The Complete Short Stories (43 page)

It was a very
distressing case. The mother of the small girl was the chief witness for the
Prosecution.

‘I was out for a walk
with my daughter,’ she said in the witness box, ‘and she wanted to go. I was
holding her out when suddenly I saw the face of the accused at the window.

‘I am afraid,’ she
added, ‘that the shock was too much for me. I let go of Betty and poor little
thing, she went right in.

‘Was the child hurt?’
inquired the magistrate.

‘Well, there’s nothing
to actually see,’ said the mother. ‘But it can’t be good for a child, a thing
like that.’

If it had been left to
the other witnesses, the Prosecution might perhaps have lost the case.

Redhead let them down by
saying she had only gone in to tidy up when she saw Bill at the window.

No one would say what
they were really doing when they saw Bill at the window. As you know, the year
was 1950. Not that it made much difference; peeping is peeping, no matter what
you see. Still, they were glad of the mother of Betty to make a clear case of
it.

The magistrate spoke
severely to Maisie, being under the impression that she was June. This was not
surprising, because with her fair hair parted in the middle and pulled back
into a bun, Maisie looked remarkably like her rival, as do so many women whose
men cannot really escape from them, but seek the same person in other arms.

When the magistrate was
put right as to the mistaken identity, he spoke severely to June.

‘You come to this place
with another woman’s husband and condone his offence,’ he said. ‘You even
attempt to impersonate,’ he added, ‘this good, this honest woman.’

Bill was fined ten
pounds with an option of three weeks.

June emigrated to
Australia to forget. Maisie went to the hairdresser without telling a soul, and
had her hairstyle changed in favour of something different. Bill went to his
lawyer without telling a soul and had his will changed in favour of his simple
cousin Leonard.

Come Along,
Marjorie

Not many days had passed since my arrival
at Watling Abbey when I realized that most of us were recovering from nerves.
The Abbey, a twelfth-century foundation, lies in Worcestershire on the site of
an ancient Temple of Mithras. It had recently been acquired and restored by its
original religious Order at that time, just after the war, when I went to stay
there and found after a few days that most of us were nervous cases.

By ‘most of us’ I mean
the lay visitors who resided in the pilgrims’ quarters on two sides of the
Annexe. We were all known as pilgrims. Apart from us, there was a group of
permanent lay residents known as the Cloisters, because they lived in rooms
above the cloisters.

Neurotics are awfully
quick to notice other people’s mentalities, everyone goes into an exaggerated
category. I placed four categories at the Abbey. First ourselves, the visiting
neurotic pilgrims. Second the Cloisters, they were cranks on the whole. Third
the monks; they seemed not to have nerves, but non-individualized,
non-neurotic, so I thought then, they billowed about in their white habits
under the gold of that October, or swung out from the cloisters in processions
on Feast Days. Into the fourth category I placed Miss Marjorie Pettigrew.

Indeed, she did seem
sane. I got the instant impression that she alone among the lay people, both
pilgrims and Cloisters, understood the purpose of the place. I did get that
impression.

Three of us had arrived at Watling
together. It was dark when I got off the train, but under the only gas bracket
on the platform I saw the two women standing. They looked about them in that
silly manner of women unused to arriving at strange railway stations. They
heard me asking the ticket man the way to the Abbey and chummed up with me
immediately. As we walked along with our suitcases I made note that there was
little in common between them and me except Catholicism, and then only in the
mystical sense, for their religious apprehensions were different from mine. ‘Different
from’ is the form my neurosis takes. I do like the differentiation of things,
but it is apt to lead to nerve-racking pursuits. On the other hand, life led on
the different-from level is always an adventure.

Those were quite nice
women. One was Squackle-wackle, so I called her to myself, for she spoke like
that, squackle-wackle, squackle-wackle — it was her neurosis — all about her
job as a nurse in a London hospital. She had never managed to pass an exam but
was content, squackle-wackle, to remain a subordinate, though thirty-three in
December. All this in the first four minutes. The other woman would be nearer
forty. She was quieter, but not much. As we approached the Abbey gates she
said, ‘My name’s Jennifer, what’s yours?’

‘Gloria Deplores-you,’ I
answered. It is true my Christian name is Gloria.

‘Gloria what?’

‘It’s a French name,’ I
said, inventing in my mind the spelling ‘des Pleuresyeux’ in case I should be
pressed for it.

‘We’ll call you Gloria,’
she said. I had stopped in the Abbey gateway, wondering if I should turn back
after all. ‘Come along, Gloria,’ she said.

It was not till some
days later that I found that Jennifer’s neurosis took the form of ‘same as’. We
are all the same, she would assert, infuriating me because I knew that God had
made everyone unique. ‘We are all the same’ was her way of saying we were all
equal in the sight of God. Still, the inaccuracy irritated me. And still, like
Squackle-wackle, she was quite an interesting person. It was only in my more
vibrant moments that I deplored them.

Oh, the trifles, the
people, that get on your nerves when you have a neurosis!

Don’t I remember the
little ginger man with the bottle-green cloak? He was one of the Cloisters,
having been resident at Watling for over three years. He was compiling a work
called
The Monkish Booke of Brewes.
Once every fortnight he would be absent
at the British Museum and I suppose other record houses, from where he would
return with a great pad of notes on the methods and subtleties of brewing
practised in ancient monasteries, don’t I remember? And he, too, was a kindly
sort in between his frightful fumes against the management of Watling Abbey.
When anything went wrong he blamed the monks, unlike the Irish who blamed the
Devil. This sometimes caused friction between the ginger man and the Irish, for
which the monks blamed the Devil.

There were ladies from
Cork and thereabouts, ladies from Tyrone and Londonderry, all having come for a
rest or a Retreat, and most bearing those neurotic stigmata of South or North
accordingly. There were times when bitter bits of meaning would whistle across
the space between North and South when they were gathered together outside of
their common worship. Though all were Catholics, ‘Temperament tells,’ I told
myself frequently. I did so often tell myself remarks like that to still my own
nerves.

I joined Squackle-wackle
and Jennifer each morning to recite the Fifteen Mysteries. After that we went
to the town for coffee. Because I rested in the afternoons Jennifer guessed I
was recovering from nerves. She asked me outright, ‘Is it nerves?’ I said ‘Yes,’
outright.

Squackle-wackle had also
been sent away with nervous exhaustion, she made no secret of it, indeed no.

Jennifer was delighted. ‘I’ve
got the same trouble. Fancy, all three of us. That makes us
all the same.’

‘It makes us,’ I said, ‘more
different from each other than other people are.

‘But, all the same,’ she
said, ‘we’re all
the same.

But there was Miss Marjorie Pettigrew. Miss
Pettigrew’s appearance and bearing attracted me with a kind of consolation. I
learned that she had been at Watling for about six months and from various
hints and abrupt silences I gathered that she was either feared or disliked. I
put this down to the fact that she wasn’t a neurotic. Usually, neurotics take
against people whose nerves they can’t jar upon. So I argued to myself; and that
I myself rather approved of Miss Pettigrew was a sign that I was a different
sort of neurotic from the others.

Miss Pettigrew was very
tall and stick-like, with very high shoulders and a square face. She seemed to
have a lot of bones. Her eyes were dark, her hair black; it was coiled in the
earphone style but she was not otherwise unfashionable.

I thought at first she
must be in Retreat, for she never spoke at mealtimes, though she always smiled
faintly when passing anything at table. She never joined the rest of the
community except for meals and prayers. She was often in the chapel praying. I
envied her resistance, for though I too wanted solitude I often hadn’t the
courage to refuse to join the company, and so make myself unpopular like Miss
Pettigrew. I hoped she would speak to me when she came out of her Retreat.

One day in that first
week a grand-looking north-countrywoman said to me at table, nodding over to
where Miss Pettigrew sat in her silence,

‘There’s nothing wrong
with
her
at all.’

‘Wrong with her?’

‘It’s pretence, she’s
clever, that’s it.’

By clever she meant
cunning, I realized that much.

‘How do you mean,
pretence?’ I said.

‘Her silence. She won’t
speak to anyone.

‘But she’s in Retreat,
isn’t she?’

‘Not her,’ said this
smart woman. ‘She’s been living here for over six months and for the past four
she hasn’t opened her mouth. It isn’t mental trouble, it is not.

‘Has she taken some
religious vow, perhaps?’

‘Not her; she’s clever.
She won’t open her mouth. They brought a doctor, but she wouldn’t open her
mouth to him.’

‘I’m glad she’s quiet,
anyhow,’ I said. ‘Her room’s next door to mine and I like quietness.’

Not all the pilgrims
regarded Miss Pettigrew as ‘clever’. She was thought to be genuinely touched in
the head. And it was strange how she was disapproved of by the Cloisters, for
they were kind — only too intrusively kind — towards obvious nervous sufferers
like me. Their disapproval of Miss Pettigrew was almost an admission that they
believed nothing was wrong with her. If she had gone untidy, made grotesque
faces, given jerks and starts and twitches, if she had in some way lost their
respect I do not think she would have lost their approval.

I began to notice her
more closely in the hope of finding out more about her mental aberration; such
things are like a magnet to neurotics. I would meet her crossing the courtyard,
or come upon her kneeling in the lonely Lady Chapel. Always she inclined her
coiled head towards me, ceremonious as an Abbess greeting a nun. Passing her in
a corridor I felt the need to stand aside and make way for her confident quiet
progress. I could not believe she was insane.

I could not believe she
was practising some crude triumphant cunning, enduring from day to day, with
her silence and prayers. It was said she had money. Perhaps she was very
mystical. I wondered how long she would be able to remain hermited so within
herself. The monks were in a difficult position. It was against their nature to
turn her out; maybe it was against their Rule; certainly it would cause a bad
impression in the neighbourhood which was not at all Abbey-minded. One after
another the monks had approached her, tactful monks, sympathetic, firm and
curious ones.

‘Well, Miss Pettigrew, I
hope you’ve benefited from your stay at the Abbey? I suppose you have plans for
the winter?’

No answer, only a mild
gesture of acknowledgement.

No answer, likewise, to
another monk, ‘Now, Miss Pettigrew, dear child, you simply can’t go on like
this. It isn’t that we don’t want to keep you. Glory be to God, we’d never turn
you out of doors, nor any soul. But we need the room, d’you see, for another
pilgrim.’

And again, ‘Now tell us
what’s the trouble, open your heart, poor Miss Pettigrew. This isn’t the
Catholic way at all. You’ve got to communicate with your fellows.’

‘Is it a religious vow
you’ve taken all on your own? That’s very unwise, it’s …’

‘See, Miss Pettigrew, we’ve
found you a lodging in the town…’

Not a word. She was seen
to go weekly to Confession, so evidently she was capable of speech. But she would
not talk, even to do her small bits of shopping. Every week or so she would
write on a piece of paper, ‘Please get me a Snowdrop Shampoo, 1s. 6d. encl.’ or
some such errand, handing it to the laundry-girl who was much attached to her,
and who showed me these slips of paper as proudly as if they were the relics of
a saint.

‘Gloria, are you coming for a walk?’

No, I wasn’t going for a
trudge. It was my third week. Squackle-wackle was becoming most uninteresting.

I sat by my window and
thought how happy I would be if I wasn’t waiting uncertainly for a telephone
call. I still have in mind the blue and green and gold of that October
afternoon which was spoiled for me at the time. The small ginger man with his
dark green cloak slipping off his shoulders crossed the grass in the courtyard
below. Two lay brothers in blue workmen’s overalls were manipulating a tractor
away in the distance. From the Lady Chapel came the chant of the monks at
their office. There is nothing like plainsong to eternalize a memory, it puts a
seal on whatever is happening at the time. I thought it a pity that my
appreciation of this fact should be vitiated by an overwhelming need for the
telephone call.

I had hoped, in fact,
that the ginger man had crossed the courtyard to summon me to the telephone,
but he disappeared beneath my window and his footsteps faded out somewhere
round the back. Everything’s perfect, I told myself; and I can’t enjoy it.
Brown, white and purple, I distinguished the pigeons on the grass.