Fear

The man in the corner spoke again. ‘Why are you here at all?’

Phrynne looked frightened, but Gerald replied quietly. ‘We’re on holiday. We prefer it out of the season. I presume you are Commandant Shotcroft?’

‘No need to presume.’ Unexpectedly the Commandant switched on the antique lantern which was nearest to him. His table was littered with a finished meal. It struck Gerald that he must have switched off the light when he heard them approach the Coffee Room. ‘I’m going anyway.’

‘Are we late?’ asked Phrynne, always the assuager of situations.

‘No, you’re not late,’ said the Commandant in a deep, moody voice. ‘My meals are prepared half an hour before the time the rest come in. I don’t like eating in company.’ He had risen to his feet. ‘So perhaps you’ll excuse me.’

Without troubling about an answer, he stepped quickly out of the Coffee Room. He had cropped white hair; tragic, heavy-lidded eyes; and a round face which was yellow and lined.

A second later his head reappeared round the door.

‘Ring,’ he said; and again withdrew.

‘Too many other people ringing,’ said Gerald. ‘But I don’t see what else we can do.’

The Coffee Room bell, however, made a noise like a fire alarm.

Mrs Pascoe appeared. She looked considerably the worse for drink.

‘Didn’t see you in the Bar.’

‘Must have missed us in the crowd,’ said Gerald amiably.

‘Crowd?’ inquired Mrs Pascoe drunkenly. Then, after a difficult pause, she offered them a handwritten menu.

They ordered; and Mrs Pascoe served them throughout. Gerald was apprehensive lest her indisposition increase during the course of the meal; but her insobriety, like her affability, seemed to have an exact and definite limit.

‘All things considered, the food might be worse,’ remarked Gerald, towards the end. It was a relief that something was going reasonably well. ‘Not much of it, but at least the dishes are hot.’

When Phrynne translated this into a compliment to the cook, Mrs Pascoe said, ‘I cooked it all myself, although I shouldn’t be the one to say so.’

Gerald felt really surprised that she was in a condition to have accomplished this. Possibly, he reflected with alarm, she had had much practice under similar conditions.

‘Coffee is served in the Lounge,’ said Mrs Pascoe.

They withdrew. In a corner of the Lounge was a screen decorated with winning Elizabethan ladies in ruffs and hoops. From behind it projected a pair of small black boots. Phrynne nudged Gerald and pointed to them. Gerald nodded. They felt themselves constrained to talk about things which bored them.

The hotel was old and its walls thick. In the empty Lounge the noise of the bells would not prevent conversation being overheard, but still came from all around, as if the hotel were a fortress beleaguered by surrounding artillery.

After their second cups of coffee, Gerald suddenly said he couldn’t stand it.

‘Darling, it’s not doing us any harm. I think it’s rather cosy.’ Phrynne subsided in the wooden chair with its sloping back and long mud-coloured mock-velvet cushions; and opened her pretty legs to the fire.

‘Every church in the town must be ringing its bells. It’s been going on for two and a half hours and they never seem to take the usual breathers.’

‘We wouldn’t hear. Because of all the other bells ringing. I think it’s nice of them to ring the bells for us.’

Nothing further was said for several minutes. Gerald was beginning to realize that they had yet to evolve a holiday routine.

‘I’ll get you a drink. What shall it be?’

‘Anything you like. Whatever you have.’ Phrynne was immersed in female enjoyment of the fire’s radiance on her body.

Gerald missed this, and said, ‘I don’t quite see why they have to keep the place like a hothouse. When I come back, we’ll sit somewhere else.’

‘Men wear too many clothes, darling,’ said Phrynne drowsily.