Brief Lives (13 page)

When I came round I was sitting on a wooden chair in somebody’s office. ‘Come along, my dear,’ said Bernard. ‘There is only one thing more to be done tonight, but it is important. This paper has to be signed by his next of kin. No one else can do it. It is important,’ he sighed, pressing his handkerchief to his upper lip. ‘Permission for burial to go ahead.’

‘Here?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘The heat,’ he said. ‘They do not advise moving the body.’

I fainted again then. I fainted several times during the following two days, so that I was not able to attend the funeral and to see Owen put into the ground. I was not sorry. Frances came to me afterwards and talked to me as I lay on my bed in the Hôtel de Plaisance, still in my creased suit, one shoe fallen to the floor. I think she must have realized that I was better kept out of sight. Then, when there was nothing more to be done, they brought me home.

I arrived home in the early evening of a grey drizzling day in early September. The weather had broken in my
absence and it was almost cold. I looked curiously at the house in Gertrude Street. Was I supposed to live here? I stood on the pavement
gazing
in perplexity at the silent façade. It worried me that Owen had left no message, no instructions. I did not know what he wanted me to do. I was so tired, so weak, that my inclination was to do nothing, yet even in my debilitated condition I knew that I should have to leave that house, which had never belonged to me and of which I had never felt a part. But I was no longer used to making decisions on my own, and in my mind I felt timid, uncertain. I even felt uncertain about entering the house and only did so when rain trickled from my hair on to my forehead. I managed to put on a kettle and make a cup of tea which I drank with lemon since the milk, which had been on the doorstep, was sour. The sharpness of the lemon made me wince. What I craved was sweetness, comfort. I would have welcomed the chance to regress, but none came; there was no soothing voice. I took off my filthy suit and the soiled blouse and put them aside to be thrown away, together with everything else I was wearing. Then, naked, unwieldy, I crossed to the bedroom on painful feet and fell into bed and slept. I slept for nearly twelve hours and aged several years in the course of that long night.

I awoke clear-headed, rational, even cold. It was a curious state of mind; I felt fatalistic, reduced, even slightly mean-spirited. I felt bitterly towards Owen for the frivolous circumstances in which he had died. I even—and this was a shock to me—saw him as what he was, a not very ideal husband. The ultimate frustration of not knowing what he wanted or thought or intended was with me very forcibly. I was conscious of the fact that he had left me alone—for ever, this time—and I resented it. I was dull, rancorous. I did not know then that one frequently fails to live up to the
enormity of death. I even felt hungry. I had not eaten much for days, and there was no food in the house. I glanced out of the window at what I could see of the grey wet street, then I swung my legs out of Hermione’s outsize bed and went downstairs.

After I had drunk another cup of acid tea, had bathed and washed my hair, and dressed in a grey skirt and a grey cardigan—for this seemed the nearest thing to black—I took my basket and prepared to go round to Vinnie. I glanced down the hall, looked at the silent telephone. Silence was to be my burden, my portion. I did not expect anyone to care what happened to me in the future. It occurred to me that I was free, as I never wanted to be free. I experienced this freedom as a sort of shame. If I was free it was because nobody needed me, because there had been a failure of some sort. It would be a matter of discretion to disappear from the lives of Vinnie and Bernard, and of course, Charlie and Julia; no one, I thought, would press me to stay. In fact the partners at Hanover Square might be relieved that I made no further demands on them. There was the little matter of the money in Owen’s drawer, which I thought I might hand over to Charlie, together with an account of Owen’s death. Fortunately he was away and not due back for a week. I would give him my new address as a matter of courtesy but I did not expect to see either of them again. For I had known, even in the fatigue of the previous evening, that I must move.

I am a simple woman, and always was. But my life had become complicated, and I had actively encouraged the process. My husband, his friends, my mother-in-law, this awful house, suddenly seemed extraneous to me. I even longed, as my mother had once done, for a little flat somewhere, with a tidy kitchen and a cosy bedroom, and perhaps
a balcony. I could live there unnoticed for the rest of my days, tempting my appetite with modest delicacies, watching television, following serials on the radio. I should not be missed: I had been too marginal. It was my duty now to be obscure and self-sufficient, as befits all widows. I felt no great surprise at my decision. My only concern was that I might not have the strength to find that flat, to go through the wearisome process of selling the house and storing the furniture, which I did not want. I would ask Bernard to handle the legal side of things for me. He might even like the house for his son, whose wife was expecting her third child. I longed to hand it over, and to disappear.

When I saw Vinnie I knew that she had been dealt a blow from which she would never recover. She sat huddled in her chair, in her pink suit, oblivious to her ruined face on which all the colours had run. She clutched a man’s handkerchief, and there was a glass of whisky beside her, but her hands were shaking too much for her to reach for it. I went into the kitchen and made her some hot coffee, knelt beside her while I guided the cup to her mouth. She did not seem to resent me, although I could not cry. This, I knew, she would remember later, when she recounted the story to her friends.

‘Let me put you to bed, Vinnie,’ I said. ‘You’re shivering. It’s the shock.’

‘Fay,’ she said, smearing the colours on her face with the handkerchief she held to her shaking mouth. ‘My heart is broken.’ Those were the simplest and the truest words she had ever spoken to me, and I put my arms round her and held her tiny body to mine. Then I put her to bed and sat with her until she slept. On my way out I alerted a neighbour, a Mrs Bliss, who promised to keep an eye on her. I reminded myself to get keys cut, for Mrs Bliss and for
myself. Then I went back to Gertrude Street and sat in a darkening room until it was late enough for me to go to bed as well.

On the following morning I made an appointment to see Bernard at the office. This, I thought, was the correct thing to do. I did not want to embarrass him further after my inadequate behaviour in Nice, and in truth what had we to discuss other than business? At Hanover Square I met serious faces and condolences; my hand was shaken, my shoulder patted several times by people I hardly knew, for I had only seen them at Christmas parties. Bernard looked old and tired. He seemed to be in a worse state than I was. I was still cold and clear-headed, although physically weak. I knew that I should not feel better until I could get into that little place of my own, where I could live my own small life, undisturbed.

‘Bernard,’ I said, rather quickly, for he looked ill and this was a strain on him. The journey had upset him; these days he did not like to move farther than his house in Wiltshire. ‘I’ll have to sell Gertrude Street. I was wondering if Paul and Caroline would like to have it.’

His face brightened. ‘I know they would,’ he said. ‘They were looking for something bigger. And Caroline is having rather a difficult time,’ He paused. ‘I’ll have it valued for you, if you’re sure.’

‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want a great price for it. Just enough to buy me a little flat and to provide something for Vinnie. I thought you might handle the money for her. Bernard, I think she’s very poorly. I must pay someone to look after her.’

‘Yes, yes.’ He sighed. ‘When would you want to move?’

‘I’ll start looking for a flat. There’s no need for a valuation.’

He looked shocked. ‘Things must be done properly, Fay. You want to get it all over now, I know, but there’s the future to think of. How will you live, my dear?’

‘Quietly,’ I said, and at last I could feel the tears beginning. He saw me to the door, patted my arm, and turned away. Later that day Frances called on me. I thought that nice of her. She had always been vaguely pleasant, like someone I hardly knew, but she had cared for me in Nice. Without her I doubt if I could have got home. I managed to assemble some tea, and she tactfully rose to go when I was shaken with hiccoughs and racking yawns. She had brought me a sleeping pill, which was an incredibly sensible thing to do, and I promised to take it, even though I knew that sleep, which I craved, would come easily. When she left I realized that that part of my life, the married part, was over. I stood at the window watching her get into her car, then following the car mentally on its way to Egerton Crescent. Then there was nothing left to do but take my pill and go to bed.

‘IT’S TOO DREADFUL,’
said Julia in a broken voice, which nevertheless held an undertone of fretfulness. ‘Too dreadful. That poor poor young man.’ Owen had been fifty-two at the time of his death. ‘So dear to us all.’

The difficulty, as I saw it, was that she was trying to manage a public self whereas she was by nature a miniaturist who excelled at drawing into her field of activity nuances, intimations, unspoken thought, the most tenuous of personal statements. She was better at the glancing criticism than at spontaneous magnanimity. Magnanimity was too big, too grand a concept for her to make anything of it: it went with statues in public places, Beethoven symphonies, the condescension of rulers. Julia was essentially a creature of insinuation, the eyelids lowered and then flying open, request and accusation mingling, retribution to follow. None of this bothered me, or rather my irritation was tempered by the knowledge that after this visit I could withdraw from her little circle of acolytes and live my own small
life somewhere out of reach. I had no time for her tragic attitudes, for I knew that whatever pain she felt was always confined to her own preoccupations; I had sensed the impatience in her tone at having to defer to me—her audience, her inferior—on this occasion, at having to displace herself from Onslow Square, with Maureen in attendance rather than Charlie, to pay her visit of condolence. In fact we both felt a certain impatience, but the ritual had apparently to be observed and by the same token endured.

‘But then it’s all so dreadful,’ Julia went on. ‘Mummy getting older and Gerald in difficulty at work, poor darling. Of course, that job is simply not good enough for him. To think of a Wilberforce working as a car salesman! Those people never did understand him. And now Owen,’ she went on, remembering why she was here in my drawing-room and plunging her head into her hands in a pantomime of grief. It may even have been genuine: there was certainly something like a tear in her eye when she raised her head.

‘Your tea, Julia,’ I said. ‘Maureen, do let me give you some cake.’

‘You must be brave,’ said Julia bravely. ‘We must all be brave. When I think of how the world has changed! As I said to Charlie, only last night, it’s not my world any more. No beauty, no elegance, no distinction. Not a gentleman in sight. We’re all supposed to be cockneys now, aren’t we, all mucking in together. And this hatred of the upper classes! Well, I’ll never be anything else. I’m out of touch. I’m finished. My day is done.’

The melancholy smile that accompanied these remarks demonstrated the true source of Julia’s grief, which, as usual, was very close to her own concerns. It was only with an immense effort that she was capable of abstract thought, and then she only managed it for a second or two at a time.
Maureen’s role on this unique occasion was to mimic sympathy—for Julia, that is—and to attend to her as if she were extremely frail, an invalid in comparison with whom I was perceived as coarse-grained. I even perceived this myself. I was aware of my humbler and simpler background; I was aware of the likely verdict of a man like my father on Julia’s social observations, and I could feel the years dropping away and myself reverting to the naïve and optimistic girl I had once been, if only as a counterweight to this salon performance, this essay in the higher cliché.

‘A little whisky, Julia,’ I said.

‘Thank you, darling.’ She stretched out her cramped hands, rubbed them, and returned them to her lap.

‘Your pills, Julia,’ warned Maureen. ‘It’s better if she takes them with a drop of milk,’ she confided to me. ‘That way they don’t upset the stomach.’

‘I’m sure you can find a clean cup in the kitchen,’ said Julia. ‘No, let her go, she’s quite capable of finding her own way. And frankly, her voice gets on my nerves,’ she said, without much lowering her own voice. ‘I’ve tried to train her, but it doesn’t seem to take. “Juli-erre,” she says. “Juli-erre.” I’ve tried to tell her that it’s light, short. “Julia.” ’ Her face lit up, as with glad tidings, as she pronounced her own name. ‘Yet God knows I couldn’t do without her. I wish I could. But I’m a poor old woman now. My day is done.’ She took the two pills handed to her by Maureen and knocked them back like a sailor taking a tot of rum.