Tourists Are for Trapping Page 6

  “You remind me”—her eyes narrowed—“of my first husband. Of course, he was a lot older than you—than me, too. But he was very set in his ways. He was a true gentleman, though. Even though we weren’t living in a community-property state, he did all right by me. And he settled a very nice trust fund on Donna, with both of us sharing the interest during her minority. Of course, she was his only child, he ought to. And I can tell you she comes into a very tidy sum when she’s twenty-five.”

  “At twenty-five,” Donna said, her eyes narrowing and a distant echo of Paula’s rapacious look shadowing her face. (Perhaps that was what had disturbed me about her. She was too young to be so calculating. But look at her tutor.)

  “It’s twenty-five,” Donna said stubbornly, “unless I—”

  “At twenty-five!” her mother snapped. “There’s plenty of time. I’m not having you make the mistake I made. Although”—her face softened—“I didn’t do so bad when I chose him. Not when I think of some of those other bums I married. I tell you”—she leaned forward earnestly—“I sometimes think I would be willing to marry that man again tomorrow. But”—she leaned back—“he’s married again, and she isn’t going to let him go.”

  The waiter brought our orders then. Lost in the dreams of ruptured romance, Paula dealt with her limp lettuce leaves and mound of cottage cheese without complaint. Afterward, she retained her fork and speared chips from Donna’s plate, Jim’s, and mine on an impartial rota basis. Occasionally, she helped herself to a chunk of meat as well. She did it with the same fine abstracted air Pandora used when doing the same thing. It was impossible to say whether it was equally calculated—she had seemed quite genuine about the diet. Unless reminiscing about her ex-husbands had brought on that weight problem again. I was briefly grateful that she would be beyond range when the results began to manifest themselves, if her problem had recurred. It was a by-product Larkin’s Luxury Tours hadn’t bargained on. Some Americans will sue at the drop of a hat, and Paula bore all the earmarks of one it wouldn’t be safe to mishandle your chapeau around. She was already too conversant with courts for comfort. She might decide she’d like a closer view of English justice, and given a susceptible chancellor, there was no telling how far she might go.

  I resigned myself to a nightmare period of, for one reason or another, trying to keep track of everyone’s caloric intake. This wouldn’t be helped by the fact that calories had never worried me overmuch, and I had no idea what most dishes racked up. There must be a small briefcase-sized book about it somewhere— I’d better find it and keep it with me.

  Donna waded into apple pie and ice cream for dessert, while her mother settled for an austere black coffee and assorted nibbles of rich, sweet crust. Some sort of distracting action seemed indicated.

  “Would you like a cigarette?” I offered them to her. “Aren’t they tiny?” she accepted thanklessly. “I guess all English cigarettes are, huh?”

  “All the cheaper ones,” I agreed, discarding a remark about Americans waving around filter-tipped batons. The customer is always right, and in public relations, that goes for the customer’s customer, too. At least she had put her fork down.

  “They’re not bad,” she decided, inhaling heartily. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a good idea, after all. I now had her full speculative attention, and it was a bit unnerving. I wondered if I reminded her of any of her ex-husbands.

  At the main table, I saw Kate stand up abruptly. She had obviously abandoned the idea of trying to keep any table talk going and was determined to herd them back to the bus for the next stage of the tour. We were two hearts that beat as one on that subject—any move that would get me away from Paula was a good move. I stood up, too.

  “I think we’re going back to the bus,” I announced.

  “What’s the hurry?” Paula grinned at Jim. “They can’t leave without us, we’ve got the driver.”

  “Come on.” Donna pushed back her chair. “Let’s us not be the ones to keep them waiting.”

  Rather surprisingly, Paula obeyed, but she fell into step beside me and seemed inclined to try to steer us toward the path that led down Memory Lane.

  “Donna’s just like her father,” she said. “He hated to keep anybody waiting—he worried too much about other people’s opinions. That sort of thing got very irritating. I mean, if he wants to worry on his own account, okay. But he wanted me to worry about the neighbors, too. Who could stand that? I was young and very high-spirited …”

  I let it flow over me, heading grimly for the bus. Even during my sojourn in the States, I’d never really learned to stem the tide of sudden unwanted confidences Americans were apt to pour out. Now that I’d been back in England for so long, I was completely out of practice. I could only take as my guide that probably apocryphal story of the psychiatrists, one of whom said to the other, “It’s getting me down. I don’t see how you can stand up to it so well. How can you bear to sit there, day after day, and listen to people telling you all these terrible stories about their wretched lives?” And the other one said, “Who listens?”

  Steadfastly not listening, I boarded the minibus and sprawled into my seat. Paula hesitated in the aisle, but I immediately put my camera on the empty seat beside me and frowning with concentration, began the delicate task of unloading and reloading it. She shrugged faintly and took her place in the seat behind me. I’d wasted about eight shots still remaining on that reel, but it was cheap at the price.

  The bus was full, Kate said something to Jim, he pulled the lever that shut the door, and we were on our way again. The peaceful English countryside rolled past us, yet there was no feeling of peace inside the bus. This, despite the silence. There was an uneasy atmosphere of too many people with too many unvoiced thoughts. Not that I gave a damn about hearing any of those thoughts, but I couldn’t escape the idea that practically anyone’s thoughts—except Paula’s— might be worth hearing.

  The low, sprawling, historic outskirts of Canterbury came into view. I was relieved to hear a murmur of appreciation ripple through the bus—at least they weren’t lost to all the finer things in life.

  “We’ll leave the bus in this parking lot,” Kate announced. “And we’ll meet back here in about an hour. I’ll take you to the cathedral—it’s just a short walk—and then I’ll have to leave you. They don’t allow outside guides in the cathedral; one of the vergers will take you through and tell you the whole story himself.”

  I began to see the attraction that Canterbury had held for her. She was free of them for at least an hour. By the time they’d roamed through the town, as well, she’d have had a couple of hours to rest her throat and gather her resources for the homeward journey. She wasn’t at all dumb, Neil’s Kate.

  Jim remained resolutely in his seat while they dismounted. I saw a glance pass between him and Kate and knew that they were going to slope off for a drink when she got rid of the tourists. Since I wasn’t invited, I decided to go along with the tourists. Although I’d seen the cathedral before, I’d never joined one of the guided tours, and it wouldn’t do me any harm. You never knew when a spot of historic culture might come in handy.

  I hadn’t gone more than a few steps when I found Paula beside me again. Donna, I noticed, was lagging behind and trying to strike up a conversation with Hortense Rogers. I wondered whether she was genuinely interested in establishing cordial relations with Horace’s mother, or whether she was just well trained to remove herself from the vicinity when her own mother was on the prowl.

  Or perhaps she was just bored with Paula’s story of her hard life—she must have heard the record many times before. And I doubted that it improved with repeating. I didn’t even want to hear it the first time. The rest of the tour, I noticed, were also well ahead of us and not turning around to see if the laggards were coming. Evidently they, too, had been regaled with the sordid saga.

  “… so, naturally, I sued for mental cruelty …” Not that I was keeping score, but Paula seemed to have reached Husband No. 3—
an oaf with the nasty habit of expecting his wife to get up and cook breakfast for him. A felony further compounded by an absolute refusal to do the dishes or walk the Pekinese. From the particular venom in her voice, I gathered that he had not even had the consideration to establish their residence in a community-property state. I took a deep breath and tried to tune her out again.

  We were approaching the door of the cathedral now, and the others were huddled there waiting for us. Not of their own accord, it was true, but because a firm-looking cleric intended that the entire group should assemble before he began his tour.

  Kate’s relief as she handed us over was an almost palpable thing. There was a new spring in her step as she walked away. I envied her. I already knew that I had not chosen the better part—I should have spent those free hours roaming around the town. I smiled weakly at the others as we joined them.

  As the tour moved off through the cathedral, Paula slowed her steps. It was pure reflex action that made me slow mine to keep pace with her. Before I knew it, the others were several feet ahead of us.

  “… but it was this last one that nearly killed me. That’s why I’m on this tour now. It’s a sort of convalescence …” To my horror, I realised that Paula was not going to stop talking. Intent on the unfolding vision of her private life, she might not have even noticed that we had entered a cathedral.

  “… There were times when I even worried about leaving him alone with Donna …”

  The group ahead had stopped, and the tour huddled around their new guide, firmly disclaiming both Paula and myself. I tried to convey that I had nothing to do with her, really, I just happened to be walking here. Faint frowns appeared on several faces as we approached nearer. There was another verger hovering on the fringe of the group who didn’t look too happy, either.

  “I tell you,” Paula continued, oblivious to everything, although she raised her voice automatically to meet the competition from the clerical guide, who also raised his voice firmly.

  “… St. Thomas à Becket—”

  “… that bum …”

  “Here, at the foot of the altar, St. Thomas à Becket—”

  “… would lay anything that would go horizontal!” When I opened my eyes, the verger was bearing down on us with the light of battle in his face. I tried to be philosophical—I had been thrown out of better places than this. Well, perhaps not better—but more exclusive. More expensive.

  “Let’s go.” I took Paula’s arm. “I need some air.”

  “That’s a good idea.” She seemed gratified at the response to her sad story. “It’s dead in here.”

  I whisked her out of there one step ahead of the indignant verger, who pursued us as far as the doorway, then stood glaring after us as we escaped into the misty afternoon.

  “This is a lot better.” Paula twined herself around my arm and snuggled closer, oblivious to anything that had happened around her. “What do we do now?”

  The wet mist was thickening—it would be a downpour any minute. There was one sure way of dampening any untoward ardour that might be developing. I smiled at her.

  “Why don’t we,” I said craftily, “go for a nice little walk?”

  Chapter 7

  We were the last back to the bus, Paula limping behind me. There was silence as we boarded, and I thought at first that we’d been sent to Coventry, either for disgraceful conduct in the cathedral or for keeping them all waiting. But then something in the veiled desperation of Kate’s expression, and the suppressed fury with which Jim gunned the motor, made me suspect that it was not entirely our fault. Now that I thought about it, there had been a curious quality of stillness about the bus as we approached it—as though Pygmalion’s magic had been worked in reverse and the living people had been turned into marble statues, cold, unyielding, and forever silent.

  The bus moved slowly through the late-afternoon traffic. Kate pointed out a few ancient buildings, but the ripple of interest these had stirred on the way down had obviously evaporated. Heads pivoted briefly in obedience to her direction, as though a switch had been pulled automating them, then swiveled back to stare unseeingly straight ahead, with no expression disturbing the alabaster faces.

  She had definitely lost her audience—so completely that it seemed impossible that she had ever held it. And yet, there had been the beginnings of animation on the journey down to Canterbury. I wondered if anything had happened after Paula and I had left the cathedral. But what could have happened, in a cathedral, to upset them so much? To cause this complete and utter withdrawal into themselves?

  Kate tried a little joke. It didn’t fall flat—it just went unnoticed. At this rate, the homeward journey was going to be just great. It was as cheerful as a morgue in here.

  And if I felt like that, what must the paying customers be feeling? They’d forked out a hefty sum for a luxury tour, and they weren’t even enjoying it. This blank and utter silence couldn’t be their idea of luxury. Silence wasn’t that golden—not for Americans. Just in case any of them had had any lingering doubts about calling a halt to the remainder of the tour and demanding their money back, this ought to settle the point for them. Who’d want to travel under these conditions? Certainly not Americans.

  “And so we say good-bye to beautiful Canterbury,” Kate mimicked as the last of the outskirts gave way to rolling fields. No one smiled. I must remember to tell her that, although those old travelogues still showed up in screen programmes in England, no one in America had seen them for about twenty years. They didn’t know what she was talking about. Or rather, they were taking what she said seriously. Just as they were taking everything seriously. Too seriously.

  “I do hope,” Kate continued, trying to force enough gaiety into her voice to elicit some response, “that you’ve all enjoyed your visit, and that you’ve been interested to see the real-life scene of Murder in the Cathedral.”

  She got a response, all right. An icy whiplash of repulsion snaked through the bus. The alabaster figures quivered and seemed on the point of shattering into tiny fragments, as though struck a fatal blow in the wrong place by the sculptor’s hammer.

  Kate felt it, but like me, she couldn’t imagine what she had said. The bright smile wavered on her lips, then disappeared. She stared at them imploringly, but the faces were shuttered again. She surrendered.

  “We’ll return to London by the quickest route,” she informed them coldly. “There isn’t much of interest along the way. I’m sure you’d prefer me to be quiet now, so that you can digest your impressions.” She sat down firmly, her back to them.

  Which was fine for her. And perhaps for me. But were the customers getting their money’s worth? From the look of them, their impressions were pretty indigestible.

  It was a time for desperate measures. I took a deep breath and raised my voice:

  From the tables down at Maury’s,

  To the place where Loo-ey dwells,

  To the dear old Temple Bar we love so well—

  For a moment, I thought I’d cast the wrong die, then Tris Tablor’s voice rose to join mine.

  Sing the Whiffenpoofs assembled,

  With their glasses raised on high,

  And the magic of their singing casts its spell—

  One by one, the others joined in, irresistibly drawn by the power of the old college song, weak in the verse, but rising into the chorus:

  We are poor little lambs,

  Who have lost our way,

  Baa, baa, baa.

  Little black sheep,

  Who have gone astray,

  Baa, baa, baa.

  Gentlemen songsters, off on a spree—

  Suddenly, I was more uneasy than ever. A new tonal quality had entered their voice. They sang with Salvationist fervour:

  Doomed, from here to Eternity,

  Lord, have mercy on such as we—

  Kate turned her head, and I saw Jim glance upward into the driving mirror. So, they felt it, too.

  As the last “baa” died away, th
e reflective silence engulfed them all again. Once more they were withdrawn, introspective, and—perhaps—fearful.

  I thought I had lost the toss. Then, suddenly, Tony Christopher raised his head and began:

  Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame,

  Shout till the mountains send back her fame—

  One by one, the other voices joined in again. A little more hesitantly this time, not so sure of the words, but willing. When the song ended, Ben Varley decided to strike a blow for the home team:

  Oooh, I’m a ramblin’ wreck,

  From Georgia Tech,

  And a heck of an engineer—

  I began to relax. Anywhere, anytime, you can always get a bunch of Americans going with the old college songs. I sometimes think they could stop a barroom brawl in midfight. They can rarely resist a singsong.

  We would soon “Sail, Navy, Down the Field” and “Buckle Down, Winsocki,” stroll through “On Wisconsin,” “Far Above Cayuga’s Waters,” pay tribute to “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” and have a “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”

  And if any of them had tumbled to the fact that I’d spent some time at Harvard, we might even get a couple of choruses of “‘Don’t Send My Boy to Harvard,’ the Dying Mother Said.”

  We were all set for the homeward journey now, and amazingly enough, everyone had snapped back into life. They even seemed to be enjoying themselves. It was a development I wouldn’t have given you odds on ten minutes ago. But it meant that I could relax—or, rather, settle down to some concentrated brooding.

  They were booked for a Medieval Banquet that evening (there went Paula’s diet again—travel is so broadening) and I had a spot of bother trying to get away from them. They seemed to feel that I was just what was needed at the banquet. In case the management hadn’t provided a court jester, I suppose.

  “No, honestly,” I said, “I’ve got to go home and feed my cat.”