A Closed Eye (31 page)

The woman shrugged. ‘His blood pressure is bad. One must remember his age.’

She looked curiously round the room.

‘Et vous? Vous avez tout ce qu’il vous faut? Vous n’avez besoin de rien?’

They spoke in both French and English. Thanks to her reading Harriet was now fluent. But she deduced that she was an object of pity, and that the visit was for her benefit more than for Freddie’s.

She no longer desired to be at home, felt in fact as if home were a fiction, less real than the fictions she read. Yet she packed up, locked up, said goodbye to Monsieur Papineau, told him that she would see him in a month’s time.

‘Ah,’ he said, momentarily alert. Then his gaze slid off into the distance, and his usual smile took its place.

The journey home was tinged with staleness, anticlimax. Of the two of them only Freddie was alert: she viewed his high colour and his good spirits with equal misgivings. Arriving in London she was aware of the chary light, the low-banked clouds, the endless stream of cars. After her silent month she felt jolted by the noise, almost frightened. Her heart beat faster than usual; in her mouth she tasted blood. She was relieved when the taxi drew up in Wellington Square, yet
the same heavy-heartedness made her stumble on the steps. What is wrong with me? she thought. I do not usually react like this. She dragged the suitcases into the hall, dropped the keys into her bag, and straightened up, alert, aware that something was out of joint.

‘Harriet, I’ve told you, I won’t have that dog in the house. What is it doing here?’

‘It must have got out,’ she said. ‘Or Miss Wetherby had something to do up here.’ But she hurried into the drawing-room, where the barking had come from, to find Miss Wetherby seated in Freddie’s chair, her hand on the dog’s collar, trying to restrain him.

‘Miss Wetherby! Are you all right? Has there been a break-in? There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

Miss Wetherby, with an obvious effort, stood up and came forward.

‘Mrs Lytton, Mr Lytton, I’m afraid there’s been an accident.’

‘Imogen,’ said Harriet, turning sick and faint.

‘You must be very brave …’

‘Where is she? Where is my daughter?’

Miss Wetherby shook her head at Freddie. ‘The police came round last night,’ she said, in a low voice, as if Harriet must not hear. ‘A car accident. One of those open cars. She was killed instantly.’

‘Where is she?’ cried Harriet.

Miss Wetherby shook her head again. The policeman had told her that Imogen’s body had been badly damaged. This she had decided to keep to herself, although the decision weighed on her: both looked so dreadfully ill, and she feared a heart attack, a collapse of some kind, which she would not be able to endure. She took an anxious look at Freddie, whose high colour had faded to nothing. She longed to get downstairs, to her own bed. She felt sick, tired out; she had vomited
the night before, after the policeman had gone, but she knew that for them the ordeal was just beginning.

‘Harriet!’ cried Freddie, clutching at his heart.

She looked up from the drooping thoughtful position into which she had fallen, on the chair which Miss Wetherby had helped her to. She gazed at him in silence for a few seconds, before reaching for the telephone and dialling the doctor’s number. ‘My husband is unwell,’ she remembered saying, and then blackness came down, and all she could hear, very faintly, was the dog barking again, in alarm, as Miss Wetherby stumbled forward to catch her.

There followed a period of semi-consciousness, prolonged by the doctor’s sedatives, so that for several days she was not completely sure where she was. She remembered someone telling her that Immy was dead, although she only intermittently believed this. At her side Freddie sighed and groaned and wept all the tears she was unable to shed. She ardently wished that he would go away; she needed all her concentration for the task in hand, which was to endure, to stay alive, when death was all she craved. She was dry-eyed, dry-mouthed. Miss Wetherby brought cups of tea, which she sometimes drank. When Freddie at last got up she fell asleep immediately. It was only the condition of the crumpled bed, where she had lain for six days, that finally goaded her to some kind of activity. With a deep sigh she pulled off her nightdress and saw that some wasting had taken place, some loss of substance. It will not be long, she thought gratefully. Bathed and dressed, she felt alarmingly light-headed. Carefully she made her way down to the drawing-room; carefully she sat down. There was nothing to be done. She sat all day, waiting for thoughts of Immy to come back to her, to battle their way, as they must do, through the confusion in her mind. Inclining her head she appeared to be listening for that elusive voice. But nothing came through, and only the remnants of her
usual discipline kept her in her chair, that and the knowledge that Freddie was out somewhere and was perhaps unwell. Left to herself she would have gone back to bed.

Every day she made her way down to the drawing-room and sat politely in her chair. People came and went; many she did not recognize. She was aware of her parents, their shocked concern, her father’s uninhibited weeping. The sight of him, as always, made her resolute. She got up, went down into the kitchen, made coffee, found cake and biscuits. Her father ate gratefully, the tears drying on his face. Her mother, suddenly old, smoked, eased a throbbing vein in her leg, took aspirins from her bag. It was only by resuming some sort of control (but she had at no point felt out of control: that was the curious thing) that she could persuade them to leave.

Freddie wept from time to time, Miss Wetherby, exhausted, asked if she might visit her sister in Somerset. ‘Just for a week,’ she said.

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘There is nothing more to do here.’

After a fortnight, with the house silent and empty, she sat in her chair, and by succumbing to a half-sleep succeeded in seeing Immy’s face as it had been when she was sixteen or seventeen. ‘Ah,’ she breathed, nodding in gratitude, as if after a visitation. It was then that she realized that all she had to do was wait for this to happen again. She knew that sometimes Immy might be too far away to come to her, but she was prepared to wait. She would spend the rest of her life, what was left of it, waiting, and then she would go to join her. There was only the matter of Freddie to be settled. It hardly mattered now which of them went first. She had sent him off to his club, seeing with pity his bowed shoulders, his shrivelled neck. She felt for him, but could not console him. There was no consolation.

All the time she remained calm, so that he frequently
accused her of being unfeeling. Only once did she falter, when, one silent afternoon, the doorbell rang, and she had answered it: on the doorstep Mary and Pamela, looking awkward, pale, embarrassed, as they had done when they were girls at school, taken to task for some misdemeanour. They stood close together, as if in fear. She saw Pamela’s hair, greying now, her reddened complexion, was aware of Mary’s scent, their outstretched hands. She leaned her head against the jamb of the door until the tears were under control, then embraced them both.

‘And you’ve come so far,’ she said. ‘You will never know …’ But gratitude was too affecting, so she hastened down to the kitchen, and busied herself. They followed slowly.

‘I’ve brought some eggs,’ said Pamela. ‘From the farm.’

‘Here’s a cake,’ said Mary. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t make it. Harrods. Give me a knife, Hattie, we’ll eat it now. You’re terribly thin.’

‘How did you know?’ she finally asked them.

‘We saw it in
The Times
,’ said Mary.

‘How strange,’ she said. ‘Freddie must have put it in. I’ve hardly known where he was these past few days. I made him go out this afternoon. He’s not well, you know. He’ll be so sorry to have missed you. The girls, he used to call you. And Tessa, of course. It has all been a heartbreak, hasn’t it?’

Mary exchanged a look with Pamela. ‘We’d better go,’ she said. ‘We only came to bring you our love. Any time you want a break away from here you’re always welcome, you know.’

Pamela took her hand. ‘David joins me,’ she started awkwardly. ‘Oh, hell. You know what I mean. Take care of yourself, Hattie. That’s all I can say.’

She saw them off, waving until the car was out of sight. Then she saw Freddie, on his way home, and waved again. At
this sign of returning vitality he brightened, but his moods were now unstable and he was soon inert again. That evening she managed to cook Pamela’s eggs; they ate them carelessly, vacantly, on a corner of the kitchen table, not talking to each other. Even the chairs on which they sat were askew, as if they were both strangers in a public place. There followed the hour they both dreaded, when the silence of the evening came down. Freddie would have liked to watch the news, but his wife’s gaze was so remote that he feared to disturb her. When the doorbell rang she gave a great leap, as if brought forcibly back to life. ‘I’ll go,’ he said. He was anxious to get away from her.

When he came back it was with Lizzie, who strolled in cautiously, her hands in the pockets of her denim jacket. Harriet stared at the sight of one so young, when her other visitors had been her own age, or older. Her resistance she immediately converted into a semblance of her usual good manners.

‘Lizzie!’ she managed to say. ‘How good of you to come. Sit down. I’ll make some coffee.’ She in her turn was anxious to get away, feeling revulsion for this burdensome visitor. When she went back into the drawing-room she was aware that Freddie had been questioning the girl.

‘It wasn’t Julian,’ she heard Lizzie say, and then she immediately started talking about Lizzie’s work, in a high social voice. Freddie looked at her as though she were mad. She did not care. She did not want their interruptions.

Lizzie saw them both in the unshaded light, as separate as if they were political prisoners in the same cell. She saw the birthmark flaring on Harriet’s white face, saw the tremor that agitated Freddie’s hands. Of the two of them he seemed more anxious for her company. Harriet, she thought, had almost entirely removed herself, although she sat there, apparently attentive, but as if she had some trouble hearing what was
being said. Imogen’s death was shocking to Lizzie, but not particularly moving. She needed to think about it. This visit was premature; she was not ready for it. There was little she could say, much that she could not.

Harriet kissed her when she stood up to leave. That much she was able to manage. She let Freddie see her out.

‘Good of her to come,’ he said, as they prepared for bed. He sighed. ‘I shan’t be sorry to leave.’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘It hardly matters where we are now.’ She knew, as she suspected he did, that they would not come back.

‘You’ll leave Miss Wetherby here?’ he asked her.

‘Of course. I must go down to Brighton tomorrow, to say goodbye to my parents.’

It was the last time, she thought, that she would make such a journey. She sat in the tightly shut room with her mother, who was unusually silent. ‘I sent Hughie out,’ she said. ‘This has all been too much for him.’

Harriet realized that her visit was not entirely welcome. I must look a sight, she thought vaguely, aware of the looseness of her dress. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said.

They sat in silence until it was time for her to go. ‘Go before he gets back,’ said her mother.

They stood up, embraced. Merle was shockingly aware of her daughter’s changed appearance.

‘Poor child, poor child,’ she said.

‘But she was a young woman,’ protested Harriet. ‘A beautiful young woman.’

‘No, dear,’ said her mother sadly. ‘I meant you.’

T
HE WEATHER
that year was magnificent. Each morning the scarlet globe of the sun rose calmly above the grey waters of the lake: each evening Harriet strolled down the rue du Château to watch the light fade and the sun finally disappear. Walking back to the Résidence Cécil she wrapped her arms round herself; she now felt permanently cold. Her state of mind reflected a perpetual absence, as if all her emotions had been laid aside, deferred, until she should have the time and the courage to consult and examine them. She dreaded the chill of the evening, dreaded going back to the flat where Freddie awaited her care. She felt pity for him, but knew that the distance between them was now so wide that it could never be bridged. By maintaining a rigid politeness she dealt with his needs. He on the other hand was given to fits of temper, bursts of weeping, as if some essential control were gone. She wondered whether there had been additional damage to his brain, or whether he were merely allowing his growing resentment of her a free rein. He accused her of heartlessness and it was true that she had never shed a tear; rather she had retreated into herself, as if she had become deaf. She prepared their evening meal while Freddie watched television. When the melodramatic tones of the French weather forecaster had subsided she went in to him, helped him up
from his chair, then led the way back to the kitchen. They ate in silence. Then he watched more television until he fell asleep, when she would wake him and put him to bed.