A Misalliance Read online

  Phyllis Duff: a good woman. The picture was now clear. Excellent wife, devoted companion. Keeping up to date, up to scratch, planning her wardrobe – modest but superior – with due care but little conceit. Always presentable, in the old fashion of the wife of a professional man, usually to be found in her spotless home. Mrs Duff had no pretensions to be, nor could she ever be mistaken for, the new breed of woman who takes on the world. She had the brilliantly cared for appearance, the fine stockings, the rosy silk scarf, the first-class handbag, of the woman who dresses for a day in town, emerging a little hesitantly from the stony fastness of her mansion flat, looking at all the shops but returning home only with some lampshade trimmings. A woman, in her own and her husband’s eyes, of some importance, with sacred rituals: my quiet time, my day for baking, my evening for the League of Friends, my spastics. A woman preserved from another time, smiling trustingly and confidingly, given to pleasantries of a bland and custom-worn nature, lacking in surprises. Blanche reflected on the wholesomeness of Mrs Duff, her extreme remoteness from the world of business activity, from the technological expertise, the sheer boldness, of Bertie’s new friend. Like the virtuous woman in the Old Testament, Mrs Duff supervised all the goings out and the comings in. Her husband, when he left in the morning, knew that when he reached the end of the street, she would be standing at the window or on the little balcony to wave, following him with melancholy brown eyes. And that when he returned in the evening it would be to a warm kiss and the aroma of a serious meal. Blanche, unwrapping a Dover sole from a paper that managed to be both dry and glutinous, imagined Mrs Duff at her preparations, the gleam of her immaculate kitchen, her gravity, her expertise, her peaceful anticipation of the evening’s reunion. Her wifeliness, so out of date, so infinitely beguiling.

  Stirred to something approaching restlessness or vivacity by the very fact that the day had been partially conquered, Blanche wondered if Bertie might look in on his way home. For this reason she took a bath early and dressed in a white silk shirt and a patterned velvet skirt that she knew he had once liked. He was disappointingly vague about colours and tastes and might not even remember it, she thought. She tried to remind herself how inadequate his responses had been after all those sense impressions she had tried to ply him with. She could hardly believe how drained of them his day might be, although he himself did not seem to feel the lack.

  ‘What did you have for lunch?’ she would ask him eagerly.

  He would appear to search painfully in the recesses of his memory. ‘Meat,’ he would say finally. Or, ‘Some sort of fish.’

  Moving now with some purpose about her kitchen, she took another look at her sole, found it dispiriting, and put it at the back of the fridge. She would cook it later, for she was conscientious about her well-being and thought it poor-spirited to descend to the sort of food that people tend to eat when they are alone; bits of cheese and fruit and the ends of anything that had not already been eaten. She liked to set a table, even now, and did so as if, were she to be surprised, all would be in order, civilized, devoid of self-pity. Even after a year of this kind of life she still thought in terms of Bertie’s calling in, as sometimes he did; she did not care, out of pride, out of love, to cause him any of the uneasiness she was almost sure he must feel. She took out a bottle of Vouvray, nicely chilled, and put it on a small silver tray with some very thin dry biscuits. That was what her shopping was best at these days.

  The dull but harsh white light of a sunless April evening, with a hint of damp in the air which turned the pages of the evening paper limp, and the unrelieved green of the garden beyond her window, caused a spasm of physical chill which she counteracted with her first glass of Vouvray. The evening, if Bertie failed to come, did not look promising. All she could expect would be a telephone call from her sister-in-law, Barbara, a few letters to be answered, some sort of music on the wireless, and then the order of release: bed. How is it possible, she thought, pouring herself another glass, how is it possible that my life has slipped through the net in this way? It is true that I have only been on my own for a year and am still a little shaken; perhaps I shall get used to this … inactivity. For she felt herself to be inanimate and did not know that many people feel like this, men as well as abandoned women. But she knew, without a hint of sentiment, that her life might just as well be over, and although she had stared so recently at that image of Bacchus and Ariadne in the National Gallery and had willed that ecstatic moment of recognition into being – so immediate that Bacchus’ foot has not had time to touch the ground as he leaps from his chariot, so shocking that Ariadne flings up a hand in protest – nothing now would happen. The greyness of the sky would permeate her evenings and her days would be spent in unrewarding schemes of sustenance and improvement. But she was in need of the unwilled action, the bonus, the discovery that would bring back into her veins the warmth of that illusory sun that had shone for her once and whose whereabouts she could not now locate. Scanning the empty sky from her window, and hearing the last car of the returning wage-earners being parked in the street below, she sighed and thought that Bertie would not come now.

  The telephone rang: Barbara. The two women had remained on good terms after the divorce, for Barbara, a more sardonic version of her brother, had always regarded his activities with some scepticism. When he had introduced his sister to the computer expert with whom he had fallen in love, Barbara had remained unimpressed. ‘You want your head examined,’ she had said to him afterwards. This had not gone down too well, for Bertie had always needed his sister’s approval.

  ‘Amanda is all I ever wanted,’ he had replied. ‘We fell in love almost simultaneously. She has given me a new lease of life.’

  ‘You mean she’s twenty years younger than you are,’ said Barbara, unmoved. ‘And what are you going to do about Blanche? She was all you ever wanted once.’

  ‘Blanche has become very eccentric,’ he replied.

  This was pretty well undeniable. Blanche went to such lengths, thought Barbara, always dressed to the nines, making elliptical remarks that no one knew how to take. Always carrying on about characters in fiction, or characters whom she said should be in fiction, and sipping uninhibitedly from various bottles of wine. But one couldn’t deny that she was a first-class wife, although less interesting and open-hearted than she had been when Bertie had first brought her home. And a woman who bore no malice, taking all the blame. She had simply bowed her head when Bertie told her that he was in love with this Amanda, or Mousie, as he uningratiatingly called her. Bowed her head and said, ‘Do you want me to move out?’ Even Bertie had been uneasy about her humility, which was entirely genuine, and had rather sharply told Mousie they must look for somewhere to live: Blanche would remain where she was. Mousie had thought this a rather foolish idea, and so, in many ways, did Blanche. She had no desire to remain in the flat and had thought of living abroad, but she forced herself to stay because she knew that Bertie wanted to be generous, and she had not the heart to disappoint him.

  ‘The least he could do,’ said Barbara, who, like Bertie, misunderstood the situation. ‘And is he making you an adequate allowance? He is not a poor man, Blanche. I hope you are not being foolish.’

  ‘I was not foolish enough,’ said Blanche mournfully. ‘I suppose that he got bored with my being sensible all the time.’ Barbara privately thought that Blanche was very far from being sensible, at any time, but she let it pass. ‘It is far too late to be foolish now,’ Blanche went on. ‘Besides, I have money of my own. I don’t want any more.’

  Barbara had sighed, had taken a closer look at Blanche’s thin face, and had been moved to something like compassion.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll marry again,’ she said. ‘You’re quite a young woman. And still good-looking.’

  She did not say, ‘How will you live now?’ But that was what she meant, and they both knew it.

  ‘I shall be fine,’ said Blanche, with one of her intimidating smiles. ‘I am thinking of joining the Open University. Or finishing my thesis on Mme de Staël. There will be plenty to keep me busy. I shall do a Cordon Bleu cookery course.’ ‘You are a very good cook, Blanche,’ said Barbara. ‘Don’t be silly.’ ‘I have always been interested in archaeology,’ Blanche went on repressively, for matters were threatening to get out of hand. ‘Something entirely new. There will be no time to be bored. Besides, I have always despised women who say they are too frightened to live alone. There is no room for that kind of woman in this day and age.’

  Barbara, who knew that Blanche was precisely that kind of woman, had since made a point of telephoning every evening. As they understood each other perfectly, neither made any attempt at serious conversation.

  ‘Am I disturbing you?’ Barbara would say. ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘As it happens, I am,’ Blanche would reply, in a tone that indicated surprise at this turn of events. After which exchange comments would be friendly, ruminative, neutral, for each had an interest in keeping the tone light. They were united in having too little to do and in their desire to make the best of it. They felt humbled and disturbed by their old-fashioned immobility, aware that they were out-moded, almost obsolete. Despite their many voluntary activities, they felt unworthy. They looked out with wary but not uncritical eyes on the changing moral landscape, and consulted with each other on matters of no consequence, having not quite mastered the art of declaring their dearest wishes and their hearts’ intentions. Instead, they kept their secrets to themselves, and understood each other perfectly.

  ‘How is Jack?’ asked Blanche on this particular evening.

  ‘A touch of gout. Temper not good, as you might have expected. And he insists on playing bridge tonight, with that couple next door. Well, it is our turn, I suppose, but I tend to forget about
these things. Tell me, Blanche, how long do you suppose taramasalata keeps? I somehow can’t bring myself to throw it away, although it looks hard round the edges.’

  ‘When in doubt, throw it away. You’re not feeding these people, I hope?’

  ‘Well, just coffee and cake.’

  ‘Quite right. Bridge players get so envenomed that I doubt if they will know what they are eating. It’s really just something to break up the arguments, isn’t it?’

  ‘It probably will be this evening.’ A pause. ‘Any news?’

  ‘No, no news.’

  ‘You’re all right?’

  ‘Tremendous.’

  ‘You wouldn’t care to join us, I suppose?’

  ‘It’s kind of you, Barbara, but you know I don’t play. I refused to learn when Mother kept bursting into tears and cheating. Such an atmosphere. The thought of it makes me feel quite ill, even at this distance. But thank you, all the same.’ Another pause. ‘Love to Jack.’

  ‘I’ll tell him. Until tomorrow, then.’

  ‘Until tomorrow. And my love to you,’ said Blanche, and put down the receiver. There would be no further calls this evening.

  This is what they call freedom, these days, thought Blanche, as she grilled her sole. Freedom to please myself, go anywhere, do anything. Freedom from the demands of family, husband, employer; freedom not to pay social calls; freedom not to play any sort of role. And I daresay some people might want it, since it is supposed to be the highest good. That is, they might want it theoretically, but free will, I find, is a terrible burden. If one is not very careful, free will can come to mean there being no good reason for getting up in the morning, becoming ridiculously dependent on the weather, developing odd little habits, talking to oneself, and not having very interesting conversations with anyone else. One’s thoughts becoming self-referential, untranslatable. The world is not always waiting for one to discover it, particularly when one is my age: the world, that entity bandied about so frequently, is in fact an endless multiplicity of impermeable concerns. And myself with none of my own.

  Slowly, thankfully, the day darkened into night. Rain had come on, as it always seemed to these evenings. The tyres of the very few passing cars hissed on the wet road. The sun is God, thought Blanche, pulling her heavy curtains.

  Pouring herself another glass, she reflected that time had a different meaning when one experienced it on one’s own. People talked such nonsense about human affairs, she thought. All this prurient concern with ‘relationships’, and the vast literature, high and low, that had grown up about them was really neither here nor there. Love – for that was what was meant – was like the patrician smile on the faces of those nymphs in the National Gallery, admission to the privileges of this world, arbitrary, unteachable, hardly a matter of reason or election. Love was mysterious and, for all the anxious speculation that had grown up in its wake, incommunicable. Love was the passing favour dispensed by the old, cynical, and unfair gods of antiquity; it was the passport to the landscape where the sun shone eternally and where cornucopias of fruit scented the warm air. But for those whom the gods disdained, and Blanche felt herself to be one of them, the world was the one after the Fall, where only effort and mournfulness might lead to a promise of safety, where sins would seem to have been committed without joy, where nothing gratuitous could be hoped for, and no lavishness bestowed, and where one’s partner, one’s referent, one’s vis-à-vis, the mirror of one’s life, had turned into an acquaintance of uncertain intimacy, whose conversation, once so longed for, was, more often than not, alien, uneasy, resentful, and boring.

  Blanche, an inhabitant of that fallen world, prepared for the evening ritual of dispensation, for the lustrations which would at last leave her free to close her eyes. She ran her second bath of the day and poured into it an essence that smelled of flowers; conscientiously, she once more cleansed and tended the body which seemed to be holding up quite well, despite the various threats of disintegration that the day had held. Her face, in the clouded mirror, had the anxious look, the lugubrious bleached look, of an inhabitant of mediaeval Flanders. Carefully she washed away the day, brushed the hair, smoothed in what she thought of as embalming fluids. Below the long white nightdress, her ribbed Gothic feet shone palely. Thus prepared for her nightly journey into the unknown, the only journey which she did not fear, she stood for a moment at her window, the curtain held back in her hand. Over the dark and silent garden a silent cat stalked. The trees were motionless under their weight of moisture. From the sodden earth came an exhalation of damp. Hearing the owl, Athena’s attendant, hooting in the far distance, Blanche let down the curtain, took off her robe, and went to bed.

  TWO

  Tuesday was Miss Elphinstone’s day and therefore moderately populated. One day a week had been agreed on by both of them shortly after the divorce, when Miss Elphinstone had found Blanche waiting for her in a spotless kitchen and had said, ‘Not worth your paying me for nothing, is it? I’ll come in on Tuesdays and if you want me later in the week you can give me a ring.’ Fear of being eliminated for ever from Miss Elphinstone’s crowded life had spurred Blanche into disposing of the empty bottles and leaving a dirty cup and saucer on the draining board and an ungathered newspaper in the living-room on Tuesday mornings, thus implying a temporary neglect that would require Miss Elphinstone’s crusading zeal and keep her there until lunch-time.

  Miss Elphinstone seemed to enjoy a lively and dramatic existence lived in the shadow of some excitable church whose activities absorbed most of her time and whose members abounded in competitive acts of selflessness. Thus was ensured an avalanche of information that took up most of the morning. Severely hatted, and wearing an overall under Blanche’s last season’s black coat, Miss Elphinstone carried an equally severe black leather hold-all which contained a pair of rubber gloves, a change of shoes, and a religious magazine to read on the bus, although as she invariably noticed something of interest on the journey the magazine remained unread and was occasionally offered to Blanche, whom Miss Elphinstone considered to be in need of spiritual guidance. Retained not so much for her services as for her turn of phrase, Miss Elphinstone thought of Blanche as one of her parishioners but was sufficiently authoritative to refrain from forcing her hand. On arrival she would remove her coat, change the shoes, and sit down at the kitchen table for tea and biscuits. This she was clearly unwilling to do, preferring to stand in the doorway to deliver her monologues. Egress from each room in turn was blocked by Miss Elphinstone’s figure giving an unedited version of the week’s events, each one charged with incomprehensible significance. The cup of tea was Blanche’s attempt to forestall Miss Elphinstone’s colonizing effect on the flat. Being monosyllabic herself, Blanche considered that news, once delivered, was self-limiting. In this she was gravely mistaken, as she had reason to recall once a week. Miss Elphinstone, ennobled by words, demanded an isolated vantage point for optimum effect. She was contemptuous of the tea and biscuits, which she considered a weak civility characteristic of the bourgeoisie. She would sip disdainfully, while putting herself out to accommodate Blanche, in whose life she took a professional interest. Offhand questions were posed, details remembered. Her tone was critical, her agreement rarely offered. ‘Been busy, I see,’ she might say sardonically, nodding her head in the direction of a batch of waferish coconut biscuits. ‘Coming round, is he?’ she might ask, disguising her avidity with a barely assumed detachment. For Bertie, who had once brought tears of scandalized laughter to her eyes, she retained a fascinated respect. Like many blameless women, she loved a disreputable man.