Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner [69]
‘You have known my address for the past two weeks, but I have not heard from you. There is therefore no point in telling you where I shall be living, for I shall not hear from you there either.
‘I do not know how to end this letter. I do not want to succumb to reproaches, recriminations, and indeed I have no right to any of these things. To say that I was a willing partner is risible, for I was the more willing of the two. I was more willing than you.
‘I send you all my love, always.
Edith.’
She sat with her head in her hands for a long time, in the room now totally silent. She was not aware of time passing. Instead she seemed to look back into the past, to other times when silence had been her lot. When she had stood at the window of her house, listening to the vanishing hum of David’s car. When, wordless, she had watched her father tidy his desk for the last time, or had meekly taken her mother’s spilt coffee back to the kitchen. Even further back, she saw herself hiding behind Grossmama Edith’s chair in the grim apartment in Vienna, while her mother and her aunts aired their grievances. And if she heard any words, they were quite inappropriate to her present situation. ‘Schrecklich! Schrecklich!’ she heard Tante Resi shout. ‘Ach, du Schreck!’
When she got up, it occurred to her that she should go to bed, but her most imperative desire was not for sleep but for the morning, when she would take her letter to the post and thus ensure that there should be no second thoughts. She looked at her watch and saw that it was half-past one. She undressed and lay down on her bed, determined to last out the night and not weaken. Her cheeks burned, and she trembled slightly, but as the night deepened, her muscles relaxed, and her breathing slowed, and finally she slept.
When she awoke it was still dark, but she got up and bathed her face and hands; there would be time for a bath later, when she came back. She re-read her letter, put it in an envelope, and stuck it down. She dressed and brushed her hair. She was now quite calm, and sat patiently until she knew that there would be someone at the desk who could sell her a stamp. At six o’clock, unable to wait any longer, she picked up her bag and her key, opened her door very quietly, and stepped out into the corridor.
Making her way silently along the thick carpet, anxious not to awaken or alarm the sleeping guests, she was just in time to see Jennifer’s door open and Mr Neville, in his dressing gown, emerge. With a caution equal to her own, he concentrated on making no noise, and pulled the door to very slowly. In the dim light left burning overnight she could quite clearly make out his controlled and ambiguous smile.
Of course, she thought. Of course.
She waited, frozen, until Mr Neville, unaware of her presence, turned away, walked rapidly along the corridor, and disappeared from sight.
And back in her room she realized how little surprised she was. She remembered his talk of preserving his centrality, repairing his self-esteem, noble words which she had perhaps accepted too easily. But that was not it, not entirely it. And then she remembered. When she had leaned against him and wept, and when he had put his arm around her, she had been aware that he had felt nothing. That he had returned her to herself most gracefully, but had felt nothing.
And Jennifer was no doubt one of those trivial diversions of which he spoke so dismissively. And that door, opening and shutting, in her dreams, in her delusive waking moments, had been a real door, the reality and implications of which she had failed to take into account.
She saw her father’s patient face. Think again, Edith. You have made a false equation.
She sat down slowly on the bed, feeling a little faint. And if I were to marry him, she said to herself, knowing this, knowing too that he could so easily and so quickly look elsewhere, I should turn to stone, to paste: I should become part of his collection. But