A Closed Eye (22 page)

At home she telephoned her parents, who agreed, with apparent carelessness, that they might have a day free towards the end of the week, that they could just manage lunch at Wellington Square, that tea at the Ritz might be fitted in. And then, on impulse, she dialled Directory Enquiries, and
asked for a number for Mackinnon in Old Windsor—she had the address from a postcard which Lizzie had been instructed to send her, thanking her for her new clothes. Soon a crystalline Home Counties voice answered. ‘Miss Mackinnon? This is Harriet Lytton. My daughter is a friend of Lizzie’s.’

The voice expressed polite interest, but held forth no promise of further exchange.

‘I was wondering if Lizzie would like a day in London, before going off to school? With us, I mean. I should like the children to have something nice … The ballet, I thought. My husband can always get a box at Covent Garden.’

There was no answer.

‘
Swan Lake
,’ she said, rather more decisively.

A throat was cleared at the other end. ‘Well, of course, it’s very kind of you …’

This signified neither yes nor no: how did Jack put up with this woman?

‘I’d be very grateful if you could make arrangements to bring Lizzie to London,’ she said firmly. ‘She can stay the night here. She is quite used to us.’

‘She can come up by herself,’ said the voice. ‘She is used to that too.’

‘On the train?’ said Harriet, horrified. ‘At her age?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Then shall we say Saturday week? She can stay the night, and I’ll bring her back the following day.’

‘Oh, there’ll be no need for that. For her to stay the night, I mean. I shall be driving up to Judd Street later that afternoon. If you put her into a taxi she can join me there.’

‘Will her father be at home?’ asked Harriet at last.

‘I’m not sure. He’s being posted to Berlin at any moment.’

‘In that case won’t you come to us for a drink?’

‘No, I don’t think so, thanks. Just put Lizzie into a cab; she’ll be all right.’

Such rudeness, she thought, putting down the receiver;
intolerable. I have never been as rude as that in my life, although I may have wanted to be. And I have no reason to be polite to her either. Ah, I am out of my depth here, and everywhere else too, it seems. It occurred to her that Elspeth Mackinnon disliked her for exactly the same reason that she disliked Elspeth Mackinnon: she had been discovered. Oh, to hell with it, she thought; and it is now too late to cancel the arrangement. I should never have spoken to her. But then Lizzie would have been deprived of her treat, and I do so want her to enjoy it. Freddie must come too: a Saturday matinée, and they can drink fruit juice in the Crush Bar. Except that Immy would demand champagne. Oh, let her have it, if that’s what she wants. There was so little time left for her to enjoy herself, although it was clear that she regarded school as more of a treat than anything else that might be planned for her. Otherness was what Immy wanted. Unlike her mother, she had no fear.

For her parents she made a cheese soufflé, with a green salad, and caramelized oranges to follow. ‘We don’t normally eat lunch,’ said her mother, picking up her fork with every sign of reluctance. She was nervous, Harriet saw, intimidated by the size of the dining-room and its heavy appointments, all inherited from Freddie’s parents. ‘We usually have a sandwich in the kitchen.’ She took tiny mouthfuls of the delicious concoction until it cooled, when she pushed it aside and lit a cigarette. Hughie ate cheerfully, greedily, fork clattering slightly against the side of his plate. ‘Don’t give him any more,’ warned Merle. ‘He’ll only get indigestion.’

‘And where’s our precious girl?’ asked Hughie, impervious.

‘She’s downstairs with Miss Wetherby,’ said Harriet. ‘I wanted you to myself for a few minutes.’

In fact she had wanted to protect her father and his tremulous hands, their quiver now restored by his increasing age,
from the child’s sharp gaze. Her parents looked much older, she thought, were now sadly too old to be bright young things. And becoming timorous, perhaps. But still, she had to admit, expertly turned out. Her mother had dressed for the Ritz before leaving home, in a bright blue silk print dress, with three rows of cultured pearls. Her father wore a grey suit. They looked more than presentable; from the back they looked remarkable. Only full-face did the eagerness, the longing show, in their naked eyes, as they waited for Immy to join them. Both now seemed to be afflicted with a degree of agitation.

But the afternoon was a success, practically a triumph. ‘It was smashing, Mummy, ace. We saw —’ and the name of a rock star of whom even Harriet had heard.

‘And did you thank Granny and Grandpa properly?’ she said.

Her parents, now fully recovered from their earlier timidity, and restored by the friendly impersonality of the hotel world, their world, held out loving arms. After Immy had embraced them—and Hughie had tried to lift her, but had found her too heavy—they stood, flushed with pleasure in the child and with pride in each other. ‘A lovely day,’ they assured Harriet. ‘Just a little bit tired now, dear. We must be getting home.’ And, ‘
Au revoir
, darling,’ they waved from the taxi. Immy, at the drawing-room window, waved back.

And the ballet tomorrow, thought Harriet, going thankfully to bed. And then, next week, she will be gone.

The sight of Lizzie, at the front door, was so familiar that Harriet did not for a moment recognize what made her look so different. At last she saw what it was: Lizzie was wearing a dress. It was a Laura Ashley creation, with a sash and a lace collar, above which her serious face appeared too old. Or perhaps the dress was too young for her. In any event it was ill chosen. She gazed impassively at Harriet, her personal
effects in a small pouch on a long strap over her shoulder. ‘Hello, darling,’ said Harriet. ‘How lovely to see you. Did you get here all right? Well, of course you did. Lunch is nearly ready. Do you want to go up and see Immy?’ She saw the child nearly wrecked on the dilemma of whether or not to tell a polite lie, saw that for her a lie would be an impossibility, decided to rescue her. ‘Would you like to come into the kitchen and help me with the fruit salad?’

Lizzie, relieved, swallowed. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said.

‘Well, Lizzie,’ said Freddie, putting down his paper. ‘Good to see you. All right, are you?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ she said once more.

He waited attentively for something further to be said, then, when it was obvious that silence was to prevail, took up his paper again. Even Lizzie disappointed him.

The ballet had an alarming effect on both children. Freddie did things well: the box was much appreciated, as were the orange juice and the champagne. Leaning over the velvet rim, animosity temporarily forgotten, they were almost disappointed when the house lights dimmed and the music started. After that they were lost to reason. She tried to explain the story to them, but they waved her away. In the first and second intervals they were too busy trying to stem Immy’s tears to bother much about Lizzie. Harriet smiled at Freddie, who was wiping away a tear of his own. ‘Harriet,’ said Lizzie hoarsely, plucking at Harriet’s sleeve. ‘Will they get married? Will the prince marry the swan?’

‘Oh, yes, Lizzie,’ she said, strangely moved by the urgency of the enquiry. ‘It will all end happily. You’ll see.’

Miss Wetherby too had had a good afternoon. Miss Wetherby had prepared a tea of anchovy toast, cress sandwiches, and walnut cake, but they were too drained to eat much, or to talk. Freddie took a visibly tired Lizzie back to Judd Street, while Harriet put Immy to bed.

‘Can we go again?’ she asked her mother.

‘Whenever you come home. You and Lizzie.’

Some days after this she was passed by a man in a car, travelling very fast. She saw a hand raised from the wheel in some sort of greeting. She thought it might have been Jack, but could not be sure. In her mind’s eye the gesture repeated itself for several days, but there was no way in which she could imagine a suitable answering gesture from herself. This worried her excessively: her lack of response. It was only the pain of Immy’s departure that put an end to her preoccupation.

B
UT
Swan Lake
does not end happily. It ends nobly, affectingly, upliftingly, as befits a tragedy. It ends, above all, appropriately. This matter of the ending—of a suitable ending—was to preoccupy Lizzie for some time. The resolution of the matter would, she knew, afford her a measure of relief But of all this Harriet saw no sign, for on leaving the theatre her thoughts were all of Immy; in comparison Lizzie seemed to dematerialize, to vanish into thin air, as if her presence were merely notional. Harriet, when she looked round for Lizzie, saw merely the unchanged and unchanging face of Lizzie, small, white, impassive, saw the unapproachable reserve, saw the same stoic tolerance, which extended to the unbecoming flowered dress, and the journey to Wellington Square uncomplainingly endured by train and cab. Had she thought to ascertain that the child had been accompanied? The cab had driven off, and she had forgotten to enquire. But Lizzie had survived her journey, whatever it: had been like. Lizzie, she thought, had even enjoyed the ballet.

Lizzie’s uncharacteristic emotion at the end of Act II had certainly been expressed, but expressed so minimally in comparison with Immy’s lovely tears, perhaps an alteration in the timbre of her voice, and her two hands clenched into fists, as Odile, in black, deployed her dazzling, her irresistible seductions.

In fact Odile’s variations had proved an intolerable ordeal for Lizzie. She could not have said why she was so frightened and repelled by the dangerous figure, and its assumptions of triumph, of victory. To see virtue so easily discarded, and the prince so easily beguiled, brought a feeling of sickness to her throat, and yet she could not have explained why. Only when the prince and Odette were reunited in the beauty of their apotheosis did she release the breath she had been holding. Stumbling after the others down the stairs and into the car she was still distressed, not quite reassured. Immy, for all her tears, was fully recovered. This simply served, once again, to reinforce her knowledge that she and Immy were constructed out of different material, and were bound to be strangers to one another. It was not simply that Imogen was loved, whereas she, Lizzie, was not. In her mind Imogen was like Odile, who can simulate passion without feeling. Her excesses, her carelessness, and what Lizzie perceived as ruthlessness were alien, frightening. Even Harriet, of whom she was cautiously fond, seemed dazzled by her, as the prince had been by Odile. This diminished Harriet in Lizzie’s eyes.

Her quarrel was with appearances, attitudes, when she knew herself to be dedicated to seriousness. She was inclined to mistrust first, only later to accept. Her life had been all caution, wariness, withholding. Her lonely courage was of no advantage to her, since it merely prepared her for more loneliness and the need for further courage. Going away to school was for her one more ordeal, yet as far as she could see school would be no worse than the holidays, when she would be transported to Scotland and more strangers, or put on the plane to France to stay with her grandparents at Ramatuelle, where she was a not altogether welcome reminder of her dead mother. Blinking in the fresh air of Bow Street, Lizzie wished momentarily that Freddie might adopt her. But then that would mean seeing more of Immy, so that was no solution either. There was, she felt, no solution to anything. In her
childish perception most outcomes, when not tragic, were uncomfortable. She looked askance at Immy, and at Immy’s insistence on being happy, or being made happy. This made Immy seem a lightweight, yet none the less demanding, for all the frivolousness of her nature. Altogether Immy was a painful subject, doubly painful now that the character of Odile had been shown to her. Lizzie could not have been said to have been reassured by her contact with art, since art casts so critical a light on life itself.

None of this was she able to articulate, so that Harriet did not know, was never to know, how profoundly she had been affected. Harriet remembered Imogen’s tears, and felt tears in her own eyes at the thought of them. And she was to be parted from her for long years: how and why had she brought this about? It was true that Imogen was high-spirited and capricious, perhaps inclined to be disobedient. It was true that her vivid face was too often clouded with disappointment at what they had hoped was a modest treat. ‘Your favourite, darling,’ Harriet would say, serving her a pear enrobed in chocolate as a dessert. ‘I don’t like it any more,’ would be the reply. Anything to avoid that look of disappointment, Harriet would think, although Freddie was less indulgent. It was Freddie who had insisted on the school, although the child was so young. ‘Let her go,’ he warned, ‘or she will be bored stiff.’

To Freddie, Imogen was somewhat alarming, since she resembled no one so much as Helen, his first wife, and sometimes, on waking, he had a moment of panic, wondering to whom he was really married. He saw in Immy some of that recklessness, that ruthlessness which Helen had mobilized in order to taunt him: he saw, in her childish eyes, a scorn that was unfriendly. He remembered Helen’s jibes, and knew that his daughter would be sexually unmanageable. He longed for her to be gone for a while, so that he could recover some
peace with Harriet, whose dark head he saw bent docilely over the Cash’s name tapes. An additional worry was that he did not feel quite well. The panic, on waking, was compounded by a dizziness; once he had nearly fallen on his way to the bathroom. ‘What is it?’ Harriet had called. ‘Nothing. Go to sleep. It’s early,’ he had called back, but he had sat on the edge of the bath, sweating, until the attack, or whatever it was, had passed. Blood pressure, he told himself later in the day: must have a check-up. But while believing in all sincerity in the existence, the reality, of high blood pressure, he thought his trouble was caused by a vague unhappiness, by retirement, by his wife’s indifference, by the more than indifference of his daughter. He was careful enough not to approach the child, never to show her his dreadful eagerness to hear a loving word. He would be the provider in the background, and as such he would achieve some value in her eyes. The day would come when they would be brought together by Imogen’s material needs. Then he would deploy his resources. Until that time, he thought, he might just manage. But it put a strain on him, and he did not want to see her for a while.