A Closed Eye Read online

  When Immy came home in the holidays she was already a stranger; taller, more boisterous, shrugging off their questions, demanding a television in her bedroom, suffering only Miss Wetherby’s adoring attentions. They came to know her moods, her restlessness, her boredom, were obliged to apologize for their lack of amenities, a house in the country, a ski chalet to which she might invite her new friends. ‘But darling,’ Harriet said. ‘You have a very nice house in town. Why don’t you invite your friends here? I’m sure they’d be delighted. There’s plenty of room for them to stay. Why don’t you invite Henrietta? Or Arabella?’ The names were invariably decorative, belonging, or seeming to belong, to Restoration comedy. ‘Actually, Henrietta has asked me to stay with her people in Somerset.’

  ‘Then Daddy and I must meet her first,’ said Harriet firmly. ‘And I must speak to her parents.’

  This was successfully negotiated, although Harriet was not much reassured by Henrietta’s mother, who called at Wellington Square with her daughter before going on to Harrods. Tall, glamorous, a compulsive talker, Lady Aldridge’s eyes wandered expertly round the room while expressing unreserved enthusiasm at the prospect of having Imogen to stay. Harriet wished that Freddie were there, to put a damper on Jane Aldridge’s boundless and meaningless euphoria. Harriet wondered if the woman drank, or if she were already drunk: the eyes from time to time flashed desperation.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re rather selfish,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m sure Immy would love to come to you, but her father sees so little of her … Perhaps next year. But we should love to have Henrietta. There is so much for them to do in London—my husband can always get a box at Covent Garden.’ At that moment she thought of Lizzie. Why, she said to herself, with some surprise, I had quite forgotten her.

  Imogen was furious, of course, but then she so often was. ‘It is dull for her,’ said Harriet to Freddie, by way of excuse. Nothing came of the invitation to Henrietta; perhaps it had not been offered. One day, coming home with her shopping, Harriet saw a very young man getting out of a car and advancing towards her front door.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she called. ‘I’m Harriet Lytton.’

  He swept off the tweed cap he had been wearing; she had time to appreciate a handsome brown face, dark eyes set a little too close together.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Julian Aldridge. Henrietta’s brother. I believe you met my mother. Is Immy around?’

  He was perhaps nineteen, at the most twenty.

  ‘She’s not in,’ said Harriet thankfully. ‘Can I ask her to telephone you?’

  ‘Not to worry,’ he replied. ‘I just thought she might like to come for a drive.’

  ‘Daddy and I would much rather you met your friends here,’ she told a predictably angry Imogen. ‘Anyway, he’s much too old for you.’

  ‘I’m nearly fifteen,’ shouted Immy.

  ‘You are fourteen and a half,’ Harriet replied. ‘If you are so anxious to see your friends why not invite them to dinner?’

  ‘Oh, you don’t understand,’ was the predictable reply.

  ‘If you are determined to grow up so fast at least you might behave in a more grown-up fashion. You were positively rude to Daddy last night.’

  It was as much as she ever managed to say. She found herself indignant on Freddie’s behalf, fearful of an explosion of wrath from him. Imogen disregarded him, was careless of his basic reserve. Every month she trailed a slight feral odour, which he found distasteful. Harriet too found it distasteful, but could think of no suitable comment. In any event she knew that the girl’s negligence was in part deliberate. She seemed to want to antagonize. Harriet found herself occasionally intimidated, even frightened, as she might have been by a bully at school, when she herself was a girl.

  She was all the more reassured to come home one afternoon and find Lizzie standing on the front doorstep.

  ‘Lizzie! What a lovely surprise! Does Immy know you’re here?’

  ‘There’s no one in,’ said Lizzie cautiously.

  ‘But, my dear child, you must come and have some tea,’ insisted Harriet. ‘Immy will be home soon, and Freddie said he’d come back early too. Why on earth didn’t you let me know you were in London?’

  ‘I can’t stay,’ said Lizzie. ‘I’ve got to get back to Windsor.’

  ‘Freddie will drive you back. At least …’

  ‘I’ve got my return ticket.’

  ‘Well, he can take you to Waterloo. Tea first.’

  She surveyed the girl, who had grown taller and filled out a little, but retained the air of childishness that she had had on the occasion of the visit to the ballet. The face was still pale, impassive, the straw-coloured hair hung limply: only the eyes, now fully recovered from the astigmatism that had afflicted them as a child, were beautiful, a dark blue, further darkened by thoughtfulness and secrecy. She wore jeans and a denim jacket, into the pockets of which her clenched fists were thrust. As far as Harriet could see she was unlike Imogen in every respect, and once more she appreciated her daughter’s beauty, her vividness. Not only could she see no resemblance to Immy, she could detect no trace of either Tessa or Jack in that closed white face. Jack’s daughter, she thought, but the idea was without resonance.

  ‘Well, Lizzie,’ said Freddie. ‘What are you going to do with yourself? Later on, I mean.’

  ‘I’m going to be a writer,’ said Lizzie, laying her slice of bread and butter down on her plate. She had always been a poor eater.

  ‘Jolly good,’ said Freddie tolerantly. ‘And how will you go about it? You’ll go to university, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh, I shan’t start until I’m old. Until I’m forty.’

  Freddie laughed, and Lizzie blushed painfully.

  ‘I think that’s very wise,’ said Harriet. ‘You’ll have to travel a lot, and get experience, and so on.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Lizzie, her blush fading. ‘I shall get it all out of my head.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to university,’ Immy interrupted. ‘I’m not going to do any more exams. I’m going to go to work. I’m going to be a stockbroker. A millionaire.’

  ‘And how will you go about that?’ asked Freddie, Lizzie’s career already forgotten.

  ‘You’ll help me, won’t you, Daddy? Get me a job, I mean. In one of your firms.’

  It was Freddie’s turn to blush, this time with pleasure. It was to be as he had anticipated, his own worldliness at the service of his daughter. ‘We’ll see what we can do,’ he said. ‘Mind you, you’ll have to work.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll work all right.’

  ‘And I can have the upstairs flat ready for you as soon as you want it,’ Harriet put in eagerly. ‘How does that sound, darling?’

  ‘Smashing,’ said Immy, who at last exhibited something like enthusiasm.

  ‘Would you like to show Lizzie the flat?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have to go now,’ said Lizzie, sliding down from her chair.

  She was quite childish in some ways, Harriet saw. Still that residual envy of Immy, yet combined with a reluctance to complain that was truly admirable. Still that inability to dissemble. Lizzie could not lie, and was therefore graceless.

  ‘You must come again,’ said Harriet kindly. ‘We are always pleased to see you. And Immy too. You must have so much to talk about.’

  But Immy was already out of the door. Her exuberance was so blissful to them that they could not bear to curtail it.

  AT SEVENTEEN, on leaving school, Imogen abandoned both her exuberance and her uncertain temper for a curious impassive control, as if she were determined that no one should ever gain access to her thoughts and her intentions. The change was startling, at least to her mother; her father welcomed it. Within months Immy had assumed the lineaments of her adult self. They were months of intense preparation, as if the interval of leisure to which they thought she was entitled was in fact an arduous apprenticeship for the life to come. Freddie had secured for her, against stiff competition, a place as a trainee in an advertising
agency, one which had been taken over by his former group of companies. To Imogen, this was no less than she had expected, and she spent a little time rehearsing for the part, as if it were essential for her not to be taken by surprise or to be found lacking, to be found out, in fact. A new wardrobe of clothes was found to be required, and a briefcase, and the baroque pearl earrings worn by young businesswomen in the television commercials she watched: she liked the gesture of removing one to answer the telephone. Harriet, aware that her daughter’s tastes were both expensive and inclined to be meretricious, found this touching, so touching that for the first time that she could remember she longed for Immy to grow older, to gain experience, and to become wise in the ways of this harsh world. At the same time she longed for her to be safe, to be protected, and to stay at home with them for ever, instead of for the few weeks of summer and autumn before she started taking the bus every day, with her briefcase, and an expression composed in equal parts of gravity and scorn, the expression of a survivor and a winner in those battles she read about in the fat paperback novels she favoured, and which constituted worldly wisdom in her understanding, an understanding both advanced and curiously narrow for a girl of her age. But behind her beautiful nun-like face, composed and severe, who knew what intelligence was forming?

  They saw little of her. She had moved into the upstairs flat, occasionally ate dinner with them, but more frequently preferred to join her friends in various wine bars and restaurants. It was clear that her home meant little to her apart from the fact that it was agreeable and extremely well situated. She liked the flat because it gave her the freedom to practise a way of life that seemed glamorous to her: black coffee and grapefruit for breakfast, although she had no need to lose weight, and a glass of white wine and the television news in the evening before going out to drink more with her friends. Julian Aldridge was a frequent caller, was indeed already accepted as her accredited suitor by her mother, although there were others of whom her mother knew nothing. Harriet had insisted that Julian come to dinner, although she had already heard him rushing upstairs to the flat on more than one occasion. The dinner was thought of as a staggering imposition by both Julian and Imogen, who raced upstairs as soon as it was over. Loud music covered what was happening up there: Harriet preferred not to know, shrinking from the idea of kisses, embraces, although in her mind they remained perfectly harmless.

  ‘You could ask any of your friends, you know, darling. Until you know how to cook.’

  ‘Actually, we prefer to eat out.’

  ‘But it is nice for them to see you at home. And you have the flat if you want to be quiet.’

  Imogen said nothing, which encouraged Harriet to think that her suggestion was being considered. But nothing came of it, and they got used to hearing her feet on the stairs and the door being banged shut behind her.

  ‘We see so little of her,’ Harnet remarked sadly to Freddie.

  ‘We shall see even less of her when she starts work. Where did you go today? Sloane Street? Bond Street? You’re not buying her a trousseau you know. Most of them wear jeans, these days.’

  ‘Can you see Immy in jeans?’ asked Harriet scornfully.

  For at that time, at seventeen, at eighteen, Imogen was beautiful, in a way that spoke of devoted nurture, spotless, unmarked, glossier and more finished than those around her. Her black hair was tied back with a velvet bow, and the face thus exposed was flawless in its symmetry, still pale, still very slightly flushed only in moments of exceptional exertion. She wore her expensive clothes immaculately, conscious of luxury, extravagance, and appreciative of them. It was easy to admire her, less easy to understand her. To her parents she was as phenomenal in this new withdrawn mood as she had been as an obstreperous child; they saw her as touchingly grown up, although she possessed a steeliness which was foreign to both of them. Harriet wished for more of her company, but had to be content with shopping expeditions; fine clothes were a solace to them both, and it did indeed seem as if Imogen were being bought a trousseau. One day, seated in Harrods restaurant, Harriet said, out of the same guilty compulsion from which she had always suffered, ‘Why don’t you get in touch with Lizzie?’

  ‘I told you. She’s working.’

  ‘Working? I thought she was going to Oxford.’

  ‘She’s working in a bookshop until she goes up. I suppose she hasn’t got any money,’ said Immy indifferently.

  ‘I think it would be nice if you telephoned her, darling. I feel she hasn’t got many friends. It must be lonely for her sometimes. Where is she living now?’

  Immy shrugged. ‘Judd Street, I imagine. She always said she was anxious to be on her own. At school, I mean. Always sneaking off with a book. Things like that. Most of my friends thought she was pretty crazy.’

  ‘Get in touch, darling. Remember she has had quite a hard life in many ways.’

  Immy assumed an expression of pain, and laid the back of her hand to her forehead—a silly gesture, Harriet thought, in an unguarded moment. To make up for what she perceived as a disloyal thought she added, ‘And now, if you really want that pink sweater I’ll buy it for you. It can be a present, until you start earning your own money. Pink was always your colour.’

  To Imogen her mother, in this indulgent mood, was exasperating. She felt sorry for her, sorry for her restricted life with a man as unattractive as her father, but she also felt contempt for the choice that had been made, the fate to which she had consented. She herself had nothing but pity for those who settled for marriage, seeing it as a kind of willed imbecility, more indecent, in its sacrificial aspects, than any amount of concubinage. The thought of her parents’ bedroom produced a shudder of disgust, as if even the act of ageing bodies undressing together was indecent. Her father she avoided whenever possible: she perceived him as gross, was shudderingly aware of the heat of his heavy body, the redness of his face after half a bottle of wine. Mentally she divorced herself from her father, as she had done, instinctively, when she was a growing child. This time the decision was final, on grounds of aesthetic inadequacy. It did not matter to her that she hurt him, for she regarded him as someone who deserved the hurt. There was anger in this reaction; she dared him to come near her, so that she could repulse him. She was also a little afraid of him, thinking him so alien that if he were to approach her she might feel a horror that contained its own helplessness. In order to avoid being kissed by him she had taken to wiggling her fingers vaguely in his direction. Freddie sat monumentally at the dinner table, inwardly slumped in disappointment. Harriet claimed a kiss, apologetically.

  ‘Don’t mind her,’ she said to Freddie. ‘It’s her age. Young girls tend to shy away from men; they become terribly aware of their own bodies. It’s a kind of modesty, really.’

  Freddie said nothing, aware of Julian Aldridge’s entrance into the house, and Immy’s languid welcome.

  ‘Julian,’ he called out. ‘I want you out of the house by eleven.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said a startled Julian, miming incomprehension for Immy’s benefit. He had as little intention of marrying anyone as Immy had; a hearty distaste for convention, and an enquiring disposition, had united them since they had first met some five years earlier.

  ‘Freddie!’ Harriet had reproached him. ‘Don’t spoil things for her. You will make her self-conscious.’

  ‘I would have her a little more self-conscious than she actually is,’ he grumbled. ‘I don’t like the way she’s behaving. Always running upstairs with that boy. Merchant banker, my foot. Aren’t you worried?’

  ‘What you don’t realize is that Immy is very fastidious. She is too fastidious to get herself into trouble; perish the thought, although that is what you are really thinking, I know. They only play records up there, or watch television. Perhaps smoke a cigarette. I think it shows great trust that she can entertain him under our roof. It’s not as if there were anything nefarious going on. Immy would never dream …’

  ‘Just remember that it’s my roof,’ said Freddie
. ‘I’m entitled to make the rules.’

  He thought Harriet foolish, as did her daughter. To Immy Harriet had the foolishness that only came with sexual innocence, an idea which she found deplorable. She was fond of her mother, in a vague impatient fashion, tolerated her kisses and her indulgences, both equally embarrassing, and looked forward to a time when she would no longer have to bother about her, about either of her parents. This time seemed very slow in coming. In the meantime she exerted herself to be as neutral as possible, judging it unwise and unnecessary for them to see the extent of her own emancipation. It was as much as she could do not to fly into a rage in their presence, so clumsy and inept did she judge them to be. Her flight to the upstairs flat with Julian was as much to escape their gracelessness, the physical evidence of their bodies, as a desire to be with Julian, an attractive boy whom she had earmarked for the reserve, being already active on various other fronts, and entertaining other speculations. Julian was devoted. Devotion made her irritable, slowed her down, forced her to respond in words, other than instinctively, as she preferred. Julian was beginning to bore her, but he was her own kind. He too avoided his parents. His mother drank; his father preferred to be out or away for most of the time. From such indignities he too escaped, seeing in Imogen something clean, unspotted, intact, with whom he could enjoy interludes of communication which he must learn not to spoil with too many words. Imogen, he had noticed, turned fretful when he tried to talk to her, explain his work, his reactions to the day’s news, his ideas for their future (which, whether he knew it or not, included marriage). She would shrug her shoulders, pour another glass of wine, and drink it thoughtfully, ignoring him. He loved her, but was a little frightened of her. But this was exactly what she intended.