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

‘It was about this house,’ I said, ‘Paradise Paddock. I was going to say that I would sell it if you wanted it.’

He laughed and laughed.

‘Yes, that was it. What do you think, Sylvia, old girl?’

She shook her head and said, without looking up, and still twiddling her toes in the water, ‘I’m afraid I don’t want it now.’

‘Don’t think us rude, old chap,’ her husband said, with sudden earnestness, ‘but the fact is, we don’t like your house any more. We think it’s got a hoodoo on it. We don’t want any more swan-songs.’

‘I should feel the same,’ I said, ‘if I were you.’ They shivered a little and I shivered in concert.

‘No offence meant, if we say we think this place is a bit lousy.’

‘Of course not.’

‘You find that it suits you?’

‘Well, yes and no,’ I said. ‘It may suit me better now.’ I was wondering if the swan was really dead.

‘Well, thanks for all the drinks you gave us, thanks a lot.’

‘Don’t speak of it,’ I said.

‘We shall often think of you,’ said Mrs. Marchmont suddenly, ‘sitting and writing, with all your treasures round you.’

My heart sank, then soared.

‘So you won’t be settling in Warmwell?’

‘Not on your life, not on your life . . . Or ours,’ he added. ‘Excuse me—no offence intended.’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said. ‘But you know best.’ I saw that they were longing to be off, but didn’t quite know how to take their leave.

‘Let’s tip the water out of the boat,’ I suggested. ‘You’ll be more comfortable so.’

‘Don’t tip us out with it!’

‘You’ll have to debark first,’ I said.

They laughed.

‘We had forgotten that,’ he said shakily.

When the operation was completed, and they were settled in again, he suddenly said: ‘Would you accept this canoe as a memento, Mr. . . . Mr. . . . ?’

‘Minchin,’ put in his wife.

‘Minchin, of course.’

‘Most gratefully,’ I said.

‘I’ll have it sent to Paradise Paddock, then . . .’ He thought for a moment. ‘Happy days,’ he said. ‘Have a good time,’ said his wife, in an uncertain voice.

‘And you!’

But they were already gone, and in a minute or two the darkness closed behind them.

I lingered by the river, trying to regain my faith in it, as one sometimes does with a friend after a quarrel. Mutely I apostrophized it. ‘You have let me down, you have let me down! What have you to say?’ But it was voiceless: the stealthy rustlings and stirring under the tree-laden banks were not meant for any ears, mine least of all. How vain to hope from nature a reciprocating mood, I thought—when suddenly, as though in answer to my thought, a V-shaped ripple stole along the river setting the water lapping at my feet, and after it a swan, a solitary swan. How changed she was! The anxious turning of the head from side to side, the questing, peering look, the jerky progress, that had lost its stately rhythm—they were quite unlike her; but most unlike was the little cry or call, louder than a moan, softer than a croak, that issued from her parted, yellow beak, which was so much less fearsome than his orange one.

She has never had to call for him before, I thought, and now he will not hear her.

There was nothing more to wait for; the air was turning cool; I had an irrational feeling that my clothes were wet. Stiffly I got up and climbed back to the house—my house, for it was mine after all: the swan had saved it for me. A moment’s doubt remained: would the switch work? It did, and showed me what was still my own.

‘There’s someone coming down in the lift, Mummy!’

‘No, my darling, you’re wrong, there isn’t.’

‘But I can see him through the bars—a tall gentleman.’

‘You think you can, but it’s only a shadow. Now, you’ll see, the lift’s empty.’

And it always was.

This piece of dialogue, or variations of it, had been repeated at intervals ever since Mr. and Mrs. Maldon and their son Peter had arrived at the Brompton Court Hotel, where, owing to a domestic crisis, they were going to spend Christmas. New to hotel life, the little boy had never seen a lift before and he was fascinated by it. When either of his parents pressed the button to summon it he would take up his stand some distance away to watch it coming down.

The ground floor had a high ceiling so the lift was visible for some seconds before it touched floor level: and it was then, at its first appearance, that Peter saw the figure. It was always in the same place, facing him in the left-hand corner. He couldn’t see it plainly, of course, because of the double grille, the gate of the lift and the gate of the lift-shaft, both of which had to be firmly closed before the lift would work.

He had been told not to use the lift by himself—an unnecessary warning, because he connected the lift with the things that grown-up people did, and unlike most small boys he wasn’t over-anxious to share the privileges of his elders: he was content to wonder and admire. The lift appealed to him more as magic than as mechanism. Acceptance of magic made it possible for him to believe that the lift had an occupant when he first saw it, in spite of the demonstrable fact that when it came to rest, giving its fascinating click of finality, the occupant had disappeared.

‘If you don’t believe me, ask Daddy,’ his mother said.

Peter didn’t want to do this, and for two reasons, one of which was easier to explain than the other.

‘Daddy would say I was being silly,’ he said.

‘Oh no, he wouldn’t, he never says you’re silly.’

This was not quite true. Like all well-regulated modern fathers, Mr. Maldon was aware of the danger of offending a son of tender years: the psychological results might be regrettable. But Freud or no Freud, fathers are still fathers, and sometimes when Peter irritated him Mr. Maldon would let fly. Although he was fond of him, Peter’s private vision of his father was of someone more authoritative and awe-inspiring than a stranger, seeing them together, would have guessed.

The other reason, which Peter didn’t divulge, was more fantastic. He hadn’t asked his father because, when his father was with him, he couldn’t see the figure in the lift.

Mrs. Maldon remembered the conversation and told her husband of it. ‘The lift’s in a dark place,’ she said, ‘and I dare say he does see something, he’s so much nearer to the ground than we are. The bars may cast a shadow and make a sort of pattern that we can’t see. I don’t know if it’s frightening him, but you might have a word with him about it.’

At first Peter was more interested than frightened. Then he began to evolve a theory. If the figure only appeared in his father’s absence, didn’t it follow that the figure might be, could be, must be, his own father? In what region of his consciousness Peter believed this it would be hard to say; but for imaginative purposes he did believe it and the figure became for him ‘Daddy in the lift’. The thought of Daddy in the lift did frighten him, and the neighbourhood of the lift-shaft, in which he felt compelled to hang about, became a place of dread.

Christmas Day was drawing near and the hotel began to deck itself with evergreens. Suspended at the foot of the staircase, in front of the lift, was a bunch of mistletoe, and it was this that gave Mr. Maldon his idea.

As they were standing under it, waiting for the lift, he said to Peter:

‘Your mother tells me you’ve seen someone in the lift who isn’t there.’

His voice sounded more accusing than he meant it to, and Peter shrank.

‘Oh, not now,’ he said, truthfully enough. ‘Only sometimes.’