The Complete Short Stories (28 page)

‘Is anything the matter,
Joe?’ I asked him after a few days of watching his performance.

He said ‘No’ and
continued staring. Joe was after all, not my concern, not my employee. The
house was well protected by burglar alarms. I had my work to do and decided to
ignore Joe; I continued to shake off the feeling of chilling weirdness that I
felt every afternoon.

The fourth week of my
stay I heard voices, the voices of young women. I opened the door of the garden
room and called out ‘Joe, who’s there?’ But Joe had disappeared. I decided this
listening to ‘voices’ and puzzling about Joe was a waste of time. I really had
a great compulsion and economic need to finish my book. I was getting on well
with it and refused to be waylaid from the job I had come to accomplish.

But no sooner had I
settled down at my desk than I heard the voices again, outside the house, quite
near. I wasn’t expecting any visitors, so went to look out of the window. The
house was attached to a stretch of woodland from where the voices came. Then
two women came in sight. I was not at first surprised that they were dressed in
Edwardian-type long skirts and shawls, with their long hair knotted up
severely. They might well have bought their outfits at London’s Miss Selfridge,
in Beauchamp Place or in Manhattan’s Village. Nothing in the way of garments is
surprising in these days of merry freedom.

I thought I recognized
them, but couldn’t tell where I had seen them before. Certainly I had a sense
of having seen them both together, young and gaunt, one tall, one less so.

As they approached the
house I saw Joe lurking on the edge of the woods behind them. He seemed
interested.

The front-door bell was
ringing, now. I was not at all sure I should answer it. There was no reason to
expect visitors and I had been assured by the Lowthers of my complete solitude.
But I opened the garden room window, smitten with nerves, and called out,

‘Who is it you want? I’m
afraid the Lowthers are away. I’m only a temporary tenant.’

‘We want you,’ said the
woman who seemed to be the younger of the two.

I was still almost sure
I had seen them before. They gave me the creeps. The older woman pressed the
bell again. ‘Let us in.

‘Who are you?’ I said.

‘Harper and Wilton,’
said the younger one. ‘Don’t panic. We are merely outraged.’

Harper and Wilton —
where had I heard their names before?

‘Do I know you?’ I said.

‘Do you know us?’ said
one of the women, the taller. ‘You made us. My name is Marion Harper known as
Harper and my friend is Marion Wilton known as Wilton. We fight for the Vote
for Women.

Oh God, I remembered
then that years ago, many, many years ago, some time in the 1950s, I wrote a
story about two Edwardian suffragettes. What could I recall of that story? It
was never published. Was it finished? I didn’t find the two characters, Harper
and Wilton, very sympathetic but I had certainly had some fun with them.

‘What do you want from
me?’ I inquired from the window. I had no intention of letting them into the
house.

‘You cast the story
away,’ said little Wilton. ‘We’ve been looking for you for some time. Now you’ve
got to give us substance otherwise we’ll haunt you.

For my part Harper and
Wilton were lying at the back of a drawer in which I used to put unfinished
stories and poems when, long ago, I started writing fiction and verse.

I packed up my
belongings, packed them in the car, and drove off, watched at a distance by
Harper, Wilton and Joe. At home I searched for the missing manuscript and
eventually found it, curled at the edges. I read it through:

One day
there appeared at the window a youth of about twenty. Unfortunately, he had a
squint.

There was another boarding-house opposite. Here, on the second floor,
lived Miss Wilton and Miss Harper, members of the suffragette movement. Their
parents, who lived in the country, gave them money to keep away.

Three weeks later, when Miss Wilton could stand it no longer, she went
along the landing to Miss Harper’s room. ‘Harper,’ she said, ‘I can stand it no
longer.’

‘Why Wilton,’ said Harper, ‘don’t be discouraged. We had three hundred
and four new recruits last month. Remember the words of Pankhurst —’

‘Harper,’ said Wilton severely, ‘I refer to a personal matter.’

‘Really?’ said Harper, losing interest and starting to roll a pair of
stays very tight and neat. ‘Well, I haven’t time to discuss anything personal.
I’m busy with my Reports.’

‘I’ll be brief,’ said Wilton. ‘Every afternoon there’s a young man at
the window across the road —’

‘I
thought
as much,’ said Harper.

‘Don’t think I’ve been spying,’ her friend protested. ‘But I can’t
avoid seeing what I see. He has been making signs.

‘I have observed it,’ Harper said. ‘I advise you to live elsewhere if
you can’t resist temptation. I cannot do more for you Wilton. There are larger
issues, important things.’

‘Indeed. You consider it important to encourage the advances of a
strange man. I hardly think the Committee will take that view,’ stated Wilton.

‘Ah!’ said Harper. ‘Ah!’

‘Ah!’ said Wilton. ‘Yes, I intend to report this to the Bayswater
Committee.’

‘You’re too late,’ Harper said, ‘with your wily scheme. I have already
reported the matter. You may read a copy of my statement.’

Wilton moved over to the gas light with the paper, and read:

‘With regret, I have to report that Miss M. Wilton of our Ranks, has
lately behaved in a manner prejudicial to our Cause. She has openly encouraged
a male person, presumably a student, to make overtures from a window opposite
her residence. I fear we will soon have to call upon Miss Wilton to resign from
the Movement.’

Wilton handed back the report. ‘It’s a clever plan of yours,’ she said scornfully,
to cover your traces by implicating me in your unworthy undertakings. But I
will prove my innocence. You will be exposed.’

‘Remember,’ she added, ‘the Secretary already has doubts regarding your
feminist zeal. The fact that you wear those stays to give you a figure, is
alone an indication that —’

‘Kindly depart,’ Harper said.

‘Moreover, I disagree that he is a student,’ said Wilton.

Next day, the youth opposite appeared to believe he was getting
somewhere with one of the girls. At her unmistakable bidding he crossed the
road, and looked up expectantly at Wilton’s window. She observed that the idiot
seemed to be watching Harper’s window. He needn’t worry; Harper was out. Wilton
dropped an envelope. It contained a note, unsigned, executed on Harper’s
typewriting-machine. It also contained a key.

It was the front-door key, and the note explained how to get to her
room, at ten that night. Only, of course, it was Harper’s room she directed him
to, this Wilton.

She heard Harper come in. Wilton composed herself to wait for justice
at ten o’clock. She would fetch the landlady. A man in Harper’s room. A noisy
scene. The Committee would be informed.

As the hour advanced, the youth was forced to consider an alternative
method of keeping the assignment, because, due to excitement, he had lost the
key. Courageous, though unimaginative, he started climbing the drainpipe which
ran between Wilton’s window and Harper’s. Wilton watched this lamp-lit
performance, appalled. Harper, too, observed it; and before he had got two
feet, the water from Harper’s wash-jug descended. Wilton worked quickly. Her
jug was empty, so she threw out the jug. Harper swooped downstairs to the door.
Wilton followed.

The young man was very wet, very stunned.

‘Don’t move,’ said Harper. ‘I shall hand you over.’

‘Harper,’ said Wilton, ‘I’m arresting him. He had an appointment with
you. It’s shameful. You are exposed at last.’

The landlady was suddenly in the doorway. ‘Constable!’ she called. A
policeman at the top of the street turned and ambled towards them.

Harper was, in spite of her stays, the more emancipated of the two; she
looked at Wilton. ‘This is my man,’ she said. ‘You get the hell out of it.’

‘What’s going on?’ said the policeman.

‘Language!’ said the landlady. ‘These suffragettes!’

‘Suffragettes, eh?’ said the policeman.

‘Constable,’ said Wilton, a-flutter, ‘this man was attempting to climb
up this lady. This drainpipe was encouraging him.’

‘It’s her fault,’ the young man gasped, glaring at Wilton. Owing to the
squint, the policeman was unable to decide which girl was meant. Not that it
mattered.

‘Oh, suffragettes!’ said the policeman.

‘Yes, I was attacked,’ sighed the youth.

The constable took all the particulars. He took Harper and Wilton by
the sleeves. ‘This way,’ he said, ‘and come quiet. Disturbing the Peace.
Suffragettes.

‘I hope they get a month,’ said the landlady.

‘Three months more likely,’ said the policeman. ‘You all right now,
sir!’

‘More or less,’ replied the young man cheerfully. ‘Good night,
Constable. Good night, sweet ladies.’

They only got a month. But you see, sweet ladies, what they all had to
suffer to get us the vote.

I raced back to the country with this
manuscript in my handbag. It had been one of many and many that I had always
intended to revise when I had a spare day or two. Those spare days had never
come. But looking at the story I didn’t see what was missing. Harper and Wilton
had adequately fulfilled their destiny for that little space of history at the
turn of the twentieth century that their story occupied.

Harper and Wilton were
waiting for me on the doorstep of my country retreat.

‘How about it?’ This was
Wilton.

I noticed that Joe the
gardener was observing us from the mysterious wooded part of the garden which I
had greatly taken to. I love mysterious gardens. I felt that Joe should come
and join us. I was dangling the door keys in my hand. On no account would I let
any of them cross the threshold. I was carried away by the fact of Joe’s
intensely squinting eyes as he approached. Again I wondered why he wore no
corrective glasses. How could I have envisaged and foreseen this boy with the
great squint all those years ago when I had written this episodic little story
of Harper and Wilton?

Joe was obviously
fascinated by the two girls in their unconventional clothes. But here again it
was difficult to see which one he was observing at any one time.

‘He has given us no
peace,’ said Wilton. ‘He follows us everywhere. Don’t you know that is a crime?
In the world of today, more than ever.

‘Sexual molestation,’
said Harper.

‘Oh, what has he done?’
I said.

‘Followed us everywhere.
He is molesting us. It was he who should have gone to prison, not us.

I saw my chance. I sat
down on the doorstep and re-wrote the ending of the story in the light of
current correctness. The girls, Harper and Wilton, were vindicated and it was
the squint-eyed student who was taken off by the police. I showed it to Harper
and Wilton.

Not only that, since
they were tepid in their satisfaction, I let myself into the house while the
group remained uneasily in the garden. I called the police and said that our
garden boy was troubling two young women by his unwanted attention. Rather
languidly, they agreed to come along and see what it was all about.

They took Joe away.
Harper and Wilton disappeared, evidently satisfied. Joe came back shortly,
having been merely cautioned, and got on with his weeding of the garden.

The Executor

When my uncle died all the literary
manuscripts went to a university foundation, except one. The correspondence
went too, and the whole of his library. They came (a white-haired man and a
young girl) and surveyed his study. Everything, they said, would be desirable
and it would make a good price if I let the whole room go — his chair, his
desk, the carpet, even his ashtrays. I agreed to this. I left everything in the
drawers of the desk just as it was when my uncle died, including the bottle of
Librium and a rusty razor blade.

My uncle died this way:
he was sitting on the bank of the river, playing a fish. As the afternoon faded
a man passed by, and then a young couple who made pottery passed him. As they
said later, he was sitting peacefully awaiting the catch and of course they
didn’t disturb him. As night fell the colonel and his wife passed by; they were
on their way home from their daily walk. They knew it was too late for my uncle
to be simply sitting there, so they went to look. He had been dead, the doctor
pronounced, from two to two and a half hours. The fish was still struggling
with the bait. It was a mild heart attack. Everything my uncle did was mild, so
different from everything he wrote. Yet perhaps not so different. He was
supposed to be ‘far out’, so one didn’t know what went on out there. Besides,
he had not long returned from a trip to London. They say, still waters run
deep.

But far out was how he
saw himself. He once said that if you could imagine modern literature as a
painting, perhaps by Brueghel the Elder, the people and the action were in the
foreground, full of colour, eating, stealing, copulating, laughing, courting
each other, excreting, and stabbing each other, selling things, climbing
trees. Then in the distance, at the far end of a vast plain, there he would be,
a speck on the horizon, always receding and always there, and always a
necessary and mysterious component of the picture; always there and never to be
taken away, essential to the picture — a speck in the distance, which if you
were to blow up the detail would simply be a vague figure, plodding on the
other way.