spooned the last of the fish on to the plate, and then turned away. One thing, he thought, there had been no Service Charge or Vat on the Last Supper. He smiled to himself: there was no point in telling Linda his joke for she would consider it blasphemy. Odd how religious she was in her own way, far more religious than him.
âLook,â he said, âletâs have peace between us. If you leave me alone Iâll not write anything about you. I swear I wonât.â
âWhat do you mean, leave you alone?â
âWhat I said.â
Linda sighed heavily and put her fish on one side. âI donât understand what youâre talking about.â
So she wasnât taking his offer of peace. Well then, let the sequel be on her own head. The room was swaying in front of him, the floor was rising and falling as if it was a high sea. The waiter was still standing at the far end of the cave staring at him. White coat, white coat â¦
And what had happened to the door? He couldnât see it. He searched around for it but it seemed to him that he was locked in and that Linda was laughing at him. Her face enlarged itself as in a fairground mirror.
âI think we should go upstairs,â she said.
She placed her shawl across her shoulders and he followed her. There was a door after all; it seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. The lounge to his right was vaster than the dining-room and there was a TV set playing. The faces elongated and shortened and for a terrible moment he saw his own face on the screen and his own hand gesturing, pale and ghostly against a background of Renaissance reds.
âListen,â he said to Linda, but she had already gone ahead of him and was climbing the stairs.
He staggered after her. She seemed to be floating ahead of him and then she was fumbling at the door with her key. He decided not to go into the room, but turned away abruptly. He walked back along the corridor and came to the stair and descended. He passed door after door which he did not recognize and he knew that he was in hell. He spiralled downwards but he wasnât finding an entrance into the foyer at all. At the third turning of the second stair. ⦠There were no windows anywhere and he couldnât see out and the stairs descended forever, perhaps to a boiler room. He knelt down on the stair and wept and then began to climb slowly again. There was no way out of the hotel. He was locked in and perhaps at this moment she was phoning to her two friends. Somehow or another she had manoeuvred him to this vain journey by reading his mind.
He ascended the stair unsteadily and found the corridor again. He walked past a number of doors, though the numbers on them seemed to have changed, and knocked on the door of his own bedroom.
âLet me in,â he shouted urgently.
She opened the door and asked, âWhere have you been?â
âNowhere,â he said. âI went down the stairs.â
âWhat for?â
âNo reason. I wanted to get out.â
She hadnât been phoning after all: or perhaps she had been doing so while he was descending the stair into hell. She always looked so innocent. He locked the door, thinking despairingly that these two men might have skeleton keys.
âI think you should go to sleep,â she said. âYou look tired.â
âNo,â he replied. âI must stay awake. But I will lie down.â
âAnd take your clothes off,â she said.
âAll right,â he said. âWhat did you do with the receipt for my case?â
âYouâve got it. You put it in your wallet.â
He took out his wallet and searched for it. Sure enough there it was. He put his wallet under the pillow for safe keeping. He didnât want her to rise in the middle of the night and take out the case with his manuscripts and perhaps throw it into the Clyde.
The receipt was the most important thing in the universe for him at that moment.
Carol Durand, Summer Prescott