be just –’
‘It’s OK,’ she says impatiently. ‘I’ve got to scoot.’
‘One minute. There’s one –’
‘Really. I’ve got to go. See you.’ And then, as an afterthought, snatching the phone back from its cradle, she says airily: ‘Nice to talk.’ The light for line two goes dead, and then the light for line one.
He had imagined that something like joy would be what he would feel when he came to speak to Stephanie again, but instead what he feels is a light-headedness, and a measure of disappointment, not at her attitude towards him, but at her rancour towards her mother, a rancour that was audible in almost every word. He takes her letter from his pocket and reads a sentence or two, but it is irrelevant now, superseded by their conversation, a conversation he almost wishes had not happened, because it has tainted his anticipation of her arrival. Instantly brought closer to his daughter by the sound of her voice, he has been left somewhere that feels no closer at all.
He puts the letter back in his pocket and goes out of the office. About to enter the Randall Room, he sees Mr Morton seated in a wicker chair at the open door, alone, facing the garden, his face raised to receive the mildness of the breeze. He touches the door and Mr Morton turns his head.
The briefest expression of worry passes over the blind man’s brow and then comes a smile of comprehension. ‘Mr Caldecott,’ he says, raising a hand.
Arrested by the certainty with which Mr Morton has spoken his name, he stops at the table in the centre of the room. ‘Mr Morton. Could I bring you something?’ he asks. ‘Tea, perhaps? We have fresh scones and home-made preserves.’
‘Thank you, but no, I don’t think I will,’ says Mr Morton. ‘Later, possibly. For now, this will suffice,’ he says, gesturing towards the garden.
‘Another very pleasant day,’ he comments, preparing to withdraw.
‘Indeed,’ Mr Morton agrees. His fingers play chords on the tape recorder that lies in his lap.
‘We have some tapes you could borrow, if you’d like. Some Mozart symphonies, a bit of Haydn. We use them as background music at receptions. I don’t know if that’s your taste –’
‘Very kind of you,’ says Mr Morton. ‘I may take you up on that offer later. Perhaps this evening.’
He retreats a pace. ‘I’ll let you enjoy the afternoon in peace, then,’ he says, but as he reaches the door he hears the wicker crack. Turning round, he sees that Mr Morton has twisted in the seat to face him, as if suddenly remembering something he had intended to say. ‘If it’s not any trouble, a spot of Mozart would be welcome,’ he says.
When he returns with the tape, Mr Morton’s demeanour has changed. His face, turned down towards the machine in his lap, betrays a darkening mood, a distractedness like that of a reader whose book has led him to a dispiriting thought. ‘Very kind,’ Mr Morton repeats, and there is a sense of absence in the smile with which he takes the cassette.
‘Is there anything else I could get you?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Well, if you think of anything, there’s a bell here,’ he tells him, placing on an adjacent table the small brass bell he has brought from the reception desk. ‘There’ll be somebody right outside all afternoon, in the hall.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll leave you to Mozart and the weather,’ he says, but he remains by Mr Morton’s chair, looking at the cassette, which the blind man is holding as if it were an object of unknown purpose.
Mr Morton adjusts his posture, grasping the arms of the chair to straighten his back, blinking at the garden, like someone mustering his concentration at the recommencement of a concert. ‘Please don’t let me detain you, Mr Caldecott,’ he says, and the request in his voice is unmistakable.
‘I’m not exactly rushed off my feet.’
Mr Morton’s lower lip presses outward and he tilts back his head. ‘To tell you the truth, if you could spare me a couple of minutes, there are a few things I’d like to ask you.’
‘By all means,’ he says, pulling a chair closer.
Mr Morton bends his head right back and turns to left and right, as if taking the measure of the space around him. ‘We’re in the room with the paintings, yes?’
‘We are. The Randall Room.’
‘The Randall Room. The greenhouse,’ Mr Morton remarks, with a nod of amusement. ‘The friend who made the booking for me, he saw a picture of it on a website,’ he explains. ‘He said it made him think of a mad millionaire’s greenhouse.’
‘Yes, yes. I suppose it could be.’
‘The ceiling feels high.’
‘It is. Twenty feet.’
‘And there’s a chandelier? A large chandelier? Behind us?’
‘There is.’
‘OK,’ says Mr Morton, and the skin round his eyes tightens.
‘You knew there was a chandelier?’
‘I had an idea. When you walk underneath it, you can tell there’s something hanging above you. And the breeze is making something scrape up there.’
‘It is?’
‘Yes. Listen,’ says Mr Morton, lifting a forefinger like a conductor preparing to give a musician his cue.’
He listens, and hears nothing but the leaves shuffling in the wind.
‘There, you heard that?’
‘I heard something,’ he equivocates, and Mr Morton lowers his hand, gratified.
‘Now, this room,’ Mr Morton goes on. ‘A ballroom, would that be right?’
‘It was the Assembly Room, when the hotel opened.’
‘Which was?’
‘At the end of the eighteenth century. It was called the Angel, originally. Concerts were held here, and dances. Then, when the Angel became the Oak –’
‘Which was?’
‘1870. Then the new owner, Walter Davenport Croombe, he converted the Assembly Room into a winter garden and commissioned the paintings.’
‘From Randall.’
‘From Randall, precisely. William Joshua Forster Randall of Devizes.’
‘Not a name I know.’
‘I don’t think his fame ever extended much beyond the county.’
‘And what about the paintings? What do they depict?’
‘There’s a wedding in the country on one wall, and workers in the fields on the other side, sowing seed and tending livestock. The third wall is a landscape, with herds of cows and a lake, and distant mountains above the door.’
‘And the style? How do the people look?’
‘Modern folk in medieval costume. Ladies in conical headdresses, men in colourful stockings, with Victorian whiskers. The peasants are all impossibly healthy looking. We had an art teacher staying here, a couple of years ago. She said that Randall’s work was just an anthology of Pre-Raphaelite quotations. A bit of Millais, a bit of Rossetti, a bit of Burne-Jones.’
‘I don’t have a very clear idea of what that might mean, I’m afraid.’
‘No, of course. I’m sorry.’
‘No need. For all you know, I might once have been an aficionado of Burne-Jones. Do you like Mr Randall’s work?’
‘It’s not great art, I know that much, but I like what it does for the room.