"Where were you?" I asked him, taking my hand off him. I was determined not to over-react.
"Coming out of Doctor Young's. I'm collecting for the Sclerosis, if it interests you, but the doctor's answer was a dusty one."
"Where did the man go?" I asked him, quite calmly and casually; almost, I thought, in his own style.
"You mean, the man with the tickers and tockers?"
Wally Walters was continuing to stare at me in the way I have described. I have never been able to decide whether his gaze is as penetrating as it seems, or whether it is all somewhat of an act.
I nodded, but concealing all impatience.
"Well," said Wally Walters, "I can tell you this. He didn't go into any of the other houses that I could see."
"So," I enquired, as offhandedly as I could, "you followed him for some of the way?"
"Only with my eyes, Joe," he replied with that slightly mocking earnestness of his. "But my eyes followed him until he vanished. He wasn't carrying on like the ordinary door-to-door salesman. He seemed to be making a special call on you. That was why I spoke. Do you collect fancy clocks, Joe?"
"Yes," I replied, looking clean away from him. "As a matter of fact, my wife does collect clocks."
"She'll have had the offer of some weird ones this time," responded Wally Walters. "Bye, Joe." And he sauntered off, looking to right and left for someone else with whom to pass his special time of day.
I stormed into my house, banging several doors, but failed to find Ursula all dressed up in the living-room, in accordance with our usual routine.
I tracked her down in the kitchen, where she was slicing up rhubarb, always one of her favourite foodstuffs. "Sorry, darling," she said, wiping her hands on her apron, and stretching up to kiss me. "I'm late and you're early."
"No," I replied. "I'm late. I've just missed a visitor."
And, as so often, one of the clocks chose that precise moment to shout at me. "Cuckoo. Cuckoo." Only I suppose it said it five times, or six: whichever hour it was.
"Yes," said Ursula, looking away, and not having kissed me after all. "All the clocks have been adjusted."
I could tell that they had. There was an almost simultaneous clamour of booming and screeching from all parts of the house.
"I'm sure that's very useful," I jeered feebly; or I may have said "helpful".
"It's very necessary," Ursula observed calmly, but with more spirit than usual, at least on this particular subject. It was as if she had taken a double dose of some quick-acting tonic. That struck me even at the time. It was as if she were staying herself artificially against my pryings and probings and general gettings at her. I thought even then that one could hardly blame her.
And then—a few weeks later, I suppose, or it may have been two or three months—came what the local paper called our "burglary". It was not really a burglary, because, though it happened during the night, virtually nothing was taken. I imagine it was a job by these modern young thugs who just like smashing everything up out of boredom and because they can so easily come by too much money too young; smashing people up too, when the circumstances are right. No one was ever laid by the heels for wrecking our house. It is very seldom that anyone is. The kids cover up for one another against us older people, and especially when we seem to have a bit of property.
Ursula and I were away for the weekend at the time, or of course I should have wakened up and gone after the thugs with a rod and a gun, as our colonel used to put it when urging us on to the slaughter. We had a rule that we went away for one weekend in every four. I thought it was good for Ursula to have a change at regular intervals; a short break away that she knew she could depend on. And I liked to drag her away from her clocks, even though she never seemed quite the same without them. We went to different small hotels in the car—in quiet towns 40 or 50 miles away, or sometimes at the seaside: from the Friday night to the Sunday night. I must acknowledge that often we spent much of the time in bed, paying the extra to have the meals brought up. We never went to stay with friends; partly for that reason, but not only. Staying with friends is seldom much of a relaxation in any direction, I should say.
When I woke that Sunday morning in the hotel, I thought immediately that Ursula looked different. This was even though I could only see her back. I sat up in bed and really peered at her, as she slept with her head turned away from me, and her mouth a little open. Then I realized what I was seeing: there were grey threads in her beautiful blonde hair, and I had never noticed them before because the light had never fallen in quite the right way to show them up. In that very strong early morning sunlight, the grey in Ursula's hair seemed to come even in streaks, rather than merely in threads. The sight made me feel intensely sad and anxious.
Ursula never had trouble with sleeping. It was one of the many, many nice things about her. That morning, as I watched her—for quite a time, I believe—she was deeply sunk; but suddenly, as people do, she not merely woke up, but sat up. She put a hand at each side of her face, as if she saw something horrifying, or maybe just felt it within and around her. Her eyes were staring out of her head, and, what is more, they looked quite different—like the eyes of some other person.
I put my arms round her and drew her down to me, but even while I did so, I saw that the change in her seemed to go further. The clear, strong, holiday sunshine showed up lines and sags and disfiguring marks that I had never noticed before. I imagine it is a bad moment in any close relationship, however inevitable. I admit that I was quite overcome by it. So sorry did I feel for both of us, and for everybody in the world, that I wept like a raincloud into Ursula's changed hair that would never, could never, be the same again; nor Ursula, therefore, either.
I do not think we should be ashamed to weep at the proper times, or do anything to stop it, provided that we are not in some crowd of people; but that time it did little to make me feel better. Instead, I kept on noticing more and more wrong with Ursula all day; not only with her looks and youthfulness, but with her spirits and behaviour also. She just did not seem the same girl, and I became more and more confused and unsure of myself. I am fairly easily made unsure of myself at the best of times, though almost always I succeed in concealing the fact, apparently to the general satisfaction.
And then, to top it all, when we reached home, we found the scene of ruin I have just referred to. It was quite late, well past eleven o'clock, I am certain; and the very first thing we found was that the lock to the front door had been forced. The young thugs had not even done the usual trick with a piece of plastic. They had simply bashed the lock right through. Of course to do as much damage as possible is always their precise idea—pretty well their only idea, as far as one can see. They had done themselves proud in every room of Ursula's and my home—and done their parents and teachers proud too, and indeed their entire generation. In particular, they had stopped all the clocks—all of them (Ursula soon made sure of that); and smashed several of them into pieces that could never be humpty-dumptied again and had to constitute the first clock burial in our garden. Early the next morning I looked after that. The thugs proved to have ripped down the different electric meters—something that is not always too easy to do. I can still hear—and, in a manner, even see—Ursula pitter-pattering in her high heels from room to room in the darkness, and uttering little gasps and screams as she discovered what had been done to her precious clocks, one by one. I doubt whether I shall ever forget it. In fact, I am sure I never shall, as it gave me the first clear and conscious inkling of what was afoot in my home and married life.
After that, the funny man, the expert, was in and out the whole time—trying to make good, to replace. I was hardly in any position to demur, and I am sure his visits were many, but I never saw him once, nor have I ever tracked down anyone who did at that particular time—or who will admit to it.
I even sank so low as to ask Wally Walters.
I stopped him one bright afternoon as he sauntered along the road which goes past
the new bus sheds. I had even taken trouble to put myself in his way. He was wearing pale mauve trousers, and a crimson silk shirt, open almost to his navel, showing the smooth skin of his chest, the colour of peanut butter. I had crossed the road to him.
"Wally," I said, though I have always avoided calling him by that name. "That funny fellow. You remember?"
He nodded with a slowness that was obviously affected. Already his soft gaze was on me.
"With all those clocks?" I went on.
"Of course," said Wally Walters.
"Well," I continued with too much of a gasp. "Have you seen him again?"
"Not I, said the fly. With my little eye I see nothing again. Never the same thing twice. I should remember that for yourself, Joe. It's useful."
He paused, very calm, while I fumed. The weather was hot and I was perspiring in any case. I felt a fool, and that was too plainly what I was meant to feel.
"Anything else, Joe? Just while the two of us are alone together?"
"No, thank you."
And he strolled off, to nowhere very much, one knew; but cool as an entire old-fashioned milk dairy.
It was not an encouraging conversation, and it played its part in further damping down a curiosity that I did not wholly want satisfied in any case. I continued enquiring as opportunity seemed to offer, but in most cases the response suggested only that the other party was embarrassed by my attitude. I failed to find any outside trace of the man who was now visiting my home so frequently; just as the police had failed to find a trace of the young thugs.
Not that there was the very slightest doubt about the man being constantly there. Once, for example, he did an extraordinary thing. I came home to find that he had allowed one of the clocks to drop its heavy weight on to the floor so sharply that it had made a hole right through the boards. Somehow the weight itself had been extricated before I arrived, and re-suspended; but the hole inevitably remained, and as poor Ursula was desperately insistent upon its being repaired as soon as possible, I had to spend most of the next morning standing over Chivers, our local jobbing builder's man, while he worked, and exercising all of my authority over him.
"Aren't the clocks rather getting out of control?" I asked Ursula sarcastically.
She made no answer, and did not seem to like what I had said.
In general, by now I was avoiding all sarcasm, indeed all comment of any kind. It had become fairly obvious that Ursula was not at all herself.
She had completely failed to recapture her former brightness—and despite the attentions of our curious visitor, as I could not help thinking to myself. And despite the fact too that his ministrations would appear to have gone well, in that what could be repaired had been, and that replacements were all too numerous and clamorous everywhere, assuredly for me. None the less, Ursula looked like a rag, and when it came to her behaviour, that seemed to consist largely in her wringing her hands—literally, wringing her hands. She seemed able to walk from room to room by the hour just wringing her hands. I had never before in my life knowingly seen it done at all, and I found it frightful to watch. And, what was more, when the time came round for our next regular weekend in a country hotel, Ursula refused to go. More accurately, she said, very sadly, that "it would be no use her going".
Naturally, I talked and talked and talked to her. It was a moment of crisis, a point of no return, if ever there was one; but I knew all the time that this was nothing, nothing at all, by comparison with what inescapably and most mysteriously lay ahead for me.
Ursula and I never went away together again. Indeed, we never did anything much, except have odd, low-toned disagreements, seldom about anything that could be defined. I had heard often of a home never being the same again once the burglars have been through it; and that replacements can never equal the originals. But Ursula seemed so wan and ill the whole time, so totally unlike what she had been since I first met her, that I began to suspect there was something else.
It was hard not to suppose there had been some sort of quarrel with the other man, though not so easy to guess what about. Indeed, there seemed to me to be some slight, independent evidence of a row. Previously I was always noticing changes in the positioning and the spit-and-polish of the different clocks; to say nothing of the completely new ones that materialized from time to time. Now, for months, I noticed no changes among the clocks at all, only a universal, stagnant droopiness; and certainly there were no arrivals. I wondered whether the tall fellow had not been peeved about our recent mishap, and perhaps indicated that while he was prepared to put all to rights that once, yet he must make it clear that he could not so do again. He might have taken a critical view of our being away from the house at the time (and, in any case, had we not spent much of that time merely sprawling about in bed?). That might well be why we had never since been out of the house for a single night, nor looked like being ever again out of it. But of course Ursula and I never said one word to each other about any aspect of all this.
That allowed me the more scope for surmise, and I knew quite well that I had more or less accurately assessed much of what was up. I have often noticed in life that we never really learn anything—learn for the first time, I mean. We know everything already, everything that we, as individuals, are capable of knowing, or fit to know; all that other people do for us, at the best, is to remind us, to give our brains a little twist from one set of preoccupations to a slightly different set.
In the end, Ursula seemed so run down that I felt she should see a doctor, though my opinion of doctors is low. I know what goes on in my own profession, and see no reason why the medical profession should be any different, by and large. All the same, something had to be done; and in circumstances such as I now found myself in, one clutches. But Ursula positively refused to visit our Doctor Tweed, even though I begged her.
Our little talk on the subject came at the end of a week—at least a week—when we had hardly spoken together at all, let alone done anything else. Ursula was all a dirty white colour; her hair was now so streaked and flecked that everyone would notice it at once; and she was plainly losing weight. She had given up any attempt to look pretty, about which previously she had been so careful, so that I loved her for it. And, as I say, she hardly let fall a word, do what I would. Evening after evening, we just sat hopelessly together listening to the clocks striking all over the house.
Ursula had always had much the same attitude to doctors as mine, which was yet another reason why I loved her. But now that made it difficult to press her on the subject.
She simply said "No," smiled a little, and shook her pretty head. Yes, a pretty head it still was for me, despite changes.
I put my arms round her and kissed her. I knelt at her feet, wept in her lap, and implored her. She still said "No, no," but no longer smiling, no longer moving at all.
So I thought the best thing—the only thing—was to visit Tweed myself.
Of course, it did no good. Tweed simply took his stand upon the official line that he could say nothing without first "examining the patient" herself. When I repeated that she refused to be "examined" (and, truly, I found it hard to criticize her attitude), he actually said with a smile, "Then, Joe, I suspect that she's not really very ill." Tweed calls me Joe, though I call him Doctor Tweed. Of course he is considerably older than I am, and I've known him since I was a boy. I should find it difficult to speak the same language as these new young doctors. I come between the generations, as it were.
I tried to remonstrate. "After all, I am her husband," I cried, "and I'm very worried about her."
"I could examine you" said Tweed, fixing me with his eye, only half-humorously.
Obviously it was out of the question even to attempt a description of the strange and oppressive background to it all.
"She's in the grip of some outside power, and it's nearly killing her," I cried. It was all I could get out, and of course it sounded ludicrous.
"Now, Joe," said Tweed, professionally conciliatin
g, but firmly silencing me all the same. "Now, Joe. You make me think that I ought to examine you. But I've a better idea. Suppose I make a joint appointment for the two of you, so that I can examine you both?b I'm sure your wife will agree to that."
"She won't," I said, like a stubborn schoolboy.
"Oh, you husbands! Have you no authority left? Joe, I'm ashamed of you."
And I think there was a bit more between the two of us along the same lines, but I know that Tweed ended by saying: "Now, of course, I'll see your wife. Indeed, I'd like to, Joe, You might tell her that. Then just ring for an appointment almost any day, except Tuesday or Friday."
As I drove away, the idea occurred to me of consulting a quack, a proper quack—one of those people who are not on the medical register, and of whom in every company there are always some who speak so highly.
Then I thought that a consultation with a priest might be another possibility.
So as I wove my way home in the car, I was meditating—though fretting might be a better word—upon which priest or parson I could consult. The difficulty was, of course, that Ursula and I belonged to different faiths, Pope John or no Pope John; and that I had always been excluded from Ursula's creed as fully as from her life with the clocks and their overseer. Moreover, as far as I could see, she had largely allowed the matter to lapse for some considerable time. Ursula's official faith was probably most incompatible with that other preoccupation of hers. And, what is more, I myself was on little more than affable nodding terms with our Church of England vicar. I subscribed to things, and I had a regular classified advertisement in the monthly parish magazine, but that was about all. A home where the religions are mixed always presents problems. And, finally, I could not see an appeal to Ursula to confide in her confessor as likely to achieve more than my appeal to her to confide in Tweed. Ursula was locked up within herself, and the key had either been thrown away or entrusted to one who no longer seemed to be visiting us.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 41
