Making Things Better

by Anita Brookner

  In the afternoon the garden filled up with a different cast. Two girls, on an opposite seat, had the absorbed excited expressions of women discussing men. Their preoccupation drove him back to his own. Josie had been the reality principle, Fanny the pleasure principle. Freud again. Pity that young doctor had paid him so little respect, but then there had been no ideological background to his work. That was what had been missing from that consultation, a lack of context. Then he told himself that he was being ridiculous: a busy London doctor had no time for discussion, and if it were to have been a discussion what had he, Herz, to contribute? Better to discuss the pressures, the lack of resources, that seemed to be the matter of most complaints, or so one heard. Doctors were always being interviewed on the evening news about their circumstances, warning of crises, of emergencies. It seemed impossible to ignore these matters; one was asked to sympathize with doctors rather than with patients. This appeal for public sympathy annoyed Herz, who was, as ever, searching for another kind of sympathy, one less indignant than intuitive. He sighed. A man at the other end of the bench (one guarded one’s space) looked up and asked, ‘All right, are you?’ ‘Oh, perfectly fine,’ said Herz, charmed. ‘And don’t worry. I won’t interrupt your reading.’

  The man—rather striking, in a dark blue shirt and cream trousers—laid aside his copy of the Telegraph, and said, ‘I’ve actually read all I want to read. In any event the sun’s too strong. Better to make the most of it, I suppose; they forecast rain.’

  ‘Oh, surely not. It’s been a perfect day. I hadn’t noticed this little garden before.’

  ‘These public gardens are a blessing to those of us who live in flats.’

  ‘Quite. I shall probably find my way here again.’

  ‘Could do worse. The morning’s the best time. But there are always things to do in the morning.’

  ‘I have been here all day,’ Herz said wonderingly.

  ‘You had the best of it, then. If you don’t mind I’ll finish this before I go home.’ He took up the paper again, after which Herz sat stiffly, anxious not to impose.

  He wished he had brought a book with him; he would do so if he came again. But his thoughts had been too absorbing and too unsatisfactory to be altered by another’s perceptions. He reminded himself that Thomas Mann’s short stories awaited him at home: old-fashioned stuff but that was what he preferred these days. And he had to get to the chemist with his prescription. With a sigh he prepared to leave, though he was not anxious to be on his own again. The man with the newspaper looked up and nodded. ‘Nice to have met you,’ said Herz, which was, he thought, the appropriate formula for leave-taking. ‘Have a pleasant evening.’

  ‘And you,’ said the man, surprised. No further rendezvous was implied.

  Slowly, reluctantly, he made his way home. The red-brick façades of Chiltern Street glowed in the last of the sun. Herz was tired now, though he had done nothing all day. He longed to postpone thoughts of pills and other purchases, and to settle down for a quiet half-hour with Thomas Mann. In the flat he made tea, found some biscuits, aware that if he were to be responsible for himself he would have to eat more. The ‘occurrence’, as he thought of it, now imposed itself once more, but worse than the feeling of illness was the baleful memory of being stranded in the street, of the almost accidental arrival of the taxi, and the uneasy thought that without it he might not have been able to get home. This unfortunately coincided with the Thomas Mann story he had most recently read, in which a poor lunatic makes his unsteady way to the churchyard to visit his graves and in so doing excites the mirth of passers-by, who witness his eventual collapse and call an ambulance. The story ends inconclusively, although the reader knows that the man’s fate is sealed.

  It was very sad, and more than sad, disturbing, yet it was only a few pages long. In fact all the stories were sad or disturbing, and it was hard to discern the art behind them. Only their authority prevailed. It would not be wise to read further on this particular evening, lest the dread that came off the page communicated itself too vividly. Herz realized that he was in a vulnerable state, tried to revive the anger he had felt in the doctor’s surgery, and failed to do so. He knew that the consultation had been abortive; worse, it had hurt his pride. No real harm had been done, but he knew he would not go back. Whatever ensued, he would have to manage himself. It was this thought that lay behind all the others.

  He finished his tea, and with an air of resolution took his prescription to the chemist. ‘Are these any good?’ he asked, as the packets were handed over.

  ‘Well, I take them myself. A lot of people do.’

  This was all the reassurance he needed. If he was at one with others no harm could come to him. Walking home again, and limping slightly with tiredness, he longed for bed. But to go to bed was to succumb. Moreover he was no longer sustained by his dreams, which had a tendency to turn menacing. The past once more made its way into his consciousness, and all the remembered faces—dead or absent, it made no difference—came back to haunt him. They had vanished into their own concerns, thought no more about him, abandoned him to a lonely end. Still he longed for a return of love, for it seemed to him that he had remained faithful. From beginning to end he had been the lover, yet love had let him down. He dreaded coming face-to-face with that thought in the watches of a sleepless night.

  Resolutely he turned on the television, watched a gardening programme, a cookery programme, a serial about policemen, and one about firemen. The exercise had done its work; he was now back in the present. He switched off with relief, took a long bath, subsided thankfully into bed. Sleep would come, sooner or later, and whatever information it brought would be considered rationally, without self-pity, and not until light had dawned on an ordinary and ordered day.

  8

  Herz had dreams of leaving. Not at night, in the safety of his bed, when there was no possibility of going anywhere, but on his walks, in the morning, and again in the evening, when he was newly aware of the decline of summer into autumn. The year had changed decisively; there was no longer any possibility of sitting in the public garden. This garden, he saw, had done duty for wider horizons, more substantial landscapes, such as he remembered from his travels, however these now appeared to him in retrospect. Frosts in the morning and a growing early twilight brought into focus the perspective of lightless winter days, when he would be forced to endure his own company for hours on end. He told himself that nothing had changed, that he still had the freedom to come and go as he pleased, or alternatively that he need make no changes. The flat oppressed him when he thought of the time he would have to spend in it, yet when he was out of doors, and newly aware of the alterations in the light, and particularly in the evenings, when he heard passers-by hurrying home, he felt a thrill of anguish as he contemplated his own arrangements, the so careful management of his time, the long day, the even longer and by now habitually sleepless night. Yet the evenings were beautiful. Blue vistas of streets seemed to usher in the night to come with a poetic intensity which he was forced to admire, but in an abstract fashion, as if the curtain were to rise on a drama of classical implications from which, once again, he was excluded, not only by his shadowy presence but by a lack of sympathy, going through the motions simply by virtue of obeying impulses the origin of which was almost forgotten.

  He looked at the windows of the travel agency and saw advertisements for great journeys to the other side of the world. There, in those so misleading posters, he saw young people drinking on beaches or trekking with rucksacks in difficult terrain. Their youth was an essential part of the attraction, yet he could see, or was informed, that older people made the same journeys, or a modified version of those journeys, spending their money after a lifetime of careful thrift, and enjoying a confidence they thought they had lost. All these holiday adventurers were in pairs, even the grey-haired couples who seemed to offer their own challenge to Herz, as he lingered, trying to penetrate their silent worlds. Such undertakings were not for him, and ne
ver had been; he had followed a solitary path, aware of, but not part of, the families he had passed and to whom he was attracted. Not that he had ever actively sought their company. They had seemed to him like objects in a museum, exhibits that he might contemplate, seeking an explanation for the enigma of the past, and the greater enigma of the present. He knew that he had managed his life as best he could, that he had been a hard worker, a faithful son, a husband no worse than any other, yet that his life had failed to yield the ultimate satisfaction, so that he advanced into age with a feeling that he had it all to do again, that he was still an uncertain youth, seeking a way into experiences that would confer fullness. Then he could almost welcome closure, knowing that he had attempted all that there was to attempt, and need feel no regret for the paths he had not followed.

  His desire now was not for the banal charm of distant places but for escape from the thoughts he knew too well. He saw himself in the sun, in some version of the public garden in which he had passed his summer afternoons. He even foresaw the possibility of staying away indefinitely, for he knew that he would not be missed. From time to time he might send a postcard to Bernard Simmonds, to Josie, to Mrs Beddington in the shop—‘Enjoying the break’—to put them off the scent, while all the time planning his disappearance from the scene. At this thought, hidden behind all the others, he took fright: surely this was not his real intention? Surely it was possible to leave home in a less adventurous sense, not from life as he knew it, but from circumstances which he now recognized as irksome? There was, after all, a simple pleasure to be derived from sitting in the sun, from reading the local paper, from drinking a glass of wine, and to such pleasures he was surely entitled. His idleness no longer bothered him, but he did not enjoy it as much as he had thought he would. And as the days grew colder, and the sun sent only a fugitive gleam through increasing cloud, he told himself that he was not ready for the greater eclipse of winter, that he needed some purely animal warmth to prepare him for the long months ahead.

  Some of this he said, in suitably disguised terms, to Ted Bishop, his cleaner, on loan once a week from Mrs Beddington, as they sat drinking their tea. Ted Bishop did little cleaning, but his offer to help out had been irresistible; in any event Herz found him companionable and did not mind the smell of cigarettes that engulfed the flat after his departure. Sometimes he brought his two-year-old grandson with him, but the child soon got bored, which meant an early departure for both of them. Herz knew that he was too tentative an employer to lay down terms of engagement, knew that Ted Bishop saw him as essentially harmless, not able to object to the child stamping delightedly on the hardwood floor, half-suspecting Herz’s desire to enfold the child, to calm him, and watching him with a lazy eye that missed nothing. On this particular morning, after a bad night, Herz welcomed Ted Bishop as a human presence, while knowing that in doing so he blurred the distance between them, together with their separate status, in a way that was not entirely appropriate, and not even welcomed by either. In Berlin servants had known their place: the parlourmaid, the daily cleaner, the caretaker. Even in Hilltop Road there had been an amiable woman who came in three times a week and stayed largely out of sight. He did not flatter himself that Ted Bishop would be likely to conform to this pattern, nor did Ted acknowledge the slightest loyalty, although he was extremely well paid for the little he did. He had a variety of ailments which prevented a great deal of activity. This had two results: Herz could check his symptoms against those of Ted, and, more important, could derive some sort of encouragement from Ted’s arthritis (which he did not share), from Ted’s dyspepsia (from which he was also free), and from Ted’s breathlessness, demonstrated to dramatic effect when asked to clean the windows. To Ted, and to Ted alone, he confessed his own occasional breathlessness, knowing that this was a dangerous route to take, but tempted to abandon high principles and sink into a miasma of head-shaking ruefulness which would almost certainly afford them both some degree of comfort.

  ‘You enjoyed your holiday, Ted? Corsica, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Never again,’ was the reply. ‘I went for my daughter’s sake, as I told you. I looked after the boy. I didn’t mind that so much. It’s hard for her, being on her own; she’s still young enough to want to enjoy herself. But it was a bit much in the evenings, when she wanted to go out. And the food didn’t agree with me. I was glad to get home, know what I was eating, have a read of my paper, go down the pub. To tell you the truth I didn’t feel so good when I was out there. I didn’t tell my daughter, and the boy enjoyed himself, but she’ll have to find someone else to take care of him if she wants to go away next year, single mother or no single mother.’

  ‘Only I was thinking of going away myself.’

  ‘It’s not that I can’t see her point of view. But I’ve got myself to think about, haven’t I? I’m not a well man, and I’ve got responsibilities, know what I mean? She’s got a good job at the hairdresser’s, but she doesn’t earn all that much. And she likes to go out in the evening, leaving the boy with me. So there wasn’t much point going all that way to do the same thing, was there? But she needed the break, I could see that. Did you say you were going away?’

  ‘Well, I thought of it.’

  ‘You sure you’re doing the right thing?’ He patted his chest. ‘You want to be careful. I don’t know that it’s wise, travelling at your age. There was a man on the plane coming back, had some sort of an attack. They gave him oxygen. About your age, he was. Then there’s the food, always causes a bit of an upset. You’re well placed here, aren’t you? Have a bit of a rest when you feel like it, do your bit of shopping. If I were in your shoes I’d be inclined to stay put. Better the devil you know.’

  In that instant Herz decided to go to Paris.

  This decision, seemingly random, remained firmly lodged in his consciousness. It became more elaborate as he moved through his uneventful day, a day of cloudy skies with which he felt a sudden overwhelming impatience. On his walk to the supermarket it became more pronounced, more focused. He was tempted by the idea of a further exile, since that was to be his lot. He would go to Paris and seek out the small hotel where, years ago, he had sown a few wild oats. Paris, initially, had been a place that was out of range of his family’s constraints, his mother’s vigilance. His brief holidays had encountered no serious opposition at home, no encouragement either, but once there he and his companions of the moment had enjoyed a genuine freedom. This he remembered as he picked out his small loaf, his packet of ham, his cheese. There was no need for extensive preparation. He would take his raincoat and an overnight bag, and join the train like any other innocent passenger. Once in Paris he would make for the small hotel where he liked to think he would be greeted with a smile of recognition. Mme Roux: that was the name of the owner. From her he had received the sort of kindness that only strangers can bestow. There was no need for him to explain himself to her: she had seemed to look with favour on his youth and on that of his companions. Of the latter he remembered very little: they were simply co-signatories to a short truce in the eternal conflict of everyday circumstances. They too had been kind, offering no reproaches, no recriminations, demanding nothing that he was not disposed to provide. A sort of sophistication had been observed, as between equal partners who knew the limits of the contract. Only when he reached home had his euphoria faded, but that had more to do with life at home than with the fact that the enjoyment was over.

  Something of the same feeling pursued him through this particular day. Diminishing expectations set in once again. He could hardly blame family circumstances on this occasion, for there was no longer any family to receive him, to pointedly ignore his brief absence, to emphasize his father’s fatigue as once again they assembled for an evening meal that was far from any kind of celebration. Back in Chiltern Street with his small purchases he revised his plans. He would initially go to Paris for the day, on a sort of reconnaissance; he would visit his old hotel and enquire about monthly rates. He would test the atmosphere, s
ee if he felt welcome. It would be an experiment, by which he need not feel bound. In the course of the day the vision faded, as other preoccupations intervened. It would soon be winter; what would he do with himself all day, far from the comfort of his flat? Ted Bishop’s warnings sounded once more in his head. Accidents could not be ruled out. Yet he persisted in envisaging some sort of freedom from constraints which were no less real than they had been in the past. It was not memory that constrained him; old habits of mind were still annoyingly intact. He almost wished that there was a family to which he might return, for as he knew from past experience, and also from inner conviction, return would be the hardest part of the entire endeavour. Would it therefore not be wiser to eliminate the idea of return altogether?

  On the morning of his departure he woke from an unusually heavy sleep, wishing only not to move. It was in a spirit of absentminded determination that he left the flat and made his way to Waterloo. The same protective indifference saw him onto the train, provided him with a newspaper and coffee, reminded him that he could do as much or as little as he desired. Mild English countryside glided past the window, just such mildness as had greeted his family all those years ago, and had made them if not exactly welcome, if not, ever, at home, at least unchallenged, unexamined. He had grown to value English incuriosity, which perhaps—native colouring—accounted for the indifference he now felt.