Not to Disturb. Muriel Spark
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due to the occasion. Lister removes a plank shelf, now bare of bottles. At the back of the cupboard is a wall-safe, the lock of which Lister slowly and respectfully opens, although not yet the door. He demands a pen, and while waiting for Hadrian the assistant cook to fetch it, he takes the envelope from his inner pocket, and counts the bank-notes in full view of the rest.
‘Small change,’ he says, ‘compared with what is to come, or has already come, according as one’s philosophy is temporal or eternal. To all intents and purposes, they’re already dead although as a matter of banal fact, the night’s business has still to accomplish itself.’
‘Lister’s in good vein tonight,’ says Clovis, who has left the perusal of his contract to join the group. Meanwhile Hadrian returns, handing up the simple ballpoint pen to Lister.
Upstairs the shutters bang.
‘The wind is high tonight,’ Lister says. ‘We might not hear the shots.’ He takes the pen and marks a sum on the envelope, followed by the date. He then opens wide the safe which is neatly stacked with various envelopes and boxes, some of metal, some of leather. He places the new package among the rest, closes the safe, replaces the wooden shelf, and, assisted by Eleanor and Heloise, puts the preserve-bottles back in their places. He descends from his chair, hands the chair to Hadrian, closes the cupboard door, and goes to the window. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘two ladies waiting in the car, as well they might. Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet, sweet, ladies.’
‘Why did they pull up round the side instead of waiting in the drive?’ says Heloise.
‘The answer,’ says Lister, ‘is that they know their place. They had the courage to accompany their kinsman on his errand, but at the last little moment, lacked the style which alone was necessary to save him. The Baron will arrive, and not see them, not inquire. Likewise the Baroness. No sense, for all their millions.’
‘With all that in there alone,’ says Heloise, still contemplating the closed cupboard wherein lies the wall-safe of treasure, ‘we could buy the Montreux Palace Hotel.’
‘Who needs the Montreux Palace?’ says Hadrian.
‘Think big,’ says Pablo the handyman, patting her around the belly.
‘How it kicks!’ she says.
‘How like,’ says Lister, ‘the death wish is to the life-urge! How urgently does an overwhelming obsession with life lead to suicide! Really, it’s best to be half-awake and half-aware. That is the happiest stage.’
‘The Baron Klopstocks were obsessed with sex,’ says Eleanor. She is setting places at the long servants’ table.
‘Sex is not to be mentioned,’ Lister says. ‘To do so would be to belittle their activities. On their sphere sex is nothing but an overdose of life. They will die of it, or rather, to all intents and purposes, have died. We treat of spontaneous combustion. One remove from sex, as in Henry James, an English American who travelled.’
‘They die of violence,’ says Clovis who has transferred to the butler’s desk his papers and the contract and documents he has been studying closely for the past three-quarters of an hour. He sits with his back to the others, looks half over his shoulders. ‘To be precise, it is of violence that they shortly die.’
‘Clovis,’ says Eleanor, ‘would you mind giving an eye to the oven?’
‘Where’s my assistant?’ says Clovis.
‘Hadrian has gone down to the lodge,’ says Eleanor. ‘Gone to borrow a couple of eggs. Him in the attic hasn’t had his supper yet.’
‘No eggs in the house?’ says Clovis.
‘There was too much else to arrange today,’ says Eleanor as she places five tiny silver bowls of salt at regular intervals along the table, carefully measuring the distance with her eye. ‘No marketing done.’
‘Things have gone to rack and ruin,’ says Lister, ‘now that the crisis has arrived. This house hitherto was run like the solar system.’
‘Cook your own damn dinner,’ says Clovis, bending closely over his documents.
‘Don’t you want any?’ says Heloise. ‘I’ll eat your share if you like, Clovis. I’m eating for two.’
Clovis bangs down his fist, drops his pen, goes across to the large white complicated cooking stove, studies the regulator, turns the dial, opens the stove door, and while looking inside, with the other hand snaps his finger. Heloise runs with a cloth and a spoon and places them in Clovis’s hand. Protecting his hand with the cloth Clovis partly pulls out a casserole dish. He hooks up the lid with the handle of the spoon, peers in, sniffs, replaces the lid, shoves the dish back and closes the oven door. Again, he turns the dial of the regulator. Then with the spoon-handle, he lifts the lids from the two pots which are simmering on top of the stove. He glances inside each and replaces the lids.
‘Fifteen minutes more for the casserole. In seven minutes you move the pots aside. We sit down at half-past seven if we’re lucky and they don’t decide to dine before they die.’
‘No they won’t eat,’ says Lister. ‘We can have our dinner in peace while they get on with the job.’
From somewhere far away at the top of the house comes a howl and a clatter.
‘I’ll have a vodka and tonic,’ says Clovis, as he passes through the big kitchen and returns to his papers at the butler’s desk.
‘Very good,’ says Lister, looking round. ‘Any more orders?’
‘Nothing for me. I had my carrot juice. I couldn’t stomach a sherry, not tonight,’ says Eleanor.
‘Nerves,’ says Lister, and has started to leave the kitchen when the house-telephone rings. He returns to answer it.
‘Lister here,’ he says, and listens briefly while something in the telephone crackles into the room. ‘Very good,’ he then says into the telephone and hangs up. ‘The Baron,’ says he, ‘has arrived.’
The Baron’s great car moves away from the porter’s lodge while the porter closes the gates behind it. It slightly swerves to avoid Hadrian who is walking up the drive.
The porter, returning to the lodge, finds his wife hanging up the house-telephone in the cold hall. ‘Lister sounds like himself,’ she tells her husband.
‘What the hell do you expect him to sound like?’ says the porter. ‘How should he sound?’
‘He was no different from usual,’ she says. ‘Oh, I feel terrible.’
‘Nothing’s going to happen, dear,’ he says, suddenly hugging her. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘I can feel it in the air, like electricity,’ she says. He takes her arm, urging her into the warm sitting-room. She is young and small. She looks as if she were steady of mind but she says, ‘I think I am going mad.’
‘Clara!’ says the porter. ‘Clara!’
She says, ‘Last night I had a terrible dream.’
Cecil Klopstock, the Baron, has arrived at his door, thin and wavering. The door is open and Lister stands by it.
‘The Baroness?’ says the Baron, passively departing from his coat which slides over Lister’s arm.
‘No, sir, she hasn’t arrived. Mr Passerat is waiting.’
‘When did he come?’
‘About half-past six, sir.’
‘Anyone with him?’
‘Two women in the car. They’re waiting outside.’
‘Let them wait,’ says the Baron and goes towards the library, across the black and white paving of the hall. He hesitates, half-turns, then says, ‘I’ll wash in here,’ evidently referring to a wash-room adjoining the library.