Hotel du Lac

by Anita Brookner

  It had seemed to her that the daylight hours were spent simply waiting for him. And yet there were five novels, of some length, there to prove that she had not spent her time gazing out of the window, like the Lady of Shalott. It was, she recognized, a tortoise existence, despite the industry. That was why she wrote for tortoises, like herself.

  But now I am reduced to pure tortoisedom, she thought, opening her eyes and gazing fearfully around the still deserted salon. But the appearance of a waiter in the doorway, with a napkin over his arm, gave her an access of determination, if only to get the meal over, for now she wanted to be alone, in her room, so as to think. Those pills must have worn off, she thought, feeling rather dizzy as she stood up, her throat aching with suppressed yawns. This is when character tells, as Father would say. And she urged herself onward to the dining room, prepared to eat because it was good for her, and to remain in an equable frame of mind for as long as possible.

  The dining room was in fact very pleasant, with its long windows overlooking the garden, now quite black, and the small bunches of rather homely flowers on each spotless white tablecloth. It was also deserted. A table in the corner was occupied by four men in grey suits who kept up the same absorbed monotone that she had already located in the bar. Mme de Bon-neuil, chewing steadily and without expression, had a curious way of taking her wine, in large gulps, as if rinsing her mouth out, and between courses would sit with her hands on the table, waiting for more. Edith could just see, embedded in her brownish fingers, small rings, one crested, but with the indentations worn away. The woman with the dog, a crêpe de Chine blouse hanging rather gauntly from her long neck and narrow shoulders, proved to be something of a disappointment, for she had not made the entrance that Edith had mentally written for her and was hunched in her seat, rather dishevelled about the hair, at an adjacent table, the impassive boy in the white jacket standing like a footman behind her chair. Kiki snuffled beside her, and was picked up from time to time and pressed to his mistress’s face, a face, Edith noted, which now gave minute hints of ultimate disintegration. With Kiki now on her lap, the woman’s wavering fork, used more for flourishing than for eating, contrived to create an impression of food being consumed, although Edith could see quite a lot of it sliding down towards the tablecloth; somehow it never quite fell, for Kiki would jump up and retrieve it, rather like a trained seal. Edith had the impression that Kiki was, in more ways than one, invaluable. The impassive boy’s attendance seemed to be entirely purposeless until, at a nod from the head waiter, he leaned forward and removed the half-finished bottle of Frascati and carried it, with a firm and uncompromising step, to a remote corner of the room. Seconds later, with the same firm and uncompromising step, he returned with a large ice cream, which he set before her, and resumed his position behind her chair. The woman with the dog rolled her fine hieratic eye in Edith’s direction, gave a complicated and sophisticated grimace, and returned her attention to her plate. Theatrical, thought Edith; one of those extremely tall dancers who make a go of it in foreign cabarets and then retire. But why here?

  She was aware that the food was hot and excellent, and that, much to her surprise, she was enjoying it, reviving minute by minute under its influence. Slightly more alert by now, she looked round the room, but there was little to see; the grey men were still absorbed in their conversation; two young couples, from the town, obviously, having a night out, had been placed near the windows, overlooking the invisible garden. A plump elderly man, who was in fact M. Huber, had decided to keep an eye on things while having his dinner and thus combine his two favourite occupations; although finding almost everything to his taste, M. Huber did not neglect to summon nearly all the waiters to his table, where they were subjected to twinkling admonitions and then speeded on their way. Out of season, reflected Edith, and it is beginning to show. The woman with the dog got up, stumbled, her napkin falling to the floor; then, picking up Kiki, she turned a superb stare on to the boy in the white jacket who had stepped forward, and, taking a deep breath, prepared to make a dignified exit. Mme de Bonneuil, her hands on the table, gave a loud belch. M. Huber closed his eyes briefly, Edith was interested to see, but when he opened them his face creased into an expression of seraphic joy. Following his gaze, she saw the occasion for this. Across the room, in midnight blue lace, small diamonds sparkling in her ears, the glamorous lady who had demanded tea for her daughter stood hesitantly in the doorway; then, having assured herself that her presence had been noted and would indeed be welcomed, she advanced graciously to her table. Her daughter, in a sleeveless black dress, followed after, smiling to left and right, as if to gather up the bouquets.

  This I must see, thought Edith, pouring herself another glass of water. She was already aware of powerful and undiagnosed feelings toward these two: curiosity, envy, delight, attraction, and fear, the fear she always felt in the presence of strong personalities. And they were undoubtedly strong, there was no doubt of that, although their presence here was problematic. They seemed destined for better things. This was apparent in the way that waiters appeared from all sides to settle them in their chairs; menus were flourished, laughing remarks exchanged. The woman with the dog, quite eclipsed by this activity, looked back at them with another complicated expression on her face; Edith noted that although she had already encountered the two women on her way out they had quite ignored her. Again, a tiny thrill of fear whispered at the back of her mind. But they were worth watching; they were veritable concentrations of energy, as well as of charm. And not only were they charming to look at, they had glorious appetites to match. Talking busily to each other, knives and forks flashed as they ate their way enthusiastically through four courses; at the same time, plans were being drawn up for the following day. ‘What time did you order the car?’ Edith could hear, and ‘Remind me to take those shoes back, Mummy.’ Then, like many greedy women, they sat back fastidiously, as if the food had scarcely come to their notice. Butter wouldn’t melt, thought Edith.

  Yet she was forced to follow them out, a humble and often stalled attendant in their rosy and perfumed wake (for this, she now realized, was the source of the scent she had smelt in the corridor) and as they took their seats in the salon, she sat near them, as if to gain some bravery, some confidence, from their utterly assured presence. Waiting for coffee to be brought, they surveyed their faces sternly in the mirrors of their respective compacts; adjustments were made, lips gleamed anew, and the ash blonde lady lifted her head to smile at the elderly pianist who had now returned, with further selections from indeterminate sources. ‘Ah, Noel,’ the ash blonde lady exclaimed indulgently, as the mild and conscientious sound arose. ‘What a genius that boy was.’

  That boy? Edith realized that ages would have to be revised once more, but before she could do this she saw the daughter rise to her feet, smooth her black dress down over her abundant hips, and advance in her direction. Her rather large, flushed, blonde face was lowered quizzically towards Edith, and she said, ‘Mummy was wondering if you would like to join us for coffee?’

  And of course it was deliverance, deliverance from the evening that lay ahead, and Edith rose joyfully to her feet, followed the daughter, bowed her head slightly to the mother, and said, ‘How kind of you. My name is Edith Hope and I only arrived today. I …’

  ‘I am Mrs Pusey,’ said the lady. ‘Iris Pusey.’

  ‘How do you do? Have you been here …’

  ‘And this is my daughter, Jennifer.’

  They sat down, smiling at each other expectantly. Coffee arrived. Mrs Pusey leaned forward and took her cup. ‘I said to Jennifer, do go and ask that lady to join us. I hate to see anyone on their own. Especially in the evening.’ She settled back in her chair. Edith smiled again.

  ‘I said, she has such sad eyes.’

  3

  The next morning, flat calm.

  Edith awoke to a mild pinkish dusk. Levering herself up cautiously in the unfamiliar bed, she peered at her watch to try to see the time. She had
supposed it to be very early; she remembered waking some time before and hearing a door close quietly some little way down the corridor, but she saw to her surprise that it was nearly eight o’clock, and a finger of light, appearing through the veal-coloured curtains, seemed to contain the promise of a fine day. She rang for breakfast, then got up and pulled the curtains; in her long white nightgown she stepped out onto the little balcony and shivered in the cold air. But the mist was lifting from the lake, and ahead of her, in the far distance, she could see a dark grey shape, which, as she looked, gained in both outline and volume: the mountain. Below her a small boat puttered quietly at the landing stage, and the chef appeared, in his sponge bag trousers and his white jacket, to take the day’s delivery of fresh perch.

  The impassive boy who had stood behind the chair of the woman with the dog delivered her breakfast tray, sliding it down from shoulder height onto her little table.

  ‘Merci,’ she said, her voice still unfamiliar to her, for it had not been in use for some time. ‘Il fait froid?’

  ‘Il a neigé cette nuit sur la montagne,’ he replied austerely.

  He seemed to take his tasks so very seriously for one so young. He was, perhaps, eighteen; his hair was punishingly short, and he had the set expression and also the expertise of a much older servant, a gentleman’s gentleman, repository of secrets, man of honour in his own right, a worthy servitor to his liege lord.

  ‘Comment vous appelez-vous?’ she asked gently.

  He turned at the door and smiled, revealing a chipped front tooth and the trusting eyes of a boy who has set himself stern tasks but who is glad to be befriended.

  ‘Alain,’ he replied. ‘Je m’appelle Alain.’

  Edith drank her coffee and reflected on the previous evening. Well, something had been accomplished; people were beginning to have names. The here and now, the quotidian, was beginning to acquire substance. The dimension of terror that this realization brought with it – as if knowing the place too well might give her presence there some reality, some validity – was quickly palliated by the extraordinary accumulation of facts, and of such very diverting facts, that had emerged from her meeting with Iris and Jennifer Pusey. Or, rather, with Iris Pusey, for Jennifer was so much a reflection of her mother that although she occupied quite a large space and had a curiously insistent physical presence, she did not have too much to say for herself, and indeed Edith had once or twice had the impression that behind her large smiling face Jennifer was somewhere else.

  But in any event Iris held the stage; Iris, it was clear, was the star. Like many a star, she could only function from a position of dominance; she held information at bay, so that Edith was not required to give an account of herself. Edith, having been briefly the recipient of Mrs Pusey’s compassion, was now to become Mrs Pusey’s confidante. And what a lot there was to tell, Edith reflected. What busy lives some people led. Iris Pusey was putting in her brief annual appearance at the Hotel du Lac for one purpose only; she had come to shop. And she was enabled to do this by virtue of the fact that her late husband had prudently deposited certain sums of money in an account in her name in a Swiss bank.

  Edith had learned all this by the end of the first half-hour spent in Mrs Pusey’s company. Half an hour was all that was needed for the rules of the game to be set down, the wordless contract agreed upon by both parties. In return for her deliverance from that dread fate so sympathetically observed by Mrs Pusey, Edith was to make herself available when not otherwise engaged – and that engagement would have to be submitted to fairly searching scrutiny – and to provide an audience for Mrs Pusey’s opinions, reminiscences, character readings, or general views on life’s little problems. Edith acquiesced to this readily enough, not because of her plight, which she saw as irremediable but not entirely serious, but because Mrs Pusey presented her with the opportunity to examine, and to enjoy, contact with an alien species. For in this charming woman, so entirely estimable in her happy desire to capture hearts, so completely preoccupied with the femininity which had always provided her with life’s chief delights, Edith perceived avidity, grossness, ardour. It was her perception of this will to repletion and to triumph that had occasioned her mild feeling of faintness when she watched Mrs Pusey and Jennifer eating their dinner. She had also perceived a difference of appetite, one that seemed to carry an implicit threat to her own. Yet she dismissed this as ridiculous (dismissed it also as potentially too painful to contemplate) as she sat drinking coffee in the agreeable company of Jennifer and Mrs Pusey and basking in the high summer of their self-esteem, which in its turn shed a kindly light on all those within its orbit. And to Edith, at this strange juncture in her life, there was something soothing in the very existence of Mrs Pusey, a woman so gentle, so greedy, so tranquil, so utterly fulfilled in her desires that she encouraged daring thoughts of possession, of accumulation, in others. She was, Edith thought, an embodiment of the kind of propaganda no contemporary woman could stoop to countenance, for Mrs Pusey was not only an enchantress in her own right, she was also appreciative of such propensities in others. (She was also, by the same token, dismissive.) She had unexpected areas of imagination, of generosity. For example, she saw her daughter not as a rival, as a lesser woman might have done, but as a successor, to be groomed for the stardom which would eventually be hers by right. There was indeed a physical closeness between mother and daughter that surpassed anything Edith had ever known, and there was also love on both sides, although Edith registered that love as being mildly unrealistic. For in spite of Jennifer’s physical stolidity, a stolidity which verged on opulence, it was clear that her mother still thought of her as a small girl. And Jennifer, probably now as a matter of habit as well as of fondness, continued to behave like one.

  The result of all this was to re-open in Edith’s mind the question of what behaviour most becomes a woman, the question around which she had written most of her novels, the question she had attempted to argue with Harold Webb, the question she had failed to answer and which she now saw to be of the most vital importance. The excitement she thus experienced at being provided with an opportunity to study the question at first hand was if anything heightened by the fact that everything that Mrs Pusey had said so far was of the utmost triviality. Clearly there were depths here that deserved her prolonged attention.

  Mrs Pusey had conveniently opened the debate by referring to her husband, now unfortunately dead, but still an inspiration to her and ever in her thoughts.

  ‘A wonderful, wonderful man,’ she had said, after releasing this information, the thumb and forefinger of her right hand pressed briefly above the bridge of her nose.

  ‘Don’t, Mummy,’ begged Jennifer, her hand stroking her mother’s forearm.

  Mrs Pusey gave a shaky little laugh. ‘She does hate me to get upset,’ she said to Edith. ‘It’s all right, darling, I’m not going to be silly.’ And she pulled out a fine white lawn handkerchief and dabbed at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Oh, but you can’t think how I miss him,’ she confided to Edith. ‘He gave me everything I could possibly want. My early married life was like a dream. He used to say, “Iris, if it’ll make you happy, buy it. I’ll give you a blank cheque. And don’t spend it all on the house. Spend it on yourself.” But of course my lovely home came first. How I adored that house.’ Here the thumb and forefinger were once again applied to the bridge of the nose.

  ‘Where do you live?’ asked Edith, aware that this was an unimpressively bald question.

  ‘Oh, but my dear, I’m talking about our first home, in Haslemere. Oh, I wish I had the photos here. Architect designed, it was. It was my dream home. And I mustn’t talk about it too much, because Jennifer will get upset, won’t you, darling? Oh, yes, it broke her heart to leave Green Tiles.’

  I can just see it, thought Edith. Parquet floors. Fitted cupboards. Picture windows. Every conceivable appliance in the kitchen. Gardener twice a week. Gardener’s wife, devoted, in a white overall, every day. Downstairs cloakro
om for the gentlemen to use after playing a round of golf. Patio, she added.