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

‘Why, it’s my sister!’

‘Your sister?’

‘You don’t remember much, do you? The twin sister I told you about. The quiet one.’

‘I do remember something.’

‘I don’t keep up with my family much, especially now. I was never any good at writing letters. . . . But it must be her. The sly-boots! She didn’t like her job, and always had a hankering for the Krazie. Yes, Gladys, that’s who it is. It might almost be me, for she’s the dead image of me.’

‘The living image.’

‘Yes, you’re right. She always was a close one. But why should she bother to tell me? I didn’t tell her when I went to London. Why write a letter, if you aren’t going to get anything out of it? But she’s a good girl, if you know what I mean, and I hope he’ll be good to her.’

‘I’m sure he will.’

‘What a chance! It might easily have been me, she’s exactly like me, though not so pretty as I am, some people say. Still, good luck to her.’

The full magnitude of her loss was becoming clear to Doris, and the Pêche Melba lay untasted on her plate.

‘It may be just a passing fancy for both of them,’ I said, but I didn’t believe it.

‘I wish I was in her shoes. Some people have all the luck.’

Our conversation languished. I thought wonderingly of Edward. What must have been the pressure on his feelings, to take him back to Restbourne, when he had been assured the bird had flown! And his blind faith had been rewarded: I felt sure that as long as Gladys lived, the Face would vanish from his doodlings.

It was getting late. We bandied words for a bit, but there was little zest behind her thrusts and parries. ‘If you knew how I felt about you, you wouldn’t look so pleased with yourself’ was the best she could do.

‘It makes you feel old, doesn’t it?’ she said suddenly.

‘What does?’

‘Oh, I dunno, the whole thing—seeing your sister get married before you do. You think he’ll marry her?’

‘I’m sure of it.’

‘Jolly good. I never wanted to marry—I’ve seen too many people part—and I don’t expect you do.’

‘Well, not at the moment,’ I said ungraciously.

She sighed musically.

‘Too comfortable, I suppose. Well, I don’t blame you. I should like to write to Gladdy, though. We call her Gladdy, or Glad—though she never was glad so as you’d notice. Perhaps she’ll be gladder now. I needn’t tell her what I’m doing here—she doesn’t know, none of them do. But I should like her to know I wish her well. Or do you think I’d better wait until she’s hooked him?’

‘I think I should.’

‘They might not tell me—but he’ll tell you, won’t he?’

I saw the implication of this, and said rather unwillingly:

‘Yes, of course.’

‘So if I don’t hear, you’ll find a way to pass it on. All right? I wonder if they’ll invite me to their wedding.’

‘I’ve no doubt they will.’

‘The more fools they—I shouldn’t, in their place. I suppose it will be ever such a smart wedding—bang on and whizzo. The real McCoy. Heigh ho!’ She gave her musical sigh, and looked up at the clock. ‘Good lord, I must be off. But I must powder my nose first.’

‘Look here,’ I said, when she came back, refurbished, ‘I’ve wasted a lot of your time, and it hasn’t turned out as I thought it would. If you are disappointed, so am I. Now what about a little remembrance?’

I didn’t have to fumble, I had the notes ready in my pocket.

‘I’ve told you before,’ she said, rising, ‘and I don’t mind telling you again, you’ve got no respect for a girl’s feelings. You can keep your blasted money! I shall tell Uncle Harry I was ill, and so I am—you’ve made me ill, and I wouldn’t go back with you, not even if you asked me!’

She glared at me through unshed tears and for a moment the impression of the Face was so intense that I could hardly see hers for it.

‘That’s O.K. by me,’ I said. ‘I don’t like these transports so soon after dinner. They give me indigestion.’

At that she laughed, and by the time we reached the pavement—now her haunt—we were friends again. Only a few steps to the kerbstone, but how the tap-tapping of her heels betrayed her! And then a passing taxi bore her off.

It was the first September of the Second War, and Philip Holroyd had decided to leave his flat in London and settle in the country out of the way of the bombs. The place he hit upon was in the West of England, about four miles from a middle-sized market town which he did not think would interest the enemy. Being a bachelor, and as helpless as bachelors generally are, and also a writer, as helpless as writers generally are, he knew he could not fend for himself: he must have a cook and a daily woman. The house, like many other houses, was called the ‘Old Rectory’, and was, of course, much too large for Philip; perhaps he would not have taken it but for the urgency of his desire to get away from London. In September 1939 travelling by train was difficult: he paid the house a brief visit, and when he heard that several other people were after it he took it on the nail, being easily influenced by threats. The pride of the well-worn Victorian furniture was a magnificent doll’s house, but there were some good pieces of an older date, which, occurring haphazard with the rest, and not given any special prominence, gave the place a kind of dignity and unself-consciousness. These included, in the room Philip had marked out for his bedroom, since among other advantages it had the inestimable one of being nearest to the bathroom, an old mahogany bow-fronted corner cupboard, which, unlike some of the cupboards and chests of drawers, was empty of the owner’s possessions. It will do for my medicines, thought Philip, who was something of a hypochondriac.

To find a cook was his most urgent problem. The woman who had looked after him in London, being cockney-born, refused to leave it. He dreaded the thought of having to get used to a new person; he was too timid to give orders with conviction, but at the same time liked things done his way. Having lived for many years alone, he was not at all adaptable and was prone to make mountains out of molehills. Although in London he had plenty of friends his experience with each had become taped: they neither gave nor took from him anything new. The unpredictable was his bugbear. Unconsciously he had withdrawn into himself and grown a shell, albeit a soft one.

Days passed with no news from the Registry Office in Shuttleworth; and when at last they wrote that they had found someone who they thought would suit him it was too late for him to go to interview her; the man in the Foreign Office who had taken his London flat was on the point of moving in. So he engaged Mrs. Weaver without seeing her, but not (as might have happened nowadays) without a reference. ‘She is a woman’, wrote her late employer, with whom she had stayed a year, ‘who needs a good deal of special attention and sympathy which, in our rather large and busy family, she has not always been able to find. She is honest and clean and within her limitations a good cook. Where there is only one in family she would, I think, feel more at home. She responds quickly to encouragement and appreciation. The loss of her husband in the First World War seems to have unsettled her in some ways.’

In her own letter Mrs. Weaver gave her age as forty-six—which happened to be Philip’s own age—and said that she hoped to be able to oblige him in every possible way. All this predisposed him in her favour; the need for sympathy and attention was one that, in spite of being an egotist, he was quite ready to meet; indeed, he rather fancied himself as a consoler. When he arrived at the Old Rectory she was already installed.