Strange Stories (23 page)

It would be false modesty to deny that Sally Tessler and I were the bright girls of the school. Later it was understood that I went more and more swiftly to the bad, but Sally continued being bright for some considerable time. Like many males, but few females, even among those inclined to scholarship, Sally combined a true love for the classics, the ancient ones, with an insight into mathematics which, to the small degree that I was interested, seemed to me almost magical. She won three scholarships, two gold medals, and a sojourn among the Hellenes with all expenses paid. Before she had graduated she had published a little book of popular mathematics which, I understood, made her a surprising sum of money. Later she edited several lesser Latin authors, published in editions so small that they can have brought her nothing but inner satisfaction.

The foundations of all this erudition had almost certainly been laid in Sally’s earliest childhood. The tale went that Dr. Tessler had once been the victim of some serious injustice, or considered he had: certainly it seemed to be true that, as his neighbors put it, he "never went out.” Sally herself once told me that she not only could remember nothing of her mother, but had never come across any trace or record of her. From the very beginning Sally had been brought up, it was said, by her father alone. Rumor suggested that Dr. Tessler’s regimen was threefold: reading, domestic drudgery, and obedience. I deduced that he used the last to enforce the two first: when Sally was not scrubbing the floor or washing up, she was studying Vergil and Euclid. Even then I suspected that the doctor’s ways of making his will felt would not have borne examination by the other parents. Certainly, however, when Sally first appeared at school, she had much more than a grounding in almost every subject taught, and in several which were not taught. Sally, therefore, was from the first a considerable irritant to the mistresses. She was always two years or more below the average age of her form. She had a real technique of acquiring knowledge. She respected learning in her preceptors and detected its absence. I once tried to find out in what subject Dr. Tessler had obtained his doctorate. I failed, but, of course, one then expected a German to be a doctor.

It was the first school Sally had attended. I was a member of the form to which she was originally assigned, but in which she remained for less than a week, so eclipsing to the rest of us was her mass of information. She was thirteen years and five months old at the time, nearly a year younger than I. (I owe it to myself to say that I was promoted at the end of the term, and thereafter more or less kept pace with the prodigy, although this, perhaps, was for special reasons.) Her hair was remarkably beautiful; a perfect light blonde, and lustrous with brushing, although cut short and “done” in no particular way, indeed usually very untidy. She had dark eyes, a pale skin, a large, distinguished nose, and a larger mouth. She had also a slim but precocious figure, which later put me in mind of Tessa in "The Constant Nymph.” For better or for worse, there was no school uniform, and Sally invariably appeared in a dark-blue dress of foreign aspect and extreme simplicity, which nonetheless distinctly became her looks. As she grew, she seemed to wear later editions of the same dress, new and enlarged, like certain publications.

Sally, in fact, was beautiful, but one would be unlikely ever to meet another so lovely who was so entirely and genuinely unaware of the fact and of its implications. And, of course, her casualness about her appearance, and her simple clothes, added to her charm. Her disposition seemed kindly and easygoing in the extreme, and her voice was lazy to drawling. But Sally, nonetheless, seemed to live only in order to work; and although I was, I think, her closest friend (it was the urge to keep up with her which explained much of my own progress in the school), I learned very little about her. She seemed to have no pocket money at all: as this amounted to a social deficiency of the vastest magnitude and as my parents could afford to be and were generous, I regularly shared with her. She accepted the arrangement simply and warmly. In return she gave me frequent little presents of books: a copy of Goethe's Faust in the original language and bound in somewhat discouraging brown leather, and an edition of Petronius, with some remarkable drawings. Much later, when in need of money for a friend, I took the Faust, in no hopeful spirit, to Sotheby’s. It proved to be a rebound first edition...

But it was a conversation about the illustrations in the Petronius (I was able to construe Latin fairly well for a girl, but the italics and long s’s daunted me) which led me to the discovery that Sally knew more than any of us about the subject illustrated. Despite her startling range of information, she seemed then, and certainly for long after, completely disinterested in any personal way. It was as if she discoursed, in the gentlest, sweetest manner, about some distant far-off thing, or, to use a comparison absurdly hackneyed but here appropriate, about botany. It was an ordinary enough school, and sex was a preoccupation among us. Sally’s attitude was surprisingly new and unusual. In the end she did ask me not to tell the others what she had just told me. "As if I would,” I replied challengingly, but still musingly.

And in fact I didn’t tell anyone until considerably later: when I found that I had learned from Sally things which no one else at all seemed to know, things which I sometimes think have in themselves influenced my life, so to say, not a little. Once I tried to work out how old Sally was at the time of this conversation. I think she could hardly have been more than fifteen.

In the end Sally won her university scholarship, and I just failed, but won the school’s English Essay Prize, and also the Good Conduct Medal, which I deemed (and still deem) in the nature of a stigma, but believed, consolingly, to be awarded more to my prosperous father than to me. Sally’s conduct was in any case much better than mine, being indeed irreproachable. I had entered for the scholarship with the intention of forcing the examiners, in the unlikely event of my winning it, to bestow it upon Sally, who really needed it. When this doubtless impracticable scheme proved unnecessary, Sally and I parted company, she to her triumphs of the intellect, I to my lesser achievements. We corresponded intermittently, but decreasingly as our areas of common interest diminished. Ultimately, for a very considerable time, I lost sight of her altogether, although occasionally over the years I used to see reviews of her learned books, and encounter references to her in leading articles about the Classical Association and similar indispensable bodies. I took it for granted that by now we should have difficulty in communicating. I observed that Sally did not marry. One couldn’t wonder, I foolishly and unkindly drifted into supposing...

When I was forty-one, two things happened which have a bearing on this narrative. The first was that a catastrophe befell me which led to my again taking up residence with my parents. Details are superfluous. The second thing was the death of Dr. Tessler.

I should probably have heard of Dr. Tessler’s death in any case, for my parents, who, like me and the rest of the neighbors, had never set eyes upon him, had always regarded him with mild curiosity. As it was, the first I knew of it was when I saw the funeral. I was shopping on behalf of my mother and reflecting upon the vileness of things, when I observed old Mr. Orbit remove his hat, in which he always served, and briefly sink his head in prayer. Between the aggregations of Shredded Wheat in the window, I saw the passing shape of a very old-fashioned and therefore very ornate horse-drawn hearse. It bore a coffin covered in a pall of worn purple velvet, but there seemed to be no mourners at all.

“Didn’t think never to see a 'orse 'earse again, Mr. Orbit,” remarked old Mrs. Ring, who was ahead of me in the queue.

“Pauper funeral, I expect,” said her friend, old Mrs. Edge,

"No such thing no more,” said Mr. Orbit quite sharply, and replacing his hat. “That’s Dr. Tessler’s funeral. Don’t suppose ’e ’ad no family come to look after things."

I believe the three white heads then got together and began to whisper, but on hearing the name, I had made towards the door. I looked out. The huge ancient hearse, complete with vast black plumes, looked much too big for the narrow autumnal street. It put me in mind of how toys are often so grossly out of scale with one another. I could now see that instead of mourners, a group of urchins, shadowy in the fading light, ran behind the bier, shrieking and jeering, a most regrettable scene in a well-conducted township.

For the first time in months, if not years, I wondered about Sally.

Three days later she appeared without warning at my parents’ front door. It was I who opened it.

"Hullo, Mel.”

One hears of people who after many years take up a conversation as if the same number of hours had passed. This was a case in point. Sally, moreover, looked almost wholly unchanged. Possibly her lustrous hair was a half shade darker, but it was still short and wild. Her lovely white skin was un wrinkled. Her large mouth smiled sweetly but, as always, somewhat absently. She was dressed in the most ordinary clothes but still managed to look like anything but a don or a dominie, although neither did she look like a woman of the world. It was, I reflected, hard to decide what she did look like.

"Hullo, Sally.”

I kissed her and began to condole.

"Father really died before I was born. You know that.”

"I have heard something.”

I should not have been sorry to hear more, but Sally threw off her coat, sank clown before the fire, and said, "I’ve read all your books. I loved them. I should have written.

"Thank you,” I said. “I wish there were more who felt like you.

"You’re an artist, Mel. You can’t expect to be a success at the same time.” She was warming her white hands. I was not sure that I was an artist, but it was nice to be told.

There was a circle of leather-covered armchairs round the fire. I sat down beside her. "I’ve read about you often in the Times Lit," I said, “but that’s all. For years. Much too long.”

“I'm glad you’re still living here,” she replied.

“Not still. Again."

"Oh?” She smiled in her gentle, absent way.

"Following a session in the frying pan and another one in the fire... I’m sure you’ve been conducting yourself more sensibly ” I was still fishing.

But all she said was, "Anyway, I’m still glad you’re living here.”

"Can’t say I am. But why in particular?”

“Silly Mel! Because I’m going to live here too.”

I had never even thought of it.

I could not resist a direct question.

"Who told you your father was ill?”

"A friend. I’ve come all the way from Asia Minor. I've been looking at potsherds.” She was remarkably untanned for one who had been living under the sun, but her skin was of the kind which does not tan readily.

"It will be lovely to have you about again. Lovely, Sally. But what will you do here?"

“What do you do?”

“I write... In other ways my life is rather over, I feel."

“I write too. Sometimes. At least I edit... And I don’t think my life, properly speaking, has ever begun.”

I had spoken in self-pity, although I had not wholly meant to do so. The tone of her reply I found it impossible to define. Certainly, I thought with slight malice, certainly she does look absurdly virginal.

A week later a van arrived at Dr. Tessler's house, containing a great number of books, a few packed trunks, and little else; and Sally moved in. She offered no further explanation for this gesture of semiretirement from the gay world (for we lived about forty miles from London, too many for urban participation, too few for rural self-sufficiency), but it occurred to me that Sally's resources were doubtless not so large that she could disregard an opportunity to live rent-free, although I had no idea whether the house was freehold, and there was no mention even of a will. Sally was and always had been so vague about practicalities that I was a little worried about these matters, but she declined ideas of help. There was no doubt that if she were to offer the house for sale, she could not expect from the proceeds an income big enough to enable her to live elsewhere, and I could imagine that she shrank from the bother and uncertainty of letting.

I heard about the contents of the van from Mr. Ditch, the remover, and it was, in fact, not until she had been in residence for about ten days that Sally sent me an invitation. During this time and after she had refused my help with her affairs, I had thought it best to leave her alone. Now, although the house which I must henceforth think of as hers, stood only about a quarter of a mile from the house of my parents, she sent me a postcard. It was a picture postcard of Mytilene. She asked me to tea.

The way was through the avenues and round the corners of a midnineteenth-century housing estate for merchants and professional men. My parents’ house was intended for the former, Sally’s for the latter. It stood, in fact, at the very end of a cul-de-sac: even now the house opposite bore the plate of a dentist.

I had often stared at the house during Dr. Tessler’s occupancy and before I knew Sally, but not until that day did I enter it. The outside looked much as it had ever done. The house was built in a grey brick so depressing that one speculated how anyone could ever come to choose it (as many once did, however, throughout the Home Counties). To the right of the front door (approached by twelve steps, with blue and white tessellated risers) protruded a greatly disproportionate obtuse- angled bay window: it resembled the thrusting nose on a grey and wrinkled face. This bay window served the basement, the ground floor, and the first floor: between the two latter ran a dull-red string course "in an acanthus pattern”, like a chaplet round the temples of a dowager. From the second-floor window it might have been possible to step onto the top of the projecting bay, the better to view the dentist’s office opposite, had not the second-floor window been barred, doubtless as protection for a nursery. The wooden gate had fallen from its hinges and had to be lifted open and shut. It was startlingly heavy.