A Work in Progress

Short Stories: The 2022 Advent Calendar

A very nice, hopefully inspiring end of the year splurge.  It has been several years since I have ordered the Short Story Advent Calendar.  I love short stories, but I have been a lapsed short story reader in the last few years and I keep trying to get back to my old habit.  I hope this helps and I am able to keep up with a short story a day through the individual stories that come in this boxed set.

Advent begins today and ends on Christmas Eve.  The first story is by Caroline Kim, whose collection of short stories (The Prince of Mournful Thoughts) about the Korean Diaspora won the 2020 Drue Heinz Prize in Literature and was shortlisted for a few other prizes is called "Bread of Lifers".  I am going to just pull the next story out each morning and read it during the day.  Each will be a daily treat, so no peeking ahead of time.  

I hope to check in occasionally and share something about my reading, but my first focus will be just to read each story and not fall behind.  I will be thrilled to discover new to me voices and perhaps add more titles to my wishlist to explore next year.  Mostly this will be a pleasant way to finish out the rest of the year while I tidy up my reading piles and prepare for the coming year.  

Last Short Story(ies) of the Year

Since today is my last short story day of the year (I've been a dedicated short story reader for nearly every Sunday of this past year), I had wanted to pick something fun to read, maybe a new story from the New Yorker or something humorous, but I am a little behind in my plans.  I was doing well, making progress in Wave me Goodbye, but then last week I (as usual) didn't get in as much reading time as I had hoped and didn't pick up this book even once.  You probably thought you finally saw the back cover of it, didn't you?  But with only three (well, three and a half if you count the rest of today) days left in 2008 and about a third of the book left to read, I'm afraid it's a few more WWII stories.  I only wish I could speed read the last hundred or so pages, but I am hopeless when it comes to reading quickly.

I still plan on reading short stories next year, but I'll be approaching them in an entirely different manner (but more about that later).  Still, I think I can manage to finish the last handful of stories before the year fizzles out, but you're going to have to bear with me just one more day.  I still think this is an excellent collection even if it has taken me ages to read it (pretty standard for me really when it comes to short stories!).

Even though the collection is all war stories, it's not all dire reading.  It's been interesting to read about the home front from a woman's perspective.  Margery Sharp was a prolific writer of not only short stories, but novels for adults and children, as well as plays.  She was popular in the 1930s both in the US and UK for her light comedies, and in "Night Engagement" she shows us that even through war life and love must go on.  Where's a nice girl to find friends and more importantly a good beau when "shelter life" is just a constant passing through of people.  You'd not think being bombed in a shelter (literally having the thing fall in on you) would be a good thing, but it is for Doris when she finally meets "ever such a nice young fellow".   

Diana Gardner was a dedicated short story writer from the age of 11.  Persephone Books has even published one of her story collections, which I will have to add to my list as I enjoyed "The Land Girl" enormously.  With so many men off to war women not only filled their jobs in factories and other businesses, but on the land as well.  It wasn't just the middle classes but upper class women also heard the call and did their part for the war effort.  "The Land Girl" is told in first person quite effectively.  Una is a young woman, but also a lady who works hard on the land, and though the farmer approves of her, the farmer's wife does not.  Let's just say Una doesn't put up with any crap from anyone, and she takes her revenge.  I'm not sure whether to account for her actions due to social class or youth--maybe a combination of both.

"The Sailor's Wife" by Anne Chadwick, was quite clever.  It is an autobiographical story, as Chadwick herself was married to a sailor.  The young woman who is the sailor's wife in the story is under pressure to find some sort of lodging for herself and her baby while her husband is at sea.  She's followed him to the coast to be near him when he's on leave.  Between an RAF station and a torpedo factory it seems there's not a spare room to be had as she goes from house to house knocking on doors and making enquiries.  It just goes to show you how times have changed as the young woman was able to leave her baby in its pram with the hotel housemaid only to keep an eye on it (and if I read correctly the baby was even left out of doors!).  So as time runs out and she can find no room (she must get back to her child), she's suddenly knocked down by a lorry.  There's this wonderful scene as all the images and refusals run through her mind--you can just feel the tension she's been under.  It's a blessing in disguise, however, as she's able to make a deal regarding a room with the lorry driver through a bit of finagling.  It's always good to have a bit of leverage in cases like these.

I've really enjoyed reading short stories this year, and thanks to Kate's Short Story Reading Challenge for giving me the impetus to actually stick with a plan for once.  I've discovered quite a few wonderful new (to me anyway) authors via their short stories.  I've added names to my wishlist and story collections to my TBR piles.  Hopefully I'll keep up the trend in 2009--there are certainly a fair few books and authors I want to get to.

"The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton"

I expect we have Charles Dickens to thank for the Christmas holiday traditions many people follow today. "The identification of Dickens with the festival of Christmas, so deeply inscribed in the popular culture of the English-speaking world, began when he was still a young man, just over a month short of his thirty-second birthday, but already firmly established as England's favorite novelist." Several years ago I read Dickens's A Christmas Carol (and Other Christmas Writings), so it seemed only fitting that this year (on the first day of winter--and shortest day of the year no less) that I should choose a short story by Dickens from the same book.

"The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton" is part of Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, a serial that ran for nearly two years and was made up of loosely related adventures as well as interpolated stories, one of which is the Goblin story.  I've not read The Pickwick Papers, so I'm not sure which came first, the short story or A Christmas Carol, but they are quite similar in make up. 

In the story of "The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton" we have Gabriel Grub as our Scrooge, a rather misanthropic gravedigger, which Dickens insures us is very unusual.  They are generally the merriest of people in the world, but not our Gabriel Grub, an "ill-conditioned, cross-grained, surly fellow--a morose and lonely man, who consorted with nobody but himself, and an old wicker bottle which fitted into his large deep waistcoat pocket; and who eyed each merry face as it passed him by, with such a deep scowl of malice and ill-humor, as it was difficult to meet without feeling something worse for the wear."

As an example of his ill-humor--as he was off to dig a grave and walking down an badly lit alleyway he raps a small happy-go-lucky boy over the head with his lantern  five or six times (not just once!) to "teach him to modulate his voice."  No worries, though, as Mr. Grub is about to be taught a lesson of his own.  No Christmas spirits, but a gaggle of goblins.  I'm not sure which would be worse.  He's visited first by one "strange unearthly creature" who then drags him down through the earth into a cavern where there seems to be a goblin kingdom.  There, he'll learn some better manners.  Dickens likes to squeeze your heart just a little bit, doesn't he.  Gabriel Grub will be shown all sorts of misery, even the death a small, much loved child.  If that's not enough, Mr. Grub will have some sense smacked into him by the goblins as well.  Literally.  

He awakes a better man.  And hopefully he's left that wicker bottle of his behind for good.  All in all this was a good story to read on a short (cold!) day the weekend before Christmas.

"The Mysterious Kôr"

Another story from Wave Me Goodbye this weekend.  Elizabeth Bowen is known for her wartime stories.  I read in the book's biographical section that "the war years could justifiably be called the peak of her life; she was at the height of her writing powers, identified closely with England at crisis and she was also deeply in love."  She worked as a journalist as well as an air-raid warden in London during the Blitz.  She also reported to the Ministry of Information on Irish attitudes during the war, she herself was Anglo-Irish having been born in Dublin but raised in England.  Her experiences sound quite interesting and I'm sure she's another author with a fascinating personal story.  (And I bet there is a biography out there about her, too). 

I've read that she was an excellent short story writer and have read a few of her novels, though enough time has passed that my memory of them is fuzzy.  She's very good at evoking an atmospheric wartime London.  The Wave Me Goodbye collection includes her story "The Mysterious Kôr", and she begins by showing the reader a very foreign sounding London.

"Full moonlight drenched the city and searched it; there was not a niche left to stand in.  The effect was remorseless: London looked like the moon's capital--shallow, cratered, extinct.  It was late, but not yet midnight; now the buses had stopped the polished roads and streets in this region sent for minutes together a ghostly unbroken reflection up.  The soaring new flats and the crouching old shops and houses looked equally brittle under the moon, which blazed in windows that looked its way.  The futility of the black-out became laughable: from the sky, presumably, you could see every slate in the roofs, every whited kerb, every contour of the naked winter flowerbeds in the park; and the lake, with its shining twists and tree-darkened islands would be a landmark for miles, yes, miles overhead."

But the Germans are not bombing on this moonlit night.  Although the city is packed with people, the streets are empty, and two lovers are walking with no place to go to be alone.  Pepita describes to her soldier-lover, Arthur, Mysterious Kôr.  Kôr, an imaginary city from a poem, is a "completely forsaken city, as high as cliffs and as white as bones, with no history--."  On this night she imagines London to be Kôr, but it is also a place she escapes to from the horror of the war wanting to take Arthur with her.  In reality Pepita must take him back to the tiny flat she shares with another young woman where he'll have to sack out on an uncomfortable sofa.  There's  not really enough room for a third person and no privacy for the couple. 

Bowen uses Kôr as a contrast to the ugly realities of war, a place to escape to and be alone, something impossible to do in bombed-out, overcrowded London.  There's more to the story than I've described, and Bowen likes to use imagery and symbolism, which I had to look up to get the full meaning of the story.  She shows how war interrupts and inconveniences the lives of three disparate people and how they cope (or not) with dire circumstances.  This was an interesting and well done story and shows once again how much an author can convey in just a very few pages. 

"The Lovely Leave"

Dorothy Parker's "The Lovely Leave" is another short story by an American author included in Wave Me Goodbye.  I read one of Parker's stories earlier this year, which piqued my curiosity about her, so I'm glad to have a chance to read yet another of her stories.  I always have good intentions to read more when I encounter an author I like, but it seems like good intentions aren't always enough and it's only luck when I actually do read something else.  Dorothy Parker is known for her witty wisecracks and was part of the famous Algonquin Hotel Round Table. Parker's first husband was posted to Europe during WWI and their marriage ended in divorce after years of separation.  Her second marriage was also a casualty of war, this time WWII, though apparently they remarried years later.  It's obvious she wrote from experience.

"The Lovely Leave", published in 1943, was one of the last stories Dorothy Parker wrote.  It's another WWII story with a domestic setting, probably New York City.  The stress of having a husband in the military is obvious on young wife, Mimi McVicker.  Her husband, Steve, calls one day out of the blue announcing he has an unexpected 24 hour leave coming.  The call is difficult, reminding her just how hard the separation is and how she tries to forget it, but looking at the "horrid " telephone after she hangs up it all comes back to her that she really can't forget.  As she talked to her husband she hears the excitement of male voices in the background, which makes her feel all the more lonely and alone and perhaps forgotten as well.

The time spent together on her husband's last leave was uncomfortable.  Mimi struggled with a shyness that came out of nowhere when faced with this "dashing stranger in strange, dashing garments."  The time slipped by with a feeling of artificialness.  When finally the shyness left her, their time together was nearly over and she found herself counting down the moments until he left.  This time she vows there will be no shy feelings, that all will be normal once again now that she's gotten past the new feelings of a aviator husband that seems so foreign to her. 

She plans and prepares, buying a new black dress and a nightgown of soft chiffon patterned with tiny bouquets.  She makes sure she has Steve's favorite food and drinks on hand determined for the leave to be as normal as possible.  Once again she's overcome with the same outrageous shyness and things go down hill from there.  The leave has been revoked and her husband has only an hour to spend with her before he must catch a train back.  You can tell Steve loves Mimi and trusts her, but she's overwhelmed with the feeling of being alone in the same old life, while her husband is with new people in a new exciting life.  Parker portrays this little slice of life with all its difficulties well.  It always has to be hard for the one left behind to hold things together--how hard this must have been for women during the war  years.  And not marriages must have held up, certainly Parker's didn't.

Next up in the anthology is Elizabeth Bowen's "Mysterious Kor", which I hope to write about as I  hear it is one of her most famous short stories.  And I still think this is an excellent short story collection!

"Grandma Isn't Playing"

After today there are only four Sundays left in the year.  (Don't you appreciate me reminding you every week just how little of the year there is left?).  You may be hearing a lot about WWII stories in the upcoming weeks as I try and work my way through the last stories in this collection, Wave Me goodbye: Stories of the Second World War edited by Anne Boston.  It's really an excellent collection, though I like some stories better than others--no surprise there I suspect.  I'm at the halfway point and to finish by the end of the year I will need to read about four stories a week.  At the moment I'd like to settle down with just one collection rather than picking randomly (that has it's good points as well, but it's a mood thing at the moment).  I hope to continue reading short stories next year, but I think I'll be approaching them in a different way.

The collection contains stories mostly by British authors (all women by the way), but there are five stories by American authors as well.  This week was my first exposure to Edna Ferber, who has quite a list of works to her name, though I'd never come across her until I read the story, "Grandma Isn't Playing" in this collection.  She's most famously known for her novels Cimarron, Showboat and Giant, all of which were made into successful movies.  She was the daughter of a Hungarian shopkeeper and began her career as a journalist before turning to fiction.  She won the Pulitzer prize in 1925. 

"Her central characters are strong pioneer women, dedicated to their families and the land; there is often a theme of racial tolerance" 

The story begins by telling of the life of Anna Krupek, an immigrant from Central Europe who followed her fiancé to America, specifically Connecticut, in the 1920s.  Coming from good, peasant stock, she spent her life working hard and not being afraid of hard work.  She raised four sons on her own after the early death of her husband.  At first I was wondering what this story was doing in a collection of WWII stories, but it's a long story and it's only later in life and thanks to the war efforts that Anna finds a sort of reprieve in her life.  Three of her four sons had moved west, and she eventually moved in with her remaining son and his wife.  Mae was a modern woman and had always thought she 'married down'.  She constantly tried to better herself and the prospects of her two children.  That meant having a washerwoman as a mother-in-law was something to be embarrassed about.  Mae does everything she can to keep Anna at home, where even her children consider their grandmother a slavey.  Somehow Anna gets stuck with the cooking and cleaning while Mae goes out social climbing when she would like nothing more but to be in control of her own life.  It's a bit of a shock to her family, when sexagenarian Anna goes to work on an airplane assembly line--to make planes for her aviator grandson, she proudly states. 

This was an interesting story, particularly as it was written for propaganda purposes.  Ferber wrote:

"Only during World War I and World War II have I ever written according to plan or theme ordered or suggested by someone else...In 'Grandma Isn't Playing', one can detect...that somewhat heavy tool of propaganda.  A necessary and important wartime weapon, but often unwieldy in unaccustumed hands."

I didn't feel that the story was terribly unwieldy at all, but I can see where the propaganda aspect came in.  I must say, though, the title does stump me a little.  I'm not quite sure what she meant by it--grandma isn't messing around as there's a war on?  I did enjoy reading a story from a different/American perspective.  A perspective from an author who is purely American and hadn't lived (as far as I know) in Europe, as opposed to some of the other authors.  The themes and concerns are different.  I tend to read more British authors these days than American authors, so I enjoyed this.  Another author I will have to investigate further I think.

"The Phoenix"

Reading short stories randomly, the way I've been reading them, is a little like choosing a chocolate from a box assortment.  You never quite know what you're going to get.  This week I decided to try Sylvia Townsend Warner, a name I've come across in my other reading.  She has been published by Virago and is an interwar author, so it's not surprising she's on my radar (considering how much I've been focusing on this era lately).  "The Phoenix" is included in 50 Great Short Stories edited by Milton Crane.   

I wish this book had some sort of brief biographical information about the authors or introductory material on the stories, as I know nothing about Sylvia Townsend Warner (found something here) or her writing.  I was surprised by this story, a witty little satire, where the annoying characters get their comeuppance in the end.  This is a very short story, so beware of plot spoilers to follow.

A phoenix is a mythological creature, of which there exists only one at a time.  It has beautiful feathers and lives a very long time.  When it nears the end of its life it builds a nest and eventually bursts into flames, and from the ashes arises a new phoenix.  You would think its presence in a story would herald a theme of rebirth and regeneration, but Townsend Warner takes the reader in a different direction entirely.  Although it's a story that can fit in any time and place (sadly some things never change), I do wish I knew what this story was a response to in Townsend Warner's life.

The phoenix was the jewel in Lord Strawberry's crown, so to speak.  He had long been collecting birds and had the premier aviary in all of Europe.  His phoenix was remarkably fine "with a charming character--affable to the other birds in the aviary and much attached to Lord Strawberry."  Keeping his collection up, feeding the birds and providing for their upkeep left him penniless upon his death.  Had it not been for a war, which left everyone bankrupt, his collection might have been sold off to a responsible zoological society or another private collector.  Instead the birds were sold off.  It was hoped that at least the phoenix might be bought for the London Zoo, so a fund was set up and everyone gave what they could.  It wasn't enough, however.  The best offer came from Mr Tancred Poldero, the owner and proprietor of Poldero's Wizard Wonderworld.  And yes, the whole set up was as repellant as it sounds.  The phoenix ended up as an exhibit in what appears to be a sideshow carnival.

Beautiful as the phoenix was, it didn't do much.  It just sat there, unlike Poldero's amusing baboons who drew many spectators thanks to their silly antics, or the fearsome crocodile who had eaten a woman.  It couldn't just be appreciated for its uniqueness and rarity.  Since it didn't earn its keep, Poldero and his assistant decided to make a spectacle of things in order to bring in a crowd of appreciative consumers.  Now I've mentioned that the phonix enjoys a very long life, but Poldero made the life of this phonix as miserable as he could in order to hurry matters along.  It was deprived of food, space, warmth and any sort of companionship save the most annoying birds he could find.  

When the phoenix was nearing its end, it built its nest, and Poldero announced what would be the most thrilling moment anyone had seen.  Sure to be a huge moneymaker.  Well, things did go off with a bang.  I won't reveal what happened, though I'm sure you can imagine things didn't go well for Poldero.  I wondered if the last bit wasn't a bit heavy handed (sheesh, I thought to myself when reading), but I wasn't terribly disappointed to see the Polderos of the world "get theirs" so to speak, since often times it's the reverse.  It was an interesting story, and I'll be curious to see what else I come across by this author.     

"The Ghosts"

Today is far too nice to spend inside, and while I would love to wile away the afternoon finishing a book, the leaves in my backyard call!  So, today's short story (and hopefully post as well) is going to be on the ultra short side.  A while back I mooched a few short story collections, and 75 Short Masterpieces: Stories from the World's Literature edited by Roger Goodman has come in handy.  The book was published in the early 1960s, so many of the authors are unfamiliar to me.  But the nice thing about this collection is that the stories are very short--most just three or four pages. This sort of book is the perfect solution for people who say they don't have enough time to read.  Who can't spare just a few minutes to read a story that's just a few pages long?

Many of the really famous (well known by me anyway) authors included are authors that I have already read, so I opted for an author that I've meant to read for a while now.  I have a copy of Lord Dunsany's The king of Elfland's Daughter, which is a Victorian fantasy novel that I always mean to read for Carl's Once Upon a Time Challenge (but never seem to get to).  Dunsany was an Anglo-Irish author who came from a very wealthy, aristocratic family.  He was a prolific writer, writing not only short stories and novels, but plays, essays, poetry and autobiography as well.  He sounds like he was a bit of an eccentric if the wikipedia is to be believed.

"Dunsany's writing habits were considered peculiar by some. Lady Beatrice said that "He always sat on a crumpled old hat while composing his tales." (The hat was eventually stolen by a visitor to Dunsany Castle.) Dunsany almost never rewrote anything; everything he ever published was a first draft.  Much of his work was penned with quill pens, which he made himself; Lady Beatrice was usually the first to see the writings, and would help type them. It has been said that Lord Dunsany would sometimes conceive stories while hunting, and would return to the Castle and draw in his family and servants to re-enact his visions before he set them on paper."

Whatever his writing habits (and they do sound peculiar), since I found "The Ghosts" in not just one but two of my short story collections I keep by my bedside, I decided that was the story I needed to read today.  I hadn't planned on choosing a ghost story, but they seem to be following me around lately.

I liked this story, because for once the protagonist gets the better of the ghosts!  Dunsany does setting quite well.  Oneleigh is a mouldering, ancient family home set in isolation amidst a "dark gathering  of old whispering cedars."  Two brothers are in attendance, one fully believing in ghosts ("he mistook things imagined for things having an actual existence") and the other somewhat skeptical.  The skeptical brother decides to sit up and give any wayward ghost every opportunity to make a visit.  As a matter of fact he wishes them to come, and come they do.  I have to say, these were actually rather chilling ghosts.  I won't give details away, because you can listen to the story here (must check the rest of Miette's site out, since she is a fellow short story lover)!  In this story logic and reason trump fear.  Still, faced with those ghosts I'm not so sure I wouldn't have been reduced to one big goosebump.   

"A Red Letter Day"

I really like Elizabeth Taylor's work.  She writes so eloquently.  Her stories are less about action than about the people inhabiting the spaces and places she writes about and what they feel and how they interact.  I sometimes find general collections of short stories that I read from a little disappointing.  It's not that they aren't filled with wonderfully crafted stories, which most of the time leave me with lots to think about.  It's more an issue with how few women authors seem to be represented in them.  I try and alternate between male and female writers (maybe I shouldn't do that?), and I'll easily run out of choices by female authors long before those by male authors.  So the choice was easy this week when I spotted a story by Elizabeth Taylor in Short Story Masterpieces edited by Robert Penn Warren.

"A Red Letter Day" is an excellent example of Elizabeth Taylor at her finest.  The story is a snapshot of a mother and her son, and the tension between them as they spend Visiting Day together.  It's a rather cheerless story about a mother's feelings of what I saw as inadequacy and unhappiness and her son's confusion from them.

Tory is a divorced mother, 11-year-old Edward her only child.  It becomes obvious to the reader how she feels about being divorced.  The cabs pass and repass her by between station and school, and she's one of the last to get one, "having no man to exert authority for her."  Later in the story Edward will mention a package he received from his father, and Tory's response, which "lays ice all over his heart", though she tries to remain indifferent.

Tory is not the only parent to arrive alone.  Another mother, Mrs Hays-Hardy does as well and shares a cab with her to the school.  One look at Mrs Hays-Hardy and Tory notes with distaste that she looked as if she had a "teeming womb".  She's certainly the mother of not one but several sons, and no matter if they didn't have a father, they would feel no lack of father as surely her son did, as she was "large enough to be both father and mother to them."  No bitterness there.  Still, you can't but help feel for Tory.

""Nervous dread made her feel fretful and vicious.  In her life, all was frail, precarious--emotions fleeting, relationships fragmentary.  Her life with her husband had suddenly loosened and dissolved; her love for her son was painful, shadowed by guilt--the guilt of having nothing solid to offer, of having grown up and forgotten, of adventuring still, away from her child, of not being able to resist those emotional adventures, the tenuous grasping after life."

The discomfit between mother and son is palpable on both sides.  She considers them both amateurs in their relationships with each other.  She loves him and no doubt he loves her as well, though it's difficult to show it.  It comes out in odd ways that neither probably really appreciate all that much.  He dreads the day as much as she must, but it does mean a meal outside the school. 

When Tory sees Edward glance after the departing Hays-Hardy brood, she asks if he'd have liked to have joined them, and he replies no, they don't like him.  Twist the knife, as if you don't already feel bad enough for the boy.  Tory tries to make the day nice, though it seems to drag and she grasps for whatever she can to make it pass quickly.  I imagine it's simply a matter of growing up, but mother and son don't seem to be able to communicate well (though the Hays-Hardys seem to have a jolly time).  Embarrassment turns Edward crimson when Tory asks a museum attendant to explain the meaning of a mosaic to him, as "her son adores Greek Mythology", but she fails to realize Edward hates it when she does this.  And she does it often.

Relief comes at the end of the day as Tory leaves Edward on the steps of the school.  Matron has gone inside to attend to Mrs Hays-Hardy, so the good-byes are uncertain.  The tension is lifted when both gaily return to their own lives.  This was a wonderful story, despite it's serious subject.  I hope I've not made it sound too dreary, and I feel like I've described it in such a choppy manner.  Taylor made me curious about both and sympathetic to each as well.  She renders the inner feelings of mother and son with such acuity.  I wish I could find this online, so everyone could easily read it, but I recommend it in any case--it's well worth searching for! 

"A String of Beads"

W. Somerset Maugham is an author I think I would enjoy reading.  Last year I read a slim novel by him called Up at the Villa and told myself I would be reading more as I enjoyed it so much.  It has taken me over a year to get around to picking up anything else by him, however.  I'm back to reading stories from 50 Great Short Stories edited by Milton Crane, which includes a story by Maugham, "A String of Beads".  It reminded me a little of a short story by Guy de Maupassant called "The Necklace", though the Maugham story has a decidedly happier ending.

Spoilers to follow.

"A String of Beads" is actually a rather satirical story.  A governess through no fault of her own manages to succeed socially much to the dismay of her "betters".  The story of Miss Robinson was related from one friend to another over dinner.  Miss Robinson was a nice young woman of twenty or twenty-one, rather attractive and soft spoken.  She was governess to a family who happened to be throwing a dinner party when one of their guests canceled at the last minute.  In order to make up the numbers they asked Miss Robinson to fill in.

Dinner table conversation turned to the cost and quality of a set of pearls worn by another guest, Mary Lyngate. She was quite pleased with herself and made it a point to show off her £8000 pearls to Count Borselli, whose knowledge of gems was vast.  Although expensive, the Count was not overly impressed with Mary Lyngate's set of pearls, but he was appreciative of the set Miss Robinson was wearing.  When asked the cost, Miss Robinson replied that she must have gotten a great bargain as they cost a mere fifteen shillings.  Nonsense the Count replied, as their worth is at least £50,000. 

At that there is a knock at the door.  Two men ask for Miss Robinson.  The dinner guests are sure Miss Robinson is a thief and must have stolen the pearls.  When she returns calmly to the dinner table not the least perturbed, she drops the set of pearls on the table.  The Count is quick to notice these pearls are fakes.  It turns out Miss Robinson has recently had the clasp fixed and her faux set was switched with another set of actual pearls.  In gratitude for her honesty the jeweler gave her £300. 

Do you want to know the twist?  I love stories where the "underdog" so to speak comes out ahead.  While the family Miss Robinson works for and the other guests of the party urge her to set aside the money for a rainy day (you know how hard it is for governesses to get by--not that any of them would know much about that), she prefers to blow it all on a trip to the South of France.  It may be her only chance, so why not live it up.  While there she meets and marries a wealthy count and becomes a countess!  What a great in your face ending. It's interesting to see Maugham's little criticisms of the upper classes and what they think is right and moral!  So again I'll say, I really need to read more by Maugham!