The Numbered Account

by Ann Bridge

  Every time she sat down Julia Probyn was conscious of an unwonted weight against the front of her thighs. This was caused by the ‘coffre-fort,’ that old ingenious American device by means of which the most careless ladies can carry currency about in almost perfect safety—a small canvas wallet with two or three compartments, slung on webbing straps from a belt round the waist and worn under the skirt; the slapping against the legs affords comforting evidence that one’s money is still there, and the thing can hardly be removed short of an attempt at rape. Mrs. Hathaway, Julia knew, possessed several of these objects, and she had caused Watkins to produce the largest of them ‘for our money’; but in fact it contained a copy of the late Mr. Thalassides’ will, and signed authorisations by Aglaia’s lawyers and bankers in London to the Swiss Bank ‘to give full information to Miss Julia Probyn’ concerning the moneys in the numbered account. There was also a scrawl in Colin’s rather crabbed writing giving the name and address of the guardian-godfather who knew the number of the account—La Cure, Bellardon—and a cautiously-worded note from the lawyers, suggesting that the Pastor of Bellardon also should give ‘all facilities’ to Miss Probyn.

  Colin had flown South from Glentoran on the plane after Julia’s, the first on which he could get a seat; he had brought all these documents round to her club, and they went through them together—the other occupants of the half-empty room appeared mostly to be deaf or blind, or both. Julia read through the papers carefully. They were addressed to Messieurs les Directeurs of the Banque Républicaine in Geneva.

  ‘Oh, so they do at least know the name of the bank,’ she said, folding them up and putting them in her handbag. ‘Only a photostat of the will. I see.’

  ‘Yes, but you also see that Judkins and Judkins have had it attested by a Commissioner for Oaths. Honestly, I think you’ve got everything you need now, bar the actual number, which old de Ritter, the guardian, will give you.’

  ‘Let’s hope he will,’ Julia had said.

  Experienced passengers on cross-Channel steamers book a steward the moment they get on board to take their luggage ashore on the further side, and see them through the Douane and into their sleepers; Julia, who usually flew to France, failed to do this till too late. Her French porter, in spite of bribes and adjurings, as usual collected eight other people’s luggage beside hers, and kept her and Watkins waiting for more than twenty minutes in the Customs shed before he appeared, behind a barrow piled nearly as high as Mont Blanc. This contretemps prevented Julia from checking on the movements of the girl with the extraordinary resemblance to Aglaia; through the dusty, dirty windows she thought she caught a glimpse of her boarding the Paris train, but she could not be sure. Oh well, it was probably just a coincidence. For the rest of the evening she was diverted by Watkins’s reactions to foreign food, and to adjusting her undressing to a sleeper.

  The Swiss Customs examination on trains from Calais now takes place at Berne; sleepy, hungry, and feeling generally dishevelled, Julia secured a porter, a tall fair middle-aged man, for their hand-luggage, and deposited this, with Watkins, in the pleasant station restaurant—then she went off to the Customs. Another contretemps— their registered luggage had not arrived. Julia, indignant, insisted coolly but persistently in her rather moderate German on being taken to see someone in authority, and was eventually led by the tall porter to a small office adjoining that of the station-master; here she made her complaint to two well-educated, civil-spoken men, who took down all details and asked where she was going?

  ‘To Gersau—and the luggage must come on at once, frei,’ Julia said firmly.

  Oh the delightful helpful Swiss, so unlike surly French officialdom, she thought, as her address in Gersau was noted, and she was promised that the missing luggage would be sent on as soon as it arrived in Berne. ‘This must have happened in France—in France anything can happen!’ one of the officials said. ‘We regret the inconvenience to the Fräulein.’ Julia laughed, thanked him, and went back to the restaurant to tuck into coffee and rolls-and-butter with Watkins.

  Emerging some two hours later from the high airy station at Lucerne and crossing the open space outside it to the quay, the lovely heat hit them—blazing sun, brilliant sky, the cobbles and tarmac almost incandescent. ‘My word, Miss, I shall be glad to get into a cottom dress,’ Watkins observed. ‘But this is a clean, pretty place,’ the English maid added, casting an approving glance at the trim beds full of bright flowers. ‘This seems a clean country—I noticed the fields and gardens as we came along. That last train was clean, too. I do like things clean!’

  Watkins’s desire for a cotton frock diminished on the lake steamer, whose swift passage over the blue-green waters made sitting on the deck quite chilly. They retreated into the saloon, where Watkins gazed out through the windows, and continued her comments.

  ‘My goodness me, Miss, do look at that! Is there any reason for a hill to stick up into the sky like a power-station chimney?’ (This was Watkins’s reaction to the Bürgenstock, seen end on.)

  ‘Switzerland is like that, Watkins,’ Julia replied, laughing. ‘The whole place is up on end.’

  But though Julia was more familiar than Watkins with the power-station-chimney aspect of Switzerland, since she had twice spent three weeks ski-ing at Zermatt, she knew nothing whatever of the country beyond what could be seen from trains or ski-slopes, or learned from how its hotels are run; of the industrial and commercial, let alone the private life of its inhabitants she was completely ignorant, as most tourists are. Her enlightenment began at once, at Gersau.

  This whole small place is compressed into a fold between two of the steep green ridges running down from the Rigi. Along the lake front is a fringe of hotels, restaurants, gardens, and filling-stations, Gersau’s public face; but up behind are large unsuspected houses in shady gardens, giving onto narrow quiet streets with occasional small shops, which supply the needs of the inhabitants rather than souvenirs for the tourist.

  A tall stately old gentleman in a Panama hat was standing on the little quay, attended by a manservant in a red-and-black silk jacket; as Julia and Watkins stepped off the boat he raised his panama and said, ‘Is it Miss Probyn? I am Rudolf Waechter,’ in perfect English, and then greeted Watkins—‘Your mistress will be very pleased to see you.’ Julia was surprised to see no sign of a car or even a taxi, but none was necessary; their luggage was placed on a hand-barrow by the manservant and they walked, slightly uphill, barely two hundred yards before reaching a large plastered house with deep overhanging eaves, and passed through a heavy old door of carved walnut into a cool hall. Within, the staircase had walnut banisters, and there was old walnut panelling everywhere; Persian rugs and carpets covered the floors and even the stairs, and on the walls modern French paintings were skilfully juxtaposed with some lovely Primitives which, Julia later learned, were early Rhenish, something in which her host specialised.

  ‘You will want to see Mrs. Hathaway,’ he said, as he took her upstairs. ‘Luncheon will be at 1.30, so you have time—Anna will show you your room, and then take you to her. It is very good of you to come yourself to bring her maid—and I am, of course, delighted to have you here.’

  On an upper landing Anna, a neat elderly maid, was waiting, and took Julia to her room, Watkins following. ‘Room’ was an understatement; Julia had been given a suite consisting of a large bedroom, a sitting-room, and a bathroom. Bedroom and sitting-room both opened onto a deep balcony, set with luxuriously comfortable chaises longues and small tables, an extra room in itself. The bathroom, like all the rest, was of a recherché perfection—the whole thing was so exquisite that Julia almost gasped. She threw her hat on the bed, and then asked Anna where ‘Miss Watkins’s’ room was? Anna, beaming, led them out onto the wide landing again—more superb rugs, Julia noticed—and opened the door of a pleasant bed-sitting-room, also with an adjoining bathroom.

  ‘Well, you will be quite comfy here, Watkins, won’t you?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Provided the water
’s hot,’ Watkins replied, turning on the tap in the basin. A cloud of steam answered her incredulity; a little abashed, she turned off the tap. ‘Yes, Miss; it’s a pretty room—and quite clean, too.’ Julia was satisfied; if Watkins passed the Waechter house as clean, she would give no trouble. She asked Anna to take them to Frau Hathaway.

  Watkins had been put in a room next door to her mistress, who was housed in another lovely suite. Julia studied her old friend’s appearance anxiously when Anna ushered them in, but it was clear that Mrs. Hathaway was, as she pronounced herself to be, very much better; her colour was quite good, and her voice as firm as ever when she gave directions to her maid.

  ‘I’m glad to see you, Watkins—I hope you had a good journey. Now go and unpack and get yourself straight, while I talk to Miss Julia. They will bring you some lunch in about half an hour; after that you must rest, and then learn your way about the house; and later you can make my tea, and do some washing for me.’ Watkins obediently made her exit.

  ‘My dear child, this is so good of you,’ Mrs. Hathaway said. ‘I’m sure Edina was furious at having you reft away the moment you got to Glentoran, after so long. But Herr Waechter wouldn’t hear of my going to a hospital, and he hasn’t a large staff, admirable as they are; I really felt I couldn’t impose the strain of having me waited on a moment longer than was necessary.’

  Julia said it was fun coming—‘and what a marvellous house.’

  ‘Oh yes, it’s bursting with treasures—partly inherited, of course, and then he has this passion for Rhenish Primitives and Persian rugs; he has spent a lifetime, and a fortune, collecting them. He only took a fancy to French painting much later—but just in time to get some good things. He has three Blue Picassos.’

  ‘Golly! But where did he get his money?’ Julia asked, with her usual frankness.

  ‘Oh, fine optical glass for precision instruments— Waechters are known all over the world for that. Oddly enough, since the War they get that mineral they use for it, the stuff which looks like flour, from a place not so very far from Glentoran—it’s three or four per cent purer than anything they can mine even in Czechoslovakia. I wish I could remember its name,’ Mrs. Hathaway said, rather wistfully, ‘but at the moment I can’t.’

  ‘Never mind. And does Herr Waechter still work at this glass performance?’

  ‘Oh no—he only goes to Board meetings occasionally. A nephew runs it now.’

  ‘What are the inherited treasures?’ Julia asked, surprised, in her English ignorance, that Swiss manufacturers should inherit any heirlooms.

  ‘Oh, the furniture—a lot of it is beyond price; you must get him to show you—and some of the Primitives. His father collected those, and started his interest in them. And of course the house itself, which is over 200 years old; that came from his grandmother, who was a Carmenzind.’

  ‘I saw that name on a shop as we walked up,’ Julia said. ‘I thought it so queer, and pretty.’

  ‘Yes, the place is full of them; it’s a great Gersau name.’ Mrs. Hathaway paused, and looked with shrewd amusement at her young friend. ‘I don’t want to bore you; I don’t think I shall, you being you—but did you ever realise that Gersau was an independent Republic, within the Swiss Confederation, till 1818, or thereabouts?’

  ‘No—and it seems impossible! This tiny place a Republic? Like San Marino?’

  ‘Yes, only perhaps even smaller. Don’t go by size for values! And its last President before it was absorbed—even the Swiss absorb, sooner or later,’ Mrs. Hathaway reflected sadly—‘was a Carmenzind; Rudolf Waechter’s great-grandfather.’

  Anna at this point brought in a tray with Cinzano, ice, and slices of orange. ‘Will the ladies please serve themselves?’ she said, and retired. Julia poured out for both, and sat down again.

  ‘This is all quite fascinating,’ she said. ‘I had no idea that Switzerland was like this.’

  ‘Of course not, dear child. The English always think of the Swiss purely as a race of hotel-keepers, with a few hardy peasant guides thrown in—and, of course, as makers of cuckoo-clocks. Well they are hotel-keepers, though that is really our fault; it was the English who invented and patented Switzerland as the Playground of Europe. Even dear Rudolf Waechter, besides his glass business, has a controlling interest in three or four of the major hotels. But they have this private life as well, which has been going quietly on for centuries—and it is a very civilised life, as you will see in this house.’

  ‘I am seeing,’ Julia said.

  ‘It can be combined with hotel-keeping, too,’ Mrs. Hathaway pursued. ‘Othmar Schoeck’s parents—you know, the great composer, who died not so long ago—kept a delightful hotel in Brunnen, quite near here; I knew him well as a girl. Old Papa Schoeck was an artist. I didn’t much care for his pictures, too Landseer-ish, all chamois and eagles. But there he was, painting away in his studio on the top floor in his spare time, while his sons went to the University in Zürich, or became great musicians. I don’t know who started the idea that hotel-keeping is a low, deadening trade. Can it have been the Americans?’

  Julia was just saying that she didn’t know any American hotel-keepers, but that so many English hotels were deadly as to suggest that the theory had its origin in England, when Anna again appeared, summoning her to luncheon, and bringing a tray for Mrs. Hathaway. ‘From now on, Miss Watkins will bring up all my trays,’ Mrs. Hathaway told the Swiss maid firmly in German. ‘For this the Fräulein has brought her here.’ Anna smirked and nodded, and led Julia down to the first floor, on which were both the drawing-room and the dining-room.

  The latter, where they ate a delicious lunch at an early walnut refectory table, was panelled throughout in the same wood; Julia, by way of making conversation, observed that it was odd to her to see such an ancient table made of anything but oak.

  ‘Ah, but you see the walnut has always been our principal furniture tree, not the oak; and since we are not a maritime nation, we seldom imported mahogany.’ Her host drew her attention to the old carved dresser and other pieces in the room, including a near-Biedermeier tall-boy between the high windows. ‘You will notice that it is not pure Biedermeier—and that is precisely what gives it its value. Here, from the eighteenth century, we copied foreign styles, but always with slight differences; if anyone shows you a piece of antique Swiss furniture which is correct Empire, or correct Biedermeier, you may be sure that it is a fake.’

  Julia was delighted with her host. Over coffee in the drawing-room, which also had a broad balcony, she felt secure enough to ask him how he had come to know Mrs. Hathaway?—explaining that she looked on her almost as a mother. She was touched by the way he told the story. Mrs. Hathaway, as a girl, had come with her parents to stay at one of the family hotels in Lugano—‘I was the receptionist then; we must all learn our trade, from the bottom up! But there were dances on Thursday and Sunday evenings, when I danced with her—and fell a little in love with her.’ Julia loved the gentle reminiscent smile with which the old man said that. ‘We both married,’ he pursued, more briskly. ‘She had sons, I had no children. But our friendship we have kept.’

  Julia, entranced by this glimpse into the past, asked what her beloved Mrs. Hathaway had been like as a girl.

  ‘Plain,’ Herr Waechter said flatly; ‘and her mother did not dress her well. But she had a merry laugh, and great intelligence; also she was always what now I believe you call “tough”, though the word was unknown then.’

  ‘And was it her toughness you fell in love with?’ Julia asked, absorbed by these revelations.

  The old man laughed.

  ‘Miss Probyn, you are rather clever! I never phrased it to myself in this way, but in fact I believe that was what I fell in love with.’

  Their heavy luggage arrived about 4 p.m.; a telephone call from the quay announced its arrival, and the manservant went down with the hand-cart to fetch it. There was nothing to pay, since the railway was at fault. Again Julia blessed the Swiss.

  Mrs. Hathaway
had to keep her bed for several days, but once Watkins had got the hang of the house, and could wait on her, Julia was fairly free, and her host insisted on taking her out with him in the car, which a chauffeur drove, when he had to go anywhere. The first of these occasions was a visit to his wine-merchant in Brunnen; Julia in her ignorance was astonished at every meal by the excellence of the Swiss wines she drank, and was delighted at the idea. She was even more delighted by the reality. Accustomed to the urban precincts of Messrs. Berry Brothers or the Wine Society, she was startled to drive into a cobbled yard flanked by a low line of buildings backed up against a steep wooded hill-side; when Herr Waechter, escorted by the foreman, walked all through the sheds, piled high with crates and barrels, to inspect the bottling of some wine in which he was particularly interested, she found it fascinating to see ferns and hazel-boughs poking in at the barred windows. Out of curiosity she enquired about the price of whisky, and was led into a cupboardlike room on whose high shelves were ranged whiskies of every conceivable sort. The well-known brands, owing to the low excise duty, were about the same price as in England, in spite of the high Swiss rate of exchange; but unheard-of varieties were priced at as little as twenty-four shillings.

  ‘Can one drink this stuff?’ she asked, holding out a bottle labelled Bonnie Bluebell to Herr Waechter.

  ‘That, no. But this, and this’—he reached two bottles down off the shelves—‘are quite good. Do you drink whisky? I have plenty.’

  ‘Yes, I do—and when we leave you I shall want some; Mrs. Hathaway likes it, too. I’d like to buy a little, as I’m here, and with you to help.’ She left with five bottles of Claonaig Cream, which cost her only six pounds and proved to be a very tolerable whisky indeed.