Unlikely Stories Mostly Read online

  “How many levels are there?”

  “Three. This one has dormitories and canteens for the staff, and underneath are the offices of the administration, and under that is the engine.”

  “What engine?”

  “The one that drives us round the sun.”

  “But gravity drives the world round the sun.”

  “Has anyone ever told you what gravity is and how it operates?”

  I realized nobody ever had. Mildred said, “Gravity is nothing but a word top-level scientists use to hide their ignorance.”

  I asked her how the engine was powered. She said, “Steam.”

  “Not nuclear fission?”

  “No, the industrial design boys are quite certain it’s a steam engine of the most primitive sort imaginable. They’re down there measuring and sketching with the rest of the committee. We’ll show you a picture in a day or two.”

  “Does nobody ask what right you have to go poking about inside this thing?”

  “No. It’s like all big organizations. The staff are so numerous that you can go where you like if you look confident enough.”

  I had to meet a friend in half an hour so we got into the lift and started back up. I said, “Well, Mildred, it’s interesting of course, but I don’t know why you brought me to see it.”

  She said, “I’m worried. The others keep laughing at the machinery and discussing how to alter it. They think they can improve the climate by taking us nearer the sun. I’m afraid we’re doing wrong.”

  “Of course you’re doing wrong! You’re supposed to be studying art, not planetary motion. I would never have suggested the project if I’d thought you would take it to this length.”

  She let me out on the ground floor saying, “We can’t turn back now.”

  I suppose she redescended for I never saw her again.

  That night I was wakened by an explosion and my bed falling heavily to the ceiling. The sun, which had just set, came up again. The city was inundated by sea. We survivors crouched a long time among ruins threatened by earthquakes, avalanches and whirlwinds. All clocks were working at different speeds and the sun, after reaching the height of noon, stayed there. At length the elements calmed and we examined the new situation. It is clear that the planet has broken into several bits. Our bit is not revolving. To enjoy starlight and darkness, to get a good night’s sleep, we have to walk to the other side of our new world, a journey of several miles, with an equally long journey back when we want daylight.

  It will be hard to remake life on the old basis.

  THE COMEDY OF THE WHITE DOG

  On a sunny afternoon two men went by car into the suburbs to the house of a girl called Nan. Neither was much older than twenty years. One of them, Kenneth, was self-confident and well dressed and his friends thought him very witty. He owned and drove the car. The other, Gordon, was more quiet. His clothes were as good as Kenneth’s but he inhabited them less easily. He had never been to this girl’s house before and felt nervous. An expensive bunch of flowers lay on his lap.

  Kenneth stopped the car before a broad-fronted bungalow with a badly kept lawn. The two men had walked halfway up the path to the door when Kenneth stopped and pointed to a dog which lay basking in the grass. It was a small white sturdy dog with a blunt pinkish muzzle and a stumpy tail. It lay with legs stuck out at right angles to its body, its eyes were shut tight and mouth open in a grin through which the tongue lolled. Kenneth and Gordon laughed and Gordon said, “What’s so funny about him?”

  Kenneth said, “He looks like a toy dog knocked over on its side.”

  “Is he asleep?”

  “Don’t fool yourself. He hears every word we say.”

  The dog opened its eyes, sneezed and got up. It came over to Gordon and grinned up at him but evaded his hand when he bent down to pat it and trotted up the path and touched the front door with its nose. The door opened and the dog disappeared into a dark hall. Kenneth and Gordon stood on the front step stamping their feet on the mat and clearing their throats. Sounds of female voices and clattering plates came from nearby and the noise of a wireless from elsewhere. Kenneth shouted, “Ahoi!” and Nan came out of a side door. She was a pleasant-faced blonde who would have seemed plump if her waist, wrists and ankles had not been slender. She wore an apron over a blue frock and held a moist plate in one hand. Kenneth said jocularly, “The dog opened the door to us.”

  “Did he? That was wicked of him. Hullo, Gordon, why, what nice flowers. You’re always kind to me. Leave them on the hallstand and I’ll put them in water.”

  “What sort of dog is he?” said Gordon.

  “I’m not sure, but when we were on holiday up at Ardnamurchan the local inhabitants mistook him for a pig.”

  A woman’s voice shouted, “Nan! The cake!”

  “Oh, I’ll have to rush now, I’ve a cake to ice. Take Gordon into the living room, Kenneth; the others haven’t arrived yet so you’ll have to entertain each other. Pour yourselves a drink if you like.”

  The living room was at the back of the house. The curtains, wallpaper and carpets had bright patterns that didn’t harmonize. There was an assortment of chairs and the white dog lay on the most comfortable. There was a big very solid oval table, and a grand piano with two bottles of cider and several tumblers on it. “I see we’re not going to have an orgy anyway,” said Gordon, pouring cider into a tumbler.

  “No, no. It’s going to be a nice little family party,” said Kenneth, seating himself at the piano and starting to play. He played badly but with confidence, attempting the best known bits of works by Beethoven and Schumann. If he particularly enjoyed a phrase he repeated it until it bored him; if he made a passage illegible with too many discords he repeated it until it improved. Gordon stood with the tumbler in his hand, looking out the window. It opened on a long narrow lawn which sloped down between hedges to a shrubbery.

  “Are you in love with Nan?” said Kenneth, still playing.

  “Yes. Mind you, I don’t know her well,” said Gordon.

  “Hm. She’s too matronly for me.”

  “I don’t think she’s matronly.”

  “What do you like about her?”

  “Most things. I like her calmness. She’s got a very calm sort of beauty.”

  Kenneth stopped playing and sat looking thoughtful. Voices and clattering dishes could be heard from the kitchen, a telephone was ringing and the noise of a wireless still came loudly from somewhere. Kenneth said, “She’s not calm when she’s at home. They’re all very nice folk, pleasant and sincere I mean, but you’ll find all the women of this family – Nan, her mother and grandmother and aunt – all talk too loudly at the same time. It’s never quiet in this house. Either the wireless is on loudly, or the gramophone, or both. I’ve been to one or two parties here. There are never many guests but I’ve always felt there are other parties going on in rooms of the house I don’t know about. Do you want to marry Nan?”

  “Of course. I told you I loved her.”

  Kenneth laughed and swung from side to side on the piano stool, making it squeak. He said, “Don’t mistake me – there’s nothing disorderly about the house. Nobody drinks anything stronger than cider. Nan’s father and brothers are so quiet as to be socially non-existent. You only see them at mealtimes and not always then. In fact I’m not sure how many brothers she has, or how large this family is. What are you grinning at?”

  “I wish I could talk like you,” said Gordon. “You’ve told me nothing surprising about Nan’s family, yet you’ve made it seem downright sinister.”

  Kenneth began to fumble out the tune of ‘The Lark in the Clear Air’.

  “Anyway,” he said, “you won’t get a chance to be alone with her, which is what you most want, I suppose.”

  Nan came in and said, “Gibson and Clare will be here in half an hour … er … would you like to have tea in the garden? It’s a good day for it. Mum doesn’t like the idea much.”

  “I think it’s a fine idea,” said Kennet
h.

  “Oh, good. Perhaps you’ll help us with the table?” Gordon and Kenneth took the legs off the table, carried the pieces on to the back lawn and reassembled it, then put chairs round it and helped to set it. While they did so Nan’s mother, a small gay woman, kept running out and shouting useless directions: “Put that cake in the middle, Gordon! No, nearer the top! Did ye need to plant the table so far from the house? You’ve given yourself a lot of useless work. Well, well, it’s a nice day. Where’s my dog? Where’s my dog? Aha, there he is below the table! Come out, ye bizum! No, don’t tease him, Kenneth! You’ll only drive him mad.”

  Gibson and Clare arrived. Gibson was a short thickly built man whose chin always looked swarthy. At first sight he gave a wrong impression of strength and silence, for he was asthmatic and this made his movements slow and deliberate. Though not older than Gordon or Kenneth his hair was getting thin. As soon as he felt at ease in a company he would talk expertly about books, art, politics and anything that was not direct experience. Clare, his girl-friend, was nearly six feet tall and beautiful in a consciously chaste way. Her voice was high-pitched, pure and clear, and she listened to conversation with large wide-open eyes and lustrous lips slightly parted. Her favourite joke was to suspect an indecency in an ordinary remark and to publicize it with a little exclamation and giggle. Kenneth had nicknamed the two Intellect and Spirit. He said there seemed nothing animal between them.

  The tea was a pleasant one. Only Nan, her four guests and the dog were present, though. Nan’s mother often ran out with a fresh pot of tea or plate of food. The sun was bright, a slight breeze kept the air from being too warm, and Kenneth amused the company by talking about the dog.

  “There’s something heraldic about him,” he said. “It’s easy to imagine him with another head where his tail is. Look, he’s getting excitable! He wants to sit on a chair! Oh, I hope he doesn’t choose mine.” The dog had been trotting round the table in a wide circle, now it came toward Kenneth, wagging its tail and grinning. Kenneth grabbed a plate of meringues and got down under the table with them. “These at least he shall not have!” he cried in a muffled trembling voice. The others laughed, left their chairs and finished the meal sitting on the grass. All but Gordon felt that pleasant drunkenness which comes from being happy in company. Kenneth crawled about the lawn on his knees with a sugar bowl in his hand and when he came to a daisy peered at it benevolently and dropped a small heap of sugar into the flower. Gibson crawled after him, adding drops from the milk jug. Clare sat with the dog on her lap and pretended to cut it up with a knife and fork. Actually she stroked and tickled its stomach gently with the edge of the knife and murmured baby-talk: ”Will I be cruel and eat oo up doggie? No, no, no, doggie, oo is too sweet a doggie to eat up.”

  Nan had taken needles and wool from her apron pocket and was quietly knitting and smiling to herself. Gordon lay nearby pretending to sunbathe. He was worried. He really did not know Nan well. He had only seen her at the homes of friends, and had not even spoken to her much. His invitation to the party had been a surprise. Nan did not know him as well as several other people she might have invited. He had assumed she knew what he felt for her and was giving him a chance to know her better, yet since he arrived she had not paid him any special attention. Now she sat placidly knitting, sometimes glancing sideways at Clare with a slight ironic smile; yet he believed he saw in her manner a secretive awareness of him, lying apart and wanting her.

  “Ach, the bitch,” he thought, “she’s sure of me. She thinks she can hurt me all she likes. Well, she’s wrong.” He got up, went to the table and started piling the plates together.

  “I’ll take these indoors,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t bother,” said Nan, smiling at him lazily. “Someone will have to shift them,” said Gordon sternly.

  He took several journeys to carry the table things into the kitchen. It was cool and dim indoors. Nan’s father and three of her silent brothers were eating a meal at the kitchen table. They nodded to him. The mother was nowhere to be seen but he heard her voice among several shrill female voices in some other room. Gordon brought in the last table things and put them on the drying board of the sink, then stood awkwardly watching the four eaters. They were large men with stolid, clumsily moulded faces. Some lines on the father’s face were deeply cut, otherwise he looked very like his sons. He said to Gordon, “A warm evening.”

  “Yes, I prefer it indoors.”

  “Would you like a look at the library?”

  “Er, yes, thanks, yes I would.”

  The father got up and led Gordon across the hall and down a short passage, opened a door and stood by to let Gordon through. The library had old glass-fronted bookcases on each wall. Between the bookcases hung framed autographed photographs of D. Η. Lawrence, Havelock Ellis, Η. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw. There was a leather-covered armchair, and a round tin labelled ‘Edinburgh Rock’ on a low table beside it.

  “You’ve a lot of books,” said Gordon.

  “The wife’s people were great readers,” said Nan’s father. “Can I leave you now?”

  “Oh yes. Oh yes.”

  The father left. Gordon took a book at random from a shelf, sat down and turned the pages casually. It was a history of marine engineering. The library was on the opposite side of the hall from the living room, but its window also looked on to the back garden and sometimes Gordon heard an occasional shout or laugh or bark from those on the lawn. He told himself grimly, “I’m giving her a chance. If she wants me she can come to me here. In fact if she has ordinary politeness and decency she’ll be bound to look for me soon.” He imagined the things she might say and the things he would say back. Sometimes he consoled himself with a piece of rock from the tin.

  Suddenly the door sprang open with a click and he saw coming through it towards him, not Nan, but the dog. It stopped in front of him and grinned up into his face. “What do you want?” said Gordon irritably. The dog wagged its tail. Gordon threw a bit of rock which it caught neatly in its jaws, then trotted out through the door. Gordon got up, slammed the door and sat down. A little later the door opened and the dog entered again.

  “Ye brute!” said Gordon. “Right, here’s your sweet; the last you’ll get from me.”

  He escorted the dog to the door, closed it carefully, turned a key in the lock, then went back to the chair and book. After a while it struck him that with the door locked Nan wouldn’t get in if she came to him. He glanced uneasily up. The door was open and the dog stood before him, grinning with what seemed, to his stupified eyes, triumphant amusement. For a moment Gordon was too surprised to move. He noticed that the animal was grinning with its mouth shut, a thing he had never seen a dog do before. He raised the book as if to throw it.

  “Grrr, get out!” he yelled. The dog turned jauntily and trotted away. After thinking carefully Gordon decided some joker must have unlocked the door from outside: it was the sort of pointless joke Kenneth liked. He listened carefully and heard from the lawn the voice of Kenneth and the barking of the dog. He decided to leave the door open.

  Later he found it too dark to see the page of the book clearly and put it down. The noises from the lawn had subtly altered. The laughter and shouting were now not continuous. There were periods of silence disturbed by the occasional shuffle of running feet and the hard breathing of somebody pursued, then he would hear a half-cry or scream that did not sound altogether in fun. Gordon went to the window. Something strange was happening on the darkened lawn. Nan was nowhere to be seen. Kenneth, Gibson and Clare were huddled together on the bare table-top, Clare kneeling, Kenneth and Gibson crouching half-erect. The white dog danced in a circle round the table among over-turned chairs. Its activity and size seemed to have increased with the darkness. It glimmered like a sheet in the dusk, its white needle-teeth glittered in the silently laughing jaws, it was about the size of a small lion. Gibson was occupied in a strange way, searching his pockets for objects and hurling them at the shrubbery at the fa
r end of the garden. The white dog would run, leap, catch these in its mouth while they were in the air, then return and deposit them under the table. It looked like a game and had possibly begun as one, but obviously Gibson was continuing in an effort to get the dog as far away as possible. Gordon suddenly discovered Nan was beside him, watching, her hands clenched against her mouth.

  Gibson seemed to run out of things to throw. Gordon saw him expostulate precariously for a moment with Kenneth, demanding (it appeared) his fountain pen. Kenneth kept shaking his head. He was plainly not as frightened as Gibson or Clare, but a faint embarrassed smile on his face suggested that he was abashed by some monstrous possibility. Gibson put a hand to his mouth, withdrew something, then seemed to reason with Kenneth, who at last shrugged and took it with a distaste which suggested it was a plate of false teeth. Kenneth stood upright and, balancing himself with difficulty, hurled the object at the shrubbery. It was a good throw. The white dog catapulted after it and at once the three jumped from the table and ran to the house, Kenneth going to the right, Gibson and Clare to the left. The dog swerved in an abrupt arc and hurled toward the left. He overtook Clare and snapped the hem of her dress. She stumbled and fell. Gibson and Kenneth disappeared from sight and two doors were slammed in different parts of the house. Clare lay on the lawn, her knees drawn up almost to her chin, her clasped hands pressed between her thighs and her eyes shut. The dog stood over her, grinning happily, then gathered some of the clothing round her waist into its mouth and trotted with her into the bushes of the shrubbery.

  Gordon looked at Nan. She had bowed her face into her hands. He put an arm round her waist, she laid her face against his chest and said in a muffled voice, “Take me away with you.”