The Penguin Book of the British Short Story

by Philip Hensher

  He was expressing a synopsis of these views in a mixture of Urdu and Cape Dutch, when the words were swept from his lips by the sight of a woman’s face, peering from the branches of a near-by tree.

  Colonel Pashley-Drake reeled where he stood. Like so many out-door men, he was the soul of modesty. Once, in Bechuanaland, he had left a native witch-dance in a marked manner because he considered the chief’s third supplementary wife insufficiently clad. An acute consciousness of the sketchiness of his costume overcame him. He blushed brightly.

  ‘My dear young lady …’ he stammered.

  He had got thus far when he perceived that the young woman was aiming at him something that looked remarkably like an air-gun. Her tongue protruded thoughtfully from the corner of her mouth, she had closed one eye and with the other was squinting tensely along the barrel.

  Colonel Sir Francis Pashley-Drake did not linger. In all England there was probably no man more enthusiastic about shooting: but the fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun. With an agility which no gnu, unless in the very pink of condition, could have surpassed, he sprang to the side of the roof and leaped off. There was a clump of reeds not far from the boathouse. He galloped across the turf and dived into them.

  Charlotte descended from her tree. Her expression was petulant. Girls nowadays are spoiled, and only too readily become peevish when baulked of their pleasures.

  ‘I had no idea he was so nippy,’ she said.

  ‘A quick mover,’ agreed Aubrey. ‘I imagine he got that way from dodging rhinoceroses.’

  ‘Why can’t they make these silly guns with two barrels? A single barrel doesn’t give a girl a chance.’

  Nestling among the reeds, Colonel Sir Francis Pashley-Drake, in spite of the indignation natural to a man in his position, could not help feeling a certain complacency. The old woodcraft of the hunter had stood him, he felt, in good stead. Not many men, he told himself, would have had the initiative and swift intelligence to act so promptly in the face of peril.

  He was aware of voices close by.

  ‘What do we do now?’ he heard Charlotte Mulliner say.

  ‘We must think,’ said the voice of his nephew Aubrey.

  ‘He’s in there somewhere.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hate to see a fine head like that get away,’ said Charlotte, and her voice was still querulous. ‘Especially after I winged him. The very next poem I write is going to be an appeal to air-gun manufacturers to use their intelligence, if they have any, and turn out a line with two barrels.’

  ‘I shall write a Pastel in Prose on the same subject,’ agreed Aubrey.

  ‘Well, what shall we do?’

  There was a short silence. An insect of unknown species crept up Colonel Pashley-Drake and bit him in the small of the back.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Aubrey. ‘I remember Uncle Francis mentioning to me once that when wounded zebus take cover by the reaches of the Lower Zambesi, the sportsman despatches a native assistant to set fire to …’

  Sir Francis Pashley-Drake emitted a hollow groan. It was drowned by Charlotte’s cry of delight.

  ‘Why, of course! How clever you are, Mr Bassinger.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Aubrey modestly.

  ‘Have you matches?’

  ‘I have a cigarette-lighter.’

  ‘Then would it be bothering you too much to go and set light to those reeds – about there would be a good place – and I’ll wait here with the gun.’

  ‘I should be charmed.’

  ‘I hate to trouble you.’

  ‘No trouble, I assure you,’ said Aubrey. ‘A pleasure.’

  Three minutes later the revellers on the lawn were interested to observe a sight rare at the better class of English garden-party. Out of a clump of laurel-bushes that bordered the smoothly mown turf there came charging a stout, pink gentleman of middle age who hopped from side to side as he ran. He was wearing a loin-cloth, and seemed in a hurry. They had just time to recognize in this newcomer their hostess’s brother, Colonel Sir Francis Pashley-Drake, when he snatched a cloth from the nearest table, draped it round him, and with a quick leap took refuge behind the portly form of the Bishop of Stortford, who was talking to the local Master of Hounds about the difficulty he had in keeping his vicars off the incense.

  Charlotte and Aubrey had paused in the shelter of the laurels. Aubrey, peering through this zareba, clicked his tongue regretfully.

  ‘He’s taken cover again,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we shall find it difficult to dig him out of there. He’s gone to earth behind a bishop.’

  Receiving no reply, he turned.

  ‘Miss Mulliner!’ he exclaimed. ‘Charlotte! What is the matter?’

  A strange change had come over the girl’s beautiful face since he had last gazed at it. The fire had died out of those lovely eyes, leaving them looking like those of a newly awakened somnambulist. She was pale, and the tip of her nose quivered.

  ‘Where am I?’ she murmured.

  ‘Bludleigh Manor, Lesser Bludleigh, Goresby-on-the-Ouse, Bedfordshire. Telephone 28 Goresby,’ said Aubrey quickly.

  ‘Have I been dreaming? Or did I really … Ah, yes, yes!’ she moaned, shuddering violently. ‘It all comes back to me. I shot Sir Francis with the air-gun!’

  ‘You certainly did,’ said Aubrey, and would have gone on to comment with warm approbation on the skill she had shown, a skill which – in an untrained novice – had struck him as really remarkable. But he checked himself. ‘Surely,’ he said, ‘you are not letting the fact disturb you? It’s the sort of thing that might have happened to anyone.’

  She interrupted him.

  ‘How right you were, Mr Bassinger, to warn me against the spell of Bludleigh. And how wrong I was to blame you for borrowing my parasol to chase a rat. Can you ever forgive me?’

  ‘Charlotte!’

  ‘Aubrey!’

  ‘Charlotte!’

  ‘Hush!’ she said. ‘Listen.’

  On the lawn, Sir Francis Pashley-Drake was telling his story to an enthralled audience. The sympathy of the meeting, it was only too plain, was entirely with him. This shooting of a sitting sun-bather had stirred the feelings of his hearers deeply. Indignant exclamations came faintly to the ears of the young couple in the laurels.

  ‘Most irregular!’

  ‘Not done!’

  ‘Scarcely cricket!’

  And then, from Sir Alexander Bassinger, a stern ‘I shall require a full explanation.’

  Charlotte turned to Aubrey.

  ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘Well,’ said Aubrey, reflecting, ‘I don’t think we had better just go and join the party and behave as if nothing had happened. The atmosphere doesn’t seem right. What I would propose is that we take a short cut through the fields to the station, hook up with the five-fifty express at Goresby, go to London, have a bit of dinner, get married and …’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ cried Charlotte. ‘Take me away from this awful house.’

  ‘To the ends of the world,’ said Aubrey fervently. He paused. ‘Look here,’ he said suddenly, ‘if you move over to where I’m standing, you get the old boy plumb spang against the sky-line. You wouldn’t care for just one last …’

  ‘No, no!’

  ‘Merely a suggestion,’ said Aubrey. ‘Ah well, perhaps you’re right. Then let’s be shifting.’

  ‘MALACHI’ WHITAKER

  Courage

  Isabel Allat was twenty, plump, pleasant, and usually smiling. She had bright, very blue eyes, and small hands with soft palms. There were many things she did not understand, such as people biting their nails, or really liking beer or black coffee, or spitting in the streets; even though she pondered over these things for a long time, she got no nearer to understanding.

  The day was a January one, light-skied but piercingly cold, yet she wore a thin navy coat and skirt and a small purple silk hat. Her underclothes were thick and c
heap, without abiding warmth, but she had on a good pair of dark wool stockings. She had had to put on these new spring things because she had got a job at last, and the old – the very old thick coat which had been good enough for the eight o’clock job was certainly not good enough for the nine o’clock one.

  She walked along, through Forster Square, looking about her, taking everything in. Because it was the first morning, she was a quarter of an hour early. Her stomach felt unquiet, she had had too little breakfast, had walked too soon, had slept too spasmodically. It had been alright to say jokingly the night before, ‘if you’re waking, call me early, call me early, mother dear’, but that made for thoughts like chasms. Supposing mother should be late? Why mother should be late, with the two other girls still setting off at twenty to eight, she did not know. No, she was just terrified. Why had she left her old job for this new one full of perils?

  She kept on walking dreamily along, glad that she was no longer to use her hands for making senseless paper ornaments.

  ‘Who’s going to buy these awful things?’ she used to cry to Jem the foreman. ‘I wouldn’t.’

  Yet for some reason, she made the things better and more quickly than anyone else.

  There had been something fascinating in the long, close room, in the bent heads of the other girls and women, in the ceaseless chatter that went on in undertones. Now and then, everybody would sing, not very tunefully, but good-naturedly and happily. It depended on Jem’s mood as to how long this went on. Sometimes he would scowl and grimace, and the song would drop dead. Other times, he would join in with apparent indifference.

  ‘Oh, Jem,’ thought Isabel, ‘I shall miss you terribly.’

  How could the world go on without Jem, without Mrs Holroyd, without Minnie Parkinson, and Beryl? (They all called Beryl Barrel, because she was so fat, yet Beryl was a lovely name.) The sun went behind an early morning cloud, and the keen wind struck through the thin costume and made gooselumps rise on the girl’s skin. Her steps had slowed, she was afraid to go any further. Abruptly, she turned and walked back into the square again.

  Surely if she walked along Swaine Street and down Leeds Road, she could go into the old door, up the old steps and slip into her old chair, gather up her old stock of paper and scent and gum, and just go on with her work where she had left off? But it was twelve minutes to nine. The girls would have been there over three quarters of an hour. They were always early because Jem’s train got down early, and anybody arriving at five minutes to eight had a chance of talking to Jem for a little while.

  Jem was married, and had two little boys, yet none of the girls except Mrs Holroyd has ever seen his family. The others just didn’t believe in it. Jem was Jem, and he existed in this dreamy, scent-laden atmosphere. He was dark, and thick, and short – almost Italian-looking, with bluish teeth and a strong, nicotine-full breath. The thought of the roomful of girls hovered about him. Even the little fifteen-year-olds would seize any excuse to go up to him.

  ‘Help me, Jem. I don’t know how to finish this.’

  ‘Get Mrs Holroyd to help you. Am I a wet-nurse? You young tarts give me a pain in the neck.’

  ‘Young tarts!’ The fifteen-year-old would sidle back, blushing. Didn’t ‘tart’ mean ‘sweetheart’? But Jem had spoken.

  Isabel crossed over the station and looked at the bookstall. People were buying morning papers so quickly that the two men could scarcely cope with them. She could not understand why they should buy or want these papers. And yet, suddenly she took twopence out of her bag and bought The Times.

  As soon as she had done it, the thrill that had entered left her. Why had she spent her only twopence? She had no more, not a cent. Each morning her mother gave her her expenses for the day. From Saturday’s spending money (she had had to buy gloves and a scarf) there had been nothing left but this twopence. Why, then, have bought a Times? And the station clock said six minutes to nine. Folding the paper under her arm, she ran through Forster Square again and up the hill.

  This, then, was the street? This was the office in which she had had her interview, in which she had said she could type (having practised on a friend’s typewriter but five times), in which she had said, no, she could not do any shorthand, but she would learn; the office in which she had been praised for her clear writing (but I don’t always write as nicely as this, she had said in a burst of frankness, I took a lot of trouble with that letter), the office in which she had grinned, and felt pleased, and sure at the moment that she could do anything that was asked of her.

  There was a wide red door at the bottom of the steps. Isabel went through the doorway and upstairs, passing a woman who was kneeling on a rubber mat and wiping up water with a black cloth.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said politely, remembering that in the old fairy tales one had to be polite to everybody. But she did not like the look of the woman, who was young and fair and strong, and had an angry glare in her eye.

  ‘Good morning,’ said the woman abruptly.

  Then something very strange happened. There were two entrances to the building. She had taken the nearer one, and had to walk along corridors. At the far end of the last corridor everything was in confusion. The girl kept skipping over streams of water which gushed along the linoleumed corridor. Men and boys were walking about with wet red ledgers in their arms. She simply stared at the things around her and then went and knocked at the glassed door of the suite of offices in which she was to be employed. It was certainly quieter here.

  Nobody answered, so she opened the door and went inside. There should have been an office-boy (‘the office-boy comes at half-past eight, Miss Allat’). The floor was not only wet and sodden, but the brown linoleum was ridged. Water was even in standing on the level backs of the sloping desks.

  ‘I must be dreaming,’ she thought. ‘Or perhaps the angry charwoman does this every Monday morning.’

  There was a small desk in the middle of the room, holding a typewriter with a tin cover on it. That was wet, too. There were six windows. One was broken. Also, water was trickling down the green-washed walls.

  Isabel put down her Times and her black bag on the desk and took off her small blue coat and purple silk hat and the white, thin scarf she had bought on Saturday, and hung them up. Underneath, she was wearing a cotton blouse with dark blue spots on it. She looked with some dismay at the very shiny, round wooden stool she was to sit on, and wondered how soon her skirt would match its brightness. Then she looked slowly round the room again.

  ‘It is a wet place,’ she thought, ‘but I suppose I shall get used to it.’

  All at once the door opened and a very little, old, bald man came in. He was breathing quickly, fluffing up the ends of a huge moustache. He said ‘Good morning,’ and came running forward to shake hands. ‘Miss Allat? I’m Mr Palfreyman, the head clerk, and the cashier too. Oh dear, oh dear, whatever’s happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. Isn’t it wet?’ asked Isabel solemnly.

  The little man ran here and there in creaking boots, while Isabel looked at him gravely. Every fresh wet thing he saw made him groan. ‘How lucky, how lucky that we put everything in the safe at night. All but the big guard books and the letter books. They’re sodden. Oh dear, oh!’

  ‘There’s been a fire, you know,’ said Mr Palfreyman, looking at the young girl sharply. ‘Now, why wasn’t I informed? There’ll be young Mr Julian worrying his head off, and nothing being done about it. I could have been down at five o’clock if necessary, you know. I’ve been with the firm for forty years. But Mr Julian will have the police call him if anything happens, and they always used to call me. He’s been a different man since his father died last year. You must obey young Mr Julian,’ said the old man, wagging his fingers and blowing out his large moustache with three sharp breaths.

  ‘But where’s that young boy, that Reggie?’ he continued testily. Then he stopped to say approvingly, ‘I see you hung your things on the proper peg. That’s right, Miss Allat, that’s right. Begin
as you mean to go on. Now I’m privileged. I hang mine in the private office,’ he said with gratification in his voice. Then the thoughts of fire and of the boy Reggie, who was still missing, overcame him, and he went into the private office groaning, ‘Whatever will Mr Julian say?’

  Isabel went to the door and looked hopefully for Reggie, but he was not to be seen. It seemed very damp and chilly in the office, in spite of the coal fire, which had been lighted for some time and was now black and rather caked. She wanted to poke it, but did not dare, so she went back and stood looking at it. Very soon another man came in. He wore glasses, and was so thin that his clothes hung upon him as if he were a coat-hanger.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said, ‘I’m Bentley.’ He glanced towards the private office where Mr Palfreyman, who had hung up his things, was now opening the mail with ostentatious cracklings. ‘I’ve only been here fourteen years, so I hang my things beside yours.’ He slid round the barrier, which stood like a mahogany counter a couple of yards from the door, hung up his things, coughed loudly and said, ‘Anything for me this morning, Mr Palfreyman?’

  ‘We shall see. We shall see,’ returned the other, distantly. ‘You realize there has been another fire, Mr Bentley?’

  ‘No, I hadn’t noticed it,’ said Bentley, winking at the girl and rubbing his thin grey hair with a handkerchief. In spite of the cold, he was sweating. He went over and poked the fire. ‘You’re the first girl that’s ever been in this place. Did you know?’ he whispered. ‘The old man wouldn’t have ’em at any price. We’ve always had lads before, but they get sick of old Pompey Snuffbox in there and sneak off to better jobs with a list of our customers’ names in their pockets. But young Mr Julian’s got the business now.’ He spun round on his heel, with the poker still in his hand, winked, and went on poking the dark coals.