Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner [9]
‘I see you are getting back your old form,’ said Harold, counting out a quantity of notes.
‘Thank you for lunch, Harold,’ Edith said, in the busy street outside. The coming separation from his kindly and self-effacing concern struck her more forcibly now than it had done hitherto. He was the only person who could be trusted to get in touch with her once she had gone away. He was the only person – well, almost – who knew where she was going. He was, alas, not the only person who knew why she was going. She looked imploringly into his eyes, aware that he had paid far too much money for a meal that would leave him hungry in an hour’s time. Her own appetite was gone, quite gone. It hardly mattered what she ate these days, since she no longer mattered to herself. But those lovely meals that she had cooked for David, those heroic fry-ups, those blow-outs that he always seemed to require when they eventually got out of bed, at such awkward times, after midnight, sometimes, leaving it till the last minute before he raced back to Holland Park through the silent streets. ‘I never get this stuff at home,’ he would say lovingly, spearing a chip and inserting it into the yolk of a fried egg. Anxious, in her nightgown, she would watch him, a saucepan of baked beans to hand. Judging the state of his appetite with the eye of an expert, she would take another dish and ladle on to his plate a quivering mound of egg custard. ‘Food fit for heroes,’ he would sigh contentedly, his lean milky body forever resistant to the fattening effects of such a diet. ‘Smashing,’ he would pronounce, leaning back, replete. ‘Any tea going?’ But even as he drank his tea she would notice him quickening, straightening, becoming more rapid and decisive in his movements, and when he passed his hands over his short, dark red hair she would know that the transition was in progress and that he would soon get dressed. Then, she felt, she knew him less. All the business of cuff-links and watches belonged to his other life; this was what he did every morning while his wife called to the children who were going to be late. And finally she felt she hardly knew him at all, although she watched from behind the curtain as he ran out to the car, hasty now, and roared off into the night. It always felt as if he had gone for ever. But he had always come back. Sooner or later, he had come back.
It had seemed to her that the daylight hours were spent simply waiting for him. And yet there were five novels, of some length, there to prove that she had not spent her time gazing out of the window, like the Lady of Shalott. It was, she recognized, a tortoise existence, despite the industry. That was why she wrote for tortoises, like herself.
But now I am reduced to pure tortoisedom, she thought, opening her eyes and gazing fearfully around the still deserted salon. But the appearance of a waiter in the doorway, with a napkin over his arm, gave her an access of determination, if only to get the meal over, for now she wanted to be alone, in her room, so as to think. Those pills must have worn off, she thought, feeling rather dizzy as she stood up, her throat aching with suppressed yawns. This is when character tells, as Father would say. And she urged herself onward to the dining room, prepared to eat because it was good for her, and