A Friend from England (4 page)

The truth was, of course, somewhat different. I owned a third of a small bookshop in Notting Hill and there was nothing Bohemian about it. My partners were a pleasant middle-aged woman called Eileen Somers and mild bookish Robin Burt who did most of the work behind the scenes: I preferred to serve. On one decisive afternoon, Heather actually picked me up there. However, she turned politely away while I was seeing
to a customer, as if this transaction should not be witnessed. She was wearing a beautiful brown tweed suit and she looked unusually grown-up and independent; however, she smiled indifferently when I asked her if there was anything she would like to take away with her, and then selected a couple of paperbacks as if to please me. These remained in the back of the car: I saw them there a week later. Thus, uncorrupted by other people’s information, Heather remained to all intents and purposes incorruptible.

I was however intrigued by the change of attire. The black avant-garde garments had disappeared: Heather was dressed as comfortably-off young women might be expected to dress. In addition to the chestnut suit she wore a pullover of ivory cashmere with a printed silk scarf knotted and tucked into the neck; she carried a handbag rather than a sort of gamekeeper’s pouch and her moccasins were the colour of conkers when they first split the green husk and emerge, glistening, to lie among the fallen leaves. She was, of course, as dreamy as ever, and nothing in her manner signalled that any change had taken place. But there was something in the way she handled the car – reversing rather carelessly, remarking on someone else’s bad parking – that bore the stamp of an assurance that had not been there before. Heather had always driven her car as if both she and it were competing for an award for good behaviour. She washed and groomed it conscientiously and nothing was allowed to mar its pale interior. On the road she drove steadily, and never did anything to kindle the emotions of other drivers. But on the day in question I noted that her driving was a little less smooth than usual, while on the back seat lay not only the paperbacks she had reluctantly acquired in my shop but several carrier bags from Harrods and some dry cleaning in a sheet of plastic. ‘Don’t mind the mess,’ she said. ‘I didn’t have time to go home after lunch.’ I thought that
she was treating me to a hospitality rather more casual, more incidental, than the kind she usually bestowed: she was offering me a glimpse into a crowded life, rather like those women who value one largely as a reflector, and to whom one has to pay one’s dues for being allowed to join them for a minute or two on their brilliant upward progress. I do not mean that Heather was suddenly giving herself airs, or finally coming to the realization that she could do as she liked; she was too decent and too genuinely obscure to behave in so parvenu a manner. But I became aware that her life, in those intervals between the weekends, might be subject to some kind of investment, that Heather might actually have some kind of a context independent of that of her parents. The idea intrigued me but it also cheered me up. I had begun to feel uneasy about the pious hopes Oscar and Dorrie might have had that I would somehow look after Heather, guide her towards a radiant future, that I might in fact inherit Heather from her parents when those parents, in obedience to some inner information, decided they could do no more. I had already received hints of this, subliminally, in the mild but dispassionate gaze that Oscar let fall on his only child, in the distant calm of Dorrie’s eyes, as she poured tea or handed cakes, in the smile that was always on her face when her drawing-room was full. It was the smile, above all, that registered with me, the smile of a woman who, doing the best she possibly could herself, would warm into greater pleasure at the sight of the good deeds of others. It was a smile that could droop into disappointment at even the rumour of a duty shirked, a burden unborne, a signal not received.

I said, ‘You look lovely, Heather. I like the new style. And I love the colours.’ She said, quite seriously, but with a hint of professional expertise, ‘Well, black isn’t quite right for this time of the year, is it?’ She inclined her head to the window as she said this, and looking out
on my side I saw the prunus trees in flower and the forsythia and the first daffodils. Everything in this suburb reminded one of the gardens of childhood. Pink petals drifted along damp pavements, and through my window I caught the harsh smell of the earth, sour after a long cold winter. The trees were still leafless and the weather uncertain, but the cloudy drizzle was not accompanied by a darkening sky, and the white light seemed to promise long evenings and a quick flowering. I had always loved suburbs. My own life was spent in the landlocked city streets, which suited me well enough since I had odd fears of death by water. But I looked forward to a time when I would occupy a little house with a garden and have people to tea. I was aware that this was the ambition of a child rather than an adult, and this was rather surprising since, as far as I knew, I behaved in a thoroughly grown-up manner. But obviously some part of me yearned to become suburban again and to hear a garden gate click behind me as I set off on summer evenings to meet my friends.

In the meantime I had the Livingstones. And they had me, for in some odd way I felt nearer to Oscar and Dorrie than I did to Heather, although Heather and I were contemporaries and might be thought to have had much in common. In fact I had originally been tried out as a companion for Heather before it had been acknowledged – wordlessly, of course – that I would be better at looking after her, as a sort of surrogate elder, than as a friend and acquaintance. This suited me well enough, for I felt a genuine love for Heather’s parents, while feeling rather little for Heather herself. When I say rather little, I mean that I felt a full complement of boredom, irritation, tolerance, and reluctant affection for her. I thought that in view of my function or destiny that was probably enough. Therefore I was both amused and relieved to see her in her new guise, well turned out, possibly with a secret, yet still scrupulously
pursing her lips before answering a question and still lowering her head before deciding on an action.

But in the course of the afternoon it began to seem as if Heather had outstripped me, or at least as if she no longer required my custodial care. Rather unusually, she allowed her mother to wait on her, to serve her with tea while she examined her glossy shoes, rotating her right ankle critically as if to examine them from a more professional stance than she usually accorded herself. She said little, as if waiting to be engaged in a topic that interested her rather than contributing eagerly to whatever plangent exchanges were on offer. Even when the aunts arrived, no, particularly when the aunts arrived and settled in to their comments on the week’s news and complaints, she held slightly aloof, favouring them only with a brief smile when they held out a subject to which she was supposed, or accustomed, to contribute. I could see that they, critical as ever, were a little baffled by this. They had expected to assist at the accouchement of whatever transformation Heather was supposed to undergo. Yet she offered them no hints as to the reason why she so suddenly and strikingly appeared to have changed. Indeed, had the conversation not been sufficiently well nourished by the frequent exchanges between Dorrie and her sisters or Oscar and his brother, the atmosphere might have seemed a little charged. When Dorrie was complimented (by me) on her dark blue silk suit, Heather remained silent. When Dorrie explained that she had worried about the colour before buying it (‘I hope I did the right thing’), Heather was finally moved to interject, ‘You should go in for lighter colours. You wear too many prints.’ She then returned to a contemplation of her foot. Dorrie, naturally, was charmed by this show of assurance in her normally pliant daughter. Perhaps she was even charmed by Heather’s unilateral declaration of independence with regard to her aunts, for although she was a woman of
exquisite humility, she was not unaware that Janet and Rosemary assumed the superiority of mothers whose daughters were safely and successfully married, and regarded her, Dorrie, as something of a failure in this respect. For they immediately conjectured that Heather had ‘met’ someone. Indeed their usual remark, their Parthian shot, half innocent, half guileful, was, ‘Met anyone nice this week?’ So delicate was this matter that Heather usually defused it by saying, ‘Nobody special,’ and accompanied this disclaimer with a smile of such general goodwill that there was little more to be said. But when Janet remarked, ‘You look as if you’ve met somebody nice at last,’ Heather replied, ‘I meet lots of nice people,’ thus affording her mother a moment of glory before she hastened to offer the sherry. For pride, Dorrie knew, went before a fall, and she was not a woman to rely on such slender evidence as a change of appearance. Nevertheless, we all felt that Heather had done something praiseworthy, even if puzzling. It was all the more puzzling in that she made no reference to it. Such was her opacity that she could neutralize all enquiries. It was as if she had overcome, in secret, whatever obstacle had hitherto kept her obediently at home, a daughter to her parents, one whose loyalty would never be in doubt, for there was no occasion on which it had ever been doubted.

With the sherry the discussion turned to holidays. Oscar and Dorrie had a flat on the Spanish coast, near Puerto Banus, and they usually went there at the end of April for a couple of weeks. They so hated leaving home that they never contemplated this visit without a return of their habitual melancholy, and had to be urged into it by their more vigorous relations, all of whom seemed to be anxious to get them there and back as quickly as possible. I actually liked to think of them sitting on their balcony, silently musing on whatever preoccupied them, emerging from this silence only to
drink a cup of tea or to eat a thoughtful meal. I imagined them delivered from their leisure only when the sun went down, for although they dutifully paid their respects to it they preferred to withdraw behind the sliding glass doors that would eventually shut them off from the heat and the dazzle and the car horns. Then, in the delivering dusk, they would turn to each other and smile. I imagined Oscar holding out a hand to Dorrie and saying, ‘All right, darling?’, as if another day’s trial had been successfully overcome. Actually, although they went to the flat two or three times a year, I believe they were only happy in their accustomed chairs in Wimbledon. They were at the same time timorous and worldly, yet their preoccupations seemed to remove them from the sphere they so successfully occupied.

‘Yes, I expect we shall be off in a couple of weeks,’ said Oscar with a sigh, and Dorrie added, as if to comfort him, ‘Heather does so love the sun. And she needs it after working so hard all the winter.’

Heather cleared her throat slowly. ‘I don’t think I’ll be coming this time,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can make it.’

Dorrie and her sisters turned to her as one. ‘But, darling,’ Dorrie began, only to be interrupted by the aunts. ‘But you always go in the spring, dear,’ and, ‘You love it there. You know you do.’ It was Ann, Sam’s effete wife, who was never quite in tune with the others, who said, ‘Maybe Heather’s got other plans this year.’ This was felt to be something of an intrusion, yet it was clear that no one was to leave the room until the reason for Heather’s curious behaviour had been brought to light. It was again Ann, who always tried so hard and usually so unsuccessfully to keep up with the others, who said, ‘I think Heather’s met someone at last.’

‘Yes, I have, actually,’ said Heather indifferently. ‘Any more sherry, Mummy?’

With a slightly shaking hand, Dorrie poured her
daughter a second glass of sherry. Her face expressed both delight and terror. The aunts, on the other hand, were disconcerted. That this should have been accomplished without their intervention did not altogether please them. They thought, I am sure, of those little parties at which Heather had so signally failed to shine and which provided them with secret ammunition against their too successful sister, she who had been so backward in youth that they were accustomed to think of her as in need of their patronage.

‘Very nice, dear,’ said Gerald moderately, for he no doubt saw vistas of conversation waiting for him when he got home, spoiling his evening’s television.

‘Well, tell us more about him.’ This was Rosemary, Lawrence’s wife, and the more aggressive of the two. Her tone of voice revealed her to be affronted. There was danger in the air, as there always is when mixed motives come to the surface.

‘Oh, I dare say you’ll meet him one of these days,’ replied Heather, scoring yet another almost invisible victory. ‘We’d better go, Mummy, if I’m to drop Rachel off.’

‘Are you out tonight, dear?’ asked Dorrie. This was still a permitted question, as it was asked every week.

‘Yes,’ was all Heather would say.

And I, who was to be so summarily dropped off, rather than taken home, began to feel a little superfluous. I think I began to see a time when these childish afternoons, the delight of my all too adult life, would no longer include me. There was no reason why they should, after all. I was there by stealth, for by no stretch of the imagination could I now apply to Oscar in any business capacity, although I think he would have been flattered if I had done so. And if I were no longer needed to guide Heather through life, on what pretext could I possibly be expected to accompany her in whatever lay before her? Heather’s future avatars were in no sense
dependent on me, as was shown by her performance this afternoon, and the secrecy in which she had matured whatever she had in mind. A part of me – that part of us that never grows up – felt sad, and when I glanced across at Oscar I saw that he felt sad too.

At first I thought this might be an early recurrence of Oscar’s habitual melancholy, although it rarely came upon him when his family was gathered safely around him and subject to his anxious hospitality. Indeed it was only the sight of those whom he loved, or perhaps, more importantly, of those whom he knew and who knew him, that ever lifted the veil of inwardness from Oscar’s face. That was why he always greeted me so kindly, relieved as he was that someone had arrived to break the spell that seemed to enfold him. And this also explained his mild desire to be of service, even to the extent of going through one’s figures and doing all the boring things that had once claimed his attention all day and every day. It seemed to me that since nobody applied to him in this capacity any longer he might feel more lonely, although he was surrounded by family affection. But now that he was inactive professionally, he may have become more dependent on these ties, as if he felt that only they could sustain him. I do not think that I exaggerate. Oscar was bound to suffer more from the great change that had taken place in his circumstances than Dorrie; chasms may have opened beneath his feet for all I know. I had never thought to ask him such a personal question, assuming the mood to be one of delicate but general rejoicing. Now I was shocked to see his face so drawn, as he looked at his daughter, looked to his wife, and then got up and poured another glass of whisky for Sam, and, exceptionally, another for himself.