‘Yes?’ said Harry.
‘Where is she?’ said Jon, turning round and turning again.
‘She isn’t here,’ said Harry.
‘She is . . .’ said Jon, and stopped with the caution of the madman. He said reasonably, ‘You’re much too old for her, you know.’
Harry watched him and said nothing.
‘Not that she’s so young,’ continued Jon, ‘but you’re too old for her.’ He lowered his voice. ‘She’s a nympho maniac, isn’t she?’ he said. ‘She comes to my room in the night . . .’ he stopped again, not sure that that was what he had meant to say. ‘You’ve got a good view from here,’ he observed, joining Harry by the window. ‘You can watch them coming from the shore.’ He hadn’t meant to say that either and closed his eyes for a second. ‘I’ve been drinking,’ he confided after a while as Harry still said nothing. ‘I’ve been drinking a bottle of whisky and eating peanuts. She’ll be angry when she sees how much I’ve drunk and I haven’t left any peanuts for her. She’ll say . . .’ He laid his hand against the cold of the window pane. ‘There’s someone watching me out there,’ he said. ‘Out in the sea. They have grey eyes – grey as the sea. They’re looking at me.’
‘The owl was a baker’s daughter,’ said Harry.
‘Yes, she was,’ said Jon, unsurprised at this disclosure. Then he left.
Harry stayed by the window, looking out to sea – to where the grey eyes were watching. He wondered what he should do.
It was night-time in the bar and outside the snow was at last beginning to fall, bringing an illusion of warmth and safety to the denizens of the inn.
‘Isn’t this cosy,’ said Mrs H., taking off her anorak to reveal a blue dress, sequinned on the shoulders and hips. It was, supposed Jessica, what is known as a cocktail frock, one of a species now largely extinct except on remote islands. ‘I’d’ve thought they’d shot the last one years ago,’ she said to herself, feeling out of place again; lost and defenceless in the alien and unfashionable ambience. ‘It must have been hiding in a corner all lonely and afraid. It’s probably terrified now that a collector will bag it . . .’
‘Did you have a nice lunch?’ asked Mrs H. ‘I’ve left John washing up.’ She looked round to see if by any chance there were any new men available for the evening and was disappointed, though unastonished. ‘What a dump,’ she said, not critically nor even sadly, but as one remarking on a fact. Eric frowned but did not contradict her.
‘Sorry,’ said Jessica, ‘I was thinking about something else. What did you say?’
‘I said, did you have a nice lunch,’ repeated Mrs H.
‘Very nice,’ said Jessica. ‘Did you?’
‘It was all right,’ said Mrs H. ‘He overcooked the sprouts but I don’t really mind that. I don’t like vegetables the way they do them now – just show them the hot water and slap them in front of you.’
‘Al dente,’ said Eric, defensively.
‘Undercooked,’ said Mrs H. ‘Doesn’t even kill the germs.’
‘Some vegetables are better raw,’ said Anita, ‘if you wash them well.’
‘We have a murderer in our midst,’ said Jessica.
‘Pardon,’ said Mrs H.
‘I was thinking aloud,’ said Jessica. ‘It’s a line from my new play.’
‘Sounds interesting,’ said Mrs H.
‘Sometimes you only need to blanch them,’ said Anita.
‘My wife used to cook little marrows – in a lot of butter, I think,’ said Ronald, reminiscently.
‘Courgettes,’ said Anita. ‘I do them with garlic and tomatoes.’ She hated Ronald’s wife.
‘I wonder if you can eat ladder fern,’ said Jessica. They looked at her inquiringly. ‘If you tied bits of it in bunches you could steam them like asparagus.’
‘Why would you want to?’ asked Anita.
‘I don’t really,’ said Jessica, ‘only there’s such a lot of it about it seems a waste not to eat it.’
‘You don’t have to eat everything,’ said Anita.
‘I suppose not,’ said Jessica. Only one more day and she could go home and see what Mike had been up to. She would stay close to Harry on the train and not go near the platform’s edge in case Jon should take it upon himself to mince her under the train wheels. He had just come into the bar and was standing to one side, looking at her.
The professor entered with a girl in the duffel coat. He seemed annoyed and Jessica wondered what he had to be cross about when, so far as she knew, nobody was trying to kill him. At present she felt she was the only person in the world with something to be really cross about.
‘They’ve been at it again,’ he said. ‘I nearly caught them this time. There’s just enough snow to show up the footprints on the lawn.’
‘They were playing music,’ said the girl in the duffel coat unexpectedly.
‘Bollocks,’ said the professor. ‘They weren’t. It was the wind in the wires.’ This was clearly the continuation of an argument which had begun earlier and was leading nowhere.
‘They were,’ said the girl, and Mrs H. brightened at the prospect of discord.
‘It was probably the ghosts again,’ she said. ‘You’re haunted.’
‘I’m not haunted,’ said the professor, as though he’d been accused of having lice. The distinction of having a ghost was obviously outweighed for him by the nuisance of trespass. If the dancers on his lawn came from another element he still resented them pushing his fence down. ‘It’s bloody-minded locals,’ he said and stroked his crotch fretfully, which made Jessica think of Mike again. Perhaps it was the fault of the feminists, she thought, which caused so many men to have to keep publicly checking on their masculinity.
Mrs H. reached over and smacked his wrist. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said in a playful voice.
‘Bollocks,’ said the professor.
Yes, thought Jessica, they did know each other well.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Ronald becoming aware of tension.
‘Someone keeps tearing down my fence,’ said the professor. ‘Some yobs.’
‘If you didn’t have a fence,’ said Ronald, ‘they couldn’t tear it down.’
The professor didn’t bother to answer him.
‘To some personalities,’ said Ronald, ‘the mere fact of prohibition is sufficient to trigger an anti-social response. Without the challenge of imposed boundaries, what might be classed by the layman as the mentally subnormal – the “yobs” of whom you speak – will not even realize that an area is intended to lie beyond their reach and competence, and therefore their resentments do not become unmanageable.’
‘He means that if you see a sign saying “Keep off the grass”,’ translated Anita who was beginning to understand his style after hours in his company, ‘you won’t. You’ll walk on it because the sign says it’s there. Isn’t that so, Ronald?’
‘That,’ agreed Ronald, ‘at its simplest, is more or less what I mean.’
‘Bollocks,’ insisted the professor, determined to retain his fence and embrace his grudge.
A chill draught swept into the bar and Jessica looked up to see who had come in. It was Finlay wearing his oilskins and lurching a little. He took his flute from a pocket and blew into it, whereupon his sister-in-law leaned across the counter and took it from him. He laughed, requesting whisky and she served him silently. ‘Whaur’s the colonel?’ he said, looking about him. ‘I hae a message.’ His sister-in-law gave him a warning glance and he laughed again.
Eric watched them coldly. Their seemingly meaningless exchanges served, as always, to make him feel left out. He was overwhelmed by anticlimax and he wanted his wife even though she could be so disagreeable. He was lonely. ‘I’m going to get some mineral water from the back,’ he said, but nobody seemed to care.
It was snowing steadily in the inn yard and through the drifting flakes he could see the boy sitting on the wall. He watched him for a while and it seemed the boy watched him back, as the seals sometimes watched him when
he stood on the foreshore, but neither of them spoke.
There was little conversation going on in the bar when he got back. Jon had said nothing all evening and the others seemed lost in private abstraction, except for Ronald and Anita, who were engrossed in some aspect of psychology, the one talking and the other wearing an intelligent expression. Jessica got to her feet suddenly. It had occurred to her that she had best make her escape to bed while there were people around to intervene if Jon’s murderous impulses should be activated.
‘Good night everyone,’ she said and went quickly upstairs. She locked her door, tried it several times to make certain it was secure, then got into bed, but only to lie awake until dawn. She knew that Jon was close by and now she was cold with a bitter fear. Harry, too, stayed awake, his door a little open so that he would know should death be afoot.
*
Jessica got out of bed at first light and went to the window. The snow had come like a coquette, pale and pretty, and now had gone again. All joy and beauty, realized Jessica, went without excuse or explanation, leaving only drabness behind, as the retreating tide, whoring after the moon, left horrid and redundant things on the helpless sand. She had a really bad hangover due to her consumption of too much port.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Anita at breakfast. ‘You look terrible.’ Although her tone was compassionate it gave her quiet satisfaction to be able to say this, in perfect truth, to a fairly famous actress.
‘I am terrible,’ said Jessica, downing her glass of juice. It tasted, she thought, like the urine of demons.
‘Would you like one of my vitamin pills?’ asked Anita. ‘They have everything.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Jessica, holding out her palm. ‘You mustn’t let me drink anything today. If anyone sees me making for the bar he must stand in my way, shaking his head like this – Ouch.’ She clutched her own head with both hands to steady it.
‘Poor thing,’ said Anita for Ronald’s benefit: a quality of caring would be invaluable in the wife of a psychoanalyst.
‘Alcohol is a depressant,’ said Ronald.
‘Life’s a depressant,’ said Jessica. She added, under her breath, ‘Jessica’s body was discovered this morning. She had shot herself after drinking too much lousy port and looked extremely beautiful and calm, considering the circumstances. With her death the theatre – or rather the world of commercial TV – has lost a luminous presence and nothing will ever be the same again. The other reason she shot herself is that a lunatic was trying to kill her and rather than submit to this gross impertinence she took the easy way out . . .’
‘Did you say something?’ asked Anita.
‘Not really,’ said Jessica.
‘You were rehearsing lines again,’ said Anita. ‘You must be subconsciously worried about your play.’
‘No, I’m not,’ said Jessica. ‘I was saying my morning prayers because I forgot earlier.’ She had discovered when she was playing St Joan in rep that any mention of religious observance tended to silence people and make them uncomfortable.
‘What are we going to do today?’ asked Anita, turning to Ronald.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ronald, polishing off the toast.
Jessica grew more depressed. It was obvious that Anita had decided to marry and had chosen Ronald. She knew the signs. Women who had determined to marry always behaved as Anita was behaving now – half proprietorial and half winsomely charming. She wondered if she ought to warn her: she could say, ‘Don’t do it. You won’t like it, you know. It isn’t any fun. You might think it’s going to be now, but you’ll soon learn better and by then it’ll be too late. I know.’ But anyone hell-bent on matri mony wouldn’t believe her. In all probability Anita would think she wanted to marry Ronald herself, or at least prevent anyone else from being happy. Unexpectedly this reflection cheered Jessica. Things could be worse: she could have been married to Whiskers over there and have had to spend a lifetime watching him eat with his mouth open. But then Jon came in and her heart missed several beats in the way she supposed it was meant to when your life was threatened. He sat down by the ladder fern and wished everyone good morning in quite a sane fashion.
‘So there’ll be no skiing,’ he said. ‘The snow’s all melted.’
‘What a shame,’ said Anita. She meant this sarcastically, but because she was so busy impressing Ronald with her sweetness of disposition she said it sympathetically. ‘Perhaps you could think of something else exciting to do on your last day.’ There, how was that for an expression of interest and concern in an undeserving person: she glanced at Ronald for approval but he was thinking about something else.
Thanks a lot, thought Jessica, he’d probably find it most exciting to make this my last day ever.
‘I was just thinking,’ said Ronald, seriously.
‘What about?’ asked Anita, laying down her napkin and turning to him with the docile air of the potential bride intent on familiarizing herself with all the innermost workings of the mind of her mate-to-be.
‘If we leave here at eleven tomorrow where will we have our lunch?’ he said.
‘We can have our lunch on the train,’ said Anita tenderly, savouring the collective pronoun and taking it to include only herself and Ronald. She no longer felt confused by the way he changed from sage to greedy child for she was, she told herself, beginning truly to understand him and find all his ways endearing.
‘I’ll just have to get in some sailing,’ said Jon, peering round the ladder fern at the dismal prospect of sea and cloud. ‘I’ll take Jessica for a spin round the headland.’
Oh no, you won’t, thought Jessica, and she said aloud: ‘I have to wash my hair.’ Then she wished she’d thought of some other excuse, for she had a vision of Jon washing her hair eternally in all the foaming wastes of the Atlantic ocean. ‘I want to finish reading my book before I leave,’ she added. ‘Here indoors where it’s warm and dry.’
‘You can watch me through the window,’ said Jon, and he sounded not mad, but disconsolate and humble. Jessica felt a second of pity for the lost child before she pulled herself together.
‘Schmuck,’ said Ronald as Jon left the room, and Jessica was briefly diverted by this evidence of a different aspect to a character she thought she had summed up. He’s human, she thought. Anita, however, found his remark lacking in dignity and professional finesse.
‘He’s unbalanced,’ she reminded the psychoanalyst. ‘He needs treatment.’
‘He’s a schmuck,’ repeated Ronald stubbornly. Jon had reminded him of his least favourite patient, and by association, of the wifeless, cold and foodless house to which he must soon return. There was, he thought self-pityingly, nothing more depressed than a depressed psychoanalyst, for no one else was so familiar, by way of both observation and practice, with the subtle gradations and bleak possibilities of this melancholy state. He took the remains of a once-hot roll from Anita’s plate and piled jam on it – an act which could be construed as displaying a heart-warming familiarity and ease of manner, or a lack of any knowledge of social decorum whatsoever. Anita couldn’t make up her mind.
Jessica pushed aside the fronds of the ladder fern and looked out over the shore to where Finlay sat beside a broken rowing-boat, doing something of a probably nautical nature to a length of rope. On the other hand, mused Jessica, he might have been playing cat’s cradle: he seemed, despite his reputation as man-of-all-work, to waste a shocking amount of time. He looked up towards the top windows of the inn and waved. Jessica heard Harry’s tread on the stairs and watched as he went out of the front door to where Finlay sat, surrounded by the things of the sea. She wished she could hear what they were saying, Harry so grave, and Finlay throwing back his head and laughing at who knew what. As she stood there she began to feel something of the sense of exclusion of which Eric was always so conscious, and then as she stood longer she began to feel like a spy.
‘What are you looking at?’ asked Anita – so her espionage was apparent to others: she had stared
too long and too intently.
‘I was just watching the birds,’ she said, looking upwards. ‘They’re all flying inland.’ She turned towards the table and when she looked through the window again Finlay had gone and Harry stood alone, facing the sea as a rising wind lifted the hem of his coat.
She felt cold and wished she’d brought her cashmere sweater with her. When she’d packed it wouldn’t go into her suitcase and she’d left it on the bed. She went to her room to get her scarlet cardigan and found Finlay’s sister-in-law tidying up. On the bed lay a strange off-white sweater. ‘Oh,’ said Jessica, ‘just what I need. Would anyone mind if I borrowed this?’ It looked much heavier and more practical than her silly, skinny red cardigan. Finlay’s sister-in-law smiled and Jessica took this for permission: she found nothing odd in the unexpected presence of the sweater. She’d needed one and there it was. Everything went dark as she pulled it over her head and when she emerged she blinked. Never again would she drink port. For a moment she had seen not Finlay’s sister-in-law, not a woman, but something else, something you would definitely not expect to find in a bedroom. She blinked again and her vision returned to normal; the woman with her had assumed her usual, human form and was wiping over the dressing-table mirror in a natural everyday manner. Crikey, said Jessica to herself, wonder ing nervously about the properties of the port. Hooch, she thought: hallucinogenic hooch. My poor brain cells . . .
Jon walked round his room, thinking of Jessica, and then of someone else and then of Jessica again and he said aloud: ‘Aah,’ and then he wondered if he had been weeping and had forgotten, for his breath had caught as though on a sob. He heard the words ‘Poor child’ and looked round, but there was nobody there. ‘Poor child,’ he repeated and shook his head. A gust of wind rattled the window pane and the room was a room no longer, but the poop deck of a man-o’-war and he was no longer Jon but Errol Flynn and all the lovely women loved him. ‘If you go to sea in that thin shirt, poor child,’ he told himself, ‘you’ll be oh, so cold’, and the sob rose again. There were some old sweaters in the wardrobe in the empty room at the end of the landing. He had seen them one night when he was on reconnaissance, when the cheating woman had locked her door against him and left him to roam the darkened corridors of a strange place all by himself. He went to the room quite openly as though he had every right, and took the top sweater. It smelled of tar and was cold to the touch, but when he pulled it on it warmed him and gave him courage so that he became a different person and laughed for joy.
The Inn at the Edge of the World Page 17