Brief Lives Read online

  Praise for

  Anita Brookner’s

  BRIEF LIVES

  “A stunning writer.”

  —Edna O’Brien

  “Unusually intelligent. Brookner’s flair for irony gives this story [its] bite.”

  —Village Voice

  “Full of the intelligence and artistry one takes for granted from Ms. Brookner.”

  —The New York Times

  “Brookner writes beautifully … and what she writes has the ring of truth … wonderful. This is an extraordinary book.”

  —Denver Post

  “The lives portrayed in this novel radiate considerable strength and poignancy.… Brookner fans will feel at home.”

  —Time

  “Anita Brookner has once again given us a novel [that] manages to address the largest of human concerns with resplendent complexity.”

  —New York Newsday

  “Exquisitely detailed, so that every line drawn is sharp and well-defined … brilliantly achieved.”

  — Houston Chronicle

  “One of Brookner’s best.”

  —Penelope Fitzgerald

  “Brookner, known for her elegant prose and remorseless insights, explores in Brief Lives new byways in the human psyche. Her characters are so authentic they could walk off the page.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “Done with such subtle brilliance that the art of it is nearly invisible. Brookner’s talent … is peerless.”

  —Cosmopolitan

  “Marvelous … Brookner at her best.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  Anita Brookner

  BRIEF LIVES

  Anita Brookner has written eight novels, including Lewis Percy, Latecomers, and The Debut. Winner of the Booker Prize, she is also an international authority on eighteenth-century painting.

  ALSO BY ANITA BROOKNER

  The Debut

  Providence

  Look at Me

  Hotel du Lac

  Family and Friends

  The Misalliance

  A Friend from England

  Latecomers

  Lewis Percy

  FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, APRIL 1992

  Copyright © 1990 by Anita Brookner

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Originally published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, Ltd., London, in 1990.

  First published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1991.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brookner, Anita.

  Brief lives / Anita Brookner. — 1st Vintage contemporaries ed.

  p. cm. — (Vintage contemporaries)

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82625-1

  I. Title.

  PR6052.R5816B7 1992

  823′.914—dc20 91-50735

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  ONE

  JULIA DIED. I read it in The Times this morning. There was quite a substantial obituary, but what immediately fixed my attention was the photograph, one of those studio portraits of the late 1930s or early 1940s, all huge semi-transparent eyes, flat hair, and dark lipstick. I never liked her, nor did she like me; strange, then, how we managed to keep up a sort of friendship for so long. Had our husbands not been partners I doubt whether we should ever have exchanged more than a few words, or seen each other on more than a few formal occasions, although we were, for quite some time, in the same line of work. As things turned out we were in fairly close contact and even spent a couple of holidays together, after the war. I can see us now, strolling along Riviera esplanades in white pleated skirts, our husbands chatting behind us. It must be years since I was last in Nice; it holds no pleasant memories for me. Julia was older than me by nearly eleven years, although she never looked it, and had become very arthritic while still in her fifties. Arthritis is a disorder I associate with her particular aquiline beauty, as if there is too little flesh to protect the bones. After Charlie died nobody saw much of her: she stayed at home, in that spacious but chilly flat of hers in Onslow Square, where I visited her sometimes, perhaps not as often as I should have done. She was never pleased to see me: why should she be? In the end I tried to stay away, unsuccessfully, as I did most things. I telephoned her from time to time, out of a dragging sense of duty, and also out of something more complicated, more timorous than pity—grief, perhaps. I realize now that I had not seen her for at least five years. That was why the photograph gave me such a shock.

  She had been quite famous in her youth, when presumably the photograph was taken. She had won a reputation as a diseuse and appeared regularly in intimate revues until these things went out of style. People were amused that so obvious an aristocrat should condescend to entertain the public in this manner. That element of condescension in her performances commanded respect, but not in every quarter: when she tried to entertain women in factories in the war years her manner was found to be too snobbish for popular taste. She looked anachronistic in her long dresses, with the chiffon handkerchief tied to the little finger of her left hand: this was an affectation of hers, but it did not go down well when the fashion was for sausage curls shoved under a turban and overalls that tied round the waist. Although she had had a number of lovers, some of them prestigious, others quite shady, Julia never achieved the sort of informality that would have put her on a par with other women and invited the confidences that amused her so much when they came her way. Latterly she was tended by a devoted and rather sickly-looking woman called Maureen who had originally come to interview her for the local paper. Julia never said no to an interview: interviews were her natural mode of communication. There was plenty of room in the flat: no problem there. And Maureen was undoubtedly useful with the shopping and general maintenance of the household. Otherwise, I think I should have called more often. As it was I saw quite a lot of her. In the end Julia gave up doing anything for herself and treated Maureen as a slave. She treated most people like that.

  She was not a very nice woman, but then neither am I. We were able to get along because we had a few things in common, principally our husbands, while they were alive, and our experience in the profession, although I always deferred to her on that score. She expected a certain amount of deference. And then we were both good at summing people up: we warmed into life when discussing acquaintances, and she was an excellent mimic. Basically, I found her alarming and she found me boring, yet in our heyday, when we were both married and healthy, it was natural for us to telephone each other two or three times a week. Such conversations as we had were almost entirely inconsequential and in time became more rare. Neither wanted to hear about the other’s aches and pains, and widowhood does not exactly increase the number of things one has to talk about. Julia was a stickler for amusement, although she had absolutely no sense of humour: she wanted to be amused all the time. Her category of amusing topics was mainly marital or sexual, who was having an affair with whom, who was divorcing, and why—that sort of thi
ng. She could usually say something scurrilous about all the parties involved, this being her idea of amusement. I found such talk distasteful, which was why she found me boring. Most people to her were an audience, and out of a sense of noblesse oblige she would deign to entertain them, but then they were under an equal obligation to entertain her. She would say, ‘Let’s have a discussion,’ when what she meant was, ‘Let’s have an argument,’ for she was restless most of the time. And she liked danger, which was why I found her alarming. Although I had known her for so long I was a little afraid of her, never at ease in her company. And in the end there was every reason why I should feel this way.

  Julia was very beautiful, but she was devoid of softness. Her beauty was of a dry immaculate kind, the kind that never deteriorates. She was strikingly tall and slim, and always remained so. Her feet were so narrow that she had always had to have her shoes made. Over the pale blue eyes the eyelids were heavy, and capable of conveying multiple innuendoes, of an unvaryingly derogatory nature. Those eyelids featured prominently in her performances and were the focus of every caricature. I believe—I have reason to believe—that she was far from sensual by nature, yet she had a number of hard sexy mannerisms: the eyelids, of course, and the bad language that fell constantly from her chiseled lips. I always felt that somewhere in the remote fastness of her being, a long way behind the eyelids, and the ringed hand clutching a glass of whisky, she was a girl, but a girl of a rather lost variety, dreaming, unawakened, incurious, almost pure. Two clues to this: her animation in the presence of her mother (both of them drinking whisky, yet laughing together like schoolgirls) coupled with her devotion to her brother, who had let himself down in various ways, ‘poor darling’, and who was working as a car salesman; and her habit of placing her underclothes on a chair in her bedroom and covering them with a square of silk reserved for this purpose. Where had such an archaic habit come from? It was common to my mother’s generation, but it has rarely survived to the present day, when women treat their bathrooms as their dressing-rooms, and in any event do not leave their clothes lying around.

  But then Julia was a strikingly old-fashioned woman. Even at the height of her fame, in the late 40s and early 50s, she appeared to me mature, worldly wise, even perverse, although by today’s standards she was still quite young. She dressed like a middle-aged woman, in beautiful severe clothes by Lelong and Patou. She made her comeback, most successfully, in a white dress and turban by Mme Grès. Such elegance inspired respect in those shabby days before the country was on its feet again: one only saw well-dressed women on the stage, which was why so many people went to the theatre. Yet she appeared out of date even to the faithful, the lonely men out of the war, the young hairdressers. That was part of her attraction: she incarnated a style which had vanished. In fact Julia was always out of date. She blamed everyone but herself, yet the only time I ever felt pain on her behalf was when I saw those beautiful eyelids lowered and knew—in a flash—that what she felt was not disdain, as she thought, but incomprehension. The next moment she would be sweeping one into her bedroom, flinging open her many wardrobes and demanding to be told what to wear. She had already made up her mind on this point, and she was never wrong, but she liked to deplore one’s own lack of taste in hazarding what she perceived to be a laughable suggestion. This exchange, which was frequently repeated, was one of a number of rituals by which she reinforced her ascendancy. She was famous for it, as she was famous for most things. ‘Oh, Julia,’ her friends would laugh. ‘Why not go mad for once and make a mistake?’ But she never did. She never ever did.

  She was Margaret Julia Wilberforce, and she always referred to herself as Wilberforce, although to her mother she was Meg. On stage, of course, she was simply Julia. Yet it meant almost as much to her to be a Wilberforce as to be Julia, and I was given to understand that to be a Wilberforce was to have access to a certain magnificence. This was never made explicit. The only reason she regretted not having children was that there was no one to carry on the name, for the unfortunate brother was unlikely to marry, being given to all the excesses except those pertaining to love and responsibility. The magnificence of the Wilberforces, now reduced to that of Julia herself, resided in those great-grandfathers, grandfathers, and uncles in the army, together with the cherished memory of her father, also in the army, whose photograph, in a silver frame, had pride of place both in the drawing-room and on the table by Julia’s bed. This honour was awarded to neither of her two husbands, Simon Hodges, always referred to as Hodge, and Charlie Morton. When Julia’s father was mentioned, both she and her mother would have tears in their eyes, after which, shakily, they would pour themselves more whisky. Hodge, whom I never met, had also been in the army but had otherwise proved unsatisfactory, and had been fairly summarily divorced. ‘We were too young,’ Julia would say, with a rueful self-indulgent smile: somehow one gathered that the interlude—for it had been an interlude rather than a true marriage—had meant very little to her.

  Charlie was different. ‘Charlie is my prop and mainstay,’ Julia would say, and it was neither less nor more than the truth. Soft-voiced, soft-footed, bulky, vague, and charming, Charlie was the ideal husband for a woman like Julia, though, not being a Wilberforce, he remained somewhat marginal when in the presence of Julia and her mother. I suspected him of maintaining the mother, in her service flat somewhere off Sloane Avenue: he certainly kept the entire household supplied in Onslow Square, for if ever Julia went to a shop, which was rarely, it was to produce a hopelessly shattered clock to be mended (‘But you must! It was Granny’s! Promise me that you’ll try’) or, very occasionally, to visit the hairdresser if her regular man, who came to her at home, was on holiday. She insisted that her wants were immaterial, so it was Charlie who telephoned Harrods or Selfridges with a quite substantial order, or, his jacket off, cooked Julia an omelette in the evening. She lived on omelettes and whisky, maintaining that she liked neither, and appeared none the worse for it.

  I was indignant that she should make Charlie wait on her, but he accepted it as a natural obligation. I think he was always conscious of having married a great beauty, of having taken her out of the running, as it were, and therefore had in a sense to enter her service. She treated him as her suitor, was all reminiscence of how he had waited for her at the stage door, had sent flowers night after night, and had finally written a letter, to be delivered to her dressing-room, saying, ‘You are the woman of my life. There will be no other.’ This was recalled several times in my hearing. I thought it overdone, beneath the dignity of a man like Charlie, who was, after all, a reasonably eminent and certainly fashionable solicitor, with offices in Hanover Square, where my own husband, Owen Langdon, was a junior partner. Yet he would acquiesce uncomplainingly in Julia’s little performances, as if he were conscious of being somehow not quite up to the mark, would sometimes pad round unobtrusively with a duster, although a Mrs Wheeler was supposed to clean thoroughly every morning. He was a nice-looking man, tall, broad, perhaps a little plump, with warm brown eyes and a cheerful expression, always ready to break into a smile. Occasionally his face would take on a faraway look, as if he might welcome a change of subject, but he was too good-hearted ever to feel irritation, and it was more natural, even pleasant, for him to smile and to concur than to strike out on his own. It occurred to me to wonder whether he were lonely, or whether he felt the burden of not being a Wilberforce. I never believed that Julia had much of an inner life. She was quite extraordinarily self-sufficient and therefore had a natural authority. She depended on no one, not even Charlie, for all that he was her prop and mainstay. Her brain, I sometimes thought, was perhaps sharper than his, and he was a very intelligent man, certainly more subtle than his wife. They were a handsome couple. He always stood a little behind her, throwing her into relief. It was only fitting that his greying hair should show off her own dark auburn bob. Artfully wrought, and a subject of intense discussion with Bobby, her hairdresser, her short sleek dark pageboy (also old-fashioned,
now that I come to think of it) remained a fixed feature of her appearance until the end of her life.

  Charlie was a darling. When he died Julia remained in control, was undoubtedly desolate, yet never shed the sort of tears that the memory of her father summoned up. She remained dry-eyed, but she must have suffered, or at least registered the heaviness of the blow, for she rarely went out after that. She hardly needed to, for Maureen had moved in by then, but it struck me as odd. Julia was not infirm, although she was very stiff, and she was only in her sixties. It was simply that she felt more in control in Onslow Square than she would have done in the street, where she would have been just another widow.

  We rallied round. I was called on to do quite a bit for her in those days, although what I did never quite met with her approval. ‘Never mind,’ she would say. ‘My standards are probably too high.’ Maureen, and Julia’s former dresser, Pearl Chesney, would laugh sympathetically, for they were nearly always in attendance, together, incredibly, with her mother, now aged eighty-four. It looked as if Julia would also be long-lived: she was protected from the manifold stresses of this life by her reclusiveness and her own steely resolve. I can see her now, sitting in her acid yellow and white drawing-room in Onslow Square, whisky in hand. Through all her various ages she appeared to me unchanged, slender, fine, sardonic, hieratic, heartless. ‘I hear Nigel’s run off again,’ she would say. ‘Well, you can hardly blame him. That wife of his … Did you ever meet such a boring woman?’ She was never on the side of the woman in such a situation. I felt there was something almost masculine in her solidarity with men who behaved badly. One had to be very tough to qualify with Julia, or even to gain her attention. That was why she had so little time for me, although fate had bound us together in a way that my nature could hardly tolerate or withstand.

  I would come into that drawing-room, with flowers, or some little trifle—one always brought an offering—which she would take from me with a gesture of palpitating gratitude, and then pause to consider. ‘Oh,’ she would say, on a note of dwindling enthusiasm, pretending to examine it or them more closely. ‘Oh. How charming.’ She would mark a pause, and then the eyelids would fall to half-mast, at which anyone in attendance—her manicurist, Maureen, Pearl Chesney, Mrs Wilberforce—would burst into delighted laughter. ‘Quite charming,’ she would go on, losing interest. ‘Put them there, would you? I’ll see to them later.’ Any flowers I brought her, and I brought her many, always ended up on a side table, sometimes to be put, much later, into a vase, sometimes to stay there until they ended up in the wastepaper basket.