‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘But will you meet me tomorrow? After your show?’
‘Where?’
‘Do you know the Sunnybeach Holiday Camp? On the West Shore?’
‘I don’t know it, but I’ve seen signs to it.’
‘I’ll be there. In the Arcadia Ballroom.’
‘Why there?’
‘Because that’s where it’s Grab a Granny Night. Didn’t you know?’ Tim could just see her smile in the darkness.
‘You’re not a granny, are you?’
‘I was. You do fancy me, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tomorrow night, then. The Arcadia Ballroom. Sunnybeach.’
‘Okay.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
He heard the clack of her heels as she ran out of the alley. It was some time before he had sense enough to follow her out onto the promenade. There was no sign of her. He looked into The Copacabana and it appeared that the panic was over and things were returning to normal, but he felt no inclination to go back in.
The next morning Tim was at the theatre occupied with rehearsals for the next show in the season. It was a routine farce called Some of Our Trousers Are Missing! in which Tim was back to playing a small, meaningless part and stage managing. By the time rehearsals finished at one the events of the previous night seemed to him remote, fantastic, like a dream. After lunch Tim decided to take a walk along the sea front at Pontybwlch to work things out in his head. After an hour of aimless wandering he was still no clearer about his experience with Sheilah, the sun was beating down, and he was thinking of going back to his digs for a rest before the show, and to learn his meagre lines in Some of Our Trousers Are Missing!
Suddenly a voice said: ‘Hello. Dreaming as usual?’ It was Tamsyn. She was walking her West Highland Terrier on a lead along the promenade in the opposite direction to him. There was no avoiding her, so he turned and fell into step beside her while Freddie the terrier pattered purposefully ahead of them. After a pause Tamsyn began to apologise for being sharp with him the previous night. Tim was surprised. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled as if he had forgotten the incident already. He began to feel powerful.
‘You’re really very good in Deathtrap, you know,’ said Tamsyn.
‘I didn’t think you . . .’
‘You didn’t think I noticed? Well I do. Why don’t you ask me out one night?’
When Tim was baffled and confused, as he was now, he usually managed to say the wrong thing. He said: ‘But I thought you were . . . spoken for.’
Tamsyn looked very solemn. She said: ‘Nobody speaks for me, Tim. Who told you I was?’
‘Owen. He said you and he——’
‘Christ! You don’t want to believe a word Owen says. He’s gay, didn’t you realise? Or bi anyway. And he’s all mouth and trousers. God, you’re green, Tim. Honestly, you’re so green, they could play hockey on you. It’s all right. No need to look like a crushed raspberry. I think it’s rather sweet. So when are you going to take me out? Tonight?’
‘Not tonight. I promised to meet someone.’ The moment Tim said it he regretted it, but he would not retract because that was to show weakness, and he had shown enough of that already.
‘Oh. Okay,’ said Tamsyn. She seemed disappointed, but at least she showed no curiosity about whom he was to meet.
‘But tomorrow. It’s a Sunday. No show. We could go for a curry . . . or something.’
‘Okay.’
Leaving the promenade, they descended some concrete steps on to the shingle shore. Tamsyn let Freddie off the leash and he bounded away up the beach while she watched him intently, making little chirruping noises of encouragement and slapping her strong, boyish thighs. Tim knew that Tamsyn had ceased to be conscious of his presence, and that he had involuntarily become a voyeur, prying into a secret personal moment between her and Freddie. He found the experience curiously exciting, arousing even; while at the same time he was being made aware that there would always be a part of her that would be closed to him, a locked door in her soul with the word DOG written on it.
That night in the dressing room, as they made up for the show, Tim was reluctant to submit to Owen’s interrogation about him and Sheilah.
‘Did she say anything about me?’ he asked.
‘I’m meeting Sheilah tonight,’ said Tim, taking some pleasure in frustrating his egoism.
‘Where?’
‘At Sunnybeach. The Holiday Camp on the West Shore.’
Owen seemed shocked for some reason. ‘Sunnybeach! My God, what d’you want to go there for?’
‘I don’t know. Ask Sheilah.’
‘You don’t want to go up there. Not to Sunnybeach.’
‘Why not? Are you jealous or something?’
They had been talking at each other through the brightly lit dressing room mirror. Every nuance of expression was evident. Tim saw Owen grimace involuntarily, then a slow subtle smile curled his lips as he carefully began to apply a tiny line of blue shadow to his upper eyelid.
* * * * *
The town of Pontybwlch lies on a headland. On the East Shore is a bay where the main part of the town is situated; the so-called West Shore overlooks the estuary of the River Dovey. It consists mainly of a number of select, wealthy dwellings, some Old People’s Homes, and the Sunnybeach Holiday Camp. Tim had not visited the West Shore (weekly repertory offers little opportunity for idle exploration), but he knew the way. It was fine and starry as he emerged from the theatre after the last night of Deathtrap, and at that moment nothing seemed more exciting than a twenty-minute walk through the dark to a mysterious assignation. Its ultimate purpose was something Tim tried to keep out of his thoughts. He was experienced enough in life to know how anticipation can desecrate the event.
The Sunnybeach Holiday Camp was easy enough to find. Tim did ask one passer-by and received for his pains detailed instructions and a rather odd look, of the kind that used to be called ‘old-fashioned’. This did not worry him greatly: the Welsh, he had noticed, particularly the senior ones, went in for funny looks.
The Sunnybeach Holiday Camp proved to be a large, fenced compound, well-situated on a bluff at the mouth of the Dovey. The fence enclosed a number of white, rather elegant Art Deco buildings with curved balconies and large, metal-framed windows. Evidently it was a step or two up from Butlins, but Tim was mildly surprised that the place was not better lit. There were lights in many of the windows but they were all yellow, faded somehow.
At the entrance was a dimly lit lodge in which sat a figure whose features Tim could not make out in the dark. He — Tim assumed it was a he — appeared to be reading a newspaper, but he did not seem to have enough light for such an activity. Tim walked up to the gatehouse, but the figure took no notice of him. Feeling he should make his presence known, Tim rapped on the window.
‘Can you tell me how to get to the Arcadia Ballroom? I’m meeting someone there.’
The man in the gatehouse looked up from the paper, but his face was still in shadow. Silently, and, Tim thought, rather contemptuously, he pointed to a large, white rectangular building only two hundred yards away. Along the windowless wall facing them, under festoons of dull red fairy lights, had been painted in huge lettering the words: ARCADIA BALLROOM.
Tim entered the camp and walked along the asphalt path that wound between lawns and joylessly elaborate formal flower beds in the direction of the ballroom. It was disappointing not to hear sounds of music or human activity. Nobody seemed to be about. Tim thought he saw someone going into the ballroom, but that was all. Apprehension now took the place of all other feelings; but Tim went on because he had a stubborn streak: he had made a promise.
Outside the Ballroom there were several posters on the walls in glazed frames, but they advertised events — concerts, variety shows, talent nights — from the previous year. However, the place was not shut, and Tim could see light of a sort coming from within. He entered a foyer, lit —
just about — but deserted. Facing him was a pair of swing doors through which he entered the ballroom. The doors must have been very well oiled because they made no sound when he opened them, and did not even bang behind him.
The ballroom seemed much vaster on the inside than it had looked from without. Moreover, it was not decorated, as Tim had expected, with severe Art Deco elegance but in an ornate mock eighteenth century Fairground Rococo style. The walls and ceilings were slathered with plaster mouldings in the form of cartouches, caryatids, composite pilasters, and swags of fruit in low relief; at regular intervals along each side globes of electric light were held up by gilded plaster cherubs. From the high ceiling, on which was painted an indecipherable scene of celestial roistering, hung a huge glitter ball which turned and scintillated silently. All of the many lights were on, but none shone brightly. The place was lit with an unwelcoming even glow, the colour of parchment.
At the opposite end of the hall was a raised stage on which was ranged a set of music stands flanked by two vast loudspeakers in the shape of gilded trumpets. Just in front of the stage on the parquet flooring stood the solitary figure of a woman in a black silk evening dress. It was Sheilah. Tim could barely see her face except when she dragged on her cigarette. The glow of it when she did so appeared to be the brightest thing in the ballroom.
She threw the cigarette onto the parquet where it lay smouldering, unextinguished, and advanced towards him. Somewhere in the centre of the room, under the revolving glitter ball, they met.
‘You kept your promise,’ said Sheilah. ‘You came.’
‘Of course.’
‘Owen didn’t. He promised to come last year, but he didn’t show up.’
‘Owen is Owen,’ said Tim, feeling suddenly very superior to his tormentor. Sheilah seemed amused. There was a silence. Tim said: ‘There don’t seem to be many people about.’
Sheilah’s smile was suddenly replaced by a look of sadness. ‘I shouldn’t have brought you here,’ she said. ‘Come on. Let’s get out, before they start.’
Just then one of the loud speakers made a noise like a hoarse cough and began to emit a thin, tinny stream of music. Neither the instruments nor the tune they played were recognisable, but the rhythm, the bones of this rotting carcass of sound, was that of a waltz.
‘It’s started,’ said Sheilah. ‘We’ll have to stay.’
‘Why?’
But Tim knew why. The ballroom was filling rapidly with dark figures who began to dance as soon as they appeared. Very soon they had surrounded Tim and Sheilah in a dense and perpetually moving crowd, each couple spinning on its own axis as they encircled them.
‘Dance! For God’s sake dance!’ said Sheilah.
Tim took her cold body in his arms and they began to dance. There was a strange acrid smell in the air. The other dancers made no sound, and Tim could not see their faces. They moved so fast that he could see only a dark blur, as if they were veiled in soot.
‘Faster!’ said Sheilah. Tim obeyed, even though he was already exhausted.
‘Kiss me!’ said Sheilah, and she put her lips to his. Tim felt the familiar burning sensation when their lips touched. Her mouth opened wider and from the caverns of her throat came the fiery heat of an Inferno.
* * * * *
The rest of the company were having a drink after the show in the bar of the Pontybwlch Hydro. Suddenly Judy, the leading lady, said: ‘Hello, where’s young Tim tonight?’
Owen smiled. ‘Believe it or not, he’s gone up the Sunnybeach for a Grab a Granny Night.’
‘Good God,’ said Judy, ‘I thought Sunnybeach had finished after that terrible fire last summer. You remember: in the Arcadia Ballroom when all those people were killed. Didn’t you tell him about that? In fact — my God, you sick bastard, it was a year ago tonight! ‘
Owen’s mock horror was very comically done and made some of the company laugh out loud. Those who didn’t — and they included Tamsyn — were grateful that they had shown restraint when Tim was found the following morning lying on the Western Shore with a mouth full of ashes.
The Children of Monte Rosa
I
IT WAS MY MOTHER who first noticed Mr and Mrs de Walter as they strolled along the promenade. She had a talent for picking out unusual and interesting looking people in the passing crowd, and often exercised this gift for my amusement, though mainly for my father. He was a journalist who was always going to write a novel when he could find the time.
My parents and I had been sitting in a little café on the front at Estoril where we were on holiday that year. In 1964 it was still unusual to see English people in Portugal, particularly the North, and the couple my mother pointed out to us were so obviously English. ‘They’re probably expatriates,’ she said. As I was only eleven at the time I had to have the term explained to me.
They must have been in their late sixties, though to me at the time they simply looked ancient. They were of a height but, while she was skeletally thin, he was flabby and shapeless in an immaculate but crumpled white linen suit. He wore a ‘Guards’ tie — this observation supplied by my father — and a white straw Panama with a hat band in the bacon and egg colours of the M.C.C, which I, a cricket enthusiast, identified myself. A monocle on a ribbon of black watered silk hung from his neck. He had a clipped white moustache and white tufted eyebrows which stood out from the pink of his face. His cheeks were suffused with broken veins that, like fibre optic cables, were capable of changing the colour of his complexion with alarming rapidity.
His wife was also decked out in the regalia of antique gentility. Her garments were cream-coloured, softly graduating to yellow age at their edges. Their general formlessness seem to date them to the flapper era of the 1920s, an impression accentuated by her shingled Eton Crop which was dyed a disconcerting shade of blue. Her most eccentric item of dress was a curious pair of long-sleeved crocheted mittens, from which her withered and ringed fingers seemed to claw their way to freedom. The crochet work, executed in a pearl-coloured silky material, was elaborate but irregular, evidently the work of an amateur, making them resemble a pair of badly mended fishermen’s nets.
My mother, who was immediately fascinated, was seized by an embarrassing determination that we should somehow get to know them. I have a feeling she thought they would make ‘good copy’ for my father’s long projected novel, or a short story at least. My father and I went along with her plans, not because we approved them but because we knew that resistance was useless.
We were staying at the Grande, one of the big old Edwardian hotels on the sea front, but my mother noticed that ‘the ex-pats’, as she was now calling them, often took a pre-dinner aperitif on the terrace of the Excelsior, a similar establishment adjacent to ours. Accordingly, one evening we went for a drink at the Excelsior, positioning ourselves at a table near to where my mother had seen the expatriates drinking.
For once, everything went according to my mother’s plan. The couple arrived shortly after we had, sat down, and ordered their drinks, gin and Italian Vermouth, a fashionable pre-war cocktail. (‘Gin and It!’ my mother whispered to us, ‘it’s too perfect!’) My mother, who had been an actress in her youth, was the possessor of a very audible voice, so our conversation was soon overheard. Presently we saw that the lady was coming over to us. She seemed to hesitate momentarily, looming over us, before saying: ‘I couldn’t help noticing that you were speaking English.’ Her mouth was gashed with a thin streak of dark red lipstick, of a primeval 1920s shade.
So we joined them at their table, and they introduced themselves as Hugh and Penelope de Walter. I was a well-behaved boy at that time and, being an only child, had no siblings with whom to fight or conspire, so I think I made a favourable impression. Besides, because I had either inherited, or acquired by influence, my mother’s appetite for human oddities, I was quite happy to sit there with my sumo d’ananas and listen to the grown-ups.
The de Walters were, as my mother had correctly surmised, expatriates,
and they had a villa at Monte Rosa, a village in the foothills above Estoril. De Walter had been in the wine trade, hence his acquaintance with Portugal, and on retiring in the 1950s had decided that England was ‘going to Hell in a handcart’, what with its filthy music, its even filthier plays, and the way the working classes generally ‘have the run of the place these days’. De Walter conceded that Salazar, the then dictator of Portugal, ‘might have his faults, but at least he runs a tight ship’. I had no idea what this meant but it sounded impressive, if a little forbidding.
Their life at the Villa Monte Rosa, so named because it was the grandest if not the oldest, dwelling in their village, was, they told us, more serene and civilised than any they could have hoped to afford in Worthing or Eastbourne. I wondered, though, if it were not a little lonely for them among all those foreigners, but said nothing.
I think it was after a slight lull in the conversation that the de Walters turned their attention on me. In answer to enquiries I told them where I was presently at school, and for which public school I was destined. De Walter nodded his approval.
‘I’m a Haileybury man myself,’ he said. ‘Are you planning to go to the ’varsity after that?’
I looked blank. My father came to my aid by informing me that ‘the ’varsity’ meant Oxford or Cambridge. I said I hoped so without really knowing what was meant.
MASQUES OF SATAN Page 5
