‘I’ll take 5.’
‘Righto. If you would please sign?’
She signed ‘Miriam Hetherington’, hesitating as she always did whether to put ‘Scottish’ or ‘British’ and finally deciding as she always did to put ‘British’. She took the key attached to the large blue block and went to the room which was on the ground floor. She opened the door and entered.
It was like all the other hotel rooms in which she had stayed. There was a dressing table, a wardrobe, a wash basin with towels, a phone, a card with a list of hotel charges, a large notice about what to do in the event of fire, a Gideon Bible, a bed with electric blanket, a large glass ashtray and a small gold-coloured box of matches stamped with the name of the hotel. She lay down on the bed and fell asleep.
When she woke she found by a glance at her small silver wrist watch that she had slept two hours and that it was five o’clock in the afternoon. She got off the bed, looking down vaguely at her red shoes which matched the case. Then she opened the latter and took out her clothes – two dresses, a hat, four pairs of stockings, a pair of shoes, three sets of undergarments, two pairs of pyjamas, shoe brushes and shoe polish and various other odds and ends including a sewing kit and a number of paperbacks. She packed them neatly into her wardrobe and dressing chest. When she had done this she took off her blouse and began to wash her face and neck, rubbing the cold water briskly into her eyes.
The face that looked back at her from the mirror was the face of a woman of about thirty-five whose skin at the corner of the eyes was beginning to wrinkle. The eyes themselves had a questioning look as if, confronted with the world, they had found it rather puzzling, not to say unintelligible. The nose was rather long, the upper lip narrow and severe, the lower lip full and red. Her teeth were still her own and fairly white. The forehead was narrow and high and lightly veined and the hair cut into a boyish crop. In short she had the appearance of someone who might have been passionate but whose passion had been mastered by a relentless severity. Her colourful red blouse and red shoes seemed like a late desperate blossoming of her buried personality. But she wasn’t ugly and, given rouge and lipstick and relaxation of mind, she would in certain circumstances appear pretty.
When she had washed herself and used rouge and lipstick she thought for a moment and then going out of the room and leaving the key at the desk she went out into the dazzling sunlight.
The streets were crowded with people – men in shirt sleeves, women bare-armed in blouses – all strolling along in an easy, relaxed manner. The road was dense with traffic and it took her some time to cross, but she waited till the sign ‘Cross’ appeared and then half ran across the street. On the opposite side was a restaurant which she entered. She sat down at a table in the shade and when the waitress came she ordered fruit juice and a gammon steak. At a table beside her there was a boy and a girl holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes. At another table there was a large man with a moustache eating fish and squeezing juice from a lemon on to his plate. He had a newspaper propped against the tea-pot.
She drank her juice and waited for her gammon steak. She didn’t feel at all hungry but decided that she ought to eat something since that was what people did at that time of day. Since her parents had died and she had started living on her own she sometimes skipped meals but on holiday one ought to eat, she told herself. She remembered that her mother used always to be very keen on her eating a lot, and would pile her plate high with meat and vegetables which weren’t really very well cooked. Her father of course ate steadily and gravely, not seeming to mind what was set in front of him, but as if he were filling himself with necessary fuel. He reminded her of a large squat car which was being pumped full of petrol. Of course he had been a large man and he needed the food. Her mother on the other hand was thin and stringy.
She ate the gammon, carefully putting aside the chips. The man with the newspaper was chewing rapidly and reading at the same time. The young couple were preparing to leave. They had eaten, she noted, some of the cheapest stuff, sausage and egg, but had wiped their plates clean. It took her a long time to eat the gammon but she succeeded and got up. She didn’t want any sweet as it might fatten her too much. The waitress hoped that the gammon had suited her and she said yes. The waitress said that if she cared to come back tomorrow they would have something special on the menu. She didn’t reply. Again she went out into the sunshine.
For a while she walked along the streets looking in the shop windows. It was a good area of the town with a large number of jewellers’ shops, good food shops, and furniture shops. She looked at the rings in the windows and noted that they were very expensive. There were also some quite splendid Russian watches. She remembered giving away her father’s watch to her uncle but she had kept her mother’s watch and was still wearing it. Her father’s watch had been a large golden one, of the kind that men used to carry in their waistcoat pockets. She still had his Masonic ring in a box in the house.
She went
