Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

Author:Anita Brookner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780141935850
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2008-11-17T10:00:00+00:00

8

‘Dearest David,

‘Astounding news! Mrs Pusey, that pinnacle of feminine chic, that arbiter of taste, that relentless seeker after luxury goods, that charmer of multitudes, is seventy-nine! I know this because she had a birthday two days ago and we were all invited to celebrate it. Premonitory rumours that something was afoot had reached me earlier in the day; as I was going out along the corridor I heard cries of delight and surprise emanating from the Puseys’ suite, while a veritable miasma of scent (a different sort) seemed to billow out almost to the head of the stairs. While I stood on the steps outside the hotel, I could see a boy emerging from a van with an arrangement of flowers which looked positively bridal; I thought no more about it, although had I worked it out I would have realized that nobody would have sent flowers to Monica or Mme de Bon-neuil or myself, and that only left the Puseys. Of course, Jennifer might have a boyfriend somewhere, and the higher reason suggests that she must have, but somehow it seems unlikely. I think she is the sort of girl who will never leave her mother. I have met many such daughters. Penelope, you might be surprised to know, has refused offers of marriage because in her opinion few of the men she meets come up to Mother’s exacting standards, of which I have heard so much. Penelope quotes Mother as the final authority on every subject, and sometimes I envy her this certainty, this piety. I wish that I had had a mother who handed down maxims on tablets of stone, and who was never without a wise saw or a modern instance. I never knew my poor mother to do much more than bark with derision. And yet I think of her as my poor mother. As I grow older myself I perceive her sadness, her bewilderment that life had taken such a turn, her loneliness. She bequeathed to me her own cloud of unknowing. She comforted herself, that harsh disappointed woman, by reading love stories, simple romances with happy endings. Perhaps that is why I write them. In her last months, she lay in bed, wearing the silk peignoir that my father bought her on their honeymoon in Venice, not caring, perhaps not noticing, that the lace was torn, the pale blue faded to grey, and when she raised her eyes from her book, her eyes too were faded from blue to grey, and full of dreams, longings, disenchantment. My mother’s fantasies, which remained unchanged all her life, taught me about reality. And although I keep reality in the forefront of my mind, and refer to it with grim constancy, I sometimes wonder if it serves me any better than it served my mother.

‘But all this is by the way. I went out for the day and when I turned up for dinner that evening all was revealed. The dining room had emptied after the bustle

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