12
Bathed and changed, her hair once more firmly secured, Edith sat in her room, waiting for it to be time to go down to dinner.
It seemed to her then that she had finished with this room, or perhaps that the room had finished with her. In any event, some sort of natural conclusion had been reached. Yet, just as it is in the nature of leavetaking to feel regret, she knew that this room, in which she had been entirely alone, would always awaken in her some memory of warmth whenever she summoned it to mind. Its silent, faded dignity would perhaps come to symbolize the last shred of her own dignity, before that too crumbled in the face of panic, or bravado, or just cold common sense.
It was the very coldness of her common sense that was afflicting her with this almost senile tremor. Abruptly she got up and went to the window; drawing aside the curtain she could see nothing but blackness, and the only sound she could hear was the occasional swish of tyres. For the weather had broken, and the mist had dissolved into a mournful drizzle; the clinging damp had the slow persistence of a climate that has at last found its natural mode of expression. So she would not be able to sit out on her balcony, writing at the green tin table, as she had intended. But in any event the book had not taken off, was destined, perhaps from the start, to be abandoned. And yet I have always, as an act of will, written myself back into a state of acceptance, she thought. Why does the recipe no longer work? Is it because the whole process now seems too much like the hair shirt of the penitent, angling to get back into God’s good graces? Am I just sick to death of making yet another effort? Will it not be very comfortable not to have to make this particular effort any more? And she passed a valedictory hand over her precisely written sheets of manuscript before putting them back in their folder, and putting the folder into the bottom of her travel bag.
This action startled her, as if her plans had been made final without her having reached any conscious decision. Yet the fact that she had accepted them as final was demonstrated by the way in which she started to fold and pack the dresses she would no longer wear here, and, as the process gathered momentum, her almost precipitous bundling together of shoes, books, scent bottles, until all that remained of her life at the Hotel du Lac was her nightgown, her hairbrush, and the clothes she was wearing. Then, having nothing more to do in this room, which was once more impersonal, ready to receive the next guest at the beginning of the new season, she closed the door behind her and made her way down the stairs to the salon.
Here too the absence of activity seemed to signify a general decision to leave. The pianist had worked out his engagement and would now return to his winter occupation of giving private lessons to unmusical schoolgirls. M. Huber, slightly disappointed, as always, at having somehow failed to achieve that ideal and brilliant social mix which is the hotelier’s most persistent wish, viewed the empty salon with regret. He was feeling those rheumatic twinges that heralded both the winter and his exile, for he was to proceed, once the Hotel du Lac shut down, to the Spanish villa of his daughter and son-in-law, where he languished in the eventless sunshine, with nothing to supervise: he was no good at being a guest. In another week they would close down. Mme de Bonneuil would be transported, by her son, to her stoically endured winter quarters, a religious pension in Lausanne. The woman with the dog would go home, a prospect which had already brought a flush of agitation and excitement to her handsome face. Mme Pusey and her daughter, for whom he felt the most affection, would be chauffeur-driven to Geneva, where they would catch a plane and pay a very great deal of money for excess baggage, but he liked to think of them passing directly from his care to the safety of their London apartment. A charming woman, charming; the daughter perhaps a little less distinguished. Cards would be exchanged in due course, for they kept in touch. And they would no doubt meet here again the following year, if they were spared. The other two remaining guests were of little interest to him; they were too recent, and he knew that they would not be back.
The staff, released from the tight restraints of their normal good behaviour, made more noise among themselves, talked to each other quite openly. Alain and Maryvonne, who turned out to be cousins, would be going back to Fribourg, and would spend the winter working in Maryvonne’s father’s restaurant. The manager, as usual, made fruitless plans to persuade his father-in-law to retire for good, while at the same time facing up to the fact that this would never happen.
For a while Edith sat alone in the salon, remembering her first evening here. Too much had happened to make this process entirely comfortable. Looking back, she saw that on that occasion she had been braver, younger, more determined to sit out her banishment and to return home unchanged by it. It had seemed, at the time, almost a joke, or perhaps she had simply decided to see it in that light. Since then she felt as if she had acquired an adult’s seriousness for the first time in her life and that henceforth all decisions would have that prudent weightiness that she had never thought hers to exercise by right. She was about to enter a world which she had instinctively recognized as belonging to others, in which she had no claim, a world of, among other things, investments, roof repairs, visitors for the weekend. And shall we take your car or mine? That was one of the remarks that she had overheard David make to his wife, and it had come to possess an almost totemic significance. Behind it she had glimpsed a series of assumptions with which they had both, equally, grown up. Launched young into adult enjoyment, fearless, privileged, spoilt, they retained a similar impatience with anything serious or disheartening, were quick, charming, enthusiastic, and forgetful. Depths were not easily reached with them and their kind. But Edith, who had spent the years of her youth in silence and wariness, and who, in order to outwit disappointment, had learnt not to make claims, was acquainted with those depths, and was, at this solemn moment, lost in contemplation before she left them for ever.
When she raised her eyes she saw that the dark shadow by the far pillar had resolved itself into the shape of Mme de Bonneuil, who had presumably been there all the time. Hands clasped on her stick, her dusty veil shedding its last sequins on to the shoulders of her equally dusty black dress, Mme de Bonneuil too seemed to be contemplating her imminent removal. But for Mme de Bonneuil, thought Edith with a pang, it would not be removal to a world of enviable adult preoccupations. She imagined a dark little room in Lausanne, and less food, less service, less dignity. And what would she do all day? The absurd terrain of Lausanne would be too difficult for her to negotiate, even with a stick. And the winter would be long, very long. As the waiters appeared in the doorways of the salon, Edith got up, went over to Mme de Bonneuil, and offered her an arm. A pleased but puzzled smile flickered doubtfully across the latter’s face, but at that moment Monica, skittish and beautiful in a flame-coloured dress, her life and energy restored by the prospect of going home, strolled out of the bar and called, ‘Wait for me!’ Mme de Bonneuil, each arm securely tethered, her stick carried by Alain, proceeded, accompanied by Edith and Monica, into the dining room, her head held high, her expression worldly, her demeanour superior to her surroundings. As M. Huber hastened forward to greet her (‘And about time too,’ said Monica scornfully), Mme de Bonneuil pressed both the younger women’s hands warmly before acknowledging him with a minimal nod. Her chair adjusted by a solicitous waiter, Mme de Bonneuil turned her attention calmly to the menu, but throughout dinner her head remained high and from time to time her smile returned.
Dinner was half-way through before Mrs Pusey, in fine lilac wool, made her entrance. Once again Edith marvelled at her appearance. Her full figure, her shining blonde hair, her cloud of scent almost obscured the presence of Jennifer who, although equally well accoutred, signalled something cruder, less exquisite, less highly conscious, less ardently attached to these repeated pleasantries. As M. Huber rose, predictably, from his seat to welcome Mrs Pusey and to guide her to her table, Edith, watching as always with fascinated interest, found her attention drawn to the enigmatic Jennifer, who, indifferent to the chill of the eve
ning, was wearing another of her oddly immodest outfits, a clinging low-necked blue silk sweater and a pair of white knickerbockers. Yet although her appearance was that of a large rich teenager about to be taken off in somebody’s car for an evening at a smart discothèque, she was as assiduous as ever in her attentions to her mother whose conversation was apparently all that she required by way of social stimulus. Edith continued to watch as the napkins were flourished, the wine poured, the bread broken, the soup savoured with much closing of the eyes in delicate appreciation; they were apparently unaware, Edith noted, that there was anyone else in the room but themselves or that the meal had been prepared for any other purpose than to assuage their own unassailable appetites.
Taking coffee in the salon, Edith found herself treated a little distantly by Mrs Pusey. Perhaps her return earlier that evening with Mr Neville had been noted, and filed away without comment. In any event, Edith was obliged to listen to Mrs Pusey’s plans, which were, as usual, extensive, without being awarded any interest in her own. Reciprocity was a state unknown to Mrs Pusey, whose imperative need for social dominance, once assured by her beauty and the mute presence of an adoring husband, had now to be enforced by more brutal means. Not that there was anything brutal in her charming recital of the labours of packing that awaited them – the very thought gave her a headache – and the arrangements that had yet to be made with her housekeeper, who would dispatch a car to meet them at Heathrow, and who would have a light supper ready on trays for Mrs Pusey and Jennifer to eat in Mrs Pusey’s bedroom.
‘I’m a wreck after travelling,’ confided Mrs Pusey to Edith.
‘Yet you’ve done so much,’ Edith replied.
‘Yes, well, I owed it to my husband. He wouldn’t go anywhere without me. Said he couldn’t bear to be away from me, the silly man.’
She laughed reminiscently. ‘And it becomes a habit, you know. Of course, I couldn’t do it without Jennifer. And she’s still willing to put up with her old mother, aren’t you, darling?’
Again the loving clasp of hands, the kiss, the radiant smiles. Yet Edith had seen Jennifer looking, for her, almost thoughtful, her normally indifferent expression less well-intentioned than usual. But with the loving exchange this was wiped away. I must have imagined it, thought Edith. I am morbid this evening.
‘When will you leave?’ she asked.
‘Oh, we’ll stay until the end of next week, if they’ll put up with us.’ Again, a little laugh.
‘I…’ she began, but was interrupted by Mrs Pusey’s cry, ‘Why, there’s Philip! Where have you been, you naughty man? Jennifer thought you’d-abandoned us. Darling, get Philip some fresh coffee. Why were you so late?’
‘I had some calls to make,’ he said, surrendering to her demands with every appearance of alacrity. ‘And the lines seemed to be permanently engaged.’
‘Business calls, I suppose,’ said Mrs Pusey, with an understanding tilt of her head. ‘I know. My husband always had to make his calls, wherever we were. I used to threaten to have the telephone removed sometimes. “Never mix business with pleasure,” I used to say to him. Not that he ever let business come first, not when he had me with him, anyway.’
‘Certain arrangements always have to be made,’ said Mr Neville with a smile.
‘Arrangements? That sounds as if you’re going to leave us. Jennifer! Philip’s going to leave us on our own.’
Jennifer looked up from her nails and gave a brief smile.
‘I shall be leaving the day after tomorrow,’ said Mr Neville in a neutral voice.
‘Then we must make the most of you while we can,’ cried Mrs Pusey. ‘I hope you don’t intend to disappear again tomorrow. We waited ages for you this morning, didn’t we, darling?’
Clearly, thought Edith, I am to be invisible until I agree to his terms. And he is right. This is what it is like, and what it will always be like, if I don’t marry him. This is what he is letting me see. Very well. But first there is something I must do.
In the silence that ensued, she recognized that the moment of decision had arrived.
She stood up. ‘If you will excuse me …’ she began.
‘Yes, of course, Edith. Good night, dear.’
‘Please don’t get up,’ said Edith to Mr Neville, placing a hand rather firmly on his shoulder. She did not care if this was construed as familiarity. She was suddenly very tired of being reticent. He could have said something, she thought, acutely aware of the pregnant silence behind her retreating back. And Mrs Pusey will spend the rest of the evening trying to find out what he will good-humouredly refuse to tell her. I am not needed.
Although her steps were light and silent, it seemed to her that she was trudging up the stairs like a weary traveller. And in the dim pinkish room, so serious, so quiet, she sat down once more like an exile. Finally, she moved over to the little table, took a sheet of paper, and wrote.
‘My dearest David,
‘This is the last letter that I shall ever write to you and the first one that I shall ever post. I am going to marry Philip Neville, a man I met here; I am going to live in his house near Marlborough, and I do not think that I shall ever see you again.
‘You are the breath of life to me. One should not say such things, I know. You do not want to hear them. When I spoke those words to Penelope she looked aghast, affronted, as if I had dealt myself out of normal society by confessing as much. And so it seems that I have burnt too many boats, crossed too many bridges, ever to return to what I was before, or what I thought I was.
‘I do not love Mr Neville, nor does he love me. But he has made me see what I will become if I persist in loving you as I do. I had begun to see this before I came here, and perhaps that wretched business with poor Geoffrey was the result of what I had begun to see. That fiasco will be avoided this time, mainly because Mr Neville will see that it is. He assures me that I will very soon, under his guidance, develop into the sort of acceptable woman whose confidence and stamina and indeed presumption I have always envied. Rather like your wife, in fact.
‘I have never been a great success in this way, and so it was supremely ironical that I should fall in love with a man who has always been a success in every way. I lived for you. Yet how often did I see you? Perhaps twice a month? More, if we met by accident. Sometimes less, if you were too busy. And sometimes a whole month without you. I have imagined you at home, with your wife, and your children, and those times were bad. But much worse were the times when I suspected that your attention, your curiosity, had been aroused by somebody new, some girl whom you might have met somewhere, at a party, perhaps, as you once met me. And then I would scrutinize women in the street, in the bus, in the shops, looking for a face that I could fit into your fantasy. Because, you see, although I lack the details, I know you very well.
‘I know, you see, that whatever you feel for me, or perhaps I should say, once felt for me, I am, as Swann said of Odette, not your type.
‘There is no reason why we should ever meet again, except, of course, by accident. Mr Neville, who has a fine collection of famille rose dishes, no doubt spends a certain amount of time in the salerooms and auction houses, and it is just conceivable that he may wish me to accompany him on these visits. But I have told him of my indifference to collecting and I doubt if he will insist.
‘I shall try to be a good wife to him. One does not receive proposals of marriage every day in this enlightened age, although curiously enough I have had two this year. I seem to have accepted them both. The lure of domestic peace was obviously too great for one of my timorous nature to resist. But I shall settle down now. I shall have to, for I doubt if I have anything more to look forward to.
‘You thought, perhaps, like my publisher, and my agent, who are always trying to get me to bring my books up to date and make them sexier and more exciting, that I wrote my stories with that mixture of satire and cynical detachment that is thought to become the modern writer in this field. You were wrong. I believed every word I wrote. And I
still do, even though I realize now that none of it can ever come true for me.
‘You have known my address for the past two weeks, but I have not heard from you. There is therefore no point in telling you where I shall be living, for I shall not hear from you there either.
‘I do not know how to end this letter. I do not want to succumb to reproaches, recriminations, and indeed I have no right to any of these things. To say that I was a willing partner is risible, for I was the more willing of the two. I was more willing than you.
‘I send you all my love, always.
Edith.’
She sat with her head in her hands for a long time, in the room now totally silent. She was not aware of time passing. Instead she seemed to look back into the past, to other times when silence had been her lot. When she had stood at the window of her house, listening to the vanishing hum of David’s car. When, wordless, she had watched her father tidy his desk for the last time, or had meekly taken her mother’s spilt coffee back to the kitchen. Even further back, she saw herself hiding behind Grossmama Edith’s chair in the grim apartment in Vienna, while her mother and her aunts aired their grievances. And if she heard any words, they were quite inappropriate to her present situation. ‘Schrecklich! Schrecklich!’ she heard Tante Resi shout. ‘Ach, du Schreck!’
When she got up, it occurred to her that she should go to bed, but her most imperative desire was not for sleep but for the morning, when she would take her letter to the post and thus ensure that there should be no second thoughts. She looked at her watch and saw that it was half-past one. She undressed and lay down on her bed, determined to last out the night and not weaken. Her cheeks burned, and she trembled slightly, but as the night deepened, her muscles relaxed, and her breathing slowed, and finally she slept.
When she awoke it was still dark, but she got up and bathed her face and hands; there would be time for a bath later, when she came back. She re-read her letter, put it in an envelope, and stuck it down. She dressed and brushed her hair. She was now quite calm, and sat patiently until she knew that there would be someone at the desk who could sell her a stamp. At six o’clock, unable to wait any longer, she picked up her bag and her key, opened her door very quietly, and stepped out into the corridor.
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