Altered States Read online

  Aubrey was there to meet me at Heathrow. I thought that was decent of him, though I knew that Mother was behind it. He told me that they were expecting me for supper. In the car we were silent.

  ‘How was it?’ he said finally.

  ‘Not bad,’ I replied. ‘Pleasant place. Rather a good idea of yours.’ Depression was finally making its expected inroads as we drove into London. There was a further silence.

  ‘And how are you?’

  I thought about this, obstinately unwilling to give him a reassuring answer.

  ‘Loveless,’ I said.

  ‘ “Personne ne m’aime, et je ne m’en plains pas. Je suis trop juste pour cela.” ’

  ‘What?’ I asked him, startled.

  ‘One of those marvellous eighteenth-century women, I forget which one. Madame du Deffand, no doubt. She blamed no one for not loving her, said she was too—what is it?—Just? Fair? for that.’

  I was deeply shocked. My guilt was to be re-established, it seemed. Yet I too was too just to deny it.

  ‘Of course people love you,’ he added, a little too late. ‘Alice loves you. I love you.’

  But I knew that he had been thinking up his quotation, and waiting for the moment when he could get me alone in order to deliver it. I said nothing, hoping that my silence would rebuke him. Maybe it did. There was no further exchange until we reached Cadogan Gate.

  As we sat in the dining-room, eating ham and salad, Wensleydale and apple tart, it seemed as if the past few years had never taken place, or it would have done had it not been for Aubrey’s reservations. This person was now my mother’s husband, towards whom I was bound to be deferential, if only for my mother’s sake. She looked tired, older. Aubrey, no doubt communing in spirit with various marvellous eighteenth-century women, made civilised conversation, mostly about his travels, and his memories of Vif. Had it not been for this the atmosphere might have been rather strained. He had his uses, I reflected, and Mother, even if tired, was cared for. They had discussed me in my absence, I realised, may even have disagreed, perhaps painfully. This would have grieved my mother, but she was too loyal to show it. Her loyalties were now divided, and she clearly found this difficult. I therefore played my part, and in the end I think she was even surprised by my levity, although she would guess the reasons that prompted it.

  After dinner conversation became desultory, until, pleading tiredness, I asked them to excuse me. I did this as much for their sake as for mine. In the hall Mother disappeared, then reappeared with a shopping bag containing a loaf, a grapefruit, a pint of milk, a packet of butter, and a tin of coffee. ‘Aubrey went out specially this morning,’ she said, but without her usual loving smile. So he was kind, I reflected, even if his kindness was eternally subjected to his critical judgement. I thanked him profusely and left, promising to telephone. In the street, as silent as ever, I felt as if I had left home for good. But perhaps leaving home was what it was all about, this new feeling of vulnerability, as if the former protection had been removed. Perhaps all I had ever done, all anyone does, is to leave home, to experiment with life on one’s own, without markers. My past experiences now appeared to me as one vast divagation, a series of inevitable mistakes. Too little is known at the outset, when others do one’s thinking for one. I had simply failed, as others no doubt fail, when the fledgling judgement proves inadequate to the trials one encounters. Maybe death, when it comes, is simply another longing for home. As, despite my bag, I walked across the park, Cadogan Gate receded, not only in distance, but in memory, like the home I should perhaps never have left, in order to protect others as well as myself.

  The flat seemed silent, indifferent, and no more welcoming than the hotel had done. It was, I reflected, my new home, as if I had never been there before. I moved cautiously through the rooms, careful to switch off the lights. In our bedroom, which, in a reflex, I thought of once again as ours, the air was undisturbed. I unpacked, drew a bath, wondering if I were as tired as I had said I was. In bed I waited cautiously, politely, for sleep. But that night sleep did not descend as easily as I had come to expect.

  13

  I became bluff, genial, to hide my loneliness. At night I read poetry, Un Voyage à Cythère, The Haystack in the Floods. I dined out most evenings, inviting my friends to restaurants when I was not at their houses, but always relishing that solitary walk home through silent streets. There were one or two flirtations, but very little came of them, apart from a transitory impression of closeness which did not survive for more than a night or two. These affairs did not take place in my flat, which was kept more or less inviolable, as if my wife still lived there. The week-ends I spent at the cottage, which turned out to be damp. I had a decent heating system installed and made various improvements, spending lavishly in order to persuade myself that it was really mine.

  The chief advantage of all this was that the house was ready to receive visitors. Brian and Felicity borrowed it frequently, and in fact used it as their own when for any reason I stayed in London. I was glad of this, both for their sake and for mine. Also it made the house seem less forlorn, and I looked forward to the time when there would be two children to play in the garden, for Felicity had become pregnant again very quickly and was expecting a girl. This news did not affect me unduly; my own daughter was a case apart. In time I came to regard the whole tragedy objectively and was successful in dismissing it from my mind for a good part of every day. What remained of it was incorporated in my loneliness, the one contingent upon the other. Because of the part I had played I was condemned to go through the world uncomforted, and because I accepted this the burden remained oddly manageable, so manageable that I think few people were aware of its existence, whereas to me it was a physical accompaniment, a doppelgänger, and the price it exacted, or one that I volunteered, was a form of celibacy, interrupted only briefly from time to time, which I also accepted, thinking it suitable, and perhaps only temporary. I walked a great deal; walking, along with sleep, remained my chief resource.

  Having, with some sorrow, realised that the long and close connection between my mother and myself was now tenuous, I was, despite my many friends, to all intents and purposes, unsupported, or rather deprived of that primitive support that one craves at such times. This did not greatly bother me, for my self-communing was so intense that it was an effort to spend many hours in company. Strangely, few people noticed this, perhaps because of the exaggerated bonhomie I cultivated at this time, so that I was forever patting men on the back and kissing their wives, actions which I should have viewed with some reserve in earlier days. It seemed important to manifest my gratitude to them in ways that they would understand, even if the effort left me tired. But I also knew that these friends would reassure themselves and others that I had recovered, that I had got over the two unfortunate deaths that had made them so wary of me. In some entirely unconscious fashion I seemed to want them all in position, ready to welcome me when I decided to re-enter the world. I was in the world, of course, but my thoughts were elsewhere. It seemed important to evolve naturally from this indeterminate state. In the meantime I did my best to assure myself of continued affection, until the day arrived when I should be able to return it in good measure.

  I spent my fortieth birthday in Cagnes with Mother and Aubrey and grew increasingly bored and depressed by the tedious expatriate life they had come increasingly to prefer. When I said as much to my mother she replied, ‘But we’re old, Alan. We’re not ambitious for anything more. We like our place in the sun. You may even be the same one day. And try to understand, darling. Life changes us, moves us on, and that is the hard truth of the matter. Even so,’ and here she lowered her voice, ‘you know that you will always come first. That’s why I try to make it up to Aubrey. Can you not show him a little more affection? He’s awfully fond of you, you know.’

  I considered this. ‘Has he made you happy?’

  ‘He delivered me from a solitary old age. You have no idea how that frightened me. I could see mysel
f tottering around with Jenny until one of us got ill and had to nurse the other. Instead of which I’ve got the sun on the terrace every morning, and the company of a man I respect. I sound hard, I know. I cut my links very abruptly, particularly with Jenny. That reminds me, have you been in touch with her?’

  ‘I’ve telephoned. She didn’t sound all that pleased to hear from me. I gather Humphrey’s not too well.’

  ‘Yes, I had a letter from Sybil. Of course, he’s getting on; he must be nearly eighty. And living in that very retiring fashion is not exactly healthy. She’s been so good, Jenny, I mean. If I gave you one or two things to take back for her could you bear to pay her a visit? Lavender bags, honey, that sort of thing.’

  I did not think that Jenny would appreciate these tourist souvenirs, and would indeed know that they had originated in a guilty conscience, but as I had my own conscience to deal with, my own amends to make, I said nothing. It was entirely possible that through our own actions both my mother and I had sacrificed someone who had been eager for our affection, perhaps too eager, in a way that had managed to be subtly irritating. Neither of us had been willing to make up for the emotional deficiencies of Jenny’s life. My own debt to her was considerable, although I remembered her attendance through Angela’s last illness with something like horror still. The fact that she had found it fulfilling had always exasperated me, as if there were merit in such simple sacrifice, even if the case were so questionable. At the same time I remembered her speculative, almost sly look, when she asked me whether I had seen Sarah in Paris. In the light of subsequent events that look, that question, were particularly unfortunate. In that moment her affection had seemed almost an affectation; a keener intelligence had been visible in her glance, keen enough to make me extremely uncomfortable.

  It had taken courage to telephone her after the funeral. When I did so Humphrey had answered and appeared not to understand what I was talking about. I left a message, which would probably not be passed on. Nor was it; when I rang again, prompted by an unwilling gratitude for her past generosity, she answered at once, as if anxious to reach the telephone before her husband picked it up in his study. To my surprise her reaction to my call was one of indifference, as if I were someone she barely remembered, rather than the man who had once so brutally dismissed her from his home. I tried to thank her; I even wrote her a letter, to which she made no reply. She was not hostile; she was even amiable, but she gave me the impression that many pages had been turned since her days of mothering Angela. I sensed that since her most lavish sympathies had brought her nothing in return, she had decided to withdraw them, even cancel them altogether. This had made me even more uncomfortable, as it exactly paralleled my own condition. And now I was bound to present her with various trinkets from the south of France, for which she would express appreciation, knowing precisely how much the gesture was worth. I felt ashamed in advance, even ashamed of my mother, as I followed her round the market, accumulating olives and cheeses.

  ‘Leave all that,’ I said. ‘Buy her something better. What about that dish over there?’

  It was a terracotta dish with a green glaze round the rim, shaped like a shallow amphora, with two short handles. I paid for it myself, relieved to have found a gift that was both appropriate and dignified. I had not relished the thought of handing over anything which smacked of haste, of precisely the sort of reflex that Jenny always seemed to invite.

  ‘You’ll give her my love,’ said my mother. ‘Tell her I think of her.’ But I could see that if she did it was of a fate she had almost not avoided. ‘And let me know how she is. And how you are, my love. I’m afraid we haven’t given you a very lively holiday.’

  But I said that I had had a good rest, which reassured her. At her age, no doubt—but what age was she? Barely seventy, I reckoned—she may have thought that a good rest was what anyone might want. The thought saddened me, as did the sight of her waving to me as I drove off, her white hair setting off her tanned face, her hand, more wrinkled than the rest of her, holding down the skirt of her cotton dress. From the balcony outside their bedroom Aubrey, looking even older than my mother, raised his hand in a brief farewell salute.

  When I telephoned Jenny after my return I got the impression that the call was answered in the same prompt, almost precipitate fashion, as if to forestall Humphrey’s interference.

  ‘Oh, Alan.’ There was a pause. There was no reason why she should be friendly, I told myself. But this was disconcerting.

  ‘Alice sends you all kinds of messages,’ I said heartily. ‘And something I can only deliver in person. Perhaps you could put up with me one evening? Unless you and Humphrey would be my guests …’

  ‘Humphrey rarely leaves the flat these days. He’s not at all well. You’d better come to dinner. Any evening next week. We’re always in.’

  We settled on the Thursday, and although the prospect filled me with boredom it was no more disheartening than spending an evening on my own. I added a bunch of yellow roses to the dish, which I kept on my desk, and which I would miss. She had warned me that because of Humphrey’s declining health we should have to eat early. At six o’clock, with a sigh, I put the dish in my bag, and left for the Edgware Road.

  It was a dull wet evening, leaves slippery on the pavement. I felt heavy in my eternal raincoat, and reflected how anomalous I must have looked in that Paris night, nearly a year ago. The gloomy pile of Humphrey’s block of flats reared up out of the uncertain light, seeming to threaten the cars passing in a cloud of spray and dampening my trouser legs. It was years since I had visited Humphrey, long before his marriage; I must have been taken there by my mother when I was still a boy. I remembered the flat as dark, ugly, macerated in a stale and never renewed warmth. I must have been given something to eat on that occasion for I had an image of myself seated at an oval table under a centre light-fitting consisting of a wooden wheel supporting several rather dim tulip-shaped bulbs. I also had an impression of thick curtains drawn against the daylight, although it must have been barely late afternoon, and the ticking of innumerable clocks.

  Jenny opened the door, with an expression of welcome, which though appropriate was not effusive. ‘Well, Alan,’ she said. ‘It’s been a long time.’ Before I had a moment in which to offer my lame excuses she drew me nearer, and said in a lowered voice, ‘You’ll see a great change in Humphrey. He’s very forgetful these days. Very obstinate too.’ She tapped her head significantly. ‘Don’t worry if he doesn’t remember you. He drifts in and out. It can be very difficult. After all, I’m not so young myself.’ She sighed, and then said brightly, ‘Humphrey! Look who’s come to see us! You remember Alan, don’t you? Alice’s boy.’

  Humphrey, rising slowly from his chair, clearly did not remember me, though he scrutinised me thoughtfully. I did not see that he was much changed from the pachydermatous creature so cherished by Sybil and Marjorie in what I now thought of as the old days. Possibly Sybil and Marjorie might have brought a smile of recognition to his face; his wife he tended to accept as a species of retainer. ‘Is dinner ready?’ he asked her, turning his head cautiously in her direction. Some reflex must have told him it was hardly worth the bother of sitting down again. Holding on to my arm as a handy means of support he made his way towards the door, ignoring Jenny who was attempting to smooth the creases out of his jacket. ‘We don’t stand on ceremony here,’ he said, in a brief access of lucidity.

  ‘No, of course not,’ I replied.

  ‘You don’t mind if we eat straight away,’ Jenny stated rather than enquired. I caught a look of weariness which was immediately effaced. ‘Humphrey likes to watch television before he goes to bed. Humphrey! Your favourite programme is on in half an hour.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Dinner first.’

  The centre light was as I remembered it, with one bulb already burnt out. Apparently it had never been replaced. We ate a mushroom quiche in all but silence. I might have been unknown to them, so little attention did they pay me.

/>   ‘Mother sends her love,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Jenny. ‘And how is Alice? Of course I never see her now. Strange, when I used to see her so often.’ The wordless accusation of disloyalty hung heavy in the dusky atmosphere.

  ‘I hardly ever see her myself,’ I said. ‘I’ve had to accept the fact that they spend most of their time in France these days.’

  ‘La vie de château, quoi?’ said Jenny. There was a further silence.

  ‘Sarah came,’ said Humphrey abruptly, mashing his spoon into his plate of port wine jelly. ‘Always comes on her birthday. Time she was getting married, I told her.’

  ‘Oh, she will marry, have no fear of that,’ said Jenny composedly.

  ‘Thought you were going to marry her,’ said Humphrey, restored to something like life by the thought of Sarah. ‘Did you marry someone else? Some other girl? Annabel?’

  ‘Angela,’ both Jenny and I said simultaneously. That was the only time Angela’s name was mentioned, without it being conspicuously avoided.

  ‘Asked her what she wanted for her birthday,’ Humphrey went on. ‘Said she wanted one of the clocks. Gave her that little silver carriage clock of mine.’

  A significant nod from Jenny indicated a gap on the mantelpiece, between two worthless brass candlesticks.

  Humphrey chuckled. ‘She knew to take the most valuable. Jenny was angry.’ He chuckled again.

  ‘You should not have let her have it, Humphrey,’ said Jenny, her colour rising.

  ‘Why not? All this will come to her anyway.’

  ‘Humphrey …’

  ‘I promised my brother I’d take care of her. She’ll get everything. Well, it’s mine, isn’t it?’