The Man Who Didn't Fly

by Margot Bennett

  “No. He just met Father in the ordinary way. When we had the antique shop. Maurice came in and bought something—I think it was a table. And Father brought him home to lunch.”

  “That’s how it would be,” Harry said with satisfaction. “Your father not only attracts calamities, he asks them home to lunch. Talking about lunch…”

  “I wasn’t talking about lunch,” Hester interrupted angrily. “When I came out I didn’t want to talk about anything.”

  “Then don’t let’s talk,” Harry said in a strained voice. “It will get us nowhere. Nothing will. We’re on a ball, being bowled through emptiness to eternal silence. We’re only pieces of animated dust. Why should we try to hurl our squeaking voices through the universe?”

  Hester was frightened. His face was vacant and his eyes looked blind. She felt he was sinking away from her into blackness: she wasn’t prepared to let him go. She caught his head to her and kissed him, and after a second of isolation he responded. They held on to each other for a moment, and then, by a common impulse of self-preservation, separated again.

  Hester was exhilarated. She felt like a driver whose brakes had failed at a point of danger and who had miraculously survived. She would proceed more carefully now.

  “Harry, how can you talk like that on a beautiful morning?” she said gaily.

  The slight but distinct relief on his face vanished. “But I love you, Hester,” he said resentfully. “And of course that makes me particularly miserable when the sun shines,” he added, beginning to grin.

  They walked on towards the village, closer in their thoughts than most people, but each still utterly confused by the behaviour of the other.

  Hester looked at her watch.

  “Is there something I could do to help you?” Harry asked. “What do you have to buy?”

  “Some buttons and some white silk.”

  “These be feminine mysteries. Anything else?”

  “And some coffee from Mad Meg’s. That’s all.”

  “Give me the money and I’ll get the coffee.”

  “Here you are. A pound note and a pound of coffee,” Hester said.

  When they came to the village Hester went into the threatening darkness of the draper’s shop. Harry went on to the grocer’s. It was a good shop, smelling of incompatible foods.

  “Delicious,” he said approvingly, while the old woman behind the counter snuffled and mewed.

  “A pound of coffee, if you please,” he barked suddenly, like a bad-tempered squire.

  “What kind?” she shrilled back, like one of the dangerous democrats of the village.

  “How should I know what kind? It’s for Miss Wade, of Tower House. Surely you know what your own customers buy.”

  “A pound of best coffee,” she muttered.

  “Well, naturally.”

  He walked round the shop, examining. “Cheese?” he said absently. “What kind of cheese do they like? I’d better take something in a box. Any Brie? Of course not. No Camembert? Well, really! I suppose I’d better take one of those things wrapped in silver paper. Do you know,” he added more genially, “I’m sure you’d find it worth your while to keep real cheese. Throw in a pound of tomatoes, and some plain biscuits. And charge it all up.”

  “Miss Wade always pays,” she croaked.

  “Well, today she wants it charged up,” Harry said.

  He met Hester in the street.

  “Here’s your coffee,” he said. “Six shillings—or was it seven? Anyway, I can’t give you the change at this very moment. I should have paid with your pound instead of my own money. So either I give you back the pound and you owe me seven shillings, or you come into the pub for a drink and I’ll get the pound changed and give you back—what did I say—thirteen shillings.”

  Hester looked confused. “But I don’t want a drink, Harry.”

  “No drink, no change. Be a good girl. A sherry before lunch will set you up.” He took hold of her elbow and steered her into The Running Fox.

  “Harry, I know you’re short of money. You don’t have to buy me a drink.”

  “I want to give you the change from the coffee.”

  “But, Harry, there are other ways of changing a pound.”

  “I can’t imagine what they are,” he said. “Sit down by that table and I’ll bring the drinks. What do you want? Sherry? Beer?”

  “Ginger beer shandy,” she said, and he walked over to the bar. He looked happy and relaxed. He liked having enough money to buy a girl a drink.

  In the corner, dark against the dark panelling, a young man was sitting, with a glass of beer and a newspaper in front of him. Hester looked at him idly. He had a dark, strong face that could have been called menacing. He looked like a man to whom the idea of subservience had never occurred. She studied him, thinking not so much of him as of Harry, realising with pain that Harry was soft where this man and others were hard; that Harry had no pride while this man probably had too much; that Harry was weak, unpredictable, and perhaps even dishonest.

  When Harry came back with the drinks she turned to him with a loving, protective smile; and accepted the shandy from him as though it had been a gift of orchids.

  “I like this pub,” Harry said. “Four hundred years old, and only three landlords in all that time, if the present one hits the average. Take a look at him—do you suppose he’s more than a hundred and thirty-three and a third years old? Your health, Hester!” The last words were spoken with a desperate sincerity that seemed to give the act of drinking a unique importance.

  He put down his empty glass, sighing. “I think I’ll get another,” he said. “What about you?”

  “I’ve hardly touched this, and I don’t want another.”

  “Or you might have high blood pressure at the age of seventy-three. That’s the girl!” Harry said approvingly. “You’re depriving yourself, Hester. The only bad habit you ever give yourself a chance to develop is me.”

  He went to the bar, and she looked after him, trying to estimate how bad a habit he could be. She felt she had no illusions about his moral strength. He was as weak as a flower that had been blown down by the wind, she thought, while the instinct of the good gardener rose in her.

  “Drink up that shandy, Hester,” he said. “I shall love you even when you’re an old woman with dropsy. Don’t look frightened. It’s not true. You’ll grow old like someone out of Yeats. A few minutes of lovely memories, then a graceful death with epitaphs in every anthology. But you must love me if you want to be sure of getting in the anthologies. Hester, love me and I’ll write you a book of poems all to yourself. And I’ll do breathing exercises before the window every morning. What a life we’ll have.” He began to breathe deeply, then bent down to lift imaginary weights and heave them above his head. The dark young man looked up from his newspaper, and the old landlord leant across the bar and gave an amazed, yelping laugh. Harry, as usual, was failing to be inconspicuous.

  Hester didn’t notice the others. She had begun to laugh. Harry was the only person who could make her forget the serious problems of life.

  “Would you be the ideal husband?” she asked teasingly.

  “You would have no pleasure then in reforming me. Would you like to try?”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said lightly. She stood up, frightened by the realisation that she was thinking about it very seriously. Life with Harry would have its compensations, and she saw with absolute clarity that if no one helped him his talent would dissolve in easy words and idleness. By asking for her help he was making her responsible for his own irresponsibility. She didn’t want to marry; like a young fish, she needed all the ocean to swim in before she returned to the small pools of the river. Harry was lost, bewildered, drifting. She wanted to lead him out of the darkness.

  “Harry, I must go. I must go now. Goodbye.”

  She walked out.
She had forgotten to ask for the change from the coffee.

  Thursday (5)

  The young man in the corner watched Hester go, then walked over to Harry.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Will you have a drink with me?”

  “Bitter, please.”

  The stranger went to the bar and came back with the drinks.

  “I thought I heard a note in your voice that suggested you’d been in Australia,” he explained.

  “You’re not accusing me of anything? Here’s your health. And Australia’s, to be on the safe side.”

  “I should keep on the safe side,” the stranger advised. “You liked Australia?”

  “I found it ravishing,” Harry said solemnly. “But I had to leave. It wasn’t the place for my profession.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m a poet.”

  “I’ll be damned!” the Australian said. He looked intently at Harry, as though he was memorising him for an examination.

  “You may photograph me, if you wish,” Harry said modestly.

  “Do you make much money out of poetry?” the Australian said, looking now at Harry’s shabby coat, whose cuffs were so unsuitably bound with leather.

  “Only decimal points,” Harry said. “Do you make much money out of Australia?”

  “In good years, yes. I’m in the farm-machinery business.”

  “Have you been buying many combine-harvesters here?” Harry asked, waving his already empty glass at the empty pub. “Or is it culture that brings you to the Cotswolds?”

  “I was watching you and your sister,” the stranger said in level tones.

  “It must have been with the inward eye,” Harry said. “I haven’t got a sister.”

  “The girl who was here with you. I thought I recognised her voice.”

  “You’re good at voices, aren’t you?” Harry said approvingly. “But you couldn’t help recognising her voice. She’s an English middle-class girl. They all speak alike. When you’ve heard one of them being Cleopatra or Juliet, you’ve heard the lot. Will you have a drink?”

  “Yes.”

  Harry went to the bar. When he came back, his round face was screwed up in pleasure.

  “It’s a happy circumstance, drinking with strangers in bars,” he explained. “My mind’s moving now like a circular saw. I’m not sure now what I’m cutting. It might be monotony. It might be the branch I’m sitting on.”

  The stranger wasn’t easily diverted. “I said I thought I recognised her voice. Does she live at the Tower House?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Hester Wade. She’s the girl I’m going to marry, eventually,” Harry said, making up his mind. Drink was clearing his head.

  “Oh. Have you bought your house yet?”

  “I hadn’t thought of buying a house. I suppose if someone gave us a house, we’d accept it. We’ll live with her father. He wants to go into the hotel business. He’d be glad to have us as his guests.”

  “Is a man called Maurice Reid going to be one of the guests?”

  “In a way, I like being pumped,” Harry said. “It makes me feel important, like a spy being interviewed by the secret police. But there’s another side of me, longing to discuss astronomy, or bird-watching. Suppose you tell me, without what you may believe to be elaborate finesse, exactly what you want to know. Roll all your questions up into one ball and tear the answers with rough strife through the iron gates of life.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?” the stranger asked truculently. “No, I see, it rhymed. Did you make it up?”

  “I adapted it to the needs of the moment. Adapt or die, my friend, that’s the rule.”

  The stranger looked grimly at Harry, then made a quick decision. “I’ll tell you what I want to know. Have the Wades much money? Do they trust Maurice Reid? Is he planning to swindle them? If he is, when’s he going to do it?”

  “The Wades have very little money. They once had more. The sooner they lose what they have, the better, then the long agony of parting will be over. Hester’s father thinks he has the Midas touch, but what he has is the reverse. All his gold turns into porridge and roses. Maurice has spent six months displaying his gilt edges to him and is now going to sell him some kind of illuminated address to Australian oil, before melting into the trees and never being heard of again. That’s my estimate of the situation,” Harry said cheerfully.

  “And you haven’t tried to interfere?” the stranger asked contemptuously.

  “I’ve told them what I think. But he’s an angel! they say. They’re weak on ornithology, or they’d know that vultures have wings, too.”

  “Oh, skip all that. There’s not much doing in Australian oil, just now. If this man Reid sells them shares in an imaginary company, would it be a crime, by English law?”

  “I’m just about the opposite of a lawyer,” Harry admitted. “But it might.”

  “So if we let Reid go ahead, and then jump, we could get him into jail.”

  “It would be better if we stopped him. How am I to get married if my father-in-law’s lost all his money?” Harry asked, bursting into laughter.

  “Then suppose the company isn’t imaginary. Suppose he bought up some bankrupt stock for a penny a piece and is going to sell it at a thousand per cent profit. That’s a possibility. You—what’s your name?”

  “Harry Walters, sir,” Harry said meekly.

  “Keep your mouth shut, Walters. I think I’ll have to deal with Reid direct.”

  “What have you got against Maurice?” Harry asked.

  The Australian stood up. His face was dark and desperate, like a man trapped in the mountains in a thunderstorm.

  “I’d sooner shake a snake by the hand than come within speaking distance of him,” he said. “If I get a chance I’ll twist him till his back breaks.”

  Harry looked at him with bright, excited eyes. “Have another drink, you—what’s your name?”

  “Marryatt. I’ll eat before I drink any more. You ought to do the same,” he said, without interest.

  “I’m eating under a haystack today. Cheese, biscuits, and the beauties of nature. Where are you staying—if I want to get in touch with you?”

  “I’m staying in the pub here. And I’m staying just as long as it takes me to get my hands on Reid.”

  “I’ll have to arrange a meeting between you two boys,” Harry said. “I’ve got my own business, of course,” he said vaguely. He closed his eyes. The beer had made him very tired. “Morgan—if I could put a red-hot poker under Morgan’s nose I’d be a rich man. It’s for Hester, you see. I’ve got to get the money for Hester. I’ll do it without the red-hot poker—and there will be no more worrying about money then.”

  “Who’s Morgan?” Marryatt asked.

  “That would take too long to explain,” Harry said. “Goodbye.” He turned to leave the pub. At the door he stopped.

  “I carry a gun,” he said. “So there’s nothing to worry about at all.”

  Thursday (6)

  Throughout the afternoon the sun blazed down until the flowers buckled in the heat and all the dogs walked with their tongues hanging out. The cows stood quite still except for the tails they swished against the flies; the bees worked against time, allowing rather less than a second to each flower, and the butterflies, the true creatures of the sun, abandoned themselves to an aimless happiness.

  Hester lay down in the shade. The long grass of the lawn smelt like hay. It was one of many reminders of the work that waited in the garden. She lay in idleness, dimly aware of a shepherd shouting to his dogs on the other side of the valley; the voice of command was thinned by distance to a grumbling bird-call. In the valley below, a tractor muttered; the bees that worked beside her in the flowers ma
de a more important noise; she had no troubles and no worries; she fell asleep.

  When she woke Jackie was standing beside her, looking underfed and overworked.

  “I’ve polished the silver, Miss. Would you want me to help in the garden?” he asked accusingly.

  She sat up, remembering guiltily that she had meant to send for the police. He looked very young to go to prison.

  “Yes, Jackie, you could begin to weed that flower bed over there,” she said sharply.

  He drooped away from her. She watched him unhappily, trying to believe that work was an infallible reformer, and that if criminals could be exposed to its pleasures, they would soon become honest men.

  She stood up, looking at Jackie with a regenerative eye. He turned back towards her, holding out a great sheaf of uprooted delphiniums.

  “Big weeds you’ve got in this garden,” he said. “What do I do with them now?”

  “Oh, Jackie, what have you done? You must try to plant them again.”

  She heard the phone ring, and wavered for a moment between the garden and the house.

  “Leave the garden alone. Don’t touch a thing till I come back,” she said, and ran into the house.

  Morgan was creeping through the hall, looking nervously at the telephone.

  “Where’s that little crook?” he asked.

  “He’s in the garden, the back garden.”

  Morgan turned and went quickly through the front door. Hester picked up the telephone.

  “Miss Wade? Are you the girl I talked to in the garden last night?”

  “Yes. Are you—I don’t know your name.”

  “My name’s Tom Marryatt. Now, look, I don’t want to interfere in anyone’s business, and you can tell me where to go, if you like. I’m trying to do the straight thing. I should have done it last night. I’ve been talking to your friend.”

  “You’ve been what?”

  “I’ve been talking to the man you’re going to marry. What’s his name—Harry Walters.”