“Arthur,” said the woman, “see to the customer …”
Her voice was like a parrot’s, chirruping words it couldn’t understand. The thin woman had a grating, shrill tone and another British accent … a comedy fishwife or a slum harridan. Cockney. Jayne had heard other Englishmen say Hitch was a cockney. He went tight around the collar if it was said to his loose-jowelled face. It was a put-down, she guessed — like “polack” or “hunkie.” David Niven and Peter Lawford weren’t cockneys. Cary Grant for sure wasn’t a cockney. Hitch was, and so was this woman who had somehow fetched up on the far side of the world, in the country of Jesuits and outlaws and Indians and gold-diggers.
“In the fullness of time, Mahmah,” said the fat young man.
He didn’t sound cockney. He had a James Mason or George Sanders voice. A suave secret agent, a bit of a rogue … but coming out of a bloated, cherubic face, that accent was all wrong. Jayne wondered if Arthur was another fairy. Was that why mother and son—“Mahmah” must mean “Mother”—had said goodbye Piccadilly and farewell Leicester Square?
She stood there, dripping and steaming.
Arthur finished reading to the end of the page, lips moving as he mouthed the balloons. Then he neatly folded over the top corner and shut the comic. Journey Into Mystery. He tidied it away with a stack of similar publications, shuffling so the edges were straight as if he had just finished an exam and wanted his desk neat.
“What might the Hacienda Hayslip do for you, madame?”
“A room, for the night.”
“Nocturnal refuge? Most fortuitous. We do indeed rent rooms, nightly. Have you a reservation?”
Before she could answer, his mother piped up … “A reservation! What does she look like, a squaw? Who ever has a reservation, Arthur?”
“Formalities must be observed, Mahmah. Did you, madame, have the foresight to contact us by telephone or telegram … or is this more in the manner of an impromptu stopover?”
“The second thing,” she said.
“Spur of the moment? Fortunate for you, then, that one or two of our luxury cabins are unoccupied at present and can therefore be put at your disposal … are you of a superstitious or numerological bent?”
She shook her head.
“Don’t give her Thirteen,” said the old woman.
Arthur sucked his cupid’s bow lips between his teeth, making his mouth into a puckered slit. He was thoughtful or annoyed.
“I don’t mind,” she said.
So far as she could recall, none of the rooms she’d been groped or duped or roughed up in had had the unlucky number. Ordinary numbers were bad enough.
“It’s too close to the edge, Arthur,” said the old woman. “Be the next to go.”
“How would you like a cabin on the beach?” Arthur asked Jayne.
“Normally, that would sound nice. Just now, dry and warm is all I want.”
“It’s not nice,” shrilled Arthur’s mother. “Not nice at all. My son is trying to be funny. We sit on the cliff here and it’s crumbling away. The dirt’s no good. The rain gets in, loosens it up. The far cabins have gone over the edge. They tumble onto the beach. In pieces. You should hear the fearful racket that makes.”
Arthur blew out his lips and smiled.
“Indeed, madame. We are in a somewhat precarious position. Some might opine that my mother made a poor investment. Others might rule this our just lot. For we have incurred the ire of the Almighty, by our many, many sins. My mother, though you’d not think it of her now, was once a very great harlot. A woman of easy virtue, baptized in champagne. Powdered and painted and primped and pimped and porked and poked and prodded and paid. Showered with gifts of opal and topaz and red, red rubies. She dragged fine men to ruin. Duels were fought. Balconies jumped from. Revolvers discharged into despairing brains. Foolish, feckless, and fickle were her many, many admirers. All dead now, though their sins remain.”
At this speech, the old woman cackled and grinned.
Jayne looked again at Arthur’s mother. Her skin had shriveled onto her bones. Her face was a pattern of wrinkles and her hands were vulture claws. She smiled and showed yellow teeth. She wore a black, feathery wig that matched her dress.
“Did you think, madame, to find the notorious Birdie Hayslip sat by the stove at this stop on your journey through life? Knitting her own shroud?”
“Shut up, Arthur, you’re making her blush!”
Birdie! There was a bird name and no mistake. Walter would have loved it.
“Just sign her in, boy. Sign her in. Don’t let her get away. We can’t afford to lose customers. Not in these trying times. Income tax and the Bomb.”
Arthur took the registration book from beneath the desk. It was bound in fleshy red leather.
She hesitated before signing. She was a thief in flight, she remembered. She wouldn’t want to be tracked and traced. Her situation couldn’t be unusual. Couples who stayed in joints like this mostly passed themselves off as Mr. and Mrs. Smith. She wrote Jana Wróbel, but with a scribble — so it couldn’t be read, let alone pronounced — and gave her address as Century City, California.
“Madame Wobble,” said Arthur, without irony, “you shall have Cabin Number Seventeen…. Come this way …”
Reaching behind him, he took a key from a board. It was attached to a fist-sized plaster cactus.
He slipped off his high stool and came out from behind the desk.
Arthur Hayslip was not a dwarf but was well under five feet in height and balloon-bellied. His hair was thinning, though she thought him not much more than twenty. He wore a velvet Little Lord Fauntleroy jacket and child’s slacks. He was a plump, aging baby — but precise and delicate, as if performing all his gestures for television cameras.
“Galoshes, Arthur,” Birdie reminded her son.
He slipped on his waterproof overshoes, and took down a big yellow fisherman’s slicker with attached hood. The protective clothing was made for a hardy six-footer and he disappeared into it. He looked like a fairy tale character, but she wished she had a more rainproof topcoat too.
“Shall we venture out, Madame Wobble? Into the storm?”
“It’s Miss Wobble,” she corrected.
“You hear that, Arthur! Miss. I saw straight away. No wedding band. She’s available!”
Birdie cackled again and the laughter turned into a coughing fit. She did not sound like a well person.
“I have to fetch some things from the trunk of my car.”
“The boot, Arthur,” said Birdie. “She means the boot.”
“You always misremember, Mahmah … you took steps in 1939, dragged me from our native shores. When I was but a babe, the Jerries started dropping whizz-bangs. There was something in the newspapers about a War. There was a term for British subjects who fled to safer climes for the duration. Gone With the Wind Up. I am a naturalized American, a real-life nephew of my Uncle Sam …”
He didn’t sound it.
“Or was it Uncle Irving, Uncle Montmorency, Uncle Yasujiro, Uncle Fedor, Uncle Harry, or Auntie Margaret. Mahmah has never confided which, if any, of my many uncles might also have been my …”
“Arthur, don’t be vulgar. She’s not interested. Can’t you tell?”
He took an umbrella from a rack by the desk and pushed open the door with it. The storm roared, and the waltz record stuttered after the music stopped. He opened the umbrella to shield them as they stepped outside. He had to stretch his arm like the Statue of Liberty’s to get above her head. They still got soaked.
They trudged across muddy asphalt to her car and she popped the trunk.
In the dark, in the cold, in the wet, her face still burned.
There it was. In a sack, tied like a post-bag.