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By Root 285 0

ash blonde, her nails scarlet, her dress a charming (and expensive) printed silk, beating time to the music with her hand, a smile of pleasure on her pretty face, while the waitresses, obviously attracted to such a positive presence, hovered round her, offering more cake, more tea. She bestowed a warm smile on them, and an even warmer one on the elderly pianist, who, when he got up and folded his music, came over to her and murmured something which made her laugh, then kissed her hand and left, his stiff, narrow back radiant with the appreciation he had received. Leaning back in her chair, her cup and saucer raised to her chin, this lady drank her tea with some delicacy, even with a sense of favourable presentation, and she did indeed make a delightful spectacle, devoid as she was of the anguish that attacks some people in strange places, and clearly at home in the ambience of the hotel, even if it was three quarters empty.

Edith watched her as if under hypnosis, sorry to have missed a moment of this spectacle. Rings sparkled on the hand that brought a delicate lace handkerchief to her lips. When her tray had been taken away, Edith waited keenly to see what she would do with the hiatus between tea and dinner, so dispiriting to the unexpected or unaccompanied hotel guest. But of course this lady was not alone. ‘Here I am,’ carolled a young voice, and into the salon came a girl wearing rather tight white trousers (rather too tight, thought Edith) which outlined a bottom shaped like a large Victoria plum, ‘There you are, darling,’ cried the lady, who was, who must be, her mother. ‘I’ve just finished. Have you had tea?’

‘No, but it doesn’t matter,’ said the girl, who was, Edith saw, a rather paler version of her mother, or rather the same model as her mother but not brought to the same state of high finish.

‘But my darling!’ exclaimed the older lady. ‘You must have tea! You must be exhausted! Just ring the bell. They can make some more.’

As one of the waitresses approached, they both turned on her a winning smile, begged for tea, but with an assurance that it would certainly be forthcoming, and immediately, and then lapsed into an engrossing conversation of which Edith could only hear the odd word, together with the joyous and congratulatory spasms of laughter that escaped them both from time to time. When the second tray arrived, they both turned their smiling faces to the waitress, thanked her effusively, and resumed their dialogue, although the girl lingered, as if her part in the ritual might just conceivably be prolonged, but, ‘That will be all, dear,’ said the lady in the silk dress, and settled down to contemplation of her daughter.

The daughter must be about twenty-five, thought Edith, unmarried, but not worried about it. ‘She’s in no hurry,’ she could imagine the mother saying, with her fine smile. ‘She’s quite happy as she is.’ And the daughter would blush and bridle, thus inviting lubricious speculation on the part of the elderly gentlemen who would, Edith was sure, be in relatively constant attendance on the mother. I must stop this, she said to herself. I do not have to make up their lives for them. They are in fact doing very nicely without me. And she felt a pang of wistfulness for such a mother, so good-humoured, so elegantly turned out, so insistent that her daughter should have tea, although it was nearly six o’clock. She felt a pang of wistfulness too for the daughter, so confident, so at ease with what was provided for her … And they were English, although not of a type with which she was familiar, and rather well-off, and having a good time. They looked as though they always did.

At last they decided to make a move, and when the mother made two attempts to lever herself out of her chair, her daughter hovering energetically beside her, as if knowing exactly when to intervene, Edith saw with some surprise that the older lady was in fact rather stiff in the joints, and that the shining impression of fairly youthful maturity, so impressive from a distance, was not prolonged when she stood up. Thoughtfully,