I noticed that she was staring at me in amazement. 'What's the matter?' I asked in alarm. 'Is my suit all right? It's my second best.'
'My God! Am I supposed to travel in that?'_
I remembered that she hadn't seen Haemorrhagic Hilda before. 'It's a remarkably good motor car,' I told her stoutly. 'As reliable as a London bus and with a lot of charm about it. You wait till we get going.'
'Oh, it's charming all right. Like one of Emett's railway engines. How do I get aboard-do you let down a pair of steps?'
I helped her into the car, and she settled in the Windsor chair I had lashed specially to the floorboards beside me. I felt nettled. I was proud of Haemorrhagic Hilda, and even if she looked as startling on the road as George Stevenson's Rocket, such mockery hurt. But refusing to allow the start of a great adventure to be marred by the petty pride of ownership, I called cheerfully, 'Hang on!' and performed the rapid manipulation of the choke, ignition, throttle, brake, gear-lever, and hand petrol pump necessary to put Haemorrhagic Hilda in motion. 'Off we go to the wide open spaces!'
'By the way,' she said lighting a cigarette. 'I've got to go to Oxford Street first.'
'Oxford Street! But that's miles out of our way. What on earth do you want to go there for?'
'I simply must do my shopping. I've got to get a length of curtain material for my room-I can't stand the hospital stuff any longer-and a birthday present for Cissy Jenkins, and some kirbigrips and some linen buttons for my uniform and a tea-pot and some soap.'
'But couldn't you do it another time? I mean to say-Apart from anything else, I'd like to get there in daylight. The headlamps aren't terribly efficient.'
'What other time? You seem to forget I'm a working girl, my dear young man.'
'Oh, sorry. No offence, of course.'
She left me for an hour and a quarter in Oxford Street, though the time passed quickly enough because I spent it driving through side-streets looking for somewhere to park and anxiously peering out for policemen, as though I were about to hold up a bank. She rejoined me with a Christmas Eve load of parcels, which she threw on to the sofa in the back, and said, 'Phew! What a bloody tussle! Drive on, James.'
'Are you sure you've got everything?' I asked stiffly.
'Except some cigarettes. But that doesn't matter. I can smoke yours.'
My spirits had dropped badly since leaving St Swithin's, and now it occurred to me that I had never seen Nurse Macpherson out of uniform before. Indeed, I had never seen her in daylight at all for several weeks. She was unfortunately one of those nurses who are flattered by the starched severity of their dress, and she had chosen for our escapade an odd orange knitted outfit that recalled the woollen suits worn at one period by Mr Bernard Shaw. Her face, too, suffered away from the night-club dimness of a sleeping ward. Her make-up was careless, the freckles that had enchanted me across the Night Report Book now reminded me of a dozen skin diseases, and I reflected that she must have begun her nursing training comparatively late, because she was clearly several years older than I was.
My mood was darkened further by the weather, which had turned from a lunch-time of brittle blue sky and sharp-edged sun to an afternoon in which the clouds and the twilight were already conspiring to make me confess Hilda's deficient headlights. On top of this, I was getting a sore throat. Nurse Plumtree's streptococcus, breathed into our farewell kiss, was already breeding generations of grandchildren across the mucous membrane of my pharynx. I had left the hospital with a half-perceived tickling in the back of my throat, and now I felt like a fire-eater after a bad performance.
Fortunately, Nurse Macpherson became more romantic as we left the outskirts of London, and began stroking my arm against the steering-wheel while murmuring that she felt deliciously abandoned. She even managed a few flattering words about Hilda, expressing surprise that the car had managed to travel so far without stopping or coming off the road. This was encouraging, but I was too busy to listen attentively through contending with the traffic on the Great North Road, which that afternoon was composed only of cars driven by men late for important interviews, bicycles propelled by blind imbeciles, and lorries carrying boilers for ocean liners. But we progressed without breakdown or accident, and when darkness fell I was delighted to find that the headlights shone more brightly than before, sometimes both of them at once. By the time The Judge's Arms appeared in front of us I began to feel more cheerful and more appreciative of the unusual treat in store for me.
'Here we are, Nan,' I said, as I pulled up at the front door.
She peered through the cracked window. 'Are you sure? It looks like a municipal lunatic asylum to me.'
'It's very romantic inside. And-according to a friend of mine who ought to know-they're very broad-minded.'
My heart was beginning to beat more quickly. 'Sure you've got the ring on the right finger?' I asked nervously.
'Of course I have. Put these parcels in your case, will you? I can't possibly get them in mine.'
We got out of the car.
When I had asked Grimsdyke more about The Judge's Arms he had murmured that it was a coaching inn in the best English tradition'. It was in the English inn-keeping tradition, right enough, but the most widespread rather than the best. The walls of the hall sprouted thickly the heads of deer, otters, badgers, foxes, ferrets, stoats, and weasels, among the glazed bodies of pike, salmon, trout, perch, and bream in generous glass coffins; in the corner a pair of rigid snipe huddled beneath a glass dome, and over the stairs was impaled the horned skull of a buffalo. The place was so dark, empty, and musty that it immediately reminded me of a corner in the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road.
On one side of the hall was a door with a cracked frosted-glass panel embossed with the words 'Coffee Room' in curly letters; opposite was a similar door marked 'Lounge'. In the corner, carefully hidden by a spiky palm leaning in a large brass pot, was a hatch with a panel inviting 'Inquiries'. In front of the hatch was a ledge bearing a small brass hand-bell, secured to the wall by a length of chain.
'Cosy place,' murmured Nurse Macpherson.
'It's bound to be rather quiet,' I said, feeling I ought to defend the hotel as well as Haemorrhagic Hilda. 'We're in the country, you know.'
She made no reply, so I set down our cases, picked up the bell, and gave a timid tinkle. She began to make up her face, and I read a large notice in a black frame explaining that it was your own fault if anyone walked off with your valuables. As no one appeared, I rang the bell again.
Not a sound came from the hotel.
'I suppose they haven't all been scared away?' said Nurse Macpherson, snapping her compact closed. 'You know, like the _Marie Celeste?'_
'It's just a sleepy part of the world,' I told her testily, for my throat was beginning to hurt badly. 'We're not in Piccadilly Circus, you know.'
'I can see it now,' she went on, gazing at the sooty ceiling where it was gathered round the root of the tarnished chandelier. 'We shall find every room empty, meals half-eaten on the tables, baths filled, beds turned down, fires burning in the grates. Some awful thing came through the front door, perhaps from Mars. Everyone has fled except for one corpse in the garden, with its features twisted into an expression of spine-chilling terror. What a wonderful story for the newspapers! We'll phone the _Daily Express,_ and in no time there'll be reporters and photographers and these tedious little men from television saying, "Now, Doctor, will you explain how you happened to be here with a trained nurse-"'
'Please be quiet for a minute. I'm doing my best.'
I rang the bell again, as though vending muffins. With the other hand I rapped the frosted glass, and Nurse Macpherson tapped a large and greasy gong with her foot.
'Yes?'
The coffee-room door had opened. Through it poked the head of an old man, in no collar and a railway-porter's waistcoat.
'We want a room.'
'I'll fetch Mrs Digby,' he said, disappearing.
We waited in silence for some minutes. I
was beginning to wonder whether it would be less trouble to bundle Nurse Macpherson into Haemorrhagic Hilda and turn her out at the Nurses' Home, when the glass suddenly shot up beside me.
'Yes?'
I turned to meet one of the most disagreeable-looking women I had seen in my life. She had a thin peaky face, cropped hair, a gold pince-nez on a chain, and a dress apparently made from an old schoolmaster's gown.
'Oh, er, good evening. You're Mrs Digby?'
'Yes.'
'Good. Well, you see, I wanted a room.'
'Yes?'
'You have a room?'
'Yes.'
I was now plainly nervous, for we had reached the point in our adventure that I had rehearsed the most in, the secrecy of my room. It all seemed so easy in novels and the Sunday papers: once the initial difficulty of persuading the girl was overcome, the rest of the trip was sheer enjoyment. I had hoped at least for a genial boniface at the reception desk, but now I felt more confident of seducing a hundred women than convincing this sharp-eyed shrew that we were married.
'What name?' she demanded, opening as ledger like the Domesday Book.
'Phillimore,' I said. I had decided that was the most natural-sounding alias I could imagine.
'Sign here.'
She handed me a pen, and spattering ink freely over the page I anxiously filled in the name, address, and nationality. I noticed that the last column left a space for 'Remarks.'
The manageress blotted the book. 'Which of you's Framleigh?' she asked, frowning.
'Eh? Oh, yes, of course, I am. I'm Framleigh. Mr Framleigh. The young lady's Phillimore. Miss Phillimore.'
I cursed myself. Framleigh had been my second choice of _nom d'amour,_ and in my agitation I had scrawled it over the visitor's book. Mrs Digby was now looking at me like Hamlet sizing up his uncle.
I tried to smile. 'We want two rooms,' I said.
'And I should think so, too!'
I put my hands in my pockets, took them out, and scratched the back of my head.
'The young lady must register.'
Mrs Digby handed the pen to Nurse Macpherson, who coolly wrote across the page 'Hortense Phillimore. Park Lane, London. Manx.' Feeling I should offer some innocent explanation of a young unmarried couple arriving for a single night in an unfrequented hotel in mid-winter, I said, 'We happened to be travelling north. We're cousins, you see. We're going to our uncle's funeral. Charming old gentleman, in the brass business. You may have heard of him. We both work in London, and to save the expense we decided to come up together by car, and we asked a man on the road for a good hotel-'
'Er-nest! Mrs Digby poked her head out of the hatch like a cuckoo-clock. 'Er-nest! Where are you, Er-nest?'.
The head reappeared from the coffee-room. 'Yes?'
'Ernest take up the baggage.'
Ernest, who looked unfit to carry anything heavier than a letter, creaked arthritically across the floor.
'The lady's in number three,' said Mrs Digby, taking from the rack behind her a key secured to a steel flag nine inches long. 'And the gentleman-' She carefully went to the far end of the rack. 'Is in number ninety-four.'
'Right, said Ernest, picking up our cases. 'Foller me.'
'We happen to be cousins,' I told him as he stumbled up the stairs. 'We're going north for our uncle's funeral. He used to be in the brass business, poor fellow. We happen to work in London, so Miss Phillimore and I decided to come up together. On the road we met a man, and I asked him to recommend a good hotel, He said, "You can't beat The Judge's Arms-"'
'Number three!' Ernest interrupted, as though announcing the winner of a raffle. He threw open the door and switched on the light. We found ourselves in an apartment the size of a billiard-room, lined with dark-brown wallpaper and containing a pair of marble-topped tables, a bowl of waxed fruit, a dressing-table ornamented with cherubs, a wash-stand with a mauve jug and basin, and sufficient solid wardrobes to lock up a gang of burglars. In the centre of the room was a large knob-garnished brass bedstead.
Nurse Macpherson, who had said nothing since signing the register, drew in her breath.
'I don't believe it,' she muttered.
'Foller me,' Ernest repeated.
'I'll see you downstairs in five minutes for a drink,' I said. 'Hope you'll be comfortable.'
'Oh, I'll be comfortable all right. I'm used to sleeping in the middle of St Paul's.'
'Foller me!' Ernest insisted.
Number three was on the first floor, but my room appeared to be at the far end of the latest extension to the building, several of which had been added with floors at different levels.
'Don't know why she put you up here,' Ernest grumbled, pausing for breath half-way up a narrow staircase. 'There ain't been no one in ninety-four since the Farmers' Union.'
Number ninety-four was immediately under the roof, a narrow, cold, low, damp room, with a bed, a commode, and a wash-stand topped with a marble slab that reminded me of the post-mortem room. I gave Ernest a shilling, which he looked at carefully before saying, 'Goodnight!' and disappearing. I sat heavily on the bed. If this was romance, I could understand why Casanovas flourished only in warm climates.
20
I reached the ground floor before Nurse Macpherson. As the hotel had resumed the sullen silence with which it had greeted us, I decided to explore the door marked 'Lounge'. This led to a small room with some furniture arranged haphazardly, like the bodies of mountaineers frozen to death where they stood. There were three or four more palms, and in the corner was an iron grate, bare of fire irons, in which a tiny fire blushed with shame.
I was now feeling really ill and I needed a drink desperately. There was a bell by the fireplace labelled 'Service', but knowing the hotel I supplemented a ring on this by opening the door and shouting, 'Hoy!' several times loudly.
From the coffee-room, which was now lighted as a preparation for dinner, came a thin, dark, short young man in a tail-suit that stretched almost to his heels. 'What'll you be wanting?' he asked, with the amiability of citizens of the Irish Republic.
'I want a drink.'
'Sure, you can have a drink if you want to.'
'What have you got?'
'Oh, anything at all,' he told me expansively.' There's gin, whisky, rum, Guinness, crиme de menthe, port, egg nogg-'
'I'll have whisky. Two doubles, in one glass. And have you any aspirin?'
'Wouldn't you be feeling well?'
'I'd be feeling bloody awful. And please hurry up.'
By the time Nurse Macpherson appeared I had downed my quadruple whisky and twenty grains of aspirin, while the waiter found some coal and brought the poker from the office. 'We have to be careful over the fires,' he explained to me. 'Some of them commercial gentlemen pile it up as though they were stoking the _Queen Mary.'_
'Nan, my dear,' I greeted her more cheerfully. 'You're looking very beautiful.'
'My God, I could do with a drink, too. That room up there's absolutely freezing.'
'That would be number three?' asked the waiter sympathetically. 'Oh, that's a terrible room that is. It's a wonder they put humans in it at all. I'd rather sleep in the tent of a circus, that I would.'
'We want some more drinks.'
'Would the lady like a cocktail, now? I could do her a good cocktail, and very reasonable.'
'Two large whiskies will do.'
As he left and we sat down on each side of the fire I began to feel better. 'It's a pity about the single rooms,' I said, looking shiftily to see if the door was shut. 'That old buzzard in the office quite put me off my stride.'
'It doesn't matter,' she said, lighting a cigarette. 'You can creep down as soon as everyone goes to bed. It saves a lot of bother in the long run.'
'You've had some experience of this-this sort of thing?' I asked.
'Really, darling, I wasn't born yesterday.' She glanced round her. 'What a bloody hole you've taken me to, if you don't mind my saying so. This place looks like a waiting-room got up for the wa
ke of a dead stationmaster.'
'I'm sorry. Really I am.' I reached for her hand. 'But I've never done anything like this before. And-and I did so much want to do it with you, Nan.'
She smiled, and squeezed my fingers. 'You're really very, very sweet.'
The waiter then returned with the drinks.
'I was looking you up in the visitors book, and I see you're from London,' he said. 'What sort of line of business would you be in, now?'
'I'm a doctor.'
I bit my lip; it was my second idiotic slip. Apart from the danger of discovery by confessing my profession, I was now the target for everyone's intimacies.
'Are you now? And that's very interesting.' The waiter settled himself, leaning on his up-ended tray. 'I've a great admiration for the medical profession myself, Doctor. It must be a great work, a great work. I had a brother, now, and he started off to be a doctor, but he had some sort of trouble with the authorities. Now he's an oyster-opener in one of the big hotels in O'Connell Street. Oh, he would have been a fine doctor, he would, a lovely pair of hands he had on him. And the lady wouldn't be a nurse, would she?'
'It happens that we are cousins,' I told him firmly. 'Our uncle, who was in the brass business, has unfortunately died suddenly. We are attending his funeral. The reason we are travelling together is that we both work in London, and it is obviously more convenient for us to share the same car. The reason we are in this hotel is that we met a man on the road-'
'Now it's a very convenient thing that you should have come tonight, Doctor, because I was having a lot of trouble with my feet, you see, and I was meaning to go to a doctor tomorrow. But now you're here, it'll save me the journey. I think that the arches must be dropped, or something, but I get a sort of burning pain along here which sort of moves round and round-'
'I'll hear about your feet later, if you really want me to. Will you please get us two more drinks.'
'But you've only just started those.'
'I know. But we shall have finished them before you can turn round.'
'I've had some trouble with my kidneys, too, I'd like to talk to you about, Doctor.'
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