Creepy "magic" story for Christmas from H. G. Wells and Alfred Hitchcock

Amazon.com...

Out for a walk in London one day, Gip and his father happen upon a magic shop. At Gip's urging, the two go in — and things grow more and more curious by the minute. Counters, store fixtures, and mirrors seem to move around the room, and the shopkeeper is most mysterious of all. Gip is thrilled by all he sees, and his father is at first amused, but when things become stranger and sinister father is no longer sure where reality ends and illusion begins.

The Magic Shop

by

H. G. Wells

I had seen the Magic Shop from afar several times; I had passed it once or twice, a shop window of alluring little objects, magic balls, magic hens, wonderful cones, ventriloquist dolls, the material of the basket trick, packs of cards that looked all right, and all that sort of thing, but never had I thought of going in until one day, almost without warning, Gip hauled me by my finger right up to the window, and so conducted himself that there was nothing for it but to take him in. I had not thought the place was there, to tell the truth--a modest-sized frontage in Regent Street, between the picture shop and the place where the chicks run about just out of patent incubators, but there it was sure enough. I had fancied it was down nearer the Circus, or round the corner in Oxford Street, or even in Holborn; always over the way and a little inaccessible it had been, with something of the mirage in its position; but here it was now quite indisputably, and the fat end of Gip's pointing finger made a noise upon the glass.

"If I was rich," said Gip, dabbing a finger at the Disappearing Egg, "I'd buy myself that. And that"--which was The Crying Baby, Very Human --and that," which was a mystery, and called, so a neat card asserted, "Buy One and Astonish Your Friends."

"Anything," said Gip, "will disappear under one of those cones. I have read about it in a book.

"And there, dadda, is the Vanishing Halfpenny--, only they've put it this way up so's we can't see how it's done."

Gip, dear boy, inherits his mother's breeding, and he did not propose to enter the shop or worry in any way; only, you know, quite unconsciously he lugged my finger doorward, and he made his interest clear.

"That," he said, and pointed to the Magic Bottle.

"If you had that?" I said; at which promising inquiry he looked up with a sudden radiance.

"I could show it to Jessie," he said, thoughtful as ever of others.

"It's less than a hundred days to your birthday, Gibbles," I said, and laid my hand on the door-handle.

Gip made no answer, but his grip tightened on my finger, and so we came into the shop.

It was no common shop this; it was a magic shop, and all the prancing precedence Gip would have taken in the matter of mere toys was wanting. He left the burthen of the conversation to me.

It was a little, narrow shop, not very well lit, and the door-bell pinged again with a plaintive note as we closed it behind us. For a moment or so we were alone and could glance about us. There was a tiger in papier-mache on the glass case that covered the low counter--a grave, kind-eyed tiger that waggled his head in a methodical manner; there were several crystal spheres, a china hand holding magic cards, a stock of magic fish-bowls in various sizes, and an immodest magic hat that shamelessly displayed its springs. On the floor were magic mirrors; one to draw you out long and thin, one to swell your head and vanish your legs, and one to make you short and fat like a draught; and while we were laughing at these the shopman, as I suppose, came in.

At any rate, there he was behind the counter--a curious, sallow, dark man, with one ear larger than the other and a chin like the toe-cap of a boot.

"What can we have the pleasure?" he said, spreading his long, magic fingers on the glass case; and so with a start we were aware of him.

"I want," I said, "to buy my little boy a few simple tricks."

"Legerdemain?" he asked. "Mechanical? Domestic?"

"Anything amusing?" said I.

"Um!" said the shopman, and scratched his head for a moment as if thinking. Then, quite distinctly, he drew from his head a glass ball. "Something in this way?" he said, and held it out.

The action was unexpected. I had seen the trick done at entertainments endless times before--it's part of the common stock of conjurers-- but I had not expected it here.

"That's good," I said, with a laugh.

"Isn't it?" said the shopman.

Gip stretched out his disengaged hand to take this object and found merely a blank palm.

"It's in your pocket," said the shopman, and there it was!

"How much will that be?" I asked.

"We make no charge for glass balls," said the shopman politely. "We get them,"--he picked one out of his elbow as he spoke--"free." He produced another from the back of his neck, and laid it beside its predecessor on the counter. Gip regarded his glass ball sagely, then directed a look of inquiry at the two on the counter, and finally brought his round-eyed scrutiny to the shopman, who smiled.

"You may have those too," said the shopman, "and, if you don't mind, one from my mouth. So!"

Gip counselled me mutely for a moment, and then in a profound silence put away the four balls, resumed my reassuring finger, and nerved himself for the next event.

"We get all our smaller tricks in that way," the shopman remarked.

I laughed in the manner of one who subscribes to a jest. "Instead of going to the wholesale shop," I said. "Of course, it's cheaper."

"In a way," the shopman said. "Though we pay in the end. But not so heavily--as people suppose. . . . Our larger tricks, and our daily provisions and all the other things we want, we get out of that hat. . . And you know, sir, if you'll excuse my saying it, there isn't a wholesale shop, not for Genuine Magic goods, sir. I don't know if you noticed our inscription--the Genuine Magic shop." He drew a business-card from his cheek and handed it to me. "Genuine," he said, with his finger on the word, and added, "There is absolutely no deception, sir."

He seemed to be carrying out the joke pretty thoroughly, I thought.

He turned to Gip with a smile of remarkable affability. "You, you know, are the Right Sort of Boy."

I was surprised at his knowing that, because, in the interests of discipline, we keep it rather a secret even at home; but Gip received it in unflinching silence, keeping a steadfast eye on him.

"It's only the Right Sort of Boy gets through that doorway."

And, as if by way of illustration, there came a rattling at the door, and a squeaking little voice could be faintly heard. "Nyar! I warn 'a go in there, dadda, I warn 'a go in there. Ny-a-a-ah!" and then the accents of a down-trodden parent, urging consolations and propitiations. "It's locked, Edward," he said.

"But it isn't," said I.

"It is, sir," said the shopman, "always--for that sort of child," and as he spoke we had a glimpse of the other youngster, a little, white face, pallid from sweet-eating and over-sapid food, and distorted by evil passions, a ruthless little egotist, pawing at the enchanted pane. "It's no good, sir," said the shopman, as I moved, with my natural helpfulness, doorward, and presently the spoilt child was carried off howling.

"How do you manage that?" I said, breathing a little more freely.

"Magic!" said the shopman, with a careless wave of the hand, and behold! sparks of coloured fire flew out of his fingers and vanished into the shadows of the shop.

"You were saying," he said, addressing himself to Gip, "before you came in, that you would like one of our 'Buy One and Astonish your Friends' boxes?"

Gip, after a gallant effort, said "Yes."

"It's in your pocket."

And leaning over the counter--he really had an extraordinarily long body--this amazing person produced the article in the customary conjurer's manner. "Paper," he said, and took a sheet out of the empty hat with the springs; "string," and behold his mouth was a string-box, from which he drew an unending thread, which when he had tied his parcel he bit off--and, it seemed to me, swallowed the ball of string. And then he lit a candle at the nose of one of the ventriloquist's dummies, stuck one of his fingers (which had become sealing-wax red) into the flame, and so sealed the parcel. "Then there was the Disappearing Egg," he remarked, and produced one from within my coat-breast and packed it, and also The Crying Baby, Very Human. I handed each parcel to Gip as it was ready, and he clasped them to his chest.

He said very little, but his eyes were eloquent; the clutch of his arms was eloquent. He was the playground of unspeakable emotions. These, you know, were real Magics. Then, with a start, I discovered something moving about in my hat--something soft and jumpy. I whipped it off, and a ruffled pigeon--no doubt a confederate--dropped out and ran on the counter, and went, I fancy, into a cardboard box behind the papier-mache tiger.

"Tut, tut!" said the shopman, dexterously relieving me of my headdress; "careless bird, and--as I live--nesting!"

He shook my hat, and shook out into his extended hand two or three eggs, a large marble, a watch, about half-a-dozen of the inevitable glass balls, and then crumpled, crinkled paper, more and more and more, talking all the time of the way in which people neglect to brush their hats inside as well as out, politely, of course, but with a certain personal application. "All sorts of things accumulate, sir. . . . Not you, of course, in particular. . . . Nearly every customer. . . . Astonishing what they carry about with them. . . ." The crumpled paper rose and billowed on the counter more and more and more, until he was nearly hidden from us, until he was altogether hidden, and still his voice went on and on. "We none of us know what the fair semblance of a human being may conceal, sir. Are we all then no better than brushed exteriors, whited sepulchres--"

His voice stopped--exactly like when you hit a neighbour's gramophone with a well-aimed brick, the same instant silence, and the rustle of the paper stopped, and everything was still. . . .

"Have you done with my hat?" I said, after an interval.

There was no answer.

I stared at Gip, and Gip stared at me, and there were our distortions in the magic mirrors, looking very rum, and grave, and quiet. . . .

"I think we'll go now," I said. "Will you tell me how much all this comes to? . . . .

"I say," I said, on a rather louder note, "I want the bill; and my hat, please."

It might have been a sniff from behind the paper pile. . . .

"Let's look behind the counter, Gip," I said. "He's making fun of us."

I led Gip round the head-wagging tiger, and what do you think there was behind the counter? No one at all! Only my hat on the floor, and a common conjurer's lop-eared white rabbit lost in meditation, and looking as stupid and crumpled as only a conjurer's rabbit can do. I resumed my hat, and the rabbit lolloped a lollop or so out of my way.

"Dadda!" said Gip, in a guilty whisper.

"What is it, Gip?" said I.

"I do like this shop, dadda."

"So should I," I said to myself, "if the counter wouldn't suddenly extend itself to shut one off from the door." But I didn't call Gip's attention to that. "Pussy!" he said, with a hand out to the rabbit as it came lolloping past us; "Pussy, do Gip a magic!" and his eyes followed it as it squeezed through a door I had certainly not remarked a moment before. Then this door opened wider, and the man with one ear larger than the other appeared again. He was smiling still, but his eye met mine with something between amusement and defiance. "You'd like to see our show-room, sir," he said, with an innocent suavity. Gip tugged my finger forward. I glanced at the counter and met the shopman's eye again. I was beginning to think the magic just a little too genuine. "We haven't VERY much time," I said. But somehow we were inside the show-room before I could finish that.

"All goods of the same quality," said the shopman, rubbing his flexible hands together, "and that is the Best. Nothing in the place that isn't genuine Magic, and warranted thoroughly rum. Excuse me, sir!"

I felt him pull at something that clung to my coat-sleeve, and then I saw he held a little, wriggling red demon by the tail--the little creature bit and fought and tried to get at his hand--and in a moment he tossed it carelessly behind a counter. No doubt the thing was only an image of twisted indiarubber, but for the moment--! And his gesture was exactly that of a man who handles some petty biting bit of vermin. I glanced at Gip, but Gip was looking at a magic rocking- horse. I was glad he hadn't seen the thing. "I say," I said, in an undertone, and indicating Gip and the red demon with my eyes, "you haven't many things like that about, have you?"

"None of ours! Probably brought it with you," said the shopman-- also in an undertone, and with a more dazzling smile than ever. "Astonishing what people will carry about with them unawares!" And then to Gip, "Do you see anything you fancy here?"

There were many things that Gip fancied there.

He turned to this astonishing tradesman with mingled confidence and respect. "Is that a Magic Sword?" he said.

"A Magic Toy Sword. It neither bends, breaks, nor cuts the fingers. It renders the bearer invincible in battle against any one under eighteen. Half-a-crown to seven and sixpence, according to size. These panoplies on cards are for juvenile knights-errant and very useful-- shield of safety, sandals of swiftness, helmet of invisibility."

"Oh, daddy!" gasped Gip.

I tried to find out what they cost, but the shopman did not heed me. He had got Gip now; he had got him away from my finger; he had embarked upon the exposition of all his confounded stock, and nothing was going to stop him. Presently I saw with a qualm of distrust and something very like jealousy that Gip had hold of this person's finger as usually he has hold of mine. No doubt the fellow was interesting, I thought, and had an interestingly faked lot of stuff, really good faked stuff, still--

I wandered after them, saying very little, but keeping an eye on this prestidigital fellow. After all, Gip was enjoying it. And no doubt when the time came to go we should be able to go quite easily.

It was a long, rambling place, that show-room, a gallery broken up by stands and stalls and pillars, with archways leading off to other departments, in which the queerest-looking assistants loafed and stared at one, and with perplexing mirrors and curtains. So perplexing, indeed, were these that I was presently unable to make out the door by which we had come.

The shopman showed Gip magic trains that ran without steam or clockwork, just as you set the signals, and then some very, very valuable boxes of soldiers that all came alive directly you took off the lid and said--. I myself haven't a very quick ear and it was a tongue- twisting sound, but Gip--he has his mother's ear--got it in no time. "Bravo!" said the shopman, putting the men back into the box unceremoniously and handing it to Gip. "Now," said the shopman, and in a moment Gip had made them all alive again.

"You'll take that box?" asked the shopman.

"We'll take that box," said I, "unless you charge its full value. In which case it would need a Trust Magnate--"

"Dear heart! No!" and the shopman swept the little men back again, shut the lid, waved the box in the air, and there it was, in brown paper, tied up and--with Gip's full name and address on the paper!

The shopman laughed at my amazement.

"This is the genuine magic," he said. "The real thing."

"It's a little too genuine for my taste," I said again.

After that he fell to showing Gip tricks, odd tricks, and still odder the way they were done. He explained them, he turned them inside out, and there was the dear little chap nodding his busy bit of a head in the sagest manner.

I did not attend as well as I might. "Hey, presto!" said the Magic Shopman, and then would come the clear, small "Hey, presto!" of the boy. But I was distracted by other things. It was being borne in upon me just how tremendously rum this place was; it was, so to speak, inundated by a sense of rumness. There was something a little rum about the fixtures even, about the ceiling, about the floor, about the casually distributed chairs. I had a queer feeling that whenever I wasn't looking at them straight they went askew, and moved about, and played a noiseless puss-in-the-corner behind my back. And the cornice had a serpentine design with masks--masks altogether too expressive for proper plaster.

Then abruptly my attention was caught by one of the odd-looking assistants. He was some way off and evidently unaware of my presence-- I saw a sort of three-quarter length of him over a pile of toys and through an arch--and, you know, he was leaning against a pillar in an idle sort of way doing the most horrid things with his features! The particular horrid thing he did was with his nose. He did it just as though he was idle and wanted to amuse himself. First of all it was a short, blobby nose, and then suddenly he shot it out like a telescope, and then out it flew and became thinner and thinner until it was like a long, red, flexible whip. Like a thing in a nightmare it was! He flourished it about and flung it forth as a fly-fisher flings his line.

My instant thought was that Gip mustn't see him. I turned about, and there was Gip quite preoccupied with the shopman, and thinking no evil. They were whispering together and looking at me. Gip was standing on a little stool, and the shopman was holding a sort of big drum in his hand.

"Hide and seek, dadda!" cried Gip. "You're He!"

And before I could do anything to prevent it, the shopman had clapped the big drum over him. I saw what was up directly. "Take that off," I cried, "this instant! You'll frighten the boy. Take it off!"

The shopman with the unequal ears did so without a word, and held the big cylinder towards me to show its emptiness. And the little stool was vacant! In that instant my boy had utterly disappeared? . . .

You know, perhaps, that sinister something that comes like a hand out of the unseen and grips your heart about. You know it takes your common self away and leaves you tense and deliberate, neither slow nor hasty, neither angry nor afraid. So it was with me.

I came up to this grinning shopman and kicked his stool aside.

"Stop this folly!" I said. "Where is my boy?"

"You see," he said, still displaying the drum's interior, "there is no deception---"

I put out my hand to grip him, and he eluded me by a dexterous movement. I snatched again, and he turned from me and pushed open a door to escape. "Stop!" I said, and he laughed, receding. I leapt after him--into utter darkness.

THUD!

"Lor' bless my 'eart! I didn't see you coming, sir!"

I was in Regent Street, and I had collided with a decent-looking working man; and a yard away, perhaps, and looking a little perplexed with himself, was Gip. There was some sort of apology, and then Gip had turned and come to me with a bright little smile, as though for a moment he had missed me.

And he was carrying four parcels in his arm!

He secured immediate possession of my finger.

For the second I was rather at a loss. I stared round to see the door of the magic shop, and, behold, it was not there! There was no door, no shop, nothing, only the common pilaster between the shop where they sell pictures and the window with the chicks! . . .

I did the only thing possible in that mental tumult; I walked straight to the kerbstone and held up my umbrella for a cab.

"'Ansoms," said Gip, in a note of culminating exultation.

I helped him in, recalled my address with an effort, and got in also. Something unusual proclaimed itself in my tail-coat pocket, and I felt and discovered a glass ball. With a petulant expression I flung it into the street.

Gip said nothing.

For a space neither of us spoke.

"Dada!" said Gip, at last, "that was a proper shop!"

I came round with that to the problem of just how the whole thing had seemed to him. He looked completely undamaged--so far, good; he was neither scared nor unhinged, he was simply tremendously satisfied with the afternoon's entertainment, and there in his arms were the four parcels.

Confound it! what could be in them?

"Um!" I said. "Little boys can't go to shops like that every day."

He received this with his usual stoicism, and for a moment I was sorry I was his father and not his mother, and so couldn't suddenly there, coram publico, in our hansom, kiss him. After all, I thought, the thing wasn't so very bad.

But it was only when we opened the parcels that I really began to be reassured. Three of them contained boxes of soldiers, quite ordinary lead soldiers, but of so good a quality as to make Gip altogether forget that originally these parcels had been Magic Tricks of the only genuine sort, and the fourth contained a kitten, a little living white kitten, in excellent health and appetite and temper.

I saw this unpacking with a sort of provisional relief. I hung about in the nursery for quite an unconscionable time. . . .

That happened six months ago. And now I am beginning to believe it is all right. The kitten had only the magic natural to all kittens, and the soldiers seem as steady a company as any colonel could desire. And Gip--?

The intelligent parent will understand that I have to go cautiously with Gip.

But I went so far as this one day. I said, "How would you like your soldiers to come alive, Gip, and march about by themselves?"

"Mine do," said Gip. "I just have to say a word I know before I open the lid."

"Then they march about alone?"

"Oh, quite, dadda. I shouldn't like them if they didn't do that."

I displayed no unbecoming surprise, and since then I have taken occasion to drop in upon him once or twice, unannounced, when the soldiers were about, but so far I have never discovered them performing in anything like a magical manner.

It's so difficult to tell.

There's also a question of finance. I have an incurable habit of paying bills. I have been up and down Regent Street several times, looking for that shop. I am inclined to think, indeed, that in that matter honour is satisfied, and that, since Gip's name and address are known to them, I may very well leave it to these people, whoever they may be, to send in their bill in their own time.

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour

Season 2, Episode 13

January 10th, 1964

Cast...

Leslie Nielsen, John Megna, Peggy McCay, David Opatoshu, Paul Hartman, William Sargent, and Hugh Sanders.

Directed by Robert Stevens.

Commentary...

bare•bones e-zine

FYI...

The young boy [John Megna] played Scout's brother in To Kill a Mockingbird.

"The Enormous Radio"

This should have been the basis of a Twilight Zone episode.

Wikipedia...

"The Enormous Radio" is a short story written by John Cheever in 1947. It first appeared in the May 17, 1947 issue of The New Yorker and was later collected in The Enormous Radio and Other Stories.

Plot...

Jim and Irene Westcott live contentedly on the 12th floor in an apartment building with their two children near Sutton Place (their city of residence is not mentioned, but Sutton Place is in New York City). Both Jim and Irene enjoy music very much, regularly attending concerts and spending a lot of time listening to music on their radio. However, the Westcotts kept their interest in music from their friends.

When their old radio breaks down, Jim orders a new one, but when it arrives Irene is shocked at the complete and utter ugliness of the device that Jim has bought. The radio is described as a large gumwood cabinet with numerous dials and switches that light up with a green light when it is plugged in. Until the new radio arrived, the Westcotts hardly ever argued and seemed to have a happy marriage.

One night, as Irene is sitting in the apartment listening to the radio she starts to hear interference in the form of a rustling noise over the music concert that is being broadcast. She tries to get the music back by flipping all of the switches and dials, but then begins to hear the sounds of people from other apartments in the building. She is so surprised by this that she shuts off the radio. Later that evening when Jim arrived home from work, he tried the radio to get some music. Instead of music, Jim hears elevator noises and doorbells.Believing that the electronics in the building are interfering with the signal he decides to turn off the radio and call the people who sold it to him and demand to have the radio repaired.

The radio is examined and the problem apparently fixed, but the next day while Irene is listening to a Chopin prelude she hears a man and woman who seem to be arguing. Realizing that the conversation is coming from people who live in a nearby apartment, she flicks a switch, but next hears a woman's voice reading a children's story, which she recognizes as belonging to her neighbor's children's nanny. She flips the switch again, but each time she does so she becomes privy to the events in another apartment. Irene demands that Jim turn off the radio because she is afraid her neighbors will hear her and Jim, just as they can hear the others in the building.

Over the next few days Irene listens in on the lives of her neighbors, and finds herself becoming both intrigued and horrified. Irene had become so obsessed with listening in on her neighbors, that she cut a luncheon short with a friend to go home and listen to the radio to hear what news would be revealed next in the lives of friends and neighbors. Jim noticed how strange Irene had become in her ways and conversations, especially at a dinner party the Wescott's attended. On the way home, Irene speaks of the stars like a little candle throwing its beam as to "shine a good deed in a naughty world."

Irene became totally involved in the lives on the radio and became depressed herself. She has gone from a pleasant, rather plain woman, to a woman who doubts who she is and doubts her relationship with her husband Jim. Once more, Jim arranges for the radio to be examined and this time the repairs are successful. The repairs are expensive and a great deal more than Jim can afford. All he wanted was for Irene to get some enjoyment from the radio. Instead the radio brought the Westcotts' peaceful life to an end. Not only was the second repair of the radio more than Jim could afford, but he also found unpaid clothing bills on Irene's dressing table. Thus the beginning of the hidden truths coming to the surface; Jim worrying about money issues and Irene worrying about the radio hearing their argument and the past indiscretions of her life.

The Enormous Radio

by

John Cheever

1947

Jim and Irene Wescott were the kind of people who seem to strike that satisfactory average of income, endeavor, and respectability that is reached by the statistical reports in college alumni bulletins.  They were the parents of two young children, they had been married nine years, they lived on the twelfth floor of an apartment house near Sutton Place, they went to the theater on an average of 10.3 times a year, and they hoped someday  to live in Westchester.  Irene Wescott was pleasant, rather plain girl with soft brown hair, and a wide, fine forehead upon which nothing at all had been written, and in the cold weather she wore a coat of fitch skins dyed to resemble mink.  You could not say that Jim Westcott looked younger than he was, but you could  at least say of him that he seemed to feel younger.  He wore his graying hair cut very short, he dressed in the kind of clothes his class had worn at Andover, and his manner was earnest, vehement, and intentionally naïve.  The Westcotts differed from their friends, their classmates, and their neighbors, only in an interest they shared in serious music.  They went to a great many concerts - although they seldom mentioned this ti anyone - and they spent a good deal of time listening to music on the radio.

Their radio was an old instrument, sensitive, unpredictable, and beyond repair.  Neither of them understood the mechanics of radio - or when the instrument faltered, Jim would strike the side of the cabinet with his hand.  This sometimes helped.  One Sunday afternoon, in the middle of the a Schubert quartet, the music faded away altogether.  Jim struck the cabinet repeatedly, but there was no response; the Schubert was lost to them forever.  He promised to buy Irene a new radio, and on Monday when he came home from work he told her that he had got one.  He refused to describe it, and said it would be a surprise for her when it came.

The radio was delivered at the kitchen door the following afternoon, and with the assistance of her maid and the handyman Irene uncrated it and brought it into the living room.  She was struck at once with the physical ugliness of the large gumwood cabinet.  Irene was proud of her living room, she had chosen its furnishings and colors as carefully as she chose her clothes, and now it seemed to her that her new radio stood among her intimate possessions like an aggressive intruder.  She was confounded by the number of dials and switches on the instrument panel, and she studied them thoroughly before she put the plug into a wall socket and turned the radio on.  The dials flooded with a malevolent green light, and in the distance she heard the music of a piano quartet.  The quintet was in the distance for only an instant; it bore down upon her with a speed greater than light and filled the apartment with the noise of music amplified so mightily that it knocked a china ornament from a table to the floor.  She rushed to the instrument and reduced the volume.  The violent forces that were snared in the ugly gumwood cabinet made her uneasy.  Her children came home from school then, and she took them to the Park.  It was not until later in the afternoon that she was able to return to the radio.

The maid had given the children their suppers and was supervising their baths when Irene turned on the radio, reduced the volume, and sat down to listen to a Mozart quintet that she knew and enjoyed.  The music came through clearly.  The new instrument had a much purer tone, she thought, than the old one.  She decided that tone was most important and that she could conceal the cabinet behind the sofa.  But as soon as she had made her peace with the radio, the interference began.  A crackling sound like the noise of a burning powder fuse began to accompany the singing of the strings.  Beyond the music, there was a rustling that reminded Irene unpleasantly of the sea, and as the quintet progressed, these noises were joined by the many others.  She tried all the dials and switches but nothing dimmed the interference, and she sat down, disappointed and bewildered, and tried to trace the flight of the melody.  The elevator shaft in her building ran beside the living-room wall, and it was the noise of the elevator that gave her a clue to the character of the static.  The rattling of the elevator cables and the opening and closing of the elevator doors were reproduced in her loudspeaker, and, realizing that the radio was sensitive to electrical currents of all sorts, she began to discern through the Mozart the ringing of telephone bells, the dialing of phones, and the lamentation of a vacuum cleaner.  By listening more carefully, she was able to distinguish doorbells, elevator bells, electric razors, and Waring mixers, whose sounds had been picked up from the apartments that surrounded hers and transmitted through her loudspeaker.  The powerful and ugly instrument, with its mistaken sensibility to discord, was more than she could hope to master, so she turned the thing off and went into the nursery to see her children.

When Jim Wescott came home that night, he went to the radio confidently and worked the controls.  He had the same sort of experience Irene had had.  A man was speaking on the station Jim had chosen, and his voice swung instantly from the distance into a force so powerful that it shook the apartment.  Jim turned the volume control and reduced the voice.  Then, a minute or two later, the interference began.  The ringing of telephones and doorbells set in, joined by the rasp of the elevator doors and the whir of cooking appliances.  The character of the noise had changed since Irene had tried the radio earlier; the last of the electric razors was being unplugged, the vacuum cleaners had all been returned to their closets, and the static reflected that change in pace that overtakes the city after the sun goes down.  He fiddled with the knobs but couldn’t get rid of the noises, so he turned the radio off and told Irene that in the morning he’d call the people who had sold it to him and give them hell.

The following afternoon, when Irene returned to the apartment from a luncheon date, the maid told her that a man had come and fixed the radio.  Irene went into the living room before she took off her hat or her furs and tried the instrument.  From the loudspeaker came a recording of the “Missouri Waltz.”  It reminded her of the thin, scratchy music from an old-fashioned phonograph that she sometimes head across the lake where she spent her summers.  She waited until the waltz had finished, expecting an explanation of the recording, but there was none.  The music was followed by silence, and then the plaintive and scratchy record was repeated.  She turned the dial and got a satisfactory burst of Caucasian music - thump of bare feet in the dust and the rattle of coin jewelry - but in the background she could hear the ringing of bells and a confusion of voices.  Her children came home from school then, and she turned off the radio and went to the nursery.

When Jim came home that night, he was tired, and he took a bath and changed his clothes.  Then he joined Irene in the living room.  He had just turned on the radio when the maid announced dinner, so he left it on, and Irene went to the table.

Jim was too tired to make even pretense of sociability, and there was nothing about the dinner to hold Irene’s interest, so her attention wandered from the food to the deposits of silver polish on the candlesticks and from there to the music in the other room.  She listened for a few minutes to a Chopin prelude and then was surprised to hear a man’s voice break in.  “For Christ’s sake, Kathy,” he said, “do you always have to play the piano when I get home?”  The music stopped abruptly.  “It’s the only chance I have,” the woman said.  “I’m at the office all day.” “So am I,” the man said.  He added something obscene about an upright piano, and slammed a door.  The passionate and melancholy music began again.

“Did you hear that?” Irene asked.

“What?” Jim was eating his dessert.

“The radio.  A man said something while the music was still going on - something dirty.”

“It’s probably a play.”

“I don’t think it is a play,” Irene said.

They left the table and took their coffee into the living room.  Irene asked Jim to try another station.  He turned the knob. “Have you seen my garters?”  A man asked.  “Button me up,” a woman said.  “Have you seen my garters?” the man said again.  “Just button me up and I’ll find your garters,” the woman said.  Jim shifted to another station.  “I wish you wouldn’t leave apple cores in the ashtrays,” a man said. “I hate the smell.”

“This is strange,” Jim said.

“Isn’t it?” Irene said.

Jim turned the knob again.  “‘On the coast of Coromandel where the early pumpkins blow,’” a woman with a pronounced English accent said, “‘in the middle of the woods lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.  Two old chairs, and half a candle, one old jug without a handle . . .’”

“My God!” Irene cried.  “That’s the Sweeneys’ nurse.”

“‘These were all his worldly goods,’” the British voice continued.

“Turn that thing off,” Irene said.”Maybe they can hear us.” Jim switched the radio off.  “That was Miss Armstrong, the Sweeneys’ nurse,” Irene said.  “She must be reading to the little girl.  They live in 17-B.  I’ve talked with Miss Armstrong in the Park.  I know her voice very well.  We must be getting other people’s apartments.”

“That’s impossible,” Jim said.

“Well, that was the Sweeneys’ nurse,” Irene said hotly.  “I know her voice.  I know it very well.  I’m wondering if they can hear us.”

Jim turned the switch.  First from a distance and then nearer, nearer, as if borne on the wind, came the pure accents of the Sweeneys’ nurse again: “‘Lady Jingly!  Lady Jingly!’” she said, “‘sitting where the pumpkins blow, will you come and be my wife? said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò . . .’”

Jim went over to the radio and said, “Hello” loudly into the speaker.

“‘I am tired of living singly,’” the nurse went on, “‘on this coast so wild and shingly, I’m a-weary of my life; if you’ll come and be my wife, quite serene would be my life . . .’”

“I guess she can’t hear us,” Irene said.  “Try something else.”

Jim turned to another station, and the living room was filled with the uproar of a cocktail party that had overshot its mark.  Someone was playing the piano and singing the “Whiffenpoof Song,”[1] and the voices that surrounded the piano were vehement and happy.  “Eat some more sandwiches,” a woman shrieked.  There were screams of laughter and a dish of some sort crashed to the floor.

“Those must be the Fullers, in 11-E,” Irene said. “I knew they were giving a party this afternoon.  I saw her in the liquor store.  Isn’t this too divine?  Try something else.  See if you can get those people in 18-C.”

The Westcotts overheard that evening a monologue on salmon fishing in Canada, a bridge game, running comments on home movies of what had apparently been a fortnight at Sea Island, and a bitter family quarrel about an overdraft at the bank.  They turned off their radio at midnight and went to bed, weak with laughter.  Sometime in the night, their son began to call for a glass of water and Irene got one and took it to his room.  It was very early.  All the lights in the neighborhood were extinguished, and from the boy’s window she could see the empty street.  She went into the living room and tried the radio.  There was some faint coughing, a moan, and then a man spoke.  “Are you all right, darling?” he asked.  “Yes,” a woman said wearily.  “Yes, I’m all right, I guess,” and then she added with great feeling, “But, you know, Charlie, I don’t feel like myself any more.  Sometimes there are about fifteen or twenty minutes in the week when I feel like myself.  I don’t like to go to another doctor, because the doctor’s bills are so awful already, but I just don’t feel like myself, Charlie.  I just never feel like myself.”  They were not young, Irene thought.  She guessed from the timbre of their voices that they were middle-aged.  The restrained melancholy of the dialogue and the draft from the bedroom window made her shiver, and she went back to bed.

The following morning, Irene cooked breakfast for the family - the maid didn’t come up from her room in the basement until ten - braided her daughter’s hair, and waited at the door until her children and her husband had been carried away in the elevator.  Then she went into the living room and tried the radio.  “I don’t want to go to school,” a child screamed.  “I hate school.  I won’t go to school.  I hate school.”  “You will go to school,” an enraged woman said.  “We paid eight hundred dollars to get you into that school and you’‘ll go if it kills you.”  The next number on the dial produced the worn record of the “Missouri Waltz.”  Irene shifted the control and invaded the privacy of several breakfast tables.  She overheard demonstrations of indigestion, carnal love, abysmal vanity, faith, and despair.  Irene’s life was nearly as simple and sheltered as it appeared to be, and the forthright and sometimes brutal language that came from the loudspeaker that morning astonished and troubles her.  She continued to listen until her maid came in.  The she turned off the radio quickly, since this insight, she realized, was a furtive one.

Irene had a luncheon date with a friend that day, and she left her apartment a little after twelve.  There were a number of women in the elevator when it stopped at her floor.  She stared at their handsome and impassive faces, their furs, and the cloth flowers in their hats.  Which one of them had been at Sea Island?  she wondered.  Which one had overdrawn her bank account?  The elevator stopped at the tenth floor and a woman with a pair of Skye terriers joined them, Her hair was rigged high on her head and she wore a mink cape.  She was humming the “Missouri Waltz.”

Irene had two Martinis at lunch, and she looked searchingly at her friend and wondered what her secrets were.  They had intended to go shopping after lunch, but Irene excused herself and went home.  She told the maid that she was not to be disturbed; then she went into the living room, closed the doors, and switched on the radio.  She heard, in the course of the afternoon, the halting conversation of a woman entertaining her aunt, the hysterical conclusion of a luncheon party, and hostess briefing her maid about some cocktail guests.  “Don’t give the best Scotch to anyone who hasn’t white hair,” the hostess said. “See if you can get rid of the liver paste before you pass those hot things, and could you lend me five dollars? I want to tip the elevator man.”

As the afternoon waned, the conversations increased in intensity.  From where Irene sat, she could see the open sky above the East River.  There were hundreds of clouds in the sky, as though the south wind had broken the winter into pieces and were blowing it north, and on her radio she could hear the arrival of cocktail guests and the return of children and businessmen from their schools and offices.  “I found a good-sized diamond on the bathroom floor this morning,” a woman said.  “It must have fallen out of the bracelet Mrs. Dunston was wearing last night.”  “We’ll sell it,” a man said.  “Take it down to the jeweler on Madison Avenue and sell it.  Mrs. Dunston was won’t know the difference, and we could use a couple of hundred bucks . . .” “‘Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement’s,’” the Sweeneys’ nurse sang.  “Halfpence and farthings, say the bells of St. Martin’s.  When will you pay me?  say the bells at old Bailey . . .’”[2] “It’s not a hat,” a woman cried, and at her back roared a cocktail party.  “It’s not a hat, it’s a love affair.  That’s what Walter Florell said.  He said it’s not a hat, it’s a love affair,” and then, in a lower voice, the same woman added, “Talk to somebody, for Christ’s sake, honey, talk to somebody.  If she catches you standing here not talking to anybody, she’ll take us off her invitation list, and I love these parties.”

The Wescotts were going out for dinner that night, and when Jim came home, Irene was dressing.  She seemed sad and vague, and he brought her a drink.  They were dining with their friends in the neighborhood, and they walked to where they were going.   The sky was broad and filled with light. It was of those splendid spring evenings that excite memory and desire, and the air that touched their hands an aces felt very soft.  A Salvation Army band was on the corner playing “Jesus Is Sweeter”. Irene drew her husband’s arm and held him there for a minute, to hear the music.”They are really such nice people, aren’t they?” she said.  They have such nice faces.  Actually , they are so much nicer than a lot of the people we know.”    She took a bill from her purse and walked over and dropped it into the tambourine.   There was in her face, when she returned to he husband, a look of radiant melancholy that he was not familiar with.   And her conduct at the dinner party that night seemed strange to him, too.  She interrupted her hostess rudely and stared at the people across the table from her with an intensity for which she would have punished her children.

It was still mild when they walked home from the party, and Irene looked up at the spring stars. “How far the little candle throws its beams,” she exclaimed. “ So sine a good deed in a naughty world.” She waited that night until Jim had fallen asleep, and then went out into the living room and turned on the radio.

Jim came home at about six the next night. Emma, the maid, let him in , and he had taken off his has and was taking off his coat when Irene ran into the hall. Her face was shining with tears and her hair was disordered . “Go up to 16-C , Jim!” she screamed. “Don’t take off your coat.  Go up to 16-C. Mr Osborn’s beating his wife. They’ve been quarreling since four o’clock, and now he is hitting her. Go up there and stop him.”

From the radio in the living room, Jim heard screams, obscenities, and thuds. “ You know you don’t have to listen to this sort of thing,”he said.  He strode into the living room and turned the switch. “It’s indecent,” he said. “It’s like looking into windows. You know you don’t have to listen to this sort of thing. You can turn it off”

“Oh, it’s so terrible, it’s so dreadful,” Irene was sobbing. I’ve been listening all day, and it’s so depressing.”

“ Well, if it’s so depressing, why do you listen to it? I brought this dammed radio to give you some pleasure,” he said. “I paid a great deal of money for it. I thought it might make you happy. I wanted to make you happy”

“Don’t , don’t, don’t, don’t quarrel with me,” she moaned, and laid her head on his shoulder. “ All the others have been quarreling all day. Everybody’s been quarreling. They’re all worried about money. Mrs. Hutchinson’s mother is dying of cancer in Florida and they don’t have enough money to send her to the Mayo Clinic. At least, Mr Hutchinson says they don’t have enough money. And some woman in this building is having and affair with the handyman- with that hideous handyman. It’s too disgusting. And Mrs. Melville has heart trouble, and Mr. Hendricks is going to lose his job in April and Mrs. Hendricks is horrid about the whole thing and that girl that plays the “Missouri Waltz” is a whore, a common whore, and the elevator man has tuberculosis and Mr. Osborn has been beating his wife.” She wailed, she trembled with grief and checked the stream of tears down her face with the heel of her palm.

“Well why do you have to listen?” Jim asked again. “Why do you have to listen to this stuff if it makes you miserable?”

“Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t,” she cried. “Life is too terrible, to sordid and awful. But we’ve never been like that, have we, darling”? Have we? I mean, we’ve always been good and decent and loving to one another, haven’t we?  And we have two children, two beautiful children. Our lives aren’t sordid, are they, darling? Are they?” She flung her arms around his neck and drew his face down to hers. “We’re happy, aren’t we, darling? We are happy, aren’t we?”

“Of course we’re happy,” he said tiredly. He began to surrender his resentment. “Of course we are happy. “I’ll have that dammed radio fixed or taken away tomorrow.” He stroked her soft hair. “My poor girl,” he said.

“You love me don’t you? she asked. “And we’re not hypercritical or worried about money or dishonesty, are we?

A man came in the morning and fixed the radio. Irene turned it on cautiously and was happy to hear a California-wine commercial and a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, including Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”. She kept the radio on all day and nothing untoward came toward the speaker.

A Spanish suite was being played when Jim came home. “Is everything all right?” he asked. His face was pale, she thought. They had some cocktails and went to dinner to the “Anvil Chorus” from Il Trovatore.  This was followed by Debussy’s “La Mer”

“I paid the bill for the radio today,” Jim said. “It cost four hundred dollars. I hope you’ll get some enjoyment out of it”

“Oh, I’m sure I will, Irene said.

“Four hundred dollars is a good deal more than I can afford,” he went on. “I wanted to get something that you’d enjoy. It’s the last extravagance we’ll indulge in this year. I see that you haven’t paid your clothing bills yet. I saw them on your dressing table.” He looked directly at her. “Why did you tell me you paid them? Why did you lie to me?

“I just didn’t want you to worry, Jim,” she said. She drank some water. “I’ll be able to pay my bills out of this months allowance. There were the slipcovers last month, and that party,”

“You’ve got to learn to handle the money I give you a little more intelligently, Irene,” he said. “You’ve got to understand that we don’t have as much money this year as we had last. I had a very sobering talk with Mitchell today. No one is buying anything. We’re spending all of our time promoting new issues, and you know how long that takes. I’m mot getting any younger you know. I’m thirty-seven. My hair will be gray next year. I haven’t done as well as I hoped to do. And I don’t suppose things will get any better.

“Yes dear,” she said.

We’ve got to start cutting down,” Jim said. “We’ve got to think of the children. To be perfectly frank with you, I worry about money a great deal. I’m not at all sure of the future. No one is.  If anything should happen to me, there’s the insurance, but that won’t go very far today. I’ve worked awfully hard to give you and the children a comfortable life,” he said bitterly. “I don’t like to see all my energies, all my youth, wasted in fur coast and radios and slipcovers and-“

”Please Jim,” she said. “Please. They’ll hear us.”

“Who’ll hear us? Emma can’t hear us.

“The Radio.”

“Oh, I’m sick! He shouted. “I’m sick to death of your apprehensiveness. The radio can’t hear us. Nobody can hear us. And what if they can hear us? Who cares?”

Irene got up from the table and went into the living room. Jim went to the door and shouted from there. “Why are you so Christly all of a sudden? What’s turned you overnight into a convent girl? You stole your mother’s jewelry before they probated her will. You never gave your sister a sent of that money that was intended for her- not even when she needed it. You made Grace Howland’s life miserable, and where was all your all your piety and your virtue when you went to that abortionist? I’ll never forget how coll you were. You packed your bag and went off to have that child murdered as if you were going to Nassau . If you’d had any reasons, if you had any good reasons-“

Irene stood for a minute before the hideous cabinet , disgraced and sickened, but she held her hand on the switch before she extinguished the music and the voices, hoping the instrument might speak to her kindly, that she might hear the Sweeney’s nurse. Jim continued to shout at her from the door. The voice on the radio was suave and noncommital. “An early-morning railroad disaster in Tokyo,” the loudspeaker said, “killed twenty-nine people. A fire in a Catholic hospital near Buffalo for the care of blind children was extinguished early this morning by nuns.

The temperature is forty-seven. The humidity is eighty-nine.”

Audio presentation...

CBS Radio Workshop