‘I suppose so. But I lived on my own for quite a while, you know. And I had my work.’
‘Which you still have. Or rather which you will have once more.’
‘Yes, I’m looking forward to that. In a week or so I’ll start going through my papers again. They’re still in the same box files in the flat.’
‘Will you stay in the flat?’
‘I’m not at all sure. It was Cynthia’s flat, you see. So many memories. I could hardly bring anyone else there.’
So he had got that far, I saw. He had outdistanced me. There was no point in my hating him; it was already too late for me to do that. The woman in Italy had obviously operated some miracle cure, or perhaps it was the complicity of the host and hostess, indeed of everyone concerned, that had shown him another kind of compliance. I looked around in despair. The plain furnishings of the living-room mocked me with their very plainness. A sort of life was possible within these confines, but it was a life that could hardly attract others. It had a certain appeal, but that appeal was modest. It was a room in which everything had fallen short of expectation, still imprinted with the presence of my disappointed father, my disappointed mother. Suddenly I was filled with love for them both, and this was new to me. I saw that they had made the best of things, had done their duty, that theirs were tame lives, but lives that they had managed for themselves. No one had removed them to an idyllic setting and slyly proposed an alternative to their undoubted celibacy. Although their minds were troubled by the burdens that had been laid upon them their consciences were clear. Or rather their collective conscience, for there were no interlopers. Their marriage was so utterly unpromising that it had forged them into a sort of partnership, in which resignation and recognition form a not altogether ironic bond.
I should never know such simplicity, but then again neither would Martin. I could see that he was ready once more to be preyed upon, to be acquisitioned. Other women would have Cynthia’s skills, although hers had been strikingly old-fashioned. No doubt these had been updated. I felt at one with the room, plain, underfurnished, making no claims, offering no attractions. I became newly self-conscious, pulled down my skirt, wondered why I had not changed my shoes for a smarter pair.
‘Do sit down,’ I said again. ‘You are very restless. You were telling me what qualities you looked for in a woman.’
‘You mean you were asking me.’
‘All right, I was asking you.’
‘I don’t think it would be right for me to tell you.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘Because I know that whatever I said would bring back the memory of Cynthia.’
‘And you’re trying not to think of her so much?’
‘Her memory never leaves me.’
‘So anyone else would have to be different?’
‘Very different. That way I should never be disloyal.’
‘Make no mistake, Martin. You will be disloyal in the long run. Everyone is.’
His mouth tightened with anger. I looked at him with dismay. Why was I ruining my own chances in this way? Perhaps because I saw those chances dwindling, because I was no longer that disinterested friend but was newly revealed as an adversary. And it was true that I now wanted to goad him, to wring some sort of confession out of him, to have all his weakness for myself rather than see it so lightly displayed. Men always want to start again with a clean slate, as women never do. I should have had the confidence I had gleaned from previous affairs; now I was obliged to consider the faulty nature of my own position. He had not perceived my true nature, my inconvenient and quite undisclosed longing for permanence, for the permanence of someone’s affections. I did not know how to deal with this newly defensive man who, as if to demonstrate his defensiveness, was sitting on the very edge of his chair. Throughout the evening he had not asked me a single question about myself. This was what his emancipation amounted to, an ability to ignore another’s expectations.
‘She will have to be very young, your ideal woman,’ I said, collecting the coffee cups. ‘No woman with normal experience could meet your demands.’
‘But I have no demands. I make no demands upon others. I am merely not ruling out possibilities. I intend to have an orderly life. I shall work. I hardly think that is a punishable offence.’
‘Not the work, certainly.’
I heard these words with horror, as if I were now openly reproaching him. Yet he seemed if anything energized by the prospect, or perhaps the prospects, open to him. It was as if I had served my purpose as a transitional object or system, and, having proved unsatisfactory had given him tacit permission to move on. He even seemed to me slightly manic in this new manifestation, while I sank into a dullness from which I could only be rescued by another’s generosity. I even wondered whether I liked him. But perhaps all women feel this spurt of antagonism towards a partner who excludes them.
‘You go through,’ I said. ‘I’ll just wash these cups.’
I lingered in the kitchen, even looked longingly out of the window, although it was now quite dark and there was nothing to be seen. I was conscious that I had embarked unwittingly on something like self-exposure. I had said nothing that was overtly revealing, but I had been unsympathetic; I had withheld approval. Worse, I had said nothing that was not true, but in return I had encountered a form of dissimulation which had made giant strides since our last meeting. I thought again of the woman in Italy, and gave a brief instinctive shake of the head. The explanation did not lie in this incident, whether or not it ever took place. It lay in something much more present, something that had not yet been enacted. What this was I could not make out: the connection was missing. Perhaps my dismay was more general than I supposed. I was disheartened, to the point of dread, that I could no longer see my way ahead. I thought I had lost him, as if he were in some way mine to lose. The display put on for my benefit was unmistakable, yet I had done nothing to provoke it. I had not gone beyond the role he had written for me. Maybe I should have been coarser, but such behaviour was anathema to me. Part of the awful fascination of Cynthia was that she was a bully. That kind of bullying can only be practised successfully within marriage, and I dare say it has its own satisfactions. These remained, and would remain, unknown to me. All I could present was a smiling receptive demeanour, not so much forgiving of a behaviour which I now saw as unconscionable, so much as mildly interested, no more than that. Lightness, he had emphasized, but he was really stating his terms. I wondered if it were already too late to take note of this.
Later, in the middle of the night, I said, ‘You really hate anyone to see you with your guard down, don’t you?’
Incensed, he turned on his side, his back to me. When I woke up again he was gone.
Eighteen
In August the leaves begin to fall; the darkness sets in earlier; the mornings are more shadowy. My bedroom smelled of sleep, although I still got up at an unnecessary hour and cleaned the flat vigorously, as if expecting a visitor. I spent most of the day in one park or another, putting off the time when this would no longer be possible. It occurred to me that one could spend an entire holiday in Hyde Park, emerging perhaps for lunch, only to relinquish the crowded streets gratefully for a long uninterrupted afternoon which would, eventually, make some sense of going home. Instinctively I avoided art galleries. Art is supposed to console, although it does nothing of the kind. Religion, I suspect, is merely an unhelpful comment in the circumstances in which I now found myself One might, if one were a believer, and even more if one were not, be inclined to complain, to send up even more vain petitions in the hope of receiving a word of affirmation that one were not hopelessly adrift. That this would never come, had never come, would induce a bewilderment which was surely not in the scheme of things, or indeed in anyone’s interest. Even the most subtle explanations could not convince me that some lives, and not others, are destined to be unfulfilled. One hears of charmed lives, and may even have witnessed them: a friend blessed with looks, and intellig
ence, and determination, and a reasonable endowment in the way of family background that will cast doubt on one’s own poor efforts. Such characters bring out the worst in one, and perhaps the worst realization of all is that there is no consolation.
One day I walked, almost idly, to the shop, only to find it closed and a notice on the door which read: ‘Under new management. Re-opening in September.’ I knew that I should present myself then, but I began to doubt that I should ever be able to summon up the requisite insouciance. No matter: I was not in a position to choose my effects. I should humbly and straightforwardly ask for a job, and perhaps they would take me on. I reasoned that the father would have retired to his fishing activities, leaving the son in charge. I should have to work on the son, which should not be too difficult, although I suspected that the father would be a different proposition altogether. The trouble was that I had no means of knowing about any of this. There was no one I could ask. I telephoned Marchmont Street more than once and got no reply, from which I concluded that Muriel and Hester had already left. Doris, outside the café, could no doubt have filled me in, but I was not yet so desperate as to seek her out. Nor could I face the café itself, which would already have forgotten my early morning visits, so regular, for so long a time, and so abruptly terminated.
I felt a hesitation that amounted to shame that I had no decent excuses to offer that kind proprietor: besides, all I could supply was a lame explanation that the shop was in effect under new management—which they already knew—and that I might be going back in the autumn, which commercial shrewdness might incline them to doubt. I had the uneasy sense of having been outmanoeuvred by everyone in the case, even by Muriel, whom I instantly forgave. Muriel was too tired, too stricken to worry about a maverick such as myself, whose youth was thought to protect her against the blows of fate. I thought a lot about fate in those long afternoons in the park. The scheming restless gods of Olympus, preoccupied by their love affairs, seemed to me a far more accurate reflection of the world as we know it, than a deity who purports to be benevolent but who is in fact indifferent, unreachable, at least by those who feel they have no claim other than their own human need.
Little by little I was becoming accustomed to my own strange idleness. I made no attempt to find a job, having fixed my sights on the shop ever since it had become unavailable to me. In the same way I became accustomed to Martin’s absence, while all the time keeping myself in readiness for him. I was aware that I had not behaved well, had, ever since we had met, exerted undue influence. I had no real business in his life. Everything separated us: his age, his status as a widower, his utter refusal to question his own motives and behaviour. I did not even answer his needs, for he repudiated me at the same time as he succumbed to that undue influence. I did not even blame him: that was how bereft I felt. And yet I knew, unhappily, that what I had been denied was part of his strategy, so that I should not come to rely on him or expect anything in the way of help or support. Even expectation was thereby ruled out. Such prudence disgusted me; such dishonesty puzzled me. He was perfectly entitled to stake his temporary claim, as I had done so often, but to do so, and to deny that he was doing so, effectively reduced me to less than nothing, to someone who was perhaps useful in a very limited capacity but who could be discarded, without prejudice, when life proposed other opportunities, other invitations, other partners. I represented the shabby side of his nature and was therefore unpalatable. It did occur to me to resent this from time to time, but in fact I was so preoccupied by my own failure—my inactivity, my solitude—that I accepted this particular failure as of right. I blamed myself for imposing my own expectations on him, although those expectations were inalienably mine; presumably I was free to dispose of them as I thought fit. But the sad truth was that those expectations had not been met, and while Martin had remained in character I had somehow slipped out of mine, so that I was now wistful where I had once been energetic, uncertain where I had once been sceptical, and apologetic where I was accustomed to feeling confident.
I went over my remarks and judged them tactless, as he had. I had already reached that point in which the other’s opinion of one seals one’s fate, so that imperceptibly one agrees with the other’s reactions, joins in the other’s faint responses to one’s own identity, discards or loses that identity for the foreseeable future, or until one’s common sense alerts one to the danger. In this state of mind common sense is simply unavailable. I told myself that it would be better if I never saw him again. In some ways it was a relief that he had not got in touch; his absence in a sense concealed my disappointment. That was why I spent so much time away from home, in the park, where no one would find me or think of looking for me. When I got back to the flat I would make a cup of tea, and sit down and drink it quite normally before picking up my messages. In that way I could persuade myself that all of this was unimportant, that shortly I would put my life back on the right track again, go away, return to the shop, and pick up where I left off. I also knew that an unsatisfactory or unfinished love affair can banish normality for some time, and that it was incumbent on me not to indulge in speculation but to dismiss the whole episode as one of those aberrations that unfortunately afflict one from time to time and for which one is hardly responsible, since the gods, or the fates, or the furies, are merely going about their usual business of disrupting human affairs according to their inscrutable remit. Nevertheless, when I looked at the clock I would see that it was time for me to have my bath and wash my hair, so that I could be found, should anyone care to find me, in my usual place, at the usual time, and perhaps for something more than the usual exchange. Friendship, some sort of trust, was what I wanted, and I was prepared to spend the evening on my own, entertaining thoughts of what such friendship might lead to, until it was time to cancel such fantasies for another day and go to bed.
I said none of this to Wiggy. I knew she would be dismayed, even as I was dismayed, and I still had enough pride to behave as I had always behaved, that is to say flippantly, uncensoriously, tactfully. We had long ago adopted tact as the right way to go about things. We did not confide in each other in the way women are supposed to; we each knew the other’s cast of characters, and that was enough. We informed each other of our prospective absences; we kept in close touch, and I dare say we knew each other as well as two people who had never exchanged a single guilty secret could do. Wiggy’s life was more populated than mine; she had these dutiful cousins who seemed to welcome her each year with something like proper affection, the familial kind, and above all she had this lover, whom I had never met, of whom I disapproved because I thought she deserved better. And yet she was happy enough with his visits, kept a bottle of wine always ready should he drop in, was kept reassured by his telephone calls, seemed content to paint other people’s children all day at her kitchen table, and to exchange news with me when I visited her. I had fallen into these visits as a more satisfactory way of keeping in touch; in my mind the telephone was being kept clear for another’s call. Besides I was always out and Wiggy was always in, so what more natural than my haphazard visits? She knew of my worries about the shop, which formed the main subject of conversation; like myself she knew the value of work. But I said nothing about that mournful conviction I had that I had failed where so many others had succeeded, nor did she know about my empty evenings, when some sort of vain hope surfaced, as if I had always nurtured such a hope, and was still, even now, not entirely discouraged by the fact that it had not yet been met.
I found Wiggy in her usual place at the table, studying the photograph of a hopefully smiling little girl of about three. The child seemed to be baring her teeth more in obedience to some offstage urgings than from personal conviction that this was a happy occasion.
‘One can see,’ said Wiggy, ‘that all is not right with this child.’
‘How so?’
‘The desperate glint in her eye. The fatal desire to please already apparent.’
I studied the photograph. All
I could see was that the child was overweight, a fact emphasized by the fat legs stuffed into lace tights and the velvet dress bunched round her nonexistent waist.
‘You’ll have a job doing that lace,’ I said.
‘I’m only doing her head. Just as well; she’s going to be large. This is an attempt by her grandmother to remember her as she always was, or rather as the grandmother would like her to remain. I see trouble ahead for them both, misplaced love on both sides.’
‘Why misplaced? Surely at that age love is not self-seeking?’
‘I’m not sure about that. There is already a fatal gleam of knowledge in that child. Her name is Arabella, by the way. And her grandmother, Mrs Corbett, intuits in a way that the parents perhaps do not.’
‘Maybe Mrs Corbett objects to her daughter-in-law. Maybe there have been unwise criticisms.’
‘Exactly so. It was Mrs Corbett who got in touch with me, of course, recommended by one of her friends. We had a meeting. She was very proper, very formal, but her hands trembled. She said she didn’t see the child as much as she had hoped, because the child’s mother didn’t wish it. After that she spent half an hour telling me that perhaps—she said perhaps—they had different views on child management, that Arabella needed a more stable background than her mother was able to provide. She became quite agitated as she said this, although as far as I could judge the mother’s only crime was to go out to work. Mrs Corbett had offered to look after Arabella in the daytime, but the offer had been refused. “I bought her that dress,” she said. “And the tights.” I told her I only did the heads, and she was a bit disappointed. Then she said, “Just as long as you capture her lovely smile.” She clearly didn’t want to part with the photograph, but she knew, she said, that the portrait would keep her company, even during those days when the child and she were denied access to each other.’
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