The Complete Stories (59 page)

  The sleeping quarters of male and female inmates were separated by the length of the house. Basil found Angela in the drawing room. They compared their diet sheets.

  "Rum that it should be exactly the same treatment for insomnia and apoplexy."

  "That booby thought I was a pansy."

  "It takes a medical man to find out a thing like that. All these years and I never knew. They're always right, you know. So that's why you're always going to that odd club."

  "This is no time for humour. This is going to be a very grim fortnight."

  "Not for me," said Angela. "I came well provisioned. I'm only here to keep you company. And there's a Mrs. Somebody next door to me who I used to know. She's got a private cache of all the sleeping pills in the world. I've made great friends with her already. I shall be all right."

  On the third day of his ordeal, the worst according to habitués of the establishment, there came a telephone call from Barbara.

  "Pobble, I want to go back to London. I'm bored."

  "Bored with Aunt Barbara?"

  "Not with her, with here."

  "You stay where you're put, chattel."

  "No. Please, I want to go home."

  "Your home is where I am. You can't come here."

  "No. I want to go to London."

  "You can't. I sent the servants away for a fortnight."

  "Most of my friends live without servants."

  "You've sunk into a very low world, Babs."

  "Don't be such an ass. Sonia Trumpington hasn't any servants."

  "Well, she won't want you."

  "Pobble, you sound awfully feeble."

  "Who wouldn't who's only had one carrot in the last three days."

  "Oh, you are brave."

  "Yes."

  "How's mummy?"

  "Your mother is not keeping the régime as strictly as I am."

  "I bet she isn't. Anyway, please, can I go back to London?"

  "No."

  "You mean ‘No'?"

  "Yes."

  "Fiend."

  Basil had gone hungry before. From time to time in his varied youth, in desert, tundra, glacier and jungle, in garrets and cellars, he had briefly endured extremities of privation. Now in the periods of repose and solitude, after the steam bath and the smarting deluge of the showers, after the long thumping and twisting by the huge masseuse, when the chintz curtains were drawn in his bedroom and he lay towel-wrapped and supine gazing at the pattern of the ceiling paper, familiar, forgotten pangs spoke to him of his past achievements.

  He defined his condition to Angela after the first week of the régime. "I'm not rejuvenated or invigorated. I'm etherealized."

  "You look like a ghost."

  "Exactly. I've lost sixteen pounds three ounces."

  "You're overdoing it. No one else keeps these absurd rules. We aren't expected to. It's like the ‘rien ne va plus' at roulette. Mrs. What's-her-name has found a black market in the gym kept by the sergeant-instructor. We ate a grouse pie this morning."

  They were in the well-kept grounds. A chime of bells announced that the brief recreation was over. Basil tottered back to his masseuse.

  Later, light-headed and limp, he lay down and stared once more at the ceiling paper.

  As a convicted felon might in long vigils search his history for the first trespass that had brought him to his present state, Basil examined his conscience. Fasting, he knew, was in all religious systems the introduction to self-knowledge. Where had he first played false to his destiny? After the conception of Barbara; after her birth. She, in some way, was at the root of it. Though he had not begun to dote on her until she was eight years old, he had from the first been aware of his own paternity. In 1947, when she was a year old, he and Angela had gone to New York and California. That enterprise, in those days, was nefarious. Elaborate laws restricted the use of foreign currencies and these they had defied, drawing freely on undisclosed assets. But on his return he had made a full declaration to the customs. It was no immediate business of theirs to inquire into the sources of his laden trunks. In a mood of arrogance he had displayed everything and paid without demur. There lay the fount and origin of the deviation into rectitude that had disfigured him in recent years. As though waking after a night's drunkenness—an experience common enough in his youth—and confusedly articulating the disjointed memories of outrage and absurdity, he ruefully contemplated the change he had wrought in himself. His voice was not the same instrument as of old. He had first assumed it as a conscious imposture; it had become habitual to him; the antiquated, wordly-wise moralities which, using that voice, he had found himself obliged to utter, had become his settled opinions. It had begun as nursery clowning for the diversion of Barbara; a parody of Sir Joseph Mannering; darling, crusty old Pobble performing the part expected of him; and now the parody had become the persona.

  His meditation was interrupted by the telephone. "Will you take a call from Mrs. Sothill?"

  "Babs."

  "Basil. I just wondered how you were getting on."

  "They're very pleased with me."

  "Thin?"

  "Skinny. And concerned with my soul."

  "Chump. Listen. I'm concerned with Barbara's soul."

  "What's she been up to?"

  "I think she's in love."

  "Rot."

  "Well, she's moping."

  "I expect she misses me."

  "When she isn't moping she's telephoning or writing letters."

  "Not to me."

  "Exactly. There's someone in London."

  "Robin Trumpington?"

  "She doesn't confide."

  "Can't you listen in on the telephone?"

  "I've tried that, of course. It's certainly a man she's talking to. I can't really understand their language but it sounds very affectionate. You won't like it awfully if she runs off, will you?"

  "She'd never think of such a thing. Don't put ideas into the child's head, for God's sake. Give her a dose of castor oil."

  "I don't mind, if you don't. I just thought I should warn."

  "Tell her I'll soon be back."

  "She knows that."

  "Well, keep her under lock and key until I get out."

  Basil reported the conversation to Angela. "Barbara says Barbara's in love."

  "Which Barbara?"

  "Mine. Ours."

  "Well, it's quite normal at her age. Who with?"

  "Robin Trumpington, I suppose."

  "He'd be quite suitable."

  "For heaven's sake, Angie, she's only a child."

  "I fell in love at her age."

  "And a nice mess that turned out. It's someone after my money."

  "My money."

  "I've always regarded it as mine. I shan't let her have a penny. Not till I'm dead anyway."

  "You look half dead now."

  "I've never felt better. You simply haven't got used to my new appearance."

  "You're very shaky."

  "‘Disembodied' is the word. Perhaps I need a drink. In fact I know I do. This whole business of Babs has come as a shock—at a most unsuitable time. I might go and see the booby doctor."

  And, later, he set off along the corridor which led to the administrative office. He set off but had hardly hobbled six short paces when his newly sharpened conscience stabbed him. Was this the etherealized, the reborn Basil slinking off like a schoolboy to seek the permission of a booby doctor for a simple adult indulgence? He turned aside and made for the gym.

  There he found two large ladies in bathing-dresses sitting astride a low horse. They swallowed hastily and brushed crumbs from their lips. A rubbery young man in vest and shorts addressed him sternly: "One moment, sir. You can't come in here without an appointment."

  "My visit is unprofessional," said Basil. "I want a word with you."

  The young man looked doubtful. Basil drew his note case from his pocket and tapped it on the knob of his cane.

  "Well, ladies, I think that finishes the workout for this morning. We're getting along very nicely. We mustn't expect immediate results you know. Same routine tomorrow." He replaced the lid on a small enamelled bin. The ladies looked hungrily at it but went in peace.

  "Whisky," said Basil.

  "Whisky? Why, I couldn't give you such a thing even if I had it. It would be as much as my job's worth."

  "I should think it is precisely what your job is worth."

  "I don't quite follow, sir."

  "My wife had grouse pie this morning."

  He was a cheeky young man much admired in his own milieu for his bounce. He was not abashed. A horrible smirk of complicity passed over his face. "It wasn't really grouse," he said. "Just a stale liver pâté the grocer had. They get so famished here they don't care what they're eating, the poor creatures."

  "Don't talk about my wife in those terms," said Basil, adding: "I shall know what I'm drinking, at a pound a snort."

  "I haven't any whisky, honest. There may be a drop of brandy in the first-aid cupboard."

  "Let's look at it."

  It was of a reputable brand. Basil took two snorts. He gasped. Tears came to his eyes. He felt for support on the wall-bars beside him. For a moment he feared nausea. Then a great warmth and elation were kindled inside him. This was youth indeed; childhood no less. Thus he had been exalted in his first furtive swigging in his father's pantry. He had drunk as much brandy as this twice a day, most days of his adult life, after a variety of preliminary potations, and had felt merely a slight heaviness. Now in his etherealized condition he was, as it were, raised from the earth, held aloft and then lightly deposited; a mystical experience as though on Ganges bank or a spur of the Himalayas.

  There was a mat near his feet, thick, padded, bed-like. Here he subsided and lay in ecstasy; quite outside his body, high and happy, his spirit soared; he shut his eyes.

  "You can't stay here, sir. I've got to lock up."

  "Don't worry," said Basil. "I'm not here."

  The gymnast was very strong; it was a light task to hoist Basil on one of the trollies which in various sizes were part of the equipment of the sanatorium, and thus recumbent, dazed but not totally insensible, smoothly propelled up the main corridor, he was met by the presiding doctor.

  "What have you there, sergeant?"

  "Couldn't say at all. Never saw the gentleman before."

  "It looks like Mr. Seal. Where did you find him?"

  "He just walked into the gym, sir, looking rather queer and suddenly he passed out."

  "Gave you a queer look? Yes."

  "He rolls through the air with the greatest of ease, that darling young man on the flying trapeze," Basil chanted with some faint semblance of tune in his voice.

  "Been overdoing it a bit, sir, I wouldn't wonder."

  "You might be right, sergeant. You had better leave him now. The female staff can take over. Ah, Sister Gamage, Mr. Seal needs help in getting to his room. I think the régime has proved too strenuous for him. You may administer an ounce of brandy. I will come and examine him later."

  But when he repaired to Basil's room he found his patient deeply sleeping.

  He stood by the bed, gazing at his patient. There was an expression of peculiar innocence on the shrunken face. But the physician knew better.

  "I will see him in the morning," he said and then went to instruct his secretary to inform the previous applicants that two vacancies had unexpectedly occurred.

  III

  "The sack, the push, the boot. I've got to be out of the place in an hour."

  "Oh Basil, that is like old times, isn't it?"

  "Only deep psychoanalysis can help me, he says, and in my present condition I am a danger to his institution."

  "Where shall we go? Hill Street's locked up. There won't be anyone there until Monday."

  "The odd thing is I have no hangover."

  "Still ethereal?"

  "Precisely. I suppose it means an hotel."

  "You might telephone to Barbara and tell her to join us. She said she was keen to leave."

  But when Angela telephoned to her sister-in-law, she heard: "But isn't Barbara with you in London? She told me yesterday you'd sent for her. She went up by the afternoon train."

  "D'you think she can have gone to that young man?"

  "I bet she has."

  "Ought I to tell Basil?"

  "Keep it quiet."

  "I consider it very selfish of her. Basil isn't at all in good shape. He'll have a fit if he finds out. He had a sort of fit yesterday."

  "Poor Basil. He may never know."

  Basil and Angela settled their enormous bill. Their car was brought round to the front. The chauffeur drove. Angela sat beside Basil who huddled beside her occasionally crooning ill-remembered snatches of "the daring young man on the flying trapeze." As they approached London they met all the outgoing Friday traffic. Their own way was clear. At the hotel Basil went straight to bed—"I don't feel I shall ever want another bath as long as I live," he said—and Angela ordered a light meal for him of oysters and stout. By dusk he had rallied enough to smoke a cigar.

  Next morning he was up early and spoke of going to his club.

  "That dingy one?"

  "Heavens no, Bellamy's. But I don't suppose there'll be many chaps there on a Saturday morning."

  There was no one. The barman shook him up an egg with port and brandy. Then, with the intention of collecting some books, he took a taxi to Hill Street. It was not yet eleven o'clock. He let himself into what should have been the empty and silent house. Music came from the room on the ground floor where small parties congregated before luncheon and dinner. It was a dark room, hung with tapestry and furnished with Bühl. There he found his daughter, dressed in pajamas and one of her mother's fur coats, seated on the floor with her face caressing a transistor radio. Behind her in the fireplace large lumps of coal lay on the ashes of the sticks and paper which had failed to kindle them.

  "Darling Pobble, never more welcome. I didn't expect you till Monday and I should have been dead by then. I can't make out how the central heating works. I thought the whole point of it was it just turned on and didn't need a man. Can't get the fire to burn. And don't start: ‘Babs, what are you doing here?' I'm freezing, that's what."