Dr. Morelle at Midnight. Ernest Dudley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ of the room and there was a chest of drawers by the window. Miss Frayle was not dismayed. She observed that the room was clean and that the wash-basin had two taps, which promised hot water. ‘How much?’ she asked.

      ‘Four-hundred-and-fifty francs a day,’ the woman told her.

      ‘Can I use my oil-stove to cook in here?’

      The woman shrugged. ‘You can do what you like, it makes no difference to me, just so long as you pay the rent.’

      ‘How long can I stay?’ asked Miss Frayle hesitantly, expecting to have her hopes dashed.

      ‘Just so long as you pay the rent.’ Indifferently.

      ‘More than a month? But what about—?’

      ‘I said as long as you like,’ the woman interrupted. ‘If the law is broken, that’s your business. I just want my money.’

      Miss Frayle had blinked. A lawbreaker? What would Dr. Morelle think? However she was eager to take the room and the bargain was struck. She had moved in the next day, feeling highly elated. That night she went to bed early and fell asleep calculating how much she would save on rent and how she could economize by being able to cook her own food.

      She had awoken suddenly. It was dark. She heard the sound of two people clumping up the stairs. They went up to the next floor and a door banged. A few minutes later a door on her own landing opened and she heard two people walk down the stairs and out into the street. Miss Frayle had dozed off. About half-an-hour later there were more footsteps on the stairs and the door of the adjoining room opened and shut. Miss Frayle put her head under the blankets but by now a regular traffic had started up and down the stairs.

      She had sat up in bed with a weary sigh, wondering what on earth was happening. Sleep was impossible. She tried to read but she could not even settle to her book. Five minutes later there had sounded a tap on her own door.

      Miss Frayle gave a frightened gasp. Who could it be? No one knew she lived here. She was about to get out of her bed to answer the door when there was another tap. An urgent male voice had whispered: ‘Mademoiselle, mademoiselle.’

      Miss Frayle dived under the bed clothes and remained there quaking long after the friendly stranger had stopped trying to persuade her it would be fun if she would open the door to him. Emerging at last hot-faced from the blankets, Miss Frayle decided to complain to the concierge in the morning. However the first light of day comforted her and she soon fell asleep. When she awoke she rebuked herself for being hysterical and decided to say nothing.

      At lunchtime when she arrived home from the morning lectures at the Sorbonne, Miss Frayle saw the over-blonde blonde again. This time she was with two other gaudily-dressed girls. There was no sign of rain, yet all three carried long thin umbrellas. And that evening Miss Frayle saw them again, standing on the corner of the passageway, umbrellas still in evidence. A man approached one of the girls. There was a short, sharp conversation, then the girl nodded amicably and the man followed her into the hotel.

      Miss Frayle had felt herself turn scarlet. She turned away blinking through her spectacles, and then she had jumped as a hand touched her arm. ‘How dare you,’ she started, but it was the concierge.

      ‘Bonsoir, Mademoiselle. Are you coming in?’

      Angry words rose to Miss Frayle’s lips, then she thought helplessly she must sleep somewhere, and had followed the woman dumbly back to the hotel. As they entered three more girls came out. It was obvious enough what they were. Miss Frayle averted her eyes. Umbrellas, she had thought, as she walked nervously up to her room, must be their hallmark.

      That night Miss Frayle pushed the chest of drawers up against her door. She had lain in bed listening to the noises. To make matters even more frightening, three men, all of them residents in the hotel, had in turn knocked hopefully at her door. She was thankful to have barred the entrance.

      By six in the morning she could stand it no longer, she had dressed and begun packing. The ornaments she had bought to decorate the room, her kitchen utensils, books, clothes, were all packed and she was ready to leave by eight.

      She sat through her lectures that day in a state of weary anxiety. Where was she to go? What was she to do?

      The professor had mumbled on. Occasionally he paused in his lecture on nineteenth-century French literature, rested back on his heels, jutting his large stomach even further forward, and gazed round the circular amphitheatre to see how his students were reacting to his words. A few, seated at the front of the auditorium, scribbled fervently. Others were obviously less enthralled.

      The professor was afflicted with a speech impediment and was difficult to hear. Students would gradually crane forward, only to reel back, deafened, as he burst forth into a quotation from Verlaine’s famous sonnet to Victor Hugo:

      ‘Nul parmi vos flatteurs d’aujourd’hui n’a connu Mieux que moi la fierté d’admirer votre gloire: Votre nom m’enivrait comme un nom de victoire, Votre oeuvre, je l’aimais d’un amour ingénu.’

      ‘Only time I can hear him is when he starts to declaim,’ a student next to Miss Frayle said. ‘Then he gives me heart-failure. I’m sure he does it to make sure we stay awake.’

      Miss Frayle had giggled at her. ‘I can hardly understand a word. And I’m afraid my thoughts keep wandering.’

      ‘You don’t look up to much,’ the other had said frankly. ‘Anything wrong?’

      Miss Frayle had blushed. ‘I’ll tell you about it afterwards,’ she said to the student. She had pulled herself together and given her attention to the lecture on nineteenth century French literature. The subject was among the most fascinating of her studies, a pity the professor was so bizarre.

      As his voice boomed forth, Miss Frayle’s neighbour was groaning quietly. Miss Frayle had glanced at her, then somebody in the gallery moved and she looked up. The amphitheatre gallery was empty save for a sprinkling of students who sat there because they wanted to leave before the end. The doors of the lower auditorium were locked by a blue-suited porter as soon as a lecture began and opened only when it was over.

      When the lecture ended, Miss Frayle had left with the other student, making their way through others of every conceivable nationality, Chinese, German, Italian, American, Swedish, Argentinian. Students came from all over the world to enrol for the Cours de Civilisation Français, a course run by the Sorbonne to give people from foreign countries a deeper understanding of France. For herself, Miss Frayle had hardly known which to choose for her diploma studies. She had settled for French literature and L’Histoire des Idées Françaises, and whenever she could find the time she attended lectures on other subjects.

      ‘Now then, what’s your trouble?’ the girl beside her said. ‘You didn’t hear a word of that lecture.’ They had turned the arched cornerway away from the Richelieu amphitheatre and went into the cloakroom where there was a kiosk at which chocolates, cigarettes and fruit were for sale. The girl hadn’t laughed when she’d told her about the umbrellas, how once again she was without a place to stay.

      ‘My aunt has a large apartment,’ the girl had said, ‘and I know she’d like a bit of company. I’ll take you to meet her if you like.’ She had interrupted Miss Frayle’s thanks. ‘We’ve time to go and see her before afternoon lectures, if we’re quick.’

      And so it had been arranged, and Miss Frayle happily occupied a room in Madame Grimault’s spacious apartment.

СКАЧАТЬ