The Second Course by E. M. Forster

“At the best hotels,” asked Lily Latour, “can one still get good wine?”

“At three pounds a bottle one can get a sugary liquid, I understand,”

Jervis put in.

“I thought,” said the Prisoner of State, “that the centre of London would have been destroyed by air-raids.”

A dead silence followed on this remark. Everyone was perhaps following some train of thought private to himself, some recollection of death or disaster. Jervis, gazing at his wineglass, became conscious that, ever so slightly, it was vibrating. He looked up and met the Brigadier’s eye. Faintly but unmistakably the heterodyned note of heavy bombers could be heard.

And before either could make any movement a siren very close to the Silver Fish began its wavering, alternating note of impersonal alarm.

The second course by E. M. Forster

“The fish will be sherved in the selter,” announced Brigadier Miles, when the siren had completed its third ululation. “Hullo, a spoonerism! Don’t often achieve a spoonerism.” Rising leisurely, he gave his arm to Lily Latour. “John, lead on. You know the way. Mr Fitzwilliam, will you safeguard our guest, also that decanter? I don’t know which of them is the more precious.”

“I used to be terrible at spoonerisms,” prattled Miss Latour as she swept off. “I never could say—let’s see—what was it I never could say?—I know

—I never could say, ‘She stood at the door of the fish-sauce shop, beckoning him in.’”

“Beckoning him in, excellent.”

They reached the lounge, and there mingled with the guests who were issuing from the public dining-room. Mr Fitzwilliam surveyed the situation with distaste. “You have, I think, no parallel to the spoonerism in your language,” he remarked to the Prisoner of State. “You are fortunate.”

“No. The Reich presents few parallels. Though there was, if I recollect, a fish-sauce shop (do I phrase this epigram correctly?) at Grivenchy. Lily will bear me out.”

“What is that, Henning?” She half turned with a smile. Belle, who was locking up the bar, watched them.

“That fish-sauce shop of Grivenchy, where she stood in the door beckoning him in.”

“I—I don’t quite follow you.”

“You did not. I followed you. I am here.”

Miss Latour’s smile became more rigid, and she touched it at either end with her hand as though to keep it in position. “Never mind, good girl, well done,” said the Brigadier.

Jervis, down the cellar stairs, received the effusive apologies of the manager, who seemed to regard himself as personally responsible for the raid. He replied, “Oh, that’s all right, this’ll do, I’ve already had a look. We want somewhere to sit, and if possible to eat, until the All Clear sounds.”

And indeed the cellar might have been worse. It was warm and well-lit, and there was a big table of the school-feast type with forms along it. An occasional silver fish was stencilled on the cellar’s rough-cast walls, to indicate that there would be no reduction in the bill.

“You shall certainly sit, sir, you shall certainly eat, but I am mortified that I cannot provide better privacy for your party.”

“Have you no second shelter where these other good people could go?”

inquired Mr Fitzwilliam from the rear.

“No, sir, nothing, this is the only accommodation either for visitors or staff. We applied for a permit to construct an additional refuge, but were refused on the ground that the work was of insufficient national importance.”

“A regrettable refusal.” The other good people, looking none too good, incommoded him and made him feel that he did not want to be buried with

them. He was as brave as any Landseer lion, but he did stipulate that death should find him among his official equals, and here was the Army, blundering as usual, and threatening him with an all-too-common grave.

“Fortunately there are two staircases, sir, so if you will kindly sort yourselves out we will start serving the fish.”

Jervis felt uneasy and a little guilty at this. He hadn’t, in his preliminary survey, spotted the second staircase. He had been too busy with Belle. Yes, there it was, curving up into the darkness from a recess, and, as far as he could calculate, communicating directly with Quimerle’s kitchen.

“Yes, sir, that is the so-called Smuggler’s Stairway. Yes, madam, many strange things went up it in the old days, and came down too, I expect. And there was a continuation of it (now cemented up of course) which led right beneath us under the tropical garden onto the beach. Will you sort yourselves, please”—advancing and retreating and rubbing his hands, and trying to combine, with his obsequiousness and showmanship, the air of a man about town.

“But I cannot endorse this arrangement,” Mr Fitzwilliam protested; he foresaw correspondence between the Foreign Office, the War Office and the Ministry of Home Security in the event of a direct hit; and he wanted it to be known that his own attitude had been, from the first, indubitable.

“Do these damned people think they’ve bought the bloody place?” called an angry voice behind him—a woman’s voice. “Blocking up the stairs—it’s disgraceful. Hi you, young man, you get a move on, you.” And she pushed the representative of the Foreign Office with her handbag. There was a tiny tinkling sound. The knell of a vintage. An ambrosial ghost. The decanter had smashed against the cellar wall.

“Butterfingers!” cried Brigadier Miles, for though he appreciated wine his first impulse was to be facetious.

“Really, it is scarcely my fault when a member of the public loses self-control.”

The woman, still in a fury, shouted: “Give them another bottle of the same, waiter, and put it on my bill. Lady Dawes’ bill. There’s more from where that comes from, I suppose.”

“Madame, that came from the Jura,” said the Prisoner of State in tones of exasperation. The English under danger were more than he could bear.

“It can come from the judge for all I care.”

“Ah. Another epigram!”

Brigadier Miles clapped his hands. He must rally his flock before it was contaminated by backchat. He descended the wine-wet stairs, advanced to the table, and reconstructed the amenities of the private room, so far as possible, by seating himself at the head upon an empty cider-cask. On his right, as before, sat the Prisoner of State, on his left Miss Latour. They were flanked by Mr Fitzwilliam and by Captain Jervis respectively. Beyond Fitzwilliam and Jervis were two butler’s trays, laid along the wooden forms at Jervis’s orders, and serving a little to protect the flock from the common herd. It was not much of a barrier, and the voice of Lady Dawes could be heard clearly across it. She spoke, among other topics, of the vulgarity of luxury in wartime, of the sufferings of dogs and cats, and of staff-officer mentality. She pleaded, always at the top of her voice, for a jollier and a simpler world with less red tape and red tabs. She had odious confederates who said to one another in her pauses, “Isn’t May marvellous, isn’t May unique? She doesn’t care. It does people like that good to hear that sort of thing once in a way. What do they want to be down here for? Why weren’t they seeing to things upstairs?”

Meanwhile the semblances of the second course began to arrive. Knives and forks came down the Smugglers’ Stairway, and were clattered in heaps.

Bread was dumped. Glasses. Belle made herself useful. As she gave Jervis a napkin, she whispered to him, “You won’t enjoy your fish.”

“Why not?”

“Ah!”

Realizing that she wanted to speak to him, he got up under the pretext of choosing Miss Latour a piece of bread. “Why not?” he repeated.

“Quimerle’s gone.”

“Quimerle’s gone? When did he go?” He thought quickly, remembering the dead telephone, and the instant of its death.

“After he’d sent in the soup. You never saw such a mess in the kitchen in your life. Shirley—she’s the vegetable cook, or supposed to be—is doing the whole dinner with the bootboy to help. They don’t know where anything is, they’ve dropped paraffin into the sauce instead of salad-oil, they’ve—well, you’ll see. The manager’s furious. This is the third time Quimerle’s let him down. He’s temperamental, of course. They say all geniuses are. Quimerle’s a marvel, I must say. It’s too funny seeing the manager smirking down here and then skipping up the stairs to swear. He’s taken the whole of the keys. What upset him, heaven above knows, but he’s gone. Who’s that fat woman you’re sitting next?”

Heaven above did know perhaps, thought John, his mind on the advancing bombers. He didn’t like the way things were turning out, at all, and must report to the Brigadier. “I can’t answer questions,” he said to Belle, “and I shouldn’t have called Miss Latour fat.”

“You can’t answer questions but you don’t mind asking them. Anyhow, I don’t like her, and I bet she’s got something on her mind. I wouldn’t like to have her conscience. And I don’t like the man she’s with. Nor the fool from London. And I’ll tell you something else, John. That other woman who calls herself Lady Dawes and tries to be rude—”

“Tries? I should have said she succeeded.”

“Well, I’ve seen more rude people than you have in my job, and I don’t think she’s natural. She’s too thick with the manager, too. Do you know she’s got a room here, and when he’s tired of me, which mercifully he is occasionally—and the drink that goes up to them, and then all this talk of luxury! Lady Dawes is a very good judge of wine indeed. I’ve heard

Quimerle say so, and he ought to know. She’s looking at us now. Don’t turn round. Anyhow I don’t like her.”

“Is there anyone whom you do like?”

“Your Brigadier.”

“Anyone else?”

“Don’t be silly. This bit of bread looks like an antique. Take it back to your Lily, and let me get to my work. If I get any news of Quimerle I’ll tell you, and meantime you can take it from me that the next course’ll be muck.”

Too true were Belle’s words. Down the Smugglers’ Stairway descended slabs of sole, pallid, veined, looking as if they had come down in the train from Whitehall with Mr Fitzwilliam, and not unlike him in texture.

Quimerle had had some dreadful retrospective effect. The Brigadier apologized. “You know England, Your Excellency, and so you won’t expect fish to be fresh on the seacoast. We always send it to mature in London when we can.”

“Exactly. Round your Empire; like East Indian sherry, when your Empire included India.”

“Still, it is not altogether our fault this time. I’m sorry we have to continue our meal under such uncomfortable circumstances.”

“Oh, it is nothing, nothing. Yes, I know England and how you are situated. You are used to it. You seldom digest a meal without interruptions, and I shall soon accommodate myself too. You have astonished me with excellent soup and a memorable wine. I could not expect fish to be achieved as well. For this is not fish. No, we will agree not to call this fish.”

“Where’s the sauce, John?”

“I’m afraid there won’t be any sauce, sir.”

“Any hope of another bottle of that wine?”

“I’m afraid not. I believe there’s to be some Algerian with the entrée.”

“There would be.”

“It amazes me to hear wine mentioned at all in England,” said the Prisoner of State, who now that his compatriots were above him had become subtly insolent. “As Balzac remarks: ‘Partout où la chimie est pratiquée, on ne boit plus de vin,’ and yours is a great industrial country.”

“Ah, Balzac!” said Miss Latour, preparing to be cosmopolitan.

“Yes, I was sure you would recognize the quotation, Lily. For it comes from his Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes.”

“I haven’t read that particular Balzac, as a matter of fact,” said she, laying down her fork and staring at her bread with distaste.

“No? I thought I remembered us reading it together in your Bal Tabarin days. You began it and did not finish it perhaps. You should read it to the end. It is a most illuminating Balzac for you. Splendeurs… et Misères des Courtisanes.” His voice became brutal and mystic. “Read it to the last line, my dear Lily. Learn what such women are reduced to, however splendidly they start. Learn how they end.”

Miss Latour got up. She was outraged. She would have swept from the cellar. The wooden form caught her at the back of her substantial knees and prevented her from moving, and the Brigadier pulled her back into her seat.

He never spoke, for which she was grateful. She looked across him at her former lover, she readjusted her smile. “All men insult one sooner or later unless they are really strong,” she was thinking. Then she blew her nose and found herself crying. It was so unfair, when she had spent her life trying to make men happy. Of course, she was open to criticism over Grivenchy, but she had hoped that Henning would never suspect her, and, now that he did suspect her, he really should have showed some largeness of mind instead of… catching one out… humiliating one over fish-sauce shops… Balzac….

To her horror, the tears were now streaming. Belle watched her again, this time more gently. An unexpected chord of sympathy had been touched.

Lady Dawes, her tongue wagging, watched too.

As if irritated beyond bearing by the whole damned business, Brigadier Miles now jumped off his cask, and called upon Jervis to report. They stood with their backs to the cellar wall, where they could command the entrances of both staircases. The guests had now received their portions of naked sole, and were washing them down with water or beer. The electric light beat upon them unkindly from the low ceiling, picking out their tonsures and the tops of their ears, and the scraggy or fluffy napes of their necks. The excitement of entry was over. The conversation was about raids, past, present and future, varied by a little grumbling, and by intimate inside knowledge of the mentality of Hitler. That is to say, it was shelter-conversation, and it could be trusted not to alter until the All Clear or the Last Trump sounded.

When John had finished: “Of course the line’s been cut,” the Brigadier snapped. “By the cook or by someone. By your barmaid, perhaps. Of course we’re surrounded by spies. Go and have a look out of doors and try to ring the Brigade Major again. When you’ve failed to get him, come back here and stay here. Our job is to stick to our man till he’s in jug. Nothing else.”

“No bombs yet, sir, that’s something.”

“You think so?” He bounced back to his perch. With vigour and fierceness, he flung himself into social smalltalk. At the bottom of the stairs John paused for a moment and watched him. He had quelled Mr Fitzwilliam and the Prisoner of State, he was increasing the intervals between the sniffs of Lily Latour. A remarkable man. The whole scene—the long low intensely lit cellar, the smugglers’ old halfway house—seemed to vibrate with his energy. Looking at him, John thought for an instant of Quimerle.

Strong—both of them strong. What women wanted, what men somehow didn’t equally admire, was strength. John wondered for a moment whether he himself was adequately strong, but he couldn’t be bothered to worry, the situation was too exciting.

The telephone was still dead, so he pushed open the door of the hotel and looked out at the night. No bombs had fallen, but the night was not calm.

From the port came sounds of confusion. The Commando had apparently been disbanded, and he got the impression that more communications than his own had been cut. False orders issued, perhaps? The Prisoner was of such immense value, the very course of the war might turn on his custody, and even during his spree at Grivenchy plans must have been laid by his friends to cover every contingency. Even now—even down in the cellar—

he must be surrounded by friends.

Then the bombing started, but some way off. They had gone for the Tetlow airfield. Tiresome for Tetlow, but not John’s concern. Relieved, he looked up at the stars, and tried to remember that they are other worlds, also perhaps the producers of life. But this is an old-fashioned thought, dearer to the nineteenth century than to the twentieth, and it did not interest the young man much. He was more thrilled by the discovery that one of the stars had disappeared. There it was again, though… but now another one had vanished. He tumbled to it now. Parachutists! The attack on Tetlow was a blind. The heavens were crawling with them, and some of them must already have touched the earth.

Here was something further to report, and he hurried back to the cellar. It was a relief to find it exactly as he had left it—the diners still exchanging the low-down on Hitler, the fish still on their plates, Lady Dawes showing off, the manager hovering equivocal, Belle lovelier than ever, and, dominating them all and holding them together as in some modern Last Supper, the virile Brigadier. He advanced, and, as if he had stepped upon a spring, the lights fused.

The darkness only lasted for a moment. Torches were soon flashed, matches struck. The cellar still looked the same. But the Brigadier no longer occupied his little perch. He lay bleeding on the floor behind it, his throat cut.