Altered States Page 13

  There was no need now to hurry. I could stay in Paris for at least another day. I could have my nostalgic walk, though I recognised that the time for nostalgia was past. I would telephone Neuilly, perhaps suggest lunch, and spend a few necessary hours recovering. I was a solicitor, the least romantic species on earth. After a decent and no doubt painful interval I would return to my original status, that of respected citizen and married man. My path in life had been traced for me before I had ever known Sarah, and no doubt it suited me well enough. If I had felt the need to turn aside from it, events had proved to me that I was unsuited for adventure. My recent behaviour filled me with a kind of amazement, as if it had been the fugue of a madman. I felt cold, old. I wondered at what time I could reasonably take another bath, so as not to wake the couple next door.

  Still dominated by time, I calculated that if I left the hotel at six I could walk for an hour before looking for a café in which to eat breakfast. In my damp raincoat I wandered aimlessly, before returning to the Place de l’Alma and waiting for the day properly to begin. The murmur of traffic grew louder as I sat down and ordered coffee, the panorama of the city coming to life in the wide open space before me. Beyond the bridge lay the Paris I had known and loved, and perhaps should never see again with that life of the heart that had once attended me every morning of my life. I was conscious of a feeling of shame that I had behaved in so uncharacteristic a fashion. I tried to expunge the previous night from my memory, consigning it to that detritus that exists at the back of every mind, so that eventually the process of living in the present will be sufficient to obliterate it, confining it to dreams from which one awakes with relief. I did not think of Sarah at all; she had if anything only confirmed her absence from my life. My task now was to justify my presence in Paris, to legitimise my absence from London. I telephoned Neuilly, but only got an answering machine. I left a message that I would ring later, then, slightly crestfallen, got to my feet and began my day of absence.

  With nothing to do, no office to go to, no one to talk to, I was profoundly disoriented. At the same time I recognised that I was not fit to go home, and would not be until I had recovered my normal composure. It had become a beautiful day, mild and sunny, with that poignant autumn sunshine that is so affecting at the decline of the year. The rain of the previous evening had brought out a strong smell of earth and grass, even of damp stone, and I followed it down the Champs-Elysées, beyond the Rond-Point, and as far as the Tuileries, where I sat down. I felt, humbly, that I should stay out of sight, but at the same time I longed for company. I did not desire the company of anyone I knew, but rather the company of small children, who, after school, would spend the afternoon in these stony gardens. Slowly I worked out a programme for the day. I remembered my father’s habitual, ‘What is your programme?’ which made no sense to me as a small boy. Now I saw that it was part of my inheritance, together with work, duty, order. And yet I did not want to go home. The day brightened about me as I sat on my iron chair. At last, with a sigh, I got up and went in search of more coffee.

  A further telephone call to Neuilly was equally fruitless. I wandered back up the Champs-Elysées, feeling guilty now that I had no alibi. Both Angela and Sarah were far from my thoughts. I found this entirely natural, yet at the same time I was uneasy with this moral obliquity. So far my life had been regular, although decisions—the decision to marry, to have a love affair—seemed to have been made without my full volition. Now it would be necessary to ask forgiveness, or rather not to appear to ask forgiveness, for a fault which had not quite taken place. I must act out my assurance until such time as it might be returned to me. I thought of our baby, but I was not yet ready for sentiment. My feelings were too ambiguous to permit of much room for anyone else. What I really wanted was to be at Postman’s Cottage, on my own, for a chance to order my thoughts. That this was an impossibility, and presumably would always be an impossibility, added to my paradoxical solitude in this city in which I had always been accompanied.

  I had an early lunch, bought some scent for Angela, and returned to the hotel. I realised that my sleepless night had exhausted me, and I had to resist an impulse to lie down and let the rest of the day take care of itself. I was also slightly light-headed with the fear that I should never again be normal, so anomalous did my present situation seem to me. I roused myself and telephoned Brian, thinking of the office with love, as if I were an exile, unable to enter it again.

  ‘Where are you?’ rasped his voice, breaking in on my reverie.

  ‘In Paris, of course. Any news?’

  ‘I’ve been telephoning the George V all morning.’

  ‘I couldn’t get in. I’m at …’

  ‘Never mind that. You must get back here as soon as possible.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s Angela. She’s in hospital. I’m afraid something went wrong.’ His voice softened.

  ‘The baby? Is the baby all right?’

  ‘The baby didn’t live. Premature, though that wouldn’t necessarily have mattered. The cord was round its neck.’ He sighed. ‘A little girl’

  ‘Is this true?’ I asked, my mouth dry.

  ‘Of course it’s true. Angela asked me to take her to the hospital. Apparently she felt unwell and didn’t know what to do. Your mother was away, and that other friend—Jenny, is it?—must have been away as well. She didn’t know where you were.’ There was a significant pause, as if Brian were waiting for my explanation. ‘She rang me at the flat. It was just by chance that I happened to be there and not at the house.’ Dimly I brought Brian’s domestic arrangements into focus. His parents-in-law had provided a small house in St John’s Wood as a wedding present. Brian had retained his bachelor flat, which he intended to let, and no doubt occupy from time to time. Now, however, he spoke with the voice of one observant of the moral law. ‘I’d left a file there,’ his voice went on. ‘I picked it up and was about to leave when the phone rang. Thank God Felicity wasn’t with me. I don’t want her brought into this, Alan.’ His voice was stern again.

  ‘Angela. Is Angela all right?’

  ‘She will be, of course. She was pretty frightened, poor girl. Although I don’t know if she took it all in. When I went this morning she was asleep. With a bit of luck you’ll be there when she wakes up. If you leave at once, that is, as I assume you will.’

  ‘I must ring my mother,’ I said, my mouth dry.

  ‘Don’t waste time. Get back here. And don’t do this sort of thing again, will you?’ Then, in an altered voice, ‘I’m sorry, Alan.’

  When I replaced the receiver there was a terrible silence. I contemplated the scale of my punishment: that it should be visited on Angela was almost too cruel for me to take in. I think perhaps that I did not grasp very much as I sat once more on the bed in that fusty room. Yet in the very few minutes left to me before I should be forced into action I realised that I had it in me to be a father, that to be a father was a natural, and inevitable, part of my real, my normal life. I think I felt more for my baby in that hotel room than I had ever felt it possible to feel. When I thought of the cord round its throat I had to tear at my collar as if I were being strangled. I wept then, but there was no time for weeping. I picked up my bag, went downstairs, paid the bill, and wandered outside in search of a cab. I have no memory of arriving at the airport, of changing my ticket, of sitting in the departure lounge. I had the impression, once again, that my mind was no longer under my control. My thoughts were of my dead daughter, whom I saw quite vividly, as though I had been there when she died. Except that she had not lived in the first place. I understood why people used euphemisms for death. ‘He passed away’, they said. ‘He went peacefully.’ There was no euphemism, however, that would apply to this particular death, a death in limbo. It was only with a last effort of will that I was able to get up and board the aircraft.

  Derek Masterton was on the plane, eyes closed, once more in agony. I went and sat next to him. As we gained height and his ordea
l began I put out my hand and touched his arm. It was my one good deed, perhaps the one good deed of my entire life.

  11

  To remember Sarah was to remember something—scarcely someone—inert and dangerous. I had been impelled by that very inertia to inaugurate an unaccustomed and untypical course of action which had led to my downfall. Poetic similes would not be out of place, though I was not in a poetic frame of mind. I was abashed by the swiftness of my punishment, for never for a moment did I not take all the blame. My wife, her face closed against me, her lips tightly shut in a grimace of rancour, held me entirely responsible for the baby’s death, as did everyone else, or so I thought. My mother, white-faced and faltering, did her best not to blame me, but Aubrey was not so restrained.

  ‘This is a bad business, Alan. What on earth were you playing at, leaving the poor girl alone like that?’

  I had no answer. ‘Playing’, or something very like it, was exactly what I had been doing. The words ‘antic’ and ‘ludic’ seemed appropriate when applied to my recent behaviour. I thought that Aubrey was mistaken if he intended to cast me as a villain. I was not wicked, or rather I was not simply wicked; I was aberrant in the way of someone who is not quite right in the head, led astray by a force he cannot comprehend. I did not comprehend it myself, nor did I intend to scrutinise my state of mind, or to ‘work through’ my feelings, as the current wisdom would have one do. My expression must have been appropriately idiotic; at any rate Aubrey regarded me without indulgence. I remembered that I had spoilt his holiday, another crime which would call for further expiation on my part.

  This exchange took place outside Angela’s hospital room, in lowered voices. In Aubrey’s tone I could detect a note of sheer dislike, which saddened me, and no doubt compounded my mother’s sadness. Although she had never cared for Angela, although she was now Aubrey’s wife rather than my mother, her feelings for me were intact, though loyalty to her husband kept her silent. Aubrey insisted that they go back to Cagnes, to which I could raise no objection. My part now was to accept others’ opinion of me; the time had not yet come for me to stand up for myself. Besides, I had no defence to offer. I stood silent, as waves of disapproval reached me in that antiseptic atmosphere. ‘My poor boy,’ murmured my mother, as Aubrey led her away. After that I was entirely alone.

  Besides, it was Angela who now had precedence. I felt an unwelcome reluctance to re-enter her room, remembering her look of spite, and her breath, foul from the anaesthetic, which she unleashed in my face, with the words, ‘It’s your fault!’ How much she knew, how much she suspected, were matters I should have to put straight if ever the right moment arrived. The fact that she had only ever seen the baby as an inconvenience did not lessen the exaggerated regard in which she was held by everyone, doctors, nurses, visitors—Felicity arriving with an armful of flowers but evidently warned not to stay too long—or the distaste with which these same people viewed me. The doctor who had delivered her took a more robust and no doubt more masculine view.

  ‘Pity you couldn’t have been here,’ he said. ‘Still, these things happen. There was nothing you could have done. She would have lost the baby in any case. You can have others, of course, but I should treat her very carefully for a while. She’s quite fragile, you know.’

  ‘But she’ll be all right, won’t she?’

  He looked evasive. ‘There’s bound to be a reaction. Some degree of depression is inevitable. She doesn’t seem to realise that the birth was compromised in any case. I’d like to keep her in for a bit. Of course she’ll need your support.’

  I thought this ridiculous. Angela was a healthy woman. It is the duty of the normally constituted to live, and to live abundantly. This is not within the power of everyone. It was Angela’s duty, as I saw it, to regain her strength, to come home, and, after a period of quietness, to take up the burden of her life again, of our life, though I doubted if that would ever be the same. For the time being she seemed thoroughly at home in the hospital, allowing the nurses to wash her as if she were a child, refusing to get out of bed, even when she was fit enough to do so. I would arrive at the hospital in the evenings to find a nurse brushing her hair or arranging her bed jacket, for all the world as if she were a proud young mother. This seemed to me exceedingly dangerous, and I tried to rouse her, to alert her to the true facts of our situation. No doubt this was premature; in any event my suggestions were met with a storm of tears which brought the nurses running. Her tears were now so habitual that I gradually accepted them as part of her normal behavior. When they ceased they were replaced by an expression of sly contentment. ‘You weren’t here, were you?’ she would say. ‘You don’t love me. You never loved me anyway.’ Though I could not refute these words they left me heavy-hearted. I would turn to leave, with a bag of dirty washing under my arm. ‘You’ll come back, won’t you?’ she would say, the tears threatening again. But there was no need to ask. She knew that I would come back, that I was tied to her as never before. I knew it too.

  ‘I’m putting her on anti-depressants,’ the doctor said. ‘For a month or two. And she’s mildly sedated. You’ll keep an eye on all this, won’t you?’

  ‘She doesn’t seem to want to come home.’

  ‘That’s to be expected. She feels safe here. Post-natal depression’s a funny thing. It can lead to a form of regression. Certain physical signs …’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Panic, loss of appetite, sleeplessness, agoraphobia. She’ll recover, of course, but it may take time. Your support is what she needs.’

  ‘She doesn’t appear to want it.’

  ‘It’ll pass,’ he said, but without conviction. ‘It was a pity you had to be away. She seems to blame you for the entire business. And me, of course. Tell me, had she always been quite well? Mentally, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Although …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She seemed to change once we were married. She was perfectly happy when we were engaged. Then she had to grow up.’

  I felt mean as I said it, but it seemed to me to be true. That dependence on Jenny, about which I had never felt comfortable, now appeared to me in a slightly more sinister light. At the same time she had entirely rejected her own mother, who seemed to have lost interest in her directly after the wedding, as if she were now entitled to honorary retirement. She had paid one visit to the hospital, had told her daughter to count her blessings, a singularly infelicitous remark in the circumstances, and had gone home again. I realised, in the interstices of the doctor’s somewhat ambiguous remarks, that he was not quite happy with the prognosis.

  ‘How long can you keep her here?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, obviously, we can’t keep her indefinitely. She’s in danger of becoming institutionalised. We try to guard against that.’

  ‘But when will she be well?’

  He looked at me carefully and then looked away. ‘She’s perfectly well now,’ he said, echoing my own conviction. ‘But she’s got it into her head that she needs help. Well, she does, of course, to a limited extent. But there’s still a lot of work she has to do on her own. Is there anyone at home? Besides yourself, I mean.’

  ‘I’m the one person she doesn’t seem to want.’

  ‘You must accept that, though I know it’s hard. Better to keep your distance for a bit, get someone in to keep her company. Don’t leave her alone too long.’

  ‘What are you telling me?’

  ‘Just that. Time is on her side. As I say, she’s a healthy young woman. And there’s no reason why she should be kept here. If you could take her home at the end of the week?’

  He turned on his squeaking rubber heel, as if his responsibilities were now at an end. I watched him disappear down the corridor. I went in to Angela, who was listening to The Archers. On her face was the beatific look it wore when entering the world of her favourite characters. I waited politely until the programme ended, but when I tried to take her hand she snatched it away.

  ‘Dr Morrison s
ays you can come home at the weekend.’

  ‘Of course I can’t come home. I’m not well.’

  ‘You’re perfectly well,’ I said gently.

  ‘How do you know? You weren’t here, were you?’

  ‘I’m here now. Try to live in the present, darling. This place is no good for you. You don’t belong in a hospital. You look fine, quite recovered.’

  And indeed she did look perfectly well, her cheeks pink, her hair slightly longer than usual. She looked almost as she had looked when we first met in the coffee bar, all that long time ago. Only now there was a new passivity about her. I always found her in bed, although she should have been up and about. I could see no sign of the depression the doctor had warned me about; that, I thought, might come later. Rather she seemed oddly defiant, sometimes humming under her breath, as though to ignore me, or to downgrade my presence.