Dorothy Quentin - The Inn by the Lake

by The Inn by the Lake (lit)

  She stopped walking and withdrew the arm she had slipped companionably inside his, to look at his face; to make clear to him the difference that was so plain to her eyes. "But I earned those tips! I worked very hard for them! And at the bad paintings. It is much more work to paint what people want than what you want to paint."

  "Whoa—let me get that tongue-twister straightened out!"

  Nicole shrugged impatiently. "You're not usually stupid. Can't you see, I will sell my work . . . but myself I will not sell ! If my grandmother thinks she can buy me— with her so-comfortable home, her clothes, her big allowance of money—she is being very foolish and I shall run away, like my mother did."

  "I see."

  "This money she has sent now—it is to please herself. I didn't ask her for anything. I shall have to work very hard for that, too, for I don't want to go at all. It's only just that I should share it with my family."

  "Come on, then, let's get the shopping done," Jonathan agreed good-temperedly. The presents were bought first, he observed, and for someone who said she hated shopping Nicole seemed to be enjoying herself tremendously. She borrowed a pencil and an old envelope from him, and did laborious sums as they went along. To his surprise she knew what the fare was, and deducted that from the six hundred francs, so his little ruse went for nothing.

  "I will borrow from you for the wagon-lit only," she said with dignity, "for that is a luxury. I would sit up all night, myself."

  "All right. Now what about this shop for your clothes?" Jonathan stopped by a corner shop in the Via Nassa, a shop displaying good-quality travel clothes and sportswear. "We can get everything here; they seem to have shoes and handbags, everything."

  "Oh, but it's much too expensive here!" Nicole looked really shocked. "And the assistants would laugh at me. We must go to one of the stores near the market. There, too, they have everything."

  Jonathan gave in reluctantly. This particular shop appealed to him; the goods displayed so elegantly in the double windows seemed to promise good taste. But he bowed to Nicole's good sense about money. She was keeping her sum very accurately.

  But in the dress department of the store she grew suddenly panicky, confronted by a very smart young assistant and the rows and rows of dresses on their stands. "Help me!" she whispered, keeping very close to Jonathan, so that the assistant thought they were father and daughter.

  "Will you please show us something—er—something suitable for travelling in?" he said quickly, and gave Nicki a little push as the girl smiled and sped off to one of the glass cases. "Go with her, you dope, and choose something you like the look of—"

  Still the girl seemed rooted to the ground. She was pale beneath her golden tan, and the hand still holding his arm trembled. He felt an upsurge of loving sympathy for her. Here, indeed, her faded cotton frock and shabby sandals looked conspicuous, among all the glossy frocks. She whispered, "When we go into the fitting room, will you call her out, Jonathan? I don't want her staring at my underwear." She added with great dignity, "It's quite clean, but it's not new."

  "Then we'll buy you some of those, too," Jonathan grinned down at her, "on our way out. Now—over the top with you, little one. Don't let all this nonsense get you down."

  He sat on a chair by the big plate-glass window, looking down a busy side street and feeling very masculine and out of his depth in this perfumed, soft-carpeted place, and all too conscious of the chattering group of assistants at the other side of the room, of their subdued laughter and sidelong glances. Good lord, what did they take him for? Nicole's fond papa or something worse? Certainly, among these sophisticated young women, Nicole looked like a schoolgirl getting her first grown-up outfit, and he smiled inwardly at the thought.

  He had to screw up his courage, as out of a corner of his eye he saw the assistant—a pile of clothes over her arm— ushering Nicki into one of the velvet-curtained cubicles. He waited a few seconds and called out, "Er—mademoiselle!" and was intensely amused to see that Nicki practically pushed the girl out to him.

  "Signore?"'

  She stood before him, dark-haired and provocative, her brown eyes smiling. He was rather nice, this papa, and she wanted to please him. It was almost lunch time and business had been slack this morning.

  "Do you speak English?" he asked, more to gain time than anything, hoping that Nicki could change quickly.

  "Yais, a leetle. Please, what would you like?" The girl showed dazzling white teeth.

  "Oh, that's good. Wonderful place, Lugano; everyone seems to speak about four languages." Jonathan smiled back at her, feeling a fatuous ass and racking his brain for any excuse to keep her away from the cubicle. Rejecting the weather as a topic for conversation with the pretty Italian, he said at last in desperation, "My—er—my niece wishes to buy some shoes and a handbag and—a—a hat to go with her travelling outfit. Do you sell those things here?"

  "Si, si. The 'at you will find over there, on this floor— the ozzer things downstairs ..." Obviously, she thought, she had made a hit with the Englishman. The other girls were watching from across the big room, though they pretended to be busy tidying the cupboards. "Ah—'ere is your niece, signore."

  Jonathan turned his head with a tremendous sensation of release, and found himself staring at a transformed Nicole. He hardly heard the approving little murmurs from the sales girl behind him. Nicki stood there, still and slender and demure, in a black linen suit with a crisp white blouse. The blouse had a tiny ruff at the neck and cuffs, the only touch of decoration anywhere, and the suit fitted as if it had been made for her.

  "Yes," Jonathan said deeply, oblivious of the Italian chatter behind him; amazed that, in spite of her fright, Nicole had gone unerringly to the right garment. She looked cool and elegant, her fairness set off by the narrow white ruff; no one would have guessed she had been a panic-stricken child a few minutes before.

  Nicki's eyes seemed pleased with his approval, and she turned to the girl and said she would take the suit. "The price is a little high," she added for Jonathan's ear, "but not too bad for this thing. A hundred and twenty francs. I could buy six frocks for that!"

  "You buy a frock as well," he ordered, suddenly very pleased with her and with himself. The assistant wasted no time but produced a crisp dress in gentian blue that matched Nicole's eyes and held it up under her chin.

  "Si, si, it is the signorina's size," she chanted affably. Jonathan paid for the things, telling Nicole to keep on the suit so that she could choose accessories to go with it, and steering her towards the hat department.

  "Oh, Jonathan, not a hat!" she cried, her new-found poise deserting her suddenly. "I never wear a hat, even in church I put a scarf over my head!"

  "For Combe Castleton—when you arrive, anyway— you must wear a hat," he retorted firmly, "but you can make it a very small hat." He was beginning to enjoy himself hugely. The tiny white hat that Nicki finally chose altered her appearance still more.

  "Now you do look like your mother," he said thought-fully, as they went in search of handbag and shoes.

  "You really knew my mother well?" she asked eagerly.

  "Only during the holidays. I was a kid—a boy of fifteen—but she was very nice, Evelyn—"

  Nicole chuckled suddenly. "She was more than 'nice', she was adorable, my maman! And—if you were only fifteen—you aren't old enough to be my father, not even my uncle!"

  "You see, you haven't embarrassed me, in fact you look very charming, Nicole, and not at all like a wild animal!" Not even like my little wild goose any more, Jonathan's mind added privately.

  They were enjoying an excellent dinner in the dining-car of the Basle Express. And Nicole, though her face took on a sadness in repose, was behaving as if she travelled first-class every day of her life. The little hat, though she had hated the idea of a hat, seemed to have worked a small miracle for her. Though she still looked enchantingly young she did not look a child any more.

  "The last time Maman and I came from Paris with all our poss
essions in a paper bag," she said wistfully. "We had lost everything in the fire."

  "Try and forget it, Nicki." For a moment his big hand rested over hers on the table. "This is the beginning of a new adventure for you, and your mother would be very happy to know—"

  "I think she does know, and she is very happy," Nicole answered with complete faith, "because she is with my father, and they would wish me to be polite to my grand'mère."

  The train climbed effortlessly through the endless mountains. A summer sunset dyed the valleys to gold and red against the softer greys and purples of the dusk, and lights began to twinkle from the chalets perched on the hillsides. It was warm and still, the electrically-driven train made little noise, and now and then they could hear the tinkle of a cow bell.

  "This is a beautiful country—" Jonathan said suddenly.

  "—where sheep may safely graze." She completed his thought, unexpectedly, delightfully. "Switzerland has a fine tradition of peace, of giving refuge to the unfortunate —I think perhaps because of the mountains. One feels very close to God in the mountains." She added, "And of course, the Red Cross was started by a Swiss."

  Jonathan was staring at the passing scene, fascinated. He was thinking, I've been in Switzerland for six weeks, but I haven't been out of Lugano . . . how unenterprising all these energetic tourists would think that! But he had not wanted to go far afield, he had been very happy at the albergo.

  "There's still snow on that ridge," he said in surprise.

  Nicole nodded. "There is always a little snow on the caps of the highest mountains." She yawned involuntarily.

  "You're tired," said Jonathan. "But never mind. We can go to sleep as soon as we board the French train."

  Nicole smiled at him. "You're very kind, Jonathan. But I don't think I shall sleep tonight. I'm too full in here." She touched her breast lightly. "I feel as if I shall never sleep again!"

  He did not argue with her, he thought that by the time midnight had come and they had transferred to their wagon-lit in the French train, Nicole would sleep. She was worn out, poor child.

  She added thoughtfully, I suppose I was very wrong to be rude to the detective. Père Angeli scolded me afterwards. He said that pride is a sin of the devil, that one must always be tender with the aged. ... I daresay my grandmother thinks I am terrible—"

  Jonathan realised what the admission must have cost her. He was able to reassure her with absolute sincerity. "She would not have written as she did, if she did not understand. I think Helen Stannisford will surprise you, Nicki. . . . She is a woman who has suffered too much through being gentle, because she allowed her husband to bully her. I think she only longs for you to understand that . . . though she is old-fashioned, and probably will not discuss Henry's character with you. She will think you are too young to understand."

  "I am not a child," Nicki said quietly, and in the soft after-glow from the sunset she did not look a child any more, and for once Jonathan did not want to tease her. He said gently, "Age is comparative, don't you think? When one is a child, thirty seems old—incredibly old—and when one is in the seventies and rather delicate, probably twenty-two seems very young!"

  Nicki laughed. It was the first time she had laughed since the train left Lugano. "In eight years I shall be thirty," she reminded him. "I think it is not the years that count but the age of one's heart." She added gravely, "I have been grown-up since I was twelve."

  "In eight years I shall be forty-five, getting pompous and probably fat"—he sketched a caricature on the menu, pleased that the shadows had left her eyes—"and even more unpopular with my staff than I am now."

  "Un—unpopular?" For once an English word failed to reach her. "What do you mean?"

  "Not liked. A detestable person!" He grinned across the table at her. "My staff all think me a tyrant."

  "But you are not detestable!" she cried vehemently, with a trace of the old laughing Nicki, her best behaviour forgotten, and several heads were turned in the dining-car, to smile at the girl. "You are wise and kind, and you laugh at the right things."

  "Ah, but you have only known me on holiday," he answered with a trace of dry irony. "When I'm working I'm a very different person. Impatient. I have to work fast, and I can't afford inefficiency or bungling in the theatre staff."

  "No. That is probably true." She looked at him candidly, remembering the night of the operation, when for a while he had forgotten her existence. "But that is understandable"—she thought that probably his patients did not find him either impatient or detestable—"when you have important work to do. But I'm glad I'm not one of your nurses!"

  He grinned again, fleetingly. "So am I. I like you better as an artist. Now we'd better go back and get what rest we can until midnight."

  In their comfortable compartment there was only one other passenger, an elderly man already dozing, so they did not talk any more. Night swiftly blotted out the magnificent mountain scenery, and after they had passed Lucerne the compartment lights were extinguished, leaving only the small blue bulbs that gave an eerie look to human faces. Nicole took off her hat and made herself comfortable in her corner, and Jonathan put a rug about her when she was asleep. She thought she would not sleep at all this night, and already she had dozed off, lulled by the soporific gentle rhythm of the train and the exhaustion of the day.

  It had been an exhausting week altogether, Jonathan thought, going out into the lighted corridor for a last cigarette. Nicole's small face, asleep, touched him to an almost painful tenderness, and he hoped with all his heart that they were doing the right thing for this child, this little orphan—he and Uncle Steve and Aunt Bella and her grandmother—in dragging her back to England. She looked very innocent and defenceless, sunk into the corner seat, yet sleep was erasing the strain from her sensitive face. Remembering how they had agreed there was something unfair, almost indecent, in observing old Lucia fast asleep, Jonathan removed himself to the corridor and stared out at the twinkling lights that flashed past. What was it Lucia herself had said . . . "does the man not know that a person's soul looks from the eyes?"

  Yet the surgeon, who had seen many unconscious faces, did not find Nicole's sleeping face lacking in expression; only like a child's, relaxed and trustful.

  Lucia's portrait was hanging in the kitchen at the albergo now, and though she merely grunted and shrugged her old shoulders when anyone commented on the likeness, he knew she was immensely proud of it.

  To his own surprise Jonathan found that leaving the albergo had been a wrench for him, too. Nothing like the agony it had been for Nicki, naturally, but still a wrench. As if he were leaving behind a little bit of himself, a Jonathan Grant who was on holiday, a released and carefree man. . . . Not given to sentimental analysis, he yet stood in the corridor of the gently swaying train for a long time, thinking about this emotion. Perhaps he had grown fond of the place and of Lucia and the Fionettis because from the first he had seen them through Nicole's eyes, and because they had very soon accepted him. Certainly this nostalgia was quite different from one's usual feeling in leaving a hotel and one's host at the end of a holiday...

  But if he felt the pull of Gandria as strongly as this, Nicki's heart must be very sore, he realised. She had enough pride not to break down, even at the end; she had been very brave. But she had not allowed them all to come and see her off at the station, as they had wanted. Emilio had wished to give his young cousin a proper Italian send-off, with tears and gifts of flowers and much shouting to and from the platform. . . . But Nicole had been adamant.

  "Do you want to make a fool of me, making me weep in front of all the tourists who will be travelling?" she had demanded fiercely. "And Pietro can't come. He would be desolate if you all came without him. I will say au revoir to you all here, in my home, and think of you here until I return. Then it will not feel as if I'm going away for ever!"

  They had agreed reluctantly, though in the end Emilio brought them over in Pegasus. Nicole shook hands with him on the jetty, and
with Francesca who had been shopping in the town. "Take care of him, carissima" she told the girl in Italian, after hugging Emilio and kissing him on both cheeks, and Francesca had promised fervently, glowing with her happiness, so that the travellers went on their way knowing that Emilio's future was in good hands. There had been no more emotion as they made their way to the station. Their baggage had been brought across. yesterday, and registered through to Victoria—a refinement of travelling that astonished Nicole.

  "Do you mean to say we shan't see our things again until we arrive? Will they not get lost, and what about the douanes!" she had cried, gazing at his big suitcase and her strapped basket that contained most of her worldly goods, including some of the precious new clothes.

  "They won't be lost, and we go through the Customs for these packages at Victoria." He showed her the registration receipts, smiling when she seemed unconvinced. "But you don't register your precious instruments!"

  "No. They might get damaged."

  "So might my basket," she argued, with feminine logic, though she finally relinquished her treasure. That basket had been a sore trial to Jonathan, he was glad to see the last of it for a while. It was a hideous piece of baggage, a large rectangular basket with a deep lid. The lid had handles for two straps to go round the whole contraption, which bulged when it was fully packed. Nicole had dragged it proudly forth from the albergo's cupboard when he asked if she wanted to buy a suitcase. "Tia Maria gave it to me," she said. "It is better than any suitcase; it expands, it can hold everything. Also, for the cost of transport, it is very light."

  Jonathan had refrained from comment on the basket, to which he took an instant dislike. It was not only old-fashioned, it was archaic. It reminded him of one used by his nannie when he had been a very small boy. But he considered Nicki's feelings had been scratched sufficiently by the necessity of buying new clothes; he could not criticise her splendid basket. He had finally compromised by registering it in advance and buying her a small, light overnight bag for her travelling necessities—and called himself a snob.