Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

“How do you like the Amer Picon?”

“I’m not used to drinks at all, so early, but it’s no more unusual than my being here, is it? I left my luggage in Interlaken, by the way.”

“The hotel people can send over for it.”

“As a matter of fact I booked a room there at the Splendide—I wasn’t certain you’d be here, and Interlaken looked very nice.”

“Sure, but you can cancel it now. Let me go to the desk and fix things.”

She talked with Wanda till he came back a few moments later. “They’ve put you in the room across from me for tonight,” he said, “but tomorrow we can switch to the royal suite—it’s probably that—two bedrooms with a real bathroom in between—quite sensational for these parts. And I asked them to telephone the Splendide to cancel your room and send over the stuff. It won’t arrive till tomorrow, but I don’t suppose that matters.”

She could not help thinking how strange it was for him to have made all these businesslike arrangements. Usually when they travelled it was she who did everything at hotel desks, booking and inspecting rooms, checking luggage, and so on. It was certainly strange of him to be rushing to handle such details himself, and courtesy seemed laughable as a possible explanation. Perhaps, though, it was no stranger than the walking in the woods, and the flowers, and the shorts. As for the arrangements themselves, they were quite normal. For years he had been apt to sit up half the night reading and smoking cigars, and for this reason separate rooms had become a habit, and in hotels whenever possible they had always tried to fix up a two-bedroomed suite.

Then, in the swiftly gathering dusk, she noticed a small group of people at the end of the terrace staring in a certain direction, some with binoculars. Paul explained that it was the Alpine glow transfiguring the snow peaks, evidently a much-esteemed local spectacle. They moved over to join the group. It appeared often in clear weather, Paul went on, with something of a chamber-of-commerce pridefulness, but this evening’s show was the most colourful he had yet seen. “That INCREDIBLE saffron…” he remarked, adding quickly: “And no joke intended.”

“That makes it a better one,” she laughed, feeling the drink in her head and legs simultaneously. “Because you ARE that incredible Saffron, and I only wish I could translate it into French for Wanda… Anyhow, it’s pretty —the colour, I mean. Just like slabs of pink blancmange… I think I’ll find where my room is now and get myself freshened up.”

“Sure, I’ll take you.”

They entered the hotel, leaving Wanda on the terrace, and climbed the staircase to the second floor. Everywhere looked rather empty, and Paul explained that it was in between seasons, the snow being now too soft for skiing and the yearly influx of vacationers having not yet begun. He talked with a satisfied air of proprietorship, as if the hotel as well as the girl had been his own discovery. “It’s just the spot to rest and relax,” he said, amazingly when she recollected all the other country places which with her he had found just the spots to get bored in. He unlocked the doors of both their rooms, then strode across hers to fling open the windows. “No screens, of course, they never have them out here, but there aren’t insects either.” Screens were his fetish; it was the one feature she had to look for first when she was booking at an American hotel, and how often they had passed up a good one for lack of them. “I think you’ll like it here,” he went on. Both rooms were bare-boarded, cheerful, spotless, but austere by American standards; Paul’s was smaller than hers, with a single bed and not much of a view. He said he had taken it because it was cheap, which she could well believe. She was wondering how much tact she need employ to offer him a loan (probably none at all if he needed the money) when he said with a grin: “Carey, what really made you come here?”

“An idea I got suddenly. I just wanted to see you. I wanted to make sure you were all right. Malcolm scared me.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. That’s what scared me. I got so that I had to find out for myself.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“That’s nice. I knew you wouldn’t.”

“Well, I mean it, Carey. I DON’T blame you.”

“And I don’t blame you either.”

He did not reply, but went on grinning, and after a pause she continued: “Anyhow, you look so well and happy… and why shouldn’t you be, with a good picture nearly finished?”

“Yes, it IS good. I wasn’t certain at first, but I know now I can do a great job for the screen just as for the stage.”

“I’m glad you haven’t changed, Paul.”

“Don’t you think I have? I’ve lost a lot of weight.”

“I meant that if I ever found you modest I really WOULD think something had happened.”

He laughed, “You know me pretty well, don’t you?”

She laughed with him. “Does Wanda think you’re going to make her a great actress?”

He became suddenly serious. “She nearly is already. You’d agree if you saw the rushes.”

“But I can’t, can I? She’s a better actress than me, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“When you say so, as solemnly as that, I know how true it must be.”

“It’s also true that I’ve missed you, Carey.”

“You HAVE? Really? I wouldn’t put it past you, as they say in Dublin.”

“There’s one thing Wanda hasn’t got.”

“That makes her human, anyhow.”

“But it’s something I miss—though perhaps it’s only due to the language barrier… A sense of humour, Carey—the kind you have.”

“And the kind I need, too, darling. When do we get dinner?”

“Six. We’ll drink champagne.”

“Provided you let me buy it.”

“Thanks, and since we’re on that subject, do you think you could lend me a little cash? I’m a bit short till we get some more out of Germany.”

She began to open her purse. “Anything you want, Paul—within limits. We’re neither of us as well-heeled as we used to be. Matter of fact, this room suits me perfectly—why bother making any change tomorrow? We don’t need a suite when the hotel’s so empty—it’s no hardship to walk down the corridor to a bathroom.”

The dinner was good, and in a somewhat under-populated dining-room the explosion of champagne corks seemed a ceremony to announce the season yet unborn. The hotel manager smiled his approval and sent them cognac on the house. Carey talked a good deal to Wanda, and Paul offered his constant interruptions, irrelevantly but not without a sort of bizarre harmony. In the rays of the table lamp Wanda was an Alpine glow herself, something to be stared at like a natural phenomenon. Her beauty was of a kind, Carey thought, that would make anything she did forgivable, while the beauty itself remained unforgivable—because in an imperfect world nobody had a right to such flawlessness. Even the flaw Paul had mentioned was more likely to be his own than hers, for Carey guessed that Wanda did have a sense of humour; it was Paul who had failed to discover it because he hadn’t nearly so much himself, as his stress on the language barrier showed; for it was wit, of which he had plenty, that required speech; humour could pass wordlessly from eye to eye, as Wanda’s did to hers, even when their chatter in French was quite ordinary and serious. And they need not tell each other much about Paul, Carey thought, because they could LOOK at each other about him; and this they had been doing all the time so far, with Paul presiding between them with an air of performing a conjuring trick that nobody was interested in.

It was during the later stages of dinner that Carey realized how impossible it would be to find out anything that could be called the absolute truth. She knew Paul well enough to know how rarely he could be attracted sexually; she knew, too, that there was nothing in the outward appearance of his attitude to make it certain that Wanda was, or had been, his mistress. He adored beautiful women, extravagantly and romantically, and a beautiful woman combined with a fine actress would surely drive him to every kind of distraction—with only one possible but not quite guaranteeable exception. It might well, for instance, expend itself in an ecstasy of gathering wild flowers, wearing shorts, and losing twenty pounds of superfluous weight. During the seven years Carey had lived with Paul she had witnessed the strangest manifestations of his enthusiasms for other women, yet she had never really believed him to be unfaithful, and had only very occasionally wondered about it. For she had the best of reasons for knowing how hazardous he found the relationship of man and woman, a problem worth solving once in a lifetime, if at all, and then to be given up not so much in despair as in thankful disregard.