Look at Me

by Anita Brookner

  I have said that I did not love him in the fatal sense. By that I mean that he was not a drug, an obsession, like that time of which I never speak. I did not have to strive for his attention, I did not have to abandon everything when he appeared, I did not have to squander all my resources at a sign from him. In fact, after the debasement of that previous time, I experienced with James a renewal of innocence, and I felt more at home with that innocence than with that cynicism of desire and contempt so strangely mingled that I had previously known. That secrecy, that urgency, that bitterness, that lack of hope… I had enjoyed the openness of consorting with an eligible man (how prehistoric that sounds!) in full view of others, after those stratagems and those returns in the early hours of the morning, weeping, my coat huddled round me to conceal the clothes so hastily put on and now creased. The concealed pain, the lying morning face. I could not go through that again.

  I wanted, you see, to make it all come out right this time. I wanted contentment and peace for myself and for him and I wanted the approbation of others. Perhaps, above all, the approbation of others. I wanted it to go according to plan; I even wanted the small satisfactions of congratulations and good wishes. I wanted to see the smiles on the faces of Mrs Halloran and Dr Simek as they raised glasses to me. I wanted, for once in my life, a celebration. To make up for all the sadness, all the waste and confusion, all the waiting, the sitting in sickrooms, the furtive returns and the lying morning face. I wanted, more than anything, a chance to be simple, once again, as I was meant to be, and as I had been long ago, a long, long time ago.

  I wanted an end to shabbiness, to pretence, to anxiety, to dissembling. That last time, the time of which I never speak, had been so unendurable and also so baffling. I had found myself rising, somehow, to expectations which I did not fully understand: grossness, cruelty, deceit. I had been humiliated, and had been enjoyed precisely because I was humiliated. It was all so different from what others had believed of me. I had managed, somehow, to live two lives. But in the end it was the more respectable of those lives that I had inherited. I minded, of course. Oh yes, I minded. But at the same time I knew that whatever people say and whatever they put up with and whatever they get away with, love should be simple. And it is. It is.

  Now, once again, it seemed that I must keep spontaneity at bay, must maneuvre and keep watch. I would do what was required of me - although I was by now so confused that I could not quite decide who required it. I trembled to lose James, my spirit failed at the thought of the expertise ranged against me, I prepared to do battle. But my heart was no longer in it.

  I ran up the stairs and knocked on his door, something I had never had to do before. He looked surprised to see me, and rather distant, encased in that professional persona of his. When I explained that I wanted to see him that evening, that, please, I must see him that evening, he gave a little smile, shook his head, as if humouring a child, and told me that he would pick me up after the Library closed, at six.

  All that day I trembled steadily, close to anger but not quite angry enough. I was tense with anxiety, with despair, for I doubted my ability to inspire love. If, as it seemed, I had become so uninteresting so quickly, how could I put matters right at this late stage? I was not a powerful woman, able to bend others to my will, nor was I particularly malleable, and therefore able to bend to the will of others. I was not distinguished by notable caprices, I was not irresistibly attractive; I was simply well behaved and rather observant - a bad combination. And my tongue, I am told, is sharp. I was certainly extremely reasonable, but that very quality seemed to deprive me of expectation. Why should anyone care to please me, or exert themselves to try, when I made so few demands? I knew this, I had always known it, but now the knowledge seemed to render me doubly ineffective. At one stage during that long day I caught myself literally wringing my hands, and then I knew how seriously I was dismayed.

  I could have been different, I think. Once I had great confidence, great cheerfulness; I did not question my purpose or the purpose of others. All that had gone, and I had done my best to replace it. I had become diligent instead of spontaneous; I had become an observer when I saw that I was not to be allowed to participate. I had refused to be pitiable. I had never once said, Look at me. Now, it seemed, I must make one more effort, one more attempt to prove myself viable. And if I succeeded, I might be granted one more opportunity to do it all over again. I did not dare to think what would happen if I failed.

  At half-past five I slipped out of the Library and went to wash my hands, which were clammy. I looked at myself in the glass and I saw my neat watchful face, my alarmed eyes, my white lips. From my bag I took a little-used lipstick and made my mouth pink, then rubbed some of the colour into my cheeks. I willed myself to relax and smiled pleasantly at myself in the glass. When I returned to the Library, Olivia said, ‘There’s a call for you’, and her eyes were as wide and alarmed as my own. I went into Dr Leventhal’s room and picked up the telephone; it was, of course, Alix, very friendly, with an invitation to dinner for that same evening.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘James is taking me out.’

  ‘Yes, he rang to tell me. I thought it would be simpler if you came over here, and then we could put you into a taxi and all have an early night.’

  ‘Well, no,’ I said carefully, although I was frightened and annoyed. ‘I want to talk to him.’

  ‘You can talk to him here,’ she said. She sounded not only inexorable but very reasonable. She made it seem as if there could be no point in my not doing as she wished, and that it would save trouble all round if I agreed to do so straight away.

  I merely said, ‘Not tonight.

  ‘All right, all right, there’s no need to snap at me.’

  ‘I didn’t…’

  ‘Just send him home early, that’s all I ask. He looks worn out. You might think of that for a change, when you can spare a minute from your old ladies.’

  ‘I’ll see you next Monday,’ I said tightly, trying to control my voice, and waited for her to ring off, which she did, without a further message.

  I think it was then that I decided that I was at Alix’s mercy, and because this shocked me so much I took a pull at myself and became more realistic. If, as was unquestionably the case, I had incurred Alix’s displeasure because of James’s attachment to me, then it seemed as if I must renounce him in order to get back into favour. This was so palpably ridiculous that I gave up the idea straight away. I would, I decided, throw in my lot with James, explain the situation to him, make it seem not serious, even rather amusing, and then ask him what he thought about it. I must, above all, clear the air. I was becoming morbid, I told myself He put his head round the door just after six, and nodded, and I picked up my bag and went out to join him. Some instinct made me turn round and I saw Olivia looking at me. Our eyes met, and although I had said nothing to her, she smiled sturdily and raised her clenched fist. In her delicacy, she made no move to leave, in case it should be thought that she was observing James and myself.

  I could eat very little at the restaurant, although I believe that the food was excellent at this Italian place: James lunches there most days. He did not seem to notice as I cut up the food and pushed it around my plate; he did not even look at me, although he was in good spirits and very talkative. He seemed to be addressing a point somewhere to the right of my head, and although I wanted to pay attention and seem interested I had some diffficulty in understanding what he was saying. I blamed my own distraction, but in lucid moments I realized that he was being deliberately inconsequential; he was talking about matters and even about people I did not know and in that way I could not join in. He was defending himself against me. I could make no inroads on his attention although I knew that it was there, warily, waiting for an ambush, and determined to avoid one. My heart beat strongly, uncomfortably, and all at once I was anxious to get out of the restaurant, to get home, to have him to myself. But he was in no hurry, it seemed, and I could not engage his attention
. He would not even meet my eyes. Look at me, I wanted to say. Look at me.

  At last he asked for the bill and I waited by the door, buttoning up my coat, tugging at the belt in my haste. It had begun to rain, a fine thin drizzle, and the air felt dank, unhealthy. When he joined me I wanted to take his hand, but he was busy with wallets, with pockets; one hand went to his collar and another to his jacket, to pull it down under his coat, and then at last we set off, side by side, out of step, saying nothing. Then we came closer to each other, instinctively, in the ugly night, and after a while my hand stole out and took his, and that was how we reached the flat, silent, but hand in hand again.

  There was no sound from the kitchen and I assumed that Nancy had gone to bed early. Our tray was on the kitchen table, and I left it there. I flung off my coat and went into the drawing room; I switched on the fire and the lamps and turned round to find him standing in the middle of the room, deep in thought. I went up to him and put my arms round his waist, round his damp coat, which he was still wearing, and then I laughed and said, ‘Darling, you’re soaking. Take this off.’ He hesitated, and I laughed again, and tugged at the sleeve, until he shrugged his way out of it. I pulled the two stools in front of the fire, but he did not join me. Instead he sat down in my mother’s chair and eased his collar away from his neck. He looked wary, distant, and it seemed to be up to me to take that curiously affronted expression off his face. I could not bear his strangeness. So I started talking, as larkily as I could, and I perched on the arm of the chair, and after a time he grinned and pulled me down on to his lap. It occurred to me that one of us was behaving rather oddly and I assumed it to be me. But his silence appalled me. So I went on talking. I stopped eventually, and looked at him, and smiled, and stood up, and took his hand, and led him into my bedroom, and as I collapsed gratefully on to the bed I relaxed and pulled him towards me. I could feel his heart beating; I could feel his hands tearing at my dress. I thought, but it should not be like this, there is no need… I reached up for him but suddenly he broke free and stood up and said, ‘Not with you, Frances. Not with you.’ And as I lay there he turned his back on me and walked jerkily over to the bookcase, and stood there with his back to me. After a minute I sat up, and waited for him to turn round, to explain. But he would not, and eventually I got up and went over to him, and asked him what was wrong. I edged round him so that I was facing him, and I said, ‘What is it? What is it?’ I said, ‘What is the matter?’, thinking that I had angered him in some way. But he did not answer. And then, I think, I knew that I had lost him long before the evening had ever started.

  I looked down at myself, at my creased dress, the collar slightly torn. I looked at him, but he would not meet my eye. I went out of the room and back into the drawing room and stood by the fire. Eventually I heard him come in, but I remained standing, with my back to him. I heard him come towards me, and hesitate’ and then I heard him go out, and then I heard the front door close very quietly behind him. After a while, I raised my eyes to that mirror, hanging by its chains over the fireplace, and I saw my white face, the eyes staring, and the mouth swollen and open, the unaccustomed lipstick smeared all over it. Then, very slowly, I bent down and switched off the fire, and the lights, and went to bed.

  The next day I worked steadily, much as usual. The Library was quiet. The telephone did not ring, although I found myself waiting for it. I planned to say that I was not well, if anyone called, and that I was going home. I would then go home. I think I hoped that this would happen, and that people would get worried about me. I think I hoped that if I went home James would eventually come and find me, and that in that bedroom I could somehow reconstruct that evening and make it all right, and then we could begin again and be once more what we had been to each other. But the telephone did not ring, and I was left undisturbed.

  I hoped that James would come to me at last, if only to explain to me what had happened. It seemed to me that I had simply not understood some difficulty, and that once I did I could laugh and pretend that it did not matter. ‘Was it the wrong moment?’ I planned to say. ‘I was quite worried. I thought I had done something to offend you.’ And then he would laugh, almost out of relief that I had understood and was not upset, and then, if I was very careful, we could begin again. I had this all worked out, and I did not even worry that he did not appear that day, or the following day, because I realized that he had had a shock, and that he was annoyed, and that he did not know how to explain. I began to wonder if I should go to him, and make it easier for him that way, but I could not quite bring myself to do that. I knew that it might be necessary, but I kept putting it off. I thought that I might have to force things into the open before the following Monday, when I should see him at the Frasers’. I could not quite trust myself to behave as if nothing had happened.

  But as the hours ticked slowly past, it began to seem as if this was what was going to happen. I felt - and there was not a minute of the day when this matter did not occupy my whole attention - that he should be allowed absolute freedom in this matter, that I should not Put any pressure on him, that I should simply put him first. I began to wonder if I had ever done this and realized, sadly, that perhaps I had not. My enjoyment of those tiny routines, which, when I now came to think about them, seemed to dwindle into the occupations of a child, or an invalid, had of course misled him. It wasevident to me that I should have got to know him better, that I should have sensed in him a complication, a sort of refusal… But I had not sensed this. I had not even been aware of it. But if cleverer, more adult eyes than mine had perceived this and had tried to protect him, and in so doing had tried to warn me, then in fact Alix was blameless of anything except rather too much mystification. I realized that I would have to tell her eventually, if James did not speak to me of his own accord, and the knowledge filled me with disgust. And yet, as the time crept on, and James did not appear, I slowly became reconciled to the fact that I would have to go to Alix for an explanation, that it would become something no longer confined to the two of us, but once again a matter among the four of us, as it had been in the beginning.

  But on no account would I tell her that he had said, ‘Not with you, Frances. Not with you.’ I heard those words over and over again, and in the end I came to understand that he had found me… not suitable in that way; that he had looked on me only as a friend, that this was a friendship that must be preserved in its nursery simplicity, with its healthy walks and its cups of coffee. I thought that I had probably mistaken that early excitement, which I had felt in both my mind and my body, but which he had evidently not felt in the same way. This realization left me numb. And I had told him so much: I had asked Olivia for the house at Plaxtol, and I had shown James that I expected him to be there with me, just as if… just as if he would want to be. Just as if I meant anything at all to him in that way. I could never own up to this. Although I knew that Alix, and even Nick, would demand a full accounting, I knew that I could never let them know how mistaken I had been.

  As the three days that separated me from the weekend slowly passed, and James still did not appear, my expectations fell away and died, and I knew that he would try to bury the incident and pretend that it had not happened, that he might never refer to it, might not even tell Alix and Nick. I perceived that it might be a matter of good manners to let it all drop, and that it was up to me to terminate our arrangement as unobtrusively as possible. On the following Monday I would be bright and entertaining, for now I needed my friends more than ever. I would plead tiredness when it came to going home, and quite naturally hail a taxi, and I would somehow let it be known that it was all over. It was, after all, what they wanted, in their various ways. And I must not be mulish or uncomfortable about this: it was nearly Christmas, and we were going to have to celebrate together. So that I must be very light-hearted. I would tell Olivia that we had decided not to use the house, and I knew that she would not ask me any questions. I would tell her some time. But not yet.

  That was h
ow I came to my realization, and I was amazingly calm about it. I slept badly, that was all. When I say badly, I don’t mean that I was restless or agitated. Quite the contrary. I fell into a deep death-like sleep that lasted all the way through until the morning, and when I woke up I would feel quite dazed. I would sit up in bed, trying to readjust to the waking day after what seemed like a total absence, and sometimes, even sitting up in bed, I would drift off again, and feel the heaviness pulling me down. Into these curious, almost amnesiac, states, images would enter, although I could not always remember what they were later in the day. They worried at me, commanding me to remember them. And sometimes they would jump into focus. That was how I saw the rosewood cigarette box again, looking very large. It looked large because I was so small; I was running a child’s hand over the slightly irregular, slightly imperfect edge. I was repeating the gesture over and over again. I had nothing else to do, because I was a child and I was waiting for the adults to come back from what was so mysteriously keeping them and to allow me once again into their company.

  Nine

  By the time I was ready to visit Miss Morpeth I had composed myself into a facsimile of my former selfbrisk, amusing, sharp, my round birdlike eyes on the lookout for oddities of behaviour that I might eventually use in that droll novel that, some day, I was going to write. I had not come round to this state of affairs without dffficulty. Above all, the thought of reverting to the role of observer rather than participant filled me with dread and sadness. For although I knew that this was an easy card of identity to use in the game of social interchange, I felt it as the seal of death on any more natural hopes I might have entertained. In my role of observer (and I could already see the reviews: ‘witty’, ‘perceptive’, etc.), I should have to prepare myself for a good deal of listening. Without comment, of course. I would somehow be on my honour to extract sly morals from everything, to view the world as a human comedy, to identify connections, to unearth motives. To do everything that I could not manage to do in real life, in fact. I, who found it so diffficult to shed my beady isolation, must in fact never appear to be lonely. I must be the odd one at every gathering, and in order to hide my sense of shame I must pretend to be taking notes. Where I had once thought to say, Look at me, I must now turn the attention of others away from myself. I, who had once wanted to be recognized for reasons other than the ones I was now reconstructing, must forget that I had ever sought that recognition. No good would come of it.