Flowers on the Grass (8 page)

“Just wait while I fetch him, and watch out for me on the stairs.” He was gone from her and out of the front door. It made it difficult to say No to a person when they didn’t wait for you to say it. Doris began to lay the breakfast-tables. Mr. Brett gave her a start, looking round the door and saying: “Psst!” She was always getting starts and turns, and wondered sometimes whether she had a funny heart.

“Where’s Mrs. P.?” he asked.

“Having her supper.”

“Lucky woman. She gets it at a respectable hour,” he said, although one of Mrs. P.’s trials was that she couldn’t sit down to a bite until turned nine.

Doris went up to stand guard outside the lounge door while Mr. Brett ran up the stairs with the dog. She did not like
doing this. She hated intrigues and secrecy, and liked nothing to happen in life that one could not speak about; but she hated upsets, too, so as he had already got the dog in the house, this was the only thing to do.

“It was awful,” she told him when she went in to turn down his bed. “Someone started to turn the handle, so I locked the lounge door. Fancy! They were mad, in there. I pretended I’d been polishing the door-knob and turned the key by mistake. They must have thought me simple—at the Brasso this time of night. Oh dear.” . She turned down the counterpane neat and taut. “I wouldn’t have done it but for being fond of dumb animals. Never again.”

“You won’t have to.”

“That’s good then. I’ll be sorry to lose him though.”

“Who said he was going? Come here.” He was standing by the window. “Look. Just the thing. Onto this roof, down onto that shed roof, and into the alley.”

“Oh, but you can’t,” Doris objected. “I mean, you can’t go in and out of the hotel by the window.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I don’t know.” It was hard to explain, even to oneself, that however queer people could be, whatever things they might say to her or write on the walls, there were certain basic rules of hotel behaviour to which everyone conformed, and surely going in and out by the front door was one of them.

He seemed to have made up his mind to it, however, so Doris decided to put it out of her head. She was going out of the room when he called her back to the window. “Who’s that spying in the house opposite?” he asked.

“Spying? Whatever do you mean?” Mr. Brett seemed determined to have things not normal. This was as bad as during the war when someone had heard Mrs. P.’s electric refrigerator and reported her for having a radio transmitter.

“Look, that crack of light—ah, it’s gone. See the curtain move? There she is again, peering round the corner.”

“Oh, her,” said Doris, turning away. “She always does that. Been at it as long as I’ve been here. Oh, don’t ask me what for. If she’s got nothing better to do with her time, that’s her funeral, not mine.”

Mr. Brett put his fingers to his nose and waggled them at the house opposite, then drew the curtains across. “I say, just do one more thing for me, will you?” he said, though it was
after nine, and Doris had told him distinctly that she was off duty at that hour. “Sneak me up something for the dog to eat.”

“Oh no,” she said, planting herself squarely. “That I can’t do.”

“He won’t want much. He had something at the school. Just a few bits of meat-”

Doris had to laugh. “Where d’you think I’d get meat from? That was the last of the joint went into the Cornish pasties—such as you could see for potato.”

“Well, bread or something, or biscuits. Do find something.”

He seemed to have no idea what he was asking. It meant getting past Mrs. P.’s sitting-room into the kitchen, groping there in the dark for fear Ferdie should see the light, having her heart nearly let her down when a saucepan lid clattered to the floor as she reached down the big tin of stale cake and bread slices that was always on hand for trifles and charlottes and bread-and-butter pudding, creeping into the pantry to pour on as much as she dared from the milk left out for her early-morning teas. By the time she got back to No. 4, dodging into the bathroom once when she heard Mr. Parker blowing his nose on the stairs, she felt as if she had been through something out of Dick Barton. She would have liked to convey to Mr. Brett an idea of what she had accomplished, but although he thanked her politely—he had a nice voice, she’d say that for him—he seemed to find nothing exceptional in what she had done. Took it for granted. That was the way he asked you to do things. He didn’t ask as a favour; just asked, and took it for granted you would do it. He could not have had much experience of private hotels.

Although it was long after her time, she had just to stay and watch the dog eat. He was such a dainty feeder. It always seemed so clever of dogs to teach themselves to eat with mouths that shape.

Mr. Brett unwrapped a bottle of whiskey from brown paper and poured some into a tooth-glass. “Oh dear,” sighed Doris, “now that’s two things you didn’t ought to have up here. Mrs. P. won’t have spirits in the house, except just for the Christmas pudding.”

“Oh——Mrs. P.,” said Mr. Brett irritably, using a word that Doris did not like to hear said, even about Mrs. P.

She lingered by the door, watching him drink the whiskey. “Have some,” he said. “Go and get yourself a glass.”

“Oh no, thank you.” Doris retreated a step. “I’ve no objection to it, mind, for them who like it.. I just can’t fancy the taste of it myself.”

“Oh well, you miss a lot,” he said, pouring himself out some more and lying back on the bed with his feet on the quilt. “I couldn’t sleep a wink without this stuff.”

Was he going to turn out to be a drunkard, then? They had never had one of those. But the drunks Doris had seen in the streets were older, blobbier men, the kind you would draw away from instinctively, even without the danger that they might be sick on your shoes.

“I’ll say good night then. And please, Mr. Brett, hide that bottle for pity’s sake.”

“I’ve got some more.” He grinned at her, but not blobbily.

“Hide them all then.” Doris went downstairs, took off her shoes and got herself interested in the papers.

There was one thing you could say for Mrs. P. She did not try to catch you unawares. She told Doris: “I’m going to do a round of inspection—everywhere,” and it would be everywhere, but it gave you fair warning.

Doris went up to No. 4 to get the dust out of the top of the wardrobe. Ah—he had hidden the bottles then, like she told him. She picked one up to get at the dust. It was empty. So were the others. Three empty bottles and he had only been there a week! No wonder he was so difficult to wake in the mornings. Well, sooner him than her. If she had to drink one, let alone three bottles of whiskey in a week, Doris believed that she would be dead. She took the bottles away, and after dark dropped them over the low fence into the dustbin of the hotel next door. Mrs. P. was not above inspecting the Lothian dustbins when the mood was on her. There had been that trouble not long ago when she had found all that bread. That was why there was never fresh bread at meals now. The old loaf had to be finished first, so by the time they got to the new one, that was old, and so it went on. Mr. Dangerfield sometimes took a slice to his room to clean the stiff collar and cuffs he wore for giving dancing lessons. He said, with his smile, that stale bread was better for this. He was always one for finding
the silver lining, and had Patience Strong verses stuck round his dressing-table mirror.

Mr. Finck had tried to be funny one day by pretending to break a tooth on the bread. No one had laughed except Mr. Brett, and they had both paid the price in jam sauce when the queen puddings came round.

Mr. Brett continued to go in and out by the window, boosting the dog over the roofs. So far no one had noticed that he was never seen either going out to or coming in from work, and Doris herself had got quite used to it. It was as much a part of him as little Curtis Lewin’s spinal jacket was of
him
, though it had given Doris a turn when she first saw it sitting on a chair when Curtis was in bed.

She had also got quite used to Mr. Brett drinking so much. He was getting worse, and Ferdie did a lot of conjecturing as to where he got his whiskey, and why he drank so much all lone up there.

“He’s drinking to forget,” Ferdie said. Doris did not speculate what, but Ferdie did. He had turned quite nasty one day when Doris asked him to get rid of some empty bottles for her, so she did not ask him any more. She smuggled them away in a suitcase when she went out, and dumped them in a corporation bin.

Sometimes Mr. Brett did his drinking out. When he stayed out to supper, he never remembered to tell Mrs. P. beforehand, which put her out with her portions. One week-end he had stayed out for every meal: dinner, tea and supper. The other guests had talked about him in the dining-room, hoping that he was having a gay time and enjoying himself, wherever he was. They were becoming quite fond of him, especially Mrs. Parker and Miss Willys and Miss Rawlings, with whom he would sometimes play whist in the lounge for a while before he went upstairs to his whiskey. Doris got quite a start when she went in to clear the coffee things to see him sitting there looking as out-of-place as a monkey at a funeral. Much too young, for even little Curtis had an old man’s face, and looking as if he could suddenly jump up and run if he wanted to, whereas the others, even Mr. Dangerfield, who was lazy after meals, thought twice about getting up to change the programme on the wireless.

They all took an interest in Mr. Brett, for want of anything else in their lives, and when a young lady from the art school
kept ringing up they teased him and wagged their fingers and said: “Ah-ha.”

“A model, I daresay. Wish he’d bring her round here,” said Ferdie, who visualised models as more or less permanently in the nude.

That week-end, when he had not come in to any meals, nobody knew that he had not come home at all on Saturday night. Doris discovered this when she took his tea, but she could not tell Mrs. P., so Mr. Brett’s Sunday egg was cooked in vain. Nobody else had it, for making distinctions in deprivations was one thing, but fair was fair and Mrs. P. did not think it right that one guest should have two eggs and the others only one. Doris privately thought it was because she did not like any of the guests enough to see them eating two eggs. The cook or Daphne would have liked it, but they could not eat it with Mrs. P. in the kitchen, and by the time she was gone the egg was congealed and nasty and even Ferdie could not fancy it.

That Sunday night, Doris had managed to secrete some chop bones from the plates after dinner. She forgot about them until she was undressed for bed, and then remembered that she had not taken up anything for the dog to eat. Her room, which she shared with the cistern, was on the top floor, so she had to creep all the way downstairs in her green wool dressing-gown and black slippers. Since Mr. Brett had come with his outlandish demands, she had got used to skulking about doing things she ought not. It had become as much part of the job as making his bed or emptying his wastepaper basket.

Coming up with the plate of bones, she knocked on the door of No. 4 and called softly, meaning, since she was indecorously dressed, to leave the plate outside and go away. He did not answer. It was not like him to fall asleep so early, even when he had a lot to drink. She knocked again, but she could not stand knocking and calling there all night without doors opening on the staircase, so she went into the room, clutching her dressing-gown tight in front of her as if its buttons were not modesty enough.

He was not back yet. The window was open a crack at the bottom, as she always left it when he was out, so that he could lift it from outside. She put down the plate and went to the window to look at the night and see if he were going to get
caught in the rain. There he was, sitting on the lead roof below her, his back against the wall, cross-legged, with his dog sitting beside him as if they intended to stay there all night. Doris raised the window and he looked up and waved.

“Come along in, Mr. Brett. Whatever are you doing?”

“Can’t get in,” he said.

Oh dear, yes, he had had too much to drink. Doris had heard his voice like this so often before, and recognised it as dispassionately as if it had been hoarse from a cold.

“Funny thing,” he said, “but tonight I can’t make it. The dog can’t make it either. Funny thing.”

“No wonder,” said Doris crisply, “since it’s you that always has to lift him in. Come on, Mr. Brett, give me your hands and I’ll help you in.” He was heavy and he was foolish, thrashing his legs about and not trying properly. She got him and the dog in somehow, expecting every minute to hear windows go up because of the noise. He did not seem to notice that she was wearing a dressing-gown, so she thought no more of it and behaved as if she were in her black dress and apron.

He flung himself onto the bed, and she took off his shoes. She never liked to see shoes on that eiderdown. Before she had finished, he was nearly asleep.

“Come along, Mr. Brett.” She shook his foot. His sock was full of holes. What did other men do, she wondered fleetingly, who had no one to darn their socks for them? Mr. Dangerfield darned his own, she knew, but he was not like other men.

“Come along, wake up. You can’t go to sleep with your clothes on.”

“Yes,” he muttered. His face looked crumpled.

“Now, if I go away, will you promise to undress?”

“Yes.” But she knew he wouldn’t. However, she could not stay to prove it, so she left him. When she got to her own room, she could not feel easy, so she came down again and listened outside No. 4. There was no sound except the dog crunching the chop bones. She opened the door. Yes, there he was, just as she had left him, only more deeply asleep.

“Mr. Brett,” she implored to his unconsciousness. “You must, you simply must undress. It’s my late morning tomorrow. Daphne will bring you your tea, and she can’t see you like this. It will be all round the hotel—after all the trouble I’ve taken to keep things dark. Mrs. P.-” But he
obviously did not care about Daphne or Mrs. P. or anything but whatever he was dreaming about which was making him smile.