Five Windows

by D. E. Stevenson

  I did not know what to say to this, so I said nothing.

  “ Writing is easy,” continued Miles. “ I’m getting along like a house on fire. Look, David, here’s the stuff.” He produced a couple of school-exercise books from the pocket of his overcoat and held them out to me.

  “ You mean I’m to read it? ”

  “ Yes, of course.”

  “ But Miles, I don’t know much about thrillers.”

  “ You read it,” said Miles pressing the books into my hands. “ Of course this is only the first part, but it’ll give you an idea of the pace. Pace is the great thing in a thriller; you must get a move on from the word go. You’ll like it, old boy—it’s terrific—it really is damned good, tho’ I ses it meself! ” He chuckled and added, “ There’s a comic bit where the fellow steals a pie out of the old miser’s larder; it’ll make you laugh like a drain.”

  I took the books reluctantly. “ Miles, look here,” I said. “ It would be much better for you to ask somebody else. Thrillers are not my line of country. I’ll give you the address of my literary agent——”

  “ No, no, I want you to read it. There’s twenty-three hours’ work in that little lot; twenty-three solid hours.”

  This seemed a strange way of measuring literary output and I said so.

  “ It’s the sensible way,” declared Miles as he hunched on his overcoat. “ It’s the only business-like way. If I’m going to make writing my career I naturally want to know how much money per hour I shall get for my work.… ’Bye, David, and thanks a lot for the party. I’ll catch up the damsels and see them home.” He clattered off down the stairs and vanished.

  The exercise books were lying on the table and I looked at them doubtfully. I did not want to read Miles’s thriller, but of course I should have to read it sometime and the night was still young. If I left it until to-morrow it would interfere with my own work. Better get it over, I thought. I adjusted the lamp and sat down. Fortunately it was easy to read for Miles affected a large, round schoolboy hand.

  The thriller was entitled Ralph’s Progress and it began with a detailed description of the hero; it was also a detailed description of the author; (so exact that I had a feeling he must have used a mirror for the job). The story went on to explain that “ Ralph was languishing in Dartmoor prison where he had been unjustly incarcerated.” He did not languish for long, of course. One dark foggy night he “ socked a warder ” and after changing clothes with his unconscious victim he walked out of the prison gates with a debonair swagger. As he ran lightly across the moor (he had won the three-mile when he was at Eton) Ralph laughed to himself at the ease with which he had outwitted his cruel gaolers; and there was a flash-back giving the story of his life and describing the court-scene where he had stood in the dock and listened to his harsh and unjust sentence.

  When I had got thus far I put down the book and tried to make up my mind whether the story was really as bad as it seemed. To me it seemed very bad indeed—astonishingly bad. It was difficult to believe that Miles could have written anything so futile. Miles had read hundreds of thrillers, they were his favourite form of literature, and I had often heard him criticising them; praising one and pulling another to bits. (“ Absolute tripe, old boy! ” he would declare. “ Not worth reading.” And he would go on to explain why it was tripe and just where the author had blundered.) It seemed very strange that his critical faculty should fail where his own work was concerned. I turned back the pages and read bits of the story again and the thing seemed worse than before. It did not ring true. Ralph was not real and although I knew nothing about Dartmoor Prison I was pretty certain it was very different from this—and much more difficult to escape from. As for the writing, it was such an odd mixture that it made me laugh (though unfortunately the serious portions of the narrative were the funniest). Parts of it were in a high-falutin’ style: “ Ralph had been wrongly condemned and incarcertated, the iron of injustice had eaten into his soul and changed him from a happy care-free youth into an enemy of society.” Other parts were written in a slangy staccato manner, slightly reminiscent of Peter Cheyney.

  I took up the second exercise-book and toiled on. Ralph met various people in his progress; some were helpful and provided him with food and listened patiently to long speeches about the cruelty of the world; others were law-abiding and tried to entrap him. Ralph was a match for them of course, he realised in the nick of time what they were up to and socked them on the jaw or trussed them up like chickens with pieces of stout rope which happened to be lying about just when and where he needed them.

  Presently I got to the incident of the pie. Ralph climbed up the ivy and stole the pie from the miser’s larder. He was being pursued by bloodhounds but he found time to write a hasty note to the owner of the pie, explaining that he was not a thief by nature but Necessity knows no Law, and promising to return the loan when circumstances permitted … then he ran on chuckling to himself at the thought of the miser’s surprise when he visited his larder in the morning.

  Miles had predicted that I would laugh like a drain at the incident, but for the life of me I could see nothing particularly funny about it.

  All this time I had been waiting for the Girl. I felt pretty certain there must be a Girl somewhere.… Yes, here she was! She had eyes like violets with the morning dew upon them and a skin like the petals of a rose (there was a very full description of her beauty and grace but I am afraid I skipped it). The Girl was the owner of an exceedingly powerful car—an eight-cylinder super-charged Bentley—and when Ralph appeared upon the scene she explained to him that it had died on her and obviously there was something the matter with the engine. Ralph knew all about cars and in spite of being almost blinded by the Girl’s beauty he coped with the trouble in his own inimitable way and soon had the engine purring sweetly. Of course the Girl wanted to know where Ralph had come from and in answer to her question she was given his story in full. Her heart went out to him—her violet eyes were full of sympathetic tears—and she offered to take Ralph home with her and hide him from his pursuers. Luckily for Ralph she was the daughter of a baronet and lived in a moated-grange which boasted a secret passage and a Priest’s Hole. Ralph realised that this was exactly what was needed and accepted her offer with alacrity.

  They had just got into the car when a posse of warders and bloodhounds broke from a nearby thicket and surrounded them … but Ralph let in the clutch and the magnificent car bounded forward, and they sped off down the road pursued by shouts of rage by the baffled warders and bays of fury from the hounds.

  By this time I was so tired of Ralph that I could accompany him on his progress no further. I put down the book and wondered what on earth to do.

  It is true that quite a lot of rubbish finds its way into print, but it is amusing rubbish. Ralph did not amuse me at all. In fact I was so fed up with Ralph that I did not care what happened to him (the authorities of Dartmoor Prison were welcome to recapture him and incarcerate him for life.) I felt certain that nobody would care what happened to Ralph.

  What was I to do about it? Should I write to Miles and say I had read his story and wished him luck? That would be much the easiest way out of the difficulty—but was it kind? I decided that it was neither kind nor honest. Miles had not asked for my opinion of his story but he had insisted that I should read it, so presumably he wanted to know what I thought of it. I considered the matter seriously and then I took a sheet of paper and wrote him a short note saying that it was very good of him to let me read Ralph’s Progress and I had read it with interest. (This was perfectly true, for it was interesting—and puzzling—to discover that Miles could not write. Writing was easy and Miles was intelligent. He knew a good thriller when he saw it so why couldn’t he write one?)

  When I had got thus far I paused and chewed my pencil. Then I continued:

  “ Quite honestly, Miles, I don’t think writing is your line and I suggest you should ask someone else before going any further. I enclose the address of
Mr. Randall who is a literary agent. He will be able to advise you much better than I can.”

  I tried to think of some way of softening the blow but I knew that if I gave Miles the slightest encouragement he would seize upon it and magnify it and continue to waste precious hours upon Ralph. His nature was to see only what he wanted to see and to ignore what he disliked.

  When I had written the note I packed it up with the manuscript and posted it the next morning. I had no housemaid who would seize upon Ralph’s Progress and use it to light the fire (as in the case of Thomas Carlyle’s masterpiece) but I felt a great deal more comfortable when it was out of my keeping.

  The Fifth Window

  “ The window was dirty and we could not see through it, so I opened it from the bottom and we looked out.… Now that the trees had been felled we could see for miles: we could see meadows and fields: we could see hedges with the green tint of spring upon them. In the distance, veiled in a tender haze, we could see the clustering roofs of London. The sun was declining in the west and its rosy beams irradiated the mist so that the big sprawling city looked like a city in a dream, a city of enchantment.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Sunday was a real April day. It rained in the morning, but cleared up beautifully in the afternoon and when Jan and I set off on our expedition to Green Beech Cottage the sky was blue and there was real warmth in the sun’s golden beams. We took a Green Line Bus and got off at Grimble’s Garage which stood back from the main road with a row of petrol pumps in front. Mr. Grimble was working on the engine of a car but he wiped his hands on a piece of waste and listened while I told him my business.

  “ You’re putting the place in order at last,” said Mr. Grimble nodding. “ Well, it’s high time—that’s all I say. If you hold on a minute I’ll get you the key.”

  We waited and presently he returned and handed me a large iron key with a label attached to it.

  “ That’s what you want,” he said. “ The cottage is about ten minutes’ walk from here. You cross the road and go up that narrow lane … but I expect you know the way.”

  “ I’ve never seen it,” I told him.

  “ Never seen it!” he exclaimed. “ You’ll get a bit of a shock. I’ve done what Mr. Kirke said—kept the roof sound and the woodwork painted—but that’s all.”

  “ I suppose I shall want a gardener? ”

  “ A gardener! Half a dozen men with axes is what you’ll want.”

  I gazed at him in consternation.

  “ Well, you’ll see,” he said. “ I’ll do what I can to find someone to deal with the garden. As a matter of fact I’m glad the place is going to be put in order; it’s a shame to keep it standing empty when so many people are screaming their heads off for a house.”

  The great main road which swept past Grimble’s Garage was like a river of tar macadam, but much more noisy and congested than any river in the world. Cars and lorries and buses rolled past in an endless procession. Motor bicycles roared along hooting and weaving their way through the other traffic at perilous speed. Jan and I crossed the road, not without difficulty, and began to walk up the narrow lane.

  It was a country lane, steep and stony, with trees and hawthorn hedges on either side. The hawthorn was budding and here and there a clump of primroses nestled in the bank. We came to a small sheltered field where there were some sheep with little white lambs. Gradually as we climbed the noise of the traffic became fainter.

  “ How funny to be in the country so suddenly! ” I exclaimed.

  “ Yes,” agreed Jan thoughtfully. “ The country is real, David—the lambs and the primroses and the hawthorn buds—but the road is an artificial sort of thing. It goes across the land but doesn’t affect it at all. I can’t explain it properly but I know what I mean.”

  I knew what she meant for I had the same feeling myself. It was odd how well we understood one another.

  “ You could roll up the road like a carpet and take it away,” continued Jan, smiling at me. “ It would make no difference at all to the primroses. Is that a silly idea? ”

  “ It’s a grand idea. Let’s do it some night,” I suggested. “ Mr. Grimble would be annoyed, but the lambs would never notice.”

  Presently we came to a beech hedge which was sprouting in all directions and obviously had not been trimmed for years. In the middle of the hedge was a wooden gate with GREEN BEECH COTTAGE painted on it. The gate fell to pieces as I pushed it open and we had to step over the ruins of it to enter my property.

  Inside the gate was a narrow path which sloped downwards amongst a jungle of laurel bushes with twisted branches and spotted leaves. Briars and brambles and sodden yellow grass straggled all over the ground and there was a smell of decaying vegetation. A few paces further brought the cottage into view and we stood still and looked at it in silence. It was a small square house built of rosy pink brick. Ivy grew up the walls and hung round the windows in heavy dark, green masses. Even the chimneys were swathed in ivy. Trees and bushes had grown unchecked for years and, encroaching from all sides, seemed to be pressing upon the little house like a hostile army and smothering it to death. The place was so neglected and deserted that it looked as if nobody had been near it for a hundred years.

  “ It ought to be called Sleeping Beauty Cottage,” said, Jan in a low voice.

  Again she had put my thought into words.

  “ All this will have to be cleared,” I said, trying to speak confidently. “ All these laurels—I hate laurels anyway—and the ivy and those half-dead trees. It will have to be opened up to let in the air and the sunshine.”

  “ Yes, of course,” agreed Jan. “ It’s only—I mean where would one begin? ”

  There was no answer to that, or none that I could find.

  Before going into the house we pushed our way along the choked-up path which led round to the back. There was a rainwater barrel at the corner, it was leaking and covered with green slime; beside the barrel were the remains of a small conservatory. At the back of the house was a veranda with a brick floor and a low brick wall. I remembered that Aunt Etta had spoken of the veranda and had said that she and her friend often had tea out here and admired the view, but there was no view now. Instead there was a jungle of trees and bushes struggling together in confusion, stretching up for room to breathe.

  “ It’s—rather horrible,” I said in a low voice.

  Jan agreed. “ But it’s no use standing and looking at it. I wonder what the inside of the house is like.”

  “ We’ll soon see,” I told her. “ If it’s anything like the outside the only thing to do is to burn it to the ground.”

  We went back to the front door and I opened it with the huge key. The door squeaked crazily as I pushed it open, but I saw that all it needed was a little oil on the hinges. The door itself had been painted quite recently and the wood was perfectly sound. The hall was dark and dirty; the woodwork was painted in a hideous shade of brown and the dark-green wallpaper was peeling off the walls. On the right there was a steep flight of stairs which led to the floor above; on the left was a door.

  Jan and I went all round the house without saying a word. We went upstairs and looked at the bedrooms—two good-sized bedrooms and a smaller one facing the road—we looked at the dingy little bathroom with its rusty iron bath; we came down and peeped into the dining-room and the kitchen with its old-fashioned stove and cracked, discoloured sink; finally we went into a biggish room—obviously the sitting-room—which was on the ground floor and stretched from the front to the back of the house with windows at each end. This room was papered in a horrible pinkish red; there were big oblong patches on the walls where pictures had hung and there were cobwebs in every corner.

  “ Jan, it’s ghastly! ” I exclaimed, turning and looking at her. “ I’ve never seen such a frightful place, have you? ”

  “ I don’t think it’s bad,” replied Jan.

  “ You don’t think it’s bad? ”

  Jan smiled. “ Oh, I kn
ow it looks awful now, but it’s only awful on the surface. It has good bones. As a matter of fact I think it’s a dear little house.”

  “ You’re joking! ”

  “ No, I’m not.”

  “ Can you imagine anybody buying it? ”

  “ Not in its present condition,” she admitted. “ But you’re going to do it up, aren’t you? That’s all it wants.” She hesitated and then added, “ I’ve been wondering if you would like to live here yourself, David.”

  “ Live here—myself! ”

  Jan nodded. She sat down on the wooden window-seat and looked out of the dirty window. “ I can see it as it could be,” she said slowly. “ You’re horrified at the awful wall-papers and the ugly paint but that could easily be altered. I’ve been wondering all the time whether it would do for you to live in—and I think it would.”

  “ But, Jan——”

  “ Listen, David, you said you wished you could live in the country but you had to be near London; this is both, isn’t it? ”

  “ Yes, but there’s an odd feeling about this place.”

  “ It’s sad, that’s all. Nobody has cared for it or bothered about it for years and years. That’s why it feels sad … but look at this room,” said Jan, waving her hand. “ Look what a lovely shape it is! Think of it with oatmeal-coloured walls and cream paint—and—and yes, a blue carpet and blue curtains to match. Your writing-table would stand just here, at the window, and the sofa there … and that little alcove only needs a few shelves to make a splendid bookcase.”

  Jan was making me see it. For a moment I saw the room just as she had described it and then the vision faded and I saw the pink wallpaper and the cobwebs and the dirty windows.

  “ Could it be like that? ” I asked doubtfully.

  “ Of course—quite easily. Paper and paint is all it wants and Barbie knows a man who would do it … and the house is yours, isn’t it? It’s your very own. Doesn’t it thrill you to feel that this is your very own house? ”