The Rules of Engagement

by Anita Brookner

  Like many women of her type Constance Fairlie ran a small charity that had to do with aid to the homeless and was based in some aristocratic religious organization to which, surprisingly, she gave her adherence. This had been mentioned at those far-off dinner parties that Digby and I had attended, and in those days I had been full of respect. Her part in this endeavour, as I came to see, was to extract money from her wealthy friends, and this she did by hosting or sponsoring various functions—dinners, receptions—at which some relatively prominent speaker would give a brief address. This efficient but painless way of doing good was completely in tune with Constance Fairlie’s strange and to me unknown loyalties. I could see how her acid humour, which might well co-exist with religious leanings, would make her a more than proficient worker in this field. I doubt if she ever got very close to her homeless beneficiaries: that task would be left to others. But as worldly patron she would have been quite an asset. She had the status necessary for such work, and she had the attributes, the fine house suitable for such gatherings, and the genial husband who gained additional respect from his wife’s gratifying activities.

  ‘What would you be doing?’ I asked Betsy.

  ‘I’ve no idea. But it might be quite nice to work in a private house. I mean, she works from home. I shouldn’t have to go to an office, or anything. It would be voluntary, of course. And it would get me out of the flat.’ She grimaced. ‘It’s definitely a flat you’d want to get out of, isn’t it? I said as much to Edmund, to Mr Fairlie.’ She blushed slightly. ‘He said I must call him Edmund.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘And when do you start this job?’

  ‘Well, apparently there might be a slight delay, because they’re going to move. They’re looking for a house, something slightly smaller, I understand. So he said he’d let me know. I gave him my telephone number.’

  I could not help but salute the ease with which this had been engineered. At that moment I had warnings of what I might be called upon to witness, for I had no doubt that the Fairlie household would be the target for all Betsy’s ardour, the loyalty that should have made her the ideal partner, and indeed had already done so. I also knew that both Edmund and Constance would be expert at deflecting that ardour, or rather those elements of it for which they would have no use. I knew something of their cast of mind: they were in control, and determined to remain so. I understood this because I had tried to be the same, and for a time had appeared to succeed. But I had never succeeded as well as Edmund, whose will had always been superior to my own. And as for Constance, whom I hardly knew but whose cruelty had always seemed to proceed from supreme confidence, I now saw that Constance might even be superior to her husband in this respect. Would she not have had enough practice over the years at discouraging other women, women who might have been drawn to her so attractive husband, and would she not have been expert at this task, putting paid to some misplaced enthusiasm with a light but stinging remark? Might not Edmund rely on her to do this for him? Such collusion between partners, or indeed associates, could, to the outsider, appear revolting, or enviable, depending on how that outsider was placed. I hated to think of the defeats thus inflicted, and endured. Some life-saving instinct had prompted me to divorce myself from this situation before such a defeat, which I might have sensed in the abstract. Edmund was protected by his own immunity—to remorse, though that was too simple: to sorrow. He and Constance were monstrous in so far as their emotions were rudimentary, confined to self-satisfaction and self-preservation. I could see why Constance might have had religious leanings. She might, over a period of time, have become aware of her own coldness, might have sought to put this out of reach, as if true warmth were the gift of another, or rather Another. And having discharged a passing distress in this manner, and made it the province of that Other, she would return briskly to her various obligations, one of which was to maintain marital equilibrium in the way that both she and her husband understood.

  I did not care to see Betsy go down that road, nor did I care for the part I should have to play in this. Far better that I should pursue a dull existence, without memories of my own former addiction. Yet what I knew of Edmund was, though reprehensible, ultimately reassuring. He was too practised to get himself involved with a woman of Betsy’s type. It was even likely that he was unacquainted with Betsy’s type, that he thought all women able to take care of themselves, as the feminists of the time were so loudly proclaiming. He would have admired such women, seen them as equal partners in the sex war. That sex might be a metaphor for love might have occurred to him as a young man, when those matters were less clear, was a possibility, yet very little sentiment had been carried over into his adult life. A woman like Betsy, with her desire to become part of a family, would strike him simply as odd. Were women in the 1980s not pursuing their own ends, eager to get ahead with plans to conquer territory formerly the province of men? Was there not something Napoleonic about the new woman, something titillating as well as provocative? Whereas Betsy, who asked only to lay her life at some man’s feet, would be regarded as quaint, anomalous, by Edmund, by any man prepared to make war, not love.

  Yet I had to admit there was an aura about her. Though I knew it was an aura of goodness others might see it as desire, as passion in its most restricted sense, whereas it was destined to be unlimited. That wide-eyed sympathy, that need to go too far, that potential realm of excess, with which I had had little sympathy in the past, when her avidity had seemed irksome, had been slightly tempered by her experiences in Paris, so that she no longer overwhelmed one with her enthusiasm, but was able to listen, to comment, like any other sensible grown-up person. And yet threatening to break through, to break out, was the girl who had proclaimed tragic soliloquies as if they alone could express the weight and pressure of her longing. What mysterious deprivation had occurred, before I knew her, perhaps even before she knew herself? The data were explanatory but insufficient: the slightly discredited father, the spinster aunt whose self-abnegation was mirrored in the pale lips and the discreet garments that had evoked my mother’s pity and derision . . . The most crucial figure—the mother—was entirely absent. Nor did Betsy ever refer to her, either because the subject was too painful, or because a veil of silence seemed to have descended on that household. More likely the latter, I reckoned. Thus the awkwardness of an unexplained absence, almost a social solecism, had been maintained, and it had been entirely due to Betsy’s loyalty that her reduced family had enjoyed anything approaching normality. Yet perhaps there had been some flaw, some taint, in the mother to make her die so young, of ‘complications’ which were also mysterious and to which Betsy could only refer vaguely and with a sense of embarrassment. Perhaps the mother had been eclipsed in other ways, mentally, emotionally; perhaps—a dreadful supposition, this—she had also been the victim of her husband’s diagnostic inadequacy. None of this could be known, but it was surely relevant. Betsy’s desire to be part of a viable family would have been her most primal need. This had been obscured by her determined blitheness, as she shouldered the task of being a credit to her aunt and appeared to look forward to a future of work and effort without the advantage of any sort of encouragement. No doubt Miss Milsom had done her best, but Miss Milsom had been defeated from the start by a sense of duty she had not entirely chosen. She may have been aware of her own inadequacies: her legacy, not entirely financial, might have been an unspoken message to Betsy that there were choices to be made, though she had known few herself.

  And then that fortuitous concatenation of high and low drama, of Racine and Hollywood, the lines learned and declaimed to indifferent friends and classmates, and the cinema on Saturday nights, and the mystifying behaviour of those who obeyed different codes, who knew about calculation, and delay and how to defeat rivals! The one must have warred with the other, yet the message of both was that love was the true business of men and women, particularly of women. She would have rejected the amorous sleight-of-hand deployed by the stars and allied herself
with the tragic sincerity of those other actors, those heroic players in the eternal game of love and loss. ‘Dans un mois, dans un an, comment sou frirons-nous/ Que tant de mers me séparent de vous/Que le jour recommence, et que le jour finisse/Sans que jamais Titus puisse voir Bérénice . . .’ She had adopted such behaviour as her standard, not knowing or not caring that it was obsolete. Her belief, and it was almost a religious belief, that such virtue as those prototypes represented must find its equivalent in human affections, and that she need only maintain that belief for the ideal conclusion to be reached, was what gave her fine eyes that strange starry light, as if at any moment her very own hero might materialize and escort her to a future which would unite them both.

  It was true that her looks had benefited from that idealism. Her air of expectancy would appeal to some, though it might be misconstrued by others. Edmund no doubt had been amused and touched. His prudence would protect him from a false step until he was sure that she understood what was at stake and even then might hold him back. At that stage he would hand her over to Constance, whom Betsy, if still unaffected, would embrace with equal fervour. If she responded like a normal woman she might, by the same token, prove onerous, in which case Constance would perform her usual function and Betsy would be carefully or not so carefully dismissed. I saw as if for the first time the dreadful dynamics of this couple, saw too that I had had a lucky escape. But was it so lucky? I had volunteered to leave, and in so doing had deprived myself of a source of pleasure of which I was now more in need than ever. I felt drab, drowsy, as if some life-giving supply had been switched off, leaving me almost comatose. I had nothing better to do than to sit in this room bearing witness to another woman’s dawning excitement, for we were separated by something more than experience, even experience of the same man. Some lingering decency kept me silent, though it would have served my purpose to have uttered a warning. But whereas I had never doubted Edmund’s duplicity, and had schooled myself to understand it, even to accommodate it, I knew that Betsy was entirely unacquainted with this particular quality. Her loyalty to Daniel had no doubt been prompted by the same idealism, whereas a normal woman would have summed him up as a fantasist and given him a wide berth. Therefore I must respect what was in the kindest interpretation a form of innocence that was unusual, indeed rare, in a grown woman. The sad act of growing up is that this quality is lost, worse, that it can lead one astray, and worse even than that, be derided, even be seen as a fault. Being good has no virtue if it is grounded in ignorance, and I could see from Betsy’s apparent conversion (or was it real?) to Edmund’s passing favour that she was ready to place her entire time at his disposal, and to accept his overtures in the hope that they might lead to the sort of inclusiveness that she had always craved.

  He might have seen something different in her response to his offer, might have intuited a fervour which it could be in his interest to explore. He would have no truck with her ideals, but was astute enough to be able to bypass them. My worst thought was that he might even have been wryly impressed, might indulge himself by feeling more than he should, might even fall a little in love with her. But here, at this critical point, my own hardheadedness prompted me to reflect that he would know the risks involved. That was the difference between Betsy and myself: I preferred to know the truth, however bleak, and what strength of character I had impelled me to look these facts in the face, whereas Betsy might have been created by Dickens. She was Little Dorrit, whose goodness, even on the page, grows a little tiresome.

  There were unusual intervals of silence in our conversation, of which I think only I was aware. Betsy had retrieved some kind of authority from her recent turn of fortune, and I could see that in some mysterious way our positions had become reversed. Not that there was anything more than coincidence at work here: I was quite sure that she had formed no comparison, or no conscious comparison, between the possibilities open to us. Yet I made no attempt to hide from her, or from myself, that I had reached the end of one particular road: I was a widow, and it was proper to assume that my emotional life was over. This was so true that I saw no sense in disputing the fact. Whatever I might have wanted from the future was now eclipsed by the very obvious fact of my solitariness. I did not have the courage to undertake new initiatives. My recent decision to return to Paris was not after all a decision, for I was incapable of putting it into action, and in any event what would I do there? If I were to live the life of an exile I could do so much more comfortably by remaining where I was, surrounded by familiar possessions, my position unambiguous. I had undergone some further rite of passage, from the experiences that pertain to youth to the anticipation of ageing, when one becomes fearful of having one’s habits and customs disturbed. This new vulnerability was brought about not only by Digby’s death but by the removal of pleasure. I was able to mourn both Digby and Edmund in equal measure, disloyal as this might seem. One huge loss, which encompassed them both, seemed to be my lot, and I could see that unless I were very careful I might end up mourning for myself.

  For I had certainly been reduced, as I had never thought I should be. Even in Paris I had maintained a certain inviolability. In London, at home, I might unthinkingly conform, as my mother had done, despite her frustrations. And I should have to assume a dignity which would be porous, made worse by the more successful lives of others. I should be useful as a confidante, an invidious position which I had no means of avoiding. For I could never recapture the kind of eagerness with which Betsy had outlined her useful future, the one now being devised for her. I could see only idleness for myself. No plans had been made for me; whatever I did or did not do was entirely in my gift. Yet the courage it would take to remove myself from this position was for the time being beyond me. I was only partly restored by the look of sympathy in Betsy’s eyes. Sympathy was the last thing I wanted.

  ‘You’ve let your hair grow,’ I said quickly, to furnish one of those silences which we had occupied by carefully drinking coffee and eating biscuits.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t be bothered with it. Does it look all right?’

  ‘It suits you. In fact it suits you rather better.’

  She had tied it back with a black ribbon, and the new nakedness of her face added to its appeal. She still had an air of having recently returned from abroad, in her deft movements, in her new confidence. I could see that she was very attractive, that the latency from which she had previously suffered was at an end.

  ‘It was really a bit of luck, our meeting like that. Though of course it was a very sad occasion.’

  ‘Meeting Edmund, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. Did you know him well?’

  ‘He was a friend of Digby’s.’ I got up from one of her uncomfortable chairs. ‘I must go.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you a bit. I want to know how you really are. I can’t believe I’ve been talking so much about myself.’ She gave a little laugh, as if better to convey her disbelief. ‘I do so want us to keep in touch. After all, we’ve been friends for most of our lives. And now that I’m so near . . . You must let me help in any way I can. If you feel . . . you know. If you want to talk.’

  It was kindly meant, I am sure. Yet once again a discrepancy had made itself felt. I belonged to the past. Suddenly, and quite fiercely, I wanted Edmund back for myself. In the next moment I saw that I had ruined my chances, and, worse, given up without a struggle.

  We left the flat, with its witheringly subdued light, and issued out into another beautiful morning. So far this had been a poignant autumn, a gift to the more poetic kind of journalist. I had taken to reading the newspapers very carefully, addressing myself to the facts, and I had been surprised by the unexpected soulfulness displayed in this matter. This gave me a moment of pleasure every day, for the weather is a democratic institution in which everyone has a vote, and in any case it made a change from the Business News, which I also read carefully in an effort to understand my financial position. This, as far as I could make out, was comfortable. I could, if I car
ed to, distribute largesse on my own account rather than respect those who were able to do so in a frivolous manner which, finally, had nothing to do with me. I had no desire to acquire property or to own anything that was not legitimately mine. I did not intend to keep different houses for different purposes. Of the whole affair this was what most offended me. The flat in Britten Street was a symbol of calculation that perhaps only a man could make. I could see now how perverse its appeal had been. More than the flat I regretted the garden and the afternoons I had spent sitting there. That was a pleasure of which I need not feel ashamed. I did not think I should ever go there again.

  This particular morning seemed more significant than most, as if it marked the decline of one life and the resurgence of another, as if in fact I was sending Betsy off to a brighter future than any she could have designed for herself. I took careful note—of that sunlit patch of brick, of those late roses in a bucket outside the greengrocer’s, of that damp butt of a cigar lying on the pavement. This was now the currency I might exchange with others, free from ulterior motive, free from personal concerns. I was aware of Betsy walking beside me in equable silence, as if she too were under the spell of the beneficent weather, but when I stole a glance I could see that her colour was still high. A kind of mutism prevented me from talking confidently or persuasively, although it might have been in both our interests if I had done so. I did not do this because although we were both silent, and although there was matter there that might have been discussed, she had not quite intuited what that matter was. If she suspected prior knowledge between Edmund and myself it was knowledge of a purely social nature: I had known him in my capacity as a married woman, and was thus disbarred from intimacy. She was disposed to pity me for what were certainly legitimate reasons, but I was not inclined to receive the sympathy she so obviously felt.