The Complete Short Stories (27 page)

Finally, they bundled
themselves into the hall and out of the house, into Daniele’s car, and away,
without even waiting for their wages.

My business flourishes
and I manage it without a Dragon. Without a cutter too, for I’ve found I have a
talent for cutting. I’ve also invented a new stitch, the dragon-stitch. It
looks lovely on the uneven hems of those dresses people like, which suggest the
nineteen-thirties — for the evening but not too much. The essence of the
dragon-stitch is that you see all the stitches; they are large, in a
bright-coloured thick thread to contrast with the colour of the dress; one line
and two forks, one line and two forks, in, out and away, all along the dipping
and rising hemline, as if for always and always.

The Leaf Sweeper

Behind the town hall there is a wooded parkland
which, towards the end of November, begins to draw a thin blue cloud right into
itself; and as a rule the park floats in this haze until mid-February. I pass
every day, and see Johnnie Geddes in the heart of this mist, sweeping up the
leaves. Now and again he stops, and jerking his long head erect, looks
indignantly at the pile of leaves, as if it ought not to be there; then he
sweeps on. This business of leaf-sweeping he learnt during the years he spent
in the asylum; it was the job they always gave him to do; and when he was
discharged the town council gave him the leaves to sweep. But the indignant
movement of the head comes naturally to him, for this has been one of his
habits since he was the most promising and buoyant and vociferous graduate of
his year. He looks much older than he is, for it is not quite twenty years ago
that Johnnie founded the Society for the Abolition of Christmas.

Johnnie was living with
his aunt then. I was at school, and in the Christmas holidays Miss Geddes gave
me her nephew’s pamphlet,
How to Grow Rich at Christmas.
It sounded very
likely, but it turned out that you grow rich at Christmas by doing away with
Christmas, and so pondered Johnnie’s pamphlet no further.

But it was only his
first attempt. He had, within the next three years, founded his society of
Abolitionists. His new book,
Abolish Christmas or We Die,
was in great
demand at the public library, and my turn for it came at last. Johnnie was
really convincing, this time, and most people were completely won over until
after they had closed the book. I got an old copy for sixpence the other day,
and despite the lapse of time it still proves conclusively that Christmas is a
national crime. Johnnie demonstrates that every human-unit in the kingdom faces
inevitable starvation within a period inversely proportional to that in which
one in every six industrial-productivity units, if you see what he means, stops
producing toys to fill the stockings of the educational-intake units. He cites
appalling statistics to show that 1.024 per cent of the time squandered each
Christmas in reckless shopping and thoughtless churchgoing brings the nation
closer to its doom by five years. A few readers protested, but Johnnie was able
to demolish their muddled arguments, and meanwhile the Society for the
Abolition of Christmas increased. But Johnnie was troubled. Not only did
Christmas rage throughout the kingdom as usual that year, but he had private
information that many of the Society’s members had broken the Oath of
Abstention.

He decided, then, to
strike at the very roots of Christmas. Johnnie gave up his job on the Drainage
Supply Board; he gave up all his prospects, and, financed by a few supporters,
retreated for two years to study the roots of Christmas. Then, all jubilant,
Johnnie produced his next and last book, in which he established, either that
Christmas was an invention of the Early Fathers to propitiate the pagans, or it
was invented by the pagans to placate the Early Fathers, I forget which.
Against the advice of his friends, Johnnie entitled it
Christmas and
Christianity.
It sold eighteen copies. Johnnie never really recovered from
this; and it happened, about that time, that the girl he was engaged to, an
ardent Abolitionist, sent him a pullover she had knitted, for Christmas; he
sent it back, enclosing a copy of the Society’s rules, and she sent back the
ring. But in any case, during Johnnie’s absence, the Society had been
undermined by a moderate faction. These moderates finally became more moderate,
and the whole thing broke up.

Soon after this, I left
the district, and it was some years before I saw Johnnie again. One Sunday
afternoon in summer, I was idling among the crowds who were gathered to hear
the speakers at Hyde Park. One little crowd surrounded a man who bore a banner
marked ‘Crusade against Christmas’; his voice was frightening; it carried an
unusually long way. This was Johnnie. A man in the crowd told me Johnnie was
there every Sunday, very violent about Christmas, and that he would soon be
taken up for insulting language. As I saw in the papers, he was soon taken up
for insulting language. And a few months later I heard that poor Johnnie was in
a mental home, because he had Christmas on the brain and couldn’t stop shouting
about it.

After that I forgot all
about him until three years ago, in December, I went to live near the town
where Johnnie had spent his youth. On the afternoon of Christmas Eve I was
walking with a friend, noticing what had changed in my absence, and what hadn’t.
We passed a long, large house, once famous for its armoury, and I saw that the
iron gates were wide open.

‘They used to be kept
shut,’ I said.

‘That’s an asylum now,’
said my friend; ‘they let the mild cases work in the grounds, and leave the
gates open to give them a feeling of freedom.’

‘But,’ said my friend, ‘they
lock everything inside. Door after door. The lift as well; they keep it locked.’

While my friend was
chattering, I stood in the gateway and looked in. Just beyond the gate was a
great bare elm-tree. There I saw a man in brown corduroys, sweeping up the
leaves. Poor soul, he was shouting about Christmas.

‘That’s Johnnie Geddes,’
I said. ‘Has he been here all these years?’

‘Yes,’ said my friend as
we walked on. ‘I believe he gets worse at this time of year.’

‘Does his aunt see him?’

‘Yes. And she sees
nobody else.’

We were, in fact,
approaching the house where Miss Geddes lived. I suggested we call on her. I
had known her well.

‘No fear,’ said my
friend.

I decided to go in, all
the same, and my friend walked on to the town. Miss Geddes had changed, more
than the landscape. She had been a solemn, calm woman, and now she moved about
quickly, and gave short agitated smiles. She took me to her sitting-room, and
as she opened the door she called to someone inside,

‘Johnnie, see who’s come
to see us!’

A man, dressed in a dark
suit, was standing on a chair, fixing holly behind a picture. He jumped down.

‘Happy Christmas,’ he
said. ‘A Happy and a Merry Christmas indeed. I do hope,’ he said, ‘you’re going
to stay for tea, as we’ve got a delightful Christmas cake, and at this season
of goodwill I would be cheered indeed if you could see how charmingly it’s decorated;
it has “Happy Christmas” in red icing, and then there’s a robin and —’

‘Johnnie,’ said Miss
Geddes, ‘you’re forgetting the carols.’

‘The carols,’ he said.
He lifted a gramophone record from a pile and put it on. It was ‘The Holly and
the Ivy’.

‘It’s “The Holly and the
Ivy”,’ said Miss Geddes. ‘Can’t we have something else? We had that all
morning.’

‘It is sublime,’ he
said, beaming from his chair, and holding up his hand for silence.

While Miss Geddes went
to fetch the tea, and he sat absorbed in his carol, I watched him. He was so
like Johnnie, that if I hadn’t seen poor Johnnie a few moments before, sweeping
up the asylum leaves, I would have thought he really was Johnnie. Miss Geddes
returned with the tray, and while he rose to put on another record, he said
something that startled me.

‘I saw you in the crowd
that Sunday when I was speaking at Hyde Park.’

‘What a memory you have!’
said Miss Geddes.

‘It must be ten years
ago,’ he said.

‘My nephew has altered
his opinion of Christmas,’ she explained. ‘He always comes home for Christmas
now, and don’t we have a jolly time, Johnnie?’

‘Rather!’ he said. ‘Oh,
let me cut the cake.’

He was very excited
about the cake. With a flourish he dug a large knife into the side. The knife
slipped, and I saw it run deep into his finger. Miss Geddes did not move. He
wrenched his cut finger away, and went on slicing the cake.

‘Isn’t it bleeding?’ I
said.

He held up his hand. I
could see the deep cut, but there was no blood.

Deliberately, and
perhaps desperately, I turned to Miss Geddes.

‘That house up the road,’
I said, ‘I see it’s a mental home now. I passed it this afternoon.’

‘Johnnie,’ said Miss
Geddes, as one who knows the game is up, ‘go and fetch the mince pies.’

He went, whistling a
carol.

‘You passed the asylum,’
said Miss Geddes wearily.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And you saw Johnnie
sweeping up the leaves.

‘Yes.’

We could still hear the
whistling of the carol.

‘Who is
he?’
I
said.

‘That’s Johnnie’s ghost,’
she said. ‘He comes home every Christmas. But,’ she said, ‘I don’t like him. I
can’t bear him any longer, and I’m going away tomorrow. I don’t want Johnnie’s
ghost, I want Johnnie in flesh and blood.’

I shuddered, thinking of
the cut finger that could not bleed. And I left, before Johnnie’s ghost
returned with the mince pies.

Next day, as I had
arranged to join a family who lived in the town, I started walking over about
noon. Because of the light mist, I didn’t see at first who it was approaching.
It was a man, waving his arm to me. It turned out to be Johnnie’s ghost.

‘Happy Christmas. What
do you think,’ said Johnnie’s ghost, ‘my aunt has gone to London. Fancy, on
Christmas Day, and I thought she was at church, and here I am without anyone to
spend a jolly Christmas with, and, of course, I forgive her, as it’s the season
of goodwill, but I’m glad to see you, because now I can come with you, wherever
it is you’re going, and we can all have a Happy…’

‘Go away,’ I said, and
walked on.

It sounds hard. But
perhaps you don’t know how repulsive and loathsome is the ghost of a living
man. The ghosts of the dead may be all right, but the ghost of mad Johnnie gave
me the creeps.

‘Clear off,’ I said.

He continued walking
beside me. ‘As it’s the time of goodwill, I make allowances for your tone,’ he
said. ‘But I’m coming.’

We had reached the
asylum gates, and there, in the grounds, I saw Johnnie sweeping the leaves. I
suppose it was his way of going on strike, working on Christmas Day. He was
making a noise about Christmas.

On a sudden impulse I
said to Johnnie’s ghost, ‘You want company?’

‘Certainly,’ he replied.
‘It’s the season of…’

‘Then you shall have it,’
I said.

I stood in the gateway. ‘Oh,
Johnnie,’ I called.

He looked up.

‘I’ve brought your ghost
to see you, Johnnie.’

‘Well, well,’ said
Johnnie, advancing to meet his ghost. ‘Just imagine it,’

‘Happy Christmas,’ said
Johnnie’s ghost.

‘Oh, really?’ said
Johnnie.

I left them to it. And
when I looked back, wondering if they would come to blows, I saw that Johnnie’s
ghost was sweeping the leaves as well. They seemed to be arguing at the same
time. But it was still misty, and really, I can’t say whether, when I looked a
second time, there were two men or one man sweeping the leaves.

Johnnie began to improve
in the New Year. At least, he stopped shouting about Christmas, and then he
never mentioned it at all; in a few months, when he had almost stopped saying
anything, they discharged him.

The town council gave
him the leaves of the park to sweep. He seldom speaks, and recognizes nobody. I
see him every day at the late end of the year, working within the mist.
Sometimes, if there is a sudden gust, he jerks his head up to watch a few
leaves falling behind him, as if amazed that they are undeniably there,
although, by rights, the falling of leaves should be stopped.

Harper and Wilton

In the afternoons there was seldom anybody
about except for the young cross-eyed gardener. He was so cross-eyed that if
you stood talking to him with a friend it was impossible to know which of you
he was addressing. And when alone, it was almost as if he was conversing with
the nearest tree if not with myself. I meant to summon courage to ask him if
there was no corrective treatment, or special eye-glasses, he could have, but I
never got round to it. The house was not mine. I was merely house-sitting for a
month for my friends, the Lowthers. It was an arrangement which suited me well.
I had a book to finish and this house in the depth of Hampshire was ideal for
my purpose. In the morning Harriet, the part-time daily came and tidied up. She
cooked my meals for the day then left me to myself about midday.

I worked hard, and I
slept well. Nothing disturbed me during the night. It was about two in the
afternoon that I felt uneasy. An oddness in the house. This went on for some
weeks. The spring weather was capricious.

But it was not when the
wind whistled round the house and moaned in the eaves that the house felt
weird. The weather and sound effects in fact normalized the old edifice. It was
on clear sunny days, spring rain sprinkling and spraying the windows, that
something was decidedly odd. Under the need to work I determinedly shook off
the feeling, often sitting in the garden or else the garden room to apply
myself to my work. I began to notice that Joe the gardener often stood under
the great cedar tree on the lawn looking up apparently at a window of one of
the two guest bedrooms to the left above the front door. They were divided by a
drainpipe which I felt rather spoilt the aspect of the house. It was impossible
to say which of the windows he was paying attention to because of his squint.