by None
Old Woodifield paused, but the boss made no reply. Only a quiver in his eyelids showed that he heard.
‘The girls were delighted with the way the place is kept,’ piped the old voice. ‘Beautifully looked after. Couldn’t be better if they were at home. You’ve not been across, have yer?’
‘No, no!’ For various reasons the boss had not been across.
‘There’s miles of it,’ quavered old Woodifield, ‘and it’s all as neat as a garden. Flowers growing on all the graves. Nice broad paths.’ It was plain from his voice how much he liked a nice broad path.
The pause came again. Then the old man brightened wonderfully.
‘D’you know what the hotel made the girls pay for a pot of jam?’ he piped. ‘Ten francs! Robbery, I call it. It was a little pot, so Gertrude says, no bigger than a half-crown. And she hadn’t taken more than a spoonful when they charged her ten francs. Gertrude brought the pot away with her to teach ’em a lesson. Quite right, too; it’s trading on our feelings. They think because we’re over there having a look round we’re ready to pay anything. That’s what it is.’ And he turned towards the door.
‘Quite right, quite right!’ cried the boss, though what was quite right he hadn’t the least idea. He came round by his desk, followed the shuffling footsteps to the door, and saw the old fellow out. Woodifield was gone.
For a long moment the boss stayed, staring at nothing, while the grey-haired office messenger, watching him, dodged in and out of his cubby-hole like a dog that expects to be taken for a run. Then: ‘I’ll see nobody for half an hour, Macey,’ said the boss. ‘Understand? Nobody at all.’
‘Very good, sir.’
The door shut, the firm heavy steps recrossed the bright carpet, the fat body plumped down in the spring chair, and leaning forward, the boss covered his face with his hands. He wanted, he intended, he had arranged to weep…
It had been a terrible shock to him when old Woodifield sprang that remark upon him about the boy’s grave. It was exactly as though the earth had opened and he had seen the boy lying there with Woodfield’s girls staring down at him. For it was strange. Although over six years had passed away, the boss never thought of the boy except as lying unchanged, unblemished in his uniform, asleep for ever. ‘My son!’ groaned the boss. But no tears came yet. In the past, in the first months and even years after the boy’s death, he had only to say those words to be overcome by such grief that nothing short of a violent fit of weeping could relieve him. Time, he had declared then, he had told everybody, could make no difference. Other men perhaps might recover, might live their loss down, but not he. How was it possible? His boy was an only son. Ever since his birth the boss had worked at building up this business for him; it had no other meaning if it was not for the boy. Life itself had come to have no other meaning. How on earth could he have slaved, denied himself, kept going all those years without the promise for ever before him of the boy’s stepping into his shoes and carrying on where he left off?
And that promise had been so near being fulfilled. The boy had been in the office learning the ropes for a year before the war. Every morning they had started off together; they had come back by the same train. And what congratulations he had received as the boy’s father! No wonder; he had taken to it marvellously. As to his popularity with the staff, every man jack of them down to old Macey couldn’t make enough of the boy. And he wasn’t in the least spoilt. No, he was just his bright natural self, with the right word for everybody, with that boyish look and his habit of saying, ‘Simply splendid!’
But that was all over and done with as though it never had been. The day had come when Macey had handed him the telegram that brought the whole place crashing about his head. ‘Deeply regret to inform you…’ And he had left the office a broken man, with his life in ruins.
Six years ago, six years… How quickly time passed! It might have happened yesterday. The boss took his hands from his face; he was puzzled. Something seemed to be wrong with him. He wasn’t feeling as he wanted to feel. He decided to get up and have a look at the boy’s photograph. But it wasn’t a favourite photograph of his; the expression was unnatural. It was cold, even stern-looking. The boy had never looked like that.
At that moment the boss noticed that a fly had fallen into his broad inkpot, and was trying feebly but desperately to clamber out again. Help! help! said those struggling legs. But the sides of the inkpot were wet and slippery; it fell back again and began to swim. The boss took up a pen, picked the fly out of the ink, and shook it on to a piece of blotting-paper. For a fraction of a second it lay still on the dark patch that oozed round it. Then the front legs waved, took hold, and, pulling its small, sodden body up, it began the immense task of cleaning the ink from its wings. Over and under, over and under, went a leg along a wing as the stone goes over and under the scythe. Then there was a pause, while the fly, seeming to stand on the tips of its toes, tried to expand first one wing and then the other. It succeeded at last, and, sitting down, it began, like a minute cat, to clean its face. Now one could imagine that the little front legs rubbed against each other lightly, joyfully. The horrible danger was over; it had escaped; it was ready for life again.
But just then the boss had an idea. He plunged his pen back into the ink, leaned his thick wrist on the blotting-paper, and as the fly tried its wings down came a great heavy blot. What would it make of that? What indeed! The little beggar seemed absolutely cowed, stunned, and afraid to move because of what would happen next. But then, as if painfully, it dragged itself forward. The front legs waved, caught hold, and, more slowly this time, the task began from the beginning.
He’s a plucky little devil, thought the boss, and he felt a real admiration for the fly’s courage. That was the way to tackle things; that was the right spirit. Never say die; it was only a question of… But the fly had again finished its laborious task, and the boss had just time to refill his pen, to shake fair and square on the new-cleaned body yet another dark drop. What about it this time? A painful moment of suspense followed. But behold, the front legs were again waving; the boss felt a rush of relief. He leaned over the fly and said to it tenderly, ‘You artful little b…’ And he actually had the brilliant notion of breathing on it to help the drying process. All the same, there was something timid and weak about its efforts now, and the boss decided that this time should be the last, as he dipped the pen deep into the inkpot.
It was. The last blot fell on the soaked blotting-paper, and the draggled fly lay in it and did not stir. The back legs were stuck to the body; the front legs were not to be seen.
‘Come on,’ said the boss. ‘Look sharp!’ And he stirred it with his pen – in vain. Nothing happened or was likely to happen. The fly was dead.
The boss lifted the corpse on the end of the paper-knife and flung it into the waste-paper basket. But such a grinding feeling of wretchedness seized him that he felt positively frightened. He started forward and pressed the bell for Macey.
‘Bring me some fresh blotting-paper,’ he said sternly, ‘and look sharp about it.’ And while the old dog padded away he fell to wondering what it was he had been thinking about before. What was it? It was… He took out his handkerchief and passed it inside his collar. For the life of him he could not remember.
WINIFRED HOLTBY
THE CASUALTY LIST
Mrs Lancing came into her drawing-room and added another silk poppy to the bunch growing annually in the cloisonné vase. Another Armistice Day’s duty done; another Two Minutes’ Silence observed at the Memorial Service in the Parish Church which the dear Rector always held. He had lost one of his own boys in 1917. It was very sad.
It was all very sad. The war had been terrible, terrible. Going to see Journey’s End1 with Margaret last month had brought it all back to her. She had been thinking about that play all through the service; about poor young Stanhope, drinking like that, and the funny servant; but most of all about that queer, tense, terrifying yet exciting call, ‘Stretcher-bearer! S
tretcher-bearer!’ in the last act. It had a curious effect upon her, as though it almost, but not quite, released the secret of a hidden fear.
Well, she was tired now. Those new patent-leather shoes were not really comfortable. It had been a relief to get into slippers again. Thank goodness there was still half an hour before lunch-time in which she could rest and look at The Times. Arthur had left it on the sofa as usual. He had not looked very well that morning; but then, who could look well every morning? When you were eighty-two. Why, she hadn’t felt any too well herself, and she was nearly nine years younger. She sat down in the big arm-chair and stretched out her feet towards the dancing fire.
Of course, it wasn’t as if she had had boys herself. With Arthur too old really, even to be a special constable, and the girls doing a little light secretarial and orderly work at the local hospital, she had never been able to feel that she was really in the war. She had done her bit, rolled bandages, and knitted socks, and served on the Refugees Committee, and rationed her own household so sternly that two of her best maids left; but that had not been quite the same thing. And she had always hated to feel out of anything – of the best set in the town, or the Hospital Ball, or the craze for roller-skating – or even the war. She had read the Casualty List every morning carefully, and written sympathetic, admiring notes to those other women whose husbands and sons were among the wounded or the fallen; but she could not sometimes help wishing that her own situation was a little more heroic. Those Wonderful Mothers Who Gave Their Sons held an immense moral advantage over the ordinary women who only coped with a sugar shortage and the servant problem, and the regulations about darkening windows. When Nellie Goodson’s only son was killed, she had felt almost envious, of the boy for his Glorious End, of the mother for her honourable grief. Her sin had always been to covet honour.
During the ten years following the war, she had nearly forgotten this strange feeling of envy, just as she had forgotten the taste of lentil cutlets and the fuss about meat cards. There had been so much to think about, Margaret’s wedding to her smart young Deryck, and Celia’s wedding to Dr Studdley. Funny she could never think of him as Eric – always as Dr Studdley – and the grand-children, and the new bathroom, and Arthur’s operation, and putting in Central Heating and her own neuritis. Life had been very full and complicated and busy, for Arthur’s business had not done so badly during the war, and though of course he had retired, he still drew dividends.
It was a pity that she had never been able to persuade him to settle anything on the girls. That night she stayed with Margaret to go to Journey’s End she remembered the girl, already in her becoming blue theatre frock, setting the grapefruit glasses on the polished table – for she was always up to date although she kept only a day-woman – and sighing, ‘If only we had a little capital.’ If Deryck had had a little capital, perhaps they would have felt that they could afford a baby. These modern ways were all wrong, thought Mrs Lancing. And yet, when she remembered Celia and her four, and another coming, and the untidiness of the Studdleys’ little house, with one meal always on top of the next, she could not reproach Margaret. It seemed a pity, perhaps, that young people needed the money, while old people always had it.
Of course she had paid for the theatre seats and taxis and everything. She had not really wanted to see Journey’s End, but everyone had been talking about it, and she felt so silly when she said she had only listened in on Arthur’s wireless. She really liked a nice, amusing play, something you could laugh over, with a little love story and pretty frocks. Still, Margaret had seemed quite glad to take her, and it had been a change from hurrying back after visiting poor Nancy.
Once a month since Nancy’s second stroke, Mrs Lancing had gone up to town to see her sister. She was astonished at the difference that Nancy’s illness made to her. The sisters had never been deeply devoted to each other, and for many years their relationship had been one of mutual tolerance and irritation. Yet ever since Mrs Lancing had seen Nancy lying in bed, between the chintz curtains covered with hollyhocks, her poor mouth twisted and her speech all thick and blurred, she had been afraid. The weeks passed, and a sudden ringing of the telephone had only meant that the butcher could not send the kidneys in time for dinner, or that the Burketts wanted a fourth for bridge; but still Mrs Lancing was afraid. They said that the third stroke was always fatal, and Mrs Lancing did not want her sister to die. For when she had gone there would be no one left to share those memories of her childhood which grew more vivid with each passing year. There was no one else who remembered the hollow at the roots of the weeping ash-tree, that had made a beautiful kitchen range whenever they had played at Keeping House. No one else remembered poor Miss Wardle, the governess, who had lost the third finger of her left hand and spoke with a lisp. And no one else remembered that exciting night when the wheel came off the brougham driving home from the Hilaries, and they had to walk in their party slippers through the snow.
Even Rita Washburn, naughty little Rita who came over from the Rectory to do lessons with them, was dead now. Only two months ago Mrs Lancing had covered the blue front of her black dress with a scarf, before she set off to Golders Green Cemetery for Rita’s funeral.
Perhaps it would be as well to ask Madame Challette to make her next dress with two detachable fronts, one black, and one coloured. For in these days one never knew. Every time Mrs Lancing picked up The Times she looked down the Deaths’ Column with apprehension. She never knew who might go next. Why, there were hardly any of the old Bromley people left. That was the worst of being the baby of a set. Everyone else seemed to grow old so soon. Mrs Lancing did not feel old at all, only sometimes she got a little tired, and always nowadays she was conscious of that lurking fear.
She picked up The Times and held it between her and the fire. Well, there was one comfort, she would never see Nancy’s death there, as she had seen their father’s, because she was on holiday in Scotland with Arthur and they had not known where to find her. She had made arrangements with Nancy’s household now to telephone to her at once if anything happened, because she knew so well how, in the confusion of death, important things were neglected.
She knew so well. She had become quite expert recently in the technicalities of sudden illness, death and funerals. There had been her mother, her elder brother Henry, cousin Jane, and her great friend, Millie Waynwright. Millie’s children had both been abroad when it happened, and she had had to arrange everything. Somehow it was just like Millie to give everyone as much trouble as possible. Dear, wayward, lovely, petulant Millie, a spoiled pretty woman to the end, her white hair waved and shingled, her neck tied up with pale mauve tulle, and fresh flowers brought by her husband every day. But she had never really got over Roddie’s death. He had been killed accidentally by a bomb exploding in England, and somehow that was really worse than if it had happened in France.
Mrs Lancing picked up The Times and looked at the Deaths’ Column in the front page. ‘Adair, Bayley, Blaynes, Brintock, Carless.’ Frederick Carless – now, would that be Daisy’s husband? Seventy-five – why, not so much older than she was. Mrs Lancing had begun to count her friends’ ages eagerly, finding comfort in her own comparative youth. ‘Davies, Dean, Dikes.’ It was a heavy list to-day. There must have been an offensive.
How absurd. She was thinking of it as though it were a casualty list; but this was peacetime. The war had been over for more than ten years. It was Armistice Day, the day on which the nation thought proudly of its glorious dead.
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn;
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.2
We who are left grow old, thought Mrs Lancing. The years condemn us. We fall in a war with Time which knows no armistice. This column in The Times is the Casualty List.
She looked up at the scarlet silk poppies in the vase. In Flanders fields the poppies grow,3 because
the young men died, so the Rector had said only an hour ago, in order that the world might be a better place for those who stayed behind. But the old who died because the years condemned them, was there no honour in their going? Of course, they had to pass on some time, and leave the world to the young. Mrs Lancing thought of Margaret, and her sigh, ‘If only we had a little capital!’ breathed without malice and without intention. She did not mean to hint anything to her mother, but of course she knew that when her parents went, there would be £12,000 each for her and Celia. The old must pass on. The young must inherit.
The shadow of death darkened the world when one was over seventy; yet save for one fear it was not unfriendly; it was not dishonourable. It was just part of life. Only she had not liked the look of Arthur’s face that morning and she did wish that his heart was stronger.
The sudden opening of the drawing-room door roused her. She sat up, and saw the scared, white face of the young parlourmaid.
‘Oh, please, ’m, will you come? The master’s had a fainting attack or something in the smoking-room.’
Arthur’s heart. Of course. It had to come.
As though with her bodily ears, Mrs Lancing heard ringing through the house the queer, exciting, alarming, sinister cry of ‘Stretcher-bearer! Stretcher-bearer!’
She knew that this was the fear she had not dared to face, that this was the hour she had awaited with unspoken terror. Yet now that it had come, she was unshaken.
She rose quietly from her chair, placed The Times again upon the sofa, said to Ethel, ‘Very well. I will come at once. Please telephone to Dr Burleigh.’ And with a steady step walked to the door.
She was not out of it this time. This was her war, and she had learned how to behave.
ROBERT GRAVES
CHRISTMAS TRUCE
Young Stan comes around yesterday about tea-time – you know my grandson Stan? He’s a Polytechnic student, just turned twenty, as smart as his dad was at the same age. Stan’s all out to be a commercial artist and do them big coloured posters for the hoardings. Doesn’t answer to ‘Stan’, though – says it’s ‘common’; says he’s either ‘Stanley’ or he’s nothing.