Essential Stories

by V. S. Pritchett

  “Englishman . . . Irishman . . . Scotsman . . . train . . . Englishman said . . . Scotsman said . . . Och, says Paddy . . .”

  “Hah! Hah! Hah!” from the pack.

  Over the carnations in the silver-plated vases on the table, over the heads of the diners, the cigar smoke was rising sweetly and the first level indigo shafts of it were tipping across the middle air and turning the portraits of the Past Masters into day dreams. Peacock gazed at it. Then a bell rang in his ear, so loudly that he looked shyly to see if anyone else had heard it. The voice of Shel was on some line of his memory, a voice richer, more insinuating than the toastmaster’s or the President’s, a voice utterly flooring.

  “Abel?” Shel was saying. “Is that you Abel? This is Cain speaking. How’s the smoke? Is it still going up straight to heaven? Not blowing about all over the place . . .”

  The man opposite caught Peacock’s eye for a second, as if he too had heard the voice and then turned his head away. And, just at the very moment, when once more Peacock could have answered that question about the effect of weight and distance, the man opposite stood up, all the accountants stood up. Peacock was the last. There was another toast to drink. And immediately there was more hammering and another speaker. Peacock’s opportunity was lost. The man who sat opposite had moved his chair back from the table and was sitting sideways to the table, listening, his interest in Peacock gone for good.

  Peacock became lonely. Sulkily he played with matchsticks and arranged them in patterns on the tablecloth. There was a point at Annual Dinners when he always did this. It was at that point when one saw the function had become fixed by a flash photograph in the gloss of celebration and when everyone looked sickly and old. Eyes became hollow, temples sank, teeth loosened. Shortly the diners would be carried out in coffins. One waited restlessly for the thing to be over. Ten years of life went by and then, it seemed, there were no more speeches. There was some business talk in groups; then twos and threes left the table. Others filed off into a large chamber next door. Peacock’s neighbours got up. He, who feared occasions, feared even more their dissolution. It was like that frightening ten minutes in a theatre when the audience slowly moves out, leaving a hollow stage and row after row, always increasing, of empty seats behind them. In a panic Peacock got up. He was losing all acquaintance. He had even let the man opposite slip away, for that man was walking down the hall with some friends. Peacock hurried down his side of the long table to meet them at the bottom and when he got there he turned and barred their way.

  “What we were talking about,” he said. “It’s an art. Simply a matter of letting the breath go, relaxing the muscles. Any actor can do it. It’s the first thing they learn.”

  “I’m out of my depth,” said the Scotsman.

  “Falling,” said Peacock. “The stage fall.” He looked at them with dignity, then he let the expression die on his face. He fell quietly full length to the floor. Before they could speak he was up on his feet.

  “My brother weighs two hundred and twenty pounds,” he said with condescension to the man opposite. “The ordinary person falls and breaks an arm or a foot, because he doesn’t know. It’s an art.”

  His eyes conveyed that if the Peacocks had kept a fried fish shop years ago, they had an art.

  “Simple,” said Peacock.

  And down he went, thump, on the carpet again and lying at their feet he said:

  “Painless. Nothing broken. Not a bruise. I said ‘an art.’ Really one might call it a science. Do you see how I’m lying?”

  “What’s happened to Peacock?” said two or three men joining the group.

  “He’s showing us the stage fall.”

  “Nothing,” said Peacock, getting up and brushing his coat sleeve and smoothing back his hair. “It is just a stage trick.”

  “I wouldn’t do it,” said a large man, patting his stomach.

  “I’ve just been telling them—weight is nothing. Look.” Peacock fell down and got up at once.

  “You turn. You crumple. You can go flat on your back. I mean, that is what it looks like,” he said.

  And Peacock fell.

  “Shel and I used to practise it in the bedroom. Father thought the ceiling was coming down,” he said.

  “Good God, has Peacock passed out?” a group standing by the fireplace in the hall called across. Peacock got up and brushing his jacket again walked up to them. The group he had left watched him. There was a thump.

  “He’s done it again,” the man opposite said. “Once more. There he goes. Look, he’s going to show the President. He’s going after him. No, he’s missed him. The old boy has slipped out of the door.”

  Peacock was staring with annoyance at the door. He looked at other groups of twos and threes.

  “Who was the casualty over there?” someone said to him as he walked past.

  Peacock went over to them and explained.

  “Like judo,” said a man.

  “No!” said Peacock indignantly, even grandly. And in Shel’s manner. Anyone who had seen Shelmerdine Peacock affronted knew what he looked like. That large white face trod on you. “Nothing to do with judo. This is the theatre . . .”

  “Shelmerdine Peacock’s brother,” a man whispered to a friend.

  “Is that so?”

  “It’s in the blood,” someone said.

  To the man who had said “judo,” Peacock said, “No throwing, no wrestling, no somersaulting or fancy tricks. That is not theatre. Just . . . simply . . .” said Peacock. And crumpling, as Shel might have done in Macbeth or Hamlet, or like some gangster shot in the stomach, Peacock once more let his body go down with the cynicism of the skilful corpse. This time he did not get up at once. He looked up at their knees, their waists, at their goggling faces, saw under their double chins and under their hairy eyebrows. He grinned at their absurdity. He saw that he held them. They were obliged to look at him. Shel must always have had this sensation of hundreds of astonished eyes watching him lie, waiting for him to move. Their gaze would never leave the body. He never felt less at a loss, never felt more completely himself. Even the air was better at carpet level; it was certainly cooler and he was glad of that. Then he saw two pairs of feet advancing from another group. He saw two faces peep over the shoulders of the others, and heard one of them say:

  “It’s Peacock—still at it.”

  He saw the two pairs of boots and trousers go off. Peacock got to his feet at once and resentfully stared after them. He knew something, as they went, that Shel must have known: the desperation, the contempt for the audience that is thinning out. He was still brushing his sleeve and trouser legs when he saw everyone moving away out of the hall. Peacock moved after them into the chamber.

  A voice spoke behind him. It was the quiet, intimate voice of the man with the loose lock of black hair who had sat opposite to him.

  “You need a drink,” the man said.

  They were standing in the chamber where the buffet table was. The man had gone into the chamber and, clearly, he had waited for Peacock. A question was going round as fast as a catherine wheel in Peacock’s head and there was no need to ask it: it must be so blindingly obvious. He looked for someone to put it to, on the quiet, but there were only three men at the buffet table with their backs turned to him. Why (the question ran) at the end of a bloody good dinner is one always left with some awful drunk, a man you’ve never liked—an unbeliever?

  Peacock mopped his face. The unbeliever was having a short disgusting laugh with the men at the bar and now was coming back with a glass of whisky.

  “Sit down. You must be tired,” said the unbeliever.

  They sat down. The man spoke of the dinner and the speeches. Peacock did not listen. He had just noticed a door leading into a small ante-room and he was wondering how he could get into it.

  “There was one thing I don’t quite get,” the man said. “Perhaps it was the quickness of the hand deceiving the eye. I should say feet. What I mean is—do you first take a step, I
mean like in dancing: I mean is the art of falling really a paradox—I mean the art of keeping your balance all the time?”

  The word “paradox” sounded offensive to Peacock.

  The man looked too damn clever, in Peacock’s opinion, and didn’t sit still. Wearily Peacock got up.

  “Hold my drink,” he said. “You are standing like this, or facing sideways—on a level floor, of course. On a slope like this . . .”

  The man nodded.

  “I mean—well, now, watch carefully. Are you watching?”

  “Yes,” said the man.

  “Look at my feet,” said Peacock.

  “No,” said the man, hastily, putting out a free hand and catching Peacock by the arm. “I see what you mean. I was just interested in the theory.”

  Peacock halted. He was offended. He shook the man’s arm off.

  “Nothing theoretical about it,” he said, and shaking his sleeves added: “No paradox.”

  “No,” said the man standing up and grabbing Peacock so that he could not fall. “I’ve got the idea.” He looked at his watch. “Which way are you going? Can I give you a lift?”

  Peacock was greatly offended. To be turned down! He nodded to the door of the ante-room: “Thanks,” he said. “The President’s waiting for me.”

  “The President’s gone,” said the man. “Oh well, good night.” And he went away. Peacock watched him go. Even the men at the bar had gone. He was alone.

  “But thanks,” he called after him. “Thanks.”

  Cautiously Peacock sketched a course into the ante-room. It was a small, high room, quite empty and yet (one would have said), packed with voices, chattering, laughing and mixed with music along the panelled walls, but chiefly coming from behind the heavy green velvet curtains that were drawn across the window at one end. There were no mirrors, but Peacock had no need of them. The effect was ornate— gilded pillars at the corners, a small chandelier rising and falling gracefully from a carven ceiling. On the wall hung what, at first sight, seemed to be two large oil paintings of Queens of England but, on going closer, Peacock saw there was only one oil painting—of Queen Victoria. Peacock considered it. The opportunity was enormous. Loyally; his face went blank. He swayed, loyally fell, and loyally got to his feet. The Queen might or might not have clapped her little hands. So encouraged, he fell again and got up. She was still sitting there.

  Shel, said Peacock, aloud to the Queen, has often acted before royalty. He’s in Hollywood now, having left me to settle all his tax affairs. Hundreds of documents. All lies, of course. And there is this case for alimony going on. He’s had four wives, he said to Queen Victoria. That’s the side of theatre life I couldn’t stand, even when we were boys. I could see it coming. But—watch me, he said.

  And delightfully he crumpled, the perfect backwards spin. Leaning up on his elbow from where he was lying he waited for her to speak.

  She did not speak, but two or three other queens joined her, all crowding and gossiping together, as Peacock got up. The Royal Box! It was full. Cars hooting outside the window behind the velvet curtains had the effect of an orchestra and then, inevitably, those heavy green curtains were drawn up. A dark, packed and restless auditorium opened itself to him. There was dense applause.

  Peacock stepped forward in awe and wholeness. Not to fall, not to fall, this time, he murmured. To bow. One must bow and bow and bow and not fall, to the applause. He set out. It was a strangely long up-hill journey towards the footlights and not until he got there did it occur to him that he did not know how to bow. Shel had never taught him. Indeed, at the first attempt the floor came up and hit him in the face.

  WHEN MY GIRL COMES HOME

  She was kissing them all, hugging them, her arms bare in her summer dress, laughing and taking in a big draught of breath after every kiss, nearly knocking old Mrs. Draper off her feet, almost wrestling with Mrs. Fulmino, who was large and tall. Then Hilda broke off to give another foreign-sounding laugh and plunged at Jack Draper (“the baby”) and his wife, at Mr. Fulmino, who cried out “What again?” and at Constance, who did not like emotion; and after every kiss, Hilda drew back, getting her breath and making this sound like “Hah!”

  “Who is this?” she said, looking at me.

  “Harry Fraser,” Mr. Fulmino said. “You remember Harry?”

  “You worked at the grocer’s,” she said. “I remember you.”

  “No,” I said, “that was my brother.”

  “This is the little one,” said Mrs. Fulmino.

  “Who won the scholarship,” said Constance.

  “We couldn’t have done anything without him,” said Mr. Fulmino, expanding with extravagance as he always did about everything. “He wrote to the War Office, the Red Cross, the Prisoners of War, the American Government, all the letters. He’s going to be our Head Librarian.”

  Mr. Fulmino loved whatever had not happened yet. His forecasts were always wrong. I left the library years ago and never fulfilled the future he had planned for me. Obviously Hilda did not remember me. Thirteen years before, when she married Mr. Singh and left home, I was no more than a boy.

  “Well, I’ll kiss him too,” she said. “And another for your brother.”

  That was the first thing to happen, the first of many signs of how her life had had no contact with ourselves.

  “He was killed in the war, dear,” said Mrs. Fulmino.

  “She couldn’t know,” said Constance.

  “I’m sorry,” said Hilda.

  We all stood silent, and Hilda turned to hold on to her mother, little Mrs. Johnson, whose face was coquettish with tears and who came only up to Hilda’s shoulder. The old lady was bewildered. She was trembling as though she were going to shake to pieces like a tree in the autumn. Hilda stood still, touching her tinted brown hair which was done in a tight high style and still unloosened, despite all the hugs and kissings. Her arms looked as dry as sand, her breasts were full in her green, flowered dress and she was gazing over our heads now from large yellow eyes which had almost closed into two blind, blissful curving lines. Her eyebrows seemed to be lacquered. How Oriental she looked on that first day! She was looking above our heads at old Mrs. Draper’s shabby room and going over the odd things she remembered, and while she stood like that, the women were studying her clothes. A boy’s memory is all wrong. Naturally, when I was a boy I had thought of her as tall. She was really short. But I did remember her bold nose—it was like her mother’s and old Mrs. Draper’s; those two were sisters. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known her. And that is what Mr. Fulmino said when we were all silent and incredulous again. We had Hilda back. Not just “back” either, but “back from the dead,” reborn.

  “She was in the last coach of the train, wasn’t she, Mother?” Mr. Fulmino said to Mrs. Johnson. He called her “mother” for the occasion, celebrating her joy.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Johnson. “Yes.” Her voice scraped and trembled.

  “In the last coach, next the van. We went right up the platform, we thought we’d missed her, didn’t we? She was,” he exclaimed with acquisitive pride, “in the First Class.”

  “Like you missed me coming from Penzance,” said Mrs. Fulmino swelling powerfully and going that thundery violet colour which old wrongs gave her.

  “Posh!” said Hilda. And we all smiled in a sickly way.

  “Don’t you ever do it again, my girl! Don’t you ever do it again,” said her mother, old Mrs. Johnson, clinging to her daughter’s arm and shaking it as if it were a bellrope.

  “I was keeping an eye on my luggage,” Hilda laughed.

  Ah! That was a point! There was not only Hilda, there was her luggage. Some of it was in the room, but the bigger things were outside on the landing, piled up, looking very new, with the fantastic labels of hotels in Tokyo, San Francisco, and New York on it, and a beautiful jewel box in white leather on top like a crown. Old Mrs. Draper did not like the luggage being outside the room in case it was in the way of the people upstairs. Constance went out an
d fetched the jewel box in. We had all seen it. We were as astonished by all these cases as we were by Hilda herself. After thirteen years, six of them war, we recognised that the poor ruined woman we had prepared for had not arrived. She shone with money. Later on, one after the other of us, except old Mrs. Draper who could not walk far, went out and looked at the luggage and came back to study Hilda in a new way.

  We had all had a shock. She had been nearly two years coming home from Tokyo. Before that there was the occupation, before that the war itself. Before that there were the years in Bombay and Singapore, when she was married to an Indian they always called Mr. Singh. All those years were lost to us. None of us had been to India. What happened there to Mr. Singh? We knew he had died—but how? Even if we had known, we couldn’t have imagined it. None of us had been to Singapore, none of us to Japan. People from streets like Hincham Street do go to such places—it is not past belief. Knock on the doors of half the houses in London and you will find people with relations all over the world—but none of us had. Mention these places to us, we look at our grey skies and see boiling sun. Our one certainty about Hilda was what, in fact, the newspaper said the next day, with her photograph and the headline: A Mother’s Faith. Four Years in Japanese Torture Camp. London Girl’s Ordeal. Hilda was a terrible item of news, a gash in our lives, and we looked for the signs of it on her body, in the way she stood, in the lines on her face, as if we were expecting a scream from her mouth like the screams we were told Bill Williams gave out at night in his sleep, after he had been flown back home when the war ended. We had had to wait and wait for Hilda. At one time—there was a postcard from Hawaii—she was pinned like a butterfly in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; soon after there was a letter from Tokyo saying she couldn’t get a passage. Confusing. She was travelling backwards. Letters from Tokyo were still coming after her letters from San Francisco.

  We were still standing, waiting for Constance to bring in the teapot, for the tea was already laid. The trolley buses go down Hincham Street. It is a mere one hundred and fifty yards of a few little houses and a few little shops, which has a sudden charmed importance because the main road has petered out at our end by the Lord Nelson and an enormous public lavatory, and the trolley buses have to run down Hincham Street before picking up the main road again, after a sharp turn at the convent. Hincham Street is less a street than an interval, a disheartened connection. While we stood in one of those silences that follow excitement, a trolley bus came by and Hilda exclaimed: