John Keir Cross

‘Happy Birthday, Dear Alex’

In the mid-20th century, in both the U.S. and U.K., a certain type of horror story seems to have been very popular, which we might term a conte cruel, tales with a particularly wicked or cruel twist at the end. A number of Valancourt authors, including notably Charles Birkin, wrote in this style, but perhaps one of the best practitioners of this type of story was John Keir Cross (1914-1967), whose excellent collection The Other Passenger (1944), published by Valancourt in 2017, features a number of such tales, including possibly the best ventriloquist’s dummy horror story ever written, ‘The Glass Eye’. The following story first appeared in an anthology in 1965 and is fairly typical of Keir Cross’s work, with its engaging storytelling style, a fair amount of humor, and of course, an unexpectedly nasty denouement. It does not seem to have been reprinted in forty years, so we think it will be new to most of our readers.

I am, essentially, I think, a simple man.

I make the statement with no kind of false modesty: it is only something that has become apparent as my long life has gone on and I have failed so often, until it is too late, to comprehend the small complexities with which we are all surrounded from day to day.

I shall even be simple in setting down this particular incident in my life – I shall have no skill in any kind of story-­telling about it, and so you will see through it all long before I may reach a particular point which someone more skilful in the art of writing would have been able to mask for dramatic effect. You will see through Hare’s terrible secret from the start, I daresay, where I never did till it all was almost over.

His shop was in a small side-street. From the start I should perhaps have suspected something sinister from the very air and atmosphere of the place, yet naturally, on such a quest, one hardly expected anything other than a slightly unusual flavour, shall I say. Certainly the other shops I had previously visited were also peculiar in one way or another, even the one that was very large and medicated in Marylebone. No doubt the association from the commodity I was seeking predisposed one to subjective impressions somewhat macabre.

The commodity in question was to be a gift for my young cousin Alex. It was, in fact, to be a birthday gift – how strange a birthday gift! – yet one that would be curiously welcome. One hardly quite knew where to begin – it is, after all, not the kind of gruesome relic that one is likely to wish to purchase every day; one had certainly no realization that there was even a positive shortage of the articles, with consequent visions of patient queues of earnest students assembled outside a supplier momentarily well-stocked. But it all was so; and after a while there came even to be a sense of mild excitement in the quest, as source after source was explored unavailingly, yet more and more clues were uncovered as to possible further milieux for enquiry . . .

You will note, no doubt – I realize it myself reading back this laborious opening of mine (laborious since, as I have said, I am no skilled writer) – that I have, probably from some lingering sense of delicacy, so far avoided any open mention by name of the commodity’s nature. Let me come to it boldly and straightly, then: the object I sought to purchase was none other than a human skeleton! And the explanation for the horrid search is simplicity itself – as again you will plainly have guessed: my cousin was a medical student, engaged conscientiously in a meditation upon the mysteries of anatomy . . .

I do not exaggerate, incidentally, when I say that at the period of which I write so inexpertly, the objects in question were in great demand and short supply. I had even read a mildly humorous article in The Times not long before to that very effect – one of the inimitable fourth leaders of that notable journal which still, behind a façade of some light-heartedness, announced the undoubted fact that for one reason or another, skeletons for medical study purposes had become extremely difficult to obtain, and those that were available, even at third or fourth hand, as their owners progressed beyond the necessity of further study, were outside the purses of most young medicos. It was where I thought I might be of some assistance; Alex had been in the search for some time, only to find that indeed the prices were outrageous, where I, more fortunately endowed with this world’s goods through a pleasing inheritance some years previously, might be able to be of some worthwhile family assistance – and with Alex’s birthday not far in the offing, might also (if the mild jest may be permitted) kill two birds, as it were, with one somewhat costly stone.

My first difficulty, however, was to know even where to begin, as I think I have already stated. But by dint of some discreet enquiry among medical friends – even of Alex during a supposedly social visit only – I eventually found myself on the long trail, calling one bright spring morning at that large and distinguished-looking shop in Marylebone.

I was interviewed by a young man of superior smartness, with a curiously clean and – if I may say – a sterile look. As I moved forward to confront him, I found myself almost slipping on the excessively polished linoleum beneath my feet. All around me were glistening machines and implements of unknown medical functionalism – trays and boxes of neat cold forceps, curiously shaped scissors, small knives, contrivances spouting arrays of red rubber tubings. At the back, where the light – perhaps fortunately – was somewhat shady, there were some shelves of silent bottles, with nameless shapes afloat in their spirituous depths. About the whole place was an elusive odour of linoleum polish and formalin. I found myself oppressed, but the thought of young Alex’s forthcoming pleasure sustained me.

The assistant inclined a somewhat oleaginous but courteous head, with a murmured request that I should state my requirement.

‘I want,’ I began, with some initial nervousness, ‘ – I want to purchase – ah – not for myself, you understand – for a friend – a cousin, in fact . . . I – ah – had wanted to enquire about the possibility of obtaining – ’

At that moment, as I glanced somewhat timidly about me, I saw, calmly regarding me from a small pedestal, a prime specimen of the object of my very search. The disinterested glare of the hollow orbs unnerved me a little, then I was able to give a small exclamation of satisfaction as I gestured towards it.

‘A skeleton, sir?’ The young man’s tone held a trace, I thought, of professional sorrow – as if, almost, I were a near relative of the deceased we both now contemplated, swaying a little on its suspending wires. I remember reflecting, even in the moment, how unexpectedly small we are untrammelled at last by flesh – those little spindly bones of ours, so frail-­seeming against the might of the world: the perpetual grin of our hapless mouths behind whatever expression of grief or soft sentiment our lips might once have worn: our dry small cage of a chest enclosing hearts that once throbbed deliriously in joy or passion: our boxy little skulls within whose confines noble thoughts may once have raced, whole symphonies or epics been composed, the plans of great cathedrals limned . . . So went my simple thoughts, until I became aware that the young man was still speaking in his smoothly modulated way:

‘Articulated, of course?’

‘Of course,’ I nodded. Unacquainted with the terminologies I assumed that the expert before me must have some profound purposes in his ‘of course’. Besides, I recollected Alex having said something too about this need for ‘articulation’ in the article.

‘Somewhat in this manner, perhaps,’ went on the young man gravely, stepping forward towards our solitary companion and touching a wire stretched almost invisibly along the spine.

Instantly, with a small dry rustling – hardly more than a whisper through the antiseptic silence – He Who Once Had Been executed a deft brief convulsion of all his members simultaneously. He quivered and revolved with a delicate waving of arms, an inclination of legs, a pointing of slender toes. He engaged in a total arabesque, a chilly mechanical ecstasy of interrelated bones and silver pivotal pins, through all his tiny joints . . . and, as I started back a little, involuntarily apprehensive, the young man beside me said reverentially, in such a tone as I might once have used myself in my distant youth in a contemplation of Madame Pavlova, no less:

‘Beautiful – ah, beautiful! Such poise, such balance, sir – such exquisite co-ordination!’

Then, with a further humble moment before the great dancer now slowly settling to no more than a lingering wavy tremor, he turned to me suddenly, briskly.

‘I’m sorry, sir – deeply sorry. We are quite out of stock.’

‘Nothing at all?’ I asked, as one might ask in the normal course of day-to-day shopping when confronted with a shortage of, say, summer shirtings during the holiday season or warm underwear with the approach of winter.

‘Nothing, sir. Our supplies are very limited – the demand of late has been quite remarkable.’

‘To what,’ I asked academically, ‘do you attribute such a curious state of – ’ I had almost said ‘trading’, then changed to ‘shortage in the line?’

‘It’s difficult to say, sir. At one time we carried almost more of the articles in our stock-rooms than we had space for – we frequently had to dismember them entirely so as to be able to find accommodation; for as you will understand, it is an easier matter to group, say, all the tibiae, all the fibulae, in one shelf, with all the metacarpals in another and so forth, than to pack the fully assembled items together with any . . . well . . . comfort.’

(I groped a little at his undoubtedly strange use of the word ‘comfort’, visualizing that unimaginable stock-room somewhere below and far away – beyond the shady bottles on the farther shelves, perhaps . . .)

‘You haven’t, by any chance – ’ and I hesitated again, wondering how one might convey the possibility of an under-the-counter purchase, recollecting one’s wartime habits in the acquiring of tobacco or whisky, for example.

‘Nothing at all, sir,’ he said severely. ‘We think sometimes that it may all be due to the Health Service in some indefinable way – no doubt that people are living longer, perhaps – ’

‘No doubt,’ I said vaguely.

‘ – or even that patients are tending to die in their beds rather than in the unnamed wards of hospitals. We had some useful connections in the better times with the river­side morgues, for an instance; but somehow suicides are less frequent than they were – or rather, should I say, the present-­day practitioners tend to stay at home rather more. The genial sleeping-draught overdose has come somewhat to the fore; and so one is more in the position of being found by relatives or friends and given – as they say – a decent burial.’

He contrived to inject an odd flavour of distaste and even disapproval into his tone.

‘These things move in trends, of course,’ he concluded with a sigh. ‘One can hardly predict or even comprehend the general movements in trade. And it was never, of course, the kind of commodity that could be . . . well, as one might say . . . made to measure. It is hardly a case for the assembly line.’

‘Plastics?’ I murmured tentatively, with visions of a fortune to be made in a factory established somewhere in the Midlands, the young men and women streaming to work each morning on bicycles, the staff canteens, the Sports Welfare Clubs, the whole great machinery of modern industry geared towards meeting the strange demand. Yet I realized on the instant that I had made an immense faux-pas. He regarded me with an ill-concealed pity.

‘It would hardly perhaps serve, sir. In our profession we must observe the proprieties. We are dealing, I think, with Fundamentals. Plastics would be hardly . . . well . . . worthy, shall I say?’

There remained one more possibility. Small as he had made me feel, I screwed myself to the suggestion.

‘Perhaps,’ I said, with a somewhat forlorn gesture, ‘ – perhaps that model there – ?’

He froze to an immobility as marked as that of the now still subject of our whole discourse.

‘I beg your pardon, sir! It is for exhibition only. It has been with us since the initial establishment of our whole business. It is in fact – and was bequeathed as such, so that, as he put it in his will, he might constantly be in a position to watch our progress – it is, in fact, our original Founder . . . Good-morning, sir: I am sorry not to have been able to have been of more assistance.’

I crept into the bright sunshine. With one backward apologetic glance I saw him stare after me with an expression of supreme distaste on his face. I could have sworn, in the shadows there, that he then turned for a moment and bowed to that small dangling shape that once had trotted so briskly, so joyously, through the very medicated doorway from which I had that instant emerged . . . I told you, I think, that I was – and indeed still am – an unsophisticated man. . . .

I will not weary you with a full account of my peregrinations. At every turn I met only frustration. I visited shops of a like nature to, but less opulent than, that veritable temple in Marylebone. But the tale was constantly the same – a hundred assistants, some sympathetic, some brusque, some positively rude, announced the identical dismal state of affairs. Skulls – yes, occasionally; isolated tibiae or fibulae, possibly; complete feet more rarely, but still at least remotely; pelvises – by some strange freak, pelvises by the score: but fully articulateds? – no, sir! One very aged proprietor of a small supplier off Holborn told me gloomily, being more courteous than most dealers that I encountered:

‘I’ve been in the trade man and boy, sir, for sixty years and more; and I’ve known nothing like it, nothing, not since the days of the great ’Uman ’Eart shortage in ’02.’

‘And what was that?’ I enquired, offering him a cigar, which he took with some absence of mind, his eyes fixed nostalgically on that distant past.

‘Terrible times, sir, terrible. In the old days we done quite a trade on the side in ’Uman ’Earts – Aitch-Aitches as we used to call ’em. Pickled ’em in acid and such and used to put ’em up in handy little jars that we bought wholesale from the jam factory down the road – changed the labels, o’ course. You won’t remember them old times of the Pawning Days?’

I shook my head. By this time, you will comprehend, I had acquired a positive interest, if not a thorough fascination for the whole subject. The Pawning Days – the unimaginable Pawning Days!

‘When you was down and out,’ said my informant, leaning confidentially over a counter littered with second-hand syringes, scalpels, tweezers, stethoscopes and the like, ‘ – which I don’t suppose you’ve never been in all your life, sir, nor never hope to . . . but when you was down and out in them old days, and you’d pawned your watch and your overcoat and your spare elastic-sideds and such, and the old rolled gold medallion with your mother’s picture inside and a lock of hair, there was still one thing left that you could pawn, and it was yourself.’

‘Yourself,’ I said non-committally.

‘Yourself, sir. You went into St William’s Orspital, like, and you said ’Ere I am, what’s left of me. And they said Good, sign here. And they gave you a form, sir, and it said on it that in exchange for a five-pun note you hereby bequeathed your body to medical science for research when such time should arrive as you passed on, see. Now, if you signed another form which said as you’d never smoked or had a drink and never would, then you got another fiver, and that made ten. So off you went with your cash, see, and that was you fixed. But if times got better for you – if you maybe came into a fortune or such – you could always go and get yourself out again; and if you were a five-pound job that would cost eight, see, ’cos they had to have their profit, but if you was a ten-pounder it was eighteen, ’cos they reckoned that if you didn’t smoke and didn’t drink they’d have had longer to wait anyways, and so the interest was higher, like. But there wasn’t many as was able to redeem themselves that way, and so they was the great times for Aitch-Aitches, and skeletons too, see.’

‘And what happened in ’02 to put an end to it all?’ I asked.

‘Reckon the Orspitals got wise to it, see. ’Cos after St William’s started it, every other Orspital ran a scheme too. And there was chaps that made a regular living out of going round ’em all and signing papers right left and centre so that when the time came nobody knew what tibia belonged to who and what fibula belonged to t’other. So in ’02 they all stopped simultaneous, and there we were – not an Aitch-Aitch in the place there weren’t.’

He stayed gloomily contemplating that terrible period of slump, then shook himself.

‘Ah well, times picked up a bit after all, in the ’20s, I s’pose, ’cos of the fashionable suicide wave, see; but now they’ve settled back again, now that folk are more homekeeping and we’ve the Health Service and such – ’ and in his more homely way he repeated the curious argument of my supercilious friend of Marylebone.

I left him at last with a desolate conviction that the day would never come when I would be able to provide poor Alex with a birthday present – particularly with that birthday looming constantly nearer and nearer. He gave me only one word of possible comfort:

‘Take my advice, sir, and don’t go round the medical suppliers. We’re all in the same boat, see. Pawn-shops – that’s the ticket.’

‘Pawn-shops?’

‘Yes, sir – them or the second-hand lads down side-streets. You see, the only time one of Them There comes on the market is when some young student chap like this cousin of yours you was telling me about gets hard-up sudden-­like. So they round the corner to Uncle with Whats-’is-Name slung over their shoulder, and that’s good for a tenner, you know, ’cos with things as they are Uncle can sell ’em again for as much as thirty and forty to chaps like you as is on the search, see. Mind you, mostly they’re pretty old and falling to bits by the time they gets to Uncle, but even so there’s sometimes something young and tasty like will turn up. So you just go on that tack, sir – there’s a little shop in Camberwell I can give you the address of, that’s been running Them-Theres for quite a time as a speciality – if you mention my name he’ll see you straight . . .’

He gave me the address and I visited Camberwell. And so, eventually, the long trail drew towards its conclusion as I came in sight of Mr Hare . . . .

– But not at first – not still for some little time. I had some further dismal rounds to perambulate. By this time the tension was rising within me to some positive degree of discomfort. The birthday was drawing closer and closer, yet still I saw little chance of success. And something else had arisen to occasion worry – something which might have held some element of the ludicrous were it not for the danger I saw in it that my whole scheme of a pleasant surprise for my young cousin might topple to desolate failure.

As I had moved from shop to shop on my quest, I had sometimes been aware of occasional faces becoming increasingly familiar – mostly of young men standing beside me at the various counters awaiting their turn, or approaching them as I withdrew. From a muttered remark once overheard, it one day dawned on me that these were none other than seekers like myself – young medicos who were also on the trail, chasing the elusive skeletons from shop to shop as I was. It was a simple step towards the further apprehensive thought that even Alex might be searching among those others – that there was consequently a chance, however remote a chance, that I might be forestalled!

The consideration quite appalled me. With the final examinations comparatively near at hand, Alex’s need for a skeleton to study was growing quite imperative – it was why I had known from the first that my projected gift would be so singularly welcome to that studious cousin of mine. I had never disclosed my intention – in all gifts, I have always felt in my simple way, there should be an element of surprise. It was more than likely that in what little time could be spared from study, Alex would be seeking to obtain that curious heart’s desire I also sought . . . and if our paths should cross – !

I had veritable confirmation of the danger on the very day of my visit to the little shop in Camberwell that had been recommended by the friendly dealer in Holborn. At the very moment of my approach to it I saw Alex’s familiar figure hurry­ing out!

I concealed myself in a convenient doorway, then made my own way forward. The shop was small and dark – a misery of ancient junk of every description, the entire stock piled high in the single evil-smelling room – great heaps of soiled clothes, piles of cracked crockery, broken tables, crooked chairs . . . but as far as I could see, no skeletons.

‘No, sir,’ said the dealer gloomily, when I made my need known to him. ‘Not in two years I ain’t seen one. Old Joe up Holborn way was right, though – used to to deal in ’em regular. It’s just that somehow they’re so hard to come by now I’ve give it up.’

‘Tell me,’ I said hastily, ‘ – that young student who came in a moment before me . . . I think I know the face. As a matter of interest – ’

The dealer smiled before I had completed the very sentence.

‘Exactly the same, sir,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking how queer it was. Wanted one o’ Them There too. In fact, there’s several been in lately – might be worth my while to start up trade again, if I can even lay my hands on the stuff. Only thing is’ – and he suddenly shrugged – ‘I doubt if it would even be worth it. These young folk these days hardly have a chance, have they?’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Cash, see. Even if I got one or two in I could hardly sell ’em under forty or forty-five smackers . . . and it ain’t every younker of a student could lay hands on that amount of cash.’

He was right, of course – and I saw a sudden ray of hope. From my knowledge of Alex’s resources it was only too plain that the purchase would be quite out of the question. Whereas I had only to trace the one physical object – one single skeleton in reasonable repair and, of course, articulated – poor Alex had to go further and find one at the very most costing ten or fifteen; and, with the demand as it plainly was, there was little likelihood of that.

I acquired a new confidence – yet still had a lingering far-off edge of apprehension. I sped from shop to shop – from Camberwell to Kentish Town, on an elusive trail thereafter to a pawnbroker in Cheapside who had been recommended – to a tangled junk yard in the Minories – to an aged surly crone almost invisible behind the ranked-high horrors of a used-clothing store in Rotherhithe.

It was she who gave me, with some reluctance at first, an address in Pimlico – then suddenly, peering closely at me, cackled quite hideously as she repeated it.

I found the side-street in a maze of crooked alleys and vennels behind Sloane Square – saw the name in blistered paintwork above the most wretched shop my eyes had ever confronted: ‘W. Hare, General Dealer.’ Having learned my lesson in Camberwell, I reconnoitred the neighbourhood with some care for a possible sign of Alex; then, satisfied, pushed forward and entered.

A cracked bell tinkled dismally through a musty dark silence. A small withered creature wearing a black skullcap came forward from the shadows. I babbled my request in some haste, anxious to escape from the whole unpleasant place as quickly as I could. I had even turned to the door again, so conditioned had I become to constant bleak refusal. But suddenly my distaste for my surroundings was swallowed in a great wave of relief as I heard Hare’s thin and melancholy voice:

‘Why yes, sir. I think I might be able to accommodate you. If you will give me a few particulars, perhaps . . . ?’

For all his small repulsiveness I might almost in that exciting moment have embraced him!

He leaned closely to me across his piled counter. I perched as well as I could on a rachitic chair which, although plainly set out for the convenience of customers, still bore a price-ticket: seven-and-six.

With my eyes a little accustomed to the gloom I found myself gazing into the most horrible face I have ever seen. It was itself, almost, a skull. The lips were thin and cracked, drawn in a perpetual rictus-grin from teeth that were totally black. The skin stretched yellowly across his high cheekbones was so taut as almost to seem transparent – there was a momentary horrid temptation to set out a finger to poke through it bloodlessly, as if it were parchment. The eyes were pale and curiously glazed, with no spark of life in them, hooded beneath crusted and rheumy lids . . . the man was a living corpse.

And from him, or from the monstrous assembly of mysteries in that shop of his, there was a smell unconscionably repulsive. What its true nature was I had no notion – yet it was a condensation somehow of a smell I had encountered before: somehow animal – somehow associated with . . . with what? I am a simple man: perhaps, in that moment, if I had been a little more worldly-wise for all my years – however . . .

‘You will realize,’ he was saying in his soft toneless voice, ‘that it may take a day or two before I can lay my hands on a specimen. I have none in stock, as it happens – ’

‘How long?’ I asked impatiently. With my first relief now over I was only anxious again to escape from the oppressive atmosphere of that dark and evil corner of London.

‘A week, shall we say? I must negotiate with my contacts.’

‘A week! Great heavens, man,’ I almost shouted, ‘I can’t wait a week! It’s for a – ’

Yet I hesitated. It seemed grotesque, suddenly, even in that place so grotesque itself, to announce that the object was required for a gift. I was mentally calculating dates – and realized that in all my general excitement I had had an impression of time more pressing than it actually was. A week from the 4th would be the 11th – the very day itself of the birthday.

‘You could guarantee it in a week?’ I asked.

‘Most certainly – indeed quite definitely, sir. Articulated, of course?’

‘Articulated,’ I said.

‘And . . . as to size? Would you require something on the larger side or the smaller, perhaps?’

The thing was absurd, of course. I could only stare at him for a moment. He spoke in his toneless way as a tailor might, discussing one’s next suit. He had a small, much-­fingered notebook on the counter before him – held over it the grimed stub of a pencil in fingers quite hideously crooked, all marked and burned with strange yellow stains.

‘It . . . it hardly matters,’ I said – somewhat lamely I feel now – in something of an anti-climax after all my tension. My aim – my only aim – was to buy the thing: it was even absurd, after everything I had been through, to discover that there might be such a thing as a choice in the matter.

‘I would suggest small, sir,’ he said smoothly, writing carefully. ‘They are somewhat easier for me to obtain – and are, of course, more portable. So. And male? – or female?’

Again I could only stare. The choice was still more bizarre. Was there even any difference? – Alex had never once suggested any kind of preference. Beyond a dim recollection of some Biblical lore about more or fewer ribs, I could not conceive of any vital reason why one sex should be more or less suitable for the purposes of study than the other.

He saw my hesitation and fluted quietly:

‘Then if I may suggest again, sir, female. They also are a little easier for me to obtain. And besides, in the thought of the more delicate flesh once enclosing them – ’

He broke off his intolerable leer as he saw the expression on my face. I believe I might almost have struck him!

‘You will require it packed, sir?’ he asked, even a little hastily, turning the dangerous corner. ‘I have a consignment of suitable light-weight cardboard boxes I usually use for the purpose.’

The very question of transport had never occurred to me. I had had a far notion, in the earlier days of the search, of an arrangement with Carter Paterson or some such firm of conveyors of general merchandise. I saw now that if I was collecting the gift on the very day I was also having to deliver it, I would have to remove it and transport it myself. Were such things heavy, I wondered? – would the box fit comfortably into a taxi?

Again it was as if he read my thoughts.

‘You will find it very light and easily carried, sir. If I might suggest a taxi-cab when you call – ?’

I nodded again and rose.

‘Yes – packed, then,’ I said abruptly. ‘But I should like to examine it, of course, before I take it.’

‘Of course, sir. It was my intention. I shall have it ready a week from today, and it will be a matter of moments to enclose it in the box after your examination.’

He smiled with a hollow malevolence and shut the notebook with a snap.

‘And the price, sir? Shall we say . . . fifty?’

It was larger than I had anticipated, even knowing the general situation. But I could ill afford a hesitation this time, with the end so happily at last in sight.

‘Very well. Fifty.’

‘Guineas, sir?’

‘Guineas!’

‘Thank you, sir. And if I may suggest it, since you will be taking the article away with you . . . cash, sir? – rather than a cheque?’

‘Cash, Mr Hare!’

‘Thank you, sir. I feel quite certain that you will be completely satisfied. Good evening, sir. A week from today – at shall we say eleven o’clock in the morning, perhaps, if that is convenient?’

I left him bowing across the counter, his yellow hands clasped tightly, the tassel of his skull-cap dangling over his thin hooked nose. I stumbled round silent heaps of rubbish – of monstrous vases set on pedestals, dead marble busts of no conceivable value, tall looming bric-à-brac stands in outmoded Victorian bamboo-work, poker-work, repulsively carved walnut . . . behind me the bell tinkled faintly as I achieved the blessed air away from the eternal smell and hurried from the shop as quickly as I could move. W. Hare – General Dealer!

It was the name, indeed, more than any other circumstance, that I found curiously lingering to haunt me. As the week passed by in a strange indolence after all the fury of my quest from that bare and antiseptic temple in Marylebone to the dingy horrors of the little shop in Pimlico, I found myself strangely repeating at odd moments simply: ‘W. Hare, W. Hare, W. Hare . . .’ and seeking some elusive association – as elusive in its different way as the odour from the man which had so oppressed me. Yet whatever I might feel about his unpleasantness – his positive evil, indeed, as I recollected his whole essence in that dusky place, leaning forward over his notebook – whatever I might feel, I had also to recognize that the man had saved me. And in that thought, as the week went on, I regained some measure of delight. I had exaggerated – my simple mind had grown infected through its piling disappointments, through the half-ludicrous gruesomeness of the whole adventure. When I encountered Hare again in the clearer light of day, his warped grotesqueness would reveal itself only as something subjective creeping through my own mind in a consideration of the macabre nature of the goods he purveyed. He was even, no doubt, a simple man like myself, of quiet tastes and lonely habits . . .

On the eve, my excitement mounted to a pitch where I could not sleep. I lay tossing for some hours, reflecting on the pleasure I was to give next day. I took a mouthful of brandy, and when it after all did not have the soporific effect I usually expect from it, I turned to my bedside bookshelf for consolation from my favourite Dickens.

It was when I read the passages referring to the nefarious secret occupation of the good Jerry Cruncher in the immortal Tale of Two Cities that I suddenly, with a small mortal chill, recalled the association in the name of that ‘General Dealer’ of mine in Pimlico. Jerry Cruncher the Resurrectionist – those other notorious real-life Resurrectionists in the old Edinburgh of a hundred and fifty years ago . . . Burke and Hare – Burke and Hare . . .

I almost laughed aloud in the suddenly realized folly of it all. The thing was a coincidence and an association, no more. Nevertheless, it made me lose for once my taste for the Master and I tossed the book aside, seizing instead another favourite – a volume of the enchanting short stories of the good O. Henry . . . and opening it by another coincidence – an altogether happier one – at that famous little masterpiece about birthdays and birthday presents, The Gifts of the Magi.

In its lulling sentimental influence I fell asleep at last, and woke to a bright and cheerful morning, all horror vanished.

The mood still lingered as I directed my cab-driver to the little street in Pimlico. Indeed and indeed my fears and imaginings had been the merest shadows! The very shop in the bright sunlight was almost cheerful in its ridiculous window-display of old rugs and tarnished silverware, its shelves of outspread books at threepence and sixpence per volume. I entered it blithely, determined against any recurrence of the old oppression, and found Hare already awaiting me, his hands as always clasped before him, his skull-cap tassel dangling.

The smell was still about me but I hardly noticed it – was determined at least to ignore it. There was little time, indeed, to notice anything in the sudden contemplation in that magic moment of the object at last of all my searching – for there, set up against the end of the counter, was the beautiful thing itself!

And you know, in a curious way it even was quite beautiful to me at that moment, even apart from all the pleasure of its finding, the further pleasure it would give. In itself it had a strange beauty – the slightly yellowed bones so cunningly fitted, the gleam here and there of the tarnished silver articulation pins and wires. Not the face, perhaps – or the lack of face: a skull can never be beautiful . . . but somehow the whole marvellous framework of it, once the supports of the very uttermost marvel of all God’s universe!

The dealer had set it in one of those tall, specially made cardboard boxes of his, the lid of it waiting in readiness on the floor. He asked if I wished to examine the articulation more closely but I shook my head – apart from my inexpertness, I knew at a glance that the thing was as perfect a specimen as could be obtained. I almost chuckled to little harmless Hare in my delight as he set to fitting the lid in position and tying the whole long parcel for me with white new string, strangely out of place in that shop of dingy second-handness. I counted out the notes I had obtained from my bank on the way to Pimlico – found I had no ten-shilling notes and cheerfully, as Hare fumbled in a pocket for change, cried:

‘Leave it so, Mr Hare, at fifty-three! You deserve it!’

In its box the skeleton was smaller than it had even seemed before – I had a recurrence of my philosophic thoughts from Marylebone. And it was after all quite curiously light, as Hare had said – I could carry it with the greatest ease to the waiting taxi.

‘I marked, sir,’ he said, as he opened his tinkling door for me, ‘a small H in pencil at the head end, so that you can keep it upright as you carry it, before unpacking. It will avoid damage to the articulation.’

It was a small and friendly touch, I felt, and I smiled to him as he stooped in a final bow to me on the pavement.

The girl who lived with Alex opened the door of the flat to me. She was an engaging, nubile young creature, I had always felt, named Miriam. I propped my box – head upwards, of course – against the lintel, smiling to her; yet noticing too that she wore an unexpectedly worried look.

‘Alex isn’t in,’ she said; and my triumphant moment vanished. I had built so carefully to it – so carefully! In my simplicity it had never occurred to me to confirm that my young cousin would be available to receive my gift.

I had a thought to go away and come back – to ask if I might wait. It was essential that the presentation should be carried out by myself and not by proxy, after all that I had gone through. But Miriam was speaking again.

‘It’s been worrying me to death,’ she said. ‘Of course, we only live together, and I naturally can’t be expected to be given a note of all Alex’s movements; but to have gone away for so long without a single word – ’

She broke off almost petulantly, regarding me in the gloomy small corridor.

‘For so long?’ I asked, dazedly a little.

‘A week nearly enough – and not a single word. It’s too bad.’

I wonder if I had my first inkling even then? – in my simplicity?

I gestured rather lamely to the tall package.

‘It was to have been . . . a birthday gift,’ I said desolately. Miriam smiled.

‘Of course! – I’d forgotten the date! Alex must surely come back home for that! Do you want to leave it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave it.’

I turned away. There was no other immediate emotion in me, I think, but a great detached sadness – over my own inability, through my simplicity, to comprehend after all the years the ironic bitterness of the bright world in which we live. I reflected too, I believe, on the strangeness of coincidence – that of all the tales in the world I should have been reading, the previous evening, that sweetly melancholy one of O. Henry’s about the people who all unwittingly give presents that can no longer be of any value to their recipients. . . .

‘If you should see Alex,’ cried Miriam after me, ‘tell her to let me know at least when she’s coming home.’

My foot, as I turned, had caught the edge of the package still leaning against the lintel. With a small whispering from its jostled contents it now fell forward into the hallway where Miriam stood, rocking gently for a moment at her feet.

‘Alex,’ I said, into infinity – ‘has come home.’