Strange Stories Read online

  Helen was a slightly austere-looking girl, with a marked bone structure and pale eyes. Her pale hair was entirely off the face, so that her equally pale ears were conspicuous. She might not have been what Laming would have selected had he been a playboy in Brussels or a casting director with the. latest "Spotlight" on his knees; but, in present circumstances, the decisive elements were that Helen was all by herself and still quite young, whereas he was backward, blemished, and impecunious. Helen wore a delightfully simple black dress, very neatly kept. When they rose at the end of the applause, to which Laming had contributed with pleasing vigor, Helen proved to be considerably the taller.

  Secretly, Laming was very surprised when she agreed to come with him for coffee and even more surprised when, after a second cup, she accepted his invitation to another gallery, this time with Marie Tempest as the attraction. A night was firmly settled upon for the following week. They were to find one another inside. Helen had appreciated how little money Laming might have, and being entertained to coffee was quite enough at that stage of their acquaintanceship.

  He took her hand, only to shake it, of course, but even that was something. It was, however, a dry, bony hand, more neutral, he felt, than his own.

  "Oh," he said, as if he had been speaking quite casually. "I don't know your name."

  "Helen Black."

  "Perhaps I'd better have your address? I might get a sore throat."

  "42 Washwood Court, N.W.6."

  Of course his Chessman's Diary for that year had been carefully though unobtrusively at the ready: an annual gift from his Aunty Antoinette.

  "I'm Laming Gatestead."

  "Like the place in the North?"

  "Not Gateshead. Gatestead."

  "So sorry." Her eyes seemed to warm a little in the ill-lit back street, on to which the gallery exit romantically debouched.

  "Everyone gets it wrong."

  "And what an unusual Christian name!"

  "My father was keen on Sir Laming Worthington-Evans. He used to be secretary of state for war. He's dead now."

  "Which of them is?"

  "Both are, I'm afraid."

  "I am sorry. Was your father a soldier?"

  "No, he just liked to follow political form, as he called it."

  They parted without Laming's address in Drayton Park having had to be prematurely divulged.

  After that, they saw Leslie Banks and Edith Evans in The Taming of the Shrew, and before they had even stirred their coffee, Helen said, "My roommate and I would like you to come to supper one of these evenings. Not before eight o'clock, please, and don't expect too much."

  Roommates were not always joined in such invitations, but Laming realized that, after all, Helen knew virtually nothing about him and might well have been advised not necessarily to believe a word men actually said.

  "My roommate will be doing most of the cooking," said Helen.

  Ah!

  "What's her name?"

  "Ellen Brown."

  "What an extraordinary coincidence!"

  "Isn't it? How about next Wednesday? Ellen comes home early on Wednesdays and will have more time."

  "What does Ellen do?"

  "She advises on baby clothes."

  "Not exactly my world. Well, not yet."

  "Ellen's very nice," said Helen firmly.

  Helen's face offered much expression, Laming reflected. Within her own limits, she seemed to do perfectly well without it.

  And, indeed, Ellen was nice. In fact, she was just, about the nicest girl that Laming had ever encountered (if that was the word). Her handshake was soft, lingering, and very slightly moist, and the deep V of her striped jumper implied a trustfulness that went straight to Laming's heart. She had large brown eyes, a gentle nose, and thick, short hair, very dark, into which one longed to plunge first one's fingers and then one's mouth. Laming found himself offering her the box of White Magic peppermint creams he had brought with him, before realizing that of course he should have proffered it first to Helen.

  In fact, Ellen, herself so like a soft round peppermint cream, immediately passed the unopened box to Helen, which hardly made an ideal start to what was bound to be a tricky evening.

  Ellen looked much younger than Helen. Fifteen years? Laming wondered. But he was no good at such assessments and had several times in his life made slightly embarrassing errors.

  "I'm quite ready when you both are," said Ellen, as if Helen had contributed nothing to the repast. There was no smell of cooking and no sign of a teacloth. Everything was calm and controlled.

  "Laming would like a glass of sherry first," said Helen. She wore a simple dark-blue dress.

  Again Laming had difficulty in not raising his glass primarily to Ellen.

  There was a little soup and then a cutlet each, with a few runner beans and pommes a la Suisse.

  Helen sat at the head of the small rectangular table, with Laming on her left and Ellen on her right.

  Laming was unable to meet Ellen's lustrous eyes for more than a second at a time, but there was no particular difficulty in gazing for longer periods at the glimpses of Ellen's slip, peony in color. Ellen's hand movements were beautiful too.

  Helen was talking about how much she adored Leslie Banks. She would go absolutely anywhere to see him, do absolutely anything. She said such things without a trace of gush or even any particular animation. It was possibly a manner she had acquired in the civil service. (She was concerned in some way with poultry statistics.)

  "I often dream of that mark on his face," said Helen calmly.

  "Is it a birthmark?" asked Ellen. Her very voice was like sweet chestnut puree at Christmas and, in the same way, offered only sparingly. She had said only five things since Laming had been in the room. Laming knew because he had counted them. He also remembered them, word perfect.

  "I think it's a war wound," said Laming, speaking toward his cutlet.

  "Ellen wouldn't know," said Helen. "She doesn't follow the stage very much. We must go and see Raymond Massey some time, Laming. I adore him too, though not as much as Leslie Banks."

  "Raymond Massey is a Canadian," offered Laming.

  "But with hardly a trace of an accent."

  "I once saw Fred Terry when I was a kid," said Laming. "In Sweet Nell of Old Drury."

  "I was brought up in Sidmouth, and Ellen in Church Win-shun," said Helen.

  "Only North London," said Laming, with exaggerated modesty. "But I saw Fred Terry and Julia Neilson at the King's Hammersmith when visiting my aunty."

  "I simply long to go to Stratford-on-Avon," said Helen. "I believe Fabia Drake's doing frightfully well there."

  "Yes, it would be lovely," said Laming.

  "I adore opera too. I long to go to Bayreuth."

  Laming was too unsure of the details to make an effective reply to that; so he concentrated on paring away the hard narrow strip from the upward edge of his cutlet.

  Later there were orange segments and cream; while Helen spoke of life in South Devon, where she had lived as a child and Laming had twice been on farmhouse holidays.

  Ellen brought them coffee, while they sat on the settee. Her eyes were reflected in the fluid. No odalisque could have made slighter movements to more effect.

  The peppermint creams came partially into their own.

  "I don't eat many sweet things," said Helen. "You must remember, Laming?"

  The worst part was that now he did remember. She had submitted quite a list of such items in the cafe after Marie Tempest. What she liked most was chicken perfectly plain. What she liked least was anything rich. What a crashing mistake he had made in the selection of his gift! But what else would have been practicable?

  Ellen, however, was making up for her roommate. She was eating cream after cream, and without even asking before taking another, which made it all the more intimate.

  "I long to visit Japan and see the Noh." said Helen.

  Laming did not know about that at all and could only suppose it was a relativ
e of the mikado, about whom there was something unusual. Or perhaps it was a huge stone thing, like the Sphinx.

  "When I get my certificate, I'm going on a real bust," said Laming, then blushed at the word. "If I get my certificate, that is."

  "Surely you will, Laming?"

  "No one can ever be quite sure."

  Ellen was twisting about in the armchair, arranging herself better.

  Laming told a rather detailed story about the older colleague in the firm who had left no stone unturned but still lacked a certificate. "It's held up his marriage for more than eight years. He was there long before I was."

  "I'm sure that won't happen to you, Laming. Shall we ask Ellen to give us some more coffee? Don't you adore coffee? I drink it all night to keep me awake."

  Laming assumed that it was her statistics. Increasingly, civil servants were having to take work home, as if they had been in real business. Laming had read about it in the evening paper, more than once, in fact.

  "Not too full, Ellen! I shall slop it over myself."

  "Would you like to see my old programs, Laming? Ellen won't mind, I'm sure."

  But Laming had managed to glimpse a meaning look in Ellen's soft features. It contrasted noticeably with Helen's habitual inexpressiveness.

  "I should like it, but I think we should do something that Ellen can join in."

  He was quite surprised at himself and did not dare to look at Helen that time.

  "Shall we play three-handed Rocket?"

  "I'm afraid I don't know the rules."

  "I'm nothing like clever enough for them," said Ellen, her sixth or seventh remark.

  Laming had ceased to count. He knew he could not carry any more remarks faithfully enough in his mind.

  "Well, then, we'll just talk," said Helen. "What aie we going to do next, Laming?"

  "There's that thing at the Apollo."

  "Yes, I long to see that."

  "I can't remember a single thing that's been said about it."

  "We mustn't always allow our minds to be made up for us."

  They had all become quite chummy, Laming realized; nor could it be the passing effect of alcohol. At that moment he felt that he had been really accepted into the household. Instinctively, his manners fell to pieces a little.

  At the end of the evening, Helen said, "You must come again often. We like having company, don't we, Ellen?"

  Ellen simply nodded, but with her lovely, almost elfin, smile. She was fiddling with the bottom edge of her jumper, using both hands. The narrow horizontal stripes were in a sort of gray, a sort of blue, a sort of pink. Her skirt was fawn.

  "I should very much like to, Helen," replied Laming, in a public-school manner, though the place he had been to was pretty near the bottom of any realistic list.

  "Well, do. Now, Laming, we meet a week from today at the Apollo."

  She imparted her dry grip. Laming could not but remember that only three or four weeks ago it had all but thrilled him. When in bed, he must look at his Chessman's Diary to see exactly how long ago it had been.

  Ellen merely stood smiling, but with her hands locked together behind her skirt, a posture that moved Laming considerably.

  On the way home, however, he was wrestling with a problem more familiar: the problem of how to attempt reciprocation in these cases, when one could not at all afford it; these cases in which hospitality could hardly be rejected if one were to remain a social being at all. The complaint against life might be that even if one expended one's every mite, which would be both unwise and impracticable, the social level accomplished did not really justify the sacrifice. Most urgently one needed to start at a higher level: ab initio, ah ovo. And, if one hadn't, what really was the use?

  But after business came pleasure, and Laming, awake in bed, spent a long, long time musing on Ellen, and twisting about restlessly. It was gray dawn before, in a sudden panic, he fell asleep.

  In fact, was thinking about Ellen a pleasure? Apart from the inner turmoil caused by her very existence, there was the certainty that she was quite other than she seemed, and the extreme uncertainty about what to do next in order to advance with her.

  When his mother brought him his cup of tea, he looked at her with sad eyes, then quickly turned away, lest she notice.

  However, for the first time in Laming's life, something extraordinary happened, something that a third party might have marveled at for months and drawn new hope from.

  Only two days later a crisis had arisen in the office: one of the partners required a parcel to be delivered at an address "down Fulham way," as the partner put it; and Laming had been the first to volunteer for the job-or perhaps, as he subsequently reflected, the junior who could best be spared.

  "You can take a No. 14 most of the distance," the partner had said. "If you get stuck, ask someone. But do take care, old chap. That thing's fragile." Whereupon he had guffawed and returned to his den.

  Laming had clambered off the bus at more or less the spot the partner had indicated and had looked around for someone to guide him further. At such times, so few people look as if they could possibly know; so few are people one could care or dare to address at all. In the end, and without having to put down the heavy parcel, Laming had obtained directions from a middle-aged district nurse, though she had proved considerably less informed than Laming had taken for granted. In no time at all, Laming had been virtually lost, and the parcel twice or thrice its former weight.

  And now he had come to a small park or municipal garden, with mongrels running about the kids in one corner, breaking things up. He was very nearly in tears. At the outset, it had seemed likely that offering to perform a small service would stand well for him in his career, but that notion had gone into reverse and japed at him within five minutes of his starting to wait for the bus. He could hardly carry the parcel much farther. Ought he to spend money of his own on a taxi? If one were to appear?

  And then he saw Ellen. The road was on his left, the dark-green park railings were on his right, and there were very few people on the pavement. Ellen was walking toward him. He nearly fainted, but responsibility for the parcel somehow saved him.

  "Hullo, Laming!"

  It was as if they were the most tender and long-standing of friends, for whom all formality was quite unnecessary.

  "Hullo, Ellen!"

  He too spoke very low, though really they were almost alone in the world.

  "Come and sit down."

  He followed her along the length of railing and through the gate. In a sense, it was quite a distance, but she said nothing more. He had heard that, in circumstances such as these, burdens became instantly and enduringly lighter, but he was not finding that with the parcel.

  She was wearing a sweater divided into diamonds of different colors, but with nothing garish about it; and the same fawn skirt.

  Once or twice she looked back with an encouraging smile. Laming almost melted away, but again the parcel helped to stabilize him.

  He had naturally supposed that they would sit on a seat There were many seats, made years ago of wooden beams set in green cast iron frames, some almost perpendicular, some sloping lasciviously backward. Many had been smashed up by children, and none at that moment seemed in any way occupied.

  But Ellen sat down at the foot of a low grassy bank, even though there was an empty seat standing almost intact at the top of the rise. Laming, after a moment for surprise and hesitation, quite naturally sat down beside her. It was early May and the grass seemed dry enough, though the sky was overcast and depressing. He deposited the parcel as carefully as he could. It was a duty to keep close to it.

  "I want you," said Ellen. "Please take me." She lifted his left hand and laid it on her right thigh, but under her skirt. He felt her rayon panties. It was the most wonderful moment in his life.

  He knew perfectly well also that with the right person such things as this normally do not happen, but only infrequently with the wrong person.

  He twisted around and,
inserting his right hand under her jumper until it reached up to her sweetly silken breast, kissed her with passion. He had never kissed anyone with passion before.

  "Please take me," said Ellen again.

  One trouble was of course that he never had, and scarcely knew how. Chaff from the chaps really tells one very little. Another trouble was "lack of privacy," as he had heard it termed. He doubted very much whether most people-even most men-started in such an environment, whatever they might do later.

  He glanced around as best he could. It was true that the park, quite small though it was, now seemed also quite empty. The children must be wrecking pastures new. And the visibility was low and typical.

  "Not the light for cricket," said Laming. As a matter of fact, there were whitish things at the other end, which he took to be sight screens.

  "Please," said Ellen, in her low, urgent voice. Her entire conversational method showed how futile most words really are. She began to range around him with her hand.

  "But what about-?"

  "It's all right. Please."

  Still, it really was the sticking point, the pons asinorum, the gilt off the gingerbread, as everyone knew.

  "Please," said Ellen.

  She kicked off her shoes, partly gray, partly black; and he began to drag down her panties. The panties were in the most beautiful, dark-rose color: her secret, hidden from the world.

  It was all over much more quickly than anyone would have supposed. But it was wrong that it should have been so. He knew that. If it were ever to become a regular thing for him, he must learn to think much more of others, much less of himself. He knew that perfectly well.

  Fortunately the heavy parcel seemed still to be where he had placed it. The grass had, however, proved to be damp after all.

  He could hardly restrain a cry. Ellen was streaked and spattered with muddy moisture, her fawn skirt, one would say, almost ruined; and he realized that he was spattered also. It would be impossible for him to return to the office that day. He would have to explain some fiction on the telephone, and then again to his mother, who, however, he knew, could be depended upon with the cleaners-if, this time, cleaning could do any good. He and Ellen must have drawn the moisture from the ground with the heat of their bodies.