The Little Hotel Read online

  Mr Wilkins said: ‘I shouldn’t worry about that, Lilia. You know we always pay our bills; and in fact Mrs Bonnard knows that at this moment we have in their safe over a thousand Swiss francs.’

  Mrs Trollope, still nervous, said she did not see the sense of this either. For one thing the money was partly hers yet it was there in his name.

  ‘Supposing you went to Geneva or Basel about this motorcar the Pallintosts want to sell us and I suddenly needed money, Mr Bonnard would be quite within his rights if he refused it to me. He is so scrupulous. My name should be on it too.’

  ‘What emergency could possibly arise? You have your money with mine in the bank. You know, Lilia, we must be careful; we are living abroad; we have not yet decided what we are going to do.’

  ‘What is there in living abroad? I am so unhappy.’

  ‘What a funny day, Lilia. Sun, wind, rain and clouds.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Blot the taximan says it is marrying weather. They have a proverb here, marry on a day with four weathers, then the marriage will weather all changes. I wish we could get married here, Robert. I see no sense in our remaining this way. It is absurd a man your age being tied to an old mother and three sisters, maiden ladies in their fifties and sixties. Why, you scarcely knew them. And you don’t like them. I send them Christmas cards; you don’t. And they know all about us but they pretend not to. Your family is full of hypocrisy.’

  ‘I promised my mother not to marry during her lifetime; and I won’t.’

  ‘But, Robert, she is blind, deaf and partly paralysed. She has lost her memory. And you don’t believe in a personal God.’

  ‘Just the same, she does; and I swore on her Bible; and she is still alive.’

  ‘Do you think it was right of your mother to make her children promise not to marry? Look at your sisters now! Wasted lives!’

  ‘You see, Lilia, that is not the question. The question is, Did they promise? And they did.’

  ‘It’s wrong to get a promise from girls who don’t know what they’re talking about.’

  ‘Chrissie and Cathy were in their mid-twenties and it has made no difference to me.’ He had a soft tranquil laugh, which she now heard.

  ‘It makes a difference to me. My daughters and my son are very unhappy about the way I am living.’

  ‘You forget, Lilia, that they are Mr Trollope’s children. Their feelings would not affect my mother or sisters. And then, would it be right? He gave each of them a settlement when you divorced; he did not mean them to be mine.’

  ‘Oh, Robert, you are so starched. You don’t belong to this world.’

  ‘On the contrary, I believe I am acquainted with the ways of this world; and I think I have managed our little affairs very well the last twenty-five years. We have brought up your children and spent our lives together and not a soul the wiser, or none cares to mention it. I am known throughout the rubber world as an exemplary bachelor.’

  ‘If you are so exemplary, why don’t you marry me? Your mother need never know. We are living abroad.’

  ‘My dear Lilia, I never promised to marry you; I do not like I.O.U’s. I did not know when I would be able to. When mother passes on it will be time enough for us to think about this question.’

  ‘If there were some money to come to you, I might understand better,’ said Lilia.

  Mr Wilkins laughed frankly. ‘Oh, perhaps the old girl is hanging on in the hopes of inheriting from me. I control all the money in the family but my married sister Margaret’s. But I fancy I shall disappoint mother.’

  Lilia turned away and wrung her hands in the little handkerchief which she had just taken out of her bag.

  ‘Of, if I could only say what I feel—’

  ‘Do not try, Lilia; or you will be as troublesome as usual.’

  Lilia cried: ‘Oh, what is the use of money when it is no use? Our money is shut up and we are in jail because we must stay with it. Here I am living abroad. You want me to bring out all my money; I will have none there. I won’t be able to go and see my girls for Christmas unless they take me in. And I’m a rich woman. This system of money has nothing to do with my life. What is the use of so much calculation? We live in the cheapest hotel in town. Suppose you live on till ninety-three, because your family does that, it is long-lived, and we go to Nice or Davos or Zermatt or Casablanca or the Argentine, all places I don’t like and where I don’t feel at home, just because it is good for our money? But that means the money has us. I tell you I wish you were not so efficient, Robert, and that I had some free money. And then, if you allow me to buy something, it is a jewelled movement or a diamond ring which are really investments. I am ashamed of Miss Chillard but in a sense it is true: it is the Bank makes her a cheat; and you are my bank.’

  Robert said indulgently: ‘Lilia, you are a child and always will be. Just leave these little problems to me. I am accustomed to them and can handle all that for you. That is one of my functions in your life.’

  Lilia said, with a rain and mist of tears in her black eyes and on her face tanned and dried by many oriental suns:

  ‘But I want to be free. Life seems very small to me this way. And what are Mme Bonnard and Mme Blaise? Are they my old friends? Are they the kind of people I would pick out for myself? They are very nice but I can’t go on all my life trying to love people at the table d’hôte. Even the U.S.A. would be better.’

  Robert said composedly:

  ‘Do you remember that man on the S.S. Jaffa? You know, the one they called the P.M.’s right eye and he had only one eye—a left eye, incidentally? Do you know that fellow said that Mme Chiang Kai-shek and the other sisters—Soong, is it?—sent all their money back to the U.S.A. The Americans gave it to them and the Americans might have kept it. But all they did was hand it over and stamp it Soong. But I think the sisters made a mistake. The yankee dollar is supporting too many countries and adventures; this is mere ABC whatever Madame Blaise thinks. She is only worried about the money she salted away there on trust; but in her name. She’s quite an interesting customer. So is he. But they’re not getting their trademark on any of our money, incidentally. Everyone around you, Lilia, sees that you are gullible.’

  He went on for a long time and Lilia said her head was aching; she had not slept the night before, and his idea about recalling facts and names had been useless again to genuine insomnia: the facts and names had kept her awake.

  ‘Very well, Lilia, but it is your own fault. Two good plates of soup at lunch and dinner would send you to sleep.’

  Mrs Trollope went upstairs and threw herself on the bed; but she left the door ajar and when she saw Luisa, she called her feebly through the door.

  ‘Luisa, Luisa, j’ai mal à la tête, venez, s’il vous plaît.’

  Yesterday she had offended Luisa again by talking about Rosa.

  ‘I saw Rosa out walking Sunday with her beau and she looked so happy, she was quite pretty, bella, Luisa.’

  Luisa with a ‘bell-1-la’ had looked long at Mrs Trollope in an icy passion of jealousy. Half an hour later she made an opportunity to come into the room, and walking up to the photograph of Mrs Trollope’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Madeleine, a ravishing brunette, and pointing to it, she said:

  ‘Sua figlia è bella: sua figlia bell-l-liss-sima! Mais cette fille est rouge et noire comme une poupée! Capisce, Madama, Madama capisce? Paint, molto, molto, rouge et noir. Non è bella; brutta, brutta!’

  And then, after a short cold silence, Luisa had shown a set of fascinating wiles, delightful smiles, half-words in English, soothing and loving. Luisa could be angry, acid, contemptuous. She had flying passions, transparent guile: she was fluid, clever and really affectionate. She responded to every advance. Sometimes Mrs Trollope spoke to her as to a daughter. She came in now.

  ‘Buon giorno, Signora. Come sta? Sta male? Povera donna!’

  Mrs Trollope said, ‘Si, si, male, Luisa. Please rub the back of my neck.’

  She raised herself and Luisa rubbed her thin strong hands in
a certain way over Mrs Trollope’s neck and shoulders. As she did it, they talked in their way.

  ‘I cannot stay long now, Madame, because I have all the next floor to do. Someone left and I must turn out the room. Another guest will be here at five o’clock.’

  ‘Oh, you must not leave me. You must try to come back tonight.’

  Presently Mrs Trollope said: Oh, what a shame it is, Luisa, that I cannot go out and enjoy this lovely day and you, too.’

  ‘I don’t see that it is so nice. The sun goes down early behind the mountain range and there is always snow on the hills. They stick up like combs,’ said Luisa nastily.

  ‘I think it is sad, molto triste, Luisa, that you can see your fiancé only once a year.’

  Luisa said quickly, in the mixture of tongues that they spoke: ‘You know, Signora, you say it is lovely here, but winter comes and I only love spring, primavera. Yes, the days are lovely in spring. I don’t mind getting up at six. It is light. The sky is clear and the water is often quite blue. I can go swimming. There are flowers everywhere. I don’t even mind the summer very much, though we work from morning to night and of course we don’t then get the rest we are supposed to have, in the afternoon. But I don’t like the autumn or winter. I can’t love them. Spring, don’t you think, is youth, beauty, it is everything! Here things look pretty—but it is dead. I come from Lago di Garda. You would think the water was covered with white daisies in the morning in spring with the light floating; and at night the stars make thousands of little lights in the water. What is there here to compare with that?’

  ‘I heard you singing in Miss Chillard’s room this morning.’

  ‘I sing a little but I do not feel like singing. I sing so that she will feel better. Don’t you go to see the poor English lady?’

  ‘Oh, I do go and everyone goes, Luisa. I don’t know what she is going to do. She says she can’t pay you anything, you know.’

  Luisa said angrily: ‘I don’t care about that. If she is sick, I try to cheer her up. I think once she was beautiful; don’t you think so? But so thin now—ai-ai-ai!—it’s hard to look straight at her. It’s a pity she didn’t marry an Englishman when she was a girl. I think she was disappointed and then she decided to become ill. I think that man who came to see her was the man.’

  ‘Which man? Her brother-in-law?’

  ‘Fratello—no!’ said Luisa sombrely. ‘Eh? In-low?’

  ‘Law—legge!’

  ‘Ah!’

  After thinking it over, she said, ‘No capisco,’ sulkily.

  ‘You mean, she kissed him—kiss?’ Mrs Trollope acted out a kiss.

  ‘No, no! She sent him away. She en colère—angry. She say: “Go a-way! I not wish see you.” He say: “Siamo amici, we are friends, surely.” She say: “I have no friends. Solamente uno in Zermatt. In Zermatt one”—I think he is il dottore. Si.’

  ‘The doctor?’

  Luisa said rapidly: ‘Perché, she say: “Just help me to go to my doctor, in Zermatt; I wish nothing more.” ʼ

  But Mrs Trollope said: ‘But that is her doctor she had to leave because she could not pay.’

  ‘No, no, I know; I see, I hear. I know,’ said the perceptive Luisa. ‘I was counting laundry, out in the hall.’

  ‘And so you think he was the one? The brother-in-law?’

  ‘Of course. That is why they sent him.’

  ‘Luisa, ask Madame Bonnard to let me help you with the rooms. If I could work I wouldn’t have these headaches. A man can waste his time and read books but a woman is useful.’

  ‘Ah, poor Madame,’ said Luisa moodily.

  Luisa arranged a few things and then said: ‘I must go. Now you must get up and get ready to eat or you will feel sick, like the other day. And I think you should go and see the poor English lady—is she a signora or a signor-ina?’

  ‘A signorina.’

  ‘Yes; I thought so. She must go home and marry an Englishman.’

  At lunch Robert was still reading his morning paper. She said:

  ‘I beg you, Robert, do not read the paper in my face! What will people think? They will say, What a rude man! I am not used to this.’

  ‘Please let me finish this article, Lilia.’

  The habit had grown upon him fast, suddenly, indeed in the past few months. He had not done it when he first came. Mrs Trollope rose and went to Madame Blaise’s table.

  ‘You would not recognize him, Gliesli; and when I complain he just says, “Our habits are changing because we are getting old”. And now, on account of his British doggedness and pigheadedness, he persists in it. He reads all through the meal. I started to do a thing I have never done, I brought a book to the table. But he did not mind: he read all through that meal. We do not exchange a single word; and after lunch he goes up, and fifteen minutes later he is asleep on the lounge with the sun pouring on his face; and there he rests until it is time for our tea. Ah, if you had known him only three years ago, in Malaya, you would not recognize him now.’

  In the afternoon before he went to sleep, he said irritably to Lilia:

  ‘Do go in and see that woman next to me; she is knocking on the wall again. Does she suppose I am going to visit her?’

  ‘I told her to knock if she wanted anything, and you would call me.’

  ‘And yet you do nothing but fuss about people knowing our relationship!’

  ‘But this is a case of sickness.’

  Robert laughed impertinently, lay down on the lounge and put a handkerchief over his face.

  ‘Robert, I myself don’t feel well. I think I must see a doctor.’

  ‘Oh, I think you will pull through.’

  ‘Robert, your unkindness is killing me. I can feel my love slowly dying.’

  ‘Lilia, go and exorcise that blessed poltergeist. I shall have her moved.’

  Lilia went quickly away, heart-struck by his unflinching cruelty. Miss Chillard required some trifling service. Afterwards Mrs Trollope went down to the office, and though I was at work she interrupted me to tell me about her health and ask if I knew a reliable doctor. ‘Madame Blaise knows one, but I am becoming a little wary about her advice. I wish Mr Wilkins would see a doctor; I am sure he is getting liverish.’

  I gave her the addresses of two doctors and told her to use the telephone. Mrs Trollope began to weep; she put her arms around my neck and said:

  ‘Oh, dear Madame, I hope you will never be as unhappy as I am. You will never know, thank God, my agony and shame.’

  ‘Everyone admires and respects you both, I assure you.’

  ‘Ah, but I don’t feel it. What have I done to live like this? Mr Wilkins was so delightful to me before. Now I think he is just a photograph in a window: he seems to stand up, but he is held up by a bit of cardboard. He is nice to look at and seems kind and cheerful, but if that were so, how could all this be? What did you think of me, when I came and asked you for two rooms communicating, and us with different names; and said we were cousins, though we at once began to live a married life? He always makes me do it. He will not go himself first. And I am obliged to call him my cousin. Thank God there are more kind people in the world than you would imagine. Can you imagine, Selda, what my feelings were that day?’

  ‘Really, you exaggerate. You are unwell and so you feel low in spirits. Everyone likes you.’

  ‘I don’t think life is worthy of us. If I did not have my religion, I could not drag myself along another mile of my road. For example, that money in the safe: he will not give it to me. He says I am just a child, a babe in the woods.’

  ‘You must insist upon getting your own money, Madame.’

  ‘In Malaya you see, he told me, “Do not worry, Lilia, I have provided for you. My will is always kept up to date and you will benefit by it. You will never have to worry.” I always said, “Oh, my dear one, my beloved one, do not mention these things to me. I cannot discuss such terrible things with you, your will and what it all means.” But he always came back to it: “Do not worry, Lilia, you will
get a large share of my money, because of what you have been to me; and you will never have a thing to think about.” I was contented just the same and did not say anything. But, Madame, when my husband, Mr Trollope, gave my money back into my hands at the time of the divorce, and provided for his three children, too, Robert changed. He suggested we should come abroad. I did not know why, but I thought, knowing his mother’s objections, that we would get married quietly and no one would suffer for it. But I did not mention it to him—it was a delicate subject. Well, when he returned to Yorkshire at last, to see the family he had not seen for over twenty years, he said not a word about me, and they were pleased. They thought that at last he had got rid of me and was coming home to them and to spend his money on them. So these three or four poor old women told everyone that Robert had now retired and was coming home from the East and was going to help with the garden and to can raspberries and to help them with the sick bedridden old mother. I must not say anything against them. I loved Robert and it is such a pain to me—they had always despised that East he worked in and in one room he found all the cases and packages he had ever sent them. I think they were afraid to undo them for fear of catching an eastern disease. But who knows? I myself, Madame, sent them silks and carved boxes. Then, when they found out, they refused to believe that I was divorced, because I am a Catholic; and when Robert went to the pantry door to get me a jar of chutney, homemade English chutney they had made, Chrissie, the eldest sister, locked the pantry door in his face and said: “It will rot there rather. Not one thing of ours will go to that woman. You may have it but you may not share it with her.”

  ‘Robert was very angry—you do not know him. This is one of the reasons I cannot talk to him, he has an ugly temper—he was so angry that he went to his satchel and took out a long envelope. Out of the envelope he took his latest will which he showed to them. He made them put on their glasses to look at it and said: “This is my last will and testament. In it I named you four beneficiaries and you were generously provided for. Now, this is what I do.” And before their eyes he tore the thick paper into little pieces, collected the pieces and burnt them in the fireplace.’