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take time for his boots to lose their rue de Rivoli gloss.
    Looking back through the woods, he could just see the Manor with its bold towers and he felt a vigorous affection for it. He turned to Christine.
    ‘I came across a strange thing this morning when I was going through my papers,’ he said. ‘A bird-watching notebook. I don’t even remember being interested in birds.’
    ‘I adore birds,’ said Christine. ‘That’s why I like this house. I hear some wonderful songs and cries from across in the forest. And sometimes I’ve seen them when it’s getting dark – the wild duck that come in from behind the trees. Do you remember your father said that one winter some swans which had flown in all the way from the Arctic came to nest here?’
    ‘Yes, I do remember. He was very excited. They had some special name, but I’ve forgotten what it was.’
    ‘Arctic swans is what he called them.’
    ‘Yes, that’s right. But they were the real thing – whatever the real thing is actually called. I know, because he had an expert down from Paris to authenticate them.’
    They walked on for a while until Hartmann said, ‘I thought I might go into town tonight. Would you like to come?’
    ‘No, thank you.’
    ‘Mattlin’s asked me if I want to go to one of the cinemas with him. Then we may go on somewhere afterwards.’
    ‘With Mattlin?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I don’t know how you can bear it.’
    ‘Oh, he’s all right. And I’ve known him for a long time.’
    ‘You know you’ve got nothing whatever in common with him.’
    ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Hartmann, as he bent to pick up a stick, which he threw in a high looping arc over the lake.
    That night Anne was on duty in the bar with Pierre, the head waiter. He was the only person at the hotel who seemed to have some sense of detachment from his surroundings. While Mme Bouin appeared to think only of enforcing discipline and Roland of how to avoid it, Pierre went about his work with a slow, self-sufficient smile and careful movements. When he trod the narrow corridor between the dining-room and the bar, the gathered air seemed barely disturbed by his passage. Between the agitation of Bruno’s kitchen and the varying demands of the clients, Pierre spread tranquillity; without him, Anne thought, it was hard to see how the hotel would have reached even the meagre level of service it offered. Pierre had thinning hair and sunken eyes with specks of black pigment beneath them. Although his manner was one of resignation he also enjoyed making small, polite jokes and he had taken a liking to Anne because she laughed at them.
    Hartmann pushed open the door from the street at about ten o’clock and took a place at the table towards the back of the bar. He had forgotten about his meeting with Anne at the tennis court and for a moment could not remember where he had seen her before. He watched her leaning against the bar, her dark hair tied carelessly back, swinging her foot in its flat black shoe slowly back and forth as she waited for the next order. He made a rapid and almost unconscious inventory of her physical features, ticking off each one as his eyes moved casually up and down. Only then did he begin to wonder what she might be thinking and whether this menial job could be interesting; probably not, to judge from her distracted figure and her partly shaded face with its air of suppressed vitality. He tried to imagine what such a girl might aspire to, apart from a worthy marriage, and in what aspects of life she took her pleasure. Unlike the involuntary spasm of sympathy he had felt for Roussel, this deliberate attempt to imagine the life of another left him with no firm impression or shared feeling; he remained uncertain, though not uninterested.
    Finally he caught her eye and she, at once recognising him, found herself blushing. She turned to the barman and made earnest conversation with him. Of course, thought Hartman: the girl at the tennis court.
    Anne