The food which I had bought, and which I should have to buy again and again, seemed insubstantial, the plastic carrier bag pathetic. I placed the contents on the kitchen table: a grapefruit, butter, a tin of coffee. This was not a meal. In the last days of her life my mother had subsisted on tea and biscuits: I now did the same, shamefully. I seemed to have lost my amused perspective on the world. The only respite was to get out of the flat; buying the food seemed to me nothing more than a pretext. In those dark streets I had recovered slightly, as if it were my destiny to go about, a wanderer on the face of the earth, unclaimed. This was how I spent those not quite innocent holidays in cathedral cities, making opportunities for myself which now seemed to me equally shameful. And I was hungry. The prospect of a meal, served in decent surroundings, now seemed enticing, and I resolved to eat out in future. I would take Wiggy with me, although I knew that she might prove recalcitrant. She was a home-loving creature, and seemed to have resigned herself to a life of waiting, as if her lover might look in at any minute, although as far as I knew his visits were infrequent. I had often wondered how she put up with this. I could not conceive of such passivity, at least for a woman at the end of the twentieth century, although I had the example of my mother constantly before me. But my mother was hors catégorie; no one could elect to live that way now. And in any event, with her death, a new order was established, one in which I had only myself to rely on, in which the future would be of my own making.
Somehow I must arrange affairs so that these dreadful days and evenings were not to be repeated. I was uncertain how this was to be achieved, but I thought, or rather hoped, that serendipity would play a part. It had not so far let me down. The job at the shop had come about almost without any effort on my part. I had answered a mysterious advertisement in the Spectator which merely stated that help was needed on a private literary project. I had telephoned the number given, had been summoned for an interview, and once I had got past the recalcitrant door had met both Colliers whom I had immediately classed as unworldly, much more unworldly than I was. They had engaged me at once, which seemed to me suspicious, until they showed me the basement. This was gloomy, not quite clean, and smelled of gas.
‘You will not be disturbed,’ Muriel assured me. ‘We get very little call for foreign language books, though why that should be I can’t quite understand. We get a certain number of academics in the summer. Those who know where to find us, that is. They tend to come back. Pleasant people.’
The peaceful silence of the shop had surprised me. It was not out of the way, far from it, but it had a provincial air, as if it had been in a side street in Ludlow, or Barnstaple. And then Muriel, behind her desk, did not look like a shopkeeper. She had a distant aristocratic appearance which she had no doubt cultivated as being suitable for the daughter of a man of letters. What had surprised me was her superiority, which was genuine. Yet here was a woman who had devoted her life to this dusty enterprise, as though it were a genuine calling. I did not then know about her days in the Land Army, which would have seemed to me as remote as the Peasants’ Revolt. Rather I imagined suitors battling their way in vain through the obstinate door, and being held at arm’s length by Muriel Collier’s distant but well-mannered smile. She seemed to accept me without question, or maybe she was simply anxious to get back to her reading.
‘Have you had many applications for the post?’ I inquired cannily. I had already removed my coat.
‘One or two,’ she replied. ‘They seemed disappointed when I explained the work to them. I think they saw themselves putting together something more contemporary. And they were unsuitable in ways I could not quite understand. So modern, you know. Young men with their shirts hanging out. And one older man smelling of drink who evidently thought I should have heard of him. He had a beard, and a collection of mannerisms. I could see that he despised me. Called me “Dear lady,” detected spinsterishness. Well, I am a spinster; I make no apology for that. How soon do you think you could start?’
I was startled, had not expected to come so far so quickly. I said that I could start at once, if that was what she wanted. She gave me a smile that lit up her pale austere features.
‘You had better familiarize yourself with the material,’ she said. ‘And there is a café round the corner if you require lunch.’ She spoke as if lunch were a reckless indulgence. ‘And my sister comes round at about four o’clock with something for our tea. I’m sure you will be happy here. But,’ she held up an admonitory hand, ‘I must be sure that you will take the work seriously. My sister and I revered our father. These days, I dare say, he would appear unsophisticated. But he wrote in happier times, before all this satire.’ I did not point out that satire was mainly the product of the long-dead Sixties. I was anxious to get down to work. When she mentioned the minuscule salary, also characteristic of the Sixties, I understood why all those young men with their shirts hanging out had turned the job down. This was a time warp. St John Collier, whose œuvre I was about to disinter, was no more a figure of the past than was his daughter. When Hester arrived that same afternoon, her presence announced by an eager shout from outside the door, which her sister was then obliged to open, I felt immensely at ease.
I might also say at home. St John Collier’s writings struck me as entirely worthy, although the added attraction was the piles of obsolete women’s magazines in which most of them were entombed. The nature articles I could deal with more or less summarily. But in the basement, on my own, except for a very occasional customer, I could indulge my curiosity, not in the great man himself, but in all those horoscopes, those letters of advice—so prudent, so circumspect—written, I suspected, and replied to by the august woman whose photograph was featured at the top of the page, those constipating recipes, and above all the illustrations to the stories, with their winsome lady role models (except that nobody had them then) and their air of gentility which even I, a spoiled product of a later age, felt bound to admire.
Nostalgia for the shop struck me painfully, but I still had this peculiar interval to observe. Truth to tell it rather frightened me, while the poor array of comestibles which I had dumped on the kitchen table and still not put away made me heartsick. I felt as if someone should be looking after me, but had the sense to see that this attitude was dangerously unhealthy, even archaic. I still had the weekend to get through, and this I knew would be difficult. Weekends were supposed to be festive; they were to be anticipated joyfully. I had always found them somewhat problematic. I seemed to sleep badly on a Friday night, and of course towards the end of my mother’s life I hardly slept at all. She had died on a Sunday, which I knew would forever colour the day which even happy people find burdensome, at least towards the evening. I could do what everybody else did now, go to a six o’clock film, if that was what I wanted. That left the matter of food. I was by now quite hungry, and it was still only Friday. I resolved to telephone Wiggy and invite her, quite casually, out for a meal. In Wiggy’s company I should feel less awkward, less conspicuous; my bereaved state would be less obvious. And if necessary I should eat out every evening, early, on my way home from work. But I still longed to get back to the shop, and the Greek café round the corner, and Hester’s cakes. An extraordinary shift seemed to have taken place in my habits and customs. I suppose that this is the inevitable result of a death in the family.
On the Saturday evening Muriel Collier telephoned to ask how I was. I thought that was good of her, and gratefully assured her that I was fine. My voice seemed strange to me, and evidently to Muriel as well, for I was told that I need not come back to work until I felt like it. I promised her that I would be in on Monday, trying not to sound too eager. Then I rang Wiggy, and suggested a meal, which I thought might inaugurate various other meals. I thought the timing was right: her lover never appeared at the weekend but devoted himself to familial pursuits in the Home Counties.
‘All right,’ she said cautiously. ‘Where would you suggest?’
‘Oh, we’ll find
something,’ I promised her. ‘I’ll pick you up around seven.’
So I did, but our dinner was not a success. Two women on their own amid the Saturday night revellers did not make a good impression. There is a stigma, even now. I said as much to Wiggy, who did not particularly want to be reminded of this. Not that her lover ever takes her out for a meal. It is rather that his presence in her life gives her a feeling of being accompanied, and this, however illusory, confers a certain composure. For one dreadful minute in the course of the evening I saw that she felt sorry for me. That was no doubt why she said, ‘This is fun. Let’s do it again.’ But the pasta (which, come to think of it, I could have cooked at home) seemed hard to digest, and the noisy restaurant was beginning to give me a headache. I longed to be out in the homegoing streets, alone, though I knew that I was condemned to such occasions for the foreseeable future. Wiggy knew this too, but we were honour bound to observe the proprieties.
‘I’ll ring you tomorrow,’ she said, with a tentative squeeze of my arm. And we parted, I think, gratefully, which merely added to my sadness.
I walked the usual route home, slipping from shadow to light to shadow again. The flat was warm when I let myself in; although it was late May the weather was still wintry. I thought I might spend the following day, Sunday, tidying my mother’s room, throwing away all the childproof pill bottles which at the end remained unopened. I went to bed discouraged, but I slept deeply and woke with a slightly lighter heart. I spent the morning and a good part of the afternoon tidying and cleaning: this was no doubt how I should spend all my remaining Sundays. This thought made me sad all over again, and I went to bed far too early. That is why, perversely, I overslept on the Monday morning, and was late arriving at the shop. Muriel raised her eyebrows slightly and pointed downwards. I thought she was consigning me repressively to my duties in the basement, but in fact all she meant was that I should not make too much noise. We had a customer.
Three
At first the man in the basement looked to me like an older and more careworn version of the man with bowed head in the café in Marylebone Lane who was not Mrs Hildreth’s son and for whom I had imagined a whole illusory history. (I am not infallible.) This man had the same air of lassitude, which I detected in spite of his polished appearance. He was formally dressed for his visit to a dusty bookshop, although he could not have known that it would be quite so dusty. He wore a finely tailored grey suit with a faint chalk stripe, a very white shirt, and highly polished shoes. I think it was the brilliantly laundered shirt that led me to make the comparison with Mrs Hildreth’s putative son, as if this man too had emerged from the hands of a watchful woman and set out, fully caparisoned, to encounter the hazards of the ordinary working day.
Except that this man obviously had no connection with the world of work: he was too careful, too immaculate. And besides, what sort of man do you find in a bookshop at ten o’clock on a Monday morning, unless he is some sort of don, about his own affairs? This man, however, was too presentable to be one of the academics we get in from time to time. He turned briefly when I said ‘Good morning’ before turning back to the shelves. I had an impression of a fine blond head and a fair-skinned face prematurely worn into furrows of anxiety which gave him an elderly look, although his figure was tall and upright and rather graceful.
In his hasty return to his earlier perusal of the shelves I sensed a reserve. This man would not waste time on a strange woman, with whom in any case he was not on terms of familiarity or friendship. I found him attractive, more attractive than the prospect of a day with St John Collier, who had begun to acquire a patina of benign tediousness. I pitied those two girls having to listen to him throughout their childhood, although the experience seemed to have done them no harm. Their respect for their father had remained intact, a fact at which I could only marvel. My own father had never emitted a single philosophical or semi-philosophical dictum, so that I had learned at an early age not to look to him for enlightenment, or even very much in the way of affection. He found me as tiresome as I found him, but I had never quite resolved the factors that made us so antagonistic.
I took the cover off my typewriter and pretended to be studying my papers. It would be impolite to start work with this man at my back, although he was paying me no attention. From what I could judge he was reading his way steadily through whatever came to hand, as if he had found sanctuary in our basement and was in no hurry to leave. I also detected an almost unnatural stillness, almost a watchfulness about him, as if he were sensitive to my own inactivity, or as if he knew that I was not normally an inactive person whom he had no wish to constrain by his presence. For this reason he was conscious of me, as I was of him. I shuffled the typewritten pages on my desk; clearly I could not start on the women’s magazines while he appeared to be reading Heine’s collected poems. I corrected a few typing errors, resolving to work properly, in a resolute fashion, when he had gone. But he showed no signs of going, and in the end I merely sat still, with a pen in my hand, as if to give an impression of profound thought.
He did not much worry me. I am at ease with men, to whom I am inclined to forgive much. This, I thought, was the direct legacy of my unfortunate father, to whom I forgave little. I was ten years old when he had his first stroke, and I became used to his clumsy presence, but also to his irascibility, as if not enough deference were being paid to his condition. He was inclined to sulk when he considered himself to be neglected. In fact he was not neglected, but he was quick to sense when my mother was tired, or when I warily brought him a cup of tea and was forced to watch while it ran down his chin … And that awful last sight of him as he lay comatose in the hospital, his hand still about its business under the sheet. ‘It’s the catheter that’s bothering him,’ said the nurse, but she was young, and as embarrassed as I was.
For that reason I appreciated wholeness in men, whatever their moral character. The partners I have chosen have all been well set up, viable, as if I need to know that they carry no trace of mortal illness, that I am not threatened with their decrepitude. My worst nightmare is to be shackled to a sick man, for I have seen what physical sickness can do to the mind. I dare say my father was aware of his lamentable appearance. I am sure he was aware of my lack of love for him. But with a young person’s primitive instincts I was frightened of ugliness, wanted to have nothing to do with it. To have him in the flat all day was bad enough. And to be fair I was not entirely to blame. He did not care for me, although he pretended to do so. He cared only for my mother, who tended him faithfully. He found my childhood noises distasteful, which was why I soon learned to be quiet, so as not to remind him of my presence. I was anxious not to have to encounter him, although this was impossible, as he installed himself in the living-room and stayed there, in his chair, unavoidably present. For this reason, when I came home from school, I made straight for my bedroom. I read a lot in those days. I have a picture of myself furiously reading, my fingers in my ears to drown out the sound of his harsh, altered voice, how it came out as a groan, as if he were angry all the time.
No doubt he was angry, yet he was determined to live, whereas I, again with the ruthlessness of a child, thought it would be more appropriate if he would simply disappear. I was nineteen when he had the second stroke, the one that killed him. Until then all I knew of men was impairment, inadequacy. After that I wanted only a certificate of durability, unaltered features, easy unthinking movements. Presumably daughters are more easily influenced by their father’s habits and appearance than by their worth. The idea that my father could have provided me with worldly instruction was simply laughable. Who could learn from a man so gracelessly concerned with what remained of his damaged life? Or so I thought, in my ignorance. In mitigation I can state that he was inclined to dismiss me as unimportant. It was not until he was dead that I began to relax. It was shortly after his death that I took, at my mother’s urging, my first tentative holiday. I like to think she remained in ignorance of what was to become somethin
g of a habit. In any event my holidays were never discussed in detail. We pored over the photographs and postcards together—rood screens and tympanums, choirstalls, misericords, clerestories and elevations—as if these had had exclusive claims on my attention. I faltered when I found that she had compiled several albums of the postcards, which she kept in her bedroom. She was so innocent herself that I am sure she managed to think me innocent as well.
I am alert now to signs of damage in a man. If this is combined with physical excellence I feel a perverse desire to take him over, as if his weakness excited me. When the two conditions are combined—attractiveness and hesitation—our conjunction is often spectacular. I sometimes think that my childish ruthlessness has survived undiminished, but in fact I am careful to cause no harm. Indeed I disappear discreetly, leaving several questions unanswered. I wish that this particular pattern did not impose itself, that I could happily offer affection without that slight feeling of vengeful satisfaction. On the whole I have managed quite well. It is just that my mother’s death, and the sight of those photograph albums, which kept company by her bed together with Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, had weakened me. And perhaps I was undergoing the influence of St. John Collier’s sweet-natured assertions, as if to believe in a happier world were within the capacity of even fallen creatures like myself. For I knew myself to be at fault. The intolerance I had manifested towards my father had left a stain, which was why I was such a solitary person. A solitary person with a longing for wholeness, an experience which would cancel all the others. A baptism, if you like.
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