In the interval between their leaving for work and their much later return he was able to think of them almost objectively, noting the changes he had managed to capture on his inner eye in those moments of meeting and greeting: Sophie’s inward smile, Matthew’s bland alertness. Of the two of them he appeared the less enlightened, accepting his good fortune as one to whom such advantages were commonplace. This could be seen as alarming, but Herz recognized that Sophie was vigilant enough for both of them. She had captured him, perhaps in that first glance, and both were content to live the aftermath, to cut it down to size, to reduce it to liveable dimensions. Neither now exhibited that capacity for extreme behaviour which, for a second or two, had made Herz hold his breath before absenting himself from the scene. Instead they exchanged cheerful talk as they manhandled Matthew’s appurtenances from one landing to another. Their presence outside his front door proclaimed once again their ability to surround and absorb his diminishing space, but they were ignorant of any threat to his peace of mind, and indeed innocent of it, so that as often as not he obediently took in the heavy winter coat and the two pairs of shoes and stored them in his cupboards, which were now uncomfortably full. They knew that no acknowledgement would be necessary, that this painless exercise could only be accepted as a transfer of ownership, his own acquiescence guaranteed. There was therefore no basis for alarm on his part, for he had come quickly to understand the procedure, as if any objections on his part would be an error of taste. He noted with respect the size of Matthew’s shoes, and knew that he would miss such details when he was no longer within their range. He had a sense of what it must be like to house a young person, reckoned that it might be both exciting and exasperating, and returned with something like relief to the half-life he had fashioned for himself and in which he had striven to attain perfection. It was only in his more habitual silence that he was able to gauge the distance he had covered, the notional advances he had made. His original letter to Fanny, the one he had not sent, had lightened him of a burden of accusations which he knew he need never deliver. He could therefore meet her like one newly risen from the dead, free of earthly corruption, pure spirit. Whether he could ever get used to such incorporeality was another matter. His instinct was to embrace the world in its entirety, for better or for worse, like a marriage. Yet it seemed that another type of marriage was being proposed, or at least offered, between two survivors of disparate experiences, held together less by expectations of the future than by a desire to understand the past.
Fanny’s voice on the telephone had been tentative, as if she dreaded interruptions. Once he had assumed a calm he did not feel she responded in kind. She even recaptured some of her original asperity, as if their original attitudes had reclaimed them. This was almost a relief to Herz, who had foreseen tearfulness of the sort he knew himself unable to dispel. A crying woman would make him regret the entire enterprise, which must be conducted with dignity, however contentious their relations might turn out to be. Indeed the greater the annoyance—for he knew there would be claims and counter-claims—the greater the need for ever more extreme restraint, so that they might always give the appearance of repose if not of harmony. They had arranged to meet in Geneva: Herz had booked a car to drive them to Nyon. He hoped that such a gesture would appeal to Fanny, who might have missed courtesies of this kind in her present life. He had begged her not to bring too much luggage; she had told him not to be so silly. Surely, she had said severely, you expect me to be suitably dressed? There may even be dancing, she had added. The longing in her voice at this point had been audible, piercing the carapace of confidence that had been briefly in place. He felt he did not yet know her well enough to tell her how moved he had been by this sign of hope, of longing not for himself but for the sort of life she had once enjoyed as a girl. He knew that he must be careful not to show that he understood her too well, must accept as seriously as he could every account of her recent misfortunes, prepare to believe her when she referred to recent ‘tiresomeness’, for which once again she would blame others, as the version of the truth which she preferred. When he knew her better he might find this frustrating, but at that stage a certain degree of exasperation might protect them from sentimentality. Any undue emotion, assumed for the occasion, would strike them both as undesirable. It would be enough to know that they understood each other on this point to fall into a workable agreement, negotiated on each side with a care that might yet turn into love.
‘What do you look like now?’ she had asked him.
‘Old,’ he said.
She had laughed, but had contrived to leave him with the impression that she herself was unchanged. The alteration in her voice, from dull to alert, had managed to convince him of this. He was willing to make this concession. Others might have to follow.
It flattered them both to know that they would be arriving as a couple, their greetings to one another unobserved. He had given the matter some thought, but in fact such potential problems were easily solved. The arrangements had been crowned with enviable success. A suite at the Beau Rivage, overlooking the lake, had been available, and all thoughts of physical embarrassment had disappeared. They would each have guarded the modesty of those whose attributes were now less than flattering, and would be scrupulous about keeping out of sight at times when the reality might threaten the appearance that each would be careful to maintain. His flight was booked, and hers too. He trusted that so far he had given a good account of himself. Indeed all these procedures were accepted without question, so that for most of the time he was able to forget them. He was rather more interested in the life that he would leave behind him, and the lives that would soon efface any imprint he might leave. He thought it quite in order that this should be so, but was mildly regretful that he would not be present to observe the unfolding of the story that had started in so promising a fashion. He knew that in moments of ennui his thoughts might return to that bright prospect, and that if ever he were to be homesick it would not be for a place but for the sound of footsteps on the stairs, the front door opening and closing, the murmur of voices, of sudden laughter. In his so peaceful exile he would wonder how they were, as if they, and not Fanny, formed part of his family. He would send them a postcard, but not otherwise remind them either of his absence or of his former presence. In due course he would return for the space of a day to discuss his future plans, having warned them beforehand of his visit. He did not at this stage know what he would decide to do, knew only that a continuation of his life in Chiltern Street was unlikely, perhaps impossible. Only grave illness, or grave disaffection, would make it seem desirable, and he was determined not to succumb to either. Eternal vigilance was the price of liberty, and for that vigilance he had received more than adequate training.
His pursuits now had a valedictory air, though they had never been more wholehearted. He greeted every unobtrusive landmark: the streetlight outside his window, the muttering television sets in the shop, and, further afield, the postman’s trolley, the supermarket, the garden. Such details now coalesced into a portrait of his life in this place, mute testimonies to his citizenship. He made no announcement of his departure, avoided conversations, left a note for Matthew giving details of his address and asking him to forward his mail. Ted Bishop had been provided for; they had shaken hands with extreme cordiality. This competence tended to desert him in the long evenings, when he would experience a brief failure of nerve. But this was to be expected and could be attributed to fatigue. He tended to stay out as long as possible, but this was self-defeating, since he had eventually to return. The street was more accommodating than the flat, which was now alien. He bathed as silently as possible. When he got into bed he noticed that his radio had been moved to accommodate a larger model.
On the day before he was due to leave he paid a last visit to the National Gallery. He expected much from this even more valedictory act but found himself for once inattentive, even impatient, as if art were withholding its secrets, finding him unworth
ily busy on his own account. It was true that he was no longer capable of innocent contemplation, but this loss of faith troubled him. He paused briefly before many suffering saints, then passed into the main building and the more reassuring company of alternative deities: Mars and Venus, Venus and Adonis, Bacchus and Ariadne. This last image, a shock of blue, proclaimed its subversive message without the intervention of physical ageing. Ariadne, her arm flung out as if to push away the intervening air and impel herself forward, arrested by the charged glance that passes between Bacchus and herself, seemed by that very act to lose power, to be rendered uncertain, while Bacchus, his near nakedness easily outclassing her draped figure, demonstrates that he has no need to emphasize this act of possession. His companions, or collaborators, by their very indifference, proclaim that this is an everyday event, or, more probably, that they are excluded from the mystery. Herz felt suddenly faint, was obliged to sit on a bench. In the light of this extraordinary conjunction what comfort could he draw from his own conscientious intentions, from the prospect of two prudent survivors, each with safety in mind, each with a record of failed chances, of not even honourable defeats? How could they even mime a joyous reunion without a similar shock of recognition? What was reasonable, even pleasant company compared with the enactment of desire? He raised his eyes once more to the picture and lowered them again, reminding himself that Ariadne had much to lose from the affair and that Bacchus would grow into an obese and sozzled wreck whose fall from grace would be depicted by other painters less indulgent to his example. The story ended badly, but this was irrelevant, even unimportant. One could take the opposite view, that temperate companionship might, almost certainly would, outlast such dazzling preliminaries. Yet that companionship would also entail regret. Herz saw a girl lingering by the picture, recognizing it, perhaps for the first time, as the real thing, and willing such an apotheosis for herself. Quite simply, nothing could take its place. It would be acknowledged not by its presence but by its very absence, and would thereby leave an indelible mark. Even to see it, to hear about it at second hand, was enough to cause wonder. Or indeed dismay.
The faintness persisted. He remained seated, until warned that the gallery was about to close. He made his way to the exit, a warder walking slowly and watchfully behind him. His extreme physical discomfort was compounded by the suspicion that Fanny might expect him to make love to her, and he made a note to telephone the Beau Rivage as soon as he arrived home—if ever he arrived home—and book a single room for himself. Love was no longer a possibility: the blatantly blue image of Bacchus and Ariadne had finally completed its work, had convinced him that such imaginings were no longer appropriate, or rather were no longer available. Even at his late age he had failed to encompass reality, when the reality of the flesh was there to remind him of the truth. Out of reluctance, of fastidiousness, even out of modesty he averted his eyes daily from his changed appearance, and if he thought of himself as he had once been it was as if he thought of some distant figure in a distant landscape, able to undertake any physical act, meet any physical challenge. This almost mystical memory of himself had something in common with the beginning of the world, the belief in inviolability, in immortality, which must return to haunt one as the days began to shorten. Even then the prospect of death would be unreal, its details hidden. There would, he knew, come a time when he would be given over into other hands, and would thus abandon any thought of himself as a distinct being. He would become part of a species, and even in that extremity would evoke little interest.
What was available to him now was more banal: a simulacrum of domesticity. Even this would be unconvincing, yet he remained determined to make it work. The almost abstract setting, the almost familiar woman, the discreet attentions of those appointed to tidy away the grosser aspects of daily life, would, he hoped, be sufficient for a routine to be established, one in which the physical life should not be too obtrusively in evidence. They would meet for walks, for meals, their changed appearance suitably disguised. In time this newly constructed life might persuade them of its reality. What he desired now was kindness, leniency, comprehension, the sort of reciprocity that two old acquaintances might recognize, and who, out of tact, would refrain from unwelcome allusions to past intimacy, for they had in fact never been intimate. Although his vision of Fanny was that of a lost lover, that lost lover was himself. His former hopes and expectations had, in the long run, amounted to nothing. Fanny had been to him the embodiment of those expectations, which had survived for a remarkable length of time. He did not think himself excessively romantic, but it was true that he had long had a less than successful relationship with unalterable circumstance. The surge of memory and feeling was liable to overtake him at every turn: why else had he been willing to set up this experiment? It would be prudent to view the real Fanny, the Fanny he was due to meet at Geneva on the following day, as a stranger, one to whom he would behave with respect, with courtesy, but no longer with ardour.
He no longer desired the sort of animated discussions he had earlier envisaged. What he desired was a smile to meet his own: that was still possible. He would allow her all her own fantasies, would humour her vanity as best he could, would permit her to see herself as sought after, but only on condition that in exchange she would sometimes let the poor worldly mask slip and favour him with unforced fondness, not for what he had once been, the humble suitor, but for what he was now, a fellow being easily frightened by the world as it was. For such a fond smile he would be willing to cross any distance. He was anxious now to get to a telephone, to talk to her, and if possible to detect in her voice some of the vulnerability that was now overtaking him, as he stood on the pavement, confused by the crowds, the traffic, the noise, and signalled for a taxi, his raised arm as heavy as lead. The great mass of the city, which he had always embraced, oppressed him. Once again he had a vision of Nyon, but of a place which thirty years earlier had appeared so caressing, so nurturing. It would have changed, as he himself had changed, but the vista across the lake would be unchanged, and the soft light, and the distant mountains. He would undoubtedly recover in such surroundings from the tiresome weaknesses which had plagued him in the last few months, would, if necessary, put himself in the care of a patriarchal Swiss doctor. And perhaps Fanny would act completely out of character and look after him. This, he saw, was not a prospect which would appeal to her. But he in his turn might act out of character and become testy, would insist on his regime being observed, would fashion her into the vigilant guardian he wished her to be. This prospect did not greatly please him either. But if they could both perfect their behaviour, or their performance, to the extent that each gave pleasure to the other he would count that as a great achievement.
He had taken note of her strain of melancholy, and her confession of past unhappiness. His worldly goods, with which he was prepared to endow her, would not efface her view of herself as a woman who had never known love. He could perhaps repair her pride, which, he knew, would once more come to the fore given a little encouragement. He would have to rely on what self-knowledge she might retain. It was possible, though unlikely, that she had gained a measure of wisdom in the intervening years, enough perhaps to enable her to treat him gently. That gentleness, as yet unproven, he now craved, as he had once craved love. In the jolting taxi he slipped a pill under his tongue and waited for his vision to clear. He had yet to pack, to telephone Bernard Simmonds, to call on Sophie and Matthew and to wish them well. All this, however, took second place to his urgent need to reach Fanny, to know of her state of mind, to discover if she too were undecided.
In Chiltern Street he seemed engulfed in a rising tide of luggage, mostly Matthew’s, his own modest suitcase a meek adjunct to the possessions of the new and rightful owner. It was clear that this was no longer his undoubted place. Nor did he want it to be. It had once represented emancipation from the dreariness of Edgware Road, from family commitments, from his marriage and divorce, yet that emancipation had not led to any
kind of fulfilment. It was a refuge, nothing more, and as such had served him well. Now it seemed strange, already filled with another life. He welcomed his own impatience as he stumbled over Matthew’s sports bag. Here was a sign of the testiness he hoped to evoke in other, more favourable circumstances. Here was a new persona in the making.
Making Things Better Page 23