The Accidental Woman

by Jonathan Coe

  She observed, however, that the paths of Charlotte’s and Miss Ballsbridge’s lives did not, all hopes notwithstanding, turn out to run as one, but ran parallel for a while and then started to diverge dramatically. Charlotte noticed this too. One day she knocked on Maria’s bedroom door, entered, and sat on the bed, so heavily that the act amounted to a gesture of dejection. A sigh would have served the same purpose.

  ‘All is not well,’ she said, ‘between me and Miss Ballsbridge.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Maria. It was extraordinary how even the most casual conversations seemed to oblige her to say things which were not strictly true.

  ‘We no longer understand each other as we did. Our conversations, once so frequent and so full, are now reduced to cryptic encounters on the quadrangle as we walk to dinner. Our eyes hardly meet. We speak in furtive glances. What do you think of this?’

  She handed Maria a sheet of paper, torn from an exercise pad. It was headed, Things to put in my look today. Maria looked up. Charlotte’s eyes were on her earnestly. This is what she had written:

  1. Reproach, but without blame.

  2. A sense of hope, poignant and unaffected, perhaps with an intimation of distant joy.

  3. Love.

  4. A sort of regret that is not despair, tinged with an acknowledgement of the ultimate benevolence of fate, speaking of the knowledge of all that might have been between us, and holding implicit in that knowledge the fragile belief that all might yet be regained.

  5. An aura of divine cheerfulness, almost resembling melancholy in its immovability, but which centres on an awareness of the existence of a communion of spirits beyond any which is feasible between two individuals on earth, and which therefore contains and conveys a premonition of this communion while recognizing with calm longing that in the bitter experience of Miss Ballsbridge and myself it was to be felt only in glimpses. Ergo,

  6. A farewell pregnant with tones of greeting.

  Maria read this through several times.

  ‘This is going to be some look,’ she said.

  Charlotte nodded.

  ‘How long do you get, normally?’

  ‘Not long. A few seconds.’

  She handed back the paper.

  ‘Would you like to try it out on me first?’

  ‘Thank you, Maria, but no. Looks are a private language. It must be to her, and her alone. It would be like talking Greek to a Chinaman.’

  Maria never found out whether the look had had the desired effect, so she assumed that it had gone badly. Anyway, Charlotte soon found another object for her affections, a man called Philip, to whom reference has already been made, on account of the smallness of his ears. They had a turbulent affair which lasted for most of the year. Their friendship was entirely Platonic, except that occasionally, rabid with sexual hunger, they would withdraw into the bedroom and thrash about for hours at a time as if their lives depended on it. When this happened Maria, if she was in, would go to her room and read a book. She found the sounds ugly. In those days it was, of course, forbidden for ladies to entertain gentlemen in their rooms at night, so that fornication had to take place during the daytime, an admirable arrangement, it meant that nobody went short of sleep. The course of Charlotte’s love for Philip ran fairly smooth at first, but this did not lead Maria to believe even for a moment that it was true. After a few months they ran into difficulties. Maria, dealing with fragments as usual, gathered something to the effect that Charlotte had learnt, at a party, that Philip had spoken of her, at another party, in terms of disrespect, to a third party, whose relaying of the information to a fourth party, at a fifth party, was the channel through which Charlotte had come to hear of it. This merely confirmed, in Maria’s opinion, the perniciousness of one of Charlotte’s dogmas, which stated that any personal remark was wasted unless it found its way, by however indirect a route, back to the ears of the person about whom it had been made. It transpired, following this incident, that Charlotte and Philip were no longer on speaking terms. They continued to communicate with one another, naturally, but only by means of a complex chain of intermediaries of which Maria, unwillingly, found herself to be part. In performing this function she was expected to deal with nuances of feeling, and of speech, and of interpretation, which were, like MacCruiskeen’s chests, so small as to challenge the belief that they really existed. A conventional opening of Charlotte’s, for example, would be to say:

  ‘He doesn’t love me any more.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Maria might counter, with a sinking feeling. ‘Only a few hours ago he was here saying that he did love you.’

  ‘Ah, but did you notice his tone?’

  ‘I noticed nothing about his tone.’

  ‘Well, Judith said that she thought his tone suggested that he was only saying it to give himself time to think of a way of changing the subject. Besides, what about his inflection?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Didn’t you notice that he gave it a sarcastic inflection? Or at least, if not sarcastic, then at least slightly suspicious of the connotations of his own words? Or at least, if not slightly suspicious of the connotations of his own words, then at best half aware that in saying them he was covertly admitting to himself that out of context they had no truth which wasn’t questionable at least on a semi-objective level?’

  ‘Judith noticed all this?’

  ‘No. Judith told me that she thought he loved me. But you see, it was the way she said it.’

  Judith had made considerable advances since those early days, and was now high on Charlotte’s list of friends. In the meantime, though, she had decided that she didn’t like Maria after all, particularly in respect of her personality. She believed that Maria’s grasp of social relations could only be described, in all kindness, as crude. Furthermore, Maria knew that she believed this, because Charlotte had told her so. Judith was skilled in the delicacies out of which her social fabric was woven, and upon which Charlotte’s love for Philip was founded. She understood the tone which belied the word, the looks resonant with meaning.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ Charlotte would ask her, whenever she called.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he say about last night?’

  Maria would listen.

  ‘Well, he said that he thought your behaviour called for some sort of explanation.’

  ‘Oh? In what way?’

  ‘He thought that you implied he’d given the impression of having thought you were being rude.’

  ‘He said I’d been rude?’

  ‘Well, he implied that you’d been rude by implication.’

  ‘How can I have been rude by implication when any attempt to be more explicit would have been insensitive by definition? Did he mean that if I’d said what he wanted me to say, instead of leaving it unsaid, he wouldn’t have known what to say? Is that what he said?’

  ‘Well, that’s what he insinuated.’

  Things went steadily downhill. Charlotte’s and Philip’s grisly attempts to sustain some sort of fondness for each other became a topic of general conversation.

  ‘I feel so cheap,’ Charlotte said. ‘My love isn’t my own any more. Everybody talks about it. It’s become a spectator sport.’

  ‘I know how you feel,’ Judith insisted. ‘I understand. That must be the worst of it. I was saying so only the other day, to Harriet, in the Lamb and Flag. I said to her, Poor Charlie, to have her emotions paraded about in public like this. And then Joanna, who was sitting at the next table, leant across, and said, Yes, fancy having everybody gossiping about it, and then even the barman, who was collecting the glasses, said, Charlie? Is that your friend with the dark brown hair, well fancy that, he said, how awful for her.’

  ‘Did he say that? That was kind of him.’

  It was Philip that Maria felt sorry for. Not that she felt very sorry, even for him, for he was a bit of a fool, by anybody’s standards, especially hers. But she felt slightly sorry for him because he seemed to be suf
fering more than anyone else. The day it ended, the day it finally ended, he was in her bedroom, sitting on the bed, his head in his hands. Maria was at her desk, trying to work, but she did not mind, especially. Charlotte was in her own bedroom, sobbing on Judith’s shoulder.

  ‘Love destroys,’ said Philip, from between his fingers. ‘It is a raging fire which warms you, then burns, then leaves you for a heap of ashes, grey and barely glowing.’ He got up suddenly. ‘Do you mind if I write that down?’

  Maria handed him pencil and paper. He stared at his own reflection in her mirror.

  ‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘I’m a wreck.’

  There was no denying it.

  ‘Cheer up,’ she said, without looking round.

  ‘Somehow… out of these ruins…’ his voice took on a more determined note, ‘I am going to build myself anew.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ said Maria, reaching for her ruler.

  ‘A new life. A new… attitude towards life. Yes, that’s it.’ He peered more closely at the mirror. And I think I know how to start. I think I know where the change will have to be made. I shall grow… a moustache.’

  Maria left him to it, walked out into the sunlight. Bright blue summer. She walked into town, jostled with the shoppers, gazed at the buildings, sat in a cafe, tried to feel part of a crowd. It didn’t work. She heard the noises, distinguished the words, saw the faces, but at a distance, even now at a great distance. Alone. Alone, she left the cafe and walked towards Magdalen bridge. Light played on the water, shot it through with a cleaner green, light lit up her hair as she began her slow return. She trailed, conscious all around her of beauty, fond of the warm and pleased by the sense of a day already on the wane. A tremor of gladness, that’s all, hardly noticed, and hardly to be trusted, for she had only her own word for it, alone.

  3. Two Companions

  Next year Maria was given a room to herself, which was a relief, by now. It meant that she could stand undisturbed at the window and watch the greyness thicken into black. The leaves, and then the lights. She saw very little of Charlotte. Their paths crossed, occasionally, as paths do, try as you may, and at first Maria was worried lest their sudden meetings should each and always begin on a note of private panic, those little frantic moments of rehearsal, followed by the heavy cheerful hello, delivered to the earth. But Charlotte, it soon became clear, did not want to say hello to her any more, which suited Maria, down to the ground.

  There were six rooms on her landing. She was expected to share a bathroom and a lavatory with her neighbours, which she did not mind, because after all such arrangements, whatever their other drawbacks, rarely involve the bathroom or the lavatory being occupied by more than one user at a time. The kitchen was another matter. She was also expected to share the kitchen, and this of course was out of the question. And yet to be certain of having the kitchen to herself, she would have had to cook her meal at a ridiculous hour, at midnight for example, which as it happens is exactly what she got into the habit of doing. And even then, she was not always alone, for Maria had in those days a friend, a new friend. Of her five neighbours, four were the usual harmless lunatics, but one was a girl called Sarah, and in her Maria found something very like a sympathetic spirit, for her she felt something bloody close to friendship, if the truth be told. And so they would do things together sometimes, they came to each other’s rooms, and talked, and Maria found herself asking, on these occasions, the question So what? far less often than she had in the days when she used to be friendly with Louise.

  On grey afternoons Maria would go to Sarah’s room, or Sarah would come to Maria’s room, and they would pass the time together, perhaps in silence. For there is not much to talk about, even between friends. Sometimes they would listen to music together, on the radio or on the record player, drinking tea, or they would read together, in silence. It was a happy time. Maria would look back on it, very occasionally, at a great distance, and think of how happy she had been then, slightly exaggerating of course, and she would feel a small shudder take place inside her, not unrelated to fear, and not unrelated to those other emotions which produce tears. There is nothing more miserable than the memory of happiness, a position which can be held from various standpoints, as will be shown in some of the following chapters. By the same token, or do I mean the opposite token, there is nothing more pleasurable than the anticipation of happiness, and when I say nothing, I do not use the word lightly. For happiness itself, it seemed to Maria, had very little meaning in relation to the time spent either looking forward to it or remembering it. Furthermore the actual experience of it seemed entirely unconnected with the experience of anticipating or recollecting it. She never said to herself, when happy, ‘This is happiness’, and so never recognized it as such when it was taking place. But this did not stop her from thinking, when it was not taking place, that she had a very clear idea of what it was. The truth is that Maria was only really happy when she was thinking of happiness to come, and she was not I think alone in this absurd outlook. It is for some reason far nicer to feel bored, or indifferent, or unexcited, and to think, In a few minutes from now, or a few days, or weeks, I shall be happy, than to be happy and to know, even if not consciously, that the next emotional shift will be away from happiness. Maria had observed many striking examples of this phenomenon. For instance, once, when she and Louise had been friends, they had agreed to go to the theatre together. Maria made the arrangements, and offered to buy the tickets, and when the matter was settled, Louise had said, with a joyful smile (she was easily pleased, it’s no wonder she and Maria never got on that well), ‘I shall look forward to it’. Those were her very words. And to Maria, as she walked back to her room, they suddenly seemed to be quite extraordinary. She realized that Louise had just expressed pleasure at the anticipation of the anticipation of pleasure. And she realized, moreover, that this was by no means uncommon. She had heard people say, ‘I shall look forward to that’, or, ‘I am going to look forward to that’, just as often, if not more often, than she had heard them say, ‘I am looking forward to that’. This could not, in her opinion, be unintentional. In fact, she was fully prepared to believe that what they really looked forward to was not the event itself, the supposed object of the anticipation, such as a visit to the theatre, but the very anticipation, no less, those pleasurable hours, or days, or weeks, of hopeful looking forward, during which the mind’s eye had some cheering goal to set itself on. And it seemed to Maria, once she had realized this, that the scope for perniciousness inherent in this arrangement was infinite.

  So by now Maria was fully aware of what she was doing when, while walking home from a lecture, say, she set her eyes on Sarah’s window and felt a glow of comfort at the thought that in only a few minutes she would be sitting with her friend in the warmth, a mug of tea between her hands, the hiss of the gas fire the only accompaniment to their broken conversation. She knew full well that this glow of comfort was in itself far nicer than anything which her friend’s room held in store for her. She knew this for a fact, but she persisted, and who can blame her.

  Not that Maria’s and Sarah’s friendship comprised nothing more than sitting together in each other’s rooms, or cooking spaghetti bolognese in enormous proportions at midnight, or consuming huge quantities of lasagne at one o’clock in the morning. It was not confined to indoor activities, by any means. For if there was one thing that they both enjoyed, it was the fresh air, provided that it was not too cold outside, or too warm. In particular they favoured the University Parks, since these were not too far from home. It is impossible to analyse the pleasure they derived from these walks, except to say that it was acute, and that because they themselves could never really understand, or picture, this pleasure, then the actual experience of it seemed, for once, far to outweigh any pleasure to be derived from anticipating it. Furthermore, at an hour’s or a day’s distance, Maria would sometimes look back on her most recent walk with pleasure, which is surely little short of miraculous, although i
mplicit in her pleasure, perhaps, was the thought that another equally pleasurable walk was just around the corner. These walks, to sum up, offered pleasure of a different complexion from any that Maria had known before, a very different complexion.

  However, a distinction should be drawn between Maria and Sarah simply walking together, and Maria and Sarah walking together and, simultaneously, talking. The latter was a very different process and offered pleasure of a less unalloyed sort, although of course if they recognized this, and it is by no means certain that they did, it did not stop them from talking to each other, for people always want to talk to each other, even friends, for some reason. When Maria and Sarah walked they did so, needless to say, arm in arm, their bodies pressed gently together, whether it was cold or not, but especially if it was cold. This enabled them to regard their separation, their involuntary and inevitable separation, from the rest of the world, from the park, from the trees, above all from the other walkers, not with unease but with joy, for what did it matter, while they were together, while they were close? It only heightened their closeness, it only meant that they felt their togetherness more keenly. Through the contact of their bodies, or rather their coats, through the linking of their arms, or rather their sleeves, they moulded into one another, they blended as one. But their voices, when they spoke, rarely had the same effect. The soul, assuming that such a thing exists, seeks to find expression in various ways, none of which are terribly satisfactory: in silences, in looks (Charlotte would have agreed with all this), in sounds, but above all in words. Maria and Sarah talked, therefore, as friends do, with a view to achieving a touching and entwining of souls, just as their bodies, when they walked, touched and entwined. But it very rarely came off, it has to be admitted. This is not to say that they ever disagreed, or quarrelled, or misunderstood each other, or at least not very often. But whether it was because words are tricky little bastards, and very rarely say what you want them to say, or because Maria’s and Sarah’s souls were not cut out for each other in the way that their bodies were (for most people’s bodies are cut out for most other people’s bodies, when it comes to the crunch), they never felt, when they talked together, as close as when they walked together and did not talk together. Yet still, as I said before, this did not prevent them from talking together, or indeed from doing so with enjoyment, of a sort.