Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

‘Auntie says to try them properly,’ I said, ‘while I’m about it.’ This gave me an opportunity to have a look round the front premises.

‘You’ll only want them for your studies,’ Basil said.

‘Oh, I sometimes need glasses even when I’m not reading,’ I said. I was looking through a door into a small inner office, darkened by a tree outside in the lane. The office contained a dumpy green safe, an old typewriter on a table, and a desk in the window with a ledger on it. Other ledgers were placed —

‘Nonsense,’ Dorothy was saying. ‘A healthy girl like you — you hardly need glasses at all. For reading, to save your eyes, perhaps yes. But when you’re not reading …’.

I said, ‘Grandmother said to inquire after your mother.’

‘She’s failing,’ she said.

I took to giving Basil a charming smile when I passed him in the street on the way to the shops. This was very frequently. And on these occasions he would be standing at his shop door awaiting my return; then I would snub him. I wondered how often he was prepared to be won and rejected within the same ten minutes.

I took walks before supper round the back lanes, ambling right round the Simmondses’ house, thinking of what was going on inside. One dusky time it started to rain heavily, and I found I could reasonably take shelter under the tree which grew quite close to the grimy window of the inner office. I could just see over the ledge and make out a shape of a person sitting at the desk. Soon, I thought, the shape will have to put on the light.

After five minutes’ long waiting time the shape arose and switched on the light by the door. It was Basil, suddenly looking pink-haired. As he returned to the desk he stooped and took from the safe a sheaf of papers held in the teeth of a large paper clip. I knew he was going to select one sheet of paper from the sheaf, and that this one document would be the exciting, important one. It was like reading a familiar book: one knew what was coming, but couldn’t bear to miss a word. He did extract one long sheet of paper, and held it up. It was typewritten with a paragraph in handwriting at the bottom on the side visible from the window. He laid it side by side with another sheet of paper which was lying on the desk. I pressed close up to the window, intending to wave and smile if I was seen, and to call out that I was sheltering from the rain which was now coming down in thumps. But he kept his eyes on the two sheets of paper. There were other papers lying about the desk; I could not see what was on them. But I was quite convinced that he had been practising handwriting on them, and that he was in the process of forging his mother’s will.

Then he took up the pen. I can still smell the rain and hear it thundering about me, and feel it dripping on my head from the bough hanging above me. He raised his eyes and looked out at the rain. It seemed his eyes rested on me, at my station between the tree and the window. I kept still and close to the tree like a hunted piece of nature, willing myself to be the colour of bark and leaves and rain. Then I realized how much more clearly I could see him than he me, for it was growing dark.

He pulled a sheet of blotting paper towards him. He dipped his pen in the ink and started writing on the bottom of the sheet of paper before him, comparing it from time to time with the one he had taken out of the safe. I was not surprised, but I was thrilled, when the door behind him slowly opened. It was like seeing the film of the book. Dorothy advanced on her creeping feet, and he did not hear, but formed the words he was writing, on and on. The rain pelted down regardless. She was looking crookedly, through her green glasses with her one eye, over his shoulder at the paper.

‘What are you doing?’ she said.

He jumped up and pulled the blotting paper over his work. Her one eye through her green glasses glinted upon him, though I did not actually see it do so, but saw only the dark green glass focused with a squint on to his face.

‘I’m making up the accounts,’ he said, standing with his back to the desk, concealing the papers. I saw his hand reach back and tremble among them.

I shivered in my soaking wet clothes. Dorothy looked with her eye at the window. I slid sideways to avoid her and ran all the way home.

Next morning I said, ‘I’ve tried to read with these glasses. It’s all a blur. I suppose I’ll have to take them back?’

‘Didn’t you notice anything wrong when you tried —’

‘— tried them on in the shop?’

‘No. But the shop’s so dark. Must I take them back.?’

I took them into Mr Simmonds early that afternoon.

‘I tried to read with them this morning, but it’s all a blur.’ It was true that I had smeared them with cold cream first.

Dorothy was beside us in no time. She peered one-eyed at the glasses, then at me.

‘Are you constipated?’ she said.

I maintained silence. But I felt she was seeing everything through her green glasses.

‘Put them on,’ Dorothy said.

‘Try them on,’ said Basil.

They were ganged up together. Everything was going wrong, for I had come here to see how matters stood between them after the affair of the will.

Basil gave me something to read. ‘It’s all right now,’ I said, ‘but it was all a blur when I tried to read this morning.’

‘Better take a dose,’ Dorothy said.

I wanted to get out of the shop with my glasses as quickly as possible, but the brother said, ‘I’d better test your eyes again while you’re here just to make sure.

He seemed quite normal. I followed him into the dark interior. Dorothy switched on the light. They both seemed normal. The scene in the little office last night began to lose its conviction. As I read out the letters on the card in front of me I was thinking of Basil as ‘Mr Simmonds’ and Dorothy as ‘Miss Simmonds’, and feared their authority, and was in the wrong.

‘That seems to be all right,’ Mr Simmonds said. ‘But wait a moment. He produced some coloured slides with lettering on them.

Miss Simmonds gave me what appeared to be a triumphant one-eyed leer, and as one who washes her hands of a person, started to climb the stairs. Plainly, she knew I had lost my attraction for her brother.

But before she turned the bend in the stairs she stopped and came down again. She went to a row of shelves and shifted some bottles. I read on. She interrupted:

‘My eye-drops, Basil. I made them up this morning. Where are they?’ Mr Simmonds was suddenly watching her as if something inconceivable was happening.

‘Wait, Dorothy. Wait till I’ve tested the girl’s eyes.’

She had lifted down a small brown bottle. ‘I want my eye-drops. I wish you wouldn’t displace — Are these they?’

I noted her correct phrase, ‘Are these they?’ and it seemed just over the border of correctness. Perhaps, after all, this brother and sister were strange, vicious, in the wrong.

She had raised the bottle and was reading the label with her one good eye. ‘Yes, this is mine. It has my name on it,’ she said.

Dark Basil, dark Dorothy. There was something wrong after all. She walked upstairs with her bottle of eye-drops. The brother put his hand on my elbow and heaved me to my feet, forgetting his coloured slides.

‘There’s nothing wrong with your eyes. Off you go.’ He pushed me into the front shop. His flat eyes were wide open as he handed me my glasses. He pointed to the door. ‘I’m a busy man,’ he said.

From upstairs came a long scream. Basil jerked open the door for me, but I did not move. Then Dorothy, upstairs, screamed and screamed and screamed. Basil put his hands to his head, covering his eyes. Dorothy appeared on the bend of the stairs, screaming, doubled-up, with both hands covering her good eye.