The Inn at the Edge of the World (15 page)

‘Come on,’ said Mrs H. ‘The spooks walk on Christmas Eve. If we all go together we’ll be all right. We’ll have to hold hands. Maybe we’ll see the ghost in the cottage – he makes everything go cold – doesn’t he?’ she said to the professor.

There was a rumour that once this chilly phantom had proved so alarming that all the ladies in the vicinity had leapt, for comfort, into the professor’s bed. He had not had the chance to either affirm or deny the allegation as no one had ever directly taxed him with it, since, in those matters, frothy speculation is frequently more satisfying than the truth. ‘
Very
cold,’ said the professor, smiling knowingly, for he liked to keep the rumour alive.

Mrs H. would have pursued the topic, but Ronald interrupted. ‘If the cottage is by the sea,’ he observed, ‘it must quite often be cold.’

‘It isn’t that sort of cold,’ said Anita.

‘What sort of cold?’ asked Ronald. ‘How do you know what
sort
of cold is under discussion?’

‘Rising damp,’ said Eric again.

‘Ghostly cold is quite different from other sorts of cold,’ said Anita, looking Ronald straight in the eye.

Again he was swift to recognize the warning signs. ‘I’m not saying it isn’t,’ he explained. ‘I merely wish to know how you
know
?’

‘You just do,’ said Anita, indicating by her expression that only a perfect idiot could fail to know. She began to remind him of his wife.

‘What I say is,’ said Mrs H., ‘we’d be silly to waste the chance of seeing the ghost when the time’s right. They always come out on Christmas Eve – it’s the only night they can talk to you.’

‘Why do you want to see it?’ asked Ronald.

Most of those present considered that this question required no answer: for one thing there were few people who wouldn’t want to see a ghost, and for another seeing the ghost was not Mrs H.’s true motive. She wanted to have a party and not go home. It was obvious.

Anita spoke: having once experienced an uncanny cold she felt herself qualified to state a preference. ‘I’d like to see it,’ she said.

‘Has anybody actually
seen
it?’ asked Ronald. ‘I thought it was merely a sensation of cold.’

‘You see it out of the corner of your eye,’ said Mrs H. ‘It’s very frightening. Isn’t it?’ She appealed to the professor, who was, after all, the proprietor of the phantom.

‘So they say,’ said the professor. ‘It frightened the girls all right.’

Mrs H. cackled.

‘Why do you laugh?’ asked Ronald, thinking of a theory which held that mirth was a response to fear, deprivation, all manner of unpleasant things, and therefore a sign of neurosis. A truly well-balanced person would never laugh out loud. He had read that the Red Indian, the well-brought-up Chinaman and Lord Chesterfield had all considered laughter to be a social solecism, characterizing the coarse and the low-born who, it was true, would have had much to deplore in their circumstances and little on the surface to giggle about – which went some way to endorsing the theory. Ronald had tried to explain this to his wife when she had accused him of lacking humour, but she had never taken in what he was saying. He was in two minds about the subject: or rather he felt he was keeping an open mind, since received lay opinion at present considered the lack of a sense of humour to be a drawback, and he was increasingly feeling the need to live in the world as well as in his consulting room. His wife had one day wondered aloud whether he had taken up psychiatry because he was barking mad, or whether daily dealings with the unbalanced had driven him so. Even now the memory stung. He smiled, surprising his whiskers which previously had been disturbed only by those jaw movements attendant upon speaking, masticating or the cleaning of the teeth which they surrounded. ‘I suppose it is funny,’ he said.

‘What’s funny?’ asked Anita.

‘Everything,’ said Ronald inadequately, and Anita felt sorry for him because he looked so lost.

‘I was laughing at everybody standing round trying to decide whether to go and see the ghost or not,’ said Mrs H. untruthfully. ‘I think you’re all scared.’

‘I don’t think they’re
scared
exactly . . .’ began Ronald.

‘It’s not that I’m scared at all,’ said Anita. ‘Only it’s cold enough out there already, and it was trying to rain earlier. I think I’d rather go to bed.’

‘You can’t go to bed on Christmas Eve,’ said Mrs H.

Jessica was beginning to feel restless. ‘Do you want to go to a party?’ she asked Harry.

‘I think I’ll have an early night,’ he said. ‘Tired . . .’ He did look tired, Jessica now saw. He was pale. She hoped she hadn’t wearied him. ‘You go,’ he said. ‘Young people . . .’ She stared at him, suspiciously, and he smiled. ‘Comparatively young,’ he said, and she was reassured: people on the brink of death seldom felt sufficiently vigorous to tease those who were likely to outlive them.

Anita changed her mind again. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

‘You just said you didn’t want to,’ said Ronald.

‘Well, before that I said I did,’ said Anita, ‘and I do.’

‘I’ll run the girls there in the Jag,’ said the professor, resigned to parting with some of the contents of his cellar.

‘We’ll walk,’ said Jon, bestirring himself from a sullen daydream in which a woman resembling Jessica begged for his forgiveness: in the daydream she was covered in mud and looking far from her best. ‘Come on,’ he said to her.

‘I’ve left my coat upstairs,’ said Jessica. ‘I’ll have to go and get it.’ She went into the hall and nearly tripped over Finlay, who had abruptly stretched out his legs. He opened his eyes and gazed at her. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘Why don’t we borrow one of these?’ said Anita. ‘They’ve been hanging here for days and nobody’s collected them.’ She reached out for the dark fur and Finlay rose up and silently but firmly took it away from her, replacing it on the peg.

‘I’ll get your coat too,’ said Jessica, observing this interplay of thoughtlessness and rudeness. ‘Is your door unlocked?’

‘No,’ said Anita, who hated above all things to be humiliated and was briefly wishing that she could condemn Finlay to a lingering death. ‘I’ll go without.’

‘You’ll be cold,’ said Ronald.

‘Not in the car,’ said Anita, who was warm with rage and embarrassment.

Mrs H. sidled up to Jessica and whispered in her ear. ‘Maybe
he’s
got another coat,’ she said, indicating, at once, the promiscuous garment which sat on the shoulders of a girl who could have been one of the recent wearers or could just as easily have been a different one, and the professor – the master of the robe. She suppressed a laugh as he turned and looked at her, and made histrionic movements relative to zipping up her anorak.

Jon watched as Jessica squeezed into the back seat of the car, trying to make room for Ronald: she showed a great deal of leg as she did so. It wasn’t her fault but Jon thought it was.

The professor’s cottage was remarkably cold, though not, decided Jessica, for any supernatural reason but because he hadn’t lit the fire: it was neatly laid and grimly unwelcoming. He ignited one bar of the Calor gas stove and invited them to retain their coats until the atmosphere warmed up.

‘Let’s light the fire,’ said Mrs H., approaching the grate purposefully.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said the professor, impeding her way. ‘What’s the point of lighting the fire at this time?’

‘It would be warmer,’ said Mrs H.

‘If you want to come down first thing in the morning and clean it out and lay it again then go ahead,’ said the professor.

‘OK,’ said Mrs H., ‘where’re the matches?’

The professor lost his temper. ‘If you’re going to take charge,’ he said, ‘just carry on. You open a bottle – or better still, go back to your place and open your own bottles.’

‘Temper, temper,’ said Mrs H. She would have persisted and struck a match, but looking round she couldn’t see any.

Ronald regarded this display with moderate professional interest. The man was clearly obsessional: people of loose morals were often neurotically economical in other ways. He was quite sure that if the professor saw a pin he would pick it up and conserve it until it came in useful. ‘What do you do with your empty cans and old newspapers?’ he asked.

‘What?’ said the professor, controlling himself.

‘You must have a lovely view here in the daytime,’ said Anita, peering through the window into the murk.

‘The cold ghost happened in the summer,’ said Mrs H. whose vaguely proprietorial attitude had not been modified by her host’s outburst, ‘so it was more noticeable.’

Jessica wondered for a moment how she knew so much about it and concluded that she and the professor must once have been closer than they now appeared to be. It was unusual, she thought, for lecherous people to care for each other: they mostly preferred to debauch the virtuous.

‘How’s the fence holding up?’ asked Mrs H. spitefully.

The subject of the fence was a sore spot with the professor: somebody kept pulling it down. Every time he arrived on the island he put it up, and every time somebody came along and pulled it down and danced on his lawn, or so it would appear. The grass would be flattened and parts of the lawn balded, the nasturtiums which trailed the edges thrust carelessly aside. It fronted the sea and was intended to deter tourists from presuming that the professor’s garden was a public place suitable for picnics. The odd thing was that even out of the tourist season somebody came along and pulled it down. He had suspected each of the locals in turn, but had no evidence with which to back an accusation and had to content himself with casting unfriendly glances and making veiled remarks, which did little to enhance his popularity.

‘I’m going to get Finlay to put it up this time,’ he said. ‘I’m fed up with hammering in stakes.’

‘He’ll charge you,’ said Mrs H., surprised at this evidence of extravagance.

‘He owes me,’ said the professor. ‘I lent him my outboard-motor last month.’

‘It’s funny,’ said Mrs H., ‘considering the amount of time Finlay spends along the shore that he hasn’t caught somebody at it.’

‘You don’t imagine Finlay pushes it over,’ said the professor. Finlay was about the only islander he hadn’t suspected.

‘Why not Finlay?’ asked Mrs H. ‘Why shouldn’t it be him? He’s always down there.’

‘Why should he?’ said the professor.

‘Why not?’ said Mrs H.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said the professor, who would have found it inconvenient if Finlay should prove to be the culprit, for when his own outboard-motor broke down he often borrowed Finlay’s.

Jon, walking as rapidly as he could through the night without falling over, came to the kitchen door and stalked in. Jessica was glad to see him since new blood might help to dilute the bad blood presently pulsing through people’s veins: if it went on blood might be spilled. ‘Isn’t this nice?’ she said.

‘It reminds me of my grandfather’s place in Ireland,’ said Jon. ‘He has a little place like this that he keeps for the fishing and sailing.’ This might have been true, but when people had been with Jon for any length of time they ceased to believe a single word he said. If he claimed to have a nose, mouth and ears they would disregard the evidence of their senses and automatically assume that, in one way or another, he must be exaggerating.

‘Come and sit by me,’ said Jessica, again feeling sorry for him. She patted the worn cloth of the sofa and moved up to make room.

‘Well, would anyone like a drink?’ asked the professor. He sounded as though he hoped that, with any luck, they might decline.

‘I’d love one,’ said Jessica firmly.

‘Get some glasses,’ said the professor to the girl in the duffel coat. ‘They’re in the bottom cupboard in the kitchen.’

She returned with an assortment of receptacles, none of which matched. Jessica supposed it didn’t matter, but it was indicative of the mean-spiritedness that distinguished the evening and she asked herself what she thought she was doing, sitting in a clammy cottage on Christmas Eve with a bunch of people she didn’t know. A stiff scotch would go some way to improving matters.

‘Beer or wine?’ demanded the professor.

‘Wine, I guess,’ said Jessica resignedly.

‘Bring a bottle from the scullery,’ said the professor to the girl. ‘It’s through that door and on the left.’ It seemed that she was not altogether familiar with the premises, and Jessica began to reflect on the other women the professor was credited with. Perhaps they were all hanging from hooks in an outhouse like the victims of Mr Fox; perhaps he planned to eat them for lunch next day . . .

‘I think I’m homesick,’ she said to Jon who was sitting so close she could feel his warmth. She was, indeed, very lost. It was a fault that she was aware of in herself that, in the company of those she found unimportant, her spirits sank: she felt insignificant, plain and ordinary as though ordinariness was contagious. If she wasn’t careful she’d start showing off to remind herself that she was quite famous and rich, and could soon be back in the Coach and Horses in Greek Street with all the amusing people she had come here to escape from. She would do this purely for her own benefit and peace of mind and not to impress the others who weren’t worth the effort. Jessica was ashamed of her attitude, which made her feel worse.