The Inn at the Edge of the World (23 page)

There was little conversation going on in the bar when he got back. Jon had said nothing all evening and the others seemed lost in private abstraction, except for Ronald and Anita, who were engrossed in some aspect of psychology, the one talking and the other wearing an intelligent expression. Jessica got to her feet suddenly. It had occurred to her that she had best make her escape to bed while there were people around to intervene if Jon’s murderous impulses should be activated.

‘Good night everyone,’ she said and went quickly upstairs. She locked her door, tried it several times to make certain it was secure, then got into bed, but only to lie awake until dawn. She knew that Jon was close by and now she was cold with a bitter fear. Harry, too, stayed awake, his door a little open so that he would know should death be afoot.

*

Jessica got out of bed at first light and went to the window. The snow had come like a coquette, pale and pretty, and now had gone again. All joy and beauty, realized Jessica, went without excuse or explanation, leaving only drabness behind, as the retreating tide, whoring after the moon, left horrid and redundant things on the helpless sand. She had a really bad hangover due to her consumption of too much port.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Anita at breakfast. ‘You look terrible.’ Although her tone was compassionate it gave her quiet satisfaction to be able to say this, in perfect truth, to a fairly famous actress.

‘I am terrible,’ said Jessica, downing her glass of juice. It tasted, she thought, like the urine of demons.

‘Would you like one of my vitamin pills?’ asked Anita. ‘They have everything.’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Jessica, holding out her palm. ‘You mustn’t let me drink anything today. If anyone sees me making for the bar he must stand in my way, shaking his head like this –
Ouch
.’ She clutched her own head with both hands to steady it.

‘Poor thing,’ said Anita for Ronald’s benefit: a quality of caring would be invaluable in the wife of a psychoanalyst.

‘Alcohol is a depressant,’ said Ronald.

‘Life’s a depressant,’ said Jessica. She added, under her breath, ‘Jessica’s body was discovered this morning. She had shot herself after drinking too much lousy port and looked extremely beautiful and calm, considering the circumstances. With her death the theatre – or rather the world of commercial TV – has lost a luminous presence and nothing will ever be the same again. The other reason she shot herself is that a lunatic was trying to kill her and rather than submit to this gross impertinence she took the easy way out . . .’

‘Did you say something?’ asked Anita.

‘Not really,’ said Jessica.

‘You were rehearsing lines again,’ said Anita. ‘You must be subconsciously worried about your play.’

‘No, I’m not,’ said Jessica. ‘I was saying my morning prayers because I forgot earlier.’ She had discovered when she was playing St Joan in rep that any mention of religious observance tended to silence people and make them uncomfortable.

‘What are we going to do today?’ asked Anita, turning to Ronald.

‘I don’t know,’ said Ronald, polishing off the toast.

Jessica grew more depressed. It was obvious that Anita had decided to marry and had chosen Ronald. She knew the signs. Women who had determined to marry always behaved as Anita was behaving now – half proprietorial and half winsomely charming. She wondered if she ought to warn her: she could say, ‘Don’t do it. You won’t like it, you know. It isn’t any fun. You might think it’s going to be now, but you’ll soon learn better and by then it’ll be too late. I
know
.’ But anyone hell-bent on matri mony wouldn’t believe her. In all probability Anita would think she wanted to marry Ronald herself, or at least prevent anyone else from being happy. Unexpectedly this reflection cheered Jessica. Things could be worse: she could have been married to Whiskers over there and have had to spend a lifetime watching him eat with his mouth open. But then Jon came in and her heart missed several beats in the way she supposed it was meant to when your life was threatened. He sat down by the ladder fern and wished everyone good morning in quite a sane fashion.

‘So there’ll be no skiing,’ he said. ‘The snow’s all melted.’

‘What a shame,’ said Anita. She meant this sarcastically, but because she was so busy impressing Ronald with her sweetness of disposition she said it sympathetically. ‘Perhaps you could think of something else exciting to do on your last day.’ There, how was that for an expression of interest and concern in an undeserving person: she glanced at Ronald for approval but he was thinking about something else.

Thanks a lot, thought Jessica, he’d probably find it most exciting to make this my last day ever.

‘I was just thinking,’ said Ronald, seriously.

‘What about?’ asked Anita, laying down her napkin and turning to him with the docile air of the potential bride intent on familiarizing herself with all the innermost workings of the mind of her mate-to-be.

‘If we leave here at eleven tomorrow where will we have our lunch?’ he said.

‘We can have our lunch on the train,’ said Anita tenderly, savouring the collective pronoun and taking it to include only herself and Ronald. She no longer felt confused by the way he changed from sage to greedy child for she was, she told herself, beginning truly to understand him and find all his ways endearing.

‘I’ll just have to get in some sailing,’ said Jon, peering round the ladder fern at the dismal prospect of sea and cloud. ‘I’ll take Jessica for a spin round the headland.’

Oh no, you won’t, thought Jessica, and she said aloud: ‘I have to wash my hair.’ Then she wished she’d thought of some other excuse, for she had a vision of Jon washing her hair eternally in all the foaming wastes of the Atlantic ocean. ‘I want to finish reading my book before I leave,’ she added. ‘Here indoors where it’s warm and dry.’

‘You can watch me through the window,’ said Jon, and he sounded not mad, but disconsolate and humble. Jessica felt a second of pity for the lost child before she pulled herself together.

‘Schmuck,’ said Ronald as Jon left the room, and Jessica was briefly diverted by this evidence of a different aspect to a character she thought she had summed up. He’s human, she thought. Anita, however, found his remark lacking in dignity and professional finesse.

‘He’s unbalanced,’ she reminded the psychoanalyst. ‘He needs treatment.’

‘He’s a schmuck,’ repeated Ronald stubbornly. Jon had reminded him of his least favourite patient, and by association, of the wifeless, cold and foodless house to which he must soon return. There was, he thought self-pityingly, nothing more depressed than a depressed psychoanalyst, for no one else was so familiar, by way of both observation and practice, with the subtle gradations and bleak possibilities of this melancholy state. He took the remains of a once-hot roll from Anita’s plate and piled jam on it – an act which could be construed as displaying a heart-warming familiarity and ease of manner, or a lack of any knowledge of social decorum whatsoever. Anita couldn’t make up her mind.

Jessica pushed aside the fronds of the ladder fern and looked out over the shore to where Finlay sat beside a broken rowing-boat, doing something of a probably nautical nature to a length of rope. On the other hand, mused Jessica, he might have been playing cat’s cradle: he seemed, despite his reputation as man-of-all-work, to waste a shocking amount of time. He looked up towards the top windows of the inn and waved. Jessica heard Harry’s tread on the stairs and watched as he went out of the front door to where Finlay sat, surrounded by the things of the sea. She wished she could hear what they were saying, Harry so grave, and Finlay throwing back his head and laughing at who knew what. As she stood there she began to feel something of the sense of exclusion of which Eric was always so conscious, and then as she stood longer she began to feel like a spy.

‘What are you looking at?’ asked Anita – so her espionage was apparent to others: she had stared too long and too intently.

‘I was just watching the birds,’ she said, looking upwards. ‘They’re all flying inland.’ She turned towards the table and when she looked through the window again Finlay had gone and Harry stood alone, facing the sea as a rising wind lifted the hem of his coat.

She felt cold and wished she’d brought her cashmere sweater with her. When she’d packed it wouldn’t go into her suitcase and she’d left it on the bed. She went to her room to get her scarlet cardigan and found Finlay’s sister-in-law tidying up. On the bed lay a strange off-white sweater. ‘Oh,’ said Jessica, ‘just what I need. Would anyone mind if I borrowed this?’ It looked much heavier and more practical than her silly, skinny red cardigan. Finlay’s sister-in-law smiled and Jessica took this for permission: she found nothing odd in the unexpected presence of the sweater. She’d needed one and there it was. Everything went dark as she pulled it over her head and when she emerged she blinked. Never again would she drink port. For a moment she had seen not Finlay’s sister-in-law, not a woman, but something else, something you would definitely not expect to find in a bedroom. She blinked again and her vision returned to normal; the woman with her had assumed her usual, human form and was wiping over the dressing-table mirror in a natural everyday manner. Crikey, said Jessica to herself, wonder ing nervously about the properties of the port. Hooch, she thought: hallucinogenic hooch. My poor brain cells . . .

Jon walked round his room, thinking of Jessica, and then of someone else and then of Jessica again and he said aloud: ‘Aah,’ and then he wondered if he had been weeping and had forgotten, for his breath had caught as though on a sob. He heard the words ‘Poor child’ and looked round, but there was nobody there. ‘Poor child,’ he repeated and shook his head. A gust of wind rattled the window pane and the room was a room no longer, but the poop deck of a man-o’-war and he was no longer Jon but Errol Flynn and all the lovely women loved him. ‘If you go to sea in that thin shirt, poor child,’ he told himself, ‘you’ll be oh, so cold’, and the sob rose again. There were some old sweaters in the wardrobe in the empty room at the end of the landing. He had seen them one night when he was on reconnaissance, when the cheating woman had locked her door against him and left him to roam the darkened corridors of a strange place all by himself. He went to the room quite openly as though he had every right, and took the top sweater. It smelled of tar and was cold to the touch, but when he pulled it on it warmed him and gave him courage so that he became a different person and laughed for joy.

There was no one there when he ran downstairs: no one to question or stop him, or even to tell him how handsome he looked in the seaman’s sweater, but he didn’t mind. Soon enough they would see what he could do and who he was – who he
really
was. Not Jon, not even Errol Flynn, but a hero like the men of myth, commanding the mighty waves single-handed, head erect, muscles taut while the merciless sea snarled and licked at the sides of his painted craft.

He had marked the craft a few days ago. It was tied to the end of the jetty where it bobbed invitingly up and down like another child saying: ‘Play with me, play with me.’

‘This is no game,’ said Jon, sternly, as he struggled to untie the rope, all wet as it was and cramped against itself.

The tide was going out and like yet another child it implored: ‘Come with me. Come with me.’ As he freed the rope and jumped into the dinghy a squall lifted it high and then outwards on a retreating wave. ‘We’ll soon be under sail,’ said Jon.

Eric, who was out in the front looking for the errant Finlay, watched disbelievingly as Jon began to make for America. ‘Hi,’ he yelled, pointlessly. He had seen him fiddling with the rope but it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone but a lunatic would push off in a dinghy with no sail, no oars and a split in the seams. The bloody thing was half full of water already.

‘Hi,’ he yelled again. ‘Come back.’

Another wave bore Jon further out.

‘Sweet hell,’ said Eric, looking round for Finlay. The wind returned with a sudden burden of rain and he could no longer see the dinghy. ‘Finlay, where are you?’ His voice faded to a moan and he fled into the inn.

‘Ring the coastguard,’ he shouted as he shot through to the back, and even as he spoke he wondered if he was overreacting to what might be an insignificant event on this damned island. Maybe Jon knew what he was doing and had some unsuspected means of controlling the dinghy. Who knew what these sailing types might get up to. ‘Finlay,’ he screamed out in the inn yard, as he realized the unlikelihood of this.

‘Why do we have to ring the coastguard?’ asked Anita of Ronald who was finishing the cooling coffee. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Where’s Finlay?’ screeched Eric as he flew in again. A drowning, more or less on the premises, wouldn’t do trade any good at all.

‘I don’t know,’ said Anita, rather put out at his lack of ceremony.

‘Then ring the coastguard,’ howled Eric as he rushed out of the front door. ‘
Finlay
.’

‘How does one ring the coastguard?’ asked Anita. ‘And why do we have to?’ She followed Eric outside. ‘What
is
going on?’ she asked.

‘The number’s on the board by the phone,’ said Jessica as Anita returned, unenlightened, since Eric had gone to the shore’s edge and was hopping about in the rain waving his arms and shouting.

‘I don’t see why I should bother the coastguard when I don’t know what’s happening,’ said Anita.