The Penguin Book of the British Short Story Page 29

  Downstairs the lounge would be empty. Magazines would be arranged neatly on a central table – Country Life, The Gas Times, The Tatler – and the curtains would be still undrawn to let a blue evening light through on to a great splay of fresh-bought lupins. Across from the empty lounge the bar would stand open and brightly polished – and empty too. At this thought old Morley brightened. Thank goodness – no one in the best chair, no chattering gin-groups, no idle guests to be sauntered into. No porter on the doorstep to mar the evening with a ‘Good evening’ and a searching eye. Fred Morley knew he could stand alone on the step and survey what he wished, undisturbed and in silence. He brightened. Such people might have meant company. But was such company preferable to his own selected privacy? By all means no.

  By what means? What sort of hotel was this – all trim and in working order, yet absolutely empty of people? Not empty as death, not dust-covered and cobweb-hung – but fresh-swept, with the feeling that a dozen servants had only a moment before left. It was as one might imagine a live hotel struck by plague, or conjured up in some ghost-tale, or in some unknown way emptied yet sailing equipped on its course like the maddening Mary Celeste.

  A hotel bought by Morley? A hotel occupied entirely by Morley?

  Almost. But in fact it was not a hotel at all. It was Morley’s private house – decorated, in many of its more obvious features, like a hotel. This was Morley’s ‘eccentricity’. But was it, on closer consideration, so very eccentric? It is commonly a habit of furnishers and decorators to make things appear what they are not. Rooms – particularly of the well-to-do – have become escapes. The chinoiserie of Chippendale, sea-shell lairs of the rococo nymph, even the Greek revival – all have succeeded to make rooms what they are not. There have been Tudor cocktail-bars and Elizabethan garages, ship’s-cabin beer-houses land-locked in a city street, chintzy cottage-rooms whose spinning-wheels shudder as the underground trains worm their way beneath. All of them studios of desire, each room an escape from four walls.

  Morley’s fancy to make his house look like a hotel was in fact less exotic than these. He had no vague wish to be different, it was a practical planned escape. A deep disaffection in him – the same that had left him a bachelor – had revolted against the idea of house-and-home. Given a homely looking home he would feel home-bound, anchored, done. But hotels! These he loved – he felt in them adventure, the passage of possibility, a lovely rootless going and coming, excitement stalking the corridors, sin lurking in the shadows of the fire extinguishers. They reminded him, too, of his touring days in the theatre. But against this stood the truth that hotels were in fact dreadfully uncomfortable: and homes were not. Hence – most reasonably – the transposition. He had dressed his seven-bedroomed mansion on the front of this rakish Channel seaside resort in a glamorous nostalgia for no-home.

  Thus at six-thirty he sat and gazed his handsome eyes about the room and wondered what to do. Six-thirty is a bad hour. Hour of sundowners. Hour when the human beast, old moon-monkey, awakes to the idea of night. Hour of day’s death and dark’s beginning, uneasy hour of change. Bedrooms stalk with people changing clothes, drinks are drunk, high teas eaten, limbs washed fresh of used daylight. No wonder Fred Morley wondered, like millions around him, what to do. A stall at the Hippodrome? A sole at the Ship? Oysters at Macey’s? A glass with old Burgess? A stroll by the Band – strains of the Rosenkavalier across green break-waters, the dying sands? A tinkle to Mrs Vereker – though it wasn’t really His Night?

  But none of these appealed. So, old bachelor that he was, he decided to pamper himself. His hand, strong, freckled, mildly arthritic, flashed its opal ring round the telephone dial. To a waiter at a real hotel some doors away his actor’s accent, from between handsome curling lips and through teeth white and strong, ordered oysters and mulligatawny soup and what – oh, pigeon pie? Excellent. And a good dollop of Stilton, thank you. Wine he had, and plenty of port. Down went the receiver – above his clean square jaws the lips silently smacked – and with erect leisurely stride his legs took him over to the bathroom. A good hot bath, plenty of lather. Then, in grace to a good quiet evening at home, the raisin-red frogged smoking jacket.

  Morley had played the romantic lead in most of the more robust musical comedies. He had toured for twenty years the length and breadth of the Isles in the boots of a Hussar, the breeches of a Desert Hero, the golden robes of Baghdad. He had made his money, saved it, and retired. Now as he strode his ample carpets he was still every inch a baritone. The theatrical years had stylized every manly gesture, incised surety into every feature of his square strong face, greyed not at all the good brown curly hair brushed suavely back and half sideways. And now as he undid his stays the deep and tuneful voice that had quickened hearths throughout the land broke into satisfied strains that declared how Maud was to come into the garden since the Black Bat Night had flown.

  But, of course, the Black Bat Night was really at that time flying in: and with it, on the evening train, there had flown in six ladies new to the town – a Miss Clermont-Ferrand, the Misses Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Miss Sauerkraut of Nuremburg, Miss Civitavecchia and Miss Great-Belt of Denmark. Every summer the Town Corporation organized a Contest of Beauty. This year, spreading its festive wings, it had decided to make the Contest international. Invitations had been despatched. In some cases accepted. Part of the result, who had been rallied in London by their various agencies, had been sent down by the evening train.

  Now they stood in the Railway Buffet studying little lists of recommended hotels and sipping, with wonder and weary enthusiasm, their watery-milked sweet cups of railway tea. The names of the hotels stared up at them with promise but nonentity. There were no Ritzes, no Savoys, none of the ordinary run. There were Ships and Crescents and Royals and many lesser establishments, listed as Boarding Houses, with Gaelic, Celtic and sometimes Malayan names. All the ladies had different ideas and different purses, and all talked at once.

  A group of local gentlemen sat drinking whisky and listening. These were a convivial lot, mixed commercials and retired front-walkers, black trilbies or stiff-collar tweeds. They spent most of the time ponderously pulling each other’s legs; but now, with such a sudden advent of beautiful ladies, they went further. They went a bit silly. They giggled, they whispered, they mouthed and winked – the ladies, accompanied by the whisky, went straight to their heads.

  Thus it was inevitable that sooner or later a sally would arch itself out at the ladies. It came very soon: an idea not indeed original, for it involved a well-tried local joke, flashed through the black trilby, the hair-grease, the hair and into the little grey cells of one of the fat red-faced commercials.

  Lifting his hat, he sweated towards the ladies:

  ‘Excuse my intruding upon yourselves, ladies – but I cannot help but see where you’re not fixed up with your hotel. Now if you was to ask me – that is as I am the local man, I’ve lived here thirty years now – I wonder if you’d know where I’d say you’d be as best fixed up?’

  He paused and looked from one to the other of those girls, eyebrows raised in huge surprise. These various girls winced, or looked away, or primped fascinated at him. He then said, sharply, with lips terse to keep a straight face:

  ‘I’d say you’d best go to Morley’s.’

  A gasp, quickly suppressed, from the other men. They were adept at the grave concealing face.

  The ladies looked from one to the other, then at their lists. They said there was no mention of Morley’s.

  The man in the trilby rose instantly to this:

  ‘And that’s where you ladies hit the nail on its head. Morley’s you won’t find on no list. Morley’s is more …’ he waved his hands, screwing up his eyes and searching for just that one word which would do justice to the exquisition he proposed ‘ … more what you call select.’

  One of the tweeded gentlemen, removing his pipe from his mouth like a stopper, said gravely: ‘Morley’s is a private hotel.’

  ‘Number
Thirty-two, Marine Parade,’ another said. ‘Not five minutes.’

  Those jolly men then fell to in earnest. Morley’s was this, Morley’s was that. Once warmed up they discovered subtleties of compliment one would never have suspected; they even began to argue among themselves. In short, the ladies were at length convinced, a street-plan was quickly sketched showing the way to Number Thirty-two, and, gamely swallowing their tea, they left for Fred Morley’s house.

  One or two, Miss Great-Belt for one, wished inwardly to show her personal superiority by choosing a more grandly named hotel (there was indeed a Bristol, a name as hallowed as the Ritz), but on practical thought it seemed wiser in a strange land at first to stick together.

  One of the gentlemen started up to escort them: but was quickly dissuaded by a furtive shake of the head from the ringleader. Let matters take their course. It might be tempting to watch old Fred Morley’s face; but if any one of them were seen the game would be given away.

  Such was the preposterous situation when those six Beauty Queens rang the bell of Mr Morley’s house. That fact is stranger than fiction has been often observed – but seldom believed. We like the ordinary, it is more restful, and liking it tend to close our eyes to the bewilderment of chance and coincidence that otherwise would strike us every minute of the day.

  In the case of these six Beauty Queens, the glove of coincidence might have fitted all the more neatly if, for instance, the waiter who had brought Fred Morley’s supper had just at that moment been about to leave the house. A uniformed servant would have perfected an otherwise passable illusion. But in fact that waiter had not even arrived by the time those girls pulled the bell. And it was Morley himself, in his raisin-red smoking jacket, who finally opened the door.

  ‘Come into the gar – den M—’ he still sang, and then stood stupefied.

  ‘We would like some rooms,’ said Miss Great-Belt, who like many Danes spoke English well. ‘Have you any to spare?’

  Since those girls were Beauty Queens, they were passably beautiful. To Fred Morley the vision of their six faces framed in his doorway like singers at some strange summer carol-feast both bewildered him and set his mind working at an unusual rate.

  The Misses Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and the two Latins Civitavecchia and Clermont-Ferrand, now followed by saying in many mixed words that for their part double rooms would do. Morley had a further second’s freedom for thought. It did not occur to him that these girls were part of a joke that had in fact been played once or twice before. Beauty seldom suggests fun. His mind instead remembered that the town was full, that these girls were probably tramping from door to door hoping for rooms in a private house, that this was difficult since they were so large a party, that it was pitiable that people should be in such a predicament, that it was the more so since they were beautiful people, that he had a large house, that it was largely empty, and … why not?

  He bowed and opened the door wider for the ladies to pass:

  ‘Certainly, Madame,’ he said, wondering what the plural could be, ‘ … I should be delighted to accommodate you.’

  They scarcely bothered to thank him, but moved brusquely into what was patently the vestibule of a hotel. In fact, that eccentric decoration hardly mattered. As foreign visitors they would never have questioned an ordinary homely hall: it would simply have looked part of the mad English scene.

  ‘La fiche?’ asked Miss Clermont-Ferrand.

  ‘Ah, oui,’ Morley smiled, having no idea what this could mean. And added, as a pleasantry: ‘Sanfaryan.’

  ‘Vraiement?’ smiled back Miss Clermont-Ferrand, impressed by such liberty.

  But Morley then thought: By Jiminy I’ll have to get moving. And raised his hand to command attention, and asked them kindly to wait a moment, and scuttled upstairs. He ran – striding now no longer – to the telephone by his bed and breathlessly called the restaurant to order not one but seven dinners. In half an hour. And then raced round the bedrooms. Fortunately these were kept made up: two double rooms, a good single room and a single dressing-room. One of these had already been slept in by guests on the previous weekend. He pulled the sheets back, smoothed out a crease or two, decided to risk it. But airing? Six hot-water bottles? Impossible. He ran round lighting with little pops gas-fire after gas-fire. Then he thought: Bathrooms! And banged open the door of the second bathroom, removing his rowing machine, a Hoover, some dirty linen and his golf-clubs: then rushed to his own to wipe off the comfortable soap-ring left only half an hour before.

  In that fine old actor’s frame there coursed a sort of boyish exaltation. For nearly nothing would he have disturbed the repose of his calm dinner alone: but for such a six … well, it hardly happened every night. He had no designs. He was simply exhilarated, flowing with the good red blush of boyishness. He felt chivalrous, too. No snake of desire but simply the flushes of virtue filled him.

  He descended to take the ladies up to their rooms.

  The oysters were laid out on seven plates, the ladies had been allocated their seats round the large table in the dining-room, and he himself, having seen that seven portions of pigeon pie were keeping hot in the kitchen, was at last on the point of sitting himself down – when, in the general delight at the sight of oysters, Miss Great-Belt spoke out:

  ‘Oysters! This is very good!’ she said, wondering at the same time what the charges of so considerable a hotel might be. ‘But it was good luck indeed those gentlemen recommended us such a hotel!’

  Morley’s hand was actually on his chair to pull it back. Instead, he pulled back his hand.

  ‘Recommended? Hotel?’

  A sudden spasm gripped him where a moment before the gastric juices had begun to play.

  ‘Surely yes,’ Miss Great-Belt smiled. ‘Some gentlemen in the railway bar. They said this is the best hotel we can have.’ Then she added with a knowing smile, a condescension to the servant standing above her, ‘But they will come quick enough for their percentage, no?’

  ‘No?’ Morley stuttered. ‘Oh, yes, yes.’

  The old joke! This time it had come off? His chivalry blew away like old hot air. He saw suddenly that he was in a very difficult position – he was a fraud. These ladies were deceived. They might be very angry. And more. He was a bachelor. Alone in his house, he had induced them to come inside. What would the world make of that? What would the neighbours, what would the Town Council, what would even the Court of Law think? Was it legal? Were there seduction laws? Certainly there were Boarding House Licences.

  These and more terrors mounted in his mind. With regret he let his hand fall absolutely from the chair, then sculpted it round towards his plate of oysters, already beginning to act the part of a real hotel employee. He muttered that he did not know why an extra place had been laid and began to withdraw the oysters to take and to eat them in the sanctity of the kitchen, in what now must be his right and proper place. For he had decided to play the rôle out. For the moment it was the only thing to do. At all costs avert suspicion, a scene, the full fury of these now formidable girls.

  His hand was about to grasp the plate – but Miss Civitavecchia’s, lizard-like, was quicker:

  ‘Piacere – do not trouble. It is plain,’ she said, smiling round at the others, ‘that we can eat some more?’

  ‘Please place this on the bill,’ she added.

  Morley tried to smile and withdrew, oysterless, to the empty kitchen. Some minutes later he took care to bring only six soup-platesful of mulligatawny into the dining-room.

  The dining-table had been laid with only one pepper-pot, one salt-cellar. The ladies required more. Morley, his soup and now his lonely pigeon growing cold, had to search for, fill, and serve others. Vinegar was required. And oil. And in the matter of drinks there was white wine, red wine, beer and water to be found for different tastes. Morley was run off his feet. His hurriedly gulped pigeon flew instantly back at him. And on top of all this he found it necessary, on being questioned, to invent excuses for the quietness of the �
�hotel’ and for the non-appearance of other servants.

  Only later, when at last he had seen the last of the ladies mount the stairs – tired from their travels, they all went up early – only later when the front door was locked and with waiter-tired feet he lay in bed, did he allow himself at last a great retrogressive chuckle.

  He saw suddenly how he lay there on his back like a dear old daddy-keeper, with his six young charges all tucked safely up sleeping blissfully on their six pillows. Six sudden beautiful girls at first look all of a piece. Only after a while, when the first endazzlement is over, can one distinguish between them. Now still to Morley they were banded indistinguishable, six little beauties all in a row, as if that beauty itself served the uniform purpose of a school hat and a gym frock.

  And so there he lay, hoary old guardian of his exquisite crocodile, and chuckled, and gradually – not knowing what might happen in the morning, too tired now to care – fell asleep.

  In the morning, reason asserted itself. Such a fantastic situation could not be allowed to continue. He considered for a moment applying for a boarding-house licence, hiring servants: but this was plainly too much trouble. And plainly it extended the falsity of the situation.

  His daily housekeeper supplied the answer. He rose early to intercept her. He explained that he had given sanctuary the night before to six roofless ladies. The housekeeper froze. Morley pretended not to notice and asked her to prepare six breakfasts. The housekeeper pressed her lips together. Morley acted a laugh.

  ‘An – er – equivocal position for an old bachelor, eh, Mrs Laidlaw?’ his lips laughed. ‘But safety in numbers, Mrs L., safety in numbers.’

  This simple remark had a far greater effect than Morley could have hoped for. The word ‘equivocal’ put Mrs Laidlaw momentarily off her balance, it rescued Morley again into the status of the Master. But then that ‘safety in numbers’ in its turn saved her own comfort of mind, it sank her happily to earth, it was comfortable and what it said was what other people said all the world over. She served the breakfasts, hypnotized by the saying, muttering it over and over to herself. Only some hours later, when she had digested the good looks and the alien chic of the ladies’ clothes, whorish to her woollen eyes, did she give notice.