as the Beales’ and the Maces’, the same as our own, come to that. Not a tither of difference, Keith.’
‘We need to be conveyed to our correct destination. An arrangement has to be made.’
‘The trouble is, Keith, I don’t know if you know it but you’re half a continent away from Venice. Another thing is, I’m not employed by Your– Kind, nothing like that. They just reduce our ticket a bit if I agree to keep an eye. On location we call it.’ Mrs Franks went on to say that her husband had also scrutinized the piece of pink paper and was in complete agreement with her. She asked Keith if he had met her husband, and said again that he was the man with the bad leg. He’d been an accountant and still did a lot of accountancy work one way or another, in a private capacity. The Edelweiss Hotel was excellent, she said. Your-Kind would never choose an indifferent hotel.
‘We are asking you to get in touch with your firm in London,’ Keith said. ‘We do not belong with your group.’
In silence, though smiling, Mrs Franks held out the pink list. Her expression insisted that it spoke for itself. No one could gainsay the dotted identification among the others.
‘Our name is there by mistake.’
A man limped across the gravel towards them. He was a large man of shambling appearance, his navy-blue pin-striped jacket and waistcoat at odds with his brown trousers, his spectacles repaired with Sellotape. The sound of his breath could be heard as he approached. He blew it through half-pursed lips in a vague rendition of a Gilbert and Sullivan melody.
‘These are the poor lost lambs,’ Mrs Franks said. ‘Keith and Dawne.’
‘How do?’ Mr Franks held a hand out. ‘Silly thing to happen, eh?’
It was Mr Franks who eventually suggested that Keith should telephone Your-Kind-of-Holiday himself, and to Keith’s surprise he got through to a number in Croydon without any difficulty. ‘Excuse me a minute,’ a girl said when he finished. He heard her talking to someone else and he heard the other person laughing. There was a trace of laughter in the girl’s voice when she spoke again. You couldn’t change your mind, she said, in the middle of a package. In no circumstances whatsoever could that be permitted. ‘We’re not changing our minds,’ Keith protested, but while he was explaining all over again he was cut off because he hadn’t any more coins. He cashed a traveller’s cheque with the receptionist and was supplied with a number of five-franc pieces, but when he re- dialled the number the girl he’d spoken to couldn’t be located so he explained everything to another girl. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ this girl said, ‘but if we allowed people to change their minds on account of they didn’t like the look of a place we’d be out of business in no time.’ Keith began to shout into the telephone, and Dawne rapped on the glass of the booth, holding up a piece of paper on which she’d written
It was not the first time that Keith and Dawne had suffered in this way: they were familiar with defeat. There’d been the time, a couple of years after their marriage, when Keith had got into debt through purchasing materials for making ships in bottles; earlier – before they’d even met –there was the occasion when the Lamb and Flag had had to let Dawne go because she’d taken tips although the rules categorically forbade it. Once Keith had sawn through the wrong water pipe and the landlords had come along with a bill for nearly two hundred pounds when the ceiling of the flat below collapsed. It was Uncle who had given Dawne a job in his shop after the Lamb and Flag episode and who had put them on their feet by paying off the arrears of the handicraft debt. In the end he persuaded them to come and live with him, pointing out that the arrangement would suit all three of them. Since his sister’s death he had found it troublesome, managing on his own.
In Interlaken they selected a postcard to send him: of a mountain that had featured in a James Bond film. But they didn’t know what to write on it: if they told the truth they would receive the old man’s unspoken scorn when they returned – a look that came into his eyes while he silently regarded them. Years ago he had openly said – once only – that they were accident-prone. They were unfortunate in their dealings with the world, he had explained when Dawne asked him; lame ducks, he supposed you could say, if they’d forgive the expression, victims by nature, no fault of their own. Ever since, such judgements had been expressed only through his eyes.
‘You choose your piece of gateau,’ Dawne said, ‘up at the counter. They put it on a plate for you. Then the waitress comes along and you order the tea. I’ve been watching how it’s done.’
Keith chose a slice of glazed greengage cake and Dawne a portion of strawberry flan. As soon as they sat down a waitress came and stood smiling in front of them. ‘Tea with milk in it,’ Dawne ordered, because when she’d said they were going abroad someone who’d come into the shop had warned her that you had to ask for milk, otherwise the tea came just as it was, sometimes no more than a tea-bag and a glass of hot water.
‘A strike?’ Dawne suggested. ‘You’re always hearing of strikes in airports.’
But Keith continued to gaze at the blank postcard, not persuaded that an attempt at falsehood was wise. It wasn’t easy to tell the old man a lie. He had a way of making such attempts feel clumsy, and in the end of winkling out the truth. Yet his scorn would continue for many months, especially since he had paid out what he would call – a couple of hundred times at least – ‘good money’ for their tickets. ‘That’s typical of Keith, that is,’ he’d repeatedly inform his customers in Dawne’s hearing, and she’d pass it on that night in bed, the way she always passed his comments on.
Keith ate his greengage slice, Dawne her strawberry flan. They did not share their thoughts, although their thoughts were similar. ‘You’ve neither of you a head for business,’ he’d said after the ships-in-bottles calamity, and again when Dawne unsuccessfully attempted to make a go of dressmaking alterations. ‘You wouldn’t last a week in charge of things downstairs.’ He always referred to the shop as ‘downstairs’. Every day of his life he rose at five o’clock in order to be downstairs for the newspapers when they arrived. He’d done so for fifty-three years.
They imagined him showing the postcard to Mrs Withers. ‘That’s typical, that is,’ they imagined him saying and Mrs Withers jollying him along, telling him not to be sarky. Mrs Withers was pleased about earning the extra; she’d been as keen as anything when he’d asked her to come in fulltime for a fortnight.
‘Could happen to anyone, a strike,’ Dawne said, voicing Mrs Withers’ response.
Keith finished his greengage slice. ‘Call in to Smith’s for a will form,’ he imagined the cross, tetchy voice instructing Mrs Withers, the postcard already tucked away on the Embassy Tipped shelf. And when she arrived with the will form the next morning he’d let it lie around all day but have it in his hand when she left, before he locked the shop door behind her. ‘Silly really,’ Mrs Withers would say when eventually she told Dawne about it.
