Hotel de Dream (15 page)

When Mr Poynter paid no attention to this assault, Mrs Houghton felt hopeful—that he was perhaps in a dream separate to hers and unaware of her presence there, imagining perhaps his first wedding and blissfully oblivious to the fact that she in no way resembled Mrs Poynter—and defeated, recognising the strange ability of husbands to ignore complaints on the part of their wives. She raised her fist again (for surely, on the wedding day, this behaviour would provoke some reaction), and then stopped, falling back as Poynter had done, into the bulk of the crowd. A gasp went up, and Mrs Houghton joined in it. For the women had appeared at the French windows, and the guns were going off, and some of the guests lay dead and injured already on the lawn
beneath the cedar tree. Mrs Poynter was visible there, her eyes wild and hair streaming. A shocked murmur followed the gasp, and Mrs Houghton realised the first Mrs Poynter had made an appearance amongst the naked hordes. The cry of “Bigamist” went around. She woke in a sweat, and grasped at the pages by the typewriter. On a day like this, it would hardly be surprising to find that Johnny and Melinda had disappeared from the motorway altogether. She must get back into the scene at once. It was then, when she realised that Block had come down for once and for all, that the characters had slipped off into some unknown Exit and might possibly never be recaptured, that she ran in her rage to the door of Mr Poynter's room. It was his fault, and he would pay for it. Yet when she saw him, in Miss Scranton's room and lying it seemed right on top of her, and the blood flowing from Miss Scranton's eye, Mrs Houghton felt jealousy for the first time in her life. She stood with Mrs Routledge and glared at him. He looked up at her in fear. After a while of standing there in a wifely position, arms folded over the stomach and head held high, Mrs Houghton marched back into her room and put a fresh sheet of paper in the machine. She decided to invent another character, a rival for Melinda, and she began to write. The maddening girl took shape, and as evening fell over the Westringham Hotel and Mrs Routledge went heavily about her cold supper, and Mr Poynter struggled back to his new quarters, his new marriage ruined, and Miss Scranton went smugly to the washbasin to prepare herself for the evening ahead, Mrs Houghton wrote on at increasing speed.

Evening in the Westringham was a time when the fullness of life elsewhere most made itself felt to the inhabitants, and not least to Mrs Routledge herself: it was thin and mean here, so grey and lacking in body it scarcely seemed to need the candle-shaped electric light bulbs which shed a faint aura from the wall brackets in the dining room; and a daylight as uninspiring appeared always to be lurking in the hall, impatient for dawn and the end of the pretence of night. There could be no festivities here, for the darkness was not thick enough to dispel with merriment. Masks and disguises would easily have been laughed off, there was no cover for surprise. In the perpetual sour twilight objects lacked perspective, and became arbitrarily large or small, like the shadowless things seen while undergoing anaesthesia. The seasons never suggested themselves in this light. Thus, time went slowly and also at a fantastic lick, the artificial passions of the occupants providing the brilliant glare and deep chiaroscuro that were lacking in the place. Mrs Routledge felt, since the arrival of Mr Rathbone's note, that an age had passed and that yet another would have to be endured before she saw him. At the same time, she fussed prematurely over the party, laying out the cocktail biscuits—and a packet of Japanese seaweed that Cridge had bought, she was uncertain if they would do or not but they might conceivably be all the rage—in the glass containers rescued from the basement where he lay. She polished glasses, and tucked the gin under her desk. If only it could be tonight! It was as much as she could do to get on with the supper in hand, lay out the dry
ham on plates and a crooked quarter of tomato, a triangle of silver cheese with its accompanying flaking cracker, sardines and cold tinned corn boasted as hors d'oeuvres. What must Mr Rathbone be doing tonight! As she went from kitchen to dining room, seeing at every step the proof of Cridge's disgusting habits—a sliminess of the kitchen floor that looked as if an ice tray of saliva had been taken from the fridge and left to melt there, a terrible furriness about the cloth that held the cutlery, a slight heaving and ticking even from the portion of brown carpet beneath the residents' tables, suggesting a form of life too primitive to dare come out and meet the uncertain day, Mrs Routledge dreamed of his engagements and saw herself escorted by him on an evening that was dark and full of mystery and delight. He would be dining with a political hostess, and in her house the candles would be red and fluted and the red wine warmed in fat decanters. After dinner he would sit in her conservatory (Mrs Routledge heard a zither, and changed it to violins) and sip brandy from a glass that stretched his fingers. Then he would rise, leaving the political conversation she found hard to imagine—for in his hands England could come to no harm, and she only hoped he had a firm rein on it—and make his way to a nightclub, where he would dance until bright sunlight succeeded the profound blackness in which he swam with such elegance. Mrs Routledge saw no greyness in Mr Rathbone's life. She knew, when he came, he would bring with him the glamour of the civilised urban evening. She smelt martinis and gardenias and saw the coloured postcard of Manhattan her sister had sent her once. Her life would be transformed by him. She would leave the nursery meals, the faded faces and chewing jaws of the occupants of the Westringham. But first—and she knew this as she passed the dresser in the dining room, with its Dutch tiles and spotted mirror, and doors that had a way of bulging open as she neared it, as if it were trying to entomb her with the mats and the greasy Christmas decorations—first she must
invent a mystery for herself. As she was was not enough for him. She stood by the dresser and stared calmly at the face behind the tarnished spots in the glass, which gave her the appearance of a sufferer from bubonic plague. She was stout, and her piled hair could not last an evening out without coming down about her shoulders. Her skin had an oniony look. It was too late now to try the beauty treatments which would no doubt be recommended by Mrs Houghton. Her mystery must be psychological, a compensation for the perspectivelessness of her surroundings. She thought on, and hit on one. It took her to the top of the steps leading down to the basement. She called out.

Cridge was lying on his mattress. He was listening to the radio. An enamel basin containing bread and milk lay at his elbow. The range of cracked opaline pots in which he relieved himself stood on a low table, with one leg missing, at the mattress's end. He heard the call and collapsed his elbow so that he lay flat, both eyes closed under the light from the dim bulb above. A spreading damp stain on the wall by his head suggested a leakage from his brain on to the collapsing plaster. He held his breath, as if he had just died there.

“Cridge!” Mrs Routledge's legs came firmly down the steps. “Cridge, there's another instruction I need to give you now.”

Cridge sat up suddenly. The radio in his hand whined and hissed.

“It's my day off, Mrs Routledge.”

“I know, I know. It's about the party tomorrow night.”

Mrs Routledge sat down on the end of the mattress by the opaline pots and coughed loudly.

“Can't you empty these things tonight, Cridge? It's perfectly terrible down here, you know.”

“Thursday's their day,” Cridge pointed out. “Will that be all then?”

“Of course not.” Mrs Routledge remembered that Cridge's co-operation would be needed if her plan were to succeed,
and managed an arch smile despite the proximity of the pots. “I just want to … well to jog your memory Cridge, if you don't mind.”

Cridge knew what this meant and that there were yet more fabrications of their past together to be spun. But this was not permitted on a Wednesday and his eyes closed stubbornly again.

“It was when you were a stable boy at our place,” Mrs Routledge began. “At Jonkers …”

“There's a funny bit of news on the News,” Cridge said in a feeble, ill voice.

“At Jonkers,” Mrs Routledge went on, “you remember that fateful summer when the head groom went down with pneumonia and Daddy was so absolutely frantic that we wouldn't be able to go over to Longchamps and then down to Monte …”

“It said there's some funny mix-up with the tides,” Cridge persisted. “They been stuck out or something. Now how could that happen, I do wonder?”

“The tides?” Mrs Routledge shrugged. “Something to do with the fishermen on strike I daresay. Are you listening, Cridge?”

“Yes, Miss Amanda.” Cridge's eyes half opened and he was resigned, propped on his elbow and listening, but with his left hand feeling under the mattress for what he had written that afternoon, a document Mrs Routledge should certainly not see. She stared at him suspiciously as he did this.

“What have you got in there, Cridge? You're not hoarding food, are you?”

“No, no, Miss Amanda. At Jonkers, like you said. Yes, that summer. Go on.”

“We ran off together.” Mrs Routledge spoke slowly and succinctly. “It was a hot summer and Daddy went ahead to Paris to make the arrangements. We were thrown a lot into each other's company. The paddocks. And the gallops. One
night when the haymakers were having their festivities in the field …”

“Wait a minute,” Cridge sat bolt upright, inadvertently pulling the tattered exercise book from its hiding place as he did so. “What's this?”

“We eloped! We couldn't help ourselves. My two brothers followed us and you shot one of them dead. We reached Gretna but by then I had decided you were too much below me in rank and I refused to marry you. You were on the run, of course, wanted for murder, and for the rest of my life I have paid for that early mistake. I have sheltered you here. Mr Routledge was let into the secret, but he lost respect for me when he was told and our marriage was a fiasco. Have you got that?”

Cridge was silent a while. Then he sighed. He slid the exercise book under his body and lay stiffly on it, as if it might bite him.

“Which brother did I shoot?” he asked in a weary tone. “The one you said used to ride me round the lawn and pretend I was a horse? Andrew, was it?”

“Yes, Andrew. I may tell this to Mr Rathbone and I hope you will remember correctly, Cridge.” Mrs Routledge poked him in the side and Cridge moved uneasily over his subversive literature. “Now I want to know what is in that book, please. We can't have secrets at the Westringham, you know!”

“It's a story I'm writing,” Cridge replied. His voice was feeble again and he lay hunched, his few muscles ready for the attack that was bound to come. But Mrs Routledge rose. She laughed unpleasantly and strode away from the opaline containers, to the foot of the stairs.

“Trying to imitate Mrs Houghton, are we? Ape our betters? Well Cridge, see to it you remember what I told you tonight.”

“We eloped,” Cridge repeated. His thumb slid over the volume knob of the radio and a voice was distinguishable
amidst the hissing. It sounded excited, but not as excited as that of a disc jockey announcing a new record, and the measure of seriousness and agitation in its tone caused both Cridge and Mrs Routledge to assume a listening expression and stay still.

“The tide has suddenly turned,” came the announcement. “After twenty-six hours of suspense, water is pouring in over the beaches. At some resorts it is reported to have overshot the mark causing flooding and danger to property. A report from …”

“What a fuss about nothing!” Mrs Routledge sniffed and began to climb the stairs. “I'll see you tomorrow then, Cridge.”

The old man nodded. Mrs Routledge's footsteps sounded ponderously above in the dining room and the bell went for supper. With a trembling hand Cridge pulled out the exercise book and opened it where a pencil lay in wait between two pages. It was his last try. Since the attempt on Mrs Houghton's life had failed in Norfolk, he realised the hopelessness of individual acts of violence, the necessity for theory and a plan of action. Yet Johnny and Melinda seemed incapable of destroying their creator—she could too easily move them from place to place—and Cridge had come to see that it was up to him to remove both Mrs Houghton and Mrs Routledge from the world. He had come to understand Mrs Houghton's power and was determined to use it. It was a long time since he had read or written anything, but he was sure the style counted for little and it was the intention of the author that mattered when it came to dictating the lives of others. He lifted the page to his weak eyes and deciphered what he had ordained so far.

'Twas full moon and in the castle the ancient curse of the Houghtons and the Routledges was now at work. The owls hooted in the North West Tower. The fox came from the nodding wheat and the rooks flew from the chimney stack. The barn was blazing, flames went up into the evil night. Cecilia Houghton lay in her great chamber. Ivy grew on the high walls. The windows had been wrenched in the last lightning bolt from their rotting frames and the black air blew in and the sound of small creatures as they ran for cover could be heard below. Thunder rolled about inside the chamber. The man in the red cloak landed on the window sill. Cecilia saw him and gave a piercing scream. He had one eye only and his dagger he held to the empty socket of the other. He approached the fourposter bed, where ivy grew on the decaying wooden posts. He lowered the dagger to her breast. This was white, and exposed in a chemise. He was about to stab. The owl hooted thrice. The fox went for the seventh time around the moat. The door opened and the maid Routledge came in with tea. The grandfather clock in the spearhung hall beneath sounded midnight and the cupboard door in Cecilia's chamber swung open, showing all the seasons of the year in plaster robes, Time with his scythe behind and their heads falling to the ground as he severed them. Maid Routledge fell to her knees and begged for mercy. The red-cloaked man killed her at a stroke, at the same time as garlanded Spring fell to the scythe. Then repeatedly he stabbed
Cecilia. When he was done, he threw their corpses from the room, and there was a thud on the dry earth for the moat had dried out in the summer months. The fox went back to its lair. The owl flew in the window of the dagger-heavy hall and flew at the pendulum of the great clock. The curse was done, for the time being, and the red man leapt from the window. There was no sound as he went. Dawn broke, and the world was grateful for the loss of these two monstrous maids.