Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

It was contrary to his routine to work after dinner but to-night he did, he felt so much in the vein. Indeed, a sort of exaltation possessed him; the words ran off his pen; it would be foolish to check the creative impulse for the sake of a little extra sleep. On, on. They were right who said the small hours were the time to work. When his housekeeper came in to say good night he scarcely raised his eyes.

In the warm, snug little room the silence purred around him like a kettle. He did not even hear the door bell till it had been ringing for some time.

A visitor at this hour?

His knees trembling, he went to the door, scarcely knowing what he expected to find; so what was his relief on opening it, to see the doorway filled by the tall figure of a policeman. Without waiting for the man to speak—

‘Come in, come in, my dear fellow,’ he exclaimed. He held his hand out, but the policeman did not take it. ‘You must have been very cold standing out there. I didn’t know that it was snowing, though,’ he added, seeing the snowflakes on the policeman’s cape and helmet. ‘Come in and warm yourself.’

‘Thanks,’ said the policeman. ‘I don’t mind if I do.’

Walter knew enough of the phrases used by men of the policeman’s stamp not to take this for a grudging acceptance. ‘This way,’ he prattled on. ‘I was writing in my study. By Jove, it is cold, I’ll turn the gas on more. Now won’t you take your traps off, and make yourself at home?’

‘I can’t stay long,’ the policeman said, ‘I’ve got a job to do, as you know.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Walter, ‘such a silly job, a sinecure.’ He stopped, wondering if the policeman would know what a sinecure was. ‘I suppose you know what it’s about—the postcards?’

The policeman nodded.

‘But nothing can happen to me as long as you are here,’ said Walter. ‘I shall be as safe . . . as safe as houses. Stay as long as you can, and have a drink.’

‘I never drink on duty,’ said the policeman. Still in his cape and helmet, he looked round. ‘So this is where you work,’ he said.

‘Yes, I was writing when you rang.’

‘Some poor devil’s for it, I expect,’ the policeman said.

‘Oh, why?’ Walter was hurt by his unfriendly tone, and noticed how hard his gooseberry eyes were.

‘I’ll tell you in a minute,’ said the policeman, and then the telephone bell rang. Walter excused himself and hurried from the room.

‘This is the police station,’ said a voice. ‘Is that Mr. Streeter?’

Walter said it was.

‘Well, Mr. Streeter, how is everything at your place? All right, I hope? I’ll tell you why I ask. I’m sorry to say we quite forgot about that little job we were going to do for you. Bad co-ordination, I’m afraid.’

‘But,’ said Walter, ‘you did send someone.’

‘No, Mr. Streeter, I’m afraid we didn’t.’

‘But there’s a policeman here, here in this very house.’

There was a pause, then his interlocutor said, in a less casual voice:

‘He can’t be one of our chaps. Did you see his number by any chance?’

‘No.’

A longer pause and then the voice said:

‘Would you like us to send somebody now?’

‘Yes, p . . . please.’

‘All right then, we’ll be with you in a jiffy.’

Walter put back the receiver. What now? he asked himself. Should he barricade the door? Should he run out into the street? Should he try to rouse his housekeeper? A policeman of any sort was a formidable proposition, but a rogue policeman! How long would it take the real police to come? A jiffy, they had said. What was a jiffy in terms of minutes? While he was debating the door opened and his guest came in.

‘No room’s private when the street door’s once passed,’ he said. ‘Had you forgotten I was a policeman?’

‘Was?’ said Walter, edging away from him. ‘You are a policeman.’

‘I have been other things as well,’ the policeman said. ‘Thief, pimp, blackmailer, not to mention murderer. You should know.’

The policeman, if such he was, seemed to be moving towards him and Walter suddenly became alive to the importance of small distances—the distance from the sideboard to the table, the distance from one chair to another.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said. ‘Why do you speak like that? I’ve never done you any harm. I’ve never set eyes on you before.’

‘Oh, haven’t you?’ the man said. ‘But you’ve thought about me and’—his voice rose—’and you’ve written about me. You got some fun out of me, didn’t you? Now I’m going to get some fun out of you. You made me just as nasty as you could. Wasn’t that doing me harm? You didn’t think what it would feel like to be me, did you? You didn’t put yourself in my place, did you? You hadn’t any pity for me, had you? Well, I’m not going to have any pity for you.’

‘But I tell you,’ cried Walter, clutching the table’s edge, ‘I don’t know you!’

‘And now you say you don’t know me! You did all that to me and then forgot me!’ His voice became a whine, charged with self-pity. ‘You forgot William Stainsforth.’

‘William Stainsforth!’

‘Yes. I was your scapegoat, wasn’t I? You unloaded all your self-dislike on me. You felt pretty good while you were writing about me. You thought, what a noble, upright fellow you were, writing about this rotter. Now, as one W.S. to another, what shall I do, if I behave in character?’

‘I . . . I don’t know,’ muttered Walter.

‘You don’t know?’ Stainsforth sneered. ‘You ought to know, you fathered me. What would William Stainsforth do if he met his old dad in a quiet place, his kind old dad who made him swing?’

Walter could only stare at him.

‘You know what he’d do as well as I,’ said Stainsforth. Then his face changed and he said abruptly, ‘No, you don’t, because you never really understood me. I’m not so black as you painted me.’ He paused, and a flicker of hope started in Walter’s breast. ‘You never gave me a chance, did you? Well, I’m going to give you one. That shows you never understood me, doesn’t it?’

Walter nodded.

‘And there’s another thing you have forgotten.’

‘What is that?’

‘I was a kid once,’ the ex-policeman said.

Walter said nothing.

‘You admit that?’ said William Stainsforth grimly. ‘Well, if you can tell me of one virtue you ever credited me with—just one kind thought—just one redeeming feature——’

‘Yes?’ said Walter, trembling.

‘Well, then I’ll let you off.’

‘And if I can’t?’ whispered Walter.

‘Well, then, that’s just too bad. We’ll have to come to grips and you know what that means. You took off one of my arms but I’ve still got the other. “Stainsforth of the iron hand” you called me.’

Walter began to pant.

‘I’ll give you two minutes to remember,’ Stainsforth said. They both looked at the clock. At first the stealthy movement of the hand paralysed Walter’s thought. He stared at William Stainsforth’s face, his cruel, crafty face, which seemed to be always in shadow, as if it was something the light could not touch. Desperately he searched his memory for the one fact that would save him; but his memory, clenched like a fist, would give up nothing. ‘I must invent something,’ he thought, and suddenly his mind relaxed and he saw, printed on it like a photograph, the last page of the book. Then, with the speed and magic of a dream, each page appeared before him in perfect clarity until the first was reached, and he realized with overwhelming force that what he looked for was not there. In all that evil there was not one hint of good. And he felt, compulsively and with a kind of exaltation, that unless he testified to this the cause of goodness everywhere would be betrayed.