Short Stories 1927-1956 Page 9

  ‘Have visited Willows,’ ran his ultimatum. ‘Immensely sorry. Nothing doing. All gone. Am emphatically convinced only course to keep exclusively to text. Strongly advise complete abandonment of the ineffable Cyril. Heaven be with you. Writing. Ronnie Forbes.’

  He then withdrew J.C.’s scrap of paper from his pocket-book and slipped it without any accompaniment into a stamped envelope – a little fly-blown – which the old lady supplied from a wooden drawer on the other side of the counter. On this he scribbled Mrs Cotton’s address, and having stuck it down, himself dropped it – with a sigh just nicely enough tinged with regret – into the little red box outside.

  * First published in Blackwood’s Magazine, September 1929.

  Crewe*

  When murky winter dusk begins to settle over the railway station at Crewe, its first-class waiting-room grows steadily more stagnant. Particularly if one is alone in it. The long grimed windows do little more than sift the failing light that slopes in on them from the glass roof outside and is too feeble to penetrate into the recesses beyond. And the grained massive black-leathered furniture becomes less and less inviting. It appears to have been made for a scene of extreme and diabolical violence that one may hope will never occur. One can hardly at any rate imagine it to have been designed by a really good man!

  Little things like this of course are apt to become exaggerated in memory, and I may be doing the Company an injustice. But whether this is so or not – and the afternoon I have in mind is now many years distant – I certainly became more acutely conscious of the defects of my surroundings when the few fellow-travellers who had been sharing this dreadful apartment with me had hurried out at the clang of a bell for the down train, leaving me to wait for the up. And nothing and nobody, as I supposed, but a great drowsy fire of cinders in the iron grate for company.

  The almost animated talk that had sprung up before we parted, never in this world to meet again, had been occasioned by an account in the morning’s newspapers of the last voyage of a ship called the Hesper. She had come in the evening before, and some days overdue, with a cargo of sugar from the West Indies, and was now berthed safely in the Southampton Docks. This seemed to have been something of a relief to those concerned. For even her master had not refused to admit that certain mysterious and tragic events had recently occurred on board, though he preferred not to discuss them with a reporter. He agreed, even with the reporter, however, that there had been a full moon at the time, that, apart from a heavy swell, the sea was ‘as calm as a mill-pond’, and that his ship was at present in want of a second mate. But the voyage of the Hesper is now, of course, an old tale many times told. And I myself, having taken very little part in the discussion, had by that time wearied of her mysteries and had decided to seek the lights and joys and coloured bottles of the refreshment room, when a voice from out of the murk behind me suddenly broke the hush. It was an unusual voice, rapid, incoherent and internal, like that of a man in a dream or under the influence of a drug.

  I shifted my high-backed ungainly chair and turned to look. Evidently this, the only other occupant of the room, had until that moment been as unaware of my presence in it as I of his. Indeed he seemed to have been completely taken aback at finding he was not alone. He had started up from out of his obscure corner beyond the high window and was staring across at me out of his flat greyish face in unconcealed stupefaction. He seemed for a moment or two to be in doubt even of what I was. Then he sighed, a sigh that ended in a long shuddering yawn. ‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘I supposed —’

  But he interrupted me – and not as if my company, now that he had recognized me as a fellow creature, was any the less welcome for being unexpected.

  ‘Merely what I was saying, sir,’ he was mildly explaining, ‘is that those gentlemen there who have just left us had no more notion of what they were talking about than an infant in the cradle.’

  This elegant paraphrase, I realized, bore only the feeblest resemblance to the violent soliloquy I had just overheard. I looked at him. ‘How so?’ I said. ‘I am only a landsman myself, but …’

  It had seemed unnecessary to finish the sentence – I have never seen anyone less marine in effect than he was. He had shifted a little nearer and was now, his legs concealed, sitting on the extreme edge of his vast wooden sofa – a smallish man, but muffled up in a very respectable great-coat at least two sizes too large for him, his hands thrust deep into its pockets.

  He continued to stare at me. ‘You don’t have to go to sea for things like that,’ he went on. ‘And there’s no need to argue about it if you do. Still it wasn’t my place to interfere. They’ll find out all right – all in good time. They go their ways. And talking of that, now, have you ever heard say that there is less risk sitting in a railway carriage at sixty miles an hour than in laying alone, safe, as you might suppose, in your own bed? That’s true, too.’ He glanced round him. ‘You know where you are in a place like this, too. It’s solid, though —’ I couldn’t catch the words that followed, but they seemed to be uncomplimentary to things in general.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘it certainly looks solid.’

  ‘Ah, “looks”,’ he went on cantankerously. ‘But what is your “solid”, come to that? I thought so myself once.’ He seemed to be pondering over the once. ‘But now,’ he added, ‘I know different.’

  With that he rose and, dwarfed a little perhaps by the length of his coat, sallied out of his obscure corner beyond the high window and came to the fire. After warming his veined shrunken hands at the heap of smouldering cinders in the grate under the black marble mantelpiece – he seated himself opposite to me.

  At risk of seeming fastidious, I must confess that now he was near I did not much care for the appearance of this stranger. He might be about to solicit a small loan. In spite of his admirable great-coat he looked in need of a barber, as well as of medicine and sleep – a need that might presently exhibit itself in a hankering for alcohol. But I was mistaken. He asked for nothing, not even sympathy, not even advice. He merely, it seemed, wanted to talk about himself. And perhaps a complete stranger makes a better receptacle for a certain kind of confidence than one’s intimates. He tells no tales.

  Nevertheless I shall attempt to tell Mr Blake’s, and as far as possible in his own peculiar idiom. It impressed me at the time. And I have occasionally speculated since whether his statistics in relation to the risks of railway travel proved trustworthy. Safety first is a sound principle so far as it goes, but we are all of us out-manoeuvred in the end. And I still wonder what end was his.

  He began by asking me if I had ever lived in the country – ‘In the depps of the country’. And then, quickly realizing that I was more inclined to listen than talk, he suddenly plunged into his past. It seemed to refresh him to do so.

  ‘I was a gentleman’s servant when I began,’ he set off; ‘first boot-boy under a valet, then footman and helping at table, then pantry work and so on. Never married or anything of that; petticoats are nothing but encumbrances in the house. But I must say if you keep yourself to yourself, it sees you through – in time. What you have to beware of is those of your own calling. Domestic. That’s the same everywhere; nobody’s reached much past the cat-and-dog stage in that. Not if you look close enough; high or low. I lost one or two nice easy places all on that account. Jealousy. And if you don’t stay where you are put there’s precious little chance of pickings when the funeral’s at the door. But that’s mostly changed, so I’m told; high wages and no work being the order of the day; and gratitude to follow suit. They are all rolling stones nowadays, and never mind the moss.’

  As a philosopher this white-faced muffled-up old creature seemed to affect realism, though his reservations on the ‘solid’ had fallen a little short of it. Not that my reality appeared to matter much – beyond, I mean the mere proof of it. For though in the rather intimate memories he proceeded to share with me he frequently paused to ask a question, he seldom waited for an answer, and then ignored it. I
see now this was not to be wondered at. We happened to be sharing at the moment this – for my part – chance resort and he wanted company – human company.

  ‘The last situation I was in’ (he was going on to tell me), ‘was with the Reverend W. Somers, M.A.: William. In the depps of the country, as I say. Just myself, a young fellow of the name of George, and a woman who came in from the village to char and cook and so on, though I did the best part of that myself. The finishing touches, I mean. How long the Reverend hadn’t cared for females in the house I never knew; but parsons have their share of them, I’m thinking. Not that he wasn’t attached enough to his sister. They had grown up together, nursery to drawing-room, and that covers a multitude of sins.

  ‘Like him, she was, but more of the parrot in appearance; a high face with a beaky nose. Quite a nice lady, too, except that she was mighty slow in being explained to. No interference, generally speaking; in spite of her nose. But don’t mistake me; we had to look alive when she was in the house. Oh, yes. But that, thank God, was seldom. And in the end it made no difference.

  ‘She never took to the vicarage. Who would? I can hear her now – Blake this, and Blake that. Too dark, too vaulty, too shut in. And in winter freezing cold, laying low maybe. Trees in front, everlastings; though open behind with a stream and cornfields and hills in the distance; especially in summer, of course. They went up and down, and dim and dark, according to the weather. You could see for miles from those upper corridor windows – small panes that take a lot of cleaning. But George did the windows. George had come from the village, too, if you could call it a village. But he was a permanency. Nothing much but a few cottages, and an outlying farmhouse here and there. Why the old brick church lay about a mile away from it, I can’t say. To give the Roaring Lion a trot, perhaps. The Reverend had private means – naturally. I knew that before it came out in the will. But it was a nice fat living notwithstanding – worked out at about fifty pounds to the pig-sty, I shouldn’t wonder, with the vicarage thrown in. You get what you’ve got in this world, and some of us enjoy a larger slice than we deserve. But the Reverend, I must say, never took advantage of it. He was a gentleman. Give him his books, and tomorrow like yesterday, and he gave no trouble – none whatever.

  ‘Mind you, he liked things as they should be, and he had some of the finest silver I ever lay finger on; and old furniture to match. I don’t mean furniture picked up at sales and such like, but real old family stuff. That’s where the parrot in the family nose came from. Everything punctual to the minute and the good things good. Soup or fish, a cutlet, a savoury, and a glass of sherry or madeira. No sweets – though he was a lean, spare gentleman, silvery beard and all. And I have never seen choicer fruit than came from his houses and orchard, though it was here the trouble began. Cherries, gages, peaches, nectarines – old red sun-baked walls nine or ten feet high and a sight like wonder in the spring. I used to go out specially to have a look at them. He had his fancies, too, had the Reverend. If any smoking was to be done it must be in the shrubbery with the blackbirds, not under the roof. And sitting there in his study, sir, he could detect the whiff of a cigarette even in the furthest of the attics!

  ‘But tobacco’s not my trouble, never was. Keep off what you don’t need, and you won’t want it when you can’t get it. That’s my feeling. It was, as I say, an easy place, if you forgot how quiet it was – not a sound, no company, and not a soul to be seen. Fair prospects, too, if you could wait. He had no fancy for change, had the Reverend; made no concealment of it. He told me himself that he had remembered me in his will – “if still in his service”. You know how these lawyers put it. As a matter of fact he had given me to understand that if in the meantime for any reason any of us went elsewhere, the one left was to have the lot. But not death. There, as it turned out, I was in error.

  ‘But I’m not complaining of that now. He was a gentleman; and I have enough to see me through however long I’m left. And that might be for a good many years yet.’

  The intonation of this last remark suggested a question. But my confidant made no pause for an answer and added argumentatively, ‘Who wants to go, I should like to ask? Early or late. And nothing known of what’s on the other side?’ He lifted his grey eyebrows a little as if to glance up at me as he sat stooped up by the fire, and yet refrained from doing so. And again I couldn’t enlighten him.

  ‘Well, there, as I say, I might have stayed to this day if the old gentleman’s gardener had cared to stay too. He began it. Him gone, we all went. Like ninepins. You might hardly credit it, sir, but I am the only one left of that complete establishment. Gutted. And that’s where these fine gentlemen here were talking round their hats. What I say is, keep on this side of the tomb as long as you can. Don’t meddle with that hole. Why? Because while some fine day you will have to go down into it, you can never be quite sure while you are here what mayn’t come back out of it.

  ‘There’ll be no partings there – I have heard them trolling that out in them chapels like missel-thrushes in the spring. They seem to forget there may be some mighty unpleasant meetings. And what about the further shore? It’s my belief there’s some kind of a ferry plying on that river. And coming back depends on what you want to come back for.

  ‘Anyhow the vicarage reeked of it. A low old house, with lots of little windows and far too many doors; and, as I say, the trees too close up on one side, almost brushing the glass. No wonder they said it was what they call haunted. You could feel that with your eyes shut, and like breeds like. The Vicar – two or three, I mean, before my own gentleman – had even gone to the trouble of having the place exercised. Candles and holy water, that kind of thing. Sheer flummummery, I call it. But if what I’ve heard there – and long before that gowk of a George came to work in the house – was anything more than mere age and owls and birds in the ivy, it must badly have needed it. And when you get accustomed to noises, you can tell which from which. By usual, I mean. Though more and more I’m getting to ask myself if any thing is anything much more than what you think it is – for the time being.

  ‘Same with noises of course. What’s this voice of conscience that they talk about but something you needn’t hear if you don’t want to? I am not complaining of that. If at the beginning there was anything in that house that was better out than in, it never troubled me; at least, not at first. And the Reverend, even though you could often count his congregation on your ten fingers, except at Harvest Festival, was so wove up in his books that I doubt if he’d have been roused up out of ’em even by the Last Trump. It’s my belief that in those last few weeks – when I stepped in to see to the fire – as often as not he was sitting asleep over them.

  ‘No, I’m not complaining. Live at peace with who you can, I say. But when it comes to as crusty a customer, and a Scotchman at that, as was my friend the gardener, then there’s a limit. Mengus he called himself, though I can’t see how, if you spell it with a z. When I first came into the place it was all gold that glitters. I’m not the man for contentiousness, if let alone. But afterwards, when the rift came, I don’t suppose we ever hardly exchanged the time of day but what there came words of it. A long-legged man he was, this Mr Menzies; too long I should have thought for strict comfort in grubbing and hoeing and weeding. He had ginger hair, scanty, and the same on his face, whiskers – and a stoop. He lived down at the lodge; and his widowed daughter kept house for him, with one little boy as fair as she was dark. Harmless enough as children go, the kind they call an angel, but noisy, and not for the house.

  ‘Now why, I ask you, shouldn’t I pick a little of this gentleman’s precious fruit, or a cucumber for a salad, if need be, and him not there? What if I wanted a few grapes for dessert or a nice apricot tart for the Reverend’s luncheon, and our Mr Menzies gone home or busy with the frames? I don’t hold with all these hard and fast restrictions, at least outside the house. Not he, though! We wrangled about it week in, week out. And him with a temper which once roused was past all reasoning.

/>   ‘Not that I ever took much notice of him until it came to a point past any man’s enduring. I let him rave. But duty is duty, there’s no getting away from that. And when, apart from all this fuss about his fruit, a man takes advantage of what is meant in pure friendliness, well, one’s bound to make a move. Job himself.

  ‘What I mean to say is, I used occasionally – window wide open and all that, the pantry being on the other side of the house and away from the old gentleman’s study – I say I used occasionally, and all in the way of friendliness, to offer our friend a drink. Like as with many of Old Adam’s trade, drink was a little weakness of his, though I don’t mean I hold with it because of that. But peace and quietness is the first thing, and to keep an easy face to all appearances, even if you do find it a little hard at times to forgive and forget.

  ‘When he was civil, as I say, and as things should be, he could have a drink, and welcome. When not, not. But it came to become a kind of habit; and to be expected; which is always a bad condition of things. Oh, it was a thousand pities! There was the Reverend, growing feeble as you could see, and him believing all the while that everything around him was calm and sweet as the new Jerusalem, while there was nothing but strife and agrimony, as they call it, underneath. There’s many a house looks as snug and cosy as a nut. But crack it and look inside! Mildew. Still, our Mr Mengus had “prospects”, up to then.

  ‘Well, there came along at last a mighty hot summer – five years ago, you may remember. Five years ago, next August, an extraordinary hot summer. And an early harvest – necessarily. Day after day I could see the stones in the stubble fields shivering in the sun. And gardening is thirsty work; I will say that for it. Which being so, better surely virgin water from the tap or a drop of cider, same as the harvesters have, than ardent spirits, whether it is what you are bred up to or not! It stands to reason.