Brief Lives (26 page)

‘Well,’ she said, in a manner of greeting. ‘Wonders will never cease. First you find a man and now Maureen does. Maureen, you might make some coffee.’

‘She says she’s getting married,’ Julia announced, when Maureen was out of the room. ‘You might get her a little present from me, the next time you’re in Peter Jones. A little tablecloth or something.’ Her hand was steady as she picked up her glass and drank from it.

‘Congratulations, Maureen,’ I said, in a moderate tone of voice, when she came back with the tray. ‘When is it to be?’

‘She says next month,’ said Julia, who behaved as if Maureen were deaf or in some way absent. ‘I’ve told her she can go as soon as she likes. She’s no good to me here.’

‘But Julia, I can stay for another fortnight,’ protested Maureen. ‘Until you get fixed up.’

‘Fixed up?’ echoed Julia, her eyelids in full play. ‘Fixed up? What on earth do you mean?’

‘Well, until you get a housekeeper, or something.’

‘Why on earth should I want a housekeeper? I eat practically
nothing. I’m waiting to die anyway. Life hasn’t been the same since Mummy went, and Charlie, of course.’

‘You can’t live here alone, Julia,’ I said.

‘Why not? I suppose you want me to go into a home. Well, I might. Mummy was terribly happy in that place of hers. You might make a few enquiries, Fay.’

‘Do you remember the name of the place, Julia?’

‘No. There might be some correspondence in Charlie’s desk. He dealt with that sort of thing. I dare say there’s a waiting list. I shall probably die before they get to me.’

I opened the flap of the desk on to a maelstrom of papers, most of them bills. Some of these, I could see, were unpaid. Surely there was no shortage of money? Or did Julia simply not concern herself with such matters, half expecting Charlie to settle her affairs from beyond the grave? Someone had been through these papers, or rather had muddled them up, for Charlie would never have left them in such a state. ‘Maureen,’ I called. ‘Have you been trying to sort out these papers?’ ‘Oh, she had a look,’ said Julia, who had decided to behave as if Maureen were no longer there. ‘I doubt if she made any difference. You might go through them for me when you have a minute. If your job doesn’t keep you too occupied.’

This last was said not with deference, but, on the contrary, with a great deal of contempt. Women who worked, Julia implied, were not very important in the scheme of things, were part of a faceless army rather than unique individuals like herself. In this she made no distinction between Maureen and myself, remaining indifferent to what we did, however well-meaning it was. I imagine that Maureen’s honorarium had dried up with Charlie’s death, for it was highly unlikely that Julia would continue to pay it, if indeed she had ever known about it. Maureen’s anxious
and ineffectual hovering would not have seemed to her to be worth anything in cash terms; in any case it was construed as devotion to her own person, and perhaps it was. As for myself, it was only fitting that I should work; what else was I good for? Since Julia had no perception of my true nature or feelings, nor—as I fervently hoped—of my life as a whole, she considered me to be uninteresting, and, more than uninteresting, inferior. Her estimates and values were all class-based. Occasionally a woman of exceptional beauty or accomplishment might be allowed to slip through the net, for Julia was generous in this way. Exceptional women aroused her interest and her calculations; husbands and lovers were assessed, much in the same way as clothes and jewellery, all seen as attributes of some kind of victory, which was in essence the victory of women over men. The strange thing about Julia was her indulgence towards a certain type of woman, although there was nothing dubious about this taste; rather, she regarded women as the normal sex, and men as aberrations or nuisances, at whom she would flap a tolerant hand, when not expecting them to subsidize her entire existence.

There was another element in Julia’s decision to lump Maureen and myself together. She had perceived, wrongly, that we were both sexually active, and found this especially difficult to tolerate. She had regarded Maureen as sex-starved and ridiculous until Maureen had produced Clive Smallwood; since then the fervour in Maureen’s gaze, her self-satisfied little pirouettes, and her occasional humming of an unidentifiable but possibly holy tune, had turned Julia icy with distaste. Certainly not with jealousy: rather with a bitter disgust. My situation was rather different. I was suspected of enjoying an illicit relationship, which was in fact not the case. But in suspecting me Julia was coming dangerously
near the truth, for the illicit relationship I was supposed to be enjoying was not in the present but in the past. What she suspected now was what she had disdained to suspect some time ago. I doubt whether the idea that anything was afoot had ever occurred to her at the time when it was relevant and indeed justified. By some curious and infallible psychological mechanism she had misplaced it, but had now retrieved it to use against me in my innocent, my more than innocent friendship with Alan Carter.

The factor that had ruined my life, or the latter part of it, was the fear that Julia knew about my relationship with her husband and was biding her time until she decided to use her knowledge against me. Looking back now I think it unlikely that she knew anything at all, for to her I was too uninteresting to be eligible. Beautiful women do have a confidence that occasionally blinds them to the truth. I truly believe that Julia remained in total ignorance of Charlie’s diversions, but, by the same token, she sensed in my present demeanour a liveliness, an alertness that could only signal some kind of sexual interest, and this she could not forgive. Her resentment she construed as disgust: the pinched nostrils, the set lips signified a physical revulsion, a recoiling from the evidence. That there were no grounds for her suspicions made no difference: a judgment had been passed, and the judgment was unfavourable. It was also, in some remarkable fashion, not far from the truth, the metaphorical truth of our respective lives. There was an essential sterility about Julia, who accepted love but could not bestow it. I make no excuses for myself. All I can say is that I have been ready to love and have been led into error for that very reason. I could not forgive myself, and indeed have never done so. Those who survive an adulterous love affair are retrospectively amazed at the flimsiness of the structure that
supported it. In time they see that it cannot be granted the status of a love affair at all, that it was in fact a simulacrum, sometimes negligent, sometimes hasty, usually hidden. This was what had occupied my thoughts since Charlie’s death. I liked him less in death than I had done in life.

His legacy to me was Julia, who obligingly lay like a dead weight on my conscience. With Maureen’s defection there was no one else left, although to her credit Julia now disliked me so actively that she would rather have suffered than have invoked my help. She made no appeal to me on that morning, the morning of the papers in the desk, nor would she. She would simply be there, alone, or with Mrs Wheeler, with whom she did not exchange more than a few phrases. She would continue to be immaculate and complaining, but too proud to accept favours, which made it astonishingly difficult to offer any. In my desperation that morning I promised myself that I would find the address of that home or contact her brother or do something, anything that would free me from the burden of Julia. Without her I might be able to look forward to a life of my own. With her there was no hope at all.

I ASPIRED TO
normality. It seemed to me that it was all that I had ever aspired to; as others covet excitement and strangeness I hankered after a bourgeois calm. Each time I looked out of my window and saw a man departing for work, with his briefcase and his newspaper, I was alerted once again to the charms of a regular existence. I would even try to picture his homecoming at the end of the day, and his wife’s welcome, and the meal they would eat: this picture would make me thrill with longing. I wished benevolent order on all those whom I encountered, but I also wished to partake of that order myself. In short I was tired of my solitary existence and longed to share my life again. I recognized my mood as dangerous, for I was no longer objective and amused; a melancholy had fallen on me and also a feeling of menace. My nights became troubled. I told myself that I was a foolish woman, beyond the age of love and romance; I even told myself that I was not in love, which was true. And yet the lure of an orderly life persisted,
and with it this acute awareness of unease, almost of distress.

What I longed for was a man who was kind and who had only traditional or orthodox intentions. No such man had presented himself; the species may in fact be rather rare. I thought with surprise of my husband, Owen, who had been such a man and to whom, for that very reason, I had given my first loyalty. My marriage began to take on a dignity of which I had not been conscious at the time. Owen had left no trace in my life. I hardly ever thought of him, and yet now, with this strange mood upon me, I was proud of him and grateful to him for the years we had spent together. If I had not wholly enjoyed those years then that was because I was aware that we were mismatched. Now I was not so sure. Owen had not been an articulate man, and moreover he disliked overt feeling, as if it might reveal dangerous depths, depths which decent men kept hidden. These were the depths which I had hoped to reach, and had failed to take the measure of his reserve. Now I blamed myself for not having sufficiently valued his simplicity of intention in marrying me. His wish that we should be married had always been marvellous to me, and in this curious late summer of mine I began to see how in this way he had proved himself superior to any other man I had ever known.

But Owen—with whom I had had very few real conversations—was gone, and I began to see that I had disappointed him. Or maybe I simply longed for a communion that would reassure me and would lift me from this painful restlessness, as if I must search for a haven before night fell. I see now that what I was experiencing was the panic of approaching old age, but at the time I merely thought that I would willingly sacrifice the rest of my life if only I might not be condemned to spend it alone. I had not done well
on my own, and I did not feel worthy. I felt humble, apologetic, occasionally bitter. Nevertheless, I longed for some kind of gift, some dispensation of fortune for which I would gladly pay, however high the cost. I wanted one more summer, and would have been content to die at the end of it, before the dark days came, if I could live those few months as a normal person, with a husband whom I should see off to work in the mornings and welcome home at the end of the day with a loving smile. I wanted to employ those faculties which had once been mine, to fill my shopping basket with good things, to be on an equal footing with all the wives I met, and to welcome my friends before it was all too late, before I became a sad old woman in a solitary flat, with no one to love me and with too much time in which to dwell on my lack of company.

In practical terms this meant Dr Carter, whose desire to marry again was in inverse proportion to my own. Where I yearned, Dr Carter fled. Dr Carter had a pleasant time being rude and elegant and sought after; if he valued me at all it was for my convenience, not for my suitability. With me Dr Carter was always assured of a certain level of hospitality. I would adapt myself endlessly to his moods, never quite knowing whether he would choose to be forthcoming or withdrawn, never making him aware of any sadness I might have felt, always agreeable, non-committal, only angry when he wanted me to be angry, utterly reasonable. My anger made him laugh, reassured him in his dry cold decision to remain uninvolved. Although I knew that I could never love so unloving a man I also knew that he was drawn to me, and that if either of us ever decided to abandon our established positions and behave naturally we might arrive at an understanding that would surprise us both.

There was a great deal of anxiety in my attitude towards Dr Carter. I wanted him to love me in order that I might consider whether or not I might allow myself to love him. This was the luxury I craved. At the same time I had to live with the disappointment that none of this was happening. For every moment of intimacy I would have to pay with an increased feeling of the distance between us; for every outing to Highgate Cemetery or the Soane Museum—his excursions were always inexpensive and involved a healthy mileage—I would have to face an abruptness for which I was no longer prepared. He would not always visit me when I invited him, yet delighted in calling unannounced. This was so disruptive to one of my settled nature that I became almost frightened of him, hating the tension that he maintained between us and resenting him for the freedom he so obviously enjoyed. For a time I was unwilling to go out in the evenings in case I missed a chance of seeing him. Fortunately, common sense asserted itself and I vowed that I should never wait for anyone again. Yet when I walked out on these lovely summer evenings I was filled with melancholy that I was walking alone, and I wondered wistfully if the telephone were ringing in my empty flat or whether a disappointed visitor were walking away from my door. The feeling was so unpleasant, so redolent of waste, that I would telephone him the following morning and invite him to dinner. He did not always come, but the contact made me feel more normal.