The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories

by Robert Aickman

  “She slipped out while you were kindly attending to my injury. Never mind. She’s in the room next to yours. The Livingstone Room, we call it.”

  A big brass clock above the large fire struck two. Griselda was surprised it was not later.

  CHAPTER IV

  Trouble began almost as soon as Griselda was back in her bedroom.

  The house, formerly so quiet, not unlike a specialist’s waiting-room, now seemed full of noises. Nor was it only the noise of Pamela snoring like an ox and perfectly audible through the substantial wall, or that of some unknown making periodical clattering trips down a distant passage (could it be Austin Barnes? Griselda wondered). There were constant small disturbances which seemed in her own room, or at least only just outside the door: creaks and jars, of course; but also sudden sussurations, in among the window curtains, near the cabinet containing the shower, or under the bed. To Griselda, overtired as the incident in Mrs. Hatch’s room had suggested she must be, it was almost as if some small animal were loose in the apartment. Rats and mice seemed extremely improbable in such a carefully ordered house. Griselda, used to living out of London, wondered whether some small creature could have entered during the day. She had removed her charming dress and was vaguely endeavouring to fluff up the organdie, flattened and pulled while she had worked on her hostess’s leg: it was certainly true that the garment no longer looked new, as it had looked so far every time she had worn it. Laying down the dress, she began to investigate the room, half-­heartedly examining corners and peering into the angles of the ceiling, not very well illuminated by the concealed lighting. Even a small bird was not out of the question, she thought. As the idea came to her, a screech owl cried very loudly outside her window. Griselda found that she was shivering, slightly clad as she was, and away from the excessive heat of Mrs. Hatch’s bedroom. She drew her dressing-gown from the wardrobe and put it on. It had once been the colour of dying peonies, but Griselda had owned it since her last disastrous year at school.

  Griselda hung up her dress, assumed her pyjamas, and faithfully removed her make-­up. She cleaned her teeth, carefully and thoroughly as always, for she regarded her teeth as attractive. Then, still shivering excessively, she drew back the curtains, opened the window at top and bottom, and leaped from her familiar dressing-­gown into her unfamiliar bed. Outside there was a misty moon, predicting, as usual, a change for the worse in the weather. Inside, the little noises had not abated, but Griselda resolved to ignore them.

  The noises were difficult to define. Nor was it easy to know whether or not any particular one of them was a new noise. One of the worst, and surely a new one, however, was like that of voices muttering. It came and went like a radio set out of order and turned very low; with long pauses of silence. Another was like long nails destructively scratching at smooth hard paintwork. Once a silent bird struck the window very hard, so that Griselda felt surer than ever that another had flown in during the day and was now in the room with her, probably lying exhausted behind a piece of furniture. The sussurating noise was still audible from time to time: it rustled for seconds or minutes in one place, then was long silent before starting elsewhere.

  Griselda slept intermittently until she reached a condition of uncertainty whether she slept or waked. She continued disagreeably cold until she was merely shivering without any distinctive consciousness of being cold at all. At one moment when she was nearer waking than sleeping, she heard the sound of tears, a high-pitched sobbing, somewhat petulant it seemed, but distant and subdued. It was possible, she thought, that Pamela wept in her sleep. Before long the noise, which from the time she first heard it had been growing less and less, died away.

  Several times during the later part of the night Griselda woke from nightmare; but not a detail could she remember even in the first moments of consciousness. She might have been dreaming of things so horrible that the mechanism of repression was forced to clamp down once more on her consciousness in the very instant of waking. But the nightmare had each time seized and penetrated her whole body and mind; it was as if she had been twisted into another identity, mysterious and horrible, which, when she returned, there could be no question of remembering since the two beings had no capacity for memory in common. She shuddered to reflect that this second identity, totally unreachable, lay always behind her face and beneath her thoughts. The strain of having perpetually to maintain the ascendancy over it weighed upon her. Now that she no longer loved her Mother, perhaps it was getting possession of her mind and affecting her gait. In the end none the less, she returned to slumber.

  The worst occurrence of the night was perfectly natural and commonplace. Griselda woke to hear a dog howling. It howled on an unusually shrill whining note. It continued howling for a very long time; for long after Griselda was fully and entirely awake. She lay with her back towards the window listening to the distressing sound and unavailingly searching her memory for a dog in the house. In the end, she was almost reduced to leaving her bed and investigating; but desisted when she saw that the dawn was near. This circumstance, she felt, might be related in some way to the unknown dog’s behaviour; moreover, she had once more started to shiver and shunned the silent chill of the large room. She was uncertain whether the dog had ceased to give tongue before she once more fell asleep.

  With the first symptoms of daylight, the tension in the room melted into appeasement. Griselda subsided into deep quiet sleep, the little noises ebbed, a measure of warmth returned.

  Griselda slept steadily for the time which remained. At the last moment before waking, she seemed to have a dream of a different order. The earlier dreams she never remembered; this one she never forgot. She dreamed of a strange perfect love; a great good, unknown to the waking world; an impossibly beautiful happiness. The rapture of her dream was something new to her. It stayed with her while she rose to wash and dress; and longer.

  CHAPTER V

  A housemaid brought her tea and two rusks on a tray.

  “Pity it’s raining. It’ll spoil tonight.”

  Filled with her dream, Griselda felt happily combative.

  “I don’t see why it should.”

  “All the lovely dresses’ll get sopping wet. And lots won’t come at all if it’s raining.”

  “Perhaps it’ll stop. Rain before seven. Fine before eleven.”

  The housemaid laughed. “Not round ’ere.” Then, looking at Griselda accusingly, she said, “Will I run a bath for you?”

  “No, thank you. I’ll manage it myself if I want it.”

  “The shower’s tricky.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  “Just as you say.” She went.

  Without resorting to the shower, for she hated getting her head wet, Griselda washed carefully all over. She felt that there was no knowing where the day’s events might take her. To meet the changed weather, she put on her coat and skirt, and a woollen jumper.

  Mrs. Hatch was already seated at the head of the breakfast table, dressed precisely as on the day before; but there was no sign of any of her other guests. Monk and Stainer were both in attendance. Before Mrs. Hatch was an enormous congregation of eggs, all so green that they looked as if disease had struck them.

  “Good girl,” said Mrs. Hatch. “Up in proper time and prepared for the weather, I see. You sit next to me. Pamela can sit the other side of me when she chooses to appear. Have some eggs? At Beams we have duck eggs every morning for breakfast. It’s one of our traditions. Take as many as you like. And have some cocoa. We don’t rot our guests with tannin or caffeine until later in the day.”

  “Thank you,” said Griselda. “I’m hungry. May I take two?”

  “For breakfast at Beams no one ever takes fewer than four. Except Mr. Leech, perhaps. I’m sure you don’t want to follow after him. Take another two.”

  Monk raised a huge bowl-­like cup containing about half-­a-­pint of cocoa and conveyed it to Griselda.

  “I think I’ll eat these two first, if I may.”

&
nbsp; “Afraid for your liver?” enquired Mrs. Hatch. “You needn’t be, you know, if you make sure of enough exercise. That reminds me, I plan to take Austin for one of our walks tomorrow. It’ll set him up and blow away all the fug from the dance as well. As you’re a walker too, I’m sure you’d like to join us.”

  “Thank you,” replied Griselda, battering her second egg. “If I’m not too tired after dancing.”

  Mrs. Hatch glanced at her, but at that moment one of the windows was raised from the outside, and Mr. Leech entered over the sill. He looked very tired and dingy.

  “Good morning. I trust I’m not late. I’ve been trying out my old limbs on the trapeze in the garden.”

  “Fine exercise for men,” said Mrs. Hatch. “Useless for women, unfortunately. Help yourself to eggs.”

  With a hand which trembled slightly, Mr. Leech took a single egg.

  Monk, who had departed for the toast, now returned bearing also an armful of mail. He proceeded to sort it and to distribute it among the various places. Most of it seemed to be for Edwin: a vast heap of letters in flimsy envelopes with foreign stamps, and large official packets. The correspondence for the Ellensteins seemed mostly to bear penny and halfpenny stamps. George Goss received a single letter: in a very thick violet envelope, bigger and more massive than usual, and threaded down one side with a fragment of carmine ribbon. The handwriting of the superscription, Griselda could not but observe, was proportionate in size to the envelope. Mrs. Hatch received a few nondescript items, all of which she opened voraciously with the bread-­knife before reading any. Griselda, to her surprise, received a letter from the girl she had known since childhood, and who liked to write to someone sojourning at so distinguished an address as Beams. She had nothing to say and Griselda felt faintly bored by the obligation to reply. Pamela received nothing. Probably, Griselda felt, Pamela never replied to letters, so that people gave up writing. More surprisingly, Mr. Leech seemed to receive nothing either.

  “Mullet is taking Mr. Barnes’s letters up to his room,” remarked Monk.

  Mrs. Hatch said nothing.

  Soon Edwin appeared full of apologies and newspapers. At least six of the latter were under his arm in various stages of mutilation and decomposition.

  “I do hope you will also forgive my taking the liberty of cutting up all your morning papers. I shall, of course, replace the copies later, but Miss Van Bush, my secretary, will be calling immediately after breakfast, and it is best if I can pass the really relevant items on to her right away.” He flourished a little packet with a large red seal. “Clippings. The result of my labours before breakfast. Ah, how really wonderful to see a Beams breakfast again. There is nothing quite like it anywhere else.” Edwin wore a brand-new light grey suit, a dark grey silk shirt, and Old Etonian tie, and an orchid. He began to wade through the expected clutch of eggs.

  George Goss entered in his hairy green tweeds.

  “Good morning, Melanie. Gottfried and Odile ask me to tell you they won’t be down until later.”

  He put his letter to one side unopened, and began to smash away at a bevy of eggs. Immediately he had entered, Monk, Griselda noticed, had slipped away.

  “George,” said Mrs. Hatch. “Would you please put that billet-doux in your pocket or somewhere? No one cares for a good scent more than I do, but that isn’t a good scent. It makes the whole room stink.”

  “The poor little thing hasn’t the cash for the sort of stuff you’d go in for,” remarked George. Inserting a thick finger, he rather clumsily ripped open the envelope.

  Monk returned with a bottle of brandy, about two-­thirds full, which he passed on to Mrs. Hatch. Taking a syphon from the sideboard, he placed it on the table next to George. This seemed the usual method, Griselda observed: Mrs. Hatch normally maintained control of the bottle.

  “Why do you keep her so short?”

  “My dear Melanie, now that I’ve got on in the world, so to speak, I don’t have to keep anyone. There’s always a long line eager to take care of me.”

  He began to read the letter, looking, Griselda thought, like a monstrous sheep which had been dyed green.

  Edwin was working methodically through his heap, opening the letters neatly with an ivory and gold paper-­knife which had been given him by the King of Roumania, and making three piles, one of matter to be handed over to Miss Van Bush, one of items to be answered in his own holograph, and one of empty envelopes.

  A number of the packets containing whole newspapers, often with marked passages. Glancing at one of these, Edwin suddenly rose, and saying to Mrs. Hatch, “Excuse me. Something rather unexpected,” bore it round the table to Mr. Leech, pointed out the significant passage, and said something quietly in Mr. Leech’s left ear. The Prime Minister, who had apparently sunk into a light coma (he had not even finished his egg), stirred very slightly and began to read. After some time had passed with Mr. Leech staring unwinkingly at the paper, Edwin spoke again in his ear.

  At last Mr. Leech slowly nodded twice. “I suppose there’s no help for it,” he said.

  “I imagine that a couple of divisions would suffice, sir,” said Edwin. His voice was still low, but this time fully audible. All of them could appreciate the urgency of the matter.

  “I don’t really know,” said Mr. Leech, still without blinking.

  “Better make it three, perhaps,” said Edwin as before.

  “I’ll consult Mr. Barnes,” said Mr. Leech almost in the tone of one nearing a decision. “Can’t be swayed by the press, you know,” he added roguishly.

  Edwin returned to his place, looking as if a weight had been lifted off his mind. “Sorry Mrs. Hatch,” he said. “So many things happen at the most inconvenient moment.” He began to assault his fourth egg.

  “Melanie,” said George Goss. “Could I have a drink?” He was still less than half way through the prodigious letter. Mrs. Hatch passed him the bottle. He looked round for a tumbler, and, when Monk had brought him one, filled it liberally, passing back the bottle. He resumed reading the love letter, belching every now and then as food reached his empty stomach.

  “Do have some more to eat, Griselda?” said Mrs. Hatch.

  “No thank you very much.”

  “How is Barnes this morning, Mrs. Hatch?” enquired Mr. Leech.

  Mrs. Hatch looked at Monk.

  “Mr. Barnes asked for his breakfast to be taken to his room as you know, madam. Also his letters. Beyond that I know nothing, madam. Shall Stainer ask Mullet?”

  The parlour-­maid glowered. Mrs. Hatch turned to the Prime Minister.

  “Would you like that to be done, Mr. Leech?”

  “Please do not go to any trouble,” replied Mr. Leech. “I’ll find my way to his room and enquire myself later. I must consult him on some business; urgent, alas!”

  George Goss looked up. “Never could see why Austin gave his time to politics at all. Should have thought he had too much red blood in his veins if you know what I mean.”

  Mr. Leech stared at him. “That is just why, Mr. Goss,” he said with unusual fire. “I believe you once painted Barnes’s portrait. You cannot have overlooked the main fact about your sitter: that he is a patriot.”

  George Goss chuckled gutturally. “Poor old Austin,” he said.

  “Austin Barnes is also a magnificent administrator,” said Edwin reprovingly. “A first class man to put in charge of any Department in the Government; is he not, Mr. Prime Minister?”

  “A leader,” replied Mr. Leech. “Certainly a natural leader of men.” He discarded the remains of his egg and began to look round for the marmalade.

  Pamela arrived. She was wearing a simple white silk nightdress and a lilac satin wrapper. The large yawn with which she entered suggested, however, that this costume implied less of coquetry than of the possibility that she had only just awakened. Then Griselda noticed that Pamela was made up with her usual time-consuming elaboration. At her entrance George Goss had actually dropped the letter (he was still far from having completed
reading it). Mrs. Hatch was also staring at Pamela, though less noticeably. “Don’t want anything to eat. Just a cup of coffee.”

  Mrs. Hatch seemed alarmed. “Are you ill?”

  “Slept too long. I’m always doing it.”

  George Goss guffawed.

  “Sit in your place,” said Mrs. Hatch, “and see what you can manage.”

  Pamela subsided into her seat and silence. Monk brought her the usual bowl of cocoa. Edwin began to converse with her on subjects suitable to one who has overslept.

  There was a knock at the door which gave access to the kitchen, and the head was poked in of the housemaid who had awakened Griselda.

  “What is it, Mullet?”

  “Maghull waiting for ’is orders.”

  “Good gracious!” cried Mr. Leech. “It’s no business of mine, I know, but I do think it rash of you still to retain in your employ a man who played such a catastrophic part in the Irish disorders. You will recall that I thought it my duty to warn you on a previous occasion.”

  Edwin tried to indicate that this topic should perhaps be left until the servants were absent.

  “Common enough knowledge,” muttered Mr. Leech, subsiding considerably, however. “But no business of mine, I know.”

  “Tell Maghull,” said Mrs. Hatch, “that he is to take Miss de Reptonville to Hodley immediately, to Mr. Kynaston’s. Then he is to return for further orders. I expect we shall all be very quiet today, preparing for the dance.”

  Mullet went.

  George Goss flipped a fragment of eggshell across the table to Pamela, who was looking particularly disagreeable.

  CHAPTER VI

  It was an unremarkable speculative builder’s two-­bedroom bungalow; one of about a dozen lined up along the fiendishly noisy main road through Hodley. Geoffrey Kynaston himself opened the door, explaining that though he called upon a certain amount of casual assistance, it had at the moment all failed him, so that he was alone in the house. He closed the front door, thin, narrow, ugly, and with small panes of glass at the top to light the little hall; and suggested coffee. It was early and Griselda had just swallowed an excessive quantity of cocoa; but she offered to make it. Kynaston thanked her pleasantly, but said that that would be unnecessary as he had some just off the boil awaiting her arrival. This statement did not increase Griselda’s inclination.