Not to Disturb. Muriel Spark
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says Eleanor. ‘Heloise doesn’t know how to market. She’s out of place in a house this style.’
‘The poor Baroness used to like her,’ says Clovis, looking up from the table where he is sitting studying the fine print. ‘The poor Baroness could see no wrong in Heloise.’
‘I see no wrong in her, either,’ Eleanor says. ‘I only say she doesn’t know how to buy carrots.’
Heloise comes to join them at the kitchen door.
‘It’s quickening,’ she informs Clovis.
‘Well it isn’t my fault,’ says the chef.
‘Nor me neither, Heloise,’ says Lister severely. ‘I always took precautions the times I went with you.’
‘It’s Pablo,’ says the girl, ‘I could swear to it. Pablo’s the father.’
‘It could have been one of the visitors,’ Lister says.
Clovis looks up from his papers, spread out as they are on the kitchen table. ‘The visitors never got Heloise, never.’
‘There were one or two,’ says Heloise, reflectively. ‘But it’s day and night with Pablo when he’s in the mood. After breakfast, even.’ She looks at her stomach as if to discern by a kind of X-ray eye who the father truly might be. ‘There was a visitor or two,’ she says. ‘I must say, there did happen to be a visitor or two about the time I caught on. Either a visitor of the Baroness or a visitor of the Baron.’
‘We have serious business on hand tonight, my girl, so shut up,’ says the chef. ‘We have business to discuss and plenty to do. Quite a vigil. Has anybody arrived yet?’
‘Eleanor, I say keep a look out of the window,’ Lister orders his aunt. ‘You never know when someone might leave their car out on the road and slip in. They’re careless down at the lodge.’
Eleanor cranes her neck towards the window, still feeling the soft carrots with a contemptuous touch. ‘Here comes Hadrian; it’s only Hadrian coming up the drive. These carrots are past it. Terrible carrots.’
The footsteps crunch to the back of the house. Hadrian the assistant chef comes in with a briefcase under his arm.
‘Did you get out my cabin trunk?’ he asks Heloise.
‘It’s too big, in my condition.’
‘Well get Pablo to fetch it, quick. I’m going to start my packing.’
‘What about him in the attic?’ says Heloise. ‘We better take him up his supper or he might create or take one of his turns.’
‘Of course he’ll get his supper. It’s early yet.’
‘Suppose the Baron wants his dinner?’
‘Of course he expected his dinner,’ Lister says. ‘But as things turned out he didn’t live to eat it. He’ll be arriving soon.’
‘There might be an unexpected turn of events,’ says Eleanor.
‘There was sure to be something unexpected,’ says Lister. ‘But what’s done is about to be done and the future has come to pass. My memoirs up to the funeral are as a matter of fact more or less complete. At all events, it’s out of our hands. I place the event at about three a.m. so prepare to stay awake.’
‘I would say six o’clock tomorrow morning. Right on the squeak of dawn,’ says Heloise.
‘You might well be right,’ says Lister. ‘Women in your condition are unusually intuitive.’
‘How it kicks!’ says Heloise with her hand on her stomach. ‘Do you know something? I have a craving for grapes. Do we have any grapes? A great craving. Should I get a tray ready for him in the attic?’
‘Rather early,’ says Lister looking at the big moon-faced kitchen clock. ‘It’s only ten past six. Get your clothes packed.’
The large windowed wall of the servants’ hall looks out on a gravelled courtyard and beyond that, the cold mountains, already lost in the early darkening of autumn.
A dark green, small car has parked here by the side entrance. The servants watch. Two women sit inside, one at the wheel and one in the back seat. They do not speak. A tall person has just left the other front seat and has come round to the front door.
Lister waits for the bell to ring and when it does he goes to open the door:
A long-locked young man, fair, wearing a remarkable white fur coat which makes his pink skin somewhat radiant. The coat reaches to his boots.
Lister acknowledges by a slight smile, in which he uses his mouth only, that he recognizes the caller well from previous visits. ‘Sir?’ says Lister.
‘The Baroness,’ says the young man, in the quiet voice of one who does not wish to spend much of it.
‘She is not at home. Will you wait, sir?’ Lister stands aside to make way at the door.
‘Yes, she’s expecting me. Is the Baron in?’ sounds the low voice of the young man.
‘We expect him back for dinner, sir. He should be in shortly.’
Lister takes the white fur coat glancing at the quality and kind of mink, and at its lining and label as he does so. Lister, with the coat over his arm, turns to the left, crosses the oval hall, followed by the young man. Lister treads across the trompe-l’œil chequered paving of the hall and the young man follows. He wears a coat of deep blue satin with darker blue watered silk lapels, trousers of dark blue velvet, a pale mauve satin shirt with a very large high collar and a white cravat fixed with an amethyst pin. Lister opens a door and stands aside. The young man, as he enters, says politely to Lister, ‘In the left-hand outer pocket, this time, Lister.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ says Lister, as he withdraws. He closes the door again and crosses the oval hall to another door. He opens it, hangs the white mink coat gently on one of a long line of coat-hangers which are placed expectantly in order on a carved rack. Lister then feels in the outer left-hand pocket of the coat, withdraws a fat, squat, brown envelope, opens it with a forefinger, half-pulls out a bundle of bank-notes, calculates them with his eyes, stuffs them back into the envelope, and places the envelope in one of his own pockets, somewhere beneath his white jacket, at heart-level. Lister looks at himself in the glass above the wash-basin and looks away. He arranges the neat unused hand-towels with the crested ‘K’ even more neatly, and leaves the cloak-room.
The other servants fall silent as Lister returns.
‘Number One,’ says Lister. ‘He walked to his death most gingerly.’
‘Sex,’ muses Heloise.
Lister shudders, ‘The forbidden word,’ he says. ‘Let me not hear you say it again.’
‘It’s Victor Passerat, waiting there in the library,’ says Heloise.
‘Mister Fair-locks,’ says Eleanor, looking at the carrot juice which she has prepared with the blender.
‘I never went with him,’ says Heloise. ‘I had the chance, though.’
‘Didn’t we all?’ says Pablo.
‘Speak for yourself,’ says Clovis.
‘Less talk,’ says Lister.
‘Victor Passerat isn’t the dad,’ says Heloise.
‘He’d never have had it in him,’ says Pablo.
‘Are you aware,’ says Eleanor to her nephew, ‘that two ladies are waiting outside in the car that brought the visitor?’
Lister glances towards the window but next he goes to a large cupboard and, drawing up a chair, mounts it. He carefully, one by one, removes the neat jars of preserved fruit that are stacked there, ginger in gin, cherries in cognac, apple and pineapple, marmalades of