The Penguin Book of First World War Stories by None & Anne-Marie Einhaus

Author:None & Anne-Marie Einhaus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2007-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

STACY AUMONIER

THEM OTHERS

It is always disturbing to me when things fall into pattern form, when, in fact, incidents of real life dovetail with each other in such a manner as to suggest the shape of a story. A story is a nice neat little thing with what is called a ‘working-up’ and a climax, and life is a clumsy, ungraspable thing, very incomplete in its periods, and with a poor sense of climax. In fact, death – which is a very uncertain quantity – is the only definite note it strikes, and even death has an uncomfortable way of setting other things in motion. If, therefore, in telling you about my friend Mrs Ward, I am driven to the usual shifts of the storyteller, you must believe me that it is because this narrative concerns visions: Mrs Ward’s visions, my visions, and your visions. Consequently I am dependent upon my own poor powers of transcription to mould these visions into some sort of shape, and am driven into the position of a story-teller against my will.

The first vision, then, concerns the back view of the Sheldrake Road, which, as you know, butts on to the railway embankment near Dalston Junction station. If you are of an adventurous turn of mind you shall accompany me, and we will creep up on to the embankment together and look down into these back yards. (We shall be liable to a fine of £2, according to a bye-law of the Railway Company, for doing so, but the experience will justify us.)

There are twenty-two of these small buff-brick houses huddled together in this road, and there is surely no more certain way of judging not only the character of the individual inhabitants but of their mode of life than by a survey of these somewhat pathetic yards. Is it not, for instance, easy to determine the timid, well-ordered mind of little Miss Porson, the dressmaker at number nine, by its garden of neat mud paths, with its thin patch of meagre grass, and the small bed of skimpy geraniums? Cannot one read the tragedy of those dreadful Alleson people at number four? The garden is a wilderness of filth and broken bottles, where even the weeds seem chary of establishing themselves. In fact, if we listen carefully – and the trains are not making too much noise – we can hear the shrill crescendo of Mrs Alleson’s voice cursing at her husband in the kitchen, the half-empty gin bottle between them.

The methodical pushfulness and practicability of young Mr and Mrs Andrew MacFarlane is evident at number fourteen. They have actually grown a patch of potatoes, and some scarletrunners, and there is a chicken-run near the house.

Those irresponsible people, the O’Neals, have grown a bed of hollyhocks, but for the rest the garden is untidy and unkempt. One could almost swear they were connected in some obscure way with the theatrical profession.

Mrs Abbot’s garden is a sort of playground. It has asphalt paths, always swarming with small and not too clean children, and there are five lines of washing suspended above the mud.

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