Forms of presentation: characterization, dialogue

Characterization is used to present a character’s personality. We come to know the characters in the short story through the indirect method of 1) physical description, 2) the character’s thoughts, feelings and words, 3) the comments and reactions of others, and 4) the actions of the character — indirect characterization; and the direct method of the author’s stated opinion about the character — direct characterization.

A person in a short story is called a character. The person around whom the conflict revolves is called the main character. Most stories contain one or more main characters and several minor characters. The hero of the story who is faced with a conflict is the protagonist while the villain of the story, the person who causes the conflict is the antagonist.

Character Development is the change in the person from the beginning to the ending of a story. We say the character who changes in personality or attitude is a dynamic character, those that remain the same are referred to as static characters. A round character is a character with a fully developed, complex, even contradictory personality. A flat character is a character with little depth or complexity, who may be described in one or two phrases. A foil character is a minor character highlighting certain features of a major character usually through contrast. The author’s mouthpiece is a character, expressing the author’s view point as to the problems raised in the story and sharing his ideas and set of values.

Dialogue is the speech of two or more characters who address each other. Verbal behaviour (the way a character speaks, or what a character says in a certain situation) is a powerful means of characterization, revealing the social and intellectual standing, age, education and occupation, individual experiences and psychology of a character. It also expresses his state of mind and feelings, the attitude to his interlocutors. When analyzing speech characteristics, one should be alert for:

• Markers of official style (I presume, I beg your pardon, etc.), or markers of informal conversational style: contracted forms, colloquialisms, elliptical sentences, tag constructions (as you know), initiating signals (Well, Oh), hesitation pauses, false start — pall of which normally occur in spontaneous colloquial speech and often remain unnoticed, but in “fictional conversation” they may acquire a certain function, as they create verisimilitude and may indicate some features of the speaker’s character;

• Markers of the emotional state of the character: emphatic inversion, the use of emotionally coloured words, the use of breaks-in-the-narrative that stand for silence, the use of italics, interjections, hesitation pauses;

• Attitudinal markers: words denoting attitudes (hate, adore, despise), intensifiers (very, absolutely, etc.);

• Markers of the character’s educational level: bookish words, rough words, slang, vulgarisms, deviations from the standard;

• Markers of regional and dialectal speech, which define the speaker as to his origin, nationality and social standing: foreign words, etc.;

• Markers of the character’s occupation: terms, jargonisms;

• Markers of the speaker’s idiolect, i.e. his individual speech peculiarities which serve as a means of individualization and verisimilitude.

How to write a character sketch

There are two effective ways of arranging your character sketch. One of them is naming the qualities of a character first and then supporting your opinion with the evidence from the text. The other one is analyzing a character’s behaviour in certain circumstances and deducing his/her traits of character. While making a character sketch you should try to find answers to the following questions:

• Who are the main characters? Are they like real people?

• Do they remind you of certain types of people? Which are the most interesting? Why?

• Does the character seem to develop and change as the story progresses, or does he/she remain about the same from beginning to end?

• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the character under study? What incidents from the text can you cite to support your conclusions?

• To what extent does the personality of the character determine his/her success or failure?

• What character did you like most and which did you dislike?

• With which ones did it make a difference to you whether they were happy or not? Why?

• Which ones helped you to understand people a little better than before?

• How well does the author seem to know people and what “makes them tick”?

A helping hand

the central/main/major character

the protagonist/the antagonist

the hero/heroine

the villain

a foil — to serve/act as a foil to…

the author’s mouthpiece

a simple/flat character

a complex/well-rounded character

moral/mental/physical/spiritual characteristics

direct/indirect characterization

to reinforce characterization

to contribute to characterization/individualization

to depict/portray/describe/reveal/disclose/a character

to evaluate/assess/rate/judge a character’s actions/words/decisions/set of values

to share a character’s emotions

to arouse warmth/affection/compassion/admiration/resentment/antipathy,etc.

Read the short-story and answer the questions that follow it.

W. S. Maugham

The Happy Man

It is a dangerous thing to order the lives of others and I have often wondered at the self-confidence of the politicians, reformers and suchlike who are prepared to force upon their fellows measures that must alter their manners, habits, and points of view. I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows himself? Heaven knows, I know little enough of myself: I know nothing of others. We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbors. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners who form mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for them as for himself. And life, unfortunately, is something that you cannot lead but once; mistakes are often irreparable and who am I that I should tell this one and that how he should lead it? Life is a difficult business and I have found it hard enough to make my own a complete and rounded thing; I have not been tempted to teach my neighbor what he should do with his. But there are men who flounder at the journey’s start, the way before them is confused and hazardous, and on occasion however unwillingly, I have been forced to point the finger of fate. Sometimes men have said to me, what shall I do with my life? And I have seen myself for a moment wrapped in the dark cloak of Destiny.

Once I know that I advised well.

I was a young man, and I lived in a modest apartment in London near Victoria Station. Late one afternoon, when I was beginning to think that I had worked enough for that day, I heard a ring at the bell. I opened the door to a total stranger. He asked me my name; I told him. He asked if he might come in.

“Certainly.”

I led him into my sitting-room and begged him to sit down. He seemed a trifle embarrassed. I offered him a cigarette and he had some difficulty in lighting it without letting go off his hat. When he had satisfactorily achieved this feat I asked him if I should not put it on a chair for him. He quickly did this and while doing it dropped his umbrella.

“I hope you don’t mind my coming to see you like this,” he said. “My name is Stephens and I am a doctor. You’re in the medical, I believe?”

“Yes, but I don’t practice.”

“No, I know. I’ve just read a book of yours about Spain and I wanted to ask you about it.”

“It’s not a very good book, I’m afraid.”

“The fact remains that you know something about Spain and there’s no one else who does. And I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving me some information.”

“I shall be very glad.”

He was silent for a moment. He reached out for his hat and holding it in one hand absent-mindedly stroked it with the other. I surmised that it gave him confidence.

“I hope you won’t think it were odd for a perfect stranger to talk to you like this.”

He gave an apologetic laugh. “I am not going to tell you the story of my life.”

When people say this to me I always know that it is precisely what they are going to do. I do not mind. In fact I rather like it.

“I was brought up by two old aunts. I’ve never been anywhere. I’ve never done anything. I’ve been married for six years. I have no children. I am a medical officer at the Camberwell Infirmary. I can’t stick it any more.”

There was something very striking in the short, sharp sentences he used. They had a forcible ring. I had not given him more than a cursory glance, but now I looked at him with curiosity. He was a little man, thick-set and stout, of thirty perhaps; with a round red face from which shone small, dark and very bright eyes. His black hair was cropped close to a bullet-shaped head. He was dressed in a blue suit a good deal the worse for wear. It was baggy at the knees and the pockets bulged untidily.

“You know what the duties are of a medical officer in an infirmary. One day is pretty much like another. And that’s all I’ve got to look forward to for the rest of my life. Do you think it’s worth it?”

“It’s a means of livelihood,” I answered.

“Yes. I know. The money’s pretty good.”

“I don’t exactly know why you’ve come to me.”

“Well, I want to know whether you thought there would be any chance for an English doctor in Spain?”

“Why Spain?”

“I don’t know, I just have a fancy for it.”

“It’s not like Carmen, you know.”

“But there is sunshine there, and there is good wine, and there is colour, and there is air you can breathe. Let me say what I have to say straight out. I heard by accident that there was no English doctor in Seville. Do you think I could earn a living there? Is it madness to give up a good save job for an uncertainty?”

“What does your wife think about it?”

“She is willing.”

“It’s a great risk.”

“I know. But if you say take it, I will; if you say stay where you are, I’ll stay.”

He was looking at me intently with those bright dark eyes of his and I knew that he meant what he said. I reflected for a moment.

“Your whole future is concerned: you must decide for yourself. But this I can tell you: if you don’t want money but are content to earn just enough to keep body and soul together, then go. For you will lead a wonderful life.”

He left me, I thought about him for a day or two, and then forgot. The episode passed completely from my memory.

Many years later, fifteen at least, I happened to be in Seville and having some trifling indisposition asked the hotel porter whether there was an English doctor in the town. He said there was and gave me the address. I took a cab and as I drove up to the house a little fat man came out of it. He hesitated when he caught sight of me.

“Have you come to see me?” he said. “I am an English doctor.” I explained my errand and he asked me to come in. He lived in an ordinary Spanish house, with a patio, and his consulting room which led out of it littered with papers, books, medical appliances, and lumber. The sight of it would have startled a squeamish patient. We did our business and then I asked the doctor what his fee was. He shook his head and smiled.

“There is no fee.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Don’t you remember me? Why, I’m here because of something you said to me. You changed my whole life for me. I’m Stephens.”

I had not the least notion what he was talking about. He reminded me of our interview, he repeated to me what we had said, and gradually, out of the night, a deem recollection of the incident came back to me.

“I was wondering if I’d ever see you again,” he said. “I was wondering if ever I’d have a chance of thanking you for all you’ve done for me.”

“It’s been a success then?”

I looked at him. He was very fat now and bald, but his eyes twinkled gaily and his fleshy, red face bore an expression of perfect good humour. The clothes he wore, terribly shabby they were, had been made obviously by a Spanish tailor and his hat was the white-brimmed sombrero of the Spaniard. He looked to me as though he knew a good bottle of wine when he saw it. He had a dissipated, though entirely sympathetic, appearance. You might have hesitated to let him remove your appendix, but you could not have imagined a more delightful creature to drink a glass of wine with.

“Surely you were married?” I asked.

“Yes. My wife didn’t like Spain, she went back to Camberwell, she was more at home there.”

“Oh, I’m sorry for that.”

His black eyes flashed a bacchanalian smile. He really had somewhat the look of young Silenus.

“Life is full of compensations,” he murmured.

The words were hardly out of his mouth when a Spanish woman, no longer in her first youth, but still boldly and voluptuously beautiful, appeared at the door. She spoke to him in Spanish, and I could not fail to perceive that she was the mistress of the house.

As he stood at the door to let me out he said to me:

“You told me when last I saw you that if I come here I should earn just enough money to keep body and soul together, but that I should lead a wonderful life. Well, I want to tell you that you were right. Poor I have been and poor I shall always be, but by heaven I’ve enjoyed myself. I wouldn’t exchange the life I’ve had with that of any king in the world.”

1. What is the author’s method of telling the story? Point out the peculiarities of the plot structure.

2. Define the forms of presentation within the story.

3. What sources of characterization does the author employ to reveal the main character’s personality?

4. Compare Dr. Stephens’ manner of behaviour the first and the second time the narrator meets him.

5. Has the main character’s manner of speaking and vocabulary changed with the course of time?

6. Each time the author pays much attention to the character’s clothes. Why?

7. What is the author’s attitude toward Dr. Stephens? Does it undergo any change throughout the story? How do you know?

Read the short-story and answer the questions that follow it.

J. Thurber

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

“WE’RE GOING THROUGH!” The Commander’s voice was like tin ice breaking. He wore his full dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. “We can’t make it, sir. It’s spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me.” “I’m not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,” said the Commander. “Throw the power lights! Rev her up to 8,500! We’re going through!” The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” he shouted. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” repeated Lieutenant Berg. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” shouted the Commander. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. “The Old Man’ll get us through,” they said to one another. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of Hell!..”.

“Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said Mrs. Mitty. “What are you driving so fast for?”

“Hmm?” said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. “You were up to fifty-five,” she said. “You know I don’t like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five.” Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN 202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. “You’re tensed up again,” said Mrs. Mitty. “It’s one of your days. I wish you’d let Dr. Renshaw look you over.”

Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done. “Remember to get those overshoes while I’m having my hair done, she said. “I don’t need overshoes,” said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. “We’ve been all through that,” she said, getting out of the car. “You’re not a young man any longer.” He raced the engine a little. “Why don’t you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?” Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. “Pick it up, brother!” snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.

“It’s the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan,” said the pretty nurse. “Yes?” said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. “Who has the case?” “Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over.” A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. “Hello, Mitty,” he said. “We’re having the devil’s own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you’d take a look at him.” “Glad to,” said Mitty.

In the operating room there were whispered introductions: “Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty.” “I’ve read your book on streptothricosis,” said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. “A brilliant performance, sir.” “Thank you,” said Walter Mitty. “Didn’t know you were in the States, Mitty,” grumbled Remington. “Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary.” “You are very kind,” said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. “The new anesthetizer is giving way!” shouted an interne. “There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!” “Quiet, man!” said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep. He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials. “Give me a fountain pen!” he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. “That will hold for ten minutes,” he said. “Get on with the operation.” A nurse hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale. “Coreopsis has set in,” said Renshaw nervously. “If you would take over, Mitty?” Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists. “If you wish,” he said. They slipped a white gown on him; he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining …

“Back it up, Mac! Look out for that Buick!” Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. “Wrong lane, Mac,” said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. “Gee. Yeh,” muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked “Exit Only.” “Leave her sit there,” said the attendant. “I’ll put her away.” Mitty got out of the car. “Hey, better leave the key.” “Oh,” said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.

They’re so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them wound around the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I’ll wear my right arm in a sling; they won’t grin at me then. I’ll have my right arm in a sling and they’ll see I couldn’t possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the sidewalk. “Overshoes,” he said to himself, and he began looking for a shoe store.

When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him twice, before they set out from their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these weekly trips to town — he was always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb’s, razor blades? No. Toothpaste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, carborundum, initiative and referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it. “Where’s the what’s-its-name?” she would ask. “Don’t tell me you forgot the what’s-its-name.” A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury trial.

“…Perhaps this will refresh your memory.” The District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. “Have you ever seen this before?” Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. “This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80,” he said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. “You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?” said the District Attorney, insinuatingly. “Objection!” shouted Mitty’s attorney. “We have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July.” Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. “With any known make of gun,” he said evenly, “I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand.” Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman’s scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty’s arms. The District Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. “You miserable cur!…”

“Puppy biscuit,” said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. “He said ‘Puppy biscuit’,” she said to her companion. “That man said ‘Puppy biscuit’ to himself.” Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A. & P., not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. “I want some biscuit for small, young dogs,” he said to the clerk. “Any special brand, sir?” The greatest pistol shot in the world thought a moment. “It says ‘Puppies Bark for It’ on the box,” said Walter Mitty.

His wife would be through at the hairdresser’s in fifteen minutes Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn’t like to get to the hotel first, she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. “Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?” Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.

“…The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir,” said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair. “Get him to bed,” he said wearily, “with the others. I’ll fly alone.” “But you can’t, sir,” said the sergeant anxiously. “It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman’s circus is between here and Saulier.” “Somebody’s got to get that ammunition dump,” said Mitty. “I’m going over. Spot of brandy?” He poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through the room. “A bit of a near thing,” said Captain Mitty carelessly. “The box barrage is closing in,” said the sergeant. “We only live once, Sergeant,” said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. “Or do we?” He poured another brandy and tossed it off. “I never see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir,” said the sergeant. “Begging your pardon, sir.” Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. “It’s forty kilometers through hell, sir,” said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy. “After all,” he said softly, “what isn’t?” The pounding of the cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming “Aupres de Ma Blonde.” He turned and waved to the sergeant. “Cheerio!” he said …

Something struck his shoulder. “I’ve been looking all over this hotel for you,” said Mrs. Mitty. “Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?” “Things close in,” said Walter Mitty vaguely. “What?” Mrs. Mitty said. “Did you get the what’s-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What’s in that box?” “Overshoes,” said Mitty. “Couldn’t you have put them on in the store?” “I was thinking,” said Walter Mitty. “Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?” She looked at him. “I’m going to take your temperature when I get you home,” she said.

They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, “Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won’t be a minute.” She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking… He put his shoulders back and his heels together. “To hell with the handkerchief,” said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

1. Make a summary of the story. Outline the actual events taking place in it. Will the title be of any help for you in this case?

2. Accumulate the facts of the main character’s life (his age, job, profession, marital status, children). Is the main hero of the story characterized directly?

3. What types of portrayal does the author resort to in creating the imaginary incarnations of the personage (Walter Mitty the pilot, Doctor Mitty, Walter Mitty the sniper, Captain Mitty)? Analyze their behaviour, manner of speaking, the attitude of the people around to them.

4. Compare your observations of Walter Mitty’s real character and the persons he imagines himself to be.

5. Is Walter Mitty viewed by the author as a sympathetic or unsympathetic person? What is your opinion of the main character?

Reading Independently

Preparation for the exam in Oral Practice will require a good deal of independent work and thinking. Below, you will find 15 short stories for independent appreciation. Read the short stories carefully, do a thorough vocabulary work and apply the tools and skills of analysis you have learned during the winter term. The suggested scheme of story analysis and After You Read questions will help you to focus on the most important points of interpretation and to understand the author’s message better.

The Scheme of Story Analysis

1. Type of story Is it a science fiction/crime/love/psychological story?

2. A brief account of events (5 sentences)

3. Plot How are the events arranged?

What conflict is there at the core of the story?

What is the turning point?

Is the ending predictable/tidy/troubling/thought-provoking /surprising?

4. Setting Give examples of some elements and their function.

5. Narration Label the narrator and the effect created.

6. Description How effective is the author’s language?

Does the writer employ any figures of speech/emotive words? What effect do they create?

7. Characters Categorize the characters (major/minor/static/dynamic/complex /simple).

How does the author reveal what his characters are like? Is it through their statements and thoughts/the opinion of other characters/their actions/their names, environment, or does the author say directly what the characters are like?

Does the author employ implicit or explicit characterization?

Give examples of some personality traits attributable to the characters and provide evidence from the text.

8. Message Identify the theme of the story.

and theme Is it about love/friendship/parents’ love for their children/a person’s quest for happiness/bullying/sense of life/trials of life/ crime and punishment?

What is the central idea of the story?

What message does the author try to get across to the reader, in your opinion?

For example:

The author suggests that love can work wonders and people can change for the better when they are head over heels in love with somebody…

In telling the story, the writer hoped to drive home the thought that everybody has their own idea of happiness…

The writer communicates by this story the idea that parents' love for their children can be selfless and they always give their offspring a helping hand...

According to the story there are people who are shallow and narrow-minded because they react to appearances only. They react to the surface of things and people, not to their substance…

STORIES FOR INDEPENDENT READING

1.

R. Bradbury

All Summer in a Day

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

“Now?”

“Soon.”

“Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today, will it?”

“Look, look; see for yourself!”

The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.

It rained.

It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.

“It’s stopping, it’s stopping!”

“Yes, yes!”

Margot stood apart from them, from these children who could never remember a time when there wasn’t rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering gold or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone.

All day yesterday they had read in class, about the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small stories or essays or poems about it:

I think the sun is a flower,

That blooms for just one hour.

That was Margot’s poem, read in a quiet voice in the still classroom while the rain was falling outside.

“Aw, you didn’t write that!” protested one of the boys.

“I did,” said Margot “I did.”

“William!” said the teacher.

But that was yesterday. Now the rain was slackening, and the children were crushed in the great thick windows.

“Where’s teacher?”

“She’ll be back.”

“She’d better hurry, we’ll miss it!”

They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes.

Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass.

“What’re you looking at?” said William.

Margot said nothing.

“Speak when you’re spoken to.” He gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather she let herself be moved only by him and nothing else.

They edged away from her, they would not look at her. She felt them go away. And this was because she would play no games with them in the echoing tunnels of the underground city. If they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched windows.

And then, of course, the biggest crime of all was that she had come here only five years ago from Earth, and she remembered the sun and the way the sun was and the sky was when she was four in Ohio. And they, they had been on Venus all their lives, and they had been only two years old when last the sun came out and had long since forgotten the color and heat of it and the way it really was. But Margot remembered.

“It’s like a penny,” she said once, eyes closed.

“No it’s not!” the children cried.

“It’s like a fire,” she said, “in the stove.”

“You’re lying, you don’t remember!” cried the children.

But she remembered and stood quietly apart from all of them and watched the patterning windows. And once, a month ago, she had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her ears and over her head, screaming the water mustn’t touch her head. So after that, dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was different and they knew her difference and kept away.

There was talk that her father and mother were taking her back to Earth next year; it seemed vital to her that they do so, though it would mean the loss of thousands of dollars to her family. And so, the children hated her for all these reasons of big and little consequence. They hated her pale snow face, her waiting silence, her thinness, and her possible future.

“Get away!” The boy gave her another push. “What are you waiting for?”

Then, for the first time, she turned and looked at him. And what she was waiting for was in her eyes.

“Well, don’t wait around here!” cried the boy savagely. “You won’t see nothing!”

Her lips moved.

“Nothing!” he cried. “It was all a joke, wasn’t it?” He turned to the other children. “Nothing’s happening today, is it?”

They all blinked at him and then, understanding, laughed and shook their heads. “Nothing, nothing!”

“Oh, but,” Margot whispered, her eyes helpless. “But this is the day, the scientists predict, they say, they know the sun...”

“All a joke!” said the boy, and seized her roughly. “Hey, everyone, let’s put her in a closet before teacher comes!”

“No,” said Margot, falling back. They surged about her, caught her up and bore her protesting, and then pleading, and then crying, back into a tunnel, a room, a closet, where they slammed and locked door. They stood looking at the door and saw it tremble from her beating and throwing herself against it. They heard her muffled cries. Then, smiling, they turned and went out and back down the tunnel, just as the teacher arrived.

“Ready, children?” She glanced at her watch.

“Yes!” said everyone.

“Are we all here?”

“Yes!”

The rain slackened still more.

They crowded to the huge door.

The rain stopped.

It was as if, in the midst of a film concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcanic eruption something had, first, gone wrong with the sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of the blasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film from the projector and inserted in its place a peaceful tropical slide which did not move or tremor. The world ground to a standstill. The silence was so immense and unbelievable that you felt your ears had been stuffed or you had lost your hearing altogether. The children put their hands to their ears. They stood apart. The door slid back and the smell of the silent, waiting world came in to them.

The sun came out.

It was the color of flaming bronze and it was very large. And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile color.

And the jungle burned with sunlight as the children, released from their spell, rushed out, yelling, into the springtime.

“Now, don’t go too far,” called the teacher after them. “You’ve only two hours, you know. You wouldn’t want to get caught out!”

But they were running and turning their faces up to the sky and feeling the sun on their cheeks like a warm iron; they were taking off their jackets and letting the sun burn their arms.

“Oh, it’s better than the sun lamps, isn’t it?”

“Much, much better!”

They stopped running and stood in the great jungle that covered Venus, that grew and never stopped growing, tumultuously, even as you watched it. It was a nest of octopi, clustering up great arms of fleshlike weed, wavering, flowering in this brief spring. It was the color of rubber and ash, this jungle, from the many years without sun. It was the color of stones and white cheeses and ink, and it was the color of the moon.

The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them, resilient and alive. They ran among the trees, they slipped and fell, they pushed each other, they played hide-and-seek and tag, but most of all they squinted at the sun until tears down their faces, they put their hands up to that yellowness and that amazing blueness and they breathed of the fresh, fresh air and listened and listened to the silence which suspended them in a blessed sea of no sound and no motion. They looked at everything and savored everything. Then, wildly, like animals escaped from their caves, they ran and ran in shouting circles. They ran for an hour and did not stop running.

And then —

In the midst of their running one of the girls wailed.

Everyone stopped.

The girl, standing in the open, held out her hand.

“Oh, look, look,” she said, trembling.

They came slowly to look at her opened palm.

In the center of it, cupped and huge, was a single rain drop. She began to cry, looking at it. They glanced quietly at the sky.

“Oh. Oh.”

A few cold drops fell on their noses and their cheeks and their mouths. The sun faded behind a stir of mist. A wind blew cool around them. They turned and started to walk back toward the underground house, their hands at their sides, their smiles vanishing away.

A boom of thunder startled them and like leaves before a new hurricane, they tumbled upon each other and ran. Lightning struck ten miles away, five miles away, a mile, a half mile. The sky darkened into midnight in a flash.

They stood in the doorway of the underground for a moment until it was raining hard. Then they closed the door and heard the gigantic sound of the rain falling in tons and avalanches, everywhere and forever.

“Will it be seven more years?”

“Yes. Seven.”

Then one of them gave a little cry.

“Margot!”

“What?”

“She’s still in the closet where we locked her.”

“Margot.”

They stood as if someone had driven them, like so many stakes, into the floor. They looked at each other and then looked away. They glanced out at the world that was raining now and raining and raining steadily. They could not meet each other’s glances. Their faces were solemn and pale. They looked at their hands and feet, their faces down.

“Margot.”

One of the girls said, “Well…?”

No one moved.

“Go on,” whispered the girl.

They walked slowly down the hall in the sound of cold rain. They turned through the doorway to the room in the sound of the storm and thunder, lightning on their faces, blue and terrible. They walked over to the closet door slowly and stood by it.

Behind the closet door was only silence.

They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and let Margot out.

1. Consider the setting of the story. Does it help to identify the genre of the short story?

2. Dwell on the descriptions of the nature and the weather on the planet Venus. Analyze the emotional colouring of the words employed for this purpose, interpret the means of expressiveness you are able to identify. What atmosphere does the author create through such descriptions?

3. Examine the way the characters are presented; pay attention to the choice of words, their connotations, the structure of the sentences. What attitude to the main character does the author establish?

4. Define the key of the story. Give your reasoning.

5. Outline the basic conflict and the themes of the story. What is the message the author tries to get across?

2.

J. Archer

Just Good Friends

I woke up before him feeling slightly randy but I knew there was nothing I could do about it.

I blinked and my eyes immediately accustomed themselves to the half light. I raised my head and gazed at the large expanse of motionless white flesh lying next to me. If only he took as much exercise as I did he wouldn’t have that spare tyre, I thought unsympathetically.

Roger stirred restlessly and even turned over to face me, but I knew he would not be fully awake until the alarm on his side of the bed started ringing. I pondered for a moment whether I could go back to sleep again or should get up and find myself some breakfast before he woke. In the end I settled for just lying still on my side day-dreaming, but making sure I didn’t disturb him. When he did eventually open his eyes I planned to pretend I was still asleep — that way he would end up getting breakfast for me. I began to go over the things that needed to be done after he had left for the office. As long as I was at home ready to greet him when he returned from his work, he didn’t seem to mind what I got up to during the day.

A gentle rumble emanated from his side of the bed. Roger’s snoring never disturbed me. My affection for him was unbounded, and I only wished I could find the words to let him know. In truth, he was the first man I had really appreciated. As I gazed at his unshaven face I was reminded that it hadn’t been his looks which had attracted me in the pub that night.

I had first come across Roger in the Cat and Whistle, a pub situated on the corner of Mafeking Road. You might say it was our local. He used to come in around eight, order a pint of mild and take it to a small table in the corner of the room just beyond the dartboard. Mostly he would sit alone, watching the darts being thrown towards double top but more often settling in one or five, if they managed to land on the board at all. He never played the game himself, and I often wondered, from my vantage point behind the bar, if he were fearful of relinquishing his favourite seat or just had no interest in the sport.

Then things suddenly changed for Roger — for the better, was no doubt how he saw it — when one evening in early spring a blonde named Madeleine, wearing an imitation fur coat and drinking double gin and its, perched on the stool beside him. I had never seen her in the pub before but she was obviously known locally, and loose bar talk led me to believe it couldn’t last. You see, word was about that she was looking for someone whose horizons stretched beyond the Cat and Whistle.

In fact the affair — if that’s what it ever came to — lasted for only twenty days. I know because I counted every one of them. Then one night voices were raised and heads turned as she left the small stool just as suddenly as she had come. His tired eyes watched her walk to a vacant place at the corner of the bar, but he didn’t show any surprise at her departure and made no attempt to pursue her.

Her exit was my cue to enter. I almost leapt from behind the bar and, moving as quickly as dignity allowed, was seconds later sitting on the vacant stool beside him. He didn’t comment and certainly made no attempt to offer me a drink, but the one glance he shot in my direction did not suggest he found me an unacceptable replacement. I looked around to see if anyone else had plans to usurp my position. The men standing round the dartboard didn’t seem to care. Treble seventeen, twelve and a five kept them more than occupied. I glanced towards the bar to check if the boss had noticed my absence, but he was busy taking orders. I saw Madeleine was already sipping a glass of champagne from the pub’s only bottle, purchased by a stranger whose stylish double-breasted blazer and striped bow tie convinced me she wouldn’t be bothering with Roger any longer. She looked well set for at least another twenty days.

I looked up at Roger — I had known his name for some time, although I have never addressed him as such and I couldn’t be sure that he was aware of mine. I began to flutter my eyelashes in a rather exaggerated way. I felt a little stupid but at least it elicited a gentle smile. He leaned over and touched my cheek, his hands surprisingly gentle. Neither of us felt the need to speak. We were both lonely and it seemed unnecessary to explain why. We sat in silence, he occasionally sipping his beer, I from time to time rearranging my legs, while a few feet from us the darts pursued their undetermined course.

When the publican cried, “Last orders,” Roger downed the remains of his beer while the dart players completed what had to be their final game.

No one commented when we left together and I was surprised that Roger made no protest as I accompanied him back to his little semi-detached. I already knew exactly where he lived because I had seen him on several occasions standing at the bus queue in Dobson Street in a silent line of reluctant morning passengers. Once I even positioned myself on a nearby wall in order to study his features more carefully. It was an anonymous, almost commonplace face but he had the warmest eyes and the kindest smile I had observed in any man.

My only anxiety was that he didn’t seem aware of my existence, just constantly preoccupied, his eyes each evening and his thoughts each morning only for Madeleine. How I envied that girl. She had everything I wanted — except a decent fur coat, the only thing my mother had left me. In truth, I have no right to be catty about Madeleine, as her past couldn’t have been more murky than mine.

All that had taken place well over a year ago and, to prove my total devotion to Roger, I have never entered the Cat and Whistle since. He seems to have forgotten Madeleine because he never once spoke of her in front of me. An unusual man, he didn’t question me about any of the relationships either.

Perhaps he should have. I would have liked him to know the truth about my life before we’d met, though it all seems irrelevant now. You see, I had been the youngest in a family of four so I always came last in line. I had never known my father, and I came home one night to discover that my mother had run off with another man. Tracy, one of my sisters, warned me not to expect her back. She turned out to be right, for I have never seen my mother since that day. It’s awful to have to admit, if only to oneself, that one’s mother is a tramp.

Now an orphan, I began to drift, often trying to stay one step ahead of the law — not so easy when you haven’t always got somewhere to put your head down. I can’t even recall how I ended up with Derek — if that was his real name. Derek, whose dark sensual looks would have attracted any susceptible female, told me that he had been on a merchant steamer for the past three years. When he made love to me I was ready to believe anything. I explained to him that all I wanted was a warm home, regular food and perhaps in time a family of my own. He ensured that one of my wishes was fulfilled, because a few weeks after he left me I ended up with twins, two girls. Derek never set eyes on them: he had returned to sea even before I could tell him I was pregnant. He hadn’t needed to promise me the earth; he was so good-looking he must have known I would have been his just for a night on the tiles.

I tried to bring up the girls decently, but the authorities caught up with me this time and I lost them both. I wonder where they are now? God knows. I only hope they’ve ended up in a good home. At least they inherited Derek’s irresistible looks, which can only help them through life. It’s just one more thing Roger will never know about. His unquestioning trust only makes me feel more guilty, and now I never seem able to find a way of letting him know the truth.

After Derek had gone back to sea I was on my own for almost a year before getting part-time work at the Cat and Whistle. The publican was so mean that he wouldn’t have even provided food and drink for me, if I hadn’t kept to my part of the bargain.

Roger used to come in about once, perhaps twice a week before he met the blonde with the shabby fur coat. After that it was every night until she upped and left him.

I knew he was perfect for me the first time I heard him order a pint of mild. A pint of mild — I can’t think of a better description of Roger. In those early days the barmaids used to flirt openly with him, but he didn’t show any interest.

I think I must have been the only one in that pub who was looking for something more permanent. And so Roger allowed me to spend the night with him. I remember that he slipped into the bathroom to undress while I rested on what I assumed would be my side of the bed. Since that night he has never once asked me to leave, let alone tried to kick me out. It’s an easy-going relationship. I’ve never known him raise his voice or scold me unfairly. Forgive the cliché, but for once I have fallen on my feet.

Brr. Brr. Brr. That damned alarm. I wished I could have buried it. The noise would go on and on until at last Roger decided to stir himself. I once tried to stretch across him and put a stop to its infernal ringing, only ending up knocking the contraption on the floor, which annoyed him even more than the ringing. Never again, I concluded. Eventually a long arm emerged from under the blanket and a palm dropped on to the top of the clock and the awful din subsided. I’m a light sleeper — the slightest movement stirs me. If only he had asked me I could have woken him far more gently each morning. After all, my methods are every bit as reliable as any man-made contraption.

Half awake, Roger gave me a brief cuddle before kneading my back, always guaranteed to elicit a smile. Then he yawned, stretched and declared as he did every morning, “Must hurry along or I’ll be late for the office.” I suppose some females would have been annoyed by the predictability of our morning routine — but not this lady. It was all part of a life that made me feel secure in the belief that at last I had found something worthwhile.

Roger managed to get his feet into the wrong slippers — always a fifty-fifty chance — before lumbering towards the bathroom. He emerged fifteen minutes later, as he always did, looking only slightly better than he had when he entered. I’ve learned to live with what some would have called his foibles, while he has learned to accept my mania for cleanliness and a need to feel secure.

“Get up, lazy-bones,” he remonstrated but then only smiled when I re-settled myself, refusing to leave the warm hollow that had been left by his body.

“I suppose you expect me to get your breakfast before I go to work?” he added as he made his way downstairs. I didn’t bother to reply. I knew that in a few moments’ time he would be opening the front door, picking up the morning newspaper, any mail, and our regular pint of milk. Reliable as ever, he would put on the kettle, then head for the pantry, fill a bowl with my favourite breakfast food and add my portion of the milk, leaving himself just enough for two cups of coffee.

I could anticipate almost to the second when breakfast would be ready. First I would hear the kettle boil, a few moments later the milk would be poured, then finally there would be the sound of a chair being pulled up. That was the signal I needed to confirm it was time for me to join him.

I stretched my legs slowly, noticing my nails needed some attention. I had already decided against a proper wash until after he had left for the office. I could hear the sound of the chair being scraped along the kitchen lino. I felt so happy that I literally jumped off the bed before making my way towards the open door. A few seconds later I was downstairs. Although he had already taken his first mouthful of cornflakes he stopped eating the moment he saw me.

“Good of you to join me,” he said, a grin spreading over his face.

I padded over towards him and looked up expectantly. He bent down and pushed my bowl towards me. I began to lap up the milk happily, my tail swishing from side to side.

It’s a myth that we only swish our tails when we’re angry.

1. State the forms of presentation and the type of narration employed.

2. Why do you think dialogue as a form of presentation is absent from the story?

3. What is the climactic point of the story? Why do you think so?

4. Accumulate the information about the protagonist’s past life and present occupation. Compare your idea of the narrator at the beginning and at the end of the story.

5. How can the personality of the narrator in this case help to define the genre of the short story and its main idea?

3.

J. Archer

The Luncheon

She waved at me across a crowded room of the St. Regis Hotel in New York. I waved back realising I knew the face but I was unable to place it. She squeezed past waiters and guests and had reached me before I had a chance to ask anyone who she was. I racked that section of my brain which is meant to store people, but it transmitted no reply. I realised I would have to resort to the old party trick of carefully worded questions until her answers jogged my memory.

“How are you, my darling?” she cried, and threw her arms around me, an opening that didn’t help as we were at a Literary Guild cocktail party, and anyone will throw their arms around you on such occasions, even the directors of the Book-of-the-Month Club. From her accent she was clearly American and looked to be approaching forty, but thanks to the genius of modern make-up might even have overtaken it. She wore a long white cocktail dress and her blonde hair was done up in one of those buns that looks like a cottage loaf. The overall effect made her appear somewhat like a chess queen. Not that the cottage loaf helped because she might have had dark hair flowing to her shoulders when we last met. I do wish women would realise that when they change their hair style they often achieve exactly what they set out to do: look completely different to any unsuspecting male.

“I’m well, thank you,” I said to the white queen. “And you?” I inquired as my opening gambit.

“I’m just fine, darling,” she replied, taking a glass of champagne from a passing waiter.

“And how’s the family?” I asked, not sure if she even had one.

“They’re all well,” she replied. No help there. “And how is Louise?” she inquired.

“Blooming,” I said. So she knew my wife. But then not necessarily, I thought. Most American women are experts at remembering the names of men’s wives. They have to be, when on the New York circuit they change so often it becomes a greater challenge than The Times crossword.

“Have you been to London lately?” I roared above the babble. A brave question, as she might never have been to Europe.

“Only once since we had lunch together.” She looked at me quizzically. “You don’t remember who I am, do you?” she asked as she devoured a cocktail sausage.

I smiled.

“Don’t be silly, Susan,” I said. “How could I ever forget?”

She smiled.

I confess that I remembered the white queen’s name in the nick of time. Although I still had only vague recollections of the lady, I certainly would never forget the lunch.

I had just had my first book published and the critics on both sides of the Atlantic had been complimentary, even if the cheques from my publishers were less so. My agent had told me on several occasions that I shouldn’t write if I wanted to make money. This created a dilemma because I couldn’t see how to make money if I didn’t write.

It was around this time that the lady, who was now facing me and chattering on oblivious to my silence, telephoned from New York to heap lavish praise on my novel. There is no writer who does not enjoy receiving such calls, although I confess to having been less than captivated by an eleven-year-old girl who called me collect from California to say she had found a spelling mistake on page forty-seven and warned me she would ring again if she discovered another. However, this particular lady might have ended her transatlantic congratulations with nothing more than goodbye if she had not dropped her own name. It was one of those names that can, on the spur of the moment, always book a table at a chic restaurant or a seat at the opera which mere mortals like myself would have found impossible to achieve given a month’s notice. To be fair, it was her husband’s name that had achieved the reputation, as one of the world’s most distinguished film producers.

“When I’m next in London you must have lunch with me,” came crackling down the phone.

“No,” said I gallantly, “you must have lunch with me.”

“How perfectly charming you English always are,” she said.

I have often wondered how much American women get away with when they say those few words to an Englishman. Nevertheless, the wife of an Oscar-winning producer does not phone one every day.

“I promise to call you when I’m next in London,” she said.

And indeed she did, for almost six months to the day she telephoned again, this time from the Connaught Hotel to declare how much she was looking forward to our meeting.

“Where would you like to have lunch?” I said, realising a second too late, when she replied with the name of one of the most exclusive restaurants in town, that I should have made sure it was I who choose the venue. I was glad she couldn’t see my forlorn face as she added with unabashed liberation:

“Monday, one o’clock. Leave the booking to me — I’m known there.”

On the day in question I donned my one respectable suit, a new shirt which I had been saving for a special occasion since Christmas, and the only tie that looked as if it hadn’t previously been used to hold up my trousers. I then strolled over to my bank and asked for a statement of my current account. The teller handed me a long piece of paper unworthy of its amount. I studied the figure as one who has to take a major financial decision. The bottom line stated in black lettering that I was in credit to the sum of thirty-seven pounds and sixty-three pence. I wrote out a cheque for thirty-seven pounds. I feel that a gentleman should always leave his account in credit, and I might add it was a belief that my bank manager shared with me. I then walked up to Mayfair for my luncheon date.

As I entered the restaurant I observed too many waiters and plush seats for my liking. You can’t eat either, but you can be charged for them. At a corner table for two sat a woman who, although not young, was elegant. She wore a blouse of powder blue crepe-de-chine, and her blonde hair was rolled away from her face in a style that reminded me of the war years, and had once again become fashionable. It was clearly my transatlantic admirer, and she greeted me in the same “I’ve known you all my life” fashion as she was to do at the Literary Guild cocktail party years later. Although she had a drink in front of her I didn’t order an aperitif, explaining that I never drank before lunch — and would like to have added, “but as soon as your husband makes a film of my novel, I will.”

She launched immediately into the latest Hollywood gossip, not so much dropping names as reciting them, while I ate my way through the crisps from the bowl in front of me. A few minutes later a waiter materialised by the table and presented us with two large embossed leather menus, considerably better bound than my novel. The place positively reeked of unnecessary expense. I opened the menu and studied the first chapter with horror; it was eminently putdownable. I had no idea that simple food obtained from Govern Garden that morning could cost quite so much by merely being transported to Mayfair. I could have bought her the same dishes for a quarter of the price at my favourite bistro, a mere one hundred yards away, and to add to my discomfort I observed that it was one of those restaurants where the guest’s menu made no mention of the prices. I settled down to study the long list of French dishes which only served to remind me that I hadn’t eaten well for over a month, a state of affairs that was about to be prolonged by a further day. I remembered my bank balance and morosely reflected that I would probably have to wait until my agent sold the Icelandic rights of my novel before I could afford a square meal again.

“What would you like?” I said gallantly.

“I always enjoy a light lunch,” she volunteered. I sighed with premature relief, only to find that light did not necessarily mean “inexpensive”.

She smiled sweetly up at the waiter, who looked as if he wouldn’t be wondering where his next meal might be coming from, and ordered just a sliver of smoked salmon, followed by two tiny tender lamb cutlets. Then she hesitated, but only for a moment, before adding “and a side salad”.

I studied the menu with some caution, running my finger down the prices, not the dishes.

“I also eat lightly at lunch” I said mendaciously. “The chefs salad will be quite enough for me.” The waiter was obviously affronted but left peaceably.

She chatted of Coppola and Preminger, of Al Pacino and Robert Redford, and of Greta Garbo as if she saw her all the time. She was kind enough to stop for a moment and ask what I was working on at present, I would like to have replied — on how I was to explain to my wife that I only have sixty-three pence left in the bank; whereas I actually discussed my ideas for another novel. She seemed impressed, but still made no reference to her husband. Should I mention him? No. Mustn’t sound pushy, or as though I needed the money.

The food arrived, or that is to say her smoked salmon did, I sat silently watching her eat my bank account while I nibbled a roll. I looked up only to discover a wine waiter hovering by my side.

“Would you care for some wine?” said I, recklessly.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said. I smiled a little too soon: “Well, perhaps a little something white and dry.”

The wine waiter handed over a second leather-bound book, this time with golden grapes embossed on the cover. I searched down the pages for half bottles, explaining to my guest I never drank at lunch, I chose the cheapest. The wine waiter reappeared a moment later with a large silver salver full of ice in which the half bottle looked drowned, and, like me, completely out of its depth. A junior waiter cleared away the empty plate while another wheeled a large trolley to the side of our table and served the lamb cutlets and the chefs salad. At the same time a third waiter made up an exquisite side salad for my guest which ended up bigger than my complete order. I didn’t feel I could ask her to swap.

To be fair, the chef’s salad was super — although I confess it was hard to appreciate such food fully while trying to work out a plot that would be convincing if I found the bill came to over thirty-seven pounds.

“How silly of me to ask for white wine with lamb,” she said, having nearly finished the half bottle, ordered a half bottle of the house red without calling for the wine list. She finished the white wine and then launched into the theatre, music and other authors. All those who were still alive she seemed to know and those who were dead she hadn’t read. I might have enjoyed the performance if it hadn’t been for the fear of wondering if I would be able to afford it when the curtain came down. When the waiter cleared away the empty dishes he asked my guest if she would care for anything else.

“No, thank you,” she said — I nearly applauded. “Unless you have one of your famous apple surprises.”

“I fear the last one may have gone, madam, but I’ll go and see.” Don’t hurry, I wanted to say, but instead I just smiled as the rope tightened around my neck. A few moments later the waiter strode back in triumph weaving between the tables holding the apple surprise, in the palm of his hand, high above his head. I prayed to Newton that the apple would obey his law. It didn’t.

“The last one, madam.”

“Oh, what luck,” she declared.

“Oh, what luck,” I repeated, unable to face the menu and discover the price. I was now attempting some mental arithmetic as I realised it was going to be a close run thing.

“Anything else, madam?” the ingratiating waiter inquired.

I took a deep breath.

“Just coffee,” she said.

“And for you, Sir?”

“No, no, not for me.” He left us. I couldn’t think of an explanation for why I didn’t drink coffee.

She then produced from the large Gucci bag by her side a copy of my novel, which I signed with a flourish, hoping the head waiter would see me and feel I was the sort of man who should be allowed to sign the bill as well, but he resolutely remained at the far end of the room while I wrote the words “An unforgettable meeting” and appended my signature.

While the dear lady was drinking her coffee I picked at another roll and called for the bill, not because I was in any particular hurry, but like a guilty defendant at the Old Bailey I preferred to wait no longer for the judge’s sentence. A man in a smart green uniform, whom I had never seen before, appeared carrying a silver tray with a of paper on it not unlike my bank statement. I pushed back the edge of the check slowly and read the figure: thirty-six pounds and forty pence. I casually put my hand into my inside pocket and withdrew my life’s possessions and then placed the crisp new notes on the silver tray. They were whisked away. The man in the green uniform returned a few moments later with my sixty pence change, which I pocketed as it was the only way I was going to get a bus home. The waiter me a look that would_: have undoubtedly won him a character part in any film produced by the lady’s distinguished husband.

My guest rose and walked across the restaurant, waving at, and occasionally kissing people that I had previously only seen in glossy magazines. When she reached the door she stopped to retrieve her coat, a mink. I helped her on with the fur, again failing to leave a tip. As we stood on the Curzon Street pavement, a dark blue Rolls-Royce drew up beside us and a liveried chauffeur leaped out and opened the rear door. She climbed in.

“Goodbye, darling,” she said, as the electric window slid down. “Thank you for such a lovely lunch.”

“Goodbye,” I said, and summoning up my courage added: “I do hope when you are next in town I shall have the opportunity of meeting your distinguished husband.”

“Oh, darling, didn’t you know?” she said as she looked out from the Rolls-Royce.

“Know what?”

“We were divorced ages ago.”

“Divorced!” said I.

“Oh, yes,” she said gaily, “I haven’t spoken to him for years.^”

I just stood there looking helpless.

“Oh, don’t worry yourself on my account,” she said. “He’s no loss. In any case I have recently married again,” — another film producer, I prayed. — “In fact, I quite expected to bump into my husband today — you see, he owns the restaurant.”

Without another word the electric window purred up and the Rolls-Royce glided effortlessly out of sight leaving me to walk to the nearest bus stop. As I stood surrounded by Literary Guild guests, staring at the white queen with the cottage loaf bun, I could still see her drifting away in that blue Rolls-Royce. I tried to concentrate on her words.

“I knew you wouldn’t forget me, darling” she was saying. “After all, I did take you to lunch, didn’t I?”

1. Regard the plot-structure of the story. Which techniques have been employed to make it complex?

2. Define the forms of presentation. Is description as a form of presentation essential in the story?

3. Why does the author indulge in great detail while describing the setting (the interior of the restaurant, some objects and things, the clothes of the characters, etc.)? What effect does such detailed description produce?

4. Analyze Susan’s speech, manners and behaviour. What sort of person does she seem to you?

5. What is the central idea of the story?

4.

Gr. Greene

The Case for the Defence

It was the strangest murder trial I ever attended. They named it the Peckham murder in the headlines, though Northwood Street, where the old woman was found battered to death, was not strictly speaking in Peckham. This was not one of those cases of circumstantial evidence in which you feel the jurymen’s anxiety — because mistakes have been made — like domes of silence muting the court. No, this murderer was all but found with the body: no one present when the Crown counsel outlined his case believed that the man in the dock stood any chance at all.

He was a heavy stout man with bulging bloodshot eyes. All his muscles seemed to be in his thighs. Yes, an ugly customer, one you wouldn’t forget in a hurry — and that was an important point because the Crown proposed to call four witnesses who hadn’t forgotten him, who had seen him hurrying away from the little red villa in Northwood Street. The clock had just struck two in the morning.

Mrs. Salmon in 15 Northwood Street had been unable to sleep: she heard a door click shut and thought it was her own gate. So she went to the window and saw Adams (that was his name) on the steps of Mrs. Parker’s house. He had just come out and he was wearing gloves. He had a hammer in his hand and she saw him drop it into the laurel bushes by the front gate. But before he moved away, he had looked up — at her window. The fatal instinct that tells a man when he is watched exposed him in the light of a street-lamp to her gaze — his eyes suffused with horrifying and brutal fear, like an animal’s when you raise a whip. I talked afterwards to Mrs. Salmon, who naturally after the astonishing verdict went in fear herself. As I imagine did all the witnesses — Henry MacDougall, who had been driving home from Benfleet late and nearly ran Adams down at the corner of Northwood Street. Adams was walking in the middle of the road looking dazed. And old Mr. Wheeler, who lived next door to Mrs. Parker, at No. 12, and was wakened by a noise — like a chair falling — through the thin-as-paper villa wall, and got up and looked out of the window, just as Mrs. Salmon had done, saw Adams’s back and, as he turned, those bulging eyes. In Laurel Avenue he had been seen by yet another witnes — his luck was badly out; he might as well have committed the crime in broad daylight.

“I understand,” counsel said, “that the defence proposes to plead mistaken identity. Adams’s wife will tell you that he was with her at two in the morning on February 14, but after you have heard the witnesses for the Crown and examined carefully the features of the prisoner, I do not think you will be prepared to admit the possibility of a mistake.”

It was all over, you would have said, but the hanging.

After the formal evidence had been given by the policeman who had found the body and the surgeon who examined it, Mrs. Salmon was called. She was the ideal witness, with her slight Scotch accent and her expression of honesty, care and kindness.

The counsel for the Crown brought the story gently out. She spoke very firmly. There was no malice in her, and no sense of importance at standing there in the Central Criminal Court with a judge in scarlet hanging on her words and the reporters writing them down. Yes, she said, and then she had gone downstairs and rung up the police station.

“And do you see the man here in court?”

She looked straight at the big man in the dock, who stared hard at her with his pekingese eyes without emotion.

“Yes,” she said, “there he is.”

“You are quite certain?”

She said simply, “I couldn’t be mistaken, sir.”

It was all as easy as that.

“Thank you, Mrs. Salmon.”

Counsel for the defence rose to cross-examine. If you had reported as many murder trials as I have, you would have known beforehand what line he would take. And I was right, up to a point.

“Now, Mrs. Salmon, you must remember that a man’s life may depend on your evidence.”

“I do remember it, sir.”

“Is your eyesight good?”

“I have never had to wear spectacles, sir.”

“You are a woman of fifty-five?”

“Fifty-six, sir.”

“And the man you saw was on the other side of the road?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And it was two o’clock in the morning. You must have remarkable eyes, Mrs. Salmon?”

“No, sir. There was moonlight, and when the man looked up he had the lamplight on his face.”

“And you have no doubt whatever that the man you saw is the prisoner?”

I couldn’t make out what he was at. He couldn’t have expected any other answer than the one he got.

“None whatever, sir. It isn’t a face one forgets.”

Counsel took a look round the court for a moment. Then he said, “Do you mind, Mrs. Salmon, examining again the people in court? No, not the prisoner. Stand up, please, Mr. Adams,” and there at the back of the court with thick stout body and muscular legs and a pair of bulging eyes, was the exact image of the man in the dock. He was even dressed the same — tight blue suit and striped tie.

“Now think very carefully, Mrs. Salmon. Can you still swear that the man you saw drop the hammer in Mrs. Parker’s garden was the prisoner — and not this man, who is his twin brother?”

Of course she couldn’t. She looked from one to the other and didn’t say a word.

There the big brute sat in the dock with his legs crossed, and there he stood too at the back of the court and they both stared at Mrs. Salmon. She shook her head.

What we saw then was the end of the case. There wasn’t a witness prepared to swear that it was the prisoner he’d seen. And the brother? He had his alibi, too; he was with his wife.

And so the man was acquitted for lack of evidence. But whether — if he did the murder and not his brother — he was punished or not, I don’t know. That extraordinary day had an extraordinary end. I followed Mrs. Salmon out of court and we got wedged in the crowd who were waiting, of course, for the twins. The police tried to drive the crowd away, but all they could do was keep the road-way clear for traffic. I learned later that they tried to get the twins to leave by a back way, but they wouldn’t. One of them — no one knew which — said, “I’ve been acquitted, haven’t I?” and they walked bang out of the front entrance. Then it happened. I don’t know how, though I was only six feet away. The crowd moved and somehow one of the twins got pushed on to the road right in front of a bus.

He gave a squeal like a rabbit and that was all; he was dead, his skull smashed just as Mrs. Parker’s had been. Divine vengeance? I wish I knew. There was the other Adams getting on his feet from beside the body and looking straight over at Mrs. Salmon. He was crying, but whether he was the murderer or the innocent man nobody will ever be able to tell. But if you were Mrs. Salmon, could you sleep at night?

1. Define the forms of presentation within the story. Who is the narrator? What effect does the chosen point of view produce?

2. Is description as a form of presentation vital in the story? Does the description of the criminal’s appearance result in characterization? Does the author create a sympathetic character? Go back to the text and support your opinion.

3. Dwell on other characters’ actions and decisions. Do you approve of the defence lawyer’s course of action? Why do you think Mrs. Salmon changed her evidence?

4. Look through the story and find points in the text which create a sense of anticipation and maintain suspense.

5. What is the tensest moment of the story? What impression did the accident produce on the narrator? And on the reader? Why did the author choose such an ending, in your opinion? How is it connected with the story’s themes and ideas? Explain.

5.

B. Malamud

My Son the Murderer

He wakes feeling his father is in the hallway, listening. He listens to him sleep and dream. Listening to him get up and fumble for his pants. He won’t put on his shoes. To him not going to the kitchen to eat. Staring with shut eyes in the mirror. Sitting an hour on the toilet. Flipping the pages of a book he can’t read. To his anguish, loneliness. The father stands in the hall. The son hears him listen.

My son the stranger, he won’t tell me anything.

I open the door and see my father in the hall. Why are you standing there, why don’t you go to work?

On account of I took my vacation in the winter instead of the summer like I usually do.

What the hell for if you spend it in this dark smelly hallway, watching my every move? Guessing what you can’t see. Why are you always spying on me?

My father goes to the bedroom and after a while sneaks out in the hallway again, listening.

I hear him sometimes in his room but he don’t talk to me and I don’t know what’s what. It’s a terrible feeling for a father. Maybe someday he will write me a letter, My dear father…

My dear son Harry, open up your door. My son the prisoner.

My wife leaves in the morning to stay with my married daughter, who is expecting her fourth child. The mother cooks and cleans for her and takes care of the three children. My daughter is having a bad pregnancy, with high blood pressure, and lays in bed most of the time. This is what the doctor advised her. My wife is gone all day. She worries something is wrong with Harry. Since he graduated college last summer he is alone, nervous, in his own thoughts. If you talk to him, half the time he yells if he answers you. He reads the papers, smokes, he stays in his room. Or once in a while he goes for a walk in the street.

How was the walk, Harry?

A walk.

My wife advised him to go look for work, and a couple of times he went, but when he got some kind of an offer he didn’t take the job.

It’s not that I don’t want to work. It’s that I feel bad.

So why do you feel bad?

I feel what I feel. I feel what is.

Is it your health, sonny? Maybe you ought to go to a doctor?

I asked you not to call me by that name any more. It’s not my health. Whatever it is I don’t want to talk about it. The work wasn’t the kind I want.

…branches cutting the sunless sky. At the corner of Avenue X, just about where you can smell Coney Island, he crossed the street and began to walk home. He pretended not to see his father cross over though he was infuriated. The father crossed over and followed his son home. When he got to the house he figured Harry was upstairs already. He was in his room with the door shut. Whatever he did in his room he was already doing.

Leo took out his small key and opened the mailbox. There were three letters. He looked to see if one of them was, by any chance, from his son to him. My dear father, let me explain myself. The reason I act as I do… There was no such letter. One of the letters was from the Post Office Clerks Benevolent Society, which he slipped into his coat pocket. The other two letters were for Harry. One was from the draft board. He brought it up to his son’s room, knocked on the door and waited.

He waited for a while.

To the boy’s grunt he said, There is a draft-board letter here for you. He turned the knob and entered the room. His son was lying on his bed with his eyes shut.

Leave it on the table.

Do you want me to open it for you, Harry?

No, I don’t want you to open it. Leave it on the table. I know what’s in it.

Did you write them another letter?

That’s my goddamn business.

The father left it on the table.

The other letter to his son he took into the kitchen, shut the door, and boiled up some water in a pot. He thought he would read it quickly and seal it carefully with a little paste, then go downstairs and put it back in the mailbox. His wife would take it out with her key when she returned from their daughter’s house and bring it up to Harry.

The father read the letter. It was a short letter from a girl. The girl said Harry had borrowed two of her books more than six months ago and since she valued them highly she would like him to send them back to her. Could he do that as soon as possible so that she wouldn’t have to write again?

As Leo was reading the girl’s letter Harry came into the kitchen and when he saw the surprised and guilty look on his father’s face he tore the letter out of his hand.

I ought to murder you the way you spy on me.

Leo turned away, looking out of the small kitchen window into the dark apartment-house courtyard. His face burned, he felt sick.

Harry read the letter at a glance and tore it up. He then tore up the envelope marked personal.

If you do this again don’t be surprised if I kill you. I’m sick of you spying on me.

Harry, you are talking to your father.

He left the house.

Leo went into his room and looked around. He looked in the dresser drawers and found nothing unusual. On the desk by the window was a paper Harry had written on. It said: Dear Edith, why don’t you go fuck yourself? If you write me another letter I’ll murder you.

The father got his hat and coat and left the house. He ran slowly for a while, running then walking, until he saw Harry on the other side of the street. He followed him, half a block behind.

He followed Harry to Coney Island Avenue and was in time to see him board a trolley-bus going to the Island. Leo had to wait for the next one. He thought of taking a taxi and following the trolley-bus, but no taxi came by. The next bus came by fifteen minutes later and he took it all the way to the Island. It was February and Coney Island was wet, cold, and deserted. There were few cars on Surf Avenue and few people in the streets. It felt like snow. Leo walked on the boardwalk amid snow flurries, looking for his son. The gray sunless beaches were empty. The hot-dog stands, shooting galleries, and bathhouses were shuttered up. The gunmetal ocean, moving like melted lead, looked freezing. A wind blew in off the water and worked its way into his clothes so that he shivered as he walked. The wind white-capped the leaden waves and the slow surf broke on the empty beaches with a quiet roar.

He walked in the blow almost to Sea Gate, searching for his son, and then he walked back again. On his way toward Brighton Beach he saw a man on the shore standing in the foaming surf. Leo hurried down the boardwalk stairs and onto the ribbed-sand beach. The man on the roaring shore was Harry, standing in water to the tops of his shoes.

Leo ran to his son. Harry, it was a mistake, excuse me, I’m sorry I opened your letter.

Harry did not move. He stood in the water, his eyes on the swelling leaden waves.

Harry, I’m frightened. Tell me what’s the matter. My son, have mercy on me.

I’m frightened of the world, Harry thought. It fills me with fright.

He said nothing.

A blast of wind lifted his father’s hat and carried it away over the beach. It looked as though it were going to be blown into the surf, but then the wind blew it toward the boardwalk, rolling like a wheel along the wet sand. Leo chased after his hat. He chased it one way, then another, then toward the water. The wind blew the hat against his legs and he caught it. By now he was crying. Breathless, he wiped his eyes with icy fingers and returned to his son at the edge of the water.

He is a lonely man. This is the type he is. He will always be lonely.

My son who made himself into a lonely man.

Harry, what can I say to you? All I can say to you is who says life is easy? Since when? It wasn’t for me and it isn’t for you. It’s life, that’s the way it is — what more can I say? But if a person don’t want to live what can he do if he’s dead? Nothing. Nothing is nothing, it’s better to live.

Come home, Harry, he said. It’s cold here. You’ll catch a cold with your feet in the water.

Harry stood motionless in the water and after a while his father left. As he was leaving, the wind plucked his hat off his head and sent it rolling along the shore.

My father listens in the hallway. He follows me in the street. We meet at the edge of the water.

He runs after his hat.

My son stands with his feet in the ocean.

1. Define the conflict at the basis of the short story and its main theme.

2. Define the prevailing form of presentation. What types of narration can you point out?

3. How many narrators does the author employ?

4. Can you differentiate between the instances of interior monologue and the characters’ dialogue? How do you know they are addressing each other if the formal marks of dialogue are absent? What is the author’s purpose in resorting to such specific forms of presentation?

5. What is the effect of multiple narration as compared to the presentation of events through only one point of view?

6.

P. Lively

Next Term, We’ll Mash You

Inside the car it was quiet, the noise of the engine even and subdued, the air just the right temperature, the windows tight-fitting. The boy sat on the back seat, a box of chocolates, unopened, beside him, and a comic, folded. The trim Sussex landscape flowed past the windows: cows, white-fenced fields, highly-priced period houses. The sunlight was glassy, remote as a coloured photograph. The backs of the two heads in front of him swayed with the motion of the car.

His mother half-turned to speak to him. “Nearly there now, darling.”

The father glanced downwards at his wife’s wrist. “Are we all right for time?”

“Just right. Nearly twelve.”

“I could do with a drink. Hope they lay something on.”

“I’m sure they will. The Wilcoxes say they’re awfully nice people. Not really the schoolmaster-type at all, Sally says.”

The man said, “He’s an Oxford chap.”

“Is he? You didn’t say.”

“Mmn.”

“Of course, the fees are that much higher than the Seaford place.”

“Fifty quid or so. We’ll have to see.”

The car turned right, between white gates and high, dark, tight-clipped hedges. The whisper of the road under the tyres changed to the crunch of gravel. The child, staring sideways, read black lettering on a white board: “St. Edward’s Preparatory School. Please Drive Slowly”. He shifted on the seat, and the leather sucked at the bare skin under his knees, stinging.

The mother said, “It’s a lovely place. Those must be the playing-fields. Look, darling, there are some of the boys.” She clicked open her handbag, and the sun caught her mirror and flashed in the child’s eyes; the comb went through her hair and he saw the grooves it left, neat as distant ploughing.

“Come on, then, Charles, out you get.”

The building was red brick, early nineteenth century, spreading out long arms in which windows glittered blackly. Flowers, trapped in neat beds, were alternate red and white. They went up the steps, the man, the woman, and the child two paces behind.

The woman, the mother, smoothing down a skirt that would be ridged from sitting, thought: I like the way they’ve got the maid all done up properly. The little white apron and all that. She’s foreign, I suppose. Au pair. Very nice. If he comes here there’ll be Speech Days and that kind of thing. Sally Wilcox says it’s quite dressy — she got that cream linen coat for coming down here. You can see why it costs a bomb. Great big grounds and only an hour and a half from London.

They went into a room looking out onto a terrace. Beyond, dappled lawns, gently shifting trees, black and white cows grazing behind iron railings. Books, leather chairs, a table with magazines — Country Life, The Field, The Economist. “Please, if you would wait here. The Headmaster won’t be long.”

Alone, they sat, inspected. “I like the atmosphere, don’t you, John?”

“Very pleasant, yes.” Four hundred a term, near enough. You can tell it’s a cut above the Seaford place, though, or the one at St. Albans, Bob Wilcox says quite a few City people send their boys here. One or two of the merchant bankers, those kind of people. It’s the sort of contact that would do no harm at all. You meet someone, get talking at a cricket match or what have you… Not at all a bad thing.

“All right, Charles? You didn’t get sick in the car, did you?”

The child had black hair, slicked down smooth to his head. His ears, too large, jutted out, transparent in the light from the window, laced with tiny, delicate veins. His clothes had the shine and crease of newness. He looked at the books, the dark brown pictures, his parents, said nothing.

“Come here, let me tidy your hair.”

The door opened. The child hesitated, stood up, sat, then rose again with his father.

“Mr. and Mrs. Manders? How very nice to meet you — I’m Margaret Spokes, and will you please forgive my husband who is tied up with some wretch who broke the cricket pavilion window and will be just a few more minutes. We try to be organised but a schoolmaster’s day is always just that bit unpredictable. Do please sit down and what will you have to revive you after that beastly drive? You live in Finchley, is that right?”

“Hampstead, really,” said the mother. “Sherry would be lovely.” She worked over the headmaster’s wife from shoes to hairstyle, pricing and assessing. Shoes old but expensive — Russell and Bromley. Good skirt. Blouse could be Marks and Sparks — not sure. Real pearls. Super Victorian ring. She’s not gone to any particular trouble — that’s just what she’d wear anyway. You can be confident, with a voice like that, of course. Sally Wilcox says she knows all sorts of people.

The headmaster’s wife said, “I don’t know how much you know about us. Prospectuses don’t tell you a thing, do they? We’ll look round everything in a minute, when you’ve had a chat with my husband. I gather you’re friends of the Wilcoxes, by the way. I’m awfully fond of Simon — he’s down for Winchester, of course, but I expect you know that.”

The mother smiled over her sherry. Oh, I know that all right. Sally Wilcox doesn’t let you forget that.

“And this is Charles? My dear, we’ve been forgetting all about you! In a minute I’m going to borrow Charles and take him off to meet some of the boys because after all you’re choosing a school for him, aren’t you, and not for you, so he ought to know what he might be letting himself in for and it shows we’ve got nothing to hide.”

The parents laughed. The father, sherry warming his guts, thought that this was an amusing woman. Not attractive, of course, a bit homespun, but impressive all the same. Partly the voice, of course; it takes a bloody expensive education to produce a voice like that. And other things, of course. Background and all that stuff.

“I think I can hear the thud of the Fourth Form coming in from games, which means my husband is on the way, and then I shall leave you with him while I take Charles off to the common-room.”

For a moment the three adults centred on the child, looking, judging. The mother said, “He looks so hideously pale, compared to those boys we saw outside.”

“My dear, that’s London, isn’t it? You just have to get them out, to get some colour into them. Ah, here’s James. James — Mr. and Mrs. Manders. You remember, Bob Wilcox was mentioning at Sports Day…”

The headmaster reflected his wife’s style. His clothes were mature rather than old, his skin well-scrubbed, his shoes clean, his geniality untainted by the least condescension. He was genuinely sorry to have kept them waiting, but in this business one lurches from one minor crisis to the next ... And this is Charles? Hello, there, Charles. His large hand rested for a moment on the child’s head, quite extinguishing the thin, dark hair. It was as though he had but to clench his fingers to crush the skull. But he took his hand away and moved the parents to the window, to observe the mutilated cricket pavilion, with indulgent laughter.

And the child is borne away by the headmaster’s wife. She never touches him or tells him to come, but simply bears him away like some relentless tide, down corridors and through swinging glass doors, towing him like a frail craft, not bothering to look back to see if he is following, confident in the strength of magnetism, or obedience.

And delivers him to a room where boys are scattered among inky tables and rungless chairs and sprawled on a mangy carpet. There is a scampering, and a rising, and a silence falling, as she opens the door.

“Now this is the Lower Third, Charles, who you’d be with if you come to us in September. Boys, this is Charles Manders, and I want you to tell him all about things and answer any questions he wants to ask. You can believe about half of what they say, Charles, and they will tell you the most fearful lies about the food, which is excellent.”

The boys laugh and groan; amiable, exaggerated groans. They must like the headmaster’s wife: there is licensed repartee. They look at her with bright eyes in open, eager faces. Someone leaps to hold the door for her, and close it behind her. She is gone.

The child stands in the centre of the room, and it draws in around him. The circle of children contracts, faces are only a yard or so from him; strange faces, looking, assessing.

Asking questions. They help themselves to his name, his age, his school. Over their heads he sees beyond the window an inaccessible world of shivering trees and high racing clouds and his voice which has floated like a feather in the dusty schoolroom air dies altogether and he becomes mute, and he stands in the middle of them with shoulders humped, staring down at feet: grubby plimsolls and kicked brown sandals. There is a noise in his ears like rushing water, a torrential din out of which voices boom, blotting each other out so that he cannot always hear the words. Do you? they say, and Have you? and What’s your? and the faces, if he looks up, swing into one another in kaleidoscopic patterns and the floor under his feet is unsteady, lifting and falling.

And out of the noises comes one voice that is complete, that he can hear. “Next term, we’ll mash you,” it says. “We always mash new boys.”

And a bell goes, somewhere beyond doors and down corridors, and suddenly the children are all gone, clattering away and leaving him there with the heaving floor and the walls that shift and swing, and the headmaster’s wife comes back and tows him away, and he is with his parents again, and they are getting into the car, and the high hedges skim past the car windows once more, in the other direction, and the gravel under the tyres changes to black tarmac.

“Well?”

“I liked it, didn’t you?” The mother adjusted the car around her, closing windows, shrugging into her seat.

“Very pleasant, really. Nice chap.”

“I liked him. Not quite so sure about her.”

“It’s pricey, of course.”

“All the same…”

“Money well spent, though. One way and another.”

“Shall we settle it, then?”

“I think so. I’ll drop him a line.”

The mother pitched her voice a notch higher to speak to the child in the back of the car. “Would you like to go there, Charles? Like Simon Wilcox. Did you see that lovely gym, and the swimming-pool? And did the other boys tell you all about it?” The child does not answer. He looks straight ahead of him, at the road coiling beneath the bonnet of the car. His face is haggard with anticipation.

1. Which forms of presentation are employed in the short story?

2. Do you regard the narrator of the story as omniscient or limited omniscient?

3. Point out the characters whose course of thinking is exposed to us. Support your opinion by giving specific references to the text. Through whose perception are the events filtered?

4. Who seems to you the main character of the story?

5. Why do you think the reader is not given access to the thoughts and frame of mind of the main character?

6. Define the conflict at the basis of the plot and decide whether it is resolved by the end of the story. What are the basic themes treated in the story?

7.

F. J. Hardy

The Returned Soldier

The sign outside the factory read: NO HANDS WANTED. A tall shabby man stood gazing at the sign. He wore a threadbare overcoat, once black, but faded a dirty green with the years. There were no buttons on it. He held the coat close around him with one hand. His other hand was in its pocket. His dirty shirt was collarless. His grey trousers were grimy and frayed around the cuffs. Incongruously, he wore a pair of cheap, fairly new sandshoes. He needed a shave, and it seemed, a bath.

He turned and walked slowly away with listless gait, slightly stooped forward into the cold wind, with an air about him that indicated he had seen such a sign many times before, and no longer believed it to be fantastic that he wanted work and could find none.

I told Mary it was no use, he was thinking; no use to look any more. Just to be satisfied to rot on the dole. Yet she was right; I must find work. To pay the bills, the rent especially; to get some good tucker and clothes; to get the sewing machine back. Those reasons are easy to understand, but the main reason is not so easy to understand. I’m getting down, down... No fight left... no guts... Don’t bother to wash... shave... nothin’. Gotta get a job or I’m finished.

He walked on aimlessly. He passed many factories which had been forced long ago to put up signs to halt the streams of job seekers; until at last, he dully noted a large factory without such a sign. He went in, found the office, and approached hesitantly.

ENQUIRIES. PLEASE RING. He reached towards the bell, pulled his hand back as if afraid he might be electrocuted, then pressed it sharply.

The pretty young woman who opened the sliding window, eyed him distastefully and said: “Yes?”

Though he had asked the questions thousands of times in his periodic excursions looking for work, now he felt tongue-tied.

Finally he blurted out: “A job. Work. Any kinda work.”

She pursed her lips affectedly. “We have no vacancies.”

He hesitated as if to say more, to plead, to ask to see the Manager, but changing his mind turned slowly and walked away.

Outside, he stood as though undecided in which direction to turn, then crossed the road and walked down the opposite footpath with tentative strides.

He walked a long way, without looking either to the right or left, passed several factories with the forbidding signs outside, until he came to another without a sign.

A machine shop! In a man’s own trade with no sign outside. He entered quickly. Inside the factory, the familiar hum and whirr of the machines was as music to his ears. He watched a young man turning a motor car piston on a lathe.

He rubbed the tips of his left fingers on his right hand. He straightened his shoulders. Lathes to be worked and no sign outside! He walked briskly towards the office, wishing he had put on a collar and tie and spruced himself up a bit. He brushed his hair with his hands.

The man who came to the enquiry window was kindly looking and grey-haired. He wore a navy blue suit. “Anything I can do for you?”

“Er, yes. I’m looking for work. This is my trade. Turner and fitter. Good references. Work any of these lathes.” “I’m sorry. Business is quiet.”

“But you have no sign outside. You must need a good man. Top-line tradesman. Good references”.

The grey-haired man seemed to waver, as though it pained him to turn men away. His eyes ran down the shabby figure and up again, then surveyed the lapel of the old overcoat. “Actually, we only employ returned soldiers.”

“I’m a returned soldier.”

“Er, have you any means of proving that... You see, we get many...”

The shabby man put his right hand into his vest pocket then withdrew it. “Yeh, I’ve got proof that I’m a returned soldier, but it means nothin’ now, except on Anzac¹ Day...”

“Well, we have no vacancies at the moment, but if you submit proof that you are a returned digger, I’ll put your name down. Then perhaps later on...”

“Don’t trouble... Don’t trouble...” the shabby man answered. He turned on his heels and slowly retraced his steps.

Again he trudged aimlessly on, away from the city until he came to a wide bridge.

He leaned on the side of the bridge, looking into the murky, swirling water. He looked back the way he had come and saw the dingy houses, the factories, the shops, the smoke-stained drabness. Then he turned his head and gazed across the river at the lawns, and the mansions that looked down from the opposite banks, as if in silent gloating. Apparently struck by a sudden idea he crossed the bridge, and, limping now, he trudged up the hill and entered a wide concrete street skirted on either side by neat lawns and beautiful trees.

He stopped in front of the first house, then walked on. At the second big gate he hesitated, ran his hands down the sides of his overcoat and through his hair, then entered slowly, surveying the well-kept garden as he walked up the curved, gravel path.

He walked gingerly over the polished-brick front verandah and rang the door bell uncertainly.

After a while he rang again, then the door was opened by a well-dressed woman. She was elderly, but tried unsuccessfully to disguise her age with powder and paint and a ridiculous hair style.

She started a little when she saw him, and said tartly: “What do you mean coming to the front door?”

“Er, sorry, madam, I didn’t think... You see, I thought perhaps you wanted a gardener; just the lawns cut, perhaps. Just an hour or two’s work, or something...”

“We have a professional landscape gardener. In future, learn your place and go to the tradesmen’s entrance. Not that we want any tramps around here.”

The man’s abject, servile manner changed. His eyes gleamed, his fists clenched.

Suddenly he threw his overcoat open wide, unbuttoned his vest with savage fingers, pulled his shirt out of his trousers and, drawing it up, bared his white stomach.

“See that? See that scar! A bullet went through there and out the other side. I fought for bitches like you!”

The woman shrank back, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with terror. She screamed piercingly.

The man turned without waiting to tuck in his shirt, and ran frantically out the gate down the hill across the bridge.

There he stopped, panting, out of breath. He looked around furtively, tucked in his shirt and walked back towards the city. He seemed to have stooped lower and his limp was more marked. His sandshoes were too small for him, his toes were skinned, his feet blistering.

He walked on for block after block without raising his head, sometimes bumping into people, until he reached the outskirts of the city, near a public park.

From the lawns nearby he heard animated voices. He looked and saw three bedraggled men sitting on the lawn; one of them was drinking from a bottle.

“Hello, Collins, ‘ave a drink,” one of them called out, holding up a wine bottle.

He hesitated, crossed the lawn and joined them.

“How are yer, Sam? Don’t mind if I do.”

He took the bottle, wiped the top and gulped a few mouthfuls. He shuddered, and handed the bottle back. “Thanks.”

The other three men had the ragtail appearance, blotched skin and bleary eyes of the plonk-drinker. One of them began to tell a story in a croaking voice riddled with lunacy. They all laughed heartily.

Sam and these other two have the solution, Collins thought. Drink and drown your troubles, no use to worry and look for work. Sam’s given up lookin’.

“Yup,” the storyteller continued. “One of the gardeners tied me and Jack’s legs together while we was sleepin’, see? When we woke up I stood up and tried to walk away and fell over; then Jack stood up and he fell over... They was watchin’ us from behind the bushes. It was funny all right. I laughed till I thought I’d kill meself.”

Till I thought I’d kill meself, that’s what he said. Collins’ distraught mind gripped the phrase. Thought I’d kill meself.

He turned and walked away from them without speaking again.

“Thanks for the drink, mate,” one of them called after him in a sarcastic, high-pitched voice.

But he did not hear. He limped off thinking: Man’s going silly. Thought I’d kill meself. The plonk-drinker’s words kept ringing in his ears.

As he walked into the city, black clouds came up suddenly and heavy rain began to fall. He put his hands in his overcoat pockets and drew it around him. The rain soon soaked through his sandshoes and aggravated his sore feet. He limped on into the rain. The cheap wine had turned sour in his empty stomach. He felt sick.

What’s the use. How long now? Since thirty-one; three years without more than a few days’ work at a time. Only the susso and ten bob a week pension. No good tucker, no good clothes, rent behind — get kicked out — and debts — plenty of ‘em. The light cut off, sewing machine repossessed. Mary gone scraggy and skinny, and the kids at school without boots. On the last of the wood... Thought I’d kill meself!

Night fell suddenly, and lights came on shimmering in the rain. Cars swishing and splashing by, the rain and the cold wind.

He walked, not knowing or caring where he was going, until he found himself in a city arcade on the corner of a lane.

He turned into the lane and huddled against the wall. Better go home for tea.

He could smell food. Saliva filled his mouth. The back of a cafe somewhere. Told Mary not to worry if I was late. Would take any work offering, would start right away, night shift, anything. He laughed aloud and his laughter echoed down the lane.

The sickly feeling in his stomach vanished and was replaced by gnawing hunger. He had not eaten since morning, and then only fried bread and dripping with tea.

The back of a cafe. Here some are getting a feed this way. He walked slowly up the dark lane. He heard voices. He saw about a dozen men huddled round a doorway, near two large scrap bins.

Presently, a door opened throwing a beam of light. The other men were even shabbier than he. They clustered round the man in a white coat who came out and tipped a tin of scraps into one of the bins without speaking to, or looking at, the scavengers. The light revealed cabbage leaves, half-eaten pieces of meat, chop bones, fruit peels, tea leaves — all churned into a disgusting mess.

The assembled men swarmed around the bin, jostling each other, grabbing handfuls of the scraps from the bin, nearly overturning it in their hungry eagerness. Collins joined them for a moment; then suddenly pulled himself clear. No! Not this! Like a dog! Never.

He ran from the lane, and continued his wanderings in the rain.

His stinging feet carried him to a wide bridge. He stood on its side-walk, thinking. Without looking for traffic he started to cross to the other side. As he reached the middle of the road, brakes screeched. A truck skidded and swerved, but by some miracle it missed him. He did not notice it. The truck stopped.

The driver stuck his head out and shouted: “What’s wrong with you? Trying to commit suicide?”

The shabby man did not hear him. He stepped on to the pavement and leaned on the side of the bridge, looking over to where he could hear the water lapping against the huge supporting pillars. He stood thus for several minutes.

Presently he felt in his vest pocket, and drew a small purse from it. He pressed the clasp, opened the purse and drew out a small object, which he threw with a flick of his wrist. It glinted in the dull light. It was a small bronze cross, with a ribbon attached. There was a plop as it hit the water. He stood motionless looking down into the river for a while, sighed, then turned and retraced his steps. The rain was falling in torrents now. He trudged on slowly, limping badly, through the city into a drab industrial suburb. He was shivering, his feet were squelching, his clothes soaked right through.

He entered a dark street. A shaft of light coming from a doorway attracted him. He stopped. It was the entrance to a hall. In the lighted lobby near the door was a sign: Meeting To-night. The Society Against War.

He squinted close to the sign. The Society against war. Against war.

He entered dubiously, blinking at the light. He saw a man on the platform addressing the half-filled hall.

Collins sat down in a chair in the back row. He leaned forward only vaguely hearing the speaker.

“Danger of war. A second world war would be a calamity.”

As the speech continued, the shabby man listened more intently, dwelling on every word with a puzzled frown.

The speaker concluded:

“We must tell the people of the horrors of war. We must warn them of the danger of war. We must tell the people that many of the heroes of the war are now walking the streets, war is not heroic, but insane. Our organisation will hold meetings everywhere, telling the people the facts.”

The speaker resumed his seat. The chairman stood up.

Suddenly Collins leapt to his feet and shouted:

“Listen, mister!”

The chairman looked in his direction with a startled air. The audience swung towards the rear of the hall.

Collins stood grasping the back of the chair in front of him tightly.

“Yes?” said the chairman, puzzled.

“Listen, mister,” the shabby man repeated. “Here’s something you can tell the people. Tell ‘em a man won the V. C.¹, and threw it in the river!”

Voices mumbled and eyes stared incredulously.

“It’s true, I tell yer. I won the Victoria Cross. I can prove it”.

He fumbled in his vest pocket, and took out the little purse and held it up.

“See that. That’s the purse I carried it in for seventeen years. I won the Victoria Cross and threw it in the river this very night, because there’s no work for heroes. I been outta work for three years.” His voice rose to a piercing yell, “Tell the people that a man won the Victoria Cross and he threw it in the river. Tell ‘em that!” A great sob broke from him. He stumbled from the hall into the cold, rainy night.

Collins walked towards home. His limp was gone. He had straightened up and walked briskly, head high, arms swinging. He seemed oblivious of the weather, his cold, blistered feet and the aching emptiness in his stomach.

1. Where and when do the events of the story take place? What are the indications in the text?

2. Introduce the protagonist of the story (age, occupation, background, marital status, etc.). Pay attention to the lexis used in the description of his appearance, clothes, in his speech. What tone does it create?

3. Examine the scenes and the atmosphere at each potential place of employment. How do the character’s manner, mood, the way he is treated interact?

4. Dwell on the mood and the atmosphere in the episodes of Collins’ conversation with the drunkards and his meeting homeless people at the back of a café. Since these scenes are not connected with looking for a job, account for their significance for the story.

5. Define the key of the story. Dwell on the role of weather descriptions: rain, wind, the sky.

6. When does Collins’ despair seem to reach its maximum? What to your mind is the climactic point of the story? Support your opinion.

7. Interpret the title and the central idea of the story. Is the theme still relevant in your opinion?

8.

O. Henry

A Retrieved Reformation

A guard came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was assiduously stitching uppers, and escorted him to the front office. There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed that morning by the governor. Jimmy took it in a tired kind of way. He had served nearly ten months of a four-year sentence. He had expected to stay only about three months, at the longest. When a man with as many friends on the outside as Jimmy Valentine had is received in the “stir” it is hardly worth while to cut his hair.

“Now, Valentine,” said the warden, “you’ll go out in the morning. Brace up, and make a man of yourself. You’re not a bad fellow at heart. Stop cracking safes, and live straight.”

“Me?” said Jimmy, in surprise. “Why, I never cracked a safe in my life.”

“Oh, no,” laughed the warden. “Of course not. Let’s see, now. How was it you happened to get sent up on that Springfield job? Was it because you wouldn’t prove an alibi for fear of compromising somebody in extremely high-toned society? Or was it simply a case of a mean old jury that had it in for you? It’s always one or the other with you innocent victims.”

“Me?” said Jimmy, still blankly virtuous. “Why, warden, I never was in Springfield in my life!”

“Take him back, Cronin,” smiled the warden, “and fix him up with outgoing clothes. Unlock him at seven in the morning, and let him come to the bull-pen. Better think over my advice, Valentine.”

At a quarter past seven on the next morning Jimmy stood in the warden’s outer office. He had on a suit of the villainously fitting, ready-made clothes and a pair of the stiff, squeaky shoes that the state furnishes to its discharged compulsory guests.

The clerk handed him a railroad ticket and the five-dollar bill with which the law expected him to rehabilitate himself into good citizenship and prosperity. The warden gave him a cigar, and shook hands. Valentine, 9762, was chronicled on the books “Pardoned by Governor,” and Mr. James Valentine walked out into the sunshine.

Disregarding the song of the birds, the waving green trees, and the smell of the flowers, Jimmy headed straight for a restaurant. There he tasted the first sweet joys of liberty in the shape of a broiled chicken and a bottle of white wine — followed by a cigar a grade better than the one the warden had given him. From there he proceeded leisurely to the depot. He tossed a quarter into the hat of a blind man sitting by the door, and boarded his train. Three hours set him down in a little town near the state line. He went to the cafe of one Mike Dolan and shook hands with Mike, who was alone behind the bar.

“Sorry we couldn’t make it sooner, Jimmy, my boy,” said Mike. “But we had that protest from Springfield to buck against, and the governor nearly balked. Feeling all right?”

“Fine,” said Jimmy. “Got my key?”

He got his key and went upstairs, unlocking the door of a room at the rear. Everything was just as he had left it. There on the floor was still Ben Price’s collar-button that had been torn from that eminent detective’s shirt-band when they had overpowered Jimmy to arrest him.

Pulling out from the wall a folding-bed, Jimmy slid back a panel in the wall and dragged out a dust-covered suit-case. He opened this and gazed fondly at the finest set of burglar’s tools in the East. It was a complete set, made of specially tempered steel, the latest designs in drills, punches, braces and bits, jimmies, clamps, and augers, with two or three novelties invented by Jimmy himself, in which he took pride. Over nine hundred dollars they had cost him to have made at — , a place where they make such things for the profession.

In half an hour Jimmy went downstairs and through the cafe. He was now dressed in tasteful and well-fitting clothes, and carried his dusted and cleaned suit-case in his hand.

“Got anything on?” asked Mike Dolan, genially.

“Me?” said Jimmy, in a puzzled tone. “I don’t understand. I’m representing the New York Amalgamated Short Snap Biscuit Cracker and Frazzled Wheat Company.”

This statement delighted Mike to such an extent that Jimmy had to take a seltzer-and-milk on the spot. He never touched “hard” drinks.

A week after the release of Valentine, 9762, there was a neat job of safe-burglary done in Richmond, Indiana, with no clue to the author. A scant eight hundred dollars was all that was secured. Two weeks after that a patented, improved, burglar-proof safe in Logansport was opened like a cheese to the tune of fifteen hundred dollars, currency; securities and silver untouched. That began to interest the rogue-catchers. Then an old-fashioned bank-safe in Jefferson City became active and threw out of its crater an eruption of bank-notes amounting to five thousand dollars. The losses were now high enough to bring the matter up into Ben Price’s class of work. By comparing notes, a remarkable similarity in the methods of the burglaries was noticed. Ben Price investigated the scenes of the robberies, and was heard to remark:

“That’s Dandy Jim Valentine’s autograph. He’s resumed business. Look at that combination knob — jerked out as easy as pulling up a radish in wet weather. He’s got the only clamps that can do it. And look how clean those tumblers were punched out! Jimmy never has to drill but one hole. Yes, I guess I want Mr. Valentine. He’ll do his bit next time without any short-time or clemency foolishness.”

Ben Price knew Jimmy’s habits. He had learned them while working up the Springfield case. Long jumps, quick get-aways, no confederates, and a taste for good society — these ways had helped Mr. Valentine to become noted as a successful dodger of retribution. It was given out that Ben Price had taken up the trail of the elusive cracks-man, and other people with burglar-proof safes felt more at ease.

One afternoon Jimmy Valentine and his suit-case climbed out of the mail-hack in Elmore, a little town five miles off the railroad down in the black-jack country of Arkansas. Jimmy, looking like an athletic young senior just home from college, went down the board sidewalk toward the hotel.

A young lady crossed the street, passed him at the corner and entered a door over which was the sign “The Elmore Bank.” Jimmy Valentine looked into her eyes, forgot what he was, and became another man. She lowered her eyes and colored slightly. Young men of Jimmy’s style and looks were scarce in Elmore.

Jimmy collared a boy that was loafing on the steps of the bank as if he were one of the stock-holders, and began to ask him questions about the town, feeding him dimes at intervals. By and by the young lady came out, looking royally unconscious of the young man with the suit-case, and went her way.

“Isn’t that young lady Miss Polly Simpson?” asked Jimmy, with specious guile.

“Naw,” said the boy. “She’s Annabel Adams. Her pa owns this bank. What’d you come to Elmore for? Is that a gold watch-chain? I’m going to get a bulldog. Got any more dimes?”

Jimmy went to the Planters’ Hotel, registered as Ralph D. Spencer, and engaged a room. He leaned on the desk and declared his platform to the clerk. He said he had come to Elmore to look for a location to go into business. How was the shoe business, now, in the town? He had thought of the shoe business. Was there an opening?

The clerk was impressed by the clothes and manner of Jimmy. He, himself, was something of a pattern of fashion to the thinly gilded youth of Elmore, but he now perceived his shortcomings. While trying to figure out Jimmy’s manner of tying his four-in-hand he cordially gave information.

Yes, there ought to be a good opening in the shoe line. There wasn’t an exclusive shoe-store in the place. The dry-goods and general stores handled them. Business in all lines was fairly good. Hoped Mr. Spencer would decide to locate in Elmore. He would find it a pleasant town to live in, and the people very sociable. Mr. Spencer thought he would stop over in the town a few days and look over the situation. No, the clerk needn’t call the boy. He would carry up his suit-case, himself; it was rather heavy.

Mr. Ralph Spencer, the phoenix that arose from Jimmy Valentine’s ashes — ashes left by the flame of a sudden and alterative attack of love — remained in Elmore, and prospered. He opened a shoe-store and secured a good run of trade.

Socially he was also a success, and made many friends. And he accomplished the wish of his heart. He met Miss Annabel Adams, and became more and more captivated by her charms.

At the end of a year the situation of Mr. Ralph Spencer was this: he had won the respect of the community, his shoe-store was flourishing, and he and Annabel were engaged to be married in two weeks. Mr. Adams, the typical, plodding, country banker, approved of Spencer. Annabel’s pride in him almost equalled her affection. He was as much at home in the family of Mr. Adams and that of Annabel’s married sister as if he were already a member.

One day Jimmy sat down in his room and wrote this letter, which he mailed to the safe address of one of his old friends in St. Louis:

DEAR OLD PAL:

I want you to be at Sullivan’s place, in Little Rock, next Wednesday night, at nine o’clock. I want you to wind up some little matters for me. And, also, I want to make you a present of my kit of tools. I know you’ll be glad to get them — you couldn’t duplicate the lot for a thousand dollars. Say, Billy, I’ve quit the old business — a year ago. I’ve got a nice store. I’m making an honest living, and I’m going to marry the finest girl on earth two weeks from now. It’s the only life, Billy — the straight one. I wouldn’t touch a dollar of another man’s money now for a million. After I get married I’m going to sell out and go West, where there won’t be so much danger of having old scores brought up against me. I tell you, Billy, she’s an angel. She believes in me; and I wouldn’t do another crooked thing for the whole world. Be sure to be at Sully’s, for I must see you. I’ll bring along the tools with me.

Your old friend, JIMMY.

On the Monday night after Jimmy wrote this letter, Ben Price jogged unobtrusively into Elmore in a livery buggy. He lounged about town in his quiet way until he found out what he wanted to know. From the drug-store across the street from Spencer’s shoe-store he got a good look at Ralph D. Spencer.

“Going to marry the banker’s daughter, are you, Jimmy?” said Ben to himself, softly. “Well, I don’t know!”

The next morning Jimmy took breakfast at the Adamses. He was going to Little Rock that day to order his wedding-suit and buy something nice for Annabel. That would be the first time he had left town since he came to Elmore. It had been more than a year now since those last professional “jobs,” and he thought he could safely venture out.

After breakfast quite a family party went down town together — Mr. Adams, Annabel, Jimmy, and Annabel’s married sister with her two little girls, aged five and nine. They came by the hotel where Jimmy still boarded, and he ran up to his room and brought along his suitcase. Then they went on to the bank. There stood Jimmy’s horse and buggy and Dolph Gibson, who was going to drive him over to the railroad station.

All went inside the high, carved oak railings into the banking-room — Jimmy included, for Mr. Adams’s future son-in-law was welcome anywhere. The clerks were pleased to be greeted by the good-looking, agreeable young man who was going to marry Miss Annabel. Jimmy set his suit-case down. Annabel, whose heart was bubbling with happiness and lively youth, put on Jimmy’s hat and picked up the suit-case. “Wouldn’t I make a nice drummer?” said Annabel. “My! Ralph, how heavy it is. Feels like it was full of gold bricks.”

“Lot of nickel-plated shoe-horns in there,” said Jimmy, coolly, “that I’m going to return. Thought I’d save express charges by taking them up. I’m getting awfully economical.”

The Elmore Bank had just put in a new safe and vault. Mr. Adams was very proud of it, and insisted on an inspection by every one. The vault was a small one, but it had a new patented door. It fastened with three solid steel bolts thrown simultaneously with a single handle, and had a time-lock. Mr. Adams beamingly explained its workings to Mr. Spencer, who showed a courteous but not too intelligent interest. The two children, May and Agatha, were delighted by the shining metal and funny clock and knobs.

While they were thus engaged Ben Price sauntered in and leaned on his elbow, looking casually inside between the railings. He told the teller that he didn’t want anything; he was just waiting for a man he knew.

Suddenly there was a scream or two from the women, and a commotion. Unperceived by the elders, May, the nine-year-old girl, in a spirit of play, had shut Agatha in the vault. She had then shot the bolts and turned the knob of the combination as she had seen Mr. Adams do.

The old banker sprang to the handle and tugged at it for a moment. “The door can’t be opened,” he groaned. “The clock hasn’t been wound nor the combination set.”

Agatha’s mother screamed again, hysterically.

“Hush!” said Mr. Adams, raising his trembling hand. “All be quiet for a moment. Agatha!” he called as loudly as he could. “Listen to me.” During the following silence they could just hear the faint sound of the child wildly shrieking in the dark vault in a panic of terror.

“My precious darling!” wailed the mother. “She will die of fright! Open the door! Oh, break it open! Can’t you men do something?”

“There isn’t a man nearer than Little Rock who can open that door,” said Mr. Adams, in a shaky voice. “My God! Spencer, what shall we do? That child — she can’t stand it long in there. There isn’t enough air, and, besides, she’ll go into convulsions from fright.”

Agatha’s mother, frantic now, beat the door of the vault with her hands. Somebody wildly suggested dynamite. Annabel turned to Jimmy, her large eyes full of anguish, but not yet despairing. To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.

“Can’t you do something, Ralph — try, won’t you?”

He looked at her with a queer, soft smile on his lips and in his keen eyes.

“Annabel,” he said, “give me that rose you are wearing, will you?”

Hardly believing that she heard him aright, she unpinned the bud from the bosom of her dress, and placed it in his hand. Jimmy stuffed it into his vest-pocket, threw off his coat and pulled up his shirt-sleeves. With that act Ralph D. Spencer passed away and Jimmy Valentine took his place.

“Get way from the door, all of you,” he commanded, shortly.

He set his suit-case on the table, and opened it out flat. From that time on he seemed to be unconscious of the presence of any one else. He laid out the shining, queer implements swiftly and orderly, whistling softly to himself as he always did when at work. In a deep silence and immovable, the others watched him as if under a spell.

In a minute Jimmy’s pet drill was biting smoothly into the steel door. In ten minutes — breaking his own burglarious record — he threw back the bolts and opened the door.

Agatha, almost collapsed, but safe, was gathered into her mother’s arms.

Jimmy Valentine put on his coat, and walked outside the railings toward the front door. As he went he thought he heard a far-away voice that he once knew call “Ralph!” But he never hesitated.

At the door a big man stood somewhat in his way.

“Hello, Ben!” said Jimmy, still with his strange smile. “Got around at last, have you? Well, let’s go. I don’t know that it makes much difference, now.”

And then Ben Price acted rather strangely.

“Guess you’re mistaken, Mr. Spencer,” he said. “Don’t believe I recognize you. Your buggy’s waiting for you, ain’t it?” And Ben Price turned and strolled down the street.

1. Think of the genre definition for the short story. Point out the story types whose characteristic features it combines.

2. Outline the main hero’s background and character. What sort of person does he seem to you in the beginning of the story?

3. Regard the plot-structure of the story. What starts the events of the story moving? What is the turning point? Does the story have a resolution?

4. How do you label the pattern of narration employed by the author? . What form does the ending take?

5. What is the central idea of the story?

9.

Saki

The Open Window

“My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; “in the meantime you must try and put up with me.”

Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.

“I know how it will be,” his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; “you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice.”

Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division.

“Do you know many of the people round here?” asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.

“Hardly a soul,” said Framton. “My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here.” He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.

“Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?” pursued the self-possessed young lady.

“Only her name and address,” admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.

“Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,” said the child; “that would be since your sister’s time.”

“Her tragedy?” asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.

“You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,” said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.

“It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said Framton; “but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?”

“Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it.” Here the child’s voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. “Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing, “Bertie, why do you bound?” as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window — “

She broke off with a little shudder, it was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.

“I hope Vera has been amusing you?” she said.

“She has been very interesting,” said Framton.

“I hope you don’t mind the open window,” said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; “my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They’ve been out for snipe in the marshes to-day, so they’ll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you men-folk, isn’t it?”

She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to run the talk on to a less ghastly topic; he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

“The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,” announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one’s ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. “On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement,” he continued.

“No?” said Mrs. Sappleton in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention — but not to what Framton was saying.

“Here they are at last!” she cried. “Just in time for tea, and don’t they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!”

Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.

In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window; they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: “I said, Bertie, why do you bound?”

Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall-door, the gravel-drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.

“Here we are, my dear,” said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window; “fairly muddy, but most of it’s dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?”

“A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel,” said Mrs. Sappleton; “could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of good-bye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.”

“I expect it was the spaniel,” said the niece calmly; “he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make any one lose their nerve.”

Romance at short notice was her speciality.

1. Define the genre of the short story. Regard the Gothic setting. Which details make it suitable for a ghost-story?

2. Which pattern does the plot structure of the story take?

3. What tone is established in the story? Give your reasoning. At what point did you start to guess that Vera’s story was the fruit of her imagination?

4. Analyze Vera’s behaviour and manner of speech. Do you find her imaginative and inventive or cruel and thoughtless? Explain.

5. What sort of person does Mr. Framton seem to be? How is his personality disclosed? Is he sympathetic to you?

6. What is the author’s purpose in creating the story?

10.

A. Maley

Gossip

Fred Battersby had a fine collection of married women, and he tried to treat them equally. No favourites. He usually called round on them once a week, staying perhaps for an hour, trying to pay exactly the same amount of attention to each one.

He still remembered the day one of them, Audrey Ball, had stopped him in the street and said: “I hear you’ve been to see Ann twice this week, and you haven’t been to see me once!” Of course she tried to make it sound like a joke, but Fred’s sensitive antennae picked up the undertones of jealousy. After that, he was always careful to share himself out, as it were.

So it was that Fred had his regular round, calling in turn on Audrey and Ann and Judy and Carol and — but it is unnecessary to list them all: the point is that they were all very fond of Fred, and always very pleased to see him.

“Hello, Fred! Come in! I’ve just put the kettle on. Would you like a cup of tea?” said one.

“Ah, Fred, I’m so glad to see you. I wonder if you’d give me a hand to move this settee?” said another.

“Good morning, Fred. Sorry if I’m not very cheerful, but I’m worried about my youngest: she’s got a terrible cough,” said a third.

“Hello, Fred. How are you? I’m a bit fed up myself. To tell you the truth, Richard and I have had another row,” confided a fourth.

And so it went, Fred was like a counsellor to them. He was a friend, an adviser, a doctor, a priest and a handyman all rolled into one. And Fred loved it. Firstly, he loved it because he was good at it. Fred lived alone, his wife having died a year or two before. He was still no more than middle-aged, a tallish, not handsome but with a pleasant open face that seemed to encourage people to confide in him. He was good at it because he was one of those rare men who actually like women. Of course, most men will tell you, and themselves, that they like women, but the fact is that most men feel more relaxed and comfortable in the company of other men. They need women, certainly, as lovers and mothers and housekeepers and admirers, but on the whole they do not actually like them — probably because they do not really understand them.

This is where Fred was different. He enjoyed the company of women, and he understood them. He knew what it was like for married women to look after houses and husbands and children, serving up perhaps twenty meals a week, nursing the family through its problems and illnesses, listening patiently while husbands complained about the boss or the terrible time they had had at work that day. And all the time, these same women were trying to stay attractive and lively. Fred understood all this, and did his best to be a good friend to his married ladies.

“Here you are, Ann. I’ve brought you some tomatoes from my greenhouse. They’ll put the colour back in your cheeks!”

“Audrey, you’ve had your hair done. It really suits you!”

“Hello, Judy. You’re looking a bit tired. Are you sure you’re not overdoing things a bit?”

“That’s a pretty dress, Carol. What? You made it yourself? I wish I had a talent like that.”

He listened to their problems, took an interest in their children, complimented them on their appearance, tried to make them feel important. He even flirted with them sometimes in a light-hearted way that amused them but never offended them. In short, he did all those things that husbands should do, but often forget to do because they are too busy and too wrapped up in themselves.

So, Ann and Audrey and Carol and the rest appreciated Fred when he came round each week to collect the insurance premiums. They looked forward to a friendly chat, a helping hand when they needed one, or simply a break from the boring routine of housework. But Hadley is a small village, and tongues began to wag. The sight of Fred’s old bike propped up against Ann Fletcher’s front wall or against the side of Carol Turner’s house for an hour or more, when everyone knew he only needed to be there two minutes, started the gossip among the older village women.

“I always said he was no good.”

“I think it’s a disgrace. She’s a married woman with two small children!”

“Her poor husband: he doesn’t even suspect what’s going on!”

“That Ann Fletcher. Personally, I think she leads him on, you know, actually encourages him!”

The worst of these gossips was undoubtedly old Mrs. Somersham. Her husband was not only the manager of the local bank, but also chairman of the Parish Council. She told him about her suspicions, but in that indirect way which makes gossip seem more like concern for the welfare of others. Mr. Somersham took no notice at first, but then began to wonder. He heard one or two comments from other sources and eventually began to believe the stories about Fred. He thought for a while, and decided to have a quiet word with one of the husbands. As is always the way with these things, it was not long before the other husbands were made aware of the gossip about their wives and the unspeakable Fred Battersby. Well, these men had their pride, so naturally they were sure that their wives were as innocent as angels. But it was clear that these innocent angels were in danger from a widower with a roving eye and the morals of a stray dog. So the husbands of Carol Turner and Ann Fletcher and the rest began to get jealous or angry or sulky, and they began to say unkind things or to drop hints about Fred Battersby in the offhand way that people have when they don’t want to look foolish but still want to have their way.

Eventually, the smell of scandal reached too many noses, and something had to happen. Tired of Mrs. Somersham’s references to the subject, Mr. Somersham decided to have another quiet word, this time with his old friend, Porter, who happened to be the managing director of the insurance company that Fred worked for. Just a quiet word was enough. Fred lost his job shortly afterwards. He could feel the cold atmosphere around him and, before long, packed his things and moved to another village several miles away. Mrs. Somersham clucked with satisfaction, old Somersham breathed a sigh of relief, the offended husbands relaxed, and peace settled once more over Hadley.

For a time, that is. But then, the strangest things began to happen to Fred’s married ladies. Not long after Fred’s departure, Ann Fletcher had an affair (a real, serious love affair) with an estate agent from Stamford. Then, a month or two later, Audrey Ball just got up one day and walked out on her husband.

At about the same time, a rumour started going round that Carol Turner was getting a divorce. And by now, even the local postman was aware that Judy Smith was no longer sleeping in the same bed as her husband. At least, these were the kinds of rumours that reached even Fred Battersby, living in his little caravan in another village some miles away. Not that he took any notice of such stories: Fred’s the sort of man who has always refused to listen to gossip.

1. In what way was the main character helpful to his married ladies? What was it that they missed? Why could not the husbands give their wives what Fred gave them, in your opinion?

2. Why do you think the local authorities decided to interfere into the matter?

3. How can you account for the fact that soon after Fred’s disappearance the women’s families started to break? Who is to blame?

4. What is absolutely essential for keeping a family together from the author’s view-point? What is important in man-woman relationship?

5. Identify the central themes of the short story. Do you share the author’s position as to the problems touched upon?

11.

B. Brown

The Star Ducks

Ward Rafferty’s long, sensitive newshawk’s nose alerted him for a hoax as soon as he saw the old Alsop place. There was no crowd of curious farmers standing around, no ambulance.

Rafferty left The Times press car under a walnut tree in the drive and stood for a moment noting every detail with the efficiency that made him The Times’ top reporter. The old Alsop house was brown, weathered, two-storey with cream-coloured filigree around the windows and a lawn that had grown up to weeds. Out in back were the barn and chicken houses and fences that were propped up with boards and pieces of pipe. The front gate was hinging by one hinge but it could be opened by lifting it. Rafferty went in and climbed the steps, careful for loose boards.

Mr. Alsop came out on the porch to meet him. “Howdy do,” he said.

Rafferty pushed his hat back on his head the way he always did before he said: “I’m Rafferty of The Times.” Most people knew his by-line and he liked to watch their faces when he said it.

“Rafferty?” Mr. Alsop said, and Rafferty knew he wasn’t a Times reader.

“I’m a reporter,” Rafferty said. “Somebody phoned in and said an airplane cracked up around here.”

Mr. Alsop looked thoughtful and shook his head slowly.

“No,” he said.

Rafferty saw right away that Alsop was a slow thinker so he gave him time, mentally pegging him a taciturn Yankee. Mr. Alsop answered again, “Noooooooooooo.”

The screen door squeaked and Mrs. Alsop came out. Since Mr. Alsop was still thinking, Rafferty repeated the information for Mrs. Alsop, thinking she looked a little brighter than her husband. But Mrs. Alsop shook her head and said, “Nooooooooooo,” in exactly the same tone Mr. Alsop had used.

Rafferty turned around with his hand on the porch railing ready to go down the steps.

“I guess it was a phony tip,” he said. “We get lots of them. Somebody said an airplane came down in your field this morning, straight down trailing fire.”

Mrs. Alsop’s face lighted up. “Ohhhhhhhhhh!” she said. “Yes, it did but it wasn’t wrecked. Besides, it isn’t really an airplane. That is, it doesn’t have wings on it.”

Rafferty stopped with his foot in the air over the top step. “I beg your pardon?” he said. “An airplane came down? And it didn’t have wings?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Alsop said. “It’s out there in the barn now. It belongs to some folks who bend iron with a hammer.”

This, Rafferty thought, begins to smell like news again.

“Oh, a helicopter,” he said.

Mrs. Alsop shok her head. “No, I don’t think it is. It doesn’t have any of those fans. But you can go out to the barn and have a look. Take him out, Alfred. Tell him to keep on the walk because it’s muddy.”

“Сome along,” Mr. Alsop said brightly. “I’d like to look the contraption over again myself.”

Rafferty followed Mr. Alsop around the house on the board walk thinking he’d been mixed up with some queer people in his work, some crackpots and some screwballs, some imbeciles and some lunatics, but for sheer dumbness, these Alsops had them all beat.

“Got a lot of chickens this year,” Mr. Alsop said. “All fine stock. Minorcas. Sent away for roosters and I’ve built a fine flock. But do you think chickens’ll do very well up on a star, Mr. Rafferty?”

Rafferty involuntarily looked up at the sky and stepped off the boards into the mud.

“Up on a what?”

“I said up on a star.” Mr. Alsop had reached the barn door and was trying to shove it open. “Sticks,” he said. Rafferty put his shoulder to it and the door slid. When it was open a foot, Rafferty looked inside and he knew he had a story.

The object inside looked like a giant plastic balloon only half inflated so that it was globular on top and its flat bottom rested on the straw-covered floor. It was just small enough to go through the barn door. Obviously it was somebody’s crackpot idea of a space ship, Rafferty thought. The headline that flashed across his mind was “Local Farmer Builds Ship For Moon Voyage”.

“Mr. Alsop,” Rafferty said hopefully, “you didn’t build this thing, did you?”

Mr. Alsop laughed. “Oh, no, I didn’t build it. I wouldn’t know how to build one of those things. Some friends of ours came in it. Gosh, I wouldn’t even know how to fly one.”

Rafferty looked at Mr. Alsop narrowly and he saw the man’s face was serious.

“Just who are these friends of yours, Mr. Alsop?” Rafferty asked cautiously.

“Well, it sounds funny,” Mr. Alsop said, “but I don’t rightly know. They don’t talk so very good. They don’t talk at all. All we can get out of them is that their name is something about bending iron with a hammer.”

Rafferty had been circling the contraption, gradually drawing closer to it. He suddenly collided with something he couldn’t see. He said ‘ouch’ and rubbed his shin.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you, Mr. Rafferty,” Mr. Alsop said, “they got a gadget on it that won’t let you get near, some kind of a wall you can’t see. That’s to keep boys away from it.”

“These friends of yours, Mr. Alsop, where are they now?”

“Oh, they’re over at the house,” Mr. Alsop said. “You can see them if you want to. But I think you’ll find it pretty hard talking to them.”

“Russian?” Rafferty asked.

“Oh, no. I don’t think so. They don’t wear Cossacks.”

“Let’s go,” Rafferty said in a low voice and led the way across the muddy barnyard toward the house.

“These folks come here the first time about six years ago,” Mr. Alsop said. “Wanted some eggs. Thought may be they could raise chickens up where they are. Took ’em three years to get back. Eggs spoiled. So the folks turned right around and come back. This time I fixed ’em up a little brooder so they can raise chickens on the way home.” He suddenly laughed. “I can’t just see that little contraption way out there in the sky full of chickens.”

Rafferty climbed up on the back porch ahead of Mr. Alsop and went through the back door into the kitchen. Mr. Alsop stopped him before they went into the living room.

“Now, Mr. Rafferty, my wife can talk to these people better than I can, so anything you want to know you better ask her. Her and the lady get along pretty good.”

“Okay,” Rafferty said. He pushed Mr. Alsop gently through the door into the living room, thinking he would play along, act naïve.

Mrs. Alsop sat in an armchair close to a circulating heater. Rafferty saw the visitors sitting side by side on the davenport, he saw them waving their long antennae delicately, he saw their lavender faces as expressionless as glass, the round eyes that seemed to be painted on.

Rafferty clutched the door facings and stared.

Mrs. Alsop turned toward him brightly.

“Mr. Rafferty,” she said, “these are the people that came to see us in that airplane.” Mrs. Alsop raised her finger and both the strangers bent their antennae down in her direction.

“This is Mr. Rafferty,” Mrs. Alsop said. “He’s a newspaper reporter. He wanted to see your airplane.”

Rafferty managed to nod and the strangers curled up their antennae and nodded politely. The woman scratched her side with her left claw.

Something inside Rafferty’s head was saying, you’re a smart boy, Rafferty, you’re too smart to be taken in. Somebody’s pulling a whopping, skilful publicity scheme, somebody’s got you down for a sucker. Either that or you’re crazy or drunk or dreaming.

Rafferty tried to keep his voice casual.

“What did you say their names are, Mrs. Alsop?”

“Well, we don’t know,” Mrs. Alsop said. “You see they can only make pictures for you. They point those funny squiggly horns at you and they just think. That makes you think, too — the same thing they’re thinking. I asked them what their name is and then I let them think for me. All I saw was a picture of the man hammering some iron on an anvil. So I guess their name is something like Man-Who-Bends-Iron. May be it’s kind of like an Indian name.”

Rafferty looked slyly at the people who bent iron and at Mrs. Alsop.

“Do you suppose,” he said innocently, “they would talk to me — or think to me?”

Mrs. Alsop looked troubled.

“They’d be glad to, Mr. Rafferty. The only thing is, it’s pretty hard at first. Hard for you, that is.”

“I’ll try it,” Rafferty said. He took out a cigarette and lighted it. He held the match until it burned his fingers.

“Just throw it in the coal bucket.”

Rafferty threw the match in the coal bucket.

“Ask these things … ah … people where they come from,” he said.

Mrs. Alsop smiled. “That’s a very hard question. I asked them that before but I didn’t get much of a picture. But I’ll ask them again.”

Mrs. Alsop raised her finger and both horns bent toward her and aimed directly at her head.

“This young man,” Mrs. Alsop said in a loud voice like she was talking to someone hard of hearing, “wants to know where you people come from.”

Mr. Alsop nudged Rafferty. “Just hold up your finger when you want your answer.”

Rafferty felt like a complete idiot but he held up his finger. The woman whose husband bends iron bent her antenna down until it focused on Rafferty between the eyes. He involuntarily braced himself against the door facings. Suddenly his brain felt as though it were made of rubber and somebody was wringing and twisting and pounding it all out of shape and moulding it back together again into something new. The terror of it blinded him. He was flying through space, through a great white void. Stars and meteors whizzed by and a great star, dazzling with brilliance, white and sparkling stood there in his mind and then it went out. Rafferty’s mind was released but he found himself trembling, clutching the door facings. His burning cigarette was on the floor. Mr. Alsop stooped and picked it up.

“Here’s your cigarette, Mr. Rafferty. Did you get your answer?”

Rafferty was white.

“Mr. Alsop!” he said. “Mrs. Alsop! This is on the level. These creatures are really from out there in space somewhere!”

Mr. Alsop said: “Sure, they come a long way.”

“Do you know what this means?” Rafferty heard his voice becoming hysterical and he tried to keep it calm. “Do you know this is the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of the world? Do you know this is … yes, it is, it’s the biggest story in the world and it’s happening to me, do you understand?” Rafferty was yelling. “Where’s your phone?”

“We don’t have a telephone,” Mr. Alsop said. “There’s one down at the filling station. But these people are going to go in a few minutes. Why don’t you wait and see them off? Already got their eggs and the brooder and feed on board.”

“No!” Rafferty gasped. “They can’t go in a few minutes! Listen, I’ve got to phone — I’ve got to get a photographer!”

Mrs. Alsop smiled.

“Well, Mr. Rafferty, we tried to get them to stay for supper but they have to go at a certain time. They have to catch the tide or something like that.”

“It’s the moon,” Mr. Alsop said with authority. “It’s something about the moon being in the right place.”

The people from space sat there demurely, their claws folded in their laps, their antennae neatly curled to show they weren’t eavesdropping on other people’s minds.

Rafferty looked frantically around the room for a telephone he knew wasn’t there. Got to get Joe Pegley at the city desk, Rafferty thought. Joe’ll know what to do. No, no, Joe would say you’re drunk.

But this is the biggest story in the world, Rafferty’s brain kept saying. It’s the biggest story in the world and you just stand here.

“Listen, Alsop!” Rafferty yelled. “You got a camera? Any kind of a camera? I got to have a camera!”

“Oh, sure,” Mr. Alsop said. “I got a fine camera. It’s a box camera but it takes good pictures. I’ll show you some I took of my chickens.”

“No, no! I don’t want to see your pictures. I want the camera!”

Mr. Alsop went into the parlour and Rafferty could see him fumbling around on top of the organ.

“Mrs. Alsop!” Rafferty shouted. “I’ve got to ask lots of questions!”

“Ask away,” Mrs. Alsop said cheerily. “They don’t mind.”

But what could you ask people from space? You got their names. You got what they were here for: eggs. You got where they were from …

Mr. Alsop’s voice came from the parlour.

“Ethel, you seen my camera?”

Mrs. Alsop sighed. “No, I haven’t. You put it away.”

“Only trouble is,” Mr. Alsop said, “haven’t got any film for it.”

Suddenly the people from space turned their antennae toward each other for a second and apparently coming to a mutual agreement, got up and darted here and there about the room as quick as fireflies, so fast Rafferty could scarcely see them. They scuttered out the door and off toward the barn. All Rafferty could think was: “My God, they’re part bug!”

Rafferty rushed out the door, on toward the barn through the mud, screaming at the creatures to stop. But before he was halfway there the gleaming plastic contraption slid out of the barn and there was a slight hiss. The thing disappeared into the low hanging clouds.

All there was left for Rafferty to see was a steaming place in the mud and a little circle of burnt earth. Rafferty sat down in the mud, a hollow, empty feeling in his middle, with the knowledge that the greatest story in the world had gone off into the sky. No pictures, no evidence, no story. He dully went over in his mind the information he had:

“Mr. and Mrs. Man-Who-Bends-Iron …” It slowly dawned on Rafferty what that meant. Smith! Man-Who-Bends-Iron on an anvil. Of course that was Smith … “Mr. and Mrs. Smith visited at the Alfred Alsop place Sunday. They returned to their home in the system of Alpha Centauri with two crates of hatching eggs.”

Rafferty got to his feet and shook his head. He stood still in the mud and suddenly his eyes narrowed and you knew that the Rafferty brain was working — that Rafferty brain that always came up with the story. He bolted for the house and burst into the back door.

“Alsop!” he yelled. “Did those people pay you for those eggs?”

Mr. Alsop was standing on a chair in front of the china closet, still hunting for the camera.

“Oh, sure,” he said. “In a way they did.”

“Let me see the money!” Rafferty demanded.

“Oh, not in money,” Mr. Alsop said. “They don’t have any money. But when they were here six years ago they brought us some eggs of their own in trade.”

“Six years ago!” Rafferty moaned. Then he started. “Eggs! What kind of eggs?”

Mr. Alsop chuckled a little. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “We called them star ducks. The eggs were star shaped. And you know we set them under a hen and the star points bothered the old hen something awful.”

Mr. Alsop climbed down from the chair.

“Star ducks aren’t much good though. They look something like a little hippopotamus and something like a swallow. But they got six legs. Only two of them lived and we ate them for Thanksgiving.”

Rafferty’s brain still worked, grasping for that single fragment of evidence that would make his city editor — and the world — believe.

Rafferty leaned closer. “Mr. Alsop,” he almost whispered, “you wouldn’t know where the skeletons of the star ducks are?”

Mr. Alsop looked puzzled. “You mean the bones? We gave the bones to the dog. That was five years ago. Even the dog’s dead now.”

Rafferty picked up his hat like a man in a daze.

“Thanks, Mr. Alsop,” he said dully. “Thanks.”

Rafferty stood on the porch and put on his hat. He pushed it back on his head. He stared up into the overcast; he stared until he felt dizzy like he was spiraling off into the mist.

Mr. Alsop came out, wiping the dust off a box camera with his sleeve.

“Oh, Mr. Rafferty,” he said. “I found the camera.”

1. Define the genre of the short story.

2. Can the reader regard the main characters (the married couple and the reporter) as foils? Which features of character of the main personages do you think the author wants to stress by comparing and contrasting them?

3. Does the description of the character’s appearances and manner of speech contribute to their characterization? In what way?

4. Compare the characters’ reaction and attitude to the most unusual event in the story. Do they differ? Why? Does this fact illuminate the characters’ world-outlook?

5. Whose opinion and manner of action would you assume in a similar situation? Why?

12.

F. Sargeson

They Gave Her a Rise

When the explosion happened I couldn’t go and see where it was. I’d been working on the wharves, and a case had dropped on my foot. It put me on crutches for a fortnight.

I was boarding with Mrs. Bowman down by the waterfront at the time. She was quite a good sort though a bit keen on the main chance. But I didn’t blame her because her husband had cleared out, and to make ends meet she took on cleaning jobs several days a week.

Explosions are like fires, you can’t tell how far off they are. But it was some explosion. Mrs. Bowman and I were in the kitchen and the crockery rattled, and the dust came down off the light shade. Sally Bowman was working out at the ammunition factory. And they said some of the hands had been blown to smithereens.

Mrs. Bowman broke down.

She’s dead, she said, I know she’s dead.

Well, we couldn’t do anything. I went over next door on my crutches and asked the people if they’d find out about Sally and whistle me. Then I’d break the news to Mrs. Bowman.

I went back and Mrs. Bowman was worse than ever. She’d been getting dinner at the time and she sat with her head down on the table among the potato peelings. Her hair’d come all unput too, and she looked awful. But she wasn’t crying, and you sort of wished she had’ve been.

She’s dead, she said, I know she’s dead.

She’s not dead, I said.

I know she’s dead.

Bull’s wool, I said, she’s not dead.

Oh God, she said, why did I make her go and work in that factory?

I’ll guarantee she’s been lucky.

She’s all I’ve got. And now she’s dead.

If you don’t look out you’ll start believing it, I said.

It was no good. She went on a treat. I asked her if she’d like me to get one of the neighbours in but she said no.

I don’t want to see nobody no more, she said. Sally’s all I was living for, and now she’s dead. She was a good girl, she said, she was good to her mother.

Sure, I said. Of course she was good to her mother. So she always will be.

She won’t. She’s dead.

I couldn’t do anything. The worst of it was I had a sort of sick feeling that Sally had been blown up. She was only seventeen and a nice kid too. And Mrs. Bowman as good as a widow. It was tough all right.

Then Mrs. Bowman started to pray.

Lord God Jesus, she said, give me back my baby. You know she’s all I’ve got. Do please Jesus Christ Almighty give me back my baby. Please Jesus just this once. Darling Jesus I know I done wrong. I shouldn’t ought to have made my Sally go and work in that factory. It was because of the money. I had to make her go, you know I did. But oh sweet Jesus if you’ll only give me back my baby just this once I won’t never do another wrong thing in my life. Without a word of lie I won’t, so help me God.

She went on like that. It sounded pretty awful to me, that sort of praying, because Mrs. Bowman was always down on the churches. You wouldn’t have thought she had a spark of religion in her at all. Still, it was tough. And I felt like nothing on earth.

The next thing was Sally was brought home in a car, one of those big limousines too. The joker driving had been going home from golf and he’d volunteered. He had to help Sally out of the car and up the steps because she was just a jelly. Her hat was on crooked and she couldn’t stop crying. Of course the neighbours all came round but I told them to shove off and come back later on.

Well, Mrs. Bowman had kidded herself into believing that Sally had been blown to smithereens. So when Sally walked in she went properly dippy and carried on about her having come back from the dead. So I slung off at her a bit for being dippy and banged about cheerful-like getting them a cup of tea. Sally wasn’t hurt at all, but some of the girls had been killed so naturally she was upset. Anyhow I slapped her on the back just to show her mother it wasn’t a ghost that had walked in, then Mrs. Bowman began crying and you could see she felt better. So both of them sat there and cried until the tea was ready.

I can’t believe my eyes, Mrs. Bowman said, I thought you was dead.

Well, I’m not dead, Sally said.

I thought you was.

I thought I was too. There’s Peg Watson, she’s dead.

What a shame, Mrs. Bowman said.

And Marge Andrews, she’s dead too.

Poor Mrs. Andrews.

Mum it was awful. It was just like the noise of something being torn. Something big. A wind sort of tore at you too. And then there was a funny smell.

Anyhow you’re not dead. You’ve been spared.

The wind knocked me over. I thought I was dead then.

You’ve been spared.

Yes I know. But what about Peg Watson and Marge Andrews?

Poor Mrs. Andrews, Mrs. Bowman said.

Then Mrs. Bowman roused on to me for putting too much sugar in her tea.

I thought I’d never taste tea again, Sally said, not when I was knocked over I didn’t.

Have another cup? I said.

Mr. Doran, Mrs. Bowman said, how ever much tea did you put in the teapot?

I made it strong, I said. I thought you’d like it strong.

Anyone would think we was millionaires, Mrs. Bowman said.

Sally said she wasn’t ever going back to work in the ammunition factory again.

Why not? Mrs. Bowman asked. You could see she was feeling a lot better and she spoke quite sharp.

Well I’m not. You never got knocked over by that wind.

I’ve had things to put up with in my life. Yes, I have.

I know you have, mum. But you never got knocked over by a wind like that.

You can’t avoid accidents.

I know you can’t. But what about Peg and Marge?

Isn’t it a shame? Poor Mrs. Andrews. Marge was getting more money than you, wasn’t she?

Anyhow I’m not going back. So there.

Oh, indeed, young lady, Mrs. Bowman said. So that’s the way you’re going to talk. Not going back! Will you tell me where our money’s coming from if you’re not? Huh! You’d sooner see your mother scrubbing floors, wouldn’t you?

Listen mum, Sally said. Listen…

Well, I left them to it. I went over next door to talk to the people, and you could hear Sally and her mother squabbling from there.

Of course Sally wasn’t off for long. And they gave her a rise.

1. Consider the forms of presentation within the short story. See if the choice of forms of presentation is connected with that of techniques of characterization.

2. Is it important that the I-narrator functions as a character? What technique of characterization does this fact allow to employ?

3. Does the author resort to the direct portrayal of the characters?

4. Analyze the main character’s speech and manner of behaviour on hearing the crucial news. What sort of parent does she make?

5. Can you account for the change in the main character’s decision by the end of the story?

13.

M. Spark

You Should Have Seen the Mess

I am now more than glad that I did not pass into the grammar school five years ago, although it was a disappointment at the time. I was always good at English, but not so good at the other subjects!!

I am glad that I went to the secondary modern school, because it was only constructed the year before. Therefore, it was much more hygienic than the grammar school. The secondary modern was light and airy, and the walls were painted with a bright, washable gloss. One day, I was sent over to the grammar school, with a note for one of the teachers, and you should have seen the mess! The corridors were dusty, and I saw dust on the window ledges, which were chipped. I saw into one of the classrooms. It was very untidy in there.

I am also glad that I did not go to the grammar school, because of what it does to one’s habits. This may appear to be a strange remark, at first sight. It is a good thing to have an education behind you, and I do not believe in ignorance, but I have had certain experiences, with educated people, since going out into the world.

I am seventeen years of age, and left school two years ago last month. I had my A certificate for typing, so got my first job, as a junior, in a solicitor’s office. Mum was pleased at this, and Dad said it was a first-class start, as it was an old-established firm. I must say that when I went for the interview, I was surprised at the windows, and the stairs up to the offices were also far from clean. There was a little waiting-room, where some of the elements were missing from the gas fire, and the carpet on the floor was worn. However, Mr. Heygate’s office, into which I was shown for the interview, was better. The furniture was old, but it was polished, and there was a good carpet, I will say that. The glass of the bookcase was very clean.

I was to start on the Monday, so along I went. They took me to the general office, where there were two senior shorthand-typists, and a clerk, Mr. Gresham, who was far from smart in appearance. You should have seen the mess!! There was no floor covering whatsoever, and so dusty everywhere. There were shelves all round the room, with old box files on them. The box files were falling to pieces, and all the old papers inside them were crumpled. The worst shock of all was the tea-cups. It was my duty to make tea, mornings and afternoons. Miss Bewlay showed me where everything was kept. It was kept in an old orange box, and the cups were all cracked. There were not enough saucers to go round, etc. I will not go into the facilities, but they were also far from hygienic. After three days, I told Mum, and she was upset, most of all about the cracked cups. We never keep a cracked cup, but throw it out, because those cracks can harbour germs. So Mum gave me my own cup to take to the office.

Then at the end of the week, when I got my salary, Mr. Heygate said, “Well, Lorna, what are you going to do with your first pay?” I did not like him saying this, and I nearly passed a comment, but I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “What do you do in the evenings, Lorna? Do you watch Telly?” I did take this as an insult, because we call it TV, and his remark made me out to be uneducated. I just stood, and did not answer, and he looked surprised. Next day, Saturday, I told Mum and Dad about the facilities, and we decided I should not go back to that job. Also, the desks in the general office were rickety. Dad was indignant, because Mr. Heygate’s concern was flourishing, and he had letters after his name.

Everyone admires our flat, because Mum keeps it spotless, and Dad keeps doing things to it. He has done it up all over and got permission from the Council to remodernize the kitchen. I well recall the Health Visitor, remarking to Mum, “You could eat off your floor, Mrs. Merrifield.” It is true that you could eat your lunch off Mum’s floors, and any hour of the day or night you will find every corner spick and span.

Next, I was sent by the agency to a publisher’s for an interview, because of being good at English. One look was enough!! My next interview was a success, and I am still at Low’s Chemical Co. It is a modern block, with a quarter of an hour rest period, morning and afternoon. Mr. Marwood is very smart in appearance. He is well spoken, although he has not got a university education behind him. There is special lighting over the desks, and the typewrites are the latest models.

So I am happy at Low’s. But I have met other people, of an educated type, in the past year, and it has opened my eyes. It so happened that I had to go to the doctor’s house, to fetch a prescription for my young brother, Trevor, when the epidemic was on. I rang the bell, and Mrs. Darby came to the door. She was small, with fair hair, but too long, and a green maternity dress. But she was very nice to me. I had to wait in their living-room, and you should have seen the state it was in! There were broken toys on the carpet, and the ash trays were full up. There were contemporary pictures on the walls, but the furniture was not contemporary, but old-fashioned, with covers which were past standing up to another wash, I should say. To cut a long story short, Dr. Darby and Mrs. Darby have always been very kind to me, and they meant everything for the best. Dr. Darby is also short and fair, and they have three children, a girl and a boy, and now a baby boy.

When I went that day for the prescription Dr. Darby said to me, “You look pale, Lorna. It’s the London atmosphere. Come on a picnic with us, in the car, on Saturday.” After that I went with the Darbys more and more. I liked them, but I did not like the mess, and it was a surprise. But I also kept in with them for the opportunity of meeting people, and Mum and Dad were pleased that I had made nice friends. So I did not say anything about the cracked lino, and the paintwork all chipped. The children’s clothes were very shabby for a doctor, and she changed them out of their school clothes when they came from school, into those worn-out garments. Mum always kept us spotless to go out to play, and I do not like to say it, but those Darby children frequently looked like the Leary family, which the Council evicted from our block, as they were far from houseproud.

One day, when I was there, Mavis (as I called Mrs. Darby by then) put her head out of the window, and shouted to the boy, “John, stop peeing over the cabbages at once. Pee on the lawn.” I did not know which way to look. Mum would never say a word like that from the window, and I know for a fact that Trevor would never pass water outside, not even bathing in the sea.

I went there usually at the week-ends, but sometimes on week-days, after supper. They had an idea to make a match for me with a chemist’s assistant, whom they had taken up too. He was an orphan, and I do not say there was anything wrong with that. But he was not accustomed to those little extras that I was. He was a good-looking boy, I will say that. So I went once to a dance, and twice to films with him. To look at, he was quite clean in appearance. But there was only hot water at the week-end at his place, and he said that a bath once a week was sufficient. Jim (as I called Dr. Darby by then) said it was sufficient also, and surprised me. He did not have much money, and I do not hold that against him. But there was no hurry for me, and I could wait for a man in a better position, so that I would not miss those little extras. So he started going out with a girl from the coffee bar, and did not come to the Darbys very much then.

There were plenty of boys at the office, but I will say this for the Darbys, they had lots of friends coming and going, and they had interesting conversation, although sometimes it gave me a surprise, and I did not know where to look. And sometimes they had people who were very down and out, although there is no need to be. But most of the guests were different, so it made a comparison with the boys at the office, who were not so educated in their conversation.

Now it was near the time for Mavis to have her baby, and I was to come in at the week-end, to keep an eye on the children, while the help had her day off. Mavis did not go away to have her baby, but would have it at home, in their double bed, as they did not have twin beds, although he was a doctor. A girl I knew, in our block, was engaged, but was let down, and even she had her baby in the labour ward. I was sure the bedroom was not hygienic for having a baby, but I did not mention it.

One day, after the baby boy came along, they took me in the car to the country, to see Jim’s mother. The baby was put in a carry-cot at the back of the car. He began to cry, and without a word of a lie, Jim said to him over his shoulder, “Oh shut your gob, you little bastard.” I did not know what to do, and Mavis was smoking a cigarette. Dad would not dream of saying such a thing to Trevor or I. When we arrived at Jim’s mother’s place, Jim said, “It’s a fourteenth-century cottage, Lorna.” I could well believe it. It was very cracked and old, and it made one wonder how Jim could let his old mother live in this tumble-down cottage, as he was so good to everyone else. So Mavis knocked at the door, and the old lady came. There was not much anyone could do to the inside. Mavis said, “Isn’t it charming, Lorna?” If that was a joke, it was going too far. I said to the old Mrs. Darby, “Are you going to be re-housed?” but she did not understand this, and I explained how you have to apply to the Council, and keep at them. But it was funny that the Council had not done something already, when they go round condemning. Then old Mrs. Darby said, “My dear, I shall be re-housed in the Grave.” I did not know where to look.

There was a carpet hanging on the wall, which I think was there to hide a damp spot. She had a good TV set, I will say that. But some of the walls were bare brick, and the facilities were outside, through the garden. The furniture was far from new.

One Saturday afternoon, as I happened to go to the Darbys, they were just going off to a film and they took me too. It was the Curzon, and afterwards we went to a flat in Curzon Street. It was a very clean block, I will say that, and there were good carpets at the entrance. The couple there had contemporary furniture, and they also spoke about music. It was a nice place, but there was no Welfare Centre to the flats, where people could go for social intercourse, advice, and guidance. But they were well-spoken, and I met Willy Morley, who was an artist. Willy sat beside me, and we had a drink. He was young, dark, with a dark shirt, so one could not see right away if he was clean. Soon after this, Jim said to me, “Willy wants to paint you, Lorna. But you’d better ask your Mum.” Mum said it was all right if he was a friend of the Darbys.

I can honestly say that Willy’s place was the most unhygienic place I have seen in my life. He said I had an unusual type of beauty, which he must capture. This was when we came back to his place from the restaurant. The light was very dim, but I could see the bed had not been made, and the sheets were far from clean. He said he must paint me, but I told Mavis I did not like to go back there. “Don’t you like Willy?” she asked. I could not deny that I liked Willy, in a way. There was something about him, I will say that. Mavis said, “I hope he hasn’t been making a pass at you, Lorna.” I said he had not done so, which was almost true, because he did not attempt to go to the full extent. It was always unhygienic when I went to Willy’s place, and I told him so once, but he said, “Lorna, you are a joy.” He had a nice way, and he took me out in his car, which was a good one, but dirty inside, like his place. Jim said one day, “He has pots of money, Lorna,” and Mavis said, “You might make a man of him, as he is keen on you.” They always said Willy came from a good family.

But I saw that one could not do anything with him. He would not change his shirt very often, or get clothes, but he went round like a tramp, lending people money, as I have seen with my own eyes. His place was in a terrible mess, with the empty bottles, and laundry in the corner. He gave me several gifts over the period, which I took as he would have only given them away, but he never tried to go to the full extent. He never painted my portrait, as he was painting fruit on a table all that time, and they said his pictures were marvellous, and thought Willy and I were getting married.

One night, when I went home, I was upset as usual, after Willy’s place. Mum and Dad had gone to bed, and I looked round our kitchen which is done in primrose and white. Then I went into the living-room, where Dad had done one wall in a patterned paper, deep rose and white, and the other walls pale rose, with white woodwork. The suite is new, and Mum keeps everything beautiful. So it came to me, all of a sudden, what a fool I was, going with Willy. I agree to equality, but as to me marrying Willy, as I said to Mavis, when I recall his place, and the good carpet gone greasy, not to mention the paint oozing out of the tubes, I think it would break my heart to sink so low.

1. Define the forms of presentation and think whether the I-narrator serves as the author’s mouthpiece in this case.

2. Consider the setting of each episode. Which details arrest the attention of the main character? Compare the places described in the story with her own place.

3. The events are related through the perception and with the language of the main character. What are the points of primary importance for her while speaking of people?

4. Regard the narrator’s view-point of the general problems (education, career, marriage, friendship, etc.). How does her set of values characterize her?

5. Are you sympathetic with the protagonist? What is the author’s purpose in creating such an image?

14.

M. Binchey

The Garden Party

Helen looked out the window at the garden next door. It was a mass of colour, mainly from bushes and small trees. No troublesome flowerbeds that would need endless weeding, nor were there paths that would have to have their edges trimmed, or rockeries where one thing might spill and crowd out another. Little brick paths wound through it and there were paved areas with tubs of plants around the garden seats; unlike her own garden which badly needed attention.

She had been told that her neighbour was a Mrs. Kennedy, who had two placid cats and was known to be easy-going. Admittedly Helen had been told this by the estate agent who would hardly have warned her even if Mrs. Kennedy had been one of the Brides of Dracula.

Helen had been there for three days and she had not yet seen Mrs. Kennedy. The two big cats spent almost all day asleep on the sunny garden seats. They looked so peaceful, Helen envied them. Dim creatures purring and dozing in the sunshine; someone to feed them at the end of every evening, birds to watch sleepily from a distance. How Helen wished that she too could have a life like that instead of sleepless nights, hours of anxiety, torrents of grief and regret. And now the whole nightmarish business of facing a new house, a new life, because Harry didn’t love her any more, because he had found real love with this girl young enough to he his daughter. The girl who was pregnant with his child.

And Harry was so pleased to be a father. For fourteen years of their marriage he had told Helen that he wasn’t ready for parenthood yet and that they were so complete in themselves they didn’t need anyone else in their lives. Now, when she was thirty-six years old and he was approaching his fortieth birthday, he decided he would like to be a father. But he told her about the change of heart and direction only after he said that he was leaving her, and the mother of his child would be a nineteen-year-old.

Other people survived, but then other people could never have felt so betrayed, so shocked and so aimless now in life.

Her sisters lived far away in other cities; they were not a family given to writing or long telephone calls. And her friends? Helen knew only too well how easy it was to alienate your friends by weeping all night at their kitchen tables. Friends preferred to think you were coping, or trying to cope. Then they were supportive and practical and around. Friends could disappear into the woodwork if you cried on their shoulders as much as you wanted to.

So when Helen told people that she was going to move house, make a fresh start, everyone seemed pleased. A place with a garden, ideal they all said. Her sisters wrote and said she would find great consolation in digging the earth and planting and seeing things grow. Helen read their letters with mute rage.

She spent many hours of her first week in the new house staring aimlessly from the window and wondering about the unfairness of life. And then when she was least expecting it she saw Mrs. Kennedy; much younger than she’d imagined — this woman barely looked ten years older than herself. She wore a rainbow-coloured skirt and a white T-shirt. She had a big black straw hat and smiled as she carried a tray of tea things to one of the two wooden tables in her garden.

Helen watched as she saw her neighbour sit down and stretch and close her eyes with pleasure in the afternoon sunshine. She was as languid and relaxed as one of the big sleepy cats.

As she watched, Helen heard the gate creak and two girls came in. One about sixteen, dark and attractive; one about six, a moppet with blonde curls. They flung themselves at the woman on the wooden seat.

“You were asleep, Debbie,” the older girl cried. “We’ve finally caught you. This is what you do all day!”

“Poor Debbie, are you tired?” The six - year – old had climbed on Mrs. Kennedy’s lap and was hugging her.

Helen felt a wave of self-pity wash over her. She would never know anything like this. How could life have been so unfair? She wondered for a bit why they called the woman Debbie, but she could look and listen no longer. She sat down by a box of untouched china. She didn’t know where she would store it, who would eat from it. No marvellous children would come and throw their arms around her calling her Helen.

The afternoon wore on. Helen unpacked one cup and one saucer and one plate. She couldn’t live the rest of her life like this. But what were the alternatives? Harry was gone; he was not coming back. She wished she could get the woman next door out of her mind, but it was like probing a sore tooth.

When she heard a car draw up outside and a younger woman arrived to collect the girls, Helen was again at the window. The younger woman seemed to have trouble dragging the children away; there were still so many things to do. The teenager wanted to inspect the flowerbed, which was her very own, and examine the lupins. The little girl said she had to feed the cats. Then there was a final hug.

“Give our love to Granny,” said the teenager to Mrs. Kennedy.

“Do you still have Granny, aren’t you wonderful, Debbie,” said the younger woman: the girls’ mother?

“I love Granny coming, we’ll be making gingerbread and fudge tomorrow if you want to drop in.” Mrs. Kennedy smiled encouragingly.

Immediately the girls said they would come, and Helen saw from her upstairs window a look of irritation cross the younger woman’s face. She had to know who they were, these people who were acting out a play in the garden next door. There was wine unopened in her fridge. Helen wrapped it in tissue paper.

“I’m your new neighbour, Mrs. Kennedy. I saw your friends or family leave just now so I thought I would come in and introduce myself. I’m Helen…” she began, and then burst into tears.

She didn’t really remember the next bit, but she was sitting in the garden on the wooden seat with a cushion at her back. Debbie Kennedy had poured them two glasses of wine and produced some little bits of cheese and celery. They sat like old friends in the evening sun. And Debbie seemed to look into the distance at the sleeping cats as Helen wept the story of Harry and his betrayal. “I can’t go on, it’s no use pretending.”

“I think you have to pretend one way or another, we all do. But the question is which way you pretend.” She was very matter of fact.

“How do you mean?” Helen had stopped crying.

“Well, you could go one route and pretend nothing had changed and that you still thought he was wonderful, remain part of his life and take over the best bits…” Debbie spoke calmly. “Or you could pretend that he is no longer part of your life and that you have forgotten him, and eventually, of course, you will. It will take time, but you will. It just depends which you think would bring you more peace, but both of them involve pretending.”

“I’ll not forget him. I can’t write it off, start again.” Helen felt the prickling tickling in her nose, and hoped she wasn’t going to start crying again.

“Well then, don’t forget him. Stick to him like a limpet, take over his life. I did,” Mrs. Kennedy said, pouring them another glass of wine as she explained the story.

Her husband left her seven years ago for a woman who already had a ten-year-old daughter. A ready-made family, he called it. He left with a series of cliches: Debbie was a survivor, she had a good job, she wouldn’t miss him, it would leave her time and space for the things she really loved. But Debbie had really loved her husband. She had been shattered as Helen was now. If grief could be measured, hers had been just as great. But she had decided not to lose him.

She had not been hostile to the woman with the ready-made family. She had been welcoming. She had offered to baby-sit for them. She had won the mind and heart of the girl who was now her husband’s stepdaughter, Tina. She had moved to live near them; she was a presence in their lives. Her ex-husband thought she was a woman in a million. He sometimes came and talked with her in the garden. He lived in a place where the garden didn’t flourish.

Debbie Kennedy had decided to make her successor’s weaknesses her own strengths. Perhaps the new woman — she never spoke her name — was a tigress in bed; perhaps she was an intellectual giant; perhaps she flattered him more than Debbie had done. But Debbie still cooked better than she did, Debbie picked up his children from school and entertained them royally while the new woman was still at work. Debbie entertained her husband’s mother regularly when the new woman had no time or inclination to do so. Debbie had arranged deviously that Tina should win two pedigree kittens in a competition when she knew the new woman was allergic to cats, and Debbie kept them, on loan, for Tina.

“It sounds like hard work,” Helen said, full of admiration.

“It’s very hard work,” Debbie agreed. “But then I was like you, I didn’t think the day would come when I could ever live without him.”

“And now you could?”

“Oh yes, indeed I could. Now he actually bores me. Not totally but slightly. He’s very predictable. You would know immediately how he will respond. I never thought the day would come…”

“So, if you’re over him why don’t you bow out? Live your own life?” Helen wondered.

“I can’t now. I have too many other people that I love and who love me. I have his mother; she never liked me much during the marriage, but I’m like some kind of angel compared to the new woman.”

“But surely…”

“No, I can’t abandon her, she never did anyone any harm. She didn’t abandon me and divorce me, her son did. And I adore the girls. And there are the cats. I only organised them out of spite, but I love them now. I couldn’t move on somewhere and abandon them when they had served their purpose.

“And the garden: I realised that the secret was to have the minimum to do, but to give the children a flowerbed each, and I work on those secretly and feed whatever they plant, so they think it’s all their own work. It’s a life, Helen, and I had no life the day he said he was leaving.”

“But he’s not the centre of it?”

“No, not now. He was when I needed it. Every single thing I did, I did from some kind of vengeance, and it gave me a purpose to my day.”

“I don’t think I could do it. I mean it’s not as if there were a ready-made family. There’s only a bump and an awful nineteen-year-old, and he doesn’t have a mother, and the cat thing wouldn’t work.”

“It’s that or get out of his orbit completely. When do you go back to work?”

“Next week.”

“Right, if you like, I’ll ask the girls and Gran to help you unpack tomorrow. It’s much better with a few people there. We’ll do a great deal in an hour and a half…”

“But I can’t.”

“Of course you can, and then, when you get back to work, have a gardening party. Invite every one of your colleagues to lunch, say that in return for two hours’ gardening they’ll have a great picnic. Hire a huge trestle table for the day. I’ll tell you what to tell them to plant and what to weed.”

“But I haven’t decided, which road to choose; whether to worm my way back into Harry’s life or not.”

“You’ll still need to unpack and to clear up that messy garden,” Debbie said. They wouldn’t talk about plans and strategies again. From now on they would not need to refer to the desperation of the one and the deviousness of the other. As the curtains went up at the windows, and the china was unpacked on to the shelves and into the cupboards, and the garden took shape, their lives would go on. Helen would make friends again. She would start with her colleagues in the bank who would view her differently after they had seen her as the host of a marvellous gardening party. Debbie’s surrogate family would never know she had loved them initially as an act of revenge. It was good to have such solidarity established on a summer evening.

1. What does the story concentrate on? Who are the characters and what situation they find themselves in?

2. Debbie was also deserted by her husband. What similarities were there between her situation and Helen’s?

3. Describe the two routes that Debbie offers to Helen as ways out of her present situation. What other courses of action might deserted wives take?

4. What attitude towards the characters does the author create?

5. Is The Garden Party a good title for this story, so you think? Is it appropriate, and if so, in what way? What other titles can you suggest?

15.

T. Pears

Blue

He knew he’d died at three o’clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, July the 27^th, 1988, the moment he woke up in the room that he’d come to hate. He hadn’t left it for two months now, and he was wearily familiar not only with every object — the thermometer in a glass beside the lamp and the heavy chest of drawers and the dark, forbidding wardrobe — also with the quality of light and shadow in the room according to what time of day it was; with the way the room expanded and contracted as the ceiling joists shrank at night and swelled during the day; and how sound changed at different times so that in the morning his voice was dulled and barely reached the door but in the dark the room became an echo chamber, his daughter’s name, ‘Joan’, rebounding off the walls and returning to him from many different directions.

He was familiar with all these things but none of them interested him, as he declined in the starched sheets, propped up against a backrest of awkward, misshapen pillows that his daughter regularly thumped and plumped up with a ritualised but desolate enthusiasm, as if doing with them what she wished she could do for her father. He’d gradually lost his huge rustic appetite until it had become a torment to swallow even the soups and junkets she prepared in the liquidiser, and he lost weight with inexorable logic until the robust farmer was a skinny wraith whose ribs were showing for the first time in fifty years.

The pain moved around his body like a poacher in the night searching for a vulnerable deer in the pinewoods. It had first attacked him in his heel, reappeared in his neck, then after a six-month respite erupted from deep cover in his back, to roam up and down his spine with sporadic, intense malevolence. He knew (and so did everyone else) that it had to be lung cancer, since he’d smoked forty untipped cigarettes a day since the age of fifteen; so why the hell didn’t it just eat up his lungs and have done with it?

The pain was what had wrecked him. Joseph had always thought he was impervious to pain and his grandson, Michael, had grown up in awe of his grandfather’s disdain of both the occasional accident and the regular discomfort that beset the life of a farmer. When he gashed his hand or banged his head he only bothered to use his handkerchief if the blood was making too much of a mess of everything. And when they’d unclogged the field drains the previous February, while Mike was whimpering like a child from the cold his grandfather thrust his arms into icy mud as if oblivious of reality.

But this pain was different: it gripped him in its teeth like a primitive dog, and there was neither escape nor end to its torture. He felt nauseous. He fantasized heating up a kitchen knife and cutting out whole inflicted chunks of his own flesh, that that might bring relief — but he couldn’t even reach the stairs. Dr. Buckle prescribed ever-changing drugs of increasing dosage, until the pain was dulled and so were all his senses and he found himself withdrawing into a small space where there was no sense and no sensation, only a vague disgust with the faint remaining evidence of a world he’d once inhabited with force and command.

Joseph Howard knew he’d died at three o’clock in the afternoon when he woke from an inconclusive nap and he looked around the room with a sharpness of vision that made his mind collapse backwards through the years, because he’d refused to wear spectacles and hadn’t seen the world as clearly as this since his fortieth birthday. He could read the hands of the alarm clock without holding it three inches in front of his face, he could make out each stem and petal in the blue floral wallpaper, and the edges of things were miraculous in their definition, lifting away from each other and occupying their own precise space instead of merging into a dull stew of objects.

He pricked up his ears and heard a voice outside calling, and although it was too far away for him to make out the actual words he could recognise, beyond any doubt, the tone and inflection of his grandson, Mike. And even more remarkably, when another man’s voice answered, from even further away, he knew that that was old Freemantle’s grandson, Tom.

It was then that he realised, too, that the pain had gone. His whole body ached with something similar to the symptoms of flu, as if his body had been punched in his sleep; but it was such a contrast to the agony of these last months that he felt on top of the world. He got out of bed and stood up, and the blood drained from his head and made him feel faint and dizzy, so he sat back down to get his balance. Yet it was actually pleasurable to come so close to fainting, woozy and lost. It made him recall the one time he had ever fainted, as a beansprouting adolescent in the farmyard, the world suddenly losing its anchorage and drifting deliriously out of control.

Joseph had finished dressing and was trying his shoelaces, with an infant’s concentration and pleasure, when his daughter came into the room carrying a mug of weak tea. “Father!” she cried. “What on earth does you think you’re doing?” She rushed around the side of the bed but he took no notice of her until he’d finished, and then he sat up and looked her in the eyes and said: “Joan, I feels better and I’m getting up.” Then his smile disappeared and he studied her face with a scrutiny that she found unnerving, taking in the crow’s-feet and the puffiness around her eyes and the small lines at each side of her mouth, and he said: “You’re a good girl, Joan.”

He knew he’d died but he didn’t care. He found his stick behind the door and went for a walk into the village. He could feel his blood flow thin through his veins and his left hip no longer troubled him. He passed two or three people on his way to the shop and they returned his cheerful greeting with manifest surprise and a certain awkwardness. The shop bell rang and Elsie came through from the kitchen. Her large owl’s eyes widened behind her thick pebble-specs, and then narrowed. “Does Joan know you’s out, Joseph?” she demanded suspiciously. “She was only in yere just now.”

“Don’t worry about me, Elsie,” he replied, “I never felt better. Only I wants some fags. I’ve not had a smoke in ages.”

Elsie looked away, embarrassed. “I haven’t got none of your sort in, Joseph. You’s the only one what smoked that brand.” She reached over to the shelves. “You could try some of this, they says ‘tis a strong one.”

“I’m not bothered, I’ll take a packet of they,” he smiled. She handed them to him hurriedly and he felt in his pockets. “Damn it,” he said, “I’ve come out without any money. You know how much I hates credit, but can I send the lad down later on?”

“Course you can, bay,” she said without looking at him. “You git on, now.”

As he turned to leave, he said: “I might even bring it myself.”

Dr. Buckle appeared the next day and took the temperature and checked his pulse and listened to the sounds of his insides through the dangling stethoscope. Then he declared, in a voice of scientific indifference: “It’s an impressive respite, Joseph. But you’re still weak. Don’t overdo it.”

He wanted to get straight back out on the farm, but Joan told Mike she’d hold him responsible if Joseph picked up so much as an ear of corn, so he left his grandfather behind in the yard. Joseph wandered around the garden and poked about in the sheds. It was a hot day, the sun rose high in a blue sky and he wiped the sweat from his neck and forehead. Sparrows swooped in and out of the eaves, a throstle sang from one of the apple trees, and when he saw a magpie in the first field he knew without any doubt that he’d see another, and sure enough there it was over by the hedge.

A ladybird landed on the back of his hand. At first the tiny creature appeared strange, only for being so distinct in his cleansed vision, but then he observed that its markings were red dots on a black shell instead of the usual other way round. He didn’t think he’d ever seen one like that before, but he might well have and never been struck by it. There must be a name for it, he thought: an inverted ladybird, perhaps; a topsy-turvy. He lifted his hand and blew, and the tiny insect opened its wings and flew away.

During the months of his miserable decline Joan had climbed uncomplaining up the stairs many times a day to make him comfortable, to help him on to the bedpan and carry it off to the bathroom, to rub cream into his dry skin, eventually to spoon food into his mouth. His recovery must have meant a great easing of her burden and he was frankly glad that she let him occupy himself now without interruption. Midway through the afternoon he became aware of a curious, pleasing sensation somewhere inside him and then he realised with surprise what it was: hunger. He marched into the kitchen.

“You’ll not believe this, girl, but I’ve got myself an appetite all of a sudden.” She didn’t look at him directly but fussed around in the fridge and said at the same time: “Sit down, I’ll knock ‘e a sandwich.”

Joseph planted himself at the table and laid his cigarettes and matches on its grainy surface. He could remember his own father making it, after a huge old beech tree had come down in an April gale. He could remember the sweet smell of the shavings as his father sawed and planed in the far shed, and he could remember the way his father kept nails between his moist lips.

Joan set a plate of sliced-white-bread sandwiches in front of him and murmured that she was off shopping, as she departed from the room. He watched her through the window disappear down the lane and then he closed his eyes, the better to appreciate the texture of mushy bread and coarse ham, and to savour the sharp distraction of mustard, contradicted by granules of sugar.

That evening after supper Joseph suggested a game of draughts with Mike, and they played for the first time since Mike was a child and Joseph had taught him, after the boy’s father had left. They played half a dozen games, all of which Mike spent hunched over the board uneasily, never once looking up at his grandfather, who won every game.

That night Joseph slept for eight hours solid, untroubled by the morbid, drugged dreams of those last months, and he woke fully rested. He lay and listened to the chickens squawking and to house martins scurrying. He yawned and stretched, slowly, his knotty old muscles elastic again, and he relished their pleasure.

As he got dressed he saw his older grandson, John, who always came home late and left early, drive off to work in Exeter. Joseph went downstairs. The kitchen was empty. He heard the tractor ignition and stepped outside; he called but Mike didn’t turn around, as the tractor coughed and rattled into the lane. He came back in and called his daughter, but there was no reply, so he made himself a mug of strong tea and wondered whether there was any secret to making toast. And he assumed there must be because he burnt it, but he ate it anyway and enjoyed the taste of charcoaled bread beneath the butter and home-made, thick-rind marmalade. Then he took his cap and went outside.

He knew he’d died because he felt so light and so at ease. It occurred to him that that evening he should challenge Mike to an arm-wrestle, and he laughed out loud at the idea. He tried to look at the sun and it made his eyes water. He walked through the lower fields. The wheat was high and brittle. He bit some grains and let the dry nutty flavour linger on his tongue and he wondered who first discovered how to make flour, and then bread. He entered the pasture where the dairy herd was grazing and passed among his Friesian cows, patting their flanks. He rolled up his sleeves and held out his arms, and the braver among them licked his skin for its salt with their rough wet tongues, though still like all the others eyeing him with dull expression of fear and reproach. He wondered whether they forgave him for his life’s labour of exploitation and butchery, and he realised how much he loved this farm, these animals, this rich and crooked valley.

Joseph walked into the village. As he began climbing Broad Lane he realised he’d left his walking stick behind, but he also realised that he didn’t need it: he was striding forward, with his bow legs and his slightly inturned toes; his tendons and sinews and leathery veins felt invincible, and he wiped the healthy sweat from his face without pausing. For the first time in he didn’t know how long, he thought of his wife, whom he once used to walk to Doddiscombleigh to, and then court during long walks in Haldon Forest, where, while the Second World War raged far away from them, they made urgent love in the shadows of the pines on a scratchy bed of cones and needles, dry twigs crackling as they moved. But he found that, in truth, he was thinking less of her than of himself — walking, much walking in his life; he could carry on walking now and he needn’t ever stop, he felt so strong, he felt he could walk the length of the Teign Valley and back again.

Joseph looked around as he walked, peering over hedges and through gates, but there wasn’t a soul around. When he got up to the phone box he thought he saw a child running along the lane in the distance, but he wasn’t sure. He sat down on the bench at the top of the Brown. The improvised goalposts stood quiet and forlorn. An absurd television image leapt perfectly remembered out of his memory, of the majestic black French defender Marius Tresor lunging into a breathtakingly insane tackle during the 1982 World Cup semi-final.

Joseph felt some tiny drops of rain fall on his hands: he looked up and the sky was a clear, unblemished blue. He wondered whether they were the prickles of pins and needles and he lifted his hands and shook them, and ran them down over his face. The world was silent and empty. He knew he’d died three days earlier at three o’clock in the afternoon, and he leaned forward with his head in his hands and wept.

When he heard the church bell tolling he wiped his eyes with his damp sweaty handkerchief, which made his eyes sting, and walked up past the almshouses and then the village hall where he’d once gone to school, and he walked through the lych-gate into graveyard. Twenty yards away they were lowering the coffin into the ground and the Rector read from his Bible but Joseph couldn’t hear him. Then the Rector, still reading, picked up a handful of soil and threw it into the grave and then he did hear, faintly, granules scattering across the lid of the coffin.

He knew everyone there: Granny Sims, for twenty years his fellow churchwarden; Douglas Westcott; old Freemantle and some of his fragmented family; Martin the retired hedge layer; Elsie and Stuart from the shop.

As to his own family, in front of the various cousins and nieces and nephews, John held his mother Joan’s arm, while Mike looked like he ought to sit down, because he was leaning a little too much of his weary weight against his girlfriend, whose name Joseph never could remember.

He looked across the graveyard at them and for the first time since his death Joseph felt a sudden upsurge of anger. It swelled inside him, pure and physical: a rage of bile, while his heart pumped hot blood through his veins. Volcanic anger. Anger so strong he thought he might burst.

He closed his eyes, clinched his fists and gritted his teeth. And then he shouted out: “Why did you not show me this world before, you bastard!” as he lifted his eyes to the wide blue sky, and felt himself light and rising.

1. Consider the exposition of the short story (the time, the place, the main characters.)

2. State the forms of presentations employed in the story. What type of narration does the author resort to?

3. Through whose point of view are the events of the three days of the story proper related?

4. Will you regard the narrator as reliable or unreliable?

5. Define the genre of the story. Does the personality of the narrator help you to do it?

6. What is the central idea of the story related through such an unusual point of view?

SUPPLEMENT

TEST 1

Consider the information given in Units 1—6 and accomplish the tasks given below. Check them with the keys.

1. Read the following representative passages and define the story types.

a) Once upon a time there was a Prince. And this Prince’s dad and mom (the King and Queen) somehow got into their royal heads that no Princess would be good for their boy unless she could feel a pea through one hundred mattresses. So it should come as no surprise that the Prince had a very hard time finding a Princess. Every time he met a nice girl, his mom and dad would pile one hundred mattresses on top a pea and then invite her to sleep over. When the Princess came down for breakfast, the Queen would ask, “How did you sleep, dear?” The Princess would politely say, “Fine, thank you.” And the King would show her the door.

b) My mother arrived at the port of Harwich some time in February, and was immediately apprehended by the British authorities for having filled up her landing form with undue accuracy. To the question: Where born? she had answered St Petersburg. To the question: Where educated? she had answered Leningrad. The immigration authorities were convinced that she was making light of the questionnaire, and I feel bound to add with a certain pride that it was only my presence that saved her from further unpleasantness. This tendency to answer official questions too literally seems to run in the family, perhaps owing to the many frontiers we all have crossed since such encumbrances were invented. (Peter Ustinov, Dear Me)

c) Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from John Willoughby. She was awake the whole night, and she wept the greatest part of it. She got up with an headache, was unable to talk, and unwilling to take any nourishment. When breakfast was over, she walked out by herself, and wandered along their favourite walks, indulging the recollection of past enjoyment and crying over the present reverse. The evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling. Marianne played over every song that she had been used to play to Willoughby, every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written out for her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied. She spent whole hours at the piano alternatively singing and crying, her voice often totally suspended by her tears. In books, too, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and present was certain of giving. She read nothing but what they had been used to read together. (Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility)

4. Soon, other men began to come into the house. First a doctor, then two detectives, one of whom she knew by name. Later, a police photographer arrived and took pictures, and a man who knew about fingerprints. There was a great deal of whispering and muttering beside the corpse, and the detectives kept asking her a lot of questions. She told her story again, right from the beginning, when Patrick had come in, and she was sewing, and he was so tired that he hadn’t wanted to go out for supper. She told how she’d put the meat in the oven and slipped out to the grocer for vegetables, and come back to find him lying on the floor. “Which grocer?” one of the detectives asked. She told him, and he turned and whispered something to the other detective who immediately went outside into the street. In fifteen minutes he was back with a page of notes, and there was more whispering, and through her sobbing she heard a few of the whispered phrases — “…acted quite normal…very cheerful…wanted to give him a good supper…peas…cheese…impossible that she…” (Roald Dahl, A Lamb to the Slaughter)

5. “It is absurd asking me to behave myself,” the ghost answered, looking in astonishment at the pretty little girl who had ventured to address him, “quite absurd. I must rattle my chains, and groan through keyholes, and walk about at night, if that is what you mean. It is my only reason for existence.”

“It is no reason at all for existing, and you know you have been very wicked. You killed your wife, and it is very wrong to kill any one.”

“Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics! My wife was very plain, never had my ruffs properly starched, and knew nothing about cookery! However, it is no matter now, for it is all over; and I don’t think it was very nice of her brothers to starve me to death, though I did kill her.”

“Starve you to death? Oh, Mr. Ghost, I mean Sir Simon, are you hungry? I have a sandwich in my case. Would you like it?”

“No, thank you, I never eat anything now; but it is very kind of you all the same.”(Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost)

f) My name is Joe. That is what my collegue, Milton Davidson, calls me. He is a programmer and I am a computer. I am part of the Multivac-complex and am connected with other parts all over the world. I know everything. Almost everything.

I am Milton’s private computer. His Joe. He understands more about computers than anyone in the world, and I am his experimental model. He has made me speak better than any other computer can. (Isaac Asimov, True Love)

g) One can ready oneself for death. I see death as more of a dynamic than a static event. The actual physical manifestation of the absence of life is simply the ultimate step of a process that leads inevitably to that stage. In the interim, before the absolute end, one can do much to make life as meaningful as possible. What would have devastated me was to discover that I had infected my wife, Jeanne, and my daughter, Camera. I do not think it would have made any difference, on this score, whether I had contracted AIDS “innocently” from a blood transfusion or in one of the ways that most of society disapproves of, such as homosexual contacts or drug addiction. The overwhelming sense of guilt and shame would be the same in either case, if I had infected another human being. (Arthur Ashe, Days of Grace)

2. (A) Matching stories. Here are the opening and closing paragraphs of four different books. Read them carefully and match them up. Define the story types.

1. I was born on 16^th April 1889, at eight o’clock at night, in East Lane, Walworth. Soon after, we moved to West Square, St. George’s Road, Lambeth. According to Mother my world was a happy one.

2. “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man left on earth!” Netta faced him defiantly, a tiny figure shaking with outrage, her spirit as fiery as the color of her copper curls. “The feeling is mutual,” he snapped back through tight lips.

3. At the palace the King was glad to welcome his son’s bride. He arranged a magnificent wedding for the Prince and his chosen wife. The wedding feast lasted a whole week and they all lived happily ever after.

4. With such happiness, I sometimes sit out on our terrace at sunset and look over a vast green lawn to the lake in the distance, and beyond the lake the reassuring mountains, and in this mood think of nothing, but enjoy their magnificent serenity.

5. Once upon a time there was a little girl called Cinderella. Her mother was dead, and she lived with her father and two elder sisters.

6. When I have finished writing, I shall enclose this whole manuscript in an envelope and address it to Poirot. And then — what shall it be? Veronal? There would be a kind of poetic justice. Not that I take any responsibility for Mrs. Ferrars’s death. I was the direct consequence of her own actions. I feel no pity for her.

7. He laughed softly at the memory, and she joined in gaily. She had been wonderfully, blissfully on time. She started to tell him so, but his lips claimed her own, masterfully silencing the words that no longer needed to be spoken.

8. Mrs. Ferrars died on the night of the 16^th — 17^th September — a Thursday. I was sent for at eight o’clock on the morning of Friday the 17^th. There was nothing to be done. She had been dead some hours.

(B) Titles and Authors. Here are the titles and authors, again mixed up. Match each book with its correct title and author.

The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd Sue Peters

Cinderella Agatha Christie

Marriage in Haste Charlie Chaplin

My Autobiography a traditional fairy story

3. Writing economically. Shorten these sentences using as few words as possible. (If you learn to write economically, this will help you to write effective summaries.)

a) My physical condition is, on the whole, one in which food would be of considerable benefit.

b) I’m telling no more than truth when I say that George is a habitual smoker.

c) In her employment, Mary showed a thoroughly satisfactory degree of energy and efficiency.

d) The main problem with which I am faced is to decide whether it is preferable to continue in existence, or whether it would, on balance, be a more advisable policy to give up the struggle. (Shakespeare)

e) It is undeniable that the large majority of non-native learners of English experience a number of problems in attempting to master the phonetic patterns of the language.

f) It is not uncommon to encounter sentences which, though they contain a great number of words and are constructed in a highly complex way, none the less turn out to contain very little meaning of any kind.

4. A) These are some common expressions used when talking about short stories. Match them with the definitions below.

suspense surprise plot character(s)

setting climax theme style

1. the manner of writing used in the story —

2. the feeling in the reader caused by something unexpected happening —

3. the place and time at which the events of a story take place —

4. the set of connected events on which the story is based —

5. what the story is about, rather than what happens in the story —

6. a tense feeling in the reader, caused by wondering what may happen further in the story —

7. the most intense part of a story, generally towards the end —

8. a person (or people) in a story —

B) Use the words in point (A) to fill in the gaps in these sentences.

1. The story is too simple to be interesting: the _____________ are too neatly divided into good and bad.

2. I found the _____________ too complicated: at times it was difficult to understand what was going on.

3. __________ is maintained throughout this thrilling story: you don’t find out the identity of the murderer until the last page, and when you do, it comes as a complete ____________.

4. Very little actually happens in this story — it is an ordinary day in the life of an ordinary person — but the writer’s ____________ makes it fascinating reading.

5. In spite of the exotic _________, in India at the time of the Mogul Emperors, the story is rather dull.

6. The story’s ______, racial intolerance in an urban setting, makes it still relevant for today’s reader.

7. The writer builds up the reader’s expectations skillfully, but the __________ itself is rather disappointing.

TEST 2

Read the short story given below. Do a thorough vocabulary work and accomplish the tasks that follow the story. Check them with the keys.

K. Chopin

The Story of an Hour

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences, veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed”. He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will-as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.

When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: “Free, free, free!” The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.

She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him — sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

“Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. “Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door — you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.”

“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through the open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. But Richards was too late.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease — of joy that kills.