A. E. (Alfred Edgar) Coppard - The Collected Tales of A. E. Coppard

Fazz sat with the tube of the thermometer projecting from his mouth. At the end of the test he regarded it very earnestly before returning it disconsolately to the table. Then he addressed his visitor with considerable gloom.

“Pardon me, I did not catch your name.”

“Simpkins.”

“Simpkins!” repeated Fazz, with a dubious drawl. “Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t like Simpkins, it sounds so minuscular. What are you taking?”

“I won’t take anything, sir, thank you,” replied Simpkins.

“I mean, what schools are you taking?”

“Oh, no school at all.”

Fazz was mystified. “What college are you?”

“I’m not at a college,” confessed the other. “I came to see Mr. Evans-Antrobus with a note. I’m waiting for an answer.”

“Where do you come from?”

“From Bagshot and Buffle’s.” After a silence he added: “Bespoke boots.”

“Hump, you are very young to make bespoke boots, aren’t you, Simpkins, surely? Are you an agnostic? Have a cigar? You must, you’ve been very good, and I am so interested in your career; but tell me now what it exactly is that you are sitting in my room for?”

Simpkins told him all he could.

“It’s interesting, most fascinating,” declared Fazz, “but it is a little beyond me all the same. I am afraid, Simpkins, that you have been deposited with me as if I were a bank, and you were something not negotiable, as you really are, I fear. But you mustn’t tell the dean about Evans-Antrobus, no, you mustn’t, it’s never done. Tell me, why do you make bespoke boots? It’s an unusual taste to display. Wouldn’t you rather come to college, for instance, and study—er—anthropology—nothing at all about boots in anthropology?”

“No,” said Simpkins. He shuffled in his chair and felt uneasy. “I’d be out of my depth.” Fazz glared at him, and Simpkins repeated: “Out of my depth, that would be, sure.”

“This is very shameful,” commented the other, “but it’s interesting, most fascinating. You brazenly maintain that you would rather study boots than—than books and brains!”

“A cobbler must stick to his last,” replied Simpkins, recalling a phrase of his father’s.

“Bravo!” cried Fazz, “but not to an everlasting last!”

“And I don’t know anything about all this; there’s nothing about it I’d want to know, it wouldn’t be any good to me. It’s no use mixing things, and there’s a lot to be learnt about boots—you’d be surprised. You got to keep yourself to yourself and not get out of your depth—take a steady line and stick to it, and not get out of your depth.”

“But, dearie, you don’t sleep with a lifebelt girt about your loins, do you now? I’m not out of my depth; I shouldn’t be even if I started to make boots. . . .”

“Oh, wouldn’t you?” shouted Simpkins.

“I should find it rather a shallow occupation; mere business is the very devil of a business; business would be a funny sort of life.”

“Life’s a funny business; you look after your business and that will look after you.”

“But what in the world are we in the world at all for, Simpkins? Isn’t it surely to do just the things we most intensely want to do? And you do boots and boots and boots. Don’t you ever get out and about?—theatres—girls—sport—or do you insist on boot, the whole boot, and nothing but the boot?”

“No, none of them,” replied Simpkins. “Don’t care for theatres, I’ve never been. Don’t care for girls, I like a quiet life. I keep myself to myself—it’s safer, don’t get out of your depth then. I do go and have a look at the football match sometimes, but it’s only because we make the boots for some of your crack players, and you want to know what you are making them for. Work doesn’t trouble me, nothing troubles me, and I got money in the bank.”

“Damme, Simpkins, you have a terrible conviction about you; if I listen to you much longer I shall bind myself apprentice to you. I feel sure that you make nice, soft, watertight, everlasting boots, and then we should rise in the profession together. Discourse, Simpkins; you enchant mine ears—both of them.”

“What I say is,” concluded Simpkins, “you can’t understand everything. I shouldn’t want to; I’m all right as it is.”

“Of course you are, you’re simply too true. This is a place flowing with afternoon tea, tutors, and claptrap. It’s a city in which everything is set upon a bill. You’re simply too true, if we are not out of our depth we are in up to our ears—I am. It’s most fascinating.”

Soon afterwards Simpkins left him. Descending the stairs to the rooms of Evans-Antrobus he switched on the light. It was very quiet and snug in those rooms, with the soft elegant couch, the reading-lamp with the delicious violet shade, the decanter with whisky, the box of chocolate biscuits, and the gramophone. He sat down by the fire, waiting and waiting. Simpkins waited so long that he got used to the room, he even stole a sip of whisky and some of the chocolate biscuits. Then to show his independence, his contempt for Mr. Evans-Antrobus and his trickery, he took still more of the whisky—a drink he had never tasted before—he really took quite a lot. He heaped coal upon the fire, and stalked about the room with his hands in his pockets or examined the books, most of which were about something called Jurisprudence, and suchlike. Simpkins liked books; he began reading:

That the Pleuronectidæ are admirably adapted by their flattened and asymmetrical structure for their habits of life, is manifest from several species, such as soles and flounders, etc., being extremely common.

He did not care much for science; he opened another:

It is difficult indeed to imagine that anything can oscillate so rapidly as to strike the retina of the eye 831,479,000,000,000 in one second, as must be the case with violet light according to this hypothesis.

Simpkins looked at the light and blinked his eyes. That had a violet shade. He really did not care for science, and he had an inclination to put the book down as his head seemed to be swaying, but he continued to turn the pages.

Snowdon is the highest mountain in England or Wales. Snowdon is not so high as Ben Nevis. Therefore the highest mountain in England or Wales is not so high as Ben Nevis.

“Oh, my head!” mumbled Simpkins.

Water must be either warm or not warm, but it does not follow that it must be warm or cold.

Simpkins felt giddy. He dropped the book, and tottered to the couch. Immediately the room spun round and something in his head began to hum, to roar like an aeroplane a long way up in the sky. He felt that he ought to get out of the room, quickly, and get some water, either not or cold warm—he didn’t mind which! He clapped on his hat and, slipping into his overcoat, he reached a door. It opened into a bedroom, very bare indeed compared with this other room, but Simpkins rolled in; the door slammed behind him, and in the darkness he fell upon a bed, with queer sensations that seemed to be dividing and subtracting in him.

When he awoke later—oh, it seemed much later—he felt quite well again. He had forgotten where he was. It was a strange place he was in, utterly dark; but there was a great noise sounding quite close to him—a gramophone, people shouting choruses and dancing about in the adjoining room. He could hear a lady’s voice, too. Then he remembered that he ought not to be in that room at all; it was, why, yes, it was criminal; he might be taken for a burglar or something! He slid from the bed, groped in the darkness until he found his hat, unbuttoned his coat, for he was fearfully hot, and stood at the bedroom door trembling in the darkness, waiting and listening to that tremendous row. He had been a fool to come in there! How was he to get out—how the deuce was he to get out? The gramophone stopped. He could hear the voices more plainly. He grew silently panic-stricken; it was awful, they’d be coming in to him perhaps, and find him sneaking there like a thief—he must get out, he must, he must get out; yes, but how?