Incidents in the Rue Laugier

by Anita Brookner

  Maud’s wishes, however, were not quite the same as those of her mother. Maud simply wanted to live in Paris, with or without a husband, preferably without. While careful not to let her thoughts show on her severe and slightly disdainful golden face, Maud had a secret desire to escape all forms of control. That was her abiding wish. The future was unclear to her, but she knew that it did not contain her mother, or her mother’s plans, of which she was fully aware. Rigidly supervised as she was, she longed for freedom. She would escape, she would get a job—any job, looking after children if need be—and when she had saved enough money she would get a room of her own. In Paris. That room would of necessity be modest, but she was used to modesty. Quite simply, she wanted to live her life without constraints. What she would do without constraints was quite unclear to her, but the prospect enabled her to wait, composed, contained, for the time being. Therefore, when her mother said, ‘You had better have two new dresses. I will make an appointment with Mlle Zughetta,’ she merely replied, ‘Two? Do I need two? And Mlle Zughetta? They have quite good things at Monoprix …’ And when her mother replied, ‘These things are always noted. I will telephone tomorrow,’ she acquiesced, without much interest, looking forward to the day when she would no longer be overruled.

  THREE

  EDWARD HARRISON FELT REPLETE AT THE ENDING OF THE day, no matter how unsatisfactory the day had been. The simple actions of preparing for the night seemed to banish the very slight melancholy of the long light evenings, which conferred on him a lassitude that had nothing to do with fatigue. Besides, he was never tired; he was determined never to feel tired, as adults did, without due cause, or so it seemed to him. He embraced an ideal of rigour, which he thought would predispose him to a life of wandering, a life large enough to accommodate adventurous impulses. This predisposition, which he cultivated, pleased him as if it were a genuine attribute, handed down from Stoic ancestors, whereas his own ancestors, principally his mother and father, for he knew no others, were all gentle confusion, redeemed by an immense indulgence which still enveloped him at privileged moments, such as the moment when he shut his book and moved into his bedroom and there began the ritual of embarking on his night’s journey. If he were lucky he would dream of a past which he thought of as aboriginal, though it was not far distant, brief ravishing dreams which, once he was awake, he would acknowledge with gladness, with gratitude. At times like these he was convinced of the poetry of life, of its unending circularity. He would glide through the dark hours on a raft of archaic remembrance, restored to the innocence of simple wondrous passivity. By the time morning came he felt himself to be renewed, returned to what he deemed the puzzling obligations of adulthood, which, as he was still young, too often caught him unawares. His ideal was a simple prolongation of immaturity, the immaturity of the artist. For this he had a plan.

  His dreams encouraged him in this quest. For how could other nights have yielded up such treasures as had come to him in the mysterious depths to which he surrendered with such ease? No one he knew would have thought these dreams remarkable, but he realised that they were remarkable because they contained not a trace of the anxiety that dominated classic dreams, textbook dreams, dreams of trains, of examinations, of perilous flight. In this he knew himself to be singular. Rather he was restored to an eternal sunny afternoon, in a garden, with the scent of syringa wafting over a hedge. He was young, no more than eight, he thought, and he was looking after his little sister, Deborah, known in the family as Bibi, since this was his first attempt to approach the baby with whom his parents had presented him. She in her turn had christened him Noddy, a well kept secret, since only she was allowed to call him by this name. His attempt to live this down involved him in minor willed deceptions; he was Edward to his friends, Eddie, or too often Neddy, to his parents. These alterations were the currency of his days, whereas the nights were given over to authenticity. In dreams he inhabited a long Sunday afternoon; sometimes a brief shower sparkled on the long grass in the reviving June heat. Soon he would be called in to tea, and they would sit at the table, the four of them, mother, father, sister, himself, filled with the contentment of the long unchanging day.

  This brilliance contrasted favourably, more than favourably, with his terrible inheritance, which had fallen on him without warning, just as he was leaving Cambridge, and about to set out, as he thought, on a series of journeys which would continue until he was old enough to find another garden, like that first one, where he would be content to sit in the sun. His greatest need, he thought, was for solitude, for self-communion. He felt no desire for friends, though he made friends easily, and throughout his student years had been an amicable partner to various girls who had been attracted by his lean dark face and neat spare frame. His face, he thought, gave the wrong impression, in particular the two strong incisors that gleamed when he smiled and the straight dark hair that fell over his forehead. He looked romantic; in fact his emotions were elusive, always bent on some distance, either in the past or in the beckoning future, which would continue the past, its innocence, its promise of happiness. It was a future which he courted in his thoughts, far removed from everyday reality and its obligations. Practical considerations were entirely absent from what was not quite a fantasy. He was strong, he thought himself durable, he would not be averse to celibacy. Thus he would spend his life travelling, picking up employment as and when he could. He would take passage on the first ship out of Southampton, and work his way round the world. Sometimes it seemed to him that the promise of such a life was enough in itself; the sun, always the sun, would dispel the murky light of London, where he found himself stranded, this rainy day in July, his plans apparently negated by a malign stroke of fate.

  He had inherited this shop, this hated shop, from an old friend of his parents, whom they had addressed as Ted, but whom he continued to think of as Mr Sheed, and after whom he had been named. A godfather of sorts, though not one in whom he had the slightest interest. Mr Sheed, a bachelor, apparently without a family, had departed from his Pimlico home on certain well heralded Sunday afternoons to take tea with the Harrisons in their small house on the outskirts of Eastbourne. His faithfulness in this matter was somehow taken for granted, although no one could quite remember how the association had started. It was supposed that he had known Arthur Harrison in the war; this was in fact the case, though they had only known each other briefly; by now they assumed that they were old friends by virtue of the fact that they had certain topics in common and also by virtue of a certain languor which was native to their characters. In their placid way native the Harrisons accepted him without much question. A more binding tie was commerce, since Harrison père was the owner of a menswear shop in the town. Perhaps for this reason he deferred to Mr Sheed, or Ted, who was after all a bookseller, in London, in Denbigh Street, near enough to the centre of things to evoke a certain respect. Mr Sheed had little to say for himself, apart from, ‘You’re looking well, Polly,’ or ‘How’s it going then?’ before settling down to a substantial tea, which on those days took place without the children, who were exiled to the kitchen. They were incurious about Mr Sheed, whose complacent and undemanding presence imposed no social duties upon them. There was something both mysterious and immemorial about this man who seemed not to age by a single day and who took his place at the table, once a month, while Edward grew up, went to school, went to university, came home for his last long vacation, greeted Mr Sheed, went up to his room to write his current girlfriend, came down again, answered Mr Sheed’s permanent question—‘And what are you going to do with yourself, young man?’—with his permanent answer—‘I haven’t decided yet. I’d like to travel first’—and then, a month later, learned to his stupefaction that Mr Sheed had died and left him the shop, the flat above the shop, and a certain amount of money.

  Initially he regarded this as a blow to all his hopes. He had been planning to spend the summer in Paris, in a flat lent to him by a Cambridge friend, Tyler, whose parents were friends of
the owners. The owners would be away until the end of September and were under the impression that Tyler himself would be in residence. In fact Tyler would be accepting various invitations around France; the arrangement was that if Tyler decided for some reason to come to Paris, Harrison would move up to the maid’s room on the sixth floor, leaving Tyler to pursue his inevitable liaisons in the flat below. Instead of this he had to go regularly to London, in humid dull weather, to be instructed by solicitors and to view with horror the dusty rooms above the shop which had once been the home of Mr Sheed and which now belonged to him. His parents, of course, were delighted with the bequest, which they thought typical of ‘Poor Ted’. His father was on the point of selling his business to a chain, from which he had received an advantageous offer, and was thinking in terms of winter holidays, in Florida or Jamaica. His parents’ eyes, bright with timid anticipation of pleasure, smiled their complete confidence that Edward would acquiesce in their wishes for him. He had not the heart to disappoint them, although he was determined somehow to implement his own wishes, even if he had to wait to put them into effect. With a heavy heart he had asked the solicitor to find him a tenant for the rooms above the shop. This was accomplished without difficulty. He himself, in a burst of gritted-teeth activity, rented a furnished flat in a purpose-built block behind the King’s Road. He had disliked it on sight, but by that stage was so desperate to get to France that once he had transferred his belongings from Eastbourne he slammed the door behind him and fled.

  But his steps led him inevitably back to the shop, for which he felt an increasingly exasperated distaste. The sight of the dull green façade, embellished with the single word ‘Sheed’, did nothing to encourage him. Who came here? Who would visit a secondhand bookshop in an ordinary, rather downmarket street in Pimlico? During the hour and a half he spent there on that first afternoon not a soul came near. Furious, he examined the stock, which was meagre, and seemed to be devoted to Latin and German textbooks and popular novels of the Thirties and Forties. Who now read Harrison Ainsworth or Hugh Walpole, Warwick Deeping or Jeffrey Farnol? How did this stuff sell? And yet it must have done, for Mr Sheed had left him a quite useful sum of money, and so embarrassing was this generosity from a man whom he had neither liked nor disliked but in whom he had never had the slightest interest that he felt, with a groan, that he was bound to be the custodian of Mr Sheed’s enterprise until such time as he could pass it on and get on with his real life. This would take place abroad, in circumstances which were not quite clear to him but which were surrounded by a great deal of very fine weather, either very hot or very cold, and in both cases very picturesque, in comparison with which the lightless street outside the dusty window appeared unendurable, not to be endured.

  It occurred to him, on that first afternoon, that Mr Sheed must have sold pornography, but he could discover nothing of a questionable nature in the boxes under the counter, merely more Beatrice Kean Seymour and Rafael Sabatini. Who bought this stuff? Obviously, there must be collectors, of a simple-minded nature, but he could find no list of subscribers. He could find nothing in the drawers of the old-fashioned roll-top desk which would give him a clue as to the real nature of Mr Sheed. Who was this man who had placidly sat down to tea in his parents’ home on innumerable Sundays, and whose presence, surely rather odd, had been just as placidly accepted? To begin with, one did not sit in a train on a Sunday just for the sake of a cup of tea. Was he in love with Polly Harrison, and was this fidelity to a situation long laid to rest behaviour of the highest chivalry? Or did he have a mistress in Eastbourne whom he saw on irregular weekends and whom he took to lunch at the Grand before topping off his stay with an innocuous cup of tea chez Harrison? Edward inclined to both theories, although he found them both unappealing. They had all, his parents and Mr Sheed, seemed to him so very virtuous, cheerful and right-minded and equable, conversing rather than chattering, and even enjoying peaceful silences, until Mr Sheed looked at his watch and hauled himself out of his chair. ‘I’ll walk down with you, Ted,’ Harrison’s father had invariably remarked at this point, and ‘Children! Come and say goodbye!’ he had called through the French windows. Growing older, Edward had tended to ignore him, out of distaste for his bulk and general unmanoeuvrability, or rather had continued to ignore him, only to discover in time that the thread had been there, that some residual feeling—a shy man’s feeling—had been there all along, and thus his present and unwanted ownership of the shop was proof that he had, in some sense, been cherished. The alternative idea—that Mr Sheed had been hurt by his indifference and had wanted to clip his wings—was too awful to contemplate. Yet contemplate it he did.

  Time was the problem, he decided, as he sat at the roll-top desk on that rainy July afternoon, time which would change him from an eager, unknowing and hedonistic boy into the resigned figure, who, if he did not take immense and immediate pains, would spend his life in this shop, which he would inevitably (he knew this somehow) transform into something profitable. And yet he still dreamed of his now remote childhood, when all who surrounded him were kind, kinder than he was ever likely to be. Perhaps he had fallen from grace, into this dull room, this poor adumbration of a disappointing future. He knew himself to be disastrously unqualified for any other career; his only positive thoughts were of evasion. His Cambridge degree was undistinguished. He had no ambitions, save those of flight. His parents would be massively disappointed if he turned his back on what they considered to be in the nature of an endowment, one which they could not have provided themselves, one, moreover, which left them relatively free. Once Bibi had left university she could live at home, until she married. The house was long paid for; they were relatively comfortable, now more than ever. The boy, in their view, was taken care of. And indeed he felt most disagreeably taken care of, as one might be taken care of in an institution.

  That lost interval, as he thought of it, that Empty Quarter that remained unvisited, stayed with him like the tormenting fragment of a dream which his inopportune waking had disturbed. The essence of the condition was dreamlike, since the adventure had not taken place, but might have taken place. He was robust enough to know that his childhood was immutable, and could no longer be recaptured; nor could it yield more than it already had done. Yet what he retained of it was the idea of happiness, plenitude, and it was this that he made it his plan to recapture. For he had no doubt that he could recapture it, somewhere along the way, and to be deprived of the chance to do so was like the door to the future being shut in his face. His surroundings he thought of as a temporary aberration, from which, in time, he would stealthily depart. He would not die in England, he thought, although he loved the country in a brooding, almost shamefaced way, loved it for the very boredom which delayed him on this rainy afternoon. As he sat at Mr Sheed’s desk he could hear a lorry discharging beer barrels into the cellar of the pub on the corner, and a blast of music when the door of the neighbouring hairdresser’s swung open. He was surrounded by commercial transactions of a humble nature; the district was humble, and he did not despise it. He felt a mild frustrated love for the people in the street, all unknowing and, it seemed to him, innocent. At the same time he remembered the blind man and his guide dog whom he had passed outside Victoria station: the man cautious, questing, his sightless head turning from side to side, the dog obedient but straining, full of power, arching to fulfil his destiny as an animal. The sight had chilled him, its symbolism too apparent.

  In the course of one tormenting afternoon he had become resistant to anything that suggested confinement, and this extended to the bars on the back window and the sight of scaffolding on the building opposite. He thought uneasily of the sheet of plastic that had detached itself from that same building and had bowled along the road, waiting to trap him by the ankles. Even the memory, the image, caused alarm. It was as if he had to keep his life inconclusive, until such time as his real life should be ready to unfold. This real life, as it continued to beckon from an ever more distant future, ha
d to do with the feeling of plenitude which he knew from his dreams and which he knew to be the essence of his authentic, his desired reality. Not to know that reality would be an impossibility, more, an outrage, an act of ungenerosity towards life itself. Yet here he was, stranded in an alien room, almost a prisoner, surveying a rainy street through smeared windows, and apparently forbidden to journey abroad and to abandon this terrible place to its fate, which was surely extinction. He could shut it up, of course, go to Paris, forget it, and after a suitable interval put it on the market. The trouble was that no one would buy it, would pay to sit here surrounded by shelves full of Dornford Yates. He had a brief insight into the way in which Mr Sheed had spent his days. As he had no financial need to sell the books, always supposing that they were remotely saleable, he must have sat here and read them. That was the clue, of course, to Mr Sheed’s somnolent and wordless existence, his pale affections, his nostalgia for the simple life of his Sundays in Eastbourne, when he could evolve among like-minded adults who would do him no harm, adults so genuine and undemanding that they seemed like children. And in the background the voices of children … A shy man, nourished by romance, comforted by a fictional flourish, consoled by a neat ending. Harrison grinned suddenly, relaxed his tense shoulders, felt a flicker of affection himself; this, however, was soon dowsed by the dusty chirrup of the telephone, all the more startling since nobody knew he was here. A feeling of being harassed settled on him, although he had spent the interminable afternoon quite undisturbed.

  ‘Harrison,’ he said somberly.

  ‘Gillian here. I’ve got Mr Viner for you.’

  ‘Put him on.’

  ‘Mr Harrison? Viner. You’ve settled in, then?’

  ‘No, I just looked in.’

  ‘Just as well I caught you, then. Some rather tiresome news, I’m afraid. Your tenant has decided against taking the upstairs flat.’