Ritual Read Free

old man’s beard, hunched a wet, half-collapsed shed.
    ‘I don’t see
anybody,’ he said. ‘And who the hell would want to stand out there in the
middle of a storm?’
    ‘Look – there!’
Martin interrupted him, and pointed.
    Charlie
strained his eyes. For one moment, through the rain that herringboned the
windowpanes, he thought he glimpsed somebody standing just to the left of the
shed, veiled like a bride with old man’s beard. Somebody dark, somebody stooped,
with a face that was disturbingly pale. Whoever it was, man or woman, it wasn’t
moving. It was standing staring at the restaurant window, while the rain lashed
across the garden so torrentially that it was almost laughable; like a
storm-at-sea movie in which all the actors are repeatedly doused with
bucketfuls of water.
    There was a
third flash of lightning, even more intense than the first; and for one split
second every shadow in the garden was blanched white. But whoever had been
sheltering there had disappeared. There was only the old man’s beard, and the
dilapidated shiplap shed, and the bushes that dipped and bowed under the
relentless lashing of the rain.
    ‘Optical
illusion,’ said Charlie.
    Martin didn’t
answer, but kept on staring outside.
    ‘Ghost?’ Charlie suggested.
    ‘I don’t know,’
said Martin. ‘It gave me a weird kind of a feeling, that’s all.’
    The waitress
returned with their plates of apple pandowdy and a jug of country cream. She
was grimacing as she came across the restaurant. Walking close behind her was a
short, fat woman in a blue and turquoise tent dress. There was an air of
ferocious authority about her which told Charlie at
once that this must be Mrs Foss, under whose direction the Iron Kettle was
going to the dogs.
    Mrs Foss wore
spectacles that looked as if they had been modelled on the rear end of a ‘58
    Plymouth Fury. The skin around her mouth was tightly lined,
and the fine hairs on her cheeks were clogged with bright beige foundation.
    ‘Well, hello
there,’ she announced. ‘I’m always glad to see strangers.’
    Charlie rose
awkwardly out of his seat, and shook her hand, which was soft and limp, but
jagged with diamond rings.
    ‘Harriet tells
me you didn’t care for the veal,’ said Mrs Foss, the lines around her lips
bunching tighter.
    ‘The veal was
acceptable,’ said Charlie, making sure that he didn’t catch Martin’s eye.
    ‘You didn’t eat
it,’ Mrs Foss accused him. ‘Usually, they polish the plate.’
    The patronizing
use of the word ‘they’ didn’t go unnoticed by a man who had eaten and slept in
over four thousand different American establishments.
    ‘I’m sorry if I
gave you an extra dish to wash.’ Charlie told her.
    ‘The
dishwashing isn’t here and it isn’t there. What concerns me is that you didn’t
eat your food.’
    Charlie lowered
his eyes and played with his spoon. ‘I don’t think I was quite as hungry as I
thought I was.’
    Mrs Foss said,
‘ You won’t find a better restaurant anywhere in
Litchfield County, I can promise you that.’
    Charlie was
sorely tempted to say that if there wasn’t anywhere better, then God help Litchfield County, but Harriet the waitress chipped in, ‘ Le Reposoir .’
    Mrs Foss turned
to Harriet wild-eyed. ‘Don’t you even whisper that name!’ she barked, her jowls
wobbling like a Shar-pei. ‘Don’t you even breathe it! ’
    ‘A rival
restaurant, I gather?’ said Charlie, trying to save Harriet from Mrs Foss’s
blistering wrath. Lightning crackled through the room, and for one second they
were all turned white.
    ‘I wouldn’t
grace that place by calling it an abattoir, let alone a restaurant,’ snapped
Mrs Foss.
    ‘I’m sorry,’
said Charlie. ‘I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of it.’
    ‘Do yourself a favour, and stay well clear,’ Mrs Foss said.
‘Those fancified French folks, with all of their unpleasant ideas.’ She
betrayed an upbringing many hundreds of miles south of Litchfield