Look at Me (9 page)

In any event I kept this to myself, for I learned very quickly that I must never criticize. For happy and successful people, Nick and Alix were extraordinarily sensitive to criticism, and I learned not to look askance at her when she claimed to have come down in the world or complained of Maria or even of Nick, whose work occupied a good deal of his attention, attention which she thought should have been devoted entirely to herself. I can see now that she was not only restless but even dismayed by the lack of continuous satisfaction which her present life provided. It was for this reason that her attention seized on gossip, on intrigue, and, if none were to hand, usually through the agency of Maria, she would interrogate strangers, whom she thought looked interesting, and try to find out the central drama of their lives. We had certain discussions about this, for I maintained that dramas in a life took a long time to mature, that every life was of its essence dramatic, but that careful study was needed to perceive such dramas, either in the making or in the sad disappearance. But she insisted that I was wrong; some lives, she said, were more interesting than others, and most could be discounted. What she wanted was a drama that would last until something else claimed her attention, one that would fill an empty afternoon, or a week, or, at the very longest, a month. Her anecdotes were of a violent or sensational character, as if all the mediating information had been removed. ‘But he can’t just have dropped dead,’ I would protest, when she told me about her father, or, ‘How do you know she never spoke to him again?’ when she offered her account of Maria’s divorce. ‘Nonsense,’ she would say. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Fanny. You just don’t know what
makes people tick. How could you, working in that place and living in that morgue?’ There was no answer to this, and after a time I would cease to contradict her. When she claimed to have talked a woman out of a suicide attempt – a woman she had encountered in the supermarket, in tears – and that this woman, after suitable advice, had gone home in a totally different frame of mind, I said nothing. What could I say? I did not doubt that her assurance and her gusto could have an inspiring effect. And, thinking of Miss Morpeth, I certainly had no victories of my own to place in the balance.

So I learned to divert her, for, during a period when Nick was very busy and inclined to be late home, I took to making my own way over in the evenings, crossing the park in the fine autumn dusk. It was on those evenings, when I would stay with her until Nick came home, that I would tell her about the people in the Library, turning them into characters, making them broader and more extreme than I should have done had I been talking to my mother, or Olivia. As I intended, in my new life, to dispense with shadows, I made them all very clear-cut, and found them much more amusing that way. This served two purposes: it was a rehearsal for the workings of my novel, and it kept Alix from talking about money, which she tended to do when out of spirits, contrasting her past with her present circumstances. Although I could not see that the Frasers had ever lacked for money, although indeed they seemed to spend a great deal, I did see that her anxiety was genuine.

It was at moments like these that she would speak to me of letting the spare room, preferably to myself. The idea was overwhelmingly attractive to me. A move from Maida Vale would be symbolic; it would signify a complete break with the old sad way of life. I could walk out on the zig-zag rugs and the creaking hide chairs and the china and glass birds with as little sense of remorse as if
I had never seen them before; they would be left to the next tenant and in that way I would not feel a pang of sorrow at seeing my parents’ flat dismantled. Nancy could be dispatched to her sister in Cork, which would be appropriate, for I must admit that I did not look forward to her inevitable decline. She had been there at the beginning of my life; I did not want to witness the end of hers. I need bring nothing away with me. And there would always be company at the Frasers’. If I moved in with them I would be delivered from the silence of Sundays, and all those terrible public holidays – Christmas, Easter – when I could never, ever, find an adequate means of using up all the available time.

I find, however, that this particular dilemma, which I will call Public Holiday Syndrome and which I would rank next to Two-Star Hotel Bedroom Syndrome as an affliction to which I am particularly prone, is not to be talked about, even as a joke. It is generally felt that complaints about loneliness are unseemly and should be turned over to professional samaritans. My own friendships have always been strong, but they no longer satisfy me. I do not seek out friends so that they will offer consolation: I have a horror of that. I am an extremely good listener, and thus pretty well in demand, although recently I suppose I have been lazy. I have been aware of a boredom, a restlessness, that no ordinary friendship can satisfy: only an extraordinary one. I have grown tired of my lot, I suppose, and have wanted strenuously to change it. So I write, and I take a lot of long walks, and I ferment my ideas, and if I am lucky they come out as vivid as I should like real life to be. That may indeed be the purpose of the exercise. It just tends to break down at times like Good Friday or in places like dim foreign hotels. Then, the lure of company, any company, is enormous, and I feel it might be more sensible
to prepare myself for contingencies like these by accepting the sort of offer that Alix was now making.

The only thing that made me pause before finally committing myself was the thought of my novel waiting to be written. I knew that I would have to pay for the company of Alix and Nick with the surrender of all my free time; I knew that Alix would look on any withdrawal from their society with suspicion, and that Nick would consider me thoughtless if I left Alix on her own for any evening on which he might be late home. In short, if I were to consider myself a writer, then I was ideally situated in that warm silent flat in Maida Vale, with Nancy in the kitchen. She was not really a burden to me, nor was I a burden to her; we shared the same food, we knew each other’s habits and movements, we were allied by the same memories and associations. At Christmas, that time when we were both a little forlorn, I knew she would be desolate if she had to tell Sydney Goldsmith, who always paid a seasonal visit, that she was being moved back to Ireland. The image sprang up in my mind: Sydney proffering his lavish box of chocolates, Nancy in tears, a lace handkerchief of my mother’s (for I gave her most of the things) pressed to her mouth. I could not quite dismiss this image, although I had conjured it up. It did not strike me until much later that this scene, which was so vivid to me, had not yet taken place. I saw no significance in the fact that this episode, pieced together from elements observed at disparate moments (the box of chocolates from many previous occasions, the tears from yet another), seemed to be a memory but was in fact a conjuration. The fact that two sets of time had come together in this way I accepted as perfectly normal.

Moreover, I needed my peace and quiet for a little while longer, for I had just finished a short story – a rather amusing one, about Dr Leventhal’s disastrous
adventures on a Hellenic cruise – and had, on an impulse, sent it off to a prestigious American magazine. I needed to be alone, not only when it came back, as it surely would, but in case, just in case, I should be encouraged to write another. I would have to keep all this to myself, until I could produce the magazine, with my name in it, which was what I dreamed of doing, for with the sanction of public recognition I could gain some allowance of free time in which to write. I knew that it was hopeless to rely on intentions and ambitions. The Frasers could only understand success. Their sympathies were with the successful, not the unsuccessful, with the moneyed rather than with the poor, with the fortunate rather than with the unlucky. And besides, they liked action, speed, gratification, which I could not yet give them. I would have to bide my time.

There seemed to be no urgency. Alix rather liked to discuss the contingency of letting the room, not necessarily to me but to anyone; indeed, it was her favourite form of imaginative exercise. She was extremely good at practical arrangements, and seemed able to dispose of anybody’s random or unfinished business, their previous contracts, their future plans, with an efficiency that amounted to
brio
. Any definite decisions were usually obviated by the arrival of Nick and the discussions about where to have dinner, although as we usually went to the same place these discussions were about as academic as the ones about letting the room. But it is sometimes necessary to entertain the fantasies of others, or even to sit still while they entertain their own, so I usually switched off at about this point, making a mental note to myself to switch on again when my co-operation might really be needed.

But one evening, when I arrived in the King’s Road after my walk across the park, I found Nick already at home, and with him Dr Anstey, the other brilliant hope,
the ‘handful’ marked out by Mrs Halloran’s percipient eye. I remember that it was a Monday and that I had not seen the Frasers since the previous week. I found the three of them in heated conversation, and I was rather surprised and not too pleased to have our original intimacy broken up. I knew Dr Anstey from the Library, but there was little chance to say more than ‘Good morning’ there, for his visits were as rapid, decisive, and tight-lipped as Nick’s were charming and extravagant and discursive. Dr Anstey, who favoured a pharmacological approach to everything, seemed to me to have an abnormally retentive attitude towards his work, and this I compared unfavourably with that of Nick himself, who was full of anecdotes, most of them amusing, although somewhere at the back of my mind I had registered the fact that Dr Anstey was extremely meticulous, and that perhaps if one were ill, perhaps, even, if one were depressed, he would give one his full attention, take one seriously, and not simply see himself as being … I believe the word is ‘supportive’. Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course.

He also struck me as a rather cruel man, although it would have been difficult for me to say why. He was attractive, in a way that did not attract me, and which in any case paled into insignificance beside Nick’s smiling charm. He was as fair as Nick himself, but there the resemblance ended, for Dr Anstey’s hair, which looked almost gilt against the reddish colour of his face, was worn flat and close to his large elegant skull. I had previously noticed him only in terms of general height and an all-over haughtiness; he had a distinguished air but smiled little and seemed unapproachable. He had a way of looking at one as if demanding a full account of one’s progress and credentials; I always found myself working harder when he was around. His general bearing was that of an army officer, just conceivably a leader
of men. His features were large but good and so impassive that it was difficult to remember them individually. The eyes were hooded and light blue, and he seemed to look at one from under his eyelids. One’s attention was taken by his hands, which were large and angry-looking. In my mind’s eye he was always striding about the Library in a long and correctly tailored black overcoat; he always seemed to be there before I arrived, and he never said anything.

I found them looking animated and pleased with each other, and after my surprise I realized that it was only natural that he should be there; he and Nick were, after all, colleagues, even if their approaches were so very different. Without his coat on Dr Anstey was revealed to be wearing an equally correctly tailored grey suit, a white shirt, and a severe blue tie, which threw Nick’s pullover and open neck into the pleasantest possible relief. Dr Anstey’s face was rather flushed; his voice, which I hardly remembered ever having heard before, sounded deep and rusty, as if he rarely used it.

Alix had obviously found him interesting and with her usual expertise was what my mother would have called ‘drawing him out’. I paid particular attention to this because when I try to do it the results are usually disastrous; nobody gives me a straight answer, so I go on and on like some inhumane detective on a murder case. When information breaks down, as it always does, I then turn into a student of form and meaning: I study the sub-text. By this stage, of course, I have all the time in the world to work this out, the subject having flown far, far away … But Alix was managing brilliantly, her voice light but friendly, her social position legitimating all her questions. She had even got him to tell her about his divorce, although I would have thought that this was the last subject on which he would wish to talk, and this might have accounted for his flushed face, on which
embarrassment was mixed with an obvious desire to be agreeable. It struck me that he might have been rather lonely, that his hauteur was a defence, and that he was as delighted to have his privacy violated as I had been. In any event, he was, as the police say, helping them with their enquiries.

Alix waved an arm at me and I slipped out of my coat. I sat down quietly, aware that my function had been altered by this addition to our original group, and feeling my way towards some kind of new status. I knew the moves, you see, the stunning invitations to intimacy, the instant crash of barriers falling. I knew then, and I know now, that this is the only way in which the over-disciplined can be sprung from their trap. I sat back, like the oldest inmate of a prison or a hospital ward, watching the initiation ceremonies being undergone by the latest arrival, eager to congratulate that new recruit on having comported himself correctly, won his spurs, gained his passport to life on the inside. I also observed that for those who undertake the initiation, it is always the first encounter that establishes the transaction, and it is always the barriers that remain – for some barriers always do remain, in spite of the reconditioning – that establish the outcome of the drama, or, to put it another way, the final form of the contract. I thought, with a slight tinge of melancholy, that this drama or contract would be more interesting than the one I had provided, and yet I sensed that Dr Anstey and I had a great deal in common in the way of good behaviour, moral stuffiness, and general lack of experience in the wilder and more interesting areas of human conduct.