Falling Slowly Read online

  Their respective escapes seemed to them miraculous, though each hankered for the closeness of the other. When Beatrice won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, the younger girl, Miriam, was allowed to go to university, on condition that she continue to live at home and keep her mother company. By this stage their father was ill, and extravagantly awkward, genuine fear shifting in his eyes, and their mother, frightened into showing a timid support, had significant failures of control. On the street, their arms linked, their faces wary, they were accorded an indulgent smile. Beatrice refused to be part of this drama; music supplied her with a world of feeling which she recognized as superior to anything she had ever known in life. But she was circumspect: no expression of pleasure, of excitement, was permitted. In any event it would have been out of place. Their faces identified them as sisters: they appeared well-meaning but unprotected. No one had ever told them they were attractive, with a slightly old-fashioned, slightly irritating appeal. Out in the world they marvelled that they were found acceptable to others, after years of being castigated as unsatisfactory, disappointing. In a perverse but logical manner disappointment was their inheritance. Nothing had prepared them for a welcome.

  Since there were no other family members to advise them they had stayed in the house after their parents’ deaths, a substantial suburban house on the outskirts of London, until Beatrice’s modest celebrity as an accompanist, her own progress as a translator, prompted their epic flight to the flat in Wilbraham Place, prompted not so much by their own initiative as by their friends’ complaints at having to travel so far to visit them. Even so they had no thought of separating; each constituted the other’s family, in a very real sense. They had been witnesses to each other’s discomfiture, a condition which they could not translate for others. By their twenties, their thirties, they were popular, courted, felt themselves momentarily to be part of the effervescence around them. Those years had run their course. They had their work, they had an agreeable home, but they were a little tired of going to weddings, which to them marked the disappearance of confidantes. It was then that Miriam had succumbed to the temptation of marriage. It had not been an easy decision. She was thirty-five, an age which almost debarred her from youthful romance and its illusions. It was because she saw how dangerous such illusions could be that, wryly, she put in train certain plans of her own, searching out the candidate least likely to disappoint her. She had known him for ever, since childhood, almost. Longing, for no reason she could identify, for a safe haven, she made the necessary telephone calls. Beatrice was not consulted. As a courtship it was well outside Beatrice’s experience. Besides, the outcome could not possibly alarm her, would indeed leave her intact, unslighted. The urge to protect had operated in this matter as in all the others. That it then had to be extended to her husband was something for which she had not bargained. It was some time before she perceived, and embraced, the appropriate irony.

  2

  In youth Beatrice had been attractive, but what was attractive about her was not her appearance but her disposability. She entered a room with a helpless suppliant air, as if looking for a pair of broad shoulders, of strong arms to which she might entrust her evident womanliness. This attribute was imprecise, but was assumed to be powerful. Her looks were unusual, although she did not always invite flattering comparisons. Her blonde hair, almost white, was much admired by her women friends, as was the Flemish fairness of her rather broad face. She bewailed her white eyelashes, but in fact her round, unyielding, almost naked blue eyes were an accurate gauge of her character, which was romantic and unpredictable. Her piano teacher, a German, had told her that she would come into her own as a woman of forty, when others started to fade: this was a compliment not much appreciated by a girl of twenty, anxious to begin her life and already awaiting lovers. ‘Saftig,’ said that same homesick German. ‘He is in love with me, of course,’ said Beatrice to her sister. Miriam thought that it might be true, but at the same time was inclined to put the blame on Beatrice’s reading matter. Between her favoured covers men were always handsome, dashing, and articulate, while women were altogether charming, as was Beatrice herself, never more so than when choosing her books, so rapt in contemplation of this ideal conjunction that she hardly had time to notice the real if imperfect men who favoured her with a speculative glance. She preferred to set the scene herself, to imagine herself always entering a room, with that look of questing obedience which she thought to be successful. ‘Oh, that I might do your bidding,’ said that look, ‘receive your orders, supply your every need.’ Such ardour sometimes drew a response, largely from men too old to be taken seriously. The homesick German was the first to be intrigued, yet even he noticed the lack of curiosity in the round birdlike blue eyes.

  Such attitudes were radically out of date, archaic even, and for that reason occasionally beguiling. While other women cultivated a deliberate childishness, and indeed looked like children in their short skirts, Beatrice covered herself with flying scarves and long necklaces, and kept her hair coiled into an elaborate structure, in itself out of date. Miriam sighed in exasperation, but ‘Artists have standards,’ said Beatrice. What was noticeable, somewhere slightly out of touch with that confident expectation, was a strange absence of practicality, so that as she grew older the confidence diminished, and a modicum of adult seriousness intervened, together with an expression that denoted wistfulness, with an occasional flash of exasperation.

  ‘But what do you expect?’ asked Miriam, herself exasperated by that expression. She knew the answer she would receive, having heard it several times already; it was nervous sisterly concern that made her return to the subject, and a perverse desire for an argument.

  ‘I expect very little,’ said Beatrice. ‘But perhaps I am wrong. No one can say that I am not appreciated. I am surrounded by men, unlike you, sitting there with your dictionaries.’

  You are not wrong, thought the younger sister, who as a student had indulged in the usual experiments, but without great conviction. These investigations had given her little pleasure but persuaded her that she was not wasting her youth. She had thought that youth should be actively employed: in fact it had rather let her down. And for neither of them had the next chapter opened, the one that was to obliterate botched beginnings and vindicate their not quite realized maturity.

  It was true that Beatrice was surrounded by men, but to Miriam’s eyes they were always the same sort of men, indistinguishable, elderly, courteous, invariably foreign born, veterans of the orchestra pit or the concert platform, who were glad of an invitation to the flat in Wilbraham Place, being lonely and ill-at-ease for most of the time. Miriam was obliged to do the honours until the moment Beatrice chose to make her entrance. This she did with a full complement of cajoling smiles, summoning, as though from unseen attendants, the bottles of whisky, of brandy (but they had already been produced) until it was time for a rehearsal, or a reprise, at the piano. Miriam knew then that she was expected to retire to her own room, and indeed had no desire to stay. Resigned to hearing the call – ‘Miriam! Walther is leaving!’ – she would emerge to see one Walther or another kissing her sister’s hand, but looking as if the interlude had not quite come up to expectations. At such times she could not avoid the impression that there was a slight alteration of the features, an infinitesimal pursing of the lips, an appeal to fellow-feeling. She understood this, but was obliged to deny the fellow-feeling. Innocence, she knew, must be protected, but for how long? And was it innocence? Beatrice was flushed, but flushed with the virtues of her own performance. ‘He is in love with me, of course,’ she would say, and Miriam’s own lips would purse. Then they would busy themselves with the evening meal, and empathy would be restored.

  ‘Use those dishes,’ one of them might remark. ‘Mother never used them.’

  Yet as time went by, and they remained mysteriously isolated from the world, they began to think more sympathetically of their mother. The subject arose quite naturally on those evenings w
hen Beatrice did not have an engagement, in the course of those same evening meals, as they lingered over cheese, or picked at grapes. They saw their mother as an exile from the land of lost content, whether or not she had ever known it, and this was a subject that gave them both pause. Was this prescience? Did they themselves begin to intuit a life of promises not kept? Superficially there was no comparison. They were healthy, and by all accounts good-looking, though differing almost comically in appearance. Beatrice, striving to identify herself as an artist (for compliments, when they came, were a little forced, or did she imagine this?), retained her long skirts and her elaborate pyramid of hair, always going to have it rebuilt if she were due at an engagement. She looked older than her years, while Miriam, short, watchful, with an expression of wary cynicism and an avowed disposition towards simple pleasures that had been only partially requited, was apparently at one with her contemporaries in clothes of the moment which she chose with care. They were in fact too careful, and inappropriately formal for one who sat at a desk all day searching for the right word or words with which to pin down a French verb. Secretly she envied those who went out and about, while she remained in the grip of her sentences. So demanding was this discipline that the words would remain with her throughout the evening. Beatrice would be unsurprised to hear her question, ‘Bave? Dribble? It doesn’t seem quite right somehow.’

  ‘Mother was lonely,’ she now said.

  ‘Who wouldn’t be, married to a man like Father?’

  ‘I think of her sometimes, sitting all the afternoon on that chintz sofa, waiting for us to come home.’

  ‘And yet she didn’t seem to love us in the way other children’s mothers loved them. I always preferred to go to Anne’s house, or Jean’s, rather than go home.’

  ‘She was disappointed in love.’

  ‘Well, of course.’

  ‘Her hopes had been too high. Like yours, Beatrice. She wanted romance, and she settled for the most unromantic man possible.’

  ‘He couldn’t help being a tax inspector.’

  ‘It’s my contention that he was deliberately unromantic, as if he wanted to punish her for being disappointed in him.’

  ‘They hated each other, didn’t they?’

  ‘And yet they stayed together. And there were no affairs, no indiscretions. They were martyred by marriage, but they never envisaged any other sort of life.’

  ‘I could feel sorry for Mother if only she hadn’t been so defiant about being let down.’

  ‘Virtue – if it was virtue – had turned sour, as no doubt it always does.’

  ‘Technically, I suppose, they were good people. An awful warning.’

  ‘I know. I blame them all the time, even now. And yet I think of Mother whiling away the afternoons, with nothing to do, in that room in which nothing ever seems to have been disarranged, so tightly was it packed together, all chintz curtains and covers, repressively creating a false impression of comfort. I once came home earlier than usual and found her sitting on that overstuffed sofa, with the Radio Times on her lap, just staring into space. It was desolate, somehow, yet when she saw me she looked annoyed, the way she did, you know, summoning up her grievances.’

  ‘Will we be like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miriam slowly. ‘We might, if nothing happens to us. The only difference is that we have limited objectives.’

  ‘You may have. I haven’t.’

  ‘Her needs were infinite. I see that now. She wanted a man to induct her into the fuller life. She was shy, you know. That was what reconciled her to Father: there was no need to unburden herself to him. She became incapable of that, anyway. And to do him justice he accepted it.’

  ‘He didn’t deal with it very well.’

  ‘He probably thought all women baffling, thought it was masculine not to understand them.’

  ‘But he was petty, pitiful.’

  ‘He was no hero, certainly. I’m afraid, Beatrice, that he did a lot of damage. To us, I mean.’

  ‘Yes. I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I’m not criticizing you. It’s just that I know you. You too want an ideal man, to give you that ideal life you fantasize about.’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’

  ‘Well, all right. But I’m more realistic than you. I’m reconciled. I know that one man couldn’t give me everything I want.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to be very good at my work,’ said Miriam primly, getting up from the table, and piling plates on top of one another.

  ‘I want more than that.’ Beatrice’s voice was sad. ‘I want love – I make no apology for that. I want the real thing. You probably think I’m quite content having my hand kissed by elderly exiles. It’s they who want that, Miriam. And even they are a little confused by me. I know that. I’m not a fool. I play the social game, that’s all. But I want something altogether different. I want intimacy, exclusivity, protection. My work gives me far less satisfaction than yours does.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I know I do it quite well. I’m endlessly accommodating, look quite good on the platform, smile modestly when some excruciating singer beckons me forward to share her applause, meagre though it is. I told you about that, didn’t I?’

  ‘Wigmore Hall, yes.’

  ‘I dissimulate, Miriam. I dissemble. When my arms ache, and I have to force the smile, I long to be taken care of. You make fun of the books I read, I know. You think it disgraceful that a fairly intelligent woman, in this day and age, when we’re all liberated, should fall for all the old myths.’

  ‘Tall, dark, and handsome …’

  ‘Quite. If Father did lasting damage, and I don’t doubt that he did, it was in giving me a taste for stereotypes. Preferring stereotypes to the real thing. And I get discouraged, make no mistake. Men look so heroic on the concert platform, in their evening clothes. But you can see right through them, or rather I can. I see their sweat, smell it. I see them combing their hair. They don’t live up to their roles, somehow.’

  ‘You want a romantic hero.’

  ‘Of course. Don’t you?’

  ‘But you’ve had lovers, more than I have.’

  ‘Oh, when I was a student, yes. But they meant nothing. We were very young, almost innocent. I can hardly remember them now. None was significant. I suppose you think I’m regressing,’ she said, with a look that meant that she had considered this question on her own account.

  ‘I do, yes.’

  ‘You may be right. And yet I feel more innocent now, as if nothing had yet happened to me.’

  ‘I’m not a romantic, not like you. I’ll probably never find the sort of person you’re talking about, but it won’t break my heart.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I have a much stronger sense of reality than you have. I take what I can get.’

  Taps were turned on, chairs were pushed back under the table. The colloquy seemed to have ended. Yet, glancing at Beatrice, Miriam was almost shocked at the sadness of her sister’s, face. All at once, unbidden, the image of their mother came to mind, as she had once seen her, with the Radio Times unopened on her lap, not looking, not listening, and surrounded by the riotous chintz chosen to denote the joy and profusion of summer. There was one difference: their mother’s expression had been querulous, distant, whereas Beatrice was genuinely yearning, her face stripped of the professional soulfulness that Miriam frequently deplored, authentic, serious beyond the limits of their recent discussion. She will be disappointed too, thought Miriam, but only if she finds the wrong sort of man. It seemed unlikely that she would find the right one, if he existed. The sort of man willing to encompass Beatrice’s neediness would be kind, sympathetic, valetudinarian, even; he would not understand women, supposing them to be all alike, childish, no doubt preferring to think that way. Maybe their father had begun his married life with that primitive belief, prepared to be indulgent, but not to understand. He had been unequal to the task; his wife’s sharper intelligence h
ad discerned his weakness, which was left as his only capital, and which he then felt free to display, to exploit. A revenge tragedy, in which each partner was exculpated, blaming the other. Hideous to witness. Surely Beatrice had more sense?

  ‘I’ll finish up here,’ she said, more sharply than she intended. ‘Why don’t you go to bed? You look tired.’