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

‘I’ll go this time,’ said Mrs. Marriner. ‘Perhaps I can do something for the child.’

And she was gone before her husband’s outstretched arm could stop her.

Again the trio sat in silence, the children less concerned with themselves than with the gleam that kept coming and going in their father’s eyes like a dipping headlight.

Mrs. Marriner came back much more self-possessed than either of her children had.

‘I don’t think he means any harm,’ she said, ‘he’s a little cracked, that’s all. We’d better humour him. He said he wanted to see you, Henry, but I told him you were out. He said that what we offered wasn’t enough and that he wanted what you gave him last year, whatever that means. So I suggest we give him something that isn’t money. Perhaps you could spare him one of your boxes, Jeremy. A Christmas box is quite a good idea.’

‘He won’t take it,’ said Anne, before Jeremy could speak.

‘Why not?’

‘Because he can’t,’ said Anne.

‘Can’t? What do you mean?’ Anne shook her head. Her mother didn’t press her.

‘Well, you are a funny girl,’ she said. ‘Anyhow, we can but try. Oh, and he said they’d sing us one more carol.’

They set themselves to listen, and in a moment the strains of ‘God rest you merry, gentlemen’ began.

Jeremy got up from the table.

‘I don’t believe they’re singing the words right,’ he said. He went to the window and opened it, letting in a puff of icy air.

‘Oh, do shut it!’

‘Just a moment. I want to make sure.’ They all listened, and this is what they heard:

Jeremy shut the window. ‘Did you hear?’ he croaked.

‘I thought I did,’ said Mrs. Marriner. ‘But it might have been “bless”, the words sound so much alike. Henry, dear, don’t look so serious.’

The door-bell rang for the third time. Before the jangling died down, Mr. Marriner rose shakily.

‘No, no, Henry,’ said his wife. ‘Don’t go, it’ll only encourage them. Besides, I said you were out.’ He looked at her doubtfully, and the bell rang again, louder than before. ‘They’ll soon get tired of it,’ she said, ‘if no one comes. Henry, I beg you not to go.’And when he still stared at her with groping eyes, she added:

‘You can’t remember how much you gave him last year?’ Her husband made an impatient gesture with his hand.

‘But if you go take one of Jeremy’s boxes.’

‘It isn’t a box they want,’ he said, ‘it’s a bullet.’

He went to the sideboard and brought out a pistol. It was an old-fashioned saloon pistol, a relic from the days when Henry’s father, in common with others of his generation, had practised pistol-shooting, and it had lain at the back of a drawer in the sideboard longer than any of them could remember.

‘No, Henry, no! You mustn’t get excited! And think of the child!’

She was on her feet now; they all were.

‘Stay where you are!’ he snarled.

‘Anne! Jeremy! Tell him not to! Try to stop him.’ But his children could not in a moment shake off the obedience of a lifetime, and helplessly they watched him go.

‘But it isn’t any good, it isn’t any good!’ Anne kept repeating.

‘What isn’t any good, darling?’

‘The pistol. You see, I’ve seen through him!’

‘How do you mean, seen through him? Do you mean he’s an imposter?’

‘No, no. I’ve really seen through him,’ Anne’s voice sank to a whisper. ‘I saw the street lamp shining through a hole in his head.’

‘Darling, darling!’

‘Yes, and the boy, too——’

‘Will you be quiet, Anne?’ cried Jeremy from behind the window curtain. ‘Will you be quiet? They’re saying something. Now Daddy’s pointing the gun at him—he’s got him covered! His finger’s on the trigger, he’s going to shoot! No, he isn’t. The man’s come nearer—he’s come right up to Daddy! Now he’s showing him something, something on his forehead-oh, if I had a torch—and Daddy’s dropped it, he’s dropped the gun!’

As he spoke they heard the clatter; it was like the sound that gives confirmation to a wireless commentator’s words. Jeremy’s voice broke out again:

‘He’s going off with them—he’s going off with them! They’re leading him away!’

Before she or any of them could reach the door, Mrs. Marriner had fainted.

The police didn’t take long to come. On the grass near the garden gate they found the body. There were signs of a struggle—a slither, like a skid-mark, on the gravel, heel-marks dug deep into the turf. Later it was learnt that Mr. Marriner had died of coronary thrombosis. Of his assailants not a trace was found. But the motive couldn’t have been robbery, for all the money he had had in his pockets, and all the notes out of his wallet (a large sum), were scattered around him, as if he had made a last attempt to buy his captors off, but couldn’t give them enough.

‘But what is it you don’t like about the pampas clump?’ I asked.

‘Well, it’s untidy for one thing,’ Thomas said. ‘It doesn’t grow evenly and always seems to need a haircut. A shrub should be symmetrical.’

‘It isn’t exactly a shrub.’

‘No, it isn’t. A shrub would be more self-controlled. It’s a sort of grass—and grass needs cutting. Besides, it’s all ages at once, some of it’s green, some sere, and some dead. And then its leaves break and dangle depressingly.’

‘But aren’t we all like that?’

‘Not so obviously. We are more of a piece. Anyone would know that you were forty-one, Fergus, and I was thirty-eight.’

I flattered myself that I looked younger than Thomas; there was a deep line between his brows and his eyes behind his spectacles were tired and restless.

‘How old is the pampas?’

‘Oh, any age. It was here, you may remember, when I bought the house. I’ve often thought of getting rid of it. It’s so suburban. It doesn’t fit into an old garden, like this one is supposed to be.’

‘But if it’s old itself?’

‘It must be, or it wouldn’t have grown to such a size. But that doesn’t make it any the less suburban. People live to a great age in surburbia, and sometimes grow to a great size. . . . And besides being untidy, it makes the grass round it untidy too, it sheds itself.’

‘A plant has to live according to its habit,’ I argued.

‘Yes, but I don’t like its habit, or its habits. It offends my sense of fitness. Besides, it’s dangerous.’

‘Dangerous?’

‘Yes. It looks fragile and wispy, but its leaves are like razors, they cut you to the bone. It’s treacherous and dishonest.’

‘Oh, do you think of it as a person?’

Thomas fidgeted.

‘No, of course not, except in so far as something you don’t like takes on a personality for you.’

‘What sort of personality has it?’

‘A semi-transparent one. It blocks the view from the french window, but if you look hard you can see through it—or you think you can. I’m always wondering if there isn’t someone the other side of it who can see me though I can’t see him or her.’

‘Oh, Thomas, how fanciful you are!’

‘Well, you try.’

Obediently I screwed my eyes up. The library had two windows, and from the french window, the one nearest to the fireplace, by which we were sitting, the pampas clump did indeed block the view. It cut the line of the hills across the valley. In the early October twilight it looked quite enormous; its cone-shaped plumes, stirred by a gentle breeze, swept the dusky sky, soaring above its downward-curving foliage as a many-jetted fountain soars above the water fanning outwards from its basin. And like a fountain, it was, as Thomas had said, half-transparent. You thought you could see what was behind it, but you couldn’t be sure. That didn’t worry me; I rather liked the idea of the mystery, the terra incognita behind the pampas. And Thomas should have liked it, too. No one ever called him Tom: at Oxford he was nicknamed Didymus, he was so much in doubt. Did he dislike the pampas because, in some way, it reminded him of himself, and his own weaknesses? I strained my eyes again, trying to see what lay beyond the soaring feathers and the looped, drooping, reed-like leaves. Perhaps . . . Perhaps . . . What did Thomas want me to say?