Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

‘He started a campaign of inquiry against us. We had to fill in forms about our origin. We had to fill in an enormous questionnaire for our licence to run the Playhouse.

‘On the grounds that we were not born on earth, and because there was no evidence of life on the Moon, Johnnie tried to prove that we did not exist at all. He sent us an official note objecting to our description of the Playhouse. He could not accept the phrase “known as the Remarkable”, he wrote, and begged to point out that whereas “Playhouse” was a noun, “Remarkable” was an adjective. The two could not be reconciled as signifying one and the same object.

‘As the year wore on, so did Johnnie’s nuisance-campaign. His tone became more and more peremptory. He tightened up on the vigilance of the police, and we were frequently fined for small infringements.

‘Johnnie defeated us, in fact. We gave our last performance one evening in February. It was seven years since our first performance. The people were very upset, but Johnnie had so worked on them that they were afraid to express their grief.

‘We had decided to take Dolores back to the Moon with us, in the usual way, you know.’

‘What way?’ I asked, eagerly.

‘Don’t interrupt,’ said Moon. ‘And anyhow you know the way to the Moon. You go on the Uprise of your Downfall, you told me yourself!’

‘Listen,’ I said desperately, ‘I know nothing about how to get to the Moon. There’s a lot of talk about spaceships, but what have they got to do with the Uprise…?’

‘Quite,’ said Moon. ‘Quite.’

I had better say straight away that so far as getting to the Moon is concerned, that was all the information I extracted from Moon Biglow. It has something to do with uprising and downfalling, we may be sure. But the end of his story is still to be told.

‘On what I thought was my last night on earth,’ Moon continued, ‘I took a walk over Hampstead Heath. We had closed the doors of the Remarkable for the last time and were all prepared for the last Uprise of our Downfall. Dolores was to come with us. We were both sorry and glad to go. We felt sad about leaving Hampstead, but the place and people had changed under Johnnie’s influence, and also largely under our own in the last seven years.

‘I brooded on these things and was turning back to our quarters where I was to meet Dolores, when suddenly I heard a curious sound on my right.

‘As I walked towards the place, I became aware that a number of people were gathered together hidden from my sight behind a large boulder. Presently I could hear more clearly what the noise was: these people were chanting together the old refrain. Tum tum ya, tum tum ya. Silently, I peered round the boulder, and stopped short, sick and terrified and appalled by what I saw.

‘Before I describe what I saw, I must tell you that Johnnie Heath had recently revived the Tum Tum Times. One of its columns was regularly devoted to a plea for a return to what was described variously as “the native purity of our customs”, or “the purity of our native customs”, or else “the customs of our native purity”. I had not thought very much about this, for Johnnie’s ideas were always rather cranky. But one day I had chanced to read in this column a reference to an organization which was recommended as offering “an outlet through a classical mode of expressions of our most pure and primitive passions”. On reading this, I shuddered, then thought no more about it.

‘I remembered this some time after the incident on Hampstead Heath.

‘Now,’ said Moon Biglow, ‘I will tell you what I saw there.

‘A group of young men and women, well known to me, and many of whom had been close friends, were seated cross-legged in a circle round a stone slab. By the light of the Moon I saw them led by Johnnie Heath clapping their hands to the rhythm of tum tum ya, tum tum ya. On the slab inside the circle lay the dead body of Dolores, with a knife stuck in her throat. The blood was congealed on her neck, where it had flowed and ceased to flow.

‘Then I saw, watching from behind them, two of my Moon Brothers. They moved round silently to where I was standing. Hand in hand we fled home.

‘My five Moon Brothers left the earth secretly during the night. I could not, myself, face the Moon without Dolores. I felt it necessary to remain on earth and die here where she died.

‘Of course, I cleared out of Hampstead.

‘But the strange thing is, that our mission wasn’t a failure, after all. The revival of the tum tum ya cult did not last. It still crops up from time to time here and there, for these things spread. But the absence of the Changing Drama of the Moon began to be felt. The sense of loss led to a tremendous movement of the human spirit. The race of the artist appeared on the earth, everywhere attempting to express the lost Moon drama. Long after the people who had frequented the old Remarkable Playhouse were dead and forgotten the legend survived; and long after the legend was forgotten, the sense of loss survived.

‘So it happens,’ said Moon Biglow, ‘that whenever the tum tum ya movement gets afoot, and the monotony and horror start taking hold of people, the artists rise up and proclaim the virtue of the remarkable things that are missing from the earth.

‘And so,’ said Moon Biglow, ‘you owe your literature, your symphonies, your old masters and your new masters, to the Six Moon Brothers and Dolores. It was a good thing we had to go. We could never have induced you to shift for yourselves by any other means.

‘You and your littery friends,’ said Moon Biglow, ‘ought to know the true position, which is what I’ve told you. And if ever you produce a decent poem or a story, it won’t be on account of anything you’ve got in this world but of something remarkable which you haven’t got. There is always a call for the Remarkable from time to time, simply because we closed the doors of the Playhouse called Remarkable, and because the Young Remarkables have gone off home, and because there is nothing left Remarkable beneath the visiting Moon.’

Chimes

Tonight is the anniversary of one of my most puzzling murders. It was the autumn of 1954, when life was sleepier than it is now. Saturday, the second of October, to be exact.

For a detective, I haven’t a particularly good memory as a rule. But you will see presently why I remember this particular date. It was nearly an unsolved murder. Old Matthews was a farmer of the village of Mellow in the West Country. He was found dead on the morning of the third of October in an outhouse of his own farm, lying at the foot of the ladder leading to the hayloft. He was eighty-two.

At the inquest the local doctor gave evidence that Matthews’s death was due to a fractured skull. It was assumed he had been up in the hayloft during the night and had fallen down the ladder. The verdict was death by misadventure.

You will wonder what old Matthews was doing in the hayloft during the night.

He slept in the hayloft. It is true he owned the farm. And there was a large farmhouse where his wife lived. You must understand that Matthews was rather peculiar. So was his wife. They didn’t get on together and he preferred to sleep in the outhouse. Situations like that are not unusual in the deep country.

The inquest was soon over and Matthews was buried on the sixth of October. A fortnight after the funeral the police received an anonymous letter accusing Harold Matthews, the son, of having murdered his father.

It was not generally known at the time, but in fact Harold was not old Matthews’s legitimate son.

The police frequently receive anonymous letters and so they took no great notice of this one. They tried to trace the author, whom they suspected to be some village woman, but they were unsuccessful. Before long, however, rumours were going about the village to the effect that Harold had murdered his father. The police questioned Harold. He was unhelpful, but that wasn’t his fault, for he was rather simple.