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

‘Fall in and follow me. At the double, mind you, at the double,’ and a shadow, momentarily blotting out the moonbeams, slid through the doorway.

Seized by an irresistible inner compulsion, Philip jumped out of bed and without waiting to put a coat over his pyjamas, or slippers on his feet, followed the visitant downstairs in a direction he knew as well as if it had been directed to him by a radar beam.

On the wall that separated the garden from the river he saw first of all a line of heads, he couldn’t tell how many, wearing Army caps, turning this way and that, bobbing and nudging, and heard an angry buzz of talk, as of bees, whose hive is threatened. At the sign of his precursor, only a few yards ahead of him, silence fell, and they drew apart, leaving a gap between them in the shallow river-wall. But they were still leaning towards each other, some of their faces and silhouettes moonstruck, the rest in darkness.

‘Now, boys, what is all this?’ asked their Colonel, for he it must have been, in a cheerful, would-be rallying tone. ‘Why have you got me up at this time of night? There isn’t an air raid.’ And his moonlit face, revolving slowly in its lunar circuit, scanned the night sky.

‘No sir, you know what it is,’ said a voice, a low, level voice charged with menace. ‘We’re fed up with you, that what it is.’

They were beginning to close in on him, their hands were already round his legs, when he called out, ‘You’ve done this before. Take him, he’s my double!’ And he pointed to Philip, shivering behind him on the lawn.

‘Shall we, Jack? Shall we, Bill? He’s one of them, we might as well.’

Their strong hands were round him and Philip, hardly struggling, felt himself being hoisted over the garden wall, to where, a few feet below, he could see his own face mirrored in the water.

‘Let’s get rid of the bastard!’

The next thing Philip knew was a hand on his shoulder, and he heard another voice, saying:

‘Good God, sir, what are you doing here? You might catch your death of cold.’

He couldn’t speak while Alfred was helping him over the wall.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ he gasped, when he had got his breath back. ‘I might have been drowned if it hadn’t been for you. But where are the others?’

He looked back at the depopulated garden wall, no dark heads bobbing and whispering, neck to neck, no limbs bracing themselves for violence; only the moon shining as innocently as that de-virginated satellite can shine.

‘But how did you know ?’

‘ I have my ways of finding out’, said Alfred darkly. ‘A hot bath, a hot bottle, a whisky perhaps, and then bed for you, sir. And don’t pay any attention to that lot, they’re up to no good.’

Anthony Easterfield was not really religious, unless the word ‘religious’ is capable of the widest and vaguest interpretation, but he was religious to the extent of not being a materialist. He was sure he was not a materialist, and if the word was mentioned in his presence, or if he came across it in a book, or if it occurred to his mind unbidden (as words will), he at once chased it away. Materialist indeed! Perish the thought! The human race was dying of materialism. Better a drunkard’s death which did at any rate result from some form of spirit.

At the same time he was aware that many of the phenomena of which he specially disapproved, ‘the worship of the motor-car’, for instance, had a relish of spirit, if not of salvation in it, besides the petrol to which motorists were addicted, for in one sense they were alcoholics all.

He himself had a car, and a man to drive it—for Anthony couldn’t drive, and he knew, from mortifying efforts to pass the driving test, that it was much better for himself and everybody else that he shouldn’t try to.

The car was a convenience to him, but to his driver it was much more than a convenience, it was an emblem of religion. His driver was not satisfied with it, or with its performance in many, if not in all, directions—as many people are dissatisfied with their religions (if any), feeling that their religions have let them down. Anthony’s car had often let Copperthwaite down, and it was anything but the status-symbol that he coveted; at the same time the creed of automobilism was in his blood, and nothing could eradicate it.

‘What you really want, sir,’ (on a special occasion he would deign to call Anthony ‘Sir’ though he would more willingly have addressed the car as such) ‘is a car with a prestige value.’

(The fact that Anthony did not and never would ‘want’ such a car never penetrated Copperthwaite’s car-intoxicated consciousness.)

‘Now the Roland-Rex 1967,’ he went on, trying to make the arcana of automobilism clear to Anthony’s non-mechanical mind, ‘with overdrive, under-drive, self-drive, automatic gears, et cetera, is just the car for you. It is a splendid car. I could tell you more about its performance, only you wouldn’t be interested, but its prestige value is enormous. I doubt if even a Rolls-Royce—’

Anthony Easterfield was indifferent, or nearly indifferent, to the prestige value of a Roland-Rex, but he knew that Copperthwaite’s interest in it, besides being mechanical, was also snobbish, and snobbism implies a sense of values that is not simply materialistic, even if it could scarcely be called spiritual.

To make people stare! To watch them gather round the Roland-Rex, wide-eyed with admiration, exclaiming to each other, patting and stroking it if they dared—venerating it as an object of excellence. To surpass, to excel! Not to keep up with the Joneses but to leave them behind, scattering and gaping. The deus ex machina ! The God in the car!

Copperthwaite spent hours, literally hours, on Anthony’s commonplace little car, making it shine so that you could see your face in it; and when its lower quarters went wrong, as they often did, he would be under it with outstretched legs, and his face, if it were visible, which it seldom was, wearing a beatific expression, as if at last he had found true happiness. And if Anthony called him to come out of his dark grimy, oily hiding-place into the light of day, he would look disappointed, and almost cross, as if his orisons had been interrupted.

Laborare est orare . Copperthwaite’s happy (although to Anthony), his unenviable labours, were a form of prayer to the deus ex machina , the god in the car. If only he could save up enough to buy a Roland-Rex! Then Copperthwaite’s dream would come true, and if his labours were doubled, so would his prayers be. To be prostrate under the chassis of a Roland-Rex! To feel its oil dripping gently on his face! To be in close touch with its genitals (excuse the phrase) what bliss! What more could a man want? To labour for, and by so doing, to pray to the embodied principle of mechanical engineering! To communicate with it (no levity intended) by the oil dripping from it—to be at one with it! Anthony envied Copperthwaite his instinctive identification with the object of his devotion, his conviction that it was more important than he was, and that in its service was perfect freedom.

Anthony had learned to recognize a Roland-Rex, for when they passed, or, as seldom happened, overtook one, Copperthwaite would draw his attention to it. ‘Now that’s what we ought to have, sir.’

Anthony, who wanted Copperthwaite to be happy, would groan inwardly and think about his bank-balance.

He realized that Copperthwaite’s passion for cars was of a religious nature, and respected him for it, for he too, was religious after a fashion, although it was a different fashion from Copperthwaite’s.

Laborare est orare . To work is to pray. Yes; but is the converse true? Orare est laborare ?—to pray is to work? It may be; many people besides the Saints had wrestled in prayer. Sweat had poured off their foreheads, tears had run down their cheeks; they had thrown their bodies this way and that; they had been taken up unconscious for dead. All this due to the physical effort of prayer. Labour! Could anyone labour more than that? Copperthwaite certainly laboured in his unuttered prayer to Anthony’s car; he withdrew himself from the light of day, he put himself into the most uncomfortable positions the body could assume, while studying and communing with the object of his adoration—albeit with its baser parts. His communication with it was immediate and instinctive, and needed no effort on his part; he required no confirmation from the car to assure him that he was completely en rapport with it, and it with him. Labour thrown away! No fear; even if he couldn’t find out what was wrong, the attempt to do so was its own reward. Another time, another hour or two, with his back on the cement and his eyes on a jungle of pipes (what he actually saw that so captivated him, Anthony, who was totally devoid of mechanical sense, never knew), he would find out, and his loving identification with the car would be closer than ever.