A Pocketful of Rye

by Anthony Masters

  Then came a little stifled scream of delight. “Exquisite—unique—a find—oh yes, a definite find.”

  Goblin stiffened—surely not—he had never found the Screen. But he had left it unguarded.

  “It’s—it’s sold—” shouted Goblin.

  “Then I’ll double the price, treble the price—”

  “The man—a man—he’s coming for it—he told me to look after it—”

  “Then I’ll wait for him.”

  “No—I mean I’m taking it to him—this afternoon.”

  “Then I’ll come with you.”

  Goblin knew that he was finished now—and the bootbutton eyes on the Screen were riveted straight ahead.

  “I’ll go across the road—and see your father.” And Mr. Cohen strode out of the shop, rubbing his ear lobe with a podgy forefinger.

  The stunted trees and bushes of the landscape behind Capulet shimmered and blurred, and only the delicate pattern of the warrior prince’s robe emerged, so delicate and yet so strong, with its rich understatement of Oriental splendour. The pastel tones and the muted shading were in a strange contrast to the bootbutton nose. But Capulet had a dignity and a presence that Goblin had never experienced before.

  His father came back alone, rubbing his hands and humming silently under his breath. He picked Goblin up suddenly, taking his breath away, and raised him high in the air.

  “Fifteen pounds—fifteen pounds for stock I’ve never even noticed—he’s coming in this afternoon.” He was talking to himself now—“I must have it neatly packed and ready.” He absentmindedly put Goblin down. “What a sale—and I didn’t even know I’d got it.”

  Goblin went out of the shop—and hurried down the high street. His father ran to the shop door and called after him:

  “You’ll be a businessman yet, Goblin. You made the sale—Mr. Cohen says so—Mr. Cohen says you showed him the screen—Mr.—”

  Goblin began to run. Those blackcurrant eyes that stared so far ahead—

  Next Saturday morning his father was just about to cross the road when Goblin asked fearfully:

  “Did he take it?”

  “Take what?”

  “The Screen.”

  “What?”

  “The Japanese Screen.”

  “I told you—he was coming to collect it last Saturday afternoon. Oh yes—I meant to tell you—he left a message for you. It’s good for Mr. Cohen to like you, you know—he’s an important man—Gentleman Dealer like him—he’s got very important customers.

  “What was the message?”

  “Don’t know why he likes you, scruffy little sod like you. Anyway he does, so you’d better behave yourself with him.”

  “The message, Pa, what was it?”

  “Why, he might make you a partner—you never know—Think of it—a partnership in a business like that.”

  “What was the message, Pa?”

  “Stop shouting at me—it was a very kind one. Mr. Cohen says that as you seemed to like the screen so much you can go up and see it at his house as much as you like. What a nice man. He’s not bought it to sell it again—he wants it for his private antique collection. Any time, he said, you like to pop in—Oh well, look after the shop—drive some hard bargains—and I’ll see you in half an hour. So long, Salesman—don’t sell the shop as well!” Goblin’s father spluttered over his joke and banged the door. There was the rustle of a parchment wing from the shadows.

  Goblin ran to the back of the shop and knelt down by the empty space where Capulet had rested.

  Then he looked up to the brittle feathered shell above him. The owl winked.

  The Power House

  Gnarled hands pulled levers, turned switches, adjusted temperature. Veins strained against brown flesh as wheels were turned, and watering eyes scrutinised dials and meters. The old ’un pursued the gentle monotony of sixty years, whilst the Power House grew vibrant with new mechanism around him. Pouched flesh quivered as he stared up at huge indicators, and valves opened to the touch of his swollen fingers.

  The heat of the room often oppressed him and he would sit, head bowed, fighting constant nausea. Then he would stumble to his feet to regulate the temperature and tend the machines. He had one chair, straightbacked and uncomfortable, set before a lighted switchboard. There was one drawer where he kept forbidden tobacco and odd scraps of belongings accumulated during his time in the Power House. Concentrated work was limited and the day seemed very long, although he was hardly conscious of time now. Alone, amongst dynamo and generator, he had become reclusive and visitors were unwelcome.

  The day began just after dawn when he scraped away silver fresh stubble, washed sketchily at the sink and began clumsily to pack his lunch box. Then pulling a shapeless cap over his eyes he opened the door and made his way to the Power House.

  He walked slowly, habitually crossing and recrossing the roads of the gradual incline of the valley at exactly the same place every morning. People rose, ate, set clocks and relied on the regularity of his humped figure. He was the beginning of the day’s industry, the first worker to cross the valley. He was proud of this as he walked past the shuttered cottages—proud of his consistency, his never changing habits, and of his increasing importance to those around him. Gradually he felt himself building up a permanent sign of security to them—a never changing basic belief. If they were assured of nothing in their lives they knew that the old ’un would pass their front doors at six, and they would hear the clatter of his rough boots on the paving stones. Then again in the evening they would lean back and say: “There goes the old ’un” as he trudged past on his homeward journey. It was a remark not to be answered, but to be accepted as a comforting after a day’s work.

  He was never referred to as anything else but the old ’un—if he had a name only a few people remembered it, and fewer still credited him with a Christian name. They thought of him twice a day and between those times he was totally forgotten. He sat in the Power House controlling every machine they touched in the factories, yet he was never remembered. But the old ’un was proud of casual acceptance and the nods he received when he had his nightly Guinness in the Albert. Sitting alone in the Snug he could hear everything that went on in the Public through the matchboard partition, although his increasing deafness sometimes made it necessary for him to press his ear very hard against it. Through decades he had sat and listened to news of labour troubles, hardship, reunions. He had heard choirs practise and drunks evicted. He heard the clack of dominoes and clink of shove halfpenny to the accompaniment of the low drone of conversation. He sat and heard the pinched desperation of the ’thirties, the war effort of the ’forties and the growing neurosis of the ’fifties. Men grew and talked, were deposed and others took their place at the bar. Listening, it seemed to the old ’un that they grew further apart from him each day, leaving him with privacy and the undeniable power of the spectator. Uninvolved he continued to listen to them while they set their watches to his morning and evening step.

  The old ’un grew arthritic and his hearing became worse, but to the people in the valley he was solid and lasting, unyielding to human weakness. One evening, sitting in the Snug, his eavesdropping was rewarded, and his breathing became fitful as he swelled with pride.

  They were discussing redundancy and an elderly man had talked of the insecurity in the valley and its increase. For a moment he lost the words and they were swamped in the low murmur of the men in the Public. Then a voice had broken in, and amidst silence roughly said: “As long as the old ’un passes the door morning and evening, I’ll not fret.”

  There was general laughter and someone shouted: “Thank God for the old ’un—may he always be passing.”

  The cry had been taken up and they chanted: “Here’s to the old ’un—and long may he pass.” Amidst more laughter a new conversation began.

  In the Snug the old ’un’s face burned with pride and he eagerly anticipated the next day’s work and the tramp of his heavy boots outside the fron
t doors.

  March gusts blustered the old ’un as he trudged to the Power House. His eyes were raw and stinging and the tip of his nose had become covered in sores as he tired of cleaning the continually forming dewdrops. He bent against the wind and occasional harsh buffets sent him staggering back, and so his progress was slow. The valley lost two minutes for the old ’un was late and watches and clocks were set slow. He knew he was late, and quickened his stride, his ears tingling with mounting crispness. The road steepened and he caught the full force of the wind—Staggering back he set himself against it, half closing his eyes and tucking his chin and mouth into the thick, grey woollen scarf. The streets thinned and he was on the rutted hillside track that led to the Power House.

  The ground was treacherous and his boots skidded alarmingly on the smooth mud. Choking back a little cry of terror each time he slipped he continued relentlessly up the path. There was a mist, thick in patches, but in places it broke to reveal a bush laced in a cobweb of frost, or bent back against constant wind, as if to hug the face of the hillside. Other breaks revealed sheep, staring down amidst the wet clamminess that shone on their wool. As the old ’un approached them they bleated and bounded back up the slopes, startling others obscured in the mist, until the entire landscape seemed to drift, the wool and the mist uniting to falsify all movement. As the sheep passed slowly over the rocky crags higher up the valley, they seemed to dim the hardness of the shapes and give the hillside a translucent effect, as if it were made of down and feather.

  Reaching the Power House he fumbled for the huge iron key. It was cold inside and he kept his greatcoat on whilst he stiffly adjusted dials and lit an antiquated oil stove. He hunched over it, restoring the circulation and wiping the tears from his eyes. Wheezing, he switched on the generators and power flooded down to the valley. Then he lit a popping gas ring and put a kettle on for tea.

  The letter lay just under the door and slowly he bent to retrieve it. Gasping and with his face flushed he sat on a chair and opened it with numbed fingers. His anticipation grew as his fingers stiffened, and in his excitement he ripped the letter as he clumsily tore open the envelope. It was from the management, for even without his glasses he recognised the official stationery. He fumbled, his hands shaking with exasperation. After a search they were clumsily discovered and he put them firmly on his nose. The letter was simple and to the point—as he was approaching eighty the management had decided to pension him and replace him.

  Outside the mist crept up the hillside, exposing the roughness and the dirty greyness of the sheep wool. In the Power House the old ’un read the letter again unbelievingly. After a while he understood.

  His greatcoat still hunched around his shoulders he got up from the chair and went over to the generators. His face was expressionless as he pulled the master switch.

  In the valley below machines faltered and ground to an unaccustomed halt. Workers were startled, then bewildered at the lack of energy. There was complete stillness—not even the generators’ hum to break the sudden monotony. Bewilderment increased as rumour spread, and the silence grew oppressive. The security of noise had disappeared completely, leaving behind it mounting fear and discomfort. The generators in the Power House were automatically perfect—the situation was impossible. Every second’s inactivity meant heavy losses and the counting houses echoed to the scurrying of accountants.

  In the Power House the old ’un ignored the incessant ringing of the telephone. Instead he emptied the treasures in his drawers, secreted them in his lunch box and, turning off the kettle, stepped into the receding mist. The sun rose and he carefully trod the slippery path down to the village. There, his alien footsteps rang out at ten o’clock in the morning. Housewives stared curiously from behind their curtains and old men gazed out, unbelieving. The old ’un slowly trod past their front doors and disappeared down the street.

  In the Power House the phone continued to ring and pallid sunlight gleamed dully on the shells of the silent machines.

  Tip Toe Annie

  The old woman was dying upstairs and the rain fell drearily on to the trim red paving stones of Laburnham Grove. Downstairs the kitchen fire glowed and Tip Toe Annie slumbered through the long Sunday afternoon. She dozed fitfully, often waking, and thinking that she had heard the rap of the stick on the floor above. The cat lay curled on the chair opposite her, slowly licking away the suburban grime from its fur with a wet and sinuous tongue. Annie hated the animal and their enmity was long standing, but she fed and cared for it well, and the cat would always purr with contentment after one of the huge meals she prepared for it.

  The kitchen was the only warm room in the great house—Victoriana and more recent extensions had reduced the plumbing and heating systems to distorted nightmares, and to Annie each huge room had its own particular kind of bleakness. But here in the warmth she was happy—she sat in a huge rocking chair, so high that her feet could not reach the ground, and avidly read the Sunday papers from beginning to end.

  She had come to the house when she was fifteen—as tiny then as she was now. Just five foot—and always standing on tip toe to make herself taller. Fifteen—and then she became forty. Quite suddenly she was growing old—and she had known nothing else but this. She looked around her, and knew that she loved the familiar clutter—the dear worthless things on the mantel from the innumerable souvenir ashtrays of Hastings, to the old framed photographs of film stars, now long dead, which she had treasured so much as a girl. Inside the frames were stuck curling photographs of distant relatives and their children. Then she looked from her one prized Toby Jug to a fading leather Bible propped up by a broken china shepherdess to the depths of the great range where tattered piles of magazines lay, and in a bursting drawer unwieldy and very dusty balls of wool poked untidily out. Annie was always running up jumpers, cardigans and socks for favoured tradesmen. On another shelf were piles of brittle shells, collected on day trips to the South Coast, and imitation oak plaques leant lopsidedly against dusty plates and huge family platters on top of kitchen cupboards, inaccessibly high. They read ‘Bless This House’ and ‘Home Sweet Home’ and had faded to near obscurity under layers of cooking grime.

  On a shelf in the range Annie kept her night lights, little stubby candles set in a honey jar, for although the house was now wired for electricity, the lights were still a comfort to her. The electric light switch in her room seemed a great distance from her bed, and every step she took in the darkened room terrified her.

  When the twilight shadowed the kitchen, and the papers had fallen from her lap, the bell would shrill from the room above to rouse Annie from a warm doze, and the old lady took tea. Everything on the tray was a miniature ceremony, and if there was so much as a smudge on the snowy table linen it would be sharply returned. Wafer thin bread and butter, cinnamon toast and tiny cream cakes sufficed the old woman’s greed, and the weak china tea was consumed by the pot. This was Sunday tea—weekday tea was a replica with the exception of the cinnamon toast.

  After the old lady’s tea it would be Annie’s job to ‘settle’ her. Settling Mrs. Harford took at least an hour, for she had to be dosed with pills and tonic, the windows opened and closed and sometimes even the bed linen had to be changed. All this time she would moan gently and call Annie a ‘cruel girl’ for disrupting the position of her body. Annie with lips firmly set and a distracted air would thump and pummel until the bed was shapeless and the shallow niche the withered body made had disappeared. Then she would cast around in the gloom for the hot water bottles, fill them downstairs with water a well judged, often criticised temperature and place them in position. Then, looking forward to only shattered relaxation, she would try and regain the peace of the afternoon with a tattered thriller and a bag of fudge—little caring for her already ball-like figure. Almost every half hour the stick would rap sharply and Annie would disconsolately trudge upstairs. There demands would be made for water, more pills or nagging enquiries about gas pipes and banging doors.

>   At half past ten Annie passed the old woman’s door with the flickering night light, listened to the rumbling snore of contentment inside and made her way thankfully, high up in the house, to bed. Before sleeping she knelt and prayed for tiny things, the welfare of distant relations and a rather hurried prayer for her employer. “God bless Mrs. Harford, and make her well.” Then with a sigh of relief she climbed into bed, clutching a half empty bag of fudge, and stolidly munched her way to sleep.

  Monday morning—and a rise at six. Bleary-eyed and fumbling her way out of thick flannel, Annie got into her working grey. Opening the window, which she kept fast shut at night, she watched Laburnham Grove begin to wake. She heard the rattle of milk bottles and turned to wave at the milkman. This was abandon itself, for he was known as a man of low morals and the grocer’s wife had hinted at two women kept in appalling squalor at opposite ends of the town. So there was a certain joyous wickedness in waving to this creature early on a grey Monday—and his wink sent a delicious tremor of fear down Annie’s spine.

  “Milkman,” he cried, and leered audaciously up at her.

  “An extra one today,” she called back primly, and drew herself up as if the four words had somehow committed her. Then she smiled a little and he, a slightly old-fashioned rake now, raised his peaked cap and swung back on to his float. It started off again with a great rattle and Annie closed the window sharply. Briskly slapping on a clean white apron she banged downstairs to await the arrival of the morning papers. This would be her first new contact with Mrs. Harford—when they came she placed them on a tray with a milky cup of tea and took them up.