The collected stories Read online

  'Terrible,' said Miss Bristow. 'An American asked me just the other day, "How can you live here?" I said, "I can live here because I once lived on an island that was overrun by savages."'

  'Actually,' said Philippa, 'I'd like to be in publishing. But there aren't any jobs going just at the moment.'

  'They are the enemy,' said Miss Bristow. 'But if you are

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  absolutely determined I might be able to help you. My publisher is looking for someone. Do you know Howletts?'

  'They're awfully grand.'

  Miss Bristow laughed. 'I used to think that!'

  'But their list is-'

  'It is all trade,' said Miss Bristow. 'They are in business to make money, like everyone else. In Isabella, before the Great War, there were icehouses in the capital. Yes, water was a commodity! They sold it by the cake to planters who carried it upcountry, so they could have cool drinks. The ice merchants were on to a good thing - isn't that the phrase? They might have been selling anything -cloth by the yard, soap, matches, motor cars.' Miss Bristow pursed her lips and added, 'Or books.'

  'You're being a bit unfair.'

  'Am I? I mean it as praise. What a very great pity it would be if they were not interested in profit,' said Miss Bristow. 'But they are, which is why I have no friends there.'

  'Drink,' said Philippa briskly. And before Miss Bristow could react, her empty glass was lifted from her hand.

  'You are very kind,' said Miss Bristow.

  The girl was immediately hired at Howletts on Miss Bristow's recommendation. And Miss Bristow knew she had assigned the girl to the firm to approve her new book, to eliminate the ritual. Miss Bristow wanted an ally. Dull people mattered more than the spirited ones who mystified her with praise that sounded like mockery.

  And now, rising carefully from the bath so she would not break her bones, and hating the feeble image that made the full-length glass seem a ridiculous distorting mirror, she thought how, in the months Philippa had been at Howletts, she had been able to work. She had her ally; and she wasn't fooled: the girl knew very little of her, but how could she? The girl was as she had once been — bold and untruthful, undemanding, generous, and a little foolish. But the girl believed, and the girl did not judge her - that was worth anything. Miss Bristow remembered that she had liked the girl for a phrase, a single observation - Romans, Italians. She had put this into a story and afterward had felt grateful and a bit guilty using words that were not wholly hers. The indebtedness was nothing compared to the fears she remembered and the faces she saw, sleeping, waking, so often now as she tunneled in the

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  past, living in it more intensely now and blinking the zombies away to write about it.

  The door chimes rang. Miss Bristow became eager.

  'Won't you have something to drink?' said Miss Bristow, entering the parlor, taking the girl's hand. She kept her back to the window so as not to see any skulls. This fear made her seem prim, and even somewhat stately.

  Alison said, 'I have already asked her. She doesn't want anything.'

  'Go on, my dear. A gin and tonic perhaps?'

  'Oh, all right,' said Philippa.

  'You see?' said Miss Bristow.

  Alison reached through the neck of her jumper and brought out a blunt key on a thong. She went to the cabinet, removed the gin bottle, and made Philippa's drink.

  'I will join you,' said Miss Bristow. She smiled at Alison. 'The usual.'

  Alison mixed the gin and vermouth for Miss Bristow with a kind of defeated disregard.

  'I am feeling a bit shaky today,' said Miss Bristow, slowly fitting herself into the chair and reaching for her drink. She sipped, gulped, sipped again, and said, 'It was that film on the television about the mummy. They unwrapped it and I thought, "Oh, my, I must turn this off." But I couldn't. I just sat there while they unwrapped it. I thought, "I know I'm going to have a bad night if I watch this" but I kept watching and they kept unwrapping. Finally, I couldn't stand it any more. I switched it off and went to bed. And I had a bad night.'

  'I didn't see it,' said Philippa. 'I was at a party. A publisher's thrash.'

  'It reminded me of something.'

  'The mummy?'

  'Something else. A face I knew, a face from the catacombs - a long time ago.'

  'I didn't know you'd been in Rome.'

  'I have never been to Rome,' said Miss Bristow.

  Philippa looked at her watch. 'I booked the table for one o'clock and the traffic's pretty bad. We ought to make a move.'

  'I'll just fetch my hat,' said Miss Bristow. From the bedroom

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  she heard Alison speaking to Philippa in a harsh accusing whisper.

  'We've got lots to talk about,' said Philippa in the restaurant. 'And I have two ideas for you.'

  'Before you say another word,' said Miss Bristow, pushing down her hat, 'I want you to get that young man's attention and ask him for two drinks. There's a dear.'

  Philippa ordered the drinks and even began talking, but it was not until the gin and French was set before her that Miss Bristow's eyes lost their vacancy and took on a glaze of attention.

  'I've been thinking,' Philippa was saying, 'that it's about time you wrote your autobiography. I don't know why you haven't done it before! What an absolutely marvelous book it would be. Of course, I haven't mentioned it to Roger' - 'Roger' to Philippa had been Mister Howlett to Miss Bristow for ten years - 'but I know he'll be fantastically sweet about it.'

  'My autobiography?'

  'Yes! It just occurred to me the other day,' said Philippa. 'I don't know how I thought of it! What do you say?'

  Not one day of my life has gone by, Miss Bristow thought, without that book appearing to me. The book was constant, not as a mass of papers, but finished, a hefty lettered spine, occupying a thick space in a shelf in her mind.

  She said, 'It is a nice idea. But who would want to read it?'

  'I certainly would!' said Philippa.

  The girl was being unhelpful. Miss Bristow wanted more than this.

  Philippa said, 'London in the First World War, Paris in the twenties, London again-'

  'My island,' said Miss Bristow.

  'Of course,' said Philippa, but seemed disappointed.

  'I haven't been back to Paris since 1938. It's such a long time ago. I wouldn't go back, not now. People say it's changed so much. I'd go back if I could do it - somehow - like being a fly on the wall, just watching and listening. But that's impossible. How can one be a fly on the wall? And my island. It wasn't what you might think. Some people think it was paradise - "That beautiful life you must have had there," they say. I say, "What beautiful life?'"

  'You could explain,' said Philippa. 'In the book.'

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  'Montparnasse was small, too. It was a village. One knew everyone who lived there. I saw James Joyce. This was at a party. We spoke for a while, and I thought, "What a kind man!" He had dark spectacles; he must have been nearly blind. I loved him - I don't think I even knew he was a writer - and I felt that this was a man that one could depend on. Dependable, that's what I thought. Gertrude Stein was very noble - a very noble face. And there was Alice B.'

  'What did she do?' said Philippa.

  'Knitting - something of the sort. Just sitting there and knitting, while Gertrude looked great and noble. I saw Hemingway -1 didn't know him. But Djuna Barnes - how grand she looked! She had a huge cape on her shoulders, a huge black cape.'

  'So I was right!' said Philippa in triumph. 'It will be a lovely book. I'm sure Roger will be thrilled. I don't know what gave me the idea, but I just knew it was a good one.'

  Miss Bristow smiled and put her glass down and pushed it until it hit the ashtray. Hearing the clink, Philippa looked down and then searched for the waiter. Fresh drinks were brought.

  Miss Bristow said, 'Once, at a party, I met the lunatic Crosby. He wanted to talk and he noticed I was wearing a pretty ring. This ring. "I've been admiring y
our ring," he said. "The boy who gave me this ring just got out of prison," I said.'

  Philippa lowered her head and frowned.

  Miss Bristow said, 'Crosby was very shocked. He looked at me and said, "And you mean you kept it?" That's all he said. "And you mean you kept it?" And he went away.'

  Philippa said, 'That's just what I had in mind. Funnily enough, I never thought of James Joyce as dependable.'

  'I am telling you what I felt.'

  'It would be a marvelous book.'

  'What was the other thing?'

  'What other thing?'

  'You said you had two ideas,' said Miss Bristow. 'You have told me only one.'

  'Oh, yes,' said Philippa. 'Would you like another drink?'

  'The same,' said Miss Bristow.

  Philippa's glass was full: one drink was brought. Miss Bristow sipped and watched Philippa trying to begin. The girl was having difficulty. Miss Bristow said, 'Is it my new collection?'

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  Tartly. But first of all I want to tell you what a brilliant collection it is-'

  With this preface, Miss Bristow thought, the news can only be bad. She was aware that it was an old woman's book, rather a monochrome, all memory, without adornment or invention. But Miss Bristow had discovered this as her strength.

  Philippa was still praising her: the news was very bad.

  Instead of speaking, Miss Bristow drank, and the drink was like speech, calming her, relieving the apprehension she felt, so that by the time the drink was gone and Philippa had finished, Miss Bristow was smiling and had forgotten her initial uneasiness about the girl's reservations. She heard herself saying, 'Why, that's all right then, isn't it?'

  'Gosh, you're quick.' Philippa turned. Now the waiter was nearby and ready, anticipating the order. He brought Miss Bristow another drink.

  'Lastly,' said Philippa suddenly, surprising Miss Bristow.

  Miss Bristow peered over the rim of her glass.

  'The icehouse story.'

  'Rather short, I'm afraid,' said Miss Bristow.

  'I have no objection to its length,' said Philippa, looking very frightened.

  'Does it seem overobvious to you?'

  'Not that.' The girl was lost. She looked around as if searching for a landmark and the right way through this confusion.

  Miss Bristow said, 'These waiters must be wondering what's keeping us.'

  Philippa took a deep breath and said, 'Miss Bristow' - the name alone was warning of worse to come - 'Miss Bristow, some of us at Howletts think it will hurt your reputation.'

  Saying so, Philippa sighed and squinted as if expecting the ceiling to crack and drop in pieces on her head.

  Miss Bristow laughed hard at the girl in disbelief. And as she laughed she saw the people in the restaurant alter: they were skulls and bones and rags, and even Philippa was skeletal and sunken-eyed, with a zombie's stare.

  'Who thinks that? 1 said Miss Bristow, spacing out her words.

  'Roger - some others/ Philippa used her teeth to clamp her lip and chafe it. 'And I do, sort of. 1 mean, 1 can see their point.'

  'My reputation is no concern ot mine. It is a figment in other

  M

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  people's imaginations. It does not belong to me. You should know that.'

  Tm not sure I understand,' said Philippa. 'But I think I understand the icehouse story. It's easily one of the best-written things you've done, and maybe that's why I think it's going to hurt you.'

  'How can it possibly hurt me?'

  Philippa said, 'Well, it's anti-Negro for one thing.'

  'Yes?' Miss Bristow was incredulous; her eyes asked for more.

  'And for another thing-' Philippa tried to go on, started twice, and finally said, 'Isn't that enough?'

  'If what you said were true it would, I suppose, be more than enough. But it is not true.'

  'It's what some readers will think.'

  'I don't care about "some readers." It's the others that I care about - and I do care, passionately.'

  'Roger thinks-'

  'Tell me what you think,' Miss Bristow said sharply.

  'I think it presents the black people - oh, God, I hate people who say things like this, but anyway - I think it presents the black people in a bad light.'

  'It happened a long time ago,' said Miss Bristow.

  'Still-'

  'Nineteen seventeen. The light could not have been worse.'

  'It worries me.'

  'Splendid. The story is a success.'

  'I'm sure it is,' said Philippa. 'Miss Bristow, would you like another drink?' Miss Bristow said she would appreciate a small one. Philippa said, 'It seems racial.'

  'It is not about race. It is about condition.'

  Philippa said, 'I hate to say this, but I think you should take it out.'

  Miss Bristow said, 'It is true from start to finish. It is a memory. "But they did not know that they were dying, like Romans becoming Italians" - the last line says it all. You are not interested, you do not want to know. Why won't you see?'

  'You were so young then,' said Philippa. 'You might have been wrong.'

  Miss Bristow said, 'I was about your age.'

  Philippa had not heard the sarcasm.

  'But things are different now. You said so yourself.'

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  'Did I say that?' Miss Bristow saw the faces - the dream skull, the one on the moving bus. And from a bus, on the street, six of them carrying placards, as savage seeming as long ago. She was not imagining those ghastly faces, the teeth, the red eyes, the dreadlocks. She said, 'I have seen them.'

  And saw them now. The drink had come. She did not sip. She gulped from the glass, and spilled some.

  Philippa said, 'I feel terrible about this. Roger was fantastically sweet. Roger-'

  In the restaurant, as in the dream and through the window, bony cheeks, dirty hair, and dusty bitten fingers. They were there, left and right, at the watery offside of her field of vision surrounding the men she saw; in shadow. They had swarmed like rats from the island and now they were here, lurking; they had gained entrance to this restaurant.

  Miss Bristow said, 'Perhaps you are right.' She turned and no longer saw the ones in the corner. But there were others. 'Perhaps.' They returned in their rags, but still she said, 'You are right' and 'Yes, yes,' hoping the words would drive them away. Her agreement was merely ritual, like the effect of this glass: it made the fright worse but enabled her to bear it.

  The young waiter hurried to Miss Bristow's side, as if instructed, and said, 'The same again, madam?'

  The Imperial Icehouse

  Of all the grand buildings on my island, the grandest by far was The Imperial Icehouse - white pillars and a shapely roof topped by ornate lettering on a gilded sign. Unlike the warehouses and the shops on the same street, it had no smell. It was whiter than the church, and though you would not mistake it for a church, the fresh paint and elongated windows - and the gold piping on the scrollwork of the sign - gave it at once a look of holiness and purpose. I cannot think of human endeavor without that building coming to mind, shimmering in my memory as it did on the island, the heat distorting it like its reflection in water.

  The icehouse did more than cater to the comforts of the islanders. It provided ice for the fisherman's catch and the farmer's delicate produce. A famous Victorian novelist visited us in 1859 and remarked on it, describing it as 'a drinking shop.' It was certainly that, but it was more. It was 'well attended' he said. He was merely passing through, a traveler interested in recording our eccentricities. He could not have known that The Imperial Icehouse was our chief claim to civilization. Ice in that climate! It was shipped to the island whole, and preserved. It was our achievement and our boast.

  Then one day, decades later, four men came to town for a wagonload of ice. Three were black and had pretty names; the fourth was a white planter called Mr Hand. He had made the trip with his Negroes because it was high summer and he wanted cold drin
ks. His plan was to carry away a ton of ice and store it in his estate upcountry. He was a new man on the island and had the strengths and weaknesses peculiar to all new arrivals. He was hardworking and generous; he talked a good deal about progress; he wore his eagerness on his face. He looked stunned and happy and energetic. He did not listen or conceal. On this the most British of the islands it was a satisfaction to newcomers to see the Victoria Statue on Victoria Street, and the horses in Hyde Park, and Nelson in Trafalgar Square. Mr Hand saw no reason why he should not drink here as he had done in England.

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  He had taken over Martlet's estate, which had been up for sale ever since Martlet's death. That again revealed Mr Hand as a newcomer, considering what had happened to old Martlet. And the estate was as far from town as it was possible to be on this island: Mr Hand, a bachelor, must have needed consolation and encouragement.

  He had, against all good advice, taken over the Martlet Negroes, and three of these accompanied him on that trip to town for the ice. Mr Hand closed the deal at the icehouse by having a drink, and he sent a bucket of beer out to his men. They were called John Paul, Macacque, and Jacket. He had another drink, and another, and sent out more beer for those men who kept in the shade. It was not unlawful for Negro estate workers to drink in the daytime, but it was not the custom either. Even if he had known, Mr Hand probably would not have cared.

  The Negroes drank, conversing in whispers, shadows in shadow, accepting what they were offered, and waiting to be summoned to load the ice.

  They had arrived in the coolness of early morning, but the drinking meant delay: by noon the wagon was still empty, the four horses still tethered to a tree, the Negroes sitting with their backs to the icehouse and their long legs stretched out. Perhaps the racket from inside told them there would be no hurry. In any case, they expected to leave at dusk, for not even the rankest newcomer would risk hauling ice across the island in the midafternoon heat.

  Just as they had begun to doze, they were called. Mr Hand stood and swayed on the verandah. He was ready, he yelled. He had to repeat it before his words were understood. Some other men came out of the icehouse and argued with him. Mr Hand took them over to the wagon and showed them the sheets of canvas he had brought. He urged the men to watch as the Negroes swung the big wagon to the back door; and he supervised the loading, distributing sawdust between the great blocks of ice as if cementing for good the foundations of an imperial building.