The Rules of Engagement (17 page)

Madame Bovary was the last to be cancelled in
this way.

If I felt unhappiness on the day preceding
the funeral it showed itself in symptoms which I
recognized for what they were: fear, above all
fear, and a sort of childish distress. The
headaches, the nausea I was able to overcome because
their origins were so obvious. The greatest dread was
of the ceremony itself, when I should have to show a courage
I no longer possessed. I saw, in a
detached sort of way, that mild illness could
provide an alibi for a day that was bound to be
dreadful, that one could treat oneself gently, take
remedies, abandon any kind of initiative,
even sleep. In the end I went to bed and did
indeed sleep. But it was a sleep from which I woke
with the feeling of dread intensified, as if only now
coming into its own. The ordeal ahead of me seemed
impossible for one of my meagre accomplishments.
I willed myself to imagine the time when it would all
be over, and saw, with a flash of something like hope, that
there might yet be room for the sort of energy that must
have left a trace, and even for pleasure. This
did not strike me as disloyal. I too should have
to die, and it was incumbent on me to live for as
long as I could, in the circumstances that the gods
had devised for me. I reminded myself that
these gods were not jealous, like the fearful God of the
Old Testament. They were indifferent, malicious,
even, but their concerns mirrored one's own. With such
an arrangement one could come to terms, however hard the
process might be.

As it happened I was hardly conscious of the
actual funeral. I was aware of Betsy's hand
under my elbow, but I felt so faint that I had
to close my eyes; had it not been for Betsy I
might have fallen. My strength returned as soon
as the doors of the small chapel were opened and the
light flooded in. In the flat I was glad of the
company of about thirty people, few of whom I knew.
I thanked everyone profusely, urged them
to eat, to drink. I did not look forward to being
alone again. I saw Edmund, standing in a corner,
saw him detach himself from the wall against which he had
been leaning as Betsy approached with a plate of
smoked salmon sandwiches. I saw his polite
smile warm into something more appreciative; I
saw Betsy's eyes widen, a slight flush
spread over her cheeks. I was distracted by the
guests who were leaving. When I searched for them again
it was too late. They were already gone.
The following morning I went to Britten
Street, let myself into the flat, and left my
key on the table. In that way there would be no need
for explanations on either side.

“
You got home all right?
”
I asked, in as
neutral a tone as possible.

“
Oh, yes. That nice Mr Fairlie
gave me a lift.
”

I felt there was nothing else I needed to know.
What was to follow I knew already. Besides, I was
finding it difficult to maintain my side of the
conversation. I felt curiously abstracted, as
if I were taking in too little oxygen. I was
sitting in Betsy's flat, without altogether
remembering how I had got there. She had invited
me for coffee, and I had gone, though I had had
a strong impulse to refuse her invitation. Yet
I had no reason for doing so. What I really
wanted was to stay at home, in bed, if possible.
I wanted the coming winter to enclose me, so that I
could not be seen. That was my instinctive wish: that no
one should see me.

“
He's very nice, isn't he?
”
said Betsy.
“
Very easy to talk to.
”
I had never found him easy to talk to.
To listen to, perhaps, or rather to tease out what he was
not saying, matters I could supply for myself, in the
shape of those domestic details for which I was
hungry. It was those basement kitchens which now formed
naturally in my mind, those imagined lives which
were, I was sure, rich in the kind of detail
I had previously found in books, and which I
embraced in a way that seemed to have persisted for a
long time and to have survived my own routine
attempts, some of them successful, to create a
domesticity for Digby and myself. Those other
lives seemed more fulfilling than my own, as if
they had been composed in another dimension to which I
had only intermediate access.

“
What did you talk about?
”
I said idly.

“
Well, he asked me how I knew you, and
I told him we had been at school together. Then
he asked me what I had done since, and we
got on to Paris.
”

“
Did you tell him about Daniel?
”

“
No, no, I didn't.
”
She looked
puzzled.
“
Do you think I should have done?
”

“
No, of course not.
”

“
It's just that the whole episode seems
slightly unreal now. As if it happened a very
long time ago. As if we were both children. I felt
rather badly about that. And I don't fully understand
how I could have let myself in for that sort of ...
adventure. I'm not really a romantic. I
think I always wanted to settle down. Yet
sometimes I should like to discuss this with a man. To get a
man's point of view, you know?
”

I did not at that moment see that I was in any
danger from Betsy. Someone so artless, so sincere,
could not possibly appeal to a man like Edmund,
who was surely expert at deflecting that sort of
desire for full disclosure. There had certainly
been true feeling between Daniel and herself, but it
would have been the feeling between two adolescents,
children, even. In that sense it would have been authentic,
but in that sense only.

“
He asked me what my plans were,
”
she
went on happily.
“
I told him I was
looking for a part-time job, even something voluntary,
and he said he might be able to help me.
Apparently his wife is looking for an
assistant.
”

Like many women of her type Constance
Fairlie ran a small charity that had to do with
aid to the homeless and was based in some aristocratic
religious organization to which, surprisingly, she
gave her adherence. This had been mentioned at those
far-off dinner parties that Digby and I had
attended, and in those days I had been full of
respect. Her part in this endeavour, as I came
to see, was to extract money from her wealthy friends,
and this she did by hosting or sponsoring various
functions
—
dinners, receptions
—
at which some
relatively prominent speaker would give a
brief address. This efficient but painless way of
doing good was completely in tune with Constance
Fairlie's strange and to me unknown
loyalties. I could see how her acid humour,
which might well co-exist with religious leanings,
would make her a more than proficient worker in this
field. I doubt if she ever got very close
to her homeless beneficiaries: that task would be
left to others. But as worldly patron she would have
been quite an asset. She had the status necessary for
such work, and she had the attributes, the fine
house suitable for such gatherings, and the genial
husband who gained additional respect from his
wife's gratifying activities.

“
What would you be doing?
”
I asked Betsy.

“
I've no idea. But it might be quite nice
to work in a private house. I mean, she works from
home. I shouldn't have to go to an office, or
anything. It would be voluntary, of course. And it
would get me out of the flat.
”
She grimaced.
“
It's definitely a flat you'd want to get
out of, isn't it? I said as much to Edmund, to Mr
Fairlie.
”
She blushed slightly.
“
He
said I must call him Edmund.
”

“
Why not?
”
I said.
“
And when do you start this
job?
”

“
Well, apparently there might be a slight
delay, because they're going to move. They're
looking for a house, something slightly smaller, I
understand. So he said he'd let me know. I gave
him my telephone number.
”

I could not help but salute the ease with which this
had been engineered. At that moment I had warnings
of what I might be called upon to witness, for I
had no doubt that the Fairlie household would be
the target for all Betsy's ardour, the loyalty
that should have made her the ideal partner, and indeed had
already done so. I also knew that both Edmund and
Constance would be expert at deflecting that
ardour, or rather those elements of it for which they would have
no use. I knew something of their cast of mind:
they were in control, and determined to remain so. I
understood this because I had tried to be the same, and for a
time had appeared to succeed. But I had never
succeeded as well as Edmund, whose will had always
been superior to my own. And as for Constance, whom
I hardly knew but whose cruelty had always
seemed to proceed from supreme confidence, I now
saw that Constance might even be superior to her
husband in this respect. Would she not have had enough
practice over the years at discouraging other
women, women who might have been drawn to her so
attractive husband, and would she not have been
expert at this task, putting paid to some misplaced
enthusiasm with a light but stinging remark? Might not
Edmund rely on her to do this for him? Such
collusion between partners, or indeed associates,
could, to the outsider, appear revolting, or
enviable, depending on how that outsider was placed.
I hated to think of the defeats thus inflicted, and
endured. Some life-saving instinct had prompted
me to divorce myself from this situation before such a
defeat, which I might have sensed in the abstract.

Edmund was protected by his own immunity
—
to remorse, though that was too simple: to sorrow.
He and Constance were monstrous in so far as their
emotions were rudimentary, confined
to self-satisfaction and self-preservation. I
could see why Constance might have had religious
leanings. She might, over a period of time, have
become aware of her own coldness, might have sought
to put this out of reach, as if true warmth were the
gift of another, or rather Another. And having
discharged a passing distress in this manner, and made
it the province of that Other, she would return
briskly to her various obligations, one of which was
to maintain marital equilibrium in the way that
both she and her husband understood.

I did not care to see Betsy go down that
road, nor did I care for the part I should have
to play in this. Far better that I should pursue a
dull existence, without memories of my own former
addiction. Yet what I knew of Edmund was,
though reprehensible, ultimately reassuring.
He was too practised to get himself involved with a
woman of Betsy's type. It was even likely
that he was unacquainted with Betsy's type, that
he thought all women able to take care of themselves, as
the feminists of the time were so loudly
proclaiming. He would have admired such women,
seen them as equal partners in the sex war. That
sex might be a metaphor for love might have
occurred to him as a young man, when those matters were
less clear, was a possibility, yet very little
sentiment had been carried over into his adult
life. A woman like Betsy, with her desire
to become part of a family, would strike him
simply as odd. were women in the 1980's not
pursuing their own ends, eager to get ahead with
plans to conquer territory formerly the province of
men? Was there not something Napoleonic about the new
woman, something titillating as well as
provocative? Whereas Betsy, who asked
only to lay her life at some man's feet, would
be regarded as quaint, anomalous, by Edmund,
by any man prepared to make war, not love.

Yet I had to admit there was an aura about
her. Though I knew it was an aura of goodness
others might see it as desire, as passion in its
most restricted sense, whereas it was destined to be
unlimited. That wide-eyed sympathy, that need
to go too far, that potential realm of excess, with
which I had had little sympathy in the past, when her
avidity had seemed irksome, had been slightly
tempered by her experiences in Paris, so that she no
longer overwhelmed one with her enthusiasm, but was able
to listen, to comment, like any other sensible grown-up
person. And yet threatening to break through, to break
out, was the girl who had proclaimed tragic
soliloquies as if they alone could express the
weight and pressure of her longing. What
mysterious deprivation had occurred, before I knew
her, perhaps even before she knew herself? The data were
explanatory but insufficient: the slightly
discredited father, the spinster aunt whose
self-abnegation was mirrored in the pale lips
and the discreet garments that had evoked my mother's pity
and derision ... The most crucial figure
—
the
mother
—
was entirely absent. Nor did Betsy
ever refer to her, either because the subject was too
painful, or because a veil of silence seemed to have
descended on that household. More likely the
latter, I reckoned. Thus the awkwardness of
an unexplained absence, almost a social
solecism, had been maintained, and it had been
entirely due to Betsy's loyalty that her
reduced family had enjoyed anything approaching
normality. Yet perhaps there had been some flaw,
some taint, in the mother to make her die so
young, of
“
complications
”
which were also mysterious and to which
Betsy could only refer vaguely and
with
a sense of
embarrassment. Perhaps the mother had been eclipsed in
other ways, mentally, emotionally; perhaps
—
a
dreadful supposition, this
—
she had also been the
victim of her husband's diagnostic
inadequacy. None of this could be known, but it was
surely relevant. Betsy's desire to be
part of a viable family would have been her most
primal need. This had been obscured by her
determined blitheness, as she shouldered the task of
being a credit to her aunt and appeared to look
forward to a future of work and effort without the
advantage of any sort of encouragement. No
doubt Miss Milsom had done her best, but
Miss Milsom had been defeated from the start by a
sense of duty she had not entirely chosen. She
may have been aware of her own inadequacies: her
legacy, not entirely financial, might have been
an unspoken message to Betsy that there were
choices to be made, though she had known few
herself.