The Numbered Account

by Ann Bridge

  ‘Where are your hats?’

  ‘All in the hat-box, over there.’

  ‘Have you one with an eye-veil?’

  ‘Oh yes, a lovely one! I’ve only worn it once, when we went to a bank in Geneva. I’d love you to see it.’

  Julia was already pulling hats out of a vulgar tartan-covered hat-box, doubtless Mr. Borovali’s choice, and laying them on the bed. ‘This one?’ she asked, reluctantly admiring Mr. B.’s astuteness.

  ‘Yes, that’s it.’ June hobbled over to the dim little mirror on the chest of drawers, powdered her face, added—quite needlessly—to her lipstick, and skilfully arranged her pale hair with smart strokes from a semi-circular nylon brush—as she watched this process Julia noticed that a much darker shade was beginning to show at the roots of the pretty cendré hair. H’m!

  ‘Have you always been as fair as this?’ she asked casually, while the girl was adjusting the hat to a becoming angle.

  ‘Oh no’ June replied, without the slightest hesitation—‘lovely brown hair, mine is; sort of chestnut, with goldy lights in it. But for this job Mr. Borovali wanted me a real ash-blonde, so in the end I agreed. Mum simply loathed it!—but he paid me twenty quid, in cash, just for the colour of my hair; and I thought that was worth it.’

  ‘It’s frightfully becoming,’ Julia said. ‘Now stop titivating and come on down; the taxi will be waiting. Pull your veil down.’ Slowly, they crept down the dark narrow stairs.

  Dr. Hertz’s clinic was at the far end of the town, beyond the Bahnhof-Platz; it was clean and functional, with trim nurses in attendance, one of whom ushered them into a waiting-room deplorably full of patients—Julia followed her out into the corridor.

  ‘Please inform the Herr Doktor that Fräulein Armitage is here. He knows that she cannot wait, and will see her quickly; we have spoken on the telephone.’

  The nurse put on the face of obstruction common to nurses the world over. ‘The Herr Doktor sees his patients strictly in rotation’ she said smugly.

  ‘You deceive yourself—and seek to deceive me,’ Julia said coldly. ‘This patient the Herr Doktor will see next.’ She took out a card and wrote June’s false name on it. ‘Have the goodness to take this to the Herr Doktor immediately.’

  ‘He is with a patient,’ the nurse said sulkily, barely glancing at the card.

  ‘Naturally—I do not imagine that he sits alone in his surgery!’ Julia said laughingly. ‘But you can enter and give the card.’ She could hear voices from behind a door a little way off, and moved towards it. ‘If you do not, I do,’ she said.

  The nurse gave way, and took in the card; in a moment a short man in a white overall, with grey hair and a pale clever face appeared, her card in his hand.

  ‘You bring Miss Armitage? Good—in five minutes I see her.’ He said this in quite good English—then he disappeared again.

  In the surgery Dr. Hertz frowned as he removed the strapping from June’s foot.

  ‘This has been on too long. I arranged it for less than twenty-four hours, and it is now two days’—glancing at a card on his desk. ‘I went to the hotel on Tuesday, as arranged, and you had left, giving no address.’ He felt the ankle skilfully while he scolded, his hands more sympathetic than his voice. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘We went to another hotel,’ June said feebly.

  ‘Then why not leave an address?’ He pressed a bell on his desk, and a young man, also in white, appeared. ‘An X-ray, at once; and I want the films promptly.’ In a moment another nurse came in with a wheeled chair, and June was propelled out.

  ‘I’ll come in a minute,’ Julia told her, and turned to the doctor.

  ‘Is it serious?’

  ‘I think not, but it is better to know. The swelling may have been just from the strapping, which should have been renewed. But what is this nonsense of changing hotels and leaving no address?’ He spoke in the arbitrary manner of a clever busy professional.

  ‘Just a nonsense, as you say,’ Julia replied, looking him straight in the eye.

  ‘So?’ He was evidently surprised at her tone. ‘And this man de Ritter, her guardian—why is he so careless of her health?’

  ‘Well, he just is. Therefore I should like you to inform me, exactly, about her condition, and what treatment she ought to have.’

  ‘You are a relation?’ the Doctor asked with a certain incredulity, studying Julia’s beautiful calm face, and the indefinable distinction of her clothes and her whole appearance.

  ‘No—just a friend. But quite as much in loco parentis as Mr. de Ritter,’ Julia allowed herself to say, thinking of ‘Mum’, and again angry at how June was being treated as utterly expendable.

  The Doctor continued to eye her steadily and curiously.

  ‘Then may I have your address?’ Julia gave it.

  ‘And hers? She is with you?’

  ‘No.’ Julia thought quickly.

  ‘Dr. Hertz, I am going to take you into my confidence; and I beg you for the moment to trust me, and not to ask any more questions, for this girl’s sake. I would prefer not to give you her present address, for if you were to call there it might put her, I believe, in actual danger.’

  He stared at her. ‘This sounds like a detective story!’

  ‘It is a detective story,’ Julia said coolly. ‘But if you will tell me, when you have seen the X-ray, what needs to be done, I will see that it gets done, somehow or other.’

  He studied her again. ‘You ask a great deal; but for some reason I trust you,’ Hertz said, with a faint smile. ‘I will come to you when I have seen the X-ray; meanwhile I must attend to my other patients. Will you wait in the Warte-Saal?’

  ‘You are very kind,’ Julia said as she went out.

  It seemed hopeless to track June down to the X-ray department, so she sat in the waiting-room; quite soon the girl was wheeled in, giggling and saying that X-rays were ever so funny—‘all that black glass’. And after very little delay they were summoned back to the surgery to hear the verdict. No, no bones broken, only a severe sprain. The foot should be kept up, mostly, but the patient should use it a little every day to prevent stiffness. Hertz eyed June carefully—in spite of all her make-up she looked pale, and somehow slack.

  ‘Get her out,’ he said to Julia. ‘Let her sit in the sun; let her amuse herself. There is a failure of nervous energy; she is altogether below par.’

  ‘Very well. Thank you.’ Julia enquired about the fee, which seemed very small, and paid it.

  Out in the street—

  ‘Well now, as he says you’re to use it a little, see if you can hobble along till we find a carriage,’ Julia said. ‘Then we’ll go and eat cakes somewhere, and look at the shops.’ With Julia’s arm June got along quite well—‘It doesn’t hurt nearly so much now,’ she announced. ‘You are good, to take me there. Was there much to pay?’

  ‘No, hardly anything.’

  ‘Well I’ll pay you back when Mr. B. pays me.’

  ‘Aren’t you paid by the week?’

  ‘No—he said he’d give it me in a lump at the end,’ June said. ‘I wish I had a little cash on me sometimes, I must say. I can’t even buy a paper.’

  Just then one of the open one-horse victorias came by—Julia hailed it, and they got in. ‘Where to?’ the driver asked.

  ‘To wherever they have the best cakes,’ Julia told him—the man whipped up his horse. ‘In Interlaken, if one will eat cakes one goes to Schuhs,’ he said.

  In fact, though Julia did not know it, the cakes at Schuhs in Interlaken have an international reputation—deservedly. They went in to the comfortable old-fashioned place (now alas pulled down) and sat at a table beside windows giving onto the Hohe Matte, the great grassy open space bordered and intersected by avenues of limes and horse-chestnuts which the municipal authorities, wisely regardless of building values, have preserved right in the centre of the town—across it one looks straight up the Lauterbrunnen Valley to the Jungfrau, framed between dark interfolding pine-clad slopes.
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  ‘Which would you like, coffee or chocolate?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Coffee, please—I’m quite thirsty, and I don’t like cocoa.’

  ‘This isn’t cocoa,’ Julia said, and ordered two chocolates, with cakes.

  June was a wholesome creature with a healthy appreciation of physical pleasures, including food; but of this her experience was rather limited. Cups of foamy creamy chocolate, and Schuhs’ melting deliciousnessses in the way of cakes—chestnut, caramel, coffee, nut, or cream, with éclairs and milles-feuilles, were something she had never dreamed of; she devoured one kind after another, saying at intervals—‘But this is exquisite!’ Presently, sated, she looked out of the window at the Jungfrau, solitary in her green frame.

  ‘Now I call that a pretty mountain,’ she said.

  ‘That’s the Jungfrau.’

  ‘No! I saw it once on a poster, and I’ve always wanted to see it—I told Mr. B. so, and he said we’d see it in Interlarken. But you don’t see it like this from the Flooss—and from that old Bear you don’t see anything!’

  Presently they went out and walked along the main street. June Phillips was just the sort of person at whom the window-displays of the Interlaken shops are aimed: the bracelets of edelweiss in imitation ivory, the carved wooden bears, the handkerchiefs luridly embroidered in blue gentians or pink Alpenrosen—she was ravished by them all; the word ‘exquisite?’ was never off her lips.

  ‘Oh, I should like to get that! I do wish I had some money,’ she said at length, stopping in front of an outsize edelweiss brooch, all by itself in a glass case.

  ‘Isn’t it rather big for you?

  ‘Oh, I could never wear it; it’s not my type at all. I want it for Mum.’

  Julia melted to her. She groped in her purse and found that she had 150 Swiss francs in notes, as well as some silver. She handed June the notes. ‘Here you are.’

  ‘Sure you can spare it?’

  ‘Yes, quite sure,’ Julia said, liking this nice child more than ever, and more than ever hating beastly Mr. Borovali, who wasn’t paying her by the week. In deed and in truth she couldn’t spare it very well; she had left so hurriedly that she hadn’t bothered to lay on her journalist’s allowance, expecting to spend most of her time at Herr Waechter’s, all for free, with a brief dash to Bellardon and Geneva. But the Bergues had been very expensive, the Silberhorn was not cheap—and even things like her run to Merligen and this down to Interlaken mounted up. But Mrs. H. would see her through, at a pinch—come to that, Colin could pay for the Merligen trip!

  They went in and bought the brooch. June was rather tempted by a carved wooden holder for toilet-paper, which played a tune as one pulled on the roll; she shrieked with laughter when the shop-girl demonstrated it, but decided against it. ‘It’s ever so comical, but it’s a tiny bit vulgar, don’t you think? I don’t believe Mum would care about it.’ For herself she bought nothing but a handkerchief embroidered in gentians of a deplorably violent blue. She took another of these and gave it to Julia.

  ‘There—now we both have a souvenir of how we met! I’m quite thankful now I picked those silly flowers—if I hadn’t I’d never have got to know you.’ Julia was more moved by this than she expected. Out in the street June suddenly began to wilt. ‘Oh, my foot does hurt again! Is it far to that Bear?’ Julia hailed one of the open carriages trotting leisurely by, and they drove off. Glancing at her companion she noticed that she had pushed her eye-veil up to examine the brooch and handkerchiefs.

  ‘Pull your veil down, June,’ she said.

  The child obeyed at once, but asked, ‘Why on earth?’

  ‘Oh, it’s so much prettier—and Mr. Borovali didn’t want you to be seen much outside, did he?’

  ‘No. Oh mercy, I do hope they aren’t back yet. What’s the time?’

  ‘Only just twelve. Anyhow I’ll deal with him if they are there.’

  ‘I hate this job!’ June burst out nervously, as the cab turned into a side street. ‘I don’t know what really goes on; I mean, it’s all so peculiar. I believe there’s more in it than meets the eye. I do wish I were out of it.’

  Julia instantly tried to profit by this frame of mind.

  ‘It must be very worrying for you,’ she said. ‘But, June, can you tell me one thing? When you were at the bank in Geneva, did Mr. Borovali take anything away with him—papers and so on?’

  ‘Oh, I’d tell you anything! Where should I be without you? Lose my foot, as like as not! Yes, masses of papers was what he took—they were carried in on a sort of tin tray. There was two lots—one whitish papers, some with red stars on them; and then there was a great big envelope with blue papers in it. Ever so funny, they were; Mr. B. had them all out to look at them, and they had white lines, well sort of drawings, on them—he looked ever so pleased when he got those.’

  ‘What did he take them away in? Not the tin tray, surely?’

  June giggled.

  ‘No—a black sort of leather bag, like business-men carry. Thin as misery it was when we went in, and stuffed out fat when we came out, like this’—she held up her small beautifully-shaped hands some six inches apart.

  ‘Did you have to sign anything?’

  ‘Aoh no—Mr. B. did all the signing. I just told the old gentleman that Mr. B. was my guardian—of course I called him Mr. de Ritter. That was what they told me to say beforehand, and it seemed all right then; I mean, I know it was telling lies, but that seemed so little to do for a month’s keep, and all my outfit—and the pay as well. But now’—she paused.

  ‘Yes?’ Julia prompted.

  ‘Well now I’m beginning to think there’s something really screwy about the whole thing,’ June said worriedly. ‘It’s partly Mr. B. turning so nasty lately, and keeping me shut up; if there was no harm in it, why doesn’t he go on being nice, like he was at first? If people get nasty, it generally means there’s something wrong behind it, in my opinion. What do you think?’

  Julia had been doing a positive blitz-think ever since June first burst out about hating the job; wondering, given the child’s extreme innocence and bird-wittedness, whether it would help her to give a guarded warning about the character of her two companions, or whether it would be safer to leave ill alone. She hedged.

  ‘It does all seem rather odd,’ she said. ‘Did Mr. Borovali ever tell you why he wanted to be called Mr. de Ritter, and Mr. Wright to be called Mr. Monro?’

  ‘No, not why. He just said that was the job. But if you ask me the real reason, I haven’t a clue,’ June replied—so airily that Julia had an impression that the girl might be hedging in her turn. In any case she, Julia, who had such an ample clue, decided not to enlighten her as yet.

  ‘Oh well, I shouldn’t worry too much,’ she was saying when the cab pulled up before the Golden Bear. In the hallway she asked the woman in the grisaille apron if die Herren had returned? They hadn’t, and she ordered June’s lunch to be served in her room—‘The Fräulein is tired, and Dr. Hertz says she must rest.’ In fact she put her to bed, and then, as she had promised on the telephone, she unpacked all the suit-cases, shook out the clothes, and repacked them, folding them neatly on the bed across June’s knees and feet.

  ‘Goodness, you are a lovely packer! Where did you learn?’ June asked.

  ‘Oh, I travel a lot,’ Julia said carelessly, going on with her work; June watched her in silence for some time, and then surprised her with a question.

  ‘How did you know we went to that bank in Geneva?’

  Julia straightened up from a suit-case, startled; to gain time she lit a cigarette. ‘Sorry—what did you say?’

  ‘I asked how you knew we’d been to that bank in Geneva?’

  ‘But, June, you told me yourself that you’d worn the hat with the eye-veil when you went to the bank, and what you’d been told to say.’

  ‘Oh yes, so I did. But why did you ask me about the papers Mr. B. picked up? And what he took them away in?’ The girl had suddenly turned suspicious, with the ready suspicion o
f the under-educated and underprivileged. Julia decided that up to a certain point it was no use hedging any more. She went over to the bed.

  ‘Listen, June. You know as well as I do that your real name is June Phillips, and that Mr. Borovali paid you twenty pounds to dye your hair to impersonate a girl called Aglaia Armitage, who really has got ash-blonde hair.’

  ‘So what?’ June asked defiantly.

  ‘So nothing. I went to the bank on behalf of the real Miss Armitage, to see about her money, and found that some other people had been there before me and taken it away. That’s all—quite enough too, I think, to make me want to know what’s become of it.’

  ‘So you’re a spy? That’s why you’ve been being nice to me? Oh!—oh my God, what am I to do? Now there’s no one.’ She burst into tears.

  Julia waited and let the poor little thing sob herself out, her face buried in the pillow; she was distressed on her behalf, but sooner or later this probably had to come. Presently June stopped crying, and raised a sad and swollen face.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry I said that. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going—and now my foot and all. I do wish I could get home.’ She began to cry again. Then, with a sudden flash—‘But I must have my clothes and my pay!’

  At this point a maid brought up June’s lunch on a tray; it was ample, and smelt good. Julia arranged it all: poured out the soup, set a chair by the bed and put the other dishes on it, gave her a hanky to dry her eyes, and started her on her meal—to her astonishment, in spite of all those cakes at Schuhs June tucked into it with a will, while Julia finished the packing. Then she looked at her watch, and went over and sat on the bed.

  ‘June, will you listen to me?’ she said slowly—‘I shall have to go in a minute.’

  Her mouth full, the girl nodded.

  ‘When I saw you up on the Niederhorn,’ Julia went on, ‘I recognised you as the girl who was pretending to be Miss Armitage; and when I went down to help you with the man who wanted to take you up for picking those gentians, I did want to get in touch with you, and find out anything I could. But then you hurt your foot, and we talked, and you told me about yourself; and we’ve talked again today. And now I want to help you. I hope you believe that. I think you’re a good girl, really; and though you must have known that it was wrong to tell lies for money, I think perhaps you didn’t fully understand what you were being used for.’