Fraud

by Anita Brookner

  The night passed vividly, in the form of streaks and flashes, of sudden illuminations. Some time after midnight it occurred to her to wonder whether Bill had ever had an affair with Phyllis. They had liked each other, that much was clear, and Phyllis was having a wretched time with Archie, who was drinking too much. She fell asleep on this thought, woke up again, and realized that Phyllis would most probably have talked him out of it. That was her speciality. But there had been that associate of his, that lady broker, unusual for those days, whom he had asked her to invite to dinner, and with whom he occasionally travelled to meetings. She had not thought to enquire too closely. In any event he had come back to her in the act of dying. She remembered his eyes following her longingly round the room. It was life he longed for, more life, and she had been unable to give it to him.

  She longed for life herself, all thoughts of dying vanquished. She only wanted to die in perfect health, with her faculties in good order, not like this, in a bed which was alternately too hot and too cold. Her head ached and her mouth was dry, but she felt too shaky to reach for her glass of water, and quickly became dizzy if she tried to sit up. She must lie as she was until somebody turned up: the doctor must see her at her worst, and then, only then, would she make the effort to get better. She knew that it would be a very great effort this time, and it occurred to her that she might not be up to it. The thought frightened her. The night seemed huge and menacing, a portent of the night to come. She grappled with her fears until they exhausted her. Towards dawn she slept.

  She made no attempt to get out of bed in the morning, but waited until she heard Mrs Duncan’s key in the lock. Mrs Duncan entered on a blast of scent (Keith kept her well supplied, she had told Mrs Marsh) and immediately assumed a look of horror.

  ‘I don’t want to come too near,’ she said. ‘They’ll kill me at home if I catch it.’

  It seemed as if Nick’s flu had been in a different category, indulged, non-contagious.

  ‘I expect you’d like a cup of tea,’ she said, backing away. ‘Then I’ll do the sitting-room. I don’t suppose you’ll want anything to eat. I won’t stay too long, if you don’t mind. Maybe you’ll feel better tomorrow. Only I was going to ask you if we could go back to three mornings a week. My husband doesn’t want me to overdo it.’

  ‘If you could just wait until the doctor’s been,’ whispered Mrs Marsh.

  ‘Oh, doctor’s coming, is he?’

  She immediately looked more competent. Later she brought in a cup of tea and The Times, both of which lay untouched, until she took them away again, when the doorbell rang. Mrs Marsh noted that she had taken off her overall in honour of the doctor’s visit. There was a sudden aroma of coffee, again in honour of Halliday. He came in smelling of the cold outdoors, but without a coat. Take care, she wanted to say to him, but she was too tired. He smiled at her, and said, ‘I’m just going to take your temperature. You can relax. It’s only the flu. Three days and you’ll be better, I promise!’

  How kind he was! He raised her up, listened to her back and to her chest. She looked at him worshipfully, no longer ashamed of her flattened breasts, for he was no longer an attractive man, but every mother’s son, and she longed to tell him so. When he assured her that she was a healthy woman, and that she would soon be well, she believed him and longed to thank him. Even Mrs Duncan was mollified, and brought in two cups of coffee on a tray, with the eternal biscuits on which she seemed to thrive. This time, with the doctor in the room, Mrs Marsh made an effort to drink and found that the hot coffee seemed to restore her.

  ‘I’m sure you were good to your mother,’ she said to the doctor’s kind face.

  His smile faded. ‘Not good enough,’ he said. ‘I was with her when she died, but only just. Most of the time I was too far away.’

  ‘I’m sure you were a good son,’ she said, this time more firmly.

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘I still miss her,’ he said.

  ‘That proves how close you were.’

  She saw his smile, which seemed to linger in the room, even after he had gone. She wanted silence, then, after this significant exchange, and reassured Mrs Duncan, who agreed to come in on the following morning. She thought she might sleep, if only she were left alone, and in fact welcomed the lonely afternoon, for her thoughts no longer frightened her. She prepared for sleep, mindful of the night to come, when more sleep would be needed and might be in short supply. She lay on her bed as if on a great raft, willing to be led out into the sea. She lay becalmed; all fear had left her. She felt the tides drawing her on, and when she woke it was with a feeling of surprise. She heard the clock in the hall strike six. She slept again and woke in the dark, but the dark was dense, and she felt a flicker of fear. But then she heard the clock strike again: five this time. She had slept through the night.

  The second day was easier. Reserves of sleep had fortified her to endure the long hours ahead, and there was a slight, a very slight, return of confidence. Mrs Duncan, unsettled by Mrs Marsh’s silence and passivity, co-operated to the extent of bringing cups of tea and placing a jug of water on the bedside table. Most observations, however, were aimed from a safe distance, and Mrs Marsh had to turn a painful head to the doorway of her bedroom, in the shelter of which Mrs Duncan stood in a defensive attitude. No backbone, thought Mrs Marsh briefly, a thought which was reinforced when Mrs Duncan informed her that she would need some time off: her daughter wanted her to go shopping—a treat they both enjoyed—and they planned to go to the West End on the following day, if that was all right with Mrs Marsh.

  ‘Quite all right,’ said Mrs Marsh.

  Mrs Duncan hesitated. ‘Only you shouldn’t be on your own. Isn’t there someone I could telephone?’

  ‘My daughter is far away,’ replied Mrs Marsh, feeling an upsurge of sadness for the daughter who would have to look after her when the time came, if indeed it were not already here. She supposed that Philippa should be told, in case she were to die, but was unwilling to summon her. If I get better it will be time to talk to her then, she thought, for the idea of frightening Philippa into attendance was repugnant to her. She was a good girl, had always been good, her father’s favourite, just as Nick had been his mother’s. Philippa had been plain but sunny-natured, sometimes puzzled, never resentful. She had married her first boyfriend, had cheerfully gone with him to Norwich, had had two cheerful children, and survived her husband’s early death if not cheerfully, then at least sensibly. And now that there was the possibility of someone new in her life her unremarkable face had taken on a certain serenity, a dignity that became her. Shocked as she would certainly be when she heard that her mother had been ill, and virtually alone, she could at least be spared a sickroom at its worst, thought Mrs Marsh. She was aware of the tired smell of bedclothes, of her own unwashed face. Thank goodness I had my hair done, she thought.

  ‘Well, I’ve done it,’ announced Mrs Duncan defiantly, from the doorway.

  ‘Done what?’

  ‘Made arrangements for someone to be with you. You can’t be left alone like this.’ She could not quite admit that she was doing the leaving. ‘I telephoned Anna Durrant. Well, she’s got nothing to do all day, and she could get you a bit of shopping.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Mrs Marsh, who was sincerely annoyed.

  ‘I could never forgive myself if anything happened to you.’ There was a slight silence. ‘And I do want to see my Louise,’ she said in an altered tone.

  She was on the verge of tears, torn between her conscience and her desire. How she longs to be free, thought Mrs Marsh. She is as impatient as a girl, her good nature fretted by anticipation.

  ‘You go,’ she said, feeling weak at the thought of being alone again. ‘If you could just take the key round to Anna …’

  Mrs Duncan assented with alacrity. When the door finally closed behind her the silence grew enormous. Only the clock in the hall gave forth a sound, and once it had struck
all sense of time was lost. She was almost impatient for the sound of the key in the door. It hardly mattered whose key it was, so long as somebody came. It was Anna who came, on almost silent feet; it was Anna’s face bending over hers, her expression neutral, studious. She disappeared silently, and reappeared with a hot-water bottle.

  ‘Hold this,’ she said. ‘I’m going to get you into the chair while I change your bed.’

  Mrs Marsh followed the beautiful swirl of the unfolded sheet with grateful eyes. Such whiteness! Such pillows! She felt that she would never leave such a bed again, but Anna had other plans. An eiderdown was tucked over her in the chair, and a cup of bouillon placed beside her.

  ‘How long have you been like this?’ said the distant voice.

  ‘I can’t remember. Two or three days, perhaps.’

  ‘You had better eat something. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes. I’m just going out shopping.’

  As a nurse she seemed austere, unloving, which was surprising in view of her closeness to her mother in those last years, thought Mrs Marsh. But she had a curious authority: she knew about illness and did not sentimentalize it. She had said little, had seemed terse, but had effectively taken charge. With this change in her fortunes Mrs Marsh began to anticipate recovery.

  Lunch came on a tray: a little halibut, taken off the bone, turned in butter, sprinkled with grated cheese, and grilled, followed by a baked apple. After this she crept along to the bathroom, washed her face, and felt better. She was not, apparently, to be allowed to return to bed, but was given another hot-water bottle and supplied with The Times. She is quite cruel, really, thought Mrs Marsh, saddened by her own submission. But she felt better, stronger, consented to change her nightgown, and got thankfully into bed, drooping with tiredness at six o’clock. When Anna left Mrs Marsh began to revise her plans for letting Philippa know about her illness. Compared with Philippa (whose happiness must be sacrificed, alas) Anna was without feeling, moving as efficiently and as wordlessly as any hospital nurse. And yet she was grateful for that very wordlessness, so different from Anna’s earlier and almost embarrassing affection. Mrs Marsh feared that if Anna were to show the same affection in these changed circumstances the embarrassment would be difficult to bear. She meant her own embarrassment, for she felt threatened by gratitude and had never found it easy to show her feelings.

  Two days later she was seated in the sitting-room in her dressing-gown, The Times open at the obituaries page but as yet unread. Anna was in the bedroom, remaking her bed. I have recovered, thought Mrs Marsh. It was not easy, but I did it. Tomorrow Philippa would be here, and then she would go back with her to Norwich for a week or two. Anna could somehow return the key to Mrs Duncan. The details of how this was to be done were unclear, but she decided not to worry about them. When she heard Nick’s key in the lock she could hardly suppress a murmur of joy, for she had seriously thought that she might never see him again.

  ‘Well, Mother, what’s all this?’ he said, bending down to kiss her.

  ‘Only the flu,’ she said, deliberately offhand. ‘I have been well looked after. The doctor came,’ she added.

  Anna came in, pale, in her red suit.

  ‘Oh, good evening,’ he said, surprised.

  ‘Good evening. Your mother has been quite unwell, but I think she is better now. Your sister will be here tomorrow.’

  He found her tone repressive, was puzzled and a little annoyed by her presence.

  ‘Anna has been very kind,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘I won’t keep you, Anna. Nick will stay with me for a bit. And Philippa will be here tomorrow.’

  ‘If you’re sure,’ said Anna.

  ‘Very kind of you to look after Mother,’ said Nick. There was a brief silence, in which, thought Mrs Marsh, Anna would surely protest her willingness. But it was Nick who said, rather automatically, she had to admit, ‘Perhaps you’d like to have dinner one evening?’

  Anna smiled, and laid her head close to that of Mrs Marsh.

  ‘Goodbye, Aunt Vera,’ she said. ‘Call me if you need me.’

  She made as if to kiss her, but Mrs Marsh felt tears of weakness and gratitude threatening and turned her head abruptly away, pretending to search for a handkerchief in the handbag on the floor by the side of her chair.

  ‘There was no need to ask her out,’ she said to Nick, after the door had closed.

  ‘You’ve changed your tack, Mother. Last time round you wanted me to marry her.’

  ‘She seems different now, quite hard.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I doubt if I’ll get in touch. I doubt if she’d want me to.’

  ‘You know how to ensure a refusal, don’t you?’ said his mother, with a touch of her old asperity.

  But Nick, who had met a certain Mrs Tierney, a divorcée, in New York, and had been greatly taken with her, thought that all that might soon change, but that there was no need to worry his mother in her weakened state with speculations and assurances which he intended in any event to keep to himself, at least for the time being.

  16

  THE CALL CAME all too soon.

  ‘Anna? How are you?’ Again the swoop of commiseration. ‘It’s Vickie here. Vickie Halliday. Lawrence’s wife. He’s mentioned you several times.’

  ‘Yes, he is my doctor.’

  ‘Well, of course he is! Now the thing is, we want you to come to dinner. Nothing formal, just the three of us. We want to get to know you better.’

  ‘Actually, I’m not going out much in the evenings just at present … Later, perhaps …’

  ‘But you must! We can’t have that, Anna! You mustn’t give in, you know, you must make an effort. There’s no need to sit in a corner just because you’re on your own.’

  ‘I don’t think …’

  ‘Is there any reason why you can’t come?’ said the voice, more sharply this time. ‘Or won’t come? Is that it?’

  There is every reason, she thought. Because you set my teeth on edge. Because you offend me without even being aware that you are doing so. Because you are trying to be kind to me out of the immense reserves of what I am supposed to think of as your charity. Because, for some reason, you dislike me, regard me with suspicion. Because you are displeased that I pre-dated you in Lawrence’s life. Because you want to remind me that he married you and not me. Because there will be a show of domesticity which I shall find hard to bear but which will be put on expressly for my benefit. Because we should get along much better, if we have to get along at all, if we view each other from a distance.

  To say all this was impossible on many counts. It had been decreed by Vickie that a sort of friendship was to be enacted, although it was clear that she already felt a sharp animosity with regard to her husband for requiring this service from her. For Vickie, marriage had been easily accomplished, so easily that she regarded the unmarried with contempt. Graceful and insinuating, she had been her father’s pet, and had simply carried her assumption of favours granted over into her relations with other men, except that with other men she could use her sexuality to good effect. She had not, perhaps, looked for intimacy, beyond the intimacies of sex: to be known, to be explored, to be understood, to be instructed had never been her ambition or her desire. Her character, she thought, was fully formed. She considered herself to be more mature than her husband, who had nevertheless passed several critical tests: he was very attractive, he was a professional man, he had a responsible nature, which meant that he would look after her, and he was very slightly in awe of her temper and her tears, both of which she used unselfconsciously and to good effect. Her idea of marriage was to pass from the care of her father to the care of her husband; she expected the same degree of indulgence and of cherishing, and could continue, in some ways, to be a child, with the child’s right to care and constant attention.

  With this childishness went the intermittent maturity that had caused her to single out Lawrence in the first place. ‘He will do,’ had been her first thought, for she was not getting any younger and she had bee
n to too many weddings. She knew that she had certain advantages: her father’s money, her pretty body, which she seemed anxious to indulge. She saw his eyes linger on her and sharpen slightly; she saw him turn reluctantly back to the girl whom he had brought to the party at which they had met. When he looked at her again he flushed, and she knew that he would offer no resistance. After that it had been easy to detach him from his girl and to carry him off. Confidence had made her indifferent to the clichés of courtship, and she invited him into her flat for coffee after he had taken her home. The rest was a foregone conclusion. Steered towards her family, made privy to the jokes which passed between Vickie and her father, there was no possibility that he would be allowed to remain as her lover unless something more serious were in the offing. The marriage, it seemed, was a triumph for both of them, although they experienced a certain amount of difficulty in steering it past the wedding and the honeymoon.

  Since that time Lawrence had diminished slightly in her eyes, although he had retained his looks, and his professional standing had increased. I do what I can to help him, she told her friends, and from time to time Lawrence himself. She would even help him to the extent of inviting his very few friends to dinner, although they were nothing like as amusing as her own. In so doing she was aware of conferring her favour, even, for the space of an evening, her patronage. She usually complained of tiredness once they had gone. In this way Lawrence saw his own circle reduced, and was forced to rely on his wife’s friends, whom he did not much like. His passive disposition helped him there.