Fraud

by Anita Brookner

  The energy with which he had suggested that she invite Anna had momentarily annoyed her; she did not see why this woman, whom she had met only briefly, had to enter her house. Questioning had brought to light something of Anna’s story. ‘I have known her for some time,’ he had said, which alerted her to a possibility of danger. But what danger could there be? Anna Durrant was a quiet woman in middle age, with nothing much to show for it, no husband, no lover, and no possibility of either, if Vickie were any judge. Yet there was something about her very quietness which gave her pause. Her own husband was remote in the same way when it suited him. She suspected an affinity which put her on her guard. Her instincts were acute, and although she despised what she thought of as Lawrence’s weakness she knew that he might, if the circumstances were different, be drawn towards that impression of silence and strength which Anna had conveyed at their last meeting. She knew that there was no better way to neutralize Anna than to be friendly with her, as only she knew how to be friendly towards those who were vaguely unfortunate. For Anna was surely unfortunate. Nevertheless she would be on her guard.

  Anna, at the end of the telephone, felt driven by a hard will to consent to what was being proposed. Besides, as was being pointed out to her, she had few other calls on her time. But that is rather the point, she wanted to say, and it has been overlooked. When people remember me I am supposed to be grateful. It is assumed that I am so deservedly humble that I shall be overcome when any attention comes my way. That is an error. What she wanted to tell Vickie Halliday was that it would be better all round if this dinner did not take place. Lawrence would not have a false feeling of security from having brought his affections out into the open (and under the scrutiny of his wife), Vickie could continue to ignore her completely, and she, Anna, could avoid the glimpses of domesticity which they both, in their various ways, and for diverging reasons, proposed to offer her.

  She was aware, belatedly, of change, of protest, as yet undefined. She remembered her fantasy of escaping to another place, another climate, and wondered if she would ever have the courage to enact it. Certainly she did not underestimate the amount of courage that would be needed. What kept her in her place was a habit of affection, rather than affection itself: she was puzzled when it was refused or denied and tended to persist in its quest, not being quite adept at reading the signals. She did not see why she should relinquish her own memory of Lawrence’s past attentions; what she did see was that his wife did not intend to allow her to retain it. She disliked his complicity in this false friendship, and remembered that in the past she had regretted his all too pliant nature. I would have been the strong one, she thought; maybe I still am. She detected a certain wariness in the Hallidays, a wariness which had prompted this unwelcome invitation. She was to be neutralized, made harmless, so that she could be discarded once again. Something about her threatened them, but drove them on in a clumsy attempt to disarm her.

  She felt a distaste for their crudeness, felt pity, even, that they were so determined. Poor Lawrence, who only wanted love and approval, who could not bear discord, who wanted all his friends to be friends, who was grateful for even a pretence of affection—nothing could now be revealed to him of her reservations, of her own foreknowledge that this encounter, in these circumstances, would be a mistake, after which perhaps they could never meet again. Nor did she want to see him at home, the home he had chosen, with the wife whom he had chosen. Although her own feelings had, she thought, been dealt with at the time, had been coloured by her mother’s plight, and the iron discipline to which she had subjected herself, she was newly aware of a commingling of love and injustice such as she had not fully experienced before. If only he had waited, she thought, and if only I had not. And now it was all over, irrevocable, dead and buried, apart from this new awareness of hers, which led her to reject the plans made for her by others. For that had been the pattern so far. She thought that with a little encouragement she might eventually be free of the past, but that she was not yet angry enough to make the break herself. He could have helped me, she thought. Because he is safe he thinks he is helping me now. It is what is called extending the hand of friendship. But it was love that was in question, and neither of us can quite forget that. His sharp-witted wife is already on the alert, quite rightly, and I am to be comprehensively put in my place.

  She was not emancipated enough to frame a refusal which would somehow obey the social rules. How did one refuse an invitation that was angrily pressed on one, when it was pointed out that it was for one’s own good, and that in any case one had nothing better to do? Once again she was being reduced to good behaviour, and the falsity of it made her feel quite faint. All she desired now was to be known, if only by one person. Given the choice she would still wish that person to be Halliday, while realizing that this was impossible. She did not contemplate underhand behaviour, for she was a novice in this matter. She wished for justice, that grand amorphous wish, and that she might have some part of it for herself. Again she felt pity for the Hallidays, in whom she aroused such clumsy feelings. At the same time she felt a certain sorrow that she was to be asked to pass yet another test.

  Aloud she said, ‘Yes, of course, I’d love to come. Thursday would be fine.’

  After replacing the receiver she went and stood at the window to see if she could detect any signs of future warmth, but the grass below was sour and livid after a recent light snowfall, which had astonished everyone, coming so late in the year. Trees were in fragile leaf but it was still bitterly cold. She thought, as she always did in moments of exceptional discouragement, of a poem by Valéry, in which the poet, under a burning sky, detects in himself the signs of a necessary change. ‘Beau ciel, vrai ciel, regarde-moi qui change …’ How did it go on? ‘Après tant d’orgueil, après tant d’étrange oisiveté …’ She had always supposed that the line referred to the poet’s inability to write, to a dry period in his creative life. Now she saw that anyone could undergo this dryness, and could also recover from it. The setting, she seemed to remember, was on the south coast of France, below Montpellier; the atmosphere was one of ardour, the ardour of the great sun awakening a corresponding intensity in the poet. Maybe it was an allegory of summer, not of England’s pallid summers but the summer of a shore that looked towards Africa. She envied the poet’s sense of wonder at his own metamorphosis, yet knew that she would feel the same if ever fate decreed a different life for her. At the same time she knew that she had both won and lost the battle some time ago, that death would hold no terrors for her now simply by virtue of the fact that she had attained and practised stoicism for some years past. There was too much distance between what she desired (as did the poet) and what was offered.

  She went to her wardrobe and took out the brown corded silk suit. She regarded it critically. Disaster seemed to strike every time she wore it; on the other hand she was not expecting to be pleasantly surprised. It would have to do. Afterwards, she knew, she would discard it, wear prettier, less formal clothes. There was no need to dress like a matron. Correct wear had been her mother’s idea. Amy Durrant herself had looked her best in brilliant tweeds, with excessively feminine blouses. For a long time they had dressed alike. But now one could wear soft flowered skirts, with brief little jackets, and look years younger. It was a pity that she had no such clothes with which to confront the Hallidays. Idly, she sketched the sort of clothes she would like to have worn. The sketches were satisfactory; the time flew. Vague plans took shape in her mind. For the moment the brown suit would have to do. She looked forward to presenting it to Mrs Duncan in the very near future. She thought it might become her very well.

  The weather had reverted to winter stringency. April, although now nearly over, was once again proving the cruellest month. With the fading of the light came frost, and with the frost silence, as if everyone had hurried home. On the Thursday evening, which came all too soon, Anna took from the wardrobe her mother’s fur coat, which she had never worn. It was an ample luxurious coat,
which her mother had bought in the euphoric aftermath of her meeting with Ainsworth. Had she fallen in love with him already? Certainly her health had improved almost overnight, so that Anna had had a glimpse of what her own life might have been had her mother been confident and happy. She had repressed the thought, for she was accustomed to see her mother falter several times a day, when in need of rest, and there was no physical reason why this pattern should change. Indeed the increased excitement had seemed to make her more vulnerable, so that Anna had to be on hand to watch over her; she had feared a total collapse, even when Ainsworth had taken up residence. In the throes of passion her mother’s life seemed to be at risk, as if her very ardour might kill her. And afterwards her collapse was all too genuine. The coat had remained unworn, for Amy Durrant had rarely left the house since Ainsworth’s disappearance. Yet she had kept it in her wardrobe as an emblem of happier times. She had not thought to pass it on to Anna, as if Ainsworth might by some miracle be restored to her and she could wear it once again. Anna had inherited it by default, had regarded it with dislike, and had never worn it. On the Thursday evening she put it on and regarded herself with curiosity in the glass. She saw a slight anachronistic figure, but one which looked unmistakably adult. As she was accustomed to thinking of herself as a child this came as something of a surprise.

  ‘Oh, fur!’ said Vickie Halliday, in the tiny hallway of the house in Tryon Street. ‘I’m afraid we don’t approve of fur in this house. Every time I see it I think of the poor animals. Would you like to put it on the chair? You may think me silly, but I don’t like to touch it. I’d rather touch the animal instead.’

  ‘You could hardly touch this animal,’ said Anna. ‘I believe it is fox, or something equally wild. I saw one once, in Hyde Park. It looked very lean and hungry. Good evening, Lawrence.’

  Halliday appeared behind his wife, smiling amiably and abstractedly. All the power seemed to have been withdrawn from him. Unless he was called to a patient the evenings were something of a trial to him: he withdrew into himself, thereby making himself unpopular. He had regretted this invitation as soon as it had been offered. Unfortunately, he had insisted on it. He had had some vague idea that it would get him out of his difficulties. On reflection he had been less sure. The house was invaded by complicated smells. Left to himself, as he never was these days, he would have made himself a bacon sandwich or fried a couple of eggs and watched something simple-minded on television. He was aware that there was too little in his life that was serious, that he rarely read anything of substance these days, but supposed that most married men were at the same disadvantage. He had been persuaded into a bright blue shirt that Vickie had bought for him and in which he felt like an ersatz estate agent. Vickie wore her short red dress, with the exaggerated shoulders, on which Anna had remarked at Mrs Marsh’s party. Although the evening was cold she seemed to smoulder with heat.

  Seated in their small front room, too small to be called a sitting-room, Anna was surprised at the discomfort of her surroundings and also by their chic, which did not marry with what she knew of Lawrence. The striped wallpaper and the heavily ruched curtains seemed to close in on her: the lights were much too bright. She was given a glass of sherry and was asked how she was.

  ‘I’m fine, I think,’ she said.

  ‘Only think?’ said Vickie. ‘Oh, that’s too bad. We must do something about that.’

  ‘No really, I’m fine.’

  ‘We shall have to keep an eye on you, then,’ said Vickie, whose attention seemed intermittent. ‘Lawrence, darling, give Anna some nuts. Make yourself useful. Oh, men! At least that’s one worry you’ve been spared.’

  Surely she could not be so crude, thought Anna, who felt the onset of something like dismay. To be so transparent! She herself had always been impassive, even in the teeth of major provocations. She regarded Vickie Halliday with well-disguised curiosity, regretting the fact that she could no longer describe her to Marie-France in a finely composed letter. She still wrote—they both did—but the confidences were no longer the same. But the letter she might have written would have seemed like revenge, and she dismissed the possibility. As she saw it, and all too clearly, the onus of the evening was on her, and she determined to carry it through with all the goodwill she could muster.

  ‘We thought we’d have you all to ourselves,’ said Vickie, who had registered the remark about the fox. ‘So that we can find out something about you.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Darling, could you turn off the oven? We’ll have to eat fairly soon,’ she said, turning back to Anna. ‘I’ve made something rather special and I don’t want it to spoil. Now, where were we?’

  ‘I believe you’re an excellent cook,’ said Anna, who supposed this to be in order. Indeed, she remembered Vickie inviting Nick Marsh to sample her food.

  ‘Yes, I am. I hope you’re going to do justice to my new recipe. It’s always very exciting for me to give my guests something out of the ordinary. So you’re quite happy, are you? Well, that’s good.’

  She got up and turned up the radiators.

  ‘Darling, must you? It’s not healthy.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense, we’ll freeze in here.’

  ‘If you wore more sensible clothes, a sweater or something.’

  ‘Darling! You’re boring Anna. Take no notice,’ she said to Anna. ‘He’s a terrible worrier. But he’s a dear, really. I’ve no complaints. Shall we go through?’

  The dining-room was in fact the other half of the room, made smaller by a round table, a sideboard, and more excessively ruched curtains. Lawrence, who had not said a word, poured wine.

  ‘Is that one of Daddy’s?’ said Vickie. ‘If so it’ll be very good. Daddy has an excellent cellar. He’s trying to train Lawrence’s palate, without much success, I’m afraid. I think he’d prefer beer.’ She laughed.

  ‘I never drink beer these days,’ said Lawrence sombrely.

  ‘Well, I should hope not! What would the patients say? Anna, tell me what you think of my terrine.’

  Too much gelatine, thought Anna, as she negotiated the slippery slice. It was unpleasantly chilly; she felt as if she were eating ice cream. ‘Delicious,’ she said.

  ‘But you haven’t told me anything about yourself,’ protested Vickie. ‘I don’t feel as if I know you yet.’

  ‘There’s so little to tell, really. I’d rather hear about you.’

  ‘I don’t know where to start. There’s the house, of course, and Lawrence’s work—that keeps me pretty busy. And I’m interested in various charities. Animal charities.’

  ‘Oh, what a good idea.’

  Vickie’s expression became tragic. ‘Such terrible things go on, Anna. The poor calves! And the lambs, going over to France in those lorries!’

  ‘Darling …’

  ‘I can’t bear to think of them. It makes me feel quite ill.’

  Anna watched in fascination as two perfectly formed tears fell down Vickie’s cheeks.

  ‘Darling, do we have to talk about animals at dinner?’

  ‘I can’t help it if I’m sensitive,’ she said, touching her napkin to the corners of her eyes. ‘I’ve always been sensitive to wrongdoing. And it’s wrong, Anna, to send those poor animals to France like that.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’

  Lawrence quietly got up and turned the radiators back to their original low setting.

  ‘So you’re not getting any meat this evening. We’re cutting out meat. I’ve made a fish stew,’ she announced. ‘And I’m counting on you to do justice to it.’

  Gusts of fishy heat rose from the soup bowl which was lowered before her. The tiny jaws of mussels gaped from its almost crimson depths. Anna looked down in consternation. Courage was called for beyond the demands of politeness. Lawrence tucked a napkin into the neck of his cerulean shirt and set to with a pantomime of enthusiasm. The chunks of white fish which occasionally bobbed to the surface were not quite cooked through.

  ‘Some more?’ urged Vickie.
‘It’s all got to be finished.’

  ‘No, really …’

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ she said, surprised.

  ‘I very rarely eat much in the evenings,’ said Anna, who usually had a banana and a glass of milk.

  ‘That’s why you’re so skinny. You’ll never be asked out if you don’t eat, you know. You want to get married, don’t you? Men hate finicky eaters.’

  Lawrence, in despair, got up and returned with another bottle of wine. He tilted the bottle at Anna enquiringly. Vickie frowned. He filled their glasses and sat down, defeated.

  ‘Cheese and fruit,’ announced Vickie. She seemed to have lost interest in the evening, but made an obvious extra effort. ‘I can introduce you to some very nice people,’ she said. ‘We can’t have you sitting on your own every evening.’

  ‘But really, I rather like sitting on my own. I’m not much good in company. I suppose I like a quiet life.’

  ‘Isn’t that a rather selfish attitude?’ asked Vickie, with a fine smile.

  ‘I suppose I am rather selfish. But as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone … And I do go out, you know. I go to the latest exhibitions. I go to concerts. As I dare say you do. Tell me, what have you seen recently?’

  ‘Well, we don’t get much time. We do a lot of entertaining. I don’t suppose you do much of that?’

  ‘You must let me take you out to dinner. I must return your kind invitation.’

  This was taken amiss. ‘Darling, make some coffee,’ said Vickie, in a tone not previously heard, a tone used to giving orders. ‘You’d like some coffee?’