Merle, who mourned the child she had been, did not know quite what to make of Imogen, was not quite sure that she liked the girl, although she approved of her, and in her heart loved her, but loved her as though she were already lost to them. If there were a choice between cultivating Imogen’s confidences—for she did not doubt that much was concealed from Harriet—and preserving Hughie, who never left her side, she knew that Hughie must prevail. In his monstrous innocence he had always prevailed. Therefore Imogen, to a certain extent, must be renounced. All she could do now was to send her something pretty to wear on her birthday, something expensive, almost too expensive for their budget. But Imogen had an unerring eye for quality, would lay aside something not quite up to her standard with a moue of distaste. This her grandmother had once caught sight of out of the corner of her eye, and had vowed never to be the cause of it again. She still burned when she thought of it, she whose taste had never been in any doubt. But she supposed the girl was right, in her way. Simply, she had preferred her as a baby, had kept all her baby photographs, for fortunately Hughie was good with a camera. Sometimes, when Hughie was having a rest, she went through these, almost secretly, to see if there was any trace in that baby face of her own child, Harriet, whom she had not loved at that age. Harriet’s birthmark was no longer shocking, was almost concealed, was less important than it had been. And Imogen had been flawless. There was in fact no trace of Harriet there. And later on, apart from a brief resemblance to herself at the same age, there was no trace of any of them. She longed to ask Harriet whether Imogen was happy, but somehow happiness was too banal a concept to attach to Imogen in her present state. She was cool, sensible, ambitious: a new order of womanhood. Happiness was for the credible, the soft-hearted, the hopeful. Harriet had been all of those things. In truth she had changed very little. She was a good girl, a good daughter, and no doubt a good wife. But she should have had a chance to transcend her situation. Had she really so little spirit?
Harriet in fact no longer thought of her life as promising, and indeed this reunion, with her husband and her parents, all the same age, seemed to prove that nothing had changed. Part of her felt peaceful at the thought of this. Yet another part deviated wildly. One day, very soon, she thought, when Imogen was a few months older, twenty-one, say, and no longer in danger from either of her parents, she would contact Jack Peckham again. That she had not already done this surprised her, and yet she knew that she could wait. Indeed she avoided any mention of his name, any invitation to his daughter: she no longer wished her contact with him, if it ever came again, to be mediated. There would be no Lizzie, no Elspeth Mackinnon; there would simply be a calm claiming of her due. That she was so calm in anticipation of this she attributed to what she had seen in his face on the evening of her visit to Judd Street. Rightly or wrongly (and if wrongly what did it matter?) she thought that he would be there when the time came. What would happen then she did not know, although she had imagined it many times. In that moment, perhaps in that one episode, there would be no husband, no children, hers or his, no former wife, no present mistress: she willed it so and knew that she could make it happen. That her thinking was magical, fantastic, did not concern her; she knew that in this mood she could bring about the impossible. And the grand adventure of a lifetime, for which she had waited so long, would faultlessly engage her and be completed, perhaps in that one episode, after which she could grow old resignedly, having done her duty to husband, parents, daughter. For she knew that with Jack Peckham she would loosen the ties which had so burdened her (and still did, still did), and with this sudden daring would rediscover her marvellous solitude, so that after being with him she would find that the others had retreated a little from her, had merely become figures in her landscape, instead of energumens whose needs were her duties.
If Jack and she were to come together (her mind fought shy of thinking in specific terms, of using specific words) she would no longer be so strenuously connected to her world; her dependents would, equally magically, have ceased to intrude upon her, and would have, at last, to take care of themselves. She would no longer feel anything for them, would smile at them, feel affection for them, hand over discreet sums of money, as she always had done, but would no longer be at their disposition. Service she could offer, but she would no longer be subservient. She would no longer be tormented by her love for her daughter, whom she would, simply, love. Jack would bring all this about, had begun the process of detaching her from her husband, might now finish it. She had no thought of flight or of desertion. She would continue to be Mrs Lytton, but she would have been mysteriously enabled to continue her life with a freedom so far denied her. In this way she thought the waiting easy. The conviction grew in her that Jack knew all about this, and that he was waiting too. What had been started, so long ago, would then be completed, and completed in more than one sense, for she might renounce him on the same occasion. For he had given no sign … And in any event she must return to Imogen. But it would all be understood between them; there would be no injury, only a sense of what was right, what was fitting. No one would suffer. It would merely be a question of activating something that had been too long dormant, and of putting it to rest.
This thought kept her benign; this, and the memory of Jack Peckham’s face, which for a short time had been as naked as her own. He might not remember, but she would remind him. What she had seen of his expression stayed with her; no matter that time had passed. It had passed for both of them; they were both older now, both mature, and, more important, there was no ghost of Tessa hovering between them. It had been decent to wait; she owed them that. She knew nothing of his life, which she somehow suspected had been indifferently domesticated; he roamed about the world, and seemed happy to do so. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of him, reporting from Washington, when Freddie was watching the early news; he looked older, she thought, standing in front of the White House, sometimes in the snow; he looked cold. When Immy was safely gathered in by somebody else (Julian?) she would contact the BBC and say she had to get in touch with him; could they tell her when he was next due in London? This tactic was also hazy in her mind but partook of the same ease as the rest of the adventure. There was nothing criminal about making a simple enquiry. He was still, as far as she knew, unmarried, for she thought that there would have been an announcement if any marriage had taken place. He might even have got in touch himself, or Lizzie would have done so. She avoided the thought of Lizzie, for the girl must be spared knowledge of this. Perhaps she should see her, find out how she was. Yet she could not quite admit Lizzie to her thoughts of Jack, and Jack was now more important. And in any event the dream, if that was what it was, had become so pervasive that Lizzie was almost irrelevant. Almost, but not quite. In another mood, her ordinary daytime mood, the one which usually claimed her attention, she wondered how Lizzie was getting on. Fortunately Imogen saw a lot of her, or said she did. Details were hard to come by. Imogen was elusive, went straight up to the flat in the evening, usually went straight out again. What she did, whom she saw, they no longer knew. They took a pride in not questioning her.
Freddie, supine in his chair, listening without comment to the pleasing inconsequential rumble of Hughie Blakemore’s voice, was thinking that if he were on his own (and the thought occurred to him more frequently these days) he might prefer to live in a decent hotel, with room service, somewhere warm. He was over seventy: time, he thought, to retire in earnest. Sometimes the thought of his wife, his daughter, his house, weighed on him like a burden. He did not feel well. He felt dizzy in the mornings, and despite the life he led these days his blood pressure remained high. He had been glad of Harriet’s suggestion that they travel to Brighton by train, for he did not think he was up to driving the car, had not done so for some time. He was even glad of Hughie Blakemore’s company, his agreeable voice, his undemanding presence. This was new, he thought, a measure of his vulnerability, or infirmity. Merle he had never much liked, suspecting that she was a calculatin
g woman who had masterminded his present entanglement. And yet he had loved Harriet, still did, but had always known that she regarded him as someone who had graciously offered to take care of her, an offer she had been unable to refuse, and for which she was grateful. But half measures were no longer enough for him: he was conscious of a lack in his life, and blamed his present feebleness on various deprivations of a sensory order. These extended to sunlight, fruitfulness, warmth, the abundant warmth of a different climate. He was not as soulless as most people thought him; he had read his Colette, had dreamed of meals with friends on Provençal terraces, beneath the shadow of a fig tree. Instead he was making do with the pale brittle sunlight of an April day in England, and although the Blakemores kept their windows shut he was aware of an acid wind, had felt it when they left the train, dreaded going out into it again.
He was nearly comfortable in this unpretentious flat, which had cost him something to maintain: that was a surprise. He felt his horizons shrinking: all on one floor, close carpeted, highly convenient—it was the next best thing to a hotel suite. Yet it was the suite he really wanted, with a vista, and nobody else to bother him.
That was the problem, of course: Harriet would hardly understand if he took a holiday on his own, although she was so preoccupied with her daughter that he felt he hardly mattered. This was unfair, he knew: she was, and had always tried to be, an excellent wife. It was not her fault that she lacked certain qualities. With a father like that she had grown up in ignorance of what men were really like. And yet he was fond in a way of old Blakemore, who persisted in remaining so young, was able to reminisce with him about service days, was reminded that he had once been young himself. That was now Blakemore’s charm: he bore witness to a state of youth which had long departed. He felt that if only the women would go away somewhere he might very well sit for another hour with Hughie, remembering, appreciating the other man’s harmlessness. In any event he felt unable to move, having eaten two slices of a fruit cake made by Blakemore himself, who now attended cookery classes. Strange: he had always been so dashing. Harriet had shaken her head and looked disapproving, but he had felt a sudden burst of anger at being treated like a child, and had taken a second slice from the proffered plate. Now he felt heavy, vaguely uncomfortable, as he so often did these days. Food was not the problem: Harriet fed him carefully, and he could usually digest anything. But he could not drink as he used to. Sometimes, in the evenings, he felt a fluttering in his left eyelid which he did not seem able to control, and in the morning, after the atrocious moment of coming back to consciousness, and the dizziness that afflicted him when he sat up in bed, there was always a bad half hour in the bathroom, where he bathed with increasing caution. Freshened with cologne his face looked momentarily better; he was always reassured by the sight of himself fully dressed. But his days were empty; pleasant, but empty. The walk to the club, the morning papers, coffee, and then that lonely hour before lunch, which he would fill by wandering round St James’s, looking at the odd picture. He felt humble in art galleries, although the young girls at the desk were hospitable and kind (and indifferent), and sometimes he was alone there for the space of twenty minutes or even longer. Dutch pictures were best, when he could find them. For a month he had studied a large flower-piece of improbable profusion, on a dark ground. He thought the picture sinister, for in the foreground there was a split fruit, a peach or a nectarine, and on the lip of the fruit a fly, breeding corruption. He realized that the picture was meant to remind him of his own decay, and felt chastened. This was not a feeling he welcomed, although he acknowledged that it was appropriate. But he found the picture’s impassivity reassuring, in a bleak way. There is no escape, the artist had meant to say: our substance is being consumed.
After this he tried to find something a bit lighter. An Impressionist would have gone down well, but there were few to be had in commercial galleries; he wandered to Wildenstein’s and looked thoughtfully at Marquet and Manguin. Then, glancing at his watch, he saw with relief that it was half-past twelve, and turned back to St James’s Street, and lunch. There was usually someone to talk to around that time, and the afternoons were not too bad. It was only when he set out for home that a sadness began to descend. He could never quite understand this. It had something to do with the fact that attention was always turned away from him, so that he stood hapless, in his own drawing-room, while Harriet, and even Miss Wetherby, busied themselves upstairs in Imogen’s flat. When Imogen was there, which was rarely, he felt positively ignored. The women were not technically at fault, were simply active in the ways in which they were programmed to be active, and yet he was uneasy with them. Hence the desire for, the dream of, the hotel terrace in the sun, and a short post-prandial stroll to buy The Times. One read the English papers so much more thoroughly when one was abroad, which was where he now ardently wished to be.
Nobody liked the spectacle of Freddie heaving himself from his chair. Freddie felt it himself, but he was so used to being considered graceless by his daughter that he was almost philosophical, more philosophical than the Blakemores, who looked on in frank dismay. Old Hughie had the decency to offer him a hand, which he refused. What worried him more than his loss of vigour was the fluttering in his left eyelid which had started up again, although he had had nothing to drink, nothing having been on offer. He saw Merle Blakemore studying him: a tiresome woman, whom nothing escaped. He was, once more, glad that they were going home by train. The effort of securing a taxi bothered him slightly, until dear old Hughie darted down the stairs: from the balcony they saw him standing in the road, gesticulating, and then his face turned up towards them, and his hand beckoned them down. Harriet kissed her mother; he could only manage a grunted, ‘Goodbye, my dear.’ With Hughie he shook hands. Hughie, like himself, must surely be glad of a little masculine company from time to time? How did he manage? And yet he looked fit, happy. Perhaps slightly thin in the face. Ah, they were all growing old. That Dutch master had got it right.
They travelled home in silence, both tired. Harriet tired easily these days, although her dreamy expression indicated not fatigue so much as absence. Sometimes he hardly knew her, although they slept in the same bed every night, while she sometimes seemed to return to him from a great distance. He yawned; for once he would be glad to get home.
‘Is Immy in this evening?’ he asked.
‘Darling, you know I never ask her.’
He sighed. He had never become reconciled to what he considered his daughter’s fecklessness. He loved her, but did not entirely trust her, whereas her mother’s trust was absolute. He wondered how Harriet could be so blind to the expression of concealment which Imogen habitually wore for her benefit. He knew that blank classic look, so very different from her childhood exuberance: a shutter drawn down on her real feelings, her real intentions. What did Imogen intend? What did she think, or do? He doubted whether her affections were secure, or sometimes, in dread moments, whether she had any deep affections at all. She was engaging, certainly, but with her ostentatious politeness and her brief smiles she no longer seemed to belong to them, if indeed she ever had. He suspected her of a fund of sexual knowledge, used coolly, deliberately. This he must keep to himself: Harriet must never know. Harriet, in fact, would look bewildered if he ever touched on the subject. To Harriet, as he well knew, sex was but a half-open book. He sighed, feeling the beginnings of a pain below his ribs. How could he blame his daughter for not resembling her mother? Yet he preferred women to be virtuous: it became them better. His daughter’s secret life unsettled him, not only because he was her father but because the very idea was unseemly. Although he knew virtually nothing about Imogen’s friends, he imagined them all with the same affectless masks as she herself habitually wore. That boy, Julian, however, seemed to be more deeply engaged. He sighed again. He did not like the idea of Julian as his daughter’s lover, but since he was almost sure that Imogen was secretive about her other affairs he could not help hoping that Julian would not get too ba
dly hurt.
‘I shan’t want anything to eat tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a touch of indigestion.’
She turned her head to him slowly. After a moment her expression cleared. ‘You ate too much,’ she said. ‘You must be more careful.’
He ignored this. ‘It stays light in the evenings now. I might take a walk when we get back.’ Suddenly he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, which seemed so treacherous when he was in the presence of his wife.
She glanced at him, more vaguely. ‘There is vegetable soup if you want it,’ she said.
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