The Rules of Engagement

by Anita Brookner

  ‘Yes, I’ll ring you.’ This would be the telephone call that announced my imminent departure. This seemed to me satisfactory, though my heart was beating uncomfortably. She took my arm, and I made no attempt to remove it. Thus had we sometimes wandered home from school.

  ‘What about the children?’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Surely one can lay claim to children?’

  ‘Only when they are helpless,’ I replied. ‘They are programmed to seek their independence. That is their strength. Goodbye, then. I’m going to grab that taxi.’ I did not urge her to keep in touch. It was somehow beyond my reach to utter the simple formula. I knew she would be hurt by my failure to do so. Through the taxi window I saw her worried face. I lifted my hand briefly, and was thankfully removed from the scene. This now assumed the dimensions of a betrayal. On both sides. The fact that we were equally guilty did nothing to salvage my self-respect. Nor would she feel any better, rather worse, in fact. But I had no more sentiment to spare. I simply hoped that she would repair herself as best she could, without any help from me. Something awful had been uncovered. Reason demanded that the whole incident should be dismissed. An error, quite possibly indelible. It would be in no one’s interest to compound it.

  Back in the flat I accepted the slow grind of traffic outside the window as an appropriate accompaniment to even slower afternoons. It had the power to hypnotize me, even to reconcile me to what was by any standards a singularly dull life. With an effort I went into the bedroom, opened a cupboard, and dragged out a suitcase, as if my travel plans must be implemented without delay. I need not pack much; it would be sunny where I was going, as it is in all fantasies of displacement. Paris first, I thought, and then a slow train south. I would leave this train on an impulse, somewhere off the main line. I would walk, on a still afternoon, until I found a small hotel, where I would be immediately recognized as a traveller, rather than a tourist. My days would be entirely empty, entirely insignificant, giving me time to evaluate my life, and also to remove myself from the life I had already lived. My aim would be to detach the present completely from the past. If this process were successful I might never feel the need to come home.

  But then I thought of my bed, of Digby’s desk, of the chair in which I had once sat to read. These were now my attributes; it might be hard to leave them. I was not old, but widowhood must have incremented the ageing process, so that I was now a creature of settled habits when all around me women were having adventures, taking lovers, running corporations. It was my feeling of shame at this comparison that had prompted me to seek the only sort of freedom I could manage. I even congratulated myself on my lack of entanglements, of obligations. I saw exile—for now it was becoming that—as cleaner, nobler than love and its delusions. For surely all love contained an element of delusion? Though that delusion was empowering, enabling one to go beyond oneself, it was not to be encouraged. I looked back approvingly to the sobriety of my marriage, an honest affair from any point of view, utterly defensible. I had never had any desire to disguise it, accepting its dullness as a necessary virtue. That it had precipitated an equally necessary madness seemed to me to warrant no further consideration. I would never speak of this, though to do so would no doubt make me seem a more interesting figure. Interesting to women, rather. No man should hear of it, not that there was any man to enquire. The empty suitcase yawned. Anything would do to fill it, for I should be leaving most of myself behind.

  At some point in my rather confused upbringing I had formed the notion that friendships should last for life, that an association once established could be relied upon not to change. Even in middle age I clung to this idea. I could see that what was in essence a conviction, an article of faith, might not always be shared, but this eventuality struck me as unlikely. I preferred the comforting illusion that I should always be known by someone to whom I did not need to explain myself. Although aware that this condition pertained to love rather than to friendship I persisted in this way of thinking. That it had some validity was proved by the distress that a broken friendship signified, and I was in no doubt that Betsy no longer regarded me as a friend. She mistakenly saw me as a rival, albeit a rival whom she had managed to vanquish, whereas I was compromised in every way by what I had heard from both the protagonists. I had not wanted to be a party to her confessions, let alone to Edmund’s moment of candour: both were incompatible with the friendships I had hoped to sustain. I now saw this as an illusion, and that one could expect to witness the defection of friends as well as lovers. This seemed to me incomparably sad. It was perhaps the last ideal I had managed to salvage, and I saw my proposed exile, for it would be nothing less, as a desire to obliterate the evidence of such unexpected disharmony, and to form myself anew, or perhaps to grow up a second time, in suitably desert surroundings, in that wilderness that awaits those who have broken all ties, or perhaps been abandoned by those whose affinity with oneself had not stood the test of time, with whom one can no longer share experiences in a way that adds to common knowledge, or ever again speak with the spontaneity, which is, I now saw, the climate of childhood rather than that of later life.

  Evening might have found me there still, sitting on my heels in front of an empty suitcase, had the telephone not rung. I ignored it, thinking it might be Betsy, to whom I was not ready to speak. But it sounded authoritative, as unanswered telephones do, and it occurred to me that it might be my mother, that something might be wrong. (My father I kept in reserve; his health might concern me at a later date.) With a sigh I got to my feet, stumbled on cramped legs to the living-room. ‘Elizabeth Wetherall,’ I said. There was a sound of a throat being cleared, almost a sigh that responded to my own. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Nigel Ward here. You very kindly gave me your number.’

  ‘Mr Ward. How nice to hear from you.’

  ‘I am going to be in your neighbourhood this evening . . .’

  ‘But you must come for a drink.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Any time from six, if you can manage it. I should be delighted to see you.’

  Another sigh. ‘Would six-thirty be convenient?’

  ‘Of course. I look forward to it.’

  I replaced the suitcase in the cupboard. Since I had all the time in the world to plan my journey I decided there was no rush. But I should leave, no matter who sought to detain me.

  14

  ‘YOU WALKED HERE, I IMAGINE? ’

  ‘Oh, yes. I walk everywhere. I find it’s the best way of ensuring a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘How far was that? Your walk, I mean.’

  ‘My flat is in Bedford Way. Not that I spend much time there. My days are organized around the students. It’s important to keep them occupied. Most of them are far from home, you see . . .’

  ‘Yes, I remember you saying that.’

  He looked far from home himself, lost, rather alarmed to find himself drinking a glass of white wine in a strange woman’s house. I wanted to put him at his ease, but was aware that I must not alarm him further. What he might have wanted was not apparent. I did not entirely believe his explanation for his presence—that he was to be in the neighbourhood—but this may have been the truth. He did not look the sort of man given to lame excuses. A rather frightening rectitude emanated from what was an elegant if mournful appearance: even seated he seemed excessively tall, taking care to fold his long legs out of the range of any furniture they might encounter. I registered the fact that his head was well-proportioned, that he might be considered good-looking. He had a stern nineteenth-century face that put one in mind of incorruptible officials in a world long since faded. I did not quite see how he fitted into our shabbier times. No doubt consorting with young people afforded him a certain amount of company, even of comfort. I thought him lonely. Certainly he seemed unattached. Why else was he here?

  ‘Have you always done this kind of work?’

  He smiled. At least he was not so inexperienced that he could not recognize a woman’s curiosity. ‘In a sense, though not in the
way I intended. I find I am happiest in a student atmosphere, no doubt because I was so happy as a student myself. I am no doubt arrested at an early stage of my development. That’s what Freud would say, anyway.’

  ‘You seem quite normal to me. One imagines Freud dealing with something more dramatic.’

  ‘Those were his women patients. Women had a hard time of it then.’

  Still do, I thought. ‘What arrested your development, then? Can I give you some more wine?’

  ‘Thank you. Oh, I can time it pretty well. I was in my last year at Oxford. Magdalen. I was doing well; everyone seemed pleased with me. I was being encouraged to think of an academic career, a fellowship, even. And I had already met my future wife, a fellow student. We were unrealistically happy, in a way that never comes again.’

  ‘Why do you say unrealistically?’

  ‘Because we were escapists, or I was. I was warned about neglecting my work but took no notice of the warnings. We planned to marry as soon as the summer term ended. I had sailed through Finals, convinced that nothing could go wrong. I was in a sort of euphoria, madness, even.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I got a Third, instead of the First everyone had so confidently predicted. My tutor was furious. It put an end to my proposed academic career. I had a wife, no job, no home of my own, and a mother whom my father had entrusted to my care before he died. We had no choice but to live with her, while we both looked around for work.’

  ‘How did that work out?’

  ‘Not well. Oh, everyone was very civilized, but my mother was more keen on a career for me than on my status as a new husband. Widowed mothers have a tendency to infantilize their sons. Not so my mother. She really wanted me to be her own age, or older, able to look after her, even to be a sort of consort. She regarded my wife rather as if she were someone I had brought home from school for tea, no more serious than a childhood friend whom I should now put away in the interests of my new seniority. Which she had imposed on me.’

  ‘And your wife?’

  ‘She was bewildered. We agreed that she should live with her parents until I got a proper job, when we’d start our life again. But it took too long, and she was lonely.’

  ‘You, too, I imagine.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a silence. ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I’m asking too many questions.’

  He smiled. ‘There aren’t many more that I can answer. I took various tedious courses, all very far removed from the classics I still longed to study, and eventually became the bursar of a college of higher education. I took early retirement— mistakenly—found I had too little to do and thought voluntary work might be the answer. That’s what I do now.’

  ‘And your wife?’

  ‘We divorced. Or rather she divorced me. We stayed married but separate for a long time. Then she met someone else.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘No. In a sense I remained true to her. To our early promise. It was hard to recover from that.’

  ‘What a strange story.’

  ‘It ruined my life, of course. My mother became ill and begged me not to leave her. My wife reproached me, quite justifiably. But really what had happened was that we had been forced to grow up, face reality.’

  ‘Like Adam and Eve.’

  ‘I’ve always been on their side.’

  ‘At least you had your time in Eden.’

  ‘Yes, I had that.’

  Again, silence fell. I had not been prepared for this operatic confession. In fact I suspected I was being given an edited version of a much longer story, one that he thought he should offer as explanation for himself: his calling card, as it were. These were confessional times, all discretion gone. Also I suspected an analyst somewhere in the background, either in the past or perhaps still on the job. There was probably more: a breakdown at some point. I hope I gave no hint that I suspected this. My role seemed to be one of contained listener, like the presumed analyst, in fact. But the analyst always has the excuse of being allowed to indicate when the session is over. I had none. Besides, I was getting hungry. I had no food in the house. I had done no shopping. The whole day had been wasted, and as well as wasted, spoiled. I warned myself to stick to the present circumstance and not to drift off again into my own preoccupations.

  ‘You must be hungry after your long walk,’ I said. ‘I’d love to offer you something to eat, but I’ve nothing suitable.’

  I thought this would give him a chance to invite me out to dinner. Instead he got to his feet, thinking he was being dismissed.

  ‘Please don’t go,’ I said. ‘There’s a small restaurant round the corner where my husband and I used to go. That might be the answer. I’m really ashamed of my lack of preparedness.’

  ‘That would be very pleasant.’

  ‘It’s an Italian menu,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you’ll find something you like.’

  No further conversation was forthcoming on the short walk to the restaurant, for which I was grateful. The evening was so benign that it shed its aura in a way that was almost abstract. I had been too long deprived of normal conditions not to marvel at their apparent availability. In this early dusk, dissolving only gently into a night that promised restful sleep, it was easy to remain in the present, to accept this inconsequential companion as an appropriate traveller on the same route as I had long schooled myself to undertake, and which I now saw as one of intolerable loneliness. That acceptance of friends, of lovers, that burden of their subsequent loss, seemed to relegate me to a sub-species of those without either, although I knew that to acquaintances, to strangers, even to this particular stranger I appeared a competent, self-sufficient, even unsympathetic person who had no need of close attachments. I was, I saw, too proud, or too ashamed (they are the same thing) ever to have confided, to have confessed in any company. The strain was great, but I knew no other way of behaving. That was why the idea of flight had presented itself, and why flight seemed to be the next logical step. I envied the silent Mr Ward his young companions, most of all the trust he must inspire, for I could see that this was a man with elevated standards, however bleak these had proved to be. He would conduct himself well, that was clear. I envied him his discipline. At the same time these qualities seemed too harsh to offer any emotional or even spiritual relief. Virtue, being its own reward, rarely if ever compensates those who possess it.

  The atmosphere eased slightly when we were seated in the restaurant, surrounded by the low murmur of discreet fellow diners. It was still too early for the young people who would surely arrive later. Our present companions were presumably on their way home, or perhaps going to see a film at one of the local cinemas. We surveyed the menu, although I knew it by heart.

  ‘Are you brave enough to eat seafood?’ I asked. ‘I believe it’s good here, although I’ve never liked it. I once had a bad experience with dressed crab.’

  ‘Lasagne,’ he said, laying the menu aside. ‘I am not an adventurous eater.’

  ‘I’ll have the same.’ Something simple seemed indicated, in deference to the tentative nature of our association.

  ‘You came here with your husband,’ he stated. It was not a question.

  ‘He died.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t know how one deals with loss,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve made a poor job of it.’

  ‘The ability to deal with loss is perhaps as important, or rather as significant, as the loss itself.’

  There spoke the therapist, I thought, that figured in the background whose shadowy presence I had intuited.

  ‘And yet my husband was too kind to leave me bereft. I miss him as a friend as much as anything. Just to know he was in the next room was enough.’

  I did not tell him that it was the other one I missed, sometimes with an urgency that shocked me. I took a draught of wine, hoping that it would make me drunk. Sober, I did not think I could add much to this conversation.

  ‘Some losses are in nature, of course,’ I
heard him say. ‘Those are the ones from which one eventually recovers. Mine was not like that. Mine was entirely self-inflicted.’

  ‘How do you live now?’

  ‘Oh, quietly. I am a disgrace to everyone’s concept of masculinity.’

  I could hardly, on so short an acquaintance, ask him about sex. ‘I do the same. I am a disgrace to my generation. But I think I was born a little too early to appreciate the fact that I was free to please myself.’

  ‘That is the orthodoxy now, certainly. Though I think it has to be amended by wider considerations. One’s own freedom is rarely absolute.’

  ‘The idea is attractive.’

  ‘Yes. And misleading.’

  There was a silence after this, as if to mark the end of the matter. Silence did not seem to worry him, although I felt the need to furnish it. It struck me that his evenings might be spent in such a manner, perhaps without a companion. When I thought the silence unduly prolonged I asked him whether he would go away. What I wanted to know was what he did about holidays, apart from leading students on forced marches.

  ‘I shall go somewhere, I suppose, I usually do a long walk in France. I have friends in the south. And you?’

  ‘I had a journey in mind, yes. The details are yet to be confirmed.’ This seemed to me both vague and respectable, as if I too had friends to whom I could go.

  This journey now seemed to me phantasmagorical, though it remained a presence in my mind. There were in fact friends of Digby’s, whom we had dined with and met at the theatre, who had pressed me most warmly to visit them, in the houses they seemed to possess in a variety of places. I had always thanked them but had managed to imply that other friends had offered similar invitations. The real reason, and I think the correct one, was that I knew that my silence, my solitude, acted as a deterrent on both sides, and that these kind people would do better without me. That they did not know the depths of that solitude seemed to me preferable. I knew it was not something that would yield easily to day-long company. My own company, unrelieved as it was, seemed to enfold me like a carapace; I doubted now if I could ever manage without it. Within its restrictions I knew what I could and could not do. This seemed to me a knowledge worth preserving, whatever the cost.