The Collected Stories Page 6

  Mrs Hinch, the General reflected, would be settling down to his South African sherry about now. ‘You thieving old bitch,’ he said aloud. ‘Fifty years in Their Majesties’ service and I end up with Mrs bloody Hinch.’ A man carrying a coil of garden hose tripped and fell across his path. This man, a weekend visitor to the district, known to the General by sight and disliked by him, uttered as he dropped to the ground a series of expletives of a blasphemous and violent nature. The General, since the man’s weight lay on his shoes, stooped to assist him. ‘Oh, buzz off,’ ordered the man, his face close to the General’s. So the General left him, conscious not so much of his dismissal as of the form of words it had taken. The sun warmed his forehead and drops of sweat glistened on his nose and chin.

  The Frobishers’ house was small and vaguely Georgian. From the outside it had the feeling of a town house placed by some error in the country. There were pillars on either side of the front door, which was itself dressed in a grey and white canvas cover as a protection against the sun. Door and cover swung inwards and Mrs Frobisher, squat and old, spoke from the hall.

  ‘It’s General Suffolk,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the General. ‘That old soldier.’

  ‘You’ve come to see Frob. Come in a minute and I’ll fetch him. What a lovely day.’

  The General stepped into the hall. It was cool and smelt rather pleasantly of floor polish. Daggers, swords, Eastern rugs, knick-knacks and novelties hung in profusion everywhere. ‘Frob! Frob!’ Mrs Frobisher called, climbing the stairs. There had been a day, a terrible sultry day in India all of fifty years ago, when the General – though then not yet a general – had fought a duel with a certain Major Service. They had walked together quietly to a selected spot, their seconds, carrying a pair of kukris, trailing behind them. It had been a quarrel that involved, surprisingly, neither man’s honour. In retrospect General Suffolk could scarcely remember the cause: some insult directed against some woman, though by whom and in what manner escaped him. He had struck Major Service on the left forearm, drawing a considerable quantity of blood, and the duel was reckoned complete. An excuse was made for the wound sustained by the Major and the affair was successfully hushed up. It was the nearest that General Suffolk had ever come to being court-martialled. He was put in mind of the occasion by the presence of a kukri on the Frobishers’ wall. A nasty weapon, he reflected, and considered it odd that he should once have wielded one so casually. After all, Major Service might easily have lost his arm or, come to that, his life.

  ‘Frob! Frob! Where are you?’ cried Mrs Frobisher. ‘General Suffolk’s here to see you.’

  ‘Suffolk?’ Frobisher’s voice called from another direction. ‘Oh my dear, can’t you tell him I’m out?’

  The General, hearing the words, left the house.

  In the saloon bar of the public house General Suffolk asked the barman about the local fêtes.

  ‘Don’t think so, sir. Not today. Not that I’ve heard of.’

  ‘There’s a fête at Marmount,’ a man at the bar said. ‘Conservative fête, same Saturday every year.’

  ‘Ah certainly,’ said the barman, ‘but Marmount’s fifteen miles away. General Suffolk means a local fête. The General doesn’t have a car.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said the man. ‘Marmount’s not an easy spot to reach. Even if you did have a car, sir.’

  ‘I will have a sandwich, Jock,’ said General Suffolk. ‘Chop me a cheese sandwich like a good man.’ He was beginning to feel low; the day was not good; the day was getting out of control. Fear filled his mind and the tepid beer was no comfort. He began to pray inwardly, but he had little faith now in this communication. ‘Never mind,’ he said aloud. ‘It is just that it seems like a day for a fête. I won a half guinea at a summer fête last year. One never knows one’s luck.’ He caught sight of a card advertising the weekly films at the cinema of the nearby town.

  ‘Have you seen The Guns of Navarone?’ he questioned the barman.

  ‘I have, sir, and very good it is.’

  The General nodded. ‘A powerful epic by the sound of it.’

  ‘That’s the word, General. As the saying goes, it had me riveted.’

  ‘Well, hurry the sandwiches then. I can catch the one-ten bus and achieve the first performance.’

  ‘Funny thing, sir,’ said the barman. ‘I can never take the cinema of an afternoon. Not that it isn’t a time that suits me, the hours being what they are. No, I go generally on my night off. Can’t seem to settle down in the afternoon or something. Specially in the good weather. To me, sir, it seems unnatural.’

  ‘That is an interesting point of view, Jock. It is indeed. And may well be shared by many – for I have noticed that the cinemas are often almost empty in the afternoon.’

  ‘I like to be outside on a good afternoon. Taking a stroll by a trout stream or in a copse.’

  ‘A change is as good as a cure, or whatever the adage is. After all, you are inside a good deal in your work. To be alone must be quite delightful after the idle chatter you have to endure.’

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying it, General, I don’t know how you do it. It would kill me to sit at the pictures on an afternoon like this. I would feel – as it were, sir – guilty.’

  ‘Guilty, Jock?’

  ‘Looking the Great Gift Horse in the mouth, sir.’

  ‘The –? Are you referring to the Deity, Jock?’

  ‘Surely, sir. I would feel it like an unclean action.’

  ‘Maybe, Jock. Though I doubt that God would care to hear you describe Him as a horse.’

  ‘Oh but, General –’

  ‘You mean no disrespect. It is taken as read, Jock. But you cannot be too careful.’

  ‘Guilt is my problem, sir.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear it. Guilt can often be quite a burden.’

  ‘I am never free of it, sir. If it’s not one thing it’s another.’

  ‘I know too well, Jock.’

  ‘It was not presumptuous of me to mention that thing about the cinema? I was casting no stone at you, sir.’

  ‘Quite, quite. It may even be that I would prefer to attend an evening house. But beggars, you know, cannot be choosers.’

  ‘I would not like to offend you, General.’

  ‘Good boy, Jock. In any case I am not offended. I enjoy a chat.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Not at all. But now I must be on my way. Consider your problem closely: you may discover some simple solution. There are uncharted regions in the human mind.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You are a good fellow, Jock. We old soldiers must stick together.’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ said Jock, taking the remark as a joke, since he was in the first place a young man still, and had never been in the army.

  ‘Well, cheerio then.’

  ‘Cheerio, sir.’

  How extraordinary, thought the General, that the man should feel like that: guilty about daytime cinema attendance. As Mrs Hinch would have it, it takes all sorts.

  The thought of Mrs Hinch depressed the General further and drove him straight to a telephone booth. He often telephoned his cottage at this time of day as a check on her time-keeping. She was due to remain at work for a further hour, but generally the telephone rang unanswered. Today he got the engaged signal. As he boarded his bus, he wondered how much it was costing him.

  Taurus. 21 April to 20 May. Financial affairs straighten themselves out. Do not make decisions this afternoon: your judgement is not at its best.

  The General peeped around the edge of the newspaper at the woman who shared his table. She was a thin, middle-aged person with a face like a faded photograph. Her hair was inadequately dyed a shade of brown, her face touched briefly with lipstick and powder. She wore a cream-coloured blouse and a small string of green beads which the General assumed, correctly, to be jade. Her skirt, which the General could not see, was of fine tweed.

  ‘How thoughtless of me,’ said the General.
‘I have picked up your paper. It was on the chair and I did it quite automatically. I am so sorry.’

  He knew the newspaper was not hers. No one places a newspaper on the other chair at a café table when the other chair is so well out of reach. Unless, that is, one wishes to reserve the place, which the lady, since she made no protest at his occupying it, was clearly not interested in doing. He made the pretence of offering the paper across the tea-table, leaning forward and sideways to catch a glimpse of her legs.

  ‘Oh but,’ said the lady, ‘it is not my newspaper at all.’

  Beautiful legs. Really beautiful legs. Shimmering in silk or nylon, with fine firm knees and intoxicating calves.

  ‘Are you sure? In that case it must have been left by the last people, I was reading the stars. I am to have an indecisive afternoon.’ She belongs to the upper classes, General Suffolk said to himself; the upper classes are still well-bred in the leg.

  The lady tinkled with laughter. I am away, the General thought. ‘When is your birthday?’ he asked daringly. ‘And I will tell you what to expect for the rest of today.’

  ‘Oh, I’m Libra, I think.’

  ‘It is a good moment for fresh associations,’ lied the General, pretending to read from the paper. ‘A new regime is on its way.’

  ‘You can’t believe a thing they say.’

  ‘Fighting words,’ said the General, and they laughed and changed the subject of conversation.

  In the interval at the cinema, when the lights had gone up and the girls with ice-cream began their sales stroll, the General had seen, two or three rows from the screen, the fat unhealthy figure of his friend Basil. The youth was accompanied by a girl, and it distressed General Suffolk that Basil should have made so feeble an excuse when earlier he had proposed an excursion to a fête. The explanation that Basil wished to indulge in carnal pleasures in the gloom of a picture house would naturally have touched the General’s sympathy. Basil was an untrustworthy lad. It was odd, the General reflected, that some people are like that: so addicted to the lie that to avoid one, when the truth is in order, seems almost a sin.

  ‘General Suffolk,’ explained the General. ‘Retired, of course.’

  ‘We live in Bradoak,’ said the lady. ‘My name actually is Mrs Hope-Kingley.’

  ‘Retired?’

  ‘Ha, ha. Though in a way it’s true. My husband is not alive now.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the General, delighted. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I am quite over it, thank you. It is all of fifteen years since last I saw him. We had been divorced some time before his death.’

  ‘Divorce and death, divorce and death. You hear it all the time. May I be personal now and say I am surprised you did not remarry?’

  ‘Oh, General Suffolk, Mr Right never came along!’

  ‘Attention! Les étoiles!’

  ‘Ha, ha.’ And to her own surprise, Mrs Hope-Kingley proceeded to reveal to this elderly stranger the story of her marriage.

  As he listened, General Suffolk considered how best to play his cards. It was a situation he had found himself in many times before, but as always the game must vary in detail. He felt mentally a little tired as he thought about it; and the fear that, in this, as in almost everything else, age had taken too great a toll struck at him with familiar ruthlessness. In his thirties he had played superbly, as good at love as he was at tennis. Now arrogant, now innocent, he had swooped and struck, captured and killed; and smiled over many a breakfast at the beauty that had been his prize.

  They finished their tea. ‘I am slipping along to the County for a drink,’ said the General. ‘Do join me for a quick one.’

  ‘How kind of you. I must not delay though. My sister will expect me.’ And they climbed into Mrs Hope-Kingley’s small car and drove to the hotel. Over their gins the General spoke of his early days in the army and touched upon his present life, naming Mrs Hinch.

  ‘What a frightful woman! You must sack her.’

  ‘But who would do for me? I need my bed made and the place kept clean. Women are not easy to find in the country.’

  ‘I know a Mrs Gall who lives in your district. She has the reputation of being particularly reliable. My friends the Boddingtons use her.’

  ‘Well, that is certainly a thought. D’you know, I had become quite reconciled to Hinch. I never thought to change her really. What a breath of life you are!’

  After three double gins Mrs Hope-Kingley was slightly drunk. Her face flushed with pleasure. Compliments do not come your way too often these days, thought the General; and he ambled off to the bar to clinch the matter with a further drink. How absurd to be upset by the passing details of the day! What did it all matter, now that he had found this promising lady? The day and its people, so directed against him, were balanced surely by this meeting? With her there was strength; from her side he might look out on the world with power and with confidence. In a panic of enthusiasm he almost suggested marriage. His hands were shaking and he felt again a surge of the old arrogance. There is life in the old dog yet, he thought. Handing her her drink, he smiled and winked.

  ‘After this I must go,’ the lady said.

  ‘Come, come, the night is younger than we are. It is not every day I can pick up a bundle of charms in a teashop.’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha.’ Mrs Hope-Kingley purred, thinking that for once her sister would simply have to wait, and wondering if she should dare to tell her that she had been drinking with an elderly soldier.

  They were sitting at a small table in a corner. Now and again, it could have been an accident, the General’s knee touched hers. He watched the level of gin lower in her glass. ‘You are a pretty lady,’ murmured the General, and beneath the table his hand stroked her stockinged knee and ventured a little beyond it.

  ‘My God!’ said Mrs Hope-Kingley, her face like a beetroot. The General lowered his head. He heard her snatch her handbag from the seat beside him. When he looked up she was gone.

  *

  ‘When were you born?’ General Suffolk asked the man in the bus.

  The man seemed startled. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘nineteen-oh-three actually.’

  ‘No, no, no. What month? When does your birthday fall?’

  ‘Well, October the 21st actually.’

  ‘Libra by a day,’ the General informed him, consulting his newspaper as he spoke. ‘For tomorrow, there are to be perfect conditions for enjoying yourself; though it may be a little expensive. Don’t gamble.’

  ‘I see,’ said the man, glancing in embarrassment through the window.

  ‘Patrelli is usually reliable.’

  The man nodded, thinking: The old fellow is drunk. He was right: the General was drunk.

  ‘I do not read the stars every day,’ General Suffolk explained. ‘It is only when I happen upon an evening paper. I must say I find Patrelli the finest augur of the lot. Do you not agree?’

  The man made an effort to smile, muttering something incomprehensible.

  ‘What’s that, what’s that? I cannot hear you.’

  ‘I don’t know at all. I don’t know about such matters.’

  ‘You are not interested in the stars?’

  The man shook his head.

  ‘In that case, I have been boring you.’

  ‘No, no –’

  ‘If you were not interested in my conversation you should have said so. It is quite simple to say it. I cannot understand you.’

  ‘I’m sorry –’

  ‘I do not like to offend people. I do not like to be a nuisance. You should have stopped me, sir.’

  The man made a gesture vague in its meaning.

  ‘You have taken advantage of an old warrior.’

  ‘I cannot see –’

  ‘You should have halted me. It costs nothing to speak.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Think nothing of it. Think nothing of it at all. Here is my village. If you are dismounting, would you care to join me in a drink?’

  ‘Thank you, no. I am
–’

  ‘I swear not to speak of the stars.’

  ‘I go on a bit. This is not my stop.’

  The General shook his head, as though doubting this statement. The bus stopped and, aided by the conductor, he left it.

  ‘Did you see The Guns, General?’ Jock shouted across the bar.

  Not hearing, but understanding that the barman was addressing him, General Suffolk waved breezily. ‘A large whisky, Jock. And a drop of beer for yourself.’

  ‘Did you see The Guns then?’

  ‘The guns?’

  ‘The pictures, General. The Guns of Navarone.’

  ‘That is very kind of you, Jock. But we must make it some other time. I saw that very film this afternoon.’

  ‘General, did you like it?’

  ‘Certainly, Jock. Certainly I liked it. It was very well done. I thought it was done very well indeed.’

  ‘Two gins and split a bottle of tonic,’ a man called out.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said the General, ‘I think I am in your way.’

  ‘Two gins and a split tonic,’ repeated Jock.

  ‘And something for our friend,’ the man added, indicating the General.

  ‘That is kind of you. Everyone is kind tonight. Jock here has just invited me to accompany him to the pictures. Unfortunately I have seen the film. But there will be other occasions. We shall go together again. May I ask you when you were born, the month I mean?’

  The man, whose attention was taken up with the purchasing and transportation of his drinks, said: ‘Some time in May, I think.’

  ‘But exactly? When is your birthday, for instance?’ But the man had returned to a small table against the wall, where a girl and several packets of unopened crisps awaited him.

  ‘Jock, do you follow the stars?’

  ‘D’you mean telescopes and that?’

  ‘No, no, my boy.’ The General swayed, catching at the bar to balance himself. He had had very little to eat all day: the old, he maintained, did not need it. ‘No, no, I mean the augurs. Capricorn, Scorpio, Gemini, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Lord Luck in the Daily Express?’

  ‘That’s it. That’s the kind of thing. D’you take an interest at all?’