‘And how will you manage?’ she now said. ‘It’s not easy for a woman without a man.’ The eyelids came down suggestively. ‘Of course, I’m lucky. Charlie is devoted to me.’ She spoke as if his devotion to her made him immortal. ‘I expect you’ll be lonely,’ she added.
‘Don’t worry about me, Julia,’ I said. ‘I’m a sensible woman. Of course I’ll be lonely. But I shan’t do anything melodramatic. I’ll find myself a little flat, and then perhaps I’ll look for a job. I’ve got time, time to settle down. It’s been a bad shock, a bad year. I need some time to myself.’ I thought with longing of the rest I could have, in my own bed, my own small bed, the early nights, the unhurried mornings. I felt anxious to get back to something resembling my girlhood, even if that meant paying the price of loneliness. I did not think that it would frighten me. The only thing that made me uneasy was the fact that I should have rather a lot of money. Camberwell Grove and Gertrude Street were both becoming immensely fashionable, and I should have enough for myself for life, if carefully managed, and enough for Vinnie too. I pushed the money to the back of my mind, because I much preferred to think of myself as a working woman. I would work for nothing, if necessary: there must be something I could do. Meals on Wheels, perhaps, or voluntary work at the library. Something practicable, reassuring, down to earth. I could not wait to get out of this drawing-room, away from people like Julia.
‘You are a funny little thing,’ said Julia. ‘Aren’t you? Isn’t she a funny little thing, Charlie?’
Charlie, lately arrived, assumed a smile for both of us, but I thought I saw a light of intelligence in his eye as it met mine. ‘Don’t take offence,’ it seemed to say. ‘It simply isn’t worth it. I shall hear about it all the way home. And of course this is not an opinion I necessarily share.’ I ignored this, although I complied with his wishes and said nothing. It was all one to me what they talked about on the way home. I simply wanted him to take Owen’s briefcase and not ask me any questions. Like Julia, I wanted someone to do my bidding. Charlie had always seemed to me intensely biddable, or maybe he had been reduced to this condition. It occurred to me to wonder whether he had a mistress. I should not have blamed him. Men who undergo a forced training in tactfulness have to break out somehow. Or was Charlie so beautifully himself, so naturally kind and self-effacing, that his inner life was not a place of betrayal, as my own had so often been? His eye, as it sought mine to enjoin me not to take issue with Julia, was not mean, not weak or pleading, but rather manly, compelling, as if he knew what was right for both of us. He seemed to be telling me that it would not be in my interest to make a fuss, and certainly not in his, if I did. As for Julia, he seemed to imply, he would deal with her later, but only if the matter arose. He had a horror, I knew, of anything less than perfect manners. I doubt if Julia ever satisfied her desire for a discussion with Charlie.
I did not tell them—nor did they ask—that I had my eye on a flat in Drayton Gardens, comfortingly near the cinema. It was not the flat of my mother’s dreams, being large and roomy, with big windows, but it had a homely feel to it, and it was on the ground floor, with a view of the street. There were shops around the corner and a hairdresser’s right opposite: a perfect flat for a widow. One walked up seven ochre-coloured steps to the building’s liver-coloured façade, and once inside the black and white tiled hall it was extremely quiet. My flat, if I took it, was on the right of the entrance. From the sitting-room I should be able to see people passing, see the bus at the end of the street, whereas the bedroom, which overlooked a small communal garden, was completely private. I had gone back to this place three times now, and the agent was getting bored. I had come to the conclusion that it would do. No home is perfect, except the home in which one has been happy, and that, somehow, is the home one leaves for ever.
I could not wait to leave Gertrude Street. I felt now a chill, a revulsion for the evenings I spent alone there. I did not feel this chill in the flat in Drayton Gardens, even though it was empty. I planned to make the colours light, pretty: pale blue and white, with a flowered paper for the bedroom. I would have lots of flowers and plants in pots: I would not bother about good taste. Good taste was something I could now leave behind, without regrets. I wanted a setting for my own little life, for I did not think that I should know too many people. There was a spare room for Millie and Donald if they ever wanted to stay, although this was unlikely since they still had Donald’s flat in Great Portland Street. It was just that Millie had said something about the lease running out: I wanted to be sure that she had a base in London, if she needed one. It would be so lovely to see her again. In her absence I should simply have to make new friends. I should not mind if they were all women. I was as yet, and possibly for ever, unable to face a life with men in it. By the same token I did not exactly miss my husband. I merely wanted a respite from the sort of life one lives with a man. I do not think that this was particularly unfeminine of me; on the contrary. Women often take refuge from men, or feel in need of a rest from them. They seem to want to be restored to more innocent days. I could see myself in Drayton Gardens, going out with my basket on wheels, tempting my own appetite, keeping up appearances, and doing no harm, not even to myself. Lonely? Yes, I should be lonely, but in time I should see that this was to my advantage. I should be training myself for old age, which takes a certain amount of training; better to start as I meant to go on. And there was the cinema, the library. I could even take a holiday. But in truth I doubted if I should need one.
It was Charlie who wrote down my new address. ‘But I haven’t quite decided,’ I said. I knew, however, that with the writing down of the address in Charlie’s diary the decision was made. Grey carpet, I thought. White walls. China blue and white curtains and covers. I saw the letting in of the light as imperative. There had been a pleasant-looking woman coming up the steps as I had left to go, on my last visit, and I thought we might be friends. Not necessarily intimates, but we could look out for each other, make gentle enquiries if we had not seen each other for a few days. I would manage. I would become the optimistic person I had once been, but this time with my feet on the ground. After all, I was nearly fifty and looked nothing like my younger self. I decided to instruct the agent the following morning, for which I was now anxious and impatient. With the prospect of my own home before me Gertrude Street, and the years that I had spent there, became irrelevant, an interruption, an error. Some memories of Owen, now strangely absent from my thoughts, would, I hoped, come back to me. But he was in the past and I was impatient for the future. Or perhaps not impatient but wistful, as if the future might still be snatched away from me. My hold on things was weaker, because of what had happened to Owen. I did not trust in fate or circumstances, as I once had, although I was aware of unused energy. I would have to make that energy work for me. And then, I thought, with a burst of relief, I can have a piano again.
‘If there’s anything you need,’ said Charlie. ‘Anything at all, just let us know.’
‘But of course we shall be seeing a lot of Fay,’ said Julia, winding a silk scarf round her throat. ‘Maureen, why don’t you run on ahead and put a light under that soup of yours? We might as well eat in tonight. Not that I’m hungry.’
‘Could you take this briefcase of Owen’s to the office, Charlie?’ I said. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. I don’t know about Owen’s business affairs.’
This was true. I hoped that Charlie would dispose of the briefcase—rather a handsome one—and regard it as a memento. I actually felt too tired to say this, although I had every intention of doing so.
I stood under Hermione’s chandelier, which Paul’s wife, Caroline, would now have the problem of cleaning, and said goodbye to them, expecting never to see them again.
‘Poor little Fay,’ said Julia, touching my cheek. ‘Poor, poor little Fay.’ She was overdoing it again.
I could hardly condemn her for insincerity since I had displayed a certain insincerity of my own. I was shocked by Owen’s death, b
ut not grief-stricken. In fact my own feelings told me nothing; it was as if I had got rid of them all in Nice, as if they had knocked me out, taking away my consciousness once and for all, as I had fallen into faint after faint. I had recovered as if from a physical illness, and, like all sufferers from violent afflictions, only convalescence interested me. Health was what I wanted, and I looked forward to it eagerly. Julia was not the only one who was play-acting, although I tried to say as little as possible, or at least as little as was compatible with the circumstances of her visit. This visit had made us both impatient. I was simply not of her world, nor she of mine. And I had lost my meekness, my pliability: I was an independent woman. I think the money annoyed her too, although Charlie kept her in some state. I did think it hard for her to be deprived of her former visibility, for I knew that this was almost impossible for her to bear. She had become futile, and she knew it. She saved her pride by underlining my own loss of status, but was further annoyed by the fact that I was quite comfortable without it. Indeed I seemed to be settling down into a state which was mysteriously denied to her. She was shrewd, clever, able to penetrate one’s unspoken thoughts. She knew instinctively that I was anxious to be free. And I think she determined then that she would never let me go. Although she found me uninteresting, I would do as an adherent, or, if I did not conform, as an adversary. She would get her discussion at last. I resolved once again to disappear. If it had not been for that address in Charlie’s diary I might have done so.
I bought the flat the following day, and as soon as I had done so a certain desolation fell on me. It looked so empty, so abandoned. Fortunately I found a nice woman who had set up as an interior decorator, and I handed the whole thing over to her, simply telling her what I wanted. She was nice, but she was slow. Evening after evening I went round to the flat to find it devoid of any activity, just a few dust sheets on the floor and wires sticking out of the walls. This made me very restless and even frightened to go back to Gertrude Street. It was a fine late autumn, but a cold one: people foretold a hard winter, as if in punishment for those astonishing days of summer. There was a café on the corner and I tried to eat a meal there, but I felt self-conscious, was aware of the dark night outside, and of the lights of the cinema, where crowds gathered. I became nervous of the dark. I told myself that this would pass as soon as I got into the flat, but the evenings were wretched. As soon as I could I got into bed, but I did not always sleep. My energy left me: I was permanently tired. I haunted the flat as if it did not belong to me, as if I were asking permission to occupy it. Men turned up eventually, cheerful noisy creatures for whom I ran to the café to buy tea and coffee. Gradually the walls became white, gradually the washing machine and the cooker were installed, and then I was not needed even to run to the café. Clouded milk bottles accumulated on the step, and there was a smell of crisps and hamburgers. It was better once I had been to Peter Jones and bought dustbins and kettles and tea towels. I wanted everything to be new. Even then the flat did not satisfy me as I had imagined it would. In my mind I had got to the stage of renouncing Drayton Gardens and planning to move on; perhaps I could do better somewhere else. When the grey carpet arrived and was laid I found that I had chosen too dark a colour. But by then the main work was completed. All I had to do was await the curtains and covers and then I could move in, with the new furniture—comfortable, undistinguished—ready to be delivered on the day I took possession.
I was standing in the empty flat one evening, a cold evening, already misty, with an orange street lamp shining through the window, when the doorbell rang. I hoped it might be a neighbour, perhaps the woman I had noticed at the entrance, but it was Charlie, in his dark overcoat, with Owen’s briefcase in his hand.
‘I tried Gertrude Street,’ he said, stepping over a roll of superfluous carpet. ‘And then I thought you must be here. This is a pleasant room, Fay. Show me round, if you’ve got a moment.’
He murmured appreciation in all the rooms and I began to warm to the task once more. Sometimes it only wants a little whisper of approbation to set one on one’s way. I was at that moment excessively grateful to him.
‘Would you like a cup of tea, Charlie?’ I asked. ‘I’m sure the men have left some, although they seem to drink it all day.’
‘That would be fine,’ he said, examining the doors. ‘Will you get all your stuff in here? It’s much smaller than Gertrude Street.’
‘Oh, I’m leaving everything. I shan’t want much. Anyway, it’s all ordered.’
He felt the radiators. ‘Beautifully warm, at any rate.’
‘Do you like it?’ I asked him.
‘Very much.’ He drank his tea in one swallow and put his cup on the window-sill. ‘You’ll want Owen’s briefcase, I suppose? I’ve removed everything relevant. Not that there was much. He left his files more or less in order.’
There was a pause. I held my breath, wondering how much he knew. But it appeared that nothing was to be said, whatever Charlie knew or did not know.
‘If the briefcase is of any use to you, Charlie, please keep it. It was my last Christmas present to Owen. I really don’t want to see it any more.’
‘I should like to have it, my dear. I’ll take it back with me then, shall I?’
I nodded gratefully. That, I thought, was the end of the affair, but he seemed reluctant to go. With the minutes that passed a very slight awkwardness could be felt, but only, apparently, on my part. Without Julia, Charlie seemed more resolute, more purposeful.
‘How is Julia?’ I asked.
‘Oh, she has her difficult days, you know. But we survive, we survive. She needs company, mostly. So do go round, won’t you? She was saying the other day that she hadn’t seen you.’ He kissed me then, and I stood in his arms, astonished. It was only kindness, I told myself, although it did not feel like that. There was certainly no excuse for anything else. Yet instinctively we moved away from the light of the street lamp and into the empty bedroom, where he kissed me again. Now there was no room for doubt. Neither of us said anything.
After this he left, still without reference to what had taken place. I put my hand to my throbbing cheek, and stood in the flat, uncertain, but not uneasy. In fact I laughed. It was only a gesture, I thought. He was an opportunist, like most men. Nothing would come of it. Indeed, I did not want anything to come of it. And yet I was not indignant. I was, if anything, amused; I experienced a lightening of the heart. I felt newly capable. But not deluded. I was grateful that a man had found me attractive, pleased that it should have been Charlie, whom I had always liked; nothing more. What more could there be? Like Julia, my day was done. I was a woman in late middle age, no candidate for romance. Even my mind, normally so naïve and sentimental, no longer lent itself to fantasies and self-indulgent imaginings. I told myself that I had had my share of love, and I was able to acknowledge that it had disappointed me. There is an age at which not telling the truth is fatal and I had reached that age. If I still looked forward hopefully to some experience that remained vague in outline, if I still dressed with care and was fastidious about my appearance, I was nevertheless quite resigned to spending the remainder of my life alone. I even took a certain pride in the prospect. No more unwelcome hopes and disappointments, no more wild anticipations, brooding let-downs. I was of an uncomplaining disposition, had never nagged or belaboured my husband, was good at disguising my cares. It seemed to me a better thing to suffer than constantly to accuse. Yet all this good behaviour, if that is what it was, had left me a little sad, a little passive, and that occasionally seemed to me unfair. But I put such thoughts out of my mind when they occurred and on the whole they did not bother me unduly.
Looking back I am impressed by two things. Firstly, that we moved instinctively out of the light of the street lamp and into the darkness. And secondly, that so slight a pretext should have set me thinking about myself in a way that I had not done for years, if ever. Idle conversations with Millie, when we were girls, had left me untouched, unstirred.
I had had no other confidante. All I knew was that on certain summer evenings I felt a pain of longing which no one person—or no one that I knew—could assuage. This pain had its origin, perhaps, in my nature as a woman, dreaming, passive, so far unexamined. I felt none of this longing, this nostalgia, as I walked home to Gertrude Street that evening. On the contrary, I felt alert, slightly cynical. Thus does Nature prepare us for the practicalities. I felt no guilt, no concern for Julia: I had already decided not to see her again. In any event I knew how she regarded me, as almost someone of the servant class. I felt free of her, free of everyone. A lifetime of freedom seemed to stretch out in front of me.
Then nothing happened for three weeks. The curtains were hung, the loose covers fitted on to the chairs and sofa, the bed made up. It looked very pleasant, but for some reason it did not gratify me. I ordered newspapers, contacted the laundry, made an appointment at the hairdresser’s, yet failed to feel at home. I suppose I was lonelier than I had anticipated. And there was so little to do after the big house that time passed very slowly. The woman whom I hoped would be my neighbour had not acknowledged me again; the porter was surly. The weather was too cold for me to spend much time out of doors, and I soon had little need to go to the shops more than once a day, sometimes not even once. I always woke in the dark, long before I needed to get up. Certain evenings I sat in the sitting-room without bothering to put on the lights, looking out at that street lamp. I was perplexed that I was not able to comfort myself more, now that there was nothing to torment me. The prospect of this sort of life continuing indefinitely caused me the occasional intake of breath. My good sense told me that I was fortunate, that I had no possible cause for complaint. Nevertheless, I could not help noticing that nothing pleased me.
Brief Lives Page 11
