Complete Short Stories (15 page)

‘I never eat treacle tart, Matron.’

It must have been hard for him to see his cake devoured by strangers before his eyes, but he made no protest; just sipped a little tea and went supperless to bed. In the dormitory he told a ghost story, which is still, I hear, current in the school after all these years: about
a Mr Gracie (why ‘Gracie’?) who heard hollow groans in the night, rose to investigate and was grasped from behind by an invisible hand. He found that his braces had caught on the door knob; and, after other harrowing adventures, traced the groans to the bathroom, where Mrs Gracie…

Lights out! Sleep. Bells for getting up; for prayers; for breakfast.

‘I never eat treacle tart.’ So Julius had no
breakfast, but we pocketed
slices of bread and potted meat (Tuesday) to slip him in the playground afterwards. The school porter intervened. His orders were to see that the young gentleman had no food given him.

Bell: Latin. Bell: Maths. Bell: long break. Bell: Scripture. Bell: wash hands for dinner.

‘I never eat treacle tart,’ said Julius, as a sort of response to Thos’s Grace; and this time
fainted.

Thos sent a long urgent telegram to the Duke, explaining his predicament: school rule, discipline, couldn’t make exceptions, and so forth.

The Duke wired back non-committally: ‘Quite so. Stop. The lad never eats treacle tart. Stop. Regards. Downshire.’

Matron took Julius to the sickroom, where he was allowed milk and soup, but no solid food unless he chose to call for treacle tart.
He remained firm and polite until the end, which came two days later, after a further exchange of telegrams.

We were playing kick-about near the Master’s Wing, when the Rolls-Royce pulled up. Presently Julius, in overcoat and bowler hat, descended the front steps, followed by the school porter carrying his tuck-box, football boots and hand-bag. Billington Secundus, now converted to the popular
view, led our three cheers, which Julius acknowledged with a gracious tilt of his bowler. The car purred off; and thereupon, in token of our admiration for Julius, we all swore to strike against treacle tart the very next Monday, and none of us eat a single morsel, even if we liked it, which some of us did!

When it came to the point, of course, the boys sitting close to Thos took fright and ratted,
one after the other. Even Billington Secundus and I, not being peers’ sons or even village Hampdens, regretfully conformed.

I
SHOULDN’T
bring the story up – there’s nothing in it really, except the sequel – if it wasn’t already current in a garbled form. What happens to me I prefer told my own way, or not at all. Point is: I fell for that girl at first sight. So much more than sympathetic, as well as being in the beauty queen class, that…

In spite of my looking such a fool, too.

And probably
if she’d had a wooden leg, a boss eye and only one tooth… Not that I was particularly interested in teeth at the moment, or in any position to utter more than a faint ugh, or even to smile a welcome. But how considerate of her to attend to me before taking any steps to deal with the heavy object on my lap! Most girls would have gone off into hysteria. But
she
happened to be practical; didn’t even
pause to dial 999. Saw with half an eye that… Put first things first. Besides looking such a fool, I was a fool: to get toothache on a Saturday afternoon, in a place like Cwm Tatws. As I told myself continuously throughout that lost week-end.

The trouble was my being all alone: nobody to be anxious, nobody to send out a search party, nobody in the township who knew me from Adam. I had come to
Cwm Tatws to fish, which is about the only reason why anyone ever comes there, unless he happens to be called Harry Parry or Owen Owens or Evan Evans or Reece Reece or… Which I’m not. Tooth had already stirred faintly on the Friday just after I registered at the Dolwreiddiog Arms; but I decided to diagnose neuralgia and kill it with aspirin. Saturday, I got up early to flog the lake, where two- and
three-pounders had allegedly been rising in fair numbers, and brought along my bottle of aspirins and a villainous cold lunch.

No, to fish doesn’t necessarily mean being a Hemingway fan; after all, there was Izaak Walton, whom I haven’t read either.

By mid-afternoon Tooth woke up suddenly and began to jump about like… I hooked a couple of sizeables, though nothing as big as advertised; both
broke away. My error was waiting for the lucky third. That, and forgetting that it was Saturday afternoon. It was only when I got back to Cwm Tatws, which has five pubs (some bad, some worse), a police station, a post office, a branch bank and so forth – largish place for that district –
that I decided to seek out the town tooth-drawer, Mr Griffith Griffiths, whose brass plate I had noticed next
to ‘Capel Beulah 1861’.

Not what you thought. Mr Griffith Griffiths was at home all right, most cordial, and worked Saturday afternoons and evenings because that was the day when everyone… But he had recently slipped on a wet rock in his haste to gaff a big one and chipped a corner off his left elbow. Gross bad luck: he was left-handed.

‘Let’s look at it,’ he said. And he did. ‘No hope in the
world of saving that poor fellow. I must yank him out at once. Pity on him, now, that he’s a hind molar, indeed!’

What should X do next? Mr Griffith-heard-you-the-first-time will be out of action for the next month. X could of course hire a motor-car and drive thirty miles over the hills to Denbigh, where maybe tomorrow…

I pressed and pleaded. ‘Is there nobody in this five-pub town capable of…
A blacksmith, for instance? Or a barber? Why not the vet? Under your direction?’

‘Well now, indeed, considering the emergency, perhaps, as you say, Mr Rowland Rowlands the veterinarian might consent to practise on you that which he practises on the ewes.’

Unfortunately Mr Rowland-say-it-twice had driven off to Denbigh himself in the last ‘bus-motorr’ (as they call it in Cwm Tatws), to visit
his whatever she was.

Mr Griffith Griffiths right-handedly stroked his stubby chin. He couldn’t shave now and thought the barber saloon vulgar and low. Said: ‘Well, well, now, I shouldn’t wonder if dear old Mr Van der Pant might peradventure play the good Samaritan. He is English too, and was qualified dental surgeon in Cwm Tatws, not altogether fifteen years ago; for it was from Mr Van der Pant
that I bought this practice. A nice old gentleman, though a confirmed recluse and cannot speak a single word of Welsh.’

Welshlessness being no particular disadvantage in the circumstances, I hurried off to Rhododendron Cottage, down a wet lane, and up an avenue of wetter rhododendrons. By this time my tooth was…

You are wrong again. I found Mr Van der Pant also at home, and he had not even broken
an arm. But took ten minutes to answer the bell, and then came out only by accident, having been too deaf to hear it.

Let us cut short the dumb-show farce: eventually I made him understand and consent to…

The room was… Macabre, isn’t it? ‘Only Adults Admitted.’ Had been locked up since whenever, by the look of it. Cobwebs like tropical creepers. Dental chair deep in dust. Shutters askew. No
heating. Smell of mice. Presence of mice. Rusty expectoration bowl and instrument rack. Plaster fallen in heaps from the ceiling. Wallpaper peeled off. Fascinating, in a way.

I helped him screw in an electric light bulb, and said: ‘No, please don’t bother to light a fire!’

‘Yes, it must come out,’ he wheezed. ‘Pity that it’s a posterior molar. Even more of a pity that I am out of anaesthetics.’

Fortunately he discovered that the forceps had been put away with a thin coat ing of oil, easily wiped off with… He eyed it lovingly. Might still be used.

Was used.

By this time the posterior molar… Or do I repeat myself? It could hardly have been more unfortunate, he complained. That forceps was not at all the instrument he should have chosen. Mr Griffith Griffiths had bought his better pair
along with the practice. Still, he’d do his best. Would I mind if he introduced a little appliance to fix my jaws apart, so that he could work more cosily? He was getting on in years, he said, and a little rusty.

And please would I keep still? Yes, yes, most unfortunate. He had cut the corner of my mouth, he was well aware, but that was because I had jerked.

Three minutes best unrecorded. Not
even adults admitted.

Mr Van der Pant then feared that we were getting nowhere. That forceps!

Tooth was rotten and he had nipped off the crown. Now we must go deeper, into the gum. It might hurt a little. And, please, would I keep still this time? I should experience only a momentary pain, and then… Perhaps if I permitted him to lash me to the chair? His heart was none too good, and my struggles…

Poor blighter! ‘You can truss me up like an Aylesbury duckling, if you care, so long as you dig this… tooth out,’ I said. He couldn’t hear, of course, but guessed, and went out to fetch yards and yards of electric light flex.

Trussed me up good and proper: sailor fashion. ‘Had he ever been dentist in a man-of-war?’ I asked. But he smiled deafly. It was now about six-thirty on Saturday evening,
and curiously enough he had begun telling me of the famous murderer – one Crippen, before my time – who had been his fellow dental-student when… His last words were: ‘And I also had the privilege once of attending his wife and victim, Miss Belle Ellmore, an actress, you will remember. She had split an incisor while biting on an…’

I wish people would finish their sentences.

So, as I say,
she
turned up, providentially, at about eleven-fifteen, Monday, Mr Van der Pant’s grand-niece, on a surprise visit. Lovely girl, straight out of Bond Street, or a band-box.

And there I sat in that dank room, on that dusty dental chair, with a dead dentist across my knees; my jaws held apart by a little appliance, a chill, a ripening abscess, my arms and legs and trunk bound tightly with yards of
flex; not to mention, of course…

Yes, I like to tell it my own way, though there’s not much in it. Might have happened to any other damned fool.

But the sequel! Now that really was…

W
ILLIAM (‘THE
K
ID’
) Nicholson, my father-in-law, could never rid himself of the Victorian superstition that a thousand guineas were a thousand guineas; income tax seemed to him a barbarous joke which did not, and should not, apply to people like myself. He had a large family to support, and as a fashionable portrait painter was bound to keep up appearances which would justify his
asking the same prices for a full length as his friends William Orpen and Philip de Laszlo. He excelled in still-lifes and, though complaining that flowers were restless sitters, would have liked to paint nothing else all day except an occasional landscape. But full-length commissions were what he needed. ‘Portraits seldom bounce,’ he told me.

When I asked him to explain, he said: ‘I have been
painting and selling, and painting and selling for so many years now that my early buyers are beginning to die off or go bankrupt. Forgotten W.N. masterpieces keep coming up for auction, and have to be bought in at an unfair price, five times as much as they originally earned, just to keep the W.N. market steady. Some of them are charming and make me wonder how I ever painted so well; but others
plead to have their faces turned to the wall quick. Such as those!’

It had come to a crisis in Appletree Yard. The Inland Revenue people, he told me, had sent him a three-line whip to attend a financial debate; also, an inexpert collector of his early work had died suddenly and left no heirs, so that his agent had to buy in three or four paintings which should never have been sold. ‘Be sure your
sin will find you out,’ the Kid muttered despondently. ‘What I need now is no less than two thousand guineas in ready cash. Pray for a miracle, my boy!’

I prayed, and hardly two hours had elapsed, before a ring came at the studio door and in walked Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr escorted by one Fulton, a butler, both wearing deep mourning. The Kid had not even known of her existence hitherto, but she seemed
solid enough and the name Mucklehose-Kerr was synonymous with Glenlivet Whisky; so he was by no means discourteous.

The introductions over, Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr pressed the Kid’s hand fervently, and said: ‘Mr Nicholson, I know you will not fail me: you and
you alone are destined to paint my daughter Alison.’

‘Well,’ said the Kid, blinking cautiously, ‘I am pretty busy at this season, you know,
Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr. And I’ve promised to take my family to Cannes in about three weeks’ time. Still, if you make a point of it, perhaps the sittings can be fitted in before I leave Town.’

‘There will be no sittings, Mr Nicholson. There
can
be no sittings.’ She dabbed her eyes with a black-lace handkerchief. ‘My daughter passed over last week.’

It took the Kid a little while to digest this,
but he mumbled condolences, and said gently: ‘Then I fear that I shall have to work from photographs.’

Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr answered in broken tones: ‘Alas, there
are
no photographs. Alison was so camera-shy. She used to say: “Mother, why do you want photographs? You will always have me to look at – me myself, not silly old photographs!” And now she has passed over, and not left me so much as
a snapshot. On my brother’s advice I went to Mr Orpen first and asked him what I am now asking you; but he answered that the task was beyond him. He said that you were the only painter in London who could help me, because you have a sixth sense.’

Orpen was right in a way. The Kid had one queer parlour trick. He would suddenly ask a casual acquaintance: ‘How do you sign your name?’ and when he
answered: ‘Herbert B. Banbury’ (or whatever it was), would startle him by writing it down in his own unmistakable handwriting.

‘Look, here is her signature; this is the cover of her history exercise book.’

As he hesitated, his eye caught sight of the bounced canvases, leaning against the table on which lay the Income Tax demand. ‘It is a difficult commission, Mrs Mucklehose-Kerr,’ he said.