The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

by Leslie Poles Hartley

  But did he really believe in the efficacy of his prayers? Did he really believe they would be answered? Did he believe in God, as implicitly and explicitly, as Copperthwaite believed in his car? Or was it all a superstition on his part, a sort of insurance against some calamity that might befall his friends or himself? or, having forgotten to mention this or that desired benefit, to have deprived them, and him, of some happiness?

  He put his friends first, because he had had doubts about the propriety of praying for himself; perhaps for oneself one could only ask God to forgive one’s sins? To ask him to forgive other people’s sins was an impertinence, an almost blasphemous prompting of God’s Will, that Anthony would never be guilty of. Some of his friends were quite bad, and urgently in need of divine, moral and spiritual aid, so Anthony never presumed to mention who they were or how they could be improved.

  His prayers, however, did include a long string of names of friends for whom he made a general, and sometimes an individual petition. They were divided mainly into two groups: friends who were still living, and relations of friends who had died. Anthony never counted them up (he had a Biblical distrust of counting the numbers of people) but together they must have come to forty at least. As he murmured the name, its owner for a moment came back to him, each one, living or dead, a link in the chain of his life, a link of love, a continuation of his own personality, a proof of identity, his and theirs.

  But there are always snags, even in prayers. Anthony did not offer prayers for the dead. Not for doctrinal reasons, but because he thought he could do nothing for them; they were in the hands of God. But he prayed for the comfort and consolation of their relations, and friends, even when he knew that their relations and friends were quite glad to see the last of them.

  The list of these relations and friends grew longer and longer, as, one after another, from love’s shining circle the gems dropped away. A queue formed; and Anthony, in self-defence, had to omit certain names in order to make room for others, just as, in the cemetery of San Michele in Venice, the bodies of the dead are only allowed a few years of earthly habitation before they are turned out. Without having to accuse himself of favouritism, Anthony had to decide whose relations were in the greater need of his prayers, who should stay and who should go.

  There was another thing. Some of Anthony’s friends whom, living, he had prayed for, had before they died and passed out of the land of the living, changed their names, owing to divorce, re-marriage, titles for themselves or their husbands. Would God know the original ‘Mary’ of his prayers for the living, for the Mrs. X, or the Lady X, for whose bereaved relations Anthony asked God for sympathy? Anthony knew how absurd this question was. God was no student of Who’s Who or Debrett; he would know who Mary was; but just as in ordinary conversation one has to explain who ‘Mary’ may be, so, in Anthony’s appeals to the Deity, he felt he ought to explain who this ‘Mary’ was. God was no respecter of persons; but Anthony felt he should take the trouble to differentiate this Mary from the other Marys, one of whom had been the mother of Christ.

  Another thing that made praying laborious was that in this long list of names he might have left out someone. Every religion has its ritual which must be strictly observed; a small fault, a casual omission, may invalidate the whole proceedings. Anthony knew his prayers by heart, and wasn’t ashamed of rattling them off at high speed so long as he gave a flick of affection to each name, alive or dead, for whom he prayed. But sometimes he had the feeling that one name—just one—had escaped him. And then he must start all over again, and sometimes twice, to make sure that no one had been omitted. Apart from the effort of repetition, he didn’t like doing this; he felt it smacked of conscience, not of devotion, but all the same, he had to.

  His prayers for the living, who had not been bereaved, but were perhaps sad, and ill, and unfortunate, were easier, because he felt that for them his intercessions were the living word of encouragement, and not the dead word of condolence. For them he did not have to pray for the negative blessings, if negative they were, of consolation and comfort; he could pray for their future happiness (if not, of course, based on some improper relationship), the success of their undertakings, their personal, general and material welfare. There was nothing wrong in this. The Old Testament had condemned many, indeed most things, but not the ideal of prosperity. Prosperity had been taken from Job: it was indeed the gravamen of his spiritual suffering. But in the end it had been restored to him ten-fold.

  So Anthony did not feel it was irreligious to wish for his friends, not too much burdened and borne down by sorrow, the desire of their hearts, even in the material sphere. Did not devout Roman Catholics pray to St. Anthony, his namesake, for the recovery of some unimportant object, a wrist-watch, for instance, which they had lost? One could not, oneself, pray to God for the recovery of a wrist-watch; in relation to God it would be outside one’s terms of reference; and, as a Protestant, one did not pray to the Saints. But on behalf of someone else, one might, and that was how Anthony came to pray that Copperthwaite, to whom he was much attached, might be granted the gift of a Roland-Rex motor-car. He did not think of himself as concerned in the gift: he only wanted it for Copperthwaite.

  *

  Rising stiffly from his knees, after an unusually long and laborious session of intercession, he felt he might have done someone a good turn. It is difficult to know what a friend really wants; and what will be good for him if he wants it. Copperthwaite wanted a Roland-Rex.

  *

  A few days later Copperthwaite came to him with a rather stiff face and said,

  ‘I’m afraid, sir, I shall have to ask for my cards.’

  Copperthwaite had been with Anthony for a good many years, and the phrase was unfamiliar to him.

  ‘Your cards, what cards, Copperthwaite?’ He thought they might be some sort of playing cards.

  ‘My cards, sir, my stamps and my P.A.Y.E., same as you have always paid for.’

  ‘You can have them, of course,’ said Anthony, bewildered. ‘That is, if I can find them. But what do you want them for?’

  Copperthwaite’s face stiffened yet more: Anthony could hardly recognize him.

  ‘Because I’ve been offered a better job sir, if you’ll excuse me saying so. I’ve been happy with you, sir, and you mustn’t think I don’t appreciate what you have done for me. But a man in my position has to look after himself—you might not understand that, sir, being a gentleman.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Anthony, still bewildered.

  Copperthwaite’s face grew stiffer.

  ‘An American gentleman—no offence to you, sir—has asked me to go to him. The porter in this block of flats told him about me. He pays very good money.’

  ‘I can raise your salary, if you like,’ said Anthony, his own face beginning to stiffen.

  ‘Oh no, sir, I couldn’t ask you to do that, I’m not a gold-digger, and besides—’

  ‘Besides what?’ asked Anthony crossly.

  ‘Besides, he has a Roland-Rex car, and it’s always been my ambition to drive one, as you know, sir.’

  ‘When do you want to go?’ asked Anthony.

  ‘A week next Saturday. That will give you time to find another man.’

  ‘I’m not sure it will,’ said Anthony. ‘But meanwhile I’ll look for your cards.’

  *

  The week passed, and Anthony tried in vain to find a replacement for Copperthwaite. In answer to his advertisement, several candidates for the job presented themselves and interviews were arranged. He was on his best behaviour, and they were on their best behaviour; who could tell? ‘There is no art,’ as Shakespeare, or his spokesman, truly said, ‘to find the mind’s construction in the face.’ As for references, so his friends assured him, they were often written by the applicants themselves. ‘Mr. Anthony Bragshaw’ (surprising how many of them were called by his own name) ‘is honest, sober, and trustworthy: a good driver, and an excellent plain cook. I have no hesitation whatever in reco
mmending him for the situation he is applying for.’

  Two or three of these replies were written on the writing-paper, and contained the telephone number of the applicant’s employer: but when he rang up the number, he did not get a reply.

  Anthony himself could not cook, nor could he drive: pushing up the seventies, he needed outside help. Meals were not so difficult; he could go out for food. And as for transport, there were buses, and tubes and taxis, if one could find a taxi at the right moment. It was ridiculous to complain of things which, as Sir Thomas Browne said, ‘all the world doth suffer from’ (including death).

  He didn’t know what to do with his car, so he left it in the communal garage, where it had a place, 5A. Sometimes, when he engaged one of the porters, or a casual man to drive it, it was neither found in 5A, nor returned to 5A. Someone else had been taking it for a ride.

  Copperthwaite himself Anthony saw, from time to time, for his employer lived on the opposite side of the Square, in one of the few houses that hadn’t been ‘converted’ into flats. Anthony didn’t always recognize him, for Copperthwaite had been so smartened up. He wore the conventional chauffeur’s uniform, blue suit, black tie, peak cap—and he looked straight ahead of him, as if other cars were in the way (as they often were).

  He and Anthony used sometimes to exchange distant greetings in which the condescension (if there is a condescension in greetings) was always on Copperthwaite’s side. And indeed the Roland-Rex was a sight to dream of, not to tell. At least Anthony, with his ignorance of all that made one car superior to another, couldn’t have told! But he did at least realize that here was a car that from its sheer bulk, more noticeable behind than before, as if it wore a bustle, took up half the street.

  Copperthwaite did not always recognize Anthony when Anthony on foot, and Copperthwaite, eyes half closed, installed in his Roland-Rex fortress, met each other. The smugness on Copperthwaite’s dozing face was sometimes more than Anthony could stand.

  He consoled himself with the thought that Copperthwaite was (to misquote Mrs. Hermans) a creature of inferior blood, a proud but childlike form.

  All the more was he surprised when one morning he received a letter with no stamp on it, brought by hand.

  Dear Sir, (it said)

  I wish to inform you that I have now terminated my engagement with my present employer, Mr. Almeric Duke. It is not on account of any disagreement with Mr. Duke, who has been both generous and understanding, but I am not happy with the conditions of my service, especially as regards the car. From what I am told, I understand you have not found another man, sir, to drive your car and minister to your comforts, and if you will consider my application to take me back into the position in which I was always happy, I shall be much obliged.

  I am, sir,

  Yours respectfully,

  J. Copperthwaite.

  Anthony studied this missive with mixed feelings. Copperthwaite had not treated him well. His daily help, who had been with him a good many years, and had known one or two of Copperthwaite’s quickly changing predecessors, once said to him, ‘You’re too easy-going with them, Mr. Easterfield, that’s what it is.’ She did not mean it as a compliment. All very well and good; but if Anthony wasn’t easy-going with them, indeed if he criticised them—their cooking, their driving, the friends of both sexes, or any sex, that they brought into the flat from time to time, their unwarrantable absences or their sometimes more disturbing presences—at the faintest hint of criticism they departed, almost before the offending words were out of his mouth. ‘Easy-going’ on his part meant easy-going on theirs; but if he had adopted a policy of ‘hard-going’, he trembled to think what the results might have been.

  It was the recollection of these fugitive characters that made Anthony think more kindly of Copperthwaite. Copperthwaite had treated him badly but he had at any rate given him a week’s notice; he hadn’t just ‘slung his hook’ (to use an old-fashioned expression), leaving the keys of the flat and the car-keys on the table with a pencilled note to say he was ‘fed up’.

  No, during the years that he and Copperthwaite had been together they had got on very well—not a ‘misword’ between them. His daily help, who was nothing if not censorious, may have thought that Anthony was too easy-going with Copperthwaite; but there was no occasion for hard feelings.

  Never take a servant back again was the advice of our forebears. The word ‘servant’ was now out of date, it was archaic; it could never be used in polite or impolite society. A ‘servant’ was ‘staff’: even one ‘servant’ was ‘staff’. One envisaged a bundle of staves, of fasces (infamous word) once used as a symbol of their office by Roman Lictors, and then by Mussolini.

  Copperthwaite a staff? The staff of life? Thinking of the dreary days and weeks that had passed since his departure, thinking of his forerunners, so much less helpful and hopeful than he, looking to the future, which seemed to hold in store nothing more alluring than an Old People’s Home, Anthony began to think more favourably of Copperthwaite’s return.

  In spite of his elders’ advice not to take back a ‘servant’, what harm could Copperthwaite do if he came back? He could become more ‘bossy’, Anthony supposed; he had always been a bit bossy, he used to decide for Anthony many small problems of food, wine, and so on, that Anthony had been too tired, or too old, or too uninterested, to decide for himself.

  The worst he could do was to leave, as he had just done; and Anthony had survived that, and no doubt would survive it again.

  *

  But why did Copperthwaite want to give up this much better-paid, much more glamorous job, with the American gentleman on the other side of the Square, with the Roland-Rex to give it added prestige value?

  Dear Copperthwaite, (he wrote)

  If you would like to come back here, please do. I have made some tentative enquiries for other Staff, but I haven’t fixed up anything, so if you want to come back you are at liberty to, and of course I shall be pleased to see you.

  My car is still in the garage. It hasn’t been used much since you went away, and I expect various things will have gone wrong with it, the battery will have run down and the tyres will need pumping up, and the oil!—but you will know about this better than I do.

  Please let me know when you are ready to return, so that I can answer the answers to my advertisements for another Staff.

  Yours sincerely,

  Anthony Easterfield.

  Copperthwaite’s reply came promptly.

  ‘Will be with you on Monday, Sir.’

  So he must have given in his notice to the American gentleman before he got Anthony’s answer. Rather mortifying to know that Copperthwaite took it for granted he would be welcome back: but what a relief to know that the rhythm and routine of his life so dismally interrupted would be resumed.

  Say nothing to begin with; make no comment; express no curiosity.

  Such were some of Anthony’s resolutions on the Saturday before Copperthwaite was due back on Monday morning. But, when the bell of the flat-door pealed at 8 a.m. on Sunday, he was taken by surprise. Who was this ? What was this ? The porter, telling him he had left a tap dripping, flooding the flat below? An urgent letter on Her Majesty’s Service, demanding Income Tax? The postman—but the postman never rang the bell unless he was carrying some object (usually of evil import) too bulky to pass through the letter-box—and besides, the post didn’t come on Sunday.

  So pessimistic was Anthony’s imagination that he could not think of any summons at eight o’clock in the morning that did not presage disaster or even doom. A mere burglar, with a sawn-off shot-gun or a blunt instrument would have been a relief compared with the horrors Anthony had begun to envisage.

  Copperthwaite said, ‘I came a bit early, sir, because I know that eight o’clock is about the time you like your tea.’

  ‘Well, yes, I do,’ said Anthony, putting all his previous thoughts into reverse. ‘And I expect you want some tea too.’

  ‘All in good time, sir, all in
good time,’ said Copperthwaite, ‘but meanwhile may I dispose of these bits and pieces?’

  The bits and pieces were two very heavy and expensive suit-cases, made of white leather. Anthony admired them and wondered how Copperthwaite had come by them: the American gentleman, no doubt. He even envied them although when full—when bulging, as they now were—he couldn’t have carried them a yard.

  ‘Well, you know where to go,’ he said, laughing rather feebly, ‘the first on the right. You won’t find it changed—no one has had it since you were there. All the same,’ he added suddenly, ‘I think the bed—the mattress—ought to be aired. The bed-clothes—the sheets and blankets are all right. They’re in the airing-cupboard.’

  ‘Don’t worry, sir,’ said Copperthwaite, bending down to pick up his suit-cases, ‘aired or not aired, it’s the same to me.

  Strong as Copperthwaite was, forty-three, forty-five?—his features showed the strain as he stooped to lift the suit-cases.

  Anthony went back to bed, with various emotions, of which relief was uppermost. It was against his routine to say prayers in the morning, but he made a short act of thanksgiving for the mercy just received. A few minutes later appeared Copperthwaite, tea-tray in hand. Wearing his service-jacket he looked so like his old self—his slightly Red-Indian self—that Anthony could hardly believe that he had been away three, four, how many weeks?

  ‘A steak for lunch, sir?’

  ‘No, Copperthwaite, not a steak. My teeth, my remaining teeth, aren’t equal to a steak. A cutlet, perhaps.’