Incidents in the Rue Laugier

by Anita Brookner

  Harrison had seen him approach women, and shortly after that first encounter, appropriate them, only to express genuine surprise when in the course of time they reproached him with faithlessness. Yet, as far as he could make out, Tyler had saddled himself with this girl, Maud, for no other reason than that he was used to being accompanied by a submissive female presence. At least, they were always submissive until they became quarrelsome. Maud was certainly submissive, yet she had a certain dignity which raised her stakes in the game, if game it were. Harrison, in the fading light, imagined them abroad in the city, loping silently through the drifting crowds, Maud, in her soft little shoes, following in Tyler’s wake, until night laid its spell on them and brought them home. They might linger for a last drink in the Place des Ternes, where he had somehow never managed to become part of that nighttime throng. Then they would return, and no doubt at last make love.

  It was an ideal picture, and it affected him most painfully. His feelings came into sharper focus: he longed to be with them, and if possible to be part of them, not to make love, but to be one in a conspiracy of three. Whereas all that was allotted to him was a minor role, his duty, as Tyler had put it to him, to be pleasant and nothing more. Yet he was necessary to them, he knew. Without him their love affair would proceed too quickly to some sort of a conclusion: boredom would be experienced on the one hand, terror on the other, and all would end badly. Whereas his presence served to put some sort of a brake on things, confining Tyler to a semblance of conventional behaviour, allowing Maud to maintain a semblance of decorum. He was the duenna, he realised, a role not noted for its nobility. Yet inevitably he would say goodbye to these people when his stay in Paris came to an end, or when he began to think of going home: Tyler he would see again from time to time, Maud probably never. And since he would see Tyler, and since Tyler was somehow phenomenal, and therefore worth conserving, he would continue to play his part, with as much goodwill as he could muster, and no doubt continue to puzzle over his own behaviour, as well as that of the other two, as if the whole affair were subject to stricter than usual scrutiny, as if it might prove to be a test of some kind. As he turned over to sleep, feeling at last the delicious languor which had escaped him throughout the tiresome day, he resolved to cultivate a detachment, to be as pleasant as the situation demanded, but not to involve his feelings in any way, to eschew rage, pain, jealousy and compassion, all of which he had already experienced, with an intensity which he found was unwelcome. Not my affair, was his last conscious thought, as sleep overcame him.

  He got up the following morning with his resolution intact, and found that he was able to greet Maud and Tyler with equanimity, and to eat breakfast with them, having, in an access of goodwill, gone out earlier to buy croissants. He was able to sustain this pleasant humour for several days, throughout the various elaborate excursions ordained by Tyler. Saint Germain-en-Laye he endured, Compiègne, Pierrefonds, Malmaison, Chatou, even, for some reason, Saint-Denis, where Tyler was perversely delighted by its hideousness. It evaporated somewhere on the long car journey to Fontainebleau, which was unfortunate, since Tyler was in an uncertain mood and Maud was silent. One injudicious word on his part, he reckoned, and they would all be in trouble. All he could remember of Fontainebleau from previous visits was a horseshoe staircase, on which he had chased his infant sister until told to come down, and a hinterland of forest. He hoped that they could take the palace for granted and merely wander under the trees. It was again very hot, an unpleasant sweltering heat that would not break, with the occasional bruised-looking cloud drifting towards the sun. They all ate lightly then made for the darkest patch of shade, looking for a hollow not obstructed by the strange prehistoric boulders that littered the forest floor, and when they found the ideal place instinctively prepared for sleep.

  Harrison slept briefly and profoundly. When he awoke it was mid afternoon, and he was alone. He looked about him in a panic, wondering if the others had abandoned him and gone back to Paris. This was the sort of joke Tyler liked to play. He got up, brushing grass from the sleeves of his shirt, and blundered through the trees, not quite daring to call their names from a genuine fear of revealing himself as childish. At last he saw them: they had not been so very far away after all. Tyler was lying with his head in Maud’s lap, and she was caressing his forehead. As Harrison came up to them Tyler shot him a glance, of warning, Harrison thought, and thought too of a picture of Samson and Delilah which he had seen on one of his solitary visits to the Louvre. Then, before he had time to digest the implications of this, Tyler was on his feet, throwing him the keys of the car.

  ‘You can drive,’ he said. ‘Up you get, Maud.’ His tone was rousing, artificially jolly. Maud got to her feet, puzzled by his change of mood. Harrison thought she moved awkwardly, for so graceful a girl.

  ‘Chartres tomorrow,’ pronounced Tyler from the back of the car, as Harrison drove slowly through the home-going traffic.

  ‘Oh, God, Tyler, can’t you stay put for a bit?’

  ‘Why? What delights did you have in mind?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind going back to the Louvre.’

  ‘What do you say, Maud?’ Harrison could hear Tyler’s hand descending rather heavily on to Maud’s knee. ‘Do you want to go to the Louvre?’

  ‘You are hurting me, Tyler. Don’t lean on me so heavily. I am quite happy to go to Chartres, if that is what you want.’

  Nobody asked him what he wanted, Harrison noted, bringing the car to rest in the rue Laugier. He deduced further that his company was no longer required that evening. He decided that he was quite grateful for this reprieve. It had been an exhausting day, but an intriguing one. That couple of lovers, with their tensions so much in evidence that they reduced their audience—him—to silence, would intrigue anyone who had a taste for such things. He was newly aware, now that he was attuned to such matters, of some conflict in Tyler, of his temper slowly but inexorably moving towards the surface. He went to his room, washed his face, then crept down the stairs, unwilling to arouse their attention or to give Tyler a pretext for being annoyed with him. He ate his dinner in a nearby brasserie (early again), and once more enjoyed a peaceful and unbroken night’s sleep.

  ‘You know the way, I take it?’ said Tyler on the following morning, handing over the keys of the car. ‘Take care of Maud.’

  ‘Why?’ he said, startled. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘I’ve got some calls to make. Get on with it, Noddy; don’t stand there staring. Must I do everything around here?’

  ‘I thought you wanted to go. To Chartres, I mean.’

  ‘Just go, can’t you?’

  Maud, he noticed, looked frightened, sad. He took her by the arm, willing her not to cry. ‘We’ll see you later, then,’ he called over his shoulder, and to Maud he said quietly, ‘Take it easy. We’re not going to Chartres, you know. We’re going to sit in the Luxembourg Gardens. Then we are going to have a quiet lunch. Then we are going to take a gentle walk. And then you will feel much better. And incidentally so will I.’

  His words amazed him, but he appeared to have said the right thing. Leaving the car keys in the hall had been an excellent idea. As they sat sedately on their iron chairs he heard himself talking on determinedly, telling her about himself, about his home in Eastbourne—the cliffs stood out sharply in his mind’s eye, superimposed on this sultry greyish haze—about his parents, whom he loved, and finally about the shop. He was homesick, he reckoned: why had he not realised this before?

  ‘I’m sorry to be talking so much,’ he said. ‘You must find this frightfully boring.’

  ‘Not at all.’ She smiled at him with what seemed like genuine friendship. ‘I like to hear about your parents.’

  ‘Do you miss your mother?’

  Her face closed again. ‘No. I love her, but I don’t miss her.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘I must be going home soon,’ he said. ‘Back to England, I mean. Will you be all right?’

 
; ‘Of course. But you have been very kind. Thank you.’

  They drifted through the afternoon, drinking coffee, watching the children in the Parc Monceau, until, tired, they turned by mutual consent and made their way back to the flat.

  ‘Tyler?’ he called. ‘We’re back. He doesn’t seem to be here,’ he called to Maud through the open door.

  She appeared from the bedroom, looking very pale. ‘I found this note,’ she said.

  ‘Gone to visit friends in the Ardèche,’ he read. ‘Will telephone.’

  He stared at her, at the tears springing from her eyes.

  ‘Don’t leave me, Harrison,’ she said.

  ‘Edward,’ he replied. ‘Call me Edward.’

  EIGHT

  IT RAINED IN THE NIGHT, NOT RHETORICALLY, WITH A cloudburst that would have satisfied everyone’s taste for drama, but softly, insistently, and with a northern steadiness. In the Vermeulens’ big bed Maud lay sleepless, listening to the faint hiss of the rain which filled the night with a kind of surreptitious activity, as if it were urging on a change of season and marking off the past from the present. At some point a disturbance was heard in the street outside; then it died away, leaving no echo. She held her breath, willing for someone to come, waiting for the dawn which she knew would be tardy, hazy, blurred by the damp, resolutely different from the brilliant days that had gone before.

  She rose early, went to the bathroom, noted that her condition was unchanged, and ran a hot bath, rubbing the steam from the damp windows. She dressed in one of her wide-skirted dresses, which now bore a slight bloom of dust and was limp from her body and its secret tensions. Impulsively she discarded it for her white cotton blouse, which she had managed to wash out but not to iron, and her brown cotton skirt, now marred by grass stains. Her ballerina shoes, never meant for walking, were almost worn through. She brushed her short bronze hair, now curling from the damp, and inspected her fine skin, which was tanned and unmarked by the exhaustion she felt. She searched through Mme Vermeulen’s wardrobe and found a light satiny raincoat with a prestigious label: this she put on, took the key, and prepared to leave the flat. Her intentions were vague; she only knew that she must walk until nightfall. At some point she must take the rest of her clothes to the dry-cleaners, for it would be important to greet Tyler, when he returned, looking pristine, as he had first seen her, on the terrace at La Gaillarderie, bored and disdainful as she had been, intact, her wilfulness successfully hidden. Since then she had experienced every form of dissolution, having been given an education which, she sensed, few women were allowed in so short a time. To give herself courage she reminded herself of Tyler’s look of admiration, as he contemplated her, narrow eyed, as she lay coolly waiting for him, her rapid and visibly beating heart telling him all he wanted to know.

  But was that indeed what he wanted? He always broke away from her afterwards, as if she had made unrestricted demands on him which he was not minded to satisfy. She had hidden her bewilderment, knowing, for all her lack of experience, that he was not a man who cared to explain himself, that integrity for him lay in a refusal to clarify his intentions. She did not much mind this, for she reasoned with herself that inscrutability was the characteristic most frequently displayed by romantic heroes. Indifferent to most men, she nourished a deep atavistic longing for the most commonplace of stereotypes. Her very genuine impassivity had made her insensible to the sort of experimental flirtations indulged in by her friend Julie and by others of their circle. She was not displeased to have retained her virginity, thinking it a small price to pay for the grand love affair that she had always had in her sights: one man, and one only, who would satisfy and consume her entirely. This economy of outlook had nothing to do with her mother’s marriage plans for her, which she considered bourgeois, provincial. She knew, as if she had already experienced them, that those plans included a white dress from Pronuptia, and a wedding breakfast at the Hôtel de la Cloche, at which her aunt Germaine would at last be an accessory rather than the main player, a guest and no longer a châtelaine. And she knew that her mother would regard this celebration, this signing of the contract, as marking the conclusion of her maternal obligations, after which there might even be a slight parting of the ways which would be acceptable on both sides.

  Behind her façade of decorum, inculcated at her convent school, she had nourished other ideas. And even now she marvelled that she had had her own way, had met the mysterious stranger, had succumbed, had exulted, and in so doing had triumphed over her mother’s vigilance, her mother’s fantasies. She could now regard with genuine pity Julie’s surprise parties, at which she had always been awkward and more often than not unpartnered, the young men thinking her disdainful, and not noticing, or if noticing rejecting, her loneliness. Her triumph was still absolute, for the memory of Tyler’s lovemaking still had precedence over the fact that he was absent, and that his absence was unexplained. In fact she drew strength from the fact that it was unexplained, for it was like Tyler to act on impulse. He was a free man: she would not impede him. All she had to do was wait for him. He had taken a bag, but not all of his clothes. These she kept in view as confirmation of his return.

  Except that without his urgent active presence there would be such a lot of time to kill, and she could think of nothing to do but walk, for if she did not get physically tired she would not be able to sleep, and if she did not sleep she would become plain and lose that golden burnish that was her greatest asset. She needed no cosmetics, was not tempted by adornments: these she left to her mother to plan. The rough, densely waved, and curled gold-brown hair, which fitted her head like a helmet, had never needed the ministrations of a hairdresser, and her dark eyebrows arched naturally and disdainfully over her slightly slanting brown eyes. She was grateful for her good figure, her full bosom, which now threatened to become fuller, for her small dry hands with the oval nails which she manicured so carefully. One memory of her mother would always be her instructions in that respect; when engaged with nail-file and orange stick in the dusk of a Sunday evening, after their visit to the cinema, they had been momentarily at one. Also the lessons on the importance of hairbrushing, of hygiene, of fastidious presentation: these were acknowledged, credit being given where credit was due. But it was due from a distance, as if the relationship were now at an end, as if Dijon were a place she had once visited and now need never visit again, except as a married woman. She would give her mother that satisfaction, she reckoned, but until then she would keep the satisfaction to herself. For despite a residual uneasiness, caused, she thought, by Tyler’s absence, she was quite confident. Except that the Ardèche was a long way away, a day’s journey from Paris. And he would need to stay two or three days, at least. And there was the day’s journey back. So that he might be absent for four of five days, more if he were enjoying himself … But he would surely telephone, as he had promised, so that she really ought to stay in the flat as much as possible, so as not to miss his call. Alternatively, there was this equally pressing need for strenuous physical exercise, so that certain matters might naturally resolve themselves. Dejected, still wearing Mme Vermeulen’s raincoat, she sank down on to the bed. That was another problem: the sheets would have to be taken to the laundry, and the flat put to rights. Even if she were to entrust matters to the concierge she had no money with which to pay her. In fact she had no money at all: her only asset was the return half of her ticket to Dijon. All the more pressing need, therefore, to await Tyler’s return.

  When the doorbell rang she caught her foot in the valance of the bed, stumbled, thought briefly that this might work to her advantage, and then ran effortfully down the corridor in her haste to welcome Tyler. She was not quite sufficiently aware of her change of expression when she opened the door to Harrison; in any event she was too indifferent to Harrison’s presence to make the effort to be pleasant.

  ‘I thought it was Tyler,’ she explained, when at last she made sense of his disappointed face.

  ‘Tyler would use the key
, surely,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘He didn’t take the key. I found the key in the bedroom, where he usually leaves it.’

  ‘Then it sounds as if he’s not planning to come back.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. He’s left some of his things.’ She indicated a discarded shirt and a tin of talcum powder. ‘Anyway, he said he would telephone.’

  ‘We need to discuss this, Maud. Perhaps you could make some coffee. Here, I brought you these.’ He handed over his bag of croissants. ‘I want to make a couple of telephone calls myself.’

  She went to the kitchen and filled a kettle. She could hear him saying, ‘Mother? How are you? How’s Dad?’ His voice sounded eager, enthusiastic. ‘I’ll be home at the end of the week,’ she heard. ‘Yes, really home. Then I’ll make a start on the shop. Or at least decide what to do with it.’ There was a silence, which she imagined to be filled with sage advice. Then, ‘I know, I know. But I haven’t really decided yet. I might try it out, I suppose. OK, we’ll talk about it. Love to you both. Bibi still in Italy? Very good, yes, but I’m ready to leave now. See you at the weekend. ‘Bye.’

  How pleasant he sounded when he spoke to his mother, she thought, arranging cups on a tray. She felt his impatience to leave this place, whose point seemed suddenly lost. She was aware of the crumpled sheets on the bed, of the dust that had settled since their arrival, of the smell of Tyler’s cigarettes in the salon. The smell of the coffee made her feel slightly sick, a feeling which she hastily ascribed to her all but sleepless night. In the hall Harrison, who seemed newly energised by the thought of going home, was dialling other numbers.