Ritual

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Where does he eat?’ asked Charlie sarcastically.

  ‘He sure as hell doesn’t eat at Le Reposoir,’ Oliver T. Burack put in. ‘He said to me the other day that Mr Musette was the closest thing he’d ever met to a goat that walks on its hind legs.’

  ‘I thought your friend was deaf,’ Charlie said to Christopher Prescott. ‘I also thought that neither of you had ever heard of Le Reposoir.’

  ‘Oh, Oliver’s deaf all right,’ smiled Christopher Prescott. ‘He knows what people are talking about, though. He has a sixth sense. What do you call it? Intuition.’

  ‘Are you talking bullshit about me again?’ Oliver T. Burack said.

  ‘Please,’ the deputy asked Charlie, as the Cadillac came dipping over the last corner of the green. But Charlie persisted. He was beginning to get the measure of these people, and he wanted to know what was going on.

  ‘The restaurant,’ he said. ‘How come you wouldn’t admit that you knew about the restaurant?’

  Christopher Prescott stared up at him with watery eyes ‘Sometimes it’s better to hold your peace, better to say nothing at all than to say something malign.’

  ‘What’s so malign about Le Reposoir?’

  The deputy came back two or three paces and pulled again at Charlie’s arm. The bank president’s car had arrived outside the bank, and the bank president was leaning forward and peering through its windshield at Charlie’s car as if he were seeing a mirage.

  ‘You want me to book you for obstructing justice?’ the deputy demanded, almost panicking.

  Christopher Prescott said to Charlie, ‘You’d better get along, fellow. I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.’

  ‘All right,’ Charlie agreed. He didn’t want to cause too much of a disturbance. MARIA inspectors were supposed to be ‘discreet and inconspicuous in their behaviour at all times’. He followed the deputy back up the grassy slope, and across the road to his automobile. The bank president was sitting with his Cadillac’s engine running. His face was hidden behind a geometric reflection of sky and trees on his windshield, but all the same Charlie gave a cheerful, insolent wave.

  Martin took his seat beside Charlie and slammed the Oldsmobile’s door. ‘You realize you’re copping out again,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s copping out?’ Charlie protested, starting the engine. ‘I made a deal.’

  ‘Some deal,’ said Martin scornfully. ‘You could have found out where that stupid restaurant is without having to ask him.’

  ‘Oh, really? How?’

  ‘You could have asked me.’

  ‘You? You don’t know where it is any more than I do.’

  Martin reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced a small white card. He passed it over to Charlie without a word. Charlie took it and held it up to the window, ignoring the contorted face of the deputy outside, who was still desperately waiting for him to move.

  At the top of the card there was an heraldic emblem of wild boars, embossed in gold, with the copperplate caption ‘Les Célèstines’. Underneath were the words ‘Le Reposoir. Société de la Cuisine Exceptionelle. 6633 Quassapaug Road, Allen’s Corners, CT.’

  Charlie turned the card over. The reverse side carried the pencilled word ‘Pain’.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Charlie asked Martin. ‘First of all those geriatrics try to pretend that they’ve never heard of the place. Now you give me this. Where did you get it, for Christ’s sake? And why the hell didn’t you show it to me before?’

  The deputy tapped on the window with his knuckles. ‘Sir,’ he mouthed, ‘will you please move?’

  Charlie let down his window and held up the card. ‘Is this the address? Sixty-six thirty-three Quassapaug Road?’

  The deputy stared at him. After all, if Charlie had known the address all along, why had he kicked up such a fuss about it? ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

  Charlie said, ‘Okay. At least we’re making some progress.’ He was about to shift his car into drive and pull away when the president of the First Litchfield Savings Bank approached him – a tall, wide-shouldered, white-haired man with a head as large as a lion. He bent down beside Charlie’s open window, and said, ‘Good afternoon. I hope you don’t feel that I’m being autocratic here.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Charlie replied. ‘I’m just about to pull out. My friend the deputy tells me you have squatter’s rights on this parking space.’

  The bank president stared at Charlie level-eyed, and then smiled. ‘You could call them squatter’s rights, I suppose. My family have lived in this town since 1845. We own most of it, and hold mortgages on the rest. So you’ll forgive me if I tend to regard this parking space as private property.’

  ‘I’m only passing through,’ Charlie told him.

  The bank president’s pale grey eyes focused on Martin. ‘You and your boy?’

  ‘That’s right. A single parent’s tour of hospitable New England.’

  ‘Listen, I apologize,’ the bank president said. ‘You stay right there. I’ll have Clive park my car for me. Allen’s Corners is a friendly town. I certainly don’t expect its law officers to hassle visitors on my behalf.’

  He reached his hand into the car, and said, ‘Walter Haxalt. Welcome to Allen’s Corners.’

  ‘Charlie McLean. And this is Martin McLean.’

  ‘Happy to know you,’ said Walter Haxalt. ‘Please feel free to stay here as long as you want.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, we’re on our way to Quassapaug Road.’

  Walter Haxalt glanced around at the deputy, then turned back to Charlie. ‘I don’t know that there’s anything of interest to a tourist up there. Quassapaug Road is just a road. Not much of a road for driving on, either. It’s all hairpins from beginning to end.’

  ‘We want to visit Le Reposoir,’ said Charlie. He held up the card that Martin had given him.

  Walter Haxalt’s expression went through a subtle but distinct change. It looked almost as if his face had been modelled out of pink wax, and an oven door had been opened close by, melting and shifting it. ‘I suppose Clive has told you that Le Reposoir is completely private.’

  Charlie reached forward and switched off the Oldsmobile’s engine.

  ‘All right,’ he said hotly. ‘Would somebody mind telling me what in the hell is going on?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ Walter Haxalt replied. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you in any way.’

  ‘I’m talking about this restaurant, Le Reposoir,’ said Charlie. ‘Mrs Foss back at the Iron Kettle warned me against visiting it. Those two good old boys on the bench there said they’d never heard of it, when they obviously had. And your pet deputy here did everything he could to tell me that I wouldn’t be welcome. Now you.’

  Walter Haxalt said nothing. Clive the deputy stroked his moustache as if it were a small furry pet.

  ‘What I want to know is what’s so darned off-putting about this place?’ Charlie appealed. Walter Haxalt’s refusal to reply was quickly defusing his temper, and making him feel embarrassed. ‘Is the food really that bad?’

  Walter Haxalt stood up straight. ‘I’m sorry, Mr McLean, I don’t think that Allen’s Corners can really give you the kind of welcome you expect. My suggestion is that you drive right on to Bethlehem. There’s a good New England-style restaurant there. They serve home-made hams and excellent boiled beef.’

  Martin said, ‘Dad, come on. Please.’

  Charlie hesitated, biting his lip. Then he twisted the key in the ignition again, so violently that he made the starter-motor screech. He was just about to pull away from the kerb, however, when he glimpsed something moving behind the maple trees on the far side of the green. It could have been nothing more than a cloud shadow, or a wind-blown sheet of newspaper. It had vanished in an instant. But Charlie was sure that he had seen a small figure, dressed in grubby white. A figure with the body of an infant and the fully developed head of a man.

  3

  They drove north-westwards out of
Allen’s Corners past two rows of white wooden houses. They saw nobody at all, nobody walking by the roadside, no other cars. After a quarter of a mile, they were back amongst the woods again, surrounded by the rusting funeral of yet another lost summer. Although it was still early, the sun had already dropped below the treeline, and glittered at them tantalizingly, always out of reach behind the branches.

  Charlie said nothing for a while, but when Martin reached forward to switch on the tape player, he took hold of his wrist and said, ‘Not now. I want to talk.’

  Martin folded his arms and sat back in his seat.

  ‘I want to know where you found that card.’

  Martin shrugged. ‘I picked it up at that Iron Kettle place.’

  ‘Where? I didn’t see any cards there.’

  ‘I found it on the floor.’

  Charlie lowered his sun visor. ‘You’re not telling me the truth, Martin. I don’t know why, but you’d better start explaining yourself pretty darned quick, otherwise this trip is over here and now and you go off to the Harrisons.’

  Martin said, ‘It’s the truth, Dad. I found it.’

  ‘We were talking about Le Reposoir and you just happened to find one of their cards? For Christ’s sake, what do you take me for?’

  Martin sulkily lowered his head.

  ‘It’s over, have you got that?’ Charlie told him. ‘Tomorrow I’m going to call the Harrisons and then I’m going to drive you right back to New York.’

  Martin said nothing.

  ‘Have you got that?’ Charlie repeated.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got it,’ said Martin, in his best ‘anything-to-keep-the-old-man-quiet’ voice.

  Charlie slowed down as they approached a steeply sloping intersection with a sign saying Washington in one direction and Bethlehem in the other. He stopped the car by the side of the road and opened up his map. ‘This should be Quassapaug Road right here.’

  He took a right, and cautiously steered the Oldsmobile up a tight corkscrew gradient, under overhanging oaks and American beeches. The sun danced behind the leaves. Somewhere behind the thicket fence of tree trunks, there were creamy clouds and pale blue sky; but here in the woods, Charlie began to feel strangely imprisoned and claustrophobic.

  ‘All right, admitted, I haven’t been much of a father to you,’ he told Martin. ‘But I never told your mother one single lie. I was never unfaithful, and I always sent money. Always.’

  ‘Well, Saint Charlie McLean,’ said Martin.

  Charlie swerved the car off the side of the road and jammed his foot down on the parking brake. He tried clumsily to smack Martin’s head, but Martin ducked and wrestled away, and the two of them found themselves panting and glaring at each other, hands clasped tightly, a fit fifteen-year-old fighting a tired forty-one-year-old.

  ‘Listen,’ said Charlie. ‘Either we try to get along together like father and son, or else that’s the finish. And I mean the finish. You’re old enough to survive without me, if that’s the way you want it. I don’t mind.’

  Martin released his father’s wrists and turned his face away. Charlie knew that he was crying. Someone else had once cried like this, in the passenger seat of his car, a very long time ago, in Milwaukee. Charlie felt as if the world was an ambush of endlessly repeated agonies, and here it was again. The argument, the tears, the temporary reconciliation that both of them knew would never last. He squeezed Martin’s shoulder but there was no love between them. He might just as well have been squeezing an avocado to make sure that it was ripe.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, although he wasn’t.

  He continued driving around the roller-coaster curves of Quassapaug Road. A wild turkey scrambled across the blacktop in front of them, and Charlie swerved towards it in a feigned attempt to run it down. ‘You ever eaten wild turkey, barbecued with new season’s squash?’

  Martin said, ‘We never have turkey, even at Thanksgiving. Marjorie doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Marjorie, Marjorie! Why the hell can’t you call me Charlie?’

  ‘Because you’re Dad, that’s why.’

  They passed the entrance to Le Reposoir so unexpectedly that they overshot it by a hundred feet. Charlie caught a flash of wrought-iron gates, painted black, and a discreet black signboard. The Oldsmobile’s tyres slithered on the tarmac. Then Charlie twisted around in his seat and backed up all the way to the gates, with the car’s transmission whinnying.

  ‘That’s it, Le Reposoir. Société de la Cuisine Exceptionelle.’

  Martin stared at the sign unenthusiastically. ‘Yes, and look what else it says. No visitors except by prior arrangement. These grounds are patrolled by guard dogs.’

  ‘We can talk to them, at least,’ said Charlie. He parked the car right off the road, in the entrance-way in front of the gates, and then climbed out. There was an intercom set into the bricks of the left-hand gatepost. He pushed the button, and then turned to Martin, who was still sitting in the car, and smiled in what was the nearest he could manage to encouragement. Martin pretended that he hadn’t noticed, and in the end Charlie turned away. God, he thought, they’re like prima-donnas, these teenage boys. You only have to raise your voice to them, and they start sulking and pouting and bursting into tears.

  He pushed the intercom button again. This time, there was a sharp crackle of interference, and then a voice demanded, ‘Qui? Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?’

  Charlie cleared his throat. ‘Is that Mr Musette?’

  ‘Who is it who is wanting him?’ the voice asked, in English this time, but with a strong French accent.

  ‘My name’s McLean. I was wondering if you had a table for two for dinner tonight?’

  ‘You must have made a mistake, monsieur. This is a private restaurant. Reservations can only be made by advance booking.’

  ‘Well, this is advance booking, isn’t it?’

  ‘Je regrette, monsieur, booking is always effected in writing, and bookings are accepted only at the discretion of the management.’

  ‘What kind of a restaurant operates like that?’ Charlie wanted to know.

  ‘This restaurant, monsieur. Although I must correct you. It is a dining society, rather than a restaurant.’

  ‘So I’ve been told. Is it possible to join?’

  ‘Of course, monsieur, by personal recommendation.’

  Charlie ran his hand through his hair. ‘You people sure make life difficult.’

  ‘Yes, monsieur, you could say that.’

  ‘So somebody has to put me up for membership? Is that it?’

  ‘Yes, monsieur.’

  Charlie thought for a moment, and then said, ‘Is everything I’ve heard about you true?’

  ‘It depends what you have heard, monsieur.’

  ‘I’ve heard that you’re exceptional.’

  ‘Yes, monsieur.’

  Charlie had nothing more to say. The voice on the other end of the intercom refused to be drawn. Charlie took hold of the gates and shook them, just to make sure that they were locked, then he walked back to the car and climbed into it. He leaned over towards the glove box and took out a pack of Rol-Aids. The Colonial-style sauce was resisting all his stomach’s determined efforts to digest it. That was the trouble with bad food, it always fought back.

  ‘They won’t take reservations unless somebody sponsors you,’ said Charlie.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Martin asked.

  ‘It means they’re just about the most exclusive restaurant in the whole continental United States. It may not be easy getting into the Four Seasons, but at least they want your business. This place... who knows? How can you run a restaurant right in the middle of nowhere at all, with no advertising, no promotion, not even a signpost to tell you how to get there, and booking by personal recommendation only, in writing, in advance?’

  ‘Maybe they’re really good,’ said Martin.

  ‘What the hell do you mean, “maybe they’re really good”!’ Charlie retorted. ‘The Montpellier is really good! L’Ermitage is real
ly good! There are twenty restaurants in America which are really good! But, darn it, even the best restaurants have to advertise. Even the best restaurants have to let people in!’

  Martin said, ‘What are you getting so upset about? If they won’t let you in, they won’t let you in. Forget them. There isn’t any point in including a restaurant in MARIA if nobody can get to eat there.’

  Charlie took one last look at the implacably closed gates of Le Reposoir, then started up the car and turned back towards Allen’s Corners. ‘If it’s that good, if it’s really that good, then I want to eat there, that’s all. Even my stomach can only take so much good old country cooking. I could use a revelation. Quite apart from the fact that I’d be fascinated to find out what it is about Le Reposoir that upsets everybody at Allen’s Corners so much.’

  They drove back through the woods. Another thunderhead had swollen up in front of the sun, and the landscape had suddenly grown chilly and cheerless.

  Martin said, ‘Where are we going to stay tonight? Are we going to drive on to Hartford?’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘Tonight we’re going to stay at Mrs Kemp’s boarding house, 313 Naugatuck. I’m not leaving Allen’s Corners until I can fix a table for two at Le Reposoir.’

  ‘Dad–we’re going to be days behind schedule. What are the people at MARIA going to say?’

  ‘I can fudge the schedule, don’t worry about that. I want to eat at that Goddamned private exclusive dining club and that’s all there is to it. There must be somebody around here who belongs. That bank president, Haxalt, don’t tell me that he’s not a member. All I need is one person who’s prepared to sponsor my reservation.’

  Martin remained silent as they drove back into Allen’s Corners. The light was turning to pale purple, and the streetlights had already been switched on. Christopher Prescott and Oliver T. Burack had left the green; but there were lights on the upper floor of the First Litchfield Savings Bank, and a few people were walking past the lower end of the green, on their way back from the supermarket. Birds sang in the maples, that sad intermittent song of early evening.