The Complete Short Stories Part 21

I decided to stop bringing my friends to my mother's. My own visits were h.e.l.l. There was a terrible smell everywhere of burnt food, unaired rooms and sheer neglect. My mother's tastes in food were simple and I dare say so were Winnie's, but as for me I like my square meals. The dining-room floor was littered with old bits of toast and egg-sh.e.l.ls. The table hadn't been cleared for weeks, the place-mats were greasy. I did my best to help clear up on my miserable Sundays and Mondays. Personally, I'm quite used to s.h.i.+fting for myself in London; in fact, having been brought up with servants, I hate them. Your life's never your own. In London I always managed with a morning woman.

But I wasn't up to coping with a vast house like Ma's. Nothing would disturb Ma's resolve to put up with it or Winnie's exasperating loyalty; she took my mother's part. It went on for a month. I spent all my spare time in employment agencies and on various other means to get someone to replace Miss Spigot, but nothing came of my efforts or those of my friends; nothing. 'I am going to have a Word with Winnie,' said Ma.

On the fifth Sunday I drove down to Suss.e.x late intending to cut short the horror of it all. Amazingly, there was no horror. Winnie had become a super-efficient cook-housekeeper all in the course of a week. As I pa.s.sed the dining-room I could see the table was laid ready, sparkling with silver and gla.s.s, and the table-linen was up to Ma's best standard. The drawing-room was fresh and the windows looked like gla.s.s once more.

Ma was knitting. It was almost time to go in to dinner.

'Have you found someone to help?' I said. 'No,' said Ma.

'Well, how has Winnie managed all this on her own?'

'I had a Word with her,' said my mother.

Winnie served an excellent dinner on the whole; perhaps it wasn't quite up to the late cook's quality but certainly ambitious enough to include a rather flat souffle.

'It's her first souffle,' said Ma, when Winnie went to get the meat course. If she doesn't improve I'll have a Word.'

But now something had happened to Winnie. She was perfectly happy, indeed almost blissful. She went around whispering to herself in a decidedly odd way. She served the vegetables with great care, but whispering, whispering, all the time.

'What did you say, Winnie?' I said.

'The souffle was flat,' said Winnie.

'Turn on the BBC news,' said my mother.

For the whole of Monday Winnie went round chattering to herself. Breakfast was, however, set out on the table with nothing forgotten. The house was already in good order before half-past eight, the fire new and crackling. And Winnie conversed with herself, merrily, and quite a lot. I supposed that finding herself alone in the kitchen was now showing. However, my mother seemed to have solved her domestic problem which had fast been developing into mine. I didn't give time to worrying lest Winnie was turning a little funny.

I went back cheerfully to my own bachelor life and regaled my friends with the news of the change that had come over Winnie and of how well she was coping. They were quite eager to come and join me in Suss.e.x again, a.s.suring me they would make their own beds, help with the shopping and generally refrain from giving Winnie a hard time. I thought I'd better wait a few weeks before making up a party as of old. These visitors to my mother's house were either unmarried and younger colleagues of mine who, like myself, had to work on Sat.u.r.days for their newspapers, or middle-aged widows who had nothing to tie them to any day of the week. All were very keen to come, but I waited.

Winnie was even more efficient the next week. I came to the conclusion that it was Winnie who had been the guiding spirit in the kitchen all along; she was a good cook. Ma took no notice of her whatsoever, as was always her way, preferring not to praise or blame, just to give orders. Winnie was an unguessable age between fifty-five and seventy, her face was big with a lot of folds, her body thin and angular, her hair chocolate-rinsed. My mother who long ago had been used to picking and choosing maids 'of good appearance' had taken some time to resign herself to uncomely Winnie, and, having done so, she was not now inclined to waste consideration on any further divergence from the norm that Winnie might display.

Winnie in fact could now be heard in the kitchen kicking up a dreadful racket. One evening the noise filled the house for about ten minutes. My bed was turned down neatly. The stair carpets were spotless as of old, and the furniture and banisters shone. Winnie conducted a further brief altercation in the kitchen and then was quiet till tea when my mother went to bed and so did she. I had a comfortable night. In the morning Winnie started fighting with herself again, or so it seemed. On investigation, I found her smiling while she argued. My mother's breakfast tray was all prepared and Winnie was about to carry it up to Ma's room. 'What's the matter, Winnie?' I said.

'Oh, the b.u.t.ter was forgot to be put on the tray. Too old for the job.'

'Would you like to leave, Winnie?' I said, somewhat desperately, but feeling that this was Winnie's way of saying just that.

'How could I leave your mother?' said Winnie, marching off with the tray.

Well, my mother, aged ninety-six, died suddenly during the following week. Winnie phoned me quite calmly from Suss.e.x and I went down right away. There was a little quiet funeral. The house was to be sold. Winnie was still having occasional outbreaks against herself, such as 'The Times didn't get cancelled at the newsagent like I said,' and she muttered a bit as she went around. However, I spent a last, comfortable night in the house and after breakfast prepared to settle Winnie's pay and pension. I believed she would be glad of a rest. She had relations in Yorks.h.i.+re and I thought she would probably want to return to them.

'I'm not leaving the family,' said Winnie.

She didn't mean her family, she meant me.

'Well, Winnie, the house will be sold. There's no family left, is there?'

'I'm coming with you,' Winnie said. 'I've no doubt it's a pigsty but I can live in the bas.e.m.e.nt.'

My pigsty, my paradise. It was a small narrow house in a Hampstead lane, which I had acquired over twelve years ago. I never got round to putting it straight. It was so much my life to be out late at night at the theatre, then usually some sort of supper after the theatre with friends; in the morning doing my notes for the theatre column, shuffling about in my dressing-gown; then after a quick lunch I would work in my study, or maybe go out to a cinema or an art show, or if not attend to something bureaucratic; or I would play some music on the piano. I worked hardest Fridays and Sat.u.r.days, for my last show was Friday and the column had to be in on Sat.u.r.day at three in the afternoon. And since, until Ma died, I would go down to Suss.e.x for Sunday and Monday with my friends, there was no time to put things straight. Sometimes there were people staying at my house and they would try to help. But it was better when they didn't, for after one of those friendly tidy-ups I couldn't find anything. Never, on any occasion, did I allow anyone into my little study upstairs. A sullen and lady-like domestic help called Ida came mincing in three mornings a week for a couple of hours, painful all round; that is, to herself, to me and to my cat Francis. Ida took the clean dishes out of the dishwasher and stacked them away; she changed the towels and bedsheets and left them at the laundry. She swept the kitchen floor, making short work of Francis with her broom, and sometimes she dusted the sitting-room and vacuumed the carpet. Francis cowered in the bas.e.m.e.nt three mornings a week till she had gone.

It was not altogether the undesirability of Ida that persuaded me to take on Winnie. At first, I was decidedly dissuaded. The family fortunes had just managed to eke themselves out over my mother's lifetime. I am comfortably off, I have a job, but I'm by no means wealthy. Like most of my friends I wasn't in a position to take on a full-time housekeeper. And for another thing, I had no room. There was the damp bas.e.m.e.nt full of rotting boxes which contained a great many other rotting objects that I always intended to do something about. These included some boxes of my mother's that had somehow landed at my house during one of her moves, and never been forwarded; once I had looked inside one of them; it had held two ostrich feather fans falling apart with moth, some carved wood chessmen the worse for the damp, some soggy books and some wine. On that occasion I threw back the contents into the box, less the wine which was still enjoyable. But I never again opened one of those boxes. The bas.e.m.e.nt contained two rooms, a little dank bathroom and a frightful kitchen. It had plainly been inhabited before I acquired the house.

'I can't put you in the bas.e.m.e.nt, Winnie,' I said, instead of saying outright 'I can't afford a cook-housekeeper, Winnie.

'What's wrong with the bas.e.m.e.nt?'

'It's damp.'

'I don't need much money,' said Winnie. 'Your mother underpaid me, anyway. Old-fas.h.i.+oned ideas. You need me to cook for you. I can go into the attic and make it over for a room.'

How she knew about the attic I don't know. I had once thought of making it into a one-room apartment and renting it, but it was just above the two bedrooms of the house, one of which was my study, and I hadn't liked the thought of people moving about over my head. So the attic was empty. The other rooms in my house apart from my bedroom and my study were on the ground floor, a sitting-room and a dining-room with a divan where I put up occasional friends. The only place for Winnie was the attic, warm and empty. What made me waver in my resolve not to take on Winnie was that remark of hers, 'You need me to cook for you.' That was indeed a temptation. I visualized the effortless and good little supper parties I could give after the theatre. The nice lunches I would have, always so well-planned, well-served; and Winnie was a very economical shopper.

'Save you a fortune in restaurants,' decided Winnie; for it really was all decided. 'And with the sale of your mother's house, you'll be in clover.

I didn't go into the fact that death duties were taking care of my late mother's property, she having stubbornly arranged her affairs so badly. But it was true that restaurant-eating in London was becoming more and more difficult as the food and service were ever more inferior. I just said, 'Well, Winnie, you'll have to settle yourself in the attic as best you can. I'll help you up with your things but beyond that, I'm a busy man.'

'I haven't many things,' Winnie said.

When she saw my house she said, 'The Slough of Despond, if you remember your Bunyan.' Nevertheless she settled into the attic. I paid off Ida and from then on was in Winnie's hands.

It was true my life was transformed. It was amazing what Winnie could do. Except for the study which I locked up every time I left the house and where Winnie could not penetrate, she penetrated everywhere. A new kitchen stove was her only extravagance. I paid no attention to Winnie's comings and goings but it was truly remarkable how she managed to clean out the house from the bas.e.m.e.nt to the attic so well that I saw through the sitting-room windows as it seemed for the first time, and my bed was actually made every day. Winnie achieved all this in a very short time. Within a week I began to have friends to meals, delicious, interesting, just right.

'How lucky you are!' was what I heard from one friend after another. There were few who would not willingly have taken Winnie away from me if they'd had the chance. My mother's silver and crystal sparkled on the table. Winnie was quite up to serving at a late hour. And her meals were always marvellous. 'Oh what elegance! How does she manage it?'

'Who is she arguing with, there in the kitchen?'

'Herself.'

For one could hear Winnie, after she had cleared away and served us coffee, muttering to herself meanwhile, in the sitting-room, still fighting her lonely battles in the kitchen.

I am a man of the theatre, and this oddity of Winnie's certainly appealed to my sense of theatre. Nor were my friends unappreciative of the carry-on. They thought it was delightful. As soon as she had left the room they called her a joy and they called her a treasure. One of my younger friends, an actress who had formerly liked to visit my mother in the country, had the quick eye to notice, what I hadn't noticed, that a couple of my chairs had been newly upholstered in genuine pet.i.t-point.

'You've had your mother's pet.i.t-point finished,' she said. 'I remember she was working on it all last summer. The last time I saw her just before she died she was sitting out on the terrace working at this.'

'How do you know it's Ma's work?' I said.

'I recognize the pattern, look, that's the Venetian design, she had it done specially, look at that red.'

'Well she must have finished it.'

'Oh, that's impossible. It's very slow work. For your mother, impossible.'

'Well, Winnie must have finished it.'

'Winnie? How could she have managed it with all the other things she had to do?'

'One never knows what Winnie's up to.

I was suspicious. But, looking back on it, I think that the truth is I didn't want to know how Winnie did it. It was like admitting you didn't believe in Santa Claus: all those lovely surprises might stop.

Winnie's success with my friends wasn't lost on her. She, too, developed a sense of her theatrical side, muttering ever the more as she served the vegetables or the coffee; and one evening when I had a few guests, for no apparent reason she entered the room with one of my mother's mothy great ostrich feather fans in her hand and gave a performance of a pre-war debutante being presented at court, sweeping the fan before her and curtseying low, with the feathers flying all over the carpet. She solemnly left the room, backwards, treating us to another low genuflection before she left. n.o.body spoke till she had gone, but Winnie's dottiness occupied the conversation merrily for the rest of the evening secretly, I was a little embarra.s.sed. Another time I was having a quiet game of chess with a friend when Winnie came in unnecessarily to tidy the fire. She had cleaned up those old chess pieces from Ma's trunk, they were positively a work of restoration. As she pa.s.sed us she cast an eye at the board and said, 'Undemocratic.' I suppose she was referring to the kings and castles. But where Winnie was getting beyond a joke was on those days when, after lunch, I sat in my study trying to compose my theatre column.

Winnie at that time of day was usually up in her room in the attic wildly remonstrating with herself. I could get no peace. Finally and reluctantly I had it out with her.

'Winnie,' I said, very tactfully, 'you're beginning to talk to yourself, you know. There's nothing to worry about, many people do it, in fact there are great geniuses who go about talking to themselves. It's only that I can't get on with my work when I hear these arguments going on over my head.'

'Well, I'm much provoked,' Winnie said.

'I've no doubt of that. And I think you really do too much for me. Will you agree to see a doctor?'

'In an inst.i.tution?' Winnie wanted to know.

'Oh, Winnie, of course not. Only privately. Maybe you need some medicine. Otherwise, I'm afraid we'll have to part. But I do urge you -I urged her into going to a young psychiatrist I'd heard of, in private practice. I have no idea what account she gave of herself and her condition but I've no doubt he got some illogical story out of her. She didn't appear to think there was anything wrong with her, and neither, apparently, did he. She refused to go into hospital under observation and he sent her away after a few visits with some medicine. I made enquiries of the doctor but he wouldn't say much. 'She has a few hallucinations, nothing to worry about. She should get over it. Of course I can't diagnose in depth without her cooperation in a clinic.' I settled his exorbitant bill. Winnie carried on in much the same way as before for about a week. She told me she was taking the medicine.

Then she did get quieter. Within two weeks she had stopped her racketing and shouting. I was able to get on with my work.

But slowly the house degenerated. It was like old times, only worse, because, although I began to eat out, Winnie burnt the food she prepared for herself. There was a super-chaos, a smell of burning and old rubbish all over the house. She bustled about brightly enough, but simply couldn't manage.

'Perhaps you need a holiday, Winnie.'

'I stopped taking them pills,' she said. 'Rose didn't like them. They had an effect.'

'Rose?'

'Rose Spigot.'

I remembered Miss Spigot, the cook who died. I remembered Miss Spigot with her specially careful enunciation, her prim and well-trained ways, and how she was said to have travelled with a duke's family all over the Orient. 'Are you talking about some relation of our late cook?' I said.

'I'm talking about our late cook herself,' said Winnie. 'She's gone away. When I started to take the pills they put her off her stroke.'

'By no means,' I said wildly, 'take anything whatsoever that doesn't suit you, Winnie.'

'It's not me, it's Rose. She was a very provoking woman, acting the lady with your mother's needlework and objecting to me showing off in front of company. But she was a good cook-housekeeper, she's a good manager, and I can't cope alone with all the mess. She was another pair of hands.'

'Definitely, you should stop the pills,' I said. 'Wouldn't you like me to have another word with the doctor?'

'Certainly not,' said Winnie. 'There was nothing wrong with the doctor.

I had to go away for a week to a theatre festival in the north. I was glad to go, notwithstanding my crumpled s.h.i.+rts and unwashed socks crammed into my bag. I felt I could face the problem of Winnie better after a break.

When I got back, as I put my key in the door, I knew something had happened by the fact that my old bra.s.s name-plate was twinkling and by the sound of Winnie's voice from the back of the house raised in argument.

Only Winnie was in the kitchen when I put my head round the door. 'Rose is back,' said Winnie.

I could see what she meant. The house was clean and s.h.i.+ning; my supper that night was excellent.

But it was all too much for my no doubt weak character. I thought it over for a bit and finally persuaded Winnie to retire. She went back to Yorks.h.i.+re, accompanied by Miss Spigot or not I don't know. My house is the pigsty of old. My friends are awfully good to me and I dine out a lot. The stuff that used to moulder in the bas.e.m.e.nt is now rotting in the attic. n.o.body combs Francis the cat, but he doesn't mind. When I'm on my own I can always sit down among the dust and the litter, and play the piano.

The Girl I Left Behind Me It was just gone quarter past six when I left the office.

'Teedle-um-tum-tum' - there was the tune again, going round my head. Mr Letter had been whistling it all throughout the day between his noisy telephone calls and his dreamy sessions. Sometimes he whistled 'Softly, Softly, Turn the Key', but usually it was 'The Girl I Left Behind Me' rendered at a brisk hornpipe tempo.

I stood in the bus queue, tired out, and wondering how long I would endure Mark Letter (Screws & Nails) Ltd. Of course, after my long illness, it was experience. But Mr Letter and his tune, and his sudden moods of bounce, and his sudden lapses into la.s.situde, his sandy hair and little bad teeth, roused my resentment, especially when his tune barrelled round my head long after I had left the office; it was like taking Mr Letter home.

No one at the bus stop took any notice of me. Well, of course, why should they? I was not acquainted with anyone there, but that evening I felt particularly anonymous among the homegoers. Everyone looked right through me and even, it seemed, walked through me. Late autumn always sets my fancy towards sad ideas. The starlings were crowding in to roost on all the high cornices of the great office buildings. And I located, among the misty unease of my feelings, a very strong conviction that I had left something important behind me or some job incompleted at the office. Perhaps I had left the safe unlocked, or perhaps it was something quite trivial which nagged at me. I had half a mind to turn back, tired as I was, and rea.s.sure myself. But my bus came along and I piled in with the rest.

As usual, I did not get a seat. I clung to the handrail and allowed myself to be lurched back and forth against the other pa.s.sengers. I stood on a man's foot, and said, 'Oh, sorry.' But he looked away without response, which depressed me. And more and more, I felt that I had left something of tremendous import at the office. 'Teedle-um-tum-tum' - the tune was a background to my worry all the way home. I went over in my mind the day's business, for I thought, now, perhaps it was a letter which I should have written and posted on my way home.

That morning I had arrived at the office to find Mark Letter vigorously at work. By fits, he would occasionally turn up at eight in the morning, tear at the post and, by the time I arrived, he would have dispatched perhaps half a dozen needless telegrams; and before I could get my coat off, would deliver a whole day's instructions to me, rapidly fluttering his freckled hands in time with his chattering mouth. This habit used to jar me, and I found only one thing amusing about it; that was when he would say, as he gave instructions for dealing with each item, 'Mark letter urgent.' I thought that rather funny coming from Mark Letter, and I often thought of him, as he was in those moods, as Mark Letter Urgent.

As I swayed in the bus I recalled that morning's excess of energy on the part of Mark Letter Urgent. He had been more urgent than usual, so that I still felt put out by the urgency. I felt terribly old for my twenty-two years as I raked round my mind for some clue as to what I had left unfinished. Something had been left amiss; the further the bus carried me from the office, the more certain I became of it. Not that I took my job to heart very greatly, but Mr Letter's moods of bustle were infectious, and when they occurred I felt fussy for the rest of the day; and although I consoled myself that I would feel better when I got home, the worry would not leave me.

By noon, Mr Letter had calmed down a little, and for an hour before I went to lunch he strode round the office with his hands in his pockets, whistling between his seedy brown teeth that sailors' song 'The Girl I Left Behind Me'. I lurched with the bus as it chugged out the rhythm, 'Teedle-um-tum-tum. Teedle-um...' Returning from lunch I had found silence, and wondered if Mr Letter was out, until I heard suddenly, from his tiny private office, his tune again, a low swift hum, trailing out towards the end. Then I knew that he had fallen into one of his afternoon daydreams.

I would sometimes come upon him in his little box of an office when these trances afflicted him. I would find him sitting in his swivel chair behind his desk. Usually he had taken off his coat and slung it across the back of his chair. His right elbow would be propped on the desk, supporting his chin, while from his left hand would dangle his tie. He would gaze at this tie; it was his main object of contemplation. That afternoon I had found him tie-gazing when I went into his room for some papers. He was gazing at it with parted lips so that I could see his small, separated discoloured teeth, no larger than a child's first teeth. Through them he whistled his tune. Yesterday, it had been 'Softly, Softly, Turn the Key', but today it was the other.

I got off the bus at my usual stop, with my fare still in my hand. I almost threw the coins away, absentmindedly thinking they were the ticket, and when I noticed them I thought how nearly no one at all I was, since even the conductor had, in his rush, pa.s.sed me by.

Mark Letter had remained in his dream for two and a half hours. What was it I had left unfinished? I could not for the life of me recall what he had said when at last he emerged from his office-box. Perhaps it was then I had made tea. Mr Letter always liked a cup when he was neither in his frenzy nor in his abstraction, but ordinary and talkative. He would speak of his hobby, fretwork. I do not think Mr Letter had any home life. At forty-six he was still unmarried, living alone in a house at Roehampton. As I walked up the lane to my lodgings I recollected that Mr Letter had come in for his tea with his tie still dangling from his hand, his throat white under the open-neck s.h.i.+rt, and his 'Teedle-um-tum-tum' in his teeth.

At last I was home and my Yale in the lock. Softly, I said to myself, softly turn the key, and thank G.o.d I'm home. My landlady pa.s.sed through the hall from kitchen to dining-room with a salt and pepper cruet in her crinkly hands. She had some new lodgers. 'My guests', she always called them. The new guests took precedence over the old with my landlady. I felt desolate. I simply could not climb the stairs to my room to wash, and then descend to take brown soup with the new guests while my landlady fussed over them, ignoring me. I sat for a moment in the chair in the hall to collect my strength. A year's illness drains one, however young. Suddenly the repulsion of the brown soup and the anxiety about the office made me decide. I would not go upstairs to my room. I must return to the office to see what it was that I had overlooked.

'Teedle-um-tum-tum' - I told myself that I was giving way to neurosis. Many times I had laughed at my sister who, after she had gone to bed at night, would send her husband downstairs to make sure all the gas taps were turned off, all the doors locked, back and front. Very well, I was as silly as my sister, but I understood her obsession, and simply opened the door and slipped out of the house, tired as I was, making my weary way back to the bus stop, back to the office.

'Why should I do this for Mark Letter?' I demanded of myself. But really, I was not returning for his sake, it was for my own. I was doing this to get rid of the feeling of incompletion, and that song in my brain swimming round like a d.a.m.ned goldfish.

I wondered, as the bus took me back along the familiar route, what I would say if Mark Letter should still be at the office. He often worked late, or at least, stayed there late, doing I don't know what, for his screw and nail business did not call for long hours. It seemed to me he had an affection for those dingy premises. I was rather apprehensive lest I should find Mr Letter at the office, standing, just as I had last seen him, swinging his tie in his hand, beside my desk. I resolved that if I should find him there, I should say straight out that I had left something behind me.

A clock struck quarter past seven as I got off the bus. I realized that again I had not paid my fare. I looked at the money in my hand for a stupid second. Then I felt reckless. 'Teedle-um-tum-tum' - I caught myself humming the tune as I walked quickly up the said side street to our office. My heart knocked at my throat, for I was eager. Softly, softly, I said to myself as I turned the key of the outside door. Quickly, quickly, I ran up the stairs. Only outside the office door I halted, and while I found its key on my bunch it occurred to me how strangely my sister would think I was behaving.

I opened the door and my sadness left me at once. With a great joy I recognized what it was I had left behind me, my body lying strangled on the floor. I ran towards my body and embraced it like a lover.

Miss Pinkerton's Apocalypse One evening, a damp one in February, something flew in at the window. Miss Laura Pinkerton, who was doing something innocent to the fire, heard a faint throbbing noise overhead. On looking up, 'George! come here! come quickly!'

George Lake came in at once, though sullenly because of their quarrel, eating a sandwich from the kitchen. He looked up at the noise then sat down immediately.

From this point onward their story comes in two versions, his and hers. But they agree as to the main facts; they agree that it was a small round flattish object, and that it flew.

'It's a flying object of some sort,' whispered George eventually.

'It's a saucer,' said Miss Pinkerton, keen and loud, 'an antique piece. You can tell by the shape.'

'It can't be an antique, that's absolutely certain,' George said.

He ought to have been more tactful, and would have been, but for the stress of the moment. Of course it set Miss Pinkerton off, she being in the right.

'I know my facts,' she stated as usual, 'I should hope I know my facts. I've been in antique china for twenty-three years in the autumn,' which was true, and George knew it.