A Closed Eye (27 page)

He was nearly comfortable in this unpretentious flat, which had cost him something to maintain: that was a surprise. He felt his horizons shrinking: all on one floor, close carpeted, highly convenient—it was the next best thing to a hotel suite. Yet it was the suite he really wanted, with a vista, and nobody else to bother him.

That was the problem, of course: Harriet would hardly understand if he took a holiday on his own, although she was so preoccupied with her daughter that he felt he hardly mattered. This was unfair, he knew: she was, and had always tried to be, an excellent wife. It was not her fault that she lacked certain qualities. With a father like that she had grown up in ignorance of what men were really like. And yet he was fond in a way of old Blakemore, who persisted in remaining so young, was able to reminisce with him about service days, was reminded that he had once been young himself. That was now Blakemore’s charm: he bore witness to a state of youth which had long departed. He felt that if only the women would go away somewhere he might very well sit for another hour with Hughie, remembering, appreciating the other man’s harmlessness. In any event he felt unable to move, having eaten two slices of a fruit cake made by Blakemore
himself, who now attended cookery classes. Strange: he had always been so dashing. Harriet had shaken her head and looked disapproving, but he had felt a sudden burst of anger at being treated like a child, and had taken a second slice from the proffered plate. Now he felt heavy, vaguely uncomfortable, as he so often did these days. Food was not the problem: Harriet fed him carefully, and he could usually digest anything. But he could not drink as he used to. Sometimes, in the evenings, he felt a fluttering in his left eyelid which he did not seem able to control, and in the morning, after the atrocious moment of coming back to consciousness, and the dizziness that afflicted him when he sat up in bed, there was always a bad half hour in the bathroom, where he bathed with increasing caution. Freshened with cologne his face looked momentarily better; he was always reassured by the sight of himself fully dressed. But his days were empty; pleasant, but empty. The walk to the club, the morning papers, coffee, and then that lonely hour before lunch, which he would fill by wandering round St James’s, looking at the odd picture. He felt humble in art galleries, although the young girls at the desk were hospitable and kind (and indifferent), and sometimes he was alone there for the space of twenty minutes or even longer. Dutch pictures were best, when he could find them. For a month he had studied a large flower-piece of improbable profusion, on a dark ground. He thought the picture sinister, for in the foreground there was a split fruit, a peach or a nectarine, and on the lip of the fruit a fly, breeding corruption. He realized that the picture was meant to remind him of his own decay, and felt chastened. This was not a feeling he welcomed, although he acknowledged that it was appropriate. But he found the picture’s impassivity reassuring, in a bleak way. There is no escape, the artist had meant to say: our substance is being consumed.

After this he tried to find something a bit lighter. An
Impressionist would have gone down well, but there were few to be had in commercial galleries; he wandered to Wildenstein’s and looked thoughtfully at Marquet and Manguin. Then, glancing at his watch, he saw with relief that it was half-past twelve, and turned back to St James’s Street, and lunch. There was usually someone to talk to around that time, and the afternoons were not too bad. It was only when he set out for home that a sadness began to descend. He could never quite understand this. It had something to do with the fact that attention was always turned away from him, so that he stood hapless, in his own drawing-room, while Harriet, and even Miss Wetherby, busied themselves upstairs in Imogen’s flat. When Imogen was there, which was rarely, he felt positively ignored. The women were not technically at fault, were simply active in the ways in which they were programmed to be active, and yet he was uneasy with them. Hence the desire for, the dream of, the hotel terrace in the sun, and a short post-prandial stroll to buy
The Times
. One read the English papers so much more thoroughly when one was abroad, which was where he now ardently wished to be.

Nobody liked the spectacle of Freddie heaving himself from his chair. Freddie felt it himself, but he was so used to being considered graceless by his daughter that he was almost philosophical, more philosophical than the Blakemores, who looked on in frank dismay. Old Hughie had the decency to offer him a hand, which he refused. What worried him more than his loss of vigour was the fluttering in his left eyelid which had started up again, although he had had nothing to drink, nothing having been on offer. He saw Merle Blakemore studying him: a tiresome woman, whom nothing escaped. He was, once more, glad that they were going home by train. The effort of securing a taxi bothered him slightly, until dear old Hughie darted down the stairs: from the balcony they saw him standing in the road, gesticulating, and
then his face turned up towards them, and his hand beckoned them down. Harriet kissed her mother; he could only manage a grunted, ‘Goodbye, my dear.’ With Hughie he shook hands. Hughie, like himself, must surely be glad of a little masculine company from time to time? How did he manage? And yet he looked fit, happy. Perhaps slightly thin in the face. Ah, they were all growing old. That Dutch master had got it right.

They travelled home in silence, both tired. Harriet tired easily these days, although her dreamy expression indicated not fatigue so much as absence. Sometimes he hardly knew her, although they slept in the same bed every night, while she sometimes seemed to return to him from a great distance. He yawned; for once he would be glad to get home.

‘Is Immy in this evening?’ he asked.

‘Darling, you know I never ask her.’

He sighed. He had never become reconciled to what he considered his daughter’s fecklessness. He loved her, but did not entirely trust her, whereas her mother’s trust was absolute. He wondered how Harriet could be so blind to the expression of concealment which Imogen habitually wore for her benefit. He knew that blank classic look, so very different from her childhood exuberance: a shutter drawn down on her real feelings, her real intentions. What did Imogen intend? What did she think, or do? He doubted whether her affections were secure, or sometimes, in dread moments, whether she had any deep affections at all. She was engaging, certainly, but with her ostentatious politeness and her brief smiles she no longer seemed to belong to them, if indeed she ever had. He suspected her of a fund of sexual knowledge, used coolly, deliberately. This he must keep to himself: Harriet must never know. Harriet, in fact, would look bewildered if he ever touched on the subject. To Harriet, as he well knew, sex was but a half-open book. He sighed, feeling the beginnings of a
pain below his ribs. How could he blame his daughter for not resembling her mother? Yet he preferred women to be virtuous: it became them better. His daughter’s secret life unsettled him, not only because he was her father but because the very idea was unseemly. Although he knew virtually nothing about Imogen’s friends, he imagined them all with the same affectless masks as she herself habitually wore. That boy, Julian, however, seemed to be more deeply engaged. He sighed again. He did not like the idea of Julian as his daughter’s lover, but since he was almost sure that Imogen was secretive about her other affairs he could not help hoping that Julian would not get too badly hurt.

‘I shan’t want anything to eat tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a touch of indigestion.’

She turned her head to him slowly. After a moment her expression cleared. ‘You ate too much,’ she said. ‘You must be more careful.’

He ignored this. ‘It stays light in the evenings now. I might take a walk when we get back.’ Suddenly he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, which seemed so treacherous when he was in the presence of his wife.

She glanced at him, more vaguely. ‘There is vegetable soup if you want it,’ she said.

‘I won’t be long,’ he assured her. He could not wait to be out in the air, instead of imprisoned in this train, with his wife whom he loved and occasionally hated for not returning his love. Abroad! He thought. Abroad!

After calling up to Immy, and getting, as she expected, no reply, Harriet looked at herself searchingly in her bedroom mirror. She had matured late, was even now young in appearance, her hair still dark, her skin unlined. Tentatively she touched the mark; in truth it no longer bothered her. All she could discern in the glass was an expression of anxiety which widened her eyes, yet she was impatient rather than anxious,
for the day of her return to Jack, which she saw now with an hallucinatory clarity. The fantasy, if that was what it was, had a sharpness that was surely indicative of something more substantial than imagination. She thought that it was indicative of the life to come, and felt her skin becoming warm at the thought that in a very short time, perhaps a month or two, she would see Jack again. She might even leave home. She laughed. That she, a respectable woman, could contemplate leaving her husband, and the daughter she adored, was unthinkable, yet she thought it. Immediately the laughter faded. It was ultimately impossible, she saw that. She would stay. But nothing, and no one, would stand in the way of her return to Jack, however soon she had to say goodbye to him. Maybe, if all went well, he would wait for her. Maybe he would be a friend, to whom she could turn, for moments of sweetness, in a life that would become more arid. For she knew that however illusory, however transitory it proved to be, she must have love in her life, before the darkness set in. She moved to the bed, tired now. Her thoughts had exhausted her.

The following morning Freddie, getting up with his usual feeling of dread, straightened himself with an effort, and fell heavily, pulling the bedclothes with him as he went down. The next thing he knew was Harriet’s frightened face hovering above him. She was in her nightdress. ‘You’ll catch cold,’ he tried to say, but found himself unable to speak.

The doctor, jovial and expansive, a professional optimist, was reasonable and full of explanations. ‘He should be back to normal within forty-eight hours,’ he said. ‘One might have a minor stroke without knowing it. Quite common, you know.’ At your age, was what he did not quite manage to conceal.

‘Don’t let Immy see me,’ were the next words that Freddie managed to say. He was aware of his drooping left eyelid, and
the rigidity at the left side of his mouth. These gradually diminished as the day went on, a long day, spent in bed, very frightened. To stay in bed meant to succumb: this he knew he must not do.

‘How are you feeling?’ asked Harriet, kneeling by the bed in what he recognized as a shaft of late sunlight.

‘Better.’

They longed to believe it. But his speech had improved, and the mouth had slightly relaxed, and later that evening he managed to get up and walk to the bathroom.

She got into bed with him, to keep him company.

‘I never liked Mordaunt,’ he said.

‘Everyone says he’s an excellent doctor. But actually, no, I don’t like him either.’

‘When I’m better,’ he said heavily, ‘I might try that clinic Sanders told me about. That Swiss place. Stay there for a bit.’ He saw something of his original image, only this time the Mediterranean was replaced by a mountain range. ‘You don’t need to come,’ he said, and a tear rolled down his cheek.

She looked with pity at his sad and mottled face.

‘Of course I’ll come,’ she said. ‘As if I’d ever leave you.’

F
REDDIE
took one look at the room into which they were shown, and said, ‘No way.’ Harriet, though tired, was relieved. She had been prepared to put up with the brown decor, the two overwhelming wardrobes, and the tiny bathroom for as long as she thought Freddie unequal to the task of providing them with suitable accommodation. She looked on this day of her life as a nightmare from which she wished to be released by a profound sleep. It did not much matter to her where she slept: everywhere was exile. She had been patient, she thought, and sensible. She had obtained from Mordaunt a list of clinics in the Lausanne area, and also an introductory letter, Freddie’s friend having proved disappointing in the matter of directions to and exact location of the place that had saved his life. ‘I couldn’t tell you the way,’ he said. ‘We were driving, from Geneva. I’d know it again, of course. You could ask around. It’s called l’Alpe Fleurie.’ Mordaunt had been polite but dubious. ‘Everything in Switzerland is called l’Alpe Fleurie,’ he had said. ‘You’re as likely to find yourself in a restaurant or a children’s home as in a clinic. You’d be better off somewhere else. As a matter of fact my partner—Strang, you know—has made a study of clinics and spas. I’ll give you a list.’ Harriet had taken it with a sinking heart, seeing them posting from clinic to clinic for month after
month, perhaps for years. Mordaunt had saved them. ‘Lecoudray is very highly thought of,’ he had said. ‘Specializes in arterial cases. Got his own clinic near Montreux. I met him once, at a conference. I’ll give you a letter.’