The Bell-Boy by James Hamilton-Paterson Read Free Book Online Page A

Muffy greeted him from behind the desk where he was reading his stars. ‘I had some silly idea you’d gone off looking for guests, but all along it was bread you were after.’
    ‘No tourists, Mr Muffy. Good morning, Mr Muffy. No tourists at all. So I bought something to make our own guests happy so they will stay here longer and bring in more money.’
    Behind him he heard the proprietor’s newspaper rattlesourly as he turned into the dining room. He had surmised correctly: the Hemonys were at table, tackling large slices of papaya.
    ‘Good morning, my lady, miss,’ he inclined his head cheerfully. ‘Good sleeping, I hope?’
    ‘Oh, Lucky, good morning to you. Yes, thank you; we all had a wonderful sleep. I’m afraid we slept most of yesterday too.’
    But Laki had spotted something amiss.
    ‘What is this?’ he cried, dumping his bread on an adjacent table and picking up their toast with horror. ‘This no good. Very old. No, no, is not for eating. Look, I take,’ and he removed the entire supply in handfuls, replacing it with his fresh loaves. ‘I buy this now,’ he explained. ‘Very new. Still hot, you feel. Special Malomba bread, we call laran. I buy to you, my lady, because you guest.’
    ‘How lovely. What did you say it was called? Laran?’
    This dining room gave on to a small verandah. Not so many years ago it had overlooked a lawn dotted with magnolia trees, but nowadays it mostly backed on to the BDL’s yard. Still, being open to the air it was moderately cool and tumbling finches flew in and out, pecking up crumbs and clinging upside down to the fly-spotted blades of the motionless ceiling fan. One of these birds was now perched on top of a cracked mirror advertising a soft drink and was fervently attacking its own image. Laki left the room with a deferential smile as the Hemonys started their loaves, flakes of crust splitting like shrapnel on to the floor to the interest of the finches whose shrill cries brought still others swooping in.
    Leaving behind him the sound of an aviary, he went to the kitchen where he prepared a small brazier shaped like a round-bottomed saucepan with holes in it. Then, starting at the top of the building, he fumigated the occupied rooms one by one, shaking powdered incense on to the coals from a beer tin. Wreathed in fragrant smoke he paid specialattention to No. 41 where the smell of mould was strongest. On the floor beneath he knocked on Zoe’s door before letting himself in. He walked all round the room with the brazier at arm’s length describing a thick smoke-ring, while his eyes took in the rumpled bed, the T-shirt and underwear hung up to dry. Through the open window came the comfortable sound of broody hens clucking on the bank’s roof.
    With a last stare at the underwear Laki sighed and gave the brazier a valedictory waft, shutting the door softly behind him. She certainly was beautiful. Seeing them all together at breakfast just now had given him quite a lurch. Maybe it was just the morning sunlight, but it seemed to him their blond heads had lit up the room, so bright was their hair. The lady’s of course, was not quite so fine and lustrous, having – as he noticed when standing over her with the loaves – somewhat browner roots, as well as strands of grey which veiled it in a certain mistiness. The boy’s was, if anything, fairest of all. Laki was much intrigued by fair hair. Since his own was the uniform jet-black of all his countrymen, anything different had about it a touch of exoticism, while blondness like the Hemonys’ carried with it the golden air of purest Hollywood fantasyland. Maybe Zoe was after all a princess travelling incognita. Perhaps – an awful thought – perhaps it was she who had to visit hadlam Tapranne for psychic surgery? Maybe the publicity which would otherwise surround her made it necessary to travel disguised as an ordinary person?
    But here they were, coming up from breakfast and catching him with the brazier in one