The Bat And Belfry Inn
By ALAN GRAHAM
(From The Story-Teller)
1922
It was the maddest and most picturesque hotel at which we have ever stopped. Tony and I were touring North Wales. We had left Llandudno that morning in the twoseater, lunched at Festiniog, and late in the afternoon were trundling down a charming valley with the reluctant assistance of a road whose surface, if it ever had possessed such an asset, had long since vanished. On rounding one of the innumerable hairpin bends on our road, there burst upon us the most gorgeous miniature scene that we had ever encountered. I stopped the car almost automatically.
"Oh, George, what a charming hotel!" exclaimed Tony. "Let's stop and have tea."
Tony, I should mention, is my wife. She is intensely practical.
I had not noticed the hotel, for before us the valley opened out into a perfect stage setting. From the road the land fell sharply a hundred feet to a rocky mountain stream, the rustle of whose water came up to us faintly like the music heard in a sea-shell. Beyond rose hills--hill upon hill lit patchily by the sun, so that their contours were a mingling of brilliant purple heather, red-brown bracken, and indigo shadow. Far down the valley the stream glinted, mirror-like, through a veil of trees.
And Tony spoke of tea!
I dragged my eyes from the magnet of the view and found that I had stopped the car within a few yards of a little hotel that must have been planted there originally by someone with a soul. It lay by the open roadside five miles from anywhere. It was built of the rough grey-green stone of the district, but it was rescued from the commonplace by its leaded windows, the big old beams that angled across its white plastered gables, and by the clematis and late tea roses that clung about its porch.
I could hardly blame Tony for her materialism. The hotel blended admirably with its surroundings. There was nothing about it of the beerhouse-on-the-mountain-top so dear to the German mind. It looked quiet, refined and restful, and one felt instinctively that it would be managed in a fashion in keeping with all about it.
"By Jove, Tony!" I said, as I drew up to the clematis-covered porch, "we might do worse than stop here for a day or two."
"We'll have tea anyhow, and see what we think of it." I clattered over the red-tiled floor, and when my eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light that contrasted so well with the sunshine without, found myself in a small sunshiny room, with a low ceiling, oak-rafted, some comfortable chairs, an old eight-day clock stopped at ten-thirty-five, and a man.
He was a long thin man, clean-shaven, wearing an old shooting coat and a pair of shabby grey flannel trousers. He smoked a pipe and read in a book. At my entrance he did not look up, and I set him down as a guest in the hotel.
One side of the room was built of obscured glass panes, with an open square in the middle and a ledge upon which rested several suggestive empty glasses, so I crossed to this hospitable-looking gap, and tapped upon the ledge. Several repetitions bringing no response, I turned to the only living creature who appeared to be available.
"Can you tell me, sir, if we can have tea in the hotel," I asked.
The long man started, looked up, closed his book, and jumped to his feet as if galvanized to life.
"Of course, of course, of course," he cried hastily, and added, as by an afterthought, "of course."
I may have shown a natural surprise at this almost choral response, for he pulled himself together and became something more explicit.
"I'll see to it at once," he said hurriedly. "I'm--I'm the proprietor, you know. You won't mind if we're--if we're a little upset. You see, I--I've just moved in. Left me by an uncle, you know, an uncle in Australia. I'll see to it at once. Anything you would like--specially fancy? Bread and butter now, or cake perhaps? Will you take a seat--two seats." (Tony had followed me in). "And look at yesterday's paper. Oh yes, you can have tea--of course, of course, of course. Of----"
His words petered out, as he clattered off down a like-flagged passage. I looked at Tony and raised my eyebrows.
"Seems a trifle mad," I said.
"How delightfully cool," said she, looking round the old-fashioned room appraisingly, "and so clean! I think we'll stop."
"Let's have tea before we decide," I suggested. "The proprietor is distinctly eccentric, to say the least of it."
"He looked quite a superior man. I thought," said Tony. "Not the least like a Welshman." Tony herself comes from far north of the Tweed.
The hotel was small, and the kitchen, apparently, not far away, for we could not avoid hearing sounds of what appeared to be a heated argument coming from the direction in which mine host had vanished. We were used to heated arguments in the hotels at which we had put up, but they had invariably taken place in Welsh, whereas this one was undoubtedly in English. Snatches of it reached our ears.
"... haven't the pluck of a rabbit, Bill."
"... all very well, but----"
"I'm not afraid, I'll----"
Then our host returned.
"It's coming, it's coming, it's coming," he said, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, jingling loose change in a manner that suggested agitation.
He stood looking down at us as though we were something he didn't quite know what to do with, and then an idea seemed to strike him, and be vanished for a moment to reappear almost immediately in the square gap of the bar window.
"Have a drink while you're waiting?" he asked, much more naturally.
I looked at my watch. It was half-past four. Very free-and-easy with the licensing laws, I thought.
"I thought six o'clock was opening time?" I said.
The thin man was overcome with confusion. His face flushed red, he shut the window down with a bang, and a moment after came round to us again.
"Awfully sorry," he stammered apologetically. "Might get the house a bad name. Deuced inconsiderate of--of my uncle not to leave me a book of the rules. Very bad break, that-- what?"
Evidently Tony was not so much impressed by the eccentricities of our host as was I. She approved of the hotel and its situation, and had made up her mind to stop.