Making Things Better

by Anita Brookner

  Walking by the lake in the very early morning of the following day he reflected that this marked the difference between them, his own assiduity meeting her own impassive calm, and saw that this quality was directed not at himself alone but at men in general. He saw that she would never quite understand a man’s yearning, or even his physical impulses, that she would be happier in female company, and most of all in the company of her mother. The transformation of the spirited girl at the party into this dignified and untroubled woman was not altogether surprising: she had never understood that others could be moved by their feelings, had mistaken her own caprices for sentiments, had never broken out of the chrysalis of her girlhood, and had remained monstrously unfamiliar with adult emotions, at home only with those that suited her purpose. That her purpose had been to be looked after in advantageous circumstances had no doubt been the reason for her marriage. Practical considerations would have been uppermost in both women: Mellerio had promised an easy way of life and would respect their closeness. Widowhood, however, to judge from their expressions, suited both Fanny and her mother much better. Their attachment to the hotel, which seemed so much their natural setting, was in fact an expression of true feeling: this was their due. Widowhood was Fanny’s version of honourable retirement. What impression could he have made, with the dust of Edgware Road still figuratively clinging to his heels? How could he imagine this delicate creature consenting to remove herself from this setting? His own humility, his consciousness of the enormity of what he was asking, had done something to prepare him for her refusal, but he was nevertheless chilled by her negligent way of dismissing him. She had kept her superior manners; her smooth mouth concealed a stinging tongue. Thus had she ruled, through a mixture of detachment and an ability to defend herself which would confound those in search of deeper feelings, even when deeper feelings were appropriate. She might annoy a man but she would also baffle him. What did she want, that man might ask. Simply to be left alone would have been the answer, had she been minded to give one.

  Thus partly exonerated, Herz had watched the sun rise over the lake, had at length castigated himself for a fool, then turned back to the hotel to collect his overnight bag before taking a taxi to the station. What compounded his feeling of helplessness was the fact that he had not been able to pay for the dinner. His instinct was always to do so, but they had waved away his attempts, as if he were still the poor relation they had always considered him to be. That this had not been exactly the case in Berlin was in fact true enough of him in London; he provided for his diminished family but this alone condemned him: he was obliged to earn his living, while Fanny and her mother were cushioned by Mellerio’s will and need never work or think in terms of working. So perfectly did Fanny fit the profile of a kept woman that he supposed that this might add to her appeal for a man. He would be purchasing the genuine article, albeit a stereotype. Maybe the genuine article was indistinguishable from a stereotype, a stereotype rather than an archetype, such as would appeal to the romantic Herz supposed he had been. He had longed to encompass the sheer otherness of Fanny, and she, with a lifted eyebrow, had once again condemned his expectations. Peaceful Nyon, with its unhurried strolling population, served as an ironic backdrop to his recognition of defeat. What had been an incompatibility at that children’s party was no less an incompatibility in these new changed circumstances. And yet the sense of loss had never entirely disappeared.

  In stark contrast to the humiliation of the experience, Nyon was mild, tentative, the sky a compromise between grey and blue, the old men playing chess in the café near the station as grave as senators. He could understand the appeal of the place for Fanny and her mother: it was an oubliette into which the cares of the world vanished. Their routine would be soporific, reassuring. Even he was seduced by the quiet rhythm of the place, the very sparseness of the streets, the unhurried pace of the few passers-by abroad at this early hour, the stone doorways leading to dark interiors, the scarlet of a geranium in a window box prudently restrained by an iron grille . . . By contrast the London to which he was returning was coarsened by work, by the harsh effort of earning money, by the absence of just those features that made Nyon seem benign, if a little unreal. He imagined a tranquil way of life such as that enjoyed by Fanny and her mother: the leisurely dressing, the adornment, the preparations made for a day of inactivity, in which the most daring excursion would be to the local pâtisserie for coffee and cake. Both were plumper, as they could not fail to be in this protected environment. The added weight had made them both appear voluptuous, yet their conversation, what he had heard of it, had been unremittingly practical, a sharp reminder to the waiter that their usual bottle of wine was missing, a comparison of the prices charged by two or more hairdressers . . . Few remarks had been addressed to him, for which he had been grateful, aware of how awkward his presence must be in this dining-room, through the large plate-glass windows of which he could just see the lake promenade, and beyond that, tideless waters stretching to a smudged horizon. The ladies had eaten delicately, but with appetite. He had thought of his mother and her valiant pretensions, of his father, struggling back to consciousness after one of his characteristically obliterating naps, of his brother, a failure who had found failure to be his proper element. Lastly he thought of himself and all his misplaced efforts, his short-lived marriage and the blame that had accrued from it. He longed to jettison the lot and simply walk out of the hotel into an unknown landscape, an unknown future. In that so unattainable future he would not be accompanied. Even in fantasy he could not see Fanny clinging to his arm. Fanny was married to her mother, who acted as her agent, her manager. If Fanny were to marry again it would be to someone who would make her mother part of the bargain. In this evolutionary struggle he could barely qualify.

  He smoothed out the pages of the letter with some reluctance, so distinct was the memory of what had been less than a forty-eight-hour absence from work. ‘My dear Julius,’ he read. ‘No doubt you will be surprised to hear from me across this distance of space and time. I found your address in a letter from your mother to mine; it was tucked between pages 123 and 124 of Buddenbrooks which Mother was reading before she died. I have been unable to read the book since that awful day, but I recently took it down when I asked Doris, my maid, to dust the shelves. The letter fell out, and it was a great relief to know how to contact you, for I am in need of friends, and I remember how faithfully you used to visit our house in Dahlem all those years ago. When I say I am in need of friends you will understand that life has not been kind to me. I have lost two husbands, but I confess that the greatest loss has been Mother, who lived with us until her death. We had never been apart from each other and I miss her dreadfully. Since her death everything has gone wrong. I am sure that if she were still here she would know what I should do. You and I are now the only members of our family: I say this although I do not know whether this letter will find you, or indeed whether you are still alive. We are now very old and only one thing can happen to people of our age. It seems particularly hard that I should be subjected to added misfortune at this stage of my life, and I write to ask you whether you can advise me.

  ‘Let me explain. I met my second husband, Alois, in Nyon, where he was taking a holiday. He and Mother got talking, and it transpired that he was from Bonn, where he had a small printing works. We had dinner together, the three of us, and I found him agreeable. Mother thought it a good match, since he appeared to be a man of property, and we married shortly afterwards. I have to say that he was very smitten with me, and, as I say, I found him agreeable. At first all went well; we had a beautiful house in Poppelsdorf, a suburb of Bonn, and Alois’s sister, Margot, was very welcoming and attentive. The surroundings were pleasant and there were servants who looked after everything, so that it was quite easy to adjust after life in the hotel. Unfortunately Alois was not a well man; he suffered from asthma and various other complaints, and although I tried to cheer him up, and, indeed, bolster him up, he remained s
omething of an invalid. Margot was a frequent visitor, too frequent I sometimes thought, and we did not always agree. I think she was jealous of me; she was a widow, not particularly attractive, and very possessive towards her brother. In time Alois’s health deteriorated, and with it his business. To cut a long story short we were obliged to sell the house and invest the proceeds in his company. Worse, we had to move to a flat in Bonn, which I found intolerable. The inevitable happened, or it may not have been inevitable in other hands: Alois went bankrupt. Fortunately he had put what remained of his assets in my hands, but the shock more or less killed him. He lingered on for a year, getting more and more depressed, and died quite suddenly, not of his assorted ailments, but of a heart attack.

  ‘My sister-in-law blamed me for this, although I had looked after him to the best of my ability. Mother was afraid I was taxing my own health, and urged me to think of myself. But in fact this was impossible, as she was causing me grave concern. I will not linger over this for it is too painful. She died of cancer of the stomach, since when I have been truly alone.

  ‘But worse was to follow. Margot’s daughter, Sabine, put it into her mother’s head that as a direct family member she was more entitled to Alois’s money than I was. She is much sharper than her mother, and said that I had no right to inherit what was left of the business, that it should have reverted to the family; in brief she has gone to court in an effort to dispossess me. She has even claimed that I should not be in the flat, though my lawyer says that here she is on shaky ground. So I am living alone, and threatened by this unpleasant woman (whom I never liked). Margot, of course, takes her daughter’s side, and we rarely speak now. Fortunately Claude, my first husband, left me a small portion which I keep in the bank in Lausanne, but it is small, barely enough for the upkeep of this flat. And Bonn has become very expensive since so many government agencies have been set up here. I am told that I could get a good price for the flat, but where would I go?

  ‘I have always relied on men in my life, and on Mother, of course, so I am hoping that you will be able to advise me. I am not happy in Bonn, though it is a pleasant town, and I find myself thinking back to Berlin, where I had such a happy childhood. Do you remember our marvellous children’s parties, which Mother organized so beautifully? She of course is the greatest loss, for she always had my best interests at heart, and I am adrift without her advice. Naturally I shall do my best to win this case, but I feel uneasy with so much hostility around me, and whichever way it turns out I shall have made no friends. The man who bought the business has put it about that Alois could have managed his affairs in such a way as to have kept afloat; he seems to blame me for its decline. I must stress that Alois was perfectly agreeable to our arrangement. I have to say that after he was declared bankrupt he took no further interest in the proceedings. He said it was a matter of indifference to him that he was no longer an honourable citizen, as he put it. I thought this very selfish of him, but by that time his health was so poor that I did not have the heart to quarrel with him. And when Mother died I had no heart for anything.

  ‘I wonder if you could suggest how I should proceed. I have no head for business but I can certainly fight for my rights and my conscience is clear. My one fear is that this letter may not reach you, but I know that if you are still as I remember you, you will do your utmost to help me. Of course you may have moved away, but if you are still as hale and hearty, and as gallant, as I remember you in that brief visit to Nyon, I know that you will do your best to help. Perhaps you could manage a visit to Bonn; my lawyer would almost certainly take more notice of a man than of my humble self, although he assures me that he is doing his best. I somehow doubt this, but I have always been too sensitive. And I have no one else to turn to.

  ‘I also wonder how life has treated you since we last met. Mother remarked that you had become a handsome man, very different from the shy boy we knew in Berlin. She was greatly impressed by you, and thought you must have made her sister very proud. As you know the two did not get on, but they managed to exchange quite affectionate letters. It was hard for us to imagine you in London, and your mother gave the impression that there was more to tell than she actually told. In any event the letters petered out, and Mother kept none of them, apart from the one she used as a bookmark. Have you read Buddenbrooks? I must confess I never got beyond a few pages. Hilltop Road sounds very pretty.

  ‘I do hope you are in good health, and that you will be able to visit me in Bonn. We shall have much to talk about, and I look forward to hearing your news. Until we meet again, I remain your affectionate cousin, Fanny Schneider (Bauer).’

  Herz laid the letter on his desk with a low whistle of admiration. She would marry the lawyer, of course, if he were available. She might even have thoughts of an alliance between the two of them. He would spirit her out of her difficulties and they would live happily ever after, in Hilltop Road. He marvelled at her magnificent self-regard, or rather self-deception. But was that not the quality that characterized the entire family? Only Freddy had been free of it, but then Freddy had been free of everything. None, however, had attained the peak from which Fanny regarded the rest of the world. Clearly supreme selfishness was the recipe for a successful life. She had, as the letter confirmed, dropped out of history, had regarded the menacing years that preceded their exile in terms of pretty houses and children’s parties. He did not delude himself that she was interested in him as anything other than a further agent, deduced that her husband had not pulled his weight on her behalf, and had thereby proved himself a broken reed, even worse than that, a failure, a wastrel. She would not have shared his shame over the bankruptcy, would in fact have separated herself from it as successfully as she had divorced herself from the terror that had afflicted their kind, and of which no trace was evident in the complacency—the indignant complacency—so undisguised in her letter. He felt for her the same gratitude that he had briefly felt for Sophie Clay: she had put an end to his fantasies of love, something that she had not quite managed to do in Nyon. Like most fundamentally inert people she had immense power over others. He had loved her, or had thought that he had loved her, for many years, ignoring the facts of their long divorce (for it was nothing less) and maintaining a fiction that had satisfied his unassuaged longing. In all that time Fanny had not spared him a thought. She remained as she had always been, a woman who viewed others in terms of their potential service or support. He could not even feel anger, for he could not accuse her of calculation, only of entirely natural egotism. A lawyer would be better placed to settle her affairs. Or she would settle them herself, with some of the steeliness she must have inherited from her mother. He could see her issuing from the lawyer’s office, having stated her requirements, and proceeding to the hairdresser or the dressmaker or the Konditorei, her mind as unruffled by speculation or anxiety as it had been in the Berlin of her youth.

  Except that she was old. Her hair, if not white, would be the result of the hairdresser’s artifice; her body would require the ever more expert attentions of the dressmaker. And even if she were as free of reflection as he knew her to be she would not be able to ignore these signs, or even the knowledge possessed by people of their age that the most valuable part of their lives was over, irrecoverable. Maybe she would even regret her vanished youth, which she had always seen in terms of marketability. Desire would not trouble her, but only because it had never troubled her; she would be spared that rage, that hunger for a last encounter that could go so disastrously wrong, leaving a legacy of shame and disaffection. He owed her perhaps a meeting, since she seemed to want one, although entirely for her own purposes. But he would be in no hurry to suggest this. His own affairs must take precedence; his own health required some care, perhaps some investigation. Fanny’s mother’s demise ushered in melancholy reflections; maybe the same was true in Fanny’s case. In that sense she deserved his respect. Her care for her mother would have been heartfelt, unstinting, unlike his own dutiful attentions, during which his m
ind had often wandered, and his eyes sought the liberty that surely existed beyond the window of the hospital room.

  The thought of Fanny’s unequal struggle, not with her late husband’s family, for he had no doubt that she would win that particular contest, but with mortality, moved him in spite of himself. It seemed unfitting that she who had never known uncertainty should be confronted with the battle that no one can win. And she would be alone, having alienated the very people who might help her, the sister-in-law, the litigious niece. He was better placed than she was to face the depredations to come, if they were not already under way, as he suspected. In his humble admiration of her affectless unattainability he had always been the petitioner for her favours. His masochism had done the rest. To be a petitioner herself had altered the balance of their relationship in a way that he did not altogether appreciate. He would have preferred to think of her as she was in his memory, impermeable, even unsympathetic. To change places now implied a lack of symmetry which he found almost physically disturbing.

  The memory of their original connection, established when they were both young, surprised him once again with its force. And there was this quasi-mystical concept of family to be reckoned with. He had never been aware of overt family feeling, had indeed entertained thoughts of the most flagrant disloyalty, but had somehow managed to survive in a unit that was neither supportive nor companionable. He had certainly longed for a family of his own, even admired the families of others. Why else had he clung to those wisps of conversation that had reached him on his solitary perambulations? Those holidays, when he had sat in cafés, in restaurants, on solitary benches, hidden by a newspaper, were in fact full of signals that he alone could decipher. That husband, that father, that grandmother, that beautiful child, had all been sustenance for an imagination that hungered for fulfilment, even for surfeit. The irony was that with this powerful need he had managed to live his life in the strictest isolation. The family that he might have had resided in the murmurs that reached him from other lives. And now, near the end, as he was, that fantasy obstinately re-created those early days in Berlin, when he had sat waiting for a fifteen-year-old Fanny to rush carelessly into a sun-filled room, and, just as carelessly, to rush out again.