Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner [2]
‘Anyway, I got over that, though it was not easy, and joined the most reliable set of people I could find, knowing, without bothering to ask, that they were bound to be going to Switzerland, and very soon I was on the plane and a quite charming man sat next to me and told me about this conference he was attending in Geneva. I deduced that he was a doctor; in fact, I had him down as a specialist in tropical diseases, particularly as he told me that he did most of his work in Sierra Leone, but it turned out that he had something to do with tungsten. So much for the novelist’s famed powers of imagination. Nevertheless I felt a bit better, and he told me about his wife and daughters and how he was flying back to them in two days’ time to have a weekend at home before he goes back to Sierra Leone. And within an extraordinarily short time we were there (I notice that I say ‘there’ and not ‘here’) and he put me in a taxi, and after about half an hour I ended up here (and it is beginning to be ‘here’ rather than ‘there’) and very soon I shall have to unpack and wash and tidy my hair and go downstairs and try to find a cup of tea.
‘The place seems to be deserted. I noticed only one elderly woman as I came in, very small, with a face like a bulldog, and legs so bowed that she seemed to throw herself from side to side in her effort to get ahead, but doing so with such grim conviction that I instinctively got out of the way. She walked with a stick and wore one of those net veils on her head covered with small blue velvet bows. I had her down as a Belgian confectioner’s widow, but the boy carrying my bags nodded vestigially and murmured ‘Madame la Comtesse’ as she rocked past. So much for the novelist’s famed powers, etc. In any event I was processed so speedily into this room (almost induced into it) that I couldn’t take in anything else. It seems quiet, warm, fairly spacious. The weather might, I suppose, be described as calm.
‘I think about you all the time. I try to work out where you are, but this is rather difficult, surrounded as I am by the time change, minimal though it is, and the lingering effects of my pills, and all these sad cypresses. In a manner of speaking. But tomorrow is Friday, and when it begins to get dark I shall be able to imagine you getting in the car and driving to the cottage. And then, of course, the weekend, about which I try not to think. You cannot know …’
At this point she put down her pen and massaged her eyes briefly, sitting for a moment with her elbows on the table and her head bent into her hands. Then, blinking, she took up her pen again and continued her letter.
‘Ridiculous to tell you to take care of yourself, because you never think of all the mild precautions that others take, and in any case there is nothing I can do to make you. My dear life, as my father used to call my mother, I miss you so much.’
She remained seated at the table for a few minutes, then took a long breath, and put the cap back on her pen. Tea, she thought. I need tea. And then a walk, a very long walk along the lake shore, and then a bath, and change into my blue dress, and by that time I shall be ready to make the entrance, always so difficult to negotiate, into the dining room. And then there is all the business of the meal to get through, which will take a bit of time, and after that I shall sit around and talk to someone, it hardly matters to whom, if only to the bulldog lady. And I need an early night, so that won’t be too bad. In fact I am quite tired already. She yawned until her eyes watered, and then stood up.
Unpacking took a few minutes. Superstitiously, she left the bulk of her clothes in her bag, signifying to herself that she could be off in a few minutes if the chance arose, although knowing that everything would stay there and be hopelessly creased into the bargain. It had ceased