‘She had previously confessed as much to me. I wasn’t at the Gents. I was making a telephone call.’
‘Shall I do that?’ Margo said. ‘Shall I ring up Nigel and ask him to explain everything?’
We all nodded. Margo rose, hesitated, and sat down again. She said she couldn’t. She explained she was too shy to telephone her husband in this way. She turned to me.
‘Mike, would you do it?’
‘Me?’
‘Mike, would you telephone?’
‘Are you asking me to telephone your husband and inquire about his relationship with some elderly women who are entirely unknown to me?’
‘Mike, for my sake.’
‘Think of the explanations it would involve me in. Think of the confusion. Nigel imagining I was the husband of one of these women. Nigel imagining I was the police. Nigel asking me question after question. For goodness’ sake, how do you think I would get some kind of answer out of him?’
Swann said: ‘All you have to do is to say: “Is that Nigel? Now look here, Nigel, what’s all this I hear about these women who come to your house at all hours of the day and night?” Say you represent the Ministry of Pensions.’
‘I can’t address the man as Nigel and then say I’m from the Ministry of Pensions.’
‘Mike, Margo’s husband’s name is Nigel. He’ll be expecting you to address him as Nigel. If you don’t address him as Nigel, he’ll simply tell you to go to hell. He’ll say you’ve got a wrong number.’
‘So I say: “Hullo, Nigel, this is the Ministry of Pensions.” The man’ll think I’m crazy.’
Margo said: ‘Mike, you just do it your own way. Take no notice of Swann. Swann’s been eating too much cake. Come on, you know where the telephone is.’ She gave me a piece of paper with a number on it.
‘Oh God,’ I said; and unable to bear it any longer I borrowed fourpence and marched off to the telephone.
‘Hullo?’ said the voice at the other end.
‘Hullo. Can I speak to Lucy? Please.’
‘Hullo,’ Lucy said.
‘Hullo, Lucy.’
‘Well?’ said Lucy.
‘It’s Mike.’
‘I know it’s Mike.’
‘They wanted me to telephone this man I was telling you about, but I can’t go telephoning people in this way –’
‘Why don’t you go home to bed?’
‘Because I wouldn’t sleep. Remember the man with the elderly women? Well, they wanted me to telephone him and ask him what he’s up to. Lucy, I can’t do that, can I?’
‘No, quite honestly I don’t believe you can.’
They told me to pose as the Ministry of Pensions.’
‘Goodbye, Mike.’
‘Just a – Lucy?’
‘Yes?’
‘Isn’t that man still there?’
‘Which man is this?’
‘The man in your flat.’
‘Frank. He’s still here.’
‘Who is he, Lucy?’
‘He’s called Frank.’
‘Yes, but what does he do?’
‘I don’t know what he does. Frank, what do you do? For a living? He says he’s a – what, Frank? A freight agent, Mike.’
‘A freight agent.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, Lucy.’
When I arrived back at the tea-table everyone was very gay. Nobody asked me what Nigel had said. Swann paid the bill and said he was anxious to show us a display of Eastern horrors somewhere in Euston and would afterwards take us to a party. In the taxi Margo said:
‘What did Nigel say?’
‘He was out.’
‘Was there no reply?’
‘A woman answered. She said I was interrupting the meeting. I said “What meeting?” but she wanted to know who I was before she would answer that. I said I was the Ministry of Pensions and she said “Oh my God”, and rang off.’
We were hours early for the party, but nobody seemed to mind. I helped a woman in slacks to pour bottles of wine into a crock. Swann, Margo and Jo played with a tape-recorder, and after a time the woman’s husband arrived and we all went out to eat.
About eight, people began to arrive. The place filled with tobacco smoke, music and fumes; and the party began to swing along at a merry enough pace. A girl in ringlets talked to me earnestly about love. I think she must have been feeling much the same as I was, but I didn’t fancy her as a soul-mate, not even a temporary one. She said: ‘It seems to me that everyone has a quality that can get the better of love. Is stronger, you see. Like pride. Or honesty. Or moral – even intellectual, even emotional – integrity. Take two people in love. The only thing that can really upset things is this personal quality in one of them. Other people don’t come into it at all. Except in a roundabout way – as instruments of jealousy, for instance. Don’t you agree?’
I wasn’t sure about anything, but I said yes.
‘Another thing about love,’ the girl with the ringlets said, ‘is its extraordinary infection. Has it ever occurred to you that when you’re in love with someone you’re really wanting to be loved yourself? Because that, of course, is the natural law. I mean, it would be odd if every time one person loved another person the first person wasn’t loved in return. There’s only a very tiny percentage of that kind of thing.’
An aggressive young man, overhearing these remarks, began to laugh. He went on laughing, looking at the girl in ringlets and looking at me.
I went away and filled my glass from the crock, and asked a pretty middle-aged woman what she did. Her answer was coy; I smiled and passed on. Margo caught my arm and dragged me off to a corner. ‘Mike, you’ll ring Nigel again?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ I said. ‘Honestly, I don’t think I can interfere.’
‘Oh but, dear, you promised.’
‘Promised? I didn’t promise anything.’
‘Oh Mike.’
‘Really, the whole affair – oh all right.’
‘Now, Mike?’
‘All right. Now.’
‘Lucy?’
‘Is that Mike?’
‘Who else?’
‘Who indeed? Where are you now?’
‘I’m at a party.’
‘A good party?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Why don’t you come along?’
‘I can’t, Mike. I’m doing things.’
‘With the bloody freight agent, I suppose.’
‘The what agent?’
‘Freight. Your friend the freight agent. Frank.’
‘He’s not a freight agent. He’s in publishing.’
‘What’d he say he was a freight agent for?’
A lengthy explanation followed. Calling himself a freight agent was a sample of Frank’s humour. I thought about this as I made my way back to Margo.
‘What’d he say, Mike?’
‘A woman said Nigel wasn’t in.’
‘Is that all?’
‘I said the house was being watched. I said the local authorities weren’t at all happy.’
‘What’d she say?’
‘She began to moan, so I said “I mean it,” and rang off.’
‘Thank you, Mike.’
‘That’s all right. Any time.’
Swann joined us and Margo said: ‘Mike’s been on to Nigel again. Mike’s being wonderful.’
Swann patted me on the back and said: ‘Any joy?’
Margo started to tell him. I went away.
Jo was pretending to listen to a couple of men who were between them retailing a complicated story. She said to me in a low voice: ‘Don’t worry about Margo. I’ll see she comes through the other side.’
I stared at her, wondering why she should imagine I was worried about Margo. ‘I’m sure you will, Jo,’ I said.
‘Trust Jo,’ she whispered.
I said I considered her a trustworthy person. I began to elaborate on the thought. One of the men said: ‘D’you mind, old boy?’
I shrugg
ed and pushed a path back to the telephone. I dialled three times to be certain, but on each occasion there was no reply.
A ragged form of dancing was now taking place. Pausing by the crock, I found myself once again in the company of the girl with the ringlets. She smiled at me and in a boring way I said: ‘Do you know a girl called Lucy Anstruth?’
The girl with the ringlets shook her head. ‘Should I?’
‘I suppose not,’ I said. The girl examined me closely and passed on.
I went upstairs and discovered a quiet room with a bed in it. A lamp on a dressing-table gave out a weak light. The bed, which looked comfortable, was almost in darkness. 1 stretched out on it, welcoming the gloom. In a few moments I dropped off to sleep. When I awoke the luminous dial of my watch indicated that I had been asleep for two hours. Two girls were tidying their faces at the dressing-table. They drew head-scarves with horses on them from their handbags and placed them about their heads. They spoke in a whisper and left the room. I lay there considering the events of the day and wondering how I was going to feel about them at breakfast. How one feels at breakfast about the preceding day has always seemed to be important to me.
A man with a glass in his hand entered the room and placed himself before the mirror on the dressing-table. He combed his hair and tightened his tie. Then he took a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around his right forefinger. He inserted this into each ear, twisting his forefinger back and forth. He remarked to himself on the outcome of this operation, examining his handkerchief. I closed my eyes; when I opened them he was gone. I lit a cigarette and set off to the telephone again.
‘What is it?’ a voice said. It was the publishing man. I asked to speak to Lucy.
‘Hullo, Lucy.’
‘Oh, Mike, really –’
‘Lucy, that man’s there again.’
‘I know, Mike.’
‘It’s two o’clock in the morning.’
‘Two o’clock in the morning. I’m sorry, Mike.’ Her voice was so gentle that I said:
‘Stop trying not to hurt me.’
‘I think I’d better ring off.’
‘I’ll ring off, damn it.’
I stood by the telephone, considering, and feeling sick. I felt something between my fingers and looked down at the piece of paper with Nigel’s telephone number on it. I lifted the receiver and dialled it.
I waited almost a minute and then a woman’s voice said: ‘Yes? Who is that please?’
I think I said: ‘I want to know what’s going on.’
The woman said quickly: ‘Who is that speaking? You haf the wrong number.’
‘I do not,’ I retaliated briskly. ‘Please bring Nigel to the phone.’
‘Nigel is in the Chair. You are interrupting our meeting with this demand. There is much on the agenda. I cannot attend to you, sir.’
‘This is the Ministry of Pensions,’ I said, and I heard the woman breathing laboriously. Then she cut me off.
I walked back through the party and looked for the front door. I was thinking that everything had been more or less resolved. Margo’s grievance had had its airing; she felt the better for it, and all anyone had to do now was to ask Nigel what he was up to and press the point until a satisfactory answer was achieved. As for me, time would heal and time would cure. I knew it, and it was the worst thing of all. I didn’t want to be cured. I wanted the madness of my love for Lucy to go on lurching at me from dreams; to mock me from half-empty glasses; to leap at me unexpectedly. In time Lucy’s face would fade to a pin-point; in time I would see her on the street and greet her with casualness, and sit with her over coffee, quietly discussing the flow beneath the bridges since last we met. Today – not even that, for already it was tomorrow – would slide away like all the other days. Not a red-letter day. Not the day of my desperate bidding. Not the day on which the love of my life was snaffled away from me. I opened the front door and looked out into the night. It was cold and uncomforting. I liked it like that. I hated the moment, yet I loved it because in it I still loved Lucy. Deliberately I swung the door and shut away the darkness and drizzle. As I went back to the party the sadness of all the forgetting stung me. Even already, I thought, time is at work; time is ticking her away; time is destroying her, killing all there was between us. And with time on my side I would look back on the day without bitterness and without emotion. I would remember it only as a flash on the brittle surface of nothing, as a day that was rather funny, as the day we got drunk on cake.
Miss Smith
One day Miss Smith asked James what a baby horse was called and James couldn’t remember. He blinked and shook his head. He knew, he explained, but he just couldn’t remember. Miss Smith said:
‘Well, well, James Machen doesn’t know what a baby horse is called.’
She said it loudly so that everyone in the classroom heard. James became very confused. He blinked and said:
‘Pony, Miss Smith?’
‘Pony! James Machen says a baby horse is a pony! Hands up everyone who knows what a baby horse is.’
All the right arms in the room, except James’s and Miss Smith’s, shot upwards. Miss Smith smiled at James.
‘Everyone knows,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows what a baby horse is called except James.’
James thought: I’ll run away. I’ll join the tinkers and live in a tent.
‘What’s a baby horse called?’ Miss Smith asked the class and the class shouted:
‘Foal, Miss Smith.’
‘A foal, James,’ Miss Smith repeated. ‘A baby horse is a foal, James dear.’
‘I knew, Miss Smith. I knew but –’
Miss Smith laughed and the class laughed, and afterwards nobody would play with James because he was so silly to think that a baby horse was a pony.
James was an optimist about Miss Smith. He thought it might be different when the class went on the summer picnic or sat tightly together at the Christmas party, eating cake and biscuits and having their mugs filled from big enamel jugs. But it never was different. James got left behind when everyone was racing across the fields at the picnic and Miss Smith had to wait impatiently, telling the class that James would have to have his legs stretched. And at the party she heaped his plate with seed-cake because she imagined, so she said, that he was the kind of child who enjoyed such fare.
Once James found himself alone with Miss Smith in the classroom. She was sitting at her desk correcting some homework. James was staring in front of him, admiring a fountain pen that the day before his mother had bought for him. It was a small fountain pen, coloured purple and black and white. James believed it to be elegant.
It was very quiet in the classroom. Soundlessly Miss Smith’s red pencil ticked and crossed and underlined. Without looking up, she said: ‘Why don’t you go out and play?’
‘Yes, Miss Smith,’ said James. He walked to the door, clipping his pen into his pocket. As he turned the handle he heard Miss Smith utter a sound of irritation. He turned and saw that the point of her pencil had broken. ‘Miss Smith, you may borrow my pen. You can fill it with red ink. It’s quite a good pen.’
James crossed the room and held out his pen. Miss Smith unscrewed the cap and prodded at the paper with the nib. ‘What a funny pen, James!’ she said. ‘Look, it can’t write.’
‘There’s no ink in it,’ James explained. ‘You’ve got to fill it with red ink, Miss Smith.’
But Miss Smith smiled and handed the pen back. ‘What a silly boy you are to waste your money on such a poor pen!’
‘But I didn’t –’
‘Come along now, James, aren’t you going to lend me your pencil-sharpener?’
‘I haven’t got a pencil-sharpener, Miss Smith.’
‘No pencil-sharpener? Oh James, James, you haven’t got anything, have you?’
When Miss Smith married she stopped teaching, and James imagined he had escaped her for ever. But the town they lived in was a small one and they often met in the street or in a shop. And Miss Smit
h, who at first found marriage rather boring, visited the school quite regularly. ‘How’s James?’ she would say, smiling alarmingly at him. ‘How’s my droopy old James?’
When Miss Smith had been married for about a year she gave birth to a son, which occupied her a bit. He was a fine child, eight pounds six ounces, with a good long head and blue eyes. Miss Smith was delighted with him, and her husband, a solicitor, complimented her sweetly and bought cigars and drinks for all his friends. In time, mother and son were seen daily taking the air: Miss Smith on her trim little legs and the baby in his frilly pram. James, meeting the two, said: ‘Miss Smith, may I see the baby?’ But Miss Smith laughed and said that she was not Miss Smith any more. She wheeled the pram rapidly away, as though the child within it might be affected by the proximity of the other.
‘What a dreadful little boy that James Machen is,’ Miss Smith reported to her husband. ‘I feel so sorry for the parents.’
‘Do I know him? What does the child look like?’
‘Small, dear, like a weasel wearing glasses. He quite gives me the creeps.’
Almost without knowing it, James developed a compulsion about Miss Smith. At first it was quite a simple compulsion: just that James had to talk to God about Miss Smith every night before he went to sleep, and try to find out from God what it was about him that Miss Smith so despised. Every night he lay in bed and had his conversation, and if once he forgot it James knew that the next time he met Miss Smith she would probably say something that might make him drop down dead.
After about a month of conversation with God James discovered he had found the solution. It was so simple that he marvelled he had never thought of it before. He began to get up very early in the morning and pick bunches of flowers. He would carry them down the street to Miss Smith’s house and place them on a window-sill. He was careful not to be seen, by Miss Smith or by anyone else. He knew that if anyone saw him the plan couldn’t work. When he had picked all the flowers in his own garden he started to pick them from other people’s gardens. He became rather clever at moving silently through the gardens, picking flowers for Miss Smith.
The Collected Stories Page 18