Free Stories by Doris Lessing Page B

Jaques. The clerk smiled and regretted that Monsieur Jaques had left them three years before. “He knew us well,” said Mary, her voice coming aggrieved and shrill. “He always had room for us here.”
    But certainly there was a room for Madame. Most certainly. At once attendants came hurrying for the suitcases.
    “Hold your horses a minute,” said Tommy. “Wait. Ask what it costs now.”
    Mary enquired, casually enough, what the rates now were. She received the information with a lengthening of her heavy jaw, and rapidly transmitted it to Tommy. He glanced, embarrassed, at the clerk, who, recognising a situation, turned tactfully to a ledger and prepared to occupy himself so that the elderly English couple could confer.
    They did, in rapid, angry undertones.
    “We can’t, Mary. It’s no good. We’d have to go back at the end of a week.”
    “But we’ve always stayed here….”
    At last she turned towards the clerk, who was immediately attentive, and said with a stiff smile: “I’m afraid the currencyregulations make things difficult for us.” She had spoken in English, such was her upset; and it was in English that he replied pleasantly, “I understand perfectly, Madame. Perhaps you would care to try the Belle Vue across the street. There are many English people there.”
    The Rogerses left, carrying their two suitcases ignominiously down the neat gravelled path, among the gay tables where people already sat at dinner. The sun had gone down. Opposite, the Belle Vue was a glow of lights. Tommy Rogers was not surprised when Mary walked past it without a look. For years, staying at the Plaza, they had felt superior to the Belle Vue. Also, had that clerk not said it was full of English people?
    Since this was France, and the season, the Agency was of course open. An attractive mademoiselle deplored that they had not booked rooms earlier.
    “We’ve been here every year for twenty-five years,” said Mary, pardonably overlooking the last four, and another stretch of five when the child had been small. “We’ve never had to book before.”
    Alas, alas, suggested the mademoiselle with her shoulders and her pretty eyes, what a pity that St. Nichole had become so popular, so attractive. There was no fact she regretted more. She suggested the Belle Vue.
    The Rogerses walked the hundred yards back to the Belle Vue, feeling they were making a final concession to fate, only to find it fully booked up. Returning to the Agency, they were informed that there was, happily, one room vacant in a villa on the hillside. They were escorted to it. And now it was the turn of the pretty mademoiselle to occupy herself, not with a ledger, but in examining the view of brilliant stars and the riding lights of ships across the bay, while the Rogerses conferred. Their voices were now not only angry, but high with exasperation. For this room—an extremely small one, at the bottom of a big villa, stone-floored, uncarpeted, with a single large bed of the sort Mary always thought of as French; a wardrobe that was no wardrobe, since it had been filled with shelves; a sink and a small gas stove—they were asked to pay a sum which filled them with disbelief. If they desired hot water, as the English so often do, they would have to heat it in a saucepan on the stove.
    But, as the mademoiselle pointed out, turning from herappreciative examination of the exotic night scene, it would be such an advantage to do one’s own cooking.
    “I suggest we go back to the Plaza. Better one week of comfort than three of this,” said Mary. They returned to the Plaza to find that the room had been taken, and none were available.
    It was now nearly ten in the evening, and the infinitely obliging mademoiselle returned them to the little room in the villa, for which they agreed to pay more than they had done four years before for comfort, good food, and hot water in the Plaza. Also, they had to pay a deposit of over ten pounds in case they might escape in the