The Key to My Heart

by V. S. Pritchett

  “He said, Lord Fobham said,” I went on, “ ‘Can’t do that. Can’t horsewhip a man any more. No horses. Nothing but cars. The roads weren’t made for them.’ ”

  “Where’s the cleverness in that?” Mother said. “We know who needs the tanning. The telephone’s working again. She’s been on the line three times this morning. I told her you were out.”

  Mrs. Brackett, of course! She was after me!

  “What did she order?” I said, playing it light.

  “Order!” said Mother. “She was a good customer till you and her husband went stark staring mad.”

  We were silent again. I thought of something else; I had heard a rumour going round.

  “Teddy Longfellow says Noisy’s got an Argentine girl now—an air hostess,” I said. “They say he’s going to marry her.” I couldn’t have said anything worse if I’d tried. I thought Mother was going to hit the ceiling, burst, have a heart attack, or die. I’d never seen her face go so purple, then almost black. It nearly doubled its size. Her voice was always loud, but now she shouted, “I won’t have you going over to the Red Lion like this.” (I don’t know why she always called the Crown the Red Lion.) “You know what drink did to your father. Teddy Longfellow was a German spy in the war. He signalled. Don’t ask me who he signalled to, but he signalled. Everyone knows he signalled.”

  And Mother jumped up, went to the window, and pulled the blind down three inches, as if she, too, were signalling, but for the Army or someone to come and help her defend the country. If she had seen Noisy, or if she had seen Teddy Longfellow scratching his beard—he always picked at his beard at one corner of his mouth when he talked—she would have called out, “Help! I’m signalling. Didn’t you see it? I’m signalling. Come in. You’ve upset me, both of you.”

  “Chinese air hostess!” she turned, raging on me. “There aren’t any Chinese here. Don’t be a fool.”

  “Argentine,” I said.

  “You’re always contradicting what I say,” she said. She sat down and became fretful. “He can’t,” she said. “He’s a married man.”

  “He’s divorced,” I said.

  “You keep telling me that. I’m not deaf,” she said. “The rat—why did he let her?”

  There was a long silence; she was frightened by what she had said. At last she became calm. She took out her handkerchief, in case she was going to need it.

  “I didn’t mean that—not rat,” she said. She put her handkerchief back in her bag. Then she scowled. “Argentine meat,” she said mournfully. “Your Father would never touch it.”

  And then Mr. Pickering, the solicitor, came over to see us.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Fraser,” said Mr. Pickering. “The wind’s still bad, but you’ve got the bloom of spring on you.”

  His nose, Mother said to me afterwards, had the bloom on it, too. We were waiting for him; in fact, that is why Mother had on her dark-blue dress and had her handbag beside her. A lucky thing had happened, and if it hadn’t I think I might have gone mad with my mind fixed on Mrs. Brackett. The Mill House at Galeford Priors had come up for sale privately, and Mother and I jumped at the chance of it—Mother because she liked a bit of property, and I because I knew it was cheap and because, as Father used to say, “Nothing clears the mind like buying property. It sobers you up.”

  But buying the Mill House gave us only a small respite. Since the night Claudia had broken our engagement I had neither seen nor spoken to Mrs. Brackett. I did everything to stop myself. I’d go out in the car and make it go the other way. I’d walk up to the telephone and all round it, but I never lifted the receiver. I spent my time thinking of new things to do. I mended the sign on the café. I even whitewashed one wall of the garage, and though I thought I had painted her out with every brushstroke, she came up through the paint. But that evening, after Mr. Pickering left, I had almost come to the end of everything that could prevent me trying to see her. I tried the usual little actions. I went round to the bakehouse to talk to the men. I came back and washed and shaved. I changed out of my working clothes. I put on my grey suit, but nothing happened, so I changed out of it into my brown. I came down-stairs. There was only one thing left for me. I said to Mother, “Let’s go into Wetherington to the pictures.”

  “Get me my coat,” Mother said, “I’m going out, Don’t gape at me. I suppose your mother can go out. too?”

  Mother’s temper was the worst side of her; it is the same with me.

  “Go on, get out!” she cried. “Go and chase your fancy woman. I’m not stopping you. I want to telephone.”

  Every family has its terrible sentences. Mother did not often answer the telephone, except in the shop, and when I was a child, if Mother announced she wanted to “use the telephone” she meant that everyone must get out of the house. Father used to say she would like the street cleared, too.

  I left her, but you see the situation I was in; there was nothing to stop me going up to see Mrs. Brackett. Nothing at all. I got out my car, but I was too startled to know where to drive, and, in fact, I just drove to the end of the town, then round it, and came back again to the cross-roads near our house to see if the lights were on. I drove out of the town again and then did the same journey once more, because I couldn’t remember which lights were on. The second time they were all out.

  All idea of going up to Mrs. Brackett’s went. Mother’s mysteriousness saved me. I found myself going south to Wetherington at last and I was glad. Mrs. Brackett’s house was in exactly the opposite direction, and every mile I put between her and myself made me gladder. It was one of those clear black evenings when the sky has been cleaned up by the wind and the stars have been brushed as bright as buttons, and if you had asked me after half an hour where I was going, I would have said I didn’t know, I was just letting the car take me where it wanted.

  Then I woke up. I had seen a signpost and I knew suddenly where I had been going all the time, where I had been thinking of going for a week or more without knowing it. I was going to see Noisy. I was only two miles from his new house. I drove faster. All the feelings that had weighed me down for a couple of weeks fell off. Good old Noisy! Once I saw him I would be all right. If there was one person who could save me from Mrs. Brackett, it was her ex-husband.

  * * *

  There is a stony lane up to Noisy’s cottage. I had never been there in his time, but I knew where it was. I had once sheltered there with Claudia in a storm when it was a ruin. I remember she had been afraid there would be bats when we went upstairs, but there weren’t. This cottage was on Teddy Longfellow’s estate and stood under a row of beeches that sighed all the time—very rare trees in our part of the country. The land around it used to be grazing land, but Teddy had changed all that. Noisy had been living there for the best part of a year, after the divorce, rebuilding the place on his own. He was good with his hands and very patient.

  I drove up to the cottage. It lay back behind new high wooden palings with a wide gate. The first thing I saw gave me a start; it was Brewster’s cab and Teddy Longfellow’s car beyond it. Beery Brewster was the taxi-driver in our town. I got out and went to open the gate, but I couldn’t open it. I switched on my torch. I saw through a crack that there was a sort of lever and a bolt on it, and, on the gatepost, a bell. A bell in the country! And then I saw there was a wire running from the other side of the gate to an upper window of the cottage. I pressed the bell. A light came on over the front door and then another in the bedroom above, and the bedroom window opened and a grey-haired old woman with a shawl over her put her head out.

  “Who is it?” she screeched in a nasal voice.

  “Bob Fraser!” I called out. I put the light of my torch on her face. It gave a sudden twitch to the left eye that I would have recognized anywhere.

  “Put that light out!” Noisy called out in his wartime voice. The wire squeaked, the gate opened. I went in, and Noisy was at the door with a wig in his hand and the shawl on his shoulders.

  “Come in. We’ve q
uite a party in here. Welcome to the doghouse. Why didn’t you bring your mother? Old Brewster’s dead drunk in the kitchen. She had a terrible drive.”

  Sitting by the fire in Noisy’s little sitting-room, comfortable and happy, was Mother, with a glass of whiskey in her hand.

  “Oh, put that silly wig away,” Mother said, laughing at him. “You frightened me out of my life. I hate those things. No!” screamed Mother. For Noisy had put the wig on again.

  “It keeps away the undesirables,” Noisy said to me, underlining the word, giving a twitch to his face. “Request permission to land. Permission refused.” He took the wig off and admired it. “The old lady is like a mother to me. I’ll get you a drink.”

  I sat down next to Mother, and she muttered, “What are you following me about for? Who looks a fool now?” And she nodded at the wig. “Argentine hostess —you’d believe anything.”

  And Mother laughed, united with herself and comfortable for the first time for weeks. “Teddy Longfellow’s here,” she whispered to me, anxious to make her call on Noisy at this hour respectable. And she straightened her dress. “What have you come here for? Haven’t I got a life?”

  Mother gave me a short, sharp rap on the knee to stop me replying, for Teddy Longfellow came in.

  “Here, Teddy,” said Noisy, handing him a drink.

  “You haven’t cut down those blasted f-fir trees yet, I see,” said Teddy, fingering his beard at the end of his lower lip. His stammer, Noisy said, was worth ten thousand a year to him; it doubled his consonants and his income.

  Teddy Longfellow scared everyone in our neighbourhood and enjoyed doing it. With his beard and the twist he gave to his hair and his eyebrows, he indeed looked like the devil. He used to alarm the parson during the war by praising Hitler, and annoy the hunting people by calling foxhounds “those ruddy useless dogs”. Teddy liked causing trouble; it was he who had started this tale about Noisy’s Argentine girl and—it turned out—had given him the wig. And, of course, he helped Noisy get his case of stuffed birds back from Heading, from under Mrs. Brackett’s nose, and had pinched our van to do it. As he sat there he eyed Mother and me to see if he could see any more chances of annoying us.

  “I said when are you going to c-c-cut down those firs?” Teddy said.

  “No can do,” said Noisy. “Useful for emergency landings in poor visibility. When I get them in line I know I’m bang on the runway.”

  “You won’t get off the ground when the bomb drops anyway,” said Teddy.

  “You don’t think there will really be a bomb, do you, Mr. Longfellow?” Mother said anxiously to Teddy.

  “Bob,” said Noisy. “Come out here. I’ll show you the place. I can’t bear to see that swine falling for the woman I love.”

  And Noisy gave me a peculiar look. I have often thought of it since. I got up and went out of the room with him.

  “Now,” said Noisy. “Here’s the passage. All my own work. I did every bit myself. I put in those two doors. These stairs were rotten; I had to replace half the treads. Come up. Oak, my boy, solid oak. Yes, I did all the painting. Made a bathroom. The geyser was falling to bits. I got a nice lad down at the airport to fix it for me. See? Hot. Cold. I did all the plumbing.”

  He turned on the taps. All the pipes in the house jumped, whistled, and thundered.

  “Beautiful sound, isn’t it? Nothing like your own plumbing. Don’t go away,” he said. “Look at this. You sit in the bath, pull this ring—front gate closed, no one can get in. Pull this—open it. Front door, too. Wonderful what you can do if there are no women about. You see the idea? They can’t get at you. Radio silence.”

  He led the way downstairs.

  “Follow me,” he said. “You haven’t seen all. I’ve got something rather special here. You’ll appreciate it.”

  He led the way down the passage to a locked door. It had a small shuttered hole in the middle of it. He unlocked the door. Inside was a tiny room, no larger than a keep pantry. It contained an armchair as wide as the room, a shelf with a gramophone on it, a wireless, a book or two, a few tins of food, and a lot of tools neatly arranged on the walls.

  “What are these?” I said.

  “Those? Wire clippers. Got them in the Service; you can cut through a half-inch bar with them. Very useful.”

  There were indeed several wires running through carefully made holes in the walls. He pulled one or two wires.

  “Puts on red light outside. Warns them off . . . Shuts up garage . . . Turns on bath . . . Opens shutter on door, so you can see who’s there. Press button, klaxon goes off in their face—no spies.” Noisy stood back and made a statement. “You see the idea? Doghouse. Every house ought to have one. Make your own doghouse comfortable.”

  But I was looking at something else. There was hardly space for the two of us to stand in the little room, but against the wall was the life-size figure of a young girl in uniform, cut out of cardboard—an air hostess advertising the Argentine Air Lines, smiling at us. She was beckoning.

  “Ah,” said Noisy. “You’ve seen her! What a peach, Bob! What a dish! Never says a word, just stands there day and night, always a welcome.”

  Noisy stopped and looked at me, in a way half threatening, for he stuck out his thin chest. “Don’t go near her,” he said, “or I’ll kill you.”

  And then slowly a dry grin came to one side of his mouth. “If you’re ever in trouble—you know what I mean, the only trouble there is—here you are. Just pop-along to the doghouse. I mean it. I trust you. Come along. I mean if the Fairy Queen gets on your tail, starts throwing the television about or burning your clothes on the sitting-room fire or trying to get your medals into slot machines. I say just let the air out of her tyres and buzz off down here. It’s all yours. I’ve packed in all that sort of thing now. There’s my girl now.” He pointed to the cardboard figure. “I’ve given her the key to my heart.” He had hung that large rusty key on a nail stuck in the back of the model. “And, by the way, that reminds me! Testing, testing, testing, zero, one, two, three, four —she rang up to see if you were here an hour ago.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “My ex-wife,” said Noisy, giving me the pistol shot with his eye.

  He stared at me as if waiting for me to fall. Then he laughed. “It’s all right. I told her you weren’t here. And, that’s funny, you weren’t! Be a good fellow, for God’s sake, and ring her up or something. I don’t want her blinding down here in the middle of the night looking for you. Go now,” he said. “You know what women are. I had to put up the barricades when my other wife— the first one—dropped down here six months ago. She’d heard I was nesting. She brought two kids with her. I don’t know where she got them. Now let’s see what that swine Teddy is up to.”

  We went into the sitting-room just as Mother was saying, “If you could only tell the future, I mean, Mr. Longfellow, you would know what was going to happen.”

  She glared at me when I came into the room. She was on to her old subject, and Teddy was politely nodding.

  “Bob’s got to go off,” said Noisy, but I sat down. I didn’t leave at once, and when I did I took Mother with me. She was upset.

  “I could wring that Noisy’s neck,” she said in the car. “I could limb him, playing a trick like that. Spreading all that daft stuff with a wig. No woman would go and live at a place like that. What were you doing outside?”

  “Looking for the air hostess,” I said.

  “That’s all pansy stuff. What’s clever in it?”

  So I said nothing, for now that she was with me she was fighting herself again.

  Something must have happened to me at Noisy’s—I don’t know what—but the next evening I went up to Mrs. Brackett’s. I didn’t even ring her first. I just went.

  It was always quiet up at Heading. Through the trees by the house you could see the stars, and the grey stone was lit by them. There was a smell of cows and wood smoke, and there was a touch of frost in the air. I passed the maid going home on he
r bicycle as I was going up. The curtains were not drawn, and I could see two lamps burning in the long sitting-room. The front door was open, and after I had rung the bell I walked in the wide hall where Noisy’s case of birds had once stood—the marks of the stand were still on the carpet—and I called out, “Anyone at home?”

  All the white doors in the hall were closed except one leading to the drawing-room. I listened. Then I heard talking; Mrs. Brackett was speaking on the telephone. I went farther in and I heard her say “There’s someone here”, but she still went on talking. More I couldn’t catch until two or three words made me stop. She was saying the name of that horse again: “Tray [or something or other] Pays On.” Exactly the words she had said two years or more ago, the second time I came up to ask her to pay our bill, and when she made all the trouble about it and I was afraid of her. I wasn’t afraid of her now and I wasn’t afraid of the house and all its things. The three or four big pictures in the room even looked smaller and the chairs rather shabby.

  I heard her ring off and she came out fast from the room. When she saw me, the telephone look went dead on her face. She hesitated and then said, “Hullo! That was Kitty Fobham.” Then she shook her head and said, “Actually, it wasn’t.”

  Does that make two lies? I don’t know: the moment she boldly said them she lowered her head and put out a foot as if she were sketching something in a hurry on the carpet, and then took a few steps aside before she looked at me again. She had a real liar’s walk. It was her body that told the lies—I mean the way she walked, how her hips moved and her arms. Her tongue, I must say, usually told the truth. If it didn’t, her head gave that shake to warn you she was going to try something on. That was why people who spread stories about her really liked her. And when I say her body told lies, I mean they were the kind of lies any man likes to hear.

  “They told me you telephoned,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you ring me back?” she said.

  “I’ve come instead,” I said.