The Penguin Book of the British Short Story Read online

  ‘D’you think my hair’s too long?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ he replied, ‘it’s lovely. That was Verlaine, wasn’t it?’

  She thought, of course, he’s the one who likes my nose.

  ‘You know you’re the worst-read man I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Worse than Archie Small?’

  ‘No, not quite. I like Archie because he’s not read anything at all. That’s probably why he dances so well.’

  What lay behind the remark was that this man Henry could not dance. Before he had time to take it up she began again, lying back in the chair, looking at him with half-closed eyes, almost in a sing-song,

  Ses cheveux, noirs tas sauvage où

  Scintille un barbare bijou,

  La font reine et la font fantoche.

  She was worried about whether her hair was right.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. He stretched. She was wearing an olive-green bow of velvet in it.

  She shut her eyes, gated them with eyelashes. It was very hot. After a pause she went on, thinking of his youngest sister, her friend.

  La femme pense à quelque ancienne compagne,

  Laquelle a tout, voiture et maison de campagne,

  Tandis que les enfants, leurs poings dans leurs yeux clos,

  Ronflant sur leur assiette, imitent des sanglots.

  ‘Me, with you, I suppose,’ he remarked. ‘Go on,’ he said. He shut his eyes. ‘I’m enjoying this.’

  She wondered that he could see himself as a child with her, when he was old enough to be her father.

  Both were sleepy from a good lunch. After a while she added slowly, in a low voice:

  Bien que parfois nous sentions

  Battre nos coeurs sous nos mantes

  A des pensers clandestins,

  En nous sachant les amantes

  Futures des libertins.

  ‘Henry,’ she said, when there had been another silence. ‘You don’t know where that comes from, do you?’

  He did not open his eyes. ‘Verlaine,’ he said. He was smiling.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, and shut her eyes. ‘It’s called “La chanson des Ingénues”.

  Nous sommes les Ingénues

  Aux bandeaux plats, à l’oeil bleu,

  Qui vivons, presque inconnues,

  Dans les romans qu’on lit peu.

  ‘How sweet,’ he said, rather dry. At that moment the syrens sounded. Everyone looked up. It was cloudlessly bare and blue.

  ‘Goodness,’ she remarked, without conviction and not moving. ‘How worried Mummy will be about me.’ They sat on. They did not close their eyes again. It was awkward.

  Then he suggested they might go to a film, saying it was waste to spend a leave day in the Park. She jumped at it. They hurried off, arm in arm, to the USA.

  6

  The ninth fireman said: ‘A ’ornet? No, I can’t recollect that I ever met with a ’ornet. But crows now. I remember the first time I seen a crow, to really notice, like. Yus. I was out on the allotment. On the previous leave day I’d put me beansticks in just lovely. But this mornin’ when I comes to see how the beans was shapin’ there’s not a bloody beanstick stood in the bloody soil. They was by far too ’eavy for ’em. I couldn’t make it out at first. But just as I’m bendin’ to ’ave a look, there’s a bloody great bloody black think that comes swoop at me out of the sky. I thought it was the blitz all over again for a minute. So then I puts me ’ands up and ’as a peep. There was seven of the buggers in the oak tree there at the bottom, where the road goes along by our allotments. An’ can’t they ’alf ’oller. Kraa, kraa. A chap come with a gun and killed three. Bloody great things they was. The rest never came back. No, we never seen them no more.’

  7

  Two firemen were walking back to the station from the factory in which they made shell caps for the two hours during which they were allowed short leave, every second day.

  The tenth man said to the eleventh: ‘I’m browned off Wal, completely.’

  The eleventh answered: ‘You’re not the only one.’

  ‘Wal, d’you think there’ll ever be another blitz?’

  ‘Well, mate, if he doesn’t put one on soon we shall all be crackers.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘And they are going insane, in every station, every day. Have you heard about the patrol man over at 18Y?’

  ‘What was that, Wal?’

  ‘Well it seems that the officer in charge finds something to take him out of his office, and as he comes out he sees no one on guard on the gate. So he looks around, and still he can’t spot the patrol man. Till something tells him to look up. And there is the chap that should have been on the gate, sitting across the peak of the roof, hauling on a long line (120 feet of rope) he has between his hands. So he calls to ’im, sarcastic, “ ’Ow are you gettin’ on up there?” And this is the answer he gets: “I’ve saved five.”” ’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s as true as I’m here. So this officer in charge he climbs as far as he can get inside the building, till he comes to a window across from where his patrol man is sitting. He’s one of those fat bastards, and he’s a bit out of breath with the climb, you understand. He doesn’t know what to make of it. So he calls out: “You’ve saved five, ’ave you?”

  ‘ “Yessir. And I’m about done up.’

  ‘ “ ’Ang on there, then, and I’ll be with yer,” the officer in charge sings out to him.

  ‘ “You can’t,” is the answer he gets. “I’m surrounded.” Surrounded by fire, he meant. In the finish they had to call out the turntable ladders to bring him down. To anyone not acquainted with this job it seems hardly possible, do it?’

  ‘They’ll be bringing the plain van any day for me,’ the tenth man replied. They walked on, silent.

  The passers-by despised them in this uniform that, two years ago, was good in any pub for a drink from a stranger.

  SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER

  The Trumpet Shall Sound

  No doubt, thought Mrs Mullen, looking at her niece, no doubt at all, everything was made uncommonly easy for these young ones, not like it was in her time. Then you didn’t have a death in the house without knowing it.

  Rightly speaking, you couldn’t call this a death in the house; for poor old Dick, falling over a bicycle in the blackout, had been taken to the hospital, and in the hospital he had died; and from the hospital, no better than a parcel, he had been taken to the undertaker’s place to await, no better than a parcel, the day of the funeral.

  Flowers c/o Messrs. Kedge, Ring St., Lower Town.

  That is why the house felt so queer. No corpse in it, no black weight at its centre to keep it steady. No reason to step softly, no door with silence behind it. Not even the blinds drawn.

  The spring sunshine shone full into the front room. There was a fire burning too, the room was very warm. But Cathie kept on shivering and pulling up the collar of her coat. Not tired enough, thought Mrs Mullen. If Dick had been brought home to die the nursing and the running about and the sitting up and one thing and another would have knocked the nerves and the shivers out of her, left her in the right frame of mind to appreciate the repose of a funeral. These young women who thought they were making things so much easier for themselves, small families, bakers’ bread, nowadays not even the whites boiled, were making a great mistake. If you’d got to be a woman it was better to be an old-fashioned woman, with plenty of work to keep your mind off it.

  Cathie sat on the sofa, and beside her sat Gwennie, Dick’s sister-in-law, and Gwennie’s girl, Ramona. Ramona yawned incessantly. She was working in munitions, and this week was a night turn.

  Soon we shall all be yawning, thought Mrs Mullen. She glanced at the clock. There was still some time to run before the car came for them.

  By the window sat Freda, Mrs Mullen’s unmarried sister, and Reg, Cathie’s husband. He had got leave for his father-in-law’s funeral. He sat on a small chair, leaning forward, with his hands dangling between his kne
es. Beside him stood the boy Alan, staring at his shoulder-badge and corporal’s stripes, and slowly drawing them on the air with his forefinger.

  ‘There would have been time for a cup of tea,’ said Cathie.

  ‘There’s time now,’ said Reg. ‘I’ll go and put on the kettle.’

  ‘Don’t trouble for me,’ said Freda.

  ‘Nor me, either. Six cups. That wouldn’t leave much of Cathie’s ration. Ah, you’ll miss your poor old dad’s ration, won’t you, Cath? It’ll make a difference.’

  ‘I had a nice cup of tea on my way here,’ said Freda. ‘Between the buses.’

  ‘How long did it take you to come?’

  ‘Matter of three hours. They’ve taken off the Kitley bus, so now you have to go round by Swopham. And who do you think I met on the bus, Lottie? Old Mr Tanner, who used to keep the fish-shop. You’ve never seen a man so changed.’

  ‘Well, he must be getting on, mustn’t he?’

  ‘Sixty-seven. You remember how rheumatic he was, and how he always wore a hat because of his face-ache? There he was, strolling into the bus bare-headed, with a potted flower under his arm. Why, Mr Tanner, I said, this war seems to be agreeing with you. And he told me he hasn’t had a twinge for the last ten years, and all because of wearing iodine socks. He was right sorry when I told him about poor Dick.’

  ‘Iodine socks? Yes, you do hear of them. All I know is, they never did anything for Florence Gander, Florence Toogood that was. Still, she’s constitutional. You remember Florence, don’t you, Gwennie? One time it looked as though she were going to marry poor old Dick.’

  ‘Didn’t she sing, or something?’

  ‘Sing or something?’ Mrs Mullen’s voice expressed reproachful surprise. ‘Why, she played on the violin, and passed examinations for it up in London. That’s how Dick took up with your sister. For in the last war Florence went round with a concert-party, all in a bus together, called The Five Lucky Beans, or something, and Dick, he was in the army, of course, and the first time he came back on leave, “What’s become of Florence,” he said, and mother said, “Why, haven’t the girls told you about her engagement?” meaning the concert-party. But just then the maroons went off and there was that awful Zeppelin, and so Florence went clean out of our heads, and Dick thought she’d taken up with some other boy, and when he came back next he got engaged to your Jessie, and Florence married Nut Gander. Just a misunderstanding, you see. Five children she had, one after another, and not a note of music among them. It’s funny how things turn out.’

  ‘Mum,’ said the child. ‘I think I’ll just feed my rabbits.’

  ‘I’ll go with him,’ said Reg, rising with alacrity.

  Cathie looked as though she were about to speak, but said nothing. The three aunts exchanged glances, and then settled down more easily.

  ‘Do you remember Buster, Lottie? And the day he took round the collecting bag at chapel in that blue suit of his? Lord, what a look he gave me as he went up the aisle! Impudent? He was worse than the seven monkeys.’

  ‘And all the time he’d got two wives, one in Chelmsford and the other somewhere in Wales. Well, I don’t mind admitting it now, the day that news came out I cried my eyes sore.’

  ‘Yes, and you weren’t the only one, either. And it wasn’t only us girls that took on about it. Mrs Blandamer, George Blandamer’s wife, who got up the whist-drives and socials – well, Julia Kinnear told me that she swallowed half a bottle of disinfectant, and only didn’t die of it because they’d happened to eat some bad fish the evening before, and the fish and the disinfectant all came back together.’

  ‘Yes, I heard something about that, too. Well, they do say, Lucky at cards, unlucky in love. What about George, though?’

  ‘Oh, all he ever knew of it was the fish.’

  Ramona had shut her eyes and begun to breathe heavily. Now she slumped forward. Cathie put an arm about her, and settled the sleeping head on her shoulder. Her face lost its look of nervous strain as the sleeping girl’s warmth invaded her.

  ‘I should like a bit of tinned salmon, though. I haven’t seen a tin for months,’ said Freda.

  ‘Ah, you should have bought it and put it by,’ said Lottie Mullen. ‘Hoarding or no hoarding, a person’s got to keep even with the future. I don’t mind telling you, if Lord Woolton were to come along and look under my old double-bed he’d see more than the chamber.’

  ‘In reason, I grant you.’ Gwennie eased her scantily-cut black skirt over her knees. ‘But the way some people behave, it’s a scandal. You know Mrs Mortus, whose Irene works along with our Ramona? Well, last Thursday week I saw her get half a pound of biscuits in a queue, and then go back to the tail of the queue, and take off her glasses, and work her way up and get another half-pound. Well, I said to myself, now I suppose you’ll go back again and take out your teeth. Oh, it makes my blood boil!’

  ‘Yes, it makes one want to say something, doesn’t it? But talking of bare-faced cheating, what about …’

  ‘Mum! Mum!’

  The child ran in, flourishing his cap.

  ‘The car’s outside, Mum. It’s waiting for us.’

  ‘Good Lord! And we were so happy talking over old times, we never heard it. Dear, dear! Poor Dick. Not even brought back for as much as to come in and go out again. It doesn’t seem quite reverent, does it, to go out of a house for a funeral with no corpse going before. Where’s my gloves?’

  The undertaker’s car was old and stately, so roomy that it held them all. Reg and the boy sat in front, where Reg and the driver conversed in undertones about double declutching. Cathie and Ramona still clung to each other, and the aunts, ennobled by the deep springing and all the little amber knobs, sat silent and upright, glancing at the shabby streets as though a Jug and Bottle Entrance meant nothing to them.

  Outside Mr Kedge’s establishment the hearse was waiting, the four mutes standing beside it. As they neared, the mutes scrambled up and it moved off. Another car which had been waiting swung out to follow theirs.

  ‘Well, my goodness, whoever’s that? Cathie! Who’s in that other car?’

  ‘I didn’t see.’

  ‘Well, surely, you ought to know. People don’t follow a body uninvited. Here, Gwennie, you’re the limberest among us. You watch out of this back window and see who it is.’

  ‘It’s the Blackbones. Fred and Mary and old Dodger Blackbones.’

  ‘The Blackbones? Well!’

  ‘The Blackbones?’

  ‘Gwennie! Look again. It can’t be the Blackbones.’

  ‘Yes, it is. And in mourning, too, as far as one can see.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing. After the way Mrs Dodger walked off with our Aunt Mabel’s furniture, and Dick never getting as much as a teaspoon, and all of us knowing he was her favourite nephew. Cathie! What are those Blackbones doing at your father’s funeral?’

  ‘Well, I suppose they are coming too, Aunt Lot.’

  ‘My word! And is that all you can do about it?’

  ‘Well, what can I do?’

  ‘Did you know they were coming?’

  Ramona came stare-eyed and assertive out of her doze.

  ‘Why shouldn’t they come, Mrs Mullen? It’s Uncle Dick’s funeral, I suppose.’

  ‘Hush, Ramona dear.’

  ‘Uncle Dick’s funeral? That’s just what I’m complaining of. If Dodger wants to go to a funeral, I should think he could pick out some other funeral where he’d be more in keeping. Or wait for his own. Why, it would make Dick turn in his grave.’

  Cathie preserved an unassenting silence. Ramona yawned with deliberation. Gwennie, her face mottled with blushes, looked steadily out of the window.

  ‘Well, wouldn’t it? After the way Dodger treated your Dad?’

  ‘Dad and Cousin Randall got on all right, Aunt Lot.’

  ‘D’you mean to say … ?’

  ‘They used to meet at the Buffaloes, and Cousin Randall was very fond of Dad.’

  The car drew up before the chur
ch. The coffin was lifted out, the clergyman came from the porch to meet it.

  ‘I am the Resurrection …’

  When he began to speak it was obvious that his teeth were false and didn’t fit. On every sibilant he sounded a shrill whistle.

  ‘Who on earth’s this awful old parson?’ whispered Mrs Mullen, as she and Freda, Cathie, Reg, and the boy, came up from their knees in the front pew. ‘Why haven’t you got Mr Dacre?’

  ‘He’s gone to be an army chaplain, Aunt Lot.’

  A little farther down on the opposite side of the aisle sat the Blackbones. Freda, who had no dignity, kept twisting herself to look at them. Mrs Mullen continued to look steadfastly before her, where the coffin, mounted on trestles, seemed irreconcilably large and dominating for anything representing Dick. In the pew just behind, Gwennie was freely and comfortably weeping.

  Well, perhaps the coffin was in the right of it. Perhaps her impression of Dick was a false one, after all. For one can’t be sure, even about one’s own brother. Dick had been reconciled with Dodger. For years he had been meeting Dodger at the Buffaloes, going round to the pub with him afterwards, talking to him of carrier pigeons and tomato blight. Her own brother – and she had never so much as suspected it.

  Staring at the coffin, so aloof and so imminent, Mrs Mullen was penetrated by a realisation of the vanity of this world. What’s the use, she thought to herself, what’s the use of sticking up for one’s principles, what’s the use of getting up into one’s best corsets to attend a funeral, why pay burial insurance, why have wars? There, across the aisle, was Dodger, grown old in wickedness, and here was she, worn out with keeping respectable. And to that whistling clergyman there, not a pin to choose between them. Just two elderly persons who would soon be funerals, and the only odds, which happened to come first.

  A lot of good horse-sense would be buried with her. And Dodger, he’d take more knowledge of the world than he was born with down into the grave with him. But nobody would dig for it, nobody wanted the wisdom of the old, any more than they wanted those big mahogany sideboards. That sideboard of Aunt Mabel’s, and the dumb waiter, and the eight chairs, so solid you could hardly lift them: Dodger had got them, and Mrs Dodger had dusted them; but young Mrs Fred would sell them as soon as Dodger had hopped it.