The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories

by Victoria Hislop

  The sketch took only a matter of minutes, but the young man had the problem of where to place his flower. He was an expert at bowls and pots and jugs, and if hard-pressed, could even produce some hideous vase from its owner’s description. Today he decided on something more ambitious. Behind his flower he sketched in a primitive landscape with a few rocks and a hard blue sky beyond. A primitive landscape was all he was capable of. The thing was quickly done, but it was some time before he could bring himself to hand it over, for he felt the moment was an awkward one. His sitter was not after a striking likeness, but he had come for a face – his own face and no other. Cautiously the young man handed over his drawing. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘It was absolutely not on today. I wouldn’t insult you with a worthless face… another time perhaps when I’m equipped for it. Naturally I want nothing for that. If you want it, keep it. There is no need to take it.’

  The other man, dropping his pose for the first time, looked down at the drawing. If he was taken aback, it took him less than a moment to adjust to what he saw. Quickly he scanned the dry-faced flower for some familiar feature, at the same time feeling along the skin of his cheek with one hand. His fingers rasped round his chin and down his throat as he followed the hard-ribbed stalk with his eyes. With an impassive face he studied the crude desert, only glancing aside once to compare its yellow ridges with the folded white snow-space through the curtain. No, he was not angry, the young man saw with relief – neither pleased nor angry. On the other hand, he had no intention of taking away a plant. His face was what he wanted and he would get it. Without fuss then he had to make the change, to feel his blood as sap, his hair as spiked petals, his neck a tough stalk, desert for snow. He seemed to manage this to his satisfaction. What other feeling he might have was harder to guess.

  The old man laid the paper down and began to button up his coat. Then again he picked up the drawing and studied it at arm’s length, stubbornly taking his time. He was not flattered. Flower or face – it was no masterpiece. He said nothing, but with a rather caustic smile pointed to a bit of stalk which had been smeared under the young man’s thumb and to the desert rock behind, pulverised to crumbs by a broken crayon end. Yet in his expression, as he now carefully rolled up the paper, could be seen some confirmation of his belief that every weird change could be expected in the human form and spirit. Indeed, as he tied the string around, he seemed determined on it. He had by no means come to the end himself. It was now well on in the afternoon. The old man nodded goodbye, and as he went out laid a pound note deep inside the jug which the young man kept for ends of crayon, and the assortment of rags which were used when necessary to scrub down crayoned lips and cheeks to a paler pink.

  The young man was alone again. First he carefully extracted the pound note from the jug, and for the second time that day packed up his stuff ready to go. He parted the curtain, and saw that the snow had already almost gone from this end of the street. The boots of pedestrians and the warm breath from office basements had melted it. But in the untrampled distance where the old man was walking, it lay thick. He could see him, still bravely, still incredulously lifting his feet from the early wastes and deserts of spring snow.

  A Weight Problem

  Elspeth Davie

  Elspeth Davie (1918–1995) was a Scottish author. Although she wrote novels, she is best known for her short stories. Davie won the Katherine Mansfield Prize in 1978.

  Very occasionally it happens – when all the baggage has been safely stowed and the passengers, their eyes already on the sky, are sitting braced for the revving up – that a plane is pronounced overweight. Everyone is startled to hear a volunteer being asked to leave. It happened like this, coming like a bolt from the blue, late one autumn afternoon. A suave voice came over the intercom asking for such a person, promising that his fare would be cut by half if he would come on by the next plane. In the minute following this request there was no movement to be seen along the lines of seats. Not a head turned. Hands which had been fixing seatbelts or fiddling with the overhead knobs were stilled, but there was no volunteer. The request was repeated more firmly, though still politely, still promising rewards. And now at last there came a movement from the rear. All heads swivelled round as a small, middle-aged man of slight proportions made his way slowly up the long aisle towards the front of the plane.

  It was the first thing his fellow-passengers noticed about him, or rather it was the only thing, the first and the last – his thinness. More than a few eyes fixed him, as he went past, with a disbelieving stare. Could the removal of this lightweight make any difference to the huge machine? Could their lives depend perhaps on one thin man? They scanned him hopefully for fat. He had no fat at all. The thin man may have sensed something of this feeling as he edged past without meeting the eyes, scarcely touching the seats, as though he had been searched relentlessly for the very substance of his being and found wanting. Nor did this passenger have any illusions about the value of his action. It was not a heroic one. He did not live in an age of heroes. He had not been asked to jump out of a moving plane nor to take over the controls from a crew of mad pilots. Indeed, far from gaining respect, he thought it more likely he would be judged as mean-minded, a man willing to give himself endless trouble simply to save a pound or two. It was true his fellow-passengers were glad enough to forget him, for in an aircraft the cause of even one instant’s unease is not to be tolerated. When he stepped from the plane he disappeared from their eyes and minds as quickly and surely as though he had stepped over the edge of a cliff.

  But the spare passenger had simply stepped down on to the ground of his own home town, and once through the genial formalities at the desk, he could go where he liked for the next two hours. The trouble was he had no desire to go anywhere. He was to be away for seven weeks on a long business trip which would take him first to London and from there to the Continent. He had said his farewells to the family. Now his wife would be peacefully filling up the gap with a visit to a neighbour across the way, his two sons would be round the corner regaling themselves and their friends with extra rounds of beer. His daughter would be preparing to meet her boyfriend and re-doing the cheek where one tear had made serious inroads on the make-up. This was no time to return. The passenger therefore decided to walk about for a while, but unobtrusively, as befitting one who had only half-returned – a kind of ghost coming back to his town to have a last look round before returning to the sky. ‘If you break my heart I’ll go, but I’ll be back again!’ a transistor sang for him from some far corner, as he walked out through the waiting-room towards the bus for town.

  Even as he approached the city he was still thinking about the plane, following its load of people as they circled farther and farther out into the blue evening. And it seemed to him that he grew lighter as he imagined it, that he grew hollow as if he had unguardedly breathed their thinner air. The bus let him off at a familiar corner where there were a café, a boutique and a flower-shop. He entered the café, went directly to a secluded alcove and almost immediately ran into someone he recognized – a man with whom he had a nodding acquaintance inside the long complex of corridors in his own firm. Over a coffee he told his tale, and the other’s eyes bulged.

  ‘I’ve flown enough myself but I’ll admit I’ve never heard that one!’

  ‘Once in a while it does happen.’

  ‘Why not throw out some baggage instead? Anyway – you’re lucky!’

  ‘Lucky? You mean I save half my fare?’

  ‘Not only that. Lucky to be asked to make any gesture at all. Who gets the chance these days? Very few.’

  ‘But it wasn’t like that,’ said the passenger. ‘This was a non-event – the same as stepping off the wrong train.’

  ‘Look,’ said the other, ‘if someone hadn’t got off they wouldn’t have gone up. Right now they wouldn’t have been up there in that sky at all. I wish I’d been given a chance like that. I’m always waiting but it never comes. The most I’ve ever done is give up my
seat in a bus, and even then you can’t be absolutely sure of a smile. Just as likely to be insulted. But you! Now there’s a stroke of luck!’

  The passenger was silent for a while, looking at the other meditatively over the rim of his cup. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said at last. ‘I suppose I think just as well of myself as the next man. On the other hand, I’m unable to see myself nowadays as a person of great weight. I have other things of course. No doubt about it. Not weight. That’s simply how I feel.’

  The other looked him over quickly as though measuring him in feet, weighing him in stones. He even glanced back at the counter as if to see what could be got there to fatten up the man. But he was no fool. He knew it was not only the physical substance they were discussing. He played for time, however. From the counter he brought back two buttered rolls and two more cups of coffee. And at the same time he added the weight of words. ‘But for you,’ he repeated softly, ‘they wouldn’t be in the sky at all!’

  The passenger sat and thought about this, once more balancing himself in space against the huge machine – against its tons of steel, against elephantine wheels and whirling blades, against its heavy human load. True enough there was something to be said in his favour. His reluctant presence on solid earth at this very instant was the price of their flight. But it did not answer everything.

  The other watched him carefully as he ate his roll – and somewhat anxiously – for he had begun to take an interest in this exceedingly thin man with the weight problem. He waited till the last bite of roll had gone, before asking: ‘You feel better now? You look better.’

  ‘As far as the stomach goes – yes.’

  ‘You are still worried about weight?’

  The passenger smiled. ‘Naturally the middle-aged are expected to worry about overweight. What isn’t always admitted is their worry about the lack of it. At our stage we’re expected, aren’t we, to make pronouncements of weight, to have opinions that carry weight, to bring our weight to bear, to throw our weight around and all the other phrases related to what should be? Worst of all, and most ridiculous, we’re expected to have gathered up some great load of wisdom…’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘That’s the trouble. Less weight. Less with the family, less with the job. My opinions on this and that carry less weight nowadays. My credentials, my references and what have you are exactly the same, of course, but now they weigh less. I very seldom have to weigh my words because they are not listened to anyway.’

  ‘You’re weighing them now.’

  ‘Yes, only because you are a sympathetic listener.’

  The sympathetic listener looked pleased, but to him it was not enough to listen. He preferred action. Moreover he was afraid that when the thin man began to be really sorry for himself, even listening would be no cure. He suggested a move.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said the other as they emerged from the door. ‘I’ve not got much time left.’

  ‘Simply to walk around. Everything’s within reach hereabouts. Let’s look in here.’

  The passenger hesitated on the threshold of a record shop. On window posters and on the sleeves of discs young men were shown singing – gilded youths polished by pink and yellow spotlights, or black-robed, close-cropped with sequined eyelids like frenzied monks, or others again, hairy and sombre as hermits. Song burst from the four walls with ear-splitting fury. ‘It is not my scene,’ said the thin man. Yet the themes were ancient and universal. Through the raucous, brutal bellow and the rhythmic moan, Love and Freedom were still to the fore.

  ‘Maybe it is not,’ said the other in answer, ‘but we can go through from here into the boutique.’ They stepped through, past beaded curtains and down some steps into a shop at the back. It was quieter here, though the place still throbbed with drumming. Coats and trousers, scarves and dresses swung gently on their hangers. From ceiling hooks the clustered beads and chains vibrated and a subdued rattling came from the boxes of rings and brooches on the table. There was a smell of spice and incense.

  ‘Have you ever looked…?’ said the sympathiser, putting up his hand towards the ropes of neckchains.

  ‘No, never,’ said the passenger, stepping back as a cluster of heavy metal crosses swung before his eyes. ‘Besides I am not really what you would call…’

  ‘No need to be any kind of Christian nowadays to wear these,’ said the other. ‘You can wear anything you fancy – crosses, amulets, wreaths, witch doctors’ charms, ankle bells. These strings of worry beads might be worth looking at. There are some beauties here.’

  ‘Worry beads?’ a charming, smiling girl stepped from the counter and began unlooping beads of polished wood, strings of chalk-white shells, beads of yellow glass. Over the traveller’s head she slipped a string of small green stones. He held them – pleasant to the touch – smooth, warm and slightly waxy as though some stronger sun in another country had melted their surface. The other two stepped back to admire him. ‘Definitely yes,’ said the man. ‘Those are your stones all right.’

  ‘But what am I supposed…?’

  ‘Anywhere,’ said the girl. ‘In your pocket, or just leave them on. Keep them hidden if you like.’ Cool, firm hands tucked the beads out of sight inside his waistcoat.

  ‘Would you believe it? – the man has a weight problem,’ said his companion.

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ said the girl, glancing at his waistline.

  ‘Yes, he feels that he has not, at his age, made sufficient weighty pronouncements to the world. And now of course he thinks it’s too late.’

  The passenger could not deny this charge, but he gave his own version and for a few minutes, until the girl was called to another customer, they discussed lightness and weight and the formidable heaviness of the great globe itself. The passenger could not help noticing as he glanced around how light everything here appeared to be – airy fabrics stirring, bird and fish mobiles twirling in a breath of air, swinging bells, ruffled feathers, wings and flowers. The whole pile put together could hardly weigh much. Nothing was meant to last. Was that perhaps its value? The records in the adjoining shop still yelled and moaned of Love and Freedom, but it was of its changing and ephemeral nature that they sang.

  ‘I suppose that was not your kind of place either,’ said the younger man, as they moved away towards the windows of the expensive flower-shop next door. There were few ordinary bunches or bouquets on display today. Huge funeral wreaths of dark leaves and waxy yellow flowers were propped up against chrysanthemums bound into hard crosses. Tightly packed balls of dried white flowers were strewn about like plushy graveyard cushions.

  ‘Well then – what now?’ said the man again with some irritation. ‘Is this your scene?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said the passenger, briskly for the first time, and in case there was any suggestion that he was already half-dead, he went decisively in past the wreaths and crosses into the back of the shop where all was earthy, damp and aromatic, with pots of leafy plants on shelves and fresh bunches of roses, iris and carnation standing in tubs of water.

  ‘We are looking for a buttonhole – something bright and perfumed,’ said the younger man. ‘It’s for my friend here and it will have to last him through a journey.’

  ‘I am not going to a wedding!’ exclaimed the passenger. But the shop assistants, who had been gravely waiting to assist mourners, clustered round as though it was their last chance at the end of the day to forget the showy displays of death in the front of the shop.

  ‘What’s more, he has just stepped out of a plane – well, not a moving one, that’s asking a bit much of a human being – but he has removed his own weight so that all the others could go on.’ Exclamations of admiration and surprise greeted this announcement, and a few light murmurs of disbelief.

  ‘Naturally he got a cut-price fare out of it. Again it would be asking a bit much if he’d had to do it for nothing,’ added the man, as he watched a free red carnation being pinned into the passenger’s buttonhole. For a while they fussed
about him, wondering how long the flower would last, whether it would survive the heat, the pressure, the wind on the tarmac. And again the passenger wondered why he should ever concern himself with weight or lasting things when the whole shop of flowers would fade and pass into memory. But again – did this give it its value? Tonight he believed he would remember every petal of the place.

  Time was almost up and the passenger was ready to board the bus back to the airfield. ‘Have you everything you need?’ asked the other.

  ‘More than enough.’

  ‘But what about something to eat on the journey – a small bar of chocolate?’

  Disregarding the traveller’s protests, he stopped at a small newspaper stall where a few boxes of chocolates were laid out. ‘Not even a small bar? Is that all you have?’ the thin man heard him ask. He came back with a small twist of golden chocolate sovereigns in a net bag.

  ‘But that’s ridiculous. I am not a child!’

  ‘They are simply thin chocolates. There is nothing to them.’

  ‘I have never wanted to gain weight of that kind,’ said the thin man.