Old Acquaintance by David Stacton Read Free Book Online Page B

thought she understood quite well. She could now relax. Once Charlie had managed to be unpleasant about something, he became so apologetic that he went round being saccharine to everyone for days. The rest of the evening would be his own variety of thistledown. And Charlie, in his thistledown mood, though difficult to follow, was often quite funny when eventually he came down out of the upper air and took a deep breath.
    They were now alone. The starlet had excused herself. It was getting late. She had to return to her producer. If she stayed any longer, she said, she’d turn into a pumpkin.
    “Very likely,” said Charlie, after Paul had taken her off, “she will in any case. If he has to go through that ridiculous performance, he might at least have the taste to pick on someone like that.”
    “Like what?”
    “That woman over there….”
    Casually, Lotte turned around to look, and for once in her life, was genuinely startled. “My God!” she said.
    “Lovely, isn’t she?”
    It was Unne.
    She was certainly noticeable. Men of Charlie’s preference were always bowled over by Unne, as had been Hans Christian Andersen, her original creator. She had a mute and ethereal distinction. She did not belong in time. She was a snow princess and an ice queen. When she was a child, surely, her dolls must have been made of snow. You could tell that by thefrostbitten sting of her hands. She had loved them so, but that had merely melted them all away. Too much breeding had made her, not febrile, as it does some, but quiet as a mirage. She did not belong on that terrace. She did not belong anywhere. She merely floated through the world in her bubble. The bubble touched gently here and there, but she never did. With both hands outspread, in childish wonder, she merely watched. When she was at last an old woman, no doubt she would pose for her portrait with folded hands, exactly the same, untouched, a stranger in her own body, but older. So men like Charlie thought of and described her. Perhaps, but Lotte found her maddening.
    Of all the strays she had picked up from time to time and helped on their way, in exchange for company, Unne alone needed no help and wanted no company. And yet she would not go away. And she was the last person Lotte wanted to see just then, or to be seen with by Charlie. She did not want to be caught out.
    Unne looked round the room as though it wasn’t there, which very probably it wasn’t, found Lotte, who was, and came over. She was wearing a little nothing of gray wool which defined her exactly.
    “You weren’t in your room,” she said. Her voice was like the rest of her, remote, but gentle. “Miss Campendonck thought maybe I should come ahead.”
    “Damn Miss Campendonck!”
    Charlie looked amused. “And do you always do what Miss Campendonck tells you?” he asked.
    Unne, who was the daughter of a diplomat, was quite the equal of Charlie. “I don’t care for Paris much,” she said. “Besides, Bill’s back.”
    Bill was Lotte’s accompanist. Apparently Unne didn’t care for him much, either.
    “Miss Campendonck said she’d be along Thursday, they’ll all be along Thursday, and are you certain she’s to have a north room?”
    Charlie screwed his monocle in. “Sometimes I think Miss Campendonck has tumbled to the truth. You’re nothing but a booking agent for your own camp followers,” he said unkindly. “You can introduce us now, if you like.”
    Lotte introduced them, though she would have preferred to ram his monocle into his mouth, instead. If he had decided to play Cheshire Cat, he might at least have had the decency to fade out on cue and leave them alone.
    He wouldn’t, of course.
    Then Paul came back.
    To her surprise, Unne seemed to like Paul. As much as she ever liked anyone. Lotte relaxed. That would make the visit easier.

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    SHE liked these responsibilities, which we keep for six months and then let go. They are substitutes for the children we might have had. But