Lewis Percy

by Anita Brookner

  ‘We can count on you, then?’ said Howard.

  ‘Yes, I think you can,’ he said. ‘I never thought this sort of thing could happen so quickly.’

  ‘That’s the way we do it,’ said Howard with a smile. ‘Why waste time?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ he said, as he shook their hands and got them a taxi. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he shouted, as the door slammed and the taxi moved off. Then he was alone on the pavement. A free man, he supposed.

  None of this would be easy, he warned himself, as he strode off in the direction of Parsons Green. But when was leaving home ever easy? And who could make it easier? Certainly not anybody he knew. If anything his family, such as it was, would make it more onerous still. To feel like this at thirty-eight! He should be joyous, determined. But around his heart, which he had believed to be arid, he felt the sad blooming of regret, of longing. For certainty, he imagined. But there was no certainty: he had already found that out, and thus learned the most difficult of all lessons. As he walked along the Fulham Road his pace slackened and his euphoria, largely induced by the unexpected company, gradually ebbed away, leaving sadness and confusion in its wake. Surely none of this could be happening to him, he reasoned. No one had actually asked him if he wanted to go to America: the idea had never occurred to him. The intervening months between now and his departure, whether spent in Paris or in London, seemed irrelevant, and would, he knew, be filled with conflicting feelings; he would be torn between a desire to have everything stay the same and the sad knowledge that it never did. He began to feel appalled at the way his life had shifted into this uncomfortable dilemma. His reason told him that he must seize this opportunity to start again, yet what he felt, overwhelmingly, was distress at having to leave everything that meant safety to him. He knew that his life was shamefully dull by anybody’s standards. He knew that he was too young to settle down into this dreamy troubled routine with which he had so easily – too easily – come to terms. Yet as he looked up into the whitish sky of a summer night he wondered under what skies he would soon find himself. It was for the furniture of his life rather than its inhabitants that he felt most longing, for he knew that his absence would make little difference to those he would leave behind. Would anyone even notice? Pen, possibly: the others not at all. His own love for his daughter would become a burden to her, while his wife had already indicated her forthcoming absence. She was more competent than he was, had brought her housewifely efficiency to bear on her plans in a way that had once amused him: he was forced to acknowledge in her the same gravity, the same concentration, the same lack of anything to say, now that her object was Gilbert Bradshaw rather than the maintenance of his, Lewis’s, comfort and inheritance. Assiduous was the word he would have used to describe her. And notably unforthcoming. And still he went to her door, and still she eluded him. He wanted her attention, that notoriously scarce commodity, as he had always wanted it. He wanted to tell her of his woe, yet the idea of her wilfully evading this explanation, as she had evaded all the others, was unbearable to him. He knew that if she were to break off to answer the telephone in the middle of this hypothetical explanation he might feel the impulse to murder her.

  Yet while longing to stay he knew that he would leave, leave the quiet house, the yellow roses in the garden, the allotted half-hour with his daughter, for a wasteland of unasked-for possibilities. And those intervening months in Paris, that probably misguided reprise of an earlier experience, would, he knew, be an error. For what had his youth yielded, apart from a modest ambition and a mistaken confidence in women? The ambition, which he supposed would now be satisfied, had all but disappeared: he had laid it aside without regret, leaving it at the back of the cupboard with the unwrapped copies of his book. And fate had seen to it that his naïf confidence had been wrongly invested. Fate would no doubt guarantee that he make the same mistake again, if ever he had the temerity to repeat the experiment. The worst of it was that he still could not see what else he could have done. And now he would leave home to make his mark, but all would be accomplished in desolation. Some essential hope had vanished, and he was about to be sent out to look for it again.

  There was a light on in the downstairs window of Mrs Harper’s house. Without thinking, he rang the bell. In her dressing-gown, now stout, but with the stand-offish air of a woman who habitually flings her head back at every encounter, she received him with the flared nostrils of old, and, as ever, he felt his vitality diminish as he contemplated the impossibility of winning her over to his point of view.

  ‘Lewis!’ she said, her hand to her breast as though he were an intruder. ‘It’s very late. I was just going to bed.’

  ‘Is Tissy here, Thea? I want to speak to you both.’

  ‘Tissy’s not back yet. She went out for the evening.’

  ‘I need to talk to her. In the meantime I want to tell you something, something that will affect you personally.’

  ‘Oh?’ She was prepared, he could see, to be affronted.

  ‘Do you think we might sit down? This is rather important.’

  Reluctantly she moved aside to allow him access to the drawing-room, following him as if he were some headlong and feckless stranger with whom she had to have dealings. He noted the thickening of her jaw, her weary eyelids, noted too the dust on the vase of dried flowers in the grate. The handsome jutting table, the overstuffed and swollen armchairs, the incongruity of the fragile cups and saucers in the corner cupboard, the heavy silver – no longer polished – his daughter’s little chair, all affected him with a further desolation, further evidence of leave-taking.

  ‘I want you to sell this house, Thea,’ he said. ‘I want the three of you to move to my house. It can be yours if you live there, as I hope you will. I want Jessica to grow up there.’

  ‘Tissy will never come back to you, Lewis. I told you that.’

  ‘I’m going away, Thea. She won’t have to come back to me. I’m going to America.’ And then, at last, he knew that it was true.

  She sank into a chair. ‘You can’t go away. You’ve got responsibilities.’

  They’re also Tissy’s responsibilities. I’m passing them over to her now. She can look after you both. And if she wants to make other plans she can do so without me as financial back-up. Where is she, by the way?’

  ‘I don’t think you’re entitled to ask that, now that you’re going away.’

  ‘But you didn’t know that before this evening, did you? I’m not blind, Thea, although I agree that it takes me an incredibly long time to see anything. Please ask her to stay in tomorrow. I must talk to her. But obviously I had to see you first.’ There was no irony in this remark, merely a statement of fact.

  ‘And when do you think you’re going? To America?’ She spoke sarcastically, as if America were some sort of illusion.

  ‘I’m going next year. Until then I shall be in Paris. I shall leave for Paris’ – here he consulted his watch – ‘in a couple of months. In the next two months I shall have moved out of the house and into a flat somewhere. The flat can be for Jessica when she’s grown up, if she wants it. Eventually,’ he paused here, on delicate ground, ‘I should hope to move back into the house. In the meantime I’m sure you’ll all be more comfortable there.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to make all the arrangements, Lewis. I can’t say what Tissy will think.’

  ‘I’ll make the arrangements, of course. And perhaps Tissy would like to let me know what she thinks when I come round tomorrow evening. Cheer up, Thea. Tissy always loved my house, and Jessica will have a proper garden to play in. And you’ll be happy there, I’m sure.’ He was saying all this very firmly, as if he believed it. Firmness was essential. There was no hope to be had from this particular quarter.

  ‘I’ll leave you now,’ he said. ‘You’ll want to get to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  She followed him to the door, which, as usual, he had to open himself.

  ‘I was thinking of going back to Jersey,’ she said. ‘I’ve still
got a brother there. We could live with him.’

  ‘Well, now you won’t have to,’ he said pleasantly. ‘You won’t have to live with anyone. The money you get from this place will see you through nicely for a few years. You can always get in touch with me if you need anything. But I’ll have to have a divorce, Thea, you do see that, don’t you? I’ve been alone too long now, and I can’t go on. And I dare say Tissy has other plans. As I said, I’m not blind, although I am incredibly stupid.’

  ‘I don’t know, Lewis. You’ve always been good to her.’

  ‘But she’s not my wife any more, is she? I’m not leaving a wife, am I? She doesn’t love me and I don’t think she ever did. She just wanted to be married. As for my feelings …’ He stopped. He suddenly could not bear to discuss his feelings. He resolved to leave his feelings out of it, since they had so little influence on his wife: by this stage it seemed like an act of human economy, of rationalization, to leave them out altogether.

  Through the open door the starless night beckoned, aloof and pure, no promise of human affection. The little hall was, as always, redolent of the smells of fine cooking, but now he noticed a staleness in the air. Part of the staleness emanated from Mrs Harper herself. Lewis felt for her his usual combination of dislike and compassion. On an impulse he bent down and kissed her, something he could not remember doing since the day of his wedding. She lowered her eyelids in acknowledgement. He waited outside on the step, until he heard her close the door, and then moved off into the night. A stranger might have remarked that he had acted like a man. Odd, therefore, how little he felt like one.

  16

  He awoke the following morning in a burst of anger. They would not be allowed to get away with this. Who ‘they’ were was quite unclear to him, nor did it matter; he was quite content to let their identity remain obscure. He simply felt entitled to a period – an intermission – of irrational and futile resentment, after which he would return to his mild-mannered and well-behaved ordinary self. In the meantime he enjoyed being angry. Energized and liberated, he tore through his breakfast and wrote a pungent note for Mrs Joliffe, asking her to pay more than usual attention to the cleaning of the bedrooms. He then became more angry when he realized that it was too early to go out and belabour estate agents. He would have liked to conclude his business within the space of a single morning, to have overseen the removals, to have bought the flat and installed the furniture, sent out the change of address cards, resigned from the library and packed his bags. He was ready to go. But this was anger speaking, and underneath the anger lurked something simpler, more tender, something unreasoning, something like the remnants of faith, hope, and charity, all three, in fact, something that looked forward, in the simplest sense, to his new life, while at the same time acknowledging his need for help. He felt newborn, unfledged. He remembered a picture he had once seen of the hand of God, conveniently cleaving a portion of the heavens to succour a martyr on the point of death. He remembered another, of a departing soul, hands joined for the upward flight, already dressed in other-worldly garments. He had thought of it as something reserved for believers, having no use for such things. But now he wondered. If help were to be needed, this particular resource must be borne in mind. For it became clear that help would come from no other direction. He had already received intimations of the future; now all that he required, but required in good measure, was the gift of acceptance. Perhaps this was not in the power of any human agency. Perhaps what he was feeling was forgivable, understandable, even justifiable – even better, perhaps it was natural to feel as he now felt. He had enjoyed the anger while it lasted, and had had the agreeable sensation that it was spontaneous, within his reach. And also that new vulnerability, quite unlike the old, the so familiar weakness. This new feeling was childlike, but without fear. He saw that while a certain amount of attack was needed to enjoy the world, this inwardness was required in order to make sense of it. He desired to make a bet with himself that he could go through with it. Already the emotions of the past hour had provided a brisk tutorial in possibilities. The only interference with these insights would come from the contingencies of ordinary living, which he saw as huge crudely fashioned roadblocks, barricades in his path, the day an endurance test of negotiations. He wished he had more cunning at his disposal. But there was no help for it: no-one would substitute for him. He must get through by himself.

  From habit he scanned the social page of The Times for the announcement of Emmy’s forthcoming marriage. As always there was nothing. He let the paper fall with his usual feelings of relief and dismay. What had happened to her, his poor girl? Why had she so singularly failed to do what other women, far less interesting, managed to do with such ease? There was something truly lost about her, as he had suspected long ago; he had not been mistaken. That infinite variety of moods which she possessed, that enormous aptitude for pleasure, those round brimming eyes, that brutal sophistication, all failed to disguise a desolate heart, a heart even more desolate than his own. Endlessly seeking without finding, she was in a more perilous condition than anyone he knew. In comparison Tissy, for whom he had sacrificed her, was a devious little girl. On an impulse, and despite the early hour, he dialled the number of Emmy’s flat. It was, of course, a mistake, as he realized when a male voice answered the telephone.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ said the voice austerely.

  ‘Will you please tell her I called? It’s Lewis Percy. She knows the number. I’d be very grateful if she got in touch.’

  As he put the telephone down he realized how urgently he wanted to see her, not for his own sake but for hers. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, but in a different way, that he would always care for her, care what happened to her, that he would dry her tears. He foresaw a future in which she would return to him, half-ashamed, half-defiant, and he would take her in his arms and sit her down and comfort her, while she would recover her spirits and revert to being the Emmy he had loved and disappointed. There would be disappointment all round, he realized. His trustingness would be no match for her anarchy: he would suffer. And perhaps she would too, as if he had no right not to make her happy, which was what she wanted and thought she deserved. The worst of it was that she had a genuine disposition towards happiness which he was not in a position to satisfy. To her happiness meant diversion: parties, holidays, love affairs. She was a genuine woman of pleasure. And his own disposition towards happiness was entirely opposed to this. He wanted peace, silence, domesticity, the sunny room with the hieratic female figure, gliding, finger to her lips, out of the door. If they ever met again they would be alarmed, sorrowful, that they had failed to match, that they had failed to change. But this was perhaps the essence of a sentimental education, that nobody lived happily ever after, or that this condition was astonishingly rare, which was not what one had been led to believe. Perhaps one was eternally surprised at how endlessly renewing, and self-defeating, love affairs turned out to be. And the sheer impossibility of inhabiting another person’s mind, of taking on their thoughts and fears – this must also be taken into account. It might be that there was sadness at the end of love, or, if not at the end, along the way. He only knew that his heart smote him when he thought of Emmy, as if he wished most painfully to find her again, to go to her rescue. He felt suddenly, scorchingly, ashamed that he had not got in touch with her. But this was simply an illustration of what he meant. His ideal had been marriage, or rather the married state, as hers had been, but while he had a wife and she had no husband they were bound to behave in different ways. He had considered himself disqualified, and viewed her freedom as dangerous to his condition. How she must have despised him! She had told him at the beginning that she hated marriage – for everyone but herself, he had understood her to mean. And he, with his facsimile of a marriage, still obeying the rules!

  She would never come to him now, he thought, after so many disappointments. If they should be together again they would be like Adam and Eve, expelled from their respective G
ardens of Eden, shamefaced with recognition. They would both know, having eaten of the apple, that they could not look forward to an uneventful and cloudless future but must face each other in the intimate knowledge of their own deficiencies. In each other’s eyes their lineaments would be apparent: he would be dull and she would be disobedient. Yet what he wanted to say was that none of this mattered, or rather that it mattered but that it was not crucial. He wanted to care for her, and he wanted, more than anything in the world, that she should care for him. Without that he doubted his ability to live his own life as he would want it to be lived. He doubted his ability to do his work, his research, to go down once again to that sunless sea, without her warmth to return to. He felt as if he had been cold for months, for years, whereas in fact his discomfort had to do with her absence. He did not even care if she did not or would not love him. He accepted this as a possibility. He accepted the fact that his behaviour might have earned her contempt. He only knew that he must reach Pen as soon as possible, to get a message to her. He could not quite face another’s voice at the end of the line, although such voices might become part of his future. For now he was determined to marry her.

  With this realization came a crashing down of barriers in his mind, a cancellation of former loyalties. Even his daughter began to dwindle, remote, well-behaved, a little ghost. Wait for me, he thought, wait for me. I may have other children, but you belong to my real life, the life I was brought up to live, when men and women got married and had children and never even envisaged a second chance. How could they? They were too innocent, like my mother and father. Now I am older, wiser, sadder, and I know that innocence must be sacrificed, before it turns out merely to have been no better than ignorance. I may have other children, but they will have to grow up with this knowledge, for their parents will be filled with it: it will be the air they breathe. Whereas you, so solemn, so dubious, so full of méfiance, and, beneath it, a baffled need to trust, are the child I must have been, and your mother too, before it all went wrong, before devices, stratagems entered our lives. Our calculations were harmless; we married as children marry. I see the same simple assumptions in your eyes, because you will have nothing to hide. You will always be my best, my most loved child, not only because you are the first but because in a sense you are also the last. I say goodbye to myself in you. My other children will be wary, as I myself shall be.