A Private View

by Anita Brookner

  He realised with a start that it was very late. He had not eaten, nor did he want to eat. This surprised him: he normally had a healthy appetite. But the whole day had been surprising, starting with one set of reflections and ending with another, surely the most inapposite he had ever entertained. Through them all ran a connecting thread, if only he could understand it. On the verge of his new life he was surprised by regret. He urged himself forward out of his chair, stumbling slightly with cramp, and poured himself a glass of whisky. He drank it standing at the window, gazing at the lights opposite. When he had first come to London he had fantasised about the happy families behind the lighted windows; on summer evenings he had strolled through squares and terraces, casting wistful looks into basement kitchens. On those occasions a curtain drawn against prying eyes had felt like a snub. He was past all that now, he told himself; he was beyond envy. Perhaps his own rise to security had blunted the eagerness with which he had sought images of happiness. He had done without them now for a very long time, but perhaps that time was past. Now he would have to do his best in a completely uncertain world, and he needed more whisky to ease his passage. For a difficult moment he was almost ready to turn back.

  For this was not the pilgrimage for which his early readings had prepared him. This was not a venture undertaken in innocence. He was behaving like the lewd greybeards in Tintoretto’s Susannah and the Elders which he had seen in Vienna. Susannah, with braided hair and pearl earrings, sits plumply in the foreground, while the sneaking elders, in the grave robes of seniority, peer from behind a convenient palisade. But in this instance there was no victim either. This perplexed him: he had detected a logical flaw in the proceedings. If he could not deceive himself as to either his motives or hers, did this not argue a cynicism with which he was unfamiliar? He would have to rely on his own restlessness, his own small rebellion against decorum, and—more reliable, this—his own desire to possess some of that life of which he had for too long remained in prudish ignorance. He would turn his back on that life, he resolved, and poured himself more whisky. His muscles lost their tenseness, and for a moment innocence appeared as something one relinquished with childhood, with the notion that virtue was rewarded. Or should be. He was getting muddled now; it might have been a good idea to have eaten something. It was even too much of an effort to go to bed. It was very late when he eventually managed it, leaving his empty glass, unwashed, for Mrs Cardozo to exclaim over the following morning.

  When he eventually surfaced from a sketchy vivid sleep he felt tentative, even frightened. But he was visited with a determination to go through with it. Something, however, prevented him from making his decision known to anyone. Besides, there was only Katy to whom the decision was relevant. He dressed carefully, aware of the cold on his shrinking flesh. His mild hangover seemed to have produced a semblance of physical decline, so that he viewed his body with more than usual distaste. Normally he accepted it without much question; it had seen him through life uncomplainingly and was still functioning in a manner which he found acceptable. He brushed the hair which still covered his scalp adequately, if not copiously, and examined his face in the bathroom mirror. He felt curious, as if he had never seen this face as an outsider might see it. It was, like the rest of him, unremarkable, though he now saw that the eyes wore a puzzled pleading expression. He hoped that this was not habitual. It was, he decided, a resigned face, and the idea that he might have gone through life looking resigned strengthened his determination to change his outlook to one of joyous determination, or at least of voluptuous brooding.

  Dressed, he decided that he could still pass muster. He had not put on weight, and his slight stoop was only noticeable when he was very tired. He had always taken the trouble to look decent, and his clothes were in good order. He thought, however, that he might treat himself to some new shirts, perhaps a pullover or two. He might think about ordering a lightweight suit for that journey to the sun. The obligatory panama hat, which he thought might suit him rather well, could be left until later.

  All at once his calculations fell away, and he thought of her simply, not seeing why he could not love her as any man might love any woman, or as a mature man might love a girl to whom he wished to extend his protection. The idea contained its own very different temptation, access to a world of sweetness, of shared company, of lifelong conversation, and other delights. The real triumph would be to pierce her carapace of worldliness and to convert her to the same simplicity as that which now flooded him with longing. He gazed out of the window into the cold winter sun, dazzled by this imaginary paradise. He felt it a tragedy that he could only approach it as an unbeliever, an infidel. In a moment or two his ineradicable lucidity told him that Katy was not a candidate for this sort of transformation. She was too earth-bound, too greedy. He remembered how her face could be transformed by greed. He would have to rely on that greed if he were ever to conquer her.

  With a sigh he relinquished his vision. It might have been the supreme emotional adventure. As it was, he would have to make do with the merest approximation, while she might not even have access to a transforming fantasy. She would remain rebarbative. He would always be on the verge of losing her. He would never know peace, never earn the right to relax in her company. Within a very short space of time she would cease to enjoy herself. She would never be grateful to him. All this he knew. Yet at the same time he knew a weird excitement at the thought of her captivity.

  He left the flat, descended the stairs, and stepped out into the freezing air. A winter sun was just piercing the frost and fog; it was a fine winter’s day, the sort of day on which he would normally have taken a long walk. How distant those humble promenades now seemed, how obsolete! They belonged to a life in which no greater pleasure could be expected. The passing of that life had now to be endured. His course was set on a different and more problematic path: satisfactions would not be guaranteed. The almost unbearable truth of his present situation faced him in all its simplicity. He was only incidentally planning for the future. What he was really doing was correcting the past, rewriting his own history. His life had taken him in a direction which had precluded him from reaching other destinations, and he had chosen that life, had willed it even, seeing it as safety, as a bulwark against anxious and chaotic thinking. Now he was in search of uncertainty, before it was too late and he was for ever imprisoned inside the fate he had once devised for himself.

  He went into Trumper’s and had his hair cut. ‘Very sad about Mr Putnam, sir,’ said the barber, who had known them both over many years. ‘Yes, I find it difficult to come to terms with his death,’ he said. He dared hardly think of Putnam’s reaction to his present behaviour. But the sun through the window was now strong, and the lotion being patted into his skin smelled sweet, and he was in any case restless. He strolled in the sun to Jermyn Street and spent a not unpleasurable half-hour choosing shirts and looking at ties. He bought coffee at Fortnum’s, contemplated lunch at the club, but felt a sudden desire to be at home. But of course, he had to be at home for when Katy called. He would be circumspect, he told himself: he would say nothing of the future. So far only the journey to Rome had been on offer. He would enjoy these moments of preparation, which would be entirely his own. Besides, it would be more elegant to say little: he had his own performance to consider. He bought cheese and bread, salad and fruit. He was aware that he had eaten very little on the previous day, but was too impatient to linger. He caught a cab outside the shop, and was home in fifteen minutes.

  He plunged into the hallway of the building: in his imagination he could hear his doorbell ringing. It seemed imperative to reach the flat before she turned away. He was briefly aware of a navy blue figure conversing with Hipwood.

  ‘Good morning, George,’ said Mrs Lydiard. ‘My word, you are in a hurry.’

  ‘Why, good morning,’ he replied, with an air of great surprise, not entirely assumed. ‘How are you? Nice to see you. I am in rather a hurry, I’m afraid.’

 
‘I was just telling Mr Hipwood that at least some of us won’t be deserting him over the holiday. I am staying put this year. And what about you, George? Any plans?’

  ‘I shall probably be away myself,’ he said. ‘But I’ll certainly be in touch before I go. Perhaps we could meet. Now, if you’ll excuse me …’

  ‘Any news of our young friend?’ said Mrs Lydiard, with a smile. ‘I was just saying to Mr Hipwood that the Dunlops should soon be back. Then I expect she’ll be moving on, won’t she?’

  Bland realised that Mrs Lydiard felt an antipathy towards the girl, perhaps merely the antipathy of an older woman for a younger one. All at once he felt an antipathy towards Mrs Lydiard, with her thin-lipped smile from which all trace of good humour had departed.

  ‘I have no idea what her plans are,’ he said.

  ‘Have you seen her recently?’ she asked, too artlessly.

  ‘Not very recently, no.’

  Mrs Lydiard was too well-bred to raise an eyebrow. Nevertheless she managed to convey the impression that she knew what was going on. Behind his desk Hipwood listened impassively.

  ‘Don’t be too kind, George,’ she said. ‘Don’t let your good nature get the better of you.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s likely to do that,’ he said jovially. ‘Any letters, Hipwood?’ Immediately he cursed himself for this crucial breach of etiquette. This was a misdemeanour which would not be forgotten. Only Colonel Crowther, from the top floor, was allowed to address Hipwood by his surname alone, and only because he had been a superior officer in the war. ‘Of course, you weren’t in the Forces, sir,’ Hipwood was wont to remark when Bland showed signs of not paying quite enough attention. He had always felt admonished, as was the intention. Hipwood was allowed these small incivilities, for reasons which had to do with his supposed surveillance of their welfare. For a quiet life it was wise to play the cards as he dealt them, or rather to agree with everything he said. Bland had always observed these rules. Now he had broken them, and felt appalled.

  Mrs Lydiard registered the significance of this episode with an even broader smile. Information was not lacking, she implied, if one were quick-witted enough to receive it. Her disappointment at being excluded from such a promising little threesome, her frustration at not being made privy to a confession of reduced circumstances, on receipt of which she would royally have offered an extremely small token of her favour, changed to satisfaction. No one could call me a prude, said her expression, but I am not a fool either. But then I am not a man. The smile now held a suggestion of moral superiority. Unable to face this, and the fiasco of the whole encounter, the ruin of his relationship with Hipwood, his unmasking by Mrs Lydiard, he chose flight.

  ‘Do excuse me,’ he said. ‘Some rather urgent business.’ Sweating slightly, encumbered by his packages, he was aware that he had cut an unheroic figure. The shape of things to come, he told himself.

  He stowed his purchases in his bedroom without unpacking them: he had lost interest in them. Now it was necessary not only to eat, but to have eaten, so that he could clear away all evidence of domesticity and present an agreeable and worldly façade to his visitor—for he did not doubt that he would see her that day. He cracked two eggs and slid them into the pan, contemplated making a salad and dismissed the idea. He ate hastily and carelessly, registering the fact that he was behaving out of character: normally fastidious, he was now febrile. Seated at last in his chair he felt momentarily triumphant, as if the morning had constituted a huge obstacle course which he had managed, against the odds, to overcome. So exhausting were his thoughts that he could no longer exactly determine to which point they had led him. Somewhere in the distance, from the floor above him, no doubt, he could hear the theme music from the afternoon repeat of The Archers. If it were not yet two o’clock, he reckoned, he might allow himself a brief nap. Sleep would expunge his confusion. Afterwards he would be calm, with just that air of amused tolerance which would become him in the afternoon’s encounter, an encounter on which he depended to advance his plans.

  He came to with a jolt, and with a feeling of panic. The room was dark: he must have slept for more than an hour. He looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly four, and that he had slept for nearly two hours, a sleep so profound that he was bewildered, not knowing what had caused it. He took this to be a sign of age, this sudden and unheralded descent into unconsciousness, and this flustered waking. He got to his feet and stumbled slightly: the ache in his calves was more pronounced today, and he thought of torn ligaments, which would effectively immobilise him, or even a thrombosis, no doubt to be expected. Would she care for him in his infirmity? He thought not: she would gleefully see the occasion as one she could turn to her own advantage and would make her escape, safe in the knowledge that he could not pursue her. Now more than ever it seemed to him imperative to exert some influence, before time could damage him more than it already had done. He felt lost, unequal to the inevitable struggle for dominance. For a moment he would have abandoned the whole plan had he not been faced with the immense problem of how to live his life without her. He felt cold, and wondered whether he had caught a chill. Then he realised that the room was cold. He hobbled over to the radiators and felt them: lukewarm. Normally he would have called Hipwood on the internal telephone and asked him to investigate, but his recent lapse seemed to have precluded that possibility. He switched on several lamps, hoping to create an illusion of warmth. He hoped that the air of discreet luxury, rather than the substance of it, might disarm his visitor. He himself was resigned to discomfort until he was safe in bed, as he momentarily longed to be.

  Her presence was necessary to displace his anxiety, and also a faint sensation of horror that he had moved so far from his normal moral position. He was a mild man (too mild, he thought), a moderate man, one who observed the courtesies of that undemanding life which he had once so treasured. Now he was attempting recklessness, and the attempt disturbed him. But recklessness has its own momentum, and he could no longer see his way out of it. Besides, it toned him up, he thought, thinking of his agreeable morning, and ignoring his recent sleep. In fact it was necessary to ignore this if he were to regard himself as capable of any kind of enterprise, especially one which comported distance, and constant travel, and an amused forbearance. He banished the thought of how he must have appeared, and would appear, to an unfriendly eye, his hair dishevelled, his body slack, his mouth open. Extreme vigilance would be the price of his hoped-for liberty. Yet part of him knew that age and tiredness would claim him, for he had always been able to recognise the inevitable. But he could fight it, he thought. The image of Putnam, dying, in the ultimate disorder of physical dissolution, came to him, and he resolved, once again, not to wait for that dissolution, which would surely come, but to enjoy what life was vouchsafed to him until that moment. He would be able to foresee that moment, he thought, and if he still had the courage, and if he were not still enamoured of his life, he would take his pills and make an end. And truth to tell his death could be more efficiently handled by a hotel than if he were to attempt it in his flat, where he would be discovered by Mrs Cardozo. That was not to be envisaged. He had always enjoyed stories of stoic deaths, particularly of Socrates drinking his hemlock while discoursing to his followers. Surely that was a death to be emulated. And might not such a vision strengthen him just when his body was becoming weaker, and when regard would no longer be paid? He saw himself, quite clearly, dying alone, having made his preparations. He would lie down one afternoon, thinking to take a nap, and all at once knowing that he could no longer sustain this immense adventure he had brought upon himself. He could see the sun, always the sun, sinking outside his window: he could see himself disposed in an orderly manner, upon a foreign bed. The vision made him lonely. But he supposed that death was always lonely; that was why people feared it so. Yet his death would not necessarily be lonelier than that of others. In any event there was no outwitting it. And he still had some remnants of decorum, although he seemed entire
ly to have lost his dignity.

  He went into the bathroom and splashed his face with water, brushed his teeth, added a discreet drop of Eau Sauvage. The bathroom was colder than the rest of the flat. He thought perhaps that he needed a cup of tea: he could always make fresh when Katy turned up, as he did not doubt that she would. Indeed her presence now seemed not only inevitable but entirely natural. She would be in the flat, washing her hair, or painting her nails, and when she was sufficiently bored, or when she judged that it was time to return to the attack she would saunter across the landing and ring his bell. He was surprised that this had not already happened, yet glad that she had not seen him at his disgraceful worst. He made and drank two cups of tea, which warmed him slightly, then went back to the bathroom, and brushed his teeth again. He warned himself against displaying too much eagerness. The mirror showed his features contracted into a slight rictus. He concentrated his efforts on correcting this, smoothed his hair, patted more toilet water into the skin of his neck and the underside of his jaw, then sped to the kitchen to refill the kettle and prepare the tray. He wondered whether to ring the bell of the Dunlops’ flat, but decided against it: it was important to keep the upper hand. But he could not stop himself from crossing the landing to listen for a sound, and when he heard none crept back to his flat in case he should be discovered. At last, unable to bear the suspense any longer, he crossed the hall and rang her bell. The bell echoed into silence: no one came. He retreated once again, and sat in his own silence, faced with the unthinkable possibility that she might have left. At last, perhaps half an hour later, he heard her key turn in the lock of the Dunlops’ door. He rushed into the hall, overwhelmed.