The Debut

by Anita Brookner

  She got to bed at two, for there was much to clear up, so much scrubbing to be done, the sheets to be changed, the bottles to be put in a bag to be taken down to the dustbin, the smell of lilac to be flapped out of the window with her duster. Even at such a late hour she could hear the traffic in the nearby Champs Elysées and imagine the moving river of brilliance; only at dawn would the wan light illumine an empty high road which seemed to be awaiting the tramp of an exhausted returning army. She did not sleep well, tired as she was. But in the morning she eased her aching back against the pillow and realized that for the first time in her life she would shortly be drinking coffee from her own cup. No more kitchen china. No more landlords’ rejects. She was a householder at last.

  * * *

  THE next few days stayed fine and she was well content with her lot. She dusted and shopped and cooked; she walked down the Champs Elysées to the library, and after her day’s work she took a string bag out of her briefcase and studied the prices at the greengrocers’ stalls. Duplessis smiled at her, a little sadly, for he had less of her attention these days, and said so.

  “But it is all for you!” she said with astonishment. “I am getting things ready.”

  And she bought flour and sugar and a vanilla pod and many eggs. Balzac stayed in her briefcase for whole evenings at a stretch.

  She could no longer identify with her favorite heroine, Eugénie Grandet. She felt she was in control of her life, that it was no longer at the mercy of others, that she could not be disposed of against her will or in ignorance of her fate. Eugénie, waiting for her handsome cousin Charles to come home to Saumur and marry her, sits dreamily in her garden, on a worm-eaten bench under a walnut tree. For relief and diversion, she looks at the miniature of her aunt, his mother, that he has given her and sees his features there. She herself, she thinks, has little to offer, for she is not beautiful, although Balzac stoutly defends what looks she has and compares her kind face and large brow to those of a Madonna. But Eugénie humbly recognizes her lack of beauty as an almost fatal flaw: “Je suis trop laide; il ne fera pas attention à moi.” Eugénie’s mother learns with dismay of her attachment; her nurse tries to put a little character into her; but her obdurate and miserly father is quite content to have her at home, for that way he can control her fortune. Grandet is a byword in Saumur for cunning and cheek. Eugénie is a good catch, but she is so listless, so absent, so unhappy. Her cousin Charles, of whom someone reports that fateful glimpse at the ball in Paris when Eugénie supposes him to be on the high seas, never returns to claim her. Eugénie, her parents dead, herself an heiress, makes a loveless match which is never consummated. She, in her turn, becomes a byword in Saumur.

  Ruth, her eyes bright, her string bag filled with vegetables and fruit, felt more like Renée de l’Estorade, who is an expert on sensible arrangements. What she tended to ignore these days (and her work suffered as a result of it) was Balzac’s strange sense of the unfinished, the sudden unforeseen deaths, the endless and unexpected remorse, the mutation of one grand lady into someone else’s grander wife, the ruthless pursuit of ambition. She did not understand, and few women do, that Balzac’s rascally heroes are in fact consumed with a sense of vocation, in which love plays only an evanescent if passionate part, that they will go on and on and on and never rest until death cuts them down. What she did understand, and this is not difficult, is Balzac’s sense of cosmic energy, in which all the characters are submerged until thrown up again, like atoms, to dance on the surface of one particular story, to disappear, to reappear in another guise, in another novel. No, really, Eugénie was an anomaly, so biddable, so inert on her bench in the garden while her mother wasted away and her father grew more angry. Ruth could not remember why she had ever liked the novel in the first place.

  * * *

  IT was arranged that Duplessis would come to the flat after his lecture at the Sorbonne, on the Thursday of a week that began fine and sunny. Tourists were already present in force in the Champs Elysées; café tables were full. Ruth, in her tartan skirt and beige pullover, felt formal and French in comparison. She would have to stay here, of that there was no doubt. She could not go home. Perhaps if she explained matters to her father he would agree to make a little more money over to her. She had no thoughts beyond the completion of her dissertation, no desire for a career now, although she supposed that eventually she would teach or write or both. But she could do that when she was thirty or so, and with much greater authority and experience. No, she would have to stay in France.

  She bought a bottle of wine, and, after only one rehearsal, made for Duplessis the beautiful cake called “le Marquis.” She sat down to wait for him. Once more, as on that other occasion, which she could now recall with a smile, a shaft of sunlight illuminated the dusty carpet; by peering upward, through the window which looked onto a well, she could see an irregular patch of Parisian gray-white sky. Resting her arms on the sill, she watched the concierge make her spidery and suspicious way into the opposite staircase and saw the youngest girl from the architect’s office next door crossing the courtyard with a cone-shaped parcel of pastries on her upturned palm. She would be able to see Duplessis as he took the same path. But perhaps he would not want to be watched. She withdrew her head and closed the window.

  When she heard his steps, she smiled to herself, glad that she could not now be seen. Now her waiting was over. With a sigh, which she thought was happiness, but may in fact have been a by-product of all the waiting she had done in her life, she rose to open the door and let him in.

  They ate their cake and drank their wine, not talking much, a little formal. He took her hand and kissed it, careful of her dignity. When she got up to make their coffee it was quite late, and she was surprised to hear the telephone, for apart from Duplessis only Rhoda had her number.

  * * *

  “BUT what is it?” said Duplessis, trying to take her stricken face in his hands. She resisted him, biting her lips to regain control.

  “My mother,” she said finally. “I think she has had a heart attack.” She wept then and gave a long sigh. “That was my father. He said I should come home straight away.”

  In fact it was Mrs. Cutler, sounding frightened, who had taken the telephone away from George and whispered into it at some length.

  “They must have had a bit of a barney,” she confided. “I was in my room so I don’t know what it was about. I heard them shouting so I got up, and there was your mother, in the drawing room for some reason, bent double in a chair. She looked awful. So did he. He looks worse than she does, if you ask me.”

  “Is she dying?” asked Ruth fearfully.

  Mrs. Cutler released a cackle of reassuring laughter. “Not likely,” she said, although she was not too sure herself. “Bit of chest pain. Wind, I should say. You know how she eats.” She meant drinks. “Doctor’s been. Gave them both something to make them sleep. I’m just going to heat them some hot milk.” She lowered her voice. “Try and come home soon, Ruth. It’s him I’m worried about, to tell you the truth.”

  “Of course, I will come straight away.”

  Duplessis would take her to the station. As she cleared away their coffee cups and threw away the remains of the cake she wept again. He knew that she was very frightened and he told her that she would soon be back, that chest pains were quite common, and even a mild heart attack not fatal. And her mother was not old. Barely sixty. He would see her very soon, he said encouragingly. He would telephone her at home and come to meet her train. She smiled sadly at the thought and also at the thought of the clean sheets on the bed that would not now be used. Would she ever sleep in it again?

  He got her onto the Night Ferry and tipped the steward to give her a berth to herself. She struggled to raise the stiff brown blind at the window and saw him standing far below her, the brim of his hat turned up all the way round, his expression patient and contained, his hand raised. The train pulled out and very soon she could no longer see him. All she could remember was a lo
ng curved platform beside a shining rail, a deserted baggage trolley, and a single figure watching the train disappear.

  Eighteen

  * * *

  THE following morning, Dover looked gray, rough, and unwelcoming. Ruth, to her surprise, had slept soundly and on awakening had been haunted by a strange dream. In the dream she had been on a luxurious international train with walnut doors and pink lamps, and was sitting down to a meal in the dining car. “Contrefilet à la sauce ravigote,” she ordered, then, looking sideways through the window, saw her mother, complete with denim cap, waiting patiently in some sort of siding. Helen looked thin, sardonic, and helpless. Ruth struggled with the window, for she wanted to get a message to her mother; she wanted to explain to her the impossibility of her leaving the train until it stopped at a proper station. But the window would not budge and Helen continued to stare, amused but implacable, through to the place where Ruth was sitting.

  Ruth awoke with a start, realized where she was and why she was there and immediately fell into a protective lethargy, her eyes dull, her limbs heavy. She ate a lot of breakfast, half fearful that the dream might come true, but a sideways glance through the window revealed only neat bungaloid hamlets, toy milk floats cruising through high streets, and acres of sodden fruit trees. As the train approached London, Ruth began to shake; the lethargy wore off, and the combined anguish of renunciation and fear of the future took her in its grip.

  Yet at Oakwood Court all was surprisingly calm. Mrs. Cutler had opened the door, wearing an overall for the first time in her life. She immediately took her cigarettes and lighter from the pocket and started smoking. She drew Ruth into the kitchen and briefed her.

  “He’s gone to Mount Street. Too ashamed to stay here, I shouldn’t wonder. Seems he’s got another woman and that’s what the fight was about. I doubt if it was worth an argument really, but you know what she’s like, anything for a bit of drama. Only this time it backfired, didn’t it?”

  She made them both a cup of instant coffee; Ruth, who was unused to the taste, felt a lurch of nausea, which was compounded by the sight of a stained saucer which served as an ashtray on the kitchen table and the pan containing last night’s milk lying in the sink, its thick skin regularly punctured by drips from the tap.

  Mrs. Cutler, glad of Ruth’s company, stretched out a knobbly left hand on which was displayed a ring with a very small blue stone. Ruth looked at it uncomprehendingly.

  “Slow as ever, aren’t you,” chided Mrs. Cutler. “My engagement ring, you funny girl. I’m getting married, aren’t I? I’m going to be Mrs. Dunlop.”

  She made the gesture that betrothed women make, holding up her hand in front of her, trying to see the ring as a part of it that she would soon take for granted.

  “That’s why we had to get you home, see? Apart from the worry about her, I’m leaving at the end of the week. You’ll be able to move into my room. Be nice and large for you. Used to be your grandma’s, I understand.”

  “Where is my mother?” said Ruth restlessly.

  Mrs. Cutler became serious.

  “You’ll find her in a funny mood,” she warned. “She’s got some idea that she’s not going to stay here with your father. Under the same roof, she says. He had to sleep on the couch last night. Load of nonsense.” She sniffed. “As if there was anything in it at their age. Carrying on like a couple of youngsters.” Mrs. Cutler had not forgotten Helen’s expression of disdain when she had announced her forthcoming marriage, and, once her fear had passed, she could not wait to abandon Oakwood Court and make for Folkestone.

  Ruth found herself pausing fearfully outside the closed door of her mother’s bedroom. She knew that something monstrous waited for her on the other side. The fact of her father’s absence seemed conclusive and it did not occur to her to telephone him; she was too frightened. He had not wanted to see her, which proved that she too was at fault. She should never have gone away. And now she would see her mother, dying, in their bed.

  But when she knocked and opened the door and peered in, she found Helen not in bed but seated, fully clothed, in her trouser suit and denim cap, calmly smoking and looking surprisingly well. The only odd thing about her appearance was that she was wearing shoes and was clutching a stout handbag which had once belonged to the elder Mrs. Weiss and had been pronounced “too good” to give away, although it was hopelessly old-fashioned and very heavy.

  “Mother,” said Ruth. Helen turned her head slowly and surveyed her daughter with eyes as impassive as those of an animal long in captivity. She was wearing, Ruth could see, full stage makeup and she looked ruined but beautiful. She had removed her wedding ring but had put on what other jewelry she possessed: a string of pearls given to her by her father on her twenty-first birthday, her mother’s garnet brooch, and her silver bracelets. She had not been, in that sense, a greedy woman.

  “Mother,” said Ruth again. There seemed little more to say.

  At length Helen smiled, but very slightly, just like the Helen in Ruth’s dream. She seemed almost amused by her daughter’s predicament and refused to offer any assistance whatsoever.

  “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” asked Ruth helplessly, although she preferred to see her mother up. “What did the doctor say?”

  Mrs. Cutler now appeared in the doorway with an official-looking orange duster in her hand.

  “Said she was to take it easy,” she supplied. “And no more arguments. He was the one who nearly bought it, if you ask me. With his blood pressure. And the weight he’s put on.”

  Helen cut into this. “Ruth,” she said, in the very deep voice Ruth had only heard her use when she was exhausted. “We are going away. I cannot stay here.” She remembered to say “cannot,” Ruth noted automatically.

  Ruth and Mrs. Cutler both advanced on her and started talking at once. Helen again ignored them.

  “I will not stay here,” she corrected, staring absently out of the window at some unhelpful daffodils blown sideways by a hefty spring breeze.

  “But Mother, there is nowhere to go. You live here. You will have to come back here anyway.”

  “If anyone’s going, it should be him,” said Mrs. Cutler with relish. “Let him go to the other one, if that’s what he wants.” Helen closed her eyes. “Then you two could stay here, all nice and cozy. And in due course get on to your solicitors. Take him for all he’s worth,” she added dramatically, having heard this phrase used in a recent television film.

  They both looked at her in surprise. In self-defense, Mrs. Cutler studied her ring again and gave it a polish with her duster.

  “There is to be nothing like that,” Ruth pronounced. “You will have to discuss it like adults, without throwing fits all over the place. You cannot rely on Mrs. Cutler any more. And I cannot always be here. I think you should be able to settle this yourselves. You are not children.”

  “Exactly what I told them,” said Mrs. Cutler.

  Helen’s eyes closed again and Ruth felt a fear that she might be terribly ill. After a moment Helen said, in that odd deep voice, so nearly like a man’s that she gave the effect of being a ventriloquist, “Take me away from here. I am quite ready.”

  Ruth looked at Mrs. Cutler. Mrs. Cutler looked uneasily back.

  “But where do you suppose you’re going to go?” Ruth asked her mother, who was sitting quite still with her eyes closed.

  “Anywhere,” said Helen. “I will not stay here.” She was perfectly calm.

  Mrs. Cutler made beckoning motions to Ruth and tiptoed elaborately out of the room.

  “You’d better take her away,” she whispered, “Humor her. She’s had a shock. Let her get her own back.”

  “But where can I take her?” Ruth whispered back. “I can’t take her back with me to Paris.”

  “What about that friend of hers in Brighton?” They were like two conspirators now, lurking in the corridor.

  “Molly?” Ruth considered. “That might be possible. But only for a couple of days at the most. I can’t spe
nd my life patching up their quarrels.”

  Mrs. Cutler, who had seen both Helen and George that morning befuddled and mute and old, thought that Ruth had little chance of patching up anything. She did not, however, say so. She had pressing reasons of her own for getting Helen away until she could make good her own escape. George she could ignore. She doubted if he’d be back, in any case.