The Inn at the Edge of the World

by Alice Thomas Ellis

‘I don’t,’ said Jessica. ‘I’m damned if I do. He was performing a strip-tease – like a girl. That’s what he was doing. He was looking at me under his eyelashes and exposing his torso, and any minute we’d’ve been down to the suspender-belt and the fishnets, in a manner of speaking, and I was meant to be going Cor, like the audience at Fifi la Frou-Frou’s, and, all in all, I missed my cue.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Harry.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Jessica. ‘Except I don’t understand what’s going on. A straightforward pass I understand, but this is different again. Creepy. What would you think if I started twirling my moustaches at you?’

  ‘I’d be very surprised,’ said Harry.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Jessica. ‘Can we blame the women’s liberation movement, do you think? Are we into total role-reversal?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Harry.

  ‘I mean – I don’t wish to sound offensive, but except under special circumstances the male form is not a pretty sight – I mean if somebody cuts out all the preliminaries and simply flings himself at you in his pelt, you think, well, forget the whole thing. Not that he flung. I think he was expecting me to fling.’

  ‘I can quite see that,’ said Harry, referring to the earlier part of her remark.

  ‘They never used to do it,’ said Jessica, puzzling away at the infinite perplexities of life. ‘What shall I do now? What can I say to him? If he’d made a pass at me I’d know, but as it is we have no clear basis for discussion. Shall I say, “Get ’em on,” and hurl him bodily from my room?’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ asked Harry.

  ‘No,’ said Jessica. ‘It would be too embarrassing. I can’t stand scenes off-stage. And he hasn’t really done anything. He’s perfectly harmless really . . .’ although even as she said it she was aware of a certain uneasiness. She construed it as misplaced compassion. ‘Poor little sod,’ she said. ‘Can I stay here a bit longer until he gets fed up waiting?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Harry. ‘Shall I make some tea? Coffee?’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Jessica, thinking of people who led ordinary lives, who would now be putting the last touches to the Christmas tree, checking on the brandy butter, worrying about the debt they’d plunged themselves into, creeping into the children’s bedrooms on one stockinged foot, while in the stocking which would have clad the other foot were crammed toy cars, small representations of appealing aliens, jigsaw puzzles, picture-books, a tangerine and a nut – or perhaps some of them were creeping for the purposes of child abuse. ‘I have a sense of evil,’ she said, ‘of something out of place . . .’

  ‘The man in your room?’ suggested Harry.

  ‘I don’t think it’s just that,’ said Jessica. ‘I’m more or less used to that sort of thing. It’s not my springtime innocence I fear for. It’s more a sense of emptiness, of no hope. I guess I’ve been drinking too much recently. In the end it just makes you sad. I’m sad.’

  ‘What do you usually do on Christmas Eve?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Get drunk, I suppose,’ said Jessica. ‘Go to Brompton Oratory for midnight mass with a crowd of people. Get drunk again. Nothing much.’ She poured boiling water on to the tea-bags and opened a plastic container of milk with her thumbnail. ‘Milk?’ she inquired.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Harry.

  ‘I’m sorry to be so depressing,’ said Jessica. ‘I’m not usually – I think,’ she added modestly. ‘Except for you I don’t much like the people here. Maybe that’s it. Maybe this whole idea was a huge mistake. It was bound to be when you come to think about it – plunging yourself into a load of strangers at the edge of the world. Trouble is – when you get there you find it isn’t the edge of the world. I think I forgot the world is round, so no matter where you go, no matter how far you run, sooner or later you find yourself staring at your own retreating backside. How pointless everything is.’

  Harry had no words of comfort. He would have said that the pointlessness existed because she had left Christ out of Christmas. She had had sufficient good sense and good taste to learn to eschew the bacchanalian excesses of the season, but not enough to realize what else she had sacrificed. You could say, thought Harry, that she had thrown out the Holy Child with the bath salts, bath oil, bath essence and bubbles which so often appeared as gifts, unknowingly symbolizing the frankincense and myrrh . . .

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Jessica and wished she hadn’t, because he might well have been remembering Christmasses past when he would now have been watching the look of delight on the face of his little son as he woke to a snowy morning and a glowing fire in the dawn and a new train set, and cream on his porridge instead of milk, as a special treat . . . sentimental tears began to slide down her make-up.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ said Harry.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Jessica. ‘Men hate tears.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t like to see you upset.’ He would have told her that he himself sometimes wept, but he knew that women cannot bear to see men weep. ‘How about a brandy?’

  ‘And soda?’ said Jessica, attempting to substitute a smile for a snivel. ‘Drink to General Gordon?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Harry. ‘He was an amazing fellow for looking on the bright side.’

  ‘I suppose he’d need to be,’ said Jessica. ‘Stuck in Khartoum like that. I’ve nearly gone mad stuck on Crewe platform for an hour – and nobody was proposing to massacre me.’

  ‘I know something to cheer you up,’ said Harry. ‘I’ll read you some last words.’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ said Jessica, drying her tears.

  ‘Now where is it . . .’ said Harry. ‘Here we are, this is about Achmet Pasha Said – he was the Turkish commandant of El Obeid and he refused to surrender to the Mahdi. It comes from the account of Father Bononi, who was a Catholic priest besieged in the garrison. “On the 18th January in 1883 the dervishes entered the dewan of the Mudiriah and found Achmet Pasha Said sitting in a high, carved, armed-chair of stained wood, bolt upright, with his arms folded, staring at them defiantly.” They were going to kill him, but some of them said he must be taken before the Mahdi. Listen: “‘Back dogs; touch me not,’ he cried. ‘You defile me, base rebels. I will go myself before this arch rebel Mohammed Ahmed. Lead on.’ They instinctively drew back, startled at his terrible voice and fierce aspect. ‘Hold his hands and search him,’ ordered Mohammed Ahmed the moment he saw him; and he was just in time with this precaution. The old man was drawing forth from his breast a revolver, and undoubtedly meant to deal death to his enemy. ‘Take the cursed dog of a Turk away,’ cried Mohammed Ahmed, ‘and sell him for a slave by auction in the bazaar. Away with him.’ Then was the commandant led forth and exposed for sale, but no man durst buy him at first. But it happened that an Emir passed by that way, and out of derision cried out, ‘O auctioneer, I will surely give 680 piastres for this man.’ So he was knocked down to the Emir. Now, when this came to the ears of Mohammed Ahmed he sent forth an order that the commandant should be slain with all speed. So some dervishes went from the Mahdi’s presence then and there and sought out the commandant. They heard he was in the house of the Emir; they went there and ordered that Achmet Pasha should be brought forth. He presented himself to them with unquailing look and bold bearing as the dervishes drew their swords. ‘You have come to murder me, have you? Cursed, cowardly dogs, I fear you not. May your fathers’ graves be defiled. I curse them, you and the foul harlots that bore you. I curse your fathers and mothers back to three generations. All your female relations are abandoned women, and may the graves of your forefathers be defiled. I curse you all.’ They fell upon him pouring forth these maledictions, and he died like a brave man, with the utmost fortitude.” What do you think of that?’ asked Harry, laying aside the book.

  Jessica said that, yes indeed, and oddly enough, she had found it cheering; that, when you came to think about it, perhaps ultimate bravery was the foremost and most valuable of all human qualiti
es; and furthermore that, given our circumstances, it was, in the end, the only necessary virtue. ‘What happened next?’ she asked.

  ‘Bloodshed, mayhem,’ said Harry. ‘These are strange tales to be telling on Christmas morning.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Jessica.

  ‘Really?’ said Harry.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Jessica.

  ‘This is Father Bononi again,’ said Harry. ‘“I forgot to mention that on the entering of the town by the dervishes this gallant soldier . . .” that’s Achmet Pasha, “. . . tried to blow up the magazine and destroy himself and army with the rebels, but the officers prevented him. The dervishes now in their rage – for they were cut to the quick by the words of the commandant – sought out Ali Bey Sherif; him they also slew with other officers. Now the dervishes returned to Mohammed Ahmed, and told all of these things to him. He burst into a flood of tears, threw dust on his head, and upbraided them for thus spilling blood: ‘Ye be sanguinary men, O ye dervishes. These deeds do not find favour in my sight.’ ” ’

  ‘That’s a bit rich,’ said Jessica, after a moment’s silence.

  ‘The Mahdi, too, was a complex man,’ said Harry.

  ‘What happened to him?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘He died of smallpox in 1885,’ said Harry.

  ‘It all makes everything look a bit of a waste of time,’ said Jessica. ‘Time, and blood, and everything.’

  ‘Not a waste of time,’ said Harry. ‘Life is only, by definition, a use of time. That’s all it was ever meant to be. We only waste it if we try too hard to make sense of it. I know . . .’

  ‘What do you know?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘Just how much time you can waste,’ said Harry, ‘when you have no purpose for it, except to try and make sense of it.’

  Jessica thought she must be growing tired, for she could not understand him.

  ‘I’ll come with you to your room,’ he said, ‘and look under the bed.’

  The room was empty and cold, for the window was wide open.

  ‘What’s all that about?’ said Jessica, crossing the room and leaning out over the sill to look down to the sea. ‘Do you think he shinned down the drainpipe, or did he open the window to annoy me? Maybe he means to climb in again?’

  ‘Let me,’ said Harry. He closed the window and drew the curtains across. ‘Lock your door and go to sleep,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a long night.’

  ‘Good night,’ said Jessica, and she yawned.

  Before dawn she woke, half dreaming that she could hear the sound of movement outside. The smell of the sea was strong in the room and she remembered the open window and blamed Jon. Not quite awake she went to check that the window was still closed, drew the curtains and looked out: all she could see was mist, paler than the dying night, drifting formlessly over the shore. ‘Merry Christmas,’ she said to herself and went back to bed.

  Descending to the dining room before nine she found it deserted except for Finlay, who was lighting the fire. Here, too, there was a strong smell of the sea: it must emanate from Finlay, decided Jessica. He had probably been up since daybreak gutting mackerel, tying lobsters’ claws together, boiling shrimps and crimping salmon – oh shut up, Jessica – she told herself. ‘Morning,’ she said aloud.

  ‘Aye,’ said Finlay, agreeing with this proposition.

  ‘Nice day,’ said Jessica, since it seemed not to be raining.

  ‘Aye,’ said Finlay equably.

  ‘No sign of snow,’ said Jessica.

  ‘No,’ said Finlay.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ asked Jessica, wishing she’d told him that he had a frog in his hair and wondering how he would have responded.

  ‘They’re no’ up yet,’ explained Finlay, and although she knew this to be the most likely explanation for their absence Jessica had again the irrational fear of the child who suspects itself to have been abandoned. I must have had a lousy upbringing she thought, perhaps I should consult Ronald about it.

  Finlay’s sister-in-law came in from the kitchen and regarded her inquiringly.

  ‘Haddock,’ said Jessica recklessly, ‘haddock with a poached egg on, and toast.’

  She moved away from the fire: if she got too warm and also ate a full breakfast she would fall asleep in her chair and wake up looking fat-faced and ugly. Already she was looking plain, as she had ascertained from the mirror in the bathroom; a candid, even cruel mirror with a tendency to distort the features width-wise.

  Anita came in with silver droplets in her hair. ‘I’ve been for a walk,’ she said. ‘It’s almost like spring.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Jessica, looking at the window. ‘It’s all grey and horrible.’

  ‘It’s got quite warm,’ said Anita. ‘It doesn’t feel cold at all this morning. The snow’s all gone from the hilltop.’

  ‘How depressing,’ said Jessica.

  This put Anita in a difficult position: she, too, regretted the melting of the snow, but if she had said so she would have seemed to be complaining, and she meant to be optimistic and cheerful for, no matter what everyone said, today was Christmas day after all. ‘It’s quite pleasant,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I’ll come for a walk with you later,’ said Jessica. ‘I’m having haddock for breakfast, so it can go down and beat the hell out of the alcohol in my system, and then I’ll have to go and walk it off or it’s going to lock the doors against lunch.’

  ‘I shall have grapefruit,’ said Anita, who was beginning to manifest, by the day, a greater independence of spirit than she had shown in the store, subjected, as she had been, to the tyrannical whims of a higher authority.

  ‘It’s nasty,’ said Jessica gloomily. ‘Little and dry and sour, and all its vitamins have fallen out.’

  ‘It isn’t fattening,’ said Anita.

  ‘It isn’t anything,’ said Jessica: she stopped talking as Eric came in with the haddock.

  ‘Hot rolls?’ he offered. ‘They’ve just come out of the oven.’

  ‘I mustn’t eat hot rolls,’ said Jessica. ‘I shouldn’t eat anything really. I think I’ve put on a stone.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Eric, annoyed. If the inn food was so delicious that she couldn’t resist it she should not be complaining, but congratulating him.

  Jessica, too, realized this. ‘Everything is so delicious,’ she explained.

  ‘We do our best to give satisfaction,’ said Eric, mollified. He had been up for a long time, putting things to rights before he had started agitating himself about his culinary arrangements for the day. There had been a number of dead fish in the inn yard, flung up by some freak wave or gust of wind, and he had had to shovel them up and dispose of them: he had decided against putting them in the bins and had eventually carried them in the log-basket and thrown them back into the sea. The log-basket still smelled fishy, but the inn was on the edge of the ocean and people must be prepared for an oceanic atmosphere; it could be regarded as an added attraction.

  Jessica did not so regard it: she had eaten her haddock, and when Finlay’s sister-in-law had leaned over her to remove her plate with its bones and skin she had been nearly overwhelmed by the odour of fish. The whole family must have been wallowing in the things all night, she thought. Perhaps they were running a canning industry on the side, or perhaps they never washed. ‘I feel sick,’ she said. ‘Tired,’ she added, as Eric was within earshot. ‘I think I’ll go and lie down.’

  ‘What about your walk?’ asked Anita.

  ‘Bother my walk,’ said Jessica. ‘I’ll go later.’ And she went back to bed, so that when Jon came into the dining room he saw no sign of her.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Anita.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Jon with a smile that he had last used in a commercial for tinned soup, when his supposed mother had placed before him a plate of supposed minestrone: it was the sort of smile that the Elect might wear for the Second Coming, and Anita was considerably disconcerted by it. She looked round to see at whom it might be directed and narrowed her eyes whe
n she realized it could only be herself. What’s his game? she surmised suspiciously.

  Ronald also caught the afterglow of this smile, and inwardly deplored it. He shook his head as he took his place at the table.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Anita solicitously. ‘Do you have a headache?’ Ronald thought about it: he hadn’t noticed it before but now he was conscious of a mild discomfort in the top of his head.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think I have.’

  ‘I’ve got a paracetamol in here,’ said Anita, grasping her handbag. ‘Drink it with a lot of water and you’ll feel better.’ Since she had perceived Ronald as a little boy she had grown to disregard his medical qualifications. Ronald did as he was bid.

  ‘You are a very sensible woman,’ he said, which had she but known it was the highest praise he could offer. She would have preferred to be described as a ‘proper’ woman: she sometimes dreamed that someone would so categorize her. ‘Now take Anita,’ they’d say, ‘there’s a proper woman.’

  ‘I think that wine was off,’ she said. ‘I felt rather bad in the night. I had to get up. What happened to you?’ she said to Jon. ‘Why didn’t you come back?’

  ‘Because the wine was off,’ said Jon, idly unoriginal since his mind was elsewhere.

  ‘You didn’t miss much,’ said Anita. ‘We came back soon after you. There was quite an unpleasant scene developing.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ said Jon, who had no interest in other people’s scenes, pleasant or unpleasant.

  ‘Have you got a headache too?’ asked Anita sharply as she noticed the expression which had moved in to replace the smile.

  Jon recalled himself. ‘Me? No,’ he said. ‘No, no, I’m fine,’ and he smiled again and stretched out his arms in his lazy panther style.

  If Jon had been his patient, thought Ronald, he would now be hurriedly consulting a colleague as to the immediate necessity of having him sectioned. ‘Do you ever hear voices?’ he asked, but Jon, now dreamily smiling, had lowered his arms and left the room.

  ‘Why did you ask him that?’ demanded Anita.

  ‘He’s mad,’ said Ronald, putting it in the simplest terms for the layman: he was prepared to trust Anita with a few professional confidences.