Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner [22]
Mrs Pusey, in black chiffon, stood hesitant in the doorway, as if overcome by the excitement, hardly daring to make her way unaccompanied to her table, Jennifer standing mildly behind her. It was only when M. Huber came forward, gallantly holding out his hand, that Mrs Pusey broke into a smile, and allowed herself to be led forward. The woman with the dog let out a snort which Mrs Pusey chose not to hear.
Edith, once again anonymous, and accepting her anonymity, made an appropriately inconspicuous exit. And, sitting in the deserted salon, the first to arrive from the dining room, she felt her precarious dignity hard-pressed and about to succumb in the light of her earlier sadness. The pianist, sitting down to play, gave her a brief nod. She nodded back, and thought how limited her means of expression had become: nodding to the pianist or to Mme de Bonneuil, listening to Mrs Pusey, using a disguised voice in the novel she was writing and, with all of this, waiting for a voice that remained silent, hearing very little that meant anything to her at all. The dread implications of this condition made her blink her eyes and vow to be brave, to do better, not to give way. But it was not easy.
Drinking her coffee in the salon, Edith felt purged by her grief, obedient and childlike, as she had on so many occasions, reaching back into the mists of childhood, to that visit, perhaps, to the Kunsthistorisches Museum with her father. And, childishly anxious to please, she went forward, when the signal came, to join the Puseys at their table. The man in grey had positioned himself nearby, and although purporting to read a newspaper, was almost visibly listening to their conversation. Perhaps he is a detective, thought Edith, without much interest.
‘You know, dear,’ said Mrs Pusey, after she had repaired her face and received compliments on her appearance, ‘You remind me of someone. Your face is very familiar. Now who can it be?’
‘Virginia Woolf?’ offered Edith, as she always did on these occasions.
Mrs Pusey took no notice. ‘It’ll come to me in a minute,’ she said. ‘You two girls talk among yourselves.’ And she placed the thumb and forefinger of her right hand to the bridge of her nose, assuming an expression of such gravity that Jennifer, always on the look-out, stopped listening to what Edith was saying and turned her attention to her mother. Edith lay back in her chair and listened to the pianist, who was being ignored by everyone else, until she was aware of Jennifer’s face being lowered into her sightline. ‘Mummy says she wants to watch television, so we’re going upstairs.’ She turned back to her mother and watched the always difficult negotiation from seated to standing position. Again, Edith wondered about her age.
At the door Mrs Pusey turned dramatically, and said, ‘I’ve remembered! I’ve remembered who Edith reminds me of!’
Edith observed a slight spasm contracting the back of the man in grey, still behind his newspaper.
‘Princess Anne!’ cried Mrs Pusey. ‘I knew it would come to me. Princess Anne!’
5
But sleep did not come easily that night. Between disjointed dreams there flashed onto the cinema screen in Edith’s head short audio-visual messages which she would later have to decode. The fine ankles, the unexpected evening pumps of the man in grey. His decision, at some forgotten point, to fold that unconvincing newspaper, to get up, stretch himself slightly, and follow a colleague into the bar. The unusual sounds of merriment that were perceptible, even across the width of the salon, from the direction of the bar. The emergence from the bar, an hour later, of the woman with the dog, helpless with laughter and somewhat dishevelled, her arms linked in those of the man in grey and