A Friend from England

by Anita Brookner

  I took a walk that kept me looking alertly round corners, gazing into the faces that I willed to meet mine. I was getting used to the place now, no longer searched hesitantly with my foot to see if the land were still dry, turned up my coat collar against the rain, thought of telephoning the man I had met on the plane. I tried to withdraw my attention from the task in hand, and even managed to do so for a little while, until it reclaimed me with the fading of the light. As darkness began to fall I hesitantly retraced my steps to the Pensione Wildner, and reluctantly took up residence in the room overlooking the Grand Canal. From my window I could see the big boats riding at anchor. I could pick out their names, painted in white on the sheer black sides: Maximus, Validus, Strenuus, Ausus, Ludus. With a sigh I turned to the bed and unpacked my bag. The melancholy of the traveller whom nobody has been designated to meet filled the silent space around me. It was with a great effort that I took off my raincoat, the uniform without which I was no longer on guard, and my boots, chosen instruments with which I would quarter Venice until I found my prey, and ran a bath. There was a restaurant down below, and if I did not mind the darkened lapping water that was my horizon I would dine there and retire early, in preparation for another day. The following day, I was sure, would bring me victory. And I thought in terms of victory and defeat, for now I knew that I was engaged in some sort of contest, in which either Heather or I would triumph and with us the vindication of our claims. It seemed to me at that moment that our entire lives were on trial, and it was a matter of some anxiety to me that I should not fail this test, that my hardworking and eminently reasonable existence should be given full marks. I felt as if this whole adventure were a tournament, at which unseen onlookers waited to be persuaded of my ultimate validity. I am not normally given to such romancing, yet the combination of the dark night, the empty room, the too lavish meal that I had ordered and which I was suddenly too tired to eat, made me fearful, like a subject nation, waiting to be overcome by a stronger power. I tried to assume a nonchalance which I did not feel and turned my head deliberately to the canal. A water bus ploughed indifferently along at high speed. It suddenly occurred to me that I might have to travel along hidden ways to find Heather, and I saw myself forced to venture out into the open sea. Yet she would not unnecessarily torment me; I knew that. She was too calm, too fair, too indifferent. And her indifference to my fate would secure her the victory if I were not extremely on my guard. That was why I must prepare for the following day with due care.

  I slept heavily, although I woke once or twice to the spectacle of passing lights dimly reflected on the ceiling of my room. When I awoke finally, some time after eight o’clock, I saw that it had rained heavily in the night but was now fine, with a pearl grey light that seemed to have trapped some vestige of a remote sun. When I had dressed, I went downstairs with a heart which was, in spite of myself, somewhat lighter. I noticed a letter in the pigeon-hole to which a silent porter returned my key. I took it out to breakfast with me, deliberately keeping it by my plate, unopened, until I had drunk my coffee. Finally, when I thought I had imposed enough discipline on myself, I slit the envelope. The single sheet of paper, without salutation, read: ‘I will meet you outside the Gritti at twelve noon today, Wednesday.’ It was signed, simply, ‘Heather’.

  Suddenly I felt genial, good-natured. It was as if in replying to my summons Heather had placed herself in my hands. Our forthcoming meeting seemed to me no less crucial than hitherto, but I no longer felt strongly about the outcome. I relinquished the idea of handcuffing her and removing her by force; in fact in a curious way I was willing to concede that she might do as she pleased. Merely by confronting her I would have acted as a reminder. There was no longer any point in telling her to be sensible. But by simply standing before her, meeting her on her own ground, forcing her out into the open, I would provide a pointed comment on her secrecy, her concealment. I would demystify her, tear down the edifice of this great love which could not stand the light of day but must burrow down through the back streets of Venice, clothed in uniform black. Like the child in the story, I would point to the emperor’s non-existent new clothes and ask politely in what ways they differed from the old ones. Then she would have to attempt, stumblingly, if I knew her, to justify her conduct. I did not demand that she renounce her Marco and follow me home: in my new mood of realism I saw that that would be unlikely. I would simply ask her why she had, apparently with a perfectly good conscience, caused such an upheaval. I would ask if this amorous commotion were really appropriate and whether it would not have been kinder to manage it some other way, whether forsaking all others were to be taken so literally that I should have to endure this pilgrimage simply for the chance of being granted an interview.

  My time was my own until twelve o’clock, but I found myself hard put to fill it with incident. It had resolved itself into pure waiting, and with the recognition of this state came dangerous intimations, driftings and longings that I had thought I had entirely forsaken. I settled down to a morning of coffee drinking, desultory exploring, examining of faces. I knew the route I had to take: across the Piazza, past San Moisè, across a tiny bridge to the pretty eventless square in which I had watched the child with the ball the previous day. After a fruitless hour in which I selected and then disheartenedly rejected churches that might be visited, I made my way back to the little Bar Ducale where I decided to sit out the intervening time. I had nothing to read. Indeed, I had come prepared only to look for Heather, not to divert myself. I sat in a trance-like state, trying to will back into myself something of that tonic anger with which I had set out on this quest. But there seemed to be no anger to hand today. My earlier good humour had entirely disappeared, and with it the rigid armature that normally sustained my days. I was at a loss. My amusements were too secret, too deliberate to spread themselves into the benign air of the working week, and now even that week had been taken away from me. A pale sun came out; water glinted shiftily behind me. As the half hour boomed mutedly from a distant campanile I started up in fright, thinking that I must have missed something, a clue, a means of cutting short this abominable visit. For if the anger had left me, the fear seemed to be returning. ‘Ancora,’ I said to the waiter, indicating my cup. For suddenly there was nothing for me to do but sit there until the chimes of another bell were to release me.

  At half past eleven I got up. I had forgotten whether she had asked me to meet her inside or outside the Gritti, and, if inside, whether in the bar or in one of the salons. And if in one of the salons, which one? I strolled as carelessly as I could into the lobby. On the terrace, perhaps? That was the obvious and most pleasant place for a talk. But she had not mentioned the terrace, I remembered: I would have retained the sound of the word if she had. If she were staying there I might enquire for the number of her room, but I had this tenacious feeling that she was somewhere else, her tracks covered, at an address that her father, having heard it only on the telephone, confessed that he might have got wrong. In any event her address would be of no use to me. I had no intention of searching for her; the topography of Venice had always eluded me. That people might actually live there always struck me as impossible. I think I really believed that they all shipped themselves back to the mainland at nightfall and there lived entirely unremarkable lives just like everybody else, parking the car, watching television, and shopping in supermarkets. The silence of the hotel seemed to bear out my assumption that she was not there. I took a last look down a vista of deserted salons, and then resigned myself to waiting outside. As I turned to go, the concierge closed his great book with an air of finality, as if ringing down the curtain on the day. It was quite clear that he would allow nothing untoward to happen within the walls of his precinct, that he would stand stalwart behind his desk to repel intruders. Our conversation therefore must take place on neutral ground.

  I wandered up and down outside, turned the corner, and then I saw her. Or rather them, for she was accompanied by a man whom I took to be Marco. S
he was, as I had expected, dressed in black, and so was he, a tall slim black-haired man in black trousers and a black blouson jacket, a black scarf round his neck. Heather herself was wrapped in a black shawl-like garment, through the sleeves of which, obviously obeying some injunction of his, she suddenly thrust her arms. From the slight distance at which I observed them they looked exactly alike. I remembered with a jolt how closely she had resembled Michael at her wedding, and I just had time to wonder whether this twin-like capacity of hers might not play her false in exactly the same way as it had before. But the two of them, engaged in conversation, did not have the factitious appearance that had so worried me the first time that I thought about it. What they were saying appeared to be entirely serious. They stood face to face in the middle of the square, not looking about them, not anxious, not reluctant, not fearful. I wondered how much Italian she knew or whether he spoke English. In any event, she looked completely at home. She lifted a hand to his arm and he strode off, disappearing down one of the dark exits, between a pharmacy and a blank-faced building that gave nothing away.

  Heather came towards me, expressing no surprise at my presence. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘How are you? Shall we sit down somewhere?’ And without breaking her stride she held out her hand to usher me along the same path as herself and guided me to the same little bar at which I had spent most of the morning. Seated, I felt as if I were a guest in her house. She ordered two coffees and then lit a cigarette, something I had never seen her do before. ‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ I said stupidly. ‘Oh, now and then,’ she said. ‘You don’t, do you?’ And she put away the packet, shook an amber bracelet further up her wrist, and drank her coffee.

  Since she had apparently nothing to say, and since I was certainly not going to launch an appeal, I addressed myself to my cup and covertly studied her appearance. She had never previously struck me as attractive, having too mulish an air, which seemed to imply a passive, even a dormant nature. Only the long jet earrings that I knew so well seemed to have been added to give the face some sense of decoration. Her fine skin was innocent of colour, as were her pale lips. Only the dark eyes, under the arching black brows, betrayed some sign that unknown factors, to which I had no access, had entered her life. She gazed past me, looking preoccupied and faintly melancholy, rather as her father might have done. Finally, as if having reached some resolution, she turned to me, smiled, and said, ‘I suppose you’ve come to tell me to go home.’

  ‘I think you might give it some thought, yes,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I have, I have.’

  ‘And what have you decided?’

  She laughed. ‘It was all decided long ago. Didn’t they tell you? I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey, Rachel. Unless you’re on holiday, of course.’

  ‘I came because your mother wanted to know how you are. How you are living. She is pining, I think.’

  ‘I’ll go home soon and see them. In the meantime you can tell her that I’m perfectly happy. I’m living here, with Marco and his mother, and I propose to go on doing so.’

  I stared at her. She was quite composed, quite normal. She had gained something, authority, perhaps, but it was, as ever, understated. I saw then that I had no hope of getting her to change her mind. I tried once more.

  ‘What about all that you’ve left behind you? Your own home. Your parents. The shop. Your own life, Heather.’

  ‘My life is here,’ she said.

  ‘But you could have had it all. You could have had Marco, too. People manage. Why go to such extremes? It may seem all right now, but in ten years’ time? Supposing you change your mind?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I will.’

  ‘And what am I to tell them? That you’ve gone for ever? That they’ll never see you again?’

  ‘There’s no need to tell them anything. They understand.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Heather. I don’t see it. I came here to talk sense and you don’t want to listen. I suppose I’ve failed.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘You’ve succeeded beyond all expectations.’

  ‘Succeeded? Then …’

  ‘Not this time, Rachel. The last time. When we spoke in my flat. The day Mummy was so ill.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ I said impatiently. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When you told me about that other life you wanted me to lead. Deceit. Control. Arrangements. Mismanagement.’

  ‘Mismanagement?’ I nearly shouted, stung to fury. ‘You call my life mismanagement? But you’re living a fantasy, Heather. Oh, I’ve said all this before. I’m not going to go through it all again. But I’m sorry I’ve given you the impression that my life is mismanaged.’ I was breathing hard. ‘I do the best I can,’ I said, more quietly. ‘And if I should have liked a softer option, well, nobody hears me moaning about it.’

  ‘I think you’re very brave,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’ I looked at her. ‘Yes, I am brave. I’ve learned to be. I’ve learned a lot of lessons. Unlike you, I’m afraid. I’ve learned to keep my life to myself, not to belabour others with it. I’ve learned not to back myself against the world, because I know the world will win. Always. I’ve learned caution, politeness, what you call deceit, but what I call good manners. I’ve learned how to be alone and to put a good face on it. And you call that mismanagement.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to. Shall we have some lunch? I’m afraid I’m busy this afternoon.’

  ‘Have lunch by all means,’ I told her. ‘I couldn’t eat a thing.’

  ‘Then I think I’d better go. The only thing is, I had one or two things for Mummy and I wanted you to take them home. I left them in the flat. Could you meet me later, for a minute or two? Here? About five? I won’t keep you. Just a couple of little things to cheer her up. I know what she likes.’

  She stood up to go. I made no effort to detain her. I felt too bitter and too disgusted. My rage had subsided, leaving me feeling chilled in the misty air. The coffee I had drunk had made me nervous and my hands trembled slightly. I flung down a handful of coins and turned up the collar of my eternal raincoat. The afternoon stretched emptily before me. One thing I could do, I thought: I could book my ticket home for the following day. I would never come back to this place again. Failure was in my mouth like ashes.

  I strode off in the direction of the Piazza San Marco. Pigeons infested the sky, which was clouding over. I pushed my way past the lunchtime crowds and made straight for the Pensione. It seemed to me imperative to retrieve something from this day, which was turning out so badly. I sat on my bed in my raincoat, wondering what to do next. What surprised me was the hatred that seemed to have sprung up between us. I had always thought her a dull person, hardly a woman at all, and she had apparently thought of me in the same way. Or perhaps she had simply thought me irrelevant, marginal. The curse of happy families again, so absorbed in themselves that they hardly perceive the reality of anyone else. I got up and paced about the room, which was dull and cold, reflecting the metallic light of the canal. I did not like myself for what I was feeling. I have never been comfortable with hatred, never found it invigorating or compensatory. Hatred seemed to me pure loss, if only for the amount of energy it absorbed. In fact, with this journey, I seemed to have entered a zone of loss, and I could not honestly see that Heather would gain from it. We had each of us inflicted wounds on the other, from which we would continue to suffer. And I had never wanted to serve as a warning to anyone. Nor, I am sure, had she. She liked to think of her life as a secret, banishing all witnesses from the scene. And I had been such a witness. She would never again feel uninspected. Even if her life turned out to be happy, she would know that there had been some dereliction, some loss of faith, even some loss of nerve. She would have left unhappiness behind her, and the discomfort of such a predicament would grow in her mind, eventually to rise up and overwhelm her.

  And yet in a way I could not fault her, that was the worst of it. To strike out and cl
aim one’s own life, to impose it on others, even to embrace a caprice, was, though monstrous, sometimes admirable. Sometimes it just had to be done. And her actions would be seen by the world as acceptable, I had no doubt of that. She would, once again, have the status of a married woman, a condition which a person as conventional as herself would consider indispensable. She might even have the great love she claimed as hers. Eventually she would have children, would bring them home for a visit, and be acclaimed, simply for the fact of having passed the essential test. For that is the test, make no mistake about it. And I? I would plough on to a game middle age, and it was I who would be the audience, the reflector, the confidante, the baby-sitter. No one would know the inner workings of my life, nor would anyone enquire, thinking me to be a creature without mystery. It was I who would become untidy round the hips, and tired, more and more tired. I suppose I would still continue to visit the Livingstones and assist in a subordinate capacity at their gatherings. I would become ‘poor Rachel’. Perhaps I already was.