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

‘Lousy young bastards,’ he said, ‘leaving us all standing about like fools on a fine evening like this. I should like to tan their hides.’

There was a murmur of sympathetic indignation, and he added, ‘What makes them think the chap’s coming to-day to pray, anyhow?’

Tom Wignall answered sullenly: ‘He comes most days now. . . . And if you want to know, Jim Chantry passed him on his motor-bike the other side of Friar’s Bridge. He didn’t half jump when Jim honked in his ear,’ Tom concluded with unrepentant relish. ‘He’ll be here any time now.’

‘Well,’ said the older boy stretching himself luxuriously, ‘you chaps can go and blank yourselves. There’s nothing else for you to do. I’m off.’ He sauntered away, grandly, alone, towards the main road. Those silly mutts need a lesson. I’ll spoil their little game for them, he thought.

The tower gallery at St. Cuthbert’s, Aston Highchurch, was a feature most unusual in parish churches. But the tower was rather unusual too. Its lower storey, which rose fifty or more feet to the belfry floor, was open to the main body of the building; only an arch divided it from the nave. The gallery, a stone passage running along the tower wall just above the west window, was considerably higher than the apex of the arch. It was only visible from the western end of the church, and itself commanded a correspondingly restricted view—a view that was further impeded by the lightly swaying bell-ropes. But Fred Buckland and his four conspirators could see, through the flattened arc of the arch, a portion of the last six rows of chairs. The sunlight coming through the window below them fell on the chairs, picking them out in gold and making a bright patch like the stage of a theatre.

‘He ought to be here by now, didn’t he?’ one urchin whispered.

‘Shut up!’ hissed the ringleader. ‘It’ll spoil everything if he hears us.’

They waited, three of them with their backs pressed against the wall, their faces turned this way and that as in a frieze, looking very innocent and naughty. Fred, who had more than once sung carols from this lofty perch, embraced a baluster and let his feet dangle over the edge.

Five minutes passed, ten, a quarter of an hour. The sinking sun no longer lay so brightly on the foreground; shadows began to creep in from the sides. The boys even began to see each other less plainly.

‘I’m frightened,’ whispered a voice. ‘I wish we hadn’t come. I want to go home.’

‘Shut up, can’t you?’

More minutes passed and the church grew darker.

‘I say, Fred,’ a second voice whispered, ‘what time does your old man come to shut the church up?’

‘Seven o’clock these evenings. It still wants a quarter to.’

They waited; then one whispered in a tense voice, ‘I believe that’s him.’

‘Who?’

‘Old Greenpants, of course.’

‘Did you hear anything?’

‘No, but I thought I saw something move.’

‘You’re balmy. That’s the shadow of the bell-rope.’

They strained their eyes.

‘I don’t think it was, Fred. It moves when the bell-rope doesn’t.’

‘Funny if somebody else should be spying on old Greenpants.’

‘Maybe it’s him who’s spying on us.’

‘What, old Greenpants?’

‘Of course. Who else could it be?’

‘I wish I could see what that was moving,’ the boy said again. ‘There, close by the stove.’

‘I suppose it couldn’t get up to us?’

‘Not unless it came by the bell-rope,’ said Fred decisively. ‘I’ve locked the door of the stairs and the only other key my dad has. You’re in a funk, that’s your trouble. Only the Devil could shin up one of them ropes.’

‘They wouldn’t let him come into church, would they?’

‘He might slip in if the north door was open.’

Almost as he spoke a puff of wind blew up in their faces and the six bell-ropes swayed in all directions lashing each other and casting fantastic shadows.

‘That’s him,’ Fred hissed. ‘Don’t you hear his footsteps? I bet that’s him. Just wait till he gets settled down. Now, all together: “God is going to punish thee, Henry Greenstream, thou wicked man”.’

In creditable unison, their voices quavered through the church. What result they expected they hardly knew themselves, nor did they have time to find out; for the sacristan, appearing with a clatter of boots at the gallery door, had them all like rats in a trap. Fear of committing sacrilege by blasphemy for a moment took away his powers of speech; then he burst out, ‘Come on, you little blackguards! Get down out of here! Oh, you’ll be sore before I’ve finished with you!’

A spectator, had there been one, would have noticed that the sounds of snivelling and scuffling were momentarily stilled as the staircase swallowed them up. A minute later they broke out again, with louder clamour; for though Fred got most of the blows the others quickly lost their morale, seeing how completely their leader had lost his.

‘I’ll take a strap to you when I get you home,’ thundered the sacristan, ‘trying to disturb a poor gentleman at his devotions.’

‘But, Dad, he wasn’t in the church!’ protested Fred between his sobs.

‘It wasn’t your fault if he wasn’t,’ returned his father grimly.

For some months after being warned Henry Greenstream came no more to St. Cuthbert’s, Aston Highchurch. Perhaps he found another sanctuary, for certainly there was no lack of them in the district. Perhaps, since he had a motor, he found it more convenient to drive out into the country where (supposing he needed them) were churches in sparsely populated areas, untenanted by rude little boys. He had never been a man to advertise his movements, and latterly his face had worn a closed look, as if he had been concealing them from himself. But he had to tell the chauffeur where to go, and the man was immensely surprised when, one December afternoon, he received an order to drive to Aston Highchurch. ‘We hadn’t taken that road for an age,’ he afterwards explained.

‘Stop when I tap the window,’ Mr. Greenstream said, ‘and then I shall want you to do something for me.’

At the point where the footpath leads across the fields Mr. Greenstream tapped and got out of the car.

‘I’m going on to the church now,’ he said, ‘but I want you to call at the Rectory, and ask the Reverend Mr. Ripley if he would step across to the church and . . . and hear my confession. Say it’s rather urgent. I don’t know how long I shall be gone.’

The chauffeur, for various reasons, had not found Mr. Greenstream’s service congenial; he had in fact handed his notice in that morning. But something in his employer’s tremulous manner touched him, and surprising himself, he said:

‘You wouldn’t like me to go with you as far as the church, sir?’

‘Oh, no, thank you, Williams, I think I can get that far.’

‘I only thought you didn’t look very fit, sir.’

‘Is that why you decided to leave me?’ asked Mr. Greenstream, and the man bit his lip and was silent.

Mr. Greenstream walked slowly towards the church, absently and unsuccessfully trying to avoid the many puddles left by last night’s storm. It had been a violent storm, and now though the wind was gone, the sky, still burning streakily as with the embers of its own ill-temper, had a wild, sullen look.

Mr. Greenstream reached the porch but didn’t go in. Instead he walked round the church, stumbling among the graves, for some were unmarked by headstones; and on the north side, where no one ever went, the ground was untended and uneven.

It took him some minutes to make the circuit, but when he had completed it he started again. It was on his second tour that he discovered—literally stumbled against—the gargoyle, which, of course, has been replaced now. The storm had split it but the odd thing was that the two halves, instead of being splintered and separated by their fall, lay intact on the sodden grass within a few inches of each other. Mr. Greenstream could not have believed the grinning mask was so big. It had split where the spout passed through it: one half retained the chin, the other was mostly eye and cheek and ear. Mr. Greenstream could see the naked spout hanging out far above him, long and bent and shining like a black snake. The comfortless sight may have added to the burden of his thoughts, for he walked on more slowly. This time, however, he did not turn aside at the porch, but went straight in, carefully shutting the inner and outer doors behind him.