by Muriel Spark
NOT TO DISTURB
MURIEL SPARK
A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK
I
The other servants fall silent as Lister enters the room.
‘Their life,’ says Lister, ‘a general mist of error. Their death, a hideous storm of terror. — I quote from The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster, an English dramatist of old.’
‘When you say a thing is not impossible, that isn’t quite as if to say it’s possible,’ says Eleanor who, although younger than Lister, is his aunt. She is taking off her outdoor clothes. ‘Only technically is the not impossible, possible.’
‘We are not discussing possibilities today,’ Lister says. ‘Today we speak of facts. This is not the time for inconsequential talk.’
‘Of facts accomplished,’ says Pablo the handyman.
Eleanor hangs her winter coat on a hanger.
‘The whole of Geneva will be talking,’ she says.
‘What about him in the attic?’ says Heloise, the youngest maid whose hands fold over her round stomach as she speaks. The stomach moves of its own accord and she pats it. ‘What about him in the attic?’ she says. ‘Shall we let him loose?’
Eleanor looks at the girl’s stomach. ‘You better get out of the way when the journalists come,’ she says. ‘Never mind him in the attic. They’ll be making inquiries of you. Wanting to know.’
‘Oh,’ says Heloise, holding her stomach. ‘It’s the quickening. I could faint.’ But she stands tall, placid and unfainting, gazing out of the window of the servants’ sitting-room.
‘He was a very fine man in his way. The whole of Geneva got a great surprise.’
‘Will get a surprise,’ Eleanor says.
‘Let us not split hairs,’ says Lister, ‘between the past, present and future tenses. I am agog for word from the porter’s lodge. They should be arriving. Watch from the window.’ And to the pregnant maid he says, ‘Have you got out all the luggage?’
‘Pablo has packed his bags already,’ says Heloise, swivelling her big eyes over to the handyman with a slight turn of her body.
‘Sensible,’ says Lister.
‘Pablo is the father,’ Heloise declares, patting her stomach which quivers under her apron.
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ Lister says. ‘And neither would you.’
‘Well it isn’t the Baron,’ says Heloise.
‘No, it isn’t the Baron,’ says Lister.
‘It isn’t the Baron, that’s for sure,’ says Eleanor.
‘The poor late Baron,’ says Heloise.
‘Precisely,’ says Lister. ‘He’ll be turning up soon. In the Buick, I should imagine.’
Eleanor is putting on an apron. ‘Where’s my carrot juice? Go and ask Monsieur Clovis for my carrot juice. My eyes have improved since I went on carrot juice.’
‘Clovis is busy with his contract,’ Lister says. ‘He left it rather late. I made mine with Stern and Paris-Match over a month ago. Now of course there’s still the movie deal to consider, but you want to play it cool. Don’t forget. Play it cool and sell to the highest bidder.’
Clovis looks up, irritably, from his papers. ‘France, Germany, Italy, bid high. But don’t forget in the long run that English is the higher-income language. We ought to co-ordinate on that point.’ He continues his scrutiny of documents.
‘Surely Monsieur Clovis is going to prepare a meal tonight isn’t he?’ says Eleanor. She goes through the door to the kitchen. ‘Clovis!’ she calls. ‘Don’t forget my carrot juice, will you?’
‘Quiet!’ says Clovis. ‘I’m reading the small print. The small print in a contract is the important part. You can get your own damn carrot juice. There’s carrots in the vegetable store and there’s the blender in front of you. You all get your own supper tonight.’
‘What about them?’
‘They won’t be needing supper.’
Lister stands in the doorway, now, watching his young aunt routing among the vegetables for a few carrots which she presses between her fingers disapprovingly.
‘Supper, never again,’ says Lister. ‘For them, supper no more.’
‘These carrots are soft,’ says Eleanor. ‘Heloise doesn’t know how to market. She’s out of place in a house this style.’
‘The poor Baroness used to like her,’ says Clovis, looking up from the table where he is sitting studying the fine print. ‘The poor Baroness could see no wrong in Heloise.’
‘I see no wrong in her, either,’ Eleanor says. ‘I only say she doesn’t know how to buy carrots.’
Heloise comes to join them at the kitchen door.
‘It’s quickening,’ she informs Clovis.
‘Well it isn’t my fault,’ says the chef.
‘Nor me neither, Heloise,’ says Lister severely. ‘I always took precautions the times I went with you.’
‘It’s Pablo,’ says the girl, ‘I could swear to it. Pablo’s the father.’
‘It could have been one of the visitors,’ Lister says.
Clovis looks up from his papers, spread out as they are on the kitchen table. ‘The visitors never got Heloise, never.’
‘There were one or two,’ says Heloise, reflectively. ‘But it’s day and night with Pablo when he’s in the mood. After breakfast, even.’ She looks at her stomach as if to discern by a kind of X-ray eye who the father truly might be. ‘There was a visitor or two,’ she says. ‘I must say, there did happen to be a visitor or two about the time I caught on. Either a visitor of the Baroness or a visitor of the Baron.’
‘We have serious business on hand tonight, my girl, so shut up,’ says the chef. ‘We have business to discuss and plenty to do. Quite a vigil. Has anybody arrived yet?’
‘Eleanor, I say keep a look out of the window,’ Lister orders his aunt. ‘You never know when someone might leave their car out on the road and slip in. They’re careless down at the lodge.’
Eleanor cranes her neck towards the window, still feeling the soft carrots with a contemptuous touch. ‘Here comes Hadrian; it’s only Hadrian coming up the drive. These carrots are past it. Terrible carrots.’
The footsteps crunch to the back of the house. Hadrian the assistant chef comes in with a briefcase under his arm.
‘Did you get out my cabin trunk?’ he asks Heloise.
‘It’s too big, in my condition.’
‘Well get Pablo to fetch it, quick. I’m going to start my packing.’
‘What about him in the attic?’ says Heloise. ‘We better take him up his supper or he might create or take one of his turns.’
‘Of course he’ll get his supper. It’s early yet.’
‘Suppose the Baron wants his dinner?’
‘Of course he expected his dinner,’ Lister says. ‘But as things turned out he didn’t live to eat it. He’ll be arriving soon.’
‘There might be an unexpected turn of events,’ says Eleanor.
‘There was sure to be something unexpected.’ says Lister. ‘But what’s done is about to be done and the future has come to pass. My memoirs up to the funeral are as a matter of fact more or less complete. At all events, it’s out of our hands. I place the event at about 3 a.m. so prepare to stay awake.’
‘I would say 6 o’clock tomorrow morning. Right on the squeak of dawn,’ says
Heloise.
‘You might well be right,’ says Lister. ‘Women in your condition are unusually intuitive.’
‘How it kicks!’ says Heloise with her hand on her stomach. ‘Do you know something? I have a craving for grapes. Do we have any grapes? A great craving. Should I get a tray ready for him in the attic?’
‘Rather early,’ says Lister looking at the big moonfaced kitchen clock. ‘It’s only ten past six. Get your clothes packed.’
The large windowed wall of the servants’ hall looks out on a gravelled courtyard and beyond that, the cold mountains, already lost in the early darkening of autumn.
A dark green, small car has parked here by the side entrance. The servants watch. Two women sit inside, one at the wheel and one in the back seat. They do not speak. A tall person has just left the other front seat and has come round to the front door.
Lister waits for the bell to ring and when it does he goes to open the door:
A long-locked young man, fair, wearing a remarkable white fur coat which makes his pink skin somewhat radiant. The coat reaches to his boots.
Lister acknowledges by a slight smile, in which he uses his mouth only, that he recognizes the caller well from previous visits. ‘Sir?’ says Lister.
‘The Baroness,’ says the young man, in the quiet voice of one who does not wish to spend much of it.
‘She is not at home. Will you wait, sir?’ Lister stands aside to make way at the door.
‘Yes, she’s expecting me. Is the Baron in?’ sounds the low voice of the young man.
‘We expect him back for dinner, sir. He should be in shortly.’
Lister takes the white fur coat glancing at the quality and kind of mink, and at its lining and label as he does so. Lister, with the coat over his arm, turns to the left, crosses the oval hall, followed by the young man. Lister treads across the trompe-l’œil chequered paving of the hall and the young man follows. He wears a coat of deep blue satin with darker blue watered silk lapels, trousers of dark blue velvet, a pale mauve satin shirt with a very large high collar and a white cravat fixed with an amethyst pin. Lister opens a door and stands aside. The young man, as he enters, says politely to Lister, ‘In the left-hand outer pocket, this time, Lister.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ says Lister, as he withdraws. He closes the door again and crosses the oval hall to another door. He opens it, hangs the white mink coat gently on one of a long line of coat-hangers which are placed expectantly in order on a carved rack. Lister then feels in the outer left-hand pocket of the coat, withdraws a fat, squat, brown envelope, opens it with a forefinger, half-pulls out a bundle of bank-notes, calculates them with his eyes, stuffs them back into the envelope, and places the envelope in one of his own pockets, somewhere beneath his white jacket, at heart-level. Lister looks at himself in the glass above the wash-basin and looks away. He arranges the neat unused hand-towels with the crested ‘K’ even more neatly, and leaves the cloak-room.
The other servants fall silent as Lister returns.
‘Number One,’ says Lister. ‘He walked to his death most gingerly.’
‘Sex,’ muses Heloise.
Lister shudders, ‘The forbidden word,’ he says. ‘Let me not hear you say it again.’
‘It’s Victor Passerat, waiting there in the library,’ says Heloise.
‘Mister Fair-locks,’ says Eleanor, looking at the carrot juice which she has prepared with the blender.
‘I never went with him,’ says Heloise. ‘I had the chance, though.’
‘Didn’t we all?’ says Pablo.
‘Speak for yourself,’ says Clovis.
‘Less talk,’ says Lister.
‘Victor Passerat isn’t the dad,’ says Heloise.
‘He’d never have had it in him,’ says Pablo.
‘Are you aware,’ says Eleanor to her nephew, ‘that two ladies are waiting outside in the car that brought the visitor?’
Lister glances towards the window but next he goes to a large cupboard and, drawing up a chair, mounts it. He carefully, one by one, removes the neat jars of preserved fruit that are stacked there, ginger in gin, cherries in cognac, apple and pineapple, marmalades of several types, some of them capped and bottled with a home-made look, others, according to their shapes and labels, fetched in from as far as Fortnum & Mason in London and Charles’s in New York. All these Lister carefully places on a side-table, assisted by Eleanor and watched by the others in a grave silence evidently due to the occasion. Lister removes a plank shelf, now bare of bottles. At the back of the cupboard is a wall-safe, the lock of which Lister slowly and respectfully opens, although not yet the door. He demands a pen, and while waiting for Hadrian the assistant cook to fetch it, he takes the envelope from his inner pocket, and counts the bank-notes in full view of the rest.
‘Small change,’ he says, ‘compared with what is to come, or has already come, according as one’s philosophy is temporal or eternal. To all intents and purposes, they’re already dead although as a matter of banal fact, the night’s business has still to accomplish itself.’
‘Lister’s in good vein tonight,’ says Clovis, who has left the perusal of his contract to join the group. Meanwhile Hadrian returns, handing up the simple ballpoint pen to Lister.
Upstairs the shutters bang.
‘The wind is high tonight,’ Lister says. ‘We might not hear the shots.’ He takes the pen and marks a sum on the envelope, followed by the date. He then opens wide the safe which is neatly stacked with various envelopes and boxes, some of metal, some of leather. He places the new package among the rest, closes the safe, replaces the wooden shelf, and, assisted by Eleanor and Heloise, puts the preserve-bottles back in their places. He descends from his chair, hands the chair to Hadrian, closes the cupboard door, and goes to the window. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘two ladies waiting in the car, as well they might. Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet, sweet, ladies.’
‘Why did they pull up round the side instead of waiting in the drive?’ says Heloise.
‘The answer,’ says Lister, ‘is that they know their place. They had the courage to accompany their kinsman on his errand, but at the last little moment, lacked the style which alone was necessary to save him. The Baron will arrive, and not see them, not inquire. Likewise the Baroness. No sense, for all their millions.’
‘With all that in there alone,’ says Heloise, still contemplating the closed cupboard wherein lies the wall-safe of treasure, ‘we could buy the Montreux Palace Hotel.’
‘Who needs the Montreux Palace?’ says Hadrian.
‘Think big,’ says Pablo the handyman, patting her around the belly.
‘How it kicks!’ she says.
•
‘How like,’ says Lister, ‘the death wish is to the life-urge! How urgently does an overwhelming obsession with life lead to suicide! Really, it’s best to be half-awake and half-aware. That is the happiest stage.’
‘The Baron Klopstocks were obsessed with sex,’ says Eleanor. She is setting places at the long servants’ table.
‘Sex is not to be mentioned,’ Lister says. ‘To do so would be to belittle their activities. On their sphere sex is nothing but an overdose of life. They will die of it, or rather, to all intents and purposes, have died. We treat of spontaneous combustion. One remove from sex, as in Henry James, an English American who travelled.’
‘They die of violence,’ says Clovis who has transferred to the butler’s desk his papers and the contract and documents he has
been studying closely for the past three-quarters of an hour. He sits with his back to the others, looks half over his shoulders. ‘To be precise, it is of violence that they shortly die.’
‘Clovis,’ says Eleanor, ‘would you mind giving an eye to the oven?’
‘Where’s my assistant?’ says Clovis.
‘Hadrian has gone down to the lodge,’ says Eleanor. ‘Gone to borrow a couple of eggs. Him in the attic hasn’t had his supper yet.’
‘No eggs in the house?’ says Clovis.
‘There was too much else to arrange today,’ says Eleanor as she places five tiny silver bowls of salt at regular intervals along the table, carefully measuring the distance with her eye. ‘No marketing done.’
‘Things have gone to rack and ruin,’ says Lister, ‘now that the crisis has arrived. This house hitherto was run like the solar system,’
‘Cook your own damn dinner,’ says Clovis, bending closely over his documents.
‘Don’t you want any?’ says Heloise. ‘I’ll eat your share if you like, Clovis. I’m eating for two.’
Clovis bangs down his fist, drops his pen, goes across to the large white complicated cooking stove, studies the regulator, turns the dial, opens the stove door, and while looking inside, with the other hand snaps his finger. Heloise runs with a cloth and a spoon and places them in Clovis’s hand. Protecting his hand with the cloth Clovis partly pulls out a casserole dish. He hooks up the lid with the handle of the spoon, peers in, sniffs, replaces the lid, shoves the dish back and closes the oven door. Again, he turns the dial of the regulator. Then with the spoon-handle, he lifts the lids from the two pots which are simmering on top of the stove. He glances inside each and replaces the lids.
‘Fifteen minutes more for the casserole. In seven minutes you move the pots aside. We sit down at half-past seven if we’re lucky and they don’t decide to dine before they die.’
‘No they won’t eat,’ says Lister. ‘We can have our dinner in peace while they get on with the job.’
