The Hanging in the Hotel. Simon Brett

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СКАЧАТЬ appreciative recognition greeted the name. Donald Chew was his boss. The young man moved in the right circles. He was one of them. ‘I qualified as a solicitor two years ago, and was fortunate enough to be kept on by Renton and Chew, working mostly at the moment on the conveyancing side, though I hope in time to expand my portfolio of skills to include . . .’

      When Jude and Suzy returned to the dining room with the coffee, the rituals were over. Guests had been welcomed, a new member initiated, and a toast drunk to ‘Pillars past, Pillars now standing, and Pillars yet to be erected.’ The wording of this last invocation, innocently coined in the late nineteenth century, was followed by the obligatory sniggering guffaw that in such company greets any form of the word ‘erect’.

      This was the sound that met the two women as they entered. Then the rituals gave way to speeches. Expressionless, Suzy and Jude set out cups, saucers and coffee pots as, sycophantically and with a few limp jokes of his own, James Baxter introduced the evening’s guest speaker, the president of a local rugby club, ‘Who I’ve heard speak before and who I know will give us all a lot of good laughs. So, if any of my fellow Pillars suffer from weak ribs, be warned you’re likely to crack a few!’

      The guest speaker started with a reference to the wives and girlfriends marooned at home by the Pillars’ dinner, and took this as a springboard for a sequence of quick-fire jokes about women, of a crudeness Jude found hard to credit. She caught Suzy’s eye and received the unspoken message to grin and bear it.

      Jude realized she and Suzy had become invisible. They were merely functionaries, fulfilling their task of serving coffee. The fact that they had identities, the fact that they were women, the fact that one of them was a great beauty of her generation and was now dressed in a stunningly expensive designer black dress, had no relevance at all.

      The jokes continued, each cruder than the last, and the raucous responses to them fed the communal hatred and fear of women. As Jude and Suzy slipped, unnoticed back into the kitchen, the fumes of misogyny rising from the Pillars’ table were almost visible.

      The clearing-up took a long time, though fortunately the Pillars of Sussex did not keep very late hours. There had been much bold talk of ‘staying in the bar all night’, but their stamina did not match their bravado. Most of the men had had two or three pints before dinner, plenty of wine with the meal, and were pretty incoherent before they started on post-prandial Scotches, brandies, ports and further pints.

      The drunkest of the lot was Nigel Ackford. Bob Hartson kept plying his guest with more drinks, and seemed to take pleasure in watching the young man’s movements grow more random, and in hearing his speech become more slurred.

      ‘Are you staying tonight, Bob?’ Jude heard Nigel say at one point. ‘Or are you being driven home?’

      ‘No, I’m going to stay. Geoff’s kipping down here too. He can drive me back in the morning.’

      Nigel Ackford waved his glass. ‘Time I bought you one, Bob.’

      ‘No. This evening’s my treat, and that means everything. Here, sexy Suzy, same again, please!’

      Jude was once again impressed by Suzy’s forbearance, as she watched her behind the bar, dispensing orders with efficiency and an automatic smile. Even Suzy’s automatic smiles were beautiful.

      None of the men noticed this. Though their conversation was still largely composed of jokes predicated on rampant lust, the presence of a real woman seemed not to impinge on their collective consciousness.

      With Suzy cornered behind the bar, Jude found she was doing the initial stages of clearing the dining room on her own. Kerry, who should have been helping, was sitting with her adoring stepfather, Bob Hartson, who, apparently amused by her precocious relish for alcohol, kept plying the girl with drinks. At no stage did Suzy make any attempt to remind Kerry of her duties.

      The atmosphere in the bar was raucous, and the conversation degenerated into ever more misogynistic jokes and playground insults. Only Donald Chew seemed marginalized from all the banter. He smiled and joined in the automatic guffaws which greeted every punchline, but looked aloof, not quite one of the boys, as he continued steadily to drink and unsteadily to sway. He was the first to say he was off to find his bed.

      ‘Ooh, sweetie!’ someone shrieked after him in a mock-camp voice. ‘Hope you find someone nice in there waiting for you!’

      And the Pillars of Sussex roared their obligatory laughter.

      ‘Spoilsport!’ shouted someone else, as the retiring president left the bar. ‘The rest of us have only just started drinking!’

      Again the Pillars guffawed.

      But, in spite of bold protestations about staying up all night, Donald Chew’s departure served as a signal to the others. Jude got the impression the Pillars were not drinking on out of enjoyment, but simply as some kind of endurance test. Now one of their number had given in, it was all right for the others to do the same. Within twenty minutes, the bar was empty. The clock showed a quarter to one.

      Kerry had somehow contrived to vanish too. When Jude mentioned this, and the fact that the girl should be helping with the clearing up, Suzy just grimaced and said, ‘It won’t take us long.’

      But it did. The hotelier’s high standards would not allow any detail to be left till the morning. So the two of them worked dourly on. The only interruption came when Suzy’s mobile phone rang. She answered it. ‘Hello. Oh, are you? See you then.’

      She said no more, and offered no explanation for the call or the lateness of the hour at which it had been made. It was not in Jude’s nature to ask for such information, but she noticed there seemed to be a new tension and impatience in the way Suzy continued with the tidying up.

      It was nearly half-past two by the time they collapsed in the kitchen.

      Suzy moved to one of the fridges and took out an open bottle of Chardonnay. She filled two glasses and raised hers to Jude. ‘First of the day,’ she said. ‘And last of the day. It’s the only time I have a drink. Just one glass. I usually feel I’ve earned it.’

      ‘You certainly have tonight.’

      ‘Yes.’ Suzy sighed. The tracery of lines between her eyebrows bunched together.

      ‘What is it?’ asked Jude, returning to their conversation of earlier in the evening. ‘Money?’

      ‘Oh, there’s always money – when I can’t think of anything else to worry about.’

      ‘And can’t you think of anything else to worry about at this precise moment?’

      But Suzy wasn’t going to be drawn. She grinned bleakly. ‘Things will get better. Or they won’t. Either way, life will continue . . . at some level.’

      Recognizing a barrier to a subject when she heard one, Jude moved on. ‘That note Kerry found . . .’

      ‘Oh yes?’

      ‘Which bedroom was it in?’

      ‘I didn’t ask her. I’ll ask in the morning.’

      ‘Where is she? Asleep in her staff room?’

      ‘Presumably. Have you put your overnight stuff СКАЧАТЬ