Voices in an Empty Room

by Francis King

  Hugo looked at Cyril. His complexion still had the same greenish pallor, the skin oddly scaly. His hands clenched in his lap, the knuckles white, he was biting his lower lip so hard that it was surprising that it did not bleed. First his jaw began to tremble; then one leg, the one closest to Hugo’s; then his whole body. He might have been suffering from the sudden onslaught of some tropical fever.

  Everyone in the hall was gazing, not at the President, but at the twins; and everyone was amazed, as Henry and Hugo had been at their first encounter, by the physical differences between them.

  At last the President ceased, gave a hitch to the baggy trousers which hung low on his ample hips, and said, ‘Right then. Let’s get on with things.’ He walked over to where Henry and Hugo were seated and took the remaining chair, leaning back in it as though to test whether its back would support his weight. Then he called across, ‘ OK, Sir Henry?’

  ‘We’re ready over here.’

  ‘Fine. Then let’s have – the first!’ He slapped his fist down on the table with so much vehemence that Cyril cringed away with an involuntary, startled ‘Oh!’

  Henry turned up a card. Lionel, as in the past, gave it only a glance. Then he gazed out, with bored insolence, at the audience before him.

  Cyril screwed up his face, shot Hugo a look of terrified appeal and at last, his hand trembling so much that he could hardly write, inscribed the letter ‘K’ on the sheet of paper before him.

  ‘Next!’ the President boomed, his North Country voice echoing in the vault of the ceiling above him.

  Henry turned another card.

  Suddenly Hugo was conscious of that strange odour which he had originally smelled when he and Cyril had first stood side by side – how long ago it seemed now – under the fanlight in Henry’s murky hallway. Oats, Harris tweed, new-mown hay, pot? He now knew the answer to the question which had baffled him. This was the smell of none of those things but of wild, uncontrolled, animal terror. It was far stronger now than on that previous occasion.

  It had been agreed that Hugo should address no word to the boy during the session. But he stared at him, willing him, ‘ Go on, concentrate, write.’ Somehow that message must have got through, because at last Cyril’s shaking hand managed to inscribe the letter ‘T’ (for ten).

  ‘Next!’

  With that green-faced figure beside him and that smell in his nostrils, Hugo suddenly felt that the President was some North Country Grand Inquisitor calling for another and yet another torture to be inflicted on a victim. He wanted to put.a protective arm round this boy, no, this child, and say, ‘ That’s enough, enough, we’re going’, but with difficulty he resisted the impulse.

  Again Henry turned up a card, again Lionel gave it a glance, and again Hugo stared intently at Cyril, willing him to continue.

  Some members of the audience were still glancing, unconcerned, now at the one boy and now at his twin; but others, sensing that terror so close to Hugo, were becoming uneasy. Sybil pressed her handkerchief, heavily scented with lily-of-the-valley, to her upper lip. It was all going wrong, she was sure that it was all going wrong, and she did not know whether to be appalled for Hugo or happy for herself.

  This time the letter written by Cyril was so shaky as to be almost illegible. Q? Yes, Hugo decided, it must be Q.

  ‘Next!’

  Suddenly Cyril leapt to his feet, knocking his chair backwards. Like a small child, his face screwed up and a knuckle pressed to his mouth, he began to scream, ‘No, no, no! No more!’

  Hugo jumped up. He put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and the next moment felt the boy gripping at him, about the waist, his knees almost touching the floor, as though he were drowning. The blue-veined eyelids fluttered over eyes which showed only their whites.

  Sybil rose to her feet, a majestic figure, a necklace of amber swaying and clashing. ‘ He’s fainted. Get him out of here.’

  Hugo and the President took an arm each. People were shifting, half rising in their seats, peering, whispering to each other. The Secretary scurried over with a glass of water, most of which she spilled in her haste. Lionel remained seated, staring out at the apprehensive, confused audience with the same look of contemptuous boredom with which he had surveyed them all along.

  The President and Hugo supported Cyril, whose otherwise inert body would from time to time twitch disconcertingly beneath their hands, out of the room and into the Secretary’s office. Mrs Lockit dropped her knitting and leapt to her feet. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘Fainted.’ Not used to carrying weights, Hugo had the sensation that his heart was about to burst like an overripe tomato.

  ‘It’s the heat. And those crowds, and the strain.’ Mrs Lockit delivered this diagnosis while standing over her nephew, now laid out flat on a ragged carpet which clearly had not been swept for a long time.

  The blue-veined eyelids fluttered, opened. The green eyes, surrounded by their bruise-like shadows, looked up into Hugo’s face. ‘Oh, sir, please, sir, I can’t sir!’

  ‘No, no. Of course not.’ Hugo turned to the President. ‘We’ll have to call it off. He’s in no condition …’

  ‘Do you think I ought to call a doctor?’

  ‘No, no. He seems all right now. But it would be folly to try to resume.’

  ‘Oh, that’s quite out of the question,’ Mrs Lockit intervened.

  Lionel was leaning against the jamb of the door, hands in pockets. He now strolled over to where Cyril was still lying, ‘Well, you’ve made a real twit of yourself.’

  Cyril smiled up at him, apologetic and embarrassed, as Mrs Lockit commanded, ‘Leave him be, Lionel! That’s enough.’

  At that moment, Sybil hurried into the room, a sheaf of papers fluttering from a hand. To the others she looked troubled and grave but Hugo, who knew her so well, could detect the triumph beneath her manner. ‘I thought I’d better rescue these.’ She waved the papers in the air. ‘Naughty of me, I know, but I couldn’t resist taking a peek at them. A complete blank, I’m afraid. Not a single hit. But in this heat – strange surroundings …’ She held the sheets out to the President, who took them from her with a mumbled ‘ Thanks, Miss Crawfurd,’ followed by the sententious observation, ‘The wind bloweth where it listeth.’

  ‘No one seems to know whether the session is to be resumed or not,’ Sybil informed them.

  ‘Oh, dear! I’d better go and tell them. I suppose we could hurry up the tea and biscuits?’ The President looked over to the Secretary, who nodded. He then rushed out.

  Sybil approached Hugo, where he stood beside the armchair in which Cyril had now been placed, his body slack and his face tilted backwards and sideways, the eyes half-closed.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry, Hugo. With so many people present – and that man from the American Society for Psychical Research among them. He was leaving as I came in here.’

  Hugo sighed. ‘As you very well know, Sybil, the whole history of psychical research is full of these mysterious setbacks. And I should have thought that by now Mark Elstein must know it too. As our President so rightly remarked ‘‘The wind bloweth where it listeth’’. If paranormal phenomena could be duplicated over and over again at will, like scientific ones, then our task would be much easier. Sybil, you know all this.’

  ‘Of course, Hugo. But even so … well, it must have been disappointing. For you, for the boys.’ She glanced down at the fluttering eyelids beside her. ‘For all of us.’

  Hugo thought: Bitch, bitch, bitch. But he smiled at her and said, ‘Let’s slip away and get ourselves a cup of tea somewhere else. I don’t think we want to mix with all those people in all that heat after a fiasco.’

  ‘I’ve never been to the Ritz.’

  It hardly seemed necessary for Cyril to state this; nor, indeed, to add, ‘But I’ve heard about it.’

  ‘Is it very expensive?’ Lionel asked.

  ‘Very,’ Henry answered. It had been his idea that they should slip into the cafeteria at Victoria Station on the way t
o their train but Hugo had said, ‘Oh, no, let’s give the boys a treat after all they’ve been through,’ and had then added, to clinch the matter, ‘This is on me.’

  ‘Pull the knot of your tie tight!’ Mrs Lockit hissed to Lionel, gripping him by an elbow. ‘And put on your blazer.’ She first tugged at the brim of her hat, a tureen of pale pink tulle with a white chenille rose attached to a side, so that it tilted even more rakishly over one of her thick, dark eyebrows, and then stooped and raised her skirt slightly to hitch at a stocking.

  ‘That walk was a mistake,’ Sybil said pettishly. ‘Far too hot.’

  ‘We couldn’t have all fitted into one taxi,’ Henry reminded her.

  ‘What’s wrong with two?’ she asked.

  They found a corner in the surprisingly dim, surprisingly cool Palm Court. ‘Now how shall we place ourselves?’ Hugo pondered. Meanwhile, blowing out his cheeks, Lionel had slumped down into the most comfortable of the chairs. Mrs Lockit tapped him on a shoulder, ‘Out of there, my lad! That’s not for you.’ Reluctantly, he rose.

  ‘Sybil, why don’t you go over there? Then it will be easy for you to pour.’ Hugo pointed to the seat vacated by Lionel. ‘Henry there. Oh, and Mrs Lockit–’ he had purposely ignored her until now ‘–I was forgetting about you. Why don’t you sit there?’ He pointed to a chair so flimsy that he had hopes, vain in the event, that it would collapse beneath her weight. ‘Lionel here.’ The chair was a gilt upright one. ‘And Cyril and I can squeeze ourselves on to this settee.’

  ‘Indian or China?’ the waiter inquired.

  ‘Oh, China,’ Sybil answered. Then she looked around at everyone else, ‘China all right?’

  ‘Can’t abide the stuff,’ Lionel pulled a face. ‘Don’t like tea of any kind, China least of all. What about a Coke?’

  ‘That could be managed, sir.’

  ‘Would you also like Coca-Cola, Cyril?’ Hugo was solicitous.

  Cyril shook his head and said, so quietly that he was hardly audible even to Hugo next to him, ‘I’d like to try the China tea. I’ve never had China tea.’

  ‘There’s nothing like a cup of piping-hot tea to cool one down, is there?’ Mrs Lockit leant forward confidentially to Sybil.

  ‘And we certainly need cooling down,’ Sybil replied, noticing how the sweat had darkened the mauve fabric under Mrs Lockit’s armpits.

  Henry gazed up at the ceiling. ‘ Haven’t been here for years,’ he said. ‘Not since the war, I should think.’

  Mrs Lockit laughed, ‘That dates you, Sir Henry.’

  ‘Everything dates me now. I’ve reached that age.’

  Lionel examined the sandwiches which Hugo held out to him. He took one and then hurriedly, before the plate could be removed, took another. ‘These look as if they’d been made for a dolls’ tea party,’ he said.

  Mrs Lockit glared at him, ‘ Sh! You eat what’s offered to you and no remarks, if you don’t mind.’

  Henry laughed. ‘ He’s right, you know. Ridiculous price to have to pay for three or four mouthfuls.’

  ‘One doesn’t pay only for the food,’ Hugo reminded him.

  ‘It’s the atmosphere,’ Mrs Lockit agreed, daintily picking up a sandwich and nibbling at a corner. Then she tried out a word which she had never used before, ‘ The ambience.’

  Sybil put her still beautiful head, with its thick grey hair springing away from her noble forehead, back in her chair. ‘How disappointing that all was,’ she sighed. Hugo had hoped that she would not again refer to the exhibition.

  Mrs Lockit said staunchly, ‘Oh, there’ll be other times. Won’t there, boys?’

  Cyril gave the brave smile of an invalid receiving a brisk assurance from a doctor on his sick bed. Lionel, meanwhile, having already swallowed a whole glass of Coca-Cola, a number of sandwiches, an eclair, a florentine and a macaroon, jumped to his feet and began to move off.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Mrs Lockit shouted after him, so loudly that even people seated at the other end of the Palm Court, teacups or sandwiches half raised to their mouths, stared over at this wild, gypsylike woman.

  ‘Only be a moment.’

  ‘I expect he wants to excuse himself,’ Mrs Lockit said. ‘All that Coke, gulped down in a single go.’

  Cyril had by now revived sufficiently first to look around him and then to hazard to Hugo, still beside him on the sofa, ‘ I suppose it must be terribly expensive to stay here.’

  Hugo agreed that it was.

  ‘Have you ever stayed here?’

  ‘Mr Crawfurd stayed here on the first night of his honeymoon.’ Sybil leaned over, her hands clasped. ‘He could have caught a late flight to Athens,’ she added, in the tone of someone remembering a grievance by now obscure to everyone else but still vivid to the speaker. ‘But he preferred not to. He preferred to spend a night at the Ritz.’

  ‘It would have been extremely tiring to set off at once.’

  ‘You could have used my flat.’ Sybil had a small flat in a block in High Street Kensington.

  ‘I wanted to give Audrey a treat.’

  In its courteous, clipped way, the conversation was becoming increasingly acrimonious.

  ‘And was it very expensive – staying here, I mean?’ Cyril pursued.

  ‘Of course it was,’ Sybil answered, before Hugo could do so.

  ‘Gosh, I’d love to stay here. Even if only for one night.’

  ‘It was for only one night that Mr Crawfurd and his bride stayed here,’ Sybil said.

  ‘Did they bring you breakfast in your room?’

  ‘I rather think they did. Though I don’t think Audrey – my wife – appreciated it. She likes to get up for breakfast.’

  ‘I’ve never stayed in a hotel.’

  ‘I’m sure you will do one day.’

  ‘I could never afford it.’

  ‘You never know.’

  They went on talking about hotel life until Lionel, preceded by that maddening, toneless whistle of his, sauntered back into the Palm Court, his hands in his pockets. To Mrs Lockit’s demand, ‘Where have you been, I’d like to know,’ he answered, offhand, ‘Just exploring.’ Shortly after that, Henry looked at his old-fashioned watch, the rolled-gold so much worn away from it that its colour was now a silvery-grey streaked with yellow, held it out to Hugo and declared, ‘We’d better be on our way. We don’t want to miss the six thirty-seven.’

  ‘It’s an awful lot of money,’ Cyril whispered as he watched Hugo remove note after note from his wallet, to pay the bill.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that.’ Hugo was touched by the solicitude of the tone.

  Outside the Ritz, Henry pointed, ‘We can catch a bus from there. What about you, Sybil? How are you going?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll take a taxi. I’m going to spend the night at the flat. Well –’ she smiled at them all, at once gracious and formidable ‘– thank you for such an – an interesting experience.’

  ‘We’ll arrange another exhibition for you soon. Just for you. All those crowds …’

  ‘Thank you, Hugo. Yes, that would be … nice.’ She nodded coldly, her eyes moving from one of the faces before her to another. She knew that she was hurting Hugo but she wanted to do so, as for some obscure dereliction or betrayal. ‘Well, goodbye all.’

  There was a ragged chorus of goodbyes, as a taxi swerved to a halt beside her upraised arm and, with a speed and dexterity belying her fifty years, she then jumped aboard it.

  ‘Don’t you think that it would be a good idea to try to squeeze into a taxi ourselves?’ Hugo suggested.

  ‘No.’ At that, Henry at once began to hobble off towards the bus stop.

  ‘One lump or two?’ Henry was asking not about sugar but about ice.

  ‘As many as you can spare,’ Hugo answered with an irony lost on his friend.

  ‘A wasted day. And a waste of money. I can’t think why you wanted to take them to the Ritz. They’d have much rather had a hamburger at one of those Mcdonald places.’

  Hugo
smiled into the glass that Henry had handed him. ‘Cyril enjoyed it, at any rate.’

  ‘Little snob.’

  ‘Not at all. I found that – that awe of his really rather touching.’

  ‘I found it really rather – awful.’ Henry gave that dry, susurrating laugh of his, which was so like a cough.

  There was a loud knock at the door and, as usual, Mrs Lockit burst in before anyone had had time to answer. ‘Well, I’ve seen that lot off,’ she announced, in precisely the same tone, briskly triumphant, and in precisely the same words with which she would announce that she had dealt with a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses, two nuns collecting for the blind or canvassers for a local election. ‘They were worn out, even Lionel, and you can see how tough he is. Which reminded me …’ She came further into the room, brown hands pressing into sides and her teeth bristling large and sharp as she smiled at them. ‘You haven’t forgotten, have you?’

  Henry stared at her, his pale grey eyes as cloudy and chilly as a winter sky. ‘Forgotten?’

  ‘What you promised. The boys.’

  ‘No, I have it here,’ Hugo said; and again, as on a previous occasion, Henry pulled a face, frowned and shook his head at him, even as the wallet was being opened. On one side of the wallet there were miscellaneous five and one-pound notes; on the other side there were five twenty ones. Mrs Lockit hovered hawk-like above. Hugo drew out the five twenty-pound notes, folded them in two, and handed them to her.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Mr Crawfurd. The boys will be happy.’

  ‘And they bloody well ought to be happy!’ Henry exclaimed as soon as Mrs Lockit had shut the door behind her.

  ‘It’s what we promised.’