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

by Frank Baker

  She would not look at him. When he had gone, for half the night she sat in the sitting room, staring at the ferns in the window, and once or twice taking up her mother’s photograph. ‘You’ve won, you’ve won,’ Barley heard her saying.

  True to her own words, she did not sing again – for several weeks.

  During the next few weeks Polly was diligent in offering her lodger all the comforts she had been accustomed to. But day by day she seemed to grow thinner till she was no more than a shapeless bag of flesh and bone. Barley took to being out more often than she need have been. It was too much for her. She almost longed for her to sing again. She would have preferred the crowds and the talk of the neighbours to this gloomy and resigned silence.

  Then, one day, something happened to restore a faint gleam of life to poor Polly Ponsonby. An old friend, who had kept away for some weeks, not knowing how to approach Polly during her eccentric period, came again to see her. This friend was one of the oldest members of the Choral Society to which Polly also belonged. It was a Society with a long tradition of fine choral singing, some of the older members having been in the Handel Festival Choir. And they had just been invited, by the management of the Albert Hall, to supply the vocal parts in a Delius concert which was to be given in October. The work for which voices were needed was Appalachia. It was unfamiliar to Polly. But her friend arrived with the score, picked out the treble line on the piano, and begged her to join them.

  ‘It will be so good for you,’ she said, ‘and take you out of yourself, Polly dear.’ She patted her affectionately. In the past the two ladies had often sung together.

  Polly consented. And thereafter, daily grew more excited at the prospect of singing in the Albert Hall. Rehearsals began in a day or so, under their own local conductor, at the Town Hall, Polly went along hardly aware of the others, who whispered about her, and waited tensely for her to open her mouth. The conductor, Dr Murdoch, shook her warmly by the hand. He was an old man and had known her for years, having been her first singing master. It had distressed him that she had lately become the victim of such a curious scandal; but he, like many other friends, had never quite had the courage to go and talk to her during the time of her flute-like fluency. It had been too embarrassing.

  ‘Stinking old sods,’ said Barley to Rye. ‘They all deserted her; now they’re all fawning on her again, waiting for her to start singing. Makes you sick.’

  It was rather a loose judgement. For most of her friends had been acutely sorry for her, but too bewildered by what had become a major sensation to be able to talk with her on the old terms.

  Still, here she was now, back with her friends, and nobody was gladder than Dr Murdoch, who had always had a high appreciation of her musical abilities. The Delius was not a very easy work for these amateur singers. It would need considerable rehearsal before they went to London to rehearse with the orchestra. Dr Murdoch was therefore delighted to see Polly in her old place again, with the first trebles; and he prayed that she might not take it into her head to sing in the extraordinary manner which had provoked so much talk in the neighbourhood, and beyond.

  This did not happen – to the disappointment of the sensationalists. What did happen was stranger – though only detected by those who sat near to Polly, including her old friend Miss Dunstable, the librarian. Although, at that first, and at subsequent rehearsals, Polly opened her mouth and appeared to be singing, she never actually made a sound. Miss Dunstable listened carefully. No – not even a whisper. That limpid treble of Polly’s seemed to have vanished like a dried-up spring. Miss Dunstable, being tactful, said no word to anyone. Dr Murdoch, with even his keen ear, was unable to detect, amongst a choir of nearly a hundred men and women, that one of them was contributing precisely nothing. Only Miss Dunstable and another lady, Mrs Reeks, a chemist’s wife, realised what was happening, or rather, what was not happening. Yet Polly herself seemed to be completely satisfied. She even remarked, at the end of the first rehearsal: ‘How lovely it is to sing again, Lorna! And what a beautiful work it is!’

  Lorna Dunstable glanced significantly at Brenda Reeks.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ she said. ‘One can see how you enjoy it.’

  At the next rehearsal – the same thing happened. At the third – again, not a sound from that wrinkled little face.

  Barley knew nothing of all this. Like anyone else, she was merely happy to see Polly so much more like her old self – her pre-flute self. And on the day of the concert she helped Polly put the finishing touches to the white satin dress she would have to wear. It was hard not to laugh at her appearance; and Barley felt glad that her work at the theatre would not allow her to be present at the concert. To watch all those mummies warbling away would have been, Barley knew, too much for her. But she reminded Rye and advised him to be present, in case of anything unusual happening.

  What happened at that concert was very unusual indeed. And yet it was not detected by even Rye Merton, who had taken a seat fairly near the orchestra and was able to pick out Miss Ponsonby, in her white dress, with all the other ladies – young, middle-aged, old, thin, fat, red-faced, white-faced, cross-eyed, bandy-legged – who filled the tiered seats behind the orchestra. He could pick out Polly, chiefly because she was so small, standing at least a foot and a half below Lorna Dunstable and Brenda Reeks. (Brenda was an Olympic woman of operatic build; Lorna was sylph-like, and swayed like a murmuring reed when she sang.) In between these two, Polly looked like a faint white blob, a large piece of cottonwool dropped there by mistake.

  Rye watched her eagerly. It seemed literally hours before the chorus had anything to do. Delius, an impractical composer, seems to take a delight in dragging on an enormous chorus and only using it for the last few episodes of an abnormally long and luscious work. Rye was terribly bored. He was no musician and kept glancing at the programme notes, trying to make out which variation they had reached. They all seemed much the same to him, except that some were loud, some soft, some slow, some fast.

  After hours of this, Rye began to get restless and long for the bar. The chorus hadn’t even stood up yet. Perhaps, thought Rye, he had made a mistake and they were singing in the next work. But there was an interval after the Appalachian Variations. No; sooner or later all these grotesque women in white and these waxwork dummies in black would open their mouths.

  Sure enough they did. The men first, singing la-la-la in soft undertones of sound, like waves on a seashore. Then more la-la-la. Then much more from the orchestra and Rye began to think the women were only brought there just to fill up the seats. He had, by now, lost interest in Polly, though he noticed her from time to time. Her face was always turned to the conductor.

  Then, at long last, with a wave of the hand from the conductor, all the ladies and gentlemen of Sydenham Choral Society rose to their feet. One could almost hear their sigh of relief. And now, everybody’s eye was fixed on Sir Kenneth Corporal who, sleek and black-haired, with a wasp-like waist and delicate engraving fingers with which he seemed to describe the shape of music in the air – suddenly poised his baton towards the singers. A glorious sound of music burst forth. Lorna and Brenda leant forward, giving of their utmost. Their great moment had come. The orchestra was silent while the singers poured out Delius’s exotic and vigorous harmonies.

  Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, down the mighty river

  Aye, Honey, I’ll be gone when next the whippoorwill’s a-calling . . .

  And then the baritone soloist (distinguished from the common hacks of Sydenham, by full evening dress with tails and white tie): ‘And don’t you be too lonesome, love, and don’t you fret and cry.’

  It was during this snatch of solo that Rye Merton noticed, far up in the glass dome of the hall, a tiny dark speck. It did not impress itself on him greatly. But when he next looked along the first row of the lady trebles, he realized that there was a space where Miss Ponsonby had been.


  Neither Brenda nor Lorna, her immediate neighbours in the hall, had anything to report in the inquiries which followed. They had been so intent on the singing, their eyes so glued to Sir Kenneth (who had been a bit of a martinet at the morning’s rehearsal), that all thought of anything but the music had gone, as it should have gone, right out of their minds. It was not, in fact, until the work ended on the long drawn-out string notes, that Lorna realized the place next to her was empty. And that, during the singing, with the women’s first entry, she thought she had heard a faint chirruping sound. Brenda said that she had definitely felt something soft and light flutter against her cheek, for only a second. Other strange stories bewildered the curious. Sir Kenneth said that he had been put off his beat, for a moment or two, by the sudden intrusion of a peculiarly beautiful singing, far above him. He had glanced up but seen nothing.

  Mr Henry Brissey, the soloist, came forward with an astonishing yarn. He had never noticed Miss Ponsonby at all. She would be to him, only one of many undistinguished ladies. But he had noticed, he said, a small dark bird, flutter away from the front row of the trebles and disappear quickly far up into the roof of the hall.

  He was, naturally, laughed at. But nobody had anything more plausible to report. Miss Polly Ponsonby, who had certainly taken her place with the other ladies at the beginning of the concert, had completely disappeared by the end of the first half.

  After endless investigations by the police, it was finally assumed that Miss Ponsonby must be dead. In her will she left the house, all its contents, and her small bank balance to Barley, ‘in return for companionship through a great crisis’. There was a legacy of a hundred pounds for a Bird-watching Society. One curious feature of the will related to Mr Ponsonby’s flute: this was to be given, if possible, Christian burial. Barley buried it herself, reverently, with Rye in attendance, in the back-garden, and made a little bed of forget-me-nots over it.

  It was many weeks before Barley realized a curious thing. Always, outside the house, vaguely in the air, there seemed to be the distant and heavenly sound of a bird singing. This persisted, sometimes far away, sometimes near, throughout the winter months. Spring came. There were days when Barley thought she could see the bird, very high up, a mere speck. Then, one May morning, when she had risen very early and the smell of summer filled the air, Barley, leaning over her bedroom window saw, nearer than ever it had been, the bird who had kept her company throughout the winter. It was, without a doubt, a skylark.

  Acting on a strange and touching impulse, she called, ‘Polly, Polly, is it you?’

  The bird was singing as though its heart would break. And for several seconds it would not stop. Barley called again.

  ‘Polly, I believe that it is you.’

  It was Polly. And suddenly the wearied endless stream of song ceased, and the small bird fell like a stone to the grass in the recreation ground. Barley rushed out and searched in the dewy grass. For many minutes she went round and round the place where she thought the bird had fallen. Then, just as she was about to take one step forward, she heard a tiny voice from the ground.

  ‘Oh Barley, I have finished singing forever. Pick me up, dear. Take me home.’

  Barley, wondering whether she were dreaming, picked up the small warm bird, covered it in her hands, and took it home. She laid it on a cushion on the sofa where the bright morning sun shone upon it. The little body was trembling with faint life. Barley knew it must die.

  ‘Oh, Polly dear, can you speak to Barley once again?’

  Very, very faint came the answering words, words that were like the tinkle of light rain upon summer leaves.

  ‘Barley, I had to go this way, dear. It had been coming on me for weeks. I tried to stop singing forever. I did not want to leave you. But this was my fate and I knew it. My father told me at one of the séances that my mother had beaten him. There was no music where he had gone to, he said. And he warned me that if I let myself go the same way, I should meet with the same fate. Now, it is the lark who sings at Heaven’s gate, dear; and I have done that. During the rehearsals I could not dare to sing. I was too frightened. Not until I got to the beautiful Albert Hall and watched Sir Kenneth could I find my voice again. The moment we stood up I knew something curious was happening to me. I saw Sir Kenneth’s baton raised. And then – well, Barley dear, I sang . . . and the moment I touched my first note I knew that Polly Ponsonby had ceased to exist as you knew her. I could, of course, have stayed there, perched on Brenda’s shoulder perhaps. I did brush my wings against her cheek. But when a lark sings he must rise. And rise I did and found, by merciful providence, a broken pane of glass through which I flew to the Albert Memorial.

  ‘I wanted to let you know, but I could not do so earlier, in case you should tell Rye and he would put me in a cage. It was that which kept me away from you, Barley. Yet all through the winter, when I should, of course, have emigrated, I could not resist singing over my old places. There is nowhere more beautiful than Sydenham in the world, I am sure. I am glad that I stayed. But it has given me a chill from which I shall not recover. I don’t mind. I have sung my life out as a lark should. And now I go to – nothing, as larks do. It is much better to be a lark than go on wandering round circles as the spiritualists do, or live forever in Heaven as the Christians do – or, as I fear some do, pass to the other place. A lark has the best of both worlds, and by his art of singing gives the very breath of life to his body. Mr Shelley knew all about it. Goodbye, Barley dear. Don’t stuff me. Bury me with father’s flute.’

  With a little shudder the small bird died. And so Polly Ponsonby passed forever away from Baker’s Lane.

  If you go to the cottage now, a very old lady who lives alone, a Miss Merton, may perhaps be induced to talk of these events. But she prefers to remain silent with her memories.

  III

  The Sack

  It’s no use pretending I can go on much longer. I can’t. And that is an understatement. Yet I must understate it, try to rationalise it. Get it out of my system. And the only way I can do that is to put it down on paper. For who to read? God knows.

  Living alone, I’m well aware that one gets silly ideas. You come back to the house when you’ve been for a prowl round the park, and it’s late afternoon with the sun setting and winter round the corner, as you might say (for it’s autumn as I try to write this), and you see a kitchen chair or a saucepan or a shovel left exactly where you left them. And you think – they’ve been moved. Then, looking back, you realize everything is just as when you went out. Except that it’s a bit darker.

  And that is what is so awful.

  No. That is overstatement. It isn’t ‘awful’. It’s plain ordinary. And yet, the very ordinariness of everything can be frightening. And of course, I’ve had such a horribly ordinary life. And now, being ‘redundant’ – that’s about as ordinary as you can get in days when inflation drains you and catches you in the stomach, and Mr Rising Price, to use an old-fashioned term, gets you by the short and curlies.

  Why did I write ‘short and curlies’? Nobody uses that phrase any more. As I see it written down, I realize how out of everything I am – a redundant old fool in his sixties who spent years trapped on the wrong side of the Post Office counter. Not even one hold-up to give an edge to any day.

  Years. Yes, years. All those years gone now, and Dorothy gone, and both girls in Canada with their families, and letters on my birthday and at Christmas. They think I’m all right. I suppose I am, really. Just lonely. Is it even worth telling them that I got the sack – which is what being ‘redundant’ means?

  The sack . . . The word has crept in. No. It’s leapt in, in a way I didn’t expect. I’d never even thought of other meanings of the word until I wrote that.

  But that is exactly what the thing does. Creeps, and leaps. For all I know, it might strangle.

  I don’t smoke. I don’t
drink. And sex is something of the past – not that I ever had much. Oh, I think of sex often. Who doesn’t, particularly in these days? Who can escape from it? Playboy and so on. And now, Knave. I’m sick of it all. I try to read serious books, like Lucretius. Yes, I’ve tried him, God knows why, except that I remember reading him when I was a lad of sixteen, and other classical writers. Juvenal, for example. Yes, I try to keep my mind on serious matters.

  But that Sixth Satire of Juvenal – God! it’s strong stuff! And how he hated women . . .

  It’s no use. I’m getting nowhere. I said to myself – I’ll sit down and try to relate quite simply what has been happening in the last few days. So I’ll start again – perhaps send a copy of this to Pam or Cynthia in Canada.

  Are you listening, either of you? Four thousand miles away. Can you hear your old father? If you want the truth, he’s crying out loud for help, and doesn’t know how to make you hear. I suppose there’s nothing really wrong with him. But he doesn’t want to be slotted into a home for MDs – he doesn’t want to have this electrical treatment they give people like me nowadays, like putting them in a mental cage, it seems to me.

  Here are the bare facts.

  It began with my neighbour in this respectable avenue in this vile town of Hadderminster where all they do is make carpets and pull down old houses and cottages, and dig up the roads, exposing drains and gas pipes, and generally make a foul mess of what was once not so bad a little place in the Midlands. Here I’ve lived all my life.

  Why did this man have to become my neighbour? He’s called Knowles – Kenneth Knowles, but we’re not on Christian name terms. It’s Mr Knowles and Mr Patch, and always will be. Better that way, really. I can’t see him calling me Ted, or me calling him Kenneth, or Ken. No. In the Avenue it’s Mister, Mrs, or Miss. Still, there’s a feeling of neighbourliness. If I was trapped in the bungalow at night with a fire raging in the hall, Mr Knowles would be on the scene before you could say knife. And I suppose I’d come to his rescue too, if needed.