The Umbrella Man and Other Stories Read online

  “Gaudier Brzeska,” I said. “How great do you think he might’ve become if he hadn’t died so young?”

  “Who?”

  “Gaudier Brzeska.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  I noticed now that something queer was happening. The woman still had her head through the hole, but she was beginning to wriggle her body from side to side in a slow unusual manner, and the man was standing motionless, a pace or so away watching her. He seemed suddenly uneasy the way he stood there, and I could tell by the drop of the head and by the stiff intent set of the body that there was no laughter in him anymore. For a while he remained still, then I saw him place his camera on the ground and go forward to the woman, taking her head in his hands; and all at once it was more like a puppet show than a ballet, with tiny wooden figures performing tiny, jerky movements, crazy and unreal, on a faraway sunlit stage.

  We sat quietly together on the white bench, and we watched while the tiny puppet man began to manipulate the woman’s head with his hands. He was doing it gently, there was no doubt about that, slowly and gently, stepping back every now and then to think about it some more, and several times crouching down to survey the situation from another angle. Whenever he left her alone the woman would start to wriggle her body, and the peculiar way she did it reminded me of a dog that feels a collar round its neck for the first time.

  “She’s stuck,” Sir Basil said.

  And now the man was walking to the other side of the carving, the side where the woman’s body was, and he put out his hands and began trying to do something with her neck. Then, as though suddenly exasperated, he gave the neck two or three jerky pulls, and this time the sound of a woman’s voice, raised high in anger, or pain, or both, came back to us small and clear through the sunlight.

  Out of the corner of one eye I could see Sir Basil nodding his head quietly up and down. “I got my fist caught in a jar of boiled sweets once,” he said, “and I couldn’t get it out.”

  The man retreated a few yards, and was standing with hands on hips, head up, looking furious and sullen. The woman, from her uncomfortable position, appeared to be talking to him, or rather shouting at him, and although the body itself was pretty firmly fixed and could only wriggle, the legs were free and did a good deal of moving and stamping.

  “I broke the jar with a hammer and told my mother I’d knocked it off the shelf by mistake.” He seemed calmer now, not tense at all, although his voice was curiously flat. “I suppose we’d better go down and see if we can help.”

  “Perhaps we should.”

  But still he didn’t move. He took out a cigarette and lit it, putting the used match carefully back in the box.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Will you have one?”

  “Thanks, I think I will.” He made a little ceremony of giving me the cigarette and lighting it for me, and again he put the used match back in the box. Then we got up and walked slowly down the grass slope.

  We came upon them silently, through an archway in the yew hedge, and it was naturally quite a surprise.

  “What’s the matter here?” Sir Basil asked. He spoke softly, with a dangerous softness that I’m sure his wife had never heard before.

  “She’s gone and put her head through the hole and now she can’t get it out,” Major Haddock said. “Just for a lark, you know.”

  “For a what?”

  “Basil!” Lady Turton shouted, “Don’t be such a damn fool! Do something, can’t you!” She may not have been able to move much, but she could still talk.

  “Pretty obvious we’re going to have to break up this lump of wood,” the Major said. There was a small smudge of red on his grey moustache, and this, like the single extra touch of colour that ruins a perfect painting, managed somehow to destroy all his manly looks. It made him comic.

  “You mean break the Henry Moore?”

  “My dear sir, there is no other way of setting the lady free. God knows how she managed to squeeze it in, but I know for a fact that she can’t pull it out. It’s the ears get in the way.”

  “Oh dear,” Sir Basil said. “What a terrible pity. My beautiful Henry Moore.”

  At this stage Lady Turton began abusing her husband in a most unpleasant manner, and there’s no knowing how long it would have gone on had not Jelks suddenly appeared out of the shadows. He came sidling silently on to the lawn and stationed himself at a respectful distance from Sir Basil, as though awaiting instructions. His black clothes looked perfectly ridiculous in the morning sunlight, and with his ancient pink-white face and white hands he was like some small crabby animal that has lived all its life in a hole under the ground.

  “Is there anything I can do, Sir Basil?” He kept his voice level, but I didn’t think his face was quite straight. When he looked at Lady Turton there was a little exulting glimmer in his eyes.

  “Yes Jelks, there is. Go back and get me a saw or something so I can cut out this section of wood.”

  “Shall I call one of the men, Sir Basil? William is a good carpenter.”

  “No, I’ll do it myself. Just get the tools—and hurry.”

  While they were waiting for Jelks, I strolled away because I didn’t want to hear any more of the things that Lady Turton was saying to her husband. But I was back in time to see the butler returning, followed now by the other woman, Carmen La Rosa, who made a rush for the hostess.

  “Nata-li-a! My dear Nata-li-a! What have they done to you?”

  “Oh shut up,” the hostess said. “And get out of the way, will you.”

  Sir Basil took up a position close to his lady’s head, waiting for Jelks. Jelks advanced slowly, carrying a saw in one hand, an axe in the other, and he stopped maybe a yard away. Then he held out both implements in front of him so his master could choose, and there was a brief moment—no more than two or three seconds—of silence, and of waiting, and it just happened that I was watching Jelks at this time. I saw the hand that was carrying the axe come forward an extra fraction of an inch towards Sir Basil. It was so slight a movement it was barely noticeable—a tiny pushing forward of the hand, slow and secret, a little offer, a little coaxing offer that was accompanied perhaps by an infinitesimal lift of the eyebrow.

  I’m not sure whether Sir Basil saw it, but he hesitated, and again the hand that held the axe came edging forward, and it was almost exactly like that card trick where the man says “Take one, whichever one you want,” and you always get the one he means you to have. Sir Basil got the axe. I saw him reach out in a dreamy sort of way, accepting it from Jelks, and then, the instant he felt the handle in his grasp he seemed to realize what was required of him and he sprang to life.

  For me, after that, it was like the awful moment when you see a child running out into the road and a car is coming and all you can do is shut your eyes tight and wait until the noise tells you it has happened. The moment of waiting becomes a long lucid period of time with yellow and red spots dancing on a black field, and even if you open your eyes again and find that nobody has been killed or hurt, it makes no difference because so far as you and your stomach were concerned you saw it all.

  I saw this one all right, every detail of it, and I didn’t open my eyes again until I heard Sir Basil’s voice, even softer than usual, calling in gentle protest to the butler.

  “Jelks,” he was saying, and I looked and saw him standing there as calm as you please, still holding the axe. Lady Turton’s head was there too, still sticking through the hole, but her face had turned a terrible ashy grey, and the mouth was opening and shutting making a kind of gurgling sound.

  “Look here, Jelks,” Sir Basil was saying. “What on earth are you thinking about. This thing’s much too dangerous. Give me the saw.” And as he exchanged implements I noticed for the first time two little warm roses of colour appearing on his cheeks, and above them, all around the corners of his eyes, the twinkling tiny wrinkles of a smile.

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