‘I like your suit,’ he remarked temperately.
‘This?’ She kicked at the full orange skirt with the toe of one soft kid boot. ‘This is Sharon’s. I always wear Armani myself. That black thing was Armani. Though I have to say her taste has improved since I knew her.’
‘When was that?’
‘Oh, ages ago. We go back a long way.’
‘You didn’t see her in America, did you?’
‘I might have done. Why are you asking me all these questions? Why is everyone so interested in my affairs all of a sudden?’
‘I don’t think that Sharon knows you’re in the flat.’
She shrugged again. ‘Actually she always said that I could stay with her when I was in town.’
‘You’d better tell me the truth,’ he said.
She looked bored and impatient, as if he were importuning her, as perhaps he was. Her cheeks were no longer an angry and, he thought, rather splendid red, but mottled pink and white, as indecisive as her mood. He thought she was uneasy, as well she might be, but what struck him as significant, as it had done in previous conversations, was her inability to answer a simple question, as if evasion were a technique practised for its own sake, one of Singer’s techniques, no doubt, but one which never incurred the risk of bringing the practitioner within dangerous distance of the truth.
‘The truth?’ she said, as if giving the lie to his conclusions. ‘As I said, we go back a long way.’
Again he admired the ease with which she had evaded his question.
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Oh, now it’s times and dates, is it? If you must know, we used to share a flat. In Muswell Hill.’
‘And more recently than that?’
‘I went to her wedding. When she married that weed.’
‘Tim?’
‘Tim. Though I advised her against it, of course.’
‘Of course,’ he said, reflecting that she was not only antagonistic to women, but antagonistic, on principle, to the men they married. This made her antagonistic to nearly everyone, a fact which he had picked up on earlier. Her attitude to men was predatory but hostile, and if he were to judge by her behaviour, hostile to himself. But no doubt she despised him for being old, while at the same time making a mental note of his attributes. He was tired of this game, which was not entirely a game. He felt foolish, not merely old, but almost in his dotage. To engage himself further would be unseemly: he was not, and could not be, in a position of trust or responsibility. He must shed these pompous illusions. At the same time he noted that his recent interrogation, which she now had a notion of having passed unscathed, had brought a healthier colour to her cheeks, as if she had been expecting a punishment which had not been meted out. Again he had a vision of the army sergeant, perhaps a man of uncertain temper, alternately cajoling and slapping, even beating, perhaps more than that … He felt pity for her, felt a warmth towards her, felt the beginnings of a need to protect her. From this standpoint he could see that Mrs Lydiard’s complacent advice, made no doubt with the best of intentions, but insensitively, gratingly, might have brought the girl to the point of open rebellion. But now she was mollified, even smiling. Her smiles were rare. Somehow he had earned this brief indulgence. He received it gratefully. Then, feeling ridiculously rewarded, almost embarrassed, he wished her goodnight. ‘Sleep well,’ he added.
She unwound herself from the door-jamb. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said.
In his bedroom, his fortress, he brooded slightly as he eased his shoes from his feet. He cautioned himself conscientiously against anticipation of further indulgence. All this must stop, he thought. He wished that the Dunlops would come home and take Katy Gibb off his hands. For she did seem to be on his hands. It gave him something to think about, of course, and since the problem would ultimately prove to be self-limiting, he could see no harm in that. The Dunlops would return, and she would leave, and he would be alone again. Here was the position at its most stark. His last thought on the matter, before preparing his evening meal, was that there must be no damage. His role was to help, as it had always been. He sighed, as if life were suddenly a burden to him, and as if he hoped, for a brief but illuminating flash, that help, or at least relief from age, from loneliness, from sadness, might be visited on him, unexpectedly, gratuitously, and without his having earned or even understood the reason for it.
6
NEVERTHELESS HE SEEMED TO HAVE PASSED some sort of test, to judge from her appearance the following morning just as he was leaving the flat. He had only to open his door, it seemed, for her to open hers. He did not want to see her, felt if anything irritated by her apparent availability. He himself had been relatively occupied, had felt that he had made an auspicious start to the day. Quite a few people had telephoned to invite him to various Christmas activities. He had successfully turned down the Hardwicks’ kind invitation to their dog- and grandchild-ridden household for the Christmas weekend, but had noted down in his diary two drinks parties, and lunch with a former colleague, at Wilton’s, on the Wednesday of the following week. He had maintained, without too much difficulty, a façade of good cheer. ‘Fine, fine,’ he had heard himself say no less than four times. ‘Yes. Keeping very busy. Sometimes I wonder how I made the time to come to work.’ This was greeted with dutiful laughter. It was the recognised formula for putting the enquirer at ease.
And indeed, in the light of a sunny morning, he was enjoying one of his brief moments of satisfaction, although he knew that it was likely to prove brief. He had not been forgotten: he had the proof. After Christmas it would be his turn to be gracious. He would make contact with those old friends with whom he had temporarily lost touch; he would invite the Hardwicks to dinner, or perhaps the opera; he would give a small drinks party, or maybe not such a small one, for now he had the time and the leisure to think about such things. In the past the few parties he had given had been a success, although he found them a terrible strain. Hipwood, at his most officious, had been co-opted as footman, a temporary position for which he was handsomely rewarded, while Mrs Cardozo had supervised the caterers in the kitchen. Bland himself felt absurd on these occasions, which were the very obverse of the intimacy which he craved and only rarely achieved, except with Putnam, to whom he felt he ought to excuse himself the following morning. ‘People expect one to entertain,’ he would say, to which Putnam would inevitably reply, ‘More fools they.’ Yet Putnam turned up faithfully, in much the same spirit as that in which he might attend a niece’s wedding: stoically, determined not to spoil the celebration, yet withholding judgment, mindful of pleasures elsewhere. Now that Putnam was gone Bland felt he might shoulder the burden once again, perhaps more at ease now that that ironic eye was no longer there to watch him.
Perhaps Putnam had been too caustic, he thought, but on the other hand how tonic his asperity had been! Putnam never ‘entertained’, but was merely happy with his own chosen company. Bland was perhaps more sensitive to social pressures. There had been no chance of his making a fool of himself while Putnam was there to provide the necessary judicious checks. Not that he had ever been in much danger: it occurred to him now to wonder why he had not been more extravagant, more excessive. If he thought about it, casting his mind back over the past, it was to conclude that he had known too few women, unlike Putnam, whose activities in this respect appeared to be seamless. He never discussed them, and out of discretion Bland had done little more than refer to his own holiday adventures, those conversations struck up over café tables in Paris or Geneva or Florence, and concluded some time later (but not too much later) to everyone’s expressed satisfaction.
In his glancing references to those liaisons Bland implied more than the truth, which was that for him these had been abortive friendships rather than physical episodes, that it had been the search for companionship which had prompted him to proffer the cigarette lighter or to pick up the fallen newspaper. To make love to these strangers—initially such a pleasing idea—fell somewh
at short of what he had desired. He would have preferred, he sometimes thought, to continue to sit in the sun with the charming partner of the moment, to learn something of her life, and her satisfactions or dissatisfactions, rather than to escort her, in the fullness of time (usually a day or two), to his hotel room, or, if he were well known in the place, to a smaller, more discreet hotel in a more distant part of town.
Always on these occasions he felt a faint preliminary disappointment that it was all so easy, almost affectless. He felt that he was doing what was expected of him, what was expected of any man in his situation. It began to seem like a duty, rather than the pleasure he had originally envisaged. The story of his life, he thought, soberly retying his tie afterwards. He always loved to be out again in the sun and the clean air, with his partner clinging to his arm in a semblance of friendship, as if she were—at last—rather more than a willing accomplice. He supposed that some basic physical hygiene was involved in all this: in any event he always slept better afterwards. But he paid dearly for his moment of intimacy, which always occurred at the beginning of the encounter rather than in its aftermath. His subsequent estrangement puzzled him. What was missing? It had all been quite agreeable; no feelings had been hurt. He could not quite analyse the desolation which frequently descended upon him, coinciding usually with the end of the holiday, and therefore easy enough to account for. If put to the test he would have said that he was after friendship, that he had made a friend and simultaneously lost her by the very act of making love to her. He did not wonder whether his love-making had been at fault. Pleasure had been mutual and had been mutually expressed. He had not failed his partner. If he had failed anyone, he thought, he had failed himself.
Immediately after such encounters he felt weary of their opportunism, their predictability. But the women seemed well disposed and he would in any case have revised his strategy had they not been, settling back, with some disappointment, but also with some relief, into his true character as a dignified if somewhat wistful English gentleman. At least he supposed he was a gentleman: he was certainly gentle, if sometimes concerned that he did not always act like a man. This worried him, until he sat back with a sigh and transferred his attention to the pleasing holiday sights before him. A companion would have been pleasant, but the companionship to which he had access was not fulfilling. He was unlucky, he supposed, in harbouring inchoate wishes which never found their exact equivalent in one other person. Yet he had no doubt that many other men found themselves in the same predicament, and he pitied them, and himself, for that loneliness that no amount of recreational sex could assuage.
All this was now, perhaps fortunately, in the past. There would be no more adventures in foreign cities, and if he were to proffer a cigarette lighter over a café table in the future it would simply be a courtesy from one stranger to another. He had imagined that such an evolution would bring a deep peace. That it did not he put down to the anxieties of approaching age, which, he was beginning to discover, banished peace almost as effectively as adolescence had done. He was astonished by the gusts of longing that frequently swept over him, when he awoke in the morning, for example, or in the middle of the night, when the news from the World Service failed to keep him company. He forced himself to think of all the solitaries listening to the radio when they should be sleeping, mariners, night watchmen, invalids, but failed to find comfort in the knowledge that others were awake. His sleeplessness seemed to confine him to a ghetto, in which the forsaken, the forgotten, and the unsatisfied were his fellow inmates. It seemed to him that women in these situations could not possibly experience the same degree of loneliness.
Nights such as these left him momentarily broken the following day, and he was almost glad that he no longer had to go to the office. If he wished he could take a siesta, and having once surrendered to the temptation found the habit quite difficult to break. He got used to sleeping, sometimes heavily, in the afternoon. He found himself looking forward to this sleep, lunching early if he were at home, taking a taxi back if he were lunching at the club, eager, almost, to reach his dusky flat, whose steady warmth was so unlike the radiant heat of those distant days in foreign cities, when adventure beckoned, or rather seemed to beckon … These days he crammed his activities into the morning hours, planning and timing them as if they were real obligations. His shopping, a visit to the London Library, perhaps an hour at the club, were enough to make him feel as if he had been active, as if he deserved to take his rest. Later, becalmed by the heavy sleep which obliterated the afternoon, he would go out for the evening paper and for whatever purchases he might need or have forgotten in the earlier part of the day. He preferred his street in the dark, when the lights came on: he liked to see people about their business, something he had failed to take in that morning. He looked forward to his peaceful evening, reading, listening to music, watching television. Sometimes it seemed to him that he only came to life in the latter part of the day, before, with a sigh, he was obliged to prepare for bed and for a night which would inevitably be, if not sleepless, at least disturbed.
He recognised the signs of age, both in his largely pointless activity and his totally unearned inactivity. All he could hope to do was to keep them to himself. Yet it seemed to him sad that the fire should have quite died down, leaving him inert, a man without impulses. Sometimes he wondered whether he were dead already, until a transient pleasure recalled him to life. His days were pleasant; even this particular day was pleasant. The sun was high in a clear sky; it would be a crime to stay at home. He would go to the London Library; he had a fancy to read Mauriac again, as he had in the years of adolescence. Then he would lunch at the club. He sighed a little as he made his plans, all too aware that many men might envy him. He was not quite reconciled to this limbo of a life and wondered if anything could restore him to some semblance of feeling, or whether he had said goodbye to feeling for ever.
Leaving the flat with as much goodwill as he could muster, he was not best pleased to see the Dunlops’ door open and Katy Gibb appear. He had been profoundly submerged in his thoughts; for a moment or two he looked at her with no sense of recognition. This morning she was dressed in black trousers and what looked to him like a very expensive black cashmere sweater. He was jolted back into the present. The sweater, he reckoned, was Sharon’s. He looked for, and found, the bare feet, and prepared to exert even more goodwill than he had thought would be necessary. A quick greeting, and then he could be about his own affairs.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I hope you slept well?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ she replied. ‘You wouldn’t find me up at this hour if I had.’
‘I should have thought that half-past nine …’
‘But then you go to bed so early, don’t you? Don’t you get bored doing that?’
These questions were accompanied by a confident half smile, as if she were prepared for them to be friends.
‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ he said. ‘I’ve got rather a busy morning.’ He groaned as he heard himself uttering this lie, but felt it necessary to stock up with half-truths in order to protect his time from what he suspected might be frequent incursions.
Her answer was to step across the landing on her bare feet, and to bestow on him the same luminous gaze with which she had favoured him at their first meeting. He had to admire her newly washed hair, still faintly damp, from which rose a lemony smell of shampoo.
‘Only if you’re making a cup of coffee, I don’t mind keeping you company for half an hour.’
Sheer exasperation, and also the masochistic thrill of succumbing to her will, a will turned idly in his direction for want of something better to exert itself upon, led him to fling open the door, rather harder than was necessary, and to usher her into his sitting-room.
‘Coffee or tea?’ he asked her shortly.
‘Oh, tea! And perhaps toast? Toast would be magic!’
She appeared to be dreamily relaxed, a fact which perplexed him, when she had previous
ly been so much on her guard. He supposed that the few words they had exchanged on the previous evening had been sympathetically received. He had said or done something right.
‘I take it you haven’t had breakfast,’ he said.
‘Oh, I never eat breakfast,’ she replied, still dreamily. A few minutes later he watched her spreading honey on her buttered toast. ‘I’m usually out to lunch, and by the time I’ve got up and had my bath and dressed there’s no time. You know how it is.’
She managed to include him in her intimacy, or rather in the intimacy of her morning activities. He studied her covertly. She certainly appeared scrubbed, burnished, as if her efforts had been extensive. Her cheeks were pink, and although she wore no make-up he was being given to understand that he was seeing merely the empty canvas, that when the invitation to lunch was received she would transform herself, as she had done on the day of their first meeting, when she appeared so startlingly changed into a woman of mysterious significance. He preferred her, if he had a preference, as she was. There was something appealing about her, although she was far from being a beauty. The mousy hair was straight, the eyes, of an indeterminate greyish blue, rather small. The skin, however, was perfect, smooth, and with a sheen that broadcast messages of health and youth. In black the body showed to its best advantage, although that little roll of flesh on the stomach might be troublesome later on.
‘Are you going out to lunch today?’ he asked.
‘It’s too early to say, really. My friends are never really around before ten or half past. I’ll make a few calls later on.’
‘Do they work, your friends?’
‘Some do, some don’t. Most of them don’t need to.’
‘What will you do when the Dunlops come home?’
She shrugged. ‘Go and stay with somebody else. I’ve got masses of invitations. I’ve only got to pick up the phone. You’re not worried about me, are you? There’s no need, you know. I’m feeling very good about myself, very positive. I’m in the moment, you know?’
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