A Friend from England Read online

  Towards Oscar and Dorrie I felt differently. Realizing that they might in secret, and so discreetly, have commiserated over my prospects, I felt a certain amount of hurt and indignation, which I quickly converted into the sort of impatience that comes over one with the realization that a love affair is going badly and that it would be better to end it. I am good at cutting my losses, as many people have found out in their time. But despite all my efforts I still thought of them kindly and with respect; I even thought of them with nostalgia for the whole picture of their lives, which they conducted in a sort of lost paradise of unworldliness that was very far from anything I knew, or with which I had contact. I still found myself thinking of them, and constructing their habits around them: I remembered little things like the pattern of their teacups, or Dorrie’s reported shopping expeditions, or the way the aunts dressed up for their Saturday afternoon visits. I remembered with astonishment their tranquil investment in the things of this world, as if they thought they were going to live for ever, but at the same time the wistfulness with which they regarded each other, as if they really knew that one of them would die first. What would happen then? Would Heather be up to the task of comforting and sustaining? Would anyone? Who could be a parent to those parents when the time came, when that Biblical day arrived and the silver chord, the golden bowl, revealed their essential fragility? Love, which they had never lacked, surrounded them like a haze of sunlight; they were not made for the dark, as some of us are. Love had made them vulnerable, only able to seek and find each other. And was this condition, which I saw as inherently painful, the reason why their daughter had deliberately chosen its opposite, thus permitting herself to rest secure in the knowledge that she would never suffer abandonment, dereliction, infidelity, bereavement? I had always thought her shrewd, and I saw her now as very much her father’s daughter. Where’s your mother? I heard, or seemed to hear, Oscar’s question, which meant so much more than it was designed to mean, as if he feared that the object of his love were eternally about to disappear, as if he might then embark on some mythic quest to bring her back. Thus Heather, saving all her strength in this unrealistic and insignificant marriage of hers, might at last find herself called upon to play her part, having perfected herself in secret for this purpose. For I knew for a fact that Dorrie would die first.

  An unpleasant thing happened around that time. I was sitting in my flat one evening, wondering whether to go out or stay in, when the telephone rang. Most of my friends were out of town and I did not recognize the voice, which sounded brisk and sporty.

  ‘Rachel? Hallo, my dear. Just wondered how you were.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Who is this?’

  There was a sort of chuckle at the other end. ‘Come on, now. You can’t have forgotten me already.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘Who is this?’

  Another chuckle. ‘A friend of yours. Or rather someone who would like to be a friend. You look like a girl who could be a very good friend.’

  A terrible realization came upon me. ‘Is that Colonel Sandberg?’

  The voice became brisker. ‘Got it in one. How about meeting me for a drink? The Churchill suit you? Half an hour?’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said again, rather carefully. ‘I was just going out. So sorry. Goodbye.’

  I put down the telephone, picked up my bag, and went out for a very long walk. I didn’t get back until it was quite dark. After that, I made a habit of being out in the evenings – I knew he wouldn’t telephone in the daytime – thus giving him time to cast his nets elsewhere. The fact that it would be difficult or unwise to face him for a bit was an additional reason for staying away from the young Sandbergs for a little while. The situation was becoming overburdened with restrictions.

  I took to walking, therefore, in those late summer evenings. I was disgusted, not in any puritanical or moralistic sense, but because I felt that my life was perhaps a little adrift. If someone as horrible as the Colonel had found me out, then I had to know that something was wrong. And yet I would defend myself. It seemed to me that I conducted my life on rather enlightened principles; that is to say, I imposed certain restraints on my feelings, kept a very open mind, rather despised those conventions that are supposed to bring security, and passed lightly on whenever I saw trouble coming. I had resolved at a very early stage never to be reduced to any form of emotional beggary, never to plead, never to impose guilt, and never to consider the world well lost for love. I think of myself as a plain dealer and I am rather proud of the honesty of my transactions. After all, I have had to make my way in the world, and I could only do so by being clear-eyed and self-reliant. I forbid myself to remember that it has not always been easy, and I never, ever, blame my parents: that sort of thing is so old hat. I pass lightly through life, without anguished attachments, and this was nearly always the way I intended it to be. I say nearly always because I do sometimes have these odd dreams. The dreams are of no interest in themselves, but they leave me wondering where they came from. In dreams I bear children, sink smiling into loving arms, fight my way out of empty rooms, and regularly drown. I wake up in a state of astonishment, and sometimes of fear, but I banish the memory of the dreams, of which no one knows anything. Telling dreams, like blaming one’s parents, or falling in love and making a fool of oneself, comes into my category of forbidden things.

  And yet the ghastly Teddy, who was obviously even more used to this kind of thing than I was, but fortunately rather out of date, had singled me out. I felt almost ashamed until I realized that he was one of those old-fashioned men who think that a liberated woman is fair game and that she will only want a little masculine attention in order to turn back thankfully into the unreconstructed model. He probably thought he was being rather kind. Had I accepted his invitation I should no doubt have been subjected to a certain amount of propaganda, the same propaganda he had been using all his life in order to get women to change their minds, but virtuously backed up by a desire to make me see the light. Seduction to him would always be disguised as conversion, and I had no doubt that somewhere along the primrose path he would utter the words, ‘There’s a good girl!’ For with his grey conscience, he would look for easy conquests and turn them to good account, i.e. his own. And in some disreputable way this would be a matter for congratulation all round. I laughed when I recognized the stereotype, and wondered why it had taken me so long. I would know how to deal with the Colonel if he ever made the same mistake again.

  Therefore I walked, in the muggy evenings, with the trees now dusty, the scent of petrol on the exhausted air, the streets enclosing me safely in their grids, their squares, their crescents; I passed on lightly in my landlocked freedom, my feet skimming the grey pavements, my hand occasionally stretching out to pluck a grimy leaf, my head quite free of reminiscence. Sometimes I covered miles in a single evening and returned home exhilarated rather than tired, rejoicing in the fact that I had found my old self intact, my wary enlightened self. The more I walked, the lighter I felt. I rarely saw the passing landscape. Most of the time I walked with head bent, hands in pockets, looking up only at occasional traffic lights, when I sensed rather than heard the bulk of an approaching bus, or when brought to a halt by a crowd of people emerging from a cinema. I liked these anonymous evenings and my feral wanderings: I liked to eat carelessly in Italian cafés with steam covering the windows, or drink coffee in the curious lounges of tourist hotels. Sometimes I would buy my supplies in those Asian shops which are the last to close, and in which the exhausted owner, his eyes ringed with darker brown, would extend a languid hand to remove my purchases from my wire basket: some washing-up liquid, a packet of tea, two grapefruit and a couple of foreign newspapers. I would postpone my return to the flat for as long as I could: only when I trudged up the many stairs would I realize how far I had walked. But my exertions always ensured a good night’s sleep, without dreams of any kind.

  It was a quiet summer. Eileen was on holiday in southern Turkey, so Robin and I ma
nned the shop together. We got on extremely well, largely because neither of us spoke much to the other; our routines were so established, and we had known each other for so long, that there was not much need to speak. His odd appearance never bothered me, although customers often took him for some sort of caretaker. He dressed very formally in suits that looked as if they belonged to someone else and were vaguely crushed; I dare say he got them second-hand. In winter he tended to turn up in a raglan coat, rather short, and an old-fashioned soft hat. This summer he favoured a black cotton shirt and black trousers with pleats and pockets that stood out at the sides: standard wear in certain quarters in about 1952. Where he got this stuff I never asked, although I did sometimes speculate rather idly about his hair which was cut very short and from time to time appeared more irregularly auburn than at others. The collars of his defeated shirts were rather tight and the knots of his ties very small. He had, however, his occasions of splendour. For a night out at one of his clubs he would change into immaculate jeans and a polo shirt with a motif over the left breast, or a linen jacket, into the top pocket of which a pair of dark glasses would be inserted. I think it pleased him to dress like a poor clerk in the daytime and a man about town in the evenings. I sometimes wished that he would reverse the procedure, but he never did. I could quite see that after his evening swim he would want to change his personality; the working day would thus be symbolically washed away, and the real, the authentic Robin would emerge, as if after a baptism. I sometimes ran into him in the course of my evening walks, either coming home from the theatre or going off to one of his numerous clubs. As he lives just around the corner from me this was hardly surprising. Otherwise, our lives did not impinge. From time to time he would urge me to join him for a swim, but I knew how to deal with that one. He was never surprised and only mildly regretful; I think he had kindly ideas about companionship, of which I sensed that he had more need than I did. But he was very incurious, which I found restful. Perhaps that was why we got on so well; each of us was basically incurious about the other. We accepted each other, in a ruminative and casual manner, and moved like dreamers through our day, pausing occasionally for mugs of tea which he made in the back of the shop, and sometimes not speaking for hours.

  In the evenings he seemed brisker and more purposeful. Once he asked me to join him for a drink and I idly agreed, thinking that we would go to the pub on the corner. He had in mind, however, a new wine bar that had just opened, an odd place, down some basement steps, specializing in elaborate cocktails, and staffed by men in mess jackets. Despite its restricted space it was got up to look like an ocean liner. There was even the standard well-dressed slightly drunk woman at the bar, trying to engage the barman in conversation, though I suspected that she too was on the staff.

  ‘Do you come here often?’ I asked, aware that this ritual remark was well in keeping with the spirit of the place.

  ‘Only just opened,’ he replied. ‘Going to do well, though. Look over there.’

  I saw a couple of well-known faces, or at least faces known to me from the gossip columns. I suppose this district is coming up in the world, although I cannot imagine how people can enjoy spending their evenings underground in this manner. I emerged thankfully into the hazy summer evening, breathing the dust-laden air. I left him there. I suppose that after keeping himself fit as he did he could stand the confinement better than I could. I preferred my odd hypnotic walks, and in his acquiescent way he accepted this. But it was kind of him. He often asked me to join him and never seemed to mind if I refused.

  Days and evenings passed in this manner, and it occurred to me, with the sharpening of the weather, that I had not seen the Livingstones, nor made contact, for some time. I remembered my invitation to Heather and Michael, now rather diminished in urgency by the passage of time and my abortive telephone call, and I found myself somewhat reluctant to renew it. If, as I suspected, we had drifted apart, was there really any point in trying to drift together again? We had nothing in common, nothing really to talk about, and besides, I preferred my pared-down life to their awkward luxuriant alliance, with its attendant aura of unspoken explanations, their mutuality, which might conceal complicity or its very opposite. Heather had for me none of the charm of her parents, although I could see that she was programmed to turn into her mother; I somehow felt that this process would be less interesting than the finished effect of Dorrie’s slightly anxious personality. Heather would be Dorrie with all the affection removed, repeating gestures which were, or had been, so attractive to me, but without their original grace. She would be either coarsened by her husband, or, in learning to ignore him, as she surely would, retreat into mutism, a condition to which she was no stranger. In either case, she would fail to surprise me. I rather dreaded the evening I had promised them, but I remembered the look of pleasure with which it had been greeted, and I decided that I must make good that promise. It was only one evening to sacrifice, and after that it would be honourable to move into a more remote form of acquaintance. After that, surely, nothing more would be required of me.

  Of course, I regretted losing contact with her parents, but that was perhaps also in the nature of things. Yet when I telephoned Heather’s flat it was Dorrie who answered, and who sounded delighted to hear my voice. Heather and Michael were still in Spain, she said, and she and Oscar were looking after the flat for them. I expressed some surprise that they had been gone so long, but it appeared that Heather had been staying with them in Puerto Banus while Michael went off on his manoeuvres up and down the coast. He was obviously being encouraged to take on his father’s responsibilities; as these were to me always mysterious, and as his father had remained in town – a matter to which neither of us would ever refer – I took it as a good sign, although it did seem to me a little odd that Heather should fail to accompany him. But they were both so much the children of their parents that perhaps it was not odd at all, or at least it was only odd to me. The marriage, as far as I could see, had not made much difference to any of them, or rather to their habits. This was perhaps what happened in bourgeois families, or just in families that kept a loving watch on each other. I have noticed that women who do well, have confidence in themselves, impose themselves tranquilly on the world, are precisely those women who have always been well looked after, have been prized, have represented to their parents their parents’ best efforts. I did not doubt that even now Dorrie was carefully putting food into Heather’s larder, tidying her bedroom, arranging fresh flowers. She was one of those women who never arrive empty-handed, whose anxious loving care extends to everyone she knows. This great out-flowing of love had been accounted a sign of weakness, of immaturity, by her sharper sisters, who saw her set upon by thieves, spongers, confidence tricksters. But I do not believe that she ever was, thus confounding their expectations. It was they who brought to those tea-parties stories of exploitation by plumbers, shop assistants, traffic wardens, and who went through life in a cloud of suspicion. Dorrie herself was untroubled by all this, and by their forebodings. I suppose she had a charmed life.

  ‘Rachel!’ she said. ‘How lovely to hear from you! Oscar and I were beginning to wonder what had become of you. Are you all right, dear?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I was wondering whether Heather and Michael might have an evening free to have dinner with me.’

  ‘Well, of course, they’d love to, dear. We’re expecting them home at the weekend. I’ll ask Heather to telephone you. I know she’d love to see you again. What have you been doing with yourself?’

  I told her that I had nothing to report, and then, aware that this might make me sound pitiable, enquired about their summer.

  ‘Well, we’ve been in Spain, you know that, and we’ve had Heather with us, which has been lovely. I’m afraid we’ve been missing her terribly. Oscar has been quite down, although he would never admit it. And we haven’t seen you either, which has been sad. We’ve been quite thrown back on each other. We’ve felt quite old. Well, we are old,
I suppose.’ She laughed sadly, as if almost unable to believe such a thing. I felt slightly impatient. There is no need to anticipate old age these days, and besides, she could not have been more than sixty. Oscar was perhaps a few years older. But living as they did, removed from the world’s concerns, I supposed that they would notice little warnings, little alterations more readily. They were, in any event, so concentrated on each other’s well-being that any tiny change of mood would be charted with alarm, even with genuine fear, for what could save either of them from the decline of the other? Perhaps they simply needed young company. I felt ashamed, then, of my long period of silence, and asked if I could come and see them. At this Dorrie cheered up immediately.

  ‘Come now, dear, if you’ve nothing better to do. We shall be in all the evening. Come and share our meal. Oscar would love to see you. And we could tell you all the news.’

  For news of Heather was sacred, and could not be delivered over the telephone. I arranged to go to Heather’s flat after I had shut the shop.

  I felt a renewal of affection for them, as I trudged along the Bayswater Road. Dorrie’s simple greeting, her regret over my absence, were, after all, extremely heart-warming. And I wanted Oscar’s advice, for Eileen was thinking of retiring and I wondered if I could afford to buy her share of the business. It would be a good thing for me to own half the shop: Robin and I could run it amicably together, although it would cut down on my free time. I often had thoughts of retiring myself, but of course that was impossible at my age. Nevertheless, it would be nice to be free. Freedom was not really a viable proposition, although an illusion of freedom – and it nearly always is an illusion – came to me in dreams, those same dreams in which I loved and drowned. What would I do with myself? After all, I was free now, I reflected; I had never been otherwise. Free to come and go as I pleased, free to walk the streets, free to find my own adventures. There was no lack of freedom in my life. On the other hand, it was very nice for once to be expected.