Lewis Percy

by Anita Brookner

  His male conscience still reserved and clung to a vision of innocence for himself, although he was well aware that he had passed the age at which innocence was appropriate. Yet here he was, a relatively honest man, or one who liked to think of himself as relatively honest, apparently accepted, apparently absorbed into the curious wordless dialogue of this strange couple, with its wealth of meaning not made clear. There was even a sort of peace in the knowledge that he did not have to present his credentials, that in being in this house for the first time he was regarded as part of the set-up, however alien that might appear to be. And he liked the idea of having a girlfriend. Surely with an accredited girlfriend he would have passed one of the many tests awaiting him, for he did not doubt that there were many tasks ahead, many stages to be passed through on his progress to true adulthood, and if possible heroic stature. Maybe he was being asked to undertake this task as an act of unselfishness, as his first trial on the way to a just reward. What that reward might be he had as yet no idea: he simply saw himself far from the final result, the right true end. He saw the future through a diminishing lens, a camera obscura that revealed little. He knew that he would always strive towards a final recognition of his place in the world. And yet he saw Tissy Harper as an ineluctable part of his quest. He thought of her again as the Sleeping Beauty, whom he would awaken with a kiss, and once more the thought commended itself to him. But could he reconcile himself to the massive preoccupations of her mother, from whom Tissy, either consciously or unconsciously, took her cue? Must he go through this entirely unaided, unsupported, without encouragement or enthusiasm on the part of what he could not help thinking of as the main beneficiaries?

  Their house suddenly seemed intolerable to him and he wondered how soon he might leave. But he could not leave without some sort of a sign from them as to how he was to continue. He knew that he would come back, yet he also knew that he would want to be a welcome guest, not merely tolerated, but gladly, excitedly, anticipated. It seemed to him that he could rise to fulfil any expectation, if only that expectation were to be indicated. Without that he would turn away in disgust, yes, disgust. He had come so near to beggary that he was indignant on his own behalf. He thought how differently his mother would have behaved in a similar situation and longed to be at home again, away from these people with their enormous reticence, their absolute lack of desire, their basic powerful refusal of life. Their indifference alone made him want to insist that they pay more attention to him, yet at the same time he had a feeling of impatience, as if he were in two minds about the whole affair and might easily be persuaded to call it off. He lacked a champion, a spokesman, an advocate, someone who would tell him what he wanted to know, that he should opt for the wider, fuller life. Something called to him beyond his present circumstances, beyond anything he could logically see, yet here he was, entrapped in this small room as if it were his destiny, as if his course were already chosen for him. The effect of Mrs Harper – and of her daughter too – was to deprive him of initiative. He longed to be gone, but curiously doubted his ability to free himself from their spell.

  And that saturation of sweetness, overlaying an immoveable core of opacity. He saw a trace of melting cream on his plate and felt a qualm of nausea. Tissy’s plate was clean; as he glanced at her her cup came gently and finally to rest in her saucer. She turned then to look at him, and smiled. He smiled back, vastly relieved. His strategy now, he saw, was to get her out of this room, preferably without her mother, and into his own house. In those astringent and much saner surroundings he would get to know her, and get to know her on his own terms. After all, this meeting was only a rite of passage, one that they had all been obliged to perform, and one that they probably found to be as discouraging as he did.

  ‘I must be going,’ he said. ‘Thank you for this splendid tea, Mrs Harper. I wonder if you’d both like to come to my house next Saturday?’ Harrods, he thought. They sell cakes, don’t they?

  Mrs Harper stubbed out her cigarette. ‘One of these days,’ she conceded. ‘If Tissy is not too tired.’

  With this he had to be content. ‘I’ll see Tissy at the library,’ he said, ‘and fix something up with her. Would that be all right?’ For by now he was determined to persevere, and, more important, to get his own way.

  As he was rising to go the doorbell rang.

  ‘Tissy, let Ralph in, would you?’ said Mrs Harper, piling dirty plates on to a papier mâché tray, another relic of former times, he supposed, and of a more commodious house. ‘The doctor,’ she added, for Lewis’s benefit. ‘He looks in once a week to see how Tissy is getting on.’

  For a moment he had thought he might have a rival and was surprised to notice how alarmed he felt. For he seemed set on his course to become Tissy’s husband, even if she had given no sign that she was to be his wife.

  He was reassured, too, by the visit of a doctor, as who is not, when there is no illness in the house. The presence of a man had seemed to him to be lacking, and he wondered if the mild depression he had felt throughout his visit was due to the fact that however sympathetically he felt towards women their unadulterated company made him feel uncertain, at a loss. Fatherless, always seeking a home among women, reading their books in an effort to love and understand them better, he nevertheless looked to them to love and understand him, and it occurred to him that this was true of most men. Men were banded together not simply as hunter gatherers but rather in sheer bafflement at the behaviour of women. Looking for a mother, they nevertheless longed to escape the commitment that such a search required, and tended to fall back on easier stereotypes, women of lesser importance, who would not exact emotional tribute money. But if the love of any woman were not forthcoming, who could describe the hurt of a man who might find himself scorned, rejected, laughed at? And why did women make such a fuss about not being loved and understood? Surely they could see that it was far more serious for a man to be in this situation, for who could understand him if not a woman? At best a man had to fall back on the unspoken sympathy of other men, who would shrug their shoulders in comradely bewilderment. The doctor, thought Lewis, must understand him, and might, moreover, hold the key to this establishment. If he called every week he must know a good deal about the Harper ménage; he would certainly be able to tell how damaged Tissy really was, and when and in what circumstances she might be held to be cured. The doctor’s visit he saw as a kindness, a formality, for it was obvious at a glance that no cure might be undertaken unless the curtains of this red room were symbolically drawn apart and the full light of day admitted. He was thus reminded of his own part in this hypothetical cure and the inherent difficulty of his role. For this reason alone he would be glad to see the doctor.

  The doctor, as if to fulfil Lewis’s expectations, entered like an old friend, a familiar, an habitué. Surely nothing less than friendship would explain the informality of his appearance, which was rumpled, untidy, unprofessional, thought Lewis, who had anticipated a dapper figure in a black coat and striped trousers. This man wore a creased grey suit with a white chalk stripe, the straining waistcoat of which bore the traces of a fall of cigarette ash. He wore, in addition, a grey overcoat, which seemed to be sliding off his shoulders, as if he had not entirely decided to put it on, and a grey Homburg hat pushed to the back of his head. He carried an attaché case which he put down beside one of the overstuffed armchairs, removed the coat and hat and hung them over the top of the door, to which he could reach quite easily. He was a tall man, but a tall man gone to seed, for there was a large rounded stomach beneath the chalk stripes. He had also lost the original fresh colouring which might have gone with the intensely waved, now grizzled, hair. Formerly fair, the doctor had become empurpled: a heavy shadow of beard darkened the lower half of his face which was now equally divided into areas of red and blue. His most striking feature was his mouth, which was full, pouting, babyish; the lips, which were violet, had the thin sheen of grape skins. He looked tired to death.

  ‘Well, Thea,’
he said to Mrs Harper. ‘Well, Tissy. How’s our girl this week, then?’

  ‘Tea, Ralph?’ queried Mrs Harper. ‘I’ll make some fresh, if you like. This is a bit cool.’

  ‘No, leave it,’ he said. ‘I like it cool.’ He received a cup and saucer in a large fatty hand.

  ‘This is Mr Percy. A friend of Tissy’s. Dr Jago.’

  ‘Well, young man,’ said the doctor. ‘How do you come to be in this neck of the woods?’

  ‘I know Tissy from the library,’ he responded, thinking that he might state his business to this man and get something like a sensible hearing. ‘I was wondering if she could come out with me? Nothing too arduous, a walk in the park, perhaps. The weather is so gorgeous now. Would you like that, Tissy?’

  ‘Would you like that, Tissy?’ echoed the doctor in a fair imitation of Lewis’s eager voice. The doctor’s adherence to his cause, Lewis saw, was not to be taken for granted.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure,’ said Tissy, as Lewis had known she would. ‘I usually go out with Mother.’

  ‘But if you got used to me,’ urged Lewis. ‘If you got to trust me and if I didn’t leave you alone, wouldn’t that be all right? It doesn’t have to be tomorrow,’ he added, seeing that he was committed to this thing, and backing down slightly now that the opportunity presented itself. ‘I could try walking you home from the library, to begin with. Wouldn’t that be the thing? And when you got used to me we could try something else. What do you say?’

  Tissy looked instinctively to her mother. ‘Up to you, Tissy,’ said Mrs Harper. She was nothing if not impartial, Lewis thought.

  ‘What do you think, Doctor?’ Lewis asked. Dragging himself forward in his chair the doctor seized Tissy’s wrist, a gesture which surprised Lewis until he saw that it was made in order to feel the girl’s pulse. The man’s movements were undisciplined, awkward, yet it was cunning of him to feel Tissy’s pulse at that particular moment.

  ‘Can’t do any harm,’ he said. ‘Give it a try.’ He exchanged looks with Mrs Harper, then put his feet up, discarded the New Statesman from a small table at his side, picked up Woman’s Own, and immersed himself in an article on how to brighten up the bathroom with a really stunning blind, special offer, see coupon on page 49. All this Lewis could see over the doctor’s shoulder, since the doctor had moved centre stage and tended to ignore him. Once again he felt ousted from what should have been his natural position.

  ‘More tea, Ralph?’ asked Mrs Harper. He held out his cup without relinquishing his magazine, and when it was placed once again in his waiting hand took a deep and audible draught.

  ‘Well,’ said Lewis, a little stiffly now. ‘I must be going. Nice to have met you, Dr Jago. Goodbye again, Mrs Harper. Tissy, I’ll …’

  ‘And what does Mr Percy do with himself?’ asked the doctor, Woman’s Own now folded back on a column of make-up tips for the over fifties.

  ‘I’m just finishing my Ph.D. thesis,’ he said eagerly. ‘I should get my degree very shortly.’

  ‘And what will you do then?’ murmured the doctor, the crumbs of an iced biscuit nestling in a womanish cleft in his chin.

  ‘I don’t know. Get a job, I suppose. I really haven’t thought that far ahead.’

  ‘And what will you live on?’ pursued the doctor, taking another biscuit.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lewis. ‘But my father left me some money. Quite a lot, in fact.’ For he thought £20,000 a great deal of money, more than he could ever earn. And he had so few needs that it was bound to last a very long time. Having delivered this information, which appeared to fall on deaf ears, there seemed to him to be nothing more to say.

  When he finally made his escape from the house, which he found inordinately difficult, although no one made the slightest effort to detain him – indeed their indifference as to whether he came or went seemed a positive obstacle to his doing either – he raced down the street, taking enlivening gulps of fresh air. The impression of having been among aliens was hard to dislodge. He had never encountered such obliquity. And yet Tissy had smiled at him, and had, finally, when he reached the door, put her hand in his. This cheered him slightly, although he reflected that the gesture was minimal. He had the impression that the afternoon had been immensely difficult, not what he had hoped at all. But, he thought sadly, he had been too eager, too needy; this was always an unfortunate tactic. And he had made it too easy for them to behave badly. For he thought that they had behaved badly, even very badly. Perhaps they were naturally deficient in courtesy, as some people are born colour blind or tone deaf. And they had told him nothing about themselves. The mystery of Tissy’s disability remained unsolved, nor were there any clues as to how it might be cured or what had induced it; at the same time it seemed to cause little concern. The doctor – who was obviously Mrs Harper’s boyfriend, he thought, in a flash of intuition – had not given him the help he required, and required rather urgently. And yet the existence of this man, his weekly visits, argued that Tissy was becoming a charge, preventing him from doing whatever he wanted to do with Mrs Harper. Lewis turned from the idea with distaste; he thought that anything between the doctor and Mrs Harper would be disreputable, based on secret understandings that should never see the light of day. He thought it quite in order that they should eclipse themselves, seek exile, and not outrage more sensitive eyes with their unattractive alliance. To Lewis, a middle-aged liaison, outside marriage, but with all the trappings of a settled affair, seemed deeply unheroic, not to be visited on the young. Clearly Tissy had been affected by what she might have guessed at. Except that with Tissy it was very hard to know how far she had progressed in adult understanding.

  She was transparent, he supposed, remembering her long cool fingers lying in his, and transparency had once been his aim. Faced with the existence of it in another human being he was forced to think again. He had not come out of the experience too well, he reflected, remembering Mrs Harper’s opaque gaze. Neither had they. Maybe they simply found it difficult to be pleasant. Tissy, he knew, was different because she was unspoilt. Nothing had occurred to mar the spotless record of Tissy’s conduct. It was with some surprise that he had learned that she was twenty-seven, a few years older than himself. Such arrested innocence affected him painfully, as did her large eyes, which had looked up into his face with every expression of trust. He would simply try to see her outside the confines of that house, he thought. He retained a disagreeable after-image of the red room, the heat, and the melting sweetness of the food. He would in fact seek Tissy out tomorrow, before her mother turned up. And he would insist that they come to him next time; politeness demanded no less. That way, he felt, he might have the upper hand.

  Unable to face supper, he ate a banana, hunted out his mother’s copy of The Constant Nymph, and took it up to bed with him. It was all easier in books, he thought, especially in books written by women. They knew their feelings so well. He was more than ever unsure of his. But he supposed that it had been an experience, and one, moreover, which had had the advantage of making him feel very tired. He found that The Constant Nymph had nothing to say to him, so immersed was he in the difficulty of his position. He put out his light and was asleep almost immediately.

  6

  As the year slowly turned into summer the prospect of a major change began to fade. With his grief gradually losing its edge Lewis sought a way of life that would be appropriate without imprisoning him in false expectations. The long days and the light evenings bred in him a restlessness that he attempted to turn to his own account. He discovered that the way to deal with this life of his, in which everything was unresolved, was to behave as if he were a tourist in a foreign city. Even the house, in which he spent as little time as possible, gave him the impression that it belonged to somebody else. He escaped from it at an early hour, enjoying the effervescence of the morning streets with their air of hopefulness, purposefulness, promise; he viewed the workers with approval, although he was only going to the British Museum, and sometimes not eve
n there. He ate all his meals out, drifted from one bookshop to another, returned home when he was too tired to stay away any longer. He felt guilty and free. But once back in his house, looking out of the window at the still intense sky, he might feel a darkness fall on him: he was lonely and could no longer ignore the fact. He would leave the house and go out into the garden, with a book and a cup of tea. Sometimes he would sit there until real darkness made reading impossible. Then he would get up with a sigh, wander round the now unkempt flowerbeds, incline his head to the magnificent yellow rose that flourished in spite of his neglect, and make his way regretfully indoors. Moving from the back to the front of the house always caused a sadness. Mounting the stairs to bed, he moved like a much older man.

  This life lasted for perhaps six weeks: he no longer counted the days. He had virtually forgotten Tissy. He was aware that this was ignoble of him, but the memory of that red room and its secrets weighed too heavily on him, and was too much at odds with the life of semi-vagrancy that he seemed to have adopted. With this mood went a desire to be free of obligations, and although he knew that such a way of life was impossible he clung to his freedom, while knowing that at some point it must be relinquished. Through the incredibly hot days of July and early August he wandered, shabby now, and dazed with irresponsibility and also with anonymity: whole days passed with only minimal conversation. The hot weather imparted a sense of emergency: no serious behaviour could be undertaken in such conditions. ‘Hot enough for you?’ people said to each other, as they watered their gardens. Bare-armed, the population shrugged off gravity until the weather returned to normal.