The Leaf-Sweeper follows the story of Johnnie who, despite having a respectable background, finds himself relegated to the role of a leaf-sweeper. He obsessively sweeps leaves in a park, seemingly content with his menial task. His aunt, however, lives with his ghost, the “ghost” of Johnnie, who is still alive. This story is full of emotions: comic, absurd, but also tragic and sad. It intelligently questions the nature of prestige, purpose and dignity. The second story, Another Pair of Hands, is about Winnie, a maid who looked after the narrator’s mother after the cook, Miss Spigot, died. Winnie was terrible at housework when suddenly, during an episode in which she began to talk to herself obsessively, she became particularly efficient. A psychiatrist prescribed pills which silenced her but led to neglect of the household. There is a ghost in this story too! I loved these two little ghost stories, a little absurd, a little cheerful, ideal for a quick read.
“I got an old copy for sixpence the other day, and despite the lapse of time it still proves conclusively that Christmas is a national crime. Johnnie demonstrates that every human-unit in the kingdom faces inevitable starvation within a period inversely proportional to that in which one in every six industrial-productivity units, if you see what he means, stops producing toys to fill the stockings of the educational-intake units. He cites appalling statistics to show that 1.024 per cent of the time squandered each Christmas in reckless shopping and thoughtless churchgoing brings the nation closer to its doom by five years.”
The Leaf-Sweeper was first published in the Observer, 1952.
Another Pair of Hands was first published in the New Yorker, 1985.