A Private View

by Anita Brookner

  ‘Hallo, there,’ he said, sounding, he thought, not too nervous. ‘I was just making a cup of tea. Can I tempt you?’

  She dropped the key in her bag, turned slowly, and surveyed him from a distance, as if she could not properly concentrate on his presence. She was wearing the orange suit and was fairly heavily made up. Her hieratic look was in place, and he had no doubt that her speech would be disdainful. This was what he was up against, her gift of removal, of closure, as if she suspected him of unseemly curiosity, or as if he were someone whom she could hardly remember, someone whose interest in her life and her movements was quite out of place. She no longer sought his approval, no longer attempted to stimulate his curiosity. Some interval had taken place, some intrusion of an alien life into the life which he had flattered himself he knew so well. She seemed unwilling even to answer him, let alone to enter his flat. He thought it a pity that her actual words were so at variance with her appearance; had she remained silent she would have subjugated many a stronger man, and a younger man, than he had the good fortune to be.

  He felt weak, excitable, as if his entire future rested on this one encounter, or the exchange that was bound to take place. He cautioned himself to stay silent, as silent as she was, but the urgency of the task was almost unbearable. He had, literally, to subdue another’s will, something he had never done in his life. His entire raison d’être had been respect for others: never in his life had he acted on a rebellious impulse, never responded to criticism (though there had been little enough of that, or maybe he had been unaware of it), never attempted to enforce his own point of view, his own methods, his own beliefs. His life had been soft-spoken, and he supposed that this was the way in which he had become so dull. As a schemer he was untrained. All he had to go on was the extreme restlessness of his present state, which surely indicated that the time had come to be decisive. His desire to be urbane, amused, had evaporated. Somehow the power had passed from him. In that same instant he saw that she was the stronger.

  In that split second he had time to admire her gleaming mouth, her suffused cheeks. She looked more adult, more her presumed age. She looked preoccupied, or rather as if something pleasurable had recently taken place. He felt her arm brush against him as he stood aside to let her enter, smelled her scent, which today was slightly altered by something earthier, as if she had been in the presence of someone smoking a cigar.

  ‘You look as if you’ve been out,’ he said jovially. ‘Anywhere exciting?’

  ‘Yes, well, I do go out occasionally,’ she replied. She wandered round the room, lingering over his appointments, testing the weight of the curtains. Once again he felt a healthy touch of irritation. This would save him, he thought. At the same time he was extremely curious as to where she had been. It was proving more difficult than he had anticipated to attract her attention. While he fussed with the cups and saucers she stood with her back to him, gazing out of the window into the early dark.

  ‘Do come and sit down, Katy. I’m afraid it’s not very warm in here. Something’s gone wrong with the heating.’

  ‘I’m not cold,’ she said absently.

  He tried again. ‘I rang your bell earlier. You must have been out for a good part of the day.’

  ‘I went out to lunch,’ she said.

  ‘With your friends?’

  ‘With a friend. This really nice guy I met. Someone who might be able to help me set up my business.’

  His heart sank. ‘How very fortunate,’ he managed to say.

  ‘Well, not exactly. He can’t put up the money. But he can introduce me to some people who might be able to. The main thing is that he seemed to believe in what I want to do.’

  ‘And you still want to do it?’

  ‘Well, of course. How else am I going to look after myself? If it’s set up correctly the place could be a goldmine.’

  He reflected that this was quite possibly true, and conceded that she was merely being sensible in contemplating her long-term security. Ah, but he was going to take care of that! Yet it seemed important not to unveil his plans for her all at once. In any event she seemed preoccupied, was not playing the part that he had written for her.

  ‘The big problem is having to find premises,’ she continued. ‘When you work from home it’s important to have a good address. I did think of going into partnership in a clinic, but now I realise it’s a flat I want.’ The remark hung in the air.

  ‘Have you heard from the Dunlops?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘No. No, I haven’t. Why, should I have?’

  ‘I rather thought they might be on their way home.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  He stared at her. ‘But you’re still in the flat! How are you going to explain …?’

  ‘I don’t have to explain anything, do I? I should have thought you were the one who had to do the explaining.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, after all, you gave me the keys, didn’t you? I couldn’t have got in without them, could I?’

  Thunderstruck, he gazed into her pleasant smile. She was sure of herself today, having undergone one of her lightning transformations. The tones were normal, friendly, above all reasonable. There was no hint of effort.

  ‘You mean, they don’t know you’re here? That you didn’t see them in New York?’

  ‘I might have done.’ She wandered over to the bookshelves, pulled out a couple of volumes, and stood leafing through them. Immediately he realised that if the Dunlops had consented to her staying they would have contacted him, at least left a message on his machine. He was utterly, crassly, at fault. How to explain to the Dunlops? But any explanation would be worthless. The important thing was to get away as soon as possible, and to take her with him.

  ‘What do you do with yourself all day, George?’ she queried, removing books from the shelves and replacing them rather carelessly.

  His eyes on what she was doing, he replied automatically, ‘I read a lot.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Here or in the study.’

  She turned to him and smiled broadly. ‘What a lot of wasted space,’ she said. ‘Well, I must be going. Thank you for tea.’ Her tone now was mildly condescending.

  He could not help it. ‘Have you thought about my suggestion?’ he asked.

  ‘What suggestion was that?’

  ‘Rome. For Christmas.’

  ‘Well, that rather depends.’

  ‘Depends on what?’

  ‘On whether I can get my business set up first. Whether I can find a base, and start planning.’

  She circled the room once more, looking about her with a speculative air. Leisurely steps took her to the door. With a swirl of orange skirt she turned to face him, and lifted up her hand in a mock salute.

  ‘Byee,’ she said.

  After she had gone, leaving the smell of her scent in the now freezing room, he sat down dumbly, trying to think of what he would say to the Dunlops. They would never forgive him, of course. He would have to move. He felt the creeping sadness again, as he contemplated being forced out of his home. It was against his nature to abandon anything. He could perhaps face this if he were not alone. And there was still a chance, he told himself. For although she would take everything and give nothing, he still had the upper hand.

  Some time in the night he awoke from a dream in which he had lost a set of keys and was locked out of his flat. I lack company, he thought, and saw Putnam’s face, as it had looked on the day before he died. What am I doing? The question was so unanswerable that he broached his secret store of pills, took two, and lay rigid, waiting for sleep, which eventually came, heavily, at dawn. For the first time in weeks the reassuring tones of the shipping forecast fell on deaf ears.

  9

  HE WAITED FOR HER NOW WITH JOY AND PAIN. For two days there was no sight of her, nor did he hear her go out and come in. It occurred to him to wonder what she did with her time, since she had so little to occupy her, and no picture presented itself to him other
than that of totally absorbed preoccupation. He had thought that women no longer lived like this: according to the propaganda they were all juggling at least two jobs, while effortlessly satisfying their husbands at the same time. Whereas Katy seemed to do nothing except wash her hair and paint her nails, like an old-fashioned courtesan. He supposed that one should include her intense scheming as something of a professional attribute: he did not discount this, but rather respected it, since his own projects involved a certain amount of concentration, and events had proved to him how extremely tiring such concentration could prove to be. Behind his door he listened hard, not quite having the courage to ring her bell. What he wanted, what he most imperatively desired, was for her to come to him, in a spirit of submission, just as in that proposed flight to Rome the details hardly mattered. Only her assent was important. He realised, hazily, that Christmas was nearly upon them, and that he might have difficulty in booking a flight. That hardly mattered either. The whole enterprise was to partake of magic: he would appropriate a plane and an empty hotel, his will alone achieving the impossible. And if not Rome, somewhere else would do. All that mattered was his overwhelming wish, and her acquiescence.

  He slept badly, waking several times in the night. He heard the news at two A.M. and again at four. One night, on perhaps the third day of her absence, he heard steps on the stairs, and thought that the Dunlops had returned. This prospect so horrified him that he got out of bed and crept to the door. He heard the voices of a man and a woman, but could not distinguish what was being said: there was a sound of laughter, which was abruptly hushed, and a certain amount of fumbling with the key. If the Dunlops had in fact returned they appeared to have got slightly drunk on the plane, in which case they might be expected to come to their senses the following morning and discover that they were not alone in the flat. He foresaw an altercation, a banishment, in which case he would be more than ready to shelter the intruder, although that was not in his plan.

  It was only later, when the night was nearly over, that the more likely truth of the matter was revealed to him. Her air of triumph, of condescension, her reappearance in the orange suit when she had last visited him, were almost certainly due to contact with a man. ‘A friend’, she had said, as women did when it was necessary to dissimulate; in due course ‘a friend’ became ‘my friend’, before ending up as ‘my partner’. He had always found this irritating; now, in retrospect, he found it unappealing, arguing as it somehow did an appropriation of the hapless male by the female, something his generation could accept only in fiction, and then with suspicion.

  Her recent high-handedness, and the noises on the stairs, could, he realised, have only one explanation. A sexual encounter was taking place in the Dunlops’ flat, while he himself, technically chaste but prey to fantasies, lingered just behind the door. The symbolism of this did not escape him. Indeed, he discounted it, as being too obvious. Artists had painted it, writers had described it. What he registered now was not the excitement which would have overtaken a younger man but a wistfulness, as if life were a dream, as if bodies, subject to mortality, were obliged to take their satisfaction when and where they could, and as if they were participating in a macabre ceremony which did not seem to have evolved at the same speed as the higher consciousness.

  Mere sex seemed to him pathetic in these circumstances, and here the circumstances did not appear to be particularly propitious: hushed laughter, stumbling footsteps, clandestinity. Such encounters belonged to another age, to Louise and himself when young; he could no more claim them now than enact them himself. Any jealousy he felt was for youth, Katy’s youth, and that of her supposed partner, and he knew that there was no cure for this. Desire afflicted the old mainly as longing. It was no longer even suitable to dwell on such matters. Sexual speculation, unattractive at any age, was particularly obnoxious when allied to grey hair and waning energy. He crept back to bed, enveloping Katy, her partner, and himself in the same weary distaste, which nevertheless held at its heart a seed of bewilderment that time had gone so quickly, leaving his own days of vigour so far behind.

  After a wakeful half-hour he no longer questioned this. He had never desired her physically, he told himself, had wanted only to hold one slim foot in his hand. Nor did his flesh rise at the idea that she might at that moment be making love to someone else. Strangely, she did not excite him. His fantasies concerned only himself, his breaking free, his forthcoming scandalous liberty, denied him all his life. She would be his essential companion by virtue of the fact that he had fashioned her for his wishes, in return for which she would be allowed a freedom of her own. There was no cruelty in this fantasy, or perhaps just a little: there would be no physical damage, no undue influence. There would be no point in forbidding her to take lovers, for she would take them in any case. The lure was not cruelty, but selfishness.

  What drew him on, although he was beginning to suspect that he was half mad, was the idea of anarchic self-indulgence after years of duties fulfilled and obligations attended to, an attempt to cancel the obedience of both his personal and his professional lives. He had always been noted for his unfailing sympathy, his consideration for others, but these qualities were not instinctive. They had been acquired at the cost of freedom, of boldness, of true individuality. And all he had to show for these qualities, and for his own laborious efforts, was the money which now waited in the bank until it was time to go to Louise and all the sick children who figured in his will. He would endure until the time came to take his pills, for he did not doubt that it would end in this fashion, much sooner than even he anticipated, if he did not, for once, enact his own desires, all the more imperative an exercise since he was so tardy in recognising them.

  The rapidity with which he had succumbed to this particular enchantment seemed to him a proof of its validity. That a man should seek his own freedom seemed to him the most moral as well as the most natural thing in the world. And he had so far experienced only a premonitory glow, the sudden liberating heedlessness that had overtaken him in Bond Street, together with his conviction that his destiny had been revealed to him. In due course he might finally know that euphoric moment which would justify his entire uneventful existence. If this were not quite the happy ending he had been promised, so long ago, it would at least signify a primitive freedom, a moment in the sun, both actual and metaphorical. This moment would be brief: perhaps it could only ever be brief, a subjective illumination that could not outlast more mundane concerns. Those concerns would indeed be mundane, an adroit mixture of cynicism and forbearance, as he sought to indulge and to contain her extravagances. And for this, he thought, he was willing to surrender his lifelong prudence, to discard it as rapidly as a child discards a broken toy, and to begin again, in a far distant place, away from the petty censorship of those who had known him only as a good friend and a model employee. And even if it were madness he would see it through. The pills would be there at the end, however well or badly he chose to live his life.

  Compared with the miraculous condition to which he aspired, what did it matter if Katy took a lover, ten lovers, a score of lovers? He would have done the same at her age, had he possessed his present insouciance. As it was, the great enlightenment, the great transformation to which he was progressing, was immeasurably superior in every way to whatever physical tremors she sought and encouraged. With an imaginary future sun in his eyes he could ignore the steps going down the stairs, as he was making an early cup of tea, and the closing of the door, and the sound of the chain being replaced. He would of course never mention this incident, and neither would she, yet each would know that the other knew of it: there might be a certain impudence on her part, a moment of gravity on his, but that was part of the bargain, and he would not be the one to break it. In a sense it would be all concealment from that moment on, all watching and waiting. Yet he felt he had the strength to endure this, for as long as she remained connected to him in the way he had devised.

  On the fourth morning life, or a
remnant of it, called him outside. The foggy air was not much colder than the air in the flat, for the heating had mysteriously ceased to function. People in the streets seemed to be in a state of abnormal effervescence, pushing wheeled baskets piled high with bags from Selfridges and Marks and Spencer. One woman, with two small children in tow, laughed hysterically as a paper bag containing tangerines collapsed at his feet: gravely he collected the fruit as they rolled towards the gutter and handed them back to her. His expression must have seemed peculiarly withdrawn, for the children, a boy and a girl, nudged each other and giggled, until reprimanded by their mother.

  ‘It’s the excitement,’ she said, apologetically. ‘Off school all day, and they think I’ve nothing to do but spend money. Oh, well. Wish the gentleman a Merry Christmas, children.’

  ‘Why?’ he said, startled. ‘What is the date?’

  This set them off again. ‘December the eighteenth,’ she replied. ‘Just one week to go.’

  This sobered him. He said goodbye, and addressed himself to the business of buying food. He had not been eating much, and only that morning the waistband of his trousers had seemed loose. He turned automatically in the direction of Marylebone High Street and a café he knew there: with breakfast inside him he would be in a better state. The street was busy with shoppers, the shops themselves filled with abundant produce. The contrast between these riches and his own spiritual poverty struck him as ironic. He suspected that he was perhaps not in the best of health, not quite as collected as he would have wished to be. His new Nietzschean consciousness wavered slightly, and for a split second he was willing to call the whole thing off. But this, he knew, was temporary. As soon as he saw her, attempting, as always, to gain her undivided attention, he would be totally absorbed in the exercise. For it was an exercise now, and he did not care to fail.