The Penguin Book of the British Short Story

by Philip Hensher

  She held up her face. Her lips were warm.

  ‘There! Let me go now.’

  He released her. They left the shop doorway, and a few paces further on she gave him her hand and said ‘Good-bye.’

  He said, ‘Good-bye, Ella. See you to-morrow night.’

  While he strode awkwardly over the cobbles, self-conscious lest she were looking after him, her door banged and simultaneously a cat nearby set up a long wail. In the following quiet he could hear the ring of his footsteps echoing up the sleep-bound houses and the gas-lamp on the corner singing to itself through a defective mantle.

  He was very much in love; so much that he was unaware what it was that had come to him, for this emotion caught him up beyond analysis, and he did not in the odd ecstasy remember the creature he had been. The strains of La Bohème, which echoed in his ears once more now that he was alone, reminded him how sad a thing love is, and the memory of Ella’s bright little face looking out on to the cold street seemed to confirm it. Why was the pleasure he got from her company such an unhappy one? The tenderness he felt hurt him, and seemed unreasonable. Perhaps it was because he was a poor creature tragically incomplete.

  For instance, every fellow he met told tales of his conquests. ‘Out with a wench last night,’ they said. ‘Had a good time. She was a hot piece of goods.’ And he never spoke of Ella to anyone. Did girls talk like that among themselves? Well, she didn’t. No.

  He reached the hill leading down to his own suburb, and from the trees of the park on the other side of the road a trail of smoke came. Winter leaves burning. The pleasant smell of wood-smoke scattered his thoughts as he looked through the trees to a wide field of frosted grass. Above it the air was crystalline and one could feel the silent penetration of the moon’s rays. One could imagine them raining down, a silent fall of electric radiance throughout the night, falling on roof-tiles and sheltered sleepers for the most part, but here and there on unprotected lovers making a miserable retreat from romance and beauty.

  It was absurd that Ella and he should part and go the ways of office and shop. Suppose they had caught a train to London now, or – well, why not London? – and were even now sitting together by a train-window watching the silvered leagues slip away. And if they had a little house to live in – no hotels – what an adventure sitting by the fire would be! Then when they drew the curtains and looked out at the frost-rimed roofs, for once it would not be on distance that separated them but on a world easily shut out.

  Easily shut out, he repeated mentally as he felt for his latchkey.

  His bedroom was chilly and the tick of the clock reminded him of the oncoming morrow. Fortunately he was always quick at undressing and in a moment or two his trousers were folded over the bedrail, a chair pulled silently close to the bed, his cigarettes, matches and the clock placed on the chair, and he jumped into bed.

  Slowly his body warmed; presently it was sufficiently warm for him to forget about it. He closed his eyes and soon the pale roses of the wallpaper which the moon had robbed of colour faded from his mind, and the endless problem of Ella came to occupy him again. And again. His thoughts ran in a sort of rhythm: first a dream of what they might do together, and he do for her; then a memory of what she had said or how she had looked; then a feeling of shame at his omission to be alert and witty or entertaining, and of reproach for being a fool and an incompetent; then again the happy dream.

  When this had gone on as long as he could stand it, he got up and lit a cigarette. The room was brilliant with moonlight; it ran in a rippling line along the folds of the curtains, and plunged silver in the mirror of the dressing-table; but the moon itself was now out of view. He stepped over to the window and stood in his shirt looking out.

  Was Ella sleeping or did she too think of her love? As he stared out at the chimney-pots and the bright shield above them, he remembered her standing in the doorway. She said, ‘Do you believe in long engagements?’ Odd things she asked. He nipped the end of his cigarette and sprang back into bed.

  Half-a-mile away in a smaller, cosier room the creamy bars of light which broke through a latticed blind lay on a coverlet and on the face of Ella. She was sleeping. She had been asleep for an hour.

  ELIZABETH BOWEN

  The Dancing-Mistress

  About half-past three at the end of November a sea-fog came up over the edge of the cliff and, mounting the plate-glass windows, filled the Metropole ballroom with premature twilight. The fantastic trees in the garden sank in like a painting on blotting-paper; the red roofs of surrounding houses persisted an hour in ever-ghostlier violet and faded at last. Below the gold ceiling the three chandeliers draped in crystal flowered reluctantly into a thin batch of lights: the empty floor of the ballroom was pointed with yellow reflections.

  The door of the ladies’ cloak-room kept creaking and swinging, gusts of chatter came out from the little girls being unpeeled from their wraps. Inside was a shuffle of feet on the muffling carpet, water gushing in basins, a clatter of ivory brush-backs on marble slabs. The mothers and governesses wanted elbow-room for their business with combs, for the re-tying of sashes and tugging of woolly gaiters from silk-clad legs. With their charges, they overflowed into the corridor. Here, all along, it was chilly and rustling with muslins; Shetlands and cardigans were flung over the radiators; little girls sat in rows on the floor to put on their dancing-sandals. Miss James, the dancing-mistress, hurrying past in her fur coat with her dispatch-case, with her frail forward slant like a reed in the current, was obliged to pick her way over their legs. This she did with stereotyped little weary amused exclamations: her pianist followed in silence, a sharper, more saturnine profile against the brocaded wallpaper.

  Miss James and the pianist went into the ballroom, where they opened their dispatch-cases behind the piano and, holding the mirror for one another, dusted over their faces with large soft puffs. The pianist moistened the tips of her fingers to flatten her hair back; it was polished against her skull like a man’s. Miss James took the mirror and, biting her lip, glanced once more at herself in the oval with a slanting, fleeting, troubled kind of reproach.

  The pianist looked up at the chandeliers, then scornfully out at the mist. ‘I’m so glad we’ve got back to artificial – it seems much more natural, I think. – I say sure you don’t feel too rotten?’

  ‘Not as rotten as all that, I suppose,’ said Miss James, indifferent. She had taken two classes already today; before the second she had declared a headache.

  Miss Joyce James had begun as a pupil of Madame Majowski’s; she worked for her now. Six days a week she went all over the country giving lessons; in the mornings she got up early to perfect her dancing at Mme Majowski’s studio. She had eight dancing dresses like clouds, in gradations of beauty, a black satin tunic for studio practice, and besides these and the fur coat to cover them nothing at all but a cloth coat-and-skirt that looked wrong in the country and shabby in town. She was twenty-one, pretty but brittle and wax-like from steam-heated air. All day long she was just an appearance, a rhythm; in studio or ballroom she expanded into delicate shapes like a Japanese ‘mystery’ flower dropped into water. Late at night, she stopped ‘seeming’ too tired to ‘be’; too tired to eat or to speak; she would finish long journeys asleep with her head on the pianist’s shoulder: her sister received her with Bovril and put her to bed. Her eyebrows tilted outwards like wings; over her delicate cheekbones looked out, slightly tilted, her dreamy and cold eyes in which personality never awakened.

  Miss James and Miss Peel the pianist sat for some minutes more in the window-embrasure behind the piano, side to side in jaded intimacy like a couple of monkeys. There was a radiator beside them. Miss Peel, having shivered out of her coat, kept spreading out her hands to the radiator, chafing them gently together, then spreading them out again, drawing in a reserve of warmth through the hands for her whole body. Her thin shoulder-blades rippled the silk of her dress as she bent forward. Miss James kept her eyes on the door, watching the child
ren in, vacantly counting. As each came in its name jumped back to her memory as though a ticket had clicked up over its head. Though her mind was blank of this party of children from Wednesday to Wednesday, she never hesitated or was confused between the Joans and Jeans, the Margerys or the Mollies.

  The little girls swung themselves in through the glass doors in twos and threes and skidded over the floor. The mothers and governesses sat down in groups round the walls with a resigned look of un-expectation. Their murmuring made a fringe round the silence, they nodded across at each other. The ballroom was gaunt in the vague smoky daylight, like a large church.

  Three minutes before the class was due to begin, the hotel secretary appeared in the doorway, looking towards the piano. Miss Peel was sorting her music; she paused for a moment. ‘There’s Lulu,’ she murmured.

  ‘I know,’ said Miss James.

  Lulu, Romano-Swiss, fervent and graceful, looked away from them guiltily, looked round the room officially, switched on a dozen more lights. Miss James picked up a valse and frowned at it. She sighed, she was so tired. Two more little girls squeezed in past the secretary’s elbow. The door swung to with a sigh.

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Miss Peel and went back to her music.

  ‘I know,’ said Miss James.

  A quarter to four. They both glanced at their wristwatches, sighed and admitted the hour. The dancing-mistress came round the piano, the pianist sat down in front of ‘Marche Militaire’, shook back a slave-bangle up either arm, and waited, her eyes on Miss James who stood at the top of the room and looked down steadily into a looking-glass at the bottom.

  ‘Good afternoon!’ she said, silvery. The little girls ran forward, shaking out their dresses. ‘Fall in for the March! Grizelda leading … Skirts out, right foot pointed … GO! … Right, left – right – right – right – Heads well up – that’s right! … Skirt, Phyllis … Toes, Jean! … Oh, toes, Margery – Margery, what are you doing … to-o-o-es!’

  Miss Peel spanked out the ‘Marche Militaire’. Grizelda, impeccable, head erect, face blank, toes pointed quiveringly, led the twenty-five twice round the room and up the centre. Then they divided, ones right, twos left, met again, came up in twos, in fours, and then spaced out for the exercises. That was that.

  The five positions: they performed like compasses. First … second … third … fourth … fifth! For each a chord, a shock of sound tingling out into silence. The dancing-mistress kept them in the fifth position and melted down between the lines to look.

  Margery Mannering never did anything right. Her week was darkened by these Wednesdays. She was perfectly certain Miss James hated her – Miss James did. She was an overdressed little girl who belonged to a grandmother. She had red sausage-curls tied up with lop-eared white bows and spectacles that misted over, blinding her, when she got hot. She stood crooked forward anxiously. A coldness fingered its way down her spine as Miss James came softly to her down the room in her blue dress that fell into points like a hyacinth-bell and fluted out.

  ‘Now, Margery … Margery Mannering. What are you doing now?’

  They looked hard at each other; all the rest waited. Margery thought, ‘She’d like to kill me.’ Miss James thought, ‘I would like to kill her – just once.’ Her face had a hard wistfulness. ‘Just think,’ she gently invited. The girls in front turned round. Margery looked at her feet. Just feet, they were, like other people’s; boat-like in dancing-sandals. Oh, she had taken the third position!

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss James and nodded. ‘Now do you see? … Now you can take those positions again by yourself. – Music, please – Go!’ The chords clanged vindictively, like choppers falling. ‘Now do you see?’

  Margery had pretty-child affectations that sat forlornly upon her. Now she flung back her hard curls; they bounced on her back. She peered up through misted spectacles like a plump small animal in the bite of a trap – like a rat, perhaps, that no one decently pities.

  ‘Yes, Miss James.’

  ‘Then please remember,’ said Miss James, and walked away. The unrealized self in her made itself felt, disturbing her calm with a little shudder of pleasure. A delicate pink touched her cheekbones, she thought of Lulu, she was almost a woman.

  Next the springing exercises, so graceful, from which the few little boys were excluded. Rows and rows of little girls kicking the air pointedly, showing the frills on their underclothes, waving their bent arms and fluttering fingers apart and together, tossing their heads. There were gleaning movements, throwing and catching movements, movements that should have scattered roses about the room. Miss Peel played ‘Oh where, and oh where, has my little dog gone!’ with a kind of saturnine prance.

  Grizelda and Lois and Cynthia, Jean Jones and Doris excelled at varying movements; they were set to dance by themselves, to show the others. When someone was dancing alone as a glory the music was different, Margery Mannering thought; the choppers became curling feathers, fluttering in towards one and waving out.

  The skipping began and finished; they passed the exercises with ribbons and Indian clubs. The fancy dances began. Little Cynthia was Spain itself in the Spanish dance; the grown-ups sighed at her, she was so sweet. Miss James told her that next Wednesday she could come, if she liked, with some castanets. Grizelda and Doris were best in the Irish Jig; so saucy, quite Irishly saucy. The Gavotte made two more couples illustrious; they were given the floor to themselves. ‘If one could only teach you to curtsey,’ Miss James sighed. If she could only, only teach them to curtsey. They went down on themselves all skewered; feet got lost behind them; knees stuck out in front.

  ‘Just look, children: watch me’ … But they all stood round sceptical; they knew they would never be able to curtsey like that. She sank with bowed head; with arms curved before her she melted into the floor. She flowed down into it and; flowing up again, stood. ‘If I had a dress like that …’ Doris thought. ‘She’s not like a person at all,’ thought Jean Jones.

  The hotel secretary stood looking in through the glass door. His eyes came a little nearer together, his face was intent. Miss Peel played a slow ripple; in her mind Miss James was curtseying.

  After the fancy dancing there was an interval. The little girls flocked and slid to the chairs round the wall. Margery Mannering went back and sat by her grandmother’s maid, who was knitting a bedsock. ‘Got into trouble again, I see,’ said the grandmother’s maid and wetted her thin lips. ‘You did ought to have practised that Spanish dance.’ ‘You mind your own business,’ said Margery, who was rude to servants. She slid along three empty chairs and sat by herself. She watched Miss James go round the room, congratulating the mothers of little girls who had been dancing nicely. Governesses she did not congratulate; she was too tired.

  Cynthia sat with her mother just beyond Margery Mannering; they were holding each other’s hands excitedly and talking about castanets. Cynthia never seemed bare of being loved, it was round her at school, everywhere, like a sheath. Miss James came round to them, smiling. Margery watched, her head well back on her thick neck, playing with one of her ringlets, and Miss James felt something catch at her, going by. She had again that shudder of life in her; a quick light came into her eyes. ‘Don’t kick that chair,’ she said, put on her smile again and went on.

  Miss Peel was back at the radiator. ‘How d’you feel?’ she said. ‘Must you go round all those hags? Are you bad?’

  ‘I suppose I’ll get through … Did you hear me killing that Mannering child?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Oh, you know. The red one.’ She laughed a little and sat stroking one of her arms. ‘She makes me feel awful … I – I don’t know how it is.’

  ‘Has she got anyone with her?’

  ‘Only a maid.’

  ‘Perhaps she’ll die,’ said Miss Peel brightly, and ran her eye over a fox-trot.

  ‘Oh, she couldn’t,’ said Miss James, startled. She couldn’t do without Margery Mannering; she wanted to kill her. She got up and said: ‘Now all take
your partners for the waltz.’

  ‘Lulu’s been back,’ said Miss Peel hurriedly. ‘When are you going to see him?’ Miss James shrugged her shoulders and walked off. The music began.

  By this time the fog had been stained to solid darkness; the windows were slabs of night. The chandeliers were in full flower. Children went round and round, smoothly spinning; the tall looking-glass at the end of the room doubled them into a crowd; they were doubled again on the outside darkness. She could not think why nobody came to draw the curtains. When she felt him again at the door, looking in at her with that straight level look of desire, she went towards him, pulled open the door, and said, ‘Do please draw the curtains. The room looks so ugly; the mothers don’t like it. People can see in.’

  ‘You will give up your train, just once, just tonight?’ he said. ‘Yes?’

  ‘No, I can’t, I’m tired; I’ve got a headache. Besides, you know Peelie’s here; she wouldn’t go home alone.’

  He skirted the floor and went round to the three windows, touching a cord somewhere so that the curtains trembling with movement slid over them noiselessly. Returning, he brushed Miss Peel’s back as she played. ‘I want her tonight,’ he said over her shoulder. ‘We all three have supper together – Yes? I put you both into the 8.40. Yes? Dear Peelie, yes?’

  She nodded, in time with the music.

  ‘Dear Peelie – good!’

  She wriggled her shoulders, he hurried away.

  ‘All arranged,’ he said joyously. ‘I get a taxi immediately. We all three had supper together down by the Pier.’

  ‘Go away,’ Joyce James whispered. ‘You’re dreadful; you’ll ruin me – One two three, one two three. Time, Jean and Betty, time, time! What are you doing! – Mollie, don’t talk while you’re dancing! Margery Bates, remember you’re a gentleman; what does a gentleman do with his hands? … Toes, Margery Mannering: why don’t you dance on your toes?’

  Lulu saw something wrong at the end of the room; the chairs were pushed crooked; he went to arrange them. Again he brushed past her. ‘Till then, I keep watching. You are so beautiful. I would give my soul, my body, all that I have …’