Latecomers

by Anita Brookner

  For she had never experienced the secret treachery of her own flesh, as Marianne had done in Toto’s embrace, had never had time for the meekness that had settled on Marianne when left behind by more adventurous friends, and, more important, had never known, never would know, longing, as Marianne was to know it in the years to come, when a young man’s hasty but expert appropriation had awakened in her the knowledge of what she was throwing away in marrying her so reassuring, so unexciting husband. Had Yvette known of this she would have dismissed it out of hand. ‘Toto didn’t mean anything,’ she would have said. ‘He’s just a boy! How could you take him seriously? He was only trying to be kind. The business of your life is to marry. That is what I brought you up for, and that is what you will do.’ She would not have understood that a trace could be left, nor could Marianne ever have confided in her. Yvette, she saw, was inexperienced by any standards, even by her own. And she could tell no one else. Who, then, could explain her to herself? In her decision to keep silent on this matter, a matter to which she was to return many times in her life, Marianne achieved a certain dignity, and a maturity which could not have been foreseen for her by her father who still thought of her – a married woman! – as a child.

  On this particular day, one of not too many like it, for Christine was aware of the disparity in their expectations, the sun chased from Yvette’s face the last lingering shadow of doubt, a doubt that was always experienced as dissatisfaction. Christine, schooled to keep Yvette happy, felt almost happy herself in the performance of this essentially simple task. She saw herself moving nervelessly through her life while Yvette, proudly, and at her leisure, expressed satisfaction or its absence, the latter to be loudly deplored. Today the auguries appeared to be favourable. On the bus, which, to Christine, was a mine of information simply waiting for her perusal, Yvette sat smilingly, without the smallest glance to left or right. Thus she was accustomed to solicit the attention without which she never felt entirely comfortable. ‘Who is she?’ she imagined her fellow passengers wondering. ‘Who is that marvellously groomed woman with the fair hair?’ And if the attention were not forthcoming she was able to imagine it and to suppose that open curiosity in her appearance was being suppressed or covered up out of sheer envy. She looked complacently down at her fine black cloth skirt, her shining high-heeled patent leather boots: she touched, with proprietorial carelessness, the silk scarf tucked into the collar of her black mink jacket. Opposite her Christine, in plaid skirt and blazer, looked, she thought, like a country mouse, but that was quite all right, that was what she was used to, that was just Christine. She tried to ignore the pain from the troublesome vein in her left leg, accentuated by the high heel of the boot, and as if to overcome this by sheer force of personality, as she did with all those defects that the middle period of her life was bringing her, imprinted an amused smile on her lips and condescended to look out of the window. Yet when the woman sitting beside her stumbled as she got up and nearly fell, it was Yvette who steadied her, the smile of condescension exchanged for one of genuine empathy. ‘Mind how you go,’ said Yvette, to the woman, a poor hesitant creature, possibly the same age as herself. As she in her turn got off the bus she said to Christine, ‘Dreadful the way some people let themselves go, isn’t it? There’s no excuse. All it needs is a little effort.’ The implications of letting go, both in falling unsteadily and jettisoning her façade, put her once more in a good humour, for she was not in danger from either of these contingencies, nor did she ever intend to be.

  First they must have coffee, she announced. It was then Christine’s task to find a suitable venue. This was accomplished without difficulty, since the commerce of Sloane Street is designed for women who are about their business in the middle of the morning or the middle of the afternoon. Seated at a small table, in a hot atmosphere redolent of chocolate, Yvette’s face took on the solemn expression with which she greeted all nourishment. Her coffee was accompanied by a chocolate eclair. ‘I know I shouldn’t,’ she said, in the way of women who are always intending to go on a diet. The reply was bound to be, ‘No, you shouldn’t’, or possibly ‘Why not?’ Christine wisely opted for the latter, as more likely to cut matters short. She herself had had to swallow a nervous yawn at the sight of the cakes proffered on a tray rather too close to her face: she had caught some of Fibich’s fastidiousness. She felt tired already at the prospect of comparing one table setting with another, as if this were genuinely beyond her powers. She knew that Yvette was a naturally energetic woman and that she would not go home until her explorations were exhaustively accomplished. And there was lunch to get through, and no doubt tea as well, for Yvette took gladly to the challenge of a day out and meant to take advantage of all its possibilities. All that Christine could look forward to was a little rallying saunter between shops. Left to herself on a day like this she would have sat in the park. She sighed briefly, and told herself not to be selfish. Opposite her Yvette sat expectantly, her lips pursed, waiting for the bill.

  The agreeable lassitude brought on by the first fine day of the year inclined Christine to dreaminess. Yvette, however, was unaffected, as she was unaffected by all variations in temperature and appearance other than her own. The sun spread its rays beneficently over the London streets, where Christine would have lingered had she not been spurred on by the quickening steps of Yvette who had sighted her goal. There followed a prolonged foray into various shops, where, amid the clash of china, the buzzing of tills, and the commotion of women, and under an unvarying synthetic light, Yvette appeared wholly absorbed in pricing, on a lengthening list, various items of increasing splendour, much as if she were the bride her daughter had so recently become. By lunchtime Christine was dazed, Yvette invigorated. They sat among women of their own kind – unoccupied, almost, to Christine’s mind, obsolescent – while waitresses sped about, eventually placing before them the kind of food that women out shopping are supposed to favour: highly orchestrated but flavourless salads, manufactured cakes and desserts. ‘I’m going to have a piece of that,’ said Yvette, pointing to a cheesecake apparently baked by the metre. ‘I know I shouldn’t.’ She had ingested the meal with her usual thoroughness, though Christine, drawn by the sun now pouring through the windows, had refused to take it seriously. She, to whom acquisition did not come naturally, felt a terrible strength in Yvette, as, fuelled by her cake, she prepared for the final reckoning, in Harrods.

  ‘I miss Marianne,’ Christine said involuntarily, once they were leaving the restaurant.

  ‘Well, of course, I miss her too,’ replied Yvette. She was a little annoyed, as if Christine had usurped her own unsettled feelings, although any residual sadness was fast disappearing. ‘I thought I’d pick out a dinner service for her. I don’t think I like the one she had from Maman. And she is so sweet about these things: I don’t think she would ever say she didn’t like it. She’s such a funny child, so quiet, not like us at all. It was high time she got married.’

  For marriage, she knew, would supply what she privately thought that Marianne lacked, the sort of natural complacency in which she had always been so proficient herself. She did not really miss her daughter, of whom she had begun to despair; the cat-like presence, the silent reading had in fact begun to worry her. She liked a bustle about her, thought women should be provocative, demanding, narcissistic, as if anything less spelled failure, unpopularity, spinsterishness. She had no time for the new woman, with her bold sexist demands, thinking that such women forfeited too much and made fools of themselves into the bargain. She herself preferred the idea of winning concessions from men, and saw no shame in doing so, even if the behaviour involved meant a certain amount of exploitation. She would have defended this position vigorously had any objections been offered. I play my part, she would have countered: I cook, I clean, I minister to my husband’s comforts. I am not responsible for his needs: after all, those are not really my affair. She was not above parading accounts of her domestic activities, and even boldly advanced the theory tha
t she was worth ten thousand a year, having read this in one of the few newspaper articles to which she bothered to address herself. Like most people who read very little, she remembered every word of it, and referred to it frequently. Her husband was rather used to impressive accounts of her exhaustion, as if she were wearing herself out on his behalf. He was wise enough to refrain from telling her what an easy life she led, but at the same time he knew that no other woman could have given herself so devotedly to his domestic peace. Hearing how this was attained was a small price to pay for a perfectly run household, and he supposed that all husbands had to endure much the same, or similar, recitals after a hard day’s work. He knew that in a sense they both pretended to work much harder than they really did, and was amused to see how they could fall into Punch and Judy confrontations in which neither of them truly believed. Playing at being married was how he thought of it.

  The look of profound absorption on Yvette’s face as she devised a dinner party or renewed the furnishings of their bedroom touched him in some way, as if he still had in his charge the girl who had pretended to work in his office. There was no doubt in his mind that her present work, the work she claimed was worth ten thousand a year, was her true work, her life’s work, trivial though it might have seemed to a busier woman. And he liked the eternal peace of a well-run household, onto which he could project his thoughts in those moments of what seemed like homesickness, when, in the middle of an idle day, he would permit himself to think back to earlier times. These memories, stirred by the disappearance of Marianne and the sadness he felt at the sight of her empty room, came now and then unbidden to his mind, a fact which appeared to him curious, more characteristic of Fibich than of himself. I am turning sentimental in my old age, he thought with surprise. No longer young, after all: two-thirds of the way there. And he tried to guard his wife against similar thoughts of her own ageing, knowing how much more vulnerable she was than himself. Therefore he indulged her, shrugged off her complaints, felt at last for her a tenderness which had perhaps escaped him in earlier years.

  Harrods yielded several desirable table settings, and two goose-down quilts, a scarlet kettle, and some Italian bedlinen for Marianne’s new home. Rendered speechless by a day of unbridled consumerism, Christine sank down in yet another restaurant and drank several cups of tea.

  ‘I know what we could do,’ said Yvette, helping herself to toast (‘I shouldn’t really’). ‘We could take a taxi to that nice little shop near the office, where that woman usually has a few things put by for me. It seems silly to go home now. And anyway I haven’t got anything for tonight’s meal. We’ll just go down to the Food Hall, and then take a taxi across the park. We’ll still be home in plenty of time. Do you want that last slice? And we might find something for you, Christine. Elizabeth has such excellent taste.’

  Outside, in the beautiful air, the sun had faded to a milky mist, draining colour from the day. A whitening of the atmosphere brought a renewed coldness, a reminder that the year was still in its infancy. Groups of people at bus stops reminded them both of the wedding day, when they had emerged, after what seemed like a lifetime of sensations, into streets populated by ordinary people going about their ordinary affairs. They smiled involuntarily at each other, struck by the same reflection.

  ‘Yes, I do miss her,’ said Yvette. ‘Always about this time of day.’

  ‘She’ll be home soon,’ Christine reassured her. ‘Look, there’s a taxi.’ For the look of blankness had come back into Yvette’s eyes, indicating depths better left undisturbed. Or shallows. In any event, uncharted territory, too delicate to meddle with. Another distraction was the remedy. So that Yvette’s life, restless and unexplored, remained the one best suited to her beginnings and to her subsequent evolution.

  ‘Why, Mrs Hartmann,’ said Elizabeth resignedly. ‘All right, Julie, you can go home.’ She turned to Yvette, her beautiful smile put back firmly in place. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I haven’t been in for some time, Elizabeth. I’m sure there’s lots to see.’

  And she slipped off her coat, her skirt and her boots and stood expectantly in the cubicle, apparently revived by the prospect of trying on clothes. By the end of half an hour she had discarded five expensive garments of varying appeal.

  ‘No,’ she said doubtfully. ‘They’re too fussy. Have you nothing Italian?’

  A taupe coloured coat and skirt, in a beautiful silky material, was produced. Elizabeth, not too inconspicuously, looked at her watch.

  ‘Yes,’ said Yvette thoughtfully. ‘That is more my style. I’ll think about it and let you know. Could you put it on one side for me?’

  She bent down to pull on her boots. Christine saw, in the mirror, the roll of flesh above the black satin half slip, the thickening yellowing back between the black satin straps. It was the view Hartmann got these evenings when he went into the bedroom, the view that Yvette never saw. She is getting old, thought Christine. And I am getting even older. But the fact did not seem to matter so much to her as it must do to Yvette.

  ‘I look tired,’ Yvette said with some surprise, scanning her face under the cruel lighting. Not tired, thought Christine: it is more serious than that. She had seen the legendary breasts, now less prominent than before: she had caught sight of the hunched shoulders as Yvette massaged her troublesome leg.

  ‘Yes,’ she said gently. ‘We must be getting home.’

  Pausing only to reapply her make-up, to take a tweed jacket from a hanger, and to say, ‘Wrap that up for Mrs Fibich,’ Yvette sailed to the door, where Elizabeth stood with her finger on the light switches. A dark blue spring night pressed against the plate glass windows. They were a little dazed, a little humbled by the rush of traffic. The taxi, when it came, was as welcome as a rescue ship in a stormy sea. Both were glad to sink back into the comfortable cigarette-smelling gloom. Both would be glad to get home. Yvette sighed longingly.

  ‘Oh, Christine,’ she said. ‘Hasn’t it been a lovely day.’

  9

  ‘Harrods,’ murmured Christine in a broken voice. ‘All over Harrods. Every department. And she wasn’t even all that tired at the end of it. At least, not as tired as I was. And I wasn’t doing anything except watch her. Or accompany her. I was her lady-in-waiting.’

  Fibich smiled. He was fond of his wife in this mood: flippant, independent, viable. He liked to share with her his absorption in the Hartmanns, both of whom he perceived as stronger, superior, not for any genuine reasons but because they had a fearlessness, even an obtuseness, that made them more successful at life’s game. Indeed, the very fact that Hartmann thought of life as a game, and, moreover, a game that could be won, intrigued and at the same time incapacitated Fibich. By the same token, his wife, although a genuinely good woman, whose qualities he had known and relied upon since he was a boy without a home, was somehow less effective a presence than Yvette whose massive complacency did a great deal to reassure him. When Yvette scolded him for not eating something oppressively complicated he felt an odd gratitude to her for acting in so commanding a fashion. Whereas Christine, hovering anxiously by his side while he took his first taste of a carefully bland concoction, put him in mind of a nurse, or a governess, appointed to supervise him, but not necessarily to give him pleasure. He knew that he could have married no one else. He knew that he loved her. Yet he also knew, in an unrealized way, that his true life lay elsewhere, that it remained undiscovered, that his task was to reclaim it, to repossess it, and that for as long as it remained hidden from him he would be a sleepwalker, doomed to pass through a life designed for him by others, with no place he recognized as home. Increasingly, what he felt was a kind of homesickness, although he could not have explained this.

  In the meantime this would have to do, this hazy blue flat, always in half shadow, always encountered by him with a start of surprise. And this anxious, sometimes dolorous wife. And the extravagant son who had somehow been foisted on them and who was the main reason, he thought, for his wife’s sile
nce and withdrawal. They had not really discussed the son, whom they suspected of ignominy: each wanted to preserve, for a little longer, the peace of his absence, which would soon come to an end. Only one more term at Oxford, and then the question of his future would have to take a more definite, a more practical form. With a heavy heart Fibich realized that he could offer no guidance, or none that Toto would respect. And, to be honest, he felt in such need of a compass himself, so ardently desirous of an explanation, that practical suggestions died on his lips. There was also a curious reluctance to have the boy back in the flat, as if his sexual adventures were an insult to his parents, who should not be expected to collude with them, to witness them, to know about them. Their odd reticence, he saw, could do them no good in this respect. In the blind state in which he and Christine lived, there was a genuine fear of taking on the world’s complications that could pass for innocence, but was in fact nothing but cowardice, lack of the right stuff. Both had been so deprived of childhood that in a sense they were both still waiting in the wings, unaware that, happy or unhappy, this stage must be passed, that all beginnings are to a certain extent situated in limbo, and are only an introduction to the definitive actions to which they are a prologue. What, in his view, incapacitated both Christine and himself and constituted their inalienable but unwelcome bond, was that they had been deprived of their childhood through the involuntary absence of adults, that his own parents and Christine’s mother had vanished without a trace, spirited away by a turn of events that wholly excluded their offspring, without being known, and that they had been left in the charge of strangers who, though tolerably well disposed, were uninvolved, uninterested. They had grown up, therefore, without true instruction, without the saws and homilies, the customs and idiosyncrasies, that, for children, constitute a philosophy.