Short Stories 1895-1926

by Walter De la Mare

  And talking of tempers reminded him of Charlie. What on earth was going to be done with Charlie? There was no difficulty in conjuring up, in seeing Charlie – that is if he really did go every Saturday to a football match. But Charlie was now of an age when he might think it a fine manly thing to be loafing about the counter of a pub talking to some flaxen barmaid with a tuppeny cigar between his teeth. Still, Mr Thripp refused to entertain more than a glimpse of this possibility. He saw him at this moment as clearly as if in a peepshow, packed in with hundreds of other male creatures close as sardines in a tin, with their check caps and their ‘fags’, and their staring eyes revolving in consort as if they were all attached to one wire, while that idiotic ball in the middle of the arena coursed on its helpless way from muddy boot to muddy boot.

  Heaven knows, Mr Thripp himself was nothing much better than a football! You had precious small chance in this life of choosing which boot should give you the next kick. And what about that smug new creeping accountant at the office with his upstart airs and new-fangled book-keeping methods!

  Mr Thripp’s mouth opened in a yawn, but managed only to achieve a fraction of it. He rubbed his face; his eyes now shut again. It was not as if any of your children were of much practical help. Why should they be when they could never understand that what you pined for, what you really needed was not only practical help but some inward grace and clearness of mind wherewith they could slip in under your own thoughts and so share your point of view without all that endless terrifying argumentation. He didn’t always give advice to suit his own ends; and yet whenever he uttered a word to James, tactfully suggesting that in a world like this – however competent a man may be and however sure of himself – you had to push your way, you had to make your weight felt, James always looked at him as if he were a superannuated orang-outang in a cage – an orang-outang with queer and not particularly engaging habits.

  He wouldn’t mind even that so much if only James would take his cigarette out of his mouth when he talked. To see that bit of stained paper attached to his son’s lower lip wagging up and down, up and down, beneath that complacent smile and those dark helpless-looking eyes, all but sent Mr Thripp stark staring mad at times. Once, indeed, he had actually given vent to the appalling mass of emotion hoarded up like water in a reservoir in his mind. The remembrance of the scene that followed made him even at this moment tremble in his chair. Thank God, thank God, he hadn’t often lost control like that.

  Well, James would be married by this time next year, he supposed. And what a nice dainty pickle he was concocting for himself! Mr Thripp knew that type of young woman, with the compressed lips, and the thin dry hair, and the narrow hips. She’d be ‘a good manager’, right enough, but there’s a point in married life where good managing is little short of being in a lunatic asylum between two iron-faced nurses and yourself in a strait waistcoat. The truth of it was, with all his fine airs and neat finish, James hadn’t much common sense. He had a fair share of brains; but brains are no good if you are merely self-opinionated and contemptuous on principle. James was not like anybody in Mr Thripp’s own family. He was a Simpkins.

  And then suddenly it was as if some forgotten creature in Mr Thripp’s mind or heart had burst out crying; and the loving look he thereupon cast on his elder son’s face in his mind was almost maudlin in its sentimentality. He would do anything for James within reason: anything. But then it would have to be within James’s reason – not his own. He knew that. Why he would himself marry the young woman and exult in being a bigamist if only he could keep his son out of her way. And yet, and yet; maybe there were worse women in the world than your stubborn, petulant, niggardly, half-sexed nagger. Mr Thripp knew a nagger of old. His brother’s wife, Fanny, had been a nagger. She was dead now, and George was a free man – but drinking far too much.

  Well, as soon as he could get a chance, Mr Thripp sitting there in his chair decided, he would have another good think; but that probably wouldn’t be until next Saturday, if then. You can’t think to much purpose – except in a worried disjointed fashion – when you are in the noise of an office or keeping yourself from saying things you have no wish to say. The worst of it was it was not much good discussing these matters with Tilda. Like most women, she always went off at a tangent. And when you came down to it, and wanted to be reasonable, there was so little left to discuss. Besides, Tilda had worries enough of her own.

  At this moment Mr Thripp once more opened his eyes wide. The small kitchen loomed beatifically rosy and still in the glow of the fire. Evening had so far edged on its way now that he could hardly see the hands of his two clocks. He could but just detect the brass pendulum – imperturbably chopping up eternity into fragments of time. He craned forward; in five minutes he ought to be brewing his little private pot of tea. Even if he nodded off now, he would be able to wake in time, but five minutes doesn’t leave much margin for dropping off. He shifted a little on his chair, and once more shut his eyes. And in a moment or two his mind went completely blank.

  He seemed to have been suddenly hauled up helpless with horror into an enormous vacancy – to be dangling unconfined and motionless in space. A scene of wild sandy hills and spiky trees – an illimitable desert, came riding towards him out of nothingness. He hung motionless, and was yet sweeping rapidly forward, but for what purpose and to what goal there was not the smallest inkling. The wilderness before him grew ever more desolate and menacing. He began to be deadly afraid; groaned; stirred – and found himself with fingers clenched on its arms sitting bolt upright in his chair. And the hands of the clock looked to be by a hair’s breadth precisely in the same position as when he had started on that ghastly nightmare journey. His face blanched. He sat appalled, listening to an outrageous wauling of voices. It was as though a thousand demons lay in wait for him beneath his window and were summoning him to his doom.

  And all this nightmare horror of mind was due solely to a conversazione of cats! Yet, as with flesh still creeping he listened on to this clamour, it was so human in effect that it might be multitudinous shades of the unborn that were thronging about the glass of his window. Mr Thripp rose from his chair, his face transfigured with rage and desire for revenge. He went out into the scullery, opened the back door, and at sound of him the caterwauling instantly ceased.

  And almost as instantly his fury died out in him. The cold evening air fanned his forehead. He smiled quixotically, and looked about him. There came a furtive rustle in the bushes. ‘Ah, there you are!’ he sang out gently into the dark. ‘Have your play while you can, my fine gentlemen! Take it like your betters, for it’s a sight too soon over.’

  Above the one cramped leafless elder-tree in his yard a star was pricking the sky. A ground mist, too, was rising, already smelling a little stale. Great London and its suburbs appeared to be in for one of its autumnal fogs. A few of the upper windows opposite loomed dim with light. Mr Thripp’s neighbours, it seemed, were also preparing to be off to the pictures or the music-halls. It was very still, and the air was damp and clammy.

  As he stood silent there in the obscurity a deepening melancholy crept over his mind, though he was unaware into what gloomy folds and sags his face had fallen. He suddenly remembered that his rates would have to be paid next week. He remembered that Christmas would soon be coming, and that he was getting too old to enter into the fun of the thing as he used to do. His eyes rolled a little in their sockets. What the … ! his old friend within began to suggest. But Mr Thripp himself did not even enunciate the missing ‘hell’. Instead, he vigorously rubbed his face with his stout capable hand. ‘Well, fog anyhow don’t bring rain,’ he muttered to himself.

  And as if at a signal his own cat and his next-door neighbour’s cat and Mrs Brown’s cat and the cat of the painter and decorator whose back garden abutted his own, together with the ginger-and-white cat from the newsvendor’s beyond, with one consent broke out once more into their Sabbath eve quintette. The many-stranded strains of it mounted up into the he
avens like the yells of demented worshippers of Baal.

  ‘And, as I say, I don’t blame ye neether,’ Mr Thripp retorted, with a grim smile. ‘If you knew, my friends, how narrowly you some of you escaped a bucket of cold water when you couldn’t even see out of your young eyes you’d sing twice as loud.’

  He shut the door and returned to his fireside. No more hope of sleep that afternoon. He laughed to himself for sheer amusement at his disappointment. What kids men were! He stirred the fire, it leapt brightly as if intent to please him. He pushed the kettle on; lit the lamp; warmed his little privy glossy-brown tea-pot, and fetched out a small private supply of the richest Ceylon from behind some pots in the saucepan cupboard.

  Puffs of steam were now vapouring out of the spout of the kettle with majestic pomposity. Mr Thripp lifted it off the coals and balanced it over his tea-pot. And at that very instant the electric bell – which a year or two ago in a moment of strangest caprice Charles had fixed up in the corner – began jangling like a fire-alarm. Mr Thripp hesitated. If this was one of the family, he was caught. Caught, that is, unless he was mighty quick in concealing these secret preparations. If it was Tilda – well, valour was the better part of discretion. He poured the water into the pot, replaced the lid, and put it on to the oven-top to stew. With a glance of satisfaction at the spinster-like tidiness of the room, he went out, and opened the door.

  ‘Why, it’s Millie!’ he said, looking out at the slim-shouldered creature standing alone there under the porch; ‘you don’t mean to say it’s you, my dear?’

  Millie made no reply. Her father couldn’t see her face, partly because the lamp-post stationed in front of the house three doors away gave at best a feeble light, and partly because her features were more or less concealed by her hat. She pushed furtively past him without a word, her head still stooping out of the light.

  Oh, my God, what’s wrong now? yelled her father’s inward monstrous monitor, frenziedly clanging the fetters on wrist and ankle. ‘Come right in, my pretty dear,’ said Mr Thripp seductively, ‘this is a pleasant surprise. And what’s more, between you and me and the gatepost, I have just been making myself a cup of tea. Not a word to Mother; it’s our little secret. We’ll have it together before the others come in.’

  He followed his daughter into the kitchen.

  ‘Lor, what a glare you are in, Pa!’ she said in a small muffled voice. She turned the wick of the lamp down so low that in an instant or two the flame flickered and expired, and she seated herself in her father’s chair by the fire. But the flamelight showed her face now. It was paler even than usual. A strand of her gilded pale-brown hair had streaked itself over her blue-veined temple. She looked as if she had been crying. Her father, his hands hanging down beside him as uselessly as the front paws of a performing bear, watched her in an appalling trepidation of spirit. This then was the secret of his nightmare; for this the Cats of Fate had chorused!

  ‘What’s wrong, Millie love? Are you overtired, my girl? There! Don’t say nothing for a minute or two. See, here’s my little pot just meant for you and me!’

  Millie began to cry again, pushing her ridiculous little handkerchief close to her eyes. Mr Thripp’s hand hovered awkwardly above her dainty hat and then gently fumbled as if to stroke her hair beneath. He knelt down beside her chair.

  For heaven’s sake! for heaven’s sake! for heaven’s sake! a secret voice was gabbling frenziedly in his ear. ‘Tell your old dad, lovey,’ he murmured out loud, softly as the crooning of a wood-pigeon.

  Millie tilted back her pretty hat and dropped her fair head on his shoulder. ‘It’s nothing, Dad,’ she said, ‘It’s only that they are all the same.’

  ‘What are all the same?’

  ‘Oh, fellows, Dad.’

  ‘Which one, precious?’ Mr Thripp lulled wooingly. God strike him dead! muttered his monster.

  ‘Oh, only young Arthur. Like a fool I waited half an hour for him and then saw him with – with that Westcliff girl.’

  A sigh as voluminous as the suspiration of Niagara swept over Mr Thripp; but it made no sound. Half a dozen miraculous words of reassurance were storming his mind in a frenzy of relief. He paused an instant, and accepted the seventh.

  ‘What’s all that, my precious?’ he was murmuring. ‘Why, when I was courting your mother, I saw just the same thing happen. She was a mighty pretty young thing, too, as a girl, though not quite so trim and neat in the figure as you. I felt I could throttle him where he stood. But no, I just took no notice, trusting in my own charms!’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ sobbed Millie, ‘but you were a man, and we have to fight without seeming to. Not that I care a fig for him; he can go. But —’

  ‘Lord, Millie!’ Mr Thripp interrupted, smoothing her cheek with his squat forefinger, ‘you’d beat twenty of them Westcliffs, with a cast in both eyes and your hands behind your back. Don’t you grieve no more, my dear; he’ll come back safe and sound, or he’s less of a – of a nice young feller than I take him for.’

  For a moment Mr Thripp caught a glimpse of the detestable creature with the goggling eyes and the suede shoes, but he dismissed him sternly from view.

  ‘There now,’ he said, ‘give your poor old dad a kiss. What’s disappointments, Millie; they soon pass away. And now, just take a sip or two of this extra-strong Bohay! I was hoping I shouldn’t have to put up with a lonely cup and not a soul to keep me company. But mind, my precious, not a word to your ma.’

  So there they sat, father and daughter, comforter and comforted, while Mr Thripp worked miracles for two out of a tea-pot for one. And while Millie, with heart comforted, was musing of that other young fellow she had noticed boldly watching her while she was waiting for her Arthur, Mr Thripp was wondering when it would be safe and discreet to disturb her solacing daydream so that he might be busying himself over the supper.

  It’s one dam neck-and-neck worry and trouble after another, his voice was assuring him. But meanwhile, his plain square face was serene and gentle as a nestful of halcyons, as he sat sipping his hot water and patting his pensive Millie’s hand.

  1 As printed in BS (1942).

  Pretty Poll1

  In her odd impulsive fashion – her piece of sewing pressed tight to her small bosom, her two small feet as close to one another on the floor – Judy had laughed out: and the sound of it had a faint far-away resemblance to bells – bells muffled, in the sea. ‘You never, never, never speak of marriage,’ she charged Tressider, ‘without being satirical. You just love to make nonsense of us all. Now I say you have no right to. You haven’t earned the privilege. Wait till you’ve jilted Cleopatra, or left your second-best bed to – to Catherine Parr – if she was the last. Don’t you agree, Stella?’

  The slight lifting at the corners of dark handsome Stella’s mouth could hardly have been described as a smile. ‘I always agree,’ she assented. ‘And surely, Mr Tressider, isn’t marriage an “institution”? Mightn’t you just as well attack a police-station? No one gets any good out of it. It only hurts.’

  ‘That’s just it, Stella, it only hurts. It’s water, after all, that has the best chance of wearing away stones – not horrid sledge-hammers like that.’

  From his low chair, his cleft clean-shaven chin resting on his hands, Tressider for a moment or two continued to look up and across the room at Judy, now absorbedly busy again over her needlework. Time, too, wears like water; but little of its influence was perceptible there. The curtains at the French windows had been left undrawn; a moon was over the garden. It was Judy’s choice – this mingling of the two lights – natural and artificial. Hers, too, the fire, this late summer evening. She stooped forward, thrusting out a slightly trembling hand towards its flames.

  ‘No, it isn’t fair,’ she said, ‘there are many married people who are at least, well, endurably happy: Bill and me, for example. The real marvel is that any two ignorant, chance young things who happen to be of opposite sex should ever just go on getting older and older, more and more us
ed to one another, and all that – and yet not want a change – not really for a single instant. I know dozens – apart from the others.’

  ‘Oh, I never meant to suggest that “whited” are the only kind of sepulchres,’ said Tressider. ‘I agree, too, it’s the substantial that wears longest. Second-best beds; rather than Wardour Street divans. But there are excesses – just human ones, I mean. It’s this horrible curse of asking too much. Up there they seem to have supposed that the best ratio for a human being was one quart of feeling to every pint pot. I knew a man once, for example, who, quite apart from such little Eurekas as the Dunmow flitch, never even made the attempt to become endurably happy, as you call it. Simply because of a parrot. It repeated things. It was an eavesdropper: an agent provocateur.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Judy. ‘Oh, how you amuse me! You haven’t said a single thing this evening that was not ironical. You just love to masquerade. Did you ever know a woman who talked in parables? It’s simply because, I suppose, men have such stupidly self-conscious hearts – I mean such absurdly rational minds. Isn’t it, Stella? Don’t be so reserved, you dark taciturn angel. Wouldn’t he be even nicer than he is if he would only say what he thinks? A parrot!’