She was still quite pretty. There was a simplicity about her freckled features that was pleasing; her soft fair hair was neat beneath her maid’s white cap. But she was not beautiful. Once, not knowing much about it, he had imagined she was. It was something less palpable that distinguished her.
‘Oh, surely? Surely, Dervla?’
‘I don’t see myself giving up the hotel, sir. My future’s here, sir.’
He smiled again and passed on. But his smile, which remained while he listened to a story of Tom Gouvernet’s about the hazards to be encountered on a honeymoon, was uneasy. An echo of the eyes that had gazed so steadily remained with him, as did the reference she had made to her future. That she had not been turned out of the hotel had seemed something to be proud of at the time: a crudity had been avoided. But while Tom Gouvernet’s lowered voice continued, he found himself wishing she had been. She would indeed not ever marry, her eyes had stated, she would not wish to.
A hand of his wife’s slipped into one of his; the voice of Tom Gouvernet ceased. The hand was as delicate as the petal of a flower, the fingers so tiny that involuntarily he lifted them to his lips. Had Dervla seen? he Wondered, and he looked through the crowd for a glimpse of her but could not see her. Hogarty the surveyor was doing a trick with a handkerchief, entertaining the coal merchant’s daughters. Mr McKibben was telling one of his stories.
‘Ah, he’s definitely the lucky man,’ Tom Gouvernet said, playfully winking at the bride.
It had never occurred to Christopher before that while he and his parents could successfully bury a part of the past, Dervla could not. It had never occurred to him that because she was the girl she was she did not appreciate that some experiences were best forgotten. Ever since the Congreves had owned the Royal Hotel a way of life had obtained there, but its subtleties had naturally eluded the dining-room maid.
‘When you get tired of him,’ Tom Gouvernet went on in the same light manner, ‘you know who to turn to.’
‘Oh, indeed I do, Tom.’
He should have told her about Dervla. If he told her now she would want Dervla to go; any wife would, in perfect reasonableness. An excuse must be found, she would say, even though a promise had been made.
‘But I won’t become tired of him,’ she was saying, smiling at Tom Gouvernet. ‘He’s actually quite nice, you know.’
In the far distance Dervla appeared, hurrying from the hotel with a freshly laden tray. Christopher watched her, while the banter continued between bride and best man.
‘He had the shocking reputation at school,’ Tom Gouvernet said.
‘Oh? I didn’t know that.’ She was still smiling; she didn’t believe it. It wasn’t true.
‘A right Lothario you’ve got yourself hitched to.’
He would not tell her. It was too late for that, it would bewilder her since he had not done so before. It wouldn’t be fair to require her not to wish that Dervla, even now, should be asked to go; or to understand that a promise made to a dining-room maid must be honoured because that was the family way.
Across the garden the Archdeacon lifted a glass from Dervla’s tray. He was still in the company of his plump wife and Christopher’s mother. They, too, took more champagne and then Dervla walked towards where Christopher was standing with his bride and his best man. She moved quickly through the crowd, not offering her tray of glasses to the guests she passed, intent upon her destination.
‘Thank you, Dervla,’ his wife of an hour said.
‘I think Mr Hogarty,’ he said himself, ‘could do with more champagne.’
He watched her walking away and was left again with the insistence in her eyes. As the dining-room maid, she would become part of another family growing up in the hotel. She would listen to a mother telling her children about the strand where once she’d bathed, where a retired lighthouse keeper had passed by on a horse. For all his life he would daily look upon hers, but no words would ever convey her undramatic revenge because the right to speak, once his gift to her, had been taken away. He had dealt in cruelty and so now did she: her gift to him, held over until his wedding day, was that afternoon shadows would gather for ever in Room 14, while she kept faith.
Mrs Nancy Simpson – who did not at all care for that name and would have wished to be Nancy le Puys or Nancy du Maurier – awoke on a December morning. She had been dreaming of a time long past in her life, when her name had been Nancy Dawes, before she’d been married to anyone. The band had been playing ‘You are my Honeysuckle’ and in the wings of the Old Gaiety they had all been in line, smiles ready, waiting to come on.
She rose, and before she did anything else applied make-up to her face with very great care. She often thought there was nothing she liked better than sitting in her petticoat in front of a looking-glass, putting another face on. She powdered her lipstick, then smiled at herself. She thought about Fitz because today was Thursday and they’d drifted into the way of having lunch on Thursdays. ‘My God, it’s Nancy!’ he’d said when by extraordinary chance he’d come upon her six months ago gazing into the windows of Peter Jones. They’d had a cup of tea, and had told one another this and that. ‘Of course, why ever not?’ she’d said when he’d suggested that they might occasionally see one another. ‘Old times’ sake,’ she’d probably said: she couldn’t remember now.
Her flat in Putney was high in a red-brick Victorian block, overlooking the river. Near by was the big, old- fashioned Sceptre Hotel, where drinkers from the flats spent a few evening hours, where foreign commercial travellers stayed. During Wimbledon some of the up-and-coming players stayed there also, with the has-beens. She liked to sit in the Bayeux Lounge and watch them passing through the reception area, pausing for their keys. That German who’d got into the final about ten years ago she’d noticed once, and she liked to think that McEnroe had stayed in the Sceptre before he’d got going, but she hadn’t actually seen him. Every year from the windows of her tiny flat she watched the Boat Race going by, but really had no interest in it. Nice, though, the way it always
