The Penguin Book of the British Short Story

by Philip Hensher

  ‘Very well, Mother,’ Kitty said meekly. If she did not have to help mother with the washing-up, she could get on with her novel all the sooner.

  She went upstairs to her bedroom and spread her writing things out on the table and soon, having at once forgotten her mother’s words, was lost in the joy of authorship.

  Her book was all about little furry animals, and their small adventures, and there was not a human being in it, except the girl, Katherine, who befriended them all.

  She managed a few more visits that holiday; but on Thursday she went back to school again, and then no one in the village knew what was happening any more.

  KINGSLEY AMIS

  Mason’s Life

  ‘May I join you?’

  The medium-sized man with the undistinguished clothes and the blank, anonymous face looked up at Pettigrew, who, glass of beer in hand, stood facing him across the small corner table. Pettigrew, tall, handsome and of fully moulded features, had about him an intent, almost excited air that, in different circumstances, might have brought an unfavourable response, but the other said amiably,

  ‘By all means. Do sit down.’

  ‘Can I get you something?’

  ‘No, I’m fine, thank you,’ said the medium-sized man, gesturing at the almost full glass in front of him. In the background was the ordinary ambience of bar, barman, drinkers in ones and twos, nothing to catch the eye.

  ‘We’ve never met, have we?’

  ‘Not as far as I recall.’

  ‘Good, good. My name’s Pettigrew, Daniel R. Pettigrew. What’s yours?’

  ‘Mason. George Herbert Mason, if you want it in full.’

  ‘Well, I think that’s best, don’t you? George … Herbert … Mason.’ Pettigrew spoke as if committing the three short words to memory. ‘Now let’s have your telephone number.’

  Again Mason might have reacted against Pettigrew’s demanding manner, but he said no more than, ‘You can find me in the book easily enough.’

  ‘No, there might be several … We mustn’t waste time. Please.’

  ‘Oh, very well; it’s public information, after all. Two-three-two, five—’

  ‘Hold on, you’re going too fast for me. Two … three … two …’

  ‘Five-four-five-four.’

  ‘What a stroke of luck. I ought to be able to remember that.’

  ‘Why don’t you write it down if it’s so important to you?’

  At this, Pettigrew gave a knowing grin that faded into a look of disappointment. ‘Don’t you know that’s no use? Anyway: two-three-two, five-four-five-four. I might as well give you my number too. Seven—’

  ‘I don’t want your number, Mr Pettigrew,’ said Mason, sounding a little impatient, ‘and I must say I rather regret giving you mine.’

  ‘But you must take my number.’

  ‘Nonsense; you can’t make me.’

  ‘A phrase, then – let’s agree on a phrase to exchange in the morning.’

  ‘Would you mind telling me what all this is about?’

  ‘Please, our time’s running out.’

  ‘You keep saying that. This is getting—’

  ‘Any moment everything might change and I might find myself somewhere completely different, and so might you, I suppose, though I can’t help feeling it’s doubtful whether—’

  ‘Mr Pettigrew, either you explain yourself at once or I have you removed.’

  ‘All right,’ said Pettigrew, whose disappointed look had deepened, ‘but I’m afraid it won’t do any good. You see, when we started talking I thought you must be a real person, because of the way you—’

  ‘Spare me your infantile catch-phrases, for heaven’s sake. So I’m not a real person,’ cooed Mason offensively.

  ‘I don’t mean it like that, I mean it in the most literal way possible.’

  ‘Oh, God. Are you mad or drunk or what?’

  ‘Nothing like that. I’m asleep.’

  ‘Asleep?’ Mason’s nondescript face showed total incredulity.

  ‘Yes. As I was saying, at first I took you for another real person in the same situation as myself: sound asleep, dreaming, aware of the fact, and anxious to exchange names and telephone numbers and so forth with the object of getting in touch the next day and confirming the shared experience. That would prove something remarkable about the mind, wouldn’t it? – people communicating via their dreams. It’s pity one so seldom realizes one’s dreaming: I’ve only been able to try the experiment four or five times in the last twenty years, and I’ve never had any success. Either I forget the details or I find there’s no such person, as in this case. But I’ll go on—’

  ‘You’re sick.’

  ‘Oh no. Of course it’s conceivable there is such a person as you. Unlikely, though, or you’d have recognized the true situation at once, I feel, instead of arguing against it like this. As I say, I may be wrong.’

  ‘It’s hopeful that you say that.’ Mason had calmed down, and lit a cigarette with deliberation. ‘I don’t know much about these things, but you can’t be too far gone if you admit you could be in error. Now let me just assure you that I didn’t come into existence five minutes ago inside your head. My name, as I told you, is George Herbert Mason. I’m forty-six years old, married, three children, job in the furniture business … Oh hell, giving you no more than an outline of my life so far would take all night, as it would in the case of anybody with an average memory. Let’s finish our drinks and go along to my house, and then we can—’

  ‘You’re just a man in my dream saying that,’ said Pettigrew loudly. ‘Two-three-two, five-four-five-four. I’ll call the number if it exists, but it won’t be you at the other end. Two-three-two—’

  ‘Why are you so agitated, Mr Pettigrew?’

  ‘Because of what’s going to happen to you at any moment.’

  ‘What … Is this a threat?’

  Pettigrew was breathing fast. His finely drawn face began to coarsen, the pattern of his tweed jacket to become blurred. ‘The telephone!’ he shouted. ‘It must be later than I thought!’

  ‘Telephone?’ repeated Mason, blinking and screwing up his eyes as Pettigrew’s form continued to change.

  ‘The one at my bedside! I’m waking up!’

  Mason grabbed the other by the arm, but that arm had lost the greater part of its outline, had become a vague patch of light already fading, and when Mason looked at the hand that had done the grabbing, his own hand, he saw with difficulty that it likewise no longer had fingers, or front or back, or skin, or anything at all.

  ALAN SILLITOE

  Mimic

  I

  I learned to mimic at an early age, probably at two or three when I sat in front of the fire and stared at the cat. A mimic has a long memory, fine hands, and a face he can’t bear to look at in the mirror, unless he puts on somebody else’s with such intensity that he cannot recognize himself there. His soul is his own, but he buries it deeply with many others because under such a mound it is finally safe. Eventually of course it is so far lost and gone that he is unable to get down to it when he wants to, but that is another matter, and finally unimportant when one knows that age and death will settle everything.

  In the early days of infancy I did not know I was becoming a mimic. By all accounts I was such a handsome baby that when my mother pushed me through town in a pram men would stop to admire me and give her five shillings to buy me a new rattle. At least that was her story, though my memory is better than any story, for another line was that because she was so pretty they gave money to me as an excuse for getting off with her.

  A still further version could be I was so rotten-faced and ugly they gave her money to show sympathy at her being loaded with such a terrible burden. Anyway, that’s how she met her second husband, which only proves that mimics usually have pretty and wayward mothers, while they may be fair-to-ugly themselves. You can’t be a mimic with a fine-featured face, but for the first few years must stare at this world and take nothing in so that you
r face stays flat and putty-coloured, with a button-nose, beehive-mouth, and burdock-chin that detects what sunlight hopes to make your features more heavenly to the world.

  While father was at work and my mother in the scullery I’d romp on the rug for a while, then settle down and look at the cat, a black tabby with a white spot between its ears. I’d stare right into its splinter eyes till it opened its great mouth and yawned. Then, facing it on all fours, I’d open my mouth as well, full of small new teeth, stretching the side skin as far as it would go. The way the cat looked at me I knew I was successful, and because of this it seemed as if I felt alive for the first time in my life. I’ll never forget this strong impression. When I mimicked, the light went on, as if somebody had sneaked up behind and slyly lifted off the dark glasses I didn’t have. Finally the cat walked away, as if embarrassed.

  I practised on animals for years, on the assumption, rightly I think, that if I could mimic animals so that they recognized themselves in me when I was doing it in front of them, then it would be quite easy to do it to human beings when I was ready for the changeover.

  I remember at the age of nine that a young woman in our yard had a puppy, a small dark fat one that had been ill, that she wanted to get rid of. So she asked me to take it to the PDSA, gave me a shilling to put into their contribution box, and threepence to myself for the errand of taking it. The place was about a mile away, and going there I called in many sweet shops, buying chocolate at every stop. The puppy was wrapped in a towel in my arms, and after stocking up at a shop I would sit on a wall to eat the loot, and take another goz at the puppy who was going to be ‘put to sleep’ as the woman had said. I knew of course what that meant, and though the puppy squinted at me and licked my hand when I gave it chocolate it still looked as if it might welcome what was in store for it. I stared hard at those brown eyes, at that fat half-blind face that could never have any say in how the world was run, and between one snap of chocolate and the next I’d borrow its expression, take on that look, and show it to the puppy to let him feel he was not alone.

  A mimic does what he is paid to do. By the time I got to the PDSA. I had only threepence left for the contribution box. A shilling had gone on chocolate for me and the dog, and for the dog it was the last thing it would ever eat.

  On the way home a hump-backed bridge crossed a canal. I went down through a gate on to the towpath. On the opposite side was a factory wall, but on my side was a fence and an elderberry bush. The water was bottle green, and reflected both sides in it. My eyes turned from grey to brown, and I barked as the dog had barked when the woman in the white overall had taken him from me.

  This isn’t a story about childhood. It is about a mimic, and mimics have no childhood. In fact it would almost be fair to say that they don’t even have a life of their own. There is a certain price to pay for taking on another face, another voice, even though mimicry need bring no profit. But what mimicry does give is a continuation of one’s life when for some reason that life had been forfeited even before birth. Whether one had done it oneself as a spirit from another age, or whether someone in another age had got hold of your spirit before it was born and squeezed the life out of it, who can ever be able to say? One may be born innocent, but in order to make one’s mark on life, one has to get rid of that innocence.

  One puts one’s devilries as a mimic into other people if one is guilty of what blasted one’s life before birth; one takes others’ devilries upon oneself if one was innocent before birth.

  To borrow a face is to show no mercy to it. In order to call it your own, you leave the owner of it with nothing. Not only do you see something of an advantage in using someone else’s face, but you seek to rob them of what strength they also get from wearing it. At the same time you mimic them to hide yourself. A mimic therefore can’t lose, except of course that he has lost everything before birth, more than anyone else can lose unless he is a mimic too.

  The first person I mimicked, or tried to, was my mother, and I did this by falling in love with her. This is not so easy as it sounds, especially since she had been responsible for giving me birth, but being the person with the power of life and death over me there surely wasn’t any fitter person to fall in love with. But I didn’t let her see it, because my way of doing it was to mimic her one day, and I expected that since she had already given me so much she wouldn’t mind this at all, would be flattered by it in fact. But all she saw was that I was taking everything.

  She’d just had a blinding row with my father, and he’d stormed off to see his mates in the pub. At the heart-rending smash of the door behind him she sat by the fire waiting for the kettle to boil. When it did, she burst into tears. I thought to myself that if I did the same, her misery would be halved, so I put on the same expression (the half-closed eyes and twisted mouth, hands to my face-side with two fingers over my ear) and drew tears out with almost exactly the same noise. I’d meant to let my heart flow with hers, to be with it as a sort of comfort, but what I didn’t know was that I’d only irritated her, mocked her – which is what she called mimicking for many years. This barefaced imitation made it worse, though instead of increasing her tears (it could hardly do that) it stopped them altogether. This was what I had hoped for, but only in such a way as to soften her heart, not to harden her. She smacked my face: ‘Don’t mock me, you little bleeder. You’re almost as bad as he is.’ I don’t need to say who ‘he’ was, though in spite of our similarity he never became the mimic that I did.

  So I mimicked my father, seeing how my attempt at love for mother had failed. It was quite a while before I stopped tormenting my mother by only mimicking my father in front of her, and began mimicking him to his face. When I did, he laughed, and I’d never seen him in such a good mood. Life is full of surprises for a mimic. He’d loosened his belt one Sunday dinner because he was too full of beer and food. He pulled me on to his knee and kissed me, my mother looking wryly over her shoulder now and again as she washed the pots. He was so pleased at my exact imitation of him, of seeing himself so clearly in me, that he gave me a shilling.

  This momentary gain went to my head and, before he could fall into a doze by the fire, I thought I would put on the best show he’d seen by mimicking my mother for him. If he could laugh at himself in me, he’d be more touched than ever to see mother in my face.

  I drew myself up on the hearthrug as if I were tall and thin, curved my arms outward from my side, tilted my head, and drew in my cheeks, completely altering the shape of my mouth and putting that fire into my eyes that expected to be swamped out any second by a tidal wave.

  ‘You’ve been a long time at the pub,’ I said in her voice, ‘don’t you know your dinner’s burnt? It’s a wonder you couldn’t smell it right from the bar.’

  His eyes grew small, and the smile capsized like a boat in a gale. Before I knew where I was I was flat on my face. Then a boot got me in the ribs and I was curled up by the stairfoot floor.

  Somehow, mimicking my mother in front of my father hadn’t upset her at all, not like when I’d done it for her alone. In fact she was amused now, so when the old man lashed out at me with the old one-two of fist and boot, she cried and railed in my defence, calling him all the cruel gets under the sun.

  ‘You leave my son alone,’ she shouted, ‘you drunken bully. I’ll get the police in next time you kick him like that. He’s never done any harm to a living soul, and you’ve never treated him right, either.’

  Father was baffled. He’d not liked me being disrespectful, he said, as if he’d been at church instead of a pub. I hadn’t any right to mock her. As for him, he could stand it because it was only a bit of a joke, but he didn’t like me doing it to her, the wife and mother of the house.

  By this time I’d uncurled myself from the hedgehog position (I could imitate a hedgehog very well at times) and had seated myself at the table. I wasn’t crying. A mimic soon learns to stop that sort of thing, otherwise he’d never do any mimicking at all. To get kicked was one of the risk
s you ran. And because I wasn’t in tears, they soon made up their quarrel which, after all, had only started because of me. He put more coal on the fire, and she made him some fresh tea. When that was finished they talked and laughed, and she sat on his knee. Then they went upstairs together for a Sunday sleep, and I was left downstairs alone on the hearthrug wondering where I’d gone wrong. I didn’t even have the energy to mimic a strong man booting the cat out of the way because things hadn’t gone too well for him at work.

  Some people believe that simplicity can only come out of madness, but who wants to go through madness in order to achieve the dubious advantage of becoming simple? Only a mimic can straddle these two states and so avoid being himself. That is to say, he finds a way of not searching for himself in order to avoid discovering that he has no self, and therefore does not exist. To see finally that there is nothing behind all the faces of one’s existence is to find real madness. And what simplicity is there in that?

  At school, I was the sort of person of whom the other boys asked: ‘Is it going to rain today?’ even though I looked nothing like a sage or weatherman. But the clouds or empty sky seemed to be on my side, and I was often right when I told them one thing or the other. It wasn’t so much that I could guess the weather as that I’d take a chance on saying what I thought was going to happen. This comes easy to a mimic, because every person or object that he decides to imitate has a vein of risk in it.

  In my young days it took a long while for me to realize that whenever I decided to mimic someone, and actually went through the process of doing so, I was filled with a deep interest in life and did no harm to anybody. But in between times I was remote and restless in turn, and liable to delve into all kinds of mischief. If I was not inspired for weeks to mimic, and at the same time found no opportunity otherwise to work off my bilious spirit by getting into trouble, then I took ill with some current letdown of the body such as pneumonia or mumps. My father and mother would have liked to have blasted me for the bother I gave them but after I had mimicked them successfully so early on they went out of my life for ever in any important way, and I took so little notice of their rage against me that many people and other members of my family began to look on me as a saint – until my next rampage.