The Debut

by Anita Brookner

  “God, doesn’t she look ghastly?” was Helen’s reaction.

  So somehow it was decided that Helen and George should spend ten days with Molly at Hove. Mrs. Cutler promised to have the bedroom done out while they were away, and took Helen to the hairdresser so that Helen would make a good and enviable impression on her old friend, whom she had not seen for some years. Ruth found herself in charge of the packing and was filled with amazed pity as she went through the jumble of dingy luxurious clothes in tallboys and wardrobes; there was no time to have them cleaned but she ironed them all assiduously. George, immaculate, was packed in less than an hour.

  Nevertheless, there was a considerable amount of luggage. And as Helen refused to travel long distances by car, claiming that they made her feel sick, Ruth, with some misgivings, purchased two first-class return tickets and arranged for a taxi from a car-hire firm to take them to Victoria. The day of their departure dawned warm and misty; it was going to be very hot. Helen, stumbling around in unaccustomed shoes, and not too steady on her feet these days, left half-smoked cigarettes burning in saucers as she searched ineffectually for a chiffon scarf or for the novel she was nearly through or for the halfbottle of brandy she was never without on her travels. George, scented with after shave, crisp white handkerchief stuck up his sleeve, the Times in his airline shoulder bag, whistled to himself on the pavement, trying to believe that ten days would go in a flash. Helen, her face chalky in the now radiant morning light, climbed unsteadily into the taxi; George’s signet ring flashed in the sunlight as he turned to wave goodbye to Ruth and Mrs. Cutler in the porch. Ruth felt a lurch of fear. Would they manage at Victoria? Her mother was so unused to crowds. Mrs. Cutler sensed her anxiety. “Do them good,” she said firmly. “They’re as sheltered as a couple of kids. Do them good to get buffeted about a bit.” She seemed to like the idea. To George and Helen, now two faces at the window of the taxi, she raised her thumb in an all-purpose gesture “Never say die,” she yelled cheerfully, and went indoors to change back into her slippers.

  Ten

  * * *

  TO her surprise, Ruth found that she got on rather well with Mrs. Cutler. They had a sort of holiday of their own. After turning out the bedroom and retrieving from under the bed a year’s accumulation of spilled and crushed pills, old tissues, and the crosswords torn out of the Sunday papers, they felt a glow of achievement. The room was thoroughly aired and then just as thoroughly closed. By tacit consent they agreed that too much time was spent in there. “There’s that nice drawing room,” said Mrs. Cutler. “I’m the only one that ever sees it.” She cleaned that out too, taking down the curtains and wheeling them to the coin-operated machine at the local launderette. Ruth returned to the dining room, removed the stained damask cloth that still covered half the table from last Sunday’s lunch, opened the windows and let out the stale air. There had never been such an autumn.

  “Aren’t they lucky?” said Mrs. Cutler. “I’ll bet they’re laughing at us here in London.”

  “Mother looked awfully frail, I thought,” Ruth hesitated. The sight of her mother’s white face had stayed in her mind.

  “A bit too much of this,” replied Mrs. Cutler, lifting her elbow. “That and lounging about all day. She’s out of touch. Sea air will do her a power of good. You won’t know her when she comes back.”

  Ruth wished to believe it. She would indeed have welcomed back parents whom she did not know. The bedroom with its detritus had left a disagreeable impression on her; it was as if they had cleared up after a death. Ruth was glad of Mrs. Cutler, with her hoarse smoker’s cough, her rakish thinness, her obvious durability. She offered to do the shopping while Mrs. Cutler put her feet up. She was determined to become a good cook. Mrs. Cutler, unexpectedly, showed her how to make a perfect egg custard. Ruth, in her turn, helped Mrs. Cutler to apply her home hair dye, out of a bottle with a twenty-year-old brunette smiling alluringly from the label. “Chestnut lights,” she read out. “Shampoo once, rinse, then shampoo in the solution and wait for half an hour.” Mrs. Cutler looked apprehensive. Ruth sat with her, putting out a restraining hand as Mrs. Cutler kept glancing at her watch. Under the plastic shower cap orange rivulets began to trickle down her forehead. The result, when washed out, was not much different from Mrs. Cutler’s ordinary hair, but Ruth persuaded her to abandon her ochreous powder and crimson lipstick for something more becoming, and was quite pleased with her appearance. She looked more acceptable, less like a saloon habitué; her grandmother would have nodded approval.

  Some mornings Mrs. Cutler volunteered to do the shopping, but Ruth liked to get out. An urge to stray all day in the divine air of late September was like a physical quickening of her blood. Almost, she was happy. Or perhaps she recognized that this was how happiness felt. All one needed was a pretext. If there were no pretext, one needed an analogue. But Ruth, walking endlessly, was content to experience the unlooked-for exhilaration, to hope, to beg, that one day, someday, she might find a reason for feeling as she did, buoyant, serene, anesthetized against everyday hurts. She imagined, wrongly, that being in love was like this. With love comes seriousness, loss of autonomy, responsibility without power. Love, Ruth thought wistfully, love returned, must surely be this state of sublime ease. She even thought that before she left for France she might get in touch with Richard. But perhaps he would think she wanted the money back? Regretfully she abandoned the idea; the bright day darkened a little. Without love there can be no reason for hope.

  She began to think seriously about going to France. A room had been secured for her in the La Muette flat of Humphrey and Rhoda Wilcox, whom George had counted among his most faithful customers. Humphrey wrote popular lives of French favorites: La Vie Passionnée de Madame de Sévigné and Robespierre, Cet Inconnu still sold pretty successfully in bookshops near the Palais Royal. Rhoda was fashion correspondent for various Scottish newspapers. Apart from these racy activities, they were an elderly and rather severe couple. Ruth remembered them vaguely from a visit they had paid to Oakwood Court when she was much younger. She did not much like the idea of living with them—or indeed with anyone—but George had been insistent.

  “You will be quite independent,” he assured Ruth. “You will be living in the maid’s room, which I understand is on the top floor. And I can always get in touch with you: Rhoda and Humphrey are on the telephone.”

  “Sounds like a dead loss to me,” said Mrs. Cutler, who would be confirmed in her opinion if she ever met Rhoda. Rhoda, thin and beautiful like Helen, but much older, was dedicated to the preservation of Humphrey, who was even older and who was currently engaged on a life of the Duchesse de Berry. So much Ruth had gleaned from George’s description. Mrs. Cutler quite rightly inferred that they would not welcome interruptions, that telephone calls would be rationed, and morals supervised. Ruth did not much care. As long as the weather lasted she could be out all day, and if anything happened (to use Anthea’s phrase) she would look for another flat. The main thing was that she had an address: 154 rue des Marronniers, and any letters that arrived for her could be sent on there. She decided to leave on the fourth of October.

  For a week the glorious autumn continued in all its power and strength; milky-white mornings, pale sun at ten o’clock, fire at midday. Even Mrs. Cutler succumbed to its allure and consented to take tea with Ruth in Holland Park. They fed the birds and watched the babies, two women on their own, even in each other’s company, but peaceable and not noticeably discontented.

  “I wonder how they’re getting on,” said Ruth. They had had no word, apart from a telephone call from Molly Edwards to tell them that they had arrived safely. Molly had sounded so tremendously cheerful and optimistic that Mrs. Cutler, who had tried the ways of Christian Science and found them wanting, suspected that something had already gone terribly wrong. But she said nothing, not wishing to spoil Ruth’s holiday. And her own, of course.

  “Forgotten all about us by now, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Mrs. Cutler.

&nbs
p; She was nearly right. The taxi had unloaded George and Helen into a maelstrom of returning holiday makers, a world they did not know existed: elderly men with veins standing out on their foreheads trying to cope with five suitcases, elderly women with swollen feet and glistening white cardigans bought especially for the holiday, enduring the fright of a lifetime in order to enjoy the pleasure they had promised themselves all through the winter, too many children, shrill with tiredness, their long hair sticking to their damp faces, their mouths smeared and stained with sweets and ice lollies, none of them aspiring even to the relative comfort of a taxi, but queueing patiently for buses, shifting their burdens from hand to hand, trying to quiet the children, longing for that cup of tea at home, safe at last for another year.

  “Good God,” said Helen, emerging from the taxi at Victoria. “Where on earth do they all come from? I have never seen such people in my life.”

  George, assembling the luggage, rather agreed with her but wished she would not stare. The back of Helen’s wrist drifted up to her forehead. One or two people, vaguely remembering her face from the cinema, wondered who she was. Helen was torn between the desire to make an entrance, to plunge into the throng as if it were assembled outside the stage door, and the desire to be taken care of. Her predicament was solved when she caught sight of the open back doors of an ambulance, which had evidently just delivered someone onto a train. The two ambulance men, wiping their mouths, returning from a tea break, prepared to pack up and drive off. Helen tottered convincingly. “George,” she said, in the voice that had once carried to the back of the stalls, “I think I’m going to faint.”

  George was ashamed of her, as he was so often these days, but as Helen was conveyed in a wheelchair to the Brighton platform—and not engaging even a ripple of attention, she was annoyed to see—he struggled after her with the luggage, thankful at least that she was sitting down. She would be all right now, he knew; she would have a triumph to recount. That usually did the trick.

  The journey down was relatively easy though he did not get his crossword done. Helen was being very charming to a thin woman sitting in the corner of the carriage, although the thin woman was nervous and clearly wanted to read her book.

  “Anything interesting?” asked Helen, who intended to talk.

  “Henry James,” replied the thin woman repressively.

  “You’ll never believe this,” said Helen, “but I once played the niece, Miss Whatsit, in The Aspern Papers. We toured it. Brighton, in fact. Do you remember, darling heart? George?”

  Newspaper and book were laid aside. Helen lit a cigarette, ignoring the fact that they were in a nonsmoking compartment, and entertained them with anecdotes. Brighton was reached in comparative amity.

  It was at Brighton station that the trouble began. Molly Edwards, cheerful and spartan with her beach hut and her health foods, did not possess a car. They joined another queue for a taxi and, when crushed into it, were informed by Molly that she had had to put them up in the dining room, as her lodger, now on holiday, had not removed his belongings from the spare bedroom. Why should he? He had paid the rent. What she did not say was that the lodger occupied the only bedroom, and that she herself slept on a divan in the drawing room: they all shared the kitchen. Took it in turns, said Molly firmly. She had no intention of cooking meat but of course would not object if they wanted to cook it themselves.

  “Good Christ,” exploded Helen. “What do you want a dining room for, Molly? You could eat a nut cutlet or whatever it is you eat off a tray.”

  “I can’t get rid of the furniture,” said Molly. And indeed she couldn’t. There was a highly varnished gatelegged table, dating from the nineteen thirties, a china cabinet filled with wedding presents of the same epoch, and six chairs in heavy leather embossed with gilt studs. Nobody would either buy them or take them away. Molly had made an effort. She had shut up the table and ranged the chairs against one wall. In the remaining floor space stood two very narrow divan beds, a small table, and a lamp with a dull parchment shade and a long, trailing cord. Helen took one look and raised the back of her hand to her forehead. This time the gesture was entirely genuine.

  George thought longingly of Mrs. Jacobs’ flat, of the entry phone and the door chimes and the electric blanket and the frilled nylon pillow slips he had seen airing in the bathroom. He thought of the record player and the sunlamp and the towelling bathrobe he intended to hang on the back of the bedroom door as soon as he got back. You never knew. Molly, putting on the kettle, thought with equal longing of her cool expanse of beach and her chalet and the Christian Science Monitor and its injunctions. She had tried. She had baked a sodden fruit loaf for them. After that they were on their own. The smell of Helen’s cigarette and the sound of her lamentations drifted ominously into Molly’s consciousness. Well, it was only for ten days. It was a change, wasn’t it?

  In the bedroom or dining room—it looked like neither—Helen was taking a pull at her bottle of brandy. She had removed some dried grasses from a tall green glass vase and was using it as an ashtray. Her shoes were off, and she was lying on her divan with a distant look in her eye.

  “Tomorrow,” she said to George, “we go home.”

  At this point Molly entered with the tea and a scrapbook. Ignoring the signs of Helen’s occupancy, she said, “You’ll never guess, darling, I found some photographs of you the other day. Look how beautiful you were.” Helen sat up. “Still are, of course,” said Molly. She was quite sincere.

  Helen pondered.

  “I was just saying to George, we shall have to leave just before the weekend. Our daughter is going to France soon and we want to spend as much time as possible with her.”

  “That tiny little thing? Well, of course you do,” said kind Molly. “A bit of sea air and you’ll look quite different when you get home. You could do with a swim or two, my girl. Why not come down to the beach with me tomorrow? George can bring a couple of deck chairs over from the bandstand.”

  Helen bowed to the inevitable. Reaching out for the scrapbook, she said, “Is there a photograph of me in Most Loving Mere Folly? They say I looked my best then.”

  Leaving the two women sitting side by side and apparently in harmony for the moment, George went out to get the supper.

  * * *

  HELEN made one effort to join in the spirit of what she contemptuously called “your seaside home” by buying herself a curious peaked denim cap at the local beach shop and by wearing it both indoors and out through the seemingly endless days that followed. Ushered down to the chalet by Molly, she had stared at her friend in amazement.

  “You mean to tell me you sit here all the time? But Molly, you must be mad. You could still get work. What about those talking books for the blind? They’re always at me to record some, but I can’t seem to get round to it.”

  Molly smiled sadly.

  “I’m not as young as I was. I’m older than you, remember, Helen. I’ve got just enough to keep me until I pop off, and then that’s it. Remember what we used to say? No regrets.”

  “No regrets,” echoed Helen. She was more shaken than she would admit. Her friend was a living embodiment of all that awaited her. Helen knew that she was aging badly, that she had lost too much weight, that her teeth ached, that her circulation was bad. Sometimes she kept her makeup on all night in order not to give herself a shock the following morning. It was only by resting most of the day, by eating soft foods that did not demand too much effort, by never risking the challenges of the street, of the bus, that she kept as well as she did. It suited her looks to never quite get dressed, to trail, to chatter, to heighten the color of her eye sockets and her cheeks, and above all, to sleep. She had brought her pills with her to Hove, of course. But she felt brittle, exposed, chilled by the invigorating wind off the sea. Her wedding ring slipped about on her finger. She could think of nothing to do. She was almost frightened. And her face wore that lost and petulant air that Ruth remembered from her childhood and which seemed to turn the
mother into the child and the child into the mother.

  George, too, was far from happy. He left the two women together and walked into Brighton: at least he could keep himself in shape. On the walk back he did the shopping. He longed, with a fierceness that surprised him, to sit down at a decent table and have someone serve his food. He longed to eat a meal without knowing in advance what it was. He longed, if not for Sally, then for life in Sally’s flat. Sometimes he caught himself longing for his mother. Ruth would have recognized his expression too—rueful, withdrawn, the lips pursed. A stranger, suddenly.

  The sun came out and they made a slight effort. George hired a car and they drove along the coast. They had lunch in restaurants and tea in hotels. Then George realized how much money they were spending and announced that they should take more advantage of the open air. They had come for the sea bathing, after all.

  “You hate it,” said Helen. “You always have.”

  “I’m quite happy,” replied George, “sitting here in the chalet.” While he sat there he let his anger mount and felt it was doing him a power of good. Anger would liberate him from servility, would make him lose his scruples. Anger, he almost believed, would enable him to have his own way.

  Following in Molly’s crunching wake over the shingle, Helen tried not to look at the bladelike thinness of her own legs. Her narrow feet, now unused to walking, turned at the ankle, and she wondered how she would ever get back. As she hobbled thankfully over the rim of sand into the sea the shock of the water nearly took her breath away. The waves were boisterous and her knees gave way. Water slopped over her mouth; her hair, so carefully set for the holiday, straggled in wet strands on her neck. Without her looks she felt her personality deteriorate. Molly, splashing cheerfully and trying to ignore the pain in her shoulder, shouted, “You’ll feel the benefit later.”