Fear

Contrary to his assumption, Gerald found the Lounge Bar as empty as everywhere else in the hotel and the town. There was not even a person to dispense.

Somewhat irritably, Gerald struck a brass bell which stood on the counter. It rang out sharply as a pistol shot.

Mrs Pascoe appeared at a door among the shelves. She had taken off her jacket, and her make-up had begun to run.

‘A cognac, please. Double. And a Kümmel.’

Mrs Pascoe’s hands were shaking so much that she could not get the cork out of the brandy bottle.

‘Allow me.’ Gerald stretched his arm across the bar.

Mrs Pascoe stared at him blearily. ‘O.K. But I must pour it.’

Gerald extracted the cork and returned the bottle. Mrs Pascoe slopped a far from precise dose into a balloon.

Catastrophe followed. Unable to return the bottle to the high shelf where it resided, Mrs Pascoe placed it on a waist-level ledge. Reaching for the alembic of Kümmel, she swept the three-quarters full brandy bottle on to the tiled floor. The stuffy air became fogged with the fumes of brandy from behind the bar.

At the door from which Mrs Pascoe had emerged appeared a man from the inner room. Though still youngish, he was puce and puffy, and in his braces, with no collar. Streaks of sandy hair laced his vast red scalp. Liquor oozed all over him, as if from a perished gourd. Gerald took it that this was Don.

The man was too drunk to articulate. He stood in the doorway clinging with each red hand to the ledge, and savagely struggling to flay his wife with imprecations.

‘How much?’ said Gerald to Mrs Pascoe. It seemed useless to try for the Kümmel. The hotel must have another Bar.

‘Three and six,’ said Mrs Pascoe, quite lucidly; but Gerald saw that she was about to weep.

He had the exact sum. She turned her back on him and flicked the cash register. As she returned from it, he heard the fragmentation of glass as she stepped on a piece of the broken bottle. Gerald looked at her husband out of the corner of his eye. The sagging, loose-mouthed figure made him shudder. Something moved him.

‘I’m sorry about the accident,’ he said to Mrs Pascoe. He held the balloon in one hand, and was just going.

Mrs Pascoe looked at him. The slow tears of desperation were edging down her face, but she now seemed quite sober. ‘Mr Banstead,’ she said in a flat, hurried voice. ‘May I come and sit with you and your wife in the Lounge? Just for a few minutes.’

‘Of course.’ It was certainly not what he wanted, and he wondered what would become of the Bar, but he felt unexpectedly sorry for her, and it was impossible to say no.

To reach the flap of the bar she had to pass her husband. Gerald saw her hesitate for a second; then she advanced resolutely and steadily, and looking straight before her. If the man had let go with his hands, he would have fallen; but as she passed him, he released a great gob of spit. He was far too incapable to aim, and it fell on the side of his own trousers. Gerald lifted the flap for Mrs Pascoe and stood back to let her precede him from the Bar. As he followed her, he heard her husband maundering off into unintelligible inward searchings.

‘The Kümmel!’ said Mrs Pascoe, remembering in the doorway.

‘Never mind,’ said Gerald. ‘Perhaps I could try one of the other Bars?’

‘Not tonight. They’re shut. I’d better go back.’

‘No. We’ll think of something else.’ It was not yet nine o’clock, and Gerald wondered about the Licensing Justices.

But in the Lounge

was another unexpected scene. Mrs Pascoe stopped as soon as they entered, and Gerald, caught between two imitation-leather armchairs, looked over her shoulder.

Phrynne had fallen asleep. Her head was slightly on one side, but her mouth was shut, and her body no more than gracefully relaxed, so that she looked most beautiful, and Gerald thought, a trifle unearthly, like a dead girl in an early picture by Millais.

The quality of her beauty seemed also to have impressed Commandant Shotcroft; for he was standing silently behind her and looking down at her, his sad face transfigured. Gerald noticed that a leaf of the pseudo-Elizabethan screen had been folded back, revealing a small cretonne-covered chair, with an open tome face downward in its seat.

‘Won’t you join us?’ said Gerald boldly. There was that in the Commandant’s face which boded no hurt. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

The Commandant did not turn his head, and seemed unable to speak. Then in a low voice he said, ‘For a moment only.’

‘Good,’ said Gerald. ‘Sit down. And you, Mrs Pascoe.’ Mrs Pascoe was dabbing at her face. Gerald addressed the Commandant. ‘What shall it be?’

‘Nothing to drink,’ said the Commandant in the same low mutter. It occurred to Gerald that if Phrynne awoke, the Commandant would go.