply moved, she thought, ‘How strange,’ feeling something begin to stir in her like an awakening.

But just at this moment he gave up, let go of her hands, turned in a queer blind groping towards a chair, dropped his face in his hands. For a second she stood looking down at his bowed shoulders and ruffled hair – the whole posture so young and unhappy – and her hand started through the air tentatively, as if it might touch him. But before the gesture was complete she forgot it, her hand returned slowly to her side … as whatever it was in her that had scarcely started its life expired without pain. Thinking only of finding her father she hurried out, and shut the door after her.

Somebody was waiting for her outside, she perceived, unalarmed … feeling an emanation of well-known warmth and protection … even before she caught sight of a milky moon floating in deepest shadow; the mild moon face of the old governess, who had loved and taught her, and kept her motherless childhood from loneliness. Miss Letty could feel the whole climate of yesterday … sunshine, security, trust, tranquil affection … for a moment the shabby old schoolroom was there, smelling of ink and chocolate and the papery looking tea roses around the open window … where the governess sat sewing, her lap full of coloured skeins. ‘You’ll help me find father, won’t you?’ she said, with a child’s habit of trustfulness, coming back to her present search.

To her surprise there was no answer. Doubt beginning to dawn in her, she strained her eyes, trying to see the face so close to hers; which remained obstinately a blurred moon, expression indistinguishable; it seemed divided from her by a new strangeness. Some reassurance she had confidently expected to find there was, for the first time, absent; and its absence struck the first clear note of dismay. Change had deprived her of this support which had never failed. A shadowy stranger seemed to be standing there … grown larger than life … blocking her way when she tried to pass … gripping her by the wrist. Suddenly all sunshine was gone from the world, all affection; there was no more trust. One of those wandering draughts which, regardless of season, frequent the passages of large old houses, now stole past, bringing the chill of the approaching night, sweeping away the sunny vision of childhood … to which she longed desperately, hopelessly, to return.

‘Listen, Letty – I must warn you. …’ The shadow began to address her, not in ordinary speech, but by means of some interior mode of communication, wordless, supernatural, impossible to escape. ‘Don’t do what I did – Don’t make the same mistake … of trying to live for others … as I have … so that I’ve had no life, no child, of my own. You must live your own life. You can’t live for or through other people. Don’t run away from your life. Letty. … Go back now, to the man who loves you … needs you … while it’s still possible … before it’s too late. …’

In astonished alarm, Miss Letty could only say: ‘Father loves me – and he needs me …’ more by way of protest than in response to this voiceless exhortation … of which she only confusedly understood that she’d been urged to return to the situation she had just left, with all its dangerous memories and associations. They seemed to gather in a black amorphous mass overhead, threatening to descend upon her. Surely this couldn’t be the kind old governess, who had always come between her and anything sad or bad – she wouldn’t want to bring down such a crushing weight on her head. … Her wide scared eyes stared at the shadowy jailer, who held her fast, and, aware of her doubts, said silently – perhaps through the touch of her unseen fingers: ‘Trust me, Letty, dear … I’ve always loved you like my own child. I’d never hurt you or tell you to do anything wrong. … I simply want you to enjoy the happiness I’ve missed. Your life is just starting. … Because I love you I can’t bear to see you in danger. … I must warn you not to make a fatal mistake. … It’s so important – your future … your whole life … depends on what you do now. … Think over my warning, child. … Think carefully, I implore you. …’

But poor Miss Letty could think of nothing but that impending threat, and the chasm which now seemed to be opening before her. ‘I promised I wouldn’t leave Father!’ she cried. And, feeling herself being driven towards the precipice of an impossible choice, she tugged at her wrist, vainly trying to free it from the other’s invisible grip.

‘But he will leave you,’ the remorseless inward voice continued. ‘Your father won’t be there always. … Your life will still go on afterwards. … Have you thought that you might be left quite alone when he’s gone?’

Although she couldn’t exclude the words, conveyed into her nerves and bloodstream, Miss Letty closed her mind to their meaning, sensing something unspeakable, blasphemous, of which she would know nothing. With all her might she rejected this abomination, refusing it with such intense aversion that, without really knowing what she was struggling against, she at length succeeded in freeing herself, and darted off.

‘This may be your only chance – don’t throw it away. …’ Some such words accompanied her as an interior echo, while she stumbled, half running, along dim corridors where their warning sound gradually faded out. Her agitation evaporated, she forgot why she was hurrying, as soon as she saw that her blind flight had brought her to a passage, terminating in a certain door – she recognized it at once, distinguishing it from every other door in the house, by the dull gleam of gilt wreaths on the architrave.

At last she was in sight of safety, alone except for the shadows, which had been her companions so long that she regarded them indulgently, like strays that had attached themselves to her, loyal, though rather stupid. They must mean to protect her by standing in front of the door, thinking that there was danger on the other side; not realizing, the silly shadows, that this was the door of her father’s room, where fear could not enter. Like stubborn black cattle they bunched there and wouldn’t move; she had to push her way through them with swimming strokes, thrust them aside, before she could reach the door.

Most strangely, here, the fear which had hitherto kept its distance, remotely stalking her through the house, suddenly came quite close – right at the entrance to safety, it suddenly seemed to touch her. She looked wildly about. Nothing was to be seen but the shadows. Yet fear, and the smell of fear, unmistakeable, filled the air … so close and strong that for a moment she couldn’t breathe … her hand flew up to her collar, too tight suddenly – choking her.

Calling upon some last reserve of ancestral pride, Miss Letty stood firm … telling herself that fear had arrived too late … here, at the very door of the sanctuary, it could not harm her. One more step, and she would be safe. But this last step was harder to take than all the rest put together. Strength had deserted her body; and now, assailed by a premonition of mortal dread, even her spirit began to fail. Before she could lift her hand, encased in a leaden glove, to the doorknob, eternities of time and effort elapsed.

And, when at last the door opened, a terrible sound arose. The house cried out. At first not very loudly. But as room after room added its composite voice with all the voices of its contents, the cry spread like an organ note in swelling volume, from cellars to eaves and ridgepoles and to the outermost walls, making a soundingbox of the great house; the countless separate cries merged in one vast lamentation – a cry of anguish, cosmic, elemental. Such a sound magnified to infinity, as a mighty tree could be thought to give, after centuries, meeting its end, not by the clean stroke of axe or lightning, but through the base crawling stranglehold of a parasite, or rotting taint of internal corruption.

Floor, walls, ceiling, and the space between were all vibrating with this appalling sound, as, crying, ‘Father, save me!’ Miss Letty plunged through the door into the further room. She didn’t hear her own voice; her hands covered her ears. Silence – to escape into silence: that was her only thought, her one need. Nothing else in the world mattered. There was nothing else in the world … but this fearful resonance … going on and on … even here, within the walls she had believed inviolable. So the shadows had been right, it seemed, after all. … It was here, in this room, where she had expected to be secure from all dangers, that fear waited for her … on the other side of the door, while she stood on the threshold, fear had pushed past her and entered the sanctuary … which was no sanctuary at all. …

There was very little light in the room; but enough to show her the high still shape on the bed, which was fear’s own shape. With all her will she tried not to see it … indeed, she had hardly looked in that direction. Her glance had swerved, almost before it got to the bed, deflected by some warning instinct; with a bird’s glancing swiftness, it had darted away. But in that split second, fear, blazing through her eyes, reached her central being, and left there its indelible imprint. What she had seen in that minute fragment of time she now knew … and could never un-know. With awful hopelessness, she felt the knowledge embedded deeply in her, for ever more. The vague memory of a premonition made it seem that she had had a nightmare come true.

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Meanwhile, the dream having failed to achieve its object, the dreamer began to wake. She felt some new horror of change impending; an end was approaching that was more a beginning; but the beginning of something already hated, far too well known. She kept her eyes sealed against this despised repetition; she would shut out the intrusive unwanted light. But other senses, less easily controlled, made the exclusion futile, forcing recognition upon her.

The room where she was had its distinctive smell, faint, elusive, hard to define; harder still not to recognize. She couldn’t avoid the smell of dust and uncared-for age; or the atmosphere of impersonal dreary discouragement, peculiar to this type of cheap hotel room, not too clean, and both cold and stuffy. The furniture, assembled, regardless of suitability, by a process of rejection from other rooms, was here undergoing its last spell of usefulness on the way to the scrapheap; it exhaled something of the despairing patience, not even reproachful, of broken-down horses performing their final labours before being sent to the knacker’s yard. A few scattered personal possessions, salvaged from a prosperity dead and gone, seemed lost and unhappy, unable to assert their intrinsic merit in the proximity of so many objects devoid of all dignity, the very pathos of which was obscured by the general meanness.

One of these incongruous marooned relics was the first thing to meet Miss Letty’s reluctantly opening eyes: a framed painting of a country house in parklike grounds, which hung, slightly crooked, at the end of a knotted string. Lying motionless on the narrow bed, she kept her eyes fastened on the picture, the only thing in the room she could bear to see. She couldn’t bear to take her eyes off her home – there it stood, a big white house with a columned façade. To her fixed gaze, it seemed to be losing the smallness and flatness and the prettiness of the conventional painting; assuming the size and stereoscopic aspect of the real thing … as she hastened backward and inward into herself, in pursuit of her dream.

It sometimes happened that, if she were quick and determined enough, she could catch in this way the escaping dream and re-enter it through the picture. Occasionally, at the moment of waking, the picture would become real and allow her to enter: she would go in and walk up through the long flowery grass of the painted meadows where cattle grazed by the stream … across the sloping lawns with their cedars … right up to the door of her home.

But not this time. She couldn’t pay the admission price of undeviating attention. Something else was all the time worrying her, clamouring for her notice. She stirred in one of the passing physical discomforts of age, her hand straying restlessly over the cotton bed-spread, her eyes still fixed on the picture. Suddenly the feeling of the cheap material got through fingertips to her brain – her heart gave a sudden jump; picture and dream were forgotten.

Why was she lying on her bed, fully dressed, in broad daylight? As always now in circumstances that were in the least unusual, she felt panic floundering like a clumsy bird in her head and chest; its flapping wings dispersed her thoughts in all directions; made her heart pound in confused agitation. Was she ill? Immediately she clapped one hand over her mouth, as though it had spoken aloud a forbidden word. ‘Oh, no … I mustn’t be ill,’ she whispered. ‘Whatever happens, I mustn’t.’ She manoeuvred her stiff old body off the edge of the creaking bed, and the floor tilted alarmingly, so that she had to cling for a moment to the iron bed rail. ‘Oh, Lord, let me not be ill. …’ With this fervent prayer, she was launched on the voyage across the room, steering a precarious zigzag course, like an old damaged cargo boat left behind by the convoy, through the clutter of nameless oddments- – empty cardboard boxes, stacks of old magazines. …

By the time she got to the mirror, sweat made every wrinkle a glistening thread. Indifferently she dabbed her handkerchief at the glazed face, netted with lines as if held in a shiny string-bag, which looked back from the clouded glass. Hot and heavy and damp, her hair clung to her neck and forehead. She poked a bony finger into the clinging mass, lifting it here and there from the scalp … while, like a fish rising from the depths of a murky pool, a long-lost recollection came back from the past – her father forbidding her to cut off her hair like everyone else, saying it was an ugly decadent fashion, and that he liked to look at her pretty hair. ‘But I’m the one who’s had the bother of it all these years,’ she grumbled, resentfully tugging a comb through the greyish waves. Suddenly she felt resentful as though her father had left her the legacy of some useless exigent pet, always requiring attention. She was hot and tired now, and aching in all her joints, and yet she must waste on it some of her meagre strength. …

Interrupting her grievance, a peremptory booming began in the depths of the house, mounting in frantic metallic waves, impossible to ignore. Miss Letty faced the door: but for the moment could get no further towards obeying the imperious summons, immobilized by a sense of nauseated refusal in mind and body. As though the food were already in front of her, she felt the strange acrobatics of sickness, somersaulting and swinging up from her stomach to close her throat.

In the midst of this sick preoccupation, she suddenly clenched her hands, thinking: ‘Mrs Coe mustn’t know there’s anything wrong with me.’ She knew the proprietress wanted to get rid of her, and would gladly make illness the pretext for turning her out, so that the room could be let to a more prosperous, more profitable tenant. Once she had stayed in bed for a few days with influenza. And the proprietress, who rarely exchanged a word with the less important guests, had visited her room and conversed meaningly of staff difficulties and the carrying of trays to invalids, staring fixedly at her all the time; thus informing her, as clearly as if she had said it in so many words, that there must be no more illness … or else – Duly intimidated, Miss Letty had lived ever since in terror of falling ill. What would happen to her if she had to leave? Where would she ever find another room as cheap as this one? The mere thought of having to search for a new home, pack all her belongings, made the bird of panic set up a disastrous flapping inside her.

Now she forced her old bones into motion, fighting down bodily weakness like an enemy, almost too strong, yet held rigorously in subjection. Emerging on to the grimy staircase, the three flights to the ground floor faced her with an ordeal on which she embarked forthwith, giving herself no time to be daunted. A painful reluctant heaviness was in all her limbs. To lower her awkward unwilling frame from one step to the next was an undertaking, an achievement both of balance and will-power; the whole descent an enterprise which could succeed only through the absolute concentration of all her forces. She was entirely absorbed in this effort of locomotion, her head empty of everything but a rune, a rhymed incantation, ‘Mrs Coe mustn’t know,’ which continued to echo long after its meaning was lost.

In due course, Miss Letty arrived on the lower landing, in sight of her destination. A steamy clatter came through the open door of the dining-room, the smell of today’s greens mingling with the aroma of past meals. She noticed none of this, however, still utterly absorbed, alone with the intensity of the effort not yet complete, isolated by preoccupation, as if in a different world. When another door opened closer to her she remained equally unaware; oblivious of the two people who came out on to the landing. Before she realized what was happening, the proprietress was nearly on top of her. Suddenly looking up, there she saw the big woman, her bosom jutting forward aggressively, almost hiding the man at her side.

‘It’s not fair, doctor,’ she was saying to this man indignantly. ‘I can’t be responsible. … It’s unfair to the staff. … She must go if she’s no better tomorrow. You’ll just have to find a bed for her somewhere. … She can’t stay here.’

Miss Letty, at the first sound of that frightening voice, had stopped in her tracks. The angry complaining voice, bursting so violently and abruptly into the silent privacy of her single-minded endeavour, had shocked her like the trump of doom, with its terrible words that unerringly travelled straight to her deepest dread. Her heart gave one struggling leap, dashing against the wall of her chest, then fell back and did not move again. She stood absolutely rigid in frozen terror between the stairs and the dangerous bosom. Even her heart had stopped dead; but, as in dreams, the stairs rose like a flock of birds, soaring up past her hair. She didn’t hear whether the proprietress said anything more, or whether a reply came from the man holding the little bag. She was listening to the silence of her unmoving heart.

But then all at once she became aware of the two faces looking at her: one large, white and menacing, but also clownish, the mouth painted thickly a sticky red; the other melancholy, with the drooping jowls of a sad hound. They seemed suddenly to have appeared there, she saw them very closely and plainly, and somehow significantly, because, from all the chaos of her agitation, they had emerged, like a pair of birds flying quietly out of a raging storm. There was a sense of something meaningful and mysterious, almost magic, not in the faces themselves, but about their coming. It sent a peculiar spasm through her, and her heart began beating again.

Now Miss Letty could start to collect herself. She still felt confused; but she was no longer frightened, now that she’d seen Mrs Coe’s clownish face. That gaudy mouth … nothing, surely, but buffoonery could come out of it … the dreadful words it had spoken could mean no more than the crude cruel jokes of the ring – she knew that they didn’t concern her. Seeing the stairs lying quietly in their proper place, proffering the example of their orderly patient descent, she braced her shoulders and stiffened her spine, standing bolt upright, lean and lank and sapless inside the voluminous black garments, which hung on her loosely, as on a gaunt scarecrow made of bean sticks and as tall as a grenadier. Her face had already put on automatically its public protective screen. The old skin, mapped with wrinkles and broken veins, was like a mask assumed deliberately. Her whole decrepit antique exterior seemed a sort of grotesque disguise, behind which she withdrew herself from the watching eyes.

Getting into difficult motion again, she inclined her head slightly, in by-gone formal politeness, as she passed the onlookers, resuming the laboured descent, which, to them, scarcely seemed to have been interrupted. Stiffly, slowly, jerkily, with infinite caution and immense resolution, she went on down the stairs, as though these two people no longer existed.

But they still looked after her, held by some peculiar magnetism, to which they had both unconsciously surrendered; deserting for the moment their own affairs in order to follow this erratic progress; which should have seemed laughable, like the dusty-looking bedraggled black, which somehow failed to make its wearer a figure of fun.

For a few seconds longer they stood there, unsmiling and in vague discomfort; vaguely aware of something unfamiliar and powerful to which they could give no name and by which they seemed obscurely diminished. It was as though their positions had been reversed, and, instead of the more-or-less contemptuous assurance of their normal attitude, they felt momentarily at a disadvantage … inferior in some way to that old image … who completely ignored them … resolutely going her way … placing each step with the meticulous accuracy and circumspection of some outlandish solitary bird of an almost extinct species.

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Anna Kavan was a British novelist, short story writer and painter.

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