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

bathes and dresses quietly; then, writing a note for Alfred to tell him that she will be back in time for lunch and that he is not to worry, she slips out of the door and runs lightly down the red-carpeted staircase. It has somehow come to her, without much thought on her part, that Alfred will recover his equilibrium if he is left to walk about Paris on his own for a short while, and that she, in the meantime, will proceed to the Hôtel des Acacias, there to confront Betty. She knows quite well that this meeting will in effect change nothing and she is prepared to say goodbye to Betty, this very morning, if necessary. In fact, rather than bring about this purely formal exchange, which, she knows, Alfred would only spoil, Mimi would rather like to know how things stand between her sister and Frank Cariani. In fact, Mimi is quite adamant on this point; she requires this knowledge, not in any spirit of panic or despair, but in order to plan her future conduct. Mimi is not even surprised to find herself thinking in these terms, so becalmed is she by the strangeness, yet the dreamlike familiarity of the pearl-grey Parisian morning. So radical has been the shift in her consciousness during those hours of perfect sleep that she is not even surprised to have exchanged the past, by which she was previously bound, for the present, which now absorbs all her attention.
    Quite without her habitual nervousness, Mimi sits down outside a café in the Place des Pyramides and orders a cup of coffee and a croissant. No one seems to think she should not be there and she is served quickly and efficiently. Then she puts a discreet hand to the embroidered collar of her blouse, another discreet handto her heavy chignon of hair, gets up, and crosses the street into the Tuileries gardens. She does not know why she has done this, for the Hôtel des Acacias is in the opposite direction, somewhere near the Parc Monceau. But it is still early, very early, and Mimi desires to use her few free moments in order to bring home from this strange visit some memory of her own. It is so beautiful there in the gardens, the only other presence being that of the tiny whispering water jets turned on to sprinkle the flowers in the beds. These flowers – begonias? – glow redly but their fierce colour is muted by the surrounding greyness of the dusty paths, the heavy dew on the grass, and the thick autumn mist that will shortly rise to reveal a majestic late sun. Mimi drifts noiselessly under the chestnut trees, now heavy with the last of their green leaves; already the sap has left them and the brown and gold colours have begun their invasion. Like a child, Mimi stoops and picks up a chestnut, green, prickly, and hard, too young to split and reveal its glossy fruit. Down the paths, past gesturing statues, mute, stern, occasionally agonized, Mimi walks sedately, as if conscious of the statues’ august and adult passions. She skirts the round pond, where she strolled as a child with her nurse, and sets her course for the Place de la Concorde. Mimi knows Paris well; she used to accompany her parents when they came over for the Salon d’Automne, and this was one of her daily promenades. But in the solitude of this early morning she is able to notice the bones of a landscape that was previously hidden to her by a press of people: here, for example, are the curving stone balustrades that form, as it were, the prelude to that great enclosure, now alive with traffic, with the obelisk in the centre and the arch at the far end and the policemen’s whistles putting an end to her morning reverie.
    Mimi sits on an iron chair and brushes the whitish dustfrom her shoes. Then two hands go up to the chignon and anchor the tortoiseshell pins more securely. Curiously enough, although the noise and bustle have now reached daytime proportions, Mimi is still undisturbed. Her mind touches lightly on the problem before her; in her imagination she sees the Hôtel des Acacias, a small dark