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

‘Yes, men with books to sell,’ said Fred, delighted to have got back to books at last. ‘And men who have sold them too, of course. Now as for mine——’

‘We want to see the book first, you know, we want to know what’s in it, don’t we, Wendy?’

‘Oh, well, you shall,’ said Fred, cautious now in his turn, ‘that is if you’re really interested, as you seem to be.’ If they were on their guard, so would he be on his. He would whet their curiosity with hints. ‘I could give you a bit——’

‘All in good time,’ the man said hurriedly. ‘All in good time, but a list is what we want.’

‘A list of names, I mean,’ Fred went on, ‘my authorities—my colleagues, I suppose I could call them since I’m a bit of an authority myself—a bibliography, you know. And I’ve done quite a lot of research, too. I’ve dug about in all sorts of places that most people don’t know about, besides London and Oxford and Cambridge. Oh, I’ve unearthed some interesting facts—facts, let me tell you, not just hypotheses. You’d be surprised how much I’ve learnt.’

The husband and wife listened in silence; then the man said, sipping his wine, ‘It’s facts we’re chiefly interested in, facts and names. You said you went to Cambridge?’

‘Oh, yes, I did quite a lot of work in Cambridge. In Cambridge it’s comparatively simple—people are ready to tell you what they know.’

‘Did you come across Ben Jonson in Cambridge?’ the man asked, lowering his voice.

Fred Cross laughed.

‘Oh, yes, of course I did.’

‘And Jack Webster?’

‘I expect you mean John Webster,’ Fred corrected him.

‘I daresay he’s called John sometimes,’ said the man.

‘Of course I know him,’ Fred said. ‘He’s my favourite. But I didn’t find out much about him.’

‘Your favourite, is he?’ the man said, disagreeably. ‘Well, there’s no accounting for tastes. And who else did you dig up? Did you dig up Dick Skipton?’

This name was strange to Fred. Was Dick Skipton a dramatist, or a critic, or a scholar—someone he ought to have heard of? He didn’t want to admit a gap in his omniscience, they would think the worse of him if he did, so he said casually, taking a chance, and hoping that Dick Skipton wasn’t dead, ‘If I didn’t meet him I heard a lot about him.’

‘You seem to be well in with the whole bunch,’ observed he man in a neutral voice, and his wife gave her quick smile, which seemed at the moment oddly out of place.

‘Well, it’s my job to be,’ said Fred Cross, modestly. ‘I’ve spent several years, you know, trailing them, tracking them down. I flatter myself that I know as much about them as anyone does. I believe that you are interested in them, too. If you care to ask me a question about any of them, sir, I should be only too glad to answer it if I can.’

Rather to Fred’s surprise, his guest didn’t take up the challenge. Instead he said, yawning into his wife’s smile:

‘I’m ready to take your word for it.’

Fred thought that this was carrying the pose of indifference rather far. ‘It’s been a labour of love, you know,’ he said. And when they looked rather rudely incredulous, he added: ‘It may be morbid of me, but I like the company of all those thugs and assassins.’

‘You’re welcome to them,’ the man said rather grimly. ‘But the main thing is, you’ve got their dossiers.’

‘Oh yes, I have,’ Fred said. ‘But I’m sorry you don’t like them. They did things so picturesquely. “Enter executioners with coffin, cords and a bell.” The killers of to-day are . . . well . . . more prosaic’

‘I’ll say they are,’ said his guest, with a sudden lapse into Americanese. ‘I’ll say they are. Now, Wendy, we must go and make up our faces, and then we’ll take Mr. Cross on to our place. It’s not too early for you, is it, Mr. Cross? We’ve got the car outside.’

‘No, indeed,’ said Fred. He felt the meal was being terminated rather abruptly; but he was as anxious as his guests seemed to be to get down to business.

Left alone, he sat for a moment at the table, thinking. No doubt the pair, besides powdering their noses, wanted to say a word to each other in private about terms. While they were doing that he would go upstairs and fetch the book. Even his rather shabby bedroom wore a cheerful air, such was his elation, and when he took the typescript out of his suitcase, instead of greeting him with the leaden look of a child that has never managed to make good—the look that only an oft-rejected typescript can give—it seemed to say: ‘Your faith in me has been justified after all.’ I’ll wrap it up, he thought, handling it affectionately; it won’t matter if I keep them waiting, it’ll make them the more eager. How often had he done up this selfsame parcel; even the brown paper had been used before. But this would be its last outward journey until it returned to him with his proofs.

The book under his arm, he walked downstairs, scorning the lift. As he was crossing the middle lounge—always some Rubicon for a Cross to cross—he heard his name called. Not a good sign had the voice been imaginary, but this time it was real, as real at any rate as the loudspeaker’s voice, which penetrated to the very nerve-centres. ‘Mr. Whiston, please. A telephone call for Mr. Whiston, please. Mr. Fred Cross would like to speak to Mr. Whiston, Mr. Fred Cross calling Mr. Whiston, please.’

The hotel seemed to echo with it. Of all the coincidences on this evening of coincidences, this was the one that surprised Fred Cross the least. Experience had taught him that there were other Fred Crosses in the world besides himself. It was a lesson in humility which he had thoroughly learnt. Sometimes it vaguely depressed him that he had to share his name with so many other men but to-night he was proof against depression; he was morally certain that his ‘Jacobean Dramatists’ was in the bag (what bag? whose bag? A bag unknown to Brewer’s Phrase and Fable ).

As the message was being repeated, the porter said to him:

‘Your guests are waiting for you in the car, sir.’

He sat on the back seat with the publisher’s wife, and didn’t notice much where they were going, so occupied was he in trying to keep up a conversation with her invisible but (he felt sure) existent smile. True to his resolution, he gave away as little as he could, and she was just as unforthcoming. Their conversation, like an iceberg, trailed unmeasured depths beneath it. Childishly, Fred found this mystification rather fun.

London spreads out a long way in all directions; when at last Fred felt he could take a rest from social effort and look about him he didn’t know where he was, but the street lamps were fewer than they had been, and the houses farther apart. A minute or two later the man said: ‘This is us,’ and drew up at the kerb.

The ‘place’ he had been taken to was much less grand than the size of the car suggested that it would be: it was in fact a bed-sitting-room in a semi-detached house. Many people lived like that nowadays, but they generally made the bed, or got it made, before the evening. As though aware of this thought the woman said:

‘Sorry the room’s in such a mess, but we had to make an early start this morning. What about some whisky, Bill?’

‘In there,’ the man said briefly, indicating a small cupboard which, when opened, was seen to house a surprising number of objects meant for a variety of uses: but drinking was one of them.

When the gas-fire had been lit the room seemed more habitable, as well as warmer. Fred and his hostess occupied the armchairs on each side of it; the man cleared a space among the bedclothes and sat down on the bed.

‘Joe’s not here,’ he said.