The Little Hotel (17 page)

‘Ah? Why not go to the States? You can make money there.’

‘You can make money anywhere.’

But Mr Wilkins became thoughtful. At last he said quietly:

‘Lilia says you would not recognize me now, if you knew me some years ago. That is the result of retirement, Mr Pallintost, I am not the same man. I think of getting back into some small business; but I need heat, as much of it as there is going, don’t you see, and we thought of Casablanca. But there must be something to stop me from sleeping all the time. All I do is take a little walk, not to feel liverish. But you know I often do feel liverish. We dine at seven-thirty. Usually we go straight up and go to bed early. I wake early, for it’s the only time you can get anything done in the East and I have the habit.’

After another pause he said: ‘I am trying to get my cousin to bring out all her pounds, but she doesn’t see it.’

‘Doesn’t your cousin—uh, Mrs Trollope, believe in the Swiss franc?’

‘Oh, rather,’ said Mr Wilkins and again fell silent.

Mr Pallintost said hesitatingly: ‘My wife and I feel we must thank you for the evening we had, you know. You were very generous. My wife and I don’t go in much for high living, but we thought the cooking excellent and we enjoyed the wine; though we take so little in general, we are not very good judges.’

‘Mrs Trollope and I rarely take it.’

‘But this—it is the Johannisberger the doctor is so fond of—I preferred the Dambacher, you know. I think I might get to like that too much perhaps. Le vice du pays, eh? Ha!’ said Mr Pallintost, hinting.

‘H’m,’ said Mr Wilkins, not wishing to comment then upon the doctor’s ways. He continued at last: ‘I’m quite a comic; just a little wine or none at all. I haven’t the habit. Everything is habit, I suppose.’

The bells began to ring midnight. Mr Wilkins, in his clear light baritone with its Yorkshire guttural at moments, continued:

‘As for South America, all I’ve seen of it is in Walt Disney. I hear there are opportunities in Bogota though.’

‘Euh—h’m’ said Mr Pallintost.

‘The air is so thick I shall sleep like a dormouse,’ said Mr Wilkins.

‘I think the ladies will be wondering if we have taken a swim.’

‘A bit early in the year for that, eh? But I have not seen Lilia come back from the Hotel Lake Terrace. I do wish she would not stay up so late talking to the Princess: the Princess is quite a comic. A great converter. And the next day, you know, Lilia always says she has a backache; and I have more fun than a cartload of monkeys getting doctors from all over town.’

They dragged another turn or two, when Lilia was seen trotting out of the entrance of the Lake Terrace. Mr Wilkins made a few terse stately reproaches and they all went in. Lilia was even more nervous than before; and when Mr Wilkins had said good night she shut her door and went to bed herself; but to toss about and remember each word she had said to the Princess and the Princess to her.

Brought to light and analysed, the unexpected injustice, the ugliness of the thing upset her. Bili was so very decided, she was already in campaign: ‘You won’t stop me, Lilia dear. The man must be brought to his senses.’

Bili—strange old humming-bird, lively, coloured, clever, with her flesh in folds and pouches from too much dieting, tapping and scurrying along like a girl, decided, foolish, coquettish, dashing—was not Lilia’s ideal friend. But she was lavish, devoted and what she said was common sense.

‘He has had your loyalty and devotion for twenty-seven years.’

‘Never another man, Bili, only my husband and then Robert. I never even thought of another man. I was so sure he would marry me the year we came abroad. I came abroad with him without a thought. What a scandal! But I didn’t even think of it. I thought Mr Trollope was a rotter, a gadabout; but he behaved very handsomely at the last; and Robert does not measure up to him. I have few kind words to say for my husband, but in this he was everything a gentleman should be.’

She had not wept then with the Princess; but spoke briskly, harshly, sadly. She had been brought up in a convent of French nuns in the East, gone home to England and returned to marry Mr Trollope.

‘I feel as if I am being punished now, Bili, in Madeleine.’

Madeleine was the younger of Mrs Trollope’s two daughters. She had been engaged several times; once had turned the man down on her wedding eve. She was dazzling, with the fresh beauty of blood newly mixed; Mrs Trollope’s mother had been a Dutch-Javanese.

‘Madeleine has that Javanese walk,’ said Mrs Trollope.

This was supposed to be a secret, though the Dutch never cared about mixed blood. Eventually Mrs Trollope told everything to everyone; she was not used to being despised and hated. She had lived in the unreal world of empire outposts for many years and in fashionable places abroad. She had been protected by the gallant rascality of Mr Trollope and the gallant loyalty of Mr Wilkins. With the departure of the gallant rascal, the gallant Mr Wilkins had shown a poorer side.

‘Everyone likes Robert at first sight. It is only much later you find out that he has a heart of stone. It is not his fault but the fault of his whole family. No one counts but the Wilkinses and their blood must not be mixed with a half-caste. That is what they call me. It does not even matter if there are no more Wilkinses, they are so precious. Someone wrote a letter to the old mother saying that my last child, Thomas, called after Mr Trollope, was really Robert’s child. His old mother had a heart attack and called him back to Yorkshire. I must say that Robert did not go; or not until it suited him. That is quite characteristic of the Wilkinses: they do what suits them and that is what God thinks right. They would not give you a cup of water if you were dying in the gutter, Princess, and they knew you were a Princess. They do not care about Princess or Queen or God Almighty. They would only give a cup of water to a Wilkins, and then only if it suited them. The world has been hard to them, taken no notice of them, made them soulless commonplace people; in their stiff vanity they resent it, they secretly know what they are and they would like to see us all die before them. Their selfish mother tried to make them all old maids and they hate a woman like me, Bili. And through defending them he has become like them: he is one of them. And now Robert has quarrelled with them bitterly; and he does not care at all. I assure you he would quarrel with me, without a flicker of feeling, without batting an eyelash, if it were not for my money. Oh, yes, I have brought abroad £8,000 and I have a lot still to bring, and that is the basis of Robert’s loyalty.’

She had said all that to the Princess. It had all come direct, tabloid from her, because she had thought it over so many times. She had already told some of it to a good many people, trying to explain the shame and disgrace of her life. She had not mentioned his habit of not talking to her at table. She was deeply ashamed that these petty things bothered her. She was ashamed when she compared her dreamed life of true love, happiness, hope and trust with the insignificance of her present life.

But Bili had wanted none of this.

‘You shan’t suffer, Lilia. We will jab him out of his lethargy, physical and moral. We must begin tomorrow. I am coming down to breakfast with you; I shall come to lunch too and to dinner. He will get no peace from me. You need someone who is relentless. He is a weak man. You must give him no peace.’

‘Oh, Bili, how can I nag him on such a subject? I can’t do it.’

‘You can’t but I can and I will.’

‘Oh, Bili, not at table; I won’t know where to look.’

‘Do as you please, Lilia. But this must be settled now; he is getting lazier and lazier and he is getting to have less and less regard for your feelings. What is more, Lilia, you must refuse to bring out any more of your money until he marries you.’

‘How could I bring pressure to bear on him like that? With money? Oh, Bili, if you knew how we felt for each other in the East—it was love, there was such a bond. That bond must still be there. I know it is. I know if I went away, he would be miserable: he cannot live without me. It’s a life bond. How can I be straight and cold with a man who has that relation to me?’

‘Yes, you’re no use as a negotiator. You must let me handle it. And I will, but when I ask you to, you must arrange for me to have lunch with Robert alone.’

At the memory of this terrible hour with the Princess, Lilia wept and her face burned. She said now to herself:

‘Oh, Bili, I would rather leave him; though it would be suffering for us both, rather than take such measures with a man I love and have loved so much for so long.’

Mrs Trollope tossed all through the night. She was afraid of what would happen tomorrow.

THE AFTERNOON BEFORE
there had been the usual upheaval, sweeping and polishing between guests; and early in the morning there was a noisy movement and a strong resonant English voice had begun to blow on the landing upstairs, relating some pension story of tipping and service; the old old story of the unhappy hotel-dwellers; and after this story, which boomed through the half-waking hotel, the great voice, the voice of an old sea officer calling down the decks in an early morning fog, said:

‘Thank you very very much; I am very very grateful.’

It was the Admiral; she had returned.

Her voice was answered by a greasy persuasive voice, without timbre, the voice of kindness, the voice of the poor helper, the unwilling travel acquaintance, and this voice said:

‘Now lie down, rest, you had all this fuss and bother, now lie down, it is nearly breakfast time; you will get your cup of tea.’

The great voice shouted:

‘No, thank you very very much. You go back and have yours. I am having mine at the table. Thank you very much. I am very very grateful. Come and see me one of these days—not tomorrow. I am going to see the Edward G. Robinson picture and then going out; but come one of these days.’

The door shut, and the helpers—there were two, a middle-aged couple in the ill-fitting, drab and numerous garments the poor English tripper wears—went down the stairs together holding hands.

Mrs Trollope, who was already dressed, thought she would go upstairs to welcome the Admiral and so distract her mind from her own troubles. She went up to the next floor. There was silence. But suddenly there was a stirring, and she was startled by a mighty squawk, ‘Aw-kh-aw-wkh! Oh-aw-kh! Eh?’ Silence. She waited. A moment later there was a slight movement, a sound like a giant yawning in a limestone cavern, distant and near and echoing, ‘Aw-wh-awh-awh!’ An explosive, sonorous, overpowering and resounding yawn followed it, awesome, disturbing, ‘Aw-aw-awkh-ah-ah-awkh!’ It was the strength that was awesome, for it was a woman in spite of the baritone, and it was sane, capable. It seemed like some limitless being who, for a reason obscure, had taken on the flesh of a superannuated tea-drinking English paying guest. Mrs Trollope retreated, but kept her door open. Then there was a mild roaring in the room upstairs, the lift went down and up, and tea was brought; and then Mrs Trollope, thinking she might perhaps now talk to the poor old lady, alone in the world at eighty-seven, went up again.

There was silence, then a complacent, clanking ‘Aw-whk-awkh-eh-eh!’ Then silence. Mrs Trollope hesitated. It seemed to her she heard her sparrows complaining on her windowsill. The sun was shining in the back of the hotel. ‘Aw-whk-whsk-eh!’ There was a bird somewhere with a musical note. The breakfast bell rang. The voice said:

‘Well, goodbye, little Caroline; don’t be lonely, little Caroline.’

Mrs Trollope feared a familiar spirit. But a canary teeked in the room, so Mrs Trollope made haste and went below. A scene took place on the upstairs landing; something was wrong. The old lady’s ungainly French clanked along. Mrs Trollope heard, Luisa heard, then Charlie, then Clara. I went to the door of my office and listened but did not go up. I had taken the old woman back, because she had had trouble at the Lake Terrace and I still had empty rooms. I thought I would give her another chance and I was going to warn the servants about their frolics; fair is fair. The Admiral croaked:

‘Je veux voir Madame. Est-ce Madame ou Mamzell? Dites-lui qu’il faut qu’elle vienne.’

They all began to argue. Bells rang. ‘Clara, venez ici!’ The Admiral liked Clara, fortunately. A stick tapped. The door opened and shut. ‘Awkh!’ After a silence, a canary answered, ‘Twee-eek!’ ‘My little Caroline, my little friend.’ ‘Twee-eek!’ ‘Goodbye, Caroline, my little friend.’ The door opened and shut; then the terror came. The stick—tap-tap-tap. The voice, ‘Clara, vous êtes mon amie, venez-ici.’ Clara’s spattering French: she had to go to the kitchen. Then: ‘Eh! L’homme qui est là! L’homme! Où est l’homme? Où est-il, l’homme?’

Grinning, Charlie limped upstairs. ‘What is your name?’

‘Charles.’

She spoke in English: ‘Charles, why doesn’t the lift work now? It wasn’t worth my trouble to come back here and find the lift still doesn’t work.’

‘It does work but it’s being painted. See the notices.’

‘If it works bring it down for me. I don’t care about notices.’

‘We’re not allowed, Madame.’

‘Eh? Ring it down. Eh? L’homme! Monsieur le peintre! Eh? Bring it down! Get Madame, get Madame at once.’

There was a sort of public meeting on the landing; Clara ran up and down stairs.

‘No, such things don’t exist, such things are impossible,’ said she.

‘Clara, you are my friend. Everything is possible. Get the painter out of the lift. What does he want it for? Go and get it, Clara.’

Running on the stairs.

‘Go and get it, l’homme.’

Running on the stairs. She thundered with her stick. She was deserted. Breakfast was on and they had flown in all directions. She rattled with her stick, the poor old bully in a great rage, in misery; for she suffered from rheumatism and she cried out, she cried in desperation to herself:

‘I am mad to come back here, je suis folle de revenir ici, I am mad to come here, why did I come?’

Mrs Trollope was very much upset by the Admiral’s predicament. There was silence and she thought she had gone away, given up, gone to her room; but no, she was standing there all the time, formidable, irreducible, miserable in the strength that can’t be turned off or controlled, unable to walk down, too proud to return to her room, deserted in her painful age.