On re-reading the letter she found it weak and unconvincing, though every word of it was true, and she rather thought that Susie would not bother to reply. It was entirely possible, and more than likely, that Susie would not be tempted by the idea of an old ladies’ shared holiday, for Susie might have become one of those women of whom it is remarked that they have not changed. In a way it was true: Susie was loyal, as witnessed by the Christmas cards, but she had always been easily bored. She had too readily seen others as a foil for her own vivacity, and Mrs May had on more than one occasion been conscious of filling this role. In a sense they had both been conscious of it, which removed the threat of incompatibility. Her true good nature had been revealed when Henry arrived on the scene; she had been generous, although she had not been entirely able to stop herself flirting with him. No resentment had been felt on either side, and this she reckoned to be a proof of true friendship. And although, if she and Susie were to spend time together now, they might find themselves at odds, or have little to say to each other, she knew that their past friendship held good. She also knew that it would be pointless to try to revive it. Which left her without even the saving grace of illusion.
She lingered at her desk, wondering why she bothered to make telephone calls when writing was so much easier. ‘Dear Molly,’ she wrote. ‘I haven’t forgotten the fiftieth wedding anniversary celebrations, although Kitty and Austin think that I have. Do you have any idea of a suitable gift? I know what they really want, but we can’t count on Gerald, I fear. In fact it is a great pity that the children will miss it, though of course it is hardly to their taste, and in any event they know nothing about it. And yet I find myself wishing that they could be here, and that they could rise to the occasion. Do you think they enjoyed their stay? I sometimes wonder. I even think that although they undoubtedly found us tiresome we may have made some sort of impression.’ (She would not send this letter, she decided, but she went on writing.) ‘When dealing with the young at our age we forget our own youth. Not that mine would have been much use to me in the present circumstances. I clung to my parents, and they to me, whereas Ann seemed to be without parents altogether. One could see that David had been properly cared for—one does not come by that sort of assurance in any other way—but Steve seemed like a foundling. That was part of his appeal, I suppose: he was like one of those sly characters in a fairy tale. At least that was how he struck me. Was it for that reason that I found him so’—she hesitated—‘amusing?
‘They seemed so rude, didn’t they? Yet that was the only way in which they could assert their independence. I wish they could have stayed a little longer, so that I could have got to know them. Which is more than they would have done. In many ways they rejected us, and we had no experience of having done this ourselves, though I suppose we must have done so at some stage. My own parents never reproached me, nor I them. This now strikes me as extraordinary.
‘I hope David’s departure has not left you too sad. I know that both you and Harold were prepared to love him. Being prepared to love is in truth a very dangerous condition. One cannot always find the right object, and one is always, as it were, the subject, one’s own preferences not consulted.
‘I also hope that you have not cancelled your plans to go to Bordighera as usual. You know of course that they will not come back. Unless … Unless by some miracle they miss us, or at least think of us fondly. I am sure, dear Molly, that you can comfort yourself with this thought. And Harold too: I saw what he was feeling. Do give him my love. In all the excitement I had no chance to speak to him. And my love to you, to all of you. Until we meet again. Dorothea.’
In the night a storm broke, waking her from a dream in which she was trying to buy a pair of shoes. The odd thing was that the shoe shop was situated exactly where she remembered it from her youth, just off Putney Bridge Road. She had not been there for fifty years. She shook her head, amused, and got up to make tea. Heavy rain slashed at the windows; she enjoyed the momentary break in the weather, although she knew that in the morning she would find wet yellow leaves plastered to her table and chair on the terrace. With the rain came a release of tension, allaying her memory of recent events.
The dream had given her a desire to visit the old neighbourhood, the old house. Perhaps she harboured a wish to be back in her old bed, the bed in the dark room in which she had always slept so dreamlessly those many years ago. Then she realised that such nostalgia was futile and unrealistic: the house would be unremarkable, one of many such houses in a street from which all the remembered inhabitants were long gone. The remote past was preserved only in memory. Even so it managed to overshadow the life she now accepted as normal, not least in those moments of reverie, of not quite waking, in which it was so easy to indulge. The journey to the old neighbourhood had in a sense already been undertaken, in the dream, and she had been as she once was, young and effortless, eager and active. In a sense she had repossessed her youth, although every increasingly frail bone in her elderly body had mislaid it.
As for the recent past, it had been diverting, eventful. The postcard from the children was on her dressing table, and she glanced at it from time to time. The memory of Steve brought a smile to her face. The wedding breakfast no longer seemed grotesque, and even the prospect of Kitty’s celebration failed to bring forth the usual sigh. The great revelation of the night was that although the past was singular, private, exceptional, and preserved for ever in neurones to which she had privileged but intermittent access, age—the age she had reached—could be, must be, an enterprise in which help must be solicited and offered. There were no precedents for the journey ahead, yet it was felt to be hazardous. Therefore some form of solidarity was in order. This could no longer be ignored.
In one sense the friends of her youth were still present, and with them the unthinking acceptance that had characterised days gone by. By comparison—yet the comparison was unwelcome, faintly ill-mannered—all latter-day attachments were tenuous. Yet she thought it marvellous that she had some existence in the consciousness of others. The postcard was there to prove this fact, as were the many fretful telephone calls she had received, and discounted, over the years. She was newly aware of a certain collective fragility. She looked back incredulously at her recent fantasy of leaving, at her vision of herself as unkempt, ill-natured. That woman in the sun was simply the obverse of her real self, a doppelgänger struggling for expression. She was valid only as an interesting variation of the truth, whereas the real truth was to be assessed in terms of character, history, even antecedents.
She was not lonely, or perhaps only for ideal company, a fact she hoped she had managed to conceal. What company was presently offered would be accepted, if not actively sought. That she still had access to that company was, she thought, remarkable, given her somewhat remote nature. In the mild morning she felt refreshed, grateful. She thought it marvellous that she could still stand at her window and watch the flight of a bird, could still (occasionally) eat with appetite, could still hear voices other than her own. She was aware of the need to make amends—for joylessness, for fatalism, for caution—in what time was left to her.
When Kitty telephoned, at the end of a day given over largely to reflection, she was not surprised. There was a questing note in Kitty’s normally peremptory tone, as if hovering over some as yet unformulated anxiety.
‘Kitty?’ she replied, unrehearsedly, and undoubtedly with more spontaneity than hitherto. ‘Don’t worry. I hadn’t forgotten. I’ll be there. Of course I’ll be there. The holiday? Another time perhaps. When we’ve had a chance to talk things over. After all, we’ve plenty to talk about, haven’t we?’
ALSO BY ANITA BROOKNER
“Anita Brookner works a spell on the reader;
being under it is both an education and a delight.”
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At the heart of Fraud lies a double mystery: What happened to Anna Durrant, a solitary woman who has disappeared from her London flat? And why has it taken four months for anyone to notice?
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Winner of the Booker Prize
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INCIDENTS IN THE RUE LAUGIER
One muggy summer Maud Gonthier and two English boys share a flat in Paris’s Rue Laugier. Out of their volatile chemistry—a chemistry of longing, sensuality, and betrayal—comes a novel that is stylish, deeply knowing, and delightfully surprising.
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LATECOMERS
Hartmann and Fibich are “latecomers” to England, brought over as children from Nazi Germany. Their fifty-year relationship is at the center of a transcendently moving tale about the ambiguous pleasures of friendship and domesticity.
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In Lewis Percy, a man is torn between the reassuring cloister of the library and the alluring but terrifying world of the senses, a world populated by women who persist in bewildering him.
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LOOK AT ME
Look at Me explores the gulf between Nick and Alix Fraser, a happy couple so dazzling they seem to vindicate Victorian theories of natural selection, and Fanny, a solitary librarian nursing a particular heartache.
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A PRIVATE VIEW
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PROVIDENCE
Providence’s protagonist is Kitty Maule, who, in revenge against the impossibly charming and elusive man who rejects her, resolves to become “totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful.”
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ALSO AVAILABLE:
Family and Friends, 0-679-78164-1
Altered States, 0-679-77325-8
Available at your local bookstore or call toll-free to order: 1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).
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