A curious kind of liberation
William Trevor
THE CLOTHES THEY STOOD UP IN In all sorts of ways the short story is an awkward customer. It is so for the publish- er, lost in his conviction that when ten or a dozen are gathered together the market- place doesn't want them. The 'cont. on p. 35' of magazines means a single uninviting gutter of type squashed between advertise- ments for underwear and kitchen aids. Uncomfortable with so many unrelieved words, newspapers lose their heads and add cheery illustrations, usually to disas- trous effect. And short stories themselves trade fruitfully in the awkwardness of truths that reverberate as explosions when the telling is all it should be.
It is a myth of publishing that short-story collections don't sell: they do so if they're encouraged to, and if they're good. And if there's an objection to the nature of collec- tions — that one story does not lead conve- niently into another as the chapters of a novel do — the simple answer is the story on its own. The Victorians were notably successful in offering this, although their stories were usually bulkier than modern ones and therefore appeared to offer more, if in fact rarely doing so. Small presses, such as the Colophon and Clarion Tales, produce single stories as collectors' items today. Tales for Travellers, launched in the United States in the 1970s by the admirable James H. Schmidt, now has a British equiv- alent in Alexander Waugh's splendid new Travelman series. The format is similar in both: each story unfolds, as a map does.
Alan Bennett's The Clothes They Stood Up In — also published on its own — comes pocket-sized, 111 short pages con- ventionally bound. It is the story of a bur- glary and its aftermath: still full of Cosi fan Tutte, the Ransomes return from the opera to find their flat in Naseby Mansions empty. Furniture, knick-knacks, carpets, cur- tains, every stitch of clothing, the casserole simmering at gas mark 4 in the oven, lava- tory brush, lavatory paper: all gone. The police are nonchalant and send round a counsellor called Dusty,
a biggish girl who, perhaps wisely, had opted for a smock rather than a frock and with it a cardigan so long and ample it was almost a dress in itself, one pocket stuffed with her diary and notebook, the other sagging under the weight of mobile phone.
Burglary, it seems to Dusty, is not the problem here. 'I know you must be hurting,' is how she puts it, and advises Mrs Ransome to see the whole experience as a learning curve. Victims single themselves out.
Be it burglary, mugging or road accidents, these mishaps were simply the means by which inadequate people came to her notice.
It could well be that the Ransomes' loss of their property might be a kind of liberation.
Understandably, the Ransomes do not share this view. Neither comforted by counselling nor in any way assisted by the police, they discover on their own the whereabouts of what Dusty has called their 'gear'. On an industrial estate near Ayles- bury, in a large storage hangar, their belongings have been lovingly reassembled, exactly as they were in Naseby Mansions. The evening newspaper. is again on the hall table, the casserole in the oven, only one or two missing from the After Eights, and Mr Ransome's cardigan and silk scarf clothing a young man called Martin.
Comic fantasy that turns out to be both serious and real is a form that pleads for the stage, and succeeds best when belief is theatrically suspended. Few playwrights today write sharper dialogue or probe more tellingly into the frailties and occa- sional strengths of the human psyche than Alan Bennett. None knows more about getting each scene just right or is as consis- tently witty. This same talent unravels the slightly overcrowded plot of The Clothes They Stood Up In and subtly tightens the tension as the mystery thickens: there's more than enough here for a whole long evening. Presented as a short story — and rightly published in its solitary splendour — Mr Bennett's clever idea does nicely enough. But limelight and actors and rip- ples of applause would elevate it to the heights where it belongs.
'Yes, that's right, a deep pan pizza with extra wildebeest topping!'
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