May contain nuts … The same might be said of Terence’s house, with these odd friends of his. The last time she visited, there had been the sacred dance people and their Beings of Light; now there were these two resident gurus, Roger and Claire, who had insinuated themselves for the purpose of writing their magnum opus. And for the purpose of eating too, no doubt, and drinking Terence’s martinis. Unless, of course, they did not indulge – shortly she would see whether it was carrot juice or gin they drank, and that would tell her a lot about whether they were genuine.
She left her room, and then, on impulse, went back in to collect her handbag. It contained her purse and her credit cards, and for some reason she felt uneasy about leaving them in her room. If Roger and Claire were capable of leeching off poor Terence then might they not be equally capable of removing a few banknotes or a card from a guest? The thought came to her quite powerfully, but she immediately felt guilty; how could she think such a thing about fellow guests whom she had not yet even met – apart from a brief sighting of Roger in the garden. I must not allow myself to be distrustful, she told herself firmly, but nevertheless she kept hold of her bag. It would not do to tempt Providence, at least not once Providence had been alerted to a possibility.
She made her way down the corridor. There was a door off to the left, to a room that she knew to be another spare bedroom; Uncle Edgar had stayed there when his wife had found it all too much to bear. She paused. The door was slightly ajar, just a tad, but enough for her to hear voices within – a man’s voice and then a woman’s. She was not one to eavesdrop, and the old adage that those who did heard ill of themselves was very true, as so many of those irritating old adages were. But she could not resist; she crept closer to the door.
A squeaky floorboard protested loudly. Berthea froze. The murmur of voices ceased, but then resumed. She breathed a sigh of relief, and strained to hear what was being said.
Chapter 42: Behind the Arras
Polonius had an arras behind which to hide – not that it did him much good. Berthea Snark had no such cover as she stood on the first-floor landing of her brother Terence Moongrove’s Queen Anne House near Cheltenham. The unfortunate Polonius brought Hamlet’s wrath upon him through an ill-timed call for help; Berthea would make no such mistake. She stood motionless, and unless she were to sneeze – which she had no plans to do –the only threat lay in the squeaky floorboard she had just trodden upon. That was silent now, and if the owners of the voices murmuring within the room off the landing had been momentarily disturbed they were no longer on the alert, as their conversation had resumed.
If there is one thing which one can always make out in an otherwise indistinctly heard conversation it is one’s name. Being professionally interested in such phenomena, Berthea had been fascinated to read in the psychological literature of how people in certain stages of sleep may not react to stimulus but upon hearing their name being called may wake up quite quickly. She had experienced this herself while sleeping through a meeting of a committee of the Royal College of Psychiatrists; she had awoken at precisely the moment the chairman mentioned her name, and fortunately had been able to respond to his question quite satisfactorily. Sleeping in meetings, of course, was nothing to reproach oneself for, even though it could be occasionally embarrassing; many meetings were unnecessarily long, or indeed completely uncalled for, and if they provided an opportunity to catch up on much-needed sleep, that at least gave them some purpose. Berthea had once been at a meeting where everybody was asleep except her and the chairman, and the two of them alone had dispatched a great deal of business in a very efficient and appropriate manner. That same chairman, one of the great chairmen of his generation, was himself an accomplished napper, famous for being able to sleep through an entire meeting, only waking at the end, whereupon he would provide an excellent summary of everything that had happened during the meeting. Various explanations had been suggested, one being that he had a rare and useful ability to hear while he was asleep; another, more plausible explanation, was that he knew the members of the many committees very well, and knew that they were unlikely to come up with any novel remarks, and therefore he had no difficulty at all imagining what they had said.
Berthea was aware that inside the bedroom off the landing, presumably preparing to go downstairs for their seven o’clock martinis mixed by Terence, were the two other guests in the house, Roger and Claire. She had seen Roger as she arrived at the house earlier that day, hanging about in the rhododendron bushes near the drive, and had on the spot identified him as a charlatan. What, she wondered, was he doing in the rhododendron bushes? But, more pertinently, what was he doing exploiting poor, innocent Terence’s generosity by coming to stay for an indefinite period of time – possibly years, according to Terence – while writing some mystical magnum opus that was undoubtedly risible in the extreme. She was yet to see Claire, whose voice she now heard from within the room and who was, in fact, the one who was mentioning Berthea’s name. Like a sleeper in stage three non-REM sleep, Berthea homed in on what was being said.
“ … that woman. What’s her name – Bertha?”
“Berthea. Berthea Snark," Terence said. "His sister. She’s the mother of that Lib Dem MP, Oedipus Snark. We’ve seen him on the box – going on about something or other.”
Claire laughed. “They do go on, don’t they?”
“Nice job,” said Roger. “You get paid to go on and on about things. I’ve often thought I’d like to be an MP.”
Claire took a moment or two to reply to this. “You? You must be joking. And your talents, Rog. Think of your talents. If you were an MP you couldn’t set up the centre. All our plans …”
Berthea drew in her breath. Centre?
“True,” said Rog. “Of course we can’t treat anything as being in the bag. Not just yet.”
Claire appeared to agree. “Naturally. What do they say? It’s not over until the fat lady sings.”
“It’s not over until Terence is kind enough to sign. Which he will.”
There now came from within the room the sound of a cupboard or drawer being closed. Berthea tensed. If Roger and Claire intended to be punctual for martinis, then they might emerge at any moment. She would have to move.
She shifted her weight. Within the room, the voices resumed.
“Will she prove awkward – Berthea Stark or whatever she calls herself? I must say I didn’t much like the look of her. I caught a glimpse when Terence drove her back from the station. Hostile-looking woman.”
“Well, if she’s anything like him, she’ll be no trouble.”
“Good. Oh, look at the time, shouldn’t we …”
Berthea took a step backwards. The floorboard squeaked. She froze. It was difficult to decide what to do. She could not stay where she was, but if she took another step she could alert them to her presence right outside their door, and that would be hard to explain. She moved again, very slightly. The floorboard protested.
There was only one thing to do. She knocked loudly on the slightly ajar door.
Roger opened it. He was smartly dressed now, a handkerchief protruding from his blazer pocket in a rather jaunty way.
“Oh …”
“Sorry to give you a fright,” said Berthea. “I wasn’t sure if anybody was in. I was looking for …” She thought quickly. “A hairdryer. There isn’t one in my room, you see.” She was pleased with the line: saying that she was not sure that anybody was in indicated that she had not heard their conversation. Assuming Roger was listening to what she was saying, of course.
“A hairdryer?”
“Yes.”
He turned to face into the room. “Claire, Is there a hairdryer in here?”
Claire appeared behind him, peering at Berthea. She was a rather plump woman, considerably shorter than Roger, and was, like him, somewhere in her forties. Berthea’s eye was drawn to a prominent mole on her brow, and then to her carefully plucked eyebrows.
“Who needs a hairdryer?” she said, l
ooking at Berthea. “It doesn’t look as if you’ve washed your hair. It isn’t wet.”
Berthea’s right hand went up to her hair in a spontaneous gesture of …guilt? Or dismay, perhaps, at having come up with a clever pretext that had such a fatal flaw.
“I’m planning to wash it later,” she said, trying to smile, but finding it rather difficult.
Chapter 43: Terence Moongrove Entertains
Terence Moongrove was full of bonhomie. “So you three have all introduced yourselves,” he said, beaming upon his guests. “That’s the nice thing about a house party. Everybody mucks in together. Such fun.”
Berthea gave him a sideways glance. She had known her brother to entertain on only very few occasions, and it was highly unlikely that he had ever held, or been invited to, a house party. He had once invited to dinner his garagiste, Lennie Marchbanks, and Lennie’s wife, Chantalle, and had served them toad-in-the-hole and cold custard. Berthea had been visiting at the time, but she had been unable to persuade Terence to let her do the cooking.
“I’m a jolly competent cook, Berthy,” he had scolded her. “You mustn’t make sexist assumptions! Lots of men are jolly good cooks, and I think I’m one of them. Look at Ambrose Heath. Look at that chap with no clothes, the Naked Chef. Look at them. They’re men, and they’re jolly good at all sorts of dishes. That Delia person is not the only one who knows how to cook.”
It had not been an easy evening, as Lennie Marchbanks appeared to get into trouble with his false teeth: a piece of sausage, or perhaps it really was toad, became lodged between the roof of his mouth and the upper plate of his dentures, and it took him fifteen minutes to free it. Nor had the other occasion she had attended been much better, the evening on which Terence had held a dinner party for his neighbours Alfie and Moira Bismarck and their son, Monty. Monty Bismarck was fond enough of Terence, having known him all his life, but at twenty-six one has better things to do than listen to Terence talking about the internal politics of his sacred dance group, which was at the time in dispute with Cheltenham Public Library over access to the dance space in one of its branches. Monty had frequently looked at his watch while Terence spoke, until Alfie Bismarck had told his son that if he knew of a better party to go to he should just go, rather than sit there like a cat on coals. Whereupon Monty had answered that there was indeed a better party just down the road at Celia Nutley-Palmer’s place, and would Terence mind terribly if he went along there before all the action was over? Terence did not mind at all, it transpired, remarking that it was terribly good fun to be eighteen.
“Actually, I’m twenty-six these days, Mr Moongrove.”
Terence expressed surprise. “Doesn’t time fly, Monty? Perhaps we should call it Porsche time. Ha! What do you think of that?”
Now, standing in Terence’s drawing room with Roger and Claire, Berthea noticed that Terence had already prepared a tray of drinks.
“Berthy and I have a soft spot for martinis,” Terence announced. “You’ll love these. I’m a jolly good mixer, aren’t I, Berthy?”
Berthea made an effort to be polite. “You have to watch him,” she said. “His martinis are terribly good but he can be a little over-enthusiastic with the gin.”
“I read somewhere that Churchill just glanced in the direction of the vermouth bottle while he poured out the gin,” said Roger. “He was a generous host, I believe. Just like you, Terence.”
Berthea looked over at Terence; he seemed pleased with the compliment.
“Well, let’s not let these hang about,” he said, handing out the martinis. “Here we are, Claire, and then you next, Berthy. Family hold back, as Uncle Edgar used to say.”
Berthea tried not to grimace.
“I’d rather hoped that you might consider us family by now,” said Roger suddenly.
Berthea spun round to face him. “Oh?” she said. “Have you and Terence known one another for a long time?”
Roger fixed his gaze on her. “Not in the strictly chronological sense,” he said. “But sometimes there are people whom you feel you’ve known all your life, even though you’ve just met them. You know about that, don’t you, Terence?”
Terence smiled. “Well, I think Roger’s right. I do feel that with certain people.” He looked at Roger and Claire as he spoke, and Berthea realised that he was referring to them.
“Very strange,” she said. “I must say I’m rather of the view that one shouldn’t manufacture intimacy. It can be most unfortunate, I think, when one makes a snap decision about somebody and then finds that one has completely misjudged the situation.”
Berthea saw that Claire was staring at her with particular intensity. Terence, of course, was blissfully unaware of the tendrils of tension that were entwining his guests.
“It all depends on whether you’re a trusting personality,” announced Claire, “or a suspicious type. I prefer to trust others and let the karma assume a positive note. Of course, if there are people who are blocked, then …”
“That’s an interesting term,” said Berthea, taking a deep sip of her martini. She had no need of Dutch courage, but it always helped. “As a psychiatrist—”
“Berthy’s a psychotherapist,” interrupted Terence. “She helps an awful lot of people, don’t you, Berthy?”
Berthea ignored her brother. “As a psychiatrist,” she continued, “I find it very interesting to hear lay people use these terms. What exactly is it to be blocked? It sounds more like a term for the gastroenterologist.”
Claire’s martini glass was at her lips. She lowered it slowly. The mole on her brow, Berthea noticed, seemed to quiver slightly, as an antenna might be imagined to do when it transmits a particularly intense message. “To be blocked is to have hostile feelings,” she said. “When we are blocked, our hearts are closed to the life-enhancing powers and forces that are all about us – all about us, constantly circling, only waiting to be called.”
“Precisely,” said Terence. “That is what is meant by being blocked.”
“I see,” said Berthea. “How interesting. How remarkable it is that modern psychiatry, with its scientific understanding of human behaviour, built up through empirical observation over so many years, has no room for this concept.”
Roger suddenly entered the fray. “Excuse me,” he said, “but my understanding of Freudian theory is that that is what neurosis is in their terms. People are blocked, and neurotic behaviour is the result of their frustrated energies and instincts.”
“Exactly,” said Terence. “That’s what happens.”
Berthea looked at Roger through narrowed eyes. The gloves were off now – there was no doubt about that. The problem, though, was that there were two of them, and although one could probably discount Claire, Roger was evidently no fool. She looked at her brother. She could not expect any support there; Terence had no idea that his guests were anything but happy to be standing with him in his drawing room, sipping at his strong martinis. And what he said next confirmed this.
“Isn’t this fun?” he remarked. “Four friends all enjoying themselves so much together. What a lovely house party.”
Chapter 44: The Green Man
As the party of four filed into the dining room, Berthea felt her heart sink even further. There were several reasons for her feelings of dread. First and foremost, she was not looking forward to two or three hours in the company of Roger and Claire, to whom she had taken an overwhelming and quite unequivocal dislike. That aside, there was the meal itself to get through – Terence had boasted that three courses would be served, each one of them a treat in itself. “They are entirely my own creations,” he announced as he relieved them of their martini glasses. “I haven’t referred to a single recipe book, not one! But I’m really sure that you’ll love everything!”
“You’re frightfully clever,” said Claire. “So few men can cook … Mind you, quite a few women can’t either.” She looked at Berthea as she delivered this remark.
“I can,” said Berthea loudly. “I enjoy cooki
ng a great deal. In fact, I’ve been on several residential cooking courses. You should try one.” She smiled at Claire as she spoke.
Claire was momentarily taken aback. Love-fifteen, thought Berthea. Your service.
“Claire doesn’t need to go on courses,” said Roger. “She’s a very fine cook indeed. In fact, you’ve had several recipes published, haven’t you, darling?” Fifteen-all.