Gerald Kersh - The Best of Gerald Kersh

I need not tell you what happened. Blücher was delayed, indeed. The English cavalry was cut to pieces, and we had the balance of artillery in our favour. It remained only to break that infernal English infantry, and the battle was in our hands. Napoleon knew this, and therefore he ordered that terrible charge of cuirassiers at the plateau of Mont St Jean. The guide Lacoste – in other words the spy de Wissembourg – was at his elbow at the very moment when he gave that order. Lacoste, as he is called, omitted to mention the ‘hollow road’ of Ohain. There is no stopping a full charge of armoured cavalry, as you know. Before they could begin to pull up, two thousand cuirassiers were in the ditch of Ohain; the remainder were flying in disorder under volley upon volley of musket-fire; demoralisation had set in; the English had re-formed and were attacking; and that was the end of us. Napoleon fled.

So, brother, France fell: I blame myself for that.

Tessier sighed, and lit a fresh cigar. Ratapoil said: ‘Come now, old moustache – how can you talk like that? There are more causes than one to any conclusion. You might, for example, also say that Cornelys the blacksmith won the battle of Waterloo because, making eyes at the inn-keeper’s wife, he lamed your mare. No one is to blame … though, had I been you——’

‘Don’t say it,’ said Tessier. ‘You asked me to tell you how I lost my teeth, and I have told you. And now, with your kind permission, I will go to bed.’

‘IF it could only be like this for ever!’ said the quiet girl called Linda, looking over Jimmy’s shoulder at the dim grey face of the clock. ‘Oh, Jimmy, this is heaven! How happy I am! What can I have done, to deserve such happiness?’

She felt Jimmy smiling. ‘Are you happy too?’ she asked Jimmy. He nodded, observing the reflection of the clock face in the long mirror on the wardrobe door. He had been grimacing.

Last year, he thought chafing and trying not to fidget, I made a hundred and four thousand five hundred pounds. All that money in three hundred and sixty-five days. It works out at … what? … Twelve-pound-ten an hour. I have given this girl twenty-five pounds’ worth of my time, at that rate. Four shillings and twopence a minute – nearly a penny a second. I’ve thrown away twenty-five pounds, being gracious to Linda for two hours. And she talks of this going on for ever – for ever, at a penny a second! There isn’t that much money in the world!

Linda, with a luminous glory behind her somewhat faded face, closed her eyes and, resting her chin upon his shoulder and caressing his cheek with her forehead, said: ‘How sweet, Jimmy! How sweet! How can I ever tell you how grateful I am to you for making me so happy? Ah, my dear darling – now, just now, do you know what? I’m so full of love and happiness that another tiny bit would be too much … I’d die. But this is Heaven: I’ll never want any Heaven but this – to be here, with you, exactly like this, loving you as I do and knowing that you love me. You do love me?’

Jimmy was inclined to say: ‘Oh, nonsense! Love? Ha! You? Bah! What, me ? Love you ? Who are you? A laundress. I am Jimmy – you know who I am – Jimmy the Star. I could have world-famous actresses, take my choice of the beauties of five continents. The world is mine, and all the women in it. Titled women, even. Because a whim takes hold of me, and I beckon to a poor pale creature in a clutching crowd of infatuated fans – because I, like a god, confer upon you the glory of my intimacy for a moment you talk of love? Love? My love? For you? At four-and-twopence a second, do you realise what a lingering look is worth?’

But he said: ‘Of course I love you,’ and he looked at the reversed reflection of the clock that told the time.

‘All my life,’ said Linda, ‘all my life I’ve dreamt of such a moment. Don’t laugh – I felt somehow that it might happen to me. I never dared to say to anybody that I had a dream of love. They would have laughed; I’m so plain and ordinary, Oh, dear God, but I love you, Jimmy! You’re too good for me!’

In spite of his seething distaste, Jimmy muttered: ‘Nothing of the sort. Charming girl!’

‘Ah, my own dear love! My dream-come-true! Do you know what? I believe you if you say so. I believe! I believe! I believe in you. This morning I was washing sheets, and you were only a picture, a splendid vision. And now I’m here, with you, in your arms, hearing you telling me you love me. There is a God! Where is yesterday? Where is the grey when the sunlight bleaches it away? Why do you love me?’

‘Sweet,’ said Jimmy, with his eye on the time. The movement of the big hand was worth thirty-four shillings an inch.

He was in an ecstasy of boredom and visitation. Oh, to be rid of this ridiculously happy woman! he thought. Why did I do it? Why? Why?

‘Tell me why you love me,’ she said. ‘No, never mind. Just say it again.’

What was Jimmy to say? If he could have said: ‘I only said so to please you. It tickled my vanity to beckon you out of the mob around the stage door. You helped me to condescend, you made me feel greater’ – then he would have been talking like an honest man. If he had had the courage to say: ‘You were such a whole-hearted worshipper that I wanted to be a god,’ then he would not have been where he was at that moment. If he could have told the truth he would have been an honest man – not a man in anguish, caressing a woman with his hand while he gritted his teeth and watched the clock.

But he said: ‘Of course I love you!’

There was a silence: it seemed to cling to his ears for a lifetime. Then it came away with a sort of thick sucking noise, and he heard the sharp tick of the round white clock. His face looked drawn in the darkening mirror. He had a desperate yearning to speak a little truth.

‘And you promise to stay with me always?’ Linda asked.

He had meant to say ‘No,’ but heard himself muttering: ‘Mm.’

‘Jimmy! Hold me!’

Although he had intended to get up and go away, Jimmy found himself embracing Linda and looking into her eyes.

‘Always?’ she whispered.

He answered: ‘Always.’ Candour stuck in his throat.

‘Oh, Jimmy, if this could go on for ever!’

Unutterably weary, he muttered: ‘Uh-uh; sure!’ He was sick, sick to the heart, of pent-up truth.

‘Did you say “sure”? Do you mean it?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you say you mean it, I know you mean it,’ said Linda. ‘Dearest, there is a God. There is a Heaven!’

‘Oh yes, yes. Sure, sure,’ said Jimmy, with a half-laugh. ‘This is Heaven, isn’t it?’

He shifted, meaning to pull himself away from her. Something happened; he moved in the wrong direction. Linda was in his arms.

‘It is! It is!’ she whispered.

He sneered. ‘And hell? Where’s hell?’

Something comparable to a bladder, a grey strained veinous membrane, seemed to burst in a splash of pure, cold light. Out of the indefinable centre of this light a grave, clear voice said: ‘Think!’

Jimmy looked at the clock. Its hands still marked seven minutes to four of a drizzling February afternoon.

He remembered that there had been a judgement, a hundred thousand years ago. Linda, on his shoulder, had achieved paradise; and he was damned. And for all eternity the clock had stopped.

THE fact that the intensely red colour of the glaze on the Oxoxoco Bottle is due to the presence in the clay of certain uranium salts is of no importance. A similar coloration may be found in Bohemian and Venetian glass, for example. No, the archæologists at the British Museum are baffled by the shape of the thing. They cannot agree about the nature or the purpose.