Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner [60]
‘I never seem to find it,’ said Edith.
‘That is because you do not give yourself over wholeheartedly to the pursuit. But, if you remember, we are going to change all that.’
‘I really don’t see how. If all it involves is giving away my cardigan, I feel I should tell you that I have another one at home. Of course, I could give that away too. But I seem to be too spiritless for radical improvement. I am simply not fascinating. I don’t know why.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘One sees that.’
He pulled her hand more firmly through his arm and steered her forward. ‘Round once more,’ he instructed her. ‘You are getting your colour back. The air will do you nothing but good. Fair-skinned women should be out as much as possible. They cannot afford to languish indoors; their faces disappear altogether. Brace yourself, Edith. When you feel a little warmer you will begin to relax and enjoy yourself. That’s better. But there is no need to look so grim. This is, after all, a pleasure steamer.’
Edith gazed at the measureless grey expanse of the lake. The steamer was unhurried, silent; now that her ears had got used to the very slight vibration of the engine she could pick up other sounds: the tiny suction of the waves on the side, far below, the creaking of the wings of a gull-like bird which flew low over the deck, the flapping of her thin skirt as it blew against her legs. And yet there was no wind, nothing but a steady pressure forward, without any discernible progress being made. Somewhere behind the veils of mist there was a pale sun which could be seen, in the far distance, to cast a white gleam on the water. They were to land at Ouchy, where they would lunch, and to come back in the afternoon. But it seemed to Edith that this journey was too serious to be thought of simply in terms of diversion. The empty lake, the fitful light, the dream-like slowness with which they were covering the distance, seemed to have an allegorical significance. Ships, she knew, were often used by painters as symbols of the soul, sometimes of the soul departing for unknown shores. Of death, in fact. Or, if not of death, not of anything very hopeful. Ship of fools, slave ship, shipwreck, storm at sea: such representations, even if not expert, working on that fear that lies dormant even in the strongest heart, upset the nerves and the balance, for such was their intention. Edith, once again, felt unsafe, distressed, unhoused.
She rather wished that she had not accepted his invitation, but, coming as it did after her fruitless day with Monica, it had seemed attractive. There was, moreover, a considerable force of will hidden behind Mr Neville’s correctly tailored persona, and Edith had found it difficult to dissuade him from his original purpose. This banal and inappropriate excursion seemed to her almost perverse in its lack of attractions; she had supposed that they might be going on another walk, a ruminative mode that suited her even when laced with the sort of anarchic suggestion for which Mr Neville had, in her eyes, become mildly precious. But no, he had forced her on to this terrible boat, this almost deserted and pilotless vessel, from which there was no hope of rescue; she saw them drifting, their aimlessness raised to almost mythological status, into ever thicker mists, while real people, on the shore, went on with their real lives, indifferent to this ghost ship which seemed, to Edith, almost to have passed out of normal existence. For this reason she clung rather tightly to Mr Neville’s arm, for, although himself a curiously mythological personage, he nevertheless managed to represent a most tangible reality.
Yet slowly, and perhaps because Mr Neville obligingly remained silent, her nerves yielded to the prevailing mournful calm, and as the landing stage at Ouchy began to materialize, she was able to take a deep breath and to relax her tight hold on Mr Neville’s impeccable greenish sleeve.
‘There,’ he said, as they stepped out into a lakeside