‘You wanted a husband – I know that. Strange, when nobody else seems to. But would anyone have done? That’s what I want to know. I must know that.’
‘You shouldn’t ask me that, not now. It’s up to you to make a few decisions – it always was. Couldn’t you just do what you wanted? People do, you know.’
‘It doesn’t always answer,’ he said. ‘Life becomes full of discards.’
‘What of it?’
‘I wanted something better, you see. Something different, new. I didn’t see how I could bring it about.’
‘You fantasize too much. You’ve probably read too much.’
‘Yes, I have. I see that. I’ve had unrealistic ideas, antiquated notions. All wrong – I see that too. But were the ideas wrong? Or did I just misapply them?’
‘You see how safe I should have been with you? Your standards would have taken care of me. I don’t have any standards myself. I want that taken into account,’ she said seriously.
‘We didn’t know each other too well, then, did we? I probably envisaged more talk than you did. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I always thought that necessary.’
‘Yes, shut up, why don’t you? And grow up. Look at yourself. You’re an attractive man.’
‘Am I?’ he said, startled.
She smiled unwillingly. ‘I’m not here to complete your sentimental education, you know. You have to do that for yourself. When you grow up give me a call. Now I really am late. Goodbye. I mean it this time.’
‘But do you …’ he shouted after her. ‘Love me,’ he added more quietly, although there was no one in the street but themselves.
‘Who knows? But in these circumstances, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’
Watching her departing figure, disappearing, melting into the dusk, he wondered whether he were any happier. Oh, go home, he thought tiredly. Read a book. Men have problems too, he wanted to tell her. Endless conflicts. Being this, being that, being damned for either. He thought of his daughter, and gave thanks that she was a girl. But for the rest of the day he thought of Emmy.
She would never concede defeat, any more than his wife would ever be magnanimous in victory, or what she would understand as victory. She would never simply love or console. Somehow a gigantic conflict of principle seemed to have been mounted; that was the trouble. Both of them were now stuck in their respective corners, each a challenge to the other. He was disgusted with himself, with his life. He was also confused. Why had it been his lot to become involved with such implacable women? He had looked to women for mercy, not for conflict. Since his earliest days he had thought of women as kindly creatures, benevolent, well-disposed. This had apparently been all wrong. What they wanted was precisely to engage you on a matter of principle, even if that principle were improvised or matured in secret. He no longer had the key to his wife, who seemed to have changed into a complete stranger, and who was not made in the least thoughtful by the direction her life was taking, away from him. She saw it as a golden opportunity to cancel the past, her past, and had, so she implied, no further interest in him. There was something unyielding about her now, as there was about Emmy, although he had once thought of them both as fallible, weak, unprotected. He had thought that it was up to him to safeguard their honour. That was, in essence, what he had tried to do. But they regarded his efforts as misguided. Emmy, in particular, would have preferred a defiant flouting of the rules. He began to see what an affair with her would have meant. The logistics would have been frightful, for she would not have cared for concealment; on the contrary, she would have challenged it. She would have telephoned him at home, at work: she would have demanded openness, cards on the table. She would have wanted to establish them as a couple, with the intention that they should marry. And whereas her status would not have been damaged by such a stratagem, his own would have been ruined for ever. He had wanted so much to behave well. And although she professed so flagrantly her wish to marry she had in fact none of the attributes of a wife. She was easily bored, became impatient with routine, was ever alert for a new beginning. With her charm, her power, her inventiveness, she was born to be a mistress. And, knowing this, had come to hate men, the men who would not marry her but preferred her as she was. Tissy probably hated men too, he now thought, but for a different reason. There was nothing of the mistress about Tissy. But she considered that she had been sold into slavery, and all her efforts now were in the direction of emancipation. In the group she had probably learnt to compare herself with ethnic minorities or the working class, on whom it was beholden to rise in revolt, to claim freedoms that had been denied to them. Apparently that was what they were both doing. Emmy would marry her rich man and revenge herself yet again by despising or deceiving him, probably both. And Tissy, presumably, would never look at a man again. In many ways they had a lot in common.
He tried to understand, failed, and gave up. He only knew that he wanted his daughter to be different. When she considered him dubiously, unsmilingly, he wondered if the process of rejection had already started. It was then that he was at his most gentle with her, although he never failed to demand a full accounting from Mrs Harper. Did she eat well? Did she get enough fresh air? No detail of her day’s activities went unscrutinized. To the child, if she were aware of him at all, he was merely the man who came in the evenings and sometimes read her a story. He realized that she probably felt more comfortable with the doctor than she did with him, for the doctor was all sprawling acceptance, all mumbling affection. The doctor sat her on his knee and stroked her hair, gave her titbits from his plate, kissed her lavishly. Although it pained Lewis to know this, and sometimes to witness it, he understood that his reaction was unreasonable. There was no real harm in the man, after all: he simply offended one’s preferences in the matter of good behaviour, or, to be fair, of ideal behaviour, the behaviour demanded of a child’s guardian. And he looked so awful, with his waistcoat undone and his abundant hair untidy. What his patients must have thought of him Lewis could not imagine. Perhaps he had no patients left. Apparently he had given up his surgery some time ago, and now went out on call, privately, to a favoured few. Old people, despairing of other company, would no doubt be glad to see him.
They were all getting older, that was the trouble. There was a lack of expectation in the air they breathed; he himself, with his arduous daily discipline, could see the futility of it all. For nothing got better. The relentless upholding of standards merely reinforced the status quo: crowded and uneventful days leading to empty nights. And that house, with its curious inhabitants, all strangers to him. Even his daughter, whom he loved so dearly, knew it as her home. The thought of Mrs Harper’s house, filled with discordant lives, each of them irregular, made Lewis’s head ache when he thought of it. If he felt sympathy for anyone it was for Mrs Harper, landed with all these incumbents, when she had wanted so much to be free. He had thought her a beauty, a bold-looking woman, when he had first met her. Now she merely looked harassed, old, her fine hands spoiled by all the washing and cooking that had accrued to her. Different meals had to be prepared for everyone, since they all ate at different times. She herself, Lewis suspected, ate next to nothing, but sat down once in a while with a cup of weak tea and a cigarette. She had never been communicative and was now even less so, but he sometimes thought she would like to present her case to him, as if he were the only sane person she knew. Perhaps he was. But she said nothing, and although he gradually got into the habit of drinking a cup of tea with her after his daughter had been put to bed he resisted the pity that overcame him on these occasions. He noticed the increasing shabbiness of the red drawing-room, with the smell of cooking seeping in from the kitchen and the fine bloom of dust on the cherry-wood table. It was as if all conviction were leaving the house. The cushion on his daughter’s little chair was torn and musty. He tried not to see this, but saw it anyway.
He was at work when Mrs Harper telephoned to say that the doctor had had a heart attack. An ambulance had taken h
im to St Stephen’s Hospital and he was in Intensive Care, but they had told her not to worry, that this was merely routine. She was going to visit him that evening: would Lewis stay with Jessica until she got back? Tissy would be late home; she was going out straight from work and it seemed a pity to spoil her evening. From the offhand way in which this information was imparted Lewis got the impression that Tissy was going out with a man. This volte-face was so amazing that it occupied his thoughts for the rest of the morning. So much for principle when there was advantage at stake. He had heard Mrs Harper refer to a certain Gilbert Bradshaw, the owner of Lancelot Antiques, and his high opinion of Tissy. Tissy herself had mentioned that she was helping Gilbert with an inventory, or that Gilbert wanted her to accompany him to a sale, but he had thought nothing of it. His wife, in her new guise, had appeared to him so asexual that he had failed to register the connection. But he registered it now. He wondered if Gilbert Bradshaw had been given Mrs Harper’s cake treatment, and also whether Tissy could be persuaded to jettison her new ideology for a second marriage. If so, he would be free. He would be free but he would also lose his daughter. Tissy would lose nothing. She might gain a reputation as a traitor with her group, but then she would give up the group anyway. He had begun cautiously to devise ways of drawing up some form of legal contract which would ensure him access to, and eventual guardianship of, his daughter, when Mrs Harper telephoned again to say that the doctor had had a second heart attack in the hospital and had died, in some distress, two hours after being admitted. She herself had not been there. She had telephoned the shop, but Tissy was out. Could Lewis call in on his way home, but as early as possible? Her voice was high, frightened. ‘I can’t let Baby see me crying,’ she had said, when he asked her if she was all right. So he went straight away.
She was profoundly shocked; that was clear. He sat her down and made a cup of tea, taking the child on his lap and speaking to her softly. But after a while the child got down and ran to her grandmother, who picked her up and buried her face in the little girl’s fly-away hair. There was not very much that he could say. Mrs Harper had always been silent on the matter of her liaison with the doctor. Lewis did not know whether or not she had loved him, although he supposed that she had. Maybe the doctor had loved her, in his own inglorious way. But why, then, had they not married? What peculiar secrecy, or respectability, had kept them in their detached state when Tissy was there to bring them together? He had never doubted that the doctor was a villain, although he now realized that even this was unfair. He may have been a sick man, defeated, disappointed, ashamed. Who could understand anyone else’s life?
Mrs Harper gave a tremendous, tremulous sigh.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘I’m all right, I’m always all right. But that’s half my life gone, Lewis.’
‘You’ve been together a long time, I know.’
‘You should have seen him as a young man,’ she went on, turning the wet ball of her handkerchief in her hands and clenching and unclenching her thumbs. ‘Handsome! All the girls were after him. But he married and then I married, and when we got back together again it all got complicated. Divorce wasn’t easy in those days. I’ll miss him,’ she said, pressing the handkerchief to her mouth. Her face was red and exhausted. ‘You never liked him, did you?’
‘I should have liked to see you happier,’ he said gently.
‘Well, I’ll never be happy now,’ she said, but even as the tears came she suppressed them, and, taking the child by the hand, led her out into the kitchen.
‘When will Tissy be home?’ he asked.
‘Oh, Tissy. Well, Tissy will have to be home a great deal more in future. Tissy can give up that job of hers and stay here with us. I’m not a young woman, Lewis. I want a bit of peace. I’ve done enough.’ Her shoulders sagged under the weight of her grief, but her hands were steady as she buttered fingers of brown bread for the child. ‘She’ll have to have a boiled egg,’ she said. ‘I haven’t done any shopping today.’
He stayed until Tissy came in. He could see from the way the excitement dropped from her face that she had had a good time and was now in for a bad one. It occurred to him that Mrs Harper might save her own life – and that of the child – by sacrificing Tissy’s, and that Mr Bradshaw, or Gilbert, might soon be a thing of the past. The conversation, or argument, that would not take place until he had left hung heavily in the air. On the pretext of arranging the funeral, which Mrs Harper wanted to take place as soon as possible, he said goodbye, promising to look in on the following day. He just had time to notice Tissy’s shoulders rounding into the docile posture that he recognized from the time when he had first known her. After so many shining possibilities it seemed that her resolve was not strong enough to withstand her mother’s directives. Or was it? He wondered, with genuine curiosity, whether she would manage to get her own way this time. His sympathies for once were entirely with Mrs Harper, whose tired eyes were no longer beautiful and who saw the new determination in her daughter’s face with the distaste she would have felt for a lewd display in her own drawing-room.
14
‘You won’t have to do that much longer, Lewis,’ said Goldsborough. ‘Once we’ve installed the computers,’ he added.
‘What will I be doing, then?’ asked Lewis, who had learned not to take Goldsborough’s enthusiasms too seriously. He noticed that Goldsborough had acquired a new persona since taking up his latest career. He now appeared both brash and deft, speedy, purposeful, unreliable, like a character in a television commercial. This impression was assisted by the serious grey suit, which was in turn enlivened by one of the Brooks Brothers shirts in which Goldsborough had invested on his recent trip to New York. The installation of the computers had revealed a new world to his always receptive mind: the world of the professional fund-raiser. He had seized hold of, and welcomed, the fact that everyone was willing to put money into computers, particularly in libraries, so that information could be beamed from one institution to another. Goldsborough now thought in terms of the global village. Whole bibliographies flashed before his eyes, summoned up on screens to which scholars like himself would soon have access. And he had always felt his place to be among the lavish spenders: he was a profligate at heart, with an innocent love of extravagance that referred back to a meagre wartime childhood. He had learned to incorporate early experience into objective study, had an excellent degree in anthropology, but still yearned for a bit of a party. Conscientious though he was in his duties as librarian, Goldsborough had a hankering for the sort of activity that libraries do not normally accommodate. The grave impersonal friendliness of grant-giving bodies excited his eagerness to please, while the sums involved moved him almost to tears. He felt like Columbus, on one knee before Isabella the Catholic. Making his bid for this mysteriously available money Goldsborough saw the various strands of his life’s work knitting themselves together. As an anthropologist he welcomed shift and change; as a librarian he simply welcomed funds. Besides, he was enjoying himself. To enjoy oneself in a good cause is a virtuous feeling quite unlike any other, and Goldsborough would have sacrificed many pleasures for this privilege. As it was, no sacrifice was involved; everything added up to immeasurable increase.
‘We shall have to take on extra staff,’ he said happily. ‘I thought of giving you Morton and Quiney. Generally speaking I foresee quite a shake-up. Arthur will have to go, of course, and perhaps one or two others. The library is going to be a place for the young, Lewis. We’ll be running courses in computer technology – all you have to do is familiarize yourself with the process. It’s a little technical, but that’s what’s so exciting. The language, Lewis, is entirely new. Think of it as meta-language. I find it fascinating,’ he went on unnecessarily. ‘I’ll let you know more about it when I come back from L.A. In the meantime just carry on as usual.’
Just as a matter of interest, Arnold, what will happen to the index?’
‘But my dear fellow!’ exclaimed Goldsboroug
h. ‘This will be the index’s finest hour! The index will henceforth be immortal. The index, Lewis, will be transformed into a permanent record. By you,’ he added.
‘You mean,’ said Lewis slowly, ‘that I transfer the index? That I key it in, or whatever one does, right from the beginning? In other words, that I start doing it all over again? This will create years of backlog, Arnold. Unless someone else does what I’m doing now. Is that how you see it?’
‘This is unlike you, Lewis. Surely you can see the advantage of all this? Those index cards could have got damaged, burnt, even.’
‘There is a microfilm, of course. What happened to microfilm, by the way? It was all the rage about ten years ago.’
‘Superseded by the computer,’ said Goldsborough triumphantly.
‘This is all going to be very expensive, isn’t it? With the extra staff and everything?’
‘I can’t go into that now, Lewis. Let me assure you that if you know where to look the money can be found. Several big companies are interested. We shall be competing with the major institutions, but I have the matter in hand. I shall rely on you to keep an eye on things here while I am in the States. I reckon to go over two or three times a year while our plans are being regularized. Cheer up, Lewis,’ he urged robustly. ‘Your job will be quite secure, you know. Unless, of course, you feel you’d like a change. I shan’t want any dragging of the feet over this. Librarianship is about to become a whole new ball game. Younger people will be involved. We need new thinking at the interface, Lewis. Younger people will take to it like ducks to water: besides, they’ll be easier to train. So let me know if you don’t like the work. Think of it as an exciting new venture; that’s what I’m doing. That’s the attitude. I’ve been in touch with the psychology department. They run a very interesting course on meeting challenges. I’ve had one or two quite worthwhile sessions with them. Perhaps you ought to do the same, Lewis. I’ve noticed you’re getting very set in your ways.’
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