‘Let’s have a little more brandy,’ said William.
But I said to him, solemnly: ‘The stuff is deadly poison to you, Mr William. I strongly urge that you spend about three months in my sanatorium.’
‘I won’t go,’ he said. ‘Nothing the matter with me. I’m okay.’
‘Make him go, make him go!’ his brother screamed. ‘Oh, William, William, for God’s sake – for my sake – go to the sanatorium!’
‘I’m okay,’ said William, cheerfully. ‘You’re the one that needs the sanatorium. I’m not going. I’d rather stay at home and enjoy myself. A short life and a merry one. Ha?’
And the extraordinary fact of the matter was, William was, as he said, okay – liver impalpable, kidneys sound, heart in excellent condition – he, who drank two quarts of brandy every day of his life! A tongue like a baby’s, eyes like stars, steady as a rock. It was John who showed the stigmata of the alcoholic and the cigar-fiend – he who had never tasted liquor or tobacco.
How do you like that for sympathy?
John whispered brokenly: ‘I might have tried to bear it all; only last week this sot proposed marriage to our housekeeper! Marriage! To our housekeeper! I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it!’
William said: ‘Why not? Nice woman. Johnny hates her, Doc, but she understands me. Past her prime, maybe, but comfortable to be with. Shares my tastes. Likes cheerful music. Don’t say no to a highball. Cooks the way I like it – plenty of pepper, rich stuff with a lot of spice. This Johnny-boy, here, all he can take is milk and boiled weakfish. Yes, so help me, I’m going to marry Clara…. Sure you can’t let me have another little bit of brandy, Doc? An itsy-boo?’
I said: ‘No. For the last time, are you sure that you won’t come to my sanatorium?’
‘Sure as you’re sitting there,’ said William, while John sobbed helplessly on the sofa.
So, to conclude: The brothers John and William went out to where their great limousine was waiting in the dusk, and drove away.
Shortly afterwards, John died in delirium of cirrhosis, nephritis, dropsy, and ‘the whole works’ – as you put it. His brother William died soon after, and they were buried together in the Sacred Heart cemetery.
Curious, what?
The good Dr Almuna rubbed his hands and chuckled.
A listening psychiatrist said: ‘Most extraordinary,’ and began an explanation that promised to be interminable.
But Dr Almuna cut him short. He said: ‘The explanation, my dear Doctor, is an exceedingly simple one. Perhaps I failed to mention that John and William were Siamese twins, and had only one liver between them. And poor John had the thin end of it, which cirrhosed in advance of William’s.’
He added: ‘Intriguing, what? Perhaps the only case on record of a man drinking his teetotal brother to death.’
The White-washed Room
SHE was one of those hearty, healthy young women whom you may see every day in towns like Guildford. You see them and you hear them. They wear good tweed execrably cut and, more often than not, are accompanied by pink-faced men in yellow turtle-necked sweaters and big flannel trousers, who wear – as it were with an air of astonishment – brushed-up gingerish moustaches. The men with the moustaches stand condescendingly filling foul old briar pipes, or lighting cigarettes, while conversing at the tops of their voices – usually with one big, booted foot on the running-board of a small, fast, yet dilapidated little car.
She came of an excellent family. She could out-ride, out-smoke, out-drink and out-think any other well-bred girl in the little town. She could ride and take care of a horse, and knew exactly what to look for in a dog. As her father said, Athene was a good girl with no damn nonsense about her. She was his only child, and after his wife died she was mother, daughter and son to him.
She had only one secret. This was the only thing of which she had ever been ashamed, or afraid. It was a dream. Normally, Athene didn’t dream; she went to bed and pulled down a big, thick black curtain which rolled up at daybreak, when she awoke, bright like a struck match, and went storming and roaring about her daily business – which was the strenuous business of organised pleasure. It would have humiliated her to admit that she had dreams that troubled her.
From time to time – especially after a hard day’s hunting – she would drop into a deeper sleep than usual, and, although this sleep was terribly deep, she felt until the last, that she was somehow standing aside from herself and watching herself. The dream took this form:
She dreamt that she had been asleep. Something at the back of her mind told her that she had been travelling, and was a long way from her home. As, in the dream, she came out of a deep blackness, with something like the gasp of relief of a swimmer who comes up to the surface from somewhere below his depth, she knew that she was in a remote and strange place, and that she was in danger.
In her dream she lay still and waited. Athene was an intelligent girl, accustomed to the frenzied patience of the hunter and the fisherman: she knew how to keep still.
She knew that she was dreaming, but she wanted to know what was to come.
Her eyes were open. She could see the foot-rail of a black iron bed. Beyond it stood a blank white-washed wall. She could not move her eyes, yet something informed her that, on the north side of the room, directly opposite the window, there stood a lectern with a small vase containing four dying chrysanthemums.
As she reached this stage of the dream the horror of the grave and the fear of death took hold of her, and she wanted to scream. But she couldn’t scream.
She was paralysed. Athene was well aware that outside the sun blazed, and that there she would be free and happy. Here there was no sun. This place was dead. One white-hot bar of light had poked itself between the bars of the window and made a little puddle somewhere behind her. She couldn’t see it but she knew it was there; she couldn’t move her eyes.
But she could hear.
She could hear little quiet feet approaching. Their scuffling began as a whisper, turned into a flapping, and at last became footsteps which stopped outside the door.
She heard the door-knob turn.
Slippered feet slapped the clean floor. Then she saw two little old ladies dressed in washed-out pale blue, who walked to the foot of the bed.
As this point she awoke, always wet with cold, biting off the beginning of a scream, because it would have been improper for such a woman to express terror, let alone scream.
Athene married. She bore her husband three children, two girls and a boy. Only one of her children went wrong – the girl, who went to live in sin with a politician who afterwards made a fortune out of advertising and thereby vindicated himself. Athene had never said anything about her hideous dream. The time had passed. She was desperately lonely. Her children were strangers to her and she could find no means of loving her husband. She went away.
She did not know where she was going; she knew simply, that she wanted to go away, anywhere away from her world.
She took the train. It was filled with soldiers. Athene had taken a ticket to the end of the line and was prepared to get out anywhere at all. The train was hot and stuffy; they had been crossing a great white desert-white because it was of fine sand under a white-hot sun.
It seemed to her that she read BERGVILLE on the sign in the station and she got out and drank ice-cold beer until the groan of coaches and the screeching of the wheels told her that the train had left without her, so she sent a telegram ahead, dealing with her luggage, found a hotel and went to sleep.