Collected Stories

A Trinity

Their first holiday since their honeymoon was paid for by the elderly man they both called Uncle. In fact, he was related to neither of them: for eleven years he had been Dawne’s employer, but the relationship was more truly that of benefactor and dependants. They lived with him and looked after him, but in another sense it was he who looked after them, demonstrating regularly that they required such care. ‘What you need is a touch of the autumn sun,’ he had said, ordering Keith to acquire as many holiday brochures as he could lay his hands on. ‘The pair of you’re as white as bedsheets.’

The old man lived vicariously through aspects of their lives, and listened carefully to all they said. Sharing their anticipation, he browsed delightedly through the pages of the colourful brochures and opened out on the kitchen table one glossy folder after another. He marvelled over the blue of the Aegean Sea and the flower markets of San Remo, over the Nile and the pyramids, the Costa del Sol, the treasures of Bavaria. But it was Venice that most instantly caught his imagination, and again and again he returned to the wonder of its bridges and canals, and the majesty of the Piazza San Marco.

‘I am too old for Venice,’ he remarked a little sadly. ‘I am too old for anywhere now.’

They protested. They pressed him to accompany them. But as well as being old he had his paper-shop to think about. He could not leave Mrs Withers to cope on her own; it would not be fair.

‘Send me one or two postcards,’ he said. ‘That will be sufficient.’

He chose for them a package holiday at a very reasonable price: an air flight from Gatwick Airport, twelve nights in the fairyland city, in the Pensione Concordia. When Keith and Dawne went together to the travel agency to make the booking the counter clerk explained that the other members of that particular package were an Italian class from Windsor, all of them learning the language under the tutelage of a Signor Bancini. ‘It is up to you if you wish to take the guided tours of Signor Bancini,’ the counter clerk explained. ‘And naturally you have your own table for breakfast and for dinner.’

The old man, on being told about the party from Windsor, was well pleased. Mixing with such people and, for just a little extra, being able to avail themselves of the expertise of an Italian language teacher amounted to a bonus, he pointed out. ‘Travel widens the mind,’ he said. ‘I deplore I never had the opportunity.’

But something went wrong. Either in the travel agency or at Gatwick Airport, or in some anonymous computer, a small calamity was conceived. Dawne and Keith ended up in a hotel called the Edelweiss, in Room 212, in Switzerland. At Gatwick they had handed their tickets to a girl in the yellow-and-red Your-Kind-of-Holiday uniform. She’d addressed them by name, had checked the details on their tickets and said that that was lovely. An hour later it had surprised them to hear elderly people on the plane talking in North of England accents when the counter clerk at the travel agency had so specifically stated that Signor Bancini’s Italian class came from Windsor. Dawne had even remarked on it, but Keith said there must have been a cancellation, or possibly the Italian class was on a second plane. ‘That’ll be the name of the airport,’ he confidently explained when the pilot referred over the communications system to a destination that didn’t sound like Venice. ‘Same as he’d say Gatwick. Or Heathrow.’ They ordered two Drambuies, Dawne’s favourite drink, and then two more. ‘The coach’ll take us on,’ a stout woman with spectacles announced when the plane landed. ‘Keep all together now.’ There’d been no mention of an overnight stop in the brochure, but when the coach drew in at the Edelweiss Hotel Keith explained that that was clearly what this was. By air and then by coach was how these package firms kept the prices down, a colleague at work had told him. As they stepped out of the coach it was close on midnight: fatigued and travel-stained, they did not feel like questioning their right to the beds they were offered. But the next morning, when it became apparent that they were being offered them for the duration of their holiday, they became alarmed.

‘We have the lake, and the water-birds,’ the receptionist smilingly explained. ‘And we may take the steamer to Interlaken.’

‘An error has been made,’ Keith informed the man, keeping the register of his voice even, for it was essential to be calm. He was aware of his wife’s agitated breathing close beside him. She’d had to sit down when they realized that something was wrong, but now she was standing up again.

‘We cannot change the room, sir,’ the clerk swiftly countered. ‘Each has been given a room. You accompany the group, sir?’

Keith shook his head. Not this group, he said, a different group; a group that was travelling on to another destination. Keith was not a tall man, and often suffered from what he considered to be arrogance in other people, from officials of one kind or another, and shop-assistants with a tendency to assume that his lack of stature reflected a diminutive personality. In a way Keith didn’t care for, the receptionist repeated:

‘This is the Edelweiss Hotel, sir.’

‘We were meant to be in Venice. In the Pensione Concordia.’

‘I do not know the name, sir. Here we have Switzerland.’

‘A coach is to take us on. An official said so on the plane. She was here last night, that woman.’

‘Tomorrow we have the fondue party,’ the receptionist went on, having listened politely to this information about an official. ‘On Tuesday there is the visit to a chocolate factory. On other days we may take the steamer to Interlaken, where we have teashops. In Interlaken mementoes may be bought at fair prices.’

Dawne had still not spoken. She, too, was a slight figure, her features pale beneath orange-ish powder. ‘Mingy’, the old man had a way of saying in his joky voice, and sometimes told her to lie down.

‘Eeh, idn’t it luvely?’ a voice behind Keith enthused. ‘Been out to feed them ducks, ’ave you?’

Keith did not turn round. Speaking slowly, giving each word space, he said to the receptionist: ‘We have been booked on to the wrong holiday.’

‘Your group is booked twelve nights in the Edelweiss Hotel. To make an alteration now, sir, if you have changed your minds –’

‘We haven’t changed our minds. There’s been a mistake.’

The receptionist shook his head. He did not know about a mistake. He had not been told that. He would help if he could, but he did not see how help might best be offered.

‘The man who made the booking,’ Dawne interrupted, ‘was bald, with glasses and a moustache.’ She gave the name of the travel agency in London.

In reply, the receptionist smiled with professional sympathy. He fingered the edge of his register. ‘Moustache?’ he said.

Three aged women who had been on the plane passed through the reception area. Had anyone noticed, one of them remarked, that there were rubber linings under the sheets? Well, you couldn’t be too careful, another agreeably responded, if you were running a hotel.

‘Some problem, have we?’ another woman said, beaming at Keith. She was the stout woman he had referred to as an official, flamboyantly attired this morning in a two-tone trouser-suit, green and blue. Her flesh-coloured spectacles were decorated with swirls of metal made to seem like gold; her grey hair was carefully waved. They’d seen her talking to the yellow-and-red girl at Gatwick. On the plane she’d walked up and down the aisle, smiling at people.

‘My name is Franks,’ she was saying now. ‘I’m married to the man with the bad leg.’

‘Are you in charge, Mrs Franks?’ Dawne inquired. ‘Only we’re in the wrong hotel.’ Again she gave the name of the travel agency and described the bald-headed counter clerk, mentioning his spectacles and his moustache. Keith interrupted her.

‘It seems we got into the wrong group. We reported to the Your-Kind-of-Holiday girl and left it all to her.’

‘We should have known when they weren’t from Windsor,’ Dawne contributed. ‘We heard them talking about Darlington.’

Keith made an impatient sound. He wished she’d leave the talking to him. It was no good whatsoever going on about Darlington and the counter clerk’s moustache, confusing everything even more.

‘We noticed you at Gatwick,’ he said to the stout woman. ‘We knew you were in charge of things.’

‘I noticed you. Well, of course I did, naturally I did. I counted you, although I dare say you didn’t see me doing that. Monica checked the tickets and I did the counting. That’s how I know everything’s OK. Now, let me explain to you. There are many places Your-Kind-of-Holiday sends its clients to, many tours, many different holidays at different prices. You follow me? Something to suit every pocket, something for every taste. There are, for instance, villa holidays for the adventurous under-thirty-fives. There are treks to Turkey, and treks for singles to the Himalayas. There is self-catering in Portugal, November reductions in Casablanca, February in Biarritz. There’s Culture-in-Tuscany and Sunshine-in-Sorrento. There’s the Nile. There’s Your-Kind-of-Safari in Kenya. Now, what I am endeavouring to say to you good people is that all tickets and labels are naturally similar, the yellow with the two red bands.’ Mrs Franks suddenly laughed. ‘So if you simply followed other people with the yellow-and-red label you might imagine you could end up in a wildlife park!’ Mrs Franks’ speech came hurriedly from her, the words tumbling over one another, gushing through her teeth. ‘But of course,’ she added soothingly, ‘that couldn’t happen in a million years.’

‘We’re not meant to be in Switzerland,’ Keith doggedly persisted.

‘Well, let’s just see, shall we?’

Unexpectedly, Mrs Franks turned and went away, leaving them standing. The receptionist was no longer behind the reception desk. The sound of typing could be heard.

‘She seems quite kind,’ Dawne whispered, ‘that woman.’

To Keith it seemed unnecessary to say that. Any consideration of Mrs Franks was, in the circumstances, as irrelevant as a description of the man in the travel agent’s. He tried to go over in his mind every single thing that had occurred: handing the girl the tickets, sitting down to wait, and then the girl leading the way to the plane, and then the pilot’s voice welcoming them aboard, and the air hostess with the smooth black hair going round to see that everyone’s seat-belt was fastened.

‘Snaith his name was,’ Dawne was saying. ‘It said Snaith on a plastic thing in front of him.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The man in the travel place was called Snaith. G. Snaith it said.’

‘The man was just a clerk.’

‘He booked us wrong, though. That man’s responsible, Keith.’

‘Be that as it may.’

Sooner or later, Dawne had guessed, he’d say ‘Be that as it may’. He put her in her place with the phrase; he always had. You’d make an innocent remark, doing your best to be helpful, and out he’d come with ‘Be that as it may’. You expected him to go on, to finish the sentence, but he never did. The phrase just hung there, making him sound uneducated.

‘Are you going to phone up that man, Keith?’

‘Which man is this?’

She didn’t reply. He knew perfectly well which man she meant. All he had to do was to get through to Directory Inquiries and find out the number of the travel agency. It was no good complaining to a hotel receptionist who had nothing to do with it, nor to a woman in charge of a totally different package tour. No good putting the blame where it didn’t belong.

‘Nice to have some young people along,’ an elderly man said. ‘Nottage the name is.’

Dawne smiled, the way she did in the shop when someone was trying to be agreeable, but Keith didn’t acknowledge the greeting because he didn’t want to become involved.

‘Seen the ducks, ’ave you? Right champion them ducks are.’

The old man’s wife was with him, both of them looking as if they were in their eighties. She nodded when he said the ducks were right champion. They’d slept like logs, she said, best night’s sleep they’d had for years, which of course would be due to the lakeside air.

‘That’s nice,’ Dawne said.

Keith walked out of the reception area and Dawne followed him. On the gravel forecourt of the hotel they didn’t say to one another that there was an irony in the catastrophe that had occurred. On their first holiday since their honeymoon they’d landed themselves in a package tour of elderly people when the whole point of the holiday was to escape the needs and demands of the elderly. In his bossy way Uncle had said so himself when they’d tried to persuade him to accompany them.

‘You’ll have to phone up Snaith,’ Dawne repeated, irritating Keith further. What she did not understand was that if the error had occurred with the man she spoke of it would since have become compounded to such a degree that the man would claim to be able to do nothing about their immediate predicament. Keith, who sold insurance over the counter for, the General Accident insurance company, knew something of the complications that followed when even the slightest uncertainty in a requirement was passed into the programme of a computer. Somewhere along the line that was what had happened, but to explain it to Dawne would take a very long time. Dawne could work a till as well as anyone; in the shop she knew by heart the price of Mars bars and the different kinds of cigarettes and tobacco, and the prices of all the newspapers and magazines, but otherwise Keith considered her slow on the uptake, often unable to follow simple argument.

‘Hi, there!’ Mrs Franks called out, and they turned and saw her picking her way across the gravel towards them. She had a piece of pink paper in her hand. ‘I’ve been doing my homework!’ she cried when she was a little closer. She waved the pink paper. ‘Take a look at this.’

It was a list of names, a computer print-out, each name a series of tiny dots. K. and H. Beale, they read, T. and G. Craven, P. and R. Feinman. There were many others, including B. and Y. Nottage. In the correct alphabetical position they were there themselves, between J. and A. Hines and C. and L. Mace.

‘The thing is,’ Dawne began, and Keith looked away. His wife’s voice quietly continued, telling Mrs Franks that their holiday had been very kindly paid for by the old man whom they lived with, who had been her employer before they ever moved in to live with him, who still was. They called him Uncle but he wasn’t a relation, a friend really – well, more than that. The thing was, he would be angry because they were not in Venice, he having said it should be Venice. He’d be angry because they were in a package for the elderly when he wanted them to have a rest from the elderly, not that she minded looking after Uncle herself, not that she ever would. The person in the travel agency had said the Windsor people were quite young. ‘I always remember things like that,’ Dawne finished up. ‘Snaith he was called. G. Snaith.’

‘Well, that’s most interesting,’ Mrs Franks commented, and added after a pause: ‘As a matter of fact, Dawne, Mr Franks and myself are still in our fifties.’

‘Be that as it may,’ Keith said. ‘At no time did we book a holiday in Switzerland.’

‘Well, there you are, you see. The ticket you handed to me at Gatwick is as clear as daylight, exactly the same as the Beales’ and the Maces’, the same as our own, come to that. Not a tither of difference, Keith.’

‘We need to be conveyed to our correct destination. An arrangement has to be made.’

‘The trouble is, Keith, I don’t know if you know it but you’re half a continent away from Venice. Another thing is, I’m not employed by Your– Kind, nothing like that. They just reduce our ticket a bit if I agree to keep an eye. On location we call it.’ Mrs Franks went on to say that her husband had also scrutinized the piece of pink paper and was in complete agreement with her. She asked Keith if he had met her husband, and said again that he was the man with the bad leg. He’d been an accountant and still did a lot of accountancy work one way or another, in a private capacity. The Edelweiss Hotel was excellent, she said. Your-Kind would never choose an indifferent hotel.

‘We are asking you to get in touch with your firm in London,’ Keith said. ‘We do not belong with your group.’

In silence, though smiling, Mrs Franks held out the pink list. Her expression insisted that it spoke for itself. No one could gainsay the dotted identification among the others.

‘Our name is there by mistake.’

A man limped across the gravel towards them. He was a large man of shambling appearance, his navy-blue pin-striped jacket and waistcoat at odds with his brown trousers, his spectacles repaired with Sellotape. The sound of his breath could be heard as he approached. He blew it through half-pursed lips in a vague rendition of a Gilbert and Sullivan melody.

‘These are the poor lost lambs,’ Mrs Franks said. ‘Keith and Dawne.’

‘How do?’ Mr Franks held a hand out. ‘Silly thing to happen, eh?’

It was Mr Franks who eventually suggested that Keith should telephone Your-Kind-of-Holiday himself, and to Keith’s surprise he got through to a number in Croydon without any difficulty. ‘Excuse me a minute,’ a girl said when he finished. He heard her talking to someone else and he heard the other person laughing. There was a trace of laughter in the girl’s voice when she spoke again. You couldn’t change your mind, she said, in the middle of a package. In no circumstances whatsoever could that be permitted. ‘We’re not changing our minds,’ Keith protested, but while he was explaining all over again he was cut off because he hadn’t any more coins. He cashed a traveller’s cheque with the receptionist and was supplied with a number of five-franc pieces, but when he re-dialled the number the girl he’d spoken to couldn’t be located so he explained everything to another girl. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ this girl said, ‘but if we allowed people to change their minds on account of they didn’t like the look of a place we’d be out of business in no time.’ Keith began to shout into the telephone, and Dawne rapped on the glass of the booth, holding up a piece of paper on which she’d written G. Snaith the name was. ‘Some sort of loony,’ Keith heard the girl say in Croydon, the mouthpiece being inadequately muffled. There was an outburst of giggling before he was cut off.

It was not the first time that Keith and Dawne had suffered in this way: they were familiar with defeat. There’d been the time, a couple of years after their marriage, when Keith had got into debt through purchasing materials for making ships in bottles; earlier – before they’d even met –there was the occasion when the Lamb and Flag had had to let Dawne go because she’d taken tips although the rules categorically forbade it. Once Keith had sawn through the wrong water pipe and the landlords had come along with a bill for nearly two hundred pounds when the ceiling of the flat below collapsed. It was Uncle who had given Dawne a job in his shop after the Lamb and Flag episode and who had put them on their feet by paying off the arrears of the handicraft debt. In the end he persuaded them to come and live with him, pointing out that the arrangement would suit all three of them. Since his sister’s death he had found it troublesome, managing on his own.

In Interlaken they selected a postcard to send him: of a mountain that had featured in a James Bond film. But they didn’t know what to write on it: if they told the truth they would receive the old man’s unspoken scorn when they returned – a look that came into his eyes while he silently regarded them. Years ago he had openly said – once only – that they were accident-prone. They were unfortunate in their dealings with the world, he had explained when Dawne asked him; lame ducks, he supposed you could say, if they’d forgive the expression, victims by nature, no fault of their own. Ever since, such judgements had been expressed only through his eyes.

‘You choose your piece of gâteau,’ Dawne said, ‘up at the counter. They put it on a plate for you. Then the waitress comes along and you order the tea. I’ve been watching how it’s done.’

Keith chose a slice of glazed greengage cake and Dawne a portion of strawberry flan. As soon as they sat down a waitress came and stood smiling in front of them. ‘Tea with milk in it,’ Dawne ordered, because when she’d said they were going abroad someone who’d come into the shop had warned her that you had to ask for milk, otherwise the tea came just as it was, sometimes no more than a tea-bag and a glass of hot water.

‘A strike?’ Dawne suggested. ‘You’re always hearing of strikes in airports.’

But Keith continued to gaze at the blank postcard, not persuaded that an attempt at falsehood was wise. It wasn’t easy to tell the old man a lie. He had a way of making such attempts feel clumsy, and in the end of winkling out the truth. Yet his scorn would continue for many months, especially since he had paid out what he would call – a couple of hundred times at least – ‘good money’ for their tickets. ‘That’s typical of Keith, that is,’ he’d repeatedly inform his customers in Dawne’s hearing, and she’d pass it on that night in bed, the way she always passed his comments on.

Keith ate his greengage slice, Dawne her strawberry flan. They did not share their thoughts, although their thoughts were similar. ‘You’ve neither of you a head for business,’ he’d said after the ships-in-bottles calamity, and again when Dawne unsuccessfully attempted to make a go of dressmaking alterations. ‘You wouldn’t last a week in charge of things downstairs.’ He always referred to the shop as ‘downstairs’. Every day of his life he rose at five o’clock in order to be downstairs for the newspapers when they arrived. He’d done so for fifty-three years.

The plane couldn’t land at the Italian airport, Keith wrote, owing to a strike. So it had to come down here instead. It’s good in a way because we’re seeing another country as well! Hope your cold’s cleared up, Dawne added. It’s really lovely here! XXX

They imagined him showing the postcard to Mrs Withers. ‘That’s typical, that is,’ they imagined him saying and Mrs Withers jollying him along, telling him not to be sarky. Mrs Withers was pleased about earning the extra; she’d been as keen as anything when he’d asked her to come in fulltime for a fortnight.

‘Could happen to anyone, a strike,’ Dawne said, voicing Mrs Withers’ response.

Keith finished his greengage slice. ‘Call in to Smith’s for a will form,’ he imagined the cross, tetchy voice instructing Mrs Withers, the postcard already tucked away on the Embassy Tipped shelf. And when she arrived with the will form the next morning he’d let it lie around all day but have it in his hand when she left, before he locked the shop door behind her. ‘Silly really,’ Mrs Withers would say when eventually she told Dawne about it.

‘I’d just as soon be here,’ Dawne whispered, leaning forward a bit, daring at last to say that. ‘I’d just as soon be in Switzerland, Keithie.’

He didn’t reply, but looked around the teashop: at the display of cake in the long glass cabinet that served also as a counter – apricot and plum and apple, carrot-cake and Black Forest gâteau, richly glazed fruitcake, marzipan slices, small lemon tarts, orange éclairs, coffee fondants. Irritated because his wife had made that statement and wishing to be unpleasant to her by not responding, he allowed his gaze to slip over the faces of the couples who sat sedately at round, prettily arranged tables. In a leisurely manner he examined the smiling waitresses, their crimson aprons matching the crimson of the frilled tablecloths. He endeavoured to give the impression that the waitresses attracted him.

‘It’s really nice,’ Dawne said, her voice still shyly low.

He didn’t disagree; there was nothing wrong with the place. People were speaking in German, but when you spoke in English they understood you. Enoch Melchor, in Claims, had gone to somewhere in Italy last year and had got into all sorts of difficulties with the language, including being-given the head of a fish when he thought he’d ordered peas.

‘We could say we liked it so much we decided to stay on,’ Dawne suggested.

She didn’t seem to understand that it wasn’t up to them to decide anything. Twelve days in Venice had been chosen for them; twelve days in Venice had been paid for. ‘No better’n a sewer,’ Enoch Melchor had said, not that he’d ever been there. ‘Stinks to high heaven,’ he’d said, but that wasn’t the point either. Memories of Venice had been ordered, memories that were to be transported back to London, with glass figurines for the mantelpiece because Venice was famous for its glass. The menus at the Pensione Concordia and the tunes played by the café orchestras were to be noted in Dawne’s day-to-day diary. Venice was bathed in sunshine, its best autumn for years, according to the newspapers.

They left the teashop and walked about the streets, their eyes stinging at first, until they became used to the bitter breeze that had got up. They examined windows full of watches, and went from one to another of the souvenir shops because notices said that entrance was free. There was a clock that had a girl swinging on a swing every hour, and another that had a man and a woman employing a cross-saw, another that had a cow being milked. All sorts of tunes came out of different-shaped musical boxes: ‘Lily Marlene’, ‘The Blue Danube’, ‘Lara’s Theme’ from Doctor Zhivago, the ‘Destiny Waltz’. There were oven gloves with next year’s calendar printed on them in English, and miniature arrangements of dried flowers, framed, on velvet. In the chocolate shops there were all the different brands, Lindt, Suchard, Nestle, Cailler, and dozens of others. There was chocolate with nuts, and chocolate with raisins, with nougat and honey, white chocolate, milk or plain, chocolate with fudge filling, with cognac or whisky or chartreuse, chocolate mice and chocolate windmills.

‘It’s ever so enjoyable here,’ Dawne remarked, with genuine enthusiasm. They went into another teashop, and this time Keith had a chestnut slice and Dawne a blackcurrant one, both with cream.

At dinner, in a dining-room tastefully panelled in grey-painted wood, they sat among the people from Darlington, at a table for two, as the clerk in the travel agency had promised. The chicken-noodle soup was quite what they were used to, and so was the pork chop that followed, with apple sauce and chipped potatoes. ‘They know what we like,’ the woman called Mrs Franks said, making a round of all the tables, saying the same thing at each.

‘Really lovely,’ Dawne agreed. She’d felt sick in her stomach when they’d first realized about the error; she’d wanted to go to the lavatory and just sit there, hoping it was all a nightmare. She’d blamed herself because it was she who’d wondered about so many elderly people on the plane after the man in the travel place had given the impression of young people, from Windsor. It was she who had frowned, just for a moment, when the name of the airport was mentioned. Keith had a habit of pooh-poohing her doubts, like when she’d been doubtful about the men who’d come to the door selling mattresses and he’d been persuaded to make a down-payment. The trouble with Keith was, he always sounded confident, as though he knew something she didn’t, as though someone had told him. ‘We’ll just be here for the night,’ he’d said, and she’d thought that was something he must have read in the brochure or that the clerk in the travel place had said. He couldn’t help himself, of course; it was the way he was made. ‘Cotton-wool in your brain-box, have you?’ Uncle had rudely remarked, the August Bank Holiday poor Keith had got them on to the slow train to Brighton, the one that took an hour longer.

‘Silver lining, Keithie.’ She put her head on one side, her small features softening into a smile. They’d walked by the lakeside before dinner. Just by stooping down, she’d attracted the birds that were swimming on the water. Afterwards she’d changed into her new fawn dress, bought specially for the holiday.

‘I’ll try that number again tomorrow,’ Keith said.

She could see he was still worried. He was terribly subdued, even though he was able to eat his food. It made him cross when she mentioned the place they’d bought the tickets, so she didn’t do so, although she wanted to. Time enough to face the music when they got back, better to make the best of things really: she didn’t say that either.

‘If you want to, Keithie,’ she said instead. ‘You try it if you’ve a call to.’

Naturally he’d feel it more than she would; he’d get more of the blame, being a man. But in the end it mightn’t be too bad, in the end the storm would be weathered. There’d be the fondue party to talk about, and the visit to the chocolate factory. There’d be the swimming birds, and the teashops, and the railway journey they’d seen advertised, up to the top of an alp.

‘Banana split?’ the waiter offered. ‘You prefer meringue Williams?’

They hesitated. Meringue Williams was meringue with pears and icecream, the waiter explained. Very good. He himself would recommend the meringue Williams.

‘Sounds lovely,’ Dawne said, and Keith had it too. She thought of pointing out that everyone was being nice to them, that Mrs Franks was ever so sympathetic, that the man who came round to ask them if the dinner was all right had been ever so pleasant, and the waiter too. But she decided not to because often Keith just didn’t want to cheer up. ‘Droopy Drawers’, Uncle sometimes called him, or ‘Down-in-the-Dumps Donald’.

All around them the old people were chattering. They were older than Uncle, Dawne could see; some of them were ten years older, fifteen even. She wondered if Keith had noticed that, if it had added to his gloom. She could hear them talking about the mementoes they’d bought and the teashops they’d been to; hale and hearty they looked, still as full of vim as Uncle. ‘Any day now I’ll be dropping off my twig,’ he had a way of saying, which was nonsense of course. Dawne watched the elderly mouths receiving spoonfuls of banana or meringue, the slow chewing, the savouring of the sweetness. A good twenty years Uncle could go on for, she suddenly thought.

‘It’s just bad luck,’ she said.

‘Be that as it may.’

‘Don’t say that, Keithie.’

‘Say what?’

‘Don’t say “Be that as it may”.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh just because, Keithie.’

They had in common an institution background: they had not known their parents. Dawne could remember Keith when he was eleven and she was nine, although at that time they had not been drawn to one another. They’d met again later, revisiting their children’s home for the annual dance, disco as it was called these days. ‘I got work in this shop,’ she’d said, not mentioning Uncle because he was only her employer then, in the days when his sister was alive. They’d been married for a while before he became an influence in their lives. Now they could anticipate, without thinking, his changes of heart and his whims, and see a mile off another quarrel with the Reverend Simms, whose church occasionally he attended. Once they’d tried to divert such quarrels, to brace themselves for changes of heart, to counter the whims that were troublesome. They no longer did so. Although he listened carefully, he took no notice of what they said because he held the upper hand. The Smith’s will forms and an old billiard-room – ‘the happiest place a man could spend an hour in’ – were what he threatened them with. He met his friends in the billiard-room; he read the Daily Express there, drinking bottles of Double Diamond, which he said was the best bottled beer in the world. It would be a terrible thing if men of all ages could no longer play billiards in that room, terrible if funds weren’t available to keep it going for ever.

Mrs Franks made an announcement. She called for silence, and then gave particulars of the next day’s programme. There was to be a visit to the James Bond mountain, everyone to assemble on the forecourt at half past ten. Anyone who didn’t want to go should please tell her tonight.

‘We don’t have to, Keithie,’ Dawne whispered when Mrs Franks sat down. ‘Not if we don’t want to.’

The chatter began again, spoons excitedly waved in the air. False teeth, grey hair, glasses; Uncle might have been among them except that Uncle never would because he claimed to despise the elderly. ‘You’re telling me, are you? You’re telling me you got yourselves entangled with a bunch of O.A.P’s?’ As clearly as if he were beside her Dawne could hear his voice, enriched with the pretence of amazement. ‘You landed up in the wrong country and spent your holiday with a crowd of geriatrics! You’re never telling me that?’

Sympathetic as she was, Mrs Franks had played it down. She knew that a young couple in their thirties weren’t meant to be on a package with the elderly; she knew the error was not theirs. But it wouldn’t be any use mentioning Mrs Franks to Uncle. It wouldn’t be any use saying that Keith had got cross with the receptionist and with the people in Croydon. He’d listen and then there’d be a silence. After that he’d begin to talk about the billiard-room.

‘Had a great day, did you?’ Mrs Franks said on her way out of the dining-room. ‘All’s well that ends well, eh?’

Keith continued to eat his meringue Williams as if he had not been addressed. Mr Franks remarked on the meringue Williams, laughing about it, saying they’d all have to watch their figures. ‘I must say,’ Mrs Franks said, ‘we’re lucky with the weather. At least it isn’t raining.’ She was dressed in the same flamboyant clothes. She’d been able to buy some Madame Rochas, she said, awfully good value.

‘We don’t have to say about the old people,’ Dawne whispered when the Frankses had passed on. ‘We needn’t mention that.’

Dawne dug into the deep glass for the ice-cream that lay beneath the slices of pear. She knew he was thinking she would let it slip about the old people. Every Saturday she washed Uncle’s hair for him since he found it difficult to do it himself. Because he grumbled so about the tepid rinse that was necessary in case he caught a cold afterwards, she had to jolly him along. She’d always found it difficult to do two things at once, and it was while washing his hair that occasionally she’d forgotten what she was saying. But she was determined not to make that mistake again, just as she had ages ago resolved not to get into a flap if he suddenly asked her a question when she was in the middle of counting the newspapers that hadn’t been sold.

‘Did you find your friends from Windsor then?’ an old woman with a walking frame inquired. ‘Eeh, it were bad you lost your friends.’

Dawne explained, since no harm was meant. Other old people stood by to hear, but a few of them were deaf and asked to have what was being said repeated. Keith continued to eat his meringue Williams.

‘Keithie, it isn’t their fault,’ she tentatively began when the people had passed on. ‘They can’t help it, Keithie.’

‘Be that as it may. No need to go attracting them.’

‘I didn’t attract them. They stopped by. Same as Mrs Franks.’

‘Who’s Mrs Franks?’

‘You know who she is. That big woman. She gave us her name this morning, Keithie.’

‘When I get back I’ll institute proceedings.’

She could tell from his tone that that was what he’d been thinking about. All the time on the steamer they’d taken to Interlaken, all the time in the teashop, and on the cold streets and in the souvenir shops, all the time they’d been looking at the watch displays and the chocolate displays, all the time in the grey-panelled dining-room, he had been planning what he’d say, what he’d probably write on the very next postcard: that he intended to take legal proceedings. When they returned he would stand in the kitchen and state what he intended, very matter of fact. First thing on Monday he’d arrange to see a solicitor, he’d state, an appointment for his lunch hour. And Uncle would remain silent, not even occasionally inclining his head, or shaking it, knowing that solicitors cost money.

‘They’re liable for the full amount. Every penny of it.’

‘Let’s try to enjoy ourselves, Keithie. Why don’t I tell Mrs Franks we’ll go up the mountain?’

‘What mountain’s that?’

‘The one she was on about, the one we sent him a postcard of.’

‘I need to phone up Croydon in the morning.’

‘You can do it before ten-thirty, Keithie.’

The last of the elderly people slowly made their way from the dining-room, saying good-night as they went. A day would come, Dawne thought, when they would go to Venice on their own initiative, with people like the Windsor people. She imagined the Windsor people in the Pensione Concordia, not one of them a day older than themselves. She imagined Signor Bancini passing among them, translating a word or two of Italian as he went. There was laughter in the dining-room of the Pensione Concordia, and bottles of red wine on the tables. The young people’s names were Désirée and Rob, and Luke and Angélique, and Sean and Aimée. ‘Uncle we used to call him,’ her own voice said. ‘He died a while back.’

Keith stood up. Skilful with the tablecloths, the waiter wished them good-night. In the reception area a different receptionist, a girl, smiled at them. Some of the old people were standing around, saying it was too cold to go for a walk. You’d miss the television, one of them remarked.

The warmth of their bodies was a familiar comfort. They had not had children because the rooms above the shop weren’t suitable for children. The crying at night would have driven Uncle mad, and naturally you could see his point of view. There’d been an error when first they’d lived with him; they’d had to spend a bit terminating it.

They refrained from saying that their bodies were a comfort. They had never said so. What they said in their lives had to do with Keith’s hoping for promotion, and the clothes Dawne coveted. What they said had to do with their efforts to make a little extra money, or paying their way by washing the woodwork of an old man’s house and tacking down his threadbare carpets.

When he heard their news he would mention the savings in the Halifax Building Society and the goodwill of the shop and the valuation that had been carried out four years ago. He would mention again that men of all ages should have somewhere to go of an evening, or in the afternoons or the morning, a place to be at peace. He would remind them that a man who had benefited could not pass on without making provision for the rent and the heating and for the replacing of the billiard tables when the moment came. ‘Memorial to a humble man’, he would repeat. ‘Shopkeeper of this neighbourhood’.

In the darkness they did not say to one another that if he hadn’t insisted they needed a touch of the autumn sun they wouldn’t again have been exposed to humiliation. It was as though, through knowing them, he had arranged their failure in order to indulge his scorn. Creatures of a shabby institution, his eyes had so often said, they could not manage on their own: they were not even capable of supplying one another’s needs.

In the darkness they did not say that their greed for his money was much the same as his greed for their obedience, that greed nourished the trinity they had become. They did not say that the money, and the freedom it promised, was the galaxy in their lives, as his cruelty was the last pleasure in his. Scarcely aware that they held on to one another beneath the bedclothes, they heard his teasing little laugh while they were still awake, and again when they slept.