Family and Friends

by Anita Brookner

  Here she is in Paris, on the first step of that defection, not knowing yet what it is but extraordinarily bold in answering its still extremely muted promptings. Here she is, about to embark on an adventure which is proportionately greater even than Betty’s, yet she hardly sees what shape it will take, only that it has given her vague life an immediate direction. Isn’t this enough? For women like Mimi it is enough. She does not know what to expect of the evening before her. She has made no firm appointment with Frank Cariani, but all the time she is drawing him towards her, invoking him, with the full force of her passive dreaming nature. Of Frank himself she knows nothing, only that he is the agent of this extraordinary change. Of Frank she merely perceives that he is beautiful and kind, a friend, a brother, yet definitely, astoundingly, desirably, other. She knows that he will be hers. Or rather, that she will be his.

  In the Rue de Rivoli she stops instinctively outside a hairdresser’s, then pushes open the door and goes in. She asks to have her hair cut, but when the hairdresser takes the tortoiseshell pins out of her chignon he exclaims with admiration and refuses to touch it. Amorously he brushes the red-gold waves, turning them with his brush this way and that; smart women waiting for his attentions join in the chorus of admiration and suddenly Mimi is suffused with happiness. She sits, glowing, her hair spread over her shoulders; she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She looks like Rossetti’s ‘Beata Beatrix’ which she has seen in a reproduction in Alfred’s collection. After this moment of happiness she submits to having her hair washed and dried and her chignon put up again. The hairdresser and his clients smile kindly at her as she makes her faltering yet curiously stately exit.

  The sun has lost its heat and is beginning to veil itself once more in greyish mist. As she sits drinking a cup of tea in that same café in the Place des Pyramides where she drank her coffee very early that morning Mimi feels coldness in the air, and the brief majesty of the hour, in which sights and sounds and smells are now so great as to seem impersonal, impels her to think ahead. She imagines that Frank will come to the hotel at about six o’clock; she finds this idea preformed in her mind and nothing will shift it. She knows, for example, that she has not missed him, that he is yet to come. She will have time for a bath before then and she will sit in her little salon and wait for him.

  Dressed in her best cream silk dress, she sits by the window and watches the moon rise above the Tuileries. It has now turned seven and she is beginning to feel hungry. She calculates that in half an hour she will ask for a sandwich and some coffee to be brought up, so that when Frank comes – and he will now probably want to take her out to dinner – she will not have spoiled her appetite. By this time she is so awake, so ardent, that all appetites seem inexhaustible. At eight o’clock she asks for her sandwich and eats it absent-mindedly, still bound up in this extraordinary dream of love that fulfils her imaginatively over and above the circumstances of the time, the place, and the hour. At nine o’clock she leans back in her chair, a little tired, her eyes still wide with the vision of Frank’s arrival. She is aware that at some point a maid has turned down the bed and has left the room silently with the tray. A little later it comes to her with the force of a revelation that Frank has had to dine with Betty, that he will see her back to the Hôtel des Acacias, and will then make his way across the city to the Rue de Rivoli: Mimi’s impression that Frank will call to take her out to dinner is suddenly overtaken by the much stronger impression that he will now steal into her room like a lover, like a thief in the night. Hastily she removes her dress and pulls down her hair; then, in her plain white nightgown, she resumes her seat by the window. Since she can now see nothing she listens all the more intently. She hears the occasional motor car; she hears footsteps in the corridor and the diminishing sound of voices. She seems to hear a clangorous bell, although there are no churches in this district and the bell is probably in her head. The intense darkness envelops her, envelops also her inviolate dream. At some time in that interminable night she lies down on her bed; on her face the smile is tinged with intimations of the most absolute horror.

  In the morning Mimi leaves Paris, a city to which she will never return.

  6

  WHO IS THIS person whom Frederick has brought home for coffee and for marzipan cake? She is certainly not a lady and is rather too old to be a girl: Sofka is almost forced to think of her as a woman. Where did he find her? At what party, in what clubhouse, on what golf-course or tennis-court did he manage to acquire this all-round, outdoor, noisy, cheery, healthy-looking, loud-voiced, incessantly laughing, large-boned, carelessly dressed person whose name is Eva and who instantly says, ‘Call me Evie’? Why should Sofka call her Evie, even if the woman has unconsciously conformed to Sofka’s family tradition? Why should she call her anything, thinks Sofka, as Evie, legs spread comfortably apart, gleaming teeth well in evidence, skirt slightly twisted, holds out a large hand for another cup of coffee and appears to think it quite appropriate that she should be entertained in this manner? Sofka is full of immediate thoughts of rage as she cuts a final slice of marzipan cake and watches Frederick proffer it to his friend. ‘Dolly telephoned,’ she informs Frederick in a voice that is slightly higher than usual. ‘She wants you to take her to a party. My son is in great demand,’ she informs Evie with a smile of forbearance. ‘I know,’ laughs Evie, with another showing of what seem to Sofka to be giant-sized teeth. ‘He’s in great demand with me too.’ At this Frederick laughs in a subservient manner that, to Sofka, is both fatuous and dangerous. A cold hand clutches at Sofka’s heart. Where once she thought she feared for her daughters, she can now no longer deny herself the knowledge that it is her sons who are more precious to her. She prepares to fight for Frederick’s virtue and for his continuance.

  First, she must study her adversary, who should be easy to outwit. Evie gives the impression that she is of a slightly lower order of accomplishment than the girls who usually besiege Frederick. She seems, moreover, to be extraordinarily noisy and to have the ability to displace any object in her vicinity. She conveys an idea of power which has nothing to do with charm. (Sofka believes that charm is indispensable.) In addition to this idea of power, which is in effect little more than restlessness, but none the less menacing for that, Evie gives an impression, greatly exaggerated, of size. Sofka is somehow persuaded that Evie has huge primeval hands and thighs, the teeth of a shark, the braced back of a giant-killer. Evie is in fact of middle height and average weight; she has, to be sure, rather large hands, but she is not bad-looking. She is not bad-looking if you abandon all thoughts of feminine beauty in the more regular or conservative sense: Evie is not bad-looking as a member of the species. And it is as a member of the species, in those days before the lava cooled, that she is most viable. That is Evie’s trump card: viability. With her strong neck, ready smile, woodcutter’s teeth, and unvarnished good health, Evie seems to promise, on her own, the propagation of the race. Next to her, Frederick appears effete, decorative, luxurious; Frederick reverts to being a violin player, no longer with the panache of the orchestral conductor whom he once resembled but rather like the leader of a trio in some provincial coffee-house, a little bulky, still radiantly good-tempered, but with some of his bloom gone for ever. When she sees this, Sofka mourns inwardly as if Frederick were already lost to her.

  It is a long time since Frederick did a proper day’s work. His visits to the factory are now brief, and, to tell the truth, they are not encouraged by Alfred, who, with Lautner as his ally, is gradually assuming sole control. Overseas buyers and representatives still ask after Frederick, rather missing his genial presence and his opulence with the cigars and the coffee, but Alfred is becoming adept at implying that Frederick is only a consultant these days. In fact Frederick is not much of anything at all. He attends perhaps two or three afternoons a week, still able to cheer and inspire the secretaries and the typists, but not altogether aware of what is going on. What he does recognize is the growing power of Alfred’s chilly pers
onality. Alfred is the one person in the family whom he has never been able to win over. In his easy-going way Frederick is sorry for this; he quite liked Alfred as a little boy, and he doesn’t even mind him too much now. Frederick bears no grudge against this slackening of the fraternal bond; the bond was, perhaps, never much more than an accident of birth, and in any event Frederick has always been more fond of his mother and his sisters. It is the astonishing fact that in spite of or perhaps because of his great success with women, Frederick has a sort of feminine sensibility. He adores women, he appreciates them, he maddens them with his knowledge of their little ploys. He bathes in an entirely feminine atmosphere, and in this way subtly eludes that English persona that his mother has decreed for him and reverts to more distant origins. The violin player in the provincial coffee-house was not altogether wide of the mark.

  What then can he see in Evie? Evie is no oil painting, and, as far as Sofka can discern, is entirely devoid of feminine mystery. But this is where Sofka ignores the clues. Evie may not be feminine, but she is abundantly female. The spread thighs, the gleaming teeth, the shouting laughter, the springy yardage of hair: all these features speak a language which perhaps Sofka has never understood. But it is precisely this concentration of animality that has hooked Frederick and knocked him out. All those years of half-measures, of flattery and badinage, of conquests too easy because they were largely unsought, have dulled his appetite for dainty fare. He now seeks cataclysms and no longer cares for disguise.

  Evie has yet another trump card, and that is power. Whereas Frederick is content to take the inert line that best suits his feminine personality, investing in life no more than his lazy good nature will tolerate, Evie has a will to succeed that might well terrify a lesser woman. Or indeed a lesser man. The traditional sort of woman in whose mould Sofka is irrevocably cast might rely on a mild and subtle influence compounded of glancing opinions, smiling obliquities, tender and persuasive flatteries, the occasional withdrawal into ancestral hauteur; these would be thought legitimate, permitted, respectable. But Evie, in her curiously blind fashion, wants certain things very much indeed and will exert a sort of menace until she gets them. This menace will be translated in a number of ways, largely physical: the restlessness will increase, the laughter become more incessant, the sort of teasing that verges on cruelty but which is covered by some semblance of rough good nature will be more in evidence, and in moments of real tension, shouting, crying, even fighting. All this is so much like Evie’s particular form of love-making that Frederick is inevitably enslaved and usually does as Evie wants. Evie has only to throw back her head in a peal of laughter, revealing her trembling pink uvula, than Frederick is subjugated. Never before has he been so closely in touch with the mysteries of the flesh. For Frederick, despite all his winning ways, is a genuine voluptuary.

  In her primitive manner, Evie squares up to Sofka, well aware of her fastidious opposition, although smiling pleasantries are still being exchanged. The marzipan cake is praised, the charming décor of Sofka’s rosy damask drawing-room is appreciated; Sofka’s opinion is sought on various unimportant issues. At the same time, Evie is laying down her cards. Her father is well off, very well off, in fact, and she is the only daughter. Her family is in the hotel business, and has been so for three generations; although Evie has been sent to England for her schooling, and although her papa has bought her a very attractive flat in Devonshire Place, her real home is on the Italian Riviera, where her papa owns several hotels on that blistering strip of coast between Nice and La Spezia. Clearly, Evie is her papa’s girl, to judge from the number of times she mentions him. She has the sort of exotic bad manners, the complete conviction of her own uniqueness, that bespeak the adoration of a father rather than of a mother. To Sofka, so much her own mother’s daughter, this is alien. She remembers her mother’s whispering encouragement when she was on the verge of marriage, her mother’s insistence on fine manners and fine linens and fine food … But this noisy girl is talking about shares and capital investments and foreign taxes and the advisability of acquiring property in several countries. It is quite clear, from the way this conversation is going, that Evie is the man in this arrangement and Frederick the woman. Evie is laying down favourable terms for taking Sofka’s son off her hands. She has the money to do it and the power to make of Frederick what she will.

  Evie, to Sofka’s regret, becomes a regular Sunday visitor. After a while, she is invited to lunch. This has been a rather mournful meal of late. Not only is Betty irrevocably missing, not only is Alfred – at the head of the table – stonily silent, but something has happened to Mimi, who is no longer the smiling and docile daughter that she used so beautifully to be. Picture them at the table. Alfred, flourishing carving knives, prepares to exert his patriarchal will on a large roast of beef, for Sunday is devoted to the consumption of traditional English food. This seems appropriate although Sofka finds it a little too robust for her appetite. Alfred sits at the head of the table because Sofka has decided that he deserves this distinction. She herself sits at the foot, and Frederick is on her right, where he prefers to be. These positions seem so appropriate to the natures of the two brothers that neither of them would think to dispute them, although Alfred has a lingering nostalgia for the days when Frederick sat at the head, and he, the cherished younger son, sat at Sofka’s side, where, as a boy, he could turn to her and whisper requests. On Alfred’s right hand sits Mimi, who seems to have lost a little weight or to have let her hair grow rather untidily; it is difficult to see at first glance what the alteration is, but Mimi seems to have forfeited that enchanting candour that she once possessed and with it that candour of appearance that so became her. She now looks older, a little gaunt at times; one is aware, as one never was before, that she is the sort of woman who loses her looks with her innocence. What has happened to Mimi no one knows; it is thought by Alfred that she caught a germ in France and is now in a state of convalescence which may take some time but which will inevitably lead to complete recovery. Sofka knows that something has happened, but will never permit herself to ask, lest her questions bruise the girl too much. She looks with pain at Mimi, who tends to fall these days into slight absences, silences devoid of rancour, largely composed of dream. To Sofka, at these times, Mimi does indeed appear to be suffering from some sort of languor, and she defers to Alfred’s verdict. Alfred remembers the nameless cordial that he purchased on the train; he remembers too the insults in which he was involved, and has no difficulty in associating this draught with Mimi’s languor. The doctor has been consulted, and an iron tonic has been prescribed. This appears to have made no perceptible difference, but as Mimi presents no real evidence of illness, other than her increased mildness and quietness, the time has not yet come for stronger measures or for serious heart searchings. Her appetite is good, if a little mechanical.

  On the other side of the table a chair has been removed, or rather set back against the wall. ‘My younger daughter is in Paris,’ explains Sofka. ‘She is completing her education there.’ Never did she speak a truer word. For some reason, some ancient sense of identification or approval, Sofka has decided to let Betty have her own way. Funds have been made available to her through the good offices of Maître Blin, who has also seen her installed in a respectable pension in the Avenue Mozart. There have been telephone calls to Betty every Friday evening, and when she comes away from the telephone Sofka allows a small smile to play round her lips. Does she secretly rejoice in this outrageous daughter who has the courage to break with the conventions? Does Sofka like the bad rather than the good in her children? If Mimi and Alfred are the alleged and established good son and daughter, deferred to and cherished for their very beautiful qualities, does Sofka nevertheless contemplate with a private delight Frederick’s dissolute charm and Betty’s nerveless insolence? ‘Mama, Mama,’ wheedles Betty on the telephone. ‘Don’t be cross with me, little Mama.’ And she puts a kiss into the receiver which Sofka hears with a smile. As far as she knows
, Betty, respectably housed, is taking singing and dancing lessons, which Sofka hopes she will forget about in due course. What Sofka does not know is that Frank Cariani is still there, albeit at the Hôtel des Acacias, and that under Betty’s direction they have rehearsed a dance routine which the manager of the Moulin Rouge is going to let them try out mid-week when business is slack. They are billed as ‘Bunny et Frank, danseurs de charme’. Betty calls herself Bunny in Paris. She thinks it more chic.

  Alfred flourishes his iron-age instruments and sets about carving the meat. This is the one meal of the week that Sofka does not supervise, leaving it to the housekeeper, who reproduces the Sunday dinners of her childhood: oozing beef, roast potatoes gleaming with fat, cabbage innocent of butter or of caraway seeds. With this, a sauceboat filled with gravy the colour of mulligatawny soup. Sofka finds this meal quite indigestible, but Alfred, for some reason, requests it and seems to enjoy it: Alfred has revealed a nostalgia for an English childhood known mainly through his reading for he never knew it in real life. Sofka’s children have never been to school: they are outside every recognized norm. The boys had a tutor and the girls a governess. They wound up with numerous accomplishments but no real education; this is one of the reasons why they find it so difficult to mix with other young people. From childhood, their ways have been cast among their own kind, and their loyalties to their home and family reinforced by memories of unlimited reading in silent cigar-scented rooms, piano lessons, little recitals, and the chocolates produced from the silver box as a reward. Although this regime is bred into Alfred, he has learned from his reading of Charles Dickens that a more robust attitude pertains to hard labour and the eating of traditional food. Feeling himself to have laboured hard and long, albeit in a handsome office these days, Alfred asserts his honorary and Dickensian right to the roast beef of old England. He has shown himself a little impatient of the douceurs of Sofka’s drawing-room of late, and has turned away from her spiced and subtle cooking. To his mind, Sofka’s odourless yet rich jellied consommé cannot compare with the housekeeper’s dense Scotch broth.