The Complete Short Stories (32 page)

As I swayed in the bus I
recalled that morning’s excess of energy on the part of Mark Letter Urgent. He
had been more urgent than usual, so that I still felt put out by the urgency. I
felt terribly old for my twenty-two years as I raked round my mind for some
clue as to what I had left unfinished. Something had been left amiss; the further
the bus carried me from the office, the more certain I became of it. Not that I
took my job to heart very greatly, but Mr Letter’s moods of bustle were
infectious, and when they occurred I felt fussy for the rest of the day; and
although I consoled myself that I would feel better when I got home, the worry
would not leave me.

By noon, Mr Letter had
calmed down a little, and for an hour before I went to lunch he strode round
the office with his hands in his pockets, whistling between his seedy brown
teeth that sailors’ song ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’. I lurched with the bus as
it chugged out the rhythm, ‘Teedle-um-tum-tum. Teedle-um…’ Returning from
lunch I had found silence, and wondered if Mr Letter was out, until I heard
suddenly, from his tiny private office, his tune again, a low swift hum,
trailing out towards the end. Then I knew that he had fallen into one of his
afternoon daydreams.

I would sometimes come
upon him in his little box of an office when these trances afflicted him. I
would find him sitting in his swivel chair behind his desk. Usually he had
taken off his coat and slung it across the back of his chair. His right elbow
would be propped on the desk, supporting his chin, while from his left hand
would dangle his tie. He would gaze at this tie; it was his main object of
contemplation. That afternoon I had found him tie-gazing when I went into his
room for some papers. He was gazing at it with parted lips so that I could see
his small, separated discoloured teeth, no larger than a child’s first teeth.
Through them he whistled his tune. Yesterday, it had been ‘Softly, Softly, Turn
the Key’, but today it was the other.

I got off the bus at my
usual stop, with my fare still in my hand. I almost threw the coins away,
absentmindedly thinking they were the ticket, and when I noticed them I thought
how nearly no one at all I was, since even the conductor had, in his rush,
passed me by.

Mark Letter had remained
in his dream for two and a half hours. What was it I had left unfinished? I
could not for the life of me recall what he had said when at last he emerged
from his office-box. Perhaps it was then I had made tea. Mr Letter always liked
a cup when he was neither in his frenzy nor in his abstraction, but ordinary
and talkative. He would speak of his hobby, fretwork. I do not think Mr Letter
had any home life. At forty-six he was still unmarried, living alone in a house
at Roehampton. As I walked up the lane to my lodgings I recollected that Mr
Letter had come in for his tea with his tie still dangling from his hand, his
throat white under the open-neck shirt, and his ‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’ in his
teeth.

At last I was home and
my Yale in the lock. Softly, I said to myself, softly turn the key, and thank
God I’m home. My landlady passed through the hall from kitchen to dining-room
with a salt and pepper cruet in her crinkly hands. She had some new lodgers. ‘My
guests’, she always called them. The new guests took precedence over the old
with my landlady. I felt desolate. I simply could not climb the stairs to my
room to wash, and then descend to take brown soup with the new guests while my
landlady fussed over them, ignoring me. I sat for a moment in the chair in the
hall to collect my strength. A year’s illness drains one, however young.
Suddenly the repulsion of the brown soup and the anxiety about the office made
me decide. I would not go upstairs to my room. I must return to the office to
see what it was that I had overlooked.

‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’ — I
told myself that I was giving way to neurosis. Many times I had laughed at my
sister who, after she had gone to bed at night, would send her husband
downstairs to make sure all the gas taps were turned off, all the doors locked,
back and front. Very well, I was as silly as my sister, but I understood her
obsession, and simply opened the door and slipped out of the house, tired as I
was, making my weary way back to the bus stop, back to the office.

‘Why should I do this
for Mark Letter?’ I demanded of myself. But really, I was not returning for his
sake, it was for my own. I was doing this to get rid of the feeling of
incompletion, and that song in my brain swimming round like a damned goldfish.

I wondered, as the bus
took me back along the familiar route, what I would say if Mark Letter should
still be at the office. He often worked late, or at least, stayed there late,
doing I don’t know what, for his screw and nail business did not call for long
hours. It seemed to me he had an affection for those dingy premises. I was
rather apprehensive lest I should find Mr Letter at the office, standing, just
as I had last seen him, swinging his tie in his hand, beside my desk. I
resolved that if I should find him there, I should say straight out that I had
left something behind me.

A clock struck quarter
past seven as I got off the bus. I realized that again I had not paid my fare.
I looked at the money in my hand for a stupid second. Then I felt reckless. ‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’
— I caught myself humming the tune as I walked quickly up the said side street
to our office. My heart knocked at my throat, for I was eager. Softly, softly,
I said to myself as I turned the key of the outside door. Quickly, quickly, I
ran up the stairs. Only outside the office door I halted, and while I found its
key on my bunch it occurred to me how strangely my sister would think I was
behaving.

I opened the door and my
sadness left me at once. With a great joy I recognized what it was I had left
behind me, my body lying strangled on the floor. I ran towards my body and
embraced it like a lover.

Miss Pinkerton’s
Apocalypse

One evening, a damp one in February,
something flew in at the window. Miss Laura Pinkerton, who was doing something
innocent to the fire, heard a faint throbbing noise overhead. On looking up, ‘George!
come here! come quickly!’

George Lake came in at
once, though sullenly because of their quarrel, eating a sandwich from the
kitchen. He looked up at the noise then sat down immediately.

From this point onward
their story comes in two versions, his and hers. But they agree as to the main
facts; they agree that it was a small round flattish object, and that it flew.

‘It’s a flying object of
some sort,’ whispered George eventually.

‘It’s a saucer,’ said
Miss Pinkerton, keen and loud, ‘an antique piece. You can tell by the shape.’

‘It can’t be an antique,
that’s absolutely certain,’ George said.

He ought to have been
more tactful, and would have been, but for the stress of the moment. Of course
it set Miss Pinkerton off, she being in the right.

‘I know my facts,’ she
stated as usual, ‘I should hope I know my facts. I’ve been in antique china for
twenty-three years in the autumn,’ which was true, and George knew it.

The little saucer was
cavorting round the lamp.

‘It seems to be
attracted by the light,’ George remarked, as one might distinguish a moth.

Promptly, it made as if
to dive dangerously at George’s head. He ducked, and Miss Pinkerton backed
against the wall. As the dish tilted on its side, skimming George’s shoulder,
Miss Pinkerton could see inside it.

‘The thing might be
radioactive. It might be dangerous.’ George was breathless. The saucer had
climbed, was circling high above his head, and now made for him again, but
missed.

‘It is not radioactive,’
said Miss Pinkerton, ‘it is Spode.’

‘Don’t be so damn silly,’
George replied, under the stress of the occasion.

‘All right, very well,’
said Miss Pinkerton, ‘it is not Spode. I suppose you are the expert, George, I
suppose you know best. I was only judging by the pattern. After the best part
of a lifetime in china —’

‘It must be a forgery,’
George said unfortunately. For, unfortunately, something familiar and abrasive
in Miss Pinkerton’s speech began to grind within him. Also, he was afraid of
the saucer.

It had taken a stately
turn, following the picture rail in a steady career round the room.

‘Forgery, ha!’ said Miss
Pinkerton. She was out of the room like a shot, and in again carrying a pair of
steps.

‘I will examine the
mark,’ said she, pointing intensely at the saucer. ‘Where are my glasses?’

Obligingly, the saucer
settled in a corner; it hung like a spider a few inches from the ceiling. Miss
Pinkerton adjusted the steps. With her glasses on she was almost her sunny self
again, she was ceremonious and expert.

‘Don’t touch it, don’t
go near it!’ George pushed her aside and grabbed the steps, knocking over a
blue glass bowl, a Dresden figure, a vase of flowers and a decanter of sherry;
like a bull in a china shop, as Miss Pinkerton exclaimed. But she was
determined, and struggled to reclaim the steps.

‘Laura!’ he said
desperately. ‘I believe it is Spode. I take your word.’

The saucer then flew out
of the window.

They acted quickly. They
telephoned to the local paper. A reporter would come right away. Meanwhile,
Miss Pinkerton telephoned to her two scientific friends — at least, one was
interested in psychic research and the other was an electrician. But she got no
reply from either. George had leaned out of the window, scanning the rooftops
and the night sky. He had leaned out of the back windows, had tried all the
lights and the wireless. These things were as usual.

The news man arrived,
accompanied by a photographer.

‘There’s nothing to
photograph,’ said Miss Pinkerton excitably. ‘It went away.

‘We could take a few
shots of the actual spot,’ the man explained.

Miss Pinkerton looked
anxiously at the result of George and the steps.

‘The place is a wreck.’

Sherry from the decanter
was still dripping from the sideboard.

‘I’d better clear the
place up. George, help me!’ She fluttered nervously, and started to pack the
fire with small coals.

‘No, leave everything as
it is,’ the reporter advised her. ‘Did the apparition make this mess?’

George and Miss
Pinkerton spoke together.

‘Well, indirectly,’ said
George.

‘It wasn’t an
apparition,’ said Miss Pinkerton.

The reporter settled on
the nearest chair, poising his pencil and asking, ‘Do you mind if I take notes?’

‘Would you mind sitting
over here?’ said Miss Pinkerton. ‘I don’t use the Queen Annes, normally. They
are very frail pieces.’

The reporter rose as if
stung, then perched on a table which Miss Pinkerton looked at uneasily.

‘You see, I’m in
antiques,’ she rattled on, for the affair was beginning to tell on her, as
George told himself. In fact he sized up that she was done for; his irritation
abated, his confidence came flooding back.

‘Now, Laura, sit down
and take it easy.’ Solicitously he pushed her into an easy chair.

‘She’s overwrought,’ he
informed the pressmen in an audible undertone.

‘You say this object
actually flew in this window?’ suggested the reporter.

‘That is correct,’ said
George.

The cameraman trained
his apparatus on the window.

‘And you were both here
at the time?’

‘No,’ Miss Pinkerton
said. ‘Mr Lake was in the kitchen and I called out, of course. But he didn’t
see inside the bowl, only the outside, underneath where the manufacturer’s mark
is. I saw the pattern so I got the steps to make sure. That’s how Mr Lake
knocked my things over. I saw inside.’

‘I am going to say
something,’ said George.

The men looked hopefully
towards him. After a pause, George continued, ‘Let us begin at the beginning.’

‘Right,’ said the
reporter, breezing up.

‘It was like this,’
George said. ‘I came straight in when Miss Pinkerton screamed, and there was a
white convex disc, you realize, floating around up there.’

The reporter
contemplated the spot indicated by George.

‘It was making a hell of
a racket like a cat purring,’ George told him.

‘Any idea what it really
was?’ the reporter inquired.

George took his time to
answer. ‘Well, yes,’ he said, ‘and no.’

‘Spode ware,’ said Miss
Pinkerton.

George continued, ‘I’m
not up in these things. I’m extremely sceptical as a rule. This was a new
experience to me.

‘That’s just it,’ said
Miss Pinkerton. ‘Personally, I’ve been in china for twenty-three years. I
recognized the thing immediately.’

The reporter scribbled
and inquired, ‘These flying discs appear frequently in China?’

‘It was a saucer. I’ve
never seen one flying before,’ Miss Pinkerton explained.

‘I am going to ask a
question,’ George said.

Miss Pinkerton
continued, ‘Mr Lake is an art framer. He handles old canvases but next to no
antiques.’

‘I am going to ask. Are
you telling the story or am I?’ George said.

‘Perhaps Mr Lake’s
account first and then the lady’s,’ the reporter ventured.

Miss Pinkerton subsided
crossly while he turned to George.

‘Was the object attached
to anything? No wires or anything? I mean, someone couldn’t have been having a
joke or something?’

George gave a decent
moment to the possibility.

‘No,’ he then said. ‘It
struck me, in fact, that there was some sort of Mind behind it, operating from outer
space. It tried to attack me, in fact.’

‘Really, how was that?’

‘Mr Lake was not
attacked,’ Miss Pinkerton stated. ‘There was no danger at all. I saw the
expression. on the pilot’s face. He was having a game with Mr Lake, grinning
all over his face.’