The Little Hotel (23 page)

Mr Forel exclaimed: ‘Animal, faut pas le forcer.’

A young man coming down the stairs from the little rooms upstairs shouted suddenly, turning red, to Mr Forel:

‘Back into your hole, dog!’

‘What were those words? Repeat them!’ said the shirt-sleeved man, creeping closer.

‘Back into your hole, like a dog,’ remarked the other young man, calmly.

‘Don’t speak to a man like that,’ I said.

The man in shirt-sleeves turned to me and raised his fists:

‘Dirty spies! Dirty spies! Switzerland is full of nothing but foreign spies !’

‘You dare!’ said the other young man.

‘She is a spy, no one else here,’ said Mr Forel, looking furiously at the Admiral.

I said to the Admiral: ‘Take no notice; he’s mad.’

The young man cried: ‘Mad, am I? Mad—ah—I’ll report it to the police.’

He ran back for his jacket, while the other young man, running down to the door, said over his shoulder: ‘You do that and we’ll all say you’re mad. Enough!’

‘Mad!’ cried Mr Forel. He ran to the door.

The other young man went racing out. ‘Goodbye!’ he shouted laughing, as he ran up the little asphalt path to the gate.

‘You’ll hear from me,’ said Mr Forel running after him.

‘Mad, mad!’ shouted the young man, running his hands through his flying hair, as he made off.

‘Tas de coquins!’ said Mr Forel, running to the gate.

‘Goodbye,’ shouted the other.

‘Mr Hops!’ shouted Mr Forel.

‘Goodbye, madman!’

‘Smuggler, smuggler!’ said Mr Forel.

Mr Hops reached the turn in the road and disappeared, still running. Mr Forel stood at the gate shaking his arm in the air. He came slowly back, his shirt-tails flying out from his trousers. He had his slippers on and a hole in one of his socks so large it could be seen for hundreds of yards, I am sure. He stood for a while in the cold breeze, thin and bent. After calling something unintelligible to Mr Hops, he turned and came towards the front door splaying his large flat feet, putting them down as if they were broken at the ankles. He was a postman who had had a nervous breakdown and was staying in one of the little rooms at the top for a holiday.

Ah, yes, Mrs Trollope did not return to the Hotel Swiss-Touring. She wrote several times from England telling me about the prices of things and how strange she found the people’s manners; and I had a postcard from Mr Wilkins in Rome, where he was looking for a business opportunity; and later another from Cape Town, where he had gone on business, asking me if I had had a word from his cousin. I do not know if they ever saw each other again.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1983 by The Estate of Christina Stead

cover design by Mimi Bark

978-1-4532-6522-2

This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

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