The Best of Gerald Kersh

by Gerald Kersh

  I had come, paying my duty-visit, with the intention of borrowing a little money – a matter of some few hundred pounds. Before I knew Mavis, I had regarded myself as quite a rich man: my uncle allowed me eight hundred pounds a year, and over and above that I had my salary, four hundred pounds a year from the High Commissioner’s office where I worked. Twenty-four pounds a week was affluence, to me. I had my little flat in Knightsbridge; my books and my gramophone records: my little self-indulgences. I could even lend a little to my friends. But after I fell in love with Mavis, somehow I could never make ends meet.

  I met her at a meeting of the Little Ballet Group, in Russell Square. She performed the dance Riabouchinska used to do, with the little metal fawn … only Mavis was smaller than Riabouchinska: an animated ivory figurine, most beautiful! Mavis lived, she told me, only for The Ballet. But her health was not very good; one of her lungs was questionable – she had had a hard time of it in her early youth. Her father drank, her mother kept a little general store in a side street off the Gray’s Inn Road…. She had been sent out to work in a factory at the age of fourteen. But she wanted to dance – dancing was her life, she said, again and again.

  She did that Fawn Dance in a borrowed costume, stained with someone else’s grease-paint. When I went to congratulate her, after the dance, and saw her weeping so forlornly in the little dressing-room, it was as if a hand came out of the foggy night and squeezed my heart into my throat.

  Mavis had such humility…. Now, here is a joke: it was I, of all created creatures, who coaxed and persuaded her into artistic arrogance! Seeds of my own destruction? Yes, perhaps I sowed them. It was I who said to Mavis: ‘You must not wait and hope; you must insist, demand!’ I, mark you! …

  She insisted. She demanded. I believe there is nothing quite so persuasive as the eloquence of a weakling who, genuinely despising himself for what he is, preaches in favour of that which he would be if he could.

  I made Mavis hard. Soon my twelve hundred pounds a year was nothing. And, in talking my doctrine of Strength – Strength – Strength, I found that I had talked myself into contempt and out of existence as the man who had comforted the thin little girl when she was crying in the dressing-room.

  I do not know whether Mavis had overestimated my fortune. I am sure I made my financial position pretty clear: eight hundred a year from my uncle, four hundred a year from my office. She thought herself lucky, at that time, if she drew a hundred and fifty a year, and had enough, at the end of the week, to satisfy her landlady in Bernard Street.

  But when Mavis and I came to be together, the money went like water. There had to be supper parties, cocktail parties, and luncheon parties; because she had to ‘meet people’. And could she meet people in a shabby dress? Of course not. And could I do her discredit by appearing less elegantly turned out than an adagio dancer? No. I went to Savile Row for my suits, to St James’s for my shoes, and to Bond Street for my shirts. Again, could we live in three little rooms in Knightsbridge? Knightsbridge, yes; three rooms, no. We needed a big lounge for ‘people’, and impressive furniture.

  I got into debt. I mortgaged myself. And, at last, when the dressmakers, and the other tradesmen, were pressing for settlement of their accounts, I had gone to my uncle to borrow five hundred pounds, and found myself with my allowance cut in two.

  Mavis would have something to say about this!

  I had not lied when I told my uncle that I could not live without her. She was all I had ever loved. Weary of turning over in my mind what I should say to her when I returned home, I began to consider ways and means of killing myself.

  And then – at half-past three in the morning – someone knocked at my door. Lambert came into my bedroom, and said: ‘Oh, Master Rodney – Master Rodney – will you come down? Sir Arnold – I mean your uncle – is taken very bad!’

  I put on dressing-gown and slippers, and followed him. As I went downstairs, I was aware of a sense of doom.

  I wished my uncle dead, yes. I wished him dead, God forgive me, for his worth in money, considering the terms of his will. But I beg you to believe me – do, please, believe me – when I tell you that I loved the old gentleman very dearly, and had no intention of murdering him, as I did, that night.

  PART TWO

  YOU may imagine that, as I went downstairs – steadily, slowly, contemplatively – my thoughts were with my uncle. As a matter of fact, they were not. The date was 30 April, but the weather struck cold in the old house. I thought, first, that it might have been a good thing to put on my overcoat, over my dressing-gown; then it occurred to me how right Mavis was when she insisted that a woman had to have a fur coat. This being the case, therefore, I had bought her a fur coat.

  Now there are fur coats and fur coats. Mavis had told me how a certain class of woman could not distinguish between musquash and mink, or between mink and sable. Such women were earmarked for oblivion. But Mavis had ‘modelled’ for furs, and knew what was what. She had a great deal of this kind of knowledge. Mavis knew, and wanted to be one with, the kind of woman that recognises – let us say – blue fox, blond mink, and Siberian sable. She could explain the difference between the pelts of certain rodents – for example, mole and chinchilla. The difference, generally, ran into many hundreds of pounds. Mavis made a social difference of it.

  … Chinchilla and sables, perhaps, might come later. Meanwhile, she could wear nothing cheaper than mink. And wearing mink, how could she ride in a bus? Women wearing mink do not ride in buses – it is antisocial to do so – the proletariat stares. And what is a mink coat without a corsage of orchids, preferably purple? … But what girl, who respects herself, wears a suit by a lesser craftsman than Vallombroso under a mink coat? Respecting herself in a Vallombroso suit, how could she feel comfortable with something inferior to Ambergh underwear next to her skin, a Bobini hair-cut, and shoes by Dupuy? … The hat was another item. Nobody who was anybody wore a hat that was not made by Berzelius. And one became a Somebody by mixing with Somebodies. This was Mavis’s philosophy, and I could not disagree with it.

  ‘I always found,’ she had told me, ‘that when I had supper for eighteen pence at the Café Mauve, I never had more than eighteen pence to pay for my supper. But when I started to have supper for three-and-sixpence at the Café Impérial, I managed to find three-and-sixpence …’

  This operates, in a way; the only drawback is that somebody must pay….

  It was of this that I was thinking when I went downstairs. My uncle was lying on his back, with his knees drawn up. His face was blue with pain, but still he fought. He said, gloatingly: ‘You would have been dead three-quarters of an hour ago, I bet! It looks as if you might come into your inheritance yet, you worm.’

  ‘What is the matter, Uncle?’ I asked.

  He said: ‘I don’t know. My belly is hard as a pumpkin, and hurts like hell…. First I go hot, and then I go cold, and when I move my head … I seem to fade away, wash away on a kind of foggy wave. It pains, Rodney, it pains!’

  Then Lambert came in with a hot-water bottle. (I write down these details to convince you that almost to the last I wished my poor uncle nothing but well.)

  ‘This sounds like appendicitis,’ I said. ‘Take that bottle away, and make a pack of crushed ice in a towel.’

  Even in his agony, my Uncle Arnold sneered: ‘Male nurse!’ You see, my eyes were weak, so that in the war I was only in the Medical Corps. He had been a rough-riding cavalryman, and had been shot in the thigh at Rorke’s Drift – carried the Mannlicher bullet that disabled him on his watch chain.

  ‘Call Dr Gilpin,’ I said to Lambert.

  He hesitated, and said: ‘I wanted to, sir, but Sir Arnold said not to.’

  Remember – all I had to do was temporise, humour my uncle in his obstinacy for three or four hours, and he would surely have been dead that day. But I said: ‘Uncle, you have an appendicitis, very likely burst; and that “fading away” in waves is a hæmorrhage. Lambert, call Dr Gilpin this instant!’


  ‘No damned quacks!’ my uncle groaned. ‘It’s nothing but a belly-ache. I can’t imagine why Lambert called you down, you Woman! … Lambert, don’t call Dr Gilpin, call Mr Coote – if I die where I lie, I cut this milksop off with a shilling.’

  That was the nature of the man; do you know, I honoured him for it! But I rose to the occasion, and said: ‘You may cut me off, or you may cut me on, as you please; I am getting the doctor.’ And so I did.

  The old gentleman was delirious when Dr Gilpin arrived. The diagnosis was as I had foreseen – a burst appendix, with a serious internal hæmorrhage.

  I went with my uncle and the doctor to the Cottage Hospital. The surgeon there said: ‘We’ll pull the old boy through, I dare say. But I’ll want somebody to stand by for a transfusion of whole blood…. How about you?’

  I said: ‘My blood group is universal O.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘I found that out during the war,’ I said. ‘I was in the R.A.M.C.’

  ‘You’ll do,’ said the surgeon.

  At this point I murdered my uncle, Sir Arnold Arnold, for the sake of my love for Mavis. For, you see, an allergy may be transmitted in a transfusion of blood. I spoke the truth when I said that my blood group was Type O, which is universally transfusible. But some devil got hold of my tongue, so that when I intended to say, I am violently allergic to oysters, and Sir Arnold lives on them; therefore, if he receives my blood in transfusion now – his heart being weak, and his blood pressure high – he will almost certainly die in a fit of asthmatic coughing, or of convulsive colitis, when he celebrates the opening of the next oyster season with three dozen Colchesters next September … I was silent.

  Premeditation here! When I let them siphon the blood from my arm into the bottle for transfusion, I knew that I was poisoning my uncle as surely as if I had been putting arsenic in his tea.

  But I never spoke.

  He was conscious by noon, and then he said: ‘Rodney, my boy, I’m an old man, and a little testy at times. Don’t mind every word I say. Blood is thicker than water, old fellow; and you must have good blood in you. You behaved like a man and a gentleman, by God! … Bring your Mavis to see me. I dare say she’s a nice gel, really. Meantime, send Coote to me. I’m going to give you a thousand pounds for a wedding present.’

  ‘Oh, no, Uncle!’ I said, almost crying.

  ‘Don’t interrupt. I haven’t the strength to argue. Get Coote. I’ll leave the Cottage Hospital five thousand, I will…. Go away now. No, wait a second. Rod——’

  ‘Uncle?’

  ‘Your allowance, henceforward, is a thousand a year. You’re a good boy. Now go home.’

  Mavis was waiting for me when I got home. She said: ‘Good Lord, Rod! You look like death warmed up. Your eyes are all red. Have you been crying, or something? And where were you all last night?’

  ‘My uncle was very ill, so I got no sleep,’ I said.

  I was sick to s hear her remark: ‘If only the old fellow would pop off! We’d have fun then, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘Very likely,’ I said heavily.

  She asked me: ‘But did the old bully come across? … He must have given you a hundred or two, at least, surely?’

  Unfolding the cheque, I said: ‘He gave me a thousand pounds, and has raised my allowance to a thousand a year. Does that please you?’

  It did. ‘Let’s celebrate!’ she cried. But I said that I was tired, and wanted to rest. I said nothing about the blood transfusion – the thought of what I had done sickened me.

  A little later, after she expressed a hope that my uncle might ‘pop off’ soon, we had our first quarrel. After that we had our first delightful reconciliation, and I agreed to take her for a holiday to the Pyrenees. In this, as you will see, there was the sure hand of God.

  *

  Ah, but that was a holiday! We spent a delightful week in Paris, and then went south. It is a wonderful thing, to leave the station under a fine rain, and wake up under a blinding sun. Mavis had never been abroad before. As you must know, the greatest pleasure that things give their possessor is the delight he finds in sharing them with someone he loves…. There was a forest, a road almost without perspective; a certain view of blue water, white foam, and yellow sand; above all, the little peak the peasants call ‘La Dent Gâtée’; and this I loved beyond everything.

  You may keep your Matterhorn, your Mont Blanc, and your Dent du Midi. Give me my Dent Gâtée. To look at, it is not much. If it were much, no doubt I should never have gone beyond the base of it. My beloved Dent Gâtée is a very minor mountain, from the point of view of a climber – there is nothing difficult about it – the herdsmen follow their goats over the peak, and down over the Spanish border, without thinking twice. To a true mountaineer, the Dent Gâtée is what soldiers call ‘a piece of cake’. I loved it, though. It has hidden depths. Never mind the precipices that go rushing a thousand feet down, buttressed like the walls of the great cathedrals; never mind the icy torrents that spring out of the living rock and go, in blown spray, down into the terraced valley! I like the Dent Gâtée for its silence, and for its mysterious caves.

  The old cavemen lived here, scores of thousands of years ago. The great M. Casteret, I believe, began to explore the caves of the Dent Gâtée; one of his predecessors, in 1906, in a hole named Le Chasme Sans Fond, discovered an antediluvian carving of a buffalo, and the carefully arranged teeth of three cave bears…. There was an animal for you, if you like! From nose to tail-root, the cave bear measured ten feet, and he stood five feet at the shoulder. His haunches were considerably higher than his shoulders; so that when he reared up to attack, his forepaws must have hovered twenty feet high, armed with hooked claws ten inches long. His canine teeth were bigger than bananas. But around this creature, which was much bigger than a bull, you must wrap a pelt about three times as long and dense as that of a grizzly bear. This nightmare our ancestors fought with chipped flints lashed to the tips of wooden poles! … All this made me feel that Man is not called Man for nothing.

  I tried to convey this to Mavis, but she felt the cold. She wanted to be over the mountain, and into Spain; where, she said, she proposed to hear a flamenco, learn a gipsy dance, and see a bull-fight. So we hurried up and up that tricky road until, a mile before we were to touch the mountain village called Lô, we crashed.

  It was not my fault. It happened like this: Mavis was hungry and thirsty, and I was preoccupied…. In my head something kept singing: You murdered your Uncle Arnold – Murdered your Uncle Arnold – He will die in September – You have murdered your Uncle Arnold…. Changing into second gear, coining into low, I encountered a cow, and swerved. My right-hand turn, thoughtlessly twisted on, took me up a steep bank. The car turned over. It stopped rolling at the edge of the road, the rear wheels spinning over the cliff.

  Mavis’s arm had gone through the windshield. I was always a coward – I had ducked – I was merely stunned.

  Coming to, I ran for help. It happened that an old man was going to Lô, mounted on a mule. I made a tourniquet of my tie, thrust five hundred francs into the man’s hand, mounted Mavis on the mule, and followed her to Lô, where there was a doctor.

  I trembled for her, when I saw him: he was a French doctor of the old school, who used his ear for a stethoscope, and did not believe in new-fangled drugs. A rugged old fellow, jack of all medical trades and master of none – but no fool. He said: ‘Madame has lost too much blood and, what with that and the shock, I order a transfusion. But you are in no condition, m’sieur, to have half a litre of blood taken out of your arteries at the moment——’

  ‘– No, no!’ I cried. ‘I gave blood for a transfusion only a month ago. I am not fit, doctor; not healthy.’

  ‘– If you will allow me to proceed?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, doctor.’

  ‘Il n’y a pas de quoi, m’sieur…. As I was saying, since you are not in a condition to give blood to your wife, I have called in a woman of the village. A healthy animal, I assure
you. She was wet-nurse to the Princesse de Bohemond’s child, which I had the honour prematurely to deliver, after the Prince’s motor-car crashed on this self-same road. The baby thrived – at eight months, mark you! We can’t do better than take a little blood from young Solomona. They do not come much healthier than she – she is bursting with milk and blood.’

  Then he introduced the woman Solomona, to whom I gave a thousand francs. She bared a powerful brown arm and giggled as the needle went home in the artery at the crook of the elbow.

  A little colour came into Mavis’s cheeks as Solomona’s blood ran into her veins. It worked like magic. Her eyes opened, the lids fluttering, and she smiled.

  I remember saying: ‘Now I can die,’ and after that I must have collapsed. When I was conscious again, a day and a half later, the doctor told me that I had concussion; for which, he said, the only remedy was ice-packs and rest.

  But how could I rest until I had seen Mavis? I went into the room where she lay – and she looked even more beautiful than ever – and, taking her by the hand, begged pardon for my unskilful driving.

  ‘It was all the cow’s fault,’ said Mavis. ‘She wasn’t looking where she was going …’ Mavis was still a little light-headed. She rambled on, drowsily: ‘… Poor old cow. Didn’t know where she was going…. But do any of us? Couldn’t see what harm she was doing…. Can any of us? Kind of lost and frightened – her eyes looked lonely…. But aren’t we all? … I hope I won’t be too much scarred.’

  I said: ‘The doctor said that there’ll be nothing that a bit of cosmetic won’t cover. You’ll be all right, my sweet.’

  ‘… Lucky it wasn’t my leg,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t afford that…. Even so, Abaloni always kept nattering about my not knowing what to do with my arms and hands. Perhaps this will make me worse. Oh, Rod – don’t let it!’

  ‘Dearest Mavis, nothing is ever going to make you unhappy.’

  ‘That would be nice, Rod … I have made sacrifices for my Art, you know?’