The Complete Short Stories (45 page)

I arrived on a Saturday
afternoon, to spend a week. The lovely twins were put to bed at six, and I did
not see them much on the Sunday, as a neighbouring couple took them off for a
day’s picnicking with their own children. I spent most of Monday chatting with
Jennie about old times and new times, while little Marjie and Jeff played in
the garden. They were lively, full of noise and everything that goes with
healthy children. And they were advanced for their years; both could read and
write, taught by Jennie. She was sending them to school in September. They pronounced
their words very clearly, and I was amused to notice some of Jennie’s Scottish
phraseology coming out in their English intonation.

Well, they went off to
bed at six sharp that day: Simon came home shortly afterwards, and we dined in
a pleasant humdrum peace.

It wasn’t until the
Tuesday morning that I really got on close speaking terms with the twins.
Jennie took the car to the village to fetch some groceries, and for an hour I
played with them in the garden. Again, I was struck by their loveliness and
intelligence, especially of the little girl. She was the sort of child who
noticed everything. The boy was quicker with words, however; his vocabulary was
exceptionally large.

Jennie returned, and
after tea, I went indoors to write letters. I heard Jennie telling the children
‘Go and play yourselves down the other end of the garden and don’t make too
much noise, mind.’ She went to do something in the kitchen. After a while,
there was a ring at the back door. The children scampered in from the garden, while
Jennie answered the ring.

‘Baker,’ said the man.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Jennie: ‘wait,
I’ll get my purse.

I went on writing my
letter, only half-hearing the sound of Jennie’s small change as she,
presumably, paid the baker’s man.

In a moment, Marjie was
by my side.

‘Hallo,’ I said.

Marjie did not answer.

‘Halo, Marjie,’ I said. ‘Have
you come to keep me company?’

‘Listen,’ said little
Marjie in a whisper, looking over her shoulder. ‘Listen.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

She looked over her
shoulder again, as if afraid her mother might come in.

‘Will you give me
half-a-crown?’ whispered Marjie, holding out her hand.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘what do
you want it for?’

‘I want it,’ said
Marjie, looking furtively behind her again.

‘Would your mummy want
you to have it?’ I said.

‘Give me half-a-crown,’
said Marjie.

‘I’d rather not,’ I
said. ‘But I’ll tell you what, I’ll buy you a —But Marjie had fled, out of the
door, into the kitchen. ‘She’d rather not, I heard her say to someone.

Presently, Jennie came
in, looking upset.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I hope
you didn’t feel hurt. I only wanted to pay the baker, and I hadn’t enough
change. He hadn’t any either; so just on the spur of the moment I sent Marjie
for a loan of half-a-crown till tonight. But I shouldn’t have done it. I
never
borrow anything as a rule.’

‘Well, of course!’ I
said. ‘Of course I’ll lend you half-a-crown. I’ve got plenty of change. I didn’t
understand and I got the message all wrong; I thought she wanted it for herself
and that you wouldn’t like that.’

Jennie looked doubtful.
I funked explaining the whole of Marjie’s act. It isn’t easy to give evidence
against a child of five.

‘Oh, they never ask for
money,’ said Jennie. ‘I would never allow them to ask anyone for anything. They
never do
that.’

‘I’m sure they don’t,’ I
said, floundering a bit.

Jennie was much too kind
to point out that this was what I had just been suggesting. She was altogether
too nice to let the incident make any difference during my stay. That night,
Simon came home just after six. He had bought two elaborate spinning-tops for
the twins. These tops had to be wound up, and they sang a tinny little tune
while they spun.

‘You’ll ruin those
children,’ said Jennie.

Simon enjoyed himself
that evening, playing with the tops.

‘You’ll break them
before the children even see them,’ said Jennie.

Simon put them away. But
when one of his friends, a pilot from a nearby aerodrome, looked in later in
the evening, Simon brought out the tops again; and the two men played
delightedly with them, occasionally peering into the works and discussing what
made the tops go; while Jennie and I made scornful comments.

Little Marjie and Jeff
were highly pleased with the tops next morning, but by the afternoon they had
tired of them and gone on to something more in the romping line. After dinner
Simon produced a couple of small gadgets. They were the things that go inside
musical cigarette-boxes, he explained, and he thought they would fit into the
spinning-tops, so that the children could have a change of tune.

‘When they get fed up
with “Pop Goes the Weasel”,’ he said, ‘they can have “In and Out the Windows”.’

He got out one of the
tops to take it apart and fit in the new tune. But when he had put the pieces
together again, the top wouldn’t sing at all. Jennie tried to help, but we
couldn’t get ‘In and Out the Windows’. So Simon patiently unpieced the top, put
the gadgets aside, and said they would do for something else.

‘That’s Jeff’s top,’ said
Jennie, in her precise way, looking at the pieces on the carpet. ‘Jeff’s is the
red one, Marjie has the blue.’

Once more, Simon started
piecing the toy together, with the old tune inside it, while Jennie and I went
to make some tea.

‘I’ll bet it won’t work
now,’ said Jennie with a giggle.

When we returned, Simon
was reading and the top was gone.

‘Did you fix it?’ said
Jennie.

‘Yes,’ he said absently.
‘I’ve put it away.’

It rained the next
morning and the twins were indoors.

‘Why not play with your
tops?’ Jennie said.

‘Your Daddy took one of
them to pieces last night,’ Jennie informed them, ‘and put all the pieces back
again.’

Jennie had the stoic in
her nature and did not believe in shielding her children from possible
disappointment.

‘He was hoping,’ she
added, ‘to fit new tunes inside it. But it wouldn’t work with the new tune …
But he’s going to try again.’

They took this quite
hopefully, and I didn’t see much of them for some hours although, when the rain
stopped and I went outside, I saw the small boy spinning his bright-red top on
the hard concrete of the garage floor. About noon little Jeff came running into
the kitchen where Jennie was baking. He was howling hard, his small face
distorted with grief. He held in both arms the spare parts of his top.

‘My top!’ he sobbed. ‘My
top!’

‘Goodness,’ said Jennie,
‘what did you do to it? Don’t cry, poor wee pet.’

‘I found it,’ he said. ‘I
found my top all in pieces under that box behind Daddy’s car.

‘My top,’ he wept. ‘Daddy’s
broken my top.’ Marjie came in and looked on unmoved, hugging her blue top.

‘But you were playing
with the top this morning!’ I said. ‘Isn’t yours the red one? You were spinning
it.’

‘I was playing with the
blue one,’ he wept. ‘And then I found my own top all broken. Daddy broke it.’

Jennie sat them up to
their dinner, and Jeff presently stopped crying.

Jennie was cheerful
about it, although she said to me afterwards, ‘I think Simon might have told me
he couldn’t put it together again. But isn’t it just like a man? They’re that
proud of themselves, men.

As I have said, it isn’t
easy to give evidence against a child of five. And especially to its mother.

Jennie tactfully put the
pieces of the top back in the box behind the garage. They were still there,
rusty and untouched, in a pile of other rusty things, seven years later, for I
saw them. Jennie got skipping ropes for the twins that day and when they had
gone to bed, she removed Marjie’s top from the toy-cupboard. ‘It’ll only make
wee Jeff cry to see it,’ she said to me. ‘We’ll just forget about the tops.

‘And I don’t want Simon
to find out that I found
him
out,’ she giggled. I don’t think tops were
ever mentioned again in the household. If they were, I am sure Jennie would
change the subject. An affectionate couple; it was impossible not to feel
kindly towards them; not so, towards the children.

I was abroad for some
years after that, and heard sometimes from Jennie at first; later, we seldom
wrote, and then not at all. I had been back in London for about a year when I
met Jennie in Baker Street. She was excited about her children, now aged
twelve, who had both won scholarships and were going off to boarding schools in
the autumn.

‘Come and see them while
they’ve got their holidays,’ she said. ‘We often talk about you, Simon and I.’
It was good to hear Jennie’s kind voice again.

I went to stay for a few
days in August. I felt sure the twins must have grown out of their
peculiarities, and I was right. Jennie brought them to meet me at the station.
They had grown rather quiet; both still extremely good-looking. These children
possessed an unusual composure for their years. They were well-mannered as
Jennie had been at their age, but without Jennie’s shyness.

Simon was pruning
something in the garden when we got to the house.

‘Why, you haven’t
changed a bit,’ he said. ‘A bit thinner maybe. Nice to see you so flourishing.’

Jennie went to make tea.
In these surroundings she seemed to have endured no change; and she had made no
change in her ways in the seven years since my last visit.

The twins started
chatting about their school life, and Simon asked me questions I could not
answer about the size of the population of the places I had lived in abroad.
When Jennie returned, Simon leapt off to wash.

‘I’m sorry Simon said
that,’ said Jennie to me when he had gone. ‘I don’t think he should have said
it, but you know how tactless men are.

‘Said what?’ I asked.

‘About you looking thin
and ill,’ said Jennie.

‘Oh, I didn’t take it
that
way!’ I said.

‘Didn’t you?’ said
Jennie with an understanding smile. ‘That was sweet of you.’

‘Thin and haggard
indeed!’ said Jennie as she poured out the tea, and the twins discreetly passed
the sandwiches.

That night I sat up late
talking to the couple. Jennie retained the former habit of making a tea-session
at nine o’clock and I accompanied her to the kitchen. While she was talking,
she packed a few biscuits neatly into a small green box.

‘There’s the kettle
boiling,’ said Jennie, going out with the box in her hand. ‘You know where the
teapot is. I won’t be a minute.’

She returned in a few
seconds, and we carried off our tray.

It was past one before
we parted for the night. Jennie had taken care to make me comfortable. She had
put fresh flowers on the dressing-table, and there, beside my bed, was the
little box of biscuits she had thought-fully provided. I munched one while I
looked out of the window at the calm country sky, ruminating upon Jennie’s
perennial merits. I have always regarded the lack of neurosis in people with
awe. I am too much with brightly intelligent, highly erratic friends. In this
Jennie, I decided, reposed a mystery which I and my like could not fathom.

Jennie had driven off
next day to fetch the twins from a swimming-pool nearby, when Simon came home
from his office.

‘I’m glad Jennie’s out,’
he said, ‘for I wanted a chance to talk to you.

‘I hope you won’t mind,’
he said, ‘but Jennie’s got a horror of mice.’

‘Mice?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Simon, ‘so
don’t eat biscuits in your room if you wouldn’t mind. Jennie was rather upset
when she saw the crumbs but of course she’d have a fit if she knew I’d told
you. She’d die rather than tell you. But there it is, and I know you’ll
understand.’

‘But Jennie put the
biscuits in my room herself,’ I explained. ‘She packed them in a box and took
them up last night.’

Simon looked worried. ‘We’ve
had mice before,’ he said, ‘and she can’t bear the thought of them upstairs.

‘Jennie put the biscuits
there,’ I insisted, feeling all in the wrong.

‘And,’ I said, ‘I saw
Jennie pack the box. I’ll ask her about it.’

‘Please,’
said
Simon, ‘please don’t do that. She would be so hurt to think I’d spoken about
it. Please,’ he said, ‘go on eating biscuits in your room; I shouldn’t have
mentioned it.’

Of course I promised not
to eat any more of the things. And Simon, with a knowing smile, said he would
give me larger helpings at dinner, so that I wouldn’t go hungry.

The biscuit-box had gone
when I went to my room. Jennie was busy all next day preparing for a cocktail
party they were giving that night. The twins devotedly gave up their day to the
cutting of sandwiches and the making of curious patterns with small pieces of
anchovy on diminutive squares of toast.

Jennie wanted some
provisions from the village, and I offered to fetch them. I took the car, and
noticed it was almost out of petrol; I got some on the way. When I returned,
these good children were eating their supper standing up in the kitchen, and
without a word of protest, cleared off to bed before the guests arrived.

When Simon came home I
met him in the hall. He was uneasy about the gin; he thought there might not be
enough. He decided to go straight to the local and get more.

‘And,’ he said, ‘I’ve
just remembered. The car’s almost out of petrol. I promised to drive the
Rawlings home after the party. I nearly forgot. I’ll get some petrol too.

‘Oh, I got some today,’
I said.

There were ten guests,
four married couples and two unattached girls. Jennie and I did the handing
round of snacks and Simon did the drinks. His speciality was a cocktail he had
just discovered, called Loopamp. This Loopamp required him to make frequent
excursions to the kitchen for replenishments of prune-juice and ice. Simon
persuaded himself that Loopamp was in great demand among the guests. We all
drank it obligingly. As he took his shakers to the kitchen for the fourth time,
he called out to one of the unattached girls who was standing by the door, ‘Mollie,
bring that lemon jug too, will you?’