The evening began quite well, although Toto found Marianne unbearably dull. After an hour conversation languished: Marianne seemed more silent than usual. Toto was exasperated by her mutism, her lack of sparkle. He was accustomed to more of a performance when he took a girl out for the evening. He considered Marianne young for her age, even backward, and became restless at the sight of her prudent expression. Marianne, fighting a headache, wondered how soon she would be allowed to go to bed. She was not happy. Her discomfort had more to do with Roger than with Toto, although she refused to give in to the implications of this idea. Her cat-like face was pale, even if the rest of her was in excellent order, and the fine ring looked well on her narrow hand. The impression given by the hand, and the cunningly draped silk dress, and the expensively coiffed dark hair was one of worldliness, sophistication, wealth, nurture. The fruits of a good education, thought Toto, who felt the failure of the evening as particularly insulting; he was not used to failure, even to so insignificant a failure as this. When she put her napkin down beside her untouched coffee cup, and said, ‘Shall we go?’ he felt the beginnings of something larger, deeper than mere irritation, felt a need to ruffle her, disarrange her. This feeling was an adult version of the pushing and hitting with which he had tried to arouse her attention when they were both children. Even then she had ignored him.
She made no attempt to thank him for the evening, being too intent on her own growing misery. As they drove back to Ashley Gardens there seemed little left for them to say to each other. After he had stopped the car he sat for a moment, waiting for her to express gratitude, flattery, as most girls were only too willing to do. Then, when no words came, he leaned over and began to say goodnight in the way he knew best. Her resistance excited him. He pinioned her arms, laughing at her, but at the same time annoyed. Anger made him act more roughly than he would have done had he considered her relative unimportance more calmly. Determined to make her relax – as if relaxation were a token of submission – he fought her head back, irritated and disconcerted by her refusal. Finally she opened the door and escaped, the skin round her mouth rubbed raw.
Fibich, coming out on to the landing with empty milk bottles, saw her streak up the stairs, in tears. Instinctively, he stepped back behind his front door, his mouth dry. He stood in the hall, his heart beating, then went into the darkened drawing-room. He stood quite still for a moment, his hand to his suddenly aching head. When he heard his son come in he waited until the boy had gone to his room. Then he followed him and flung open Toto’s bedroom door.
‘Burglar!’ he shouted.
‘What’s the matter?’ enquired Toto, flushed and bad-tempered.
Fibich searched for a total, a final term of abuse.
‘I only kissed her,’ said Toto.
‘Asset-stripper!’ shouted Fibich.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Christine appeared in the doorway, frightened, in a dressing-gown.
‘Go to bed,’ shouted Fibich, rounding on her.
‘My God, my God,’ she cried. ‘What have you done?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ shouted Toto in his turn. ‘Leave me alone.’
There was a sudden silence. They were all aware that nothing like this exchange must ever take place again, even at the risk of eternal formality. They became aware that it was late, very late. After a moment, Fibich repeated, more quietly, ‘Go to bed,’ and took Christine by the arm to usher her out of the room. Gradually all the lights in the flat went out. The following day Toto sent a note to Yvette. He was obliged to be in Oxford, he explained: he could not come to the wedding; he sent them all his love.
The bride did not look well. Her white veil hid the reddened patches round her mouth, but she was pale, listless. Her parents put this down to an attack of sickness which had kept her in bed the previous day. In any event, Yvette was too exhausted to worry any more and was now anxious for all to be over. Hartmann, seeing his daughter through a mist of tears, was unaware that she looked any less beautiful than she always did to him. Christine and Fibich were very quiet, and of course Toto’s absence was regretted. At the reception both Yvette and Fibich had a migraine, although Hartmann recovered his spirits somewhat. But when Marianne disappeared to change he felt the same inner trembling that he had felt when she had said her first word. As they left, on the first stage of their wedding journey to Sorrento, he managed to keep a smile on his face until they were out of the room. Then he sank down on to a small creaking gilt chair, pulled a white silk handkerchief from his pocket, and unashamedly wiped his eyes. Yvette hissed at him, exasperated by his sentimentality. Fibich wept in sympathy. ‘Ah, Fibich,’ groaned Hartmann. ‘Wait till it’s your turn.’ Yvette, thankful that it was over, nursed a lingering irritation that somehow her daughter had once again failed to live up to the occasion. Christine signalled a waiter to bring them all a cup of tea.
They stayed on in the deserted ballroom, uncomfortable on gilt chairs, too tired to move, reminiscent, and saddened, as one is by reminiscence. How time flies, they said, wonderingly. At last they got to their feet, went in search of coats, emerged thankfully into the fresh air, where office workers were waiting quite brazenly for buses, as if this were a day like any other. Wordlessly they got into their cars. For Christine and Fibich there was the consciousness of a gulf, a little rift in their perfect amity, something to be concealed, buried, if possible forgotten. Yet the moment of reminiscence had united them as never before. They marvelled among themselves at their unbroken friendship. Never separated, they reminded each other. They shook hands, kissed each other ardently at Fibich’s front door, and took themselves off to bed, no more words to be exchanged that night. All slept heavily, in the two homes deserted by their children.
When Marianne, shortly after her return from Italy, announced that she was pregnant, both Hartmann and Fibich felt very old. When, two months later, she miscarried, they realized, for the first time for many years, that all might not be well in their lives, that a disorder had occurred which for once they were unable to put right.
8
After her daughter left home, Yvette experienced a certain restlessness. Since she was not in the habit of analysing her feelings she did not attribute this restlessness to grief but tended to blame Hartmann, in an unfocused way, for being out all day and leaving her alone. He, acknowledging a far less manageable grief, and anxious not to let it develop into Fibich-seeming proportions, agreed hastily and exited as usual. He was having to supply himself with many more small treats than usual in order to keep up his habitual good humour; he was determined to play his part with honour. The office was not much quieter without Myers, who was in any event a silent man who worked stolidly and seemed never to move at any great pace: a soft-footed sleep-walker’s tread took him away at the end of the day and brought him back again without incident the following morning. His absence from the office was uneventful; he had left everything in order. Hartmann found himself lingering in Fibich’s room, anxious for general reassurance, which Fibich readily supplied. Fibich understood this need only too well; he suffered permanently from it himself. It was, in fact, a relief to him to supply rather than to demand. And he liked Hartmann in this new guise of vulnerability, although he knew it to be only temporary. It suited them both not quite to know what would happen next.
Yvette, overtired, decided that she needed a rest. Having had this decision ratified by Hartmann and Christine, she then announced that she was going to redecorate the flat. Nothing pleased her; all suggestions – for a holiday, a weekend in the country – were brushed aside. While workmen installed ladders and groundsheets in her kitchen she exhibited a tearful hollow-eyed appearance, much as she had done during her pregnancy. It was indeed a difficult time for her, but that had more to do with her age than with Marianne’s marriage. She was growing old unevenly, as most people do; as she was not in the habit of comparing herself with anyone else, she had no notion that her dilemma could in any way be universal. Examining herself fearfully
in her mirror, she was reassured to see that her inner turmoil had left no trace, or at least no trace that she could detect. The fine etched lines on the fair skin were invisible to her, as was the mildly humped appearance of her shoulders. The waist, however, was expanding; there was no getting away from that. Well, she would get down to a proper diet as soon as she had some time to herself, without the obligations and the tasks that she so dutifully took upon herself. She began to spend more time at the hairdresser’s, spreading out her hands for the manicurist’s attentions. The hands, in a woman, go first, but Yvette attributed their worn shiny look to her recent exertions rather than to the passage of time. Her expertise in the kitchen was curtailed by the presence of Ken and Dave, two nice young men who were spreading peach-coloured paint over her formerly white walls.
‘Peach?’ said Christine doubtfully. ‘In the kitchen?’
‘Why not?’ retorted Yvette, alert for any whisper of criticism. ‘I want a change. I’m going to get rid of everything. I want red saucepans and everything else plain white. After all, if I don’t like it I can always change it back again.’
‘White plates get to look so boring,’ said Christine, unwisely.
‘Who said so?’ replied Yvette. ‘Anyway, I can always get others. And I want a blue blind at the window.’
For she was beginning to think in Mediterranean terms, feeling, with her thinning blood, the cruel burden of the north and remembering her mother’s little flat in Nice. She suggested to Hartmann that he might buy a retirement home for them there, where she could see palm trees from her window and go shopping in a cotton dress. Hartmann did not think this was a bad idea, providing he could transport Fibich and Christine there as well. Might they not all end up spending hot lazy dreaming days in the sun, growing old amidst the reviving cynicism of the French, rather than here, where they feared the cold? The flat in Nice was a possibility, but not one that Hartmann intended to implement straightaway. It was Christine who suggested the evening classes, a suggestion that was initially brushed aside until Yvette began to consult the women’s magazines and to read about the new expansion of women’s consciousness. The old expansion had always been good enough for her, spending, and perfecting her appearance, and she was inclined to trust that more. Christine, perceiving a real if undiagnosed distress, kept in daily contact.
‘Hello,’ Yvette trilled into the telephone, managing to stretch the word out into three syllables.
‘Christine here,’ the dry voice answered. ‘What are you doing? Are you busy?’
‘I’m always busy,’ came the reply. ‘I’m exhausted. I’ve just washed all the paint.’
‘But it’s only just been done.’
‘Yes, but I noticed a thumb mark. And anyway I like it done my way.’
‘Have the men gone, then?’
‘They’ve gone, and I gave them a lot of the plates. That will give me a chance to replace them. Plain white, I thought. In fact I was going out today to see what I could find. Why don’t you come with me?’
‘But if you’ve just washed the paint…’
‘Oh, the paint. Well, that’s done now. Do come, Christine. I thought I’d just price a few things. Peter Jones, the General Trading Company, Harvey Nichols and Harrods. We could have lunch out. And anyway I need something to wear. It’s time I looked after myself a bit.’
Christine, who had witnessed the frantic provisioning of clothes and accessories that had gone on just before the wedding, said nothing. She reserved for Yvette some of the protectiveness she had initially lavished on Fibich. She saw that Yvette, though incurably frivolous, was, in all the important ways, innocent, uncorrupted by the reflections that seemed to burden her own life. Each day was new for Yvette, and whatever she felt remained unexamined. Sometimes Christine saw in her face a look of bewilderment, the eyes turning to the window, waiting, waiting. And her marriage, the birth of her daughter, and that daughter’s wedding, all accomplished promptly and without complications, seemed to have left her unappeased, as if the next thing must quickly come along to occupy her, or the abyss might open. What abyss? The abyss that waits for all of us, when all our actions seem futile, when the ability to fill the day seems stalled, and the waiting takes on an edge of dread. Fortunately Yvette did not identify the onset of these adult fears. The prospect of her day fulfilled, she sang happily in her small pretty voice as she shook lace-trimmed handkerchiefs from a drawer, soaked them in cologne, and put them in her bag. I won’t cook tonight, she thought. I’ll pick up something at Harrods. This seemed to her a dashing, even an emancipated decision. She paused only to impart this news to Hartmann, and went down the stairs to join Christine.
The streets had been washed clear by a recent shower and a pale spring sun had brought on the crocuses. Pigeons strutted expansively on the pavements. Outside Victoria Station emerging travellers blinked in the unaccustomed light. ‘We can catch the bus to Knightsbridge and walk down Sloane Street,’ Yvette informed her silent companion. ‘I hope you’re not in a hurry. I want a good look round the shops.’ She then turned her attention to the passing scene, having satisfied herself that her conditions had been stated. She often found herself putting Christine into some sort of order, misunderstanding, or rather not understanding at all, the other woman’s need for quiet. Christine, for her part, found it restful to glide along in the slip-stream of Yvette’s activity. She was also genuinely curious to find out how Yvette maintained her self-esteem, that unfaltering attribute, which seemed to have been conferred on her from birth. Christine had heard the story of Yvette’s mythic beginnings, had felt pity where Yvette had only felt pride. The triumphant sense of survival that Yvette shared with Hartmann (‘Look! We have come through!’) had bred in her no sense of disaster averted. Good fortune she put down to merit rather than to luck, and if anything in her well-ordered life resulted in a minute disappointment she would loudly and uninhibitedly bewail her fate instead of bowing her head momentarily to the inevitable. By the same token, she would rally quickly, be comforted by the prospect of a treat, an outing, a holiday, a party, the promise of something nice to come. In that way they had all unconsciously been trained to offer Yvette inducements to further good humour. These were small concessions, for she was easily appeased: that was her charm. What they all pitied, without ever acknowledging the fact to each other, was that intermittent look of blankness, as if, unknowing, Yvette had discovered herself to be adrift in her life, as if that life were suddenly incomprehensible to her, as if she were still that child in the train, not understanding the desperation of her mother’s injunctions, simply wanting to be and to remain a child, without the superimposition of adult hopes and fears. She had moved competently through her life, had overcome, had not consciously remembered, or perhaps had genuinely forgotten, the penumbra of sensations that had settled around her in that train to Bordeaux. This event seemed to them all, to Christine in particular, a much graver affair than it had ever seemed to Yvette, who continued to recount it as if it were a pretty story whenever she judged the occasion demanded it. Toto, in particular, had loved the story when as a little boy, he had stood by her chair, playing with the rings on her fingers. But, ‘Look after my daughter,’ Martine Cazenove had said to Christine, before taking off finally to Nice and the flat bought for her by Hartmann, on the day of Marianne’s wedding. Christine had agreed. What else could she do? The strong must always look after the weak, even if their strength is unwelcome, even if it has been wished on them by circumstances not of their choosing.
There was also in Yvette a will to overcome that was translated, without the mediation of her mind, into excellent bodily health. The rapid and effortless ingestion of meals, the efficient sleep, the satisfactory regulation of her digestion, filled her with an innocent pride, as if she could not tolerate any other systems of management. Seated before an empty plate, she would lay down her spoon with a certain approval, as if her food were automatically destined to benefit her. Fibich’s beleaguered stomach was a source of am
azement to her. When they all dined together she would berate him for being nervous, as if she had caught him in an act of lèse-majesté towards his food, so munificent a substance. Oddly enough, he tended to eat better in her company, reassured by her appetite for life, although her food was too rich for him. Christine, who empathized with his delicate and instinctive revulsions, and who cooked him tiny careful meals, did not fare so well. ‘More indigestion,’ he would sigh comfortably, as they set off for Hartmann’s dinner table. The ensuing night would be punctuated by the sound of tablets dissolving fizzily in glasses of water, and careful, even loving, eructations. In the morning he would wave away breakfast, but, ‘It was worth it,’ he would assure Yvette later, on the telephone.
Yvette was not aware of having entered her life by the back door, so to speak, although all the others were. ‘Look! We have come through!’ was a permanent thought in Hartmann’s mind. Christine and Fibich were not so sure. Yvette’s conscience, like that of her husband, was unclouded: that was why, in the final analysis, they suited each other so well, despite incompatibilities which were, in fact, growing less marked as age took a hand in the matter. They shared an innate festiveness which, in their daughter, was mysteriously absent. That their entering into possession was also a latecoming was a thought that often occurred to Hartmann, whose reaction was one of fervent gladness; to Yvette the thought never occurred at all. Any girl (for she secretly thought of herself as a girl, although as a girl she had prided herself on being a woman, in both cases wrongly) could do what she had done, if only she knew herself, as Yvette did, simply to be the best. Her good fortune, her prosperity, she dealt with expansively: that also was part of her charm. Presents were bestowed incessantly: to object to her extravagance was to induce a look of wonder, as if the recipient were in the throes of some cramping disability which she could not understand. Intolerant, therefore, but good-natured, she sailed through life much as a child does, and was in this much more a child than her own daughter.
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