The Inn at the Edge of the World (10 page)

None of them had. Ronald was eating bread and butter, wondering how it was done. Since he had been so well fed and his bed was made for him he had ceased to mind much about his wife. He found this interesting, for the theory was that sexual desire lessened with physical deprivation and increased on four square meals a day. Either the theory was incorrect or he was not normal.

‘There’s a dance at the village hall tonight,’ said Eric from the doorway. ‘I know you’re mostly here for a rest, but if you wanted a spot of local colour . . .’ He looked over his shoulder to make sure that no islander had crept in to listen: unlike some obliging natives the locals resented being called upon to sing and dance for the delectation of the tourist. They were a dour lot, he thought exasperatedly.

Ronald, who was eating a quantity of Black Bun, flinched: a dance at the village hall sounded rather worse than
The Phantom of the Opera
. His spirits lifted as he realized that if his wife had been with him she would probably have made him go: she saw it as her duty to ingest culture whenever and wherever it was offered. There had been an evening of flamenco once in Andalusia . . .

*

‘Will you go?’ asked Anita.

Ronald, deep in masochistic reminiscence, did not, at first, appreciate that it was he whom she was addressing. When he did he responded with a vehement
No
. Realizing that this abrupt refusal had caused a startled hush to descend upon the company, he went on to qualify it. ‘I don’t like dancing,’ he explained.

‘You wouldn’t have to dance, you could just watch,’ said Anita.

‘I don’t like watching dancing,’ said Ronald. Anita began to readjust her recently formed assessment of his character and capabilities . . . ‘Watching others perform,’ said Ronald, who was also aware that he had sounded like a recalcitrant five-year-old, ‘is as extrovert an expression of personality as the overt demonstration itself.’ He clamped his teeth into a slice of Dundee cake.

‘Then you,’ said Anita, thinking about this, ‘must be an introvert.’

‘Yes,’ said Ronald, measuredly. ‘If we are to accept the validity of the concept and employ its terminology – then yes – I would describe myself as an introvert.’ He wasn’t too concerned, at the moment, with the obscure niceties of his inner self since he was examining his developing response to the absence of his wife. She wasn’t here, and . . . it was really something of a relief. Astonished, he sat with his mouth a little open. A few crumbs of Dundee cake fell into his beard.

‘I think
I’ll
go,’ said Jessica to Anita. ‘Shall we go together?’ She knew that Harry wouldn’t avail himself of the evening’s entertainment.

‘I’d love it,’ said Anita.

Jon, who had decided to adopt the hard-to-get gambit himself, and was sitting by the ladder fern at the furthest point from Jessica, wondered what her motives were. Why was she inviting the shop-lady to accompany her to the village hall? She was even trickier than he had thought. So – if she wanted to play games . . .

Ronald was still gazing into space. He looked profound or half-witted, according to your point of view, as he made a rapid reappraisal of all he had held sacred. He had accepted, without question, that inter-personal relationships were the pivot, the mainstay, the be-all and end-all, the purpose and meaning of all human existence. Now – the
fuck
with interpersonal relationships, he thought, reaching absent-mindedly for the last round of bread and butter. He did not delude himself that he would necessarily continue in this frame of mind, but it was interesting that he had become aware of it.

‘I’ll see you in the bar at seven,’ said Jessica.

‘Right,’ said Anita.

*

That evening the bar was as full as ever it was for the time of year. A few locals, Mrs H., the professor and a girl in the duffel coat.

‘This is Patricia,’ said the professor.

‘G and T,’ said Jessica to Eric.

‘Going to the hop?’ asked Mrs H.

‘Yes,’ said Jessica. ‘We thought we might as well. Are you going?’ she added out of politeness.

‘Me? No,’ said Mrs H. She leaned forward and pinched Jessica lightly on the arm. ‘
He’s
going,’ she said. ‘You want to bet?’ She spoke in a whisper.

‘Eh?’ said Jessica.

‘Him,’ said Mrs H., ‘the professor. He’s got his little red scarf on.’

‘Oh,’ said Jessica.

Mrs H. correctly recognized this as a sign of incomprehension. ‘It’s his pulling scarf,’ she said. ‘When he’s pulling birds he wears his little red scarf. In the summer he goes round in his underpants and in the winter it’s his little red scarf.’

‘But he’s with a girl,’ said Jessica. She found, to her annoyance, that she too was speaking in a whisper. There was nothing so catching as whispering, except for yawning.

‘Ha,’ said Mrs H., ‘that makes no odds to him. He’ll’ve made a date with three more by the end of the evening. You mark my words.’

‘Good heavens,’ said Jessica, feebly.

Eric, who had been listening to these whisperings, gave Mrs H. one of his looks. It meant – you’re no slouch in that direction yourself, lady.

‘I’ll have another mineral water, please, Eric,’ she said, in her ordinary tone, except that she had pitched it at a more imperious level than usual. Eric wished he was rich, because then he could afford to pour it down her jumper. ‘I have to watch my figure,’ she said to Jessica, all girls together.

Jessica thanked her stars that the days had passed when someone would have cried at this: ‘No, no. Let
me
watch your figure.’

The professor leaned forward on his bar stool. ‘You
don’t
,’ he said. ‘Leave it to me to watch your figure.’

Once upon a time, thought Jessica remotely, Mrs H. would have responded, ‘Ooh, don’t try your wiles on me, you handsome rogue.’

Mrs H. too leaned forward. ‘Ooh,’ she began, ‘don’t try . . .’

Jessica, seeing Anita in the hallway, fled before she could hear the end of this. She had once played in a modern version of
Aladdin
, much of the script of which, she felt, could have been written by the people at the bar. Bawdiness she did not object to; just the predictability of the lines.

‘There’s a moon,’ said Anita, ‘so we won’t need a torch. It’s only about half a mile along the road. Eric said he’d take us in the van, but I said we wouldn’t mind walking. Do you mind?’

‘No,’ said Jessica. ‘I couldn’t half do with a spot of fresh air.’

‘It’s stuffy in the bar,’ agreed Anita. ‘Have you got flat shoes on?’ The air was cold and salty and clean.

Back in the bar Eric was making conversation with his
bêtes noires
, remembering the words of one of Mrs H.’s friends earlier that year. ‘She,’ he had said, indicating Mrs H. with a forward motion of his thumb, ‘ ’as ’ad every bloke on this island, bar ’im,’ whereupon he had indicated with a backward motion of his thumb the pitiful form of Mrs H.’s husband, John. Eric, who did not consider adultery a laughing matter, had frowned upon the friend. Nevertheless the words had been just. Mrs H., thought Eric, who should perhaps have been a minister rather than an innkeeper, was an uncleanly woman, and the professor was an unregenerate chaser of skirt. They both, probably, were incubating dreadful diseases, and if they weren’t they doubtless would be before very much more water had passed under the bridge. He would leave their glasses twice the time in the wash.

A group of men in a corner were gossiping and laughing too loudly, like adolescents who have come across something unfamiliar but suggestive and are faintly nervous of it. Eric ignored them contemptuously, serving them in brisk, unsmiling silence when they came to replenish their glasses. They were all locals, but one of them had been away and come back. He it was who had found something – a woman in Glasgow by the sound of it. ‘Never knew her name,’ he was saying. ‘Don’t know where she came from . . .’ Eric sniffed scornfully and ran a wet cloth over the bar counter. ‘Never saw anything like it,’ said the venturer and his cronies sniggered.

Eric wished perversely that Anita and Jessica had not gone to the dance. Not that he wanted their ears to be sullied by the corner conversation, but the presence of ladies – real ladies, unlike Mrs H. – had a freshening effect on a room defiled by loutish behaviour. They resembled a bunch of flowers in their polite purity. Eric realized that his train of thought was taking an unrealistic turn and paused to wonder what the guests really thought of his inn: he hoped that the old soldier wasn’t monopolizing Jessica and causing her to be bored. From what he had overheard of their conversation it seemed not improbable, but she appeared content in Harry’s company. There was no accounting for tastes and the old boy was undeniably a gentleman. A further rumble of vulgar mirth from the peasants set his teeth on edge. ‘You never saw anything like it,’ the man said. ‘Black rubber and a rose in her . . .’ Eric grew horridly alert. There was probably hundreds of women who behaved naughtily in the anonymity of cities, but he couldn’t help wondering whether it was Mabel of whom this creature was speaking. He turned away resolutely, determined to think about something else.

‘Sex . . .’ began the professor, so Eric said he had to change a barrel, and went out to the inn yard for his own complement of fresh air. He stood in the cold watching the moon-path over the sea, and as he watched he saw the form of a boy crossing it from left to right. In the uncertain light he could have been walking on the strand or on the sea, and as Eric blinked he had gone again, into the shadows. A mist was rising.

Harry standing at his window, looking far out, saw nothing but the gibbous moon. Nothing at all.

Jessica was growing sleepy and the noise was growing louder since a young man had arrived with a drum. Earlier the music had been supplied by a record player, and a few couples had jiggled vigorously around in a corner. Jessica and Anita had sat on folding chairs behind a table drinking canned lager out of paper cups and hoping they had not taken places reserved for local notables; but nobody had confronted them and, indeed, nobody had taken any notice of them. Four girls had provided the cabaret, hopping about over four swords laid on the floor, clad in kilts and bedecked with bits of white heather, and Jessica had supposed that their turn must have required more skill than was immediately apparent, for otherwise why would they have bothered? ‘I could do that,’ she had said and Anita had not argued. Then another girl had sung the ‘Skye Boat Song’, unaccompanied, and somebody had recited a work by Burns. It’s all very
tartan
, thought Jessica, but not very authentic. Since the locals were clearly not performing for the benefit of tourists she could only imagine that their culture had ossified into self-parody under the influence of the media and a plethora of communication. The most remote and isolated savage, having once seen himself on telly, would find his attitudes to himself and his rites subtly altered, and these people must have been constantly bombarded by reflections and images of Caledonian mores and behaviour.
Sad
, thought Jessica. Hoots mon and Haggis.

The door opened, several more people entered, including Finlay carrying a flute. The drummer put down his sticks, and someone turned the record player back on. The lights were lowered. The door opened again and someone who looked like Finlay’s sister-in-law slid in along the wall.

‘Either of you two ladies care to dance?’ asked the professor of Jessica and Anita. They declined: Jessica on the grounds that her feet were hurting, and Anita because she was already too hot. ‘Let me know when you want to go,’ he said, ‘and I’ll run you back in the Jag.’ He shuffled away in time to the music.

‘I’m ready for bed,’ said Anita. ‘I don’t want to wait. Shall we walk back?’ It was dark outside: the moon hidden in cloud. Jessica tripped against a low wall.

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ she said of the cool air. ‘Let’s sit here a moment until we get used to the dark.’

The door opened and the professor emerged flanked by two girls. ‘Hang on,’ he said, ‘I’ve just got to have a pee.’ He moved a foot or so from his companions and urinated over the wall on which Anita and Jessica were sitting. Perhaps he hadn’t seen them there. Jessica gave him the benefit of the doubt.

A hush followed the racket as the professor’s Jag rumbled away along the sea road. All sound had ceased in the village hall behind them. Then there came the strains of a flute: a wild melody, sweet and sorrowful and piercing – and so unfamiliar, thought Jessica, that it could seldom have been heard on the earth before. They waited until it had stopped and the moon had come out from the clouds before they started home, not speaking.

Jessica looked out to sea, and in the light from the suddenly soaring moon she saw dark shapes at the water’s edge; so many she thought she must be seeing things. ‘Seals,’ she said. ‘Look. There are hundreds of them out there . . .’ but when Anita looked they had gone.

Jon, walking soundlessly behind them on cushioned soles, saw nothing but the white drift of Jessica’s cashmere scarf. It covered her brown hair and swathed her pale neck, guiding him through the shadows.

‘Do you suppose this place is haunted?’ asked Anita the next morning. She had skipped breakfast because her waistband was feeling tight and had joined the others for elevenses. ‘I heard noises in the night.’

‘People go to the bathroom in the night,’ said Ronald.