Altered States

by Anita Brookner

  Brian did not like her. This worried me, for Brian’s approval was always necessary to me. Of course he was too well mannered to say that he did not like her, nor may he have formulated his dislike in any conscious way. His dislike was entirely characteristic: he simply did not find Angela attractive. He would not have wanted to make love to Angela had they been under house arrest at the Ritz for forty-eight hours. For Brian to abstain from his usual speculations on being introduced to a woman was a bad sign; a worse one was that although he had met her before he did not remember her, or indeed had never noticed her. Yet she was pleasant to look at, fresh, artless. It may have been the artlessness that put him off. Once, when she called in at the office with her market basket over her arm, he made an excuse and left. In Brian’s simple view a woman should know how to play the great game and give every sign of that knowledge, rather than pose as Little Red Riding Hood. I think he felt genuine distaste for one so unformed, rather as my mother did. Both were more concerned for me than for Angela, which made my desire to protect her even more ardent. At the time I could not see that there was anything wrong with this, or that there was anything the matter with Angela. I told myself that Brian was used to a different sort of woman, and that both of us must abstain from criticising each other’s tastes. This caused a very slight distance between us, for the first time in our long friendship.

  He did his best to enlighten me, without being so cross as to ask direct questions. Instead he said cunningly, ‘You ought to take Angela to Paris for a week-end. You’re getting set in your ways.’ To Brian, Paris was the touchstone of any love affair: if a woman did not respond to Paris, and to her lover in Paris, then she was beyond redemption. He may have thought that I shared this belief, an irony in the light of what was to come, though not one I have ever appreciated. Looking back I can see that he was maddened by my domesticity, worried by my new caution. Every morning I would treat him to an account of the previous evening’s meal, as if I had just been promoted to a normal diet. He too reflected on the length of our friendship, and dreaded to see it banished by a woman whom he rightly suspected of jealousy. I may have been aware of this; I no longer know. Perhaps I already felt that any jealousy on Angela’s part was justified. Certainly I knew and trusted Brian enough to know that he would never shame me into saying something untoward. In that way we were able to remain friends, despite an habitual reserve. To break this would have signified an infringement of all the codes by which we had been educated. I had a singular, and perhaps sinister conviction of doing the right thing at this time. I felt invulnerable because I was behaving myself. My conscience was clear, which no doubt made me complacent, insensitive to the feelings of others. Had I been in my normal state, which verges on the sceptical, I should have paid more attention.

  When the invitation to Brian and Felicity’s wedding arrived, Angela decided that we must give a dinner party, so that our own status as a couple should not go unregarded.

  ‘Is this really necessary?’ I asked. ‘They know we’re engaged. Anything more formal tends to be embarrassing.’

  ‘It’s customary,’ she replied. ‘And it’s customary to offer a gift.’

  I thought this was ridiculous. I had not ‘offered’ a gift to Brian; I had merely kissed Felicity warmly and gone back to work. The very faintest suspicion of melancholy stole over me as I watched Angela hauling down long-unused dinner plates and champagne glasses (‘We must have champagne’) from the top shelves of cupboards. I was perhaps beginning to regret my quiet evenings, particularly those evenings when I could slip out to Paddington Street and find Sarah, sometimes willing, more often not at home. My regret was almost abstract. I wondered if I really wanted a woman in my life on a permanent basis, let alone a woman who would turn my life upside-down. I no longer knew my own kitchen, since Angela had provided us with a servant, by dint of persuading Adelina, who did the washing-up at the coffee bar, to work for us. Secretly I was appalled by the amount of money being spent, although I could afford it. I just thought that life had been simpler when I was unattached, with the proviso that being unattached was synonymous with being available. Like most men, I contemplated affairs with equanimity, or had done before I met Sarah. The great argument in their favour was that one’s home generally remained uninvaded, so that one could return to peace and quiet and one’s own standard of living. I had been unprepared for the sheer busyness of life with Angela, particularly as she seemed to have imported so many of her clothes, and, until I threw it out, her teddy bear.

  Yet I remained impressed—still—by the energy she expended on my behalf, although unwilling to acknowledge the fact that I was required to expend a great deal of energy in return. If I did not pay enough attention to the matter in hand, if, for example, I wanted to read the evening paper, there was a very slight tendency to sulk. The tears, which were quite frequent, I could cope with: they made me feel protective, but I disliked being taken over. If I thought of another woman at this time it was not Sarah but Simone, my hard-headed sunny-tempered companion in Paris, with whom it was so easy to enjoy life, who never bore a grudge, and who was even able to tolerate partings with a certain style. On the other hand, Angela would do me credit in her way, was in fact quite ambitious socially, and would see to it that this dinner party, to judge by her preparations, would impress our guests, or rather Angela’s guests, since I was merely there to acquiesce to arrangements which had been maturing in Angela’s mind for some time, and for whom Brian’s wedding invitation acted as a stimulus, or perhaps an irritant: I feared the latter, since Angela and Felicity were not guaranteed to hit it off. Felicity was a clever, sharp-featured girl, with all the right connections. Brian was her weakness: her brittle upper-class authority literally melted when he looked at her in a certain way. I had seen him look at other women like that, but I said nothing, having long ago decided that Felicity could fight her own corner. But Angela, who could only oppose softness to Felicity’s hardness, was not comfortable with her, as I had reason to observe. Nevertheless Felicity’s presence was ineluctable; indeed I rather thought the dinner was in her honour, a view which Felicity herself shared. Brian had already learned the trick of mental absence, perfected through many a tedious discussion. Only his ineffable smile would signal to me that his thoughts were elsewhere.

  The other guests were Aubrey and my mother, and Jenny and Humphrey. I thought it kind of Angela to invite this couple until I remembered that Jenny was her new friend. My mother, it occurred to me, might have been a little offended at being passed over in this way, but I doubt if she knew that Angela and Jenny spent so much time together. And if she had known would she have minded? My feeling was that she would have deplored the amount of time that Angela spent in Jenny’s company, thinking back with something like horror on those afternoons once deemed so amusing and so suitable for an unoccupied woman like herself. I could not help noticing the fact that her marriage had given her a new dignity, a new assurance. She greeted Brian and Felicity warmly, and introduced Aubrey with pride; she kissed Jenny and Humphrey as if they were mere acquaintances, as if Jenny were no longer the honorary sister or sister-in-law she had once been, and her greeting to Angela was affectionate, but no more than that. It was Jenny who enthused, exclaiming rapturously over the salmon and wild rice, the tropical fruit salad, and the apple cake that was served with the coffee. It was indeed a splendid meal, worthily accompanied by the Montrachet and the Beaume de Venise which were my contribution. Only the coffee was not strong enough: it never was. I remembered Brian once saying that if a woman could not make a decent cup of coffee she was likely to be no good in bed, and avoided his eye. Fortunately he was beguiled by Aubrey, as was Felicity. They were going to Thailand for their honeymoon, and Aubrey was telling them exactly what to see.

  It was a success, but the sort of success that makes one feel inordinately tired. Indeed, I tended to feel tired quite a lot about this time, not at work, but as soon as I got home. When I was tired Angela was the ideal companion, a
nxiously supervising my intake of nourishment, the quality of my sleep. It was precisely when I was less tired that I found her something of a problem. I became aware that my advances displeased her, though I had learned to curb my enthusiasm. She claimed that I hurt her, so that I became careful and circumspect. It was at times like these that the spectre of Sarah revived and took on flesh and blood, so that it became impossible to sleep. Sometimes I found this intolerable, though I said nothing. Finally I renewed an old prescription the doctor had once given me for a mild sleeping pill. That way we both got some rest.

  I remember very little of our wedding, which took place in the village church which Angela had not frequented since early childhood. The reception was held in a marquee in her mother’s garden. The early spring sun shone fitfully through heavy cloud, but ‘At least it’s not raining,’ as the guests cheerfully assured each other. Angela, in voluminous white, had been given away by her uncle, Frank Clark, Mrs Milsom’s brother, who, to judge from his ramshackle appearance, was not a frequent visitor to the Milsom household. Her mother, I thought, had done things well, and, having seen to everything single-handed, was almost wild-eyed with the strain. She struck up a friendship with Mother, who at one point, when the celebrations were successfully under way, led her into the kitchen and made her a cup of tea. I was very touched to notice that Sybil and Marjorie had travelled up from Dorset. For a moment I wondered what they were doing at Angela’s wedding, until I remembered that it was my wedding as well. It was Jenny who took Angela up to her bedroom to change. When I was sent up to find them I discovered them both sitting on Angela’s bed in tears. The discarded wedding dress, an irreducible mountain of white taffeta, was hanging on the outside of the wardrobe, as if it might be put on again at any minute.

  ‘Why on earth are you both crying?’ I asked.

  ‘So sad,’ said Jenny, dabbing her face, a face now looking much older. ‘I had hoped that Sarah might be here.’

  ‘I sent her an invitation,’ said Angela. ‘I sent it to Paddington Street. Don’t cry, Jenny. She’ll be home soon. After all, I’m the one who’s going away’ Aubrey was lending us his house in Cagnes for the honeymoon. The thought of this provoked a fresh burst of tears.

  ‘You’re both tired,’ I said. Actually I was the one who was tired. I was exhausted. If Brian, as my best man, had not looked after me so well I think I should have stolen away to find an empty bedroom and gone to sleep. We were going back to Wigmore Street that evening and flying to France the following day.

  My last sight, as we bumped off in the car, was of Sybil and Marjorie, rather more elaborately hatted than usual, peering at us through the side window and flinging a handful of confetti. Marjorie, leaning painfully on her stick, raised a hand to wave. ‘Who on earth is that?’ asked Angela, arranging her pleated skirt at its most becoming. I did not have the energy to explain the ramifications of the Miller family, which was after all Sarah’s family; too much fervour had worn me out. I longed for nothing but a cup of good strong tea, preferably drunk in complete silence. Angela, I knew, would sit up half the night dispatching pieces of wedding cake, the very cake that was giving me such unaccustomed indigestion. I wondered if there were any precedent for a bridegroom wanting to spend his wedding night on his own.

  In England the weather had been uncertain, overcast days declining into soaking rain. In France it was hot, gloriously hot. The spring light was so brilliant that Angela complained that it gave her a headache. I, on the contrary, felt as if I had shed a skin, not only of winter heaviness but of conformity. I was up at six every morning, humming happily in Aubrey’s kitchen, making coffee as strong as I had always thought it should be made. I took my cup out onto the little terrace and inhaled an air filled with the sharp scents that I loved, the scents of France. I envisaged days spent wandering about the little town, until I remembered that I was on my honeymoon, and went indoors to make the tea that Angela preferred. She looked charming as she awoke from sleep, the morning light enhancing her fair colouring. Aubrey and Mother had left the house ready for us; there were enough supplies to last a fortnight. There was literally nothing for us to do, and I was impatient to go out; this however did not appeal to Angela, who had inspected the house and declared it not to her liking. She would have preferred an hotel, she said; apparently an hotel was more ‘customary’. Also she felt Mother looking over her shoulder, though Mother had scrupulously tidied all her things away. She got up slowly, although she had always bustled about in the early mornings in Wigmore Street. I offered to go out for bread for our breakfast, but she asked me to wait so that we could go out together. By this time I was hungry and impatient to begin the day, but she claimed that she had no appetite when we sat down at a café table and toyed with her coffee while I guiltily wolfed croissants.

  When I suggested driving somewhere for lunch she said, ‘You go. I’m a bit tired. I’ll just go back and read my book.’ Again with a feeling of guilt, I hared off, like a child let off school. When I returned in the afternoon, after a solitary lunch, I would find her lying on the sofa in the salle de séjour, her book discarded by her side.

  ‘You should get more air,’ I told her. ‘Don’t waste it, just lying there.’

  But she protested that her stomach was slightly upset, that France always did this to her, and that she would be all right if left on her own. She seemed oddly withdrawn, as if the paradisal place were somehow not up to her imaginings. I felt obliged to keep her company, although I craved the heat and light of the majestic day. When she consented to come out with me for an aperitif she was dismissive of the passing show which so enchanted me. ‘This place doesn’t suit me,’ she said. ‘I shall be glad when we get home.’

  Aubrey had said that we could stay as long as we liked—I had thought three weeks. But at the end of the first week Angela could barely tolerate the place and was talking about our looking for a house in Sussex or Hampshire where she thought it would be appropriate for us to live.

  ‘But why move?’ I asked her. ‘There’s no hurry. And anyway you don’t know anyone in Sussex or Hampshire. And I should have to commute. Unless of course I spent the weeks in Wigmore Street.’

  ‘Oh, you couldn’t leave me on my own. After all, I shouldn’t know anyone to begin with.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve just said. Don’t try to do everything at once. You like the flat, don’t you? And you’ve got Jenny to go out with.’ Although I could see that Jenny’s company might pall after a time. Poor Jenny! Eternal makeshift, eternally on the margins. I thought of her in tears, in Angela’s bedroom, as I had last seen her. Her tears had seemed so heartfelt, as if she had finally realised that she had no daughter of her own, and as if she knew that Sarah would never be that daughter. And the ungrateful girl had given no sign, not to Jenny, not to me.

  By the time we got ready to come home, after a mere nine days, Angela told me that she was pretty sure that she was pregnant.

  9

  The hardest lesson to learn is that everything is subject to change. My reversal of fortune was brought home to me not by any dramatic circumstance but by the distinctly unfriendly attitude of Mrs Daley at the coffee bar, where I was once again obliged to eat breakfast. Blaming me no doubt for the defection of Adelina, she would plant my coffee on the table in such a way as always to spill a little in the saucer. Thus, a refugee from my own home, it appeared that I was not to be allowed to enjoy hospitality elsewhere. Another of Mother’s novels came to mind, one over which we had both puzzled, although I suspect that men find it more palatable than women. This was Goethe’s Elective Affinities, in the Penguin edition, a seemingly passionless story in which couples change partners with those of their best friends in a calm and unadventurous fashion, as if they were obeying a scientific law, or a law of nature. No damage is done, no jealousy is caused, and civilised behaviour is maintained at all times. My mother had remained anxious after reading it, and had passed it on to me for my opinion. My opinion was that if these matters could be accomp
lished without undue emotional expenditure then so much the better. But I had felt uneasy after reading it, as if it contained subversive material. And I already knew that without love one was condemned to that same aridity that prevailed in the novel. What I did not yet know, not in fact until I had been married to Angela for three or four months, was how to deal with loss of love, how to negotiate a passage to that same civilised behaviour that was held to be desirable in Goethe’s novel. I did not know how to behave when my spontaneity was so rigorously checked, when I had become a guilty stranger in my own home. I blamed myself, although I had not changed. I still cherished my wife, felt protective of her. Yet at about this time, in the space of those three or four months, I knew that I had never loved her, and now never would.

  Nor, I think, did she love me. Certainly she treated me with hostility, as one who had inflicted on her a monstrous wrong. Her fear of men had if anything increased now that her body was no longer her own but was inhabited by an embryo which she seemed, from the very beginning of her pregnancy, to regard as an incubus. I had been delighted by the prospect of a baby, although aware that our way of life would be threatened, and the anxious care which I now felt obliged to dedicate to Angela in all her waking moments would soon have to be diverted to someone even more helpless. In fact I should have been almost happy, bemused yet excited, had Angela not come to this strange decision that I was entirely responsible for her condition.

  ‘But you were on the Pill, weren’t you?’ I asked her.

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘But if you didn’t want a child …’

  ‘I still don’t. I’m not strong enough. I’ve got my hands full looking after the flat.’

  ‘I remember when you used to look after me,’ I said, only half jokingly.