A Friend from England Read online

  But we were not young. Heather was twenty-seven and I was thirty-two, and we had been working and independent for years. We were young only in the sense that we were not unduly burdened with responsibilities, were not in poor health, and were not married. We were not even a natural pair, for we had nothing in common except Heather’s parents. It never occurred to me to wonder what Heather got up to in Portman Square, but if ever I gave it any thought her life, somehow, failed to convince me. I sensed in her no trace of clandestine excitement or secret alliances, no unsuitable friends or dangerous acquaintances. I saw her treating her friends to the same even-tempered and natural hospitality as her parents meted out in Wimbledon. For some reason I saw her friends as predominantly female; there was something unaltered in Heather’s placid expression, and this was what gave her aunts pause. They saw in this undemanding girl a sort of incapacity; but what I saw was absence. Like her parents, she was utterly deficient in the desire to do anything dangerous or proprietary, deficient, too, in bad faith, in curiosity, in speculation. She moved through her life not as a sleep-walker, precisely, for I believe she managed her little shop quite efficiently, but rather as a swimmer in calm and protected waters, powered only by the healthy movements of a beautifully functioning organism. Her very steadiness irritated me, until I was even more irritated by the vivacity of her learned responses when she talked to her aunts, but her steadiness also shamed me, as did her habitual mildness.

  There was something inherently immovable, or perhaps non-negotiable, about the three of them, but only in Heather did this quality make one a little uncomfortable, as if something were out of joint. For Oscar and Dorrie one had no fears; one knew that they were good, and if they tended to be immovable in this life, there was no doubt that in some future incarnation they would reap the reward promised in the Bible and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble. But there was something artificial about Heather’s demeanour, although she was not aware of this; when I thought about it I had the feeling that she was a potential victim. Not the victim of a violent action, exactly, but of a trick. Once I had come upon her, in the hallway of her parents’ house, dreamily standing on one leg, large earrings reflecting a beam of sunlight from the glass above the front door, apparently doing nothing. In fact she was reading a postcard which she had picked up from a piece of furniture imitating a Florentine marriage chest, but she gave the strong impression that nothing was taking place. And when she would help to carry in the tea from the kitchen to the drawing-room her head would be bent and her rather long pale neck would emerge from her black sweater as if she had been prepared for execution. One thought of her not exactly as a woman but as some sort of animal known for its unassuming qualities, a heifer, perhaps. Heifers are also traditionally associated with sacrifice. The difficulty with Heather seemed to be that she lacked the emotional equipment even for sacrifice, though sacrifices were planned for her by those watchful aunts. Little parties were arranged by her married cousins, Sarah and Georgina, at which Heather was exhibited to various young men who were said to be acquaintances of their husbands. I was never invited to these ordeals, of course, since it was feared that I might forget the family conspiracy and strike out on my own, but from what I gathered later Heather had failed to play her part, had smiled politely but in evident bewilderment at the ponderous and slightly obscene badinage destined to put her at her ease, and had left early, casting the whole thing into perspective with the words, ‘No, thank you, I came in my own car.’ These horrible rituals were then further discussed, and at last I began to feel a genuine sympathy for Heather, although I could see that her impenetrability might prove to be a problem for her mother and father.

  But supposing that she were happy with matters as they stood? Supposing too that she possessed that genuine mildness of temperament, that latency to which I have referred, that was not only the quality that she shared with her parents but the quality that she could share with nobody else? Supposing that Heather’s shrewdness, which I had somehow never doubted, lay in her perception of this fact? Supposing that she had taken stock of her situation and realized, quite calmly and maturely, that she was unfitted for those watchful occasions, at which others, it appeared, were always to be allowed to lay bets, preferring, as a matter of dignity, the quieter manners of her parents’ house, with its rituals and its customs so devoid of malicious intention, so maddening to those of a more contentious disposition? Heather could see, as I could, that her mother was superior to those sisters of hers, and that those sisters disguised their largely unconscious envy as exaggerated concern for Heather’s well-being. She could even see that their concern was not devoid of a certain prurience, the prurience that some ageing women feel when excluded from the sexual odysseys of the young. Their view of Heather’s obduracy was baffling and uncomfortable even to themselves, for they were essentially harmless women who did not fully understand their own mixed motives. I pitied these harmless women, faced with this evidence of their own baseness, and so anxious to disguise its existence that they increased their ostensible anxiety over Heather’s unpartnered existence in order to hide its traces. Heather knew all this, of course; her uninflected smile began to seem more complex to me as I saw it as a weapon with which she guarded her virtue.

  It was probably over the meaning and substance of the concept of virtue that we all came adrift. For myself, the battle was long lost: such shreds of virtue as I retained served only to make me seek it in others, and, when I found it, to be moved beyond all words, ready to defend what I had already forfeited. In this way, my odd relationship with the Livingstones was of great value to me; they were fixed points of reference in a slipping universe, abiding by rules which everybody else had broken. Heather I was eventually willing to take on as a contemporary embodiment, faint but unmistakable, of those rules. I think she had a feeling that she was somehow endangered, or that she belonged to an endangered species, for she sometimes asked my advice on quite simple matters, as if unwilling to reveal her ignorance to others among her contemporaries. And in due course it began to be apparent to me that Oscar and Dorrie regarded me as a chaperone for Heather, whose incapacities may have contributed to their melancholia but whose very integrity and unalterability they cherished. Even the aunts saw me as having some value, or perhaps function would be a better way of putting it, for I doubt if they liked me. ‘I’m sure Rachel meets some interesting people in that bookshop of hers,’ they would say. ‘I’m sure Heather would love to meet them – she was always a great reader.’ For they thought I ruled over a sort of Bohemia, and, greatly daring, were willing to trust me with an enterprise at which they had so surprisingly failed.

  The truth was, of course, somewhat different. I owned a third of a small bookshop in Notting Hill and there was nothing Bohemian about it. My partners were a pleasant middle-aged woman called Eileen Somers and mild bookish Robin Burt who did most of the work behind the scenes: I preferred to serve. On one decisive afternoon, Heather actually picked me up there. However, she turned politely away while I was seeing to a customer, as if this transaction should not be witnessed. She was wearing a beautiful brown tweed suit and she looked unusually grown-up and independent; however, she smiled indifferently when I asked her if there was anything she would like to take away with her, and then selected a couple of paperbacks as if to please me. These remained in the back of the car: I saw them there a week later. Thus, uncorrupted by other people’s information, Heather remained to all intents and purposes incorruptible.

  I was however intrigued by the change of attire. The black avant-garde garments had disappeared: Heather was dressed as comfortably-off young women might be expected to dress. In addition to the chestnut suit she wore a pullover of ivory cashmere with a printed silk scarf knotted and tucked into the neck; she carried a handbag rather than a sort of gamekeeper’s pouch and her moccasins were the colour of conkers when they first split the green husk and emerge, glistening, to lie among the fallen leaves. She was, of course, as dreamy as ev
er, and nothing in her manner signalled that any change had taken place. But there was something in the way she handled the car – reversing rather carelessly, remarking on someone else’s bad parking – that bore the stamp of an assurance that had not been there before. Heather had always driven her car as if both she and it were competing for an award for good behaviour. She washed and groomed it conscientiously and nothing was allowed to mar its pale interior. On the road she drove steadily, and never did anything to kindle the emotions of other drivers. But on the day in question I noted that her driving was a little less smooth than usual, while on the back seat lay not only the paperbacks she had reluctantly acquired in my shop but several carrier bags from Harrods and some dry cleaning in a sheet of plastic. ‘Don’t mind the mess,’ she said. ‘I didn’t have time to go home after lunch.’ I thought that she was treating me to a hospitality rather more casual, more incidental, than the kind she usually bestowed: she was offering me a glimpse into a crowded life, rather like those women who value one largely as a reflector, and to whom one has to pay one’s dues for being allowed to join them for a minute or two on their brilliant upward progress. I do not mean that Heather was suddenly giving herself airs, or finally coming to the realization that she could do as she liked; she was too decent and too genuinely obscure to behave in so parvenu a manner. But I became aware that her life, in those intervals between the weekends, might be subject to some kind of investment, that Heather might actually have some kind of a context independent of that of her parents. The idea intrigued me but it also cheered me up. I had begun to feel uneasy about the pious hopes Oscar and Dorrie might have had that I would somehow look after Heather, guide her towards a radiant future, that I might in fact inherit Heather from her parents when those parents, in obedience to some inner information, decided they could do no more. I had already received hints of this, subliminally, in the mild but dispassionate gaze that Oscar let fall on his only child, in the distant calm of Dorrie’s eyes, as she poured tea or handed cakes, in the smile that was always on her face when her drawing-room was full. It was the smile, above all, that registered with me, the smile of a woman who, doing the best she possibly could herself, would warm into greater pleasure at the sight of the good deeds of others. It was a smile that could droop into disappointment at even the rumour of a duty shirked, a burden unborne, a signal not received.

  I said, ‘You look lovely, Heather. I like the new style. And I love the colours.’ She said, quite seriously, but with a hint of professional expertise, ‘Well, black isn’t quite right for this time of the year, is it?’ She inclined her head to the window as she said this, and looking out on my side I saw the prunus trees in flower and the forsythia and the first daffodils. Everything in this suburb reminded one of the gardens of childhood. Pink petals drifted along damp pavements, and through my window I caught the harsh smell of the earth, sour after a long cold winter. The trees were still leafless and the weather uncertain, but the cloudy drizzle was not accompanied by a darkening sky, and the white light seemed to promise long evenings and a quick flowering. I had always loved suburbs. My own life was spent in the landlocked city streets, which suited me well enough since I had odd fears of death by water. But I looked forward to a time when I would occupy a little house with a garden and have people to tea. I was aware that this was the ambition of a child rather than an adult, and this was rather surprising since, as far as I knew, I behaved in a thoroughly grown-up manner. But obviously some part of me yearned to become suburban again and to hear a garden gate click behind me as I set off on summer evenings to meet my friends.

  In the meantime I had the Livingstones. And they had me, for in some odd way I felt nearer to Oscar and Dorrie than I did to Heather, although Heather and I were contemporaries and might be thought to have had much in common. In fact I had originally been tried out as a companion for Heather before it had been acknowledged – wordlessly, of course – that I would be better at looking after her, as a sort of surrogate elder, than as a friend and acquaintance. This suited me well enough, for I felt a genuine love for Heather’s parents, while feeling rather little for Heather herself. When I say rather little, I mean that I felt a full complement of boredom, irritation, tolerance, and reluctant affection for her. I thought that in view of my function or destiny that was probably enough. Therefore I was both amused and relieved to see her in her new guise, well turned out, possibly with a secret, yet still scrupulously pursing her lips before answering a question and still lowering her head before deciding on an action.

  But in the course of the afternoon it began to seem as if Heather had outstripped me, or at least as if she no longer required my custodial care. Rather unusually, she allowed her mother to wait on her, to serve her with tea while she examined her glossy shoes, rotating her right ankle critically as if to examine them from a more professional stance than she usually accorded herself. She said little, as if waiting to be engaged in a topic that interested her rather than contributing eagerly to whatever plangent exchanges were on offer. Even when the aunts arrived, no, particularly when the aunts arrived and settled in to their comments on the week’s news and complaints, she held slightly aloof, favouring them only with a brief smile when they held out a subject to which she was supposed, or accustomed, to contribute. I could see that they, critical as ever, were a little baffled by this. They had expected to assist at the accouchement of whatever transformation Heather was supposed to undergo. Yet she offered them no hints as to the reason why she so suddenly and strikingly appeared to have changed. Indeed, had the conversation not been sufficiently well nourished by the frequent exchanges between Dorrie and her sisters or Oscar and his brother, the atmosphere might have seemed a little charged. When Dorrie was complimented (by me) on her dark blue silk suit, Heather remained silent. When Dorrie explained that she had worried about the colour before buying it (‘I hope I did the right thing’), Heather was finally moved to interject, ‘You should go in for lighter colours. You wear too many prints.’ She then returned to a contemplation of her foot. Dorrie, naturally, was charmed by this show of assurance in her normally pliant daughter. Perhaps she was even charmed by Heather’s unilateral declaration of independence with regard to her aunts, for although she was a woman of exquisite humility, she was not unaware that Janet and Rosemary assumed the superiority of mothers whose daughters were safely and successfully married, and regarded her, Dorrie, as something of a failure in this respect. For they immediately conjectured that Heather had ‘met’ someone. Indeed their usual remark, their Parthian shot, half innocent, half guileful, was, ‘Met anyone nice this week?’ So delicate was this matter that Heather usually defused it by saying, ‘Nobody special,’ and accompanied this disclaimer with a smile of such general goodwill that there was little more to be said. But when Janet remarked, ‘You look as if you’ve met somebody nice at last,’ Heather replied, ‘I meet lots of nice people,’ thus affording her mother a moment of glory before she hastened to offer the sherry. For pride, Dorrie knew, went before a fall, and she was not a woman to rely on such slender evidence as a change of appearance. Nevertheless, we all felt that Heather had done something praiseworthy, even if puzzling. It was all the more puzzling in that she made no reference to it. Such was her opacity that she could neutralize all enquiries. It was as if she had overcome, in secret, whatever obstacle had hitherto kept her obediently at home, a daughter to her parents, one whose loyalty would never be in doubt, for there was no occasion on which it had ever been doubted.

  With the sherry the discussion turned to holidays. Oscar and Dorrie had a flat on the Spanish coast, near Puerto Banus, and they usually went there at the end of April for a couple of weeks. They so hated leaving home that they never contemplated this visit without a return of their habitual melancholy, and had to be urged into it by their more vigorous relations, all of whom seemed to be anxious to get them there and back as quickly as possible. I actually liked to think of them sitting on their balcony, silently musing on whatever pr
eoccupied them, emerging from this silence only to drink a cup of tea or to eat a thoughtful meal. I imagined them delivered from their leisure only when the sun went down, for although they dutifully paid their respects to it they preferred to withdraw behind the sliding glass doors that would eventually shut them off from the heat and the dazzle and the car horns. Then, in the delivering dusk, they would turn to each other and smile. I imagined Oscar holding out a hand to Dorrie and saying, ‘All right, darling?’, as if another day’s trial had been successfully overcome. Actually, although they went to the flat two or three times a year, I believe they were only happy in their accustomed chairs in Wimbledon. They were at the same time timorous and worldly, yet their preoccupations seemed to remove them from the sphere they so successfully occupied.

  ‘Yes, I expect we shall be off in a couple of weeks,’ said Oscar with a sigh, and Dorrie added, as if to comfort him, ‘Heather does so love the sun. And she needs it after working so hard all the winter.’

  Heather cleared her throat slowly. ‘I don’t think I’ll be coming this time,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can make it.’