A Closed Eye

by Anita Brookner

  Freddie tolerated her friends, the girls, as he called them, and this toleration she took for encouragement to see them. These meetings all took place on neutral ground—in restaurants or hotel dining-rooms—as if the four of them, individually and collectively, wanted to be free of their new lives, their new homes, and to rediscover the solidarity of their youth, with which they had dealt so carelessly at the time. They were all older, and the threat of dispersal hung over them. Pamela, now a farmer’s wife, and living in Northamptonshire, came to London irregularly, which was always the signal for a meeting. Harriet was surprised to find her looks so changed: a reddened complexion, a chipped front tooth, and long darker hair had replaced the bold blonde head of her earlier days and also the commanding pronouncements on style which they had accepted without question. With Pamela’s looks gone authority seemed lost. Mary was due to go to Hong Kong with her husband who worked for Cable and Wireless. Of the four of them she had perhaps changed the least, was still confident, rushed, important. Tessa, after two painful love affairs, was engaged to a television journalist called Jack Peckham: no money, she assured them, but never mind, he was a wonderful lover. Her wedding was to be simple, at her own request, but her parents had bought them a flat in Beaufort Street; after that they were on their own. The marriage seemed ill-starred to Harriet, to whom marriage was a grave affair, but in this setting, among the four of them, it was not what was new that was important but what was already over, their common youth, their shared past. Somehow what each of them had to tell about her new life failed to arouse the same interest. What they appreciated was the physical presence of the others, a sudden shared goodwill. Together they monitored each other’s progress towards maturity, towards middle age, or what they thought of as middle age. When she was with them Harriet felt a girl again, and when she thought of her present substantial position it was with the onset of a certain bewilderment. They embraced ardently on parting, saw Pamela, who was five months pregnant, into a taxi, made Mary promise to write regularly, kissed and waved, turned and waved again, as if immense distances were to separate them for ever, as if husbands would now remove them from the pre-sexual conformity which they felt to be their right, and as if this were suddenly a matter for regret. Harriet stood on the pavement outside the Royal Court Hotel and thought of a desolate telephone call of the evening before. ‘He doesn’t really want to marry me,’ Tessa had said. ‘But I’m pregnant and that’s all there is to it. And I’m so tired, Hattie. I can’t seem to get it right, somehow. Not like you.’ Yet none of these reflections had come to light in the course of their lunch together, on the contrary; Tessa had been mordant, sprightly. It was another illustration, Harriet had thought, of the adulteration that had taken place in their original behaviour. None was what she had previously been.

  Walking home, at the dead hour of three in the afternoon, she was anxious for the comfort and shelter of the flat, which she saw as both protection and dignity, in much the same terms as she viewed her husband. With him she need feel neither pain nor pity. Sorrow, the sorrow that she had occasionally glimpsed in earlier days, would never come to her from Freddie Lytton. The warmth that she had felt when she was with her friends—the girls, as she now thought of them, shading, perhaps unconsciously, into Freddie’s way of thinking—was ebbing away from her, like those dreams whose disappearance left her so strangely chilled. But it was the warmth, she decided, that was illusory, unreliable, something of a snare. The real climate was moderate, even a little cool, and probably for that very reason less conducive to disorder, or distraction. Real life warned one to keep up one’s guard, not to be seduced by attachments, certainly not those encountered in dreams. She wondered why she felt so sad. But they had all felt sad, she realized, sad for the very changes to which they were submitting, so difficult is it to leave childhood, and its innocence and courage.

  Innocent: but this was an illusion too, she reasoned, as she walked the damp mild streets, with the haze of green in front of her that was the park. I was not so much innocent as undemanding, not knowing how to stake my claim, not even daring to think I had a claim to stake. She thought of the room behind the shop, and her childish father’s smile, of her mother’s harassment, of her own meekness. She saw this now quite coldly. She also saw the anomaly of her presence at the Dodds’ house in Cadogan Square, always dressed in garments which had not sold in the shop and were therefore too old and too inappropriate. She remembered, with a rush of shame, a cherry red frock with a bow at the neck, designed for a matron, one of the Pont Street variety. At least that would never happen again, she thought, glancing down at her beautiful olive tweed suit. They must have been very kind to me, seeing at a glance that I did not fit in. Undoubtedly they were sorry for me, though I never knew it. Yet I became one of their set, even if I was the least important member of it. Pamela and Mary: I doubt if there was a great deal of affection for me there, although I failed to see it at the time. Tessa was always my ideal. And perhaps it suited her to have so disingenuous a friend. The friendship, she now saw, was based on habit, on her own assiduity, but also on something more, as if Harriet’s very modesty, her lack of sexual awareness, had ensured that Tessa remained connected to a condition that was not shadowed by calculation. Had they ever discussed men? Or boys, as they were then called? Perhaps it was fortunate that they had lost sight of each other for a while, when she was at secretarial school and the others were doing their cookery course. Her own marriage had reunited them, and then Mary’s later the same year. At Pamela’s wedding they had made a joke of these reunions, yet each saw the others go with genuine emotion.

  And now Tessa. And after that, no doubt, dispersal, for what could keep them all together when partners had to be considered? And they were no longer girls; at thirty Harriet looked back to an infinity of time past. Breaking in on her thought came a sudden feeling of muteness, as if there were no one in whom she could confide, even supposing that she might ever find the words to express what she wanted to say. She was aware of emotions that had never come to the surface. When she withdrew her hand from her glove to find her keys she was surprised to find it trembling. She told herself that these reunions were pointless if they derogated from her present contentment. She told herself that she had no need to keep a watch on Tessa’s happiness, that in fact it no longer concerned her. That aching friendship that the four of them had briefly experienced, at the Royal Court Hotel, was to do with the past, with the sense of time slipping away, with the well-known effects of a spring day after a long winter, with different journeys to different homes, with a sense of no longer being fully known. Their bodies now held secrets, were no longer presented to each other for inspection. They had learnt to be silent on certain matters. Even Tessa, on the verge of an exciting marriage which was also perceived as a disaster, and already pregnant, could only joke and boast. After so long, after so many transparent years, they had grown opaque to each other. And this would—must—continue. The dignity of their husbands was at stake. Later, perhaps, when they were much older, they might confess mistakes, regrets. But Harriet saw them all bound in the meantime by certain rules. She herself had reason to be grateful for those rules.

  To calm herself she went to the window, and saw directly opposite, across the oblong enclosure of trees and shrubs that was Cornwall Gardens, the mysterious window that was always closed yet always lit up. She had seen the light blazing there at five in the morning and at midnight. Sometimes a figure could be seen moving rapidly across it, as if in agitation. Was it a sickroom, a nursery? Somehow that agitated figure seemed to Harriet like a prisoner, for whom she felt a terrified sympathy. Soon the branches of the trees would thicken with foliage, and she would no longer be able to see clearly. On this particular afternoon, still light, still bright, but very quiet, she could discern no silhouette. Yet the light was already on. Suddenly the figure appeared, as if from nowhere, and took up a position at the window. With a qualm of fear she turned away, for even worse than seeing the stranger
was the thought of the stranger seeing her, lonely, at the window, and gazing with longing at a world which was beginning to disclose concealment, estrangement, silence.

  WHEN Harriet first saw Jack Peckham she put up her hand, instinctively, to shield her face. With no one else had she ever done this. The gesture was symbolic, as if she were hiding more than her face, as if she were hiding herself, for she recognized in him the stranger of her dreams, and in the light of day did not wish to be found. The four of them were in a restaurant, a week before Tessa’s wedding. Freddie had grumbled at the idea of this dinner, which, he thought, had nothing to do with him, but Harriet had insisted on this being their treat, and the most graceful way to show the recalcitrant Peckham that there were witnesses to his dubious entrance into Tessa’s life, and as if to warn him against a too precipitate departure from it. Theirs was apparently already a tired arrangement: he would stay with Tessa until the baby was born, and then they would separate. He had it in mind to be a free man within a couple of years.

  ‘I’ll never divorce him, never,’ Tessa had said to Harriet in the Ladies’ Room. ‘Anyway, he might as well be married to me as to anyone else. You’ll see what he’s like. He’ll never settle down until somebody makes him. And when he sees the baby …’

  Harriet, apart from noticing the antagonism in Tessa’s voice, and understanding it, knew that she was wrong, that Jack Peckham was unlikely to be seduced by a baby, or by a simulacrum of marriage, or even by a woman’s longing for him, because he was a prodigious man who was made for adventure in the wider world, and whom the same four walls, however welcoming, would irritate beyond endurance. He was already irritated by having to dine with this friend of Tessa’s and her pompous husband, a man of the kind who normally made him utter a short bark of laughter. He seemed to create annoyance wherever he went and to be indifferent to it. He had arrived late, wearing jeans and a leather jacket: light caught the very fine reddish stubble on his jaw, and his longish hair was untidy. Harriet became aware simultaneously of her husband’s disapproval and of that same husband’s costive navy blue suit and striped tie, his sparse hair, and the cologne which he used and which she now realized she had never liked. She switched her attention as best she could to Tessa, who had coloured hectically at Jack Peckham’s arrival and had caught at his hand, which was unresponsive.

  ‘Too bad of you to be so late, darling,’ she had said, in a tone which attempted to convey that they had been happily married for years.

  ‘I’m afraid I shall have to leave rather early,’ was his reply. ‘I have to go back to the office.’

  ‘Then we had better order now,’ said Freddie, who seemed to find Peckham’s presence displeasing. ‘Will you leave the wine to me?’

  ‘Delighted,’ said Jack Peckham, sitting sideways to the table. ‘Tessa mentioned that you were in the oil business. Can you fill me in on Riyadh? I have to go there in a few weeks.’

  It was then that Harriet made a sign to Tessa to join her in the Ladies’; it seemed to her urgent to find out more about this strange alliance which had previously seemed to require from her nothing but sympathy.

  ‘He is very handsome,’ she said moderately, while combing her hair. In the mirror she noticed, with a feeling of instant rejection, the white crêpe de Chine shirt, the black skirt, and the pearl stud earrings which she usually wore on such occasions. She felt she never wanted to see them again.

  ‘I hope I’m going to be able to manage this,’ said Tessa. ‘I usually feel sick in the evenings.’

  ‘I’m afraid Freddie is already a little put out,’ Harriet observed. ‘This is not going to be easy. Yes,’ she added, after a moment in which both scrupulously washed their hands, ‘he is marvellous to look at. He will break your heart, you know.’

  ‘He already has. He was bound to. I adore him. I hate him too.’

  Both silently acknowledged the rightness of this last remark. Yes, thought Harriet, as they turned to go, you hate him because you will never master him. He will leave you and you will wait for him, and maybe he will come back but too late, and you will not look as he remembered you in the brief moments when he ever thought about you. I should be the same. No, I should be even more abject; I should be contemptible. I should wait for ever, so that my life would resemble a long widowhood, and I should still be proud to have captured—for however fleeting a moment, a second, even—such a man’s attention.

  They went back to the crowded restaurant to find Freddie discoursing quite amiably to Jack Peckham, who was taking notes. So his time was not entirely wasted, thought Harriet meekly. Throughout the meal he continued to sit sideways to the table, as if he had no intention of staying. He ate decisively, economically, staring at his plate for a few seconds before making a strategic incision, then laying aside his knife as if of no further use to him. She studied him covertly, under her eyelashes. Although large he was very graceful. He was, she decided, the villainous hero of romantic fiction, the cruel lover who breaks hearts and thrills women, so that they look with disdain on the humbler, more available variety of men for ever after. Thus did the virtuous Jane Eyre spurn St John Rivers, who would have made her a much better husband than Mr Rochester. Mr Rochester, she thought, has a lot to answer for, both in the book and in real life, where his legend lingers on. Only when he was blind and impotent did Charlotte Brontë let Jane have her way with him, and what kind of a victory was that? To master such a man demands extraordinary resources, of which undoubtedly the most effective is indifference. Jack Peckham had the unforgivably memorable looks which provoke a certain respect, from men as well as from women. Tall, big-boned, and of a reddish fairness, he lowered his head as if bored with admiring glances, and was taciturn, even rude, for the same reason. His extraordinary looks and his abrupt manners gave no clue to his character, but then his character would always be of less interest than his appearance, she thought, and so thinking, had no feeling of strangeness but rather one of familiarity.

  Of course, he was not made for a conventional marriage, particularly of the kind which Tessa envisaged: her jokey coyness must make him grit his teeth with fury. He would have to be greatly diminished, like Mr Rochester, to allow a woman like Tessa any access, and then no doubt a woman like Tessa would ignore him, for conventional women like Tessa also had their cruelties. As it was, his very refusal, his obvious reluctance, had conferred on Tessa a certain depth, even a foreshadowing of tragedy, which did not become her. The very incongruity of Tessa’s passion and her well-brought-up obstinacy made Harriet uncomfortable. She was aware of tension, a tension which was in some perverse fashion attractive. Pity would come later, for pity was what she was supposed to feel, the solidarity of women in such a predicament. But the time at her disposal was too precious. For this hour it was almost permitted—and at the same time it was even a necessity—to contemplate Jack.

  Feeling a pulse beginning to beat in her throat she laid down her fork, and took a sip of wine. She found herself looking at his hands. Instinctively he raised his head; his gaze was quite dispassionate. It was then that she put up her hand to her face.

  He is only the same as other men, she admonished herself, remembering her husband in the dark and his clumsy hands. Why should it be different? Yet she noted that her thoughts had immediately turned to the act itself, as if any other context were irrelevant—she, who out of fastidiousness, out of shame, even, would never allow herself to speculate on anyone else’s sexual activities, and who could hardly bear to think about her own. But this was a man with whom she would never want to walk or talk, or pass agreeable but unconsidered time: she would want to lead him straight away to a bed, to a secret room, and the odd thing was that in her imagining it was she who led the way, while he, prodigious though he might be, merely followed her. It took no further imagination to see them naked, as if all this were pre-ordained, as if her present life were a superimposition of no importance, which an expert hand had cleanly removed.

  While thinking these thoughts she felt tal
ler, stronger, more armoured against the world than she had ever felt before. She looked at her husband perplexedly, as if he were someone she barely remembered, saw his speckled hand pour the last of the wine into Jack’s glass. He was captivated too, she saw: his initial defensiveness had already dissolved into a kind of admiration, as if the stranger’s grace and force, his careless presence, his indifference, even, exacted their own tribute. So must Freddie have been at school, thought Harriet, clumsy even then, and flattered by the mere existence of beauty. He is such a decent man, she told herself, and he must never know what I feel at this moment, what I felt when Jack Peckham looked up and caught my eye, what I have been feeling ever since he came into the room. She saw Tessa trying to suppress an ominous hiccough, laid her hand on Freddie’s arm, and said, ‘Dear, it’s getting late. Shall we make a move?’ and, turning to the others, said, ‘We are so looking forward to the wedding.’ (Indeed, she was anxious to see what Jack Peckham would look like in a formal suit. She was excited by the idea of his being momentarily subdued.) ‘Tessa, shall I come over to the flat tomorrow and give you a hand?’ She did not much care that her wishes and her remarks were dominating the proceedings. She did not at that moment feel guilty that she had eclipsed her friend, who admittedly was not looking her best, nor was she much impressed that their roles seemed to be reversed. Childhood now seemed far off, irrelevant, discarded. Now, for the first time, she had passed into a different phase of being.

  Later that night cold realization came to her and she felt terrible. Better that she should remain in lifelong ignorance than yield to insights so destructive of her real life, her real husband, who now seemed to her to be definitely altered by her recent perceptions. He was not young for his age: he would get older, and his hands would get clumsier. And she would never know anything other than this. For her imaginings were not to be borne, not to be tolerated, as if they were dangerous. And they were, exceedingly dangerous; they were a danger to order. She saw that the power of Jack Peckham was to spread this grand disorder into other lives, not seeing, or not caring, that although disorder was his natural climate it might not be so for those with whom he came into contact. Already Tessa was damaged by it, had, like any girl victim in a melodrama, succumbed, and was diminished, never again to enjoy freedom. She had looked frail, mournful, behind that façade of defiant high spirits which so annoyed Freddie. Part of Harriet’s anguish originated in the knowledge that she must henceforth support Tessa, and Tessa’s interests, and that Tessa’s interests were not those of Jack Peckham, were in fact diametrically opposed to them. Here was her chance to be the friend she had always longed to be, loyal and good and faithful unto death, like those valiant friendships she had read about in her fairy books. An immense sense of the fragility of human destiny enveloped her. It occurred to her briefly that she might choose another path. In her mind she chose it, then, blushing, put it away from her for ever.