The Complete Short Stories Part 28

'Tomorrow night, though,' she added, with a searching look at Bill.

'That's all right,' said Bill who was still a bit bewildered. 'If you don't want to come across with it - I mean,' he said, 'if you would rather wait my dear, then naturally I will respect your wishes.

'I hope,' he said, warming to the idea, 'I hope that I am man enough for that. And I love you very dearly, June.'

June felt relieved. She would have liked to go on about the final break with Maisie, but she thought it wiser to wait.

'Let's go and see the old Roman wall,' she suggested.

She had thought it wiser to wait before mentioning Maisie again. However, she was only eighteen and very excited.

'I'm only eighteen and very excited, what with it all,' she told herself.

In a few seconds she was back on the subject of Maisie.

'Have you made a settlement on Maisie?' she inquired. 'Because I hope you will make her a small income. Have you done that?'

'Yes,' said Bill.

'Sufficient for her needs?' said June. 'They can't be much, there are no children involved.'

'Yes,' said Bill.

June was longing to ask 'How much?' She was thinking of the best way to frame this question when Bill spoke again.

'I must remember to send a flyer to my old cousin Leonard. He lives near this place, in fact. At Bricket Wood.'

'Who is he?' said June. 'Oh, I hope we shan't meet him.'

'Don't worry,' Bill laughed. 'He wouldn't recognize me. He's been simple all his life. He lives all alone, poor chap. I daresay he gets a disability pension now,' Bill mused on. 'Still, I must get Maisie to send him a flyer, now I can afford it.'

'Why Maisie?' said June. 'Can't you do it yourself?'

'I don't know his address,' said Bill. 'Maisie knows it. She has kept up with him. Out of charity, you know.

'Maisie has got her better side,' Bill said, stopping in the pathway to stress his point. 'I'll say that for her, darling.'

'Oh, everyone's got their good side,' said June, looking at him anxiously. 'But she sounds a terror otherwise.

'Yes,' said Bill. 'I'm afraid she is a terror all right. But I'm going to buy my freedom now, at last.'

'Come on,' he said, 'let's go and look at the Roman wall.'

He took a few paces forward and stopped. 'Stop,' he said.

About fifty yards ahead, on the left side of the path facing the lake, was a bench. It was placed on a small raised bank under a hawthorn. A man and a woman were seated on the bench. Owing to the bending sprays of hawthorn, it was impossible to see their faces properly.

'That looks like Maisie,' he said.

'I'm not sure,' he said. 'Don't move, dear. Let's wait a moment. 'Oh, no!' she said. 'Oh, Bill!' she said. 'I'm going back to the town.'

'Don't be silly,' he said, 'I'm not at all certain it is Maisie. It just looks a bit like her. I can't quite see the face. But I'm certain she never comes here.'

'Maybe she has come to see your old cousin,' said June. 'Oh, let me get back, quick.'

'That's possible,' said Bill. 'It might be old Leonard with her there. But I'm sure she would have told me she was coming.'

'I'm going,' said June.

'No. Wait here. Don't panic,' said Bill. 'I'll find out.'

'It might all get into the papers,' said June, 'my name and all.'

'It won't get into the papers,' said Bill.

Alas, it got into the papers.

In their present predicament, Bill kept his head.

'Wait here,' he repeated. 'I'll skirt round that wooden hut and get a look at their faces. I'll soon see if the woman is Maisie or not.'

I daresay that even if you once knew the place you would not remember the wooden hut. It was a modest building situated on the lake side of the path, about halfway between the mill-race and the bench where the couple were seated. It was a building less crude than it looked. Perhaps it was built to look rustic, with its rough overlaid planks. It was lined with brick. All round this simple structure was a narrow s.p.a.ce fenced off with wavy wire. You might enter this enclosure at either end, according as you were a Gentleman or a Lady in large print. These were the days before a skirted or trousered figure indicated your rightful door. The two ends of the public lavatory were separated by a shaky fence.

It is doubtful if Bill noticed this. In any case, he went in at the right end, and pa.s.sing the wooden door marked Gentlemen, began to skirt round the building with his eyes fixed on the bench.

He could not make out their faces. Keeping close to the wooden walls he pa.s.sed under the Gentlemen's windows. Still he could not see the couple on the bench. The hawthorn tree was still in the way. If, at first, he had observed what the building was, he had by now forgotten it. He was intent on seeing the occupants of that bench.

It took him three movements to climb over the wire fence separating the two ends of the enclosure. A second, and he was under the windows of the Ladies.

Nearer, nearer, he crept. Yes - it is Maisie! But, is it? No. She has no hat on. Maisie always wears a hat. It is not Maisie. But look - she is holding her hat! Yes, and isn't that Leonard there beside her, with his mouth wide open?

To make quite certain, Bill started to heave himself up on to the sagging wire. He gripped the ledge of one of the Ladies' windows; he placed his hand on the ledge of another Ladies' window. Thus poised, he turned and got a clear view of the bench. It was Maisie! It occurred to him how like June she looked; older, of course. Yes, and that was Leonard sitting all slack and silly beside her.

Thus poised, he surveyed them, calculating his retreat with June. They had better leave the town. No one would see them. Thus poised, he signalled to June; and thus it was that they caught him.

Advance warning of the ensuing disturbance came with a fanfare of outraged shrieks from inside the building. There was a splash followed by a child's loud yell.

'Hold him!' said a thin wiry woman, rus.h.i.+ng out of the Ladies. 'The dirty Peeping Tom, the swine!'

She got hold of Bill's feet, and with the aid of two pa.s.sing girls who laid down their bicycles for the purpose, floored him.

June turned and started to run for it.

'Wait here, you!' shouted the wiry woman. 'Stop her, someone. She's a witness, an accomplice.'

A middle-aged couple caught at June, who did not resist.

'I know nothing about it,' she said.

'I saw nothing,' she said.

'Didn't you?' said the thin woman. 'Well I did.'

'So did I,' said one of the girls. 'He was peeping into the Ladies. Broad daylight, too.'

'Low,' said the middle-aged man. 'I call it low. You hold him down while I get a policeman.'

Three more women had emerged from the Ladies a-tremble with the fuss. One woman held a little girl under her arm, and with her other arm she wielded her handbag, landing it on Bill's upturned face.

'Let me get up,' cried Bill, 'I can explain.'

'Yes, you sneaky peeper,' said the mother of the wailing child, 'You'll explain all right. You wait till my husband hears of this.'

'Ask my friend there,' gasped Bill, pointing to June.

'Your friend!' said a pretty young redhead who had been inside the Ladies. 'If she's your friend, she's for it too. Part of the game, she is, I'll bet.

'With a face like hers,' added Redhead inconsequently.

'I didn't see anything,' said June helplessly.

Bill managed to lean up on his elbows. The thin woman was sitting firmly on his legs. His feet were being secured by the child's mother.

As Bill saw the policeman approach, so also did he see Maisie arise from the bench. Curious about the little crowd which had gathered, Maisie ambled in her familiar casual way, over to where he was lying. Behind her shuffled Leonard, shaking his head a little.

Suddenly, Maisie jammed on the brakes, her nonchalant stride ceased. 'Bill!' she said.

'This,' she informed the crowd haughtily, 'is my husband. Is he ill? Make way for me if you please.'

'Oh, is he?' said the wiry woman, 'Well, he's been up to his tricks, the back-door squinter.'

June made one more attempt to retreat.

'You stop right there,' said the redhead.

The policeman arrived. 'Stand up,' he said to Bill.

It was a very distressing case. The mother of the small girl was the chief witness for the Prosecution.

'I was out for a walk with my daughter,' she said in the witness box, 'and she wanted to go. I was holding her out when suddenly I saw the face of the accused at the window.

'I am afraid,' she added, 'that the shock was too much for me. I let go of Betty and poor little thing, she went right in.

'Was the child hurt?' inquired the magistrate.

'Well, there's nothing to actually see,' said the mother. 'But it can't be good for a child, a thing like that.'

If it had been left to the other witnesses, the Prosecution might perhaps have lost the case.

Redhead let them down by saying she had only gone in to tidy up when she saw Bill at the window.

No one would say what they were really doing when they saw Bill at the window. As you know, the year was 1950. Not that it made much difference; peeping is peeping, no matter what you see. Still, they were glad of the mother of Betty to make a clear case of it.

The magistrate spoke severely to Maisie, being under the impression that she was June. This was not surprising, because with her fair hair parted in the middle and pulled back into a bun, Maisie looked remarkably like her rival, as do so many women whose men cannot really escape from them, but seek the same person in other arms.

When the magistrate was put right as to the mistaken ident.i.ty, he spoke severely to June.

'You come to this place with another woman's husband and condone his offence,' he said. 'You even attempt to impersonate,' he added, 'this good, this honest woman.'

Bill was fined ten pounds with an option of three weeks.

June emigrated to Australia to forget. Maisie went to the hairdresser without telling a soul, and had her hairstyle changed in favour of something different. Bill went to his lawyer without telling a soul and had his will changed in favour of his simple cousin Leonard.

Come Along, Marjorie Not many days had pa.s.sed since my arrival at Watling Abbey when I realized that most of us were recovering from nerves. The Abbey, a twelfth-century foundation, lies in Worcesters.h.i.+re on the site of an ancient Temple of Mithras. It had recently been acquired and restored by its original religious Order at that time, just after the war, when I went to stay there and found after a few days that most of us were nervous cases.

By 'most of us' I mean the lay visitors who resided in the pilgrims' quarters on two sides of the Annexe. We were all known as pilgrims. Apart from us, there was a group of permanent lay residents known as the Cloisters, because they lived in rooms above the cloisters.

Neurotics are awfully quick to notice other people's mentalities, everyone goes into an exaggerated category. I placed four categories at the Abbey. First ourselves, the visiting neurotic pilgrims. Second the Cloisters, they were cranks on the whole. Third the monks; they seemed not to have nerves, but non-individualized, non-neurotic, so I thought then, they billowed about in their white habits under the gold of that October, or swung out from the cloisters in processions on Feast Days. Into the fourth category I placed Miss Marjorie Pettigrew.

Indeed, she did seem sane. I got the instant impression that she alone among the lay people, both pilgrims and Cloisters, understood the purpose of the place. I did get that impression.

Three of us had arrived at Watling together. It was dark when I got off the train, but under the only gas bracket on the platform I saw the two women standing. They looked about them in that silly manner of women unused to arriving at strange railway stations. They heard me asking the ticket man the way to the Abbey and chummed up with me immediately. As we walked along with our suitcases I made note that there was little in common between them and me except Catholicism, and then only in the mystical sense, for their religious apprehensions were different from mine. 'Different from' is the form my neurosis takes. I do like the differentiation of things, but it is apt to lead to nerve-racking pursuits. On the other hand, life led on the different-from level is always an adventure.

Those were quite nice women. One was Squackle-wackle, so I called her to myself, for she spoke like that, squackle-wackle, squackle-wackle - it was her neurosis - all about her job as a nurse in a London hospital. She had never managed to pa.s.s an exam but was content, squackle-wackle, to remain a subordinate, though thirty-three in December. All this in the first four minutes. The other woman would be nearer forty. She was quieter, but not much. As we approached the Abbey gates she said, 'My name's Jennifer, what's yours?'

'Gloria Deplores-you,' I answered. It is true my Christian name is Gloria.

'Gloria what?'

'It's a French name,' I said, inventing in my mind the spelling 'des Pleuresyeux' in case I should be pressed for it.

'We'll call you Gloria,' she said. I had stopped in the Abbey gateway, wondering if I should turn back after all. 'Come along, Gloria,' she said.

It was not till some days later that I found that Jennifer's neurosis took the form of 'same as'. We are all the same, she would a.s.sert, infuriating me because I knew that G.o.d had made everyone unique. 'We are all the same' was her way of saying we were all equal in the sight of G.o.d. Still, the inaccuracy irritated me. And still, like Squackle-wackle, she was quite an interesting person. It was only in my more vibrant moments that I deplored them.

Oh, the trifles, the people, that get on your nerves when you have a neurosis!

Don't I remember the little ginger man with the bottle-green cloak? He was one of the Cloisters, having been resident at Watling for over three years. He was compiling a work called The Monkish Booke of Brewes. Once every fortnight he would be absent at the British Museum and I suppose other record houses, from where he would return with a great pad of notes on the methods and subtleties of brewing practised in ancient monasteries, don't I remember? And he, too, was a kindly sort in between his frightful fumes against the management of Watling Abbey. When anything went wrong he blamed the monks, unlike the Irish who blamed the Devil. This sometimes caused friction between the ginger man and the Irish, for which the monks blamed the Devil.

There were ladies from Cork and thereabouts, ladies from Tyrone and Londonderry, all having come for a rest or a Retreat, and most bearing those neurotic stigmata of South or North accordingly. There were times when bitter bits of meaning would whistle across the s.p.a.ce between North and South when they were gathered together outside of their common wors.h.i.+p. Though all were Catholics, 'Temperament tells,' I told myself frequently. I did so often tell myself remarks like that to still my own nerves.

I joined Squackle-wackle and Jennifer each morning to recite the Fifteen Mysteries. After that we went to the town for coffee. Because I rested in the afternoons Jennifer guessed I was recovering from nerves. She asked me outright, 'Is it nerves?' I said 'Yes,' outright.

Squackle-wackle had also been sent away with nervous exhaustion, she made no secret of it, indeed no.

Jennifer was delighted. 'I've got the same trouble. Fancy, all three of us. That makes us all the same.'

'It makes us,' I said, 'more different from each other than other people are.