Free The Numbered Account by Ann Bridge Page A

déjeuner?’
she asked.
    â€˜Oh, whenever you all have yours,’ Julia said, anxious to be accommodating.
    â€˜We breakfast at a quarter past six,’ her hostess said. ‘You see Marcel has to catch an early train to Lausanne for his school, and Jean-Pierre likes to be in the church at least by a quarter to seven, to have an hour to say his prayers in peace before the day’s work begins. But this is early for you—I can bring you a tray in the
salle à manger
at any time. Just name the hour.’
    â€˜Golly!’ Julia muttered—and named the hour of 8.30. What people! she thought, just before falling asleep in the narrow but gloriously comfortable Swiss bed, with the smell of lilac coming in at the window.

Chapter 4

Geneva
    Julia gave careful thought to the wording of her telegram the moment she awoke, and went down to breakfast with it written out on a sheet of paper.
    â€˜See my letter stop Grandpa died in Constantinople and paper I asked for must be stamped and verified by our consulate there stop staying here pro tem stop hurry repeat hurry.’
    She signed it ‘Darling’.
    The Pastor read this through carefully when she handed it to him.
    â€˜You have put “stop” three times, when really the sense is quite clear without,’ he said, pulling out the pen clipped into his breast-pocket. Julia snatched at his hand.
    â€˜No, leave it. It’s the way they telegraph. Is it all right otherwise? I don’t think it gives much away, do you?’
    â€˜No. Why’—he turned his blue eyes, usually so dancingly gay, onto her with a certain severity as he asked—‘Why do you sign it “Darling”?’
    â€˜Oh, that’s a code word. It just means urgency, between Colin and me,’ Julia said airily. As he continued to regard her a little seriously she turned her doves’ eyes onto him. ‘Dear Monsieur de Ritter, do take this from me’ she said in English. ‘Would I be busting myself to secure Aglaia’s fortune for her, if Colin was really a “darling” to me?’
    His expression relaxed.
    â€˜Very well—yes, I accept what you say. But a telegram should be signed with a name, here.’
    â€˜Well Darling is a name. There was Grace Darling, the girl in the life-boat,’ Julia replied promptly.
    He laughed loudly.
    â€˜All right. So now I take this to the Bureau de Poste, and meanwhile you stay with us. How nice!’
    When a telegram like this of Julia’s reaches a certainheadquarters in London it sets all sorts of activities in motion. Tall men, with rather dead-pan faces, reach for their desk telephones and talk to one another, or walk along corridors to other rooms for conversations face to face; small men, usually in brown felt hats, scurry unobtrusively about Whitehall and the purlieus of the Strand. In this particular case, in a matter of hours, men in rather loud check caps were hurrying through the steep narrow streets of Istanbul, and returning, frustrated by the innate Turkish passion for stalling, to their superiors. Ultimately there were even telephone calls between London and Ankara. And it all took quite a long time, as everything to do with Turkey does.
    Meanwhile Julia, when she had breakfasted, asked to be allowed to ring up Gersau; she spoke to Herr Waechter, enquired after Mrs. Hathaway, and learning that she was going on well explained that she, Julia, would not be returning for a few days. ‘Please be sure to telephone if she gets worse, or wants me,’ the girl said earnestly. ‘But I feel sure that in your house, and with Watkins to harry, she will be perfectly all right unless she has a relapse. And I should really stay here—she will understand.’
    She heard his dry old-man’s laugh when she spoke of Mrs. Hathaway harrying Watkins, but he promised to do as she wished.
    Julia spent the next five days very happily at La Cure, taking part in a