The Little Hotel (11 page)

‘Liliali, Liliali, come and talk to me!’

Mrs Trollope sighed, groaned:

‘Oh, my heart beat all night to suffocate me and now I must talk to these women.’

‘Well, I am sure I am not going into either of them in my dressing-gown,’ said Robert leaving his door open and going back to bed with the morning newspapers, where he had begun to draw his charts and graphs of market values.

Mrs Trollope rose, brushed her hair. She wore an old-fashioned high-necked pink flannel nightgown with cuffs and collar scalloped in silk, the sort of thing she had worn as a girl in the convent. She put on her striped flannel dressing-gown and went in to see Miss Chillard.

‘Oh, dear Mrs Collop, I had such a wretched night without sleep, but I would not call you, as that man is not very responsive. I wonder if you would mind putting out my tea things? I cannot bear the tea they send up to me.’

‘I sympathize, their tea is awful. I have got into the habit of going down and getting my own hot water. But Madame Bonnard takes it personally and says I must send for the servants, that is what they are here for. But if you like I shall go down just the same and get you some really hot water.’

‘Oh, how very kind, but I think I shall wait for the girl, the servant. Would you mind finding me the shetland bed-jacket? I am afraid I am a little décolleté in this nightgown and the doctor is coming.’

The same thing occurred. While Mrs Trollope was going through the brown valise, though she carefully followed directions she felt she was being watched. She thought again there must be money in the valises. She flushed.

‘Oh, thank you very much, thank you so much. I am afraid it does not really help.’

‘Don’t you think you should get some fresh air? It’s a lovely morning.’

‘With my trouble, I can never trust to the air. Perhaps, later on. I have friends in Vevey; they adore me and they may come to take me out. But I am so weak—Mrs Scallop—and I cannot eat anything. I got up last night, fell on the floor from weakness and spent the night on the floor. I am dirty on one side but I am not strong enough to wash.’

Mrs Trollope offered to wash her, gave her advice. Miss Chillard could not do any of the things suggested.

As Mrs Trollope went on talking, the two women looked at each other speculatively. There was a faint supercilious smile in Miss Chillard’s wasted face; perhaps she did not know this. She must have been a real beauty, thought Mrs Trollope. How these English stay-at-home girls wasted their lives. She must have been a spoiled child, the beauty of the family, something had turned her into a hypochondriac. Perhaps she had had a lover and was suffering from that lingering and languishing disease. Lilia formed all kinds of ideas about the sick woman, as she saw her in the bright morning light reflected from the lake.

Miss Chillard watched the sunburnt, weathered woman with a bright still look, and her smile deepened. Mrs Trollope knew very well what she was thinking. This woman is an Eurasian, that is why the man won’t marry her.

As she talked to her about the sagging mattress, the winter curtains which should now be changed for summer weight, about the insufficient heating and that Miss Chillard should ask for an electric heater for windy evenings, she thought that perhaps Miss Chillard’s illness was self-induced: she was a brave malingerer-errant who was not afraid of homelessness but of home, and who knew enough about people to cast herself on the mercy of hotelkeepers, of casual acquaintances; and could not bear those at home who knew her sadness. Who would lead such a life? ‘And I am leading it,’ said Mrs Trollope to herself.

Miss Chillard was saying:

‘Oh, I have cheated hotel-keepers before this, but I can’t feel myself responsible. You see, I am so unwilling to go out of Switzerland, because I am afraid they won’t let me in again. I am rather a suspect.’ She moved her handsome shoulders and smiled her luminous smile. She continued:

‘My brother-in-law was here a few days ago but I refused to go back with him. It would be quite wrong. They think he can influence me; but they are quite wrong. I knew him long ago before he married my sister. One must be careful in a family. I told him to go back. Something may happen. I have showered the Bank of England with doctors’ certificates and one always hopes they will take some notice. But as far as I can see the Bank is merely enriching the Swiss doctors and impoverishing the Swiss hotelkeepers. There seems to be no logic in anything they do; but I suppose they bow the knee to the Labour Government.’

Mrs Trollope said: ‘Oh, naturally, we are all miserable with the Labour Government. I have never lived long in England and the idea of going there now makes me wretched, and yet I so long to be among my own, among people who speak English all their lives, even though their England isn’t England to me. But it is home. I have children there, I am afraid if I am away so long they will become strangers to me.’

Mrs Trollope said she must look for her letters and she went. After she and Mr Wilkins had eaten their breakfast, they put on their outdoor clothes and were to be seen picking their way across that part of the esplanade which is near the Nautical Club. This part was now being re-paved; and one large and one small Walo-Bertschinger roller-tractor were running over and over the new tarring. They called them the Walo Dragons or the Walos; and each day they went to observe them.

‘It amuses me; I am glad there is something to look at,’ said Mr Wilkins.

Mrs Trollope said: ‘About Miss Chillard: do you know, Robert, I felt uneasy. I don’t like the name of England being dragged down by these people. I am ashamed to say it, for I expect she is really sick, but I am haunted by the idea that she is a bit of a fraud.’

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.’