The Rules of Engagement (23 page)

She smiled faintly.
“
Yes, I know.
Unfortunately Edmund noticed it. He asked
me if I were short of money.
”

“
Are you?
”

“
No, of course not.
”
She blushed hotly,
annoyed with us both.

“
If you gave up working for nothing you could get
a proper job and earn real money. You're
bilingual. It shouldn't be difficult to find
something.
”

“
Oh, I will. It's just that I promised
Constance that I'd help them with the move.
”

“
How long will that take?
”

“
No idea. In fact it's all a bit
undecided. Constance hates the new house, but then
she doesn't much like the old one. She
complains of the noise, which I can't say I've
noticed. Anyway it's sold.
”

“
Where's the new one?
”

“
I don't like it much either.
”
(
I
had not
asked her that. She seemed to consider herself entitled
to a view on the matter. Rather as if she might at
some point consider taking up residence.)
“
Oh,
off Oakley Street. You know, that rather bleak little
square.
”

I made a mental note to cross this
particular area off my itinerary. It was an act
of faith, as well as a matter of principle,
never to encounter the Fairlies again. That way we
could consider ourselves to be strangers, with no history
behind us.

I tried to divert her by telling her about my
Christmas walk, but she was less equable than
usual and let her lack of interest show. Whatever
the reason for this it could only be a sign of deep
preoccupation. And it too was uncharacteristic, as was the
proud brooding expression of which she was not
conscious. She had a slightly unreliable
authority, which would have been welcome were it not for the
evidence of negligence that accompanied it. She
looked as if she had slipped down a social
notch or two, and was determined not to regret it.
The torn lining of her jacket was merely the
outward and visible sign of this. Yet it seemed that
love no longer made her happy, from which I
deduced that it was the real thing.

“
I shall be glad to see the children again,
”
she said.

“
They must be growing up,
”
I pointed out.

“
Oh, yes.
”
She sighed.
“
All too
quickly. Even David.
”

Her tone was proprietorial, as if she owned
a part of them.

“
How do you see your role there?
”

“
Part of the family, I suppose. An
expendable part, but I know how to fit in.
”

Always the family cited as protection, as if
once admitted one need never fear
expropriation.

This illusion was rudely shattered at the V and
A, as soon as we had climbed the steps and were
in the entrance. To my horror I saw Constance, in
the company of an older woman exactly like her
—
a sister, I supposed
—
approaching from the
direction of the shop. I took Betsy's arm
to propel her away, but
“
Constance!
”
she said
delightedly.
“
When did you get
back?
”

Constance considered her.
“
My sister,
”
she
explained, but did not introduce us.
“
A
couple of days ago. We should have stayed longer, but
there's this wretched move.
”

“
You know I'll help all I can,
”
said
Betsy.

“
In fact we may not stay in that house.
We're thinking of moving on. What have you been
doing with yourself?
”
she asked me.

I made noncommittal sounds.
“
Sorry
to hear about your husband.
”
There was a pause.
“
Happy New Year,
”
she added.

“
I'll come tomorrow, shall I?
”

“
What? Oh, Betsy. Yes, come tomorrow, why
don't you? I may not be there, but someone will let you
in.
”

Again there was a pause. The sister's
impassive expression indicated that she was aware
of the situation.

“
It was kind of you to entertain my husband,
”
said Constance. Betsy's tell-tale colour
flared in her cheeks.
“
And I insist on seeing
that you're not out of pocket.
”

“
There's no need ...
”
said Betsy.

“
Oh, I think I'd feel better if I
knew you were paid something.
”

The insult hung in the air, until, smiling,
Constance and her sister moved on. My hand tightened
on Betsy's arm.
“
Come,
”
I urged.
“
Let's go home.
”

We wandered out in silence.
“
You won't go, will
you?
”
I said.

“
Of course I'll go. I want to see the
children before they go their separate ways.
”

“
Constance is no friend to women,
”
I warned
her.
“
Do you know what you're in for?
”

“
Don't worry,
”
she said.
“
She can be a
bit edgy sometimes. I'm used to it.
”

But when I saw her walk down the road she
did not turn and wave. This was a sign to me: the
fault was mine, because I had witnessed her
humiliation.

It promised to be an early spring. When I
went out soon after dawn for my papers it was still
dark, but the darkness was slightly leavened, not so much
by a change in the sky as by a hint of
luminosity to come. This transformed the coming day
into something more bearable, although the promise was rarely
kept. It seemed that we must endure the long
passage of time before the sun broke through as best
we could, and that, as always, was proving difficult.
I was tired, with the tiredness of one who has too
little rather than too much to do, and longed for the night when
I could sleep again. Yet I seemed to be
functioning normally, or so I believed: I had
no notion of how others were managing. I ate
conscientiously, although I no longer cooked
proper meals, dressed, as I thought,
appropriately, but sometimes I had to remind
myself that I was not an old woman whose life was
virtually over. I behaved as I was expected
to behave, though there were few witnesses.
“
You're
looking better,
”
said my hairdresser.
“
We
were quite worried about you.
”
Again this kindness was proof
that my progress was being monitored and was thought
to be satisfactory.

I was more than grateful for this since I seemed
to be entirely alone. This was not as threatening as it
had been after Digby's death, though I was aware
that I was not fully alive, or even fully
awake. I spent as much time as I could away from
the flat, even telephoned one or two old
friends to arrange to meet for lunch. But these friends,
most of whom dated from before my marriage, were so much
more confident than I could ever be. They had jobs,
which I envied, and I felt like a humble petitioner,
seeking an hour of their time, in wine bars and
restaurants near their places of work. Their
conversation was full of allusions that were foreign to me
and names I only half recognized. They
viewed my empty days, which I could not hope
to disguise, with open disapproval.
“
What do you do
with yourself all day?
”
was their most predictable question.
What did I do with myself? I was not entirely
inactive, or so I persuaded myself, for the time
seemed to pass, as it does for everyone. But it was
not the sort of time by which others reckoned. It was
ruminative, attentive to change, to those
alterations in the light, to tiny inconsequential
happenings and accidents: that dead pigeon, a
mess of dirty feathers, lying in the gutter, the
warmer wind, a familiar shop being refurbished
by its new owner, the smell of coffee from the open
door of a
café
. I often wished that I could do
something with these impressions, that I were a writer of
some sort and could form them into a pattern,
though there was no narrative thread that I could
invent. I felt, mysteriously, that there was some
virtue attached to being a witness. My walks
afforded me a mild contemplative pleasure.
At the same time I knew that I had no valid
excuse to offer my busy friends, and that my efforts
to renew contact with them were proving something of a
failure.

I telephoned Betsy once or twice but
got no answer. I assumed her to be out of
reach, either at the Fairlies', or transporting
their effects to their new house, and in any event not
anxious to hear from me. A breach had opened in our
friendship: the simple fact of my having been
present at an awkward moment, even a
critical moment, had served to turn me into a
hostile witness, someone to be avoided. She was the
sort of eager vulnerable woman who saw the
mildest hesitation as a withdrawal of favour. I
regretted her apparent absence, but was not anxious
to enter into that world again, that worship of all the
Fairlies, or worse, that intimation of darker
confidences that I had no wish to hear. It seemed
monstrous that Edmund's last gift to me was
to deprive me of a friend, equally monstrous that
Betsy would accept this, with perhaps a suspicion that
it might be prudent to do so. She would by now be
awake to jealousy, and to the sort of calculation that
was not normally in her character. She had, as far back
as I could remember, looked to me for a sort of
legitimacy. I was the one with the correct
attributes, a mother, a father, eventually a
husband, and the sort of home that was open
to visitors, whereas her homes had always been
makeshift, unpeopled. Even her present
flat, in which Edmund was the only guest, had
resisted my efforts to turn it into something else,
something more open to the public gaze, and was now
reduced to its humblest elements, a hiding place
for a more or less clandestine arrangement, and thus
disbarred from the public gaze.

I had no way of knowing this for certain, but her very
silence spoke for itself. I dismissed the crises of
conscience she might have endured with a shrug: if she
chose to behave in this or any other way, that was
strictly her affair. She was no longer the
innocent she had been in Paris, in the rue
Cler; she was embroiled not only with a married
lover but with his wife, whom she continued to attend out
of a sort of fear. So long as she
proclaimed affection for Constance (and she may even
have felt this) she could persuade herself that her crime
was not great, that it was hardly a crime at all, but
an extension of a love that encompassed the whole
family. I doubted whether the Fairlies saw
this in the same way. They may have been convinced
by her sheer artlessness that she was no threat to their
stability. They may have conceded her entirely
genuine love for their children. They may even have
laughed at her. Some quality of hers, that
obstinate aura of goodness, might have prevailed
against their cynicism. Quite possibly they had never
encountered this before.

For I thought them demonic in a way that
Betsy could not hope to understand, collusive, without
shame. Their characters, in hindsight, seemed to blend
together, so that their alliance was one of true equals.
I had encountered this before only in books, and even
between the pages of a book such evidence was frightening.
And I had not entirely avoided the Fairlie
influence, though some sense had prompted me
to turn my back on it. The true danger had
lain in my possible conversion to their way of thinking.
I could have persuaded myself that there was no real harm
in my, or even in their, behaviour, that such a
descent was even an enviable path to maturity, that
experience was valuable however it was procured.
Even my own bad faith had seemed to me
amusing: was I not a more interesting person because of it?
That there were others more experienced in this field had
never crossed my mind; in any event one does
not quarrel with physical satisfaction. My
buoyancy at the time had stemmed from the illusion that
I had nothing to fear; now I saw that I should have
been terrified. One fears for the loss of one's
innocence, even when that innocence is little more than
ignorance. And also the blamelessness that blinds one to the
superior sophistication of others, and makes of that
very sophistication a mystery which might reveal itself
to have some value, even some merit, a capacity which
one had been denied but which it might have been in one's
interest to have acquired.

For this reason, if for no other, I was bound
to question my own solitude, and to look back with
genuine bewilderment to my former misdemeanours. I
had been given the opportunity to measure the
distance I had had to travel to reach my present
position of relative safety. Betsy, I
could see, would not have that consolation or that assurance.
Always dependent on the good opinion of
others, she would consider any failure to qualify
for this to be a reflection on her own character. Her
need to please, and to go too far in her desire
to please, had been seen, in those distant
schooldays, as something laughable; naturally, at that
age, we did not perceive the tragedy implicit in
such striving. And now her position would be even more
precarious: how to please the person to whom she was
doing an injury? Only, I saw, by increased
devotion, usefulness, a humble acceptance of
tasks which she knew to be beneath her. Her promised
reward would be no more than a brief encounter with her
lover, if he were that still. Even so she would have lost
caste, as she seemed to have been doing all her
life. I should have preferred her to remain the girl
who had returned from Paris to be a guest at my
wedding, her appearance immaculate, her confidence
intact. I tried to believe that the torn lining of
her jacket was of no consequence, but without
success. The discomfort that this had afforded me was
surely of some significance. She may have been
short of money: I had no way of knowing. It
may even have been Edmund's prompting that lay
behind Constance's hateful remark. And if she had
been forced to accept their money her obligation to them
would be unending.

Therefore when the telephone rang it was something of a
relief, as well as a disappointment, that it was not
Betsy's voice, for which I must have been
unconsciously waiting, but that of Nigel Ward,
proposing another excursion, this time to Regent's
Park and Primrose Hill, on the following
Sunday.
“
We shan't be quite so numerous,
”
he
said.
“
Just a few stragglers. It's a dull time
of the year for them.
”
There was a pause.
“
If
you're interested,
”
he said.
“
Baker Street
Station. Ten o'clock. No need to let me know.
”
“
I shall look forward to it,
”
I told him.
But in fact it was to prove a disappointment. The
weather had deteriorated sharply: there was a scudding
wind
—
our version of the tramontane, the
föhn
—
the wind that sets the teeth on edge and inclines
one to murder. By the time I reached Baker Street
Station my eyes were watering and my hair
unkempt. The students, two Indians, two
Japanese, and a Nigerian, seemed disenchanted,
as I was, by the peculiar pall that hangs over
a London Sunday. The streets looked
tarnished in a light which promised rain. Mr
Ward, his evident good intentions
surrounding him like the attributes of sainthood,
was engaging them politely in the sort of conversation
they were in no mood to appreciate. When we set
off we must have resembled a couple of dutiful
parents with a family of disgruntled teenagers.
Our semi-rural surroundings failed to enchant.
The students wanted, as I did, some sign of
urban excitement, and this was sadly lacking. The
green of the grass looked crude and cold; the very
real cold made one yearn for a different
climate, different colours. Before we were out of the
park I made an excuse, in fact a series
of excuses, designed to make my departure
less offensive, but Mr Ward was patiently
amenable in a way which underlined his unusual good
nature. This man, I reflected, must have been
appointed to his job by someone exceptionally
far-seeing. Unfortunately his obvious good
nature made him seem merely dull, even
subservient, a schoolmaster out of some improving
nineteenth-century novel, one of those undervalued
heroes despised even by the reader.