‘I’m not blind, I’m not deaf, Mrs Gandell,’ he replied.
The silence seemed too long, the torrent too surprising. Jones was on his feet again, half way across the table, glaring down.
‘Only one thing lower than low, Mrs Gandell, one thing worse than worse and that’s if Jonesy here suddenly took it into his head to depart, yes, and walked right out of this place. Tell you what would happen, you great fat bitch, tell you. You’d die. Yes, and all that would be left for you is Vaughan, the upstairs angel, with her silly bloody dreams about princes and stars and seas, and her dead grandmother, and the shadow on her wall. Perhaps in her Vaughan way she might help you, as a creature, yes indeed.’
She pushed him away. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Jones?’
‘You know what I’m talking about,’ he replied, ‘you do … know.’
‘Know what?’ and she too, was on her feet, and the thunder a little too close to the Jones ear.
When he looked at her again, it was with a certain disgust. ‘When you shout, Mrs Gandell, I think only of the world’s bosun.’
She gripped and shook him. ‘And you, when you have your bloody moods, are the world’s bugger.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, and sat down.
‘Why are we doing this?’
‘Why are we?’
And they both sat down. Jones picked up his empty coffee cup, and put it to his lips, and appeared to be drinking copiously. Mrs Gandell bowed her head, traced patterns with her finger among the bread crumbs. When she looked up Jones was sitting with his back to her.
‘Jones?’
He swung round. ‘Yes, Mrs Gandell?’
‘I’ve been thinking of letting Miss Vaughan have the larger room now that Mr Prothero has gone.’
‘Indeed!’
‘Yes.’
‘She likes where she is.’
‘I’ll talk to her about it.’
‘I said, she won’t like it.’
‘She doesn’t appear to go out very often, Jones.’
‘Does she have to go out then?’
‘All right, all right. No need to get excited about it.’
‘I never get excited, Mrs Gandell,’ he said.
‘Then get excited,’ she said, and swept out of the dining-room.
‘Come along. Laundry.’
‘Oh yes,’ Jones said, stumbling after.
At the top of the stairs he turned and faced her.
‘Tell you something, Mrs Gandell. If you left me, left this place, you’d always be sorry about it. I was anchored in this town long before you arrived from that un-nameable place of yours in Yorkshire, and I’ve been here so long that you’ll find my shoulder rubs over half the town. My heels were dug in the ground long before you ever smelt Wales. This hotel depends as much on me as on you. I am a person that is always thoughtful about his condition, I know where I am, and I know where my place is, and my motto has always been, cling, clutch. It’s the way it goes, you see.’
She gave him a violent push and he landed up outside the door of the linen room. ‘There’s work to do,’ she said. ‘And no one is indispensable,’ she added, and bent over the laundry basket.
‘Have you met the man with the chariot in his head, Mrs Gandell?’
‘The man with the chariot in his head?’
‘Minister Thomas,’ he said. ‘Lives with his sister at Ty Newdd. Now there’s a piece of grey granite, Mrs Gandell, if ever there was. She’s ten years younger than him and acts as his housekeeper. He practically lives in his little study, always reading, and writing. Lives in a big black chair with a high back to it, very small his study is, and the walls are damp.’
‘All the walls in Wales are damp,’ she said, and flung him a towel.
‘There’s lots of spiders in his study, too, Mrs Gandell. Very nice, very cosy. Yes indeed. Met him in the street the other afternoon, and what d’you think he said to me?’
‘What?’
‘“Jones,” he said, “I think you have a very common mind”.’
Jones tittered, and Mrs Gandell finally closed down the basket.
‘I gave him such a freezing look, Mrs Gandell, and I said to him, “Mr Thomas, I love my common mind.” He walked away then with his head well in the air, and his mouth was as tight shut as any old purse that’s got nothing in it.’
‘I think I’ve seen him passing through the town.’
