Falling Slowly

by Anita Brookner

  ‘ Is that the sister?’ she heard one woman say to her companion. ‘Not much of a resemblance, is there? Beatrice was lovely. When she was young, of course.’

  As she waited politely for all these people to disperse Miriam realized that she was responsible for them until further notice. A procession of cars, headed by Miriam, Mrs Kinsella and Anne Marie formed: at the last moment she beckoned Max forward, moved despite herself by the trembling hand, still clutching his handkerchief, and the sunken eyes. He seemed grateful for this attention, which she afforded him only reluctantly; he, in his turn, was glad of the presence of the other two women, whom he took to be relations. Without them, Miriam knew, he might have been encouraged to dwell on his own sadness, which she did not doubt was genuine. But what did it comprise? Remorse over his flight, shame at his own very slight and convoluted warning, the night he had recognized the inevitability of Beatrice’s death? Miriam had had time to think about this, to read the signs. She bore him no malice; what had happened had not been Max’s fault. It could not be said to be anybody’s fault. But she still did not like him.

  ‘You’re living abroad now, I heard,’ she said, to break the silence.

  ‘Yes. I went back to Monaco. I managed to buy back my flat. The chap I sold it to only wanted it for the Cannes Festival.’

  ‘And will you stay?’

  He sighed. ‘Yes, I expect I’ll stay there now. My brother comes out from time to time. My sister doesn’t know me any more.’ His voice was monotonous, no longer the voice of a confident man. ‘There’s nothing to keep me in London. Those people at the funeral: I used to know them well. Now I hardly know them at all.’ He swivelled round from the passenger seat of the car. ‘Old age is a terrible thing, Miriam. Live while you can. It will all be taken away when you least expect it. You too, young lady. Make the most of your life.’ Miriam saw Anne Marie’s eyes dart towards her mother, saw the minute defensive lift of the shoulders, was glad of the girl’s robust scepticism. This event – the Kinsellas’ contribution to the proceedings – must be celebrated in due form. She did not yet know what form this would take, supposed that long discussions were in order, that she would have to stay at home for several days to give their conversations due weight. She was rather glad of this. She was now trembling, and, worse, yawning with hunger. When the car reached Wilbraham Place she looked up at their building, expecting to see Beatrice’s face. Latterly she had been greeted in this way. She had a moment of faintness when she saw that the window of the sitting-room was empty. Then she forced her expression back to neutral, and unlocked the door to admit all these kindly strangers, whose names, she was sure, would be offered in due course. What would she say to them? What did one say? ‘Thank you for coming,’ would be in order. But that was the formula usually offered to the departing guest, and she surmised that their departure would be delayed for some time.

  ‘Will there be a memorial service?’ asked a woman in a smart black hat.

  ‘Oh, no, nothing like that. Beatrice was a very private person.’

  She wondered if this was true. What was certain, and undeniable, was that Beatrice was not anyone’s wife, mother, or grandmother. That was what had made the death notice in The Times so brief. Few women remained unmarried, yet Beatrice had done so. At the same time she was so intensely romantic that it was hard to see how marriage had escaped her. In fact, Miriam reflected, the two conditions rarely went together. The true romantic fell in love all the time, as Beatrice had when young, disastrously susceptible to a handsome face, a lingering glance. Very private? One would have to be if one harboured such vulnerability. In retrospect Miriam congratulated her sister on having kept so much hidden. Her real feelings could be detected only by a look of perplexity in the round still childish eyes, or by a blush which she concealed by bravely animated conversation. She was an expert at concealment, or perhaps had become so after years of naïve disclosure of the most common, the most archaic enthusiasms. ‘Isn’t he good-looking?’ she would remark wistfully, as a photograph of a well-known person appeared in the newspaper. For like all romantics she responded more to outward appearance than to a consideration of worth or merit. She had discounted Miriam’s husband completely on account of his indifferent looks. His more serious shortcomings had barely registered.

  What was sad about being a very private person, as she had described Beatrice to this unknown woman, was that the condition was usually forced on one, or at least ascribed to one by others. Few doubted that it was sad, although Beatrice had been valiant, had not shown signs of self-pity, had deplored the sort of compromise entered into by their friend Suzanne, who, Miriam was surprised to see, was present, together with her predecessor’s mother. No doubt they would make for Harrods when their duty was judged to be done. Nor had Beatrice ever sought the company of other women, for fear of their questions. Her feelings were too deep, and no doubt too unhappy, to be shared. When she reached the age at which most women had small children she had felt the shame of loss, although again she had kept this to herself. It was detectable only in the bewilderment that overtook her from time to time, as if she did not fully understand why she had been left alone. Thereafter she tried even harder to perfect her mask of smiling serenity, worldly enough to know that this particular expression was rarely challenged publicly, although speculation would not be halted by it. But Beatrice would know nothing of that, or rather would choose to know nothing. She had smarted at her exclusion, but humiliation had soon turned to a genuine sadness, of which only Miriam was aware. But Miriam also knew that Beatrice was likely to be beguiled by so many potential lovers that a certain pleasure resided in the reveries they inspired. Miriam had seen her intense gaze on that horrible evening when Simon Haggard had first appeared, and had just as appropriately disappeared, only to reveal himself in another guise in Bryanston Square. For that reason neither referred to his visit, since each complicity cancelled the other out. When the affair that followed had revealed its limitations Miriam had wondered whether Beatrice had not chosen the better part. An unshared life, though not necessarily innocent, is at least allowed to cherish its original expectations.

  ‘All right?’ said Tom Rivers, touching her arm. ‘Shall I try to move them on?’

  ‘Soon,’ she replied. ‘But everyone has been so kind. I don’t want to seem ungrateful.’

  For there, amongst all the unknown faces, was one she did recognize, altered by age but still wearing the glad smile with which she had once greeted the girls in their now distant youth.

  ‘Mrs Oliver!’ she said. ‘How lovely to see you again. How long has it been?’

  ‘Oh, many years, dear, since I saw you two coming home from school. I wanted to pay my respects, as much to your mother as to Beatrice. I was away when she died; I felt badly about that. We were quite good friends, you know.’

  For Miriam remembered now. Their friendless mother had accepted this little woman as a friend, or rather had recognized that it was in order to respond to a neighbour who had shown such exceptional signs of friendliness. Mrs Oliver, who helped out at the local primary school, was a kind of genius, eager, unpretentious, always happy to lend a hand in an emergency, without any sign of reluctance or hesitation. She was the only person whom their mother, no doubt subject to ferocious inhibitions, admitted to her company, would not go so far as to invite her, but was happy, or more than happy, when Mrs Oliver dropped in and could be offered a cup of coffee without loss of face. Beatrice and Miriam had been grateful for Mrs Oliver’s assiduity. She had had the true instinct of friendship, or maybe it was love: she did not recognize stiffness or discouragement, merely attributing them to shyness, which was accurate in a number of cases. The blaze of Mrs Oliver’s unselfishness broke down all barriers. She shopped for neighbours, knew their children, presented the same eager face to strangers as she did to acquaintances of long standing. Even now the face was turned to Miriam as if Mrs Oliver were longing to perform some service. Miriam noted two teeth missing and reflected that
Mrs Oliver must be well over eighty. But she looked hardy: good works had replenished her energies. Miriam was reminded of statues of river gods she had seen in Rome: stone water pouring from an inexhaustible cornucopia, and no possibility that the arrested but continuous movement could ever be subject to change.

  ‘We very much appreciated your kindness to our mother,’ she now said.

  ‘Oh, we put the world to rights, Celia and I,’ laughed Mrs Oliver, who was a stranger to sadness and who probably took funerals in her stride.

  Celia? Miriam had not known that their mother had allowed such intimacy. She too had kept her own counsel, a gift she had transmitted to both the girls, her only gift, perhaps. Miriam now saw how her mother would have delighted in the company of this woman, would have taken a timid pride in playing the hostess on such terms of affability.

  ‘She was very proud of you two,’ said Mrs Oliver cheerfully. ‘Will you be all right, dear? I’d love to help you clear up, but I’ve quite a long journey, as you know.’

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said, as she was forced to say many times to the departing guests. Mrs Kinsella was already removing the plates and glasses, signalling to Miriam that she and Anne Marie were anxious to leave. In the kitchen Miriam took them both in her arms. This was the only time she felt tearful, as, apparently, did Mrs Kinsella. They smiled shakily at each other.

  ‘Do you want me to come in tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh, no. You deserve a day to yourself. You’ve been wonderful. Anne Marie too. I shan’t forget your kindness.’

  ‘I was fond of her, you know,’ said Mrs Kinsella, depositing her empty shopping-bags in the pedal bin. ‘I’ll see you the day after tomorrow, then. Take care.’

  When she returned to the sitting-room it was to find Max seated in Beatrice’s chair nursing a glass of whisky. ‘I was the last of that crowd to see her at all recently,’ he said. ‘What was it? Six, no, seven months ago. I tried to warn you, Miriam.’

  ‘You did. I thought you were exaggerating at the time, but when I moved back I saw for myself.’

  ‘I knew the signs,’ said Max, who seemed disposed to stay. ‘The mouth. That tells you everything. But you say she was run over?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Should she have been out on her own?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  In that case, he reflected, there was no one to blame but Beatrice herself. He tried a last shot. ‘You weren’t here, I suppose?’

  ‘No. I wasn’t here.’

  ‘I loved her, you know,’ said Max, looking into his glass as if surprised to find it empty.

  ‘Of course you did, Max. Everyone loved Beatrice. She hadn’t an enemy in the world.’

  ‘She had that gift of putting herself out to please, making herself agreeable. Women don’t do that any more.’ He became belatedly aware that he was talking to a woman. ‘She always did. I dare say you do too, Miriam.’

  Miriam wondered if they were thinking of the same person. Her Beatrice was a rather more immovable character than the pliant hostess whom Max evidently had in mind. Her Beatrice was a person with whom she had shared a deep but tacit bond, but whose compliance could not always be taken for granted. She wondered if that Beatrice would ever come back to her, or whether she would be changed for ever into the stereotype so recently celebrated by her former friends. That was it: they had changed Beatrice into somebody else. Perhaps it was the function of funerals to distance the dead from the living, to turn them into unknown people to whom strangers had access. And worse: to make sure that they were never again entirely knowable. This thought frightened her. What if she were now to lose sight of Beatrice, who had kept her company for so long, and whose reliance on her watchfulness had not always been easy to shoulder? She wanted to be alone, so that she could sit quietly in Beatrice’s bedroom, and, if possible, call her back to life.

  Tom Rivers came back, bringing cool air from outdoors. ‘They’ve all gone,’ he said. ‘All sent on their way. You must be exhausted, Miriam. Shall we leave you in peace? Or would you like me to come back later and take you out for a meal?’

  ‘Anything,’ she said desperately. She suddenly felt that more words were beyond her. Her mouth was sour from the sherry she had drunk and her head ached.

  ‘Can I give you a lift?’ he said politely to Max, who had poured himself a small whisky.

  ‘You shouldn’t drink any more,’ said Miriam sharply.

  Sharpe by name and sharp by nature, he reflected, hauling himself out of his chair. She had a married name but he had never bothered to remember it. Disagreeable as ever.

  ‘You’ll stay here, I suppose?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. Where else would I go?’

  Pity about the flat, he thought. But in truth he was not sorry. London had become alien. And those old friends: not one of them had issued an invitation. He did not blame himself, but his age, and, once more, his appearance. His ugly face no longer had prestige behind it, nor any vestige of sexual energy. He longed to be in Monaco, where no one could witness his fall from grace. He would leave immediately, he decided, or rather when he had had a rest. That was the one advantage of staying once more with his brother. There was no need to explain the facts of ageing to him. He knew them well enough. All those trim fifty- and sixty-year-olds had annoyed him. They’ll find out, he thought vengefully, as he allowed himself to be led from the room. He collected his hat from the hall table, glad now of this stranger’s arm.

  Alone, Miriam walked through the flat, opening all the windows, then went into Beatrice’s room and leaned over the iron railing that did duty for a balcony. It had been a beautiful day, and the evening was clear. She could hear the sounds of home-going traffic and longed to be out in the street, sharing the hour at which it was legitimate to think of pleasure. She supposed it would not be appropriate for her to wander out, simply to savour the beautiful evening. Beatrice had been the expert on appropriate behaviour: now, newly exposed, she imagined onlookers expressing surprise and mild admonition if she were to pick up her keys and walk into the park. She looked round the room: all was neat, undisturbed. At the sight of Beatrice’s slippers she faltered. But the tears, so near the surface, still did not come.

  In her own room she surveyed the manuscript on her desk and knew that tomorrow, or the next day, she would settle down to work again, would keep her regular afternoon hours at the London Library, was now free to go there all day, with nothing or no one to call her home. That, surely, was the point: there was no longer anyone to welcome her home. It would be hard now to live alone, with no conversation, however mild, to punctuate the evenings. And the evenings would now be getting longer, more beautiful, so that, alone, she would measure their poignancy. Beneath her sadness, which she had managed to keep under control, she identified another feeling: disappointment that Simon had not thought to attend the funeral. There was no reason why he should have done: one did not attend the funerals of those whom one had met only once, yet something – compunction, perhaps – might have prompted another kind of person to pay his respects to one whose career had ended by his decree. For she now saw that it might not have been Max who made that final decision, but had left it to a younger partner, newly appointed, to go through the books, to examine the returns, and to suggest that Beatrice Sharpe was no longer an asset. It was usually young people who made brutal decisions, and Max, for all his double dealing, might have adopted indifference as his strategy. He had been on the verge of retirement; besides, it was not in his nature to wish the firm well when he was no longer there to take the credit. He might even have, quite enjoyably, anticipated a few problems for his successors. Simon’s confusion had been appealing; no doubt it was genuine. But the fact remained that both she and Beatrice had been comprehensively let down by him. Her own disappointment had lasted longer, might last for ever. Love, arriving at this late stage, had ruined her life.

  And yet she did not want to see him again, was too afraid of revealing her lack of comprehension of
so agile a character. For his slipperiness had something legendary about it. He was the sly hero of a fairy tale, who is unaware of his own slyness, but who nevertheless relies on it to get him out of trouble. As it had done. She had not reproached him, but now she was troubled by her own discretion. He had simply moved on, out of her reach. And Beatrice too had been left behind, to live out the rest of her days being polite, rather than angry, as she might have been. ‘Silence is golden,’ had been their father’s favourite maxim; no doubt he would have been proud of them. And ‘Humility in all is an essential virtue. Dr Johnson,’ he would add, as if they had not grown used to hearing it. By that time he had almost proudly given up exchanging information with anyone. So in effect they had all been barred from communication, not only in that silent house, which she now saw with surprise as the home they had both lost, but later, throughout their lives.