Hotel du Lac

by Anita Brookner

  She bent her head, overcome by a sense of unworthiness. I have taken the name of Virginia Woolf in vain, she thought.

  She sat for a long time, then, humbly, got up, smoothed her hair, picked up her bag, and went down to tea.

  The only person taking tea in the salon was Mme de Bonneuil, her old brown hands brushing the crumbs from the front of her dress. Edith smiled at her, and received a nod in return. The hotel had emptied since the weekend. The weather was still fine, but waning in conviction, as if its hold on heat and light were growing weaker. On the terrace, the mild sun had an opaque quality, dwindling into mist as the afternoon, shorter now, slowly disappeared. The warmth was humid, promising showers. Once again, the mountain was beginning to dissolve into the mist.

  ‘There you are, dear,’ said Mrs Pusey. ‘You’ve been almost a stranger these past few days. Jennifer thought you had quite deserted us. Didn’t you, darling?’

  Jennifer raised her face from Mrs Pusey’s abandoned copy of The Sun at Midnight and smiled, her beautiful digestive system momentarily at rest.

  ‘Quite forgotten us, we thought,’ she confirmed. ‘Mummy was really upset.’

  Murmuring disclaimers, Edith sank into her wicker chair, and asked them what they had done that day. And was rewarded by happy expressions, and a great deal of delightfully inconsequential information.

  7

  ‘One hardly notices the proximity of the glaciers,’ said Edith appreciatively.

  ‘No,’ agreed Mr Neville. ‘But then they are not all that close.’

  They were seated outside a small restaurant under a vine-covered trellis, a bottle of yellow wine on the table between them. Shaded, they were able to look out across a small deserted square made brilliant by the sun of early afternoon. At this height the lake mists were no longer imaginable: half-tones and ambiguous gradations, gentle appreciations of mildness and warmth, were banished, relegated to invalid status, by the uncompromising clarity of this higher air. Up here the weather was both hot and cold, bright and dark: hot in the sun, cold in the shade, bright as they climbed, and dark as they had sat in the small deserted café-bar, resting, until Mr Neville had asked, ‘Could you walk a little more?’ and they had set off again until they reached the top of what seemed to Edith to be a mountain, although the golden fruit on the trees in the terraced orchards they had passed on their way rather gave the lie to this assumption. Now they sat after lunch, becalmed, the only two people contemplating these few square metres of flat cobbled ground, the only sounds the faint whine of a distant car and a mumble of music from a wireless deep in the recesses of the restaurant, perhaps from the kitchen, perhaps from the little sitting room at the back, where the owner might retire to read his newspaper before opening up again for dinner.

  But who came here? hi Edith’s mind, Mrs Pusey and Monica and Mme de Bonneuil, the hotel itself with its elderly pianist and its dependable meals, seemed to be at the other end of the universe. The mild and careful creature that she had been on the lake shore had also disappeared, had dematerialized in the ascent to this upper air, and by a remote and almost crystalline process new components had formed, resulting in something harder, brighter, more decisive, realistic, able to savour enjoyment, even to expect it.

  ‘Who comes here?’ she asked.

  ‘People like us,’ he replied.

  He was a man of few words, but those few words were judiciously selected, weighed for quality, and delivered with expertise. Edith, used to the ruminative monologues that most people consider to be adequate for the purposes of rational discourse, used, moreover, to concocting the cunning and even learned periods which the characters in her books so spontaneously uttered, leaned back in her chair and smiled. The sensation of being entertained by words was one which she encountered all too rarely. People expect writers to entertain them, she reflected. They consider that writers should be gratified simply by performing their task to the audience’s satisfaction. Like sycophants at court in the Middle Ages, dwarves, jongleurs. And what about us? Nobody thinks about entertaining us.

  Mr Neville noticed the brief spasm of feeling that passed over Edith’s face, and observed, ‘You may feel better if you tell me about it.’

  ‘Oh, do you think that is true?’ she enquired, breathing rather hard. ‘And even if it is, do you guarantee that the results will be immediately felt? Like those obscure advertisements for ointment that help you to “obtain relief”. One is never quite sure from what,’ she went on. ‘Although there is sometimes a tiny drawing of a man, rather correctly dressed, with a hand pressed to the small of his back.’

  Mr Neville smiled.

  ‘I suppose it is the promise that counts,’ Edith went on, a little wildly. ‘Or perhaps just the offer. Anyway, I forget what I was talking about. You mustn’t take any notice,’ she added. ‘Most of my life seems to go on at a subterranean level. And it is too nice a day to bother about all that,’ Her face cleared. ‘And I am having such a good time,’ she said.

  She did indeed look as if she might be, he thought. Her face had lost its habitual faintly sheep-like expression, its quest for approval or understanding, and had become amused, patrician. What on earth was she doing here, he wondered.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ asked Edith.

  He smiled again. ‘Why shouldn’t I be here?’

  She gestured with upturned hands. ‘Well, that hotel is hardly the place for you. It seems to be permanently reserved for women. And for a certain kind of woman. Cast-off or abandoned, paid to stay away, or to do harmless womanly things, like spending money on clothes. The very tenor of the conversation excludes men. You must be bored stiff.’

  ‘You, I expect, have come here to finish a book,’ he said pleasantly.

  Her face clouded. ‘That is quite right,’ she said. And poured herself another glass of wine.

  He affected not to notice this. ‘Well, I am rather fond of the place. I came here once with my wife. And as I was at the conference in Geneva, and in no rush to get back, I thought I’d see if it were still the same. The weather was good, so I stayed on a little.’

  ‘This conference,’ she said. ‘Forgive me, but I don’t know what it was about.’

  ‘Electronics. I have a rather sizeable electronics firm which is doing surprisingly well. In fact, it almost runs itself, thanks to my excellent second in command. I spend less and less time there, although I remain responsible for everything that goes on. But this way I can spend a good deal of time on my farm, and that is what I really prefer to do.’

  ‘Where …?’

  ‘Near Marlborough.’

  ‘And your wife,’ she ventured. ‘Did she not come with you?’

  He adjusted the cuffs of his shirt. ‘My wife left me three years ago,’ he said. ‘She ran away with a man ten years her junior, and despite everyone’s predictions she is still radiantly happy.’

  ‘Happy,’ said Edith lingeringly. ‘Howmarvellous! Oh, I’m so sorry. That was a tactless thing to say. You must think me very stupid.’ She sighed. ‘I am rather stupid, I fear. Out of phase with the world. People divide writers into two categories,’ she went on, deeply embarrassed by his silence. ‘Those who are preternaturally wise, and those who are preternaturally naive, as if they had no real experience to go on. I belong in the latter category,’ she added, flushing at the truth of what she said. ‘Like the Wild Boy of the Aveyron.’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘Now you are looking unhappy,’ he observed, after a short silence, during which he allowed her flush to deepen.

  ‘Well, I think I am rather unhappy,’ she said. ‘And it does so disappoint me.’

  ‘Do you think a lot about being happy?’ he asked.

  ‘I think about it all the time.’

  ‘Then, if I may say so, you are wrong to do so. I dare say you are in love,’ he said, punishing her for her earlier carelessness. Suddenly there was an antagonism between them, as he intended, for antagonism blunts despair. Edith raised eyes brilliant with anger,
only to meet his implacable profile. He was apparently inspecting a butterfly, which had perched, fluttering, on the rim of one of the boxed geranium plants that marked the restaurant’s modest perimeter.

  ‘It is a great mistake,’ he resumed, after a pause, ‘to confuse happiness with one particular situation, one particular person. Since I freed myself from all that I have discovered the secret of contentment.’

  ‘Pray tell me what it is,’ she said, in a dry tone. ‘I have always wanted to know.’

  ‘It is simply this. Without a huge emotional investment, one can do whatever one pleases. One can take decisions, change one’s mind, alter one’s plans. There is none of the anxiety of waiting to see if that one other person has everything she desires, if she is discontented, upset, restless, bored. One can be as pleasant or as ruthless as one wants. If one is prepared to do the one thing one is drilled out of doing from earliest childhood – simply please oneself – there is no reason why one should ever be unhappy again.’

  ‘Or, perhaps, entirely happy.’

  ‘Edith, you are a romantic,’ he said with a smile. ‘I may call you Edith, I hope?’

  She nodded. ‘But why must I be called a romantic just because I don’t see things the same way as you do?’

  ‘Because you are misled by what you would like to believe. Haven’t you learned that there is no such thing as complete harmony between two people, however much they profess to love one another? Haven’t you realized how much time and speculation are wasted, how much endless mythological agonizing goes on, simply because they are out of phase? Haven’t you seen how the light touch sometimes, nearly always, in fact, is more effective than the deepest passion?’

  ‘Yes, I have seen that,’ said Edith, sombre.

  ‘Then, my dear, learn to use it. You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish. It is the simplest thing in the world to decide what you want to do – or, rather, what you don’t want to do – and just to act on that.’

  ‘That is true of certain things,’ said Edith. ‘But not of others.’

  ‘You must learn to discount the others. Within your own scope you can accomplish much more. You can be self-centred, and that is a marvellous lesson to learn. To assume your own centrality may mean an entirely new life.’

  ‘But if you would prefer to share your life?’ asked Edith. ‘Supposing that you were a person who was simply bored with living their own life and wanted to live somebody else’s. For the sheer pleasure of the novelty.’

  ‘You cannot live someone else’s life. You can only live your own. And remember, there are no punishments. Whatever they told you about unselfishness being good and wickedness being bad was entirely inaccurate. It is a lesson for serfs and it leads to resignation. And my policy, you may be surprised to hear, will ensure you any number of friends. People feel at home with low moral standards. It is scruples that put them off.’

  Edith conceded his point with a judicious nod. This dangerous gospel, which she would have refuted at a lower level, seemed to accord with the wine, the brilliance of the sun, the headiness of the air. There was something wrong with it, she knew, but at the moment she was not interested in finding out what it was. More than the force of his argument, she was seduced by the power of his language, his unusual eloquence. And I thought him quiet, she marvelled.

  ‘That is why I so much enjoy our dear Mrs Pusey,’ Mr Neville continued. ‘There is something quite heartening about her simple greed. And one is so happy to know that she has found the means of satisfying it. And, as you see, she is in good health and spirits: altruism has not interfered with her digestion, conscience has not stopped her sleeping at nights, and she enjoys every minute of her existence.’

  ‘Yes, but I doubt if all this is good for Jennifer,’ said Edith. ‘Or good enough, I should say. At her age there should be more to life than buying clothes.’

  ‘Jennifer,’ said Mr Neville, with his fine smile. ‘I have no doubt that in her own way Jennifer is a chip off the old block.’

  She leaned back in her chair and raised her face to the sun, mildly intoxicated, not so much by the wine as by the scope of this important argument. Seduced, also, by the possibility that she might please herself, simply by wishing it so. As a devil’s advocate Mr Neville was faultless. And yet, she knew, there was a flaw in his reasoning, just as there was a flaw in his ability to feel. Sitting up straight, she returned to the attack.

  ‘This life you advocate,’ she queried, ‘with its low moral standards. Can you recommend it? For others, I mean.’

  Mr Neville’s smile deepened. ‘I daresay my wife could. And that is what you are getting at, isn’t it? Do I tolerate low moral standards in other people?’

  Edith nodded.

  He took a sip of his wine.

  ‘I have come to understand them very well,’ he replied.

  Well done, thought Edith. That was a faultless performance. He knew what I was thinking and he gave me an answer. Not a satisfactory answer, but an honest one. And in its own way, elegant. I suppose Mr Neville is what was once called a man of quality. He conducts himself altogether gracefully. He is well turned out, she thought, surveying the panama hat and the linen jacket. He is even good-looking: an eighteenth-century face, fine, reticent, full-lipped, with a faint bluish gleam of beard just visible beneath the healthy skin. A heartless man, I think. Furiously intelligent. Suitable. Oh David, David.

  Mr Neville, noting the minute alteration in her attention to him, leaned over the table.

  ‘You are wrong to think that you cannot live without love, Edith.’

  ‘No, I am not wrong,’ she said, slowly. ‘I cannot live without it. Oh, I do not mean that I go into a decline, develop odd symptoms, become a caricature. I mean something far more serious than that. I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode. My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all day, reading, or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening.’

  ‘You are a romantic, Edith,’ repeated Mr Neville, with a smile.

  ‘It is you who are wrong,’ she replied. ‘I have been listening to that particular accusation for most of my life. I am not a romantic. I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.’

  ‘Putting the cat out?’ suggested Mr Neville.

  Edith gave him a glance of pure dislike.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you obviously find this very amusing,’ she said. ‘Clearly they order things better in Swindon, or wherever it was that you … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It was extremely rude of me. How dreadfully …’.

  He poured her out another glass of wine.

  ‘You are a good woman,’ he said. ‘That is all too obvious.’

  ‘How is it obvious?’ she asked.

  ‘Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.’

  Edith, breathing hard, wondered if she were drunk or simply rendered incautious by the novelty of this conversation.

  ‘I should like some coffee,’ she announced, with what she hoped was Nietzschean directness. ‘No, on second thoughts, I should like some tea. I should like a pot of very strong tea.’

  Mr Neville glanced at his watch. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is getting on. We should be making a move soon. When you have had your tea,’ he added.

  Edith drank her tea fiercely, unawar
e that the exertion of thinking, so remote, so unusual in her present circumstances, had brought colour to her cheeks and added brightness to her eyes. Her hair, slipping from its usual tight control, lay untidily on her neck, and with a gesture of impatience she removed the last securing hairpins, raked her fingers through it, and let it fall about her face. Mr Neville, appraising her with faintly pursed lips, nodded.

  ‘Let me tell you what you need, Edith,’ he said.

  Not again, she thought. I have just told you what I need and I know what that is better than you do.

  ‘Yes, I know you think you know better than I do,’ he said, as her head shot up in alarm. ‘But you are wrong. You do not need more love. You need less. Love has not done you much good, Edith. Love has made you secretive, self-effacing, perhaps dishonest?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Love has brought you to the Hotel du Lac, out of season, to sit with the other women, and talk about clothes. Is that what you want?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’

  ‘No,’ he went on. ‘You are a clever woman, too clever not to know what you are missing. Those tiny domestic pleasures, those card games you talk about, they would soon pall.’

  ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘Never.’

  ‘Yes. Oh, your romanticism might keep rueful thoughts at bay for a time, but the thoughts would win out. And then you would discover that you had a lot in common with all the other discontented women, and you’d start to see a lot of sense in the feminist position, and you’d refuse to read anything but women’s novels …’.

  ‘I write them,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Not that sort,’ he said. ‘You write about love. And you will never write anything different, I suspect, until. you begin to take a harder look at yourself.’