It was funny about names, thought Sarah. You could often tell what a person was like from a name. Take the Arkwright woman, for instance, who had cancelled her room, Annexe 4—the drifting snow south of Solihull making motoring a perilous folly, it appeared. Doris Arkwright! With a name like that, she just had to be a suspicious, carefully calculating old crab-crumpet! And she wasn't coming — Binyon had just brought the message to her.
Minus one: and the number of guests was down to thirty-eight.
Oddly enough, one of the things very much on Sarah Jonstone's mind early that evening was the decision she had made (so authoritatively!) to allow 'Caribbean' in the Scrabble final. And she could hardly forget the matter, in view of a most strange coincidence. Later on in the evening, the judge for the fancy-dress competition would be asking whether another 'Caribbean' should be allowed, since one of the male entrants had gaily bedecked, himself in a finely authentic Rastafarian outfit. 'The Mystery of the East' (the judge suggested) could hardly accommodate such an obviously West Indian interpretation? Yet (as one of the guests quietly pointed out) it wasn't really 'West Indian' at all — it was 'Ethiopian'; and Ethiopia had to be East in anyone's atlas — well, Middle East, anyway. Didn't it all depend, too (as another of the guests argued with some force), on exactly what this 'East' business meant, anyway: didn't it depend on exactly whereabouts on the globe one happened to be standing at any particular time? The upshot of this difference of opinion was that 'Caribbean' was accepted for a second time in the Haworth Hotel that New Year's Eve.
It would be a good many hours into New Year's Day itself before anyone discovered that the number of guests was down to thirty-seven.
CHAPTER SIX
December 31st/January 1st
Beware of all enterprises that require fancy clothes.
(THOREAU)
DURING THE TIMES in which these events are set, there occurred a quite spectacular renaissance in fancy-dress occasions of all types. In pubs, in clubs, in ballrooms, at discos, at dinner parties — it was as if a collective mania would settle upon men and women wherever they congregated, demanding that at fairly regular intervals each of them should be given an opportunity to bedeck the body in borrowed plumes and for a few hours to assume an entirely alien personality. Two years previously (the Haworth's first such venture) the New Year's party had taken 'What we were wearing when the ship went down as its theme, with the emphasis very much upon the degree of imagination, humour and improvisation that could be achieved with a very minimum of props. The theme for the following New Year's Eve had been 'This Sporting Life'; and since this theme had been announced in the brochure, some of the guests had taken the challenge most seriously, had turned their backs on improvisation, and had brought appropriate costumes with them. This year, in accord with the temper of the times, participants had been given even wider scope than before, with ample time and opportunity to hire their chosen outfits and to acquire suitable make-up and accessories — in short, to take the whole thing far too seriously. The hotel's 'Rag Bag' still stood in the games room, but only one or two had rummaged through its contents that afternoon. After all, the current theme had been likewise pre-announced, and all the guests knew exactly what was coming; and, to be fair, in many cases the fancy-dress evening was one of the chief reasons for them choosing the Haworth Hotel in the first place. On such occasions, the greatest triumph would be registered when a person went through the first part of the evening — sometimes a good deal longer — totally unrecognized even by close acquaintances: a feat which Binyon himself had accomplished the previous year when only by a process of elimination had even his hotel colleagues finally recognized the face of their proprietor behind the bushy beard and beneath the Gloucestershire cricket-cap of Dr W.G. Grace.
This year the enthusiasm of the guests was such — all but six had presented themselves in various guises — that even Sarah, not by nature one of the world's obvious have-a-go extroverts, found herself wishing that she were one of the happy band drinking red or blue cocktails in the restaurant-cum-ballroom on the ground floor at the back of the hotel, where everything was now almost ready. The whole of the area was surprisingly warm, the radiators round the walls turned up to their maximum readings, and a log fire burning brightly in a large old grate that was simultaneously the delight of guests and the despair of management. But tonight the fire was dancing smokelessly and merrily, and the older folk there spoke of the times when their shadows had passed gigantic round the walls of their childhood, and when in the late hours of the night the logs had collapsed of a sudden in a firework of sparks. Abetting this fire, in a double illumination, were tall red candles, two on each of the tables, and all already lit, with the haloes that formed around them creating little pools of warm light amid the darkling, twinkling dining room, and reflecting their elongated yellow flames in the gleaming cutlery.
It would have been easiest to divide the original guest-list into three tables of thirteen; but in deference to inevitable superstition Binyon had settled for two tables of fourteen and one of eleven, with each place set only for two courses. At each place, a small white card denoted the seating arrangements for these first two courses, spouse duly positioned next to spouse; but each of these cards also had two numbers printed on it, denoting a different table for the third and fourth courses, and a different table again for the fifth and sixth. This system had been tried out the previous year; and although on that occasion one or two of the couples had failed to follow instructions too carefully, the social mix effected thereby had proved a huge success. The only real problem attendant upon such a system was the awkwardness of transferring side plates from one seat to another, but this had been solved by the supremely simple expedient of dispensing with rolls and butter altogether.
It was at about a quarter to eight (eating would begin at eight o'clock) when the nasty little episode occurred: Sarah could vouch for the time with reasonable confidence. One of the women guests from the annexe, one dressed in the black garb of a female adherent of the Ayatollah, informed Sarah in a voice muffled by the double veil of her yashmak that there was something rather unpleasant written on the wall of the Ladies' lavatory, and Sarah had accompanied this women to inspect the offending graffito. And, yes, she agreed with the voice behind the veils that it was not really very nice at alclass="underline" 'I'm nuts' had been daubed on the wall over one of the washbasins in a black felt pen; and underneath had been added 'So are Binyon's B—'. Oh dear! But it had taken only a few minutes with sponge and detergent to expunge these most distressing words — certainly to the point of illegibility.