A Closed Eye (32 page)

Little was said between them. They had become strangers to one another, each retaining some impression of a former part to be played. Of the two of them Harriet was the more proficient, although in reality she was a sleep-walker. Her duties were now automatic, and were automatically carried out: the marketing in the early morning, the preparation of lunch, and then Freddie’s afternoon rest, when she sat trying to read, although the book was frequently laid aside. Monsieur Papineau usually joined them for a cup of tea, yet the balance of their friendship had very slightly shifted. Harriet sensed that he was fearful now of her polite reserve, as if the terrible reality of what had happened had estranged him. He felt for her, but could not express his feelings, which were confused. The tragedy had impinged upon his own comfortable nostalgia; his stories of life in London, nights at the opera, Sundays taking his governess, Missy, to tea at the Hyde Park Hotel, fell on deaf ears. His own dead love, that same Missy, had died in her late seventies, when Monsieur Papineau was already a mature man; how could this death be compared with the other? And his love for Missy, which was real enough, had in it something of the love of a boy for an older woman. It was as a boy that Monsieur Papineau had grown old; beneath the polished manners were the innocence and eagerness of childhood, but also its revulsions. Harriet now seemed to him cold. He preferred the company of Freddie, with whom he was able to shake his head over Harriet’s tearless state. He even felt a slight thrill of disloyalty when Freddie told him that Harriet had always been an unfeeling woman. ‘I’m sure I don’t have to spell it out for you,’ said Freddie, with heavy emphasis. Monsieur Papineau felt horror and fascination. Freddie’s decline put him more within Monsieur
Papineau’s reach. Together they played the occasional game of chess, while Harriet put on a sweater and walked down by the lake.

And Monsieur Papineau was indispensable when Freddie felt unwell.
‘Allons-y, avançons,’
he would call out gaily as he guided the bent figure into the bedroom. This gaiety was well within his capabilities, for he liked the sensation of virtue, was in fact enlivened by it. What he could not tolerate was Harriet’s remoteness, which made him uneasy. He had no resource against the encroachment of fear: it made him fretful, uncomfortable. He admired Harriet, felt affection for her, but these days she inspired a melancholy which was unwelcome. On Freddie’s better days he took him out in the car. That way he could honestly feel that he was helping them both. At such times he greeted the return of his habitual good conscience with relief, as if it were an old friend. On Sundays he went to church. It was important to him to behave decently. Therefore he devoted himself to Freddie, leaving Harriet to the solitude she now seemed to crave.

Freddie’s treatment became intermittent, and then finally ceased, when, by common consent, he was recognized to be too frail to benefit from further visits to the clinic. Instead, one of his nurses, Irène, was seconded to the Résidence Cécil to look after him, a fact for which Harriet was profoundly grateful. Irène was given the spare room, the small white room which had been left untouched by the interior decorator, who had deemed it appropriate, in its unadorned state, for the servant who would occupy it. The presence of this unsmiling, even severe woman relieved Harriet, although she no longer looked for the pleasures of company. Nevertheless, to see Irène’s head bent over her sewing by the light of one of the elaborate lamps gave her a timid feeling of normality partially restored.

‘You’re sure you don’t mind being here?’ she asked.

Irène snorted. ‘It’s what I trained for. What do you think I do there, most of the time? Pedicures, for rich women! At least this is serious.’ She meant
sérieux
, respectable. She forbore to add that she needed the extra money, merely telling Harriet that her daughter was expecting again. She sighed, then held up the beautiful nightdress she was stitching for Harriet’s approval.

‘How ill is he?’ asked Harriet.

‘He is being well looked after,’ temporized the nurse. ‘Don’t worry. He is not suffering.’

‘How long?’ pursued Harriet.

‘Who can say?’

With Freddie gone, she thought, they would all leave, Irène, Monsieur Papineau. She would be left alone, with no further duties. There would be a relief in the cessation of her normal activities, although she was tired when she contemplated the duty of living the rest of her life. It did not occur to her to end it by violent means; she rather thought that she would let it slip away. Yet even this idea was curiously repugnant to her. Her heart still beat strongly, her eyes still saw the sun going down into the lake, her legs still carried her effortlessly on her morning walk. What she craved was not so much death as silence. These days the flat seemed crowded, overpopulated, with Freddie and Monsieur Papineau in the bedroom and herself and Irène in the drawing-room. The smell of Irène’s carnation scent bothered her, until she got used to it. And all the encroachments—Irène’s sewing basket, Monsieur Papineau’s chess board—she regarded with something like bewilderment until she shrugged her shoulders and accepted them. But she was not at home. That was her principal feeling. She was not at home anywhere. She might have come to terms with her present surroundings if she had been left alone, but there were three strangers to contend with, for Freddie was now more comfortable with Irène and Monsieur
Papineau than he was with her. She did not actively imagine how life would be when he died, did not in fact believe that he would die, for he cheered up in company, and seemed relatively comfortable. Only with Harriet was he largely wordless. At night they settled down for sleep in the big bed, earlier and earlier. Sometimes his hand felt for her breast, then fell away. ‘No good, no good,’ he would groan, and shed a tear. She waited, in silence, until he fell asleep. These times were the most difficult, for try as she might she could think of nothing to say to him.

He got better, was livelier, even went out in the car one day with Monsieur Papineau, although he had to be helped up the stairs when he returned. He had a bad night after that, and on the following morning half fell as she took him through to the kitchen for breakfast. She noticed that he ate carelessly, could not locate his plate, let his coffee drip down his chin. ‘Freddie,’ she warned. ‘Wipe your mouth.’ In reply he put his head down on the table and began to sob. ‘Irène, Irène,’ she cried. The nurse came running in, took one look at Freddie’s face, with the smear of butter on the forehead, and said, ‘Ah.’ Together they lifted him from his chair, and took him back to the bedroom. He said nothing while they put him to bed, eventually lay back on the pillows, a final tear drying on his cheek. They sat with him all day. At five o’clock Monsieur Papineau put his head round the door, saw them at the bedside, and exchanged nods with the nurse. Harriet was aware of his frightened face slowly disappearing, of the door slowly shutting. An hour later Freddie fell asleep, peacefully, it seemed. Harriet and Irène withdrew to the kitchen, ate swiftly, smoked a cigarette.

‘What will happen now?’ asked Harriet.

‘
Ma pauvre petite dame
, only one thing can happen.’

‘Then I must be with him,’ she said.

‘Freddie,’ she said, into his sleeping ear. ‘Forgive me. Forgive
me for not loving you, as a wife should love a husband. Forgive me for disappointing you, for not coming up to expectations. You are a good man; the faults were all mine.’

She took his hand. ‘Freddie, can you hear me? Don’t be afraid. I will never leave you. I never left you, did I? We managed, somehow. But then it all changed, didn’t it? After that there was nothing more to say. How could we even pretend that we were the same people? If I have seemed unsympathetic it was not because I didn’t feel for you; it was because I had run out of emotional disguises. The truth of the matter is that we gave up in different ways. You managed to grieve for her, while I have not yet started. I perceive everything as a distraction from the main business of my life now, which is trying to recapture Imogen. Even your illness is a distraction, because when I am attending to you I am trying to see her face, which is puzzlingly out of reach. I know that it will come back to me one day, but in the meantime I am hemmed in by circumstance. I need a great absence. I even need your absence, although my life will be strange without you. What shall I do when you are no longer there? And yet I know that I will manage, just as I know that you will be glad to shed this body which torments you. Perhaps death is not the punishment I always thought it must be. Simply one must greet it when it comes, so that there is no time for fear. I can’t join you yet. But I shall stay with you until then.’

So many years, she thought. Turning to him in the bed, she said again, ‘Don’t be afraid.’

They thought he must have died in the night, or in the very early morning. They thought that Harriet must have been asleep when it happened. When she awoke it was to a great silence. She looked at him, saw that he was colourless, felt his cheek. For a few minutes she lay there beside him. Then she got up, still anxious not to disturb him, bathed and dressed. In the kitchen she put water on to boil, as she always had
done. When the coffee was made she took a cup in to the nurse, and announced that Freddie was dead. The sun was rising on to another perfect day. She noted this while Irène was making the necessary telephone calls. Then, as she was no longer needed, she walked out and went down to the lake. She sat there, in the beneficent heat, until she judged that she might be needed again. When she rose from her seat her only thought was that now at last she could be alone with Imogen.

Monsieur Papineau wept. He wept throughout the funeral, then, with a great sigh, cheered up again. When Harriet clasped his hands and kissed him in gratitude for being so good a friend he assured her that he would not abandon her. She in her turn assured him that she was all right, that he must not feel that he had to keep her company: he did not see that she craved solitude. Together with the nurse she cleared the bedroom, arranged for Freddie’s things to go to the Red Cross. Then she helped Irène to pack up, stripped Irène’s bed, and remade it with pristine white sheets. ‘You could have a guest,’ said Irène. ‘You could have someone to stay.’ But she knew no one, although she did not say so.

Shortly the weather broke, and rain fell steadily. For days she stayed in the flat, in a state of latency. She thought that she ought to go back to London, knew that she should, but was somehow incapable of summoning the energy to buy her ticket. Gradually the light went, and the days shortened. The lake was now grey from morning to night, and a chill wind blew. In the spring, she thought vaguely. I shall go in the spring. Go home, she corrected herself. But it was no longer home to her.

As the winter closed in she forced herself to go out, to buy food, although she felt no desire to eat. Sometimes Monsieur Papineau came up and had tea with her, partially reassured by her calm demeanour. When the days lightened again it was he who wondered aloud when she would go home, saw her
reluctance, did not insist. She was grateful to him for his tact. Throughout the following summer he took her out for walks; sometimes they lunched together. ‘Your parents?’ he questioned. ‘I telephone them every week,’ she answered. ‘They seem to be all right. But I should see to Miss Wetherby. She is alone too now.’ In the end, on a fine September day, it was he who went with her to the travel agent, took her to the station, saw her on to the train. At the airport in Geneva she was surprised to see so many people. She had seen hardly anyone for nearly a year.

England seemed strange, a foreign country. As always, when coming back, the house confused her. When she put her unfamiliar key into the unfamiliar lock the dog started to bark, and she almost turned round and left again. Miss Wetherby’s anxious face, appearing at the top of her stairs, forced her to behave normally.

‘Mrs Lytton! But I didn’t know you were coming! I would have got some food in!’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I can go out again later.’

‘Let me make you a cup of tea, at least.’

‘Yes, I should like a cup of tea. I’ll come down to you, shall I? I must just take a look upstairs.’

In the drawing-room Miss Wetherby had put dust sheets over the sofa and chairs. Otherwise all was in order. Harriet climbed the stairs to Immy’s flat, knowing that this was why she had really come, but, opening the door, was defeated by the silence of the place. She thought she could smell scent, but how was this possible, after two years? Or was it three? She tried hard to remember, but encountered a blank in her mind. It must be three years. The scent came from a cake of lavender soap in the bathroom. She opened the windows, let the evening breeze blow through, then shut them again and went down to Miss Wetherby.

Tea restored her, but now she felt frightened, as if opening
Immy’s door had opened doors which she had so far succeeded in keeping closed.

‘There is no cake,’ fretted Miss Wetherby. ‘If I had known you were coming … Perhaps a little toast?’

She smiled. ‘My father always used to make me toast for tea,’ she said.

Miss Wetherby too was frightened. ‘I suppose you’ll be thinking of selling the house?’ she said. ‘Unless you decide to come back.’ All this time she had lived in fear that Harriet would put the house on the market, and then where would she go? She paid no rent, subsisted on various small pensions, could not afford to buy anything. A residential home, she thought, if I could find one. But would a home take the dog? There was her sister, in Somerset, but her sister lived in a tiny cottage, and on her last visit they had both been uncomfortable.

Harriet came back to earth with a jolt. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I shan’t sell the house. This is your home. It is yours for as long as you want it.’

Miss Wetherby’s face cleared. ‘I’ll take care of everything here,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’ll come back?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I don’t think I’ll come back.’

They sat in silence. Finally Miss Wetherby reached out a hand, which Harriet took. ‘You were so good to Imogen,’ said Harriet, for now the name had been spoken.