by H. E. Bates
Stacey found No. 12, Rankin’s house, and went up the entry and round to the back door. Rankin was sitting in his shirt sleeves at the dinner-table, and called, ‘Come in’.
Stacey went in. ‘The missus has just gone into next door,’ Rankin said. ‘That just leaves room for you.’
Stacey looked round the room.
‘You ever keep dogs in a kennel?’ Rankin said, in his dry, pin-pricking way.
Stacey knew there was no need to answer, no need to comment on the miserable smallness of the room, with the old-fashioned upright gas-mantle on the wall, the broken ceiling, the varnished and re-varnished wall-paper rubbed off, here and there, by years of passing elbows.
‘If you smell anything,’ Rankin said, ‘It’s just a stink.’
‘What’s the rent?’ Stacey said.
‘Eleven and six. Began at four and six. Montague itched it up and up till it was thirteen and six, one time. But they stopped that.’
‘How many more rooms?’
‘Oh! tremendous number,’ Rankin said. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’
Rankin showed him the little extra front room. Even on that hot day, Stacey was shocked by its coldness. Rankin pulled back the linoleum, showing it blue-green, mould-furred, on the under side. He pulled up a floor board. On the joist, underneath, he showed Stacey the marks of rats’ teeth, and, on the bare earth lower down, the marks of rats’ feet and many rat-droppings. ‘I’d take you upstairs,’ Rankin said, ‘but the missus would die. Come outside.’
Stacey followed Rankin into the yard. Rankin showed him the little community water-closet, the old-fashioned iron yard water tap. ‘Mr. Montague owned the property,’ he said.
Then: ‘Did Brierley tell you anything?’
‘Yes.’
‘Everything?’
‘No.’
‘He wouldn’t tell you about the girl dying?’
‘That was it.’
Stacey felt that there was nothing more to say. Rankin’s slow words had made another pattern of pins in his mind, and he could see the pins, now, very bright in the wider aperture of light.
He drove Rankin back to the office. They came up out of Lime Street like men coming up from a culvert for air. The heat of the day, in the higher streets, was sweet.
‘Ever hear Mr. Montague talk of anyone named Clarkson?’ Stacey said.
‘No,’ Rankin said, ‘I can’t say I did.’
Obsessed by the name, for some reason, Stacey went upstairs to his office. The imprisoned heat struck at him in a muffled cloud as he went in. He stood on a chair and again, as in the morning, tried to beat open the window with his fists, but without success.
Then he went into Mr. Montague’s office, sat down at his desk, and tried to find some evidence of the name Clarkson. As he searched, he kept coming across the Paddington hotel bills, always for the same night, Friday, always for the double room.
He went back into his own office. The reporters had been in with notes, urgent queries, which they had left on his desk. He scanned them, scribbled replies on them and then telephoned down to the composing room that he would be out again until seven or eight o’clock that evening, and that he would work all night.
Then he looked up the trains to London. There was one at 1.53 which would bring him into Euston at 3.11. He caught this train.
The woman who came to the door of the Paddington hotel, that afternoon, asked him at once:
‘Room? Double or single?’
Like Miss Montague, the woman was also in black, and her mind, like hers, seemed clasped tight shut, so that nothing should escape from it. But the closing up of her mind was conscious.
‘I would like to know if you ever knew a Mr. Montague?’ he said.
‘Mr. Montague, Mr. Montague,’ she said. ‘No, no.’ She thought again. ‘No.’
‘Is this one of your hotel-bills?’ he said.
She looked at the bill. ‘Oh! yes, oh yes. That’s one of our bills.’
While she was looking at the bill, he took out the photograph of Mr. Montague taken at the Annual Church Conference, and gave it her. ‘Would you know that gentleman?’
‘That?’ she said. ‘I should say so! That’s one of our regular clients. Mr. Clarkson.’
‘That’s right,’ Stacey said. ‘This Mr. Clarkson was a friend of Mr. Montague. That’s what I was trying to get at.’
‘Nothing wrong, I hope?’ she said.
He told her then that Mr. Montague, Mr. Clarkson, was dead.
‘Oh! poor Mrs. Clarkson!’
Stacey did not say anything.
‘Sudden?’
He told her how sudden it was. ‘They often came here?’ he said.
‘Oh! yes. But don’t stand out here in the hot sun,’ she said, and he followed her into the hotel, with its hat-stand in the hall, the stale odours of greasy meals, the hush of afternoon. She looked into the lounge. It was empty, and she invited him in.
‘Oh! poor Mrs. Clarkson.’
Casually, Stacey asked about Mrs. Clarkson. What was she like?
‘Smart,’ the woman said, ‘Long hands. Much younger than Mr. Clarkson. Very smart.’
‘Had they been married long?’
‘I think about seven or eight years. Of course Mr. Clarkson used to come here before that. Oh yes. He came here quite often with the first Mrs. Clarkson.’
Stacey asked what the first Mrs. Clarkson was like.
‘Oh! a much different woman. Plumper. A bit coarse. Common. A type. You could see what she wanted.’
‘She died?’ Stacey said.
‘Oh! no, no. I don’t think so. A divorce, I think. Oh! yes it was a divorce. I know we thought it was a very good thing for Mr. Clarkson at the time.’
‘Thank you.’ He picked up his hat.
‘Won’t you have a cup of tea?’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask you.’
He thanked her, said no, and went out into the street. As she let him out of the shabby hotel lobby he knew her eyes were filling with tears and he tried not to notice it. ‘We shall miss him,’ she said. ‘He had such a way with him.’
There was nothing else he could do. He caught the earliest train back from Euston at 6.3, having a wash and some tea on the train so that he could drive straight to the office.
It was just after half-past seven when he arrived at the office and now, as in the morning and afternoon, the pent up heat of the day struck at him as soon as he opened the door.
He sat down at his desk, tired, and looked at the day’s accumulation of papers: the notes brought in by reporters, others sent up by the composing room, and among them the photograph of Mr. Montague, as a young man, sent along by Miss Montague.
He sat looking at the photograph. ‘This would have been taken,’ Miss Montague’s note said, ‘about 1893.’ Mr. Montague was wearing a straw-hat, a white crocheted tie and cream flannel trousers held up by a wide fancy waist-band. The face was full lipped, the eyes very black, like ripe berries, and the nostrils wide and sensuous. Stacey looked at it.
Suddenly he could not bear the heat any longer. He got up and banged at the window with his fists again. It would not open. Then his persistent knocking split off a wafer of sun-burned paint, and he saw underneath it the head of a screw. He saw then that the window had been screwed up for years.
He went down to the engine-room and borrowed a screw-driver from the engineer and then, scraping off more paint, at last had the screws clear, so that he could turn them. There were four screws and in five minutes he had taken them out. The window opened easily then, and he left it open and the clear evening air began to come in, slowly, very sweet, out of the August dusk, clarifying the room and giving it new life.
He sat down at his desk. The tributes to Mr. Montague as a public figure, from many prominent public figures, had come in and were laid under a paper weight. He took them up and read them through.
Then, refilling his pen and taking up a pile of the obsolete pink election-ballot sheets always used in that office, by Mr.
Montague’s orders, for the sake of economy, he began to write his notice.
He took his tone from the tributes to a public figure. Filling his lungs with the fresh August night air, he wrote:
‘It is with the profoundest regret that we learn, to-day, of the sudden and untimely death of Mr. Charles Macauley Montague, founder, proprietor, and editor for forty-five years of this paper, and for almost all of that time a public figure.’
The Blind
Once a week, every market day, the man Osborne and his wife drove down to the town in the old Ford tourer piled up with chicken crates, to take their girl to the travelling optician. They called him the eye-doctor. ‘Now then, look slippy,’ the man would say. ‘We don’ wan’ keep th’eye doctor waiting,’ or the woman: ‘You think th’eye doctor’s got all day to wait? Git y’ things on quick. Look about you.’ But they were never late. Punctually at half-past nine the car came down into the town, mud-spattered or chalk white from its journey across the field-track from the poultry farm, the man with rusty moustaches hanging down like loose tobacco from the pouch of his mouth; the woman like a hen herself with beak-nose and cherry-hung hat bobbing like a comb; and the girl sitting between them on the cart-cushion, staring with still stone-coloured eyes into the distance, as though she could see beyond the ends of the earth.
‘Summat do wi’ cat’s eyes.’ The man had become slightly addicted to boasting about it. He had a habit of blowing into his moustaches, with a sound of astonishment. ‘Knock-out, ain’t it? Think as the gal’s got eyes like that? He reckons it gonna take about eight or nine months to cure it. Seven and six a time – that’s money.’
The eye-doctor rented the front room of a house behind the market. He hung his card in the window, above the fern pots. ‘J. I. Varipatana. Optician. Attendance Tuesdays 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.’ And punctually at ten o’clock he would come to open the door to them, with the shell-white smile dazzling on his dusky sand-coloured face, his dark hand extended, and his way of greeting them with impersonal courtesy.
‘Mrs. Osborn. Mr. Osborn. Miss Osborn. Please enter.’
In the front room a number of cards with test numbers hung on the wall facing the light. The eye-doctor stood with his hands clasped behind his back, the white almost feminine smile constantly on his dark face. ‘And how is business with Mister Osborn? Nice weather. And Mrs. Osborn? You look very well. And the little lady?’
The girl sat as though far away, dumb.
‘Well, speak up. Th’eye doctor’s speaking to you. Lost your tongue?’
‘The eyes are a little better?’
‘Yes,’ the girl would say.
‘Good. Very good. Very good.’ The voice slow, correct, rather beautiful. ‘You persevered with the lotion?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come near the window.’
He would hold back one curtain a little, so that the light fell on the stone-coloured, almost dead eyes. ‘Yes. Look up to me. Now shut the eyes. Now open. Look out of the window. Look just like that for one minute. Yes.’ The voice soft, in rumination, sauvely gentle. ‘Now shut them again. Open now. Look sideways.’
And then, as she looked sideways, he would put his hands on her face, the fingers supporting her head, the thumbs touching the eyelids. Like that he would look down at her, still smiling, until the force of his own eyes drew her own back again. With his thumbs he peeled back the lids and then released them. The man and woman watched in silence, waiting for the verdict.
‘The cataract is no worse.’ The smile remained on the lips, even as they spoke and shut. ‘Indeed perhaps a little better.’
By silence they demonstrated their complete faith in him. They saw him as someone who could perform a miracle. Still more, the girl took on importance because it was on her that the miracle was being performed. And they, in turn, took importance from her.
One week the women grew impatient, impelled by fear. ‘Ain’t she never goin’ to git no better?’
‘My dear Mrs. Osborne.’ The voice itself had something miraculous in it, some gentle hypnotic healing quality. ‘I am not a magician. The eyes are very precious, very delicate. You see, think of it like this. If you cut your finger I can put something on it that will heal, that will destroy the germs. Some iodine, something to burn out the infection. But no – not on the eyes. No drastic measures can cure the eyes. Only time and faith can cure the eyes. You must be patient, and have faith.’
Continually, week by week, the girl herself had the impression that she could see less. At a distance of forty feet hung a curtain of mist that her eyes could not penetrate, and gradually, she felt, this mist began to close in on her. She began to see the hens at home only as vague lumps of colour, and on dull days, when the light was poor, the black hens were lost on her altogether. The hens, which she fed morning and evening, were the test for her, and gradually, with the range of vision lessening, she had to begin to rely less on sight than hearing. By hearing, by listening to the sound of hen noises, her mind conjured the vision that eyes could not see. She began to hear things with wonderful clarity.
In the eye-doctor’s small front-room there were no hens, no test for her. And she was always frightened. Partly through fear, partly through some notion that if she said a thing often enough it would eventually become a fact, she said, always, that she could see a little better.
At the end of the consultation the eye-doctor wrapped up a bottle of lotion in white paper and Osborn paid the seven and six. Osborn felt that by doing so he paid for something else besides a cure. He bought prestige, importance, some essence of slight mystery, a thing to boast about.
‘Cost us pounds a’ready. Every week she’s got ’ev this special tackle. You can’t git it in England. He gits it from India – it’s some rare herb or summat and it don’t grow in England. Gits it from some head man over there. Ah! I tell y’, costs us pounds, costs us a small fortune. You know what he told me? Reckons where he comes from they ain’t got such things as bad eyes and like o’ that. It’s this herb as does it.’
Then one week the girl could read only the large capitals on the text-cards. At home the hens had begun to resemble balls of brown and white mist. With the mist closing down on her, she was more frightened than ever.
‘Well, I think it may be only temporary. But just to be on the safe side, I am going to give you a new lotion.’ The voice was easy, smooth, like a beautiful oil itself. ‘Now Mr. Osborn, I should charge you one pound for this lotion. The herb from which it is distilled is very rare indeed and in my country it only grows on hills above 10,000 feet, and it can only be gathered after the snow has melted. My people have known about it for centuries. You see? But wait please – wait one moment, please, one moment. I am not going to charge you one pound, not anything like one pound. Because I know you, because I want your daughter to get better – half price. To you only, half-price. Ten shillings.
‘Half a quid a week – that’s what it costs us. Enough to break anybody – but there y’are. I don’t care what it costs, I ain’t goin’ t’ave anybody say I was too mean to fork out the dough. Course, he ain’t ordinary doctor – you don’t expect to pay ordinary prices.’
One morning it was not the eye-doctor but a woman who opened the door, and the card was not in the window.
‘No, he ain’t come.’
‘Very like had a break-down? – puncture or summat?’
‘Well, it seems funny. He always drops me a card so as I get it first post Tuesdays. But to-day I ain’t had one.’
‘H’m, funny. Well, we’ll go back to market and then come round again.’
At twelve and again in the afternoon Mr. Varipatana was not there. They drove home. ‘Hope he ain’t bad or nothing. You’re sure he must be took bad or else he’d write?’ They spoke with concern, making the illness of an important man a thing of importance for themselves.
To the girl it seemed as if they drove in semidarkness. She could hear the wind, now, with the aggravated keenness of her he
aring, as she had never heard it in her life. Her mind gathered the sounds and translated them into images. The sounds seemed to her to come through an immense expanse of space. She sat with her hands in her lap and when she touched one hand against another she was reminded of the sensation of Mr. Varipatana’s hands pressing on her eyes. They seemed to be pressing her down into greater darkness.
‘Well, I hope nothing’s happened to the man. I hope he ain’t been took bad or nothing. She’s used every drop o’ lotion up.’
They drove down to market as usual, a week later. Mr. Varipatana was not there.
‘He ain’t bad?’
‘I dunno. He sent a letter saying he wasn’t comin’ no more. That’s all I know.’
In the afternoon they drove back, the eyes of the man and woman depressed, short-focused, as though seeing nothing, the girl with her eyes still and fixed, as though on some illimitable distance. Osborn felt cheated, turning the lost money over and over in his mind.
The girl sat with her hands in her lap. She recalled the touch of Mr. Varipatana’s hands on her eyelids, and it seemed suddenly as if the hands shut down the lids with suave finality, for ever.
The car stopped before she was aware of it. She was jerked back to reality. She felt the pressure of mist on her eyes and was frightened.
Instinctively she put out her hands.
Shot Actress – Full Story
There were fifteen thousand people in Claypole, but only one actress. She kept a milliner’s shop.
My name is Sprake. I kept the watchmaker-and-jeweller’s shop next door to Miss Porteus for fifteen years. During all that time she never spoke to me. I am not sure that she ever spoke to anyone; I never saw her. My wife and I were a decent, respectable devoted couple, Wesleyans, not above speaking to anyone, and I have been on the local stage myself, singing in oratorio, but we were never good enough for Miss Porteus. But that was her affair. If she hadn’t been so standoffish she might, perhaps, have been alive to-day. As it is she is dead and she died, as everybody knows, on the front page of the newspapers.