Colour Scheme. Ngaio Marsh
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Questing,’ began Mrs Claire, ‘has very kindly …’
‘I might have recognised the authentic touch,’ said her brother, turning his back on the room. ‘Staying here tonight are you, Bell? I’d like a word with you. Come along to my room when you’ve a moment.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Dikon.
Dr Ackrington looked through the doorway. ‘The star boarder,’ he said, ‘is returning in his usual condition. Mr Bell is to be treated to a comprehensive view of our amenities.’
They all looked through the doorway. Dikon saw a shambling figure cross the pumice sweep and approach the verandah.
‘Oh dear!’ said Mrs Claire. ‘I’m afraid … James, dear, could you …? ’
Dr Ackrington limped out to the verandah. The newcomer saw, stumbled to a halt, and dragged a bottle from the pocket of his raincoat.
To Dikon, watching through the window, the intrusion of a drunken white figure into the native landscape was at once preposterous and rather pathetic. A clear light, reflected from the pumice track, rimmed the folds of his shabby garments. He stood there, drooping and lonely, and turned the whisky bottle in his hand, staring at it as if it were the focal point for some fuddled meditation. Presently he raised his head and looked at Dr Ackrington.
‘Well, Smith,’ said Dr Ackrington.
‘You’re a sport, Doc,’ said Smith. ‘There’s a couple of snifters left. Come on and have one.’
‘You’ll do better to keep it,’ said Dr Ackrington quite mildly.
Smith peered beyond him into the room. His eyes narrowed. He lurched forward to the verandah. ‘I’ll deal with this,’ said Questing importantly, and strode out to meet him. They confronted each other. Questing, planted squarely on the verandah edge, made much of his cigar; Smith clung to the post and stared up at him.
‘You clear out of this, Smith,’ said Questing.
‘You get to hell yourself,’ said Smith distinctly. He looked past Questing to the group in the doorway, and very solemnly took off his hat. ‘Present company excepted,’ he added.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Is that the visitor?’ Smith asked loudly, and pointed at Dikon. ‘Is that the reason why we’re all sweating our guts up? That? Let’s have a better look at it. Gawd, what a sissy.’
Dikon wondered confusedly which of the party felt most embarrassed. Dr Ackrington made a loud barking noise, Barbara broke into agonised laughter, Mrs Claire rushed into a spate of apologies, Dikon himself attempted to suggest by gay inquiring glances that he had not understood the tenor of Smith’s remarks. He might have spared himself the trouble. Smith made a plunge at the verandah step shouting: ‘Look at the little bastard.’ Questing attempted to stop him, and the scene mounted in a rapid crescendo. Dikon, Mrs Claire and Barbara remained in the room, Dr Ackrington on the verandah appeared to hold a watching brief, while Questing and Smith yelled industriously in each other’s faces. The climax came when Questing again attempted to shove Smith away from the verandah. Smith drove his fist in Questing’s face and lost his balance. They fell simultaneously.
The noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun. An inexplicable and ridiculous affair changed abruptly into a piece of convincing melodrama. Dikon had seen many such a set-up at the cinema studios. Smith, shaky and bloated, crouched where he had fallen and mouthed at Questing. Questing got to his feet and dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his handkerchief. His cigar lay smoking on the ground between them. It was a shot in Technicolor, for Rangi’s Peak was now tinctured with such a violence of purple as is seldom seen outside the theatre, and in the middle distance rose the steam of the hot pools.
Dikon waited for a bit of rough dialogue to develop and was not disappointed.
‘By God,’ Questing said, exploring his jaw, ‘you’ll get yours for this. You’re sacked.’
‘You’re not my bloody boss.’
‘I’ll bloody well get you the sack, don’t you worry. When I’m in charge here …’
‘That will do,’ said Dr Ackrington crisply.
‘What is all this?’ a peevish voice demanded. Colonel Claire, followed by Simon, appeared round the wing of the house. Smith got to his feet.
‘You’ll have to get rid of this man, Colonel,’ said Questing.
‘What’s he done?’ Simon demanded.
‘I socked him.’ Smith took Simon by the lapels of his coat. ‘You look out for yourselves,’ he said. ‘It’s not only me he’s after. Your dad won’t sack me, will he, Sim?’
‘We’ll see about that,’ Questing said.
‘But why …’ Colonel Claire began, and was cut short by his brother-in-law.
‘If I may interrupt for a moment,’ said Dr Ackrington acidly, ‘I suggest that I take Mr Bell to my room. Unless, of course, he prefers a ring-side seat. Will you come and have a drink, Bell?’
Dikon thankfully accepted, leaving the room in a gale of apologies from Mrs Claire and Barbara. Questing, who seemed to have recovered his temper, followed them up with a speech in which anxiety, propitiation and a kind of fawning urgency were most disagreeably mingled. He was cut short by Dr Ackrington.
‘Possibly,’ Dr Ackrington said, ‘Mr Bell may prefer to form his own opinion of this episode. No doubt he has seen a chronic alcoholic before now, and will not attach much significance to anything this particular specimen may choose to say.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course,’ Dikon murmured unhappily.
‘As for the behaviour of Other Persons,’ Dr Ackrington continued, ‘there again, he may, as I do, form his own opinion. Come along, Bell.’
Dikon followed him along the verandah to his own room, a grimly neat apartment with a hideous desk.
‘Sit down,’ said Dr Ackrington. He wrenched open the door of a home-made cupboard, and took out a bottle and two tumblers. ‘I can only offer you whisky,’ he said. ‘With Smith’s horrible example before you, you may not like the idea. Afraid I don’t go in for modern rot-gut.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dikon, ‘I should like whisky. May I ask who he is?’
‘Smith? He’s a misfit, a hopeless fellow. No good in him at all. Drifted out here as a boy. Agnes, my sister, who is something of a snob, talks loosely about him being a public-school man. Her geese are invariably swans, but I suppose this suggestion is within the bounds of possibility. Smith may have originated in some ill-conducted establishment of dubious gentility. Sometimes their early habits of speech go down the wind with their self-respect. Sometimes they keep it up even in the gutter. They used to be called remittance men, and in this extraordinary country received a good deal of entirely misguided sympathy from native-born fools. That suit you?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Dikon, taking his drink.
‘My sister chooses to regard him as a sort of invalid. Some instinct must have led him ten years ago to the Spring. It has proved to be an ideal battening ground. They give him his keep and a wage, in exchange for idling about the place with an axe in his hand and a bottle in his pocket. When his cheque comes from home he drinks himself silly, and my sister Agnes gives him beef tea and prays for him. He’s a complete waster but he won’t trouble you, I fancy. I confess that this evening I was almost in sympathy with him. He did what I have longed to do for the past three months.’ Dikon glanced up quickly. ‘He drove his fist into Questing’s face,’ Dr Ackrington explained. ‘Here’s luck to you,’ he added. They drank to each other.
‘Well,’ said Dr Ackrington after a pause, ‘you will doubtless lose no time in returning to Auckland and telling your principal to avoid this place like the devil.’
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