Brief Lives (27 page)

I was aware that my preoccupations were becoming too unbalanced to appeal to Dr Carter, who only valued me as someone independent, comfortably off, and quite attractive for my age. In other words he thought I was as selfish as he was, whereas in fact I was more selfish, since I wanted from him what he was not prepared—was perhaps unable—to
give. He was fond of me, would have been shocked if I had told him that I did not want to see him again, and yet he was armoured against me. I was part of his bachelor life, and he thought that enough, whereas I regarded his bachelor status as temporary and suspected that if he were to renounce it and marry again I should have no part in that existence, for he would not be married to me. Someone bolder would have claimed him, and he would have succumbed, like any other man, for men can be quite cheap in this respect. All this I saw quite clearly. I saw that we might keep up this guarded and amusing friendship until something irreparable were said or done, and I had to strive mightily to suppress those words which would have told him of the rage and sorrow in my heart and of how he had caused them. And yet, on another level, he intrigued me, as I intrigued him. I told myself that I had only known him for a few months and that he was cautious by nature, but I knew that we had already reached a point at which we had ceased to be acquaintances. I told myself that my melancholy mood was unjustified; however, I could not shake it off. The children going to school, the old men walking their dogs, the ladies with their shopping baskets all seemed to me to be citizens of a world from which I was excluded. I tried, without complete success, to present a smiling face and an equable temperament to those with whom I came into contact. I still dressed carefully, still stepped out cheerfully into the sunny mornings. And yet I felt as if my days were numbered.

I understand it all now, of course. My days were in fact numbered by the fear that descended on me from time to time. This fear had to do with Julia’s loneliness and my curious obligation to her, as if I depended on her favour, as if she might recall me at any time. Part of the reason why
I left the flat so early in the morning and returned so late at night was a desire not to hear the telephone and Julia’s demand—or was it a command?—that I should call on her as soon as possible. In this context alone Alan Carter would have seemed desirable, yet I was not unscrupulous enough to shelter behind his non-existent invitations. I went, haplessly, to Onslow Square when my conscience made my life sufficiently uncomfortable for me to seek the one thing that would momentarily cancel my account, yet this never entirely worked, for I was always castigated for not having come earlier, on the day before, for example, which, she implied, would have been more convenient. In reality her dissatisfaction sprang from the fact that I reminded her of the existence of a world in which she was completely forgotten. On these occasions it seemed to me that Julia would live for ever, for there was no appreciable alteration in her appearance, apart from a thinning of the features. The mask of her face was still impassive; above her high forehead the defiantly bronzed hair was carefully coiffed, yet I noticed that the rings were loose on her now slightly bent fingers, and one day I was disproportionately shocked to find her wearing only one earring. It was the first sign that her control was not what it once had been. ‘Why, Julia,’ I said. ‘You’ve lost an earring.’ ‘I dropped it somewhere,’ she replied indifferently. Later that morning I saw a gleam beside her narrow left foot. ‘There it is!’ I said. ‘Beside your foot. Don’t tread on it.’ But as I bent down to pick it up the slow foot brushed over it and crushed it. This incident disturbed me. Julia said nothing, pretended not to notice. Mrs Wheeler, arriving with a tray of coffee, pursed her lips and nodded meaningfully in my direction behind Julia’s rigid back.

These visits gave her little pleasure; what gave her pleasure
was the discomfort they caused me. ‘How’s that man of yours?’ she would say. ‘What’s he like in bed?’ Apart from the peculiar distress this question caused me I sensed in her attitude a loathing which could only be appeased by unseemly detail. It became a torment for me, and some form of perverse satisfaction for Julia to note the blush stealing over my face. The blush was for my inadequacy, my incompetence as a woman, unable as I was to deal with this question, either to confess the truth or to laugh at it. I had never encountered real malice in a woman before, and I was completely at a loss as to how to deal with it. If I hoped to inveigle Julia into some form of indulgence I paid dearly for my simple-mindedness in supposing that such a thing existed. ‘He’s very nice,’ I would say, smiling brightly and willing my burning cheeks to subside. ‘But you mustn’t suppose that I know him all that well. It’s only been a few months since I met him.’ ‘You must be very slow,’ she would say. ‘It wouldn’t have taken me that long. I suppose that’s the difference between us.’ ‘Quite,’ I would reply. ‘And now behave yourself. Have you heard from Maureen?’ But this was another delicate matter, for Maureen had not invited Julia to her wedding. Her excuse was that Julia could not have made the journey to Devon, but I rather think she might have done, in a hired car. I might even have taken her myself. Julia had been shocked, as I had been on her behalf. When the ruined slice of wedding cake arrived she threw it in the waste-paper basket with a hand that trembled slightly and asked me to pour her a drink.

I think that her sadness was as great as my own, but that every vestige of human charity had deserted her. She still gained a certain pleasure from being rude to me, and my feeling was that I could hardly deny her this pleasure. For what did it matter? She had become so painful and burdensome
a subject in my mind that I underwent actual encounters with her as a form of martyrdom. What did it matter if she were ruder one day than on another? The glorious sun shone outside the windows and I could eventually escape into it, leaving the brooding unforgiving presence until the next test of my faith. If my attendance were a form of expiation then it did not work for either of us. She could have tolerated complaints, grumbles, laments. What she could not tolerate was the small last hope she detected in my heart.

I believe that our meetings were damaging to both of us, for if they lacerated me they left Julia unappeased. She wanted scandal, and if possible defeat; she wanted me to provide her with an enthralling serial story in which I would appear in my worst light. ‘What’s his name?’ she asked me repeatedly. When I could no longer withhold it I felt vanquished. ‘Oh, Alan Carter. Yes, I remember. His wife ran off. Must be something wrong with him. Actually, I could do with another doctor—old Bannister’s hopeless. You might ask him to call round.’ I noted that she did not ask me to bring him round. The worst realization was that Julia would have amused Alan enormously. They would have got on like a house on fire. ‘I’ll mention it,’ I said, as carefully as possible. ‘But I believe he’s very busy.’ ‘Then you’ll just have to use your influence, won’t you?’ Her smile as she said this was the smile on the face of the tiger.

Thus frightened and humiliated I took no pleasure in the beautiful days, which became quieter when the schools broke up and families began to depart on holiday. My street took on a suburban calm, and I longed to preserve it, to enjoy it at leisure, in innocence, when my mood should change, if it ever did. ‘Will you go away?’ I asked Alan Carter timidly. ‘I’ve got a house on the Isle of Wight,’ he
replied. ‘We might run down there for a few days.’ This was so major a development that all fear temporarily left me. So great was my shock of pleasure that I almost wished to be left alone to savour it. He was drinking a glass of white wine in my sitting-room at the time, on his way to a dinner somewhere. He liked to start the evening in this way, liked both my eager welcome and the safety of his early departure. I think he feared the complicity that the late hours bring. He was superstitious enough to believe that the later he stayed the more deeply committed he would become. Maybe this was true. Maybe he even regretted his invitation to me as soon as he had offered it. To me it hardly mattered at the time. My reaction of joy was of course excessive, for I knew him too well to suppose that he intended any meaning to be read into what would at most be one of his fraternal interludes. But to me it meant a treat, an excuse to dress in pretty summer clothes, to be accompanied, to have a definite answer when people asked me whether I were going away; to me the invitation was a promise of the normality for which I longed. ‘When shall we go?’ I asked. He said he thought the beginning of September would do well enough. There was a faint grumpiness in his tone as if my sudden radiance were displeasing to him. This did not escape me, but it could not entirely dim my pleasure. I poured him another glass of wine, and said, casually, ‘You must leave all the housekeeping to me. Why don’t you come to dinner next week? We can get it all settled then. Nothing more to discuss—we can just get in the car and go.’ Even this was too much, but I no longer cared. Suddenly I could not go on as I was, eking out my careful existence, pretending that all was well, looking after the flat I did not much like, stepping out in the mornings with a smile on my face. I wanted my life back again, or as much of it as was
left to me; I was tired of moderation and good manners. Even the promise of a few days in the company of a man almost too recalcitrant to be tolerated fired me up and the face I turned to him must have been different, for he bent and kissed it, then hurriedly, and without looking back in my direction, took his leave. We arranged that he should come to dinner on the following Thursday.

The intervening week was indescribably pleasant to me. We were not too busy in the office as so many people were away, and there was time to drink a cup of tea with Mrs Harding and to leave a little early. I surveyed the food in the shops with the eye of a connoisseur, planning our dinner, which I wanted to be light and simple, and at the same time turning an indulgent eye on my domestic fantasies. I had reached an age at which the fantasies alone were almost enough sustenance, yet here I was, in my early sixties, making arrangements for an intimate dinner with an attractive man of my own age, as I had not done for many years. A vegetable terrine, I thought, followed by a dish of baked chicken and rice, with a fruit salad to follow. My step was light, my energy renewed. Mrs Harding told me how well I looked.

Julia was ostensibly forgotten, although the slight febrility of my behavior may have had something to do with the fact that while I had put her out of my mind she refused to be entirely absent. In unguarded moments her sceptical smile would materialize in the air in front of me, and I could feel her waiting, biding her time. I told myself that I should see her as soon as the dinner party was behind me; in fact, I told Julia this, gabbling my assurances in my desire not to have to talk to her at all, making otiose promises in exchange for my temporary freedom. I was just putting the finishing touches to the terrine on the Thursday morning
when the telephone rang. ‘Now look here,’ said Julia, her voice low and cold, less the voice of an old woman than of an old man. ‘Mrs Wheeler hasn’t turned up. Says she’s not well, not that I believe her. Swore she’s coming in tomorrow. But I need someone today. There’s no food in the house—not that I eat anything—and I haven’t had my bath.’ For one of Mrs Wheeler’s indispensable functions was to be present when Julia took her bath, for with her weak hands and feet she was in danger of falling. I contemplated my own hands, which were sticky with aspic, and said, ‘I’m sorry, Julia, I can’t manage today. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’ ‘I had a bad night,’ the voice went on. ‘I feel so stale and uncomfortable. If you could just come round for an hour this afternoon I think I might have a bath and go straight to bed. I couldn’t eat much. Perhaps you could bring some fruit or something.’

I put the telephone down very quietly, washed my hands with excessive care, refrigerated the terrine. I sliced the fruit for the fruit salad and put some in a plastic tub for Julia. I put two fresh rolls in a napkin and cut a wedge from the fine Stilton I had bought for Alan Carter. I was quite calm, but some of my early sadness had returned; my effervescent mood had disappeared, and had given way to a certain heaviness. I could still manage it, I thought. If I dressed first, asked Mrs Harding if I might leave early, went round to Onslow Square and then came home and completed my preparations I could still manage. I should have time in hand. And if we had to eat at half-past eight or nine there was nothing unusual in that. I dressed slowly in a blue silk blouse and a blue and black print skirt, noted that the sky was clouding over, looked at my puzzled face in the mirror. Then, taking my basket, I left the house almost eagerly,
anxious now to get the whole day over so that I could be alone again with no one, man or woman, to torment me.

It was very close, sunless, with a promise of a storm. ‘Why, Fay, how nice you look,’ said Mrs Harding. ‘I hope Doggie is not going to spoil that pretty skirt.’ I smiled sadly, my party mood gone. I got through the afternoon as though I had nothing better to do, as indeed was the case; my only desire was to help the people on the other end of the telephone, who were so much easier to help simply because they were so safely distant. A little before four-thirty I locked up, took my basket, and left. I calculated that if I got to Onslow Square just after five, or as soon after five as I could make it, I could leave by six or six-thirty at the latest and my evening would not suffer. Alan was coming at seven-thirty. Nothing need be lost.

I found Julia sitting in the drawing-room. She was dressed, and yet she looked dishevelled. ‘You’re very festive,’ she said. ‘What’s it all for?’ I went through to the kitchen to unload my basket and to make her a cup of tea. ‘Alan Carter is coming to dinner,’ I said. ‘Which is why I can’t stay. As soon as this tea is made I’m going to run your bath.’ I vanished into the bedroom, where I was obliged to make the bed. I had the beginning of a slight headache; the oppressive weather, no doubt, and the anxiety, an anxiety I had no desire to prolong. I ran the bath, and took two aspirin tablets from a bottle on Julia’s night table. A sort of hopelessness came over me. I contemplated racing back to the flat to cook the chicken. And the rice, always a delicate matter. And I had not yet laid the table. ‘Come on, Julia,’ I called. ‘It’s all ready for you.’ ‘Coming to dinner, is he?’ she said, making her way slowly into the bedroom. She undressed equally slowly, revealing the lingerie of a
cocotte
on limbs which were beginning to look wasted. The whiteness of her body shocked me: I did not think I should be witnessing it. I lowered her into the sweet-smelling water of the bath, and turned my back. By this time I was trembling, although I did not quite know why. ‘This man,’ said Julia, behind me. ‘Are you going to marry him?’ ‘Of course not,’ I said, as lightly as possible. ‘Come on, Julia, let me help you out.’ ‘But you’re having an affair with him, aren’t you?’ She stood up unsteadily, and water slopped against the side of the bath, splashing a little onto the floor and onto my skirt. ‘I am not having an affair with him,’ I said with loathing. ‘But you will, won’t you?’ ‘There’s no question of that. We might go away for a few days, that’s all.’