A Closed Eye (26 page)

A
LIFETIME
of inactivity had kept Hughie Blakemore in perfect physical condition. Slim, straight, if a little dry and jerky in his movements, he sat on the edge of a hard chair, his eyes, empty of guile, shining with the pleasure of providing tea for his daughter and her husband, and, perhaps, with the greater pleasure of registering the fact that his contemporary and one-time companion, Freddie Lytton, was an old man, heavy, inert, and possibly a bad colour. Harriet, glancing from her husband to her father, understood very well what the latter was thinking, and did not begrudge him his moment of pride. It was a feeling shared by Merle, proud, certainly, but also exhausted by this acme of healthy manhood, with his eternal unnatural youth, whom she had saved from possible dereliction and who had confined her life within crushing limits for as long as she could remember. The need to look after this fossilized boy, so agreeably good-natured, so loving, so submissive, had deprived her of the life she might have had as a mother, a grandmother. In both of these roles she had been largely absent, wishing for her daughter only viability, durability, financial security, and seeing in her granddaughter the fulfilment of these wishes, and the great changes they wrought on the human personality.

Harriet, she saw, had only reached the halfway mark of
such a development; she was unfledged, expensive to look at, confident in matters of manners and appearance, but still timid, and, her mother saw, physically unawakened. For this fact Merle blamed herself; her husband, poor darling, was not worth blaming. His curious innocence exonerated him from all adult feelings. They had been ardent lovers once; in their little flat in Soho they had sometimes stayed in bed all day. The image of their rumpled bed, and the curtainless window, and the smell of coffee from the café downstairs came back to her sometimes, but not in the way of real memory, rather as something she might have seen in a film, long ago. More vivid were the images of Hughie, back from the war, his eyes empty, or restored to contentment, at home in the small back room of the shop, supervising the making of the tea. Memory, real memory, that brought a grimace to the lips, was Mr Latif, and his urgent and expert hands. She did not blame herself for the decision to escape at all costs, which somehow also involved the decision to sacrifice Harriet, although this last was a painful matter. She had found that her grief for her daughter, who had somehow been denied her real life, could be mitigated by anger, so that now she managed to feel genuine indignation when she saw in Harriet’s eyes something of the same benevolence that emanated, like continuous good weather in a boring climate, from her husband.

A woman had no business to look so empty of calculation, when she should be busy thinking, planning ahead. A woman of Harriet’s age should not be spending time with her husband and her elderly parents when she could be in bed with a lover. A woman, if she had any pride, should have preserved that husband in better condition, or discarded him altogether. Merle had never much liked Freddie Lytton, although she had always seen him for what he was: a solid prospect, a sad man humiliated by his first wife, and in many ways an ideal husband for her docile daughter. The docility of that daughter,
persisting, amazed her. Could she not see that she was bored? Or had she a secret? Merle, an adept at keeping secrets, thought not. Whatever had once, momentarily, brought a look of beauty to her daughter’s face had vanished, to be replaced by this premature calm. It was as if she had sacrificed whatever it was that had brought her to life. She is a fool, poor girl, thought her mother. I did the same, but I loved my husband, whereas Harriet never loved Freddie. At least Hughie repaid my efforts. We have not done too badly. He is a dear old boy now, whereas once he was a dear young one. Simply, he missed out on maturity, so that I never had the satisfaction of relying on a man’s strength, a man’s judgement. But he has done me proud, or I have done him proud: it no longer matters. He is more than presentable, so much so that women of my age envy me. And he sleeps like a child in our grand bed, and will never again be wakened by me. I could have done better, she thought, lighting a fresh cigarette, but I loved him. Still do, for that matter.

But Freddie! Who could be proud of Freddie, once so impressive in his incarnation as a captain of industry, but now so defeated, retired and unsought-after? There was no need, surely, to slump so in the wide armchair, head forward, legs apart. Did he not know how unwieldy he looked? Did Harriet not see this? And if she saw it why did she permit it? A man needed to be knocked into shape: almost any woman could manage this. But not Harriet, apparently; all Harriet cared about now was her daughter. Yet Merle, who had so little maternal feeling, could see that Imogen had already outgrown her mother, that she possessed all the calculation that her mother so signally lacked, as if the evolutionary process, so slow in Harriet, had suddenly speeded up, providing Imogen with a full quota of adult thoughts and feelings, had turned her into a keeper of secrets. Merle felt a different sadness when she contemplated Imogen, whom in fact they
rarely saw. The girl was not interested in them, could not, moreover, be trusted to safeguard Hughie’s feelings when he laid before her the offering of his simple treats. At least Harriet had kept her sweet nature. Merle was not sure that Imogen had ever had a particularly good character. When she was a child her naughtiness had promised a kind of worldly success, allied as it was then to prettiness of a grand order. When that prettiness became beauty, and the girl had returned home from that school of hers, with different friends and ambitions, Merle could see what her character now contained was courage, boldness, ardour, and also something inordinate, to which she had no access, all disguised by a perfect mask, so pure that it was almost without expression.

Merle, who mourned the child she had been, did not know quite what to make of Imogen, was not quite sure that she liked the girl, although she approved of her, and in her heart loved her, but loved her as though she were already lost to them. If there were a choice between cultivating Imogen’s confidences—for she did not doubt that much was concealed from Harriet—and preserving Hughie, who never left her side, she knew that Hughie must prevail. In his monstrous innocence he had always prevailed. Therefore Imogen, to a certain extent, must be renounced. All she could do now was to send her something pretty to wear on her birthday, something expensive, almost too expensive for their budget. But Imogen had an unerring eye for quality, would lay aside something not quite up to her standard with a moue of distaste. This her grandmother had once caught sight of out of the corner of her eye, and had vowed never to be the cause of it again. She still burned when she thought of it, she whose taste had never been in any doubt. But she supposed the girl was right, in her way. Simply, she had preferred her as a baby, had kept all her baby photographs, for fortunately Hughie was good with a camera. Sometimes, when Hughie was having a
rest, she went through these, almost secretly, to see if there was any trace in that baby face of her own child, Harriet, whom she had not loved at that age. Harriet’s birthmark was no longer shocking, was almost concealed, was less important than it had been. And Imogen had been flawless. There was in fact no trace of Harriet there. And later on, apart from a brief resemblance to herself at the same age, there was no trace of any of them. She longed to ask Harriet whether Imogen was happy, but somehow happiness was too banal a concept to attach to Imogen in her present state. She was cool, sensible, ambitious: a new order of womanhood. Happiness was for the credible, the soft-hearted, the hopeful. Harriet had been all of those things. In truth she had changed very little. She was a good girl, a good daughter, and no doubt a good wife. But she should have had a chance to transcend her situation. Had she really so little spirit?

Harriet in fact no longer thought of her life as promising, and indeed this reunion, with her husband and her parents, all the same age, seemed to prove that nothing had changed. Part of her felt peaceful at the thought of this. Yet another part deviated wildly. One day, very soon, she thought, when Imogen was a few months older, twenty-one, say, and no longer in danger from either of her parents, she would contact Jack Peckham again. That she had not already done this surprised her, and yet she knew that she could wait. Indeed she avoided any mention of his name, any invitation to his daughter: she no longer wished her contact with him, if it ever came again, to be mediated. There would be no Lizzie, no Elspeth Mackinnon; there would simply be a calm claiming of her due. That she was so calm in anticipation of this she attributed to what she had seen in his face on the evening of her visit to Judd Street. Rightly or wrongly (and if wrongly what did it matter?) she thought that he would be there when the time came. What would happen then she did not know,
although she had imagined it many times. In that moment, perhaps in that one episode, there would be no husband, no children, hers or his, no former wife, no present mistress: she willed it so and knew that she could make it happen. That her thinking was magical, fantastic, did not concern her; she knew that in this mood she could bring about the impossible. And the grand adventure of a lifetime, for which she had waited so long, would faultlessly engage her and be completed, perhaps in that one episode, after which she could grow old resignedly, having done her duty to husband, parents, daughter. For she knew that with Jack Peckham she would loosen the ties which had so burdened her (and still did, still did), and with this sudden daring would rediscover her marvellous solitude, so that after being with him she would find that the others had retreated a little from her, had merely become figures in her landscape, instead of energumens whose needs were her duties.

If Jack and she were to come together (her mind fought shy of thinking in specific terms, of using specific words) she would no longer be so strenuously connected to her world; her dependents would, equally magically, have ceased to intrude upon her, and would have, at last, to take care of themselves. She would no longer feel anything for them, would smile at them, feel affection for them, hand over discreet sums of money, as she always had done, but would no longer be at their disposition. Service she could offer, but she would no longer be subservient. She would no longer be tormented by her love for her daughter, whom she would, simply, love. Jack would bring all this about, had begun the process of detaching her from her husband, might now finish it. She had no thought of flight or of desertion. She would continue to be Mrs Lytton, but she would have been mysteriously enabled to continue her life with a freedom so far denied her. In this way she thought the waiting easy. The
conviction grew in her that Jack knew all about this, and that he was waiting too. What had been started, so long ago, would then be completed, and completed in more than one sense, for she might renounce him on the same occasion. For he had given no sign … And in any event she must return to Imogen. But it would all be understood between them; there would be no injury, only a sense of what was right, what was fitting. No one would suffer. It would merely be a question of activating something that had been too long dormant, and of putting it to rest.

This thought kept her benign; this, and the memory of Jack Peckham’s face, which for a short time had been as naked as her own. He might not remember, but she would remind him. What she had seen of his expression stayed with her; no matter that time had passed. It had passed for both of them; they were both older now, both mature, and, more important, there was no ghost of Tessa hovering between them. It had been decent to wait; she owed them that. She knew nothing of his life, which she somehow suspected had been indifferently domesticated; he roamed about the world, and seemed happy to do so. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of him, reporting from Washington, when Freddie was watching the early news; he looked older, she thought, standing in front of the White House, sometimes in the snow; he looked cold. When Immy was safely gathered in by somebody else (Julian?) she would contact the BBC and say she had to get in touch with him; could they tell her when he was next due in London? This tactic was also hazy in her mind but partook of the same ease as the rest of the adventure. There was nothing criminal about making a simple enquiry. He was still, as far as she knew, unmarried, for she thought that there would have been an announcement if any marriage had taken place. He might even have got in touch himself, or Lizzie would have done so. She avoided the thought of Lizzie, for
the girl must be spared knowledge of this. Perhaps she should see her, find out how she was. Yet she could not quite admit Lizzie to her thoughts of Jack, and Jack was now more important. And in any event the dream, if that was what it was, had become so pervasive that Lizzie was almost irrelevant. Almost, but not quite. In another mood, her ordinary daytime mood, the one which usually claimed her attention, she wondered how Lizzie was getting on. Fortunately Imogen saw a lot of her, or said she did. Details were hard to come by. Imogen was elusive, went straight up to the flat in the evening, usually went straight out again. What she did, whom she saw, they no longer knew. They took a pride in not questioning her.

Freddie, supine in his chair, listening without comment to the pleasing inconsequential rumble of Hughie Blakemore’s voice, was thinking that if he were on his own (and the thought occurred to him more frequently these days) he might prefer to live in a decent hotel, with room service, somewhere warm. He was over seventy: time, he thought, to retire in earnest. Sometimes the thought of his wife, his daughter, his house, weighed on him like a burden. He did not feel well. He felt dizzy in the mornings, and despite the life he led these days his blood pressure remained high. He had been glad of Harriet’s suggestion that they travel to Brighton by train, for he did not think he was up to driving the car, had not done so for some time. He was even glad of Hughie Blakemore’s company, his agreeable voice, his undemanding presence. This was new, he thought, a measure of his vulnerability, or infirmity. Merle he had never much liked, suspecting that she was a calculating woman who had masterminded his present entanglement. And yet he had loved Harriet, still did, but had always known that she regarded him as someone who had graciously offered to take care of her, an offer she had been unable to refuse, and for
which she was grateful. But half measures were no longer enough for him: he was conscious of a lack in his life, and blamed his present feebleness on various deprivations of a sensory order. These extended to sunlight, fruitfulness, warmth, the abundant warmth of a different climate. He was not as soulless as most people thought him; he had read his Colette, had dreamed of meals with friends on Provençal terraces, beneath the shadow of a fig tree. Instead he was making do with the pale brittle sunlight of an April day in England, and although the Blakemores kept their windows shut he was aware of an acid wind, had felt it when they left the train, dreaded going out into it again.