The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories Page 12

  The trouble was that no one seemed sufficiently interested, though the Duke and Duchess followed up politely.

  “Who is he?” enquired Pamela, the resonating chambers of her (never very resonant) voice clotted with mucus.

  “I beg your pardon?” enquired Edwin courteously.

  “The director. What’s his name? Or is that a whimsey little secret too?” Pamela was unused to not being answered first time.

  “The director’s name is not actually a secret, but I doubt whether any of you would know it.”

  “Thought he was world famous,” persisted Pamela spitefully. Probably she had by now something against Edwin. She added with unwelcome acumen: “How’s he to reach the masses now if he hasn’t done it already?”

  “I don’t think I actually described him as world-­famous: only in certain informed circles.” It was the first time Griselda had ever seen Edwin reduced to the defensive. His entire narrative, moreover, seemed to her less impressive than some of its glittering predecessors.

  “I see,” said Pamela, “high hat. Tell your Princess she’d do better with Punch and Judy. More to remould society, I mean, if that’s the idea, as you say it is.” Pamela seemed to doubt whether it was the idea. She tried to sniff, but her nose was so blocked that she failed to do so, which was much more distressing than even success would have been. The zymosis which choked her tubes seemed, none the less, somehow to have cleared her brain. She applied a minute hard ball of a handkerchief and began with the other hand to release drops from a bottle of bitters on to her pancake.

  Griselda noticed that Mrs. Hatch was barely even eating.

  Real trouble broke out only when Brundrit brought in a large dish of medlars.

  The trouble was that no one seemed to want medlars: no one except perhaps Mrs. Hatch, and even she, like most people in such cases, seemed more concerned that the others should like medlars than happy that she liked them herself. She implied, with the faintest undertone of pugnacity, that these particular medlars had been preserved in exactly the recommended state of decomposition since the previous autumn, an undertaking involving much skill and difficulty, of which the present company were privileged to enjoy the benefit.

  To begin with, the Duke and Duchess did not know what medlars were, and fogged themselves worse and worse with obscure Germanic polysyllables, cooing together like puzzled budgerigars. Then Edwin seemed afraid that the deliquescent fibres would damage his suit. And Griselda had experienced medlars in the past.

  Pamela merely said, “They look rotten.”

  The Duke, speaking German, made some reference to their smell.

  “Not rotten at all,” said Mrs. Hatch. “The fruit is in the finest possible condition for eating. It is properly bletted.”

  “What is bletted, Melanie?” asked the Duchess.

  “Medlars cannot be eaten, Odile, until they mature. Then they are the most delicious of all fruit. Try one and see for yourself.”

  The Duke and Duchess took one medlar each.

  “Griselda?”

  “No thank you.”

  “Don’t be narrow. Have you any first-­hand experience of medlars?” This question clearly, in the grammarians’ phrase, expected the answer No.

  “Yes. I’m afraid I don’t like them.”

  “Then you’re a silly girl. Pamela.”

  “I’m only allowed to eat food which is perfectly fresh.”

  “What about you, Edwin? You may use the table implements if you wish to preserve your appearance.”

  “Please excuse me on this occasion, Mrs. Hatch. I always lunch very lightly, you know. Usually only a single quail brought to my office from the Express Dairy or somewhere like that.” Edwin had begun to doubt whether the proposed film would regenerate the proletariat after all. This made even so perfectly balanced a man as Edwin a little standoffish. Perceiving the fact, Griselda wanted to restore his confidence, as he was so much more agreeable when confident.

  But before she could think of anything to say, the Duke and Duchess had begun to misbehave. The rearrangement of the table consequent upon the departure of Mr. Leech, the absence of George Goss, and the reluctance of Edwin to risk contracting a nasty cold, had brought the Duke and Duchess against all custom to adjoining seats; and the difficulty they had experienced in identifying the strange foodstuff in the Duke’s language, had amplified into intermittent and giggling exchanges of pleasantries in German. Suddenly the Duke said something very quickly to his wife under his breath; and the two of them burst into explosions of unsuitable mirth. They tilted back their chairs, roared at the ceiling, nudged one another, and gasped out confirmations of the joke which were strangled by new attacks of laughter beyond all control. It was plain what they thought of medlars, even when properly bletted.

  Mrs. Hatch said nothing at all, but piled up a heap of medlars on her plate, and began to devour them displaying much more appetite than earlier in the meal, and sucking rather noisily.

  The Duke and Duchess went on laughing in an uncontrolled Germanic way. At first they were oblivious of their isolation; then suddenly they became over-­sensitive to it and began long-­windedly to apologize. The single medlars, still almost intact, were evidence of their good intentions.

  “It was something of which Gottfried said they reminded him,” concluded the Duchess not very happily; especially as they then began both to laugh again.

  “I was spending a night once inside the Great Pyramid,” began Edwin. He had overheard and understood the Duke’s simile and was fearful of its disclosure. “We had nothing to eat but dates. Not the artificially nurtured Tunis dates we buy in boxes, but the real native dates, small and packed into blocks and not very clean. The dogs, you know. Not to mention the heat and the native children. We had a little camel’s milk too in a gourd. It would have been most unwise to introduce any Western food, as we were entirely in the power of the group we had gone to meet.”

  “Was it a pleasant meeting?” asked Griselda.

  “Very profitable indeed. It enabled me precisely to foretell the date of the rebuilding of the Temple.”

  “Which Temple?”

  “The Temple of Jerusalem. As you probably know, I adhere to British-­Israel. It is to my mind the only conceivable explanation of modern British history. We are mere tools.”

  “Shall I serve coffee, madam?” asked Monk. Mrs. Hatch who was still silently assimilating the putrescent-­looking heap, merely nodded.

  Griselda tried to talk intelligently about the Glastonbury Thorn and to discuss the question of whether or not the Prophet Jeremiah was buried on an island off the coast of Scotland, only to be reborn as General Booth; but it was difficult going. Edwin, naturally, was eager and convincing, politely countering possible objections and clarifying dark places; but the Duke and Duchess had sunk into a state of guilty abashment, quite unlike their usual mood, and sat drinking cup after cup of café au lait and wringing their hands under the tablecloth; while Mrs. Hatch continued simply to sulk. She had been so agreeable on and before their walk that Griselda was unable fully to understand what was the matter with her, though Austin Barnes, shaker of nations and breaker of lives, almost certainly had something to do with it, she supposed.

  Ultimately the house party fell to pieces like the ten little nigger boys. Two were already missing. Then, as Edwin was explaining the mystical status of the Union Jack, Pamela abruptly remarked that her Father always insisted upon her going straight home when she was ill, and proceeded upstairs to pack, Mrs. Hatch offering singularly little resistance. Five minutes later, by which time Edwin had arrived at the Biblical appointment of the site of Balmoral Castle, the Duchess, with exquisite anguish, observed that if there were to be no games in which all of them could join, she and Gottfried would like to retire for their usual afternoon rest, and departed easing the belt of her dress (she was a little flushed) and followed by her husband hard on her heels. Again Mrs. Hatch stonily acquiesced, and sat glaring at the épergne. Suddenly Edwin stopped in
the middle of sentence and, exclaiming “The Aga Khan. I must, if you will forgive me,” hastened away. “I wonder if the lines to that part of India are busy at this hour?” he enquired absently as he carefully closed the door.

  Left alone with Griselda, Mrs. Hatch was clearly about to say something of the utmost significance. Her mien was almost frightening with import. But Monk entered and asked if he could clear; and once more Mrs. Hatch wearily acquiesced.

  “Shall Stainer serve tea, ma’am? It’s the usual time.”

  “Do you want any tea, Griselda?”

  “Yes, please,” said Griselda stoutly. “If I could first remove your boots.”

  “Remove what you like,” said Mrs. Hatch; then, addressing Monk, added “Tea for Miss de Reptonville. And I suppose we may have visitors. Tea for five or six. Nothing for me.”

  Griselda began to realize that few things are so important in any kind of shared life as the moods of the person it is shared with. Mrs. Hatch was being quite unlike herself. Griselda recalled Louise’s words about the difficulty of living with anyone, and that even Louise had shown signs of a moodiness which would doubtless wax on longer and less desperate acquaintanceship.

  To judge by her past experience, she suspected that so many medlars had made matters worse by giving Mrs. Hatch colic.

  It took Griselda twenty minutes to remove the boots, and to oil and part her hair; and when she again descended it was to find that Mrs. Hatch’s single visitor that Sunday had arrived, a certain Mrs. Cramp, the wife of a neighbouring landowner. It was still raining hard.

  “Bitches,” cried out Mrs. Cramp in a loud harsh voice like a police whistle, “have two or three times the staying power of dogs. If not more.”

  A fire had been lighted and the scene offered all the cosiness of an English country house at Sunday tea time; though none of the other guests seemed eager to partake. Griselda soon learnt that Pamela had already left without saying Goodbye to anyone, even to her hostess. In the end, however, George Goss clumped down the stairs.

  “Think I’ve thrown up the worst by now, Melanie,” he announced. But he seemed too dispirited even to pester Griselda. He sat by himself crumbling a lump of the famous cake and casting round the furniture for the alcoholic provision normally made for him.

  “Melanie,” he said at last. “Could I have a drink?”

  This time Mrs. Hatch did not even answer; and George Goss continued to sit feebly opening and closing his fingers, like a frustrated crustacean.

  Nor did Edwin fare better. When he reappeared from the tele­phone room (it had been converted from its previous function of downstairs lavatory), Griselda was startled to notice that his face was pale and his hair almost dishevelled round the ears. Manifestly he was using all his worldly knowledge and resource to conceal that anything was wrong. He accepted tea and cake; but every now and then Griselda heard him whispering to himself between mouthfuls. The words sounded like “It can’t be. It can’t be.” The crisis came quite suddenly: Edwin sat up straight in his chair, and, returning his cup, from which he had been drinking, to his saucer, cried out: “The Pope must intervene.” After that he seemed to recover rapidly, and to return to his normal, exceptionally well-adjusted frame of mind; but not before Mrs. Hatch had said in the rudest possible way, “Edwin Polegate-­Hampden, you bore me.” It was proof how hard to disturb was Edwin’s fundamental equilibrium that he was able to smile and reply, “The ex-­Empress used to say exactly the same.” Edwin then munched briskly and began to draft a long sequence of telegrams for Monk to spell out as best he could to a country telephone operator on a Sunday evening. Mrs. Hatch even seemed almost to demur at Monk being given this employment.

  Dinner was worse. The Duke and Duchess made a belated reappearance, the Duchess, evening dress being inconsistent with the Sabbath, in a short gown of olive-­coloured satin, rather more shiny than would have best suited any other wearer but exactly right for her; and Edwin seemed entirely restored to cheerfulness by the knowledge that Monk was still faithfully at work on his behalf and on behalf of enduring humanity. But George Goss was still rather ill, and also empty, as the rattlings and roarings of his intestines bore witness whenever conviviality ebbed, which was frequently. For Mrs. Hatch’s mien had by now become such as almost to cancel all faintest prospect of the jovial. Griselda sincerely wondered what could be the matter with her.

  It was unfortunate that none of the company, pleasant people though they all were, really appealed to Griselda as a sympathetic conversationalist. After all, it was her last evening as a guest at Beams. Did most house parties deflate in this way? she wondered. She tried to place in her mind the exact time when the gaiety had been at its height, the social balloon most stuffed with gas. She was unable to settle this time. She could only think of Louise, who seemed in no way whatever a part of her surroundings. This, however Griselda reflected, was probably wrong: one had to put up with George Goss belching and with hours of wasted living if one was to have any hope of minutes with such as Louise.

  “The thing I can least abide in life,” announced Mrs. Hatch, apropos of some behind-­the-­scenes domesticity, “is deceit. Did you know, Stainer, that my grandfather in Greece once strangled with his own hands a servant who deceived him?”

  “No, mum,” said Stainer, shaking all over, and beginning to snivel.

  “It was only a small matter. It was the principle my grand­father cared about. And I feel precisely the same as my grand­father. Do you understand what I say?”

  Stainer was now speechless.

  “Answer me, please. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, mum.” The words were hardly audible in the unpleasant hush that had fallen upon all present. Griselda reflected upon the fact that, unlike most domestic servants she had encountered, Stainer seemed to contemplate neither cheeking Mrs. Hatch nor leaving her employ.

  “Then you will never attempt to deceive me again?”

  “No, mum.”

  “Very well then. Serve the ortolans.”

  Griselda thought not of ortolans, but of falcons: of a sky full of falcons and herself a dove amongst them. She was frightened.

  Their spirits temporarily broken, the Duchess did not suggest games, nor Edwin bridge. Instead, Mrs. Hatch, apologizing perfunctorily to her guests and referring them to their own devices, ordered Monk, by now as one shellshocked with telephoning, to bring her the big ledger, and settled down to an evening of entering up accounts, which she did with no small dexterity. The full deployment of her powers required concentration, however; and it was soon to be made clear to the luckless company that the continuum was readily disturbed. Edwin who would probably have liked to attempt flirtation with Griselda, or something tending in the same direction with the Duchess, was reduced to drafting a study for “The Times Literary Supplement” to be entitled “A Case for Holy Living.” The Ellensteins and Griselda felt remarkably bored, and began, in their different ways, to think of bed, although it was not yet half-­past nine.

  Suddenly George Goss roared out “In Christ’s name, Melanie, what’s the matter with you?” Griselda realized that he was crazed from lack of liquor.

  Mrs. Hatch who was adding an entire long column, made a small tight gesture of exasperation, utterly murderous, but said or did nothing further. George Goss began to stagger away, questing for a drink, a lion at last.

  The Duke and Duchess excused themselves. Mrs. Hatch could not have seemed more indifferent. They ascended the staircase, a little shakily, Griselda thought. Nerviness riddled the entire community. Then Griselda decided to snap the link herself. After all, she had Sir Osbert Sitwell’s “Winters of Content” to read; and her bedroom was just the place for such a book.

  “If you can spare me, Mrs. Hatch, I think I’ll go to bed too. Our walk must have tired me.” This last statement was untrue, but something of the kind seemed to be required.

  Mrs. Hatch was glaring at an invoice, seeking to pluck out the heart of its mystery. She said nothing.

&nbs
p; “Well—Good night.”

  Mrs. Hatch still did not look up, but she said “Good night.” Her tone baffled Griselda completely. It was certainly not noticeably pleasant. Griselda could not recall her Mother, or any of her Mother’s circle, behaving like this in the capacity of hostess. But her Mother was limited, and her circle small. Nine-­thirty struck in the hall as Griselda entered her room, leaving Mrs. Hatch in malign solitude with her sums. It was raining harder than ever.

  CHAPTER XII

  The room was filled not with damp night, but with Louise’s perfume.

  Griselda softly cried out, “Louise!”

  Then again she recalled that the perfume was Stephanie’s also. But as apparently only Louise could see and converse with Stephanie, it was difficult to know what to do, except be frightened once more. More than ever, Griselda wanted Louise to be with her. But she had no idea where Louise was.

  Griselda tentatively removed her wrist watch and laid it on the dressing table. A gust of wind, weighted with rain, so jarred the window that Griselda thought she would investigate. There was nothing to be done about that either: though the water was seeping into the room at many points between the well-­made sashes and frames, and though it would clearly be a troubled night for any sleeper not enamoured of a storm. Fortunately, Griselda was not such a sleeper. She was simply a sleeper not enamoured of a ghost.

  For when she returned to the dressing table, though her back had been turned upon it for only seconds, a strange object had appeared, and lay beside her familiar efficient wrist watch. It was a tiny knife: almost a dagger; conceivably a stiletto. The silvery blade, as if daily used and polished for generations, reflected a great bar of light across the ceiling. The ivory hilt was inlaid with purple amethyst, spiralling round it like the pattern on a Byzantine column. From butt to tip the knife was about five inches long. Griselda picked it up and tried the blade. The two edges were so sharp that it was difficult not to cut off at least a finger. They converged to a tip like the sting of a glittering insect.