‘Oh, no, poor Max,’ she said, ‘it’s not his fault, every room is like this; of course, I don’t know but I expect so.’
‘Well then,’ said Amabel, ‘I bet you had to order drinks,’ and Alex laughed. ‘When shall I ever,’ she went on, ‘be able to teach him how to make people comfortable,’ and then was silent.
Claire, who did not care for silences, she thought them unnatural, took up what Amabel had said about this room. While she went rattling on, blaming the directors for allowing decorations such as these and saying she could not think what Julia’s uncle was about in letting them do such things, Amabel wondered again how Max would be and what he had on with Julia. She had expected to find him with these others and when she had opened the door she had been braced up to meet him. She was like someone who opens his front door expecting to step out into a gale of wind and then stays bent although he finds he has no wind to lean against, although it is still whining in the chimney and rattling windows. She knew well she could deal with Max but he was always escaping. It was while he was not there that she felt anxious and that was one reason why she had made up her mind to come along.
Mrs Hignam was still talking. ‘It is a perfectly ridiculous price to ask for rooms of this kind when you can get something really comfortable for only double at any of the best hotels. I can’t understand it,’ she said and was going on when Amabel, although she had already been told once, expressed what she was feeling:
‘Where has Max got to? I’ve been here fifteen minutes,’ she said.
Claire thought this was too rude and that anyway they were all sick of this endless thing between Amabel and Max. She would have nothing more to do with it. ‘Let’s go back,’ she said to Evelyn and when they were outside she said ‘Well, surely the poor man can call five minutes of his time his own.’ As they went into Miss Fellowes’ room she began to elaborate on this theme. Unaware of her aunt who had long been unaware of them and of those nannies whose training made them seem deaf and dumb at moments her voice rose and fell like a celluloid ball on the water-jet men shoot at and miss at fairs. When it fell through lack of breath Evelyn, like any paid attendant, put that ball back with an encouraging word and Claire was off again.
No one answered Amabel and now that he was alone with Angela and her again and that her last remark reminded him he had not yet got word to Max that she was here, he suddenly felt more strongly than ever before how these girls were a different species and were quite definitely hostile. As he looked at them both, exquisitely dressed, Angela smoking and watching her smoke rings, Amabel looking at her nails like you and I gaze into crystals, as he looked at them waiting it struck him again how women always seemed to expect things, and for that matter, events even, to be brought to them for their pleasure, in white cotton gloves on plates. He determined he would do nothing, if Max had been in his place he would not have done anything or even have thought of it, and then it was too much for these two girls to expect. For he now thought Amabel had only been late as she had so often been before. He did not see why he should get Max for her. It was easier to believe her maid had been mistaken or that she had forgotten her orders to pack the things. In this way he showed how he had been taken in by Amabel, whose wish it was that she should not show haste. In this way also he showed again how impossible it is to tell what others are thinking or what, in ordinary life, brings people to do what they are doing. So he sat quiet, said nothing, and watched the bubbles in his glass.
Through those lidded windows, the curtains so thick and heavy they seemed made of plaster on stage sets, there faintly whispered through to them in waves of sound as in summer when you are coming on a waterfall through woods and it is still unseen or, in summer, breathless in the meadows an aeroplane high up drones alternately loud then soft and low it is so high, what were shouted protests or cheering or just a hubbub of that crowd away below, all this gently came in and passed them by. All three wondered and dreaded a little perhaps in their different ways but no one said anything, there was nothing to say.
Max and Julia, come to an end of talk and speeches, of his saying yes and of her saying no, had moved again to their window upstairs which they had opened and now they were leaning out. The crowds were singing.
Looking down then on thousands of Smiths, thousands of Alberts, hundreds of Marys, woven tight as any office carpet or, more elegantly made, the holy Kaaba soon to set out for Mecca, with some kind of design made out of bookstalls and kiosks seen from above and through one part of that crowd having turned towards those who were singing, thus lightening the dark mass with their pale lozenged faces; observing how this design moved and was alive where in a few lanes or areas people swayed forward or back like a pattern writhing; coughing as fog caught their two throats or perhaps it was smoke from those below who had put on cigarettes or pipes, because tobacco smoke was coming up in drifts; leaning out then, so secure, from their window up above and left by their argument on terms of companionship unalloyed, Julia and Max could not but feel infinitely remote, although at the same time Julia could not fail to be remotely excited at themselves.
When earlier on she had asked him to go down when she had heard someone scream, the crowd was now too great, indeed it was so thick it was plain they could never get out of their hotel to go home if they wanted and she was glad, everything she felt now would come right between them if only it was not hurried, and that promise of the birds which had flown under the arch she stood on would be fulfilled if only, as seemed likely, she could see sea-gulls that night on their crossing. What that promise could be she had no idea, and she did not let herself think of what she wanted, her feeling was just what she had when in a hot bath so exactly right she could not bear to wonder even. In fact she did not want anything different from how things were now this instant. She certainly did not want him to go down and get in the crowd, although its thousands of troubles and its discomfort put new heart into her.
‘You’re not to go down there, even if I ask you,’ she said rather loud to him. ‘No one’s to go down there, I tell you.’
‘What about your servant?’
‘Oh, him! Bother him!’
For where she had at one time been nervous and had clutched at straws to fuss over, she now wanted things to stay as they were and, if put to it, she would have insisted she had asked Robert to ring the station master only so as to tease him. Also whatever there is in crowds had reached into her, for these thousands below were now working up a kind of boisterous good humour. If they had been angry individually at first at the delay, and at not being able to get in or out, they were now like sheep with golden tenor voices, so she was thinking, happily singing their troubles away and being good companions. What she could not tell was that those who were singing were Welshmen up for a match, and what they sang in Welsh was of the rape of a Druid’s silly daughter under one of Snowdon’s wilder mountains. She thought only they knew what it meant, but it sounded light-hearted.
Also she felt encouraged and felt safe because they could not by any chance get up from below; she had seen those doors bolted, and through being above them by reason of Max having bought their room and by having money, she saw in what lay below her an example of her own way of living because they were underneath and kept there.
‘Aren’t you glad you aren’t down there?’ she said, and he replied he wondered how it was going to be possible to get them out.