The Complete Short Stories

  Then she did get quieter. Within two weeks she had stopped her racketing and shouting. I was able to get on with my work.

  But slowly the house degenerated. It was like old times, only worse, because, although I began to eat out, Winnie burnt the food she prepared for herself. There was a super-chaos, a smell of burning and old rubbish all over the house. She bustled about brightly enough, but simply couldn’t manage.

  ‘Perhaps you need a holiday, Winnie.’

  ‘I stopped taking them pills,’ she said. ‘Rose didn’t like them. They had an effect.’

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘Rose Spigot.’

  I remembered Miss Spigot, the cook who died. I remembered Miss Spigot with her specially careful enunciation, her prim and well-trained ways, and how she was said to have travelled with a duke’s family all over the Orient. ‘Are you talking about some relation of our late cook?’ I said.

  ‘I’m talking about our late cook herself,’ said Winnie. ‘She’s gone away. When I started to take the pills they put her off her stroke.’

  ‘By no means,’ I said wildly, ‘take anything whatsoever that doesn’t suit you, Winnie.’

  ‘It’s not me, it’s Rose. She was a very provoking woman, acting the lady with your mother’s needlework and objecting to me showing off in front of company. But she was a good cook-housekeeper, she’s a good manager, and I can’t cope alone with all the mess. She was another pair of hands.’

  ‘Definitely, you should stop the pills,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t you like me to have another word with the doctor?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Winnie. ‘There was nothing wrong with the doctor.

  I had to go away for a week to a theatre festival in the north. I was glad to go, notwithstanding my crumpled shirts and unwashed socks crammed into my bag. I felt I could face the problem of Winnie better after a break.

  When I got back, as I put my key in the door, I knew something had happened by the fact that my old brass name-plate was twinkling and by the sound of Winnie’s voice from the back of the house raised in argument.

  Only Winnie was in the kitchen when I put my head round the door. ‘Rose is back,’ said Winnie.

  I could see what she meant. The house was clean and shining; my supper that night was excellent.

  But it was all too much for my no doubt weak character. I thought it over for a bit and finally persuaded Winnie to retire. She went back to Yorkshire, accompanied by Miss Spigot or not I don’t know. My house is the pigsty of old. My friends are awfully good to me and I dine out a lot. The stuff that used to moulder in the basement is now rotting in the attic. Nobody combs Francis the cat, but he doesn’t mind. When I’m on my own I can always sit down among the dust and the litter, and play the piano.

  The Girl I Left Behind Me

  It was just gone quarter past six when I left the office.

  ‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’ — there was the tune again, going round my head. Mr Letter had been whistling it all throughout the day between his noisy telephone calls and his dreamy sessions. Sometimes he whistled ‘Softly, Softly, Turn the Key’, but usually it was ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’ rendered at a brisk hornpipe tempo.

  I stood in the bus queue, tired out, and wondering how long I would endure Mark Letter (Screws & Nails) Ltd. Of course, after my long illness, it was experience. But Mr Letter and his tune, and his sudden moods of bounce, and his sudden lapses into lassitude, his sandy hair and little bad teeth, roused my resentment, especially when his tune barrelled round my head long after I had left the office; it was like taking Mr Letter home.

  No one at the bus stop took any notice of me. Well, of course, why should they? I was not acquainted with anyone there, but that evening I felt particularly anonymous among the homegoers. Everyone looked right through me and even, it seemed, walked through me. Late autumn always sets my fancy towards sad ideas. The starlings were crowding in to roost on all the high cornices of the great office buildings. And I located, among the misty unease of my feelings, a very strong conviction that I had left something important behind me or some job incompleted at the office. Perhaps I had left the safe unlocked, or perhaps it was something quite trivial which nagged at me. I had half a mind to turn back, tired as I was, and reassure myself. But my bus came along and I piled in with the rest.

  As usual, I did not get a seat. I clung to the handrail and allowed myself to be lurched back and forth against the other passengers. I stood on a man’s foot, and said, ‘Oh, sorry.’ But he looked away without response, which depressed me. And more and more, I felt that I had left something of tremendous import at the office. ‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’ — the tune was a background to my worry all the way home. I went over in my mind the day’s business, for I thought, now, perhaps it was a letter which I should have written and posted on my way home.

  That morning I had arrived at the office to find Mark Letter vigorously at work. By fits, he would occasionally turn up at eight in the morning, tear at the post and, by the time I arrived, he would have dispatched perhaps half a dozen needless telegrams; and before I could get my coat off, would deliver a whole day’s instructions to me, rapidly fluttering his freckled hands in time with his chattering mouth. This habit used to jar me, and I found only one thing amusing about it; that was when he would say, as he gave instructions for dealing with each item, ‘Mark letter urgent.’ I thought that rather funny coming from Mark Letter, and I often thought of him, as he was in those moods, as Mark Letter Urgent.

  As I swayed in the bus I recalled that morning’s excess of energy on the part of Mark Letter Urgent. He had been more urgent than usual, so that I still felt put out by the urgency. I felt terribly old for my twenty-two years as I raked round my mind for some clue as to what I had left unfinished. Something had been left amiss; the further the bus carried me from the office, the more certain I became of it. Not that I took my job to heart very greatly, but Mr Letter’s moods of bustle were infectious, and when they occurred I felt fussy for the rest of the day; and although I consoled myself that I would feel better when I got home, the worry would not leave me.

  By noon, Mr Letter had calmed down a little, and for an hour before I went to lunch he strode round the office with his hands in his pockets, whistling between his seedy brown teeth that sailors’ song ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’. I lurched with the bus as it chugged out the rhythm, ‘Teedle-um-tum-tum. Teedle-um…’ Returning from lunch I had found silence, and wondered if Mr Letter was out, until I heard suddenly, from his tiny private office, his tune again, a low swift hum, trailing out towards the end. Then I knew that he had fallen into one of his afternoon daydreams.

  I would sometimes come upon him in his little box of an office when these trances afflicted him. I would find him sitting in his swivel chair behind his desk. Usually he had taken off his coat and slung it across the back of his chair. His right elbow would be propped on the desk, supporting his chin, while from his left hand would dangle his tie. He would gaze at this tie; it was his main object of contemplation. That afternoon I had found him tie-gazing when I went into his room for some papers. He was gazing at it with parted lips so that I could see his small, separated discoloured teeth, no larger than a child’s first teeth. Through them he whistled his tune. Yesterday, it had been ‘Softly, Softly, Turn the Key’, but today it was the other.

  I got off the bus at my usual stop, with my fare still in my hand. I almost threw the coins away, absentmindedly thinking they were the ticket, and when I noticed them I thought how nearly no one at all I was, since even the conductor had, in his rush, passed me by.

  Mark Letter had remained in his dream for two and a half hours. What was it I had left unfinished? I could not for the life of me recall what he had said when at last he emerged from his office-box. Perhaps it was then I had made tea. Mr Letter always liked a cup when he was neither in his frenzy nor in his abstraction, but ordinary and talkative. He would speak of his hobby, fretwork. I do not think Mr Letter had any home life. At forty-six h
e was still unmarried, living alone in a house at Roehampton. As I walked up the lane to my lodgings I recollected that Mr Letter had come in for his tea with his tie still dangling from his hand, his throat white under the open-neck shirt, and his ‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’ in his teeth.

  At last I was home and my Yale in the lock. Softly, I said to myself, softly turn the key, and thank God I’m home. My landlady passed through the hall from kitchen to dining-room with a salt and pepper cruet in her crinkly hands. She had some new lodgers. ‘My guests’, she always called them. The new guests took precedence over the old with my landlady. I felt desolate. I simply could not climb the stairs to my room to wash, and then descend to take brown soup with the new guests while my landlady fussed over them, ignoring me. I sat for a moment in the chair in the hall to collect my strength. A year’s illness drains one, however young. Suddenly the repulsion of the brown soup and the anxiety about the office made me decide. I would not go upstairs to my room. I must return to the office to see what it was that I had overlooked.

  ‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’ — I told myself that I was giving way to neurosis. Many times I had laughed at my sister who, after she had gone to bed at night, would send her husband downstairs to make sure all the gas taps were turned off, all the doors locked, back and front. Very well, I was as silly as my sister, but I understood her obsession, and simply opened the door and slipped out of the house, tired as I was, making my weary way back to the bus stop, back to the office.

  ‘Why should I do this for Mark Letter?’ I demanded of myself. But really, I was not returning for his sake, it was for my own. I was doing this to get rid of the feeling of incompletion, and that song in my brain swimming round like a damned goldfish.

  I wondered, as the bus took me back along the familiar route, what I would say if Mark Letter should still be at the office. He often worked late, or at least, stayed there late, doing I don’t know what, for his screw and nail business did not call for long hours. It seemed to me he had an affection for those dingy premises. I was rather apprehensive lest I should find Mr Letter at the office, standing, just as I had last seen him, swinging his tie in his hand, beside my desk. I resolved that if I should find him there, I should say straight out that I had left something behind me.

  A clock struck quarter past seven as I got off the bus. I realized that again I had not paid my fare. I looked at the money in my hand for a stupid second. Then I felt reckless. ‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’ — I caught myself humming the tune as I walked quickly up the said side street to our office. My heart knocked at my throat, for I was eager. Softly, softly, I said to myself as I turned the key of the outside door. Quickly, quickly, I ran up the stairs. Only outside the office door I halted, and while I found its key on my bunch it occurred to me how strangely my sister would think I was behaving.

  I opened the door and my sadness left me at once. With a great joy I recognized what it was I had left behind me, my body lying strangled on the floor. I ran towards my body and embraced it like a lover.

  Miss Pinkerton’s Apocalypse

  One evening, a damp one in February, something flew in at the window. Miss Laura Pinkerton, who was doing something innocent to the fire, heard a faint throbbing noise overhead. On looking up, ‘George! come here! come quickly!’

  George Lake came in at once, though sullenly because of their quarrel, eating a sandwich from the kitchen. He looked up at the noise then sat down immediately.

  From this point onward their story comes in two versions, his and hers. But they agree as to the main facts; they agree that it was a small round flattish object, and that it flew.

  ‘It’s a flying object of some sort,’ whispered George eventually.

  ‘It’s a saucer,’ said Miss Pinkerton, keen and loud, ‘an antique piece. You can tell by the shape.’

  ‘It can’t be an antique, that’s absolutely certain,’ George said.

  He ought to have been more tactful, and would have been, but for the stress of the moment. Of course it set Miss Pinkerton off, she being in the right.

  ‘I know my facts,’ she stated as usual, ‘I should hope I know my facts. I’ve been in antique china for twenty-three years in the autumn,’ which was true, and George knew it.

  The little saucer was cavorting round the lamp.

  ‘It seems to be attracted by the light,’ George remarked, as one might distinguish a moth.

  Promptly, it made as if to dive dangerously at George’s head. He ducked, and Miss Pinkerton backed against the wall. As the dish tilted on its side, skimming George’s shoulder, Miss Pinkerton could see inside it.

  ‘The thing might be radioactive. It might be dangerous.’ George was breathless. The saucer had climbed, was circling high above his head, and now made for him again, but missed.

  ‘It is not radioactive,’ said Miss Pinkerton, ‘it is Spode.’

  ‘Don’t be so damn silly,’ George replied, under the stress of the occasion.

  ‘All right, very well,’ said Miss Pinkerton, ‘it is not Spode. I suppose you are the expert, George, I suppose you know best. I was only judging by the pattern. After the best part of a lifetime in china —’

  ‘It must be a forgery,’ George said unfortunately. For, unfortunately, something familiar and abrasive in Miss Pinkerton’s speech began to grind within him. Also, he was afraid of the saucer.

  It had taken a stately turn, following the picture rail in a steady career round the room.

  ‘Forgery, ha!’ said Miss Pinkerton. She was out of the room like a shot, and in again carrying a pair of steps.

  ‘I will examine the mark,’ said she, pointing intensely at the saucer. ‘Where are my glasses?’

  Obligingly, the saucer settled in a corner; it hung like a spider a few inches from the ceiling. Miss Pinkerton adjusted the steps. With her glasses on she was almost her sunny self again, she was ceremonious and expert.

  ‘Don’t touch it, don’t go near it!’ George pushed her aside and grabbed the steps, knocking over a blue glass bowl, a Dresden figure, a vase of flowers and a decanter of sherry; like a bull in a china shop, as Miss Pinkerton exclaimed. But she was determined, and struggled to reclaim the steps.

  ‘Laura!’ he said desperately. ‘I believe it is Spode. I take your word.’

  The saucer then flew out of the window.

  They acted quickly. They telephoned to the local paper. A reporter would come right away. Meanwhile, Miss Pinkerton telephoned to her two scientific friends — at least, one was interested in psychic research and the other was an electrician. But she got no reply from either. George had leaned out of the window, scanning the rooftops and the night sky. He had leaned out of the back windows, had tried all the lights and the wireless. These things were as usual.

  The news man arrived, accompanied by a photographer.

  ‘There’s nothing to photograph,’ said Miss Pinkerton excitably. ‘It went away.

  ‘We could take a few shots of the actual spot,’ the man explained.

  Miss Pinkerton looked anxiously at the result of George and the steps.

  ‘The place is a wreck.’

  Sherry from the decanter was still dripping from the sideboard.

  ‘I’d better clear the place up. George, help me!’ She fluttered nervously, and started to pack the fire with small coals.

  ‘No, leave everything as it is,’ the reporter advised her. ‘Did the apparition make this mess?’

  George and Miss Pinkerton spoke together.

  ‘Well, indirectly,’ said George.

  ‘It wasn’t an apparition,’ said Miss Pinkerton.

  The reporter settled on the nearest chair, poising his pencil and asking, ‘Do you mind if I take notes?’

  ‘Would you mind sitting over here?’ said Miss Pinkerton. ‘I don’t use the Queen Annes, normally. They are very frail pieces.’

  The reporter rose as if stung, then perched on a table which Miss Pinkerton looked at uneasily.

  ‘You see, I’m in antiques,’ she rattled
on, for the affair was beginning to tell on her, as George told himself. In fact he sized up that she was done for; his irritation abated, his confidence came flooding back.

  ‘Now, Laura, sit down and take it easy.’ Solicitously he pushed her into an easy chair.

  ‘She’s overwrought,’ he informed the pressmen in an audible undertone.

  ‘You say this object actually flew in this window?’ suggested the reporter.

  ‘That is correct,’ said George.

  The cameraman trained his apparatus on the window.

  ‘And you were both here at the time?’

  ‘No,’ Miss Pinkerton said. ‘Mr Lake was in the kitchen and I called out, of course. But he didn’t see inside the bowl, only the outside, underneath where the manufacturer’s mark is. I saw the pattern so I got the steps to make sure. That’s how Mr Lake knocked my things over. I saw inside.’

  ‘I am going to say something,’ said George.

  The men looked hopefully towards him. After a pause, George continued, ‘Let us begin at the beginning.’

  ‘Right,’ said the reporter, breezing up.

  ‘It was like this,’ George said. ‘I came straight in when Miss Pinkerton screamed, and there was a white convex disc, you realize, floating around up there.’

  The reporter contemplated the spot indicated by George.