Altered States

by Anita Brookner

  Then, feeling noble and calm, and quite resolute after my recent distress, I telephoned Aubrey and wished him well. He was very pleased.

  ‘We shall always be glad to see you, Alan. Don’t leave it too long. And of course the house in France is yours whenever you want it. You’ll be with us on Sunday? I’ll look forward to seeing you then.’

  The following morning in the coffee bar I ordered eggs with my toast in an attempt to make myself feel better.

  ‘Gosh, you look awful,’ said Angela, her eyes widening in sympathy. ‘Has something upset you?’

  ‘My mother’s getting married. No, she’s got married. She was married yesterday morning. I still can’t believe it.’

  ‘How absolutely frightful for you,’ was her response. Frightful for me, I noted. She had instinctively got it right.

  ‘They’re giving a small drinks party on Sunday,’ I told her. ‘I don’t suppose it would amuse you …?’

  ‘I’d love to come. I’ll pick you up, shall I? I’d love to see your flat. Then perhaps we could walk across the park. I’m a great walker.’

  In the light of what was to come, all I can offer was the fact that I had posted my letter to Sarah, and consequently did not want to be alone, or to be seen to be alone, in case news of me should ever get back to her.

  In fact I was glad to have Angela with me on that Sunday, when Mother and Aubrey were the centre of attention, and I had no function except to assure friends that I was delighted for her. I felt like a bridesmaid at the wedding of her oldest friend, aware that life would soon separate us. I was of course glad to see Mother so happy. I saw her glancing speculatively at Angela, who once again made herself useful handing round the canapés. I wondered if the poor girl faced a lifetime of doing this, at least until someone rescued her and elevated her to a position superior to that of handmaid. Strangely, Mother did not seem to appreciate her assiduity, and at one point took a tray from her and told her to sit down and drink a glass of champagne. The only other people sitting down were Humphrey and Jenny, Jenny looking doleful, Humphrey nearly asleep. I could see why Mother wanted to enjoy a form of life rather more removed from their orbit than would have been possible had Aubrey not been at hand. One makes significant decisions sometimes on the strength of insignificant pointers. One look at Jenny’s swollen feet told me more about those afternoons that had been deemed so pleasurable than Mother’s remarks about status and respect had been able to do. As she had said, she had once been admired for her looks and even now was an attractive woman.

  ‘Doesn’t she look lovely?’ whispered Jenny. ‘I’m so glad for her. Of course I’ll miss her.’

  ‘But she’ll still be here,’ I assured her. ‘Although we can’t expect her to be here as much as formerly.’

  ‘Oh, no, Alan. It won’t be the same at all.’ There was a finality to her tone that spoke of past disappointments, past betrayals. ‘Come, Humphrey. It’s time for us to go. You’ll come to see us, Alan? Humphrey is so fond of you. As I am, of course.’

  ‘Still waiting to show you my clocks,’ said Humphrey, as Jenny manoeuvred him to his feet. ‘Come any time. Always pleased to see you. And Anthea, of course.’

  I wondered who Anthea could be until I saw Angela faithfully posted on Humphrey’s other side. She was invaluable in awkward or dreary situations, although ill at ease with people of her own age. She took Humphrey’s other arm and kissed him goodbye, at which I saw Jenny give her the same lightning appraisal that had momentarily arrested my mother’s happy exuberance. Jenny’s expression was considered, as if she might be sorry for one so inexperienced, but at the same time devoid of indulgence for that lack of experience. I remembered that she had been a working woman, possibly a woman who had lived on her wits, and that this event, my mother’s marriage, signified for her the end of something she had come to treasure: equality. With Mother she had been allowed to think of herself as a lady. Now she was on her own again.

  The party broke up at about two o’clock, and soon we were out in the dead calm of the Sunday street, a calm broken only by Angela’s breathy enthusiasms. She thought everything was marvellous, my mother amazing, Humphrey adorable. I suddenly found this hard to bear. She was no companion for my forlorn state. I thought only of the letter I had sent to Paddington Street, and cursed myself for having sent it. It seemed to me then that my moment of lucidity was no substitute for a lifetime of hope and expectation, fallacious though both might have been. I had a headache; I felt vaguely sick. I remembered how I had tried to avoid Mother’s parties all my adult life. My ungracious mood must have communicated itself to Angela; certainly I did nothing to disguise it. I took her home in a taxi, refused her invitation to coffee, and walked back. In the flat I resisted an impulse to sleep, and settled down to study some papers. These too I eventually pushed aside and spent the rest of the afternoon watching a football match on television. I have no interest in football, but I could think of nothing better to do.

  At what point does destiny reveal itself? I woke up the following morning with a temperature. I plodded into the office, feeling dreadful, and was sent home by Mrs Roche. It was only the flu, I told myself, but I had never been ill, and did not know how to take care of myself. I remembered a vague injunction to drink plenty of fluids, but I did not have the strength to make myself a cup of tea, and cold water made me feel worse. Eventually I went to bed and tried to sleep, without success. Some time in the middle of the night I realised that I was unnaturally hot, and also that I had not cancelled my appointments for the following day. Regardless of the hour I tried to ring Brian, but there was no answer from his Dorset Square flat. If I were to die I thought it important that someone should know. I could not bring myself to disturb Mother; that was my last sensible thought, and I was rather proud of it. But by the morning all reticence, every shred of self-respect had vanished. That was when I telephoned Angela.

  And she was there, miraculously, and within an hour. Home-made lemon barley water appeared on my bedside table. I did not hear her leave: at some point it occurred to me that she must have pitched camp in another room. She was an excellent nurse, and I clung to her gratefully. When the fever left me I saw a small suitcase in the corner of the bedroom and realised that she had to all intents and purposes moved in. I wondered how she would take it when I intimated to her that I would be perfectly all right on my own once again. In the end I was too weak. Or perhaps I lacked the necessary resolution. Perhaps she knew what she wanted and I had temporarily forgotten what it was that I had always wanted. I said nothing. That was how she came to stay. She had sponged my burning body, she had seen me naked. My helplessness gave her a new authority. I could not but remain grateful for the care she had shown me. Helplessly I felt a weight descend on my shoulders, the weight of domestic quietude. By the time I was on my feet again we seemed to have become engaged.

  8

  Illness serves as a corrective: one emerges from it sober but diminished. One learns that one’s continuation cannot be taken for granted, or, as the poet puts it, never glad confident morning again. My brush with mortality—and it was only a bad attack of the flu—made me grateful and tender-hearted. Above all I was grateful for Angela’s care, which remained constant. I accepted the fact that she now took charge of my comfort and, incidentally, of my flat; I would arrive home in the evenings to find her scrutinising swatches of fabric and colour charts. She was overjoyed, not only to have become engaged, but to have become engaged before any of her friends had managed to do so. And I think she loved me, in her rather juvenile and utterly conventional way: I was, as men go, a good catch. And I? I loved her pretty hands and feet, the camomile smell of her hair. I loved her domesticity, the stateliness with which she presided over my household affairs.

  She gave up her job immediately, although I urged her not to; I was alternately becalmed and disconcerted to think of her sitting at home all day, although she seemed to think this perfectly natural. When she was not shopping, for which she dressed hersel
f carefully, as other women do when they meet a friend for lunch, she was lying on the sofa reading one of her reassuring novels. When I bent over to kiss her on my return from the office, the look on her face was one of purest gratitude. It disarmed me, but I could not always suppress a feeling of irritation. It seemed to me that she had abdicated her independence and thus turned her back on all the advances that women had made. It also limited our conversation. ‘What sort of a day did you have?’ she would ritually say, and when I described an interesting case I could see that I was talking to myself. She preferred to think of us in a genteel country setting, in a house called The Old Rectory, or The Old Post Office, in which she, in a flowered skirt, and one of her eternal blouses, would bake bread or entertain guests of the squirearchical class. I did nothing to disabuse her, although I liked my flat. Vaguely I envisaged a move some time in the future, but when I saw how much pleasure the fantasy gave her I quietly laid the plan to rest. Reality, I knew, would always let her down.

  She spent my money freely, as if it were her birthright. I could hardly object to this, since she cared for me so well, but I was sorry when my terracotta walls became an inhospitable vanilla, and my Hessian curtains were replaced by a William Morris print. The flat became transformed into a clinic, one of the many clinics in this area of London, and Angela into a sort of superior nurse. Yet her happiness disarmed me. She regarded her new status as entirely rewarding; I was aware at times that she was a little girl playing at being grown up. To confuse the matter, she did not behave like a little girl but as an unconvincing adult, one who lives the part for which she has been cast. Being engaged, to Angela, meant acting like an engaged person, rather than like a woman who is going to be married. Indeed, she was in no hurry to get married, as if the prospect displeased her in some way; what she really enjoyed was this role-playing, which had its beguiling moments even for myself. I liked to think of her concern spreading to every corner of my domain. I was sent out every morning like a schoolboy, while Angela set to with Hoovers and dusters, before arraying herself for a morning’s shopping. This too was a semi-official activity. In order to buy half a pound of butter at Selfridges she would traverse Wigmore Street with a wicker basket over her arm, for all the world as if she were living in that market town in which she felt herself to be an honorary inhabitant. She listened fervently to The Archers, and rustic accents greeted me when I returned from the office.

  But I was also greeted by a smell of fine cooking, and the meal that was produced was invariably delicious. I went out less: as Angela pointed out there was no need. On my way to work I greeted Mrs Daley at the coffee bar with a guilty wave as I hastened past. I was always early, and thus was able to work more effectively than ever. I was grateful to my professional life for posing few problems. If I was aware of anything that might eventually check my enthusiasm, it was at this stage too unformed to contain much anxiety. I too was amused by the novelty of my situation; I was touched and flattered by Angela’s admiration. Above all I felt safe with her. I looked back on my affair with Sarah as a derangement, an inconvenience. I retained an image of myself peering through the letter-box of her flat in Paddington Street and felt little more than impatience, embarrassment. If I thought about her at all, it was with antagonism. Yet in my dreams, with Angela lying chastely beside me, I saw her strange closed face, the face that could so disconcertingly change to a mask of hilarity when in unimportant company, yet remained impassive even in the act of love.

  Of course comparisons were inevitable, although I did nothing to encourage them, suppressing my thoughts as best I could. Anyone could have told me that suppressing thoughts is the best way to ensure their irruption at a later date. Angela was frightened of men; her trust in me, who she knew would never willingly harm her, was undermined by a certain primitive fear of the male animal. She was docile in my arms, but she was also ineradicably embarassed by the reactions of my body. I tried to explain that these were involuntary but she would turn her head away and a few moments later brightly talk of something else. Her pleading expression, which had been turned on me at our first meeting, had an unwelcome effect on me: I found it stimulation, so that our love-making was perhaps more violent than it should have been, until I came to realise that this was precisely what frightened her, as it might have frightened any inexperienced woman.

  Her lack of experience puzzled me: it was in direct contrast to her wifely or womanly activities. In the daytime, safe from the terrors of the night, she was all confidence and competence, and I found her more and more beguiling. Yet I was forced to acknowledge the fact that my value to her was primarily as the essential component in a fantasy of married life that had been lovingly cherished ever since she was a little girl. As a lover I was as good as any other, since all were unwelcome, something to be endured, the price to be paid for a position for which she had secretly planned since our two lives had collided. Both of us were preoccupied by secrets. For Angela a tense kind of emotional bargaining took place: if she consented to do such and such a thing then she might claim a reward, the reward of freedom and respectability. My own thought processes were not essentially different: if I surrendered all my anarchic longings I could successfully engineer my emergence as a prime example of conformist man, housed, fed, cared for, my continued existence successfully guaranteed.

  I accepted this. I have always been fairly conventional, and perhaps that was why I found Sarah’s frustrating behaviour, her unaccountability, so intriguing. Initially I was pleased to think of myself as restored to order. In this respect I was perhaps more self-deluding than I knew. My mother, in her new realistic mood, did not really find Angela to her taste, although her manner towards her was welcoming. As a new wife herself she appeared to have a surer grasp of a couple’s secret life than Angela and I did. Angela’s fussiness, her awkward compliments, grated on my mother, who appeared to wonder why the prospect of marriage did not confer more dignity, more comprehension. She found my complacency equally puzzling, as if I had become middle-aged overnight. Aubrey was in favour of the match, not only because he wished me to be taken in charge by someone other than my mother. Angela flirted with him, as she did with Humphrey, elderly men being devoid of any kind of threat on her primitive scale of imaginings. She was wary of my mother, of her sophistication and her indulgence of the male, which she sensed, as she had always sensed another woman’s potential response; she placed herself under Aubrey’s protection when we went to Cadogan Gate, and his exquisite courtesy and basic self-satisfaction were equal to the task of putting Angela at her ease. For when she felt threatened or misunderstood, the tears would gather in her eyes and her face would lose its colour. I found this phenomenon so alarming that I perfected a whole armoury of disclaimers, so that in any situation and at all times I was able to reassure her that all was well.

  The person with whom she felt most at ease was Jenny, whose initial doubts had been laid to rest by Angela’s fervid overtures. Perhaps they were true soul-mates, or perhaps Jenny was a severe case of thwarted maternity. I remembered how she had coveted Sarah, and how Sarah had shrugged off her unwanted care, so that Sarah’s visits to Humphrey had been planned to coincide with Jenny’s afternoons out with my mother. She was thus doubly duped, and some realisation of this might have made her wary of new friendships. But she was lonely for young people, and if Sarah were so long absent then Angela would be more than acceptable as a replacement. Perhaps life with Humphrey was not quite all she had been promised, although when speaking of him she was touchingly loyal; perhaps she had simply not acceded to age as successfully as her elderly husband had done. My mother had always marvelled at her girlishness, her hopefulness. Whatever the reason, she adopted Angela as her new companion. Both professed a liking for Selfridges, and before long that was where Angela was wont to spend her afternoons, in the company of Jenny, whom she seemed to regard as a surrogate mother, although she had a perfectly good mother of her own, living on the outskirts of Maidstone. I noticed that although she pr
ofessed great love for this parent, she would rarely make time to visit her, too protective of her new authority to wish to see it undermined. In the end it was I who insisted that we visit Mrs Milsom, although after an excruciating weekend in her red-brick box of a house I was not keen to repeat the experience.

  Her mother was a tremulous but obstinate woman who deferred to me flatteringly on every conceivable subject and who did not appear to notice the extreme discomfort in which she lived. All the rooms in her house were small, so that the dining-room was filled by the dining-table, while three chairs and a television occupied the sitting-room. This last, however, was rarely used, as the kitchen was the largest room in the house, and I guessed that meals had been taken there prior to my arrival on the scene. A steep staircase led to three tiny bedrooms and a single bathroom. The garden was large and sloped down to a small stream, and it was there that Mrs Milsom spent the best part of her days, battling with weeds in all weathers. Her dust-coloured hair and her anxious unadorned face might have prefigured what Angela would have become had she not taken refuge in another life. Oddly enough there was no love lost between them. They were perpetually on the brink of some trivial argument, and the exasperated sweetness with which Angela addressed her mother might have alerted me to the strength of certain animosities in a character which still seemed to me open, trusting, even childlike in its transparency.