The Inn at the Edge of the World (2 page)

The boatman spoke. ‘Och,’ he observed, ‘there’re no’ many folks around for the time of the year.’

‘Finlay,’ said Eric, exasperated by this needless observation, ‘it’s October. Of course there’re no’ many folks around. The season’s over.’

Finlay, who was a big Scotsman with a big Scots nose and a brow more geological than anatomical, went on talking. Usually the ingratiating native, when attempting to describe the customs of his country to an outsider, wears an expression that combines modest pride with self-deprecatory reservation, for while he may value his traditions and feel affection for them, he cannot believe that they truly hold much interest for the stranger, since strangers, by definition, have come from a wider, more sophisticated world – or so it is assumed by the innocent. Finlay did not wear this expression: Finlay appeared to regard the stranger with mildly amused contempt. He gave the impression that he knew what he knew and did not care in the least for the experience or opinions of the outsider – whatever they might be. As he got into his stride his accent became nigh impenetrable, but no matter: ‘When Allan Maclean had the place,’ he said, ‘there were folks sleeping in heaps on the floor.’

‘Why?’ asked Mabel, in a better mood now that she too had had her first whiskies.

‘Because all the bedrooms were full,’ said Finlay.

‘Why?’ asked Eric in his turn. ‘Why was the place full in October?’

‘For the shooting,’ said Finlay. ‘For the game.’

‘What game?’ asked Eric, beginning to sense again the feeling of being somehow excluded, of not under standing. As far as he had been able to gather, it was at least two centuries since Allan Maclean had had the place.

‘Why, the isle was wild with game,’ said Finlay, who was doubtless exaggerating. ‘With partridge, and capercaillies, pheasant and duck and deer.’

‘I’ve never seen any,’ said Mabel. ‘All I ever see is poxy seagulls.’

“There’re oyster catchers too,’ said Eric defensively, ‘and cormorants, and I’ve seen ducks.’

‘What’s happened to all this game then?’ asked Mabel. ‘I suppose they’ve shot it all.’ Her tone was scornful, and Finlay gave her a brief impassive glance.

‘Times change,’ he said, unanswerably.

‘We could restock it,’ said Eric. ‘Get some chicks from the mainland, a breeding pair of deer . . .’

Nobody took up this suggestion and the conversation died for a while until Eric’s whiskies had restored his will to live. ‘Finlay,’ he said, ‘if I get, say, half a dozen guests to stay over the Christmas period do you think your sister-in-law would come in and give me a hand?’

‘Aye,’ said Finlay, ‘aye, she would.’

No one found this assurance on the lady’s behalf surprising. Finlay’s sister-in-law was out on almost constant loan, like a lawn-mower or a piece of farming equipment too valuable to be permanently owned by any one individual or organization. She was always available in a crisis, to rub the backs of the bedridden, watch the dying, mind those children whose mothers had gone off to Glasgow on the rampage, and help out in the inn – either behind the bar or behind the scenes, making beds and scones for tea and cleaning the rooms. Finlay made sure that her utility was well rewarded, for his sister-in-law lived with him and her sister, and he was responsible for her.

‘Aye,’ said Finlay again. ‘Just let me know when you want her.’

‘When the moon is made of green cheese, I should think,’ said Mabel.

‘I’m going to put an ad in some of the London weeklies,’ explained Eric, whose courage was high again since night had flooded day, and the inn, all closed and sealed against the indifference of the wilderness, might have been a small boat bobbing through eternity, endlessly seaworthy. I obviously suffer from agoraphobia, thought Eric, but what he said was, ‘We’ve all heard people moaning about Christmas, about how they’re never going to go through another one, how they’re going to find some small hotel at the end of the world and ignore the whole thing. Well, I’m going to give them the opportunity. There must be thousands of them out there.’

‘You won’t have room for them all,’ said Mabel.

‘I shall accept the first six,’ said Eric with the calm dignity of the third whisky.

Mabel stared at the row of optics asking herself whether this deserved replying to. On the whole, she decided, it didn’t: an argument of this type was always won by the person who could shout the loudest and, as she knew this would certainly be herself, it didn’t seem worth the trouble.

A man who used to be a farmer came in from the dark for a pint. He had sold his livestock when the smallholding had proved uneconomic. Now he spent his time mending other people’s tractors, catching lobsters in pots and encouraging visitors to the island to stay in the secondhand caravan he had installed in a disused field. Eric resented his enterprise since, as an incomer, he himself was not qualified to diversify his energies in the same fashion. He had an unexpressed sense that as long as he confined himself to running the inn he would be accepted, albeit somewhat reluctantly, but if he began to compete with the indigenous population by using his engineering skills or potting lobsters things untoward might begin to happen. He thought, with some indignation, that it was unfair for the islanders to offer accommodation to travellers who might otherwise have stayed at the inn in the way they were meant to, while denying him any opportunity to augment his income. It was, he supposed, something to do with the island mentality.

He wrote out his advertisement again that night, after closing time, and next day he posted it off to the various publications he considered fit to carry it.

‘. . . inn at the edge of the world . . .’ read Harry. He had read every word of the
Spectator
, starting as always at the back and going through like an Arab, from right to left. He had considered trying the competition and deferred the exercise. Now he was reading the small ads. The remains of his breakfast – the shell of his egg, the crumbs of his toast and bitter marmalade, the dregs of his tea – he had meticulously disposed of, and had washed the dishes in cold water. He was a military man, disciplined and tidy, and he had been sad for almost as long as he could remember. In a moment he would put on his overcoat and go for his daily walk in Hyde Park: then, since it was Thursday, he would lunch at his club. Occasionally, or perhaps most days, he thought of death, but he was a Christian and had been a soldier and the option of suicide was not available to him.

His admiration for and envy of General Gordon who had died comparatively young, albeit in a possibly unenviable fashion – but then what mattered the means to so desirable an end – had led him to attempt an essay on the last days of Khartoum. The essay had grown and had stretched backwards to encompass all that he could discover about Charles George Gordon and now, to his surprise, he found he was well on the way to writing a book. He had never intended to do that, but he had realized that it was as good a way as any other to fill up the endless hours, and better than many. There was an emptiness inside him that once he had thought might be filled – by love or happiness or peace – but he had grown to understand that it could merely be lessened, contracted until the void ceased to exist, and he would be healed and whole. This, he knew, could only be fully accomplished with the assistance of the Grim Reaper, but writing helped a little.

He dreaded Christmas no more than any other time, and ‘dread’ was not the word for his response to life. It was more a weary astonishment at being confined in so seemingly purposeless an existence. His faith served only to illuminate and, to some extent, define his bewilderment: faith revealed the presence of a window opening to freedom, but the window was barred – faith itself forming the defining grille.

‘Lord,’ said Harry, as old and half-forgotten images of the island drifted through his head. Without knowing quite why he took paper and an envelope from his desk drawer and wrote off to Eric.

Jessica ate her breakfast on foot since she felt ridiculous sitting alone at the table with food in front of her. Eating on your own was absurd enough, she thought, without making a meal of it. She pulled a grapefruit into segments and spat the pith into the ashtray. One of the benefits of eating alone was that you could do that without being looked at askance by some man. Whenever Jessica thought of not living alone she thought of some man. At the moment she was enjoying being alone, but she wasn’t certain how long this would last. Her principal fear at present was that she would get drunk and ask Mike to come back to her. Whatever the results of this were, they would be disastrous. If he refused her pride would be shattered, and if he did come back the whole dreary business would start again. ‘Yuk,’ said Jessica. She opened the fridge and looked hopefully for a bottle of apple juice. There wasn’t any, so she drank some milk from the carton. Then she wondered what to do next. She supposed she could always go and see her agent, who seemed to appreciate these small attentions. Jessica still could not get used to being greeted by agents with glad cries and welcome, since she remembered too well the times before she was successful when such people were always in meetings when she rang, or whisking out of sight through unmarked doors when she arrived in person at their offices. In the front office there had always been one of those all-purpose young girls so usual in publishing, publicity and public relations, and all liars. It was a bad world, thought Jessica censoriously, that taught all those indistinguishable young females to lie like that for a living. Still, it needn’t bother her any more since she was famous now – well, fairly. She got large sums for appearing in or merely doing voice-overs for com mercials and her agent loved her. She had also done well in film and television, but for some reason whenever she needed to reassure herself she thought of the vast sums she was paid for praising toilet soap and tea-bags. She supposed a person of more depth would be ashamed, or at least covertly deprecatory, of this activity, but it only gave her a sense of satisfaction, of universal acceptance. She was a household voice and a household face, if not a household word. The knowledge made her comfort able and it amused her. Mike had professed to despise the commercials, which was one of the reasons she had poured the coffee over him. He had then perversely accused her of being actressy. Only an actress, he had said, would do such a ludicrous thing: he said she was showing off. Jessica had found this irrational and infuriating, for surely any woman of spirit, be she waitress, wife or what-the-hell, would have done the same. It was then that she had decided they were incompatible, although she had to admit that it was Mike who had packed his bags and left. In leaving so hurriedly he had also left an assortment of his belongings. Every day Jessica debated with herself whether to send them round to him on a bike, thereby letting him see what she thought of him, or whether to wait for him to come and get them and see what he had to say for himself. It was a problem.

Outside, a paltry November rain was falling, which made the prospect of going out seem unattractive. On the other hand, what would she do if she stayed in? She was starting rehearsals of a play in the new year but that was some time away and she had nothing to do in the meantime except sometimes watch or listen to herself on TV (this had also maddened Mike). Her agent might find her something untaxing to do while she was waiting. She hated the waiting. She was afraid. She looked at herself in the glass over the fireplace and asked herself if she was that living cliché, an actress who felt unreal when she wasn’t acting. No, she decided – for she had learned from that very profession that honesty was a prerequisite of performance – she was merely a woman who had been left by her lover. Why this should frighten her she didn’t know: it might reasonably have made her angry or sad, but what she felt was fear. She percolated the coffee as she thought about it, for doing anything was better than doing nothing. If, she argued, Mike had been the cornerstone of her existence, then when he extracted himself it was only natural that her confidence, at the very least, should have been shaken – and confidence was her stock-in-trade – but it didn’t feel like that: her confidence in her abilities was unimpaired. It was probably, she decided with dissatisfaction, that she was used to being half of a couple. Having been twice a wife and many times a mistress, she was unaccustomed to being single. It was some dreary atavistic residue that bedevilled her: a primitive instinct lingering on from the times when it was better that there were two of you, when it was convenient for one to go out hunting while the other picked nuts and berries and kept the baby from the ravages of the sabre-toothed tiger. But I haven’t got a baby and there are no more tigers, she told herself. And the two of you would only have been part of a larger tribe, and I would deeply loathe being part of a tribe. Being part of a cast was different.

Jessica wearied of these reflections and started to read
Private Eye
, beginning with the Lonely Hearts column. It was by mere chance that, turning over the page, the word Christmas caught her eye and she read Eric’s ad. For want of anything more constructive to do she ringed it round with her eyebrow pencil and went to put her clothes on. As she painted her face she realized she had blunted her eyebrow pencil by so misusing it, and was glad of the necessity of sharpening it, since that, too, was something to do. She took up her coat, put an arm in a sleeve and then took it off again. It was still raining after all, and she’d left her umbrella somewhere. She turned on the radio and heard the announcer heralding the morning service. She turned it off again, for on the other channels they would only be playing love songs.