Look at Me Read online

  But there were to be no consequences today, that was clear. They were both becalmed by the tremendous emotional experience of seeing that woman in her strapless evening dress driving away from the man she loved, and they sipped their coffee almost wordlessly, still contemplating the blank screen. Then Alix said, ‘H’m’, again, and pushed back her chair.

  I tried to put myself into the same mood, or what I imagined would be an acceptable mood.

  ‘Where’s James?’ I asked brightly. ‘Still with his Mama? Poor James.’

  ‘Actually, Honor Anstey is an extremely nice woman,’ said Alix. ‘Extremely nice. I’m devoted to her. Yes, he’s staying there to dinner.’

  I felt a pang on hearing that James had introduced his mother to Alix. I had never met her. Yet Alix was already devoted to her, or claimed to be. I contemplated her range of possibilities, and then my own. I felt some old determination returning, although everything that I had learned that day had been discouraging. Perhaps that was what stiffened me. If, as I thought, Alix had had her way - and I shied away from imagining precisely what that was - then why should it not be my turn to have mine? And I thought of the house at Plaxtol, waiting for us.

  ‘Nick!’ cried Alix suddenly. ‘How could you?’ She indicated the box of chocolates, now three-quarters empty and surrounded by screwed-up wrappings. ‘How could you let me eat all those horrible fattening things?’

  He looked at her and smiled, the smile of the hunter who has also eaten well.

  ‘How could you?’ she went on. ‘You know I’m trying to lose weight.’ She stood up, releasing a few fragments of cellophane, which fell silently from her skirt on to the littered carpet, and placed her hands round her waist. ‘I must have put on pounds. How could you, Nick?’ She walked over to his chair and gazed down at him. He, his legs splayed, gazed up at her, at her pouting face, her mock anger, and he smiled his lazy smile.

  ‘Nick,’ I said timidly, ‘I think you ought to give Miss Morpeth a ring. She’s not at all well. She can’t go to Australia because there’s something wrong with her heart. I think she’ll be alone at Christmas. She’s fed up with me so I can’t do anything. Perhaps if you could find time to telephone her?’

  ‘Jesus,’ murmured Alix under her breath.

  ‘Darling, darling,’ protested Nick, laughing, ‘don’t worry. I’m not going to ask her round here.’

  He stood up and faced me, his arm round Alix’s waist. ‘All right, Fanny. I’ll do something or other. Thanks for bringing the message.’

  Clearly, and for the second time that afternoon, this was my cue to leave.

  I was confused and disheartened. I moved towards the door, bulky in my coat, for I had not taken it off, and thought of the hands at Alix’s waist. ‘See you tomorrow, then,’ I said, again very brightly. They smiled and said, ‘Yes, yes’, as if paying no attention. The dinner the following evening had lost all significance for them, for they were deep in their haste to be alone.

  As the door shut behind me I stood on the stairs for a minute or two, unwilling to leave. Then the thought that they might find me still there, and that they might think I was listening, sent me rapidly and stealthily down the stairs, as if I were in fact guilty of eavesdropping. It did not occur to me that I was behaving or thinking oddly. All I knew was that the resolution I had felt earlier that afternoon had undergone some sort of fragmentation, and that I was now in a state of disarray so very nearly like an illness that I began to wonder if I would last long enough to bring matters into some sort of resolution. I began to feel as if my very substance were threatened; I felt the strength of other people’s wills about to break my own in pieces. Perhaps if I had gone straight home after seeing Miss Morpeth I would have been all right. I would have repaired myself somehow or other; I would have exercised my autonomy again. I might even have started to write that story in which she was to figure with Dr Leventhal. But, as though by instinct, I had flown to seek the antidote for that distressing experience, for this is what people do in real life. Or so I thought. And all I had found was that I was more incapacitated by the spectacle of normal happiness, no, not even that, of normal satisfaction, than by that of loss, of despair, and of acceptance. For there is something repellent in the spectacle of another’s naked misery; it does not encourage friendship. One runs away from it.

  And yet there is a special loneliness that comes from contemplating the opposite, particularly when it is so carelessly displayed to one. I walked across the park in the darkness, frightened less of the emptiness around me than of the emptiness within. Edgware Road was deserted, except for a few disconsolate Indians at one of the supermarkets. The nurses’ uniforms looked spectral in the unfriendly light. I wondered what on earth I was going to do until I went to bed, and then I realized that, if I wanted to, I could go to bed straight away. Certainly that odd heaviness, as of sleep, was already upon me. When I got to the flat I called out to Nancy that I didn’t want any supper, took off my coat, and went into my bedroom. It seemed very quiet. After a few minutes I heard the shuffle of Nancy’s slippers along the corridor; the door opened, and then I felt her rough shiny little hand on my forehead, as I had so often felt it in my childhood. ‘I’m all right, Nan,’ I said, as I had always said then. I sensed rather than heard her go away again. I was so tired that I could barely wait to undress. Then I fell into bed and slept.

  Ten

  What I had forgotten, in my concentration on the evening, was that Monday was the last day that the Library was open before the Christmas break, that it would, in fact, close down at twelve noon, and with it the entire Institute.

  The morning was spent doing the filing, which had rather got left on one side. Mrs Halloran fought a losing battle over the piles of material she insisted on keeping around her like an entrenchment, and then, when I took it away from her, reached into her bag and produced a bottle of ginger wine and a packet of chocolate biscuits. Becoming rather animated, she seized our Mickey Mouse mugs, splashed the wine into them, and handed them round. Olivia, to do her credit, drank with an expression of calm enjoyment; one of her unexpected accomplishments is that she can eat and drink anything. I was not so lucky, but I made a great show of sipping and exclaiming with pleasure. I must have rather overdone it, because I found Mrs Halloran’s eye fixed on me with an expression of extreme scepticism. After that I could hardly complain that she had left a small mess of crumbs all over a rather revolting engraving of a scene from Moliere’s Malade Imaginaire, which showed a couple of doctors in shovel hats wielding a syringe the size of a Bofors gun.

  The major event of the morning was the arrival of Dr Simek with two bunches of anemones, one for Olivia and one for myself. Mrs Halloran was delighted to see him and presented him with the rest of the ginger wine, of which only about an inch remained, poured into a small glass vase which Miss Morpeth had formerly used for holding pencils. Murmuring, ‘Most kind’, Dr Simek raised the vase in a papery hand, threw back his head, and drained it in one unhesitating movement. He then inclined his head, placed the vase on the table, advanced towards Mrs Halloran, took her hand and kissed it. Not to be outdone, she rose and folded him in her arms, kissed him on both cheeks, and sank back in her chair, tilting the empty bottle, and then, having ascertained that it was indeed empty, tossing it towards the metal wastepaper basket. Alerted by the clang, Dr Leventhal appeared in the doorway, and, sizing up the situation, said, ‘I think we can begin to be on our way. We look forward to seeing you both in the New Year.’

  ‘All the best, girls,’ cried Mrs Halloran in desolate tones. The fight seemed to have gone out of her with Dr Leventhal’s announcement. I imagined Christmas in a small South Kensington hotel: the tiny tree, the paper hats, the microwaved turkey portions, and the enormous takings at the bar. Olivia and I looked at each other and she nodded to me. Reaching into the drawer of my desk I took out the two Metropolitan Museum diaries, which she had sent for and I had wrapped, and gave them to our visitors. Neither, as I could see, would have the sli
ghtest use for a diary, but the pictures were nice. Dr Leventhal had already been presented with the most expensive calendar I could find; the reproductions were of Audubon birds, which Olivia said could hardly be faulted, although last year’s, which had shown enlargements of John Speed maps, had fallen rather flat. Everyone professed to be delighted: Dr Simek inclined his head, and Mrs Halloran became emotional, which was what we dreaded, although we did not see that she could manage it over a diary. ‘All you wish yourselves, girls,’ she proclaimed, with renewed ardour, stowing the diary into her raffia bag, which clinked. ‘All the best, Joe.’ As we assisted her into her cape, it occurred to me to wonder whether she was addressing Dr Simek or Dr Leventhal, both of whom are called Joseph. Dr Leventhal solved this by retreating into his room, leaving Dr Simek to escort Mrs Halloran from the building. ‘How about a First Noel, girls?’ she shouted from the door. Then, taking Dr Simek’s arm, she gave us a lewd wink, and swept him from the room.

  It is extraordinary how everyone assumes us to be totally inexperienced. It must be the way we look.

  I went home to Bryanston Square with Olivia and stayed to lunch. I had altogether too much time to waste before the evening and was unwilling to waste much of it on my own. As everybody was out, we had beans on toast and a couple of apples; then we took our coffee into their tobacco brown drawing room, where the windows were always kept tightly shut and the curtains smelt of cigars, and sat down, one at each end of the sofa. We were both creatures of habit, and this interruption of our daily routine was not altogether welcome. ‘We can do anything we like,’ I reminded her. ‘We can watch daytime television if we want to.’ But in fact we didn’t want to. Olivia, who was tired, said she would go to bed and read for an hour or two, and I decided to walk home and try to do the same. Shades of our childhood, when we always had to rest before a party… I sought her advice on what to wear that evening, and she thought my grey dress with the white collar would be about right It is a rather prim dress, but it has a small waist and a full skirt, and it does quite suit me. She reminded me that I was to go there on Boxing Day as usual, and asked if I would like David to pick me up in the car. With her habitual delicacy she did not refer to Christmas Day itself, having retained from an earlier conversation the fact that I had other plans. Nor did she refer to the house at Plaxtol, although at some point she would be forced to ask me when I intended to go, so that she could tell the woman in the village who cleaned for them to let me have the spare key.

  I did not altogether want to leave her, although I knew that she really wanted to sleep, so I trailed rather reluctantly to the door and prepared to begin my long afternoon alone. It was quiet in their flat and somnolence seemed to be gathering in the darkening air. In fact it is always somnolent in their flat, which is only brought to life by the disruptive presence of Olivia’s mother, with her bags and satchels full of minute papers, agenda, and memoranda. She is the sort of woman who never bothers to take her coat off because she always intends to go out again immediately, and she is in the habit of continuing a conversation she has been having with someone else, as if assuming that her husband and children will tune in with the expected responses. She is genuinely bewildered when they declare that they don’t know what she is talking about. They love her deeply and tolerate her not at all; she has become used to being told to close the door behind her, or tidy up her things. ‘Come on, Ma,’ David calls, ‘get fell in.’ On Sundays, the only day she is at home for lunch, she looks beamingly around for approval, for she has not only taken off her coat, she has tidied her desk, swept the papers from the sofa, and is prepared to listen as well as being listened to. Those Sunday afternoons, which I have occasionally spent with the Benedicts, are a revelation to me of family happiness. They all talk, which always strikes me as faintly amazing, until the heat of the fire and the peace of the afternoon becalms them, and the conversation dwindles to murmurs. I have seen them all sitting together with their books, each taking sustenance from a different story, but most potently together. Olivia’s father eventually makes the tea, and after that Olivia’s mother gives a sigh of pleasure and sadness, and says, ‘I always forget how much I enjoy Sundays. What a lovely day this has been.’ Within half an hour they hear her on the telephone to colleagues - long complicated conversations - and the week has already begun.

  I love her because once, only once, during those last days, she took my face between her two hands, and said, ‘Whatever happens - and it will happen, Frances - you will never be alone as long as we are here.’ Then she patted my cheek, seized her briefcase, and sailed off to a meeting. She regarded my presence in their home as entirely normal, and probably wished, as my mother had done, that I would marry David so that I could be there all the time. This was a matter to which I had given little thought, not because I disliked David, who was quiet and like his father, but because there seemed to me to be no urgency about it. I had the comfortable feeling that David would wait for me to make up my mind; there would be no pressure, no official courtship, simply a gentle, eventual enquiry. I had forgotten him recently and I felt a little guilty; he was too sensible a man to be hurt by me, but I should have liked to have contributed something positive to their family at Christmas. It was just that my mind was too full of my recent adventure and its sad and bewildering development to respond to this thought. As I remembered James I sighed a little and knew that I could not make my contribution either this year or even the next. I knew, ineluctably, that I would always want to know what was happening to James, how he was, where he was, what he was doing. If this was love, it had come not when we were together, but had made itself known most officiously when we were apart. And it had shattered my former unity, made me plan and scheme and try to manipulate events, turned me into a watcher, an outsider. Yet I was still intermittently resolved; I still seized on any reason to make a fight for it; I refused to concede defeat. Simply, I wished that it could have come about another way. I would have wished it to be more straightforward. I would have wished there to be no dissimulation, no mystification, no… damage. I would have liked to have met James’s mother, and for him to have met the Benedicts, at home. I would have liked straightforwardness, spontaneity, approval. Above all, approval, the good wishes of friends. I would have liked to be the daughter of the house once more.

  At the door I turned to Olivia and said, ‘Are you quite sure the grey dress isn’t too plain?’ She said that it fitted me perfectly and that I might as well settle for something in which I was comfortable instead of spending the entire afternoon trying on things and discarding them. I nodded, but my smile must have been half-hearted, for at this point she became very decisive and severe. ‘Climb every mountain, girls,’ she cried, in a passable imitation of Mrs Halloran, ‘Dream the impossible dream’, after which we looked at each other, and I said, ‘That’s it, then’, and she said, ‘Right’, and I went off feeling a little relieved.

  I walked home, trying to spin out the afternoon. Christmas was in three days’ time, on the Thursday, but most people seemed to have stopped work already. I always hated this cessation of work and the empty streets and the desolation of Christmas. I hated the madness of the people in the supermarkets, buying half a dozen loaves of bread, and the aftermath of office parties, with girls hanging on to each other on the pavements, giggling, and hitching up the straps of their evening sandals. I hated men roaring outside pubs; I hated cars driving away with crates from off-licences; I hated the shop windows, especially in the Edgware Road, where extreme cynicism expressed itself in placing a sprig of mistletoe in the corsage of the same wax nurse, wearing the same white nylon overall and cap that she had worn for the last six months, or where identical tired garlands of coloured bulbs winked on and off in the window of the Asian take-away and the television rental company. Above all, I hated the launderette. On Christmas Day Nancy served a full Christmas dinner, which we ate together in the dining room. When we had watched the Queen, it was time for her to go to her room and rest until much later
in the afternoon, when she would join me for tea and Christmas cake. While she was resting I would go out for some much needed air, for on that particular day of the year I found my surroundings oppressive, and it was on one of those walks, when it was so quiet that I could hear the sound of my own heels ringing out on the pavement, that I passed the launderette., and saw inside the steamy window three men and one woman, quite well-dressed, reduced to spending their day like this, and finding what company the desperation of others afforded them. I never wanted to see that again.

  We had had only two Christmases alone together, Nancy and I. One was immediately after my mother died and we ignored it, both too aware of her bedroom, the door closed for ever, the bed still stripped, and eternal emptiness within. Last year we had managed a little better, and it was really quite peaceful until I went for that walk. I saw, through lighted windows, all sorts of noisy jubilation, in which I wished most strenuously to join, and then, at the end of my walk, I saw that launderette with its hopeless and respectable inmates. The day was ruined. I could not wait for Nancy to retire to her television, and I even went to my mother’s bathroom cabinet and took two of her sleeping pills from the bottle. I did not need them; I simply wanted to kill the day. And then I wanted to get through Boxing Day and get it all over and done with, and after that to get back to work and not ever have to think about Christmas again.