The Bazaar and Other Stories (36 page)

“It

cannot
have passed before we got here?” said he – and he had
said this before.

 

“No; it’s just late. It’s never before its time.”

 

“You are quite sure what its time
is
?”

 

“Why, of course I am,” she said conclusively. “It’s the last bus.”

 

“My heavens,” he almost raved, “
that
I do know, only too well! –
What do you think has happened?”

 

She considered, then said: “Well, it’s Christmas, for one thing.”

 

“In that case, we may be left here to see the New Year in?”

 

“Well, I hope not,” she said. “I’m in a hurry, too.”

 

“ – Stop; listen!” He put up his hand sharply. “Or is that simply
one more of those damned lorries?” (For lorries had been playing
them up already.)
¹

 

She listened, critically, to the vibration gathering in the distance;
then pronounced: “No, that would not be a lorry. That’s the bus all
right. But – ” again she listened – “it sounds to me sort of funny.
Does it to you?”

 

It did. The sound was a sick sound – uncertain, jerky, rasping.
The dimmed lights which, like pinpoints, now appeared in view
shook and blinked with the efforts the bus was making. The bus
traversed, in a series of these convulsions, the saucer of land above
which the watchers stood. “Sounds to me,” said the woman im
partially, “like it’s conking out.” Her companion, for his part, was
beyond words. The bus attempted to breast the hill towards them:
change of gear tore a final screech from its vitals – it stopped dead.
Triumphantly, silence fell.

 

The woman hitched up her parcels, the man regripped his
despatch case: the two of them started downhill, as though in
expostulation, towards the hulk, in whose dimmed blue inside the
passengers were astir like uneasy ghosts. One by one the passengers
got out, following the driver and the conductor: a despondent
crowd began to form round the bonnet. The driver played his torch
into the engine, shrugged, glanced at the conductor and said
nothing.

 

“Surely,” exclaimed a lady, “there must be
something
that can be
done?”

 

“I dessay you’re right, lady,” replied the driver,
²
who, however,
confined himself to shrugging again, stepping back and lighting a
cigarette.

 

“But look here,” asserted another voice, “I’m on important
business!”

 

“
All
our business is very important,” added somebody else. As for
the civil servant, he turned to the countrywoman and emitted a
long, bitter, expressive laugh.

 

“So they think,” he said. “But if they knew about
me
– !”

 

“Well, whoever we are,” she said, “we’ve all got to get to
some where
.”

 

There had not been so many passengers in this last bus: in the
course of exchanging looks of despair they took stock of each other,
there in the misty moonlight, and automatically counted each other
up – a lady in a fur coat, a small boy attached to the lady, an
American soldier, a corporal in the A.T.S.,
³
an elderly clergyman, a
commercial gentleman, a capable spinster type, a couple of students
who looked foreign, a couple of lovers and a lean dark man in mufti
who singled out the despatch-bearing civil servant for an address in
rapid, emphatic French. To which the Englishman answered: “
Je ne
sais pas
.”

 

“What does he want?” asked the countrywoman, sorry for any
body for being foreign.

 

The Englishman said: “He is asking what one had better do.”

 

“That won’t get him far,” said she, shaking her head.

 

What they did all do was, get back into the bus. And even our
two disappointed ones took their places, as at least some satisfaction
for their long wait. The conductor, they were informed, was setting
out on foot for the nearest village – by which one must understand,
the least distant one – to telephone for a relief bus: it was much to
be hoped he could flag a ride . . . At first, the passengers could not
help sitting up alertly, as though this in itself might help them to
continue their journey at any minute. And at first, their combined
mood created a sort of psychological whirring, almost audible, in
the unearthly blue gloom of the static bus.

 

The fur-coated lady then said: “We must try to imagine that time
is no object.”

 

“We must employ philosophy,” said the clergyman.

 

“Why, sure,” said the American, “show me some.”

 

One student added, in broken English, that science would
revolutionise the idea of time.

 

“No more revolutions for me, if you please,” said the commercial
gentleman, who, under a blue lamp, had been busily totting some
thing up.

 

“Coo,” murmured the little boy, from the lee of the lady’s fur coat,
“I bet
I
could make this old bus go!”

 

The spinster, with a good-natured laugh, indicated the lovers
who, both wrapped in his overcoat, occupied, cheek to cheek, a
dark front seat. “Here at least,” she said, “we have two young people
lucky enough not to care
where
they are!”

 

The girl only nestled her head lower, but the man raised his
slightly, aroused to thought. “Yes, but we’ve got married,” he said.
“We’ve got to know where we’re going.”

 

At this, the corporal in the A.T.S. paused in the act of lighting a
cigarette to give the spinster an informative smile: “Love’s all right,
but it won’t take you all the way.”

 

The Frenchman sighed and said in his own language: “Yet there
was a time once – long ago, it is true – when I should have been
happy to travel no further than that.”

 

Only the newcomers, so far, had not spoken: the civil servant
now glanced across at the countrywoman, as though he felt it was
time
they
should set to partners. She sat feeling over her bags and
parcels, to make certain nothing had fallen out: through a tear in her
knitted glove gleamed a wedding ring. “And you,” he said, “have
urgent reasons to travel?”

 

She replied simply but fully: “I ought to be getting back.”

 

“We must face the fact,” said the spinster, “that we are not getting
anywhere. It is extraordinary that our combined wills should be
insufficient to move this bus. One could almost think that, between
us, we could generate something. Our intelligence level” – she
glanced round her fellow passengers – “is, on the whole, high. We
represent several nationalities – ”

 

“Ma’am,” interposed the American, “we’ve kinda gotta stick here,
so we’ve kinda gotta like it.”

 

“One could always,” said one of the students, “descend and walk.”

 

“In that case,” said his friend, “either this bus or its fellow, being
in motion, would pass one; one would be left behind by oneself,
travelling slowly, and, still worse, without any certainty of one’s
direction.”

 

“Well, I must say,” exclaimed the corporal, “this makes me sick! If
you know what I mean, it’s so like life – sitting there on your bottom
wondering what will happen!”

 

“My dear child, my dear girl,” said the clergyman, unable to hide
his distress.

 

“Well, I’m sorry, I’m sure,” said the corporal, “but I and all the girls
I know don’t intend to stand for it.”

 

As she spoke, the little boy extricated himself from the lady’s fur
coat and began to tramp loudly up and down the bus. “
I’m
moving,”
he shouted triumphantly, “whichever way I’m going, I’m going some -
where!”

 

“Ah,” said one of the students, “but you do not progress.”

 

“At least,” said the Frenchman, following the little boy sombrely,
impersonally with his dark eyes, “what is essential is there – power,
fire, energy. See him resist stillness: how right he is. Acquiescence is
fatal: it is decay.”

 

The civil servant opened his case an inch or two and looked,
almost secretively, eagerly, at the papers inside. “If the light weren’t
so bad,” he murmured, “I could always be getting on with some
thing.”

 

“In which case,” asked the clergyman, courteously turning round
in the seat in front, “you would have the illusion that you were
getting somewhere? A help to you, my dear sir, but no help to the
rest of us.”

 

“Then do you,
my
dear sir,” returned the civil servant, “propose to
help by reminding us that faith moves mountains?”

 

“It is not a question of mountains,” said the clergyman mildly.
“And where this or any bus, or the course of the world, is concerned,
I cannot claim to believe in
un
intelligent faith.”

“Yes,” said the spinster, “and there is another thing – suppose we
could all, by combined power, move this bus, should we all, do you
think, agree on its destination? Tonight, it is true, it

would
happen to
suit us all to arrive at the same place. But suppose we set out on a
wider, long-term trip?”

The American stared at her ruminatively; the young husband
shifted his beloved’s head on his shoulder in order to listen better;
the Frenchman, in a fidget of half-understanding, asked that the
question be asked again; the students excitedly stamped out their
cigarettes; the A.T.S. corporal eyed the spinster with at least a gleam
of thoughtful respect; the clergyman cried: “Now, come; let us talk
this out!” and the lady in the fur coat said: “Harold, stop trampling,
dear; people want to hear what they’re saying.”

The countrywoman, intercepting Harold in mid-bus, said: “My
big boy is a fidget, just like you,” and allowed him to poke about in
her string bag. “Well, at any rate,” she observed to the civil servant,
“we’ve come to be quite a party: we were such a pack of strangers.”

As for him, he resignedly snapped his despatch case to. “Our
thoughtful lady’s question,” he said, “has delusive simplicity of the
kind that will no doubt keep us talking all night.”

⁴
It was, in fact,
about two o’clock in the morning when “the relief’s” approaching
headlights, melting in mist and moonshine, made the passengers
realise, with some surprise, that, in point of fact, their bus
was
still
standing still.
Fairies at the Christening
N
ona Julia having been born exactly five weeks before
Christmas Day, her christening could be combined with a Christmas
party. This delighted her parents, who were young, handsome,
happy and rich. It was not the economy which appealed to them –
no, indeed, the young Claybees gave parties on the slightest excuse.
Rather, they envisaged the sort of enchanted party they would be
able to have, with their first child’s great day lit by a Christmas tree.
The tree would be crowned by a gilded cradle, topped by a star;
white and silver ribbons would be threaded through wreaths of
holly. Long before Mrs. Claybee was out of bed, she had been at
work on the lists of guests and godparents – sucking her pencil,
frowning, ruffling her hair, tearing sheet after sheet off her writingpad.

“This is by no means going to be so simple as we thought, my
girl!” she exclaimed, from time to time, to Nona Julia.

¹
The baby
also frowned slightly and looked wise. “Take my advice,” her mother
went on, “and don’t make too many best friends:
I
know what that
lands one up in!” It always ended, of course, by Mrs. Claybee’s
tossing away the lists in order to concentrate, rapturously, on Nona
Julia. In this dalliance, time rolled on, no less observed by the baby
than by her mother. Tom Claybee, who in the first flush of father
hood had begun by saying that
nothing
mattered – why worry,
darling? – began to worry himself. They really must soon get
organised as to the christening party. “Perhaps we should put our
minds to this?” he suggested, the first evening Angela (looking
beautiful) came downstairs.

“Well, it’s all so

difficult
, darling. You’ve no idea.”

 

“Still, we ought to face it.”

 

“Oh, it’s not the guests,” she moaned, “it’s the godparents. As far

as the

“Ought one to speak of godparents like that?”
party
goes, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t ask everybody:
we always have. Though of course, by this time many of them may
have made other plans for Christmas. – Not that I shouldn’t be sorry
if they had,” she added. “Nona Julia rather expects a crowd, and I
certainly wouldn’t like her to feel we’d muffed things. Still, it’s not
the party that’s difficult: no, it’s these fearful godparents!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t if they existed,” she said hastily. “What is fearful
about them is that they, so far, don’t.”

 

Tom stubbed one cigarette out, then lit another. He felt himself
plunged into deep waters.
²
“I suppose most people decide these
things in advance,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I thought we had
got the godfathers sorted out? – your brother Gervase and good old
Andy. I believe, strictly, a girl’s only allowed one godfather, but – ”

 

“ – There!” exclaimed Angela, beating the palms of her hands on
the arms of her enormous brocade chair. “I
knew
you really wished
she had been a boy!”

 

To clear up this misunderstanding took time, and tenderness.
Tom, on returning to his own side of the fire, paused another
moment, then felt it safe to go on: “All I’d meant to say was, what’s
the harm in stretching a point? She can perfectly well have two
godfathers: there’s no law against it.”

 

“No; why should there be?” said Angela, slightly bored. “In fact,
I’ve been taking it for granted that Gervase and Andy
would
be
standing by. I thought at least that had been settled,” she said
reproachfully. “Do just ring them both up and make certain, this
evening, darling, when I’ve gone back to bed. If they’ve made other
plans for Christmas, they’ll have to break them. – No,