Dark Entries (9 page)

‘Truly, I don’t need a doctor.’

But by the time Dr Bermuda appeared, Fenville was in such straits that he rose avidly to enquiries as to whether he was worried about anything. Dr Bermuda was an unkempt, sympathetic little man, made shapeless by stretching points in favour of his patients. Not only did Fenville tell the story of his love, but he also found a conscientious and expert listener. Once when the landlady rapped at the door, the Doctor cried out: ‘Please, Mrs Stark. Apply yourself to your own duties, and leave me to mine.’ Fenville realised that he had not heard her approaching, and deduced that she had been eavesdropping. He lowered his voice, even though he heard her shuffling away.

‘I have no idea what to do next.’

‘That’s easy enough,’ said Dr Bermuda. ‘You go after her. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.’
He quoted gently, like an elderly country priest who sought no monsignorate but only to serve his tiny simple flock.

‘But what can I do?’

The Doctor produced a large dingy wallet from the gaping inner pocket of his jacket, and from it
extracted a card.

‘The name of the street. Write it on the back.’ He gave Fenville the card between his third and fourth fingers,
tarry with nicotine; then laboriously stooped to gather up the cigarette papers he had let drift to the floor.

‘I don’t know the name of the street. I didn’t notice.’

‘Ah, you are still unaccustomed to romance. One soon learns.’

Fenville said nothing. He was too cast down even to
resist this justified reflection upon his manhood.

Dr Bermuda rose fumblingly to his feet. ‘Lie back,’ he said.

‘I don’t want any further examination.’

‘Back,’ repeated the Doctor, with a short sharp flicker of his left hand. Fenville saw that he was wearing a big ring with a stone the colour of old-fashioned sugar candy. He lay back.

‘Watch me,’ said Dr Bermuda, waving his left hand, like a dwarfish policeman calling on traffic. ‘Keep your eyes on mine.’

Fenville realised that he was being hypnotised; but it was too late to demur.

A moment later he was awake again, and the Doctor was writing on the card.

‘Arcadia Gardens. Which end?’

‘The far end,’ said Fenville.

The Doctor looked at him.

‘There’s a house with sphinxes outside.
That
end.’

The Doctor stared into his eyes and wrote it down.

‘How do you know I’ve got the right street?’ asked Fenville.

‘You noticed the name of it without being conscious of doing so. By modern science the suppressed memory has been recovered.’

‘Suppressed? I didn’t do that.’

The Doctor looked at him gravely. ‘Didn’t you?’ he said. ‘A man in fancy dress? Who looked at you strangely? Whom you did not mention to me?’ He raised his hand. Now it was as if he were stopping the traffic. ‘I see you remember him.’ Only the back of his ring was visible to Fenville. He became the physician giving orders. ‘Do not leave the house until you hear from me again. I shall speak to Mrs
Stark. I shall also speak to that other young woman; the one who so unluckily accompanied you to the restaurant. I must have her address too.’ Fenville supplied it and the Doctor wrote it down. ‘After that I shall institute some enquiries. We have resources nowadays for dealing with such matters. You may consider yourself to be dangerously ill; far more so than if you had a more conventional disease. Unless you meet
this woman again and get to know her and masticate her and bite upon her and fully digest and eliminate her, you will be unlikely to recover. It is
a rare disease you have; and fatal unless it is
permitted to run its full course.’ He smiled into his withered beard. ‘Good-bye, my friend,’ he said, drawing on his shabby brown leather gloves. ‘Modern science will do its best to cure you.’

At half past twelve Mrs Stark brought luncheon: spaghetti au gratin, followed by ground rice and prunes, and a large white cup of piebald Camp coffee. At half past three, she reappeared with a letter. The writing was faint and shaky. The letter proved to be from the Doctor; written on his prescription paper.

‘Her name is Dorabelle. Your magnetic undermind has already led you to her house. I have prescribed for Miss Terrington. May eloquence attend you.’ The Doctor enclosed his account for two and a half guineas.

By four o’clock Fenville could remain in bed no longer. Physical energy was wrestling with spiritual malaise. As the church clock struck, he rose and crept to the bathroom, there to shave in water which at that hour was scarcely tepid. He dressed and stole downstairs. In the hall he heard Mrs Stark snoring in her little back den. For many years the bottom of the front door had dragged on the lumpy linoleum, sometimes shaking the whole house; and now, as soon as Fenville had opened it, a gust of wind snatched it out of his hand and slammed it
shut. He stood silent for a moment, but Mrs Stark’s afternoon dreams were unbroken. At the second attempt, he was outside the house.

He walked through to Holborn and took a number 17 omnibus to Notting Hill. Then with some difficulty and several retracings of his path he made his way to the house with the
sphinxes in Arcadia Gardens. As he walked between that noncommittal double file of portly residences, now, as he saw, divided and sub-divided within themselves, the wind lifted torn sheets of cheap newspaper, tossed in from other less desirable quarters, glanced at them, and blew them away. One of them tangled itself round Fenville’s trousers. The street was empty and passé.

At the now-familiar front door, he rang the bell. More than once he lugged at the big iron knob without a sound reaching him. He began to shiver in the rising wind. But doubtless the bell had long since ceased to work. Then he heard slowly approaching steps. Their rhythm seemed to be erratic.

The door opened. A very tall, elderly man, with a pale, lined face, and dressed in
black, spoke to Fenville.

‘The tradesmen’s entrance is round at the side.’

Fenville took a pull on himself. ‘I want to see your mistress.’

The man looked at him. His aspect was so frail that he seemed in danger of blowing away.

Then he spoke in weary tones. ‘There was another man last week.’ He seemed resentful. Then he said, ‘Wait a moment. I’ll look in the almonry.’

He retreated into the gloom within. Fenville saw that he walked with difficulty. Soon he was back; and his long bony hand held a five-pound note.

‘What’s it for? Can’t see what need there is
for giving
to charity nowadays.’

‘I’m not collecting for charity,’ said Fenville. ‘I want to see your mistress. Is she in?’

‘That’s different,’ replied the man sharply. ‘You mean is she at home?’

Fenville realised that this was his first encounter with a butler.

‘As you wish. Anyway I mean to see her.’

Again the man looked at him. ‘Mean to see her, eh? What name?’

‘Fenville.’

‘Any business?’

Fenville hesitated.

But the man came to his rescue. ‘Oh never mind,’ he said sulkily. ‘I can’t wait about all day in
the cold.’ And indeed he was beginning to cough. ‘I’ll have to shut the door.’

Fenville involuntarily withdrew half a step. Instantly the door was closed.

The man was gone for so long that Fenville was contemplating ringing again. His heart and pulses were all the time beating so fast that he felt he would be sick. He wondered whether he possessed the reserves for a second sortie. In the street beyond the encrusted porte-cochère, an old grey woman, stooped and shrouded and spent, was stumbling towards him against the wind. She seemed the female counterpart of the decrepit butler.

‘Come in.’ The door had re-opened a few inches, and its custodian spoke grudgingly through the crack. Fenville had to push it back. As soon as he was in, the door was shut again; and the butler moaning on about the cold.

Now that he was inside, Fenville was so completely unnerved that he was unable to speak. It was no moment for sympathetic small talk about the impact of the weather upon old blood.

‘This way,’ said the man, ungraciously as ever, and limped feebly forward.

The murky hall was in
the same involved, derivative style as the exterior of the house, but here sustained in dark yellow stone. On the tiled floor was an immense rug, obviously once valuable, but now discoloured and torn. There was a large pyramidal fireplace, but no fire. Furniture was sparse, and what there was looked unused and dusty. A small chest stood open in a corner.

Behind the range of yellow columns to the left ascended a black wooden staircase. The butler slowly led the way, step by step drawing himself forward and upward by the immense moulded handrail. Fenville followed him. Two or three minutes seemed to pass before they reached the first landing. The stair carpet was as worn as the rug below, and there were no pictures on the walls. The house seemed
extraordinarily draughty, until Fenville realised that several diamond panes were missing from the vast window which lighted the stairwell. The butler’s cough became distressing. The stairs, it was clear, were not to be undertaken lightly. Fenville imagined that he should apologise for the trouble he was causing, but could find neither voice nor words.

At the top, where the stairs wound upwards to the second floor, a high cavernous passage, with the stairwell on one side, led past several panelled doors. At the end of the passage, the butler stopped, and feebly tapped at a door which was ajar.

Fenville heard no response, but response there must have been, for the butler pushed open the door with the length of his arm, and with his head motioned Fenville in.

‘All right, Gunter,’ said the voice which had been in Fenville’s ears since the evening before. ‘You can go.’

The door closed and Fenville was alone with the girl he was pursuing.

She sat in a corner of the high bay window behind an embroidery frame. The chair she occupied was so huge that it closely resembled an old-fashioned stage throne, and she a stripling queen. In this the chair was not alone: the room was big, and everything in it was big. The scale of even such small objects as the waste-basket and the coal scuttle made them very large objects. Unlike the hall and staircase, the room was ordered and warm.

‘So you decided in favour of a formal call at the properly appointed hour.’

Fenville could only nod. She glanced at him and his eyes fell.

‘Are you cold? Warm yourself before you try to talk.’ Her hands were full of the accessories of her craft. She wore a brocaded dress which matched but bettered the room. Fenville drew near the roaring pyre on the palazzo-like hearth. For a minute there was no sound but that of the flames. Then the girl spoke again.

‘What month is it?’

‘October. But it seems colder than usual.’

Thus conventionally Fenville first addressed her.

‘Sit down if you wish.’

‘Thank you.’ Fenville sat upon a stool with four carved and gilded legs and a patterned velvet seat. Half turning away from the girl, he cautiously extended his hands towards the flames.

‘Don’t you want to look at me?’

Fenville felt himself blushing all over his face and neck. The sensation was as painful as it was novel.

‘It’s no good coming to see me if
you don’t look at me.’

Fenville twisted round his legs to the other side of the stool and regarded her. He now observed that the level of the floor in the bay window was considerably higher than in the rest of the room, so that he had to look up at her. She was working concentratedly.

‘You can talk to me at the same time. But perhaps you’re still warming yourself?’ Her hands were fluttering about, as Fenville had seen them in the restaurant, but now with purpose.

‘Thank you. I’m warm.’

‘Would you like tea? You are paying me a formal call. I must respond. If you pull the bell, Gunter will appear – eventually.’

‘I couldn’t think of bringing him upstairs again.’ Fenville was painfully aware that at Gunter’s rate of progress, he could only just have reached the bottom of the flight.

She glanced at Fenville again and smiled. Instantly he felt that the two of them were alone together in the world. ‘You’re my guest,’ she said. ‘Look. The bell is behind you.’

There was no help for Gunter. Fenville turned and stared about.

‘Look harder.’

Then Fenville realised. It was a bell of the earlier type with wires, and operated by a wide strip of thick yellow silk which hung from ceiling to floor in a corner of the projecting fireplace. He pulled it cautiously.

‘Now you must
pull
harder.’

Fenville remembered the bell at the front door, and pulled very hard indeed.

‘I can’t hear anything.’

‘Gunter can.’

‘I hope I haven’t damaged it.’

‘You can’t hurt bells like that. Only the modern electric ones. I’m sure you agree?’

‘Yes. As a matter of fact I do.’ Fenville had had many troubles with electric bells, partly because he did not understand electricity.

‘That bell has never been repaired since the house was built.’

‘How long ago was that?’

‘Exactly a hundred years. I live in it
because I can’t afford to live anywhere else.’

‘I see.’ There was nothing else to say. Her eyes were fast on her work, and Fenville was staring at her.

‘You know no one has any money any more?’ The ungainly sentence was made music by her voice. Moreover she seemed to
expect an answer.

‘Neither I nor my family’, said Fenville, gathering courage with the familiar reference, ‘have ever had any money that I know of.’

‘The other butlers in the Gardens have all become caretakers. At least I’ve saved Gunter from that.’

Fenville was wishing that Gunter would appear. Gunter’s condition worried him. But conversation must be sustained.

‘When I first arrived, Gunter thought I was collecting for charity and offered me five pounds.’ He had meant to imply that this did not suggest
penury in the house, but stopped short and again blushed.

‘I keep up my father’s almonry, naturally,’ the girl said dispassionately; then raised her voice to bid Gunter come in. Fenville had been so occupied with her that he had after all missed Gunter’s knock. ‘Tea. At once, please.’ Gunter mumbled something. ‘At once, please.’ Gunter withdrew. The girl had not looked up at him.