A Friend from England Read online

  No, for such women I would decree a dear little house, in some established suburb, and a leisurely walk to the shops with a basket over one arm, and an afternoon with one’s feet up on the sofa, reading a magazine. The evenings of such women are a bit vague in my mind: I always assume them to be married, or possibly of independent means. Such women never venture out at night unless suitably accompanied, and of course they are always delivered safely to their door afterwards, their escort checking, at their request, the window locks and the burglar alarm. I actually know a woman who lives like this. What is extraordinary is that she is the same age as I am, and yet she lives in this time warp, as if she had no idea that this kind of existence is reserved for a dying breed, for women in their late middle or old age who perhaps worked for one or two years in their youth and then thankfully gave it up.

  The lives of idle women fascinate me, and yet such women always bridle when you speak to them of your commitments, your plans, your calculations, as if you were casting aspersions on their own industriousness, which they will then go on to demonstrate. And it is true that my kind of woman rarely has time for the fine cooking, the planned shopping, or even such things as an afternoon tidying the plants in the garden. It will be a pity if women in the more conventional mould are to be phased out, for there will never be anyone to go home to. Of course, my own existence has never remotely resembled any of this, and yet I like to think about it. It pleases me, in some obscure way, to conceive of women as timorous, delicate, in need of special treatment, of deference, waves of sympathy and praise lapping at their feet as they perform some quite ordinary task, or simply preside at their tables, family acquiescent around them. Born to serve, as it might be thought, such women seem to triumph, and many of them preserve a good conscience at the same time. It is quite an achievement. It was for the pleasure of watching this phenomenon at its best that I was initially fascinated by the Livingstones. Beautifully at ease with her conscience, Dorrie was like the virtuous woman in the Bible, anxious to see others happy, and all prospering around her. The thought of Dorrie intruding into this pleasant fantasy should have warned me that I was trying to keep unwelcome thoughts at bay, that all this vague thinking was obscuring a task which I had banished to the back of my mind, where it waited, seeking its time, always inconvenient, and destined to disrupt my own activities. But really, I thought, as December slid into January, something must have been decided by now, some agreement have been reached between Heather and her parents. I found myself reacting with increasing violence against the softness of heart that had overtaken me in those days at the hospital, against all my talk of duties and loyalties, for which, when removed from the Livingstone cause, I cared nothing. I still felt a pang of regret when I thought of the trouble that Heather’s absurd decision must have stirred up by now, but for Heather herself, I felt, I regret to say, a certain contempt. To embrace so obscure a destiny was, to my mind, a feeble excuse for not doing anything else. It signified an abdication of a different sort, not the abandonment of a difficult situation, but the abandonment of a self that might have matured into just the sort of independence that the self-reliant woman must attain. After all, we are all committed to this now. That Heather should merely exchange one set of parents for a parent of a different sort seemed to me ludicrous, a desecration of all that she was leaving behind, as well as illustrating a docility that no longer had anything attractive about it. My aversion to her line of conduct was compounded by a kind of anger at the position I had adopted, almost by default, as if it should not have fallen to my lot to speak up for parents, for families, and, even more, for what I had called the life of reason, as if all these things had anything to do with me, represented my true wishes, or even my true destiny. I had adopted a position which might even be false, and I had felt myself called upon to convert others to it. The discomfort involved in this process will be recognized by anyone who acts in bad faith. That was why I had visions of the sign saying CLOSED on the door.

  And yet, although the outcome had proved to be so uncomfortable, I still did not see what else I could have done. It was just that I had decided not to do any more of it. If my remonstrations had had no effect, then that was unfortunate, but I was under no further obligation in the matter of Heather’s behaviour. The trouble was, I reflected, that they were all so romantic. I remembered Oscar and Dorrie at the opera, hands clasped, attention sharpening, as the heroine came forward on the stage to sing of her undying and usually fatal love. I had a suspicion that if Heather told them of her feelings for this Marco they might be willing to see the elements of a great love in what was probably merely an error of judgement. For romantic love usually is fatal, and not for the reasons given by the heroine on stage. And if one embarks on it one must be prepared for a state which is very nearly all loss. Romantic love is either for the very gullible or the very brave, and I had no conviction that Heather was very brave, although I had no doubt that she was gullible, probably in the wrong sense. This adventure of hers could lead to permanent exile, for which she was lamentably unprepared. She, who had been cared for all her life, would be vanishing into the unknown and would be without occupation, stranded in a web of circumstances which she had no means of understanding. And in her memory she would undoubtedly revert with nostalgia and with regret to the life she had left behind her, the life of just such a woman as I had been thinking about, correct and tranquil and protected.

  For she would never come home again. I saw that quite clearly. She would live down to her new situation, and her parents, bewildered, would wonder what had become of her. The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule. And Oscar and Dorrie, powered by their investment in that wonderful beginning, would, by that same token, be bereft of her company. There was no reason why they should have her company for life, of course; even she had seen that, and she was not a hard-hearted girl. But they were all of the same stamp; they had peaceful expectations. It was probably on account of their peaceful expectations that they could indulge their fantasies of romantic love. For them, it would essentially be a romance, a dream, something that happened to heroines, willing to renounce the world, and dying before the world could renounce them. Those who survive such an experience have been forced to learn a hard lesson, and it does not always improve them. Love, any kind of love, contains such lessons. Not all are capable of learning them.

  I could hear myself sighing as I moved towards the telephone, committing myself once again to the fortunes of the Livingstones. Heather, for some reason, I dared not face. I felt that I had offended her simply by virtue of being myself, as if I had failed some vital test of worthiness by advertising my own fall from innocence. I also knew – and this could not be altered – that everyone falls from innocence sooner or later, shedding the earlier self and its illusions to assume the wary guise of a mature adult. It was by no stretch of the imagination my fault if I had already entered this state and Heather had not. Nevertheless, I felt the shame that comes with the feeling of having despoiled something, although Heather continued to irritate me and her plight to strike me as extravagant, ridiculous, and damaging.

  I had also felt a measure of relief in speaking to her so brutally, as if the time had come to shed all the euphemisms with which her life was shrouded. Although I knew the reasons for the failure of her marriage I felt that the actual divorce would be dealt with daintily and its cause never be revealed or acknowledged. Heather would then no doubt be declared in need of a holiday, and little compensations would be offered, as if she had not so much suffered (I doubt if any real suffering were involved) as been mildly insulted. Oh, I know such women, women who, like Ophelia, turn all to favour and to prettiness. These are the women who say, ‘I’m afraid I was a little bit naughty’, after committing some gross misdemeanour, or ‘I’m afraid I got rather cross’, after screaming their way to victory. Women like this have always existed: they still do, in spite of all the changes that have taken
place. I simply cannot put up with them, or with their conviction that Nanny is still somewhere in the background. Better by far to be glum but truthful, piercing a few clouds of deceit, matching the word to the thought or to the intention. No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does. And in confining the intrinsically blameless Heather within the larger category of women whom I despise, for really quite other reasons, I felt that I had committed an offence which could not be overlooked by either of us. That was why I made no attempt to get in touch with her. Nor, of course, she with me.

  But Dorrie was another matter. I had seen her near death, and I could not quite banish the sight from my mind. Even if she had escaped the knowledge of her near demise I had not. And although I had no doubt that the truth would always be hidden from her by that loving and anxious family, the truth was there. There was no avoiding it. In fact, in my eyes, the truth was rendered all the more terrible by the enthusiastic decision to ignore it that had no doubt been made on her behalf. Even now I did not doubt that her convalescence was taking place on a wave of false assurances, in an attempt to expunge the sights that all had seen and none could live with. And Dorrie herself laughing at their efforts and their energy, protesting that this was not necessary, that she was perfectly all right, that they were making too much of a fuss. Perhaps their very commitment to the task would sow a tiny seed of doubt in her mind, and she would look across at Oscar, sitting so calmly in his usual chair, his newspaper across his lap, while her excited sisters ran to and fro with little trays of food to tempt her. And he would look up, would smooth down his tie with his fine dry hand, would say, ‘All right, darling?’ And for a time at least she would be all right.

  Heather’s part in all this I could not quite see. She would not be needed at these daily rituals, so essentially a conspiracy among adults which might risk destruction at younger hands. Heather’s part in all this would be her absence, but with that absence, in which they could compound all their pretences, the knowledge, the promise, that Heather would visit them at the weekend, as she always had, as she used to in the days before her marriage, and would sit there, amiable, blank-faced, without mystery, subsumed once again into the matrix of her family, as if everything that had happened to her in the recent past had been an illusion, a myth put about to frighten them. Heather was simply required not to change. It might be difficult for her, I could see that, but why should she not encounter a little difficulty? She had the stamina for it. She would know which part was hers to play. After all, she was very shrewd. I persisted in thinking this, although, when I turned it over in my mind, I could not remember a single circumstance in which Heather had ever demonstrated her legendary shrewdness. Nevertheless, I knew it to be there.

  My hesitation and my faint-heartedness were compounded by the fact that about that time it rained heavily for a part of every day, usually in the morning, so that I awoke to streaming windows and that sense of oppression that always accompanies wet weather. This is not mere antipathy (nobody likes rain, after all) but a terrible nervousness that connects with my other fears. I cannot look at weeping skies or raindrops pattering on windows, or, least of all, at the falling rain itself without getting up to wander nervously from room to room, wringing my hands, and wondering if I can last out until it stops. And if I am out, of course, it is a hundred times worse. With every splash of water on my face or my leg I have to suppress an involuntary cry. In the end I have to run for cover, and end up buying something I never use in the nearest shop to hand. If I am at home, I try not to look at the windows, but I find I am drawn to them, as if made to watch, repelled yet fascinated by the falling sheet of water, wondering what it would be like to stand in it and let my head fall back and my mouth and eyes fill. But this, of course, is to be resisted, as is any kind of relaxation of my vigilance. The temptation is both horrifying and enduring, and can never be resolved.

  My mission, however, was to enquire after Dorrie’s health, and to find out what had happened to Heather and her romance. If, as I hoped, the idea had quietly subsided and she were back in the fold there would be nothing more for me to do, for I could hardly add to what I had already said, nor could I even allude to it. Perhaps we could all be as we had been before, a little circle which I was occasionally permitted to join. Perhaps we could again be that nest of gentlefolk, the idea of which had once so beguiled me. The idea, in fact, rather than the reality, for reality is neither static nor shapely: reality is for the most part inconvenient. The real part of this acquaintanceship had held up a mirror in which I saw myself: forlorn, uncherished, unaccompanied. For all I knew this was the way I was seen not merely by myself but by the Livingstones as well. Various discomforts – the monotonous falling water, the vision of myself as a poor orphan, and my recent outburst, perhaps, above all, my recent outburst – kept me from enquiring after Dorrie’s health until well into January.

  When I finally made the call it was answered by Dorrie, who sounded delighted to hear from me.

  ‘We wondered what had happened to you, dear. Of course we know how tired you must be after Christmas and we didn’t like to bother you.’

  ‘It’s lovely to hear your voice, Dorrie. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m getting along splendidly, dear. And they’re all making such a fuss of me. Anyone would think I’d been really ill.’ She laughed doubtfully. ‘And I’m not allowed to do a thing.’

  Her voice had recovered its vigour, with perhaps a slightly breathy overtone which I put down to the temporary wound in her throat.

  ‘Rachel?’ she went on. ‘We’d love to see you, dear. Are you by any chance free tomorrow afternoon? I’ve told the girls to go out for the day. They’ve been so good, here all the time. But I’ve put my foot down. And it would be such a lovely chance to have a really good talk with you. I know Oscar would love to see you.’

  ‘How is he?’ I asked.

  ‘Just fine, bless him. Can we expect you tomorrow, then? The usual time. You know the way, dear.’

  Although her greeting had been so warm my reluctance strangely persisted. Perhaps because by now I knew too much, because, in fact, I knew more than any of them, I felt an instinctive desire to avoid that lovely talk that Dorrie had promised me. There was too much that I would not be entitled to say. I felt poisoned by my knowledge: this was perhaps my equivalent of original sin. Although the rain had died down to a fine drizzle I stopped the first taxi I saw coming and settled down in the back for what might well be an afternoon of great difficulty, in which dissimulation must be my lot, and further discomfort its inevitable accompaniment.

  The house, as I stood outside it, seemed smaller than I had remembered, and the garden less immaculate: one drowned rose hung limply from its stem. When Oscar opened the door to me, and smiled at me as he had always done, I felt reassured, but as I followed him into the drawing-room I was aware of a miasma of forgotten meals, or of the hasty housekeeping of the sisters in an alien kitchen. I was aware of the much breathed air of convalescence, the contagion of the flesh thrusting its persistent memory forward into a time in which it might be thought to be irrelevant. I found myself nervous of what I might see, but Dorrie, seated in her usual chair (but in it, not on the edge of it as hitherto) greeted me delightedly and with conviction. She looked astonishingly well. Her hair had been done in a new and flattering way to hide the mutilated earlobe, and it made her look younger. She wore a skirt and cardigan of dark blue raw silk, and into the opening of the inevitable print blouse she had tucked a silk scarf to hide the tiny wound in her throat. She looked, if anything, better than I had seen her for a long time. Her honeysuckle scent floated on the waves of warmth emanating from the radiators, which were, as always, turned up to their highest register. Bowls and vases of flowers added their exudations to the heady atmosphere.

  I had always thought her a pretty woman, and here, in her natural setting, she appeared to her best advantage. There were few signs of age about her beyond a slight blurring of the outlines of face
and figure. The upper part of the body was still fine, but the waist was beginning to sink into the saddle of the hips, which would eventually give her an appearance of shortness and plumpness, although she was in fact very neatly made. I noticed the legs in that passive elderly position again, the ankles crossed, the knees splayed slightly outwards. But the face was still that of a good-looking youngish woman. Perhaps there was a pad of flesh under the chin, perhaps there were lines describing a parenthesis around the mouth, but the eyebrows were not yet untidy and they arched magnificently above the mild blue eyes. That expression, described so long ago, was still familiar to me. It quested, in an unhurried way, and appeared to be looking, above a crowd of heads, for a well-loved face. Where? Where? it appeared to be saying. I remembered Oscar’s eternal question: ‘Where’s your mother?’ But she was here, beside us both, looking well and happy, and there was no need to seek any further.

  And yet there was one huge question in the air. Where was Heather and where would she be in the future? When would she come back to them, and how would they find her? This matter lay untouched as we exchanged our compliments and pleasantries, as the tea was made and brought in, as Oscar handed me a cup and a plate, and Dorrie protested at the smallness of my appetite. My appetite had in fact died on me as soon as I had entered the house. And it was not Dorrie, all animation and pleasure, who retained my attention: it was Oscar. Immaculate and benign as ever, there was a thoughtfulness, a scruple, a pursing of the lips, a holding apart, even as he joined in our conversation. I could see it was an effort for him to concentrate on the banalities that were being offered and which were clearly a preliminary to what was to follow, the main business of the day. I sensed more reserve in him than usual, although he had always kept his own counsel. I felt he was mounting a watch, and was, behind his placid exterior, alert for misconstructions, for evasions of the truth – for the truth must now be faced – but also for hurt and injury. It would fall to his lot to recognize the truth but also to mediate it, lest it fall too heavily on the one who had already been weakened.