Читать книгу The Evil at Monteine - Brian Ball - Страница 7

CHAPTER THREE

The dinner was a disaster.

I was on the defensive from the moment a neat little waiter appeared to tell us it was ready. I knew what to expect, for I had looked up the word ‘catalyst’ in the library on my way down to the bar. I was, as the dictionary put it, a substance that causes change. I was part of an experiment.

They were going to watch the effects of my presence on Richard: I was sure that they would try to needle me into committing some social gaffe that would then reveal me as unsuitable for an International executive’s wife.

Mercifully, Max was out of earshot. He stayed in the bar, making a pretence of deferring to the three; Jensen, Fitch, and the Sievel woman as the waiter ushered us through the entrance hall of Monteine Castle to a large dining room.

I wobbled on my sandals, but I didn’t wince. Richard made me lean on his arm, and Jensen solicitously placed his large fat hand under my right elbow. I couldn’t help glancing back as we passed into the panelled room. The pseudo-barman was watching me. I might have been a laboratory specimen for all the humanity he showed.

“Madam,” said the waiter, helping me into an antique tall-back chair. I sat down and smiled at the Sievel woman. She would attack first.

“I’ve done it myself,” she smiled back. “The soap,” she explained. “I’ve slipped on my butt before now. So undignified! And it hurts!”

Fitch poured the wine. “I can’t imagine Miss Blackwell in any but a dignified position.”

Jensen said, “Do let’s stop embarrassing Anne and decide what we wish for the first course of this excellent meal. The game pâté is superb with the Pommard!”

“Richard’s told us a little about your work, Anne,” said Eric Fitch, when all but Richard had chosen the pâté. “Does it involve a great deal of travelling?”

I caught the faint whiff of some form of perfume from him as he handed me the pâté. I disliked him intensely from that moment.

“Goes with the job, doesn’t it, darling,” said Richard. “Anne’s a good driver.”

“I’d say that Anne would be very competent at whatever she put her hand to,” said Jensen, dipping his toast and pâté into a glass of green wine. He sniffed at the result.

Eric Fitch laughed. “It’s quite a cut-throat business, the design world, so I hear. And you’ve prospered. Falco’s right. You must be very competent.”

“How did you start, Anne?” asked Monica Sievel,

They knew, of course. They’d investigated me thoroughly, but I mustn’t show that I knew.

“I could always draw and paint a little,” I said. “I realized my limitations at about sixteen, though. I knew I wasn’t good enough for original work, but I could match materials and design. I freelanced, and I was lucky in getting some good, reliable artists.”

“So you’re an artistic entrepreneur,” smiled Fitch. “How clever you must be.”

He was mocking me. I kept my temper. Richard took their interest for what it seemed to be: polite, easy flattery.

“It’s more of an instinct for sensing what fits the mood of the times,” I said, and drank some wine.

“Your Anne has a marvellous life,” said Monica in her deep, sincere tones. “You’ve no idea what a bore it can be, the endless round of personality tests on people who are far more interesting than oneself. Lucky girl,” she smiled.

“Terrible bore,” agreed Jensen, as he finished his wine. “Look at Richard. Full of health. Enough action and excitement behind him to fill a dozen lives. Unlimited prospects before him—”

“Depending on your reports,” Richard pointed out. “I haven’t officially been offered a job yet, and I’ve yet to consider the offer if and when it comes.”

“Outspoken and crisp,” said Eric Fitch.

It was coming. I sensed it in the slight edge of malice in Fitch’s tone, “And with the finest prospects a man could wish for in this age,” said Jensen, unperturbed by Richard’s interruption. “Everything about Richard says he’s a notable acquisition for the company.”

“Of course!” I burst out.

“Steady on the wine,” said Richard very quietly, for I was on my second glass of the green-white wine by now. I hadn’t noticed that the waiter had refilled my glass.

“You’re both lucky,” said Jensen. “A meeting of the talents. Embodied in the male, strength and courage. And, I if it isn’t too fanciful, in the lady here, all the qualities of creativeness and beauty that best complement the man of action. Ah, the pheasant!”

The little waiter made quite a business of removing the cover of the huge platter. There were six pheasants, neatly arrayed two by two, cock and hen together. I might have felt hungry if I hadn’t been so apprehensive. The carving and the serving took long enough for me to recover my composure, and Richard and I were able to take a little time out to talk about ordinary things. He asked about Tony. I said he wasn’t expecting me till the weekend. I asked if there were any other guests at the Castle; there weren’t. Then I wanted to whisper that I had overheard the bar-steward and the others, but I sensed an alertness as they made jokes about one another’s appetites; without seeming to, they were listening. When Jensen took the carver and flicked it around the steel, I felt he was about to dissect me. I took the recommended portion.

Red wine was poured, dark-red and beautiful in the cut-glass goblets.

Fitch neatly chomped his way through the large plateful of food before him; Jensen guzzled noisily, doing a Falstaff act. Monica Sievel began to draw Richard out in conversation. She asked about simple things, beginning with food at sea. I listened carefully, but they all seemed to have forgotten about me,

Richard explained that the storage space on his latest yacht was enough for a complete range of frozen and dehydrated foods, He was enjoying himself thoroughly; he loves talking about boats.

I began to unwind, thankful that I had been ignored. Richard finished telling quite an amusing story about cooking a Christmas dinner for himself in a Force Seven gale along the coast of South-West Africa, when Monica Sievel turned to me and said:

“You’ll have to get Richard to write it all down for your children, my dear!”

“Children?” I said, and noticed that my glass had been filled again. Fitch was watching me.

“I made a few notes of my voyages,” Richard said. “A sort of extended log, but I wouldn’t know how to make stories of them. Not my line of country at all.”

He didn’t know that the Sievel woman was needling me about my son.

“Richard’s often told my son about his experiences,” I said, very deliberately. “Tony would keep Richard telling stories for hours at bedtimes if I let him, wouldn’t he, Richard?”

Richard was quite unaware of the byplay. “Little beggar,” he said. “As a matter of fact, he made me promise him I’d take him along to Burnham. She’s in the boatyard now,” he explained to the others. “I wanted a couple of modifications to the line of the keel. I don’t suppose Tony told you about it, love?”

“Just before I came away.”

Now I feared they would begin to probe into my early adult life and bring out the fact that I hadn’t been married to Tony’s father.

I realized that I was losing my cool, for my cheeks burned.

But it didn’t happen. Instead, Eric Fitch said, “You haven’t had any of the sauce!”

“No.”

I caught the whiff of perfume again. Estée Lauder. A friend of mine used it.

Richard helped me to the sauce, though I could cheerfully have hurled my plate and its contents at the effeminate little man beside me. Fitch and the Sievel woman would go for me now.

“I can’t think when I’ve had a better meal,” Richard said appreciatively. “What do you say, Anne?”

He knew I was distraught, but I think he had put it down to the hurt ankle.

“Anne’s not feeling too well, are you?” said the Sievel woman. “Stop filling her glass,” she told Eric Fitch, who was pouring more of the heavy red wine into my glass. “She’s a working girl and she’s obviously had a long day.”

“It’s a marvellous meal,” I said. “And I’d enjoy another glass of the burgundy.” I was at the stage where I would do exactly the opposite of what anyone suggested.

“I like to see women eating well. And drinking,” said Fitch. “That’s the charm of primitive communities, you know. I was commissioned to do a study of aboriginal eating customs a couple of years back. One of the big American philanthropic trusts put up the money. Go and research the their food fetishes, they commanded. And I went. Extraordinary people. Odd customs.”

“Don’t be mysterious, Eric,” reproved the Sievel woman. “The aboriginals. Come on, what was odd about them?”

“Nothing to do with the their food—a boring diet. It happened whilst I was at a small town in the interior, a quite horrid experience. The local traders knew I was interested in the aboriginals’ customs, and they knew too that I was some sort of scientist.”

Fitch smiled.

“I saw a dead man speak.”

It should have been shocking or at least have produced a dramatic effect, but it didn’t shock or awe me.

I exploded with laughter into the long silence that followed his announcement. Red wine sprayed over the tablecloth. I gulped and gasped for air, and began to laugh aloud. As I spluttered and howled, I turned to Richard and saw an expression of shock on his face, and I knew that at last I had done what the three interrogators wished. I had offended him.

Richard used his napkin to help me tidy up, and the waiter appeared with fresh table linen. To cover my embarrassment, the other three began a conversation about similar occurrences in their lives.

“All right now?” asked Richard, when I had recovered. “Must have gone down the wrong way,” he said quietly. “Eric, what were you saying?”

“It wasn’t much of a story,” Fitch said. “Nothing more than an apparently supernatural manifestation which could be rationalized by anyone with a minimum of scientific training.”

I felt that I had to say something, in case Richard believed me to be insensitive.

“What was the explanation for your dead aboriginal’s continued speechifying?”

“It was all to do with air pressure,” he replied. “In itself quite a remarkable phenomenon. You see, the dead man was kept perfectly preserved in the desert air. He had been buried, though that isn’t the right term for it—for they used a stilted platform for their dead—in a small depression in the desert where the evening winds coming down from two mountain ranges met at sundown. A small amount of air which had expanded during the heat of the day became cooler and passed through his vocal cords.” He paused. “Yet the whole tribe believes he is one of the living dead.”

The room was very quiet. I couldn’t see a pattern in the way the conversation was leading. There was a disturbing undercurrent of connivance in the glances of the three International psychologists.

“Nonsense, Eric,” said the Sievel woman. She indicated the remains on her plate. “Once physical death occurs, there’s nothing left but the bones. The trouble with you field-workers is that you adopt the superstitions of the communities you meet. But men are the dreamers, aren’t they, Anne?”

I didn’t want any more talk about dead men speaking.

“Richard’s as down-to-earth as any man I’ve known,” I said.

“André,” said Jensen, gesturing largely at the waiter, who then cleared the table with his neat unobtrusive skill. “So, no mysteries for you, Richard? But I thought the sea was the last home for romantics and visionaries. No stories for us, Richard? No experiences that left you with the feeling that you thought there were some answers you didn’t want to find in your charts?”

André, neat as a bird, brought on a selection of sweets as Richard considered. Then:

“I’ve had the usual hallucinations,” he said. “I’ve seen all the mythical beings when I’ve been short on food and sleep. The fruit,” he told André. “But it was always hallucinatory. As for anything approaching Eric’s tale, no.”

“But there was something?” prompted Monica Sievel, her voice soothing and confidential.

“I’ve never told anyone before,” Richard said slowly. “I’d not seen a living soul for over a month, and then it was only a little cargo boat. Nothing after that for days. I was right off the main lanes, more or less idling, trying out a new rig for an Australian manufacturer. I’d been for a swim, with a line, of course, and I’ll swear the sea was empty when I went over the side.

“I saw a fishing-boat whilst I was in the water,” he went on. “The boards were bleached white and streaked by drying weeds. The hull was high in the water, as though she was out of ballast. I couldn’t see more than her boards and her single mast—not her people, not her upper works. I remember the pleasure I felt in the end of my loneliness. I pulled myself back to the yacht and began waving as I climbed up the side,”

Richard’s handsome face looked tired. I felt the weight of his loneliness, and the mystery he had kept to himself.

“I could see the remains of a sail—the usual island rig for that part of the world. And the baskets they use for their catch.”

“And?” prompted Jensen.

“The crew.” Richard stabbed with a fruit fork at the guavas on his plate. The waiter deftly removed the wine glasses and brought on two bottles of a German wine. “Dead, of course. The bizarre thing was that they were all in position. One man at the tiller. Another in the bows looking forward as if he could see his landfall. There was one other, and he had his back to the small cabin amidships, for all the world as though he’d been on watch all night and it was his turn to loll back whilst the others sailed the boat. I shouted to them even as I realized that they had been dead for months, for every man was dried and withered by sun and spray. Their faces and limbs were crusted so white they looked like stone men. God knows how they’d died, and so much at their ease.”

I stared at Richard, wishing I could say something that would break the heavy silence.