A Closed Eye (14 page)

O
N WAKING
, these cold mornings, she had a cowering feeling of dismay, as if she had been ordered into a life not of her choosing. Nothing in the pattern of the day before her warranted such dread anticipation. Immy was well, and had apparently accepted Miss Wetherby, of whom she was still the slightest bit afraid: Freddie was well, but morose these days, only permitting himself an occasional smile, and not always in response to one of her own. It occurred to her to wonder whether he might have a mistress somewhere. She would not have blamed him. She knew that she had not turned out to be entirely satisfactory. She envisaged a plump smiling woman, rather dyed about the hair, with a maternal bosom and swelling hips, given to fussy dressing and floral scents, an Edwardian sort of woman, not averse to a slap on the buttocks and other, similar, gestures. Just why the fastidious Freddie should have to do with such a woman, if she existed, she would not have been able to say; she only knew that she had failed to encompass his anxieties, being too harassed, or too self-questioning herself. She had no idea what Freddie did with his day. She only knew that he liked to lunch, alone, at his club, perhaps joining a friend afterwards for a moment’s conversation. She supposed that the vulgar friendly woman of her imagination could be fitted in some time after lunch, as
a
digestif
, after which he would be both relieved and gloomy, in the manner of well-meaning adulterous husbands, unable to take the thing lightly, yet determined not to take it at all seriously. She felt no animus against Freddie for this imaginary liaison—if it existed—but rather a certain guilt on her own behalf, not for alienating Freddie, but in fact for having always kept him at a distance, where she felt most comfortable with him, her own thoughts and sentiments—dissatisfactions, too—inviolate, and, she hoped, not perceived.

For if Freddie had a mistress, which was extremely unlikely, given his utterly predictable behaviour, the clumsiness of his occasional ardour, the lost look she sometimes saw in his eyes, the general prudence of his utterances, she would be the last person to accuse him. She knew that he thought her half-hearted, caring more for the child than she had ever done for himself, proud of and exasperated by the house and by her general respectability, tempted, perhaps unconsciously, by a freedom she had never known. Docile no longer, practical and competent, rather, preoccupied with the child and its well-being, only half attentive to himself. She knew this to be true, whether it had entered Freddie’s mind or not. She felt the temptation of resentment hovering over him, although she was technically innocent. Why disaffection had entered her house she did not entirely know, but put it down to his acknowledgement of her complete lack of marital desire. She now found his overtures alarming, and sad. It was as if the birth of her daughter had restored her to virginity. Pinned down by his heavy body, she found herself gasping for air, and afterwards, when she was allowed to sleep, felt nothing but loneliness. After a rest, which always seemed too brief, she would stir awake with that sense of haplessness, even panic, as if the night had been impossibly short, too short to contain all the reflections she had reserved for those silent hours, in the hope of arriving at some resolution.

It was not resolution of conflict that she sought: there was no conflict. Simply some pointer to the way ahead, as if she had an exceptionally difficult problem to solve. Then she would get up and have her bath and dress, and the feeling would disperse. And once she had prepared the breakfast (missing Dawn on these occasions) and tried to subdue Immy in order to give Freddie a bit of peace, and usually failing, she was quite glad when they both left and she was really alone. Now that Dawn was gone, Freddie sometimes took Immy to school in his car; at other times Miss Wetherby officiated. Lizzie made her way independently, sometimes driven by Tessa, sometimes trudging on her own. They saw less of Lizzie these days. She was capable of going straight home on her own, and she preferred to. For a child of eight she was oddly mature.

My daughter is all I desire, thought Harriet, resting in the early afternoon, and yet somehow I desire more. For in this brief hour, on her sofa, she freed her imagination from its usual restraints and thought of another life, other lives. Lives lived in perpetual sunshine, not this meagre light, and, yes, that was it, just two of them. But here imagination let her down, for although she knew it was not Freddie at her side, she could not quite see her companion, or rather could not formulate him, since she was free to make him up. He bore a resemblance to Jack Peckham, but this was fortuitous, since the Jack Peckham character, the ruthless faceless lover, had been present in her thoughts before the real Jack Peckham had ever been encountered. She thought it strange that an obedient woman like herself should have fantasies of such strangeness and such intensity, yet she also knew that with such a partner she would no longer be obedient, but powerful, irresistible, even. And all in that sunshine, somewhere far away, just the two of them, with no relatives, no friends, and no need of either. In these moods, in the half doze of early
afternoon, she disposed of her present life, and substituted for it the life of the imagination, for which nothing in her experience or her reading had prepared her. Outwardly calm, but inwardly amazed at herself, she would rise, and see to her face, and go downstairs to prepare Immy’s tea. Sometimes, very occasionally, Lizzie would turn up, without explanations. Harriet would scrutinize the child’s face, to see if Jack were present there. Fortunately, there was no trace. This was a relief to her. It is not Jack I want, she thought. It is someone
like
Jack, but someone of my very own. That way there would be no guilt. For guilt she could not endure.

‘How is Mummy?’ she asked Lizzie, on one of the occasions when the child was present. ‘I haven’t seen her lately. And she seems to be out whenever I telephone.’

Lizzie observed her usual pause when directly addressed.

‘All right,’ she said finally.

‘Can I wear your pearls?’ interjected Immy.

‘No, of course you can’t. Besides, I am wearing them.’

‘Yes, but you’re old. You’re too old to wear them.’

A beautiful child, more precious than life itself, Harriet reflected. But occasionally taxing.

‘Perhaps Mummy and Daddy would like to come to dinner while Daddy is in London?’ she went on. ‘You could stay overnight, in Immy’s room. Would you like that?’

Lizzie maintained a prudent silence.

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Immy rudely.

The invitation was accepted, with some surprise, and—or did she imagine it—with a hint of something like amusement. Harriet found herself excited and daunted. To have Jack Peckham under her roof brought her dangerously near to fantasy, yet what could be more sedate, more bourgeois than an intimate dinner party in Wellington Square? On reflection, she decided against inviting any of Freddie’s colleagues, sedate bourgeois persons like themselves, and although civilized and
knowledgeable, elderly. She did not dare risk boring Jack. It occurred to her, while she was dressing, that Tessa knew something of her fascination with Jack, although she had always been careful, she thought, to hide it away, to reserve it for her most private moments. Slowly, as this sank in, she felt herself blush, put up her hand to shield her face. Then she resolutely turned to herself in the mirror, saw the mark on her jaw brilliantly infused with colour, and realized that she was a middle-aged woman, never very exciting, now positively dull, an old friend, and, she hoped, a good friend, worthy enough to take care of the children, to serve up a decent daube of beef, to observe (yes, that surely was permitted), but to observe in a spirit of detachment, as befitted an old friend, one who still valued the ties of friendship (overvalued them, perhaps) and would comport herself with dignity to the very end. The end of what, she wondered, then heard the doorbell ring, and hurried down the stairs.

On the bottom step she met Tessa, coming towards her. A rumble of talk indicated that Freddie had already taken Jack to the drawing-room. Tessa, with the light behind her, appeared darkened, crow-like, in chic but unbecoming black. One foot on a higher step, she looked up, and then Harriet saw her face, pale, with an unfamiliar pallor, drawn, tired. ‘Oh, you’re not well,’ she said. Tessa looked at her with a certain weariness. ‘Could I just use your bathroom?’ she asked. ‘Of course. Come up. I’ll come with you. Use my bedroom as well, if you want to. Are you all right?’

‘Of course I’m all right. How you fuss, Harriet.’ She trailed past, a heavy musky scent following her, narrow ankles in fine black stockings turned slightly inwards.

Harriet. Not Hattie. Something guessed at, perhaps, more than suspected. Shame brought a high colour to her cheeks and inflamed the birthmark still further. Looking at herself in the glass, she thought, the game is up, and then, how absurd,
how meretricious I have become. The flush subsided, leaving behind a resigned calm, and a slight but definite indignation. I have done nothing wrong, she reminded herself. In fact, I have done nothing at all. I have simply been here all the time, running when called to, waiting when not, always grateful for the slightest, most insignificant mark of attention. She felt a bewilderment: had it come to this, a tardy realization of past inadequacies on both sides? But surely there was always our friendship? More than twenty years … That is what counts, now that we are both middle-aged, and past the time when we might have been unreasonable?
Nothing has happened
. ‘Of course,’ she said lightly, ‘I can see why you keep Jack to yourself. He really is most attractive.’

Tessa, applying lipstick, glanced at her sideways.

‘Yes. I know.’

She then took from her bag a small compact filled with something which looked like gold dust, and applied it with a brush to cheeks which were already heavily coloured. Gradually a misty web was drawn over features which, Harriet saw, were thin, sharply defined. The mouth was once again, very slowly, painted brick red, almost brown. She looked amazing, but entirely absent, inhabited by some thought far from the surface of her mind.

‘What is wrong?’ asked Harriet quietly.

‘Nothing more than a touch of indigestion. Eating at night doesn’t really agree with me these days—too tired, I suppose. So don’t be upset if I don’t do justice to your excellent cooking. Shall we go down?’

Your excellent cooking? But she is behaving like a stranger, thought Harriet. And yet if anything were wrong she would surely have told me?

Dinner was less arduous than she had expected, but possibly more disconcerting. Tessa, true to her predictions, hardly touched her food, moved it expertly about her plate, and then
left it. Freddie’s prized Lynch-Bages was smilingly declined by her, but accepted with due appreciation by Jack, who, between courses, got up and roamed around the room, examining the books in the two fine pedimented bookcases. When he deigned to sit down, it was to place an arm on the back of Tessa’s chair, to gaze searchingly into her face, as if oblivious of the other two. Harriet found it disturbing, ostentatious, this flouting of the rules of hospitality, of courtesy, of seemliness. She suspected that it was habitual, this exclusivity, that they met on this level, if on no other. But Freddie seemed to see nothing wrong, seemed, if anything, exhilarated, looked for once indulgently at Tessa’s sharp and highly coloured face, hastened to pour Jack more wine.

‘Shall we have coffee in the drawing-room?’ asked Harriet, longing suddenly for the evening to be over.

‘None for me,’ said Tessa. ‘Jack, I’m sure, would love some.’

‘How long are you to be in London, Jack?’ asked Harriet.

He stirred himself, seemed almost to yawn, then sat forward and nodded to Freddie, who hovered with a bottle of brandy.

‘I go to Paris next month,’ he said. He drank appreciatively, and then added, ‘Intermittently.’

‘Of course,’ Harriet said, light dawning. ‘Lizzie has inherited your way of speaking.’

He fixed her with his disconcerting eye. ‘Which way is that?’ he asked.

‘Sparing,’ she said. ‘Laconic.’ Just this side of rudeness, she thought. Aloud, she said, ‘I see Lizzie’s resemblance to you now.’

He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘We have to thank you for looking after Lizzie. You have been very good.’

So that is why you condescended to come this evening, she thought. Otherwise you might not have bothered.

‘We love having her,’ she said, very quietly.

He looked at her, as searchingly as she had seen him look at Tessa. She got up, removed empty coffee cups.

‘We must go,’ said Tessa, after a long abstracted pause. ‘Jack has to go back to Judd Street. He’s got a very early start in the morning.’

‘Oh, I’ll drop you off,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow night.’

‘Must you go? It’s barely eleven …’

‘Work in the morning,’ said Tessa, with a smile that was almost a grimace. ‘Can you tell Lizzie to come straight home after school?’

‘Of course,’ said Harriet, slightly bewildered. ‘And when shall I see you? Shall we have lunch?’