The Rules of Engagement

by Anita Brookner

  Yet at that moment I saw that the cost was great. In these pleasantly familiar surroundings it would be easy to let down my guard. But there was no reason for me to do so. I was with a stranger, whose conversation, interesting though it was, revealed a solitude as closely guarded as my own. It was not in my interest to dismantle it, nor indeed in his. He was luckier than I was in having activities that absorbed him. I was lucky only in being free of financial considerations, in being housed and independent, in not being a burden. I knew that my earlier thoughts would return when I was alone again. The despair, the shock, the thoughts of flight were part of a pattern which seemed to me fixed, not subject to alteration.

  ‘Would you like to come home with me?’ I heard myself saying. It was then I knew I was drunk.

  When I could bear to look at him I saw that he was smiling, a rare smile that illuminated his austere face.

  ‘Is that you speaking, or your generation?’ he said.

  ‘Women do this all the time. It seems there is nothing to it.’

  ‘So you want to be part of the Zeitgeist?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I never have been. I have been a fool. And now I dare say it is too late. Please don’t look at me like that. You are supposed to acquiesce eagerly, no questions asked.’

  ‘The questions may come later.’

  ‘Not this time?’

  ‘Later. Shall we go? I’ll walk you home, of course. If you are not too tired.’

  Outside the blue evening had deepened, darkened, giving promise of fine weather on the following day. Cars rushed by, their headlights cutting a swathe through the otherwise quiet street. I felt weary, ashamed, headachy, unequal to the task of rescuing this strange evening. I searched for anodyne subjects of conversation. Easter was early this year; surely that would do? Yet the thought of Easter, the first of the year’s annual migrations, depressed me even further. Everyone had plans: it was a social duty to enquire what these were.

  ‘I suppose you will take a break?’ I said.

  ‘Probably. Almost certainly. And you?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ I said, maintaining the fiction of those friends vying with each other for my company. We walked on in silence.

  ‘Did you really just happen to be in the neighbourhood this evening?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. I had to see someone at Imperial College about finding a place for a homesick first-year Indian medical student.’

  ‘And did you? Manage that, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  He was no more talkative than I was, as if the evening had made us equally exhausted.

  At the entrance to Melton Court I resolutely held out my hand.

  ‘Thank you for dinner.’

  ‘It was my pleasure.’

  It did not then seem as if it had been a pleasure. He had retreated into his earlier mournful self. What he had no doubt wanted was not something I could supply. The brief recitation of his emotional history had served some purpose, but I was not able to evaluate this. No doubt it had been defensive, even pre-emptive, in order to forestall any more leisurely enquiries. It now seemed entirely irrelevant, yet I knew that I should give it further thought. He seemed to regret it, but it was in keeping with his general stoicism not to offer excuses.

  ‘I’ll no doubt be in touch after the holiday.’

  ‘I hope you will. Goodnight, Mr Ward.’

  ‘Nigel.’

  ‘Elizabeth.’

  ‘Goodnight, Elizabeth.’

  I turned away quickly, in case I should seem to be watching him stride off. He would of course walk home. It would be a relief to him to be on his own again, as it would be to me. I no longer had much taste for my own company, although alternative company usually left me unsettled. What I dreaded (but this was routine) was returning to my empty flat, in which I should not be disturbed. Tonight the rooms seemed airless, and more silent than usual. I was never glad to get home, though frequently reassured that I had managed it. It occurred to me that I was not bound to stay in this flat, could in fact move. I had a vision of a house, of a family kitchen, a back door opening on to a garden. I promised myself that I would explore the side streets that I usually ignored, and perhaps let myself plan an alternative future. The advantage of moving might in fact be even greater than the advantage of a long journey: no one could get in touch with me, and I need offer no explanations. And I need never come back to this place which I suddenly found inimical.

  There was no trace of Nigel Ward’s presence, apart from his empty glass. This I tidied away, together with my own and an untouched dish of olives. How bored he must have been! And yet I reminded myself that he had more or less arranged the meeting, had telephoned, and might telephone again. Unfortunately I lacked the stamina for an association in which I might be required to behave discreetly, circumspectly, as if everything might be reported back to the analyst, if he had one. I had to remind myself that the analyst was, until verified, merely a figment of my imagination: Mr Ward, whom it would be difficult to think of as Nigel, might be his own analyst. He certainly had penetrating insights, was certainly a better tactician than I had proved to be in the course of the evening. Yet the need for circumspection would remain, and I preferred other ways of behaving. I preferred, in fact, the absence of circumspection, as I believe most women do. In trying the direct approach I had made a serious mistake, though this struck me as laughable rather than tragic. I had been irked by his civilized restraint; I had not been prey to sudden urges. All my life, it seemed, I had longed for direct engagement, for total intimacy, and had encountered it only once, in the least poetic of settings, in a rented flat of no great amenity, which nevertheless held the secret which had at last been revealed to me. However shabby, however second-rate, however deplorable in the eyes of the world those encounters could, with hindsight, be seen to have been, they had answered my most profound need, and in themselves had proved sustaining enough to remain the standard by which all other attachments had to be measured.

  It was perhaps strange that I, an ordinary woman of no great distinction or accomplishment, frequently overlooked by others, no longer studied by men, should have discovered this for myself and should cling to it as proof of my validity. It would, I knew, never be repeated. The best I could hope for—and this was a great deal to hope for—was that the memory of such pleasure might be shared, might bring a reminiscent smile to another’s face. I lived on the possibility that this might be so, yet sometimes I found it hard to sustain that hope. Now it came back to me with a sort of anger, the anger I unjustly felt for Nigel Ward’s punctilio. Behind that anger lay the trace of Betsy’s bold claim that she had in some way succeeded where I had failed. I no longer saw her as touching and vulnerable; in the again unlikely setting of Peter Jones she had seemed confident, even over-confident. In my memory I invested her with a slight sneer, which I knew had not been there, but she had implied that my marriage had been faulty in some way, that I had not loved my husband, that her love affair was superior to any I might have known, and for that I should find it hard to forgive her. There was no way I could convince her, even persuade her, that I had emotional resources of my own, since she had decided that no trace of these remained. And behind even this, but stimulated by it, was the longing for a rash act, such as I was no longer permitted, after which I would truly vanish, with the satisfaction of having answered a need of which others had hitherto been unaware.

  I was late getting to bed, and the usual soothing routines were not effective. I lay in the dark, trying to rid myself of the events of the day, which had been unusually disconcerting. Of the encounter with Betsy I preferred not to think, and so far the events of the evening were not quantifiable. My bold suggestion to Nigel Ward had been out of character; it was company rather than sex that I had wanted, although the body can often prove a traitor. What disturbed me was the thought that I had not been in good faith, and that I had no real interest in this man beyond his no doubt unusual story. It would have been one of those makeshift inti
macies in which I too should have to furnish a history, something I was not willing to do. This particular man seemed to be proceeding on the same principle, yet I had to remember that he had turned me down. I had also been prompted by a certain shame at my own continence. This was no longer de rigueur, was almost suspect. My standards of behaviour were markedly out of keeping with the spirit of the times; they were standards remembered from the novels I used to read, in which there was no doubt that virtue and sexual fidelity went hand in hand. It was entirely possible that such standards could only be attained in fiction. At the same time there were disturbing echoes of the same belief in Nigel Ward, whose physical presence, though agreeable, was somehow hollow. I could see that he was imprinted with the memory of his early experiences; his standards had been set by a combination of Oxford, of love, of confidence, and of early promise, none of which had borne fruit. No doubt he had moments of lucidity, in which he saw himself as a hostage to the past, and by his own decree a hostage to a grim present. His flat in Bedford Way would be austere, a cell suitable for a latter-day penitent, and long walks his remedy for inconvenient physical promptings. He gave the impression of having made a good job of his life, of coming to terms with it by devoting his energies to young people with whom he sympathized largely by virtue of their youth. In his lost world he had been a participant; now he was merely an observer. Such confidence as he had enjoyed had proved fallacious, yet he still treated it as if it remained his sole capital. He had conveyed all this in very few words, yet left the impression that it remained an article of faith, likely to outlive whatever had come after. At some point there would have been a reckoning, an unwelcome realization of the truth, perhaps even a slow recovery. In that respect he was superior to myself. Yet I knew, by instinct, that we both preferred our failures to our relative successes. In that respect we were perhaps more alike than unalike. Perhaps friendship would be possible. Perhaps he saw that too.

  15

  THE SEASON CHANGED, AND I, RELUCTANTLY, CHANGED with it. Though there was little raw nature in my immediate surroundings to inform me of this change I could not help but be aware of the lighter mornings and evenings, the longer days which faded slowly and almost imperceptibly into shadow. I regretted the dark that had previously enfolded me, permitting the voluptuous descent into welcome sleep. Now my sleep was fitful, so that the day never really ended, and I was awake before dawn at the beginning of another long day. It was also warm, so that it was a relief to throw back the bedclothes, to get up and take a shower. Thus my day began when other people were still asleep, and I found this unwelcome, revealing to me as it did my lack of occupation, or rather of direction.

  Occupation of a sort was available, but the greater part of it took on the nature of displacement activity. My mother telephoned from Spain to ask if I would like to visit for a few days, but I knew that there was no room in the little house she shared with her friend, and that I should have to go to an hotel. I was not anxious for her company, nor she for mine. I knew that her days were filled with arguments, as they had been when she lived at home with my father; she accepted this as natural behaviour, as I dare say her friend did. Some women are contentious by nature, relieving their anger at the hand life has dealt them with a pointless stream of criticisms which they dare not direct against themselves. I no longer questioned my father’s decision to leave, though I had thought him cruel to do so. I had become so used to my mother’s dissatisfaction—in which I was aware that I played a part— that for many years I accepted her references to her unusual sensitivity, which were constant, without questioning her claims to her refined nature, her dislike of other people, particularly women, even of her closest friends.

  I had come to a sterner assessment of these claims, but was uncomfortably aware that she was an unhappy woman. I thought that in her exile she had found some sort of solution to her various discontents, arguing, as she had always done, proclaiming the rightness of her decisions, animadverting freely against those whom she accused of letting her down. She had had the good fortune, if that was what it was, to find a companion similar to herself in outlook; no doubt they understood each other perfectly, and did not complain, or not more than was customary, about their routine disagreements. I viewed this arrangement as something unnatural which I did not care to witness at close quarters. The idea of a woman choosing to live not with a man but with another woman was unfamiliar to me, nor did my attitude ever change. Therefore sorrow for my mother, mixed with the difficult love we still felt for each other, kept me away from her. Nor did I have fantasies about an alternative mother whom I might fashion in my own image. No doubt childhood was something I was prepared to forgo. I do not remember at any time regretting this.

  At Easter the streets had been deserted, and I had felt uneasy at the prospect of what seemed endless uninterrupted time. The unusual warmth had made me aware of the confines of the flat, pleasant enough in winter, but now inappropriately restricting. On Easter Sunday I walked round the park, but this inevitably brought to mind Nigel Ward and his student followers. I thought perhaps, as I had not thought at the time, that the students were indulging him, that they had no real interest in the long walks, and would rather be drinking coffee somewhere more convivial. I now saw his efforts on their behalf as noble but a little sad, and also rather impressive in their innocence. I imagined him on his holiday, walking purposefully through France, persuading himself that there was some satisfaction in carrying out a self-imposed task, and doing so successfully, so that when he eventually met up with his friends he would in fact have little to say to them, the mere enactment of the task being paramount.

  His friends, in their turn, would welcome him warily, their affection tempered by his unwavering sternness. Yet there would be affection, I thought. One is touched, even moved, by a spectacle of such virtue; one is also made uncomfortable by it. I myself had felt shabby, flimsy, in his company, I had been impressed but also appalled by the vision he had given me of his life, the depth of disappointment that had spoilt his youth and contributed so unhappily to what should have been the years of his maturity. In many ways he had been frozen in time, and therefore exhibited a conduct of extreme ambiguity, although to him this may not have been apparent. An attractive man by any standards, he was paradoxically unapproachable. There had been no hint of a woman in the background, apart from the child-bride to whose memory he had remained faithful. He did not seem to know that such unclouded times, if one is fortunate enough to have experienced them, can never be replicated. He would conjure up their memory, and be eternally saddened by his inability to build on it. Yet he was intelligent, and seemed to need no consolation. He had made strenuous efforts, the sort of efforts beyond most of us, certainly beyond myself, and the result was a rigidity of behaviour that might alienate any possible company he might have wished.

  There was a mismatch here between us which I regretted but could not ignore. Whereas he had been permitted to enjoy youth and its optimism I had been the opposite, restrained and expecting nothing. I now looked back in something like horror to my lonely days in Paris, and knew quite suddenly that I should not go back there. I was not keen to emulate the stoicism of which I could not help but be aware. Our approach to each other had been as tentative as that between automata, and I had been both impatient and embarrassed by my failure to intrigue him. I had never been a great success in this way; I was not confident enough to make claims on my own behalf. That was the great virtue of my husband, whose easy tolerance and good nature had appeased my sexual misgivings, no doubt the result of a homesickness for romance that I had felt in Paris and had not found with the few young men I had met and known there. I had owed him an immense debt that I continued to honour. It was entirely possible that Nigel Ward could provide the same sort of loyal companionship—anything less would be unthinkable—which would leave me comforted but unassuaged. I had never committed the indignity of blaming Digby for the passion I felt for Edmund, but no doubt it would serve as an explanati
on. I had been aware of checks and balances since my early adolescence: if I renounced this then I could have that. It had never occurred to me that I could have it all, as the feminists proclaimed. I saw this as impossible: how could one reconcile such diverging opposites?

  The question that preoccupied me as I walked round the park was whether either of us was so tired of our lives as to seek out each other, and why this prospect should appeal to one so ferociously guarded as Nigel Ward. The advantage to myself would be obvious; no longer a careful widow I might enjoy more dignity than had recently been my lot. Indeed I was conscious, as I might otherwise not have been, of how drab a figure I must have appeared to anyone who had not known me in the days of my confidence as both wife and mistress. I could see why Betsy’s hateful remarks had so offended me, stirring in me thoughts of flight, of exile: I appeared to her, and no doubt to others, as a polite relic, all fires put out. I had been so successful in my concealment that none thought to question it. In a sense this was appropriate: my secret was safe with me. Now I saw that it had not always been so, that it had been overlooked only by virtue of certain codes, a barrier which Betsy had knocked down. The defiant freedom I had once felt had been eclipsed and could never be re-invented. What I wanted now was something quite different, a sort of blamelessness such as adults rarely come by. I wanted, if anything, some of Nigel Ward’s virtue. I wanted a good conscience, such as I had not enjoyed for a long time, perhaps never.

  I viewed this matter almost in the abstract, since my feelings were not engaged. This fact did not disturb me unduly; rather it seemed a matter for congratulation. Fate had presented me with a possibility which I could hardly ignore. I was not old, but I was no longer young. Nor was I particularly worried that I was thinking these thoughts in isolation, without reference to the partner whom I was speedily taking for granted. Sex might be a problem, but I was prepared for that. His physical reluctance had been unmistakable, not merely in his smiling refusal of my invitation, but in his obvious avoidance of contact, even in the precipitate way he moved his legs when I approached with his glass of wine. Such conduct seemed to me pitiable, though it was obviously part of his life, and had no doubt been fashioned in rigorous circumstances. I doubted the existence of another woman, let alone other women, although other women must certainly have punctuated his austere existence. Flattered by his good manners such women, if they indeed existed, would have expected a favourable outcome, only to be puzzled and disappointed by his lack of desire. Thus each promising beginning would be followed by a period of such extreme caution that some would shrug their shoulders and move on. I had proof of this caution, for he had not left me his home telephone number. At first I had assumed that he had forgotten to do so; now I saw this as a tactical manoeuvre, leaving the entire undertaking in his own hands, to implement or to discard as he saw fit. This was a more formidable obstacle than whatever sexual naïveté I ascribed to him. And yet I remained convinced that he would find his way back to me, that he was lonely, and even ashamed of his loneliness, and that I represented something agreeable and approachable which he might find to his taste.