Dorothy Quentin - The Inn by the Lake

by The Inn by the Lake (lit)

  The Inn by the Lake

  Dorothy Quentin

  CHPATER ONE

  "SIX heures moins vingt, monsieur. Nous arrivons à Basle pour le petit déjeuner."

  The wagon-lit attendant, a fat cheerful man with twinkling eyes, shook Jonathan Grant gently. "Il faut passer les douanes, m'sieur," he added more urgently.

  "Merci—" Jonathan roused himself from sleep that had been deeper, more peaceful, than any he had had for a long time. Once awake, his training made him instantly alert. They were arriving at Basle, where there would be breakfast at the station when they had been through Customs. They were almost in Switzerland—he tipped the attendant, bolted the scalding-hot coffee, and began to shave, humming softly that absurd but haunting song about the wild goose that one of the coloured G.I.s in the hospital had been perpetually crooning when Jonathan was recovering from his leg injury received during the bombing of Ming-dhu.

  It was an old song, the G.I. said, perhaps twenty years old; he had learned it from his father. Somehow the plaintive melody in a minor key and the words of the song expressed all mankind's longing to be free—free of the lunacy of war, of the industrial rat-race, of a machine-dominated civilisation.

  "I must go where the wild goose goes, I must go where the wild goose cries . . ."

  Jonathan hummed in tune with the rhythm of the train wheels that were climbing steadily towards the frontier, surveying his lean, tanned face and dark unruly hair in the mirror above the washbasin with only cursory interest; but he was amused by the almost-boyish excitement in the grey eyes that stared steadily back at him, belying the fine lines of fatigue and strain that surrounded them.

  Switzerland, with its clean beautiful mountains and lakes, lay ahead of him like some Shangri-la, an oasis of peace after the horrors of the torrid jungle warfare of Vietnam. He had never been to Switzerland and he found himself looking forward to it—to six glorious weeks of rest and holiday—with growing enthusiasm. He was sick of the whole beastliness of war, and of flying—that was why he had elected to travel in the old, slow, peaceful fashion by boat and train, unhurriedly making his way to the Promised Land. He grinned at himself in the mirror and gave his thick hair a last disciplinary brush. Yesterday in France it had been grey and raining, a small disappointment; this morning was different; already the crisp, clean air was banishing the train-stuffiness and the pale golden sunshine was rimming the mountain-tops.

  "Wild goose, brother goose, which is best ... a wandering foot or a heart at rest ... ?"

  It was absurd, Jonathan thought ironically, the way that song had haunted him through the fever-ridden days and nights after Ming-dhu, throughout the flight back to London, and during his convalescence at home in the West Country. He was thirty-eight, almost middle-aged, not a boy from the American backwoods romantically turning himself into a wild goose to follow the spring migration ... leaving a woman sleeping in his log cabin to awake and find her man gone, a shadow of wings sweeping across the sky, and a feather fluttering down on to her pillow . . .

  Uncle Steve's gracious old house in the shadow of the cathedral of Combe Castleton that had been his home since the death of his parents in an air-crash years before was no log cabin ... and since Fay's defection when he had been still a student there had been no woman in his heart. In fact, he thought drily, he had acquired a reputation for being ruthlessly woman-proof, which was sometimes useful to a busy surgeon fending off romantic nurses or neurotic women patients. There had been plenty of both during his years in the great London hospital, and probably there would be more when he took up his new appointment in August as consultant surgeon to the West Country regional group of hospitals in and around Combe Castleton. Women patients frequently fell in love with their surgeons after a successful operation... for a little while, and mostly out of gratitude. Jonathan was not a vain man, and he understood that adoration for the ephemeral thing it was.

  After getting his F.R.C.S. and the termination of his Registrarship at St. Cuthbert's he had applied for and been granted the West Country appointment that would enable him to live at home and do some private practice as well in Combe Castleton, which he chose deliberately in preference to Harley Street. He had filled in six of the nine months intervening by volunteering to serve in an American field hospital in Vietnam, which cared for civilian as well as military casualties. It had been an experience he would never forget; increasing his skill and ingenuity in emergency surgery but shocking his humanity with the sight of women, children, old men and non-combatant villagers caught up in the savagery of modern warfare. The bombing of Ming-dhu had occurred a fortnight before he was due to leave Vietnam. They had patched him up in the field hospital and flown him back to London and St. Cuthbert's, where Sir James Hennessy had received his ex-Registrar back as a patient with kindly irony.

  "This'll teach you not to go poking your scalpel into other people's wars! Should have put up your plate here, Jonathan, like I told you. Lucky it wasn't your right arm, though."

  He was lucky to be alive, Jonathan thought grimly, trying not to remember the shambles they had made of Ming-dhu . . . probably by accident as there was no military installation there. He did not regret his six months in Vietnam; he was even obscurely glad that he had been injured, that in some small measure he had shared in the general suffering. He was also human enough to be glad his leg had healed properly; now it was just stiff and he walked with a slight limp that would gradually disappear with exercise.

  The train drew to a standstill in the quietude of Basle station and disgorged its full load of yawning, grumbling humanity that after breakfast would proceed in a Swiss train. The Customs' examination was cursory; people who travelled by train these days were mostly having a cheap holiday and not smuggling—not going in this direction, anyway—and the officials were sleepy. Yet one of them stared alertly as Jonathan unlocked his instrument case.

  "I'm a surgeon on holiday," he explained gruffly in French, almost apologetically. He had no right to be carrying that case; he had promised Dr. Cranford to be just a tourist; not to foregather with surgeons anywhere, not to talk shop, and in no circumstances to operate. Yet at the last moment he had included this case of instruments with his baggage; leaving it would be like leaving his right arm behind.

  The Customs official shrugged, glanced again at Jonathan's passport, and drew a squiggle of blue chalk on the case. These Englishmen were peculiar always, and six in the morning is no time to argue with a man who chooses to take his tools of trade on holiday with him, but ... !

  The buffet was crowded with sleepy passengers off the French train. Jonathan thought the strong coffee, crisp rolls and butter and cherry jam delicious, but around him he heard the traveller's usual complaints.

  "What I'd give for a good cup of tea! I never slept a wink all night."

  "Those couchettes are a swindle."

  "Next time we'll fly, Marge."

  "Fancy cherry jam instead of marmalade for breakfast!"

  "Oh, they're famous for their cherry jam, Hilda. We ought to get the recipe while we're here."

  "They can't make decent tea, anyway."

  Jonathan found himself wondering why people who liked English breakfasts so much endured the discomfort of travelling at all, if they came abroad only to criticise. Certainly there was no feeling among the majority of his fellow-passengers that they were drawn to follow the wild goose of imagination to lovely, unknown lands . . . then he remembered that not all of them had had the comfort of a wagon-lit; it was six o'clock in the morning and many of them had sat up for twelve hours in the rocking train.

  The Swiss train, small and electrically driven and spotlessly clean,
left punctually at seven-twenty. And there began for Jonathan and all the first-timers a journey of pure delight that banished such mundane thoughts as the relative value of jam or marmalade, coffee or tea for breakfast. For the little train ran smoothly down valleys between green hills scattered with wooden chalets so exactly like the toy ones that they looked unreal; the clear sunlight, growing warmer with every hour, shone down on window-boxes bright with flowers and trailing creepers, on fat cows whose bells tinkled as they turned and gazed placidly at the passing train, on men with peaked hats and lederhosen going about their farms, on streams crossed by little wooden bridges, on children who waved to the passing train as children wave all over the world. And everything was so incredibly bright in that clear atmosphere that it looked too good to be true. The electric train ran so quietly that the passengers could hear the cow bells and the chattering of the children in German as they walked to school.

  Jonathan found himself travelling with a Swiss on his way to Florence, a man who spoke fluent French and explained much of the passing scenery to him. "If you're going to Lugano, it will be easy to see something of Italy also," he said. "The coaches go almost every day to Florence and Rome, to Venice—"

  Jonathan smiled. "But I am not trying to see Europe. I am going for a—a complete rest."

  It was not the whole truth. He had chosen Lugano, of course, because of that fantastic story Uncle Steve had told him about old Mrs. Stannisford's granddaughter. Uncle Steve was the Stannisfords' solicitor; generations of legal Grants had looked after the Stannisford affairs; it was a family friendship of ancient origin as well as a business connection. And Uncle Steve had pounced on the news that Jonathan was to have a holiday in completely new surroundings. "For heaven's sake go to Lugano, lad, and try and knock some sense into Helen's granddaughter. The old lady is dying of curiosity, longing to see the girl and kill the fatted calf—and all she does is to return our letters unopened!"

  "Isn't it a bit late to kill the fatted calf?" Jonathan had demanded dryly. He had been a schoolboy when Evelyn Stannisford had run away with Jean Berenger, a penniless French artist; but he could remember that he had liked Evelyn much better than her parents, those two wealthy old tyrants who lived in Osterley House and occasionally came to dine with his uncle and aunt. At fifteen, the fuss they had made about Evelyn's runaway marriage had seemed to Jonathan much ado about nothing ... Now old Henry Stannisford was dead. During the intervening years Jonathan had grown up, qualified, endured a war, and become a distinguished surgeon, and forgotten all about the almost legendary affair of Evelyn and her Frenchman. His uncle had mentioned that since her husband's death Helen Stannisford had started enquiries, trying to get in touch with her daughter through a Continental enquiry agent. Jonathan had been too preoccupied with his own work to take more than a passing interest in the Stannisford affair, but his uncle and aunt were excited when the news came from the enquiry agent. Jean Berenger had died in Paris ten years ago and Evelyn had died since, in Switzerland. But they had left one child, a daughter, who was twenty-two. There the work of the enquiry agent came to an abrupt full-stop. According to his reports, Nicole Berenger was not at all interested in meeting her English relations; she did not desire the reconciliation with her grandmother. She positively refused any further information and sent the enquiry agent about his business firmly. Letters from her grandmother or from Stephen Grant, in fact any letters bearing the Combe Castleton postmark or the solicitor's address, were returned unopened.

  "That child's as proud as Lucifer—she takes after old Henry!" Uncle Steve said ruefully. "A pity, though—with the old lady wanting to have her home, and all that money. It will go to Nigel if the girl won't play."

  There was something in the legend of the young, proud Nicole Berenger that appealed to Jonathan. Rather than persuade her to come home he felt like encouraging her in her stand . . . yet after he had seen and talked with her grandmother he knew that his uncle and aunt were right.

  Helen Stannisford was just what Aunt Bella had called her ... a little old frail woman haunted by the loss of her only child, the victim for many years of her husband's temper; all the money in the bank, the good furniture that filled Osterley House, the depleted but still large and efficient staff, could not bring back her dead daughter.

  "It was always thought Henry would relent," she said wistfully, and her faded eyes lighted up when she spoke of Evelyn, "otherwise I would have followed them to France. But young married folk don't want a mother-in-law tagging on. Jonathan—if you can bring Nicole home I shall die happy. Give her my love, tell her I will not keep her here if she does not want to stay; but I would so love to see Evelyn's daughter."

  Jonathan had promised, unwillingly, to do his best. "But I'm not going to use any blackmail, emotional or financial, on the girl," he stipulated bluntly. He had been touched, in spite of his reluctance, by the old lady's frankness.

  "Ah. You have been ill? You do not look like a convalescent!" The Swiss shrugged cheerfully. "It does not matter. You will find Lugano restful, and beautiful enough. It is in the canton of Ticino—that is the Italian part of Switzerland." He laughed, showing excellent teeth. "We are proud to call it Switzerland, but you will find everything Italian except the prices and the cleanliness! We are practically international here—French, Austrian, Italian. Perhaps after all you will see Europe very well by staying in Switzerland!"

  Later, the man was engaged in German conversation by a newcomer, and later still he hailed a woman passing down the corridor in Italian. Jonathan envied him his command of languages, but he was to find that a commonplace in this country.

  By the time the train reached Lucerne it was hot, and he was glad of the big, wide-open window of the train. The lake glittered in the bright sunshine, and many of the parties got out at the station. The train climbed, seemingly effortlessly, towards the Alps; towards the St. Gotthard Pass. Round and round the little hamlet with the church spire it circled, each time higher up, and now there was still snow visible on the mountain tops. It halted to load up cars on the flat trucks at the rear, and the Swiss explained that the road across the pass was not yet open for motor traffic. "There are sometimes avalanches."

  It was amusing, watching the cars being loaded on the train so effortlessly. People leaned from the windows to take photographs of the performance, of the little hamlet like a toy in the crystal air far below, of the snow-capped mountains. It was too late for winter sports, but the dazzling snow still dominated the scene.

  "Now you will see—the houses, the farms, the vines— everything becomes Italian," the Swiss told Jonathan.

  It was true. Though they were still travelling over the same land, a few miles after the St. Gotthard tunnel, the scene changed subtly to something more southern. The sun grew hotter, the farms and cottages were no longer like toys, neat and compact; the flowering vines straggled everywhere, and in every hamlet there was a church. The Swiss grinned. "Every three houses and you have a church! They are very old, these churches—medieval. The Ticinese are church-going people."

  The train belled its way into Lugano station punctually at noon and Jonathan said good-bye to his travelling friend, and felt oddly alone as he stood on the platform and watched it going on its way to Italy. The capped and armleted couriers had already swept up their tourists; he was alone in the strong sunlight, at the end of a twenty-four-hour journey; at the beginning, he could not help feeling, of an adventure. He plunged into the subway that led to the station entrance, in the wake of his porter who showed him the funicular that would carry him down the steep hill into the town.

  "What hotel?" the porter asked in careful English.

  Jonathan shrugged. "Lunch first. Then I want to go here—an albergo is an inn, isn't it?" He showed the man the address of Nicole Berenger his uncle had given him. He had intended to put up at a hotel in the town, but a sudden impulse made him look in his wallet for the girl's address. Albergo Fionetti, Gandria, Lago di Lugano.

  The porter shrugged,
tried a spate of German that Jonathan did not comprehend, and called to the American Express courier for help. The fair young man mopped his steaming face and grinned at Jonathan, after listening to a long explanation that made the traveller hungrier than ever. "He says the Albergo Fionetti is a poor place, not a hotel for tourists. A place for fishermen and artists. There are plenty of good hotels in the town."

  "I want to go there—" Jonathan was becoming annoyed. His impulse to go and stay at the Albergo Fionetti strengthened into determination. He had seen brochures of the charming but conventional hotels scattered along the slopes of the town, and he felt suddenly that he did not want to stay with a crowd of English people, with the tourists on a hectic sightseeing holiday. He wanted to go somewhere peaceful, to live with the natives, to see for himself exactly how old Helen Stannisford's granddaughter was living and supporting herself.

  The American Express courier shrugged again, amiably. "Me, I am from Paris. The Lugano hotels I know, and the expeditions to the other lakes—Morcoté and Gandria, I know. But Ï have not seen this albergo. You will have to hire a boat, if there is not an expedition to Gandria after your déjeuner." He told Jonathan where to get a good lunch, how much to pay the porter, and where to find the debarcadero centrale from which boats—all kinds of boats— left for the various villages around the lake.

  Jonathan thanked him for his helpfulness and went down in the little funicular to the town. Once away from the cluttered buildings surrounding the station it was delightful, and he ate an excellent lunch at a café over-looking the lake where the avenue of pollarded chestnut trees made a deep, shady promenade beside the glittering blue water.

  It was a brilliant day, a day as different from the sad greyness of yesterday in England as could be imagined. Jonathan felt too hot in his lounge suit, he longed to relax in old clothes, to swim in that limpid blue water. Perhaps later he would swim . . . After lunch he hefted his two cases the few yards to the central jetties and looked about him interestedly. There was a steamer tied up, but with no obvious intention of sailing yet. There were plenty of row-boats, empty, and two motor-boats whose captains were shouting out long itineraries for the afternoon trips. It was the siesta hour, hot in the noonday glare, and it seemed as if he was the only impatient passenger in the whole of Lugano.