Essential Stories (3 page)

“Well I’ll be danged!” said Harkaway and turned to look at his wife, grateful for the excitement. The air was like a cold pond put in a swirl. It reeked of the animals, the smell of leaves and of grass from which the dew had been dashed. His ankles and shoes were soaked and his pyjamas’ legs were wet, too. She, fey and war-like, was waving her twig. The dashing gods had gone. And now, as the ring of the hooves on the road grew fainter, Mr. and Mrs. Harkaway stood alone on top of the silence which spread like a dew on the earth. The broad aspect of the country was weird with melting capes of mist. The new day shapes were not yet born and as yet there was an unearthly configuration on the land. The hills and their woods had capsized and disintegrated and in the valleys below the Harkaway’s cottage the lower vapours poured into milky lagoons that smoked and foamed, and the higher ones grew out of the earth in melting smoke through which the woods could be seen fragmentarily in violet immaterial palisades. Appearing above the highest branches of the mist, like a gaudy parrot in a forest, was the glow of the unseen sun. Harkaway in his pyjamas and his wife in her night-dress seemed to be the only living and breathing creatures in the world, for there was no sound, not even singing, and they stood in awe like two travellers who in a dream had come upon the beginning of a world before anyone was born in it and unshaped spirits kneeled in the final vigils of their ritual, entranced. Harkaway, feeling his moustache, thought in his professional way of all the people he would call upon after the sun had long risen that day. They were all asleep. Even Radfield in his farm that was sunk in mist—asleep, and their houses dead. He thought, supposing they were not there. Supposing there were nothing. No more rents to collect. He marvelled. If at any time in his life he had felt magnified and immortal it was at that moment. Jupiter, the great progenitor. He thought he shone like the god upon his wife with sudden love.

She laughed at him.

“You have a spider web in your hair,” she said. But that did not dash him. He flung the mockery aside and suddenly picked her up in his arms and ran stumbling into the house. He laid her down upon her bed, with all the morning winding in his blood and his heart beating like the hooves of the horses. He was like them, godlike and great and ruinous, a communicant with darkness and mystery. But as she lay there quickly curled up like a feather, looking at him with a kind of fear, he suddenly became timid, tender, pitiful, apologetic. Alas! he sneezed and the god vanished.

“You will catch cold,” she said, “if you stand there.”

And at this, misery stamped out his fire and almost with tears of desolation he kissed her and went to his own room and the tepidity of his bed. She called to him through the wall:

“You did leave the gate open. That is how they got in, the cheeky boys.”

That serious question of the open gate came rushing into his mind to add to his perplexities. When he was calm the daylight became cold and golden and the new sun was born. The vigilant hills had got their day but, his children, they had vanished.

SENSE OF HUMOUR

It started one Saturday. I was working new ground and I decided I’d stay at the hotel the weekend and put in an appearance at church.

“All alone?” asked the girl in the cash desk.

It had been raining since ten o’clock.

“Mr. Good has gone,” she said. “And Mr. Straker. He usually stays with us. But he’s gone.”

“That’s where they make their mistake,” I said. “They think they know everything because they’ve been on the road all their lives.”

“You’re a stranger here, aren’t you?” she said.

“I am,” I said. “And so are you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Obvious,” I said. “Way you speak.”

“Let’s have a light,” she said.

“So’s I can see you,” I said.

That was how it started. The rain was pouring down on to the glass roof of the office.

She’d a cup of tea steaming on the register. I said I’d have one, too. What’s it going to be and I’ll tell them, she said, but I said just a cup of tea.

“I’m TT,” I said. “Too many soakers on the road as it is.”

I was staying there the weekend so as to be sharp on the job on Monday morning. What’s more it pays in these small towns to turn up at church on Sundays, Presbyterians in the morning, Methodists in the evening. Say “Good morning” and “Good evening” to them. “Ah!” they say. “Church-goer! Pleased to see that! TT, too.” Makes them have a second look at your lines in the morning. “Did you like our service, Mister—er—er?” “Humphrey’s my name.” “Mr. Humphrey.” See? It pays.

“Come into the office, Mr. Humphrey,” she said, bringing me a cup. “Listen to that rain.”

I went inside.

“Sugar?” she said.

“Three,” I said. We settled to a very pleasant chat. She told me all about herself, and we got on next to families.

“My father was on the railway,” she said.

“ ‘The engine gave a squeal,’ ” I said. “ ‘The driver took out his pocket-knife and scraped him off the wheel.’ ”

“That’s it,” she said. “And what is your father’s business? You said he had a business.”

“Undertaker,” I said.

“Undertaker?” she said.

“Why not?” I said. “Good business. Seasonable like everything else. High class undertaker,” I said.

She was looking at me all the time wondering what to say and suddenly she went into fits of laughter.

“Undertaker,” she said, covering her face with her hands and went on laughing.

“Here,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Undertaker!” she laughed and laughed. Struck me as being a pretty thin joke.

“Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m Irish.”

“Oh, I see,” I said. “That’s it, is it? Got a sense of humour.”

Then the bell rang and a woman called out “Muriel! Muriel!” and there was a motor bike making a row at the front door.

“All right,” the girl called out. “Excuse me a moment, Mr. Humphrey,” she said. “Don’t think me rude. That’s my boy friend. He wants the bird turning up like this.”

She went out but there was her boy friend looking over the window ledge into the office. He had come in. He had a cape on, soaked with rain and the rain was in beads in his hair. It was fair hair. It stood up on end. He’d been economising on the brilliantine. He didn’t wear a hat. He gave me a look and I gave him a look. I didn’t like the look of him. And he didn’t like the look of me. A smell of oil and petrol and rain and mackintosh came off him. He had a big mouth with thick lips. They were very red. I recognised him at once as the son of the man who ran the Kounty Garage. I saw this chap when I put my car away. The firm’s car. A lock-up, because of the samples. Took me ten minutes to ram the idea into his head. He looked as though he’d never heard of samples. Slow,—you know the way they are in the provinces. Slow on the job.

“Oh Colin,” says she. “What do you want?”

“Nothing,” the chap said. “I came in to see you.”

“To see me?”

“Just to see you.”

“You came in this morning.”

“That’s right,” he said. He went red. “You was busy,” he said.

“Well, I’m busy now,” she said.

He bit his tongue, and licked his big lips over and took a look at me. Then he started grinning.

“I got the new bike, Muriel,” he said. “I’ve got it outside.”

“It’s just come down from the works,” he said.

“The laddie wants you to look at his bike,” I said. So she went out and had a look at it.

When she came back she had got rid of him.

“Listen to that rain,” she said.

“Lord, I’m fed up with this line,” she said.

“What line?” I said. “The hotel line?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m fed right up to the back teeth with it.”

“And you’ve got good teeth,” I said.

“There’s not the class of person there used to be in it,” she said. “All our family have got good teeth.”

“Not the class?”

“I’ve been in it five years and there’s not the same class at all. You never meet any fellows.”

“Well,” said I. “If they’re like that half-wit at the garage, they’re nothing to be stuck on. And you’ve met me.”

I said it to her like that.

“Oh,” says she. “It isn’t as bad as that yet.”

It was cold in the office. She used to sit all day in her overcoat. She was a smart girl with a big friendly chin and a second one coming and her forehead and nose were covered with freckles. She had copper-coloured hair too. She got her shoes through the trade from Duke’s traveller and her clothes, too, off the Hollenborough mantle man. I told her I could do her better stockings than the ones she’d got on. She got a good reduction on everything. Twenty-five or thirty-three and a third. She had her expenses cut right back. I took her to the pictures that night in the car. I made Colin get the car out for me.

“That boy wanted me to go on the back of his bike. On a night like this,” she said.

“Oh,” she said, when we got to the pictures. “Two shillings’s too much. Let’s go into the one-and-sixes at the side and we can nip across into the two-shillings when the lights go down.”

“Fancy your father being an undertaker,” she said in the middle of the show. And she started laughing as she had laughed before.

She had her head screwed on all right. She said:

“Some girls have no pride once the lights go down.”

Every time I went to that town I took a box of something. Samples, mostly, they didn’t cost me anything.

“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Thank the firm.”

Every time I took her out I pulled the blinds in the back seat of the car to hide the samples. That chap Colin used to give us oil and petrol. He used to give me a funny look. Fishy sort of small eyes he’d got. Always looking miserable. Then we would go off. Sunday was her free day. Not that driving’s any holiday for me. And, of course, the firm paid. She used to take me down to see her family for the day. Start in the morning, and taking it you had dinner and tea there, a day’s outing cost us nothing. Her father was something on the railway, retired. He had a long stocking, somewhere, but her sister, the one that was married, had had her share already.

He had a tumour after his wife died and they just played upon the old man’s feelings. It wasn’t right. She wouldn’t go near her sister and I don’t blame her, taking the money like that. Just played upon the old man’s feelings.

Every time I was up there Colin used to come in looking for her.

“Oh Colin,” I used to say. “Done my car yet?” He knew where he got off with me.

“No, now, I can’t Colin. I tell you I’m going out with Mr. Humphrey,” she used to say to him. I heard her.

“He keeps on badgering me,” she said to me.

“You leave him to me,” I said.

“No, he’s all right,” she said.

“You let me know if there’s any trouble with Colin,” I said. “Seems to be a harum-scarum sort of half-wit to me,” I said.

“And he spends every penny he makes,” she said.

Well, we know that sort of thing is all right while it lasts, I told her, but the trouble is that it doesn’t last.

We were always meeting Colin on the road. I took no notice of it first of all and then I grew suspicious and awkward at always meeting him. He had a new motor bicycle. It was an Indian, a scarlet thing that he used to fly over the moor with, flat out. Muriel and I used to go out over the moor to Ingley Wood in the firm’s Morris—I had a customer out that way.

“May as well do a bit of business while you’re about it,” I said.

“About what?” she said.

“Ah ha!” I said.

“That’s what Colin wants to know,” I said.

Sure enough, coming back we’d hear him popping and backfiring close behind us, and I put out my hand to stop him and keep him following us, biting our dirt.

“I see his little game,” I said. “Following us.”

So I saw to it that he did follow. We could hear him banging away behind us and the traffic is thick on the Ingley road in the afternoon.

“Oh let him pass,” Muriel said. “I can’t stand those dirty things banging in my ears.”

I waved him on and past he flew with his scarf flying out, blazing red into the traffic. “We’re doing 58 ourselves,” she said, leaning across to look.

“Powerful buses those,” I said. “Any fool can do it if he’s got the power. Watch me step on it.”

But we did not catch Colin. Half an hour later he passed us coming back. Cut right in between us and a lorry—I had to brake hard. I damn nearly killed him. His ears were red with the wind. He didn’t wear a hat. I got after him as soon as I could but I couldn’t touch him.

Nearly every weekend I was in that town seeing my girl, that fellow was hanging around. He came into the bar on Saturday nights, he poked his head into the office on Sunday mornings. It was a sure bet that if we went out in the car he would pass us on the road. Every time we would hear that scarlet thing roar by like a horse-stinger. It didn’t matter where we were. He passed us on the main road, he met us down the side roads. There was a little cliff under oak trees at May Ponds, she said, where the view was pretty. And there, soon after we got there, was Colin on the other side of the water, watching us. Once we found him sitting on his bike, just as though he were waiting for us.

“You been here in a car?” I said.

“No, motor bike,” she said and blushed. “Cars can’t follow in these tracks.”

She knew a lot of places in that country. Some of the roads weren’t roads at all and were bad for tyres and I didn’t want the firm’s car scratched by bushes, but you would have thought Colin could read what was in her mind. For nine times out of ten he was there. It got on my nerves. It was a red, roaring, powerful thing and he opened it full out.

“I’m going to speak to Colin,” I said. “I won’t have him annoying you.”

“He’s not annoying me,” she said. “I’ve got a sense of humour.”

“Here Colin,” I said one evening when I put the car away. “What’s the idea?”

He was taking off his overalls. He pretended he did not know what I was talking about. He had a way of rolling his eyeballs, as if they had got wet and loose in his head, while he was speaking to me and you never knew if it was sweat or oil on his face. It was always pale with high colour on his cheeks and very red lips.

“Miss MacFarlane doesn’t like being followed,” I said.

He dropped his jaw and gaped at me. I could not tell whether he was being very surprised or very sly. I used to call him “Marbles” because when he spoke he seemed to have a lot of marbles in his mouth.

Then he said he never went to the places we went to, except by accident. He wasn’t following us, he said, but we were following him. We never let him alone, he said. Everywhere he went, he said, we were there. Take last Saturday, he said, we were following him for miles down the by-pass, he said. But you passed us first and then sat down in front, I said. I went to Ingley Wood, he said. And you followed me there. No, we didn’t, I said, Miss MacFarlane decided to go there.

He said he did not want to complain but fair was fair. I suppose you know, he said, that you have taken my girl off me. Well, you can leave
me
alone, can’t you?

“Here,” I said. “One minute! Not so fast! You said I’ve taken Miss MacFarlane from you. Well, she was never your girl. She only knew you in a friendly way.”

“She was my girl,” was all he said.

He was pouring oil into my engine. He had some cotton wool in one hand and the can in the other. He wiped up the green oil that had overflowed, screwed on the cap, pulled down the bonnet and whistled to himself.

I went back to Muriel and told her what Colin had said.

“I don’t like trouble,” I said.

“Don’t you worry,” she said. “I had to have someone to go to all these places with before you came. Couldn’t stick in here all day Sunday.”

“Ah,” I said. “That’s it, is it? You’ve been to all these places with him?”

“Yes,” she said. “And he keeps on going to them. He’s sloppy about me.”

“Good God,” I said. “Sentimental memories.”

I felt sorry for that fellow. He knew it was hopeless, but he loved her. I suppose he couldn’t help himself. Well, it takes all sorts to make a world, as my old mother used to say. If we were all alike it wouldn’t do. Some men can’t save money. It just runs through their fingers. He couldn’t save money so he lost her. I suppose all he thought of was love.

I could have been friends with that fellow. As it was I put a lot of business his way. I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea about me. We’re all human after all.

We didn’t have any more trouble with Colin after this until Bank Holiday. I was going to take her down to see my family. The old man’s getting a bit past it now and has given up living over the shop. He’s living out on the Barnum Road, beyond the tram stop. We were going down in the firm’s car, as per usual, but something went wrong with the mag. and Colin had not got it right for the holiday. I was wild about this. What’s the use of a garage who can’t do a rush job for the holidays! What’s the use of being an old customer if they’re going to let you down! I went for Colin bald-headed.

“You knew I wanted it,” I said. “It’s no use trying to put me off with a tale about the stuff not coming down from the works. I’ve heard that one before.”