The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [218]
“The lock was easy,” he said, “but I can’t find anything except wine. Where d’you keep the whisky?”
“Heavens, I don’t know,” said Barbara.
“Good evening,” said Basil.
“Oh, good evening. Where do you keep the whisky?”
“It is a fancy dress party?” Basil asked.
“Not particularly,” said the young man.
“What have you got there?”
“Champagne of some kind. I didn’t notice the label.”
“He’s got the Cliquot rosé,” said Basil.
“How clever of him,” said Barbara.
“It will probably do,” said the young man. “Though most people prefer whisky.”
Basil attempted to speak but found no words.
Barbara quoted:
“‘His Aunt Jobiska made him drink
Lavender water tinged with pink,
For the world in general knows
There’s nothing so good for a Pobble’s toes.’
“Come along, Charles, I think we’ve got all we’re going to get here. I sense a grudging hospitality.”
She skipped downstairs, waved from the hall and was out of the front door, while Basil still stood dumbfounded.
At length, even more laboriously than he was wont, he continued upward. Angela was in bed reading.
“You’re home early.”
“Peter was there. No one else I knew except old Ambrose. Some booby made a speech. So I came away.”
“Very wise.”
Basil stood before Angela’s long looking glass. He could see her behind him. She put on her spectacles and picked up her book.
“Angela, I don’t drink much nowadays, do I?”
“Not as much as you used.”
“Or eat?”
“More.”
“But you’d say I led a temperate life?”
“Yes, on the whole.”
“It’s just age,” said Basil. “And dammit, I’m not sixty yet.”
“What’s worrying you, darling?”
“It’s when I meet young men. A choking feeling—as if I was going to have an apoplectic seizure. I once saw a fellow in a seizure, must have been about the age I am now—the Lieutenant Colonel of the Bombardiers. It was a most unpleasant spectacle. I’ve been feeling lately something like that might strike me any day. I believe I ought to take a cure.”
“I’ll come too.”
“Will you really, Angela? You are a saint.”
“Might as well be there as anywhere. They’re supposed to be good for insomnia too. The servants would like a holiday. They’ve been wearing awfully overworked expressions lately.”
“No sense taking Babs. We could send her to Malfrey.”
“Yes.”
“Angela, I saw the most awful-looking fellow tonight with a sort of beard—here, in the house, a friend of Babs. She called him ‘Charles.’”
“Yes, he’s someone new.”
“What’s his name?”
“I did hear. It sounded like a pack of fox hounds I once went out with. I know—Albrighton.”
“Albright,” cried Basil, the invisible noose tightening. “Albright, by God.”
Angela looked at him with real concern. “You know,” she said, “you really do look rather rum. I think we’d better go to one of those starving places at once.”
And then what had seemed a death-rattle turned into a laugh.
“It was one of Peter’s shirts,” he said, unintelligibly to Angela.
II
It may one day occur to a pioneer of therapeutics that most of those who are willing to pay fifty pounds a week to be deprived of food and wine, seek only suffering and that they could be cheaply accommodated in rat-ridden dungeons. At present the profits of the many thriving institutions which cater for the ascetic are depleted by the maintenance of neat lawns and shrubberies and, inside, of the furniture of a private house and apparatus resembling that of a hospital.
Basil and Angela could not immediately secure rooms at the sanatorium recommended by Molly Pastmaster. There was a waiting list of people suffering from every variety of infirmity. Finally they frankly outbid rival sufferers. A man whose obesity threatened the collapse of his ankles, and a woman raging with hallucinations were informed that their bookings were defective, and on a warm afternoon Basil and Angela drove down to take possession of their rooms.
There was a resident physician at this most accommodating house. He interviewed each patient on arrival and ostensibly considered individual needs.
He saw Angela first. Basil sat stolidly in an outer room,