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

My car is still in the garage. It hasn’t been used much since you went away, and I expect various things will have gone wrong with it, the battery will have run down and the tyres will need pumping up, and the oil !—but you will know about this better than I do.

Please let me know when you are ready to return, so that I can answer the answers to my advertisements for another Staff.

Yours sincerely,

Copperthwaite’s reply came promptly.

‘Will be with you on Monday, Sir.’

So he must have given in his notice to the American gentleman before he got Anthony’s answer. Rather mortifying to know that Copperthwaite took it for granted he would be welcome back: but what a relief to know that the rhythm and routine of his life so dismally interrupted would be resumed.

Say nothing to begin with; make no comment; express no curiosity.

Such were some of Anthony’s resolutions on the Saturday before Copperthwaite was due back on Monday morning. But, when the bell of the flat-door pealed at 8 a.m. on Sunday, he was taken by surprise. Who was this ? What was this ? The porter, telling him he had left a tap dripping, flooding the flat below? An urgent letter on Her Majesty’s Service, demanding Income Tax? The postman—but the postman never rang the bell unless he was carrying some object (usually of evil import) too bulky to pass through the letter-box—and besides, the post didn’t come on Sunday.

So pessimistic was Anthony’s imagination that he could not think of any summons at eight o’clock in the morning that did not presage disaster or even doom. A mere burglar, with a sawn-off shot-gun or a blunt instrument would have been a relief compared with the horrors Anthony had begun to envisage.

Copperthwaite said, ‘I came a bit early, sir, because I know that eight o’clock is about the time you like your tea.’

‘Well, yes, I do,’ said Anthony, putting all his previous thoughts into reverse. ‘And I expect you want some tea too.’

‘All in good time, sir, all in good time,’ said Copperthwaite, ‘but meanwhile may I dispose of these bits and pieces?’

The bits and pieces were two very heavy and expensive suit-cases, made of white leather. Anthony admired them and wondered how Copperthwaite had come by them: the American gentleman, no doubt. He even envied them although when full—when bulging, as they now were—he couldn’t have carried them a yard.

‘Well, you know where to go,’ he said, laughing rather feebly, ‘the first on the right. You won’t find it changed—no one has had it since you were there. All the same,’ he added suddenly, ‘I think the bed—the mattress—ought to be aired. The bed-clothes—the sheets and blankets are all right. They’re in the airing-cupboard.’

‘Don’t worry, sir,’ said Copperthwaite, bending down to pick up his suit-cases, ‘aired or not aired, it’s the same to me.

Strong as Copperthwaite was, forty-three, forty-five?—his features showed the strain as he stooped to lift the suit-cases.

Anthony went back to bed, with various emotions, of which relief was uppermost. It was against his routine to say prayers in the morning, but he made a short act of thanksgiving for the mercy just received. A few minutes later appeared Copperthwaite, tea-tray in hand. Wearing his service-jacket he looked so like his old self—his slightly Red-Indian self—that Anthony could hardly believe that he had been away three, four, how many weeks?

‘A steak for lunch, sir?’

‘No, Copperthwaite, not a steak. My teeth, my remaining teeth, aren’t equal to a steak. A cutlet, perhaps.’

‘Yes, sir, a nice, tender cutlet. And for this evening a nice bit of fish, a Dover sole, perhaps.’

‘No, I think a lemon sole. They don’t sit so heavily on one’s tummy, and they’re cheaper, too.’

‘I meant a lemon sole,’ said Copperthwaite.

‘Did he?’ thought Anthony, with his eyes bent on Copperthwaite’s broad retreating back, and his blue-black hair, which he kept short and trim, army-fashion. Does he remember my requirements automatically, or has he been thinking them up?

The sound of voices disturbed his cogitations. His daily help had arrived. ‘So you’re back?’ he heard her say, ‘like the bad penny, who always turns up.’ Anthony jumped out of bed and shut the door which Copperthwaite had left ajar, so he didn’t catch Copperthwaite’s riposte which was something about some bad pennies being there all the time.

Later, when Anthony emerged at breakfast time, they seemed to be billing and cooing.

Soon afterwards, when Copperthwaite was in his room, presumably unpacking his impressive suit-cases, Anthony said to Olive,

‘Copperthwaite has come back.’

‘So I see, Mr. Easterfield,’ she answered drily, and giving him a poke, or, as some would say, a back-lash, with the carpet-sweeper. ‘So I see,’ she repeated, ‘and how long for?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Anthony carelessly. ‘I’ve no idea what his plans are, or if he has any. You may know better than I do.’

‘I have nothing against Mr. Copperthwaite,’ said Olive, drawing herself up and reclining, so far as one can recline, on the pole of a carpet-sweeper.

‘I’ve nothing against him,’ she repeated, ‘but this I know, he’ll go when it’s his interest to go, and where ,’ she added dwelling on the words, ‘it’s his interest to go.’

‘Then why,’ said Anthony, taking her up, ‘did he leave this much better job with the millionaire across the Square, and come back here, where he doesn’t get half as much money or half as much time off?’

This will be a facer for her, he thought. But it wasn’t.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said, starting off again with the carpet-sweeper, ‘I wouldn’t know what goes on in a man’s mind. It might be that this American—and not only Americans either,’ she added, giving Anthony a straight look, ‘was one of those who—well, I needn’t explain. Mind you, I’m not saying anything against Copperthwaite, but he may have felt the game wasn’t worth the candle.’

‘The candle?’

‘You know what I mean, sir.’

‘I don’t,’ said Anthony, although a faint flicker of enlightenment played across his mind—‘but if he didn’t do whatever . . . whatever they wanted him to do—isn’t that a good mark for him?’

‘I’m not saying it is or it isn’t,’ said Olive darkly. ‘With those sort of people you never know. Keep away from them, I say.’

‘But that’s just what he has done,’ said Anthony, rashly.

‘Time will show,’ said Olive, who was apt to repeat her more gnomic utterances. ‘Time will show.’

Anthony’s curiosity, never very keen, was whetted by Olive’s insinuations, and the temptation increased to ask Copperthwaite why he had left a job so much better than the one he had come back to. ‘Better not,’ he told himself, falling into Olive’s habit of repeating herself, ‘better not. All in good time, all in good time.’

The thunderous sounds of Copperthwaite’s unpacking suddenly ceased, and he himself appeared at the door of Anthony’s sitting-room. At least it must be he, this radiant figure dressed in the smartest chauffeur’s uniform, peaked cap in hand.

‘Would you be wanting me to drive you anywhere, sir?’ (Sir, now, not Mr. Easterfield, as of yore.)

‘Well, no, Copperthwaite,’ Anthony said, rising from his chair to greet this splendid apparition, ‘I’ve nowhere to go, and I’m not sure if the car’ (he hardly liked to mention this ignoble vehicle) ‘will be—well, will be in going order. You see, it hasn’t been used . . .’ He stopped, feeling that tactlessness must go no further.

‘I see, sir,’ said Copperthwaite, as if envisaging a great number of things. ‘Leave it to me. But first I will put on my working clothes.’ He sketched a salute to go.