The Rules of Engagement (26 page)

Though animated she looked tired. She had that
aura of contained excitement which is exhausting in the
long run. Although she was deluded, her condition was
enviable, enviable to me in my newly restored
respectability, enviable perhaps to those other women
in the restaurant, with their shopping bags at the
sides of their chairs. A woman senses the
level of sexual activity in other women and
instinctively resents it, particularly if she
is bereft of male company. All thoughts of
innocent, long-ago friendship were erased from my mind
as I was treated to a display, perhaps conscious, perhaps
unconscious, of determined insouciance that failed
to mask a single overriding preoccupation. I
noticed new busy feminine gestures that sent out
their own semaphore
—
a sweeping back of the
hair, a turning of the cuff to check the time on her
watch
—
and saw myself reduced to the level of an
onlooker. Outwardly peaceable, I was engaged in
a struggle to defeat my baser self. I may
even have succeeded, but the struggle had left a
victim, or perhaps two victims. We could no
longer lay claim to the friendship which had survived
earlier vicissitudes. Lucidity had brought in
its train a revision of previous
attitudes. Without examining these more closely
—
for
what good would it have done?
—
I saw that she too had
recognized the change that had taken place. The
display, the determined gladness were no doubt
consequent upon closer understanding of my relations with
Edmund. There was no need to acknowledge this. It
stood out a mile.

A sudden shower of rain peppered the windows; below
us in the street umbrellas bloomed.
“
Be
careful,
”
I said quietly.
“
They are much
cleverer than you.
”

She laughed angrily.
“
I think I know that,
thank you. I'm not completely stupid.
”

“
Then why persist? Surely it would be better
to leave them to their own devices. Be discreet,
retain some dignity. Finir en
beauté
.
Such a useful phrase, I always thought, though there
is nothing really fine about endings. They have to be
managed as best one can. The saving grace is
to be in control.
”

As if I were spelling out her fate, the
bravado left her.
“
I can't do it,
”
she
said.
“
They have become my family.
”

“
You mean he has.
”

“
Yes.
”

“
But what do you hope for? Even if he were in
love with you ...
”

“
He is.
”

“
Has he said so?
”

“
Oh, I don't need a declaration, if that
is what you mean. I just know. And for the first time in my
life I've something of my own. A secret.
Something that excludes everyone else. Even you,
though you think you know all about it.
”

It was important to me not to join in this mutual
confession. My one thought, and an imperative one,
was that I must go away, away from the tedium of the
English weather, away from the more menacing tedium of
female soul-searching. I would go back
to Venice, where the light was stronger; I would even
go back to Paris, which haunted me, as a lost
opportunity often does. With careful management
I could be away for six months, or even longer.
Digby had left me comfortably off; I should not
even need to let the flat. There was in fact no
reason why I should not spend the greater part of the year
abroad, returning to London only in the
brightest days of the summer, and then only briefly.
I should be one of those odd English women who could
be counted on to haunt the Riviera in the
low season, taking advantage of reduced
rates, not minding the discomfort of a small pension,
and badly dressed in a way that would not be noticed
at home. The vision appealed to me, its sheer
sexlessness an added attraction. I should read
novels over dinner in restaurants which would soon
accept me as a regular patron, and wander back
to bed along some notional promenade which I had not
yet quite located. I was, I thought, entitled
to spare myself any further involvement in this affair
which might yet intensify on my part as it would on
Betsy's. I was, it seemed, not quite free of
it. That was not to say that I had to relive it
by proxy. A long absence would also remove me from
Betsy, who was now on the defensive, within a
hair's breadth of disliking me. I busied myself
in gathering up my purchases, preparatory
to leaving. I was aware that she was looking at me
fixedly, as if trying to read my thoughts. I should
have to keep my Mediterranean fantasy to myself,
leaving suddenly, without warning, after only the
briefest of telephone calls. Acting out of character
was permitted to a woman of my age, though I was
probably being optimistic in imagining that this would
arouse comment. I knew few people who would be
interested. Betsy, oddly enough, was closest
to me, by her reckoning, if not by mine. I saw her
once more as someone in need of protection, even
patronage, still longing to be sheltered, more perhaps now
than ever before.

“
You say you've never had anyone of your
own,
”
I said, fishing in my handbag.
“
But in
fact it's folly to think you can lay claim
to another person. I know how lonely it can be without
someone close to you, but it becomes quite difficult
to work out why. Probably status is involved.
A woman with a partner feels superior to a
woman who has none. But this is illusory.
All one ever possesses is free will, and even
that has to be safeguarded. Handing over one's
life to another person is not really to be
recommended.
”

“
You didn't love your husband, did you?
”
she said.
“
If you had you wouldn't say what you've
just said.
”

I was deeply shocked. This seemed a far more
dangerous intrusion than the one I had originally
feared, the one I had done my utmost
to deflect. It seemed to me that it was Digby who
was under attack, and that he needed me
to defend him. I would not dignify the conversation
by responding, but I must have gone slightly pale,
for she reached out a hand to grasp mine.
“
I'm
sorry, I'm sorry,
”
she said.
“
That was not
what I meant to say. What I meant to say was
...
”

“
Shall we go?
”
I stood up, glanced out of the
window on to the rain.

“
Will you ring me?
”
she said, disconcerted,
awkward. Unprotected, as I now saw all
too clearly.

“
Yes, I'll ring you.
”
This would be the
telephone call that announced my imminent
departure. This seemed to me satisfactory,
though my heart was beating uncomfortably. She
took my arm, and I made no attempt
to remove it. Thus had we sometimes wandered home
from school.

“
What about the children?
”
she said, almost to herself.

“
Surely one can lay claim to children?
”

“
Only when they are helpless,
”
I
replied.
“
They are programmed to seek their
independence. That is their strength. Goodbye, then.
I'm going to grab that taxi.
”
I did not urge
her to keep in touch. It was somehow beyond my reach
to utter the simple formula. I knew she would be
hurt by my failure to do so. Through the taxi window
I saw her worried face. I lifted my hand
briefly, and was thankfully removed from the scene.
This now assumed the dimensions of a betrayal. On
both sides. The fact that we were equally guilty
did nothing to salvage my self-respect.
Nor would she feel any better, rather worse, in
fact. But I had no more sentiment to spare. I
simply hoped that she would repair herself as best
she could, without any help from me. Something awful
had been uncovered. Reason demanded that the whole
incident should be dismissed. An error, quite
possibly indelible. It would be in no one's
interest to compound it.

Back in the flat I accepted the slow grind
of traffic outside the window as an
appropriate accompaniment to even slower afternoons.
It had the power to hypnotize me, even
to reconcile me to what was by any standards a
singularly dull life. With an effort I went
into the bedroom, opened a cupboard, and dragged out
a suitcase, as if my travel plans must be
implemented without delay. I need not pack much;
it would be sunny where I was going, as it
is in all fantasies of displacement. Paris
first, I thought, and then a slow train south. I would
leave this train on an impulse, somewhere off the
main line. I would walk, on a still afternoon, until
I found a small hotel, where I would be immediately
recognized as a traveller, rather than a tourist.
My days would be entirely empty, entirely
insignificant, giving me time to evaluate my
life, and also to remove myself from the life I had
already lived. My aim would be to detach the present
completely from the past. If this process were
successful I might never feel the need to come
home.

But then I thought of my bed, of Digby's
desk, of the chair in which I had once sat to read.
These were now my attributes; it might be hard
to leave them. I was not old, but widowhood must have
incremented the ageing process, so that I was now a
creature of settled habits when all around me
women were having adventures, taking lovers,
running corporations. It was my feeling of shame
at this comparison that had prompted me to seek the
only sort of freedom I could manage. I
even congratulated myself on my lack of
entanglements, of obligations. I saw exile
—
for now it was becoming that
—
as cleaner, nobler than
love and its delusions. For surely all love
contained an element of delusion? Though that delusion
was empowering, enabling one to go beyond oneself, it was not
to be encouraged. I looked back approvingly
to the sobriety of my marriage, an honest
affair from any point of view, utterly
defensible. I had never had any desire
to disguise it, accepting its dullness as a necessary
virtue. That it had precipitated an equally
necessary madness seemed to me to warrant no further
consideration. I would never speak of this, though to do so
would no doubt make me seem a more interesting
figure. Interesting to women, rather. No man should
hear of it, not that there was any man to enquire. The
empty suitcase yawned. Anything would do
to fill it, for I should be leaving most of myself behind.
At some point in my rather confused upbringing I
had formed the notion that friendships should last for life,
that an association once established could be relied
upon not to change. Even in middle age I clung
to this idea. I could see that what was in essence a
conviction, an article of faith, might not always be
shared, but this eventuality struck me as
unlikely. I preferred the comforting
illusion that I should always be known by someone to whom I
did not need to explain myself. Although aware that this
condition pertained to love rather than to friendship I
persisted in this way of thinking. That it had some
validity was proved by the distress that a broken
friendship signified, and I was in no doubt that
Betsy no longer regarded me as a friend. She
mistakenly saw me as a rival, albeit a
rival whom she had managed to vanquish, whereas
I was compromised in every way by what I had heard
from both the protagonists. I had not wanted to be
a party to her confessions, let alone to Edmund's
moment of candour: both were incompatible with the friendships
I had hoped to sustain. I now saw this as an
illusion, and that one could expect to witness the
defection of friends as well as lovers. This seemed
to me incomparably sad. It was perhaps the last
ideal I had managed to salvage, and I saw
my proposed exile, for it would be nothing less,
as a desire to obliterate the evidence of such
unexpected disharmony, and to form myself anew, or
perhaps to grow up a second time, in suitably
desert surroundings, in that wilderness that awaits
those who have broken all ties, or perhaps been
abandoned by those whose affinity with oneself had not stood the
test of time, with whom one can no longer share
experiences in a way that adds to common knowledge, or ever
again speak with the spontaneity, which is, I now
saw, the climate of childhood rather than that of
later life.