Scoop-Evelyn-Waugh [8]
chapter 3
An oddly placed, square window rising shoulder-high from the low wainscot, fringed outside with ivy, brushed by the boughs of a giant monkey-puzzle; a stretch of faded wallpaper on which hung a water colour of the village churchyard painted in her more active days by Miss Scope; a small shelf of ill-assorted books and a stuffed ferret, whose death from rat-poisoning had overshadowed the whole of one Easter holiday from his private school � these, according as he woke on his right or left side, greeted William daily at Boot Magna. On the morning after his interview with Mr. Salter, he opened his eyes, relieved from a night haunted by Lord Copper in a hundred frightful forms, to find himself in black darkness; his first thought was that there were still some hours to go before daylight; then, as he remembered the season of the year and the vast, semiconscious periods through which he had passed, in the intervals of being pursued down badger runs in the showy plumage of the great crested grebe, he accepted the more harrowing alternative that he had been struck blind; then that he was mad, for a bell was ringing insistently a few inches, it seemed, from his ear. He sat up in bed and found that he was bare to the waist; totally bare, he learned by further researches. He stretched out his arm and found a telephone; as he lifted it, the ringing stopped; a voice said, "Mr. Salter on the line." Then he remembered the awful occurrence of the previous evening. "Good morning," said Mr. Salter. "I thought I'd better get you early. I expect you've been up and about for hours, eh? Used to milking and cubbing and so on?" "No," said William. "No? Well, I don't get to the office much before eleven or twelve. I wondered if everything was clear about your journey or are there one or two little things you'd like to go into first?" "Yes." "Ah, I thought there might be. Well, come round to the office as soon as you're ready." Groping, William found one/of the dozen or so switches which controlled the lighting of various parts of the bedroom. He found his watch and learned that it was ten o'clock. He found a row of bell-pushes and rang for valet and waiter. The evening before he had been too much surfeited with new impressions to pay particular attention to the room to which eventually he had been led. It was two o'clock when Mr. Salter left him; they had returned to the Megalopolitan office after dinner; William had been led from room to room; he had been introduced to the Managing Editor, the Assistant Managing Editor, the Art Editor (who had provided the camera), the Accounts Manager, the Foreign Contacts Adviser, and a multitude of men and women with visible means of support but no fixed occupation who had popped in from time to time on the various officials with whom William was talking. He had signed a contract, an application for Life Insurance, receipts for a camera, typewriter, a portfolio full of tickets, and a book of traveller's cheques to the value of �1000. He had reached the hotel in a daze; the management had been told to expect him; they had led him to a lift; then aloft, along a white, unnaturally silent passage, and left him in his room with no desire except to sleep and awake from his nightmare in the familiar, shabby surroundings of Boot Magna. The room was large and faultless. A psychologist, hired from Cambridge, had planned the decorations � magenta and gamboge; colours which � it had been demonstrated by experiments on poultry and mice � conduce to a mood of dignified gaiety. Every day carpet, curtains and upholstery were inspected for signs of disrepair. A gentle whining note filled the apartment, emanating from a plant which was thought to "condition" the atmosphere. William's crumpled clothes lay on the magenta carpet; his typewriter and camera had been hidden from him by the night porter. The dressing table was fitted with a "daylight" lamp, so that women before retiring to sleep could paint their faces in a manner that would be becoming at dawn; but it was bare of brushes. Presently a valet entered, drew back four or five layers of curtain, and revealed the window