Bête (6 page)

‘Fifty-two fifty,’ she said.

It took us a long time, but we eventually agreed twenty-five fifty, and she took the money from my chip there and then. After letting me through the door, she told me: ‘Breakfast is not included’ and when I asked how much breakfast would cost me, she told me: twenty euro. ‘I like your manner,’ I told
her, smiling broadly – it had been long enough since my last smile that my cheeks ached a little with the unfamiliar motion. ‘I’ll not pay so much for Vitameat rashers and a tin of Tesco beans. But I’ll pay five now for a large glass of red wine – if that’s on offer?’

She said: ‘I am licensed to sell alcoholic beverages.’

So I went up to my room, meeting nobody on the way, and had
a shower and put all my things in the bath to soak with bubble bath for detergent. Then, wearing the only other clothes I possessed, I came back down and saw nobody else. I paid her the fiver. She served me a glass of wine. We were in a bar the size of a large cupboard. I’ve seen cinema usherettes with larger trays than her L-shaped bar area. The choice was stay sitting at the bar or squeeze myself
between the wall and a mushroom-shaped table. I stayed at the bar.

‘Your fingerprint tells me you might benefit from a reduction in alcoholic consumption,’ the wineglass told me.

‘I apologize,’ said the landlady. ‘I used to be able to turn that function off. But the switch must have broken in the dishwasher.’

‘For free health advice on cutting down your alcohol intake,’ said
the glass, ‘wi-tap now.’

‘I guess it should have,’ I said. ‘Switch, yes. It
will
have one. On the base I guess. Still “switch” makes me think of a Bakelite toggle. My name is Penhaligon. My name is Graham Penhaligon.’

‘A fine old name,’ she replied. ‘Although, if I may say, it has too many syllables. My name is Anne Grigson.’

‘Mrs Grigson,’ I said, putting my wineglass down and
offering a hand. ‘Or miss?’

‘Mrs,’ she replied. ‘Although I am not longer married. I and my husband had a disagreement.’ She shook my hand. ‘Over the animals.’

‘He disapproved?’

‘He did, or I did, is a fifty-fifty. But you have guessed correctly.’ Her sentences were delivered with a perfect deadpan that, I was beginning to think, was actually a skilfully handled dry wit. She
had a well-coiffured head of straight white-grey hair, and a crease on each side of her face running from her crow’s feet down to bracket the corners of her mouth. Her eyes, very dark brown, stood out vividly against the pallor of her skin and hair.

‘I was a farmer for twenty years,’ I told her, ‘before everything changed. Before smallheld livestock farming became impossible. I think I can
tell an animal lover when I see one.’

‘My animal love is confined to certain animals only,’ she said. Then: ‘You are no longer a farmer?’

‘Not any more. Milk hasn’t covered its costs for decades. I used to make up on the sale of beef, especially veal, and a few other things. But the coming of the bêtes knocked the bottom out of the meat-supply market, and smallholdings really are no
longer viable. Nowadays I move from place to place. My daughter’s family is up near Birmingham. I like to move about.’

‘Your wife?’

‘She is living, I believe, in Middlesbrough with a digestion insurance salesman.’

‘Forgive me if I am being forward.’

‘Not at all,’ I said. The wine was warming me; and Mrs Grigson, though not young, was attractive. It had something to do with
the combination of her austere manner and her full-figured promise of physical pliability. ‘If you are looking for company tonight,’ I offered, sitting a little straighter on my barstool. ‘I would certainly be very happy to oblige you.’

The lines running from the curls of her nostrils to the sides of her mouth lengthened. She drew a short thumb-sized device out of a pocket and tapped it
on the bar. ‘
My
ears have been treated; but I assure you, pressing the red button on this will generate a noise that will rupture
your
eardrums. This will incapacitate you, and necessitate hospital treatment.’

‘You misjudge the rapacity of my proposal,’ I said stiffly. ‘I meant no offence, and apologize if I have given any. I will not harass you further.’

‘Alternate drinking days with
non-drinking days to give your liver a chance to recuperate!’ the wineglass chimed in. ‘Surgeon General’s advice!’

There was a period of silence. Mrs Grigson lowered her rape alarm and stared for a while through the window into the back garden. Two thrushes were having a conversation on the branch of an apple tree. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. My own face, visible in ghostly fashion
in the glass, had fallen into the grimmer posture that is, if I’m honest, natural to it. It was a rather awkward moment. Another person would have made their excuses and left, but I am not another person. I am stubborner than another. So I sat, taking small sips from my wine-glass. There was nothing stopping Mrs Grigson from leaving, of course; but, evidently, her levels of stubborn were on
a par with mine. She slipped the rape alarm back in her pocket, and stood there. Finally, not because I thought it likely to defuse the tension, but (if I’m honest) because I thought it might intensify it, I continued our conversation. I’m contrary like that.

‘I encountered a new fence on my way down here. The right of way across the downsland has been blocked off,’ I said. ‘Up above the
White Horse.’

She turned to look at me. ‘That is correct,’ she replied, with a whole ice age folded into her tone.

‘I spoke to some sapient pigs on the other side of the fence. They implied that the whole area has been turned into a porcine sanctuary.’

‘Mrs Li,’ Grigson said. ‘There has been a good deal of coverage of it in the local iMedia. Some people are not happy with such
a large concentration of canny animals nearby. Anti-trespassing provision has been heavy-handedly applied.’

‘What is this Mrs Lee hoping for?’

She heard my misprision in the length of ‘e’ I gave the surname, or else guessed that I had got it wrong. At any rate she said: ‘Ell, eye; not elly-ee. I do not know her hopes for the community. I dare say that, like many wealthy people in this
day and age, she sees the existence of bêtes as an opportunity to return to Eden.’

‘Well,’ I said, draining my wine. ‘She has no legal right to fence off the rambler path.’

‘Think before refilling me!’ the glass advised. ‘Leave it a day!’

‘You might take the matter to court,’ Mrs Grigson said, not looking at me. ‘Though it would be a long-drawn-out and, likely, fruitless common-law
prosecution.’ Her tone was full of contempt; but it was contempt for me, not for the feebleness of due legal process. Something inside me quailed, but my stubbornness kept me from running away.

I did get up, but instead of making a decent retreat I merely stood there. The sheer, ghastly awkwardness of it had a kind of fascination for me. ‘My boots are nearing the end of their useful,’ I
informed her. She sneered at me as if nothing could possibly interest her less than the state of my boots – which, I dare say, was indeed the case. ‘I need to replace them,’ I added.

‘I am content for you to put me down as a delivery address,’ she replied, ‘provided you pay for immediate delivery. I am not prepared to hold any items for you after you have departed, until such time as you
might or might not …’

‘Actually I was thinking of going to a store in person. Could you direct me?’

She paused before answering, as if biting back a rebuke. ‘Your iSlate will of course contain all appropriate directions.’

‘I do not possess one.’

She angled her head a fraction at this, as if to say
a throwback, I see
. ‘In that case: the nearest Tesco walkway feed is about
half a mile away. Turn right out of my front door, next left, and all the way to the end. You’ll see the feed entrance.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and left.

I went back to my room, took my clothes out of the bath and wrung them. Then I draped them over the room’s two radiators to dry and looked again at my shoes. My eyeballs felt hot and my cheeks were warm to the back of my hand, the physical
manifestations of embarrassment finally overcoming me now that I was alone. Weakness of course, and accordingly despicable. I would leave in the morning and never see Mrs Frigid Grigson again: there was no use in getting worked up. Of course, I told myself, I was angry at myself, and not at her. It was I who had misjudged the situation. Of course, I thought: a drink will make this better.
This last sentiment – and never mind what Wilfred Owen said – is the true Old Lie.

What the cat told me

The evening was pleasantly cool, and the walk did me good. I really had got disproportionately riled-up by my encounter with the stubborn-headed landlady. The thing to do was rebalance my inner emotions. So down the suburban street I went – a parade of lit, closed windows with barely
another human being out and about. Venturing outside was not the modern way, not if it could possibly be avoided. Two women passed me, on a tandem.

A fox dashed out of a front garden and angled a high-pitched bark in my direction: ‘Food! Please! Starred! Starred!’ I shook my head and walked on. It was only when I got to the bright lit entrance to the Tesco walkway that I figured out what
the fox had been saying with its last word –
starved
. Those labiodentals are a bugger for elongated mouths and thin lips. ‘Go boil your own brush,’ I shouted at it, and the bête skittered round me and away.

I found the entrance soon enough. The walkway whisked me underground and straight to the Tesco. For twenty minutes I wandered the well-lit aisles, checking the goods and sale items.

There were a great many other people there, this being one of the ways the young liked to socialize with one another – when not socializing virtually, of course, which was the bulk of their interaction. For a while I enjoyed simply walking amongst them, having been alone, or shunned, by others for so long. But it soon palled. None of these youngsters was the slightest bit interested in me.
They walked the half-klick-long neon aisles, row on row, rank on rank, with arms curled round one another’s waists. I bought some cheese – it was being sold only in blocks indistinguishable, save the labelling, from the packs of 500 sheets of A4 the store also retailed. Then I put a vatgrown salami (‘salameat: budget product’) and a bottle of Scanda whisky in the robotrolley. I spent a little while
looking at the clothes. The boots were improbably cheap, but did not look durable. Eventually I took my small haul away, refused the delivery option twice – the machine was insistent, or perhaps simply disbelieving that I wanted actually to haul my own spoils away – and sat down in the eatery, a branch of a chain-coffee store called
Koffee Kingdom
. An automated waiter asked thrice what I wanted; thrice I requested a glass of water. It trundled off, and I broke off a fist-sized piece of the cheese and one of the salameats, and washed it down with a healthy slug of whisky before wrapping the comestibles carefully and stowing them in my backpack. The waiter trundled back and tried to charge me €3.77 for my water. I remonstrated,
and was just starting to really get into my role as Angry Customer when I saw a blinking light over by the rear of the venue. A large, well-muscled woman in Tesco livery emerged from a door, holding a prod pole. At this point discretion checkmated valour. I left the water undrunk and slipped away.

I ate another salameat on the walk home. It had rained during my time in the supermarket, and
the streetlights gleamed oilily off the wet roads. I stood beneath a dripping acacia and drank some more of the whisky. Finally I decided it was time to return to my hotel. I’d hoped I had left enough time for Mrs Grigson to have taken herself off to bed, or to wherever in her hotel she enjoyed alone-time, but she was waiting for me when I came through the front door.

‘Mr Penhaligon,’ she
said.

‘Mrs Grigson,’ I said.

‘I have further considered your offer and, on balance, wish to take advantage of it.’

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Ah.’ It took me a moment to digest what she was saying. ‘Well, all right!’ Then, as all the implications of her words sank in, I said: ‘You have decided
on balance
?’

‘I do not like beards,’ she informed me. ‘Accordingly, I shall make it a condition
of accepting your proposition that you do not attempt to kiss me.’

Had I been more sober, I might have let my resentment at her haughtiness provoke me to some rebuke, even at the risk of forfeiting the chance of sex. But there was enough cheap whisky in my system to mollify me; and it had been a long time since I had spent any time in the land of intercourse. So, rather idiotically, I said:
‘I’m not wedded to the beard. I could shave it off.’

‘You have a razor?’

‘I have no razor. Hence the beard. I must, perforce, travel light.’ Even as I said this, I found myself thinking to myself:
perforce
? Truth is: my inner gyroscope was tilted a long way over. This feeling might have been— Let me think. Might it have been
exhilaration
?

‘You may use my husband’s razor if you
wish,’ she said.

‘He won’t mind,’ I said. She peered at me, checking to see whether I meant this as a question. I didn’t, but she answered it anyway.

‘He has been absent three years. He is not coming back; and were he to do so, I would not let him in the building.’

‘Very well,’ I said. And then, to leaven the pomposity that seemed to have crept into my manner, I added: ‘All righty-tighty.’
Then I winced at my own idiocy.

‘Please take a shower, also,’ she said. ‘Cleanness is important to me.’

‘I have showered once this evening already,’ I told her.

‘Cleanness is important to me,’ she repeated.

So I followed her up three flights of stairs to her rooms at the top of the building. I was starting to believe that there were no other guests in the hotel. We went
into her apartment. Her pet cat eyed me suspiciously from a basket in the corner of the bedroom as I passed through to the bathroom. Anne had to retrieve her husband’s razor from a locked plastic storage crate in a cupboard – an old-fashioned Araze model, but it buzzed through the facial hair swiftly enough. She left me alone to undress. There were three bottles of the same brand of showersoap standing
on the windowsill; the gloop inside each was the colour of the Mediterranean as displayed in those maps displaying the topography of the Holy Land you find at the end of Bibles.