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
‘There’s a big department store near the Post Office,’ Lise says. ‘You can get everything you want there.’
‘My nephew is arriving this evening.’
‘The traffic!’ says Lise.
They pass the Metropole Hotel. Lise says, ‘There’s a man in that hotel I’m trying to avoid.’
‘Everything is different,’ says the old lady.
‘A girl isn’t made of cement,’ Lise says, ‘but everything is different now, it’s all changed, believe me.’
At the Post Office they pay the fare, each meticulously contributing the unfamiliar coins to the impatient, mottled and hillocky palm of the driver’s hand, adding coins little by little, until the total is reached and the amount of the tip equally agreed between them and deposited; then they stand on the pavement in the centre of the foreign city, in need of coffee and a sandwich, accustoming themselves to the lay-out, the traffic crossings, the busy residents, the ambling tourists and the worried tourists, and such of the unencumbered youth who swing and thread through the crowds like antelopes whose heads, invisibly antlered, are airborne high to sniff the prevailing winds, and who so appear to own the terrain beneath their feet that they never look at it. Lise looks down at her clothes as if wondering if she is ostentatious enough.
Then, taking the old lady by the arm, she says, ‘Come and have a coffee. We’ll cross by the lights.’
All perky for the adventure, the old lady lets Lise guide her to the street-crossing where they wait for the lights to change and where, while waiting, the old lady gives a little gasp and a jerk of shock; she says, ‘You left your passport in the taxi!’
‘Well, I left it there for safety. Don’t worry,’ Lise says. ‘It’s taken care of.’
‘Oh, I see.’ The old lady relaxes, and she crosses the road with Lise and the waiting herd. ‘I am Mrs Fiedke,’ she says. ‘Mr Fiedke passed away fourteen years ago.
In the bar they sit at a small round table, place their bags, Lise’s book and their elbows on it and order each a coffee and a ham-and-tomato sandwich. Lise props up her paperback book against her bag, as it were so that its bright cover is addressed to whom it may concern. ‘Our home is in Nova Scotia,’ says Mrs Fiedke, ‘where is yours?’
