The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories Read online

  “Come into the studio.”

  It was what the builder of the bungalow would have called the lounge: in fact, the only sitting-­room. Now the floor was bare; a bar extended round the walls; and there were photographs of Karsavina, Lifar, and Genée. There was also a rather larger photograph of Doris Ditton in a white shirt and black tie, the walking-­out uniform of some women’s organization.

  “It’s not very much,” said Kynaston, glancing round. “I’ll talk about myself over our coffee.”

  “It looks very interesting.”

  “Sit down.” With his foot he pushed towards her a small round stool covered in scarlet artificial leather. He departed for the coffee.

  Griselda soon rose and began to examine the photographs. Lifar, every feather in position as the male Blue Bird, particularly took her fancy. Doris Ditton also, she thought, looked more self-sufficient than at the tea party the previous day. There was a heap of copies of a paper she had not previously heard of. It was called “The Dancing Times.”

  “Do you read poetry?”

  This was something Griselda had forgotten about her teacher.

  “Not as much as I should.”

  Kynaston had returned with two large mugs and a small dun-coloured book:

  “I don’t know about that. But some of these might amuse you while I fill the jug.”

  He departed once more. The book was entitled “Days of Delinquency” by Geoffrey Kynaston. It contained about thirty short poems. Somewhat to her surprise, Griselda seemed quite able to understand them.

  Incubus

  Can you hear my feet approaching?

  Can you bear my heart encroaching?

  No hope to hide when I am coming

  Straight into your soul I’m homing.

  There were about twenty more lines but Kynaston had returned with a steaming jug and a milk bottle.

  “White, I imagine?”

  “Please.”

  The mug was very heavy and very hot. It was in peasant ware and bore an inscription in Breton.

  “What are you making of your own life?” He sat on the floor at her feet.

  “Very little.”

  “Good. I dislike womanly women. They’re the only ones who make a success of it. Of being a woman I mean. It’s hell, isn’t it?”

  “It varies.”

  “Do you read Rilke?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t altogether care for his work but he had a lot in common with me as a man. I have the same utter dependence on a strong woman.”

  Griselda looked up at Doris’s photograph.

  “I didn’t mean Doris. Though she can look rather splendid, don’t you think?”

  “Very attractive.”

  “It’s only skin deep, though, or clothes deep. She lacks guts, little Doris.”

  “I rather liked her.” This was not true, but Griselda disapproved of Kynaston’s comment.

  “Of course. Don’t misunderstand me. I adore Doris. She’s the sweetest girl in Hodley.”

  “How long have you lived in Hodley?”

  “Eighteen months. Ever since I left the Shephard’s Market Ballet. They chucked me, you know. After that I was done. You don’t get another shop when you’ve been chucked for the reason I was.”

  Griselda thought enquiry was unnecessary.

  “I refused to go to bed with Frankie Litmus.”

  “Oh.” Griselda took a resolute pull at the interminable coffee.

  “I’m not that way at all, believe it or not. And look what’s become of me in consequence! Let that be a lesson to you. Ditched in this pigstye teaching the lads of the village to caper. Have some more coffee? It’s actually Nescafé, as you doubtless perceive.”

  “No thank you.” The vast mug was still more than half full.

  “Pupils like you are rare. Do you mind if I make the most of you?”

  “I hope you will.”

  “We’ve got all day. Will you come for a picnic with me?”

  “I’m under orders to learn to dance.”

  “That won’t take you all day. By the way, why can’t you dance?”

  There was something about him which enabled her to tell him.

  “I dislike being held.”

  He rose dangling his empty mug.

  “Even by someone you’re fond of?”

  “I’ve never been fond enough of anyone.”

  He considered. “In that case clearly, I must first win your confidence.”

  She smiled.

  “More coffee?”

  “No thank you.”

  “Do you think the preparations for a picnic are the best or the worst part? Cutting the sandwiches. Filling the thermoses. Counting the knives.”

  “The worst part.”

  “In that case we’d better not set about it until later. I haven’t told you much about myself yet. That’ll fill the gap. Or better still I’ll read you some of my poems. I’ve given up serious dancing you know and am trying to establish myself as a poet.” Griselda noticed it was the phrase Doris had employed the day before.

  “I shall be sent home if I don’t dance.”

  “If they are cruel to you at home, you can always come and live here. But more of that later. And, by the way, I’m coming to the Ball myself, you know.”

  “Mrs. Hatch didn’t mention that.”

  “I’ll be able to keep an eye on you. And hands off you, so to speak. Other hands than mine, of course. Apropos of which—” He began to read aloud.

  “Disclaimer

  Other loves than mine may kill you;

  Other hates than mine fulfill you;

  Other saints through grief atone you;

  Other sinners crowd to stone you——”

  He continued through the poem, then read several others. Griselda, a fair judge of verse, was not very much impressed by Kynaston’s poesy, but more than a little charmed by his excellent delivery. His attractive voice and skilful accentuation made far more emerge from the verses than had ever entered into them.

  “I won’t ask you what you think,” he said at the end. “A poet I believe must heed only his inner voice.”

  This, on the whole, was a relief.

  “May I say,” enquired Griselda, “how very much I enjoyed the way you read?”

  “I was taught by Moissi,” replied Kynaston. “And much good has it done me.”

  “That was before you took up dancing?”

  “I have many gifts,” he answered, “but none of them has come to anything at all. I need a suitable woman to manage my life for me. Without that, even my poetry will be still another dreariness and misery.”

  “You’ve at least achieved publication. Many poets don’t.”

  “True. And against really passionate opposition by Herbert Read. Still, fewer than a hundred copies have sold. Well, well. Before we pack the picnic basket, will you help me with the washing up?”

  There were not only the coffee adjuncts, but the remains of Kynaston’s breakfast and of another vague meal which had seemingly involved the consumption of some very fat ham or boiled bacon. Griselda hung her jacket on the door of the little kitchenette and applied herself, while Kynaston dried on a small, discoloured tea-­cloth. The tiny room became hot and steamy.

  When it was all over, Kynaston, from a box-­like cupboard in the hall, produced a large wicker picnic-­basket.

  “Now for the awful preliminaries.”

  “Must we have the basket? Are there going to be enough of us?”

  “If we don’t take the basket, the picnic will turn into a walk, and with you, I couldn’t stand that.”

  From the dilapidated meat-­safe he produced the knuckle end of a Bath chap, a bottle of French mustard, and half a stale loaf. “Better than no bread,” he remarked. “Will you please do your very best with the ingredients provided? Here’s a knife. I’m going to pack the tinned apricots and the opener.”

  Griselda began to make sandwiches. Kynaston hurried about packing the basket with heavy
, and, in Griselda’s view, superfluous objects. “I’ll just get the stove for coffee,” he said.

  “What does Doris do?” enquired Griselda at one point, for something to say, and in the capricious and destructive spirit in which women ask such questions at such times.

  “Part time nursing,” replied Kynaston, packing plates. “She’s no use at the bedside, but the clothes are good. Mostly, she’s waiting, of course. Waiting for experience of the male. Shall I put in some bottles of beer?”

  “I dislike beer.”

  “You sound as if you dislike me too? Would you rather not come on the picnic? I can always go unaccompanied.”

  “I have to stay here until it is time for tea. You’re supposed to be teaching me dancing, which I don’t want to learn. We’d better use up the time somehow.”

  “Yes,” he said, lining up the cutlery they were to take. “You’re at my mercy, aren’t you? I should so much prefer the situation to be reversed.”

  After a round of complicated preparations, remarkably onerous in view of the smallness alike of the bungalow and of the undertaking before them, they at last found themselves on the doorstep.

  “Forgive me if I double-­lock the front door,” said Kynaston. Griselda reflected that the whole woodwork would yield like cardboard to any housebreaker.

  They set out along the distractingly noisy main road through Hodley, carrying the ponderous basket between them. The traffic made conversation impossible, and the preservation of life, weighed down as they were, a matter calling for constant attention. After about a hundred yards Griselda wished she could change hands with their burden. After about a hundred and twenty-­five yards she arranged with Kynaston to do so. After about a quarter of a mile Kynaston shouted: “Up there for the Woods. Up the steps to your left.”

  Griselda was realizing that her left arm was by no means as strong as her right, and she transferred the basket once more as she struggled up the steps ahead of Kynaston. Hodley Woods, though a well-­known beauty spot, were neither as extensive nor as dense as Griselda had expected from the descriptions she had often read of them in advertisements; but they appeared unpopulated, it being a time of the day and week when all but the anti-­social were at work. The road now ran in a cutting which much diminished its uproar. The sun, moreover, had begun to shine, falsifying Mullet’s forecast; and among the undergrowth Griselda noticed a yellow-hammer.

  “Places like this are only beautiful when they’re near a town,” remarked Kynaston.

  “I don’t think I follow.”

  “When there’s no town, the landscape should be more startling. Miles of this sort of thing and nothing else, would be intolerable.”

  “It’s what I’m used to. I haven’t travelled much. Where do we settle?”

  “What about here? You can just see the main line through that gap in the trees. At least you will be able to, when there’s a train. I like trains.”

  It was a spot where several trees had been cut down. Generations of pine needles warmed and cushioned the dead roots. Griselda began to convert one of the stumps into a table. Kynaston lay on his back.

  “I suppose you work.”

  “Not at the moment. Or not in the way you mean. I had to give it up owing to troubles at home.”

  “You mean they took exception to the nature of your employment?”

  “No. I had to return home and help.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Things went wrong. Have a sandwich?”

  Still regarding the tree-­tops he reached about with his arm. “You’re not very informative. Never mind. It’s unlikely that I’d be able to assist much. Even with advice.” His hand, roving through the air, struck the arm of her jacket. He took her arm between his fingers and thumb and followed it down to the wrist. Then he took the sandwich. “I detest mustard, by the way. I should have mentioned that.”

  “There’s no mustard. I forgot to ask you. I don’t like it either.”

  He began to drop bits of the sandwich into his upturned mouth.

  “As we’ve carried plates all this way, perhaps we’d better use them,” said Griselda.

  “Am I eating swinishly? After all, it’s swine I’m eating.”

  “Here you are,” said Griselda firmly. “Take it.” She held a plate before his face.

  Kynaston sat up. He placed the remains of the decomposing sandwich on the plate. “I am a creature of moods,” he said. “As you see. But I like women to know their own minds.”

  For the remainder of the meal his behaviour was irreproachable.

  After they had consumed the final tinned apricot, Kynaston busied himself making Nescafé on the little stove. The stove was slow to light and laborious to sustain. “It’s getting old,” he remarked. “I’ve had it since I was at school. I was at Stowe, you know,” he added, as if alluding to a matter of very common knowledge. “It’s supposed to be better than the usual reformatory. We were allowed to have a few possessions of our own. This was mine. I used to make Bantam in the grounds. Nescafé hadn’t been invented, I think, at that time.” He was striking matches and blowing the minute flame. “Don’t get me wrong all the same,” he went on. “At the best Stowe’s only a vulgar makeshift. It was built for another purpose.”

  “Wasn’t it the house of the Duke of Buckingham?”

  “It was, Griselda. May I call you Griselda? I think one should ask. Oh, curse.” He had burned himself rather badly.

  “You may call me Griselda. I like you to ask. Can I do anything helpful?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Cold tea would be good for that burn.”

  “We’ve only got Nescafé. . . . How did you know about the Buckingham’s?”

  “I read.”

  “About the history of architecture?”

  “Family histories.”

  “What else?”

  “Almost everything else. You can’t define. You know that.”

  “I know that. I was trying to trap you into an admission.” The stove was now flaming merrily; almost hysterically, Griselda thought. “I was trying to trap you into an admission of anything.”

  “I have little to conceal.”

  “Are you awakened? I think not.”

  “You think the same of others, I notice.”

  “Doris, you mean? It’s true. Have you read Casanova?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh. You have. Then you’ll recall his remark to the effect that most people never receive the initial jolt which is required to bring the mind to consciousness.” The water boiled over, extinguishing the long yellow flames. There had been a good blaze and little of the water was left.

  But they made the best of it and somehow began a conversation about books and the psyche which continued until Griselda noticed that her wrist-­watch showed half-­past three.

  “What about my lessons?”

  “You’ve too many brains to make a good dancer, but I’ll do what I can in the time.”

  “Whose fault is it about the time?”

  “Blame it on life. It’s hard to know where to begin else. Living in Hodley I cannot be expected to regard someone like you only as a source of income.”

  Griselda wondered what there was about her to elicit a compliment from a man who, however irritating in his habits, yet undoubtedly had seen much of the world. She wondered but smiled. Then she thought of the ordeal before her.

  They returned with the picnic basket to the bungalow. Entering the studio immediately, Kynaston put a record on the gramophone.

  “Leave that outside,” he said, referring to the basket. “Anywhere.” Soft music trickled forth.

  “There’s a note for you,” cried Griselda, staving off events. “It was behind the front door.”

  “Read it. Out loud.”

  “ ‘I have put your shirt in the top left hand drawer on top of the others.’ ”

  “For tonight. Doris has been washing it. She has to wash her own shirts the whole time and she’s become very good at it.
”

  “I’m looking forward to meeting her again tonight.” This remark could hardly do more than gain time.

  “Doris won’t be coming. I’m asked only for professional reasons.” The music was murmuring on. Kynaston was in the centre of the room. He spoke with a touch of impatience. “I’m ready.”

  There seemed no help for it.

  CHAPTER VII

  Immediately Griselda re-­entered Beams, the Duchess clutched her by the arm.

  “You have returned at the right moment, my dear,” she said. “I have something I want to ask you. Tell me the truth. Did you hear Fritzi last night? Were you awakened?”

  This last question seemed to recur.

  “I don’t think so,” replied Griselda, courteously but cautiously. Could the Duchess be referring to the noisy frequenter of the distant passage?

  “I am so very glad to hear it. The lovely Pamela was not awakened either, and, of course, George it is always utterly impossible to awake. But everyone else, it seems. Even that Irish assassin, who sleeps outside above the motor-­cars. And poor little Fritzi he could not at all explain to me what was the matter with him.”

  Griselda realized that Fritzi was the Duchess’s dog. She remembered. She was a little frightened.

  “Have you no idea yourself?”

  “No idea at all. Gottfried and I woke up together. There was little Fritzi crying his poor heart out. We could not see him as there was no light. Gottfried, you know, will never allow there to be a crack of light in the room when we are in bed. I clutched Gott­fried very tightly. What could it be? Gottfried kissed and caressed me. Then he got out of bed and turned on the light. Fritzi was standing up in his basket, quite erect and stiff as a statue. I got out of bed too. I went to Fritzi and asked him why he was crying. And do you know, my dear, what happened then? He growled at me as if he didn’t know me. Fritzi has never growled at Gottfried or me in all the eleven years we have had him. But Gottfried made it better for me again and in the end Fritzi stopped crying and fell asleep quite suddenly. I asked him again in the morning but he couldn’t tell me what it all meant.”