Not to Disturb. Muriel Spark

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СКАЧАТЬ on the sofa, absentmindedly plucking her thigh while he stares at the dancing fire. ‘You and your dreams.’

      Clara says, ‘There’s nothing in it for us. We were better off at the Ritz in Madrid.’

      ‘Now, now. We’re doing better here. We’re doing much better here. Lister is very generous. Lister is very, very generous.’ Theo picks up the poker and turns a coal on the fire, making it flare, while Clara swings her legs up on to the sofa. ‘Theo,’ she says, ‘did I tell you Hadrian came down here to borrow a couple of eggs?’

      ‘And what else, Clara,’ says Theo. ‘What else?’

      ‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘Just the eggs.’

      ‘I can’t turn my back but he’s down here,’ says Theo. ‘I’ll report him to the Baron tomorrow morning.’ He goes to draw the window-curtains. ‘And Clovis,’ he says, ‘for not keeping an eye on him.’ Theo returns to the sofa.

      Clara screams ‘No, no, I’ve changed my mind,’ and pushes him away. She ties up her cord-trimmed dressing-gown.

      ‘Not so much of it, Clara,’ says Theo. ‘All this yes-no. I could have the Baroness if I want. Any minute of the hour. Any hour of the day.’

      ‘Oh, it’s you that makes me dream these terrible things, Theo,’ she says. ‘When you talk like that, on and on about the Baroness, with her grey hair. You should be ashamed.’

      ‘She’s got grey hair all places,’ Theo says, ‘from all accounts.’

      ‘If I was a man,’ says Clara, ‘I’d be sick at the thought.’

      ‘Well, from all accounts, I’d sooner sleep with her than a dead policeman,’ says Theo.

      ‘Hark, there’s a car on the road. It must be her,’ says Clara. But Theo is not harking. She plucks at his elastic braces and says, ‘A disgrace that they didn’t have an egg in the house for the idiot-boy’s supper. Something must be happening up there. I’ve felt it all week, haven’t you, Theo?’

      Theo has no words, his breath being concentrated by now on Clara alone. She says, ‘And there’s the car drawing up, Theo – it’s stopped at the gate. Theo, you’d better go.’

      He draws back from his wife for the split second which it takes him to say, ‘Shut up.’

      ‘I can hear the honking at the gate,’ she says in a loud voice – ‘Don’t you hear her sounding the horn? All week in my dreams I’ve heard the honking at the gate.’ Theo grunts.

      The car honks twice and Theo now puts on his coat and pulls himself together with the dignity of a man who does one thing at a time in due order. He goes to the hall, takes the keys from the table drawer and walks forth into the damp air to open the gate beyond which a modest cream coupé is honking still.

      It pulls up at the porter’s lodge after it has been admitted. The square-faced woman at the wheel is the only occupant. She lets down the window and says, cheerfully, ‘How are you, Theo?’

      ‘Very well, thanks, Madam. Sorry to keep you waiting, Madam. There was a question of eggs for the poor gentleman in the attic, his supper.’

      She smiles charmingly from under her great fur hat.

      ‘Everything goes wrong when I’m away, doesn’t it? And how is Clara, is she enjoying this little house?’

      ‘Oh yes, Madam, we’re very happy in this job,’ says Theo. ‘We’re settling in nicely.’

      ‘You’ll get used to our ways, Theo.’

      ‘Well, Madam, we’ve had plenty of experience behind us, Clara and me. So we’ve shaken down here nicely.’ He shivers, standing in the cold night, bareheaded in his porter’s uniform.

      ‘Your rapport with the servants – is that all right?’ gently inquires the Baroness.

      Theo hesitates, then opens his mouth to speak. But the Baroness puts in, ‘Your relationship with them? You get on all right with them?’

      ‘Oh yes, Madam. Perfectly, Madam. Thanks.’ He steps back a little pace, as if only too ready to withdraw quickly into the warm cottage.

      The Baroness makes no move to put her thick-gloved hand on the wheel. She says, ‘I’m so very glad. Among servants of such mixed nationalities, it’s very difficult sometimes to achieve harmony. Indeed, we’re one of the few places in the country that has a decent-sized staff. I don’t know what the Baron and I would do without you all.’

      Theo crosses his arms and clutches each opposite sleeve of his coat just below the shoulders, like an isolated body quivering in its own icy sphere. He says, ‘You’ll be glad to get in the house tonight, Madam. Wind coming across the lake.’

      ‘You must be feeling the cold,’ she says, and starts up the car.

      ‘Good night, Madam.’

      ‘Good night.’

      He backs into the porchway of the cottage, then quickly turns to push open the door. In the hall he lifts the house-telephone and waits for a few seconds, still shivering, till it comes alive. ‘The Baroness,’ he says, then. ‘Just arrived. Anybody else expected?’

      The speaker from the kitchen at the big house says something briefly and clicks off. ‘What?’ says Theo to the dead instrument. Then he hangs up, runs out of the front door and closes the big gates. He returns as rapidly to the warm sitting-room where Clara is lying dreamily on the sofa, one arm draped along its back and another drooping over the edge. ‘You waiting for the photographer?’ says Theo.

      ‘What was all that talk?’ Clara says.

      ‘Shivering out there. She was in her car, of course, didn’t feel it. On and on. Asked after you. She says, are we happy here?’

      Pablo has got into the little cream coupé and driven it away from the front of the house as soon as Lister has helped the Baroness out of it, taken her parcels, banged shut the car door, and followed her up the steps and into the hall.

      ‘Here,’ she says, pulling off her big fur hat in front of the hall mirror. Lister takes it while she roughs up her curly grey hair. She slips off her tweed coat, picks up her handbag and says, ‘Where’s everyone?’

      ‘The Baron is in the library, Madam, with Mr Passerat.’

      ‘Good,’ she says, and gives another hand to her hair. Then she pulls at her skirt, thick at the waist and hips, and says, ‘Tell Irene I’ll be up to change in half-an-hour.’

      ‘Irene’s off tonight, Madam.’

      ‘Heloise, is she here?’

      ‘Yes, Madam.’

      ‘Still working? Is she fit and well?’

      ‘Oh, she’s all right, Madam. I’ll tell her to go and prepare for you.’

      ‘Only if she’s feeling up to it,’ says the Baroness. ‘I think the world of Heloise,’ she СКАЧАТЬ