A Private View Read online

  ‘Well, dear,’ she said predictably, as he opened the door to her.

  ‘Well dear,’ he replied, ushering her into the sitting-room. After these preliminaries he thought he could probably foresee what the rest of the day’s conversation would be. Louise would talk about her grandchildren, in whom he took not the slightest interest, and he would make appropriate noises, diverting her attention from time to time to a sight, a sound, which he thought would please her: the nearly tame blackbird that lingered in the tree outside his window, a child’s face glimpsed for a second amid the hurrying crowds. He preferred anonymous children to those who came complete with a set of parents: anonymous children belonged to everyone. Louise, as usual, would ask few questions, leaving his inner life undisturbed. They were most in harmony during their habitual long silences. It was silence rather than dialogue, the silence of things unsaid but understood, which had confirmed their original unity, and Bland now looked forward to those intervals, on which he knew he could count, and in which he could recapture their earlier closeness, so essential to them both and yet so familiar that surely a very slight feeling of tedium was forgivable.

  Nevertheless, he was pleased, as always, to see her. She looked well, in her forest-green suit, with the Hermès scarf he had given her the previous Christmas. ‘Comely’ was the word he would have chosen to describe her. She had the unsurprising good looks of a healthy woman who was now able to care for herself, to shop selectively, and to visit the hairdresser twice a week. Fine mild eyes beamed from under unreconstructed brows: a discreet pink lipstick enlivened the still girlish mouth. She had never been a beauty, but had always contrived to be pleasing. Now the gaze was kindly but frank, as if there were no longer any need to be modest, and the hair was carefully coiffured in a style appropriate to the older woman. Her figure, slight in his day, had in fact filled out considerably, although her legs had remained slim. She took a pleasure in her appearance, which he thought reflected her pleasure in the life she now lived as a contented widow in a small town where she was well known and well liked. Yet he knew that her visits to London, and to him, were part of that pleasure, just as they had become part of that agreeable well-run life. She saw no anomalies in their long history: in her view it had always been meant to continue, and indeed to end like this.

  ‘We’ll have lunch round the corner,’ he said, already in a hurry. ‘And then I want you to see the Sickert exhibition. It’s quite exceptional. I saw it yesterday and I can’t wait to go again.’

  ‘Whatever you say,’ she replied. ‘But you will remember that I want to go to Selfridges, won’t you? I told you about the present situation, didn’t I? And I want to look at curtain material. That blue in the drawing-room faded quite badly last summer.’ (‘Drawing-room’, he noted.) He made a noncommittal noise.

  ‘And yet it was such a good colour,’ she went on. ‘Perhaps if I got a darker shade …’

  ‘Shall we have a quick lunch first?’ he said impatiently. ‘Then we can go straight to the exhibition. You can do your shopping afterwards, and come to me for tea.’

  ‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘As long as you leave me plenty of time.’

  She snapped shut her powder compact, retied her scarf, and announced herself to be ready. They walked companionably round the corner to the Italian restaurant, where he was well known, and ate, as always, veal. ‘Nice to see you again, sir,’ said the waiter. Of course, there had been that dinner the other night. He smiled. The first of the silences installed itself, and was prolonged until they had drunk their coffee. ‘Lovely,’ she repeated. It was so easy to give her pleasure, he reflected; that had always been part of her charm. It may even have made him a little lazy, as if he might have preferred more of a challenge: more foreplay, he privately termed it. Yet he knew that a more difficult woman would have defeated him, might entertain him initially but would baffle him and leave him bereft, if not positively damaged. With Louise he was safe. That too was part of her charm. It was a gift for which men were nearly always grateful. And if they sometimes grew discontented, feeling in themselves an unused store of curiosity, they eventually grew resigned as time and age did their inexorable work. That was why old married couples seemed so contented, he thought: they had bowed to necessity, which in their case was not the mother of invention, but its opposite. They were like survivors of a war, grateful for a comrade in adversity, grateful too that hostilities were at an end, and that a peace treaty had been signed and witnessed.

  After that, Bland thought, most men would have the delicacy to keep their disappointment to themselves, as he did now. The day seemed to have become dusky very early, although it was only just past two, and the crowds in the streets, surely more numerous than usual, impeded their progress. In the taxi she asked him about his Christmas plans. He answered her abstractedly, remembering only that he had meant to go away. ‘I was thinking of Rome,’ he said, only half believing in the project. ‘I shall be alone this year,’ she told him. ‘They’re all going to Sarah’s parents. I thought of a cruise, but I hate travelling alone.’

  ‘Maybe we could go together,’ he said moodily, aware that the onus was now on him to express enthusiasm. A sudden shower of rain spattered the window of the taxi: he felt glum. ‘That’s why it got so dark,’ she observed. ‘Maybe it’ll clear up now.’

  But the day became slightly more melancholy, and the pictures did nothing to cheer him. He gazed conscientiously at the images which had so delighted him on the previous day, and did his best to point them out to Louise, but he seemed to have lost the thread, and the crowds got on his nerves. Louise laughed dutifully at the Tiller Girls, but seemed untouched by Venice, by Dieppe, and by the comic tragedies so slyly indicated by the droop of a moustache, a head propped up by an exasperated hand. He would have to come back another day on his own, he decided; maybe he was tired. He steered her thankfully towards the exit, and put her in a taxi to Selfridges. He would walk back, he told her; he would see her later. Alone he took a deep breath, glad of the respite. Yet I am always glad to see her, he reminded himself. Perhaps I am not quite myself, burdened with all this new leisure. Yet he knew that was not the cause of his malaise. He felt himself to be like one of the failures in the pictures, seedy, tetchy, graceless. He was glad of the dark afternoon, so that he could no longer catch sight of himself.

  By contrast the flat seemed almost welcoming. He opened a window on to the darkling sky, leaned out, and breathed deeply. He was, he supposed, prepared for the evening, which would be long. Unwilling to pull curtains, he remained leaning on the window-sill, aware that for a man of his age such a brooding position was ridiculous. When Louise’s steps could be heard in the quiet street, and he could just make out her form advancing confidently towards him, he retreated into the room, and put the day to rest.

  Later it became better. As they sat together, all the lamps lit and the tea-tray between them, he felt as fond of her now as he had always been, and ascribed his earlier disaffection to some passing physical cause. He always loved her most when she was about to leave, when the end of her visit was in sight. Then it seemed to him imperative to arrange a further meeting, for she was in a sense his lifeline, even though he had grown as used to her as a child is to its mother. And she was always pleased to fit in with his plans, or even to suggest a plan of her own. He liked to look at pictures and she at gardens: they shared and shared alike.

  ‘I’ll ring on Sunday, of course,’ he said.

  She looked at her watch. ‘I’ve still got a few minutes,’ she said. ‘There’s your doorbell.’ They looked at each other in amazement, as if the world had suddenly discovered the fact of their careful liaison.

  ‘I’m not expecting anyone,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you’d better answer it. What a shame. Well, I’ll leave you to them, whoever they are.’

  Bland opened the door to Katy and Mrs Lydiard, whom he saw to be burdened with expensive carrier bags. Mrs Lydiard looked excited and a little dishevelled: behind her back Katy mad
e a small face, her eyes rolling upwards. ‘We’ve been shopping!’ exclaimed Mrs Lydiard. ‘We’ve been frightfully extravagant, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, you have, Moira. I haven’t bought a thing. But I do have this lovely scarf that Moira bought me,’ she added, in response to a sharp glance from Mrs Lydiard. Bland noted that they both smelt of the same asphyxiating scent. He also saw that Katy was not particularly impressed by her gift, saw this as soon as her eyes took in the Hermès silk square that Louise was tying round her throat. He also noticed that they were both tremendously dressed up. Katy, in particular, in a suit of tangerine-coloured wool and soft fawn leather boots, looked somewhat older than she had on previous occasions, and he was obliged to revise her age upwards. Today he would have put her at thirty-three or -four.

  He introduced them. Before he went into the kitchen to make fresh tea he had time to note that Katy had ignored Louise’s outstretched hand and, putting her palms together, had bowed her head in an Indian greeting. Repressing laughter that threatened to become unmanageable—the first that day—he was glad to make his escape, if only for a few minutes.

  When he returned it was to find Louise and Mrs Lydiard deep in conversation, delighted to find interests in common, and also perhaps to indulge in the sort of pleasantries they both best appreciated. ‘I do believe appearances are so important,’ said Mrs Lydiard, whom Louise had evidently complimented on her smart navy blue jacket. ‘At my age one dare not let one’s standards drop. The change can be seen immediately.’

  ‘I do so agree,’ Louise enthused. ‘Although it’s more of a struggle in the country than in town. People don’t seem to bother so much. I have to go quite far afield to find something suitable. Or just that little bit out of the ordinary, you know?’

  ‘Have you considered colour counselling?’ asked Katy, who had so far contributed nothing to this exchange.

  ‘Why no,’ said Louise, surprised. ‘I don’t think we have it in Lymington. Is it very expensive?’

  ‘Louise,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to catch the six-thirty …’

  ‘Oh, I’ll catch the next one,’ she said, loosening her scarf. ‘Of course you don’t have to worry about such things yet,’ she said to Katy. ‘You’re young! And very pretty,’ she added, though with some reserve. ‘I wonder we haven’t met before. Are you a new neighbor? I do think these flats are so comfortable …’

  ‘Katy has been living in America,’ said Bland.

  ‘Oh, you’re American!’

  ‘Not really,’ she said, her voice distant and aristocratic. ‘Of course, I’ve lived all over the place. We were an army family.’

  For some reason Bland saw an army camp in Germany, on the outskirts of Hannover or Paderborn. He saw dismal married quarters, a young and downtrodden wife, an army sergeant father, sitting down to his evening meal with khaki braces over a khaki shirt, a pretty child hushed into silence while her father ate, and then alternately petted and chastised. He saw all this quite clearly, and knew that although it might be a fantasy it was a fantasy very near to the truth.

  ‘And where is your father stationed now?’ pursued Louise. Mrs Lydiard was leaning back in her chair, a smile on her face. She glanced at Bland, triumphant, with a look implying shared intelligence.

  ‘My father’s dead,’ said Katy.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean to pry …’

  Bland could almost hear Katy say that that was exactly what Louise had meant to do. But there was no malice in Louise; he if anyone knew that. And the question had been innocent enough.

  There was a brief silence. ‘Well,’ said Louise finally. ‘I must be on my way. I could just make the six-thirty. So nice to have met you.’

  ‘I must be on my way too,’ said Mrs Lydiard. ‘This has been most pleasant. Thank you for tea, Mr Bland. George, I should say. Perhaps you’d like a glass of sherry one evening? I’ll give you a ring. Goodbye, Katy. Remember what I told you.’

  But he was not immediately to learn what this was. He supposed it to be some well-meaning but irrelevant advice about finding a job while making plans for the future. In any event, by the time he had taken Louise down and put her in a taxi, his train of thought was broken. He was surprised how the day had fatigued and irked him, and looked forward to being alone. There had been a surfeit of women. Louise’s last words to him had been rather tiresome, he thought. She had remarked on what a strange girl Katy had seemed, whereas Bland had wanted to savour this strangeness on his own. How had George met her? Had he known her long? There was a slight reserve, again, in her manner of asking these questions, not quite looking him in the eye. Then, with a sigh, she had turned to him and put up her face for his kiss. ‘Until Sunday,’ she said. ‘Until Sunday,’ he replied. And on Sunday, he reflected, as he went back up the stairs, there would be more questions. And the answers, he knew, he would keep to himself, if indeed there were to be any answers. For Katy was his own private research project, the findings of which he would keep in the equivalent of a locked file, inaccessible to prying eyes.

  He mounted the stairs wearily. The open door of his flat seemed unattainable. Just as he prepared to lock himself in for the night the door of the Dunlops’ flat opposite to his own opened to reveal Katy, two patches of red flaring on her cheeks, her anger this time spectacularly in evidence.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘I was getting a lot of negativity back there. I could feel my stress levels going up.’

  ‘We are too old for you,’ he said gently. ‘Of course you find us tiresome. You should be with people of your own age. There’s very little to interest you here. My friend was merely asking a few polite questions. You shouldn’t let them upset you.’

  ‘ “I don’t think we have it in Lymington,” ’ she minced, ‘ “is it very expensive?” ’

  ‘What did you expect?’ he asked. ‘These things are for smart young women, not elderly widows.’ But she had perhaps been looking for a consultation, he saw, since that was apparently how she earned her living, and if she had hoped to capture Louise, with whom she was barely acquainted, as a client, then she must be seriously short of money. He remembered Mrs Lydiard’s expression, the satisfied expression of one who has given good advice and was not in a position to have it rejected. No doubt she had paid for their lunch, in the course of which she had poured this advice into Katy’s unwilling ear.

  ‘Was it Mrs Lydiard who upset you?’ he asked. And did she buy you that terrible scent in an attempt to win you over? For he could see it now: Katy’s attempt to annex Mrs Lydiard as a useful ally, followed by her discovery that Mrs Lydiard had no intention of letting herself be annexed. No doubt the giving of advice was Mrs Lydiard’s weakness. That it was probably good advice did not make it any more palatable. Rather less, in fact. He supposed that it had had something to do with money. Mrs Lydiard’s suspicions were therefore not too far from his own. It was an unwelcome discovery.

  ‘I have plans of my own,’ she said grandly. ‘I have only to make a few phone calls to set up interviews with some of the most important people in the alternative health field.’

  ‘Then that is what you must do, obviously. Why not do it tomorrow?’

  ‘I hardly think I need any advice on a matter which I know like the back of my hand. In my business it’s all a matter of personal contacts. I don’t suppose people such as yourself would understand that.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed, thinking back to his own working life, which had proceeded along the most conventional lines. It had been his destiny to be a company man: he thought of himself as an office boy, even after multiple promotions. Without the company, he thought, he was dying of insignificance. He had been popular because he was blameless; perhaps he had not been valued, as more eccentric or rebarbative characters not infrequently are, but he had been respected, and that respect had been precious to him. The office had represented peace, good order, a place in an acceptable hierarchy. It had also represented work, a work that inclu
ded judgment, a weighing up of facts on which much depended. He did not believe that work could be done other than in a sober fashion, at a desk, within regular hours, which would keep one in one place and accountable. He did not believe that work was a matter of activating a few contacts. Perhaps actors and journalists lived like that, he thought, but for most people going to work meant just that, going to where the work was, putting in a day’s best effort, and then coming home on the bus or in the train, as others did. And home, at the end of the day, was perceived anew as a reward, the goal of one’s hopes and ambitions.

  At least he supposed that ambition came into it. He had had none himself, a fact which had made him trusted. To be accepted was his reward, and he had wanted no other. Putnam had been the same, and that, in turn, had cemented their friendship. And now it was all gone, all the safety and the pleasure of his working life, his working friendships, and here he was, at the end of an apparently pointless day, having this otiose conversation with a complete stranger, although one for whom he felt mildly sorry, and who had the trick of engaging his curiosity, partly in default of anything more serious, and partly because his professional instincts were not quite dormant, because he saw her as mildly sociopathic, and he wanted to follow the case, as it were, to its conclusion.