Cousin Rosamund by Rebecca West Page B

Marshall Fields, smiling to herself over Nancy’s wedding, in spite of the high wind that was like invisible ice splinters about us.
    We put our arms round each other and kissed, and I said, ‘Just look, we’re both of us too thin,’ and Mary said, ‘Yes, it’s wonderful, we shall be able to eat what we like during these three days, we will have waffles and maple syrup whenever we think of it.’
    ‘And no squab,’ I said.
    ‘Why do Americans like squab?’ asked Mary. ‘And those horrid clams, embittered spinster oysters. And toast all leathery in a napkin instead of in a toast-rack, as God decreed. But everything else is nice. This is a lovely continent to be given the run of. Shall we go and look at the Christmas trees in the big stores?’
    ‘No, we are too tired,’ I said.
    ‘Of course we are,’ said Mary. ‘Kate would not let us go if she could see us now. But it will be nice just to be alone together in that big room. Can you ever get used to the big hotel rooms we can afford now?’
    We stocked up for our days of rest by buying an armful of magazines and a big box of coffee walnuts and several sorts of bath salts, and then took a Yellow Cab back to the hotel, and went into the coffee-shop on the ground floor and had a table by the window, and had our first indulgence in waffles and maple syrup. ‘We will have no flowers in our room,’ said Mary. ‘We cannot buy flowers for ourselves, it is against nature. But it will be good not to have the room crammed with flowers which are given in such a way that one has no occasion to look up the Language of Flowers. They are beautiful, but there’s no time to look at them, and the hotels never have the right vases, and one isn’t clear who they come from, and so often they come just from people who like our playing.’ Dusk fell, and through the window we watched a procession of bright automobiles, cells of privacy in the cold public night, sweeping on their way to homes that would be more warm and private still. ‘How good it is to be tired,’ said Mary. ‘If we were not tired we might feel lonely here.’
    ‘Would you rather have been with people?’ I asked. ‘Let us go on to the Wallensteins by the night train, they probably would not mind if we telephone and ask if they could have us early, you know how nice everyone is here.’ But she shook her head. With her elbows on the table, her smooth face cupped in her fine fingers and nursed by her fur collar and her fur cuffs, she continued to watch the stream of shining cars pass by, or halt at the florist’s shop next door. It was amusing to see people hurrying in and out with last-minute presents. One man had trouble in packing a flowering apple tree growing out of a pot into his car, though that was nearly as big as a tram. We drank more coffee, but presently the coffee-shop closed early, because it was Christmas Eve, and we went into the hotel. A clerk at the desk tried to give us our letters but we asked him to send them in the morning. The management had sent us up some roses, so our room was not bare after all. We had long baths, with lots of bath salts, and put on our dressing-gowns and lay down on our beds, meaning to read a little before we ordered dinner, but we fell asleep. When we woke it was nearly nine o’clock and we were not very hungry, so we ordered just oyster stew. There was a lot of it, and we pulled our chairs to the window and drew back the curtains and ate the lovely milky mess, looking down on the long line of steady lights that ran along the black lake’s edge, the two lines of moving lights that ran beside them, one line moving north and the other south.
    I said, ‘When it’s this time over there they’ll be closing the bar at the Dog and Duck and starting to put up the holly.’
    ‘And Kate and her brothers will be putting it up at her mother’s cottage.’
    ‘And poor Mr Morpurgo will have gone home and be sitting in a big chair with his family, after spending all