Diana Glass
The Help
‘Aren’t those hideous?’ Mrs Bantry says, pointing at the wall.
‘All this elegance,’ she indicates the surroundings of the hotel’s great hall, where we are having a drink before dinner – the oils of mountain scenes on the silk-covered walls, the thick carpets upon the floors, the low, inlaid mahogany tables between the elegantly upholstered chairs – ‘and then they choose to put those up!’
I look and see what she means. Just above us leer several hideous faces: yellowish teeth bared, eyeballs bulging, horribly realistic hair sprouting wild and matted from scalp and ears.
The features are grossly exaggerated and distorted and yet at the same time slightly too lifelike; the skin has a convincing texture to it, the irises seem to follow one’s movements.
‘Can those be … real teeth?’ Mrs Bantry asks.
‘Yes, Madame,’ says a waiter, appearing as if from nowhere. And then after very slightly too long a pause: ‘Animal teeth, Madame. Bovine, you know. Or sheep, depending upon … availability. The hair is real too.’ He grins. ‘Horse.’
‘Gracious,’ Mrs Bantry says, apparently making a heroic effort not to look too repulsed. ‘But what are they?’
‘Trolls, Madame,’ he says, proudly. ‘Mountain trolls. We like our trolls in Switzerland.’
‘Do you … really?’ Mrs Bantry says, a little faintly. But soon her attention is caught by the Narracotts passing through the hall on their way to dinner.
‘She reminds me a little of Gertrude Dunlop from St Mary Mead,’ Miss Marple says.
‘Oh,’ Mrs Bantry gives her a look. ‘Do you mean the one that ran away with that trampolinist at sixteen?’
‘Yes,’ Miss Marple says, and then, ‘she was rather babied by her parents, do you remember? They couldn’t really accept her dressing up. Seemed to keep her in almost little girls’ clothes, didn’t allow her to go to any of the local dances. That repression, you know …’
‘But Catherine Narracott’s a grown woman,’ Mrs Bantry says. ‘She’s a wife.’
‘But doesn’t she give you the impression of a little girl?
It isn’t really about one’s station in life.
It’s a state of mind. She seems to me like a pink and white girl who has seen very little of the world.
And I am sure he has been happy to keep her that way.
I’m sure it suits a man like that.’ This last said rather darkly.
‘Jane!’ Mrs Bantry says. ‘Here was I, thinking only what a handsome couple they made. And all the while you … well, you never cease to surprise me.’
‘Look, and they don’t talk to each other.’ She’s right, they pass the length of the hall in complete silence. ‘They sit there at mealtimes hardly saying a word to one another. I eat most of my meals alone, of course, but that seems to me to be true loneliness.’
‘Oh, but Jane, plenty of very content marriages are like that. Arthur hated talking, particularly at mealtimes. Said it gave him indigestion. And really, we were very happy in our way.’ Mrs Bantry’s eyes, for a moment, seem to grow a little filmy.
‘Of course, my dear,’ Miss Marple says. Very briefly, her small frail hand touches Mrs Bantry’s across the tabletop.
‘Do you have … anyone, Diana?’ Mrs Bantry asks, turning to me.
‘I don’t,’ I say. ‘I— was engaged once. But it … didn’t last.’
I have forgotten the smell of his skin. For a long time I could still summon it to me.
It smelled like a life lived outdoors, like the scent of the rain-soaked ground after a drought.
I can no longer conjure it on demand, as I once could.
So too, I have lost the precise feel of his fingertips on me, the husk of them, fingers that had done battle with earth and stone.
I have not had anyone since; probably I never will.
I am alone and that is less lonely, somehow, than any alternative to him.
I take a sip of my wine.
The light in the room shifts suddenly, bathing us all in a roseate glow.
It has begun to snow lightly, I see. And a strange optical illusion has occurred: the peaks of the mountains have turned deepest crimson.
On longer inspection it’s a trick of the light: the snow and the very rock itself have been stained red by the setting sun.
‘I think it’s called Alpenglow,’ I say.
Mrs Bantry shivers. ‘It seems a little eerie – even portentous. Like a blood moon. Don’t you think, Jane?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Miss Marple says. ‘I find the actions of human beings are usually far more predictive of coming danger than any natural phenomenon.’