‘My dear boy, I am so sorry. Is there anything I can do? Are you alone? Perhaps if I could come in for a few minutes?’
Lewis led the way to the drawing-room, momentarily ashamed of the empty grate. He was leaving anyway, he told himself; he would clear up before he went. He watched Professor Armitage lower himself into a chair, placing his flowers tactfully out of sight. Why did everyone have to seem to him so unbearably vulnerable? Armitage, he had heard, was a bachelor, had lived with a widowed sister until she died, and since then had soldiered on alone, grateful for any company. A good scholar, but too modest to have made his mark, an excellent adviser, patient and always interested. There had been a wistfulness there too, thought Lewis, who steeled himself to be ruthless. He saw, regretfully, that he must say goodbye to his earlier innocence if he were ever to make his mark in the world. If he failed in this task, innocence – his mother’s innocence – would overcome him, and then where would he be?
‘You’ll go on with your work, I hope, Lewis?’ Professor Armitage, Lewis saw with despair, was easing himself out of his coat. ‘Of course, I shan’t be at the college after June, but you will have the thing well set up by then. And I dare say Dr McCann will look after you if you want any help. I don’t think I’m being indiscreet in saying that the university press is always interested in new work. You would have to revise and expand, of course, but that would be a matter for the future. You’ll keep in touch, Lewis? I’ve enjoyed your work.’
Fatal humility, thought Lewis. Yes, he would keep in touch, but not too frequently. Men like Armitage were obsolete, all but saintly, and thus uncomfortable. He too had enjoyed the work, but, being young, had thought it entirely his own. Besides, it was the company of women that he craved. He did not see, in this moment of discomfort and disarray, how Professor Armitage could minister to him. Of the two barren lives he was forced to prefer his own. Yet how did that help him?
‘Have you enough to live on?’ pursued Professor Armitage.
Lewis said that he had no idea.
‘Well, that is certainly very important. And you will want a job. You might find something in the library to tide you over. That friend of yours works there, doesn’t he? If you like the idea I might be able to use a little influence.’
It was to be all libraries, Lewis thought.
‘I wonder if I might ask you for a cup of tea, Lewis? It is rather a long way from Muswell Hill. Several buses, you know, and I am not so young as I was.’
It was seven o’clock before he left, after having persuaded Lewis to light the fire again. Even then he seemed reluctant to go. But Lewis was now impatient to telephone the Avenue Kléber, and paid scant attention to Professor Armitage’s kind assurances. He regarded the library suggestion as something to fall back on in a case of extreme need, something to be avoided for as long as possible. He felt now that only an investment in his own future could obliterate the grief he felt silently gathering in the corners of the room. He stood at the door, watching Professor Armitage beat his slow retreat, seeing him as a blank silhouette outlined against the fuzzy halo of a street lamp. Only when the sound of his heels had faded and the suburban street was quiet again did he go inside.
The return to Paris he now saw as a desperate act, one perhaps that would not repay him. And yet it was the thing he had to do. He craved the sedative of routine, and here, at home, routine had been cancelled and he did not know how to re-establish it. The untidy grate stared him in the face, ashes scattered over the hearth; the room already had a pall of dust, and in the kitchen the larder was almost empty again. He would go simply because it was impossible for him to stay. He would finish his work – that went without saying – but that was not his primary purpose. What he craved was a return to his earlier self, before sadness had come into his life. Perhaps he would never come home again. He saw himself, an ageing child, living out a bachelor existence in a room in Paris: eventually he would assume the lineaments of a Frenchman, with a trenchcoat and a briefcase and rimless glasses. He would go home in the evenings to Mme Doche and the women. Nothing about this was ideal, he knew, and most of it was illusory, but if he stayed here loneliness would overpower him. He did not like the direction his thoughts were taking. He did not like his situation. And yet he knew that decisions would have to be made, and that now was the time to make them. In so doing he would grow up, grow older, something that he had singularly failed so far to do. He must move immediately if he were not to lose the power of moving altogether.
On the telephone Mme Doche sounded distant, cautious. Mme Roussel was unwell, she explained, was, she feared, going downhill very fast. And she was unwilling to let rooms again, would not want the responsibility. She had not liked those two girls – did Lewis remember them? – and had thought they had made themselves too much at home. She did not want that problem any more, could not in fact even contemplate it. Of course if Lewis were coming to Paris it would be nice to see him. Mme Doche did not see many people these days. But Lewis would understand if she were not free.
‘And Cynthia?’ Lewis asked. ‘And Roberta?’
‘Those girls?’ said Mme Doche in some surprise. Both gone. They left shortly after Lewis himself had done. And now there was nobody in the apartment except Mme Roussel and herself. It got lonely sometimes. If anything happened to Mme Roussel – there was a tactful sound at this point – she, Mme Doche, would go home to Brittany. Did Lewis know Nantes? A fine town, and more sympathetic than Paris.
Lewis, encouraged by her growing assurance – her voice seemed to have taken on a new resonance when talking about her plans, although still dipping cautiously at the end of her sentences – promised to telephone when he arrived in Paris, although he was a little disconcerted that she had not invited him to stay in the Avenue Kléber. But if there were illness there he would rather not witness it: his memories were still too raw. Besides, eight months had passed since he had left, and in the summer evenings of the remainder of his stay the winter atmosphere of the salon had been difficult to recapture. He himself, while living through his last days in Paris, had deserted the apartment and had wandered about the city in the brilliant evening light. And now perhaps it was too late, all dark and dim and spoiled by recent events. Something told him that it was a mistake to go back, but his desire for certainty and for the time before things had gone wrong forced him to return to the only set of associations that were still secure. From the depths of his experience he longed to recapture what he thought of as the transparency of that time. By transparency he meant a whole complex of contingencies – his work, his earlier ardour, his singlemindedness, his simple and almost forgotten wish for wholeness. Transparency – or desire – would banish sadness, embarrassment, a sense of failure. Laissez-moi ma vie idéale … On a more practical level, his work demanded that he revisit the scene, or so he thought. What else could he do? There was no possibility of existence for him with things as they were.
On the following day, Sunday, he made an effort and cleaned the house. He thought of telephoning his cousin, but told himself that Sunday was a day for domesticity, and that Andrew would not welcome an intrusion. Or rather that Andrew might, but that Susan would not. By the evening the house was cleared of his mother’s relics. He opened the door of her room, stood inside for a moment, then decided to leave it as it was. He paused only to collect her library books, sober tales of love and loyalty that reflected the moods of women as he wished to consider them. He had often read her books himself, was acquainted with her tastes, which, half-smiling, he acknowledged to be his own. He removed a nail-file from between the pages of The Song of the Ark, which the pale girl at the library had put aside for them, with assurances that his mother would love it. A beautiful story, the girl had said: it had made her cry. Lewis supposed that this girl must now be informed of his mother’s death. Or perhaps he could just post the books back. He did not think he could stand the words normally offered on these occasions, although he was aware that the sympathy of strangers was often m
ore kindly meant than the sympathy of relatives, of his relatives, at least, and that strangers offered different perspectives onto the lives of the dead, remembered a gesture, a word, that they offered to the bereaved, and that such offerings were sweet.
On the Monday he went to the bank and saw the manager. ‘You should be quite comfortable,’ said Mr Harvey. ‘The portfolio is very conservative and will bring in a small but regular income, as it did your mother. You don’t want to diversify, I take it?’
‘How much would I have if I sold everything?’ Lewis asked.
‘Between twenty and twenty-five thousand,’ was the answer. ‘But I cannot advise …’
‘Please sell everything,’ said Lewis, ‘and put the money in my account.’
He booked a ticket on the Night Ferry for the same evening, returned home to pack a few clothes, and went straight to Victoria, where he sat for several hours in the Golden Arrow bar, rising only to buy food. As soon as it was dark he picked up his bag and moved to Platform 1, anxious to be gone, watching indifferently as passengers slowly accumulated, fur coats over their arms, heavy bags consigned to porters’ trolleys. Doubting his ability to endure the burden of a sleepless night he had booked a wagon-lit. The thought of the money relieved him enormously; he resolved to go to a comfortable hotel. He remembered seeing such a place in the rue Clément-Marot, on one of his cheese-buying expeditions. He remembered that the bright windows had cheered him, promising pleasure, insouciance. He determined to go there.
He awoke to a dark morning, and an impression of cruel lights dashing through the chink in the blind. He washed and dressed quickly and went in search of coffee. Seated in the restaurant car he felt a sense of anticipation, noting the subtle changes in smells, in sounds. He returned to stand at the window of his compartment, avid now for the sights of France. He was the first person to leave the train.
They gave him a small but adequate room at the Hôtel Roosevelt, one, no doubt, reserved for unaccompanied visitors. He felt disastrously unaccompanied. He unpacked quickly, anxious to be in the street, afflicted with restlessness, and also with anxiety. Suddenly there was nothing to do. He wandered down to the Place de l’Alma, in search of the street market, but it was the wrong day for it. A pale sun broke on the whitish façades of the buildings, and he walked for a long while in a westerly direction. He thought of making for the Bois, but purposelessness overcame him, and he turned back. He caught a bus to the Bibliothèque Nationale, presented his reader’s ticket, and sat down at one of the desks. He consulted the notebook he always kept in his pocket, and looked up one or two titles in the catalogue. This, it appeared, was to be the extent of his work, on this occasion, at least.
He must have changed, he thought, in the months that had elapsed since he had last sat in this room. He was no longer content with things as they were, with small pleasures, small perspectives. The thought frightened him, for there seemed to be nothing to put in the place of those perspectives, which, however limited, had always been reassuring. He got up hurriedly, and out of sheer habit, walked round the Palais-Royal garden, and bought himself a sandwich in a familiar café. It now seemed a matter of urgency that he should proceed directly to the Avenue Kléber. He supposed that he should telephone first, but he knew that Mme Doche would be at home. She only went out once a day, he remembered, to do her shopping. She was bound to be in.
He felt a little easier out on the street, walked the length of the Champs-Elysées, dogged only by a fatigue that was more mental than physical. The Avenue Kléber, when he reached it, stretched out endlessly: he suddenly doubted whether he could go much further. He stood for a moment in the dimness of the vestibule, aware of his labouring breath, before mounting the stairs to Mme Roussel’s floor. When he rang the bell he heard a faint exclamation, then raised voices. The door opened slowly, very slowly, on to a chain which permitted a limited view of Mme Doche’s frightened face. This face, which he remembered as round, blonde, replete, now looked to him puffy and anxious, the hair surrounding it ashy and dry. Stealing through a crack in the door was a strange pharmaceutical smell, mixed in with an odour of stale unchanged air. The door closed in his face, then opened again. He was bidden to come in and make no noise.
He walked instinctively into the salon, where Mme Doche, after another half-heard conversation, this time disclosing an admonitory voice, joined him. He became aware that he should have telephoned, that his visit was inappropriate. Mme Doche seemed to be waiting for him to state his business, but he had a great desire to confide in her, to tell her of his mother’s death: a desire, in short, to be comforted. This, he understood, was the whole purpose of his journey. But as soon as he was seated on one of the faded tapestry chairs the hushed and somehow furtive atmosphere was interrupted.
‘Fernande! Fernande!’
He recognized the harsh hoarse voice of Mme Roussel, now harsher, hoarser, urgent, a voice that contained anger, even fury. Mme Doche put her finger to her lips, and ran from the room. Lewis waited, heard Mme Doche’s voice take up its burden of reassurance, heard the chink of a glass, heard a spoon being dropped. Finally a door closed and Mme Doche reappeared. She put a finger to her lips again and shook her head. Lewis understood that she wanted him to go. He remembered Professor Armitage easing himself out of his coat, anxious to stay, even in that house of the recently dead. And now he was in the same position. He took Mme Doche’s hand, pressed it, and went to the door, conscious now of her willing him to be gone. He hesitated for a moment, with all that he had to say unsaid, but then the harsh voice made itself heard once more.
‘Fernande! Fernande!’
He stood for a moment on the landing, then hurried down the stairs and out into the street. He all but ran back to the hotel, packed his bag, and made for the station. He left Paris the same evening, catching the same train, or its twin, back to London.
The house was waiting for him, as empty and as silent as when he had left. The house was waiting for him, and he recognized it as the place where he would remain. He picked up his mother’s library books, went out, stood at the bus stop by the Common, and began another unmomentous day.
4
Another library, he thought. He felt doomed, irritated, yet at the same time submissive. Here was destiny staring him in the face. Not exactly here but somewhere very like, up imposing steps, through swing doors, into the arched and silent room, where a timid sun sent coloured refractions through the lozenge shapes of art deco fanlights, where children sat at one of the two long tables composing essays for their English homework, and where old men, cloth capped and mufflered, read the Express and the Telegraph and sometimes dozed until it was time to go home. This was a kindly place, something of a day care centre for the lonely, the naturally silent, the elderly and the reclusive. The lighting and the heating were generous, even if the rules were strict: there was to be no talking, not one word, emphasized Miss Clarke, the librarian, and although she was well disposed she would not countenance outright sleep, however frail the sleeper. Tapping across the parquet floor on her military-sounding high heels, she would shake the offender by the shoulder. ‘This is a library, Mr Baker, not a dormitory! And you were beginning to snore.’ This admonition had to be repeated rather frequently. Mr Baker, white stubble nestling in the folds of a very ancient, once handsome silk scarf, damp of nostril but calm of presence, his former bearing resurrected for the occasion, had once, in Lewis’s hearing, replied, ‘You make more noise than I do, you silly bitch,’ and had been ordered to leave. ‘Poor old thing,’ Mrs Percy had said. ‘He probably has nowhere else to go.’ ‘Oh, he’ll be back tomorrow,’ said Miss Clarke, with a laugh that was tolerant but a little too hearty. ‘I like to do my best for everyone but I can’t have the atmosphere disturbed. I feel sorry for him really. But old people can be very tiresome, can’t they?’ She was perhaps forty-three to Grace Percy’s sixty-two. ‘Yes,’ Grace Percy had smiled in return. ‘Yes, I dare say they can.’
‘There is something very sad about t
hat woman,’ she had said to her son on their journey home. ‘I somehow doubt that she will marry. And she knows this. It has probably broken her heart but she is too good a woman to show her feelings. What comes out is a terrible cheerfulness, with no cheer in it.’
Lewis had laughed and pressed his mother’s arm. He loved her in this mood. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘What happened to her? Did some rotter let her down?’
‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Percy, surprised. ‘There never was a rotter, that’s the trouble. She’s the sort of great-hearted woman who would be magnificent with a rotter. That deep bosom, that high colour. The sacrifices she would have made! The faith in his untested abilities she would have maintained! She would have taken on his parents, his friends, even his lovers. I can just see her keeping open house for all his hangers-on, being decent to the women who ring up, lending him money.’
‘Why wouldn’t someone like that want to marry her?’ Lewis had asked in his innocence.
‘Well, he might be a homosexual,’ his mother had replied. She thought it her duty, for which she braced herself, to introduce her son to these complexities. ‘At any event someone who couldn’t tolerate the intimacy of women. And I have to say, although I shouldn’t, that Miss Clarke gives the impression of someone whose intimacy might be a little tiring.’
She said no more, thinking to spare Lewis the spectacle, which she had quite clearly in front of her, of Miss Clarke, full-throated, wild-eyed, in the throes of some spectacular but unrequited ardour. It was the sort of thing for which actresses became famous in the theatre. Jacobean tragedy would have suited her, she reflected.
‘The sad thing is that many women of Miss Clarke’s type never marry,’ she said mildly. ‘And yet they would make excellent wives. Miss Clarke probably has a chest of drawers full of exquisite linen,’ (nightdresses, she thought, but kept the thought to herself). ‘She probably still adds to it. And she always looks well turned out, have you noticed? Those very pretty blouses, those high heels. And nice discreet scent. And always well made up. And her hair always immaculate.’
Lewis Percy Page 5
