Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

Then he dropped them. It was as if they had been jerked out of his hands by an invisible nudge. He approached close to the window and gazed, but now he was gazing at a point above and slightly to the left of my room. After about two minutes, he turned and disappeared.

Just then Gertha knocked at my door. ‘Frau Chef has protested, and you won’t have any more trouble,’ she said.

‘Did she telephone to his house?’

‘No, Frau Chef doesn’t use the phone; it mixes her up.

‘Who protested, then?’

‘Frau Chef.’

‘But she hasn’t been across to see him. I’ve been watching the house.’

‘No, Frau Chef doesn’t visit with him. But don’t worry, he knows all right that he mustn’t annoy our guests.

When I looked out of the window again, I saw that the blind of Herr Stroh’s room had been pulled down, and so it remained for the rest of my stay.

Meantime, I went out to post my letters in the box opposite our hotel, across the path. The sun had come out more strongly, and Herr Stroh stood in his doorway blinking up at the roof of the Guesthouse Lublonitsch. He was engrossed, he did not notice me at all.

I didn’t want to draw his attention by following the line of his gaze but I was curious as to what held him staring so trancelike up at our roof. On my way back from the post-box I saw what it was.

Like most of the roofs in that province, the Lublonitsch roof had a railed ledge running several inches above the eaves, for the purpose of preventing the snow from falling in heavy thumps during the winter. On this ledge, just below an attic window, stood the gold-and-rose ormolu clock that I had seen in Frau Lublonitsch’s splendid bedroom.

I turned the corner just as Herr Stroh gave up his gazing; he went indoors, sullen and bent. Two car-loads of people who had moved into the hotel that morning were now moving out, shifting their baggage with speed and the signs of a glad departure. I knew that his house was nearly empty.

Before supper, I walked past the Hotel Stroh and down across the bridge to the café. There were no other customers in the place. The proprietor brought the harsh gin that was the local speciality over to my usual table and I sipped it while I waited for someone to come. I did not have to wait long, for two local women came in and ordered ices, as many of them did on their way home from work in the village shops. They held the long spoons in their rough, knobbly hands and talked, while the owner of the café came and sat with them to exchange the news of the day.

‘Herr Stroh has been defying Frau Lublonitsch,’ one of the women said.

‘Not again?’

‘He’s been offending her tourists.’

‘Dirty old Peeping Tom.’

‘He only does it to annoy Frau Lublonitsch.’

‘I saw the clock on the roof. I saw —’

‘Stroh is finished, he —’

‘Which clock?’

‘What she bought from him last winter when he was hard up. All red and gold, like an altarpiece. A beautiful clock — it was his grandfather’s when things were different.’

‘Stroh is finished. She’ll have his hotel. She’ll have —’

‘She’ll have the pants off him.’

‘He’ll have to go. She’ll get the place at her price. Then she’ll build down to the bridge. Just wait and see. Next winter she’ll have the Hotel Stroh. Last winter she had the clock. It’s two years since she gave him the mortgage.

‘It’s only Stroh’s place that’s standing in her way. She’ll pull it down.

The faces of the two women and the man nearly met across the café table, hypnotized by the central idea of their talk. The women’s spoons rose to their mouths and returned to their ices while the man clasped his hands on the table in front of him. Their voices went on like a litany.

‘She’ll expand down to the bridge.’

‘Perhaps beyond the bridge.’

‘No, no, the bridge will be enough. She’s not so young. ‘Poor old Stroh!’

‘Why doesn’t she expand in the other direction?’

‘Because there isn’t so much trade in the other direction.’

‘The business is down here, this side of the river.’

‘Old Stroh is upset.’

‘She’ll build down to the bridge. She’ll pull down his place and build.’

‘Beyond the bridge.’

‘Old Stroh. His clock stuck up there for everyone to see.

‘What does he expect, the lazy old pig?’

‘What does he expect to see with his field-glasses?’

‘The tourists.’

‘I wish him joy of the tourists.’

They giggled, then noticed me sitting within earshot, and came out of their trance.

How delicately Frau Lublonitsch had sent her deadly message! The ormolu clock was still there on the roof ledge when I returned. It was thus she had told him that time was passing and the end of summer was near, and that his hotel, like his clock, would soon be hers. As I passed, Herr Stroh shuffled out to his front door, rather drunk. He did not see me. He was looking at the clock where it hung in the sunset, he looked up at it as did the quaking enemies of the Lord upon the head of Holofernes. I wondered if the poor man would even live another winter; certainly he had taken his last feeble stand against Frau Lublonitsch.

As for her, she would probably live till she was ninety or more. The general estimate of her age was fifty-three, fifty-four, -five, -six: a healthy woman.

Next day, the clock was gone. Enough was enough. It had gone back to that glamorous room behind the kitchen to which Frau Lublonitsch retired in the early hours of the morning to think up her high conceptions, not lying supine like a defeated creature but propped up on the white pillows, surrounded by her crimson, her scarlet, her gold-and-rosy tints, which, like a religious discipline, disturbed her spirit out of its sloth. It was from here she planted the palm tree and built the shops.

When, next morning, I saw her scouring the pots in the yard and plodding about in her boots among the vegetables, I was somewhat terrified. She could have adorned her own person in scarlet and gold, she could have lived in a turreted mansion rivalling that of the apothecary in the village. But like one averting the evil eye or like one practising a pure disinterested art, she had stuck to her brown apron and her boots. And she would, without a doubt, have her reward. She would take the Hotel Stroh. She would march on the bridge, and beyond it. The café would be hers, the swimming-pool, the cinema. All the market place would be hers before she died in the scarlet bed under the gold-fringed canopy, facing her ormolu clock, her deed-boxes, and her ineffectual bottle of medicine.

Almost as if they knew it, the three tourists remaining in the Hotel Stroh came over to inquire of Frau Lublonitsch if there were any rooms available and what her terms were. Her terms were modest, and she found room for two of them. The third left on his motorcycle that night.

Everyone likes to be on the winning side. I saw the two new arrivals from the Hotel Stroh sitting secure under the Lublonitsch chestnut tree, taking breakfast, next morning. Herr Stroh, more sober than before, stood watching the scene from his doorway. I thought, Why doesn’t he spit on us, he’s got nothing to lose? I saw again, in my mind’s eye, the ormolu clock set high in the sunset splendour. But I had not yet got over my fury with him for spying into my room, and was moved, all in one stroke, with high contempt and deep pity, feverish triumph and chilly fear.

The Portobello Road

One day in my young youth at high summer, lolling with my lovely companions upon a haystack, I found a needle. Already and privately for some years I had been guessing that I was set apart from the common run, but this of the needle attested the fact to my whole public: George, Kathleen and Skinny. I sucked my thumb, for when I had thrust my idle hand deep into the hay, the thumb was where the needle had stuck.