Brief Lives

by Anita Brookner

  I was sitting by the window, in the darkened room, one evening, when Charlie came the second time. Already I felt embarked with him. He handed me a parcel, and said, ‘I brought you this. I thought it had your name on it.’ It was a flowered Victorian cup and saucer, gilt rimmed, capacious and confident. I loved it. ‘How is Julia?’ I asked. He looked at me with a certain amusement, showing a side of himself not naturally seen. ‘You know Julia,’ he said. ‘She is my wife. She will always be my wife.’ I felt disappointed, as if this heralded the start of something that could only be nefarious and was thus signalled from the outset. ‘Why are you here?’ I asked him, almost antagonistically. ‘You know why,’ he said, and took me in his arms.

  That was all that he said, but possibly not all that he felt. The collusion was avoidable, and it did not occur to me to avoid it. I never made claims for it in my own mind, although it was real enough, and seemed right enough at the time. Yet shame, and a kind of irritability steal upon me even as I write these words. Adultery is not noble. Adulterous lovers are not allowed to be star-crossed. Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary are not really heroines. Even when there is real love, authentic love, it is not the sort in which one rejoices. That night I began a long training in duplicity, in calculation, in almost continuous discomfort, but also in confidence and expectation and effectiveness. Years did not diminish any of these feelings: they constituted my apprenticeship.

  TEN

  ONE TRIES TO make light of these things, for to make anything else of them is somehow unseemly in the circumstances. I look back now in amusement, surprise, and only occasionally despair at my love affair with Charlie, which was a love affair, although fatal words were never spoken. We were a recreation to each other, and this made the time we spent together permissible. How could it hurt? Whom could it hurt? Only one person was thought of as a victim, and her name was only pronounced airily, socially, normally. ‘Julia says she never sees you these days.’ ‘Yes, I must go round.’ But I could not quite do this. I telephoned instead, concerned myself with her health, her needs. ‘I’m not quite defunct, you know,’ she would say. ‘But I dare say I’m too dull for you now. That’s why I never see you.’ This saddened me, the necessary deceit. But that in any case was part of my involvement.

  He was a good-looking man, tall, broad, well set-up, perhaps putting on weight, as I was. We reconciled each other to growing old, for this was the last thing that would happen to either of us. He came to me on Saturday afternoons or looked in on his way home. Retirement, which was looming for him, would pose a problem about which we declined to think. We both assumed that the affair would end when that happened, when he had to take his place as Julia’s full-time companion. With me he demonstrated a levity which I would never have suspected; in Onslow Square he was always resigned, mild, tactful. His nature was, I think, reserved, quiet, not given to confessions or complaints. His enormous control suited us both well, keeping me within bounds when I might have been tempted to be foolish. He never mentioned his marriage; this was, in a way, honourable of him. I understood discretion had been professionally bred into him. As far as I was concerned I was his permitted luxury, after a lifetime of endurance. I think he loved Julia. She was his wife; she was innocent. And he respected the conventions.

  I never got a job. He was my sole occupation. Not knowing when he would be able to visit me kept me alert, presentable; time no longer hung heavy. Each day I would prepare for him. I took my bath and changed after I had made a cup of tea, and on the whole I was quite happy to sit in the darkened room, looking out of the window. When I heard the car door slam—and it was a door I never confused with any other—I would draw the curtains and light the lamps. Sometimes days went by in this dreamy fashion. The tension of the waiting tired me and it was almost with relief that I would realize I was free to turn on the radio or the television, eventually to go to bed. On occasion I was surprised by a terrible sadness. This I did not fully understand. I would catch my breath in amazement: why so sad? I had what few women of my advanced age could lay claim to: a man who did not bore me and who never made me suffer. For he never did make me suffer; my unhappiness, of which I was barely conscious, had to do with a certain disappointment. I had been a conventional wife, and now I was a conventional mistress, docile and agreeable, little treats always to hand. I felt a certain pride, a boldness; I was not pathetic. I could hold up my head. I grew older more or less successfully, refused to dye my hair, chose my clothes with a new care. I would try to dress up for him until I realized that this was the last thing he wanted. I made him feel younger, for which he was grateful. He was amused, indulgent, overwhelmingly fond. The cup and saucer he had given me became his cup and saucer. I would serve him coffee in it.

  I never sang again. Who would want to hear a fifty-five-year-old woman singing love songs, which were the only songs I knew? But I did ring Harry, the agent, my father’s friend, who had been at my mother’s funeral, and who was retired but eternally present in his son’s office, making a nuisance of himself, and it was he who got me the engagement to read the story on ‘Woman’s Hour’, which I did for a fortnight. This suited me very well, for it meant that I could get home in time for Charlie’s expected visit, and it was nice to be back at the BBC, although it now seemed to be staffed by convivial young women in jeans. To them I was a relic of olden times, and they were enormously kind to me, bringing me glasses of water, begging me to sit down when I would have been quite happy to stand. I think they were surprised that I managed to last the course.

  Julia rang me after that. ‘Now look here! You simply can’t abandon me like this. You say you’re busy, although I can’t see how you can be. The least you can do is spare an afternoon or two. I feel very lonely now that Mummy’s gone to this home of hers, although of course she’s madly comfortable there. The other two are complete fools. I don’t know how I put up with them.’

  ‘I’ve been on the wireless,’ I said, really just for something to say.

  ‘I know. I heard one of them. An episode, or whatever you call them. I thought your diction quite good, surprisingly good; in fact I meant to listen today, but Maureen forgot to switch it on. Perhaps when you’ve finished you could come and tell me all about it. All your adventures.’

  I think she meant nothing by this. I think she was lonely. She had maintained her rigorous nun-like existence until she was fitted for no other. With this in mind I went round to see her, aware of all she must not know. I found her seated in her yellow chair, wearing an immaculate white suit with an orange and black blouse. All at once I felt plump, clumsy. Mrs Chesney later told me that getting dressed was the main event of Julia’s day. She would survey her banked wardrobes, sit at her dressing-table trying on one pair of earrings after another, then take her place in the drawing-room, sighing with languor, as if she had just completed some wearisome task or duty. She still thought in terms of her public, of living up to it, of never disappointing the people who had bought tickets for her performance. She looked older, thinner. She was now having trouble with her back, had to control a tendency to lean forward. ‘Posture, Wilberforce, posture!’ she would say, straightening herself. The eyes were still fine, impassive. They contemplated me at leisure. ‘What a lot of weight you’ve put on,’ she observed. ‘And you shouldn’t let your hair go like that. Standards are so important.’ But her heart wasn’t in it. I, on the contrary, found myself eager to please, but as usual I disappointed her. She found me dull, as dull as Maureen, as Mrs Chesney. When I got ready to make my escape she did not try to detain me. This made me plead a multiplicity of things to be done.

  ‘Anyone would think you had a lover,’ she said, which brought obedient laughter all round.

  ‘I saw Julia today,’ I said to Charlie that evening.

  ‘Did you? Good.’ He drew a dark green silk handkerchief from his sleeve and brushed a crumb from his mouth. ‘Excellent toast. Any more of it?’

  Seasons changed, years melted into one another. I no longer walked
the summer streets; in fact I spent more time in the flat than out of it. There must have been hot weather and cold weather, but I remember those years as being mainly dark, late autumn, with a little mist curling round the orange street lamp outside the window. I went out early in the morning to do my shopping, not because I was constrained for time, but because I liked to see the children going to school. I knew one or two of them by name, and I would have lingered with them had I dared, but although I am a respectable woman I was aware of a certain impropriety in doing so. I also feared the onset of a particular morbidity, that morbidity with which Julia had once taxed me. From the children I turned my eyes to the young men and women going to work. On some days I longed to join them. They looked so fresh-faced, so smart, with their briefcases and their morning papers. They made me think of certain Strauss polkas.

  These young people were my main reason for going out so early. I would be home by nine, with a whole empty day in front of me. My duties as a housewife were minimal: I had no family to take care of, no garden. I never exactly regretted the big house but I did sometimes wonder what to do with my time. Once a week I went to see Vinnie, now looked after by a student nurse, who was glad to have a rent-free room near her hospital. Vinnie could be left alone in the daytime, although her mind was no longer intact, and she rarely spoke. I would take her the little parcels of food that I used to take to my own mother, the cold salmon, the tongue, the fruit tart, and it was almost a relief to do so; it made me feel purposeful, dutiful again. She recognized me but lost interest almost at once; with advancing senility old grudges were coming to the surface. I spent little time with her; my company, I knew, did not please her. I simply provisioned her, looked for any messages that Sandra, the nurse, might have left for me, and went on my way.

  Those who stay at home all day live in a world of women. The only men are those who have retired; one sees them going for their newspaper, domesticated, smiling at their freedom, wearing cardigans instead of jackets. The women of the same age seem more thoughtful, as if bearing the heat and burden of the day. Some still wear gloves and even hats, navy blue berets to go with their coats and the silk scarf that their son or daughter gave them for Christmas. Age can be detected here in the length of a skirt, the turn of a collar. I was at one with these people, whom I saw in the late morning when I went out again, for flowers, or for fresh bread, or perhaps just for company. We were out of it, somehow, although our preoccupations were surely weightier than those of the young men and women with their briefcases. We knew our time was limited, even though we were still healthy; we had the same desire to see and hear the young, in whom we perceived true beauty. We were courteous with each other. The women smiled, the men lifted their folded newspapers in greeting. On days when the sun shone words would be exchanged, of an extremely formal nature. ‘Isn’t it lovely? Spring is really here at last. Keeping well?’ For it was essential to keep well.

  There was a pleasantness about these exchanges that eased me into the afternoon. Since this could have been lengthy, empty, I took to lying down on my sofa, as my mother had done, to rest, sometimes to sleep. I seemed to resemble her more and more, in my own imagining at least, for I could not help but be glad that she had died knowing nothing of my present behaviour. In her mind I had always been her marvellous child, her prodigy. Now I was old and deeply flawed. When had this process begun? It was not entirely recent. Perhaps it began when I moved out of my milieu, married above myself (and unwisely, I now saw), started to watch my words, censor my reminiscences of harmless but homely relatives, of being spoiled by the boys in the orchestra, and closed the door on memories of the Blitz, of evenings in the cinema, all the paraphernalia of a suburban upbringing. It seemed to me that once I had left my world nobody had loved me. Until now, perhaps. But in order to bridge the gap between then and now what adulteration had taken place! I thought of it as adulteration rather than adultery, adulteration of my original essence. One does not grow up in innocence, I told myself: changes are bound to take place. I reflected along these lines throughout that hour on my sofa, then I closed the matter off. I cancelled the afternoon, cancelled the experiences of the day, took my bath and changed, and sat down to wait for Charlie. Even when I knew he was unlikely to come I waited for him.

  There was the time when he took Julia away to the sun, Majorca, I think it was. He came round in an official capacity, with the keys, and a request that I should keep an eye on things. Even when the flat in Onslow Square was empty, Maureen also being away, I hated to be there. The yellow and white drawing-room seemed so impregnated with Julia’s essence—acid, heartless, virginal—that I felt it accusing me. Nothing would have made me enter their bedroom. I aired the place, opened the windows, then closed them again, and left as silently and as hastily as any burglar. On the eve of their return I took round some food, a chicken and a tub of potato salad, and put fresh flowers in the vases. This went down wonderfully well. It was in my capacity as a servant that I best pleased Julia. Her fortnight in the sun had left her as white and as immaculate as ever. Later Charlie told me that she had hardly moved from the hotel. He, on the other hand, was bronzed, expansive. They looked a handsome couple.

  ‘We must see more of you,’ said Julia. ‘Do say you’ll be round soon.’

  ‘Why, yes,’ I said. ‘As soon as I come back.’

  ‘Back? Are you going away?’

  ‘Yes. A brief holiday.’ I had only just thought of it, but it seemed as good an idea as any other. Occasionally I found myself on the edge of panic when anyone—not just Julia—asked me about my affairs. Taking a holiday seemed the only thing I could do that was halfway respectable and had the added advantage of being something I could talk about. I would talk about it endlessly, if necessary.

  So I went to Saint Paul de Vence for a week and it was a disaster. It was a disaster shrouded in mystery for I had managed to give the impression that I might be away for much longer. As soon as I got there I wanted to come home. It was late September, and the mosquitoes were still active; I was bitten immediately. The heat I could tolerate, but the light bothered me, the hard cloudless sky under whose brilliance it was so difficult to get one’s bearings. I found myself sunburnt, dazzled, fearful, and unoccupied. My hotel, a modest one, had a café on the ground floor, and I would take my breakfast there and try to make it last. Then came the expedition to buy the International Herald Tribune. Then the walk, during which I would be engulfed by tourists pouring out of coaches and into souvenir shops for that bottle of lavender essence or that cake of brown soap to take home. Then more coffee. And then the walk along the terrace, hearing the cars speeding on the main coast road far below, trying hard to tolerate the noise and the glint of the sun on every surface. I was aware of excess; everything seemed excessive, and I could not accommodate it, not the olive oil in the food, nor the deeply sensuous smells of sun lotion and caramel that came from the tourist shops, nor, of course, the pitiless sun which kept up its strength all day until it declined briefly and all at once into darkness. I thought with longing of my flat, of which I was in reality not all that fond, and of the view from my window, the cinema on the corner. I had never been so lonely in my life.

  Suddenly it was all too much for me, the duplicity, the endurance. I doubted my ability even to make the journey home. I was shocked, I suppose, at this revelation of my solitariness which I had thought banished for ever by the circumstances of my life, however irregular these might have appeared. I thought of Charlie and Julia, so very much together, and myself, so very much apart. And not only apart, but exposed as being apart by the unyielding sun and my own lack of occupation. In the end I gave up pretending to be on holiday, pursued my daily round cynically and mutinously, defying the charming place to charm me. This moment of revolt served me well, made the days seem unimportant. But it also showed me how vulnerable I was, so vulnerable that I found myself buying bottles of scent—the modest flower waters they have down there—for Julia, for Vinnie, for Sandra, even for Maureen a
nd Mrs Chesney, as if theirs were the only friendship on which I could hope to count. When I got home I stood in the hallway of the flat and closed my eyes in gratitude. I made a vow never to go away alone again. I would stay with Millie, I told myself, or take her with me. With a friend beside me I would be impervious to the pity or the curiosity of others. Or even to their indifference. Then I reflected how my life had been designed, with my fullest co-operation, so that I was accountable to no one, not even to a dear friend. My life was my secret and that was how it had to be kept. Millie would not approve, would look at me sadly and with surprise if I confided in her. I would spare us both that. I would get used to my routine again, would simply school myself out of certain imaginings, certain longings. Fortunately, Charlie came round that evening. I had caught the earlier plane, hoping that he might. He had missed me too.

  I delivered all my bottles of scent the following day. I put a few drops on Vinnie’s handkerchief: she stared at me haughtily and let it drop. In her ancient eyes was a look of outrage, of rejection. The afternoon saw me at Onslow Square, where Pearl Chesney and Maureen murmured gratefully, and Julia said, ‘You’ll have to open it for me. My hands are too bad. That’s why I always use an atomizer. Charlie keeps me supplied.’ I found myself apologizing. ‘But there’s one thing you can do for me,’ she said. ‘And that’s get me something to read. You’re near the library, aren’t you?’ I was not, particularly. ‘If you could just change my books once or twice a week, that would be so kind. Really kind.’

  ‘But Julia,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what you like.’

  Unfortunately I did. She liked particularly violent and slap-dash crime novels, the kind recognizable by the colour of the jacket. I knew she liked these because she extolled their merits and attempted to explain the plots, all of which seemed to be interchangeable. Her former gifts were of no use to her on these occasions. Hopelessly confused and confusing, she had no idea of what made a book good or bad but judged it by the actions it contained in the first and last chapters. She liked stories about confidence tricksters, small-time crooks, weak young men who preyed on weaker old ladies. She liked lags, con men, in an English village setting. She liked rural detective sergeants and aristocratic policemen, but infinitely preferred the criminals to either of them. She liked the classes to be distinguished by their names, humorous or hyphenated. She had a weakness for lovable rogues who got away with murder, to try it on again in another novel of the same kind. Unfortunately there were a great number that she had not read, or claimed not to have read, until Maureen brought them home from the library, eight at a time. She used Charlie’s tickets as well as her own.