The Little Hotel by Christina Stead Read Free Book Online

older lady having said something to the younger, they took care not to catch her eye; and they seemed to have some slight joke between them. Madame Blaise had come in. Mrs Trollope, who had seen everything in the mirror, got up excitedly and went over to her friend’s table. Mrs Powell’s gaze, still incredulous, moved from the dark-skinned artistes to the others in the room and she even looked for sympathy to Mrs Trollope; but Mrs Trollope was too busy with her friend.
    Mrs Trollope and Mr Wilkins slept a good deal in the daytime and so they often went to the Toucan or the Casino to drink and dance after dinner. You don’t have to dress to go to the Toucan or the Casino, just simple afternoon frocks or suits. They hobnobbed with all the artistes and would often drink with them. It was rather expensive, said Mrs Trollope, but then she and her cousin liked a good time. Mrs Trollope was always quite eager to talk to the artistes and would smile and ‘bow’ as she said, that is incline her head, when they came in; and she did this now. Mrs Powell fixed her outraged glance on Mrs Trollope’s face. When dinner was finished Mrs Powell came to me in the office and said:
    ‘You said when you’re busy in summer you turn that little writing room into a dining-room for the extra table?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I think the dancers at the cabaret would be happier if they had a place to themselves. They don’t eat at the same time, they eat differently, and they must feel out of place with us.’
    ‘They are quite happy, Mrs Powell. With our system of separate tables, which is so different from so many hotel-pensions, everyone keeps to himself. Mr Bonnard and I are very proud of having separate tables instead of long tables which you will find in other hotels at our rates.’
    Mrs Powell went upstairs, put on her hat and went out for a brief walk. From then on she made a detour when she entered the dining-room, to say hello to the Dutch ladies and straight from there to her own table. Thus she avoided Madame Blaise who had complained about her snores, and Mrs Trollope whom she now called nothing else but ‘that Asiatic.’
    I laughed the first time. ‘She is not an Asiatic.’
    The old woman insisted: ‘She is not one of us: you don’t feel she’s like you and me.’
    ‘She was very beautiful as a girl, I’ve seen a photograph.’
    ‘They often have a showy prettiness when they’re young; that’s one of the signs.’
    ‘But she’s as white as you or me,’ I said; though I knew and everyone knew that Mrs Trollope had something strange, foreign, which I thought very interesting in her pale-skinned face.
    ‘White! With those eyes,’ said Mrs Powell.
    Mrs Trollope had beautiful long dark eyes and not a grey hair. She dressed this fine black hair in a crown or aureole. She had thickened and coarsened, but her wrists and hands, her ankles and feet remained delicate; and she was always shopping for shoes small enough to fit her. On the nails of her small pale oval hands she wore pale pink enamel, and they made me think often of a bush we have along the esplanade, the flowering judas. In early spring when the first green buds appear on other trees, this bush puts out pale rose sessile buds, the size of rice. She and Madame Blaise would sit together on the esplanade and when I passed sometimes out walking with Olivier I would see them, holding each other’s hands. Madame Blaise’s were heavy, knotty and thick with rings; Mrs Trollope’s were veined but reminded me of these bushes. She also wore many rings, thin rings of different colours and a good many bracelets going up her arm. The two were fond of jewellery. They would often go shopping for jewellery, visit all the expensive jewellers in Lausanne and Montreux, get a powder-case, a lighter, get a ring mended, substitute a more expensive movement in a wristwatch for the old one, have their initials put on things, buy a handbag. Then they would spend days saying they didn’t