Falling Slowly

by Anita Brookner

  When the doorbell rang she forgave him instantly, forgot, genuinely forgot his absence, the scene in the restaurant, forgot Tom Rivers. Yet when she opened the door it was to Max Gruber, a curious hat held to his chest, in an attitude suggestive of ardour, or devotion.

  ‘Max,’ she said hopelessly. ‘It’s very late.’

  He glanced at her in surprise. ‘It’s only just after ten-thirty. May I come in?’

  ‘I was just going to bed,’ she lied. ‘Is anything the matter?’

  He followed her in, turning the brim of his hat between his hands, gave a quick appraising glance to her living-room, which, he noted automatically, was not to his taste.

  ‘It’s Beatrice,’ he said. ‘I’m a little concerned. Have you seen her lately?’

  ‘Not for about ten days, no. Why, what is the matter?’

  ‘I took her out to dinner,’ he said. In retrospect this action seemed to him virtuous, in view of what had happened. ‘She doesn’t look too well to me, Miriam.’

  This was a careful understatement. His usual soliloquy had been interrupted by a shocking incident. Beatrice had dropped her fork, upset a glass of wine, and – the worst thing of all – had not noticed that she had done so. Within a few minutes she had turned to normal, had looked about her in a dazed manner, had laughed a little uncertainly, then had said, ‘Do go on,’ although he had been watching her in consternation, had noticed her missing fork, then had pushed her plate away, as if she could not bear the sight of food. He had summoned the waiter to remove the stained tablecloth, had demanded the bill, and had sat there with an attentive expression on his face, his mind racing.

  He had seen it all before, had commiserated at too many bedsides, had attended too many memorial services to quell his inner conviction. And this was not even a memorial service, which he was usually in a position to enjoy, seeing old friends, fellow survivors. He thought of memorial services as cocktail parties for the elderly, and preferable to other social occasions in that one could sit down. But this manifestation was the sort that preceded memorial services; this was the introduction to a long period of decline, at which he had no desire to be present. Events had outrun him. He had had a gentle, a very gentle period of informal friendship in mind, himself looking in periodically until invited to stay on. He was an old man; he could not tolerate any other outcome. His own heart had beaten uncomfortably in the restaurant, aware of all the other diners turning away tactfully as the waiter stripped off the tablecloth and replaced it with another. A little of the wine had splashed on to Beatrice’s blue jacket. She did not notice this at the time, but when they got up to leave – and he had helped her to her feet – she had uttered a cry of distress and dabbed at it repeatedly, so that the table was once again strewn with stained linen.

  He said none of this to Miriam, not wishing to involve himself further. He knew, with a sense of shame, that he would now bow out of Beatrice’s life. He would telephone from time to time, assure her of his undying devotion, and say that he was going away for a while. Maybe he would even do so. The weather was colder than he remembered it from his days in London, when he had always been bustling, busy, too busy to notice the temperature. His busyness had created its own microclimate. Now he thought almost nostalgically of the concrete panorama from his windows in Monaco, wondered if this might not be a good time to try and redeem his flat, or one like it. He had no ties, or rather he no longer had any ties. His dream of a new home had been only that, a dream. And if there were to be bad news, as he knew there would be, he might be better off out of reach. He felt deeply depressed at these thoughts, which had entered his head with magical suddenness as he manoeuvred Beatrice into a cab. He had seen her into the flat, had raised his hat and kissed her, but had not ventured further. He had done what he could, had survived the embarrassment in his usual worldly manner, but had felt frightened, and when he was alone in the street took a few minutes to regain his equilibrium. Bad news was fatal to men of his age. This was not the convivial atmosphere of a memorial service but the real thing, a glimpse of an altered state. Such as might befall him at any moment, he reminded himself. He had done the best he could, and now he handed the whole problem over to Miriam. It would be her business to do the nursing, the encouraging, and eventually the mourning. The more he thought about it the less he wanted to see either of them again.

  But Beatrice! That that once lovely girl, with her intriguing air of helplessness, should have come to this, and so quickly! Apart from his sister he knew no other ill people, was careful to stay away from them after the one obligatory visit, felt a sense of relief once they disappeared. His duty now, he reasoned, was to himself, yet he realized sorrowfully that he was not man enough to deal with a situation that held so much grief. Therefore the younger sister, whom he had apprised of the facts (but not all of them) must assume the task as of right. He eyed her carefully: she looked pale, older. He felt a moment’s compassion, to which he surrendered, reached out and patted her hand.

  Miriam thought that she had advanced beyond mere irritation, but the sight of Max’s freckled hand provoked her to an almost enjoyable exasperation. She thought him ridiculous, this whole visit an intrusion. She had early written him off as an inveterate but harmless tease of the old school; her animosity was only just concealed by her carefully neutral expression. ‘Max looked in,’ Beatrice had said recently, on more than one occasion, taking the style for the substance. Max, they both knew, was not a suitor; he was a courtier, and they had no illusions that this man, or any like him, could make a genuine commitment. There was no loyalty in him. His flowery manner hid so many genuine feints that it was as well to take nothing he said seriously. Therefore it was in order to give an ear to his protestations and to discount them at once. This masquerade was guaranteed to please him, or to please his vanity, which was considerable. He liked women, took every opportunity to cultivate them. In the company of women he rediscovered something of his youth, at home, when he had been adored by his mother and sister, by clucking aunts, even by a remote grandmother. Few spoiled him nowadays. Only Beatrice was gentle enough to play her part.

  ‘Why exactly are you here, Max? Couldn’t you have telephoned?’

  ‘I don’t sleep very well,’ he confessed. This at least was the truth. ‘I wasn’t in a hurry to get home. And you are so near …’

  He thought she might have offered him a cup of coffee, made more of an effort. He was affronted by her cross expression. So great was her annoyance that he could see that she had not fully understood what he had been saying. He was saying that Beatrice did not look too well. To Miriam there was nothing new in that. Miriam thought that for a woman with all the time in the world to fuss about minor ailments Beatrice managed rather successfully. This was clearly written on her face.

  ‘Beatrice has always worried about her health,’ she said.

  ‘I think she has reason to.’ His tone was sharper than he had intended. It was some years since he had issued an order (although that had usually come out in the form of a request). Now he was prepared to arrange matters, in so far as this was his responsibility. Yet he felt a reluctance to inflict a burden on this slight tense woman. He knew exactly what he was handing on, knew almost squeamishly why he was doing so. But this was his chance. He was not duty bound to Miriam, only slightly more so to Beatrice. She had looked quite preoccupied when he had said goodnight, her earlier hospitality in abeyance. He had waited until he heard the door close, had made his way slowly down the stairs. Now Miriam, who suspected him of fraudulence, was quite clearly, and not too politely, waiting for him to leave.

  ‘If you could keep an eye on her,’ he suggested.

  ‘Of course. I have always kept an eye on Beatrice.’

  ‘I say all this because I may have to go away.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Back to Monaco. Some trouble with the flat, you know.’

  ‘I thought you had sold it.’

  ‘Only on a short lease.’ He thought how disagreeab
le she was.

  ‘I’ll look in tomorrow. I can’t do anything tonight, can I?’

  ‘Well, Miriam,’ he said. ‘It was good to see you again, however briefly.’ With the prospect of departure his usual manners returned. ‘Goodnight, my dear. Oh, and give my love to Beatrice when you see her.’

  Outside in the street, he replaced his hat carefully, conscious of an onerous task accomplished, though not with honour. He shrugged. He had done his best. He was only human, he sighed, and there, in the dark, there was no one to express the slightest shadow of disapprobation.

  14

  When the girls were young, when the house was becalmed, and no visits could be expected, they walked, on Sunday afternoons, round the silent streets of their suburb and sometimes as far as the scrubby woodland that surrounded it. Though berating the silence, the inactivity, they experienced a certain peace as their steps took them past the houses of neighbours who on any other day they would greet politely. They were on the lookout for signs of a domesticity that was foreign to their own circumstances, as if they could glimpse not only other lives but a life which they might live if fortune favoured them. Were those curtains on an upper floor still drawn at three o’clock in the afternoon? Then the couple who lived there were still in bed. They looked at each other, hardly daring to imagine such a thing. The two schoolteachers who shared a house could be seen talking through an open window, cups and saucers raised genteelly to their lips: they too must be bored. The elderly man in the cardigan was, as usual, tending his garden, raking up the fallen leaves, for it always seemed to be the same time of year, that uneventful time before the dark days imposed their own curfew, and it was cold enough to send them home early, grateful that the day had been more or less dealt with.

  That was the function of those walks, which were accepted as a sort of ritual. In retrospect they took on an aura of tradition, in a family which had no traditions. They leaned towards each other; sometimes Beatrice took Miriam’s arm. To an outside observer, but there were few, they presented a picture of maidenly rectitude which was not entirely incorrect: the quiet weather cast its own spell on them, and for brief moments they savoured the innocence they were so anxious to lose. They were in that mood of heightened receptivity that enables one to ponder the shape of a leaf, flattened on the pavement by a recent shower, or to stand quite still to watch a squirrel bound past them. They breathed in the semi-rural smells, almost in love with this place where nothing happened, and where they were still safe. One day they would leave it all behind and discover with some surprise that they remembered it with a sort of tenderness. It was only human presence that was disconcerting. Finally, the domesticity of others, or what they imagined of it, failed to impress them with its desirability. Their own could be postponed. For the moment this brief interval was enough.

  They would sigh as they discussed their present discontents, but by the end of the afternoon their expressions would be clear of irritation or of longing. They were both subject to the same decrees, the same circumstances; though they might groan at the prospect of another Sunday they knew that such Sundays would always be re-enacted, knew too that the peculiar spell of such Sundays would somehow work on them, disposing them to calm and order of a kind unfamiliar to them on any other day of the week. In this way they learned that acceptance is not always a matter of resignation but of recognition. The very air was uncontentious. Their aspirations, confused and urgent, their longing to escape, to live as fully as possible, seemed far away. They sensed that such moments prolonged their childhood, which was after all safely in the past. It was just that at such times adulthood was equally safely consigned to some vague period in the future. It was often dusk when they turned their steps towards home. The tea would be made; their father would say, as always, ‘Did you have a good walk? Where did you go?’ knowing that they would not tell him, and for once accepting their brief replies as a sign that nothing had changed, before turning back to his paper. Neither parent lived long enough to witness their emancipation, for which they were sometimes grateful.

  Contemplating their present lives they agreed, but silently, that this had been a blessing. These days they avoided those who had formerly known them, ashamed of, but again accepting, their tenor of life, much as they had once accepted the silent Sundays of their youth. These days they walked cautiously round their much more affluent streets, finding them lacking in incident, comparing them unfavourably with their earlier surroundings. Once again Beatrice took Miriam’s arm, no longer out of inclination but from necessity; her right leg dragged slightly after one of those episodes which neither of them was brave enough to name, but which brought a certain solemnity to Mrs Kinsella’s demeanour. She became as much of a friend as they were prepared to admit, even looked forward to the sound of her key in the door. But Sundays they had to themselves. On Sundays they were amazed to see traffic still active in the streets when they themselves were so contemplative. They walked up to the park or down to the river. They preferred the river prospect, but here the cars rushed past them more ferociously. ‘George Eliot lived here,’ Miriam would say. ‘And Henry James had a flat a little further along. He was quite poor. You can see how rich George Eliot must have been.’ Beatrice would reply vaguely. She no longer read as much as she used to, preferred to sit in her chair and dream. Miriam knew that if she had not moved back to Wilbraham Place Beatrice would have got up later and later and gone to bed earlier and earlier. There would have been no harm in this, but it was best postponed. Full knowledge comes soon enough.

  But mostly, on these walks, they gravitated to less pretentious streets, where men were not ashamed to be seen collecting their newspapers in carpet slippers, where boys romped with dogs, and women carried washing to the launderette. They would take a taxi to the end of the long main road, past the council estates and the petrol station, and discover unknown small houses in terraces hidden from the public gaze. The whine of cars could still be heard but they felt safe, protected from all that urgent traffic, silent and ruminative. It was in Beatrice’s nature these days to prefer the small to the great, to value the diminutive – an ornament glimpsed through a window between two loops of nylon curtain, a child’s doll’s pram in a tiny front garden, a ball abandoned on a doorstep – as if such humility was a protection in itself. She said nothing, not wanting to alarm Miriam. By the same token Miriam no longer criticized Beatrice, blamed herself for having done so in the past, on so many occasions. She found herself reading Beatrice’s newspaper, not with annoyance but with genuine curiosity, studied articles on liposuction and hormone replacement therapy. ‘My husband left me for another man,’ she read. Was this what women discussed these days? In the same way she watched late afternoon television with some of Beatrice’s own gravity, before listening to the shipping forecast on the wireless. ‘Mallin Head rising today,’ was sometimes the only comment that passed between them. Their meals were light. Beatrice would have eaten from a tray, but Miriam insisted on laying a table, just as she insisted that Beatrice dress herself every day. When Beatrice went to her room, and to bed, Miriam would fetch her briefcase and settle down to work. She worked late into the night, glad of the reprieve but with a sense of urgency, as if this translation must be finished before worse befell them. This outcome was never specified, but came to form one unified impression, along with the child’s doll’s pram, the elderly men in carpet slippers, the monotony of their days, and the shipping forecast.

  Rubbing her aching eyes in the early hours of Monday morning Miriam longed for the usual sounds to begin again and life to return to the streets. On Monday morning proper she would go out, join the stream of those going to work, and look curiously at the faces of the smart girls with briefcases, the young men with sports bags, as if they were a different species. How was your weekend, she wanted to ask them. Did you stay in bed till noon, go out to lunch, buy the papers, and read until it was perhaps time to visit the in-laws or drive over to friends? She could not have described her own Sund
ays with any degree of conviction: the ride in the taxi, the slow progress through the recreation ground, the checking of small landmarks, perhaps a timid smile of acknowledgement from one of the people they were likely to pass. She knew that Beatrice was endangered, that she herself might be at risk. The risks were enormous. That most of them had already been taken was no safeguard for the future.

  Since moving back to Wilbraham Place she had given her telephone number to no one but Tom Rivers. He had called quite frequently in the early days, seemed puzzled by her unavailability, and unconvinced by explanations which he thought were excuses.

  ‘My sister is not at all well,’ she had said. ‘I don’t like to leave her, particularly in the evenings.’

  He had asked what the doctor had said, had been impatient when she explained that Beatrice did not want to see a doctor, or rather no longer wanted to see a doctor, since the young man who had originally turned up in response to a call from Miriam to the emergency service had mentioned the possibility of a slight stroke. Horrified, she had shut the bedroom door behind her, afraid that Beatrice might hear him. But Beatrice had heard, and had embargoed further visits.

  ‘He was too young,’ she had said, almost normally. ‘What could he possibly know? Where did you get him from, anyway?’

  ‘From that outfit the chemist told me about, Medcall.’

  ‘There you are then. Probably not long registered, out till all hours to earn some money. I won’t have anyone here again, Miriam. And you can forget that nonsense about strokes. It was more likely a panic attack. I used to have them, do you remember, when I was young?’

  Miriam thought it prudent not to question this: the explanation would serve them well enough. And Beatrice seemed not to have suffered any decline in perception or intelligence. But when she was tired her speech was a little unclear, and she winced when she got up from her chair, as if her leg were numb. All this Miriam had tried to explain to Rivers in hushed telephone calls, and finally, since she did not wish to be overheard, over lunch. He seemed to think that the whole matter could be dealt with rationally, that a housekeeper could be engaged, or a nurse.