Look at Me Read online

  I lay in the water, the kindest of all the elements, the one that welcomes and soothes and cradles you and from which it is difficult to break free. I floated, without thought or memory, only aware that something had happened. That was what my mind kept saying: something has happened. The details escaped me, although I knew that they were all stored somewhere, and could, at some future date, be retrieved, intact. It would be my wearisome task to retrieve them with gusto, to make my readers smile wryly at the accuracy of my detail. No mercy given, none received. And the purpose of it all distinctly questionable. Perhaps to lighten the burden of things left unsaid. For those who put pen to paper do so because they rarely trust their own voices, and, indeed, in society, have very little to say. They are, as I now knew, the least entertaining of guests.

  I looked at myself in the long glass, wiping the steam away with the corner of the towel. I saw a slight and almost childish person, with fixed and fearful eyes. Briefly, I even smiled. I congratulated myself on never looking like this when anyone was near; normally, I know, I look rather disdainful. When I was younger, MY Aunt Julia had once taken me on one side and told me that I would make myself unpopular unless I took that expression off my face. I had done so then, but lately, very lately, I had found it useful again.

  I put on the nightgown, a white nightgown with long sleeves that I did not immediately recognize. This puzzled me, for I am rather particular about my clothes. This, as far as I could judge, had never been worn, for it had long vertical creases in it and smelt of new cotton. It was a pretty garment, with a round neck, and fullness falling from a yoke. I looked rather well in it. But its strangeness puzzled me, and I found myself standing in the middle of the bathroom, wondering where Nancy had found it. Then it came to me. It was one of the nightgowns I had bought for my mother. She had said, ‘Far too pretty for me, my darling. You wear it.’ And she had smiled, and folded it up again. But I was rather hurt, although I had not shown it, and I had taken it into her room and put it into the drawer of the dressing table with the glass top and all the photographs stuck underneath it. Nancy, of course, had kept it, as she had kept everything else.

  Suddenly I wanted to sleep, and I stumbled to the door and out into the passage. Nancy emerged from the kitchen, and said, ‘No dressing gown, Miss Fan? What can you be thinking of?’ But I must have looked exhausted, for she took my arm again and guided me. When we reached my door, I made as if to kiss her goodnight, but she said, ‘No, dear, no’, and went on walking, urging me forward with her. I said, ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ She went ahead of me, her step more purposeful now. ‘Nancy,’ I called after her, ‘what is it?’ Then she turned, her expression guileless. ‘You said you wanted a change,’ she said, ‘so I’ve put you in Madam’s room. Such a nice room. I’ve made up the bed.’

  So I got into that bed, which seemed very strange after my own. And I looked at the ivory satin curtains, and the white rug in front of the pale tiled fireplace, all rather faded now, but made of such superior materials that they would last for ever. And the idiosyncratic centre light, of wrought iron, sprouting many tiny satin shades, that I begged my mother to allow me to change, but she never would. She always wanted everything to stay the same. And although I had not been in this room for a long time, I had no doubt that her clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe, and her narrow shoes marshalled in their usual impeccable rows.

  I did not now want to sleep, but I could feel Nancy’s hand stroking my own, smoothing it out as it lay on the sheet. Then I felt her hand on my forehead, testing it. And then I felt it across my eyes, as I had so often felt it as a child: the signal to close them. I heard her moving round the room, pulling curtains closer together, touching things on the dressing table. Then I heard her close the door, very quietly, as if I were already asleep.

  Twelve

  I remember that I slept and woke all through the rest of that short night and that it somehow seemed extremely long. When Nancy had left the room I got up and pulled the curtains back and saw that the sky was a dull plum colour, as it is always supposed to be above an unsleeping city. This was strange, because when I had been out in it I had been aware only of blackness. Several times I awoke to see that same uneasy and menacing light, which seemed to darken and harden as the hours wore on, falling back into a neutral pallor only before dawn.

  Each time I awoke I felt a child’s innocence and anticipation, and I would stretch my legs and arms with pleasure until I remembered where I was and how I came there. My unconsciousness must have been of a very strange kind. From black and undisturbed sleep I would surface every so often - perhaps after only fifteen minutes or so - into this state of total regression, as if I were on holiday, being cared for, with a day full of surprises and treats ahead of me. I think this is one of the cruellest tricks we play on ourselves, this inability to banish early expectation. This childlike layer of my being had apparently been preserved intact, under layers of experience which had settled on it like volcanic ash, and which were dispersed by the action of waking, that immense upward thrust into the light, only to settle again once the superhuman effort had been made. And each time, for a second, I felt the same size, small and spindly, and I could swear there was a smile on my face, the smile of the child who knows that its nurse will soon come to prepare it for the day ahead.

  The smile faded rapidly, and with it all hope, but I was not ready to disentangle my situation, and I simply turned over on my side and willed myself to sleep again. The quality of this sleep was dense, thick, engulfing, and I found myself hungry for it, as for some gross food. At one point I could even see my face, eyes tightly shut, mouth full, questing, in my pig-like search for unknowingness. Oddly enough, both the periods of sleep and the mistaken innocence of the awakening were not unpleasant. And the fact that they were so regularly interspersed, and with such frequency, gave me the impression that I was not only being rested but also programmed for the task that lay ahead of me.

  I awoke finally and regretfully at about eight o’clock. It was a dull, dark morning, and owing to the position of my mother’s bedroom I could hear none of the familiar noises of the street. Instead I heard Nancy shuffling along the passage and I heard the front door open and close behind her. I sat up in the bed and felt those arms and legs, which had been weightless during the night, resume their fatigue and their stifness. The joints of my feet hurt, and my wrists, when I stretched them out in front of me, seemed thinner. I had thought, during some brief practical moments, that I might spend the morning in bed, for there was no work to do, nothing to get up for. The presents were all wrapped. I had helped Nancy with the shopping at the weekend. I had nothing to do. But in fact I was anxious to get up. I felt a curious distaste for my unclothed self, as if my naked state were an offence. For this reason, when I drew off the nightgown the sight of my body filled me with shame, so lacking did I perceive it to be in adult qualities, so flat, so unremarkable, so humiliated. I wondered if this feeling would ever leave me or whether I was condemned to see myself in this manner for the rest of my life.

  I bathed again, and dressed very carefully. I put on cheerful clothes, my blue woollen shirt and my blue pullover. I paid great attention to my appearance and even to my well-being. I made no objections when Nancy insisted on my eating two boiled eggs for breakfast, and I sat unprotesting at the kitchen table while she fussed around me. I ate some toast and drank two cups of tea, chewing very carefully, as if I must now get into some sort of training, husbanding my physical energy for the task ahead. Nancy was very pleased with my appetite and scolded me for having got so thin. I had not noticed it until this morning, but now that she mentioned it I could feel the angular bones of my shoulders and my skirt was slightly loose around my waist. I did not mind. It seemed to me appropriate that I should dwindle, that I should shed my biological characteristics. In future I would become subsumed into my head, and into my hand, my writing hand.

  The problem was how to fill the rest of the day, for when I had
made my bed and tidied the room it was still only half-past nine. I thought I might begin writing straight away, but I found myself sitting in my mother’s chair, my hands quite idle, while the day, lightless and dreary, unfolded without me. Far from being the poised satirist of my fantasy and my intention, I found myself returned to my childhood, to those empty winter afternoons when I had to sit quietly because my mother was resting. I missed the Library and saw what life would be like if I had no work to go to. But then I reminded myself that I carried my work about with me, and with a great effort I got up and found a notebook and a pen and sat down again to make notes for my novel, the characters of which were so very real to me and so near. Yet when Nancy called me for lunch I was still sitting there, in the same chair, and I had written nothing of consequence.

  Nancy had cooked fish and the smell hung about in the passage, thick and dull and penetrating. I felt it in the curtains, I felt it in my hair, and the inside of my mouth felt dry with it. She must have noticed my peculiar state - which was in fact a suspension of all normal states - and she asked me if I was all right. ‘Oh, of course,’ I said. ‘Not going to work always takes a bit of getting used to. I think it’s almost more tiring staying at home’, and as I said this I stifled a yawn. But she was quick to see this, and also the fact that I could not finish my food. ‘You’d best have a rest,’ she remarked. ‘You’d best get into bed for an hour. You can take a book in with you,’ she added. As if I were very young.

  And so, with a feeling of inevitability, I took off my clothes again, and got into bed, not expecting to sleep or even desiring to, but rather taking up the requisite position for reflection or for self-communion. I sat up in the bed, as if marooned on a great raft, and I must have stayed there, quite unmoving, for over an hour. Despite my excellent intentions I could not escape a mood of lethargy that was almost one of mourning. What disturbed me most was my absence of anger, for without anger where is the satire? I felt instead a weariness, and an understanding that extended even to my companions of the night before. I felt in my bones, and this may merely have been extreme fatigue (but I doubt it), that those people were innocent of everything except greed, that, like children or animals, they simply took what they wanted. That this was the law. In the light of my sad day, I saw their faces again, sly, flushed, their eyes sliding sideways, as if to see if anyone were catching them out… Eating too much, filling their smeared mouths with sweetness. Having a party, a celebration. Laughing too loudly, dressing up. I saw that they were children, much as I had been in my sleep, or in my waking moments, and that they would inevitably, at some point, feel that momentary desolation that afflicts the grown child, the child without parents, elders. That they would start, and look puzzled, look annoyed, and their annoyance would fade into bewilderment. And then all their haughty ways would be of as little use to them as my sharp tongue was to me. The only difference was that they would comfort each other, for they were good at crying out objections and complaints. Whereas I would simply be here, not knowing how to recover, but working at it, with my pen and my notebook.

  I could not even side against them. I was not of their number, that was all. The moment at which I recognized this difference was the ultimate sadness, and I felt all my assumed certainties dropping away from me as if they had been fashionable clothes which I had perhaps tried on in a shop and then regretfully laid aside, as being… not suitable. I thought with longing and even with affection of the times we had spent together, the laughter, which had been genuine, the enormous fascination of their selfish hedonism, the curious attention I had brought to the business of watching them. I thought, first, and instinctively, of Nick and Alix, and I remembered how they had delivered me from various prospective prisons - old age, silence, solitude - and how I had risen at their command as if I had been waiting for it all my life. I remembered how they had introduced me to the true, the’saving selfishness, and how, under their tuition, I had distanced myself from sad people to whom I could bring no joy, nothing but my presence and my helpless company. I thought of the evenings, and how I had swung across the park, confident of the entertainment I should find at the end of my journey. I thought of the day we had motored out to Bray, and I remembered the photograph: I remembered the sound of the last leaves falling silently on the lawn as we sat in the mellow sun, in almost unexpected warmth, and how only the slight coldness stealing up from the river let us know that this was winter and not spring.

  I remembered, as one does, how the weather was always better then, colours more vivid, appetite sharper, energy unending. I looked back, as if from a great distance, at that autumn and the notable benefits it had brought me, and I saw myself, in my rather nice cream suit, walking down Sloane Street: I thought, as I saw myself, how eager and elegant I looked. And this brought me back to my present situation, lying in bed at two o’clock in the afternoon, thin, watchful, neither very young nor very old, but in fact a mind destined to grow older in a body destined to appear ever more childish. The bonhomie of those autumn days had freeze-dried into endless wariness.

  And yet even then I hoped that I might see them again. I missed them too much, and the lessons that they taught, to forego them altogether. I needed their company, their enjoyment, even if I was not of their number. I needed to study them, I needed them for material. And if I ever found the courage for a last throw of the dice, I needed to take them on again. I needed to watch them at Christmas; I needed to see their grasping hands, their infallible appetites; I needed their profligacy, on which I could always depend. I needed their gusto, so appropriate to the Christmas season, when eyes glisten with covetousness and excess, when appetites expand and are never sated, when affection is extended to the watchers at the feast. I wanted, quite simply, to spend Christmas with those lords of misrule, in heat and noise, amid platefuls of sucked bones and the collapsing ruins of puddings, at a table awash with glossy leaves and discarded wrappings, the air blue with the smoke from monster cigars, and idle hands searching lazily for nuts, sweetmeats, marzipan. No sacramental Christmas, this. But how much more desirable than my blameless household, with its smell of dead fish, its muffled dusty heat, its untouched furniture, and the shuffle of slippered feet outside my door.

  If I thought of James, and I tried not to, it was with a feeling of dread, for I now realized that he was accessible to others but not to me. What I had witnessed had made it impossible for me to think that evidence out of the way. For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And in the unlikely event of my forgetting, he would not forget, or rather, he would be aware of a small danger signal somewhere in his consciousness which would remind him of my watching eye and my writing hand, and he would stay away from me. It seemed to me that I, rather than he, had brought this about, and my despair was extreme. For now that I knew that I loved him, it was his whole life that I loved. And I would never know that life. Changes would no doubt take place, and I would not even know what they were. ‘How is he?’ I would long to ask. But there would be no one to ask. If I were to pass him in the corridor, or in the Library, I would have to smile like the stranger he wanted me to be. And if I wished to please him, I must simply stay away. And his life, his life… would go on without me. And I would have no knowledge of it. And since I had apparently understood so little, I could not even blame him. I get things wrong, you see.

  This conclusion moved me to restlessness, and again I wondered if the position could not be retrieved.

  I thought with terror of the days and nights ahead of me, of the months and the years in which nothing might change and I might become as old and discreet as Nancy. And I think I then resolved to find the courage to fight this fate, and to ring up and let them know that I was fine, that I was looking forward to seeing them. On their terms, let it be understood. There would be no need to spell this out; the message would be quite clear. And if I were very careful, and husbanded my looks and my expressions of doubt or blame, perhaps they would allow me back. Of course, my
status would be changed. I would be humbler, more subordinate. That was the price to be paid. And I would pay it. But if, at the same time, I were to make notes for a satirical novel…? If they were to meet their fate at my hands, and all unknowing, would this not be a very logical development?

  The idea excited me and put an end to my musings. Already I could feel that chemical sharpness beginning to take command, and I switched off that inward eye, which is called, erroneously, in my opinion, the bliss of solitude, and switched on the outer one, focusing once again on the white wardrobes with sliding doors, the edges of which were picked out in gold, the oyster satin curtains, the fluffy white bedside rugs, the pink quartz elephant bookends, the pink opaline bowl of pot pourri on the dressing table, the silver-backed brushes, and the small cut-glass tray with its pink velvet pin cushion and ivory-handled manicure set. I believe this stuff is worth quite a bit these days; I must get an estimate some time. I swung my legs out of the bed and rushed into my clothes, the cheerful blue shirt and pullover, the blue wool skirt. I sat down at the dressing table and brushed my hair, and as I looked into the glass I congratulated myself on my steadiness. I saw no ghosts. And beyond my reflection in the glass I caught sight of a framed, tinted engraving hanging on the opposite wall. This showed an eighteenth-century scene of skaters, doll-like figures with muffs and wide skirts or tricorne hats and tight-fitting satin breeches. I had always loved it as a child, but I could not then read what was written underneath. The words now seemed to me singularly apposite. They read, ‘Glissez, mortels; Wappuyez pas.’ Alluding to the thinness of the ice, of course. This seemed to me a good omen, and I resolved to behave in a suitably light and elegant manner.