Hotel de Dream (22 page)

“Mr Rathbone? Oh I'm so sorry to disturb you at home, Mr Rathbone, before you go to the office, but I'm a teeny weeny bit surprised at the document I received this morning. What's that? Oh well of course one would love to have the opportunity to discuss …”

There was a pause, and in this time Mr Poynter shifted uncomfortably under the bedclothes, fragments of unwelcome memory returning to him as he did so. He felt uneasy and insecure and depressed. There had been something once which had sustained him through the days, and he had now a feeling of inconsolable loss, as if whatever it was had gone from him for ever. He thought of his wife; but all that had been too long ago to return to him now with such fresh grief. As Mrs Routledge resumed her conversation below, Mr Poynter concluded that it must be the knowledge of having to move oneself, go off to a new and strange hotel, that was unsettling him like that. At his age moving was not to be taken lightly. And his bad dreams of the past few nights had no doubt been some premonition of this future insecurity. He reached for his cup of tea and drained it to the dregs.

“Well of course I'd simply love it if you came!” Mrs Routledge was saying into the telephone in the hall. “I do understand, Mr Rathbone, one can't keep redundant buildings standing just for sentimental reasons! Good … well about six-thirty then. How simply perfect!”

She rang off and began to question Cridge about nuts and tonic water. Wearily, Mr Poynter rose and dressed. He heard Miss Scranton march past on her way down to the dining
room. Miss Briggs followed. Feeling his years, Mr Poynter went shakily out on to the landing, passed the room where Mrs Houghton was typing, and descended into the cleaner air of a Thursday morning in the Westringham.

Born in London, Emma Tennant was educated at St Paul's Girls' School and spent the World War II years and her childhood summers at the family's faux Gothic mansion The Glen in Peeblesshire. Her family also owned estates in Trinidad.

Tennant grew up in the modish London of the 1950s and 1960s. She worked as a travel writer for
Queen
magazine and an editor for
Vogue
, publishing her first novel,
The Colour of Rain
, under a pseudonym when she was twenty-six. Between 1975 and 1979, she edited a literary magazine,
Bananas
, which helped launch the careers of several young novelists.

A large number of books by Tennant have followed: thrillers, children's books, fantasies, and several revisionist takes on classic novels, including a sequel to
Pride and Prejudice
called
Pemberley
. In later years, she began to write about her own life in such books as
Burnt Diaries
(1999), which details her affair with Ted Hughes.

Tennant has been married four times, including to the journalist and author Christopher Booker and the political writer Alexander Cockburn. She has two daughters and a son, author Matthew Yorke. In April 2008, she married her partner of 33 years, Tim Owens.

Confessions of a Sugar Mummy
Heathcliff's Tale
Hotel de Dream
The Autobiography of The Queen
The Colour of Rain
The Crack
Wild Nights

This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

First published in Great Britain 1976 by Victor Gollanz Limited

Copyright © 1976 Emma Tennant

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,
printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

The moral right of the author is asserted.

ISBN 9781448209873

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