A Private View

by Anita Brookner

  ‘How did you come to know Sharon?’ he asked noncommittally, refilling her glass.

  ‘Sharon?’ She was deeply flushed now, eyes and teeth gleaming. ‘She was Sheila when I first knew her. Sheila Robinson. She changed it to Sharon because she thought it was more distinguished. Whereas anyone could have told her that Sharon is incredibly naff.’

  The vowels had narrowed again, the tone had modulated into a distinguished drawl. Even her expression had changed, had become distant, as if contemplating a little-known human folly.

  He noted once again that she had not answered his question. He also noted that although she had had a great deal to drink she was not drunk, whereas he himself was feeling a little warm, a little vague. Mrs Lydiard was rearranging her gloves and her handbag, as if impatient for the evening to end. Gloves, he could hear Katy thinking: how incredibly naff. Coffee was served.

  He signalled the waiter for the bill, looked at his watch, and saw to his surprise that it was after eleven-thirty.

  ‘Forgive me for keeping you up so late,’ he apologised to Mrs Lydiard. ‘At least tomorrow’s Sunday.’

  She smiled patiently at him, as if every day were Sunday to her. He collected them both by the door; they seemed to have become bulky and voluminous, difficult to manoeuvre. Just as well I don’t have to drive, he thought. Out in the street the clean air staggered him with its purity; he felt grateful for it, humbled by it. Suddenly the evening seemed tawdry, a waste of time and money. He wished that he could have remained on distant terms with Mrs Lydiard, and that this cumbersome girl had never entered their quiet lives. His earlier feeling of licensed irreverence was replaced by a sensation of shame. Mrs Lydiard was silent, whether on her dignity, or wearily aware that any young person, even so marginal a one as this (and what in the end did they know about her?) could turn her into someone of no importance. Mrs Lydiard, Bland could see, felt old. As, suddenly, he did himself.

  ‘Thank you so much, George,’ said Mrs Lydiard distantly. ‘No, don’t come up. I’m quite all right on my own. Why don’t you see Katy to her door? I’m sure we’re all ready for bed. I know I am.’

  ‘Ready for bed?’ queried Katy, amused, as they made their slightly unsteady way up the stairs. ‘I’m not. I rarely go to bed before one-thirty or two, sometimes later. I’m at my best at night, do my best thinking then. Howard and I often did encounter work around this time …’

  ‘Encounter work?’ he queried.

  ‘You know. Question and answer sessions. Transactional analysis. Howard has this marvellous technique for getting people to recognise their hang-ups.’

  ‘You mean he sees clients, patients, or whatever, in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Sure. Are you unhappy with that?’

  ‘I would be if it were happening to me.’

  ‘I could tell you a bit more about it if you’re interested. Even give you a trial session. On an introductory basis, of course. Are you going in?’ she questioned, apparently amazed at this state of affairs. ‘You’re not going to bed though, surely? If not, I don’t mind watching television with you for a bit. You get the really grungy programmes round about midnight. They’re the ones I really enjoy. And they’re American. Howard and I knew a lot of people in the entertainment business.’

  He put his key in the lock of his own door and said, ‘I think I’ll turn in, if you don’t mind. I am a little tired now. I only got back from France this morning. Goodnight, Katy. Thank you for a pleasant evening.’

  Although he was by this time in his own hallway she lingered, watching him. All at once he felt tired of her, inimical to her, as if she were a threat, as if she might destroy his peace of mind, the desperately calm and comfortable life he had fashioned for himself, if she had a mind to. He retained enough self-possession to wish her, once again, a pleasant goodnight, once again to thank her for an enjoyable evening. If he overdid it it was because he was unsettled, and mildly ashamed of himself.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But remember, if you want to kick a few ideas around, or even share your thoughts, you know where I am.’

  He noticed, even in his tired state, that she had not thanked him, had not expressed appreciation for the evening. This was how women behaved now, he told himself. He had little experience of the phenomenon, being cast in an ancient and no doubt false mould of politeness, of smiles and acknowledgments, and dutifully expressed deference towards the masculine gift of largesse. He also noticed that she was utterly unmarked by the evening’s excesses. At least, they felt like excesses to him; to her they must seem little more than an interlude. Inside his flat he knew both alarm and relief, as if he had been caught out in some deception. Intellectually, he knew, the evening had been indefensible; at certain moments he had been secretly derisive not only of the girl but of himself. Such an evening could not have taken place if Putnam were still alive, or, if it had taken place, would have been put into context by Putnam’s commentary. Putnam had served this useful function, among so many others. He knew that he was not being quite honest with himself: he had been stimulated by the sight of the girl’s appetites (for there had been more than one in evidence) and intrigued by her, as if she were a puzzle sent to beguile him in these bewildering days of leisure, this life so free of incident and adventure. He wanted, he thought, to study her further; that surely was allowed. In bed, in the blessed dark, he thought, she is young! All that this implied, all the longing, all the hurt, all the frustrations of his own youth came flooding back as he remembered her flushed cheeks, her decorated eyes. These were the last images that tempted him before he slid into sleep, her cheeks, her eyes, and her gleaming mouth closing on a morsel of nourishment, her scarlet fingertips guiding it steadily towards extinction.

  4

  AMAZING GRACE’, DRONING OUT OF THE RADIO by his bed, alerted him to the fact that it was Sunday. He sat up cautiously: not too bad. On the other hand not quite as good as usual, which was only to be expected after his intake of the previous evening. He looked back on the occasion with amazement: what on earth had possessed him to arrange it? At least he had refused to prolong it; that was one thing saved. But perhaps this too was cause for concern, that he had turned down an opportunity to do what any other man would have done, and by his very action, or lack of it, had confirmed his status as cautiously respectable bachelor, near celibate, and hopeless recluse.

  The incident worried him, not, he thought, because he had in any sense desired the girl, but because he despaired of himself. He realised that had he not been aware of Mrs Lydiard’s implicit disapproval he would have invited the girl into his flat, not to make love to her, but to find out more about her. She had stimulated his near professional curiosity; he doubted that she was altogether above board. He retained, for closer inspection, the undoubtedly expensive black silk outfit, toted across continents in a cheap nylon holdall, ready for a fortuitous meeting with a man, even a man as unpromising as himself. But that was wrong too, he thought, as he ran his bath, for the most worrying factor of all was that throughout the previous evening he had not felt noticeably benevolent. What he had felt, he reflected with a slight shock, was young, much younger than his official age (which must be all too apparent to the girl), and open to suggestions, however louche. He had even been willing to engage in a species of flirtation, distinguished only from the conventional kind by the fact that it was a flirtation with the truth. He would get the truth out of her; in this matter he would have his way with her.

  Nevertheless he was still puzzled by his own behaviour, which was part good nature, part avidity. His interest had been engaged, and for that he was grateful to her. On the other hand he must be circumspect, more circumspect than he had already shown himself to be in the presence of Mrs Lydiard, who, having taken her leave of them at the lift, had assumed a dignified air, as if dissociating herself from bad behavior. He must remember that this girl, Katy Gibb, was not being given to him to study, that she had a life of her own, flimsy though it might seem to him. After she had
left the Dunlops’ flat—for she could hardly remain there after their return—he would never see her again. Therefore it might be wise, as well as appropriate, to give her a wide berth, to treat her as the stranger she both was and was destined to be, and to behave with renewed decorum, as befitted his station in life.

  He felt disturbed that anything out of character had ever crossed his mind, then reflected that the provocation had been blatant. This, he thought, was also worrying, but was no concern of his; the girl was young (or possibly not so young), was at a loose end, had perhaps drunk too much, had perhaps thought that this was the way in which she was expected to reward her host for a not very scintillating evening. But at some deeper level he had known that she was angry, with that strange unfocused anger of hers which could be activated by a random incident or circumstance, by something as mysterious as an association formed in her own mind which would remain completely inaccessible to others. He wondered if she had had the benefit of Howard Singer’s therapy, or rather of one of his therapies, his encounter work, as she had called it. However bogus the man was he could surely not fail to notice the strange combination of concealment and aggression which even he had isolated. But however complicated her mind appeared to be, Bland sensed that it was closed, uncommunicative, not available for comment, not susceptible to explanation. Hence his strange sensation of alarm as he had slid into sleep the previous night.

  He remembered the last conscious image he had entertained: the lips closing definitively over something glistening and defenceless. The image itself had frightened him then and contrived to frighten him now. But there was a difference: now he divined its gross indecency. With a bemused expression, to which he was oblivious, he decided that he had been near the edge. This edge, which he did not and could not define, represented the limit of acceptable behaviour, acceptable not merely to society but to his own internal censor whom, so far, he had done nothing to defy. He was aware that what he termed acceptable behaviour would be a laughable neutrality to others, a hedging of bets, a failure to take advantage of life’s opportunities, like the opportunity offered to him on the previous evening. He even felt that he would never gain the upper hand over what was on the whole a limited past and a limiting future until he crossed that same limit, that it might at some point prove crucial to recognise that limit and to decide no longer to respect it, to reach the edge and to behave as if it were no longer there, and in that way to be free. And that certain situations, and certain persons represented that challenge … But behaviour is as much a question of habit as it is of principle, and he thought that at his age habits could no longer be broken. He was condemned to be what he had always been; indeed he must be careful, vigilant even, if he wished to remain the same, as he suspected that he did. Why else had he been so quick to recognise anomalies in his own attitude, his very slight cruelty during the dinner, a cruelty which had felt so liberating but which had been followed almost at once by a sensation of danger?

  The upshot of all this was that he had better steer clear of the edge if he did not want to ruin the rest of his life, and that he had better accept the fact that he was a dull character who was unlikely to comport himself with dignity in untoward situations. His dignity had been hard won, and he was not about to abandon it now. As the morning grew lighter the very idea of a man of his age amusing himself with a girl young enough to be his daughter seemed grotesque, unseemly; he rejected it utterly. And the girl had been quicker than he to reach this conclusion; hence her anger, both at his amusement and at his belatedly respectable reaction. He must therefore, as the priests said, avoid the occasion of sin, must barricade himself if necessary behind the walls of his accustomed habits and routines. He felt so disgusted with himself for his pitifully sportive impulses that he concluded that the girl deserved better, even if she herself was a complete mystery. Where previously he had been afraid of her he was now afraid for her. All in all it might be better for both their sakes to make sure that each of them stayed out of the other’s way.

  He went into the kitchen and helped himself to a couple of teabags from Mrs Cardozo’s private store, saw that there was nothing to eat, and that he must shop and cook something and generally behave in a sensible manner. The trouble was that he had no taste for it. This new problem—of how to get through the uneventful day—was liable to preoccupy him unless he took violent action. For a variety of reasons he judged it imperative to get out of the house. He seized the tweed hat he wore only on a Sunday, and that only for walking in the park, and made for the front door. His instinct was to shut it firmly behind him, signalling to the world that he was his own man and had done nothing of which he could be ashamed or for which he could be called to account. Then, obeying some other instinct which he recognized as equally strong, he pulled it to with extreme caution, tiptoed past the Dunlops’ door, and only reverted to normal speed when he was on the stairs. After all, he reasoned, she was probably sleeping. And it was in both their interests to keep their lives completely separate. At least, it was in his interest to do so. Out in the blessedly normal street he was alarmed by the divagations of his recent thinking. Such speculation was outside his normal parameters. He resolved to put it behind him once and for all.

  The park received him into its indifferent embrace. The morning was fine: sun sparkled on dew, on mica. He walked towards the Peter Pan statue and watched the light flashing off the water of the lake as frantic geese and ducks, scrabbling for the food held out by nervous children, disturbed its placid surface. He watched the same thing every Sunday morning, without ever quite thinking it delightful. With the sun in his eyes, and thus almost blind to his surroundings, but sufficiently familiar with the place to assume that the feet pounding past him belonged to men in tight bright clothes, each imprisoned in an equally bright capsule of effort and reward, he made his way towards South Kensington where there would be a couple of cafés open and where he could eat breakfast. This cheered him, as the prospect of a treat, however derisory, usually did. The day was fine, perhaps too fine; such early brightness could not be sustained. All the more reason therefore to appreciate the morning before succumbing to the usual gloom of Sunday afternoon. He kept up a steady and invigorating pace until he was at the bottom of Exhibition Road, by which time the clear skies had already developed a steely glint. This was the way of it on these short winter days; one’s craving for the light was only acknowledged in mere snatched moments, such as this. The rest of the time one had to endure the dark as best one could.

  Lingering over his coffee, he wondered what to do next, what to do with all the time that remained to him. Christmas, he supposed, was the immediate problem, as it was for so many. He would receive the usual invitations and would be unable to offer the usual excuses, for everyone now knew that he was retired and on his own. He would have to go away, he reflected, although the idea of travelling alone was no longer as pleasurable as it once had been, when there had been so much to come back to. Now the prospect seemed faintly menacing, as if something might happen to him when he was far from help, or as if he might die without anyone knowing. But it would have to be faced, and it might have to be faced immediately. Rome, he thought, or Vienna, for he knew them both well and was at least assured of comfortable hotels. Reluctantly, as if the journey were already upon him, he paid for his coffee and toast, and set out to find a supermarket. He bought lavishly but absent-mindedly, thinking he might eventually find a use for all this stuff, the cod’s roe and the artichoke hearts and the mascarpone, although he could not quite work out in what context they might be useful. Then, with his plastic bag only slightly weighing him down, he set out for the north side of the park and home.

  There was still no sound from the other flat. With the same stealth he closed the door behind him, unpacked his provisions in the kitchen and put them away, simultaneously aware that there was nothing sensible for lunch and that he was anxious to get out of the house again as soon as possible. Again the pantomime of caution, but it was no longer a
pantomime, he acknowledged: he did not want to be confronted, detained. Again he was relieved to be out of the building; again he breathed more freely when he was in the street. He would lunch at his club, he decided, and then he would look at some pictures.

  This was what usually happened to him on those Sundays not occupied by a ruminative walk to the suburbs. At least, it was the pattern on those Sundays which found him both tired and depressed, as he was now, tired because of the previous evening, and depressed by his renewed consciousness of Putnam’s absence. On such a day he and Putnam might have been lunching together, before each of them went off peaceably to their separate occupations, which would in their turn be recounted over their regular lunch on Monday. Thus was an air of purpose given to the longest day of the week. They might not talk again until the following Sunday, but the contact would be unbroken throughout their professional concerns, which often came together when it was a question of entitlements or bonuses. In the office they would lift a brief hand of acknowledgment to each other, but not linger. Thus there was ample material for commentary, which seemed to be, and often was, mutually beneficial. The fact that Putnam would have cast a sceptical eye on Bland’s excursion the previous evening was particularly unwelcome, as, for a different reason, was Putnam’s absence. With Putnam there was no possibility of making a fool of oneself. By the same token he had often added some depth to Putnam’s scathing verdicts. Putnam was a mathematician, of course: one had to remember that. As Stendhal said, there was no hypocrisy in mathematics, which isolated it from most other scholarly pursuits. Nevertheless, although he was without sentiment, Putnam acknowledged Bland’s thoughtfulness and respected it. His absence was once again deeply felt.

  Art would console him, Bland decided. That was art’s business, after all, and he, it seemed, was in the business of being consoled, or at least of needing consolation. On this particular afternoon, the weather already dull, the streets empty, he suspected that at the end art would fail him, as perhaps it failed others, since the physical body in its extremity would be oblivious to the blandishments of paint on canvas or fine words on paper. Particularly to paint on canvas, which would appear, he feared, as a symbol of vanity. What then to hang on to? Since religion was closed to him, apart from a modest belief in a general good, he supposed that he would have to store up as many images as his memory, in those last days, if it were still intact, could play back to him. He had decided at some point that those memories would be visual, since his gifts of observation were acute. If he could recapture a corner of a Rubens landscape, say, or a vase of flowers by Odilon Redon, he thought he might be happy. Or as happy as his slightly melancholy temperament would allow him to be. It was just that, although the pleasure was great, sometimes the task seemed a little too conscientious, as if it were a preparation for death itself, as if death were just around the corner, as perhaps it might be. Sometimes these Sunday excursions were undertaken with a slightly heavy heart, as a poor man might go to his bank, to see if there were anything left.