Incidents in the Rue Laugier (28 page)

And that was what had escaped him: lack of fear. There was no need of complicated explanations. It was the look of calm-eyed plenitude on the Egyptian faces that had moved him. He himself could not recapture that original wholeness, first experienced in the garden of his childhood and restored to him in
dreams, so that he remembered waking with a feeling of bliss. He had tried to read some spiritual message into those waking moments; for a time he had firmly believed in Wordsworth’s clouds of glory. But now there was no choice; he had to experience those shades of the prison house by which he felt more and more constricted. It was not merely the headache that descended on him for most of every day. It was more likely to be the fact that he had tried, and failed, to strike an answering spark from both his wife and his daughter, who continued to be all that his rational mind could desire them to be, but who, he thought, could quite well live without him. If he should die unexpectedly soon (and he had secretly taken out additional insurance policies), he thought that they would not greatly notice his absence.

He envied his wife her apparent wholeness, thinking her without guile. What she concealed from him was so little concealed; his imagination had always supplied what her words had never conveyed. Out of a sort of modesty they never referred to the past: his outburst, when he heard that Tyler had been present at Xavier’s wedding, had been heated, certainly, but his feeling of jealousy related to the remote past rather than to the few days of her absence. He knew that she had not been unfaithful to him, that she would never deceive him. What doubt remained attached itself to a matter which he could not bring himself to discuss: her enjoyment of Tyler as a lover. And here his own dolorous excitement entered into the equation: that was why the matter could never be discussed. The proof that it was he who was at fault lay in his present state of doubt and disorder, as if both had grown throughout the years of a marriage which most would judge to be successful. And his wife, who was the principal victim of that original hurt, had matured into an apparent calmness which was denied to him. The very fact that it could find no
place in his life put him on edge, caused him to grind his teeth. She would look at him wide-eyed, as if distressed for him, but, he could see, quite uncomprehending. He longed to shout at her, ‘What do you feel? What did you feel? What did he do to you? How do we compare?’ but would never do so. Thus he prolonged his own strange torment, which again he tried to infuse with some spiritual meaning. Was it loss of innocence? And was all innocence doomed to be lost? Apparently not, for Maud had not lost hers, and this was puzzling, for hers was the first defection, while he had been conscious of behaving ‘well’. He remembered his brief glow of satisfaction in the rue Laugier: ‘I have behaved well,’ he had told himself. And yet that good behaviour had led to this despair, as if bad behaviour might have yielded better results.

But all this was in the past: the present was a wife whom he loved more hopelessly with every year that passed, and a daughter made in her mother’s image, as if she had been immaculately conceived, only her dark colouring a polite acknowledgment of his paternity. As a child he had hoped to drown her with love, only to see her back away, frightened by his exuberance. Her attitude now was one of respect: she questioned him about the shop, about Cambridge, where she was due to read Modern Languages, but seemed uninterested in him as a person, whereas he had heard her ask her mother, ‘Did you do this when you were young?’ He thought that when she was older—and she was already extremely self-possessed—she would resemble the French side of the family completely, and he would be excluded all over again. His mother, who had made the connection long before he had, was now more open in her dislike, which overflowed onto Maffy herself. Polly Harrison, being a simpler, cruder character, had already made her adjustments: Bibi’s son William received all her love, William’s father having been judged
sufficiently malleable to be entirely satisfactory. Every time Edward contemplated his nephew, during his increasingly rare visits to Eastbourne, he was convinced of the beauty and superiority of his own child. Something of the same conviction might have struck Bibi: her contact with Maud was now more intermittent than before.

‘You were restless in the night,’ Maud said to him. ‘Should you see the doctor?’

‘I don’t need a doctor.’

‘Nelly thought you were looking unwell. She thought you were pale. Are you pale, Edward?’

‘I’m quite well. You’re supposed to be the one who isn’t well.’

‘But I’m better,’ she said, with some surprise. ‘I hadn’t noticed. I was so used to feeling odd, under a cloud, almost behind a pane of glass. That feeling seems to have vanished, quite suddenly. What do you think it was?’

‘That doctor of yours called it depression. Depression is a form of anger, or so I’ve read.’

‘I’m not angry.’ She looked at him wonderingly. ‘Why on earth should I be angry?’

‘Maybe you were angry without knowing it. Maybe anger is merely undigested experience.’

She looked at him with her calm eyes, as if judging him to be a danger not to her but to himself. She went to the window and opened it wide. ‘Look, the sun! It seems to be spring. Somehow we’ve managed to get through the winter. Maybe that’s why I feel better.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Don’t let us be on bad terms, Edward. We’ve always managed to be on good terms, haven’t we? And now that Maffy is no longer at home so much it is even more important for us to be on good terms. Do you miss her so terribly?’

‘Appallingly.’

‘I can see that. I think I can bear it better than you, partly because we are so alike that I know what she is thinking. Now that she is with Mother in Dijon I have only to look back to know where she is going and what she is doing. When she is at Cambridge I shall truly feel that I have lost her. She will be closer to you then.’

‘I doubt it. I’ve lost her already.’

‘Don’t say that. Can’t you see how she looks up to you?’

‘I wanted more than that.’

‘But it is wrong for a father to want too much feeling from a daughter. Do you remember my friend Julie? Her father was always kissing and hugging her, and she hated it. It was all quite innocent: he was such a nice man. But he loved her too much. In the end she couldn’t return his love. It was awfully sad.’

‘Am I like that with Maffy?’

‘No, of course not. You are impeccable. She is quite proud of you, you know.’

‘But you are the one she wants to be with.’

‘But of course. I’m her mother.’

‘You say that with such pride.’

‘I am proud,’ she said quietly. ‘I am proud because you have allowed me to be. My prospects were not good. I had none of the advantages that my mother thought indispensable for a girl who wanted to attract a husband. I can remember being a poor relation. Yet thanks to you I married and had a daughter who will never know any of this, and who has grown up beautiful and clever and good. Why shouldn’t I be proud? And grateful to you.’

‘Grateful!’

‘What is wrong with gratitude? Why aren’t you grateful? We are comfortably off, we have a handsome home (though strangely enough I preferred the other flat: perhaps we should
move again?), a healthy child, and no worries that can’t be dealt with. If only you could relax, Edward, stop grinding your teeth. It is grinding your teeth that gives you those headaches. Or used to. You’ve been better lately, haven’t you?’

‘Much better,’ he lied.

‘All you need is a mild sleeping pill. And Maffy will do well at Cambridge, and you can go and visit her, and take her out. You know it so well. I thought it a cold place. Beautiful, but cold. You will know her life as well as I know it now. It will be your life all over again.’

‘I don’t want my life over again.’

‘Then you had better make the most of this one. There are muffins for breakfast, and some of that apricot jam that you like.’

‘You are feeling better, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am. I want to go out. I want to go for a long walk.’

‘Walk with me to the shop.’

‘That’s not far enough. I want to go to the park.’

Her improved health removed her somewhat from his sphere of protection, and although he was pleased to see her active once more, he could not help regretting the fact that she was increasingly independent of him. She did indeed seem to have found a new faith in herself, and with it a new dignity, as if the ghosts of the past had left her undisturbed. He was glad that her doctor was old-fashioned enough to rely on bromides rather than to recommend any form of analysis: that, he knew, might have threatened her fragile unity, put her again in touch with more primitive impulses, with promptings now buried deep. He had reason to be grateful for her restored health, now that his own was under threat. When Maffy departed once again, this time to Cambridge, it was Maud who was the more competent, Maud who found him sitting on the bed in an attitude of utter dejection, and who talked him round into some sort of acquiescence.

‘What will you do when she marries?’ she asked, thinking to bring a smile to his face.

He looked at her bleakly, but said nothing, thinking, I shall not be here.

Gradually she took control, became the guiding partner. One year, two years passed, and they both survived. Maffy did not always come home in the vacations, and they tried not to mind. She had a lot of new friends; men found her attractive. Her lithe figure and her splendid eyes had earned her many admirers, and she was not averse to taking them seriously. Maud, who had some inkling of this, encouraged her to pursue her affairs away from home. The less Edward knew of them the better. She merely distracted him, with more dinner parties, more long walks. She saw to it that they took holidays, though neither of them really enjoyed them. She watched him covertly, but could see no dramatic change in him, being used by now to his unpredictable moods. He looked older, of course, complained of his back, as old people do. She herself was older, and the thought of making love was now faintly embarrassing. She went back to Proust, thinking she had been cast all along for a quiet life. Sitting on the sofa, at the end of a calm afternoon, when winter came round again, she too would think back to the past. A bad sign, she had always heard. Yet what she saw was herself sitting in the garden of the Château d’Eau with her mother, the sun hazy. She could no longer imagine the sun as anything but hazy, all other suns having vanished without a trace, just as that prime mover had vanished. She no longer thought of him, at least not consciously. Nevertheless she wished that she could recapture something of that first splendour, which she remembered as part of her youth. When she looked in the mirror now, at the end of the day, she saw a handsome dignified woman, one whose youth it seemed impossible to imagine.

When Cook brought Edward home one evening, he merely said, ‘He fainted,’ but his eyes held hers in warning over Edward’s drooping head.

‘Edward,’ she said, kneeling on the couch on which they had laid him. He made no response beyond straining to look at her, his eyelids heavy.

Perplexed, she turned to Cook. ‘Has this happened before?’

‘Once or twice.’

‘Why didn’t he tell me? Edward, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I think he may have had a stroke of some kind.’

‘But he is too young! Edward, can you tell me what happened? Could you ring the doctor, Tom? The number is on the pad.’

She turned back to her husband, held his hand, did not hear Cook on the telephone explaining to the doctor that Edward had been staggering a lot in the shop, knocking things over. ‘He’s been having headaches,’ he added, not making known his own suspicions.

‘I see. How’s the wife taking it?’

‘She doesn’t know what’s happening.’

But at last she did. When he tried to reach out a hand to her hair, and failed, when she saw his upper lip drawn back from his splendid teeth, and those teeth dulled by a gummy saliva, she clutched his hand, held it tight. ‘Don’t leave me, Edward. I can’t live without you. Stay with me.’ She kept begging him to stay with her until she felt the doctor’s hand on her shoulder. Cook, in the shadows, seemed uncertain as to whether he should remain there. Yet it was Cook who closed Edward’s eyes.

‘Brain tumour, by the sound of it,’ said the doctor. ‘Not that he consulted me about it. I’d have known what to do. Did he see anyone else, do you know?’

‘I don’t know,’ lied Cook.

‘I’ll send someone round. There’ll have to be a post mortem, I’m afraid. You’ll stay with her?’

But she sent him away, and sat down on the sofa, in the space next to Edward’s body. When that was removed, she continued to sit there, spending the night there, and the next day, and part of every day after that. When Maffy telephoned to say that she was thinking of becoming engaged, she merely said, ‘Yes, do, darling. He would have been so pleased,’ knowing that the opposite was true. It seemed important to her now to keep Edward’s secrets, to keep faith with Edward. Gradually she began to neglect herself, summoning the strength only to assure her mother, who telephoned every evening, that she was well. She was, she thought, well enough. It was simply that she no longer wanted to eat, to go out. Sometimes, in the evening, she arranged some fruit on a plate, as she had done so many times for Edward. But mostly she read, and slept. Sleep continued to be her main resource, and her deliverance. She no longer minded being alone in the big bed. In those moments before sleep came, her mind was completely blank.
‘Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure,’
she would repeat to herself, and when she slept it was deeply, and without dreams.