The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham - II - The World Over (94 page)

One day he was emptying a box in one of the better streets, a street of semi-detached houses, and had just closed his bag when a girl came running along.

“Postman,” she cried, “take this letter, will you. I want it to go by this post most particularly.”

He gave her his good-natured smile.

“I never mind obliging a lady,” he said, putting down his bag and opening it.

“I wouldn’t trouble you, only it’s urgent,” she said as she handed him the letter she had in her hand.

“Who is it to-a feller?” he grinned. “None of your business.”

“All right, be haughty. But I tell you this, he’s no good. Don’t you trust him.”

“You’ve got a nerve,” she said.

“So they tell me.”

He took off his cap and ran his hand through his mop of curling red hair. The sight of it made her gasp.

“Where d’you get your perm?” she asked with a giggle.

“I’ll show you one of these days if you like.”

He was looking down at her with his amused eyes, and there was something about him that gave her a funny little feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Well, I must be on my way,” he said. “If I don’t get on with the job pretty damn quick I don’t know what’ll happen to the country.”

“I’m not detaining you,” she said coolly.

“That’s where you make a mistake,” he answered.

He gave her a look that made her heart beat nineteen to the dozen and she felt herself blushing all over. She turned away and ran back to the house. Fred noticed it was four doors away from the pillar-box. He had to pass it and as he did so he looked up. He saw the net curtains twitch and knew she was watching. He felt pleased with himself. During the next few days he looked at the house whenever he passed it, but never caught a glimpse of the girl. One afternoon he ran across her by chance just as he was entering the street in which she lived.

“Hullo,” he said, stopping.

“Hullo.”

She blushed scarlet. “Haven’t seen you about lately.”

“You haven’t missed much.”

“That’s what you think.”

She was prettier than he remembered, dark-haired, dark-eyed, rather tall, slight, with a good figure, a pale skin, and very white teeth. “What about coming to the pictures with me one evening?”

“Taking a lot for granted, aren’t you?”

“It pays,” he said with his impudent, charming grin.

She couldn’t help laughing.

“Not with me, it doesn’t.”

“Oh, come on. One’s only young once.”

There was something so attractive in him that she couldn’t bring herself to give him a saucy answer.

“I couldn’t really. My people wouldn’t like me going out with a fellow I don’t know. You see, I’m the only one they have and they think a rare lot of me. Why, I don’t even know your name.”

“Well, I can tell you, can’t I? Fred. Fred Manson. Can’t you say you’re going to the pictures with a girl friend?”

She had never felt before what she was feeling then. She didn’t know if it was pain or pleasure. She was strangely breathless.

“I suppose I could do that.”

They fixed the night, the time, and the place. Fred was waiting for her and they went in, but when the picture started and he put his arm round her waist, without a word, her eyes fixed on the screen, she quietly took it away. He took hold of her hand, but she withdrew it. He was surprised. That wasn’t the way girls usually behaved. He didn’t know what one went to the pictures for if it wasn’t to have a bit of a cuddle. He walked home with her after the show. She told him her name. Grace Carter. Her father had a shop of his own in the Brixton Road, he was a draper and he had four assistants.

“He must be doing well,” said Fred.

“He doesn’t complain.”

Gracie was a student at London University. When she got her degree she was going to be a school teacher.

“What d’you want to do that for when there’s a good business waiting for you?”

“Pa doesn’t want me to have anything to do with the shop-not after the education he’s given me. He wants me to better myself, if you know what I mean.”

Her father had started life as an errand boy, then became a draper’s assistant, and because he was hard-working, honest, and intelligent was now owner of a prosperous little business. Success had given him grand ideas for his only child. He didn’t want her to have anything to do with trade. He hoped she’d marry a professional man perhaps, or at least someone in the City. Then he’d sell the business and retire, and Gracie would be quite the lady.

When they reached the corner of her street Gracie held out her hand.

“You’d better not come to the door,” she said.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me good night?”

“I am not.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“You’ll come to the pictures again, won’t you?”

“I think I’d better not.”

“Oh, come on.”

There was such a warm urgency in his voice that she felt as though her knees would give way.

“Will you behave if I do?” He nodded. “Promise?”

“Swop me bob.”

He scratched his head when he left her. Funny girl. He’d never met anyone quite like her. Superior, there was no doubt about that. There was something in her voice that got you. It was warm and soft. He tried to think what it was like. It was like as if the words kissed you. Sounded silly, that did, but that’s just what it was like.

From then on they went to the pictures once or twice a week. After a while she allowed him to put his arm round her waist and to hold her hand, but she never let him go farther than that.

“Have you ever been kissed by a fellow?” he asked her once.

“No, I haven’t,” she said simply. “My ma’s funny, she says you’ve got to keep a man’s respect.”

“I’d give anything in the world just to kiss you, Grade.”

“Don’t be so silly.”

“Won’t you let me just once?” She shook her head. “Why not?”

“Because I like you too much,” she said hoarsely, and then walked quickly away from him.

It gave him quite a turn. He wanted her as he’d never wanted a woman before. What she’d said finished him. He’d been thinking of her a lot, and he’d looked forward to the evenings they spent together as he’d never looked forward to anything in his life. For the first time he was uncertain of himself. She was above him in every way, what with her father making money hand over fist and her education and everything, and him only a postman. They had made a date for the following Friday night and he was in a fever of anxiety lest she shouldn’t come. He repeated to himself over and over again what she’d said: perhaps it meant that she’d made up her mind to drop him. When at last he saw her walking along the street he almost sobbed with relief. That evening he neither put his arm round her nor took her hand and when he walked her home he never said a word.

“You’re very quiet tonight, Fred,” she said at last. “What’s the matter with you?”

He walked a few steps before he answered.

“I don’t like to tell you.”

She stopped suddenly and looked up at him. There was terror on her face.

“Tell me whatever it is,” she said unsteadily.

“I’m gone, I can’t help myself, I’m so stuck on you I can’t see straight. I didn’t know what it was to love like I love you.”

“Oh, is that all? You gave me such a fright. I thought you were going to say you were going to be married.”

“Me? Who d’you take me for? It’s you I want to marry.”

“Well, what’s to prevent you, silly?”

“Gracie! D’you mean it?”

He flung his arms round her and kissed her full on the mouth. She didn’t resist. She returned his kiss and he felt in her a passion as eager as his own.

They arranged that Gracie should tell her parents that she was engaged to him and that on the Sunday he should come and be introduced to them. Since the shop stayed open late on Saturday and by the time Mr Carter got home he was tired out, it was not till after dinner on Sunday that Gracie broke her news. George Carter was a brisk, not very tall man, but sturdy, with a high colour, who with increasing prosperity had put on weight. He was more than rather bald and he had a bristle of grey moustache. Like many another employer who had risen from the working class he was a slave-driver and he got as much work out of his assistants for as little money as was possible. He had an eye for every thing and he wouldn’t put up with any nonsense, but he was reasonable and even kindly, so that they did not dislike him. Mrs Carter was a quiet, nice woman, with a pleasant face and the remains of good looks. They were both in the early fifties, for they had married late after “walking out’ for nearly ten years.

They were very much surprised when Gracie told them what she had to tell, but not displeased.

“You’re a sly one,” said her father. “Why, I never suspected for a minute you’d taken up with anyone. Well, I suppose it had to come sooner or later. What’s his name?”

“Fred Manson.”

“A fellow you met at college?”

“No. You must have seen him about. He clears our pillar-box. He’s a postman.”

“Oh, Gracie,” cried Mrs Carter, “you can’t mean it. You can’t marry a common postman, not after all the education we’ve given you.”

For an instant Mr Carter was speechless. He got redder in the face than ever.

“Your ma’s right, my girl,” he burst out now. “You can’t throw yourself away like that. Why, it’s ridiculous.”

“I’m not throwing myself away. You wait till you see him.”

Mrs Carter began to cry.

“It’s such a come-down. It’s such a humiliation. I shall never be able to hold up my head again.”

“Oh, Ma, don’t talk like that. He’s a nice fellow and he’s got a good job.”

“You don’t understand,” she moaned.

“How d’you get to know him?” Mr Carter interrupted. “What sort of family’s he got?”

“His pa drives one of the post-office vans,” Gracie answered defiantly.

“Working-class people.”

“Well, what of it? His pa’s worked twenty-four years for the post-office and they think a lot of him.”

Mrs Carter was biting the corner of her handkerchief.

“Gracie, I want to tell you something. Before your pa and me got married I was in domestic service. He wouldn’t ever let me tell you because he didn’t want you to be ashamed of me. That’s why we was engaged all those years. The lady I was with said she’d leave me something in her will if I stayed with her till she passed away.”

“It was that money that gave me my start,” Mr Carter broke in. “Except for that I’d never have been where I am today. And I don’t mind telling you you’re ma’s the best wife a man ever had.”

“I never had a proper education,” Mrs Carter went on, “but I always was ambitious. The proudest moment of my life was when your pa said we could afford a girl to help me and he said then: ‘The time’ll come when you have a cook
and
a house-maid,’ and he’s been as good as his word, and now you’re going back to what I come from. I’d set my heart on your marrying a gentleman.”

She began crying again. Gracie loved her parents and couldn’t bear to see them so distressed.

“I’m sorry, Ma, I knew it would be a disappointment to you, but I can’t help it, I can’t really. I love him so. I love him so terribly. I’m sure you’ll like him when you see him. We’re going for a walk on the Common this afternoon. Can’t I bring him back to supper?”

Mrs Carter gave her husband a harassed look. He sighed.

“I don’t like it and it’s no good pretending I do, but I suppose we’d better have a look at him.”

Supper passed off better than might have been expected. Fred wasn’t shy, and he talked to Gracie’s parents as though he had known them all his life. If to be waited on by a maid, if to sup in a dining-room furnished in solid mahogany and afterwards to sit in a drawing-room that had a grand piano in it was new to him, he showed no embarrassment. After he had gone and they were alone in their bedroom Mr and Mrs Carter talked him over.

“He is handsome, you can’t deny that,” she said.

“Handsome is as handsome does. D’you think he’s after her money?”

“Well, he must know that you’ve got a tidy little bit tucked away somewhere, but he’s in love with her all right.”

“Oh, what makes you think that?”

“Why, you’ve only got to see the way he looks at her.”

“Well, that’s something at all events.”

In the end the Carters withdrew their opposition on the condition that the young things shouldn’t marry until Gracie had taken her degree. That would give them a year, and at the back of their minds was the hope that by then she would have changed her mind. They saw a good deal of Fred after that. He spent every Sunday with them. Little by little they began quite to like him. He was so easy, so gay, so full of high spirits, and above all so obviously head over ears in love with Gracie, that Mrs Carter soon succumbed to his charm, and after a while even Mr Carter was prepared to admit that he didn’t seem a bad fellow. Fred and Gracie were happy. She went to London every day to attend lectures and worked hard. They spent blissful evenings together. He gave her a very nice engagement ring and often took her out to dinner in the West End and to a play. On fine Sundays he drove her out into the country in a car that he said a friend had lent him. When she asked him if he could afford all the money he spent on her he laughed, and said a chap had given him a tip on an outsider and he’d made a packet. They talked interminably of the little flat they would have when they were married and the fun it would be to furnish it. They were more in love with one another than ever.