A Start in Life

by Anita Brookner

  She would have to move out of Edith Grove and go home, of course. There was no point in keeping the flat on now, and in any case she would be going to France in the autumn. And she would need every penny of the rest of her grandmother’s legacy if she wanted to stay in France for a full year. It would be cheaper to pay rent at home.

  They were not surprised to see her back. She pretended that the landlord was putting up the rent and that she would not pay it. George helped to move her in the car; the knives and forks were restored to the dining room, the napkins went to the laundry.

  ‘Well,’ said Anthea, ‘did he turn up?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Ruth. ‘We had a very interesting evening.’ She did not tell Anthea about the cheque. But when she mentioned that she had moved back to Oakwood Court, Anthea refused to speak to her for two whole days.

  8

  Sally Jacobs’s flat in Bayswater was very clean and very warm. Even in September the central heating was on, and with the curtains half pulled to keep the sun out the effect was of entering a seraglio. George, who had taken to driving Mrs Jacobs home from the shop, was pleased with what he saw although he knew it to be in faintly bad taste; this, if anything, increased his pleasure. He particularly delighted in a coffee table covered with a sheet of mirror glass, and when he went into the bathroom to wash his hands he admired the initialled pale green guest towels matching the tooth mugs in plastic opaline. Through the bedroom door he caught a glimpse of a counterpane heavily swagged and pleated in blue-grey satin and a kidney shaped dressing table. The kitchen was immaculate, every surface swept clean of evidence. It looked as if nothing had ever been cooked there, but the battery of mixers, choppers, blenders, and freezers was impressive.

  ‘I make everything myself,’ said Mrs Jacobs. ‘My ice cream is particularly good. Would you like to try some?’

  She gave him a generous helping in a fluted octagonal glass dish which his mother would have relegated to the kitchen, if she had allowed it into the house at all. George basked in the warmth of the flat and the coldness of the ice cream. He particularly liked the way Sally took his plate away the moment he had set it down, how she ran to the kitchen and washed it up. He liked her rather strenuous and obviously expensive silk dresses with their scarves at the neck and their jackets to match; he liked her double string of pearls, worn with the clasp at the side, and her very large diamond ring; he liked the way she talked about her husband.

  ‘Ernest was very good to me,’ she said. ‘Of course, he was much older than me. More like a father, really. I couldn’t say I had a young time of it with him. But he looked after me so well. Everything was always taken care of. I never had to make a decision all the time I was married to him.’ From her black patent leather bag she extracted a handkerchief generously bordered with lace and wiped her eyes.

  George, who had been sitting in his favourite attitude, his legs crossed to show his fine ankles, his face propped up on his hand, the little finger bearing the signet ring with his father’s crest slightly raised, felt a long forgotten flicker of desire. Not necessarily for Mrs Jacobs but for the high degree of comfort that seemed to go with her.

  He sat down next to her on the sofa, rather heavily; he must watch his weight. He placed a hand over hers and murmured, ‘Poor little Sally.’ Mrs Jacobs cried harder. George slipped an arm round her and said, ‘You know I’ll help in any way I can.’ And why not? he answered unknown accusers. I have a precious thin time of it at home these days. Sometimes Helen doesn’t even bother to get dressed, and as for that woman, she never could cook anyway. And the place is never clean. I’ve spoiled Helen, that’s the truth of it. A woman should look after a man, not the other way round. Papa would never have dreamed of doing anything in the house. I’ve done enough.

  Later Mrs Jacobs made them both a cup of tea, heavily sugared, and served in broad shallow cups. She produced a cut glass jar full of home-made biscuits and draped a tiny embroidered napkin over his knee. George ate hungrily. Down in the car was the half pound of tongue and the tin of artichoke hearts that Mrs Cutler had asked him to bring home for dinner. At least, she had asked for the tongue and something to go with it; George rather fancied himself as a gourmet and they were getting to know him on the ground floor at Fortnum’s. He glanced at his watch, registering the time with a start of genuine surprise. They would be well into their drinks at home by now. And that, too, was something they ought to watch.

  On the way back to Oakwood Court, driving along with the evening sun on his face, he thought he might buy Sally something to cheer her up. With Ruth at home again, paying rent for her room, Helen did not talk about money as much as she used to. Helen had always been a bit close, in his opinion; he liked a touch of lavishness himself. Helen used to remind him that she earned more than he did. Well, nobody could say that now, since neither of them was earning anything. They were living on the money from the shop, his mother’s legacy, and Helen’s royalties. Ruth’s contribution went straight into the housekeeping.

  Sally, he reflected, must be lonely. How could he cheer her up? He had noticed a transistor radio in the kitchen and the largest size of colour television in the sitting room. Perhaps a record player? He could rig it up for her, placing the speakers at what he considered to be ideal intervals. The chairs would have to be moved slightly; no matter. He could spend the odd evening there. No, he admonished himself; they need me at home. He would never get away with it, anyway. But perhaps they could go back to Bayswater in the afternoons? Or he could drive her home a little earlier than usual? Delightful prospects for the winter began to open up in front of him. There was no reason why he should not keep them all happy. And with Ruth at home again, until she went to France – and he really couldn’t see why she had to go – there was not much point in his doing the shopping.

  He reached home in a fine humour to find Helen and Mrs Cutler having a difference of opinion. It had apparently started shortly after he had left in the late morning and had rumbled on all day. Consequently very little had been done in the flat and last night’s washing up was still on the draining board in the kitchen. It was perhaps unfortunate that Helen, wandering in in her nightgown after George’s departure, and intending to cut herself a slice of bread and butter, should have knocked over a jar of marmalade which had shattered on the floor. Mrs Cutler, suffering from her usual headache, which lasted until midday, had enjoined Helen, who had wandered back to bed, to clear up the mess. Helen, deprived of her breakfast, and also a little headachy, turned her head very slowly – a gesture for which she had been celebrated in her heyday – and said, ‘Darling Maggie, you can’t be serious.’ She gave a little laugh to indicate incredulity. It was the first bit of acting she had done for some years.

  Mrs Cutler, who was no actress, nevertheless had her reserves. Pregnant silences alternating with tuneless whistling, the bathroom door left open, and a refusal to change out of her slippers, eventually modulated into an announcement that there was nothing for lunch and that she was damned if she was going out with all that mess to clear up. Helen then decided that a short course in Christian Science principles might help Maggie to overcome her problems and gave her a small book to read. This had been sent to her by her friend Molly Edwards, an elderly comedy actress now living in retirement in Hove, and relegated to the bedside table where it kept company with several novels by Georgette Heyer.

  ‘I found it immensely helpful,’ said Helen, knocking the dust from it and presenting it to Mrs Cutler. ‘And could we have a cup of tea?’

  ‘No time, if I’m going to read this,’ replied Mrs Cutler with great satisfaction. She could go without food indefinitely. She not only read it, she read it aloud, frequently popping in to ask Helen’s advice on a passage with which she disagreed. They were both enjoying themselves in a dangerous kind of way and it seemed only natural that they should have a heated discussion of some of the finer points over a large whisky. After all, they could not eat until George came home with the food. As they had ha
d nothing all day the drinks went to their heads, and their voices were raised when George put his key in the door. Mamma always knew when I was coming home, he thought.

  George exerted himself to calm the two women down but could barely intervene in their debate, which had now reached major proportions. Leaving them to it, he retired to the kitchen and made the tongue up into sandwiches, arranging them carefully on a plate. He went to the dining room and fetched three of his mother’s napkins, stiff with starch; these he added to the tray which he took into the bedroom. He placed the tray on the bed, between Helen and Mrs Cutler, who both reached out a hand automatically and went on talking.

  ‘I have lost more than you have ever had,’ said Helen imperiously, ‘yet I remain buoyant, optimistic.’

  Mrs Cutler revealed a fine head for argument.

  ‘If it’s all in the mind, who said you ever had it?’ she countered.

  ‘My success is as real as your bunions,’ retorted Helen furiously. ‘And we hear enough about those.’

  The technical victory was Mrs Cutler’s.

  ‘It says here that neither exists,’ she said, laying down her tongue sandwich to find the source of her conclusion in Mrs Eddy’s text.

  Helen laid the back of her wrist to her forehead – a gesture for which she had also been famous – and said ‘I cannot bear it,’ in so genuinely broken a voice that Mrs Cutler shot her a glance and retired to the kitchen to do last night’s washing up. George, reluctantly replacing his sandwich, put his arm round Helen to comfort her.

  ‘Come on, darling heart, it’s not like you to give way like this.’

  Helen, who was picking the meat out of his bread and eating it, rallied.

  ‘It’s just that I get so tired listening to her stories about her beastly marriage and her beastly feet.’

  At this point Mrs Cutler came in with another tray, bearing the amende honorable: three plates of sliced tinned peaches. She had intended to offer them coffee, but thought better of it.

  ‘I’ll have an early night if it’s all the same to you,’ she said, tight-lipped.

  ‘Yes, do, darling,’ urged Helen. ‘You’ll feel better in the morning.’

  She was feeling much better herself, and allowed herself an extra sleeping pill as a treat. She was quite ready to settle down after so stimulating a day.

  When Ruth returned from her usual long walk later that evening, she discovered George in the kitchen eating artichoke hearts out of the tin. He looked furtive but not unhappy. She kissed him goodnight and went silently to her room. George, smiling, allowed himself one of his late father’s cigars.

  9

  In the evenings Ruth walked. She was too lonely to sit in her room reading, too restless to work. She went down to Edith Grove and started walking from there, down to the river, along the embankment to Chelsea Old Church, all the way to Victoria and back to Sloane Square and along the King’s Road and into the Fulham Road until it got too late and she caught the 31 bus home. The weather was superb: a golden autumn such as she could not remember. The streets were tranquil; knots of young people dedicated to love and peace strolled along or drank their beer on the pavements outside the pubs. In the cooling dusk she was not disturbed.

  She had never found the long vacation so difficult before. Usually she worked in the even more silent library, well pleased with her steady progress, her growing involvement with her characters. But now things were different. Work was a refuge and she found herself unable to seek that particular sort of asylum. Work, she thought, is a paradox: it is the sort of thing people do out of sheer inability to do anything else. Work is the chosen avocation of those who have no other calls on their time.

  She did not really mind being at home. It was anonymous, familiar; she had no further need for independence. Her recent encounter with reality had shocked her and made her feel childish. Only her books and her notes allowed her some measure of dignity, but there was no one waiting to read her essays or to question her on the psychology of Le Misanthrope; alone with her work, she felt a regretful distaste for so much unacknowledged effort. That this was but a shadow of a much stronger regret she was not yet fully aware. She only knew that she found it hard to fill the time. Anthea and Brian had gone off to Greece. Richard was with his friends in Somerset: no doubt the wretched Harriet was being listened to still further. Even Mrs Cutler had spent the previous weekend with her sister-in-law, whom she loathed, in Totteridge (‘Beautiful place she’s got there. Just like the country.’). In her absence Ruth had done the cooking but had not enjoyed it. ‘Fabulous, darling,’ said Helen, her mouth full of chicken casserole, but she went back to bed as soon as the meal was finished, leaving Ruth and her father at the kitchen table with very little to say to each other.

  A London summer. She had had many. Holidays were rare in the Weiss household. When she was a child her grandmother had taken her to those mild watering places that she herself had known in earlier days: the Isle of Wight to recover from measles and chicken pox, then Baden Baden, Vevey, Scheveningen. They had sat obediently in hotel gardens and lounges, planning their walks, their rests, looking forward only to the hours between tea and dinner. Sometimes a band would play. Once they took the train from Vevey to Montreux, where her grandmother had spent her honeymoon; once they took a lake steamer in the other direction. Rousseau and Stendhal had left their mark here, but Ruth was too young and they did not yet matter. At Scheveningen they sat huddled in the chill wind in the Kurhaus gardens. Ruth had only once braved the sea, while her grandmother stood guard on the endless and almost untenanted beach.

  While they sipped their tea in Baden Baden – her grandmother with an old-fashioned sunshade and Ruth’s pullover on her knee – George and Helen went on tour or stayed with friends in Menton. They were good guests, Helen so vivacious, George so good-natured. But all that had come to an end. Baden Baden and Vevey were still there, Ruth did not doubt; even the improbable Scheveningen was still reachable. But Oakwood Court, now permanently occupied, as if they were under house arrest, had assumed a centrality that had never existed before. The elder Mrs Weiss had imposed calm and order. Now there was a restlessness of continuous yet undignified occupation. They could not get away.

  Ruth sensed danger here, if only because she herself had so little to report after her vacations. For how could she talk about wandering the evening streets between Kensington and Victoria? Occasionally she went to Paris, not too often because her parents always reacted with dismay if she appeared to be leaving them. But she knew that Paris was not the answer, for she pursued her same dreamy paths there, or sat in the Luxembourg Gardens as if her grandmother were still beside her with the sunshade and the spare pullover. And getting home was no relief either, for she had so little to say for herself. ‘Well,’ Anthea would demand, ‘did anything happen?’ Nothing happened.

  It was with this knowledge that nothing was happening that Ruth returned to Oakwood Court one evening in mid-September and informed her parents in a tone of nannyish cheerfulness that they should go away for a holiday. That it would do them good. That they spent too much time in the flat. That they did not see enough people. That she would be off herself in October and that she would like to see them looking fit and refreshed before she left. George was deeply annoyed. Helen was amazed. Mrs Cutler was all in favour.

  George was annoyed because he found himself unwilling to spend any money, having already spent a good deal in the electrical department at Peter Jones. The record player, which he had not yet presented to Mrs Jacobs, had cost more than he expected but the euphoria of spending his own money had got out of hand, and he had gone on to treat himself to a sun lamp and a small portable grill in which, the assistant told him, he could make toasted sandwiches. He planned to keep these two items at Sally’s flat; he could see himself fit and bronzed from the sun lamp and lean and trim from the steaks with which he would supply the grill. He would have to ring Peter Jones to postpone the date on which he intended to have the things sent to Bays
water. He had warned Sally to expect a couple of bulky packages and had mistaken the look of alarm that flashed across her face for one of pleasure and awe. He did not feel he could go on eating her ice cream and biscuits without making some sort of return. And he did so love to see her face, with her large, anxious, and rather protuberant eyes, scanning the street from between snowy flounces of Terylene at the window, for his departing wave. Why should he need a holiday? He was already having one.

  Helen was more receptive to the idea, though not in any practical sense. The mere mention of the word holiday sent her on a bout of reminiscences, mainly of late nights, fast cars, dancing in the waves with a glass of gin in her hand, and someone to iron her evening dress.

  ‘Well, we can’t go to Menton,’ said George. ‘We can’t afford it.’

  ‘I believe Freddy sold his place to a retired juke box manufacturer,’ replied Helen. ‘Hideous, isn’t it, the way everything gets worse?’

  Mrs Cutler was in favour of the coast, any coast. Wales, she said generously, Scotland. It did not have to be abroad. Ruth thought this not a bad idea. She felt that her parents needed to recover some vigour and muscularity and the idea of healthful walks in a sea breeze was uppermost in her mind. She perceived in them some fundamental loss of tone that made her uneasy. She wanted to get them repaired, as it were, before she left them behind.

  ‘I don’t mind where we go, as long as it’s not those bloody fjords,’ said Helen, closing her eyes.

  ‘There is no question of fjords,’ said George, who had always wanted to see them, and who had mentioned them at intervals throughout his married life. ‘There is no question of Freddy’s place, whether it’s there or not. We really have to pull in our horns. There is no money coming in, remember.’

  Helen opened her eyes and looked serious, as she always did at the mention of money.