by RA Williams
‘Not staying for tea?’ she asked.
‘You’re joking,’ he said, gently closing the door behind him.
She found Mahmoud standing at the window.
‘I hope you didn’t want your tea white,’ she said. ‘There’s no milk in the icebox.’
‘Modern conveniences.’ He turned. ‘I’m not accustomed to them. In the end, I leave the milk on top of the icebox rather than in it.’
A milkman, neatly dressed in a red-striped apron, his hair tidily side-parted and greased over, happened by the window, two bottles of milk in hand. She turned to Mahmoud. ‘I tend not to believe in coincidences, but in this case…’
‘Don’t argue the toss?’ replied the Persian.
She nodded before going to the door.
‘Oh,’ he said, surprised. ‘Morning.’
‘Morning,’ she replied, wondering if he was more surprised by her attire, or a woman answering the door. ‘I haven’t any empties for you.’
‘Never mind. Mssr Gaele puts them up on the back fence and shoots them.’
‘There will be no more of that.’
‘I’ve fresh eggs if you fancy?’
‘Perhaps tomorrow. I’ll plan omelettes.’
‘Very well,’ he replied with a smile. ‘Not seen a lady round the old place before. Nice to see.’
So, it seemed there had never been a woman in the house. At least, not in the years the milkman had been making rounds. Elle bid him farewell and returned to the lounge, prising the foil from the lid of a bottle.
‘Please,’ Mahmoud said, back in his chair and raising his hand towards one. ‘Would you mind, terribly?’
She handed him the bottle. He drank the layer of cream off the top. Leaning back in the chair, he closed his eyes. ‘Forgive my rubbish manners. English cream is the best part of my day.’
His eyes slowly parted. ‘Been a month since I had any.’
Opening the second bottle, Elle dropped a dollop into both cups.
‘Sugar?’
He shook his head, reaching for his cup and saucer. Settling into the settee across from him, she took a sip. After the night’s happenings, it was divine.
‘A man who indulges in sugar,’ he noted, ‘soon ceases finding satisfaction in it. Just as a hermitic man can never appreciate a life of toil and hardship.’
‘You speak from experience?’
The Persian’s gaze remained fixed on the street outside.
‘Learned the hard way,’ he made mention, as if in passing.
‘Shall I tell you something I’ve learned?’ she said, taking another sip of tea. ‘You’re Balthasar Toule’s Sentinel.’
‘Haven’t heard that name for years and years.’
‘Buster Hadley then. You’re his Sentinel, yes? During his dormancy?’
‘I’m his Sentinel always.’
‘And you are Crimen. Like Siobhan?’
‘Crimen?’ he said, turning to her. ‘Yes, I am. Like Balthasar. To be Guilty is to once have been mortal. To be us, to refuse the one thing we find sweet, enrages her.’
‘And you aren’t talking about sugar.’
‘I am not.’ A cautionary smile. ‘I do enjoy English cream, though.’
She smiled too, putting down her cup. ‘I’m happy to see you again, Mahmoud.’
‘I’m pleased to see you too, Dr Annenberg.’
Elle leaned forward, pouring him another cup of tea, ensuring he got an extra dollop of the thick stuff.
‘Don’t you think if the man whose ear I chewed half off is willing to call me Elle, you might consider it too?’
‘If you like.’
She sat back in the sofa, looking out of the window as the day began, indulging in a moment’s peace and quiet.
‘How much has that daft Belgian let on?’ Mahmoud asked her.
‘He told me of the incident at Kinuwai Station,’ she replied. ‘I learned about the Crimen many years ago.’
‘And what is it you learned?’
‘Sekr,’ she said, her eyes meeting his penetrating stare. ‘I’m not just an ethnologist, Mahmoud. I also have a woman’s intuition.’
‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘Look at me, Elle. If what you see then is a man, then you see nothing. In your worst night terror, you cannot imagine what it is to be Guilty.’
‘I have an idea,’ she replied, almost dismissively.
‘Indeed, you have none.’ His voice took on a menacing note. ‘To protect Balthasar, I would crush your larynx before that teacup reached your lips. And as you lay gasping for your final breath, I would sit down and finish my tea.’
His face softened, if only slightly.
‘For the moment, Elle, you are not a threat.’
‘And for the moment, Mahmoud, I refuse to permit your very troubling words to deter me.’ She sat in silence. As did he. Normally, she loved to bluff. The building tension. Normally, she won. There was nothing normal about the last few days. ‘And Siobhan?’ she blurted.
‘I warn you not to blaspheme in Balthasar’s company.’
‘I’m not in his company.’
Her response gave him pause. Then he leaned forward.
‘Unlike the banshee, we would not consume you.’
‘You mean eat?’ she asked, without batting an eye.
‘I do mean eat. And, if I were you, I’d get as far away from here and him as you can,’ he responded uncompromisingly. ‘I am his Sentinel.’
Elle must have looked confused.
He went on to explain, ‘His adjunct. You understand?’
‘I think not.’
‘An adjunct is not essential. I know what I am. A guardian. Nothing more. A bulwark during his time of dormancy. I’m subservient. When I am no longer useful, he’ll be rid of me.’
‘How long have you been his Sentinel?’
‘Two centuries.’
She nodded slowly. ‘You weren’t subservient a couple hour’s ago, letting me so close to him.’
‘I was not.’
She nodded, in thought. ‘Is Cubby Smyth subservient?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘If not for Gaele, I think the brute would have killed me.’
The Persian did not seem surprised by this. ‘Cubby is a man of nil finesse.’
‘Is that meant as some sort of reassurance?’
‘He wasn’t meant to kill you. He was meant to warn you off.’
‘Who gave him the nod?’
‘Curiosity is reckless,’ he said, looking about the tea service.
‘Curiosity is the most important prerequisite in my trade,’ Elle responded.
‘God, I fancy a shortbread.’
Without pause, she hammered home her enquiry. ‘By whose order?’
‘Whose do you think?’ he answered firmly.
‘Balthasar?’
Mahmoud nodded reluctantly.
‘Why?’ she asked, voice betraying her shock.
‘He worries.’
‘Worries? What the hell has he to worry of me?’
‘You haven’t the faintest idea, have you?’ he asked, narrowing his eyes.
She glared at him, at a loss for words.
‘He warned that someday you’d suss us out and come calling. Someday.’
‘And someday is today.’
The Persian nodded. ‘He worried you would get too close.’
‘To what?’
It was the Persian’s turn to keep schtum.
‘Him?’ she prompted.
He shook his head.
‘If you were set upon by the banshee, she would cause you harm.’ His eyes drilled through her. ‘He would have to kill you.’
Her lips moved but there were no words.
The front door creaked open and the Belgian entered, carrying a French press, the strong aroma of coffee following him.
Mahmoud stood. ‘Filled the butcher’s bill?’
‘Ja, ja,’ he replied, disappearing to the kitchen. The Persian’s eyes returned to Elle. Certainly, ther
e was more to say. Gaele returned moments later with a cup, and poured himself a coffee.
‘The butcher was not yet open. I had them dress a swine while I waited.’
‘Well, what have you done with it?’
‘The butcher’s boy will bring it. Surely you did not expect I would carry a lot of guts and eyeballs up the hill?’
‘I did.’
‘Bah.’ He gulped his coffee. ‘At this very moment, Buster is resting upstairs in his bed. A far more comfortable alternative than that dreadful sarcophagus you seal him in.’
‘The victuals?’ asked Mahmoud with an unsettling snarl.
‘The boy will be here with them at any moment. Why are you so impatient?’
‘Do not make light of this, Gaele. It is you who are to blame for this.’
The Belgian humphed. ‘Is it too early to drink?’
‘Yes. It is too early for you to drink.’
‘For me? No, no, Mssr Hajian. It is you who could use the drink.’
The Persian climbed to his feet, confrontation escalating. A small knock at the front door broke the mounting tension.
‘Ja, you see? Here is the lad now.’
Gaele emptied his cup and put it on the table as he stood to answer the door. Almost immediately, Mahmoud repositioned it on a pub coaster before following him.
Elle looked out of the front window. A barrow sat in the street. A lad, not yet ten, crouched inside, his flat cap tweaked to the side. She waved. He cocked a snook in reply. A second boy, older, bounded down the front steps, followed by Gaele and the Persian. They stopped at the barrow, inspecting the contents. Gaele hefted a side of pork to his shoulder, Mahmoud gingerly lifting a pail by its handle. It knocked against the edge of the barrow and some of the dark red contents sloshed out. Fresh blood. The boys followed the men up the steps, carrying armfuls of parcels wrapped in brown paper. Elle arrived at the doorway as the Belgian came through the front door. The boys greeted her with a tip of their brims.
‘In my country, it is tradition to salute an end to summer with a nice roast,’ Gaele told the boys as he made his way down the hallway. ‘You may leave it here in the kitchen.’
‘What you want all these sticky bits for?’ the older boy asked, pointing out the greasy paper.
‘Blood for the pudding,’ Gaele explained. ‘From l’intestin I make a nice sausage.’
‘You snotneus eat them guts and eyeballs, don’t ya?’ the younger boy tossed in.
‘Who taught you such a word as that?’ asked the Belgian with an amused smile.
‘Cubby Smyth calls you it all the day long,’ replied the older boy.
‘If I give you a shilling, you’ll promise not to say it again.’
‘Between us?’ the boy asked, nearly unable to control his excitement.
Gaele produced two coins from his trouser pocket. ‘Each.’
‘Cor thanks, guv,’ they replied simultaneously, snatching the coins away.
‘Push off now. Be good.’
They scampered off, closing the door behind them.
‘What’s a snotneus?’ Elle asked.
‘An annoying little shit,’ he replied. ‘In Flemish.’
‘Come and help me, you annoying little shit,’ said Mahmoud, already opening the sticky brown paper to reveal its contents.
‘Balthasar will have to eat this?’ Elle asked.
‘Had he not been disturbed,’ Mahmoud said, ‘Buster would have enjoyed a proper English breakfast when he awoke.’ His stare did not linger. ‘As things are, this is what he wants to eat now.’
‘Let me come up with you.’
‘No,’ he replied emphatically.
Gaele agreed.
‘Come, Eleanor. We’ll have a coffee, ja?’
Grasped by the arm, she was shown back to the lounge. She watched Mahmoud disappear up the narrow stairs to the first floor, a dripping brown bundle in one arm, the pail in the other. Footfalls creaked along the upstairs hall. A door opened and then closed. Mad thumping pounded across the floor, followed by a jagged growl hardly recognisable as human.
Silence.
Nervously, she scanned the lounge, searching for a distraction. The Belgian calmly opened the front windows, filling the musty room with welcome air.
‘It will be all right,’ he reassured her, as if it were the norm. She nodded, sitting anxiously on the edge of the settee and trying very hard not to imagine the things happening above her head.
‘Coffee?’ he asked.
‘Got any Scotch?’
Producing a sterling silver flask, he unscrewed the top and poured a generous amount into both cups, topping them up with coffee. Elle gulped hers down.
Sitting in Mahmoud’s armchair, Gaele lifted his tommy gun.
‘Like an American gangster, ja? Chicago? Al Capone?’
‘Thompson. I know what it is,’ she replied, her smile forced.
‘The British call it a trench broom. Personally, I believe the Winchester a superior weapon. You cannot engage a target at great range with a machine gun.’
‘When we were in the hollow,’ Elle interrupted, the whisky calming her, ‘below the redoubt. Neither of you seemed eager to put your guns aside.’
‘When Crimen are about, it’s better to be armed. Never mind three of those ghouls in their sarcophagi.’
‘But they’re dead.’
The Belgian pulled a face.
‘The difference between dead and undead is dependent entirely upon the ℑungfräu.’
Elle slid her cup across the table.
‘Refill please. And leave out the coffee.’
Gaele’s snoring sounded just as she imagined the noise of wildebeest mating to be. Whisky flask dry, he had dozed off mid-sentence in the sitting-room armchair. Elle was wide awake after the night’s revelations and had decided to return to her hotel for a bath and change of clothes. It was a glorious late-summer day. To the holidaymakers parading along The Leas, the world wasn’t much different than the day before.
Elle nearly begrudged them their serenity. How must it feel to go to bed the night before and awake to a new day as sunny and cheerful as the last? To crack an egg and dip sliced toast soldiers in it on the hotel terrace? To have nothing more to do than take a little swim in the seawater baths below Marine Crescent?
Yesterday she hadn’t known if she would see Balthasar again. Today she had found him. Disturbed him. And for all she knew, he suffered, being force-fed the awful shit Mahmoud brought him. All down to her selfishness.
Mounting the Clifton’s front steps, she entered the lobby. It hadn’t changed: same old goats sitting about the lounge, sneering; same dunce at reception giving her the evils.
Yet everything felt different.
As Elle paused at reception to collect her key, Tony emerged from his office. ‘Ah, Eleanor. Good morning.’
‘Morning, Tony.’
‘Rested, I see,’ he said dryly, pointing out her soiled dungarees and the spot of blood on her rolled-up sleeves.
She realised what a mess she looked. Again.
‘I went riding. The horse reared. A dog, a little one, got underfoot.’ She stumbled through her explanation on the fly. ‘Took a fall. English saddle, you know. I’m really quite all right.’
‘Quite all right,’ he reassured her.
The clerk handed over her room key and Elle snatched it, retreating to the stairs across from reception, wanting nothing more than to be away from all eyes and in a hot bath.
‘Oh, Eleanor?’
She turned.
‘A gentleman called this morning for you.’
‘A gentleman?’
‘At just gone eight.’
‘Did he leave a message?’
‘No message. Suggested he would call again.’
‘When you say “called”,’ she asked, ‘do you mean called the hotel on the telephone or came calling?’
‘Do beg your pardon. British English, not your American. I mean to say he stopped round to reception.�
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‘Thank you,’ she replied, flummoxed. Retreating to the lift, she wondered who else could have known she was in Folkestone.
Brrrinng-brrrinng. Brrrinng-brrrinng. Elle’s eyes cracked. The telephone. On the desk in the corner.
Brrrinng-brrrinng. Brrrinng-brrrinng. She had fallen asleep and slept soundly. So warm was that last day of August, she had tossed aside her hotel robe and lain naked on the bed. Max and Moritz sat at the open window raising a racket, even braving the interior of the windowsill to snatch biscuits from her tea service.
Brrrinng-brrrinng. Brrrinng-brrrinng. Reaching for the telephone handset, she knocked it from its cradle. It fell noisily to the floor. Tony’s disembodied voice called at the other end. Grasping the cord, she pulled the handset towards her.
‘Eleanor?’ she heard again. ‘Are you there?’
‘Uh-huh,’ she replied hoarsely.
‘I’ve awoken you.’
‘What’s the time?’
‘Gone four.’
She had slept all day.
‘Are you there?’ Tony asked.
‘Yup.’
‘There is a gentleman in the lounge asking after you. Shall I inform him you are not receiving guests?’
‘Who is it?’ she asked, wiping the sleep from her eyes.
‘Commodore Wimbourne.’
Jumping from the bed, the room spun as blood rushed from her head. She dropped the telephone and fell back onto the bed, fumbling for the handset.
‘Down in five.’
Elle tried to run down the stairs, but her new attire was not exactly ideal for speed.
A dress shop in town had left boxes of clothing at her door. In one, she found an unpretentious pair of cream linen flared trousers from Elsa Schiaparelli’s Le Sport collection. They fitted beautifully. Pairing them with a white blouse, a coral summer-weight jumper and brown pyramid-wedge sandals, she managed a playfully chic yet cosmopolitan look quite well. Far more acceptable in Folkestone than her bärchen bulldagger togs. Mother would finally approve.
Passing reception, she caught the clerk’s eye. He did a double take, a lascivious smirk appearing on his face. His back to her, Tony Swinburne put messages into guests’ key cubbies. Turning, his reading glasses fell from his forehead to the bridge of his nose. He smiled. Noticing the reception clerk’s mouth agape, he cleared his throat. ‘I believe you were about to tell Dr Annenberg how smashing she looks.’
‘Oh, yes.’ The clerk nodded in agreement. ‘Ever so lovely.’