A Closed Eye

by Anita Brookner

  ‘Can I take you all out to dinner?’ he asked.

  ‘No, my dear,’ said Merle quickly. ‘It’s sweet of you, but after a day on my feet I’m whacked. But I’m sure Hattie would love to go.’

  She went, again moved by a strange politeness, the quality that stood her in such good stead in the bookshop. He made her drink a glass of wine, and ordered for her. She found him agreeable, if a little uninteresting. But kind, very kind. Encouraged, she talked about her job, about the books she was reading. She was flattered by his attention, reminding herself to make this the main item of her weekly telephone call to Tessa. She was happy as she thought about this, her small contribution to the great game. After paying the bill he said to her, ‘I have enjoyed myself. Would you like to do this again?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘I should love to.’

  He walked her back through the beautiful evening, and rang the bell at the street door beside the shop. Merle appeared looking exhausted, but with a radiant smile, her feet encased in incongruous pink slippers.

  ‘Here she is,’ said Mr Lytton. ‘Safe and sound.’

  ‘Freddie, you are an angel. Did you thank Freddie, darling? Now we want to see you again. You’ve done Hughie so much good. And my poor Hattie doesn’t get out as much as I’d like her to. Say you’ll come again.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll come again, now that I’ve found you,’ said Mr Lytton. He raised his hat and kissed Merle on the cheek, then held out his hand to Harriet.

  ‘Goodnight, Harriet. Thank you for a very pleasant evening.’ And he melted away into the night, forgetting that his car was still at the door. Five minutes later they heard him drive off.

  In the dark hallway at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the flat Merle looked tensely at her daughter, then nodded.

  ‘Go to bed now, darling,’ she said. ‘I’ve put one or two things in your room. A couple of dresses I brought home from Maddox Street. I think it’s time you took a bit more care of yourself.’

  Harriet heard her parents talking on the other side of the thin bedroom wall for what seemed like a long time. The wine had made her sleepy, and she gave no further thought to her evening. If she thought about it at all on the following day it was in connection with Tessa, for whom she had at last an item of news.

  And Tessa was intrigued, as were Mary and Pamela, all gathered together for once at Gunter’s on a Saturday afternoon.

  ‘Freddie Lytton?’ asked Pamela sharply. ‘My father knows him. He’s been to our house. He’s rich.’

  ‘But if your father knows him he must be pretty old,’ said Mary.

  ‘He is. He’s ancient. How on earth did you get hold of him, Hattie? He’s been married. His wife left him, or something. He’s divorced.’

  ‘I always blame the man if the wife leaves,’ said Tessa, with a worldly air.

  ‘Oh, so do I,’ they concurred, but Harriet, bewildered, said, ‘I thought he was rather nice.’

  All were alerted to the event while she was still in ignorance. New dresses awaited her in her bedroom when she returned from the bookshop, and sometimes Mr Lytton was there, sitting with her father. Harriet thought her mother might be attracted to Mr Lytton, so excited did she seem. In a dress which she privately disliked, Harriet prepared to go out with Mr Lytton, rather reluctantly, as she was tired and a little depressed. She was looking at her face in the mirror when Merle entered her room and stood with her back conspiratorially to the door, her hands spread out on either side of her. There was a smudge of cigarette ash on the bodice of her black dress.

  ‘I hope you know what this is all leading up to, Hattie,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet, even more tired and depressed. ‘I suppose I do.’

  ‘Well, all I ask is that you do the right thing. Daddy and I aren’t getting any younger, you know. We’d like to enjoy life while we still can. I’ll soon be fifty, Harriet.’

  ‘So will Freddie,’ said Harriet, which was ignored, though registered.

  ‘I can’t work for ever,’ Merle went on. ‘And Latif definitely wants the flat. We can get a good price from him. We want out, darling, don’t you see?’ She began to cry. ‘He’s a good man. And he’s besotted, although he doesn’t show it. And not everyone … Although it’s faded a lot …’ She was crying in earnest now, ashamed of herself, bitter with impatience. ‘Oh dear,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t go down like this. I’ll have to stay up here. Don’t keep him waiting, darling.’ She took Harriet in her arms and kissed her, leaving a smear of damp on the girl’s cheek. Then she sank down on to the bed, put her head in her hands, and wept.

  HER PARENTS, no longer Mother and Father, but Merle and Hughie, in deference to their almost exact contemporaneity to her husband, released the flat and the shop to Latif, were largely compensated, and decamped to Brighton. Why Brighton? It was a place they remembered from the old days, when weekends were spent at the races, or taking a spin along the coast to Rottingdean, or dancing at the Grand. They were unprepared for the stony wind-blown shopping precinct, and the greatly increased traffic, and the conference centre where they remembered a skating-rink. But Brighton meant so much more to them than its new and odd appearance: it meant youth, their own youth, and their little car, and the light going on in the blue evening. It meant the last year before the war, when there was nothing to spoil their pleasure. They had decided on Brighton before going down to see it, fearful perhaps of any changes that might remind them that they were no longer young. Eventually they hired a chauffeur-driven car. The auspices were good: the sun shone from a clear autumn sky, and their driver was cheerful. It was wonderful to see how Hughie recaptured some of his old confidence away from the shop, how he bought them all gin and tonics at the Grand, shot his cuffs and surveyed the promenade. The driver, Norman, a good-hearted man, guided them through the afternoon, waited for them outside shops, conveyed estate agents to and from properties which they rejected with a moue as old-fashioned.

  Finally, just as the light was going, they found the flat, in a new block overlooking the promenade and the now mysterious sea, so placid, so uninteresting under the extinguishing darkness that covered it. Both exclaimed with delight at the dainty kitchen, the two, admittedly small, bathrooms, the balcony, the glass doors. ‘We’ll take it,’ they said simultaneously, were driven back to the office, signed the cheque with the assurance of their new-found solvency, and insisted on vacant possession within the month. They wanted to be in by Christmas, which they dreaded. They dreaded change, and Harriet’s leaving, for she was a dear good girl, and her marriage, which might well turn them into grandparents before they were ready, was, although an accomplishment of a sort, still something of a surprise. They knew so few people. But they would join a bridge club, even if it meant their having to play bridge, and they would find a few restaurants, and get themselves known somehow. They usually managed to be on friendly terms with barmen: that at least was what had happened in the old days. And they were both determined to make a go of things, for Harriet had been bound to leave sooner or later. Merle felt sorry for her, knowing that she was too young for her age, knowing that Freddie was probably too old. But what was she to do? It was not as if their way of life cast young men into their daughter’s path. And this way she would never have the fear of bringing up a baby and supporting a husband who was an emotional invalid single-handed. This, to Merle, was the best dowry her daughter could possibly have. She was tired, as if the effort of willing it all to happen had been immense, disproportionate. Her heart broke when she thought of the girl on her honeymoon, and of her disappointment. But there was no help for it. Her own marriage, which had begun so rapturously, had ended in disappointment. Privately, she wondered if all women were disappointed, and concluded that this was probably the case but was never admitted. She felt better when she had managed to persuade herself of the truth of this. The prospect of spending money, after the years of careful parsimony, cheered her considerably, and in a while she forgot about Harriet, for
the furnishing of the new flat made her feel as if she were the heroine of an adventure, a fresh start, while her daughter, who looked on solemnly and without comment, seemed oddly static, as though the roles were reversed and she were now the adult. Sometimes Merle hid the prices on the articles she now bought so feverishly, as if Harriet might disapprove and order her to return them to the shop.

  The flat was to be pale green, Merle decided, eau-de-Nil, her favourite colour, and one that dated her, although she was never to know this. Harriet and Freddie were invited down to admire. Harriet knew that she had to reassure them, for the following week they would be gone, and she would be alone in the flat for the last few days before her wedding. Merle and Hughie had already booked themselves into the Ritz for that event, although the prospect did not excite them as much as their vast pale green velvet sofa, with matching armchairs, their ivory silk wall lights, their walnut cocktail cabinet, their glass-topped brass-legged coffee table, and their giant television set. A swirling green carpet led them to the bedroom, which was upholstered in ivory, this time, with a pink en suite bathroom. The triple mirror of Merle’s dressing-table was already hung with necklaces; her kicked-off mules lay beside a button-backed pink nursing chair, with an ivory and pink cushion to match. Everything was shiny with newness. Merle’s hand lovingly stroked her pink and ivory counterpane, a girlhood dream come true. ‘And Hughie has a study and his own bathroom further along,’ said Merle triumphantly. Harriet felt a twinge of pity when she saw her father’s room, with the desk at which he was never to do any work but which she saw was fitted with a blotter and pen tray. ‘I can settle down to some reading at last,’ he said, incorrigibly cheerful. It was his greatest gift, she thought; his own youth had never decayed, gone sour, deserted him. He was still entire, frozen at the age of immaturity, and curiously unlined, filled with unlived life. ‘You can send me some books from that shop of yours,’ he said, momentarily forgetting that she was to be married. ‘Keep me up to date. And don’t worry about us, old girl. We’ll have a whale of a time.’

  And Harriet hoped that they would, although they had both seemed alarmed, even affronted, at the wedding, as if nothing had prepared them for this separation. Both had wept when she kissed them goodbye, when they realized that their factitious friendship with her husband was now at an end, and that their ways would now part and their meetings be rare. Merle’s eyes brimmed and she bit her lip as she remembered moments of intimacy in the room at the back of the shop, the gas fire humming on winter afternoons, and the kettle on the boil for Harriet’s tea when she came home from school. Hughie seemed about to beg his new son-in-law to take care of his daughter, but Merle put a stop to that and thrust another glass of champagne into her husband’s hand. What was done was done, and, she thought tiredly, it was for the best. Harriet would now have to take her chance along with the rest of the human race, the female half of it, at least. She felt too old to sympathize. All she wanted now was the peace of her new bed, with the sea outside her window, and time to think of herself at last.

  Harriet, in her new home in Cornwall Gardens, felt sorry for them, as she knew they felt sorry for her. This was both the depth and the limit of their love for each other. With her husband she was easier than she had ever been with her parents: the words ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ now brought with them a kind of sadness that had to do with their frustrated lives and their pitiful domesticity and the reality behind their still handsome faces. But with Freddie Lytton all was solid, reassuring, prosperous. He was quiet, and pleasant, and she was fond of him in an uncomplicated way. Without the slightest feeling of strangeness she waited on him, served his breakfast in the morning, charmed by the novelty of seeing him respectable in his business suit after his behaviour of the previous night. When he returned in the evening she kissed him, took his briefcase from him, glanced at the Standard, then lit the two red candles on the dining-table and waited for him to pour the wine. Without warning, it seemed, she had become a married woman. She shopped and cooked and looked after the flat—his flat—and sometimes she walked through the fallen leaves in the fine afternoons, just sighing a little when the light began to fade and she remembered those homeward journeys of which she would now never be a part. The seasons changed, but nothing else changed. However, she liked her life. She liked Freddie, who was more of a father than her father had ever been. Her marriage seemed to her like a form of honourable retirement, with pleasant amenities to which she had previously had no access: the opera, the ballet. They talked objectively, on interesting topics. Feelings were rarely discussed. Nothing was expected of her except that she be reasonable and decorative. She had no trouble in being either. He, in his silent way, seemed devoted to her. He was an ideal husband.

  But he was not an ideal lover. She knew this instinctively, although she was completely inexperienced. His taciturnity, so soothing and reliable in the daytime, vanished at night, when he was ardent, even violent, careless of her, briefly unknowable, occasionally foul-mouthed. Shock, and even a kind of excitement, gave way to distaste, to disappointment, to resignation, as her mild endearments failed to calm his fury. ‘Quiet’, she heard, and ‘Keep still’, and then, despite sensations of her own, which she was quite sure were in no way compatible with her husband’s volcanic state, she would long for the return to calm and to some degree of respect for the night’s integrity. He would subside and say nothing, for which she was grateful. She would not have known how to reply, whether to be gallant or to tell the truth. She lacked the mocking spirit, although some part of her was amused by her husband’s doubleness. And in the morning she would bathe and dress and feel quite happy at the prospect of another day. Thus she reckoned that her marriage was a success.

  They had friends to dinner, went to Glyndebourne, went abroad. Obediently she forgot her own life and adopted that of her husband. She had always hankered for stability and had always feared pity, the mournful pity she now felt for her parents, and thus found it easy to be her husband’s creature, to dress as he liked her to dress, to entertain his business partners and their wives, finally to find herself on equal terms with her former friends, to cross the social gap of which she had scarcely been aware in the innocence of her youth but of which she now measured the significance. Looking back, she saw the pink woolly slippers her mother wore with her black dress at the end of the working day, saw the clutter of dirty cups and crumbed plates on the desk in the room at the back of the shop, heard Mr Latif ask, ‘Et comment allez-vous ces jours-ci, ma petite Harriet?’ saw his hand on her mother’s arm, saw her mother’s eyes warning her to be pleasant. She had no difficulty in preferring to be Mrs Lytton. Freddie was courteous, stable, appreciative. On his fiftieth birthday they had lunch at the Connaught and then went on to an exhibition at the Royal Academy. Afterwards he bought her a silk scarf at Fortnum’s, and when she protested, saying, ‘But it’s your birthday, not mine,’ he replied, ‘But when it’s your birthday you will still be younger than I am. I feel I have to make it up to you.’ She hugged his arm, and when they got home she took the champagne from the fridge, and they spent a pleasant evening.

  Of his first wife there was no mention. Harriet did not ask about her, thinking the matter of no relevance, and indeed of little interest. He was simply not a man who could ever make her jealous. Despite his attentions to her she did not consider him a sexual being. Faithfulness was simply a natural condition, like breathing.

  Of course she dreamed of a lover, but these were real dreams, in her sleep, and they troubled her only on waking, when she sometimes remembered them, and never in the daytime. This lover was faceless, but she knew that he was her own age, and that he both awoke and dispelled the loneliness that she felt in his arms. He made her aware of the strangeness of life, of its intrinsic strangeness, as they embarked together on that journey that only two can share. In her dream she wept and sighed, as if in acknowledgement of her real life and its unimportant compensations. The stranger in her arms knew her every mood, her every mov
ement, felt as ardently and as sadly as she did herself, but took her away with him even as he vanished into the real light, so that on waking she was surprised and alarmed to find the body of her undisturbed husband in her bed. It will never be my bed, she thought, only his. He does not even know me, and he leaves me undiscovered. This is his loss as well as mine. But he knows so little, and is so well satisfied that this is not a regret that he will ever care to be acknowledged. Briefly she felt sorry for him, for his ignorance. She felt slightly superior, more his equal. With an unlived life of her own she felt reality breaking into the illusion with which her husband was content.

  On such mornings, when she awoke, she felt a sudden ebbing of warmth and shivered slightly as she drew the curtains, although the spring morning was mild and damp, and the earth emerged from the night as if from a warm sleep of its own. Flat white light fell on buds and rustling birds, and although the cloud cover was low there was little doubt that the same unwavering light would persist until after seven in the evening, until nearly eight, in fact, and that she would no longer need to light the candles on the dining-table. Spending the evening in the flat with Freddie in this indeterminate season oppressed her a little: she felt a childish desire to be out in the streets, to stand by the railings in the park and watch the darkness come down, and see the trees lose their outlines to shadow. She did not quite know how to deal with these intimations of restlessness. Freddie, on his own admission, was too tired to take a walk, regarded walking as a pursuit for those who did not work, did not go into the city with a briefcase and return home smelling of cigars and exhaustion. Harriet deferred to this, but, remembering her own working days, felt wistful. Freddie, who sometimes dozed in the evenings when they were not going out, looked older when asleep; his hair was thinning and turning grey, and he had put on weight. Presumably he had seen his marriage as the one task heroically to be performed before the tiredness of middle age took over. Once married he could relax both his vigilance and his efforts. Harriet saw all this and felt sorry for him. She did not yet feel sorry for herself.