Incidents in the Rue Laugier

by Anita Brookner

  ‘You are getting married, you said. Am I to believe this?’ Nadine’s tone was mildly coquettish; her fork hovered over her tomato salad.

  ‘Certainly, Mother. I am going to marry Edward Harrison. You met him at La Gaillarderie.’

  ‘When was this decided?’

  ‘Oh, very suddenly.’

  ‘I must confess I hardly noticed him.’

  ‘He is very kind, Mother.’

  ‘And that is enough? Kindness?’

  ‘Yes.’ She felt the beginning of tears.

  ‘In one way I am relieved,’ said Nadine, gently laying down her fork. ‘There was a very unpleasant atmosphere after you left. Germaine asked what I was thinking of, letting you go off like that.’

  ‘Really, Mother, this is 1971. I am not a child.’

  ‘No well-brought-up girl—which I hope you are, Maud—would go off like that with two men she hardly knew.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you stop me?’

  ‘I could see you were in love. We could all see that. That was what shocked Germaine. She thought you should have stayed with me, and let those two men go off on their own.’

  ‘What difference does it make now?’ asked Maud tiredly.

  ‘It makes this difference. You may not know it but Germaine helps us out financially from time to time. We have never got on, but it has to be said that she plays her part. For her to disapprove of you, and therefore of me, is quite serious. We had a very considerable falling out after you left.’

  ‘Then I can’t understand why you both let me go.’

  ‘We were at dinner, if you remember. Nobody argues at the dinner table.’

  There was a silence. Nadine removed their plates, and brought in a platter of chicken.

  ‘I should have done the same myself,’ she said.

  Maud looked at her in surprise. ‘You would? Why?’

  ‘My dear child, I am not a fool. I could see what had happened between Tyler and yourself. I was young too, remember. I am not old even now. I should certainly have followed a man like Tyler, if he had made it possible. So would Germaine, of course. One does not meet a Tyler very often in one’s life.’

  ‘You mean …?’

  ‘Tyler is a man who makes women love him, and to whom women forgive much. I hope you enjoyed him. I also hope you will manage to forget him. Life must become orderly again. Germaine was shocked that I could even entertain such thoughts, although she herself was mildly affected. We all were. Germaine is more conventional than I am, and therefore all the more insistent on good behaviour. Naturally, when I telephoned to tell her you were getting married she quietened down immediately. Particularly when I said you were not marrying Tyler, but the other one.’

  ‘His name is Edward, Mother.’

  ‘I suppose I must get to know him. Why didn’t he come back with you?’

  ‘He said he wanted to go ahead and find a flat for us. I dare say he will telephone some time.’

  ‘And do you want to marry him?’

  ‘Of course. At least …’

  ‘My dear, there is no at least about it. You owe it to us all. You have not behaved well. You put my life at risk, as well as your own.’

  She thought back to the scene on the terrace, after the car had driven off. It was not a pleasant memory: two middle-aged women accusing each other of unseemly conduct, then of jealousy, while Xavier, embarrassed, tried to calm them down. Eventually he left them to it and wandered off, unhappy. He too had been shocked, she saw, but shocked at the abuse of hospitality, for she knew that he was aware of the lovemaking in the attic, as Germaine, fortunately, was not. Indeed, if she had known, Nadine’s position would have been desperate. She saw Xavier’s expression, bewildered at his mother’s obtuseness, determined not to show it. She saw his disappointment, his disapproval. In a rare mood of enlightenment, brought on by this unaccustomed sharing of antagonisms, she saw that Xavier would have been only too happy to have accompanied Tyler to Paris on his own. When Xavier, with an expression of distaste, wandered off, she could see what was in his mind: horror at the spectacle of two women fighting, and fighting in effect over the same man.

  She gave him credit for his feelings, but she could hardly know that he had most vividly at the forefront of his mind the scene which he had not witnessed, but in which he felt involved: Maud and Tyler making love, in the hot afternoon. She did not know that he pictured further scenes of lovemaking, although she did know that it was Tyler’s peculiar gift to make this voyeurism possible. Germaine had been affected by the atmosphere of sensuality, but because she was a very innocent woman she had not known that it was possible to move from speculation into action. Nadine had an image of her sister in bed at night, going over the day’s events, or rather those she had witnessed, with a smile on her face. Nadine knew that Xavier did not like her, that he thought her an unworthy mother, sister, aunt. Yet there had been that irresistible desire for some kind of a victory over her sister’s pretensions, since that sister left her with none of her own, and even at the risk of losing everything she had felt a savage pleasure, not for Maud, whose part she had so readily taken, but for herself.

  ‘Germaine wanted to know the date of the wedding,’ she said, wiping her lips, with the best linen napkins brought out for the occasion. ‘I take it there is no hurry. We shall need a little time to send out the invitations. And I have already spoken to the Hôtel de la Cloche: they get booked up so early, you know.’

  ‘We want to get married quietly, Mother.’

  ‘Why?’

  In that lightning glance across the table could be read her mother’s suspicions, which she must at all costs do nothing to confirm. Maud ate the last of her chicken with application, although she now felt both tired and sick. The night in the hotel, the train journey, and now this conversation had exhausted her: she wished only to get away, out of the sound of her mother’s voice. For a moment marriage seemed a very real possibility, more, a desirable outcome.

  ‘We want to get married quickly and quietly. There is no need to go to any expense. Anyway, we can’t afford it.’

  ‘But didn’t I tell you? Germaine has been quite generous. As I say she was reconciled when I told her you were marrying Mr Harrison.’

  ‘Edward, Mother.’

  ‘Edward. A simple white dress, I thought, and then a good suit for travelling in. You can’t get married in under a month: October, fortunately, is usually fine. I’ll get on to the hotel this afternoon, and let Germaine know. We owe it to her to let her be the first to know the date. You can make a list of the people you want to invite. You might as well do that this afternoon.’

  ‘I’m awfully tired. I’d really like a rest. Or some air. I’d like a walk. I’ll help you with these dishes first …’

  ‘No. You can go. I’ll take care of this. You don’t look well, Maud. I can’t see that your adventure has done you much good. If I had had a love affair I hope I should have looked better on it than you do.’

  ‘But why did you let me go? You should have stopped me.’

  Her mother put down the glass dish she was holding. ‘I let you because … because I can’t give you very much, not as much as girls of your age usually have, and because you are a good girl, and because you will get married and settle down, and we shall all live happily ever after. At least I hope we shall. I wanted you to have what I never had. Oh, I was happy enough being a wife, but I knew I had missed something. I married to get away from home, as you will, my dear—oh, yes, I know: you have always been docile, a good daughter. But Maud, when you get to my age you realise that being a good daughter isn’t enough, or it shouldn’t be. A woman should have an opportunity to be bad from time to time. I’ve shocked you, I see. Well, this is 1971, after all, as you so recently reminded me.’

  ‘I think Tyler was rather wicked.’

  ‘Of course he was. That was the whole point.’

  ‘You shock me, Mother.’

  ‘I’m not displeased to hear it. But listen to me, Maud. T
hat is over now, do you hear? You have the chance to be respectable again. Not every woman is so lucky. You will settle down; we shall all settle down, and be as we were. And next year you and your husband will spend the summer at La Gaillarderie, and …’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Well, as you wish. I think it is the least you could do. But you will see Germaine at the wedding, of course. And now I think I shall make a few telephone calls. You had better tell me more about your fiancé. Everyone will be so interested. What does his father do?’

  ‘Nothing. He is retired. His family lives by the sea, in Sussex.’

  ‘Are they wealthy? Professional people?’

  ‘I have no idea. Edward has his own business. He is a bookseller. He has a shop.’

  ‘A shop?’

  ‘It is in the heart of London, Mother. And I think he is quite well situated. At least he is buying a flat for us. He is very kind.’

  At the memory of his kindness, and of what she had done to stimulate it, her heart sank. Nadine, looking at her daughter’s woebegone face, said, ‘You will get used to it. Every woman does. Men like Tyler don’t last, and they don’t marry either. At least not girls like you. You have had your love affair, and now you must put it behind you.’ There was another swift glance. ‘Are you quite well, Maud? There’s nothing you want to tell me, is there?’ In the face of Maud’s silence she said, ‘Is everything quite normal, Maud?’

  ‘Everything is quite normal, Mother. There is nothing to worry about.’

  She left the dining-room quickly, aware that this particular conversation was at an end, must never be repeated. She took a sweater from her cupboard, tied the sleeves round her shoulders, and left the flat, profoundly disturbed. She walked down the rue des Dames Blanches, conscious of a tenderness in her feet from all the recent walking. This then was the dilemma: not her own condition, though that was dilemma enough, but the fact that she had discovered a profound moral failing in her mother, and that she was about to commit a moral fault herself. Somehow the former served to make the latter unacceptable. She had thought to reinforce her mother’s values by this marriage, only to be given to understand that her mother’s values were more subversive than she had ever imagined. She would never have dreamt that her mother could countenance an irregular love affair, let alone promote one. She tried to persuade herself that the status of women had changed, that they were now permitted to voice their disappointment with their lot and with what they had to undergo at the hands of men. If her mother had urged celibacy, a life without men, she could not have been more shocked, but she would not have been surprised. Women urge their own behaviour on others all the time. But for her mother to have enjoyed vicariously conduct which she would never have permitted herself was too much. And then to accept without question this obviously hasty marriage in order simply to reinforce the status quo (essential after an aberration) was so cynical, in Maud’s eyes, that her mother’s fault quite eclipsed her own.

  There was more at stake here than her own reason for this marriage, so nearly suspected, so deliberately undisclosed. There was her mother’s security, even her future, for a start. With the whole of her meagre income supplemented by Germaine’s contributions, about which Maud had not known, her mother could keep up a certain style, entertain, make new friends. The wedding alone, whatever it would cost, would be her introduction to society, for she would receive invitations in return. The wedding, in fact, would be for her mother’s benefit, and how was she to be denied that pleasure? She would soon be alone, and winter was coming. Her gamble, for that was what it was, was the only one a decent woman of her class could make. Which made her recent remarks, her recent action, seem lewd in comparison. Despite the wisdom of the age, or rather the propaganda of the age, Maud did not consider it seemly for a mother to countenance a daughter’s love affair, particularly when that love affair was compounded by an abuse of hospitality on a grand scale. Maud was sufficiently aware of her convent education to know that a minor does not make love under a relative’s roof. Her standards were those of the Fifties rather than of the recent Sixties, and among her friends she was thought old-fashioned. Her mother’s impropriety, she thought, was in advance of her own, and therefore all the more disconcerting. She was left with the impression that, although she was alone responsible for her present dilemma, her mother was in some way to blame.

  These reflections confirmed her earlier desire to revert to a form of prelapsarian integrity, if that were possible. She could not see herself as a mother. She doubted if she ever would want children, or even if she ever wanted to be married. Yet she knew that her mother’s silk dress, the visit to the hairdresser, the heightened colour in her cheeks, all betokened some kind of wish fulfilled. The question now was whether she could fulfil her own wish: for freedom. She had once had a vague idea that she should train as an interpreter; her English was fluent, and she could teach herself Italian, had indeed planned to do so. She saw herself in a small flat in Geneva, working for some international organisation. Her present guilt she saw, more accurately, as a form of dismay. It amounted to this, she thought: she must get married and have a child in order to please her mother, yet at the same time she must not disclose the fact that she was pregnant. Of her own wishes no one had thought to enquire. Of Edward she thought with pity, perhaps a distant regard. Yet she knew that if, by some unimaginable feat, she managed to regain her freedom, she would not think much about him ever again.

  When it was clear that there was no answer to any of this, she turned in the direction of home. She was irked by the greyness of the sky, the silently falling leaves, as if she had been tricked into this return. Chilled and uneasy, she planned to take a hot bath before dinner, and then beg an early night. She supposed that as a bride she would be allowed indulgences, one more instance of life’s partiality towards the undeserving.

  ‘Your fiancé telephoned,’ said Nadine, hardly waiting for Maud to enter the living-room before giving rein to her new-found exuberance. ‘He wanted to know that you got home safely. Very correct of him, I thought. And I got on to the hotel. They are booked up until the eighteenth of October, so I fixed the reception for twelve o’clock on the eighteenth. Just a simple meal, I thought, nothing too elaborate. Oh, and I’ve put something in your room for you.’

  Maud found the dark pink silk kimono on her bed. The extravagant garment, with its fringed sash and its wide sleeves slashed at the armpit, fitted loosely over her cotton frock, changing her into a beauty. Instinctively she stood up straight, swept the silk skirts around her, saw herself objectively as a handsome woman, one who might in other circumstances have had a promising future.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘My mother’s father brought it back from China. He had business connections there. That is Chinese silk, real silk. It was the only thing of my mother’s that I kept. I wore it on my honeymoon. Then I packed it away. It suits you very well. Where are you going?’

  ‘I’d like a hot bath: I’ve got a slight chill, I think. And thank you, Mother. I shall treasure it.’

  She reckoned that the bleeding started even before she reached her bedroom and she hurried to remove the kimono before it got soiled. Her heart beating rapidly, her joy and shock vertiginously mingled, she ran to the bathroom, tore off her clothes, and lowered herself into the hot water, watching it turn red. Within a few moments she was alarmed by the volume of the loss. Faint, she wondered how she would ever disguise the evidence, wondered in fact how she would get back to her room. She cleaned up as best she could, at last managed to accommodate the red tide. The buzzing in her ears gradually subsided, leaving behind a lightness of the heart which she could hardly remember.

  That evening at dinner she ate voluptuously. Her mother watched her as she peeled a pear. ‘You have got your appetite back, I see. Mind you don’t put on weight.’

  ‘I’ve come to a decision, Mother,’ said Maud, patting her lips. ‘I don’t think I’m ready for th
is marriage. It was, after all, very sudden. And I am very young. So I think you’d better cancel the Hôtel de la Cloche. I think what I’d really like to do is study. I always wanted to be an interpreter anyway. Women marry much later these days, and it’s not as if …’

  Nadine’s face was very pale. ‘You were saying? It’s not as if …?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean anything,’ said Maud joyously. ‘I’m just relieved at having come to a decision. I’m sorry, Mother. I hope you’re not too disappointed. After all,’ she added, as this last remark met with no response, ‘I take it I’m allowed to please myself in this matter?’

  ‘And how nearly were you not able to please yourself? And for how long do you suppose you are allowed to please yourself?’

  ‘Surely I can decide …’

  ‘You shock me, Maud. I hadn’t realised …’

  ‘Please, Mother, don’t look like that.’

  ‘I don’t want you here, Maud. You had better make up your mind to that.’

  ‘Yet it was you who let me go to Paris. What right have you to be shocked now?’

  ‘Very little, no doubt. But it is not a question of rights. It is a question now of what is appropriate.’

  Maud, shocked herself at her mother’s sudden pallor, saw at a glance the obverse of her mother’s boldness: a fear of consequences. A love affair was to be permitted only if it left the woman intact. Her mother’s gift to her carried an important proviso: that a return to blamelessness be assured. And witnessed.