Not to Disturb Read Free Page B

drag on all night. I’m
intuitive, as Mr Lister says, and —’
    â€˜Only as regards your condition,’ says Lister. ‘Normally,
you are not a bit intuitive. You’re thick, normally. It’s merely that in your
condition the Id tends to predominate over the Ego.’
    â€˜I have to be humoured,’ says Heloise, shutting her eyes.
‘Why can’t I have some grapes?’
    â€˜Give her some grapes,’ says Pablo.
    â€˜Not before dinner,’ says Clovis.
    â€˜Clara!’ says Theo the porter. ‘Clara!’
    â€˜It’s only that I’m burning with desire to ask them
what’s going on up at the house tonight,’ she says.
    â€˜Come back here. Come right back, darling,’ he says,
drawing her into the sitting-room where the fire glows and flares behind the
fender. ‘Desire,’ he says.
    â€˜Theo!’ she says.
    â€˜You and your nightmares,’ Theo says. He shuts the door
of the sitting-room and sits beside her 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.’
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜And what else, Clara,’ says Theo. ‘What else?’
    â€˜Nothing,’ she says. ‘Just the eggs.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜She’s got grey hair all places,’ Theo says, ‘from all
accounts.’
    â€˜If I was a man,’ says Clara, ‘I’d be sick at the
thought.’
    â€˜Well, from all accounts, I’d sooner sleep with her than
a dead policeman,’ says Theo.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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