Making Things Better Read online

  He was impressed by her honesty, both in bed and out of it. Used as he was to polite evasiveness on the part of his father, to regrets on the part of his mother, he thought he might find this difficult, but instead found it liberating. Josie was vigorously natural, in a way that impressed him as foreign. He had not come across this style before and thought it characteristically English, an opinion which he held in the teeth of much evidence to the contrary and which he never revised. Within days he knew that he wanted to marry her, wanted her comfortable confident presence in his life as a bulwark against future sorrow. The only problem that he could foresee was introducing her to the habits and customs that held sway in Hilltop Road, to the early nights, to the company of no one more exciting than Bijou Frank and Ostrovski, who looked in occasionally on Friday evenings, ‘keeping up the old traditions’, as he claimed, though they were none of them observant. Even his mother had abandoned her former intransigence, and had written to her sister care of the Beau Rivage in Nyon, the Nyon she had never visited, nor was likely to visit. But he need not have worried, for they had both adored Josie, seeing her, not unreasonably, as a symbol of life and health, ‘a breath of fresh air’, as his mother said. And it was somewhat to his surprise that Josie, with her exuberant forthright manner and her untidy hair, had made such a good impression. As, he was the first to concede, were his parents. His mother had bestirred herself and cooked a proper meal, which Josie ate with every sign of enjoyment. Their first meeting could not have been more auspicious.

  ‘Lovely place you’ve got here,’ said Josie. ‘Bit different from . . .’ The flat above the shop, she was about to say.

  He silenced her with a warning glance, but saw his father hide a small smile and turn away to hide a larger one.

  ‘Oh, Julius has shown you the other flat, has he?’ said his mother, unaware. ‘Yes, well, we shall have to come to terms with it. Of course it’s hardly what we’re used to.’

  ‘Must you move, then? Can’t you stay here?’

  ‘The owner, Mr Ostrovski, whom I’m sure you will meet, wants it for himself, though as an inveterate traveller he will hardly be here.’

  This was an old grievance, but how could they oppose Ostrovski’s wishes? His life was mysterious to them, his motives obscure. Yet he was their patron as well as their employer; there was no way in which they could argue their case. Without him they would be without either home or employment. They had not the means to move, although the shop more than paid its way. Julius privately thought that if he were in charge he would introduce some improvements and look further afield for sources of inspiration. In order to do this he would have to persuade his father to retire, though that might be difficult to see through. If retired, his father could take those long walks he had always loved, and once Josie was installed might come home to a warmer welcome, certainly a more interesting one, than he habitually received from his wife. That wife now had two spots of colour burning in her cheeks,

  and drank a cup of coffee, though it always made her tearful. It was the rising tension caused by her excited state, which Josie interpreted with professional detachment, that prompted her tactful announcement that it had been a lovely evening. She thanked her hostess profusely.

  ‘Where did you say you worked?’ asked his mother.

  ‘I do private work, look after people in their own homes.’

  ‘Ah!’ breathed his mother, with a beatific smile. ‘How lovely that must be for them!’ After that it was more or less settled.

  That night, after he had put Josie into a taxi, he went to bed and dreamed that his brother Freddy, wearing a striped jersey and a porter’s cap, was bad-temperedly sorting through a large pile of books that he wished to remove from this shop or library, whatever it was. They were for his own amusement, he implied, and instructed the assistant or librarian to parcel them up. ‘Have you got a lorry?’ he enquired, in the same bad-tempered way, though Julius, who was lurking in the background, thought that a van might be more appropriate. The main thing, when Freddy was in this mood, was to keep out of the way, yet the dream had no application to real life, in which Freddy rarely read anything more substantial than a newspaper, and sometimes not even that. He awoke with a feeling of weariness, told himself that he was shortly to be a married man, and resolved to be less attentive to his family’s wishes. Retired, his father could do more for them all; in fact his father’s putative retirement took on a certain inevitability in his mind. Changes needed to be made, and he was in a mood to make them.

  He wanted a change, that was the truth of the matter. They all wanted a change. Even Josie wanted a change. She was tired of nursing, tired of being in all day, wanted to be out in the fresh air. He made no objections, was hardly in a position to do so. In fact he liked the idea of her being at home, keeping his mother’s discontent at bay. It was decided very suddenly. When they announced that they had slipped out and got married his parents were not surprised. His father produced a bottle of champagne from a cupboard in their bedroom and they drank one another’s health, amazed that change had been brought about so easily.

  For a time changes went on being made. His father retired, with some relief, and Julius had the shop to himself. His mother kept house again: roast chicken appeared on the table, cold fried fish à la juive, fruit compotes. Josie seemed to enjoy her new position as daughter of the house, and was good-hearted enough to play her part when his mother, relapsing into one of her former malaises, required her attention. They got used to hearing her cry, ‘Josie! Josie!’ from her bedroom, even as they were preparing to go to bed themselves. Everyone’s health seemed to improve, despite his mother’s protestations. And the young people, as his father referred to them, delighted in their intimacy, the new indulgence that had been granted to them. Despite his mother’s efforts Josie still looked slightly unkempt, but Julius found this oddly attractive, and in any event without her clothes he thought her magnificent. She played her part; he would always be grateful to her for that. And she seemed pleased with her new life, pleased to have left the flat she shared with others in the same boat, pleased with the favours granted her, the love. Even the odd invasion of their privacy seemed acceptable; they had their own quarters at the other end of the flat, were not too much disturbed by the proximity of the Herz parents. Their marriage seemed the ideal solution for everyone.

  It was the move to Edgware Road that settled their fate. Here again Josie was invaluable. She commandeered the woman who cleaned the shop and got her to put the flat to rights. Without any authorization she removed several pieces of furniture from Hilltop Road and installed them in their new cramped quarters. She did her best to rally them, to keep up their spirits, though without much success. Their bedrooms were no longer separated by a substantial corridor. His mother’s former good humour faded, his father absented himself as much as he could, though he did not tell them what he did with his free time. Bijou Frank explained that she would no longer be able to visit so frequently, as the journey was now inconvenient. This distressed Mrs Herz, perhaps more than it distressed Bijou Frank, as his mother, always hypersensitive, observed. Their health, which had been so gratifying, began to suffer; again Josie complained of the lack of fresh air. Then his mother caught a cold and bronchitis developed, and it seemed as if Josie had become a nurse all over again. Their nights were more disturbed, by noises from the street, from the other bedroom. Julius was embarrassed by his parents’ night sounds, by their occasional arguments, and worse, by his mother’s appeals for help, for a remedy, for consolation. Josie would get up with a sigh, her good humour in abeyance. They would settle down again, but not for long. ‘Josie! Josie!’ would come the cry, the endless solicitation. It was love his mother wanted, and did not notice that that love was fast fading.

  And then it was gone. When Josie announced that she was leaving Julius could hardly blame her. He was tired of fielding his mother’s renewed complaints, saw that various incompatibilities were beginning to surface. He too wanted some peace,
saw no alternative to reinstating the family as it had been before its brief renaissance. He would take care of them, since he had, as always, to make things better. And his father seemed ill, failing. And his mother had not quite recovered, would need his full attention. He almost wished Josie out of the house, in order to spare them all. ‘I love you,’ he said to her, as he watched her packing her cases. ‘Yes, well,’ she replied. ‘In other circumstances, perhaps.’ He kissed her goodbye: it was the most solemn moment of his life, more solemn than his marriage. She too was moved. It was that moment of genuine emotion that confirmed for him that he had been a married man and was one no longer.

  4

  ‘Salmon fishcakes! My favourite!’

  He smiled. He had ascertained that they would be on the menu when he had made the booking. After this he had felt a diminution of interest, as if, the preparations for the occasion once made, nothing more needed to be done. He would have been happy, indeed happier, to let the lunch go ahead without him. But that was the way of it these days: all the pleasure was in the anticipation, very little in the enactment. He thought that all old people must feel this, this slight sinking of the heart when the time came for social interchange, when the need to be ‘positive’ (Josie’s favourite word) imposed its iron rule on a nature more given to reminiscence than to normal human curiosity.

  An additional reason for his slight depression was the conviction, conveniently overlooked when he was on his own, that Josie would do her strenuous best to rally him, to cheer him up, as though his delicate sadness were some kind of an affront. She had, she had once told him, always been ‘marvellous with old people’, from which category she excluded herself, although she was now sixty-six and technically a pensioner like himself. But she still worked, he reminded himself, in that garden centre where she seemed to have found her métier, as if nursing had been merely a false start. And that was what divided them, for her days were busy and his were empty, filled with routine tasks, with activities so modest that they would hardly register on the scale of her undertakings. This put him at a moral disadvantage, one more reason for keeping out of harm’s way, although the niceties were still to be observed.

  ‘Busy?’ he asked humbly.

  ‘Very. Bedding plants mostly. And I’ve got a delivery this afternoon. I’ll have to leave you fairly sharpish. I’m in the car park, luckily. Otherwise . . .’

  This was the only sign that she too was growing old, her failure to utter a proper sentence, as if time were too short for all the formalities of normal speech. Yet she looked much as she had always done. Her crinkly hair was now grey but her complexion was almost ruddy, witness to those days spent in the open air. Her light eyes, always her best feature, were still fine, but coming upon her unawares, as he might have done, he would have taken her for some kind of mutant, verging towards the masculine. Her shoulders had rounded and grown thicker, her hands larger and less cared for. As she buttered a piece of bread he noticed that the last two fingers of her left hand were slightly bent. But it would not do to mention this, for health could only be dealt with in the most general terms.

  ‘Keeping well?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, fine. You know me.’

  He noticed that she did not ask him about himself, but that he recognized as part of her strategy of being positive. She would not shoulder his burdens, not even if he were in dire distress. Suddenly he acknowledged his reluctance to play his part for what it was: a sort of disenchantment. What had seemed like a good idea in his reclusion was fast turning into a disappointment. He put this down to the impact of reality on a dreaming nature but could not entirely rid himself of the conviction that something had gone out of this relationship, and that the memories he had of it now appeared erroneous. She had been ahead of him in perceiving their incompatibility: she had a primitive practical intelligence which reached conclusions before he did and was adept at avoiding regrets. Her self-centredness, which he had always admired as a sign of health, protected her from many of life’s more awkward revelations, protected her too from feeling undue sympathy on another’s behalf. Perhaps she was too vivid a reminder of the past, one of the few people from times gone by who was still alive and in visibly good health. Again he felt a surge of gratitude for her sheer viability. There was no danger of mournful reflections in Josie’s presence, for the simple reason that she armoured herself against them. She would fail to pick up his signals in the interest of her own survival. He could not but think this an admirable, an enviable trait. To engage in a proper discussion of the sort he craved would have her bristling, on the defensive. He would have to content himself with admiring her, as he invariably did, admiring even those features he did not normally find admirable.

  This was the way most of their meetings were conducted now: lunch in a good restaurant and an attempt, on his side, to recapture former intimacy which was usually unsuccessful. It was a parody of courtship which had not been necessary in the early days of their acquaintance. He supposed that what he still wanted from her was some sort of recognition that he had played a part in her life. She seemed to have no need to reassure herself that his presence was the presence of an old and valued friend. Positive thinking had reinforced her separateness. He saw with a shock that her good will could not now be taken for granted. Bowing his head in confusion, he understood that she was slightly bored, that she might manufacture an argument just to keep boredom at bay, that she accepted his invitations because she felt that something was due to him but would have been much more comfortable with the odd telephone call, or none at all. And she was busy, he reminded himself, perhaps too busy for these old-fashioned ceremonies. Mainly, as always, he blamed himself for misconstruing her willingness to accept his invitations. By doing so she could cross him off her list of obligations. A prompt acceptance would put paid to further arrangements . . . And she had always had an excellent appetite. And he was always careful in his choice of a decent, even a prestigious restaurant, so that she would not too much regret what she might even have considered a waste of time. He still cherished the illusion that he might call on her in case of need, of illness. Now he saw that this was indeed an illusion, one that he had cherished for far too long. And she would not make it any easier for him to ask for her help. Her famous positive thinking, like an insurance policy, covered only herself. He wondered if she had had other partners. ‘Partner’ was the term she used when speaking of the manager of the garden centre. At first he had thought this a purely business term. Now he saw that ‘Tom’, about whose health he must also enquire, was rather more than that, that this thickset woman sitting opposite him had captured the heart of another. This struck him as part of life’s plan, a plan from which he appeared to have been excluded. Yet the joke was on himself, and, as if seeing it for the first time, his smile grew broader.

  ‘And how’s Tom?’ he asked, as the waiter poured the wine.

  ‘Tom’s fine,’ she said steadily. After that they felt easier with each other, as if a vital piece of information had been filed away. Fortunately their food arrived at this point. Some of his pleasure returned as he saw her delighted appreciation. In that at least he had not failed her.

  Nevertheless he would have been happier on his own. He stole a brief comprehensive look around him and settled on two women lunching together at an adjacent table. They were, he supposed, sisters, or sisters-in-law, certainly not working women. He supposed them to have met for a day in town, if women still did that sort of thing. They were properly, that is to say, formally dressed in a way that he recognized, and heavily made-up in a way he supposed appropriate to the wealthier suburbs. Their red-nailed hands bore wedding and engagement rings. Sisters, he thought, rather than sisters-in-law. Not always on good terms, as witnessed by that slight furrowing of the brows, that whisper of discontent, yet fine women, indispensable to each other. Anachronisms, spending busy idle wealthy days, such as his aunt Anna had spent at the Beau Rivage, with her daughter as a guarantee of her respectability. Not so easy fo
r a woman to represent respectability these days, he reflected, patting his lips with his napkin. Now, like Josie, they worked hard and accepted what protection was available. And became harsher and more confident in the process. He had a sudden memory of the dinner at the Beau Rivage, after his impetuous and wrong-headed proposal. He had never told Josie about this, nor would he, though he had frequently longed to tell someone. How elegant the women had looked, both in black! How he now wished that he had stayed longer, given himself a second chance! He should have obeyed that almost unimaginable impulse and stayed, simply not come home. But not to come home had struck him then as now as against nature. Not to come home was to disappear from view, as he had never had the courage to do. And home had been so longed for, so aspired to, that he knew that he would never have had the courage to abandon it, not even for a lifetime of future felicity. That too was an illusion. It was sheer common sense to stay with what one knew.

  It was strange how the Nyon episode was somehow secret. It was not a guilty secret; on the contrary, it fulfilled the function of a youthful indiscretion of which one is somehow proud, although he was already a middle-aged man when it had come about. The sheer unlikelihood of Josie’s understanding it had reinforced his desire to keep it to himself. The ladies in their black dresses . . . This memory was not communicable. And there was no need to confide in Josie, who certainly did not look to him for confidences. The less he told her the less she seemed to want to know. His deaths, those of his parents, of Freddy, he kept to himself. When he had measured the extent of his solitude he had sought her out, had briefly courted her understanding. He was more ashamed of this than of the Nyon episode. She had responded, but ‘positively’, urging him to take up various activities in which he had no interest, and if anything congratulating him on his new status as a completely isolated and unattached person. ‘Now you can please yourself,’ she had said, as if this were the only conclusion to be reached. It was then that he had inaugurated the custom of inviting her to lunch three or four times a year. He thought it a duty to be observed, a civilized duty which kept open lines of communication, though little was communicated. His father’s death from cancer, his mother’s decline, had no need to be dressed up in mournful colours: they both knew, in their different ways, that those deaths were a release. A release which she acknowledged but he did not. He still felt those hands grow slack in his, still metaphorically stood at their bedsides. By definition anyone who was not with him at those moments was a stranger. And his grief and subsequent loneliness were no cause for congratulations.