by Paul Merton
At this moment a bell rang loudly and a steamer sidled up to the pier. The man folded his paper, waved his hand and was immediately joined by a large woman in green and three children who had been sitting on a seat. They all went onto the boat together, the children making a good deal of noise. Aubrey sighed. Just another family.
While Aubrey was having his bath before dinner he visualized, on Somerset Maugham lines, the evening before him. A cocktail in the bar, then a table in the corner of the dining room commanding an excellent view of all the other tables. A distinguished-looking man, slightly gray at the temples eating alone at a table by the window, high cheekbones, skin yellowed by malaria and tropical suns.
Then later, in the lounge, “Perhaps you would do me the honor of taking a glass of brandy with me.” Aubrey agreeing with an assured smile, noting the while those drawn lines of pain round the finely cut mouth, those hollow, rather haunted eyes. “One can at least say of this hotel that the brandy is of unparalleled excellence!” That slightly foreign accent, Russian perhaps or even Danish! Then the story—bit by bit, gradually unfolding—“I wonder if you ever knew the Baroness Fugier? A strange woman, dead now poor thing; I ran across her brother once in the Ukraine, that was just after the war, then later on, seven years to be exact, I ran across him again in Hankow; I happened to be there on business. He was probably the most brilliant scientist of his time. Has it ever occurred to you to reflect upon the strange passions that lie dormant in the minds of the most upright men?” The lounge emptying, still that level unemotional voice retailing the extraordinary, almost macabre, history of the Baroness Fugier’s brother, the scandal in Hong Kong, the ruining of his career, his half-caste wife and finally the denouement.
Aubrey, at last rising. “Thank you so much—what a wonderful story. And what happened to the woman?” Then the sudden bitter chuckle, “The woman, my friend—happens to be my wife!”
2
Aubrey, immaculately dressed in a dinner jacket, descended to the bar, where he was discouraged to find no one whatever except the barman, who was totting up figures and absently eating potato salad. Aubrey suspected that there must be garlic in the potato salad as it smelt very strong. It was a rather dingy little bar, dimly lit, although modern in decoration to the extent that everything that looked as though it ought to be round was square or vice versa and there was a lot of red about. Aubrey hoisted himself on to a square stool and ordered a dry Martini and a packet of Player’s. The barman, although quite willing to be pleasant, was not discoursive and turned on the radio. Aubrey sipped his Martini and listened, a trifle wistfully, to an Italian tenor singing “Santa Lucia,” and when that was over “La Donna E Mobile.” Presently several people came in together, they were elderly and without glamour, and they stood silently by the bar as though they were waiting for some catastrophe. The barman glanced at the clock and then switched the radio to another station. A tremendous shriek ensued which he modulated until it became a German voice announcing the news. Aubrey could only pick out a word or two here and there such as “Einmal,” “Americanische,” “Freundschaft” and “Mussolini” so he ordered another dry Martini in a whisper. At the end of the news, which lasted half an hour, everybody bowed to the barman and filed out. Just as Aubrey was preparing to give up the whole thing and go and have dinner, a bald man of about fifty came in. He was obviously English and although not quite as sinister and distinguished as Aubrey would have wished, he was better than nobody. Aubrey noted the details of his appearance with swift professional accuracy. A long nose, eyes rather close together, a jutting underlip, slight jowl, as though at some time in his life someone had seized his face with both hands and pulled it downward. His clothes were quite good and his figure podgy without being exactly fat. He said “Good evening” in a voice that wasn’t quite cockney but might have been a long while ago. Aubrey replied with alacrity and offered him a drink, whereupon the man said, “That’s very nice of you, my name’s Edmundson” as though the thought of accepting a drink from anyone who didn’t know his name was Edmundson was not to be tolerated for a moment. Aubrey said that his name was Dakers and they shook hands cordially.
Mr. Edmundson was more than ready to talk, and before a quarter of an hour had passed Aubrey had docketed a number of facts. Mr. Edmundson was fifty-four and was in the silk business although he intended to retire shortly and let his son, who was married and had two children, a boy and a girl, take over for him. He also had two daughters both unmarried. One, however, was engaged to a nice young fellow in the Air Force, this was Sylvia the younger. The elder, Blanche, was having her voice trained with the object of becoming an opera singer. It was apparently a fine voice and very high indeed, and both Mr. and Mrs. Edmundson were at a loss to imagine where she had got it from as neither of them had any musical talent whatsoever. She was very good-looking too, although not so striking as Sylvia, who was the sort of girl people turn round to stare at in restaurants. Mr. Edmundson produced a snapshot from his note-case showing both girls with arms entwined against a sundial with somebody’s foot and calf in the left-hand corner. “That’s Mrs. Edmundson’s foot,” he said gaily, “she didn’t get out of the way in time.” Aubrey looked at the photograph with his head on one side and gave a little cluck of admiration. “They are nice-looking girls,” he said as convincingly as he could. Thus encouraged, Mr. Edmundson went on about them a good deal more. Sylvia was the dashing one of the two and in many ways an absolute little minx; whatever she set her heart on she got, she was that sort of character; in fact, a few years ago when she was just beginning to be grown up, both he and Mrs. Edmundson had frequently been worried about her. Blanche, on the other hand, despite her musical gift, was more balanced and quiet, which was very odd really, because you would have thought it would have been just the other way round. Aubrey agreed that it certainly was most peculiar but there just wasn’t any way of accounting for things like that. “This is my son Leonard,” said Mr. Edmundson, producing another snapshot with the deftness of a card manipulator. “He’s different again.” Aubrey looked at it and admitted that he was. Leonard was short and sturdy with an under-slung jaw and eyebrows that went straight across his forehead in a black bar. On his lap he was holding, rather self-consciously, a mad baby. Mr. Edmundson discoursed for a long while upon Leonard’s flair for engineering which apparently fell little short of genius. Ever since he was a tiny boy he had been unable to see a watch or a clockwork engine or a musical box without tearing it to pieces immediately, and when he was sixteen he had completely dismembered his new motorcycle on the front lawn within three hours of having received it.
During dinner, Mr. Edmundson having suggested that as they were both alone it would be pleasant to share a table, he explained that the reason he had come to Switzerland was to see a specialist on diseases of the bladder who had been recommended to him by a well-known doctor in Tonbridge. It appeared that for nearly a year past there had been a certain divergence of opinion as to whether he was forming a stone or not, and both he and his wife had decided, after mature consideration, that by far the wisest thing to do was to get an expert opinion once and for all. The Swiss specialist, who wasn’t really Swiss but Austrian, had declared that as far as he could discover there were no indications of a stone having been formed or even beginning to form, but that in order to be on the safe side Mr. Edmundson must lead a perfectly normal life for ten days eating and drinking all that was habitual to him, which of course accounted for the three dry Martinis he had had in the bar, and then further tests would be made and we should see what we should see.
After dinner, in the lounge where they took their coffee, Mr. Edmundson reverted to his domestic affairs, discussing, at length, Blanche’s prospects in Grand Opera; the problematical happiness of Sylvia when married to an aviator who might be killed at any minute; the advisability of forcing Leonard into the silk business where he would be certain of an assured income, or allowing him to continue with his experimental engineering; and last, but by
no means least, whether Mrs. Edmundson’s peculiar lassitude for the past few months was really caused by her teeth, which had been suggested, or whether it could be accounted for by those well-known biological changes that occur in all women of a certain age. He personally was in favor of the teeth theory and agreed with the doctor that she ought to have every man jack of them pulled out, and a nice set of artificial ones put in. The idea of this, however, somehow repelled Mrs. Edmundson, and so at the moment things were more or less at a deadlock.
Leaving them at a deadlock, Aubrey, increasingly aware that his head was splitting, almost abruptly said good night and departed, on leaden feet, to his room.
The next morning, round about half-past ten, Aubrey was sunning himself on his balcony, breathing in gratefully the fresh mountain air and enjoying the romantic tranquil beauty of the view. The lake was calm and blue and without a ripple except for the occasional passing of a steamer and a few little colored rowing boats sculling about close to the shore. Fleecy clouds lay around the peaks of the mountains and the morning was so still that the cow bells in the high pastures could be heard quite clearly. Presently Mr. Edmundson appeared on the next balcony about four feet away from him. “What a bit of luck,” he said cheerfully. “I had no idea we were next-door neighbors.” Conversation, or rather monologue, set in immediately. “I’ve had a postcard from Leonard’s wife,” he went on. “The younger child, the boy, woke up yesterday morning covered with spots and they’re very worried, of course. I don’t suppose it’s anything serious, but you never know, do you? Anyhow, they sent for the doctor at once and kept the little girl away from school in case it might turn out to be something catching, and they’re going to telegraph me during the day.”
Aubrey endured this for a few minutes and then rose with a great air of decision. Mr. Edmundson, with the swiftness of a cat who perceives that the most enjoyable mouse it has met for weeks is about to vanish down a hole, pounced. “I thought we might take a little excursion on the lake; those skiffs are no trouble to handle.”
Aubrey, shaken by the suggestion, replied that there would be nothing he would have liked better but that he was being called for by some friends who were driving him up to the mountains for lunch.
“Never mind,” said Mr. Edmundson, “we’re sure to meet later.”
Aubrey lay on his bed for a while, shattered. He had been looking forward to a stroll through the town by himself and later a quiet lunch either on the hotel terrace or at a café down by the lake. Now, having committed himself to a drive in the mountains with his mythical friends, he was almost bound to be caught out. Why, oh why hadn’t he been smart enough to think of a less concrete excuse? Suddenly he jumped up. The thing to do was to finish dressing and get out of the hotel immediately before Mr. Edmundson got downstairs. Once in the town he could keep a careful lookout and dart into a shop or something if he saw him coming. Fortunately, he had already bathed and shaved and in less than ten minutes he tiptoed out of his room. The coast was clear. He ran lightly down the stairs rather than use the lift which might take too long to come up. He was detained for a moment in the lounge by the hotel manager inquiring if he had slept well, but contrived to shake him off and sped through the palm garden on to the terrace. Mr. Edmundson rose from a chair at the top of the steps. ‘No sign of your friend’s car yet,” he said. “Why not sit down and have a Tom Collins?”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Aubrey hurriedly. “I promised to meet them in the town and I’m late as it is.”
“I’ll come with you.” Mr. Edmundson squared his shoulders. “I feel like a brisk walk.”
Halfway to the town Aubrey gave an elaborate glance at his wristwatch. “I’m afraid I shall have to run,” he said. “I promised to meet them at 11:15 and it’s now twenty to twelve.”
“Do us both good,” said Mr. Edmundson and broke into a trot.
In the main square, which Aubrey had chosen at random as being the place where his friends were meeting him, there was, not unnaturally, no sign of them. Mr. Edmundson suggested sitting down outside a café and waiting. “They’ve probably been held up on the road,” he said.
“I’m afraid,” murmured Aubrey weakly, “that they’re much more likely to have thought I wasn’t coming and gone off without me.”
“In that case,” said Mr. Edmundson with a comforting smile, “we can take a little drive on our own and have lunch in the country somewhere.”
During lunch, in a chalet restaurant high up on the side of a mountain, Mr. Edmundson spoke frankly of his early life. He had not, he said, always known the security, independence and comparative luxury that he enjoyed now, far from it. His childhood, most of which had been spent in a small house just off the Kennington Road, had been poverty-stricken in the extreme. Many a time he remembered having to climb a lamp-post in order to get a brief glimpse of a cricket match at the Oval, and many a time also he had been chased by the police for this and like misdemeanors; indeed on one occasion—
Aubrey listened and went on listening in a sort of desperate apathy. There was nothing else to do, no escape whatever. Incidents of Mr. Edmundson’s life washed over him in a never-ending stream; his experiences in the war during which he hadn’t got so much as a flesh wound in three years; his apprenticeship to the silk trade as a minor office clerk in Birmingham; his steady climb for several years until he arrived at being first a traveler and then manager of a department in a big shop in South London; his first meeting with the now Mrs. Edmundson at a dance in Maida Vale; his marriage; his honeymoon at Torquay; the birth of Blanche. By the time the doctor had arrived to deliver Mrs. Edmundson of Sylvia it had become quite chilly in the chalet restaurant and the shadows of the mountains were beginning to draw out over the lake. In the taxi driving back to the town Sylvia was safely delivered and Leonard well on the way.
Finally, having reached his room and shut and locked the door Aubrey flung himself down on the bed in a state of collapse. His whole body felt saturated with boredom and his limbs ached as though he had been running. Through the awful deadness of his despair he heard Mr. Edmundson in the next room humming a tune. Aubrey buried his head in the pillow and groaned.
3
Aubrey came down into the bar before dinner resolute and calm. He had had a hot bath, two aspirin, thought things out very carefully and made his decision. Consequently he was able to meet Mr. Edmundson’s jocular salutation with equanimity. “I am leaving tomorrow evening,” he said, graciously accepting a dry Martini. “For Venice.”
Mr. Edmundson looked suitably disappointed. “What a shame,” he said. “I thought you were staying for a week at least; in fact I was looking forward to being able to travel as far as Paris with you if my test turns out to be all right on Tuesday. You did say you were going to Paris from here, you know,” he said reproachfully.
“I’ve changed my mind,” said Aubrey. “I’m sick of Switzerland and I’ve always wanted to see Venice.”
“Nice time of year for it anyhow,” said Mr. Edmundson raising his glass. “Here goes.”
The one thing that Aubrey had realized in the two hours’ respite before dinner was that no compromise was possible. He couldn’t very well stay on in the same hotel as Mr. Edmundson and refuse to eat with him or speak to him. That would be unkind and discourteous and hurt his feelings mortally. Aubrey shrank from rudeness and there was a confiding quality about Mr. Edmundson, a trusting belief that he was being good company which it would be dreadfully cruel to shatter. It was all Aubrey’s own fault anyhow for having encouraged him in the first place. The only thing was to put up with things as they were for this evening and, he supposed, most of the next day and leave thankfully on the Rapide the next night. He had already arranged about his ticket and sleeper with the porter.
Mr. Edmundson banished melancholy by shrugging his shoulders, shooting his cuffs and giving a jolly laugh. “Anyway,” he said, “it’s all right about the baby’s spots! I had a telegram this evening. The doctor said it was nothing bu
t a rash, which only goes to show that there’s no sense in being fussy until you know you’ve got something to be really fussy about. But that’s typical of Nora, that’s Leonard’s wife, she’s like that over everything, fuss, fuss, fuss. Sometimes I don’t know how Len stands it and that’s a fact; fortunately his head’s screwed on the right way; it takes more than a few spots on baby’s bottom to upset his apple-cart!”
Mr. Edmundson continued to be gay through dinner. He ordered a bottle of Swiss wine just to celebrate, “Hail and Farewell you know!” After dinner they went to the Kursaal and sat through an old and rather dull German movie. Mr. Edmundson seemed to enjoy it enormously and actually laughed once or twice, which irritated Aubrey, as he knew Mr. Edmundson understood German as little as he did. In the foyer on the way out a man in a bowler hat with a very foreign accent asked Mr. Edmundson for a light. “Right you are, me old cock robin,” said Mr. Edmundson, and slapped him on the back. Aubrey hung his head in shame.
