Not to Disturb Read Online Free PDF Page B

Tell
me what you want.’
    The other friend of Victor Passerat replies, ‘Victor
Passerat. We’re waiting for him. It’s serious. He had an appointment with the
Baroness and with the Baron, and — ’
    â€˜Just a minute,’ says Mr Samuel, looking closely at the
second friend, ‘just a minute. You sound like a man.’
    â€˜I am a man.’
    â€˜All right. I thought you were a girl.’
    â€˜That’s only my clothes. My friend here’s a woman. I’m
Alex — she’s a masseuse.’
    â€˜My name’s Anne,’ states the masseuse, stockily regarding
Mr Samuel’s bunch of keys. ‘Do you have the keys to the house?’
    â€˜I certainly do,’ says Mr Samuel.
    â€˜Well, we want to know what’s going on,’ says the
woman.
    â€˜We’re worried, quite frankly,’ says her young
friend.
    Mr Samuel places a gentle hand on the shoulders of each.
‘Don’t you think,’ he says, ‘that it would be more advisable for you to go away
and let nature take its course? Go away, quietly and without fuss; just go away
and play the piano, or something. Take a soothing nightcap, both of you, and
forget about Passerat.’
    From an upper room comes a sound like a human bark
followed by an owl-screech.
    Anne the masseuse adds a further cry to the night. ‘Open
that door,’ she screams and running to the back door beats her heavy shoulder
against it, banging with her fists as well.
    Mr Samuel winds his way to her with pleasant-mannered
authority. ‘That was only the invalid,’ he says. ‘The nurse has probably bitten
his finger again. You would do the same, I’m sure, if one of your patients
attempted to place his hand over your mouth for some reason.’
    Anne’s friend, Alex, calls out, ‘Come on back in the car,
Anne. It might be dangerous.’
    Mr Samuel is touching her elbow, urging her back to their
small car. ‘There’s nothing in it for you,’ he is saying. ‘Go home and forget
it.’
    The masseuse is large but she appears to have very little
moral resistance. She starts to cry, with huge baby-sobs, while her companion,
Alex, his square bony face framed in a silk head-scarf and his eyes pleadingly
laden with make-up under finely shaped eyebrows, puts out a bony hand to touch
her face. ‘Come back in the car, Anne,’ he says, giving Mr Samuel a look of hurt
umbrage.
    Anne turns on Mr Samuel. ‘Who made you the secretary?’
she says. ‘Victor Passerat has been secretary since June.’
    â€˜Please,’ says Mr Samuel. ‘I didn’t say he wasn’t
secretary. I only say I’m the secretary in residence. There are I don’t know how
many secretaries. Victor is only one of the many and it’s only just unfortunate
that this appointment between him and the Baron Klopstocks should keep you
hanging around outside the house on a cold night. Just go home. Put on a
record.’
    â€˜Is everything going to be all right?’ Anne says. Alex
has got into the car waiting for her. Anne gets in and puts her hands on the
wheel without certainty. She looks at Alex as if for guidance. Meanwhile Mr
Samuel has flicked himself in a graceful and preoccupied way to the back door of
the house and now selects a key.
    The couple in the car stare after him and he gives them
one more glance; he lets himself in and quietly closes the door upon them. They
drive off, then, up the long avenue, round the winding drive, past the lawns
which in summer lie luminously green and spread on the one hand towards the
swimming-pool in its very blue basin, and on the other towards the lily-pond,
the animal-shaped yews, the fountains and the sunken rose garden. Behind them,
and beyond the darkness, twinkles the back of the house — a few slits of light
peppering its whole length — and behind that again, in the further darkness, the
sloping terraces leading to the