Invisible

He retreats a pace. ‘I’ll let you enjoy the afternoon in peace, then,’ he says, but as he reaches the door he hears the wicker crack. Turning round, he sees that Mr Morton has twisted in the seat to face him, as if suddenly remembering something he had intended to say. ‘If it’s not any trouble, a spot of Mozart would be welcome,’ he says.

When he returns with the tape, Mr Morton’s demeanour has changed. His face, turned down towards the machine in his lap, betrays a darkening mood, a distractedness like that of a reader whose book has led him to a dispiriting thought. ‘Very kind,’ Mr Morton repeats, and there is a sense of absence in the smile with which he takes the cassette.

‘Is there anything else I could get you?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Well, if you think of anything, there’s a bell here,’ he tells him, placing on an adjacent table the small brass bell he has brought from the reception desk. ‘There’ll be somebody right outside all afternoon, in the hall.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I’ll leave you to Mozart and the weather,’ he says, but he remains by Mr Morton’s chair, looking at the cassette, which the blind man is holding as if it were an object of unknown purpose.

Mr Morton adjusts his posture, grasping the arms of the chair to straighten his back, blinking at the garden, like someone mustering his concentration at the recommencement of a concert. ‘Please don’t let me detain you, Mr Caldecott,’ he says, and the request in his voice is unmistakable.

‘I’m not exactly rushed off my feet.’

Mr Morton’s lower lip presses outward and he tilts back his head. ‘To tell you the truth, if you could spare me a couple of minutes, there are a few things I’d like to ask you.’

‘By all means,’ he says, pulling a chair closer.

Mr Morton bends his head right back and turns to left and right, as if taking the measure of the space around him. ‘We’re in the room with the paintings, yes?’

‘We are. The Randall Room.’

‘The Randall Room. The greenhouse,’ Mr Morton remarks, with a nod of amusement. ‘The friend who made the booking for me, he saw a picture of it on a website,’ he explains. ‘He said it made him think of a mad millionaire’s greenhouse.’

‘Yes, yes. I suppose it could be.’

‘The ceiling feels high.’

‘It is. Twenty feet.’

‘And there’s a chandelier? A large chandelier? Behind us?’

‘There is.’

‘OK,’ says Mr Morton, and the skin round his eyes tightens.

‘You knew there was a chandelier?’

‘I had an idea. When you walk underneath it, you can tell there’s something hanging above you. And the breeze is making something scrape up there.’

‘It is?’

‘Yes. Listen,’ says Mr Morton, lifting a forefinger like a conductor preparing to give a musician his cue.’

He listens, and hears nothing but the leaves shuffling in the wind.

‘There, you heard that?’

‘I heard something,’ he equivocates, and Mr Morton lowers his hand, gratified.

‘Now, this room,’ Mr Morton goes on. ‘A ballroom, would that be right?’

‘It was the Assembly Room, when the hotel opened.’

‘Which was?’

‘At the end of the eighteenth century. It was called the Angel, originally. Concerts were held here, and dances. Then, when the Angel became the Oak –’

‘Which was?’

‘1870. Then the new owner, Walter Davenport Croombe, he converted the Assembly Room into a winter garden and commissioned the paintings.’

‘From Randall.’

‘From Randall, precisely. William Joshua Forster Randall of Devizes.’

‘Not a name I know.’

‘I don’t think his fame ever extended much beyond the county.’

‘And what about the paintings? What do they depict?’

‘There’s a wedding in the country on one wall, and workers in the fields on the other side, sowing seed and tending livestock. The third wall is a landscape, with herds of cows and a lake, and distant mountains above the door.’

‘And the style? How do the people look?’

‘Modern folk in medieval costume. Ladies in conical headdresses, men in colourful stockings, with Victorian whiskers. The peasants are all impossibly healthy looking. We had an art teacher staying here, a couple of years ago. She said that Randall’s work was just an anthology of Pre-Raphaelite quotations. A bit of Millais, a bit of Rossetti, a bit of Burne-Jones.’

‘I don’t have a very clear idea of what that might mean, I’m afraid.’

‘No, of course. I’m sorry.’

‘No need. For all you know, I might once have been an aficionado of Burne-Jones. Do you like Mr Randall’s work?’

‘It’s not great art, I know that much, but I like what it does for the room. Gives it a certain gaiety.’

‘OK.’

‘And I like it because it has a story.’

‘Excellent,’ says Mr Morton, laying his hands on the arms of the chair to denote attentiveness.

‘Quite a long story.’

‘All the better,’ Mr Morton laughs, smacking the wicker arms. ‘I have an insatiable appetite for stories. So please, take as long as you like.’