The Hothouse by the East River by Muriel Spark

back,’ says Elsa.
    ‘Oh,
Garven or the maid, one of them,’ says the Princess. ‘You can’t count on anyone
these days, can you?’ She has taken her drink from Paul who now gives Elsa her
vodka and tonic. He looks at his watch.
    ‘We’ve
got time,’ says Elsa.
    ‘It
starts at seven-thirty,’ Paul says. ‘Hadn’t you better go and change?’
    ‘Certainly
not,’ Elsa says. ‘Imagine,’ she says to the Princess, ‘it’s my son’s opening
night and he wants me to go dressed like a hippy. He should be wearing a dark
suit, at least.’
    ‘I
always dress,’ says the Princess. ‘Always have done and always will.’
    Suddenly
Garven moves towards them, then stops. He opens his mouth wide, then says in a
high-pitched top note, ‘Sick!’ He then shuts his mouth tight and turns to pour
himself out a trembling drink.
    ‘Garven,’
says the Princess as they stand waiting for Elsa to get her coat, ‘I can. get
you a remarkable job with a very delightful couple who have a triplex at
Sixty-eighth and Park. Everything they have is an objet d’art including
the teaspoons.’
    ‘Thanks,
I’m going back to my practice,’ Garven says, and sighs.
    ‘He’s a
professional man,’ says Paul.
    ‘I’ve
wasted time,’ says Garven. ‘If she wants my services in future, she’ll have to
come to my office.’
    Paul
takes out his handkerchief and pats his forehead here and there. ‘This
apartment kills me,’ he says. ‘It’s antiquated. The heat’s terrible. You can’t
control it. Poppy, can’t you talk to Elsa about moving to a new apartment? I’ve
tried for years. She won’t listen to me.’
    ‘One
gets attached to one’s home,’ Poppy says. ‘Can’t you have it fixed? Open the
window.’
    ‘It’s
open,’ says Paul. ‘But the heat wins.’
    Garven
says, ‘I’d have all the air-conditioners turned on full if I had my way.’
    ‘She
likes the heat in winter,’ says Paul. ‘It’s good for the palm tree,’ says the
Princess, looking at the flourishing plants in the corner.
    ‘I tell
you what, Poppy,’ says Paul. ‘She has too much money. Some women can’t take it.
In the old days when she didn’t have so much she was more amenable to reason.’
    ‘Ha,
ha, so was I,’ says the Princess. ‘But I’m healthier and happier now, and so is
Elsa.’
    ‘I
agree with Paul,’ says Garven. ‘Not on every point, but on this one.’
    Elsa
calls out from the hall. ‘Come on, I’m ready.’ Princess Xavier is carefully
handled out of her hollow on the sofa by Paul and Garven and is escorted to the
hall where Elsa is waiting.
    ‘You
can’t go like that,’ Paul says. Elsa is wearing a long coat of white fox fur.
‘I bought it in Paris,’ she says, ‘for this occasion.’
    ‘I
believe in. style,’ says Princess Xavier, who, with the help of Garven is being
enfolded in her voluminous sable coverings which give off little wafts of
something that smells like a strange incense, but is in reality a mixture of
camphor and a scent named Diane du Bois. How long, cries Paul in his
heart, will these people, this city, haunt me? ‘Elsa,’ he says, ‘be yourself.
Just be yourself, I ask you.’
    They
are driving through the streets in Princess Xavier’s Rolls. A long journey
through the traffic, with the Princess’s chauffeur muttering quietly all the
way down Second Avenue. He stops to let them off at a convenient corner,
conspicuously. And nervously Paul and Garven propel the women in haste along
the narrow pavements. A girl tries to block Elsa’s path, saying in a slow
solemn voice, ‘That is too much,’ but Paul pushes his wife ahead causing the
girl to stumble and bump into Garven who follows with the Princess. ‘Wait a
minute,’ says the girl to Garven, but he waits not at all, barging past the
other pedestrians with his charge, the breathless Princess. Paul is watching
the street numbers with shifty eyes. He stops at a doorway between a delicatessen
shop and a Mexican. art gallery. A woman