Lewis Percy

by Anita Brookner

  Mrs Harper breathed hard, as her ordinary life, the life she had lived between Tissy’s marriage and the events of this evening, receded in an aura of distant happiness.

  ‘I don’t know what you did,’ she went on. ‘And I don’t want to know. All I know is that she’s decided to leave you.’

  ‘Did she walk here by herself?’ asked Lewis stupidly.

  ‘No. She telephoned me to come and get her. Oh, I know her in this mood. But what could I do? She is my daughter after all. She has no one else.’

  ‘She has me,’ said Lewis.

  ‘Oh, men,’ Mrs Harper retorted, with something of her old asperity. ‘Take it from me, Lewis, a woman can’t rely on a man. I should know. Not that I’ve anything against you: you’ve been good to her. But I wonder if these feminists aren’t right. Only women really understand women.’

  As she talked, Lewis was aware that the two of them, mother and daughter, would soon work their way back into a type of female collusion that he had disrupted but not obliterated. By intemperately marrying Tissy he had taken her from her rightful place, from the ranks of all those women who would presumably understand what she was doing. Yet they all wanted to get married, didn’t they? They were not above the odd sly move in this direction, the odd ploy, the odd plan. What more could he have done to please her, once he knew that this was her intention?

  In Mrs Harper’s face there began to dawn the first signs of a look of dangerous disappointment, which would soon, Lewis knew, be directed against himself. In no time at all she would be blaming him for what had happened. He marvelled at the irrational faultlessness with which their minds worked: so swift to reach the correct conclusion, yet getting there by means which he would consider irregular, almost gangsterish. His shoulders slumped in weariness: he would never find mercy at this tribunal. He saw himself condemned to repeat his defence throughout eternity, without ever a hope of swaying the jury. ‘But nothing happened!’ he said to himself, miserably aware of how paltry a man sounds when he utters this particular excuse. If nothing happened, then this was the final blow to his masculinity, no matter how ardently he might proclaim his virtue. And to a man there was something unseemly in this raking over the ashes, this jealous watchfulness, when what had taken place should have been an affair of the utmost privacy, of secrecy. He did not know the rules, he concluded, had merely thought in terms of admiring, longing, loving, when what apparently counted was a calculation of the sexual score, as if everyone were keeping a tally. Did you or didn’t you? Tissy had humiliatingly asked him. Either you did or you didn’t. But she had left the room without waiting for an answer. Either answer would have counted against him. And, will you or won’t you? Emmy had demanded. And all that he had wanted was to examine, quite delicately, this feeling that had brought them together, to experience its novelty, to dream of its possibility. But a passage of arms was what had been in mind, so that she too could add him to her list of unsatisfactory or impossible men.

  It still did not occur to him that Tissy had left him for good. He thought this retreat to her old room was part of an elaborate ritual, and that once he had played his part, confessed that he was penitent, remorseful, and helpless without her, she would return.

  ‘Can I see her?’ he asked Mrs Harper.

  ‘I shouldn’t advise it. I’ve put her to bed with some hot milk and an aspirin. I’ll give her a sleeping pill later.’

  ‘Well, what would you advise?’ he had said, exasperated by this show of invalidism. If this was where they were heading the outlook was poor.

  ‘You could call round tomorrow, I suppose. Or better still, leave it for a couple of days. It won’t do you any harm to look after yourself for a bit, show you what women have to do.’

  ‘I do work, you know.’

  ‘Oh, work,’ she said, with a look of disgust. ‘I know all about men’s work.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, Thea, it would have done Tissy no harm to have had a job of sorts. Part-time. Nor you either.’ He knew he was on dangerous ground but a wave of anger had made him bold. ‘You’ve both got too much time to think about yourselves. About what pleases you. And you’re both competent women. Tissy is much too young just to sit at home. She had more energy when she was working in the library. Why couldn’t she go back there?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Lewis. You forget how handicapped she is.’

  ‘But the point is she was getting so much better. She could have overcome it altogether if you’d let her. You kept treating her as if she were a little girl. You colluded with her. And don’t tell me your life couldn’t have been different if you’d met more people. You might have married again. You’re still a good-looking woman.’

  The ‘still’ was perhaps unfortunate. But now that he was speaking the truth he thought there was no point in pretending that things were other than they were.

  ‘That’ll do, Lewis. You’ve no business criticizing me.’

  ‘No, you’re right, I haven’t. But Tissy is a married woman now. My wife. It’s time she stopped behaving like a baby. She’s going to have a baby, for God’s sake. What kind of a mother is she going to be?’

  He thought of a daughter, undergoing the same claustration, the same reclusion as Tissy had done, with all her childishness preserved intact. Yet a daughter would be better than a son. A son would be denatured by such a mother. Or would he? He himself had been brought up by his mother, and he did not truly think that he was any the worse for it, although the women in his present life – or out of it – would no doubt accuse him of nameless faults in this connection. But his mother had been all sweetness, and her only fault had been to lead him to overvalue sweetness in others. He himself half hoped for a boy. But when he thought of Tissy he knew it was unrealistic to calculate in terms of a son or a daughter. He saw the child in terms of infinite babyhood, a babyhood enduring throughout its adult life. Sexless loyalty was Tissy’s requirement, and if she could not get it from her husband she would exact it from her child.

  ‘Whether I call round or not,’ he said, ‘I expect Tissy to get in touch with me tomorrow.’

  ‘I can’t answer for her,’ said her mother.

  ‘Surely you can see how unsatisfactory this is? It’s in nobody’s interest … And anyway, she’s my wife.’

  ‘Yes, well, you should have thought of that.’

  But her voice was weary and her eyes seemed tearful, as the prospect of the rest of her life unrolled before her. She doubted whether the doctor would come to heel now, although he might have done if Jersey and its delights had been on the horizon. Instead of that she was to have a grandchild in the house, for there was a distinct possibility that Tissy might stay indefinitely. Tissy’s revenge would be extended to everyone she had ever known, beginning with her mother. Forgiveness was beyond her; forgetting out of the question. Her sole pleasure, in the future, would consist of being an uncomfortable reminder of how they had all wronged her. And no doubt the baby would come in for some of that as well.

  The fact that throughout this interview he had not been asked, let alone invited, to sit down, seemed to Lewis emblematic of the whole affair. His status, he saw, was henceforth to be that of an intruder. As he was already classed as the guilty party, this new attitude, which had formed remarkably quickly, simply edged him further towards marginality. Steps would soon be taken to remove him altogether. He would be redundant, irrelevant in a household of women. For although there were only two of them he saw them as the centre of a grievance that would inevitably bring others to their side. They would benefit from their situation, however precarious, however unenviable it might seem to be, and the longer they persisted in it the more incapable it would become of any resolution. Pride, reputation, honour were in the balance, and all would fall if the masculine will were to prevail. This contest, in which love had no part – had indeed not been mentioned throughout the proceedings – seemed to Lewis the height of insanity. He had hardly time to consider his own situation, sinc
e he still could not calculate the time-scale of Tissy’s absence. But at last he began to perceive his predicament, if Tissy chose to stay away. He could see that just as it was a matter of honour for her to leave him, it was a matter of his honour that she should return. There was simply no point at which they could compromise. And the poor little baby, torn between the two of them! But he did not really believe that they would still be in this mess in seven months’ time, when the baby was due to be born. If they were he would simply have to abandon the child to his or her mother and grandmother. He would be too heartbroken to bring it up on his own. He thought of Silas Marner, and felt the beginning of tears again as he saw himself, a grey-haired old man, devoting his life to a pretty and unsuspecting little girl. Yet tears were not to be shed, it seemed, neither his nor Mrs Harper’s. Tissy’s tears would, of course, have preceded her arrival.

  Above his overriding and immediate dilemma there hovered a more abstract speculation. Something about this mother and daughter repelled him. Their behaviour towards each other, towards the world, was not as it should be. He had never, except at the wedding ceremony, seen them embrace. His reading had led him to expect more, much, much more, perhaps an outpouring of love and anguish such as he himself felt ready to bestow. He imagined an ideal mother and daughter, whom he might have devised himself, greeting each other. The picture was vivid: he could see it quite clearly, over and beyond Mrs Harper’s discomposed features. Such kisses, such sighs, such patting of cheeks! There was none of that here, nor, to his knowledge, had there ever been. Emotion was something they did without; at least, their constricted view of emotion was translated into silent demonstrations of attachment, of loyalty, certainly, of fidelity of an unquestioning kind, but also of an inability to go further, into pleasurable feeling. If Tissy loved him – if she had ever loved him – it was in the same way that Mrs Harper loved the doctor, almost with a sort of reluctance, as if this were all that could be expected of them. It pained him to discover within himself a sympathy with the doctor, whom he unreservedly disliked, but he could see that both of them must often have retreated into resignation. It was Emmy who had opened this new perspective in his thinking. She was outrageous, but she was also spontaneous, instinctive: the surge of the id was there, however disastrous the consequences. She was at the other extreme from Tissy. Then he remembered that they both appeared to hate him, and that whatever he had done, or not done, had apparently removed them both. A coldness settled on him, and he began to face the fact that he had somehow, simultaneously, let them both down. It would have been better if he had been unfaithful: what comfort could there be in inadequacy? Yet the idea that he had failed his marriage was his predominant anxiety: this was a crime, and, like the shooting of the Duc d’Enghien, worse than a crime, an error. Who would have thought Tissy capable of the action that now confronted him? And how was he to live, if not as a married man, the fate that he felt had been bestowed on him almost since birth?

  Marriage to him meant order, infidelity disorder, even chaos. And behind this simple fact came the subdivisions of order: a quiet and regulated life, predictable but manageable longings, an old age that could be anticipated without fear. And children: he longed for children. Apart from Andrew, whom he saw perhaps once a year, he had no family. He came from a short line of dead people. Surely, even with her restricted imagination, Tissy could see that his was the natural path? He was in no sense exceptional, and never would be. Perhaps his disappointment in finding his wife to be as unexceptional as himself was unworthy. He knew now that together they might have had a peaceable life, but that it would have been a life without growth. Yet he dreaded to see the possibility of such a life taken away by this ugly hackneyed return to the red house, with its over-large, over-important furniture, and its smell of caramel. That reminded him: he had not eaten since breakfast. He had missed lunch, had wandered round Lincoln’s Inn Fields, thinking of Emmy. Even that had been wrong. Disorder was already apparent in everything he did. Miserably, he longed for his wife, and the restitution of their life together before this unimaginable, this ludicrous disaster had overtaken him. That he must appear apologetic, importunate, a figure of fun, did nothing to reassure him.

  At last, heavy-hearted, he had turned to go. He was obliged to open the front door himself, since Mrs Harper’s brand of hospitality had reverted to the peculiar unfriendliness that had been his impression on first meeting her. She stood and watched him, not hostile, not really indifferent, merely incurious as to the state of his own feelings. That, of course, was the quality which both mother and daughter shared: incuriosity. Faced with this he felt suddenly frightened. Who would care for him now? How long would he have to go home to an empty house? Pure panic seized him when he thought of his inevitable descent into illness and squalor, or, if not these, then certainly eccentricity, of which he had previously given no sign. He had seen elderly scholars in the library, locked for years inside someone else’s biography, and now recognizable by their dull ties, their unpolished shoes, the hair straggling down their necks. He would probably become like one of them. His heart broke with loneliness, and because he could not trust his voice to speak he had merely lifted his arm in farewell to Mrs Harper and gone out into the night.

  This, then, was what he had to face, and he knew he must be very vigilant. He knew that he must lose neither his feelings nor his manners in the days to come. Dignity would go as soon as he would be forced to explain himself and his situation to a third party, but sensibility, with a bit of luck, could be retained. No heroic attitude would be available to him, and he now began to doubt the reality of such attitudes. Heroic behaviour was a contributory factor to the madness of art: it had little to do with the untidiness, the shabbiness, the sheer randomness of life itself.

  At home he noted that Tissy had apparently disposed of everything in the larder, and had disdained further shopping as being beneath her wounded dignity. This was as much as he had expected; in that sense he was adapting to the situation. He poured himself a glass of milk and went into the bedroom. Oddly enough, he did not miss her here. In bed with her, he had always felt uncomforted, and sometimes his dreams had shown himself as longing to be free. What he felt now was a coldness, as if he were, or had become, a much older man. It even seemed to him that there was a new stiffness in his movements, but the hour was late, and he was uneasy on so many levels that he sought the solace of his bed without any further nod towards the implications of his condition. He slept the black sleep of grief, or of bereavement.

  In the morning he went to the library as usual. He did not think he looked any different, met no surprised glances as he walked past the porter’s lodge and up the stairs. At some point during the morning Goldsborough, now adorned with several CND badges, loomed into view.

  ‘A word with you, Lewis, if you would be so kind. In my office.’

  Lewis wondered if he were to be dismissed. On grounds of moral cowardice, no doubt, word having got round. He was to be indicted as a poltroon, unworthy, among other things, of the office of librarian. He was sure that there was nothing wrong with his work, so it could only be his utter failure as a human being that was giving rise to Goldsborough’s concern. For Goldsborough was undoubtedly concerned; his face was uncharacteristically grave. Goldsborough too must be getting on, Lewis thought, although disguised by a protracted boyishness, a very real naïveté. Yet his girth was increasing; there was no mistaking his figure for that of a younger man. He had appeared twice on a television panel discussion, but despite his grasp of events had been judged too old to appeal to the young and had been replaced by a pop singer who had found Jesus. The elements of a dawning maturity, never fully to be realized, had sent him back to his former work. Deconstruction, when all was said and done, offered more dignity and better career prospects. He had begun to feel left out of it when Lewis’s book had been accepted for publication, but had handsomely said nothing. In this way he was able not to offer congratulations, but that, he thought, was by the by. He
did not believe in encouraging vanity in others.

  Lewis was aware of a portentous clearing of the throat that augured no good for his situation.

  ‘I think you ought to know, Lewis, that your wife telephoned, very early, before you arrived, in fact. Hilary took the call; I’d only just got here myself. She said to tell you not to go round this evening. She said she was staying at her mother’s until further notice.’ He paused significantly. ‘Nothing wrong, is there, Lewis?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. He was burning with humiliation. ‘My wife hasn’t been too well lately. She’s gone to her mother’s for a rest.’

  ‘Of course, of course. These things happen. Not to worry. Take time off, if you like. Not too long, mind you.’

  He managed to smile. ‘I shan’t need time off, Arnold. Thanks all the same. I’ve got rather a lot to do. If you’ll excuse me …’

  He reached the haven of his desk, which was now to be his only haven, having just managed to fight back the wave of scarlet that threatened to engulf him, and which, even now, he could feel draining away, leaving a deadly pallor behind. It was only by telling himself that he would never, in the whole of his life, be so utterly miserable again that he was still able to function. So this is it, he thought, journey’s end. What made it infinitely worse was the way in which Tissy had told the world of his plight. Everybody knew, of course. It was no use pretending that nothing was wrong. At this point he accepted that he was alone again. He looked humbly round him at the library, and applied himself with infinite care to his index cards. In the middle of the morning Pen came to his desk, laid a hand briefly on his shoulder, and said, ‘Usual place? Half-past twelve?’ Some little while later Arthur Tooth came creaking alongside and deposited a barley sugar on one of the piles of off-prints that he was cataloguing. Thanks, Arthur,’ said Lewis, clearing his throat.