Undue Influence

by Anita Brookner

  Somehow I was able to get rid of this feeling, so that I turned imperceptibly into what customers expected the manageress of a bookshop to be: useful, tactful, helpful. But a heaviness settled over me and I wondered how long I should have to continue like this. In the afternoons Muriel came in for an hour. Her manners were always restrained, but now I saw that she regarded me with something like suspicion, as if I had taken over from her, was filling the place where she had elected to spend her life, had ousted her, in short, although without me she would have had to shut the shop or even sell it. She would look round the shelves, almost disappointed that nothing was amiss, then take the money round to the bank. This I saw as the first sign of distrust on her part, for I could easily have done it myself, and indeed had done in the past. Those customers who remembered her greeted her absently but came to me with their purchases. When she had gone I resigned myself to those long empty hours before I could close and sat at my desk with a book in front of me which I did not read. I walked home through now dull and dusty streets, eating at the café where Wiggy and I had gone, and reached Montagu Mansions at about eight o’clock. It was too early to go to bed but sometimes I did so, feeling heavy and disappointed, though without cause.

  Every time the door of the shop opened I expected to see Martin, but he was absent for what seemed a long time, though it was really only a couple of weeks. I told myself that he was staying with those friends of his, either in Dorset or in Cortona, and this caused me an odd feeling of displacement, as if it were I who had gone away and was homesick in unfamiliar surroundings. His absence was not entirely unexpected. I felt as if I had ruined my chances, although I knew I could retrieve the situation when he returned. I would conduct the affair this time, leaving him no opportunity for pious reminiscence: I would confront him with the actual, with the business in hand. For I thought that my rights in the matter had been ignored, overlooked, and I was determined that my failure, or what I thought of as my failure, should be eradicated. It was up to me to redress the balance. When I thought of that evening in the restaurant I grew hot with indignation at his opacity. No man, I thought, should behave like that, delivering themselves to a woman’s attention with no hint of a suggestion that he should do more. I blamed myself as well; I had been too impatient for the conclusion of this affair—I would not use the word relationship for there was none. I knew what I wanted and I thought that he should want it too. That was the heart of the matter and I could not see what was wrong with it.

  Sometimes, after Muriel had gone, I indulged in a little make-believe, of which I was mildly ashamed. I was overcome with a longing for a normal life, one as filled with diversions as the Gibsons had had. Again, I thought that some attention was due to me, but instead of making me indignant this reflection made me wistful. I too should like a holiday, but again it was up to me to engineer one, and now I was tired of those buccaneering excursions, tired of ecclesiastical details and the less than ecclesiastical behaviour in which I indulged. Now these holidays appeared to me in a morbid light, and I felt secretive, shameful. The fact that I could never discuss them with anyone made matters worse. My mother of course had chosen a wilful ignorance, and was probably right to do so, yet now, looking back, I saw this as not quite straightforward, as if my entire inheritance had consisted of the obligation not to disturb others, or rather to give as little offence as possible.

  Wiggy knew something of my activities without my having to tell her. Wiggy is a romantic whose illusions are still in place. She is steadily, consistently faithful to her lover, whom she never discusses with me. Our mutual exchange in this context is confined to a fairly routine ‘Are you seeing George this week?’ to which the reply is ‘Yes, tomorrow,’ or ‘Probably not. He’s very busy.’ And yet he telephoned her every day, which gave her life a settled aspect, and it was this that I began to crave. Stealthily it became clear to me that I had somehow forfeited respect, that I had failed to conform to what a woman should do and be, even in this unregulated age. I knew few people. This was not the reflection induced by Eileen Bateman’s demise but something quite different, though possibly related. I wanted a proper setting.

  It was useless to remind myself that I had felt this before, that it was something to do with summer, which I regarded as the equivalent of the empty quarter, when everyone was away and I was left in the desert. This year I was not even able to make plans on my own account, owing to Hester’s accident and Muriel’s reliance on my presence in the shop. It was not even as though I particularly wanted to go away, or at least I did not want to go away on my own. Wiggy would be staying with her cousins in Scotland, as she generally did in both August and December, but I did not even have that resource. What I wanted was some sort of mutuality, some sharing of plans, some utterly banal interlude of walking hand in hand with someone devoted to me, in whose affections I was absolutely secure. My companion, whom I would not allow myself to identify, would address himself to my well-being. Only a husband would fit the bill. I made excuses for Martin, which I should have realized was a departure from my normal intolerance: he had suffered a bereavement, he was inhibited, unworldly, glad of a sympathetic ear. At the same time as I dismissed his performance as inadequate I began to question my own knowingness. What if he had been genuinely devoted to Cynthia, so that even to follow where she led had made him happy? And he was a man who followed because he was content to be the passive partner, disposed of by the will of another, obedient to another’s decree.

  Where I was not wrong, I thought, was in considering the odd, even perverse attraction of this passivity, as no doubt Cynthia had done. There was about a man as simple as Martin an urge to violate that he would inevitably awaken in a woman like Cynthia, whose every gesture was predatory. And his response would have been her secret, hers and possibly his as well, if he had allowed himself to dwell on it. His seemliness would soon have reasserted itself; he would want to believe in his own continued decency. So in fact it was up to his wife to make him love her. This struck me as my own situation, for I was still sufficiently in charge of myself to calculate my chances. In fact the element of chance was absent: I was thinking of a foregone conclusion. I felt an odd sympathy for Cynthia. She was not stupid; she would have known his hesitations. I excused her from understanding them; perhaps few women could. One has been fed stereotypes; perhaps they are a genetic inheritance. One knows how a man should behave, or one thinks one does. And if his approach is lacking in fervour one will do one’s best to inspire it. Poor Cynthia, on what was to be her deathbed, had been divested of her powers, worse, had become a burden, no longer capable of joining in the game of perpetual courtship at which they both excelled. And both, in their respective ways, would have known that the time for holidays was past, and only the grim present and the even grimmer future bound them together. When the present is satisfactory it is natural to seek diversion. When present comfort fades one is more inclined to think of flight.

  That was my situation and I could hardly make myself believe that it was undeserved. But what I wanted was precisely undeserved in another sense. I wanted to be overwhelmed by delightful surprises, to hear people exclaim in my wake, ‘What a delightful girl!’ That this wish was puerile did not disturb me unduly. What did disturb me was the knowledge that none of this was likely to happen, that I should continue to leave the flat in the early morning, continue to encounter the man attempting to walk his unpleasant shuffling dog, continue to spend my days in the dusty shop, even continue to attempt to put Muriel’s mind at rest. I suppose it was inevitable that she should think of me as a usurper. Her settled expectations had received an unwelcome jolt, and her no doubt inadequate domesticity revealed for what it was, an uninteresting set of tasks to be performed for as long as the future lasted. Her dignity had been impaired, and with it her status. Seated behind her desk she had felt at one with those early pioneers, those rigid but welcome reminders of the conformist past, so soon to be discredited. Muriel was as much a victim of the emancipation
of women as I was. She had thought to do without love, only to be shown that love was on offer to those who knew how to deal with it. The climate of sexual liberation which succeeded her middle years, possible as long as she was not forced to contemplate a life of unbridled hedonism, had moved her into the age of exclusion, of disqualification. Old, Muriel would have seen that the young enjoyed a monstrous freedom, one that she had been denied through sheer goodness, by the example of an upright father, a devoted sister with whom she was condemned to finish out her days, ever more restrained by good manners, even more taciturn, even more bitterly reflective.

  I of course had been empowered by what must have seemed to Muriel as inordinate licence. Now she had become aware of this and perhaps began to dislike me not only in the matter of my assiduity in the shop but for my youth, and all the advantages she imagined I enjoyed. I did enjoy them, but even young people can be lonely, whereas children can be very lonely, as I well knew. I wanted to reassure her that this was out of the question. What she wanted was myself back in the basement, attending to poor St John’s papers. Even at this late date she wanted to believe that his simple but admirable codes had held value, not only for himself but for others. She did not know, or did not wish to know, how wistfulness had overtaken him towards the end, would no doubt maintain that ‘Elderflower. Stale nostalgic smell’ was a perfectly valid observation, ignoring the forlorn aspect of the expanse of white paper surrounding this particular notation and the other empty pages that succeeded it. The one good thing I had done was to stick that last page down again, for Muriel, I believe, would not have accepted that her father was a man like other men. She probably believed that all men were like her father, and that it was perfectly possible to deal with them in a professional manner, respecting their differences, which one was bound to take into consideration, but too proud to make the necessary concessions. Duty, stern daughter of the voice of God … It had served well enough, but now perhaps it threatened to serve no longer.

  There was little I could do about this. What she would like me to do, I reckoned, was to resign as soon as she was able to put in a full day once more. That might be a couple of months, if Hester were to maintain her progress. Hester, I thought, was the stronger of the two, largely because she was innocent of Muriel’s regrets. Hester had somehow remained an eager girl who had no knowledge of defeat. When those suitors Muriel had mentioned had disappeared, a little puzzled, perhaps, she would have been as undamaged as when they had made her acquaintance. Thus she was not a victim in the sense that I imagined Muriel to be; rather she was unawakened, in her case a blessed state. It was eating of the tree of knowledge that did you down, since innocence was then pronounced to be irretrievable. I, who believed that everything was retrievable, and who behaved as if it were, was no longer so sure.

  I called on Wiggy on my way home and said, ‘It looks as if I ought to be taking a holiday. Any suggestions?’

  She opened a drawer and extracted a handful of leaflets. ‘Take your pick,’ she said. ‘These are what Eileen kept urging on me. I kept them because I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. Not that they’re much use to me. But you never know, do you? Might as well put them to some use. Tea?’

  ‘Thanks.’ I spread them on the table. Barcelona. Budapest. A tour of Georgia and Armenia. Various spa towns, Biarritz, Vichy. Who on earth would want to go to Vichy? Apparently it was much in favour with the ladies of Napoleon III’s court, who thought that the waters eliminated the ravages inflicted by the chocolate of which they were so fond. I thought of whalebone compressing those inflated diaphragms, all fizzy with gas.

  ‘Did she intend to go to these places?’ I asked.

  Wiggy sat down. ‘This will interest you, no doubt. No, she didn’t. The farthest she ever got was that journey to Brittany. You know? The plate?’

  I nodded.

  ‘She hated going away. It was after Brittany that she was ill. I thought it was flu, but now I’m not so sure. She was constantly nerving herself up to be a traveller, but she was really only happy when she was on her bike, on her own, in control. She knew that she ought to be more adventurous; that was why she collected all these brochures. Besides, it was something to do with her day. I’m sure she consulted travel agents, made extensive inquiries. But when she had the leaflets in her hand the whole enterprise somehow expired.’

  ‘Did she tell you all this?’

  ‘No, I guessed it. I didn’t want to upset her. I went on pretending that she might take off at any minute. We even discussed the best routes—you can see, there are train timetables there.’

  ‘Probably out of date.’

  ‘Almost certainly. When I heard her overhead I said nothing. It seemed wrong to inquire.’

  ‘She was frightened.’

  ‘But she wanted to live up to the pretence. She wanted to think that at any minute she could be a world-class traveller. All it would take was a little courage. But her courage consisted of accepting that she couldn’t manage it.’

  ‘She never struck me as lonely.’

  ‘I don’t think she was. I think she had come to terms with it. She just knew she had to stay within limits.’

  ‘Do you honestly think something dramatic would have happened if she had gone to Budapest or Biarritz?’

  ‘I think it would have killed her.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘Perfectly serious. The odd thing was that when she was working she did go away. She took her three weeks like everybody else. The difference was that she had something to come back to, something to tell the girls, as she called them. They all got on very well, apparently; they used to tease her, pretend she was a woman of the world, likely to spring surprises. I dare say that suited her. Whereas the reality …’

  I knew the reality, which I had fought with the weapons at my disposal. For Eileen those lonely days amid the tourist sights would have been unrelieved. The preparations would have been enthusiastic; no doubt she had bought new clothes from the shop. And the destinations would have been ambitious, fashionable, whereas she would probably have been happier in some modest English seaside resort, changing for dinner, exhibiting her sunburnt face in the bar, inquiring after the children of the other guests, not too conscious, in that incurious company, of her solitude. Whereas the sharp eyes of the French, the Italians, would have found it out immediately. Pride sent her to the demanding south, in her new clothes which proved to be somehow not quite right. Pride accompanied her home again, with assurances that she had had a marvellous time. She would have had as much of a marvellous time as she could endure. She had done this for a number of years, no doubt thought that she could do it again. But on her own she was not so sure. She could drop the names of glamorous and beautiful places, but that was why she had gone there. They had served their purpose. And besides she no longer had an audience. I knew what a difference that made.

  I merely said, ‘How sad.’

  Wiggy gave me a thoughtful look. ‘I hope you’re not going to waste the summer, Claire.’

  ‘Well, the shop, you know. I’m a bit tied there for the moment. But no, I’m not going to waste it. When are you off?’

  She made a face. ‘Friday. I don’t want to go, actually. I want to stay here and see George.’

  ‘Remember Eileen,’ I said.

  ‘But she was different.’ We pondered the nature of this difference, but said nothing. We smiled apologetically at one another and agreed to have dinner in ten days’ time.

  ‘Same place?’

  ‘Same place,’ I said. I was unwilling to say goodbye. I think she was too.

  The following morning Minnie, who cleans the shop, announced that she was going on holiday.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

  ‘Cuba,’ was the answer. This did not surprise me; she comes from there. I gave her two weeks’ money and resigned myself to going round with a feather duster. Muriel had evidently forgotten about Minnie, she who was so vigilantly attached to every trans
action that took place. I wondered whether she was beginning to be a little vague, whether her watchful eye simply hid a desire to hang on for as long as possible. I should have to deal with this too, as tactfully as I could. I did not want to get embroiled in what I thought of as old people’s problems, but I was extremely disheartened on my own account. In fact I succumbed to an entirely uncharacteristic depression which lasted for most of the morning. When Martin appeared, at about midday, I was released from this state as if I had been restored to my own youth.

  ‘I’ve been to Dorset,’ he explained.

  ‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘I’m so glad you looked in. I’ve been wanting to invite you to dinner. To repay your hospitality,’ I added, as if this were the only term he would understand.

  I was no longer surprised at my lightning change of mood. In fact it seemed as if my early unhappiness had merely prepared the way for the enthusiasm I now felt. This did not surprise me either. After all, everything is connected.

  Thirteen

  The desire and pursuit of the whole was the only instruction my mother gave me, and I never knew what she meant. I think I related it to her own disappointment, spending dull days with an almost immobile husband, or possibly to the courtship she had entered into half-heartedly after her friend’s wedding. Who knows what went through a girl’s mind in those conformist days? I saw, and maybe she had too, some very slight betrayal of honesty in her friend’s desire that she should not be left out, that all weddings should prepare the way for other weddings, so that the newly-married woman would not have to pity her unmarried friend, and that some semblance of complicity could be restored.

  But in fact the friend would have been conscious of the distance between her own eager husband, so proper and so desirable, and the shy widower towards whom she had directed my mother. Perhaps she had not liked to see her alone, on the outskirts of the wedding party, her untouched glass of champagne in her hand. In any event she had dispatched her, knowing what she was doing, hoping that she was acting in all good faith, but hiding from herself the knowledge that her high-minded and innocent companion would accept the arrangements that she was making for her.