A Private View Page 11

  ‘Is that what they say in California?’

  ‘Self-actualisation is what Howard taught me. It means affirming the essential self. That’s why it’s so important to walk tall and think positive and get in touch with your feelings. And tell the world how great you are!’

  He thought that if all Howard Singer’s acolytes spent their time telling each other how great they were then no information of any importance was ever likely to be exchanged. This seemed to him an excellent idea for keeping people happy on a fee-paying basis, providing that those people were rather stupid or lonely or at least susceptible in the first place. And it was no doubt Howard Singer’s business to tell them how great they were, so that they could then impart the information to others. He imagined a playground filled with adults in leisure wear, all self-actualising obediently until the end of the session, and no doubt begging to come back at midnight to have any residual doubts taken care of in one of Howard Singer’s encounter hours, those hours when the truth could be shyly told (and who knew what truths were told then?) before the burden of self-affirmation had to be taken up again in the light of common day. Was Howard Singer up to this? he wondered. How did he fare, with his all-purpose cheeriness, if someone were addicted to truth and anxious to pursue it?

  ‘What happens if someone has a real problem?’ he asked. ‘Supposing someone comes up with something like incest? Or vampirism?’ This last was an attempt at a joke. She did not smile.

  ‘We get more eating disorders than incest,’ she said.

  ‘And what does he do for those?’

  ‘He holds them.’

  ‘Holds them?’

  ‘Surely you’ve heard of holding therapy? If someone’s been on a binge he just holds them and lets them cry.’

  ‘And what good does that do?’

  ‘It enables them to get in touch with their pain.’

  ‘And with the child inside? Within,’ he corrected himself.

  ‘That’s right. And it works.’

  He doubted that. He thought it might work for half an hour, but would not bring about transformation. And surely transformation was what these people wanted? It was, he realised, what he himself wanted, as had been promised in those fairy tales which he had read as a child and of which he retained an awed perception. The sadness of those stories! Those boy woodcutters, those little mermaids—how they suffered! For his father had shown a rare spark of intelligence and had presented him with the stories of Grimm and Hans Andersen instead of the contemporary fables for which he had clamoured. And the sorrow of those mermaids and woodcutters had corresponded to something sorrowful in his own nature, so that he was emboldened to feel that his own sadness was legitimate, and that it was but a prelude to that transforming stroke of benevolence or good fortune that would enable him to accede to a happy end. That happy end had never come about. Nevertheless he still believed that it might, or even, at a pinch, that if he waited he would be rewarded, at last, in a way not yet foreseen. He felt a powerful anger against Howard Singer, who pursued a lucrative trade, and who denied his patients even a transforming vision. With him it would be all acceptance and understanding: he would understand every aberration, whether he really understood it or not. He had met this attitude in some of the younger women in his office: an assumption of all-round emotional proficiency. It was the new creed, it seemed. At the same time he cherished a headline he had savoured in the evening paper: WOMEN TAKE UP BOXING TO BEAT STRESS. As if only by knocking hell out of someone could they get rid of the overload caused by too much acceptance. How did Howard Singer get rid of his stress? Did he run therapeutic punch-ups with his patients, some of whom he must surely loathe? And was this girl, who somehow came to be in his flat, although he could hardly understand how or why, really as stupid as her conversation? He noted in passing that she was at least not actually lying or evading his questions, as she usually did. No doubt she thought she was making him privy to a great deal of useful information. He felt a surge of annoyance, so powerful that it took him by surprise.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ he said. ‘You caught me just as I was going out.’

  ‘What time will you be back?’ she asked.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea. Was there something else …?’

  ‘I just thought, if you’re around this afternoon, and if I’m not doing anything …’

  ‘Of course. Of course you thought that.’ This sounded harsh to him, though she appeared not to register the snub. ‘Why don’t you come in for a cup of tea?’ he said. ‘Not before five, though. Now I really must go.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ She put up her hands in a propitiatory gesture. ‘I’ve got things to do myself, you know. I’ll see you later, then.’ She turned to go, though she did not seem in any great hurry to leave. He had time to admire her rather pronounced hips in the tight black trousers. Her movements were slow, and, he thought, exaggerated. He could feel his irritation rising. The mere sight of her now was enough to annoy him.

  Fuming, he ran down the stairs. It was nearly eleven o’clock, and as far as he could make out the rest of the day was compromised. Why had he sacrificed it? He walked at an unusually fast pace, down Kendal Street—his street, he reminded himself, just as the flat was his flat, owned and paid for—into Connaught Street and across the Edgware Road, not slackening his speed until he was in Upper Berkeley Street and making for Selfridges. He had planned to do his shopping and then go to the London Library, but now it seemed more urgent to get his books first, as if laying them up would protect him in some way from inane encounters of the type with which he suddenly seemed threatened. He felt a heightened disgust with himself for giving in so spinelessly to the girl’s suggestions: she was apparently unaware of his reluctance, or had decided to ignore it, although when it suited her she was quick to take offence, her drawling intonations, assumed for the occasion, expressing a wealth of upper-class distaste. This was bogus, he knew, and probably she did as well: those wealthy friends of hers, in whom somehow he did believe, having proved themselves useful models, would have contributed this much if nothing more material.

  The mystery of her resources, or of her currently re-sourceless state, continued to preoccupy him. He knew that few people of her age, or her presumed age, took work as seriously as he did himself. Work for him had done duty as an alternative life, one which he was now obliged to register only as a memory. There was no reason why a young woman should devote herself, as he had devoted himself, to life at a desk. He had a notion that, apart from the barbaric nature of her discourse, she was shrewd, and would make a success of her flimsy enterprise, if it ever got off the ground. She had, in addition, already formed a fairly accurate idea of his own resources and capabilities. He had no doubt that she had earmarked him for future use, in which case she had made a grave mistake. He was not so stupid as to take her on trust or to tolerate any demands she might make of him. No doubt she thought to seduce him into this. He was, however, impervious to whatever charm she possessed. Such charm was calculated, far too calculated, blatant even, a studied mixture of the worldly and the juvenile. Even her name—Katy—was deliberate. He had noted in his odd excursions into the modern world, how many tough determined women reduced their names to diminutives, as if to disarm the opposition, or to reassure themselves as to the lovable nature of their true characters.

  What he felt, apart from the automatic response of pure observation, and an almost impersonal appreciation of salient characteristics—the flawless skin, the unexpectedly adult hips—was an overpowering anger which surprised him. It was not merely that she had disrupted a day which had been harmlessly dedicated to his own concerns. It was not merely that she polluted his ears with an unbroken stream of jargon. It was not even that he suspected her of deceit and duplicity. His feelings, suddenly gigantic, struggled for expression. What he felt, quite simply, was a desire to wring her neck. But even that would not do, was too formulaic to contain an anger that was becoming enjoyable. Wringing her neck, or
wreaking some physical damage on her, would not settle the matter. What he suspected now, and it made his heart beat faster, was the fact that in visiting some kind of violence on her, in actually manhandling her flesh, he might experience a powerful erotic satisfaction. In an unwanted moment of lucidity he recognised that he had hit on some truth that he had long hidden even from himself. What he felt now was interesting, exciting, disturbing, distasteful even. He felt that approaching her, for whatever purpose, would involve a recklessness, a heedlessness, an antagonism, or at the very least a hostility, the factor that had always been missing in his too correct, too considerate love-making. His lifelong affection for Louise, his friendships, sentimental or carnal, with other women, had been all too anodyne. This would be different. The knowledge hit him like a stone hurled by an unseen assailant.

  For a brief moment he was afforded a glimpse into the heart of hedonism, something ancient, pagan, selfish. He saw it as movement, headlong rush, carelessness, the true expression of the essential ego. It would cause fear and damage to those who opposed it, for it was without fear of damage itself. Few were brave enough to accommodate it, although to taste it was addictive, Dionysian. Certainly a man of his age, and his character, would do well to shun it. Yet what he had seen, or felt, did more than enchant him: it entertained him. To live like that would be to know true freedom, freedom from another’s cares, or rather the cares that others imposed on one and which called for the exercise of forbearance, restraint, even virtue. To be done with all that, and all that it entailed, would be to be at one with the gods, those ancient heedless gods, with their complicated and demanding private lives and their imperviousness to punishment. Dead, they merely took their place in the galaxy, which was perhaps how human life too should end, instead of miserably seeking repentance, crawling on one’s knees to an unforgiving deity, a deity still suffering its own pain, and enjoining others to suffer in emulation. And the damage that he had longed to do: no one said that it had to be lethal. It had simply to be the full flowering of his own instinctive joy, too long repressed, too long feared, and at last acknowledged.

  Of course, it was all quite reprehensible. There was no need for this to be known, he assured himself, striding down Bond Street in the light of a cruel and all too brief winter sun. He could keep this unseemly intelligence to himself. He was a civilised man: he did not rape and pillage, and his aggressive impulses, which were never very strong in the first place, had been bred out of him. He could utterly disguise the fact that he disliked and possibly desired this girl, though desired in an ambiguous and radically destructive way. He was not a monster, and although he had this peculiar and unsought reaction, which he was sure other men had entertained, there was no question of his acting upon it. Indeed, looked at in the light of this involuntary vampirism (strange how that had come up earlier), the girl now seemed pathetic, a victim, with her airy Californian make-believe, unprotected, even, transparent in her pretensions, a psychological amateur by comparison with the swamp into which he had so suddenly and amazingly fallen.

  He had never used a woman for his own purpose and would not now do so, however willing Katy had initially appeared to be. Her willingness had nothing to do with his current feeling. Of course he pitied her, unknowing as she was of his secret desires. He even felt pain, as he thought of her, idle, in the Dunlops’ flat, her possessions in a nylon holdall, her empty pretensions left floating on the unsympathetic air.

  His earlier fear of her, which must have been fear of his own buried impulses, had entirely vanished. He felt shame, certainly, but also some of that exquisite sorrow that was the obverse of desire. He even felt sorrow for that young woman, so gamely repeating her mantras in an uncaring world, and marooned in a dark London flat, waiting for a turn of fortune to release her from whatever difficulty had brought her to this place, unheralded, unexpected, and, apart from her own quick but clumsy thinking, without support. He breathed more easily: he was sorry for the girl. He was glad to have got that settled. Were it not for the residue of that pity he would have dismissed the matter from his mind altogether, shaking his head indulgently over the memory of his earlier lawless impulses. Yet, he now discovered, even that pity contained an erotic twist, which, when consulted, brought a flush to his thin cheeks.

  Walking purposefully down Duke Street, and ignoring the picture dealers’ windows into which he usually peered, he felt as if he had emerged from a long sleep, and was half afraid that this might be the truth. Yet he also felt a vigour which was not unpleasant; he felt like a man again, could hold his head up and stare boldly at the young men whom he passed in the street. In the London Library an acquaintance told him how well he was looking.

  The poor girl was coming to tea, he reminded himself. This fact was somehow more important than his progress along the upper floors of the library. He removed his books from the shelves with a negligent hand: he scarcely now remembered which ones he had wanted to read. Since she was greedy he would feast her: he would cram her mouth with sweetness. This too had its erotic appeal, which he suppressed. He would have a quick lunch at the club, then buy a cake at Fortnum’s, and walk back while the sun still laid its illusory light over the city streets. He could foresee the later hours, when that sun would dwindle, turn red and opaque, and finally disappear altogether in the early dark. He would be at home, eating cake. The idea had its childish charm. Altogether this was a day of surprises. There would be no need to take a nap this afternoon. He had never felt so wide awake in his life.

  The faintest hint of his habitual melancholy reasserted itself that afternoon, as he sat in his chair, waiting for her. He thought it ridiculous for a man of his age to spend his time in this manner. Yet what am I to do, he thought, with the time that is left to me? Why not simply divert myself, as harmlessly as I can? No harm: that was what he had to bear in mind. None of it was entirely appropriate, and that made him uncomfortable. To an unsympathetic eye he would appear weak, pathetic, even more bereft than his prospective visitor, on whom he had earlier lavished such feeling. Only her animal presence, he knew, could bring him back to life. As he arranged his cake on a plate, a pang of sorrow caught him unawares. He felt sorrow for himself. I must beware of pity, he thought: it is pity that has to go. But in those few moments of waiting it was sadness that gained the upper hand, as if after the orgy of his earlier impulses.

  Once she was in the room, however, sorrow and pity gave way to the usual exasperation. She had made up her face and drenched herself in the obnoxious scent she had somehow acquired in the course of her shopping expedition with Mrs Lydiard. She looked homelier than usual, or perhaps she had let down her guard: she prowled about the room, inspecting his possessions, turning up the lid of a cigar box, twisting round a vase to inspect it, humming slightly under her breath.

  ‘Oh, do sit down, Katy, and have your tea,’ he said, aware that the visit was going to be tiresome, wishing now that she would hurry up and go, leaving him alone with Mauriac. ‘Look, I bought you this cake.’ He could hear himself sounding ridiculous. Extreme control would be needed if he were not to become bad-tempered.

  ‘Good heavens, you don’t expect me to eat anything made with white sugar, do you? Besides, I’m on a diet.’ She pulled aside her sweater to reveal the waistband of her trousers, which she had eased with a small but ragged slit. The side seam, too, had been loosened. He saw a roll of milky flesh, which seemed momentarily repellent.

  ‘At least sit down,’ he repeated. ‘I can’t talk to you if you’re moving about all the time.’

  Still humming, she returned obediently to his side, drank her tea, and wiped her glistening lips on her napkin. In this gesture he thought he could see the whole of her childhood. He wondered which one of them would break the silence.

  ‘Do you like this room, George?’ she said finally.

  ‘It suits me pretty well,’ he replied. It was comfortable, if impersonal. He was modestly proud of it.

  ‘It looks like a window in Peter Jones.’
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br />   He felt pained: it was from Peter Jones that he had bought most of the furniture. A large sofa, striped in green and coral pink, flanked by two tables bearing lamps made out of Chinese vases with coral pink shades, stood against the only wall not covered with bookshelves. Two wing chairs, covered in the same green and coral pink material, faced the sofa, at right angles to a brass and glass coffee table. The carpet was green, the curtains again striped. Peter Jones had supplied metres and metres of the fabric and had had to re-order. Eventually it was completed. He had felt relieved rather than gratified. The effect was soothing, perhaps gloomy on a dull day, but its underwater calm suited him.

  ‘It’s boring, George. It wants livening up. It’s too careful. Now, if you were to throw a few cushions around, or change the curtains … At least you could move that desk. It could go somewhere else, away from the window, for instance.’

  It was not a desk but a delicate little writing-table, an early twentieth-century imitation of a traditional style, with slender legs and a brass rail round the top, a reproduction, but a faithful one. It had been made by a diligent craftsman and was too fragile for much use. He kept a spare cheque-book in the single central drawer. Heavy-duty correspondence took place at a larger and more important desk in what he called the study, a small dark room overlooking the back of the building. The virtue of this piece was aesthetic. He had bought it at auction and had instructed Mrs Cardozo to be careful when dusting it. It lived its own delicate life in a corner, almost protected from use. He regarded it as he would a picture, an object of virtue. It gave him pleasure to contemplate it.

  ‘It’s near the window because it’s near the light,’ he said mildly.