Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  And, as if he had been heard listening – ‘Oh! Is that you, Aubrey? Supper’s ready,’ a voice called faintly from upstairs. ‘I am just coming. I was getting a handkerchief.’

  ‘Right, darling!’ he shouted back, but louder than he had intended. ‘But don’t come down. I am coming up. I must have a wash. I was kept in the garden. I mean I could not get…’

  ‘“Kept in the garden”?’ echoed the voice, a little nearer now, and even as if the owner of it were awaiting, even dreading, what so simple an explanation might mean, although he had carefully refrained from making it unusual by even a fraction of a syllable.

  ‘Don’t come down,’ he repeated. ‘I am coming up – this moment.’ He paused to swallow. ‘Everything all right?’ Dam’ fool!

  ‘Oh, very well,’ came the answer, yet faintlier. ‘Yes, everything. I shall be in the bathroom. I am getting a hot-water bottle.’

  A hot-water bottle! The old self-pampering! More invalidism – and doctors’ bills. The old ‘pains’, he supposed. But surely she couldn’t be going to bed! ‘Clay – clay-cold is my earthy mouth’… How did the old borderland jingle go?

  Treading with an almost cat-like punctilio on the mats, from door to door, with two almost soundless intervening steps on the linoleum between them, he made his way into the kitchen. All that for the moment he could see of its only inmate was a hummock of black skirts, a strip of what appeared to be a petticoat, and exposed heels. The rest of her was concealed by the open door of the gas oven.

  ‘Mary,’ he cried softly. ‘Don’t dish up just yet. I am not ready. And —’

  A long, dark and intent face had made its appearance above the oven door.

  ‘What I was going to say,’ he explained, ‘is that – well, there may be a visitor. And I don’t want Mrs Silcot to be worried just now. She seems to be over-tired.’

  Yet again he listened to an ejected statement that he could have taken his Bible oath he had never meant to make. Well, he must stick to it.

  The dark stare from above the oven door had intensified. Sullen rat! Who paid her wages?

  ‘A visitor!… Staying for supper!’

  ‘Yes. Oh, no. I didn’t mean that. Only that if anyone should knock whom you may not recognize – don’t necessarily ask him in. I see there is no light in the hall yet; I’ll switch that on first. It may, of course, be nothing at all; merely a false alarm. I mean, of course, there’s only a possibility… In the City this afternoon…’

  Why had the stolid colourless face stirred not so much as an eyelid? Merely stared?

  ‘I mean,’ he fumbled on, ‘if no one comes, it does not matter. Obviously. There is no need to wait about, I mean; except not to dish up for the time being. But, if so – if anyone should – then just come to me, and say, “A Mr Hamilton wishes to see you. It’s about a picture.” Something of that kind. I am not suggesting, mind’ – and an all but winsome smile edged into his grey features – ‘that it will be a Mr Hamilton. Or about a picture. It might be somebody else. However, that will be all right. I shall understand. Do you see what I mean?’

  Mary abruptly turned her head away; paused, as it seemed, to exchange a few words with the interior of the oven; then rose to her feet. She then firmly shut-to the oven door. She knew that she had been watching him more intently than was necessary while he had given his directions, his ‘orders’. But then you can never be sure what some people are up to. That rigmarole! – and a face like a half-starved ferret. She looked at him again point-blank, with her pitch-black, disciplined eyes. A bleak, plain, honest stare; and intelligent.

  ‘Very good, sir,’ she said. ‘You don’t know whether or not. But if so, a Mr Hamilton. I quite understand. But nobody extra. And whoever it is, I am to say, “a Mr Hamilton” … Mrs Silcot is poorly again?’

  ‘Ah,’ Aubrey answered the tone of her remark, not its meaning. ‘Yes, I am sorry.’

  Yet again his rasp-edged temper had nearly got the better of him. Of what consequence was it what a servant thought or felt? No love was lost between them! Let her do as she was told, or get out. Even Emily would agree to that. Or would she? Even the dustman was a devotee of Emily’s. As quietly as if he were a strange cat in his own house he turned away from the kitchen and its hated inmate and mounted the stairs. Arrived at the bathroom, he paused at the open door, watching for a while Emily bathed in the bright electric light within, as she stood, head thrown back, gargling over the basin.

  ‘What’s wrong now?’ he inquired.

  ‘Oh!’ said Emily, ejecting the mouth-wash. ‘It’s this geyser. It takes such an age to heat up. I thought I would have my bath a little earlier than usual.’

  ‘That, darling, is because you never manage it right,’ he retorted. ‘And anyhow it’s better than getting the water scalding hot out of the tap before you can say knife. What I really meant was – not so much the tap as – what’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Matter?’ she echoed, glancing apprehensively over her shoulder. ‘I didn’t say anything was the matter, Aubrey. Only I think I shall have to go to bed soon after supper. The same old thing.’

  ‘As I supposed,’ said Aubrey. And now her too-large luminous eyes had also suddenly become fixed on his fair pallid features. An ingenuous but searching scrutiny had met a viper-like stare in an instantaneous conflict of questioning. ‘After dinner eh?’

  ‘What was it you called up to me about the garden just now? You look as white as a ghost. You’re not ill, Aubrey?’

  The mask had all but taken to itself the appearance of plaster of Paris. It had set so hard.

  ‘That’s merely your childish way of getting even; of evasion, my dear. An old dodge!’ he answered as sweetly as his mouth would let him. ‘I stumbled – fetching water in the garden. And anyhow, what are we waiting for? Mary? There is never – I say, never – a single meal in this house on the tick. And surely you aren’t going to suggest that that has anything to do with the geyser?’

  Emily paused a moment in the act of stooping to put down the kettle, and was now screwing in the stopper of the water bottle. She watched her fingers.

  ‘The bell rang about five minutes ago,’ she said.

  ‘Look here, Emily,’ Aubrey broke out, ‘it’s not a particle of use your attempting to come down to dinner. You just sham that these aches and pains are of no importance, and so only make them worse. You are to go to bed now; and the janitrix shall bring you up something on a tray – some nice minced chicken, and a cup of cocoa, perhaps.’ He had listened to this idiotic irony, and his stomach had fallen. ‘Keep friends!’ urged an inward voice.

  Emily paused a second time. She had gradually fallen into the habit, during these last months, of thinking over every answer she was on the point of making to her husband – before its terms became irretrievable.

  ‘I am very sorry,’ she said at last. ‘But isn’t that a little inconsistent? There can’t be anything seriously “wrong”. At least…Of course there can’t. And you have always said that it’s best not to pay attention to such things. You have always said, “Wait for them to make you do so.” There was only a little faintness. And – well, just here.’ But her left hand was already stationed over her breast-bone.

  Almost as if an hour-glass hung suspended in the air before his eyes, Aubrey was watching the sands of time as they soundlessly glided away.

  ‘First it was aches and pains,’ he argued. ‘Now it is “a little faintness”. These women!

  ‘And wasn’t it I’ – he had raised his voice a little – ‘wasn’t it I who at last insisted on your seeing the doctor again? And wasn’t it I who insisted on his sounding and ninety-nining you and flourishing that absurd rubber contraption in his ladylike fingers – careless devil? And didn’t he say that he could find nothing organically wrong? Pah! “Organically”! Good heavens, I had a heart for years – when I was a boy; and was not even taken off football. All that palaver! This vague haze of suggestion. “Symptoms”! They invent complications; phobias, as they c
all them. It pays.’

  Emily had turned away, pretending still to be drying the dumb rubber mouth of her hot-water bottle with a towel. By biting her lips perhaps she could the better keep her mouth shut.

  ‘Of course…I’ll go at once. But honestly, there is no need.’

  Aubrey drew back – a little too much for it to have been instinctive – behind the door, as she closely passed him by.

  ‘I never even uttered the word “need”,’ he called after her, and then on second thoughts followed her into her bedroom, pausing only a moment to dip his head over the rail of the landing, though he failed to catch a glimpse of the front door.

  ‘Ouff,’ he grumbled. ‘One could dine off merely the smell of the cooking in this house before tasting a mouthful. That fool!’

  Emily was already drawing the short curtains over the windows. He watched her face intently as she turned down the sheet of her bed. So slow and laborious was every movement that it might have been a sheet of lead. And at every turn, when she hoped she was unobserved, she glanced back at him. What was really wrong? she was meditating. What was behind all this? When a man is tired and hungry one has to hold one’s tongue. Anyhow, it’s best to, however unfair and morose he may be. Yes, hold it like a tactful, vigilant child – the child, thank God, they were never going to have. And this time, like a wicked child, he was complaining not because there was anything to complain of, but because there was not.

  She folded the bedspread, lifted the bedclothes, and pushed in the bottle between the sheets.

  ‘There, now,’ she said, gingerly smiling round at him, ‘that’s all. But you know, Aubrey, how I hate going to bed. Please don’t let there be much on the tray.’ She suppressed a faint shudder. ‘I am not really hungry.’

  He hesitated. How the devil was he ever to get to the point? Somewhere in the far dark of his mind he had heard approaching footsteps faint as the coming of feet on wool, like a man weightless as a shadow walking in snow. Snow!

  ‘The fact is, Emily, what is really worrying and fretting you is the conviction that you ought to see a specialist. Then why – whatever apart from fees and humbug that blessed word implies, and it means of course having that wretched doctor back again – why don’t you say so? I wish to God we had someone we could depend on in this miserable neighbourhood.’ He paused again, watching her. ‘What, Emily, by the way, was the name of that fellow at Ambrey? A tall man, stiff as a board; with a nose and spectacles? He seemed to know his business.’

  Emily had sat down. She was stooping as if to draw off her shoe, and at this she fixed her eyes as intently on it as if the thing could speak.

  ‘You mean Dr McLechlan?’

  ‘Yes, Dr McLechlan. That’s it. Dr Mucklechkchlan. Just like that! The snuffy Scotchman. You wouldn’t, I suppose, like to see him?’

  ‘But surely —’ she paused. ‘Don’t you remember? He sold his practice nearly a year ago and went – wasn’t it? – to Canada.’

  ‘Was it?’ Aubrey continued to stare at his face in the looking-glass. Better, better, better to get down to brass tacks; to have it out. Just in case. And other things too. The dead past cannot always take care of itself – with the future in view.

  ‘Canada, eh? That’s a long way off. You have a remarkable memory for dates, Emily. You never, never forget. And yet, after all, it would be no great loss. Not now. He may have been clever; but he was a trifle underhanded, don’t you think? Even fishy? But his friend? Don’t you remember on the river that awful day in August when we sat in the boat under a bridge while the rusty rain dripped on and on into the salad? That seems a devil of a time ago. What was his name?’

  She hadn’t stirred. So that was it? – at last. Again! Not all omens prove false. ‘You know his name, Aubrey. You are only pretending… You are stir ring up…Why?’

  Aubrey watched himself laugh in the glass; though silent laughter more closely resembles a grimace. ‘Of course,’ he drawled, ‘I know his name. The “Reverend” John Fiske. He ought of course to have gone into the Church. You agree to that? He might have some day become an archdeacon; gaiters and laced-up chapeau. In spite of the buns and oranges, it needs strong, silent men. Another anniversary, Emily! You had a very soft spot for him in that rebellious, susceptible heart of yours. Once. It was quite a dare.’

  Emily had at last managed to take off the second shoe, and had reached, with a shuddering sigh, for her bedroom slippers. Well, she must go on, she supposed.

  ‘But… but what is the use, what is the purpose,’ she continued, ‘of pretence? Oh, heavens, haven’t we had this all out again and again; ages, ages ago? You were talking of doctors. Dr McLechlan was an excellent doctor.’

  ‘So it’s to be “All change” – for the time being?’ Aubrey inquired sarcas tically. ‘I didn’t say he was not a good doctor. I didn’t even say that he was not an excellent doctor. But were you quite satisfied – afterwards? I have often wondered; though I don’t remember to have mentioned it. But perhaps you hadn’t much opportunity for thinking. Too far gone; stricken?’

  ‘I refuse to ask or answer any more questions, Aubrey. Why, I mean, you have brought all this up again now. I should not have supposed that just mocking at anyone at … yes, at a grief like that, was … But what I am asking now is, did you really have any doubt about Dr McLechlan?’

  ‘Well, you see, I happened to know Dr McLechlan myself personally, and he talked the case over with me. Mockery, a quite natural little grievance, and all that aside, I never wanted to dig it up again. But if you must know, he told me himself that he had not really been satisfied. Regarding the result of his treatment of the case, I mean. And that then it was too late.’

  ‘Too late?’

  ‘Yes, too late. And I – well, really, I didn’t care a damn. Though, as a matter of fact, I was not so sure myself that I agreed with him.’

  ‘“Agreed”?’

  ‘My dear Emily, I do wish you would make an effort to get over the habit of just repeating every word one says. It’s called cuckoo-ing. It gains time, of course … I say, I didn’t agree with him that it was too late.’

  ‘Then, did you tell him so? Did you? I want to know that.’ She bent still lower over her knees.

  ‘I – tell him?’ said her husband. ‘Certainly not. It is not for a mere layman to butt in – though that’s what they lie in wait for. “Tell me what’s the matter with you, then I’LL tell you!” – That’s their tack.’

  ‘You mean,’ she said, rising with a sigh of difficulty to her feet and facing him in the full light of the lamp over the dressing-table, scattered over with its shining glass, cosmetics and gewgaws, ‘you mean, you let it go? That it need not have been fatal – that he himself…Oh, oh, I wish I were dead!’ She flung her hands apart, and gazed steadily back at him. ‘But why do you ask me?’

  ‘“Me”?’ echoed he, in quiet derision. ‘Oh, I like that, and which “he” may I ask? Why do I ask her about him? That’s pretty good. I was right, however, about the soft spot. And, oh yes, I agree that we have discussed all this, or nearly all this before – and the precise quality of the softness. Nor, Emily, are you by any means the only person in this world who has ever wished herself dead. And in “a better world”, as they call it. But even from any kind of world some of us may now and then relent and come back again – alive-like, if not positively kicking. From “the other side”, I mean. Even to this. A very few. What I am really wanting to know, though – and please do try to be reasonable and calm about it – what I soberly and truly am pining to know is what would you do if – say, tomorrow evening – if I happened to meet our friend (not Dr McLechlan), and I asked him home to supper with us?’

  ‘After what you have said, Aubrey, and you don’t seem to see, or even to suspect how awful it is about knowing and not saying whether or not Dr McLechlan even suggested that he – that he need not have died … No, I refuse to say anything more.’

  ‘“She takes refuge in silence”,’ Aubrey silently protested to the
All-Highest. ‘And that,’ he added, ‘is just where, my dear, you are at last on the right tack … So your precious Dr McLechlan went off to Canada, did he? And if there was anything out of the common, a little mysterious; well, we can’t ask him now, can we? No address… In either case —’

  ‘And I say to that,’ said Emily, ‘that not one of John’s friends ever said a word that even suggested that. Anything “mysterious”, I mean.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake don’t keep niggling,’ said her husband. ‘It’s just like a pretty pollie parrot. You will agree, you can’t help agreeing, that you only had Dr McLechlan’s word for it. Actually. That his patient had just finally retired, I mean. We omitted attending the funeral, didn’t we? You said that I somehow made you lose the train. Charitable. Besides, after all this time, why on earth should you mind so simple a question? Merely, if I had happened to meet the afflicted one, say, this afternoon? Well, then, good God, he couldn’t be dead, could he? Though it might suggest that he was a bit restless? On the other hand does even an “excellent” doctor never make mistakes? And especially if he wishes to do not merely one forlorn friend, but two, a little favour. You’ll agree with me that that’s an ingenious little suggestion. Even though I was gracious enough to accept him at his word. There is always that horrid little inquisition about one’s having been in one’s right mind. Still, a lie is a lie, even if there are grey and commendable ones as well as white. And just a word – a word that would finally put our friend John out of any needlessly unhappy thoughts concerning him, would certainly have been kind, and perhaps even condonable. For both your sakes.’

  Aubrey had ventured further into his own fantastic, pitiless trap than he had intended. His mouth remained ajar, in spite of his intention to shut it; and yet again he found himself listening, though his eyes, reflected in the quicksilver of the glass, continued to watch, as Emily came near. She even persuaded herself to lay a hand on his sleeve, to touch him.

  ‘You are torturing me? You are beginning again? Well, even if – even if it should be for the last time. It was Dr McLechlan himself who told me that you went to see him. That you even sat with John that afternoon of the very day before he – he died. Listen —’ Her eyes were scrutinizing his face as though in search of what until this moment she could never so much as imagine could be discoverable there – discoverable even there. ‘Listen!’ she repeated, ‘you know that you are hinting at what is absolutely untrue. You know that Dr McLechlan did his very best and… Oh, I can’t bear it. What has happened? Something has happened, I say. Unless you want to – well, to have done with me – you must tell me. You will have to tell me.’