Fear Read online

  ‘Darling!’

  ‘I mean with these bells. God knows when they will stop.’ Instantly he felt a new pang of fear at what he had said.

  Mrs Pascoe had appeared at the door leading to the Bar, and opposite to that from which the Commandant had departed. She bore two steaming glasses on a tray. She looked about, possibly to confirm that the Commandant had really gone.

  ‘I thought you might both like a nightcap. Ovaltine, with something in it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Phrynne. ‘I can’t think of anything nicer.’

  Gerald set the glasses on a wicker table, and quickly finished his cognac.

  Mrs Pascoe began to move chairs and slap cushions. She looked very haggard.

  ‘Is the Commandant an Anabaptist?’ asked Phrynne over her shoulder. She was proud of her ability to outdistance Gerald in beginning to consume a hot drink.

  Mrs Pascoe stopped slapping for a moment. ‘I don’t know what that is,’ she said.

  ‘He’s left his book,’ said Phrynne, on a new tack.

  Mrs Pascoe looked at it indifferently across the Lounge.

  ‘I wonder what he’s reading,’ continued Phrynne. ‘Fox’s Lives of the Martyrs, I expect.’ A small unusual devil seemed to have entered into her.

  But Mrs Pascoe knew the answer. ‘It’s always the same,’ she said, contemptuously. ‘He only reads one. It’s called Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. He’s been reading it ever since he came here. When he gets to the end, he starts again.’

  ‘Should I take it up to him?’ asked Gerald. It was neither courtesy nor inclination, but rather a fear lest the Commandant return to the Lounge: a desire, after those few minutes of reflection, to cross-examine.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ said Mrs Pascoe, as if relieved of a similar apprehension. ‘Room One. Next to the suit of Japanese armour.’ She went on tipping and banging. To Gerald’s inflamed nerves, her behaviour seemed too consciously normal.

  He collected the book and made his way upstairs. The volume was bound in real leather, and the tops of its pages were gilded: apparently a presentation copy. Outside the Lounge, Gerald looked at the fly leaf: in a very large hand was written ‘To my dear Son, Raglan, on his being honoured by the Queen. From his proud Father, B. Shotcroft, Major-General.’ Beneath the inscription a very ugly military crest had been appended by a stamper of primitive type.

  The suit of Japanese armour lurked in a dark corner as the Commandant himself had done when Gerald had first encountered him. The wide brim of the helmet concealed the black eyeholes in the headpiece; the moustache bristled realistically. It was exactly as if the figure stood guard over the door behind it. On this door was no number, but, there being no other in sight, Gerald took it to be the door of Number One. A short way down the dim empty passage was a window, the ancient sashes of which shook in the din and blast of the bells. Gerald knocked sharply.

  If there was a reply, the bells drowned it; and he knocked again. When to the third knocking there was still no answer, he gently opened the door. He really had to know whether all would, or could, be well if Phrynne, and doubtless he also, were at all costs to remain in their room until it was dawn. He looked in the room and caught his breath.

  There was no artificial light, but the curtains, if there were any, had been drawn back from the single window, and the bottom sash forced up as far as it would go. On the floor by the dusky void, a maelstrom of sound, knelt the Commandant, his cropped white hair faintly catching the moonless glimmer, as his head lay on the sill, like that of a man about to be guillotined. His face was in his hands, but slightly sideways, so that Gerald received a shadowy distorted idea of his expression. Some might have called it ecstatic, but Gerald found it agonized. It frightened him more than anything which had yet happened. Inside the room the bells were like plunging roaring lions.

  He stood for some considerable time quite unable to move. He could not determine whether or not the Commandant knew he was there. The Commandant gave no direct sign of it, but more than once he writhed and shuddered in Gerald’s direction, like an unquiet sleeper made more unquiet by an interloper. It was a matter of doubt whether Gerald should leave the book; and he decided to do so mainly because the thought of further contact with it displeased him. He crept into the room and softly laid it on a hardly visible wooden trunk at the foot of the plain metal bedstead. There seemed no other furniture in the room. Outside the door, the hanging mailed fingers of the Japanese figure touched his wrist.

  He had not been away from the Lounge for long, but it was long enough for Mrs Pascoe to have begun again to drink. She had left the tidying up half-completed, or rather the room half-disarranged; and was leaning against the overmantel, drawing heavily on a dark tumbler of whisky. Phrynne had not yet finished her Ovaltine.

  ‘How long before the bells stop?’ asked Gerald as soon as he opened the Lounge door. Now he was resolved that, come what might, they must go. The impossibility of sleep should serve as excuse.

  ‘I don’t expect Mrs Pascoe can know any more than we can,’ said Phrynne.

  ‘You should have told us about this – this annual event – before accepting our booking.’

  Mrs Pascoe drank some more whisky. Gerald suspected that it was neat. ‘It’s not always the same night,’ she said throatily, looking at the floor.

  ‘We’re not staying,’ said Gerald wildly.

  ‘Darling!’ Phrynne caught him by the arm.

  ‘Leave this to me, Phrynne.’ He addressed Mrs Pascoe. ‘We’ll pay for the room, of course. Please order me a car.’

  Mrs Pascoe was now regarding him stonily. When he asked for a car, she gave a very short laugh. Then her face changed. She made an effort, and she said, ‘You mustn’t take the Commandant so seriously, you know.’

  Phrynne glanced quickly at her husband.

  The whisky was finished. Mrs Pascoe placed the empty glass on the plastic overmantel with too much of a thud. ‘No one takes Commandant Shotcroft seriously,’ she said. ‘Not even his nearest and dearest.’

  ‘Has he any?’ asked Phrynne. ‘He seemed so lonely and pathetic.’

  ‘He’s Don and I’s mascot,’ she said, the drink interfering with her grammar. But not even the drink could leave any doubt about her rancour.

  ‘I thought he had personality,’ said Phrynne.

  ‘That and a lot more no doubt,’ said Mrs Pascoe. ‘But they pushed him out, all the same.’

  ‘Out of what?’

  ‘Cashiered, court-martialled, badges of rank stripped off, sword broken in half, muffled drums, the works.’

  ‘Poor old man. I’m sure it was a miscarriage of justice.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t know him.’

  Mrs Pascoe looked as if she were waiting for Gerald to offer her another whisky.

  ‘It’s a thing he could never live down,’ said Phrynne, brooding to herself, and tucking her legs beneath her. ‘No wonder he’s so queer if all the time it was a mistake.’

  ‘I just told you it was not a mistake,’ said Mrs Pascoe insolently.

  ‘How can we possibly know?’

  ‘You can’t. I can. No one better.’ She was at once aggressive and tearful.

  ‘If you want to be paid,’ cried Gerald, forcing himself in, ‘make out your bill. Phrynne, come upstairs and pack.’ If only he hadn’t made her unpack between their walk and dinner.

  Slowly Phrynne uncoiled and rose to her feet. She had no intention of either packing or departing, nor was she going to argue. ‘I shall need your help,’ she said. ‘If I’m going to pack.’

  In Mrs Pascoe there was another change. Now she looked terrified. ‘Don’t go. Please don’t go. Not now. It’s too late.’

  Gerald confronted her. ‘Too late for what?’ he asked harshly.

  Mrs Pascoe looked paler than ever. ‘You said you wanted a car,’ she faltered. ‘You’re too late.’ Her voice trailed away.

  Gerald took Phrynne by the arm. ‘Come on up.’

  Before they