A Misalliance (24 page)

It was after leaving the bright room, and after taking her leave of Mrs Duff, that the first tremor of melancholy made itself felt. The sun, bright now over the quiet streets, drew Blanche to her window, and she stood for some time in her familiar attitude, with her hand holding back the curtain. She realized how long it had taken for the sun to gain its ascendancy on this particular day and, remembering the
uncertain light of the morning, the windless air, the blackberries, and the dahlias, knew that this was truly autumn. The evening would be a short one; darkness would come early. And soon a harvest moon, the moon that was nearly golden. She would miss all that, of course, for she would be where the sun shone all day. With a sigh, which she did not hear, she moved resolutely to her desk and sat down to pay bills and to write letters, notes for the milkman and the laundryman, a note cancelling the papers, an envelope containing Miss Elphinstone’s money until the end of the year, together with the rigidly itemized account on which Miss Elphinstone insisted. She telephoned Barbara and said she would let her have an address as soon as she arrived, would in fact telephone as soon as she arrived. ‘But where will you be?’ asked Barbara anxiously, and, ‘Is this wise, Blanche?’

‘It is more than wise; it is necessary,’ Blanche replied, and she supposed that it was. After putting the receiver down she took out a suitcase and started to pack.

With the waning of the sun came the full melancholy, the melancholy of departure. She was a decisive woman and her preparations had not taken her long. She made an omelette with herbs which she would eat later, cold, with some garlic bread and the rest of the blackberries. After that there seemed very little to do. She roamed restlessly round the flat, checking her dressing-table, draping a sweater round her shoulders, pushing her suitcase out of sight. It was a relief to sit down with a bottle of Frascati, although this evening the wine was not to her taste. She was too agitated to sit quietly and thought of going for a long walk, tiring herself out, and thus ensuring a night’s sleep. For tomorrow she must pick up her ticket and take her leave, so that on the following day she could disappear silently, without witnesses. In the event she doubted whether it would be as seamless a departure as she had recently imagined it to be, but she put this down to an unusual form of nervousness, brought on by her
long reclusion from the world, and tried not to let the fear take hold.

It took hold, none the less, and she went early to bed, by now more than willing to enter the world of night, in which only the action of dreams was possible. A certain formality helped to keep misgivings at bay, and she dressed in her best nightgown, which had been laid in a drawer for over a year. With a sigh she got into bed, took up her book, and prepared to read for an hour, but after a few minutes the book fell from her hand, and her head turned to the window. There was nothing to see now, and no sound to be heard. She listened in vain for the cat with the bell round its neck, padding along on its night-time patrol. Straining her ears she heard not the sound of the cat’s bell but of the front door: a key had been inserted cautiously into the lock. For an insane moment she imagined herself pursued by the entire Beamish family – Sally, Paul, Elinor, the grandmother – each member of which had somehow managed to furnish itself with a key. She sat up in bed with a wildly beating heart until she realized that this was impossible, that her visitor could only be Mrs Duff or Miss Elphinstone, about her parochial business at the hospital and looking in as she had promised. ‘Is that you, Miss Elphinstone?’ she called out. There was no answer. ‘Mrs Duff?’ she said, in a voice from which conviction was dwindling. There was a noise of keys being dropped, and then her bedroom door slowly opened.

‘I’m back, Blanche,’ said Bertie, putting down a suitcase. ‘I’ve come back. What have you done to your hair?’

ALTERED STATES

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A CLOSED EYE

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THE DEBUT

Since childhood Ruth Weiss has been escaping into books. Now Dr. Weiss, at forty, a quiet scholar, is convinced that her life has been ruined by literature and that she must make a new start.

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DOLLY

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FALLING SLOWLY

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FAMILY AND FRIENDS

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FRAUD

What has happened to Anna Durrant, a solitary woman who has disappeared from her London flat? As Brookner reconstructs Anna’s life, she gives us a clever yet devastating study of self-annihilating virtue while exposing the social, fiscal, and moral frauds that are the underpinnings of terrifying rectitude.

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A FRIEND FROM ENGLAND

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HOTEL DU LAC

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INCIDENTS IN THE RUE LAUGIER

A young Frenchwoman and two English boys share a flat and strike up a volatile chemistry of longing and betrayal. Maud yearns to escape bourgeois modesty, and the caddish Tyler seduces her effortlessly. But when he disappears, it is up to the dutiful Edward to rescue her.

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LATECOMERS

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LEWIS PERCY

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LOOK AT ME

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MAKING THINGS BETTER

Facing life alone at an advanced age, Julius Herz cannot shake the sense that his whole life may have gone awry. Yet after a lifetime of deferring to others’ wills, he faces a future of possibility, the only constraint the deeply ingrained habits of his mind.

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A PRIVATE VIEW

The young and abrasively self-assured Katy Gibb walks into the aging bachelor George Bland’s life. She may be looking for friendship or for a dupe to finance a New Age business venture, but Katy incites in George the most alarming feelings, not least of all the discovery of his capacity for compromise and self-deception.

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PROVIDENCE

For years, Kitty Maule has been tactfully courting her colleague, an elegant English professor. Now, running out of patience, Kitty’s amorous pursuit takes her from academic committee rooms and lecture halls to French cathedrals and Parisian rooming houses, from sittings with her grandmother to séances with a grandmotherly psychic.

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THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

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UNDUE INFLUENCE

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VISITORS

At seventy, Dorothea May has withdrawn, cloaking her disappointment with life in emotional remoteness from her few friends. But when her late husband’s sisters ask her to take in a reticent young man for a week, she is forced to realize that old age will require more attention to the ties of friendship than she had anticipated.

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