The Night Porter, by Leonard Ashby
An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.
At the Halcyon Hotel in Bayswater the night porter’s chair stood at the foot of the stairs, so that nobody could go up or come down without Albert Finch seeing them. He had sat in it for nineteen years. He prided himself on knowing every guest by the sound of their tread.
The man in Room Fourteen had arrived on the Tuesday with one leather case and the name Mr J. Ellery written in a small, upright hand. He took his meals in his room. He asked for an alarm call at six each morning and was always awake before it came; Albert would hear the bed creak overhead at a quarter to, as regular as the pips on the wireless.
On the Friday the bed did not creak.
At six Albert knocked. At ten past six he knocked again and called the gentleman’s name. At twenty past, with the manager in his dressing gown behind him, he tried the handle and found the door locked, and through the keyhole he could see the key still in it, turned, on the inside.
‘Break it,’ said Mr Pargeter.
It took two shoulders and a good deal of language. The door gave all at once and Albert went through it on his knees.
The room was empty. The bed had been slept in, and the sheets were folded back neatly, as a careful man folds them when he means to return. The leather case stood open on the rack with two shirts in it. The window was shut and its catch was fastened, and when Albert tried to lift the sash he found it painted into the frame, as all the back windows had been since the decorators came in the spring. There was no chimney wide enough for a cat. There was no other door.
On the washstand, propped against the jug, was a telegram. It had been opened and read and put back in its envelope. Mr Pargeter took it out, read it, and handed it to Albert without a word.
COME HOME. SHE IS ASKING FOR YOU. ALL FORGIVEN.
There was no signature, and no place of origin that either of them could read; the stamp was smudged, as though a wet thumb had pressed on it.
‘He went out in the night,’ said Mr Pargeter. ‘You dozed off.’
‘I did not doze off.’
‘Then he went out by the window.’
Albert said nothing. He looked at the painted sash and at the key in the splintered lock, and he looked at the bed with its neat fold, and he thought of nineteen years in the chair at the foot of the stairs.
They gave the room a week, and then Mr Pargeter had the case put in the cellar and the door rehung. A new guest took Fourteen the following Monday, a salesman in ladies’ gloves who snored. Albert listened to him every night.
He never told anyone what he heard on the Friday, in the minutes after they found the room empty and before the police came. He had gone back up alone to fetch the case. And as he stood in the doorway, somewhere beyond the painted window, beyond the yards and the wet slate roofs of Bayswater, he had heard a woman’s voice say, quite clearly and with great happiness, ‘There you are.’
“The ending of this extract is disappointing because the writer never explains what happened to the guest.”
To what extent do you agree with this view?
You should write about:
You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer.
120 exam-style questions on Eduqas GCSE English Language 1.3 Critical reading and comprehension, covering 1.3.1 Identifying and interpreting themes, ideas and information, 1.3.2 Reading in different ways for different purposes, 1.3.4 Supporting a point of view with textual evidence, and 1.3.6 Reflecting critically and evaluatively on text. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.