Hotel de Dream (21 page)

“We must mend the lights in here,” said Mr Rathbone after a pause. “My dear Kitty, perhaps you would ask your manservant to conduct me to the fusebox.”

Mr Poynter, encouraged by this show of common sense, drew the curtains back into place; the fusebox was found and the lights mended; and as Mrs Routledge had known, had dreaded and prayed against as the men fiddled with the fuses in the dark and the rain began to fall more heavily, what sprang into sight at the touch of the switch was of course not Lady Kitty Carson's at all, but the Westringham: the Westringham in all its dinginess and dilapidation, the dining room already dripping from the ceiling where once the chandelier had been, the cut glass droplets replaced by muddy water; the grease-marked walls, the smell of Cridge's basement strong and fetid in the hot and rainy weather. The bulging cupboard seemed to laugh widemouthed at Mrs Routledge and her pretensions. The Queen was on an unsteady chair now, by the basement steps, and her head low in a handkerchief. Mrs Houghton let out an exclamation. Mrs Routledge sank on to the chair normally occupied by Mr Poynter, and stared helplessly at her guests. As if the recent interlude had passed already from his memory, Mr Rathbone approached her and held out his document, glancing at the same time impatiently at his watch.

“Notice to quit the premises within six months,” he finished off. “And now, as I said before, dear lady …”

“Lady Kitty?” warbled Mrs Routledge. But she knew she was as good as done for. Her own cheap dress with the large cameo brooch rose up to meet her eye from the heaving
bosom below. A plastic fern in a plastic vase trembled on the table by her hand. The closed curtains, against which Mr Poynter stood with a troubled expression, were thin and worn and an all-too-familiar safety pin protruded from the drooping hem. Mrs Routledge tried to catch his eye but Mr Poynter looked away from her. He was staring desperately at Mr Rathbone, as if the financier was the only person present capable of restoring the elegance of the past hour. Yet, in turn, Mr Rathbone seemed extremely anxious to leave.

“Many thanks for your kind hospitality.” He bowed, went into the hall and stepped out through the front door while the others, defeated, watched him go. But then he stopped, and could be seen to make a mopping motion in the direction of his brow. For if the interior of the Westringham had been restored to its rightful proportions, the outside world had indubitably changed since he had been in there. Mr Poynter's City—and this time he could not count it as an hallucination, the product of a tiring day, the emotions natural to a man on receiving a knighthood—lay before him. The crowds were dispersing a little, but a thin shout of animosity went up when he was spotted on the doorstep. He retired, and closed the door behind him, stood facing the intolerable impostors in the dining room of the property he planned shortly to topple to the ground.

“What is the meaning of this?” Mr Rathbone asked in a severe tone.

Mr Poynter walked slowly up to him. His face was chalk white and his legs shaking, but Rathbone felt no pity for the man.

“It's because they've got out.” His voice was scarcely more than a wheeze; to Mr Rathbone's irritation hearing what he said involved stooping down to his now greatly reduced level.

“Who's got out? Is this a zoo or what?”

Cridge, tattered once more and immeasurably filthy, gave a low laugh just to the left of where Mr Rathbone was standing.

“He means the Scranton and that young fellow,” he cleared up the point. “Till we catch them we won't have any peace tonight I fear.”

Mr Poynter, despite his revulsion for Cridge, nodded agreement. The dreams had escaped; they were trapped in a pool of reality; standing there, in front of the man he most respected, he must do the one thing he most despised, the ultimate in rudeness and contempt: he must close his eyes and sleep. His eyelids went down. Cridge could be heard with his laugh again. Mr Rathbone strode up to Mr Poynter and shook him by the shoulder.

“What the hell d'you think you're doing, man? This is no time for sleep, for God's sake!”

But as he spoke a strange drowsiness came over Mr Rathbone. It spread across his head and down into his chest and made his legs heavy and incapable of movement. For a few seconds he struggled manfully against the sensation. He saw the Queen asleep, her head on the soup-stained tablecloth, the last recipient of Miss Scranton's nervous eating habits—he saw Mrs Routledge and Miss Briggs sleeping on their feet, with oddly contented expressions as if they had been rescued from the pain of a nightmare; he saw Mrs Houghton, her crocodile bag held out before her like a trophy, asleep in a rigid formal pose as if she had turned all of a sudden into a mannequin in a shop window. Mr Rathbone let his lids come down on his cheekbones.

Marcus Tapp, in his waking dream, wandered the streets of Mr Poynter's disintegrating city. His instincts and his training told him to make for the radio stations and the water supply, but his legs took him at a slow pace through the wide boulevards of the residential quarter, the crooked lanes of the ghetto and the monumental architecture of the main square; and his eye registered all he saw with a kind of dim recognition, as if the pattern of the city had been at some early stage implanted in his brain. The arcades, the wide portals of the grand houses, the steep, arbitrary twists and turns of the poor region were all somehow familiar to him, and just as familiar to him were his future actions: he wandered, but with foreknowledge of his destination, like a tourist exploring the city for the second time.

Rain was falling steadily, but Marcus was impervious to it. He saw that some of the buildings were succumbing already to the downpour: portions of grey stone façades had detached themselves from the main edifice, had turned to sodden papier mâché and were lying in the gutters, where they melted gradually to pulp and were washed with the rushing water into the drains; a part of Mr Poynter's headquarters—the balcony, in fact, and the French windows behind it—had broken off and melted, and were stepped over by soldiers at drill in the courtyard as if they were no more than drenched ribbons of black paper; parts of the ghetto were coming down to form soft barricades in the narrow streets. He must hurry, if his task was to be accomplished
before the city disappeared altogether, leaving nothing but a perishable ruin behind it; at the preordained moment, when the tour of the precincts had been made and the signs of recent warfare in the garden of Mr Poynter's residence noted, Marcus felt his legs quicken under him, his shoulders make an about turn in the wall of rain which encased his body. He went with a sure step to the industrial zone and marched into the biggest factory. The crowds, sheltering in the precarious doorways along his route, gave a ragged cheer as he went. An unearthly light had replaced the street lamps and pools of darkness of west London, it was as if dawn and twilight had become confused, and if there was to be a day ahead it would contain only the blank certainty of night. In this aura of limited promise the crowds stood like ghosts, and Marcus passed between them upright behind his pane of water.

The Revolution went according to Marcus's plan. Factories were occupied, and there was fighting with Mr Poynter's troops; the workers were victorious. HQ was stormed and Mr Poynter taken prisoner, his hands tied behind his scarlet-coated back and his eyes blindfolded in readiness for public execution. In the Stock Exchange where Mr Rathbone was shouting and gesticulating like a marionette pulled on ever-tightening wires—the sense of his connection with the deep bedrock gone, he was twitched from above now rather than connected with the base—the money was destroyed and Rathbone himself murdered, his body flung out on to the slush of the streets. Mrs Houghton, presiding at a literary luncheon, was bound and gagged and left to sit there indefinitely with her respectful and terrified admirers. The Queen and Miss Briggs, mere figureheads, were shown compassion by Marcus and expelled from the fast-melting walls of the city, to wander in permanent exile amongst the replicas of Stonehenge and the plaster cast of Windsor Castle. Mrs Routledge and Cridge, obsequious and subservient to Marcus as they were, were put to work in the great kitchens of the once noble houses,
preparing soup for the forces of liberation. The city was taken—but it was disappearing fast! There was so little time to lose, if a new state was to be built on the foundations of the old—and Marcus lacked the imagination to start anew—so little time, when even as Mrs Routledge stirred the pot the walls of the kitchen buckled and sagged with rain, when the railings of the courtyard where Mr Poynter was to be executed drooped and swayed like sodden matches, when the crenellated walls of the city were breaking down and the accumulated rainwater outside was pouring in to cause yet more confusion. Marcus made his plans and shouted orders. Men were sent to the surrounding countryside to cut wood, so that a simple temporary city should stand while the perfect state of the future was under way. It was while he was marching on this mission at the head of his bedraggled troops—and it was hard to march now: the cardboard streets had become a treacherous mire, the men sinking in thick, wet paper up to their shins as they went—that Marcus first espied the women; they strode from every angle down the wide avenues; they carried shields and spears and they were twice the size of the men; strange, incomprehensible war-songs poured from them as they advanced.

The battle was brief and bitter. The men were armed, and the bullets killed the women; Marcus saw Miss Scranton go down clasping her side; matted hair and severed, gigantic limbs were strewn on the dissolving streets. But despite their victory, the men were shaken by the fight and Marcus led them back to the now faintly delineated courtyard in order to raise their spirits with an execution. Mr Poynter was tied to a post. The squad faced him. Shots rang out in the just visible remains of the city. Mr Poynter's head lolled against the post. As Marcus stood watching, a smile of triumph on his lips, the rain stopped and in the improved but still uncertain light the crowds began to drag themselves from the sodden streets and out into the area which had once been beyond
the walls. Marcus called to them, but they did not look back or answer. Soon he was left alone, in a devastated waste of pulp and dying bodies.

Mr Poynter woke suddenly at what sounded like pistol shots going off. Of course—it was only Mrs Routledge with the early morning tea—but he was surprised to find himself fully dressed on his bed, as if someone had lain him out there when he was drunk. He took the tea gratefully and sipped it; and as he did so reflected that he had had a particularly bad night. Mrs Routledge still lingered in the doorway, and from the adjoining rooms came the familiar sounds of Miss Scranton washing herself prudishly and Miss Briggs stamping down her heel into a walking shoe. Further on, Mrs Houghton was already pounding at her typewriter. Mr Poynter smiled feebly up at his landlady, and remarked it had been very heavy rain for the time of year.

“And that's not all!” Mrs Routledge whisked Mr Rathbone's document from her pocket and handed it to the only male resident of the Westringham (she did not count Cridge as such).

“This arrived this morning, Mr Poynter. Who would have thought it? Tonight was to have been the night of our party, you know. I shall certainly cancel the invitation now.”

Poynter reached for his glasses. He read the document carefully. His hands began to tremble as his eyes went over the small print, and he let out a groan of fear.

“But where are we all to go then, Mrs Routledge? This is monstrous. We must take this up with the authorities …”

“Mr Rathbone
is
the authorities,” Mrs Routledge replied. “It breaks my heart Mr Poynter, it really does. But I felt I must inform the clients at the earliest possible opportunity.” She squared her shoulders and sighed. “I shall be going into retirement at Eastbourne, Mr Poynter. My days of running an establishment are over now!”

“But surely there is something we can do about this?” Mr Poynter, his security running out from under him, raised himself in the bed and set his mind racing. “What about Mrs Houghton? Doesn't she have connections?” (He had a dim memory of some unpleasantness with Mrs Houghton lately, but he was not awake enough yet to remember. At any rate, she would be as keen as he was to save the Westringham from demolition.)

“Mrs Houghton is returning to Knightsbridge,” Mrs Routledge replied. “She has lost a close relative, I gather.”

“Oh dear, I'm so sorry?”

“If you ask me, it's a good thing.” Mrs Routledge lowered her voice and half closed the door behind her. A stench rose from the hall, and Poynter recollected it was Thursday, the day Cridge emptied his pots. He buried his nose in his sheet and looked wonderingly up at Mrs Routledge as she stood over him.

“She keeps saying she can get this person back if she types long enough,” Mrs Routledge confided. “Not quite right in the … you know what I mean. And Miss Scranton's not well today so she has to have hot water instead of tea. If you ask me, Mr Poynter, I'm well out of the hotel business. With the exception of yourself of course. Well you've never been any trouble I must say!”

“What's wrong with Miss Scranton?” asked Mr Poynter, feeling again that unaccountable sinking of the heart. “Usually the picture of health, isn't she?”

“Indigestion. Complains of a pain in the side.” Mrs Routledge put her hand on the doorknob and made preparations to leave.

“And Miss Briggs is going to Persia for an indefinite visit,” she said in a loud undertone as she pulled the door ajar. “Says she's been invited by the Shah, but you never can tell!”

With this, Mrs Routledge was gone. Mr Poynter lay on in bed, digesting the news. Downstairs he could hear Mrs Routledge telling Cridge to clean out the kitchens, his refusal to do this, and the ping of the telephone as Mrs Routledge made her call.