The Rules of Engagement

by Anita Brookner

  I longed for air, for ease of movement. The horror of being penned in a small space with two women who saw me as a child waiting to have decisions made for her was still with me. And I had been rude, and was ashamed of myself. This was being a terrible day, and it was probably my fault. I had thought to offer my patronage in the matter of providing Betsy’s flat with a few amenities, but this offer had been turned aside, disregarded, as if it were now beside the point. Favour had been found from another quarter; there was no longer any need to set a trap. Not all the re-arrangement in the world could compare with what had already been enacted.

  Out in the air I breathed more easily, although a feeling of suffocation persisted, as if I were being swathed in fabric. This was intensified by the damp mist which pressed against my lips, as if willing me to silence. Such weather was hard to tolerate in the light of previous experiences, yet only yesterday, a day like today, a veiled orange sun of considerable immanence had manifested itself behind the greyness. The effect, however, had been far from reassuring, apocalyptic, rather, as if it might rain blood, or symbolize a warning, like the geese in ancient Rome. Yet nothing terrible had happened; slowly the sun was eclipsed, or perhaps eclipsed itself, and the shadows drew on more decisively in its absence. This was an hour when melancholy was pervasive. But it is true that at such times one calculates how many days, weeks, months will have to pass before summer, calculates how to outwit Christmas, the year’s midnight. In the summer one feels younger, less burdened; it is easier to be tolerant, accommodating. I measured the distance between myself and a putative summer with dread, knowing that it would put all my powers of endurance to the test. It was the purest bravado that made me move to embrace Betsy, as we prepared to go our separate ways.

  ‘I’ll walk with you a bit,’ she said. ‘I’m not in a hurry.’

  ‘You’re not seeing Edmund this evening, then?’ I asked, tired of my own delicacy.

  She blushed. ‘Well, of course not. He’d only come if . . .’ I had to smile at this confusion. ‘If he had a message from Constance,’ she wound up unconvincingly. ‘I wouldn’t know if he were coming or not. In any case it would be up to him . . .’

  Yes, I might have said. That is the prerogative of errant lovers, those who trade on a woman’s mistaken patience. How unlike marriage, I could have told her, when the presence of the other can be taken for granted, so much so that one has time and opportunity to devise one’s own escape. The benefits of adultery are not unlike those of marriage, the greatest of which is the knowledge that there is someone to come home to. This advantage, completely unearned, is likely to give offence to those of a narrower outlook. In this there could be a large element of envy.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked kindly, seeing the blush fade. I should not go down this route again but for the moment I had succeeded in restoring my composure.

  ‘Of course I’m all right. It was you I was worried about. You hardly ate a thing at lunch.’

  ‘It was my way of protesting against the sort of food that women are supposed to like. I should have preferred something coarse, sausages, baked beans on white toast. Tea in a mug. A slice of Dundee cake wrapped in cellophane. An unfiltered cigarette.’

  ‘Well, you could have had the cigarette.’

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ I said sadly. ‘Though I suppose I could always take it up.’

  ‘There are places where you can eat that sort of food all day, if you really want to. I don’t suppose you’re serious. Are you trying to shock me?’

  ‘Possibly, although there’s no reason why I should want to. Anyway, you’re far too easily shocked. You always were.’

  This made it easy for one or other of us to hark back to the old days, to ask, ‘Do you remember so-and-so?’ or ‘What happened to such-and-such?’ Here I should be handing the advantage back to Betsy, who had faithfully kept in touch with our old friends. They might now have to go, as she isolated herself in the interest of maximum availability. She too would in time discover the limits of this exclusivity, and for a moment I felt genuine indignation on her behalf.

  ‘I think it’s I who have shocked you,’ she said.

  ‘Not really.’ This was true, though it is sometimes difficult to measure the extent of shock. ‘Just be sure to look after yourself, your own part in this, I mean. However it turns out. Don’t let yourself be monopolized by the Fairlies. They’re a brutal couple.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know.’

  After that we smiled at each other, and embraced in good faith.

  ‘Come to me next time. For lunch, I mean. Come any time. I’m always at home, for the time being, anyway. Until Christmas. After that I don’t know.’

  ‘I’d love to. It made a difference, your being there. After Daniel, I mean, and my moving into the flat. Sometimes I wake up and wonder where I am.’

  ‘Everybody does that.’

  ‘Do they?’ She looked surprised. ‘And I do get frightened sometimes. That’s why I’ve always been so grateful for company.’

  That night I had a dream so vivid that when I woke I wondered whether or not a real event had taken place, or if it was not a dream but a memory that I had somehow mislaid. It took place in a dingy deserted restaurant, and I assumed it was too early for other patrons to have arrived. Edmund was seated at the only occupied table, and he was as I remembered him, in an open-necked shirt, a discarded newspaper beside him. As I approached he looked up, his expression abstracted. I knew, even in the dream, that any hesitation in a greeting was significant, that it might have meant inattention, even reluctance. So clear was this that I could even see the level of coffee in his cup, see the pattern on the cup itself. He looked at me, puzzled, then said, ‘We make a great couple.’ In a second his face exploded into joy as he saw Betsy approaching behind me. She was dressed in a loose grey sweater and trousers, the sort of clothes she never wore. He got up to welcome her, and as he did so her upper lip lifted into an answering smile that hinted at intimacy. This dream had no sequel: the moment remained frozen, as did their smiles, his joyous, hers open but with a hint of excuse, as if seeking my indulgence. I was simply an observer, and with some remaining instinct of self-preservation I walked past them and sat down at another table. My instinct was to be angry, at their discourtesy if nothing else, and this I managed for the second that my dreaming mind had decreed. Then, still in the dream, my anger gave way to a terrible dismay as I perceived the truth of their involvement, the joy on Edmund’s face, the shy disclosure on hers. ‘We make a great couple,’ he had said, and this remark stayed with me. There was no turning back from this knowledge, which I had produced for my own enlightenment. I had witnessed a love affair, which had perhaps been going on for some time, and of which I had had no warning until it had been demonstrated, made manifest to my unsuspecting but so irrelevant self.

  The horror of this dream was still with me when I woke, and it was only gradually, in the course of a normal morning, that I managed to persuade myself that it was in fact only a dream and not a real encounter. It seemed a matter of my continued existence, of life itself, that I survey what I knew of Betsy and discount the phantoms with which the dream had presented me. That there was a connection between them I already knew: Betsy had confessed as much. That there might be true feeling involved was something I had contrived to ignore. As the cold grey day wore on I persuaded myself that what I knew of both of them was my only guarantee of sanity. Edmund’s curiosity, Betsy’s sincerity could only result in a mismatch which would bring one or the other of them to grief. I willed on him the kind of punishment he had shown no signs of receiving: the wicked again, flourishing like the green bay tree. I urged on him baldness, impotence, gout, also absent, or at least not yet present. He would extricate himself the moment he felt endangered: that I also knew. It was difficult to imagine Betsy’s reaction when that happened. No doubt she would blame herself. And my role was simply to watch, as I had done in the dream, seated alone at another table, my ruffled feelings givin
g way to the purest despair.

  11

  WHILE I MIGHT HAVE PREDICTED THAT BETSY WOULD fall under Edmund’s spell, or even that she would devote herself to Constance, I was not prepared for her love for their children, which was absolutely genuine and not troubled by conflicting loyalties. ‘They’re so beautiful,’ she said on the telephone when she called to wish me a happy Christmas. Though I thought the word unnecessarily emotive, I had to concede that they were indeed beautiful. This I had been able to see for myself when Digby and I had visited their house: shouts and protestations had issued from behind a closed door, to materialize into three ethereal presences when they were summoned to greet the guests. The girls had been fair, like Edmund, while the boy was dark, like his mother, and with a hint of her wolfish grin. I had seen that in time the boy, David, would eclipse his father and I was sorry that I should not be able to witness the process, for even at the time I read volumes into Edmund’s pride and exasperation as he reproached the boy for some undisclosed misdemeanour, one that had preceded our appearance on the scene. In his eyes I saw a wonder, almost an admiration for the boy’s loose limbs, his unfettered movements. In that glance, to which the boy did not respond, keeping his head obstinately lowered, Edmund seemed to perceive that at some point he would grow old, be replaced, and that his famed sexual potency would pass to the boy, with his mother’s approval.

  Constance, in fact, had given every sign that she would welcome this moment, had treated the boy as an adult, had given full approval to his latent anarchy, and had dismissed him lightly after hearing his plans for the evening. They were all on their way out, the girls to one party, the boy to another. Privileged children, they were never at a loss for company or entertainment. Though the girls were beautiful, with their long fair hair and narrow features, it was the boy who captured the attention. Edmund’s eyes had followed him as he left the room. Constance, whose victory was so clearly in sight, merely smiled pleasantly, savouring the moment of her ascendancy. ‘Don’t be late,’ called Edmund, unwilling to see them go. But they had gone, nudging each other exuberantly, all movement suddenly restored.

  They had been young then, the girls fifteen, the boy nearly twelve. Now they would all be adolescents, with even more exciting prospects. Betsy herself, in that same telephone call, seemed excited herself, at this new sign that the Fairlies had in their gift even more rewarding companionship than that which she already took for granted. For she had, as it were, renewed her lease with the Fairlies by making herself useful in the matter of the children, performing with alacrity those small tasks which might otherwise have fallen to the housekeeper, the renewal of their school clothes, the occasional visit to the dentist, the purchase of birthday presents for their friends, and perhaps most of all the confidences of the two girls, Julia and Isabella, who appeared to regard her as their governess. On holiday from their prestigious schools, they were, to her fond eyes, already more emancipated than she had thought permissible. Both girls had boyfriends, whom they discussed without for a moment doubting their own appeal, both could drive and had been promised cars, both were already familiar with fashionable bars and restaurants. On the strength of her long sojourn in Paris Betsy’s stock was high. Although with unwavering instinct they perceived her to be quite naïve, they were willing to give her credit in the matter of personal appearance, and listened avidly to her largely irrelevant advice. For a time they accepted her as part of the household, and, she said, felt genuine affection for her to which she had the wit to respond with moderation. She seemed happy, and I could only hope that her hero-worship of Edmund and Constance, differentiated but ardent in both cases, would cool and be replaced by a quite different and more justified love for their children.

  This was apparent in her happy voice on the telephone, as she told me that she had been invited to the Fairlies’ on Christmas Day for lunch, or was it dinner? whatever that punitive meal was called, and that she would contact me after the holidays when we must catch up on one another’s news. When I put down the receiver, my own holidays obstinately not taking shape, I wondered if this late avatar of family happiness were not feeding Betsy’s particular addiction. I could see only too clearly that both Edmund and Constance had found an acceptable way of emphasizing her status as an acolyte. This may have served Constance’s purposes, for Constance had always considered Betsy a subordinate who had been drafted into her home by a process which it would not have taken her long to understand. Edmund, whose feelings in the matter were unknown to me, apart from the evidence of that horrifying dream, the details of which were still vivid in my mind, might regard Betsy’s position as the least worst thing to come out of their adventure. He may have had genuine feeling for her, but, seeing her with his children, had painlessly removed her to the background. This may have been inadvertent. Unlike his other loves, Edmund’s love for his children was fierce; not only were they miraculous, unique, they did not appear to find him wanting. And, less fortunately for Betsy, the beauty of the girls put her own looks into perspective. She had always been a pretty girl, but she was no longer a girl. We were both approaching the age at which a woman knows she will never have a child. The implications of this were, I thought, more apparent in Betsy’s case than in mine. My small closed face had undoubtedly not benefited from the passage of time, but I could detect no major changes, perhaps because I was not looking for any. Whereas Betsy’s fairness compared unfavourably with that of the girls, which was flawless. Despite her eagerness on the telephone she complained of tiredness, and the effects of fatigue on a fair complexion are well-known. I urged her to reserve some time for herself, but she protested that there would be no opportunity to do so, as she had promised to help with various arrangements: the party on Christmas Eve, the open house on Boxing Day, and then seeing Constance and the children off to Scotland for the rest of the holiday, after which she promised to be in touch.

  There was something vaguely worrying in all this zeal. I could imagine, though she did not appear to do so, that she had been relegated in some way. Why else did they consent to her continued presence unless it had become completely anodyne, without greater significance? And although she played her part with enthusiasm it worried me that she had failed to perceive the mechanism at play. Again, I had no means of knowing Edmund’s feelings, nor did I intend to give her the opportunity of confiding in me. I was still sore at what I saw as his rejection, for he had not sought so much as a conversation with me, such as I took for granted before, during, and, perhaps more significantly, after any love affair. He had not even indicated that he would be absent, nor for how long: his absence alone spoke for him. Though I was willing to accept that he had been touched by Betsy’s naïveté, and perhaps more, it did not take me long to work out that Constance’s will would prevail in this matter, that it was her own fine instinct that had engineered an outcome to a situation perhaps more threatening than most, and that by the terms of their contract he would be honour bound to observe it. Nor need it constrain him unduly: he was still free to visit Betsy, though perhaps by now he was able to cast a more critical eye on her surroundings. Infinitely more practised than she could ever be, he would wonder why she had not intuited change, would decide that at some point he would explain himself to her, but that before that point was reached he might as well take advantage of a not unsatisfactory arrangement. And she loved his children: he gave her credit for that. He may even have thought in terms of the end of the holidays, when family intimacy would return to normal, either with or without additions. When the children went back to school changes would take place naturally; there would be no need for explanations. And in any event he knew where she was, should he ever feel the need to see her.

  All this was supposition on my part, but I thought I knew him well enough to work out what might have been on his mind. There was always the terrifying possibility that his feeling for her was genuine, but I had almost managed to convince myself that I had no real evidence for this. It was painful for me to deny m
yself information that I could have come by had I had the intelligence to question Betsy without revealing anything of my recent history. But I was not clever enough to be able to do that, and besides it seemed to me a morally distasteful thing to do. Why I was so scrupulous when so many other barriers had fallen I did not quite know. What I did know was that a relatively clear conscience, such as I was able to admit to now, gave me a better night’s sleep. Although a part of me sought to gain eager admittance to what was after all a private affair I could not trust myself to withstand certain revelations, certain details that might have tormented me through untold quiet nights. All women compare themselves, in this situation, as I dare say men do: one longs to know how others behave, yet at the same time one evades the knowledge. Besides, I had no doubt that Betsy would be happy to unburden herself. It was only with the greatest difficulty that she had refrained so far, and I put down to the fact that we had been children together that we had never exchanged the dreadful confidences that women are supposed, indeed entitled, to share. We understood that we were bound to remain on the right side of defensible behaviour, whether it suited us to do so or not.

  Besides, I had no desire for further contact with Edmund, either directly or by proxy. A kind of distaste had intervened, not primarily over my own behaviour but over his. I reminded myself that it was not his character that had attracted me: now I saw this as mildly meretricious. But to apply moral considerations to someone so profoundly and so gracefully amoral was misconceived. Nevertheless I took care never to be in his orbit, even by accident. That meant avoiding his street or the flat where we used to meet, until I reflected that he might have no use for this since he had a reason for going straight home with Betsy and thus economizing on both time and effort. I did not gloss over my own bad behaviour, but I viewed it more calmly. I had not been seduced against my will, but had been genuinely happy with what had been offered. This had been a rapture rather than a simple love affair, as I had known at the time: the gods, perhaps, reminding humans that it was they who were in control. Or maybe I was not made for moderate friendships. I even wondered whether I had not retrieved a kind of authenticity with Edmund that I had been in danger of losing. My marriage was by all accounts successful, but it was largely an affair of affection and good manners. I was bound by those standards out of a loyalty to Digby, but I remembered all too clearly the sheer excitement of leaving such constraints behind. Infatuation seemed to me a perfectly reasonable condition. Yet I knew it was no longer something I need consider, that it had passed to others, or rather to another, and that I must avoid all knowledge of it if I were not to succumb, perhaps more fatally, another time.