Brief Lives

by Anita Brookner

  Maureen, Julia’s slave, was about thirty-five at this time and thus considerably younger than the rest of us—Julia, her mother, Mrs Chesney, Julia’s former dresser, and myself. Maureen struck me as fairly hysterical in her devotion to Julia, who was dependent on her but who probably liked her as little as I did. Maureen was simply not very likeable, an eager hapless creature with permed hair and rimless glasses, usually dressed in a pair of shapeless navy blue trousers and a fairly juvenile sweater which she had knitted herself. Maureen’s furious knitting was an accompaniment to Julia’s more tasteless revelations: bent over the needles Maureen could thus hide the blushes which rose in unison with her nervous laughter. One stubby finger, with a childishly bitten nail, would push her glasses back up the bridge of her nose from time to time. She was extremely religious, according to Julia, and I suppose it was true, although Maureen herself made no reference to anything of a churchly nature. Why did she stand such a life of slavery? She had a free room in Onslow Square, and I am sure that Charlie must have paid her quite well, but she had given up her independence, and also her profession, for although she had been a very minor sort of journalist, there was no reason why she should not have gone on and made something of herself. I think she was enormously frightened of the outside world, and instinctively took refuge with the strongest person she could find. This happened to be Julia, met, not entirely by chance, in the days when Maureen was working on the local paper.

  I felt uncomfortable with Maureen, who blushed and writhed and laughed at Julia’s remarks, although she must have heard them at least a hundred times: it occurred to me, in an idle moment, that with all her physical silliness and suggestibility, she was probably quite highly sexed, which made her doubly unfortunate. The thought surprised me, for in those days I was not given to speculating about other people’s emotional lives. I assumed that they were all like my own: faulty. What I saw of Charlie made me think differently, but then Charlie was the exception. Whatever Julia was like as a wife, or even as a woman, she was successful in surrounding herself with an atmosphere of gallantry, and this had to be maintained by women as well as by men. In this respect Maureen was invaluable, and so, to a very much lesser extent, was I.

  Nevertheless, I felt more relaxed when the five of us—Julia, Mrs Wilberforce, Mrs Chesney, Maureen and myself—were all present, because the absence of any one of us would encourage Julia to examine, with the others, some tiny fault which she would mention deprecatingly, and which only perverseness, it seemed, stopped us from rectifying. Thus, after an absence of a few days, when Owen was at home, I went round to Onslow Square, on one occasion, to hear myself accused of morbidity. ‘It’s such a little thing,’ said Julia, smiling. ‘But I had to mention it. I said to Mummy the other day, “Have you noticed how morbid Fay has become?” And Mummy was forced to say that she had. And Pearl (Mrs Chesney) was worried that something might be wrong. But I said, “Nonsense, I’m sure there’s nothing wrong. Why should there be? As far as I know Owen hasn’t got another woman, although of course he has plenty of opportunity, and no one would know if he kept a mistress in Monte Carlo or Málaga or wherever he goes, but I somehow don’t think that’s the trouble.” ’ She paused here and I trembled for Owen, though not as Julia would have wished. She continued. ‘I think you’ve just developed a morbid outlook, Fay, and you’ve got to guard against it. Heaven knows I’ve got more to be morbid about than you have, but being on the stage teaches you to keep going, in spite of your feelings. That’s what I try to do. With some success, I hope.’

  These words were met with murmurs of approval from her audience, although I confess to feeling deeply annoyed, even as I recall the incident. At that time, of course, I was also a little fearful, for Julia had a speculative cast of mind, and it was difficult to tell whether she made such remarks out of sheer boredom or whether she really intended to make one lose one’s temper and have a glorious row. ‘We had a glorious row,’ she would say with some satisfaction, after a passage at arms with one of her friends. There was another reason for my fear. Although I never mentioned Owen in company, conscious that I had much to hide, and also conscious of having to protect him, Julia was preternaturally aware of the sensitive part to which the arrow or goad might be directed. I excused this, as we all did, because we knew that her suffering was quite genuine and that it took some courage to transpose her sphere of influence from a full theatre to a group of silly women, although I think that each of us knew that the company of women held no charm for her and that she could turn her attention to each one of us and leave us unsettled as a result. Maureen, during one of her absences at Peter Jones, was convicted of gracelessness (difficult to deny) and Mrs Chesney was adjured to her face to lose some weight. ‘You know how it ages one, darling.’ I liked Mrs Chesney, whom I found a simple sympathetic sort of woman, and burned with indignation on her behalf. The fact of the matter was that Mrs Chesney, who was not well off, habitually wore a rather tight black suit which did nothing to conceal her ample hips, and the sight of this suit, which usually bore a little powder on the lapels of the jacket, was anathema to Julia, who continued, throughout her retirement, to be magnificently dressed. Although Mrs Chesney cheerfully admitted to enjoying her food I had caught an instant of helplessness in her smile, and hated Julia for mocking someone so defenceless. But in reality she mocked us all. Only Mrs Wilberforce, a tinkling fountain of appreciation, and Julia herself, constituted a protected species.

  Why did I persuade myself that this sort of company was in any sense desirable? I believe that I had reached a low point in my life when I felt I could aspire to nothing good, when there was a kind of pleasure in accepting the second- or even the third-rate, as if that were all a person of my calibre could expect. There was in me an absence of volition which made me an easy prey for characters stronger than myself. And my motives in going to Onslow Square were not entirely noble, for the company of these women made Owen seem so much more interesting, worthwhile and laudable that I could hardly wait to get back to Gertrude Street in time to hear his key in the door. Owen, of course, was all in favour of my keeping in with Julia, for he thought that that softened Charlie’s heart towards him, and in a sense it was true. Owen’s motives were not noble either, but I had lost sight of Owen’s moral strategies, and in any case the discovery of the money in the sock drawer made me willing to defend his interests, where once I might not have given these a thought.

  The suggestion of the holiday, made by Julia, came as a direct result of her discovery of my morbidity. In fact she was not entirely wrong: I may well have been displaying some sort of symptom at that time, although I should have described this as unhappiness rather than morbidity. To save face—and because it is always bad form for a married woman of settled years to complain of unhappiness—I accepted the lesser charge. I mentioned the suggestion idly to Owen that evening and he surprised me by saying, ‘Why not? You look a bit peaky. And I’m sure I could borrow a house for us. It might be rather fun.’ ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘It might be a busman’s holiday for you, with all your travelling. Wouldn’t you prefer to stay at home?’ ‘It’s time we spent a few days together, somewhere away from here. I’ve neglected you a bit, haven’t I?’ And he looked at me with a curious doubt in his eyes, and a sort of plea for trust, and I felt myself turn into his wife all over again.

  The holiday in the south of France was our happiest time. The house was in the hills behind Nice and it had a terrace, and a long cool dining-room, and terracotta tiled floors on which tiny lizards palpitated in the sun. Each morning Owen drove me to the market, while Charlie and Julia were getting up, and I bought fish and vegetables for our dinner. Then we would go back to the house and collect the others, and go down to Nice. We would sit at a café, where Julia would have her whisky and Owen his pastis, and then make for a good restaurant for lunch. This was when I remember walking arm in arm with Julia along the Promenade des Anglais, in our white skirts, with Owen and Charlie chatting behind us. We would r
est in the cool of the house in the afternoon, although no sun is too hot for me, and I would leave Owen and steal out into the garden. We went to bed early, leaving the car for Charlie and Julia, who liked to go back to Nice and did not get home till very late. Owen and I would be asleep by then, like children: like children we would fall asleep hand in hand. At those times I never thought that we could ever let each other go out into the world alone.

  SIX

  MEMORY BEGINS TO falter here, as if in anticipation of darker times ahead.

  We took one more holiday in Nice, although not so successfully. We went one Christmas, the Christmas of the year which had seen our former visit, but this time Owen failed to borrow a house and we went to an hotel, the Negresco: it was ruinously expensive and not very nice, and although the weather was fine we did not really want to be out all day. Hotels make one self-conscious: one desires not to give offence, perhaps in the hope of being welcomed back with more deference than has been shown on the first occasion. We found the reception cool, or perhaps I am imagining it. Every morning saw me smiling placatingly at chambermaids anxious to do the rooms in which Owen still slept and Julia contemplated her wardrobe. Sometimes Charlie, who evidently had the same scruples as I did, would join me in the lobby. Finally we would leave a message for the other two and go out for a walk. It made me sad that Owen showed no inclination to be alone with me, as he had done on our previous miraculous stay in this part of the world, but of course Charlie was very agreeable, very kind, and did his best to make me forget my discomfiture. For that was what I felt. I knew that Charlie and I were blameless boring people and that we had left our more interesting partners behind—or rather that they had refused to join us. I think Charlie always felt he had no individuality that could compare with Julia’s, and so he kept mostly quiet when in her company, acting as her attendant, her protector, her perfect escort. Yet he was an attractive man in his own right, fit and bland and good-tempered, with an easy smile and excellent manners. It was only his silence, or rather his relative silence, that made him seem curiously out of the running, marginal, neutered, almost, as if his duties as Julia’s husband precluded him from ever again fully engaging in normal human activity. His mode of address to me, on those slightly disappointing mornings when we took our walk together, was, ‘All right, my dear? Let’s try and find some newspapers, shall we? And then, I think, a cup of coffee.’ We would sit outside a nearby café, sometimes for half an hour or so, reading and saying nothing, until the waiter came to be paid, and we would look up with a smile, fold our papers, and get to our feet. On our return to the hotel we would find Owen and Julia in the bar, nursing the first drink of the day, and realize that it was past eleven o’clock. ‘Where on earth have you been? Julia would demand. ‘Only out for a breath of air,’ I would say. ‘It’s so beautifully sunny, and quite warm.’ Julia would stare at me under her eyelids. After a pause she would pronounce, ‘How very odd.’ She never failed to register surprise when we could voluntarily absent ourselves from her side. And then, losing interest, or reaffirming possession, or perhaps both, ‘Charlie, run upstairs and get my glasses, would you, darling? The key? No, I haven’t got the key. Well, ask at the desk. They must have a spare.’ And so it went on.

  I hated these time-wasting moments or hours. I could see the sun outside the darkened bar and longed for it as only one whose youth has been spent with the alarms and the distress and the heartbreaking cheerfulness of the war years can long for peace and beauty and brilliance, and that healing warmth. My eyes could not see enough radiance to satisfy me, for I remembered all too well the air raids and the broken nights and the shattered streets, and the endless dark. I should have been perfectly content to sit by myself all day on the front, or in the little museum garden, doing nothing, perhaps reading a magazine, until the light began to fade and I would decide, reluctantly, to join the others. The palm trees, the dazzle of sun on the chrome of cars, the spiky plants, the crepitating earth would make me forget the house in Gertrude Street with its absurd appurtenances, its engraved wine glasses specially commissioned from an artist friend of Hermione’s, its bed big enough for the birth of royalty, the winsome fresco in the bathroom. All this I would sacrifice for a bottle of cheap mimosa scent from the herboristerie or a bunch of blue carnations, magnificently vulgar, from the market. I began to discern depths of superficiality and bad taste in myself which I could see were not wholly regrettable. The sight of a simple plate of sliced tomatoes and olives, with oil and basil dribbled over them, made me think of the conscientious meals I cooked for Owen and his guests with something like contempt. I began to wish that the others would leave me alone so that I could eat pizza slices and sandwiches from street stalls. Instead of which, except for my early clandestine walk with Charlie, I was expected, as a matter of duty, to spend half my time in bars, and after that in restaurants, and only after that by the sea, until it was time to return to the bar again for the evening aperitif, which, to my mind, seemed to start earlier and earlier. Owen’s drinking habits surprised me. He never drank like that when he was at home.

  Next to being by myself I rather desperately wanted to be alone with Owen, although this seemed to be impossible, as Julia always insisted on a quorum wherever we went. It was clear to me that Charlie’s gentle manners could not satisfy her natural avidity, although they were somehow necessary to set limits to her aggression. Sometimes I saw a distant look in his eye as if he too would like to escape, but it would quickly be replaced by one of attentive good humour: no one ever knew what it cost him. He could be called to order by Julia and frequently was; therefore he got into the habit of doing nothing in case he were needed. For such a man an office is a sanctuary, and Charlie was consequently known as an extremely hard worker. He was, I believe, very good at his job. Sometimes he spent Saturday in Hanover Square, ‘going through some urgent papers,’ much to Julia’s annoyance. His phenomenal patience seemed to wear out towards the weekend, especially when he knew that Julia liked her friends to call on Sundays, so that Saturday would really be his holiday, much as sitting alone in the museum garden was mine. He later told me that he would make a lonely and voluptuous cup of tea for himself, using his secretary’s electric kettle. He would switch off the telephone and sit in absolute silence until his conscience told him that such licence must cease. Then, because of that same conscience, he would in fact do some of the work which could have been put aside for Monday, until the fading of the light outside his windows drove him home. When we came to know each other better we confessed that we were perfectly happy on our own, but that at a certain hour, usually around five o’clock, we would begin to long for company. Now that I have all my time to myself I still feel the same, feel it more poignantly, even though I am no longer young, perhaps because I am no longer young. When the light goes, and the curtains are drawn, it is only natural to turn to one’s companion. And if that companion is no longer there one feels his absence most cruelly.

  Owen was my companion, and as the days drifted past in pointless trivialities—hunting for Julia’s lost glasses, waiting politely with Charlie for the others to join us—I thought despairingly how these minute obstacles separated us, and of how they only did so because we were so separate already. I had never known Owen well, although I was now a seasoned married lady, one who had married late, and agreeably, and had settled down to be a traditional and if possible an honourable wife. I had never known Owen well because I had been infatuated with him and had therefore never seen him as a friend. If anything he was an enemy, an adversary, whom I would have to beguile and delay, distract and disarm. I came into these skills quite gradually, but they soon began to weary me. I was, however, too much in awe of Owen ever to contradict or ignore him. I never nagged, never provoked a quarrel, and so there was a vast distance between us that was filled with the formality of our life together. I endured the house and Owen’s guests and Hermione’s signature on everything because I thought, quite rightly, that this was what I had married. I tho
ught in terms of paying the price for Owen’s hand in marriage. That was how much I loved him at the beginning.

  But love of this calibre is not easy to sustain or to prolong, largely because it is unrealistic, and in a sense inauthentic. Love is not the awesome prize I once thought it was but a much more daily commodity, penny plain rather than tuppence coloured. But I suppose women throughout the ages have felt dissatisfied with what is available, the friendlier varieties of love which are natural to the human race, and have broken their hearts and suffered mightily for unsuitable partnerships which were never meant to be consummated. My own was not quite in that category but it frequently felt uncomfortable; and I came to regard it as more duty than pleasure. This should have told me that something was wrong; in fact I knew that something was wrong, but I offloaded my suspicions on to the house or Owen’s absences or even the length of the winter. I cannot say that I still loved him, as I once had done, but I still yearned for him, much as one yearns for a lost opportunity. I wanted to start again, but this time telling the truth, not smiling at inappropriate gifts or being nice to my mother-in-law or welcoming odious guests as if I were delighted to have the opportunity of serving them. I had reached that dangerous state in which I could see every fault that I had committed, and I desired an enormous confrontation so that I could cancel it all and begin again. This, of course, is impossible. Inevitably the false reading of one’s own commitment has been supplemented by false readings on the part of everyone else. There is in fact no way back.