Incidents in the Rue Laugier

by Anita Brookner

  Maud, washing up the cups in the kitchen, heard him on the telephone. ‘Yes, it is very sudden, but I know you’ll like her. Maud. Yes, it is unusual, isn’t it?’ She intuited excitement at the other end of the telephone, in that house by the sea. ‘We’ll have to get married in Dijon, of course. Oh, pretty soon, I should think. Tell Dad I’m counting on him. Oh, next week. I’ll explain everything then. Lots of love. Goodbye.’

  He judged it tactful to take her place in the kitchen while she telephoned her mother. After what he assumed to be the usual reproaches, he heard, quite clearly, the excited question, ‘Tyler?’ ‘No, Mother,’ said Maud tiredly. ‘Edward … The other one.’

  He did not wait to hear any more. Throwing down the dish towel he strode to the front door and opened it, incandescent with anger. He then strode back to confront her, only to be faced with more tears.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m crying,’ she sobbed. ‘I never cry.’

  He could well believe it, had never seen her express any emotion other than ardour in Tyler’s presence. He put a reluctant arm round her, feeling the softness of her breast against his hand. They sat together, wordless, in the dying afternoon, until she grew quiet. At last she heaved a long sigh. When he looked up Tyler, deeply tanned, stood in the doorway.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Tyler. ‘You’ve been busy, I see.’

  Harrison fished the key to his room out of his pocket. ‘Go upstairs, Maud, and wait for me. Go on,’ he said. ‘I’ll join you later.’

  She looked at the key in her hand, looked at Tyler, waited for him to say something. Then, when he said nothing, she got up and went out of the door without a word.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Tyler, throwing his bag down on the bed. ‘You didn’t wait long, did you?’

  ‘Maud and I are going to be married,’ said Harrison.

  A complicated expression, in which he could distinguish either anger or relief, passed over Tyler’s face, and just as rapidly vanished.

  ‘And then what will you do with her? Take her back to that shop of yours? How long will she put up with that, do you think?’

  ‘Sod you, Tyler.’

  ‘You know what this means, don’t you? Jealousy, pure jealousy. You wanted what I’ve already had. Well, I doubt if you’ll get it.’

  ‘You never loved her. You’ve never loved anyone. I doubt if you could love a woman to the extent of taking care of her.’

  Anger, he decided. It had been anger. But there had been relief there too. Which argued that the stay in the Ardèche had been a tactical withdrawal. Nevertheless Tyler’s face was pale, as Harrison had never seen it.

  ‘We’ll be leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tyler, gazing out of the window. ‘It’s time to be moving on.’

  ‘You will stay here. That will give you an opportunity to clear up this flat. The bed will have to be changed. And you might think about having the carpet shampooed. You’ll have to ask your friend the concierge about that. Perhaps you could get her to give you a hand.’

  Tyler smiled. ‘This is really about you and me, isn’t it, Noddy?’

  ‘There’s a laundry on the corner. I reckon a few thousand francs should cover your expenses. I’d be only too happy to let you have some money. If your journey to the Ardèche left you short.’

  ‘You hate me, don’t you?’

  ‘I never want to see you again.’

  ‘And I thought we were friends.’

  ‘We were.’

  That was the crux of the matter. In the dark room they gazed steadily at each other. Neither thought to switch on the light. In the street, beyond the window, the sounds of an ordinary day could be heard. Tyler’s expression, which he could see clearly, despite the darkness, was rueful. Harrison had seen that rueful smile when Tyler was taking his leave, as he so often was, of a woman. He put his hand to his head and said, with some difficulty, ‘I don’t suppose we shall meet again. I’ll go back, as you say, to my shop, and you’ll no doubt have a flourishing career, in, what was it? Adverstising? You should do well at that. Advertising is what you are particularly good at. After all, it’s the others who have to deliver.’

  ‘The clients,’ said Tyler, with a smile.

  ‘The clients. Who after all have the final say.’

  ‘I never suspected you of this, you know.’

  ‘That may have been your mistake.’

  ‘Possibly. Though the story’s not finished yet.’

  ‘It is, as far as you’re concerned.’

  Tyler turned away, apparently unconcerned. ‘Are you staying here tonight?’

  ‘We’ll go to a hotel. I hate this place anyway. Tomorrow I’ll put Maud on a train to Dijon. Then I’ll catch a plane to London. You can stay as long as you like.’

  ‘Oh, I shan’t stay. It’s a pity we can’t be friends.’

  It was a pity, Harrison thought. He had loved the man, in a way, although he had disliked him. Now he looked at him blankly, aware that anger had deserted him. Tyler, head bent, appeared thoughtful, regretful. Yet even in this circumstance, Harrison saw, his physical splendour had not deserted him, saw also that Tyler knew it, was contrasting his long lean body with Harrison’s shorter one, his finely shaped head with Harrison’s unremarkable face, even his effortless elegance with Harrison’s neat blazer. Harrison was aware that he was sweating, that he needed a bath. There was no question of that here. Slowly he straightened his back, summoned his suddenly depleted forces, gathered up Maud’s things. ‘That raincoat will have to go to the cleaner’s,’ he said.

  ‘I’d better say goodbye to Maud, hadn’t I?’

  ‘Don’t even think of it.’

  ‘Perhaps she’d like to say goodbye to me, though.’

  ‘Goodbye, Tyler.’ On an impulse he stuck out his hand.

  Tyler laughed. ‘If you must,’ he said, and shook it. ‘Dear Noddy. If you could only see your face.’

  ‘You’ve spoilt it,’ said Harrison, and said it with genuine regret. ‘Goodbye, then.’ With that he was safely out of the door, but on the stairs was not surprised to find himself trembling.

  On the following morning, in the noise and confusion of the Gare de Lyon, he held Maud firmly by the arm, like a husband, if that was what husbands did. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘You can have coffee on the train.’ She looked at him as if she hardly remembered who he was. When the signal for departure sounded he had to push her into the train, then stood outside on the platform, grateful that there was no need to say any more. She leaned out, anxious, aware that he was leaving her on her own. As the train moved slowly off he saw her turn away, saw her back view retreating. Then she turned round, raised an uncertain arm. Before she vanished from his sight, he had time to hope that she would not be cold, in her thin blouse, without a coat.

  NINE

  MAUD, IN THE TRAIN, RECOVERED HER COMPOSURE TO an extent which she would not have thought possible. Her present impassivity was achieved by a sort of willed regression, in which she was the age she was in reality but unencumbered by Harrison or even by Tyler, and all that she could contemplate was the sexless presence of some kindly companion who wore a passing resemblance to her cousin Xavier. As she sat, with her hands folded in her lap, her images of happiness were quite distinct: they were of herself engaged in some harmless or childish pursuit, eating ices, or sitting in the sun, or stretched out for sleep in her high narrow walnut bed in the rue des Dames Blanches. If the thought of her forthcoming marriage crossed her mind it was at a considerable degree of distance, as if it were someone else’s fantasy. That fantasy was her mother’s, and had relevance only as far as her mother had relevance in this strange translated state of mind. She was prepared to tolerate her mother as background, as guiding principle, as presiding genius of a certain domestic economy which should have prepared her for an entirely predictable destiny. As this destiny had been in some unforeseen way compromised, Maud did not see how her mother featured in the scenario in which she now had a leading part. She wis
hed, in some dreamlike fashion, to be deprived of her mother as well as of her putative fiancé, whom she saw as mystically allied: she wished to be alone, and single, and free, above all free, free to walk along a street and to know that no one was shadowing her movements, expecting her to return to an order which she had already renounced, free not to divulge her whereabouts, free not to telephone or converse even with friends, free if necessary to disappear.

  If she were to disappear from her mother’s vigilance she would have to go to London and marry Edward. If she were to disappear from Edward’s life she would have to stay in Dijon and shelter behind her mother, who would defend her actions in so far as she considered Maud to be marrying the wrong man. Maud was quite aware of her mother’s needs and desires. She knew that her marriage would put an end to an over-preparedness which they both found intolerable. How often had she winced to feel her mother’s hand in the small of her back, propelling her forward to greet some man, any man, even the ancient family doctor, even Xavier (certain Xavier), and to hear her mother’s voice exaggerating her slender accomplishments. Yet she had also seen that mother’s wry smile and downcast eyes in the presence of Tyler, and knew that she could have presented her mother with no greater prize than Tyler for a son-in-law. That chaste woman, with her long history of widowhood, had derived a speculative thrill from contemplation of Tyler’s peculiar form of masculinity; the more dangerous, the more anarchic he appeared, the greater the satisfaction derived from what could only be an imaginative exercise, but one which was none the less thrilling for that very reason. And to have him in the family, to be able to rely on his presence from time to time, and above all to have abstracted him from Germaine’s sphere of influence would have been a triumph which would have compensated for so many undeserved privations, not to speak of the timorous comforts which she envisaged for her old age.

  But I cannot help you there, Mother, thought Maud; somehow it has all gone wrong. She watched as the train drew out of Sens and calculated that she was half-way home, a home she was by no means anxious to reach, since it would be dense with family implications, and her one desire at this moment was to be without ties of any kind. If she were free, which she was not, she would have gone to the rue des Dames Blanches, changed her clothes, and then gone out again immediately, perhaps to sit in a tea-room and eat cakes, or to wander round the streets, to look at the shops, never to have to give an account of herself again. Her mother she consigned to another place, some sunny retirement home in the south, perhaps, in which she would have no power. Days would pass idly; nothing would happen. This dream of irresponsibility was so beguiling that it brought a faint smile to the features which were already set in the impassive mask by which most people knew her. Paris retreated from her memory as though it had never been. It had betrayed her: that was her impression. She wanted nothing more to do with it.

  If she even fleetingly thought of her marriage it was as something provisional, something from which she could escape as naturally as she could wake up after a dream. As she saw it there would be little point in going to London, since she would not be staying there. The absolute inadmissibility of the situation she had subjected to a form of magical thinking which she found entirely reassuring. At the same time she was aware of the tenderness of her breasts, and of her stained and ruined shoes. She had no money, that was the fact of the matter. Even the previous night in a hotel, with Edward, was something she could not have managed on her own. Security was somehow mixed up with Edward, whom she thought must be quite rich, since he had paid for everything, and insecurity with her mother, whom she knew to be proud but needy. They had slept in the same room, but he had not touched her, and she had been grateful to him for that delicacy. After dinner she had felt so unwell that she would have been grateful to anyone who would let her go to bed and sleep, even to Tyler, had it been possible to imagine Tyler so quiescent. She had felt better in the morning, had even enjoyed the novelty of breakfast in their room, had appreciated Edward’s discretion, although she was aware that he looked at her too fixedly, and once she was in the train had tried to forget him, and to a certain extent had succeeded.

  But that image of insouciance which had initially proved so beguiling could not quite disguise the fact that she was in some physical discomfort, and had been for a few days past. Had she had any money she would have known what to do, or rather she would have asked Julie what to do and where to go. But then had she had any money she would not so promptly have fallen in with so many people’s plans for her. She saw herself now as helpless, and wondered whether her dream of independence were entirely benign, or rather some kind of parody of her present situation. Before leaving the hotel she had wondered whether it would be possible for her to stay there, until what she thought of as her problem was resolved or had resolved itself. But she could not ask Edward for money, and she needed to get away from his anxious face, his regrettable expression of something that was not quite desire but more of a general concern, such as a seasoned husband might wear.

  She knew that he had performed a brave action in declaring his intention to marry her, yet she was not able to appreciate that action for what it was. She was vaguely aware of this as an enormity on her part, an aberration of conduct, yet she realised that she was no longer able to think of herself as an honourable person, not because she had fallen in love with Tyler, but because she had not succeeded in making him love her. If she felt anything she felt shame in not bringing home Tyler as a prize for her mother. And the result of her love affair was this fleeting sensation of unreality. How had it been possible to feel so much then, and so little now? Her amorous life, her life as a woman, was apparently over, and the rest would be a simulacrum of a maturity she must soon assume. She would need a great deal of dignity and of self-control if this were to be possible. Yet all she wished for herself was a higher form of fecklessness, one which would obscure her duties and cancel all her obligations.

  Her shoes, she calculated, would just get her home and must then be thrown away. The memory of those days spent walking with Edward was fading; only the shoes reminded her. If she thought of Paris at all it was in the grey damp of those latter days. The early heat of her nights in the rue Laugier, as well as the radiant sun which had bewitched them all at La Gaillarderie, had disappeared, vanquished by the colder certainties of the advancing autumn, which entirely mirrored her own situation. She saw the whole thing as an allegory, some mischief of the ancient gods who had painted the world in the beguiling colours of summer in order to tempt her, and had then abruptly switched their interest to some other mortal and left her with her broken shoes and her fallen state. They had no mercy, those deities, yet it was somehow appropriate to invoke them, since Tyler so beautifully conveyed the character of Apollo, whom she imagined as having the golden face surrounded by spiky rays of the clock in her mother’s salon. Tyler was of course a mythical being, one who partook of that ancient company, and she knew that although her blood was now cool—cold, in fact—she would never blame Tyler for his legacy to her. The revelation of Tyler was such as to make her tolerant of her own weakness: if she were not now Tyler’s partner it was because she had failed, and failed not for any mundane reason but because she was earthbound, obedient to more prosaic rhythms, because she was simply one of those whose destiny it was to be visited by a transcendent being, and then left alone to ponder her outcast state.

  By the same token she knew that she had already enjoyed the best that there was to enjoy, and that she had, if she cared to use it, a knowledge of how to please, and to be pleased, in the act of love. She felt immeasurably older than any of her friends, than Julie, with her gossip and her parties, certainly older than Jean Bell, with her inscrutable enthusiasm for artefacts. The one person to whom she did not feel superior was her mother, whose amorous secrets had for so long been locked out of sight, and whom widowhood had restored to a semblance of virginity. To a memory of it, as well. To long unillumined and entirely predictable days, without that hin
t of spontaneous gladness which must once had quickened her step. Yet Maud understood that condition, understood what she had once unthinkingly accepted. Given a chance she would have hoped to return to a condition not unlike virginity herself. She had known love, or rather passion, and now she wished to regain her previous invulnerability, her physical integrity, which was so badly compromised. If she was to be the poor mortal, the unworthy recipient of her lover’s transient attention, then she wished still to be in an allegory and to be restored supernaturally to that weightless state in which she had spent her previous existence and the very real years of her real life.

  The one person who did not fit into this allegorical setting was Edward, with his one episode of quixotic kindness, and the covert expression, in itself unheroic, of which she felt she had already seen too much. Edward was the faithful shepherd in the toile de Jouy fabric that covered the walls of her usual bedroom at La Gaillarderie, always peering through undergrowth at the sleeping shepherdess, whose winsome smile is an eloquent indication of her recent activities. Those activities, repeated in ovals as far as the eye could see, never encompassed the shepherd, with his honest face and his clumsy breeches. In the same way Edward would love her, but she would never love him. His love would hardly touch her, since her thoughts would be given over entirely to other matters, principally to memory, which she saw as the appropriate repository of her desire—of her former desire—and to a loneliness which it would be heedless of her to ask him to share.

  It was cold in Dijon, and leaves were already falling. As she reached the rue des Dames Blanches the sole of one shoe detached itself and slapped against the pavement. She longed now for cold water on her face and a change of clothes. As the door of the flat opened to reveal her mother, wearing a silk dress usually reserved for more formal occasions, she felt shabby, downcast, aware of her worn cotton skirt, the goose-flesh on her cold arms. Her mother, in contrast, looked formidable, two spots of colour burning in her cheeks. She had been to the hairdresser, Maud noted. She could have been preparing for a wedding. There was a smell of roasting chicken, which made her feel sick. She kissed Nadine, indicated her woebegone appearance, and hurried to the bathroom. Lavish applications of hot and cold water to her face did a little to restore her equilibrium, and a simple blue cotton dress her appearance. Nevertheless she took her seat at the table in a state of some apprehension.