The Wine-Dark Sea (46 page)

The hotel in Sovastad said it was already fully booked that night, and was none too polite about it either. Had it not been that she and Henry had just stayed in the establishment for a week, and had this not been emancipated Sweden, Margaret might have thought from the demeanour of the reception staff that a foreign woman travelling alone was not welcome as a guest. All three of them glowered at her, as if she were a complete stranger and an undesirable one.
Moreover
, the taxi-driver had brought her case into the hotel and was shifting about apparently almost as eager to be rid of her as were the hotel people.

‘Can you recommend me somewhere else?’

‘The Central.’

‘You realise that I shall be returning here tomorrow?’

They simply stared back at her and said nothing. She imagined that they had not enough English to understand her.

The taxi-driver, with extreme grumpiness, took her to the Central.

The Central was apparently so fully booked that the
elderly
woman behind the desk did not even need to consult her record. In fact, she did not speak at all. She merely shook her head, on which the smooth grey hair surmounted the familiar Swedish bone structure. However, she shook it with great decisiveness.

‘Can you recommend me somewhere else?’

This time Margaret seemed more or less to be understood.

‘Krohn’s.’

Sovastad was only a small town, despite its skilful graft of Scandanavian urbanity, and Margaret appreciated that as the quest continued, standards were bound to sink. Krohn’s was a pension, basically, perhaps, for commercial travellers. None the less, it was clean, bright, and attractive.

It was also full up. This time the reception was in charge of a small boy, with a tousle of wild blond hair larger than his face, and curious, angular eyes. He wore an open white shirt, and a scarlet scarf round his neck. He could speak no English at all, so that it was useless even asking for a
suggestion
of somewhere else. Foreign visitors were unusual at Krohn’s.

The boy stood behind a table (Krohn’s did not rise to a formal reception desk) holding tight to the edge of it, and visibly wishing Margaret out of the place and far away. One might have thought he was quite frightened of her, and
Margaret
supposed it was only reasonable seeing that he was perhaps but ten or eleven, and with not a word he could share with her.

‘Where now?’ she asked the taxi-driver.

It was still only half past ten, but the situation was
becoming
disturbing. Margaret wondered if the taxi-man would by this time suggest that she return for the night to the Kurhus. She began to wish that she was not alone in Sovastad. She supposed that she could have recourse to Henry’s Swedish friends, but it was the last thing she wanted (short of returning to Kurhus) and the last moment at which she would have wanted it. She would have such particularly difficult things to explain, and she was bound to be questioned with solicitous closeness, and probably reported back to Henry in the same spirit.

‘Frälsningsarmén,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Frälsningsarmén,’ he said again. ‘It’s all you’ll get.’

This last could hardly be true, Margaret thought.
Sovastad
was not a large town, but she herself, during the previous week, had seen more than three places at which it seemed possible to stay. Possibly the taxi-driver knew that all were full. Possibly there was some big event in the town which had booked all the beds. She decided at least to have a look at the place the taxi-driver had suggested.

It proved to be a hostel of the Salvation Army.

‘No, really,’ said Margaret; but she was too late.

A woman officer had immediately appeared and was not so much welcoming her in, as drawing her in; pulling at her arm, gently but very firmly, as if already commencing the process of redemption, manifesting the iron goodness beneath the common flesh.

The place proved to look quite agreeable (as well as most astonishingly cheap, to judge from the prominently placed list of charges): more like a normal hotel, though simple and scrubbed, than like Margaret’s idea of a Salvation Army hostel in England, concerning which
Major
Barbara
was her most recent authority. Margaret’s room contained a Bible, a book in Swedish expounding the Bible, a holy picture, and a
selection
of Swedish tracts; there seemed to be no reference to any more direct programme of observance in the establishment.

At one moment, however, when Margaret was lying down, there was a knock at the door, and the officer who had received her, handed her a tract in English. It was entitled ‘Purification’, and the woman passed it over unsmilingly. Margaret had realised already that the woman had very little English. Now Margaret got the impression that the English tract was the fruit of searching in cupboards and chests for something suitable for the visitor from abroad. She felt mildly appreciative of so much trouble on her behalf and smiled as gratefully as she could. The woman went silently away.

There seemed to be no further attempt at Margaret’s conversion.

Indeed, she was perfectly free to go off into the town and eat there or go to the cinema. There was no real reason why she should not be, but she felt faintly surprised all the same. A more real difficulty was that she had already very much seen all there was to be seen in Sovastad, and also very much wanted not to meet at the moment anyone there whom she knew. She therefore read for much of the day and
industriously
washed things; lunched in the hotel or hostel or
whatever
it properly was (the food was primitive but good); and confined herself to sneaking out to dinner in a café she had not before entered. She did not read the tract on purification.

She found the café disappointing. She was hidden away in a corner and served with a rudeness and indifference she had not previously met with in Sweden – or perhaps
elsewhere
either. But Margaret had not travelled very much, and still less on her own. She knew that lone women were often said not to be popular with waiters, or even with restaurant managements. ‘No wonder,’ she thought, ‘that, with one thing and another, women tend to retreat into their little nests.’ Altogether, she reflected, her short period of time away from Henry might well, in one way and another, have been the most vivid and informative of her entire life. She tried to put away the thought. It might at all times be a mistake to know more than one’s husband. She had never before noticed the Swedes as being so dour and unobliging, but that was doubtless something to be learnt too.

That night Margaret slept brokenly and badly. There was heavy traffic in the street outside. Margaret wondered how much worse it would be when Henry’s road was completed; thought warmly of Colonel Adamski; and tried to deflect her mind, though, lying there awake, it was difficult. She explained to herself that she had, after all, consumed very little energy that day; done little but lie about and ruminate.

At some dark and unknown hour, there was a tap at the door. It actually woke Margaret up.

The woman officer entered. Could this be another,
Margaret
instantly thought, who did not sleep? It seemed very unlikely, despite Adamski’s emphasis upon the all-sorts-
to-make
-a-world theme.

The woman was carrying a candle. She walked towards the bed and, without preliminary, asked in her strong accent ‘Would you like me to pray with you? I’m afraid I can pray only in Swedish.’

Margaret sat up, with a view to showing some kind of respect. Then she felt that the black nightdress which Henry liked, might here be a mistake.

‘It’s very kind of you,’ she replied uncertainly.

‘Do not despair,’ said the woman. ‘There is pardon for all. For all who seek it on their knees.’

‘But if I could not understand you –’ said Margaret, trying to cover her unsuitable apparel with her arms. It was neither a very ready nor a very gracious reply, but Margaret, newly awakened from scanty sleep, could think of nothing else.

The woman gazed at her from behind the candle in its cheap tin candlestick.

‘We never force salvation upon any,’ she said, after a longish pause. ‘Those who are able to find it seek it on their own.’

It did seem to Margaret that the woman, having decided to appear at all, could have been more cordial; but she thought she had heard that something of what the woman had said was an item of Salvation Army philosophy.

The woman turned and walked away, shielding the
candle
-flame with her left hand, and quietly closing the door. Margaret felt that she herself would have been obscurely glad of something further; but had to admit that she had offered little encouragement. She returned to her disturbed and scrappy slumbers. The night seemed very long as well as shockingly noisy; and Margaret had troubled thoughts about the morrow.

In the morning, the woman officer was merely quiet and efficient, though still unsmiling, at least where Margaret was concerned. Margaret wished she could have eaten more of the pleasant breakfast, but found that her mind was too full of conflict. Henry was due to arrive before lunch, and in due course she set off for the railway station, this time carrying her own bag. The place where she had stayed seemed to think it the normal thing to do. They did not offer to send for a taxi, and Margaret felt one could hardly ask. Nor did she much care for the taxi-drivers of Sovastad. Perhaps her muscles had strengthened a little, as her vision, for better or for worse, had a little cleared.

‘Had a good time?’

‘Lovely.’

‘You look a bit peeky.’

‘I didn’t sleep very well last night.’

‘Missing me, I hope?’

‘I expect so. How did you get on in Stockholm?’

‘Bloody. These Swedes just aren’t like us English.’

‘Poor Henry.’

‘In fact, I’ve got a problem on my hands. I’ll tell you all about it over lunch.’

Which Henry did. Margaret could not complain that he was one of those husbands who keep from their wives
everything
that they themselves take seriously. And, immediately lunch was over, Henry had to dash off to a different
conference
with Larsson, and Falkenberg, and the other local ogres. Margaret did not have to consider further, as she had been considering now for more than twenty-four hours, how much she should tell Henry. It was unlikely that at any time she would have to tell him anything crucial about what had
happened
to her. ‘You’re still looking under the weather, old girl,’ said Henry, as he tore off. ‘Even the reception people and the waiter seemed to notice it. I saw them glancing at you. I don’t know when I shall be back. I should go and get some sleep. Just trot upstairs and relax.’

He kissed her – really most affectionately.

*

Margaret did not feel at all like sleep; nor, for that matter, did she feel particularly out of sorts. None the less, she went to their room, took off her dress, and sprawled on the bed in her blue lambswool dressing-gown. It was quite reasonable, after last night’s traffic, that she should be short of rest, and perhaps even show it. All the same, no sleep came; and Margaret faced again the problem that there was nothing more to do in Sovastad. Henry’s solution to that would undoubtedly be a resumption of sociabilities with the Larssons and
Falkenbergs
and their kind; which, as he had already observed, would kill two birds with one stone, keep Margaret occupied while assisting business. One reason why Margaret felt unattracted was the time-limit on such associations: she could not, on the instant, become gay and intimate with strangers, and then, on the instant, cut it all off. And it was even worse when the time of cessation was so mobile and indefinite. Margaret could only give, or even take, when she had some consciousness of continuity. Probably, she thought gloomily, it was a serious limitation in the wife of a business man.

In the end, she put on her dress once more, went out to buy three more postcards, and sent them off to her children. She continued to prevent her mind from dwelling upon all that had happened since the previous triptych of postcards to Dinah, Hazel, and Jeremy.

*

But it was not until well past midnight that she began to feel alarmed: to be precise, when she heard the tinkling church clock strike three, as she had heard it strike one and two.

Even then, she thought, it might have been simply the fact that once more she was sleeping with Henry in the room. Heaven knew that Henry slept noisily enough to keep anyone awake, especially one who a second time had exerted herself so little during the day. Henry rolled and squirmed. He groaned and snored and panted. Sometimes he cried out. Margaret had to admit that Henry was not (to use his own idiom) good publicity for the institution of slumber. Not that many would sympathise with his wife’s predicament: it was too utterly ridiculous, and probably too familiar also. A good wife would take it in her stride; restricted though the stride of a good wife might be.

The tinkling clock struck four and five and six, and
Margaret
never slept at all. It also struck a single, delicate note at the intermediate half-hours. At some time after half past six, with heavy rain, which had begun to fall about an hour earlier, beating drearily against the bedroom window, Henry sat up, trained auxiliary to the day’s commands.

At breakfast, he said that she still looked odd, and she noticed that he was watching for the Swedes to be eyeing her. She still did not feel anything out of the ordinary. She had said nothing to Henry about not sleeping. She remarked to herself that to miss one night’s sleep was nothing at all by the standard of people who slept badly. Or, at least, by the proclaimed standard. She had been immensely exposed to the suggestion of insomnia; could hardly have been more exposed. Normality, her own possibly rather notable
normality
of somnolence, would probably be restored when she was returned to her own proper bed. On present evidence, that looked like being the day after tomorrow, but one never knew. The road ruled all.