Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner [59]
‘Why, Edith,’ cried Mrs Pusey, with her usual vivacity. ‘What on earth have you done to your hair? Come and join us, dear. Let me have a proper look at you.’
Edith crept back to her accustomed seat, while Mrs Pusey, a finger to her chin, looked doubtful.
‘Well, it’s unusual, of course,’ she pronounced finally. ‘But I think I liked it better the other way. Jennifer! What do you think, darling?’
Jennifer, looking up from her nails, gave a brief vague smile. ‘Quite nice,’ she said. ‘Not bad at all.’
‘Oh, but I think I liked it better the other way,’ said Mrs Pusey. And, with her head on one side, continued to assess the problem until it was time to go in to dinner.
11
Edith, stepping carefully and shivering a little in the chill air, took Mr Neville’s outstretched hand. The landing stage was deserted; the prospect was too poor to tempt visitors, such as the few that were left, to a day trip on the lake. It was in fact the last such trip of the season, a fact held out by Mr Neville as an inducement. He seemed to collect such uncomfortable and out of the way experiences, expecting from them nothing but the value of novelty and irony. For this brief excursion he was, once again, hopelessly well dressed. Two American ladies, wearing trousers and plastic mackintoshes, contemplated his greenish tweed suit and his deerstalker hat from behind the glass of the verandah-like cabin. There was no one on the deck. To Edith, it seemed as if there were no one else on the ship which slid, very silently, away from the shore and into the grey mist that encompassed the lake as far as the eye could see.
Mr Neville took up an elegant position, his hands on the rail. Edith, shuddering in time with the steady throb of the engine, turned her back on the desolate scene, trying to limit her vision to the structure which supported her, but a feeling of being cut off, not only from dry land, but from any recognizable viewpoint, unsteadied her. Out of sheer weakness she had left herself no means of escape, a fact of which she was uncomfortably aware. I could have stayed in and spent the entire day writing, she thought to herself, but the mere thought of it made me feel ill. The fact is that there are very few distractions in a place like this and one gets to fear one’s own boredom. It is not true that Satan makes work for idle hands to do; that is just what he doesn’t. Satan should be at hand with all manner of glittering distractions, false but irresistible promises, inducements to reprehensible behaviour. Instead of which one is simply offered a choice between overwork and half-hearted idleness. And that is scarcely a choice at all. One cannot even rely on Satan to fulfil his obligations.
‘Now what?’ asked Mr Neville, taking her arm.
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Edith. ‘I was simply thinking how little vice there is around these days. One is led to believe that one can pick and choose, but in fact there seems to be no choice at all.’
‘Stroll round the deck with me,’ said Mr Neville. ‘You are shivering. That cardigan is not warm enough; I do wish you would get rid of it. Whoever told you that you looked like Virginia Woolf did you a grave disservice, although I