Not to Disturb

by Muriel Spark

  ‘Head and shoulders only,’ says Lister at the same time as he answers a buzz on the house-telephone. ‘Him?’ says Lister into the telephone. The answer fairly prolonged and intelligible apparently to Lister, is otherwise that of a bronchial and aged raven, penetrating the room, until Lister says, ‘All right, all right,’ and hangs up. Then he turns and says, ‘We’ve got the Reverend on our hands. He’s come on his motor-bike from Geneva. Sister Barton has summoned him to soothe her patient.’

  ‘I smell treason,’ says Eleanor.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Lister says. ‘She always has been an outsider, so treason isn’t the word.’

  ‘Well, she’s a bitch,’ says Heloise.

  ‘Here he is,’ says Lister, as the sound of a motor approaches. ‘Pablo, open the door.’

  Pablo goes to the back door but the sound of the motor recedes round the house towards the front. ‘He’s gone to the front door,’ Lister says. ‘I’d better go myself.’

  He passes Pablo, saying, ‘Front door, front door, leave it to me,’ and, crossing the black and white squares of the hall, admits the Reverend.

  ‘Good evening, Lister. I thought you’d be in bed,’ says the white-haired Reverend who carries a woollen cap in his hand.

  ‘No, Reverend,’ says Lister, ‘none of us is in bed.’

  ‘Oh well, I came to the front thinking you were in bed. The light’s on in the library, I thought the Baron might let me in.’ He looks up the staircase. ‘He sounds quiet, now. Has he gone to sleep? Sister Barton called me urgently.’

  ‘Sister Barton did wrong to bring you out, Reverend, but I must say I’m relieved to see you, and it just occurs to me after all, she may have done right.’

  ‘Your riddles, Lister.’ The Reverend is tall, skinny and wavering. He takes off his thick sheepskin coat. He wears a clerical collar and dark grey suit. He is quite aged, seeming to give out a certain life-force which perhaps only derives from the frailty of his appearance combined with his clear ability to come out on a windy night on a motor-bicycle.

  He nods towards the library door. ‘Is the Baron alone? — I know it’s late but I’d like to pop in and have a word with him before going on upstairs. I’ve many times sat up later talking to the Baron.’ The Reverend is already at the library door, waiting for Lister merely to knock and announce him.

  ‘They are a party of three,’ says Lister. ‘I have orders from the Baron, I’m sorry, Reverend, that they are not to be disturbed. Not on any account.’

  The Reverend, happily breathing the centrally heated air of the hall, sighs and then cocks his head slightly with sudden intelligence, his eyes bird-like. ‘I don’t hear anybody. Are you sure that he has company?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ says Lister moving away, sideways, backwards, indicating decisively the pathway that the Reverend must take. ‘Come in with us, Reverend, and warm up. A hot drink. Whisky and water. Something warm. I would like to talk to you personally, Reverend, before you see Sister Barton.’

  ‘Where? Oh, yes.’ The Reverend’s eyes are losing their previous thread of reasoning and lead him in the precise footsteps of Lister’s polished shoes.

  ‘Good evening. I have something here,’ the Reverend says to the assembled room, putting his hand in his pocket, as Lister leads him in. ‘Before I forget.’ He brings out a small press-cutting and puts it on a ledge of the television table, sitting down near it. He feels in his inside coat pocket and pulls out his spectacles.

  ‘Good evening, Reverend,’ and, ‘Nice to see you, Reverend,’ say Heloise and Pablo respectively while Hadrian comes in bearing, platterwise under an airy cloud of cellophane, a large round flower-arrangement that looks as if it began as a wreath of laurel-leaves and was filled in according to taste with various rings of colour — red roses, double daffodils, white lilies, an inner ring of orange roses, and finally, at the bull’s eye, a tight bunch of violets.

  The sight seems to recall something to the Reverend. He moves his long bones to the process of getting up and says, ‘He hasn’t died has he?’

  ‘The Reverend means him in the attic,’ says Heloise.

  Eleanor says, ‘I’ll put them under the shower and give them a slight spray. Keep them fresh.’

  Lister, while assisting the Reverend to relax back into the seat, says, ‘We’re having our photographs taken, Reverend.’

  ‘Oh!’ says the Reverend. ‘Oh, I see,’ and, plainly, he is practised at habituating himself swiftly and without fuss to newer and younger notions however odd or untimely. He seems to be considering this as he warms to the room. Mr Samuel brings his camera round and clicks at the pensive head, the loose and helpless hands of the Reverend. ‘Good,’ says Lister, bringing an elegant silver-cupped glass of softly steaming whisky on a tray from the kitchen, and stirring it with a long spoon. ‘Do another,’ he says to Mr Samuel, standing back meantime, withholding the glass from the Reverend who has begun to stretch out his hand to receive it. The camera clicks smoothly upon the gesture of benediction. Then the Reverend gets his hot toddy.

  ‘Good evening — or rather it’s good morning, isn’t it, Reverend?’ says Mr McGuire who comes in from the pantry office with his heavy tape-machine. ‘This is a pleasure,’ says Mr McGuire.

  ‘Mr McGuire — good evening. I was in bed and the phone rings. Sister Barton is asking for me. It’s urgent, she says, he’s screaming. So here I am. Now I don’t hear a sound. Everyone’s gone to sleep. What are the Klopstocks up to, there in the library?’

  Mr McGuire says, ‘I really don’t know. They’re not to be disturbed.’

  ‘The Klopstocks and Victor Passerat,’ says Heloise.

  ‘Heloise, it is not relevant who the guest is,’ says Lister. ‘It might be anybody.’

  Pablo has returned with Eleanor from the bathroom quarters where they have left the funeral flowers. He sits on the arm of Heloise’s chair. The Reverend looks at the couple and reaches out for the newspaper cutting. He puts on his glasses. ‘I brought this along,’ he says. And again looks at the couple. He looks at the scrap of paper and looks hard at Pablo. ‘I cut it out of the Daily American for the Baron to read. It is quite relevant to the practices that go on in this house, and now I’m here and I see the Baron is busy, it seems to me that I can read it to whom it may concern.’ He looks at Pablo.

  ‘Let’s have it,’ says Pablo, leaning nearer to Heloise. She strokes her belly which moves involuntarily from time to time. Lister, seated at the table, silently points to the tape-machine and looks at Mr McGuire.

  Mr McGuire heaves the machine on to the table while Lister says, ‘I don’t quite gather all this, Reverend. Would you mind explaining again?’

  Mr McGuire is plugging his wire into the wall.

  The Reverend now looks over his glasses at the tape-recorder. ‘What’s that?’ he says.

  ‘It’s the new electronic food-blender,’ says Lister. ‘We’re all computerized these days, Reverend. The personal touch is gone. We simply programme the meals.’

  ‘Yes, oh yes.’ The Reverend suddenly looks sleepy. His head droops with his eyelids, and his hands with the newspaper cutting held in them move jerkily a fragment lower.

  ‘Reverend, you were explaining about the newspaper item,’ Lister says, drawing on a cigarette. ‘Naturally, we are all receptive to any precepts you may have to cast before us, real swine that we are, we have gone astray like sheep. Every one his own way, numbered among the goats. Normally — ’

  ‘Yes,
sex,’ says the Reverend, wakeful again. He looks at Pablo, then at Heloise, then back to the cutting.

  Lister says, ‘Normally it isn’t a topic that we discuss between these four walls.’

  ‘You have to be frank about it. No point concealing the facts,’ says the Reverend severely.

  Lister raises a finger and the discs of the machine begin to spin.

  The Reverend says, ‘I brought this for Cecil and Cathy Klopstock to see. I think it might have something in it to help them with their problems. I hope it will help you with yours, every one of you.’ Then he reads, ‘ “New anti-sex drug” — that’s the headline. “Edinburgh, Scotland — Medical science has come up with a drug that keeps sex offenders under control, a doctor has reported to the Royal Medico-Psychological Association. The head of Edinburgh trials of the German drug told association members of the case of the 40-year-old man who had sexually assaulted a number of girls. The man had a history of indecent exposure, homosexual activity and a need for sex daily. But, three weeks on the new drug, cyproterone acetate, damped down his urges, the expert said. Three other subjects were given the drug. All the men reported being happier.” And so on, and so on. — Well,’ says the Reverend.

  Lister raises a finger and the machine stops. ‘You have given out an interesting statement, Reverend,’ says Lister. ‘It should be heard and seen by all as a comment on many things that have been going on under this roof.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ says the Reverend gloomily, putting away the press-cutting in his pocket. ‘I’d better go home,’ he says, then.

  ‘The wind has died down,’ says Hadrian.

  ‘He should spend the night here,’ says Eleanor. ‘He can’t go all the way back to Geneva on that bike.’

  ‘Quite frankly, I got out of bed,’ says the Reverend. ‘Go and tell Klopstock I’m here.’

  ‘They are not to be disturbed. I had strict orders.’

  ‘I hope they aren’t carrying on in the library. In the library! What time is it?’

  ‘Just past quarter to three,’ says Lister.

  ‘I should be in bed. You should all be in bed. Why did you bring me all this way?’

  Lister goes to the house-phone, lifts the receiver, and presses a button. He waits. He presses again, leaving his finger on it for some minutes. At last comes a windy answer.

  ‘Sister Barton,’ says Lister into the phone. ‘Why did you bring the Reverend all this way?’

  The Reverend says immediately, ‘Oh, yes, of course, my poor boy upstairs,’ while Lister listens patiently.

  The Reverend is creaking himself out of his chair. Clovis, who has been sitting with his arms folded and his little mouth shut tight, jumps to help him.

  Lister is heard to say, ‘There was no need,’ and replaces the phone.

  Lister says to the Reverend, ‘Sister Barton says that him in the attic needed you, but now he’s gone to sleep.’

  At that moment a long wail comes from the top of the house, winding its way down the well of the stairs, followed then by another, winding through all the banisters and seeping into the servants’ hall. ‘She’s woken him up,’ says Hadrian. ‘That’s what she’s done.’

  ‘It’s deliberate,’ says Eleanor. ‘She wants to bother the Reverend, that’s all.’

  ‘I wonder why?’ says Clovis. ‘What’s her trend?’

  ‘Take me up,’ says the Reverend.

  Heloise has gone to bed. She is propped up with pillows, drinking tea. At the foot of her bed, sitting on either side, are Pablo the handyman and Hadrian the assistant cook, both of them as absolutely young as Heloise.

  ‘I really could sleep,’ she says. ‘I really feel like another nap.’

  ‘No,’ says Pablo. ‘Lister wants us all to be suffering from shock when the police arrive. Lack of sleep has the same effect, Lister says.’

  ‘I could act a state of shock at any time, and besides there’s my condition.’ She yawns, balancing her cup of tea in her left hand while covering her mouth with her right. ‘Lister’s wonderful,’ she says.

  ‘Terrific,’ says Hadrian.

  ‘Marvellous,’ says Pablo. ‘I never saw such a sense of timing.’

  From the floor above comes the noise of a sharp clap, followed by another and another.

  ‘It sounds like guns going off,’ says Heloise.

  ‘Well it isn’t,’ says Pablo. ‘It’s shutters. The wind must be rising again. I loosed those shutters really good, didn’t I?’

  ‘Let’s put on a record,’ says Hadrian. He slides off the bed and goes to the gramophone, to choose a record, first turning them this way and that, his sharp eyesight quickly discerning the details printed on either side of the disc, even though that part of the room is dim, the only light being that by Heloise’s bed.

  From above the shutters make further reports, followed by a more subdued clatter from a window below. Hadrian puts on a record and sets it going. The noise fills the room for an instant until Hadrian turns down the volume.

  Then, while Heloise lights a cigarette, the two boys dance to the rock music. Heloise puts her tea-cup on the table by her bed. She takes a comb from a fringed satchel which is lying on the bed and a hand-mirror from her bedside table. She lays them on the bed while she loosens her hair which has been pulled back, ponytail style. Then she holds up the glass and begins to comb, swinging her shoulder a little in time to the rock vibrations, her tongue tapping the beat against her teeth. The boys dance, facing each other and swinging, their feet moving always in the same small area of shiny pinewood flooring.

  Heloise’s room is furnished much like that of a young daughter of the house. Posters, slogans and pin-up photographs cover part of the walls. The furniture is low-built with straight lines, and upholstered with dark red, black and yellow stuff. A white woolly rug lies askew before a desk piled with coloured magazines and crayons and some boxes of various medicines. The boys’ feet just miss the rug as they continue to dance.

  Heloise says, ‘She didn’t drink much, I’ll say that for her.’ She stubs out her cigarette.

  Pablo stops dancing. He says, ‘You’re thinking thoughts, Heloise.’

  Hadrian, who continues dancing by himself, says, ‘Heloise, relate.’

  ‘What do you mean, I don’t relate?’ she says.

  ‘When you relate you don’t ask what you mean. There’s such a thing as a trend.’

  ‘Who do you think you are, you — Chairman Mao?’

  Pablo starts dancing again. The record ends. He turns it over and puts on the other side.

  ‘Clovis is all right, too,’ Heloise says. ‘I’ll miss Clovis.’

  Pablo says, ‘He could stay with us. Why shouldn’t he stay with us?’

  ‘Clovis can stay with us,’ says Hadrian.

  ‘The Baroness was natural,’ says Heloise. ‘I’ll say that. Why shouldn’t she be photographed and filmed in the nude?’

  Hadrian stops dancing. ‘You know what?’ he says. ‘Sorry for Victor Passerat I am not. Neither alive nor dead.’

  ‘Nor me,’ says Heloise.

  ‘He had a kind of something,’ Pablo says, jerking his arms as he rocks.

  ‘I know,’ says Hadrian. ‘But it didn’t correspond.’

  ‘Funny that it had to be him,’ says Heloise.

  Pablo says, ‘It could have been one of the others.’

  Hadrian says, ‘But she decided on him. She got hooked on him.’

  ‘It was inevitable
,’ says Heloise.

  ‘It could have been someone else,’ Pablo says. ‘Anyone could have made his mistake.’

  ‘There’s such a thing as a trend,’ Hadrian says. ‘If he was hooked on the Baron he should have coordinated.’

  ‘Well he didn’t coordinate,’ says Heloise, putting her looking-glass back on the table, then lighting a cigarette.

  They stop talking for a while. Heloise smokes her cigarette, languidly regarding the dance. When the music ends, the young men together silently choose another record and put it on. First Hadrian, then Pablo, start once more to dance, bobbing and swaying as if blown by a current which fuses out from the beat of the music.

  After a while, Heloise says, ‘I like Mr McGuire.’

  ‘The finest sound-track man in the business. He coordinates,’ says Hadrian.

  ‘Very professional, though,’ says Pablo. ‘That kind of puts a division, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Mr McGuire and Mr Samuel,’ says Hadrian, ‘are in a class by themselves. You can’t judge against them just because they made a success. They’re a great team.’

  ‘They went to prison for it,’ Hadrian says.

  ‘Is that true?’ Pablo says, and simultaneously Heloise says, ‘Did they? When was that?’

  ‘Yes, when they started the business six, seven years ago. Mr Samuel told me a lot about it,’ Hadrian says, stopping his long spell of dancing without any sign of having spent energy. ‘Mr Samuel told me,’ he says, ‘that they were doing it for small money. If you do a thing for peanuts you get caught for a crime. You have to do it privately for big money like everything else.’

  Pablo stops dancing and sits on the bed.

  ‘How did they do it before?’ he says.

  ‘It was the same technique. Mr Samuel did the photography and Mr McGuire did the sound-track. They put code ads in the papers. They got a lot of responses.’