Stories of the Strange and Sinister (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) by Frank Baker

Lionel’s temper burst out. ‘My mother’s dying,’ he cried, ‘and you start this sort of talk. You’re too damned selfish, that’s the trouble. I’m leaving today and you’ve jolly well got to look after the place yourself. Do you good! You’ll have less time for those ridiculous poems you keep saying you’re working on but which nobody ever sees.’
    ‘I’ll thank you to attack me. Not my poems.’
    ‘Oh, this is a silly argument. Pull yourself together, Harold, for God’s sake.’
    ‘There’s nothing to pull together. I’m a sick man.’
    ‘I don’t believe it. If you took more exercise and stopped reading all those unhealthy books, you’d be a different man. You’re not ill. You’re weary. That’s all.’ Into Lionel’s mind came an image; a choir-boy in the vestry of a Yorkshire church. ‘Art thou languid?’ he sneered.
    He saw Harold slowly rising from the table. Then he ran upstairs to pack his bag, crying, as he ran, a mocking, inane echo of the choirboys’ taunt: ‘No, he’s weary! No, he’s weary!’
    Resentment filled Harold Weary as he heard again those words which had always hung in his mind. For indeed he felt, he had always felt, tired to death – and knew, and had always known, that he had been born only to die. But was not death also the gateway to his true vocation? Now he knew, with absolute certainty, that he would haunt Lionel Hoare; and he knew, too, that Lionel both expected it and dreaded it. For what could be the ultimate purpose of their partnership, except that Hoare should be haunted by the ghost of Weary? The uneasy look along the canal, the fear in the bright eyes . . . Harold smiled, then chuckled, then fell to a fit of harsh coughing. How glorious the future was going to be!
    Capriciously, his mind pointed to another mood; he realized with embittered tenderness how much he loved this friend. Even though he had been so cruelly hurt by him, could he, in cold blood (the aptness of the phrase pleased him), submit him to such a fate? Yet how could he be spared? For, once dead, Harold knew that he would have no control over his movements. There was no escape for the wretched Lionel. A ghost must walk where his fate lay.
    He stood at the table, fingering a bread-knife, tormented by the thought of the inevitable torments he must inflict, and would enjoy inflicting, upon his only true friend. He was not a cruel man; he did not desire such a fate for Lionel. But what escape could there be for him?
    There was only one certain escape. Lionel must die before him.
    As soon as that thought entered his mind he was filled with compassion for his friend. Quickly he went upstairs, anxious only to appease him.
    ‘Lionel, I’m sorry.’ Lionel was wrapping shoes in newspaper and did not look up. ‘Forgive me. You must go away – of course you must. Only – come back. Don’t desert me. I’m too proud to tell anyone else what I told you. I knew even as a kid that I wouldn’t live long. That’s why I wanted a friend like you, someone healthy and normal. I don’t envy you your good health. When I die you’ll have the shop – you’ll have everything .’ He paused and could not resist a smile; so much was implied in the word ‘everything’. ‘You won’t be too old to marry,’ he added. He thought a wife would help Lionel to bear the burden of his haunting.
    It was as though the laugh of Ilona had tumbled in the room. Lionel for a moment could not speak. Then he took Harold’s hand. ‘Chuck it, old man!’ he said. ‘Talk to me about anything, but not about getting married. There! Of course I’ll come back. And we’ll get you well somehow.’
    He whistled the tune of the ‘Valse Triste’ as he continued his packing.
    The mother died, the father went to live with some friends, and Lionel, after three weeks in old haunts, decided to spend a few days in London before returning to Wellsborough. He wanted, if only for a short while, the gaiety and exuberance of a