A Friend from England (9 page)

‘Of course,’ he said, retaining my hand, and even squeezing it rather hard. ‘I never forget a face.’

‘Rachel!’ said Michael, having been given the help he needed. ‘You look wonderful! How are you?’

I replied that I was fine. I was rather taken aback by this evidence of goodwill, and also by the fact that the entrance of Michael and the Colonel actually eased the atmosphere. Their manufactured
bonhomie
had the effect of putting women at ease, or at least permitting them to behave naturally, perhaps with an element of annoyance, or even bad temper. This at least was the effect they had on Heather, who sighed, ‘Do sit down.
You make the place look untidy.’ She did not seem much affected by the entrance of her husband, who immediately bounded to the sofa, along the back of which he laid one careful arm. The Colonel, cigar clamped between his teeth, was wrestling with the cork of a bottle of champagne which he had brought with him.

‘Why, Teddy, what a lovely idea!’ said Dorrie, who was now turning on all the lights.

‘Well, I thought their first night in their new home,’ he explained, as the champagne foamed over the neck of the bottle and dribbled into an ashtray hastily tendered by Dorrie.

‘Second,’ pronounced Heather from the sofa.

‘What was that, dear?’ he asked, removing the cigar which he placed in the damp ashtray, where it smouldered disgustingly before Dorrie, with an apologetic murmur, took it away.

Once again I got the impression that the parents were in charge and that the children were under escort. No one was better at giving this impression than Michael, who seemed to rely on the presence of his father for effective functioning. Heather, I sensed, might turn mutinous in time, although she too had a tremendous tolerance of parental interference. I looked at her, sitting stolidly on the sofa, drinking the champagne which made no appreciable difference to her mood, and at her husband, who was tossing peanuts and tiny cheese biscuits into his mouth like a dog, or a very small child.

‘Here, here,’ said the Colonel, lighting another cigar. ‘Don’t eat all those. What about Rachel?’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, brushing crumbs on to the floor, and offering me a depleted dish. ‘Lovely to see you, Rachel,’ he repeated, and winked.

It was not quite clear to me why he thought we should be in such complicity. I got up to leave, for I found the atmosphere ambiguous, and rather a strain.

‘Not going already, are you?’ said the Colonel. ‘We can’t have that.’

He was one of those men who think they are good at getting women to change their minds, but I had no trouble in dealing with this. Men of his age like to think they are masterful, whereas their chief attraction, did they but know it, is that they only have power over material necessities. To people of my generation they appear quite toothless. I had no doubt that in the ballrooms of his youth the Colonel had been noted for his charm and his way with women. It was a style which he had carefully taught his son, who had never, as far as I could remember, uttered a serious word. Badinage was obviously the favoured means of exchange in the Sandberg establishment. Part of me could not bear to watch the ruined child I took Michael to be, or to imagine the efforts he would have to make to live without his father’s supervision. Heather I thought the more down to earth of the two, but in her way equally enigmatic.

I kissed Dorrie, who made disappointed noises, shook the Colonel firmly by the hand, and said to Heather, ‘Would you both have dinner with me one evening? I’ll book some theatre tickets. Think of something you’d like to see and let me know.’ They both looked childishly pleased at this, and I felt almost moved by their pleasure. I seemed to be on the verge of several emotions, an interesting but uncomfortable combination of boredom and sadness, regret too. I realized with a pang of pity that it could not have been easy for Heather and Michael to behave naturally under all this scrutiny. I was almost indignant on their behalf at the continued presence of their parents, although they themselves took Dorrie and the Colonel as an entirely natural component of their communal lives. Poor Oscar, who must still be patrolling the Edgware Road, was no doubt more alive to the potential difficulties of
the situation but was too careful of Dorrie’s happiness to try to stop her in her efforts to create a home from home for her only child. Perhaps she thought that Heather would be lonely without her. As I say, she was a very innocent woman.

I met Oscar on the stairs when I was leaving, my hand skimming along the chrome handrail as I ran down, anxious to be gone. I was aware of his patient tread before I saw his mild eyes lifted up to mine.

‘Going already?’ he asked, but he did not seem surprised. He, despite his efforts, was the least happy of them all. ‘Don’t abandon us, Rachel, now that Heather’s gone,’ he said.

This was strange; both he and Dorrie had made this remark at various times and in different situations. Besides, I thought their function was not to abandon me. But I suppose they saw me as one who might, if needs be, negotiate a passage for them, someone sturdy, streetwise, on their side. And I think that Oscar still had reservations about Heather’s fate. I did not, however, see that I had any further part to play in this, and had indeed found the afternoon disappointing, even slightly disturbing. But I assured Oscar that they would see as much of me as they could stand, and told him that I had asked Heather and Michael for an evening on their own. At this the heaviness lifted from his face, and he pressed my hand in gratitude. I left him, with his adaptor, and a bunch of roses which he had been unable to resist, standing on the stairs and looking after me. His patient face came back to me at various odd moments during the evening, and for some reason I imagined him, a suppliant, with his roses, outside his daughter’s door.

N
EVERTHELESS
, it seemed as if our friendship might have reached a natural conclusion, might be at an end. It occurred to me that we really had little in common. I had comforted myself, falsely, I now saw, with the illusion that these people might function as a family for me. Now I saw that they existed only for each other. The horrible thought struck me that all the time that I had been intent on appropriating them for my own purposes, they were in reality sorry for me. This idea, oddly enough, had never struck me before, probably because they were so genuinely kind, so very sensitive and delicate. Yet now that it had entered my consciousness I could not get rid of it. My secret life, and what Dorrie referred to, and no doubt thought of, as my feminism, cannot have struck them with anything but with pity. They dealt in euphemisms, and while describing me as brave, felt on my behalf all the deprivations of which I was hardly conscious, having lived with them for most of my adult life. I now saw that I had succumbed rather too readily to the enticements of their existence, and that they had noted this. I also was in no doubt that the arrangement between us could continue for as long as I wished it to, for they were genuinely fond of me, and they still thought of me as a friend of their daughter, and a friend for their daughter in case anything should happen to either of them. They were blameless people, good people, and yet I knew that they had somehow earmarked me as a subordinate, someone who might step in and continue their guardianship in due course. This did not bother me. But the idea behind the assumption did. It was as if they knew that my emancipation would lead inevitably
to lifelong spinsterhood, and that in this capacity (or incapacity, according to their thinking) I would be available for, no, grateful for, any function that would give me a purpose in life.

This idea struck me as rather amusing, although it had a certain painful aspect to it. It was undeniable that I knew more about the ways of the world than Heather, but as far as I was concerned she had only to do her homework in order to catch up with me: the onus was on her, and I certainly did not intend to be on hand to guide her. With the wealth of material goods at her disposal, with all the necessities of life supplemented by all of the luxuries, she had little left to do with her time except cultivate her feelings, and if these feelings, properly cultivated, brought a certain amount of disillusionment in their train I did not see that it was my responsibility to cushion the blows for her. She had chosen a defective husband, that I could see; but on the other hand he might be the instrument, the chosen agent, of her long delayed maturity. I thought of those two children in their slightly overblown apartment – such a contrast to my own deliberately underfurnished rooms – and I decided to let them get on with it. I would proffer my invitation in due course, but I would not be in any hurry. And if they should by any chance think of me, I would maintain a slightly offhand stance. I would not in any circumstances urge my attendance on them. And with their curiously inert attitude to life, I doubt that they would even notice my absence.

Towards Oscar and Dorrie I felt differently. Realizing that they might in secret, and so discreetly, have commiserated over my prospects, I felt a certain amount of hurt and indignation, which I quickly converted into the sort of impatience that comes over one with the realization that a love affair is going badly and that it would be better to end it. I am good at cutting my losses, as many people have found out in their time. But
despite all my efforts I still thought of them kindly and with respect; I even thought of them with nostalgia for the whole picture of their lives, which they conducted in a sort of lost paradise of unworldliness that was very far from anything I knew, or with which I had contact. I still found myself thinking of them, and constructing their habits around them: I remembered little things like the pattern of their teacups, or Dorrie’s reported shopping expeditions, or the way the aunts dressed up for their Saturday afternoon visits. I remembered with astonishment their tranquil investment in the things of this world, as if they thought they were going to live for ever, but at the same time the wistfulness with which they regarded each other, as if they really knew that one of them would die first. What would happen then? Would Heather be up to the task of comforting and sustaining? Would anyone? Who could be a parent to those parents when the time came, when that Biblical day arrived and the silver chord, the golden bowl, revealed their essential fragility? Love, which they had never lacked, surrounded them like a haze of sunlight; they were not made for the dark, as some of us are. Love had made them vulnerable, only able to seek and find each other. And was this condition, which I saw as inherently painful, the reason why their daughter had deliberately chosen its opposite, thus permitting herself to rest secure in the knowledge that she would never suffer abandonment, dereliction, infidelity, bereavement? I had always thought her shrewd, and I saw her now as very much her father’s daughter. Where’s your mother? I heard, or seemed to hear, Oscar’s question, which meant so much more than it was designed to mean, as if he feared that the object of his love were eternally about to disappear, as if he might then embark on some mythic quest to bring her back. Thus Heather, saving all her strength in this unrealistic and insignificant marriage of hers, might at last find herself called
upon to play her part, having perfected herself in secret for this purpose. For I knew for a fact that Dorrie would die first.

An unpleasant thing happened around that time. I was sitting in my flat one evening, wondering whether to go out or stay in, when the telephone rang. Most of my friends were out of town and I did not recognize the voice, which sounded brisk and sporty.

‘Rachel? Hallo, my dear. Just wondered how you were.’

‘I’m sorry. Who is this?’

There was a sort of chuckle at the other end. ‘Come on, now. You can’t have forgotten me already.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘Who is this?’

Another chuckle. ‘A friend of yours. Or rather someone who would like to be a friend. You look like a girl who could be a very good friend.’

A terrible realization came upon me. ‘Is that Colonel Sandberg?’

The voice became brisker. ‘Got it in one. How about meeting me for a drink? The Churchill suit you? Half an hour?’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said again, rather carefully. ‘I was just going out. So sorry. Goodbye.’

I put down the telephone, picked up my bag, and went out for a very long walk. I didn’t get back until it was quite dark. After that, I made a habit of being out in the evenings – I knew he wouldn’t telephone in the daytime – thus giving him time to cast his nets elsewhere. The fact that it would be difficult or unwise to face him for a bit was an additional reason for staying away from the young Sandbergs for a little while. The situation was becoming overburdened with restrictions.

I took to walking, therefore, in those late summer evenings. I was disgusted, not in any puritanical or moralistic sense, but because I felt that my life was
perhaps a little adrift. If someone as horrible as the Colonel had found me out, then I had to know that something was wrong. And yet I would defend myself. It seemed to me that I conducted my life on rather enlightened principles; that is to say, I imposed certain restraints on my feelings, kept a very open mind, rather despised those conventions that are supposed to bring security, and passed lightly on whenever I saw trouble coming. I had resolved at a very early stage never to be reduced to any form of emotional beggary, never to plead, never to impose guilt, and never to consider the world well lost for love. I think of myself as a plain dealer and I am rather proud of the honesty of my transactions. After all, I have had to make my way in the world, and I could only do so by being clear-eyed and self-reliant. I forbid myself to remember that it has not always been easy, and I never, ever, blame my parents: that sort of thing is so old hat. I pass lightly through life, without anguished attachments, and this was nearly always the way I intended it to be. I say nearly always because I do sometimes have these odd dreams. The dreams are of no interest in themselves, but they leave me wondering where they came from. In dreams I bear children, sink smiling into loving arms, fight my way out of empty rooms, and regularly drown. I wake up in a state of astonishment, and sometimes of fear, but I banish the memory of the dreams, of which no one knows anything. Telling dreams, like blaming one’s parents, or falling in love and making a fool of oneself, comes into my category of forbidden things.