Hotel de Dream (13 page)

“Please Miss Scranton! I'll come and see you in a moment if you'll just be good enough to keep quiet!”

There was a silence, in which Mr Poynter thought he could hear the hum of Mrs Houghton's typewriter down the passage. Thank goodness for that! But once they had settled down to married life he had no intention of letting his wife pursue her career as a novelist. She would have too many duties to attend to. He made a mental note to be firm about this after the country honeymoon.

“Are you really coming?” Miss Scranton said in a low whine that set Mr Poynter's teeth on edge. He rubbed at his chafed lips and whispered hoarsely back:

“Do I ever break my word? Just pipe down and I will come!”

Now the silence seemed more certain. Mr Poynter went back to bed and closed his eyes again. He remembered the ceremony, with the thrilling moment when Mrs Houghton had said I do, and the kiss at the end of the service. The music played loudly and they went out on the lawn, where Mrs Houghton threw her bouquet and it was caught by an eager bridesmaid. Then, as he remembered, his brows went together in a frown and his eyes snapped open again. Of course—there had been a mistake in the dream at that point—the first Mrs Poynter had appeared at the French windows of the Blue Room and a shriek had gone up from the celebrating guests. She had been naked, and with matted hair like the Amazons. She was carrying a spear, and it was pointed at Mr Poynter's heart. He thought he could see hordes of naked women behind her. He had woken in a sweat, but not before seeing the look on his bride's face. The bewilderment,
the disappointment! And then the contempt! The word bigamist had gone round the sward, hissed in the tent and fallen at the hurdles, retainers had poured out to hurl abuse at him, young innocent country cousins run to hide in the brushwood shelters they had erected for the afternoon's sport. Poynter had made for the French windows. But his legs folded under him, and there was laughter. When he was properly awake—yes, there was the empty aspirin packet—he remembered swallowing three of them, and for him this was unprecedentedly rash. How would he make things right with Mrs Houghton later this evening? How could he prove, without vulgarly producing his wife's death certificate, that Mrs Poynter had been gone twenty years and had only survived in his dreams until he met the woman he had always been looking for? He lay thinking, eyes resolutely wide open. There was still silence from the next room, but he decided to go and visit Miss Scranton before she started to raise hell again. It would hardly help matters at supper if Miss Scranton presented herself as yet another candidate for his affections. Wearily, Poynter pulled his dressing gown over his sunken shoulders and went out into the corridor of the Westringham Hotel.

Jeannette Scranton, who had suffered from remorse since childhood—her father had had no desire to commit incest with her, her mother had compensated for this lack of interest by climbing frequently into her bed, Jeannette's first remorse stemmed from having been the unwilling disrupter of their marriage (and her successive bouts of remorse, too, had come from finding herself insufficiently inspiring to God for Him to fill her with religious zeal, uncharismatic with her pupils so that they had no wish to learn anything at all)—suffered, as she lay in a half-waking state in her bed in Room 22, from one of the worst attacks she had known for a long time. She had betrayed her friends. She had lied to them, promising freedom in return for their silence, when she knew very well there was not and never could be a comfortable place for them within the walls of Mr Poynter's City. She had done this to gain the affections of Mr Poynter. Mr Poynter was not only not interested in her, but passionately in love with Mrs Houghton; and she felt, added to her existing remorse, a deep throb of the remorse for the future when she was bound to try and disrupt their relationship, inject another few drops of misery into a world which could well do without it. Why was she like this? How could it be that she had heard herself crying out for Mr Poynter? She was making the very sound of which he had so rightly complained in the dungeons: she knew he was only interested in that sound as far as finding a suitable method of stopping it; yet (and it was horrifying to think that even the first Mrs Poynter, after her long years of submission, had
joined the Amazons and Jeannette was incapable of it) she was calling out for him as Judas had vainly called on the name of Christ after the act of treachery. For Jeannette had not only sold her sisters into slavery for the faint promise of a special position in Mr Poynter's world, she had brought about the downfall of Mr Poynter on his most glorious day. Scorned, hearing the news of the wedding from the cheering crowds outside the windows of the neat little guest house to which she had been politely removed by Struthers and an attendant retinue of lady's maids and footmen, she had taken advantage of her freedom of the City to release the furious women and unleash them on her unsuspecting host. Led by the first Mrs Poynter, they had stormed down the wide streets and boulevards and up the great avenue to the Residence. The crowds had fallen back in fear, and the soldiers had turned tail and run back to barracks, where they had locked themselves in. The women had seized arms—and this Jeannette had not foreseen—from the artillery wing of HQ; they had carbines and muskets and pistols and machine guns, and cartridge belts that thumped against their naked flanks as they marched. After what seemed only a moment, but it could have been more (Jeannette was used to this disturbing sense of flying and stopping time in her dreams), she heard the sound of gunshots and the quick sharp rattle of the machine guns, which sounded from the window of the house where she stood, like an angrier, more confident version of the incomprehensible language with which they had communicated in the dungeons. A blue haze rose into the sky above the battlefields of Mr Poynter's wedding. It was then, still dozing, remembering herself in the house he had so kindly presented to her—and in a beautiful shot silk dress, which suited her, she felt, as nothing had before—that she cried out for him. She banged on the partition wall, to obliterate the sound of the guns. The view of Mr Poynter's City faded, and she saw the thin hump of her body beneath the bedclothes. Cridge, back from the shops with his store
of cocktail food and lacy mats, trudged past on his way up to hand these trophies to Mrs Routledge. Cecilia Houghton's typewriter could be heard to falter and then to start blithely up again. Miss Briggs called out once, and then was silent. Mr Poynter's voice came through the wall and Jeannette sat up, her blood freezing in her veins. He would come to her! If she was quiet! She sank down in the bed, fists clenched at her side in an attempt at self-control and only her eyes, wild as those of the women she had betrayed and falsely liberated, showing above the thin sheet.

Mr Poynter came in and sat down on the end of Jeannette Scranton's bed. He was shaking badly, she saw, but it was difficult to believe she wasn't dreaming, so near and yet so immeasurably far did Mr Poynter seem, tangible and yet impossible to touch. He was looking at her, but she could not meet his gaze (for who has ever looked into the eyes of another in a dream?); instead she stared at the contents of her room as if seeing them for the first time in her life. Her past suddenly became clear to her. The photograph of her mother in the heart-shaped frame showed an alien face with a hint of a moustache about the lips, a thin, bent nose that looked as if it had been stuck on to express disapproval at the way the world was made. The stuffed salmon, caught by Jeannette's father just before the outbreak of the First World War—in order to try and interest him she had shown enthusiasm in fishing and he had bequeathed it to her in his will: it lay as heavy on her as the remorse she had always felt for him—disintegrated before her eyes to scales and stuffing and a gaping mouth amongst the dead ferns in the box. Her clothes—a pile of woollies and a sensible grey skirt folded neatly on the chest of drawers, could never have belonged to her. In her ecstasy at Mr Poynter's presence, Jeannette felt her identity disintegrate and a new one come to life. She moulded herself to suit him, and felt her limbs beneath the sheets grow full and round, a youthful blush creep to her cheeks. She looked at him at last, and smiled. But
it was so hard to think that he was really there!

“Miss Scranton.”

Mr Poynter's voice trembled. Jeannette saw them in a country cottage and she waking early to prepare a good breakfast. He was pitifully thin and uncared for. “Miss Scranton, I must ask you to join in an experiment with me.”

Jeannette's eyelashes fluttered—of their own accord; she had the delightful feeling of being quite out of control of her actions. She strengthened her smile. Outside, Cridge went grumbling past on his way down from Mrs Routledge, and she remembered with some pleasure that tonight he would not be in the dining room. Cridge took up too much of Mr Poynter's time.

“What experiment?” She sounded arch, she knew, but he seemed serious. She cursed the sound of Mrs Houghton's typewriter down the passage at a moment like this.

“We must try and dream together. I feel we have been at cross purposes too long. Too concerned with our own dreams, perhaps, and not enough with the dreams of others.”

As he spoke, Mr Poynter put his hand on Jeannette's foot under the blankets. A warm glow spread up her leg, but she lay still. A momentary revulsion seized her: when the time came she had expected a slightly more subtle approach.

“I will certainly dream with you,” she said in a soft voice nonetheless.

“We must try and change our dreams,” Mr Poynter went on in his solemn, almost frightening tone. “I am in a very difficult position now, as you must know.”

So he had regrets already! Jeannette felt a surge of sympathy for the man. He found himself married to a professional woman, a woman who would be unable to devote herself to him as a wife should. How could she tell him that she forgave his mistakes, that for him to admit he was not always in the right would wipe out her remorse of a lifetime and bring fulfilment to them both? Then, for she was not stupid,
she had passed out of Training College with flying colours, Jeannette remembered that his mistake was not as irrevocable as he thought.

“Your marriage to Mrs Houghton is null and void,” she said. She sat up, and leaned forward to within a few inches of the longed-for face. She did not dare touch it yet, however. “Your first wife is after all still alive,” she went on, and instantly regretted this, for poor Mr Poynter's eyebrows shot up and he looked unbearably confused. “But insane,” Jeannette added quickly, “There will be no need for a divorce, even. She can be certified insane. And you—” she let out a trilling laugh “—are quite free to marry whom you choose.”

Everything seemed to happen very quickly after that, and Jeannette had the only too familiar symptoms of nightmare as Mr Poynter leapt at her, battered her head with his fists so that she was knocked into a misty version of his City, saw stars in the blue sky over his Residence, smelled the blood and carnage the Amazons had created in the streets. He swore in hatred at her, and if at first she felt his violence as an expression of his love, enjoyed his superior strength even, as he forced her to the scene of the battle and demanded she remove the women, she soon kicked and struggled at his impossible demand.

“There's nothing I can do about it now, Mr Poynter! They're out of my control. Ask your wife!”

Mr Poynter fell away from her at this. There was silence, apart from their panting and gasping, and a door down the passage opened quietly. Jeannette's left eyelid was bleeding, and as she tried to force it open she saw in one last horrifying glimpse, the Amazons shoot the little pink pills they had been given in the dungeons through the mouths of the machine guns into the air. Jeannette felt her womb contract and subside again. There were footsteps on the stairs leading to Mrs Routledge's room. Miss Briggs next door, in an unnaturally loud voice, said, “Admit Mr Geoffrey Rathbone.” Several feet came to the door of Room 22 and it was flung
open. Jeannette opened her eyes at last. Blood streamed down her face.

Mrs Routledge was standing in the doorway, and behind her was Mrs Houghton. They both gaped in disbelief at the scene before them. From the adjacent room came a loud thump and the sound of steel scraping from a scabbard.

“Rise, Sir Geoffrey!” Miss Briggs said. Deflected by this new disturbance Mrs Routledge turned and went heavily out over the creaking boards into the passage. Mrs Houghton stayed on, her arms folded across her stomach, a hard glint in her eyes as she contemplated Mr Poynter and Miss Scranton there.

Mrs Houghton had had a trying afternoon. Every scene with Johnny and Melinda had proved a failure—a visit to the Zoo (with Johnny proudly pointing out the territorial imperative of the male gorilla and Melinda, quiescent now after the violent years, clinging to Johnny's arm and laughingly agreeing) had resulted in a stand-up fight between the characters and another assault, by both of them this time, on the author herself. A large meal in a fashionable restaurant in Covent Garden, put in against her better instincts as a placatory scene before the departure of the couple for their married future in Dorset, had ended in Mrs Houghton's being ignominiously covered in avocado soup and potato salad just as she was launching on a description of the ageing pop stars and media men at the surrounding tables. She had truly begun to feel Johnny and Melinda beyond her control, and saw she must put an end to their dangerous antics at once if she was to survive herself; but the trouble here lay in the gospel of freedom and moderation she had always preached, and the dead wooden nature of the prose that always succeeded a decision to be more ruthless with them. If she simply sent them to Dorset, making sure they obeyed her outline to the letter, the readers would be bored and disappointed, after all the emotional upheavals they had undergone, by their sudden capitulation to Mrs Houghton's will. It was a difficult moment, and although she had typed bravely on in the face of their increasingly murderous acts, she felt the onset of Block: a whitish blank in the head, like the beginning of a migraine, and not helped by the dull, low sky outside; a
feverish impatience to be shot of the whole thing combined with a lingering love for her characters and a wild desire to change the shape of the plot in order to gain their approval. At the end of each paragraph she sat with her head in her hands at the table. Johnny now spoke only in American, which she recognised as a very bad sign indeed. Melinda's statements had become almost incomprehensible, and when she was supposed to be talking to her lover, discussing the meaning of the life they led together, she spoke instead in cryptic tones of the movement of the tides, the sway of the moon, and the day of victory, whatever that could possibly mean. Mrs Houghton had begun to doubt Melinda's sanity, and therefore, as she had always proudly believed Melinda to be a submerged fraction of herself, her own as well. She wondered if she should see a psychiatrist before completing the trilogy. The irritating and inexplicable noises from the other rooms in the Westringham Hotel only added to her despairing state.