The Inn at the Edge of the World (5 page)

Jessica had bought a Penguin copy of
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
, thinking she might as well improve her mind on this long journey. She had read very little except for Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Ayckbourn, etc. and hence, while in some ways she could appear erudite, in others she was in danger of seeming a perfect fool.

She had been reading for some time with increasing incredulity. As the train neared the Lake District she flung the book from her on to the table with a cry of ‘Oh
no
!’

Harry smiled inquiringly as to the reason behind her histrionic gesture. While as yet they were unaware that they shared a destination, each had been covertly observing the other with quiet approval, assuming that they were the same sort of human being. They looked alike. Harry was handsome with clear eyes and white hair, and Jessica had a large pleasant face, which she could, when called upon, make beautiful. This is the most useful sort of face for an actress.

‘Have you read this?’ she demanded, indicating her book.

Harry picked it up and looked at it. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid I haven’t.’

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Jessica. ‘It’s terrible. The heroine is terrible.’ The train sped through as she spoke. ‘Listen,’ she said, opening the book at random. ‘Now, she’s been playing the piano. This is her: “I was exerting myself to sing and play for the amusement, and at the request, of my aunt and Millicent, before the gentlemen came into the drawing-room (Miss Wilmot never likes to waste her musical efforts on ladies’ ears alone): Millicent had asked for a little Scotch song, and I was just in the middle of it when they entered.” Now, Mr Huntingdon, who she’s got her eye on, asks Miss Wilmot to play, so Helen hops up from the piano in a huff. Listen. “I had quitted it immediately upon hearing his petition. Had I been endowed with a proper degree of self-possession, I should have turned to the lady myself, and cheerfully joined my entreaties to his; whereby I should have disappointed his expectations, if the affront had been purposely given, or made him sensible of the wrong, if it had only arisen from thoughtlessness; but I felt it too deeply to do anything but rise from the music stool, and throw myself back on the sofa, suppressing with difficulty the audible expression of the bitterness I felt within. I knew Anabella’s musical talents were superior to mine, but that was no reason why I should be treated as a perfect nonentity. The time and the manner of his asking her appeared like a gratuitous insult to me; and I could have wept with vexation.” She reminds me of somebody,’ added Jessica thoughtfully. ‘Who does she remind me of?’

‘Mr Pooter,’ said Harry.

‘Yes, of
course
,’ said Jessica. ‘You are clever.’ She had listened to one of her friends reading
The Diary of a Nobody
on the radio.

A traveller at an adjacent table was puzzled by this exchange. She had watched Harry and Jessica get on the train separately, and they hadn’t said a word to each other until now. Yet they obviously knew each other well. She had been wondering why Jessica looked so familiar, but gave up racking her memory in order to speculate on their relationship. Father and daughter? Husband and second wife? No, she didn’t think they were married. They were smiling at each other too openly. She concluded, not being a person of great imagination or depth of perception, that Harry was the managing director of an international company, and Jessica was his personal assistant. They were probably travelling to a conference to be held at Gleneagles over the Christmas period.

‘Aah,’ said Jessica. ‘Tears are rising unbidden to her eyes and she’s burying her head in the sofa cushions that they might flow unseen. What a
creep
.’

‘Would you like to read the
Spectator
?’ offered Harry.

‘Thank you,’ said Jessica. ‘Would you like a Polo mint?’

At this evidence of a new friendship being formed the fellow traveller grew confused again. She made up her mind that the managing director had only just engaged his personal assistant and they were feeling their way as they got to know each other even better.

After a while they went together to the bar and when they returned the fellow traveller was completely thrown, for they had discovered that they were both going to the island and their relationship had changed. Jessica was always excited and animated by coincidence and Harry was surprised and quietly gratified to have found an undemanding and congenial companion. He had intended to spend his island time alone as far as that was possible, lost in thought in streaming coves and rocky embrasures, and if there were other guests he had expected that he would find himself under the necessity of avoiding them. He had not thought that he might make a friend.

*

Anita had sworn not to give a single thought to work for a whole week. She stared out of the window at the unprepossessing scenery and wondered what her fellow guests would be like. It had not occurred to her, as it had to Harry, that there might not be any. A passing conifer plantation reminded her again of her department. She hoped the under-section manager was coping well, but not too well; she didn’t like to feel she wouldn’t be missed. She was picturing the shelves of executive toys and wondering how they were selling when she remembered she wasn’t going to think about work, and stared resolutely at a field and some sheep. She worried a little that they might be feeling cold and hoped she had brought enough woollies to keep herself warm. It was probably always warm in Taiwan where the buyer had spent a week earlier in the year, purchasing a large consignment of Christmas tree fairies with slanting eyes. The buyer had justified her choice with rather too much conviction and Anita was certain that she had bought them after lunch when her judgement was impaired. Anita couldn’t really see why she should have fairies in her department anyway: paper plates, cups and serviettes perhaps, even jigsaw puzzles didn’t seem too out of place, but baubles and fairies could surely have been displayed elsewhere, and she couldn’t see any justification at all for having a rack of Santa Claus suits situated to the left of the Advent calendars. It was hard being titular head of a department and yet at the mercy of another’s whims.

Rain began falling on the already damp countryside, and she asked herself why she hadn’t taken a package trip to Florida. The reason was that she had thought it more chic to go to a small hotel at the edge of the world. Exotic foreign travel was becoming curiously vulgar: everyone was doing it either for pleasure or business. It was more elegant to be travelling to a small island; the cold and the wet an added distinction, for it must be evident to everybody that if people were prepared to put up with these conditions the experience must be richly, if subtly, rewarding. It was far more
tasteful
, thought Anita with uncharacteristic defiance. So there.

‘They’ll drown,’ said Mabel happily. ‘They’ll all be sick as dogs and perishing cold and then that rotten old boat will sink and they’ll all drown. Still, you’ll have their deposits.’

Eric took no notice of her, not mentioning that he had not demanded deposits since that would draw upon him her awful scorn. He had decided one evening that it would make an interesting start to the holidays for his guests to sail over, not on the MacBrayne ferry, but in Finlay’s boat. Finlay, not surprisingly, since Eric paid him well for these services, had agreed with him.

‘It’s a rusty old tub and they’ll get their clothes filthy,’ Mabel went on, ‘and it doesn’t half rock – even when the sea’s as flat as a mill pond.’

‘You’ve been across in it when you couldn’t get on the ferry,’ said Eric.

‘That’s how I know what it’s like,’ said Mabel, ‘only I’m not fussy.’

Eric didn’t say anything to this because he couldn’t think of anything.

‘It’s not seaworthy,’ said Mabel. ‘Not really.’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Eric.

‘’Tisn’t,’ said Mabel.

Finlay seemed unconcerned by this clash of opinion: he was dressed in sou’wester and sea-boots, and Eric was almost certain he had dressed the part deliberately. He was glad someone was entering into the spirit of the thing. ‘Radio working now?’ he asked. There had been some flaw in this useful piece of equipment.

‘Aye,’ said Finlay.

‘That’s lucky,’ said Mabel.

‘Have you got the flares?’ asked Eric.

‘Aye,’ said Finlay.

‘And you’d better take a couple of duffel coats from here in case anyone’s cold,’ said Eric, who was beginning to wonder whether there might not be something in what his wife was saying. It was a grey day with a hint of mist.

‘Aye,’ said Finlay.

‘And you’d better get going,’ said Eric, adding hastily in order to prevent Finlay from saying ‘Aye’ again, for it was getting on his nerves, ‘You don’t want to keep them waiting on the quay.’

When Finlay had gone Eric went to take a final look at the rooms which he and Finlay’s sister-in-law had prepared. The previous owner had had a regrettable passion for stripes. The wallpaper, curtains and counterpanes had all been resolutely striped and several chairs had had tartan-covered cushions on them. Eric had removed all these in his first enthusiasm and replaced them with a pale and restrained chintz he had got cheap when a shop in Glasgow, which had been too pale and restrained for its own good, went out of business. On the floors were Indian rag rugs which he had bought from a market-stall, and, as a little joke, he had hung some pictures of
Highland Kim
and the
Stag at Bay
on the walls. He’d got them from another market-stall late in the afternoon when the stallholder was thinking only of getting home, out of the puddles. They had been a bargain even though no one else had wanted them. Mabel hadn’t seen the joke. She’d said
‘Honestly
’ and laughed for the wrong reason. Now she was walking behind him, getting in the way whenever he turned and irritating him by humming a song about a small hotel and a wishing-well.

‘Can’t you find something to do?’

‘What?’ inquired Mabel. ‘What is there to do here?’ She was developing one of her worst moods, and Eric wondered fretfully how she was going to behave when the guests arrived. She could be indescribably offensive when she put her mind to it.

‘If you’re going to be like that,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why you don’t go and stay with your mates in Glasgow.’

She had met her mates from Glasgow when they were taking their summer break on the island and driven Eric nearly out of his mind by giving them free drinks when he wasn’t looking, and often when he was. He had heard that they lived in some style on the dole, pursuing an idle and carefree way of life and playing borrowed musical instruments for their own satisfaction.

‘I might,’ she said. ‘I might just do that.’

Eric was painfully torn. He could hardly bear to imagine what she got up to when she was away from him, but he dreaded the prospect of what she might do if she stayed. Perhaps, he thought, if she did something really outrageous and really ruined his business, he could finally stop loving her. In the end that would be best.

‘You’ve left it a bit late,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no more ferries running after today. How’ll you get there?’

‘Oh,’ said Mabel. ‘Oho, I’ll get there. You just watch me.’

‘Walk, will you?’ said Eric. ‘Swim?’

She was moving away from him towards the stairs, and as he spoke she stopped, turned and slapped him on the ear. She’d never done that before. Eric was stunned and then angry. He slapped her back. He’d never done that before.

‘Right,’ said Mabel before she grew incoherent. ‘That does it. That’s the third time. I told you before, you touch me once more . . .’ Then she grew incoherent.

Finlay’s sister-in-law, down in the kitchen, heard the screaming and shook her head over the loin chops she was defrosting under the tap.

Eric wanted to say ‘. . . you started it . . .’ but he didn’t get the chance. His wife was beside herself.

The four who had been on the train stood on the quayside amid the wasteland while a few gulls swooped, grieving, over their heads.

‘Oh crikey,’ said Jessica. They had been carried here from Glasgow Central on another, smaller train and thus been spared the peculiarly unpleasant aspects of the town which lay behind the docks, to all appearances deserted and as derelict as a collection of concrete bunkers can be. It was similar to the less salubrious parts of Calais although not as large, and the dock area itself offered nothing to ease the eye. There wasn’t a ship in sight.

‘No rigging,’ said Jessica, disconsolately.

Since the four of them had gathered on the spot where Eric’s letter had directed them, to the right of the place assigned to the roll-on-roll-off ferry, she spoke again. ‘Are we all going to the edge of the world?’ she asked.

‘Well yes,’ and ‘Yes,’ said Ronald and Anita.

‘I think we got there,’ said Jessica since she couldn’t see the horizon which had disappeared under the mist. ‘Where, I ask myself, is the much-vaunted local boatman?’

‘He’ll be along,’ said Harry, who had never panicked.

‘What if he doesn’t?’ said Jessica. ‘What if he doesn’t come at all? What if the craft has foundered and he’s gone down to Davy Jones’s locker? Oh crikey.’

‘Then we’ll take a cab back to Glasgow and put up there for the night,’ said Harry. ‘But he’ll be here. Wait and see.’

Anita was grateful for Jessica’s show of nerves. The circumstances called for something like that, and Jessica had saved her the necessity of doing it herself and going too far. Jessica, she considered, had done it well: she had voiced the misgivings of all of them and expressed their doubts succinctly and clearly. Now it was out in the open.