Strange Stories (20 page)

The Coffee Room was so low that Gerald had to dip beneath a sequence of thick beams.

‘Why “Coffee Room”?’ asked Phrynne, looking at the words on the door. ‘I saw a notice that coffee will only be served in the lounge.’

‘It’s the
lucus a non lucendo
principle.’

‘That explains everything. I wonder where we sit.’ A single electric lantern, mass produced in an antique pattern, had been turned on. The bulb was of that limited wattage which is peculiar to hotels. It did little to penetrate the shadows.

‘The
lucus a non lucendo
principle is the principle of calling white black.’

‘Not at all,’ said a voice from the darkness. ‘On the contrary. The word black comes from an ancient root which means “to bleach”.’

They had thought themselves alone, but now saw a small man seated by himself at an unlighted corner table. In the darkness he looked like a monkey.

‘I stand corrected,’ said Gerald.

They sat at the table under the lantern.

The man in the comer spoke again. ‘Why are you here at all?’

Phrynne looked frightened, but Gerald replied quietly.

‘We’re on holiday. We prefer it out of the season. I presume you are Commandant Shotcroft?’

‘No need to presume.’ Unexpectedly the Commandant switched on the antique lantern which was nearest to him. His table was littered with a finished meal. It struck Gerald that he must have switched off the light when he heard them approach the Coffee Room. ‘I’m going anyway.’

‘Are we late?’ asked Phrynne, always the assuager of situations.

' ‘No, you’re not late,’ said the Commandant in a deep, moody voice. ‘My meals are prepared half an hour before the time the rest come in. I don’t like eating in company.’ He had risen to his feet. ‘So perhaps you excuse me.’

Without troubling about an answer, he stepped quickly out of the Coffee Room. He had cropped white hair; tragic, heavy- lidded eyes; and a round face which was yellow and lined.

A second later his head reappeared round the door.

‘Ring,’ he said; and again withdrew.

‘Too many other people ringing,’ said Gerald. ‘But I don’t see what else we can do.’

The Coffee Room bell, however, made a noise like a fire alarm.

Mrs Pascoe appeared. She looked considerably the worse for drink.

‘Didn’t see you in the bar.’

‘Must have missed us in the crowd,’ said Gerald amiably.

‘Crowd?’ inquired Mrs Pascoe drunkenly. Then, after a difficult pause, she offered them a hand-written menu.

They ordered; and Mrs Pascoe served them throughout. Gerald was apprehensive lest her indisposition increase during the course of the meal; but her insobriety, like her affability, seemed to have an exact and definite limit.

‘All things considered, the food might be worse,’ remarked

Gerald, towards the end. It was a relief that something was going reasonably well. ‘Not much of it, but at least the dishes are hot.’

When Phrynne translated this into a compliment to the cook, Mrs Pascoe said, ‘I cooked it all myself, although I shouldn’t be the one to say so.’

Gerald felt really surprised that she was in a condition to have accomplished this. Possibly, he reflected with alarm, she had had much practice under similar conditions.

‘Coffee is served in the lounge,’ said Mrs Pascoe.

They withdrew. In a corner of the lounge was a screen decorated with winning Elizabethan ladies in ruffs and hoops. From behind it projected a pair of small black boots. Phrynne nudged Gerald and pointed to them. Gerald nodded. They felt themselves constrained to talk about things which bored them.

The hotel was old and its walls thick. In the empty lounge the noise of the bells could not prevent conversation being overheard, but still came from all around, as if the hotel were a fortress beleaguered by surrounding artillery.

After their second cups of coffee, Gerald suddenly said he couldn’t stand it.

‘Darling, it’s not doing us any harm. I think it’s rather cosy.’ Phrynne subsided in the wooden chair with its sloping back and long mud-coloured mock-velvet cushions; and opened her pretty legs to the fire.

‘Every church in the town must be ringing its bells. It’s been going on for two and a half hours and they never seem to take the usual breathers.’

‘We wouldn’t hear. Because of all the other bells ringing. I think it’s nice of them to ring the bells for us.’

Nothing further was said for several minutes. Gerald was beginning to realize that they had yet to evolve a holiday routine.

‘I’ll get you a drink. What shall it be?’

‘Anything you like. Whatever you have.’ Phrynne was immersed in female enjoyment of the fire’s radiance on her body.

Gerald missed this, and said, ‘I don’t quite see why they have to keep the place like a hothouse. When I come back, we’ll sit somewhere else.’

‘Men wear too many clothes, darling,’ said Phrynne drowsily. Contrary to his assumption, Gerald found the lounge bar as empty as everywhere else in the hotel and the town. There was not even a person to dispense.

Somewhat irritably, Gerald struck a brass bell which stood on the counter. It rang out sharply as a pistol shot.

Mrs Pascoe appeared at a door among the shelves. She had taken off her jacket, and her make-up had begun to run.

‘A cognac, please. Double. And a Kummel.’

Mrs Pascoe’s hands were shaking so much that she could not get the cork out of the brandy bottle.

‘Allow me.’ Gerald stretched his arm across the bar.

Mrs Pascoe stared at him blearily. ‘O.K. But I must pour it.’ Gerald extracted the cork and returned the bottle. Mrs Pascoe slopped a far from precise dose into a balloon.

Catastrophe followed. Unable to return the bottle to the high shelf where it resided, Mrs Pascoe placed it on a waist- level ledge. Reaching for the alembic of Kummel, she swept the three-quarters full brandy bottle on to the tiled floor. The stuffy air became fogged with the fumes of brandy from behind the bar.

At the door from which Mrs Pascoe had emerged appeared a man from the inner room. Though still youngish, he was puce and puffy, and in his braces, with no collar. Streaks of sandy hair laced his vast red scalp. Liquor oozed all over him, as if from a perished gourd. Gerald took it that this was Don.

The man was too drunk to articulate. He stood in the doorway clinging with each red hand to the ledge, and savagely |i struggling to flay his wife with imprecations.

‘How much?’ said Gerald to Mrs Pascoe. It seemed useless to try for the Kummel. The hotel must have another bar.

‘Three and six,’ said Mrs Pascoe, quite lucidly; but Gerald saw that she was about to weep.

He had the exact sum. She turned her back on him and flicked the cash register. As she returned from it, he heard the fragmentation of glass as she stepped on a piece of the broken bottle. Gerald looked at her husband out of the corner of his eye. The sagging, loose-mouthed figure made him shudder. Something moved him.

‘I’m sorry about the accident,’ he said to Mrs Pascoe. He held the balloon in one hand, and was just going.

Mrs Pascoe looked at him. The slow tears of desperation were edging down her face, but she now seemed quite sober. ‘Mr Banstead,’ she said in a flat, hurried voice. ‘May I come and sit with you and your wife in the lounge? Just for a few minutes.’

‘Of course.’ It was certainly not what he wanted, and he wondered what would become of the bar, but he felt unexpectedly sorry for her, and it was impossible to say No.

To reach the flap of the bar she had to pass her husband. Gerald saw her hesitate for a second; then she advanced resolutely and steadily and looking straight before her. If the man had let go with his hands, he would have fallen; but as she passed him, he released a great gob of spit. He was far too incapable to aim, and it fell on the side of his own trousers. Gerald lifted the flap for Mrs Pascoe and stood back to let her precede him from the bar. As he followed her, he heard her husband maundering off into unintelligible inward searchings.

‘The Kummel! ’ said Mrs Pascoe, remembering in the doorway.

‘Never mind,’ said Gerald. ‘Perhaps I could try one of the other bars?’

‘Not tonight. They’re shut. I’d better go back.’

‘No. We’ll think of something else.’ It was not yet nine o’clock, and Gerald wondered about the Licensing Justices.

But in the lounge was another unexpected scene. Mrs Pascoe stopped as soon as they entered, and Gerald, caught between two imitation-leather armchairs, looked over her shoulder.

Phrynne had fallen asleep. Her head was slightly on one side, but her mouth was shut, and her body no more than gracefully relaxed, so that she looked most beautiful, and, Gerald thought, a trifle unearthly, like a dead girl in an early picture by Millais.

The quality of her beauty seemed also to have impressed Commandant Shotcroft; for he was standing silently behind her and looking down at her, his sad face transfigured. Gerald noticed that a leaf of the pseudo-Elizabethan screen had been folded back, revealing a small cretonne-covered chair, with an open tome face downward in its seat.

‘Won’t you join us?’ said Gerald boldly. There was that in the Commandant’s face which boded no hurt. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

The Commandant did not turn his head, and seemed unable to speak. Then in a low voice he said, ‘For a moment only.’

‘Good,’ said Gerald. ‘Sit down. And you, Mrs Pascoe.’ Airs Pascoe was dabbing at her face. Gerald addressed the Commandant. ‘What shall it be?’

‘Nothing to drink,’ said the Commandant in the same low I mutter. It occurred to Gerald that if Phrynne awoke, the Commandant would go.

‘What about you?’ Gerald looked at Mrs Pascoe, earnestly hoping she would decline.

‘No, thanks.’ She was glancing at the Commandant. Clearly she had not expected him to be there.

Phrynne being asleep, Gerald sat down too. He sipped his brandy. It was impossible to romanticize the action with a toast.

The events in the bar had made him forget about the bells. Now, as they sat silently round the sleeping Phrynne, the tide of sound swept over him once more.

‘You mustn’t think,’ said Mrs Pascoe, ‘that he’s always like that.’ They all spoke in hushed voices. All of them seemed to have reason to do so. The Commandant was again gazing somberly at Phrynne’s beauty.

‘Of course not.’ But it was hard to believe.

‘The licensed business puts temptations in a man’s way.’

‘It must be very difficult.’

‘We ought never to have come here. We were happy in South Norwood.’

‘You must do good business during the season.’

‘Two months,’ said Mrs Pascoe bitterly, but still softly. ‘Two and a half at the very most. The people who come during the season have no idea what goes on out of it.’

‘What made you leave South Norwood?’

‘Don’s stomach. The doctor said the sea air would do him good.’

‘Speaking of that, doesn’t the sea go too far out? We went down on the beach before dinner, but couldn’t see it anywhere.’

On the other side of the fire, the Commandant turned his eyes from Phrynne and looked at Gerald.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Mrs Pascoe. ‘I never have time to look from one year’s end to the other.’ It was a customary enough answer, but Gerald felt that it did not disclose the whole truth. He noticed that Mrs Pascoe glanced uneasily at the Commandant, who by now was staring neither at Phrynne nor at Gerald but at the toppling citadels in the fire.

‘And now I must get on with my work,’ continued Mrs Pascoe, ‘I only came in for a minute.’ She looked Gerald in the face. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and rose.

‘Please stay a little longer,’ said Gerald. ‘Wait till my wife wakes up.’ As he spoke, Phrynne slightly shifted.

‘Can’t be done,’ said Mrs Pascoe, her lips smiling. Gerald noticed that all the time she was watching the Commandant from under her lids, and knew that were he not there, she would have stayed.

As it was, she went. Till probably see you later to say good night. Sorry the water’s not very hot. It’s having no porter.’ The bells showed no sign of flagging.

When Mrs Pascoe had closed the door, the Commandant spoke.

‘He was a fine man once. Don’t think otherwise.’

‘You mean Pascoe?’

The Commandant nodded seriously.

‘Not my type,’ said Gerald.

‘DSO and bar. DFC and bar.’

‘And now bar only. Why?’

‘You heard what she said. It was a lie. They didn’t leave South Norwood for the sea air.’

‘So I supposed.’

‘He got into trouble. He was fixed. He wasn’t the kind of man to know about human nature and all its rottenness.’

‘A pity,’ said Gerald. ‘But perhaps, even so, this isn’t the best place for him?’

‘It’s the worst,’ said the Commandant, a dark flame in his eyes. ‘For him or anyone else.’

Again Phrynne shifted in her sleep: this time more convulsively, so that she nearly awoke. For some reason the two men remained speechless and motionless until she was again breathing steadily. Against the silence within, the bells sounded louder than ever. It was as if the tumult were tearing holes in the roof.

It’s certainly a very noisy place,’ said Gerald, still in an undertone.

‘Why did you have to come tonight of all nights?’ The Commandant spoke in the same undertone, but his vehemence was extreme.

‘This doesn’t happen often?’

‘Once every year.’

‘They should have told us.’

‘They don’t usually accept bookings. They’ve no right to accept them. When Pascoe was in charge they never did.’

‘I expect that Mrs Pascoe felt they were in no position to turn away business.’

‘It’s not a matter that should be left to a woman.’

‘Not much alternative surely?’

‘At heart women are creatures of darkness all the time.’

The Commandant’s seriousness and bitterness left Gerald without a reply.

‘My wife doesn’t mind the bells,’ he said after a moment. ‘In fact she rather likes them.’ The Commandant really was converting a nuisance, though an acute one, into a melodrama. The Commandant turned and gazed at him. It struck Gerald that what he had just said in some way, for the Commandant, placed Phrynne also in a category of the lost.