Twenty-One Stories Read online

  ‘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 newpaper 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 by 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?”

  ‘I jerked my head back at the room. “Give it me,” he said, “quick. You shall have the train in the morning.”

  ‘I shook my head. He said, “I’ve got the bleeder here, and the key. You’d better toss it down.”

  ‘“Go away,” I said, but I could hardly speak with fear.

  ‘“I’ll bleed you first and then I’ll have it just the same.”

  ‘“Oh no, you won’t,” I said. I went to the chair and picked it – Him – up. There was only one place where He was safe. I couldn’t separate the Host from the paper, so I swallowed both. The newsprint stuck like a prune to the back of my throat, but I rinsed it down with water from the ewer. Then I went back to the window and looked down at Blacker. He began to wheedle me. “What have you done with it, David? What’s the fuss? It’s only a bit of bread,” looking so longingly and pleadingly up at me that even as a child I wondered whether he could really think that, and yet desire it so much.

  ‘“I swallowed it,” I said.

  ‘“Swallowed it?”

  ‘“Yes,” I said. “Go away.” Then something happened which seems to me now more terrible than his desire to corrupt or my thoughtless act: he began to weep – the tears ran lopsidedly out of the one good eye a
nd his shoulders shook. I only saw his face for a moment before he bent his head and strode off, the bald turnip head shaking, into the dark. When I think of it now, it’s almost as if I had seen that Thing weeping for its inevitable defeat. It had tried to use me as a weapon and now I had broken in its hands and it wept its hopeless tears through one of Blacker’s eyes.’

  The black furnaces of Bedwell Junction gathered around the line. The points switched and we were tossed from one set of rails to another. A spray of sparks, a signal light changed to red, tall chimneys jetting into the grey night sky, the fumes of steam from stationary engines – half the cold journey was over and now remained the long wait for the slow cross-country train. I said, ‘It’s an interesting story. I think I should have given Blacker what he wanted. I wonder what he would have done with it.’

  ‘I really believe,’ my companion said, ‘that he would first of all have put it under his microscope – before he did all the other things I expect he had planned.’

  ‘And the hint?’ I said. ‘I don’t quite see what you mean by that.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ he said vaguely, ‘you know for me it was an odd beginning, that affair, when you come to think of it,’ but I should never have known what he meant had not his coat, when he rose to take his bag from the rack, come open and disclosed the collar of a priest.

  I said, ‘I suppose you think you owe a lot to Blacker.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You see, I am a very happy man.’

  1948

  WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK

  1

  WHEN the chemist had shut his shop for the night he went through a door at the back of the hall that served both him and the flats above, and then up two flights and a half of stairs carrying an offering of a little box of pills. The box was stamped with his name and address: Priskett, 14 New End Street, Oxford. He was a middle-aged man with a thin moustache and scared evasive eyes: he wore his long white coat even when he was off duty as if it had the power of protecting him like a King’s uniform from his enemies. So long as he wore it he was free from summary trial and execution.

  On the top landing was a window: outside Oxford spread through the spring evening: the peevish noise of innumerable bicycles, the gasworks, the prison, and the grey spires, beyond the bakers and confectioners, like paper frills. A door was marked with a visiting-card Mr Nicholas Fennick, B.A.: the chemist rang three short times.

  The man who opened the door was sixty years old at least, with snow-white hair and a pink babyish skin. He wore a mulberry velvet dinner jacket, and his glasses swung on the end of a wide black ribbon. He said with a kind of boisterousness, ‘Ah, Priskett, step in, Priskett. I had just sported my oak for a moment . . .’

  ‘I brought you some more of my pills.’

  ‘Invaluable, Priskett. If only you had taken a degree – the Society of Apothecaries would have been enough – I would have appointed you resident medical officer of St Ambrose’s.’

  ‘How’s the college doing?’

  ‘Give me your company for a moment in the common-room, and you shall know all.’

  Mr Fennick led the way down a little dark passage cluttered with mackintoshes: Mr Priskett, feeling his way uneasily from mackintosh to mackintosh, kicked in front of him a pair of girl’s shoes. ‘One day,’ Mr Fennick said, ‘we must build . . .’ and he made a broad confident gesture with his glasses that seemed to press back the walls of the common-room: a small round table covered with a landlady’s cloth, three or four shiny chairs and a glass-fronted bookcase containing a copy of Every Man His Own Lawyer. ‘My niece Elisabeth,’ Mr Fennick said, ‘my medical adviser.’ A very young girl with a lean pretty face nodded perfunctorily from behind a typewriter. ‘I am going to train Elisabeth,’ Mr Fennick said, ‘to act as bursar. The strain of being both bursar and president of the college is upsetting my stomach. The pills . . . thank you.’

  Mr Priskett said humbly, ‘And what do you think of the college, Miss Fennick?’

  ‘My name’s Cross,’ the girl said. ‘I think it’s a good idea. I’m surprised my uncle thought of it.’

  ‘In a way it was – partly – my idea.’

  ‘I’m more surprised still,’ the girl said firmly.

  Mr Priskett, folding his hands in front of his white coat as though he were pleading before a tribunal, went on: ‘You see, I said to your uncle that with all these colleges being taken over by the military and the tutors having nothing to do they ought to start teaching by correspondence.’

  ‘A glass of audit ale, Priskett?’ Mr Fennick suggested. He took a bottle of brown ale out of a cupboard and poured out two gaseous glasses.

  ‘Of course,’ Mr Priskett pleaded, ‘I hadn’t thought of all this – the common-room, I mean, and St Ambrose’s.’

  ‘My niece,’ Mr Fennick said, ‘knows very little of the set-up.’ He began to move restlessly around the room touching things with his hand. He was rather like an aged bird of prey inspecting the grim components of its nest.

  The girl said briskly, ‘As I see it, Uncle is running a swindle called St Ambrose’s College, Oxford.’

  ‘Not a swindle, my dear. The advertisement was very carefully worded.’ He knew it by heart: every phrase had been carefully checked with his copy of Every Man His Own Lawyer open on the table. He repeated it now in a voice full and husky with bottled brown ale. ‘War conditions prevent you going to Oxford. St Ambrose’s – Tom Brown’s old college – has made an important break with tradition. For the period of the war only it will be possible to receive tuition by post wherever you may be, whether detending the Empire on the cold rocks of Iceland or on the burning sands of Libya, in the main street of an American town or a cottage in Devonshire . . .’

  ‘You’ve overdone it,’ the girl said. ‘You always do. That hasn’t got a cultured ring. It won’t catch anybody but suckers.’

  ‘There are plenty of suckers,’ Mr Fennick said.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, I’ll skip that bit. “Degree-diplomas will be granted at the end of three terms instead of the usual three years.” ’ He explained. ‘That gives a quick turnover. One can’t wait for money these days. “Gain a real Oxford education at Tom Brown’s old college. For full particulars of tuition fees, battels, etc., write to the Bursar.”’

  ‘And do you mean to say the University can’t stop that?’

  ‘Anybody,’ Mr Fennick said with a kind of pride, ‘can start a college anywhere. I’ve never said it was part of the University.’

  ‘But battels – battels mean board and lodgings.’

  ‘In this case,’ Mr Fennick said, ‘it’s quite a nominal fee – to keep your name in perpetuity on the books of the old firm – I mean the college.’

  ‘And the tuition . . .’

  ‘Priskett here is the science tutor. I take history and classics. I thought that you, my dear, might tackle – economics?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about them.’

  ‘The examinations, of course, have to be rather simple – within the capacity of the tutors. (There is an excellent public library here.) And another thing – the fees are returnable if the diploma-degree is not granted.’

  ‘You mean . . .’

  ‘Nobody will ever fail,’ Mr Priskett brought breathlessly out with scared excitement.

  ‘And you are really getting results?’

  ‘I waited, my dear, until I could see the distinct possibility of at least six hundred a year for the three of us before I wired you. And today – beyond all my expectations – I have received a letter from Lord Driver. He is entering his son at St Ambrose’s.’

  ‘But how can he come here.’

  ‘In his absence, my dear, on his country’s service. The Drivers have always been a military family. I looked them up in Debrett.’

  ‘What do you think of it?’ Mr Priskett asked with anxiety and triumph.

  ‘I think it’s rich. Have you arranged a boat-race?’

  ‘There, Priskett,’ Mr Fennick said proudly, rai
sing his glass of audit ale, ‘I told you she was a girl of the old stock.’

  2

  Directly he heard his landlady’s feet upon the stairs the elderly man with the grey shaven head began to lay his wet tea-leaves round the base of the aspidistra. When she opened the door he was dabbing the tea-leaves in tenderly with his fingers. ‘A lovely plant, my dear.’

  But she wasn’t going to be softened at once: he could tell that: she waved a letter at him. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘what’s this Lord Driver business?’

  ‘My name, my dear: a good Christian name like Lord George Sanger had.’

  ‘Then why don’t they put Mr Lord Driver on the letter?’

  ‘Ignorance, just ignorance.’

  ‘I don’t want any hanky-panky from my house. It’s always been honest.’

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t know if I was an esquire or just a plain mister, so they left it blank.’

  ‘It’s sent from St Ambrose’s College, Oxford: people like that ought to know.’

  ‘It comes, my dear, of having such a good address. W.l. And all the gentry live in Mewses.’ He made a half-hearted snatch at the letter, but the landlady held it out of reach.

  ‘What are the likes of you writing to Oxford College about?’

  ‘My dear,’ he said with strained dignity, ‘I may have been a little unfortunate: it may even be that I have spent a few years in chokey, but I have the rights of a free man.’

  ‘And a son in quod.’

  ‘Not in quod, my dear. Borstal is quite another institution. It is – a kind of college.’

  ‘Like St Ambrose’s.’

  ‘Perhaps not quite of the same rank.’