The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

by Leslie Poles Hartley

  ‘Time for you to go, Madam,’ said the gaoler, opening the door.

  Rudy didn’t wait. At the sound of the gaoler’s footsteps nearing stealthily, he had unleashed his hands, and the gaoler, taken utterly by surprise, was lying sprawled, his face hidden by his crash-helmet, motionless, his eyes adrift, on the stone floor.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Angela.

  Rudy followed her through devious ways where no one challenged them, for every prison has its times off, to a small door beyond which stood a car. Angela’s car. They got in and drove away.

  Rudy fell asleep; but waking up he asked, not knowing where, or even who he was,

  ‘How did you know the way?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ she said accelerating. ‘I’ve been that way before, more than once.’

  Her tone told him something, but not everything; and trying to solve the puzzle, he dropped off to sleep again.

  For most of the time Rudy was asleep; he woke up when he saw lights flashing, then he dropped off again.

  *

  After a few hours they stopped abruptly, and Rudy, waking from his half-dream, said ‘Where are we?’

  ‘At the frontier,’ Angela replied. ‘It’s quite all right, Father, I’ve got your passport, the bearded one,’ she laughed, ‘which looks quite like you, at least as you used to be.’

  Rudy could hardly take in what she was saying, but the customs official seemed satisfied. Rudy, lurching, opening and closing his eyes, couldn’t take in what was happening.

  Then they were off again, for an hour or more, and it was dark before they arrived.

  Angela had to help him out of the car for he wasn’t steady on his feet, and didn’t know which door to get out of, hers or his, or how to open it.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, a long way away,’ she answered, still carefully lending him her arm. ‘They won’t find us here. Besides, it’s another country. Don’t you remember the customs?’

  Dimly he did, but though his eyes kept closing, he still remembered, subconsciously, the dangers attaching to a life like his, and the dangers they might involve for other people.

  ‘Is this your house?’ he asked, still accepting her aid towards the unlighted windows.

  ‘And will your husband—I can’t remember his name—mind? And you have the baby—He spoke as if the baby might mind, too.

  ‘Oh no, the baby is quite happy. He’s asleep now, at least I hope so. And Jacko knows all about it (now). He isn’t here at the moment, but he’s in sympathy with you, otherwise I couldn’t have done—well, what I did do.’

  Still, Rudy wasn’t quite convinced, and the seven devils who enter in when one has been expelled, began to raise their heads.

  ‘Shall I sleep in the garage? I shall be quite comfortable there, or in that hut in the garden—’ Tired as he was he had an instinct for the precautions he ought to take.

  Angela opened the front door.

  ‘I shall be bitterly offended,’ she said, ‘if you sleep anywhere but in the house. And so will Jacko. Your bed is aired—everything is laid on. Now what would you like for supper—a mixed grill, an omelette? or what?—An appetiser of course to start with. There are plenty of them,’—she waved towards the sideboard, where the bottles gleamed, whisky, gin, vodka, each with its special appeal, its message of encouragement to the weary human race. ‘Or would you like something else, another sort of cocktail?’

  ‘I would like you,’ he said, and before she had time to assent or dissent he had clasped her in his arms. Gently she released herself, and bared her bosom to him for the last time.

  PAINS AND PLEASURES

  There is always room for improvement, but there is not always time for it. Henry Kitson had reached and over-reached the allotted span. In his youth he had been something of a teleologist. An immense and varied field of ambition lay open to him. He would become one with his desires; he would achieve an important and worthwhile aim in which his whole self, all the contents of his personality, such as they were, would be completely and forever expressed.

  These aims took different forms. He would climb the Matterhorn (in those days a considerable feat) and, if he had known about it, he would have wanted to climb the North face of the Eiger. He would also play the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ quite perfectly: the last movement would have no terrors for him. Adding to these achievements he would learn to read, and to speak, at least five languages; his Aunt Patsy, his father’s eldest sister, had done so, so why not he? He would reduce his handicap at golf which was 12, to scratch or even to plus something. He would write a book (he couldn’t decide on what subject) that would be a classic, immortal: the name of Henry Kitson would resound down the ages.

  And he had other ambitions.

  Alas, none of them had materialised, and here he was, in the early seventies, with nothing to show for them. He was comfortably off, with a pension from the firm in the City who had employed him for nearly half a century, and with the money he had saved up—for he had not, mentally, grown old with the years; he was not, and could not be, ‘his age’; he still regarded himself as the impecunious, ambitious young man he was at twenty-five.

  Apart from the tendency which often overtakes elderly men to regard himself as penniless, his situation was most fortunate. He had, as general factotum, a retired policeman, who cleaned his cottage, cooked his meals and drove his car. Wilson (‘Bill’ to Henry Kitson) was perfect: he did everything he should, and nothing he shouldn’t. In this he was very different from some of his predecessors, who had done everything they shouldn’t, and nothing that they should.

  Coming at the tail-end of this procession of mainly unsatisfactory characters (‘character’ was a word used in the old days, but in a different sense, when a prospective employer was asking for a reference) Bill had, of course, for Henry, an overwhelming advantage. After many years of domestic darkness, Bill was the light. Whenever Henry thought of him he gave (if he could remember to) thanksgiving to Heaven for Bill.

  At the same time it was a great temptation, as it always is if the opportunity arises, to flog the willing horse. Bill, like Barkis, was willing; and Henry sometimes asked him to do jobs that he would never have dared to ask of any of Bill’s less amenable forerunners.

  With the advent of Bill, ‘a soundless calm’, in Emily Brontë’s words, descended on Henry. Domestic troubles were over; nothing to resent; nothing to fight against; no sense of Sisyphus bearing an unbearable weight uphill. No grievance at all. Had he lived by his grievances, was a question that Henry sometimes asked himself. Had his resistance to them, his instinct to fight back and assert himself and show what he was made of, somehow strengthened his hold on life, and prolonged it?

  Now he had nothing to resist. What Bill did with his spare time—if he occupied it, as Henry suspected, at the pub and the betting-shop, was no business of his. As far as he was concerned, Bill could do no wrong.

  But just as someone who has always carried a weight on his shoulders, or on his mind or on his heart and who is suddenly relieved of it, feels in himself a void, an incentive to living suddenly taken away, even so Henry, lacking this incentive, found his life empty, almost purposeless.

  Gratitude to Bill was his major preoccupation, but how to express it? Bill was by no means indifferent to money—he liked it and he knew more about it than Henry, with a lifetime’s experience of business, did.

  Little presents, Bill was not averse to them; but they didn’t represent to Henry even a small part of his indebtedness to Bill. Perhaps a bonus of ten per cent for honesty?

  Undoubtedly, Henry Kitson’s retired and retiring life was the happier for Bill’s presence, and for his presents to Bill, but it was also the emptier, now that his grievance had been taken away. Most people need something to live against, and if this objective, positive or negative, is removed, they suffer for it. Henry had friends in the neighbourhood whom he saw as often as he could; but they did not supply him with that extra-personal incentive.
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br />   ‘Live with one aim, but let that aim be high’—or low—which he had had when X, and Y, and Z were ill-treating him, and whose malfeasances, he felt, must be resisted to the ultimate extent of his emotional if not his personal prowess.

  With Bill in charge of his domestic affairs, there was nothing at all to be resisted, nothing to aim at—for Bill was a placid, self-contained character, who had seen a lot of the ups and downs of life, and had little to learn from it which Henry, with the best will in the world, could supply.

  So this life stratified itself into a routine, pleasant but nearly featureless. There were, however, two features in his day which had an emotional content and significance, and to which he clung, for they represented what he liked, and what he disliked: as long as he stuck to them and could look forward to or dread them, he knew he was keeping the advance of senility at bay.

  One was concerned with Bill. Bill in common with many other men, rich and poor, criminal and honest, liked a drink: and Henry saw to it that Bill’s ‘elevenses’ should be a tot of whisky. With all the variations of vocal expression at his command, he would ask Bill if he would like a drink; and Bill, with all the variations of expression at his command, would say ‘Yes’. From the time when he was called, at 8 o’clock, Henry looked forward to this little episode. At the word ‘drink’ Bill’s dark eyes would glow, like coals that had suddenly been set alight. ‘Good health!’ he would say, before he took his glass into the kitchen. Henry never failed to get pleasure from his simple interchange of amenities, just as he never failed to get pain from the other cardinal event of his day, and unfortunately he had longer to anticipate it. This was to put out his cat, Ginger, at bed time. He was fond of Ginger, but Ginger was old and set in his ways, and did not like being put out. Being a neuter, he did not have the same motive that many cats have for prowling about at night, growling and yowling and keeping everyone within earshot awake. He wanted to be warm and comfortable; and although there was a shed and an outhouse in the garden which he must have known about, he preferred Henry’s fireside, and when Henry opened the garden door to put him out he would streak past through Henry’s legs and sit down in front of the fire, purring loudly and triumphantly.

  Henry found this daily or rather nightly ejection of Ginger very painful; but it was inevitable, for with age he had lost whatever house-training he ever had, and misbehaved accordingly. It fell to Bill’s lot to deal with these misdemeanours, which always happened in a certain place, on some stone flags by the cellar-door. Perhaps Ginger thought that his oblations would be more acceptable there than anywhere else; and as someone said, ‘it is impossible to make a cat understand that it should do what you want it to do.’

  When bed-time approached, Henry picked Ginger up and carried him towards the garden-door, the fatal exit. Then Ginger would purr ingratiatingly, as though to say, ‘You can’t have the heart to do this.’ Sometimes, in rebellious moods, he would struggle and claw and scratch: but the end was always the same; he made a desperate dash to get back into the house. Often the hateful process had to be repeated more than once and Henry peering through the glass door (which he couldn’t resist doing) would see Ginger’s amber eyes fixed on him with a look of heart-rending reproach.

  Henry knew what the correct solution was: he should clean up the mess that Ginger made, and not leave it to Bill. But how tempting it is to flog the willing horse! And if ever he yielded to Ginger’s protests, whether in the form of purr or scratch, and let him stay indoors, he refrained from asking Bill what had happened outside the cellar-door.

  Not that Bill ever complained. When Henry surreptitiously went down to the cellar-door and saw and smelt the unmistakeable traces (however carefully cleaned up) of Ginger’s nightly defecations, not a word was said between them.

  But as time passed, and the pension-supported Henry came to rely more and more on his daily routine of living, with nothing to jerk him out of it, the problem of pleasure and pain, as exemplified by Bill’s whisky elevenses in the morning, and Ginger’s compulsory expulsions at night, began to assume undue importance. Henry simply did not want his septuagenarian happiness to depend on these two absurd poles of emotional comfort and discomfort.

  What could he do? Human beings were (so it was generally thought), more valuable and more important than dumb animals (a ridiculous expression, for many animals including Ginger were far from dumb). Certainly Bill was much more valuable to him than Ginger was: Bill was an asset of the highest order whereas Ginger (except for Henry’s affection for him) was merely a debit. He was very greedy; he did nothing to earn his keep; he could not, and did not try, to catch the most unsophisticated mouse; he was just a liability and a parasite.

  Bill, though such a mild-mannered man, must in his time have been a tough character, and used to dealing with tough characters, criminals, murderers and such, as policeman have to be.

  *

  ‘I wish I knew what to do about Ginger,’ Henry said. ‘He makes such a fuss when I turn him out at night. But you know better than I do, I’m sorry to say,’ (and Henry was genuinely sorry) ‘what happens when he stays indoors. It’s not his fault, he doesn’t mean it, he can’t help it, but well, there it is.’

  ‘I know what you refer to, sir,’ said the ex-policeman with an instinctive delicacy of utterance, ‘and I think I know the solution. Indeed, I have been turning it over in my mind for some time. It’s really quite simple.’

  ‘You mean it would be simple to have Ginger put down?’

  ‘Oh no, sir,’ said Bill, horrified. ‘Nothing as drastic as that. Ginger is a good old cat, he wouldn’t hurt a mouse.’ (This was only too true.) ‘I am attached to him, just as you are, and when I said the solution is quite simple, it is quite simple, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I do. What is the solution?’

  ‘Just this, sir. Give him a box with sawdust in it, and put it where he usually—where he usually does his business, if you know what I mean—and I’ll show it to him and then if he doesn’t understand at once—but he will, all cats do. I’ll put his paw in it, and he will soon know what it’s for—and, and act accordingly.’

  ‘What an excellent idea,’ said Henry, a little patronisingly. ‘I wonder that I never thought of it. There is an empty seed-box in the greenhouse, I think, that would be just right for the purpose. And sawdust I suppose is quite easy to get hold of.’

  ‘Well, not all that easy, sir,’ said Bill. ‘But having in mind the ash-tree that fell down, which I am cutting up for firewood, it shouldn’t be difficult, in fact I’ve got nearly enough already.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Bill.’

  Ginger was duly introduced to the box, and his paw gently embedded in the sawdust. This he took very well, purring all the time; but when the ceremony of initiation was over, he did not use the box for its intended cloacal purpose, but settled down in it, with his fore-paws tucked under him, and his tail neatly curled round his flank, and went to sleep.

  Next day he was discovered still asleep in the sawdust box, but alas, only a few inches away were the extremely malodorous vestiges of Ginger’s digestion or indigestion, which the box had been intended to absorb.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Bill, ‘he’ll learn in time.’

  But Ginger didn’t learn. He spent many hours, sometimes all day, slumbering on his sawdust mattress, purring to himself, no doubt, instead of sitting in front of Henry’s comfortable fireplace purring to him.

  ‘I’m afraid Ginger isn’t going to learn, Bill,’ said Henry.

  ‘It looks like not,’ said Bill. ‘You can’t teach an old cat new tricks.’ He laughed at this sally. ‘But we can give him a few days’ grace.’

  *

  The few days passed, but Ginger did not learn. He still regarded the sawdust box as his bed; and like a well-conducted person, he did not wish to pollute it. It was woundingly evident that he still preferred it to Henry’s fireside and that his adjacent loo was very convenient to him.

  H
enry knew that he himself ought to undo what Ginger had done; but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to. ‘I am over seventy,’ he reasoned, ‘and why should I sacrifice myself to the selfish whims of a cat, especially when it has been given every opportunity to satisfy the needs of Nature in other ways?’ All the same, he didn’t relish the nightly ordeal of turning Ginger out.

  ‘I’m afraid our experiment with Ginger hasn’t been successful,’ he said to Bill. ‘He goes on making a nuisance of himself. I wonder if you would mind putting him out at night? He doesn’t like it, he claws and clutches at me, but I dare say that with you he would be more—more sensible. Would you mind?’

  ‘Of course not, Mr. Kitson,’ replied Bill, who when he remembered, preferred to call Henry ‘Mr. Kitson’ rather than ‘sir’.

  *

  Days passed; Henry saw little of Ginger, so content was he on his sawdust bed that he didn’t bother to visit Henry in the sittingroom. Henry caught fleeting glimpses of him in the garden, tail-twitching, intent on birds which he was far too old to catch. ‘Blast him!’ thought Henry. ‘Ungrateful beast!’

  One day there was a knock at his study door. ‘Come in!’ said Henry, who had always asked people not to knock. ‘Come in! Who is it?’

  ‘Oh, Bill!’ he exclaimed, instantly welcoming. ‘What can I do for you?’

  He hadn’t noticed how upset and how unlike himself Bill looked.

  ‘It’s like this, sir,’ Bill began and stopped.

  ‘Like what, Bill?’ asked Henry, and his heart turned over with a presage of disaster.

  ‘It’s like this,’ Bill paused, and repeated more slowly and with a note of authority in his voice that reminded Henry that he had once been a policeman, ‘It’s like this.’