Allington? Can you make it upstairs if we give you a
hand?’
‘Please
don’t bother, I think I can make it on my own.’ I got up, not all that shakily,
and saw that people were watching me from the dining-room and bar door and
elsewhere. ‘Could you tell anybody who’s interested that I’ve been under severe
strain recently, or some such flap-doodle? Everyone’ll think I was as tight as
a tick anyway, but I suppose we might as well preserve the outward forms if we
can.’
‘I’m
sure very few of them will think that, Mr Allington.’
‘Oh
well, what of it? I’ll be off now. Don’t worry, David. If Ramón goes berserk
with the meat-cleaver you’d better let me know, but short of that the house is
all yours until the morning. Good night.’
None
too comfortably, the four of us settled in the drawing-room, so called by my
predecessor, though its lack of spaciousness and its pretty unrelieved
symmetry made it, for me, a mere parlour or ante-room. I had never much tried
to make it more than barely decent, had rather tended to turn it into a dump
for the less attractive furniture and a couple of bits of statuary that had
started to get on my nerves, a portrait bust of an early-Victorian divine and a
female nude in some pale wood, sloppily modernistic in tendency, which I had
bought in Cambridge after a heavy lunch at the Garden House and had since been
too lazy to get rid of. Only my father had seemed to like the room, or at least
had used it regularly. However, we would not be disturbed here.
I told
them what I had seen. Nick watched me with great concern, Joyce with concern,
Lucy with responsible vigilance, like a member of a team conducting a
nationwide survey of drunks who see ghosts. Halfway through, I made Nick fetch
me a small Scotch and water. He demurred, but I made him.
Joyce
lost her look of concern as I talked. When I had finished, she said, ‘Sounds
like D.T.s to me, don’t you think?’ in the interested voice she had used in
discussing my father’s chances of surviving the current year, and, once, to
suggest that Amy’s remoteness might he due to mental sub-normality.
‘Christ,
what an idea,’ said Nick.
‘What’s
so terrible about it? I mean, if it’s that you can deal with it. Not like going
mad, after all.’
Nick
turned to Lucy. ‘Isn’t D.T.s little animals and that type of stuff?’
‘Very
often, yes,’ said Lucy dependably. ‘Something completely removed from reality,
anyway. A man just standing about smiling hardly counts as that.’
This
was a small relief, but I rather wished she had not spoken as if what I had
seen was on the same level as one of the waiters wearing a dirty collar. ‘All
right,’ I said, ‘what was it, then?’
Nick
drew back his lips and shook his head earnestly. ‘You were pissed, Dad. I don’t
know whether you realize, but you were really droning away when you were
talking to the three of us in the bar just before.’
‘I’m
not pissed now.’
‘Well
no, but in the meantime you’ve had a shock and that does pull people round. But
earlier on you were. Oh, you were making plenty of sense, but I know the way
your voice goes, and your eyes.’
‘But
I’d come round after that. I was talking to David … Look, Nick, you go down
now and ask Professor Burgess. He’ll tell you I was all right. Go on.’
‘Oh, Dad. How can I go and ask him?’
‘Go
down and get hold of David and the two of you take some of the regular people
aside, David knows who they are, and ask them if they saw somebody standing by
the window. I’ve described how he looked, so they’ll be——’
‘Christ, Dad … Let it drop. Take my advice, honestly. All
their bloody tongues’ll be flapping as it is. Don’t go and make it worse. You
don’t want it going round that the landlord of the Green Man seems to be seeing
things. Don’t mind me saying this, just with the four of us, but they all know
you’re a boozer. And anyway they wouldn’t remember seeing
hand?’
‘Please
don’t bother, I think I can make it on my own.’ I got up, not all that shakily,
and saw that people were watching me from the dining-room and bar door and
elsewhere. ‘Could you tell anybody who’s interested that I’ve been under severe
strain recently, or some such flap-doodle? Everyone’ll think I was as tight as
a tick anyway, but I suppose we might as well preserve the outward forms if we
can.’
‘I’m
sure very few of them will think that, Mr Allington.’
‘Oh
well, what of it? I’ll be off now. Don’t worry, David. If Ramón goes berserk
with the meat-cleaver you’d better let me know, but short of that the house is
all yours until the morning. Good night.’
None
too comfortably, the four of us settled in the drawing-room, so called by my
predecessor, though its lack of spaciousness and its pretty unrelieved
symmetry made it, for me, a mere parlour or ante-room. I had never much tried
to make it more than barely decent, had rather tended to turn it into a dump
for the less attractive furniture and a couple of bits of statuary that had
started to get on my nerves, a portrait bust of an early-Victorian divine and a
female nude in some pale wood, sloppily modernistic in tendency, which I had
bought in Cambridge after a heavy lunch at the Garden House and had since been
too lazy to get rid of. Only my father had seemed to like the room, or at least
had used it regularly. However, we would not be disturbed here.
I told
them what I had seen. Nick watched me with great concern, Joyce with concern,
Lucy with responsible vigilance, like a member of a team conducting a
nationwide survey of drunks who see ghosts. Halfway through, I made Nick fetch
me a small Scotch and water. He demurred, but I made him.
Joyce
lost her look of concern as I talked. When I had finished, she said, ‘Sounds
like D.T.s to me, don’t you think?’ in the interested voice she had used in
discussing my father’s chances of surviving the current year, and, once, to
suggest that Amy’s remoteness might he due to mental sub-normality.
‘Christ,
what an idea,’ said Nick.
‘What’s
so terrible about it? I mean, if it’s that you can deal with it. Not like going
mad, after all.’
Nick
turned to Lucy. ‘Isn’t D.T.s little animals and that type of stuff?’
‘Very
often, yes,’ said Lucy dependably. ‘Something completely removed from reality,
anyway. A man just standing about smiling hardly counts as that.’
This
was a small relief, but I rather wished she had not spoken as if what I had
seen was on the same level as one of the waiters wearing a dirty collar. ‘All
right,’ I said, ‘what was it, then?’
Nick
drew back his lips and shook his head earnestly. ‘You were pissed, Dad. I don’t
know whether you realize, but you were really droning away when you were
talking to the three of us in the bar just before.’
‘I’m
not pissed now.’
‘Well
no, but in the meantime you’ve had a shock and that does pull people round. But
earlier on you were. Oh, you were making plenty of sense, but I know the way
your voice goes, and your eyes.’
‘But
I’d come round after that. I was talking to David … Look, Nick, you go down
now and ask Professor Burgess. He’ll tell you I was all right. Go on.’
‘Oh, Dad. How can I go and ask him?’
‘Go
down and get hold of David and the two of you take some of the regular people
aside, David knows who they are, and ask them if they saw somebody standing by
the window. I’ve described how he looked, so they’ll be——’
‘Christ, Dad … Let it drop. Take my advice, honestly. All
their bloody tongues’ll be flapping as it is. Don’t go and make it worse. You
don’t want it going round that the landlord of the Green Man seems to be seeing
things. Don’t mind me saying this, just with the four of us, but they all know
you’re a boozer. And anyway they wouldn’t remember seeing
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