To myself, of course, I did. Had I been brave enough to admit it I should have acknowledged the stupefying nature of such irreproachability. Yet, miraculously, I managed to keep my impatience in check. It was enough, or almost enough, to shop for food with some enthusiasm, to devise a meal that would tempt him, to make him welcome. For I too had been lonely, though well enough equipped to deal with loneliness. There was genuine pleasure in knowing that my evenings would be occupied, and by a man who was becoming less and less of a stranger, but that was how I had felt at the outset of my marriage. I did not, could not, envisage another marriage: the idea oppressed me, although an outside observer might have concluded that this stately friendship could end in nothing less than marriage. That was not within my sights, although on certain evenings it might seem as though it had already taken place. We ate, we cleared away—he now knew where everything was kept—we watched television together. Like the solitaries that we remained we were fascinated by the alliances, the domestic arrangements of the characters in the soap operas. His attitude towards these imaginary people was severely critical: they were stupid, or, more often, workshy. I could see that he was well on the way to becoming a testy old man, and I on the way to becoming one of those humorously tolerant women whose presence I had always found so soporific, largely on account of that very tolerance. Take a lover, I would urge silently, when stopped by one of these women in the shops or in the street (for now I seemed to know quite a few people, or perhaps they knew me), or, as one of my erstwhile Parisian acquaintances would recommend, in stronger terms, ‘Faites de la gymnastique, ou faites-vous baiser.’ There was a certain mean pleasure in knowing myself to be on the right side of orthodoxy, to be entitled to a certain smugness, to be able to accept as normal this strange entitlement to which I was still not accustomed. We understood enough about each other to enable us to avoid disharmony, and if this was not quite enough for me I could see that it pleased Nigel. Indeed his satisfaction at the way things had turned out was almost palpable. He seemed both younger and older than I was, younger in his lack of worldliness, older in his unvaryingly courteous demeanour in all circumstances. There were times when I longed to torment him, to goad him into some form of spontaneity, to inspire in him some rude initiative, but these times were becoming increasingly rare. I was almost a reformed character. Nigel, of course, had always been one.
When the telephone rang I said, ‘That can’t be you; you’re already here.’ He loved that kind of remark, with its implications of assurance, of continuity. We had been leaning on the window-sill, gazing out at the brilliant evening, struck by the beauty of the summer season. Reluctantly we turned back into the comparative dimness of the unlit room. ‘You sit down,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell them to ring back.’
‘Hello,’ said Betsy. ‘How are you?’
I had forgotten all about her, willingly. I had thought it better to leave our fractured friendship alone rather than go through the tedious motions of reviving it.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘And you?’
‘Well, not so good, actually.’ Her tone was merry, but with an undertone of distraction.
Nigel mimed a query. He was not used to having his presence disturbed. My success in making him feel at home had, perhaps, been a little too complete. I put my hand over the mouthpiece. ‘We’re out of wine,’ I said. ‘Could you bear to go out and get a bottle? White. We’re having fish.’
I heard his steps on the stairs and removed my hand. ‘Betsy? What’s wrong?’
‘Oh, nothing really. It’s just that I’m going into hospital tomorrow, and I thought I’d better let you know.’
‘Are you ill?’
‘No, I don’t suppose I am. It’s just for tests. Isn’t that what they always say?’
The merriment had left her voice, in which I now detected tiredness.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’ve been having a little discomfort. I expect it’s nothing really. I’ll only be in a few days.’
‘I’ll come and see you. Where will you be?’
She mentioned a name that meant nothing to me. ‘It’s a small private hospital somewhere across the river.’
‘Why private? Wouldn’t you be better off on the NHS? They have the resources . . .’
‘Edmund insisted.’ Her pride was unmistakable.
‘So Edmund knows about this?’
‘Naturally. The thing is, they want the name of my next of kin. Well, as you know, I have no next of kin.’ She laughed. ‘I wondered if you’d mind if I gave your name? I’m sure they won’t bother you. As I say, it’s only for a few days. And you can see that I can’t give Edmund’s name.’
‘In your place I think I might have done.’
‘Oh, no. And anyway I don’t want him to think of me as ill. He hates illness. Even when one of the children is ill he’s quite squeamish. So I probably shan’t bother him until I’m home again. Of course if he turns up that’s a different matter.’
‘Quite. Give them my name by all means.’ There was a pause which seemed to me significant. ‘Are you sure it’s nothing serious?’
‘Well, I don’t think so. As I say, discomfort, rather than anything else. A little pain, perhaps. I didn’t know what to make of it. I’ve never been ill before. I’m quite healthy, really.’
‘I’ll be along to see you. When are you going in?’
‘Tomorrow. Leave it for a day or two. They’ll want to do these tests.’ There was another pause. ‘You will come, won’t you?’ This time the voice was wistful, as if she had shed all her irritating adult mannerisms and had reverted to being the girl not yet damaged by the ways of the world. That was my thought at the time: damage. And in a moment that summoned up our previous history I wished that we were both still our uncorrupted selves, before the onset of calculation. I too was damaged, if only by the decisions I had made. These decisions had not been fatal, but neither had they been innocent. I had always been conscious of the work that time, that enemy, can do, or rather undo. Now I had the sensation of being rather more implicated in its processes than I had previously recognized.
‘Let me know if there’s anything you want,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you in a couple of days.’
Even a couple of days seemed a difficult prospect. I stood, with the now silent telephone in my hand, unwilling to move, wishing the previous untroubled hours back again, wanting to be on my own. When I heard Nigel’s steps on the stairs I was conscious of the need to greet him in my familiar disguise, that of a person of good will whom he thought he knew, whose good faith he was beginning to trust. And really nothing had changed, apart from that seismic revelation that I was no longer secure, that there was no direct menace other than that provided by the unknown, the accidental, the change that must be investigated, subjected to ‘tests.’ In this process I was as vulnerable as Betsy, even though the hour had not yet struck.
A voice. Not Nigel’s. Edmund’s.
‘Your door was open.’
‘I’m expecting a friend. He should be back in a moment or two.’
‘Very unwise, leaving your door open. I shan’t keep you long.’
‘You came about Betsy, of course.’
He looked tired, even haggard. ‘I must get home. We’re going out to dinner.’
‘Ah, yes. How is Constance?’
‘Don’t look at me like that, Elizabeth.’
‘What do you want from me, Edmund? I’ll go and see Betsy, of course. I rather gather that you won’t.’
He sat down heavily. ‘This is a bad time for me.’ I could see that it was. ‘It has damaged my family for ever. I bear the burden.’
‘So does everyone else, I rather imagine.’
‘I thought it could be kept within limits.’
‘Men always do.’
‘Instead of which she has, deliberately or otherwise, not understood my situation.’
‘She had her own to consider.’
‘She rings up the girls. God knows what she says to them.�
��
‘She is a decent woman. She would not do anything underhand.’
‘Constance may not forgive me. I have to take notice of that.’
‘What will you do?’
His hands, which I remembered acutely at that moment, went up to cover his face, to rub his eyes.
‘I know what has to be done.’
‘Can’t you tell me?’
‘No, I can’t drag you into this. You’re not involved.’
‘I am, you know. Not just with Betsy. With you. I have never doubted it. I don’t doubt it now.’
He stood up, shocked out of his misery. This scene of tacit complicity was what greeted Nigel when he returned.
‘Edmund is just leaving,’ I said, but with a voice that hovered between terror and confidence. ‘I’ll see you out.’ In that moment the future was banished. In the hallway we spoke in lowered voices, conspirators.
‘You’ll go and see her?’
‘Not you?’
‘I may have to go away on business. If there’s any change, of course, you’ll let me know.’
‘Is she really ill?’
‘I don’t know. She looks pale, certainly.’
‘You’ve just come from there?’
‘Yes.’
He made the supreme mistake of handing me his card, which I thrust angrily into the nearest telephone directory, knowing that I should not bother to retrieve it. He went on to compound the mistake by laying a heavy hand on my shoulder, a gesture which he obviously thought appropriate to the circumstances. And yet there was intimacy there, as well as deliberation. Distantly I heard Nigel clearing his throat in the living-room. When Edmund was half-way down the stairs I shouted, ‘Who’s paying for this?’ His upturned face was creased with sorrow. ‘Provision has been made,’ he said.
I stood in the hall until I heard the outer door close, then his steps on the pavement, then the car starting up. ‘Provision has been made,’ he said. To make provision: to provide for. So Edmund had been contributing to Betsy’s life in more ways than one. I was profoundly shocked, as if giving money to a woman implied yet more intimate responsibility. I had not understood this, although I might have done. Money was not anything Betsy had earned or inherited. The strange equality that existed between us was not a matter of our respective resources. It was both deeper and more troubled than that. He had also said, ‘I know what has to be done.’ This was equally shocking, hinting at the stirrings of conscience. Did he mean to marry her, to escape from Constance and her dinner parties? To me he had merely given his card, as if I were a business acquaintance, or a client. I knew that I would never forgive him for that.
‘Where are you?’ said Nigel, coming out to find me. ‘Why were you shouting?’
‘I just remembered something I should have told him.’
‘I have never heard you raise your voice before. Who was that?’
‘Someone I used to know,’ I said. When I looked up and saw his face I knew that I had made a mistake. ‘Dinner is not ready, I’m afraid. Shall we go round to the restaurant?’ For it was important to get us both out of the flat, to observe an interval that might otherwise be filled with questions.
Yet it was time for questions to be asked, if there were to be more honesty between us. I suspected that he had already come to his own drastic conclusions about my association with Edmund: that wordless confrontation, even more than my conspiratorial manners on the stairs, would have convinced him that I was concealing a liaison of which he had previously known nothing. In a sense he was correct, though all this was long in the past and of no immediate relevance. But he was the sort of man who expects and demands full disclosure, in the manner of the account of himself he had given me, obviously hoping to convince me that I need not fear further revelations. This had satisfied him, as he had supposed that it would satisfy me. But I knew that this was of no further interest, that I should have been rather more aware of him had there been signs of conflict in his account, and also in his present behaviour. He now appeared to me as a man of little emotional energy (though I had already been conscious of this) and I had to ask myself whether I could live the rest of my life with such latency. What brief signs of impatience and dissatisfaction he ever betrayed were confined to the dilemmas he saw portrayed on television. I had thought it curious that a man of such obvious strength of purpose should let himself be persuaded by such ersatz sensations.
I had not previously thought this anomalous, but now I did so. Perhaps it was not significant; what was significant was that I now knew that I could not tolerate this level of conversation and preoccupation as my staple evening diet. Of his virtues I remained convinced; what I now perceived was a certain determined superficiality. He had decided that I had no history that need concern him. He was less sure now. My stance, with my back to him as he came upon Edmund and myself, and, if he had caught it, Edmund’s brief spark of appraisal, of involuntary memory, would have spelled out some kind of wordless knowledge that could only presuppose long acquaintance. And that was true; his conclusion was entirely correct. It would now fall to him to adjust all his attitudes, and if necessary to withdraw whatever favour he was granting me. Any explanation that I had to offer—that we were discussing the fate of a sick friend—would not excuse that stance, that look. He had further work to do on himself in the light of these new facts, work that might exclude me altogether.
This did not seem to be my problem, and yet it was. The sight of Edmund had revealed the different nature of the two men, and their different appeal. Edmund was essentially a transient, and I had always known that. Nigel was what would do duty as my next of kin. He would stand by me in all circumstances, but only if I fulfilled certain moral requirements. I could see the advantages of such a settled arrangement, but I could no longer see the attraction. I might do better on my own, with my own knowledge to guide me.
For I was still processing the past: it had not left me. In a sense it had revived; my long-dead feelings were once again active, and I could no longer bear to let them go. And I should have to do so if I were to have any sort of future with this man. I foresaw with something like dread the day when we would agree that he should move into the flat with me, inaugurating a lifetime of domesticity in which our respective roles would be decreed by immortal custom. I could see him reading the evening paper, seated in Digby’s chair, while I busied myself in the kitchen. I could also see that in time I might be tempted to attend fictitious evening classes, not necessarily in order to meet a lover, but rather to escape the dead weight of Nigel’s presence.
We were silent on our walk to the restaurant, although the beautiful evening was conducive to mild peaceable conversation. He did not touch my arm or take my hand, the sort of gesture that endorses existing physical experience and awakens the indulgence of passers-by. We were glad to sit down, to unfurl napkins, to greet our usual waiter. Apparently there was to be no pretence that nothing untoward had taken place, yet neither of us knew how to broach the subject. At last I broke the silence. ‘There is nothing for you to be afraid of,’ I said. ‘We were discussing a mutual friend, who may be rather ill, and working out what was going to be needed.’ (‘I know what has to be done,’ Edmund had said.) ‘I’m afraid I was rather shocked; I had not realized that she was ill. I had not seen her for some time.’ Whether this explanation satisfied him or not was irrelevant; it had the authority of truth. But then the fact of Betsy and her illness surfaced and bid fair to overwhelm me. It was as if all my associations were in turmoil, and the past, that other enemy, coming back to haunt me. Our youth, Betsy’s and mine, was once again threatened, and we must both now deal with the realities visited on adults, whether or not they are prepared. I felt an ache in my throat, laid down my fork. ‘You must forgive me,’ I said. ‘This has been a shock.’
Then he did lay a hand on mine, and his touch comforted me. But he did not stay with me that night. It was easy to imagine him walking off, alone, into the night, his purpose, his life, even, subject
ed to careful revision.
17
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN A BREACH WAS REPAIRED, AND quite soon: we may have feared a return to an unregarded and unpartnered state. In retrospect we both, individually, and without discussing the matter, remembered those stretches of time which had been filled dutifully and without pleasure. For both of us it was a novelty to be connected. For that was the underlying message: connection. I doubt if it was ever more than that, though it was a relief to surrender our solipsism, to allow a more or less chosen companion into our lives, and to feel increasingly at ease in this new companionship, to pick up references, to reserve anecdotes, to accept as a given one’s desire and indeed one’s right to pleasure.
This was enough to override any residual misgivings and misunderstandings. But because we were aware that our association had so nearly been undermined by that glimpse of what was undoubtedly genuine and unrehearsed we were on our best behaviour, not only out of fear but out of a residual sense of honour. We were bound to do justice to the situation which we had both created, to value its merits, its sheer suitability. We were alike in so far as we approved of consistency. Nigel no doubt appreciated this more than I did. But I had only to imagine myself in a hospital bed, with no visitors, to cling more closely to what was in essence the simulacrum of an affair, a marriage, the benefits of which it was impossible to overlook, though the strains were now rather more pronounced. The incompatibility of our tastes and temperaments, both forged in more passionate circumstances, might have warned us of difficulties to come. Instead we averted our eyes, became more careful than was entirely comfortable. Nigel, of course, was blameless, but I could see quite clearly now a lurking censoriousness that placed me on probation. So far I had given no cause for undue suspicion. Suspicion, however, was what I now had to allay. Instead of making me indignant, this made me cautious. I told myself that I was beyond the age of meaningful glances, of involuntary memories. I was a middle-aged woman and it was in my interest to rescue myself from what would almost certainly be that further age in which there are few compensations.
The Rules of Engagement Page 20