The kindly ones (21 page)

‘Ever read this?’

Duport glanced at the title, then turned the pages.

‘The Arab Art of Love,’
he said. ‘Are you always armed with this sort of literature? I did not realise you meant that kind of thing when you said you reviewed books.’

‘I found it among my uncle’s things.’

‘The old devil.’

‘What do you think of it?’

‘They say you’re never too old to learn.’

‘Would you like it?’

‘How much?’

‘I’ll make a present of it.’

‘Might give me a few new ideas,’ said Duport. ‘I’ll accept it as a gift. Not otherwise.’

‘It’s yours then.’

‘Got to draw your attention to the clock, Mr Duport,’ said the barman, who was beginning to tidy up in preparation for closing the bar.

‘We’re being kicked out,’ said Duport. ‘Just time for a final one.’

The bar closed. We said good night to Fred.

‘Nothing for it but go back to the Bellevue,’ said Duport. ‘I’ve got a bottle of whisky in my room.’

‘What about the pier?’

‘Shut by now.’

‘Let’s walk round by the Front.’

‘All right.’

The wind had got up by that time. The sea thudded over the breakwaters in a series of regular, dull explosions, like a cannonade of old-fashioned artillery. I felt thoroughly annoyed. We turned inland and made for the Bellevue. The front door was shut, but not locked. We were crossing the hall, when Albert came hurrying down the stairs. He was evidently dreadfully disturbed about some matter. His movements, comparatively rapid for him, indicated consternation. He was pale and breathless. When he saw us, he showed no surprise that Duport and I should have spent an evening together. Our arrival in each other’s company seemed almost expected by him, the very thing he was hoping for at that moment.

‘There’s been a proper kettle of fish,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to see you back, Mr Nick – and you too, Mr Duport.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Dr Trelawney.’

‘What’s he done?’

‘Gone and locked himself in the bathroom. Can’t get out. Now he’s having one of his asthma attacks. With the wife queer herself, I don’t want to get her out of bed at this time of night. I’d be glad of you gentlemen’s help. There’s no one else in the house that’s less than in their seventies and it ain’t no good asking those silly girls. I’m all that sorry to trouble you.’

‘What,’ said Duport, ‘the good Dr Trelawney, the bearded one? We’ll have him out in a trice. Lead us to him.’

This sudden crisis cheered Duport enormously. Action was what he needed. I thought of Moreland’s remarks about men of action, wondering whether Duport would qualify. This was not how I had expected to meet Dr Trelawney again. We hurried along the passages behind Albert, slip-slopping in his ancient felt slippers. There were many stairs to climb. At last we reached the bathroom door. There it became clear that the rescue of Dr Trelawney presented difficulties. In fact it was hard to know how best to set about his release. From within the bathroom, rising and falling like the vibrations of a small but powerful engine, could be heard the alarming pant of the asthma victim. Dr Trelawney sounded in extremity. Something must be done quickly. There was no doubt of that. Albert bent forward and put his mouth to the keyhole.

‘Try again, Dr Trelawney,’ he shouted.

The awful panting continued for a minute or two; then, very weak and shaky, came Dr Trelawney’s thin, insistent voice.

‘I am not strong enough,’ he said.

Albert turned towards us and shook his head.

‘He’s done this before,’ he said in a lower tone. ‘It’s my belief he just wants to get attention. He was angry when your uncle died, Mr Nick, and the wife and I had to see about that, and not about him for a change. It can’t go on. I won’t put up with it. He’ll have to go. I’ve said so before. It’s too much. Flesh and blood won’t stand it.’

‘Shall we bust the door down?’ said Duport. ‘I could if I took a run at it, but there isn’t quite enough space to do that here.’

That was true. The bathroom door stood at an angle by the end of the passage, built in such a way that violent attack of that kind upon it was scarcely possible. Dr Trelawney’s hoarse, trembling voice came again.

‘Telephone to Mrs Erdleigh,’ he said. ‘Tell her to bring my pills. I must have my pills.’

This request seemed to bring some relief to Albert.

‘I’ll do that right away, sir,’ he shouted through the keyhole.

‘What on earth can Mrs Erdleigh do?’ said Duport.

Albert, with an old-fashioned gesture, touched the side of his nose with his forefinger.

‘I know what he wants now,’ he said. ‘One of his special pills. I might have thought of Mrs Erdleigh before. We’ll have him out when she comes. She’ll do it.’

‘What pills are they?’

‘Better not ask, sir,’ said Albert.

‘Drugs, do you mean?’

‘I’ve never pressed the matter, sir, nor where they come from.’

Duport and I were left alone in the passage.

‘I suppose we could smash the panel,’ he said. ‘Shall I try to find an instrument?’

‘Better not break the house up. Anyway, not until Albert returns. Besides, it would wake everybody. We don’t want a bevy of old ladies to appear.’

‘Try taking the key out, Dr Trelawney,’ said Duport in an authoritative voice, ‘then put it back again and have another turn. That sometimes works. I know that particular key. I thought I was stuck in the bloody hole myself yesterday, but managed to get out that way.’

At first there was no answer. When at last he replied, Dr Trelawney sounded suspicious.

‘Who is that?’ he asked. ‘Where has Mr Creech gone?’

‘It’s Duport. You know, we sometimes talk in the lounge. You borrowed my
Financial Times
the other morning. Creech has gone to ring Mrs Erdleigh.’

There was another long silence, during which Dr Trelawney’s breathing grew a little less heavy. Evidently he was making a great effort to bring himself under control, now that he found that people, in addition to Albert, were at work on his rescue. Then the ritual sentence sounded through the door:

‘The Essence of the All is the Godhead of the True.’

Duport turned to me and shook his head.

‘We often get that,’ he said.

This seemed the moment, now or never, when the spell must prove its worth. I leant towards his keyhole and spoke the concordant rejoinder:

‘The Vision of Visions heals the Blindness of Sight.’

Duport laughed.

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ he said.

‘That’s the right answer.’

‘How on earth did you know?’

We heard the sound of Dr Trelawney heaving himself up with difficulty from wherever he was sitting. He must have staggered across the bathroom, for he made a great deal of noise as he came violently into contact with objects obstructive to his passage. Then he reached the door and began to fumble with the key. He removed it from the lock; after a moment or two he tried once more to insert it in the keyhole. Several of these attempts failed. Then, suddenly, quite unexpectedly, came a hard scraping sound; the key could be heard turning slowly; there was a click; the door stood ajar. Dr Trelawney was before us on the threshold.

‘I told you that would work,’ said Duport.

Except for the beard, hardly a trace remained of the Dr Trelawney I dimly remembered. All was changed. Even the beard, straggling, dirty grey, stained yellow in places like the patches of broom on the common beyond Stonehurst, had lost all resemblance to that worn by the athletic, vigorous prophet of those distant days. Once broad and luxuriant, it was now shrivelled almost to a goatee. He no longer seemed to have stepped down from a stained-glass window or ikon. His skin was dry and blotched. Dark spectacles covered his eyes, his dressing-gown a long blue oriental robe that swept the ground. He really looked rather frightening. Although so altered from the Stonehurst era, he still gave me the same chilly feeling of inner uneasiness that I had known as a child when I watched him and his flock trailing across the heather. I remembered Moreland, when we had once talked of Dr

Trelawney, quoting the lines from
Marmioti,
where the king consults the wizard lord:

‘Dire dealings with the fiendish race
Had mark’d strange lines upon his face;
Vigil and fast had worn him grim,
His eyesight dazzled seem’d and dim …’

That just about described Dr Trelawney as he supported himself against the doorpost, seized with another fearful fit of coughing. I do not know what Duport and I would have done with him, if Albert had not reappeared at that moment. Albert was relieved, certainly, but did not seem greatly surprised that we had somehow brought about this liberation.

‘Mrs Erdleigh promised she’d be along as quick as possible,’ he said, ‘but there were a few things she had to do first. I’m glad you was able to get the door open at last, sir. Mrs Creech must have that door seen to. I’ve spoken to her about it before. Might be better if you used the other bathroom in future, Dr Trelawney, we don’t want such a business another night.’

Dr Trelawney did not reply to this suggestion, perhaps because Albert spoke in what was, for him, almost a disrespectful tone, certainly a severe one. Instead, he held out his arms on either side of him, the hands open, as if in preparation for crucifixion.

‘I must ask you two gentlemen to assist me to my room,’ he said. ‘I am too weak to walk unaided. That sounds like the beginning of an evangelical hymn:

I am too weak to … walk unaided …

The fact is I must be careful of this shell I call my body, though why I should be, I hardly know. Perhaps from mere courtesy to my medical advisers. There have been warnings – cerebral congestion.’

He laughed rather disagreeably. We supported him along the passage, led by Albert. In his room, not without effort, we established him in the bed. The exertions of Duport and myself brought this about, not much aided by Albert, who, breathing hard, showed little taste for the job. Duport, on the other hand, had been enjoying himself thoroughly since the beginning of this to-do. Action, excitement were what he needed. They showed another side to him. Dr Trelawney, too, was enjoying himself by now. So far from being exhausted by this heaving about of the shell he called his body, he was plainly stimulated by all that had happened. He had mastered his fit of asthma, brought on, no doubt, as Albert had suggested, by boredom and depression. The Bellevue must in any case have represented a low ebb in Dr Trelawney’s fortunes. Plenty of attention made him almost well again. He lay back on his pillows, indicating by a movement of the hands that he wished us to stay and talk with him until the arrival of Mrs Erdleigh.

‘Bring some glasses, my friend,’ he said to Albert. ‘We shall need four – a number portending obstacles and opposition in the symbolism of cards – yet necessary for our present purpose, if Myra Erdleigh is soon to be of our party.’

Albert, thankful to have Dr Trelawney out of the bathroom and safely in bed at so small a cost, went off to fetch the glasses without any of the peevishness to be expected of him when odd jobs were in question. Dr Trelawney’s request seemed to have reference to a half-bottle of brandy, already opened, that stood on the wash-stand. I had been prepared to find myself in an alchemist’s cell, where occult processes matured in retorts and cauldrons, reptiles hung from the ceiling while their venom distilled, homunculi in bottles lined the walls. However, there were no dog-eared volumes of the Cabbala to be seen, no pentagrams or tarot cards. Instead, Dr Trelawney’s room was very like that formerly occupied by Uncle Giles, no bigger, just as dingy. A pile of luggage lay in one corner, some suits – certainly ancient enough – hung on coat-hangers suspended from the side of the wardrobe. The only suggestion of the Black Arts was wafted by a faint, sickly smell, not immediately identifiable: incense? hair-tonic? opium? It was hard to say whether the implications were chemical, medicinal, ritualistic; a scent vaguely disturbing, like Dr Trelawney’s own personality. Albert returned with the glasses, then said good night, adding a word about latching the front door when Mrs Erdleigh left. He must have been used to her visits at a late hour. Duport and I were left alone with the Doctor. He told us to distribute the brandy – the flask was about a quarter full – allowing a share for Mrs Erdleigh herself when she arrived. Duport took charge, pouring out drink for the three of us.

‘Which of you answered me through the door?’ asked Dr Trelawney, when he had drunk some brandy.

‘I did.’

‘You know my teachings then?’

I told him I remembered the formula from Stonehurst. That was not strictly speaking true, because I should never have carried the words in my head all those years, if I had not heard Moreland and others talk of the Doctor in later life. My explanation did not altogether please Dr Trelawney, either because he wished to forget that period of his career, or because it too painfully recalled happier, younger days, when his cult was more flourishing. Possibly he felt disappointment that I should turn out to be no new, hitherto unknown, disciple, full of untapped enthusiasm, admiring from afar, who now at last found dramatic opportunity to disclose himself. He made no comment at all. There was something decidedly unpleasant about him, sinister, at the same time absurd, that combination of the ludicrous and alarming soon to be widely experienced by contact with those set in authority in wartime.

‘I may be said to have come from Humiliation into Triumph,’ he said, ‘the traditional theme of Greek Tragedy. The climate of this salubrious resort does not really suit me. In fact, I cannot think why I stay. Perhaps because I cannot afford to pay my bill and leave. Nor is there much company in the Bellevue calculated to revive failing health and spirits. And you, sir? Why are you enjoying the ozone here, if one may ask? Perhaps for the same reason as Mr Duport, who has confided to me some of the secrets of his own private prison-house.’

Dr Trelawney smiled, showing teeth as yellow and irregular as the stains on his beard. He was, I thought, a tremendously Edwardian figure: an Edwardian figure of fun, one might say. All the same, I remembered that a girl had thrown herself from a Welsh mountain-top on his account. Such things were to be considered in estimating his capacity. His smile was one of the worst things about him. I saw that Duport must be on closer terms with the Doctor than he had pretended. I had certainly not grasped the fact that they already knew each other well enough to have exchanged reasons for residing at the Bellevue. Indeed, Duport, while he had been drinking at the Royal, seemed almost deliberately to have obscured their comparative intimacy. There was nothing very surprising about their confiding in one another. Total strangers in bars and railway carriages will unfold the story of their lives at the least opportunity. It was probably true to say that the hotel contained no more suitable couple to make friends. The details about his married life which Duport had imparted to me showed that he was a more complicated, more introspective character than I had ever guessed. His connexion with Jean was now less mysterious to me. No doubt Jimmy Stripling’s esoteric goings-on had familiarised Duport, more or less, with people of Dr Trelawney’s sort. In any case, Dr Trelawney was probably pretty good at worming information out of other residents. Even during the time we had been sitting in the room I had become increasingly aware of his pervasive, quasi-hypnotic powers, possessed to a greater or lesser degree by all persons – not necessarily connected with occultism – who form little cults devoted primarily to veneration of themselves. This awareness was not because I felt myself in danger of falling under Dr Trelawney’s dominion, though it conveyed an instinctive warning to be on one’s guard. Perhaps the feeling was no more than a grown-up version of childish fantasies about him, perhaps a tribute to his will. I was not certain. Duport, on the other hand, appeared perfectly at ease. He sat in a broken-down armchair facing the bed, his hands in his pockets. I explained about my early associations with Albert, about Uncle Giles’s funeral.