The Driver's Seat (5 page)

FOUR

At the hotel desk she
seems rather confused as if she is not quite sure where she is. She gives her
name and when the concierge asks for her passport she evidently does not
immediately understand, for she asks him what he wants first in Danish, then
French. She tries Italian, lastly English. He smiles and responds to Italian
and English, again requesting her passport in both languages.

‘It is
confusing,’ she says in English, handing over her passport.

‘Yes,
you left part of yourself at home,’ the concierge says. ‘That other part, he is
still en route to our country but he will catch up with you in a few hours’
time. It’s often the way with travel by air, the passenger arrives ahead of
himself. Can I send you to your room a drink or a coffee?’

‘No,
thank you.’ She turns to follow the waiting page-boy, then turns back. ‘When
will you be finished with my passport?’

‘Any
time, any time, Madam. When you come down again. When you go out. Any time.’ He
looks at her dress and coat, then turns to some other people who have just
arrived. While the boy waits, dangling a room-key, to take her up, Lise pauses
for a moment to have a good look at them. They are a family: mother, father,
two sons and a small daughter all speaking German together volubly. Lise is
meanwhile gazed back at by the two sons. She turns away, impatiently gesturing
the page-boy towards the lift, and follows him.

In her
room she gets rid of the boy quickly, and without even taking her coat off lies
down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. She breathes deeply and deliberately,
in and out, for a few minutes. Then she gets up, takes off her coat, and
examines what there is of the room.

It is a
bed with a green cotton cover, a bedside table, a rug, a dressing-table, two
chairs, a small chest of drawers; there is a wide tall window which indicates
that it had once formed part of a much larger room, now partitioned into two or
three rooms in the interests of hotel economy; there is a small bathroom with a
bidet, a lavatory, a washbasin and a shower. The walls and a built-in cupboard
have been a yellowish cream but are now dirty with dark marks giving evidence
of past pieces of furniture now removed or rearranged. Her suitcase lies on a
rack-table. The bedside light is a curved chromium stand with a parchment
shade. Lise switches it on. She switches on the central light which is encased
in a mottled glass globe; the light flicks on, then immediately flickers out as
if, having served a long succession of clients without complaint, Lise is
suddenly too much for it.

She
tramps heavily into the bathroom and first, without hesitation, peers into the
drinking-glass as if fully expecting to find what she does indeed find: two
Alka-Seltzers, quite dry, having presumably been put there by the previous
occupant who no doubt had wanted to sober up but who had finally lacked the
power or memory to fill the glass with water and drink the salutary result.

By the
side of the bed is a small oblong box bearing three pictures without words to
convey to clients of all languages which bell-push will bring which room
attendant. Lise examines this with a frown, as it were deciphering with the
effort necessary to those more accustomed to word-reading the three pictures
which represent first a frilly maid with a long-handled duster over her
shoulder, next a waiter carrying a tray and lastly a man in buttoned uniform
bearing a folded garment over his arm. Lise presses the maid. A light goes on
in the box illuminating the picture. Lise sits on the bed and waits. Then she
takes off her shoes and, watching the door for a few seconds more, presses the
buttoned valet who likewise does not come. Nor does room-service after many
more minutes. Lise lifts the telephone, demands the concierge and complains in
a torrent that the bell-pushes bring no answer, the room is dirty, the
tooth-glass has not been changed since the last guest left, the central light
needs a new bulb, and that the bed, contrary to the advance specifications of
her travel agency, has a too-soft mattress. The concierge advises her to press
the bell for the maid.

Lise
has started reciting her list over again from the beginning, when the maid does
appear with a question-mark on her face. Lise puts down the receiver rather
loudly and points to the light which the maid tries for herself, then, nodding
her understanding of the case, makes to leave. ‘Wait!’ says Lise, first in
English then in French, to neither of which the maid responds. Lise produces the
glass with its Alka-Seltzers nestled at the bottom. ‘Filthy!’ Lise says in
English. The maid obligingly fills the glass from the tap and hands it to Lise.
‘Dirty!’ Lise shouts in French. The maid understands, laughs at the happening,
and this time makes a quick getaway with the glass in her hand.

Lise
slides open the cupboard, pulls down a wooden hanger and throws it across the
room with a clatter, then lies down on the bed. Presently she looks at her
watch. It is five past one. She opens her suitcase and carefully extracts a
short dressing-gown. She takes out a dress, hangs it in the cupboard, takes it
off the hanger again, folds it neatly and puts it back. She takes out her
sponge-bag and bedroom slippers, undresses, puts on her dressing-gown and goes into
the bathroom, shutting the door. She has reached the point of taking a shower
when she hears voices from her room, a scraping sound, a man‘s and a girl’s.
Putting forth her head from the bathroom door, she sees a man in light brown
overalls with a pair of steps and an electric light bulb, accompanied by the
maid. Lise comes out in her dressing-gown without having properly dried herself
in the evident interest of protecting her hand-bag which lies on the bed. Her
dressing-gown clings damply to her. ‘Where is the tooth-glass?’ Lise demands. ‘I
must have a glass for water.’ The maid touches her head to denote forgetfulness
and departs with a swish of her skirt, never to return within Lise’s
cognizance. However, Lise soon makes known her need for a drinking-glass on the
telephone to the concierge, threatening to leave the hotel immediately if she
doesn’t get her water-glass right away.

While
waiting for the threat to take effect Lise again considers the contents of her
suitcase. This seems to present her with a problem, for she takes out a pink
cotton dress, hangs it in the cupboard, then after hesitating for a few seconds
she takes it off the hanger again, folds it carefully and lays it back in her
case. It may be that she is indeed contemplating an immediate departure from
the hotel. But when another maid arrives with two drinking-glasses, apologies
in Italian and the explanation that the former maid had gone off duty, Lise
continues to look through her belongings in a puzzled way, taking nothing
further out of her suitcase.

This
maid, seeing laid out on the bed the bright-coloured dress and coat in which
Lise had arrived, inquires amiably if Madam is going to the beach.

‘No,’
says Lise.

‘You
American?’ says the maid.

‘No,’
Lise says.

‘English?’

‘No.’
Lise turns her back to continue her careful examination of her clothes in the
suitcase, and the maid goes out with an unwanted air, saying, ‘Good day.’

Lise is
lifting the corners of her carefully packed things, as if in absent-minded
accompaniment to some thought, who knows what? Then, with some access of
decision, she takes off her dressing-gown and slippers and starts putting on
again the same clothes that she wore on her journey. When she is dressed she
folds the dressing-gown, puts the slippers back in their plastic bag, and
replaces them in her suitcase. She also puts back everything that she has taken
out of her sponge-bag, and packs this away.

Now she
takes from an inside pocket of her suitcase a brochure with an inset map which
she spreads out on the bed. She studies it closely, finding first the spot
where the Hotel Tomson is situated and from there traces with her finger
various routes leading into and away from the centre of the town. Lise stands,
bending over it. The room is dark although it is not yet two in the afternoon.
Lise switches on the central light and pores over her map.

It is
marked here and there with tiny pictures which denote historic buildings,
museums and monuments. Eventually Lise takes a ballpoint pen from her bag and
marks a spot in a large patch of green, the main parkland of the city. She puts
a little cross beside one of the small pictures which is described on the map
as ‘The Pavilion’. She then folds up the map and replaces it in the pamphlet
which she then edges in her hand-bag. The pen lies, apparently forgotten, on
the bed. She looks at herself in the glass, touches her hair, then locks her
suitcase. She finds the car-keys that she had failed to leave behind this
morning and attaches them once more to her key-ring. She puts the bunch of keys
in her hand-bag, picks up her paperback book and goes out, locking the door
behind her. Who knows her thoughts? Who can tell?

She is
downstairs at the desk where, behind the busy clerks, numbered pigeon-holes
irregularly contain letters, packages, the room-keys, or nothing, and above
them the clock shows twelve minutes past two. Lise puts her room-key on the
counter and asks for her passport in a loud voice causing the clerk whom she
addresses, another clerk who sits working an adding machine, and several other
people who are standing and sitting in the hotel lobby, to take notice of her.

The
women stare at her clothes. They, too, are dressed brightly for a southern
summer, but even here in this holiday environment Lise looks brighter. It is
possibly the combination of colours — the red in her coat and the purple in her
dress — rather than the colours themselves which drags attention to her, as she
takes her passport in its plastic envelope from the clerk, he looking meanwhile
as if he bears the whole of the eccentricities of humankind upon his slender
shoulders.

Two
girls, long-legged, in the very brief skirts of the times, stare at Lise. Two
women who might be their mothers stare too. And possibly the fact that Lise’s
outfit comes so far and unfashionably below her knees gives an extra
shockingness to her appearance that was not even apparent in the less
up-to-date Northern city from which she set off that morning. Skirts are worn
shorter here in the South. Just as, in former times, when prostitutes could be
discerned by the brevity of their skirts compared with the normal standard, so
Lise in her knee-covering clothes at this moment looks curiously of the
street-prostitute class beside the mini-skirted girls and their mothers whose
knees at least can be seen.

So she
lays the trail, presently to be followed by Interpol and elaborated upon with
due art by the journalists of Europe for the few days it takes for her identity
to be established.

‘I want
a taxi,’ Lise says loudly to the uniformed boy who stands by the swing door. He
goes out to the street and whistles. Lise follows and stands on the pavement.
An elderly woman, small, neat and agile in a yellow cotton dress, whose
extremely wrinkled face is the only indication of her advanced age, follows Lise
to the pavement. She, too, wants a taxi, she says in a gentle voice, and she
suggests to Lise that they might share. Which way is Lise going? This woman
seems to see nothing strange about Lise, so confidently does she approach her.
And in fact, although this is not immediately apparent, the woman’s eyesight is
sufficiently dim, her hearing faint enough, to eliminate, for her, the garish
effect of Lise on normal perceptions.

‘Oh,’
says Lise, ‘I’m only going to the Centre. I’ve no definite plans. It’s foolish
to have plans.’ She laughs very loudly.

‘Thank
you, the Centre is fine for me,’ says the woman, taking Lise’s laugh for
acquiescence in the sharing of the taxi.

And,
indeed, they do both load into the taxi and are off.

‘Are
you staying here long?’ says the woman.

‘This
will keep it safe,’ says Lise, stuffing her passport down the back of the seat,
stuffing it down till it is out of sight.

The old
lady turns her spry nose towards this operation. She looks puzzled for an
instant, but soon complies with the action, moving forward to allow Lise more
scope in shoving the little booklet out of sight.

‘That’s
that,’ says Lise, leaning back, breathing deeply, and looking out of the
window. ‘What a lovely day!’

The old
lady leans back too, as if leaning on the trusting confidence that Lise has
inspired. She says, ‘I left my passport in the hotel, with the Desk.’

‘It’s
according to your taste,’ Lise says opening the window to the slight breeze.
Her lips part blissfully as she breathes in the air of the wide street on the
city’s outskirts.

Soon
they run into traffic. The driver inquires the precise point at which they wish
to be dropped.

‘The
Post Office,’ Lise says. Her companion nods.

Lise
turns to her. ‘I’m going shopping. It’s the first thing I do on my holidays. I
go and buy the little presents for the family first, then that’s off my mind.’

‘Oh,
but in
these
days,’ says the old lady. She folds her gloves, pats them
on her lap, smiles at them.