The Rules of Engagement (25 page)

I could feel my anger rising as I became
eloquent on the subject of Betsy's wants
and needs, which were also my own. There were more things I
could have told him, but did not: how we were both at
an age when our bodies might impart
unwelcome information, indications of change with which it
would be difficult to come to terms. I did not tell
him this, not out of pity, but because I
suspected that it might arouse his distaste. And I
was aware that in all this discussion he had not made the
slightest enquiry about myself.

He started the car again.
“
Where shall I drop
you?
”
he said.
“
Where were you going?
”

“
I was going home. Take me home if you
would. Or you could leave me here. I'll walk
back. I think I need some air.
”
For the
atmosphere in the car was heated, suddenly
oppressive, and filled with our uneasiness.
Edmund in particular seemed aware of this, and
opened a window.

“
I'll take you home, of course. Still in the
same place?
”

“
Oh, yes. Yes, take me home.
”
It
was the only place where I could feel safe, where
there was no need for me to be tactful,
diplomatic, to look after any interests but my
own. Even the telephone might now prove an
adversary. It was preferable that I keep away from
Betsy. There was no problem about keeping away from
Edmund, for I knew that I should never see him
again.

“
You must understand that my family is my first
priority,
”
he was saying.
“
And Constance. She
is seriously upset.
”

“
There's an old saying about one's sins finding
one out.
”

“
I don't see it that way.
”

“
Neither do I, really. But you must admit
there's a certain irony here. Your asking me
to intervene.
”

He looked puzzled.
“
But you're the only
person I could ask,
”
he said.
“
I didn't
expect you to take it personally.
”

“
You must sort out your own affairs, Edmund.
Or if you can't do it I'm sure Constance would.
”

“
I wouldn't put her in that position.
”

There was no answer to this. We sat in the car,
apparently unwilling to move. Then at last I
was able to look at him, knowing it was for the last time.
I saw, in his slumped shoulders, that he was as much
a victim as I was, as Betsy was, even as
Constance was. Some element of
—
what was it?
Certainly not justice
—
had intervened to bring about
thoughtfulness, and to bring it to a situation which had once
seemed agreeably natural, immune from
examination. Maybe it was the classical
principle that decreed a suitable solution only
in the form of a
dénouement
, whether one
accepted it or not.
“
Be good to your daughters,
”
I said.
“
Set them free.
”

“
I couldn't live without them. They are all the
world to me.
”

“
You must remember that. They matter more than
Constance does. Than your marriage, as you so
pompously put it.
”

“
I know.
”

It seemed that there was to be no parting, or at
least not one camouflaged by vague assurances that
we would meet again. I accepted this. Edmund was
too sunk in his own reverie to register that I had
opened the car door and was on the point of leaving him
to his thoughts. I doubt if he knew the exact
moment at which he was alone. I, on the other hand,
registered my every footfall as I walked away.
There was a finality here with which I could not argue.
One always recognizes the irreparable, in whatever
shape it takes. Though there were now pretexts on
which I could act if I wanted to bring myself once
more within his orbit I knew that they would not be
employed. This was not a moral decision. It lay
in the evidence of the sadness we had both felt, a
sadness proportionately different in both
cases, and yet a humbling mutual acceptance of
inevitability. I still knew nothing about him, had
not made appropriate light conversation, asked
about the new house. None of that applied. Nor was
Betsy uppermost in my mind. The working out of the
plot, devised by the Fates or the Furies,
would take place without our consent, as it always
does. I did not even think of myself. I thought of
Edmund, showing signs of age, and beginning to perceive
that he was no longer the favourite of the gods. I
found that I loved him all the more for this, and I
mourned him as if he had recently died.

Since our lives are ruled by chance it came as
no surprise to me to encounter Betsy outside
Peter Jones shortly afterwards. Nevertheless I had
not expected to see her, nor did I want to:
I had decided, or it had been decided for me,
to have nothing further to do with a situation which cast me in
a role so marginal and so ambiguous that the
outcome was somehow liberating. If I were to meet
Edmund again I thought that my feeling would be one of
cordial dislike, and I imagined that he would
feel the same. As a child, long ago,
I had had to be the peacemaker between disaffected
parents. This I managed by dint of an
uncritical muteness which they were forced to respect.
As long as I was in the room, and apparently
attributing no blame to either of them, they lowered
their voices, assumed pacific expressions, and
looked on me with favour. I knew no better
at the time than to be grateful for this, and it was
only much later, on my own in Paris, and
chronically uncomfortable in my meagre
surroundings, that I began to question not only their
behaviour but my own. I was not, I realized, a
naturally servile person, rather the opposite.
Indeed it was that unexpended opposition to the role
decreed for me that led indirectly to my brief
period of lawlessness in later life. And though that
had once seemed so natural I saw now, at
the moment of that meeting with Betsy, on a
humdrum morning, in fitful sunshine, that I
need never again play either of these parts, that it was perhaps
preferable to be free of them and to live the sort of
life that involved no collusion with others,
to become known for this, and to have it acknowledged, and thus
for the first time in my life to achieve a sort of
dignity.

Nevertheless, and again in that first sighting of Betsy,
I regretted that I was not able to greet her more
warmly, or with something of the spontaneity that I had
misplaced. I missed a female friend, though I
could no longer trust anyone, friend or lover. I
remembered with a genuine sadness those early days,
when we had known not only each other but each
other's circumstances. I still had, in my
sewing-box at home, a little empty perfume
bottle that Betsy had given me for some forgotten
birthday: we may have been thirteen or fourteen
at the time. I had thought it
naïve
of her,
sentimental, and yet I had cherished it. Now more
than ever it had come to symbolize the sort of
early friendship which is so difficult to recapture
in more complex days, and I looked back on that
period of my life, largely unsatisfactory
in most respects, as emblematic of what I had
lost. I wanted to pick up the telephone
unthinkingly, as I had done then, to ask her some
idle question, about homework, perhaps, and hear her
reply in the same tone of voice, and ask me
questions in return. There would be no art in this
conversation, no contrivance: that would be the beauty of
it. I wanted everything to be once more
understood between us, as if we had never let each
other down.

Instead, there must be a certain mistrust, a
withholding, for there were secrets that were never to be
mentioned, conversations with others in which we were
implicated, whether we liked it or not.
Betsy, despite her oddly immovable
naïveté
, would surely have realized that Edmund
had played a part in my life, may even have questioned
him about this, and would have reacted to the perhaps
unwelcome knowledge in the only way she knew, with
redoubled assurances of affection. This would be so
different in quality from those uncensored conversations
of younger days that I should feel a genuine
nostalgia for that lost time. The friends of one's youth
are perhaps the only people who know one properly, know the
background and the context as well as the presenting
characteristics. More than extravagant love my
overwhelming wish now was to be known in that way once
more, before it was too late. The intimate support
—
the nurture
—
that two such friends instinctively
supply was now denied to me, to both of us. And the little
scent bottle, almost hidden by the scissors and the
needles in my sewing-box, would serve to remind
me of a time before prudence, before artifice, had come
to rule my life, and to a lesser degree that of
my erst
while friend.

For I had seen a slight shadow pass across
her joyous expressions, the merest suggestion of
reluctance. It would not take long for that
reluctance to blossom into mistrust, yet she
too wanted me for a friend, the friend I had once
been. It would have taken one far less solitary
than myself to ignore that very slight alteration in her
sighting of me: it was my predilection for noting
small everyday accidents that made me alive to that
momentary clouding of her welcome. My face,
habitually under control, gave no hint, I am
persuaded, that this was anything more than an accidental
meeting shorn of other associations. At one
level we were genuinely pleased to see each other;
at another we were calculating how much information could
be disclosed, how much concealed. To do us some sort of
credit we both knew this, and were determined to go about
the matter as best we could. For those childhood
codes still obtained. Once we would have taken up
the conversation where we had last left it. Now we
had to negotiate a way of dealing with a situation that
neither of us wanted to acknowledge, aware that it might
divide us, and determined to let none of
this appear.

She made the adjustment quickly, although the
process was apparent to me. She was both pleased
and not pleased to see me; for once I was the more
assiduous friend. Although I feared her revelations
(for I did not doubt that at some point they would
break through) I was willing to meet her in the spirit of
our now lost friendship, was even looking for some sign
of recognition of the person I was once, or perhaps
as we both had been. As a girl she had made
up for poor resources by an anxious attention
to detail, her shining appearance more than compensating
for undistinguished clothes and unfashionable shoes.
Now, in that lightning first glance, I saw that this
arrangement had been turned on its head. She was
attractively dressed in a grey trouser
suit, yet her hair was slightly disarranged, as
if creeping out of her control. She looked like the
other women going into the store, looked, I dare
say, like myself, but with a difference. She seemed to have
changed her status for one less modest than
previously endured without complaint. Indeed she
had the preoccupied, slightly important
expression of a woman with a domestic burden
to maintain, with appetites to satisfy, with a
family to care for. I had often questioned this look on
other women's faces, thinking them superior
to myself, newly conscious of my lost culinary
expertise, my idle ruminative hours. These
women seemed to be characterized by a look of
achievement, of accomplishment, as if they had
passed some test of all-round competence. It was a
competence that was somehow linked with a quality of
desirability, and I knew myself unlikely
to qualify ever again for such a badge of caste.
Now I was convinced that Betsy was so qualified,
knowing her as few others did. There was about her a
trace of that complacent haste that was a more than
adequate disguise for her true feelings,
whatever these might have been, and which she seemed
disposed to enjoy, even to cultivate.

“
What a lovely surprise,
”
she said.

“
We seem doomed to meet here, don't we?
Have you time for coffee? You're looking well.
”

I followed her meekly into the restaurant,
where she now took her place as of right, summoning
a waitress with an uplifted hand, a gesture
she would not normally have permitted herself.

“
Let me look at you,
”
she said, with the
same proprietorial air.
“
Yes,
you do look well. What have you been doing with
yourself?
”

This was so like the questions I was used to being asked by my
genuinely busy friends that I dealt with it in the way
I had devised after several humiliating
episodes: I ignored it.

“
You're not working today, then?
”
I enquired,
hoping to get on to firmer conversational ground.
Only distaste for the artifice that had overtaken our
relationship had made me venture such a question.

“
No, they can do without me today,
”
she laughed.

“
Actually Constance's car was gone when I got
there. She must have left early.
”

“
Do you ever wonder whether she needs you there
any more?
”

“
Oh, I think I've proved my
usefulness. I may have to do so again, if they can't
settle down. Constance has really taken against that
house. Amazing how easily some people give up.
”

“
I should leave them to get on with it. Moving
house can be very traumatic.
”

“
Well, of course. That's where I come in.
Helping to get them settled.
”

“
Them?
”

“
Well, Constance. I'm worried about her.
She seems quite neurotic.
”

“
Perhaps you've outstayed your welcome.
”

Her face hardened.
“
I like to see the
girls,
”
she said.
“
They're used to my being
around.
”

But in fact the girls were largely absent, as
no doubt she knew and as I surmised. The
reason for her assiduity was imperfectly
disguised: she was in love with Edmund and was willing
to court humiliation, if that were the price to be paid
for those unedited glimpses of him in his domestic
setting that would otherwise be denied to her. I was
profoundly shocked. No woman of my generation
is allowed to behave so slavishly. Women's
liberation had surely been designed to free us from
such masochistic impulses. But in Betsy's
case such a liberation might not have taken place.
She seemed to proclaim the sort of fidelity that
most societies other than tribal have done their
best to shed. I was in two minds about this, as, I
dare say, are most women. I admired the
ideal, but had observed that it could lead one
into extravagances of behaviour no less
deleterious than the wildest licence. Proof of
this was being supplied by Betsy, whose
unfortunate attachment might sooner or later
achieve the hitherto unthinkable work of dismantling
her character altogether. For I knew, or thought I knew,
of Edmund's obsidian self-regard, so like his
wife's. At some level they would unite in
distaste for this eager acolyte, and though nothing
might be acknowledged between them, some attitude would
result from their shared impatience, some manoeuvre
be initiated that would safeguard their original
alliance. This would not be easy; they might be brought
face to face with an awkward need to avoid
embarrassment in a situation that was already
sufficiently embarrassing. And Edmund was
affected by her, may even have been in love with her.
For Edmund love was about an initial attraction
that might profit both partners. Nowhere did it
imply duration. For duration, or durability,
he could rely on his adamantine wife whose most
notable attribute was a sort of
inscrutability, so much more acceptable than the
bizarre sincerity, the sheer incomprehension of a
woman whom experience had taught so little as
to make her seem anomalous, even threatening, like
a dysfunctional infant who persists in courting
one's approval.