Authors: Anita Brookner
The child was a different matter. The child was earth-bound. From the first moment of seeing her, pushing her cake around her plate with the hospital’s shiny metal teaspoon, Blanche knew that Elinor had already learned difficulty and pain. The blitheness of the mother had merely increased the seriousness of the little girl. Blanche now saw that Sally’s most worrying feature was her lack of gravity, although she might be concerned enough about her own expectations. On the other hand Elinor seemed to have no expectations of any sort, as if even growing up were almost too difficult for her, as if, at three years old, or a little older, she was more burdened than her mother could ever be. And this difference in temperament, stemming no doubt from the genetic disposition of her real mother, who had given up and died, opposed her implacably to Sally, who had the misleading facility of a woman who could do anything, but who lacked the wistfulness that betrays the woman who loves children.
The absent Paul Blanche had long dismissed as a lightweight, as a lighter weight than his wife. The boyish good looks she remembered from his photograph had become converted in her mind to an impression of pleading, hesitancy, embarrassment. From a distance she sensed the man’s plausibility. She saw in those moist shining eyes the good-looking young romantic who had fallen in love with Sally and swept her off her feet with presents and luxuries, in the same way as he had swept all difficulties out of the way, relegating his infant daughter to his mother’s care, and living the life of a stateless person, without responsibilities, until, under threat of insolvency, and no doubt as a joke, he had taken on a job with this ridiculous American to whom he would lend his services for a year in order to make enough money to disappear once more, with Sally, to live a life of
play. The fact that this play was invisible, anonymous, abroad, and conducted with the assistance of an instant ‘crowd’, made it seem all the more unreal, yet at the same time more legendary. Blanche thought that the husband was probably rather uninteresting, inferior to his wife, and forced into ever more daring or outrageous enterprises in order to retain her attention. He might even be aware that her attention was wandering, and was probably, under the guise of boyish ardour, terrified.
As she walked out into the hazy sunshine, which seemed to surround her like a sparkling mist and drew out earthy vapours from shrubs and bushes that were already taking on the darker green of midsummer, Blanche reflected that while she had been seated modestly on her bench in the public gardens, under the shade of a dusty palm, Sally and her friends were no doubt waking late in the Carlton or the Negresco or the Martinez or whatever happened to be the hotel of the moment in the resort of the day after a party which had no doubt gone on until dawn. My pleasures were always too modest, thought Blanche, for it is immodesty that wins concessions. I sat there, in those gardens, face blissfully uplifted, knowing that in an hour I should go back to the hotel and see Bertie, and counting that moment more than adequate recompense for the strenuous public evening I should be forced to undergo, being witty in a restaurant with his friends. And no doubt, at the same time, in a similar restaurant, Sally and her friends were preparing for another sleepless night, but being younger did not feel the strain of putting on this evening performance. And perhaps in the daytime, when I got up early to walk on those pristine sands, I may have been marking out the spot where she and her friends, groaning, would lie down later in the day. She is the sort of woman men admire, and her entertainments are more suited to their taste than my poor pastimes. That is why I never speak to her of my own holidays in the south;
I avoid the reflections that my confidences would give rise to, both in her mind and in mine. I avoid the confrontation.
Blanche was well aware that in her mind she had already made the dangerous comparison between Sally and Mousie and between Elinor and herself. She saw this not so much as a struggle between vice and virtue – for she apportioned herself much the lesser role in all this – as between effectiveness and futility or between vitality and inertia. And somewhere in the middle of these conflicting principles, she saw the man, uncommitted, easily beguiled,
volage
. She saw also that her visits to the National Gallery, which had been designed to rescue her from a noisome self-pity, had simply brought these principles into focus and into opposition. On the one hand she had seen the fallen creation and its mournful effigies – the bleached virgins, the suffering saints, the uncalled-for martyrdoms – and on the other the carefree mythological excesses of those who did not, or did not need to, know of the alternative convention. It seemed to her now that those mocking smiles had brought her to this point in her life, and that after saying goodbye to Bertie yet again she had consigned herself to the order which she continually questioned. At this very moment, while she was walking down this little street, becalmed in its afternoon quiet and reverting in appearance to the suburb it had once been, Bertie might be worshipping the sun god, on that island where surely some rout awaited him. Even now she could see, some way ahead of her, Mrs Duff, that embodiment of heavenly duty and obedience, proud with the pride of her legitimate wifely concerns, unvisited by subversive thoughts, and happily subdued by the bonds of matrimonial felicity.
Her encounters with the pagans (for that was how she now thought of them, although well aware of the distortion) had brought her to this modest pass. She walked carefully down the tree-lined street, in careful grey sandals, with yet another cake in her shopping bag. So abstracted were her
thoughts that she passed her neighbour with no more than an abstracted smile, and, as an after-image, saw the eager words fade on Mrs Duff’s lips. Walking down the steps to Sally’s basement, she took one last long breath of the river-laden, dust-laden air, and rang the bell, to find the door opened instantly by Sally, wearing what looked like a long sleeveless marigold-coloured vest, belted loosely around the hips, and Elinor, who, having seen her, immediately retreated into the gloom of the sitting-room.
‘Nellie!’ cried Sally, laughing. ‘Come here at once! You remember Mrs Vernon, don’t you? She brought you that lovely book about trains.’
Elinor stood still, in the middle of the room, considering the matter. She appeared older, taller, slightly altered. Staying with her grandmother seemed to have shaken her hitherto unshakeable confidence, and after a moment she went to Sally and took her hand.
‘I don’t know,’ said Sally, still laughing. ‘She’s forgotten all about us, I think. She doesn’t know where she is. She keeps following me, and she never used to do that.’ She stooped down to the child and pinched her chin. ‘She’s afraid I might send her away again, I suppose. Not that there’s much hope of keeping her here,’ she added in an aside to Blanche. ‘Not with what we’ve got on the
tapis
at the moment.’
‘Well, darling,’ said Blanche, also stooping to the child, and meeting her hesitant and unresponsive gaze. ‘Did you have a nice time?’ No reply, of course; nothing had changed. ‘And is it nice being home with Sally again?’ Elinor turned her head away from these promptings, and seeing Blanche’s shopping basket wandered over to it and began to look inside. When she found the cake, she turned to Blanche questioningly, and, on receiving a nod, lifted it carefully on to a chair and began to undo the waxed paper in which it was wrapped. I forgot to bring her a present, Blanche thought
regretfully, and this thought was evidently shared by Elinor, who, having uncovered the cake, pushed it away and ran out of the room. ‘Elinor,’ said Blanche, blushing at the hideousness of the remark. ‘There’s a gold coin hidden somewhere in my purse. Do you think you can find it? It can buy you a present when Sally takes you to the shops tomorrow.’ Elinor came slowly back into the room, took Blanche’s bag, and, turning over and rejecting wallet, diary and handkerchief, found the little mesh purse that Bertie had bought in an antique shop, long ago, and occupied herself with the contents. Soon, five gold coins had been carefully put on one side. Sally, coming in with the Danish silver teapot, laughed. ‘Just like her father,’ she said. ‘She’s fearfully excited about Paul coming home, aren’t you? When are we going to see Daddy?’ she asked. Elinor went to the photograph of her father and kissed it. The child has been corrupted, thought Blanche, and immediately winced at the unkindness of the thought.
They sat down to the watery tea in the riveted flowered cups, Elinor in her small chair, Blanche’s cake, forgotten in its paper, on the seat of another.
‘Have you seen him yet?’ asked Blanche.
‘No.’ No shadow seemed to interfere with Sally’s mirth.
‘He’s still closeted in the Dorchester with the Demuths. He’s telephoned, of course.’
‘Can’t you go to the Dorchester and see him?’
‘Well, I can’t leave Nellie. And I can’t take her with me because the things we have to discuss are definitely
not
for her ears.’ Sally laughed.
‘I could take care of her if you want to …’
‘Sweet of you, but that’s not actually what’s needed. No, what’s actually needed is someone to go and talk to the Demuths. Tell them what a splendid chap Paul is and how he’s never going to be naughty again.’
Blanche placed her cup very carefully back in its saucer.
‘And who could do that?’ she asked.
‘Well, you could, for a start, Blanche.’
‘Are you serious, Sally? I’ve never even met your husband.’
‘Well, you know us. And you’re a person in good standing. No, Nellie, you can’t have that cake. That cake belongs to Blanche.’
‘But Sally, how could I possibly talk to the Demuths, whom I’ve also never met, and tell them Paul is splendid, when from what I gather he
has
been what you call naughty?’
‘All right,’ said Sally airily. ‘It was just a thought. Forget it. We’ll work something out.’ And, taking the child on to her knee, she said, ‘Did I ever tell you about that time we ran out of money in Cannes? What a hoot
that
was.’ And on it came again, the story of Sally’s inexhaustible anterior life in the South of France, with full complement of reminiscent laughter interrupted only by kisses given to Elinor, who relaxed in her mother’s arms, her eyes regarding Blanche incuriously, her small hand on Sally’s marigold-coloured knee. ‘Only that time there were friends to bail us out. Otherwise we’d still be there. Wouldn’t we?’ she said to Elinor. Elinor, unexpectedly, smiled.
This is torture, thought Blanche, torture by infinite recall. She is going to tell me all about her holidays and parties and what fun she had before she had the misfortune to be translated here until I beg for mercy. She will do this until I consent to go and see these Demuths, which she seems to think is a matter of no moment at all, the sort of errand that dull people like myself can most usefully be sent on. Until I agree to do this she will continue to belabour me with this monologue which is cleverly disguised as conversation. Perhaps she is really very unhappy and all this talk is a kind of fugue, a clinical flight from the present. But, looking at Sally, fresh-faced and relaxed in her modish garb, Blanche found it difficult to believe that this was true. Far more
worrying than Sally, whose apparent lightheartedness might even be frighteningly real, was the inertia of the child, her new obedience, her fatigue. Even now her eyes were sleepily closing. Here, Blanche thought, was a reaction she could understand, the dreadful drowsiness that comes with grieving, the black sleep that overtakes one almost without warning, so that one wakes with a dry mouth and contorted limbs, wondering what day it is. But Sally, who is indifferent to, no, almost empowered by, the hazards of this situation, which remind her of other hazards, successfully overcome, though by what means I cannot know, may be that rare thing, a delinquent personality. She may thrive on the excitement of close shaves, ill-gotten gains, flights to freedom, escapes of all sorts. Truly weightless, like the characters in mythology. And, like them, unscrupulous.
‘Sally,’ she said. ‘You do see that I couldn’t possibly go and talk to the Demuths, don’t you? As I say, I don’t know them, I’ve never met Paul, and it does sound to me as if he’s been a little unwise. I think it’s something he’ll have to put right himself.’
Sally shrugged. ‘I just thought it might be something you were good at. After all, your husband was a diplomat, wasn’t he?’
Blanche stared at her. ‘Whatever gave you that idea? My husband is an estate agent.’
‘Well, why didn’t you
say
so?’
‘It didn’t seem relevant,’ said Blanche humbly.
Sally pealed with laughter, shaking Elinor from her somnolence.
‘And here was I thinking you were frightfully grand,’ she said.
Blanche told herself that the girl was merely tactless, although she knew herself to be hurt, not by Sally’s misconception but by her utter lack of curiosity. How could she believe such a thing if she did not even know that it was
true? And how could she compute a quality as being of potential use to her when it was based on nothing more than a hazy impression in her own mind? Frightfully grand, indeed. Not that she believed that, Blanche knew. What she thought she saw was the power of money. She thought that not only the money could help her but the power as well. All utterly illusory.
‘Anyway,’ Sally went on. ‘I’m quite sure you’re grand enough for the Demuths. They won’t know the difference.’
‘Ah, but I will,’ said Blanche, her colour rather high. ‘I’m not sure that the Demuths are my problem, you know. If Paul has caused some embarrassment, then I think it is up to him to make amends.’
‘It’s just that it would look better if someone spoke on his behalf. I got the impression you were rather fond of us, that’s all. You seem to like coming here.’
Blanche looked round the room, saw her unwanted cake on the seat of a chair, saw Elinor’s somnolescent gaze, saw her hand on Sally’s knee, saw her indifference.
‘You know I am fond of you both,’ she said. ‘But what inducement could I hold out on Paul’s behalf to the Demuths? After all, they know him and I don’t. It would be dishonest …’