Read Online Family and Friends by Anita Brookner - Free Book Online Page A

disconcerted, Mimi rallies her forces, and like the excellent sister that she is lays a hand on his arm and says, ‘First things first. We will go to the hotel, take a hot bath, have a meal sent up, and get a good night’s sleep. We have done quite enough for one day. Tomorrow we can start again.’
    In this way, impervious to the globe-shaped lights and the ineffable blue Parisian evening, they struggle into a taxi and are speeded towards the Hôtel Bedford et West End. ‘We must telephone Mama,’ says Mimi, who, in her tiredness, has let down her hair and loosened the collar of her dress. Glancing sharply at her, Alfred is surprised to see Mimi looking so old, and is immediately glad that he has ordered a suite instead of the two rooms that were offered. Money is no problem. Their father, in one of his mysterious but so adult arrangements, has left certain funds in the care of a lawyer acting for a deceased partner, and Alfred supposes that this lawyer must be contacted as soon as possible so that they are not to starve. A further telephone call is put through and Alfred is reassured to hear a polite voice speaking in strongly accented English,which to him at that moment means infinitely more than the French of Victor Hugo. Maître Blin will send a representative to the hotel in the morning and will meet Monsieur Dorn at the bank; a signature is all that is needed.
    This conversation, together with some hot soup and a glass of wine, restores Alfred’s equilibrium. He sits with Mimi in their stuffy little salon until it seems reasonable to send her to bed. He hates to see her looking so wan and defenceless and hopes that she will have repaired herself by the morning. Left alone, he puts through another call to Sofka, and this time manages to be less testy and more reassuring. Sofka, more impressed by his testiness than by his slightly mechanical reassurances, praises him for his aptitude; already she is reacting to his assumption of control, having persuaded herself that this will carry the day. Left alone, and with no one to talk to, almost too keyed up to go to bed, Alfred pulls aside the curtain and gazes down on the rushing traffic of the Rue de Rivoli. Faced with all that speed, he knows a moment of discouragement. Leaning his head against the cold glass, he remembers that it is his birthday. He is seventeen years old.

5

    W HEN MIMI awakes, after a profound sleep, she is strangely calm, passionless, devoid of all the fears that usually beset her. For a short while she lies in the broad French bed, gazing at the milky rectangle of light that is only faintly obscured by the yellowish tulle curtains, for she was too tired, on the previous evening, to let the maid in to make all secure for the night. She reviews the events that have brought the two of them to Paris; she is well aware of Alfred’s distaste for this adventure, of his misery at having to deal with his father’s lawyer – a meeting for which he would have liked to be thoroughly briefed and prepared – and his discomfort in this vast, shabby and respectable hotel. Alfred has rarely been away from home before, does not remember being a baby in Paris and never thought that he would make his first excursion into that wide world, of which he has read so much, in so unseemly and so wretched a cause. Mimi is aware of his disappointment; she is also aware that his birthday was spent largely on a French train, and although she knows that Sofka will have prepared a festive meal for Alfred to celebrate his return, it will seem as if he is only being congratulated for having carried out her wishes, not for any merit of his own. Mimi is aware of all this. She knows, too, that her sister is lost to them, and for a moment she falters as she remembers how theyused to brush each other’s hair, dreamily, in the old nursery. But after this moment of weakness, she recovers and rediscovers that strange blessed calm that descended on her when she awoke that morning.
    She