Essential Stories

by V. S. Pritchett

  She gave a dry dismissive laugh at it. She had, he remembered, always defied what she saw. The day when he had seen her at the fair seemed to slide away under his feet and years slid by, after that, following that day.

  “What—” he began. Then in his military way, he jerked out, “Rowena’s gone into town. I am waiting for her.”

  “I know,” said Daisy. “Can I sit down and get my breath? I know. I saw her.” And with a plotting satisfaction: “Not to speak to. She passed me. Ah, that’s better.”

  “We never see people,” said Harry sternly. “You see I am working. If the telephone rings, we don’t answer it.”

  “The same with us. I hope I’m not interrupting. I thought—I’ll dash up, just for a minute.”

  “And Rowena has her work . . .” he said. Daisy was always an interrupter.

  “I gave you a surprise,” said Daisy comfortably. “She is lovely. That’s why I came. You’re lucky—how d’you do it? Where did you find her? And what a place you’ve got here! I made Stephen go and see his friends. It was such a long time—years, isn’t it? I had to come. You haven’t changed, you know. But you didn’t recognise me, did you? You were trying not to see me, weren’t you?”

  Her eyes and her nose were small. She is at her old game of shock tactics, he thought. He looked blankly at her.

  “I explained that,” he said nervously. “I must go and turn the kettle off,” he said. He paused to listen for Rowena’s car, but there was no sound.

  “Well,” she said. “There you are. Time goes on.”

  When he came back with a teapot and another cup, she said, “I knew you wouldn’t come and see me, so I came to see you. Let me see,” she said and took off the scarf from her head. “I told you George died, didn’t I? Of course I did,” she said briskly.

  “Yes.”

  “Well . . .” she said. “Harry, I had to see you. You are the only wise man I know.” She looked nervously at the garden and across to the army of trees stacked on the hill and then turned to him. “You’re happy and I am happy, Harry. I didn’t come to make a scene and drag it all up. I was in love with you, that was the trouble, but I’m not now. I was wrong about you, about you and Violet. I couldn’t bear to see her suffer. I was out of my mind. I couldn’t bear to see you grieving for her. I soon knew what it was when poor George died. Harry, I just don’t want you to hate me any more. I mean, you’re not still furious, are you? We do change. The past is past.”

  The little liar, he thought. What has she come up here for? To cause trouble between himself and Rowena as she had tried to do with his wife and himself. He remembered Daisy’s favourite word: honesty. She was trying for some reason to confuse him about things he had settled a long time ago in his mind.

  He changed the subject. “What is—”—he frowned—“I’m sorry, I can’t remember names nowadays—your son doing?”

  She was quick to notice the change, he saw. Nothing ever escaped Daisy.

  “Oh, Tommy, the ridiculous Tommy. He’s in Africa,” she said, merrily dismissing him. “Well, it was better for him—problems. I’m a problem to him—George was so jealous too.”

  “He looks exactly like George,” Harry said. “Taller, of course, the curly hair.”

  “What are you talking about? You haven’t seen him since he was four.” She laughed.

  “Don’t be stupid, Daisy, we saw him last week at that—what is the name of the place?—at the fair.”

  The blood went from Daisy’s face. She raised her chin. “That’s a nasty one,” she said and gave her head a fierce shake. “You meant it to, didn’t you? That was Stephen. I thought you’d be the last to think a thing like that, with your Rowena. I expect people say it and I don’t care and if anyone said it to him he wouldn’t know what they were talking about. Stephen’s my lover.”

  The old sentimental wheedling Daisy was in the coy smile that quickly followed her sharpness. “He’s mad about me,” she said. “I may be old enough to be his mother, but he’s sick of squealing, sulky girls of seventeen. If we had met years ago, he would have hated me. Seriously, Harry, I’d go down on my knees to him.”

  “I am sorry—I—that’s why I didn’t recognise you. You can ask Rowena. I said to her, ‘That’s Daisy Pyke’s daughter,’ ” Harry said, “when I saw you.”

  Daisy gaped at him and slowly, her lips curled up with delight. “Oh, good! Is that true? Is it? You always told the truth. You really thought that! Thank you, Harry, that’s the nicest thing you ever said to me. I love you for it.”

  She leaned forward, appealing to him quietly.

  “George never slept with me for seven years before he died. Don’t ask me about it, but that’s the truth. I’d forgotten what it was. When Stephen asked me I thought it was an insult—you know, all this rape about. I got into the car and slammed the door in his face and left him on the road—well, not on the road, but wherever it was—and drove off. I looked back. He was still standing there. Well, I mean, at my age! That next day—you know what it is with women better than anyone— I was in such a mood. When I got back to the house I shouted for George, howled for him to come back and poured myself a tumblerful of whisky and wandered about the house slopping it on the carpet.” She laughed. “George would have killed me for that if he had come— and I went out into the garden and there was Stephen, you won’t believe it, walking bold as brass up from the gate. He came up quickly and just took the glass from me very politely—the stuff was pouring down my dress—and put it on the grass and he wiped my blouse. That’s what did it.”

  She paused thoughtfully and frowned. “Not there,” she said prudishly, “not at the house, of course. I wanted to get away from it. I can’t bear it. We went to the caravan camp. That’s where he was living. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I mean, there’s a lot more.”

  She paused. “Love is something at our age, isn’t it? I mean, when I saw you and Rowena at Guilleth—I thought I must go and talk to you. Being in the same boat.”

  “We’re not,” he said, annoyed. “I am twenty years older than you.”

  “Thirty, if you don’t mind,” she said, opening her bag and looking into her mirror. When she had put it away with a snap she looked over the flowers in the steep garden to the woods. She was listening for the sound of a car. He realised he had stopped listening for it. He found himself enjoying this hour, despite his suspicions of her. It drove away the terrors that seemed to dissolve even the trees of the ravine. With women, nature returned to its place, the trees became real trees. One lived in a long moment in which time had stopped. He did not care for Daisy, but she had that power of enticement which lay in stirring one with the illusion that she was defying one to put her right. With Rowena he had thrown away his vanity; with Daisy it returned.

  “Where did you and Rowena go the day we saw you?” she asked suddenly.

  “Along the cliffs,” he said.

  “You didn’t go to the cove, did you? It’s a long way. And you can’t swim at this time of the year.”

  “We went to the cove and I did swim,” he said. “I wouldn’t let Rowena.”

  “I should hope not! You don’t forget old times, do you?” She laughed coolly. “I hope you didn’t tell Rowena—young girls can be so jealous. I was—d’you remember? Gosh, I’m glad I’m not young still, aren’t you?”

  “Stop being so romantic, Daisy,” said the old man.

  “Oh, I’m not romantic any more,” she said. “It doesn’t pay else one would pity them, Rowena and Stephen. So you did go to the cove—did you think of me?”

  “I only think of death now,” he said.

  “You always were an interesting man, the type that goes on to his nineties, like they do now,” she said. “I never think about it. Stephen would have a fit. He doesn’t even know what he’s going to do. Last week he thought he’d be a beach guard. Or teach tennis. Or a singer! He was surfing on the beach when I first saw him. He was living at the camp.”

  She paused, offende
d. “Did you know they switch off the electric light at ten o’clock at the office in those places? No one protests. Like sheep. It would make me furious to be treated like that. You could hear everyone snoring at once. Not that we joined in, I must say. Actually, we’re staying in his mother’s house now, the bunks are too narrow in those caravans, but she’s come back. So we’re looking for something— I’ve let my house. The money is useful.”

  The old man was alarmed. He was still trying to make out the real reason for her visit. He remembered the old Daisy—there was always a hidden motive, something she was trying out. And he started listening urgently again for Rowena’s car. I know what it is, he thought; she wants to move in here!

  “I’m afraid it would be impossible to have you here,” he said.

  “Here, Harry?” she said, astonished. “None of that! That’s not what I came for. Anyway,” she said archly, “I wouldn’t trust you.”

  But she considered the windows and the doors of the house and then the view. She gave a business-like sniff and said seriously, “You can’t keep her a prisoner here. It won’t last.”

  “Rowena is not a prisoner. She can come and go when she likes. We understand that.”

  “It depends what you mean by coming and going,” said Daisy shrewdly. “You mean you are the prisoner. That is it! So am I!”

  “Oh,” said Harry. “Love is always like that. I live only for her.”

  “That is it! I will tell you why I came to see you, Harry. When I saw Rowena in town I kept out of her way. You won’t believe it—I can be tactful.”

  She became very serious. “Because I don’t want us to meet again.” It was an open declaration. “I mean not see you for a long time, I mean all of us. You see, Rowena is so beautiful and Stephen—well, you’ve seen him. You and I would start talking about old times and people, and they’d be left out and drawn together—now, wouldn’t they? I just couldn’t bear to see him talking to her, looking at her. I wish we had not met down at the fair. It’s all right now, he’s with his surfing friends, but you understand?”

  She got up and said, “I mean it, Harry. I know what would happen and so do you and I don’t want to see it happen.”

  She went up to him because he had stood up and she tapped him hard on the chest with her firm bold finger. He could feel it on his skin, a determined blow, after she had stepped away.

  “I know it can’t last,” she said. “And you know it can’t. But I don’t want you to see it happen,” she said in her old hard taunting style. “We never really use your town anyway. I’ll see he doesn’t. Give me your word. We’ve got to do this for each other. We’ve managed quite well all these years, haven’t we? And it’s not saying we’ll never meet someday, is it?”

  “You’re a bitch, Daisy,” he said, and he smiled.

  “Yes, I’m a bitch still, Harry,” she said. “But I’m not a fool.”

  She put out her hand again and he feared she was going to dig that hard finger in his chest again, but she didn’t. She tied her scarf round her hair. “If anything happened I’d throw myself down Withy Hole.”

  “Stop being so melodramatic, Daisy,” he said.

  “Well, I don’t want you conniving,” she said coarsely. “I don’t want any of your little arrangements.”

  And she turned to the ravine and listened. “Car coming up,” she said.

  “Rowena,” he said.

  “I’ll be off. Remember.”

  “Be careful at the turns,” he said helplessly. “She drives fast. You’ll pass her on the road.”

  They did not kiss or even shake hands. He listened to her cursing the steps as she went down and calling out, “I bet you dug out these bloody steps yourself.”

  He listened to the two cars whining their way towards each other as they circled below, now Rowena’s car glinted, now Daisy’s. At last Rowena’s slowed down at the steps, spitting stones.

  Rowena came up and said, “I’ve just passed Daisy on the road.”

  “Yes, she’s been here. What a tale!”

  She looked at the empty cups. “And you didn’t give your dearest friend any tea, you wretch.”

  “Oh, tea—no—er—she didn’t want any,” he stammered.

  “As gripping as all that, was it?” she laughed.

  “Very,” he said. “She’s talking of marrying that young man. Stephen’s not her son.”

  “You can’t mean that,” she said, putting on a very proper air. “She’s old enough—” but she stopped, and instead of giving him one of her light hugs, she rumpled his hair. “People do confide in you, I must say,” she said. “I don’t think I like her coming up here. Tell me what she said.”

  THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD

  Maya Angelou

  A. S. Byatt

  Caleb Carr

  Christopher Cerf

  Ron Chernow

  Shelby Foote

  Charles Frazier

  Vartan Gregorian

  Richard Howard

  Charles Johnson

  Jon Krakauer

  Edmund Morris

  Azar Nafisi

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Elaine Pagels

  John Richardson

  Salman Rushdie

  Oliver Sacks

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Carolyn See

  William Styron

  Gore Vidal

  V. S. PRITCHETT

  Victor Sawdon Pritchett, the extraordinarily prolific and versatile man of letters widely regarded as one of the greatest stylists in the English language, was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, on December 16, 1900. His father, whom he recalled in the enchanting memoir A Cab at the Door (1968), was a boundlessly optimistic but chronically unsuccessful businessman whose series of failed ventures necessitated frequent moves to elude creditors. These uprootings interrupted Pritchett’s formal education, yet he was a voracious reader from an early age. Apprenticed in the London leather trade at fifteen, Pritchett alleviated the boredom of a menial clerical job by delving into the classics. At twenty he left for Paris, vowing to become a writer. He later reflected on his experiences there in Midnight Oil (1971), a second volume of autobiography that endures as an intimate and precise record of an artist’s self-discovery.

  Pritchett began his writing career as a contributor to The Christian Science Monitor, which, in addition to sending him on assignments in the United States and Canada, employed him as a foreign correspondent in civil-war Ireland and then Spain. Marching Spain (1928), his first book, recounts impressions of a country that held a lifelong fascination for Pritchett. His other travel writing includes The Spanish Temper (1954), The Offensive Traveller (1964; published in the U.K. as Foreign Faces ), and At Home and Abroad (1989). In addition, he collaborated with photographer Evelyn Hofer on three acclaimed metropolitan profiles: London Perceived (1962), New York Proclaimed (1964), and Dublin: A Portrait(1967).

  While continuing a part-time career as a roving journalist, Pritchett increasingly focused on writing fiction, living with his Anglo-Irish first wife in Dublin, and then in the bohemian London of the mid to late 1920s. Clare Drummer (1929), the first of his five novels, draws on his experiences in Ireland, while Elopement into Exile (1932; published in the U.K. as Shirley Sanz) again reflects his enthrallment with Spain. He also wrote Nothing Like Leather (1935), a compelling saga about the rise and fall of an English businessman, and Dead Man Leading (1937), an allegorical tale of a journey into darkness that is reminiscent of Conrad. Pritchett’s best-known novel, Mr. Beluncle (1951), is a work of Dickensian scope featuring an endearing scoundrel-hero modeled after his own father.

  Yet it is widely acknowledged that Pritchett’s genius as a storyteller came to full fruition in the short fictions which he began to publish in his early twenties and continued to write up to his nineties. “Pritchett’s literary achievement is enormous, but his short stories are his greatest triumph,” said Paul Theroux. From The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories (1930) right up through Complete
Collected Stories (1991), Pritchett published fourteen volumes filled with masterful tales that chronicle the lives of ordinary people through a flood of details and humorous, kindhearted observations. His other collections, all of them published during his long second marriage to Dorothy—a working partner as well as an adored wife—include: You Make Your Own Life (1938), It May Never Happen (1945), The Sailor, Sense of Humor, and Other Stories (1956), When My Girl Comes Home (1961), The Key to My Heart (1964), Blind Love (1970), The Camberwell Beauty (1974), Selected Stories (1978), On the Edge of the Cliff (1980), Collected Stories (1982), More Collected Stories (1983), and A Careless Widow (1989).

  “We read Pritchett’s stories, comic or tragic, with an elation that stems from their intensity,” observed Eudora Welty. “Life goes on in them without flagging. The characters that fill them—erratic, unsure, unsafe, devious, stubborn, restless and desirous, absurd and passionate, all peculiar unto themselves—hold a claim on us that is not to be denied. They demand and get our rapt attention, for in their revelation of their lives, the secrets of our own lives come into view.” And Reynolds Price noted: “An extended view of his short fiction reveals a chameleonic power of invention, sympathy and selfless transformation that sends one back as far as Chekhov for a near-parallel.”

  The acclaim lavished on Pritchett for his short stories has been matched by that accorded his literary criticism. “Pritchett is not only our best short story writer but also our best literary critic,” stated Anthony Burgess. In My Good Books (1942), The Living Novel (1946), Books in General (1953), and The Working Novelist (1965) contain essays written during his long association with the New Statesman and also, after the Second World War, The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review. Pritchett continued his exploration of world literature in George Meredith and English Comedy (1970), The Myth Makers (1979), The Tale Bearers (1980), A Man of Letters (1985), and Lasting Impressions (1990). His magnum opus of literary criticism, Complete Collected Essays— which reflects, too, his central association with The New York Review of Books, from the journal’s earliest days—was issued in 1992. In addition he produced three masterful works that artfully meld criticism with biography: Balzac (1974), The Gentle Barbarian: The Life and Work of Turgenev(1977), and Chekhov: A Spirit Set Free (1988).