Then it was Arthur’s turn to argue against the pots. They changed sides as easily as if they had been engaged in a strange dance. Which they were.
‘Why should we put up with the nuisance of them?’ he asked her. ‘He was only a garrulous old man making a fool of us.’
‘You know you wouldn’t feel right if you did move the pots – not yet anyhow. It’s a matter of psychology.’
‘I told you it was a trick,’ growled Arthur, who had a poor opinion of the things his wife read about.
‘Besides, the pots don’t get in your way,’ Mabel said, changing her line of defence. ‘I’m about the place more than you and they don’t really worry me, standing there.’
‘I think about them all the while when I’m down at the pumps,’ he said.
‘You’d think more about them if you moved them. Leave them just a few more days.’
He stood glowering at the two little china pots. Slowly he raised a hand to skitter them off the table and across the room. Then he turned away instead, and mooched into the yard. Tomorrow, he’d get up real early and start on all that blamed chickweed.
The next stage was that neither of them spoke about the pots. By mutual consent they avoided the subject and Mabel dusted round the pots. Yet the subject was not dropped. It was like an icy draught between them. An intangible.
Two years passed before the antediluvian vehicle drove through Hapsville again. The day was Arthur’s twenty-fourth birthday, and once more it was evening as the overalled figure with the long skull walked up to the door.
‘If he gets funny about those pots, I swear I’ll throw them right in his face,’ Arthur said. It was the first time either of them had mentioned the pots for months.
‘You’d better come in,’ Mabel said to the crinkled old man, looking him up and down.
He smiled disarmingly, charmingly, and thanked her, but hovered where he was, on the step. As he caught sight of Arthur, his spectacles shone, every wrinkle animated itself over the surface of his face. He read so easily in Arthur’s expression just what he wanted to know that he did not even have to look over their shoulders at the table for confirmation.
‘I won’t stop,’ he said. ‘Just passing through and thought I’d drop this in.’
He fished a small wooden doll out of a pocket and dangled it before them. The doll had pretty round painted light blue eyes.
‘A present for your little daughter,’ he said, thrusting it towards Mabel.
Mabel had the toy in her hand before she asked in sudden astonishment, ‘How did you guess it was a girl we got?’
‘I saw a frock drying on the line as I came up the path,’ he said. ‘Good night! See you!’
They stood there watching the little truck drive off and vanish up the road. Both fought to conceal their disappointment over the brevity of the meeting.
‘At least he didn’t come in and rile you with his clever talk,’ Mabel said.
‘I wanted him to come in,’ Arthur said petulantly. ‘I wanted him to see we’d got the pots just where he left them, plumb on the table edge.’
‘You were rude to him last time.’
‘Why didn’t you make him come in?’
‘Last time you didn’t want him in, this time you do! Really, Arthur, you’re a hard man to please. I reckon you’re most happy when you’re unhappy. You’re your own worst enemy!’
He swore at her. They began to argue more violently, until Mabel clapped a hand to her stomach and assumed a pained look.
This time it was a boy. They called him Mike and he grew into a little fiend. Nothing was safe from him. Arthur had to nail four walls of wood round the salt- and pepper-pots to keep them unmolested; as he told Mabel, it wasn’t as if it was a valuable table.
‘For crying aloud, a grown man like you!’ she exclaimed impatiently. ‘Throw away those pots at once! They’re getting a regular superstition with you. And when are you going to do something about the yard?’
He stared darkly and belligerently at her until she turned away.
Mike was almost ten years old, and away bird-snaring in the woods, before the crinkled man called again. He arrived just as Arthur was setting out for the garage one morning, and smiled engagingly as Mabel ushered him into the front room. Even his worn old overalls looked unchanged.
‘There are your two pots, mister,’ Arthur said proudly, with a gesture at the table. ‘Never been touched since you set ’em down there, all them years ago!’
Sure enough, there the pots stood, upright as sentries.
‘Very good, very good!’ the crinkled man said, looking really delighted. He pulled out a notebook and made an entry. ‘Just like to keep a note on all my customers,’ he told them apologetically.
‘You mean to say you’ve folks everywhere guarding salt-pots?’ Mabel asked, fidgeting because she could hear the two-year-old crying out in the yard.
‘Oh, they don’t only guard salt-pots,’ the crinkled man said. ‘Some of them spend their lives collecting match-box tops, or sticking little stamps in albums, or writing words in books, or hoarding coins, or running other people’s lives. Sometimes I help them, sometimes they manage on their own. I can see you two are doing fine.’
‘It’s been a great nuisance keeping the pots just so,’ Mabel said. ‘A man can’t tell how much nuisance.’
The crinkled man turned on to her that penetrating look she remembered so well, but said nothing. Instead, he switched to Arthur and enquired how work at the garage was going.
‘I’m head mechanic now,’ Arthur said, not without pride. ‘And Hapsville’s growing into a big place now – yes, sir! New canning factory and everything going up. We’ve got all the work we can handle at the garage.’
‘You’re doing fine,’ the crinkled man assured him again. ‘But I’ll be back to see you soon.’
Soon was fourteen years.
The battered old vehicle with its scarcely distinguishable sign drew up in front of the bungalow and the crinkled man climbed out. He looked about with interest. Since his last visit, Hapsville had crawled out to Arthur’s place and embraced it with neat little wooden doll’s houses on either side of the highway. Arthur’s place itself had changed. A big new room was tacked on to one side; the whole outside had been recently repainted; a lawn with rose bushes fringing it lapped up to the front fence. No sign of chickweed.
‘They’re doing OK,’ the crinkled man said, and went and knocked on the door.
A young lady of sixteen greeted him, and guessed at once who he was.
‘My name’s Jennifer, and I’m sixteen and I’ve been looking forward to seeing you for simply ages! And you’d better come on in because Mom’s out in the yard doing washing, and you can come and see the pots because they’re just in the same place and never once been moved. Father says it’s a million years’ bad luck if we touch them, cause they’re intangible.’
Chattering away, she led the crinkled man into the old room. It too had changed; a bed stood in it now and several faded photographs hung on the wall. An old man with a face as pink as sunset sat in a rocking-chair and nodded contentedly when Jennifer and the crinkled man entered. ‘That’s Father’s Pop,’ the girl explained, by way of introduction.
One thing was familiar and unchanged. A bare table stood in its usual place, and on it, near the edge and not quite touching each other, were two little china pots. Jennifer left the crinkled man admiring them while she ran to fetch her mother from the yard.
‘Where are the other children?’ the crinkled man asked Father’s Pop by way of conversation.
‘Jennifer’s all that’s left,’ Father’s Pop said. ‘Prue the eldest, she got married like they all do. That would be before I first came to live here. Six years, most like, maybe seven. She married a miller called Muller. Funny thing that, huh? – A miller called Muller. And they got a little girl called Millie. Now Mike, Arthur’s boy, he was a young dog. He was good for nothing but reproducin’. And when there was too many young ladies that shoul
d have known better around here expecting babies – why, then young Mike pinches hold of an automobile from his father’s garage and drives off to San Diego and joins the Navy, and they never seen him since.’
The crinkled man made a smacking noise with his lips, which suggested that although he disapproved of such carryings on he had heard similar tales before.
‘And how’s Arthur doing?’ he asked.
‘Business is thriving. Maybe you didn’t know he bought the garage down town last fall? He’s the boss now!’
‘I haven’t been around these parts for nearly fifteen years.’
‘Hapsville’s going up in the world,’ Father’s Pop murmured. ‘Of course, that means it ain’t such a comfortable place to live in any more … Yes, Arthur bought up the old garage when his boss retired. Clever boy, Arthur – a bit stupid, but clever.’
When Mabel appeared, she was drying her hands on a towel. Like nearly everything else, she had changed. Her last birthday had been her forty-eighth, and the years had thickened her. The spectacles perched on her nose were a tribute to the persistence with which she had tracked down home psychology among the advert columns of her perennial magazines. Experience, like a grindstone, had sharpened her expression.
Nevertheless, she allowed the crinkled man a smile and greeted him cordially enough.
‘Arthur’s at work,’ she said. ‘I’ll draw you a mug of cider.’
‘Thank you kindly,’ he said, ‘but I must be getting along. Only just called in to see how you were all doing.’
‘Oh, the pots are still there,’ Mabel said, with a sudden approach to asperity, sweeping her hand towards the pepper and salt. Catching sight as she did so of Jennifer lolling in the doorway, she called, ‘Jenny, you get on stacking them apples like I showed you. I want to talk with this gentleman.’
She took a deep breath and turned back to the crinkled man. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘You keep longer and longer intervals between your calls here, mister. I thought you were never going to show up again. We’ve had a very good offer for this plot of ground, enough money to set us up for life in a better house in a nicer part of town.’
‘I’m so glad to hear of it.’ The long face crinkled engagingly.
‘Oh, you’re glad are you?’ Mabel said. ‘Then let me tell you this; Arthur keeps turning that very good offer down just because of these two pots sitting there. He says if he sells up, the pots will be moved, and he don’t like the idea of them being moved. Now what do you say to that, Mister Intangible?’
The crinkled man spread wide his hands and shook his head from side to side. His wrinkles interwove busily.
‘Only one thing to say to that,’ he told her. ‘Now this little bet we made has suddenly become a major inconvenience, it must be squashed. How’ll it be if I remove the pots right now before Arthur cames home; then you can explain to him for me, eh?’
He moved over to the table, extending a hand to the pots.
‘Wait!’ Mabel cried. ‘Just let me think a moment before you touch them.’
‘Arthur’d never forgive you if you moved them pots,’ Father’s Pop said from the background.
‘It’s too much responsibility for me to decide,’ Mabel said, furious with herself for her indecision. ‘When you think how we guarded them while the kids were small. Why, they’ve stood there a quarter of a century …’
Something caught in her voice.
‘Don’t you fret,’ the crinkled man consoled her. ‘You wait till Arthur’s back and then tell him I said to forget all about our little bet. Like I explained to you right back in the first place, it’s impossible to do even a simple thing with all the intangibles against you.’
Absent-mindedly, Mabel began to dry her hands on the towel all over again.
‘Can’t you wait and explain it to him yourself?’ she asked. ‘He’ll be back in half an hour for a bite of food.’
‘Sorry. My business is booming too – got to go and see a couple of young fellows breeding a line of dogs that can’t bark. I’ll be back along presently.’
And the crinkled man came back to Hapsville as he promised, nineteen years later. There was snow in the air and mush on the ground, and Arthur’s place was hard to find. A big cinema showing a film called ‘Lovelight’ bounded it on one side, while a new six-lane by-pass shuttled automobiles along the other.
‘Looks like he never sold out,’ the crinkled man commented to himself as he trudged up the path.
He got to the front door, hesitating there and looking round again. The garden, so trim last time, was a wilderness now; the roses had given away to cabbage stumps, old tickets and ice-cream cartons fringed the cinema wall. Chickweed was springing up on the path. The house itself looked a little rickety.
‘They’d never hear me knock for all this traffic,’ the crinkled man said. ‘I better take a peek inside.’
In the room where the china pots still stood, a fire burned, warming an old man in a rocking-chair. He and the intruder peered at each other through the dim air.
‘Father’s Pop!’ the crinkled man exclaimed. For a moment he had thought …
‘What you say?’ the old fellow asked. ‘Can’t hear a thing these days. Come here … Oh, it’s you! Mister Intangibles calling in again. Been a durn long while since you were around!’
‘All of nineteen years, I guess. Got more folks to visit all the time.’
‘What you say? Didn’t think to see me still here, eh?’ Father’s Pop asked. ‘Ninety-seven I was last November, ninety-seven. Fit as a fiddle, too, barring this deafness.’
Someone else had entered the room by the rear door. It was a woman of about forty-five, plain, dressed in unbecoming mustard-green. Something bovine in her face identified her as a member of the family.
‘Didn’t know we had company,’ she said. Then she recognised the crinkled man. ‘Oh, it’s you, is it? What do you want?’
‘Let’s see,’ he said. ‘You’d be – why, you must be Prue, the eldest, the one who married the miller!’
‘I’ll thank you not to mention him,’ Prue said sharply. ‘We saw the last of him two years ago, and good riddance to him.’
‘Is that so? Divorce, eh? Well, it’s fashionable, my dear … And your little girl?’
‘Millie’s married, and so’s my son Rex, and both living in better cities than Hapsville,’ she told him.
‘That so? I hadn’t heard of Rex.’
‘If you want to see my father, he’s through here,’ Prue said, abruptly, evidently anxious to end the conversation.
She led the way into a bedroom. Here curtains were drawn against the bleakness outside and a bright bedside lamp gave an illusion of cosiness. Arthur, a Popular Mechanics on his knees, sat huddled up in bed.
It was thirty-three years since they had seen each other. Arthur was hardly recognisable, until you discovered the old contours of the bull under his heavy jowls. During middle-age he had piled up bulk which he was now losing. His eyebrows were ragged; they all but concealed his eyes, which lit in recognition. His hair was grey and uncombed.
Despite the gulf of years which separated their meeting, Arthur began to talk as if it were only yesterday that they had spoken.
‘They’re still in there on the table, just as they always were. Have you seen them?’ he asked eagerly.
‘I saw them. You’ve certainly got will-power!’
‘They never have been touched all these years! How … how long’s that been, mister?’
‘Forty-five years, all but.’
‘Forty-five years!’ Arthur echoed. ‘It doesn’t seem that long … Shows what an object in life’ll do, I suppose. Forty-five years … That’s a terrible lot of years, ain’t it? You ain’t changed much, mister.’
‘Keeps a feller young, my job,’ the crinkled man said, crinkling.
‘We got Prue back here now to help out,’ Arthur said, following his own line of thought, ‘She’s a good girl. She’d get you a bite to eat, if you asked her. Mabel’s out.’
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The crinkled man polished up his spectacles on his overalls.
‘You haven’t told me what you’re doing lying in bed,’ he said gently.
‘Oh, I sprained my back down at the garage. Trying to lift a chassis instead of bothering to get a jack. We had a lot of work on hand. I was aiming to save time. Should have known better at my age.’
‘How many garages you got now?’
‘Just the one. We – I got a lot of competition from big companies, had to sell up the down-town garage. It’s a hard trade. Cut-throat. Maybe I should have gone in for something else, but it’s too late to think of changing now … Doctor says I can get about again in the spring.’
‘How long have you been in bed?’ the crinkled man asked.
‘Weeks, on and off. First it’s better, then it’s worse. You know how these things are. I should have known better. These big gasoline companies squeeze the life out of you … Mabel goes down every day to look after the cash for me. Look, about them pots –’
‘Last time I came, I told your lady wife to call the whole thing off.’
Arthur plucked peevishly at the bedclothes, his hands shining redly against the grey coverlet. In a moment of pugnacity he looked more his old self.
‘You know our bet can’t be called off,’ he said pettishly. ‘Why d’you talk so silly? It’s just something I’m stuck with. It’s more than my life’s worth to think of moving those two pots now. Mabel says it’s jinx and that’s just about what it is. Move them and anything might happen to us! Life ain’t easy and don’t I know it.’
The long head wagged sadly from side to side.
‘You got it wrong,’ the crinkled man said. ‘It was just a bet we made one night when we were kind of young and foolish. People get up to the oddest things when they’re young. Why, I called on some young fellows just last week, they’re trying to launch mice into outer space, if you please!’
‘Now you’re trying to make me lose the bet!’ Arthur said excitedly. ‘I never did trust you and your Intangibles too much. Don’t think I’ve forgotten what you said that first time you come here. You said something would make me change my mind, you thought I’d go in there and knock ’em off the table one day. Well – I never have! We’ve even stuck on in this place because of those two pots, and that’s been to our disadvantage.’
The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One Page 86