The Complete Short Stories Part 19

He was taken aback, as if he had been deceived.

'I thought,' he said, 'that you were some sort of employee.'

Really, he was a nice-looking truck-driver. He pushed away his gla.s.s of ice-cream as if he had something newly on his mind.

He said, 'My sister works in a textile and garment factory in Lyons. Good pay, short hours. She's a seamer.'

'A seamstress,' I said.

'She calls it seamer.'

'I sew my seams by hand,' I said.

'By hand? How do you do that?'

'With a needle and thread.'

'What does that involve?' he said, in a way that forced me to realize he had never seen a needle and thread.

I explained the technique of how you use the fingers of your right hand to replace the needle and shuttle of the sewing machine, while holding the material with your left hand. He listened carefully. He was almost deferential. 'It must save you a lot of electricity,' he observed.

'But surely,' I said, 'you've seen someone sewing on a b.u.t.ton?'

'I don't have any clothes with b.u.t.tons. Not in my line.'

But he was thinking of something else.

'Would you mind lying low in the cabin of the truck while I pa.s.s the customs and immigration?' he said. 'It's quite comfortable and they won't look in there. They just look at my papers. I've delivered half my load and I've got to take the rest across the St Gotthard to a hotel at Brunnen in Switzerland. Then on to Dusseldorf. Health crackers from Lyons.'

But I, too, was thinking of something else, and I didn't answer immediately.

'I thought you were an employee,' he said. 'If I'd known you were the employer I'd have thought up something better.

It saddened me to hear the anxiety in his voice. I said, 'I'm afraid I'm in charge of my business.' I was thinking of the orders mounting up for next winter. I had a lady from Boston who was coming specially next Tuesday across the Atlantic, across the Alps, to order her dresses from my range of winter fabrics which included a length of wool so soft you would think it was muslin, coloured pale shrimp, and I had that deep blue silk-velvet, not quite midnight blue, but something like midnight with a glisten of royal blue which I would line with identical coloured silk, for an evening occasion, with the quarter-centimetre wide lace hand-sewn on all the seams. I had another client from Milan for my grey wool-chiffon with the almost indiscernible orange stripe, to be made up as a three-piece garment flowing like a wintry cloud; I had the design ready for the cutter and I had matched all the threads.

I was going on to think of other lengths and bales and clients when Simon penetrated my thoughts and ideas with his voice. 'Look, you're breathing fire. You must have some sort of electricity,' he said; and he stood up and took the check off the table. He looked shaken. 'I can see that you could be a Dragon in your way.

I slipped out of the bar while he was paying the bill at the counter. I waited till after dark and hired a car to take me back to my villa. Everyone had gone home. The statues in the garden stood again unclothed. Emily Butler was in the living-room talking to Daniele. I had been sorry to part with the nice-looking truck-driver. He seemed to have a certain liking for me, a sympathy with my nature and my looks which I know are very much those of the serious unadorned seamstress. Some people like that sort of personality. But when I thought of how, as Simon had observed, I was really the Dragon in the case I couldn't have gone over the border with him. Perhaps forever. Neither my temperament nor my temperature would stand it.

I stood, now, at the living-room door and looked at Emily and Daniele. Emily gasped; Daniele sprang to his feet, his eyes terrified.

'She's breathing fire,' said Emily, and escaped through the french windows. Daniele followed her quickly, knocking over a chair as he went. He looked once over his shoulder, and then he was away after Emily.

I went to the kitchen and made some hot milk. I waited there while the sound of their creeping back, and the b.u.mps of hasty packing went on in Daniele's room upstairs and Emily's at the back of the house.

Finally, they bundled themselves into the hall and out of the house, into Daniele's car, and away, without even waiting for their wages.

My business flourishes and I manage it without a Dragon. Without a cutter too, for I've found I have a talent for cutting. I've also invented a new st.i.tch, the dragon-st.i.tch. It looks lovely on the uneven hems of those dresses people like, which suggest the nineteen-thirties - for the evening but not too much. The essence of the dragon-st.i.tch is that you see all the st.i.tches; they are large, in a bright-coloured thick thread to contrast with the colour of the dress; one line and two forks, one line and two forks, in, out and away, all along the dipping and rising hemline, as if for always and always.

The Leaf Sweeper.

Behind the town hall there is a wooded parkland which, towards the end of November, begins to draw a thin blue cloud right into itself; and as a rule the park floats in this haze until mid-February. I pa.s.s every day, and see Johnnie Geddes in the heart of this mist, sweeping up the leaves. Now and again he stops, and jerking his long head erect, looks indignantly at the pile of leaves, as if it ought not to be there; then he sweeps on. This business of leaf-sweeping he learnt during the years he spent in the asylum; it was the job they always gave him to do; and when he was discharged the town council gave him the leaves to sweep. But the indignant movement of the head comes naturally to him, for this has been one of his habits since he was the most promising and buoyant and vociferous graduate of his year. He looks much older than he is, for it is not quite twenty years ago that Johnnie founded the Society for the Abolition of Christmas.

Johnnie was living with his aunt then. I was at school, and in the Christmas holidays Miss Geddes gave me her nephew's pamphlet, How to Grow Rich at Christmas. It sounded very likely, but it turned out that you grow rich at Christmas by doing away with Christmas, and so pondered Johnnie's pamphlet no further.

But it was only his first attempt. He had, within the next three years, founded his society of Abolitionists. His new book, Abolish Christmas or We Die, was in great demand at the public library, and my turn for it came at last. Johnnie was really convincing, this time, and most people were completely won over until after they had closed the book. I got an old copy for sixpence the other day, and despite the lapse of time it still proves conclusively that Christmas is a national crime. Johnnie demonstrates that every human-unit in the kingdom faces inevitable starvation within a period inversely proportional to that in which one in every six industrial-productivity units, if you see what he means, stops producing toys to fill the stockings of the educational-intake units. He cites appalling statistics to show that 1.024 per cent of the time squandered each Christmas in reckless shopping and thoughtless churchgoing brings the nation closer to its doom by five years. A few readers protested, but Johnnie was able to demolish their muddled arguments, and meanwhile the Society for the Abolition of Christmas increased. But Johnnie was troubled. Not only did Christmas rage throughout the kingdom as usual that year, but he had private information that many of the Society's members had broken the Oath of Abstention.

He decided, then, to strike at the very roots of Christmas. Johnnie gave up his job on the Drainage Supply Board; he gave up all his prospects, and, financed by a few supporters, retreated for two years to study the roots of Christmas. Then, all jubilant, Johnnie produced his next and last book, in which he established, either that Christmas was an invention of the Early Fathers to propitiate the pagans, or it was invented by the pagans to placate the Early Fathers, I forget which. Against the advice of his friends, Johnnie ent.i.tled it Christmas and Christianity. It sold eighteen copies. Johnnie never really recovered from this; and it happened, about that time, that the girl he was engaged to, an ardent Abolitionist, sent him a pullover she had knitted, for Christmas; he sent it back, enclosing a copy of the Society's rules, and she sent back the ring. But in any case, during Johnnie's absence, the Society had been undermined by a moderate faction. These moderates finally became more moderate, and the whole thing broke up.

Soon after this, I left the district, and it was some years before I saw Johnnie again. One Sunday afternoon in summer, I was idling among the crowds who were gathered to hear the speakers at Hyde Park. One little crowd surrounded a man who bore a banner marked 'Crusade against Christmas'; his voice was frightening; it carried an unusually long way. This was Johnnie. A man in the crowd told me Johnnie was there every Sunday, very violent about Christmas, and that he would soon be taken up for insulting language. As I saw in the papers, he was soon taken up for insulting language. And a few months later I heard that poor Johnnie was in a mental home, because he had Christmas on the brain and couldn't stop shouting about it.

After that I forgot all about him until three years ago, in December, I went to live near the town where Johnnie had spent his youth. On the afternoon of Christmas Eve I was walking with a friend, noticing what had changed in my absence, and what hadn't. We pa.s.sed a long, large house, once famous for its armoury, and I saw that the iron gates were wide open.

'They used to be kept shut,' I said.

'That's an asylum now,' said my friend; 'they let the mild cases work in the grounds, and leave the gates open to give them a feeling of freedom.'

'But,' said my friend, 'they lock everything inside. Door after door. The lift as well; they keep it locked.'

While my friend was chattering, I stood in the gateway and looked in. Just beyond the gate was a great bare elm-tree. There I saw a man in brown corduroys, sweeping up the leaves. Poor soul, he was shouting about Christmas.

'That's Johnnie Geddes,' I said. 'Has he been here all these years?'

'Yes,' said my friend as we walked on. 'I believe he gets worse at this time of year.'

'Does his aunt see him?'

'Yes. And she sees n.o.body else.'

We were, in fact, approaching the house where Miss Geddes lived. I suggested we call on her. I had known her well.

'No fear,' said my friend.

I decided to go in, all the same, and my friend walked on to the town. Miss Geddes had changed, more than the landscape. She had been a solemn, calm woman, and now she moved about quickly, and gave short agitated smiles. She took me to her sitting-room, and as she opened the door she called to someone inside, 'Johnnie, see who's come to see us!'

A man, dressed in a dark suit, was standing on a chair, fixing holly behind a picture. He jumped down.

'Happy Christmas,' he said. 'A Happy and a Merry Christmas indeed. I do hope,' he said, 'you're going to stay for tea, as we've got a delightful Christmas cake, and at this season of goodwill I would be cheered indeed if you could see how charmingly it's decorated; it has "Happy Christmas" in red icing, and then there's a robin and -'

'Johnnie,' said Miss Geddes, 'you're forgetting the carols.'

'The carols,' he said. He lifted a gramophone record from a pile and put it on. It was 'The Holly and the Ivy'.

'It's "The Holly and the Ivy",' said Miss Geddes. 'Can't we have something else? We had that all morning.'

'It is sublime,' he said, beaming from his chair, and holding up his hand for silence.

While Miss Geddes went to fetch the tea, and he sat absorbed in his carol, I watched him. He was so like Johnnie, that if I hadn't seen poor Johnnie a few moments before, sweeping up the asylum leaves, I would have thought he really was Johnnie. Miss Geddes returned with the tray, and while he rose to put on another record, he said something that startled me.

'I saw you in the crowd that Sunday when I was speaking at Hyde Park.'

'What a memory you have!' said Miss Geddes.

'It must be ten years ago,' he said.

'My nephew has altered his opinion of Christmas,' she explained. 'He always comes home for Christmas now, and don't we have a jolly time, Johnnie?'

'Rather!' he said. 'Oh, let me cut the cake.'

He was very excited about the cake. With a flourish he dug a large knife into the side. The knife slipped, and I saw it run deep into his finger. Miss Geddes did not move. He wrenched his cut finger away, and went on slicing the cake.

'Isn't it bleeding?' I said.

He held up his hand. I could see the deep cut, but there was no blood.

Deliberately, and perhaps desperately, I turned to Miss Geddes.

'That house up the road,' I said, 'I see it's a mental home now. I pa.s.sed it this afternoon.'

'Johnnie,' said Miss Geddes, as one who knows the game is up, 'go and fetch the mince pies.'

He went, whistling a carol.

'You pa.s.sed the asylum,' said Miss Geddes wearily.

'Yes,' I said.

'And you saw Johnnie sweeping up the leaves.

'Yes.'

We could still hear the whistling of the carol.

'Who is he?' I said.

'That's Johnnie's ghost,' she said. 'He comes home every Christmas. But,' she said, 'I don't like him. I can't bear him any longer, and I'm going away tomorrow. I don't want Johnnie's ghost, I want Johnnie in flesh and blood.'

I shuddered, thinking of the cut finger that could not bleed. And I left, before Johnnie's ghost returned with the mince pies.

Next day, as I had arranged to join a family who lived in the town, I started walking over about noon. Because of the light mist, I didn't see at first who it was approaching. It was a man, waving his arm to me. It turned out to be Johnnie's ghost.

'Happy Christmas. What do you think,' said Johnnie's ghost, 'my aunt has gone to London. Fancy, on Christmas Day, and I thought she was at church, and here I am without anyone to spend a jolly Christmas with, and, of course, I forgive her, as it's the season of goodwill, but I'm glad to see you, because now I can come with you, wherever it is you're going, and we can all have a Happy...'

'Go away,' I said, and walked on.

It sounds hard. But perhaps you don't know how repulsive and loathsome is the ghost of a living man. The ghosts of the dead may be all right, but the ghost of mad Johnnie gave me the creeps.

'Clear off,' I said.

He continued walking beside me. 'As it's the time of goodwill, I make allowances for your tone,' he said. 'But I'm coming.'

We had reached the asylum gates, and there, in the grounds, I saw Johnnie sweeping the leaves. I suppose it was his way of going on strike, working on Christmas Day. He was making a noise about Christmas.

On a sudden impulse I said to Johnnie's ghost, 'You want company?'

'Certainly,' he replied. 'It's the season of...'

'Then you shall have it,' I said.

I stood in the gateway. 'Oh, Johnnie,' I called.

He looked up.

'I've brought your ghost to see you, Johnnie.'

'Well, well,' said Johnnie, advancing to meet his ghost. 'Just imagine it,'

'Happy Christmas,' said Johnnie's ghost.

'Oh, really?' said Johnnie.

I left them to it. And when I looked back, wondering if they would come to blows, I saw that Johnnie's ghost was sweeping the leaves as well. They seemed to be arguing at the same time. But it was still misty, and really, I can't say whether, when I looked a second time, there were two men or one man sweeping the leaves.

Johnnie began to improve in the New Year. At least, he stopped shouting about Christmas, and then he never mentioned it at all; in a few months, when he had almost stopped saying anything, they discharged him.

The town council gave him the leaves of the park to sweep. He seldom speaks, and recognizes n.o.body. I see him every day at the late end of the year, working within the mist. Sometimes, if there is a sudden gust, he jerks his head up to watch a few leaves falling behind him, as if amazed that they are undeniably there, although, by rights, the falling of leaves should be stopped.

Harper and Wilton In the afternoons there was seldom anybody about except for the young cross-eyed gardener. He was so cross-eyed that if you stood talking to him with a friend it was impossible to know which of you he was addressing. And when alone, it was almost as if he was conversing with the nearest tree if not with myself. I meant to summon courage to ask him if there was no corrective treatment, or special eye-gla.s.ses, he could have, but I never got round to it. The house was not mine. I was merely house-sitting for a month for my friends, the Lowthers. It was an arrangement which suited me well. I had a book to finish and this house in the depth of Hampshire was ideal for my purpose. In the morning Harriet, the part-time daily came and tidied up. She cooked my meals for the day then left me to myself about midday.

I worked hard, and I slept well. Nothing disturbed me during the night. It was about two in the afternoon that I felt uneasy. An oddness in the house. This went on for some weeks. The spring weather was capricious.

But it was not when the wind whistled round the house and moaned in the eaves that the house felt weird. The weather and sound effects in fact normalized the old edifice. It was on clear sunny days, spring rain sprinkling and spraying the windows, that something was decidedly odd. Under the need to work I determinedly shook off the feeling, often sitting in the garden or else the garden room to apply myself to my work. I began to notice that Joe the gardener often stood under the great cedar tree on the lawn looking up apparently at a window of one of the two guest bedrooms to the left above the front door. They were divided by a drainpipe which I felt rather spoilt the aspect of the house. It was impossible to say which of the windows he was paying attention to because of his squint.

'Is anything the matter, Joe?' I asked him after a few days of watching his performance.

He said 'No' and continued staring. Joe was after all, not my concern, not my employee. The house was well protected by burglar alarms. I had my work to do and decided to ignore Joe; I continued to shake off the feeling of chilling weirdness that I felt every afternoon.

The fourth week of my stay I heard voices, the voices of young women. I opened the door of the garden room and called out 'Joe, who's there?' But Joe had disappeared. I decided this listening to 'voices' and puzzling about Joe was a waste of time. I really had a great compulsion and economic need to finish my book. I was getting on well with it and refused to be waylaid from the job I had come to accomplish.

But no sooner had I settled down at my desk than I heard the voices again, outside the house, quite near. I wasn't expecting any visitors, so went to look out of the window. The house was attached to a stretch of woodland from where the voices came. Then two women came in sight. I was not at first surprised that they were dressed in Edwardian-type long skirts and shawls, with their long hair knotted up severely. They might well have bought their outfits at London's Miss Selfridge, in Beauchamp Place or in Manhattan's Village. Nothing in the way of garments is surprising in these days of merry freedom.

I thought I recognized them, but couldn't tell where I had seen them before. Certainly I had a sense of having seen them both together, young and gaunt, one tall, one less so.

As they approached the house I saw Joe lurking on the edge of the woods behind them. He seemed interested.