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

Sir Sigismund Keen was writing at his desk when the dark dust thinned away from before Mr. Amber’s eyes. He asked if he might have another cushion, and Sir Sigismund arranged it under his head.

‘That’s better,’ said the patient. ‘I must have had one of my attacks.’

As Sir Sigismund continued to write, Mr. Amber slid weakly off the sofa and tottered across the room to the doctor’s side.

‘Are you making out a prescription for me?’ he asked in a subdued voice.

Sir Sigismund nodded.

‘Is it a tonic?’ he inquired timidly.

‘It will have a certain tonic effect,’ Sir Sigismund answered guardedly.

‘I’m sorry I made such a scene just now—you must have thought me very badly brought up,’ Mr. Amber murmured, altogether crestfallen.

Sir Sigismund described a semi-circle with his head in order to lick an envelope. ‘No, Mr. Amber; your reluctance to be examined was entirely understandable.’

‘Then I am very ill?’ asked Mr. Amber. The tenseness of his earlier manner had disappeared and he seemed happier.

‘I have written to Dr. Wormwood about you,’ replied the doctor. ‘His address appears to be 19A, St. Mary’s Buildings, Studdert Street, West.’

‘West fourteen,’ said Mr. Amber.

‘West fourteen. I’m afraid your heart is affected, and you will have to take considerable care—great care. You must go to bed as soon as you get home. . . . Oh, never mind, Mr. Amber; you can send me a cheque.’

‘A cheque?’ said Mr. Amber doubtfully.

‘It will be one guinea, then. Thank you.

As the door closed on Mr. Amber, Sir Sigismund rang the bell. A nurse appeared.

‘Nurse, I should be glad if you would see Mr. Amber to his home.’

‘Yes, Sir Sigismund. Shall I inform the relatives?’

‘You had better ask him,’ Sir Sigismund Keen replied. ‘But I forgot he has no relatives.’

There are things one cannot get used to. A hot bath may, and perhaps ought to be, a habit; it rarely demands resolution; its frequency, within limits, is taken for granted, and, among ordinary people, scarcely commands respect. But a cold bath, however misrepresented by self-hypnotism or conscience, is usually a practice, seldom a habit, never an indulgence. Be the prospect of immersion never so attractive, the reality of it, the imminence even, sets one’s inclinations in revolt. It is a chronic insurrection; the conscript forces of the will—that minion of manliness, respectability’s redoubt—may scotch but cannot kill it.

But these are paltry encounters, bloodless Italian wars, compared with the campaign which opens with one’s determination to bathe; and I, as with towel draped about my neck, I started on the ‘good’ twenty minutes’ walk to the river, was complacently aware of this inward conflict. In the unwonted firmness—finality almost—of my farewells and in my avoidance of their tiresome sentimental frillings, resolution must, I thought, have been apparent; the snap of the gate was purposeful; my choice of the steep, adder-haunted path to the wood was unmistakable; I evidently meant business. On the reverse slope that dropped more gradually to the river this self-imposed tension gave way to a more legitimate excitement. Gleams of the river kindled anticipation. The brilliance of the sunlit grass glimpsed tantalizingly between twisted branches or framed in occasional openings, made my heart beat faster. I began to run.

But before reaching the little gate that led into the meadow I stopped. My thoughts took a gloomier turn. The danger of bathing when overheated was only one of many perils; weeds, cramp, heart failure, the odious oozy circumstances of drowning. My loneliness increased, but I revelled in it; everything led up to it and emphasized it. Better to be drowned, I thought, than to be saved from drowning; fished out of a swimming-bath by an obese instructor, and ‘brought round’ by the relentless appliance of physical indignities in an atmosphere staled by the breath of obscenely curious urchins! Better be drowned than rescued to make a Brighton holiday by some officious tripper, who would wear the Royal Humane Society’s medal and never weary of retelling his exploit.

In this intolerant mood, feeling that the very existence of the human race was an insult to my self-sufficiency, I approached the little green knoll whose further bank, I knew, sloped steeply to the water, but not so steeply as to forbid one to recline on it and bask in the sunshine. Essential solitude and privacy, protection militarily perfect awaited me in this declivity; a security almost tangible, an exquisite medium through which my thoughts could roam with something amounting to physical pleasure. Reaching the summit, I stopped; for my stronghold had been surprised.

A man was lying there in the most perfect, because the most unconscious, occupation. His formidable boots, his grey flannel shirt, his corduroy trousers were lying all about. Ordinarily, the thought that so much should be encased in so little gives a pathos to divested clothing; but his had an amplitude, an air of being successfully, if rudely worn, that forbade pity. The impression of size was repeated by their owner. His head, pivoted on a large arm, turned slowly; he said ‘Good morning’ indistinctly down two sides of a pipe, and resumed his reflections.

Hedged about by his ponderous garments, daunted and almost intimidated by his immobility, I undressed; it was a prosaic business, robbed of all romance. Subject as I was to scrutiny, observed, sized up, I had as little joy of the process as though I were stripping for a Medical Board. The man was intensely difficult to talk to; and his monosyllabic replies had, I was afterwards to remember, a sinister intonation as though he were secretly bargaining with Destiny for my downfall. Mechanically I stuffed my socks into my shoes, after them my spectacles and wrist-watch, and sighed to think that this simple action should once have had all the thrill and significance of a final initiation. Instead of lingering on the bank until the forces of attraction and recoil had reached a delicate equilibrium—without giving the water a chance to get ready for me—I plunged in. The shock of the dive, usually as effective as a night’s sleep in supplying a brand-new set of thoughts and sensations, left mine exactly as they were—small, thwarted and commonplace.

This was awful. I swam round a corner to be out of sight of the monster on the bank, uneasily conscious that his proximity gave me a pioneering impetus, a confidence in negotiating weeds that I lacked before. The sudden rising of fish, the startling croak of a moor-hen in the sparse discoloured reeds, had no terrors for me. With equanimity I clove my way through slow-moving groups of foamy, closely-massed bubbles, to which I was wont to give a wide berth—thinking them the expiring sighs of men long drowned. The climax of my courage came when I investigated and bestrode a great log. This in other days I would have shunned; its curious conformation in three coils suggested a serpent, and who knew how much it trailed, like an iceberg, below it in the water? I stood on a shelving bank of gravel and laughed to feel it suddenly wriggled under my feet; and I dived in deep water and brought up a huge, pale, fleshy weed. At last, trembling and feeling incredibly weak and heavy, I climbed out on to the bank and reached for my towel. My eyes were blurred, and it was some seconds before I noticed that the man on the bank was partially dressed; still longer before I realized that the trousers he was wearing were not his but my own. He had drawn my coat up to his side.

There might be all sorts of explanations; there were perhaps as many lines to take. One could not tell from his attitude whether he was a madman, a convict, or simply a practical joker. If he was a thief, why hadn’t he decamped with the clothes? If he had meant it for a joke he wouldn’t have left the job half done. There was nothing, moreover, in his appearance to suggest jocularity. Provisionally, I was forced to conclude that he was mad; and I thought perhaps the question might be thrashed out more amicably over a couple of cigarettes. I moved across to get them out of my coat pocket.