Free Dolly by Anita Brookner

buildings were bomb-damaged and those that were not were requisitioned. Wandering around the rubble-strewn streets they knew an awful fear, as if the streets were to remain for ever desolate. The people looked so cold and so poor that Fanny realised that her career was over, for who would want fine clothes when it had become a matter of pride, of patriotism, to look shabby? She was, to all intents and purposes, redundant, had brought about her own retirement.She was not altogether sorry. Her eyes troubled her far more than she let her daughter know. But Dolly was aware of her mother’s drooping spirits, and made a decision to spend some of the money they had saved on a holiday for them both. In the foyer of the gloomy hotel she found a brochure advertising Christmas breaks at another hotel, newly re-opened, on the south coast. In this manner Dolly and Fanny Schiff found themselves under the same roof as Toni, Hugo, and the young Henrietta Ferber for three days which were to change Dolly’s life.
    On their arrival they were immediately homesick once more. The desolate empty coastline, populated by stoical walkers, was minimally more discouraging than the other guests, large women with accommodating husbands who seemed content to doze in armchairs and let their wives conduct their social lives without their active assistance. Out of fear they stayed in their room until the evening, thus missing the afternoon tea hour at which Toni made a ceremonious entrance, flanked by her son and her teenage daughter. She knew the hotel well, had stayed there before the war, assumed that a certain deference was due to her, as indeed she did in most situations, and nodded graciously at one or two old acquaintances, women like herself who intended to keep a strict watch on their offspring. In consequence of this there were few young people about. Hugo, whose excuse for accompanying his mother was that he would have otherwise been alone in London, and hungry, since Nanny Sweetman was on holiday, was already bored stiff. But at the age of twenty-six he had inherited that agreeable pliancy, that almost meaningless acquiescence in a woman’s whims thatmust have marked certain of his Viennese ancestors. Certainly he managed to keep a smile on his face in most circumstances. Few people managed to know what he was thinking, or indeed if he were thinking at all.
    Fanny and Dolly dressed determinedly for dinner. Knowing that they had to stay, that there was no home awaiting their return, gave them a last spark of courage. In the restaurant they were circumspect, picking daintily at the terrible food. Dolly was wearing one of her mother’s most beautiful creations, a sea-green faille with a shawl collar and the new very full skirt. Fanny, discreet in black, looked like every respectable continental mother. They could scarcely bring themselves to glance at their fellow guests, but caught glimpses, out of the corner of their eyes, of maroon crêpe and cross-over bodices; they permitted themselves a desolate smile of recognition, as if to register the failure of what must have seemed their last, their final enterprise. But from the adjoining ballroom came the sounds of a band tuning up. That saved them. Dolly breathed more freely, and when they stood up to leave their table they seemed more erect, more confident. A few iron-grey heads were turned; one or two mute interrogations were exchanged. The first chord of the evening was struck, and the band broke into a fervent rendition of ‘Everything’s in Rhythm with my Heart’. This was judged suitable for an ageing clientele which might take a turn round the floor and would certainly reminisce about pre-war musicals.
    Dolly installed her mother in a chair and waited in an agony of impatience on the edge of the floor. She wanted to dance; she would even dance with the fogies who waddledbehind their wives and beat time complacently to the music. As she was the only young woman in the room and Hugo was the