The Collected Short Fiction Part 34

She dropped to the floor with a crash, an extremely loud crash for so small a person. And there is something else to be sworn to, if anyone cares. I swear that the small filigree clock with the soft, human voice said "Cuckoo" again at this point, although two or three minutes only could have pa.s.sed since it had spoken before.

I looked up the Homelovers' Encyclopaedia and did not take long to bring Ursula round again. But it was, naturally, impossible to return to the same subject. And, what is more, Ursula from then on developed a new wariness which was quite obvious to me-perhaps meant to be obvious, though that was hard to tell. But now I am fairly convinced that the evening when I made Ursula faint was the turning point. It was then that I really m.u.f.fed things; missed my chance-possibly my only chance-of coming frankly to terms with Ursula, and helping her. Of helping myself, also.

As it was, Ursula's rather too obvious wariness had a bad effect on me. I feel that if a wife has to have a big secret in her life, she should at least make a successful job of concealing it from her husband completely. It is generally agreed to be the kind of thing a woman should be good at. But no doubt it is particularly difficult when the husband and wife are of different nationalities.

What I found was that the absence of change in Ursula's behaviour towards me in any other respect (or, at least, of visible change) only made things worse. I could no longer be completely relaxed with her when all the time I was aware of this whole important topic which we never mentioned. I felt myself beginning to shrink. I seemed to detect a faint patronage in her caresses and her affection. I felt they were like the attentions paid to a child before it is of an age to come to grips with the world on its own: sincere, of course; deeply felt, even; but different from the attentions bestowed on an equal.

I believe that Ursula's idea, conscious or otherwise, was to make up for having to shut me out in one direction by redoubling her a.s.surances in others. As time pa.s.sed, she seemed for the most part not less demonstrative but more; sometimes almost too responsive to be quite convincing. I found myself comparing my situation with that of a man I know whose wife took to religion. "Nothing could be any good with the marriage after that," he said; and, poor fellow, he actually wept over it, in the presence of another man. It was one of those dreadful liberal kinds of religion too, where one never knows where one is. Not, of course, that I am criticizing religion in a general way. There's much to be said for religion in general. It's just that it's no good for a marriage when one of the parties enters a whole world that the other cannot share. With Ursula it was not perhaps a whole world, but it was certainly a secret world, and certainly a terrible one, in so far as I have ever understood it at all.

I began trying to catch her out. I am ashamed of this, and I was ashamed of it at the time. The bare fact was that I could not help myself. I think that other men in similar situations, or in situations that seemed similar, have felt the same. One cannot prevent oneself setting trips and traps. And something else soon struck me. This was that had not Ursula and I been so close to one another, so exclusive, the present situation might have been more manageable, might have caused me less anguish. I saw what a sensible case there was for not putting all one's eggs in the same basket. And my seeing the sheer common sense of that-while being totally unable to act upon it-was another thing that was bad for both of us.

By now I had left Rosenberg and Newton and was set up on my own. I called myself a property consultant, but right from the start I was making small investments also, and borrowing the money to do it. I have always been able to keep my head above water, partly because I have never sought to fly up to the stars. If one wants to go up there, and to stay up there of course, one needs to rise from foundations set up by one's father, and preferably one's grandfather also. My father was just not like that, and neither of my grandfathers made much mark either. As a matter of fact, one of them was no more than a small p.a.w.nbroker: a very useful trade in those days, none the less.

Being on my own enabled me to watch over Ursula in a way that would otherwise have been impossible. I insisted upon clients and enquirers making an appointment. A local girl named Stevie looked after all that, and did it quite well, until she insisted on marrying one of those Indian students, strongly against my advice, and then going out there. The next local girl was less satisfactory; the great thing about her being that she was always ill, one thing after another, and all of them supported by medical certificates. Still we got by: most people expect little in the way of efficiency nowadays, and especially when, by one's whole existence in their lives, one is supposed to be making money for them. Nowadays that makes them so guilty and uneasy that difficulties and delays pa.s.s unnoticed.

So that when there were no appointments in the book, I was usually to be found snooping round my own happy home, spying on Ursula, hoping (or dreading) to catch her clock man by the heels.

I took to arriving home "unexpectedly". Some days, and with equal unexpectedness, I refused, at the very last moment, to depart from home at all.

I could only be touched when Ursula seemed filled with joy to see me back so soon; or sweetly delighted at finding she had a whole, long day in which to do nothing but look after me, perhaps go to an entertainment with me. For I felt that taking her away from the house for hours on end without warning might serve some useful purpose too. If I had an appointments book, surely the clock man must have one also, coming, as he did, from so great a distance?

On several different occasions, and unmistakably, I did hear retreating feet: and each time, or so I thought, the same step, rather quick and, as one might say, sharp on the ground, but never, seemingly, in anything that could properly be called flight. This house offers a completely separate approach to the back door: a path paved with concrete slabs and leading to an access road for the delivery vehicles. But pa.s.sing round the side of the building from one front to the other is a little troublesome. On one side is a very narrow pa.s.sage, which, as well as being unevenly paved, is often damp and slippery with dead leaves. On the other, is one of those trellis gates so often seen in the suburbs and which no one ever opens if he can possibly help it. The idea of giving chase, therefore, was hardly even practicable. On the other hand, I was not so far sunk as to tax Ursula with vexing questions as soon as I had entered the house. Nor did I ever hear these steps from within the house; always from the little garden in front, or even from the road outside. And I should say at once that the steps of others visiting the back door were often perfectly audible in that way. There was nothing odd in itself about my hearing those particular steps, except that they were particular, or seemed so to me.

And once, but only once, I heard a voice for which I could not account. It was a winter night and there had been a fall of snow. I cannot remember whether I had returned especially early. I took advantage of the m.u.f.fling snow to creep up the few steps of path from the gate and to bend beneath the lighted living-room window with the tightly drawn curtains. (Ursula was attentive to all details.) It was not a thing I often did. In the first place, it was only practicable when it was pitch dark. In the second place, I disliked having to listen through the window and the wall to those clicking, clacking clocks. None the less, it was the room in which Ursula normally awaited me; a room with a coal fire and big soft sofas. After a while, I straightened up, and set my ear to the icy gla.s.s of the window itself. Possibly it was from some kind of intuition or telepathy that I listened that particular night.

I heard a voice, which was certainly a strange one, in more senses than one. It was the voice of a man right enough, and a.s.suredly not of a man I knew. In any case, very few men entered our home as guests. Neither of us wanted them in that way.

It was a rather monotonous, rather grating voice. It said something, there was a silence, and then it said something else. I supposed that during what seemed to me to be silences, Ursula had spoken, and that the man had then replied. I strained and strained, but not a sound from Ursula could I hear, and not a word from the man could I understand. Of course not, I thought: he is speaking in a foreign tongue. As for Ursula, it was true that her voice was always a low one (doesn't Shakespeare say that is a good thing in a woman?); and I had acquired little experience of eavesdropping upon it, because I had seldom before made the attempt.

From the first moment of hearing it, I linked the man's voice with those quick, firm footsteps. It was exactly the voice I should have expected that man to have. I was doubtless almost bound to link the two, but it was really more than a link. I can only state that it was a certainty. And the fact that the man was probably talking in a foreign language further enraged me against all trespa.s.sers, all uninvited guests.

I stooped down again as if I might be detected through a crevice between the curtains, even though Ursula's drawing of curtains left no crevices, and then realized that my heart was pounding fit to bust. How preposterous if I were to have one of those attacks that so many men have! The thought did enter my mind, but it availed nothing to stay the whirlwind of fury that was now sweeping through me. I drew myself to my fullest height (I felt it was far more than that) and rapped uncontrollably on the gla.s.s with my mother's ruby ring, which I always wear on my right small finger. The noise, I thought, would be audible all the way to the corner down by the church. At last I had made a demonstration of some kind. As I rapped, a few small flakes of snow began once more to descend. Perhaps it would more properly be called sleet.

The front door over to my left opened, and Ursula charged out into the sleety darkness. Her high heels clattered down the crazy paving. She always dressed up to greet my coming home; making a mutual treat of it every evening.

She cried out to me. "Darling!"

In the wide beam of silvery light from the open door, she looked like a fairy in a pantomime.

"Darling, what has happened?" she cried.

She stretched her hands up to my shoulders and, even though my shoulders were touched with sleet, kept them there. It occurred to me at once that she was gaining time for someone to make off. I could not bring myself actually to force her away, to push her down into the freezing whiteness.

"Who was talking to you?" I cried. But my voice was caught up in the tightness within me and only made a cackle, completely ridiculous.

"Silly boy!" said Ursula, still holding me in such a way that I could not throw her off without a degree of force that neither of us could forgive.

"Who?" I gurgled out, and then began coughing.

"It was just the bird crying out," she replied, and let go of me altogether. I knew that I had forced her into saying something she had not wished to say. Her ceasing to hold me also: it was true that a visitor would by then have had time to make away, but it was also true that I had behaved in a manner to forfeit her embrace.

Still choking and coughing, quite ludicrous, I dashed into the house; and inside was something which was not ludicrous at all. The hallway and the living-room were less than half-lighted (it would hardly have been possible even to read, I thought subsequently), but, dim though it was, I saw that indeed a bird there seemed to be: not merely squawking but actually flapping round, just under the living-room ceiling, and more than once striking itself with a rap or thud against the fittings.

It was very frightening, and I made a fool of myself. I cried out "Keep it off! Keep it off!" I covered my eyes with my hands, and should have liked to cover my ears also.

It lasted only a matter of seconds. And then Ursula had entered the room behind me and turned the lights full on from the switchplate at the door. She had a slightly detached expression, as of one reluctantly witnessing the inevitable consequence of a solemn warning disregarded.

"It was just the bird crying out," she said again soberly.

But what I saw, now that the light was on, was the look of the cushion on the sofa opposite to the sofa on which Ursula had been sitting. Someone had been seated opposite to her, and there had been no time to smooth away the evidence of it.

As for the bird, it had simply vanished in the brighter light.

All I could do was drag upstairs in order to deal with my attack of coughing. When, after a considerable time, I came down again, the cushions were all as smooth as in a shop, and Ursula was on her feet offering me a gla.s.s of sherry. We maintained these little formalities almost every evening.

That night, as we lay together, it struck me that Ursula herself might have sat, for some reason, first on one sofa then on the other, her usual one.

All the same, Ursula had once actually admitted that a man sometimes came to mess about with the clocks; and about six months after the evening I have just described, I was provided with third-party evidence of it. And from what a quarter!

It was young Wally Walters. He is not a man I care for-if you can call him a man. He seems to think the whole suburb has nothing to do but dance to the tune of his flute. He has opinions of his own on everything, and he puts his nose in everywhere-or tries to. He has had a most unfortunate influence on the Parochial Church Council, and the Amateur Dramatic Society has never been the same since he took it over. What is more, I strongly suspect that he is not normal. I saw a certain amount of that during the war, but men who are continually under fire can, I fancy, be excused almost anything. In our suburb, it is still very much objected to, whatever may be the arguments on the other side. Be that as it may, young Walters always greets me when we happen to meet, as he does everyone else, and I have no wish actually to quarrel with him. Besides, it would probably by now be a mistake.

Young Wally Walters never says "Good morning" or "Good evening" in the normal way, but always something more casual and personal, such as "h.e.l.lo, Joe"-that at the least, and soon he is trying to put his hand on one's arm. He makes a point of behaving as if everyone were his intimate friend.

And so it was that evening-for it was another case of things happening in the evening.

"h.e.l.lo, Joe," Wally Walters cooed at me as I stepped round the corner of the road into sight of my home. "You're just in time to miss something."

"Evening," I rejoined. Almost always he has something silly to say, and I make a point of refusing ever to rise to it, if only for the simple reason that it is never worth rising to.

"I said you've just got back in time to miss something."

"I heard you say that," I replied, smiling.

But nothing ever stopped him saying his piece, just like the village idiot.

"Great tall bloke with clocks all over him," said Wally Walters. "Man a mile high at least."

I admit that this time it was I who clutched at him. In any case, he was watching me very steadily with his soft eyes, as I have noticed that he seems to watch everyone.

"Covered with clocks," he went on. "All up his back and all round his hat. Just as in the song. And pendulums and weights dangling from both hands. He must be as strong in the back and arms as a full-time all-in wrestler. I missed most of his face. Unfortunate. I'd have given a shilling to see all of it. But he was dressed like an old-fashioned undertaker. Wide-brimmed black hat-to carry the clocks, I suppose. And a long black coat-a real, old bedsider, I should call it. Perhaps he is a turn of some kind? What do you say? I presume he's a family friend. He came out of your front gate as if he lived there. I say, lay off holding me like an old boa constrictor. I haven't said something out of place, have I?" Of course he said that knowing he had, and knowing that I knew he had.

"Where were you?" I asked him, taking my hand off him. I was determined not to over-react.

"Coming out of Doctor Young's. I'm collecting for the Sclerosis, if it interests you, but the doctor's answer was a dusty one."

"Where did the man go?" I asked him, quite calmly and casually; almost, I thought, in his own style.

"You mean, the man with the tickers and tockers?"

Wally Walters was continuing to stare at me in the way I have described. I have never been able to decide whether his gaze is as penetrating as it seems, or whether it is all somewhat of an act.

I nodded, but concealing all impatience.

"Well," said Wally Walters, "I can tell you this. He didn't go into any of the other houses that I could see."

"So," I enquired, as offhandedly as I could, "you followed him for some of the way?"

"Only with my eyes, Joe," he replied with that slightly mocking earnestness of his. "But my eyes followed him until he vanished. He wasn't carrying on like the ordinary door-to-door salesman. He seemed to be making a special call on you. That was why I spoke. Do you collect fancy clocks, Joe?"

"Yes," I replied, looking clean away from him. "As a matter of fact, my wife does collect clocks."

"She'll have had the offer of some weird ones this time," responded Wally Walters. "Bye, Joe." And he sauntered off, looking to right and left for someone else with whom to pa.s.s his special time of day.

I stormed into my house, banging several doors, but failed to find Ursula all dressed up in the living-room, in accordance with our usual routine.

I tracked her down in the kitchen, where she was slicing up rhubarb, always one of her favourite foodstuffs. "Sorry, darling," she said, wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n, and stretching up to kiss me. "I'm late and you're early."

"No," I replied. "I'm late. I've just missed a visitor."

And, as so often, one of the clocks chose that precise moment to shout at me. "Cuckoo. Cuckoo." Only I suppose it said it five times, or six: whichever hour it was.

"Yes," said Ursula, looking away, and not having kissed me after all. "All the clocks have been adjusted."

I could tell that they had. There was an almost simultaneous clamour of booming and screeching from all parts of the house.

"I'm sure that's very useful," I jeered feebly; or I may have said "helpful".

"It's very necessary," Ursula observed calmly, but with more spirit than usual, at least on this particular subject. It was as if she had taken a double dose of some quick-acting tonic. That struck me even at the time. It was as if she were staying herself artificially against my pryings and probings and general gettings at her. I thought even then that one could hardly blame her.

And then-a few weeks later, I suppose, or it may have been two or three months-came what the local paper called our "burglary". It was not really a burglary, because, though it happened during the night, virtually nothing was taken. I imagine it was a job by these modern young thugs who just like smashing everything up out of boredom and because they can so easily come by too much money too young; smashing people up too, when the circ.u.mstances are right. No one was ever laid by the heels for wrecking our house. It is very seldom that anyone is. The kids cover up for one another against us older people, and especially when we seem to have a bit of property.

Ursula and I were away for the weekend at the time, or of course I should have wakened up and gone after the thugs with a rod and a gun, as our colonel used to put it when urging us on to the slaughter. We had a rule that we went away for one weekend in every four. I thought it was good for Ursula to have a change at regular intervals; a short break away that she knew she could depend on. And I liked to drag her away from her clocks, even though she never seemed quite the same without them. We went to different small hotels in the car-in quiet towns 40 or 50 miles away, or sometimes at the seaside: from the Friday night to the Sunday night. I must acknowledge that often we spent much of the time in bed, paying the extra to have the meals brought up. We never went to stay with friends; partly for that reason, but not only. Staying with friends is seldom much of a relaxation in any direction, I should say.

When I woke that Sunday morning in the hotel, I thought immediately that Ursula looked different. This was even though I could only see her back. I sat up in bed and really peered at her, as she slept with her head turned away from me, and her mouth a little open. Then I realized what I was seeing: there were grey threads in her beautiful blonde hair, and I had never noticed them before because the light had never fallen in quite the right way to show them up. In that very strong early morning sunlight, the grey in Ursula's hair seemed to come even in streaks, rather than merely in threads. The sight made me feel intensely sad and anxious.

Ursula never had trouble with sleeping. It was one of the many, many nice things about her. That morning, as I watched her-for quite a time, I believe-she was deeply sunk; but suddenly, as people do, she not merely woke up, but sat up. She put a hand at each side of her face, as if she saw something horrifying, or maybe just felt it within and around her. Her eyes were staring out of her head, and, what is more, they looked quite different-like the eyes of some other person.

I put my arms round her and drew her down to me, but even while I did so, I saw that the change in her seemed to go further. The clear, strong, holiday sunshine showed up lines and sags and disfiguring marks that I had never noticed before. I imagine it is a bad moment in any close relationship, however inevitable. I admit that I was quite overcome by it. So sorry did I feel for both of us, and for everybody in the world, that I wept like a raincloud into Ursula's changed hair that would never, could never, be the same again; nor Ursula, therefore, either.

I do not think we should be ashamed to weep at the proper times, or do anything to stop it, provided that we are not in some crowd of people; but that time it did little to make me feel better. Instead, I kept on noticing more and more wrong with Ursula all day; not only with her looks and youthfulness, but with her spirits and behaviour also. She just did not seem the same girl, and I became more and more confused and unsure of myself. I am fairly easily made unsure of myself at the best of times, though almost always I succeed in concealing the fact, apparently to the general satisfaction.

And then, to top it all, when we reached home, we found the scene of ruin I have just referred to. It was quite late, well past eleven o'clock, I am certain; and the very first thing we found was that the lock to the front door had been forced. The young thugs had not even done the usual trick with a piece of plastic. They had simply bashed the lock right through. Of course to do as much damage as possible is always their precise idea-pretty well their only idea, as far as one can see. They had done themselves proud in every room of Ursula's and my home-and done their parents and teachers proud too, and indeed their entire generation. In particular, they had stopped all the clocks-all of them (Ursula soon made sure of that); and smashed several of them into pieces that could never be humpty-dumptied again and had to const.i.tute the first clock burial in our garden. Early the next morning I looked after that. The thugs proved to have ripped down the different electric meters-something that is not always too easy to do. I can still hear-and, in a manner, even see-Ursula pitter-pattering in her high heels from room to room in the darkness, and uttering little gasps and screams as she discovered what had been done to her precious clocks, one by one. I doubt whether I shall ever forget it. In fact, I am sure I never shall, as it gave me the first clear and conscious inkling of what was afoot in my home and married life.

After that, the funny man, the expert, was in and out the whole time-trying to make good, to replace. I was hardly in any position to demur, and I am sure his visits were many, but I never saw him once, nor have I ever tracked down anyone who did at that particular time-or who will admit to it.

I even sank so low as to ask Wally Walters.

I stopped him one bright afternoon as he sauntered along the road which goes past the new bus sheds. I had even taken trouble to put myself in his way. He was wearing pale mauve trousers, and a crimson silk shirt, open almost to his navel, showing the smooth skin of his chest, the colour of peanut b.u.t.ter. I had crossed the road to him.

"Wally," I said, though I have always avoided calling him by that name. "That funny fellow. You remember?"

He nodded with a slowness that was obviously affected. Already his soft gaze was on me.

"With all those clocks?" I went on.

"Of course," said Wally Walters.

"Well," I continued with too much of a gasp. "Have you seen him again?"

"Not I, said the fly. With my little eye I see nothing again. Never the same thing twice. I should remember that for yourself, Joe. It's useful."

He paused, very calm, while I fumed. The weather was hot and I was perspiring in any case. I felt a fool, and that was too plainly what I was meant to feel.

"Anything else, Joe? Just while the two of us are alone together?"

"No, thank you."

And he strolled off, to nowhere very much, one knew; but cool as an entire old-fashioned milk dairy.

It was not an encouraging conversation, and it played its part in further damping down a curiosity that I did not wholly want satisfied in any case. I continued enquiring as opportunity seemed to offer, but in most cases the response suggested only that the other party was embarra.s.sed by my att.i.tude. I failed to find any outside trace of the man who was now visiting my home so frequently; just as the police had failed to find a trace of the young thugs.

Not that there was the very slightest doubt about the man being constantly there. Once, for example, he did an extraordinary thing. I came home to find that he had allowed one of the clocks to drop its heavy weight on to the floor so sharply that it had made a hole right through the boards. Somehow the weight itself had been extricated before I arrived, and re-suspended; but the hole inevitably remained, and as poor Ursula was desperately insistent upon its being repaired as soon as possible, I had to spend most of the next morning standing over Chivers, our local jobbing builder's man, while he worked, and exercising all of my authority over him.

"Aren't the clocks rather getting out of control?" I asked Ursula sarcastically.

She made no answer, and did not seem to like what I had said.

In general, by now I was avoiding all sarcasm, indeed all comment of any kind. It had become fairly obvious that Ursula was not at all herself.

She had completely failed to recapture her former brightness-and despite the attentions of our curious visitor, as I could not help thinking to myself. And despite the fact too that his ministrations would appear to have gone well, in that what could be repaired had been, and that replacements were all too numerous and clamorous everywhere, a.s.suredly for me. None the less, Ursula looked like a rag, and when it came to her behaviour, that seemed to consist largely in her wringing her hands-literally, wringing her hands. She seemed able to walk from room to room by the hour just wringing her hands. I had never before in my life knowingly seen it done at all, and I found it frightful to watch. And, what was more, when the time came round for our next regular weekend in a country hotel, Ursula refused to go. More accurately, she said, very sadly, that "it would be no use her going".

Naturally, I talked and talked and talked to her. It was a moment of crisis, a point of no return, if ever there was one; but I knew all the time that this was nothing, nothing at all, by comparison with what inescapably and most mysteriously lay ahead for me.

Ursula and I never went away together again. Indeed, we never did anything much, except have odd, low-toned disagreements, seldom about anything that could be defined. I had heard often of a home never being the same again once the burglars have been through it; and that replacements can never equal the originals. But Ursula seemed so wan and ill the whole time, so totally unlike what she had been since I first met her, that I began to suspect there was something else.

It was hard not to suppose there had been some sort of quarrel with the other man, though not so easy to guess what about. Indeed, there seemed to me to be some slight, independent evidence of a row. Previously I was always noticing changes in the positioning and the spit-and-polish of the different clocks; to say nothing of the completely new ones that materialized from time to time. Now, for months, I noticed no changes among the clocks at all, only a universal, stagnant droopiness; and certainly there were no arrivals. I wondered whether the tall fellow had not been peeved about our recent mishap, and perhaps indicated that while he was prepared to put all to rights that once, yet he must make it clear that he could not so do again. He might have taken a critical view of our being away from the house at the time (and, in any case, had we not spent much of that time merely sprawling about in bed?). That might well be why we had never since been out of the house for a single night, nor looked like being ever again out of it. But of course Ursula and I never said one word to each other about any aspect of all this.

That allowed me the more scope for surmise, and I knew quite well that I had more or less accurately a.s.sessed much of what was up. I have often noticed in life that we never really learn anything-learn for the first time, I mean. We know everything already, everything that we, as individuals, are capable of knowing, or fit to know; all that other people do for us, at the best, is to remind us, to give our brains a little twist from one set of preoccupations to a slightly different set.

In the end, Ursula seemed so run down that I felt she should see a doctor, though my opinion of doctors is low. I know what goes on in my own profession, and see no reason why the medical profession should be any different, by and large. All the same, something had to be done; and in circ.u.mstances such as I now found myself in, one clutches. But Ursula positively refused to visit our Doctor Tweed, even though I begged her.

Our little talk on the subject came at the end of a week-at least a week-when we had hardly spoken together at all, let alone done anything else. Ursula was all a dirty white colour; her hair was now so streaked and flecked that everyone would notice it at once; and she was plainly losing weight. She had given up any attempt to look pretty, about which previously she had been so careful, so that I loved her for it. And, as I say, she hardly let fall a word, do what I would. Evening after evening, we just sat hopelessly together listening to the clocks striking all over the house.

Ursula had always had much the same att.i.tude to doctors as mine, which was yet another reason why I loved her. But now that made it difficult to press her on the subject.

She simply said "No," smiled a little, and shook her pretty head. Yes, a pretty head it still was for me, despite changes.

I put my arms round her and kissed her. I knelt at her feet, wept in her lap, and implored her. She still said "No, no," but no longer smiling, no longer moving at all.