Ritual (9 page)

Looking around
the restaurant Charlie saw bare breasts everywhere, some with nipples that had
been rouged, others which had been pierced and decorated with golden rings. He
saw a redheaded woman with a feathery hat talking to the maitre d’, smiling
archly as she did so. Her thighs were wide apart on her satin dining chair, and
a small hairless dog, was lapping with its tongue at her bushy, russet vulva.
He turned. A monk-waiter had brought his meal, concealed beneath a shiny dish
cover. The monk-waiter’s face was as black as the inside of a clothes closet.
‘Your dinner, sir,’ he whispered seductively, and raised the dish cover with a
flourish.

Charlie looked
down at his plate and screamed.

The plate was
brimming with thin, greyish soup, in which Martin’s face was floating, staring
up at him in silent desperation.

He opened his
eyes. He was twisting the quilt in both hands, and he was smothered in sweat.
He also had a taut, painful erection.

He thought for
a moment that he had screamed out loud, but the night seemed so silent and
undisturbed, and Martin was still breathing steadily and peacefully, and he
realized then that he must have screamed only in his dream. He checked his
watch. A minute and a half had passed since the last time he had looked.

He thought for
a while about Martin’s face staring up at him out of the plate. Then he thought
about the naked women in his dream restaurant. There was no question about
it,
his daytime problems were catching up with him while he
slept.
The problems of food, fatherhood, and sexual
frustration.
He lay there feeling very middle aged and inadequate and
tired, for hour after hour. He didn’t know when he fell asleep; but shortly
afterwards Martin opened his eyes and turned and looked at him, and then slid
quietly out of bed and went to the window.

Martin stood by
the window for almost a half-hour, while the sky gradually grew paler over the
treeline towards Black Rock and Thomaston. In the yard below him, the small
hooded figure stood, equally silent, its cloak ruffled by the thin,
early-morning wind, its eyes fixed steadily on Martin, waiting with a patience
that had been shared by the diners in Charlie’s dream.

W
alter Haxalt was smooth, patronizing, and impatient. He sat behind
his leather-topped reproduction desk, his hands steepled, gently tapping his
fingertips together as if he were counting the valuable seconds that Charlie
was wasting, second by second, dollar by dollar.

The morning sun
struck through the window of his office and illuminated, as if it were a sign
from God, a gold presentation clock that stood on the bookshelf just behind
him. There was a motto engraved on the clock, ‘Time Driveth Onward Fast’.
Strangely, Charlie could remember the verse from which that motto had been
taken. It ended, ‘all things are taken from us, and become/Portions and parcels
of the dreadful Past’.

Walter Haxalt
said, ‘I can’t help you, I’m afraid. My only contract with M. Musette is purely
professional. He lives here and so he banks here, and that’s as far as it
goes.’

Charlie glanced
towards the window. Martin was waiting for him outside, in the car. ‘I wasn’t
asking for anything more than an introduction.’

‘Well, I wish I
could help,’ said Walter Haxalt, making it quite plain by his disinterested
tone of voice that he didn’t wish anything of the kind. ‘But I can’t abuse a
customer’s personal relationship with the bank for any reason at all, even if
that reason happened to be meaningful and advantageous.’

‘Have you ever
eaten at
Le Reposoir
?’ asked Charlie.

Walter Haxalt
kept on tapping his fingers, but didn’t answer directly. ‘I guess you’ll be
leaving us now,’ he said. ‘Travelling ever onward, in your search for culinary
perfection.’

Charlie stared
at him. Walter Haxalt became suddenly selfconscious about the way that Charlie
was looking at him, and shifted in his studded leather chair.

‘How did you
find out what I do for a living?’ Charlie asked.

‘You told me,’
said Walter Haxalt, uncomfortably.

‘I never tell
anybody.’

‘Well, to tell
you the truth, I had Clive check it out for me. He ran your licence through the
computer.’

‘Clive?
That deputy who told me to move my car yesterday?’

Walter Haxalt
nodded. ‘This is a small town, it’s vulnerable. We always have to take certain
elementary precautions when strangers come around.’

‘Did you take
any elementary precautions when M. Musette set up shop?’

Walter Haxalt
said, ‘I can’t discuss M. Musette with you, Mr McLean. If you want to know
anything at all about M. Musette, I suggest you ask him yourself.’

Charlie eased
himself out of his chair. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What can I say but thanks for
nothing?’

Walter Haxalt focused
on Charlie narrowly. ‘We do try to be friendly, here in Alien’s Corners. I want
you to know that.’

‘I think I’ve
been able to make my own assessment, thank you,’ Charlie replied.

‘In that case,
I hope you won’t judge us too harshly.’

Charlie opened
the office door. ‘It’s not my job to judge you, Mr Haxalt.
Only
your hotel and refreshment facilities.
Right now, I’d say that Alien’s
Corners deserves the bent spoon award for service, the broken spring award for
comfort, and the golden barbed wire award for hospitality.’

Walter Haxalt
stood up. ‘I hope you’re not going to try to publish anything like that. If you
do, I’m going to have to speak to your employers.’

Charlie said,
‘My employers take a very dim view of bribes and threats, Mr Haxalt. Come to mention
it, so do I.’

He walked out
of the bank into the sharp fall sunshine.

Martin was
lounging back in the front seat of the car reading Power Man and Iron Fist.
Charlie climbed in beside him and started the engine. ‘Glad to see you’re
reading something improving.’

Martin said,
‘Did he fix it up for you?’

‘No. It seems
to me that Alien’s Corners is low on helpfulness, apart from being a poor place
to get a good steak. I’m going to try the direct approach.’

‘What does that
mean?’

Charlie steered
away from the green and out toward the Quassapaug Road. ‘That means a direct
frontal assault on
Le Reposoir
, with
all guns blazing.’

They drove for
four or five minutes in silence. Then Martin said, ‘Dad?’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘We don’t have
to do this, Dad. I mean, it isn’t totally necessary, is it?’

Charlie glanced
at him. ‘What do you mean, it isn’t totally necessary?’

‘I mean, if
it’s private, nobody who reads MARIA is going to be able to eat there anyway.’

Charlie nodded.
‘You’re right. You’re absolutely right. But the argument against that is that I
want to eat there.’

Martin said
nothing more to dissuade him; but all the same Charlie began to feel that he
was distinctly worried about their driving up to
Le Reposoir
and forcing their way into La Societe Gastronomique
without being invited. But the more reluctant Martin showed himself to be, the
more determined Charlie became. Perhaps he was punishing Martin in a way, for
lying to him last night. Perhaps he was just being stubborn and bloody-minded,
like he always was.

They drew up
outside the entrance to
Le Reposoir
and, to Charlie’s
surprise,
the wrought iron gates
were open. He hesitated for a moment, craning his head around to see if there
were any security guards or parking valets around, but there was nobody there
at all, neither to greet them nor to prevent them from driving inside. Charlie
looked down the wide, shingled driveway, which curved in between two dense
banks of maculata bushes. The house itself was out of sight, although Charlie
thought he could glimpse rows of black chimneys through the bright yellow
maculata leaves.

‘Well,’ he
remarked. ‘Not so reclusive after all.’ ‘We’re not going in?’ asked Martin.
‘The gates are open, why not?’ ‘But it’s private!’

‘Since when
have you been concerned about private?’ ‘Dad, we can’t just drive straight in.
You heard what that deputy said about trespassers.’

‘We’re not
trespassers. We’re potential customers.’ Charlie didn’t really feel quite so
confident about venturing into the grounds of
Le Reposoir
, but he was determined to show Martin that he was in
complete control of everything he did, and that he was scared of nobody and
nothing. If he backed out now, Martin would regard him for the rest of their
vacation together as a flake and a wimp; and if that
happened
their relationship would be ruined for ever. He didn’t mind if Martin thought
he was a flake; but he had to be a brave flake; like Murdoch in The A-Team.

Charlie eased
his foot off the brake and the Oldsmobile rolled forward between the gates and
down the curving drive. The car windows were open, so that they could hear the
heavy crunching of shingle beneath the tyres. The morning which had started
sunny was now dull. The eastern sky behind them was as black as Bibles. They
could hear ovenbirds and protho-notary warblers singing in the woods, but apart
from that the air was curiously still, as if their intrusion into the grounds
of
Le Reposoir
had been noticed by
nature at large, and a general breath was being held until they were
discovered.

They turned a
bend in the driveway and Martin unexpectedly covered his face with his hands.

‘What’s the
matter?’ Charlie asked him. ‘Martin? What’s wrong?’

Martin turned
his head away, and pushed at Charlie with his left hand, like a linebacker
warding off a tackle. At the same time, the house in which
Le Reposoir
had been established rose up in front of them, sudden
and dark and almost wickedly elaborate. It was built in the high Gothic style,
the kind of house that Edward Gorey drew for The Dwindling Party or The West
Wing, with spires and turrets and twisted columns, and a veil of long-dead
wisteria over the porch.

Charlie slowed
the car as he passed between two old and stooping cedar trees, and drew up at last
on a circular shingled turning space, with weeds growing up through the stones.
He pushed on the parking brake and killed the engine, and then almost
immediately he stepped out of the car and stood leaning on the open door, his
eyes narrowed against the light wind, looking around like a man who has
discovered an uncharted valley, or a garden which has been secretly neglected
for fifty years.

‘Now this is
what I call a restaurant,’ he said, although he was quite aware that Martin was
making a determined effort not to listen to him. He stepped away from the car
and walked a few yards out across the shingle, the soles of his brogues
crunching in the fall silence. ‘What a locale! It merits one star for locale
alone. Did you ever see a locale like this?’

The house was
enormous, yet for all its blackness and all of its
size,
it seemed to float suspended in the dark air, like a mirage, or a grotesquely
over-decorated man of war. There was a central entrance, reached by wide stone
steps, and flanked on either side by eight gothic pillars, each of them
different in design with spirals and diamonds and hand-carved ropes. Between
the pillars stood an arched mahogany door, with brass handles and engraved
glass panels, all highly polished. On either side of the central entrance, the
house stretched over 300 feet to the east and 300 feet to the west, with tier
upon tier of glittering windows. A weather vane in the shape of a medieval
dragon creaked and whirred to itself on the highest spire.

There was an
odd smell on the wind, like burning fennel.

‘You know
something?’ said Charlie, leaning back into the open automobile, ‘I never even
knew this place existed. Can you believe it? I’m supposed to be one of the top
restaurant inspectors in the continental United States. I got an
award,
did I ever tell you that? So how did I get to miss a
place like this?’

‘Dad,’ Martin
begged him. His voice was odd and edgy. ‘I don’t want to stay here. I want to
go on to Hartford.’

Charlie had
heard the tone in Martin’s voice but he feigned a brash, tourist enthusiasm.

‘You don’t want
to see what goes on here? Look at this place? It’s probably unique. Some of the
really old colonial houses were built on designs the Pilgrims brought over from
England. I’ll bet you anything the place is haunted by Nathan Hale’s
great-grandmother.’

Martin begged,
‘Dad, please.’

‘What’s it to
you?’ Charlie demanded. He felt a little cruel now; but he felt that Martin had
been equally uncaring about him, refusing to talk about the small figure he had
met in Mrs Kemp’s back yard, and refusing to tell the truth about the visiting
card he claimed he had found.

‘Dad, I just
don’t like it here. I want to go.”

‘Come on,
Martin, there’s nothing to get worked up about. It’s a restaurant. And let me
tell you something about people who run restaurants – even the worst of them
have some sensitivity.

You have to
have some sensitivity, whether you’re running an a la carte or a greasy spoon.

You’re dealing
with people’s stomachs, and there isn’t anything more sensitive than that.’

At that moment,
quite unexpectedly, a deep, cultured voice said, ‘
You’re
right, my friend. The alimentary canal is the river of human life.’

Charlie
involuntarily jerked in surprise. He turned around to find a tall man standing
only five or six feet away from him. The surprise was that the man could have
approached so close without making any noise at all, especially over a shingled
driveway. And the man wasn’t just tall; he was unnervingly tall, at least six
feet three, and he had the predatory appearance of a well-groomed raven. His
black hair was slashed straight back from his hairline. His forehead was narrow
and white. Beneath two thinly curved eyebrows his eyes looked like two shining
silver ball bearings, and were equally expressionless. His nose was thin and
hooked, although there was an angular flare to his nostrils. He sported a thin,
black, clipped moustache. By his clothes, Charlie could tell that he was a man
of taste, and a European. He wore a dark blue pinstripe suit in the Armani
style, although obviously more expensive than Armani, a pure silk
paisley-patterned necktie, and gleaming handmade shoes.