Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

‘I know,’ he said, ‘Johnnie’s boys have been here.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I told them to try elsewhere.’

There were few white men in the Colony who rode bicycles, and only one in the district. Bicycles were used mostly by natives and a few schoolboys. All the children were away at school. Daphne’s unknown protector was therefore either a passing native or Donald doing his rounds. Moreover, there was the question of the gun. Few natives, if they owned firearms, would be likely to risk betraying this illicit fact. And few natives, however gallant, would risk the penalty for shooting a white man.

‘Why not let them put Old Tuys on charge?’ said Daphne.

‘I don’t prevent them,’ he said. ‘They can go ahead.’

‘They need a witness,’ she said. ‘Otherwise it’s his word against mine. Old Tuys would probably be acquitted on appeal.’

‘Nothing doing,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the law-courts.’

‘Well, it was very nice of you, Donald,’ she said. ‘I’m grateful.’

‘Then don’t talk to me about law cases.’

‘All right, I won’t.’

‘You see,’ he said, ‘how it is. Chakata wouldn’t like the scandal. All the past might come out. You never know what might come out if they start questioning Old Tuys in the courts. Old Chakata wouldn’t like it.’

‘I think he knows what you did, Donald. He’s very grateful.’

‘He’d be more grateful if Old Tuys had been killed.’

‘Did you catch Old Tuys on purpose or did you just happen to be there when Old Tuys came after me?’ she inquired.

‘Don’t know what you mean. I was putting up the Foot and Mouth notices that day. I was busy. I’ve got more to do than keep Old Tuys in sight.’

‘I’m going away next week,’ she said, ‘for about two years.’

‘So I hear. You have no conception of the greenness of the fields. It rains quite often … Go to see the Tower … Don’t return.

2

Linda Patterson, aged twenty-eight, was highly discontented. Daphne could not see why. She herself adored Uncle Pooh-bah with his rheumatism and long woollen combies. Only his constant threats to sell the damp old house and go to live in some hotel alarmed Daphne at the same time as the idea gave hope to her cousin Linda. Linda’s husband had been killed in a motor accident. She longed to be free to take a job in London.

‘How could you leave that lovely climate and come to this dismal place?’ Linda would say.

‘But,’ Daphne said happily, ‘this at least is England.’

Not long after she arrived Aunt Sarah, who was eighty-two, said to Daphne, ‘My dear, it isn’t done.’

‘What isn’t done?’

Aunt Sarah sighed, ‘You know very well what I mean. My nightdresses, dear, the rayon ones. There were three in my drawer, a green, a peach, and a pink. I only discovered this morning that they were gone. Now there is no one else in this house who could have taken them but you. Clara is above reproach, and besides, she can’t climb the stars, how could she? Linda has lots of nighties left over from her trousseau, poor gel —’

‘What are you saying?’ said Daphne. ‘What are you saying?’

Aunt Sarah took a pin out of her needle-box and pricked Daphne on the arm. ‘That’s for stealing my nighties,’ she said.

‘She’ll have to go to a home,’ said Linda. ‘We can’t keep a daily woman for more than a week because of Aunt Sarah’s accusing them of stealing.’

Pooh-bah said, ‘D’you know, apart from that one thing she’s quite normal, really. Wonderful for her age. If we could only somehow get her to realize how utterly foolish she is over that one thing —’

‘She’ll have to go to a home.’

Pooh-bah went out to look at the barometer and did not return.

‘I don’t mind, really,’ said Daphne.

‘Look at the work she causes,’ said Linda. ‘Look at the trouble!’

Next day, when Daphne was scrubbing the kitchen floor Aunt Sarah came and stood in a puddle before her. ‘My Friar’s Balsam,’ she said. ‘I left a full bottle in the bathroom, and it’s gone.

‘I know,’ said Daphne, scrubbing away, ‘I took it in a weak moment, but now I’ve put it back.’

‘Very well,’ said Aunt Sarah, trotting off and dragging the puddle with her. ‘But don’t do it again. Pilfering was always a great weakness in your mother, I recall.’

The winter temperature lasted well into April. Linda and Daphne had to sit by a one-bar electric fire in the library if they wanted to smoke; Pooh-bah’s asthma was affected by cigarette smoke.

Linda was conducting a weekend liaison with a barrister in London, and with Daphne in the house she found it easier to disappear for longer weekends, and then, sometimes, a week. ‘Daphne,’ she would say on the phone, ‘you don’t mind holding the fort, honestly? This is so important to me.

Daphne went for walks with Uncle Pooh-bah. She had to take short steps, for he was slow. They walked on the well-lad paths to the river which Daphne always referred to as ‘the Thames’, which indeed, of course, it was.

‘We went as far as the Thames,’ Daphne would tell Linda on their return. They ventured no further than the local lock, a walk bordered with green meadows and wonderful sheep.

Relations of some friends in the Colony invited her to London. She accepted, then told Linda when she would be away.

‘But,’ said Linda, ‘I shall be in London next week. It’s important, you know. Someone’s got to look after Pooh-bah and Aunt Sarah.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Daphne.

Linda cheered up. ‘Perhaps you could go the week after?’

‘No, next week,’ said Daphne patiently, ‘that’s when I’m going.’

‘Someone’s got to look after Pooh-bah and Aunt Sarah.’

‘Oh, I see.

Linda started to cry. Daphne said, ‘I’ll write to my friends, and explain.’ Linda dried her eyes and said, ‘You can’t imagine how deadly it is living in this awful house year after year with a couple of selfish old people and that helpless Clara.’

Next weekend, while Linda was away, several Patterson relations arrived. Molly, Rat, Mole and an infant called Pod. Mole was an unattached male cousin. Daphne expressed a desire to see Cambridge. He said it would be arranged. She said she would probably be in London soon. He said he hoped to see her there. Aunt Sarah stuck a pin in the baby’s arm, whereupon Molly and Rat took Daphne aside and advised her to clear out of the house as soon as possible. ‘It’s unhealthy.’

‘Oh,’ said Daphne, ‘but it’s typically English.’

‘Good gracious me!’ said Rat.

At last she had her week in London with the relations of her friends in the Colony. Daphne had been told they were wealthy, and was surprised when the taxi drove her to a narrow house in a mean little side street which was otherwise lined with garages.

‘Are you sure this is the right place?’ she asked the driver.

‘Twenty-five Champion Mews,’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ said Daphne. ‘This must be it.’

Before Daphne had left the country Linda had remarked, ‘A house in Champion Mews. They must be rather rich. How I would adore a mews house.’ Daphne remembered this.

The interior of the house was very winning. She readjusted her ideas, and at dinner was able to say to her hostess, ‘What an adorable mews house.

‘Isn’t it? We were so lucky — literally everyone was after it.’

Mrs Pridham was middle-aged, and smart. Mr Pridham was a plastic surgeon.

‘I shan’t make the mistake,’ he said to Daphne, ‘of asking you about all the dangers you encountered in darkest Africa.’

Daphne laughed.