Free Strange Stories by Robert Aickman

arise later; even though Stephen had fully and sincerely intended it.
    The next morning, very early the next morning, Nell vouchsafed to Stephen an unusual but wonderful breakfast - if one could apply so blurred a noun to so far-fetched a repast.
    Stephen piled into his civil service raiment, systematically non-committal. He was taking particular trouble not to see his own bare back in any looking glass. Fortunately, there was no such thing in the dim bathroom.
    ‘Goodbye, my Nell. Before the weekend we shall be free.’
    He supposed that she knew what a weekend was. By now, it could hardly be clearer that she knew almost everything that mattered in the least.
    But, during that one night, the whole flat seemed to have become dark green, dark grey, plain black: patched everywhere, instead of only locally, as when they had arrived. Stephen felt that the walls, floors, and ceilings were beginning to advance towards one another. The knick-knacks were de-materializing most speedily. When life once begins to move, it can scarcely be prevented from setting its own pace. The very idea of intervention becomes ridiculous.
    What was Nell making of these swift and strange occurrences? All Stephen was sure of was that it would be unwise to take too much for granted. He must hew his way out; if necessary, with a bloody axe, as the man in the play put it.
    Stephen kissed Nell ecstatically. She was smiling as he shut the door. She might smile, off and on, all day, he thought; smile as she foraged.
    ***
    By that evening, he had drawn a curtain, thick enough even for Elizabeth to have selected, between his homebound self and the events of the daylight.
    There was no technical obstacle to his retirement, and never had been. It was mainly the size of his pension that was affected; and in his new life he seemed able to thrive on very little. A hundred costly substitutes for direct experience could be rejected. An intense reality, as new as it was old, was burning down on him like clear sunlight or heavenly fire or poetry.
    It was only to be expected that his colleagues should shrink back a little. None the less, Stephen had been disconcerted by how far some of them had gone. They would have been very much less concerned, he fancied, had he been an acknowledged defector, about to stand trial. Such cases were now all in the day’s work: there were routines to be complied with, though not too strictly. Stephen realized that his appearance was probably against him. He was not sure what he looked like from hour to hour, and he was taking no steps to find out.
    Still, the only remark that was passed, came from Toby Strand, who regularly passed remarks.
    ‘Good God, Stephen, you’re looking like death warmed up. I should go home to the wife. You don’t want to pass out in this place.’
    Stephen looked at him.
    ‘Oh God, I forgot. Accept my apology.’
    ‘That’s perfectly all right, Toby,’ said Stephen. ‘And as for the other business, you’ll be interested to learn that I’ve decided to retire.’
    ‘Roll on the day for one and all,’ said Toby Strand, ever the vox populi.
    Mercifully, Stephen’s car had been restored to a measure of health, so that the discreet bodywork gleamed slightly in the evening lustre as he drove into the rented parking space.
    ‘Nell, we can leave at cockcrow!’
    ***
    ‘I forgot about buying you that dress.’
    He was standing in his bath gown, looking at her in the wide bed. The whole flat was narrowing and blackening, and at that early hour the electric light was even weaker than usual.
    ‘I shan’t need a dress.’
    ‘You must want a change sometime.’
    ‘No. I want nothing to change.’
    He gazed at her. As so often, he had no commensurate words.
    ‘We’ll stop somewhere on the way,’ he said.
    They packed the rehabilitated car with essentials for the simple life; with things to eat and drink on the journey and after arrival. Stephen, though proposing to buy Nell a dress, because one never knew