Brief Lives

by Anita Brookner

  Owen had been abroad a great deal recently and there was some feeling in Hanover Square that he should put in more time at the office. His reaction to this was to tell me that he was inviting the senior partners to dinner, with their wives. This meant three separate dinner parties, for it would look too obvious if they were all to be invited together. His uncle Bernard and Lady Frances were no problem, nor was there any difficulty with George and Claire Gascoigne, who were elderly. But on the day that we were expecting Charlie and Julia Morton—famous Julia—in the evening, I had a headache and was unusually low-spirited. My fingers were clumsy as I laid the table and I should have given anything to be able to go to bed. In fact I did lie down for half an hour and fell asleep, which annoyed Owen, who woke me when he came up to dress. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said. ‘I’m not asking you to do anything difficult. You don’t even have to go out. Just put a good face on it, that’s all I ask.’ He added, ‘And you’d better see the doctor tomorrow, if you really feel rotten. You don’t suppose …?’ ‘No,’ I said, for I had never become pregnant and now I knew I never should. Some part of me must have resisted being taken over even further, and although I did not grieve too much then I do now. Growing old is so meaningless when there are no young people to watch.

  I got out of bed, had my bath, and dressed. My head was throbbing, but I thought it might be all right if I did not eat: the smell of the roast veal, as I opened the oven, made me turn away, momentarily faint. Owen was on edge, and it looked as if the evening could not be anything but an outright failure. The Mortons had never been to us before because Julia was still on the stage and did not go out in the evening, at least not to any house connected with her husband’s business, which she deplored, as if he conducted it only out of some weird caprice, when he could have been spending more time at home with her. But the changing fashions had evidently reached Julia and she roundly condemned the tide of popular taste which was turning against her and the particular impression she conveyed. From her first entrance into our drawing-room that evening, in ravishing black silk, with a black silk turban, it was evident that she had thrown herself body and soul into the character of a simple suburban wife. ‘My darlings!’ she announced, sweeping a black chiffon handkerchief from her bag and draping it round her neck, ‘I want you to treat me as one of yourselves. Forget about Julia. Julia is no more. Let the people have what they want. If they want ruffians there are plenty to go round. My day is done.’ She put her hand to her throat and I swear there were tears in her eyes. Charlie, who must have brought unobtrusiveness to a fine art, removed the black chiffon scarf and put it in his pocket. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘Isn’t that the sort of thing middle-class housewives wear? For I suppose we are all middle-class now,’ she added, and the eyelids came down. ‘What about the ruffians?’ said Owen, laughing. The eyelids were slowly and suggestively lifted. ‘I dare say they are available if one knows where to look for them.’

  I was laughing now and the evening looked less dubious than it had done. Although she had very little to say to me (‘Oh, do show me what you are cooking. I am so interested’) she appreciated Owen wonderfully. He was, after all, a handsome and attentive host. The dinner was as good as I could have hoped, although I could manage very little of it. Charlie and Julia ate heartily, and in Julia’s case with enormous pantomimes of appreciation. As I cleared the table and went to get the coffee Charlie held the door open for me, and said, very quietly, ‘All right, my dear?’ I nodded, touched, and felt a little warmth creep into my half-numb face.

  That was the beginning of our friendship, ‘for we are not going to let you go now,’ said Julia, who was obviously fretting at the loss of her public. She was fifty, a difficult age for letting go, still young enough to have ambitions and desires but with fewer opportunities of satisfying either. Owen was delighted with the evening, and Charlie gave the impression of being happy whenever his wife was happy. I decided that he must be exceptionally good-natured to act as her foil in the way that he did: there was something so gallant in that, I thought, as I thankfully prepared for bed. I took off my make-up without even looking at my face, which was an indication of the tiredness I felt. But even as I slipped into that wonderful half-dream that announces sleep I realized that my headache had quite gone.

  FIVE

  JULIA WAS A DEDICATED WOMAN. She was dedicated principally to herself, but that did not seem to lessen her charm, which was powerful if capricious. I know now that inside every one of us there is another self, wistful, wary, uncertain, but also cruel and subversive, a stranger who can respond to any suggestion, any impulse, whether wise or unwise, though it is usually the latter. In Julia’s case this other self seemed to be absent: she was the same, from her polished outward appearance to her ironic inner heart. I never knew a woman so little given to self-doubt or self-questioning. If she thought a thing she said it, and if she wanted to do something she did it. She was impervious to remorse, for in her eyes her desires were always justified. I sensed in her a will as hard as her heart, although she was kind in an absent-minded fashion. But if her kindness was absent-minded it was nevertheless designed to serve her purpose. After flattering attention to oneself she would signify the end of this particular phase of the conversation by asking one, negligently, to perform some small but onerous service. ‘You’re so clever with food,’ she once said to me. ‘What should I get for Charlie’s dinner tonight? What was that delicious vegetable thing I had at your house?’

  ‘That was ratatouille, Julia. It’s very simple, but it takes a little time. I’d bring you some if I had some made.’

  ‘Too sweet of you, but you must remember I’m a housewife now. Come along, Wilberforce! Pencil and paper. Can you see my pencil anywhere? Over there, perhaps, under the Tatler.’

  She adjusted a pair of spectacles which hung on a chain round her neck.

  ‘Now! What do I need?’

  ‘You need tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes …’

  The glasses were removed.

  ‘Don’t go on. I haven’t got any of those things. And I couldn’t possibly carry them, with my poor hands.’

  She flexed her narrow chalky hands, which were beginning to get stiff.

  ‘The next time you buy these things, Fay, could you possibly get a few for me? Then you can come and show me how to cook them.’

  ‘I suppose it would be simpler if I gave you some of my own, when I next make it.’

  ‘Yes, that might be best. What a lovely idea!’

  The subject was closed.

  ‘But what about Charlie’s dinner?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, he can have an omelette. It’s what he usually has. Now I’ve never been able to like eggs. Funny, isn’t it? I find them incredibly boring. Eggs and avocados. Whereas I can eat all kinds of shellfish and sleep like a baby afterwards. I remember a very grand dinner party in New York once: our ambassador was there. The first course was prawns and avocados. So silly. Why ruin prawns? I ate mine and gave the avocado to the ambassador. My hostess was furious, but she was a very tiresome woman. What were we saying?’

  I could see that with Julia one’s natural position was one of subservience, and I was no exception to the rule. I got into the habit of going round to visit her, since this was encouraged by both Owen and Charlie, for different reasons. Charlie was worried that she might feel lonely without the theatre to go to, and Owen was keen to please Charlie. I liked Julia well enough in those days, although I thought her selfish and outrageous, and no substitute for Millie. But Millie had married and gone to live near Oxford, and I felt the need of a female companion. My own state of mind was unstable. Mother, on my recent visits, had seemed to me so much more frail, so removed from my life and the world I had come to inhabit, though not comfortably, far from that. Fortunately I was able to secure the services of a neighbour, Mrs Barber, Joan Barber, who had a small child at school and was glad to go into Mother every day and sit with her. That way, at least I knew that she was not alone, although my
heart ached for her and I could hardly wait for the opportunity to see her to come round. As always, I felt for her a mixture of love and pain, and I only hoped that as she drifted away from me she felt easier in her mind than I did.

  But there was another cause for concern. I had found, in Owen’s sock drawer, several bundles of twenty-pound notes, which were evidently not destined for the household budget, and I was frightened. I assumed that this money was some kind of payment for services of a private nature, an investment, if you looked at the matter in an indulgent frame of mind, on the part of his clients, who would then have access to him for whatever purposes were under discussion. I knew that he was declaring this money neither to the Inland Revenue nor to the partners, and I was alarmed, so alarmed that I closed the drawer with a blush and never asked Owen where the money had come from. He was noticeably more short-tempered these days, as if his conscience, so much more malleable than I had ever suspected, was making him very slightly uneasy. Communication between us was reserved to whatever had to be said, which was convenient, for we had few evenings on our own. Owen was rarely at home; when he was not abroad he was dining with clients in London restaurants, which he found easier than entertaining in Gertrude Street. Thus my role in our marriage was reduced even further. When we got to bed it was to sleep, for which I now had an enormous desire. I got into the habit of taking a nap in the afternoons, and even then I slept deeply. When I awoke it was with a familiar feeling of oppression, and I was anxious to get out of the house. On some days I was happy to go round to Julia, who never seemed to worry about anything and whose preoccupations were confined entirely to herself. When I did not go round she would telephone.

  ‘Now look here!’ This was her usual greeting. ‘It’s no good my sitting here and your sitting there. Why don’t you come round? I was thinking I might go through some of my clothes. I’ll never wear any of them again.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense, Julia.’

  ‘No, I mean it. They ought to go to the Red Cross.’ She pronounced it ‘Crorss’. ‘You could help me; I’m sure you’re clever about these things. And you’re out and about so much more than I am, you could tell me what’s in and what’s out. Not that I ever went by that. But then I always had dressmakers to tell me. And I suppose I ought to cut down now that I’m no longer earning.’

  She would sigh, and I knew the sigh to be genuine. So I went. At the end of the afternoon there would be piles of dresses all over the drawing-room. As far as I know Maureen put them all back again: at any rate the same process was repeated several times. The Red Cross, so frequently invoked, never got anything out of it.

  It is always hard for a woman who has been well known to drop out of sight. In a very real sense she loses significance. This had happened in my own case, although my own case was modest compared to Julia’s. I suppose this is why so many women are ambivalent about marriage these days: they are reluctant to give up the independence for which they have worked so hard and which they occasionally feel as a burden. They are not being frivolous: they fear that genuine loss of significance. It is all the harder for them if they have had to postpone their own desires, for these desires dwindle and are experienced as pain. Julia’s case was less harsh, of course, for she already had Charlie, the perfect partner for a woman with a famous presence, and the least self-serving of men. But the higher the achievement the greater the regret. And although I thought that Julia exaggerated her own fame—she never, for example, acknowledged anybody else’s—there was no doubt that she had achieved an enormous visibility. Julia was iconic, featured in Vogue, known for her amazing elegance as well as her rather louche performances. Her appearance in a restaurant turned heads and subdued conversations. She had the fearlessness of the true aristocrat: her announced intention of becoming middle-class was in fact a jeer at those who already were. Being of more modest condition myself I kept quiet, another little cowardice of mine, but with Julia one had to protect oneself as best one could. She was genuinely devoid of shame. Or of humility. Yet I could see that it pained her to sit at home in Onslow Square, with such a reduced audience. It pained her, but she was resolute. Nowadays she rarely went out.

  It pained me too. I felt that we were in a similar situation. I missed my singing days, now long gone, and even looked back wistfully to the time when the boys in the orchestra were so kind to me. And sometimes it was an effort to maintain my appearance. Julia was invaluable on that score. Always immaculate, she kept me up to the mark. She would gaze at me quite impersonally. ‘Shorter hair,’ she would pronounce. ‘And you need a manicure. And you might ask whoever does it if she could come round and do mine. Tell her the morning is my best time. Tell her to telephone about ten-thirty.’ And I would be off on another errand, but one which benefited myself as well as Julia.

  It was Julia who had the idea that we should take a holiday together, the four of us. The winter was cruel to her incipient arthritis, and although she rarely went out, her flat, in which she spent so much of her time, was not quite warm enough. Actually I think—indeed I know—that she exaggerated her disability, as she exaggerated everything else. Once I saw her take a jar of marmalade that Maureen had been trying to open and give the lid a sharp wrench. ‘Why, Julia!’ I made the mistake of saying. ‘Your hands!’ She looked at me impassively, under the eyelids. ‘I just fancied a little piece of bread and marmalade,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I’ll go without. You can take that away now,’ she said to Maureen, waving away the plate she had brought in. ‘I’ll have it later.’ She also exaggerated the fact that she never went out. She would sometimes go out to take one of her many defunct clocks and watches to the jeweller’s near South Kensington station, but these occasions were occasions for getting into character. She would take a wicker basket, like a milkmaid going to market, which she thought appropriate for the environs of the Fulham Road, and smile prettily at passers-by. The basket was always empty. She never seemed to have time to buy the more humble commodities on which a household runs. Members of her entourage—Charlie, Maureen, myself—would be used for this purpose.

  She deplored the cold, which she said made her hands ache, but in fact she was antagonistic to most forms of weather. She liked the artificial climate of her dressing-room rather than anything more natural or more variable. She would sigh for the sun, but when it came it did not always meet with her approval. ‘Just pull that curtain, would you? I can’t stand a glare in my eyes.’ This from a woman who could spend twenty minutes to half an hour examining her face in the light of the bulbs round her dressing-room mirror. But I have heard many women sighing for the sun, and I am inclined to take their longing seriously. What they are really saying is, ‘I am weary, even frightened. I look tired, and plain. Why have I changed so? Is it age that is doing this to me, or is it just the winter? If only the summer would come! Then I might look young again!’ For the sun is the symbol of all that has been lost, a great capricious god who might restore one to oneself, if only he were so minded. I too sighed for the sun, and I had reason to in those cruel dark rooms which I knew I could never transform into anything of my own. It was a relief to go to Onslow Square, although I found Julia’s flat almost equally unwelcoming. She liked colours which contained no warmth, and the white curtains and the mustard walls, the white carpet and the white and yellow lilies in the enormous vases of clear glass seemed to reduce the temperature, which was always chilly, even further. She had some quarrel with the central heating, so that more often than not it had to be turned off completely. When it was stone-cold Maureen was despatched to the telephone to summon assistance. If none came, they would sit there, resigned, until Charlie came home, when all that was needed was someone to make the most minor adjustments, which they could easily have done for themselves. They could even fail to understand that they had to turn the knob and switch on the radiators. I myself have performed this function times without number. ‘You’re so clever, Fay,’ Julia would say. ‘What should we do without you?’

  I was
no longer happy, and in the restless state that this realization brought into being it was a welcome reprieve for me to sit in Julia’s drawing-room, uncomfortable though it was, and cold as it even more frequently was, and to calm myself down in the atavistic pleasure of purely female company. It is a resource of women to exclude men from time to time, to take a break from being on the alert and looking one’s best. It is a resource which can outlive its usefulness, as alliances are made and broken, and jealousies begin to peak. But at that particular period of my life, when Owen was away and winter turned the rooms in Gertrude Street into malevolent caves I would hurry round to Onslow Square as if to a sanctuary, a harem or zenana, where the half-maternal instincts of women could be deployed and the vagaries of men seen for what they really were. Women in such a situation will unite in deploring the childishness of men, their deceptions, and their frivolity, although, if questioned by an outsider, all would pride themselves on having such a fragile creature as their protector. Unmarried women come off worst in such company, and I began to feel sorry for Maureen, although I had never liked her, and I did not find that she improved on acquaintance.