Titus Awakes

34

The End of an Unwelcome Interlude

THE LARGE DINING room with its white-clothed table running the whole length was ready: like a field awaiting the advance of the enemy.

About thirty people sat down at their allotted places, and the dark woman sat at one end of the table, with the chair at the other end remaining empty. The meal began, easy and friendly, and progressed quite happily for some time, until everyone became aware of a voice being raised outside the door. Titus recognised it, and he saw an interchange of raised eyes between his hostess and many of her guests.

The door was pushed open with a foot and in came the portly poet. His face was flushed and, as he sat down on the empty seat at the end of the table, he pointed a finger at a young man sitting a few places from him and spluttered, ‘Be gone from this table. You do not sit with the great, and you, and you!’ he screamed, pointing at other guests.

The meal had come to a standstill, and the reactions varied greatly. Some flushed, some grinned; only one vast woman of autocratic bearing continued as though there had been no interruption, which angered the bully more. He rose from his chair and, taking his glass of wine, before he could be stopped, poured it over her head. She continued eating, and the hostess, neither embarrassed nor angry, went up to him and led him away. She returned some minutes later and, taking her seat, spoke as though nothing had happened.

It took some time for most of the people to relax but gradually, as the room became warmer and the wine glasses more quickly refilled, a certain gaiety superimposed itself and the mood regained its earlier ease.

Just as they were finishing the voice could be heard calling out, ‘There will be murder in this house tonight.’

‘I think you’d better get over to the theatre,’ murmured the hostess to the girl, who must have been her daughter. ‘Take the younger ones, and we’ll come if we can. It looks an ominous evening ahead.’

The company divided into two camps – the younger ones leaving by a side door, and the older ones crossing the hall back to the white room.

‘I am’ was the only person there, and he was sitting in a big chair, beside him a table covered with what Titus recognised as the instrument of torture, which had nearly reduced him to crying for mercy that morning in the car. He knew that he could not endure another reading, and was on his way out when he was espied and called to.

‘Come turn the pages, o slave.’

‘I was about to leave. I must go.’

A deep flush rose on ‘I am’s’ face, and his hostess whispered to Titus, ‘Just once, to quieten him and then you will be free of him. Would you . . . please?’

How could Titus refuse? He was directed to a chair immediately behind the horrible man, who started to read. He read much of what he had done that morning, and as he finished each page, he threw it over his shoulder and extended his right hand for Titus to refill it with another paper. What he read was obscene and unoriginal, and each listening face betrayed an emotion of disgust or boredom or dislike. The more extreme the emotion shown, the more pleased the reader seemed, as he surveyed them, on reaching the end of each sheet of paper.

Suddenly a youngish man stood up and shouted, ‘I’ve had enough,’ and ran quickly out of the room.

The reading stopped and the poet, whose temper seemed hard to control, threw all his papers in the air and screamed, ‘I’m not staying here. There will be murder in this house tonight. There will be murder. I shall walk to my house by the sea. There will be murder!’

So saying he departed, with all his papers scattered across the floors and chairs and, judging by the apoplectic sound of a door being slammed, left the house.

Someone picked up the papers, handling them with the disgust one might feel for a decomposing rat, and dropped them behind a chair, out of sight. The windows were opened and someone started to sing. Someone else told a joke, and there was the kind of laughter that people cannot control, after having been silent too long.

‘What would you like to do?’ asked the hostess.

‘Nothing – just breathe fresh air,’ said one person.

‘Automatic writing,’ said another.

‘Oh, yes,’ said a third, who pulled a round table to the middle of the room.

Chairs were placed round it, and those who wished sat down and put their hands, palms down, upon it.

Titus, longing to get out and away, watched in a desultory way. The lights had been lowered and there was a kind of hectic silence. Someone started to write, and as the table began to rise slowly from the ground, outside in the hall there was a sound of a horse’s hooves. One of the women at the table gave a startled cry and the door of the room opened very, very slowly. As it opened wider the head of a white horse appeared, and at that very moment a bell rang through the house.

The lights turned higher, and the horse’s head backed away. The bell was insistent, and it was not until the hostess left the room that it was silenced.

Her voice was heard, as the horse’s footsteps receded, saying, ‘No, there has been no murder. No, there has been no murder.’

Titus left the room and found his way up to the nursery. To be alone was the only thing he wished. All through the night, at hourly intervals, a bell pealed through the house, and it would seem impossible that anyone could sleep in it, as they heard, ‘No, there has been no murder – No, there has been no murder.’

When it was light, and in between the hourly bell, Titus got off his bed and left the house, making as little sound as possible. He left by the front door, and climbed up the steep steps that led from the Hidden House to the long drive. It took him some time to reach the road on which he had been waylaid only the day before.

‘That is another end,’ he thought. ‘Let there be a new beginning.’