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

Marcus was utterly at a loss, for he felt that where his practical or comparatively practical friends, the Larkins, had failed, he was most unlikely to succeed. When he surveyed the length and breadth of England, sometimes with a map, sometimes relying on his imagination, he didn’t know which way to turn.

But turn he must, for the people who had let him their house, for the period of the war, now wanted it back.

Where could he go? He was a bachelor and an orphan, aged fifty, by no means rich but not too badly off. The thought of all England lying before him, studded with houses, each of which had some vital drawback, appalled him. And what of Henry and Muriel, the couple who had served him well for so many years, in spite of Muriel’s chronic melancholia and Henry’s occasional outbursts of temper, where would they go?

Marcus was not without friends, and he decided, with an unconscious foresight, that he had better try to find a house that was near to some of them. In the town of Baswick, in the west country, he had several good friends. Baswick must be his first house-hunting ground.

How to start about it? Marcus found the name of a house-agent in Baswick, and applied to him.

Marcus’s quest had at the same time, vis-à-vis the vast area of England, a limitation which might be a hindrance but also might be a help. He wanted a house by the river, where he could row his boat. Boating was his favourite pastime—boating of a relaxed, unskilful, unprofessional kind, just plodding along a river, in a skiff with a sliding seat, thoughtless, mindless. But something from the movement and from the rustle, heard or unheard, of Nature around him, gave him a peace of mind which he couldn’t give himself.

Baswick was on a river.

The house-agent, a red-faced beefy-looking man, said, ‘I think we’ve got just the place for you. It’s called Paradise Paddock. It was occupied by the Army, and perhaps still is, but we’ll go and see.’

Marcus, certain that the expedition would be a wash-out, jumped into the car, and in a quarter of an hour they were there.

It was a mill-house, the river dammed up on one side and flowing freely, but not too freely, on the other. So much Marcus took in, before, crossing a little bridge, they stood in front of a paint-blistered front-door, and the agent rang the bell.

A lady answered it, dressed in the casual clothes of an artist, as in fact she turned out to be.

‘Yes?’ she said.

The agent advanced a step or two.

‘I understand this house is for sale,’ he said.

‘Well, I’m the owner of it,’ she replied, ‘and I can assure you it isn’t.’

The agent was by no means taken aback.

‘I’m sorry, Madam,’ he said, ‘I must have been mistaken.’

‘Not to worry,’ said the lady. ‘Since you’ve come out here, perhaps you would like to see over the house.’

It had been built at different times, and on different levels; not a room that had not a step up to it, or a step down. Not only that, they seldom faced each other squarely, they eyed each other widdershins. But Marcus liked them all.

He told the owner so. ‘I’m so sorry you don’t want to part with the house,’ he said, when the tour was over, ‘but I quite understand.’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t want to part with it,’ the woman answered, ‘I only said I was the owner of it—I and my husband—and that it was not for sale. But we might change our minds, given a suitable inducement.’

‘Well, perhaps you will let me know,’ said Marcus, with a caution that was usual with him, for he hated decisions, and could only make them on the spur of the moment, or not at all.

‘I can let you know now,’ the woman said. “We are prepared to sell it, if you will name a sum.’

Marcus glanced at the agent, whose porphyry-coloured face became for a moment mask-like, before he said, ‘I think £5,000 would be a fair price.’

‘Oh, surely,’ the woman protested.

‘The house isn’t everyone’s choice, as perhaps you know,’ said the agent, giving her a look. ‘I don’t say it’s damp, but it well may be, since there is water all round it. I doubt if you would get a higher offer.’

‘I must ask my husband,’ she said, showing them the door.

It hadn’t occurred to the innocent Marcus that she was meaning to sell it all the time.

When he took possession, he brought with him the furniture and objets d’art that he had been collecting during the war years. At first they made the house, or some of it, look habitable. Later, when he had been toying with them and moving them this way and that, it looked less so. One thing that he couldn’t find a suitable place for was a turquoise-coloured beetle—obviously meant to be Egyptian for it had a cartouche on its back, but too large, he thought, to be a real scarab. He had bought it at an antique shop for a few shillings.

A friend, who had travelled much in the Near East, took a different view.

‘One never knows,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the look of it and I should get rid of it, if I were you.’

Marcus, who was superficially superstitious, and hated to see a single magpie, or the new moon through glass, or to spill the salt, or break a looking-glass (which, happily, he had never done) was fundamentally anti-superstitious, and thought one shouldn’t give way to it. . . .

‘How have things been going here?’ his friend asked.

‘Oh, quite all right,’ said Marcus, with an assurance that his expression belied. ‘One or two people have had troubles. A friend of mine fell downstairs and broke a bone in her hand, and the gardener fell down some steps which were rather greasy—it rains so much here—and had to have some stitches put into his elbow. But these things happen in the best-regulated establishments.’

‘But you have suffered no inconvenience?’ asked his friend, surveying the curious little object, with its rudimentary antennae, which looked as if they might wave.

‘None,’ said Marcus.

‘All the same,’ said his friend, ‘I should get rid of the creature, if I were you. It isn’t a creature, of course, but it looks rather like one.’

Months passed that were not uneventful, and his friend again came to stay.

‘Well, how goes it?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, domestically and otherwise.’

‘Oh,’ said Marcus, ‘nothing much. My cook fell into the river, one night, looking for her cat. She dotes on it. The cat I hardly need say, was quite safe in some outhouse, and would never have dreamed of plunging into the river, especially in this cold weather. Happily, Mrs. Landslide’s husband was at hand, and he hauled her out, wet through, but none the worse for her ducking. There was something else,’ he added, unwillingly, ‘but it happened only a fortnight ago, and I don’t much want to talk about it.’

‘Tell me, all the same.’

‘Well—but not well—the gardener’s young daughter, Christine, was riding her bicycle on the main road, coming away from school, and a lorry hit her, and well—she died. Not very nice, was it?’ said Marcus, with a tremor in his voice. ‘They haven’t got over it, of course, and I don’t suppose they ever will. They don’t blame me, I’m glad to say; it was no fault of mine, though I had given the bicycle to Christine as a birthday present.’

His friend considered this.

‘Have you still got that scarab?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, if I were you I should get rid of it.’

‘But how? It wouldn’t be enough to sell it, or give it to somebody I disliked. I don’t know much about black magic, but I am sure it involves some kind of ritual.’

‘You’re right,’ said his friend, ‘it does, but there are ways and means.’