by John Wyndham
‘Light vivacity, light vivacity, just say it to yourself over and over again whenever you’re doing nothing in particular – and even if you are.’
‘But is that really my personality? Is it the real me?’ asked Peggy.
Miss Carnegie raised her eyebrows.
‘Your personality?’ she said, then she smiled. ‘Oh, I see. Oh dear, you have got a lot to learn, haven’t you? You’re confusing us with the television side, I’m afraid. Screen personality is quite different. Oh, yes, indeed. A few years ago it was sultry, then we had sparkling for a time, then we had a stretch of sincerity – let me see what came next? Oh, yes, smouldering, and, for a rather brief time, ingenuousness – but that doesn’t suit modern audiences, silly to try it, really – then there was a spell of passionpent – the audiences liked that all right, but it was exceedingly trying for everyone else. This season it’s lightly-vivacious. So just keep on saying it to yourself until you come to me again next Wednesday. Light-vivacity, light-vivacity! Try to throw your weight a little more forward on your toes, you’ll find that’ll help. Light-vivacity, light-vivacity!’
And then to her coiffeur, to her facial-artist, to her deportment-instructor, to her dietician, to a number of others until, finally, to Miss Higgins, whom she found on the point of terminating an interview with Carla.
‘Yes,’ Miss Higgins was saying. ‘You’ve a good ear. I don’t think you will need much help from me. We can easily emphasize those “Rs” a little. What you need to guard against is a tendency to shout in ordinary conversation. That’s hard on the microphone. Besides, unless she happens to live in Kensington, a lady doesn’t shout.’
Then Carla departed, and it was Peggy’s turn. Miss Higgins asked her to read a passage printed on a card, and listened, fascinated.
‘Beautiful!’ she said. ‘I must get you to make some recordings before we spoil it. Those “ees”! Please repeat after me: “The B.B.C. decrees at least three paeans to Greensleeves each week”.’
For the next ten minutes Peggy demonstrated her vowels. As she concluded, Miss Higgins was regarding her with the benevolence of one who has at last discovered a task worthy of her talents.
‘A work after my grandfather’s heart,’ she said, ‘but it’s going to mean hard work for you, my dear. Harder than for any of the rest, I’m afraid.’
‘The rest?’ asked Peggy.
‘Well, there are thirty-six of you on the next Screen Beauty Course, and it is a highly competitive profession, you know.’
‘But I do have a contract, Miss Higgins.’
‘An option contract, I understand,’ amended Miss Higgins. ‘That makes an extra incentive. I don’t suppose you are acquainted with your competitors yet, but they have read all about you, and what is the result? Four of them have already requested that they may be given a slight trace of Irish in their speech, and I have no doubt more will do the same. So you see … !’
Peggy stared at her indignantly.
‘Have they indeed! So it is after stealing my contract they are?’
‘It shows the way the wind blows,’ admitted Miss Higgins. ‘But, of course,’ she added consolingly, ‘it is an utterly impossible request. Naturally, one cannot teach anything on this course other than received Anglo-American. Still, it does go to show …’
‘But if they change me shape, and change me voice, and change me hair, and change me face, as they say, what is it that is me, at all?’ asked Peggy.
‘One has a duty to the public,’ said Miss Higgins, ‘or, perhaps one should say, the film people have a duty to the public. One has to learn to suit oneself to a medium, to work within its limits. That is required of every artist, is it not?’
Peggy unhappily supposed it was.
‘Now, don’t you worry, my dear,’ Miss Higgins advised. ‘We’ll see you through, and get you your certificate. Just you come along here on Monday morning after your callisthenics, and we’ll get down to it. You’ll be in movies, all right, never doubt it …’
George Floyd wandered into Mr Solly de Kopf’s spacious office, and dropped into an easy-chair.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Solly inquired looking up.
‘I need a drink,’ George told him, ‘a large one.’
Al conjured it up, and put it beside him.
‘What’s wrong? I thought you’d gone to meet her. Don’t say the Marinstein plane’s crashed.’
‘Oh, no, it came in all right. Everything was laid on – Press, steam-radio, television, the lot.’
‘But she wasn’t there?’
‘Oh, she was – at least, I think she was.’
Solly de Kopf looked at him with concern.
‘George, you gotta get a grip on yourself. You went there to meet her, see that she got properly mugged and all that, and bring her here. Well, where is she?’
George sighed.
‘I don’t know, Solly. I reckon she’s vanished.’
‘Al,’ said Solly, ‘ask him what happened.’
‘Sure, Chief. Look, George, you say the plane came in all right – then what?’
‘It was what came out of it that was the trouble.’
‘Well, what did come out of it?’
‘Lolos,’ said George gloomily. ‘Thirty-six made-to-measure Lolos. Not a trace of a colleen, or an Irish Rose among ’em. Thirty-six Lolos, all certified up to Marinstein movie-standard, all claiming to be Deirdre Shilsean, all saying they’ve got a contract with us. It’s heartbreaking.’
‘You mean, you can’t tell which she is?’ inquired Al.
‘Well, you try – they’re all downstairs in the lobby. Anyway, it’s too late now if you did. Oh, the blue mountains, the emerald turf, the silver loughs – and the sweet soft-eyed colleen with the laughin’ eyes … All gone. – Vanished away. Nothing but Lolos.’ He sagged further into his chair, radiating a despondency that touched even Solly de Kopf.
Al, however, preserved a thoughtful detachment, and presently he brightened.
‘Say, Chief!’
‘Huh?’ said Solly.
‘I been thinking, Chief, maybe that Irish stuff wouldn’t have been so hot after all – kinda chancy and out of line. But we do still have a sure-fire script on hand – remember that one about the Roman wolf-pack and the Sabrinas?’
Mr Solly de Kopf sat silent for a moment, teeth clenched on his cigar, then he exhaled, and a gleam came into his eye.
‘And thirty-six Lolos waiting in the lobby! Al, you got it! What are we waiting for? Get down there, Al. Get ’em signed up right away – option, mind you, no figures yet.’
‘Sure, Chief,’ Al said, as he made for the door.
And that is why they keen in the cottage in Barranacleugh by the Slieve Gamph for poor Peggy MacRafferty; her that was lissom as the reeds by the bog, with the sweet trustin’ ways of her – her that never was seen again, at all. Ochone!
Stitch in Time
On the sheltered side of the house the sun was hot. Just inside the open french windows Mrs Dolderson moved her chair a few inches, so that her head would remain in the shade while the warmth could comfort the rest of her. Then she leant her head back on the cushion, looking out.
The scene was, for her, timeless.
Across the smooth lawn the cedar stood as it had always stood. Its flat spread boughs must, she supposed, reach a little further now than they had when she was a child, but it was hard to tell; the tree had seemed huge then, it seemed huge now. Farther on, the boundary hedge was just as trim and neat as it had always been. The gate into the spinney was still flanked by the two unidentifiable topiary birds, Cocky and Olly – wonderful that they should still be there, even though Olly’s tail feathers had become a bit twiggy with age.
The flower-bed on the left, in front of the shrubbery, was as full of colour as ever – well, perhaps a little brighter; one had a feeling that flowers had become a trifle more strident than they used to be, but delightful nevertheless. The spinney beyond the hedge, however, had changed a little; mor
e young trees, some of the larger ones gone. Between the branches were glimpses of pink roof where there had been no neighbours in the old days. Except for that, one could almost, for a moment, forget a whole lifetime.
The afternoon drowsing while the birds rested, the bees humming, the leaves gently stirring, the bonk-bonk from the tennis court round the corner, with an occasional voice giving the score. It might have been any sunny afternoon out of fifty or sixty summers.
Mrs Dolderson smiled upon it, and loved it all; she had loved it when she was a girl, she loved it even more now.
In this house she had been born; she had grown up in it, married from it, come back to it after her father died, brought up her own two children in it, grown old in it … Some years after the second war she had come very near to losing it – but not quite; and here she still was …
It was Harold who had made it possible. A clever boy, and a wonderful son … When it had become quite clear that she could no longer afford to keep the house up, that it would have to be sold, it was Harold who had persuaded his firm to buy it. Their interest, he had told her, lay not in the house, but in the site – as would any buyer’s. The house itself was almost without value now, but the position was convenient. As a condition of sale, four rooms on the south side had been converted into a flat which was to be hers for life. The rest of the house had become a hostel housing some twenty young people who worked in the laboratories and offices which now stood on the north side, on the site of the stables and part of the paddock. One day, she knew, the old house would come down, she had seen the plans, but for the present, for her time, both it and the garden to the south and west could remain unspoilt. Harold had assured her that they would not be required for fifteen or twenty years yet – much longer than she would know the need of them …
Nor, Mrs Dolderson thought calmly, would she be really sorry to go. One became useless, and, now that she must have a wheelchair, a burden to others. There was the feeling, too, that she no longer belonged – that she had become a stranger in another people’s world. It had all altered so much; first changing into a place that it was difficult to understand, then growing so much more complex that one gave up trying to understand. No wonder, she thought, that the old become possessive about things; cling to objects which link them with the world that they could understand …
Harold was a dear boy, and for his sake she did her best not to appear too stupid – but, often, it was difficult … Today, at lunch, for instance, he had been so excited about some experiment that was to take place this afternoon. He had had to talk about it, even though he must know that practically nothing of what he said was comprehensible to her. Something about dimensions again – she had grasped that much, but she had only nodded, and not attempted to go further. Last time the subject had cropped up, she had observed that in her youth there had been only three, and she did not see how even all this progress in the world could have added more. This had set him off on a dissertation about the mathematician’s view of the world through which it was, apparently, possible to perceive the existence of a series of dimensions. Even the moment of existence in relation to time was, it seemed, some kind of dimension. Philosophically, Harold had begun to explain – but there, and at once, she had lost him. He led straight into confusion. She felt sure that when she was young philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics had all been quite separate studies – nowadays they seemed to have quite incomprehensibly run together. So this time she had listened quietly, making small, encouraging sounds now and then, until at the end he had smiled ruefully, and told her she was a dear to be so patient with him. Then he had come round the table and kissed her cheek gently as he put his hand over hers, and she had wished him the best of luck with the afternoon’s mysterious experiment. Then Jenny had come in to clear the table, and wheel her closer to the window …
The warmth of the slumbrous afternoon carried her into a half-dream, took her back fifty years to just such an afternoon when she had sat here in this very window – though certainly with no thought of a wheelchair in those days – waiting for Arthur … waiting with an ache in her heart for Arthur … and Arthur had never come …
Strange, it was, the way things fell out. If Arthur had come that day she would almost certainly have married him. And then Harold and Cynthia would never have existed. She would have had children, of course, but they would not have been Harold and Cynthia … What a curious, haphazard thing one’s existence was … Just by saying ‘no’ to one man, and ‘yes’ to another, a woman might bring into existence a potential murderer … How foolish they all were nowadays – trying to tidy everything up, make life secure, while behind, back in everyone’s past, stretched the chance-studded line of women who had said ‘yes’ or ‘no’, as the fancy took them …
Curious that she should remember Arthur now. It must be years since she had thought of him …
She had been quite sure that he would propose that afternoon. It was before she had even heard of Colin Dolderson. And she would have agreed. Oh yes, she would have accepted him.
There had never been any explanation. She had never known why he did not come then – or any more. He had never written to her. Ten days, perhaps a fortnight later there had been a somewhat impersonal note from his mother telling her that he had been ill, and the doctor had advised sending him abroad. But after that, nothing at all – until the day she had seen his name in a newspaper, more than two years later …
She had been angry of course – a girl owed that to her pride – and hurt, too, for a time … Yet how could one know that it had not been for the best, in the end? – Would his children have been as dear to her, or as kind, and as clever as Harold and Cynthia …?
Such an infinity of chances … all those genes and things they talked about nowadays …
The thump of tennis-balls had ceased, and the players had gone; back, presumably, to their recondite work. Bees continued to hum purposefully among the flowers; half a dozen butterflies were visiting there too, though in a dilettante, unairworthy-looking way. The farther trees shimmered in the rising heat. The afternoon’s drowsiness became irresistible. Mrs Dolderson did not oppose it. She leant her head back, half aware that somewhere another humming sound, higher in pitch than the bees’, had started, but it was not loud enough to be disturbing. She let her eyelids drop …
Suddenly, only a few yards away, but out of sight as she sat, there were feet on the path. The sound of them began quite abruptly, as if someone had just stepped from the grass on to the path – only she would have seen anyone crossing the grass … Simultaneously there was the sound of a baritone voice, singing cheerfully, but not loudly to itself. It, too, began quite suddenly; in the middle of a word in fact:
‘ “– rybody’s doin’ it, doin’ it, do –” ’
The voice cut off suddenly. The footsteps, too, came to a dead stop.
Mrs Dolderson’s eyes were open now – very wide open. Her thin hands gripped the arms of her chair. She recollected the tune: more than that, she was even certain of the voice – after all these years … A silly dream, she told herself … She had been remembering him only a few moments before she closed her eyes … How foolish … !
And yet it was curiously undreamlike … Everything was so sharp and clear, so familiarly reasonable … The arms of the chair quite solid under her fingers …
Another idea leapt into her mind. She had died. That was why it was not like an ordinary dream. Sitting here in the sun, she must have quietly died. The doctor had said it might happen quite unexpectedly … And now it had! She had a swift moment of relief – not that she had felt any great fear of death, but there had been that sense of ordeal ahead. Now it was over – and with no ordeal. As simple as falling asleep. She felt suddenly happy about it; quite exhilarated … Though it was odd that she still seemed to be tied to her chair …
The gravel crunched under shifting feet. A bewildered voice said:
‘That’s rum! Dashed queer! What the devil’s happened?
’
Mrs Dolderson sat motionless in her chair. There was no doubt whatever about the voice.
A pause. The feet shifted, as if uncertain. Then they came on, but slowly now, hesitantly. They brought a young man into her view. – Oh, such a very young man, he looked. She felt a little catch at her heart …
He was dressed in a striped club-blazer, and white flannel trousers. There was a silk scarf round his neck, and, tilted back off his forehead, a straw hat with a coloured band. His hands were in his trousers pockets, and he carried a tennis-racket under his left arm.
She saw him first in profile, and not quite at his best, for his expression was bewildered, and his mouth slightly open as he stared towards the spinney at one of the pink roofs beyond.
‘Arthur,’ Mrs Dolderson said gently.
He was startled. The racket slipped, and clattered on the path. He attempted to pick it up, take off his hat, and recover his composure all at the same time; not very successfully. When he straightened his face was pink, and its expression still confused.
He looked at the old lady in the chair, her knees hidden by a rug, her thin, delicate hands gripping the arms. His gaze went beyond her, into the room. His confusion increased, with a touch of alarm added. His eyes went back to the old lady. She was regarding him intently. He could not recall ever having seen her before, did not know who she could be – yet in her eyes there seemed to be something faintly, faintly not unfamiliar.
She dropped her gaze to her right hand. She studied it for a moment as though it puzzled her a little, then she raised her eyes again to his.
‘You don’t know me, Arthur?’ she asked quietly.
There was a note of sadness in her voice that he took for disappointment, tinged with reproof. He did his best to pull himself together.
‘I – I’m afraid not,’ he confessed. ‘You see I – er – you – er –’ he stuck, and then went on desperately: ‘You must be Thelma’s – Miss Kilder’s – aunt?’
