Anita Brookner Read online

  Edith watched her as if under hypnosis, sorry to. have missed a moment of this spectacle. Rings sparkled on the hand that brought a delicate lace handkerchief to her lips. When her tray had been taken away, Edith waited keenly to see what she would do with the hiatus between tea and dinner, so dispiriting to the unexpected or unaccompanied hotel guest. But of course this lady was not alone. ‘Here I am,’ carolled a young voice, and into the salon came a girl wearing rather tight white trousers (rather too tight, thought Edith) which outlined a bottom shaped like a large Victoria plum, ‘There you are, darling,’ cried the lady, who was, who must be, her mother. ‘I’ve just finished. Have you had tea?’

  ‘No, but it doesn’t matter,’ said the girl, who was, Edith saw, a rather paler version of her mother, or rather the same model as her mother but not brought to the same state of high finish.

  ‘But my darling!’ exclaimed the older lady. ‘You must have tea! You must be exhausted! Just ring the bell. They can make some more.’

  As one of the waitresses approached, they both turned on her a winning smile, begged for tea, but with an assurance that it would certainly be forthcoming, and immediately, and then lapsed into an engrossing conversation of which Edith could only hear the odd word, together with the joyous and congratulatory spasms of laughter that escaped them both from time to time. When the second tray arrived, they both turned their smiling faces to the waitress, thanked her effusively, and resumed their dialogue, although the girl lingered, as if her part in the ritual might just conceivably be prolonged, but, ‘That will be all, dear,’ said the lady in the silk dress, and settled down to contemplation of her daughter.

  The daughter must be about twenty-five, thought Edith, unmarried, but not worried about it. ‘She’s in. no hurry,’ she could imagine the mother saying, with her fine smile. ‘She’s quite happy as she is.’ And the daughter would blush and bridle, thus inviting lubricious speculation on the part of the elderly gentlemen who would, Edith was sure, be in relatively constant attendance on the mother. I must stop this, she said to herself. I do not have to make up their lives for them. They are in fact doing very nicely without me. And she felt a pang of wistfulness for such a mother, so good-humoured, so elegantly turned out, so insistent that her daughter should have tea, although it was nearly six o’clock. She felt a pang of wistfulness too for the daughter, so confident, so at ease with that was provided for her … And they were English, .although not of a type with which she was familiar, and rather well-off, and having a good time. They looked as though they always did.

  At last they decided to make a move, and when the mother made two attempts to lever herself out of her chair, her daughter hovering energetically beside her, as if knowing exactly when to intervene, Edith saw with some surprise that the older lady was in fact rather stiff in the joints, and that the shining impression of fairly youthful maturity, so impressive from a distance, was not prolonged when she stood up. Thoughtfully, she adjusted their ages, which she had put in the upper fifties and the middle twenties, to the upper sixties and the early thirties. But the appearance was excellent, in both cases. And she was secretly very pleased when the older lady, opposite whom she had been seated, but at some distance, turned round and gave her a mild smile of acknowledgment before she left the room.

  Then there was nothing to do but go for a walk. Through the silent garden, through an iron gate, across the busy road, and along the shore of the lake she walked in the fading light of that grey day. The silence engulfed her once she was past the town’s one intersection, and it seemed as if she might walk for ever, uninterrupted, with only her thoughts for company. This solitude to which she had been banished, by those-who knew best, was not what she had had in mind. And this dim, veiled, discreet, but unfriendly weather: was this to be an additional accompaniment to this time of trial, for someone who had rashly travelled without a heavy coat? The lake was utterly still; a solitary lamp gleamed above her, turning the limp leaves of a plane tree to brilliant emerald. There is no need for me to stay here if I don’t want to, she decided. Nobody is actually forcing me. But I must give it a try, if only to make things easier when I get home. The place is not totally unpopulated. I do need a rest. I could perhaps give it a week. And there is a lot to find out, for someone of my benighted persuasion, although of course none of those people would fit into the sort of fiction I write. But that very long, narrow woman, that beautiful woman, with the tiresome dog. And more than that, the glamorous pair who seem so at ease here. Why are they here? But women, women, only women, and I do so love the conversation of men. Oh David, David, she thought.

  Her walk along the lake shore reminded her of nothing so much as those silent walks one takes in dreams, and in which unreason and inevitability go hand in hand. As in dreams she felt both despair and a sort of doomed curiosity, as if she must pursue this path until its purpose were revealed to her. The cast of her mind on this evening, and the aspect of the path itself, seemed to promise an unfavourable outcome: shock, betrayal, or at the very least a train missed, an important occasion attended in rags, an appearance in the dock on an unknown charge. The light, too, was that of dreams, an uncertain penumbra surrounding this odd pilgrimage, neither day nor night. In the real world through which she walked she was aware of certain physical characteristics: a perfectly straightforward gravel path flanked by two rows of trees standing in beaten earth, on one side the lake, invisible now, on the other, presumably, the town, but a town so small and so well ordered that one would never hear the screaming of brakes or the hooting of horns or the noise of voices raised in extravagant farewell. Only the modest sound of a peaceable file of evening traffic going home came faintly to her ears from somewhere beyond the trees, out of sight. Much louder was the sound of her own steps on the gravel, so loud that it seemed intrusive, and after a while she began to walk on the soft earth of the path nearest the lake. Beneath the light of an occasional lamp, she walked on uninterrupted, as if she were the only one abroad in this silent place. A perceptible chill rose from the water, which she could no longer see, and she shivered in her long cardigan. Doomed for a certain time to walk the earth, she thought, and, brooding but acquiescent, she carried on until she thought it time to be allowed to stop. Then she turned and retraced her steps.

  Walking back through the twilight she saw the hotel from afar, lit up, falsely festive. I must make an effort, she decided, although she knew that a different sort of woman would have said, with a worldly sigh, ‘I suppose I must put in an appearance.’

  In the silent foyer, bright lights, a mumble from the television room, and a smell of meat. She went up to change.

  At the desk, M. Huber the elder, retired but still active, benevolent and only mildly intrusive, was enjoying his favourite moment of the day. He opened the register to see who had gone and who had arrived. Business was of course very slack at this time of the year; the place was bound to be half empty in the month before the winter closure. The German family had gone, he noted; the noise of their going had indeed penetrated to his sitting room on the fifth floor. That curious elderly couple from the Channel Islands had left after tea. The conference at Geneva might yield the odd visitor. someone who decided to stay on, perhaps, and go back after the weekend. Otherwise, only the regulars were left: the Comtesse de Bonneuil, Mme Pusey and her daughter, the woman with the dog whom he refused to name, although her husband was in the English Gotha, and as to whom his son-in-law had received certain instructions. One new arrival. Hope, Edith Johanna. An unusual name for an English lady. Perhaps not entirely English. Perhaps not entirely a lady. Recommended, of course. But in this business one never knew.

  2

  Dressed for dinner, in her Liberty silk smock, her long narrow feet tamed into plain kid pumps, Edith sought for ways of delaying the moment at which she would be forced to descend into the dining room and take her first meal in public. She even wrote a few paragraphs of Beneath the Visiting Moon, then on re-reading them, realized that she had used the same device in The Stone and the Star, and crossed them out. And in crossing them out, understood exactly where she would have to go when she started again. Thus slightly reassured, with tomorrow’s work tentatively programmed, she closed the folder, took up her bag and her key, and walked resolutely out of the room.

  From the same not too distant point along the corridor she could hear the radio again, and also bath water, and as she went towards the stairs there seemed to be a sudden emanation of a rosy scent, signalling the sort of preparation made by someone with a proper sense of her own presence. The woman with the dog, thought Edith. She will emerge, rather late, in some stunning creation, flat-stomached and disdainful, the dog under her arm. I must try and talk to her.

  There will, she thought painfully, be nothing else to do after dinner.

  Downstairs all was deserted, and she realized that she was too early. The only sounds came from the bar, where subdued masculine conversation, unbroken by laughter or conviviality, was in progress. She would have liked a gin and tonic but could not quite make the effort. She sat down at a small table in the salon and picked up a crumpled copy of the Gazette de Lausanne which someone had left. Curious that it had not been cleared away, she thought; the housekeeping here seems so very careful. But at that moment the bulldog-faced lady, whom she must remember to address properly, if ,she were ever called upon to address her at all, appeared in the doorway, wearing an all-purpose black dress and having changed her blue veil with the bows for a black one with a few slightly precarious sequins, raised her stick and said, ‘Ah!’ Edith held up the Gazette de Lausanne with an enquiring smile. Mme de Bonneuil nodded and began rocking her way through the thicket of unoccupied chairs and tables. Edith rose to meet her, but Mme de Bonneuil made surprisingly rapid progress, and Edith was stalled at the next table but two. ‘Merci,’ said Mme de Bonneuil, raising her stick again. ‘Je vous en prie,’ said Edith, and returned to her chair. They were the first, words she had spoken since her arrival.

  Leaning back and closing her eyes briefly, she allowed her dread of the evening before her to come to the surface. In any event, meals in public were not to her taste, even when she was accompanied. She remembered with a slight shudder the last meal she had had before leaving England. Her agent, Harold Webb, had taken her out to lunch. He had clearly meant to raise her spirits, had assured her of his confidence in her, had even told her that he intended to negotiate a higher advance for her next book. ‘This other business will blow over,’ he had said, lighting an unaccustomed cigar. A mild and scholarly man who looked like a country doctor, he disliked the more sociable aspects of his calling, but had nevertheless booked a table in a cathedral-like restaurant, where the patrons cowered in worship before the marvels to be set in front of them, and had gamely tackled the intricately coiled fillet of fish which had seemed to be the simplest item on the menu. Edith, regretting the Perrier water which always gave .her wind, stared moodily into the distance. Conversation was not easy.

  ‘I like the idea of the new one,’ said Harold, after a longish pause. ‘Although I have to tell you that the romantic market is beginning to change. It’s sex for the young woman executive now, the Cosmopolitan reader, the girl with the executive briefcase.’

  Receiving no response, he made play with the tiny fan of fretted carrot placed on a side plate and, having dealt with that, returned to the attack.

  ‘What does she take with her on that business trip to Brussels?’

  ‘Glasgow,’ emended Edith.

  ‘What? Oh, well, probably. But anyway, she wants something to reassure her that being liberated is fun. She wants something to flatter her ego when she’s spending a lonely night in an hotel. She wants something to reflect her lifestyle.’

  ‘Harold,’ said Edith, ‘I simply do not know anyone who has a lifestyle. What does it mean? It implies that everything you own was bought at exactly the same time, about five years ago, at the most. And anyway, if she’s all that liberated, why doesn’t she go down to the bar and pick someone up? I’m sure it’s entirely possible. It’s just that most women don’t do it. And why don’t they do it?’ she asked, with a sudden return of assurance. ‘It’s because they prefer the old myths, when it comes to the crunch. They want to believe that they are going to be discovered, looking their best, behind closed doors, just when they thought that all was lost, by a man who has battled across continents, abandoning whatever he may have had in his in-tray, to reclaim them. Ah! If only it were true,’ she said, breathing hard, and spearing a slice of kiwi fruit which remained suspended on her fork as she bent her head and thought this one out. She really does look remarkably Bloomsburian, thought Harold, viewing the hollowed cheeks and the pursed lips.

  ‘Well, my dear, you know best,’ he said, not wishing to upset her more than she had already been upset by that other business. ‘I just thought that…’

  ‘And what is the most potent myth of all?’ she went on, in the slightly ringing tones that caused him to make a discreet sign to the waiter for the bill. ‘The tortoise and the hare,’ she pronounced. ‘People love this one, especially women. Now you will notice, Harold, that in my books it is the mouse-like unassuming girl who gets the hero, while the scornful temptress with whom he has had a stormy affair retreats baffled from the fray, never to return. The tortoise wins every time. This is a lie, of course,’ she said, pleasantly, but with authority, the kiwi fruit slipping back unnoticed onto her plate. ‘In real life, of course, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Axiomatically,’ she cried, her voice rising with enthusiasm. ‘Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game. The propaganda goes all the other way, but only because it is the tortoise who is in need of consolation. Like the meek who are going to inherit the earth,’ she added, with a brief smile. After a pause, she addressed herself to what was left on her plate, ate it in one dismissive mouthful, and leaned back, still lost in her argument.

  He reflected that she was not a professor’s daughter for nothing, but that she could be relied upon to get back to work fairly soon, and that, after a break, she would probably come up with yet another modest but substantial seller.

  ‘Of course,’ said Edith, ladling chips of sugar coloured liked bath salts into her coffee, ‘you could argue that the hare might be affected by the tortoise lobby’s propaganda, might become more prudent, circumspect, slower, in fact. But the hare is always convinced of his own superiority; he simply does not recognize the tortoise as a worthy adversary. That is why the hare wins,’ she concluded. ‘In life, I mean .. Never in fiction. At least, not in mine. The facts of life are too terrible to go into my kind of fiction. And my readers certainly do not want them there. You see, Harold, my readers are essentially virtuous. And as far as they are concerned—as far as I am concerned—those multi-orgasmic girls with the executive briefcases can go elsewhere. They will be adequately catered for. There are hucksters in every market place.’

  ‘I see you are getting back your old form,’ said Harold, counting out a quantity of notes.

  ‘Thank you for lunch, Harold,’ Edith said, in the busy street outside. The coming separation from his kindly and self-effacing concern struck her more forcibly now than it had done hitherto. He was the only person who could be trusted to get in touch with her once she had gone away. He was the only person well, almost—who knew where she was going. He was, alas, not the only person who knew why she was going. She looked imploringly into his eyes, aware that he had paid far too much money for a meal that would leave him hungry in an hour’s time. Her own appetite was gone, quite gone. It hardly mattered what she ate these days, since she no longer mattered to herself. But those lovely meals that she had cooked for David, those heroic fry-ups, those blow-outs that he always seemed to require when they eventually got out of bed, at such awkward times, after midnight, sometimes, leaving it till the last minute before he raced back to Holland Park through the silent streets. ‘I never get this stuff at home,’ he would say lovingly, spearing a chip and inserting it into the yolk of a fried egg. Anxious, in her nightgown, she would watch him, a saucepan of baked beans to hand. Judging the state of his appetite with the eye of an expert, she would take another dish and ladle on to his plate a quivering mound of egg custard. ‘Food fit for heroes,’ he would sigh contentedly, his lean milky body forever resistant to the fattening effects of such a diet. ‘Smashing,’ he would pronounce, leaning back, replete. ‘Any tea going?’ But even as he drank his tea she would notice him quickening, straightening, becoming more rapid and decisive in his movements, and when he passed his hands over his short, dark red hair she would know that the transition was in progress and that he would soon get dressed. Then, she felt, she knew him less. All the business of cuff-links and watches belonged to his other life; this was what he did every morning while his wife called to the children who were going to be late. And finally she felt she hardly knew him at all, although she watched from behind the curtain as he ran out to the car, hasty now, and roared off into the night. It always felt as if he had gone for ever. But he had always come back. Sooner or later, he had come back.

  It had seemed to her that the daylight hours were spent simply waiting for him. And yet there were five novels, of some length, there to prove that she had not spent her time gazing out of the window, like the Lady of Shalott. It was, she recognized, a tortoise existence, despite the industry. That was why she wrote for tortoises, like herself.

  But now I am reduced to pure tortoisedom, she thought, opening her eyes and gazing fearfully around the still deserted salon. But the appearance of a waiter in the doorway, with a napkin over his arm, gave her an access of determination, if only to get the meal over, for now she wanted to be alone, in her room, so as to think. Those pills must have worn off, she thought, feeling rather dizzy as she stood up, her throat aching with suppressed yawns. This is when character tells, as Father would say. And she urged herself onward to the dining room, prepared to eat because it was good for her, and to remain in an equable frame of mind for as long as possible.