ELIZABETH BOWEN

Green Holly

Mr Rankstock entered the room with a dragging tread: nobody looked up or took any notice. With a muted groan, he dropped into an armchair – out of which he shot with a sharp yelp. He searched the seat of the chair, and extracted something. ‘Your holly, I think, Miss Bates,’ he said, holding it out to her.

Miss Bates took a second or two to look up from her magazine. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Oh, it must have fallen down from that picture. Put it back, please; we haven’t got very much.’

‘I regret,’ interposed Mr Winterslow, ‘that we have any: it makes scratchy noises against the walls.’

‘It is seasonable,’ said Miss Bates firmly.

‘You didn’t do this to us last Christmas.’

‘Last Christmas,’ she said, ‘I had Christmas leave. This year there seems to be none with berries: the birds have eaten them. If there were not a draught, the leaves would not scratch the walls. I cannot control the forces of nature, can I?’

‘How should I know?’ said Mr Rankstock, lighting his pipe.

These three by now felt that, like Chevalier and his Old Dutch, they had been together for forty years: and to them it did seem a year too much. Actually, their confinement dated from 1940. They were Experts – in what, the Censor would not permit me to say. They were accounted for by their friends in London as ‘being somewhere off in the country, nobody knows where, doing something frightfully hush-hush, nobody knows what’. That is, they were accounted for in this manner if there were still anybody who still cared to ask; but on the whole they had dropped out of human memory. Their reappearances in their former circles were infrequent, ghostly and unsuccessful: their friends could hardly disguise their pity, and for their own part they had not a word to say. They had come to prefer to spend leaves with their families, who at least showed a flattering pleasure in their importance.

This Christmas, it so worked out that there was no question of leave for Mr Rankstock, Mr Winterslow or Miss Bates: with four others (now playing or watching ping-pong in the next room) they composed in their high-grade way a skeleton staff. It may be wondered why, after years of proximity, they should continue to address one another so formally. They did not continue; they had begun again; in the matter of appellations, as in that of intimacy, they had by now, in fact by some time ago, completed the full circle. For some months, they could not recall in which year, Miss Bates had been engaged to Mr Winterslow; before that, she had been extremely friendly with Mr Rankstock. Mr Rankstock’s deviation towards one Carla (now at her ping-pong in the next room) had been totally uninteresting to everybody; including, apparently, himself. If the war lasted, Carla might next year be called Miss Tongue; at present, Miss Bates was foremost in keeping her in her place by going on addressing her by her Christian name.

If this felt like their fortieth Christmas in each other’s society, it was their first in these particular quarters. You would not have thought, as Mr Rankstock said, that one country house could be much worse than any other; but this had proved, and was still proving, untrue. The Army, for reasons it failed to justify, wanted the house they had been in since 1940; so they – lock, stock and barrel and files and all – had been bundled into another one, six miles away. Since the move, tentative exploration (for they were none of them walkers) had established that they were now surrounded by rather more mud but fewer trees. What they did know was, their already sufficient distance from the market town with its bars and movies had now been added to by six miles. On the other side of their new home, which was called Mopsam Grange, there appeared to be nothing; unless, as Miss Bates suggested, swineherds, keeping their swine. Mopsam village contained villagers, evacuees, a church, a public-house on whose never-open door was chalked ‘No Beer, No Matches, No Teas Served’, and a vicar. The vicar had sent up a nice note, saying he was not clear whether security regulations would allow him to call; and the doctor had been up once to lance one of Carla’s boils.

Mopsam Grange was neither old or new. It replaced – unnecessarily, they all felt – a house on this site that had been burned down. It had a Gothic porch and gables, french windows, bow windows, a conservatory, a veranda, a hall which, puce-and-buff tiled and pitch-pine-panelled, rose to a gallery: in fact, every advantage. Jackdaws fidgeted in its many chimneys – for it had, till the war, stood empty: one had not to ask why. The hot-water system made what Carla called rude noises, and was capricious in its supplies to the (only) two mahogany-rimmed baths. The electric light ran from a plant in the yard; if the batteries were not kept charged the light turned brown.

The three now sat in the drawing-room, on whose walls, mirrors and fitments, long since removed, left traces. There were, however, some pictures: General Montgomery (who had just shed his holly) and some Landseer engravings that had been found in an attic. Three electric bulbs, naked, shed light manfully; and in the grate the coal fire was doing far from badly. Miss Bates rose and stood twiddling the bit of holly. ‘Something,’ she said, ‘has got to be done about this.’ Mr Winterslow and Mr Rankstock, the latter sucking in his pipe, sank lower, between their shoulder-blades, in their respective armchairs. Miss Bates, having drawn a breath, took a running jump at a table, which she propelled across the floor with a grating sound. ‘Achtung!’ she shouted, at Mr Rankstock, who, with an oath, withdrew his chair from her route. Having got the table under General Montgomery, Miss Bates – with a display of long, slender leg, clad in ribbed scarlet sports stockings, that was of interest to no one – mounted it, then proceeded to tuck the holly back into position over the General’s frame. Meanwhile, Mr Winterslow, choosing his moment, stealthily reached across her empty chair and possessed himself of her magazine.

What a hope! – Miss Bates was known to have eyes all the way down her spine. ‘Damn you, Mr Winterslow,’ she said, ‘put that down! Mr Rankstock, interfere with Mr Winterslow: Mr Winterslow has taken my magazine!’ She ran up and down the table like something in a cage; Mr Rankstock removed his pipe from his mouth, dropped his head back, gazed up and said: ‘Gad, Miss Bates; you look fine …’

‘It’s a pretty old magazine,’ murmured Mr Winterslow, flicking the pages over.

‘Well, you’re pretty old,’ she said. ‘I hope Carla gets you!’

‘Oh, I can do better, thank you; I’ve got a ghost.’

This confidence, however, was cut off by Mr Rankstock’s having burst into song. Holding his pipe at arm’s length, rocking on his bottom in his armchair, he led them:

‘“Heigh-ho! sing Heigh-ho! unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly –”’

‘“Mere folly, mere folly,”’ contributed Mr Winterslow, picking up, joining in. Both sang:

‘“Then, heigh ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.”’

‘Now – all!’ said Mr Rankstock, jerking his pipe at Miss Bates. So all three went through it once more, with degrees of passion: Miss Bates, when others desisted, being left singing ‘Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! sing –’ all by herself. Next door, the ping-pong came to an awe-struck stop. ‘At any rate,’ said Mr Rankstock, ‘we all like Shakespeare.’ Miss Bates, whose intelligence, like her singing, tonight seemed some way at the tail of the hunt, looked blank, began to get off the table, and said, ‘But I thought that was a Christmas carol?’

Her companions shrugged and glanced at each other. Having taken her magazine away from Mr Winterslow, she was once more settling down to it when she seemed struck. ‘What was that you said, about you had got a ghost?’

Mr Winterslow looked down his nose. ‘At this early stage, I don’t like to say very much. In fact, on the whole, forget it; if you don’t mind –’

‘Look,’ Mr Rankstock said, ‘if you’ve started seeing things –’

‘I am only sorry,’ his colleague said, ‘that I’ve spoke.’

‘Oh no, you’re not,’ said Miss Bates, ‘and we’d better know. Just what is fishy about this Grange?’

‘There is nothing “fishy”,’ said Mr Winterslow in a fastidious tone. It was hard, indeed, to tell from his manner whether he did or did not regret having made a start. He had reddened – but not, perhaps, wholly painfully – his eyes, now fixed on the fire, were at once bright and vacant; with unheeding, fumbling movements he got out a cigarette, lit it and dropped the match on the floor, to slowly burn one more hole in the fibre mat. Gripping the cigarette between tense lips, he first flung his arms out, as though casting off a cloak; then pressed both hands, clasped firmly, to the nerve-centre in the nape of his neck, as though to contain the sensation there. ‘She was marvellous,’ he brought out – ‘what I could see of her.’

‘Don’t talk with your cigarette in your mouth,’ Miss Bates said. ‘– Young?’

‘Adorably, not so very. At the same time, quite – oh well, you know what I mean.’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Miss Bates. ‘And wearing –?’

‘I am certain she had a feather boa.’

‘You mean,’ Mr Rankstock said, ‘that this brushed your face?’

‘And when and where did this happen?’ said Miss Bates with legal coldness.

Cross-examination, clearly, became more and more repugnant to Mr Winterslow in his present mood. He shut his eyes, sighed bitterly, heaved himself from his chair, said: ‘Oh, well –’ and stood indecisively looking towards the door. ‘Don’t let us keep you,’ said Miss Bates. ‘But one thing I don’t see is: if you’re being fed with beautiful thoughts, why you wanted to keep on taking my magazine?’

‘I wanted to be distracted.’

‘?’

‘There are moments when I don’t quite know where I am.’

‘You surprise me,’ said Mr Rankstock. – ‘Good God, man, what is the matter?’ For Mr Winterslow, like a man being swooped around by a bat, was revolving, staring from place to place high up round the walls of the gaunt, lit room. Miss Bates observed: ‘Well, now we have started something.’ Mr Rankstock, considerably kinder, said: ‘That is only Miss Bates’s holly, flittering in the wind.’

Mr Winterslow gulped. He walked to the inch of mirror propped on the mantelpiece and, as nonchalantly as possible, straightened his tie. Having done this, he said: ‘But there isn’t a wind tonight.’

The ghost hesitated in the familiar corridor. Her visibleness, even on Christmas Eve, was not under her own control; and now she had fallen in love again her dependence upon it began to dissolve in patches. This was a concentration of every feeling of the woman prepared to sail downstairs en grande tenue. Flamboyance and agitation were both present. But between these, because of her years of death, there cut an extreme anxiety: it was not merely a matter of, how was she? but of, was she – tonight – at all? Death had left her to be her own mirror; for into no other was she able to see.

For tonight, she had discarded the feather boa; it had been dropped into the limbo that was her wardrobe now. Her shoulders, she knew, were bare. Round their bareness shimmered a thousand evenings. Her own person haunted her – above her forehead, the crisped springy weight of her pompadour; round her feet the frou-frou of her skirts on a thick carpet; in her nostrils the scent from her corsage; up and down her forearm the glittery slipping of bracelets warmed by her own blood. It is the haunted who haunt.

There were lights in the house again. She had heard laughter, and there had been singing. From those few dim lights and untrue notes her senses, after their starvation, set going the whole old grand opera. She smiled, and moved down the corridor to the gallery, where she stood looking down into the hall. The tiles of the hall floor were as pretty as ever, as cold as ever, and bore, as always on Christmas Eve, the trickling pattern of dark blood. The figure of the man with the side of his head blown out lay as always, one foot just touching the lowest step of the stairs. It was too bad. She had been silly, but it could not be helped. They should not have shut her up in the country. How could she not make hay while the sun shone? The year round, no man except her husband, his uninteresting jealousy, his dull passion. Then, at Christmas, so many men that one did not know where to turn. The ghost, leaning further over the gallery, pouted down at the suicide. She said: ‘You should have let me explain.’ The man made no answer: he never had.

Behind a door somewhere downstairs, a racket was going on: the house sounded funny, there were no carpets. The morning-room door was flung open and four flushed people, headed by a young woman, charged out. They clattered across the man and the trickling pattern as though there were nothing there but the tiles. In the morning-room she saw one small white ball trembling to stillness upon the floor. As the people rushed the stairs and fought for place in the gallery the ghost drew back – a purest act of repugnance, for this was not necessary. The young woman, to one of whose temples was strapped a cotton-wool pad, held her place and disappeared round a corner exulting: ‘My bath, my bath!’ ‘Then may you freeze in it, Carla!’ returned the scrawniest of the defeated ones. The words pierced the ghost, who trembled – they did not know!

Who were they? She did not ask. She did not care. She never had been inquisitive: information had bored her. Her schooled lips had framed one set of questions, her eyes a consuming other. Now the mills of death with their catching wheels had stripped her of semblance, cast her forth on an everlasting holiday from pretence. She was left with – nay, had become – her obsession. Thus is it to be a ghost. The ghost fixed her eyes on the other, the drawing-room door. He had gone in there. He would have to come out again.

The handle turned; the door opened; Winterslow came out. He shut the door behind him, with the sedulous slowness of an uncertain man. He had been humming, and now, squaring his shoulders, began to sing, ‘… Mere folly, mere folly –’ as he crossed the hall towards the foot of the staircase, obstinately never raising his eyes. ‘So it is you,’ breathed the ghost, with unheard softness. She gathered about her, with a gesture not less proud for being tormentedly uncertain, the total of her visibility – was it possible diamonds should not glitter now, on her rising-and-falling breast – and swept from the gallery to the head of the stairs.

Winterslow shivered violently, and looked up. He licked his lips. He said: ‘This cannot go on.’

The ghost’s eyes, with tender impartiality and mockery, from above swept Winterslow’s face. The hair receding, the furrowed forehead, the tired sag of the jowl, the strain-reddened eyelids, the blue-shaved chin – nothing was lost on her, nothing broke the spell. With untroubled wonder she saw his handwoven tie, his coat pockets shapeless as saddle-bags, the bulging knees of his flannel trousers. Wonder went up in rhapsody: so much chaff in the fire. She never had had illusions: the illusion was all. Lovers cannot be choosers. He’d do. He would have to do. – ‘I know!’ she agreed, with rapture, casting her hands together. ‘We are mad – you and I. Oh, what is going to happen? I entreat you to leave this house tonight!’

Winterslow, in a dank, unresounding voice, said: ‘And anyhow, what made you pick on me?’

‘It’s Kismet,’ wailed the ghost zestfully. ‘Why did you have to come here? Why you? I had been so peaceful, just like a little girl. People spoke of love, but I never knew what they meant. Oh, I could wish we had never met, you and I!’

Winterslow said: ‘I have been here for three months; we have all of us been here, as a matter of fact. Why all this all of a sudden?’

She said: ‘There’s a Christmas Eve party, isn’t there, going on? One Christmas Eve party, there was a terrible accident. Oh, comfort me! No one has understood. – Don’t stand there; I can’t bear it – not just there!’

Winterslow, whether he heard or not, cast a scared glance down at his feet, which were in slippers, then shifted a pace or two to the left. ‘Let me up,’ he said wildly. ‘I tell you, I want my spectacles! I just want to get my spectacles. Let me by!’

‘Let you up!’ the ghost marvelled. ‘But I am only waiting …’

She was more than waiting: she set up a sort of suction, an icy indrawing draught. Nor was this wholly psychic, for an isolated holly leaf of Miss Bates’s, dropped at a turn of the staircase, twitched. And not, you could think, by chance did the electric light choose this moment for one of its brown fade-outs: gradually, the scene – the hall, the stairs and the gallery – faded under this fog-dark but glass-clear veil of hallucination. The feet of Winterslow, under remote control, began with knocking unsureness to mount the stairs. At their turn he staggered, steadied himself, and then stamped derisively upon the holly leaf. ‘Bah,’ he neighed – ‘spectacles!’

By the ghost now putting out everything, not a word could be dared.

‘Where are you?’

Weakly, her dress rustled, three steps down: the rings on her hand knocked weakly over the panelling. ‘Here, oh here,’ she sobbed. ‘Where I was before …’

‘Hell,’ said Miss Bates, who had opened the drawing-room door and was looking resentfully round the hall. ‘This electric light.’

Mr Rankstock, from inside the drawing-room, said: ‘Find the man.’

‘The man has gone to the village. Mr Rankstock, if you were half a man –. Mr Winterslow, what are you doing, kneeling down on the stairs? Have you come over funny? Really, this is the end.’

At the other side of a baize door, one of the installations began ringing. ‘Mr Rankstock,’ Miss Bates yelled implacably, ‘yours, this time.’ Mr Rankstock, with an expression of hatred, whipped out a pencil and pad and shambled across the hall. Under cover of this Mr Winterslow pushed himself upright, brushed his knees and began to descend the stairs, to confront his colleague’s narrow but not unkind look. Weeks of exile from any hairdresser had driven Miss Bates to the Alice-in-Wonderland style: her snood, tied at the top, was now thrust back, adding inches to her pale, polished brow. Nicotine stained the fingers she closed upon Mr Winterslow’s elbow, propelling him back to the drawing-room. ‘There is always drink,’ she said. ‘Come along.’

He said hopelessly: ‘If you mean the bottle between the filing cabinets, I finished that when I had to work last night. – Look here, Miss Bates, why should she have picked on me?’

‘It has been broken off, then?’ said Miss Bates. ‘I’m sorry for you, but I don’t like your tone. I resent your attitude to my sex. For that matter, why did you pick on her? Romantic, nostalgic Blue-Danube-fixated – hein? There’s Carla, an understanding girl, unselfish, getting over her boils; there are Avice and Lettice, due back on Boxing Day. There is me, as you have ceased to observe. But oh dear no; we do not trail feather boas –’

‘– She only wore that in the afternoon.’

‘Now let me tell you something,’ said Miss Bates. ‘When I opened the door, just now, to have a look at the lights, what do you think I first saw there in the hall?’

‘Me,’ replied Mr Winterslow, with returning assurance.

‘O-oh no; oh indeed no,’ said Miss Bates. ‘You – why should I think twice of that, if you were striking attitudes on the stairs? You? – no, I saw your enchanting inverse. Extended, and it is true stone dead, I saw the man of my dreams. From his attitude, it was clear he had died for love. There were three pearl studs in his boiled shirt, and his white tie must have been tied in heaven. And the hand that had dropped the pistol had dropped a white rose; it lay beside him brown and crushed from having been often kissed. The ideality of those kisses, for the last of which I arrived too late –’ here Miss Bates beat her fist against the bow of her snood – ‘will haunt, and by haunting satisfy me. The destruction of his features, before I saw them, made their former perfection certain, where I am concerned. – And here I am, left, left, left, to watch dust gather on Mr Rankstock and you; to watch – yes, I who saw in a flash the ink-black perfection of his tailoring – mildew form on those clothes that you never change; to remember how both of you had in common that way of blowing your noses before you kissed me. He had been deceived – hence the shot, hence the fall. But who was she, your feathered friend, to deceive him? Who could have deceived him more superbly than I? – I could be fatal,’ moaned Miss Bates, pacing the drawing-room. ‘I could be fatal – only give me a break!’

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Mr Winterslow, ‘but really, what can I do, or poor Rankstock do? We are just ourselves.’

‘You put the thing in a nutshell, said Miss Bates. ‘Perhaps I could bear it if you just got your hairs cut.’

‘If it comes to that, Miss Bates, you might get yours set.’

Mr Rankstock’s re-entry into the drawing-room – this time with brisker step, for a nice little lot of new trouble was brewing up – synchronized with the fall of the piece of holly, again, from the General’s frame to the Rankstock chair. This time he saw it in time. ‘Your holly, I think, Miss Bates,’ he said, holding it out to her.

‘We must put it back,’ said Miss Bates. ‘We haven’t got very much.’

‘I cannot see,’ said Mr Winterslow, ‘why we should have any. I don’t see the point of holly without berries.’

‘The birds have eaten them,’ said Miss Bates. ‘I cannot control the forces of nature, can I?’

‘Then heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! –’ Mr Rankstock led off.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘let us have that pretty carol again.’