A Friend from England

by Anita Brookner

  In the course of the afternoon I learned more. The curious name of Sandberg was conferred on them by some slightly complicated ancestry: there was a Danish grandfather, apparently, as well as an Irish grandmother, or possibly two, but I never got this properly worked out, and it was certainly not my place to ask questions. At the same time, the long periods spent in Spain or Portugal had resulted in a very slight blurring of the sibilants in their speech, more noticeable when father and son spoke to each other than when they spoke to the rest of us. It was like a little code between them, rather charming, as was the anxiety with which the Colonel regarded his only child. So deep was the feeling between them that they could only communicate by means of jokes, at which the aunts nodded in slightly bewildered enjoyment. There were more smiles, there was more laughter that afternoon than I could remember before. But I saw that the essential part of these jokes was that not everyone could join in. The unit that the Colonel and Michael formed was a fairly impermeable one. Nevertheless, the sound of their laughter increased the atmosphere of goodwill, and seemed to ensure the happiness of everyone, both now and in the future.

  I saw too that I was to be the wedding guest, that, in fact, my function for this family was perceived as quite a positive one. Formerly thought to be the agent of Heather’s advancement, I was now to be the reflector of her glory. This did not bother me in the least. I had no romantic views about marriage, or marriages, nor was I consumed with envy. As far as I was concerned, my life was perfectly balanced and satisfying, although I kept quiet about certain aspects of it. Dorrie and her sisters chose to see it as a riot of fun about which I had the good manners to remain discreet, and they had valued my discretion in their desire to promote Heather as the main attraction. My life was not all fun, of course; in fact sometimes it was not much fun at all, but I suppose it suited me. I tried to keep everything within limits, in proportion. I was not made for excess.

  Therefore I felt no qualms as I regained my place in this family circle, only too glad to come to rest there. My function was not one that required much of me, either in the way of thought or censorship. I was more than willing to join in these celebrations, except for the worrying idea, that kept coming back to me, no matter how hard I tried to banish it, that something was missing. On the surface all was well. Dorrie, now addressed by the Colonel as ‘Dora, my dear’, was in a state of such happiness that her eyes frequently had a sheen of tears. The aunts too had smiles of pleasure on their faces, and instinctively turned to their husbands, perhaps laying a hand on a sleeve, or enquiring, with renewed and unconscious tenderness, if they agreed or disagreed with some proposal or other, while the uncles, eased into pleasure by this cessation of restlessness in their wives, responded with more than their usual smiling acquiescence. Even silly Ann, who, I believe, was tolerated but not much liked, failed to give offence, although she kept putting forward tactless questions about the wedding, and this was clearly too big and important a subject to be broached by anyone who was not of the blood, so to speak. Oscar’s mouth had relaxed into a smile, and so had his brother’s; as they habitually sat side by side, the resemblance was very noticeable. And the atmosphere was decidedly festive, for the married cousins were coming on later to join the party with their husbands, and there were bottles of champagne on ice in the kitchen and tiny smoked salmon canapés already prepared. I understood that Oscar and Dorrie and the Colonel were going out for a late supper somewhere, while Heather and Michael would be going back to Heather’s flat to decide which of her belongings and appointments would be needed for their new home. For of course this was to be the occasion for more lavish spending, perhaps the very occasion for which the money had been valued in the first place.

  No, what struck me as discordant in this atmosphere of rejoicing was the empty place at the heart of it. I could not, with all the goodwill I was able to summon, see that these two loved each other. I could, of course, see that Heather was capable of, would indeed grow into, a sort of matronly calm, but I thought this impression, which was quite forceful, was rather premature, and I worried that her Gioconda-like smile was a little too placid, a little too immovable. My acquaintance with her (and despite Michael’s fervid assurances it was an acquaintance rather than a friendship) had proved her to be uninflammable, but surely she should have been expressing something else beyond her usual detachment, her politeness, her innocence? Surely she should at the very least have been less innocent by now?

  The trouble, of course, was her fiancé. I could see that this Michael, this child-husband, was not the sort of man to rouse a woman from the slumbers of virginity, least of all a placid and slow-moving woman like Heather. The impression of ardour that he gave out was to my eyes unconvincing. It occurred to me that he literally did not know what he was undertaking but was if anything responding to his father’s needs rather than to his own. I could see that the Colonel’s anxiety, expressed in this fast-talking desire to make everyone change place, was in reality for his son, and although there was something heartening about this it also made me uneasy. Why should this anxiety, which seemed to me more maternal than paternal, make itself felt so strongly? Why did the Colonel’s eyes never leave his son, or rather why did they return to him after every compliment paid to either Heather or Dorrie? And why did Oscar’s eyes never leave him either, when his only child, his much-loved daughter, sat mildly by her mother, having already consigned her future to this man who was not quite grown-up and yet at the same time not quite a real boy, with his golden hair and his blazer and his expensive watch and his adoring father?

  I also thought the festive atmosphere a little too Dickensian in its cheerfulness and surprised myself by longing to bring a note of realism into the proceedings. ‘Do you know what you are doing?’ I wanted to say. ‘Do you know what it’s all about?’ For the couple they formed had something infantile about it, something that irritated me, as I had often been irritated by Heather’s sacrificial passivity in the past. And although she had sufficiently emerged from that passivity to have performed the astonishing feat of getting herself engaged to be married, I could not see that she would perform her other duties with the right kind of understanding. For this was where my own experience, extensive, I’m afraid, had kept me from true friendship with Heather. I knew what mattered and she did not. Now I wondered if she ever would and felt that I had grounds for my occasional exasperation with her. Yet I was still disarmed by her kindness. In her slow-moving way she had always been kind, as they were all so kind, as if their kindness were irreversibly bound up with their blamelessness. As if only in a state of complete unknowingness could their marvellous instincts of benevolence and trust have free and full employment. And perhaps Heather had responded to that family conspiracy, that collusion with their own innocence, in her choice of a partner, a partner who would certainly not remove her to an alien world of brutal depths and unwanted rancours. Perhaps even the habitual melancholy of her parents had been adopted in her present stance, for she would surely have grounds for a little secret disillusionment. For she was still very shrewd. But the coalition of innocence and melancholy could be maintained on this basis, and I began to see that it would be.

  Things livened up a little when the cousins, Sarah and Georgina, arrived with their husbands, one a doctor, and one a manufacturer of ball-point pens, exactly the kind of go-ahead and self-sufficient young men that Oscar could understand. In comparison with these model husbands Michael’s unfocussed radiance appeared even more suspect, but I remembered those dreadful parties to which Heather had been summoned, and for a moment I was almost ready to give my vote to Michael. In any event congratulations were now in order, and everyone but myself seemed to think the omens were good. The cousins were pretty, rather sulky girls who resembled each other. Both had high-pitched exclamatory voices and watchful eyes, and I could see where the slight element of malice that had informed those parties had come from. They were extremely fashionable, and they darted about in their very high-heeled shoes, int
roducing an independent element of restlessness into this nest of gentlefolk, in addition to the element already present in the person of Michael. Facing up to these new arrivals, Michael almost looked like a man dancing with himself, and his activity was if anything increased when the champagne was brought in. Corks popped, toasts were proposed. ‘Michael and Heather!’ exclaimed the Colonel, to which Oscar replied, ‘Heather and Michael!’ The Colonel retrieved his ascendancy by lifting his glass and rallying everyone with, ‘Oscar and Dora! New family, new friends. And I hope old friends already.’ He then looked at his son, who responded with, ‘To Hetty!’ He overdid it of course, as if he were already at his own wedding, and this cannibalizing of Heather’s name did not go down too well with Oscar, but by now it was too late to rearrange matters, and on that slightly hectic note we all drank deeply, and in my case, and I am sure in Oscar’s, thoughtfully. Then I decided that it would be tactful to take my leave of them so that they could have a proper family party without outsiders. Or with only Michael and the Colonel.

  I telephoned Dorrie the following morning, a Sunday, and told her what a lovely party it had been. She was childishly grateful for an opportunity to prolong her euphoria and told me all the wedding plans, which had been discussed after I left. Perhaps they all thought I would have minded, would have been smitten with a bridesmaid’s gloom, if I had been there. There were to be no bridesmaids, of course. In fact Heather had, with unexpected firmness, stood out against any elaborate fantasies that Dorrie might have been maturing, with the full collaboration of her sisters. ‘It’s all arranged, Mummy,’ she had apparently said. ‘We’re having a tea-dance.’ Once this idea had been mooted, Dorrie began to see its possibilities. ‘And it’s to be very soon,’ she added proudly. ‘As soon as we’ve found her a nice flat, although Oscar’s been busy looking for the past week. And he thinks he’s found just the thing. He’s taking me to see it this afternoon.’ I said that everything sounded marvellous. ‘Of course, I’m going to be very busy,’ she went on. ‘But you won’t forget me, will you, Rachel? Or Heather? She relies on your judgement, you know. And we shall expect you next Saturday as usual, dear, if you’ve nothing better to do. You know your way now.’

  I warned myself against colluding with this curiously passionless excitement, although it was the very absence of passion, the very even tenor of controlled emotion, that had attracted me to the Livingstones in the first place. It seemed to me now as if their former lives had had a mature calm which had vanished, replaced by a rather more commonplace activity which became them less. Dorrie affairée was slightly less attractive to me than the timid and sighing embodiment of domestic immobility, while Oscar the man of property was inferior in my view to the gentle and indeed rueful man who would cast aside his newspaper, smooth down his tie, and greet Heather and myself as if we were still children. My next visit to their house, on the following Saturday, was even slightly nostalgic for those early days of our friendship, which seemed to me now almost prelapsarian, untouched as they were by adult considerations, hermetic, indifferent to the world’s events and news. The safety that I had felt in their particular enclosure had evaporated and was replaced by a certain glumness as I was called upon to view the splendour of Heather’s appointments. Dorrie had been shopping with a vengeance, meeting her sisters for lunch at the Capital Hotel and going on afterwards with them to plunder the stores, making for Harrods on an almost daily basis. Appalled as I was by the array of saucepans, china, glass, linen, and above all, the glossy nightgowns and dressing-gowns so lovingly purchased by her mother, I did have time to reflect that there was even something age-old and defensible about these preparations, and I imagined the three sisters setting out on their pilgrimage every day, united as they had not been since childhood, or rather since the last wedding. This, they obviously felt, was what women were for. And the sisters were mobilized on Dorrie’s account because they had always felt that she was the one most in need of scolding, of supervision. Only in the event of this final marriage, the last child to leave home, would they retain their earlier status; by the same token, a certain amount of deference was due to Dorrie, whose dignity, they felt, was newly conferred upon her by events. The little sister had grown up.

  I learned in the course of that fairly distracted afternoon that a flat had been purchased for Heather and Michael in a large block behind Marble Arch. The flat had been newly decorated just before the previous owners had had to leave it, due to a posting abroad, and all that needed to be done was to fill it with furniture of the kind most favoured by the Livingstones. This was now actively under way. Heather, apparently, had no firm views on interior decoration, which I found a little surprising in view of her way with clothes: she was capable of a kind of outlandish chic, which was immediately undersold by her mild, questing expression. She was however quite content to let her mother provide the necessities, and already piles of bath towels, in royal blue, were mounting up next to the enormous range of white French porcelain bowls and dishes, the tomato red casseroles, the electric toasters and kettles, and even the terracotta vases and tubs for their terrace. Vans must have been streaming out of Harrods in convoy. There was something enjoyable about this excess, although I had the feeling that it proceeded more from Dorrie’s longing for her child than from the child herself. Heather made a brief appearance on this occasion, with her usual absent-minded expression; none of this seemed to touch her very closely, or perhaps she merely took it all for granted, having had a protected upbringing and a long acquaintance with the world’s material goods. The acquisitions were taken far more seriously by Michael, who endeared himself to Dorrie by his grave examination of her purchases. It occurred to me that this wedding must be costing a great deal, but nobody seemed to mind. A fever of spending, a religious ecstasy, had taken hold of Dorrie, and she was not to be diverted. When Heather put in her brief appearance, with the crowd-pleasing Michael in train, all Oscar could say was, ‘Go and tell your mother to sit down, will you?’ And later, after she had reappeared, in her usual noiseless, undramatic way, his only words were, ‘Where’s your mother?’

  They were to honeymoon in Venice, at the Gritti Palace Hotel. This was the Colonel’s contribution, and I felt that he had the more economical part of the alliance. The offers of villas in Portugal or Spain had proved to be illusory, or at least not conclusive, and not to be concluded without a great deal more discussion and display of expertise. I got the feeling that the Colonel had been impressed by the Livingstones’ serious attitude to expenditure, and had found himself forced to live up to them. The odd unsaleable villa that he might have had up his sleeve had been returned to its file, and he had risen to the heights demanded of him, even to the extent of arranging a holiday without a discount, without a percentage for himself, or any of those complicated returns that people in the travel business know about. I can’t say why I thought of him as mean. He wasn’t; and he appeared to be well off. It was just that his money didn’t seem to me to be as straightforward as the Livingstones’, and wherever it came from or wherever it went to seemed to be hedged about with restrictions. I began to see that Michael’s childhood might have been spent in more wearisome circumstances than Heather’s, that he might have been aware of his father’s affairs, the speculations, the occasional gigantic windfall, the years of affluence, and the periods of bluff. I began to feel sorry for him.

  But the wedding was truly charming. I didn’t go to the register office – for Heather had, unexpectedly, stood out against a religious ceremony – but merely turned up at the Ritz with my shoes in a paper bag, exactly like a child going to a party. Outside, the rain was streaming down, and for once I didn’t mind it, so great was the emanation of festivity from the hotel itself. Inside, the streaming windows merely enhanced the beauty of the white flowers, and through the veil of water I could see the green of the park, now in full leaf. Heather and Michael were wearing deliberately similar white suits, in which they looked young and solemn. Dorrie and her sisters were the on
es to do the wedding full honours: silk dresses, large hats, frail sandals. The Colonel and Oscar were in morning dress, the Colonel looking like a bantam as he paraded jauntily up and down the receiving line, his hands clasped beneath the tails of his coat. Oscar greeted me with a smile that was almost weary. He pressed my hand, and said, ‘Our little Rachel. Thank you for coming, dear.’ I had to turn away, for sudden tears had come into my eyes. Dorrie was so happy that I doubt if she knew who was there. I resolved not to bother her, but to write her a long letter the following day. She would like that.