I felt myself to be a stranger.

The street along which I walked was lit only by the windows of the terraced houses stretching interminably either side of me. All were curtained across, some with swish, home-tailored fabrics, printed with every combination of colourful abstracts, flowers and stripes; others were dowdy and tawdry, no doubt hanging in textures of dust; a few had straggling hems, threadbare patches, frays, tears, nicks and even sickening stains.

One window, as I passed, much to my bewilderment, was completely uncurtained. I could see a single bare bulb flexing from a crumbling rose in the ceiling and shining out with glowing quilts of yellow light across the glistening pavement.

I pulled the coat collar tighter over the adam’s apple, since the wind had taken a renewed tug upon me, mixed with sleety rain and gnawing bonechills.

I stopped, walked back, peered over the squat garden wall into the empty window. I had always wondered what really went on in this town after dark. And, if curtains are drawn together, there must be a reason for so doing. And, if undrawn, there may be just some clue…

Within my over-large wellington boots, I stood on tiptoes, but still could not see much beyond the bulb (which I now realised was within a transparent shade), the peeling blistered wallpaper (or was that just the pattern?) and a tallboy chest with what looked like rags (or clothes at a loose end) hanging out of the ill-fitting drawers. There were some miniatures on the wall, which were too far away to make out. The large carriage clock below them on the chipped baroque mantelpiece told a time which seemed to have stopped for more years than it had stood there.

The longer I loitered and stared, the more details of the interior emerged. There was actually someone standing by the mantelpiece, leaning upon it, the pipe in his mouth giving off more smoke than billowed from the local factory and disfiguring his face. He was evidently sounding off to a person sitting under the window inside the room. Perhaps a girl with eyes weltering in pools of tears. Then the words themselves could be heard, as the man by the fireplace got his gander up and pitched his voice further into the street:

“You slut! A daughter of mine dressed. . . like that! I can very nearly see every bit of your body which God gave you to hide. I’ll tell you again, you’re not going out till you’ve changed into your winceyette…”

I crawled over the sodden front garden and cowered under the window-sill to hear the girl’s response:

“All my friends dress like this to go to the dance band. . . And ... And. . . You only say what you do because you’re jealous! Your eyes are always all over me! No wonder Mum has taken to her bed…”

There was a crunch, then, and silence.

Desperately trying to scurry back on hands and knees to the pavement, I must have missed the most significant bit for, eventually, I saw that the carriage clock had disappeared and worms of smoke crawled along the mantelpiece.

And a girl’s face gradually slid like a red sunset over the glass of the window, with all the clockwork of her head hanging out on springs of blood...

I shrugged and forged on quickly, since the weather was settling in. I shivered, pretty pleased that all the other windows in the street were still firmly curtained, and disappeared as a stranger into the night.


(published 'Skeleton Crew' 1990)