Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner [25]
‘Have you been here long?’ asked Edith.
‘Ages,’ sighed Monica. ‘I’m here for my health.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Have you been ill?’
‘No,’ replied the other. ‘Look, let’s have some coffee, shall we?’ She summoned a shadowy waiter with an imperious hand, it’s so nice to have someone to talk to,’ she said. She seemed to be recovering a long-lost animation by the second, and when the coffee arrived, poured it out largely and carelessly, although she took only one sip from her cup and almost immediately lit an immensely long cigarette with a lighter that sprang into a two-inch flame. Everything about her seemed exaggerated: her height, the length of her extraordinary fingers, her carrying voice, her huge oyster-coloured eyes, today slightly bloodshot, Edith could see, behind her dark glasses. A breakdown, she decided. A bereavement. Tread carefully.
Monica nodded towards the cigarette. ‘Forbidden, of course. Strict instructions. To hell with it.’ She inhaled deeply, as if about to submerge in several fathoms of water. After a few seconds, two plumes of smoke emerged from perfect nostrils. A patch on a lung, perhaps, thought Edith, revising. And how beautiful she is. I had not thought so before.
The sound of wheels on gravel brought their heads round. Mme de Bonneuil, her pug face creased into a smile, was struggling to her feet. A car door banged, and a man walked jauntily into the garden, followed by a woman in a red dress, the spikes of her high-heeled sandals plunging into the lawn. ‘Eh bien, maman,’ cried the man, falsely cheery. Kisses were exchanged.
‘Poor old trout,’ said Monica, her tone very slightly lower. ‘She lives for that son. She’d do anything for him. And he comes to see her once a month, takes her out in the car, brings her back, and forgets her.’
‘Why is she here?’ asked Edith.
Monica shrugged. ‘His idea entirely. He considers her manners too rustic for her to be allowed to live under the same roof as that frightful wife of his who, incidentally, started life as a hairdresser before snaffling her first husband. This one’s her second. Mme de Bonneuil had a beautiful house near the French border: it’s quite a good family, incidentally. Naturally, the daughter-in-law wanted the house to herself. So the old girl had to go. She can’t stand the wife, of course. Despises her. Quite right. She lives here because she doesn’t want to see the son unhappy.’
‘How do you know all this?’ asked Edith, startled and impressed.
‘She told me,’ said Monica, inhaling from another cigarette.
‘I’ve never heard her say a single word,’ mused Edith.
‘Well, it’s difficult for her.’ To Edith’s enquiring glance Monica replied, ‘She’s stone deaf. What a life.’
They watched the man and his wife manoeuvring Mme de Bonneuil into the back of the car. A regrettable pair, thought Edith. The man was chunkily built, swarthy, with dark glasses. He looked like a croupier, off duty until nightfall. The wife was much younger, black-haired, voluptuous, expensive. She will marry yet again, thought Edith, as the car drove off. Then perhaps Mme de Bonneuil can go home. But it seemed unlikely.
Monica, she reflected later, as they strolled slowly along the lake shore, knows far more than I do; it is right that she resembles a sphinx. The morning had passed quite pleasantly in her company. But she was puzzled by Monica’s insistence that they visit the café for more coffee and cakes. ‘It’s nearly lunchtime,’ she protested. A fleetingly oblique look crossed Monica’s face. ‘Oh, come on,’ she begged. ‘It’s Sunday. And I’m sick of that awful fish.’
Watching Monica plunging a resolute fork into an éclair, Edith reflected, with some humility, that she was not good at human nature. She could make up characters but she could not decipher those in real life. For the conduct of life she required an interpreter. And this woman was very pleasant, very pleasant indeed. Although apt, she could see, to cause