Stories of the Strange and Sinister (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

by Frank Baker

  When Barley came home she said she thought Polly looked very pale.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing my dear. I had a strenuous day. Such long queues at the greengrocer’s and the butcher’s. Have your tea now, while it’s hot. I wish that you’d been with me to-day, dear. I caused quite a sensation in the street.’

  ‘In the street?’ Barley stared. ‘What’ve you been up to?’

  ‘I started to sing while I was waiting in a queue outside Hobson’s, the butcher’s.’

  ‘What? Sing? Did you send round the hat?’

  Miss Ponsonby took this seriously, and looked a little hurt.

  ‘I’ve no need for that, my dear. Mr Ponsonby left me well provided for.’

  ‘I was only joking.’ Barley wolfed toasted cheese furiously. ‘But what do you mean, you started to sing?’

  ‘Just what I say. People looked so surprised, but rather pleased, I thought. I think it meant something to them, as it did to me.’

  ‘I should think it darn well did. What did you sing?’

  ‘Oh, anything that came to me. “Bid me discourse,” “Where the bee sucks,” snatches from Puccini – just anything. It didn’t matter.’

  Barley paused with a forkful of toasted cheese. Then she asked: ‘Did you sing that one you’re always singing – what is it – something about the lark?’

  ‘No. No. I didn’t do that one.’

  ‘Just why did you do it, Miss Ponsonby?’

  ‘Well, Barley – might I call you Barley? It’s such a sweet name – and will you call me Polly?’

  ‘Righty-oh. Well, why did you do it, Polly?’

  ‘I had a bad pain here,’ she vaguely flicked a long finger towards her flat chest, ‘it bothered me all the early part of the morning. But I noticed that when I sang, it left me. Goody-goody, I said, this puts me right. There’s no doubt about it: music does keep you going.’

  ‘Did you sing right out loud?’

  ‘I never do sing loud, dear. I haven’t that sort of voice. Listen.’

  She started to sing.

  Later that night Barley wrote to her brother.

  Dear old Rye,

  I’m a bit worried. I believe the old girl I lodge with is going off her nut. You remember I told you she went spooky some weeks ago and started dabbling in spiritualism? Now she can’t stop singing. She’s warbling away like mad as I write this and it kind of gets into me and scares me a bit. Wish you’d come down this weekend and tell me what you think of her. She says she’s got a pain and when she sings it stops. She’s awful sweet, you know, though as shapeless as last year’s Christmas pudding; and she couldn’t have been kinder to me. She’s just gone to the kitchen with the supper remains and I can hear her on a high note. Now she’s trilling like a penny whistle. It doesn’t sound like ordinary singing. Do you remember that Chaplin film years ago when he swallowed a kid’s whistle and every time he tried to speak it shrilled out a high note? It’s rather like that. I – ’

  Barley put down her pen suddenly. The sound was getting on her nerves. She went to the kitchen, carrying the cheese dish through. Polly was standing on tip-toe before the sink, washing dishes, and still singing. As Barley watched her, she put aside the washing-up mop and held on to the sink with both her hands. From her open lips flooded an arabesque of pellucid sound, pure and spontaneous. There were no words. One of her feet left the ground; the other still stretched on tip-toe. It was a bewildering and grotesque scene.

  ‘Polly!’ cried Barley, ‘what’s the matter with you?’

  She turned round. Still singing, she held her fingers to her lips as though to ask for silence. Then she suddenly collapsed and fell to the floor. Barley got her to a chair, dabbed water on her forehead, managed presently to revive her, then fled out to ring for a doctor.

  The doctor said there was nothing whatever wrong with her. But she still complained of the nagging pain in her breast. He suggested an X-ray examination. A week later she went to the hospital and submitted to this. While she waited, she began to sing, startling the staff and delighting patients in distant wards. It was a truly Heavenly sound, far more flute-like than it should have been. She did not seem able to stop herself. They could find nothing irregular which could have caused the pain. Pure nervous imagination, it was said. The doctor suggested a long rest in a nursing-home. But she said she would rather not go. Her singing might only disturb the other inmates.

  So she returned home. Barley began to wonder whether she ought to look for other lodgings. By now, it was common gossip that Miss Ponsonby had gone strange. Often, on her return from the theatre, Barley would find a group of boys and girls gathered outside the park gates, opposite the cottage, listening to Polly and giggling and making rude remarks while she stood in the open doorway, filling the night with luscious liquid musical sequences, sometimes slithering away in Ravel-like phrases of tender and evocative lyricism, sometimes just staying for a long time on one trilling note, then falling, then rising. She would stand with her hands clutching the door knob, as though she feared to have another collapse.

  The crowds would get bigger. With closing time at the Talma semi-drunks would wander down Baker’s Lane to hear the old girl going at it. It grew intolerable for Barley. Yet she felt she could never desert one who had been so kind to her, giving her hot-waterbottles in winter, always bringing up a tray of tea and toast to the snug little bedroom which overlooked the gentle slopes of the wooded park, and bearing most patiently with Barley’s little outbursts of temperament.

  In desperation, one hot summer night, when Polly was singing over the grey phloxes in the small square garden, Barley wrote again to her brother.

  For God’s sake come down and help me. I’m afraid she’ll get locked up or something. Nobody cares. It’s just a local joke. Those damned spiritualists have deserted her. She hardly ever talks now. It’s music all the time and it’s driving me bats. But I can’t help loving the old thing. And I forgot to tell you – something very funny’s happening. She’s growing smaller.

  When Rye got this letter he decided to investigate. He had just joined forces with a chap who ran a Mammoth Fair, touring all over the country. Freaks were rare nowadays. This sounded the goods.

  Rye was thirty, looked forty and behaved twenty. He wore a pale fawn teddybear coat, a startling silk scarf, a wide-brimmed stetson hat and carried a black cane. His hair was black and was arrowed devilishly over his eyes. There was a flash of diamonds about him; and he was always bringing illicit treasures from the large secret pockets of his coat. Cigars, half bottles of spirits, perfume, silk stockings, peaches, tickets for boxing matches, silver pencils, chocolate liqueurs – Barley had long ceased to register any surprise at what emerged from these prodigious pockets.

  Polly didn’t like him at first. He was common, you could tell after a glance. And she had always understood that Barley’s brother had gone to Lancing College and on to Cambridge and later into business of some sort. ‘There’s nothing Rye hasn’t done,’ Barley had said. ‘He’s a wiz of the wizards.’

  But after a few minutes, Polly warmed to his breezy style, his slap-on-the-thigh manner, his way of treating inanimate objects as though they were close personal friends.

  It was his remarks about Mr Ponsonby’s flute that won her. This stood, in its case, which was open, on top of the piano. It was never touched, except to be dusted, and every Saturday a bowl of fresh flowers was put before it. When Rye came the flowers were cherry-pie and scarlet salvias, an exotic display in a crystal bowl. It caught his eye at once.

  ‘I say,’ he said, ‘jolly fine instrument you’ve got there. Must be worth a packet. Can I take it out?’

  ‘I’d prefer that you didn’t, Mr Merton. It was my father’s dearest possession.’

  ‘Quite understand! Handsome little place you’ve got, Miss Ponsonby.’ He sat down and stroked
the back of a mahogany musical box, a small treasure which stood on a three-legged bamboo table in the window with the ferns and potted fuchsias.

  ‘Now I’ll get you tea, Mr Merton.’ She rose rather weakly. Yes, thought Rye, there was no doubt about it; she certainly looked strange. And very shrunken.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Polly,’ said Barley. ‘I’ll get the tea while you and Rye have a chat.’

  She opened her mouth. Barley knew the signs and left for the kitchen hurriedly. But Polly didn’t sing. Instead:

  ‘Let me be quite frank, Mr Merton. Why have you come to see me?’

  Running a chubby forefinger over the mouse-coloured velvet of the Prince Consort easy-chair in which he sat, ‘Why not, Miss Ponsonby? You’ve been a saint to Barley. She’s always telling me how good you are. By the way, I’ve got something you might like. Accept it as a little present.’ He snapped out from his breast pocket, a very pretty piece of costume jewellery: a small brooch of paste diamonds, shaped like a soprano clef, and mounted on five gold bars. ‘Know you’re fond of music,’ he said, ‘and happened to pick this up and thought – well, there you are!’

  She was charmed. She blushed. She had not been given any such present for a very long time.

  ‘Oh, Mr Merton!’ She pinned it to her dress and thanked him warmly. ‘Yes, it’s a very happy choice for me. Music is my whole life. I expect Barley has told you.’

  ‘She mentioned how keen you were on singing.’

  ‘Yes. I do sing a great deal.’ Again, a pause, and she half opened her mouth. Rye waited. He thought it was about time she started.

  But she seemed determined not to sing that afternoon. ‘I want to ask you something,’ she said, ‘as a man of the world, Mr Merton.’

  ‘Carry right on and no charge.’

  She appeared to have difficulty in speaking; an agonized look darkened her face. ‘Only this,’ she said. ‘I want to know Mr Merton: is there any law against singing in the street – or in any public place? Is it illegal?’

  He slapped his knee and leant across towards her.

  ‘Now that’s queer,’ he said, ‘For that’s just what I wanted to talk about. I might as well be frank, too. Barley’s worried about you. She thinks there’ll be trouble about your singing. Mind you – she and I, and people who know – people who understand the artistic impulse and so on, we like it. At least, I haven’t heard it. But I’m pretty certain I should like it.’

  ‘Wait till you get it all night,’ muttered Barley, who was listening in the passage while the kettle boiled.

  ‘You see, Mr Merton, I have to sing. But lately I’ve grown conscious of strange looks from people in the street. I’m afraid, oh dear! I’m afraid they don’t really care for it as I do and Barley does. And I never feel myself unless I’m singing.’

  ‘Why should you? I mean, why shouldn’t you? But the trouble is, Miss Ponsonby, we’re living in a world that’s hot against anything they call eccentric. If I had my way I’d let you sing all day and night. But it’s no use denying it; sooner or later, if you go on warbling in the market place, they’ll put you under lock and key.’

  ‘Oh no, oh no,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes, oh yes. What I want to say is – sing when you’re at home, as much as you like. Nobody can object to that. But try to curb the impulse when you’re out and about.’

  ‘To be locked up – oh dear! In a cage, perhaps, oh how dreadful!’

  ‘Cage? What makes you say cage?’ He looked at her quickly. The word linked up with his own thoughts.

  ‘Linnets, Mr Merton. You know what they do to linnets?’

  Her voice had sunk away to a scratched needly sound, like an old record on an old gramophone. And her face was pale and ashen. Rye began to feel worried. He could see his bird slipping through his fingers. And he thought it was about time she treated him to a song.

  ‘You mustn’t get downhearted, Miss Ponsonby,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Stick to it when stuck. That’s our family motto. It’s always served me well. As I see it, you’re stuck away here in Sydenham, wasting a wonderful gift. Has it ever occurred to you? Beat the world, before it beats you.’

  ‘What – do – you – mean?’

  She looked scared. And even as he watched her, she seemed to shrink into her chair. There didn’t seem to be any shape to her. Only her large flat feet, which kept shifting on the worn carpet, had retained any life.

  ‘I mean,’ said Rye, ‘that it’s up to you not to let folk think you’re barmy – that’s straight from the shoulder, my dear lady, and I speak as a friend. I look at it this way. If you’ve got an exceptional gift for anything, unless you use it, unless you market it to the best possible advantage, the world’ll merely say you’re crackers and put you away where you don’t want to go. All musical geniuses are bats, if you look at them from ordinary standpoints. Look at friend Mozart. Do you call him human? Thumping out the jolly old semiquavers at the age of four. If the authorities had had their way, bang would have gone Wolfgang into a looney bin. Fortunately he had a father who knew his job. What did that father do? Marketed the kid promptly. Romped him round Europe to all the courts. Result – world cries genius!’

  He sank his voice to a tense whisper. She was staring at him. There was a tiny point of burning light in her small, dark eyes. ‘That’s what somebody’s got to do for you – before it’s too late. In other words – here I am, and I’m your devoted from now on. We’ll go fifty-fifty. I don’t want more than my share. And I can promise you the time of your life, and every comfort. And you can warble in eighteen different keys at once. How about it?’

  ‘About what? I don’t understand.’

  ‘The show business, Miss Ponsonby. Easy money and no more persecution from neighbours!’

  ‘The show business? You mean – ’

  ‘I mean – money, a friend of mine runs a travelling joint – what some people call a Fair but what I prefer to call a – ’

  She suddenly gave a pathetic little shriek. At that moment Barley entered with the tea.

  ‘Oh no, no,’ cried Polly. Her words seemed to torture her. The veins in her throat bulged. Her tiny nose twitched and her fingers fumbled clumsily at her dress. ‘How dreadful – how dreadful of you!’ Stumbling out of the room she went upstairs. They heard her lock the door of her bedroom.

  ‘Now you’ve dished it,’ said Barley.

  ‘Not on your life. She’ll come round to the idea. But, blast me, I wish the old eagle would pipe up a bit. I’ve only got your word that she can sing at all.’

  Not a sound came from upstairs. Barley went up, tried the door, knocked, begged Polly to let her in. Not a sound. Going down, the brother and sister sipped cups of tea and crumbled some of Polly’s seed-cake on their blue-ringed plates.

  ‘I’m horribly worried, Rye,’ said Barley. ‘I didn’t have time to tell you. This morning old Mrs Jackson who lives opposite said to me that everybody agreed it would be kinder to send her away somewhere. They get tired of the crowds round here, you see. But she’s not dotty, I’m quite sure she’s not.’

  ‘You wait. I’ll catch her. We’ll make a pile out of this, old dear.’

  ‘Oh, Rye, it doesn’t seem fair.’

  ‘Why not? If it’s going to save her from a padded cell?’

  But he never did catch her. All the rest of that evening no sound at all came from upstairs. About nine, Rye got tired of waiting and went round to the Talma for a quick one. Chatting there to some of the regulars, old Sydenham folk who had known Polly’s father and always had great respect for Polly herself, what Barley had feared was confirmed by them. They all spoke sadly of her, as though it were only a matter of days before she would have to be put away. ‘But why – why?’ argued Rye angrily, thumping his fist on the counter. ‘What the devil’s wrong with the old lady?’

 
‘It ain’t right nor proper,’ said one, ‘for a lady to go on singing in the street. It upsets people, for one thing. And it ain’t human, not that sound, not human at all.’

  More and more he longed to hear her sing. But when he went back to the cottage, she was still upstairs, and not a single note had escaped from her lips since his absence.

  Gloomily, Rye picked up the precious family flute and lingered the pistons. ‘I’ve offended her, that’s what it is,’ he said. ‘Curse myself for being so impatient. I should have got her to sing first, then, bit by bit, worked the idea into her head. I know she’d be happy once she was on the road with the gang. There’s a bearded female who’s an absolute duck. She and Polly would chum up in no time. It’s only because she’s got false ideas of what’s respectable. You’ll have to bring her to it, Barley. Otherwise she’s for it.’

  ‘Not if she goes on like this,’ said Barley, ‘silent as night up there. It frightens me, Rye. I kind of feel I don’t like being left alone with her any more.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got to be back to-night, old dear. Business in Petticoat Lane at crack of dawn. Wire me if anything begins to happen. I’ll be down like a shot.’

  He put the mouthpiece of the flute to his lips and tried to blow a note from it. ‘Might encourage her,’ he said.

  But he couldn’t get a sound from it, however hard he tried. Screwing his lips to a thin crack, he went redder in the face, blowing for all his might.

  Suddenly a door upstairs was hurled open, there were stumbling footsteps down the stairs, and Polly burst into the room, her eyes inflamed with tears. In a choking voice she addressed Rye.

  ‘Put that flute down, Mr Merton. Leave my house at once. You have come here with an intolerable proposition. I have made up my mind. I will never sing again. Never!’

  He tried to pacify her, but to no avail. Barley got her to a chair and soothed her. ‘I’ve nothing against you, my dear,’ she muttered. ‘But I cannot have your brother here. I beg you to ask him to leave. I know he meant well. But he has killed my purest impulse.’