Дэймон Найт - Orbit 8

You won’t find our little village on any map. Too small, I suppose. So when the new guest came to the manor it created a great deal of foolish talk—and ever since I was sworn in as a constable (the proudest day of my life, I might add), I have considered it a part of my duties to listen to that sort of talk. He was a big man, with a face somewhat like a St. Bernard’s that has worms, and would come into the public bar of the Royal James some nights just before closing and drink a glass or two of cognac and watch the moon through the big mullion window. It wasn’t full then, but what they call gibbous, meaning between the half and the full, and growing with every turn of the clock, like a bad girl without a ring. Talbot was what they said his name was, and he was an American.

That night, the first night I can really remember, as I told you, nothing to speak of occurred until just a trifle after midnight. Then the ‘phone rang, and it was Wilkes, the butler at the manor. The poor chap was so taken I could hardly make out what he was saying, but I could tell it was serious and I hopped on my bike and pedaled out there. The fog had lifted from the high ground but it was still as thick as porridge in the low spots and looked silver-white in the moonlight—not yellow like one of your London fogs.

Breakchain House is the manor’s right name, though it isn’t used much. The legend that goes with that name is ugly enough that most of us in Stoke-on-Wold don’t want to be reminded of it. Except when we can afflict it on trippers. (But then you’re a kind of tripper yourself, aren’t you? Thumbing your way through the pages.) It’s a castle, really, to which a Georgian wing—they call it the “new wing”—has been added. No one lives in the old part now; at least, no one the people in the new wing want to talk about.

Wilkes answered the door for me, still white as paste; I had him assemble everyone in the library in the usual way. Besides Lord and Lady Breakchain, there was a very pretty Yank girl named Betty, and Talbot, and a Prof. Smith. This Smith was a striking-looking gent who called himself “a student of the occult.” I noticed that he carried a cane with a heavy silver knob shaped like a wolf’s head; that was unusual, of course, since in a place like the manor one usually gives one’s stick to the butler—although I had kept my cosh.

I won’t bore you with what was said in the library that night about the unearthly howling that had been heard on the moor or the thing Wilkes and the girl had seen lapping water from the fountain in the garden at midnight, since none of that really bears on what’s bothering me now. But when I left there and rode back to the village I saw lights at the James, and thinking of that does put me off a bit. You see, the bar was open, just like any roadhouse in the States, and the barmaid and the owner didn’t seem to have any fear of losing the license either, not even when I walked in, even though it was hours after closing.

What was more, they’d quite a number of patrons, late as it was, as if everyone had known the place would be open. Just now I was on the point of saying the patrons were ordinary enough village people, but they weren’t, really. Every person for miles around that had something odd or comic about him, something that perhaps might make a stranger laugh, was there. And none of the others were.

The girl behind the bar too. A big strapping blonde. You’d expect her to be sour at having to work late like that and miss her beauty sleep; but she was chipper as a wren, pulling the old Major’s long mustaches and making jokes with everyone. I didn’t say anything about closing, but took a place at the bar and ordered a pint of the dark. When she brought it, I thought for a second or two that I’d come to the bottom of it all, but afterward I was more at sea than ever.

You see, the stuff in the tankard she brought me wasn’t beer at all, but a kind of foaming ginger drink or some such slop. When I tasted it first I nearly spit it out on the floor, but then, as I said, for a moment I thought I had the whole game. “Going to have a good ‘un on the law,” I thought to myself, “when I tries to tag ‘em for servin’ after closin’ hours they’d give me the proper laugh and claim none of this stuffs alcoholic.” But then I looked around, and so help me none of it was! I couldn’t hardly believe my eyes, and when the Major left for a bit of a go at the WC, I took up his brandy and sniffed it and tasted it, and it was nothing but tea—nasty, bad, cold tea at that. It was the same with everyone. Those that was supposed to have beer had the same slops they’d served me, and those that was drinking whiskey or what-not had tea. Of course I should have piped up right then and said, “ ‘Ere now, isn’t there a one of you blighters with more sense than to sit up drinkin’ this ‘ere sweet bilge at two o’clock in the morn-in’?” But I didn’t. For the first few minutes I didn’t because I expected they’d have the laugh on me, and after that it was because I felt it in my bones they’d say I’d gone crackers and call the sergeant to have me locked up.

Talking to one and another I tried to hint around about it, but it was no go. Nobody wanted to talk about anything except Talbot and what was happening out at the manor. Finally I told them what I had heard out there that night, very official about it so they wouldn’t think I was just spreading rumors, and, crikey! when I did, every one of them did just what it was he was famous for. The Major coughed and talked in his throat like a sheep so that no one could understand what he was saying, Harry Dorsey the barber swallowed so you could see the Adam’s apple bounce in his long neck, the barmaid patted her hair and said something smart and tartish, and so on.

That was the beginning of it, I suppose. That and the cinema and the time I walked by the widow Perry’s window and happened to glance in. Of course that wasn’t until later, but then the whole month, the month between the first call out to the manor and the second one, seemed just to pass in a dream anyway. I suppose I performed my regular duties, but I don’t remember it. All I was really thinking about was coming into the station house with all the fog blowing past me that time, and how the folk in the village never seemed to have anything to do but gossip now. Also—I know this is going to sound queer, but I can’t explain it better—how badly all of us spoke. Some, I mean, as though they were cockneys right out of Cheap-side although they were born and raised here. And others like Canadians or even Yanks. I found I was doing it myself.

What I’m getting at is that the film set me thinking about how those method actor chaps are supposed to take a part—create a role is what they call it—and really make themselves believe they’re the person. As I understand it, if one of the method chaps is supposed to be a sea captain, for example, he’ll bloody well force his mind to believe he fairly is that captain.

Now when he’s the captain, if you take my meaning, how does he feel about it, eh?

Does he like thinking that when the film’s over he’s going to be that twirpy little method chap again, not knowing the tiller from the main brace? Or does he even know it?

You see, it seems to me that almost the only thing I’m good for in the village here is going out to the manor as I did tonight to sort of wrap things up officially when all the dust has settled, like tonight when this Prof. Smith winged poor old Talbot with one of his silver—and a rum idea that is if you ask me—bullets and I made my speech about how the best thing would be for me not to report the goings-on at all for fear there’d be a panic. What bothers me, you see, is not watching all that hair come off Talbot’s face and his teeth shrink up to normal ones again —that seems right enough, now that the Professor’s explained it all—but that when I looked into the widow Perry’s window there wasn’t any insides to her house. Just empty ground, if you understand me, and weeds.