Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

‘Oh, is he?’ said the wiry woman, ‘Well, he’s been up to his tricks, the back-door squinter.’

June made one more attempt to retreat.

‘You stop right there,’ said the redhead.

The policeman arrived. ‘Stand up,’ he said to Bill.

It was a very distressing case. The mother of the small girl was the chief witness for the Prosecution.

‘I was out for a walk with my daughter,’ she said in the witness box, ‘and she wanted to go. I was holding her out when suddenly I saw the face of the accused at the window.

‘I am afraid,’ she added, ‘that the shock was too much for me. I let go of Betty and poor little thing, she went right in.

‘Was the child hurt?’ inquired the magistrate.

‘Well, there’s nothing to actually see,’ said the mother. ‘But it can’t be good for a child, a thing like that.’

If it had been left to the other witnesses, the Prosecution might perhaps have lost the case.

Redhead let them down by saying she had only gone in to tidy up when she saw Bill at the window.

No one would say what they were really doing when they saw Bill at the window. As you know, the year was 1950. Not that it made much difference; peeping is peeping, no matter what you see. Still, they were glad of the mother of Betty to make a clear case of it.

The magistrate spoke severely to Maisie, being under the impression that she was June. This was not surprising, because with her fair hair parted in the middle and pulled back into a bun, Maisie looked remarkably like her rival, as do so many women whose men cannot really escape from them, but seek the same person in other arms.

When the magistrate was put right as to the mistaken identity, he spoke severely to June.

‘You come to this place with another woman’s husband and condone his offence,’ he said. ‘You even attempt to impersonate,’ he added, ‘this good, this honest woman.’

Bill was fined ten pounds with an option of three weeks.

June emigrated to Australia to forget. Maisie went to the hairdresser without telling a soul, and had her hairstyle changed in favour of something different. Bill went to his lawyer without telling a soul and had his will changed in favour of his simple cousin Leonard.

Come Along, Marjorie

Not many days had passed since my arrival at Watling Abbey when I realized that most of us were recovering from nerves. The Abbey, a twelfth-century foundation, lies in Worcestershire on the site of an ancient Temple of Mithras. It had recently been acquired and restored by its original religious Order at that time, just after the war, when I went to stay there and found after a few days that most of us were nervous cases.

By ‘most of us’ I mean the lay visitors who resided in the pilgrims’ quarters on two sides of the Annexe. We were all known as pilgrims. Apart from us, there was a group of permanent lay residents known as the Cloisters, because they lived in rooms above the cloisters.

Neurotics are awfully quick to notice other people’s mentalities, everyone goes into an exaggerated category. I placed four categories at the Abbey. First ourselves, the visiting neurotic pilgrims. Second the Cloisters, they were cranks on the whole. Third the monks; they seemed not to have nerves, but non-individualized, non-neurotic, so I thought then, they billowed about in their white habits under the gold of that October, or swung out from the cloisters in processions on Feast Days. Into the fourth category I placed Miss Marjorie Pettigrew.

Indeed, she did seem sane. I got the instant impression that she alone among the lay people, both pilgrims and Cloisters, understood the purpose of the place. I did get that impression.

Three of us had arrived at Watling together. It was dark when I got off the train, but under the only gas bracket on the platform I saw the two women standing. They looked about them in that silly manner of women unused to arriving at strange railway stations. They heard me asking the ticket man the way to the Abbey and chummed up with me immediately. As we walked along with our suitcases I made note that there was little in common between them and me except Catholicism, and then only in the mystical sense, for their religious apprehensions were different from mine. ‘Different from’ is the form my neurosis takes. I do like the differentiation of things, but it is apt to lead to nerve-racking pursuits. On the other hand, life led on the different-from level is always an adventure.

Those were quite nice women. One was Squackle-wackle, so I called her to myself, for she spoke like that, squackle-wackle, squackle-wackle — it was her neurosis — all about her job as a nurse in a London hospital. She had never managed to pass an exam but was content, squackle-wackle, to remain a subordinate, though thirty-three in December. All this in the first four minutes. The other woman would be nearer forty. She was quieter, but not much. As we approached the Abbey gates she said, ‘My name’s Jennifer, what’s yours?’

‘Gloria Deplores-you,’ I answered. It is true my Christian name is Gloria.

‘Gloria what?’

‘It’s a French name,’ I said, inventing in my mind the spelling ‘des Pleuresyeux’ in case I should be pressed for it.

‘We’ll call you Gloria,’ she said. I had stopped in the Abbey gateway, wondering if I should turn back after all. ‘Come along, Gloria,’ she said.

It was not till some days later that I found that Jennifer’s neurosis took the form of ‘same as’. We are all the same, she would assert, infuriating me because I knew that God had made everyone unique. ‘We are all the same’ was her way of saying we were all equal in the sight of God. Still, the inaccuracy irritated me. And still, like Squackle-wackle, she was quite an interesting person. It was only in my more vibrant moments that I deplored them.

Oh, the trifles, the people, that get on your nerves when you have a neurosis!

Don’t I remember the little ginger man with the bottle-green cloak? He was one of the Cloisters, having been resident at Watling for over three years. He was compiling a work called The Monkish Booke of Brewes. Once every fortnight he would be absent at the British Museum and I suppose other record houses, from where he would return with a great pad of notes on the methods and subtleties of brewing practised in ancient monasteries, don’t I remember? And he, too, was a kindly sort in between his frightful fumes against the management of Watling Abbey. When anything went wrong he blamed the monks, unlike the Irish who blamed the Devil. This sometimes caused friction between the ginger man and the Irish, for which the monks blamed the Devil.

There were ladies from Cork and thereabouts, ladies from Tyrone and Londonderry, all having come for a rest or a Retreat, and most bearing those neurotic stigmata of South or North accordingly. There were times when bitter bits of meaning would whistle across the space between North and South when they were gathered together outside of their common worship. Though all were Catholics, ‘Temperament tells,’ I told myself frequently. I did so often tell myself remarks like that to still my own nerves.

I joined Squackle-wackle and Jennifer each morning to recite the Fifteen Mysteries. After that we went to the town for coffee. Because I rested in the afternoons Jennifer guessed I was recovering from nerves. She asked me outright, ‘Is it nerves?’ I said ‘Yes,’ outright.

Squackle-wackle had also been sent away with nervous exhaustion, she made no secret of it, indeed no.

Jennifer was delighted. ‘I’ve got the same trouble. Fancy, all three of us. That makes us all the same.’

‘It makes us,’ I said, ‘more different from each other than other people are.