The Old Silent

first to agree that the more offensive the sulfur, the greater its potency and the better the cure.

He looked up and down the long hall, where windows displayed the latest finery to be bought at great expense from the local swank shops. In the enormous and handsome dining room, waiters were moving about putting final touches to napkins and crystal. To his left was a large sitting room that served as bar and a place for tea. Here the tea-drinkers sat about like sticks, what few there were: three couples and one single lady, all middle-aged, looking as if they were caught in some holding pattern between life and death.

One could feel the history of Harrogate pressing heavily in, looking round the Old Swan, sitting here in the cold and sodden January of Yorkshire's West Riding.

God! Would he stop thinking about Death in Venice? Melrose shut his eyes tightly to make the vision go away, himself like Prufrock in white flannel trousers strolling along the beach-

'Over here! Yoo-hoo! Melrose, dear! Melrose!'

The fluting voice broke up a vision, like pebbles dashed in water, of himself dying in a canvas deck chair by a bathhouse. He looked about, baffled, and then heard the bellowing voice of Agatha behind him answering the other:

'Teddy! Teddy, dear!'

Hell's bells! he thought. He'd been mentally basking in the Italian sun when he should have been making his get-away. Now he was stuck, that was all there was to it, as Agatha trumpeted by him toward the table where sat the single lady. He was, after all, a gentleman, and could hardly walk out without saying hello…

Or could he? Not walk out, of course, but continue his vow of silence? If he could manage to keep his mouth shut for two hundred miles, surely he could play the game for another half hour. He checked his watch as he walked toward the two women. One-half hour, chair to door, the acid test. Could he make a comparative stranger believe that he'd actually taken part in their exchange without saying anything?

'Hello, Melrose!' Teddy extended her heavily veined and beringed hand.

With what he hoped was a debonair smile, rather than shaking the hand, he barely grazed the fingers with his lips.

Teddy's tiny black eyes, being lent the glint of shadow and kohl liner, glittered like sequins.

Melrose sat as his aunt said, 'Well, practicing for the Continent, are you, Plant? But you'll never scrub off that old moth-eaten country-tweedy look…'

He smiled, choking the desire to ask her if she'd any more adjectives on hand, but merely crossed his unbespoken-tailored gray-worsted-trousered legs, plucked an apple green napkin from the blush pink tablecloth, and sat back while Agatha told Teddy that they were all off to Italy soon.

As they greeted each other, kissing air, and then sat gabbling away, Melrose wondered both how he was to order tea without opening his mouth (here came the waiter) and if this was the same woman whom they'd visited in York. That Teddy (Althea, he believed, was her name) had been a heavy, squarely built woman with a frieze of bright orange hair so lacquered that a North Sea gale couldn't've dislodged a wisp of it. This Teddy looked a bit gaunt and had given up the henna, apparently, for her bluey-black hair was done in some hairdresser's idiot version of a '20s style, a lot of little wet-looking ringlets like a bunch of mashed grapes.

And she was no longer plain old Mrs. Stubbs, but had snagged-good Lord, were they that common?-a nobleman somewhere in the South of France. De la Roche was her name now. Were there so many loose princes, counts, crackpot kings wandering round that they were ripe for the taking? Which line of thought quite naturally only led him back to Count Dracula Giopinno and that Vivian had shouted at him and Marshall Trueblood she'd be bloody damned if she'd let them come to her wedding-

Slam went the door of her cottage. He chewed his lip. Marshall had a plan for taking the Orient Express.

'Well, good Lord, Melrose! Absolutely everyone disguises himself on the Orient Express. You should see them trooping about Victoria Station.'

'Sir?'

Melrose was jolted now from Vivian's doorstep, where he was determined to stand until he molted, by the white-jacketed waiter. He was nearly surprised into a reply of some sort. He merely returned the waiter's smile and got the result he wanted.

'Tea for three, sir?'

After all, waiters in places like the Old Swan were trained to anticipate one's needs. Melrose nodded. He'd really have loved to have been challenged with a menu in Greek, or something. No, that wouldn't be a challenge. All he'd have to do was point.

The waiter returned his nod and said, 'The set tea, ma-dame? Or would you prefer sandwiches? Buttered toast-?'

Melrose was absolutely enjoying the small challenge this could present, until the waiter said, 'Madame?' Hell, 'Madame' would fill up the whole thirty minutes-now twenty-two-just ordering.

'-tarts, of course. Have you watercress sandwiches? Yes, we'll have those with the cucumber ones, too-'

Teddy put in: 'Oh, you must try the anchovy toast, dear. It's quite delectable.'

'Sir,' said the waiter, and swanned away as if Melrose had given him the complete order.

Checking his watch, he raised his time-frame to forty-five minutes, all told, which left, as of now, thirty-one minutes in which he intended to make them believe he had talked when he hadn't.

The Times crossword in under fifteen minutes seemed dull by comparison. When he thought about it further, he realized actors could do this very thing: Bogart only needed to narrow his lips, Cagney to grit his teeth, Gielgud to raise his eyebrows, and Gable-hell, did anyone remember a word he'd ever said except 'I don't give a damn'? Of course not.

Thus for thirty-one minutes, two cups of tea, one finger of anchovy toast, Melrose grinned, grimaced, touched, sat back and forth, laughed soundlessly, leaned close, leaned back, slapped his leg, crooked his elbow, looked intent.

He had become, in half an hour, a brilliant conversationalist.

As they gibbered like gibbons in the bush, he rose, looked pained that he must leave, once again brought Teddy's hand to his lips, and actually squeezed Agatha's shoulder in farewell.

As he walked off, smiling all round at waiters and stone-faced guests, he thought again, I won!

He'd make a mockery of speech, a burlesque of words, a travesty of talk.

'Melrose!'

Agatha was bellowing at his back. He stopped, turned. She was waving him back.

Very well.

She was actually being gracious as she said, 'But Melrose, you didn't notice!'

He raised his eyebrows in question, a thin smile playing on his lips.

'It's Teddy! Don't you remember how she looked in York?'

A confidential whisper now from Teddy: 'Dear, I've been completely done over!' Here she spread her arms, then touched her neck, her hair, turned her head this way and that. 'There's this marvelous little clinic in Zurich… Well? What do you think?'

He knew he didn't need to do it. He knew he was clever enough to get out of this. After the whole day's efforts, he could have ordered Wellington's troops with a few flicks of his fingers; beaten Connors at Wimbledon with a teabag; left Lester Piggott a length behind with a hobbyhorse.

'Well, Melrose? Well?'

He splayed his arms on the table, looked deeply into Teddy's eyes and said, 'Why waste words?'

The gasps and giggles trailed behind him as he left the Old Swan Hotel.

10

Gnawing on a chicken leg that Agatha had missed in her rummage through the picnic basket, Melrose drove