Not to Disturb Read Free

says Clovis.
    â€˜Hadrian has gone down to the lodge,’ says Eleanor. ‘Gone
to borrow a couple of eggs. Him in the attic hasn’t had his supper yet.’
    â€˜No eggs in the house?’ says Clovis.
    â€˜There was too much else to arrange today,’ says Eleanor
as she places five tiny silver bowls of salt at regular intervals along the
table, carefully measuring the distance with her eye. ‘No marketing done.’
    â€˜Things have gone to rack and ruin,’ says Lister, ‘now
that the crisis has arrived. This house hitherto was run like the solar
system,’
    â€˜Cook your own damn dinner,’ says Clovis, bending closely
over his documents.
    â€˜Don’t you want any?’ says Heloise. ‘I’ll eat your share
if you like, Clovis. I’m eating for two.’
    Clovis bangs down his fist, drops his pen, goes across to
the large white complicated cooking stove, studies the regulator, turns the
dial, opens the stove door, and while looking inside, with the other hand snaps
his finger. Heloise runs with a cloth and a spoon and places them in Clovis’s
hand. Protecting his hand with the cloth Clovis partly pulls out a casserole
dish. He hooks up the lid with the handle of the spoon, peers in, sniffs,
replaces the lid, shoves the dish back and closes the oven door. Again, he turns
the dial of the regulator. Then with the spoon-handle, he lifts the lids from
the two pots which are simmering on top of the stove. He glances inside each and
replaces the lids.
    â€˜Fifteen minutes more for the casserole. In seven minutes
you move the pots aside. We sit down at half-past seven if we’re lucky and they
don’t decide to dine before they die.’
    â€˜No they won’t eat,’ says Lister. ‘We can have our dinner
in peace while they get on with the job.’
    From somewhere far away at the top of the house comes a
howl and a clatter.
    â€˜I’ll have a vodka and tonic,’ says Clovis, as he passes
through the big kitchen and returns to his papers at the butler’s desk.
    â€˜Very good,’ says Lister, looking round. ‘Any more
orders?’
    â€˜Nothing for me. I had my carrot juice. I couldn’t
stomach a sherry, not tonight,’ says Eleanor.
    â€˜Nerves,’ says Lister, and has started to leave the
kitchen when the house-telephone rings. He returns to answer it.
    â€˜Lister here,’ he says, and listens briefly while
something in the telephone crackles into the room. ‘Very good,’ he then says
into the telephone and hangs up. ‘The Baron,’ says he, ‘has arrived.’
    â€¢
    The Baron’s great car moves away from the
porter’s lodge while the porter closes the gates behind it. It slightly swerves
to avoid Hadrian who is walking up the drive.
    The porter, returning to the lodge, finds his wife
hanging up the house-telephone in the cold hall. ‘Lister sounds like himself,’
she tells her husband.
    â€˜What the hell do you expect him to sound like?’ says the
porter. ‘How should he sound?’
    â€˜He was no different from usual,’ she says. ‘Oh, I feel
terrible.’
    â€˜Nothing’s going to happen, dear,’ he says, suddenly
hugging her. ‘Nothing at all.’
    â€˜I can feel it in the air, like electricity,’ she says.
He takes her arm, urging her into the warm sitting-room. She is young and small.
She looks as if she were steady of mind but she says, ‘I think I am going
mad.’
    â€˜Clara!’ says the porter. ‘Clara!’
    She says, ‘Last night I had a terrible dream.’
    Cecil Klopstock, the Baron, has arrived at his door, thin
and wavering. The door is open and Lister stands by it.
    â€˜The Baroness?’ says the Baron, passively departing from
his coat which slides over Lister’s arm.
    â€˜No, sir, she hasn’t arrived. Mr Passerat is
waiting.’
    â€˜When did he