Undue Influence (26 page)

I said none of this to Wiggy. I knew she would be dismayed, even as I was dismayed, and I still had enough pride to behave as I had always behaved, that is to say flippantly, uncensoriously, tactfully. We had long ago adopted tact as the right way to go about things. We did not confide in each other in the way women are supposed to; we each knew the other’s cast of characters, and that was enough. We informed each other of our prospective absences; we kept in close touch, and I dare say we knew each other as well as two people who had never exchanged a single guilty secret could do. Wiggy’s life was more populated than mine; she had these dutiful cousins who seemed to welcome her each year with something like proper affection, the familial kind, and above all she had this lover, whom I had never met, of whom I disapproved because I thought she deserved better. And yet she was happy enough with his visits, kept a bottle of wine always ready should he drop in, was kept reassured by his telephone calls, seemed content to paint other people’s children all day at her kitchen table, and to exchange news with me when I visited her. I had fallen
into these visits as a more satisfactory way of keeping in touch; in my mind the telephone was being kept clear for another’s call. Besides I was always out and Wiggy was always in, so what more natural than my haphazard visits? She knew of my worries about the shop, which formed the main subject of conversation; like myself she knew the value of work. But I said nothing about that mournful conviction I had that I had failed where so many others had succeeded, nor did she know about my empty evenings, when some sort of vain hope surfaced, as if I had always nurtured such a hope, and was still, even now, not entirely discouraged by the fact that it had not yet been met.

I found Wiggy in her usual place at the table, studying the photograph of a hopefully smiling little girl of about three. The child seemed to be baring her teeth more in obedience to some offstage urgings than from personal conviction that this was a happy occasion.

‘One can see,’ said Wiggy, ‘that all is not right with this child.’

‘How so?’

‘The desperate glint in her eye. The fatal desire to please already apparent.’

I studied the photograph. All I could see was that the child was overweight, a fact emphasized by the fat legs stuffed into lace tights and the velvet dress bunched round her nonexistent waist.

‘You’ll have a job doing that lace,’ I said.

‘I’m only doing her head. Just as well; she’s going to be large. This is an attempt by her grandmother to remember her as she always was, or rather as the grandmother would like her to remain. I see trouble ahead for them both, misplaced love on both sides.’

‘Why misplaced? Surely at that age love is not self-seeking?’

‘I’m not sure about that. There is already a fatal gleam of knowledge in that child. Her name is Arabella, by the way. And her grandmother, Mrs Corbett, intuits in a way that the parents perhaps do not.’

‘Maybe Mrs Corbett objects to her daughter-in-law. Maybe there have been unwise criticisms.’

‘Exactly so. It was Mrs Corbett who got in touch with me, of course, recommended by one of her friends. We had a meeting. She was very proper, very formal, but her hands trembled. She said she didn’t see the child as much as she had hoped, because the child’s mother didn’t wish it. After that she spent half an hour telling me that perhaps—she said perhaps—they had different views on child management, that Arabella needed a more stable background than her mother was able to provide. She became quite agitated as she said this, although as far as I could judge the mother’s only crime was to go out to work. Mrs Corbett had offered to look after Arabella in the daytime, but the offer had been refused. “I bought her that dress,” she said. “And the tights.” I told her I only did the heads, and she was a bit disappointed. Then she said, “Just as long as you capture her lovely smile.” She clearly didn’t want to part with the photograph, but she knew, she said, that the portrait would keep her company, even during those days when the child and she were denied access to each other.’

‘Poor little girl,’ I said. ‘She has been introduced to family dissension. She has learned that one must love all equally, but some more equally than others.’

‘I shall do my very best for her,’ said Wiggy. ‘For them both. Tea?’

‘Thanks. I feel even more sorry for Mrs. Corbett than for Arabella,’ I remarked. ‘Anyone could see that that dress would be dead wrong. She will probably go on buying her unsuitable
clothes and unsuitable presents until the girl goes to school, to university, gets a job. These gifts will be acknowledged, but no more. All this will be laid at the mother’s feet; the original dislike will be intensified. And the child will throw off this inconvenient love; she will have to if she’s not to be a family hostage. In time she will train as a psychotherapist, simply in order to explain all this to herself.’

‘Oh, really, Claire. I doubt if it’s as bad as that. She’s only three, remember. You don’t look all that well, if I may say so, despite your afternoons in the park.’

‘Or possibly because of them. I feel at one with all the pensioners and the unemployed who probably spend the same sort of day as I do now.’

‘It’s the shop, isn’t it?’

I agreed that it was the shop that was making me downcast. Arabella’s hopeful face, all teeth showing, gazed insistently into mine until Wiggy removed the photograph and set down two cups of tea and a plate of chocolate biscuits.

‘I’m sure the situation can be retrieved, particularly if you time it right. If you go in looking carefree and capable they’ll jump at the chance of having you back. Just don’t plead. Be offhand, as if you might be in a position to do them a favour. Look as if you don’t need the money, as if the last thing you want is a job.’

‘Easy to say.’

‘But it works, Claire. Indifference puts people on their mettle. People who set out to please don’t know this. One must put on an act. And you don’t even have to, which should make it easier. After all …’

‘Yes, I know all that. How anyone would jump at the chance of having me.’ I managed to smile as I said this, and hoped that my smile was convincing. ‘I probably need a break,’ I said. ‘Although
I don’t really want to go away. My place is here, with all the other unemployed. Very few children in the park, incidentally. I suppose they’re on holiday. And yet you’d think that some children would love the freedom of the park, boys, probably, living in flats. Their mothers could send them out in the morning with a packet of sandwiches and their bus fare, and they’d probably do as well as children transported to Italian villas, like all those politicians’ kids, and look just as healthy when it was time to go back to school.’

‘You need a proper holiday, Claire. You’re not exactly down and out, even if you pretend to be.’

‘Have you still got Eileen’s archive?’

‘Certainly.’ She went to the drawer and produced Eileen’s travel leaflets. ‘Take your pick.’

One could trace Eileen’s trajectory through the diminishing claims of the brochures, as Shakespeare’s country (by coach) replaced Biarritz and Budapest. Both were wrong for her, but she had not gone there anyway. Instead a valetudinarian preoccupation had crept in, as if her health must be catered for should anything go wrong, as she may have suspected. That was how Vichy came to be there, either because it promised an almost nursing-home regime, with plenty of doctors in attendance, or because the brochure contained recommendations from English visitors who had come back rejuvenated. ‘Hotel Victoria, rue des Carmes,’ ran one comment: ‘a haven of tranquillity. English spoken. Evening meal not provided, but café next door. Hire of bicycle possible.’

‘That’s probably what attracted her,’ I told Wiggy. ‘I feel I know the Hotel Victoria already. And the rue des Carmes, which is considerably off the beaten track. The haven of tranquillity is disturbed in the early morning by the rattle of the shutters going up at the café next door, and no doubt by the
motorbike of the owner’s son. The room itself will be a distillation of all the hotel rooms one has ever stayed in, that is to say that the last occupant will have left his imprint on the atmosphere. There will be an adjoining bathroom, but no soap. And the owners, so happy to welcome English visitors, will no doubt manage to convey a wish that those visitors do not loiter in their rooms but get out into the town or in fact anywhere where they will immediately become invisible. Walks by the river, the Allier, will be recommended. And of course the waters may be taken.’

The sheer tedium of such a visit exerted a perverse appeal. ‘I’ll go there,’ I said.

‘Don’t be silly, Claire. Go to Paris, buy yourself some clothes.’

‘No, I mean it. I feel too provincial for Paris. Not outgoing enough. I should appreciate some sort of backwater.’

‘You’re depressed about the shop. Don’t be. I’m sure it’ll all work out.’

I stopped only because I sensed Wiggy’s impatience. I swept the leaflets and brochures together and said, ‘You might as well get rid of these. Nobody is going to use them.’

‘What will you do?’

‘I’ll go to Paris and get the first train out, it hardly matters which. I’ll go wherever it takes me. That way I’ll have done something positive.’

She brightened. ‘You’ll let me know what you decide?’

‘Of course. Don’t I always?’

But I was conscious of a lack of candour, although Wiggy, I think, did not perceive this. I did not tell her about Martin, for reasons that had more to do with instinct than pride, or its converse, shame. As far as Wiggy was concerned Martin was an acquaintance whom we had once encountered in bizarre
circumstances and with whom we had not kept in touch. I did not want to unburden myself to her, as if we were fellow conspirators in the mating game. I did not even want to talk to a woman, however close. I thought that only a man could explain me to myself. I wanted one of those conversations that women like to initiate and which men tend to dismiss. Such conversations are usually unwise, but one embarks on them with a dreadful eagerness, regardless of the other’s closed expression. With Martin, of course, one would have to battle with his own self-absorption before such a conversation could take place. He would feel that his dignity was impugned by the mere fact of listening. He had established that his feelings were paramount, whatever they were. He had issued a policy statement to that effect. I did not want to tell Wiggy that I was bewildered, and in any event I doubt if I could have found the words to describe my condition, which was basically regretful, as if I had been found out in a fault. The fault was undoubtedly mine, but I wanted to have it explained to me by the only person in a position to do so. I should have listened respectfully; probably the words once spoken would be fatal, terminal. Silence, maybe years of silence, must follow such an exchange. But if it does not take place the alternative is worse. One may ask oneself questions for the rest of one’s life, and still receive no answers.

I felt a sense of disloyalty to Wiggy, for I knew that this was a friendship that would last, whereas others might fail, might indeed already have failed, but the instinct that makes a woman want to attach herself to a man was uppermost. I wanted to explore that instinct, to embrace it, until it was time to face the world, triumphantly partnered. This is where women part company; friendships are never quite the same when affections have been redistributed. I wandered home rather regretting my
visit. I should have stayed in the park, where no one suspected me of duplicity. And then it went against my nature to be indifferently honest, not to present an open mind, which meant a mind open to all. Candour is a primordial virtue, though it can lead one into difficulties, as I well knew. I felt physically uncomfortable with anything less, which was why I made so many disastrous mistakes. Strange how what is recommended by all the authorities can prove to be one’s undoing. Different values should no doubt be taught, for if they are not one learns them too late to be of any use to one. Those gods of Olympus, with their enviable lack of conscience, are probably the ones to emulate. Their reputation has not noticeably suffered from their unashamed preoccupation with sex and influence. We who have been taught to love our enemies, sometimes to the detriment of our friends, will always be sunk in a morass of self-questioning, timorous restraint taking the place of robust self-interest. Wiggy had thought that I was depressed about the shop. Indeed I was, but I had other concerns. She may have sensed this, but had had the grace not to probe. In time I should probably tell her everything; the time might come when I should need to. For the time being, however, I preferred concealment. Perhaps for the first time in my life I did not understand myself. Nor did I altogether want to.

The air in the streets seemed heavy, stale, as if everyone had breathed out at once. Maybe it would not be a bad idea to go away, to catch that first train standing at the station, to end up in Venice or in Barcelona, carefree and unprejudiced, as I had once been. A few days’ absence could hardly affect my chances, my ultimate goal. And then I could write to Martin—I still avoided the telephone—and tell him that I was going on holiday, like everyone else. This would provoke some response or other. Eventually my traveller’s tales would match his, put me
on a new footing. This seemed so obvious that I wondered why I had not thought of it before. On the following morning I would consult my continental timetables. The pain of leaving, which I always suffered, was already slightly mitigated by the anticipation of arriving. I was on my way once more.

Nineteen