Hotel du Lac

by Anita Brookner

  ‘But when my husband went to Head Office and I saw how much travelling he was going to have to do, I put my foot down. Why should he wear himself out, I said to myself, just to please his silly little wife who loves a quiet life in the country? And anyway, I knew he would want me to entertain for him. I knew that before he did. So we moved to St John’s Wood. Montrose Court. And of course it’s a beautiful flat, and I have an excellent housekeeper. And it’s big enough for Jennifer to have her own suite. She can invite all her friends; I leave her entirely alone. And the shops are very good.’

  She dabbed the corners of her mouth again. ‘Of course, I have everything delivered,’ she added.

  Having assured Edith of her comfortable circumstances at home, she went on to describe to her the tenor of their life abroad. It was clear that as travelling companions, Mrs Pusey and Jennifer were entirely compatible. Abroad was seen mainly as a repository for luxury goods. They were extensively familiar with the kind of resort which had recently but definitively gone out of fashion; hence their presence here, although that was also explained by the bank account and the fact that Mr and Mrs Pusey had known M. Huber when they motored over from Montreux ‘in the old days’. But it became clear that Mr Pusey had frequently been left at home to do whatever he did while Jennifer and her mother took off for restorative trips to Cadenabbia or Lucerne or Amalfi or Deauville or Menton or Bordighera or Estoril. Once, only once, to Palma, but that was apparently a mistake. ‘I never could stand the heat. After that, my husband said he wouldn’t risk the Mediterranean again, not in the high season. Of course, that was before all these package tours. Pretty place. But the heat was terrible. I spent all my time in the cathedral, trying to cool down. Never again.’

  No, Mrs Pusey went on, she preferred the cooler weather. And they hated crowds. And M. Huber made them so welcome. Of course, they always had the same suite. The one on the third floor, overlooking the lake.

  ‘Then I think we must be on the same corridor,’ ventured Edith. ‘My room is 307.’

  ‘Why, yes,’ said Mrs Pusey. ‘That little room at the end. Of course, there are very few single rooms in a place like this.’ She looked speculatively at Edith. ‘If we go up together, you can look in and see where we are,’ she said. Then, urging herself effortfully to the edge of her chair, she attempted to rise, and after two false starts heaved herself upright, shaking off Jennifer’s arm and steadying herself on her fine ankles. This woman is getting on for seventy, thought Edith.

  But it did not seem so, as she followed the shapely midnight blue back and the wake of rosy scent into the lift and out again and along the corridor. While Jennifer was allowed forward to open the door, Mrs Pusey made herself ready to do the honours. They did indeed have a suite: their two bedrooms could be entered separately from the corridor, but, Mrs Pusey implied, they were invariably to be found in the small salon that connected them and which was agreeably filled with the amenities which confident people accord themselves in strange places: a colour television, a basket of fruit, flowers, several splits of champagne. And leading the way into her bedroom, Mrs Pusey gestured with a smile to a négligé in oyster-coloured satin, thickly encrusted with lace, which was laid out over the back of a chair. ‘My weakness,’ she confided. ‘I do love nice things. And there’s such a good shop in Montreux. That’s why we come back here every year.’

  She eyed Edith again and smiled. ‘You should buy yourself something pretty while you’re here, dear. A woman owes it to herself to have pretty things. And if she feels good she looks good. That’s what I tell Jennifer. I always see to it that she’s fitted out like a queen. Don’t I, darling?’

  And she held out her arms to Jennifer who walked into them and snuggled her face against her mother’s. ‘Ah,’ laughed Mrs Pusey. ‘She loves her silly mother, don’t you, darling?’ And they embraced lovingly and walked to the door, still entwined, to see Edith out. ‘Don’t be alone, dear,’ said Mrs Pusey. ‘You know where to find us.’ And the door had closed.

  Edith found herself thinking about this conversation at various moments in the night when the Spartan firmness of her mattress made her normally light sleep more intermittent than usual. She thought too of the Aladdin’s cave she had perceived in the Puseys’ suite, with its careless deployment of pleasurable attributes. But most of all she thought of the charming tableau of mother and daughter entwined, their arms locked about each other, their rosy faces turned to Edith. Seeing her, they had taken the full measure of her solitariness, and the implication of this condition showed in their expressions which had become quite innocent with surprise and pity. She had felt almost apologetic as, with a stiff little bow (and that was an association and a reminiscence in itself), she had bid them goodnight and made her way thoughtfully to her room. And had resolved to learn and to do better, so that this particular complex of feelings might not be activated again.

  The next morning, dressed in her tweed skirt and her long cardigan, Edith reflected that she had perhaps been a little lax in presenting an appearance to the world. And that if the world had not shown much interest in her appearance (‘And what are you working on now?’ people asked her at parties) then it was perhaps her fault. She had failed to scale the heights of consumerism that were apparently as open to her as they were to anyone else; this could now be remedied. If a woman feels good she looks good, she said to herself, as she stepped out into the corridor. And as she crossed the foyer and went out through the revolving door, steadying herself with a deep breath before going out into the world, she reminded herself once again of this dictum. Of course, I have everything delivered, she added.

  But it was clear after about ten minutes that abroad for her, even a small resort out of season, was not the same as it was for Iris Pusey or even for Jennifer. Where they saw luxury goods, she saw only houses of detention. ‘Pension Lartigue (Dir. Mme Vve. Lartigue)’ was followed by ‘Clinique Les Mimosas (Dr Privat)’. A small railed garden contained two men playing chess on a collapsible table, watched by six totally silent onlookers. Disappointed, but still calm, she walked on until she came to a large café, its glass windows half covered with steam. She went in and sat down, taking a notebook out of her bag to give herself a countenance. But the sight before her was more reassuring. A low buzz of conversation emanated from a number of sturdy-looking women; flushed waitresses carried plates of cakes from a counter to the tables; coffee was ordered and reordered. Somewhere in the distance Edith could hear a familiar little whine; looking up, she saw the tall woman break off a piece of macaroon and poke it into Kiki’s mouth. Catching sight of Edith, the tall woman raised her small silver fork in brief and silent greeting. Edith nodded and smiled. What on earth was this woman doing here? Mrs Pusey would no doubt know. And what am I doing here myself, she thought, but quelled that thought, paid her bill, and left.

  The rest of her walk yielded no further evidence of the sybaritic life. A small corner shop, evidently a grocery of some sort, displayed on its pavement three perfectly unadorned baskets of string beans. Outside the station she bought a three days old copy of The Times. And returning to the hotel she was just in time to see Mrs Pusey and Jennifer being ceremoniously installed in the back of an old-fashioned limousine. Off to Montreux, no doubt, to get Jennifer fitted out like a queen. Edith turned slowly back into the hotel, went up in the lift, met a fresh effusion of scent in the corridor, and sat down thoughtfully at the little table in her room.

  ‘My dearest David,’ she wrote,

  ‘Well, it is all go here, a veritable whirl of activity. And an unworldly creature like myself might well have shrunk back in alarm from the sophistication of the smart set, had I not been kindly taken in hand by a respectable duenna, Mrs Iris Pusey of Montrose Court, late of Haslemere. It is thought that I might prove an acceptable companion for her daughter Jennifer, although Jennifer is clearly destined for higher things. However, Jennifer is in no hurry to leave her mother, or so her mother assures me, and in the meantime we are all peaceably pretendi
ng that the right man will come along in due course. At the moment, there are no men at all. Apart from Mrs Pusey’s husband (who seems to have no other title or appellation, none being needed, it is implied) we are on our own.

  ‘She is quite the most interesting person here, although there is a beautiful woman with a dog who looks promising. Her husband is something important in Brussels, I understand. However, we have not yet spoken. Mrs Pusey, on the other hand, is very communicative, which is rather a blessing because otherwise I …’ (this sentence she crossed out).

  ‘I adore Mrs Pusey. She is a totally serene, supremely confident woman who has, she laughingly suggests, simply made the best of what the good Lord gave her. She clearly has an enormous amount of money and I am rather interested to find out where this came from. When my husband was moved to Head Office, occasioning that tragic departure from Haslemere, where exactly did he go? What was his Head Office Head Office of? There is a nuance in Mrs Pusey’s behaviour, and even something, dare I say it, about the cut of Jennifer’s jib, that leads me to suspect that my husband might have been the kind of man who calls a shop a retail outlet. But he was clearly a man of decision. Apart from lodging some of his loot in a Swiss bank, it was he who realized that he could not risk the Mediterranean in the high season. Could not risk it for her, I mean. Did he slip off from time to time for a solitary spree at the tables? Was he a closet member of the Marbella Club? I rather hope so, but there is no evidence to support this.

  ‘Incidentally, although I have been thinking of Mrs Pusey as a lady, I have adjusted this downwards: Mrs Pusey is definitely a woman. “All woman”, my husband used to call her. (But he was one of the old school.) And the woman with the dog has to be adjusted upwards to lady, or rather Lady. She, or rather her husband, equally absent, is a member of the ruling class, although Mrs Pusey doesn’t think much of his title. Mrs Pusey clearly dislikes Lady X (I do not yet know her name). It will be interesting to find out why.

  ‘But otherwise, we all have names now: Mrs Pusey and Jennifer, of course, and the boy who brings the breakfast is Alain, and the pretty little blonde waitress at tea time is Maryvonne …’

  Edith laid down her pen. It was all very well to write up Mrs Pusey and Jennifer, but she was still left with that memory of the two women lovingly entwined as they saw her to the door to say goodnight. For there was love there, love between mother and daughter, and physical contact, and collusion about being pretty, none of which she herself had ever known. Her strange mother, Rosa, that harsh disappointed woman, that former beauty who raged so unsuccessfully against her fate, deliberately, wilfully letting herself go, slatternly and scornful, mocking her pale silent daughter who slipped so modestly in and out of her aromatic bedroom, bringing the cups of coffee which her mother deliberately spilled. And shouting, ‘Too weak! Too weak! All of you, too weak!’ Sighing for Vienna, which had known her young and brilliant, and not fat and slovenly, as she was now. And weeping for her dead sister, Anna.

  Thinking of Mrs Pusey’s sparkling charm, Edith encountered painful memories. They had aged badly, the fascinating Schaffner sisters, her mother, Rosa, her aunt Anna. They had enslaved many of the students who had lodged in their mother’s grim apartment while preparing their theses on Klimt or Schnitzler or the Jugendstil, or on all three. But although the sisters had married promptly, and young, they were soon bitterly disappointed. Those students, so attractive away from home, turned all too soon into mild university men. The campuses of Reading, of Nottingham, of Ohio State, of Kingston, had little to offer two such accomplished Viennese flirts, with their strategies, their tactics, their moods, and their endless desire for victory. When the sisters found each other again, many years later, together with their cousin Resi, it was to outbid each other with stories of horrific boredom, of husbands become too puny to interest them, of pointless days which it seemed beneath them to try to fill. Annoyance and frustration blazed from their every pore; in their mother’s dark drawing room the air was filled with dissension, with ugliness. They were now heavy women, punishingly corseted, with badly pencilled eyebrows, and large, hard bosoms. They whipped themselves into a blaze of retrospective fury, voices raised, coffee spilling from their cups. ‘Schrecklich! Schrecklich!’ they shouted. ‘Ach, du Schreck!’

  Seven-year-old Edith, hiding behind Grossmama Edith’s chair, heard with relief her father’s key in the door and ran to him, crying. The brutal sound of the words, which she did not understand, hurt her. Her father, guessing, smiled palely, and suggested that they go for a walk. He took her to the Kunsthistorisches Museum and tried to explain the pictures to her, but she pressed her wet red face against his hand and would not listen. And when he stopped longingly before a picture of men lying splayed in a cornfield under a hot sun she burst into further tears, and he bent down and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. Now, Edith, he had said, wiping her eyes with his handkerchief, this is when character tells.

  And he had died quite young, in his early fifties, her poor little professor, and scornful Rosa had collapsed without him. Not a day passed as, dirtier and more irascible, she heaped insults upon his memory. But when she in her turn died, not long after, Edith had found among her papers a faded scrap of a letter in her father’s careful student German, an invitation of some kind, its purpose now lost, and only its opening sentence hinting at earlier, happier times. In a gentle sloping hand were written the words, ‘Gracious lady, would you do me the honour …’ before the torn paper obliterated the rest of the message.

  Edith rubbed her eyes, and picked up her pen again.

  ‘My dear darling, you cannot know how much I think of you and long for you and wait until I can see you again.’

  This she blotted carefully and laid aside. Then, tak­ing up the folder containing Beneath the Visiting Moon, she pulled out her papers, re-read her last paragraph, and bent her head obediently to her daily task of fantasy and obfuscation.

  4

  ‘I think you have an admirer,’ said Mrs Pusey with a light laugh.

  Edith made no reply, nor, it seemed, was she required to do so, for Mrs Pusey, in an almond green linen coat and skirt, and wearing her daytime pearls, had turned away from her to summon Maryvonne: more hot water was needed.

  Edith, emerging dazed and haggard from her room after several hours with Beneath the Visiting Moon, had found the salon deserted with the exception of Mme de Bonneuil, who was reading very small portions of the Gazette de Lausanne through a magnifying glass. The dense, warm silence of the place indicated that she was too late for lunch and too early for tea. She crossed the foyer, still mildly anaesthetized by her labours, and stepped again through the revolving door into an afternoon of such mature beauty that she won­dered how she could possibly have missed it. An autumn sun, soft as honey, gilded the lake; tiny waves whispered onto the shore; a white steamer passed noiselessly off in the direction of Ouchy; and at her feet, on the sandy path, she saw the green hedgehog shape of a chestnut, split open to reveal the brown gleam of its fruit.

  The café with the clouded windows, now transparent and bathed in afternoon light, was almost empty. Seated at a silent table, Edith closed her eyes momentarily in a shaft of sunlight and tasted pure pleasure. Time dissolved; sensations expanded. She drank coffee, still too highly charged with vicarious emotion to eat, and then sat back in her chair, her eyes closed once more, savouring the reward of rest after her obscure and unnoticeable exertions. When she opened her eyes it was to see the extraordinary sight of the woman with the dog, remote, on the shore of the lake, bending and uncoiling her long narrow body, her slender arm flung out from time to time, her hair shining and tousled, her strange cry, ‘Kiki! Kiki!’, just audible through the window as the little dog, his neurotic temperament forgotten, chased after sticks. The lonely energy of the woman, the wild strangeness and concentration of her gesture, changed Edith’s mood back into one of caution, and she retraced her steps back to the hotel, returned to the melancholy of exile.

  Tea wa
s being served, and to Edith’s surprise it was being served to a number of people whom she had not seen before. More young waiters than she had previously noticed were busy at tables filled by groups of men in high good humour, animated by cordial discussion; one or two looked up as she passed, then returned to the more urgent matter of business that had brought them here, from the conference in Geneva, for a last informal meeting before they all went their separate ways. For the first time, Edith was aware of the hotel as a well populated organism, its attendants merely resting until an appropriate occasion should summon them to present themselves, serious and anxious to give service, at an appointed time. That time, it seemed, had now arrived. M. Huber, at the desk, getting in his son-in-law’s way, smiled, nodded, and suggested difficult alterations to the menu for dinner.

  To this scene of animation, her nose wrinkling slightly at the unusual smell of cigarette smoke, came Mrs Pusey, late as usual, and perhaps a little tired after a day which had not yielded the required amount of shopping. They had been after a particular kind of blouse, with drawn-thread work, she explained to Edith, who was drawn to Mrs Pusey’s table from her own as if by some magnetic force, but there had been a disappointment. The little woman who used to make the blouses had just disappeared, without giving them any sort of notice, although she was well aware that Mrs Pusey and Jennifer came over every year and always gave her a substantial order. And sent her a Christmas card. ‘But there you are,’ said Mrs Pusey. ‘The old days of service have disappeared, even in Switzerland. It’s not my world any longer.’ She gave a little smile. ‘No, everything has changed, and not for the better, either. But one thing I will not do is lower my standards. I have always striven for the best. It’s an instinct, I suppose. As my husband used to say, Only the best is good enough.’