A Friend from England (18 page)

‘Darling, darling,’ said Dorrie, holding out her arms. ‘Are you all right? Aren’t you cold? How could you, darling, coming out without a coat?’

‘Of course I’m all right,’ Heather replied in her usual monotone, but pitched a little more heartily, which
gave her a certain curatorial authority. ‘And you’re all right, too. At least you will be after tomorrow.’

‘Yes, dear, of course I’m all right.’ She looked it. She looked as if health had returned to her quite suddenly. ‘Oh, I can’t wait to get this over and to be at home. Ring the bell, Oscar. Let’s have some tea.’

‘Oh, don’t bother, Daddy. I’ll find someone.’ She nodded to me almost imperceptibly, and I followed her to the door.

‘That’s right, dear,’ said Dorrie. ‘You two girls have a nice talk. Oh, I feel so much better now. I knew she’d come.’

As the door swung to behind me I could hear the others reassuring themselves that, of course, they knew she’d come. She had timed it beautifully. I followed her along the corridor, saw her summon a nurse out of thin air, and order tea as if she were in charge of the whole party.

‘Terrific,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’

‘Daddy rang me at the Gritti. By the way, you can always get hold of me there. Or leave a message. I call in most days.’

‘But why should I want to get hold of you there?’ I asked, in some surprise. ‘You’re home now.’

‘Yes, but I’m going back. As soon as this is over. As soon as she’s out of here.’

We were standing in a long grey corridor, with unhelpful strip lighting. From the far end came a rattle of wheels, as a maid appeared with a trolley of chattering tea cups.

‘Going back?’ I said. ‘But you can’t go back. Surely your place is here.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘The fact is, I’ve met someone. Come on. They’ll wonder what’s keeping us.’

I contemplated her stylish back in stupefaction. My indignation was rising rapidly to the surface, although I
knew that the polite fictions had to be sustained for as long as this little adventure had to run its course.

‘Just a minute,’ I said, catching up with her outside the door. ‘What about Michael?’ I found myself whispering furiously.

‘Oh, he’s gone,’ she replied in her normal voice. ‘I told him I was leaving him and he didn’t seem surprised. Just packed his clothes and left. I’m putting the flat on the market.’

Heather’s entrance,
en coup de vent
, had had a galvanizing effect on the assembly. She was complimented on her appearance and congratulated, as if she were a royal visitor, bestowing benefits by her magic presence. Her clothes were remarked upon, and she was invited to tell them what was being worn in Italy that season. Once again she claimed the attention, as she had during those far-off days when she had admitted, without any inflection of voice or behaviour, that her life had taken a decisive turn. I saw now that it was she who had done all the deciding, and I wondered whether the same phenomenon was being re-enacted. I saw, as in some paralysing dream, that I might have to stay here for ever, leaving Heather to pursue her plans in Italy. Apart from the fact that I had no wish to sacrifice myself in this matter, I had no more reason to trust her judgement on this occasion than I had previously, when events had proved her to be so stunningly wrong. I was inclined to see the present object of her attention as equally unworthy: not a gondolier, exactly – she was too stately and immovable for so vulgar an attachment – but certainly no one she could possibly bring home. The thought occurred to me that she might wish to enact this liaison far from the eyes of her family circle, and that thought should have alerted me to the possible seriousness of the affair, as should her new assurance. Silence, exile, and cunning, James Joyce’s desiderata for an artist’s life, seemed to have been discovered by
Heather with the rapidity and the inevitability of one who led a charmed existence.

I must confess to feeling furious with her. In addition to the sheer inconvenience of it all, I felt that Heather had usurped my independence and was in effect using my time to enjoy the equivalent of my habitual adventures. And, I thought, once she realized that such adventures were preferable to more complex and burdensome attachments, who knew what path she might not follow? But over and above my fury I felt a pang of pity for this slow-moving girl, with her prudish good manners, and her awakening in the arms of a knowing Italian, the word passed round behind her unsuspecting back. Gradually she would assume a puzzled and preoccupied air, although her inward thoughts would take on a darker colouring. What happens to women is that they never entirely lose the faith that it will all come out right in the end, that the next man, or the next, will be the answer to their original expectations of stability and order, will resolve the difficult equation of innocence and experience. She was not made for my sort of life. She did not have the mental equipment, the reserves of temperament, the cynicism, the taste for danger. I saw her in years to come, living out her obedient life with her parents, and escaping to her adventures abroad, a child at home, a schemer, a pragmatist, far from loving eyes. She would become one of those efficient women in the rag trade, disaffectedly reviewing fashions, looked on for tips to current trends. Time and age would happen to her, bulking out her already sturdy figure, fading her hair, and the vision still far off, waiting to be sought. I could see her in her parents’ drawing-room in years to come, a little untidy round the hips, a little weary, still polite, still private, as she tended their now wistful expectations, parrying their questions, giving no hint. It was no life for a decent woman, and yet it is the life that many
women have had to lead. And it is the lot of such women to be despised, as if they had failed some essential test, the test that more fortunate women have had the wit to pass. No sign of love would appear to change that changeless expression, and eventually she would find herself indispensable to her friends, as reflector, as recipient of confidences, as baby-sitter, as flavour enhancer of safer and more recognized conditions. No amount of transient lovers would redeem her status. She would be referred to as ‘poor Heather’. And women of a more conventional stripe would feel gloriously sorry for her.

Nevertheless, she had no business to adopt this career at this inconvenient moment, ill-equipped as she was, and with the blundering goodwill that characterized her. She should give it up, I felt, recognize her limitations, stay within her boundaries. She had money, she had the status of a married woman – still important, even in these liberated days – and she had a career of sorts. And she had a home to which she could always return. The true adventuress knows that she can never go home again. That was the essential difference between us. I felt that Heather was making the most enormous miscalculation and that she was making it at other people’s expense. Yet even now I had to give her credit for her performance. Not for Heather the dropped hint, the larky raised eyebrows, that would signify to the world at large that something of an amorous nature was afoot. She had at least learned the first lesson; she had learned to keep her own counsel. She answered all the questions readily, but with no show of enthusiasm. Yes, she had bought one or two things; yes, it had been tiring; yes, she and Chiara had been glad to get to the Gritti; yes, she had known Chiara for some time, had met her mother, and her brother, Marco. They apparently lived in a rather modest way, and Chiara had been delighted with Oscar’s offer of a luxurious
weekend. By the end of her recital, her parents and her aunts were almost ready to adopt Chiara and her family as old friends, much as they had swum unsuspectingly into the open arms of Colonel Sandberg. No, said Heather, Chiara was not thinking of visiting London: she was too busy with her own little shop. But they kept in touch. What a pity, they all said: we should have so liked to meet her.

I suspected this Chiara, but by this time I suspected practically everybody. My ill will had reached such proportions that I silently accused them all of complicity, of making things too easy for her. But there was no doubt that she had transformed the situation. Among the tea cups an air of expectation reigned. Even the operation seemed a thing of little importance. The general feeling seemed to be a desire to get it out of the way so that life could resume its normal appearance, and all be as before, with Heather in attendance once more. Dorrie was cheerful now, and had her normal colour in her cheeks. When Sam came in, on his way home, welcomes and good wishes had to be repeated. We were all surprised when we saw how late it was.

It was a nurse who told us to leave. The long night of preparation was about to begin. I kissed Dorrie and told her that I would telephone the following day, and would come back when it was all over. I waited outside the door, hoping to catch Heather, for now my curiosity was aroused. It was difficult, and it would have looked too obvious, to detach her from her father at this stage, yet I did manage to have a word with her. It seemed surreal, in that corridor, to ask her whom, in particular, she had met. ‘Oh, I’ll give you a call,’ she said, infuriatingly. ‘Before I go back.’

W
HEN
I telephoned the Clinic the following afternoon, I was told that Mrs Livingstone had had her operation but was still sedated. Her husband was with her, but no other visitors would be allowed. I was advised to telephone again later.

I was a little surprised that such a curfew should be imposed. I had thought that the actual surgery would take about half an hour at the most, and would be followed by a quick recovery and a rapid discharge. The whole thing was proving to be more cumbersome than I imagined. But I supposed that the anxiety of her family had prevailed and that they had agreed to turn this little episode into a sort of rest cure, to which no time limits need be attached. Indeed, the current mythology was that Dorrie was ‘exhausted’, and that explanations were not difficult to find. That disastrous marriage had ‘worn her out’; she was ‘prostrated’ by the outcome, although curiously enough nobody seemed to want to take any responsibility for this. The fabled preparations for the wedding, the wedding itself, were seen as a manifestation of family virtue, of unselfishness, of generosity, even of chivalry, and I suppose that this was more or less true. The brute fact of the rapid dissolution of the marriage itself was viewed with distaste, as if it were happening to somebody else. If pressed to examine this attitude a little more closely, the consensus of the sisters would have been that Michael had proved unreliable, that his background was eccentric, and that he had failed to settle down. Heather would emerge from this imbroglio as if from a convent, with not a stain on her character.

All this was so near the truth – which only Oscar and
I possessed – that it was found to be generally acceptable, even comfortable. I was not alone in noticing the fine web of deceit thus thrown over the affair, for I had seen Oscar turning his face reflectively to the window from time to time, as if taking a brief sabbatical from family unanimity. The same cosmetic procedure seemed to have overtaken the business of Dorrie’s ear, which did not in itself, as far as I could see, require prolonged bed rest. My general irritability on this score contained a quantum of fear, certainly, but also of impatience. How the rich succumbed to their ailments! And how premature this prostration would be when news of Heather’s little divagations came into greater prominence! Would her imminent departure be greeted with the same indulgence as her forthcoming uncontested divorce? Would the same euphemisms be used to describe what was only too obviously a foreign adventure of the most banal kind? And would these euphemisms eventually die on the lips when that adventure was repeated at regular intervals?

If, on the other hand, Dorrie were really ill, then Heather’s temporary defection would be overlooked, forgotten, cancelled, in the relief of her having returned to deal with the situation. Indeed, it would be a matter of urgency to secure Heather’s continued presence even before that presence was officially required. As so often in my relations with the Livingstones, I now reflected that I had done all I could, or, unfortunately, nearly all: my supreme, my ultimate task would be to talk sense to Heather, persuade her, in my own inimitable way, that what awaited her in Venice could be postponed
sine die
(could indeed be renewed or replicated at a time to suit her in the future) and that it would be more seemly on her part to inaugurate a period of official spinsterhood until the time was propitious for her next brief disappearance. This would be a matter of convenience all round, I would explain: I would not harp on the fact
that fears for Dorrie’s health could not be entirely discounted, but would take the line that the life she was about to embark upon required a coolness of attitude and a long-term strategy that she would do better to contemplate, perhaps in the comfort of her now deserted flat, before succumbing to its more obvious pitfalls. To this end I telephoned her, hoping to catch her before she left for the hospital to be with her father when Dorrie came round from her anaesthetic.

Having to see her was, as always, inconvenient, but time was short, both the time allowed for the interview and the time I could spare from the shop, where business was suddenly booming and Robin was beginning to look a little frayed. It was a sense of my own position that led me to force the issue. I set out for Marble Arch on one of those gloomy days that threaten rain but never deliver it, fearful, despite myself, of those lowering clouds and what they concealed. The events of the previous days had put me into such a state of nervous receptivity that my hydrophobia seemed to darken the edges of my mind and even the sight of Robin pouring glass after glass of water down his throat made me uneasy. I found myself glancing upwards at the dark grey sky, as I hastened along the Bayswater Road, willing it to remain dry until I reached the safe anchorage of Heather’s flat. There I would deliver my message as expeditiously as possible before hurrying back to my own four walls. It is when I am in this state that I have bad dreams. All of this was an additional burden to me.