A Stranger with a Bag Read online

  A STRANGER WITH A BAG

  AND OTHER STORIES

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  To

  DAVID GARNETT

  With the exception of A Jump Ahead and Total Loss all these stories were first published in ‘The New Yorker’ to whom my thanks are due.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  A Stranger with a Bag

  Johnnie Brewer

  A Jump Ahead

  Fenella

  Heathy Landscape with Dormouse

  Happiness

  A Love Match

  Swans on an Autumn River

  The View of Rome

  An Act of Reparation

  Their Quiet Lives

  Total Loss

  A Long Night

  About the Author

  Copyright

  A STRANGER WITH A BAG

  AFTER three years as a travelling salesman Clive Peters supposed he knew every detail of the East Anglian landscape he covered, whether he went southward to Bungay and Beccles or inland through the Cambridgeshire fens. The firm that employed him was old-fashioned and without enterprise; he only went out two days a week, working the rest of the time in the office as a clerk. The landscape through which he travelled, going by local trains—for the previous salesman had met his death in a car accident, for which Mr. Ingham, a paternal employer, had never ceased to blame himself—from one market town to another, was not the sort of landscape in which details escape one’s attention. If a new milking shed were built or an old barn pulled down or a tree uprooted by the gales that blew in from the North Sea Clive would have noticed it and marked it down in his memory as an event and something to speculate about. But now, glancing out of the train window, he saw a house that had never been there before. Square and sombre and planted massively behind a screen of overgrown laurels and tossing ilexes, it looked as though the time of the year had put it there, a corroboration of the dark waterlogged November fields and the dull sky.

  But really it was just that he had never happened to notice it before. It was quite an old house; it must have been there for years. It stood about half a mile from the track—too far to see it as more than a picture. He had an instant conviction that it was uninhabited, which on examination he traced to the fact that though this was a Monday there was no washing out. It was a house in which there would be no place for a spin dryer. Everything would be done in the old way: the washing pegged to a line, the pork meat for pies and galantines chopped with a sharp knife on a wooden board, the carpets swept with tea leaves. The spell had fallen on him so completely that simultaneously he knew the house to be uninhabited and knew all about its former inhabitants: chapelgoers; upright, hard-working, close-fisted, bleakly suspicious of all customs but their own, yet secreting a kind of sturdy cosiness, bred of duty and self-satisfaction. While they lived there, the core of the house was safety and prosperity. Now they were gone, and the house remained for his possession—a solemn plaything.

  The house slid out of sight but remained solidly in his mind. He saw himself approaching it, the figure in the foreground. Presently he was near enough to hear the swish of the ilexes, the laurels’ dry rattle. In the garden, hoary gooseberry bushes were laced with strings of last summer’s bindweed; trailing brambles caught at his feet but did not delay him. The house was certainly empty. Sure enough, on its weather side a back door had rotted from its hinges. He walked in, meeting the raw smell of a cold hearth, a smell mixed of soot and rusty iron. He went up the stairs and wandered from room to room. In one of them a discolouring illuminated text flapped on the wall, stirred by the wind blowing down the chimney. ‘Be Ye Also Ready.’ In a garland of wheat and poppies.

  He was too deeply absorbed to notice the train slowing down. Now it stopped. The station was called Yetton Halt; he had never known the train to stop there before. He heard a voice say ‘Here you are, Bill’ and a heavy parcel thrown down on the platform. Before he knew what he was doing he got out, carrying his bag of samples. Before he could think better of it the train was moving on. Bill was walking away with the parcel; there was no one else about. Clive thought, If I am killed, there will be no one to give evidence that I left the train at Yetton Halt. The thought pleased him. In his regular days between work and home, there was no room for even a possible anonymity. Outside the station a road branched east and west, and he turned eastward.

  Though he was uncertain how far away the house might be he judged it could not lie more than three or four miles back. Standing alone and within sight of the railway it should be easy to find; if he guided himself by the railway he must hit it, sooner or later. For a mile or so the road kept level with the railway, then it veered suddenly and went under the track by a tunnel. It would be fatal to get on the wrong side of the track, so he retraced his steps to where he had noticed a lane which branched off in the direction he wanted. The lane ran zigzagging between tall hedges; he soon lost his sense of orientation, and whenever he came to a left-hand gate and looked hopefully over it, some obstacle, a further hedge or a stand of tall winter kale, interposed itself between him and any chance sight of the railway telegraph poles. But he kept on, and felt a kind of obstinate enjoyment. He was splashed with mud, his arms ached from the weight of the bag, it was nearly half past two and he had left his parcel of sandwiches in the train, he was behaving like a madman and would have to account for it; but it was a break, and worth it.

  He was still obstinately enjoying himself when he heard an engine whistle. With a burst of joy that denounced his previous enjoyment, he scrambled through the hedge and began to run across country. He ran on and on, scattering a herd of bullocks, setting up a flock of curlews feeding in a marshy meadow. He swung himself over a gate into a rickyard where blown chaff streamed across his vision like a sallow snowstorm. He stooped under a strand of barbed wire, stood up, dizzied with breathlessness, and saw the row of telegraph poles and the railway track. The train had vanished, but the smell of coal smoke remained.

  So now he had only to find the house. He walked on soberly, in line with the railway track, and presently, as in a dream, the house reappeared, and was instantly recognizable, though, as in a dream, it looked quite different. Seen from ground level it lacked the compactness and drama of its first presentation and had an upstart, ungainly appearance, its chimneys too tall, its roof too sharply pitched and furbelowed by ornate bargeboards. It was smaller, too, than he had supposed.

  It was not so easy of access, either. The ilexes and laurels were fenced in by a railing of tall iron spikes and he had to walk to the farther side before he found the gate, which was approached by a track across a muddy pasture— branching off, no doubt, from some farm lane, for he could hear the shouting voice of a man driving cows. The gate was of iron, like the fencing, and with the same air of having been brought from a town. Beyond the gate a path, running between a laurel hedge and a shaggy lawn on which there were some rabbit hutches, led to the front door and on round the corner of the house. Clive followed it, because in his imagined house the door rotted from its hinges had been a back door. The compulsion of the imagined house was stronger than the disenchantment of what he saw; and it still seemed to him that if he went on he would find the door rotted from its hinges, and make his way into that other house and go upstairs and read the text bordered with wheat and poppies. Meanwhile the rational part of him continued to make the rational assertion that, having come so far, it would be poor-spirited to give up his intention just because the house turned out to be uninviting and rather pretentious with its lowering barge-boards and oversized sash windows. Looking with sidelong distaste at one of these windows he saw a boy, whose pale face was pressed to the glass, whose
eyes were fixed on him. A moment later the vision disappeared, for the boy’s breath had been released and misted over the pane. A skinny hand wiped the mist away and the face looked out once more, with the stare of a full moon emerging from a cloud.

  As though the staring gaze had shown it to him, Clive saw what the boy was looking at. A stranger, carrying a bag. Of course, that was the answer. He smiled at the boy, who did not return his smile, walked back to the front door, mounted its pretentious steps and pulled the bell handle. He heard no footsteps, but presently the door opened and the boy stood on the threshold. He looked to be about ten years old, very near the age of Clive’s own son, but small for his age.

  ‘Anyone in, Sonny?’

  ‘Be,’ said the boy, who had a cold in his head.

  ‘I wonder if I can interest you in these samples of floor and furniture polish.’ Clive opened the bag. ‘All made locally, with real beeswax. You don’t find many polishes nowadays with the real beeswax. Perhaps if I leave this card, you could tell your mother.’

  ‘I habn’t got a bother now. She went away last Tuesday, with Jib Bason. I saw theb go off together, on his botor bike. And Dad says he won’t hab her back, not if she came on her bended knees.’

  Shaking off the impression that there must be something superlatively appealing about a mended knee, Clive said, ‘Oh dear!’ and then, ‘I’m sure I’m sorry.’

  ‘So ab I. I liked Jib. He bade me laugh.’

  Clive looked at the skinny, unappetizing child, framed against the recession of that long, dark passage and the stairway ascending under the bleak glare of another of those oversized windows, and thought that Jim Mason must have talents for the impossible. One could imagine a woman’s laugh flaring out in such a house; but not the laughter of a child. And there was nothing he could do about it. And pity was unavailing.

  ‘You mustn’t stand here, Sonny. You’ll make that cold of yours worse. And I must be going.’

  He stooped and fastened the bag. A stranger with a bag. Well, at least he had supplied a brief diversion, an incident in a winter afternoon.

  ‘Cub in,’ said the boy.

  ‘Why, Sonny, that’s very nice of you. I wish I could. But I’m on my rounds, you see. And I’ve got a long way to go yet.’

  ‘Cub in,’ the boy repeated.

  ‘And what would your dad say? I don’t suppose he’d approve of you asking strangers into the house.’

  ‘Cub in.’ The boy’s voice, which his cold rendered totally expressionless, rose to a peremptory shriek.

  ‘Cub in, cub in, cub in!’ His hands fastened on Clive’s wrist like pincers, like red-hot pincers, for they were burning with fever.

  ‘Well, for two minutes, then. Just to settle you back by the fire and see that you’re comfortable.’

  The boy flitted down the passage before him and opened a door into a high-ceilinged room. It was cold and cavernous and the glow of a small electric heater darkened it rather than warmed it.

  ‘Is this where you’ve been sitting all this afternoon?’

  The boy was shaking up a cushion and did not reply.

  ‘Dull work, having to nurse a cold, isn’t it? Still, better indoors than out on a day like this. What rain we’ve been having! And gales, too.’

  A train was passing; the reverberation in the chimney seemed to decant it into the room. But he’s too old for trains now, thought Clive.

  ‘Though I don’t suppose gales mean much to you in a house like this. It looks uncommonly solid. Built to last.’

  The boy was still fidgeting with the armchair. Having beaten up its cushions, he was now diving into the cranny between the back and the seat. Clive walked about the room, trying to make conversation.

  ‘Are those your rabbits, in the hutches near the gate?’

  ‘They were.’ After so long a silence it was almost disconcerting to be answered. ‘But now we hab eaten theb. We ate old Roger yesterday.’

  The statement was so flat that it was not even unfeeling.

  ‘When I was your age, I had a tame rat. I used to take it to school with me, in my pocket, and one day—I say, Sonny, what’s that? Take care you don’t cut yourself.’

  The boy had somehow produced a carving knife and was fingering the blade.

  ‘And that’s not the way to handle it, running your finger across its edge. You must use your finger and thumb if you want to feel how sharp it is. I’ll show you.’ He took the knife and demonstrated. ‘Sharp as a razor. Let me tell you, you were very lucky not to give yourself a nasty cut. Well, here you are. Be more careful next time.’

  The boy put his hands behind his back and shook his head vehemently. ‘No! It’s for you.’

  ‘But, Sonny, I don’t want a carving knife.’

  ‘It’s for you.’

  Half mad with loneliness, thought Clive. His mother’s gone off with a man, his rabbits are eaten, he’s got nothing to care for; then I come along, a romantic stranger.

  ‘I want you to burder Dad.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I want you to burder Dad.’

  ‘Is that what you asked me in for?’ said Clive, after a pause.

  The boy nodded. A delicate pink colour had come into his cheeks; his eyes glittered.

  Clive laid the knife on the table and sat down in the armchair. It was a more fatherly attitude—and his knees were shaking. ‘Now, look here, Sonny. This sort of thing won’t do. I suppose you’ve been watching the tellie.’

  ‘We habn’t got a tellie. Dad wouldn’t get one. We neber hab anything like other people do. Burder hib, burder hib! It’s all he’s good for.’

  ‘Blow your nose,’ said Clive. ‘What, lost your handkerchief? Have mine, then. Now, listen to me. I’m not going to murder your dad. Neither are you. Murder’s a fool’s game—not to mention a crime. Do you ever feel afraid?’

  The boy glanced at the black mouth of the chimney, then out of the window at the tossing ilexes.

  ‘I can tell you this. Whatever you may feel afraid of, a murderer feels ten times more afraid, a million times more afraid. And because he’s a murderer, he’s afraid of everything, everyone he meets, every knock at the door, every noise——’

  The noise was quite perceptible, and was the noise of a bicycle being wheeled along the path. ‘There’s Dad,’ said the boy.

  Clive leaped up. The bicycle was being wheeled past the window; presumably there was a shed at the back of the house. There was still time for him to get away. At the same moment, the boy switched on the light. It lit up the small, dejected figure of a man with a pointed beard. He turned and saw Clive standing by the window. His look of oppression deepened. He attempted to prop the bicycle against a bush. At each attempt, the bush gave way and the bicycle subsided. Finally he left it lying, and turned towards the front door. While the door was opened and carefully closed again, and a swishing mackintosh shaken and hung on a peg, and a tread that would have better matched a larger man came along the passage, Clive avoided looking at the boy.

  ‘Hullo, Tony! I see you’ve got a visitor.’

  Clive began to explain, reopening the bag and drawing out a couple of tins to substantiate his words. The sound of his voice embarrassed him—it was so full and ringing, so grossly unlike the flat, dejected tones that replied.

  ‘Hmm. Yes, I see. Very kind of you, I’m sure. But I’m afraid I don’t want any polish just now.’

  ‘No, no! Of course not. I quite understand.’

  The words were no sooner spoken than Clive realized their appalling appropriateness. He hurried on. ‘And I’m sure it’s a reward in itself to be asked in so kindly by Sonny here.’

  Mentioning the boy, he dared to glance towards him, and saw the knife still lying on the table. ‘To tell the truth, I’ve always been rather interested by this house. I often notice it from the train. Quite a period piece, isn’t it? Puts one in mind of Dickens—Pickwick, and What-d’you-call-it Hall, and that house in the marshes where the old lady lived.’

  ‘Yes
. They don’t build such houses nowadays. It’s got the date over the door—I don’t know if you observed it. 1887. Same date as Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. You could call it historic.’

  ‘Neber had an alteration since,’ interposed the boy, as though repeating something known by rote.

  ‘Yes, it has, Tony. You know it has. It’s got the electricity. And I’ve a good mind to take it out again—nothing but trouble from first to last. I don’t know why anyone should complain of a house like this. It’s a splendid house; everything of the best, and built by an Indian colonel to retire to. Got its own water supply, and a patent pump to raise it, and a game larder, and any number of cupboards, and a marble pedestal basin in the downstairs lavatory. You’d think anyone would be happy to live in such a house. So they would be, if they feared God and knew what was best for them.’

  ‘The rats do! They know what’s best for theb. That’s why Bother slept with be—to keep the rats off. But now I’b going to tabe theb. I’b going to hab billions and billions of tabe rats. This man said he had a tabe rat and he took it to school with hib in his pocket.’

  The chin beard, as though it had a life of its own quite independent of the meagre flesh it was fastened in, suddenly bristled.

  ‘So it’s you that have been putting ideas into the boy’s head, is it? That’s what you’ve been coming here for, whenever my back was turned? I knew it, I knew it! But I tell you, I’ve had too much of that sort of thing. First there’s Jim Mason going off with my wife, now it’s you, sneaking in after my boy. And what’s that knife meant for, lying there on the table? There you were in the dark, waiting to get me as soon as I came into the room. You and your polishes! You and your soft sawder about books you’ve never read in your life. No need to read nowadays, you can see it all on the tellie. Yes, and pick up those clever ideas about carving knives. But two can play at that game!’

  He snatched the knife, and attacked. Clive caught up a chair to defend himself.