A Closed Eye

by Anita Brookner

  There was no more boredom, no more loneliness. Unsuspected energies constantly renewed themselves; self-pity was a thing of the past. And sometimes there were two children to look after, for Tessa took advantage of the garden in Wellington Square to leave poor Lizzie Peckham for the afternoon, or for the day, or occasionally for the night. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she would say. ‘Only it’s Dad’s retirement party.’ Wish it were mine, thought Freddie, who was now rather more tired than he had bargained for. Dawn was not best pleased, although it was really no trouble to cook two fillets of plaice instead of one, to put two sets of clothes into the washing machine. ‘That kid’s not properly fed,’ she might remark to Harriet. ‘She doesn’t know how to eat.’ ‘I think her mother still gives her baby food,’ Harriet would say. ‘That’s why she has no appetite. The food is unfamiliar to her. Come on, Lizzie, another little mouthful.’ Imogen would look on amazed, then would start to eat the strawberries put on a plate for Lizzie. ‘Immy!’ she would protest. ‘Those are Lizzie’s strawberries. You’ve had yours.’ Imogen laughed.

  Curiously, the two children did not get on. Lizzie was a nervous child, pale, and sometimes, when she could raise the energy, fierce. She would sit in a corner of the room, nursing the toy she had brought with her, visibly anxious that it might be taken away from her, longing for her mother to come and end her ordeal. For that mother she had a love and a hunger that were not entirely reciprocated. Tessa viewed her daughter with a certain perceptible disappointment. Where was Jack’s beauty, where were her own high colour, her sense of what was due to her? She grew bored with the tasks required of her, decided that she must go back to work, left Lizzie at Wellington Square for a whole day while she had her hair done, and, while she was about it, treated herself to a manicure and a pedicure, and—why not?—something new to wear. For Jack might come home, unannounced, at any moment, though he showed no signs of doing so. ‘Somewhere in Israel,’ she replied to Harriet’s question, sitting in Harriet’s drawing-room, accepting a glass of sherry from Freddie, while Lizzie plucked fretfully at her short and unmaternal skirt. ‘But he’ll be back as soon as he can manage it.’ ‘He won’t, you know,’ Freddie remarked to Harriet, when they were preparing for bed that evening. ‘She really is a tiresome woman. And why can’t that child go to its grandparents?’ ‘You weren’t listening,’ said Harriet. ‘They’ve sold Cadogan Square and moved to the mews. Now that he’s retired they plan to spend most of the year at their place in France. Tessa will be entirely alone.’ ‘Why don’t you think Jack will come back?’ she asked, a little later. ‘Why should he?’ Freddie retorted. ‘He’s not my idea of a married man.’ He resented Jack’s freedom on behalf of married men like himself. ‘He’s never spent any time at home, if you can call it home. And neither of them seems particularly interested in the girl.’ For Lizzie was ‘the girl’ to him. He could not, perhaps would not, take to her. She was inferior in every respect to his own child, who was quite enough, sometimes too much for him. Lizzie Peckham was an annoyance, a distraction, with her woeful face and her grubby track suit. She did not seem to care for him, or indeed for anyone except her mother. She sat out her periods in Wellington Square as if they were a long exile. Harriet was sorry for her, but Immy came first.

  Imposing Lizzie on Freddie meant imposing Tessa as well, for Lizzie had to be collected at the end of a long and tiring day, when the child’s face was already wan with fatigue. And Tessa was not easily dispatched; Freddie fumed. It seemed to Harriet that her friend was endangered by various antagonisms; Dawn too rather disliked her, thought her a bad mother, and to Harriet’s amazement remarked that she thought Tessa frivolous. ‘Frivolous?’ echoed Harriet. ‘But in fact her life is rather hard. She never knows when her husband is coming home.’ (Or indeed whether he is coming home at all, she said to herself.) ‘And her parents are leaving London, going to live abroad—she will hardly ever see them. And Lizzie does rather cling to her. I think perhaps she’s a little unsettled,’ she said moderately. ‘She was talking about going back to work.’ ‘Lizzie might as well be a weekly boarder here,’ said Dawn, who liked the child. ‘And she’s not happy. Anyone can see she’s unhappy here. Women like that shouldn’t have children,’ she added virtuously, as the young sometimes will.

  Women like that? But Tessa was not like anything, thought Harriet, for whom Tessa had lost none of her prestige, indeed had rather gained a little more by virtue of having married Jack, and married him against his will. Tessa spoke of him only in the airiest terms, which particularly angered Freddie, although Harriet knew that it was all an act. But it was the kind of act which confers a certain glamour on a woman, a recklessness, a restlessness, even a depth denied to staid wives like herself. And Tessa responded to her strange condition of abandonment—if that was what it was—of ambiguity, certainly; she even played up to it, saw herself as an object of interest, of speculation. In her heart of hearts she knew that her marriage was threadbare, was inferior in quality even to Harriet’s own, knew that it was over, knew that the child was irrelevant, since it had not served its purpose of winning back the errant father. In the light of such terrible knowledge, Harriet saw, Tessa had decided to be airy, inconsequential, self-indulgent. She had the strange satisfaction of being publicly acknowledged as her husband’s wife, and with the solid conviction of her class was beginning to consider herself something of an asset, as if she and Jack had married on an equal footing, as if she had never confessed her unhappiness. She avoided the truth of her imperfect condition these days, berated herself smilingly for being depressed, or, more usually, ‘quite angry’. This anger of hers, always referred to with an air of complaisance, she thought an advantageous quality, heroic almost, something that did her credit. ‘I’m beginning to feel my anger,’ she might say to Harriet, who, in passing, was quite glad that Freddie was not at home to hear this. The anger was always referred to with the sort of smile a therapist might have worn, a steady, patient, professional smile. And there was pleasure in it, as well. The anger would rebuild Tessa’s self-esteem. And while it went about its essential work—a long task, for that self-esteem had never previously faltered—it received a certain amount of help in the form of new clothes, beauty treatments, and, tentatively at first, the attentions of other men.

  These days, after leaving Lizzie at Wellington Square, Tessa would take herself off to renew ‘contacts’, high-spirited women like herself, for whom she had worked energetically but for brief periods before she was married. Thus, for three months she had been an expensive florist; for six months had helped Pamela cook directors’ lunches; for a year had worked for Angie, the interior decorator. Angie was her most substantial contact, although nothing seemed to come of these meetings. Perhaps Tessa simply liked going into Angie’s overstuffed little shop (‘blowing in’, was how they both put it) and pretending to be working there without actually having to do any work. Perhaps she found it an ideal way to fill in the morning and see a few people, before embarking on the most important matter of the day, which was lunch, in a good restaurant, or a hotel dining-room, the sort of place where businessmen forgathered and where she might find just such a man on his own. Hotels were better for this, although she preferred the more fashionable kind of restaurant.

  She attracted attention because she looked purposeful, and also unafraid. She had regained her major asset, her lean long-legged figure, and was now well dressed, her hair groomed. Occasionally there was what she considered to be a permitted distraction in the afternoon. She was discreet, although it did not matter much to her whether she was discreet or not, but her partners preferred it. For herself, she rather hoped that Jack might get to hear of her conduct and become furiously possessive. This was the whole point of her manœuvres. It was difficult to tell whether she enjoyed them or not. Certainly the attention (and the champagne, which was obligatory on these occasions) keyed her up, brought colour to her cheeks, made her a little self-conscious, so that when she arrived at Wellington Square to pick up
Lizzie (whom she had entirely forgotten: thank God for Harriet) she would sometimes be quite self-absorbed, mock-ashamed, inclined to take long exaggerated breaths, raise her eyebrows, roll her eyes, as if to say, yes, I dare say this is scandalous behaviour, but you see I am acting out my anger. I am making my anger work for me. And anyway, Jack can hardly expect me to sit here like patience on a monument, can he? I have a pretty good idea what he’s up to. Israeli women can be quite attractive, I hear. Anyway, he’s not particular. In this way she set Jack up as an enemy, to suit her own purposes. As if in recognition of the hopelessness of the task (to make Jack come back and be a good husband and father and settle down and let the parents find him something suitable to do) she lavished more attention (and less thought) on her own concerns and turned up at Wellington Square looking merry, secretive, rakish, and longing for someone to ask her what on earth she had been up to.

  To Harriet this was all derisory, pitiful. More alive to symbols than Tessa ever could be, she saw symptoms of decadence in tiny incidents: the combing of the hair in the mirror in the hall, the removal of a long alien hair from the exaggerated shoulders of the new suit, the hasty brushing down of the skirt, as if she had just emerged from a maison de passe, thought Harriet, yet it cannot have been as sordid as that. It was difficult for her to conceal dismay, and also shame, shame not only on Tessa’s behalf but on her own, for in comparison she thought she must appear hopelessly suburban, retarded, almost. She knew that the reunions to which she had formerly so looked forward—Tessa, Pamela, Mary, and herself—were now compromised, for she would never be sought after as a co-conspirator in adventures of this sort, although the former Pamela Harkness might, while the former Mary Grant would have joined in enthusiastically. And of course Harriet saw dereliction where there was simply a certain verve, reasserting itself after a long period of aberration. Harriet suspected that at some point a letter had been received, giving grounds for divorce, and that Tessa had smilingly chosen to ignore it. Always that smile! Always that fiction that the marriage, although awkward, was particularly intriguing and fascinating. Always that slight air of pity for a friend who, while absolutely marvellous, simply didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain. But then look who she had married! A man old enough to be her father, and nothing in the way of charm to carry it off. Moneyed, but if that was all she had wanted … Yes, Dawn’s use of the word frivolous was probably justified, decided Harriet, to whom Tessa’s thoughts were perfectly visible.

  Dawn was of great value to Harriet, since she incarnated those bourgeois values which Tessa was currently putting to flight. Apparently the circles in which Dawn’s parents moved in Durban were particularly down on that sort of thing. And Dawn felt sorry for Harriet, whom she saw saddened by the knowledge of such behaviour. In any case Dawn was fed up with washing whichever of Lizzie’s two track suits she happened to have dirtied the previous day; it seemed simpler to keep the clean one in Immy’s cupboard, where it scarcely found room among the latter’s many toilettes. ‘At least she can go home looking clean,’ Dawn said to Harriet, who sadly acquiesced. Dawn was seriously thinking of moving on. ‘Don’t go,’ begged Harriet. ‘You know we love having you. And Immy is devoted to you.’ ‘I can’t stay here for ever,’ said Dawn crossly, but she put the kettle on, and added, ‘You ready for a cup, then?’

  In the meantime Immy grew, in beauty, in boldness, a boldness which her mother delighted to see, having none of her own. It did not occur to her that this quality should be checked, since its very existence seemed a certificate of viability, a passport to a successful future. It was Immy who brought a smile to Freddie’s harassed face; to be the father of a turbulent two-year-old at fifty-nine was otherwise no laughing matter. Immaculately presented in the clothes her grandmother sent her, the child apparently had a foreknowledge of all the social graces: how to receive, how to entertain. There was an interval in the evenings when, freshly bathed and dressed, she would greet her father with cries of ‘Daddy!’, and laugh. This laugh indicated pleasure, excitement, though her attention was quickly withdrawn if Freddie turned his face to Harriet. Lizzie, having made one attempt to join the celebrations and been repulsed—‘My Daddy!’—would look on, until Harriet, reminded of certain solitary days of her own, bought her a couple of picture books. These concerned the behaviour of an infant of indeterminate sex who put saucepans on its head and climbed into its parents’ bed. ‘What’s that naughty baby doing, Lizzie?’ Harriet would call, when she saw the child lapse into disappointment. The book would be opened; Lizzie would smile. Sometimes Imogen would snatch it away, and then Lizzie’s face would crumple. ‘She’s tired,’ Harriet would explain, taking Immy by the hand. ‘Dawn, perhaps Lizzie would like some milk,’ she would call over her shoulder as she mounted the stairs. ‘Daddy will come and see you when you are in bed,’ she would console. For this too was a moment savoured by all three of them. The child had certain innocently lewd gestures; she would pull up her nightgown, and watch her father’s face. Freddie, Harriet was amused to see, was even a little embarrassed. Lizzie, in all this, waited out her exile downstairs.

  ‘Have some compassion,’ she said to Freddie later, pushing back her hair, which had grown long. ‘She has no father to speak of.’ ‘And I suppose it’ll be you who takes her to school and collects her afterwards?’ He dropped the shoe he was taking off. ‘It’s no trouble, now that I’ve got the car.’ ‘Something ought to be done about that girl’s eyes,’ he also said. ‘I believe they give them exercises,’ she replied. ‘But she’s too young to understand them. It’ll all straighten out when she’s older.’ She placed great faith in Lizzie’s growing older, as if childhood were wasted on her, as indeed it seemed to be. Only the books, reverently placed on a shelf in Immy’s room, engaged her attention, the books and her mother. Immy tried to throw the books away, but Dawn found them and put them back again. Harriet hoped that school would make them better friends and teach them both the virtues of citizenship (or interaction, as the head teacher had informed her such a condition was now called). Occasionally she perceived both children as entirely unmanageable, as if their characters were formed, their destinies plain, their successes or their failures adumbrated, waiting to be developed. She was aware of Immy’s hilarity, of Lizzie’s bleakness, felt time rushing away from her as they seemed to grow up, grow older, as if there were nothing more to discover, as if all she could do would be to follow humbly in their wake. She even thought she might be too tired to contain, eventually, Immy’s energy, for the child was merciless, issuing commands and demands like the courtesan she seemed destined to become. And Lizzie, always lagging behind, disadvantaged.

  What cruelty had placed two such disparate children in such close proximity? At last Harriet began to think like Freddie: that Tessa should occupy herself with her own daughter more than she evidently desired to do. But this, she could also see, was a hopeless idea, for Tessa consistently failed to interest herself in Lizzie, having written her off as a mistake, someone who would fail to win Jack’s affection or approval, someone so lacking in prestige, in natural charm, that Jack, if he ever reviewed the situation, would decide that it was Tessa who was defective in presenting him with such a daughter. Therefore Lizzie was perceived as disgraced, although this perception was never overt. Tessa herself, if she allowed herself to feel anything but tolerance, would have felt pity, but pity was something she strove to ignore. In any event, nothing in her make-up provided the right conditions for pity to be registered. If she ever felt the onset of a certain impatient ache—for the child’s poor appearance, her limp hair, her clumsy movements, her wandering right eye—she knew that it was time to take herself out again. ‘I mustn’t let myself get depressed,’ she thought. ‘I need distraction,’ she told Harriet. ‘I don’t see enough people. It’s all right for you—you’ve got Dawn. And Freddie, of course.’ Freddie she despised. Harriet, noting the sheerness of the dark stockings on the long legs, and the slight exaggeration of the arched brows, replied, ‘Oh,
that’s all right. You go. I’ve got to be here with Immy, anyway. Only do try to get back earlier. Lizzie gets so tired, and it’s bad for her seeing Immy being put to bed. The sooner she learns to read the better. She loves her little books.’ ‘Yes, it was good of you to buy them. Well, I’m on my way. Goodbye, poppet.’ Harriet, as always, turned aside, so that she could not see Lizzie’s blank expression.

  On their first day at school Immy wore a pink dress, with a pink sweater knotted loosely around her neck, and Lizzie one of her track suits. Immy at once acquired a boyfriend, a surly child called Vincent. Lizzie, who was bewildered, was allowed to hold the teacher’s hand. At the end of the first day both decided that they might give it another try. Harriet, waiting tensely for their reappearance, was relieved to see them emerge unscathed. In the car they were vociferous, vainglorious; even Lizzie had something to tell her. She realized that it was going to be all right, and then understood how very tired she was.

  ‘Angie’s thinking of taking me on again,’ said Tessa, in the hall. These days she kept a small hairbrush in her bag. She smelt of cigarettes, although she did not smoke. ‘Part-time, of course. I told her I couldn’t manage full-time, now that I’ve got Lizzie.’ She brushed her hair in the hall mirror, replaced the black velvet hair band. ‘Do you see how dark I’m getting?’ she asked. ‘And I used to be a true blonde.’ ‘You’re still a blonde,’ said Harriet. ‘But you look a bit thinner. Do you feed yourselves properly?’ ‘Oh, yes. We don’t have much in the evenings because we’re not hungry—anyway, I don’t believe in too much food. Isn’t it a bore, having to stay at home in the evenings? I can’t wait for Lizzie to be a bit older. She’ll go away to school, of course. St Mary’s. She’ll love it. Anyway, I told Angie I’d give it a try. Ten to four, and it’s quite near. So if I could drop Lizzie off here first thing, before I go to work …? Marvellous. That way I needn’t worry so much. I’ll know she’s all right.’