by Henry Green
'What's this?' he says, 'in a committee meeting?' He smells faintly of whisky.
'Go away,' says Claire to him, 'we're busy. Run along now,' she said, and as he went and was just opening the door to go in to Max and Angela, and as they stayed silent so that Max should not hear anything through that open door, the man who had followed Miss Fellowes and whom Alex had taken for a detective also came round that same corner and made after Robert. Julia whispered: 'Oh dear, who's this? What can he want?' she said as he went in after Mr Hignam, 'or is it another friend of Max's we have to do with?'
Max, when he saw Hignam, thought it would be best to find out what he could about Amabel rather than pretend he had always known she would be coming, for there was no knowing what she might have said while she was alone with them, so he asked him, 'What's this about Amabel?' Miss Crevy took this to mean that Max had believed her when she had, so she thought, told on Alex. But Mr Hignam had no time to reply that he knew nothing before that false detective was on to him. Putting his head inside he said, 'I want you,' in educated accents this time.
'Yes,' said Robert, taken aback. 'Well, what for? Right you are, I'll come outside,' he said.
They walked up that corridor where his wife and those two others could not hear them and then Mr Hignam asked again what might be wanted of him.
'How is she?'
'How's who? My aunt, you mean? I say, who are you?'
'She were mortal bad I reckon when I see her took upstairs,' this strange man said, speaking now in Brummagem. 'Now don't misunderstand me,' he said. 'I don't mean any harm, just a civil inquiry, that's all. You see I was sitting nigh her when she was taken bad,' and by now he was speaking ordinarily, 'and I think I'll just ask after her.'
'She's better, thank you,' Robert answered, and began to see how he could use this man.
'Well, 'ere's a to-do if you like with this fog and none being able to get off to their own fireside like with no trains running on account of it. But I'm right glad to 'ear from you as she's better. Of course it's different for the likes of you as can afford it, and thank God for it, I say. I'm not one of those as 'olds there ought only to be the poor and no rich in this world, but it's different for you so it is as can take rooms and be a bit comfortable like instead of 'aving to stand like cattle waiting to be butchered in that yard beneath. Not but what I thought,' he said going back to Miss Fellowes, 'she looked terrible ill down there in that tea-room where I was just getting a bit of comfort down inside me. I remember it now,' he said, smacking his lips.
'What did she have down there?'
'Why, bless my soul, not more than one small whisky on account of 'ow strange she was feeling, I'll be bound. The properest lady that ever stepped,' he added. 'I felt sorry for her, that I did; aye and I thought to myself, my lad, I thought, you can go and ask after her, you know a real lady when you sees one. She's a goner.'
'She's what?'
'Oh, aye, she's a goner. She's your aunt, you said. Yes, I don't give her long.'
'You know better than the doctor then.'
'Aye she's a goner.'
'Look here, you doing anything just now, what? I mean if I slipped you ten bob, could you get outside?'
'What for?'
'Ten bob.'
'No, what d'you want me to do?' he said in his educated voice again.
'Only to go out and find Miss Julia Wray's man who's called Thomson and ask him if her luggage is all right. He ought to be with it down in that place where it's registered.'
After some difficulty Robert got him off and went back to be with Angela and Max. Before he could reach their room Julia called out to him and asked who had that man been and what did he want, Robert answered he had sent him out to find Thomson as she seemed so upset about her luggage, and as he said it he showed how pleased he was; he thought he was killing two birds with one stone. And as he went in and Angela began to ask him this same question, Julia said how perfectly sweet of Robert, and then added to herself, but not that man, couldn't he have gone himself, not that man of all men? She looked so distracted, Claire said to her: 'Now, darling, don't get in a fuss.'
When Mr Hignam had explained, Angela said: 'But you can't treat him like that, he's the hotel detective.'
'He's not.'
'But, Robert, I tell you he is,' she said, using his Christian name for the first time. 'Alex found that out when he came in before, and I was here.'
'He isn't one.'
This she could take from Max but not from Robert. 'How do you know he isn't one?' she said, going white under her make-up. All of a sudden she was so angry she began to tremble from her toes up.
And Amabel was just drying hers on a towel. The walls were made of looking-glass, and were clouded over with steam; from them her body was reflected in a faint pink mass. She leaned over and traced her name Amabel in that steam and that pink mass loomed up to meet her in the flesh and looked through bright at her through the letters of her name. She bent down to look at her eyes in the A her name began with, and as she gazed at them steam or her breath dulled her reflection and the blue her eyes were went out or faded.
She rubbed with the palm of her hand, and now she could see all her face. She always thought it more beautiful than anything she had ever seen, and when she looked at herself it was as though the two of them would never meet again, it was to bid farewell; and at the last she always smiled, and she did so this time as it was clouding over, tenderly smiled as you might say good-bye, my darling darling.
Angela's raised voice came through to her.
'She sounds cross,' she said to Alex, and he replied she was cross by nature, she did such dreadful things. 'It was too intolerable,' he told her, 'there was this young man of hers, he had gone before you came, and she left him outside and made me come in where I am now, sent me out again into that corridor and then clapped her hands as though she was slapping my face.'
'Oh, no!'
'Yes, it's true.'
'Alex, my dear, how very funny. Wasn't it a bit hard on you?' she said to humour him, and went on drying herself. Her bath-towel was huge and she slowly rubbed every inch of herself with it as though she were polishing. She was gradually changing colour, where she was dry was going back to white; for instance, her face was dead white but her neck was red. She was polishing her shoulders now and her neck was paling from red into pink and then suddenly it would go white. And all this time she dried herself she moved her toes as if she was moulding something.
When Alex came to an end she had not properly heard what he had been saying so she said something almost under her breath, or so low that he in his turn should not catch what she had said, but so that it would be enough to tell him she was listening.
As she went over herself with her towel it was plain that she loved her own shape and skin. When she dried her breasts she wiped them with as much care as she would puppies after she had given them their bath, smiling all the time. But her stomach she wiped unsmiling upwards to make it thin. When she came to dry her legs she hissed like grooms do. And as she got herself dry that steam began to go off the mirror walls so that as she got white again more and more of herself began to be reflected.
She stood out as though so much health, such abundance and happiness should have never clothes to hide it. Indeed she looked as though she were alone in the world she was so good, and so good that she looked mild, which she was not.
She put out her tongue and carefully examined this. Then she smiled herself good-bye again and began to powder all over her.
'What on earth are you doing?' he said. 'I don't believe you listened to a word I said.'
'Is Max out there, d'you suppose?'
'I don't know. Shall I go and find him?'
'No, of course not. Let him find me.'
'As you are? In or out of your bath?'
'No such luck for him,' she said, and laughed. She began whistling.
Max said he would ask Alex what he thought this man had been, it seemed to him a natural
excuse to see what they were doing. Going in he found Alex wearily leaning his shoulder against the shut door of that bathroom.
'Hullo, old boy!'
'Amabel,' said Max.
'Why, hullo, darling,' she said. 'I'm having a bath.'
'Good,' he said.
Angela came in. 'Alex,' she said, 'didn't you say that man was the hotel detective?'
'What man?'
'The man you gave a drink to.'
'I thought he might be, but I shouldn't think so.'
He could not have been, for now that he was trying to get out of this hotel, and it was like trying to get out of one world into another, no one in authority seemed to know him. If they let people out they said then they would have to allow them in, they had experienced that before when everything had been broken up, no, he could not go outside. Then he asked them what right they had to keep him in, and they told him it was to protect their own property. He had said he must go out, and then each of those officials had left him.
In the lounge where he was now it was even fuller than it had been. Every seat was occupied and people sat about on their bags as they had done outside when there had been room to sit down. One wall had windows high up along it which looked out over the station, and on their outside ledges were perched young men, mostly amusing themselves at the guests inside. These youths were putting out their yellow tongues at one old lady seated by him, and while he thought how he could get out he watched her shake her paper at them. As he always interfered he told her not to bother, and in this he was right, as she encouraged them by showing temper. But she would not listen. 'Go away,' she said, and once she had said that began mouthing soundlessly, go away, articulating with her lips at those youths behind glass. They caught on to this and mouthed back through the shut window, only what they brought soundless out were obscenities. He could read their lips, but she never knew. He said to her, 'Now don't you go and throw something at them, ma'am, it would not be proper in someone in your position and you might never know what you got back.' 'Go away,' she said out loud again.
Although all those windows had been shut there was a continual dull roar came through them from outside, and this noise sat upon those within like clouds upon a mountain so they were obscured and levelled and, as though they had been airmen, in danger of running fatally into earth. Clouds also, if they are banked up, will so occupy the sky as to dwarf what is beneath and this low roar, which was only conversation in that multitude without, lay over them in such a pall, like night coming on and there is no light when one must see, that these people here were obscured by it and were dimmed into anxious Roman numerals.
Not putting this into words he did feel relieved when he got into a passage where it was emptier, though three people lay at full length against one wall. Seeing another stranger come out of one door to go into another, 'Hi, Charlie,' he shouted, not knowing his name, and stopped him. These three sleepers moaned in their darkness. 'Charlie,' he went on, coming up to him, 'any way out of 'ere?' 'No, lad, it's all shut up.' 'But say you or me wanted to get out?' 'He'd slip out of a window,' this other stranger said and went off.
'Have you looked outside?' Julia said to Evelyn upstairs.
'How d'you mean, outside?'
'Why at all those millions down below,' she said, and led them past where Angela was sitting by the curtains. 'Look at that, darlings,' she said almost tearfully, for what had exhilarated her not so long ago was forbidding now. She frowned.
Max came back to be with them, unseeing. Now that he had heard Amabel and that he knew she was in her bath undressed, it seemed to him that when they had been together she had warmed him every side. When he opened his eyes close beside her in the flat she had blotted out the light, only where her eye would be he could see dazzle, all the rest of her mountain face had been that dark acreage against him. He had lain in the shadow of it under softly beaten wings of her breathing, and his thoughts, hatching up out of sleep, had bundled back into the other darkness of her plumes. So being entirely delivered over he had lain still, he remembered, because he had been told by that dazzle her eyelids were not down so that she lay still awake.
He wanted her.
So this stranger on his mission went into rooms at a venture, tried windows and found them locked, and then went out again until he came to one room where two maids leant out of an open casement towards their knight standing on his friend's shoulder from the station floor ten foot beneath. His bowler hat lay next his friend's feet and in a cross neatly on the crown of it lay his pair of gloves.
Through this open window noise of all those outside smote him in one vast confused hum like numbers of aeroplanes flying by and against which these two maids' shrill female voices, screeching to make themselves appreciated by their white-collared boy, were like urgent wheels that had not been oiled. Interfering again he came forward and he said, 'Save us, young fellow. Don't you go and fall down or you might be hurt.'
'It's her eyes enfold me and uphold me,' was his gallant answer.
'Did you hear that?' she screeched, and her friend leaned further out and said:
'Which one, which eyes?'
'Now don't make me choose,' he said, reaching up with one arm, his other hand sucking to the wall. 'Hold me,' he said, 'hold me.' One of them stretched her dainty dirty fingers down and he caught her wrist. 'Now,' he said, 'where would you be if I jumped off his shoulder?' These two screamed now like rats smelling food when they have been starved in empty milk-churns. 'Listen,' this stranger interrupted, 'that's murder,' leaning out himself. 'What's murder?' was his answer, and the other said he could not stand Ed's weight much longer. They redoubled their shrieks, they were famished and had not been so charmed for ages.
'She'd fall slap on her 'ead and break 'er neck,' he said pondering, when the one who was being held broke off her shrieks to say, well it was her neck, wasn't it?
'I'll jump off and then I'll knock his block off for him,' he murmured and scrambled out, hung at arm's length, while Ed said, mind my gloves and hat, dropped lightly for his age, and began ploughing his way through. He had forgotten them at once.
To push through this crowd was like trying to get through bamboo or artichokes grown thick together or thousands of tailors' dummies stored warm on a warehouse floor.
'What targets,' one by him remarked, 'what targets for a bomb.'
Max leaned his forehead against a shut window tormented by his dreams of Amabel, daydreams brought on by her voice, by her being so near, by her choosing to be undressed behind that door and because she used another voice when she wore no clothes, she mocked.
He was in that state when she no longer haunted him all day, but it came back at night and when, if thinking about her while she was not there did not make him as desperate as he had once been when first he knew her he still had that same feeling come over him at times and all the more, very often, when they had just met again.
Five months ago, when his love had been first conceived, he had been maddened by his thoughts of her when she was away, they had boiled all over him and then when she came back they would simmer down again to his happiness. But now he was cooling off he still had returns of that old feeling made worse because he resented her still having that command.
She still swayed him like water moves a trailing weed, and froth and some little dirt collects round, and sometimes when he first heard her voice again and when as now she used that private tone, then it was as if his tide had turned and helpless he was turned back, delivered up to move to her tune and trail back the way he had come helpless, delivered over, benighted.
And as does, in moonlight in cold deep-shadowed other day, push him out of his burrow and kick the old buck to death so when they saw him down, these girls and Amabel, coming out as she now did, all set upon him he was so absurd.
'Look round, darling,' Amabel said as cruel as could be, 'I'm here, not floating around outside.' Angel, he said to himself, angel and knew how fatuous it was and could not help himself. When
he did turn round to say how do you do, like Robin Adams he could not bring himself to look at her and this made him seem ashamed.
'Hamlet,' said Julia, and then all three girls laughed.
'Well, my darlings, and what shall we do?' she went on and laughed twice, for Max had turned his back again, he looked so like any boy at school, 'here we are, three lovely girls all mewed up and can't get out. What d'you say?'
Amabel smiled at his back as though she was taken up with thinking all of him over. She held a bone paper knife against her cheek, along her nose now and then across her forehead. She thought these three bits prettiest in her face.
Angela said how lovely her dressing gown and bent down to stroke it and Amabel murmured Embassy Richard had given it her. So all three of them laughed again, and Amabel said, 'I'm so bored, darling.' They were in league against him and watched his back like cats over offal or as if they thought his heart might fall out at their feet feebly smiling and stuck all over with darts or safety pins.
Miss Crevy asked where Alex had got to and Julia said, why didn't she know he was up to his old tricks with Toddy, how he adored her, for as soon as Amabel looked another way he would always be after her maid.
'Is she so very pretty then?'
Julia laughed and explained she was ever so old and besides hadn't Angela seen her in here already and Amabel sat on, quite still and quiet, looking at his back.
'Lot of people down there,' he said at last.
Julia thought she would take him in hand. 'Max, why don't you turn round and entertain us?' she said and smiled at Amabel who smiled back. 'You do look such a silly standing there as if they'd made you dunce or put you in Coventry or something.'
But this shot went too near home. Amabel said again and this time more kindly, 'I'm so bored, darling,' for she did not care to let them go too far with him.
He turned round and again could not bring himself to raise his eyes. He said:
'There's nothing for it,' and at that he saw her feet which were bare in sandals and looked fantastic on that cheap carpet. Her toes were pink and quite perfect for him, so much so they had no character at all and he thought they were unreal. The nails glittered.
