Flowers on the Grass (7 page)

When they had gone, and Daniel was looking through his books to see which he must take away, Ossie thought that he would try bluntness, if that was what Daniel wanted.

“I say, old boy,” he said bluffly, “I’ve been feeling bad.”

“I told you kippers and leeks didn’t mix,” said Daniel, reading.

“No, but listen. I know you laughed at the time, but that day you suddenly decided to let the cottage—it was because of finding me and Doreen here, wasn’t it? Made you think— made you think of you and Jane-”

“My God!” Daniel spun round. “Don’t make me sick. As if it could compare——How dare you even mention her name, you blundering fool? As if you and that toothy—that-” His stammer assailed him and he beat the air for words.

This was too much. Ossie was roused at last. “I’ve had just about enough!” He hated the way his voice always went shrill when he got angry. He rushed squeakily on, before Daniel could become articulate: “After all I’ve done for you —you talk to me like a dog. You insult Doreen. You let the cottage with no thought for me, when you know I promised my sister she could have the flat another month. I gave up my home for you! I-”

“I never asked you to!” shouted Daniel.

“Didn’t you want me?”

“No!”

“Well, don’t think I wanted to come!” They stood a yard apart and yelled at each other in the low room. Suddenly Daniel gave a shout of laughter and fell over the arm of the sofa onto his back with his legs in the air.

“Oh God, that was wonderful, wonderful. Done me a power of good. I like you a hell of a lot, Oswald. You’re a great chap.”

Ossie felt wonderful, too, and next morning when he had packed up his things and left the cottage for good they parted better friends than ever before.

Ossie looked forward now to the future. They would go on being friends, and he would see Daniel a lot in London. They might even share a flat, and if Doreen did not like it, no matter. No matter either that she was still annoyed about what had happened at the cottage. If she wanted to be like that, and flaunt Morris at Ossie whenever he suggested an evening’s entertainment, all right. He and Daniel could get on quite well without her.

A few days later in the library, when he asked Peter Clay to send Daniel along with some overdue books, he said: “Don’t you ever know anything, Ozzie? He’s cleared out— * chucked the job and cleared out. No one knows where he’s gone.”

Doris was getting No. 4 ready for a new guest. The floor did not trouble her much, but she spent quite a long time on the taps and the veneered top of the dressing-table. Dusting and polishing she liked—things that showed—but those bits of fluff and dried mud at the bottom of the wardrobe she just pushed back into a corner. There was no means of getting them out, anyway, with that ridge at the front. Furniture was always made as inconvenient as possible. Doris was used to that.

She stepped on to a chair and dipped her finger into the well on top of the wardrobe, looked at the finger and wiped it on her apron. No point doing anything about that. It would only make the dusters dirty. She banged all the drawers open and shut. She had not brought any drawer paper up with her, so the paper would do for one more guest. She threw a little knot of brown hair out of the window, likewise the hairpin and the razor-blade. A hairpin
and
a razor-blade in a single room? Yes, because Miss Rigges had been one to take trouble with her appearance, even though it was not the bathing season. No other explanation was possible. The Lothian Private was not that kind of hotel. There was a gentleman once who was asked to leave. No scandal. Mrs. P. had simply given him a more suitable address.

Doris threw the razor-blade and the hairpin without vigour, and they landed on the jutting lead roof below. Oh well. There were other bits of rubbish out there. This was not a window to look out of, giving only on to the roofs and side walls of the houses that climbed away from the sea.

Doris wiped round the basin and reminded herself to ask Mrs. P. to unlock the soap cupboard. She glanced under the bed and gave one scythe-like swish of the broom there. The bed itself she made carefully, tight and cold as a coffin. One
thing she was good at was making beds. Her mother, who had been a nurse, had taught her. Since the age of ten Doris had had a passion for mitred corners and eighteen inches of turn-down.

When she had finished, she paused by the door for a quick look round. It was a nice enough room for the money. Whoever was coming had got the best eiderdown in the place, though some guests complained that it would not stay on the bed. The gentleman who was in here last winter used to tie his dressing-gown cord right over, which was a great nuisance to undo when Doris came to make the bed.

Sometimes Mrs. P. chose to come up and inspect before a guest arrived, so—one thing more. Doris looked at the notice on the wall by the light switch to make sure that the last occupant had not written anything rude against the part where it said: “TO FACILITATE THE ORGANISATION OF THE HOTEL AND THE CONSEQUENT FELICITY OF THE STAFF, GUESTS ARE URGED TO ATTEND PUNCTUALLY AT MEALS.” It didn’t mean a thing. Felicity was a girl’s name. There had been a girl at Doris’s school called that.

Not that Miss Rigges would “have written a remark, but you never knew. Quite ordinary people did the queerest things. Doris never thought twice about it. She did not trouble herself much about who came and went in the rooms. It didn’t do to think too much and fancy things. You could go nervy that way. You had your own life. The best thing was to forget the guests as much as possible and just do the job. Sometimes she forgot that she only had the job because of the guests. She was intolerant of people who wanted to miss breakfast and lie in late on a Sunday morning. It put her behind with beds, and after seven years of making their beds, cleansing after them, feeding them, Doris had come to think of cleaning, bedmaking, waiting at table as her business, not theirs. Mrs. P. had got like that, too. Once when an invasion scare had emptied the hotel, she had made Doris clean the rooms just the same every day. Doris had not objected. It gave you something to do.

Although she was what you’d call a mobile woman, they had not called Doris up, because her eyes were so shocking. They were better now, with these new glasses whose thick lenses made her eyes look like beads in the head of a teddy bear. She had read a piece in a magazine that said
you must wear your hair soft and fluffy to distract from your glasses, so Doris had a perm every six months and washed her hair herself, without setting it, so that it stood out twice as thick. Jimmie always said that he liked her better when it was straight, needing a new perm, but men never knew.

“And another for No. 4,” the porter said, passing through the pantry where Doris was laying the early-morning tea-trays.

“He’s never come yet,” Doris said.

“Oh, he hasn’t?” said Ferdie. “I suppose I didn’t get out of bed at long gone twelve to let him in.” The door of the Lothian was locked at eleven-thirty, and anyone gadding later must take a key, which did not happen often with their type of guest.

“What’s he like?” asked Doris without interest, spooning tea into the pots with a screwed-up mouth, for Mrs. P. would not unlock her cupboard to give her any more if she ran short at the end of the week.

“Nothing extra,” Ferdie said. “Youngish for us.”

“Oh—traveller.”

“I daresay. I didn’t see his looks much. A window got banging when I was opening the door, and while I was gone fixing it he was off upstairs. Smallish bag he had,” said Ferdie, with a Sherlock Holmes air. “Short-term lodger—you’ll see.”

Ferdie had not been at the Lothian as long as Doris. He had not yet learned not to take an interest. He had a married daughter in the other part of the town who was always on at him to tell her things. She wished he worked at the Queens or the Imperial, so that he could tell her about famous people. No one famous ever came to the Lothian. Ferdie, however, always had it in the back of his mind that one day there would be a murder done there. That
would
be something. His picture in the London, as well as the local papers.

Doris slammed another plastic tray on to the pantry shelf. “Just look at that!” She indicated the curling cigarette burn on the edge. Would they never learn that you couldn’t treat modern improvements the same as the old stuff?

“I don’t know what time he wants his tea,” Ferdie said. “He’d gone up before I could ask.”

“Oh well,” said Doris. “He’ll get it now, while the kettles are boiling, and like it.”

When she went into No. 4, she screamed and had to lean against the door, collecting her heart together.

“What’s the matter? Who’s that?” No. 4 sat up in bed, looking round him as if he could not think where he was.

“Oh, he gave me a fright.” Doris drew great breaths. “Rising up at me from under the bed like one coming out of the sea.”

“It’s all right. He won’t hurt you.”

“Ah, I can see that. Oh, you beauty.” Doris set down the tray and bent to rub the dog’s head against yesterday’s dirty apron which she wore for morning work. “What have they done to your tail then? Fancy cutting your tail, poor fellow.”

“He got it in a trap.”

“Ah, they’re bringing a law against that in Parliament.” Doris read the papers from end to end, after supper, with her shoes off. “There’s a good dog. They always like me,” she said. “They know.”

“Know what?” asked the gentleman in the bed, but Doris went over to the window, where she rattled aside the curtains with the dramatic cry: “It won’t do!” She turned round, her humpy shoulders making a right angle with her squat square sides against the morning light. “You can’t keep him here,” she said. “If Mrs. P. was to set eyes on him, she’d-” She did not know what Mrs. P. would do, for no one had ever tried to bring a dog into the Lothian Private, which had notices on its railings, in the hall, on the prospectus and on all the notepaper: “No Dogs.”

The winter guests at the Lothian were mostly long-term although this lot had the air of being only there while they waited for something. Mrs. Lewin was waiting with her twelve-year-old son Curtis for her Canadian husband to send for her. Miss Willys was waiting for a man. She had been waiting all her life. Old Mr. and Mrs. Parker were waiting for their daughter to ask them to go up north and live with her. Miss Rawlings was waiting for her mother to die in the nursing home round the corner. She went in every day and read the
Pilgrim’s Progress
to her in Esperanto, but it had not killed her yet. Mr. Dangerfield, who was the M.C. at
the Palace Ballroom, was waiting for the summer season, when he could stop giving private lessons and once more be Our Own Dudley Dangerfield in white gloves and tails to the ground, chanting into the microphone for the old-fashioned dances: “Swing your partners and turn
around
. Knees to the middle and bow to the
ground”

Mr. Finck had some job connected with building the new holiday camp outside the town. No one knew what he was waiting for. To pinch the spoons, Ferdie said.

Just now they were all waiting for their supper. Mrs. P. liked everyone to be there before she started serving—
to Facilitate the Smooth Organisation, etc
. Five minutes after she had sounded the gong she looked through the hatch at the company docilely unrolling napkins in the cold shiny dining-room.

“Where is Mr. Brett?” she asked Doris. “Run upstairs and tell him.”

Doris never ran anywhere, but she went, at her own special gait, foot to foot, far apart, for her legs were set on square and wide.

“Supper now?” he said. “It’s only half-past six.”

“Now or never. Didn’t you see the notice?”

“No. Oh that. Tell me.” He was sitting on the edge of the bed, and he leaned forward and looked up at her with interest. “If I do, will it give you felicity?”

“Mrs. P. is waiting to serve supper,” Doris said firmly and led the way downstairs. She hoped he wasn’t going to be’ one of those who got larky. She’d had some of that. No thank you.

Mrs. P. was ladling out soups when they came down. She never let the cook serve out the portions. Doris showed Mr. Brett to the table in the draught—the newcomer’s table—and began to fetch soup plates from the hatch. There was a noise of spoons and of mulligatawny going through Mr. Parker’s moustache.

Mr. Brett turned up his coat collar. “What’s the good of a gas fire if they don’t light it?” he asked Doris, when she brought him his Cornish pasty.

“Mrs. P. lights it when necessary.”

“When is necessary?” But Mrs. P. was shoving not only vegetable dishes but her head through the hatch to see what Doris was up to.

After the semolina, jelly, or cheese and biscuits, Mr. Finck stopped Mr. Brett on the way out. He had a nose like a piece of Government cheese, with a blob on the end that quivered when he talked. “Keep it up,” he said. “We may get that ruddy thing lit yet.”

“Why don’t you ask?”

“Oh, she’ll do it if you
ask
. Most obliging. Do anything. But she has her subtle ways of getting back at you.”

How well Doris knew those small reprisals. The portion of stew all carrots and no meat. The outside slice of suet roll, from which the jam had retreated. The gravy poured back into the soup before the last plate had been wetted. “For Mr. Finck,” she would say. Or: “For Mr. Parker” (that day he had left the tap running in his basin and wet Miss Rawlings’s clothes on a chair in the room below), pushing the sweets of revenge through and slamming down the hatch.

When Doris was going upstairs with an armful of hot-water bottles, Mr. Brett came out of the first-floor lounge, passing a hand across his forehead, as if it had tired him talking in there. “How am I going to get the dog in?” he asked.

“Gracious, you’re never going to bring him back?”

“What did you think I was going to do?” Doris had not thought. “I had the devil of a time getting him out this morning. People popping out of their rooms like jack-in-the-boxes. The caretaker at the art school has had him in his room all day, but he goes off at nine.”

“So do I,” said Doris, suspecting that she was about to be embroiled.