by H. E. Bates
That was the end. It was established, beyond doubt, that Miss Porteus had taken her life. And suddenly all the mystery and sensation and horror and fascination of Miss Porteus’s death became nothing. The papers were not interested in her any longer and her name has never appeared in the papers again.
I no longer live at Claypole. All those odd, unrealised rumours that went round were enough to drive me mad; but they were also enough to kill my wife. Like me, she could not sleep, and the shock of it all cracked her life right across, like a piece of bone. Rumour and shock and worry killed her, and she died just after the facts of Miss Porteus’s death were established. A month later I gave up the business and left the town. I could not go on. The first week before her death I had three people in the shop. All that mad inquisitiveness had hardened into indifference. Nobody wanted anything any longer. Nobody even stopped to stare up at Miss Porteus’s windows.
Poor Miss Porteus. She took her life because she was hard up, in a fit of despair. There is no more to it than that. But nobody in Claypole ever believed that and I suppose very few people ever will. In Claypole they like to think that she was murdered; they know, because the papers said so, that she was a strange and eccentric woman; they know that she acted in a play with a black man; they know, though nobody ever really said so, that she was a loose woman and that she was pregnant and that somebody shot her for that reason; they know that she let men in and up the back stairs at a pound a time and they like to think that I was one of those men; they know that I found her naked in the bathroom and that I was a bit queer and that I knew more than I would ever say.
They know, in short, all that happened to Miss Porteus. They can never know how much has happened to me.
The Dog and Mr. Morency
Mr. Alexander Morency, residing at Seaview Hotel, the Esplanade, had a little dog, Fritz, a Pomeranian. Mr. Morency came to a decision to shoot either the dog or Mrs. Morency. He could not make up his mind.
Curiously, Mr. Morency had first wanted the dog. This had been in the days when the Morencys lived at ‘Morency’, 3 Lilac Gardens, close to Regent’s Park, and Mr. Morency was in business as a tea-broker, in the City. Mrs. Morency had not then wanted a dog. ‘Me? A dog? What should I do with a dog?’ she would say. ‘All over the furniture, paddling in and out in wet weather. Besides, there’s some other things I don’t like about them.’ Morency, a small, easy-going gentle fellow with a voice like smooth toffee, who wore rimless glasses, tried to persuade her otherwise. ‘You see you’re alone here all day, and that isn’t good for you. One hears stories of fellows calling ostensibly to sell floor polish and well – You need company, and you can’t have better company than a dog. Everybody knows that, and it will protect you as well.’
Mr. Morency had not at that time considered the question of breed, but he had in his mind the idea of a large dog, some kind of mastiff. He saw himself exercising this mastiff in the park on Sunday mornings, and felt the power of it on the leash, of the great neck straining magnificently forward, the muscles rippling silkily, hard as rubber. He wanted a dog that was a dog, a fighting dog, a dog that if necessary might have to be muzzled. He felt vaguely some latent power in himself expressed in the thought of such a dog.
‘Well, if I must have a dog,’ Mrs. Morency said at last, ‘I’ll have a Pomeranian.’
‘Oh! no. Have a dog. Have a dog that you can call a dog.’
‘Well, isn’t a Pomeranian a dog? What’s wrong with a Pomeranian?’
‘In the first place,’ Mr. Morency said, ‘it’s a dog of German origin. And we can do without German dogs, I think. Then the whole idea of your having a dog at all is for you to have protection.’
‘You said companionship.’
‘Well, if you like. Companionship as well if you like. But primarily protection. Because you’re alone in the house. Now if you would make up your mind on some dog like an Alsatian – ’
‘Oh! no. Beastly things. I can’t bear them.’
‘Well, all right. A Labrador.’
‘What’s a Labrador?’
So Mr. Morency explained what a Labrador was, but Mrs. Morency was not impressed. Then he described a Collie, and then a Sheep Dog, subsequently other large dogs, including a Wolf-hound. He even went so far as to describe a St. Bernard. He became very enthusiastic about a St. Bernard, playing on Mrs. Morency’s maternal instincts. Mr. and Mrs. Morency had had no children and Mr. Morency kept saying didn’t Mrs. Morency know that it was the St. Bernard who, with brandy flask, rescued lost snow-bound little children from death in Alpine passes?
But Mrs. Morency merely pointed out that St. Bernards ate a lot.
‘Well, yes,’ Mr. Morency said, ‘admitted. A lot for their size yes. But – ’
‘I don’t want a dog that eats a lot.’
‘Well, have a Collie. They don’t eat so much.’
‘And I don’t want a dog that needs a kennel. If I’m going to have a dog I’ll have a dog that’ll be easy to keep, and that can come into the house and eat with us.’
‘Yes, but the whole idea – ’
‘I’ll have a Pomeranian,’ Mrs. Morency said.
‘Oh! no. Please.’
‘I’ll have a Pomeranian,’ Mrs. Morency said, ‘and I’ll call him Fritz.’
When the Pomeranian arrived Mr. Morency almost liked it. It was soft and odd and puppy-playful, and he would roll it into a little black woollen ball in his hands. It wetted the cushions, but Mrs. Morency said that was natural, wasn’t it? and Mr. Morency forgave it when it rolled in the geraniums. Mrs. Morency called it Fritzie, and bought a dog basket and lined the basket with red silk. The dog slept in the box-room and for a night or two was frightened, whimpering, and Mrs. Morency woke up and put on her dressing-gown and went to comfort it. Another day Mrs. Morency was wildly excited when Mr. Morency came home. ‘It drinks tea! I gave it tea in a saucer and it drank it! Tea! There’s a knowing creature for you. You a tea-broker and it drinks tea! Couldn’t you bring it home a little caddy with some nice special Darjeeling in it, all its own?’
Mr. Morency brought home a little half-pound caddy, filled with Darjeeling, and Mrs. Morency wrote a label on it – ‘Fritz’. Then Sunday came and Mrs. Morency said, ‘Dogs need exercise. Would you like to take Fritzie for an hour into the park?’
With great reluctance Mr. Morency took the dog into the park. There were a great many dogs in the park. It seemed to him that there were, that morning, unusually large numbers of large dogs. He saw Alsatians with wild cocked ears, big Collies, vast Labradors bounding after balls across the grass. Fritzie strained at the leash and Mr. Morency strained back, walking almost on his heels, trying to foster the illusion of power. But it was no good: he could not blind himself to the reality of the little Pomeranian, miserable and despicable, so absurd that it did not even know what a tree was for. And he felt that he was on the verge of hating it.
But it was not until some time afterwards that he felt his hatred become a reality. In the autumn of that year Mr. Morency retired from business, and the Morencys decided to go and live at the seaside.
‘Of course,’ Mr. Morency said, ‘we shall have to get rid of Fritz.’
‘Get what? What do you mean? Get rid of Fritz?’
‘Why, yes. You can’t take a dog to live in an hotel. No hotel will have it.’
‘Oh! won’t they? We’ll see about that. We’ll find an hotel that does.’
Mrs. Morency went to several hotels and even took Fritz down to them, to see the managers. Finally the Seaview Hotel said it did not mind little dogs, providing they were well-trained.
‘He has his own bed and bath and even his own tea-caddy. Oh! yes, and he even has other necessary things too. He’s an angel.’
So the Morencys moved into the Seaview Hotel, and every morning, before breakfast, and every evening, after supper, Mr. Morency exercised the Pomeranian along the Esplanade with the sea-wind in his face. Mr. Morency tried hard to foster the old illusion of grappling with a powerful
animal. But it was no good: he saw only the wretched yelping and yapping little Fritz, who would never grow any bigger.
And in the hotel lounge, every day, the Pomeranian did his tricks. ‘Fritzie sit up! up! Up! Steady, Fritzie, wait. Fritzie, wait. Naughty Fritzie. Fritzie wait, wait. Now – catch it!’ And Fritzie would catch the biscuit. ‘Now,’ Mrs. Morency would say, ‘cow jump over the moon.’ And Mrs. Morency would hold up a saucer and call to Fritzie: ‘Cow jump over the moon! Fritzie, now, Fritzie cow jump – Fritzie, naughty Fritzie. Naughty Fritzie not looking. Now. Cow jumps over – Fritzie, Fritzie. Naughty. No jump, no cakey. Now cow – steady – cow jumps over the moon!’
And the ladies in the lounge would say what a wonderful little thing Fritzie was.
‘Oh! yes. He’s so knowing. He knows it’s teatime when I rattle a spoon in a cup, and he knows it’s walkie time, don’t you Fritzie?, if I just pick up his lead. And he knows – well, he can tell me when he – ’
And hearing the voice of Mrs. Morency praising and explaining the dog and seeing the dog itself, paws up, begging for biscuit day after day in the hotel lounge, Mr. Morency felt the gradual growth and hardening of a peculiar hatred towards them both. He saw himself for the rest of his life exercising the dog morning and evening, getting out of bed to give it its saucer of early morning tea, hearing its silly yappings of joy and misery, smelling the old dog-smell about the room. He began to long for the day when the dog would get run over by a bus, and in desperation, once or twice, he called it suddenly across the road on the off-chance that it would get run over by the bus. He felt jealous of the dog because of his wife’s affection for it, jealous of his wife because of the dog’s everlasting yapping and stupid affection for her. He hated the walk along the Esplanade, and he could not sleep at night, the thought of the dog boring into his mind like a gimlet. Until finally he felt he could bear it no longer.
He decided to shoot the dog. He would take it down on the sea shore, one dark evening, and shoot it and let the tide wash it away. If there was any trouble afterwards, he would probably shoot Mrs. Morency too.
And one evening, after dinner, he took the dog far along the Esplanade. He had an old service revolver in his overcoat pocket and he would shoot the dog down under the cliffs, where the lamps ended. As he walked along he passed other men exercising other dogs, and suddenly, instead of being remorseful, he was struck by the whole outrageous idea of dogs on earth. He thought of all the dogs being exercised, for the same purpose, along that piece of sea-front, and then of all the dogs being exercised, still for the same purpose, along all the sea-fronts of England. He thought of the thousands of dogs all over England, and then of the millions of dogs all over Europe, and all the other millions of dogs from China to San Francisco, from Greenland to Honolulu. There were millions of dogs in the world and what were they worth? You couldn’t milk them, you couldn’t eat them and sometimes, he felt bitterly, you couldn’t trust them. They were pampered parasites, an outrage, and nobody saw it. They didn’t even hunt their own food, like cats, and he saw all the vast unharnessed power of dog muscle all over the world as something which was worth nothing at all.
He tugged the Pomeranian down to the shore. In the half-darkness he could just see it: miserable, despicable, an absolute caricature of a dog. He thought of the dog he had wanted, the mastiff. He felt the tremendous pull of it on the sockets of his arms, the strength of a dog that was a dog.
He got the Pomeranian by the collar with his left hand and held it down against the still sea-wet shingle. Below him he could hear the tide going out, washing the pebbles. There was no other sound except the wind up on the cliffs. The dog was making no sound at all.
As Mr. Morency looked at it, there was just a faint light from the last lamp on the Esplanade, and unexpectedly Mr. Morency saw the dog’s eyes. He looked at them and suddenly, for about a second, he saw in the reflecting eyes of the small dog a small reflection of himself. He saw the dim light of something abject, downtrodden, a little forlorn, deeply unhappy.
And in that moment he could have shot himself.
The Wreath
The train was almost ready to start when the old man and the girl came into the carriage. The girl was very sweet with him, putting his travelling case and the wreath on the rack, reminding him of things, kissing him very tenderly good-bye.
‘You know where you’re going? Now don’t forget. Ham Street. First stop and then you change and get the other train. You think you’ll remember? Ham Street and change first stop?’
‘Yes. I think I shall remember.’
‘And carry the wreath this way up. Like this. You see, there’s a little handle.’
He said yes, he would remember and carry it that way up, and then she kissed him good-bye through the open window and the train moved away.
‘Oh! dear,’ he said to me, ‘we went to the wrong station and then had to run for it.’
He was dressed all in black. He had pure white hair and a very pink fresh face, and he looked rather like a picture of a French priest. He gave me a smile. ‘When you get over eighty, running for trains isn’t what it used to be.’
‘You’re not over eighty?’ I said.
‘Oh! yes. Eighty-three. You think I don’t look it?’
He looked perhaps seventy. I said so.
‘They all say that,’ he said. ‘No, eighty-three. At eighty I had an illness, a sort of stroke, and the doctors said, “You won’t get better.” Then I did get better and they said, “It’s very remarkable. We’ll give lectures on you,” and so they’ve been giving lectures on me.’ He looked up at the rack. ‘Is the wreath all right?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s all right.’
He was silent and I thought perhaps he was tired of talking and I handed him an evening paper.
‘No,’ he said, ‘thank you. Thank you all the same. But since my illness I can’t read. I can write, but I can’t read.’ He looked out of the window at the darkness. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Yes.’
He looked at me. ‘What were we talking about?’
‘You were telling me,’ I said, ‘how you could write but not read.’
‘Ah yes. Yes.’ He began to forage in his pockets. ‘Yes, I can write. I write quite well, quite straight.’ He turned out first one pocket and then another. ‘I am trying to find a specimen of my writing.’ He found a piece of blue paper. ‘No. That’s who I am, where I’m travelling to. In case I get lost.’
He gave me the paper to read. It had written on it: ‘Simpson. Travelling to Ham Street.’
‘I am going to a funeral,’ he said. ‘Is the wreath all right?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s all right.’
He took out his snuff-box, opened it and handed it to me. I thanked him and said no. The box was silver and on the lid were engraved figures of men cycling. He said, ‘The arms of my cycling club. I do a great deal of cycling.’
‘Still?’
‘Oh, yes! In the summer. Oh yes! I cycle all over the countryside.’
Again he looked out of the window, briefly, watching the darkness. Then he looked at me.
‘What were we talking about?’
‘About the cycling.’
‘Ah yes. Yes. About the cycling. Oh! yes I’m energetic. I go into the bathroom every morning and wash in cold water and do my exercises. Take a bath once a week. Cycle in summer.’
He held out his hands to me.
‘Are they the hands of a man of eighty-three?’
They were full, beautiful hands, wonderfully pink and fresh like his face.
‘Oh, no!’ he said. ‘In summer I cycle from Ham Street to Rye, three times a week, to get a shave.’
‘That’s a long way.’
‘Seven miles.’
For a time he told me about the cycling. Then he began to tell me about his youth.
‘I was a grocer. An apprentice.’ He stopped. ‘But this is not fair to you. Talking about myself.’
‘I like it,’ I said.
> ‘You have some way of making me do it,’ he said. He paused, looked up. ‘The wreath is all right?’
‘Yes, it’s all right. I’ll watch it.’
‘What were we talking about?’
I told him.
‘Oh, yes. We sold everything. Provisions, furniture, blankets, stockings. A big connection. I used to drive about the country in a trap, taking orders. Ladies’ stockings. Oh, yes! In those days you measured the length of the leg. Pleasant. Blankets was another thing. I remember selling a hundred pairs of blankets in one day, just by telling them that I’d dreamed it was going to be the coldest winter on record.’
‘And now,’ I said, ‘it’s all different?’
‘Oh, yes!’
‘You sit back and take it easy?’
‘Oh, no! I’m the director of a company with a capital of five million.’ He put his hand on his neck-tie. ‘You see that pin?’
‘The Prince of Wales’s feathers?’
‘Exactly. The late Edward VII gave it to me. Any time I like I can walk into Buckingham Palace.’
The train was rushing on. The wreath trembled as we swayed over points.
‘What was I saying?’
I reminded him. He went on to talk about his daughter. ‘She is a pianist. You may have heard of her?’ He told me her name. I said yes, I had heard of her.
‘You are musical yourself?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘I knew it. You have a musical face.’
I told him how I heard his daughter, often, play the piano. He was touched. The train rushed on, lights were hurled past us in the darkness. Sitting silent, he suddenly looked frail and tender. I thought of him as a boy, measuring the ladies’ legs for stockings, in the seventies. He took out his snuff-box.
‘You really won’t try any?’
I hesitated.
‘Go on.’
‘All right.’
‘Snuff said!’ he laughed.