Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

Mark Letter had remained in his dream for two and a half hours. What was it I had left unfinished? I could not for the life of me recall what he had said when at last he emerged from his office-box. Perhaps it was then I had made tea. Mr Letter always liked a cup when he was neither in his frenzy nor in his abstraction, but ordinary and talkative. He would speak of his hobby, fretwork. I do not think Mr Letter had any home life. At forty-six he was still unmarried, living alone in a house at Roehampton. As I walked up the lane to my lodgings I recollected that Mr Letter had come in for his tea with his tie still dangling from his hand, his throat white under the open-neck shirt, and his ‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’ in his teeth.

At last I was home and my Yale in the lock. Softly, I said to myself, softly turn the key, and thank God I’m home. My landlady passed through the hall from kitchen to dining-room with a salt and pepper cruet in her crinkly hands. She had some new lodgers. ‘My guests’, she always called them. The new guests took precedence over the old with my landlady. I felt desolate. I simply could not climb the stairs to my room to wash, and then descend to take brown soup with the new guests while my landlady fussed over them, ignoring me. I sat for a moment in the chair in the hall to collect my strength. A year’s illness drains one, however young. Suddenly the repulsion of the brown soup and the anxiety about the office made me decide. I would not go upstairs to my room. I must return to the office to see what it was that I had overlooked.

‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’ — I told myself that I was giving way to neurosis. Many times I had laughed at my sister who, after she had gone to bed at night, would send her husband downstairs to make sure all the gas taps were turned off, all the doors locked, back and front. Very well, I was as silly as my sister, but I understood her obsession, and simply opened the door and slipped out of the house, tired as I was, making my weary way back to the bus stop, back to the office.

‘Why should I do this for Mark Letter?’ I demanded of myself. But really, I was not returning for his sake, it was for my own. I was doing this to get rid of the feeling of incompletion, and that song in my brain swimming round like a damned goldfish.

I wondered, as the bus took me back along the familiar route, what I would say if Mark Letter should still be at the office. He often worked late, or at least, stayed there late, doing I don’t know what, for his screw and nail business did not call for long hours. It seemed to me he had an affection for those dingy premises. I was rather apprehensive lest I should find Mr Letter at the office, standing, just as I had last seen him, swinging his tie in his hand, beside my desk. I resolved that if I should find him there, I should say straight out that I had left something behind me.

A clock struck quarter past seven as I got off the bus. I realized that again I had not paid my fare. I looked at the money in my hand for a stupid second. Then I felt reckless. ‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’ — I caught myself humming the tune as I walked quickly up the said side street to our office. My heart knocked at my throat, for I was eager. Softly, softly, I said to myself as I turned the key of the outside door. Quickly, quickly, I ran up the stairs. Only outside the office door I halted, and while I found its key on my bunch it occurred to me how strangely my sister would think I was behaving.

I opened the door and my sadness left me at once. With a great joy I recognized what it was I had left behind me, my body lying strangled on the floor. I ran towards my body and embraced it like a lover.

Miss Pinkerton’s Apocalypse

One evening, a damp one in February, something flew in at the window. Miss Laura Pinkerton, who was doing something innocent to the fire, heard a faint throbbing noise overhead. On looking up, ‘George! come here! come quickly!’

George Lake came in at once, though sullenly because of their quarrel, eating a sandwich from the kitchen. He looked up at the noise then sat down immediately.

From this point onward their story comes in two versions, his and hers. But they agree as to the main facts; they agree that it was a small round flattish object, and that it flew.

‘It’s a flying object of some sort,’ whispered George eventually.

‘It’s a saucer,’ said Miss Pinkerton, keen and loud, ‘an antique piece. You can tell by the shape.’

‘It can’t be an antique, that’s absolutely certain,’ George said.

He ought to have been more tactful, and would have been, but for the stress of the moment. Of course it set Miss Pinkerton off, she being in the right.

‘I know my facts,’ she stated as usual, ‘I should hope I know my facts. I’ve been in antique china for twenty-three years in the autumn,’ which was true, and George knew it.

The little saucer was cavorting round the lamp.

‘It seems to be attracted by the light,’ George remarked, as one might distinguish a moth.

Promptly, it made as if to dive dangerously at George’s head. He ducked, and Miss Pinkerton backed against the wall. As the dish tilted on its side, skimming George’s shoulder, Miss Pinkerton could see inside it.

‘The thing might be radioactive. It might be dangerous.’ George was breathless. The saucer had climbed, was circling high above his head, and now made for him again, but missed.

‘It is not radioactive,’ said Miss Pinkerton, ‘it is Spode.’

‘Don’t be so damn silly,’ George replied, under the stress of the occasion.

‘All right, very well,’ said Miss Pinkerton, ‘it is not Spode. I suppose you are the expert, George, I suppose you know best. I was only judging by the pattern. After the best part of a lifetime in china —’

‘It must be a forgery,’ George said unfortunately. For, unfortunately, something familiar and abrasive in Miss Pinkerton’s speech began to grind within him. Also, he was afraid of the saucer.

It had taken a stately turn, following the picture rail in a steady career round the room.

‘Forgery, ha!’ said Miss Pinkerton. She was out of the room like a shot, and in again carrying a pair of steps.

‘I will examine the mark,’ said she, pointing intensely at the saucer. ‘Where are my glasses?’

Obligingly, the saucer settled in a corner; it hung like a spider a few inches from the ceiling. Miss Pinkerton adjusted the steps. With her glasses on she was almost her sunny self again, she was ceremonious and expert.

‘Don’t touch it, don’t go near it!’ George pushed her aside and grabbed the steps, knocking over a blue glass bowl, a Dresden figure, a vase of flowers and a decanter of sherry; like a bull in a china shop, as Miss Pinkerton exclaimed. But she was determined, and struggled to reclaim the steps.

‘Laura!’ he said desperately. ‘I believe it is Spode. I take your word.’

The saucer then flew out of the window.

They acted quickly. They telephoned to the local paper. A reporter would come right away. Meanwhile, Miss Pinkerton telephoned to her two scientific friends — at least, one was interested in psychic research and the other was an electrician. But she got no reply from either. George had leaned out of the window, scanning the rooftops and the night sky. He had leaned out of the back windows, had tried all the lights and the wireless. These things were as usual.

The news man arrived, accompanied by a photographer.

‘There’s nothing to photograph,’ said Miss Pinkerton excitably. ‘It went away.

‘We could take a few shots of the actual spot,’ the man explained.

Miss Pinkerton looked anxiously at the result of George and the steps.

‘The place is a wreck.’