The Penguin Book of the British Short Story Read online

  I repeated his last word as a question, ‘Hints?’

  ‘Oh, they mean very little in cold print – or cold speech,’ he said, shivering in his overcoat. ‘And they mean nothing at all to another human being than the man who catches them. They are not scientific evidence – or evidence at all for that matter. Events that don’t, somehow, turn out as they were intended – by the human actors, I mean, or by the thing behind the human actors.’

  ‘The thing?’

  ‘The word Satan is so anthropomorphic.’ I had to lean forward now: I wanted to hear what he had to say. I am – I really am, God knows – open to conviction. He said, ‘One’s words are so crude, but I sometimes feel pity for that thing. It is so continually finding the right weapon to use against its Enemy and the weapon breaks in its own breast. It sometimes seems to me so – powerless. You said something just now about the corruption of children. It reminded me of something in my own childhood. You are the first person – except for one – that I have thought of telling it to, perhaps because you are anonymous. It’s not a very long story, and in a way it’s relevant.’

  I said, ‘I’d like to hear it.’

  ‘You mustn’t expect too much meaning. But to me there seems to be a hint. That’s all. A hint.’

  He went slowly on turning his face to the pane, though he could have seen nothing in the whirling world outside except an occasional signal lamp, a light in a window, a small country station torn backwards by our rush, picking his words with precision. He said, ‘When I was a child they taught me to serve at Mass. The church was a small one, for there were very few Catholics where I lived. It was a market town in East Anglia, surrounded by flat chalky fields and ditches – so many ditches. I don’t suppose there were fifty Catholics all told, and for some reason there was a tradition of hostility to us. Perhaps it went back to the burning of a Protestant martyr in the sixteenth century – there was a stone marking the place near where the meat stalls stood on Wednesdays. I was only half aware of the enmity, though I knew that my school nickname of Popey Martin had something to do with my religion and I had heard that my father was nearly excluded from the Constitutional Club when he first came to the town.

  ‘Every Sunday I had to dress up in my surplice and serve Mass. I hated it – I have always hated dressing up in any way (which is funny when you come to think of it), and I never ceased to be afraid of losing my place in the service and doing something which would put me to ridicule. Our services were at a different hour from the Anglican, and as our small, far-from-select band trudged out of the hideous chapel the whole of the townsfolk seemed to be on the way past to the proper church – I always thought of it as the proper church. We had to pass the parade of their eyes, indifferent, supercilious, mocking; you can’t imagine how seriously religion can be taken in a small town – if only for social reasons.

  ‘There was one man in particular; he was one of the two bakers in the town, the one my family did not patronize. I don’t think any of the Catholics patronized him because he was called a free-thinker – an odd title, for, poor man, no one’s thoughts were less free than his. He was hemmed in by his hatred – his hatred of us. He was very ugly to look at, with one wall-eye and a head the shape of a turnip, with the hair gone on the crown, and he was unmarried. He had no interests, apparently, but his baking and his hatred, though now that I am older I begin to see other sides to his nature – it did contain, perhaps, a certain furtive love. One would come across him suddenly, sometimes, on a country walk, especially if one was alone and it was Sunday. It was as though he rose from the ditches and the chalk smear on his clothes reminded one of the flour on his working overalls. He would have a stick in his hand and stab at the hedges, and if his mood were very black he would call out after you strange abrupt words that were like a foreign tongue – I know the meaning of those words, of course, now. Once the police went to his house because of what a boy said he had seen, but nothing came of it except that the hate shackled him closer. His name was Blacker, and he terrified me.

  ‘I think he had a particular hatred of my father – I don’t know why. My father was manager of the Midland Bank, and it’s possible that at some time Blacker may have had unsatisfactory dealings with the bank – my father was a very cautious man who suffered all his life from anxiety about money – his own and other people’s. If I try to picture Blacker now I see him walking along a narrowing path between high windowless walls, and at the end of the path stands a small boy of ten – me. I don’t know whether it’s a symbolic picture or the memory of one of our encounters – our encounters somehow got more and more frequent. You talked just now about the corruption of children. That poor man was preparing to revenge himself on everything he hated – my father, the Catholics, the God whom people persisted in crediting – by corrupting me. He had evolved a horrible and ingenious plan.

  ‘I remember the first time I had a friendly word from him. I was passing his shop as rapidly as I could when I heard his voice call out with a kind of sly subservience as though he were an under-servant. “Master David,” he called, “Master David,” and I hurried on. But the next time I passed that way he was at his door (he must have seen me coming) with one of those curly cakes in his hand that we called Chelsea buns. I didn’t want to take it, but he made me, and then I couldn’t be other than polite when he asked me to come into his parlour behind the shop and see something very special.

  ‘It was a small electric railway – a rare sight in those days, and he insisted on showing me how it worked. He made me turn the switches and stop and start it, and he told me that I could come in any morning and have a game with it. He used the word “game” as though it were something secret, and it’s true that I never told my family of this invitation and of how, perhaps twice a week those holidays, the desire to control that little railway became overpowering, and looking up and down the street to see if I were observed, I would dive into the shop.’

  Our larger, dirtier, adult train drove into a tunnel and the light went out. We sat in darkness and silence, with the noise of the train blocking our ears like wax. When we were through we didn’t speak at once and I had to prick him into continuing.

  ‘An elaborate seduction,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t think his plans were as simple as that,’ my companion said, ‘or as crude. There was much more hate than love, poor man, in his make-up. Can you hate something you don’t believe in? And yet he called himself a free-thinker. What an impossible paradox, to be free and to be so obsessed. Day by day all through those holidays his obsession must have grown, but he kept a grip; he bided his time. Perhaps that thing I spoke of gave him the strength and the wisdom. It was only a week from the end of the holidays that he spoke to me of what concerned him so deeply.

  ‘I heard him behind me as I knelt on the floor, coupling two coaches. He said, “You won’t be able to do this, Master David, when school starts.” It wasn’t a sentence that needed any comment from me any more than the one that followed, “You ought to have it for your own, you ought,” but how skilfully and unemphatically he had sowed the longing, the idea of a possibility … I was coming to his parlour every day now; you see I had to cram every opportunity in before the hated term started again, and I suppose I was becoming accustomed to Blacker, to that wall eye, that turnip head, that nauseating subservience. The Pope, you know, describes himself as “The servant of the servants of God”, and Blacker – I sometimes think, that Blacker was “the servant of the servants of …” well, let it be.

  ‘The very next day, standing in the doorway watching me play, he began to talk to me about religion. He said, with what untruth even I recognized, how much he admired the Catholics; he wished he could believe like that, but how could a baker believe? He accented “a baker” as one might say a biologist, and the tiny train spun round the gauge O track. He said, “I can bake the things you eat just as well as any Catholic can,” and disappeared into his shop. I hadn’t the faintest idea what he meant. Presently he emerged a
gain, holding in his hand a little wafer. “Here,” he said, “eat that and tell me …” When I put it in my mouth I could tell that it was made in the same way as our wafers for communion – he had got the shape a little wrong, that was all, and I felt guilty and irrationally scared. “Tell me,” he said, “what’s the difference?”

  ‘ “Difference?” I asked.

  ‘ “Isn’t that just the same as you eat in church?”

  ‘I said smugly, “It hasn’t been consecrated.”

  ‘He said, “Do you think if I put the two of them under a microscope, you could tell the difference?” But even at ten I had the answer to that question. “No,” I said, “the – accidents don’t change,” stumbling a little on the word “accidents” which had suddenly conveyed to me the idea of death and wounds.

  ‘Blacker said with sudden intensity, “How I’d like to get one of your ones in my mouth – just to see …”

  ‘It may seem odd to you, but this was the first time that the idea of transubstantiation really lodged in my mind. I had learnt it all by rote; I had grown up with the idea. The Mass was as lifeless to me as the sentences in De Bello Gallico, communion a routine like drill in the school-yard, but here suddenly I was in the presence of a man who took it seriously, as seriously as the priest whom naturally one didn’t count – it was his job. I felt more scared than ever.

  ‘He said, “It’s all nonsense, but I’d just like to have it in my mouth.”

  ‘ “You could if you were a Catholic,” I said naïvely. He gazed at me with his one good eye like a Cyclops. He said, “You serve at Mass, don’t you? It would be easy for you to get at one of those things. I tell you what I’d do – I’d swap this electric train set for one of your wafers – consecrated, mind. It’s got to be consecrated.”

  ‘ “I could get you one out of the box,” I said. I think I still imagined that his interest was a baker’s interest – to see how they were made.

  ‘ “Oh, no,” he said. “I want to see what your God tastes like.”

  ‘ “I couldn’t do that.”

  ‘ “Not for a whole electric train, just for yourself? You wouldn’t have any trouble at home. I’d pack it up and put a label inside that your Dad could see – ‘For my bank manager’s little boy from a grateful client.’ He’d be pleased as Punch with that.”

  ‘Now that we are grown men it seems a trivial temptation, doesn’t it? But try to think back to your own childhood. There was a whole circuit of rails on the floor at our feet, straight rails and curved rails, and a little station with porters and passengers, a tunnel, a foot-bridge, a level crossing, two signals, buffers, of course – and above all, a turntable. The tears of longing came into my eyes when I looked at the turntable. It was my favourite piece – it looked so ugly and practical and true. I said weakly, “I wouldn’t know how.”

  ‘How carefully he had been studying the ground. He must have slipped several times into Mass at the back of the church. It would have been no good, you understand, in a little town like that, presenting himself for communion. Everybody there knew him for what he was. He said to me, “When you’ve been given communion you could just put it under your tongue a moment. He serves you and the other boy first, and I saw you once go out behind the curtain straight afterwards. You’d forgotten one of those little bottles.”

  ‘ “The cruet,” I said.

  ‘ “Pepper and salt.” He grinned at me jovially, and I – well, I looked at the little railway which I could no longer come and play with when term started. I said, “You’d just swallow it, wouldn’t you?”

  ‘ “Oh, yes,” he said, “I’d just swallow it.”

  ‘Somehow I didn’t want to play with the train any more that day. I got up and made for the door, but he detained me, gripping my lapel. He said, “This will be a secret between you and me. Tomorrow’s Sunday. You come along here in the afternoon. Put it in an envelope and post it in. Monday morning the train will be delivered bright and early.”

  ‘ “Not tomorrow,” I implored him.

  ‘ “I’m not interested in any other Sunday,” he said. “It’s your only chance.” He shook me gently backwards and forwards. “It will always have to be a secret between you and me,” he said. “Why, if anyone knew they’d take away the train and there’d be me to reckon with. I’d bleed you something awful. You know how I’m always about on Sunday walks. You can’t avoid a man like me. I crop up. You wouldn’t even be safe in your own house. I know ways to get into houses when people are asleep.” He pulled me into the shop after him and opened a drawer. In the drawer was an odd-looking key and a cut-throat razor. He said, “That’s a master key that opens all locks and that – that’s what I bleed people with.” Then he patted my cheek with his plump floury fingers and said, “Forget it. You and me are friends.”

  ‘That Sunday Mass stays in my head, every detail of it, as though it had happened only a week ago. From the moment of the Confession to the moment of Consecration it had a terrible importance; only one other Mass has ever been so important to me – perhaps not even one, for this was a solitary Mass which could never happen again. It seemed as final as the last Sacrament, when the priest bent down and put the wafer in my mouth where I knelt before the altar with my fellow server.

  ‘I suppose I had made up my mind to commit this awful act – for, you know, to us it must always seem an awful act – from the moment when I saw Blacker watching from the back of the church. He had put on his best Sunday clothes, and as though he could never quite escape the smear of his profession, he had a dab of dried talcum on his cheek, which he had presumably applied after using that cut-throat of his. He was watching me closely all the time, and I think it was fear – fear of that terrible undefined thing called bleeding – as much as covetousness that drove me to carry out my instructions.

  ‘My fellow server got briskly up and taking the communion plate preceded Father Carey to the altar rail where the other Communicants knelt. I had the Host lodged under my tongue: it felt like a blister. I got up and made for the curtain to get the cruet that I had purposely left in the sacristy. When I was there I looked quickly round for a hiding-place and saw an old copy of the Universe lying on a chair. I took the Host from my mouth and inserted it between two sheets – a little damp mess of pulp. Then I thought: perhaps Father Carey has put the paper out for a particular purpose and he will find the Host before I have time to remove it, and the enormity of my act began to come home to me when I tried to imagine what punishment I should incur. Murder is sufficiently trivial to have its appropriate punishment, but for this act the mind boggled at the thought of any retribution at all. I tried to remove the Host, but it had stuck clammily between the pages and in desperation I tore out a piece of the newspaper and screwing the whole thing up, stuck it in my trouser pocket. When I came back through the curtain carrying the cruet my eyes met Blacker’s. He gave me a grin of encouragement and unhappiness – yes, I am sure, unhappiness. Was it perhaps that the poor man was all the time seeking something incorruptible?

  ‘I can remember little more of that day. I think my mind was shocked and stunned and I was caught up too in the family bustle of Sunday. Sunday in a provincial town is the day for relations. All the family are at home and unfamiliar cousins and uncles are apt to arrive packed in the back seats of other people’s cars. I remember that some crowd of that kind descended on us and pushed Blacker temporarily out of the foreground of my mind. There was somebody called Aunt Lucy with a loud hollow laugh that filled the house with mechanical merriment like the sound of recorded laughter from inside a hall of mirrors, and I had no opportunity to go out alone even if I had wished to. When six o’clock came and Aunt Lucy and the cousins departed and peace returned, it was too late to go to Blacker’s and at eight it was my own bed-time.

  ‘I think I had half forgotten what I had in my pocket. As I emptied my pocket the little screw of newspaper brought quickly back the Mass, the priest bending over me, Blacker’s grin. I laid the packet on the chair b
y my bed and tried to go to sleep, but I was haunted by the shadows on the wall where the curtains blew, the squeak of furniture, the rustle in the chimney, haunted by the presence of God there on the chair. The Host had always been to me – well, the Host. I knew theoretically, as I have said, what I had to believe, but suddenly, as someone whistled in the road outside, whistled secretively, knowingly, to me, I knew that this which I had beside my bed was something of infinite value – something a man would pay for with his whole peace of mind, something that was so hated one could love it as one loves an outcast or a bullied child. These are adult words and it was a child of ten who lay scared in bed, listening to the whistle from the road, Blacker’s whistle, but I think he felt fairly clearly what I am describing now. That is what I meant when I said this Thing, whatever it is, that seizes every possible weapon against God, is always, everywhere, disappointed at the moment of success. It must have felt as certain of me as Blacker did. It must have felt certain, too, of Blacker. But I wonder, if one knew what happened later to that poor man, whether one would not find again that the weapon had been turned against its own breast.

  ‘At last I couldn’t bear that whistle any more and got out of bed. I opened the curtains a little way, and there right under my window, the moonlight on his face, was Blacker. If I had stretched my hand down, his fingers reaching up could almost have touched mine. He looked up at me, flashing the one good eye, with hunger – I realize now that near-success must have developed his obsession almost to the point of madness. Desperation had driven him to the house. He whispered up at me, “David, where is it?”