Short Story (The Man Who Hated Time) - Beginners

 I could tell that he was going to ask me for money. Because my suit was new and his was old, my glass was full and his was empty, I was sorry for him. A man always wonders at such times if he himself won't have to ask for money from a stranger someday. In twenty years I would be as old as he -about sixty- and what might happen to me in twenty years?  He came over, sat down, and leaned across the table. He pulled out a watch from his pocket and laid it between us. It was a good silver watch, with those beautifully-made gold hands that you don't see any more.  "It's your for two pounds. Nothing wrong with it, and I got it honestly."  You could see at once that he was used to doing this by the way he ignored any talk about anything else and said what he wanted to say at once.  "I don't want it," I said. But because I was sorry for the man, as I pushed the watch back I passed a ten-shilling note with it. He was so surprised that he couldn't say anything. I ordered some food and a drink for him.  "I wish you would just buy the watch," he said while he was eating.  "Forget it," I said.  He seemed to want to tell me something. "I hate the sight of watches," he cried out suddendly, like a man remembering something that he had forgotten. "Watches started it all."  "All what?"  "This." He pointed to his poor clothes and began to eat again.  It was raining, and I had half an hour to wait before I had to meet someone. So I stayed.  "Chris Selby was his name," the old man said. "He was an actors' agent in London. Yes, he managed really important actors at the time. He was not poor, but he could never resist the temptation to get richer -even if it meant that he would have to go outside his own kind of business."  He told it easily and well. he had had a lot of practice telling it. It had all happened just after the First World War, a long time ago.  This Chris Selby, it seems, was a delightful man with a warm smile, a soft voice, and a poisonous nature if you got in the way of his love of money. But most people liked him because they didn't know his character.  He used to make five or six trips a year from London to Paris, seeing new plays and musical shows. He knew lots of people in Paris, and never lacked company in the evenings. Twice a year he would take his car.  He always went from Dover to Calais and back the same way. Most of the men in customs knew and liked him. When you saw him for only ten minutes five or six times a year he was easy enough to like. It was people who knew him very well who learned to dislike him. Besides, he always gave the customs men free tickets to London plays.  He never had any trouble with customs, and, except for those two car trips a year, there was no need for trouble, because he never tried to smuggle anything across the border. But when he took the car -that was different. Twice a year he used to bring back about five thousand watches.  That sounds like a lot, but it's surprising how many watches you can put into one car, especially if the floor of the car is a false one and the gas tank holds only two gallons of gas, with room for watches. Of course he had to stop for gas often, but that was a small problem when he could earn a thousand pounds from each trip.  If you or I tried to do anything like that, we'd be as nervous as a cat the in the rain, and we would probably show at once what we had done. But Chris Selby never felt nervous and he knew just how to smuggle his watches.  Well, one November day Chris Selby left London in his car, feeling angry. The watches he had brought the last time were not worth as much as Chris had expected. The trip had not been as profitable as it should have been. He was going to talk about this with the jeweler when he saw him again.  But as he drove into the Dover docks, he did not show his anger. He gave tickets for a new play to the Customs men, and in two hours he was driving on the paris road, his anger under control.  In Paris, he went to see the dealer, a little jeweler named Monsieur Audiat, who was helped in the store by his rather dull brothers. Monsieur Audiat was careful as well as humble. Chris Selby was his only customer for smuggling and Minsieur Audiat was glad to have a regular twice-a-year profit rather than business every week with a risk of being found out. Chris found Audiat and his brothers in the back of the shop. Without any polite talk about their health and in a voice harsher than they had ever heard it before, he began to complain.  A thousand of the last shipment of watches had not worked; most of the others were poorly made; and all of them had been so badly packed that many had been broken on the way to London. He went on, telling what he thought of Audiat and his brothers, their parents, and the whole French nation.  Audiat stood there, hating Chris. He would have liked to kill him, but he did not want to destroy the source of a nice little profit. He finally explained that he had brought the bad watches from Switzerland and that he had not had time to look them over before he put them in the car. He promised that the next shipment, which was arriving the following day, would be perfectly all right.  But the next day the watches had not come. By the morning of the day after that, Selby had driven his car to the garage in back of Audiat's shop, and the watches still had not arrived.  Selby wanted the watches to be ready for him to take to Calais on the last boat that night. He wanted to be in London the next day for the first performance of a new play. He was very angry, and swore that if the watches didn't come by night he would take his business somewhere else in the future.  He spent the day in the company of a dancer whom he felt that he could help both professionally and privately in London. He telephoned Audiat every now and then to see if the watches had come. Finally, at six o'clock in the evening, he was told that the watched had just arrived. He immediately went to Audiat's garage.  He told Audiat just how he wanted to watches to be packed in the car. Audiat promised him again that his brothers would examine them all and see that they all worked. The car would be packed by four in the morning, which would give Selby time to drive to Calais and get the first morning boat. He would be in London after lunch, and would be able to see his new play that evening.  Just after four in the evening he was in his car, singing to himself, driving fast, and smiling at the woman at the railroad gates. When he used his smile for practice, Selby didn't care what kind of woman it was. It was a cold morning and he went through the French customs quickly. He watched the men put his car on the boat and then he went below, had coffee, and slept.  At Dover all his bags were opened by the custom man. Then he walked to his car. The customs officer who was looking at the car was a man he knew well, a man about his own age. Selby gave him a big smile, and answered the usual questions. Everything went well, just as it always had: the smile, the joke, the easy manner, and the promise of a free seat at the new play if the officer would write and ask him sometime.  He had his hand on the car door; he was about to get in and drive away, when there was suddendly a mad noise of whistles for a few moments and then everything stopped.  Chris Selby didn't have to be told what that meant. In those days the First World War was still fresh in everyone's memory, and when the whistles blew at eleven o'clock on Armistice Day, everybody stopped and there was silence for two minutes in memory of the war dead. There really was a silence. Even the birds stopped calling. Chris Selby and the customs officer stood by the car and bowed their heads. You could hear the water against the dock, and that was all.  Or rather, that was almost all -something else was heard too. From the car, not loud enough for anyone else to hear, it's true, but loud enough to let the customs man know where they were hidden, came the gentle sound of five thousand watches ticking. They had all been carefully wound by the Audiat brothers, who had wanted to please Selby by making sure that this time he had watches that worked as well as watches that looked nice.  It was then that my friend stopped his story to finish his lunch. There was still something more I wanted to know. I said: "Now tell me that you're Chris Selby and maybe I will buy that watch you offered to me for two pounds."  But the old man shook his head. "Selby died years ago. No, I'm the customs officer he talked to. With his smile and his charm he persuaded me to forget that I had heard the watches, and I even agreed to help him when he brought his watches over twice a year in his car. Two years later we were both caught."

The Man Who Hated Time - Victor Canning