“I’d been going to say . . .”
“No, Neville worked till all hours, or at least he had to hang round in case something else should come in. So he used to dine at his club on the way back. Most of the food would be off by the time he got there. It was partly that made him nervy, I dare say.”
“But you weren’t nervy?”
“I tell you,” she said, “I was happy. Madly happy – perhaps in rather a nervy way. Whatever you are these days, you are rather more so. That’s one thing I’ve discovered about this war.”
“You were happy . . .”
“I had my reasons – which don’t come into the story.”
After two or three minutes of rapid smoking she leaned forward to stub out her cigarette. “Where was I?” she said, in a different tone.
“Dressing . . .”
“Well, first thing when I got in I always went across and opened my bedroom windows, because it seemed to me the room smelled of the char. So I always did that before I turned on my bath. The glare on the trees used to make me blink, and the thick sort of throaty smell of the may came in. I was never certain if I liked it or not, but it somehow made me feel like after a drink. Whatever happens tomorrow, I’ve got tonight. You know the feeling? Then I turned on my bath. The bathroom was the other room on that floor, and a door led through to it from one side of the bed. I used to have my bath with that door ajar, to let light in. The bathroom black-out took so long to undo.
“While the bath ran in I used to potter about and begin to put out what I meant to wear, and cold-cream off my old make-up, and so on. I say ‘potter’ because you cannot hurry a bath. I also don’t mind telling you that I whistled. Well, what’s the harm in somebody’s being happy? Simply thinking things over won’t win this war. Looking back at that month, I whistled most of the time. The way they used to look at me, at the depot! The queer thing is, though, I remember whistling but I can’t remember when I happened to stop. But I must have stopped, because it was then I heard.”
“Heard?”
She lit up again, with a slight frown. “What was it I heard first, that first time? I suppose, the silence. So I must have stopped whistling, mustn’t I? I was lying there in my bath, with the door open behind me, when the silence suddenly made me sit right up. Then I said to myself, ‘My girl, there’s nothing queer about that. What else would you expect to hear, in an empty house?’ All the same, it made me heave the other way round in my bath, in order to keep one eye on the door. After a minute I heard what wasn’t a silence – which immediately made me think that Neville had come in early, and I don’t mind telling you I said ‘Damn’.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a bore being asked where one is going, though it’s no bother to say where one has been. If Neville was in he’d be certain to search the house, so I put a good face on things and yelled ‘Hoi’. But he didn’t answer, because it wasn’t him.”
“No?”
“No, it wasn’t. And whatever was in my bedroom must have been in my bedroom for some time. I thought, ‘A wind has come up and got into that damned chintz!’ Any draught always fidgets me; somehow it gets me down. So I got out of my bath and wrapped the big towel round me and went through to shut the windows in my room. But I was surprised when I caught sight of the may trees – all their branches were standing perfectly still. That seemed queer. At the same time, the door I’d come through from the bathroom blew shut, and the lid fell off one of my jars of face cream on to the dressing-table, which had a glass top.
“No, I didn’t see what it was. The point was, whatever it was saw me.
“That first time, the whole thing was so slight. If it had been only that one evening, I dare say I shouldn’t have thought of it again. Things only get a hold on you when they go on happening. But I always have been funny in one way – I especially don’t like being watched. You might not think so from my demeanour, but I don’t really like being criticized. I don’t think I get my knife into other people: why should they get their knife into me? I don’t like it when my ear begins to burn.
“I went to put the lid back on the jar of cream and switch the lights on into the mirror, which being between the two windows never got the sort of light you would want. I thought I looked odd in the mirror – rattled. I said to myself, ‘Now what have I done to someone?’ but except for Neville I literally couldn’t think. Anyway, there was no time – when I picked up my wrist-watch I said, ‘God!’ So I flew round, dressing. Or rather, I flew round as much as one could with something or somebody getting in the way. That’s all I remember about that first time, I think. Oh yes, I did notice that the veil on my white hat wasn’t all that it ought to be. When I had put that hat out before my bath the whole affair had looked as crisp as a marguerite – a marguerite that has only opened today.
“You know how it is when a good deal hangs on an evening – you simply can’t afford to be not in form. So I gave myself a good shake on the way downstairs. ‘Snap out of that!’ I said. ‘You’ve got personality. You can carry a speck or two on the veil.’
“Once I got to the restaurant – once I’d met him – the whole thing went out of my mind. I was in twice as good form as I’d ever been. And the turn events took . . .
“It was about a week later that I had to face it. I was up against something. The more the rest of my life got better and better, the more that one time of each evening got worse and worse. Or rather, it wanted to. But I wasn’t going to let it. With everything else quite perfect – well, would you have? There’s something exciting, I mean, some sort of a challenge about knowing someone’s trying to get you down. And when that someone’s another woman you soon get a line on her technique. She was jealous, that was what was the matter with her.
“Because, at all other times the room was simply a room. There wasn’t any objection to me and Neville. When I used to slip home he was always asleep. I could switch all the lights on and kick my shoes off and open and shut the cupboards – he lay like the dead. He was abnormally done in, I suppose. And the room was simply a room in somebody else’s house. And the mornings, when he used to roll out of bed and slip-slop down to make the coffee, without speaking, exactly like someone walking in his sleep, the room was no more than a room in which you’ve just woken up. The may outside looked pink-pearl in the early sunshine, and there were some regular birds who sang. Nice. While I waited for Neville to bring the coffee I used to like to lie there and think my thoughts.
“If he was awake at all before he had left the house, he and I exchanged a few perfectly friendly words. I had no feeling of anything blowing up. If I let him form the impression that I’d been spending the evenings at movies with girl friends I’d begun to make at the depot, then going back to their flats to mix Ovaltine – well, that seemed to me the considerate thing to do. If he’d even been more interested in my life – but he wasn’t interested in anything but his work. I never picked on him about that – I must say, I do know when a war’s a war. Only, men are so different. You see, this other man worked just as hard but was interested in me. He said he found me so restful. Neville never said that. In fact, all the month we were in that house, I can’t remember anything Neville said at all.
“No, what she couldn’t bear was my going out, like I did. She was either a puritan, with some chip on her shoulder, or else she’d once taken a knock. I incline to that last idea – though I can’t say why.
“No, I can’t say why. I have never at all been a subtle person. I don’t know whether that’s a pity or not. I must say I don’t care for subtle people – my instinct would be to give a person like that a miss. And on the whole I should say I’d succeeded in doing so. But that, you see, was where her advantage came in. You can’t give a . . . well, I couldn’t give her a miss. She was there. And she aimed at encircling me.
“I think maybe she had a poltergeist that she brought along with her. The little things that happened to my belongings . . . Each evening I dressed in that room I lost five minutes
– I mean, each evening it took me five minutes longer to dress. But all that was really below her plane. That was just one start at getting me down before she opened up with her real technique. The really subtle thing was the way her attitude changed. That first time (as I’ve told you) I felt her disliking me – well, really ‘dislike’ was to put it mildly. But after an evening or two she was through with that. She conveyed the impression that she had got me taped and was simply so damned sorry for me. She was sorry about every garment I put on, and my hats were more than she was able to bear. She was sorry about the way I did up my face – she used to be right at my elbow when I got out my make-up, absolutely silent with despair. She was sorry I should never again see thirty, and sorry I should kid myself about that . . . I mean to say, she started pitying me.
“Do you see what I mean when I say her attitude could have been quite infectious?
“And that wasn’t all she was sorry for me about. I mean, there are certain things that a woman who’s being happy keeps putting out of her mind. (I mean, when she’s being happy about a man.) And other things you keep putting out of your mind if your husband is not the man you are being happy about. There’s a certain amount you don’t ask yourself, and a certain amount that you might as well not remember. Now those were exactly the things she kept bringing up. She liked to bring those up better than anything.
“What I don’t know is, and what I still don’t know – why do all that to a person who’s being happy? To a person who’s living the top month of her life, with the may in flower and everything? What had I ever done to her? She was dead – I suppose? . . . Yes, I see now, she must have taken a knock.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I know now how a knock feels.”
“Oh . . .?”
“Don’t look at me such a funny way. I haven’t changed, have I? You wouldn’t have noticed anything? . . . I expect it’s simply this time of year: August’s rather a tiring month. And things end without warning, before you know where you are. I hope the war will be over by next spring; I do want to be abroad, if I’m able to. Somewhere where there’s nothing but pines or palms. I don’t want to see London pink may in flower again – ever.”
“Won’t Neville . . .?”
“Neville? Oh, didn’t you really realize? Didn’t I. . .? He, I, we’ve – I mean, we’re living apart.” She rose and took the full, fuming ashtray across to another table, and hesitated, then brought an empty tray back. “Since we left that house,” she said. “I told you we left that house. That was why. We broke up.
“It was the other thing that went wrong,” she said. “If I’d still kept my head with Neville, he and I needn’t ever – I mean, one’s marriage is something. . . . I’d thought I’d always be married, whatever else happened. I ought to have realized Neville was in a nervy state. Like a fool I spilled over to Neville; I lost my head. But by that time I hadn’t any control left. When the one thing you’ve lived for has crashed to bits . . .
“Crashed was the word. And yet I see now, really, that things had been weakening for some time. At the time I didn’t see, any more than I noticed the may was fading out in the square – till one morning the weather changed and I noticed the may was brown. All the happiness stopped like my stopping whistling – but at what particular moment I’m never sure.
“The beginnings of the end of it were so small. Like my being a bit more unpunctual every evening we met. That made us keep losing our table at restaurants – you know how the restaurants are these days. Then I somehow got the idea that none of my clothes were becoming; I began to think he was eyeing my hats unkindly, and that made me fidget and look my worst. Then I got an idiot thing about any girl that he spoke of – I didn’t like anyone being younger than me. Then, at what had once been our most perfect moments, I began to ask myself if I was really happy, till I said to him – which was fatal – ‘Is there so much in this?’ . . . I should have seen more red lights -when, for instance, he said, ‘You know, you’re getting nervy.’ And he quite often used to say ‘Tired?’ in rather a tired way. I used to say, it was just getting dressed in a rush. But the fact is, a man hates the idea of a woman rushing. One night I know I did crack: I said, ‘Hell, I’ve got a ghost in my room!’ He put me straight into a taxi and sent me – not took me – home.
“I did see him several times after that. So his letter – his letter was a complete surprise. . . . The joke was, I really had been out with a girl that evening I came in, late, to find his letter.
“If Neville had not been there when I got the letter, Neville and I might still – I suppose – be married. On the other hand – there are always two ways to see things – if Neville had not been there I should have gone mad . . . So now,” she said, with a change of tone, “I’m living in an hotel. Till I see how things turn out. Till the war is over, or something. It isn’t really so bad, and I’m out all day. Look, I’ll give you my address and telephone number. It’s been wonderful seeing you, darling. You promise we’ll meet again? I do really need to keep in touch with my friends. And you don’t so often meet someone who’s seen a ghost!”
“But look, did you ever see it?”
“Well, not exactly. No, I can’t say I saw it.”
“You mean, you simply heard it?”
“Well, not exactly that . . .”
“You saw things move?”
“Well, I never turned round in time. I . . .
“If you don’t understand – I’m sorry I ever told you the story! Not a ghost – when it ruined my whole life! Don’t you see, can’t you see there must have been something? Left to oneself, one doesn’t ruin one’s life!”
A Gremlin in the Beer
Derek Barnes
Location: RAF North Coates, Lincolnshire.
Time: January, 1942.
Eyewitness Description: “The crew came shuffling in, in their soft flying-boots, they were red-eyed and stiff with cold, and their normally pink and fresh young faces looked drawn and stubble-marked under the office lights. It appeared, to my not inexperienced eye, that the Gremlin was still aboard the Beaufort.”
Author: Derek Barnes (1904–78) grew up on the outskirts of London and in his teens developed a passion for flying. After working for several years as a journalist, he became a PR in London. In his spare time he trained to fly a Tiger Moth and had almost a hundred hours in his logbook when war was declared. Barnes was called up into the RAF, but instead of being allowed to fly was trained as an Intelligence Officer to debrief crews after operations. He was stationed in Lincolnshire with a squadron of Beauforts when he first heard stories about Gremlins, mysterious and malicious spirits apparently set on causing as many mishaps as possible to pilots. According to some accounts, the phantoms had first been detected in 1918 by the newly constituted RAF, but were now back with a vengeance. Barnes’ account for The Spectator was written at the same time as a certain Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl was creating his first children’s story, “The Gremlins” for Collier’s magazine in America in May 1942. Unfortunately for Barnes, of course, it was to be Dahl’s account that would lead the writer to fame and fortune.
It has never been my way to take any part in the flying talk which, of a winter evening, takes place around the anteroom fire. Such talk is for flying men only, and not for earth-bound Intelligence Officers like me. Should the conversation turn to aircraft recognition, the flak positions down the enemy’s coastlines or the location of targets in German-occupied territory, then I speak my piece in my due turn. But flying “shop” – no! My modest thirty hours in a “Moth”, in peace-time, do not entitle me to swap yarns with boys who have flown their fifty, sixty or hundred sorties against the enemy. No, sir!
But, though I lie low, I keep an ear cocked when the chaps are talking shop, for it is often helpful when I have to interrogate the crews on their return. By quietly listening one gains an insight into a pilot’s reactions at awkward moments; one gleans a few more words of technical jargon and a scrap or two o
f flying “gen”. And these things go to make the interrogator sound less of an amateur and gain for him acceptance as a well-informed, professional collaborator from the flying personnel.
Sometimes the talk is not so technical. As, for instance, that night a year ago when there arose a lively argument upon the subject of Gremlins. Once again I said little, but listened with interest as well as amusement, for even these wild speculations enhanced my knowledge of the men who made them.
The existence of Gremlins is tacitly admitted by all R.A.F. air crews. Nobody has seen one, though many have felt their influence. It has fallen to my lot to paint their portraits upon the aircraft of superstitious pilots – in propitiation of the imps believed to haunt them.
A Gremlin, then, is an imp or sprite whom pilots blame when things go wrong. One type, for example, lives at the aircraft’s centre of gravity and only hurls himself forward when the machine is about to land, thus making it nose-heavy at an unfortunate moment. Others stiffen the controls, jam rudder, undercart or ailerons, dispel cloud cover when most urgently needed, or spread it plentifully between aircraft and target, thus foxing the bomb-aimer at a vital time. Yet another type – “with a long nose and wings like a bat” – as the experts assure me, spins the compass like a teetotum the moment it becomes the aircraft’s sole navigational aid.
“Old Moaner” set the ball rolling. For weeks he had been suffering from the filthiest luck which defied even his exceptional skill. And he had long adopted a comical “defeatist” line of talk to cover his disappointment. Hence his nickname. That night, by the fire, he startled us by declaring that a super-Gremlin had taken up its abode in his Beaufort within the last few days and that this was not to be confused with any common-or-garden Gremlin “such as other types have”. It was, if you please, a Universal Gremlin! It put all others in the shade, for it mucked up everything – compass, maps, ailerons, rudder, the “R.T.” undercart, oxygen, and even Moaner’s own thermos flask – all at the same time.
The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories Page 31