Hotel de Dream (6 page)

The drawing room, through which Mr Poynter had shot
at a speed that must surely have rendered him invisible to its occupants, was littered with the forms of huge, sated and sleeping women. Their sandy buttocks made an undulating mound of pale flesh. Their hair, stiff with salt and mud, lay like twisted rope on the pile carpets, their great arms were intertwined and their brown eyes were lazily open, lying like puddles of forgotten water when the tide has left the beach. In his race over their recumbent bodies, Poynter had seen his wife—brown-eyed too now, and as naked as the rest—and, to his particular horror, what appeared to be Miss Scranton, small and scrawny but bearing nevertheless the same marks of recent and passionate lovemaking. Piles of soldiers' uniforms stood up against the walls of the drawing room, obscuring Old Masters and vases of herbaceous flowers on the gilt and marble consoles. The uniforms belonged to the Forty-Five, his most reliable battalion. Poynter closed his eyes and felt in the pocket of his breeches for a handkerchief.

“My dear Lieutenant-colonel.” A soft, already beloved voice sounded in his ear but he kept his eyes closed, not believing.

“I came out here to find you. As I so much looked forward to meeting your wife. There seems to have been some kind of mishap. May I give you the advice my uncle the Field-marshal once gave me?”

Poynter opened his eyes and despite the tragedy in his Residence found himself smiling in welcome. Cecilia Houghton stood before him. She was wearing a crushed-pink taffeta dress and matching hat, and from her pale wrists a pair of elbow-length, white kid gloves dangled elegantly.

“Cecilia! I don't know what to say …”

“We must repair the damage, Arthur. These … these Amazons have raped and looted. I took the liberty of calling HQ and ordering the Special Police to come up here forthwith. As my uncle said, it's never as late as you think.”

Poynter rubbed at his eyes and wished they were closed
again. He wondered if the famous lady writer was aware that his wife was amongst the pile of hideous flesh. And had she recognised Miss Scranton, from the short meeting at early morning tea? She would be bound to leave the Westringham now, to relegate their meetings to the regions of sleep alone.

“I won't abandon you,” Mrs Houghton said, as if capable of reading his thoughts. “I'm here to help you, Arthur. And look, here are your men. All will be well in no time.”

As Cecilia spoke, Poynter's Special Police Force swept into the Residence and the familiar, acrid smell of tear gas filled the pleasant morning air. Poynter gave a sigh of relief and glanced up at the sky. If only the sun would move. He imagined himself dancing gratefully with Mrs Houghton tonight at the ball, while his wife recuperated from her shock in the military hospital. But the sun was still, idiotically, at a pristine, matutinal slant. He reached out and took hold of his saviour's hand.

“Cecilia, I can't thank you enough …”

Coughing and choking, the giantesses were led, docile, through the drawing room and down the hall to the waiting police vans. Poynter watched them go, glancing away at the sight of his wife's naked posterior and the pathetic, slouching gait adopted by Miss Scranton. Servants came in and tidied the room, spraying the pine-flavoured essence in the gas-laden air and restoring the deep sofas and little occasional tables to their accustomed positions. Mrs Houghton returned the pressure of Mr Poynter's hand.

“I think it's safe to go in there and order a little snack, don't you Arthur? And don't worry about … well about the day not progressing as it should. I'm sure we'll be able to get that under control too. Come along, you must be hungry. How about anchovies on toast? Or something a mite more substantial?”

Concealing his tears of gratitude, Poynter followed Mrs Houghton into the house. For a moment the idea of divorcing his wife and marrying Mrs Houghton flashed
through his mind, then he dismissed it. In Mr Poynter's City, divorce was strictly forbidden and it was for him to set a good example to the mob.

Jeannette Scranton climbed back into bed eagerly after the unnecessary tea break and closed her eyes. Memories of the irritating woman who seemed to have completely taken over the dining room with her crocodile handbag and gold cigarette case, and the strange atmosphere her presence had engendered—Mrs Routledge both excited and suspicious, Mr Poynter courtly, and old Cridge verging on a state of catatonia—soon faded from the teacher's mind. She was on the great plain and the men were visible now, the scarlet tunics of their uniforms glowing in the torchlight and the horses whinnying as they came at full gallop to the women's leafy tents. Miss Scranton felt calm, more prepared than she had imagined possible for the soon to be consummated ritual.

The women rose to their feet and stood tall and silent before their partners. Miss Scranton followed suit. The men dismounted. Miss Scranton's hand was grasped. She was lifted on to a horse. The saddle was warm and inviting beneath her naked flanks. She smiled, and a burst of song escaped from her lips. The moon was full. The air smelled of thyme and honey. A soldier leapt on to the saddle in front of her and the horse began to move forward. Miss Scranton's breasts quivered and bounced. She had never felt so happy. She looked back at the other women and their escorts, her hand raised in a gracious wave. Then, as the steed broke into a canter under her, she saw that all was not well at the encampment and that it was too late to go back.

The women were wailing and gnashing their teeth and
putting up resistance to the men. They were outnumbered and the men were lashing them to the backs of the horses by their long, sandy hair. One of the women, the largest and most terrifying in aspect, was attacking her captors with a flaming torch; the little wooden constructions in which they had waited for their mates caught fire; as Miss Scranton receded powerless from the scene, she saw the giantess fighting there, smoke billowing from her matted tresses and flames licking at her rough, wide legs. The men shouted in triumph and spurred their mounts up into the hills behind Miss Scranton. Each carried its heavy, protesting load. Soon the other soldiers were level with her and she could see the gagged faces of the women, their eyes giving out for the first time hatred and hostility and fear.

Miss Scranton's heart sank. It seemed she had got everything wrong again. If she had stopped to think—and this was a complaint she often heard in the staff-room—she would have realised that these uniformed soldiers were hardly the gentle, goddess-worshipping men met once yearly by the Amazons for the propagation of the female species. The aggressors looked, if anything, dressed for a musical comedy in the 1890s. They had small neat moustaches, their tunics were gold-buttoned, and a toy sword poked from a scabbard at their sides. Their eyes were a bright Prussian blue. Miss Scranton had a horrible feeling that she was being taken back at full speed to the world of her childhood years, when men such as these were her brothers' heroes, and stupefying afternoons were spent outside Buckingham Palace watching the changing of the guard. All her desire and happiness vanished. At the same time she was afraid: of the reprisals of the women at her joyous welcome—for she had betrayed them, there was no doubt about that; she had put up no fight at all—and of the forthcoming embraces in the arms of these brutal military men. Miss Scranton's dream had turned to a nightmare. Every soldier seemed to possess the unbearable, proud features of her father; even the sound of their
shouting voices was a forcible reminder of why she had never, however great her mother's disappointment, gone to the altar as a bride.

The convoy reached the top of the hill and Miss Scranton was able to look down at the landscape below. The Ancient Greek mountains to which she had become accustomed since her dreams in the Westringham began had disappeared, and in their place was a neat English landscape. Downs bearing the marks of Roman invasion, Saxon tillage, trammelled with hedgerows and narrow lanes and sewn into a patchwork of multicoloured fields, stretched out before her. The moon, too, was small, and hung like the electric light bulb in her bedroom over the spire of a market-town cathedral. Sluggish streams made dark shadows in the shallow valleys. A moan from the gagged women went up as they too saw the country of Miss Scranton's birth. The horses began to walk slowly down through stubble, the saddles creaking and slipping as they went. For a moment Miss Scranton wondered if she would be able to help them in their escape by identifying the county they were in. There was something familiar about it—could it be Hampshire?—but the absence of high-rise buildings and urban sprawl made this seem unlikely. It was as if England, like the soldiers, had been arrested at some point near the beginning of the century. The beach, the long hut, seemed irrecoverably far away. Miss Scranton would never be able to get herself or her sisters out of this. She jogged on behind her captor, hands folded for safety's sake around the thin red felt of his tunic.

When two streams had been forded and several valleys left behind, the soldiers and the women arrived at a great gate set in a thick wall of white marble. The gate swung open and the convoy went in. Miss Scranton, exhausted as she was, saw that it was early morning here: the sun was climbing the sky, jets of water splashed on the façades of the spotless houses, birdsong filled the air. Despite her fear of the other women and her dread of the rape which must surely take
place soon, her spirits lifted a little. Miss Scranton loved cleanliness. Wonderful though her life had been on the timeless pre-Helladic beach, the sight of the well-proportioned streets, each house with its soil pipe and flowery window box, was somehow comforting and reassuring. She looked down at her sand-encrusted legs and promised herself a bubble bath as soon as the fiesta was over—flannels, loofahs and nail brushes, all forgotten objects of her previous life sprang into her mind. It was clear from the continued muffled protests of her sisters that they felt no such anticipation. However—and here Miss Scranton felt hopeful again—a happy compromise might be reached. It was possible that the rulers of this town, whomsoever they might be, would allot to the women a pleasant hygienic quarter where there would be plenty of baths, peace, and good food brought to them at regular intervals. Miss Scranton realised it might take a long time to persuade the Amazons of the advantages of harem conditions, but she hoped that in the end they would come to their senses. Otherwise there would be mass slaughter. Going at a stately trot through the newly paved streets, she tried to communicate this message to them with the eye language of the past. But they looked back at her with stubbornness and incomprehension. Their eyes, even, appeared to have lost the rich fire that had burned in them on the beach.

The horses went over Mr Poynter's lawn and Miss Scranton shuddered at the hoof marks on the rich turf. She saw a beautiful woman in a blue gown and wimple standing by the French windows of what was without doubt the most important house in the city. She waved and dismounted, waiting impatiently on the sward while the soldiers untied the women. Then, as the great, sulking captives were pushed over the grass and in through the open windows, she skipped to the head of the line and smiled up at the beautiful woman. The beautiful woman smiled back, and when Miss Scranton had come right up to her asked for
assistance in disrobing herself of her stiff and richly embroidered gown so that she, too, could be naked. Miss Scranton felt reassured at this. Her chafed hands, coarse with sand and sea water, fumbled with the tiny, silken hooks and eyes. When it was time to lie down and wait on the deep fitted carpet, she chose to lie beside the beautiful woman, to suffer the forthcoming indignity with the same degree of stoicism exhibited by the mistress of the house.

The soldiers tied the Amazons down, securing thick wrists and ankles to drawing room tables and chairs. The floor of the room undulated with their breasts, like a desert sea; their nipples, which looked like dried flowers, made splashes of dull brown red. They seemed resigned now, and accepting of their fate. Miss Scranton saw that they had closed their eyes. She glanced at the beautiful woman, saw the perfect blue of her orbs cloud with brown, as if a muddy spring was welling up in them. Then the eyelids went down. Miss Scranton followed suit, and waited.

The rape seemed to take a long time. Miss Scranton thought of her multiplication tables as the sharp thrusting went on, and then of the essays on The Best Day of the Holidays which were still uncorrected in her satchel bag. She remembered she had left the satchel bag behind on the plain, in her haste to greet the captors, and groaned aloud. All round her the Amazons were groaning, the rope on their wrists and ankles snapping as their powerful bodies heaved and writhed. Their coarse hair rubbed loudly on the carpet. Only the beautiful woman was silent, and Miss Scranton promised herself not to make another sound, even though the loss of the satchel would probably cost her her job, and the pain from the organs of the soldiers was reaching an unbearable level. The beautiful woman reminded her of the National Gallery postcard she had once worshipped, when she had been the age of her poor, neglected pupils—the Virgin Mary—by Leonardo?—by Fra Angelico?—her mind began to wander, and as the moaning and screeching
rose to a crescendo, and flesh slapped against flesh with the horrible, final sound of a dead catch from the sea going down on marble slabs, Miss Scranton at last lost consciousness. When she opened her eyes again, the soldiers had gone. She sat up tentatively, and examined the scene.

The Amazons and the beautiful woman were sleeping peacefully, and a faint, snoring rumble filled the room, taking Miss Scranton back in her ever-eager memory to the drone of bees at her aunt's house, the sweet william and peonies that grew in abundance there, the time when she had thought herself in love with the vicar's son. The soldiers' uniforms, she saw, were piled against the walls, and she wondered if this was a deliberate gesture, to indicate to their General that they would no longer fight wars for him. Miss Scranton felt surprisingly well and refreshed. Her mind was clear. The leaving behind of the satchel no longer seemed such a tragedy, as she had no intention of returning to the school. This City was the perfect place to be. She tried to imagine the delightful quarters she would be given—as a special friend of the mistress of the house she would certainly have apartments of her own—and came to the conclusion that it was time to wake the Amazons. They must all take their baths now, and acclimatise themselves to the new life. It was then that she saw Mr Poynter pass through the room, at a speed which led her to rub her eyes and tell herself she must be imagining things. He was there—and then he was gone—and Mr Poynter of all people! A brownish blush spread over Miss Scranton's body, and she reached for the lacy tablecloth, which hung draped over the nearest occasional table, in an attempt to cover herself. Too late, of course—but suppose he had come to rest out in the garden, suppose he had seen her—Miss Scranton thought of lunch at the Westringham, and Mr Poynter's eyes over the plastic fern, and gazed anxiously out at the lawn for a glimpse of him.