Hotel du Lac

by Anita Brookner

‘I can’t see anything wrong with it,’ retorted Monica, but without much heat. ‘Men do it too,’ she added, after a pause. They both drooped, their spirits low, dimly aware that any remark would fail to elicit the expected response. They sat moodily, contemplating their exile. After a few moments, Monica signalled to the waitress and ordered cakes for both of them. Why not? thought Edith. At least we needn’t go back for lunch. And I am not hungry anyway.

  They ate in silence, feeling exposed and guilty, graceless, as women eating alone without enjoyment do feel. The sweetness burst in Edith’s mouth, cloying quickly; sated, she passed her plate over to Monica, who fed the remaining crumbs to Kiki.

  ‘I wonder that dog isn’t monstrously fat,’ remarked Edith, ‘with the amount you give him to eat.’

  ‘He sicks up most of it,’ said Monica thoughtfully, in the voice of one who is on the brink of discovering the connection between effect and cause. Through a dense fringe of hair, Kiki stared up at her with infinite trust. And who am I to come between them, thought Edith.

  ‘Anyway, he’s not bad looking,’ said Monica, lighting one of her immense cigarettes. ‘Neville, I mean. And you’re not bad looking, Edith, when you put your mind to it. Your clothes are terrible, if you don’t mind my saying so. Or even if you do. Still, that’s your affair. No, Mr Neville could be thought to be a catch.’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ said Edith truthfully.

  Monica gave her a narrow glance. ‘My dear girl, that man had a price on his head the minute he walked into the hotel.’

  ‘Monica,’ said Edith, startled. ‘Do you mean you have fallen in love with Mr Neville?’

  ‘Who said anything about love?’ replied Monica, after a pause.

  ‘Then what…?’

  ‘Oh, never mind, Edith. No, I’ll pay for this. No, really, do let me. I’m going to, anyway.’

  Edith, rubbing a patch of the steamy window clear, saw the grey mist advancing and felt herself begin to dissolve into it. This is when character tells, she thought. But her character, by which she had never set much store, seemed to have undergone a debilitating process recently, perhaps since the thoughts of last night, and she knew that the only remedy was work. I have done it before, she admonished herself, and I can do it again. Besides, I am getting behind with Beneath the Visiting Moon. I promised Harold I’d let him have it by Christmas. I haven’t written anything for three days. No wonder I feel depressed. I need to get down to some work.

  ‘I think I’ll go back,’ she said to Monica. ‘I’ve got some letters to write. What will you do?’

  ‘On a day like this, the only thing to do is to go to the hairdresser and have the works. The whole caboodle. Walk round that way with me. You’re not in a hurry, are you?’

  No, she was not in a hurry. And when the tall woman linked arms with her, she found herself touched and warmed by the contact, and, with the little dog bustling ahead through the leaves, they wandered slowly and silently along under the damp trees, aware of an impatient but genuine good will towards each other, just enough to sustain them against the onslaught of more painful memories that came to them unbidden and uncensored.

  Women share their sadness, thought Edith. Their joy they like to show off to one another. Victory, triumph over the odds, calls for an audience. And that air of bustle and exigence sometimes affected by the sexually loquacious – that is for the benefit of other women. No solidarity then.

  In the dead hour between two and three, when sensible people put their feet up or take a nap, Edith walked with Monica under the lifeless trees by the lake shore. The day seemed interminable, yet neither was in a hurry to have done with it. It seemed to both of them in their separate ways that only the possession of this day held worse days at bay, that, for each of them, the seriousness of their respective predicaments had so far been material for satire or for ridicule or even for amusement. But that the characters who had furnished that satire or that amusement were now taking on a disturbing life of their own, were revealing capacities for command or caprice that threatened, although in a very obscure or oblique way, their own marginal existence. We both came here to get other people out of trouble, thought Edith; no one considered our hopes and wishes. Yet hopes and wishes are what should be proclaimed, most strenuously proclaimed, if anyone is to be jolted into the necessity of taking note of them, let alone the obligation to fulfil them. Yet how curious it is that some women have to be indulged and placated all the time … It seems that I shall never learn the rules of correct behaviour, she thought, those rules that girls are supposed to learn at their mother’s knee. All I learned I learned from Father. Think again, Edith. You have made a false equation. This is when character tells. Sad precepts of a lost faith.

  With a sigh they turned round and began to walk back the way they had come, in the direction of the town and of the hairdresser. The streets were dull and empty, most people having prudently withdrawn from this unpromising scene. They rounded the corner and wandered past the bookshop; Edith, halfheartedly, hung back to look in the window, where Le Soleil de Minuit, in its paper cover, made a modest appearance. It was my best, she thought. But the prospect of doing it all over again, for the rest of my life, strikes a chill into my heart.

  ‘Edith,’ hissed Monica. ‘Don’t hurry.’

  Mildly surprised, Edith looked up, and saw in the distance Mrs Pusey and Jennifer, arm in arm, emerging from a shop that sold gloves and handkerchiefs. An assistant, holding three of the shop’s smartly de­corated bags that were almost as handsome as their contents, followed them after a moment or two and was directed to the car, which Edith and Monica could now perceive cruising slowly towards them from the opposite direction. The driver stopped, emerged from behind the wheel, crossed the street, conferred with the Puseys, took the parcels and got back into the car. Mrs Pusey, apparently restored to health and equilibrium by her purchases, could be seen smiling and nodding her head vigorously, although Monica and Edith were too far away to hear what was being said. Instinctively, they backed into the bookseller’s doorway, in the hope of not being noticed. But after a minute or two it was clear that the attention of the Puseys was held in one of those intense and enthusiastic colloquies from which all outsiders were definitely disbarred. This realization, coming to them both simultaneously, caused them to exchange a look in which relief and something like resignation were exactly mingled.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Monica, ‘that we will either have to catch up with them or go past them or trail behind them in order to get back.’

  ‘You were going to the hairdresser,’ Edith reminded her.

  ‘Well, that’s on the way, isn’t it? You’d have to come that far with me if you wanted to get back to the hotel.’

  ‘I don’t want to get back all that much,’ said Edith, to whom the hotel or what it represented had become uncomfortable.

  ‘In that case,’ decided Monica, ‘we might as well go back and have another coffee.’

  They retraced their steps through the little stony grey street. By this time their earlier intimacy had fragmented into a sort of disaffection; each was inwardly sighing at the wasted day. I should have stayed in, thought Edith; I should have spent the day writing. At least when I am writing I am gainfully employed. This strolling about is pointless. Functionless. Yet it is only a day, and I have no real duties, and I am not letting anybody down. In a way it is quite pleasant, really, she thought, heavy-hearted, as they made their way once more into Haffenegger’s, its interior now rich with the smell of sugar and coffee, and busy with the conversations of the immaculate, stolid, well-behaved ladies who made up the regular afternoon clientèle.

  ‘Makes you homesick, doesn’t it?’ said Monica, who seemed quite reduced by the fact that the attention of the waitresses was now monopolized by those stern and hearty women who seemed to have displaced her. Her face registered the wistfulness she felt at being displaced, and she busied herself with installing Kiki on a spare chair, just in case anyone should come to claim it.
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  They sat islanded in their foreignness, irrelevant now that the holiday season had ended, anachronistic, outstaying their welcome, no longer necessary to anyone’s plans. Priorities had shifted; the little town was settling down for its long uninterrupted hibernation. No one came here in the winter. The weather was too bleak, the snow too distant, the amenities too sparse to tempt visitors. And they felt that the backs of the residents had been turned on them with a sigh of relief, reminding them of their transitory nature, their fundamental unreality. And when Monica at last succeeded in ordering coffee, they still sat, glumly, for another ten minutes, before the busy waitress remembered their order.

  ‘Homesick,’ said Edith finally. ‘Yes.’ But she thought of her little house as if it had existed in another life, another dimension. She thought of it as something to which she might never return. The seasons had changed since she last saw it; she was no longer the person who could sit up in bed in the early morning and let the sun warm her shoulders and the light make her impatient for the day to begin. That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself. She bent her head over her coffee, trying to believe that it was the steam rising from the cup that was making her eyes prick. This cannot go on, she thought.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ moaned Monica. ‘That does it. That’s all we need.’

  Edith, raising her head and following the direction of Monica’s eyes, looked towards the doorway where Mrs Pusey, laughing, her arm through that of Mr Neville, was waiting for Jennifer to negotiate rights in a favourable table. The elderly man who had been sitting at the one she had chosen, and who had been about to light a cigarette, changed his mind, gathered his briefcase and shopping bag from the empty seat beside him, and retired to the cash desk to pay his bill, while at the same time attempting to put on his hat and coat. As he left, he raised his hat to Jennifer, who beamed. She had, in that instant, Edith noted, exactly the same expression as her mother.

  Monica and Edith sat hunched, furtive, waiting for the inevitable summons. This, however, was not forthcoming. Instead, after a few minutes, they found themselves watching the Puseys and Mr Neville. Much sparkling laughter was in evidence, at least from Mrs Pusey; an anecdote was being recounted by Jennifer, and Mr Neville, his head inclined indulgently in her direction, was paying grave attention. He was not saying anything, Edith noted. It was Mrs Pusey who was supplying the recitative.

  ‘Well,’ said Monica. ‘I suppose we could make a move now.’

  She seemed thoughtful. Edith sighed and called for the bill. They waited in silence for it to be delivered, then, cautiously, stood up and turned towards the door.

  ‘Why,’ said Mrs Pusey in surprise, as they edged past her table, ‘there are the girls!’ They stood awkwardly, smiling, as Jennifer and Mr Neville smiled back. ‘And what have you two been doing with yourselves all day?’ asked Mrs Pusey.

  ‘Having a rest,’ said Edith, rather uncertainly. ‘Are you feeling better, Mrs Pusey?’ She noted that Mrs Pusey’s appearance, so refulgent from a distance, could be seen, at closer quarters, to be subject to a certain degree of disintegration. The cheekbones were rosier, the eyelids bluer, and the mouth slightly more tremulous, more smudged, than usual. And yet the will was there, the indomitable will, the refusal to give up, give in, give way, stand down, stay behind. Admirable Mrs Pusey, thought Edith. Protected by the brilliance of her own réclame. She will outlive us all. But she repeated, ‘Are you feeling better?’

  Mrs Pusey cast her eyes down, then cast them up again.

  ‘Yes, dear, thank you. Thanks to these two dear people, I’m almost myself again. Though when I think …’

  ‘Must go,’ said Monica. ‘Hair appointment. Coming, Edith?’ Edith mimed haste, regret, farewell into the upturned faces of the Puseys and Mr Neville, and followed Monica out into the street.

  She scarcely remembered getting back to the hotel, although she shivered once more as the mist stole in from the lake. Back in her room, she ran a bath until the bathroom was dense with steam. She brushed her hair furiously and left it hanging loose on her shoulders. She studied her crimson face in the glass, then walked to the wardrobe and took out the new blue silk dress that Monica had made her buy and which she had never worn. She disappeared into the bathroom with a bottle of scent, and poured the entire contents into the water. Heat and rebellion and extravagance served her appearance well. An altogether different creature sat down at her writing table and uncapped her pen.

  ‘My dearest David’ (she wrote).

  But caution warned her not to start her letter before dinner, because once started she could not be sure when she would stop.

  She paced up and down in her room, unwilling to exchange her silence for the pleasantries of the evening. Eventually, with a sigh, she took up her bag and key and went downstairs.

  In the salon, Mrs Pusey, in her black chiffon, was, as usual, accompanied by Jennifer, who looked pink and rested. The pianist, arranging his music, looked up enquiringly at Mrs Pusey who raised a deprecating hand and shook her head, as if to indicate that her attention was not available that evening. Discouraged, he began his usual selection, but without enthusiasm. Mme de Bonneuil came rocking in, paused, and went over to Mrs Pusey. ‘Alors,’ she enquired, in her hoarse, loud, deaf voice. ‘Ça va mieux, la santé?’ Mrs Pusey managed a tired smile, and waved a spotless handkerchief, but did not reply. Disconcerted, but only for a moment, because she was used to being ignored, Mme de Bonneuil turned away with a shrug. ‘ Toujours pomponnée,’ she observed, to herself, as she thought, but in fact to the assembled company. Mr Neville, elegant ankles crossed, remained in a far corner, obscured behind his newspaper. Edith, her head held high, advanced in his direction.

  ‘Why, Edith,’ cried Mrs Pusey, with her usual vivacity. ‘What on earth have you done to your hair? Come and join us, dear. Let me have a proper look at you.’

  Edith crept back to her accustomed seat, while Mrs Pusey, a finger to her chin, looked doubtful.

  ‘Well, it’s unusual, of course,’ she pronounced finally. ‘But I think I liked it better the other way. Jennifer! What do you think, darling?’

  Jennifer, looking up from her nails, gave a brief vague smile. ‘Quite nice,’ she said. ‘Not bad at all.’

  ‘Oh, but I think I liked it better the other way,’ said Mrs Pusey. And, with her head on one side, continued to assess the problem until it was time to go in to dinner.

  11

  Edith, stepping carefully and shivering a little in the chill air, took Mr Neville’s outstretched hand. The landing stage was deserted; the prospect was too poor to tempt visitors, such as the few that were left, to a day trip on the lake. It was in fact the last such trip of the season, a fact held out by Mr Neville as an inducement. He seemed to collect such uncomfortable and out of the way experiences, expecting from them nothing but the value of novelty and irony. For this brief excursion he was, once again, hopelessly well dressed. Two American ladies, wearing trousers and plastic mackintoshes, contemplated his greenish tweed suit and his deerstalker hat from behind the glass of the verandah-like cabin. There was no one on the deck. To Edith, it seemed as if there were no one else on the ship which slid, very silently, away from the shore and into the grey mist that encompassed the lake as far as the eye could see.

  Mr Neville took up an elegant position, his hands on the rail. Edith, shuddering in time with the steady throb of the engine, turned her back on the desolate scene, trying to limit her vision to the structure which supported her, but a feeling of being cut off, not only from dry land, but from any recognizable viewpoint, unsteadied her. Out of sheer weakness she had left herself no means of escape, a fact of which she was uncomfortably aware. I could have stayed in and spent the entire day writing, she thought to herself, but the mere thought of it made me feel ill. The fact is that there are very few distractions in a place like this and one gets to fear one’s own boredom. It is not true that Satan makes work for idle hands to do; that i
s just what he doesn’t. Satan should be at hand with all manner of glittering distractions, false but irresistible promises, inducements to reprehensible behaviour. Instead of which one is simply offered a choice between overwork and half-hearted idleness. And that is scarcely a choice at all. One cannot even rely on Satan to fulfil his obligations.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Mr Neville, taking her arm.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Edith. ‘I was simply thinking how little vice there is around these days. One is led to believe that one can pick and choose, but in fact there seems to be no choice at all.’

  ‘Stroll round the deck with me,’ said Mr Neville. ‘You are shivering. That cardigan is not warm enough; I do wish you would get rid of it. Whoever told you that you looked like Virginia Woolf did you a grave disservice, although I suppose you thought it was a compliment. As to vice, there is plenty to be found if you know where to look.’

  ‘I never seem to find it,’ said Edith.

  ‘That is because you do not give yourself over wholeheartedly to the pursuit. But, if you remember, we are going to change all that.’

  ‘I really don’t see how. If all it involves is giving away my cardigan, I feel I should tell you that I have another one at home. Of course, I could give that away too. But I seem to be too spiritless for radical improvement. I am simply not fascinating. I don’t know why.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘One sees that.’

  He pulled her hand more firmly through his arm and steered her forward. ‘Round once more,’ he instructed her. ‘You are getting your colour back. The air will do you nothing but good. Fair-skinned women should be out as much as possible. They cannot afford to languish indoors; their faces disappear altogether. Brace yourself, Edith. When you feel a little warmer you will begin to relax and enjoy yourself. That’s better. But there is no need to look so grim. This is, after all, a pleasure steamer.’

  Edith gazed at the measureless grey expanse of the lake. The steamer was unhurried, silent; now that her ears had got used to the very slight vibration of the engine she could pick up other sounds: the tiny suction of the waves on the side, far below, the creaking of the wings of a gull-like bird which flew low over the deck, the flapping of her thin skirt as it blew against her legs. And yet there was no wind, nothing but a steady pressure forward, without any discernible progress being made. Somewhere behind the veils of mist there was a pale sun which could be seen, in the far distance, to cast a white gleam on the water. They were to land at Ouchy, where they would lunch, and to come back in the afternoon. But it seemed to Edith that this journey was too serious to be thought of simply in terms of diversion. The empty lake, the fitful light, the dream-like slowness with which they were covering the distance, seemed to have an allegorical significance. Ships, she knew, were often used by painters as symbols of the soul, sometimes of the soul departing for unknown shores. Of death, in fact. Or, if not of death, not of anything very hopeful. Ship of fools, slave ship, shipwreck, storm at sea: such representations, even if not expert, working on that fear that lies dormant even in the strongest heart, upset the nerves and the balance, for such was their intention. Edith, once again, felt unsafe, distressed, unhoused.