Look at Me Page 8

I laughed. ‘That’s because I walk to work. I love walking. But it’s no great distance. I live in Maida Vale. And I lived with my mother, until she died.’

  I felt him relax, and my little sadness passed. ‘I like walking too,’ he said. ‘I do quite a bit of it.’ At this point we were turned towards each other, and I sensed that Nick and Alix were watching us. ‘You’ve been at the Library some time now, haven’t you?’ he went on. ‘Do you like the work?’

  ‘But you don’t know her secret.,’ Alix broke in. ‘She’s really a writer. She’s writing a novel.’

  I protested, but Nick said, ‘Don’t be an idiot, Fanny. Tell him all about it.’

  So I succumbed and said my piece, and made it funny, and he laughed, and Alix called for the bill, and waved me imperiously aside when I insisted that it was my turn, and then James, whom I now thought of as James, with fairly impressive determination, brought out his wallet and put four ten pound notes on the table.

  ‘Well,’ said Alix, ‘you must be our guest next time.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ he agreed. ‘This has been so very pleasant. Can I offer you a nightcap somewhere?’

  I think perhaps that he had suddenly grown rather impatient with that hothouse atmosphere of intimacy that had so attracted him earlier in the evening. And his legs were so long that he found sitting at a small table rather uncomfortable. And so we found ourselves, somewhat incongruously, in the lounge of a very large hotel in Knightsbridge and sat ourselves round a table surrounded by acres of orange and brown geometrical carpet. There was no one else there but an Italian family chattering in a corner; their small daughter, a beautiful child with big over-tired eyes and tiny earrings, ran round and round, getting more tired, and stopping on her way to gaze at us. Alix offered her an olive from a dish on our table, and she covered her face with her hands and ran back to her mother.

  I remember that they were putting up Christmas decorations, two-dimensional gold trees fixed to the fake pilasters.

  ‘Rather early, isn’t it?’ I remarked to Alix. It was only the third week in October.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘They always do it early. Foreign tourists expect it. Anyway, it can’t be too early for me. I love Christmas.’

  ‘I don’t,’James and I said simultaneously, and looked at each other in surprise.

  ‘I usually spend it with my mother,’ he explained. ‘We’re both divorced and we both dread it.’

  ‘I can’t wait for it to be over,’ I confessed, not wanting to go into the business of Nancy and our sad little celebration. Public Holiday Syndrome is something you keep to yourself, I thought. I was amazed and enchanted to find a fellow sufferer.

  ‘But you must come with us this year,’ cried Alix. ‘A whole crowd of us usually gets together. You know practically everyone by now. It’s great fun. And it saves cooking.’

  ‘Spaghetti,’ murmured Nick, and dodged a glancing blow.

  ‘Boxing Day is even worse,’ James continued; he had by now quite lost his original shyness. ‘On Boxing Day I am obliged to go for a healthy walk. A very healthy walk.’

  Alix groaned. ‘On Boxing Day we go to Nick’s parents. Don’t remind me.’

  Nick laughed. ‘Darling, they adore you.’

  How interesting, I noted. They adore her. If I were in her place, I should adore them.

  ‘I usually go to the Benedicts’,’ I said. ‘Olivia, you know. In the Library. Her parents. But it usually ends up in a healthy walk, just the same.’

  ‘Sounds delirious,’ Alix broke in. ‘What exactly is the matter with that girl?’

  I shouldn’t have minded the question, although few people ask it. They take Olivia’s disability for granted, as she does. She was injured in a car accident when she was about sixteen. She spent a year in hospital, and a further year at home afterwards. She made a good recovery, but she has a certain amount of difficulty walking, although as she is always sitting down this is rarely noticed. What had caught Alix’s eye was her neck brace, that cruel pink collar on which her beautiful head so uncomfortably rests. In my mind’s eye I remembered her on that day when Nick had brought Alix to the Library and had invited me to dinner. Olivia had blushed at Alix’s glance, and then had whitened when forced to witness the performance with the hair. She 80 a had picked up a pair of scissors and had begun to trim a photograph; she had had to bring it up rather high into her field of vision and Alix had noted this too.

  I also saw Olivia’s perfect face, a colourless olive face with eyes so black that the iris and the pupil seemed to be one. I saw the long waving black hair parted in the middle and falling to her shoulders, over the neck brace. It is this face, and her impeccable good sense and balance, that makes me literally forget her movements when she has to get up from her chair. She is so good at her job, such a natural scholar, that it does not matter that she cannot walk round the tables or carry piles of photographs. I do that for her. It works out quite easily, and what I have in physical strength, she has in moral strength. We are dear friends.

  I also see her on those Sundays, after lunch and the brazil nuts, when her untidy mother and her silent father, both rather ugly people, seat her in her chair in the drawing room and gaze at her with unsentimental love. They seem more impressed with her beauty than with her disability, and as they have always taken this attitude, which is perfectly genuine, she is singularly uninhibited about her appearance. I don’t know what she feels about it, for she never mentions it, and I have long since ceased to notice it. I put down her blush to her love for Nick, rather than to anything Alix had said or done.

  ‘Spinal damage. She manages very well,’ said James, for I could not trust myself to answer. Suddenly the surroundings of that hotel, with the geometrical carpet and the gold trees, seemed tawdry, the refuge of people who had no genuine reason to be out. I had already got Olivia’s Christmas present, a first edition of The Ordeal of Richard Feveral, her favourite novel, and I also saw the smile that would break up her little face when I gave it to her.

  Alix began to stir, rather restlessly. ‘Well, I think we can do better than that,’ she said. James and I looked at each other, and after a moment smiled. ‘I’ll have a word with Maria,’ said Alix. ‘And let you know. Put yourselves in my hands.’ She looked at us speculatively. ‘You could do worse,’ she added.

  It was close to midnight when we got outside. It was a beautiful night, cold and misty, with a yellow moon. I was tired but excited; I had had such an extraordinary evening that I did not want it to end. I wanted, in fact, to walk a little, but discussions were already under way between Alix and Nick about who was to be dropped first. James, obviously. Markham Street was closer than Maida Vale. The car, when Nick opened the door, smelt of cigarettes.

  ‘Oh,’ I said impulsively. ‘I wish we could walk.’

  ‘We can,’ James replied. ‘At least, we can. I’ll walk you home, Frances.’

  I turned to Alix and then to Nick, both of whom looked faintly amused.

  ‘I see,’ said Alix. ‘I see.’ She laughed, and we had to join in. And this time I laughed with genuine pleasure and surprise. For the one thing I had not expected was to be written into the plot. I had really not expected that at all.

  We parted with promises to ring up the following day, and our voices left an echo in the misty air.

  James and I walked in silence until we got to the top of Sloane Street. Everything around us was quiet, but not quiet enough for me. The air was very still, and there was a faint scent of burnt leaves. After a moment I said, ‘Do you think we could walk through the park?’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘It’s what I intended. You’re not tired, are you? Could you walk all the way home?’ I think that was the happiest night of my life. We walked in complete silence through the silent park, and it seemed to me that instead of drawing to a close the year was just beginning. Beginnings are so beautiful. Although I am naturally pale, I could feel the blood warm in my cheeks. I drew no conclusion from this, and my instinct was cor
rect. I was not falling in love. Nor was there any likelihood that I might. But I was being protected, and that was something that I had not experienced for as long as I could remember. I was coming first with someone, as I had not done for some sad months past, and in my heart of hearts for longer, much longer.

  ‘They’re a remarkable couple, aren’t they?’ he asked, more to break the silence than anything else. ‘Remarkable.’ I agreed. ‘Wonderful friends.’

  So we walked up the Edgware Road, past the nurses’ uniforms and the sex shops and the bleary light from the launderette, and after a while he said, ‘You’re not tired, are you?’ and I shook my head, for I could have gone on for ever.

  ‘But how will you get back?’ I asked him suddenly, when we were at my door. ‘You have no car, and taxis are hopeless around here.’

  ‘I’ll walk back,’ he replied. ‘Goodnight, Frances. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  That night I did not bother to write.

  Six

  And I did not write for many evenings that followed. In my new security I began to see it all in a different light. I began to hate that inner chemical excitement that made me run the words through in my head while getting ready to set them down on the page; I felt a revulsion against the long isolation that writing imposes, the claustration, the sense of exclusion; I experienced a thrill of distaste for the alternative life that writing is supposed to represent. It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world’s tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present, and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state ‘I hurt’ or ‘I hate’ or ‘I want’. Or, indeed, ‘Look at me’. And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, of thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory.

  So that when I received a congratulatory letter from the prestigious American magazine, and the news that my story about Dr Leventhal’s Hellenic adventures would shortly be published, I felt no urge to sit down and write another. Rather the opposite. I looked on my success as the fitting conclusion to a career wrongly chosen, and dangerous in its implications of future effort and loneliness. I could now sign off with a flourish and never write again.

  Of course, I was pleased, in a nonessential way. I felt the reward was undeserved because I no longer wanted that sort of reward. But Olivia was pleased, if only because she takes things so much more seriously than I do. And James was delighted. His haughty, horsey face broke into a smile such as I had never seen before when I told him about it. That smile was directed at the magazine, which he held in his hands, and I knew then that I wanted that smile to be directed nowhere but at myself. Look at me, I wanted to say, look at me. That was how and when I found out about writing.

  I telephoned Alix, of course, because that is the sort of thing she loves. She gave a shout, and said, ‘Hey, hey. We must celebrate.’

  ‘My treat,’ I said. ‘I should hope so,’ was her reply. ‘Shall I ask James to join us?’ I felt awkward at this point because I had thought of James so much that I could not have enjoyed this little celebration if he had not been there, so I decided to be entirely honest and said to Alix, ‘Oh, yes please. Four is a better number than three, don’t you think?’ Then I wondered if I had offended her because there was a short silence, and she said, ‘I think two is the best number of all, myself’, and I agreed so fervently that I managed to convince myself that we had been talking about the same thing. Perhaps we had; I shall never know.

  Beginnings are so beautiful. I was not in love with James, but now there was something to get up for in the mornings, other than that withering little routine that would eventually transform me into a version of Miss Morpeth, although I had no niece in Australia who might brighten my last years. Nor would I turn into Mrs Halloran, still game, but doomed to hopelessness. No glasses of gin for me, no bottle in the wardrobe of a room in a hotel in South Kensington, no evenings lying on the bed dressed in a housecoat too young and too pink, casting superior horoscopes for those who fear the future. With what thankfulness did I register my deliverance from this dread, which had possessed me for as long as I could remember. I breathed more deeply, slept more soundly, ate more heartily, freed from this weight. Nancy’s mumblings and shufflings, ceased to bother me, for they no longer represented the shades of the prison house. In fact I began to love her as I had loved her long ago, when, as a child, I ran to her to be kissed, and made up treats for her. I realized that she too must feel isolated, particularly as she was so shy and did not make friends easily. As I swung out of the building one morning, I had a word with the porter, Mr Reardon, and arranged for him to go up to the flat and have tea, when he came off duty. He could sit with Nancy for half an hour, and give her the evening paper, which he always bought at lunchtime, for the racing forecasts. So that Nancy felt a little happier too.

  I felt strong, I felt energetic, I felt… young. I had never felt this before. I had always understood that I would have to assume responsibilities that others found unacceptable. I had been writing the cheques and paying the bills and the tax when I was still in my teens; it was always I who called the doctor. Nancy would ask me to buy her a new dress, a new cardigan. ‘Like my blue one, Miss Fan. The one Madam likes.’ Every time I looked at her I could see some garment that I had bought either for Nancy, or for my mother, and the sadness of those 86 M afternoons, in department stores, all alone, fingering modest nightgowns, opaque stockings, discreet and genteel garments, and taking them home to that claustral quiet, for their inspection. They loved those times. But I hated them. They were a parody of all the shopping I wanted to do. They interfered with my impulse to please myself, so that I might please others.

  I had never thought myself interesting to look at, but now I could not help noticing that my eyes were wider, my expression lively with anticipation. I began to study my appearance in the glass. I looked through my clothes and put the dull sensible things on one side. I got rid of the heavy walking shoes, and gave my navy coat to Nancy. I bought a couple of pullovers, and a wool shirt, in light fresh colours, sky blue and white. I resurrected a pale grey dress with a white puritan collar and a black bow at the neck that I had not worn for a couple of years and had folded up and put aside because I thought it looked too elaborate for the sort of life I led. Now, as I examined myself with a franker sort of appreciation, I thought it made me look interesting, almost unusually so. I began to look forward to dressing up for the day that lay before me.

  My attitudes in general seemed to have undergone a change for the better, making me less sharp, more receptive. I felt myself sliding deliciously downwards into a miasma of kindliness. I found amusement in my routine at the Library, not the engineered amusement that I had tried to amass for my stories, but genuine human oddness and fascination. I told no one of the change in myself, the sense I had that life was opening up for my inspection, and more than that, for my participation. Mrs Halloran had long since stopped waiting for me to mention Nick’s frequent appearances round the door when he collected me in the evenings. I had disappointed her, I know, but I did not wish to share what I had. For it was such a novelty for me to have anything, although from her point of view I was one of the lucky ones, with the flat and my job and my stable income. I could not tell her that I was only just beginning my life, for she would have stared at me, had such a conversation ever taken place, and asked me what had ever stood in my way. I could not tell her that even in defeat, which was how I viewed my life until this moment, there are certain loyalties to be observed. Her lack of sympathy, I felt, would still have been absolute.

  Olivia was pleased, although I had said nothing to her. She was pleased for me, because I was happy, a
lthough she may have regretted things for herself. She had not only her love for Nick to forget, but also the hope, which our two mothers had silently shared, that I might marry her brother David. I believe my mother said something to Olivia, when she began to get so very ill, although Olivia, being a creature of exquisite delicacy, has never mentioned this to me. But she knows that my mother loved her; she remembers my mother’s thin hand caressing her wondrous hair; she feels the loyalty too. Yet she was pleased for me.

  I saw James every day. He would linger in the Library until I arrived in the morning, and I would make us both some coffee, which we drank from the Mickey Mouse mugs. And if we were not going to the Frasers, or meeting at the restaurant, he would walk me home in the evenings. I worried that I could not invite him to a meal, explaining that I would have to get Nancy used to the idea., but he said, ‘We have plenty of time’, and so there was no awkwardness on that score. The days passed swiftly between our early morning meetings and our long walks home. I don’t think that anyone noticed anything. James was much more reticent than I was, much more careful. I was cautious because I could not believe my good fortune; when I could believe it, I knew that I should become extravagantly demonstrative. But he had a high level of control, which I suppose went with his professional demeanour; at any rate, it went well with the rusty unused voice and the haughty and impassive face. I found such reticence very exciting. For I knew he cared for me.

  We were very shy with each other. I never asked him about his divorce, for I think I sensed that he too wanted to begin again. Because we were so shy - longing for our meetings, but sometimes faltering in conversation - we made sure that we went out with the Frasers a great deal. Those evenings at the restaurant, with James’s arm lying across the back of my chair, and Maria sitting down with us - so that we were five - were very precious to me. Alix and Nick made fun of us a little, but we learned to deal with it, as long as we were together. ‘Maria,’ Alix would say, ‘take a look at this. Aren’t they sweet?’