No Fond Return of Love (22 page)

Dulcie longed to ask him for something suitable for drinking in the bedroom of an unlicensed hotel, and she was sure he would have been equal to the challenge, but she kept silent, allowing Viola to ask for a quarter-bottle of Gordon’s gin. Only when he was wrapping it up, respectfully as if it were medicine, did she say anything.

‘Perhaps we should have a corkscrew?’ she suggested nervously.

‘A corkscrew? Oh, madam,’ the salesmanlaughed quite pleasantly, ‘you won’t need
that
, I can assure you.’

‘Really, Dulcie,’ said Viola when they were outside the shop, ‘you did make me feel a fool. Surely you know how a gin bottle opens?’

‘I know you don’t need a corkscrew for champagne,’ said Dulcie, ‘but I’d forgotten about gin.’

‘Dinner is at a quarter to seven,’ said Viola, ‘which is much too early. I can hear the gong now.’ She gulped down her gin and water. ‘I suppose this is the kind of place where they don’t like you to be late.’

There was silence as they entered the dining-room and were shown to a table for two near the door. The window tables were occupied by an elderly couple and what looked like a family party – mother and father and two daughters and a boy of about fifteen, who glared resentfully round the room. At a small table by herself sat a fierce-looking, white-haired woman, extremely thin and surprisingly sunburnt considering the time of year. Her collar bones stood out sharply from the neck of her low-cut blouse – there was something almost aggressive about so much burnt flesh. Two women of about their own age, and a clergyman with his mother, judging by the similarity of features (beaky nose and small pursed mouth), sat at two tables in the centre of the room. A third table was unoccupied, but laid hopefully with the appropriate china and cutlery.

The silence in the room was broken only by the sound of water being poured out into glasses – perhaps the most dismal sound heard on an English holiday, and having nothing in common with the musical trickle of spring water rippling over stones in a mountain stream. The elderly couple in the window had a bottle of lemon barley water on their table. Dulcie thought of the little bottle of gin upstairs and wondered if it could be smelt on their breath.

A plate of bright tomato soup was put before her, and the waitress handed a basket piled with very small squares of white bread.

‘You take bread” she said fiercely, revealing that she was a foreigner and not the gentle, slow-speaking West Country girl that might have been expected. That in itself was saddening and disillus-ioning. Dulcie wanted to remark on it to Viola, but she left it too late, so that the soup-drinking – under cover of which she might have spoken – was finished, and the unnerving silence again descended on the room.

After a moment the clergyman took up the water jug and began to fill glasses for himself and his mother.

‘Don’t do that, Clive,’ came a whisper from one of the window tables, as the mother admonished the fifteen-year-old.

At last, and it was fitting that he should be the one to break the silence, the clergyman made an audible remark. Addressing the white-haired lady, whose table adjoined his, he said tentatively, ‘This must be a change from
Bu
ganda, Miss Fell.’

It was less than he deserved that she should be a little deaf, so that he was forced to repeat his not very brilliant observation, whose inanity she emphasized yet further by saying in a loud bright voice, ‘A change from Uganda – it certainly is!’

‘What a lovely title for a novel that would be,’ Dulcie whispered, ‘and one can see that it would be almost easy to write. The plot is beginning to take shape already …’

‘I suppose one should say Bwganda to be strictly accurate,’ laboured the clergyman with unnecessary pedantry, but his efforts had not been in vain, for now a general conversation started between the tables.

It seemed that Miss Fell was a missionary, a sister of the owner of The Anchorage. She was on leave, or ‘furlough’, as she called it, from Uganda, where she was headmistress of a girls’ school.

‘I hope you got your walk before the rain started,’ she said to the clergyman’s mother.

‘Yes, we went quite a way. In fact, we
saw
the castle in the distance, but of course we couldn’t have gone in.’

‘No, it doesn’t open to the public till Saturday,’ said Miss Fell. ‘I often wonder what old Miss Forbes would have thought, to see all those people traipsing through the rooms. It’s really a mercy she i. Âť can t.

Some thin slices of meat were now served, and little dishes with just enough vegetables for two were placed on the table. Remembering that it was Friday – and Good Friday, too – Dulcie glanced to see whether the clergyman was having fish. But he was not, and did not appear to object to what was put before him. Dulcie was disappointed, having hoped for some spirited protest or whispered conference between him and the waitress. She supposed he must be rather Low Church.

‘Old Miss Forbes,’ repeated Viola in a low tone, and of coursc Dulcie had noticed it too. It was odd how a name would crop up when one happened to be interested in it. ‘I suppose that’s the castk you see from the train,’ Viola went on.

‘Yes, we must go and look over it,’ said Dulcie. ‘You never know, there might be some connection.’ She would have liked to join in the general conversation and find out more about it, but the subject had now been left, and walks in the neighbourhood were being discussed.

It was at this point that somebody came to the unoccupied table, but as she was a woman of about forty, ordinary-looking and unaccompanied, nobody took much notice of her. As it happened, she was a novelist; indeed, some of the occupants of the tables had read and enjoyed her books, but it would never have occurred to them to connect her name, even had they ascertained it from the hotel register, with that of the author they admired. They ate their stewed plums and custard and drank their thimble-sized cups of coffee, quite unconscious that they were being observed.

The thought of the small ‘lounge’, crowded with chairs and tables, was insupportable, so Dulcie and Viola went up to their bedroom. Sitting aimlessly in bedrooms – often on the bed itself – is another characteristic feature of English holidays. The meal was over and it was only twenty-five past seven.

‘The evening stretches before us,’ said Viola gloomily. ‘What shall we do with it?’

‘I should like to have another look at Eagle House,’ said Dulcie. ‘It’s dark now and we must decide whether we’re going to stay there or not, as they can’t have us here.’

‘I don’t want to stay here,’ said Viola. ‘Let’s go boldly to Eagle House and see if they can take us.’

‘They might be in the middle of dinner now,’ said Dulcie doubtfully.

‘Well, we can wait a little – we could always go into one of the hotels and have a drink.’

‘Another?’ said Dulcie nervously. ‘But I can see now that it’s a way of passing the time.’

‘There’s a big hotel on the sea front,’ Viola suggested. ‘There might be a bit of life there.’

They put on their coats and went down the road that led to the beach. The distance was what The Anchorage in its description claimed it to be – ‘sea 500 yds’. It was dark and quiet there, for the tide was out and nothing was to be seen but wet glistening sand and large stones.

‘I suppose they have fairy lights strung along these trees in the season,’ said Viola rather sadly.

‘It must look quite gay,’ Dulcie agreed.

An elderly man with an Aberdeen terrier passed them.

‘It must be strange to live at the seaside all the year round,’ Viola observed. ‘Look – there’s the hotel I was thinking of – the Bristol. It seems to be the biggest one. Shall we go in?’

‘Yes, but let’s peer first,’ said Dulcie. ‘This is the dining-room, obviously.’

A middle-aged couple, looking like people in an advertisement – she in pearls and a silver fox cape over a black dress, he in a dark suit – sat at a table in the window. A waiter bent over them – ‘deferentially’, Dulcie supposed, helping them to some fish – turbot, surely? Its white flesh was exposed before them. How near to the heart of things it seemed!

‘What is that sauce one has with turbot?’ Dulcie asked. ‘
Du
something or other. I suppose this is only one course of dinner at the Hotel Bristol. I feel quite hungry again. Do we go in by this side door – where it says “American Bar”?’

‘I suppose so.’ Viola pushed open the door and led the way. A young man in a white coat stood behind a bar polishing glasses; otherwise it was empty. Some small tables had on them dishes of olives and potato crisps. Dulcie and Viola sat down at one of these.

‘Two gins and tonic, please,’ said Viola, in a rather high voice as if she were nervous: and indeed, it did seem quite an ordeal to break the silence, like getting up to ask the first question after a lecture.

‘It’s like a poorly-attended church,’ whispered Dulcie. ‘Or even a cathedral.’

I expect it’s pretty lively in the season,’ said Viola doggedly.

The barman finished polishing glasses and began to read a newspaper. It was a relief that he did not show any signs of wanting to make conversation.

They finished their drinks rather more quickly than they had intended, said ‘Good night’ to the barman, and found themselves again by the dining-room window.

‘They’re eating roast duck now,’ said Dulcie. ‘I can hardly bear it. I think we must go to Eagle House now and book our rooms.’

‘You’re sure we want to stay there?’ asked Viola doubtfully.

‘I don’t know about “want”,’ said Dulcie, ‘but we’re going to. I can feel it. The whole thing now has the inevitability of Greek tragedy.’

They walked on in the dark until they came to Eagle House. Seen at close quarters and at night there was something strangely impressive about it, so that the artist’s picture did not seem so much exaggerated as they had at first thought. There were indeed little turrets and narrow Gothic windows and the general effect was one of size and mystery, increased by the fact that the place seemed to be in total darkness.

‘Perhaps they are all at dinner, round the back somewhere,’ Viola whispered. ‘Is this the main entrance?’

‘It’s the sort of door that looks as if it’s never opened,’ said Dulcie. ‘Or only when a Stuart king ascends the throne of England. But 
this
door seems to be open and there’s a dim light on inside. We’d better go in here. It seems to be a kind of lounge,’ she added, trip-ping over a small footstool. The floor seemed to be littered with them, like toadstools. ‘I don’t recognize
this
from the photograph.’

‘What extraordinary pictures!’ Viola exclaimed. ‘Coloured prints of the Pre-Raphaelites, aren’t they? “The Death of Guinevere”!’ she read, peering at one of them. ‘Where on earth did they get these?’

‘There’s a room leading out of here. Ah,
this
is it – the Corner of the Residents’ Lounge in the photograph!’ cried Dulcie enthusiastically. She approached a glass-fronted bookcase and opened one of the doors. ‘Novels by Marie Corelli and Florence Barclay.
Kelly’s Directory of Somerset
for 1905.
Aylwin
  –  of course! that’s where he got his name. And a bound volume of
Every Woman’s Encyclopaedia
for 1911 – that’s the one I’ve got.’

‘Dulcie, we can’t stay here like this,’ said Viola firmly. ‘We must find somebody to ask about booking rooms. There seems to be a kind of reception desk through here – perhaps somebody will come if we wait.’

‘Listen,’ said Dulcie. ‘I can hear voices through that door.’

They were quiet and heard a woman’s voice with a pronounced West Country accent and a cultured man’s voice engaged in conversation.

‘Yes, I could,’ said the man, ‘but I don’t feel that’s a very good way to start married life. I’d rather make my own choice, if it has to be. Did you hear somebody outside? I’ll go and see who it is.’

‘You’d better leave that to me, Nev,’ said the woman. ‘You wouldn’t know what to say.’ She laughed roughly. ‘Good evening, ladies. What can I do for you?’

Actually confronted by Mrs Forbes, Dulcie could think of nothing to say, so surprised was she by her air of total unlikeness to Aylwin. It was Viola who inquired about the rooms. Dulcie was peering behind the desk to the room leading away from it, where a clergyman in a cassock was standing facing her. Neville Forbes at last, she thought. Is this why we have come here?

‘I see that dogs are not allowed in the public rooms,’ she said impulsively, for he had come out as if to speak to her.

‘Aren’t they?’ He turned to where she was reading from a printed notice. ‘Oh, I see. Well, I expect we could make an exception for yours.’

‘I haven’t got one,’ Dulcie blurted out.

‘We are going upstairs to see the rooms,’ said Viola sharply.

The four of them ascended a wide staircase, covered in dark red Turkey carpet. Mrs Forbes led them along a corridor, lined with closed doors and with engravings of violent battle scenes on the walls. It was all as quiet as the grave – as if nobody had ever penetrated behind the doors, which must surely conceal some dreadful secret. At last she stopped at one, which she unlocked from a bunch of keys, and stood aside for Dulcie and Viola to go in.

A double bed, covered with a white honeycomb quilt, dominated the room. Had the brochure said ‘hot and cold water in all bedrooms’? Dulcie wondered, for she could not see any. And a double bed! Viola would never stand for that. But this is Aylwin Forbes’s mother, she told herself firmly, impossible though it may seem. They would have to accept what she offered.

It was with shame and relief that she heard Viola, who was perhaps less conscious of the sacredness of the relationship, protesting and saying to Mrs Forbes in a firm tone, ‘I’m very sorry, but this room won’t be at all suitable. We should want one with two beds and hot and cold water – or two single rooms.’

Mrs Forbes was silent for a moment, but a crafty look had come into her eyes.

‘It would be more expensive,’ she said at last. ‘And there’d be a double lot of sheets. You wouldn’t believe the price of this old laundry here, robbers they are.’

‘Yes, laundries are expensive, I know,’ said Dulcie, anxious to please, but feeling at the same time that it was hardly fitting for a hotel proprietress to fall back on this kind of excuse for not offering her visitors single rooms. ‘Are all these other rooms taken?’ she asked, indicating the closed doors on either side of the corridor.