you
have hidden away there, mustn’t we? And antiques—there’s another coincidence! How I agree with what you say about “this world of the tawdry and second-rate”. My dear sister is always telling me that I spend too much of my “humble sufficiency” on the works of old craftsmen, but she does not understand the collector’s “mad joy in ancient graven things and trinkets fondly wrought”.
Please tell me that we may meet. A word, a word, and all will be arranged!!
So far, so jolly, jolly good, mused Miss Teatime, folding the letter away in her handbag.
She looked at her little silver dress watch. Half past nine. She decided against replying immediately to 4122. An impression of over eagerness would not be ladylike. Only a brief note was needed this time; it could go tomorrow.
She crossed the corridor into the resident’s lounge, collected the Daily Mail from a pile of papers on the central table, and sank with it into a big grey chair. Flaxborough mornings were very pleasant; nobody bothered one and there was nothing of that sense imparted by London hotels of having to keep one’s feet tucked out of the way of anxious, self-important people.
Reading a newspaper here was rather like casually scanning dispatches from some mad, remote battlefield, so it was with surprise and amusement that Miss Teatime spotted a Flaxborough dateline over a modest, down-page paragraph.
The story was nothing much—something about police inquiries into the disappearance of a local widow and the possibility of connection with a previous, similar case—but just to see the name Flaxborough in a national paper now had a queerly personal significance.
An hour later Miss Teatime sauntered through the sunshine to the public library, in whose almost deserted reference room she added a few interesting snippets to what she knew about Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite, besides finding time for a quick cruise through The Elements of Modern Seamanship.
It was just after midday when she left the library and made her way along Church Street to the lane where she had discovered, the day before, an altogether adorable inn.
This was The Saracen’s Head, a thatched, whitewashed building so old that either the weight of its thick walls had caused it to sink during the centuries or the lane had risen by a succession of resurfacings. Through whichever cause, the pavement was now level with the tops of its windows. To reach the door, one had to descend a flight of five steps, each hollowed by wear into the semblance of a shallow tureen.
The bar room was long and dim and its air held the coolness of old stone. Lamps gleamed in the corners farthest from the window. Their soft yellow light—implying, one felt, a comfortable independence of time—was reflected from the black knuckles and sinews of oak furniture.
As Miss Teatime entered, the landlord rose from the company of his only three customers and stepped behind the bar. He was a big, sorrowful looking man whose Fair Isle pullover was rucked in wavelets from an unsuccessfully belted paunch. The quartet had been playing dominoes and the landlord clicked face down on the counter the hand of half a dozen pieces that had been nestling in his left palm. As soon as he had measured out her double whisky and her change, he retrieved the dominoes by pressing upon them the flat of his hand, and went back to the game.
Miss Teatime took a seat at a nearby table and for a while looked on with a benevolent eye. At the next interlude for the recharging of glasses, she rose and approached with modest hesitation.
“I wonder if I might sit and watch you for a while? I’ve always wanted to see how this game is played.”
There was a murmur of slightly embarrassed but respectful assent, and two of the players hutched along their bench to make room for her.
She sat primly beside a man in blue serge whose smile of assurance was somewhat marred by a cast in one eye. This gave the feeling of there being someone behind her shoulder and with whom the man was in confidential communication. However, as play progressed the conversation warmed again and Miss Teatime soon found herself included.
She was impressed by the rapid calculation of which these people so obviously were capable. Their power of divination was perhaps even more remarkable. But most of all she marvelled at the way each could hold ten, twelve, fourteen “cards” in one perfectly secure palmful.
Two more games had been played and fresh drinks brought in. The ivory tablets swirled and rattled in another shuffle. Hands reached out to divide them.
“I wonder,” quickly said Miss Teatime, “if I...”
They looked at her.
“What I mean is, would it spoil your game terribly if I had a go? I think I can see how it’s played.”
There was a moment’s silence. The landlord glanced at the others. “All right,” he said. “You have a try, duck.” He slid a helping of cards towards her.
Happily, Miss Teatime began to pick them up and to build a little crescent shaped wall. “I haven’t quite such big hands as you gentlemen,” she explained.
“You just suit yourself, pet,” the cast-eyed man told her. “I’ll not look at them.” Oddly enough, that appeared to be exactly what he was doing at that moment, but Miss Teatime had been too well brought up to view uncharitably the afflictions of others.
“Right, then,” said the landlord. “Your drop, Jack.”
“Oh, there is one thing,” Miss Teatime announced, “that I really must insist upon.” She gave a nervous smile. “There can be no question of my not ‘taking my corner’, as I think you describe it. Pints—that’s right, isn’t it? And if I should win...oh, but that’s hardly likely!”
“Whisky it’ll be if you do,” gallantly asserted the landlord.
Miss Teatime blushed. “But just a single. Naturally.”
The play began.
Two hours later, when the irrefutable fact of closing time (The Saracen’s Head not being, after all, in another world) lay heavy upon the rest of the company, Miss Teatime was brighter than they by nine glasses of spirits. The mastery of dominoes, like that of anything else, simply called for a certain knack. She was pleased, but not arrogant at her success in having discovered it among her reserve talents.
The landlord climbed ponderously to his feet, stretched, and stood looming over them.
“Glasses, if you please,” he intoned.
“It’s not time yet,” said the man called Jack.
Miss Teatime smiled mischievously into her tenth glass of whisky. “Old crusty crutch!” she said. Jack laughed and nudged her.
“It’s three o’clock,” affirmed the landlord.
Miss Teatime ostentatiously consulted her dress watch. “Two minutes to,” she corrected.
The man with the odd vision stared at a vase of flowers in the window in order to see the clock on the wall of a building across the street. “That’s right,” he said. “Two minutes to go yet.” He turned and the landlord received, by proxy, as it were, the gaze of admiration intended for Miss Teatime.