Family and Friends

by Anita Brookner

  Sofka herself is a diminutive, of course, although one never thinks of her as in any way diminished, rather the opposite. She is Sophie (Sophie Dorn).

  In the photograph the men wear tails or dinner jackets and the women long dresses with little hats, for this is a wedding in the old style, with something of a feeling for the old country. These weddings are important affairs, with the roster of the family’s achievements on show. Quiet and retiring as their social lives may be, spent largely in each other’s houses, playing cards or discussing the children, with a sharp eye for both perfections and imperfections of housekeeping, the women will prepare for a wedding as if they themselves were getting married. Long sessions with the dressmaker will replace the idle but watchful afternoons in one another’s houses, then the shoes, the tiny tapestry bag, and of course the hat will demand all their attention. The children will be indulged with new and impossibly pretty dresses, although these may be a little too young for them. The children will become petulant with the long hours standing in front of a glass, while a dressmaker crawls round them pinning the hem. They do not really like this indoor life, to which they seem to be condemned; it sharpens their nerves and makes them touchy, although they have the beautiful rose-coloured bloom of days spent in the gardens. There are gardens, of course, but they are supervised by gardeners. These days of bustle and calculation will culminate in the actual preparations for the wedding itself. Husbands, cheerfully and with resignation getting into their tails or their dinner jackets, quell an instinctive sinking of the heart as they view their wives’ very great solemnity at this moment of their adornment. Iconic and magnificent, the women stand in the centre of their drawing-rooms, and it is difficult to remember that they were ever girls. The children, longing to run and to play, kick moodily around in their enchanting clothes; already they look like men and women, bored with an adult boredom, discontented enough to run for their lives.

  Sofka sits in her morning-room, waiting for the car to come round. This is the traditional cry, the view halloo of wedding mornings or afternoons: ‘Has the car come round?’ Sofka’s back is ramrod straight, her beaded dress immaculately appropriate, the hat tiny but triumphal. Around her sit the girls (Mimi and Betty) in their pretty Pre-Raphaelite dresses, and little Alfred, who is already pale with the heat and the strain. Alfred is always good, but the effort costs him a great deal. Lounging in the doorway, with the nonchalant stance of the Apollo Belvedere, is Frederick who enjoys these long celebrations, offering himself the pleasure of surveying a large field of nubile girls, for weddings put such thoughts into the forefront of every mind. While waiting for the banquet, Frederick is perfectly happy to offer his arm to his mother or his sisters, and indeed is most at home in doing so, for it seems to be his only function within this family. Even now he is pouring his mother a tiny glass of Madeira, placing a small table at her elbow, smiling at her, and very gently teasing her, for she finds these events initially rather daunting. She is a shy woman, virtuous and retiring, caring only for her children, but determined to fulfil her role as duenna, as figurehead, as matriarch. This means presentation, panache, purpose and, in their train, dignity and responsibility; awesome concepts, borne permanently in mind. Like a general on the evening of a great campaign, like an admiral setting a course for his fleet, Sofka looks to the family fortunes and plans her performance accordingly. She surveys her children, is proud of them, trembles for them. The tremor conveys itself to her hand, and a tiny drop of Madeira gleams on the polished wood of the little table. ‘Mama,’ says little Alfred. ‘The car has come round.’

  At the wedding they will dance, husbands with wives, fathers with daughters. Under watchful gazes the young people will flirt, amazed that no one is stopping them. The music will become slower, sweeter, as the evening wears on. The children will be flushed, glassy-eyed with tiredness, their beauty extraordinary, as if it were painted. On the gilt chairs the elders will sit and talk. Reflecting, on the following day, Sofka will judge the event a success. Her girls have been congratulated on their charming appearance and manners, her boys on their filial devotion. This is how it should be. Sofka’s cheeks have now lost their ivory pallor and her mouth wears a proud smile. In a few days she will receive telephone calls, no doubt with more compliments; she will give one or two tea-parties, for there is much to discuss. The verdicts of those sharp-eyed women, those sisters in the spirit, must be sought, their advice heeded. Strange how much calculation there is even in the most virtuous! Upstairs, in the old nursery, the girls are playing the piano. Little Alfred stands behind his mother’s chair until told to go and play. When he receives this permission he hardly knows what to do, for he is rather bad at playing. Frederick, who is very good at it, is nowhere to be seen. Sofka pours coffee, offers cakes. Looking out into her garden, she sees that a wheelbarrow has not been put away. She frowns slightly. How tiresome that so innocent a detail should spoil the perfect picture of her day.

  2

  FREDERICK IS so charming and so attractive that women forgive him his little treacheries. Where others would meet censoriousness Frederick tends to invite collusion. His reputation precedes him, for that is reputation’s only useful function. In this, perhaps, he finds the justification for his behaviour. He can never understand what is wrong when people upbraid him. When the occasional woman screams at him, accusing him of forgetting his promise to take her somewhere, or saying that he was reported to have been at that same somewhere with somebody else, Frederick shakes his head, bemused. Frederick does not, in his own estimation, break promises; he merely forgets them. ‘You know what a hopeless memory I’ve got,’ he smiles, tapping his marble forehead with his poetic hand. ‘You know what I’m like,’ he smiles, deep into the woman’s eyes. At such relentless and hypnotic persuasion the reproachful woman falters. She tries to retrieve the situation by exacting from him another engagement, half aware that she is on a doom-laden course. It is important to her to be seen in public with Frederick, but as time passes this is not so easy to arrange as it used to be. Whole edifices of status are built on this sort of public appearance, reputations salvaged or lost. Somewhere she is conscious of the fact that the women in Frederick’s life are either all equally important or all equally unimportant. Perhaps his reputation has taken over his behaviour. Misgivings increase. Is it better never to make a fuss? What must one do to encourage Frederick’s affection once one has lost that turn of the head that proclaims his interest? Does one laugh, give in to him, go along with his little dishonesties? Or does one, once and for all, fling down the gauntlet? How much attention should one pay to the knowledge that if one does engage in this sort of flinging one is likely to live in permanent exile from Frederick and his kind? ‘Neurotic,’ shrugs Frederick, and his cronies agree. Some of them women.

  The exiled woman has been heard to remark that if Frederick behaves in this manner it is because his mother has encouraged him, that it was in fact Frederick’s mother who first gave him licence to misbehave at all. Frederick’s mother would, if she had ever heard it, react to this opinion with genuine amazement. Is it her fault, she might ask this hypothetical critic, if her elder son has inherited his father’s legendary way with women? This is a clever but uncalculated statement, in the way of all Sofka’s statements. In the first place it establishes the legend of a heroic line of charming and handsome men, the sort of men who make women conscious for the first time of their powerlessness. In the second place it establishes the superior power of Sofka herself, able to finesse this potent charmer into marriage. None of this is entirely true, of course; the commerce between the sexes is rarely so simple or so just. But the function of such an argument is to annul the criticism of the disappointed, the rancorous, the deceived. Sofka implies that there is little that women can do about such men. A look of distaste crosses her face as she contemplates the possibility of effort, of stratagem, of reproach. Sofka is such a lady, and such a mother. Her husband, the reprobate, almost vanished into thin air after he married her. Fo
rtunately, his reputation was still there to sustain him. In the same way, his reputation now sustains Sofka. And if she looks with an indulgent eye on Frederick, it is because she sees in him his father’s disgraceful charm. And a mother is more susceptible to this sort of charm than a wife or a lover can ever be.

  When the telephone rings, and Frederick fears an importunate voice, he signals to his mother, and she gets up from her chair with the most extraordinary expression of girlish glee on her face. ‘I’m afraid Frederick is out,’ she will say in her soft grave voice, one hand to her mouth to subdue her smile. The voice continues in her ear, becoming plangent, and clearly audible to Frederick on the other side of the room, one hand wearily marking time to the reproaches. Sometimes, when Sofka is unable to terminate the conversation as briefly as decency tells her is necessary, Frederick sets his metronome going and his mother is obliged to bring her handkerchief up to her mouth to stifle a little laugh. Sofka loves this teasing relationship with her son and sees no reason why she should forgo it. It brings a little light-heartedness into her serious grown-up life. It makes her feel like a girl again. And no harm is meant by it. Harm may be done, but it is never meant.

  Sometimes Sofka will wait up for Frederick when he has been out in the evening. She will prepare a jug of iced lemonade and wait for him in the morning-room, sitting peacefully in the light of one shaded lamp. She looks very charming in repose. To Frederick she is an oasis of sanity in a world peopled by increasingly difficult women. He sighs thankfully when he reaches this haven, and after kissing his mother flings himself into a chair and allows Sofka to pour him a glass of lemonade. Sofka will often have a little embroidery to hand on these occasions: she somehow judges it necessary not to look at Frederick in order to facilitate his confidences. Frederick is rueful, Sofka is smiling. It is the smile of a woman who understands men. Sofka does not know that women who understand men are unreliable allies. Her only allegiance is to her family, so the question does not arise. Sofka can see that something is wrong; her probing is almost imperceptible. Yes, says Frederick, he is rather tired. The evening had not been guaranteed to relax him. Why do women make fusses? In this way he rationalizes his delayed arrival, his straying attention, his glad recognition, across the space of the restaurant, of another girl. Tears, of course, in the taxi. Sofka smiles into her embroidery. ‘I can’t face her again tomorrow,’ says Frederick, assuming an expression of great nobility and weariness. ‘There’s only so much I can do for her. I can’t be expected to deal with her problems. I doubt if anyone could.’ Sofka agrees. When the girl telephones in the morning, Sofka will say that Frederick is out and that she does not know when to expect him back. This patent untruth will sometimes bring a girl to the house, in tears. ‘My dear,’ sighs Sofka. ‘I wanted to spare you.’ So delicate is Sofka’s treatment on these occasions that the girl is quite puzzled to realize that she feels no resentment.

  Frederick’s deportment, in love and business, is extremely aristocratic. Somehow, out of the unpromising debris of a European family, Sofka has bred an English aristocrat. This is perhaps her most triumphant achievement. Frederick’s looks, his smiling dismissal of his small but genuine musical gift, and his ability to treat work as play confirm his unassailable lack of effortfulness. At the factory, which is largely run by the works manager, a hard-headed and devoted German who knew Sofka’s husband in the old days and who was in fact previously employed by him as a major-domo, Frederick charms everyone, employees, clients, secretaries, machine minders.

  They never know when he is coming in, and so they work harder: the uncertainty, and the desire to earn one of his winning smiles, makes them all very conscientious. There are as yet no partners but a place is being kept for Alfred, who will start there – at the bottom, of course – as soon as his schooling is finished. Never mind the studies and the books and the growing obsession that Alfred has with distant places: he must work first and earn the right to play afterwards. But Frederick seems to play all the time; he is the original homo ludens. He will often arrive in his office in the early afternoon, having let the whole morning go to waste. Sometimes he will be carrying golf clubs, a tennis racquet, for one of the delightful things about Frederick is his imperturbability. A weak man might invent excuses but Frederick, with the knowledge that he is the family’s pride and joy and an object of scandal and desire, will not bother to be anything but himself. Perhaps a client has been waiting for him for some time and is getting restive; clients, after all, are not necessarily under Frederick’s spell. But Frederick will wave such a person into his office, make a comic face behind his back to his secretary, and in his charming way, which the client considers extremely European, offer him coffee and iced water and cigars. For brief periods Frederick can manage to be an enthusiast, and it is this lightning enthusiasm, apt to fade very fast, that tends to attract investment. Besides, Frederick’s very outrageousness is entertaining. Here too his reputation has preceded him. It seems quite an achievement to have gained his attention for as long as half an hour.

  With the astonishing luck that is somehow coaxed out of circumstances by impudent behaviour, Frederick has managed to put the factory on its feet. This is the reputation that Frederick is allowed to have, although the steady work is done by Lautner, the ex-major-domo, who, having only a cramped and unattractive flat to go home to, is there at all hours. Lautner sometimes sleeps at the factory if he has been working late on an order, or going through the figures. He is not above brushing Frederick’s lapels before he leaves the office. With Lautner there nothing is left to chance, and he is so devoted to the family and his days and nights are so devoid of entertainment that the factory is his life. Lautner, in fact, should be a partner, but it would be unkind to demote him when Alfred finally makes it to the top. Although Alfred is only sixteen, his rise to managerial importance is discussed as if it will come about in a matter of months. When these discussions take place Alfred hangs his head so that his mother should not see the dark expression which he has never been able to hide; in due course he invariably slips out of the room and goes back to The Conquest of Peru. Frederick is quite understanding about this and cuffs him affectionately round the head, but there is no question of Alfred’s course in life being changed. Home is such an agreeable place, and Sofka so delicate a mother. And the money is beginning to return and life is easier and very pleasant. There is Elizabeth in the kitchen and Winnie who comes in every day to do the rough work, and the dressmaker and the hairdresser now come to the house again. The chauffeur is paid two pounds a week. Sofka is able to indulge her little weakness again: beautiful monogrammed linen. The children are encouraged to give her fine white embroidered lawn handkerchiefs as presents, but dashing Frederick will turn up with a bouquet of flowers and Sofka will forget the other little tributes. Sometimes Frederick will present his mother with one red rose. There are roses in the garden, of course, but they are the province of the gardeners. Frederick’s rose will be placed in a vase and taken up to Sofka’s bed-table. As she lies back on the square pillows that her mother gave her when she married, Sofka will look at the rose and smile.

  In this world of weddings and marriages Frederick is the dark horse, the enigma. He is also the trump card. Who will win Frederick? The contestants are many, and their fight for the conquest of his hand has begun to contain elements of panic and disappointment. Sofka has always encouraged her children to bring their friends to the house, but only Frederick avails himself of this offer. He loves his friends to meet his mother and they are encouraged to come to tea on Sunday afternoons. In this way more than one aspirant has found herself face to face with someone rumoured to be a rival, for rumour thrives on this sort of confrontation. Frederick and his mother see nothing shaky in this arrangement; indeed, Sofka thinks it redounds to Frederick’s credit that he openly shows his hand. The sheer good manners demanded by the pleasant worldliness of these occasions subdue sharp reactions, and looks of dismay are turned into agreeable and sophisticated smiles. Sofka,
who loves Sunday afternoons, puts herself out to entertain the girls. They are shown the garden, rather slowly, and asked if they would like to sit out there for a little while. Frederick, who remains in the drawing-room, allows his mother to do the honours. Then there is tea, with Frederick’s favourite marzipan cake. ‘Freddy, you’ll get fat,’ shriek the girls, half-hoping that he will. ‘Freddy?’ smiles Sofka. ‘Is that what you call him?’ She implies a very slight lowering of standards here, which would not be tolerated in her own family. The girls attempt to salvage something from what is already perceived as a missed chance by being extraordinarily nice to Mimi and Betty. Mimi is so charming, so like her mother: why do the girls prefer Mimi? If she is like her mother, she is also unlike her mother, but it is difficult to tell how, and there is so much more to think about than this little matter. The struggle for control becomes more arduous. No sooner does one of the girls decide to make a positive move by asking Frederick to take her home and thus, at last, getting him on his own, than Sofka says, ‘We always enjoy a little music on Sunday afternoons,’ and bids Frederick take up his violin. With Mimi at the piano, there follows an interminable arrangement of something or other which entails rapt attention and minimal movement. When Frederick at last lowers his violin and Mimi strikes her final chord, the girls are so relieved that their applause is genuinely enthusiastic. Mimi flushes becomingly but Betty seems already to be completely aware of what is going on. When the girls get up to leave, there being no other ploy available, Sofka shakes their hands kindly. ‘I’m so glad you enjoyed our little concert. You must come again some time,’ she says. ‘I want to meet all Frederick’s friends.’ She implies that their number is legion and that they are all female. Both implications are correct.