The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories

by Robert Aickman

  “Hullo. I’m afraid I know no one else here but you. Can you tell me who some of these people are?”

  “Don’t know. I’m strictly orthodox.”

  “How interesting! In what way?”

  “Full Anglican. I accept the Thirty-­Nine Articles. Unconditionally.” Ruth looked round for somewhere to deposit the ice cream glass.

  “Well, so do I, I suppose.”

  “What’s Article Thirty-­three?”

  “I can hardly recall the exact words.”

  “Then you’re not an Anglican, are you?” Ruth was reduced to laying the receptacle in much jeopardy on the floor.

  “Can you recite Article Thirty-­three?” This feeble rejoinder was the best Mrs. Iblis could muster. It was so long since one had been at school.

  “That person which by open denunciation of the Church is rightly cut off from the unity of the Church and excommunicated ought to be taken of the whole multitude of the faithful as a Heathen and Publican until he be openly reconciled by penance and received into the Church by a Judge that hath authority there­unto.”

  “Not a very Christian sentiment surely?” Mrs. Iblis inquired almost involuntarily.

  “Why not?”

  “More like the Church of Rome. Excommunication and penance, you know.”

  “I do penance daily.” Ruth’s voice was dreamy, her eyes blank.

  “You can hardly be as wicked as that!” But Mrs. Iblis’s mind recalled the alarming figure she had seen upstairs in the passage, and was instantly less sure.

  “Not wicked. Sinful.”

  “Is there any difference?”

  “Sin is a sense of something larger than oneself.”

  “Ah, now I understand you.” Mrs. Iblis began to glance about for some sign of tea, surely overdue. “I think that is something we all feel.”

  But Ruth ignored her. “To merge,” she cried in her soft, light voice. “To break through the barrier and become One. For a single infinitely small person to meet the infinitely vast. The end of every pilgrimage must be orthodoxy.” Her eye lighted upon a fellow guest the other side of the room. “You see that man to the left of the big ‘Annunciation’?”

  “The red-­haired one in tweeds?”

  “He’s a Lewisite. He’s misplaced, like me.”

  “I thought lewisite was a kind of explosive.”

  Ruth merely said in the most casual way, “Have you read Arrival and Departure?”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to look for another ice.”

  Before she had disappeared, Mrs. Iblis had time to ask: “Do you know what time we get tea?”

  Ruth replied: “Any time you like. Ask at the buffet in the billiard room.” And she was gone before Mrs. Iblis had completed the horrifying realization that at Bunhill there were no regular meals.

  The better to face the situation, Mrs. Iblis opened her handbag and produced a compact. Peering into the little mirror, she failed to notice that two strange men now stood before her.

  “Permit me to introduce my friend, Professor Dr. Borgia, principal of the Demokratischereligion Gesellschaft of Zürich.” The speaker was a rotund young man of highly educated accent and masterful demeanor.

  “How do you do? I suppose you must be used to people asking whether you are really one of the Borgias?”

  “But natürlich I am one of the Borgias.” The professor had the strongest of Teutonic accents. He was a slight, worn, Semitic-­looking figure, with large fanatical eyes. “The Borgias were a great aristocratische family of old Spain. My family.”

  The rotund young man said: “I am sure you will both have much to say. Will you excuse me if I seek a word with Dr. Spade?” He was gone.

  Professor Borgia rolled his eyes. “Have you found spiritual proficiency, gnädige Frau? You see I come straight from the point.”

  Mrs. Iblis considered carefully. “Well, actually, not yet, I think.”

  “Mine is the shortest way to truth.” His diction had much of the charm of the German classical actor, the aptitude for making the most commonplace words profound and stirring. “I am in a sense a commercial traveler for God.” This was uttered in a tone which recalled Manfred confronting the abyss. “You have first to sign your name only.” He was holding out a quite fat booklet closely printed in a way which reminded Mrs. Iblis of Dutch seed catalogues.

  “Thank you very much. I shall look forward to reading it.”

  “Reading alone will not avail. Words reach only the mind. It is the spirit, the Geist, we grope for, nicht wahr?”

  “I suppose so.” Mrs. Iblis was beginning to feel cowed and upset, unequal to life.

  “Do you come much to Switzerland?” He pronounced the English name so elaborately that Mrs. Iblis had difficulty in following him.

  “Only for the winter sports, I’m afraid. And that not for some years now.”

  “Ach, so? But no matter. We are starting an Enfiedelei in London this very winter. There will be your rebirth.”

  At this point it dawned on Mrs. Iblis that quite possibly the rotund young man had merely intended to unload upon her a bigger than ordinary bore, a person recognized to be such even in this company.

  Excusing herself, she began firmly to look for the billiard room. The professor stood quite still, smiling after her retreating figure.

  En route she passed a particularly frenzied group, at the center of which a man was saying, “Now can’t we reduce our differences to a few simple points which we could talk over?” This, though Mrs. Iblis did not know it, was her host.

  “What is the use of words if the spirit is wrong?” screamed out a woman whose style of looks Mrs. Iblis considered obsolete, and who wore a complex, black tea gown. For people who set so little store by words, they seemed to Mrs. Iblis remarkably dependent on them.

  There were only ten or eleven people at the buffet, eating and drinking not being primary interests of the present gathering (unlike some at Bunhill). The billiard room also contained two tables, on one of which a couple of young waiters were playing half-­hearted snooker. Above the dark brown mantelpiece was a huge vague-­colored drawing of a Universal City designed by Patrick Geddes. A new strip-­lighting system had been installed; but something had gone wrong with it and instead of giving better than daylight, it emitted a depressing yellow red glare as dusk descended outside.

  As Mrs. Iblis stood drinking Indian tea and nibbling a maid of honor, a massive figure approached her, wearing enormous highly polished shoes.

  “And what do you make of it all?” The accent was transatlantic.

  “I’m afraid I know very little about it. I’m not really a member of the Forum.”

  “Nor I, ma’am. I just dropped in to see that Coner’s on the right lines.”

  “And is he?” There seemed nothing else to say.

  “Well now, I’m a Canadian. I’m also a businessman and editor, like Coner. But that doesn’t mean I’m impervious to spiritual values. Quite the contrary. The one thing the whole world needs, the one thing every man’s heart is sighing for—and every woman’s­—is a big spiritual revival. And what I say is, it’s up to us servants of the public to get things rolling.”

  “I always think the press could be such an influence for good,” said Mrs. Iblis, selecting an éclair. “After all, it’s foolish not to take things as we find them.”

  “Sure, sure. Those are wise words, ma’am. I swear to you that not a copy goes out of a single journal in my group without it contains both a passage from the good book and some words of cheer by one of a panel of leading ministers.”

  “That must be very nice for your readers.” Mrs. Iblis wished she had a larger handkerchief on which to deposit some of the sticky chocolate now coating her fingers. Nonetheless, she took a second éclair.

  “You should see the thankful letters. Never less than sixty a day and often above the century. I tell you they make me a humble man. But I’m not a narrow man either, and I tell you something more is needed.”

&nb
sp; “Yes?” said Mrs. Iblis.

  “After all, what are sects? What are denominations, creeds, dogmas, rituals? Aren’t we all the same where it really matters—in our hearts? What are the little orthodoxies besides the great universal need, man’s eternal quest for something larger than his puny self? That’s what I’m doing here this very afternoon. Watching Coner pull the old country’s socks up.” His somewhat inflexible features almost beamed upon Mrs. Iblis.

  “You think all this will really lead to something useful?” She turned to the buffet. The waiter was at the other end, and Mrs. Iblis raised her voice: “Could I have another cup of tea, please?”

  “Sure, sure. There’s just nothing that can’t be had if you’ll give your soul for it.” Mrs. Iblis turned back to him with some surprise; but now he had seized the sleeve of a cadaverous, academic-­looking young man with an enormous Wellingtonian nose. “And you, sir. What do you think?”

  The young man merely snatched away his sleeve without a word or even a glance. He was like a preoccupied child. In ardent tones, he addressed his friend: “You know, Neville, I’ve found that much of the best modern thought, the really deep stuff, now comes from inside the Salvation Army.”

  “I still remain faithful to the dear old Hibbert Journal. That and my Karma Research Group. Let’s have a cup of char, then I’ll tell you about a new technique we’re working on to accelerate the ecstasy.” His voice had hushed almost to inaudibility. They glanced at one another, conscious of secrets shared.

  The Canadian was now conversing with an enormously fat woman in a cassock. About her neck, on the end of a brass chain, hung an object which Mrs. Iblis fancied was called an anhh. Or was it a crux ansata?

  At this point an exceedingly attractive woman entered the billiard room accompanied by a positive throng of unusually handsome young men. She wore a gray nurse’s uniform made of silk, like the nurse’s uniforms worn by film stars in the early silent days, and a high white collar. Mrs. Iblis had been about to leave the billiard room but, supposing that this might be Sister Nuper, remained for a moment.

  The posse advanced upon the buffet, laughing and calling loudly for refreshments, which seemed to be brought to them with more alacrity than had attended the service of the other guests. They stood in a group exchanging merry commonplaces, carefree, exuberant. They were totally unlike the rest of the Forum, but no one other than Mrs. Iblis and the waiter seemed to be taking any particular notice of them. To Mrs. Iblis, however, they seemed in the end even to be engaged in parodying the transactions around them.

  “And what faith are you, my pretty maid?” cried out an Apollo-like young man.

  And Sister Nuper (if she it was) instantly replied in a cooing, but perfectly clear, voice: “I worship St. Nicholas, sir,” she said.

  At this all the young men laughed very loudly. The group made Mrs. Iblis feel a wild girl again. But the billiard room was emptying and the waiter beginning to assemble supper dishes and bottles of beer. Mrs. Iblis felt she could not stay longer without becoming conspicuous, possibly a butt, not for any sort of unkindness (the group did not seem unkind), but simply for witty remarks calling for witty answers which she had never been able to provide, even long after the need. Before she left, she noticed through the line of long windows that the lurid light in the billiard room seemed to have its counterpart in a livid autumnal glare outside. Was it something to do with the equinox, she wondered.

  “Shall I find you a chair?” The speaker was a shaggy, elderly, paternal figure.

  “That would be very kind of you. Such tiring weather.”

  He guided her gently forward by the arm. They reached a small sofa. He seated himself beside her. This was not exactly what she wanted.

  “Permit me to introduce myself. O’Rorke: founder of the New Vision Movement, small for the present, it is true, but a veritable seed of mustard, if I may quote from an anachronistic scripture.”

  “How do you do? My name is Iblis. Mrs. Iblis.”

  “Ah yes.” He seemed abstracted. “I think I have convinced Mr. Coner. I think I have moved his heart to see that a new world demands a new faith and will not be put off.” The speaker appeared to be at least seventy-­five.

  “There have indeed been many changes.”

  “But still we worship the old false gods! Still we prostrate ourselves before the concepts of medieval anthropomorphism.” He looked exactly like a cathedral figure of St. Peter.

  “Life is not easy,” said Mrs. Iblis.

  “But need we therefore rend ourselves like vultures? Can we not seek the truth each in his own way? Or, of course, hers? After all, in every heart is an unimaginable arcana: must we sell out to the money changers of the temple? Evil is, after all, so very small.”

  Mrs. Iblis looked up. “Is it?”

  “Indeed it is. In how many mythologies the Devil is represented as a little fellow, as Mannikin or Peterkin, and how rightly! It is only the sophisticated theologians who make him vast and roaring and terrible: in order that we may be afraid of him and in their power. But pluck up your heart, Mrs.—er—” He stumbled for the name. “Only God is vast and great: that is to say, Good; for they are one and the same.”

  “How convincingly you put it!” Mrs. Iblis said this without the slightest irony. It was merely that the lowering weather was giving her a headache. Even as she passed her hand across her brow, there was a distant roll of thunder, too faint to be generally heard above the many voices, the diversities of business.

  “It is God who speaks through me,” said the patriarch modestly. “Or rather Good, the life spirit of the universe, to which it is within all of us to hearken.”

  Mrs. Iblis wondered whether Sister Nuper could produce some aspirin. Somehow it seemed improbable. It also seemed almost impossible to ask her.

  Suddenly, however, the chic but world-­worn figure of Mrs. Coner leaned over the back of the sofa and spoke in Mrs. Iblis’s ear.

  “Mavis tells me that you are unfortunately not feeling too good.” Mrs. Iblis had not consciously set eyes on Mavis since her arrival.

  “I have a slight headache, I’m afraid. It is foolish of me. The weather, I think.”

  “Take my advice and have a rest on your bed. Mavis is mixing you a draught.”

  With relief, Mrs. Iblis rose to her feet. “You are very kind.” She addressed the patriarch: “Please excuse me. I’m not feeling very well, I’m afraid. I am going to rest for a little. I expect we shall meet again later.”

  He grasped her hand and held it. “Hold on to the spirit, Mrs.— er—I shall confidently await your return—purged and splendid.” It was not quite what was usually said in such circumstances.

  Mrs. Coner came with her upstairs. As they passed the door to the Louise Room, Mrs. Coner said: “We’ve been having some trouble there, I’m afraid. Mavis thought that Rabbi Morocco and your friend Mr. Stillman would have a lot in common. Anyway, she didn’t expect Rabbi Morocco to turn up at all. But he has. And he and Mr. Stillman seem to be somehow different kinds of Jews. I don’t really get it. They always seem to cause some sort of trouble, don’t they?” She and Mrs. Iblis exchanged glances.

  Lying on Sister Nuper’s double bed was a girl in her underclothes and black silk stockings. Her thick black hair was drawn into a ballet dancer’s bun, and she was reading a tome by Karl Barth.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Coner. I thought Sister Nuper wouldn’t mind.” She sat up, staring at Mrs. Iblis.

  “I am sure she won’t, Patacake. But haven’t we given you a room?”

  “Can’t stop. Have to get back to the Shelter.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Coner didn’t seem to like her very much. But she did her duty as hostess. “This is Mrs. Iblis. Lady Cecilia Capulet.”

  “How do you do?” said Mrs. Iblis. “Please don’t move.” But her head was splitting, and she very much hoped that Lady Cecilia would move.

  “I must go anyway.” With great elegance she crossed to the window and looked out between the bright Gordon Russel cur
tains. “Oh God, it’s raining.”

  Mavis appeared, bearing a large graduated glass filled to the brim with a blue green liquor, seething and opaque.

  “Vincent’s special,” said Mrs. Coner. “Drink it down.”

  “You’re really very kind,” said Mrs. Iblis weakly. She sipped. Mavis, she noticed, had changed her dress and now wore a flame-colored model, very out of key with her apparent general temperament. Lady Cecilia was washing her hands and forearms with great thoroughness.

  “It’s almost pure peptomycin,” said Mavis encouragingly.

  The beverage tasted of liquid candle-­grease gone flat with the years.

  “Down the hatch,” said Mrs. Coner, displaying for the first time the slightest hint of impatience.

  There was a terrific crash of thunder. The four women looked at one another momentarily. Mrs. Iblis felt quite frightened.

  “Christ!” ejaculated Lady Cecilia. “Can you lend me a mack, Mavis?”

  “Of course, Patacake—if you’ll give me five minutes.” Mavis collected the now empty glass (a sticky bright yellow sediment occupied the last inch of it), said “Thank you” to Mrs. Iblis, and departed. It was now thundering briskly.

  “Well now,” said Mrs. Coner, once more sensibly sympathetic. “Lie down with your feet up so that the vapors can rise, and get some sleep. When you’re better, come down again. The Forum will carry on most of the night, I expect, so you needn’t rush things.” She dragged out the bolster from the head of the bed and put it under Mrs. Iblis’s feet. Mrs. Iblis had cast off her shoes but did not care to remove her dress, being conscious that her underclothes compared unfavorably with Lady Cecilia’s. Lady Cecilia was now carefully rubbing under her arms with (presumably) Sister Nuper’s Arrid.