LADY ASHLEY HOTEL MONTANA MADRID ARRIVING SUD EXPRESS TO-MORROW LOVE JAKE.
That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch.
I did not sleep much that night on the Sud Express. In the morning I had breakfast in the dining-car and watched the rock and pine country between Avila and Escorial. I saw the Escorial out of the window, grey and long and cold in the sun, and did not give a damn about it. I saw Madrid come up over the plain, a compact white skyline on the top of a little cliff away off across the sun-hardened country.
The Norte station in Madrid is the end of the line. All trains finish there. They don’t go on anywhere. Outside were cabs and taxis and a line of hotel runners. It was like a country town. I took a taxi and we climbed up through the gardens, by the empty palace and the unfinished church on the edge of the cliff, and on up until we were in the high, hot, modern town. The taxi coasted down a smooth street to the Puerta del Sol, and then through the traffic and out into the Carrera San Jeronimo. All the shops had their awnings down against the heat. The windows on the sunny side of the street were shuttered. The taxi stopped at the kerb. I saw the sign HOTEL MONTANA on the second floor. The taxi-driver carried the bags in and left them by the elevator. I could not make the elevator work, so I walked up. On the second floor up was a cut brass sign: hotel montana. I rang and no one came to the door. I rang again and a maid with a sullen face opened the door.
‘Is Lady Ashley here?’ I asked.
She looked at me dully.
‘Is an Englishwoman here?’
She turned and called someone inside. A very fat woman came to the door. Her hair was grey and stiffly oiled in scallops around her face. She was short and commanding.
‘Muy buenos,’ I said. ‘Is there an Englishwoman here? I would like to see this English lady.’
‘Muy buenos. Yes, there is a female English. Certainly you can see her if she wishes to see you.’
‘She wishes to see me.’
‘The chica will ask her.’
‘It is very hot.’
‘It is very hot in the summer in Madrid.’
‘And how cold in winter.’
‘Yes, it is very cold in winter.’
Did I want to stay myself in person in the Hotel Montana?
Of that as yet I was undecided, but it would give me pleasure if my bags were brought up from the ground floor in order that they might not be stolen. Nothing was ever stolen in the Hotel Montana. In other fondas, yes. Not here. No. The personages of this establishment were rigidly selectioned. I was happy to hear it. Nevertheless I would welcome the upbringal of my bags.
The maid came in and said that the female English wanted to see the male English now, at once.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘You see. It is as I said.’
‘Clearly.’
I followed the maid’s back down a long, dark corridor. At the end she knocked on a door.
‘Hello,’ said Brett. ‘Is it you, Jake?’
‘It’s me.’
‘Come in. Come in.’
I opened the door. The maid closed it after me. Brett was in bed. She had just been brushing her hair and held the brush in her hand. The room was in that disorder produced only by those who have always had servants.
‘Darling!’ Brett said.
I went over to the bed and put my arms around her. She kissed me, and while she kissed me I could feel she was thinking of something else. She was trembling in my arms. She felt very small.
‘Darling! I’ve had such a hell of a time.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Nothing to tell. He only left yesterday. I made him go.’
‘Why didn’t you keep him?’
‘I don’t know. It isn’t the sort of thing one does. I don’t think I hurt him any.’
‘You were probably damn good for him.’
‘He shouldn’t be living with anyone. I realized that right away.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, hell!’ she said, ‘let’s not talk about it. Let’s never talk about it.’
‘All right.’
‘It was rather a knock his being ashamed of me. He was ashamed of me for a while, you know.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, yes. They ragged him about me at the café I guess. He wanted me to grow my hair out. Me, with long hair. I’d look so like hell.’
‘It’s funny.’
‘He said it would make me more womanly. I’d look a fright.’
‘What happened?’
‘Oh, he got over that. He wasn’t ashamed of me long.’
‘What was it about being in trouble?’
‘I didn’t know whether I could make him go, and I didn’t have a sou to go away and leave him. He tried to give me a lot of money, you know. I told him I had scads of it. He knew that was a lie. I couldn’t take his money, you know.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, let’s not talk about it. There were some funny things, though. Do give me a cigarette.’
I lit the cigarette.
‘He learned his English as a waiter in Gib.’
‘Yes.’
‘He wanted to marry me, finally.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. I can’t even marry Mike.’
‘Maybe he thought that would make him Lord Ashley.’
‘No. It wasn’t that. He really wanted to marry me. So I couldn’t go away from him, he said. He wanted to make it sure I could never go away from him. After I’d gotten more womanly, of course.’
‘You ought to feel set up.’
‘I do. I’m all right again. He’s wiped out that damned Cohn.’
‘Good.’
‘You know I’d have lived with him if I hadn’t seen it was bad for him. We got along damned well.’
‘Outside of your personal appearance.’
‘Oh, he’d have gotten used to that.’
She put out the cigarette.
‘I’m thirty-four, you know. I’m not going to be one of these bitches that ruins children.’
‘No.’
‘I’m not going to be that way. I feel rather good, you know. I feel rather set up.’
‘Good.’
She looked away. I thought she was looking for another cigarette. Then I saw she was crying. I could feel her crying. Shaking and crying. She wouldn’t look up. I put my arms around her.
‘Don’t let’s ever talk about it. Please don’t let’s ever talk about it.’
‘Dear Brett.’
‘I’m going back to Mike.’ I could feel her crying as I held her close. ‘He’s so damned nice and he’s so awful. He’s my sort of thing.’
She would not look up. I stroked her hair. I could feel her shaking.
‘I won’t be one of those bitches,’ she said. ‘But, oh, Jake, please let’s never talk about it.’
We left the Hotel Montana. The woman who ran the hotel would not let me pay the bill. The bill had been paid.
‘Oh, well. Let it go,’ Brett said. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’
We rode in a taxi down to the Palace Hotel, left the bags, arranged for berths on the Sud Express for the night, and went into the bar of the hotel for a cocktail. We sat on high stools at the bar while the barman shook the Martinis in a large nickelled shaker.
‘It’s funny what a wonderful gentility you get in the bar of a big hotel,’ I said.
‘Barmen and jockeys are the only people who are polite any more.’
‘No matter how vulgar a hotel is, the bar is always nice.’
‘It’s odd.’
‘Bartenders have always been fine.’
‘You know,’ Brett said, ‘it’s quite true. He is only nineteen. Isn’t it amazing?’
We touched the two glasses as they stood side by side on the bar. They were coldly beaded. Outside the curtained window was the summer heat of Madrid.
‘I like an olive in a Martini,’ I said to the barman.
‘Right you are, sir. There you are.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I should have asked, you know.’
The barman went far enough up the bar so that he would not hear our conversation. Brett had sipped from the Martini as it stood, on the wood. Then she picked it up. Her hand was steady enough to lift it after that first sip.
‘It’s good. Isn’t it a nice bar?’
‘They’re all nice bars.’
‘You know I didn’t believe it at first. He was born 1905. I was in school in Paris, then. Think of that.’
‘Anything you want me to think about it?’
‘Don’t be an ass. Would you buy a lady a drink?’
‘We’ll have two more Martinis.’
‘As they were before, sir?’
‘They were very good.’ Brett smiled at him.
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
‘Well, bung-o,’ Brett said.
‘Bung-o!’
‘You know,’ Brett said, ‘he’d only been with two women before. He never cared about anything but bull-fighting.’
‘He’s got plenty of time.’
‘I don’t know. He thinks it was me. Not the show in general.’
‘Well, it was you.’
‘Yes. It was me.’
‘I thought you weren’t going to ever talk about it.’
‘How can I help it?’
‘You’ll lose it if you talk about it.’
‘I just talk around it. You know I feel rather damned good, Jake.’
‘You should.’
‘You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s sort of what we have instead of God.’
‘Some people have God,’ I said. ‘Quite a lot.’
‘He never worked very well with me.’
‘Should we have another Martini?’
The barman shook up two more Martinis and poured them out into fresh glasses.
‘Where will we have lunch?’ I asked Brett. The bar was cool. You could feel the heat outside through the window.
‘Here?’ asked Brett.
‘It’s rotten here in the hotel. Do you know a place called Botin’s?’ I asked the barman.
‘Yes, sir. Would you like to have me write out the address?’
‘Thank you.’
We lunched upstairs at
