Read Online Dolly by Anita Brookner - Free Book Online Page B

smuggling home chocolate and American cigarettes in her handbag. Fanny Schiff was delighted with these midnight feasts. When Dolly sat on her bed, on the rug of mock tigerskin, and fed her mother a
petit four
, Fanny smiled and laughed as she saw her daughter’s glowing cheeks. She slept at last with a taste of sugar in her mouth. She may even, in her simple way, have thought that marriage was in the air. More probably she wanted her daughter to enjoy a freedom which she herself had never enjoyed. She had little time for men, but resigned herself to envisaging a man as part of her daughter’s future.
    But Dolly could not settle for one man; she was having too good a time. She quickly learned that these Americans were relatively chaste, that they did not want to sleep with her but only to flirt with her, to practise their French, and to teach her the new dances. How they danced! Whirled around, thrown around, Dolly was in her element. Fanny had made her a short skirt cut on the bias which flared out as shemoved; it was her favourite garment, and she could not wait to get dressed for the evening’s entertainment. But as these evenings wore on the Americans became solemn and homesick; they could not drink like Frenchmen, and tended to become tearful, passing round photographs of the girls back home, some of whom they had married hastily before embarkation. None of this interested Dolly, but her adaptability stood her in good stead, and she feigned a sympathy which she did not feel, yawning a little in the ladies’ room and noting at the same time that her face did not reflect the lateness of the hour. She knew that all this would soon vanish, that she would be reduced once again to ordinary life. She liked the Americans well enough, loved their extravagance, their kindness, their well-groomed good looks, but she was a realist, far more of a realist than her mother had ever been. She sometimes reflected desperately that when they left, as they were bound to do sooner or later, life would be very hard, harder than ever now that two sources of protection had disappeared. The prostitutes who had consorted with German officers had gone underground, obtained false papers, turned up with a clean record in a different city. Fanny missed them. Dolly sometimes calculated their chances and was not optimistic.
    But she was young: if necessary she would sell herself. She had nothing against this as an idea, but it seemed that surprisingly few men wanted to acquire her on a permanent basis. Perhaps they regretted the simplicity of dancing all evening with an attractive partner. In this way she retained as much of her virginity as would be useful to her when she was in a more serious marriage market, although for twoyears she had been subject to such kissings and rubbings and explorations as necessitated a new make-up before she went home to her mother. She became aware that some men were clumsy when they made love, and she made a vow to seek refinement. In this way she knew she would respect her mother as well as herself. The time had come for her to take on the burden of their mutual existence.
    When the Americans left their difficulties increased. The presumed Alsatian origins of their surname did them no good at all. Despised as Germans, hated as collaborators and dealers on the black market, they began to consider the possibility of leaving France. But where to go? Suddenly they had no friends. It was Dolly, with her new-found fluency in English, who suggested London. What could they lose? Fanny could make clothes for the English as well as for the French. Besides, they were very cold, and they knew that the English had coal fires. Once again their ignorance protected them. They shut up the flat and slipped away in the darkness of a winter evening. Three days later they were in the Grosvenor Hotel, Victoria.
    They were immediately homesick. This took them by surprise. They had thought to find a flat and settle in, but most of the