The Rules of Engagement Read online

  I had no way of knowing this for certain, but her very silence spoke for itself. I dismissed the crises of conscience she might have endured with a shrug: if she chose to behave in this or any other way, that was strictly her affair. She was no longer the innocent she had been in Paris, in the rue Cler; she was embroiled not only with a married lover but with his wife, whom she continued to attend out of a sort of fear. So long as she proclaimed affection for Constance (and she may even have felt this) she could persuade herself that her crime was not great, that it was hardly a crime at all, but an extension of a love that encompassed the whole family. I doubted whether the Fairlies saw this in the same way. They may have been convinced by her sheer artlessness that she was no threat to their stability. They may have conceded her entirely genuine love for their children. They may even have laughed at her. Some quality of hers, that obstinate aura of goodness, might have prevailed against their cynicism. Quite possibly they had never encountered this before.

  For I thought them demonic in a way that Betsy could not hope to understand, collusive, without shame. Their characters, in hindsight, seemed to blend together, so that their alliance was one of true equals. I had encountered this before only in books, and even between the pages of a book such evidence was frightening. And I had not entirely avoided the Fairlie influence, though some sense had prompted me to turn my back on it. The true danger had lain in my possible conversion to their way of thinking. I could have persuaded myself that there was no real harm in my, or even in their, behaviour, that such a descent was even an enviable path to maturity, that experience was valuable however it was procured. Even my own bad faith had seemed to me amusing: was I not a more interesting person because of it? That there were others more experienced in this field had never crossed my mind; in any event one does not quarrel with physical satisfaction. My buoyancy at the time had stemmed from the illusion that I had nothing to fear; now I saw that I should have been terrified. One fears for the loss of one’s innocence, even when that innocence is little more than ignorance. And also the blamelessness that blinds one to the superior sophistication of others, and makes of that very sophistication a mystery which might reveal itself to have some value, even some merit, a capacity which one had been denied but which it might have been in one’s interest to have acquired.

  For this reason, if for no other, I was bound to question my own solitude, and to look back with genuine bewilderment to my former misdemeanours. I had been given the opportunity to measure the distance I had had to travel to reach my present position of relative safety. Betsy, I could see, would not have that consolation or that assurance. Always dependent on the good opinion of others, she would consider any failure to qualify for this to be a reflection on her own character. Her need to please, and to go too far in her desire to please, had been seen, in those distant schooldays, as something laughable; naturally, at that age, we did not perceive the tragedy implicit in such striving. And now her position would be even more precarious: how to please the person to whom she was doing an injury? Only, I saw, by increased devotion, usefulness, a humble acceptance of tasks which she knew to be beneath her. Her promised reward would be no more than a brief encounter with her lover, if he were that still. Even so she would have lost caste, as she seemed to have been doing all her life. I should have preferred her to remain the girl who had returned from Paris to be a guest at my wedding, her appearance immaculate, her confidence intact. I tried to believe that the torn lining of her jacket was of no consequence, but without success. The discomfort that this had afforded me was surely of some significance. She may have been short of money: I had no way of knowing. It may even have been Edmund’s prompting that lay behind Constance’s hateful remark. And if she had been forced to accept their money her obligation to them would be unending.

  Therefore when the telephone rang it was something of a relief, as well as a disappointment, that it was not Betsy’s voice, for which I must have been unconsciously waiting, but that of Nigel Ward, proposing another excursion, this time to Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill, on the following Sunday. ‘We shan’t be quite so numerous,’ he said. ‘Just a few stragglers. It’s a dull time of the year for them.’ There was a pause. ‘If you’re interested,’ he said. ‘Baker Street Station. Ten o’clock. No need to let me know.’

  ‘I shall look forward to it,’ I told him.

  But in fact it was to prove a disappointment. The weather had deteriorated sharply: there was a scudding wind—our version of the tramontane, the föhn—the wind that sets the teeth on edge and inclines one to murder. By the time I reached Baker Street Station my eyes were watering and my hair unkempt. The students, two Indians, two Japanese, and a Nigerian, seemed disenchanted, as I was, by the peculiar pall that hangs over a London Sunday. The streets looked tarnished in a light which promised rain. Mr Ward, his evident good intentions surrounding him like the attributes of sainthood, was engaging them politely in the sort of conversation they were in no mood to appreciate. When we set off we must have resembled a couple of dutiful parents with a family of disgruntled teenagers. Our semi-rural surroundings failed to enchant. The students wanted, as I did, some sign of urban excitement, and this was sadly lacking. The green of the grass looked crude and cold; the very real cold made one yearn for a different climate, different colours. Before we were out of the park I made an excuse, in fact a series of excuses, designed to make my departure less offensive, but Mr Ward was patiently amenable in a way which underlined his unusual good nature. This man, I reflected, must have been appointed to his job by someone exceptionally far-seeing. Unfortunately his obvious good nature made him seem merely dull, even subservient, a schoolmaster out of some improving nineteenth-century novel, one of those undervalued heroes despised even by the reader.

  His equally unpopular attribute was to make our little party seem cheap and churlish, myself included. I wanted more creature comforts than a walk in the park could provide, as did the students who stayed obstinately together, unappreciative of their surroundings. Mr Ward, no fool, could see that this particular endeavour was proving a failure but had the good manners to give no sign of this, and went on talking pleasantly in a voice almost carried away by gusts of wind. He appeared entirely impervious to the occasional harshness of fortune, heroic, and sexless. I was impatiently aware of all this but unsympathetic. I was also tired of walking in a disaffected group. What was more significant was my realization that I fared better without company. Solitude was obviously my destiny. I regretted this, but I was not much discomposed by the discovery. If I desired company it was for the company of one other person, intimate colloquy, a form of nurture that I could certainly embrace. The whole idea of friendship would have to be recast if it were to mean anything. I must in future, I thought, set standards of my own. What was called for was not compliance but its opposite, the more extreme forms of exigence.

  I missed my husband, whom Mr Ward strangely resembled. Not in physical terms: he was extremely tall and thin, whereas Digby had been of moderate height and bulk. The likeness was one of disposition. Both were courteous to women, a fairly unusual characteristic, and therefore gentlemanly. There was no need for me to know Mr Ward for any greater length of time to be entirely convinced of this. I felt safe in his company and endured the subsequent feeling of boredom with something like the familiarity of long association. Even after two meetings, the present one unsatisfactory, I knew that he would be a good friend if he would allow himself a little more freedom of behaviour and of inclination, but unfortunately there was no sign of his capacity to develop either. I wondered briefly about his marital, even his sexual status, but only because I had been spoiled in this respect, and had acquiesced all too eagerly in the sort of plans no gentleman would make. But this was forbidden territory, which I was not permitted to revisit, and I suggested to Mr Ward that he might like to come for a drink one evening. ‘Do ring me when you’re free,’ I urged, my enthusiasm fuelled by the providential sight of a taxi. ‘I’m always
at home by five.’ He bowed his head, as if accepting yet another challenge, which firmness of purpose would enable him to carry out. The whole group watched as the taxi carried me away. I felt ashamed, as if I had let them down, but in fact they were merely envious. My action in leaving was, if anything, applauded. Yet Mr Ward’s noble nature had had this effect on me: he had made me want to do better.

  Back in the flat I felt violently relieved, as if I had resisted a brainwashing. What had briefly been on offer was a succession of anodyne pastimes in the circumscribed company of an utterly respectable man. It would have been in my interest to bow my head and acquiesce in a process that might extend far into the future: I put it no higher than that. And yet this prospect roused me to a kind of anger. I wanted to remain in character, low spirited, but with a fund of unexpended bad behaviour. I knew that I should respond without hesitation to the right kind of stimulus, but that I could not be satisfied with the merely mild and useful. Even Betsy’s behaviour struck me as more natural, more understandable, even more sympathetic than the entirely upright stance of those whose conduct was open to inspection. I was no longer willing to pass this test. I welcomed anarchy and had proved myself capable of sustaining it. At the same time I longed for company, as only a lonely person could. The problem was that the company I might be offered was not to my taste, was too peaceful to invite my interest. The conundrum resisted my efforts to solve it. I spent most of that Sunday afternoon asleep, and the evening watching television. By the time I went to bed I felt a paradoxical pride in having merely pleased myself.

  These various considerations foundered, or were swept aside two days later, when, returning from a routine shopping expedition, I became aware of a car drawing up beside me, and heard a voice saying, without preamble, ‘Elizabeth. Have you got a minute?’ I nodded, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that I should be reunited with Edmund at a traffic light in the King’s Road. I slid into the car, aware only that this was the first time that I had seen him for many months, and strangely calm, as if I had known that we should meet again some day. I longed to question him, but in fact we were both silent and staring straight ahead, as if we were two ordinary passengers on an ordinary afternoon, proceeding westward, and too preoccupied with our own thoughts to engage in conversation. Out of the corner of my right eye I took in the salient features. He was older, or he looked older, his relaxed stomach slightly bulkier than I remembered it, his face more furrowed, his hair longer and streaked with more obvious grey. He seemed tired to death, assured but no longer triumphant as I had always remembered him. It was that confidence of his, that air of having outwitted the gods and their designs that was his most humbling feature. No one who came within the orbit of his intense scrutiny could dissemble; from that first confrontation all actions would be known. As they had been.

  ‘Rather an awkward situation has arisen,’ he said finally.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I don’t know how much influence you have on your friend . . .’

  ‘I take it you mean Betsy. No influence at all. Were you intending to take me into your confidence? If so, I should warn you . . .’

  He ignored this. ‘When did you last speak to her?’

  ‘Not for quite a time. Whenever I telephone I get no answer. I don’t know where she is.’

  ‘I can tell you where she is. She is round at my house, on various pretexts which are in fact quite nebulous. Although I have to say that she was a great help when we moved.’

  ‘How is that going? Are you pleased?’

  He shook his head. ‘A mistake.’

  ‘Well, I can’t help you there. What is the problem?’ I asked. Since this conversation was to be about Betsy I felt coldly objective, any hope that I might have intruded into his consciousness quite gone, leaving an absence of calculation, or indeed forethought, behind.

  ‘The problem is that Constance is getting upset. It’s not that they’ve had a disagreement—in fact Constance takes care to be out when Betsy puts in an appearance. It’s just that Constance has come to dislike her. Quite irrationally . . .’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Well, perhaps not. But there’s never been any threat to my marriage. Constance knows that. And Betsy knows that I’m a married man, always has known it. I was wondering if you could have a word . . .’

  ‘Why can’t you have a word?’

  He stopped the car in a discreet side street somewhere in Kensington and sat looking resolutely forward, his hands loose on the wheel.

  ‘I can’t hurt her,’ he said. ‘And I can’t stop her coming to the house. She turns up as if it’s the most natural thing to do, as if she’s a member of the family.’

  I winced. ‘You put it so tactfully. And yet you say you can’t hurt her. Why can’t you hurt her? Are you in love with her?’ These words I ground out, knowing that at last the truth must be faced.

  ‘There has been a degree of involvement,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, please.’

  ‘Difficult for you to understand, perhaps. She’s not at all my type. Nothing I can do will alter the fact that I was taken by surprise by all this.’

  ‘Is it over, then?’

  He raised his hands from the wheel in a helpless gesture and let them fall again.

  ‘I think it had better be. I have Constance to consider. And the children.’

  ‘I thought she loved the children.’

  ‘So she does. Too much. Wants them to take her into their confidence, and so on. The girls, that is. David takes no notice of her.’

  ‘That is fairly harmless, surely? Women with no children of their own frequently love the children of others.’

  ‘I don’t want them to come under her influence.’

  ‘I’m sure she’d be very discreet.’ In fact I was not so sure; Betsy had never been discreet with her affections and would now be even less so. In the circumstances I thought Edmund more likely to be discreet than Betsy. He would have the fierce protectiveness that a man of his type would feel towards his daughters, prone to hatred for any man likely to remove them from his sphere of influence. And the advice, the intimacy of an older woman who might urge them on to independence, to other affections, might be more than he could tolerate.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Edmund? This is strictly none of my business. I never wanted to know about your marriage or your love affairs, let alone this one. I can’t take sides in this matter. You must sort it out for yourselves. What is so difficult? I’m sure you must have done it before.’

  ‘She trusts me, you see.’ His voice was sad, as if he had no desire for this trust but accepted it as a fact. ‘And she has so little in her life, that awful flat, no friends apart from you. No family.’

  ‘That, of course, is how the whole trouble started. She always wanted a family, as I dare say she imagined herself one day with children of her own. You may have given her what she wanted in one sense, but you’ve also done a considerable amount of damage.’

  I could feel my anger rising as I became eloquent on the subject of Betsy’s wants and needs, which were also my own. There were more things I could have told him, but did not: how we were both at an age when our bodies might impart unwelcome information, indications of change with which it would be difficult to come to terms. I did not tell him this, not out of pity, but because I suspected that it might arouse his distaste. And I was aware that in all this discussion he had not made the slightest enquiry about myself.

  He started the car again. ‘Where shall I drop you?’ he said. ‘Where were you going?’

  ‘I was going home. Take me home if you would. Or you could leave me here. I’ll walk back. I think I need some air.’ For the atmosphere in the car was heated, suddenly oppressive, and filled with our uneasiness. Edmund in particular seemed aware of this, and opened a window.

  ‘I’ll take you home, of course. Still in the same place?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes, take me home.’ It was the only place where I could feel safe, where the
re was no need for me to be tactful, diplomatic, to look after any interests but my own. Even the telephone might now prove an adversary. It was preferable that I keep away from Betsy. There was no problem about keeping away from Edmund, for I knew that I should never see him again.

  ‘You must understand that my family is my first priority,’ he was saying. ‘And Constance. She is seriously upset.’

  ‘There’s an old saying about one’s sins finding one out.’

  ‘I don’t see it that way.’

  ‘Neither do I, really. But you must admit there’s a certain irony here. Your asking me to intervene.’

  He looked puzzled. ‘But you’re the only person I could ask,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect you to take it personally.’

  ‘You must sort out your own affairs, Edmund. Or if you can’t do it I’m sure Constance would.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put her in that position.’

  There was no answer to this. We sat in the car, apparently unwilling to move. Then at last I was able to look at him, knowing it was for the last time. I saw, in his slumped shoulders, that he was as much a victim as I was, as Betsy was, even as Constance was. Some element of—what was it? Certainly not justice—had intervened to bring about thoughtfulness, and to bring it to a situation which had once seemed agreeably natural, immune from examination. Maybe it was the classical principle that decreed a suitable solution only in the form of a dénouement, whether one accepted it or not. ‘Be good to your daughters,’ I said. ‘Set them free.’