Falling Slowly

by Anita Brookner

  ‘What idea would that be?’ he had asked, smiling.

  ‘That I am a decent person. I am quite underhand, really. Pedantic, disagreeable.’

  He laughed, his pleasant face radiating genuine amusement. ‘And how did you become all of these things?’ he asked. ‘Was it your cruel husband? Women usually blame men, don’t they? At least the women I know do.’

  ‘Oh, my husband was quite innocent. Anyway I’ve practically forgotten about him. You see? That’s hardly the sort of remark a decent woman would make. No,’ she said, suddenly serious. ‘I think it was being left alone again. I think I told you that he went to Canada? I didn’t miss him, but without him my life was somehow no longer a matter of record. Does that sound stupid?’

  He shook his head, his expression as serious as her own.

  ‘The days went by, and I felt they had no significance. No markers. I had to get on with them by myself. And my thoughts were not good company.’

  ‘That’s why you were walking in the rain on Christmas Day?’

  But she remembered glancing up at the windows in Bryanston Square, felt shame and anguish, looked at her watch, exclaimed at the time, and said she must get back.

  ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘But you’re going to tell me about it one day, you know. When will you let me take you out to dinner?’

  She was grateful to him for his gentleness, which she had not expected from one so well set up, so ruddy-faced, so generally at ease. She could see that he was attractive to women, although she herself was not attracted. She appreciated him as a harmonious feature of the landscape, but felt no curiosity or desire to know him further. All physical feelings belonged to her knowledge of Simon, to memories of his naked figure striding unselfconsciously round the bedroom, as he picked up the telephone and reconnected himself with the outside world. At the same time she felt an edge of animosity. She was newly aware that he had not telephoned, that she had no news of him, and that she was unfair in concentrating on her own reactions when in Oxford a tragic scenario may have been unfolding, that the house in Norham Gardens might be hushed, alien, invaded by nurses, that children might be bewildered, and Simon harassed and impotent, as she had never seen him. She even envied poor Mary such moments of intimacy as surely must pass between them, castigated herself tor her monstrous reactions and realized that she would have to go to Paris if only to annul her own feelings of shame. When she returned she would surely be a better person, as receptive to his life and what she knew of it as she had ever been. In this way she thought that the least she could do was to go away, for his sake if not her own.

  ‘I’ll be back at the weekend,’ she told Beatrice. ‘I’ll ring up when I get there. Though I don’t like to use her phone too much.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Beatrice. ‘You practically pay for the thing, don’t you?’

  The arrangement in the Avenue des Ternes was a mutually profitable one. She paid a minimal annual rent for what was in reality the run of a substantial flat. The woman from whom she rented the room looked on her as an assurance against burglars, malefactors, and any representatives of an official body alerted by the gardienne. She was an elderly eccentric, with relatives in Egypt and Turkey, whom she visited on a regular basis, fearless in every respect except one: that her son, with whom she had fallen out long ago, and who had gone to the bad, might emerge from the latest in a series of prison sentences, and come home. Miriam had been instructed as to how to deal with this. She was to present herself as the new owner, returned to France only recently after her husband’s death in a foreign posting. She was to say that she had no idea where Mme Bertin had gone, but had heard that she was no longer in the country.

  The son had in fact once turned up, and had not been easily routed. He had lounged against the jamb of the open front door for some fifteen minutes, looking suitably disreputable, until steps had been heard coming up the stairs, at which he had unexpectedly detached himself and disappeared. She deduced from this that someone was looking for him, and told Mme Bertin so when she next returned from Cairo. ‘Tant mieux,’ said Mme Bertin, removing her large felt hat and giving it a knock or two. Her ancient lips had worked reflectively, but within half an hour she was on the telephone to a cousin in Davos and promising her a visit. Miriam assumed that she would be welcome precisely because the son was an object of excited speculation among those safely removed from any possibility of his reappearance, and because Mme Bertin was so peripatetic that she would soon be on her way. Money was handed over to the gardienne, a purely business arrangement, rather like paying the rent. Mme Bertin explained Miriam away as her late husband’s niece. This deceived no one.

  The apartment in the Avenue des Ternes was dustily appointed, in a way which did not detain Miriam’s interest. She was aware of spindly pieces of furniture in an unvisited salon, but generally kept to her own room, where she now supposed she could hole up for a few days. Apart from this she had no idea how she was to spend her time, but time without the possibility of seeing Simon did not much matter. She suspected that Beatrice was aware of this, but Beatrice in her new incarnation, as if she herself were planning to move on, chose not to dwell on it. They kissed abstractedly and parted with mutual admonitions to take care. This too was felt by Miriam to be inadequate, but she was grateful not to be asked further questions. She went home and put a few things into a small bag, feeling at a loss without her ordinary tasks to occupy her. The telephone message was what counted. The rest was unimportant.

  It was the silence that was so insupportable, not so much the breaking of their usual connection as the breaking of any connection at all. He had never been out of contact for so long, had previously always warned her if he had to leave London. In vain she summoned up that picture of a household in disarray, but by force of repetition this image was losing its potency. And her inability to sustain the silence was beginning to tell on her. Outwardly as controlled as ever, she had started to suffer small accidents, had snagged a finger badly on the wire of a super-market basket, had stubbed her foot on the kerb in Sloane Street. These injuries were symbolic of her new disarray, all the more worrying in that they were only noticeable by herself: the bleeding finger, the bruised foot … Both were slow to heal. And there was another problem. A new tenant had moved into the flat next door, an Italian woman who left bags of rubbish on the landing, and when gently guided to the dustbins in the courtyard laughingly agreed and did the same thing all over again. The possibility that she might have to move if she wanted to avoid this daily detritus was becoming very real, as was the impossibility of looking for another flat. She could move back to Wilbraham Place, of course, but Beatrice might not be happy about this. Beatrice, she sensed, wished for the time being to be unobserved, and although this had suited her in the recent past it no longer did so. Those long hours without occupation would have been agreeably filled by a familiar presence. As it was she wished for company, and had failed to find it. No suggestion had come from Beatrice, and she was so unsure of her welcome anywhere that she would not venture it herself.

  These thoughts occupied her so completely that she reached the Gare du Nord without being aware of the journey. She took the Metro to St-Germain-des-Prés with her last ticket, and wondered whether this was symbolic. Once she was separated from Simon by distance as well as by time she felt worse rather than better, realized anew that this whole enterprise had been artificial, an error. She went into a small restaurant in the rue Saint-Benoît and ordered a tomato and mozzarella salad and a bottle of water. The arrangement on her plate, when it arrived, was sparse, not to say ironic. This was another change. She remembered from her student days that she could rely on this place for substantial though slapdash meals and that it had been popular with young people like herself. Now the only other diners seemed to be Japanese. And as well as being hungry she was sure that she had lost weight. That perhaps was why her new clothes failed to fit her properly. She felt alarmed, out of sorts, knew she could not quite face
the silence of the flat in the Avenue des Ternes, resolved in that moment to return to London on an evening train. No one would know, no one would blame her. She would eat her lunch, take a walk in the Luxembourg Gardens, and then change her ticket and go home unobserved.

  The resolution calmed her, though she knew it was deplorable. That it was correct was proved by her renewed sense of purpose once she was out in the air. For the first time she was indifferent to the blandishments of the city she had always loved. The weather was grey, mild, overcast. The summer exchange of inhabitants for tourists had not yet taken place, yet there was an impalpable slackening of pace, of attention, as if families were counting the days until they could get in the car and head south or east. Catherine and Eliane and their kind would in due course be revealed as normal people, obedient wives, harassed mothers; habitual quarrels and gratifications would replace austere professional performances. She abandoned the thought of visiting the rue Soufflot, just as she had abandoned the Avenue des Ternes. Both suddenly seemed to belong to a past phase of her existence. Resignedly she dragged an iron chair on o the terrace in the Luxembourg Gardens. That was where the mothers sat, while their children ran off to play. Occasionally a wheeled infant would attract admiration from a normally tight-lipped populace. ‘Minou, Minou,’ an exceptionally outgoing character might murmur. The baby would gaze back with the same indifferent French stare. No currying favour there!

  She wished that she had brought something to read, but books no longer detained her in the same way. As girls she and Beatrice had read voraciously, seeking alternatives to their restricted lives. As she thought back to those silent days her heart constricted with sympathy. What chance had she and Beatrice had of applying their piecemeal insights, their imperfect information? Simultaneously exalted and repressed, they were disabled for the conduct of ordinary life, as lived by more fortunate women. And their parents must have laboured under the same handicap, so that what was passed on was ignorance, until the innocence that had once pertained was spoiled by disappointment. The daughters had done their best, had embraced the world eagerly, too eagerly, failed to make simple connections or even to exercise a choice. Her own marriage had been effected by a desperate resolution which no longer took love into account. Until nine months ago she had not known true love, and because of that she was marked for life. That was the tragedy of her situation, and no amount of valiant reason would prevail in the light of this alarming fact.

  To be marked for life … To remain for ever alert for the sight of a particular figure, the turn of a particular head. She knew that this was to be her fate, whether she saw him again or not. Frightened by the idea that the mystery of his silence might never be solved by something so simple as an explanation, face to face, she nevertheless felt that the moment for such an explanation had already passed. Time had taken care of if: to return to the original cause would now be redundant. If, given the opportunity, she persisted in asking questions, he would look puzzled, irritated, as if he had already given an explanation, or explanations, to others, in answer to kindly and legitimate enquiries. She suddenly wondered whether she had given him both telephone numbers. Beatrice would certainly take a message, but it was just as well that she had not prepared Beatrice for such an eventuality. Once innocent, she must now feign innocence. ‘Did anyone call?’ she would ask in due course. ‘I left this number while I was away. You don’t mind, do you?’ And Beatrice would not mind, as long as she had no inkling of these machinations. For to offend Beatrice’s good faith as well as her own would be unthinkable. She began to perceive fissures in the natural order. That order was, or should be, composed expectation and fulfilment. Surely it was not in the interest of the Almighty, or whatever prime mover one promoted as a substitute, to recreate chaos out of order?

  It was past midsummer day; from now on the light would fade a little earlier each evening. The sky above her, in the Luxembourg Gardens, was still grey, undisturbed, but the mothers were packing up and leaving, their children summoned back from the distant playground. Although no dramatic change was visible, a smell of cut grass, which she had not previously noticed, stole towards her, alerting her to the arrival of fresher air. When the park had emptied she made her way back to the busy streets, had to wait a long time for coffee to be brought, and at last, spurred by the imminence of departure, was able to behave like an ordinary visitor, rather than as an exile. She bought a couple of books, which would take their place on the pile by her bedside, and perhaps at some time in the future, when this enormous upheaval had been put aside, she would have the patience to read.

  When she knew she must make her way to the station she picked up the bag which she had carried about with her all day, and was able to envisage the thought of her silent return with a modicum of impatience. Though it might be shabby it would mean wasting no more time, although time was the one commodity which she had in abundance. On the train, calmed, as always, by the journey, by the silence of the evening landscape, by the lights that appeared and disappeared, by another train passing with a whine in the opposite direction, she was even able to give a thought to Tom Rivers. How tolerable the day would have been if spent in his company, how agreeable the indeterminate hours! He was sweet-natured, undemanding, seemed genuinely interested in her life, seemed to regard her as a piece of research he might one day decide to undertake seriously. And she had asked him so few questions about himself, feeling preoccupied even in his company. And he had sought her out. He was a temptation which she might one day be too tired to resist. But until that day her life was unfinished business, which she alone would have to tolerate. She wondered who was the first to frame the concept of suffering in silence. At Waterloo her usual neutral smile in place, the usual courtesies offered and accepted, the usual immaculate appearance adjusted, she took her first steps into a world in which she perceived the possibility of being denied essential information, a world in which silence was commonplace, and absence a foregone conclusion.

  12

  Beatrice, strolling round the beauty counters in Harrods, which she did more and more frequently (‘Why don’t you go to a museum?’ asked Miriam. ‘The National Gallery?’) watched as a woman was lowered to a chair by an assistant and felt a sympathetic trembling in her own throat as the woman tried to apologize and failed. A collapse of some sort, a faint: no doubt a commonplace. Fortunately they knew how to deal with it. The assistant knelt by the woman’s chair, murmuring consolingly. Then suddenly the woman’s head went back and her legs spread untidily. Beatrice watched, unable to look away, as now two assistants attempted to hide her from public view, while a third, behind the counter, picked up a telephone to summon help. In due course two uniformed men picked up the chair, with the woman still spreadeagled on it, and carried it somewhere out of sight. She would be taken away, and when she recovered – if she recovered – she would be aware only that she had felt unwell. The unaesthetic aftermath, the rescue operation, would be obliterated. Beatrice had no doubt that an ambulance was already on its way, was perhaps being directed to a side door. Incredibly, very few people seemed to have noticed this incident. Sales of perfume were proceeding normally: advice was being given on moisturisers and foundations. The girls, so glossily unreal in their confected beauty, were perhaps more animated than usual, but expert at concealing what tremors they might have felt behind capable smiles. Later, in the staff-room, they might speculate on the woman’s fate, but without anguish. They were young; nothing similar could happen to them.

  Beatrice, who took some time to collect herself, who lingered, as if putting herself under Harrods’ protection, felt dismay at having witnessed such a terrible loss of dignity. Her own unsteadiness she attributed to some malign form of identification. She had felt at one with that unknown woman, had understood intimately what was happening to her, had seen it, or imagined it, all before. Her mother had had similar episodes, had emerged from them bewildered, had gone about her business shakily, as if soliciting forgiveness for her brief loss o
f autonomy. For it was always more or less brief, and she was only marginally aware. She was certainly unaware of its significance. Beatrice remembered with shame that she had fled from the room, unable to bear intimations of disaster. It was Miriam who had dealt with these crises, Miriam who had insisted on a proper investigation in hospital, ‘tests’, being the operative word, Miriam who had over-ridden the doctor and insisted on a private room. Beatrice still did not know how she had managed this. Their mother had lost all independence as soon as she was installed in the hospital bed, had initially asked when she could go home, then lost interest in the answers. ‘They are going to do some tests,’ she had told Beatrice, who had steeled herself to visit every day. But there was no time for tests, in which she retained an illusory confidence. Briefly she became another woman, lavished endearments on the nurses, took Beatrice’s hand and whispered to her such details of the nurses’ lives as she had been able to gather, always with a strange schoolgirlish glee. It was almost as if she had been relieved of her adulthood, of the strange world in which two sexes were active and in which she herself had achieved so little. In the nursery atmosphere she seemed to experience an odd peace. A final stroke killed her a mere eight days later.

  Thinking back Beatrice found this fate more unbearable than she had at the time. Her own legs were still unsteady; the sight of that unknown woman’s head, the careful bluish-grey hair now dishevelled, bobbing helplessly on a uniformed shoulder, had filled her with a brief alarm which connected with her own situation, though she could not have immediately said why this should be so. But she had always been sensitive, she reasoned, had indeed proclaimed her sensitivity to anyone who would listen to her. ‘I am a vulnerable person,’ she would say, half noticing but ignoring the sceptical look with which Miriam favoured this remark. But it was true, had always been true. Illness must be kept at arms’ length; no rumour of it must be allowed to reach her. Disasters must be concealed from her. Sometimes the television news made her tremble; an appeal from stricken parents could reduce her to tears. That was why her idle life was a form of protection against the world’s assaults; that was why she tolerated it so easily. Beatrice knew this, but thought that no one else might. To accede to a life of virtual inactivity after the grotesque prominence of the concert platform was incomprehensible to most. Mrs Anstruther, whom she had reluctantly invited one afternoon for a cup of tea, had overdone the sympathy. ‘It must be terrible for you, sitting here all day, now that your career is finished. I couldn’t imagine it for myself.’