It May Never Happen

by V. S. Pritchett

  I was disappointed in Thompson. Really, not to have had more guts than that! Restlessly I looked out of the window. There was a full moon spinning on the tail of a dying wind. Under the moonlight the fields were like wideawake faces, the woods like womanish heads of hair upon them. I put on my hat and coat and went out. I was astonished by the circle of stars. They were as distinct as figures on a clock. I took out my watch and compared the small time in my hand with the wide time above. Then I walked on. There was a sour smell at the end of the wood, where, no doubt a dead rabbit or pigeon was rotting.

  I came out of the wood on to the metalled road. Suddenly my heart began to beat quickly as I hurried down the road, but it was a long way round now. I cut across fields. There was a cottage and a family were listening to a dance-band on the wireless. A man was going the rounds of his chickens. There was a wheelbarrow and there were spades and steel bars where a water mill was being built.

  Then I crossed the last fields and saw the bungalow. My heart throbbed heavily and I felt all my blood slow down and my limbs grow heavy. It was only when I got to the road that I saw there were no lights in the bungalow. The Colonel’s daughter, the Sergeant’s daughter, had gone to bed early like a child. While I stood I heard men’s voices singing across the fields. It must have gone ten o’clock and people were coming out of the public-house. In all the villages of England, at this hour, loud-voiced groups were breaking up and dispersing into the lanes.

  I got to my house and lit a candle. The fire was low. I was exhausted and happy to be in my house among my own things, as if I had got into my own skin again. There was no light in the kitchen. Thompson had gone to bed. I grinned at the thought of the struggles of poor Thompson. I picked up a book and read. I could hear still the sound of that shouting and singing. The beer was sour and fiat in this part of the country but it made people sing.

  The singing voices came nearer. I put down the book. An argument was going on in the lane. I listened. The argument was nearing the cottage. The words got louder. They were going on at my gate. I heard the gate go and the argument was on my path. Suddenly—there could be no doubt—people were coming to the door. I stood up, I could recognize no voice. Loud singing, stumbling feet, then bang! The door broke open and crashed against the wall. Tottering, drunk, with their arms round each other, Thompson and the Colonel’s daughter nearly fell into the room.

  Thompson stared at me with terror.

  “Stand up, sailor,” said the Colonel’s daughter, clinging to him.

  “He was lonely,” she said unsteadily to me. “We’ve been playing gramophone records. Sing,” she said.

  Thompson was still staring.

  “Don’t look at him. Sing,” she said. Then she gave a low laugh and they fell, bolt upright on the sofa like prim, dishevelled dolls.

  A look of wild love of all the world came into Thompson’s eyes and he smiled as I had never seen him smile before. He suddenly opened his twitching mouth and bawled:

  “You’ve robbed every tailor,

  And you’ve skinned every sailor,

  But you won’t go walking Paradise Street no more.”

  “Go on. That’s not all,” the Colonel’s daughter cried and sang, “Go on—something—something, deep and rugged shore.”

  She put her arms round his neck and kissed him. He gaped at her with panic and looked at her skirt. It was undone.

  He pointed at her leg in consternation. The sight sobered him. He pulled away his arms and rushed out of the room. He did not come back. She looked at me and giggled. Her eyes were warm and shining. She picked leaves off her skirt.

  “Where’s he gone? Where’s he gone?” she kept asking.

  “He’s gone to bed,” I said.

  She started a fit of coughing. It strained her throat. Her eyes were dilated like an animal’s, caught in a trap and she held her hand to her chest.

  “I wish,” she cried hysterically, pointing at me in the middle of her coughing, “I wish you could see your bloody face.”

  She got up and called out.

  “Thompson! Thompson!” And when he did not answer she sang out, “Down by the deep and rugged shore—ore-ore-ore.”

  “What’s the idea?” I said.

  “I want Thompson,” she said. “He’s the only man up here.”

  Then she began to cry. She marched out to his room, but it was locked. She was wandering through the other rooms calling him and then she went out, away up the path. She went calling him all the way down to her bungalow.

  In the morning Thompson appeared as usual. He brought the breakfast. He came in for “orders”. Grilled chop, did I think? And what about spotted dick? He seemed no worse. He behaved as though nothing had happened. There was no guilty look in his eyes and no apprehension. He made no apology. Lunch passed, tea-time and the day. I finished my work and went into the kitchen.

  “Tell me,” I said, “about last night.”

  Thompson was peeling potatoes. He used to do this into a bucket on the floor, as if he were peeling for a whole crew. He put down the clasp-knife and stood up. He looked worried.

  “That was a terrible thing,” Thompson said, as if it was something he had read about in the papers.

  “Terrible, sir. A young lady like that, sir. To come over here for me, an educated lady like that. Someone oughter teach her a lesson. Coming over and saying she wanted to play some music. I was took clean off my guard.

  “It wasn’t right,” said Thompson. “Whichever way you look at it, it wasn’t right. I told her she’d messed me up.”

  “I’m not blaming you. I want to know.”

  “And she waited till you was out,” Thompson said. “That’s not straight. She may class herself as an educated young lady, but do you know what I reckon she is? I reckon she’s a jane.”

  I went down to the bungalow. I was beginning to laugh now. She was in the garden digging. Her sleeves were rolled up and she was sweating over the fork. The beds were thick with leaves and dead plants. I stood there watching her. She looked at me nervously for a moment. “I’m making the garden tidy,” she said. “For Monday. When the bitch comes down.”

  She was shy and awkward. I walked on and, looking back, saw her go into the house. It was the last I ever saw of her. When I came back the fork she had been using was stuck in the flower bed where she had left it. She went to London that night and did not return.

  “Thank Gawd,” Thompson said.

  There was a change in Thompson after this and there was a change in me. Perhaps the change came because the dirty February days were going, the air softer and the year moving. I was leaving soon. Thompson mentioned temptation no more. Now he went out every day. The postman was his friend. They used to go to the pub. He asked for his money. In the public-house the labourers sat around muttering in a language Thompson didn’t understand. He stood them drinks. At his first pint he would start singing. They encouraged him. He stood them more drinks. The postman ordered them for him and then tapped him on the pocket book. They emptied his pockets every night. They despised him and even brought complaints to me about him after they had emptied his pockets.

  Thompson came back across the common alone, wild, enthusiastic and moaning with suspicion by turns. The next day he would have a mood. All the countryside for ten miles around knew the sailor. He became famous.

  Our last week came. He quietened down.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I’ll stay by you.”

  “You can’t,” I said. “I’ll be going abroad.”

  “You needn’t pay me,” he said. “I’ll stay by you.” It was hard to make him understand he could not stay with me. He was depressed.

  “Get me out of here safe,” he pleaded at last. “Come with me to the station.” He could not go on his own because all the people he knew would be after him. He had told them he was going. He had told them I was saving his pension and his last fortnight’s pay. They would come creeping out of cottage doors and ditches
for him. So I packed his things and got a taxi to call for us. How slowly we had lived and moved in these fields and lanes. Now we broke through it all with a rush as the car dropped down the hill and the air blew in at the window. As we passed the bungalow with the sun on its empty windows I saw the fork standing in the neglected bed. Then we swept on. Thompson sat back in the car so that no one should see him, but I leaned forward to see everything for the last time and forget it.

  We got to the town. As the taxi slowed down in the streets people looked out of shops, doors, a potman nodded from the pub.

  “Whatcha, Jack,” the voices called.

  The police, the fishmonger, boys going to school, dozens of people waved to him. I might have been riding with royalty. At the station a large woman sweeping down the steps of the bank, straightened up and gave a shout.

  “Hi, Jacko!” she called, bending double, went into shrieks of laughter and called across to a friend at a first-floor window. It was a triumph. But Thompson ignored them all. He sat back out of sight.

  “Thank Gawd I’ve got you,” he said. “They skin you of everything.”

  We sat in the train. It was a two-hour journey.

  “Once I strike Whitechapel,” he said in the voice of one naming Singapore, “I’ll be O.K.” He said this several times, averting his face from the passing horror of the green fields.

  “Don’t you worry,” he said. “Don’t fret yourself for me. Don’t you worry.” His optimism increased as mine dwindled as we got nearer London. By the time we reached London he was almost shouting. “I’ll fall on my feet, don’t you worry. I’ll send you my address.”

  We stood on the kerb and I watched him walk off into the yellow rain and the clogged, grunting and mewing traffic. He stepped right into it without looking. Taxis braked to avoid him. He was going to walk to Whitechapel. He reckoned it was safer.

  THE LION’S DEN

  “Oh, there you are, that’s it, dear,” said the mother, timidly clawing her son out of the darkness of the doorway and kissing him. “You got here all right. I couldn’t look out for you; they’ve boarded up the window. We’ve had a land-mine. All the glass went last week. Have you had your tea? Have a cup of tea?”

  “Well, let’s see the boy,” said the father. “Come in here to the light.”

  “I’ve had tea, thanks,” Teddy said.

  “Have another cup. It won’t take a tick. I’ll pop the kettle on….”

  “Leave the boy alone, old dear,” the father said. “He’s had his tea. Your mother’s just the same, Teddy.”

  “I only thought he’d like a cup of tea. He must be tired,” said the mother.

  “Sit down, do, there’s a good girl,” said the father.

  “Now—can Father speak? Thank you. Would you like to wash your hands, old chap?” the father said. “We’ve got the hot water back, you know.”

  “Yes, go on,” said the mother, “wash your hands. They did the water yesterday.”

  “There she goes again,” the father said. “Wonderful, isn’t it?”

  “No, I don’t want to wash,” said Teddy.

  “He doesn’t want to wash his hands,” said the father, “so leave him alone.”

  “It’s hot if he wants to.”

  “We know it’s hot,” said the father. “Well, my boy, sit down and make yourself comfortable.”

  “Take this chair. Don’t have that one. It’s a horrible old thing. Here, take this one,” the mother said.

  “He’s all right. He’s got a chair,” the father said.

  “Let him sit where he likes,” the mother said. “You do like that chair, Teddy, don’t you?”

  “Well,” said Teddy, “you’re looking well, Mother.” This was not true; the mother looked ill. Her shoulders were hunched, her knees were bent and her legs bowed stiffly as she walked. When she smiled, tears ran to the corners of her eyes as if age were splitting them; and dirty shadows like fingermarks gave them the misplaced stare of anxiety. Her fingers, too, were twisting and untwisting the corners of her cardigan.

  “Of course she’s looking well. Nothing wrong with her, is there? What I keep saying,” the father said.

  He was a bit of a joker. He resembled a doll-like colonel from a magazine cover, but too easy in manner for that.

  “I’m well now,” said the mother. “It’s just these old raids. They upset me, but I get over it.”

  “We worry about you,” Teddy said.

  “You shouldn’t worry,” said the father. “There’s nothing to worry about, really. We’re here, that’s the chief point. We just don’t worry at all.”

  “It doesn’t do any good, Teddy dear,” said the mother. She was sitting by the fire and she leaned over to him and gripped his knee hard. “We’ve had our life. I’m seventy, don’t forget.”

  “Seventy,” laughed his father. “She can’t forget she’s seventy. She doesn’t look it.”

  “But I am,” said his mother fiercely.

  “Age is what you make it,” the father said. “That’s how I feel.”

  “There’s a lot in that,” said the son.

  “I go to bed … and I lie there listening,” the mother said. “I just wait for it to go. Your father, of course, he goes to sleep at once. He’s tired. He has a heavy day. But I listen and listen,” the mother said, “and when it goes I give him a shake and say ‘It’s gone’.”

  “I don’t want to sound immodest,” the father laughed, “but she nearly has my—my confounded pyjamas off me, sometimes.”

  “He just lies there. He’d sleep through it, guns and all,” the mother went on. “But I couldn’t do that. I sit on the edge of the bed. If it’s bad I sit on the top of the stairs.”

  “We both do if it’s bad,” the father said. “I get up if it’s bad.”

  “You ought to sit under the staircase, not on top,” said Teddy.

  “Just in case,” said the mother. “I like to feel I can get out.”

  “You see, you want to get out,” the father said. “It isn’t that one’s afraid, but—well—you feel more comfortable.”

  “I sit there and I know it’s wrong of me, I think of you all, if I’ll ever see any of you again. I wish you were with me. I never see you all, not together like we used to be …”

  “It is natural for a mother to feel like that,” said the father

  “I mean if we could be not so far apart.”

  “We wish you’d come down to us,” Teddy said.

  “I wish I could, dear,” said the mother.

  “Why don’t you? You could, easily.”

  “I’d like to, but I can’t.”

  “I don’t see why not. Why don’t you send her, Dad? Just for the rest.”

  “I’ve got to stay with Dad,” she said.

  “Your mother feels she’s got to stay with me.”

  “But,” Teddy said, “you could look after yourself for a while.”

  “I could look after myself all right,” said the father. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  “Well,” said Teddy, “what’s against it?”

  “Nothing’s against it,” said his father. “Just herself. She feels her place is here. She just feels this is her place.”

  His father raised his chin and lowered his eyes bashfully. He had a small white moustache as slight as a monkey’s, and it seemed to give a twist to the meaning of his words, putting them between sets of inverted commas.

  The mother read his eyes slowly and fidgeted on her stool by the fire. She nodded from habit when she had got through her husband’s words, but she glanced furtively at her son. She put on an air of light-heartedness, to close the subject.

  “Some day I’ll come,” she said. “The Miss Andersons are very kind. They had us down last Sunday when the windows went…. It’s safer downstairs.”

  “You know what I feel?” said his father, in a sprightly way. “I feel it’s safe everywhere.”

  The son and the mother both looked at the father with very startled concer
n and sympathy, recognizing that in danger every one lives by his own foible. Then guiltily they glanced at each other.

  “I feel it,” said the father apologetically, when he saw their expression.

  “I know it,” he asserted, feebly scowling. Seeing he had embarrassed them, he escaped into a business-like mood. “Now I’m going down to see about the coal for the morning. I always do it at this time.”

  “He’s wonderful,” said the mother. “He always does the coal.”

  When the father left the room a great change came over the mother and son.

  “Come nearer the fire, dear,” said the mother. They were together. They came closer together like lovers.

  “Just a minute, dear,” she said. And she went to the curtains and peeped into the night. Then she came back to the stool.

  “You see how it is, dear,” she said. “He has faith.” The son scowled.

  “It’s wonderful, his faith,” she said. “He trusts in God.”

  A look of anger set on the son’s jaw for a moment, then he wagged his head resignedly.

  “He always did. You remember, when you were a boy?” said the mother, humouring her son. “I never could. He did from the beginning when I met him. Mind you, Teddy, I don’t say it’s a bad thing. It’s got him on. When one of those old things starts he goes to his room and he prays. I know he’s praying. Really he’s praying all the time, for me, for you children …”

  “For us!” exclaimed the son.

  “Yes, for everyone,” said the mother. “The world—oh, I don’t understand. If there’s a God why did He let it happen in the first place?—but your father, he always did do things on a big scale.”

  She was speaking in a whisper and glancing now and then at the door.