Hotel de Dream (8 page)

While Melinda pondered, Johnny got up and began to stride around the room. He tossed his hair back out of his eyes as he went to and fro, and Melinda was irresistibly reminded of the first volume, just after they had returned from abroad and were trying to involve themselves in London life once more. The passage went:

This was the first time for Johnny, this questing sense that for all his attempts to reach her, the delicacy he had learned from Angela, the bond between them that they would care for others more than themselves, would reject with a new force the self-indulgence of their age
and their generation, that he could hardly know Melinda at all, that she was, to him, a mysterious entity: female to his male and yet not quite that. He went over to the sink to put the morning cornflakes in the bowl. His hair fell in his eyes and he thought of his father; upright; trim; so sure of his belonging and his aims. They were out of milk now. He would go for it, for this was decided between them: the household tasks were his; and yet he felt he might be emasculated by the trip, return to another spell of bad depression. There was rain flat against the window. And she was smiling at him, as if she knew perhaps the struggle in his soul for her. He ate the cornflakes dry, the sugar rasped against his tongue.

“Stop shaking your hair out of your eyes like that!” Melinda broke the silence on a bad-tempered note. “If you're so bored, why don't we go next door and see what that old nut is up to? As she's dressed for a ball, maybe some guests have arrived and we could join in?”

“I'm not interested in Miss Briggs.” Johnny gave a dry laugh. “I only know one thing. I'm not being sent down to Dorset while you're in this mood. Or ever for that matter. It's time we put an end to the Houghton woman—do you realise how long this has been going on?”

“So you don't love me any more?” Tears sprang into Melinda's eyes and she wiped them away angrily with a corner of her soiled dress. “How can you go on like that, Johnny?”

“For Christ's sake don't let her see you like that or we'll have a whole emotional scene to put up with!” Johnny sounded truly exasperated. “You know we don't love each other, Melinda, we never have, it was all just an invention. Why can't you be realistic for once?”

“Yes, and you know I want to be free …” Melinda stopped suddenly, recognising with an awful sinking of the heart the
words Mrs Houghton had so often put into her mouth:

She wanted to be free, but she needed him, and if she saw the influence of her father in all this, the happy “normal” years when she had looked to a home for support supplanted by the growing doubts of an era in upheaval, she saw also an inability to live without him, to provide for herself in such a world.

“What is love anyway?” Johnny demanded, but also with the angry expression of one who recognises a lack of originality in his words. “I don't even want to …” He fell silent, Mrs Houghton having shown modernity in her approach to Anglo-Saxon usage and no word remaining to him with which to describe the act.

“To embrace me?” Melinda suggested.

“Yes, Cecilia certainly wouldn't put it like that!” For a moment Johnny looked quite cheerful and the two characters exchanged glances of complicity. The only times they had succeeded in getting on together were when they outwitted Mrs Houghton and slipped unacceptable expressions into the fabric of her style.

“But why should it be of interest that it's you who don't want to embrace me?” Melinda cried. “I might not like the idea myself. Has that occurred to you?”

Johnny groaned and flung himself down on the narrow divan beside her.

“Not again, Melinda! Not that feminist stuff! You know you don't care who embraces you as long as you get it. You'd probably go happily to Dorset if you thought there was going to be nothing but embracing down there!”

“You arrogant fool!”

A silence ensued, while the woman and the man waited tensely for the usual small manifestations of a painful silence: Melinda undergoing a stream of consciousness which could only be broken by some move on his part;
Johnny picking at his lower lip and playing with the straggled ends of his long hair. In their effort to prevent this, nothing at all happened; and after a minute or two both had relaxed and were examining the situation coolly.

“We'll have to murder her,” Johnny said at last. “We can't go on being like this. It's all her fault after all. And who knows, we might actually like each other if we weren't bound together like this. I'll do it, don't worry, leave it to me.”

“We might like each other?” Again, tears came to Melinda's eyes, but this time they were tears of happiness. Mrs Houghton had fashioned her a romantic, vulnerable being and it would take an age before she could make some change in her personality.

“Sure we might.” Johnny was excited: Americanisms were the clearest sign of emancipation from Mrs Houghton. “Like we could have a break and see what comes along—take a raincheck, you know?”

“And maybe be together again some day?” said Melinda dreamily.

“Sure, sure. Why not? Question is, how do I do it? Gun … pills … how?”

“People do change and develop,” Melinda recited, then pulled herself up and smiled. “You're wonderful, Johnny. And I can leave it all to you really?”

“Don't you go pushing your nose into this,” Johnny said, good-humoured now. He rose and stretched out his arms in satisfaction. “Or maybe a knife,” he said, gloating, and laughed as Melinda recoiled from him. “Oh I'm looking forward to this OK. It'll be great!”

Melinda gave a contented sigh and leaned back on the divan. It was such a blessed relief not to have to take an equal part in the thing. When Mrs Houghton let herself into the room five minutes later, there was a distinctly pleasant atmosphere there and the writer sat down without further ado at the typewriter.

“Now, on with the task in hand!” she said and her fingers went down on the keys. “I think I'm rather going to like it at the Westringham after all!”

Preparations were being made for lunch. While outside the grey day lay about the district, the litter blew along the streets around the Westringham Hotel, the yellow cranes dumped and lifted rubble from demolished houses, and people came and went as if in a trance: Africans and West Indians, eyes dull under the blanket of the sky, and movements sharp; gangs of children with rubber knives and young men sauntering to the pavement's edge and stopping there to see if there was any point in going on. A sluggish wind pulled at the blossom from the trees, and it fell to the ground to lie among the scraps of dirty paper. A smell of steak and kidney came from the pubs. In the kitchen behind the greasy dining room of Mrs Routledge's establishment, Cridge hung over his Wednesday stew. A tainted fog rose from the big saucepan, a suggestion of onions and unwanted shreds of meat in the wet smoke. He poked at the mixture from time to time with a wooden spoon gone ragged at the end, as if a bite had been taken from it by an angry client. The steamed potatoes were already done, and lay shoulder to shoulder in a cracked tureen. He had yet to lay the tables, and ring the little bell that once, with a now departed resident, had triggered off a whole cascade of dreams of leprosy, and the Dance of Death in a medieval town, and scaling fortress walls in an attempt at courtly love (this resident, a Mr Wainwright, had died upstairs in Miss Scranton's room, clasping a paper rose)—he had yet to shuffle in with his stew once the tables were occupied, serve coffee and wash up before he could go back down
to the fetid cellar and fall asleep. Wednesday was Cridge's afternoon off, and Mrs Routledge provided cold supper. He stirred at the stew again, and coughed and retched over it, for he had never become accustomed to the smell. His breath joined with the belching smoke. Then he took the bell, and a handful of knives and forks still slimy from the treatment given them at the end of breakfast, and went through into the dining room. The basement stairs gaped a welcome at him, but he ignored them and went about his tasks. Cutlery slid from his hands on to the paper tablecloths, due for their weekly replacement tomorrow, the same day as the cleaning out of the pots and jars in his quarters. When this was done, he lifted the bell. His hand trembled enough for not much effort to be needed. Mrs Routledge stopped him from the hall, where she sat as always in a ball position on the stool behind the desk. Her tone was urgent. Mr Poynter's step was on the stairs—and besides, the bell had given a soft tinkle before Cridge could put it down—he stood staring at her, caught in this further manifestation of incontinence, head down and eyes searching through the door for the meaning of her command.

“Cridge, come here!”

He went towards her, still grasping the bell, which gave off a little trill of uncertain notes as he went. Mr Poynter stood above him on the half-landing, puzzled; for he was quick at the sound of the bell and yet today there seemed no conviction in it. He watched Cridge go over to the desk, and Mrs Routledge whisper in the old man's ear. He stayed where he was, hoping to overhear, and this he did without difficulty.

“Tomorrow at six, Cridge.” Mrs Routledge hissed the words and at the same time rolled her eyes up at Mr Poynter, as if willing him not to listen. Her eyes rolling like that made both men uncomfortable, but it was clear she had information of some value to impart.

“Mr Rathbone is coming!” She held up a letter, and even
Mr Poynter could see, from his bad vantage point, that it was a valuable one. “A strange coincidence, really,” she continued, still breathy if a little louder. “I was about to invite him for cocktails tomorrow, as it so happens. And now he has invited himself. I sometimes wonder what it will be like when the science of telepathy has been discovered!”

“Cocktails?” said Cridge. He wanted none of Mrs Routledge's speculations now. And he had made it clear over the last couple of years that he would not tap ghostly voices with his employer either. There had been a time when she had hoped to recapture Mr Routledge with a planchette board, one of the fingers on the glass being the widow's and the other belonging to old Cridge. He had on the whole been successful in discouraging this side of Mrs Routledge, and gave a warning frown now that she was speaking of telepathy again. In response to this, Mrs Routledge sat upright and assumed a dignified expression. Mr Poynter nodded to her from the stairs, but she ignored him.

“We must have cocktail biscuits. And gin and tonic as well as the sherry. I want you to do some shopping for the party this afternoon, Cridge. We need those little mats for standing the glasses on. And toothpicks for putting the olives on. I believe we still have somewhere the cut glass dishes for nuts?”

Cridge shook his head, and the movement set off the bell in another soft ring. A door opened upstairs and feet came along the landing in reply to the summons.

“Olives? Glasses?” Cridge said dimly. “Today's Wednesday as you remember, Mrs Routledge.”

“This is more important than your day off! And where
are
those cut glass dishes, Cridge? You haven't got them down in that basement, have you?”

There was an unpleasant silence, which Mr Poynter tried to break by clearing his throat, while all three envisaged the tiny, dainty dishes as receptacles for old Cridge's waste
matter, and Mr Rathbone sensing this as he took a nut. Cridge glowered at the landlady.

“I believe they may be downstairs,” he granted her when he answered at last. “I will look, Madam,” he went on, subservient once more. He tugged at his forelock. “If Madam will give me the list this afternoon, I will buy the necessary provisions for the cocktail party.”

“That's better!” Mrs Routledge glanced at him suspiciously nevertheless. Then up at the stairs, where Miss Briggs stood behind Mr Poynter, and the shadow of Miss Scranton behind Miss Briggs on the wall. She screwed up her eyes in doubt. But Miss Briggs was in her normal well-worn jumper and skirt, and her head was unjewelled. Cridge was turning and bowing in her direction, however, and his manner had changed since her appearance there. Mrs Routledge tutted with exasperation, then with effort took on a charming smile and rolled herself into a ball shape again.

“Cridge, you're so good at this sort of thing! Don't you remember the lovely parties Daddy used to give and he always said afterwards that it was you who made the things go? It does seem a long time since we've had a party here. I simply count on you!”

“Yes, Miss Amanda.” Cridge bowed—but annoyingly, still in the direction of Miss Briggs—and went off back to the kitchen to fetch the stew. Mrs Routledge stood up and smiled graciously up at Mr Poynter and the other residents (Mrs Houghton was still typing, there was a regular crashing sound from upstairs, and that was no doubt why she had not heard the bell) and motioned to them to come down.

“I think I should tell you all that I invite you to a small party here tomorrow night. Mr Rathbone, who is the … well, the proprietor in chief if you like, of this Hotel—and all the other buildings in the area (here Mrs Routledge gave an entranced laugh)—is coming for a drink, and I feel we should make an occasion of it. I do hope you will be able to come?”

Mr Poynter descended the stairs gravely, as if trying to
decide whether or not he was in fact engaged elsewhere on that evening. He came up to the desk and expressed his appreciation at the invitation. Miss Briggs accepted in her new, queenly manner, inclining her head and sweeping on into the dining room. Miss Scranton, even more scruffy since breakfast—and Mrs Routledge noted this with a sinking of the heart: most of the sand had gone, but the schoolteacher looked as if she had spent the night in a cell—gave a sullen nod and went in doggedly after them. Cridge came in from the kitchen with the stew.

“Bon appetit,” Mrs Routledge called out. (She never ate with her guests, preferring the snacks she made for herself at odd hours to Cridge's cooking.) She sat on, trying to imagine how Miss Scranton could be persuaded to have a bath before tomorrow. The stew went down in dollops on the plates, and Mr Poynter spoke.