Happy Half-Hours

by A. A. Milne

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s absurd to go on like this. You had better see about it today, Celia.’

  ‘I don’t think – I mean, I think – you know, it’s really your turn to do something for the bathroom.’

  ‘What do you mean, my turn? Didn’t I buy the glass shelves for it? You’d never even heard of glass shelves.’

  ‘Well, who put them up after they’d been lying about for a month?’ said Celia. ‘I did.’

  ‘And who bumped his head against them the next day? I did.’

  ‘Yes, but that wasn’t really a useful thing to do. It’s your turn to be useful.’

  ‘Celia, this is mutiny. All household matters are supposed to be looked after by you. I do the brain work; I earn the money; I cannot be bothered with these little domestic worries. I have said so before.’

  ‘I sort of thought you had.’

  You know, I am afraid that is true.

  ‘After all,’ she went on, ‘the drinks are in your department.’

  ‘Hock, perhaps,’ I said; ‘soapy water, no. There is a difference.’

  ‘Not very much,’ said Celia.

  By the end of another week I was getting seriously alarmed. I began to fear that unless I watched it very carefully I should be improving myself too much.

  ‘While the water was running out this morning,’ I said to Celia, as I started my breakfast just about lunch-time, ‘I got Paradise Lost off by heart, and made five hundred and ninety-six revolutions with the back paws. And then it was time to shave myself again. What a life for a busy man!’

  ‘I don’t know if you know that it’s no –’

  ‘Begin again,’ I said.

  ‘– that it’s no good waiting for the last inch or two to go out by itself. Because it won’t. You have to – to hoosh it out.’

  ‘I do. And I sit on the taps looking like a full moon and try to draw it out. But it’s no good. We had a neap tide today and I had to hoosh four inches. Jolly.’

  Celia gave a sigh of resignation.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll go to the plumber today.’

  ‘Not the plumber,’ I begged. ‘On the contrary. The plumber is the man who stops the leaks. What we really want is an unplumber.’

  We fell into silence again.

  ‘But how silly we are!’ cried Celia suddenly. ‘Of course!’

  ‘What’s the matter now?’

  ‘The bath is the landlord’s business! Write and tell him.’

  ‘But – but what shall I say?’ Somehow I knew Celia would put it on to me.

  ‘Why, just – say. When you’re paying the rent, you know.’

  ‘I – I see.’

  I retired to the library and thought it out. I hate writing business letters. The result is a mixture of formality and chattiness which seems to me all wrong.

  My first letter to the landlord went like this:

  Dear Sir, – I enclose cheque in payment of last quarter’s rent. Our bath won’t run out properly. Yours faithfully.

  It is difficult to say just what is wrong with that letter, and yet it is obvious that something has happened to it. It isn’t right. I tried again.

  Dear Sir, – Enclosed please find cheque in payment of enclosed account. I must ask you either to enlarge the exit to our bath or to supply an emergency door. At present my morning and evening baths are in serious danger of clashing. Yours faithfully.

  My third attempt had more sting in it:

  Dear Sir, – Unless you do something to our bath I cannot send you enclosed cheque in payment of enclosed account. Otherwise I would have. Yours faithfully.

  At this point I whistled to Celia and laid the letters before her.

  ‘You see what it is,’ I said. ‘I’m not quite getting the note.’

  ‘But you’re so abrupt,’ she said. ‘You must remember that this is all coming quite as a surprise to him. You want to lead up to it more gradually.’

  ‘Ah, perhaps you’re right. Let’s try again.’

  I tried again, with this result:

  Dear Sir, – In sending you a cheque in payment of last quarter’s rent I feel I must tell you how comfortable we are here. The only inconvenience – and it is indeed a trifling one, dear Sir – which we have experienced is in connexion with the bathroom. Elegantly appointed and spacious as this room is, commodious as we find the actual bath itself, yet we feel that in the matter of the waste-pipe the high standard of efficiency so discernible elsewhere is sadly lacking. Were I alone I should not complain; but unfortunately there are two of us; and, for the second one, the weariness of waiting while the waters of the first bath exude drop by drop is almost more than can be borne. I speak with knowledge, for it is I who –

  I tore the letter up and turned to Celia.

  ‘I’m a fool,’ I said. ‘I’ve just thought of something which will save me all this rotten business every morning.’

  ‘I’m so glad. What is it?’

  ‘Why, of course – in future I will go to the bath first.’

  And I do. It is a ridiculously simple solution and I cannot think why it never occurred to me before.

  – Heavy Work –

  Every now and then doctors slap me about and ask me if I was always as thin as this.

  ‘As thin as what?’ I say with as much dignity as is possible to a man who has had his shirt taken away from him.

  ‘As thin as this,’ says the doctor, hooking his stethoscope on to one of my ribs, and then going round to the other side to see how I am getting on there.

  I am slightly better on the other side, but he runs his pencil up and down me and produces that pleasing noise which small boys get by dragging a stick along railings.

  I explain that I was always delicately slender, but that latterly my ribs have been overdoing it.

  ‘You must put on more flesh,’ he says sternly, running his pencil up and down them again. (He must have been a great nuisance as a small boy.)

  ‘I will,’ I say fervently, ‘I will.’

  Satisfied by my promise he gives me back my shirt.

  But it is not only the doctor who complains; Celia is even more upset by it. She says tearfully that I remind her of a herring. Unfortunately she does not like herrings. It is my hope some day to remind her of a turbot and make her happy. She, too, has my promise that I will put on flesh.

  We had a fortnight’s leave a little while ago, which seemed to give me a good opportunity of putting some on. So we retired to a house in the country where there is a weighing-machine in the bathroom. We felt that the mere sight of this weighing-machine twice daily would stimulate the gaps between my ribs. They would realize that they had been brought down there on business.

  The first morning I weighed myself just before stepping into the water. When I got down to breakfast I told Celia the result.

  ‘You are a herring,’ she said sadly.

  ‘But think what an opportunity it gives me. If I started the right weight, the rest of the fortnight would be practically wasted. By the way, the doctor talks about putting on flesh, but he didn’t say how much he wanted. What do you think would be a nice amount?’

  ‘About another stone,’ said Celia. ‘You were just a nice size before the War.’

  ‘All right. Perhaps I had better tell the weighing-machine. This is a co-operative job; I can’t do it all myself.’

  The next morning I was the same as before, and the next, and the next, and the next.

  ‘Really,’ said Celia, pathetically, ‘we might just as well have gone to a house where there wasn’t a weighing-machine at all. I don’t believe it’s trying. Are you sure you stand on it long enough?’

  ‘Long enough for me. It’s a bit cold, you know.’

  ‘Well, make quite sure to-morrow. I must have you not quite so herringy.’

  I made quite sure the next morning. I had eight stone and a half on the weight part, and the-little-thing-you-move-up-and-down was on the ‘4’ notch, and the bar balanced midway between the top and the
bottom. To have had a crowd in to see would have been quite unnecessary; the whole machine was shouting eight-stone-eleven as loudly as it could.

  ‘I expect it’s got used to you,’ said Celia when I told her the sad state of affairs. ‘It likes eight-stone-eleven people.’

  ‘We will give it’, I said, ‘one more chance.’

  Next morning the weights were as I had left them, and I stepped on without much hope, expecting that the bar would come slowly up to its midway position of rest. To my immense delight, however, it never hesitated but went straight up to the top. At last I had put on flesh!

  Very delicately I moved the-thing-you-move-up-and-down on to its next notch. Still the bar stayed at the top. I had put on at least another ounce of flesh!

  I continued to put on more ounces. Still the bar remained up! I was eight-stone-thirteen … Good heavens, I was eight-stone-fourteen!

  I pushed the-thing-you-move-up-and-down back to the zero position, and exchanged the half-stone weight for a stone one. Excited but a trifle cold, for it was a fresh morning, and the upper part of the window was wide open, I went up from nine stone ounce by ounce …

  At nine-stone-twelve I jumped off for a moment and shut the window …

  At eleven-stone-eight I had to get off again in order to attend to the bath, which was in danger of overflowing …

  At fifteen-stone-eleven the breakfast gong went … At nineteen-stone-nine I realized that I had overdone it. However I decided to know the worst. The worst that the machine could tell me was twenty-stone-seven. At twenty-stone-seven I left it.

  Celia, who had nearly finished breakfast, looked up eagerly as I came in.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘I am sorry I am late,’ I apologized, ‘but I have been putting on flesh.’

  ‘Have you really gone up?’ she asked excitedly.

  ‘Yes.’ I began mechanically to help myself to porridge, and then stopped. ‘No, perhaps not,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Have you gone up much?’

  ‘Much,’ I said. ‘Quite much.’

  ‘How much? Quick!’

  ‘Celia,’ I said sadly, ‘I am twenty-stone-seven. I may be more; the weighing-machine gave out then.’

  ‘Oh, but, darling, that’s much too much.’

  ‘Still, it’s what we came here for,’ I pointed out. ‘No, no bacon, thanks; a small piece of dry toast.’

  ‘I suppose the machine couldn’t have made a mistake?’

  ‘It seemed very decided about it. It didn’t hesitate at all.’

  ‘Just try again after breakfast to make sure.’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better try now,’ I said, getting up, ‘because if I turned out to be only twenty-stone-six I might venture on a little porridge after all. I shan’t be long.’

  I went upstairs. I didn’t dare face that weighing-machine in my clothes after the way in which I had already strained it without them. I took them off hurriedly and stepped on. To my joy the bar stayed in its downward position. I took off an ounce … then another ounce. The bar remained down …

  At eighteen-stone-two I jumped off for a moment in order to shut the window, which some careless housemaid had opened again …

  At twelve-stone-seven I shouted through the door to Celia that I shouldn’t be long, and that I should want the porridge after all …

  At four-stone-six I said that I had better have an egg or two as well.

  At three ounces I stepped off, feeling rather shaken.

  I have not used the weighing-machine since; partly because I do not believe it is trustworthy, partly because I spent the rest of my leave in bed with a severe cold. We are now in London again, where I am putting on flesh. At least the doctor who slapped me about yesterday said that I must, and I promised him that I would.

  HOME LIFE

  – Fixtures and Fittings –

  There was once a young man who decided to be a poodle-clipper. He felt that he had a natural bent for it, and he had been told that a fashionable poodle-clipper could charge his own price for his services. But his father urged him to seek another profession. ‘It is an uncertain life, poodle-clipping,’ he said. ‘To begin with, very few people keep poodles at all. Of these few, only a small proportion wants its poodles clipped. And, of this small proportion, a still smaller proportion is likely to want its poodles clipped by you.’ So the young man decided to be a hair-dresser instead.

  I thought of this story the other day when I was bargaining with a house-agent about ‘fixtures’, and I decided that no son of mine should become a curtainpole manufacturer. I suppose that the price of a curtain-rod (pole or perch) is only a few shillings, and, once made, it remains in a house for ever. Tenants come and go, new landlords buy and sell, but the old brass rod stays firm at the top of the window, supporting curtain after curtain. How many new sets are made in a year? No more, it would seem, than the number of new houses built. Far better, then, to manufacture an individual possession like a toothbrush, which has the additional advantage of wearing out every few months.

  But from the consumer’s point of view, a curtainrod is a pleasant thing. He has the satisfaction of feeling that, having once bought it, he has bought it for the rest of his life. He may change his house and with it his fixtures, but there is no loss on the brass part of the transaction, however much there may be on the bricks and mortar. What he pays out with one hand, he takes in with the other. Nor is his property subject to the ordinary mischances of life. There was an historic character who ‘lost the big drum,’ but he would become even more historic who had lost a curtain-rod, and neither parlour-maid nor cat is ever likely to wear a guilty conscience over the breaking of one.

  I have not yet discovered, in spite of my recent familiarity with house-agents, the difference between a fixture and a fitting. It is possible that neither word has any virtue without the other, as is the case with ‘spick’ and ‘span’, One has to be both; however dapper, one would never be described as a span gentleman. In the same way it may be that a curtain-rod or an electric light is never just a fixture or a fitting, but always ‘included in the fixtures and fittings’. Then there is a distinction, apparently, between a ‘landlord’s fixture’ and a ‘tenant’s fixture’, which is rather subtle. A fire-dog is a landlord’s fixture; so is a door-plate. If you buy a house you get the fire-dogs and the doorplates thrown in, which seems unnecessarily generous. I can understand the landlord deciding to throw in the walls and the roof, because he couldn’t do much with them if you refused to take them, but it is a mystery why he should include a door-plate, which can easily be removed and sold to somebody else. And if a doorplate, why not a curtain-rod? A curtain-rod is a necessity to the incoming tenant; a door-plate is merely a luxury for the grubby-fingered to help them to keep the paint clean. One might be expected to bring one’s own door-plate with one, according to the size of one’s hand.

  For the whole idea of a fixture or fitting can only be that it is something about which there can be no individual taste. We furnish a house according to our own private fancy; the ‘fixtures’ are the furnishings in regard to which we are prepared to accept the general fancy. The other man’s curtain-rod, though easily detachable and able to fit a hundred other windows, is a fixture; his carpet-as-planned (to use the delightful language of the house-agent), though securely nailed down and the wrong size for any other room but this, is not a fixture. Upon some such reasoning the first authorized schedule of fixtures and fittings must have been made out.

  It seems a pity that it has not been extended. There are other things than curtain-rods and electric-light bulbs which might be left behind in the old house and picked up again in the new. The silver cigarette-box, which we have all had as a birthday or wedding present, might safely be handed over to the incoming tenant, in the certainty that another just like it will be waiting for us in our next house. True, it will have different initials on it, but that will only make it the more interesting, our own having become fatiguing to us by this time. Possibly this sort of thin
g has already been done in an unofficial way among neighbours. By mutual agreement they leave their aspidistras and their ‘Maiden’s Prayer’ behind them. It saves trouble and expense in the moving, which is an important thing in these days, and there would always be the hope that the next aspidistra might be on the eve of flowering or laying eggs, or whatever it is that its owner expects from it.

  – The Cupboard –

  It was the landlord who first called my attention to the cupboard; I should never have noticed it myself.

  ‘A very useful cupboard you see there,’ he said; ‘I should include that in the fixtures.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said I, not at all surprised; for the idea of his taking away the cupboard had not occurred to me.

  ‘You won’t find many rooms in London with a cupboard like that.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ I said. ‘Well, I’ll let you have my decision in a few days. The rent with the cupboard, you say, is –’ And I named the price.

  ‘Yes, with the cupboard.’

  So that settled the cupboard question.

  Settled it so far as it concerned him. For me it was only the beginning. In the year that followed my eyes were opened, so that I learned at last to put the right value on a cupboard. I appreciate now the power of the mind which conceived this thing, the nobility of the great heart which included it among the fixtures. And I am not ungrateful.