A Private View Read online

  ‘Punch and Alfreda Rogerson, my brother’s children. We don’t get on,’ he had said, apparently without regret.

  Bland had still been naïve enough to ask eager questions.

  ‘Punch? What an unusual name,’ he had said.

  ‘His name is Peregrine. Naturally he dislikes it. In many ways he has always been problematic. However, that need not trouble you. I’ll telephone him. Perhaps you’ll do the same.’ A piece of paper was handed over.

  Bland, newly arrived in London, had accepted the offer eagerly, and that same evening had gone round to the flat in Radnor Place with his suitcase, bought in Reading just prior to leaving Reading for ever. The door had been opened by a very tall, very thin man, with a look of radiant goodwill playing around a weak mouth.

  ‘Punch Rogerson,’ he had said. ‘My sister will be in later. Come in, come in! Your room’s over here. You’ll have to excuse me; we’ve got a meeting here this evening. Care to join us?’

  ‘A meeting?’ Bland had queried, his suitcase on the floor beside him.

  ‘Prayer meeting; my sister Alfreda will fill you in on the details. I’m thinking of joining an order, you see. You are a believer, I take it?’

  But before he could answer the front door had opened again, and Alfreda Rogerson, as tall and thin as her brother, came in, followed by three women and two men, all of them talking in rather loud voices. These voices had continued to make themselves heard until long after dark, interspersed with bursts of high-pitched laughter. At some point Punch Rogerson, drunk with his own merriment, and also, it seemed, with whisky, had knocked on the door of Bland’s room and invited him to join them. He had been rapidly introduced: ‘Jamie, Caroline, Anna, Nigel, Cressida.’ He had nodded, embarrassed. He felt tired and hungry, but found himself with a large glass of whisky in his hand. It was his first contact with the rich. He noticed how well they all looked, as if doctors and dentists had vied with each other to keep Cressida and Nigel, and indeed Anna and Jamie, in perfect condition since childhood.

  ‘We usually end with silent meditation,’ said Alfreda crossly, ‘but as it’s your first evening … By the way, if you think of joining us, as I hope you will, we can put you in touch with Father Ambrose. Our people will take care of everything.’

  ‘Everything?’ he had asked, bewildered.

  ‘That is if you decide to stay,’ she said.

  He had left the following morning, having spent most of the night composing a letter telling them of other plans, which he left on a console table in the hall. It was six-thirty; he had walked, with his suitcase, until he had found a workman’s café, near Paddington Station, where he had breakfast. At nine o’clock he was at a local estate agent’s. At nine-thirty he was at the bank arranging a loan. By the end of the week he was in his own tiny flat in a large red-brick building over Baker Street Station. When Rogerson senior enquired how he was getting on he had told him that he had found a place of his own: no further details.

  ‘Very wise,’ Rogerson had said. ‘You have a mortgage, I suppose? Well, if you are in any need …’

  He had not finished the sentence, and Bland had never reminded him of his extremely vague offer. It had taken him years to pay off the loan, years of doing without, of living modestly but uncomplainingly. He sometimes thought that these years of careful budgeting, careful to the point of sacrifice, had cost him Louise. He had never at any point blamed her for leaving him. By that stage he was too conscious of his real advantages for that. His most precious gain was liberty, a fact of which he was well aware. And in any case Louise’s departure was not rancorous: she was, and had ever since continued to be, thoughtful and loving. He was grateful for this too. It was, all things considered, a creditable relationship. And ever since then he had only to pick up the telephone to hear Louise’s voice, still full of concern for him. She was, he knew, very slightly boring; perhaps that was why he had not married her. But kindness in a woman had always struck him as a precious quality, and she had always been kind. What he felt for her now he would have described as esteem, although they had nothing more to say to each other. They were linked by their long history, two aged siblings who retained a common language, which they tried, with only partial success, to apply to their now separate concerns. If she disappeared, or rather when she disappeared, there would be no one left who knew him as well as he knew himself.

  Seated at a café table, in the syrupy warmth of out-of-season Nice, he reviewed his life and found it to be alarmingly empty. It had been built on flight, he saw, flight from an uncomfortable childhood, an unfairly victimised adolescence, an atmosphere of tension and contention, his father drinking too much, his mother ever handy with reproaches. If he had sought liberty, his own liberty, as a method of vindication for those clouded years, then surely he had gone about the only way of achieving it, although his life, by the standards of most normal people, must appear dim, limited. Who, in these volatile days, stayed in the same organisation for forty years? Who could boast only one long-term—in fact embarrassingly long-term—love affair? Who, at his stage of life, managed without a car, a second home, a flutter on the money markets, or a little property speculation, as did most of the people he read about in his newspaper, and indeed some of the men he had known in the firm, men at the same level of seniority as himself, or even a little lower? Who remained unmarried, or, as they said nowadays, without a partner? Who enjoyed a friendship of rare quality with another man which managed to be entirely sexless? Who was as dull as he was? And was this not the consensus of those who knew him?

  At this point it became a matter of urgency to activate those inner voices, those imaginary companions to whom he was bound to listen when other, authentic voices failed him. These voices reminded him that he was healthy (so far), wealthy (incredibly so in the light of his earlier humility in this respect), and independent. This last fact was undeniable. He was the possessor of a comfortable flat a few minutes’ walk from the park, where he could stroll without any limit on his time or leisure. Should he be ill he could avail himself of paid help, in the shape of Mrs Cardozo, his weekly cleaning lady, who, though noisy and unsatisfactory in almost every respect, was supposed to be devoted to him, or Hipwood, the downstairs porter, who sat behind a desk in the lobby of his apartment block, and who was amiable enough, although perhaps not entirely reliable. That was the rub: he was sixty-five, and illness, sooner or later, would descend on him. The thought was frightening, but he told himself that he probably had a few more years in hand before he succumbed to pain or disability. He was hardy, he was free from immediate care, and he could afford to do as he pleased.

  But nothing pleased him. His life of effort, of self-denial, of regular if tardy rewards, seemed to him almost shameful: that thought again. Shame was an emotion left over from childhood, but it had kept him company throughout many a year, always easily stimulated, quick to spring to the fore. Now he felt shame for this undeserved leisure, this pointless interlude in the sun. He had fled London as quickly as he could after settling Putnam’s affairs; it had seemed to him then that nature might heal him, might remind him that growth and flowering were as possible as decline and decay. But he had encountered no nature worth speaking of in Nice, only mineral expanses, which, in their relative aridity, reminded him that he was without occupation. Perhaps that was the problem. He had had no time as yet to experience retirement, for his days had been filled with visits of a business nature, and with the sad task of disposing of Putnam’s effects. When almost all had been completed, and only the flat remained to be sold, he had simply lingered in his own flat long enough to pack a lightweight bag and take a cab to the airport. The sun, he had thought: the sun is the cure for sad thoughts. But although the sun was unvarying throughout the day, the onset of night was sharp and disconcerting, reminding him that sooner or later he must return home. Then what to do all day? He had no calls on his time, and very few extravagances to indulge. He could walk in the park, of course, go to concerts. There was always the
London Library, although not being a scholar he always felt a little shy there. He would read; he had always read voluptuously, and yet he still sensed his mother’s withering eye on him as he buried his head in a book in order to drown out the sound of his parents’ almost routine bickering.

  One thing was certain: he would not go mad. He had never been in the least unstable, was in fact almost comically sensible. Any fantasy in his outlook had been supplied by Putnam. With that gone he was on an unenviably even keel. He knew that the days would be long, and probably empty; he knew that in due course Louise’s telephone call would be the one fixed point in his life, but he also knew that he could and would endure his altered state, for was he not, when all was said and done, an extremely fortunate man?

  Except that contemplation of his good fortune filled him with distaste. All the forbearance, all the obedience, all the acceptance that had cast their shadow over his formative years now disgusted him. Why and how had he come to this, to this idle afternoon at the café table, out of everyone’s sight, with past contentment suddenly turned to ash? If he stayed here it was partly to avoid going home; if he lingered on this café terrace it was to delay the moment of going back to his hotel room. Confinement seemed to him tantamount to concealment, and he wanted his moment of visibility, wanted to be the focus of someone’s enquiry, wanted not to have to search for company. To all intents and purposes, to the waiter’s eye at least, an ordinarily impassive Englishman, he was filled with all the sadness of loss, not merely for Putnam, but for his whole past life, for his refusal of adventure, excitement, commitment. And now it was too late, for no one found excitement at sixty-five; no one was even attractive at sixty-five. No more women: the thought struck him as a blow, though he had never been careless with women’s feelings. There had been flirtations, the occasional sentimental friendship; above all there had been Louise, who had functioned as both wife and mother. There was still Louise, of course, but Louise belonged in essence to that past life which now seemed to him so distasteful. He sighed. At this, as if in answer to his sigh, the waiter came forward. Bland paid, added a tip. The waiter seemed a pleasant serious boy; Bland was anxious to learn something about him. But the waiter, obviously fearing an ulterior motive, refused to be engaged. ‘Bon, merci,’ said Bland finally. ‘A votre service,’ was the reply. They were the only words which had been addressed to him directly all day.

  He wandered in the direction of the Place Masséna: the English papers would have arrived by now. The sea had taken on an opaque look, as if to cue the light to fade. He still had an hour before him in which to walk, but after that there would be a difficult interlude to fill before dinner. At home he would find it equally difficult, perhaps more so. And there would not be the solace of this beguiling golden light, this poignant late warmth. At home there would be greyness, darkness, the sultriness of central heating. Perhaps he would do better to stay here for a while, since he had no appointments. He caught a glimpse of himself sitting out the winter, an English tourist of an obsolete kind, no longer highly regarded because careful and solitary, not, when all was said and done, rewarding. He might buy a property here, he could, he reflected sadly, afford it. Without company his life would be penurious: it would be true exile, in comparison with which life at home would be relatively comforting. He thought of leaves falling in the park, the calm of libraries, the bustle of department stores. He felt a sudden ache of longing, or was it loneliness?

  The light was now beginning to change, and it would soon be dark. He took a last look at the impassive sea, then, with a new urgency in his step, made his way back to his hotel and informed the man behind the desk that he would be leaving the following day. In his room he packed steadily, with a suspicion of haste. I was never meant to be here, he thought. I should be at work. I mean, I should be at home. He felt a moment of fear, as if he were no longer safe. Darkness, sudden as always, pressed against the window; cars roared along the corniche. He was aware of an alien life, nothing to do with him, utterly indifferent to whether he stayed or left. He wondered whether they could find him a seat on a plane that evening, but apparently this was impossible. Home, he thought, I must get home. This thought pursued him throughout a sleepless night. When he left, in the very early morning, it was with a feeling of infinite relief, as if he had outwitted a danger. Not until he was actually on the plane did he sense the vague stirrings of a species of nursery comfort, as if he believed the advertisements, a habit left over from a straitened childhood, as if British Airways would take care of him, and would have to, since in an emergency he could count on no one else. Henceforth he would have to be his own prop and mainstay, a prospect which filled him with despair, as if he had been called to task by an enemy so intimate that he knew his security to be undermined, efficiently and inexorably, for ever.

  2

  HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS. ALTERNATIVELY, Home is so sad. Bland’s attitude towards his flat was the somewhat shifting point at which these two attitudes conjoined. When he was away from it he thought of it longingly, as the place which would always provide him with a refuge from the world. When he was actually inside it, safe and warm and quiet, as he had always wished to be, it exasperated him, precisely on account of those same qualities for which he had felt such intense nostalgia. The quietness, which he cherished, tormented him. There seemed to be no way in which he could resolve this dichotomy of feeling.

  The flat was situated on the second floor of a handsome modern block in a quiet street equidistant from the park and the Edgware Road; he could walk to either in less than five minutes, but rarely did so since most of his immediate needs were met by the shops in the small arcade which occupied the ground floor of the building. First impressions were if anything favourable. One entered a lobby, usually deserted, under the eye of the dubious Hipwood, who was on duty until six o’clock; the lift had not been known to break down; the lighting was adequate, although subdued. Once inside one was conscious that one had definitely left the outside world, where occasional cars passed with only a mild murmur.

  It was in the flat itself that Bland always registered a faint sinking of the heart, something to do with the confirmation of his own unresolved state of mind. Yet the purchase of the flat, some four years previously, had been well aspected; Putnam had viewed it with him and had expressed approval, and indeed it had seemed a significant advance on the flat over Baker Street Station, not the one he had secured after his flight from Punch and Alfreda Rogerson in Radnor Place, but the larger gloomier apartment on the fourth floor of the same building which he had acquired with the enjoyment of greater affluence, and to which he had remained sentimentally attached for much of his working life, although truth to tell he hardly noticed it, and was indifferent to its largely undistinguished furnishings and the fact that there was a small crack in the bathroom window.

  This present flat was different; it represented a conscious choice. It was to be his own creation, and to express his own personality, although he had no illusions on this score, and thought of himself, quite accurately, as an honest but faintly colourless man, not lacking in courage but disinclined to take risks. Its main advantage was that it was still near to Putnam’s place in George Street; thus each was within reach of the other and could be called upon to attend in an emergency, if one were to arise. In due course the emergency had arisen but had done so in a public place, a fact which made it doubly painful to Bland, although at the time Putnam was so dominated by his condition that he was indifferent to his surroundings, as he was to be indifferent to the alien sights and sounds of the hospital ward, before he was moved to the small end room in which he had died.

  Together they had surveyed the agreeable empty rooms, cheerily optimistic that they could enjoy the years of leisure that were due to them. But now those same rooms represented not leisure but emptiness, an emptiness which would have to be filled each day, until there was no time left to brood on what might have been in store for him, as it had been in store—and both of them qu
ite unsuspecting—for Putnam.

  The absence of Putnam was compounded now by the absence of labour. He had faced the prospect of retirement as honestly as he had faced most of the trials in his life, but the prospect had been mitigated by that vision of the Far East which he and Putnam had promised themselves, and which had never been and now never would be realised. The substitution of Nice for Indonesia seemed to Bland symbolic of his presently reduced condition. On his way up to his flat in the lift he had even felt a pang of regret for Nice, where at least he had been able to sit in the sun: here the day was dark and quiet, with a moody subterranean quality to it which he found dispiriting. The low wattage of the lights in the corridor, together with the mild stale warmth given out by the bronze-painted radiators, depressed his already jarred spirits even further, and once inside the flat he went straight to the window of his sitting-room and leaned out into the clammy but kindly air to look at the tree which somehow flourished on the edge of the pavement and was a glory of blossom in the spring. Now it could boast only a dozen or so tired leaves, all hanging down lifeless and waiting for the next wind to plaster them to the kerb which even now was darkening under a light sprinkling of rain.