Collected Short Stories Read online

  With each bend Diana was able to gain a little time as the van continued to lurch from side to side, unfamiliar with the road, but she never managed a clear break of more than a few seconds. She checked the speedometer. From the turnoff on the main road to the farm was just over five miles, and she must have covered about two by now. She began to watch each tenth of a mile clicking up, terrified at the thought of the van overtaking her and forcing her into the ditch. She stuck determinedly to the center of the road.

  Another mile passed, and still he clung to her. Suddenly she saw a car coming toward her. She switched her headlights to full and pressed on the horn. The other car retaliated by mimicking her actions, which caused her to slow down and brush against the hedgerow as they shot past each other. She checked the speedometer once again. Only two miles to go.

  Diana would slow down and then speed up at each familiar bend in the road, making sure the van was never given enough room to pull up with her. She tried to concentrate on what she should do once the farmhouse came into sight. She reckoned that the drive leading up to the house must be about half a mile long. It was full of potholes and bumps that Daniel had often explained he couldn’t afford to have repaired. But at least it was only wide enough for one car.

  The gate to the driveway was usually left open for her, though on the odd rare occasion Daniel had forgotten, and she’d had to get out of the car and open it for herself. She couldn’t risk that tonight. If the gate was closed, she would have to travel on to the next town and stop outside the Crimson Kipper, which was always crowded at this time on a Friday night, or, if she could find it, at the steps of the local police station. She checked her gas gauge again. It was now touching red. “Oh my God,” she said, realizing she might not have enough gas to reach the town.

  She could only pray that Daniel had remembered to leave the gate open.

  She swerved out of the next bend and speeded up, but once again she managed. to gain only a few yards, and she knew that within seconds he would be back in place. He was. For the next few hundred yards they remained within feet of each other, and she felt certain he had to run into the back of her. She didn’t once dare to touch her brakes—if they crashed in that lane, far from any help, she would have no hope of getting away from him.

  She checked her speedometer. A mile to go.

  “The gate must be open. It must be open,” she prayed. As she swung around the next bend, she could make out the outline of the farmhouse in the distance. She almost screamed with relief when she saw that the lights were on in the downstairs rooms.

  She shouted, “Thank God!” then remembered the gate again, and changed her plea to “Dear God, let it be open.” She would know what needed to be done as soon as she came around the last bend. “Let it be open, just this once,” she pleaded. “I’ll never ask for anything again, ever.” She swung round the final bend only inches ahead of the black van. “Please, please, please.” And then she saw the gate.

  It was open.

  Her clothes were now drenched in sweat. She slowed down, wrenched the transmission into second, and threw the car between the gap and into the bumpy driveway, hitting the gatepost on her right-hand side as she careered on up toward the house. The van didn’t hesitate to follow her, and was still only inches behind as she straightened out. Diana kept her hand pressed down on the horn as the car bounced and lurched over the mounds and potholes.

  Flocks of startled crows flapped out of overhanging branches, screeching as they shot into the air. Diana began screaming, “Daniel! Daniel!” Two hundred yards ahead of her, the porch light went on.

  Her headlights were now shining onto the front of the house, and her hand was still pressed on the horn. With a hundred yards to go, she spotted Daniel coming out of the front door, but she didn’t slow down, and neither did the van behind her. With fifty yards to go she began flashing her lights at Daniel. She could now make out the puzzled, anxious expression on his face.

  With thirty yards to go she threw on her brakes. The heavy car skidded across the gravel in front of the house, coming to a halt in the flower bed just below the kitchen window. She heard the screech of brakes behind her. The leather-jacketed man, unfamiliar with the terrain, had been unable to react quickly enough, and as soon as his wheels touched the graveled forecourt he began to skid out of control. A second later the van came crashing into the back of her car, slamming it against the wall of the house and shattering the glass in the kitchen window.

  Diana leaped out of the car screaming, “Daniel! Get a gun, get a gun!” She pointed back at the van. “That bastard’s been chasing me for the last twenty miles!”

  The man jumped out of the van and began limping toward them. Diana ran into the house. Daniel followed and grabbed a shotgun, normally reserved for rabbits, that was leaning against the wall. He ran back outside to face the unwelcome visitor, who had come to a halt by the back of Diana’s Audi.

  Daniel raised the shotgun to his shoulder and stared straight at him. “Don’t move or I’ll shoot,” he said calmly. And then he remembered that the gun wasn’t loaded. Diana ducked back out of the house but remained several yards behind him.

  “Not me! Not me!” shouted the leather-jacketed youth, as Rachael appeared in the doorway.

  “What’s going on?” she asked nervously.

  “Call the police,” was all Daniel said, and his wife quickly disappeared back into the house.

  Daniel advanced toward the terrified-looking young man, the gun aimed squarely at his chest.

  “Not me! Not me!” he shouted again, pointing at the Audi. “He’s in the car!” He quickly turned to face Diana. “I saw him get in when you were parked on the hard shoulder. What else could I have done? You just wouldn’t pull over.”

  Daniel advanced cautiously toward the rear door of the car and ordered the young man to open it slowly, while he kept the gun aimed at his chest.

  The youth opened the door and quickly took a pace backward. The three of them stared down at a man crouched on the floor of the car. In his right hand he held a long-bladed knife with a serrated edge. Daniel swung the barrel of the gun down to point at him but said nothing.

  The sound of a police siren could just be heard in the distance.

  OLD LOVE

  Some people, it is said, fall in love at first sight, but that was not what happened to William Hatchard and Philippa Jameson. They hated each other from the moment they met. This mutual loathing commenced at the first tutorial of their freshman term. Both had arrived in the early thirties with major scholarships to read English language and literature, William at Merton, Philippa at Somerville. Each had been reliably assured by their schoolteachers that they would be the star pupil of their year.

  Their tutor, Simon Jakes of New College, was both bemused and amused by the ferocious competition that so quickly developed between his two brightest pupils, and he used their enmity skillully to bring out the best in both of them without ever allowing either to indulge in outright abuse. Philippa, an attractive, slim redhead with a rather high-pitched voice, was the same height as William, so she conducted as many of her arguments as possible standing in newly acquired high-heeled shoes, while William, whose deep voice had an air of authority, would always try to expound his opinions from a sitting position. The more intense their rivalry became, the harder the one tried to outdo the other. By the end of their first year they were far ahead of their contemporaries while remaining neck and neck with each other. Simon Jakes told the Merton professor of Anglo-Saxon Studies that he had never had a brighter pair up in the same year and that it wouldn’t be long before they were holding their own with him.

  During the long vacation both worked to a grueling timetable, always imagining the other would be doing a little more. They stripped bare Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, and went to bed only with Keats. When they returned for the second year, they found that absence had made the heart grow even more hostile; and when they were both awarded A-plus for their essays o
n Beowulf, it didn’t help. Simon Jakes remarked at New College high table one night that if Philippa Jameson had been born a boy, some of his tutorials would undoubtedly have ended in blows.

  “Why don’t you separate them?” asked the warden sleepily.

  “What, and double my workload?” said Jakes. “They teach each other most of the time: I merely act as referee.”

  Occasionally the adversaries would seek his adjudication as to who was ahead of whom, and so confident was each of being the favored pupil that one would always ask in the other’s hearing. Jakes was far too canny to be drawn; instead he would remind them that the examiners would be the final arbiters. So they began their own subterfuge by referring to each other, just within earshot, as “that silly woman” and “that arrogant man.” By the end of their second year they were almost unable to remain in the same room together.

  In the long vacation William took a passing interest in Al Jolson and a girl called Ruby, while Philippa flirted with the Charleston and a young naval lieutenant from Dartmouth. But when the term started in earnest these interludes were never admitted and soon forgotten.

  At the beginning of their third year they both, on Simon Jakes’s advice, applied for the Charles Oldham Shakespeare prize along with every other student in the year who was considered likely to gain a first. The Charles Oldham was awarded for an essay on a set aspect of Shakespeare’s work, and Philippa and William both realized that this would be the only time in their academic lives that they would be tested against each other in closed competition. Surreptitiously, they worked their separate ways through the entire Shakespearean canon, from Henry VI to Henry VIII, and kept Jakes well beyond his appointed tutorial hours, demanding more and more refined discussion of more and more obscure points.

  The chosen theme for the prize essay that year was “Satire in Shakespeare.” Troilus and Cressida clearly called for the most attention, but both found there were nuances in virtually every one of the bard’s thirty-seven plays. “Not to mention a gross of sonnets,” wrote Philippa home to her father in a rare moment of self-doubt. As the year drew to a close it became obvious to all concerned that either William or Philippa had to win the prize while the other would undoubtedly come in second. Nevertheless no one was willing to venture an opinion as to who the victor would be. The New College porter, an expert in these matters, taking his usual bets for the Charles Oldham, made them both evens, ten to one against the rest of the field.

  Before the prize essay submission date, they both had to take their final degree examinations. Philippa and William confronted the examination papers every morning and afternoon for two weeks with an appetite that bordered on the vulgar. It came as no surprise to anyone that they both achieved first-class degrees in the final honors school. Rumor spread around the university that the two rivals had been awarded As in every one of their nine papers.

  “I would be willing to believe that is the case,” Philippa told William. “But I feel I must point out to you that there is a considerable difference between an A-plus and an A-minus.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” said William. “And when you discover who has won the Charles Oldham, you will know who was awarded less.”

  With only three weeks left before the prize essay had to be handed in, they both worked twelve hours a day, falling asleep over open textbooks, dreaming that the other was still beavering away. When the appointed hour came, they met in the marble-floored entrance hall of the Examination Schools, somber in the gloom.

  “Good morning, William, I do hope your efforts will manage to secure a place in the first six.”

  “Thank you, Philippa. If they don’t I shall look for the names C. S. Lewis, Nichol Smith, Nevil Coghill, Edmund Blunden, R. W. Chambers, and H. W. Garrard ahead of me. There’s certainly no one else in the field to worry about.”

  “I am only pleased,” said Philippa, as if she had not heard his reply, “that you were not seated next to me when I wrote my essay, thus ensuring for the first time in three years that you weren’t able to copy from my notes.”

  “The only item I have ever copied from you, Philippa, was the Oxford-to-London timetable, and that I discovered later to be out-of-date, which was in keeping with the rest of your efforts.”

  They both handed in their twenty-five-thousand-word essays to the collector’s office in the Examination Schools and left without a further word, returning to their respective colleges impatiently to await the result.

  William tried to relax the weekend after submitting his essay, and for the first time in three years he played some tennis, against a girl from St. Anne’s, failing to win a game, let alone a set. He nearly sank when he went swimming, and actually did so when punting. He was only relieved that Philippa had not been witness to any of his feeble physical efforts.

  On Monday night after a resplendent dinner with the warden of Merton, he decided to take a walk along the banks of the Cherwell to clear his head before going to bed. The May evening was still light as he made his way down through the narrow confines of Merton Wall, across the meadows to the banks of the Cherwell. As he strolled along the winding path, he thought he spied his rival ahead of him under a tree, reading. He considered turning back but decided she might already have spotted him, so he kept on walking.

  He had not seen Philippa. for three days, although she had rarely been out of his thoughts: Once he had won the Charles Oldham, the silly woman would have to climb down from that high horse of hers. He smiled at the thought and decided to walk nonchalantly past her. As he drew nearer, he lifted his eyes from the path in front of him to steal a quick glance in her direction, and could feel himself reddening in anticipation of her inevitable well-timed insult. Nothing happened, so he looked more carefully, only to discover on closer inspection that she was not reading: Her head was bowed in her hands, and she appeared to be sobbing quietly. He slowed his progress to observe not the formidable rival who had for three years dogged his every step, but a forlorn and lonely creature who looked somewhat helpless.

  William’s first reaction was to think that the winner of the prize essay competition had been leaked to her and that he had indeed achieved his victory. On reflection, he realized that could not be the case: the examiners would only have received the essays that morning and since all the assessors read each submission, the results could not possibly be forthcoming until at least the end of the week. Philippa did not look up when he reached her side—he was even unsure whether she was aware of his presence. As he stopped to gaze at his adversary William could not help noticing how her long red hair curled just as it touched the shoulder. He sat down beside her, but still she did not stir.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

  She raised her head, revealing a face flushed from crying.

  “No, nothing, William, except leave me alone. You deprive me of solitude without affording me company.”

  William was pleased that he immediately recognized the little literary allusion. “What’s the matter, Madame de Sévigné?” he asked, more out of curiosity than concern, torn between sympathy and pleasure at catching her with her guard down.

  It seemed a long time before she replied.

  “My father died this morning,” she said finally, as if speaking to herself.

  It struck William as strange that after three years of seeing Philippa almost every day, he knew nothing about her home life.

  “And your mother?” he said.

  “She died when I was three. I don’t even remember her. My father is—” she paused “—was a parish priest and brought me up, sacrificing everything he had to get me to Oxford, even the family silver. I wanted so much to win the Charles Oldham for him.”

  William put his arm tentatively on Philippa’s shoulder.

  “Don’t be absurd. When you win the prize, they’ll pronounce you the star pupil of the decade. After all, you will have had to beat me to achieve the distinction.”

  She tri
ed to laugh. “Of course I wanted to beat you, William, but only for my father.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Cancer, only he never let me know. He asked me not to go home before the summer term as he felt the break might interfere with my finals and the Charles Oldham. While all the time he must have been keeping me away because he knew if I saw the state he was in, that would have been the end of my completing any serious work.”

  “Where do you live?” asked William, again surprised that he did not know.

  “Brockenhurst. In Hampshire. I’m going back there tomorrow morning. The funeral’s on Wednesday.”

  “May I take you?” asked William.

  Philippa looked up and was aware of a softness in her adversary’s eyes that she had not seen before. “That would be kind, William.”

  “Come on then, you silly woman,” he said. “I’ll walk you back to your college.”

  “Last time you called me ‘silly woman’ you meant it.”

  William found it natural that they should hold hands as they walked along the riverbank. Neither spoke until they reached Somerville.

  “What time shall I pick you up?” he asked, not letting go of her hand.

  “I didn’t know you had a car.”

  “My father presented me with an old MG when I was awarded a first. I have been longing to find some excuse to show the damn thing off to you. It has push-button ignition, you know.”

  “Obviously he didn’t want to risk waiting to give you the car on the Charles Oldham results.” William laughed more heartily than the little dig merited.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Put it down to habit. I shall look forward to seeing if you drive as appallingly as you write, in which case the journey may never come to any conclusion. I’ll be ready for you at ten.”