Fraud

by Anita Brookner

  ‘I’ll be all right.’ He was making the transition from ‘Mum’ to ‘Mother’, and feared that under the stress of emotion he might revert to ‘Mum’ once more.

  ‘Take care of yourself,’ they said to each other on the following day. He took her in his arms, then released her and hurried off, knowing that June, less cheerful than usual, was preparing a pot of tea in the back room as a restorative. Part of him longed to stay in their company, to be safe, to be looked after, to be loved as only they could love him, but he also knew that the needs of his body were becoming urgent and that these could not be satisfied while he was under his mother’s roof. Nevertheless he was forlorn throughout the journey, and it was only when he got off the train at Cambridge and surveyed the beautiful pale city that his spirits rose. He had grown immensely tall, and his fair ingenuous looks made him the object of instant admiration. He was soon able to satisfy his appetite for girls, who adored him, longing to make him blush with embarrassment. He graduated from nurses and secretaries to fellow students, smart girls, smarter than he was himself, who took good care not to fall in love with him. This puzzled him, for he saw no harm in love, and was if anything sentimental by nature. But he was learning about ambiguity, and about ambiguous situations. In a short time he saw that the world was a more complicated place than he had ever supposed that it would be.

  At Cambridge he ironed his accent out into an acceptable classlessness. To have gone further in this direction would have signified disloyalty to his mother, so he kept his voice as low and as neutral as possible. He did his best to work his feelings into a comparable classlessness, and enjoyed affairs with one or two girls whose material situation was markedly superior to his own. He saw no significance in this, but enjoyed being invited to their houses in the vacations, enjoyed the log fires and the sherry before lunch and taking the dogs out for a run. He knew that he could only repay hospitality with his agreeable presence, but this seemed to be enough, and so heady were these delights that he managed to suppress the thought of his mother in her dark bedroom, sleeping away her Sunday afternoons, while he cavorted with the dogs in the spinney behind his host’s house. But he did not quite forget her, and when he did go home his heart, which had been growing colder, melted as she came running to meet him, like a girl. In those moments he thought of her as his girl, closer than all the Angelas and the Jennifers, with their high voices, and the baffled and occasionally resentful anxiety with which they surveyed his naked back as he got out of bed and reached for his shirt. He would leave them, these girls, and go back to his studies. When he wanted a rest he would go home to his mother and her lemon pancakes, her jam tarts, her rhubarb pie, all scenting the shabby house with sugary richness, the smell of home.

  He went on to St Mary’s, Paddington, and enjoyed the work. Although he had begun conscientiously he could not now imagine anything in life other than being a doctor. Nothing disturbed or repelled him, and he had acquired enough self-confidence to be looked upon kindly by his seniors. He was immediately popular with the patients, many of them women, for he preferred the women’s medical wards: he saw in each worried face, each new pink bed-jacket, his mother or June, and he would hasten to reassure them, to replace a grimace of pain with a smile of gratitude. He thought he would like to bring comfort to women for the rest of his life, although he still blushed when any one of them pressed his hand and thanked him. But he was not fond of the hospital atmosphere, found his living conditions cramped, and longed for the wider world. He had decided on general practice, had in fact just made his decision, was going out with a couple of friends to celebrate, when he was called to the telephone.

  ‘It’s June here, Laurie. Bad news, I’m afraid, dear. It’s Mum. Can you come home? She’s in the hospital.’

  ‘What happened?’ he asked, his mouth dry.

  But all she said was, ‘Hurry, dear,’ and put the telephone down.

  He went to Leicester that night, went straight from the station to the hospital, saw her in the small end room into which they moved moribund patients. She had had a severe stroke, was deeply unconscious, but he thought that after a while she returned the pressure of his hand. He stayed with her all night, and was there when she died in the early hours of the morning.

  June wept unreservedly; he himself was tearless. But from that moment on, he later reckoned, he took no comfort from his life, felt perpetually cold and disheartened. He sold the shop, said goodbye to June, and took the train back to London, where, with the proceeds from the sale, and the small amount of money his mother had left him, he bought a small flat on the top floor of a house in Barkston Gardens, off the Earl’s Court Road. It felt strange being on his own, but he was too sad to want company. His only consolation was his work: he became dedicated. His friends saw less of him. Even the women fell away. The day he was taken on as a junior partner by two elderly Chelsea doctors was the greatest day of his life. His only regret was not being able to tell his mother of his success. But this passed, or almost passed, and as time went on he got used to his new life, and forgot Leicester. Only when he was exceptionally unhappy did he think of earlier days, and then with a complicated mixture of impatience and regret.

  The doctors, Grantley and Howarth, let him deal with the chronic cases, with the old people whom they were too busy to visit. He enjoyed these visits, enjoyed in particular the old ladies, Mrs Finnegan, Mrs King, Mrs Marsh, Mrs Durrant, this last a grace and favour patient held over from the days when Dr Howarth had had his original practice in Kensington. Halliday enjoyed entering their houses or flats, and the welcome they unreservedly gave him. He glanced at their surroundings with a new eye: he was getting tired of Barkston Gardens. When he first went to Albert Hall Mansions he felt a deep peace descend on him.

  ‘But your hands are cold, doctor!’ said pretty silly Amy Durrant, chafing his cold hands with her own warm ones. ‘Is it very cold out? I don’t move from here these days. My poor heart, you know. But you must have some hot coffee! I insist! And some of my daughter’s coconut biscuits. Anna, darling.’

  But Anna was already bringing in a tray. He looked at her then, saw a pale slight figure in a bright blue suit, saw heavy hair giving some dignity to an unremarkable face. He accepted the coffee and the biscuits, and for some reason found it easy to answer questions about himself, although he only gave them the barest details: Leicester, his parents dead. They exclaimed sympathetically, or at least Mrs Durrant did; Anna was rather silent. Warmed by the coffee and the attention, he followed Mrs Durrant into her bedroom, where he auscultated her and took her blood pressure. There was nothing much to be done for her except to renew her prescription for Digoxin and to offer a few soothing words.

  ‘You’ll go on for years,’ he told her cheerfully.

  ‘I hope so,’ she smiled. ‘It’s not myself I worry about. It’s Anna.’ Her eyes filled with the easy tears of old age.

  ‘There’s no need for you to worry,’ he told her, and patted her hand. The tears vanished and she smiled gratefully.

  ‘There’s no appreciable change,’ he said to Anna in the drawing-room. ‘She seems in good general health. I’ll look in again next week.’

  ‘I’d be so grateful,’ she said, and her smile lit up her rather plain face. Surprised, he looked at her again. She held out her hand, which was long and slender. ‘It’s been so good of you,’ she said. He flushed then, and made his exit.

  He returned the following week, and the week after that. His visits became regular, and on each occasion Amy Durrant drew him in lovingly, and he was welcomed by the sublime smell of fresh baking. For a while he began to fantasize that he was at home again, although the surroundings were very different from that shabby room at the back of the shop where June and his mother gossiped and drank tea. But this warm shadowy drawing-room was sufficiently symbolic for him to feel strangely relaxed, and when he followed Amy Durrant into her bedroom to examine her it was all part of the ritual, a ritual to which very little actual importance attached but to whi
ch both felt committed. He thought of it as dreamtime. And then, leaving Amy Durrant to get dressed again, it was to Anna that he returned. He felt for her. He felt a tenderness in her presence. He sensed that she was good, that she was faithful, and forbearing, used to sacrifice. Like his mother. He felt nothing for her in any other way, yet entertained fantasies of living with her in that peaceful flat, where at last he would take his ease, away from the often discordant excitements of his too prolonged bachelor existence. When their hands touched he scanned her face, and saw that her gaze was without guile. Yet there was a sternness about her, as if expecting nothing less than the truth from him. That serious peaceful look of hers, as if she were prepared to wait for him, but only if he were to perform to the highest of standards, gave him pause. He was, after all, a mature man, with an active body. However tenderly he entered that flat he sometimes left it with a puzzled sense of relief.

  And yet she was good … He thought this once more, regretfully, when he met Vickie Gibson at a party given by one of the elderly doctors, and began an affair with her that same evening. This he found disconcerting, for he had both desired and disliked her at first sight, loved her vulnerability, her excitability, loathed her social performance, which was that of a grown-up child showing off. He was invited, the following weekend, not to her own flat, as he had expected, but to a flat in Cadogan Gate, where her father, the director of a West End firm of chartered accountants, looked him over carefully, and her mother flashed him the occasional distracted smile, as if she were thinking of something totally different. She appeared to believe—and to give him to understand—that she had married beneath her, leaving her daughter to the care of her pompous prosperous husband. Vickie and her father were in close and indulgent accord; many were the private jokes which passed between them. He had felt himself irritated, and had wanted to carry her off, away from this petulant atmosphere. Dinner had been a strain, full of slippery food: cups of soup, rack of lamb, caramelized oranges. He felt an overpowering and futile fury when he realized that he was on probation as a future son-in-law, was shocked when Vickie allowed herself to be petted by her father. Yet all this aroused in him a powerful excitement, which was compounded equally of sexual impatience and sheer exasperation.

  It was her father who saw to it that they married. Vickie was tired of her job—she worked, predictably enough, for a firm of smart estate agents—and she already had the complacent air of a married woman. He had not the heart to let her down. The engagement was celebrated with an outburst of tearful excitement from Vickie, and the promise of a house from Vickie’s father. The house, in Tryon Street, was small, fashionable, uncomfortable, and conveniently near the practice. With death in his heart he had surveyed the tiny rooms, in which his head seemed almost to touch the ceiling, while Vickie competently took measurements, humming to herself as if he were momentarily forgotten. Yet when she stood up to kiss him goodbye her tongue slipped naturally into his mouth and she moved his hands to her full breasts. He tore himself away reluctantly, picked up his bag, and went on his visits. Albert Hall Mansions was last on his list. The welcome from Amy Durrant was as warm as ever, but there was anxiety in her eyes, as if she had hoped to be welcoming him in another capacity. His examination of her was as scrupulous as usual, but he could hardly bear to meet her gaze. He patted her hand by way of apology, then retreated to the drawing-room for what he felt was going to be one of the major ordeals of his life.

  ‘Anna,’ he said finally, after a painful silence, during which the only sound was that of his sherry glass being returned to a silver tray. ‘I’m getting married.’

  There was the slightest of pauses.

  ‘Married? Then I must wish you well, Lawrence.’

  ‘To Vickie Gibson,’ he went on. ‘I think you know her.’

  ‘No, I don’t know her.’

  ‘Then you must meet her. I hope you’ll be friends.’

  There was a high colour in her cheeks, but otherwise no sign of emotion.

  ‘Anna …’

  ‘You won’t mind if I don’t tell my mother, will you?’

  He gripped her hand. After a while she loosened it and turned away.

  ‘And you will understand if we ask one of the other doctors to call?’

  ‘Is this really necessary? I am very fond of your mother. And of you.’

  ‘Are you?’ She turned to him and gave him her full sad gaze. ‘I wish you well,’ she repeated. ‘I have always wished you well.’

  He felt crushed by such nobility, and also resentful of it. He felt that he had been dismissed, found wanting. That night he made love vigorously to his fiancée and was mollified by her loudly voiced satisfaction. He was to seek her company assiduously in the weeks which followed, as if fearful of what he might do if she were not there to protect him.

  After five years of marriage he was resigned to half measures, his physical life as rewarding as ever, his brain and his heart untouched. He was successful, popular, established, yet he had moments of astonishing sadness. He had learnt, in his turn, to protect his wife and her frequent silliness, to smooth over her tactlessness, to pour the wine at her dinner parties, to accompany her fearfully elaborate cooking. Heavily spiced and garnished Mediterranean dishes replaced the simple roasts of his youth; he had retained his sweet tooth, and longed for his mother’s baking, her apple pies, her jam tarts. He thought back a great deal these days when not loyally sharing his wife’s anecdotes, the anecdotes—of a humorous or embarrassing nature—which his wife recounted to her dinner guests. He looked preoccupied; they admired his dedication. In fact he was longing for them all to be quiet, or for himself to be elsewhere.

  He never thought of Anna, had not thought of her until he saw her at Mrs Marsh’s party. Seeing her in front of him now, in his office, he was quite calm, free from uncomfortable memories. She too was calm: they might have been old friends. As indeed, in a sense, they were. He noted that she looked much the same, but that she was very thin: he remembered noting this before. Surely she was thinner than he remembered?

  ‘What can I do for you, Anna?’

  ‘I’d like another prescription, Lawrence.’ She held out an empty bottle. ‘Dr Grantley gave me these when my mother died.’

  He took the bottle from her. That was all they had in common now, he thought: the deaths of mothers.

  ‘Have you lost weight recently?’

  ‘I may have done. But I’m very well. I’m always well.’

  ‘Just step onto the scales, would you?’ A pause. ‘You weigh just over seven stone, Anna.’

  ‘What of it? I’ve never been fat.’

  ‘I’d better examine you,’ he said unhappily.

  Their faces remained neutral as his hands palpated her. He thought her body beautiful, fine and gracile, in sharp contrast to the rather coarse skin of her face. He was reminded of Degas’s Jeunes Spartiates s’exerçant à la guerre. She lay on his couch quite peacefully, looking not at him but at the glass front of a small cabinet on his wall. His hands pressed firmly down on her abdomen.

  ‘Does that hurt?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Nothing hurts.’

  ‘You can get dressed, Anna.’

  She came back from behind the screen with her hair dishevelled, which made her look older but more approachable, and sat down.

  ‘You’re going to have to put on weight, you know. But you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll put it on in France. I’m going to France soon.’

  ‘I shall want to see you when you come back. In fact I want to monitor any weight gain. Or loss, of course, but we won’t talk about that. Can I trust you to come and see me? Or do you want me to make an appointment now?’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. And the prescription, Lawrence?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Never more than one of these at a time, Anna. And only when necessary. Don’t make a habit of them.’

  ‘L. M. Halliday,’ she read. ‘What is the “M” for?’

  ‘I hardly dare tell
you.’

  ‘Be brave.’

  ‘Merlin.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Yes, that is rather serious. But don’t worry—I’ll keep it to myself.’

  He was grateful to her for bringing their meeting to so skilful a conclusion, for striking the right note—amiable, light-hearted, worldly, not heavy with reminiscence. He was grateful to find himself so light-hearted. She bore no grudge; she was not dependent on him. She was a healthy woman, with a healthy sense of her own worth. So he told himself. He held out his hand in a comradely fashion. For a moment she scanned him with her all-judging, all-comprehending gaze. You are too hard on me, he wanted to say. Not everyone can live like you—ascetically, devotedly, selflessly. It is not quite becoming in a woman: no man could put up with it. But his mood changed, and he was puzzled by the change, as if not realizing that she still had power to affect him. When the door closed behind her he sat for a while, looking at his hands. Then, rousing himself with a sigh, he buzzed his secretary to send in the next patient.

  12

  SHE WAS SURPRISED to have heard nothing from Marie-France, to have had no confirmation of her expected arrival in Paris. When she thought back to the days before Christmas she realized that letters from Marie-France had been coming at longer and longer intervals, although when they came they expressed the same interest in Anna’s life that they had done for the past thirty years. Her own letter containing the account of Mrs Marsh’s party had not been answered, but she had supposed that Marie-France was with her family at Meaux, and had not therefore been especially disconcerted to receive no reply. She had simply written again with the details of her flight.

  Telephoning was difficult, as Bertrand Forestier, Marie-France’s father, kept the telephone in his study and insisted that it should not be used when he was working, which was more or less all the time, except for his ceremonious promenade in the late afternoon, when he drank a cup of coffee at the Deux Magots and read his newspaper, always hoping to be greeted by a colleague, a confrère, a fellow ruminant in the pastures of literature. This rarely happened, but Anna, taking coffee herself one day, had surreptitiously observed him: the fastidious manicured hands had flicked open the newspaper, the pale heavy scornful face had expressed various forms of contempt or disgust, and when the coffee was finished the cup had been filled with water from the carafe on the table until that too was finished and the interlude concluded. No colleague or confrère had greeted him, and it was easy to suppose that he was not much liked. His main weapon was sarcasm, which had served him well in the days when he had contributed a weekly causerie to a now defunct journal, but which was now a shield used to mask his affections. He loved his daughter, or so it was supposed, since they had never lived apart, but he imposed his iron rules upon her and upon his household as if he still expected to be obeyed unquestioningly. He was eighty-six and in immovably good health. Marie-France, at sixty, was as disciplined and submissive as if she were a little girl. This would no doubt explain why she had been unable to answer Anna’s letter, and why it would be an act of grave irresponsibility to telephone her.