The Bay of Angels

by Anita Brookner

  I was obliged to rely on all those people, and they did not let me down. Even when Sœur Elisabeth told me warningly that my mother was not eating and sometimes refused to leave her room I placed my entire trust in her robust disapproval of such weakness. I dismissed from my memory the sight of my mother politely accepting a marron glacé from Mme Lhomond and of her trying to eat it. Or rather I tried to dismiss it. The image was too painful to be retained; it had to be dismissed as an unfortunate lapse, one of those unwise and unbecoming instances to which we are all prone. It was more than this, of course; it was a sign. I was in no position to disregard that sign, nor did I manage to do so. I merely relegated it to a time of future contemplation which had not yet come about. I placed my hopes in the superimposition of a more cheerful image, a smile, a greeting resembling her loving greetings to me in the past. Yet the smile and the greeting were mine, growing more vivid, more eager, as her own response grew more faint.

  The major shareholder in the angelic enterprise was Dr Balbi, whose immanence was unmistakeable. That he was immanent rather than present I put down to his professional obligations, which placed us in different geographical locations for most of the day and rarely allowed him out in the evening. I saw him only occasionally, and after nightfall. There was no more subterfuge: if we registered each other’s presence we did not always speak, but passed on with merely a discreet signal of recognition. The fiction that we both took a late walk had become a reality, but then it had never entirely been a fiction. The tisane incident was repeated once only. It was an immense relief to have managed this, as if it marked a significant development in our relationship. Yet it was disappointing in every other respect. Dr Balbi, having made this concession to my presence, seemed determined to treat me like a patient. This was quite comfortable in its way, but it was also baffling. Behind his professional reserve lay vast areas of personal reserve which had to be protected at all costs. By nature laconic and sceptical he preferred to be seen as formidable, unapproachable, perhaps unaware that such a stance was an open invitation to marauders. I liked to see him battling with his nature, or with nature in general. Only the occasional, very reluctant smile was any indication that he had registered me as an adversary. He was clearly both willing and unwilling to do so.

  His was the only narrative I now cared to follow, though he managed to make it as opaque, as uninteresting, as possible. I admired the technique, having been unable to acquire it myself. It is a defensive strategy, the object of which is to make the terrain safe from invasion. Thus I got to hear about his sister, whose fate he compared to mine. She had stayed at home to look after their mother while he pursued his studies. I concluded that she had been sacrificed to the brilliant son, who was thus given his chance to make his way in the world.

  ‘I sympathize with women,’ he said. ‘My sister never married.’

  ‘I shan’t either.’

  He made a deprecating gesture. ‘I always felt badly about leaving her. But my mother wished it. And I wanted to get away.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘She is staying with me.’

  ‘She lives with you?’

  ‘No, she still lives in Marseilles. She has a flat there. She comes to stay once or twice a year.’

  ‘She must be very proud of you.’

  ‘That is almost the worst part. Though I think she is quite happy.’

  I doubted that. A woman who has been sacrificed is never happy. And although such sacrifices may be involuntary they are also instinctive, so that there never has been, and never could be, any choice. The flat of one’s own is the only symbol of upward progress. My own flat loomed larger, would soon have to be faced.

  Dr Balbi’s verbal camouflage, to which I meekly assented, marked the limits of our contract. Although the exchange of information is never without its purpose I saw that this was of more value to Dr Balbi than it could be to me. It was easy to imagine him with his sister, eating together in the evenings under a centre light, returned to their early days in Marseilles. He would have been the protective brother, although she would always be the older sister, anxious about his health, proud of his progress. I was aware that this was a burden to him. He would fear the regression that such closeness implied. No doubt they would enact, or re-enact, those earlier days. And he would be uneasily aware of his own guilt, which he would have been able to surmount when faced with the evidence of their poverty. For they had been poor, of that there was no doubt, and he would have been dismayed by a reminder of that early poverty in his sister’s behaviour. I had no desire to meet the sister, nor did it seem likely that I ever should. She seemed to be a family secret, and as such belonged to him alone. This was implied by his determination to come clean: it was as if our conversation could not continue until she was out in the open. I admired the purity of his motives, but wished rather that our conversation would take another turn. It was I who suggested that it was late, that I should go home. As always he walked me to my door and disappeared before I had locked myself inside. I tiptoed up the stairs, aware of M. Cottin sleeping somewhere above my head, and of Dr Balbi walking steadily away from me.

  I began to perceive the advantages of living in more than one room. I had had a strange dream, which had alarmed me. In the dream I had been consigned to a small room, not unlike the room I currently occupied, but with one essential difference: it was in an advanced state of dilapidation, with strips of paper hanging from the walls. I was delighted with this room, thanked the owner effusively, until I noticed that there was a breach in one of the walls, rather like a cat-flap, covered with yet another strip of wallpaper, but of a different pattern. Once I had seen this I had become uneasy, but the urgency of my mission, the mission that had brought me to this place, dictated that I must be about my business, and that I must issue out into the day to fulfil my obligations. This, in high good humour, I was willing to do. There was one disadvantage. At some point I should have to return to the room, with its gap in the wall, and await the outcome of whatever it had in store for me.

  I awoke from this dream in a state of horror, with the details still vivid in my mind’s eye. I could even see the contrasting patterns of the unmatched wallpapers, hanging in strips which no one had thought to repair. I knew that the owner of the room was well-meaning; I also knew that I was not fully conversant with the custom of this place, which was in Nice. As ever the relief with which I encountered the light and air of everyday was profound.

  Perhaps for this reason, or out of a longing for normality, I determined to go to London. My current work was finished and must be delivered. There was an additional reason: my childhood friend Mary was getting married and had sent me an invitation to her wedding. There was to be a small reception at the Basil Street Hotel after the ceremony at the Register Office. I loved Mary; we had once been close friends, though that closeness had been eroded by my long absence. If I left on the Monday, attended the wedding on the Wednesday, and left again on the Thursday I could be back by the end of the week. This seemed to me a perfectly reasonable objective. It would mean interrupting my various routines, but that might be no bad thing. And I should see my mother on the Sunday as usual. And Mary would be glad to see me; she may have been a little hurt that I had been such a bad correspondent. I had not wanted to burden her with such strange information, and therefore my letters may have struck her as evasive. They were deliberately so, for there was another fiction in play, namely that my stay in Nice was voluntary, even rather dashing. I saw how impossible it might be to destroy this fiction. Attendance at the wedding could be used to test my ability to adapt. The attempt should be made before it was too late.

  I told Sœur Elisabeth that I should be away, gave her my London number, but said that I should in any case telephone every evening. I boarded the plane with a distinct feeling of relief, which shocked me. I was used to my duties, and this excursion seemed frivolous by comparison. But I had the alibi of my work, and of the quest for further assignments. Both were ge
nuine but felt false, as did the familiarity with which I noted various features of my former life, still bewilderingly in place. Only the weather had changed: leaves were falling, for this was now early September, and the children were enjoying their last days of freedom before going back to school. I saw them in the streets when I went out to buy milk; they seemed strong, invincible. In the cupboards of the flat my clothes looked staid, unfamiliar, out of date. I had been absent for so long that they might have been bought by somebody else, for a purpose I could no longer remember. There was no money to spend on further adornment. Even the fee for my work was earmarked for a more serious purpose, for those modest supplies on which my mother depended, the soap, the talcum powder, the hand cream. They were little enough to contribute; they were a symbol of intimacy rather than intimacy itself. They were a means of exchange that soothed us both, and there was no question that it might be foregone.

  Dr Blackburn was away. I handed the work to a secretary whom I did not know, and told her that I should be in touch. I was almost glad of his absence. I registered fatigue, not the fatigue of the journey but of remoteness, of being out of touch, of no longer knowing my contemporaries, of not being in context. My isolation was emphasized by the activities I could sense in the background and to which I had no access. There was no place for me here, had not been for some time. What work I did—and that was little enough—made no impact on the wider scene. It may have been useful to someone, but I had no sense that it was useful to me. I had become removed from what had once been habitual. My long absence had taken root, and I was no longer at home.

  This sense of isolation increased at the wedding, as I knew it must. Mary’s look of pleasure was my only reward; otherwise the occasion was something of an ordeal. Many of my former friends were present and exclaimed with astonishment when they saw me. I must have seemed something of a revenant. I was aware too of other discrepancies. These friends were now successful professionals, assured, even wealthy. Girls with whom I had been at school had become adults, a different species, while I was still serving my apprenticeship. I was told how well I looked. ‘France evidently suits you,’ said Mary. ‘But when are you coming home?’

  For everyone went home eventually. The truth was never more self-evident as I surrendered to the English atmosphere, louder, less well behaved than I was used to. I was used, too used, to my slice of pissaladière and my bottle of mineral water at lunchtime to appreciate the glistening complicated food and the abundant champagne. I found it difficult to make the transition from my quiet way of life to the slightly ribald atmosphere of a wedding. I found the conviviality forced, as it may always be on such occasions. It was, in any event, difficult for me to break my long habit of silence. Silence, I thought, should be interrupted only by significant exchanges. The onus was on me to talk vivaciously, something I could no longer do. I appreciated the company, or rather I appreciated the idea of the company, the fact of the company, but found myself longing for other conversations, for other concerns. I would readily sacrifice occasions such as this for the rare hoped-for encounter, however tentative this turned out to be. I was newly tentative myself, and by now could hardly be otherwise.

  As I knew I should, I saw my former lover, Adam Crowhurst. He was still handsome, insolently so, though he had put on weight. Now he looked like a man, rather than a graceful youth. I studied him for a minute or two, as he did me. He was in the City, he told me, a trader with an old-fashioned and highly regarded firm. He loved the work, loved the money, about which he was unapologetic, even loved the pressure. Sometimes he managed to get away for a weekend, but this was becoming increasingly rare. He had a flat in Bayswater, was getting interested in contemporary art, had purchased one or two pieces of sculpture. Might even change tack eventually, he said; one never knows.

  ‘And you,’ he said. ‘I know nothing about you now. Are you married?’

  No, I told him, I was not married.

  ‘Neither am I,’ he said. Then he hesitated. ‘We could have made a go of it, I suppose. Only you were a bit difficult, as I recall.’

  ‘Oh, I was always difficult. Much too difficult for most people. You were no exception.’

  He looked at me uncertainly and decided to assume that I was joking. His expression cleared as he greeted a girl on the other side of the room. Did I know Sophie? He would introduce me. As he veered off in her direction I escaped into the blessed anonymity of the street. It was already late afternoon and the light was beginning to thin, to lose its vigour. I deplored my recent performance, my attempts to respond to those friends whom I still treasured. They had not appeared to mind the fervent smiles and fragmented sentences to which I was reduced. It had been essential to conceal the seriousness of my concerns, and this at least I had managed to do. This was the full extent of my social success.

  Later, in the flat, I thought not of the wedding but of my strange dream. Once between the clean sheets, in my own bed, I pondered its significance, for I did not doubt that it held some meaning for me. My initial gratitude for that derelict room had been overtaken by bewilderment, as I contemplated that gap in the wall, which was nevertheless too small to be of any use. No one could enter through it, nor could I use it to get out. Yet it was unmistakeably a feature of the room, as was the urgency of the business that had brought me to this place. Half open, under the fluttering strips of wallpaper that revealed rather than concealed it, it was the room’s most salient feature. As I had woken from this dream I had been impressed by the feeling of dread that must accompany any return to that room. No good could come of my presence there, even less of my absence. The room was my destiny, and the gratitude with which I had initially warmed to it was the most dreadful feature of all.

  I returned to Nice a day earlier than anticipated, for I had nothing to do in London. Again the journey was a relief, and I wondered whether I should seek refuge in aeroplanes in the unguessable future. This return would be problematic. I had no work, no reason to stay in my room—my real room—and no real reason, save one, to be out of it either. I took M. Cottin the packets of biscuits he liked, and I thought his thanks less fervent than usual. His expression was grave, as if I had somehow displeased him. Then he told me there had been a telephone call from the Résidence Sainte Thérèse that very morning. There was no message, but perhaps I should call back? The telephone was at my disposal. No need to leave any money.

  ‘Mademoiselle,’ said Sœur Elisabeth. ‘Votre maman est au plus mal. On vous attend.’

  This, then, was the dread, not the room with the gap in the wall, the significance of which was now clear to me, as was the nature of the business which had brought me to this place. My business was, and always had been, my mother; however much I repudiated the idea it refused to go away. That was why my own hopes and plans had been so tentative, so nebulous. My life had become a stasis I was unable to alter in any direction; that was why every other enterprise seemed beyond me, beyond even my eventual possibilities. My timid affections remained timid for that very reason; they were prevented from moving forward, for I was a prisoner in that room, and until the gap widened I could not proceed. And my fear was that the gap would yawn so wide that the whole wall would collapse, and the room with it. My life was that poor room, with its enigmatic opening, the purpose of which was not to let me out but to have me contemplate it for so long that I could no longer relate to the rest of life, even though that life was my own.

  I found my mother in bed, under the black wooden crucifix, and I was struck by the beauty of her expression. Her eyes were open, but her head was turned slightly to one side, as if she were listening to inner voices. One of the sisters had dressed her in a clean nightgown, prior to her being taken to the clinic, for the rule was that no one died at the Résidence Sainte Thérèse, at least not on the premises. The incongruous pink nightgown sat lightly on her slight frame, and I saw how thin she had become. She looked neither sad nor frightened, merely preoccupied, and I did not immediately see the reason for Sœur E
lisabeth’s telephone call, her note of unmistakeable urgency. For my mother was surely resting: her eyes were not even closed. Her arms lay quietly on the sheet, and from time to time one of the sisters would take her pulse. Dr Lagarde, I was told, was in the office, on the telephone, making arrangements for the transfer.

  ‘Mama,’ I said. ‘Mama,’ for these brief childish syllables were now the only ones I had to offer.

  I tried not to watch as the attendants lifted her from the bed. I had no sensation of the ride in the ambulance, though it evidently took place, for within half an hour of my arrival I was installed in my mother’s room, by her side, her hand in mine. Her eyes were now closed, as if the effort of leaving the Résidence Sainte Thérèse had exhausted her. From time to time a nurse, not one of the ones I remembered, would come in and palpate her wrist and throat. Then her hand was returned to mine. I longed for her to speak to me, if only to murmur my name; I longed for a sign of recognition that she knew me, knew that I was there, that I would never leave her again. Once she stirred, and I bent over her, but then she was still again. Someone placed a cup of coffee in front of me. When I looked up I saw that the sky beyond the window was quite dark.