The Inn at the Edge of the World Read online

  ‘What sort of mad?’ asked Anita.

  ‘Paranoiac,’ said Ronald, reaching for a roll. ‘Where’s my breakfast?’

  ‘You mean he thinks people are getting at him?’ persisted Anita.

  ‘I think I’ll have kippers,’ said Ronald. ‘What . . .?’

  ‘Do you mean he thinks people are trying to kill him?’ said Anita.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Ronald. ‘It’s more complicated than that.’ He was not prepared to go into the complexities of paranoiac hallucination, of persecution dread and omnipotent fantasy.

  ‘Is he dangerous?’ demanded Anita.

  ‘Probably,’ said Ronald.

  ‘But . . .’ said Anita.

  ‘I’m so hungry,’ said Ronald pathetically. ‘Where’s my kipper?’

  Anita stood up and went to the kitchen door. ‘Could we have a kipper here?’ she asked sweetly and politely. Ronald found her lovely, seeking food for him.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Eric, panting slightly. ‘I didn’t realize you were down.’ The Raeburn had chosen this morning to start playing up. ‘Pair of kippers just coming.’

  ‘But what might he do?’ said Anita.

  ‘Who?’ asked Ronald.

  ‘Jon,’ said Anita. ‘What might he do?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Ronald. ‘He might do anything.’

  ‘Yes, but what?’ asked Anita, her voice rising.

  Finlay’s sister-in-law entered with the kippers.

  ‘I always have trouble with the bones,’ said Ronald, ‘but I do like a nice kipper.’

  ‘Kippers!’ said Harry as he came into the dining room. ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ he said to Finlay’s sister-in-law. ‘I lost track of time. Can I have a kipper?’ He sat down opposite Ronald and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  ‘That’s a bit cold,’ said Anita, resigning herself to abandoning the subject of high mania for the time being. ‘I’ll ask for some fresh for you.’

  Ronald, as he picked a fish bone out of his whiskers, reflected that Anita was that rare being, a proper woman.

  ‘How was your evening?’ asked Harry. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘Well, not really,’ said Anita. ‘Did you, Ronald?’

  ‘Did I what?’ asked Ronald, pushing a kipper’s eye to the edge of the plate.

  ‘Did you enjoy the evening at the professor’s?’

  ‘No, not really,’ said Ronald, considering the matter. ‘I don’t think I did.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Harry, ‘what was wrong?’

  Ronald, inartistically splitting the backbone from the flesh of his fish, did not immediately respond.

  ‘It was uncomfortable,’ said Anita. ‘I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I didn’t feel easy there. If you didn’t find me silly I’d say there was a feeling of evil about the place . . .’

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ said Harry.

  ‘Why?’ asked Anita.

  ‘Jessica was saying something similar.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Anita, who still had her doubts about Jessica: she found her fanciful.

  ‘What gave you that impression?’ asked Harry as his kipper arrived.

  Anita waited until Finlay’s sister-in-law had gone out again. ‘I don’t want to sound fanciful,’ she said, ‘. . . it’s hard to describe. I didn’t get any sense of welcome, of friendship . . .’ She paused as she strove to find words to illustrate the sense of lovelessness she had felt. She had never been in a brothel but she thought the atmosphere might have been the same.

  ‘It was freezing cold,’ said Ronald. ‘They wouldn’t light the fire.’

  Anita was surprised he’d noticed. ‘And the wine wasn’t very nice,’ she said.

  ‘And there wasn’t much of it,’ said Ronald, surprising her further with this evidence of flawed humanity.

  ‘It’s not that we’re greedy,’ she explained. ‘It’s the thought.’

  ‘Perhaps it was just as well,’ said Harry. ‘If you’d drunk too much bad wine you’d be in no condition for today.’

  ‘What time is lunch?’ asked Ronald, fishing a final bone from its hiding place behind a molar.

  ‘You can’t think about lunch yet,’ cried Anita. ‘You’ve hardly finished breakfast.’

  ‘I thought between two and three,’ said Eric bearing in another plateful of rolls. ‘I don’t want to tie you down too closely today, but if anyone’s hungry there’s always elevenses.’ He was still having trouble with the Raeburn. Bloody thing. He had also been overcome by a jealous curiosity as to what his wife might be up to today of all days. It was almost unbearable, and between that anguish and his responsibilities to the guests he thought he might scream, throw back his head, hurl down the plate and howl.

  ‘That’ll be fine,’ said Anita firmly as Ronald showed signs of speaking. Already she had taken a decision not to allow him to make a spectacle of himself and certainly not today by demanding his lunch at the usual time.

  Eric relaxed a little. She wasn’t a bad old stick, this guest.

  ‘Do you think the islanders would mind if I called on them today?’ asked Anita.

  ‘Do I . . .?’ said Eric, bewildered by her unexpected query.

  ‘You say they don’t bother about Christmas,’ said Anita. ‘And as I haven’t got much longer here, I thought I’d go and see that lady about the knitting again.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Eric. ‘No, I shouldn’t think she’d mind at all.’ If he was right in his suppositions the lady would be only too enchanted to get the chance to rip off a mug from the city. ‘No, go along and try it out. I’m sure she won’t mind.’

  ‘Are you more or less ready, Ronald?’ asked Anita.

  ‘What for?’ asked Ronald.

  ‘You are coming with me,’ explained Anita patiently, ‘to talk to a lady I met, who knits special sweaters with a special pattern so that when her husband and sons get drowned she can identify the bodies.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Ronald. ‘I remember now. I said I’d come, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anita. ‘You did.’

  ‘I’ll go and get my coat,’ said Ronald after a short silence, illustrative of some reluctance.

  ‘You can’t spend the morning pigging crisps and nuts in the bar,’ said Anita on a sudden surge of gaiety.

  So that’s the way the wind’s blowing, thought Eric. For she had sounded quite like a wife in a not unreasonable humour.

  ‘It’s me again,’ said Jessica when Harry opened the door. ‘You are the soul of courtesy and I – I am an unmannerly wretch, and things like that, to take advantage of your good nature.’

  ‘Come in,’ said Harry, making his customary allowances for other people’s tiresome ways.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jessica. ‘Sometimes I forget you’re not the sort of person . . . oh, never mind.’

  ‘Chair?’ invited Harry.

  ‘I mean, I sometimes forget I don’t always have to behave the way I imagine people expect actresses to behave,’ continued Jessica. ‘You’ll have to make allowances for me.’

  ‘I do,’ said Harry.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jessica.

  ‘Is Jon bothering you again?’ asked Harry.

  ‘No,’ said Jessica. ‘He’s disappeared. It’s something else. I’m frightened of Hell. It’s Helen Huntingdon’s fault. No it isn’t, it’s the fault of this island . . .’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said Harry.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘No,’ said Harry.

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Do you mean I’m going off my head?’

  ‘No,’ said Harry.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t mean anything much,’ said Harry, ‘but Hell isn’t here and evil doesn’t crawl out from the rocks. You could say the island is indifferent but you can’t say it’s malevolent.’

  ‘It feels it sometimes,’ said Jessica.

  ‘I know,’ said Harry.

  ‘Maybe it is the people,’ said Jessi
ca. ‘Not so much the islanders, but I get the feeling a number of people come here to do things they wouldn’t do in their own back yards – making the place a sort of moral dustbin – if you follow me. Or am I being over-sensitive? Maybe it’s only the holiday atmosphere.’

  ‘Tourism always has a corrupting influence,’ said Harry. ‘Perhaps that’s what you’re conscious of?’

  ‘I hate everybody today,’ said Jessica. ‘Everybody is so selfish and self-regarding and I wouldn’t mind, except when I see them being like that I’m reminded that I’m the most selfish and self-regarding one of all. I thought if I ignored Christmas it would be all right, but there’s always something.’

  Or nothing, thought Harry, but he said: ‘Do you think the antics of Jon have upset you more than you realize?’

  ‘He didn’t help,’ said Jessica. ‘That sort of thing’s always depressing, but it isn’t only him. Anita’s depressing and Ronald’s depressing and the dentist – or the professor, or whatever he is – is depressing and Mrs H. reminds me of a rat – I think it’s her nose, it twitches – and the weather’s depressing and I’m depressing. I wonder if Eric would let me help in the kitchen? I’d like to feel I was of some use to someone. I could make bread – up to my elbows in flour.’ She saw herself, rosy-cheeked, wearing a white apron, mingling her skin cells with the sacredness of bread and earning the approbation of God and the angels.

  ‘Are you good at making bread?’ asked Harry.

  ‘I never tried,’ said Jessica. ‘I don’t suppose I would be.’

  ‘It’s quite simple,’ said Harry.

  Jessica didn’t ask him how he knew, because she knew how he knew – they would have made their own bread at a table in the Manse kitchen, and they would have cried to the young Harry: ‘Take off your uniform or you’ll spoil it, put up your sword, and wash your hands and you can help us make the bread . . .’

  She stood up and straightened her skirt. ‘I can make cakes,’ she said, ‘only there’s seldom any point.’

  ‘You needn’t go,’ said Harry. ‘I’m not doing anything.’

  ‘It’s the oppression,’ said Jessica. ‘I don’t know where to go to get away from the oppression. Don’t you feel it?’

  ‘Not the way you do,’ said Harry, who was aware only of emptiness, weightless and waiting.

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ said Jessica without thinking. Anyone who did not feel as she presently did was fortunate.

  ‘Do you want to go down to the bar?’ asked Harry.

  ‘I suppose that’s all I can do,’ said Jessica. ‘Though I don’t want to end up like Huntingdon. He’s got the horrors, and old Helen keeps telling him there’s nothing the matter with him except what he brought on himself against her earnest exhortation and entreaty, and then he says if she doesn’t shut her trap he’s going to order another six bottles of wine and sink the lot. And I don’t blame him. I wish I had something else to read. Helen would drive a saint to drink. I expect it’s her who’s made me feel like this.’

  ‘A brandy and soda will do you little harm,’ said Harry.

  ‘Try telling that to Helen Huntingdon,’ said Jessica, ‘and she’ll slip you an ipecacuanha.’

  The bar was deserted. ‘Tell me some more about Achmet Pasha,’ requested Jessica as they stood at the counter. ‘He sounds exactly my type.’

  ‘I don’t know much more,’ said Harry.

  ‘They do that sort of thing in films,’ said Jessica. ‘When the hero is tied hand and foot in the dentist’s chair surrounded by his enemies, who are mostly half-wits, he starts insulting them, which always strikes me as most ill-advised, but apparently what he’s trying to do is rattle them so that they make an unwary move. Then the arch villain wastes valuable time boasting about how clever he’s been to get the hero into the dentist’s chair and that gives the hero time to unshackle himself, or let his friends pop in through the window – and right triumphs. Real life isn’t like that, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Harry, ‘although it must have been satisfying for Achmet Pasha to unburden himself. Those words are the sort of thing you might have wished you’d said, but he had no time for l’esprit d’escalier . . .’

  ‘Right, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Eric, hurrying behind the bar. ‘What are you having?’

  ‘Do you like it here?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘Do I?’ said Eric, glancing over his shoulder as he pressed up the brandy optic. ‘Yes, it’s very peaceful after Telford. I used to be in engineering, then I got on the sales side and it all got me down.’ He was glad to be able to state his case aloud. It went some way to making him believe it.

  ‘Don’t you ever feel lonely?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘Lonely?’ said Eric stoutly. ‘Not I. No time.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ said Jessica.

  ‘No problem,’ said Eric.

  ‘Will you have one yourself?’ invited Harry.

  ‘I believe I will,’ said Eric, as though drinking alcoholic liquor was foreign to his nature, ‘and no cold tea for me today. I’ll have a brandy, and here’s to your healths.’

  ‘Cheers,’ said Jessica, lugubriously. She lit one of her cigarettes and when she’d smoked that she had another, which made her feel slightly ill. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ she said.

  ‘I must go and tidy away some papers,’ said Harry. ‘I’ll see you at lunch.’

  Jessica walked in the green Christmas morning with her coat unbuttoned and her spirits round her ankles. ‘Cursed, cowardly dogs . . .’ she said under her breath, ‘I fear you not.’ She walked and walked, but the oppression went with her. She came to one of the rock formations for which the island was admired: it started at ground level and rose gradually, and then abruptly, until it terminated in a sheer drop to the snarling waves, foaming round its feet. Jessica walked, then climbed until she had reached its limit, where she sat down, out of breath, and lit another cigarette in the soggy stillness. She was coughing so hard that she could hear nothing. The turf was damp, the view unimpressive. She wouldn’t have cared if she died.

  Jon lay on his stomach in a small, wet declivity where the rock just started to rise. From here he could not see Jessica, but he knew where she was. He had followed her, had stood and watched her until she reached the heights and had stopped.

  He was, he told himself, displeased with Jessica. She was not, he reminded himself, a particularly good actress, and she had no grace: she was, he considered, in all probability a lesbian. He had for a while intended to remonstrate with her and demand to know why she pretended not to desire him; to confront her and insist that she gave up all subterfuge, but now that he saw her sitting on the edge of a cliff he thought the best thing he could do would be to push her off. The move would undoubtedly teach her a lesson. He began to crawl forward.

  Jessica finished her cigarette and threw the butt down into the sea, watching it as it fell. The sizzle as ember met water would be inaudible from where she sat, but she could imagine it. ‘I curse you,’ she remarked aloud, experimentally, ‘and the foul harlots that bore you . . .’

  Jon, hearing her talking to herself, concluded that she was crazy as well as devious, and was reaching out a hand when he felt he was being watched. There was a seal out there with an unblinking eye on him. He hesitated . . .

  ‘What on earth possessed you to climb so high?’ inquired Harry, panting a little. His daily walks in Hyde Park kept him fit, but he was no longer a young man.

  ‘Crikey,’ said Jessica, turning and noting that she now had two companions. ‘Piccadilly Circus.’ She looked at Jon and then looked away, embarrassed.

  ‘I nearly didn’t make it,’ said Harry. ‘I’d forgotten how the rock rises.’

  ‘I thought you were fiddling with your papers,’ said Jessica.

  ‘Got bored,’ said Harry, getting his breath back.

  Jon smiled straight at him. ‘It’s nice up here,’ he said, ‘isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harry.

  ‘We can walk home together
,’ said Jessica. ‘I hope all this exercise has given you an appetite for lunch.’

  They caught up with Ronald and Anita on the way back to the inn. Anita was waving her hands around and speaking shrilly. ‘. . . I tell you that’s where the cottage was,’ she was saying. ‘I remember the wall ending there and the tree on one side and the pillar box on the other . . .’

  ‘It isn’t there now,’ said Ronald, obviously not for the first time.

  ‘I know it isn’t there now,’ said Anita, ‘but it was. I saw it. I spoke to the woman. She was knitting a sweater for her man and she spoke to me. She was eating a cough sweet – I smelt it. She gave me a cup of tea.’

  ‘It must have been further along the road,’ said Ronald.

  ‘There isn’t any further along the road . . .’ said Anita, but she stopped arguing as the others came level.

  ‘Nice walk?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Anita. ‘Most refreshing.’

  ‘How far did you go?’ asked Jessica, noting that these two fellow travellers had clearly been having a row, and adopting a friendly, eirenic tone.

  ‘Right to where the little road stops,’ said Anita.

  ‘Not as far as the castle ruins, then,’ said Jessica.

  ‘No,’ said Anita.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jessica. She stumbled and Harry took her elbow to steady her. ‘These shoes aren’t as sensible as they look,’ she said. ‘It’s a funny sort of Christmas Day,’ she continued as no one else said anything. ‘I keep thinking there ought to be children. I haven’t seen any since I came.’

  They passed a field with some cows in it and she wondered if Harry had once taken his little boy on the Eve of Christmas to see them kneeling in the stable, except that cows didn’t frequent stables much these days and she hadn’t noticed a stable in the Manse yard. Perhaps they knelt in the fields. When they lay down it meant it was going to rain. It was raining; a thin drizzle was drifting down from the hills.

  ‘Oh hell,’ said Jessica, buttoning her coat, ‘why are those lying cows standing up? They’re supposed to lie down when it’s going to rain.’