The Best of by John Wyndham

Author:John Wyndham [Wyndham, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-01-14T20:44:46.641000+00:00

Pawley's Peepholes

#7 The Best Of John Wyndham

John Wyndham

PAWLEY'S PEEPHOLES

(1951)

WhenI called round at Sally's I showed her the paragraph in theWestwich Evening News.

"What do you think of that?" I asked her.

She read it, standing, and with an impatient frown on her pretty face.

"I don't believe it," she said, finally.

Sally's principles of belief and disbelief are a thing I've never got quite lined up. How a girl can dismiss a pack of solid evidence as though it were kettle steam, and then go and fall for some advertisement that's phoney from the first word as though it were holy writ, I just don't... Oh well, it keeps on happening, anyway.

This paragraph read:

MUSIC WITH A KICK

Patrons of the concert at the Adams Hall last night were astonished to see a pair of legs dangling kneedeep from the ceiling during one of the items. The whole audience saw them, and all reports agree that they were bare legs, with some kind of sandals on the feet. They remained visible for some three or four minutes, during which time they several times moved back and forth across the ceiling. Finally, after making a kicking movement, they disappeared upwards, and were seen no more. Examination of the roof shows no traces, and the owners of the Hall are at a loss to account for the phenomenon.

"It's just one more thing," I said.

"What does it prove, anyway?" said Sally, apparently forgetful that she was not believing it.

"I don't know that—yet," I admitted.

"Well, there you are, then," she said.

Sometimes I get the feeling that Sally has no real respect for logic.

However, most people were thinking the way Sally was, more or less, because most people like things to stay nice and normal. But it had already begun to look to me as if there were things happening that ought to be added together and make something.

The first man to bump up against it—the first I can find on record, that is—was one Constable Walsh.

It may be that others before him saw things, and just put them down as a new kind of pink elephant; but Constable Walsh's idea of a topnotch celebration was a mug of strong tea with a lot of sugar, so when he came across a head sitting up on the pavement on what there was of its neck, he stopped to look at it pretty hard. The thing that really upset him, according to the report he turned in when he had run half a mile back to the station and stopped gibbering, was that it had looked back at him.

Well, it isn't good to find a head on a pavement at any time, and 2 a.m. does somehow make it worse, but as for the rest, well, you can get what looks like a reproachful glance from a cod on a slab if your mind happens to be on something else. Constable Walsh did not stop there, however.He reported that the thing opened its mouth "as if it was trying to say something". If it did, he should not have mentioned it; it just naturally brought the pink elephants to mind.

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