Fictional Lives (13 page)

He had killed her. He had killed her. He told himself this again and again as he lay in his hospital bed. He told himself this as he answered a phone-call—he had been about to call
himself—from his publishers, and having listened to their condolences, and to their expressions of relief that he at least was all right, told them that they would, in the next day or two, be receiving a manuscript from him; a manuscript that was under no circumstances to be opened or looked at, and was to be returned instantly to him. He told himself this as he spoke to the police, and recounted how he had gone out to the post-office just before five, how he had walked back to his house, built up the fire in his study, and then, feeling weary, had gone to his bed to rest for an hour or so; and how, woken by the smoke, he had heard Mrs Stein screaming, and had realized she had come in while he had been out. And he told himself this as he spoke to the reporters who besieged the hospital, and he repeated and repeated—which was why he agreed to speak to them; it was the very least he could do for the poor woman’s memory—that Anna Stein hadn’t ‘just’ been his housekeeper. She had been far, far more. She had been—and he didn’t care how emotional it sounded—the only woman he had ever loved.

Perhaps the tragedy happened in a slow week for news. Or perhaps there was something about it that appealed to newspaper proprietors. The reserved English writer and the refugee…. (Ah, and how he learned now the facts of Mrs Stein’s life!) Whatever the reason, within a week the story, and again that photograph, had appeared not only in English papers, but in the papers and magazines of half the world. And within a year Walter realized that those logs he had displaced from his hearth had ignited not only his house, but also the hitherto barely warm embers of his reputation. For his publishers, having at last a name to play with, and able to beat effectively on the drums of publicity, had reprinted a number of his books; and had brought them out—because of that publicity?—to greater attention and acclaim than their author had ever dreamed possible….

To such attention and acclaim, indeed, that fairly soon Walter Drake had become something of a cult figure; and was well on his way to being considered a modern master. And as he saw his reputation growing, and the beliefs he had always passionately held being given the dues he thought they deserved, he even, very discreetly, started to lend his own scarred hands to the beating of the drums.

Yet though, by the age of fifty-five, he had attained the position he had aspired to for so long, and though, especially among the young, his ideas had found a fertile ground in which to flourish, he was not, according to his own definition, a happy man.

Nor, he told himself one day, as, after much deliberation, he built a fire in the study of his new house, and threw onto it the manuscript of his autobiography, was he ever likely to be.

For he knew that whatever recognition he received, he would never be able to forget Mrs Stein and what he had done to her; and knew further, that though the world now hailed him as a wiseman, he would always, till the day he died, think of himself as a fool.

S
HE KNEW WHY HE’D DONE IT
; he was asserting his
independence
. Still, as she put the phone down, she was hurt. Not only because of the story, but also because of the way he had told it. There had been a note of glee in his voice; as if he had known he was hurting her, and had wanted to hurt her.

‘Basically it’s the story of a rich unattractive woman married to a younger man who plans to kill her to inherit her money and marry the woman he has been having an affair with for years.’

‘I imagine,’ she had said, ‘that the rich unattractive woman’s name is Fran, that her husband’s name is Gerhard, and the other woman’s name is Lucie.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Fran,’ he had protested, all righteous indignation. ‘Stop being paranoid.’

Then he had laughed.

Not for the first time, as she uncurled her little legs from the sofa, got up, and went to find a cigarette, she considered asking him to move; or even evicting him. Of course if she did he would really attack her, really savage her. But at least then she would have the satisfaction of knowing that his attack was that of the abandoned stray; that it was, in a sense, justified. Whereas to be bitten by a creature she had always given shelter to, had fed tid-bits to, and had doted on, would not only bring her no satisfaction, but would make her very wary of ever giving shelter to anyone else. Which would be a terrible state of affairs.

She needed a pet about the place.

Two minutes later, however, having lit a cigarette, having put on a record of some music by a young Polish composer she had just discovered, and having told herself she didn’t care that Gerhard, who would be home shortly, would berate her for doing both, she dismissed any such consideration from her mind. For one thing she knew that it was extremely unlikely that David would actually write that story; it wasn’t at all his genre. For another she
did
understand him, and realized it
must
be difficult for him to feel dependent on her. And for yet another, she couldn’t throw him out because of all the young men and women she had given shelter to in the past, he was the first who promised to be—who already was—something more than a lame dog. He was the first, indeed, who promised to be a champion….

Possibly, though, it was just this sense that she had, almost in spite of herself, picked a winner this time—and therefore couldn’t evict him—that made Fran feel, when Gerhard did come in, and she told him, as casually as she could, the plot of the book that David Chezzel was proposing to write, more hurt than ever. Not only hurt but also, absurdly, frightened. If it was
not
because of this, it was because after Gerhard, looking both angry and amused, had listened to her, he had told her that she knew he couldn’t stand to be in the house if she’d been smoking, or if she were playing her squeaks and bumps—and had gone out again.

As he had left he had called, with a laugh, ‘I think David’s story is quite good. Though God knows why
you’re
helping him to write it.’

*

It had been a ridiculous thing to say, Fran told herself as she went to bed at eleven. (Gerhard wasn’t back yet.) Still, she hadn’t been able to help repeating it to herself all evening as she waited for her husband, made dinner for Cyrus, and thought again and again of that story; and couldn’t help
repeating it to herself now as she lay alone between the sheets.

Obviously in one way she knew why she was helping David; it was for the same reason she had helped all those others. She was (trying to see herself objectively) a small, plump, unattractive, middle-aged woman, who was extremely wealthy and reasonably intelligent. Yet though she was intelligent, hers was an analytical intelligence, a critical intelligence. It was not a creative intelligence. She could see through anything; discern its nature, its texture, its composition. She could also see through anyone, herself included. Her vision of the world was, she liked to think, unclouded by rhetoric, sentimentality, or guilt. Or—she liked to think more—by meanness, greed or pettiness. Some of her friends summed her up by saying she had great taste; others by saying she was happy. Both in a way were true; yet they were both terms she dismissed as largely meaningless. She had taken account of the cards she had been dealt; and played with them as best she could. That was all there was to it. And one of the cards she hadn’t been dealt was imagination. She could cope with the facts as she saw them, and she saw them exceptionally clearly; but she couldn’t cope with facts, or even conceive of facts, that she didn’t see. Realizing this quite early on, and realizing equally that imagination was a force that had to be reckoned with—without imagination there would be no music, no paintings, no plays, no books (all the things, in other words, that served to make reality
understandable
to her)—she determined to do something to encourage the growth of this flower that was not in her own garden. And caring more for books than for any other form of art—and owning, amongst other things, an apartment building in the West Seventies—she had, from the age of twenty-six onwards, kept three rooms in this building free for writers who needed somewhere to live. She had offered the place to young authors she liked, or to authors who had been recommended to her, and she was always very business-like about the terms of their stay.
She—aside from not charging them any rent—took care of the electricity and gas, did not (in theory; in practice she frequently did) take care of the telephone, and gave them money if they had none at all. They in return undertook to leave the apartment at the end of the year, or however long a period had been agreed upon; and to do some writing. (Only once had she had any trouble, and been forced to evict someone. It had been an unpleasant business; but necessary.) The fact that none of her tenants had fulfilled their promise had never worried her; she had never expected to see a prize rose bloom from every shoot she tended, and had always thought that if just one in her lifetime did, she would count herself lucky.

Yet as she lay in bed, going through these reasons for having maintained that apartment and all its inmates for so long, she found herself wondering if, deep down in her, she hadn’t always known that those shoots wouldn’t bloom, and, what was more, hadn’t really wanted them to. She wondered, indeed, if far from trying to encourage imagination, she hadn’t always been afraid of it, and had been hoping to keep it in check. Which was why she had always thought (though without malice) of her writers in residence as pets, and then lame dogs; and why, in another way, Gerhard’s parting remark about David hadn’t been so ridiculous. Perhaps her husband had always perceived, more clearly for once than herself, the motives for her so-called generosity; and perceived now that David Chezzel didn’t, or wouldn’t, meet her requirements. He wasn’t, to return to the imagery of flowers, going to wither away; and he was, huge and scarlet, going to dominate her hitherto
rose-less
portion of the earth. He was going to overshadow her, he was going to draw all the goodness from the rest of her soil; and she, mere assistant gardener that she was, was going to find her life controlled by him. Controlled by the very fact of trying to keep
him
under control….

No. Gerhard hadn’t after all been so ridiculous. God knows why she
was
helping David to write this story….

She turned over and told herself to stop being stupid. Being overshadowed. Being controlled. What nonsense. David was just a writer—a good one—who had, for the reason she had understood immediately, told her an unkind story. There was nothing more to it than that. She had no cause to be frightened—either of him, or his projected book—and she would not be. She supported him for exactly the same purpose as she had supported everyone else—which
was
to encourage him—and she was glad to do so. And now she would think about something else.

She would think, for example, about where Gerhard was. She would wonder if he was with Lucie Schmidt; and she would wonder, if he was, what they were talking about….

*

In fact—there again because it would have required imagination to worry and wonder about such things, and she couldn’t worry about the unknown—she fell asleep almost immediately; and it wasn’t until the following morning, when she was having breakfast with Gerhard, that she really started to dwell on the subject of where her husband had been the night before. To dwell on it and, since he was sitting opposite her, to ask him.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘I went out, had a few drinks, had dinner, had a few more drinks, then went to a movie somewhere.’ He smiled across the table with his most disarming smile. ‘But honestly I don’t remember.’

Fran stared at him, trying to discover the truth in his eyes. She knew it was useless however. Gerhard’s loss of memory when he had been drinking was one of the basic moves of his game; and she had never, throughout the fifteen years of their marriage, known whether he were bluffing. It happened on average once a month—though recently had been happening more often—and sometimes made her laugh, sometimes
irritated 
her, sometimes made her admire him—if he were bluffing he bluffed with such a straight face it was impossible not to admire him—and sometimes, as this morning, made her very angry. It was too easy. Not to know anything—and by implication not to be responsible for anything—just because he had had a few drinks too many. Or to have a few drinks too many in order to say he didn’t know anything, and wasn’t responsible for anything.

For a moment she was tempted to challenge him; to tell him that he hadn’t been drunk at all last night, knew perfectly well where he had been—with his French mistress—and had only used his dislike for modern music and the smell of cigarettes as an excuse to walk out on her. He had been intending to walk out anyway, and if she hadn’t been smoking he would have found some other pretext for leaving. He would have told her that she was looking tired, or miserable, or old…. But partly because Cyrus too was sitting at the table, and she didn’t like to reveal her anger to her son, and partly because she did know it was useless—he would blandly assure her that he had been bombed; and less blandly tell her that it was her own fault anyway; he really
couldn’t
bear the smell of cigarettes, or the sound of that damn music she listened to—she held her tongue; and contented herself by remarking, sourly, that this was the third time in three weeks that he had been afflicted with amnesia, that if he weren’t careful his condition would become chronic, and that it was very strange he was only so afflicted in the evenings. Why was it that however much he drank at lunch he always managed to retain his faculties throughout an afternoon at the office?

Now it was Gerhard’s turn to seem about to lose his temper. His grey eyes gazed at her as if she were not just unattractive, but truly repulsive; and he pursed his lips as if he were about to spit. Then, like her—and probably, again, because of the boy—he managed to control himself. And smiling at her once
more, he told her it was undoubtedly because though he did sometimes drink a lot at his business lunches, he never totally let himself go. Whereas as soon as he had finished work….

‘Anyway,’ he added, as if the very idea were hilarious, ‘where did you think I was? Out plotting with Lucie?’

That, Cyrus or no Cyrus, really would have made her explode—she would not have that woman’s name mentioned in her house—if, even as she was trying, as it were, to take aim, to make sure the whole blast went off in that smug German face, her son himself hadn’t defused her.

‘Why,’ he said brightly, ‘doesn’t Lucie stay with us any more when she’s in New York?’

Because, Fran wanted to say, the last time she did I caught your father making love to her. Or if not that, and to be certain that Cyrus’s sympathy was entirely with her: Because your father is planning to kill me and marry her. But naturally she said neither—the first was true, but might have upset the boy; the second, aside from upsetting him more, was definitely not true—and shrugged the question off with a murmured ‘Because she prefers to stay in a hotel. She likes to be independent.’ And by the time she had gathered her wits together to murmur this, the danger was over. Though if he ever
did
mention that name again, she told her husband with a glance, there would be such an explosion that the whole structure of their life together would come crashing down.

*

She had spent much of the evening before asking herself why she supported David Chezzel; she spent much of that day, after she had seen Cyrus off to school, had received a kind of apology from Gerhard—an apology that took the form of his asking her if it would be all right if he came to the ballet with her tonight—and had kissed him and wished him a good day at the office, asking herself why she supported her husband.

But though—as she spoke to friends on the phone, read the
paper, did some shopping, had lunch with her lawyer, went round a couple of galleries, met the editor of a literary magazine that she helped to finance, had tea with her mother, went home, talked and read a book with Cyrus, bathed and got ready for the ballet—she did ask herself this question, the answer she kept on giving herself was, at least superficially, far simpler than the answer she had given herself regarding David. She supported Gerhard because she loved him.

She had always believed that her looks, if they didn’t precisely account for her intelligence, accounted for its nature. From the age of twelve or thirteen she had realized that she was not, nor was ever likely to be, a pretty girl. She had short thick legs, pudgy little hands, dull brown hair that was neither straight nor curly, and a face that had absolutely nothing special or striking about it. She had a small nose, a small mouth, and small eyes; that was all. To begin with she told herself she didn’t care—her home life was very happy, and her quiet kind parents loved her as much as she loved them—and that she much preferred reading, listening to music, and going to the ballet, than dressing up and having boys ask her for dates. But inevitably perhaps, in a world so dominated by beautiful images, where appearance was held to be important, and an attractive appearance held to be desirable, her own less than beautiful image began, around the age of fourteen, to distress her. She could do, she instinctively realized, one of two things. The first was to flee from that distress, to feel upset, if not bitter about her looks, and to try to disguise them with carefully studied hair-styles, make-up, and clothes. The second was to face her distress head-on, analyse it, and attempt to see her longing for an attractive appearance for what she believed it was: either a longing to recapture the harmony of nature that she felt herself cut off from; or a longing to cut herself off entirely from nature, and make herself into a hard and brilliant artefact that was safe from the ravages of time,
and the world. She chose, logically—since the first could only end in failure; in an ever more desperate flight, and bitterness—the second course. And having done so—having, that is, come to terms with her physical self—though she did, thereafter, have the occasional moment of regret that she didn’t look like a movie-star or a ballet dancer, she never really worried about not being tall and slim and possessing huge dark eyes, and accepted that those boyfriends she did have would be attracted by her personality rather than by her face and figure.