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

‘And you relied on finding a convenient banana-skin?’

‘Ah, there I was clever. But to go back. I worked, as I told you, in the City, practically the same hours as she did, and the City is a long way from Knightsbridge. How could I be there when she was? One afternoon I told my boss I wasn’t feeling well and could I have to-morrow off? I’d never gone sick before. I remember his reply, he said: “Yes, of course, Parminter. We’ve got to keep you fit, haven’t we, for the match on Saturday.” So the next morning I was there in Wilton Place, walking up and down and——’

‘Looking for a banana-skin?’ my friend asked.

‘No! Even in those days manners had changed, as you must have noticed, and street manners especially. I was eating a banana. Between bites I looked up and at last I saw her hurrying along, a little late, towards me. I dropped the banana-skin on the pavement, I put my foot on it, and down I went.’

‘Poor Parminter!’

‘Well, yes, you’re right. I was heavy then—I’m a good deal heavier now—and I came a terrific cropper. My head hit the pavement and I didn’t know where I was for a moment. Then I saw Rosemary bending over me.

‘ “Good God!” she said. “It’s Gerald! Are you hurt?” ’

I moaned, and tried to stir but couldn’t.

‘ “Darling,” she said—it was the first time she had ever called me “darling”—“I know I mustn’t try to move you, but I can kiss you,” and she did. Then she said, “I’ll get an ambulance.” I was still feeling groggy when the ambulance drove up, and it’s a blur what happened next, but they let her go with me. At the hospital they X-rayed me, in case I had broken any bones or cracked my skull (you may think it was cracked already!). I hadn’t, but they said they must detain me for the night for observation and I was put into a ward with several other cases—orthopaedic, it was called. Rosemary said she would go back to my flat and fetch the things I needed for the night. “Pyjamas? Toothbrush? Toothpaste? Hair-brush? Sponge? Razor? Shaving-brush? Shaving-cream? Bedroom-slippers, dressing-gown?” I had no idea she knew so much about a man’s requirements and it all sounded so intimate, as if I’d spent the night with her, which of course I never had—she was too keen on the other fellow. She was back within an hour, but they wouldn’t let her see me, because by that time I was suffering from shock—uncontrollable shivers was the form it took. They gave me strong sweet tea and put hot-water bottles round me, I remember. Oh, what a fool I felt, and frightened too: I thought I might have injured myself for life. And what was so mortifying, I had had scores of tumbles playing football, and thought I had learned how to fall. After a time the shivering wore off and then they told me that during the lunch-hour the young lady had telephoned about me twice; she sounded upset, the nurse said, but very sweet. Then a bunch of roses was brought in—roses in February, think of the expense! I took them with me when I left next morning—my bed was needed for another patient. But I could still hardly move: I had a bruise right from my ankle to my hip, and had to be helped into the ambulance and upstairs to my flat. I couldn’t get about for several days, and might have starved if Rosemary hadn’t come to my rescue. Of course, I missed the match.’

‘But not the other match?’ my friend said.

‘Oh no, I married her.’ While I was trying to think what to say next, he said:

‘But wasn’t that what you wanted?’

‘Yes, but it didn’t last.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’ll tell you. One day—it was the third anniversary of our wedding day—we had a celebration. It was a slap-up affair, for I’d been doing well, and when we got home, I, being a bit tiddly told her the whole story, how I had faked the fall, and all that. I thought it would amuse her, but it didn’t. She burst into tears and said, “You deceived me—I need never have married you.” I was as upset as she was. I tried to make her understand that what I did, I did for love of her. But she wouldn’t listen. She kept saying I had played a trick on her emotions. “You didn’t need me you only wanted me. You’ve never had anything the matter with you from that day to this! You’re the most self-sufficient man I know—you always fall on your feet!”

‘ “Well, I didn’t that time”, I couldn’t help saying.’

‘ “Nor this time either,” she sobbed, angrier than ever, and the next morning she left me.’

I couldn’t have said those words so calmly once; but it was three years ago.

My friend got up and walked about the room.

‘And so you lived the story,’ he said, ‘or part of it.’

‘There isn’t any more,’ I said. ‘She went off with another man—the man she’d always been fond of, I suspect—and asked me to divorce her, but I wouldn’t.’

‘Why not?’ my friend asked.

‘Oh, I dunno. I still loved her, I am still in love with her, I suppose. She might come back to me.’

‘Would you divorce her now?’ my friend said.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Not even if I asked you?’

‘If you asked me?’

‘You see,’ he said, ‘I was the other man and I wrote the story, little knowing . . . You were right about coincidences. I didn’t have to fabricate a fall: I was always down and out, until she came. Perhaps my need is greater than thine, as Sir Philip Sidney didn’t say. Without her, I should be——’

I got up. ‘I’ll think it over,’ I said, ‘I’ll think it over.’ I turned away blindly and in turning my foot caught in the fold of a rug and I went headlong. He helped me to my feet.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, quite all right,’ I gasped. ‘But take care, and if she’s anywhere about, don’t tell her that I’ve had a real fall.’

Deirdre O’Farrell (it wasn’t her real name, though she was Irish) had been George Lambert’s mistress for three years. She would have been his wife if he had had his way; but her position with regard to husbands, past, present and to come, was dubious. ‘It’s quite impossible,’ she would say when he urged marriage on her: ‘don’t ask me why.’ He didn’t ask her; he accepted her and everything about her without question, and those elements in her make-up that were mysterious and unexplained had a particular glamour for him. Like a retriever carrying a handbag, he was proud of being the bearer of her secrets.

A younger man would have been more exacting. A more experienced man would have looked askance at Deirdre. He would have seen what there was to be seen: a very pretty face, rather chocolate-box, and eyes so blue that they seemed to create a bluish mist between them and the beholder. Through this mist her eyes shone with so much innocence that (to use a vulgarism) it wasn’t true. But to George it was true. What gave life and character to her face was a kind of determination to make good. She was, in fact, a calculating little minx, a sexual tease and sometimes a sexual cheat. Every now and then she would withhold her favours, saying, ‘Oh, no, I’m not in the mood’; or she would find some pretext for breaking an engagement at the last moment, leaving George with an evening to himself; sometimes she would even hint at other attachments which might be going to supersede his. This policy, however, she used with the utmost caution; she had almost a genius for knowing how far she could go.

During the first two years of their relationship, however, she could have gone any length and George would not have noticed. The idea that he was being made a fool of never entered his head, and wouldn’t have influenced him if it had. There was a difference of eighteen years between them; he was forty-one when they met, and she, she said, was twenty-three. He was so much in love with her that his one desire was to satisfy her every whim. Indeed, her caprices only served to make him love her more, for they gave him unlimited opportunities for self-escape, which was, for him, his natural form of self-expression. On her he threw himself away with both hands. No neophyte in love with the love of God, and resolved above all else to do His will, could have got more satisfaction from self-sacrifice than George got.