Essential Stories (28 page)

“Where did you and Rowena go the day we saw you?” she asked suddenly.

“Along the cliffs,” he said.

“You didn’t go to the cove, did you? It’s a long way. And you can’t swim at this time of the year.”

“We went to the cove and I
did
swim,” he said. “I wouldn’t let Rowena.”

“I should hope not! You don’t forget old times, do you?” She laughed coolly. “I hope you didn’t tell Rowena—young girls can be so jealous. I
was—
d’you remember? Gosh, I’m glad I’m not young still, aren’t you?”

“Stop being so romantic, Daisy,” said the old man.

“Oh, I’m not romantic any more,” she said. “It doesn’t pay else one would pity
them,
Rowena and Stephen. So you did go to the cove—did you think of me?”

“I only think of death now,” he said.

“You always were an interesting man, the type that goes on to his nineties, like they do now,” she said. “I never think about it. Stephen would have a fit. He doesn’t even know what he’s going to do. Last week he thought he’d be a beach guard. Or teach tennis. Or a singer! He was surfing on the beach when I first saw him. He was living at the camp.”

She paused, offended. “Did you know they switch off the electric light at ten o’clock at the office in those places? No one protests. Like sheep. It would make me furious to be treated like that. You could hear everyone snoring at once. Not that we joined in, I must say. Actually, we’re staying in his mother’s house now, the bunks are too narrow in those caravans, but she’s come back. So we’re looking for something— I’ve let my house. The money is useful.”

The old man was alarmed. He was still trying to make out the real reason for her visit. He remembered the old Daisy—there was always a hidden motive, something she was trying out. And he started listening urgently again for Rowena’s car. I know what it is, he thought; she wants to move in here!

“I’m afraid it would be impossible to have you here,” he said.

“Here, Harry?” she said, astonished. “None of that! That’s not what I came for. Anyway,” she said archly, “I wouldn’t trust you.”

But she considered the windows and the doors of the house and then the view. She gave a business-like sniff and said seriously, “You can’t keep her a prisoner here. It won’t last.”

“Rowena is not a prisoner. She can come and go when she likes. We understand that.”

“It depends what you mean by coming and going,” said Daisy shrewdly. “You mean you are the prisoner. That is it! So am I!”

“Oh,” said Harry. “Love is always like that. I live only for her.”

“That is it! I will tell you why I came to see you, Harry. When I saw Rowena in town I kept out of her way. You won’t believe it—I can be tactful.”

She became very serious. “Because I don’t want us to meet again.” It was an open declaration. “I mean not see you for a long time, I mean all of us. You see, Rowena is so beautiful and Stephen—well, you’ve seen him. You and I would start talking about old times and people, and they’d be left out and drawn together—now, wouldn’t they? I just couldn’t bear to see him talking to her, looking at her. I wish we had not met down at the fair. It’s all right now, he’s with his surfing friends, but you understand?”

She got up and said, “I mean it, Harry. I know what would happen and so do you and I don’t want to
see
it happen.”

She went up to him because he had stood up and she tapped him hard on the chest with her firm bold finger. He could feel it on his skin, a determined blow, after she had stepped away.

“I know it can’t last,” she said. “And you know it can’t. But I don’t want
you
to see it happen,” she said in her old hard taunting style. “We never really use your town anyway. I’ll see
he
doesn’t. Give me your word. We’ve got to do this for each other. We’ve managed quite well all these years, haven’t we? And it’s not saying we’ll
never
meet someday, is it?”

“You’re a bitch, Daisy,” he said, and he smiled.

“Yes, I’m a bitch still, Harry,” she said. “But I’m not a fool.”

She put out her hand again and he feared she was going to dig that hard finger in his chest again, but she didn’t. She tied her scarf round her hair. “If anything happened I’d throw myself down Withy Hole.”

“Stop being so melodramatic, Daisy,” he said.

“Well, I don’t want you conniving,” she said coarsely. “I don’t want any of your little arrangements.”

And she turned to the ravine and listened. “Car coming up,” she said.

“Rowena,” he said.

“I’ll be off. Remember.”

“Be careful at the turns,” he said helplessly. “She drives fast. You’ll pass her on the road.”

They did not kiss or even shake hands. He listened to her cursing the steps as she went down and calling out, “I bet you dug out these bloody steps yourself.”

He listened to the two cars whining their way towards each other as they circled below, now Rowena’s car glinted, now Daisy’s. At last Rowena’s slowed down at the steps, spitting stones.

Rowena came up and said, “I’ve just passed Daisy on the road.”

“Yes, she’s been here. What a tale!”

She looked at the empty cups. “And you didn’t give your dearest friend any tea, you wretch.”

“Oh, tea—no—er—she didn’t want any,” he stammered.

“As gripping as all that, was it?” she laughed.

“Very,” he said. “She’s talking of marrying that young man. Stephen’s not her son.”

“You can’t mean that,” she said, putting on a very proper air. “She’s old enough—” but she stopped, and instead of giving him one of her light hugs, she rumpled his hair. “People do confide in you, I must say,” she said. “I don’t think I like her coming up here. Tell me what she said.”

THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD

Maya Angelou

A. S. Byatt

Caleb Carr

Christopher Cerf

Ron Chernow

Shelby Foote

Charles Frazier

Vartan Gregorian

Richard Howard

Charles Johnson

Jon Krakauer

Edmund Morris

Azar Nafisi

Joyce Carol Oates

Elaine Pagels

John Richardson

Salman Rushdie

Oliver Sacks

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Carolyn See

William Styron

Gore Vidal

V. S. PRITCHETT

Victor Sawdon Pritchett, the extraordinarily prolific and versatile man of letters widely regarded as one of the greatest stylists in the English language, was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, on December 16, 1900. His father, whom he recalled in the enchanting memoir
A Cab at the Door
(1968), was a boundlessly optimistic but chronically unsuccessful businessman whose series of failed ventures necessitated frequent moves to elude creditors. These uprootings interrupted Pritchett’s formal education, yet he was a voracious reader from an early age. Apprenticed in the London leather trade at fifteen, Pritchett alleviated the boredom of a menial clerical job by delving into the classics. At twenty he left for Paris, vowing to become a writer. He later reflected on his experiences there in
Midnight Oil
(1971), a second volume of autobiography that endures as an intimate and precise record of an artist’s self-discovery.

Pritchett began his writing career as a contributor to
The Christian
Science Monitor,
which, in addition to sending him on assignments in the United States and Canada, employed him as a foreign correspondent in civil-war Ireland and then Spain.
Marching Spain
(1928), his first book, recounts impressions of a country that held a lifelong fascination for Pritchett. His other travel writing includes
The Spanish Tem
per (1954), The Offensive Traveller (1964; published in the U.K. as Foreign
Faces
), and
At Home and Abroad
(1989). In addition, he collaborated with photographer Evelyn Hofer on three acclaimed metropolitan profiles:
London Perceived
(1962),
New York Proclaimed
(1964), and
Dublin: A Portrait
(1967).

While continuing a part-time career as a roving journalist, Pritchett increasingly focused on writing fiction, living with his Anglo-Irish first wife in Dublin, and then in the bohemian London of the mid to late 1920s.
Clare Drummer
(1929), the first of his five novels, draws on his experiences in Ireland, while
Elopement into Exile
(1932; published in the U.K. as Shirley Sanz) again reflects his enthrallment with Spain. He also wrote
Nothing Like
Leather
(1935), a compelling saga about the rise and fall of an English businessman, and
Dead Man Leading
(1937), an allegorical tale of a journey into darkness that is reminiscent of Conrad. Pritchett’s best-known novel,
Mr.
Beluncle
(1951), is a work of Dickensian scope featuring an endearing scoundrel-hero modeled after his own father.

Yet it is widely acknowledged that Pritchett’s genius as a storyteller came to full fruition in the short fictions which he began to publish in his early twenties and continued to write up to his nineties. “Pritchett’s literary achievement is enormous, but his short stories are his greatest triumph,” said Paul Theroux. From
The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories
(1930) right up through
Complete Collected Stories
(1991), Pritchett published fourteen volumes filled with masterful tales that chronicle the lives of ordinary people through a flood of details and humorous, kindhearted observations. His other collections, all of them published during his long second marriage to Dorothy—a working partner as well as an adored wife—include:
You Make Your Own Life
(1938),
It May
Never Happen
(1945),
The Sailor, Sense of Humor, and Other Stories
(1956),
When My Girl Comes Home
(1961),
The Key to My Heart
(1964),
Blind Love
(1970),
The Camberwell Beauty
(1974),
Selected Stories
(1978),
On the Edge
of the
Cliff
(1980),
Collected Stories
(1982),
More Collected Stories
(1983), and
A Careless Widow
(1989).

“We read Pritchett’s stories, comic or tragic, with an elation that stems from their intensity,” observed Eudora Welty. “Life goes on in them without flagging. The characters that fill them—erratic, unsure, unsafe, devious, stubborn, restless and desirous, absurd and passionate, all peculiar unto themselves—hold a claim on us that is not to be denied. They demand and get our rapt attention, for in their revelation of their lives, the secrets of our own lives come into view.” And Reynolds Price noted: “An extended view of his short fiction reveals a chameleonic power of invention, sympathy and selfless transformation that sends one back as far as Chekhov for a near-parallel.”

The acclaim lavished on Pritchett for his short stories has been matched by that accorded his literary criticism. “Pritchett is not only our best short story writer but also our best literary critic,” stated Anthony Burgess.
In My Good Books
(1942),
The Living Novel
(1946),
Books
in
General
(1953), and
The Working Novelist
(1965) contain essays written during his long association with the
New Statesman
and also, after the Second World War,
The New Yorker
and
The New York Times Book
Review.
Pritchett continued his exploration of world literature in
George
Meredith and English Comedy
(1970),
The Myth Makers
(1979),
The Tale
Bearers
(1980),
A Man of Letters
(1985), and
Lasting Impressions
(1990). His magnum opus of literary criticism,
Complete Collected Essays
— which reflects, too, his central association with
The New York Review of
Books,
from the journal’s earliest days—was issued in 1992. In addition he produced three masterful works that artfully meld criticism with biography:
Balzac
(1974),
The Gentle Barbarian: The Life and Work of Turgenev
(1977), and
Chekhov: A Spirit Set Free
(1988).

“Pritchett is the supreme contemporary virtuoso of the short literature essay,” said
The New York Times Book Review.
As Gore Vidal, who deemed him “our greatest English-language critic,” put it: “At work on a text, Pritchett is rather like one of those amorphic sea-creatures who float from bright complicated shell to shell. Once at home within the shell he is able to describe for us in precise detail the secrets of the shell’s interior; and he is able to show us, from the maker’s own angle, the world the maker saw.” “It would be very nice for literature,” Vidal added, “if Sir Victor lived forever.”

From the 1950s on, Pritchett was increasingly in demand as a distinguished visiting professor at American universities, from Princeton to Berkeley, Smith to Vanderbilt. But in spirit he always remained a freelance writer. “If, as they say, I am a Man of Letters I come, like my fellows, at the tail-end of a long and once esteemed tradition in English and American writing,” Pritchett once said. “We have no captive audience. . . . We write to be readable and to engage the interest of what Virginia Woolf called ‘the common reader.’ We do not lay down the law, but we do make a stand for the reflective values of a humane culture. We care for the printed word in a world that nowadays is dominated by the camera and by scientific, technological, sociological doctrine. . . . I found myself less a critic than an imaginative traveller or explorer . . . I was travelling in literature.”

Knighted in 1975 for his services to literature and made a Companion of Honour in 1993, Sir Victor Pritchett died in London on March 20, 1997. As novelist Margaret Drabble noted before his death: “Pritchett has lived as a man of letters must, by his pen, and he has done it with a freshness of interest and an infectious curiosity that have never waned.”