The Little Hotel (19 page)

Mrs Trollope waved the cigarette cases away as soon as her friend entered and began to question the jeweller about movements for watches. After a lot of talk, she went out without anything; but she could see the jeweller understood well enough; he was used to these ladies.

She then walked straight back home, saying she had a tea appointment, leaving Mrs Elliott at her pension, with a very deflated expression. So she came back with her purse full, having spent nothing. Because of this, she began to feel grudging. Why should I buy him the cigarette case when he also expects a car from me? I am wrong to give him his every whim. I can’t be carping and mean with Robert; and that is my mistake. What shall I do? I would rather leave him than quarrel and carp. If I give him the cigarette case, at which he has hinted several times, he will be quite self-satisfied and think he has me underfoot. He does not believe I am dissatisfied. ‘Why worry about our future life?’ he says; ‘I am your future life’. That is enough for him. I must get away. It will be agony; but this is agony and I am living a life of shame as well. I would rather give the money to a beggar in the street, to poor old Charlie, to Clara, to Luisa, than to Robert who will take it without gratitude, because it is his. She was so upset that she did not notice how she was hurrying, and she reached the lower part of the hill long before teatime: it was too early to go to the Princess. She walked down to the lakeside and sat down on a seat. Sparrows came round her feet; she had no bread for them. ‘I am sorry, I did not think of you,’ she said to them.

She was tired and trembling. Suddenly she thought of Miss Chillard. Supposing she, Lilia, did what Robert wanted, brought out all her money, supposing she were left helpless—he was capable of that. Supposing she ended up like that, with her little aches and pains, in a narrow poor hotel room, despised and harassed? She began to pant as if someone were after her. How foolish she had been! Thank goodness it was not yet too late. She had a terrible choice to make, to choose between Robert and some sort of freedom, between a wandering old age and that homeland in which she was a stranger. She felt she must get away to see how it looked from a distance.

‘I will go with Gliesli. I cannot stay and face the music, as Bili wants me to do.’

And if she married Robert? She would be worse off perhaps. He was married to his family; she would always come second. She saw quite sharply another life in England, where she would be a welcome rich divorcee of good reputation and friendly ways, who would have many friends. She would live in Knightsbridge, get up not too early, have a little maid to come in, trot round the pleasant shopping streets and the park, find friends in bars where her sort collected, go to the races sometimes, be welcome with her children and grandchildren, a sensible sophisticated loving grandmother, taking gifts, buying a French dress, going to dances in hotels. She was fifty, but there were decent men of fifty. Her heart sank; but she and Robert loved each other: ‘We are one flesh,’ she had said to him, with deep emotion.

‘And one fortune,’ he said quickly, embarrassed.

‘It is only too true. What on earth am I to do? My love is wasted,’ she said to herself, now, remembering the past.

She started to walk again. She became very tired. Some church or railway clock in the wooded, gardened slopes above her struck a late quarter. She began to hurry up the hill again. When she got to the tea-room, she was red and her hair loose about her face; in a glass she saw that her eyes looked old. The orchestra which began at four had struck the first notes and she heard Angel singing. She saw the Princess at their favourite table. It was a table in a cushioned corner by some large plate-glass windows and looked out on a lawn with exotic trees from hot countries. Many trees here were evergreens from China and the Pacific; some she recognized. They made her heart ache. On the table was a plate of cakes chosen for her and Angel by the Princess. When she reached the Princess, her eyes were dusty and shedding tears.

‘Oh, dear Bili, how thankful I am to see you. You do not know how wonderful it is.’

She told Bili that things had never been worse: Robert was breaking her heart and did not even feel it. He was estranged and selfish. ‘You would never recognize that man; he was different in Malaya.’

‘You see, he is sure of you. You have given him everything. He does not trouble his head.’

‘Dear Bili, I have left him three times, never telling him, never expecting to come back, and he does not know this; and yet he does write me such faithful letters and says he is lonely, that he has nothing to live for but me; and that is true. Then he telephones to me; he, so careful of expenses, sends me reply-paid telegrams, and my return ticket and he loosens up and sends me presents of cash. To leave a man you must have a reason. He is very clever about that: he has given me no reason. He has never even taken another woman out for a meal. And then, Bili, how can I forget he loved me?’

Said the Princess: ‘This will never do. Sing, Angel, one more song, and then you will get another cake.’

As soon as the orchestra began again, Angel was induced to sing; at the end of the song, in his emotion, he wetted the cushion and then got another cake. The hostess hovered near.

‘Lilia, I have fully made up my mind to speak to that man.’

Lilia begged her not to do so. ‘I shall have to leave town.’

The Princess was determined. She sat in the full afternoon light and spoke vigorously, nodding her curls, the pink and blue feathers in her pink hat. She wore a low neck and had sleeves halfway up her wasted forearms. Her bust was tightly supported and she had a belt of rough-cut turquoise and silver round her slender waist. She had charm bracelets and jewelled bracelets on each wrist; and high-lacing blue suede buskins with high heels. She looked very very old and very strange. Mrs Trollope, listening to her, wondered if she were really only the forty-five she pretended to be. Mr Wilkins said she was in her sixties. But Lilia had seen many wasted worn women in the East.

‘I don’t believe you have ever shown any character, Lilia.’

‘It’s not in my nature; I am too affectionate, Bili.’

‘I am going to invite him for lunch; but first have a little talk with him and be straight, tell him how you feel.’

‘He knows and doesn’t care.’

‘Now you have started this, you cannot stop. Leave it to Bili. Bili gets what she wants. Will you have lunch with me tomorrow at the Lake Club? Just you and Robert and Angel and me.’

Mrs Trollope accepted without saying what was troubling her. The Princess detested Dr and Madame Blaise. How could she say she contemplated going to stay with them to bring Robert to his senses? She heard the Princess saying that she would arrange the marriage within four months.

‘I have married so many people and I am going to get married again myself, at the end of the year, as soon as I have been to the Paris clinic.’

Mrs Trollope, indeed the whole hotel, surmised that the Princess was going in for a face-lift.

‘Oh Bili, have you someone in mind?’

‘Yes, a young man; he is a young Spaniard and will just suit me. He is not a child: he is thirty-three. We are going out to Buenos Aires and are going to open a restaurant there.’

Mrs Trollope said slowly: ‘You see, Bili, I do not know if he will do it. Under the export of capital scheme, we get say one thousand pounds each if we are separate and only one thousand pounds altogether if we are married; that is not quite enough for Robert. He knows my money, except for some arrangements made for my children, some trust funds, is to go to him if I predecease him, and, if not, then all to my children.’

‘You are mad, simply mad. You told that man that you have left all your money to him? Already. Before you’re married?’

‘But what difference does it make? Bili, he is slowly swallowing it all anyway. His appetite grows and grows. He made about sixty thousand pounds in Malaya and now that he is not in business he wants to make money out of me. And my children are being estranged. My son Claude, as you know, is a grammar-school headmaster, with three children of his own. My daughter-in-law is a fine girl, not pretty but well-educated, and she likes me; but he is turning her against me. My married daughter, Jessamine, has refused to write to me again until I have made Robert see reason, as she puts it. They have formed a plot. I think it was begun by Madeleine. No one is to write to me until I have brought Robert to his senses. This all happened after I told them I had arranged the trust funds. How oddly people behave! Where is love in all this, Bili? I do not know where love is.’

‘Supposing I write to them, to one of them, and explain things?’

‘Oh, Bili, very well. I wish someone would take it all into their hands and solve it for me; it is too much for me.’

‘Yes, I will arrange everything. And it will all come out all right. And another thing, we must work out how to get your money back into your own hands. How is it he has got it?’

‘He has an irrevocable power of attorney; you can get that in Switzerland between foreigners.’

‘I shall ask a lawyer.’

‘I did as you suggested, Bili. I got the money out of the safe to buy him the car.’

‘Are you going to do that?’

‘No, Bili—’

‘He will ask you and you will say yes.’

‘No, Bili, no. I prefer to give it away. Bili, I promised to go to Basel, to stay with Madame Blaise for a while. I could write to Robert from there.’

To her surprise, the Princess was pleased. If Lilia went to Basel, then the Princess would allow Angel to go with her; and they might find a purchaser, a dog-lover, in Basel.

Mrs Trollope wiped her eyes; the Princess kissed Angel many times, assuring him that she loved him; and they left the tea-room. They went looking for various trinkets in the jewellers’ stores; but Bili would not allow Mrs Trollope to buy the gold cigarette case.

‘He expects it, Bili.’

‘All the better.’

She did not get back in time to feed the sparrows; but Robert was waiting with the drinks.

‘Robert, the Princess is taking us to the Toucan this evening, if you wish.’

‘If she will leave the Angel at home.’

‘Oh, she said she would. But the thing that bothers me is that Dr and Madame Blaise will hear about it and be very much hurt.’

‘Why on earth should the Princess include them in her invitation?’

They had a pleasant evening with the Princess, who was generous and gay. Some time in the evening Mrs Trollope managed to caution the Princess:

‘Oh, Bili, be careful. I would not cause pain.’

When they dropped the Princess at her hotel, she whispered:

‘Bili, oh, do not ever mention to Robert what I told you. He would be very much put out and I should be unhappier than ever.’

‘I am not interested in gossip; I do things,’ said the Princess.

When the ‘cousins’ got home they had a drink. Robert, as if warned by his instinct, had an eager affectionate smile. He helped her with her coat, put away her gloves, running in and out of her room like a husband; he held her chair for her. They began laughing.

‘Robert, this is just like old times.’

She blushed as she remembered her traffic with the Princess.

‘Yes, by Jove. I half expect Rollo to drop in. Do you remember incidentally that chap from Kuala Lumpur, big red-faced chap? I never told you, I had a bothering experience with him. Nothing came of it fortunately.’

‘Oh, I think I do, Robert.’

‘You remember, he brought with him this fellow with a lot of medals who told me we were quite done out there in the East. I believed him, too. It was my party, remember? And he kept paying for rounds of drinks. I felt very shoddy, not right. But this chap decided me. That was the day I decided to pack up and go. And you see, he was right: we are done out there in the East.’

‘But all these terrible wars, Robert?’

‘Those are parting shots to cover our retreat.’

‘Yes, I wish we were still there. That was our life.’

THE NEXT MORNING
the Princess, looking down from her hotel window at about ten in the morning, was somewhat surprised to see Robert and Lilia crossing the public square hand in hand and walking together with the unmistakable trotting and nodding of the long-married. She dismissed this incident from her mind. She had made up her mind to save Lilia before she set out for the Paris clinic.

They were saying:

‘I always admired you, Lilia.’

‘Men did admire me when I was a girl. I never can understand why it was you.’

‘But it was.’

‘But you really took it so complacently, Robert.’

‘Not so complacently. I was upset when you ran off like that yesterday.’

‘You knew quite well I was with the Princess.’

‘The Princess is an interferer. She influences you.’

‘She is a very good-hearted woman. I won’t hear a word against her.’

‘Let’s keep on walking. It’s good for your health. Let’s go along the lake. I like to see the gulls, they swoop and circle, what a noise their wings make!’

‘I often thought the swooping of the angels would be deafening, after I heard the noise these gulls make. I should not like to hear the swooping down of all the angels. I should go deaf. I’d fall on my face, cover my ears. Doomsday would be funny to see, Robert. I hope I see it. With the wings coming down so thick you could see no sky. Supposing it were here on the lake!’

‘Well, yes, if you like, but it’s a gloomy idea. Do you want to sit in the kiosk? They put up a glass kiosk and there’s no use for it. Who wants to sit in a glass kiosk? Do you remember last spring when the gulls would not take our bread? I met a chap whose brother is an ornithologist. He says the birds gather out there and then they are on their way to Norway. I don’t know why they don’t eat when they are on their way to Norway. There must be stopping-places on the way.’

‘Let’s go along the lake a little and then turn in by that diagonal street. There’s a house there that seems painted, because of the Virginia creeper right across the wall. I like painted walls, as they have in Italy.’