Short Fiction

Bridget woke up with a start.

Somewhere something had fallen; perhaps a slate from the roof, or maybe it was only a door banging on the floor above. She did not know this, of course; at six years old it is difficult to reason about strange noises, or about anything that happens in the middle of the night. Half-past nine was the same as midnight to Bridget.

For a few minutes she lay awake wondering what it was that had woken her. She no longer felt tired or sleepy, her mind was alert, and every nerve was on edge. Then she opened her eyes and looked around her. At first everything seemed black, pitch black, but as she became accustomed to the darkness the furniture in the bedroom gradually began to take shape.

A queer, ghastly shape.

This was not the same room as the one in which she had undressed. She saw that Nanny had not come up yet, because the bed was empty.

But, what is empty? The pillow must have slipped a little, for something bulky lay in the corner by the turned-down sheet. A piece of blanket had become untucked at the side; it was rolled slightly, and stretched across the centre of the bed. Yet it was not like an ordinary piece of blanket, this rolled object, it was an arm⁠—a cold, white arm⁠—with no body near it, with no person to whom it belonged.

A loose arm hanging from nowhere⁠ ⁠…

He leant against the mantelpiece, nervously jingling the change in his pockets. He supposed there would be another scene. It was so unreasonable the way she minded him going out without her. She never seemed to realise that he just had to get away sometimes⁠—for no particular reason, but because it gave him a sense of freedom. He loved to slam the front door behind him, and to walk along the street to a bus, swinging a stick. There was something about the feeling of being alone he could not explain to anyone, not even to her. The delicious sense of utter irresponsibility, of complete selfishness. Not to have to look at his watch and remember, “I promised to be back at four,” but at four to be doing something quite different that she would not know. The feeblest thing. Even driving in a taxi she had never seen; to have the sensation of leaning back and smoking a cigarette without turning his head and being aware of her beside him. He would come back in the evening and tell her about it; they would sit in front of the fire and laugh; but at least it would have been his afternoon⁠—not theirs, but his alone.

I saw him in Leicester Square, standing on the edge of the pavement in front of the Empire.

There was something familiar about him, the tall, thin figure, the small moustache, and the pale, helpless blue eyes. He looked up at me, hesitating, uncertain, a little afraid to speak, expecting that I should cut him.

Then, like a flash, it came back to me; his name, his personality.

“Surely it’s Marlow, isn’t it?” I said, “and I don’t believe you’ve forgotten me either. Where have you been all these years, and what happened to you after we ran up against each other that time in France, in ’17?”

He had scarcely changed at all. He must have been thirty-six or seven, and yet there was scarcely a line to show the difference between him and the boy I knew at school. And yet there was something⁠—vague, shadowy. It was as if, imperceptibly, he had shrunk into himself, become worn, a little humble. I could see him at school, rather arrogant, inclined to show off, and yet popular, with many friends. Then, in France, when I met him suddenly in Havre during 1917, his arrogance had shown itself again. His attitude towards me, a junior officer, had been superior, slightly ridiculous. Now, twelve years later, his manner had altered. He stooped a little, too, as if he bore some weight upon his shoulders. I felt curious to know how he had lived.

It was ten-thirty on a wet morning in January. The telephone boxes were empty on the Piccadilly Circus subway, empty save for one at the right-hand corner by the entrance to Shaftesbury Avenue.

A woman stood there, her lips pressed close to the mouthpiece, the pennies clutched in her hand. She moved impatiently and flung a glance over her shoulder, and rattled the receiver.

“But I’ve repeated the number three times already. I tell you I want Gerrard 10550⁠—Gerrard 10550.”

She bit her lip and tapped her foot nervously on the floor.

“Of course there is somebody there. Will you please ring them again.”

He turned over in bed and reached for a cigarette. He yawned, stretched himself, and fumbled for his dressing-gown. Then he flung aside the bedclothes and strolled over towards his dressing-table.

He ran the comb through his hair and peered at the dark shadows beneath his eyes. His hand wandered towards the bottle of Bromo Seltza. When the telephone rang he frowned, and, making no attempt to answer it, wandered into the bathroom. The steaming water foamed from the taps; his dressing-gown slipped to the floor.

He lay back in his bath, a large sponge pressed to his chest, and watched his pale limbs beneath the water, flabby and mushroom-coloured. The smoke from his cigarette curled towards the ceiling. Still the telephone continued to ring on the little table beside the bed.

“Yes, Gerrard 10550. Can you clear the line again? There must be some mistake.”

After he had been engaged to her for seven years he felt that it was impossible to wait for her any longer.

Human endurance had been tested to the limit. For seven years he had held her hand by the stile in the field, and it was beginning to pall at last.

It seemed to him that there must be more in life than these things.

He admitted that time had been when the simple fact of looking at her from a distance had ensured him weeks of fever and excitement, when the mere process of brushing against her on a tennis court had caused a state of nervous prostration.

Such follies belonged to the distant past. He was twenty-four now instead of eighteen. In the irony of his soul he wondered what Napoleon would have done if someone had offered him a box of tin soldiers; it occurred to him that Suzanne Lenglen in her day would have protested had she been compelled to play battledore and shuttlecock.

He was earnest, he was desperate, he was very much in love.

Saying good night to her at half-past nine in the evening was a modern equivalent to the appalling tortures of the Spanish Inquisition. At these moments his legs twisted themselves inside out, his fingers clutched at the air, and his tongue got caught up his uvula.