At the End of the Century

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

‘I’d better go. This table is not big enough for you and me.’

  ‘But the apartment is enormous, as I keep saying. Have a second helping, be a devil. Well, I will then,’ he said and was already digging his spoon in when she left.

  A tiny old oriental attendant welcomed Brigitte into her pink kingdom. Brigitte could see Frances’ elegant shoes and ankles under a stall so she took an adjoining one. She said, ‘It’s me.’

  ‘I know. I can see your feet, and I wish you wouldn’t wear those kinds of teenage sandals.’ Frances’ voice was steady; she had not been crying but she had been thinking, and now she announced her decision. ‘I’m not going back with him. I’m staying with you.’ But when Brigitte said nothing, Frances’ voice was less firm. ‘I’m staying with you and Shoki.’ She pulled the lever in her stall and went out.

  Brigitte lingered inside; she could hear the excited birdlike voice of the attendant communicating with Frances in what sounded like Chinese but could not have been for Frances was able to respond. When Brigitte emerged, the attendant addressed her in the same birdsong, offering fragrant soap and towel. Frances was already wiping her hands on hers, and since neither of them spoke, the little attendant took over the conversation. They gathered that she was distressed about her job, which she had held for twenty years, and now they had been informed by the management that the restaurant was closing. Suddenly she was crying; tiny tears ran down her wizened cheeks, slightly rouged. Brigitte made comforting noises at her.

  Frances was staring at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were dry, her face was set. She said, ‘You can’t send me back with him because I won’t go.’

  ‘Who’s sending you back?’

  ‘I haven’t heard you say stay.’

  Brigitte was using her towel to wipe away the attendant’s tears. She told her, ‘You’ll find another job. Anyone would like to have you in their home.’

  The attendant praised Brigitte for her kindness. She went on to explain that she was not weeping for herself but for the others, the old men whom no one would ever again want to employ. She herself had a son and a daughter, both of whom did not want her to work any more. She took the towel, wet with her own tears, and gave Brigitte a fresh one.

  ‘You don’t need to feel sorry for the whole world,’ Frances said. ‘And you heard her – she has a son and a daughter who care for her.’

  ‘Of course I want you to stay,’ Brigitte said. ‘I don’t know what gave you the idea I don’t. Shall we go back now?’

  ‘I don’t want to see him.’

  ‘I mean go back to the hotel. He’s all right. He’s having another helping of chocolate soufflé.’ She found a fifty-dollar bill in her purse and put it in the tactful little saucer. ‘That’s too much,’ Frances said outside, though she herself, usually more careful, overtipped the valet who whistled up a cab for them.

  One evening a few weeks later Shoki gave Brigitte a lovely surprise. He came to her suite dressed up in a high-collared jacket of raw silk – Indian, but he had had it made in Beverly Hills. ‘I showed them exactly what to do, how to cut it – you really like it?’

  ‘Love it, love it; love you,’ and she kissed his cheek in the beautiful way of friendship they had with each other.

  He had been invited to a charity premiere and he asked her to come along. He assured her his host had taken a table for twelve.

  ‘Ralph?’

  ‘No, someone else, another friend.’ There was sure to be room, someone or other always dropped out.

  ‘What about Frankie?’

  ‘Of course; let’s take Frankie.’

  Frances said she was waiting for a call but might join them later. Her call came exactly when she was expecting it. Marshall telephoned the same time every evening. It was always when he was home from the office or a board meeting and was having his martini by the fireplace in the smaller drawing-room (called the library, though they had never had many books). She imagined him wearing slippers and maybe his velvet housecoat; or if he was going out, he might have begun to dress.

  ‘Isn’t tonight the hospital benefit?’ When he yawned and said he didn’t feel like going, she urged, ‘Marshall, you have to. You’re on the board.’

  ‘I guess I have to. But to turn up there by myself –’ He always left such sentences unfinished. She waited; perhaps tonight he would say more. Instead he became more irritated. ‘Marie can’t find any of my dress shirts – do you think she drinks?’

  ‘Marie! After all this time!’

  ‘Who knows? Servants need supervision. Someone to make them toe the line.’ Perhaps suspecting that she had begun to preen herself, he said, ‘I’ll send from the office to buy some new ones. What about you? You want any of your stuff sent out there?’

  She hesitated; it was true she was running short of the underclothes that were specially made for her by a Swiss lady in New York. But the subject of her underclothes was not one she ever intruded on her husband, so she murmured, ‘I’m all right for now.’

  ‘For now? What’s that supposed to mean?’ She was silent, and then he almost asked, though grudgingly, what she was waiting to hear: ‘Are you intending to stay out there forever, or what?’

  He sounded so put out – so fed up – and it was her fault. She said, ‘What can I do, Marshall? Brigitte just likes it better here.’

  ‘She thinks she does. She’s from New York. She was born here like the rest of us, why would she want to be in that joke place out there? Where is she, by the way?’

  ‘She’s gone out. It’s a premiere. A big event. She wants me to join her later. Do you think I should?’

  ‘You should do what you want, not what she wants. Though why anyone would want to go to a thing like that. “A Premiere. A Big Event.” Tcha. You’d be better off at the benefit with me.’

  ‘Marshall? You know my dresser? In the last drawer there are some bits and pieces I might need. If it’s not too much trouble. Just some bras. And girdles.’

  ‘I didn’t know you wore girdles.’

  ‘They look like panties but actually they’re tummy control.’ She was glad he couldn’t see her face – it was the most intimate exchange they had had in years. ‘Marie can pack them.’

  ‘If she’s not too drunk.’

  ‘Marie is practically a teetotaller.’

  ‘You’re the easiest person in the world to fool,’ he said.

  Shoki had been right and there were two empty places at his host’s table. This host was a powerful studio head but a far more modern type than Louis had been. He was from the Midwest and had been to some good schools in the East; still in his thirties, he was well groomed, well informed, smart. The guests at his table were there for their fame, their money or their youth and beauty. Brigitte’s celebrity was in the past, but that gave her an aura of historical tradition, and she kept having to raise her cheek for the tribute offered to her by other guests. Each table was ornamented by someone like Shoki, with no claim whatsoever to celebrity. Some were girls, others young men or almost boys; some were very lively, some totally silent – it didn’t seem to matter as long as they were visibly there and known to be attached to a powerful member at the table. Shoki and his host hardly acknowledged one another, except that from time to time the older man’s eyes stabbed towards the younger, maybe just in an instinctive gesture of checking on the security of possession. He could be entirely relaxed – Shoki gave all his attention to Brigitte next to him and to the matron on his other side, a former star. He was light-heartedly laughing and making them laugh.

  But there was tension – not emanating from their table but from elsewhere. Her eyes roaming around the room, Brigitte soon discovered Ralph. He was craning in their direction and even half-rose in his chair as though intending to leave his place and make his way towards theirs. But it was impossible – the room was packed, each table crowded and the spaces between them thronged with guests still trying to find their place or changing it for a more desirable one, whil
e the servers weaved and dodged among them with their platters and wine bottles.

  Although without an invitation card, Frances looked too distinguished not to be let in. But once inside, she had no idea which way to turn to locate Brigitte among this crowd of strangers, strange beings who all knew or knew of one another. She stood there, dazed by the din and glitter. Then she heard her name called: ‘Are you all right?’

  It was Ralph. He settled her into an empty chair beside him and tried to revive her with wine. She preferred water. ‘For my aspirin,’ she said, taking her pill box out of her evening purse.

  He laughed. ‘Are you sure that’s what it is?’

  ‘It may be Disprin. For my headache. It’s so terribly noisy. How can anyone enjoy being in such a noisy place?’

  ‘At least one doesn’t have to hear what’s going on in one’s own head. They’re over there. No, you’re looking in the wrong direction.’

  The reason it took her so long to find Brigitte’s table was that all the eighty-four tables crammed into that space appeared very much the same. Everyone there sat as in a burnished cast of wealth, of costly ornament. It was she, Frances, who was out of place. Although her hair too was professionally dyed, it had a discreet touch of silver; and her jewellery was not like that of others, women and some men, who displayed diamonds and rubies and pearls of a size and quantity that, if this had been any other place, would have been taken for paste. And maybe it was paste, she thought; it couldn’t be safe to walk around loaded with such immeasurable riches.

  ‘They’re waiting for me,’ she told Ralph.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get through myself, but there’s such a crush. Maybe after they’ve served the dessert. Why didn’t you come with them?’

  ‘I was on the phone with my husband. He wants me to come back to New York.’ Again looking around the room, she thought of Marshall at his fundraiser. He too would be with the powerful and rich, but his would be not only physically less brilliant but much more glum than these surrounding her, who were laughing, chatting, shouting and outshouting one another as though placed on a stage to impersonate characters having a festive time.

  ‘Brigitte doesn’t want to leave. But he wants both of us. They’ve been having sex together.’ She found it difficult to say – the words, that is; to herself she still thought of it as ‘sleeping together’. ‘It’s been going on for years. I don’t blame her for not wanting to come live with us. She doesn’t even like Marshall.’

  ‘No. Not the way she likes Shoki. As a friend, that is. They’re friends.’

  ‘Yes, he’s my friend too. But I really think I must go home. Of course Marshall will be angry if I come without her. But he’s angry at me anyway. It’s just that he needs someone with him where he can be any mood he wants. That’s the only way he feels comfortable.’

  Dessert had been served. A master of ceremonies tapped a microphone. Speeches were about to start. Ralph suggested they should try and squeeze through the crowd to the other table. He led the way, and when Shoki looked up, he saw them cleaving a path towards them. Shoki told Brigitte that it was very hot inside and maybe they should try to catch some fresh air? She got up at once and he took her elbow to guide her. Their host rose in his chair, but they did not appear to see him, or to hear him when he called after them.

  Unimaginably, outside the noisy room there was an empty terrace hovering over an expanse of ocean and moonless sky. Although a crowd of brilliant figures could be seen agitating inside, no sound reached through the double glazing of the windows. Two faces were pressed against the glass, trying to peer out into the darkness. Shoki said, ‘There’s Ralph.’

  ‘Yes, and Frankie.’

  They sighed as though something was difficult for them. But it wasn’t. Nothing was difficult for them. Shoki knew a way down from the terrace to the beach and soon he and Brigitte were walking there, their hands lightly linked. He told her about Bombay, where he had also walked on the beach, but it was not the same. For one thing, the sun was too hot, and then, always, there was Bombay – right there on the beach with the coconut sellers, the boy acrobats and others seeking money for food; and beyond, the whole city of Bombay with its traffic, its slums, its huge heavy Victorian buildings pressing down on the earth and the human spirit. He didn’t have to explain much to Brigitte, because somehow it was how she felt about New York, where everything was just as oppressive. But here, now, the ocean was very calm and very dark and all that could be seen of it were the white fringes of its waves gliding into the sand. There was absolutely nothing, no world at all between water and sky, and it was inconceivable that, with such fullness available, anyone could be troubled about anything – apartments, desires, attachments, anything.

  At the End of the Century

  Celia and Lily were half-sisters, but since both their fathers had long ago withdrawn, they were united by their one parent in common, their mother, Fay. Fay took them along with her – to France, South America – wherever she had a new marriage or liaison. Celia, who was ten years older than Lily, returned to New York as soon as she could. Educating herself through a series of semi-professional courses, she set up as a psychotherapist and became quite successful, while waiting for Lily to be old enough to join her.

  Lily was sent to boarding school in Switzerland, where she was miserable. Celia advised patience; she knew Lily would be miserable anywhere except with herself. As soon as she had failed her last exam, Celia made arrangements for her to take art classes in New York, though she wasn’t really surprised when Lily dropped out within a month. After that, Lily spent her days wandering around the streets carrying her sketching pad. This remained blank, but perhaps for the first time in her life Lily appeared to be entirely happy, living with her sister in their apartment in an Art Deco building on the East Side.

  Celia was still there – immensely old, the only one left. Even Scipio was gone (killed when his racing car overturned at São Paulo), although his name remained as sole heir in Celia’s will. Nowadays, all Celia could do was keep herself slightly mobile. When she managed to get up, she somehow dressed herself, usually askew, and shuffled off to the soup and salad place at the corner. Here she was served the same bowl of soup every day, which was all she seemed to need for nourishment. What was there left to nourish? The present was extinct for her; the past had vanished with all the people in it, even the dearest of them.

  When Lily, at nineteen, had decided to get married, it had been unexpected: a shock. She simply produced Gavin, didn’t even introduce him, murmured his name so softly that Celia failed to hear it and he had to say it himself, louder. Celia couldn’t find out where and how they had met. ‘I picked her up on the street,’ Gavin said. He warned Celia: ‘I’ve been telling her she really ought to be more careful about strangers.’ He said it tongue-in-cheek, a joke, but afterwards, when she and Lily were alone, Celia was serious about the dangers of the street. Lily said mildly, ‘I don’t talk to many people and hardly anyone talks to me.’ Celia believed her; there was something remote about Lily that would discourage strangers from addressing her.

  Gavin’s family liked and accepted her immediately. Gavin was a poet, and it seemed right for him to unite himself with his muse. Lily was fair to the point of evanescence, delicate, almost diaphanous – it was easy to think of her as a muse. She loved Gavin, everything about him. ‘Why?’ he would ask, amused, but she couldn’t answer; she had no gift for words. She was an artist by temperament more than practice. She liked to trace Gavin’s features – not with a pencil or brush but with her finger, lightly feeling him. This also made him laugh, but he kept still for her.

  He came from a large old American family, and the wedding was quite grand. It was held in the Hudson Valley mansion where Gavin’s mother Elizabeth still lived with two old uncles. China Trade dinner services were taken out of cabinets where they had been shut up so long that they had to be soaked in tubs of water to wash the dust off. Faded tapestries were hung over wallpap
er that was even more faded. But it was summer and the grounds were lush, the ancient trees loaded with foliage that looked too heavy for their broken limbs to carry. A fountain spouted rusty water out of the mouths of crumbling lions. There was a band and some of the guests danced, even some very old ones in very old long dresses that got wet in the grass.

  The original idea had been for the newly wed couple to live in the house with the groom’s mother. Gavin was the youngest of Elizabeth’s five children and the only son; his sisters were all married with children, but he was over thirty and had not been expected to marry. Elizabeth prepared one of the bedrooms for him and Lily – it had been unoccupied for years, but all that was needed was to renew the curtains and the canopy over the four-poster. Elizabeth picked flowers and filled several vases so that youth and freshness permeated the ancient room, which held a harp and watercolours of mountain streams and a broken-down castle in the Catskills. It was enchanting, and at first Lily and Gavin were enchanted. It seemed so perfect for them, for him who wrote poetry and her who painted.

  It turned out that both of them preferred the city. Lily saw plenty of sky from the terrace of Celia’s apartment, and birds, and buildings as fantastic as trees and more ornate; this was as much landscape as she needed. Gavin had spent his childhood in the country, but after he went to boarding school, he didn’t look forward to going home; school was far more exciting to him (he made deep friendships) and even during vacations he preferred to take up invitations from friends whose parents lived on Park Avenue and had season tickets to the opera.

  Six months into their marriage, Gavin and Lily were mostly with Celia in the city. At least Lily was – Gavin spent much of his time elsewhere, with friends in their studios and their weekend houses on Fire Island or the Cape. It didn’t occur to him to take his wife with him on these visits; she too appeared to think it natural that she should be mostly alone or with her sister. Marriage for her meant waiting for Gavin and being very happy when he was there. And because Lily was happy, Celia too complied with the situation, at least to the extent of not commenting on it.