While she was wondering what to do she heard voices underneath the window.
“We don’t seem to be very lucky here just now, Rundle,” said Mr. Ampleforth.
“No, sir.”
There was a pause. Then Mr. Ampleforth spoke again.
“He’s still breathing, I think.”
“Yes, sir, he is, just.”
“You take his head and I’ll take his feet, and we’ll get him into the house.”
Something began to stir in Maggie’s mind. Rundle replied:
“If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, I don’t think we ought to move him. I was told once by a doctor that if a man’s had a fall or anything it’s best to leave him lying.”
“I don’t think it’ll matter if we’re careful.”
“Really, sir, if you’ll take my advice—”
There was a note of obstinacy in Rundle’s voice. Maggie, almost beside herself with agitation, longed to fling open the window and cry “Bring him in! Bring him in!” But her hand seemed paralysed and her throat could not form the words.
Presently Mr. Ampleforth said:
“You know we can’t let him stay here. It’s beginning to rain.”
(Bring him in! Bring him in!)
“Well, sir, it’s your responsibility . . .”
Maggie’s heart almost stopped beating.
“Naturally I don’t want to do anything to hurt the poor chap.”
(Oh, bring him in! Bring him in!)
The rain began to patter on the pane.
“Look here, Rundle, we must get him under cover.”
“I’ll fetch that bit of wing, sir, and put over him.”
(Bring him in! Bring him in!)
Maggie heard Rundle pulling something that grated on the gravel path. The sound ceased and Mr. Ampleforth said:
“The very thing for a stretcher, Rundle! The earth’s so soft, we can slide it under him. Careful, careful!” Both men were breathing hard. “Have you got your end? Right.” Their heavy, measured footfalls grew fainter and fainter.
The next thing Maggie heard was the motor-car returning with the doctor. Not daring to go out, and unable to sit down, she stood, how long she did not know, holding her bedroom door ajar. At last she saw the nurse coming towards her.
“The patient’s a little better, Miss Winthrop. The doctor thinks he’ll pull through now.”
“Which patient?”
“Oh, there was never any hope for the other poor fellow.”
Maggie closed her eyes.
“Can I see Antony?” she said at last.
“Well, you may just peep at him.”
Antony smiled at her feebly from the bed.
Happy Hour
Ian Watson
Prospectus
Address:
The Roebuck Public House, near Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire, England.
Property:
Elizabethan building with authentic low-beamed ceilings, comfortable furnishings and restaurant annex. Ample living accommodation. A popular local venue with substantial catchment area.
Viewing Date:
Summer, 1990.
Agent:
Ian Watson (1943–) was born on Tyneside and was a teacher in Tanzania and Tokyo for some years before returning to England to become one of the first lecturers in Future Studies. He has written an impressive variety of award-winning science fiction and supernatural novels – including The Embedding (1973), The Gardens of Delight (1980) and The Fire Worm (1988) – and has been described as the “natural successor to H.G. Wells”. Watson is a master of short stories dealing with the nature of perception, as he demonstrates in “Happy Hour”, which is about an ancient evil mixed up with modern technology. The setting, he says, is based on a real pub.
With an abrupt loud clatter the steel slats of the exhaust fan exploded open, making our hearts lurch. Martin mimed quick pistol shots at it.
“Pung! Pung! Gotcha.”
That fan was set just beneath the bowed, beamed ceiling of the bar in the Roebuck. The contraption was at least twenty years out of date. It didn’t purr softly like a modern fan. It exploded open, showing its teeth, and gulped at the atmosphere. One of the historic stones of this pub – built in the reign of Good Queen Bess, so a sign on the wall boasted – had been removed so that the thing could be inserted. The actual mechanism was hidden inside the wall. When the fan was in repose, all that showed was a slatted cream panel one foot square lying flush with the cream plasterwork. You hardly noticed it, forgot all about it – until suddenly the Xtractall opened its mouth as if by its own volition; until the flat panel became a dozen razor lips spaced an inch apart, through which fuggy air was sucked into its throat.
The fan throbbed lustily, sucking Charlotte’s cigarette smoke and my own cigar smoke into it.
“Does it have a built-in smoke detector?” I wondered.
“We could ask what’s-his-name. Our host.” Jenny nodded toward the deserted bar counter.
“Host” was somewhat of a misnomer. The landlord was a quiet, wispy chap with little by way of personality. He smiled amiably, but he was no conversationalist; and frankly we liked it this way. Right now he would be round in the restaurant annex neatening the array of silver and wineglasses on the tables. The Roebuck was one of those few country pubs that opened fairly promptly at six of an evening, but it relied for its main trade on the gourmet menu from about half-past seven till ten. It wasn’t much of a hangout for locals and yokels.
To be sure, now that the licensing hours had been liberalized, the place could have stayed open all day long. Yet what rural pub would bother to? We were lucky to have found the Roebuck.
Jenny and I, Charlotte and Martin, and Alice (who was special) all commuted to London and back by way of big, glassy Milton Keynes Station. Charlotte and Martin had bought a sizable thatched cottage in a couple of acres this side of Buckingham. Jenny and I were based in a different little village outside of Stony Stratford, in a barn conversion. Alice lived . . . somewhere in the vicinity. Alone? Or otherwise? Alice was our delicious enigma. Apparently she was in publishing. Webster-Freeman: art and oriental-wisdom volumes, shading into the outright occult. I sometimes fantasized her dancing naked around a bonfire or homemade altar along with other like spirits, firelight or candlelight winking between her legs. If such was the case, she had never tried to recruit us (and, curiously, my fantasies along these lines never provoked an erection). We were merely one slice of her life on Friday evenings: a slice lasting an hour – twice as long when we all dined at the Roebuck once a month.
Why had we been so honored by Alice? Perhaps she was lonely under her capable, gorgeous facade. Perhaps we were neutrals with whom she could be friends without obligations or ties.
I myself worked for an oil company and was in charge of Butadiene, a gas used as fuel and also in the manufacture of synthetic rubbers. Since I was on the contracts rather than the chemistry side, the job called for some foreign travel – quick trips to Eastern Europe, Mexico, Japan, from which I returned tired out – but otherwise my career was ho-hum. I assumed I would be with the same mob for the rest of my working life, slowly advancing. In our company salaries were somewhat pinched to start with (and indeed to continue with!) until the final five years, when suddenly you were rolling in money and could practically write yourself cheques. Thus my masters assured staff loyalty.
My wife, Jenny, was office manager for an airline, which gave us free tickets once a year to hot, exotic places where I didn’t need to sit haggling in an office. Jenny was a short, trim blonde who wore smartly tailored suits and lavish bows like big silken napkins tucked into her neckline.
Burly, early-balding Martin was an architect, and his spouse, Charlotte, willowy and auburn, was a senior secretary to an export-import firm called, uninventively, Exportim, which managed to sound like some Soviet trade bureau.
And Alice was . . . Alice.
Weekdays (except Fridays) Martin and Charlotte and Jenny and I all dro
ve our own cars to MK Station, since we might need to work late and catch different trains home. Every Friday, however, my wife and I shared a car; so did Martin and his wife. On that day nothing would make us miss the same return train and our wind-down drink with Alice at the Roebuck. Needless to say, our minor contribution toward car-sharing in no way relieved the parking pressure at MK. By seven-fifteen in the morning every weekday the station car parks were full up, and the central reservations and traffic islands were becoming crowded with vehicles. The new city in the Buckinghamshire countryside boasted a fine network of roads, but where parking was concerned, the planners had cocked up. Pressure, pressure. No wonder we looked forward to our Friday evenings. Or our once-a-month dinner.
I screwed my cigar butt into one ashtray at the exact moment when Charlotte stubbed out her Marlboro in another – as if she and I had been reproached by the extractor fan for our filthy habits. We glanced at one another and burst out laughing. The fan thumped shut.
“I heard this in Hungary,” I said. “There’s a new Russian wristwatch on the market, triumph of Soviet technology. It’ll do absolutely everything: time zones, phases of the moon, built-in calculator. It only weighs a few ounces. ‘So what’s the snag?’ asks this fellow. ‘Oh,’ says his informant, ‘it’s just the two suitcases of batteries you need to carry round with it . . .’ ”
Then Alice told a dirty joke.
“This British couple went for a holiday in the States to tour the national parks. Well, in the first park they made friends with a skunk. They adored the skunk so much they took it with them in their trailer to the next park, then the next. Come the end of their holiday, they could hardly bear to be parted from the animal. ‘I wish we could take it home,’ said the husband, ‘but how could we avoid the quarantine laws?’ ‘I know,’ said his wife, ‘I’ll stick the skunk inside my knickers, and we’ll smuggle it in that way.’ ‘Great idea,’ agreed her husband, ‘but, um, what about the smell?’ The wife shrugged and sighed. ‘If it dies, it dies.’ ”
Alice was good that way. She was incredibly desirable – tall, slim, long legs, wonderful figure, that mass of raven hair, olive skin, dark broody eyes – but she easily defused any sexual tensions that might have undermined our little group. Lust from the men; or jealousy from the ladies. Charlotte had first fallen into conversation with Alice on the homeward train, and introduced her to the rest of us at journey’s end. We rarely sat together on the train itself. Such a rush to catch it. Carriages would be crowded; and we all had work to keep us busy.
Alice refrained from letting us know her home address or phone number – perhaps wisely, in case Martin or I tried to see her privately. Nor, in fact, had she ever asked about our own homes. A tacit agreement prevailed, not to know. Meanwhile, she certainly made our Friday evening group react together. She was our catalyst. Without her, we would have been just two everyday couples. With her, we felt special: a new sort of unit, a sparkling fivesome.
Gleefully Martin took over the baton of joke-telling.
“The mother superior of this convent school invited a Battle of Britain hero to address her girls,” he said with relish. “The flying ace told them, ‘I was at eight thousand feet in my Spitfire. I saw a fokker to the left of me. There was another fokker to the right of me. I looked up, and the sky was full of fokkers.’ ‘I should explain, girls,’ interrupted the mother superior, ‘that the Fokker-Wolf was a Second World War German fighter plane.’ ‘That’s quite right, Mother,’ said the airman, ‘but these fokkers were flying Messerschmidts.’ ”
Though the jokes themselves might have seemed silly – it’s the way they’re told, isn’t it? – we excelled ourselves in wit and amity that evening . . . until the pub cat came a-calling on us. This mog was a scruffy ginger specimen, which I had seen the landlord shooing outdoors on a couple of occasions. With the unerring instinct of pussies, it made straight for Alice, to rub against her leg. She drew away.
“I loathe cats. I’m allergic.”
“Gid away!” Martin flapped and clapped his hands. The mog retreated a little, not particularly deterred.
So much, I thought wryly, for Alice being any kind of spare-time witch; and to my scanty store of information about her I added the knowledge that there were no felines in her home.
She shifted uncomfortably. “I can’t bear to touch them. I really don’t like them.” This was the first sour note in any of our evenings.
“Derrick,” Jenny said to me, “for heaven’s sake grab it and shove it out of the door.”
“It’s their hair,” murmured Alice. “It would give me a terrible rash. I hope they don’t let it sleep in here at night. Sprawling on these seats, rubbing fur off all the time. If they do let it, and I knew that, well . . .”
The end of our Friday fivesome. Panic. We would never find another suitable pub.
“I’m sure it’s an outdoor cat,” Martin assured her. I was shoving my chair back quietly prior to attempting to collar the beast, when that fan on the wall went click-clack. It simply opened its slats for a moment, then shut them again as if a strong buffet of wind had surged through from outside – though the weather had been clement when we drove up.
The cat skedaddled as if a bucket of water had been dumped on it. “That’s scuttled him. Thanks, fan. Must be turning blowy outside.”
“We should go,” said Alice.
“Till next week?” Anxious me.
“Oh yes,” she promised. We all rose.
But outside the night was perfectly still. Not even a breeze.
The following Friday our trio of vehicles all arrived at almost the same time at the Roebuck. Under the bare chestnut tree standing sentinel by the car park, Charlotte inhaled.
“Is that your perfume, Alice? It’s glorious.”
It was indeed: rich, musky, wild, yet subtle nevertheless, like some treasure forever unattainable, unownable.
“A friend of mine runs a perfumery down in the Cotswolds,” Alice told her. “This is a new creation.”
“Could you possibly get me –?” began Charlotte. “No, don’t. Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
Of course not. If Charlotte wore that ravishing scent, what might Martin imagine? Alice didn’t press her.
“I’m trying to give up smoking,” added Charlotte as we headed through the November chill toward the door. “Tonight I think I’ll do without.”
This seeming nonsequitur was actually an intimate confidence between the two women; indeed between all of us. We mustn’t pollute Alice’s fragrance. The onus now lay on me to refrain from lighting up any of my slim panatelas.
I rechecked our host’s name painted over the lintel of the door – John Chalmers, of course–though I needn’t have bothered. I had to tinkle the bell on the counter several times before he came, seeming too preoccupied even to greet us beyond a few nods. As soon as I had extracted a couple of pints of Adnam’s for Martin and me, a gin for Jenny, and a lowland single malt for Alice, Chalmers withdrew. Alice was a connoisseur of scotches; another grace note in her favor.
“I’d like to sit under the fan tonight,” she announced.
So as to minimize her own fragrance diplomatically, symbolically? We sat at a table different from our usual one. Scarcely a couple of minutes passed before – clunk-clack – the slats of the fan sprang open, and the machinery sucked air.
“How odd,” said Martin. “None of us is smoking, and it switches on.”
“Maybe,” I said recklessly to Alice, “it’s breathing your scent in. Maybe it’s in love with you.”
Jenny darted me a dubious glance. The fan continued operating without ceasing, throbbing away, never shutting down.
Unaccountably John Chalmers kept wandering into the body of the bar, dusting ashtrays, adjusting the hang of hunting prints on the walls.
“What’s up, man?” Martin asked the landlord during his third incursion.
“Tiger’s gone missing. Our cat.”
“Aaah,” breathed Alice. “I meant to
ask: Do you let that cat roam these rooms during the night?”
“The whole place gets a thorough vacuuming every morning,” said our house-proud host.
Alice pursed her lips. “An old building. Nooks and crannies. Mice?”
“I have never found any dead vermin inside. Outside, I’ve found Tiger’s trophies. What do you expect? Not in here, never. If there’s any mice, he scares ’em off.”
Alice continued gazing at him till he took umbrage. “Health inspector gave us a pat on the back last month. He’s more interested in kitchens, but he said this was the most spick-and-span bar he’d seen in all the county.” Chalmers wandered off, restaurantward.
When he had gone off, Martin pointed up at the busy Xtractall. “There’s a tiny bit that isn’t spick.” A russet something – barely noticeable – had lodged between the edge of one slat and the housing.
“What is it?” Alice asked, in a need-to-know tone. Martin had to take off his shoes and clamber onto an upholstered chair, handkerchief in hand.
“Just you be careful of those fingers!” Charlotte called.
“S’all right. Safety grille inside. Stops idiots from mincing themselves.” He pried with the hanky and stepped down. “Bit of ginger fur. Ugh, skin? Dried blood?” Hastily he folded the hanky over and plunged it deep in his pocket. I glanced anxiously at Alice, but she was smiling up at the fan.
Presently Charlotte started kidding Alice gently about the arty occult books published by Webster-Freeman. Charlotte had popped into a bookshop to buy new pages of her personal organizer, had happened upon a display of those volumes, and had skimmed through a few out of curiosity.
“What’s the use of it all nowadays?” she asked. “Is it a spiritual thread in a material world? Gurus, psychedelics . . . But the sixties are gone forever.”
Alice mused. “For a while it seemed as if the world would change. As if a new age were coming: of joy, the flesh, the mind, old values in a new incarnation. Instead, what came was plastic people making plastic money.”
The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) Page 21