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

Five rooms they had, two bedrooms, a bathroom, a sitting-room and a kitchen. Awkwardly placed, they didn’t constitute a flat or a maisonette or any sort of dwelling you could give a name to. The kitchen and the sitting-room were self-contained and had their own entrance, a green door giving on the garden, invisible from Cyril’s part of the house. One went downstairs to them, as if to a basement, but it wasn’t really a basement: their windows looked out on the garden, not on an area wall, for the house, being perched on a steep slope, had an extra storey on the garden side, making four in all.

What a strange house it was. Built on to at different times, it had no plan or method. Few of the eighteen rooms were on the same floor-level as the others; a step up or a step down led to them. The architects, it must be admitted, hadn’t wasted any space on passages or landings; door followed door with a suddenness that confused strangers. In the days when Cyril had visitors to stay they often lost their way—indeed it was some time before Cyril could find his. Some of the rooms were roughly pentagonal in shape, with the doorway in the short fifth wall: should the door happen to be open, you got an oblique view of the room—you took it by surprise—walls meeting, pieces of furniture sidling up to each other—all most irregular.

The tenants’ bedrooms and bathrooms were also self-contained, behind a door that shut them off from Cyril’s domain. But between them and the sitting-room was a tract of common ground—a section of the staircase that, winding its way up from below, made a brief halt outside the tenants’ door. Only eight steps impaired their privacy, but sometimes Cyril met the Trimbles on them. ‘Unlucky to cross on the stairs,’ he would say gaily, and it always seemed to amuse them.

Mr. Snow hadn’t been in favour of letting the rooms off. He could look after the house perfectly well, he said, when Cyril was away. Tenants—well, you never knew who they were, or what they might be up to.

As far as the Trimbles were concerned, Mr. Snow turned out to be right. Cyril did know something about them, of course. They were Midlanders who had come south from Birmingham and bought a tobacconists’ and newsagents’ business in the large town near which Cyril lived: they had been in lodgings till they answered his advertisement. Others had answered it too, there had been quite a number of applicants for Cyril’s five rooms. But they all had something against them—children, dogs, unreasonable requirements—whereas the Trimbles had nothing against them. They were a sober, serious couple who minded their own business and gave no trouble: Mr. Snow admitted that. He even made friends with them, came down from his eyrie to sit with them, and accompanied them to the village local, where, so report said, they were making headway in the (for a foreigner) never easy task of making friends.

And how well Cyril had got on with them! When they met on the staircase, which was almost the only occasion when they did meet—what smiles and hand-shakings there were, what solicitous inquiries into each other’s health and comfort! How often Cyril would ask if everything was to their liking, and how invariably they would answer that they couldn’t possibly be better off than they were! Mr. Trimble was tall and thin and sallow; he wasn’t prepossessing but had a nice smile that flickered across his face. She was fair and stout and dumpy, with big blue eyes that smiled continually, and a faint foreign accent: she might have been an Austrian Jewess.

For several months, then, all went well, and Cyril was so used to its going well, and to his own automatic reactions to the Trimbles’ unfailing amiability when they met on the stairs, that he began to take not only their amiability but their presence for granted. So what was his amazement when one day, happening to mention them to Mr. Snow, he received the chilling answer:

‘I haven’t seen much of them lately.’

‘Not seen much of them? I thought you saw a good deal of them.’

‘At the start I did,’ said Mr. Snow. ‘But it often happens that things don’t go on as they began——’

Cyril’s heart sank.

‘I hadn’t noticed anything——’

‘You will, sir, you can take my word for it.’

‘Do you know what’s wrong?’ Cyril asked.

‘I have an idea, sir, a very shrewd idea, but I shouldn’t dream of telling you.’

‘Oh, do tell me,’ Cyril begged.

‘No, sir, those things are best left in the minds of those who invented them.’

Cyril was not left long in doubt, however. When next he met the Trimbles on the stairs they did not return his greeting. Disappearing behind their door of partition they shut it none too gently. But the time after that they stood their ground, and Mr. Trimble said:

‘I’d like a word with you, Mr. Hutchinson.’

Cyril noticed that contrary to custom, he was smiling but his wife was not. Resenting the man’s tone, he said:

‘I’m rather busy now. Will another time do?’

‘I’m afraid it won’t, Mr. Hutchinson. You see we’re not standing for it.’

‘I didn’t ask you to stand,’ said Cyril.

‘Mr. Hutchinson, you’re trying to evade the issue. I said we’re not standing for it, we are giving notice. But first we want an explanation.’

‘Yes, we want an explanation,’ repeated his wife, with a set face.

‘An explanation of what?’ Cyril asked, mortified to feel that he was trembling.

‘Don’t try to evade the issue, Mr. Hutchinson,’ put in Mrs. Trimble. We want an explanation of the interference.’

The interference?’ repeated Cyril. ‘What sort of interference? Do you mean electrical interference? Are you speaking of your television set? I know the reception here is none too good.’

‘Mr. Hutchinson, bluffing won’t get you anywhere. We want your explanation before we report the matter to the police.’

‘The police? What on earth do you mean?’

‘Come, come, Mr. Hutchinson, you know quite well what we mean.’

The reiteration of his name infuriated Cyril.

‘Unless you stop annoying me, Mr. Trimble and Mrs. Trimble, he shouted, ‘ I’ll call the police and give you in charge for insulting language and behaviour. Now for the last time, what is this interference you complain of?’

Mr. Trimble’s smile at last left his face, and he said sullenly:

‘The interference with our things.’

‘Interference with your things?’ Like many mild men, when he lost his temper Cyril lost it thoroughly. ‘Are you accusing me of some act of indecency? I wouldn’t interfere with your things . . . not with a barge pole.’

He saw his anger had cowed them.

‘All we know is,’ the man said, ‘someone has been in our apartments, moving things about, reading our letters, prying and spying. And who can it be but you? You’ve got the duplicate keys.’

Cyril drew a long breath.

‘That settles it,’ he said. ‘I’ll call the police.’

They both protested that this was the last thing they wanted; they even denied having mentioned the police at all. But Cyril was adamant. They had appealed to the police and they should have the police. Crest-fallen, the couple shut the door on themselves, and Cyril retired to his study, fuming and shaking. Any declared enmity made him feel ill.

The village copper was an old friend of Cyril’s and predisposed in his favour. All the same, he conducted his inquiry in an impartial manner. Mr. Snow was summoned, and the daily woman. Mr. Snow said that he had been in the Trimbles’ sitting-room a few times, at their express invitation; he suggested he had never wanted to go. Asked if he had ever moved any of their things, he did not at first answer; then he said temperately, ‘No, why should I? I’ve got my own things to look after.’ The daily help was still more nonchalant. Yes, she had heard of the Trimbles and knew they occupied part of Mr. Hutchinson’s house; when pressed she admitted she had passed the time of day with them, but that was all: she was a woman who kept herself to herself. ‘It’s the only way,’ she added darkly. She didn’t look at the Trimbles while she was speaking; she gave the impression that they were not there. Cyril could not emulate his retainers’ lofty unconcern, but repeated his denials of any sort of interference in the Trimbles’ quarters. He laughed nervously after saying this, it seemed so absurd that the ambiguities of language should again betray him into an impropriety; but the policeman did not notice. Asked if they had missed anything as a result of the interferences, the Trimbles admitted that they hadn’t. The policeman shrugged his shoulders. Could he see the room where the alleged interferences occurred? They trooped down into the sitting-room, which was long, low and oval at the garden end. Furniture had been moved, said Mr. Trimble; this chair, for instance, had been there; and these letters—he pointed to them but didn’t hand them round—had been taken from this drawer and put in that one. Ornaments had been moved and a table-lamp knocked over; but no damage had been done and nothing was missing. In that case, the policeman said, he could take no action; he hoped there would be no recurrence of the interferences; but if anything was stolen or damaged they must let him know.