The Complete Short Stories (52 page)

Miss Simmonds appeared
in the doorway in her avenging white overall. Her brother, who had been rubbing
his thigh in a puzzled way, pretended to be dusting a mark off the front of his
trousers.

‘What’s wrong? Why did
you shout?’ she said.

‘No, I didn’t shout.’

She looked at me, then
returned to attend to the person in the shop, leaving the intervening door wide
open. She was back again almost immediately. My examination was soon over. Mr
Simmonds saw me our at the front door and gave me a pleading unhappy look. I
felt like a traitor and I considered him horrible.

For the rest of the
holidays I thought of him as ‘Basil’, and by asking questions and raking more
interest than usual in the conversation around me I formed an idea of his
private life. ‘Dorothy,’ I speculated, ‘and Basil.’ I let my mind dwell on them
until I saw a picture of the rooms above the shop. I hung round at tea-time
and, in order to bring the conversation round to Dorothy and Basil, told our
visitors I had been to get my eyes tested.

‘The mother bedridden
all these years and worth a fortune. But what good is it to her?’

‘What chance is there
for Miss Simmonds now, with that eye?’

‘She’ll get the money.
He will get the bare legal minimum only.’

‘No, they say he’s to
get everything. In trust.’

‘I believe Mrs Simmonds
has left everything to her daughter.’

My grandmother said, ‘She
should divide her fortune —’

‘— equally between them,’
said my aunt. ‘Fair’s fair.’

I invented for myself a
recurrent scene in which brother and sister emerged from their mother’s room
and, on the narrow landing, allowed their gaze to meet in unspoken combat over
their inheritance. Basil’s flat-coloured eyes did not themselves hold any
expression, but by the forward thrust of his red neck he indicated his meaning;
Dorothy made herself plain by means of a corkscrew twist of the head — round
and up — and the glitter of her one good eye through the green glasses.

I was sent for to try on
my new reading glasses. I had the hat-pin with me. I was friendly to Basil
while I tested the new glasses in the front shop. He seemed to want to put a
hand on my shoulder, hovered, but was afraid. Dorothy came downstairs and
appeared before us just as his hand wavered. He protracted the wavering gesture
into one which adjusted the stem of my glasses above my ear.

‘Auntie says to try them
properly,’ I said, ‘while I’m about it.’ This gave me an opportunity to have a
look round the front premises.

‘You’ll only want them
for your studies,’ Basil said.

‘Oh, I sometimes need
glasses even when I’m not reading,’ I said. I was looking through a door into a
small inner office, darkened by a tree outside in the lane. The office
contained a dumpy green safe, an old typewriter on a table, and a desk in the
window with a ledger on it. Other ledgers were placed —

‘Nonsense,’ Dorothy was
saying. ‘A healthy girl like you — you hardly need glasses at all. For reading,
to save your eyes, perhaps
yes.
But when you’re not reading …’.

I said, ‘Grandmother said
to inquire after your mother.’

‘She’s failing,’ she
said.

I took to giving Basil a
charming smile when I passed him in the street on the way to the shops. This
was very frequently. And on these occasions he would be standing at his shop
door awaiting my return; then I would snub him. I wondered how often he was
prepared to be won and rejected within the same ten minutes.

I took walks before
supper round the back lanes, ambling right round the Simmondses’ house,
thinking of what was going on inside. One dusky time it started to rain
heavily, and I found I could reasonably take shelter under the tree which grew
quite close to the grimy window of the inner office. I could just see over the
ledge and make out a shape of a person sitting at the desk. Soon, I thought,
the shape will have to put on the light.

After five minutes’ long
waiting time the shape arose and switched on the light by the door. It was
Basil, suddenly looking pink-haired. As he returned to the desk he stooped and
took from the safe a sheaf of papers held in the teeth of a large paper clip. I
knew he was going to select one sheet of paper from the sheaf, and that this
one document would be the exciting, important one. It was like reading a
familiar book: one knew what was coming, but couldn’t bear to miss a word. He
did extract one long sheet of paper, and held it up. It was typewritten with a
paragraph in handwriting at the bottom on the side visible from the window. He
laid it side by side with another sheet of paper which was lying on the desk. I
pressed close up to the window, intending to wave and smile if I was seen, and
to call out that I was sheltering from the rain which was now coming down in
thumps. But he kept his eyes on the two sheets of paper. There were other
papers lying about the desk; I could not see what was on them. But I was quite
convinced that he had been practising handwriting on them, and that he was in
the process of forging his mother’s will.

Then he took up the pen.
I can still smell the rain and hear it thundering about me, and feel it
dripping on my head from the bough hanging above me. He raised his eyes and
looked out at the rain. It seemed his eyes rested on me, at my station between
the tree and the window. I kept still and close to the tree like a hunted piece
of nature, willing myself to be the colour of bark and leaves and rain. Then I
realized how much more clearly I could see him than he me, for it was growing
dark.

He pulled a sheet of
blotting paper towards him. He dipped his pen in the ink and started writing on
the bottom of the sheet of paper before him, comparing it from time to time
with the one he had taken out of the safe. I was not surprised, but I was
thrilled, when the door behind him slowly opened. It was like seeing the film
of the book. Dorothy advanced on her creeping feet, and he did not hear, but
formed the words he was writing, on and on. The rain pelted down regardless.
She was looking crookedly, through her green glasses with her one eye, over his
shoulder at the paper.

‘What are you doing?’
she said.

He jumped up and pulled
the blotting paper over his work. Her one eye through her green glasses glinted
upon him, though I did not actually see it do so, but saw only the dark green
glass focused with a squint on to his face.

‘I’m making up the
accounts,’ he said, standing with his back to the desk, concealing the papers.
I saw his hand reach back and tremble among them.

I shivered in my soaking
wet clothes. Dorothy looked with her eye at the window. I slid sideways to
avoid her and ran all the way home.

Next morning I said, ‘I’ve
tried to read with these glasses. It’s all a blur. I suppose I’ll
have
to
take them back?’

‘Didn’t you notice
anything wrong when you tried —’

‘— tried them on in the
shop?’

‘No. But the shop’s so
dark.
Must
I take them back.?’

I took them into Mr
Simmonds early that afternoon.

‘I tried to read with
them this morning, but it’s all a blur.’ It was true that I had smeared them
with cold cream first.

Dorothy was beside us in
no time. She peered one-eyed at the glasses, then at me.

‘Are you constipated?’
she said.

I maintained silence.
But I felt she was seeing everything through her green glasses.

‘Put them on,’ Dorothy
said.

‘Try them on,’ said
Basil.

They were ganged up
together. Everything was going wrong, for I had come here to see how matters
stood between them after the affair of the will.

Basil gave me something
to read. ‘It’s all right now,’ I said, ‘but it was all a blur when I tried to
read this morning.’

‘Better take a dose,’
Dorothy said.

I wanted to get out of the
shop with my glasses as quickly as possible, but the brother said, ‘I’d better
test your eyes again while you’re here just to make sure.

He seemed quite normal.
I followed him into the dark interior. Dorothy switched on the light. They both
seemed normal. The scene in the little office last night began to lose its
conviction. As I read out the letters on the card in front of me I was thinking
of Basil as ‘Mr Simmonds’ and Dorothy as ‘Miss Simmonds’, and feared their
authority, and was in the wrong.

‘That seems to be all
right,’ Mr Simmonds said. ‘But wait a moment. He produced some coloured slides
with lettering on them.

Miss Simmonds gave me
what appeared to be a triumphant one-eyed leer, and as one who washes her hands
of a person, started to climb the stairs. Plainly, she knew I had lost my
attraction for her brother.

But before she turned
the bend in the stairs she stopped and came down again. She went to a row of
shelves and shifted some bottles. I read on. She interrupted:

‘My eye-drops, Basil. I
made them up this morning. Where are they?’ Mr Simmonds was suddenly watching
her as if something inconceivable was happening.

‘Wait, Dorothy. Wait
till I’ve tested the girl’s eyes.’

She had lifted down a
small brown bottle. ‘I want my eye-drops. I wish you wouldn’t displace — Are
these they?’

I noted her correct
phrase, ‘Are these they?’ and it seemed just over the border of correctness.
Perhaps, after all, this brother and sister were strange, vicious, in the
wrong.

She had raised the
bottle and was reading the label with her one good eye. ‘Yes, this is mine. It
has my name on it,’ she said.

Dark Basil, dark
Dorothy. There was something wrong after all. She walked upstairs with her
bottle of eye-drops. The brother put his hand on my elbow and heaved me to my
feet, forgetting his coloured slides.

‘There’s nothing wrong
with your eyes. Off you go.’ He pushed me into the front shop. His flat eyes
were wide open as he handed me my glasses. He pointed to the door. ‘I’m a busy
man,’ he said.

From upstairs came a long
scream. Basil jerked open the door for me, but I did not move. Then Dorothy,
upstairs, screamed and screamed and screamed. Basil put his hands to his head,
covering his eyes. Dorothy appeared on the bend of the stairs, screaming,
doubled-up, with both hands covering her good eye.

I started screaming when
I got home, and was given a sedative. By evening everyone knew that Miss
Simmonds had put the wrong drops in her eyes.

‘Will she go blind in
that eye, too?’ people said.

‘The doctor says there’s
hope.’

‘There will be an
inquiry.’

‘She was going blind in
that eye in any case,’ they said.

‘Ah, but the pain …’

‘Whose mistake, hers or
his?’

‘Joan was there at the
time. Joan heard the screams. We had to give her a sedative to calm —’

‘— calm her down.’

‘But who made the
mistake?’

‘She usually makes up
the eye-drops herself. She’s got a dispenser’s —’

‘— dispenser’s
certificate, you know.

‘Her name was on the
bottle, Joan says.

‘Who wrote the name on
the bottle? That’s the question. They’ll find out from the handwriting. If it
was Mr Simmonds he’ll be disqualified.’

‘She always wrote the
names on the bottles. She’ll be put off the dispensers’ roll, poor thing.’

‘They’ll lose their
licence.’

‘I got eye-drops from
them myself only three weeks ago. If I’d have known what I know now, I’d never
have —’

‘The doctor says they
can’t find the bottle, it’s got lost.’

‘No, the sergeant says
definitely they’ve got the bottle. The handwriting is hers. She must have made
up the drops herself, poor thing.’

‘Deadly nightshade, same
thing.’

‘Stuff called atropine.
Belladonna. Deadly nightshade.’

‘It should have been
stuff called eserine. That’s what she usually had, the doctor says.

‘Dr
Gray
says?’

‘Yes, Dr Gray.’

‘Dr Gray says if you
switch from eserine to atropine —’

It was put down to an
accident. There was a strong hope that Miss Simmonds’s one eye would survive.
It was she who had made up the prescription. She refused to discuss it.

I said, ‘The bottle may
have been tampered with, have you thought of that?’

‘Joan’s been reading
books.’

The last week of my
holidays old Mrs Simmonds died above the shop and left all her fortune to her
daughter. At the same time I got tonsillitis and could not return to school.

I was attended by our
woman doctor, the widow of the town’s former doctor who had quite recently
died. This was the first time I had seen Dr Gray, although I had known the
other Dr Gray, her husband, whom I missed. The new Dr Gray was a sharp-faced
athletic woman. She was said to be young. She came to visit me every day for a
week. After consideration I decided she was normal and in the right, though
dull.

Through the feverish
part of my illness I saw Basil at the desk through the window and I heard
Dorothy scream. While I was convalescent I went for walks, and always returned
by the lane beside the Simmonds’ house. There had been no bickering over the
mother’s will. Everyone said the eye-drop affair was a terrible accident. Miss
Simmonds had retired and was said to be going rather dotty.

I saw Dr Gray leaving
the Simmonds at six o’clock one evening. She must have been calling on poor
Miss Simmonds. She noticed me at once as I emerged from the lane.

‘Don’t loiter about,
Joan. It’s getting chilly.’

The next evening I saw a
light in the office window. I stood under the tree and looked. Dr Gray sat upon
the desk with her back to me, quite close. Mr Simmonds sat in his chair talking
to her, tilting back his chair. A bottle of sherry stood on the table. They
each had a glass half-filled with sherry. Dr Gray swung her legs, she was in
the wrong, sexy, like our morning help who sat on the kitchen table swinging
her legs.