Read The Hothouse by the East River for Free Online Page A

little distance from her waist in a manner unusual to her. She waits in
this position for a little moment, then spreading her fingers she lets the tray
drop from her hands.
    ‘Oh!’ says
the Princess.
    Elsa
and the maid say nothing. The three women stare at the wreckage on the carpet,
at the silver teapot on its side oozing leafy tea, the cream crawling its way
among the jagged fragments of Elsa’s turn-of-the-century Coalport china, the
petit-fours and scones from Schraffts, Fifth Avenue, and the pineapple
preserves from Charles’s, Madison Avenue; they stare at the sugar cubes
scattered over the carpet like children’s discarded playing-blocks seen from a
far height. Then Delia says, ‘You people are lousy. Katerina and Mr Hazlett is
lousy, your son Pierre is lousy, my husband is lousy and the kids is just so
lousy as well, this rat in my home is lousy and his lice is lousy.’
    ‘She
has never said such a thing before,’ Elsa says.
    Delia
then runs to the window and wrenches at the latch-handle, scratching with her
little fingers and freshly painted nails to get it open; it is stiff, for it
has not been opened for the past eight weeks.
    ‘She’s
going to throw herself out!’ says the Princess, rolling like a ship to rise to
her feet.
    ‘Don’t
open the window, Delia,’ says Elsa, ‘because it upsets the central heating.
One should never open the windows when the central heating or the
air-conditioners are turned on, as it creates an atmospheric imbalance. If the
room is too hot, Della, you can turn down the heating by means of that tap by
the side of the radiator, you turn it to the right. If that fails to reduce the
heat—’
    ‘Elsa,’
says the Princess, ‘come and hold her!’
    Delia
is trying all the windows in turn and now she is fighting off Princess Xavier
while attempting to reach the East window behind Elsa which looks out on the
dark daylight full of snow, a swirling grey spotted-muslin veil, beyond which,
only by faith and experience can you know, stands the sky over the East River.
    In the
end they get the girl to sit down, then to lie down on the sofa, then to sip
water, while Elsa telephones to Garven. Delia says nothing but just lies and
looks sourly about the room with the corners of her mouth turned down
exceedingly, distorting her usual prettiness, in an expression of entire
disgust. The Princess sits by her side making remarks intended to soothe, such
as ‘We all feel that way sometimes,’ and ‘It will all have blown over by
tomorrow.’ So she must have sat many hours at her desk of Princess Xavier’s
Agency in Bayswater, dispensing into the nerve-racked ears of Europe’s refugees
sentiments which were all the more hypnotic in effect for having been unintelligible.
    Elsa
goes and brings a brush and pan, and starts sweeping up the mess on the carpet,
her shadow weaving as she kneels. ‘When Garven arrives,’ she says, as she
sweeps and gathers up, ‘he will say to Delia “What’s your problem ?“ Those will
be his words, I would place a bet on it. So she will have to think of a problem
whether she has one or not.’
    Delia
does not respond, even with a lowering of her frown or a lifting of it. The
Princess says, ‘I dare say the poor girl does have a private problem.’
    ‘Not
necessarily,’ Elsa says. ‘It doesn’t follow, really, at all, that she has a
problem.’
    The key
in the lock away in the distance of the front door lets in Paul. The Princess
gazes down at Delia, settling herself so as to present a tableau for Paul’s
appearance in the room. Elsa stands up, brush and pan in hand; she looks out of
the window at the obscure snow-sky, giggles, and again kneels to her
sweeping-up. Paul enters and stops in the doorway: ‘What have you been doing,
Elsa?’
    ‘1
knifed the girl,’ Elsa says.
    ‘Nothing
of the kind,’ says the Princess. ‘Keep quiet, Paul. Delia has had a nervous
crisis.
    ‘Lousy
people,’ Delia says, breathing heavily.
    ‘Just
lie quiet, my