Falling Slowly

by Anita Brookner

  In her archaic mind, or rather that part of her mind that was still rooted in evolutionary prehistory, love would reveal itself in an instant. Yet she was not, she thought, entirely stupid, had learned a great deal, most of it unpalatable, thought back grimly to her family history, and of the efforts she had had to make to gain her freedom. That freedom had, she now saw, proved illusory. Emancipation, flight, had brought with them an unsleeping anxiety. If deliverance never came she thought that she might just as well not have fought her battles, cared for Miriam, inspired their move to the flat, at whose golden walls she now gazed unseeingly. The worst had now happened: she had no occupation, no protective colouring, no card of identity. The toughness that had enabled her to endure so far examined the situation. There was money in the bank, a pleasant roof over her head; she was well regarded by many who were unaware of the change in her circumstances. She had Miriam, although Miriam now had Simon, for a while, at least. When he let her down, as Beatrice had no doubt that he would, they would carry on much as they always had done, ruminatively and inescapably joined, nervily private.

  She would insist that Miriam stayed in Lower Sloane Street. Insensitive though she thought she may have been, with that reference to Simon’s wife, she would not want Miriam at close quarters again, not want another female presence, while hers must be kept inviolate, her own longings well disguised. Miriam had always been disturbed by the sound of the piano; occasionally each had been frustrated by the proximity of the other. It was, Beatrice acknowledged, easier to live without Miriam at this juncture. In any event she felt too ashamed at her fall from grace, even from a form of prominence, to bear another’s eyes watching her.

  Shame and anger kept the colour high in her cheeks, would prompt her visitor that evening to tell her that she was looking well. But his eyes would be searching; his father, she remembered, had been a doctor. Indeed she had instantly known, when Jacob had first introduced her to his parents, that this haphazard household, with the collecting tin for spastics prominent by the front door, was not one in which she was keen to spend her life. He had seen it too, bore her no grudge, thinking her more delicate than she really was. Only this evening had he discerned the fact that her life had not turned out as she had wished, and had at last seen her clearly for what she was: a woman in middle age, with inadequate personal resources, and only a memory of his earlier desire to comfort her. But she was sufficiently familiar with his expression to know that once at the end of the street and out of her range he would shake his head, as if he should not have been witness to such a sight, and was even now comparing the blonde wide-eyed girl he had once known with the too gracious matron whose eyes had never quite met his in the course of the evening, and whose head habitually, instinctively, turned away from him, as if she were listening for the steps of another visitor, someone who was not himself.

  Beatrice now embraced vacancy as a state to which she had always been condemned. Cautiously she began to recognize that she was glad to have time to herself, that she was no longer obliged to turn out in the evenings, just when the end of the day seemed so propitious to rumination. Her dream life had gained enormously: in sleep she revisited old friends, forgotten landscapes, embarked again on travels which had in fact been undertaken with reluctance. Work no longer constrained her; she rarely touched the piano. She was, she realized, free to come and go as she pleased, without checking her answering service. She could live like other women in this pleasant neighbourhood, meet friends for lunch (but her friends were now scattered), care for her appearance, let others wait on her. Take her ease, in short. Somewhere, beneath the shame, there dawned a wondering relief. This, she knew, was not contentment, but it might have to do duty for contentment. In time, when she was in a more objective frame of mind, she would get in touch with the few contacts who might still be useful. Yet again she might not do any of these things. There was such a condition as honourable retirement, after all. Except that it did not feel honourable, although it might have been timely.

  What had necessarily passed was a kind of readiness, of preparedness. Changes were now accepted; it was also accepted that these changes would not necessarily be for the better. Youth, as a time of looking forward, was over. Nowadays she would not dare to take off her clothes for any man, although she had done so eagerly enough in the past, prompted by a desire to refute her mother’s suspicious strictures. If she had had daughters, Beatrice reflected, what advice she would have given them! She would have told them that the time for display was limited, that the years would add weight, both physically and metaphorically, that a time would come when second thoughts were wiser than heedless impulses … She would have urged them to enjoy men, as many men as possible, before they became aware, as she was now, of the neutered state that awaited them. Therefore it was appropriate that she now be forgotten except by those who had known her when she was young. There was, somewhere in her consciousness, the luxury of a right decision, as if she alone had chosen this particular career path. At least it enabled her to contain her thoughts, to keep secret those pitiful reflections that still saddened her when she saw young people laughing together, a father holding his infant daughter by the hand. It was fathers she was willing to contemplate, as, bright of eye, they negotiated supermarket aisles, stealing proud looks at the imperious five-year-old at their side, although the five-year-old, they knew, was bored with this particular exercise, and looked forward to once more sitting primly in the car … Sometimes Beatrice would have to smile at the youngish man, and would be rewarded with a brief smile in return. But these smiles of complicity identified her as a mother, or perhaps a grandmother, with similar concerns. Few would see in the matronly figure she had somehow acquired a still young woman with unrealistic expectations.

  Yet she was still attractive enough, she reckoned. By this she meant that she was attractive enough for strangers, like the genial Irishman who, every morning, waved his copy of the Telegraph at her, and said, ‘If there’s no good news in this paper I’m taking it back. All right?’ ‘Fine,’ she would reply, charmed into this momentary wellbeing by his joviality. It was true what they said about the kindness of strangers, true too that like Blanche Dubois she had come to rely on it. Why this was so she was unsure, unwilling to examine the causes, simply accepting it as an inalienable truth. Her doctor, whom she visited to have her blood pressure checked, had suggested a holiday, but she knew what awaited her if she took his advice: disorientation, of a kind, and possibly of a depth, with which she could not easily cope. She was safer at home, she knew, without quite knowing why she should want to feel safe. For that reason alone it was good to know that no further services would be required of her.

  This day had started inauspiciously. She had been due to meet her dressmaker, Rachel Wise, in the fabric department at Liberty’s to choose material for a suit and a dress. She was early for the appointment, had lingered on the hard pavement, assailed by a sudden longing for green spaces. With a sigh she had entered the store, remembering all at once her horror of airless rooms, had surveyed the massed ranks of cloth with a feeling of dread. ‘Now that,’ Rachel had said, fingering a bolt of orange wool, ‘would make up beautifully. With a length of that black and yellow print for a blouse. Or that grey worsted. You could wear that with blue. Or no, perhaps not; too dead. What about that off-white? That always looks good, particularly if you have a lunch, or a professional meeting. What do you say? Or shall we go to John Lewis before you make up your mind?’

  ‘No, no,’ she had murmured. ‘I’ll take them all.’

  She hardly remembered paying, had held out her credit card with a feeling of increasing unreality, as if the fabrics had entered her lungs, making breathing difficult. For a brief moment she had wondered whether she was going to faint, wondered if she had, but only for a split second, lost consciousness.

  ‘I’ll get in touch, Rachel,’ she said through numbed lips.

  The next thing she was aware of was Rachel’s sharp face gazing at her in per
plexity through the window of the taxi.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she had asked, to which she must have replied in the affirmative. ‘Don’t forget your parcels, then,’ said the voice, with perhaps an edge of anxiety. ‘I’ll wait to hear from you,’ all too ready to relinquish her, until she was out of sight.

  In the flat she walked slowly into the kitchen, made tea, and in due time found herself seated at the kitchen table with a cup before her. But when she took a conscientious sip the tea had felt unstable in her mouth, and a little had leaked out of the corner and run down her chin. She dabbed her face, sat still, felt a little better. When she heard Mrs Kinsella’s key in the door she forced herself to stand up, behave normally. It was claustrophobia, she reasoned, her old familiar. As a girl she had had panic attacks, although she had thought she was now free of them. She resolved to say nothing to Miriam, or indeed to anyone, particularly not to her doctor. But perhaps she should ring him and make an appointment for the following week, when she was more herself.

  Mrs Kinsella did not appear to notice anything untoward, but sat down with a sigh and poured herself a cup of the tea which Beatrice usually had ready for her. ‘I won’t do too much today,’ she said. ‘I’m on painkillers.’ This announcement was fairly routine, served to cover her legendary inactivity. She was an envious woman, with whom it did not bode well to disagree. Those black shoes of mine, thought Beatrice; she can have those. ‘I’d ask the doctor for something stronger,’ Mrs Kinsella went on, lighting a cigarette. ‘But then I thought, knock one devil out, knock another devil in.’ She was full of these meaningless aphorisms. When she mopped her brow after one of her very rare exertions she claimed that the rush of heat, otherwise attributable to her age, was beneficial, ‘worth a tenner a minute’. There was no way of getting rid of her. She had been with them for some years now, knocked about the flat singing tunelessly. ‘I’m like you,’ she would remark. ‘Musical.’ ‘Just do the bathrooms then,’ said Beatrice, moving cautiously towards her room. ‘I’m going to write some letters. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Mrs Kinsella, who was not Irish but who had been briefly married to a Liverpudlian before decamping back to her mother Pimlico, looked offended. Beatrice trailed out and returned with the black shoes. ‘These might suit you better than they do me,’ she said. Mrs Kinsella, her lips pursed with annoyance, agreed. ‘Treating me like a servant,’ were the words she would utter that evening, as her daughter kicked off her trainers and slid her feet into the shoes. ‘Oh, don’t go on, Mum,’ Anne Marie would reply. ‘These are ace. Can I have them?’ For Mrs Kinsella could refuse Anne Marie nothing, which proved, perhaps, that there was a rich seam of humanity there somewhere, but that Beatrice, much less Miriam, had never been able to find it.

  She rested on her bed in the afternoon, and must have slept, for the next thing she heard was the end of the shipping forecast: ‘And finally Mallin Head.’ Then a very brief instant of confusion until the somehow soothing last words, ‘… falling very slowly.’ She was quite comfortable, thought she might stay like this, then remembered Jacob’s proposed visit. There was no way of putting him off, although she supposed she might ring his parents’ austere house in Hampstead and leave a message. She was unwilling to do this for several reasons, the main one being that she had uncomfortable memories of that house and of their necessary furtiveness, the father’s harsh rumble on the ground floor as he dealt with patients, the possible return of the psychoanalyst mother as they were making love. Finally they had stolen up to his bedroom, somehow remaining alert to ordinary domestic sounds from below. Once they had met the father on their way out. Disconcertingly he had been all benevolent approval, reassured that his only son was gaining sexual experience, he being too busy to issue the necessary instructions. Jacob had been uneasy in his father’s presence, while she had been at a loss, not knowing how to behave in the circumstances. As she prepared to slip out of the front door the father had indicated the spastics tin. Annoyed, she had fished out her purse. This was contrary to all her imaginings. And yet Jacob had loved her; of this she was quite sure. But he had not loved her in the way she had envisaged, could think of nothing more than those afternoons in his bedroom, where, truth to tell, she had been uncomfortable, aware of the people passing through on their way to the surgery, some of them quite ill …

  She had said nothing, not wanting to be unpleasant, unaccommodating, and it had gone on for some months, until she had found the courage to tell him that they must end it. She had offered no excuse or explanation, not knowing the form of words usually offered on such occasions, but finally overwhelmed by the discomfort of it all. She smiled faintly as she remembered his crestfallen expression, remembered that she had wanted to reassure him, had finally done so, but using expressions that sounded to her unconvincing. I was unacquainted with the procedure, she thought soberly, looking at but not seeing her altered face in her dressing-table mirror. I was too unhandy.

  She reminded herself that there had been others, that she had in fact lived a perfectly normal young girl’s life. But something had been missing, some chivalry, some passion. Romance, that was what had been missing, and she leaned forward to the mirror to scrutinize the face which was imprinted with an unwanted stoicism. She had very early entered a state of resignation, but that resignation was undercut with longing. As it was now. Even now the sight of a beautiful face could bring it all back. Simon Haggard, at ease in his too small chair, which had threatened to crack under his weight, had inspired nothing definitive in the way of feeling, apart from a certain wistfulness. Not you, she had thought, but someone like you might have been the answer. If she had said little to him, had not been indignant, had not questioned him about her shattered prospects, it was because she had felt fear, not for her career – to that she was relatively indifferent – but for the original disenchantment dealt by inexperienced lovers who claimed too much in the way of connivance. Therefore she had perfected a whole repertory of charming invitations and gestures, had been soothed and flattered by the attentions of men who knew the rules of courtliness, of courtesy, but who were never crude enough to exact more of her. These were men who had been deprived of their homes and who were still homesick. Beatrice knew that what she had to offer was anodyne but was gratefully received.

  The illusion had served its purpose. It was, after all, experience of a kind. She had been attractive then, even beautiful, but she saw, in Jacob’s surprised look when she opened the door, that her looks had gone. But then so had his, although he was still slim, whereas she was not. That was why she had agreed to meet the dressmaker; many of her clothes no longer fitted. But it was better not to think of that. She was aware that she wanted nothing better than to go back to bed, but her social manners were so practised by years of hollow behaviour that she was confident that her lassitude was properly hidden. With a smile she complimented him, enquired after his career, poured his drink, realized that he might stay for the whole evening. He missed her cues as always, settled down comfortably. She remembered that he had always been content to know very little about her.

  ‘I still love you, of course,’ he was saying briskly, without a hint of sentiment. ‘But I’m very happy. Meg and I have a little girl you know. And she has a son by her first marriage. Her only marriage, I should say.’

  ‘You never married?’

  ‘No, we shan’t bother. Let’s face it, Beatrice. We’re too old for marriage.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ she said agreeably. ‘I value my independence even more these days.’

  ‘We could have made a go of it, I suppose.’

  ‘I doubt it. I would have bored you in the long run.’

  ‘Well, yes, you might.’ He took some time considering this. ‘But you were a lovely girl.’

  This remark hung in the air. She realized that in some way she had let him down. He had wanted to be flattered with reminiscence. Instead she heard herself say, ‘And when do you go back to Denver?’

  This, she knew, was a mistake, one which
would cause her discomfort in the future. Unexpectedly he grinned at her; the ghost of their old friendship revived for a few seconds, enabling him to make his farewells without embarrassment.

  ‘Keep in touch,’ she told him. Then, inconsequentially, ‘Is it nice out?’

  ‘It is, yes. Full moon.’

  ‘We could have taken a walk.’

  He smiled again. ‘Maybe we will some day.’ Then, ‘You must visit us when you’re next in the States. Meg would love to show you round.’