The Chaser

“On one of the dirty buff-coloured walls were a couple of shelves, containing in all perhaps a dozen bottles and jars.” 

Not only is the shop plain, it is unkempt. It apparently employs no one and makes no concession to beauty or to maintenance. On the surface, these bottles are treated like the barest commodities, like ketchup bottles shoved to the back of a grocery shelf.

“‘Call it a cleaning fluid if you like,’ said the old man indifferently. ‘Lives need cleaning. Call it a spot-remover.’” 

Understatement is the lingua franca of the proprietor of the shop. He never just says what he sells, or why one would buy it. It is the only form of artistry he uses to present his wares, and it is brutally effective.

“It would be no good charging that sort of price for a love potion, for example. Young people who need a love potion very seldom have five thousand dollars. Otherwise they would not need a love potion.” 

The assumption of privilege here is that, while all young men might struggle to match a dollar for a life-altering love potion, all older, wiser men can get together $5,000 (roughly half the cost of a house in 1951) to become single again.

“Please a customer with one article, and he will come back when he needs another. Even if it is more costly. He will save up for it, if necessary.” 

Here, the proprietor speaks in the language of advertising, a language Collier would know well throughout the course of his commercial career. However, the proprietor has elevated his sales pitch to the level of a magical incantation.

“Their effects are permanent, and extend far beyond the mere casual impulse. But they include it. Oh, yes they include it. Bountifully, insistently. Everlastingly.” 

The “casual impulse” is the proprietor’s oblique reference to sex—a euphemism that allows his customers to imagine that drugging their intended targets is somehow not committing sexual assault. Nevertheless, the older man takes a moment to emphasize the primal effects of the drug.

“‘For indifference,’ said the old man, ‘they substitute devotion. For scorn, adoration. Give one tiny measure of this to the young lady—its flavour is imperceptible in orange juice, soup, or cocktails—and however gay and giddy she is, she will change altogether. She will want nothing but solitude and you.’” 

The drug transforms a woman from a happy individual into a cipher wanting nothing but her man. Collier subtly underscores that such sequestered domesticity is a misery for both parties, while allowing the young man to continue to think that it’s just what he wants.

“‘She will want to know all you do,’ said the old man. ‘All that has happened to you during the day. Every word of it. She will want to know what you are thinking about, why you smile suddenly, why you are looking sad.’

‘That is love!’ cried Alan.

‘Yes,’ said the old man.” 

The proprietor plays with the double result of his drug; while Alan Austen may consider “love” the culmination of interior life, the older man suggests that such interiority is a cage his future wife will be forced to gaze into, and from which Austin can never escape.

“How carefully she will look after you! She will never allow you to be tired, to sit in a draught, to neglect your food. If you are an hour late, she will be terrified. She will think you are killed, or that some siren has caught you.” 

In the postwar years, isolated domesticity was seen in the popular imagination as a trap women designed for men. By the ’70s, authors such as Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem had pointed out that the opposite was true: Single-career married life and child-rearing turned the home into a prison, one from which men could far more easily escape than women.

“‘I can hardly imagine Diana like that!’ cried Alan, overwhelmed with joy.

‘You will not have to use your imagination,’ said the old man.” 

Collier weighs this line with portent. At issue is Alan Austen’s failure of imagination. This extends to his failure to imagine other prospects for both himself and Diana, failure to imagine a more prosperous future, and a failure to imagine that interiority would not be capped and concluded with a profession of love.

“She would never divorce you. Oh, no! And, of course, she will never give you the least, the very least, grounds for—uneasiness.” 

Collier’s message is that love without uneasiness would be a chore and a nightmare. It is a message the young man will soon discover, as his options open up and his world expands.

“‘It is not as dear,’ said the old man, ‘as the glove-cleaner, or life-cleaner, as I sometimes call it. No. That is five thousand dollars, never a penny less. One has to be older than you are, to indulge in that sort of thing. One has to save up for it.’” 

The poisonous murder weapon is an indulgence, and therefore murder is presented as a pleasure equal to love, one discovered late in life.

“‘Oh, that,’ said the old man, opening the drawer in the kitchen table, and taking out a tiny, rather dirty-looking phial. ‘That is just a dollar.’”

Unlike the extremely valuable undetectable poison, the love potion is barely worth the price of its ingredients, suggesting that the kind of cartoonish simplistic love Alan envisions is ultimately worthless.

“‘I like to oblige,’ said the old man. ‘Then customers come back, later in life, when they are better off, and want more expensive things.’”

Men murdering their wives is so common in Collier’s world that it forms the basis for the old man’s business. This is a world steeped in melodrama and ironic twists, which were the stock-in-trade of short stories at the time.