The Complete Short Stories

  ‘I saw you in the crowd that Sunday when I was speaking at Hyde Park.’

  ‘What a memory you have!’ said Miss Geddes.

  ‘It must be ten years ago,’ he said.

  ‘My nephew has altered his opinion of Christmas,’ she explained. ‘He always comes home for Christmas now, and don’t we have a jolly time, Johnnie?’

  ‘Rather!’ he said. ‘Oh, let me cut the cake.’

  He was very excited about the cake. With a flourish he dug a large knife into the side. The knife slipped, and I saw it run deep into his finger. Miss Geddes did not move. He wrenched his cut finger away, and went on slicing the cake.

  ‘Isn’t it bleeding?’ I said.

  He held up his hand. I could see the deep cut, but there was no blood.

  Deliberately, and perhaps desperately, I turned to Miss Geddes.

  ‘That house up the road,’ I said, ‘I see it’s a mental home now. I passed it this afternoon.’

  ‘Johnnie,’ said Miss Geddes, as one who knows the game is up, ‘go and fetch the mince pies.’

  He went, whistling a carol.

  ‘You passed the asylum,’ said Miss Geddes wearily.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘And you saw Johnnie sweeping up the leaves.

  ‘Yes.’

  We could still hear the whistling of the carol.

  ‘Who is he?’ I said.

  ‘That’s Johnnie’s ghost,’ she said. ‘He comes home every Christmas. But,’ she said, ‘I don’t like him. I can’t bear him any longer, and I’m going away tomorrow. I don’t want Johnnie’s ghost, I want Johnnie in flesh and blood.’

  I shuddered, thinking of the cut finger that could not bleed. And I left, before Johnnie’s ghost returned with the mince pies.

  Next day, as I had arranged to join a family who lived in the town, I started walking over about noon. Because of the light mist, I didn’t see at first who it was approaching. It was a man, waving his arm to me. It turned out to be Johnnie’s ghost.

  ‘Happy Christmas. What do you think,’ said Johnnie’s ghost, ‘my aunt has gone to London. Fancy, on Christmas Day, and I thought she was at church, and here I am without anyone to spend a jolly Christmas with, and, of course, I forgive her, as it’s the season of goodwill, but I’m glad to see you, because now I can come with you, wherever it is you’re going, and we can all have a Happy…’

  ‘Go away,’ I said, and walked on.

  It sounds hard. But perhaps you don’t know how repulsive and loathsome is the ghost of a living man. The ghosts of the dead may be all right, but the ghost of mad Johnnie gave me the creeps.

  ‘Clear off,’ I said.

  He continued walking beside me. ‘As it’s the time of goodwill, I make allowances for your tone,’ he said. ‘But I’m coming.’

  We had reached the asylum gates, and there, in the grounds, I saw Johnnie sweeping the leaves. I suppose it was his way of going on strike, working on Christmas Day. He was making a noise about Christmas.

  On a sudden impulse I said to Johnnie’s ghost, ‘You want company?’

  ‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘It’s the season of…’

  ‘Then you shall have it,’ I said.

  I stood in the gateway. ‘Oh, Johnnie,’ I called.

  He looked up.

  ‘I’ve brought your ghost to see you, Johnnie.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Johnnie, advancing to meet his ghost. ‘Just imagine it,’

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ said Johnnie’s ghost.

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Johnnie.

  I left them to it. And when I looked back, wondering if they would come to blows, I saw that Johnnie’s ghost was sweeping the leaves as well. They seemed to be arguing at the same time. But it was still misty, and really, I can’t say whether, when I looked a second time, there were two men or one man sweeping the leaves.

  Johnnie began to improve in the New Year. At least, he stopped shouting about Christmas, and then he never mentioned it at all; in a few months, when he had almost stopped saying anything, they discharged him.

  The town council gave him the leaves of the park to sweep. He seldom speaks, and recognizes nobody. I see him every day at the late end of the year, working within the mist. Sometimes, if there is a sudden gust, he jerks his head up to watch a few leaves falling behind him, as if amazed that they are undeniably there, although, by rights, the falling of leaves should be stopped.

  Harper and Wilton

  In the afternoons there was seldom anybody about except for the young cross-eyed gardener. He was so cross-eyed that if you stood talking to him with a friend it was impossible to know which of you he was addressing. And when alone, it was almost as if he was conversing with the nearest tree if not with myself. I meant to summon courage to ask him if there was no corrective treatment, or special eye-glasses, he could have, but I never got round to it. The house was not mine. I was merely house-sitting for a month for my friends, the Lowthers. It was an arrangement which suited me well. I had a book to finish and this house in the depth of Hampshire was ideal for my purpose. In the morning Harriet, the part-time daily came and tidied up. She cooked my meals for the day then left me to myself about midday.

  I worked hard, and I slept well. Nothing disturbed me during the night. It was about two in the afternoon that I felt uneasy. An oddness in the house. This went on for some weeks. The spring weather was capricious.

  But it was not when the wind whistled round the house and moaned in the eaves that the house felt weird. The weather and sound effects in fact normalized the old edifice. It was on clear sunny days, spring rain sprinkling and spraying the windows, that something was decidedly odd. Under the need to work I determinedly shook off the feeling, often sitting in the garden or else the garden room to apply myself to my work. I began to notice that Joe the gardener often stood under the great cedar tree on the lawn looking up apparently at a window of one of the two guest bedrooms to the left above the front door. They were divided by a drainpipe which I felt rather spoilt the aspect of the house. It was impossible to say which of the windows he was paying attention to because of his squint.

  ‘Is anything the matter, Joe?’ I asked him after a few days of watching his performance.

  He said ‘No’ and continued staring. Joe was after all, not my concern, not my employee. The house was well protected by burglar alarms. I had my work to do and decided to ignore Joe; I continued to shake off the feeling of chilling weirdness that I felt every afternoon.

  The fourth week of my stay I heard voices, the voices of young women. I opened the door of the garden room and called out ‘Joe, who’s there?’ But Joe had disappeared. I decided this listening to ‘voices’ and puzzling about Joe was a waste of time. I really had a great compulsion and economic need to finish my book. I was getting on well with it and refused to be waylaid from the job I had come to accomplish.

  But no sooner had I settled down at my desk than I heard the voices again, outside the house, quite near. I wasn’t expecting any visitors, so went to look out of the window. The house was attached to a stretch of woodland from where the voices came. Then two women came in sight. I was not at first surprised that they were dressed in Edwardian-type long skirts and shawls, with their long hair knotted up severely. They might well have bought their outfits at London’s Miss Selfridge, in Beauchamp Place or in Manhattan’s Village. Nothing in the way of garments is surprising in these days of merry freedom.

  I thought I recognized them, but couldn’t tell where I had seen them before. Certainly I had a sense of having seen them both together, young and gaunt, one tall, one less so.

  As they approached the house I saw Joe lurking on the edge of the woods behind them. He seemed interested.

  The front-door bell was ringing, now. I was not at all sure I should answer it. There was no reason to expect visitors and I had been assured by the Lowthers of my complete solitude. But I opened the garden room window, smitten with nerves, and called out,

  ‘Who i
s it you want? I’m afraid the Lowthers are away. I’m only a temporary tenant.’

  ‘We want you,’ said the woman who seemed to be the younger of the two.

  I was still almost sure I had seen them before. They gave me the creeps. The older woman pressed the bell again. ‘Let us in.

  ‘Who are you?’ I said.

  ‘Harper and Wilton,’ said the younger one. ‘Don’t panic. We are merely outraged.’

  Harper and Wilton — where had I heard their names before?

  ‘Do I know you?’ I said.

  ‘Do you know us?’ said one of the women, the taller. ‘You made us. My name is Marion Harper known as Harper and my friend is Marion Wilton known as Wilton. We fight for the Vote for Women.

  Oh God, I remembered then that years ago, many, many years ago, some time in the 1950s, I wrote a story about two Edwardian suffragettes. What could I recall of that story? It was never published. Was it finished? I didn’t find the two characters, Harper and Wilton, very sympathetic but I had certainly had some fun with them.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ I inquired from the window. I had no intention of letting them into the house.

  ‘You cast the story away,’ said little Wilton. ‘We’ve been looking for you for some time. Now you’ve got to give us substance otherwise we’ll haunt you.

  For my part Harper and Wilton were lying at the back of a drawer in which I used to put unfinished stories and poems when, long ago, I started writing fiction and verse.

  I packed up my belongings, packed them in the car, and drove off, watched at a distance by Harper, Wilton and Joe. At home I searched for the missing manuscript and eventually found it, curled at the edges. I read it through:

  One day there appeared at the window a youth of about twenty. Unfortunately, he had a squint.

  There was another boarding-house opposite. Here, on the second floor, lived Miss Wilton and Miss Harper, members of the suffragette movement. Their parents, who lived in the country, gave them money to keep away.

  Three weeks later, when Miss Wilton could stand it no longer, she went along the landing to Miss Harper’s room. ‘Harper,’ she said, ‘I can stand it no longer.’

  ‘Why Wilton,’ said Harper, ‘don’t be discouraged. We had three hundred and four new recruits last month. Remember the words of Pankhurst —’

  ‘Harper,’ said Wilton severely, ‘I refer to a personal matter.’

  ‘Really?’ said Harper, losing interest and starting to roll a pair of stays very tight and neat. ‘Well, I haven’t time to discuss anything personal. I’m busy with my Reports.’

  ‘I’ll be brief,’ said Wilton. ‘Every afternoon there’s a young man at the window across the road —’

  ‘I thought as much,’ said Harper.

  ‘Don’t think I’ve been spying,’ her friend protested. ‘But I can’t avoid seeing what I see. He has been making signs.

  ‘I have observed it,’ Harper said. ‘I advise you to live elsewhere if you can’t resist temptation. I cannot do more for you Wilton. There are larger issues, important things.’

  ‘Indeed. You consider it important to encourage the advances of a strange man. I hardly think the Committee will take that view,’ stated Wilton.

  ‘Ah!’ said Harper. ‘Ah!’

  ‘Ah!’ said Wilton. ‘Yes, I intend to report this to the Bayswater Committee.’

  ‘You’re too late,’ Harper said, ‘with your wily scheme. I have already reported the matter. You may read a copy of my statement.’

  Wilton moved over to the gas light with the paper, and read:

  ‘With regret, I have to report that Miss M. Wilton of our Ranks, has lately behaved in a manner prejudicial to our Cause. She has openly encouraged a male person, presumably a student, to make overtures from a window opposite her residence. I fear we will soon have to call upon Miss Wilton to resign from the Movement.’

  Wilton handed back the report. ‘It’s a clever plan of yours,’ she said scornfully, to cover your traces by implicating me in your unworthy undertakings. But I will prove my innocence. You will be exposed.’

  ‘Remember,’ she added, ‘the Secretary already has doubts regarding your feminist zeal. The fact that you wear those stays to give you a figure, is alone an indication that —’

  ‘Kindly depart,’ Harper said.

  ‘Moreover, I disagree that he is a student,’ said Wilton.

  Next day, the youth opposite appeared to believe he was getting somewhere with one of the girls. At her unmistakable bidding he crossed the road, and looked up expectantly at Wilton’s window. She observed that the idiot seemed to be watching Harper’s window. He needn’t worry; Harper was out. Wilton dropped an envelope. It contained a note, unsigned, executed on Harper’s typewriting-machine. It also contained a key.

  It was the front-door key, and the note explained how to get to her room, at ten that night. Only, of course, it was Harper’s room she directed him to, this Wilton.

  She heard Harper come in. Wilton composed herself to wait for justice at ten o’clock. She would fetch the landlady. A man in Harper’s room. A noisy scene. The Committee would be informed.

  As the hour advanced, the youth was forced to consider an alternative method of keeping the assignment, because, due to excitement, he had lost the key. Courageous, though unimaginative, he started climbing the drainpipe which ran between Wilton’s window and Harper’s. Wilton watched this lamp-lit performance, appalled. Harper, too, observed it; and before he had got two feet, the water from Harper’s wash-jug descended. Wilton worked quickly. Her jug was empty, so she threw out the jug. Harper swooped downstairs to the door. Wilton followed.

  The young man was very wet, very stunned.

  ‘Don’t move,’ said Harper. ‘I shall hand you over.’

  ‘Harper,’ said Wilton, ‘I’m arresting him. He had an appointment with you. It’s shameful. You are exposed at last.’

  The landlady was suddenly in the doorway. ‘Constable!’ she called. A policeman at the top of the street turned and ambled towards them.

  Harper was, in spite of her stays, the more emancipated of the two; she looked at Wilton. ‘This is my man,’ she said. ‘You get the hell out of it.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ said the policeman.

  ‘Language!’ said the landlady. ‘These suffragettes!’

  ‘Suffragettes, eh?’ said the policeman.

  ‘Constable,’ said Wilton, a-flutter, ‘this man was attempting to climb up this lady. This drainpipe was encouraging him.’

  ‘It’s her fault,’ the young man gasped, glaring at Wilton. Owing to the squint, the policeman was unable to decide which girl was meant. Not that it mattered.

  ‘Oh, suffragettes!’ said the policeman.

  ‘Yes, I was attacked,’ sighed the youth.

  The constable took all the particulars. He took Harper and Wilton by the sleeves. ‘This way,’ he said, ‘and come quiet. Disturbing the Peace. Suffragettes.

  ‘I hope they get a month,’ said the landlady.

  ‘Three months more likely,’ said the policeman. ‘You all right now, sir!’

  ‘More or less,’ replied the young man cheerfully. ‘Good night, Constable. Good night, sweet ladies.’

  They only got a month. But you see, sweet ladies, what they all had to suffer to get us the vote.

  I raced back to the country with this manuscript in my handbag. It had been one of many and many that I had always intended to revise when I had a spare day or two. Those spare days had never come. But looking at the story I didn’t see what was missing. Harper and Wilton had adequately fulfilled their destiny for that little space of history at the turn of the twentieth century that their story occupied.

  Harper and Wilton were waiting for me on the doorstep of my country retreat.

  ‘How about it?’ This was Wilton.

  I noticed that Joe the gardener was observing us from the mysterious wooded part of the garden which I had greatly taken to. I love mysterious gardens. I
felt that Joe should come and join us. I was dangling the door keys in my hand. On no account would I let any of them cross the threshold. I was carried away by the fact of Joe’s intensely squinting eyes as he approached. Again I wondered why he wore no corrective glasses. How could I have envisaged and foreseen this boy with the great squint all those years ago when I had written this episodic little story of Harper and Wilton?

  Joe was obviously fascinated by the two girls in their unconventional clothes. But here again it was difficult to see which one he was observing at any one time.

  ‘He has given us no peace,’ said Wilton. ‘He follows us everywhere. Don’t you know that is a crime? In the world of today, more than ever.

  ‘Sexual molestation,’ said Harper.

  ‘Oh, what has he done?’ I said.

  ‘Followed us everywhere. He is molesting us. It was he who should have gone to prison, not us.

  I saw my chance. I sat down on the doorstep and re-wrote the ending of the story in the light of current correctness. The girls, Harper and Wilton, were vindicated and it was the squint-eyed student who was taken off by the police. I showed it to Harper and Wilton.

  Not only that, since they were tepid in their satisfaction, I let myself into the house while the group remained uneasily in the garden. I called the police and said that our garden boy was troubling two young women by his unwanted attention. Rather languidly, they agreed to come along and see what it was all about.

  They took Joe away. Harper and Wilton disappeared, evidently satisfied. Joe came back shortly, having been merely cautioned, and got on with his weeding of the garden.

  The Executor

  When my uncle died all the literary manuscripts went to a university foundation, except one. The correspondence went too, and the whole of his library. They came (a white-haired man and a young girl) and surveyed his study. Everything, they said, would be desirable and it would make a good price if I let the whole room go — his chair, his desk, the carpet, even his ashtrays. I agreed to this. I left everything in the drawers of the desk just as it was when my uncle died, including the bottle of Librium and a rusty razor blade.