A Closed Eye (13 page)

‘I’ve been here longer than I meant to,’ said Dawn. ‘I’ll
never get home at this rate. And I want to spend more time in Europe.’

‘There will always be a home for you here,’ said Harriet, kissing the girl. ‘You’re like a daughter to me,’ she heard herself saying, a remark on which she reflected with some surprise. Yes, she could be my daughter, and has always felt as if she might be. I am almost too old to be the mother of a little girl. ‘But how shall I manage without Dawn?’ she said to Freddie. ‘Taking the children to school and collecting them every day—I don’t know how I’m going to do it.’

She despised herself even as the words were out of her mouth, but Freddie took her seriously.

‘She must go away to school,’ he said. ‘As soon as she is old enough. Lizzie’s going, isn’t she? They can go together. Immy needs to be disciplined; you spoil her too much. And she’s getting boisterous—I don’t like it.’

She thought there was some rancour in him which dictated this course of action, but was forced to see the wisdom of it. She sometimes got headaches these days, when the children were at loggerheads, sometimes longed to take an untroubled walk in the park, where a precocious spring had brought on the daffodils with the crocuses, and put thick green buds on the magnolias. She knew her indulgence was too extreme but could not forgo it: it was her secret passion, the only one she had ever indulged. She also knew that if Immy went away she would come to treasure that indulgence, and the idea did not displease her. On another level she knew that Immy’s absence would allow Freddie’s self-esteem to repair itself. This too might be necessary. Therefore the idea did not seem too extravagant to her. ‘And we can take a decent holiday for once,’ said Freddie. Immy’s departure was fixed for a couple of years ahead, when she was ten: she longed for it. Lizzie, inscrutable, nodded when asked if she were looking forward
to going away to school. There was no knowing what was in her mind.

‘Am I a bad mother?’ she asked Dawn, watching the girl pack. ‘Am I bad for Immy? She seems to me so delightful, yet her teacher says she is disruptive. I can see that she’s high-spirited, yet that’s what I admire in her—her energy. I don’t know where she gets it from. Freddie and I are, well, terribly ordinary.’ She chose the word with care, loyally aligning herself with Freddie in this ordinariness of which she so carefully spoke. On reflection she believed it to be the case, although knowing that sometimes she harboured extravagant feelings, wistful imaginings, longings for experiences not in her peaceable domain. ‘I have tried hard,’ she said regretfully, as if taking the measure of what she had not achieved.

Obliquely, Dawn said, ‘You should get out more. You’re too tied to the house. Immy’s okay. She needs a bit of discipline, that’s all. Did you see the way she bossed that boy about, the one she brought home the other day?’

But Harriet had secretly admired Immy’s imperiousness, a quality she herself had never possessed. It seemed as though Immy were developing the very gifts in which she herself was deficient, and, although she could see that this might cause a certain amount of disaffection, she thought that that very imperiousness might serve her daughter well in later life.

‘I shall miss her awfully,’ she went on, forcing herself to see a life, a house, without her daughter’s presence to enliven them.

‘You’ll see enough of her in the holidays,’ Dawn said. ‘She needs more distractions. So do you, as a matter of fact. There’s no need for you to stick around all day. Anyway, I’m off. Freddie’s been awfully good—did he tell you?’

For an envelope had been passed over, with a substantial cheque inside it. Harriet had not witnessed this, leaving it to Freddie, whose suggestion it had been. The occasional generosity of her husband still impressed her.

A diversion was now decreed for her, however. More of an obligation than a diversion, she was beginning to think, so rooted had she become in general domesticity, in contemplation of her daughter’s now foreshortened sojourn under her roof. The entity she now thought of as Mary-Pamela was to be in town—Mary and her husband home on extended leave, Pamela down on one of her visits to Harrods—and they were all to meet for one of those lunches which she thought of as a tradition, although they had necessarily been in abeyance while the children were small. ‘My treat,’ Mary had said, which made it more of an obligation. ‘Why are you sighing?’ asked Freddie. ‘You used to enjoy being with them. As long as you don’t bring them back here,’ he added hastily. He had always distrusted her female friends, assuming, not incorrectly, that they indulged in scandalous confidences. His mistrust was automatic: he thought he knew more about women than his wife did.

For this occasion, half dreaded now that it had come about, Harriet dressed carefully, thinking she looked older than she should, and said as much to Dawn.

‘That blue suits you,’ said Dawn stoutly.

‘Not too much?’ she queried. ‘I don’t want to look overdressed. Mary was always very chic. Although Tessa always managed to look better, as if she’d taken no trouble, as if she didn’t need to bother.’

Many worried glances were cast in the mirror before she took her gloves and opened the door. On an impulse she went back and left the gloves behind. Gloves were what matrons wore.

But the others looked older too, she saw with surprise. Seated at the table they eyed each other comprehensively and without indulgence. Mary was exquisite, certainly, although with a certain air of contrivance now, but Pamela’s life in the country had given her a harsh flush. Tessa, by contrast, was pale, thin, abstracted and hectic by turns. Their husbands,
Harriet noted, they referred to unselfconsciously, with a certain indifference, as if they had written them off. Could have done better, they seemed to imply. Mary, composedly, admitted to having a lover.

‘But how do you manage?’ asked Pamela, who seemed affronted, not by the fact of Mary’s having a lover so much as by the fact that, stuck on the farm, she found so little opportunity for having one herself.

‘One can always manage if one wants to,’ replied Mary, winking at Tessa. ‘Anyway, be faithful to a man? Why should I? Why should any woman?’

This is exactly what Freddie was afraid of, thought Harriet, laying down her fork. She had a moment of lucidity, seeing them not as glamorous friends she had once envied but as harder and more practised than herself. Perhaps they are right, she thought, in a moment of exceptional discouragement. I cannot claim to be any better. I have often been bored by Freddie, although I have never done what seems to be the norm today. Perhaps the opportunity has simply never presented itself.

‘How’s Jack?’ she asked, one thought leading to another.

‘He’s in London, actually,’ said Tessa, who was not eating much either. ‘He’s at Judd Street. In fact I sent him off there. I’ve had some sort of bug. I didn’t think he’d like to see me throwing up all the time.’

‘Not pregnant, I hope?’ queried Pamela.

Tessa smiled. ‘Not much chance of that, is there?’

‘You mean …?’

‘I mean he’s hardly ever around, is he?’ She yawned convulsively, and pushed her plate away. ‘Excuse me for a minute, would you? I feel a bit queasy.’

There was a moment’s silence after she had disappeared.

‘Is she all right?’ asked Harriet, appealing to the other two. ‘She doesn’t look it. I noticed it when she came in.’

‘I thought you saw her all the time?’

‘Well, no, not now that Lizzie’s old enough to go home by herself. I haven’t seen her for two or three weeks, as a matter of fact. But I’m sure she’d have told me if there were anything wrong.’ She felt alarmed and at fault, as if her function, which she had once assumed so gladly, was to protect Tessa, who suddenly appeared to be without protection, almost fragile.

‘She’ll be okay, she’s as tough as a horse. I’m going to have some of that apple tart, and blow the diet. Hattie? Come on, don’t look so glum. I adore that suit, by the way.’

Tessa, looking pale, came back, sat down, and averted her eyes from the abandoned plates. She was a bad, greyish colour. Something is wrong, thought Harriet, with a stab of fear. Aloud she said, ‘Do you want to go home? I’ll take you, shall I? You probably ought to be in bed.’

The others looked up enquiringly. This was not how their lunches usually progressed.

‘Perhaps I will,’ said Tessa, forcing a smile. ‘I’m so sorry. Too silly. Lovely to see you both.’ Tears stood in her eyes. Harriet, with a feeling of distress which she knew or thought was quite disproportionate, guided her through the restaurant, a hand under her arm. Out in the air Tessa swayed a little. ‘I’ve been awfully sick,’ she said fretfully.

‘Can you walk? The air might do you good. Take it slowly. It’s not far.’

They walked slowly, heads down, along the road, which seemed endless, full of hooting cars and women with prams and shopping bags.

‘I must have eaten something,’ Tessa claimed, in the same fretful, almost querulous tone.

Strange, thought Harriet. I have never known her like this. Or has she altered and I not noticed it? In Beaufort Street, reached after a largely wordless, and to Harriet endless interval, in the course of which Tessa had bumped against her, as
if no longer capable of steering her own course, she took charge of the key and inserted it thankfully into the door of the flat. ‘Home at last,’ she said.

‘Oh, God,’ cried Tessa, in naked panic, and ran for the bathroom.

Harriet waited outside the door, listening to the terrible sounds. A doctor, she thought; I must get a doctor. But when Tessa emerged she was calmer, very pale, very quiet, almost sad, distant.

‘I don’t need a doctor,’ she said. ‘I’m all right now. Only if you could have Lizzie tonight? I’d rather like to be on my own.’

‘But you can’t …’

‘Yes, I can. I must.’

They looked at each other, as if what had taken place were too shameful, too distressing to be shared, or to be admitted to normal conversation, as if it must somehow be contained. They both sat in the room which continued to look careless, uninhabited. They said nothing. After a while Harriet took Tessa’s hand and held it. Perhaps five minutes passed, perhaps ten. ‘I’m all right now,’ said Tessa finally. ‘You’d better go. Tell Lizzie … Tell her I’m going out. Tell her I’m fine.’ She gazed at the window, tears again in her eyes. ‘Tell her I’m absolutely fine,’ she said. ‘She can come back tomorrow.’

‘Should I ring Jack?’ asked Harriet, knowing the answer.

‘No, no, I’m all right. I’ll go to bed. You go, Hattie. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘She’s not going to sleep in my room, is she?’ asked Immy, with an exaggerated expression of distaste.

‘Of course she is. Don’t be so rude. I hope you’re not going to let Miss Wetherby hear you talking like that.’

She had already let Dawn’s basement to a Miss Wetherby, an elderly, placid, slightly deaf woman who had been a nanny at a foreign embassy. Although past retiring age she had consented
to perform supervisory duties when necessary in return for a token rent, which she could well afford on her pension. She appeared to be satisfied with the arrangement, although it was a little difficult to be sure of this. Miss Wetherby had a certain authority, which showed in her absolute failure to return winning or placatory smiles. When introduced to Imogen she had produced nothing more than a judicious look and a dry outstretched hand. Yet she was kindly, and without pretension: Harriet, paying a visit to the basement to see if Miss Wetherby had everything she needed, had found herself in a world of stored knitting patterns, tea cosies, and plastic watering cans. ‘So lovely to have a home of my own after all those years abroad,’ she murmured; contrary to most deaf people she spoke very softly. ‘I hope you won’t mind babysitting for us,’ Harriet had said. ‘It’s only until she goes away to school next year. And then in the school holidays, of course.’ Miss Wetherby inclined her good ear, which gave her the air of a medium. ‘I’m sure you’ll get along,’ Harriet had added. She did not see how anyone could fail to get along with so mild a person as Miss Wetherby. Yet the mildness was deceptive. Imogen was slightly afraid of her, until she found out that she could say things without Miss Wetherby overhearing them. ‘I was just saying what a lovely day it was,’ she would explain, when Miss Wetherby’s face turned in her direction. Miss Wetherby, choosing to appear deceived, held Imogen in check by allowing an unfavourable verdict to be implied in her attitudes and movements: criticism was immanent, never voiced. The level eyes, the pale conventual face, the unhurried, slightly arthritic walk, although easily imitated, nevertheless exacted a certain respect.

‘Which yoghourt would you like, Lizzie? Pineapple or apricot?’

For it seemed important to let the poor child have some sort of a choice, although she was so stoical that it was hard
ever to detect disappointment. She had not asked where her mother was, but seemed to accept whatever conditions were decreed for her by others. Why was she so remote? There had been no major dereliction: her parents were unusual, but not delinquent. Was it that she needed more love than anyone had yet given her, and was too proud ever to demand it? In which case the road ahead of her was bleak, for few people gave too much affection, or more than they could spare from their closely guarded hoard, and the child had no pretty ways, of the sort that attract the indulgence of others. Her gaze was now normal, and indeed had become strangely uncompromising, not unlike Miss Wetherby’s, but she was a pale little creature, thin, colourless, scrupulous, but not forthcoming. Her responses were obedient, no more. She seemed to be harbouring thoughts beyond her years. Her attitude to Imogen was now one of wariness; what had earlier seemed almost like contempt was circumscribed by caution. She accepted the fact that she must endure her company (for Immy would be the only person she knew when they went away to school, an event she anticipated with horror) while giving the impression that she was reserving her opinion. Harriet she submitted to, without a great deal of emotion. The one person she really liked was Miss Wetherby.

‘You can watch television for half an hour after you’ve had your tea,’ said Harriet. She did not normally allow this, but found herself unable to cope with them, slightly unwell. I must have the same thing that Tessa has, she thought. This effectively neutralized the more serious suspicion that Tessa was ill, and not only ill but in the grip of some strange withdrawal, which she could not penetrate. Why that withdrawal, which was almost silent? For a malaise which, however unpleasant, was surely routine, the sort of thing from which one had suffered as a child, and which returned as an odd reminder in later life? Was it because of the recalcitrant,
the ever-troublesome Jack? Of course, she is upset; Jack has upset her, as usual. And a touch of food poisoning, no doubt; she was never very careful about what she ate. And the state of that flat … But I wish there were someone with her. This thought tormented her until she remembered that Jack was, after all, in town, as were her other friends. There was no need to think of herself as indispensable. She would go round in the morning. Or perhaps she would telephone first. Ridiculous to feel this apprehension. Nevertheless, when Freddie came home she embraced him ardently, surprising him. His eye dwelt on her appreciatively, as they sat over dinner. Oh no, that was not what I meant at all, she thought. Or did I? I no longer know: that is what I have come to. In Freddie’s arms she trembled slightly, for many obscure reasons, and then fell, with deep gratitude, and almost as great perplexity, into sleep and dreaming.