It was immediately evident to me that the Clarendon Hotel, Doncaster, fell into this unhappy category; and under the mild influence of two whiskies obtained (free, but with difficulty) at the Verandah Bar I elaborated on the theory while being jostled by businessmen trying to get mistaken for learned technocrats…this being the prevailing snobbery of the feast.
For it was quite evident that the building was entirely held up by its own lighting…and never mind the lock-nut. Beams of garish orange sprouted from concealed lamps in the ceiling of the disembodied American bar and shot up to the roof, glueing it there. Sprays of mauve spurted from fittings inset in the cantilevered awning and poured downward on to the floor, providing the only visible structural support. You felt that someone had only to flick the wrong switch absent-mindedly and the whole thing would come crashing down.
The Verandah Bar was reserved for ‘special guests’, and indeed the segregation had been carried through to such a degree that surely only those who actually enjoyed being publicly humiliated would have dreamed of paying good money to take their humble place below, where a second bar — securely supported on the floor without recourse to floodlighting — formed a nucleus for the paying diners.
Up here the eager patrons of the sciences enjoyed a sense of eliteness — even if they did normally sneer at so provincial a northern town as Doncaster when they happened to be somewhere else. Judging that a more basic note needed to be struck in convivial conversation here than — say — at the Savoy, tycoons raised their gritty voices in dirty stories (on the whole scientists don’t like dirty stories) and mouths of their helpless captive listeners twisted themselves into strained upward curves in recognition of the fact that something allegedly funny had been said.
Most of the qualified men maintained better humour, in the face of this agonizing display, than I did myself; so I marvelled at the tolerance of mankind and ordered another drink. The barman went through an immensely complicated ritual of flourishes and came up with a sulky whisky and soda of which the soda was flat.
“Your drink, sir.”
“Thank you.”
“You are a ‘special guest’?” he asked sceptically.
“Er, yes.”
Interested in finding out what kind of candidate would more easily convince him on this issue, I turned my attention to the gentleman who had just clapped a cringing fellow-guest on the shoulder in an offensive gesture of friendship — if not ownership — and who then boomed: “Ar, the usual.” The barman guessed right. With ‘the usual’ securely clamped into a seasoned drinking-hand, the graduate special-guest then launched into a faultlessly ill-informed appraisal of what he chose to call ‘Fast Reactor Practice’. His unhappy band of listeners, quite unable to escape, floundered into a collective effort to minimize the appalling ignorance so displayed; until, irretrievably defeated in this noble intent, they reversed tactics and regarded him as fair game, encouraging him to talk himself into a maze of technological traps from which there could be no conceivable exit. Mercilessly now, they waited until he was puce in the face and gravely in need of another double — of which he availed himself — and then left him to stew. I pitied his chauffeur, his wife, his secretary, his junior executives and his switchboard operator — more or less in that order — who would, beyond doubt, have to make up for his stricken sense of status.
I was beginning to feel a great deal better.
Armed with my new drink, I turned momentarily from the bar in the hope of finding a square inch to stand on all my own.
“You’ve arrived,” I said, rather desperately, to the girl whose foot I was now standing on, “just in time.”
“Wrong,” she smiled. “I’ve been watching you for ages. Why so miserable?”
“I’ll tell you over a drink.”
“Done. Only could you very kindly move off my foot? As it hasn’t gone quite numb as yet, it’s really quite painful.”
“My foot and I mutually extend our most humble apologies.”
“Which I most cordially accept.”
“Thank you. Then please accept this gin as well. I may say I’ve never managed to get one so fast. The barman’s eyes are popping out of his head…Would you mind telling me what on earth you’re doing here?”
“Is,” she asked, sipping from her drink and watching me over the rim of the glass, “my appearance here such an outrage?”
“Yes. Against you…Look, we can’t possibly talk in this.” I felt a sudden doubt. “I’m taking an awful lot for granted. Am I behaving very badly?”
“Only by standing on my foot. You’re a little drunk, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m afraid I am.”
“Then I shall talk you sober.”
We pushed and shoved our way through a babbling mob, who proved quite extraordinarily resistant to any form of interruption. Not a word could be allowed to go to waste, it seemed, and whether we were driven to diving underneath cocktail-laden arms, or taking an entire group by means of a flanking movement around it, valuable words were buffeted against each other head-on with the missile impact of rival inferiority complexes. The smoke curled up to the roof and blemished the beams of coloured lights — endangering the structure of the building. (I explained this principle to the girl as we picked a way through to the edge of the balcony which overlooked the other bar and the hall where the ‘T’-formation tables were. She smiled, but I couldn’t tell whether she really heard anything.)
Miraculously we found a space, where we announced our names. Hers was Nicola. “But I can’t fit you in,” she said. “You certainly don’t talk like a scientist. You seem to be an odd man out.” She saw my face go tense. “Sorry…was that the wrong thing to say?”
“Er, it was the right thing to say.”
“And now you’re closing up like a clam…staring across the room at those coloured lights again. Like you were before.”
I looked back at her. Her smile was infectious. “I’ve no right to be so bloody silly,” I said. “And yes, you’d have to search far and wide to find an odder-manner-outer than me.
We lit cigarettes, and smoked in silence for a while. Then she said: “So, of course, all these people seem ridiculous to you. Don’t they? Would it horrify you if I said you envied them?”
“Actually you’d find it remarkably difficult to horrify me.”
“Well, I must admit, that haunted look you had a few minutes ago isn’t quite so obvious…”
“Haunted?”
“Like someone trying to come out of a nightmare…and not really succeeding.”
“Perhaps the nightmare isn’t over.”
She said: “What a funny conversation, between strangers.”
“Do you always probe, like this?”
“No. But if somebody didn’t ‘probe’ you might never come out of it.”
“I should think that’s probably quite true.” I was thinking of the girl in the Stook (was it only that morning?) and how I just came out with horrible, bitter things. Only this girl didn’t make me feel bitter at all.
I noticed her glass was empty, but she didn’t want another drink. She seemed to want me to lay off it too, so, very much to my own surprise (not to hers), I did.
“There’s a table by the rail there,” she said. “Let’s sit down.” Once seated, she went on: “You know I came with someone?”
“I guessed you must have done” — but I hadn’t, all the same.
She saw my disappointment, but said: “He’s a haunted person too.”
I said stiffly: “He has my sympathy.”
Her eyes said: ‘You’re being silly again.’ But aloud she went on: “There’s a big difference though.”
I couldn’t stop looking at her eyes. “What’s that?”
“In a thousand years, I know I could never get through to him.”
I said: “Does it sound very petty of me to say that if anyone’s going to get through to anybody, I’d rather be the one to get through to you?”
“No.” She
looked up gaily. “Not petty.”
“Tell me about your escort.”
She half-sighed on the first word of her answer. It was a sort; of gesture of tragi-exasperation. “Well…I met Miles in rather an odd kind of way…in fact, everything about it was…odd. Not in a way you could define, I mean. Things don’t go as simply as that, with me.”
“Blame it on your Youth.”
The smile just touched her lips again. “The song! No, these days nobody’s young, are they? I can’t blame that. But I’m not getting anywhere with the tale of woe, am I?” She stopped herself. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes — I’d much rather talk about you than me.”
She digested this, and what she considered it meant. Then: “I took a job in Fortnum’s — the Confectionery department…only it was Easter then, so it was Easter eggs. Then I saw a man wandering through the store…I was sure he hadn’t meant to buy anything at my counter; really, he was just coming through. There was a very large egg — a great big thing with ribbons all over it — on display; and he stopped there and started looking at it in a very weird sort of way. It fascinated him…”
“You’re talking about this last Easter? Just a few weeks ago?”
“Yes…Well, the man — Miles — went out without saying anything, but he came back the next day and did the same thing…except that particular egg had gone — all seven guineas of it! — and he was terribly upset. He’d brought the money with him and there wasn’t another one like it. Well, we talked a bit and I got on the phone to see whether we could get another one in time — and I managed it. I said that if he came back in the afternoon it would be there ready for him. Well…seven guineas is seven guineas!”
“And how!”
“But I liked him…I was intrigued by him. And when he came back for the egg he seemed…almost embarrassingly grateful. Anyway, he wanted to take me out and I wasn’t doing anything and he seemed dreadfully lonely.”
“Yes…but he must have wanted the egg for somebody pretty special. Hell…Seven guineas!”
“I’m coming to that.” She paused a while, which gave me time — suddenly — to dread the threatened announcement that dinner, at last, was to be served. A few minutes back I had been praying for it; praying to get the wretched thing eaten, to hop back on the train at Doncaster station and bury myself again in Trasgate. Nicola seemed to sense even this. She darted a look toward the easel where the seating plan was, then talked quickly. “He was going to some cocktail party, he said, and wanted me to go with him. So I went.”
“What was it like?”
She cast her eyes down. “It was…rather awful, really. Nothing wrong with it — ”
“And yet everything wrong with it.”
“Have you ever walked into a room, which looked perfectly all right, and full of perfectly-all-right people, and yet felt a sort of warning feeling? — as if you’d no right to be there? It was like that.”
“Where was it?”
“Oh, somewhere in the maze behind Walton Street. I never know whether it’s Chelsea or Kensington…all those little roads are such a muddle. Or at least they get me in a muddle. Anyway, there were one or two people there who quite frightened me.”
“What sort of people were there?”
“Mixed…one or two scientist friends of Miles’, but all sorts really. Models — people like that…Well, he had the egg in the car, and he’d said nothing about it to me — who it was for, anything like that. But somehow I guessed it would be someone at the party. So I had a good look round and tried to work out who it would be. Then Miles went up and said something to the woman who seemed to be giving the party — you know, she was obviously the hostess…green dress…everything! — and the woman nodded and disappeared. Then Miles went down to the car and when he got back a very nice little girl had come down. She was wearing a dressing-gown and we all fussed over her and she was very sweet.
“When Miles came back in, there was a very funny silence. He had the egg — which he’d taken out of the box — and was holding it triumphantly. Everybody was looking at him and even the little girl looked odd. The only person who didn’t seem to notice anything was the woman in the green dress. She just gushed.” Nicola gestured with a hand. “Well, that’s all, really. Nothing much really happened, except that silence. The little girl took the egg and — you know — she had a lemonade or something, and was taken off to bed. But…there was this man…I’d noticed him earlier on. He’d been standing over by the window, not saying very much to anybody and only drinking tomato juice. Now you may laugh, but when he saw the egg — I…I don’t think I’m explaining this very well.”
“You’re painting a very clear picture. Go on.”
“It’s just that it seemed…” she struggled for the right words “…it seemed to mean something absolutely electric to him. He behaved as if he’d seen some sort of a ghost. He looked at Miles for a few seconds and it was quite frightening. Quite a short time later this man suddenly decided to leave. He had a powerful car and I heard it start up; and he drove off like a maniac.”
I said: “But surely, couldn’t you have asked Miles what all this meant? Have you seen him many times since?”
“I’ve seen him nearly every day.”
“But why? You don’t talk as if you even like him. You certainly can’t be very close to him. Or am I —?” I’d been about to say that I was probably talking out of turn, even trying to talk the other man down. But Nicola didn’t seem to want me to say anything like that, and in any case I was interrupted by the dinner announcement. So abruptly I took a few ruthless shortcuts in the conversation and asked: “Are you afraid of him. Nicola? — or for him?”
She didn’t answer me but was looking among the crowd — I thought for Miles. Then suddenly she seemed very startled. “That’s the man! The one who was at the party Miles took me to!”
“Where?”
She indicated the more balding of the three barmen in view. “Taking a drink from him now…a tomato juice.”
I looked round, saw the tomato-stained glass being plonked on the bar top.
The man I was looking at was Dick Davvitt.
*
Perhaps I may be forgiven for starting my meal with the distinct impression that the whole thing looked a little too neat.
So as I hacked my way through a piece of smoked salmon which any self-respecting lampshade manufacturer would have thrown out as second-rate parchment, I tried to figure what had really happened.
A man walks into Fortnum’s and wants an Easter egg. Well, that’s all right. All right, also, to want the girl along with it. By all means take her to a cocktail party. But who was the egg really for? If it was for the little girl, why the big reaction from Davvitt? If the story were true, it looked like a piece of crazy mixed-up symbolism.
But for seven guineas and all that planning?
I’d managed to get a look at this Miles…Miles Pollenner. I had tactfully withdrawn from Nicola’s company as he had approached the table near the verandah’s edge. I don’t think he saw me. But I saw him…and I didn’t think he was the type to pick up a girl. Nor for any ordinary purpose, anyway…
(“No thanks…I’ll have the rose.” — It was only pink barley water, but I had reasons for staying sober…)
Miles was a tall, aesthetic mystery with — it was true — a strained, delicate face…strong in a way; strong in that he held in check the forces which seemed to oppress him. That was my first impression, anyway. He was walking against the wind.
I studied him.
I’m hardly in a position to be smug about other people wearing dark glasses unnecessarily since I used to sport them myself rather more often than the sun came out. But scientists who wear them indoors are pretty rare; and, indeed, if sunglasses are worn as a mere screen on grounds of shyness they cancel themselves out by attracting attention.
True, Miles had taken them off, in rather an affected way, when he joined Nicola on the balcony; equally t
rue, Nicola herself had no desire to draw unpleasant inferences from the Little Girl story. But these were the only two things I knew as yet about Miles Pollenner; and taken together they didn’t help the assumption that Science — that most rational of pursuits — was exclusively on the mind of this enthusiast for yummy Easter eggs at seven guineas apiece.
No…there had to be more to the Fortnum’s episode.
(If this was ever really rose it must have come out of a packet…)
I looked all the way down the knife-board table, past the weedy lady-enthusiast pathetically tugging at the mind of the tycoon of the double-whiskies upstairs…past the earnest group of postgrads talking Cybernetics and other recent fads…past the huge, twitchy, red-faced, physically-fit ex-athletic who was moving into a neurotic phase and showed it by describing the highlights of his sailing experiences with eternal ha-ha-goody-goody references to a girl in a bikini who seemed to spend her life sunning herself face-downward on the hurricane-swept deck of his sea-going, spinnaker-rigged something-or-other…past the platters with lemon segments on board-like remains of fumigated fish, past the waitress snatching the plates away with all the decorum of a prison wardress serving the principal convicts…past them all to the top ‘T’ of the table.
Davvitt and this man Miles were sitting well apart, nicely balanced on the spoke of the ‘T’. Nicola, next to Miles, held a glass in a slender hand, no sleeves to hamper her, and talked quietly and interestedly to the man at her other elbow. Bright lights spotting down on the top table provided a fringe excuse for tinted lenses and Miles had his shielding restored, though apparently he had nothing to say; just sat silently staring into the body of the hall.
Many eyes were riveted on Nicola, but none more finely focused than mine. I had been alerted by her when I least expected such a thing to happen. Only with an effort could I sustain concentration on the screwball circumstances surrounding us…
The Egg-Shaped Thing Page 3