THE RING
F - Big Charlotte - Bavaria
A - Eric Olafsson - Sweden, Industrialist, Armaments
D - Said to go by the name of Demetrios - Smyrna, Drugs
C - Dr Sarolensky - Colorado, USA, Physicist, Chemist - Suspicion only
J - A woman. Goes by Code name of Juanita. Said to be dangerous. No knowledge of her real name.
Chapter 15
AUNT MATILDA TAKES A CURE
'A cure of some kind, I thought?' Lady Matilda hazarded.
'A cure?' said Dr Donaldson. He looked faintly puzzled for a moment, losing his air of medical omniscience, which, of course, so Lady Matilda reflected, was one of the slight disadvantages attached to having a younger doctor attending one rather than the older specimen to whom one has been accustomed for several years.
'That's what we used to call them,' Lady Matilda explained. 'In my young days, you know, you went for the cure. Marienbad, Carlsbad, Baden-Baden, all the rest of it. Just the other day I read about this new place in the paper. Quite new and up to date. Said to be all new ideas and things like that. Not that I'm really sold on new ideas, but I'm not actually afraid of them. I mean, they would probably be all the same things all over again. Water tasting of bad eggs and the latest sort of diet and walking to take the Cure, or the Waters, or whatever they call them now, at a rather inconvenient hour in the morning. And I expect they give you massage or something. It used to be seaweed. But this place is somewhere in the mountains. Bavaria or Austria or somewhere like that. So I don't suppose it would be seaweed. Shaggy moss, perhaps - sounds like a dog. And perhaps quite a nice mineral water as well as the eggy, sulphury one, I mean. Superb buildings, I understand. The only thing one is nervous about nowadays is that they never seem to put banisters in any up-to-date modern buildings. Flights of marble steps and all that, but nothing to hang on to.'
'I think I know the place you mean,' said Dr Donaldson. 'It's been publicized a good deal, in the press.'
'Well, you know what one is at my age,' said Lady Matilda. 'One likes trying new things. Really, I think it is just to amuse one. It doesn't really make one feel one's health would be any better. Still, you don't think it would be a bad idea, do you, Dr Donaldson?'
Dr Donaldson looked at her. He was not so young as Lady Matilda labelled him in her mind. He was just approaching forty and he was a tactful and kindly man and willing to indulge his elderly patients as far as he considered it desirable, without any actual danger of their attempting something obviously unsuitable.
'I'm sure it wouldn't do you any harm at all,' he said. 'Might be quite a good idea. Of course travel's a bit tiring though one flies to places very quickly and easily nowadays.'
'Quickly, yes. Easily, no,' said Lady Matilda. 'Ramps and moving staircases and in and out of buses from the airport to the plane, and the plane to another airport and from the airport to another bus. All that, you know. But I understand one can have wheelchairs in the airports.'
'Of course you can. Excellent idea. If you promise to do that and not think you can walk everywhere...'
'I know, I know,' said his patient, interrupting him 'You do understand. You're really a very understanding man. One has one's pride, you know, and while you can still hobble around with a stick or a little support, you don't really want to look absolutely a crock or bedridden or something. It'd be easier if I was a man,' she mused. 'I mean, one could tie up one's leg with one of those enormous bandages and padded things as though one had the gout. I mean, gout is all right for the male sex. Nobody thinks anything the worse of them. Some of their older friends think they've been tucking in to the port too much because that used to be the old idea, though I believe that is not really true at all. Port wine does not give you gout. Yes, a wheelchair, and I could fly to Munich or somewhere like that. One could arrange for a car or something at the other end.'
'You will take Miss Leatheran with you, of course.'
'Amy? Oh, of course. I couldn't do without her. Anyway, you think no harm would be done?'
'I think it might do you a world of good.'
'You really are a nice man.'
Lady Matilda gave him the twinkle from her eyes with which now he was becoming familiar.
'You think it'll amuse me and cheer me up to go somewhere new and see some new faces, and of course you're quite right. But I like to think that I'm taking a Cure, though really there's nothing for me to be cured of. Not really, is there? I mean, except old age. Unfortunately old age doesn't get cured, it only gets more so, doesn't it?'
'The point is really, will you enjoy yourself? Well, I think you will. When you get tired, by the way, when doing anything, stop doing it.'
'I shall still drink glasses of water if the water tastes of rotten eggs. Not because I like them or because frankly I think they do me any good. But it has a sort of mortifying feeling. It's like old women in our village always used to be. They always wanted a nice, strong medicine either coloured black or purple or deep pink, heavily flavoured with peppermint. They thought that did much more good than a nice little pill or a bottle that only appeared to be full of ordinary water without any exotic colouring.'
'You know too much about human nature,' said Dr Donaldson.
'You're very nice to me,' said Lady Matilda. 'I appreciate that. Amy!'
'Yes, Lady Matilda?'
'Get me an atlas, will you. I've lost track of Bavaria and the countries round it.'
'Let me see now. An atlas. There'll be one in the library, I suppose. There must be some old atlases about, dating back to about 1920 or thereabouts, I suppose.'
'I wondered if we had anything a little more modern.'
'Atlas,' said Amy, deep in reflection.
'If not, you can buy one and bring it along tomorrow morning. It's going to be very difficult because all the names are different, the countries are different, and I shan't know where I am. But you'll have to help me with that. Find a big magnifying glass, will you? I have an idea I was reading in bed with one the other day and it probably slipped down between the bed and the wall.'
Her requirements took a little time to satisfy but the atlas, the magnifying glass and an older atlas by which to check, were finally produced and Amy, nice woman that she was, Lady Matilda thought, was extremely helpful.
'Yes, here it is. It still seems to be called Monbrügge or something like that. It's either in the Tyrol or Bavaria. Everything seems to have changed places and got different names -'
Lady Matilda looked round her bedroom in the Gasthaus. It was well appointed. It was very expensive. It combined comfort with an appearance of such austerity as might lead the inhabitant to identify herself with an ascetic course of exercises, diet and possibly painful courses of massage. Its furnishings, she thought, were interesting. They provided for all tastes. There was a large framed Gothic script on the wall. Lady Matilda's German was not as good as it had been in her girlhood, but it dealt, she thought, with the golden and enchanting idea of a return to youth. Not only did youth hold the future in its hands but the old were being nicely indoctrinated to feel that they themselves might know such a second golden flowering.
Here there were gentle aids so as to enable one to pursue the doctrine of any of the many paths in life which attracted different classes of people. (Always presuming that they had enough money to pay for it.) Beside the bed was a Gideon Bible, such as Lady Matilda when travelling in the United States had often found by her bedside. She picked it up approvingly, opened it at random and put a finger on one particular verse. She read it, nodded her head contentedly and made a brief note of it on a booklet that was lying on her bed table. She had often done so in the course of her life - it was her way of obtaining guidance at short notice.
I have been young and now am old,
yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken.
She made further researches of the room. Handy, but not too apparent, was an Almanach de Gotha, modestly situated on a lower shelf of the bedside table. A most invaluable book for those who wished to familiarize themselves with the higher strata of society reaching back for several hundred years and which were still being observed and noted and checked by those of aristocratic lineage or interested in the same. It will come in handy, she thought, I can read up a good deal on that.
Near the desk, by the stove of period porcelain, were paperback editions of certain preachings and tenets by the modern prophets of the world. Those who were now or had recently been crying in the wilderness were here to be studied and approved by young followers with haloes of hair, strange raiment, and earnest hearts. Marcuse, Guevara, Levi-Strauss, Fanon.
In case she was going to hold any conversations with golden youth she had better read up a little on that also.
At that moment there was a timid tap on the door. It opened slightly and the face of the faithful Amy came round the corner. Amy, Lady Matilda thought suddenly, would look exactly like a sheep when she was ten years older. A nice, faithful, kindly sheep. At the moment, Lady Matilda was glad to think, she looked still like a very agreeable plump lamb with nice curls of hair, thoughtful and kindly eyes, and able to give kindly baa's rather than to bleat.
'I do hope you slept well.'
'Yes, my dear, I did, excellently. Have you got that thing?'
Amy always knew what she meant. She handed it to her employer.
'Ah, my diet sheet. I see.' Lady Matilda perused it, then said, 'How incredibly unattractive! What's this water like one's supposed to drink?'
'It doesn't taste very nice.'
'No, I don't suppose it would. Come back in half an hour. I got a letter I want you to post.'
Moving aside her breakfast tray, she moved over to the desk. She thought for a few minutes and then wrote her letter. 'It ought to do the trick,' she murmured.
'I beg your pardon. Lady Matilda, what did you say?'
'I was writing to the old friend I mentioned to you.'
'The one you said you haven't seen for about fifty or sixty years?'
Lady Matilda nodded.
'I do hope -' Amy was apologetic. 'I mean - I - it's such a long time. People have short memories nowadays. I do hope that she'll remember all about you and everything.'
'Of course she will,' said Lady Matilda. 'The people you don't forget are the people you knew when you were about ten to twenty. They stick in your mind for ever. You remember what hats they wore, and the way they laughed, and you remember their faults and their good qualities and everything about them. Now anyone I met twenty years ago, shall we say, I simply can't remember who they are. Not if they're mentioned to me, and not if I saw them even. Oh yes, she'll remember about me. And all about Lausanne. You get that letter posted. I've got to do a little homework.'
She picked up the Almanach de Gotha and returned to bed, where she made a serious study of such items as might come in useful. Some family relationships and various other kinships of the useful kind. Who had married whom, who had lived where, what misfortunes had overtaken others. Not that the person whom she had in mind was herself likely to be found in the Almanach de Gotha. But she lived in a part of the world, had come there deliberately to live in a Schloss belonging to originally noble ancestors, and she had absorbed the local respect and adulation for those above all of good breeding. To good birth, even impaired with poverty, she herself, as Lady Matilda well knew, had no claim whatever. She had had to make do with money. Oceans of money. Incredible amounts of money.
Lady Matilda Cleckheaton had no doubt at all that she herself, the daughter of an eighth Duke, would be bidden to some kind of festivity. Coffee, perhaps, and delicious creamy cakes.
Lady Matilda Cleckheaton made her entrance into one of the grand reception rooms of the Schloss. It had been a fifteen-mile drive. She had dressed herself with some care, though somewhat to the disapproval of Amy. Amy seldom offered advice, but she was so anxious for her patronesse to succeed in whatever she was undertaking that she ventured this time on a moderate remonstrance.
'You don't think your red dress is really a little worn, if you know what I mean. I mean just beneath the arm - well, there are two or three very shiny patches -'
'I know, my dear, I know. It is a shabby dress, but nevertheless a Patou model. It is old but it was enormously expensive. I am not trying to look rich or extravagant. I am an impoverished member of an aristocratic family. Anyone of under fifty, no doubt, would despise me. But my hostess is living and has lived for some years in a part of the world where the rich will be kept waiting for their meal while the hostess will be willing to wait for a shabby, elderly woman of impeccable descent. Family traditions are things that one does not lose easily. One absorbs them, even, when one goes to a new neighbourhood. In my trunk, by the way, you will find a feather boa.'
'Are you going to put on a feather boa?'
'Yes, I am. An ostrich feather one.'
'Oh dear, that must be years old.'
'It is, but I've kept it very carefully. You'll see, Charlotte will recognize what it is. She will think one of the best families in England was reduced to wearing her old clothes that she had kept carefully for years. And I'll wear my sealskin coat, too. That's a little worn, but such a magnificent coat in its time.'
Thus arrayed, she set forth. Amy went with her as a well-dressed though only quietly smart attendant.
Matilda Cleckheaton had been prepared for what she saw. A whale, as Stafford had told her. A wallowing whale, a hideous old woman sitting in a room surrounded with pictures worth a fortune. Rising with some difficulty from a throne-like chair which could have figured on a stage representing the palace of some magnificent prince from any age from the Middle Ages down.
'Matilda!'
'Charlotte!'
'Ah! After all these years. How strange it seems!'
