Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner [62]
‘I think you should marry me, Edith,’ he said.
She stared at him, her eyes widening in disbelief.
‘Let me explain,’ he said, rather hurriedly, taking a firm grip on his composure. ‘I am not a romantic youth. I am in fact extremely discriminating. I have a small estate and a very fine house, Regency Gothic, a really beautiful example. And I have a rather well-known collection of famille rose dishes. I am sure you love beautiful things.’
‘You are wrong,’ she said, her voice cold. ‘I do not love things at all.’
‘I have a lot of business overseas,’ he went on, ignoring her. ‘And I like to entertain. I am away a certain amount of the time. But I dislike having to come back to a house only occupied by the couple who live in it when I am not there. You would fit perfectly into that setting.’
A terrible silence installed itself between them. Edith concentrated her attention on the bill, fluttering unnoticed under an ashtray. When she spoke her voice was unsteady.
‘You make it sound like a job specification,’ she said. ‘And I have not applied for the job.’
‘Edith, what else will you do? Will you too go back to an empty house?’
She shook her head, wordless.
‘You see,’ he went on, ‘I cannot afford another scandal. My wife’s adventure made me look a laughing stock. I thought I could sit it out with dignity, but dignity doesn’t help. Rather the opposite. People seem to want you to break down. However, that’s all in the past. I need a wife, and I need a wife whom I can trust. It has not been easy for me.’
‘And you are not making it easy for me,’ she said.
‘I am making it easier for you. I have watched you, trying to talk to those women. You are desolate. And without the sort of self-love which I have been urging on you, you are never going to learn the rules, or you are going to learn them too late and become bitter. And when you think you are alone, your expression is full of sorrow. You face a life of exile of one sort or another.’
‘But why should you think me such a hopeless case?’
‘You are a lady, Edith. They are rather out of fashion these days, as you may have noticed. As my wife, you will do very well. Unmarried, I’m afraid you will soon look a bit of a fool.’
She studied him sadly. ‘And what will I do in your fine house, when you are away?’ she asked. And when you are not away, she thought, but kept the thought to herself.
‘Whatever you do now, only better. You may write, if you want to. In fact, you may begin to write rather better than you ever thought you could. Edith Neville is a fine name for an author. You will have a social position, which you need. You will gain confidence, sophistication. And you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are doing me credit. You are not the sort of woman of whom men are afraid, hysterics who behave as though they are the constant object of scandal or desire, who boast of their conquests and their performance, and who think they can do anything so long as they entertain their friends and keep a minimal bargain with their husbands.’
‘Women too are afraid of that sort of woman,’ murmured Edith.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Most women are that sort of woman.’
She looked up at him. ‘But I thought that men preferred that kind of woman. I thought that they despised the sort of conjugal peace that you prescribe for me.’
‘In a sense, yes,’ he replied. ‘Men do like that kind of woman. They feel they are missing out if they get anything that is less than tricky and fantastic; they like the danger of that sort of attachment. They like the feeling that they have had to fight other men for possession. That is what it is all about, really. Knocking other men down. It is only when those other men get up and start fighting for possession all over again that they realize