The Complete Short Stories (44 page)

Everyone else seemed to be
out of doors. My room was on the attic floor, under the dusty beams of the
roof. All along this top floor the rooms were separated by thin partitions
which allowed transit to every sound. Even silent Miss Pettigrew, my immediate
neighbour, could not lie breathing on her still bed without my knowing it. That
afternoon she too was out, probably over in the chapel.

The telephone call was
to be from Jonathan, my very best friend. I had returned from my coffee session
in the town that morning to find a letter from him which had been delayed in
the post. ‘I’ll ring you at 11.30, he had written, referring to that very day.
It was then past twelve. At eleven-thirty I had been drinking coffee with
unutterable Squackle-wackle and Jennifer.

‘Has there been a call
for me?’ I inquired.

‘Not that I know,’ said
the secretary vaguely. ‘I’ve been away from the phone all morning, of course,
so there may have been, I don’t know.’

Not that there was
anything important to discuss with Jonathan; the idea was only to have a chat.
But at that moment I felt imperatively dependent on his voice over the
telephone. I stopped everyone, monks and brothers and pilgrims. ‘Did you take a
telephone message for me? I should have received a very urgent call. It should
have come at eleven-thirty.’

‘Sorry, I’ve been out,’
or ‘Sorry, I haven’t been near the phone.’

‘Doesn’t anyone attend
to your telephone?’ I demanded.

‘Hardly ever, dear. We’re
too busy.

‘I’ve missed an
important telephone call, a vital —’

‘Can’t you telephone to
your friend from here?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s
impossible, it’s too bad.’

Jonathan did not have a
telephone in his studio. I wondered whether I should send him a wire and even
drafted one, ‘Sorry love your letter arrived too late was out please ring at
once love Gloria.’ I tore this up on the grounds that I couldn’t afford the
expense. And something about the torment of the affair attracted me, it was
better than boredom. I decided that Jonathan would surely ring again during the
afternoon. I prepared, even, to sit in the little office by the telephone with
my sense of suspense and vigilance, all afternoon. But, ‘I’ll be here till five
o’clock,’ said the secretary; ‘of course, of course, I’ll send for you if the
call comes.’

And so there I was by
the window waiting for the summons. At three o’clock I washed and made up my
face and changed my frock as if this were a propitiation to whatever stood
between Jonathan’s telephone call and me. I decided to stroll round the
green-gold courtyard where I could not fail to miss any messenger. Once round,
and still no one came. Only Miss Pettigrew emerged from the cloisters, crossing
the courtyard towards me.

I was so bemused by my
need to talk to Jonathan that I thought, as she approached, ‘Perhaps they’ve
sent her to call me.’ Immediately I remembered, that was absurd, for she
carried no messages ever. But she continued so directly towards me that I
thought again; ‘She’s going to speak.’ She had her dark eyes on my face.

I made as if to pass
her, not wishing to upset her by inviting approach. But she stopped me. ‘Excuse
me,’ she said, ‘I have a message for you.

I was so relieved that I
forgot to be surprised by her speaking.

‘Am I wanted on the
telephone?’ I said, half-ready to run across to the office.

‘No, I have a message
for you,’ she said.

‘What’s the message?’

‘The Lord is risen,’ she
said.

It was not until I had
got over my disappointment that I felt the shock of her having spoken, and
recalled an odd focus of her eyes that I had not seen before. ‘After all,’ I
thought, ‘she has a religious mania. She
is
different from the
neurotics, but not because she is sane.’

‘Gloria!’ — this was the
girl from the repository poking her head round the door. She beckoned to me,
and, still disturbed, I idled over to her.

‘I say, did I see Miss
Pettigrew actually speaking to you, or was I dreaming?’

‘You were dreaming.’ If
I had said otherwise the news would have bristled round the monastery. It would
have seemed a betrayal to reveal this first crack in Miss Pettigrew’s control.
The pilgrims would have pitied her more if they had known of it, they would
have respected her less. I could not bear to think of their heads shaking
sorrowfully over Miss Pettigrew’s vital ‘The Lord is risen.

‘But surely,’ this girl
pursued, ‘she stopped beside you just now’.

‘You’ve got Miss
Pettigrew on the brain,’ I said. ‘Leave her alone, poor soul.’

‘Poor soul!’ said the
girl. ‘I don’t know about poor soul. There’s nothing wrong with that one. She’s
got foolish medieval ideas, that’s all.’

‘There’s nothing to be
done with her,’ I said.

And yet it was not long before something
had to be done with Miss Pettigrew. From the Sunday of the fourth week of my
stay she went off food. It was not till supper-time on the Monday that her
absence was noticed from the refectory.

‘Anyone seen Miss
Pettigrew?’

‘No, she hasn’t been
down here for two days.’

‘Does she eat in the
town, perhaps?’

‘No, she hasn’t left the
Abbey.’

A deputation with a tray
of food was sent to her room. There was no answer. The door was bolted from the
inside. But I heard her moving calmly as ever in her room that evening.

Next morning she came in
to breakfast after Mass, looking distant and grey, but still very neat. She
took up a glass of milk, lifted the crust end of the bread from the board and
carried them shakily off to her room. When she did not appear for lunch the
cook tried her room again, without success. The door was bolted, there was no
answer.

I saw Miss Pettigrew
again at Mass next morning, kneeling a little in front of me, resting her head
upon her missal as if she could not bear the weight of head on neck. When at
last she left the chapel she walked extremely slowly but without halting in her
measure. Squackle-wackle ran to help her down the steps. Miss Pettigrew stopped
and looked at her, inclining her head in recognition, but clearly rejecting her
help.

The doctor was waiting
in her room. I heard later that he asked her many questions, used many
persuasives, but she simply stared right through him. The Abbot and several of
the monks visited her, but by then she had bolted the door again, and though
they tempted her with soups and beef broth. Miss Pettigrew would not open.

News went round that her
relatives had been sent for. The news went round that she had no relatives to
send for. It was said she had been certified insane and was to be taken away.

She did not rise next
morning at her usual seven o’clock. It was not till after twelve that I heard
her first movement, and the protracted sounds of her slow rising and dressing.
A tiny clatter — that would be her shoe falling out of her weak hands; I knew
she was bending down, trying again. My pulse was pattering so rapidly that I
had to take more of my sedative than usual, as I listened to this slow
deliberated performance. Heavy rhythmic rain had started to ping on the roof.

‘Neurotics never go mad,’
my friends had always told me. Now I realized the distinction between neurosis
and madness, and in my agitation I half-envied the woman beyond my bedroom
wall, the sheer cool sanity of her behaviour within the limits of her
impracticable mama. Only the very mad, I thought, can come out with the
information ‘The Lord is risen’, in the same factual way as one might say, ‘You
are wanted on the telephone,’ regardless of the time and place.

A knock at my door. I
opened it, still shaking with my nerves. It was Jennifer. She whispered, with
an eye on the partition dividing me from Miss Pettigrew,

‘Come along, Gloria.
They say you are to come away for half an hour. The nurses are coming to fetch
her.’

‘What nurses?’

‘From the asylum. And
there will be men with a stretcher. We haven’t to distress ourselves, they say.’

I could see that
Jennifer was agog. She was more transparent than I was. I could see she was
longing to stay and overhear, watch out of the windows, see what would happen.
I was overcome with disgust and indignation. Why should Jennifer want to
satisfy her curiosity? She believed everyone was ‘the same’, she didn’t
acknowledge the difference of things, what right had she to possess curiosity?
My case was different.

‘I shall stay here,’ I
said in a normal voice, signifying that I wasn’t going to participate in any
whispering. Jennifer disappeared, annoyed.

Insanity was my great
sort of enemy at that time. And here, clothed in the innocence and dignity of
Miss Pettigrew, was my next-door enemy being removed by ambulance. I would not
miss it. Afterwards I learned that Jennifer too was lurking around when the
ambulance arrived. So were most of the neurotics.

The ambulance came round
the back. My window looked only on the front but my ears were windows. I heard
a woman’s voice, then in reply the voice of one of our priests. Heavy footsteps
and something bumping on the stairs and strange men’s voices ascending.

‘What’s her name, did
you say?’

‘Marjorie Pettigrew.’

The hauling and bumping
up the stairs continued.

‘Ain’t no key. Bolt from
the inside.’

Whenever they paused I
could hear Miss Pettigrew’s tiny movements. She was continuing to do what she
was doing.

They knocked at the
door. I pulled like mad at the rosary which I was telling for Miss Pettigrew. A
man’s voice said, kindly but terribly loud,

‘Open up the door, dear.
Else we shall have to force it, dear.’

She opened the door.

‘That’s a good girl,’
said the man. ‘What was the name again?’

The other man replied, ‘Marjorie
Pettigrew.’

‘Well, come on, Marjorie
dear. You just follow me and you won’t go wrong. Come along, Marjorie.’

I knew she must have
been following, though I could not hear her footsteps. I heard the heavy men’s
boots descending the stairs, and their unnecessary equipment bumping behind
them.

‘That’s right, Marjorie.
That’s a good girl.’

Down below the nurse
said something, and I heard no more till the ambulance drove off.

‘Oh, I saw her!’ This
was the laundry-girl who had been fond of Miss Pettigrew. ‘She must have been
combing her hair,’ she said, ‘when they came for her. It was all loose and
long, not at all like Miss Pettigrew. She was always just so. And that going
out in the rain, I hope she doesn’t catch cold. But they’ll be good to her.’

Everyone was saying, ‘They
will be kind to her.’

‘They will look after
her.’

‘They might cure her.’

I never saw them so
friendly with each other.

After supper someone
said, ‘I had a respect for Miss Pettigrew.’

‘So did I,’ said
another.

‘Yes, so did I.’

‘They will be very kind.
Those men — they sounded all right.’

‘They meant well enough.’

Suddenly the ginger man
came out with that one thing which stood at the core of this circuitous talk.

‘Did you hear them,’ he
said, ‘calling her Marjorie?’

‘My God, yes!’

‘Yes, it made me feel
funny.’

‘Same here. Fancy
calling her Marjorie.’

After that the incident
was little discussed. But the community was sobered and united for a brief
time, contemplating with fear and pity the calling of Miss Pettigrew Marjorie.

The Twins

When Jennie was at school with me, she was
one of those well-behaved and intelligent girls who were, and maybe still are,
popular with everyone in Scottish schools. The popularity of boys and girls in
English schools, so far as I gather, goes by other, less easily definable
qualities, and also by their prowess at games. However, it was not so with us,
and although Jennie was not much use at hockey, she was good and quiet and
clever, and we all liked her. She was rather nice-looking too, plump, dark-haired,
clean, neat.

She married a Londoner,
Simon Reeves. I heard from her occasionally. She was living in Essex, and once
or twice, when she came to London, we met. But it was some years before I could
pay my long-promised visit to them, and by the time I got round to it, her
twins, Marjie and Jeff, were five years old.

They were noticeably
beautiful children; dark, like Jennie, with a charming way of holding their
heads. Jennie was, as she always had been, a sensible girl. She made nothing of
their beauty, on which everyone felt compelled to remark. ‘As long as they
behave themselves —’ said Jennie; and I thought what a pretty girl she was
herself, and how little notice she took of her looks, and how much care she
took with other people. I noticed that Jennie assumed that everyone else was
inwardly as quiet, as peacefully inclined, as little prone to be perturbed, as
herself. I found this very restful and was grateful to Jennie for it. Her
husband resembled her in this; but otherwise, Simon was more positive. He was
brisk, full of activity, as indeed was Jennie; the difference between them was
that Jennie never appeared to be bustling, even at her busiest hours, while
Simon always seemed to live in the act of doing something. They were a fine
match. I supposed he had gained from Jennie, during their six years of
marriage, a little of her sweet and self-denying nature for he was really
considerate. Simon would stop mowing the lawn at once, if he caught sight of
the old man next door asleep in a deck-chair, although his need to do something
about the lawn was apparently intense. For Jennie’s part, she had learned from
Simon how to speak to men without embarrassment. This was something she had
been unable to do at the age of eighteen. Jennie got from Simon an insight into
the mentalities of a fair variety of people, because his friends were curiously
mixed, socially and intellectually. And in a way, Simon bore within himself an
integrated combination of all those people he brought to the house; he
represented them, almost, and kept his balance at the same time. So that Jennie
derived from Simon a knowledge of the world, without actually weathering the
world. A happy couple. And then, of course, there were the twins.