Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  He watches his visitor mount the narrow street and vanish into the thickening fog. No one, not even a cat, is otherwise in sight. The no one, indeed, might almost have been nothing. Merely an old man’s memory – after the muffled jangling of the shop-bell had ceased.

  * First published as ‘Odd Shop: A Dialogue for Broadcasting’ in Listener, 31 March 1937.

  Music*

  The worn-out rickety gig had all but see-sawed its way along the damp sandy track, between its moonlit outcrop of rocks and boulders. Its substantial occupants were perched up tight together above its splashboard and their horse’s stumpy tail. Apart from an occasional grunt of encouragement from the driver, a prolonged silence had fallen between them. The immense night had cupped them in.

  ‘How much further now?’ his passenger at length inquired.

  ‘Better part of a mile, maybe.’

  ‘The old mare goes well.’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘It’s fortunate you brought the gig. Few of my patients telephone me until there is urgent need; and wet sand over rocks makes risky going for a car. You can snap an axle that way … Telephones appear not to be very fashionable hereabouts?’

  ‘The master doesn’t care for cars. Or telephones neether. He has no need for them. As for the going, it’s a sight better here than it may be nearer home.’

  There was no surliness in the voice, only a kind of tired patience.

  ‘Well,’ said the other, glancing seawards, ‘I am not familiar with this coast-track. You’d suppose no mortal creature had ever visited it before. Nor had I a notion that the dunes were so steep and lofty here. It’s like some outlandish desert. Strange.’ It seemed he might have been talking to himself.

  ‘Ay,’ came the answer. ‘So it is to most. We lie out of the way, like. And well worth while – if there’s not too much of it.’

  ‘Have you been here long?’

  ‘With where I am? About fifteen years. And this will be the last of them.’ The tone had become muffled, as though the speaker were uncertain to add, Thanks be! or precisely its opposite.

  ‘You are leaving Dr Brandt, then? It was “Doctor”, you said?’

  No sound followed the question for a while except the swish of the descending sea-wet sand from the rims and spokes of the high wheels, and the hiss of the incoming tide. A few stars were shining between the thin flat layers of cloud in the sky.

  ‘He’s leaving me, is Dr Brandt,’ came the answer at last. ‘There’s no hope for him.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that when you rang the house-bell some little time ago. Was there “hope” do you suppose then? This afternoon?’

  The driver drew his head a little further down into his coat collar. ‘I wasn’t bid come then … Dr Brandt asked for you. That’s not his way, and that’s why I came. But to my thinking he doesn’t really want you. Unless, maybe, to say his last. He’s used to being ill. He knows. He’s old – and tired. I’ve nothing to say against him; far from it. He’s a bit queer, though; just now. It’s this music-stuff that’s on his mind. He thinks of nothing else; he broods on it. And so, I suppose, he can’t die easy.’

  His passenger ignored a good deal in these remarks that might have tempted anyone less professionally reticent.

  ‘I see. It’s music then that is Dr Brandt’s hobby? A composer, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes; if that’s what you call them. A composer. Music. There are rows and rows of these books of his in the house. Funny-looking stuff. Scribbled along lines, and, most of it, without a word of writing from cover to cover. Though there may be words too now and then. Songs, I suppose. In the old days he’d sit for an hour or more together, or longer; without a finger stirring – until his pen was dry.’

  ‘What does he do now, then?’ inquired his passenger, as if he were a little apprehensive of intruding too much, although he had had time to think his question over before asking it.

  ‘He’s always listening.’

  ‘“Listening?” What does he listen to?’

  ‘To everything … Because of this music.’

  ‘But you haven’t said what music,’ replied the doctor, without revealing the irritability he might be feeling, his eyes peering out to the horizon-line over the waste watery hummocks of the sea. ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Well, listen then … Whoa!’

  The creaking wheels slowly ceased to revolve, and, with their human burden, came to a standstill. The clock-like hoof-beats ceased. And a vast mellay, as though of shouts, cries, multitudes, at once filled to overflowing the spaces around them, like the bubbling and simmering of a gigantic pot of broth. So multitudinous and continual was the clamour of the leaden-grey mass of water, stretching out here to the rim of the globe, it would seem that earthly night could never be silent. And this was accompanied by immense mutterings and echoings out of the starry vacancies above it. The mare, with a cough and a shudder, suddenly shook her whole ramshackle body so violently that every metal buckle of her worn-out harness rang and rattled again.

  ‘Oh, that,’ said the doctor, as if in sudden enlightenment. ‘The roar, the rocks, the billowing breakers. You call that “music”, then? Surely, that could not delude or distress anyone accustomed to it – well or ill! The whistling and siffling of wind and sand over the dunes, the tide washing and ruckling in the shingle. Is that Dr Brandt’s trouble?’

  The driver shrugged his rounded shoulders.

  ‘’Twasn’t me that made any mention of “trouble”,’ he replied flatly, ‘that’s your word.’ And once again they fell silent – and listened in a brief lull in the noise of wind and water to the barking of a dog from some inland farmyard, and the faint blast of a ship’s siren far out to sea.

  ‘That,’ he went on ironically, ‘was the old retriever bitch at Farmer Hallows’s, that was. And the ship is making for Kellsay Harbour.’

  ‘You have good ears.’

  ‘Ay, and need them.’

  ‘You listen too, then – to this “music”, as you call it?’

  ‘You’d be stone-deaf not to hear it. And there are many as are. I listen only because I’m told to. What you seem to be talking of is not the “music” neether. Not what Dr Brandt finds in it, anyway. He says that even this criss-cross hullabaloo that’s all around us has a meaning to it, if one could give it a name. What he’s after is different. And there I’m useless. Nor wishing to be anything else … Why, you can listen to your own ears, in a manner of speaking. But you’d better not give heed to fancies – to what as like as not, isn’t there. There are some who say they hear “voices”. You wouldn’t, p’raps,’ he added slyly, ‘wish me to share them I suppose … Come up, lass.’

  The sea-foam swept as though furtively a little nearer to the track, and the gig lurched slowly forward on its melancholy journey. The doctor drew up the collar of his great-coat.

  ‘Much further now? … It’s coldish. What does your Master say about this music? He is gravely ill, I understand.’

  ‘“Ill”,’ his companion echoed dryly. ‘I keep a-telling you, he’s all but past it. Not, mind you, that I wouldn’t do the best I can for him. But you have to make a stand somewhere. For his own sake. He says it’s in the air. But then he could tell you the name of any bird – land-bird or sea-bird – you might have heard warbling, or screeching, why, half a mile off. He can hear a fly crawl over the wall. He can watch even a trace of a lie in your mouth before a syllable comes out of it, as easy as a cat catches mice. Things said to him and meant only for kindness, I mean. The truth is, under the sheets, sometimes, he dreads – he is afeard – of this music. You’d almost think he was hiding his eyes to escape from it. That’s the truth. Sometimes. Not always. Mostly, it’s meat and drink to him – and no living soul to share it.’

  ‘In the air, you say?’ repeated the doctor. ‘He maintains that this music is in the air, does he? Nothing connected with fancies about wireless, I suppose?’

  ‘“Wireless!”’ muttered the driver derisively, and spat sidew
ays out of the gig. ‘What would he be doing with that stuff. God help us, do you mean what they call this jazz? Try a race-horse with musty offal. No, not that. It’s his own music; wherever that comes from. Whether it’s what they call audible or not. Travellers say, he once told me, there’s something of the sort to be heard even in the middle of these great empty deserts they tell of. Out in the East, there. Harps, drums, dulcimers and the like. Others say it’s caused by the heat and the shifting of the sands. After a hell-hot day or when the wind’s in the driest quarter. You’ll never fail of finding a wise-acre these days who couldn’t tell you whether your eyes are shut or not when you’re asleep!’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand; and smiled. ‘I expect they learn it in these books! He listens; ay, his lips moving perhaps, and a smile on his old face like a child asking for a slice of bread and sugar. Or he used to. It’s in all such lonely god-forsaken parts as these, he says. Ay, and those out of the ship-tracks. And it’s not of this earth at all. That’s what he says. And that, off and on, he has been waiting for it – listening – all his life. And I shouldn’t wonder if it has got into those music books of his, either. All lines and squiggles – like this Persian and Chinese. The truth is, the poor gentleman’s gone a bit crazy in his wits; that’s the truth. Bats in the belfry – and bells. But as calm and pleasant about it all as a baby in its cradle. And a gentleman if ever there was one. And sweeter in temper, and less hasty than he used to be …’

  He broke off suddenly. They had turned a little inland, round one of the dunes, then out again towards the sea and the rocks.

  ‘There’s the house!’ he bawled in the tumult that followed, pointing with his whip. ‘Over there, where the moon is shining.’

  ‘Gad! Is it!’ muttered his companion. ‘You’re right.’ He continued for a while to stare at the glass-panes of its windows, shot with the blaze of the moon … ‘A solitary place, and no mistake. Curious. With that silvery shining glitter on the slates it is hardly distinguishable from the sand themselves. Are there other servants? A nurse? Many relatives?’

  ‘Servants? – no. Ten or a dozen rooms, I suppose, all told. Some of them all but empty. And then there’s the kitchen and those parts … There’s a brother. He never comes this way now, though. As I’ve said, except for the woman who does for the old gentleman from the village, all he has is me. And you may well say, solitary. When extra high water swims up all around us here – we are marooned, as they say. He began this music-talk months – ay, years ago. It gets on your nerves in time. You wouldn’t, else, I guess, catch yourself, listening too. And as often as not in the dark.’

  His companion – his head turning slowly sidelong – scrutinized his features ruminatingly. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re not another patient. You must have been a great and constant help to Dr Brandt. This trouble which we now call “nerves” is the folly of the age. It’s the froth of the life we lead; and none too wholesome at that … Does Dr Brandt ever describe these illusions? To others? We are most of us subject to something of the sort. Every city in the world has its own voice you might say. Every wilderness and churchyard too; every human memory is haunted by some voice. Or by silence.’

  The driver treated his passenger to a prolonged stare.

  ‘You ask me, “Does he say what it’s like?” Well, you’d suppose at times he heard the angels singing. And at other times, not the angels. By God, no. Brassy trumpets, horns, cymbals, kettle-drums, and the like. With all those bookfuls of his own music, it’s nothing but his own imaginings and fancies, I tell him. To keep him quiet … Crazy, poor gentleman, or not, he won’t be forgotten. I’ll lay you that. Sometimes, to humour him, I say it’s all out of the past. Hollows in the air. Relics, as you might call them. Why not? There’s a full-sized church under the sands over yonder. When my grandfather was a boy he used to listen to its bells. Now, when there’s a winter sea riding in, it’s like an army of cavalry, cannon and shouting. Of a soft summer night, too, he’ll lie there, quietly smiling to himself. Mermaids, p’raps! Like as if he was a child again and his nannie telling him stories and combing his hair. For people cooped up in towns and suchlike, such things are merely book-stuff nowadays; and these lying cheapjacknewspapers.’

  The old mare’s hoofs steadily and hollowly thudded on with an occasional spark struck by a shoe from a half-hidden flint. He brooded a while.

  ‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘you get your ears sharpened – listening. There are three dogs hereabouts, all within whistle, though you wouldn’t think it. And I could tell you which of them’s howling down the moon, with a horsecloth tied over my head. And the cocks bawling at midnight, near and far: you can hear ’em fading out half across the county. You get – well, as you might say, open to it, by trying. And Dr Brandt, he’s wide-open to it. That’s the only difference; or near it. And then you begin fancying … Whoa, Nancy, girl! She shies and stumbles at that lump of rock every time we passes it. P’raps she sees things. And here we are. I’ll tie her up for the time being. You won’t have to be long, I reckon. Perhaps a look’ll be enough. I’ll go in first and turn up the lamp, though there’s moon enough for a funeral.’

  He reappeared in the solid faded doorway, and the doctor followed him down and across a wide corridor, with pictures on its walls, into a room at the back of the house. He paused at a high window.

  ‘My word!’ he all but muttered. ‘What a view! And what a tide coming in! … No mistaking that music! And if you add, “Bats in the belfry”… Well?’

  He had turned towards his companion, only to find himself alone, and that he had been conversing with no one to answer. The glass in the uncurtained lofty window-sashes with their heavy shutters can only have slightly diminished the tumultuous reverberations of the sea. The whole house seemed to be gently trembling in the vibrations of air and water. Far to the south, along the rugged coast, a light reiteratedly blinked at this stranger. Footsteps at length sounded again, and Dr Brandt’s factotum re-entered the room.

  ‘He seems to be asleep. Fast. I whispered him close up. He’s dreaming – or looks like it. His bald old face – handsome in a way – was as calm as a tombstone … I’m desperate sorry he’s going. Will you wait here, or shall I wake him? Better not until it’s needed. There’s a barrel of beer in the kitchen, and food in the larder. Ay, he said before you came that I was to make you comfortable and at home, and all that. “At home!”’

  ‘No beer, thank you. Has your master a fire? It’s a comfortless night in spite of the moon. Because, perhaps … Just now, while you were gone – ssh! Listen!’

  He had stayed his talk, interrupted as it seemed by a perceptible change in the resounding churning of noise, rumour and echo beyond the walls of the house. There had accompanied it, too, what seemed like a gabble, or, rather a remote yet vaguely harmonical babble of voices, either high up or in the interstices of the hiss and clutter of the sea.

  ‘Is that it?’ he inquired sharply. ‘Is that anything like what he means? Yet surely that too is only the in-and-out, the surge and swish of the sandy water in the hollows of the rocks; and the wind’s far-away trumpetings. Strange, though!’

  The morose answer to his question seemed needlessly resonant and argumentative in the silent house itself —

  ‘You can hear what you like. I say, that’s all deceiving. What’s strange in a following wind and a spring tide coming in? Fast, too. It – it’s a real bumper,’ he added ironically. ‘You’ll have plenty of time for whatever needs doing. It will be all around us before the clock strikes; and it isn’t we who will be able to hie off then.’

  ‘Well, you live here; you are familiar with all this, and you should know. But there certainly was a sound then, the like of which I cannot recall having heard, either from wind or water. Not that I haven’t lived by the sea. Dr Brandt hasn’t any instrumental devices that may not be known to you, I suppose? Things I mean for his own amusement, and for his own ear only?’

  ‘Haven’t I told you, no, again and again! Apart from h
is old pyanniforty over there, and that crammed cupboard in the corner, there’s nothing else I’ve ever seen. And he hasn’t opened eether of them for months past. I tell you, I’m sick and tired of the whole thing and shall be glad when – when I’m gone. All I’m asking now is a quiet end for the old gentleman, or I wouldn’t have come for you. I shall be at an empty end myself, let alone a loose one, when he’s gone. I tell you I’m attached to him, and can’t bear the thought of his weakening and waning. A quiet end, that’s what’d be his greatest earthly blessing.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said his visitor. ‘But you couldn’t but have come, if you were told to. As for a quiet end, that’s neither here nor there. You can depend on me to do my best for Dr Brandt.’

  ‘Ay. So say all the others. What I am saying is, if we have to go, why not go easy? Would you keep even a cat alive, its eyes green with a poisoned liver?’

  The doctor remained silent, his eyes fixed on the distant and revolving lantern of the lighthouse, repeatedly obscured by the tossing surf.

  ‘But surely,’ he began persuasively at last, ‘aren’t we beating about the bush? All that you say, I agree, is kindly meant. Concerning Dr Brandt’s sick fancies of this music; though scarcely this talk of “others”. It’s not for us to criticize what we cannot understand. And that is immeasurable! A great, rare and unusual mind has its own pathways to follow. If they are not ours, what wonder? And what then? … How often does this music, which even we ourselves may think at times we hear, as if between waking and sleeping – how often does it occur, or seem to occur? At set times? At certain states of the weather, of the tides perhaps? Why is it sometimes pleasing, and at others – what you said – alarming? Terrifying? Has anyone else heard it! What do you yourself think its cause to be?’