Not to Disturb Read Online Free PDF Page A

worthy of you,’ he says. ‘You look
like a parlour maid. A minute ago you didn’t.’
    She listens hard, looking upward through space to the
high ceiling as if in a trance. Every little while a wave of indistinct voices
from below reaches the drawing-room, one shrill, another shrill, then all
together, excited. From a floor above, somebody bangs and the sound is repeated,
with voices and a scuffle. Eleanor raises her head and says, exasperated, ‘With
him in the attic barking again and banging, and you carrying on, it’s impossible
to hear properly what’s being said below. Why didn’t Sister Barton give him his
injection?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ he says, leaning back with his cigarette.
‘I’m sure I advised her to. This parquet flooring once belonged to a foreign
king. He had to flee his throne. He took the parquet of his palace with him,
also the door-knobs. Royalty always do, when they have to leave. They take
everything, like stage-companies who need their props. With royalty, of course,
it all is largely a matter of stage production. And lighting. Royalty are very
careful about their setting and their lighting. As is the Pope. The Baron
resembled royalty and the Pope in that respect at least. Parquet flooring and
door-handles. The Baron bought them all in a lot with the house when the old
king passed away. They definitely came from the royal palace.’
    â€˜All I heard from down there,’ says Eleanor, putting the
oblongs of palace parquet back in place and rising, while she folds back the
carpet over them, ‘was something like “You said . . .” — “No you did not. I said
. . .” — “No, you did say . . .” — “When in hell did I say . . .” That means
they’re going over it all, Lister. It could take all night.’
    â€˜Heloise said it could be around six in the morning,’
Lister remarks as Eleanor stands flicking her skirt against the strange event
that it has gathered fluff or dust. ‘Not,’ he says, ‘that I normally take any
interest in Heloise’s words. But she’s in an interesting condition. They get
good at guessing when they’re in that state.’
    Eleanor is back in her chair again. Down at the back door
there is a noise loud enough to reach this quiet room. A banging. A demand. At
the same time, at the front door the bell shrills.
    â€˜I hope someone answers that door before the Baroness
gets it in her head to go and answer it herself,’ says Eleanor. ‘Any break in
the meeting might distract them from the quarrel and side-track the climax,
wouldn’t you think?’
    â€˜The Baron said not to disturb,’ says Lister, ‘as if to
say, nobody leaves the room till we’ve had a clarification, let the tension
mount as it may. And that’s final. She’ll never leave the library.’
    â€˜Well, they must be getting hungry. They’ve had nothing
to eat.’
    â€˜Let them eat cake,’ says Lister, and he adds,
    â€˜Think, in this battered
Caravanserai
    Whose doorways are alternate Night
and Day,
    How Sultan after Sultan with his
Pomp
    Abode his Hour or two, and went his
way.’
    Eleanor says, ‘It’s true they’ve had some important
visitors.’
    â€˜The adjective “battered,”’ Lister says, looking round
the quiet expanse of drawing-room, ‘I apply in the elastic sense. Also
“caravanserai” I use loosely. The house is more like a Swiss hotel, which you
may be sure it will become. But endless caravans, so to speak, have most
certainly come and gone here, they have come, they have stopped over, they have
gone. I’m fairly to the point. It will make a fine hotel. Put different
furniture into it, and you have a hotel.’
    â€˜Lister,’ she says, ‘you’re always so wonderful. There
could never be anyone else in my life.’
    He says, rising to approach