The Complete Short Stories Part 35

'Five. You know she had five. You took them out, didn't you?'

Mamie says, 'I was only wondering if there was room for five in the priest hole. Did she really say there were five? It wasn't four?'

'She said all five of them. What are you talking about, no room in the priest hole? There's plenty room. He'd have killed six if she'd had six. She was so good to him.'

'A shocking affair,' says her father.

Mamie feels weightless as daylight. She waves her arms as if they are freed of a huge harness.

'Five of them.' I counted wrong. I didn't lose one. There were five.

She skips over to fetch the s.h.i.+ning bra.s.s pokers from the fender and places them crisscross on the linoleum to practise her sword dance. Then she starts to dance, heel-and-toe, heel-and-toe, over-and-across, one-two-three, one-two-three. Her mother stands amazed and is about to say stop it at once, this is no time to practise, children have no heart, Alice Long pays your school fees and I thought you loved animals. But her father is clapping his hands in time to her dancing - one-two-three, heel-and-toe, hand-on-hip, right-hand, left-hand, cross-and-back. Then her father starts to sing as well, loudly, tara rum-tum-tum, tara rum-tum-tum, clapping his hands while she dances the jig, and there isn't a thing anyone can do about it.

The Dark Gla.s.ses Coming to the edge of the lake we paused to look at our reflections in the water. It was then I recognized her from the past, her face looking up from the lake. She had not stopped talking.

I put on my dark gla.s.ses to s.h.i.+eld my eyes from the sun and conceal my recognition from her eyes.

'Am I boring you?' she said.

'No, not a bit, Dr Gray.

'Sure?'

It is discouraging to put on sun-gla.s.ses in the middle of someone's intimate story. But they were necessary, now that I had recognized her, and was excited, and could only honourably hear what she had to say from a point of concealment.

'Must you wear those gla.s.ses?'

'Well, yes. The glare.'

'The wearing of dark gla.s.ses,' she said, 'is a modern psychological phenomenon. It signifies the trend towards impersonalization, the weapon of the modern Inquisitor, it -'

'There's a lot in what you say.' But I did not remove my gla.s.ses, for I had not asked for her company in the first place, and there is a limit to what one can listen to with the naked eye.

We walked round the new concrete verge of the old lake, and she continued the story of how she was led to give up general medical practice and take up psychology; and I looked at her as she spoke, through my dark gla.s.ses, and because of the softening effect these have upon things I saw her again as I had seen her looking up from the lake, and again as in my childhood.

At the end of the thirties Leesden End was an L-shaped town. Our house stood near the top of the L. At the other extreme was the market. Mr Simmonds, the oculist, had his shop on the horizontal leg, and he lived there above the shop with his mother and sister. All the other shops in the row were attached to each other, but Mr Simmonds' stood apart, like a real house, with a lane on either side.

I was sent to have my eyes tested. He took me into the darkened interior and said, 'Sit down, dear.' He put his arm round my shoulder. His forefinger moved up and down on my neck. I was thirteen and didn't like to be rude to him. Dorothy Simmonds, his sister, came downstairs just then; she came upon us silently and dressed in a white overall. Before she had crossed the room to switch on a dim light Mr Simmonds removed his arm from my shoulder with such a jerk that I knew for certain he had not placed it there in innocence.

I had seen Miss Simmonds once before, at a garden fete, where she stood on a platform in a big hat and blue dress, and sang 'Sometimes between long shadows on the gra.s.s', while I picked up windfall apples, all of which seemed to be rotten. Now in her white overall she turned and gave me a hostile look, as if I had been seducing her brother. I felt s.e.xually in the wrong, and started looking round the dark room with a wide-eyed air.

'Can you read?' said Mr Simmonds.

I stopped looking round. I said, 'Read what?' - for I had been told I would be asked to read row after row of letters. The card which hung beneath the dim light showed pictures of trains and animals.

'Because if you can't read we have pictures for illiterates.'

This was Mr Simmonds' joke. I giggled. His sister smiled and dabbed her right eye with her handkerchief. She had been to London for an operation on her right eye.

I recall reading the letters correctly down to the last few lines, which were too small. I recall Mr Simmonds squeezing my arm as I left the shop, turning his sandy freckled face in a backward glance to see for certain that his sister was not watching.

My grandmother said, 'Did you see -'

'- Mr Simmonds' sister?' said my aunt.

'Yes, she was there all the time,' I said, to make it definite. My grandmother said, 'They say she's going -'

'- blind in one eye,' said my aunt.

'And with the mother bedridden upstairs -' my grandmother said.

'- she must be a saint,' said my aunt.

Presently - it may have been within a few days or a few weeks - my reading gla.s.ses arrived, and I wore them whenever I remembered to do so.

I broke the gla.s.ses by sitting on them during my school holidays two years later.

My grandmother said, after she had sighed, 'It's time you had your eyes tested -'

'- eyes tested in any case,' said my aunt when she had sighed.

I washed my hair the night before and put a wave in it. Next morning at eleven I walked down to Mr Simmonds's with one of my grandmother's long hat-pins in my blazer pocket. The shop front had been done up, with gold lettering on the gla.s.s door: Basil Simmonds, Optician, followed by a string of letters which, so far as I remember, were FBOA, AIC, and others.

'You're quite the young lady, Joan,' he said, looking at my new b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

I smiled and put my hand in my blazer pocket.

He was smaller than he had been two years ago. I thought he must be about fifty or thirty. His face was more freckled than ever and his eyes were flat blue as from a box of paints. Miss Simmonds appeared silently in her soft slippers. 'You're quite the young lady, Joan,' she said from behind her green gla.s.ses, for her right eye had now gone blind and the other was said to be troubling her.

We went into the examination room. She glided past me and switched on the dim light above the letter card. I began to read out the letters while Basil Simmonds stood with folded hands. Someone came into the front shop. Miss Simmonds slid off to see who it was and her brother tickled my neck. I read on. He drew me towards him. I put my hand into my blazer pocket. He said, 'Oh!' and sprang away as the hat-pin struck through my blazer and into his thigh.

Miss Simmonds appeared in the doorway in her avenging white overall. Her brother, who had been rubbing his thigh in a puzzled way, pretended to be dusting a mark off the front of his trousers.

'What's wrong? Why did you shout?' she said.

'No, I didn't shout.'

She looked at me, then returned to attend to the person in the shop, leaving the intervening door wide open. She was back again almost immediately. My examination was soon over. Mr Simmonds saw me our at the front door and gave me a pleading unhappy look. I felt like a traitor and I considered him horrible.

For the rest of the holidays I thought of him as 'Basil', and by asking questions and raking more interest than usual in the conversation around me I formed an idea of his private life. 'Dorothy,' I speculated, 'and Basil.' I let my mind dwell on them until I saw a picture of the rooms above the shop. I hung round at tea-time and, in order to bring the conversation round to Dorothy and Basil, told our visitors I had been to get my eyes tested.

'The mother bedridden all these years and worth a fortune. But what good is it to her?'

'What chance is there for Miss Simmonds now, with that eye?'

'She'll get the money. He will get the bare legal minimum only.'

'No, they say he's to get everything. In trust.'

'I believe Mrs Simmonds has left everything to her daughter.'

My grandmother said, 'She should divide her fortune -'

'- equally between them,' said my aunt. 'Fair's fair.'

I invented for myself a recurrent scene in which brother and sister emerged from their mother's room and, on the narrow landing, allowed their gaze to meet in unspoken combat over their inheritance. Basil's flat-coloured eyes did not themselves hold any expression, but by the forward thrust of his red neck he indicated his meaning; Dorothy made herself plain by means of a corkscrew twist of the head - round and up - and the glitter of her one good eye through the green gla.s.ses.

I was sent for to try on my new reading gla.s.ses. I had the hat-pin with me. I was friendly to Basil while I tested the new gla.s.ses in the front shop. He seemed to want to put a hand on my shoulder, hovered, but was afraid. Dorothy came downstairs and appeared before us just as his hand wavered. He protracted the wavering gesture into one which adjusted the stem of my gla.s.ses above my ear.

'Auntie says to try them properly,' I said, 'while I'm about it.' This gave me an opportunity to have a look round the front premises.

'You'll only want them for your studies,' Basil said.

'Oh, I sometimes need gla.s.ses even when I'm not reading,' I said. I was looking through a door into a small inner office, darkened by a tree outside in the lane. The office contained a dumpy green safe, an old typewriter on a table, and a desk in the window with a ledger on it. Other ledgers were placed - 'Nonsense,' Dorothy was saying. 'A healthy girl like you - you hardly need gla.s.ses at all. For reading, to save your eyes, perhaps yes. But when you're not reading ...'.

I said, 'Grandmother said to inquire after your mother.'

'She's failing,' she said.

I took to giving Basil a charming smile when I pa.s.sed him in the street on the way to the shops. This was very frequently. And on these occasions he would be standing at his shop door awaiting my return; then I would snub him. I wondered how often he was prepared to be won and rejected within the same ten minutes.

I took walks before supper round the back lanes, ambling right round the Simmondses' house, thinking of what was going on inside. One dusky time it started to rain heavily, and I found I could reasonably take shelter under the tree which grew quite close to the grimy window of the inner office. I could just see over the ledge and make out a shape of a person sitting at the desk. Soon, I thought, the shape will have to put on the light.

After five minutes' long waiting time the shape arose and switched on the light by the door. It was Basil, suddenly looking pink-haired. As he returned to the desk he stooped and took from the safe a sheaf of papers held in the teeth of a large paper clip. I knew he was going to select one sheet of paper from the sheaf, and that this one doc.u.ment would be the exciting, important one. It was like reading a familiar book: one knew what was coming, but couldn't bear to miss a word. He did extract one long sheet of paper, and held it up. It was typewritten with a paragraph in handwriting at the bottom on the side visible from the window. He laid it side by side with another sheet of paper which was lying on the desk. I pressed close up to the window, intending to wave and smile if I was seen, and to call out that I was sheltering from the rain which was now coming down in thumps. But he kept his eyes on the two sheets of paper. There were other papers lying about the desk; I could not see what was on them. But I was quite convinced that he had been practising handwriting on them, and that he was in the process of forging his mother's will.

Then he took up the pen. I can still smell the rain and hear it thundering about me, and feel it dripping on my head from the bough hanging above me. He raised his eyes and looked out at the rain. It seemed his eyes rested on me, at my station between the tree and the window. I kept still and close to the tree like a hunted piece of nature, willing myself to be the colour of bark and leaves and rain. Then I realized how much more clearly I could see him than he me, for it was growing dark.

He pulled a sheet of blotting paper towards him. He dipped his pen in the ink and started writing on the bottom of the sheet of paper before him, comparing it from time to time with the one he had taken out of the safe. I was not surprised, but I was thrilled, when the door behind him slowly opened. It was like seeing the film of the book. Dorothy advanced on her creeping feet, and he did not hear, but formed the words he was writing, on and on. The rain pelted down regardless. She was looking crookedly, through her green gla.s.ses with her one eye, over his shoulder at the paper.

'What are you doing?' she said.

He jumped up and pulled the blotting paper over his work. Her one eye through her green gla.s.ses glinted upon him, though I did not actually see it do so, but saw only the dark green gla.s.s focused with a squint on to his face.

'I'm making up the accounts,' he said, standing with his back to the desk, concealing the papers. I saw his hand reach back and tremble among them.

I s.h.i.+vered in my soaking wet clothes. Dorothy looked with her eye at the window. I slid sideways to avoid her and ran all the way home.

Next morning I said, 'I've tried to read with these gla.s.ses. It's all a blur. I suppose I'll have to take them back?'

'Didn't you notice anything wrong when you tried -'

'- tried them on in the shop?'

'No. But the shop's so dark. Must I take them back.?'

I took them into Mr Simmonds early that afternoon.

'I tried to read with them this morning, but it's all a blur.' It was true that I had smeared them with cold cream first.

Dorothy was beside us in no time. She peered one-eyed at the gla.s.ses, then at me.

'Are you constipated?' she said.

I maintained silence. But I felt she was seeing everything through her green gla.s.ses.

'Put them on,' Dorothy said.

'Try them on,' said Basil.

They were ganged up together. Everything was going wrong, for I had come here to see how matters stood between them after the affair of the will.

Basil gave me something to read. 'It's all right now,' I said, 'but it was all a blur when I tried to read this morning.'

'Better take a dose,' Dorothy said.

I wanted to get out of the shop with my gla.s.ses as quickly as possible, but the brother said, 'I'd better test your eyes again while you're here just to make sure.

He seemed quite normal. I followed him into the dark interior. Dorothy switched on the light. They both seemed normal. The scene in the little office last night began to lose its conviction. As I read out the letters on the card in front of me I was thinking of Basil as 'Mr Simmonds' and Dorothy as 'Miss Simmonds', and feared their authority, and was in the wrong.

'That seems to be all right,' Mr Simmonds said. 'But wait a moment. He produced some coloured slides with lettering on them.

Miss Simmonds gave me what appeared to be a triumphant one-eyed leer, and as one who washes her hands of a person, started to climb the stairs. Plainly, she knew I had lost my attraction for her brother.

But before she turned the bend in the stairs she stopped and came down again. She went to a row of shelves and s.h.i.+fted some bottles. I read on. She interrupted: 'My eye-drops, Basil. I made them up this morning. Where are they?' Mr Simmonds was suddenly watching her as if something inconceivable was happening.

'Wait, Dorothy. Wait till I've tested the girl's eyes.'

She had lifted down a small brown bottle. 'I want my eye-drops. I wish you wouldn't displace - Are these they?'

I noted her correct phrase, 'Are these they?' and it seemed just over the border of correctness. Perhaps, after all, this brother and sister were strange, vicious, in the wrong.

She had raised the bottle and was reading the label with her one good eye. 'Yes, this is mine. It has my name on it,' she said.

Dark Basil, dark Dorothy. There was something wrong after all. She walked upstairs with her bottle of eye-drops. The brother put his hand on my elbow and heaved me to my feet, forgetting his coloured slides.

'There's nothing wrong with your eyes. Off you go.' He pushed me into the front shop. His flat eyes were wide open as he handed me my gla.s.ses. He pointed to the door. 'I'm a busy man,' he said.

From upstairs came a long scream. Basil jerked open the door for me, but I did not move. Then Dorothy, upstairs, screamed and screamed and screamed. Basil put his hands to his head, covering his eyes. Dorothy appeared on the bend of the stairs, screaming, doubled-up, with both hands covering her good eye.

I started screaming when I got home, and was given a sedative. By evening everyone knew that Miss Simmonds had put the wrong drops in her eyes.

'Will she go blind in that eye, too?' people said.

'The doctor says there's hope.'

'There will be an inquiry.'

'She was going blind in that eye in any case,' they said.