Mansfield with Monsters: The Untold Stories of a New Zealand Icon by Katherine Mansfield

Author:Katherine Mansfield [Mansfield, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780987663511
Goodreads: 15317245
Publisher: Steam Press
Published: 2012-07-07T05:00:00+00:00

The Escape

It was her husband’s fault, wholly and solely his fault, that they had missed the train. The military had announced that morning that it was to be the last passenger train out of the city before a total lockdown began. The Martian tripods had laid waste to half of Europe, and were now only hours away. What if the idiotic hotel people had refused to produce the bill? Wasn’t that simply because he hadn’t impressed upon the waiter at lunch that they must have it by two o’clock? Any other man would have sat there and refused to move until they handed it over. But no! His exquisite belief in human nature had allowed him to get up and expect one of those idiots to bring it to their room…

Telegraphs from home had told of old friends who perished in the burning of London, succumbed to the creeping plagues that had swept through the midlands, been drowned or worse—captured—at sea while fleeing England. How could he trust foreigners to have any sense of urgency? And then, when thvoiture did arrive, while they were still (Oh, Heavens!) waiting for change, why hadn’t he seen to the arrangement of the boxes so that they could, at least, have started the moment the money had come? Had he expected her to go outside, to stand under the awning in the heat with the Martian tripods even now crossing the Channel, and point with her parasol? A very amusing picture of English stoicism. Even when the driver had been told how fast he had to drive he had paid no attention whatsoever—just smiled. Oh, she groaned, if she’d been a driver she couldn’t have stopped smiling herself at the absurd, ridiculous way he was urged to hurry. And she sat back and imitatehis voice: “Allez, vite, vite,”—and begged the driver’s pardon for troubling him…

And then the station—unforgettable—with the sight of the sombre little train shuffling away, loaded with French cowards and hideous children in gas masks waving from the windows. “Oh, why am I made to bear these things? Why am I exposed to them?” The glare, the flies, while they waited, and he and the stationmaster put their heads together over the time-table, trying to find another route out of the city. At last a carriage and horses had been found. The people who’d gathered round as they left, blistered and maimed refugees and the woman who’d held up that baby with that awful, awful head… “Oh, to care as I care—to feel as I feel, and never to be saved anything—never to know for one moment what it was to… to…”

Her voice had changed. It was shaking now—crying now. She fumbled with her bag, and produced from its little maw a scented handkerchief. She put up her veil and, as though she were doing it for somebody else, pitifully, as though she were saying to somebody else: “I know, my darling,” she pressed the handkerchief to her eyes.

The little bag, with its shiny, silvery jaws open, lay on her lap.

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