A Friend from England Read online

  Remembering how long it took to get her going, I made noises of sympathy, enquired after her regime, her temperature, her diet, all the while aware that similar enquiries were not coming in my direction. Made nervous by her monosyllabic replies, I enquired after Michael, after Dorrie, after Oscar: something stopped me from enquiring after the Colonel.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, after another pause. ‘Are you in bed?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I have to get up to feed the cat. Daddy bought me this little brown cat. I call her Phoebe.’

  There seemed very little I could offer after this. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Let’s hope we both feel better soon. I’ll give you a ring in about a week’s time, shall I? Maybe you’ll feel like going out then.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said, again in that peculiar monotone. ‘Actually, I don’t think I shall feel like going out for some time. Perhaps you’d like to come round here.’

  But Heather’s flat was not the garden of earthly delights that Dorrie’s house had been to me. If I thought of her at all it was with a slight feeling of oppression, for I seemed to see her marooned in that cruel blue bedroom, with the lustrous ice blue satin puff pulled up to her pale face. She had a marvellously white skin which never seemed to flush or alter: her recent fever, if anything, would have drained it still further. I felt a reluctant sympathy for her. I sensed that she would have been happier at home. It was about half an hour before I realized what a subversive thought this was, and yet it had come instinctively, unbidden. Heather was home; she was in her own home, even if it did look like something out of a colour supplement, put together from slightly outdated ideas of good taste. The royal blue towels and the French porcelain were in use, although I still saw them as piled up, inviolate, in untouched cupboards. Lives were actively lived in that flat, although in my mind’s eye I saw it as empty of all activity, hollow and desolate. Heather’s marriage seemed to have drained her of energy, exactly as if it had tired her in the way that Dorrie feared. In comparison with her present state, the Heather of the black garments, who had discoursed so enthusiastically of female complaints, had been a positively dynamic creature, fuelled by her timid inclinations and her native watchfulness.

  She should never have left home, I thought. Her marriage was an extravagance. Not all women are born to be married. Some exist quite happily in their original child-like state, apparently deaf to the demands of the body, or unable to interpret them, to pursue the path that leads to satisfaction. Not all women have the biological awareness to decode their impulses and to set out to find the partner who will give those impulses free rein. As far as I could see, Heather had failed on both counts, for in addition to her physical mutism, she could hardly suppose that Michael was a man to answer any unspoken need in her own life. No, she should never have married. She should have stayed with her parents, in that villa in the suburbs. She should have lived out her life in that bedroom that I had once seen, so different from the one she now occupied, a girl’s bedroom, such as few girls have today, with flowery wallpaper and an apple tree just outside the window. Brilliantly clean, whereas I seemed to see that icy blue bedroom as through a haze, a mist of falling dust. I seemed to see the French windows standing open and a mournful wind scattering raindrops on to the carpet: I seemed to see curtains blowing and twisting, wrapping themselves round the legs of tables and chairs. In a curious sort of illumination I saw a pair of slippers, abandoned, one of them lying on its side. All of this, I thought, was the possible décor for Heather’s recent illness. I felt also that the illness would confirm her ever increasing passivity.

  I was therefore not much surprised to receive a call from Dorrie, urging me to go round and cheer Heather up. I explained that I had been ill myself, whereupon I received all the commiseration, all the sympathy that had been lacking so far.

  ‘But you should have let me know, dear. I would have come round.’

  I thanked her, reflecting that I had done quite well on my own, that further kindness would merely have encouraged me to languish. Heather, of course, would have been in receipt of all those encouragements to rest which anxious relatives visit on their cherished young. Yet she seemed none the better for them. I reflected on my own solitary struggle and tried to feel pleased with myself, but the effort had been too great: it had not only tired me, it had weakened me. And now that I was better I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind, as if it were an aberration best forgotten, something which I did not intend to share with anyone else.

  When Dorrie urged me to go round and see Heather I assented a little wearily for I had not yet been out, and the Bayswater Road seemed to stretch endlessly before me, hedged around with incalculable hazards. It also occurred to me to wonder why Dorrie herself were not with Heather, although I supposed that Heather had something to do with this, that she had not wanted her mother to catch the illness, or that she had suddenly grown up and seen the irregularity of her mother’s continued presence. Of Michael’s part in her nurturing I thought it useless to enquire. He was the sort of man to hover nervously and jokily round the bedroom door before saying, ‘Well, you don’t want me hanging around,’ and vanishing. No doubt he would come back later with ceremonious flowers and a bottle of wine, before changing his shirt and going out again. ‘I’ll leave you to rest,’ he would say. ‘Try and sleep. Don’t worry about me. I’ll have something to eat out.’ And he would disappear, leaving Heather to her solitary contemplations, or whatever habitually occupied her inner horizon, and no doubt as lonely and bereft as I had felt myself to be, when I sat in my small sitting-room and wondered what had happened to me. And if he were to catch the virus himself he would be terrified, not trusting anyone but his father to come near him. Again I felt that mingling of pity and distaste as I contemplated the vista of his childhood, the father’s frantic and noisy ministrations, all lacking in conviction because of his overriding anxiety. And the anxiety passed from one to the other, like the parcel in that game that used to be played at the children’s parties of my youth. And if the father ever got ill, catastrophe! I saw his habitually tanned face locked in discouragement, a thermometer sticking out of his mouth, the eyelids closed. And I imagined women of a certain age sailing up to his door, convinced that their hour had come, but unable to dislodge the whining pathetic little boy hanging round the foot of the bed. Poor Michael, destined always to be disliked by someone, possibly by everyone. There must be room for Michael in the universe, although it seemed that few people could find adequate reasons for his existence. Even Oscar, the kindest of men, had no use for him.

  So I set out, on slightly uncertain legs, fuelled once more by the nervous exasperation that the thought of Heather’s company always induced in me but reflecting that this visit would surely release me from the obligation of having to take them out, for the time being, at any rate. The walk tired me, and I was not encouraged to find Heather seated mournfully on her sofa, her expression blank, her hand mechanically caressing a neat narrow brown Burmese cat. Michael, who had opened the door to me, did not join us. Indeed, he disappeared immediately I had been shown into the drawing-room, only to reappear minutes later, to say, ‘Well, I’ll leave you two together. You won’t want me butting in.’

  Rather alarmed, as if I were to be held there in perpetuity until somebody else turned up to relieve me, I said, ‘But I can’t stay long. I must get back soon. This is the first time I’ve been out for nearly three weeks.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ This was accompanied by a knowing laugh and a wink.

  ‘No, really, Michael. I’ve been ill myself.’

  His face immediately became grave with exaggerated sympathy.

  ‘I know, I know. But you look the picture of health now. And I’m sure you’ve got masses to talk about.’ Again this illusion that we actually conversed. ‘Make some tea, or something. Won’t be late, Hetty.’ This last remark was addressed to the back of the sofa.

  ‘Are you in tonight?’ Heather enquired, without turning ro
und.

  ‘Am I in? Of course I’m in.’ He laughed uproariously. ‘I’m just going down to the office to see if there’s anyone I ought to meet. And if there is I’ll get rid of them as soon as I can. Will you still be here, Rachel?’

  I said I thought not.

  ‘Well, give one of your friends a ring. Ring your parents if you’re lonely.’

  He was clearly itching to get away, and for once I couldn’t blame him, for the atmosphere was clouded, and Heather expressed no desire for his company. Something had gone wrong, and this time I was inclined to blame Heather. Sitting there, with the cat on her lap, she looked bored and distant. I thought one should make more of an effort if one were married, even if one disliked one’s husband, as she gave every appearance of now doing. I couldn’t fault her for this, although it did seem to me that she had exhausted the possibilities of her new status rather rapidly. Surely she had always known what he was like? And even if she had only just found out, surely a little dissimulation was in order?

  Heather sighed. ‘Daddy said he might look in later.’

  This he took as permission to depart. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’ He leaned over the back of the sofa as if to kiss her, but she averted her face, then immediately bent it to kiss the little cat. Michael laughed again; apparently nothing destroyed his irritating good humour. He flapped a hand at us both, abjured us to behave ourselves, and was gone. He was wearing a pale grey flannel suit, I remember, and a dark blue shirt, a combination which made him look as if he had just arrived from out of town. His face was still tanned and even a little flushed: he looked radiantly healthy. His consonants were as sibilant as ever, his gestures as emphatic, and were it not for the abundant fair hair I would have taken him for a foreigner, a Spaniard, perhaps, the loafer of the family, rich, infantile, well-heeled, not to be taken entirely seriously, happiest and most himself in places of light entertainment. Certainly he was out of his element in this high-ceilinged room, cold now in the receding light, the curtains shifting very slightly in the draught from a badly sealed window frame. The thought of him in that blue bedroom was one which I refused to contemplate, although I had certainly speculated about their intimacy the first time I had laid eyes on him. I had dismissed the idea then and I dismissed it now. He probably had a room of his own, I realized, that primrose yellow spare room that I had glimpsed when Heather had shown me round. Well, if that was the problem, they had surely come to terms with it. Again, I was inclined to blame Heather. Everything I knew about her contributed to this way of thinking. I had supposed that she had ruled this element out of her life as too obstructive, too likely to endanger her peculiar unstated decision to remain exactly as she was, too disruptive of her own settled and placid feelings. I had further assumed that she had chosen this partner precisely because with him she could not be changed into anything else and through him she would not be made vulnerable. I had even, remembering her shrewdness, thought it was a clever arrangement, a dispensation for her to enjoy the uninterrupted privacy of her own mind. Although it was an arrangement which I thought ludicrous I could see in it evidence of advanced thinking. But now it seemed as if the system had broken down, although I did not see why it should, if that was what she had wanted. She probably had not reckoned on his being there all the time. With that I felt my old impatience with her rising to the surface. Some women avoid love – I do myself – because they fear its treachery. But such women, myself included, have to be pretty sure they understand their decision to do so. Heather, I could see, was quite simply unequal to the task of thinking the matter through.

  Because I had thought it through myself I was inclined to disparage her attempt to do it the easy way. I had cut my losses early – no more sleepless nights for me, no more boredom either. I had made myself invulnerable and had found that I was free. But Heather, I saw, as I looked at her, still motionless, still mechanically stroking the little cat, had feared freedom, had sought the safer haven of marriage: marriage as protection, marriage as alibi, marriage as camouflage, marriage, in some odd way, as a continuation of her virgin life. And indeed there was no change in her expression to indicate that a disastrous mistake had been made. She was quieter, if anything, but who had ever known what she was thinking? Her expression was as blank as ever, her dark eyes as unblinking. She sat there, in unbecoming sage green, moodily, on the mediaeval sofa. She was beginning to wear the same colours as her mother, I reflected; in no time at all she would have graduated to printed silks. I wondered how I should tackle the question I felt should now be asked. Are you happy? Is everything all right? Were we at last to have the conversation that we had always avoided?

  Nevertheless, I was inhibited from doing any of this by her lumpen immobility, her absorption in the cat, who now seemed to be her companion of choice, her indifference to what might be happening around her, and the fact that I had not been offered any tea. In fact I had not even been asked to sit down, but was left awkwardly stranded, as if my only purpose in coming had been to enquire after her health, like a delegate of a foreign power being received in audience. Michael too had been seen to stand and hover, although in his case reluctance to linger had kept him on his feet. As against this Heather seemed obstinately rooted, as if she would still be there when everybody else had been forced to leave. I thought I saw in this the power of possession – the flat was in her name, having been bought with Oscar’s money – but this was out of character: she had always been unthinkingly generous, like her parents. But something in the set of her jaw and her brooding silence led me to think that whatever grievance had put her under this enchantment it was no mere material meanness. Nor was it the effect of her illness, for there was no perceptible change in her normal pallor.

  ‘Heather,’ I said. ‘Are you all right? You don’t seem quite yourself.’

  She glanced at me briefly. ‘Don’t I?’ she asked, unhelpfully.

  ‘Perhaps being ill has tired you,’ I said, rather annoyed by now. I was extremely mindful of the fact that I had been ill too. ‘Or is something wrong?’

  ‘Something wrong?’ she echoed. ‘What on earth could possibly be wrong?’

  ‘Are you unhappy?’ I said, exasperated by now. ‘Are you disappointed? Are you bored? Are you having regrets?’ My rising fury goaded me to ask these questions. ‘Your mother appears to think you need cheering up.’ No response. Exhausted, I dropped into a chair. ‘Heather, is there anything at all you want to tell me? Anything you can’t tell your mother?’

  At last she turned on me that mild gaze that had been the despair of her aunts and cousins. I could see now, although I could not stop myself, that there might be something obscene about this goading of Heather, although she was so extremely unforthcoming that one was always tempted, and indeed felt entitled, to go too far. The gaze promised nothing but was held for a little longer than I felt to be comfortable. There did appear to be a speculative factor hidden somewhere within it but not near enough to the surface to be of any help. As my anger cooled I began to wonder if I had annoyed her, or at least unsettled her. But surely that was what I was there for, what I had always been there for. I tried again.

  ‘Perhaps you’re worried about something,’ I ventured. Then a thought struck me. ‘You’re not expecting a baby, are you?’

  At that she gave a single brief laugh.

  ‘Well, it’s not such an extraordinary idea,’ I said, nettled again. ‘Maybe you hadn’t noticed because of the flu.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure I’d notice,’ she said, with a touch of irony. She lifted the cat off her lap and brushed down her skirt. ‘Don’t worry, Rachel. You’ve asked all the right questions. You’ve done what my mother sent you to do. I’m perfectly all right. Let’s have some tea, shall we?’ And she got up and left the room.

  There was no solving the mystery of Heather, if in fact there were any mystery at all. I looked round the room, which was cold, and felt a sense of dereliction. The grey light seeping through the windows made the green furnishings look s
our. If it had been my room, instead of that small white bunker I called home, I should have lit all the lamps, put on the fire, pulled the curtains. As always, I appreciated luxury in other people without actively seeking it for myself. Mentally I changed the furnishings in that terrible bedroom – I could quite see that she would have no desire to languish there – and livened it up with patterns of red on the walls and more brilliant paint. If I had been Heather I would have sat in the cheerful blue and white kitchen, furnished with all Dorrie’s loving expertise, and made plans to go off to Spain with Michael. Even if he were unappetizing as a husband, he could still be, surely, a useful companion. And he would travel cheerfully, possessing that all-purpose good humour that would come in so useful away from home. I began to see that he might be unhappy too, having failed to secure from Heather the anxiety that had so protected him when lavished on him by his father. He would not register this as unhappiness, bearing as he did the hidden imprint of secret, private, unhappiness, the unhappiness of a child in a world populated by unreliable adults, but rather as discomfort, boredom, restlessness. There was no real harm in him. It was simply that he was untutored, that nobody read his mind in order to save him the trouble of trying to read it himself. But in a place where nature provided all the gifts – sun, wine, good manners, good humour – might he not gain more of an ascendancy than he could ever do here, in this important flat, with its too new furnishings, and the sinister light of an English November outside the windows?

  There had been a touch of mockery in Heather’s last remark which I considered uncharacteristic, at war with the euphoric image furnished by her mother. Poor Dorrie, who had always seen this marriage as a gift from an indulgent fate, had made her peace with it, had seen no change occurring in it, had thought it as well aspected as the material gifts she brought to it. Oscar, who had had reservations of his own, which he had heroically kept to himself, would be less surprised than even I was that the marriage had apparently already run its course, served its term. I seemed to see in this a partisanship which made me a little uneasy, for I felt that Heather’s parents, blameless as they were, might be a little less indulgent to their daughter’s inability to tolerate her husband, might have reproached her for her childishness, might have seen to it, in short, that she behaved herself. Her attitude to Michael had been one of fatigue verging on boredom, yet by now she should have seen that he required more of her, too much, perhaps, but not too much to incur that downcast expression, that concentration on the cat. What he required was protection, first and foremost, and then opportunities to amuse himself. As far as I could see, this was not enough to cause Heather to sulk. But of course she had always been the protected one, allowed to remain a child for as long as she wished, and then presented with a set of grown-up toys when the passage of time demanded them. I felt sorry for her, but I felt impatient too. It was impossible not to feel sorry for that creature on the sofa, blank-faced, as if she were in the waiting-room of a deserted railway station, as if the train for which she was waiting had already gone. Yet at the same time I wanted to shake her. Don’t you know, I wanted to say, that many women would envy you, your home, and even your husband? After all, what is asked of you beyond a little tolerance? Michael may not be the world’s most exciting man, but given the right opportunities I dare say he could make himself quite agreeable. I also saw that there was no point in my saying any of this, for someone as gently nurtured as Heather had been would not take kindly to my strictures, to any strictures. She would, on the contrary, look for sympathy, and no doubt receive it, from her parents most of all. I felt a spasm of distaste for her and for all those women like her, women who work for fun and marry for status, and still demand compensation. The only excuse for such women is incurable frivolity. And Heather was not even frivolous.