Hotel de Dream (18 page)

“She must have thought of something,” Melinda said at last. “What will she do without us, Johnny? I mean, will her career be finished, d'you think?”

“People will go on believing in her for a time,” Johnny said. “There's still more incense laid at her altar than any other. But they'll forget … she doesn't belong to this age, you know. What's the matter Melinda, are you feeling guilty again?”

“She didn't really treat us so badly,” Melinda muttered. “She believed in
us
, after all, and who else will now?”

“No one should believe in us. We don't have any significance. We'll have to change if we're to have any meaning in the modern world.”

Melinda shivered. She got up and crossed the square white kitchen and lowered the blind over the window so that only the bright fluorescent lighting was in the room. The blind was black, like a ruled line of ink against the walls, and she turned from it shuddering again and went back to her chair by the table.

“I don't want to look out at a place I don't belong in. How can we change ourselves, Johnny? Cecilia thought of us as individuals, at least. Surely …”

Before Melinda had time to finish, footsteps sounded on the gravel path outside and a key scraped in the door. She jumped to her feet, and Johnny pulled her down again roughly.

“What did I tell you? Give me a guess and I'd say this is our Mrs Houghton's last attempt in the present form to bring us to heel. Keep laughing. It's the only hope.”

Melinda nodded, her eyes wide with terror as the steps pattered across the square hall of the farmhouse and came to
the kitchen door. Part of an aria was hummed, and then broken off. The door opened. Melinda clamped her hand across her mouth, forcing out a cross between a laugh and a sob of fear, and Johnny, unable to follow his own advice, rose to his feet and stood dumbfounded. Then he gave a long whistle.

“Well I'm damned! What the hell does she think she's doing this time?”

The girl who stood in the doorway of the overbright kitchen was at first glance young and attractive, with long black hair, a slender figure, and pretty legs going down into scarlet, pointed shoes. She was wearing a black cardigan and skirt, and a row of pearls hung over her breasts. She stretched out a hand in greeting and Melinda shrank back. Johnny shut his eyes and groaned.

“I am your rival,” the girl said in a low clear voice to Melinda. “Please fill me in on what is going on here, as I fear I am rather a late arrival on the scene!” Her voice was foreign, French perhaps, and pleasant to listen to. Melinda swallowed hard, and forced herself to walk up to the girl, while Johnny still stood blind, and swaying on his feet.

“Your face …” Melinda began. “I'm sorry … but you … why do you have no face?”

A smile made itself felt from the blank expanse of skin, oval-shaped, which occupied the space between hairline and neck.

“I think I was being described and the description was broken off in the middle,” the girl said—and for a moment Melinda thought she could see a mouth there, so strong was the desire to see it. “But I was given words to say … and I was set down at this farmhouse so here I am,” she continued. “If I am to be your rival—your name is Melinda, no?—then I would like to know if I am supposed to take this man from you?” She pointed to Johnny, who opened his eyes and closed them again. “Is he in love with me? It seems he is not.”

“And what's your name?” Melinda said quickly. She felt Mrs Houghton's power already, a stirring of interest in Johnny for the faceless girl, a sense of tension which made her want to escape from the farmhouse and hide from both of them in the surrounding fields.

“My name is Joa,” the girl said. “I think I was meant to be Joanna, but she got so angry. She scrumpled me up, you know, and then straightened me out again. Has this ever happened to you?”

“Hasn't it just,” Johnny growled. His eyes were open now and he was appraising the girl, glancing guiltily at Melinda when he had finished. “Look, Joa, we're all in the same boat now. Melinda and I are on the run from that woman, do you understand? And so are you. So …”

“So we all hide out here together,” said Melinda bitterly. “We might as well sleep in the same bed, eh Johnny?”

“Please!” If Joa had had eyes they would have gone wide in innocence. “I do not wish to take your husband, Madam. I can assure you of that. I was sent here, you know.”

“He's not my husband,” Melinda snapped. “That's what we're running away from.”

Joa gave another of her invisible smiles. “Then if you do not want each other I can surely have a good time with Johnny. I am sorry, I am wrong somewhere?”

Johnny suddenly laughed loudly. “I know where you come from, Joa. You've been in one of Cecilia's early novels about the au pair running off with the husband, and the anguish of the wife, haven't you? And poor dear Cecilia half remembered you and decided to put you in as a punishment for us. Well Melinda, what did I tell you about that woman's resources when she finds herself with her back against the wall?”

Both Melinda and Johnny read a pout into the girl's face as she answered this.

“It is possible I was in such a situation once. But it was not pleasant for me either and I do not think there was much
sympathy shown to me. Will this be the same now? I cannot endure Madam in a rage and I prefer to leave the post.”

“No no.” Melinda went up to Joa and took her by the hand. “If we're all friends she'll be thwarted. Can't you see that? It's our only hope. Isn't that so Johnny?”

“Indeed it is.” Johnny was looking at Joa greedily by now and despite himself winked and made a movement of the head unmistakably suggesting a visit to one of the square white rooms upstairs. “Very sensible Melinda and very true,” he went on in a throaty voice.

“We'll all go upstairs together,” Melinda said. She was firm, but her legs trembled beneath her: if she should show jealousy at this point all would be lost and Mrs Houghton would have her way with them for ever. “I'll lead the way,” she said to Joa. “The front room don't you think Johnny, with the big bed. It's made up. I noticed that when we arrived.”

“Whatever you say.” Johnny sounded surprised, and was trying to conceal this. “After you,” he said heartily to Joa. “Rather fun, don't you think? And I'm sure it's not what's intended!”

Melinda opened the kitchen door, and Johnny and Joa followed her into the hall. They began to climb the stairs. But when they reached the landing, all three stopped in confusion, and Johnny let out a shout of rage.

“The bitch! She's trying something else on us now that this hasn't worked!”

Melinda, on looking into the bedroom, found herself laughing at last, and turned to Joa with the laughter still on her lips. But Joa had gone. Only Johnny stood on the landing, and before them, where the bare white-walled bedroom had been, was a tent, multi-coloured and splendid, and two mattresses, side by side on the floor. From the flap in the tent a desert scene showed: white dunes, a line of camels, the topmost branches of a date palm.

“So she's trying all the perfumes of Arabia,” said Johnny quietly. He took hold of Melinda's arm and they went into the tent and sat down.

There was a young merchant who married the most beautiful girl in the district and immediately after set out with his servants along the road, leaving his guests to feast and dance and his wife to pine in his absence. His companion, Rashid, was concerned about this, and said:

“Why do you leave your wife and friends and go out on the road alone?”

“I have not enough to give her,” the merchant replied. “My father was a rich man but I am not, and I go to seek my fortune so that she will be the finest wife any man can have.”

A serpent who was lying under a stone by the side of the road heard this and came out from under the stone and spoke.

“You may take my skin for your wife,” it said. “It is the most beautiful skin of any serpent in the world and she may adorn herself with it. But now you must go back to the wedding feast before more time is lost.”

The merchant took the skin and thanked the snake. “I will go a little further,” he said to his companion, Rashid. “I cannot return to my wife with only one offering.”

They went on and as they went a fox who was lying in his earth by the side of the road heard them speak.

“You may take my skin,” the fox said, appearing before them. “I am old and I have lived long enough and your beautiful wife may adorn herself with it. But you must go back to the wedding feast before more time is lost.”

The fox lay down and died and the merchant cut the skin from its back.

“We will go on a little further,” he said to Rashid. “For I can see eyes as beautiful as my wife's by the side of the road and she shall have them to wear around her neck.”

A peacock, who had heard the merchant speak to Rashid in this fashion, came out into the road and stood before them.

“I have the most beautiful tail in the world,” it said, “and the eyes are even more beautiful than your wife's. But I shall keep it for myself as you already have enough to offer her. Go back to the wedding feast before more time is lost.”

The merchant killed the peacock and went on down the road with the tail held out before him so that he could not see the road. A group of bandits, thinking the eyes belonged to a marching army, set on the merchant and Rashid and their servants and took them off into the hills. They spent many years in captivity, and when they were released they made their way back along the road where they had met the serpent and the fox and the peacock. The merchant had no offerings for his wife, and he went with a bowed head into the tent he had not seen since the day of his wedding feast.

An old woman came out to greet him.

“What do you want here?” she said. “I am a widow and the poorest woman in the district. I will wash your feet for you and give you water but more I cannot do.”

While the old woman was washing the merchant's feet she recognised a mark on the sole of her husband's left foot. The merchant and Rashid at the same time recognised the tent and saw that the old woman was the merchant's wife.

“I have nothing to offer you,” said the merchant, who was deeply ashamed.

“And nor have I anything to give you,” the old woman replied.

A serpent and a fox and a peacock came into the tent when they heard the merchant and his wife speak.

“We can give you our skins,” said the fox and the serpent, “but we cannot give you Time back.”

“You can take the eyes from my tail,” said the peacock, “but they will not look well on your wife now, for her own eyes have dimmed. If you had hearkened to us on the road you would have had plenty to give to each other. Now, as it is, you will soon die of poverty and old age.”

This came to pass, and, the merchant's wife dying first, the merchant took her eyes as a gift to the peacock. The peacock refused them, saying:

“I will not take human eyes as a gift. They are faded. My eyes see Truth, and that is why they never fade.”

As the fable ended, the tent where Johnny and Melinda had been sitting began slowly to dissolve and the square white walls of the farmhouse bedroom showed through the rich hangings. The smell of camel dung, which had grown ever stronger as the fable was recited through the flap in the tent became less acute. Melinda sighed in relief.

“She's not going to get us that way,” she said. She spoke with resolve, but her voice was shaken. “What's she saying? That I'll lose my looks and you'll be an old man if we don't get back on the road and go to Dorset?”

“God knows. I suppose so.” Johnny frowned at the window, where the topmost branches of a date palm were still clearly visible. He looked pale. “What the hell is she
doing
to us, Melinda?”

The characters held hands briefly, and as they did so the scene changed again, this time to a first-floor room in what appeared to be a French coastal resort, with the palm clearly outlined beyond a small balcony, and crowds on the beach below. Coloured balls bobbed in the air, and a group of children lay on rubber mattresses in the sea.

I will tear the limbs from your body. I will dive in the gold of your shield. I will pierce your heart and I will gnaw
at your entrails. The sea is blue as a kite. The irises of your eyes are iris. I will eat your hair and I will take your vitals in my hands. The balloon of the child is orange like an orange. I will scoop your pupils into the sun. I will dive in the sea which is flat and blue as a balloon.

“Must be translated from the French,” Johnny said gloomily when the voice had stopped and the seaside scene had faded. He got up from the bed and went over to the window, which was returning to farmhouse proportions, the balcony outside disappearing into thin air as he looked out. “The palm's going, thank God,” he remarked over his shoulder. “Just some rhododendrons there, and the usual English fields. Well Melinda, what are we going to do? I'm feeling pretty exhausted by now.” He went back to the bed and lay down and closed his eyes. “There isn't much more I can take. How about you? You think we might as well get back on the road, don't you? Just obey her, admit defeat?”

“I know what she's doing,” Melinda said. Her voice sounded sleepy too, and she rolled over and kissed Johnny on the cheek.

“Oh not that!” Johnny half sat in indignation and then slumped back again. “Her last resort—perhaps that's what the last scene was trying to tell us.” He giggled, and ran his fingers through Melinda's hair. “Here goes,” he muttered. “We have to hand it to her I suppose.”

If they had made love before, it had never been like this. There was in the passion between the man and woman in the empty house a fire and a calm that was like a waterfall of stars; the music that sounded in their ears was that of a great marching crowd, going to demand its rights from the oppressor; worlds rolled out in front of them, wide continents and seas with long waves breaking before even there was land in sight. The sky hung above and round them, the moon faded in the strong wash of blue. Only
their bodies, linked like a god and goddess of the ether, floated across time and space and belief and falsehood and burned in the Eternal Fire from whence they came.