The Boarding-House

by William Trevor

  ‘What?’ said Major Eele.

  There was silence except for a song on the television set.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Rose Cave said quietly. ‘Forgive me, Mr Venables.’

  Venables swallowed, swallowing the groaning that was trying to break through. The pain lessened. He began to smile, breathing through his mouth. He was gasping but it was not noticeable. His feet still pressed the floor.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Rose Cave repeated. ‘I cannot think why I said that.’

  ‘All right,’ said Venables. ‘That is quite all right.’

  ‘I saw you were in pain.’

  He shook his head. ‘A touch of indigestion, nothing more. I forgot to take my Setlers.’

  Major Eele glanced from one to the other, hardly comprehending. He grasped at least that Venables had indigestion and that Rose Cave had said to see a doctor.

  ‘I am not myself,’ explained Rose Cave, ‘else I most certainly would not have shouted out like that.’ She smiled, feeling silly and awkward. ‘I hate to see people in pain.’

  Venables began to move his body about, shifting the acids in his stomach, or so he thought.

  Another silence fell. Everything hung in the air: all three were thinking of what had happened.

  ‘The mint with the hole,’ said a voice, and their three heads turned towards the television screen.

  ‘Very good, that,’ said Major Eele, laughing in a gamy kind of way, as if some esoteric jest had just been loosed upon them.

  Rose Cave picked up her needles and shot them quickly across one another. She was aware of the speed of this motion and was glad that she could achieve the speed without going wrong, because the speed was a help. Her mother had spoken to her of the change of life, saying one felt different and sometimes irresponsible. Married women, faithful all their lives, left their families or did some silly thing, her mother said, when the change of life arrived. She said it was worse for women who had not been married, or rather who had had no children. It was the end of something, her mother said: the body withered. She knitted hard, wishing there was someone she could talk to at that moment. She wanted to tell all that had happened, how she had called out ‘For God’s sake’ to the sick Venables, how she had invaded his greatest privacy and torn the shell off his lonely secret. She tried to imagine what he must be feeling, what now he must be thinking of her. He could not know about the change of life, probably he had never heard of such a thing.

  ‘Is Venables ill?’ said Mr Scribbin, who was sitting away from the other three and had been outside the incident. They had forgotten his presence, but some remark had registered with him, though he had been more intent on the television.

  Rose Cave shook her head. ‘My mistake, Mr Scribbin. Mr Venables had just a turn of indigestion.’

  Mr Scribbin, an easy man to satisfy, said something quietly. He cleared his throat and settled down.

  ‘Miss Cave.’

  She looked behind her and saw Nurse Clock standing in the doorway.

  Mr Obd realized that he was still carrying the twelve red roses and the Evening Standard. He stood on the pavement and felt rain on his face. ‘I do not need these,’ he said, and he threw them into the gutter. The bunch of roses fell apart and scattered on the wet surface. The soft white paper that had wrapped it turned grey before his eyes as it soaked up the grimy rain.

  ‘Disgraceful,’ shouted a man, pointing at Mr Obd, then at the flowers and the newspaper on the street. ‘Disgraceful,’ he repeated, coming closer. He held a black umbrella in his right hand, while with his left he gestured in a threatening way.

  ‘What is the matter?’ asked Mr Obd.

  ‘Keep Britain tidy,’ said the man. ‘Pick up that mess, sir.’

  Mr Obd made as if to pass by. ‘You can be fined up to five pounds,’ said the man. ‘I intend to call a policeman.’

  Mr Obd bent and collected the flowers and the sodden Evening Standard from the street. A couple passing stopped to watch.

  ‘They come here,’ said the man, ‘and then they litter our streets.’

  The couple took exception to this statement and said so. An argument broke out, and Mr Obd, with flowers and newspaper, went away.

  He walked for a while in the rain, looking for a litter bin. Then he turned into a small café and asked for coffee. He did that because it was so wet and unpleasant, because he did not particularly want to return to The Boarding-House. He stirred a cup of greyish coffee with the tea-spoon supplied but did not drink it. He left it there, with flecks of milk on the surface; and he left the roses and the Evening Standard on the floor near his chair. ‘That black man forgot his flowers,’ cried a waitress, and she ran into the rain to call him back. But Mr Obd was on his way back to The Boarding-House and did not wish to be disturbed.

  ‘You understand, my dear, The Boarding-House must be organized on an economic basis.’

  Nurse Clock thought about smiling in the pause after she had spoken, but she decided that a smile would be out of place, that the note of seriousness must be stressed. She sat in her own room, with the coloured photograph of the Queen glowing quietly on the mantelshelf and the little piece of the Garden of Gethsemane seeming ordinary beneath its glass.

  Rose Cave had not ever been in this room before. She saw that it was tidy and businesslike: what she expected, more or less, of the room of a nurse. Her own, she thought, was cosier, with its pleasant curtains and new chintz bedspread.

  ‘Otherwise,’ said Nurse Clock, ‘the whole place will fall into rack and ruin and there’ll be no boarding-house at all. The state of Mr Bird’s finances was not good.’

  Nurse Clock was having a busy evening. Already she had seen Mrs le Tor and had read with interest the letter they had earlier discussed. Together they had taken it to the house of the desk sergeant. ‘Nothing much about this,’ the desk sergeant had remarked, irritated at being drawn away from a game of chance with his son. ‘In any case, you know, I am not on duty.’ But the man’s wife had interrupted to say he must not stand on ceremony with Nurse Clock or be in any way stand-offish. ‘I am making us all tea,’ she said, and reminded her husband of Nurse Clock’s past services in a medical way. ‘Oh, not at all,’ cried Nurse Clock, sitting down and feeling glad that this had come out in front of Mrs le Tor. ‘Very well,’ said the desk sergeant, and read the letter through again.

  ‘That is libel,’ Mrs le Tor had said.

  ‘But how can we apprehend the miscreant?’ demanded the desk sergeant, causing Mrs le Tor to think that that was a matter for him to work out on his own. ‘There is no truth, I suppose, in any of this? ‘He examined her face for guilt. It was unlikely, he thought, that she had ever been apprehended herself: he would most surely have known about it. ‘We can take it the insinuations are false?’

  ‘My dear man,’ said Nurse Clock quietly; and then to Mrs le Tor: ‘A formal question. He is obliged to ask it.’

  ‘How can we apprehend the miscreant,’ repeated the desk sergeant, ‘Since we do not know who the miscreant is? You did not, I suppose, madam, write this note yourself?’

  ‘Certainly she didn’t,’ cried Nurse Clock. ‘Why ever should Mrs le Tor do that?’ Nurse Clock was enjoying the occasion. Tea was brought in, which added to her pleasure.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mrs le Tor. ‘What a silly thing to say.’

  ‘Archie, really,’ said the desk sergeant’s wife.

  ‘It is far from unknown,’ said the desk sergeant, rising to help himself to a macaroon and revealing to his guests that he was in his socks. His wife frowned at him, drawing his attention to his feet.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said the desk sergeant, and his wife laughed, pretending that nothing was.

  ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘it is far from unknown,’ he tapped Mrs le Tor’s letter with his finger. ‘People are always drawing attention to themselves by composing works of this nature. We had a chap up the other day, an old Mr Pritchard–’

  ‘I happen to know,’ said Nurse Clock q
uickly, ‘the hand responsible for this. A certain Mr Studdy.’

  The desk sergeant mentioned proof, and Nurse Clock suggested a handwriting expert.

  The desk sergeant laughed. ‘Forget the whole thing,’ he said. ‘It is a storm in a tea-cup.’

  The two women left the house shortly after that, having been told that they could make an official complaint if they wished, but advised against it.

  ‘Mr Studdy will be moving on,’ said Nurse Clock to Rose Cave, ‘if that ever worries you.’ It seemed to Nurse Clock that a person of Rose Cave’s nature might well be affected by Studdy’s coarseness. Nurse Clock had more than once heard Studdy use unpleasant-sounding words beneath his breath.

  ‘Mr Studdy?’ said Rose Cave. ‘But how can that be?’

  Nurse Clock coughed. ‘I’m afraid Mr Studdy is in a spot of trouble. He may well wish to slip quietly off. Mr Studdy has been up to no good.’

  ‘But The Boarding-House? Mr Bird’s will? What is happening, Nurse Clock? Really, this seems to be quite a case. ‘

  ‘Well,’ said Nurse Clock. ‘I am going to tell you. Let’s forget that old Studdy for a while. In a word, Miss Cave, the situation is this: to save The Boarding-House it is necessary to transform it into a more profitable institution, an old people’s home. That is it in a nutshell.’

  ‘But in that case you would not be saving The Boarding-House. The Boarding-House would be gone.’

  ‘That is true,’ said Nurse Clock.

  ‘I do not understand.’ Rose Cave leant forward, as if it had occurred to her that she might be missing part of Nurse Clock’s argument.

  ‘I am saying this,’ said Nurse Clock. ‘I am saying this to you, Miss Cave: there is a place for you with the old folks.’

  ‘But I am not old.’ Rose Cave was certain now that Nurse Clock was engaged upon nefarious practice. Apparently she had turned upon her accomplice and had already come into the open with an admission that The Boarding-House was to become a refuge for the elderly. Now, it appeared, Nurse Clock was regarding her as one of that number. ‘I am not old,’ she repeated, her forehead furrowed in bewilderment.

  Nurse Clock gave a loud laugh.

  ‘My dear, of course not. I meant it in another way.’ She drew in a breath, and then explained that Rose Cave could be of value in the old persons’ home, performing agreed chores and receiving a wage.

  Mr Obd sat alone in his room and did not shave and did not report for work. After the third day a man telephoned The Boarding-House and spoke to Mr Obd and said that as far as Mr Obd’s employers were concerned Mr Obd need never report for work again. These tidings did not disturb him. He returned to his room and sat down with a piece of paper and a ball-point pen. He wrote down figures and made calculations. He worked out the accumulated cost of the flowers he had bought Miss Tonks over the years, the gentians and veronicas, the roses, dahlias, and asters in season. He delved into the past and calculated the cost of their cups of coffee, of bus fares paid, and then of such details as the evening newspapers he had had to purchase to while away the time while waiting for her in public places.

  Mr Obd felt sick and could eat no food. ‘I am surely deranged,’ he said to himself, and he felt it a comfort, knowing that he was deranged, that that was the cause of his trouble and of all the calculations on the paper.

  He no longer saw Mr Bird flashing through the skies in the guise of a Renaissance angel. Confused, he identified Mr Bird as the founder of heaven and hell and earth. He saw him now in his glory, glancing down on all of them, on Tome Obd and on Annabel, on the African leaders, on his late employers, on all of them here in The Boarding-House. Mr Bird was smiling, and his bad leg was not noticeable, for he was neither standing nor moving about, but was sitting in majesty on a chair, wearing what to Mr Obd looked like golden raiment. Mr Bird was not saying ‘Alas, Tome Obd’. He was not speaking at all, only resting there amongst laurels.

  ‘You are surely not beautiful,’ cried Mr Obd. ‘You have done those terrible things.’ He tried to strike at the image with his arms, but the image persisted, and in the end he lay down on his narrow bed and thought.

  Mr Obd in his madness suspected that Mr Bird had been a man of infinitely subtle cruelty. He saw the gathering together of people in The Boarding-House as a cruel action and he remembered that Mr Bird had said to him, the first day he arrived on the doorstep, that the solitary man is a bitter man and that bitterness begets cruelty. He saw the people in The Boarding-House as reflections of Mr Bird, and then he lost track of logic and saw them as his creatures.

  Mr Obd rose from his bed and again drew paper and ballpoint pen to him. He made a fresh set of marks. He was hating Mr Bird now, hating him for ever saying ‘Alas, Tome Obd’. He suspected now that the dead man had had some real reason for the repetition of that remark, that he knew about Tome Obd’s fourteen-year courtship and had mocked it as often as they had met in the passages or on the stairs, raising his eyes and shaking his head and saying the inevitable words.

  ‘You are the worst man of all, you are the worst man that ever lived,’ cried Mr Obd. ‘I shall kill you,’ cried Mr Obd who had come to London to learn the secrets of the law. ‘I shall kill you,’ cried he again, and then remembered. He wrote on a fresh sheet of paper, creating his plan.

  23

  Once upon a time Major Eele had answered an advertisement worded thus:

  Required as a photographic model for a series of advertisements promoting a famous British product a gentleman of good appearance and bearing, of not more than fifty-five years. Write with details of education, background, and present availability at short notice.

  He had written, and rather to his surprise had later been summoned for an interview. ‘Who are you?’ a man had enquired from behind an expanse of desk. ‘Eele,’ he had said. ‘My appointment was for three.’ The man behind the desk muttered something about an error and asked Major Eele to wait in another office. While he did so he heard the man’s voice on the telephone. ‘Eele. E-e-l-e. Like the fish. Well, take him away, will you?’ A young woman had led him through passages to the entrance of the building. ‘Thank you, Major Eele,’ she had said, and vouchsafed no further explanation.

  Now he looked through the advertisement columns again and wondered if in seeking a place of residence he would meet with such brusque conduct. He amused himself by imagining a series of landladies regarding him expertly as they opened their hall-doors. ‘Oh dear me, no,’ they would murmur, leaving him there as the young woman had. He had lied a bit about his age in replying to the advertisement for a man of bearing, but otherwise he thought they should have known what to expect. The whole episode had puzzled him greatly, and like the reported excursion of Bicey-Jones into the world of sex had remained in his consciousness as a source of wonderment ever since.

  To Major Eele it seemed incredible that the inheritors of Mr Bird’s house were going to achieve their dire purposes through a series of tricks, subterfuges and small pecuniary inducements. There was something almost farcical about Nurse Clock and Studdy plotting together and sinking their differences towards a common end. Major Eele did not then know that Nurse Clock was moving in for the final kill, that she was even then preparing to be left triumphant and alone, like a beast that destroys the instrument of its past success.

  Miss Clerricot took her small face between her hands and pushed the flesh about, a habit she had always had. Life was all right, she reflected, when it continued in a mechanical way, like the typing she had performed for Mr Sellwood and now performed for a Mr Morgan. Change, like the abrupt breach in her routine when Mr Sellwood had discovered she would listen and had started to take her to lunch and later to Leeds, was upsetting. She wanted to awake one morning and find herself in Kingston-upon-Thames, married to a man, and the mother of three children. She wanted to see in her bedroom mirror not the face of Miss Clerricot but the face of someone she did not know and did not care about, some face that she could take for ever for granted. She knew that none of that woul
d ever be, not even the part of it that was possible. ‘I am fit company for the typewriter keys in Mr Morgan’s outer office,’ she said to herself, and felt depressed because of all the topsy-turviness, because on top of everything else she would have to leave The Boarding-House and Mr Morgan’s outer office too. Mrs Sellwood, miraculously, had guessed what once had been in her mind and naturally had placed upon it the wrong construction.

  ‘I do not know what to say,’ said Rose Cave. ‘I am quite unqualified, quite untrained. And I cannot at all reconcile myself to the break up of The Boarding-House–’

  ‘What good work it is,’ murmured Nurse Clock. ‘When they have passed their ninetieth year they rely on us for every little thing. It would be a happiness for the poor old souls to have kind Miss Cave dispensing this and that.’

  ‘But Mr Bird–’

  ‘My dear, give over about that old Mr Bird. Mr Bird, I assure you, does not care or matter in the least. Putrefaction has long since set in.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that.’ Rose Cave was shocked to hear the expression used about a man who not long ago had lived amongst them. But Nurse Clock, who was used, as she would explain, to death as well as to life, only laughed at the other’s timidness and poured a cup of tea.

  So it was that at the time when Mr Obd went mad The Boarding-House was at sixes and sevens. Studdy did not yet know what was in Nurse Clock’s mind. Venables had promised Studdy that he would seek accommodation elsewhere and had not yet confessed this to the other residents. Miss Clerricot expected Mrs Sellwood to come and create a scene which would disgrace her in the eyes of all. Major Eele awaited with apprehension the threatened arrival of Mrs le Tor and meanwhile scanned the advertisement columns. Rose Cave felt that a preposterous question had been put to her and yet was attracted by it. Gallelty and Mrs Slape prepared for their dismissal. ‘When he comes again, I shall ask him what’s best to do,’ said Gallelty. ‘As soon as he materializes in the kitchen I shall say at once: “Mr Bird, we are at sixes and sevens; we do not know what to do next.” He will give us a lead, I am sure of that’ Mr Scribbin found three of his gramophone records broken.