Lise has started reciting her list over again from the beginning, when the maid does appear with a question-mark on her face. Lise puts down the receiver rather loudly and points to the light which the maid tries for herself, then, nodding her understanding of the case, makes to leave. ‘Wait!’ says Lise, first in English then in French, to neither of which the maid responds. Lise produces the glass with its Alka-Seltzers nestled at the bottom. ‘Filthy!’ Lise says in English. The maid obligingly fills the glass from the tap and hands it to Lise. ‘Dirty!’ Lise shouts in French. The maid understands, laughs at the happening, and this time makes a quick getaway with the glass in her hand.
Lise slides open the cupboard, pulls down a wooden hanger and throws it across the room with a clatter, then lies down on the bed. Presently she looks at her watch. It is five past one. She opens her suitcase and carefully extracts a short dressing-gown. She takes out a dress, hangs it in the cupboard, takes it off the hanger again, folds it neatly and puts it back. She takes out her sponge-bag and bedroom slippers, undresses, puts on her dressing-gown and goes into the bathroom, shutting the door. She has reached the point of taking a shower when she hears voices from her room, a scraping sound, a man‘s and a girl’s. Putting forth her head from the bathroom door, she sees a man in light brown overalls with a pair of steps and an electric light bulb, accompanied by the maid. Lise comes out in her dressing-gown without having properly dried herself in the evident interest of protecting her hand-bag which lies on the bed. Her dressing-gown clings damply to her. ‘Where is the tooth-glass?’ Lise demands. ‘I must have a glass for water.’ The maid touches her head to denote forgetfulness and departs with a swish of her skirt, never to return within Lise’s cognizance. However, Lise soon makes known her need for a drinking-glass on the telephone to the concierge, threatening to leave the hotel immediately if she doesn’t get her water-glass right away.
While waiting for the threat to take effect Lise again considers the contents of her suitcase. This seems to present her with a problem, for she takes out a pink cotton dress, hangs it in the cupboard, then after hesitating for a few seconds she takes it off the hanger again, folds it carefully and lays it back in her case. It may be that she is indeed contemplating an immediate departure from the hotel. But when another maid arrives with two drinking-glasses, apologies in Italian and the explanation that the former maid had gone off duty, Lise continues to look through her belongings in a puzzled way, taking nothing further out of her suitcase.
This maid, seeing laid out on the bed the bright-coloured dress and coat in which Lise had arrived, inquires amiably if Madam is going to the beach.
‘No,’ says Lise.
‘You American?’ says the maid.
‘No,’ Lise says.
‘English?’
‘No.’ Lise turns her back to continue her careful examination of her clothes in the suitcase, and the maid goes out with an unwanted air, saying, ‘Good day.’
Lise is lifting the corners of her carefully packed things, as if in absent-minded accompaniment to some thought, who knows what? Then, with some access of decision, she takes off her dressing-gown and slippers and starts putting on again the same clothes that she wore on her journey. When she is dressed she folds the dressing-gown, puts the slippers back in their plastic bag, and replaces them in her suitcase. She also puts back everything that she has taken out of her sponge-bag, and packs this away.
Now she takes from an inside pocket of her suitcase a brochure with an inset map which she spreads out on the bed. She studies it closely, finding first the spot where the Hotel Tomson is situated and from there traces with her finger various routes leading into and away from the centre of the town. Lise stands, bending over it. The room is dark although it is not yet two in the afternoon. Lise switches on the central light and pores over her map.
It is marked here and there with tiny pictures which denote historic buildings, museums and monuments. Eventually Lise takes a ballpoint pen from her bag and marks a spot in a large patch of green, the main parkland of the city. She puts a little cross beside one of the small pictures which is described on the map as ‘The Pavilion’. She then folds up the map and replaces it in the pamphlet which she then edges in her hand-bag. The pen lies, apparently forgotten, on the bed. She looks at herself in the glass, touches her hair, then locks her suitcase. She finds the car-keys that she had failed to leave behind this morning and attaches them once more to her key-ring. She puts the bunch of keys in her hand-bag, picks up her paperback book and goes out, locking the door behind her. Who knows her thoughts? Who can tell?
She is downstairs at the desk where, behind the busy clerks, numbered pigeon-holes irregularly contain letters, packages, the room-keys, or nothing, and above them the clock shows twelve minutes past two. Lise puts her room-key on the counter and asks for her passport in a loud voice causing the clerk whom she addresses, another clerk who sits working an adding machine, and several other people who are standing and sitting in the hotel lobby, to take notice of her.
The women stare at her clothes. They, too, are dressed brightly for a southern summer, but even here in this holiday environment Lise looks brighter. It is possibly the combination of colours — the red in her coat and the purple in her dress — rather than the colours themselves which drags attention to her, as she takes her passport in its plastic envelope from the clerk, he looking meanwhile as if he bears the whole of the eccentricities of humankind upon his slender shoulders.
Two girls, long-legged, in the very brief skirts of the times, stare at Lise. Two women who might be their mothers stare too. And possibly the fact that Lise’s outfit comes so far and unfashionably below her knees gives an extra shockingness to her appearance that was not even apparent in the less up-to-date Northern city from which she set off that morning. Skirts are worn shorter here in the South. Just as, in former times, when prostitutes could be discerned by the brevity of their skirts compared with the normal standard, so Lise in her knee-covering clothes at this moment looks curiously of the street-prostitute class beside the mini-skirted girls and their mothers whose knees at least can be seen.
So she lays the trail, presently to be followed by Interpol and elaborated upon with due art by the journalists of Europe for the few days it takes for her identity to be established.
‘I want a taxi,’ Lise says loudly to the uniformed boy who stands by the swing door. He goes out to the street and whistles. Lise follows and stands on the pavement. An elderly woman, small, neat and agile in a yellow cotton dress, whose extremely wrinkled face is the only indication of her advanced age, follows Lise to the pavement. She, too, wants a taxi, she says in a gentle voice, and she suggests to Lise that they might share. Which way is Lise going? This woman seems to see nothing strange about Lise, so confidently does she approach her. And in fact, although this is not immediately apparent, the woman’s eyesight is sufficiently dim, her hearing faint enough, to eliminate, for her, the garish effect of Lise on normal perceptions.
‘Oh,’ says Lise, ‘I’m only going to the Centre. I’ve no definite plans. It’s foolish to have plans.’ She laughs very loudly.
‘Thank you, the Centre is fine for me,’ says the woman, taking Lise’s laugh for acquiescence in the sharing of the taxi.
And, indeed, they do both load into the taxi and are off.
‘Are you staying here long?’ says the woman.