Visitors

by Anita Brookner

  ‘He’s gone out with David and Harold. They’ve gone to the health food shop, although I’ve got salmon steaks for lunch. Will he eat salmon, do you think? Only David and Harold will only want a salad, so that will be salmon for Steve and myself …’

  ‘Don’t spoil him, Molly. He won’t want to leave.’

  ‘Frankly, Thea, we shall miss David. He’s been so good to Harold, seeing that he takes exercise, and so on. And Harold says they have such interesting discussions.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t ask, dear. Religion, I suppose. Funny, because Harold’s never been particularly inclined that way.’

  ‘You’re not too tired? With all the extra work?’

  ‘Oh, no, not at all.’ There was a brief silence. ‘Of course, it’s not the same as if he were our own, but he is part of the family, isn’t he? Harold minded more than I did, our not having children. Well, I minded, of course I minded, but I didn’t want him to see me grieving. No regrets, I said to him. And when I see him with David, I know he minds …’

  ‘Don’t upset yourself, Molly.’

  ‘No, no, it’s nothing,’ she sighed. ‘It’s just that Harold will miss him when he goes.’

  ‘We’re all a bit unsettled, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s Kitty I worry about. She’s overdoing it, as usual.’

  Mrs May sighed too. There was a very brief pause while she hunted for words of concern and reassurance.

  ‘If you could just give her a ring, Thea? She looks up to you, you know. “Thea has inner strength,” she says. If you could prevail on her not to make herself ill …’

  ‘Was there anything in particular?’ she enquired. ‘Has anything happened?’

  ‘She’s very disappointed in Ann, between ourselves.’ Molly’s voice was lowered as she uttered what was to her a recently discovered fact.

  ‘We must remember that they’ll all be gone by the end of the week.’

  ‘If you could just have a word with Kitty, then. I don’t want it to end badly. And don’t worry about Steve. He’ll be fine with us.’

  Mrs May replaced the receiver thoughtfully. So her energies were to be invoked once again for the task of appeasing Kitty. Yet here she was, dressed and ready to go out, and it seemed suddenly that only a trip to the local shops would free her mind from pondering these twisted alliances. A pleasant normal activity—and how blessedly normal it seemed!—would restore the illusion that her life was her own, if only by virtue of old age. Old age should be a time of great and significant self-indulgence, she thought: otherwise it is too bitter. At the same time she wondered how she would put up with her daily routine once all the visitors had gone, and the task of talking about them—of reconstructing them, in fact—was not yet fully engaged.

  She was halfway out of the door when the telephone rang.

  ‘Kitty here.’

  ‘Good morning, Kitty. How are you?’

  Was it her imagination that Kitty’s breathing sounded more laboured, bringing her splendidly upholstered form most vividly to mind?

  ‘I need your help, Thea. Could you possibly come over?’

  ‘What’s wrong? Is it Austin?’

  ‘No, it’s not Austin. It’s Ann. She won’t get out of bed.’

  ‘Is she ill?’

  ‘She says she doesn’t want to get married. She won’t talk to me; just pulls the covers over her face. I’m afraid we had a silly argument. Do you think you could have a word with her?’

  This was new. Kitty frequently had arguments, but not, according to her, silly ones.

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, Thea. We’ll expect you for tea.’

  ‘Well, Ann,’ she said, closing the door of the bedroom behind her. ‘We haven’t had much of a chance to talk, have we?’

  She glanced round the room unhurriedly, and in doing so caught the momentary gleam of an eyeball from the motionless figure in the bed. Sleep was not easily simulated, she thought; there was always something tense in the impersonation that was absent from the natural condition. She thought of her own bed, in her own quiet room, and wished she were back there. Her heart had behaved uncomfortably in the taxi and she rather wondered whether she had the energy to convert this recalcitrant girl to a course of action in which she could see no merit. Kitty’s peace of mind, of course, must be restored, but for the moment she was more interested in her own. She thought of home most lovingly, as it had been before the arrival of Steve; she saw herself moving through her shadowy rooms undisturbed, as though she were her own ghost. And this room, in which she was most reluctantly seated, beside a crumpled bed, was too bright, too eager, too obviously Gerald’s room, kept pristine in case he should decide to come home and behave as if he had never been away, which was Kitty’s obvious wish. Austin, she knew, was more philosophical: Austin did his duty, although publicly he might deride the fact that he did so. What he had against David was the ostentatious nature of his goodness, an affront to one of his sly and sorrowful nature. Austin knew that all was vanity, whereas David appeared to be convinced that salvation was available to those of a sunny disposition. They were aspirational, the young, she reflected; what a pity it was that they must be disillusioned.

  But she was here to deal with a crisis, and she must be sympathetic, although it was difficult to feel much sympathy for the figure in the bed, her hair flattened, her cheek creased by the pillow. She was with Kitty in this, perhaps by virtue of her age. Older women felt an instinctive impatience when the young squandered their endowment. She sat up straighter, smoothing her linen skirt. ‘Won’t you talk to me?’ she said. ‘I have come rather a long way to see you, and I don’t suppose we shall meet again. I remember you as a little girl, you know. You were unhappy even then. I remember your dark eyes repudiating everyone and everything. I had hoped you were happier now that you are going to be married …’

  The figure reared up in the bed. ‘I don’t want to get married.’

  ‘But why not? It’s very pleasant. On the whole I enjoyed it, although I didn’t marry until I was quite old.’

  There was no answer. ‘What do you want to do?’ she enquired in her mildest tone.

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘And where is home?’

  ‘America.’

  ‘But I thought you were going back anyway, after you are married.’

  ‘I want to go home. I don’t want to be here, with all this fuss, all this furniture.’

  Mrs May contemplated the dusky cheeks, now red with anger and unhappiness, the round accusing eyes, the plump chin, and thought that if Ann put her mind to it she could be to a certain extent attractive. She would not put the estimate higher than that. There was a lack of intelligence in the mere fact that she was so deliberately unadorned, so dishevelled, although the bright light of day outside the window should have alerted her to the fact that there was a time to present oneself properly, just as there was a time for every other societal act. This indifference was what drove Kitty mad. Or was it more than that? It took a measure of insolence to ignore the proper rules of engagement, particularly if one were under another’s roof. Yet she felt some sympathy for the downcast head, the dark uncombed hair, the womanly breasts under the crumpled T-shirt. She felt sorry for the child still visible in the woebegone face, just as she had felt sorry for the real child all those years ago. Then she had empathised with any child condemned to this milieu of ardent disappointed adults. No doubt there would have been tears, adult tears, and not quite adequately disguised frustration. The child, then, had remained implacably tearless, as if in contempt for Kitty’s hysteria. Henry had been sent for to smooth things over after some such battle of wills and had devoted his energies to comforting Kitty. Mrs May had wanted to approach the child, but a glance had told her that the child was quite literally unapproachable. The cheeks then had been the same alarming red as she triumphantly stood her ground, uncomforted. What rage she must have felt! For her status as a child was not being
respected: it was the older woman who was weeping.

  It was the same entrenched resentment that had been revived by the wedding preparations. For it was, if anything, to be Kitty’s wedding, and Mrs May had inherited Henry’s obligation to pacify. Her efforts had been momentarily redirected, but only in order to put Kitty’s mind at rest before the inevitable outburst. The poor girl had learnt nothing beyond what she had known as a child: contempt. Had she been more worldly she would have perfected a whole repertoire of smiles, attitudes, disclaimers, which would have held condemnation at bay. But this was beyond her, in the same way that truly adult opposition was beyond her. What was called for was selfishness, but to be effective selfishness must be deployed with charm. Ann lacked charm, was not likely to acquire it. Mrs May watched as the fiery cheeks faded and the downturned mouth became rueful. Only the round dark eyes still looked out accusingly, although the gaze was merely directed towards the opposite wall, which a fitful shaft of sunlight had transformed into the purest yellow. Such a pity to be indoors, wasting this brief interlude of bright weather. Surely it was in everyone’s interest to be up and about, in the beneficent air, the fugitive sun, instead of settling into this miasma of primitive feelings? Mrs May felt a nostalgia, little more than a memory, for her terrace, for silence, for the simple act of contemplation. A bird on the lawn—even a crow, a magpie—was all she needed in the way of incident. With an effort she addressed her mind once more to the matter in hand.

  ‘Tell me about your home,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose it’s poor by your standards. Frank, that’s mother’s boyfriend, has a garage. There’s nothing fancy, not like here …’

  ‘Your grandmother tries too hard, I know. But you see she still grieves for your father. Did you find him, by the way?’ She asked this question as casually as she was able to manage, although her heart, which had been quiescent, was beating irregularly once again.

  ‘It was easy.’

  ‘It can’t have been.’

  ‘It was. I had his phone number, didn’t I? You’ve heard of mobile phones, I take it? Of course we had a bit of a job finding this place in Somerset where he lives. It’s a camp, sort of.’ She wrinkled her nose in distaste. Perhaps she was not Kitty’s granddaughter for nothing. ‘Lots of little kids running around, and dogs.’

  ‘So Plymouth was just to put us all off the scent?’

  ‘I think he’s got a bank account there. Of course they don’t use money, but I reckon he’s got some. I thought he might like to shell out for me, but he said it would all be needed to buy more land. They own this piece of land, you see; they do a bit of farming, sell apples, and so on.’

  ‘How did he look?’

  ‘Old. Dirty. Cheerful. I hated him, Dorothea. And I wanted to get to know him, but by the time we got there it was nearly dark and we had to come back. And he didn’t want to know about me or about grandma or any of us.’

  For it was ‘us’ now, Mrs May noted.

  ‘Did you tell him about the wedding?’

  ‘Yeah. He said it was a bourgeois custom, which it is. That’s why I don’t want to go through with it.’

  ‘Though if you changed your mind I’m sure Gerald could be persuaded to be present. You could ring him on his mobile,’ she suggested idly. ‘Keep the whole thing up your sleeve until the last moment. Wouldn’t that be rather amusing?’

  The girl smiled reluctantly. ‘You mean not tell Grandma?’

  ‘Well, of course, you’d have to tell her at some point. But it would all be your doing, wouldn’t it?’

  There was a silence while this idea was being digested.

  ‘David seems a very genuine sort of person,’ Mrs May observed, again in an idle, only half interested tone.

  ‘David’s all right. I don’t know why everyone’s so beastly to him.’

  Mrs May smiled. ‘We are too old for you,’ she said, acknowledging the truth of this remark. ‘Old people don’t want to be converted, particularly not to a young man’s way of thinking. Austin may have been through it all before on his own account. Have you thought of that? Young people are aware of endless possibilities, either in this world or the next. Except that they are nowhere near the next: that is the difference. When you get old you realise how limited those possibilities really were, and you regret the fact that you made so little of them. And really, there’s no harm in a discussion, you know; most people get good value from a discussion about religion. I expect Austin is genuinely sorry that his faith has gone. That’s why he teases David a bit.’ She paused. ‘I expect you tease him too sometimes.’

  ‘I can’t say I agree with him on everything, though I admire him for what he does, of course. It’s just that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life surrounded by guitars and cheering.’

  ‘Cheering?’

  ‘They cheer when they hear the name of Jesus,’ the girl said glumly.

  ‘And that’s why you don’t want to get married?’

  ‘I’d be quite happy to live with him for the time being.’ For as long as it suits me, they both understood.

  ‘Then why don’t you do that?’

  ‘He’s religious, isn’t he? He won’t.’

  ‘But the baby?’

  ‘That was the one and only time I got him to do something I wanted. He didn’t want to, really. That’s what put me off.’

  ‘Just the one time?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, twice, actually.’

  ‘I wouldn’t recommend abortion,’ Mrs May said. ‘It can leave such sadness behind, and I doubt if one recovers very quickly. I should go through with it, if I were you. David is nice-looking, well-meaning. He will change, you know, lose that optimism of his that annoys Austin so much. Why did you agree to marry him in the first place? You must have been a little in love with him.’

  ‘You just don’t understand, do you?’ Ann said wearily. ‘David’s well-off, and I’m not. Do you think I’d marry him if I had money of my own?’

  ‘Is that why you’re here? And why you went to see your father?’

  ‘Partly.’

  Rather more than that, thought Mrs May, whose initial antagonism had quite dissolved. As a novice wife she too had been oppressed by the wealth of the cousins, and even of Henry himself, had been embarrassed by their unembarrassed enjoyment of the fact. The girls, Kitty and Molly, had been substantially well-off even before they married. There was a carelessness about them, an indifference to thrift which would disgust a young person, particularly a young person with no resources of her own.

  ‘I dare say you will be quite wealthy one day,’ she observed. ‘But wealth doesn’t enable you automatically to do as you please. That is how the poor think, and it is not true. The poor think that wealth confers irresponsibility. But my dear Ann, nothing confers irresponsibility. Each of us is bound by duty, and I think you know that. If I were you I’d go through with it, get married, have the baby, grow as a family. And there are good times to be had, you know. You will always have a companion; you can travel together. Believe me it’s no fun travelling on your own …’ She checked herself here; her own solitude had nothing to do with the matter in hand. Or had it? She remembered the last holiday she had taken with her mother, after her father’s death and before the sale of the house. Her mother was already ill but did not yet know the nature or extent of her illness. They had gone to Rottingdean, out of season, at the beginning of autumn. To her mother it was an escape from the dark house, although she was uncertain in a different setting. Every morning they took a careful walk through the quiet streets, and every afternoon her mother rested. Mrs May could still see the yellow leaves on the lawn outside the dining room of their modest hotel. She had felt acutely aware of distant horizons forbidden to her by her mother’s failing health. She had felt a desperate need for a miracle, or the appearance of a stranger who would mysteriously take care of them both. But of course no stranger appeared until many years had passed. And on her honeymoon that was how she thought of him: as the stranger who would
henceforth keep her company.

  ‘I could get my head round it if it weren’t for the fuss,’ Ann went on. ‘Caterers. Paris. I don’t want to go to Paris.’

  ‘Why ever not? Paris is marvellous. You probably think all this is very conventional. Well, of course it is. But you can still enjoy it, you know.’

  There was a knock on the door, which Mrs May got up to open. Kitty stood there, a petitioner, a tray in her hands.

  ‘I brought you a poached egg, dear,’ she said. ‘You didn’t have any lunch. At least, I didn’t want to get you out of bed. You must have got back very late?’

  ‘Latish, yes.’

  They watched her humbly as she ate the egg and the slices of toast. Trimmed of their crusts, Mrs May noted. Poor Kitty.

  ‘You know what I think?’ she said. ‘I think Ann needs a new haircut. Really short and simple. She’s got such a pretty face, and—I don’t know if you were going to wear a hat for the wedding, Ann?’ She flashed the girl a look of the keenest intelligence, which was at the same time a kind of complicity.

  ‘Would you like that, darling?’ asked Kitty eagerly. ‘I could ring up and make an appointment for this afternoon.’

  ‘If I had short hair need I wear a hat?’ asked Ann, in whom a kind of slow acquiescence was dawning.

  ‘No, of course not, you must please yourself,’ said Kitty, and to Mrs May, ‘The dress is divine, very plain, you know, a simple shift. But the colour!’

  ‘Then a hat would certainly not be needed. Let the old people dress up; that’s why they enjoy weddings so much. Perhaps we should leave you to get up,’ she said. ‘Something short and feathery, I think, don’t you? Ring the hairdresser, Kitty. And perhaps you’d give me a cup of tea before I make my way home. I’ve hardly had a word with Austin.’

  She left Kitty on the telephone to the hairdresser and made her way back to the drawing room. Her part in these revels was now ended, apart from one crucial detail. She sat down beside Austin, who raised a hand in greeting. They sat silent, listening to Kitty’s excited voice in the other room.