The Penguin Book of the British Short Story Read online

  ‘Man was mad.’

  ‘Mad as a hatter. And you should have seen their faces. It was full of people drinking and they didn’t know whether it was them who were crazy or whether it was Stinker. They kept looking up at each other to make sure that they weren’t the only ones who couldn’t see the dog. One man dropped his drink.’

  ‘That was awful.’

  ‘Terrible.’

  The waiter came and went. The room was full of people now, all sitting at little tables, talking and drinking and wearing their uniforms. The pilot poked the ice down into his glass with his finger.

  ‘He used to jink too,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Stinker. He used to talk about it.’

  ‘Jinking isn’t anything,’ I said. ‘It’s like not touching the cracks on the pavement when you’re walking along.’

  ‘Balls. That’s just personal. Doesn’t affect anyone else.’

  ‘Well, it’s like car-waiting.’

  ‘I always do it,’ I said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Just as you’re going to drive off, you sit back and count twenty, then you drive off.’

  ‘You’re mad too,’ he said. ‘You’re like Stinker.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful way to avoid accidents. I’ve never had one in a car yet; at least, not a bad one.’

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘No, I always do it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because then if someone was going to have stepped off the kerb in front of your car, you won’t hit them because you started later. You were delayed because you counted twenty, and the person who stepped off the kerb whom you would have hit – you missed him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He stepped off the kerb long before you got there because you counted twenty.’

  ‘That’s a good idea.’

  ‘I know it’s a good idea.’

  ‘It’s a bloody marvellous idea.’

  ‘I’ve saved lots of lives. And you can drive straight across intersections because the car you would have hit has already gone by. It went by just a little earlier because you delayed yourself by counting twenty.’

  ‘Marvellous.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘But it’s like jinking,’ he said. ‘You never really know what would have happened.’

  ‘I always do it,’ I said.

  We kept right on drinking.

  ‘Look at that woman,’ I said.

  ‘The one with the bosom?’

  ‘Yes, marvellous bosom.’

  He said slowly, ‘I bet I’ve killed lots of women more beautiful than that one.’

  ‘Not lots with bosoms like that.’

  ‘I’ll bet I have. Shall we have another drink?’

  ‘Yes, one for the road.’

  ‘There aren’t any other women with bosoms like that,’ I said. ‘Not in Germany anyway.’

  ‘Oh yes there are. I’ve killed lots of them.’

  ‘All right. You’ve killed lots of women with wonderful bosoms.’

  He leaned back and waved his hand around the room. ‘See all the people in this room?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wouldn’t there be a bloody row if they were all suddenly dead; if they all suddenly fell off their chairs on to the floor dead?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t there be a bloody row?’

  ‘Certainly there’d be a row.’

  ‘If all the waiters got together and put stuff in all the drinks and everyone died.’

  ‘There’d be a godalmighty row.’

  ‘Well, I’ve done that hundreds of times. I’ve killed more people than there are in this room hundreds of times. So have you.’

  ‘Lots more,’ I said. ‘But that’s different.’

  ‘Same sort of people. Men and women and waiters. All drinking in a pub.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Like hell it is. Wouldn’t there be a bloody row if it happened here?’

  ‘Bloody awful row.’

  ‘But we’ve done it. Lots of times.’

  ‘Hundreds of times,’ I said. ‘This is nothing.’

  ‘This is a lousy place.’

  ‘Yes, it’s lousy. Let’s go somewhere else.’

  ‘Finish our drinks.’

  We finished our drinks and we both tried to pay the bill, so we tossed for it and I won. It came to sixteen dollars and twenty-five cents. He gave the waiter a two-dollar tip.

  We got up and walked around the tables and over to the door.

  ‘Taxi,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, must have a taxi.’

  There wasn’t a doorman. We stood out on the kerb waiting for a taxi to come along and he said, ‘This is a good town.’

  ‘Wonderful town,’ I said. I felt fine. It was dark outside, but there were a few street-lamps, and we could see the cars going by and the people walking on the other side of the street. There was a thin, quiet drizzle falling, and the wetness on the black street shone yellow under the lights of the cars and under the street-lamps. The tyres of the cars hissed on the wet surface.

  ‘Let’s go to a place which has lots of whisky,’ he said. ‘Lots of whisky and a man with egg on his beard serving it.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Somewhere where there are no other people but just us and the man with egg on his beard. Either that.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Either that or what?’

  ‘Or a place with a hundred thousand people in it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘OK.’

  We stood there waiting and we could see the lights of the cars as they came round the bend over to the left, coming towards us with the tyres swishing on the wet surface and going past us up the road to the bridge which goes over the river. We could see the drizzle falling through the beams of their headlights and we stood there waiting for a taxi.

  L. A. G. STRONG

  The Rook

  A little gathering of rooks, maybe a dozen, sat waiting for the old man to leave his garden. They sat a couple of hundred yards away, some in a tree, some on the fence beneath it, making little guttural noises to one another. It was a fine frosty morning, and the rooks all looked amazingly big and black and glossy in the bright sunshine. One of them, balancing himself on the topmost wire of the fence, kept tilting awkwardly backwards and forwards, revealing a rainbow sheen upon his neck and shoulders. He hung on strongly with his claws, the wire quivering beneath him. Once he tilted so far that he had to use his wings to regain his balance. The flapping seemed to excite his companions: they fidgeted, and broke into a kind of chatter.

  Well aware of the rooks’ intention, the old man kept looking at them furtively over his shoulder, and muttering to himself. But he did not allow them to interfere with what he was doing: and paused only to rub the side of his nose with his sleeve, and to give an occasional loud sniff. He was an unlovely old man. He had next to no teeth, and his loose lips, pursed wetly up together, made a sort of horrid frill, resting upon the dirty grey frill of his beard, which in its turn was frilled out upon the red woollen muffler wound about his neck.

  Straightening himself, with a last malevolent glance at the rooks, he began to hobble stiffly up the path. After a few steps, he paused, resting a hand upon his side, and a bubble of complaint came from him. Then he disappeared into an outhouse at the top of the garden.

  Except that they had stopped making noises to one another, there was nothing to show that the rooks had noticed the old man go in. Then, quite casually, the rook on the fence rose, as if he were tired of an uncomfortable position, and flew to the top of the tree. Choosing another insecure perch, a twig hardly strong enough to bear his weight, he settled, and sat swinging gently up and down. There was a few seconds’ pause: and then, by one consent, the whole gathering leaned forward and took off without a sound. Obeying some instinct, they swooped close to the ground, flew towards the old man’s wall, careening over it, dipping again the moment it was cros
sed, and made for the place where he had been working. Reaching it, they nullified all their precautions by rising a few feet in the air, and letting themselves slowly settle, with outspread wings. Then instantly they were waddling and nodding hard, making the most of the stolen moments.

  For a while there was nothing but sunlight, brown loam, the glossy nodding bodies and clicking beaks of the birds. Then, sharp and wicked, a crack, which put up every bird within a quarter of a mile: and the vengeful figure of the old man, rifle in hand, blinking and chuckling at the outhouse door.

  ‘Did you get them, Da?’ called a woman’s voice lazily from inside.

  ‘Did I get them! Oh, bedad, I did. Wan of them, anyway. A quare dart, I gev him! A quare dart! The dirty, thievin’ divils.’

  ‘Is he in it? Can ye get him?’

  ‘Tcheh! I cannot, then. What do ye think I am? A jack-rabbit, is it, or a retriever dog, to be leppin’ fences, an’ all? Wha’?’

  ‘It’s a pity, now, you couldn’t get him. If we were to get one or two of them, we could be putting them in a pie.’

  The old man made a furious gesture, shooting out both his arms stiffly, from his sides.

  ‘There ye go again!’ he cried. ‘There ye go again! Was there ever such a woman! Amn’t I after telling ye, this hundred times and more, that it’s only the little rooks do be nice in a pie.’

  ‘Well.’ The woman appeared at the door, big, still young, wiping a dish and surveyed him good-humouredly. ‘Shoot the little ones, then.’

  The old man lowered his head, and darted out his frilly lips. He seemed to be collecting all his passion for some venomous retort, when suddenly he tucked his rifle under his arm, and turned off abruptly down the garden.

  The ringleader rook had just risen from the ground with a choice morsel, and flown to the top of a stick, when the rifle went off. As his muscles leaped into action, something struck him a terrific blow in the back, knocking him head over heels. For a moment he sprawled and bumped on the ground: then his wings, beating in a panic, pulled him up, and he followed the others. Slow at first, their wings flapping loud and fast, they gathered momentum, soared above the fence, and made for the elms in the wide school playing field a quarter of a mile away. The rook, trying frantically to catch up with them, found with dismay that he could not keep his balance. His legs and the lower part of his back had all gone numb. They trailed behind, dragging down and down, a heavy aching weight. Terrified, he flew harder than ever, and his flight became unsteady and wild. Each fresh effort sent his head and his breast vertically upwards. He rose and dipped, like a bit of black refuse on the surface of a torrent. Next he began to fly crooked, bearing away from the others in a wide arc, to the left of the trees. He did not know, but it was his instinct, realizing that he could not make the height direct, and taking him towards it by a circuit. Even so, he all but failed to reach the tree tops. Flying grew more difficult every second, his body heavier. His wing muscles ached cruelly, and he panted for breath. After little short of a circle, he saw that he was level with the others. A last effort, a sort of unsteady swoop, and he dropped thankfully at a vacant branch – only to fall heavily upon his breast. His paralysed legs refused their hold, and he tumbled down through the branches, flapping wildly, uttering hoarse screams of consternation. For a moment he hung struggling, his left wing caught in a fork, some forty feet above the grass. Then he flapped it loose, and fell, turning helplessly over. It seemed he must crash upon the ground, but somehow, in the last fraction of a second, his wings half gripped the air, and broke his fall.

  Feeling the ground thrust up against him, he tried once more to rise, but being unable to stand, he could not get his wings clear of the ground. All he could achieve was a series of agonized flops, which carried him some yards out from the foot of the tree, into the open space of the school playing field.

  Except for the black untidy flapping shape, the field was empty.

  Exhausted, ceasing his efforts, the rook lay upon his breast, with outspread wings, and considered. The mixture of indignation and fear, which his situation caused him, rose and fell in his mind. He could no longer feel the lower half of his body. A drowsiness came over him, a sense of temporary security. Under its influence he forgot what had happened, till a sick spasm of pain, and the strangeness of the grass pressing up against his breast, woke him to fresh terror. The instinctive reaction to terror would no longer work. He could not rise and fly away from it. He could only struggle a few inches, his wings ignobly scrabbling along on the ground. Soon that effort was too much: he was glad to leave off, and lie quiet, moving his beak from side to side in puzzled, querulous jerks.

  In the big hall of the school, two priests were invigilating an examination. There was no real need for both to be there, but they had work to correct, and, as each was technically on duty, it looked better to be there, in case ‘His Reverence’ should poke his head in the door – as he well might.

  One, dark and sturdy, sat frowning leisurely over his corrections. His face was fresh-coloured, with a blue jowl: his eyebrows met in a dark bunch, and he had wide black nostrils. Now and then he sat back, to admire the neatness with which he made a correction in blue pencil.

  Presently, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tall figure of his colleague standing near his desk. This was a younger man, very young in appearance, handsome, spare, with fair hair that looked red in some lights. His nose looked as if the sculptor had given it a firm pinch between finger and thumb, before it had set hard.

  The seated priest took no notice. He started another page of corrections, and forgot the figure by his side – or got used to it in his mind. It was a surprise to him when the young priest spoke.

  ‘Corvus moribundus est,’ he said, little above a whisper. The other looked up.

  ‘What?’ he said. Then, taking in the remark, he turned round vaguely in his chair. ‘Eh? Where?’

  The younger priest nodded out towards the field. Looking, his friend saw first of all the concourse of rooks in the tree, sitting absolutely silent, without movement. Then, on the grass below, he saw the wounded rook.

  ‘Shot?’ he asked, looking up.

  ‘Or just dying.’

  ‘Shot, I think.’ He paused, making faces in an effort not to sneeze. ‘Yes; I heard a shot, just now.’

  They both looked at the rook. It moved its head, and every now and then made a sort of gawky flop with its wings. Even from a distance they could see its hurt, bewildered wonder at the sudden unfamiliarity of its world.

  As they looked, a man appeared on a bicycle, riding along the drive which cut the big field in two. He too saw the rook, and waved his arm to scare it. The bird, forgetting its plight, tried to rise, and drove its beak hard against the ground. Terrified, it struggled wildly, and its great uninjured wings beat it maybe a yard away from the danger before it collapsed in a sprawling heap, crushed with pain, unable to stir further. It had gained one thing, however: its back was now turned to the man, so that it could no longer see him. He rode on, in too much of a hurry to stop, screwing his face round two or three times over his shoulder, to look at the rook.

  ‘Will I go out and put it out of its agony?’ asked the young priest, when the man had disappeared.

  The other started, and breathed out loudly through his nose.

  ‘Yes. It would be well to do that.’

  ‘Right. I won’t be long.’

  ‘No hurry. I’ll have an eye to them.’

  The young priest nodded, and went across to his own desk. Opening it a little way only, and leaning back to peer inside, he reached in his hand swiftly and took out a pointer with a thick handle. He slipped it up his sleeve thin end first, made a wry grimace of a smile at his colleague, and went down the hall. A few heads were raised to look at him. One, near the door, continued to watch vacantly after him down the long stone passage.

  The priest at the desk saw. Lowering his eyes to his work, he spoke tonelessly, without raising his voice.

  ‘McC
omas.’

  The boy jumped, gaped at the desk, and went on with his work. The priest did not look up. He corrected a paper, pursing up his lips, fingering one side of his close-shaven chin.

  But his thoughts were not on the paper, nor on the boys in front of him. All his imagination was now with the doomed rook. Blaming himself, saying that his interest was morbid, he twisted round in his chair. The rook was still in the field, lying on its breast, its wings sprawled out, moving its head in bewildered indignant jerks. There, he thought, there is a live, sentient creature, like myself: in a minute or so it will experience death, and then all its experience will be at an end, while I, who share life with it now, will still be sitting in this chair. In a dreadful sense, he envied the rook: no, perhaps not envied it, but wished for his soul’s correction and wisdom, that he could suffer with it and afterwards return to his own person. His mind was always curious after experience, hankering for it, so far as was lawful. So far, that is of course, as was con—

  Ah. There was young Kerrigan, walking casually across the grass. At sight of him the rooks in the tree rose in a body and flew away. To the watcher there was something evil in their flight, as though, having gloated over their brother’s misery, they now derisively abandoned him to his death.

  As he walked, Kerrigan looked about him, and up at the sky, as if he did not see the rook.

  It heard his tread, and did its best to escape: but now it was too far exhausted to stir. He bent over it, grasped one wing close to the body, and with a quick movement secured the other. Thus pinioned, the rook could do nothing. It tried to turn its head and peck him, and he saw with compassion that its beak was full of blood.