The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

by Leslie Poles Hartley

  ‘I only meant we don’t want anything to do with Oedipus,’ his wife said.

  ‘You shouldn’t spoil him, then. You should be much nastier to him than you are. I’ve more reason to worry about Oedipus than you have. Laurie might marry you, O.K., but he would murder me. It’s I who am to be pitied. No one ever pities fathers. No one ever pities Oedipus’s father, whom Oedipus bumped off. I think I shall expose Laurie on Mount Cithaeron, having first struck the toasting-fork through his toes.’

  All the same, he put off ‘speaking’ to Laurie as long as he could, and when the time came he approached the subject warily.

  ‘Well, old man,’ he said, when he had got Laurie alone, ‘take a pew and tell me how you fared last term.’

  Deliberately he seated himself at some distance, for fear the nearness of his large strong body might arouse the wrong kind of response and inflict a Freudian bruise.

  ‘Well,’ echoed Laurie, heavily, ‘I didn’t do very well, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You’re growing too fast, that’s the trouble,’ said his father. ‘It takes it out of you.’

  ‘I only grew an eighth of an inch last term. They measured me,’ Laurie added, almost as mournfully as if the measuring had been for his coffin.

  Drat the boy, his father thought. He won’t use the loop-holes that I offer him.

  He pulled at his moustache which, unlike the bronze hair greying on his head, had kept its golden colour. Proud of its ability to keep its ends up unaided, he wore it rather long, a golden bow arched across his mouth and reaching to the wrinkles where his smile began. Tugging it was a counter-irritant to emotional unease. But was such an adult masculine gesture quite suitable in front of a small boy?

  ‘How do you account for it, then?’ he asked, at last.

  ‘Account for what, Daddy?’ But Laurie knew.

  ‘Well, for your reports not being so good as they sometimes are.’

  Laurie’s face fell.

  ‘Oh, weren’t they good?’

  ‘Not all that good. Mr. Sheepshanks——’ he stopped.

  ‘What did he say?’ The question seemed to be forced out of Laurie.

  Mr. Sheepshanks had said that Laurie’s work was ‘disappointing’. How mitigate that adjective to a sensitive ear?

  ‘He said you hadn’t quite come up to scratch.’

  ‘I never was much good at maths,’ said Laurie, as though he had had a lifetime’s experience of them.

  ‘No, they were never your strong suit . . . And Mr. Smallbones——’

  Laurie clasped his hands and waited.

  Mr. Smallbones had said, ‘Seems to have lost his wish to learn.’ Well, so have I, his father thought, but I shouldn’t want to be told so.

  ‘He said . . . well, that Latin didn’t come easily to you. It didn’t to me, for that matter.’

  ‘It’s the irregular verbs.’

  ‘I know, they are the devil. Why should anyone want to learn what is irregular? Most people don’t need to learn it.’ He smiled experimentally at Laurie, who didn’t smile back. He unclasped his hands and asked wretchedly, but with a slight lift of hopefulness in his voice:

  ‘What did Mr. Armstrong say?’

  Mr. Armstrong was Laurie’s form-master, and it was his cruel verdict that had rankled most with Laurie’s parents. It couldn’t be true! It had seemed a reflection on them too, a slur on their powers of parenthood, a genetic smear, a bad report on them. And it was indignation at this personal affront, as well as despair of finding further euphemisms, that made him blurt out Mr. Armstrong’s words.

  ‘He said you were dull but deserving.’

  Laurie’s head wobbled on his too-plump neck and his face began to crinkle. Appalled, his father ran across to him and touched him on the shoulder, pressing harder than he knew with his big hand. ‘Don’t worry, old chap,’ he said, ‘don’t worry. When I was your age I had terrible reports, much worse than yours are. You’ve spoilt us, that’s what it is, by always having had such smashing ones. But now I’ve got some good news for you, so cheer up!’

  Laurie raised his tear-stained face open-eyed to his father’s and set himself to listen. His father moved away from him and, drawing himself up to give the fullest effect to his announcement, said:

  ‘It doesn’t matter so much what these under-masters say, it’s what the Headmaster says that counts. Now the Headmaster says——’

  Suddenly he forgot what the Headmaster had said, although he remembered that some parts of the report had best not be repeated. Reluctantly, for he meant to keep the incriminating document hidden, and believed he had its contents by heart, he pulled it out of his breast-pocket, ran his eyes over it, and began rather lamely:

  ‘Mr. Stackpole says, hm . . . hm . . . hm—just a few general remarks, and then: “Conduct excellent”. “Conduct excellent”,’ he repeated. ‘You’ve never had that said of you before. It’s worth all the others put together. I can’t tell you how pleased and proud I am.

  He paused for the electrifying effect, but it didn’t come. Instead, Laurie’s face again began to pucker. For a moment he was speechless, fighting with his sobs; then he burst out miserably:

  ‘But anyone can be good!’

  Trying to comfort him, his father assured him that this wasn’t true: very, very few people could be good, even he, Laurie’s own father, couldn’t, and those who could were worth their weight in gold. After a time he thought that he was making headway: Laurie’s sobs ceased, he seemed to be listening and at last he said:

  ‘Daddy, do you think they’ll ever build the pylon up again?’

  His father stared.

  ‘Good lord, I hope not! Why, do you want them to?’

  Laurie shook his head as if he meant to shake it off.

  ‘Oh, no, no, no. Of course not. It’s an eyesore. But I just thought they might.’

  That night Laurie dreamed that he had got his wish. There stood the pylon: much as he remembered it, but bigger and taller. At least that was his impression, but as it was night in his dream he couldn’t see very well. But he knew that he had regained his interest in life, and knew what he must do to prove it to himself and others. If he did this, a good report was waiting for him. But first he must get out of bed and put on his dressing-gown which lay across the chair, and go down-stairs, silently of course, for if they were about they would hear and stop him. Sometimes, when he was sleepless, he would go out on to the landing and lean over the banisters and call out: ‘I can’t get to sleep!’ and then they would put him to sleep in the spare-room bed, where later his father would join him. But long before his father came up he would be asleep, asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, such an assurance of security did the promise of his father’s presence bring.

  And now if they heard him moving about he would just say that he couldn’t get to sleep, and put off his visit to the pylon to another night. Oh, how clever he was! It was the return of the pylon into his life that made him clever.

  Nobody heard him; they had gone to bed. The house was in darkness, but if he was a burglar he wouldn’t mind about that: he would be glad; and Laurie-the-burglar was glad, too, as he tiptoed downstairs in his felt-soled slippers.

  But the door—could he unlock it? Yes, the catch yielded to his touch as it would have to a real burglar’s, and he remembered not to shut it, for he must be able to get in again.

  He went round to the front of the house. Now the pylon was in full view: its tapering criss-cross shape indistinct against the hill-side, as if someone had drawn it in ink on carbon paper with a ruler; but where it rose above the hill—and it soared much higher than it used to—it was so clear against the sky that you could see every detail—including the exciting cross-piece, just below the summit, that Laurie used to think of as its moustache.

  With beating heart and tingling nerves he hastened towards it, through the garden gate and out into the field, feeling it impending over him long before he reached it, before he could even properly see where its four great
legs were clamped into the concrete. Now he was almost under it, and what was this? Something grinning at him just above his head, with underneath the words: ‘Danger de Mort’. Abroad all pylons had them. He hadn’t needed to ask his father what the skull and crossbones meant; he hadn’t needed to ask what ‘danger de mort’ meant: ‘Your French is coming on!’ his father said. In England pylons didn’t bear this warning; the English were cleverer than the French—they knew without being told. In England pylons were not dangerous: could this be a French one?

  It was a warm night but Laurie shivered and drew his dressing-gown more closely round him. But if there was danger of death, all the more reason to go on, to go up, to be one with the steel girders and the airs that played around them. But not in a dressing-gown, not in bedroom slippers, not in pyjamas, even! Not only because you couldn’t climb in them, but because in them you couldn’t feel the cold touch of the steel upon the flesh. It would be a kind of cheating: you wouldn’t win the good report, perhaps, which depended, didn’t it? on doing things the hardest way.

  Lest anyone should steal his night attire Laurie hid it under a low bush close by the monster’s base. Clever Laurie, up to every dodge! English pylons had steps—iron bolts like teeth sticking out six inches from two of the four great supporting girders, and reaching to the top, making the climb easy. But this one hadn’t, so it must be a French pylon. He would have to climb the face of it, clinging to the spars as best he could, for the pylon was an empty shell until almost the top, where a network of struts and stays, like a bird’s nest in a chimney, would give a better foot-hold.

  When he had started he dared not look down to see if his clothes were still there, because climbers mustn’t look down, it might make them giddy. Look up! Look up! The climbing wasn’t as difficult as he thought it would be, because at the point where the girders met, to form an X like a gigantic kiss in steel, there was a horizontal crossbar on which he could stand and get his breath before the next attempt. All the same, it hurt; it hurt straddling the girders and it hurt holding them, for they were square, not rounded as he thought they would be, and sometimes they cut into him.

  That was one thing he hadn’t reckoned with; another was the cold. Down on the ground it had been quite warm; even the grass felt warm when he took his slippers off. But now the cold was like a pain: sometimes it seemed a separate pain, sometimes it mingled with the pain from his grazed and aching limbs.

  How much farther had he to go? He looked up—always he must look up—and saw the pylon stretching funnel-wise above him, tapering, tapering, until, when he reached the bird’s nest, it would scrape against his sides. Then he might not be able to go on; he might get wedged between the narrowing girders, like a sheep that has stuck its head through a fence and can’t move either way.

  And if he reached the top and clung to the yard-arm, which was his aim, what then? What proof would he have to show them he had made the ascent? When his schoolfellows did a daring climb, they left something behind to show they had; the one who climbed the church-spire, clinging to the crockets, had left his cap on the weathercock; it had been there for days and people craned their necks at it. Laurie had nothing to leave.

  And what had happened to him, this boy? What sort of report did he get? He had been expelled—that was the report he got. It had all happened many years ago, long before Laurie was born: but people still talked of it, the schoolboy’s feat, and said it was a shame he’d been expelled. He should have been applauded as a hero, and the school given a whole holiday. Perhaps it was just as well for Laurie that he had nothing to leave, except some of his blood—for he was bleeding now—which wouldn’t be visible from below. But they would believe him, wouldn’t they, when he told them he had scaled the pylon? They would believe him, and make out his report accordingly? Would they say, ‘Jenkins minor has proved himself a brave boy, he has shown conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty, in that he has climbed the pylon which no boy of his age has ever climbed before, and in commemoration of this feat the school will be granted a whole holiday’?

  Or would they say: ‘Jenkins minor has been a very naughty boy. By climbing the pylon he has disgraced himself and the whole school. He will be publicly expelled in the school yard, and the school will forfeit all half-holidays for the rest of term’?

  Well, let them say that if they wouldn’t say the other! At any rate he would have made his mark.

  Soon he was too tired to argue with himself: too tired and too frightened. For the pylon had begun to sway. He had expected this, of course. Being elastic the pylon would have to sway, and be all the safer because it swayed. But it shouldn’t sway as much as this, leaning over first to one side, then to the other, then dipping in a kind of circle, so that instead of seeing its central point when he looked up, the point where all its spars converged, the point where his desires converged, the point which meant fulfilment, he saw reeling stretches of the sky, stars flashing past him, the earth itself rushing up to meet him. . . .

  He woke and as he woke, before he had time to put a hand out, he was violently sick.

  ‘I can’t think what it can be,’ his mother said. ‘He can’t have eaten anything that disagreed with him; he ate the same as we did. You didn’t say anything to upset him, did you, Roger?’

  ‘I told him about the reports,’ her husband said. ‘You asked me to, you know. I did it as tactfully as I could. I couldn’t exactly congratulate him on them, except on his good conduct, which he didn’t seem to like. Yes, I remember now, he was upset: I did my best to calm him down and thought I’d succeeded. I hope the poor boy isn’t going crackers—we’ve never had anything like that in my family.’

  ‘He’s highly-strung, that’s all, and your presence, Roger, is a bit overpowering. I know you don’t mean it to be, but if I was a little boy——’

  ‘Thank goodness you aren’t.’

  ‘I might be frightened of you.’

  ‘How can he be frightened of me, when he wants to sleep with me?’

  ‘I’m often frightened of you,’ said his wife, ‘but still I want to sleep with you.’

  ‘This is getting us into deep waters,’ Roger said, stretching himself luxuriously. ‘But you won’t be able to sleep with me to-night, my dear, because you’ve arranged for me to sleep with Laurie.’

  ‘Yes, he’s in the spare-room bed.’

  ‘He’ll never find another father as accommodating as I am.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘At any rate I hope there won’t be any repetition of the incident—the upshot, the fall-out, or whatever you call it.’

  ‘I’m sure not, he was fast asleep when I left him. But you know, Roger, he was a bit light-headed—he kept muttering something about the pylon, very fast in that indistinct way children talk when they’re ill and half-asleep——’

  ‘I hope he doesn’t take me for the pylon.’

  ‘Oh dear, how silly you are. But what I mean is, if he wakes up and mentions the wretched thing, because it seems to be on his mind, just say——’

  ‘What shall I say?’

  ‘Say that it’s dead and buried, or cremated, or on the scrapheap, or whatever happens to pylons that have outlived their usefulness. Say that it’s nothing to be afraid of, because it doesn’t exist, and if it did——’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘If it did, which it doesn’t, it’s still nothing to be afraid of, because men made it and men have taken it down, taken it to pieces. It’s not like Nature, there whether we want it or not; it’s like the things he makes with his Meccano. From what I gathered he seemed to think it could have a kind of independent existence, go on existing like a ghost and somehow hurt him. He reads this science fiction and doesn’t distinguish very well between fiction and fact—children don’t.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Roger. ‘Don’t worry, Anne. I shall have the situation well in hand. I shall say, if he wakes up, which please God he won’t, “Now, Laurie, just pretend the pylon is me”—or I, to
be grammatical. That will re-route his one-track mind, and turn it in a different direction.’

  Anne thought a moment.

  ‘I’m not sure that I should say that,’ she said. ‘If he asks you, hold on to the pylon being artificial, something that man has made and can unmake, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Very well, dear wife,’ said Roger, and they parted for the night.

  Laurie was lying, cheeks flushed and breathing quickly, on the extreme edge of the bed, as he always did to give his father room. Gingerly Roger stole in beside him, and laid his long, heavy body between the sheets. Lights out! He slept late, for his wife wouldn’t have them called, and woke up wondering if Laurie was awake.

  He wasn’t; his face was much less flushed and his breathing normal.

  I’ll stay in bed till he wakes up, his father thought. He may have something to say to me.

  At length the boy began to stir; consciousness returned to him by slow stages, and deliciously, as it does in youth, down gladsome glades of physical well-being. Sighs, grunts and other inarticulate sounds escaped from him, and then he flung his arm out and hit his father full across the mouth.

  ‘Hi, there, I’m not a punching-bag!’

  Laurie woke up and gave his father a rueful, sheepish smile.

  ‘Well, say good morning to me.’

  ‘Good morning, Daddy.’

  ‘Now I’ve got to get up. You, lazybones, can stay in bed if you like.’

  ‘Why, Daddy?’

  ‘Because you weren’t too well last night. Your mother gave a poor report of you.’ He paused, regretting the word, and added hastily, ‘That’s why you’re here.’

  Laurie’s face changed, and all the happiness went out of it.

  ‘Because I had a bad report?’

  ‘No, silly, because you weren’t well. You were sick, don’t you remember? In other words, you vomited.’

  Laurie’s face lay rigid on the pillow: the shadow of fear appeared behind his eyes.

  ‘Yes, I do remember. I had a dream, oh, such a nasty dream. I dreamed the pylon had . . . had come back again. It couldn’t, Daddy, could it?’