Dolly (23 page)

Harry’s presence stimulated the ladies to gales of laughter, at which their husbands permitted themselves an absent-minded and indulgent smile. It was as if Harry were relieving them of a duty which had become onerous. His talk was invariably suggestive, and I felt there was something slightly professional about Harry as well. As the flat-chested Phyllis helped herself to an éclair Harry remarked, ‘Better weigh yourself this evening, darling. I think you’ll find you need a bigger size. I’d offer to do it for you, if Jack weren’t here.’ They loved it. I reflected how easy it is for a man to reduce women of a certain age to imbecility. All he has to do is give an impersonation of desire, or better still, of secret knowledge, for a woman to feel herself a source of power. Dolly, although deploring the concessions Harry was making to her friends, was radiant, succumbing not only to Harry’s presence but to the
louche
atmosphere. I was too dazed to feel
any sense of outrage. I realised that all this had been conjugated without me, that one friend had indicated the hotel as a possibility for Christmas for the others to join in, and for Dolly to be determined not to be left out. ‘Where are you going, Jane?’ called Dolly, as I got up to leave them.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a slight headache.’

‘Don’t forget dinner’s at seven-thirty. Oh, and the champagne reception. Don’t forget that.’

But in fact they were uninterested in my movements. I wandered out into the dusk, and down in the direction of the sea, although the tide was out and the sea was silent. There was no one about. In front of me spread a colourless emptiness; behind me the hotel blazed with all its discordant light and heat. Although it was nearly dark I descended the steps to the sand and walked a long way. I was unaware of distances, forced myself to notice only the chill of the air and the whisper of the waves. I was alone, and less angry than sad, sad to have been duped, sad to have been disappointed, sad even to have been denied the opportunity of befriending, or being befriended by, Dolly, to whom I was now irrelevant, having performed the only service for which she judged me apt. I might have given way to tears, but my native obstinacy reasserted itself, and I walked on, in the growing darkness, and under an empty sky, willing myself back into some sort of composure. I must have walked for well over an hour and a half. In that way I was able to avoid the champagne reception, which took place without me. I only had time for a quick bath and change before joining Dolly and Harry for dinner.

They were both too greedy to flirt at the table. Both ate in
an intense and businesslike manner, as if not willing to waste words when there was nourishment to be had. All around me middle-aged and elderly couples devoted themselves to dinner in the French style. ‘We’re paying for it’, their attitude seemed to say, although they tried to be restrained, and often indulged in a little mild conversation with husbands for whom they generally answered as a matter of course. Against this gentility Dolly and Harry, mouths glistening, gave an impression of superior appetite. A clue could be read here to their more intimate behaviour. As an unwelcome guest at their table I was not able to ignore this.

I escaped and went to bed early, my stomach heavy with the unwanted food. Because I hated the room, with its pink lampshade and its cynical minibar, I took one of the sleeping pills the doctor had given my mother after my father’s death. I slept dreamlessly, woke easily, and was the first down to breakfast, which I ate alone. All around me was evidence that the day had not properly started. Waiters looked pasty, and did not bother to lower their voices as they passed through the swing doors into the kitchen. I was alone in the dining-room, apart from a couple of elderly men eating All-Bran at distant tables. The air smelt of the dinner of the previous evening. On an impulse—and I was thinking more clearly this morning—I decided that I owed Dolly no more than a token presence. I got my coat and left a message at the desk that I would be back for dinner. I would have been absent even for that but could not think of a sufficiently convincing excuse.

It was Christmas Eve, and as I left the hotel the loudspeaker was crackling into play. I retraced my steps of the
previous evening and walked in the direction of Sandbanks, or so a notice with an arrow informed me. The day was mild and slightly overcast, a good day for walking, although there were few walkers about. The coastline seemed to me unresolved, neither hilly nor flat but occasionally both, and not brought into focus by the strange tentative misty light which hinted, or seemed to me then to hint, at forlorn destinies, lives lived in silence, desolate villas with gimcrack balconies, gardens filled with mournful laurels, cautious promenades with subservient dogs, widowhood. I felt oppressed by the silence, and even thought kindly of Dolphin Square, wishing I were there already, unpacking my books.

I walked on until the tide began to come in, and then I turned towards what was to become the town. I ate a lunch of fish and chips in a café crowded with school-children being treated by their parents. Children again: I began to feel better. Undoubtedly my destiny was to be coloured by children, and I felt a distaste and an impatience for those elderly revellers waiting for me back at the hotel. I wandered about the town in the afternoon, bought a pair of gloves for Dolly, for whom I now felt my usual mixture of pity and exasperation, drank a cup of tea in another café, and then, when I could no longer avoid it, made my way back, through streets now crowded with last-minute shoppers, to the glistening lights of the monstrous and menacingly hospitable hotel.

The only evening wear I possessed consisted of a black top and a black and white check taffeta skirt. This had always seemed adequate for the few parties I had attended at home, but here, I realised, as I joined the others for the
champagne reception, I was out of my depth. All the ladies were tremendously coiffed, having evidently spent the afternoon in the hairdressing salon, and they were dressed as if for a gala evening at Covent Garden. Perfumes mingled and clashed; ear-rings were constantly adjusted. The mild husbands circulated goodnaturedly in ancient dinner jackets which revealed their owners’ ages. Dolly and Harry stood out clearly as the most handsome couple, for both had that air of busyness and appetite which their contemporaries could only envy. Everything about Harry gleamed: his shirt, his silver hair, his narrow shoes on his small dancer’s feet. Dolly wore black, but there was nothing modest about Dolly’s black: it was a shameless satin sheath moulded to her opulent figure, the tulip skirt parting from time to time to reveal her still excellent legs. She looked resolute, outrageous, and magnificent, like a star giving what might turn out to be her final performance. So filled was she with her defiant belief in herself that all eyes were upon her. And I did not begrudge her her triumph, for however much I had contributed (unwittingly, a hidden voice reminded me, but I silenced it) I had to concede that I had given her pleasure. And Dolly’s desire for pleasure was so profound that it seemed only natural to provide it. When in a state of pleasure—and there was no denying this—the years fell away from Dolly, making her real age and its disadvantages irrelevant. It was almost possible to wish her well in whatever she undertook. I learned something in those few moments; mainly I learned that not everyone felt as I did. I saw and applauded the energy of a temperament in every way opposed to mine; I saw—and even understood—the thrill of the chase. That
Harry was the prey seemed to me unimportant. That I was there under false pretences seemed equally unimportant. Momentarily I was Dolly’s faithful ally, with, at the back of my mind, the memory of her bitter European face, as revealed in sleep, in the half light of the car, the effervescent mask for once cast aside and the grim working woman revealed. I was both frightened and determined for her, as she must have been frightened and determined for herself.

My indulgence cooled slightly in the course of the evening, when it became obvious that Dolly had forgotten all about me, and that Harry regarded my presence as a joke. This became even more apparent when the loudspeaker, after a preliminary crackle, announced that dancing was about to begin. Although rendered almost comatose by dinner in the Italian style I followed Dolly and Harry into the ballroom, where I caught the eye of an otherwise impassive teenage saxophonist who immediately looked away. The music was predictable and slightly out of date: selections from the Beatles’ early albums, selections from
Fiddler on the Roof
, selections from
Brigadoon
, and once every hour, with a wail from the saxophone, ‘Moon River’. Dolly and Harry sped across the floor, weightless and at one, still businesslike, but expert, as if they had been doing this all their lives. It occurred to me, as I waited silently for the evening to end, that this was what they did in their spare time. There must have been afternoon tea dances in various London hotels, or maybe they had joined a club of some sort. A club was where a predatory man or woman would look for a partner, and Harry and Dolly were both predators. I shifted uneasily as Dolly’s tulip skirt swung open and her triumphant laughter
rang out. I doubted whether on that previous occasion, in this hotel or one like it, when she had subjugated my uncle, she had been more sexually aroused than she so obviously was now. Others became aware of what was in any case obvious: applause which had been enthusiastic became desultory, faces relapsed into disapproval. At last Dolly noticed this, and led Harry off the floor to where I was seated. ‘Give Jane a dance, Harry,’ she said.

‘I’d rather not,’ I protested.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jane. Off you go.’

Harry’s fingertips moved intimately to my upper arm. Longingly I gazed back at Dolly who glared at me. As the band struck up ‘Moon River’ for the third time I heard the last instructions I was ever to accept from Dolly. Harry smoothed his hair: I gave Dolly one final glance. ‘Charm!’ she hissed, and then I was on the dance floor, far from human aid.

Harry was a good dancer; he was even too good. He was certainly too good for me. His tiny feet sped over the floor while mine trod hesitantly after them, occasionally a step behind. Humming jauntily he issued instructions which, coming from him, sounded dubious. ‘Let it go,’ he ordered. ‘Easy now,’ and again, ‘Let it go.’ I had lost weight and my skirt was slightly loose. I was aware of his hand, which he turned fastidiously outwards, shifting the waistband. When my ordeal was over I was obliged to adjust it, in full view of Dolly and her friends. ‘Harry up to his tricks again,’ tittered Phyllis, but Dolly, I could see, was put out. When I said that I was going to bed, she said, quite shortly, ‘Yes, do.’ Evidently my increasingly agonised presence was no longer to her liking, if it
ever had been. I was only a pretext, I reflected, and none of it was important. But I woke in the night to hear delighted laughter in the next room—Dolly’s room—interspersed with Harry’s slow chuckle. Looking back now I realise that what was taking place may have been merely anodyne; then it sounded like an introduction to the world’s corruption. I put the pillow over my head and somehow struggled through until morning.

I was up far too early. I went down into the stale-smelling restaurant, where there was no one about. There was a sound of hoovering from the lounge. I date my horror of hotels from that morning. When a waiter finally appeared I coldly requested coffee and toast. ‘Full English breakfast at nine, Madam,’ I was told. Even more coldly I repeated my request. At nine o’clock Dolly appeared, alone, in a rather unfortunate trouser suit which was ill-suited to her odalisque’s figure.

‘A word with you, if you don’t mind, Dolly,’ I said.

‘Well?’ She was no better disposed than I was.

‘I’m going home. There’s no point in my staying. You’ve got your friends, and I’ve got mine.’

‘Oh, really? And who are your friends? Miss Lawlor? Pickering? Your mother?’

‘I thought you were fond of my mother.’

‘I loved her! But she wasn’t a real woman to my mind. She just sat and read. Real women are alive, Jane!’ Here I anticipated her views on the desirability of singing and dancing, but she was too angry for that. ‘Real women attract men, Jane! It’s no good your looking at me like that. It’s true. How do you think life goes on?’

‘I didn’t expect to see your friend here …’

‘Why not? He is my friend, after all. I’m not going to apologise because he wants to be with me, because we want to be together. You’ll find out one day, although at the moment I wouldn’t bank on it.’

‘I’m going home today.’

‘Yes, go! Go back to your books! Go back to Pickering! You’re no good to me here.’

‘But I wasn’t ever going to be, was I? You planned to be with your friends all along. I was just here as an afterthought.’ To pay the bill, I knew, but that seemed too outrageous a thing to say, even now.

‘My dear, you were never of the slightest importance to Harry and me, or the girls. I thought to do you a good turn, show you a bit of life, take you out of yourself. Instead of which you sulk!’

‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I’m rather tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night.’

There was the tiniest pause.

‘Then perhaps you know a bit more about life today than you did yesterday.’

‘Perhaps I do.’

There was a silence.

‘Go home, Jane. You’re no good to me here. In fact if anything could spoil the pleasure it would be you.’

‘Unfortunately there are no trains until tomorrow.’

‘And you’re too mean to hire a car! Just like your mother, with her little skirts from Jaeger! Oh, go home! I don’t care how you get there.
Bon débarras!
Of course, you know what’s
really wrong, don’t you? You’re jealous! Harry was saying to me last night, what that girl needs is a man.’

I doubted whether Harry had put it as delicately as that. We were both so terribly angry that I thought we must never see each other again. There remained the matter of the bill, a matter which had also occurred to Dolly.

‘Pay your bill and go,’ she said. ‘Harry and I will look after ourselves.’ And with that she turned on her heel and went upstairs, having effectively had the last word.