Hokey Pokey by Kate Mascarenhas EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Authors: Kate Mascarenhas
- Language: English
- Genre: Novels
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 8 MB
- Price: Free
Nora was not a liar, by nature. She was blessed with a prodigious skill for
mimicry. If she chose, she could open her mouth and repeat every word she
had ever heard, verbatim, in the style it was first spoken. Because of this
ability she saw herself as truthful: she was a recorder of truth, as true as any
phonograph.
At dusk, guarded against the cold by a fur coat and a mulberry red
cloche, she arrived outside the Regent Hotel. The sky was opaque with the
coming snowfall. The building was cream stone, half a dozen storeys high,
and European in style: rectangular columns and iron balustrades abounded.
Floral carvings and decorative heads, positioned in shrine-like niches,
ornamented the spaces between the windows.
A red-jacketed porter carried her luggage up the central steps. He had
met her at the railway station, which was a few minutes’ walk away. She
entered reception, blinking at the blaze of electric light. Her footfall
softened on a Greek key carpet. Green marble clad the walls. She could
hear the strings of salon music, coming from a distant room. Psychoanalysts
favoured luxurious accommodation, and Nora was no exception to that
particular professional snobbery. But she hadn’t chosen this hotel. Leo
Cadieux – her fellow analyst; once her friend, and something more than a
friend – had asked her to follow his wife here. He suspected promiscuity.
Nora would watch, and send reports back to him in Zurich. The watching
would come naturally. Despite never having met his wife, Nora was used to
observing her from a distance; Berenice was a famed singer, of noted
beauty, who Nora found compelling and hateful in equal measure. But the
need for stealth made her feel furtive. She must appear entirely at ease, lest
someone say: “Surely you’re up to no good.”
Signs pointed the way to the Pinfold Dining Room, the Hagley Tea
Rooms, the Reading Room, and the Narcissus Bar. To the left was a great
staircase; to the right, a long mahogany desk. Behind the desk sat a neat-
moustached man in a dark suit. Beside him stood a woman with an unmadeup face, a blonde shingle cut, and a sensible demeanour. He addressed her
as Harvey. She was likely a housekeeper. In sizeable establishments you
could count on one per floor. By the hotel’s rules, a woman travelling alone
must have an advance reservation, and a housekeeper must be there to
receive her on arrival.
“Good evening.” Harvey consulted her list of that night’s arrivals and
departures. “Might I have your name?”
Nora was English. Despite spending her adulthood abroad she could still
switch easily to the soft King’s English of her mother, from her father’s
Czech, or her colleagues’ Swiss German. With her pale blue eyes and pale
brown hair she looked unremarkable in an English crowd. And the
reservation was in an English name: her mother’s before marriage.
Nora Čapek said: “My name is Dr Dickinson.”
To be English in England was to be less conspicuous. That was valuable
when you were watching someone.
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