«Seems a bit silly when they're paying plenty to take the cure or whatever it is.»
«And that's another thing.» The young man's voice was indignant. «I can understand charging twenty quid a week and giving you three square meals a day, but how do they get away with charging twenty quid for giving you nothing but hot water to eat? Doesn't make sense.» «I suppose there are the treatments. And it must be worth it to the people if they get well.»
«Guess so,» said the young man doubtfully. «Some of them do look a bit different when I come to take them back to the station.» He sniggered. «And some of them change into real old goats after a week of nuts and so forth. Guess I might try it myself one day.» «What do you mean?»
The young man glanced at Bond. Reassured and remembering Bond's worldly comments on Brighton, he said, «Well, you see we got a girl here in Washington. Racy bird. Sort of local tart, if you see what I mean. Waitress at a place called The Honey Bee Tea Shop– or was, rather. She started most of us off, if you get my meaning. Quid a go and she knows a lot of French tricks. Regular sport. Well, this year the word got round up at the Scrubs and some of these old goats began patronizing Polly–Polly Grace, that's her name. Took her out in their Bentleys and gave her a roll in a deserted quarry up on the Downs. That's been her pitch for years. Trouble was they paid her five, ten quid and she soon got too good for the likes of us. Priced her out of our market, so to speak. Inflation, sort of. And a month ago she chucked up her job at The Honey Bee, and you know what?» The young man's voice was loud with indignation. «She bought herself a beat-up Austin Metropolitan for a couple of hundred quid and went mobile. Just like the London tarts in Curzon Street they talk about in the papers. Now she's off to Brighton, Lewes–anywhere she can find the sports, and in between whiles she goes to work in the quarry with these old goats from the Scrubs! Would you believe it!» The young man gave an angry blast on his klaxon at an inoffensive couple on a tandem bicycle.
Bond said seriously, «That's too bad. I wouldn't have thought these people would be interested in that sort of thing on nut cutlets and dandelion wine or whatever they get to eat at this place.»
The young man snorted. «That's all you know. I mean»–he felt he had been too emphatic–»that's what we all thought. One of my pals, he's the son of the local doctor, talked the thing over with his dad– in a roundabout way, sort of. And his dad said no. He said that this sort of diet and no drink and plenty of rest, what with the massage and the hot and cold sitz baths and what have you, he said that all clears the blood stream and tones up the system, if you get my meaning. Wakes the old goats up–makes 'em want to start cutting the mustard again, if you know the song by that Rosemary Clooney.»
Bond laughed. He said, «Well, well. Perhaps there's something to the place after all.»
A sign on the right of the road said: « Shrublands. Gateway to Health. First right. Silence please. « The road ran through a wide belt of firs and evergreens in a fold of the Downs. A high wall appeared and then an imposing, mock-battlemented entrance with a Victorian lodge from which a thin wisp of smoke rose straight up among the quiet trees. The young man turned in and followed a gravel sweep between thick laurel bushes. An elderly couple cringed off the drive at a blare from his klaxon and then on the right there were broad stretches of lawn and neatly flowered borders and a sprinkling of slowly moving figures, alone and in pairs, and behind them a redbrick Victorian monstrosity from which a long glass sun parlor extended to the edge of the grass.
The young man pulled up beneath a heavy portico with a crenelated roof. Beside a varnished, iron-studded arched door stood a tall glazed urn above which a notice said: « No smoking inside. Cigarettes here please. « Bond got down from the taxi and pulled his suitcase out of the back. He gave the young man a ten-shilling tip. The young man accepted it as no less than his due. He said, «Thanks. You ever want to break out, you can call me up. Polly's not the only one. And there's a tea shop on the Brighton road has buttered muffins. So long.» He banged the gears into bottom and ground off back the way he had come. Bond picked up his suitcase and walked resignedly up the steps and through the heavy door.
Inside it was very warm and quiet. At the reception desk in the big oak-paneled hall a severely pretty girl in starched white welcomed him briskly. When he had signed the register she led him through a series of somberly furnished public rooms and down a neutral-smelling white corridor to the back of the building. Here there was a communicating door with the annex, a long, low, cheaply built structure with rooms on both sides of a central passage. The doors bore the names of flowers and shrubs. She showed him into Myrtle, told him that «the Chief» would see him in an hour's time, at six o'clock, and left him. It was a room-shaped room with furniture-shaped furniture and dainty curtains. The bed was provided with an electric blanket. There was a vase containing three marigolds beside the bed and a book called Nature Cure Explained by Alan Moyle, M.N.B.A. Bond opened it and ascertained that the initials stood for «Member: British Naturopathic Association.» He turned off the central heating and opened the windows wide. The herb garden, row upon row of small nameless plants round a central sundial, smiled up at him. Bond unpacked his things and sat down in the single armchair and read about eliminating the waste products from his body. He learned a great deal about foods he had never heard of, such as Potassium Broth, Nut Mince, and the mysteriously named Unmalted Slippery Elm. He had got as far as the chapter on massage and was reflecting on the injunction that this art should be divided into Effleurage, Stroking, Friction, Kneading, Petrissage, Tapotement, and Vibration, when the telephone rang. A girl's voice said that Mr. Wain would be glad to see him in Consulting Room A in five minutes.
Mr. Joshua Wain had a firm, dry handshake and a resonant, encouraging voice. He had a lot of bushy gray hair above an unlined brow, soft, clear brown eyes, and a sincere and Christian smile. He appeared to be genuinely pleased to see Bond and to be interested in him. He wore a very clean smocklike coat with short sleeves from which strong hairy arms hung relaxed. Below were rather incongruous pin-stripe trousers. He wore sandals over socks of conservative gray and when he moved across the consulting room his stride was a springy lope.
Mr. Wain asked Bond to remove all his clothes except his shorts. When he saw the many scars he said politely, «Dear me, you do seem to have been in the wars, Mr. Bond.»
Bond said indifferently, «Near miss. During the war.»
«Really! War between peoples is a terrible thing. Now, just breathe in deeply, please.» Mr. Wain listened at Bond's back and chest, took his blood pressure, weighed him and recorded his height, and then, after asking him to lie face down on a surgical couch, handled his joints and vertebrae with soft, probing fingers.
While Bond replaced his clothes, Mr. Wain wrote busily at his desk. Then he sat back. «Well, Mr. Bond, nothing much to worry about here, I think. Blood pressure a little high, slight osteopathic lesions in the upper vertebrae–they'll probably be causing your tension headaches, by the way–and some right sacroiliac strain with the right ilium slightly displaced backwards. Due to a bad fall some time, no doubt.» Mr. Wain raised his eyebrows for confirmation.