The Green Man by Kingsley Amis Page A

with his wife, also a
caricature of a savant, though of a more purely learned, perhaps more Germanic,
type. They had brought along a couple of friends, less discernibly erudite than
themselves. As expected, they all went for the grouse—the first of the year to
have hung long enough—accompanied by a couple of bottles of the Château Lafite 1955 I kept under the counter for a few people like old Burgess, and preceded by
some of the chef’s admirable kipper pâté. I ushered them into the dining-room
myself; the head waiter, alerted in advance, met us at the doorway. The rather
low-ceilinged room, a little over half-full, looked pleasantly welcoming with
its candles, polished silver, polished oak and dark-blue leather, and was much
cooler than the bar had been. The sight and sound of so much eating and talking
daunted me a little, but there was a certain amount of drinking going on as
well: not enough to satisfy me, but then there never is.
    I had
got the Burgesses and their friends settled, and was about to make a round of
the other tables when I caught sight of a man standing by the window, perhaps
looking out through a chink in the curtains, although he seemed to be in a
slightly wrong position for doing this. I was pretty sure he had not been there
when I came into the room. For a moment, I assumed this person to be a guest
concerned about, for instance, the state of the lights of his car. Then, as my
innkeeper’s reflexes sent me across the room with officiously helpful tread,
I saw that the figure was wearing a short grey wig and a black gown and white
bands at the throat. By now I was no more than six feet away. I halted.
    ‘Dr
Underhill?’
    It is
never true that we speak so entirely without volition as not to realize, even
for an instant, that it is we who have spoken. But I had not had the least
conscious intention of pronouncing that name.
    In
leisurely fashion, but without delay, the head turned and the eyes met mine.
They were dark-brown eyes with deeply creased lids, thick lower lashes and
arching brows. I also saw a pale, indoors complexion scattered with broken
veins to what seemed an incongruous degree, a broad forehead, a long, skewed nose
and a mouth that, in another’s face, I might have called humorous, with very
clearly defined lips. Then, or rather at once, Dr Underhill recognized me. Then
he smiled. It was the kind of smile with which a bully might greet an inferior
person prepared to join with him in the persecution of some helpless third
party. It also held a certain menace, as if any squeamishness in persecution
would result in accomplice becoming victim.
    I
turned to the nearest table, where there sat a party of three youngish London
lawyers and their wives, and said loudly, ‘Do you see him? Man in the black …
Just here, there…’
    Underhill
had gone when I looked round. I felt a great weary irritation at the
predictability of this. I floundered idiotically on for a bit about his having
been there a moment before, and how they must surely have seen him, before I
realized that I could not stand up any more. My heart was perfectly steady just
then, I was not dizzy or ill, and I have never fainted in my life; it was
simply that my legs would not do their job. Somebody—the head waiter—caught
me. I heard alarmed voices and scuffling sounds as people got to their feet.
Immediately, and from nowhere, David arrived. He put his arm round me, called
out a sharp order for my wife and son to he fetched from the bar and steered me
into the hall. Here he sat me down in an upright-backed Regency chair by the
fireplace and tried to loosen my collar, but I prevented him.
    ‘It’s
all right, David, really. Just … nothing at all.’
    Nick
said, ‘What’s the matter, Dad?’ and Joyce said, ‘I’ll phone Jack.’
    ‘No,
don’t do that. No need for that. I just came over a bit dizzy. I must have been
drinking faster than I realized. I’m all right now.’
    ‘Where
would you like to be, Mr