The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories

by Robert Aickman

  After similar experiences at irregular and unpredictable intervals on twenty-­eight occasions, Griselda, when a twenty-­ninth occasion offered, felt positively but indefinably unwell. It would be deplorable, she spent much of the time reflecting, if, more­over, nature, despite counter-­measures, took her course. She began to wonder more than ever whether she was truly suited to marriage.

  Energy, thwarted of satisfactory direct outlet, expended itself obliquely, as is the way in marriage. Griselda began to apply herself more steadily and more forethoughtfully at the shop; and also to see that Kynaston applied himself as efficiently as his temperament and his job permitted. Soon the shop became the subject of a note in “The Bookseller”, and Colonel Costa-­Rica was holding before Kynaston the possibility of a position, at higher pay, in the Orinocan Intelligence Service. Not only did they become richer, their increase in income being coupled with a diminished desire to expend; but they began to scent the first faint sunrising of social approbation renewed.

  Before long Kynaston was losing interest in both poetry and his plastic poses, in favour of a projected Anthology of Curator-ship, for which he hoped to obtain a Foreword from the Editor of “Country Life”. Sometimes they found themselves invited to visit homes of repute and to mingle on equal terms with the enbosomed families. More and more the shop stocked books which might sell, instead of minority books. Lena, over whom, of course, hymeneal happiness had yet to hover, regarded this last tendency disapprovingly; though the proceeds conveniently augmented the slight returns from her own new book. A climax was reached when Kynaston received an invitation to stand in the Labour interest at the Parish Council Elections. He declined, because he deemed politics to obstruct full self-­realisation; but he declined politely, conscious that, far more than any other party, the Labour party gives careful heed to the morals and probity of all it permits to join its pilgrimage.

  When she had been married nearly a year, Griselda one morning realized with surprise that Lena, to judge by some remarks she made, regarded her state with envy.

  “But, Lena, you don’t have to marry a man in order to enjoy him.”

  Lena leaned back against the counter, her hands in her pockets. “There are times, Griselda, when your superficiality is equalled only by your smugness.”

  She had never before spoken so to Griselda, though given to the style when speaking to certain other people. Griselda had observed, however, that Lena’s censoriousness, though seldom judicious, was seldom wholly undeserved.

  “Am I becoming smug, Lena?”

  “I apologize for what I said. I’m a bitch.”

  “But am I becoming smug?”

  “As a matter of fact, you are.”

  “What should I do about it?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  Before the matter could be taken further, they were interrupted by the arrival of a thousand copies of a book describing the atrociousness of the new German government.

  Not the least remarkable change in Kynaston was his sustained firmness in dealing with the problem of Lotus. Quite soon Lotus was reduced to supplicating Griselda: a procedure which Griselda considered superfluous and irrelevant, though, with a perverseness new to her nature, she did not say so to Lotus.

  “You gave me your word,” cried Lotus, her beauty rising from her tears, like Venus from the flood.

  And instead of simply pointing out that she had in no way broken it, Griselda replied reflectively “Things are never quite the same after marriage as they were before it,” and offered Lotus another glass of lemon tea.

  After weeks of apparent rebuff and equivocation Lotus tumultuously capitulated at the end of February.

  “You’ve won him and I’ve lost him,” she said to Griselda over morning coffee. “You’ve been stamping out my body like wine beneath your little feet. I need renewal. I always find it in the same place.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Sfax.”

  In due course, a picture postcard of a grinning Arab under a palm tree laden with dates, confirmed Lotus’s decision; but Griselda wondered what in Kynaston’s life had replaced the satisfactions, however limited, which, even by his own account, Lotus had given him. She looked at the sky of Sfax, almost unnaturally ultramarine, at the camels on the horizon, at the Wagons-­Lits official in the foreground; and supposed that Kynaston must at last have found a purpose in life. Really it was most unlike him.

  About a week after Lena’s outburst in the shop, Griselda received a visit from Guillaume. It was a Saturday afternoon; and Griselda was lying on her back, gazing at the ceiling, and eating Pascall’s crèmes-­de-­menthe. She and Kynaston had not yet found a better place to live; indeed lately the search itself had flagged.

  “Sorry Geoffrey’s out. How’s Florence?”

  Guillaume was wandering about the small sitting-­room collecting cushions.

  “Losing weight just a little, I’m afraid. She strains you know. I try to open her eyes to the wonder of life, but I doubt if the brightness of it all is ever wholly clear to her.”

  He filled an armchair with his accumulation and sank his large body slowly into the midst of it.

  There followed a long silence. Guillaume looked like a dingy Mother Goose.

  He restarted the momentum of intercourse. “I thought I’d take a chance of finding you in.”

  “Have a crème-­de-­menthe?”

  “May I take a handful?” He nearly emptied the small green tin. “I’m engaged on research at Soane’s. The work of years. Probably my very last chance. The final brief passage before the volume closes.”

  “Surely not?”

  “I’m a disappointed man, you know, Mrs. Kynaston.” He smiled like the last sunset of autumn. He had difficulty in extracting the sweets entirely from their papers, so that every now and then he ejected a tiny moist scrap which had accidentally entered his mouth.

  “Florence told me.”

  He seemed disturbed. “That she had no right to do. Even a failure has his pride.”

  “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Where is it that you’ve failed?”

  “Can you look at the world around you and ask me that?” he replied. “On the one hand the dream. On the other the reality. And I started with such hopes.” He was feeling for his pocket handkerchief. Griselda feared that he was about to weep, but he only sought to remove some of the stickiness which his large moist hands had retained from the sweets.

  “Take only one case,” he continued. “Take the state of affairs in denominational schools. Little children exposed naked to the blast of bigotry. Take the mines. Do you know that the faces of miners are black all the time they work? Men born as white as you or I. Take the so-­called catering industry. Have you ever worked for twenty-­four hours on end in an underground kitchen? Do you know that the world’s supply of phosphorus is being consumed at ten or twenty times the rate it’s being replaced? Look at the cruelty and waste involved in the so-­called sport of polo alone! If you live in Wallsend, you have to walk ten miles to see a blade of grass. Is anything being done to harness the energy in the planets? Even though there’s enough to extirpate work everywhere. Think of the millions deceived by so-­called free insurance schemes, paid for out of profits!”

  “I see what you mean,” said Griselda.

  “And in other countries things are worse. What have you to say about the Japanese? Or the Andaman Islanders, who pass their entire lives in a prison camp? Or the so-­called freed slaves in Liberia?”­

  “Perhaps we’d better stick to England. At least to start with.”

  “There’s a great danger in parochialism. The aboriginal Tasmanians discovered that.”

  “How?”

  “Very simply. They were trapped, killed, and eaten by men of more progressive outlook.”

  “I think there is a lot in what Lord Beaconsfield said.”

  “Of course there is,” said Guillaume unexpectedly. “But did he put it into practice?”

  Griselda was far fro
m sure. But almost certainly Guillaume was thinking of some other remark of the sage’s. In any case, he resumed speaking immediately.

  “Though who am I to throw the first stone?” he enquired. “William Cook, the failure. You didn’t even know that my real name was William?”

  “It would never have occurred to me. I suppose you disliked being called Bill? I know I should.”

  “In those days no one would have ventured. I was a man of spirit then. I knew Hubert Bland quite well: and Hyndman too. No. I changed my name, Mrs. Kynaston, solely in order to appear to advantage with women.”

  “I’m sure you did impress them.”

  “Not one. I might have saved myself the cost. Never has one woman truly opened her heart to me, although my heart finds room for the whole human race.” He looked into Griselda’s eyes and coughed back into his mouth a crème-­de-­menthe which had involved itself with the lump in his throat.

  “You have Florence. She’s devoted to you.”

  “A mere Ahaviel. A simple handmaiden,” he replied irritably. “If I could have made my own, utterly my own, a woman of spiritual power, comparable with mine, mountains would have moved.”

  For some reason this remark annoyed Griselda. “I think Florence is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

  “Nice is the just word,” he replied bitterly. “But you speak to a prophet. My responsibility is wide. I seek the divine flame, not soapsuds.”

  “I won’t have this,” said Griselda quietly and putting on her shoes. “I am fond of Florence. You’re lucky to have her.”

  “Florence is Florence. Naturally no one estimates her more justly than I do.”

  “She is beautiful and intelligent and devoted and faithful and kind. Kind people are rare. As a prophet you ought to know that.”

  Guillaume eyed her through the gathering October dusk. “I understand why you set store by at least one of those qualities.”

  “I set store by all of them.” Griselda suspected another attempted seduction.

  “We need not pretend. Your business partner still lives at Juvenal Court, you know. Florence has known Lena for years.”

  Griselda thought quickly and clearly before deciding what to say next. Then she decided.

  “I’m sorry I can’t offer you tea. I’ve arranged to join Geoffrey.”

  “Like everybody else, you under-­estimate me. Had you been taking tea with Kynaston, I should not have chosen today to visit you.”

  Griselda had not expected that either. But for reasons she had not yet had time to determine, Guillaume’s surprising remarks had the effect of clearing rather than unsettling her mind.

  “I’m afraid I must ask you to go. Please give my love to Florence.”

  “I am quite used to eviction and condemnation, as to many other unpleasant things. I should be a poor creature if by now I had not my philosophy, strong as iron.” Laboriously he rose from his cache of cushions, like the nook of an animal about to hibernate. Still sucking and spitting, he crawled across to the window and stared into the encroaching night. Griselda stood by the open door, waiting.

  “I was absorbing the peace of the lamplighter at work,” said Guillaume after a while, “like a glowworm. Or, perhaps more nearly, a firefly.”

  “I often watch him,” said Griselda, who had never previously noticed him.

  “ ‘Like a good deed in a naughty world.’ You are sensitive to the beauty of words?”

  “Of course. I own a bookshop.”

  “It would be pleasant to live so high up.” Guillaume sighed and looked about in the twilight for his hat.

  “Here.” Griselda extended the object. It was a close replica of that worn by Mazzini when in disguise.

  “Good-­bye,” said Guillaume, assimilating and retaining her hand. “I grieve for you.”

  “Quite unnecessary,” replied Griselda, struggling slightly.

  “You mustn’t deny me that single luxury.” He kissed her heavily and adhesively upon the brow and went away, reeking of charity and peppermint.

  Griselda drew the curtains, turned on the lights, and prepared for herself a satisfying, solitary tea, including cucumber sandwiches, and custard creams, new and crisp. For the first time since before Christmas, she felt able to regard herself and find all her faculties present and functioning. Before long she wondered whether it was not even more than that: whether she was not in process of restoration against the consequences of losing Louise. It might be that her marriage to Kynaston had been required to achieve that.

  The only awful thought was that Guillaume’s hints, bearing in mind Guillaume’s nature, might have been untrue.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  Griselda thereafter took particular trouble to be kind and understanding to Lena, despite provocations which steadily increased.

  One morning, as the anniversary of her wedding drew near, Griselda sat in the little office after the shop had closed. She was writing and addressing Christmas Cards, designed by herself. Lena had been supposed to be keeping an appointment of some kind, but at the last moment had decided not to go. She was wandering about the shop examining the stock with dissatisfaction.

  Just as Griselda decided that she was not called upon to send a specially designed Christmas Card to Mrs. Hatch, Lena called out “Griselda. May I talk to you? Or do I interrupt?” She was seated on top of one of the shop ladders.

  “Of course you don’t interrupt. I’ve hardly spoken to you alone for weeks.”

  “I think our books are frightful. There’s an entire shelf of Warwick­ Deeping.”

  “It’s right up under the ceiling. No one can see it.”

  “And under it Jeffrey Farnol.”

  “That’s just old stock.”

  “And under that J. B. Priestley.”

  “We’ve got to live.”

  “I’d rather live honestly.”

  “Come down and talk about it.”

  Lena descended and entered the office. She had taken to wearing dresses; which did not suit her personality. Griselda reflected with interest upon the deterioration in her own clothes since marriage.

  “I want to hand back my partnership. With thanks, of course, Griselda.”

  “I can’t do without you.”

  Lena upturned the wastepaper basket, and sat upon it. The floor was now covered with the transactions of the day.

  “I’m going to live abroad.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere warm.”

  “North Africa?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Dear Lena. Of course, it’s a man?”

  “The feeling when you haven’t got one is exceeded only by the quite different feeling when you have. But you don’t know about that.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “Not this particular example of it.”

  “Then why leave the shop?”

  “I told you. I don’t like the books we stock. The books we have to stock. I admit that. I still don’t like them.”

  “Is it that he still chases you?”

  “Mind your own business, Griselda.” Then she added “You’ll be much better without me.” Griselda had never seen or even imagined her so distressed. She spoke very gently.

  “It’s Geoffrey, I think.”

  Lena shook her head.

  “I recognized him from your description.”

  “It’s over, Griselda. At least for me. I’m not sure about him, I’m afraid. I feel a pig, pig, pig.”

  “You needn’t. I believe I’m grateful to you. Anyway I know very much how you feel. I feel some of it myself. Please don’t feel it any more. It’s quite unnecessary. I do know.”

  “You’re good to me Griselda.” She looked at the pile of Christmas cards. “Shall I stick on stamps?”

  Griselda smiled and nodded. Soon Lena’s tongue was inflexible with mucilage.

  “May I stay in the shop?”

  “I can’t do without you.”

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  Griseld
a felt more than ever that marriage did not suit her. She supposed that she should have a plan to extricate herself; since resignation, the other possibility, had never suited her either. The trouble was that Kynaston was clearly coming to depend upon her more and more. Worse still, his marriage had enabled him to acquire and develop a variety of social and professional responsibilities and entanglements, which he would be wholly unable to sustain unaided. Griselda found difficulty in deciding how far these were expressions of Kynaston’s personality, previously kept latent by restricted conditions, and how far mere substitute outlets for energy diverted by marriage from true and individual aims. Things were not made easier by Lena’s normal defence mechanism of aggression turning against herself, and manifesting as acute guilty embarrassment, whenever she came into contact with Kynaston. This led to Lena absenting herself from the shop whenever she thought Kynaston might appear; and to Kynaston making sour remarks about Lena whenever opportunity offered. In the end he suggested that he himself might take Lena’s place.

  “I could begin by organizing a display of ballet books. Give the entire shop over to it, I mean.”

  “It wouldn’t be fair on Lena, darling. After all she’s done nothing wrong.”

  One day in November Griselda received a letter from Lotus. It was on a large sheet of paper in a large envelope, possibly because Lotus’s handwriting was so large; but the contents were brief. It simply invited Griselda to luncheon at Prunier’s the same day. It was the first she had heard of Lotus since the postcard view of Sfax. Apparently she was now staying at the Grosvenor Hotel.

  Lotus was very brown, a little plumper, and even better dressed than usual. But her big green eyes were deep rock pools.