Look At Me

Anita Brookner.

Look At Me.

One.

Once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And, in a way that bends time, so long as it is remembered, it will indicate the future. It is wiser, in every circ.u.mstance, to forget, to cultivate the art of forgetting. To remember is to face the enemy. The truth lies in remembering.

My name is Frances Hinton and I do not like to be called f.a.n.n.y. I work in the reference library of a medical research inst.i.tute dedicated to the study of problems of human behaviour. I am in charge of pictorial material, an archive, said to be unparalleled anywhere else in the world, of photographs of works of art and popular prints depicting doctors and patients through the ages. It is an encyclopaedia of illness and death, for in early days few maladies were curable and they seem therefore to have exerted a dreadful fascination over the minds of men. We are particularly interested in dreams and madness, and our collection is rather naturally weighted towards the incalculable or the undiagnosed. Problems of human behaviour still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.

I work with Olivia, my friend, and we send off for photographs to museums and galleries, and when they arrive we mount them on sheets of cardboard and type all the relevant information about them on a paper slip which is then fixed to the mount. It is extremely interesting, in a hopeless sort of way. So many lunatics, so many punitive hospitals, so much deterioration. And so much continuity, so much still unsolved. That, I am glad to say, is not my job, although it seems to exercise the minds of most of the people for whom I work.

Take the problem of melancholy, for example. I could almost write a treatise on melancholy, simply from looking through the files. In old prints melancholy is usually portrayed as a woman, dishevelled, deranged, surrounded by broken pitchers, leaning casks, torn books. She may be sunk in unpeaceful sleep, heavy limbed, overpowered by her inability to take the world"s measure, her compa.s.s and book laid aside. She is very frightening, but the person she frightens most is herself. She is her own disease. Miter shows her wearing a large ungainly dress, winged, a garland in her tangled hair. She has a fierce frown and so great is her disarray that she is closed in by emblems of study, duty, and suffering: a bell, an hourgla.s.s, a pair of scales, a globe, a compa.s.s, a ladder, nails. Sometimes this woman is shown surrounded by encroaching weeds, a cobweb undisturbed above her head. Sometimes she gazes out of the window at a full moon, for she is moonstruck. And should melancholy strike a man it will be because he is suffering from romantic love: he will lean his padded satin arm on a velvet cushion and gaze skywards under the nodding plume of his hat, or he will grasp a thorn or a nettle and indicate that he does not sleep. These men seem to me to be striking a bit of a pose, unlike the women, whose melancholy is less picturesque. The women look as if they are in the grip of an affliction too serious to be put into words. The men, on the other hand, appear to have dressed up for the occasion, and are anxious to put a n.o.ble face on their suffering. Which shows that nothing much has changed since the sixteenth century, at least in that respect.

Cures for melancholy include music and scourging. It is thought that some of the great religious figures of the past were melancholics. El Greco even chose models from the asylum of Toledo for his pictures of saints and apostles.

Next to melancholy in our filing system is madness, and this section too is heavily patronized. Here, the good news is that quite a bit has changed: madmen were once thought to be incredibly amusing, and there are far too many popular prints, most of them English, I am sorry to say, of funny men hitting themselves on the head or pulling faces at one another. But of course this material can be very serious indeed, particularly as quite a few artists have a close understanding of this sad condition. How powerful lunatics are! Once they were nude, struggling, chained. They tore their hair and hid their faces. A medieval emblem of a madman, on a Tarot card, shows a giant figure dressed in skins, a raven on his shoulder, playing the bagpipes. Only Gericault seems to have shown the mad as creatures of dignity, but of course he lived in the great age when the shackles of the insane were struck off, and in some cases the patients were allowed to wear their own clothes. And it is said that Gericault was mad himself, at least from time to time, and this would undoubtedly deepen his sense of kinship with this strange population. The world of obsession, of delusion, turns the eyes of G&ricault"s madmen red with suspicion, or opens them wide with uncorrupted innocence. Sometimes they think they are children, or generals, or kings. In a horrendous picture by Goya, a large vaulted room with a high window is filled with melee of furious nude figures, some fighting, some grovelling, some simply crawling on the ground, yet even among these barely human creatures some have adorned themselves with paper crowns or with feathers or with chains of office. Goya also shows a figure slipping away from the normal human condition, with an animal head and huge feet, his body electrified by a storm of black chalk strokes. I know very little about Goya"s state of mind apart from the fact that it must have been unenviable. He seems to have been on the edge of the tolerable all his life.

We also have a full range of deaths, and here the fear is unending. Death too can be a woman, with a skull, misleadingly handsome. But death is usually a skeleton which one perceives to be male. Death can menace the mother with the child, can invade the comfortable dwelling of the merchant, can interrupt the miser counting his gold or the scholar in his study. Death can waylay the bridegroom and his bride; death can attend the wedding feast. Death, wearing a crown, his bony foot on a globe, holds a gla.s.s inscribed with the words, The mirror that flatters not. And death is unpeaceful, as I well know. At the end temptation comes in the form of gargoyles and devils, and a fight for the soul of the dying will be waged by angels around his bed of suffering.

The section most popular in our Library is the one devoted to dreams. There are dreams of women, dreams of G.o.d, dreams of whirlwinds, of giant birds, of dogs, of fame. St Helena dreams of the True Cross, which she was later to find. The most famous dream image of all shows a man with his head sunk on his folded arms and bats flying all around him. All these dreams seem terribly disturbing. I never dream myself, and I suppose I am very lucky. I am also fortunate enough to be in excellent health, and this fact, and the fact that I have no specialist knowledge, makes my work tolerable. If I were to be afflicted in any way, I doubt if I could look at this stuff all day. Fortunately, even for one as invulnerable as myself, there are images of good doctors, although it is true that too many of them seem to spend their time pulling teeth or burrowing into open wounds with large iron instruments or squinting at flasks of urine. But I try to remember that picture painted by Goya (you see how his name keeps coming up) as an act of friendship towards his own doctor, Dr Arrieta. I have a peculiar fondness for this image. It shows the painter in a dressing gown; he faces the spectator in an extremity of suffering, the structure of his face and body disintegrating beneath the gravity of his pain, his expression both naked and disbelieving. Behind him stands his doctor, a small man, neat, hopeful, resolute. He extends one arm round the shoulders of his patient, and with the other proffers a remedy. I believe that on that occasion Goya did not die, although he may not in fact have ever fully recovered. n.o.body knows what the illness was, but it was clearly terrible. Dr Arrieta was something of an expert on the plague and he went to Africa to investigate it. Whether he ever caught it or not I do not know. My information runs out here.

Most of the real work in the Library is done by Dr Leventhal, the librarian, who combs the many reference books in search of maladies and images of maladies and who then pa.s.ses the information on to Olivia or myself. We do the work of mounting and filing, of collecting offprints of learned articles, and we also look after the visitors who come to consult our archives. We are not very well known to the general public nor would we wish to be, but we cater for our own staff of doctors and for outside specialists and the odd, the very odd, visitor. At the moment we can count on Mrs Halloran and Dr Simek. Mrs Halloran is a wild-looking lady with a misleading air of authority who claims to be in touch with the other side and who is trying to prove her theory that the influence of Saturn is responsible for most anomalies of behaviour. You get a lot of borderline cases in libraries. Dr Simek is an extremely reticent Czech or Pole (we are not quite sure which and we do not see that it is our business to enquire). He is working, on a series of tiny file cards, on the history of the treatment of depressions, or melancholia, as it used to be known, and he comes in every day. They both come in every day, largely, I suspect, because the Library is so very well heated.

Mrs Halloran"s attempts to engage Dr Simek in conversation - efforts which he courteously and wordlessly ignores - usually reach some sort of climax when they both want to study the same folder of photographs. Mrs Halloran always wins, because she makes such a noise that it is in everybody"s interest to shut her up, just as some people get a lot of sympathy because they complain all the time. On these occasions Dr Simek smiles, inclines his head, and says, *Miss Frances, if you would be so kind...", and requests more photographs. I always deal with him because Olivia is more brutal and has been known to tell Mrs Halloran to keep quiet or go to another library. Mrs Halloran knows that she would not last five minutes outside the confines of this peculiar place, half study, half nursery, and subsides, for a time, at least. Round about midday she says, *Either of you girls coming round to the Bricklayers?", and we say, as we always do, that we are so busy that we are simply going to have a quick sandwich in the canteen. Mrs Halloran goes out for a couple of hours and comes back breathing rather heavily, her concentration gone, as is proved by the way she gazes out of the window for long periods and taps on the table with one or other of her ma.s.sive onyx rings. She does not seem to know that she is doing this, and eventually Dr Simek looks up, inclines his head politely, and says, *Madam, if you would be so kind - -." I think this was the first phrase he learned when he came to this country. He never goes out to lunch. He never seems to eat at all. When I bring Olivia her tea I sometimes take him a cup, which is a bore because then Mrs Halloran wants one too, and then Dr Leventhal appears in the doorway that divides the Library from his office and wants to know if we are having a party, and could we please remember that silence is the rule. He is the sort of man who only breaks his own silence in order to utter a derogatory remark. But he is otherwise quite harmless. I would not say that we were genuinely fond of him (that would hardly be appropriate) but he is easy to work for, a mild, heavy man, probably shy, probably lonely, very correct, easily tolerated. We all get on very well.

The potential boredom of this routine is broken by the visits of one or other of the Inst.i.tute"s own doctors, particularly one of the two whose research we are funding, James Anstey or Nick Fraser. Particularly Nick Fraser. Nick is everybody"s favourite, even Dr Leventhal"s. For as long as Olivia and I have known him he has been distinguished by that grace and confidence of manner that ensure success. He is tall and fair, an athlete, a socialite, well-connected, good-looking, charming: everything you could wish for in a man. Our allEngland hero, Olivia once called him, in those days when she was more than a little in love with him. She may still be, for all I know, but she never mentions it and I don"t ask. Sometimes her mouth tightens after one of his lightning visits when, in a mood of general hilarity or euphoria, he sweeps in, flings his arms around Mrs Halloran (*Delia, you old monster., what are you doing here?"), demands, with an urgent clicking of the fingers, a whole pile of photographs, looks at his watch, remembers he has an appointment, begs me, with his ravishing smile, to take them up to his room, and sweeps out again, I I leaving a trail of disorder and excitement. Dr Leventhal appears in his doorway, sees who it is, and subsides. *Don"t take them," says Olivia. *Why should you?"

*Oh, but I must," I reply. *I can"t hold up his work. He"s so brilliant. I mean his work is."

*You mean he is. You have succ.u.mbed, just like everybody else. The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie vanquished once more by the brutal fascination of the upper cla.s.ses."

She talks like that. She was brought up in a strictly socialist household. Also, she pines a little, I think, because Nick is married to the equally dazzling Alix, whom Olivia, for various reasons, can"t stand. We have never discussed this because on some matters reticence is preferable, particularly when feelings are liable to change. We are both rather old-fashioned, I suppose, and although our friendship is deep and sincere, we do not really subscribe to the women"s guerrilla movement. I think we like to maintain a certain loyalty to the men who have, or have had, our love and affection; we regard ourselves in some way as being concerned with their honour. Ridiculous, really, when you come to think of it. I have learned that there is no reciprocity in these matters. But in any case Olivia is a creature of such high breeding that she would consider such a discussion to be in questionable taste. So we never say anything, although I have seen her eyes darken and her face grow paler than usual after one of these visits. There is no hope, of course. I think she saw that even before I did. She is very brave.

So I struggle up the stairs with Nick"s photographs and he leans back in his chair for an instant and smiles and says, *Darling f.a.n.n.y. What a good girl you are", and I go downstairs again, and do something strenuous and unpleasant, like a lot of very brisk filing, until Mrs Halloran comes back from her lunch and knocks some- thing off one of the tables with her bag and the afternoon gets under way.

Nick is also working on depression and it sometimes surprises me that he talks to Mrs Halloran, whom he knows from the pub, rather than to Dr Simek, who was apparently quite an authority in his own country. I would have thought that they would have a great deal in common. Dr Simek has often tried to retain his attention but he is too courteous, too resigned, and Nick is always too much in demand for them ever to be able to get together. Dr Simek seems to accept this, as he accepts everything else: the un-European character of this Library, with its cups of tea and its ash-trays and Mrs Halloran, who is sometimes quite drunk, and the fact that one of the librarians is more or less immobile. I feel that it is just as well that Dr Simek is working largely on the nineteenth century for there is no doubt that Nick will sweep the board of honours when he publishes his own work on depression. Dr Simek always waits until Nick has finished his joke with Mrs Halloran, his head on one side, his lips slightly pursed, his eyes looking studiously down at the photograph in his slightly trembling hand, and when the laughter has died down, he clears his throat and says, *Dr Fraser, if you would be so kind... *, Which is his all-purpose phrase, and he shows him the photograph. Nick, who is always in a tearing hurry, and who has to combine his research with his professional duties and a full social life, makes a disappointed face. *Joseph," he says, *it really is too ridiculous that we never have time to discuss this properly. Why don"t you come to dinner one evening? I"ll get my wife to give you a ring."

*I have no telephone," says Dr Simek, as might have been expected. *Perhaps now we could..."

*I"ll get her to ring here," Nick a.s.sures him. *One of the girls will take a message." Actually we are not allowed to use the telephone, which is in Dr Leventhal"s office and which is in fact his telephone, but I don"t suppose he would mind as it has to do with research. I a.s.sume that they have had this dinner, which Dr Simek certainly looks as if he needs, but he shows no signs of leaving Nick alone, and Nick sometimes advances behind his back with exaggerated wariness, willing him not to turn round. Dr Simek never does turn round: I suppose that, being a foreigner, he does not recognize the informal approach. Of course he knows that Nick is in the room because he has seen him come in, and I think he also knows that Nick is avoiding him, but he merely purses his lips and gets on with his work. Curiously enough, Mrs Halloran and I find ourselves in some sort of complicity with Nick on these occasions. Our eyes follow his progress round the room, and he gives us both a grateful wink as he tiptoes out.

It is strange how this fails to annoy me, although as a rule I am sensitive to bad manners. It is just that occasionally, very occasionally, one meets someone who is so markedly a contrast with the general run of people that one"s instinctive reaction is one of admiration, indulgence, and, no doubt, if one is not very careful indeed, of supplication. I am not arguing the rights and wrongs of this: I am simply stating the facts as they appear to me. And not only to me, for I have noticed that extremely handsome men and extremely beautiful women exercise a power over others which they themselves have no need, or indeed no time, to a.n.a.lyse. People like Nick attract admirers, adherents, followers. They also attract people like me: observers. One is never totally at ease with such people, for they are like sovereigns and one"s duty is to divert them. Matters like worth or merit rarely receive much of their attention, for, with the power of choice which their looks bestow on them, they can change their minds whenever they care to do so. Because of their great range of possibilities, their attention span is very limited. And their beauty has accustomed them to continuous gratification.

I find such people - and I have met one or two - quite fascinating. I find myself respecting them, as I would respect some natural phenomenon: a rainbow, a mountain, a sunset. I recognize that they might have no intrinsic merit, and yet I will find myself trying to please them, to attract their attention. *Look at me," I want to say. *Look at me." And I am also intrigued by their destinies, which could, or should, be marvellous. I will exert myself for such people, and I will miss them when they leave. I will always want to know about them, for I tend to be in love with their entire lives. That is a measure of the power that they exert. That is why I join Nick in a smile of complicity when he spares himself the boredom of a conversation with Dr Simek. It is a kind of law,, I suppose.

*That", says Mrs Halloran heavily, after every other one of Nick"s disruptive visits to the Library, *is one h.e.l.l of a man", at which point Olivia asks her to be quiet and observe the rule of silence, and Mrs Halloran says,"Miss Benedict, why don"t you get hold of that sodding offprint I"ve been asking for every day for the last month instead of telling me what to do? I don"t tell you what to do, do IF *You just have," says Olivia, who is never less than totally composed, and after that they subside for an hour or two, until dissension breaks out again over the matter of whether Mrs Halloran gets a cup of tea or not. Oddly enough, Olivia quite likes her, although I suspect that she finds her life in the Library rather painful at times. But she never says anything. How could she? Apart from her unspoken love for Nick, there is her unspoken dislike of his behaviour. Neither, of course, will ever register with him. It is when I think about this that I congratulate myself on not being in love with anyone. I am not in love with Nick. I am not in love with Dr Leventhal (difficult to imagine) or Dr Simek (even more difficult) or even with James Anstey, even though he is tall and ferocious-looking and presentable and not married and undoubtedly what Mrs Halloran would call a bit of a handful.

I used to make my mother laugh when I went home in the evenings and described the characters who came into the Library. *My darling Fan," she used to say, her eyes widening, *I think you have a gift." She knew all their habits, and where they lived; it was like a serial story to her. She encouraged me to write it all down, and so I bought the usual large exercise book and kept a sort of diary, and I like to think that one day I will use this material and write a comic novel, one of those droll and piquant chronicles enjoyed by dons at Oxford and Cambridge colleges. I could do it, I know. Since my mother died, I have had no one to talk to about these things, no one who is so interested, who knows the characters, who wants to find out what happens next, who responds with such delight. So I tend to write a bit more, these days, when I get home in the evenings, although it is not the same, and I have to struggle to keep a note of despondency out of what gets put down, In fact sometimes I have to struggle quite hard, because I do hate lowspirited people. I would even say I hate unfortunate people, which is why I do not enquire too closely about Dr Simek. I have put all that sort of thing behind me.

And it seems that I am right to do so, because a short story I wrote - actually about the Library, although heavily disguised, of course - was once published. I was not on the whole as pleased with it as everyone else seemed to be, but I"m glad that my mother knew about it before she died. It was one I hadn"t read to her, which in an odd way may have been just as well. She always took people more seriously than I try to do.

So the days go by in an orderly fashion. I get up, I come to work, I have lunch with Olivia, I stick on the photographs, I even try to work out some of the pictures for myself. I find the power of images very strong, even when I do not understand them. Sometimes an image stands for something that will only be understood in due course. It is a mnemonic, a cryptogram, very occasionally a token of precognition. I pay very great attention to images, both at the Library and away from it. I spend a lot of time on my own, and the contents of my mind, which is nothing out of the ordinary, amaze me with their random significance. That is why I like the Library, not only for the task of cla.s.sification which is its main purpose, but for the potency of its images, like the Fool on the Tarot card, or Melancholia with her torn book, or Goya with his doctor.

The day goes on very peacefully, and eventually it gets dark and we start to tidy up. The light goes out in Dr Leventhal"s office, and we ask Dr Simek which photographs he wants kept out for the following day. After a time he puts on his old tight foreign overcoat and his astrakhan hat, ties his grey m.u.f.fler, smoothes his heavy brown gloves over those permanently shaking hands, bows slightly to both of us, and leaves. Mrs Halloran asks if either of us is coming round to the Feathers, which she patronizes in the evenings, and when we say that we are expected for dinner somewhere, she tugs a comb through her wiry hair, flings on her tweed cape, says, *All right, be like that", and sweeps out of the room. She is a noisy woman. I once tried to find out why she came here; she does not really need our resources for those articles she writes in psychic magazines, but Olivia says that she lives in a private hotel in South Kensington and has to get out in the daytime, and besides, she hates to be alone. And I imagine she gets paid more if she includes an ill.u.s.tration or two in her articles. She certainly stays here until the bitter end, and I have seen her face droop into a quite hopeless expression by the end of the day, the inside of her lower lip, which protrudes, looking empty and babyish.

I walk with Olivia to her car, and then I buy a newspaper and read it over a cup of coffee somewhere. I never want to go home and I put it off for as long as I can. I usually walk, from Manchester Square, where the Inst.i.tute is situated, through to the Edgware Road and past all those horrible shops, full of corsets and nurses" uniforms and video ca.s.settes and Indian food. I tramp past the launderettes and the cheap hairdressers with the mauve neon illuminations until I reach the more salubrious uplands. I always walk, whatever the weather. And when I have got rid of my restlessness and my tendency to brood, I let myself into the flat and I am in for the rest of the evening. I have something to eat and then I usually try to write. In that way I manage to get rid of the rest of the day.

I encounter resistance in myself, of course. That is only natural. I am quite young and I am aware that this is a dull life. Sometimes it seems like a physical effort simply to sit down at my desk and pull out the notebook. Sometimes I find myself heaving a sigh when I read through what I have already written. Sometimes the effort of putting pen to paper is so great that I literally feel a pain in my head, as if all the furniture of my mind were being rearranged, as if it were being lined up, being got ready for delivery from the storehouse. And yet when I start to write, all this heaviness vanishes, and I feel charged with a kind of electricity, not unpleasant in itself, but leading, inevitably, to greater restlessness.

Fortunately, I am not a hysterical person. I am used to being on my own and sometimes I doubt whether I could endure a lot of excitement. This remains an academic question, for I have never yet been tempted in this way. I am very orderly, and Spartan in my habits. I am famous for my control, which has seen me through many crises. By a supreme irony, my control is so great that these crises remain unknown to the rest of the world, and so I am thought to be unfeeling. And of course I never speak of them. That would be intolerable. if I ever suffer loneliness it is because I have settled for the harsh destiny of dealing with these matters by myself.

Sometimes I wish it were different. I wish I were beautiful and lazy and spoiled and not to be trusted. I wish, in short, that I had it easier. Sometimes I find myself lying awake in bed, after one of these silent evenings, wondering if this is to be my lot, if this solitude is to last for the rest of my days. Such thoughts sweep me to the edge of panic. For I want more, and I even think that I deserve it. I have something to offer. I am no beauty but I am quite pleasant-looking. In fact people tell me that I am *attractive", which always depresses me. It is like being told that you are *brilliant", which means precisely nothing. But apart from that, I am in good health and have ample private means. I have few bad habits, apart from my sharp tongue. I have no religion, but I observe certain rules of conduct with considerable piety. I feel quite deeply, I think. If I am not very careful, I shall grow into the most awful old battle-axe.

That is why I write, and why I have to. When I feel swamped in my solitude and hidden by it, physically obscured by it, rendered invisible, in fact, writing is my way of piping up. Of reminding people that I am here. And when I have ordered my characters, plundered my store of images, removed from them all the sadness that I might feel in myself, then I can switch on that current that allows me to write so easily, once I get started, and to make people laugh. That, it seems, is what they like to do. And if I manage this well enough and beguile all the dons and the critics, they will fail to register my real message, which is a simple one. If my looks and my manner were of greater a.s.sistance to me I could deliver this message in person. *Look at me," I would say. *Look at me." But since I am on my own in this matter, I must use subterfuge and guile, and with a bit of luck and good management this particular message will never be deciphered, and my reasons for delivering it in this manner remain obscure.

Two.

These odd feelings of isolation may have something to do with my immediate environment, which is, I suppose, anachronistic. Maida Vale is a very strange neighbourhood, I always think, full of huge blocks of flats which in their turn seem to be full of small elderly people. Very few of these people seem to be about in the streets, which are always deserted, and those who venture out for a spot of shopping wear enormous fur coats and have dogs and sticks. When I come home in the evenings I see no one, although I can smell enticing cooking smells behind the closed double doors on each landing. I imagine dinner parties being prepared; I imagine hostesses with silver hair and small diamond earrings leaning heavily forward to light candles on walnut tables. Their guests will probably have travelled no farther than next door or the floor below, but they will have dressed up for the occasion, the ladies in old but good black chiffon dresses, the gentlemen in velvet jackets and bow ties. They will all be in slight physical distress, appropriate to their age, but they will be very gallant and good-humoured, and they will exclaim in delight at the strength of the sherry in the consomme, and compliment their hostess profusely. These excellent people attend lectures at the Victoria and Albert Museum and occasionally team up to go to the National Theatre, which they do not enjoy. *My dear, I found it difficult to breathe," they will say to each other. They usually make up a four for bridge, or sometimes two fours, and there will be a cup of tea for the ladies and a whisky and soda for the gentlemen at eleven-thirty. They will kiss each other affectionately as they leave, and insist, *You must come to us next time." I don"t know any of these people, of course. I can simply smell their food, which is very good. Various ladies sent flowers when my mother died, but after I had written to thank them I threw away the cards. I am aware of a nod and a smile from behind a door, should it happen to be open when I pa.s.s, but as I am out all day, and as they apparently play bridge all night, or at least until eleven-thirty, there is hardly much chance for us to meet. Besides, they are all so much older than I am.

I am very much aware that this is a building for old people, with its red stair carpet and the heavy lift with the iron gates and the polished bra.s.s letter boxes and the small corpulent porter. The residents belong to that cla.s.s and generation which was never told to lower its voice, so that cries of *Phyllis! My dear!" ring out from floor to floor until the door shuts behind the fur-coated visitor. I have seen small grandchildren appear at Christmas, in coats with velvet collars; they are excessively well-behaved and hold their mother"s hands. Their cheeks are quite flushed when they re-emerge) either from the Christmas cake so proudly produced (*Your great-grandmother"s recipe, my darlings!") or at the prospect of opening the crackling parcels which they cradle in their arms. Things are even quieter in the summer. Then it is the turn of the old people to pay their children a visit, and from my window I hear the voices rise from the pavement and the sticks tap, and should I happen to look out I might see Mrs Hunt or Lady Cohen negotiating the difficult business of getting into the car. *Goodbye, Mr Reardon, and thank you so much," they cry as they rearrange their old legs in the narrow s.p.a.ce. *Goodbye, Madam," says the porter, and he waits on the pavement until the car has moved safely on its way.

I am hardly aware of this place as home, although I have always lived here, and, as the flat now belongs to me there is no real reason for me to move, particularly as prices are so high at the moment. Indeed I am so excessively comfortable, and my life is so regulated, that the question only rarely crosses my mind. But that restlessness of which I spoke is in part caused by boredom and in part by lack of company. I sometimes have fantasies of a life in which I would spend evenings sitting on somebody"s bed, exchanging confidences, keeping up with each other"s love affairs, comparing clothes, trying out new hairstyles... Although all that is hardly to my taste. But it is very difficult to invite anyone here. If life were suddenly to change and I were to make a completely new circle of friends I should have to do some radical rearranging. I am hardly likely to give dinner parties for ten or soir? es for fifty people, although the rooms are big enough. And I can see that I should have a hard time disowning the furniture, of which I have grown inexplicably fond, although I spent some of my most critical years grumbling about it. The wind of change would have to blow very hard indeed for me to feel that I had at last taken possession of this place and was ent.i.tled to make it my own.

For in my mind it still belongs to my parents. My mother and father moved here during the war, when my father"s job necessitated their being in London. They moved in very quickly, as one did in those days; within a week they had got rid of their house in Surrey, which my mother was finding too difficult to manage. They took over the flat lock, stock and barrel as the owner was anxious to sell before she went to join her sister in America. That is how they came to inherit this extremely peculiar &cor, which looks like something sprung direct from the brain of an ambitious provincial tart. Times being what they were, my parents did nothing to change it; they were in any case too wrapped up in each other, too fearful for the safety of each other, to care for their surroundings, so long as these were safe, warm, comfortable, and could keep danger at bay. Even when life settled down and became more normal than they ever dared to hope, they changed nothing, perhaps out of superst.i.tion. That is how I came to grow up with all manner of terrible cut-gla.s.s mirrors with bevelled edges hanging from chains over tiled fireplaces, s.h.a.ggy off-white fitted carpets, zig-zag patterned rugs, nests of walnut tables, semicircular armchairs upholstered in pale creaking hide, standard lamps with polygonal ivory satin shades, white wrought-iron trellises over the radiators, a dining table ma.s.sive enough to overshadow the ten dining room chairs whose seats are composed of beige brocade secured with bra.s.s studs, divan beds with headboards which sweep round to accommodate bedside cabinets, dressing tables with sheets of gla.s.s covering the surfaces and triple mirrors, and, piice de risistance, a collection of china and gla.s.s birds, some rather large, which march along the shelves of highly polished pale wood bookcases with sliding doors made of yet more gla.s.s.

My mother domesticated this interior by inserting her many photographs of my father, and later of myself, under the topmost surface of her dressing table. She did not much care for her surroundings but she liked the solidity of the flat, which is in a rea.s.suring stone building on top of the Westminster Bank on the corner of Maida Vale and one of those quiet streets which go off in the direction of St John"s Wood. A whining lift, with polished bra.s.s fittings, is presided over by the porter, Mr Reardon, who otherwise lives in a cubby-hole on the ground floor. My mother grew to love the solemn clash of the lift gates, for she felt protected and enclosed by them, and this was a need which grew in her with the years.

The flat is very large, much too large for me. In my parents" day this problem was solved by their finding Nancy, quite by accident. Nancy is from Ireland and they found her crying in a doorway after an air-raid which had flattened the house in which she had a room. They brought her home; she became their devoted maid and she has been here ever since. As these flats were built to accommodate servants, she has her own room and bathroom beyond the kitchen, which is large enough to serve as a sitting room for her. She is now pretty old and she will undoubtedly live here until she dies. She gets up very early and goes to Ma.s.s every day. She comes back and has her breakfast, by which time I have already gone to work. She goes out later to do the shopping and then she is in until the following morning. Her routine never varies. Every evening she used to serve my parents" dinner, so that my mother never had to do a lot, which was just as well, for her heart was weak and the doctor had warned her not to lift or carry anything. After my father"s death, by which time my mother was so much more frail, Nancy would prepare her evening meal and give it to her on a tray. It came to be the same meal every evening: a cup of soup, a little chicken, some stewed fruit, all in tiny portions. As my mother grew weaker, the meal got smaller and more bland: the soup, which my mother barely touched, a few b.u.t.tered crackers, a dish of custard or semolina.

Nowadays, if I am in, she serves the same meal to me, and however much I dislike it, I know that I cannot stop her doing this. *Madam always liked it this way", she says, and her small but surprisingly flower-like blue eyes look at me in reproach and disappointment.

I have never known anyone grieve and mourn like Nancy. After my mother"s death I was dry-eyed and stony-faced, glad that the ordeal was over. As I moved stiffly about the bedroom, opening curtains, sweeping all the useless pills into a plastic bag, stripping that terrible bed, Nancy sat in my mother"s chair, like a frightened child, small tears creeping down her cheeks, wisps of grey hair sticking to her wet face. She thought me ruthless and s.n.a.t.c.hed up my mother"s slippers, just as I was about to throw them away, holding them to her, cradling them... She had been fearless in her nursing. She would hold my mother"s head, during those spasms of which I cannot bear to think, while I would fly in terror to the door. She would settle her for the night, smoothing her forehead on the pillow, taking her hand and patting it on the sheet. Or she would hold that hand and stroke it, the hand that had become so thin that the rings were stuck on with sellotape. But it was for me that my mother stayed awake, for my goodnight kiss, which I came to dread, like all the rest. *My darling Fan", she would murmur, and Nancy would stay with her until she fell asleep.

Like my mother, I have changed nothing in the flat. Although the days are so different, the nights, when I hear Nancy shuffling down the corridor to lock up, and shuffling back again, are just the same. The food is the same. And I can make no more impression on the decor than did my mother. Nancy becomes distressed when I suggest that she remove those china and gla.s.s birds which she dusts every day and washes once a week. The flat is much too big, but we have shut off the extra three bedrooms and we do not get in each other"s way. Besides, I can walk to the office from here. Sometimes it seems impossible and I dream of a candid attic somewhere, all white and empty, looking over trees. Then I finger the gold brocade curtains, with their ta.s.selled gold tie-backs, and I think how my mother used to stand at the window, waiting for my father to come home. And then I know that I will stay.

Once Nick and Alix brought me home, when I first knew them. They looked around in amazement and I thought appreciation, for it is very comfortable. But when they saw the birds, recently washed by Nancy, they caught each other"s eye and within seconds they were helpless with laughter, staggering, leaning in pain over the backs of the awful hide chairs. They would sober up, only to start off again, and I had to join in, although I felt... What did I feel? That I had not really looked at them before, had not noticed how absurd they were. I put them into a drawer when Nick and Alix had left, but Nancy took them out again the following morning and gave them an extra wash. I said nothing.

Otherwise Alix seemed very keen on the flat, although she gave way to another paroxysm when she asked for an ash-tray and was given one in green malachite with a green malachite c.o.c.katoo on the rim, gazing down as if into a tropical lagoon. As I don"t smoke myself I had never really noticed it, but I did manage to relegate it to the back of a cupboard after they had gone. Nancy found it, of course, and it was soon back in its old place.

Alix and Nick, unexpected, unhoped for visitors, bringing me home in the car after I had had dinner with them, and invited in with a mixture of eagerness and panic. They, mildly curious, always willing to be diverted, consented to sit down but not to remove coats, scarves, gloves. It was not a real visit at all. They would not let me pour them a drink or make more coffee, and yet they lingered, frankly taking an inventory. *I"m interested in people"s houses," said Alix. *I used to have a very beautiful one of my own." At which she heaved a sigh, and pulled out her cigarettes and her lighter. *Don"t, darling," Nick commiserated, but at that moment I tendered the c.o.c.katoo ash-tray and provided a timely diversion. We all joined in her laughter, grateful to her for having raised her spirits again. I saw, even then, that Nick was perpetually on the watch for a change in her mood, and I thought how fortunate she was.

Pulling herself together with an effort which made her seem more authoritative than usual, Alix said it was ridiculous my having all this s.p.a.ce, and that I should put Nancy into a home and take their spare room, which they were always thinking of letting in order to bring in some extra money. She said they could keep an eye on me that way, and I am thinking about it, although Nancy is a problem, and I have said nothing to her yet. Alix became quite excited when she saw the large bathroom with its pale green thirties"tiles and the bath which is so much bigger than theirs. Indeed, the whole flat is more their size than mine, as Alix said, and became impatient when I said that I preferred theirs. *You don"t know what it"s like to live there," she said bitterly. *And anyway you"ve only seen it once."Nick always gets unhappy when she starts on about their flat, and said, *Darling, why don"t you ask f.a.n.n.y to sell you her flat, then she could take ours. It"s more her size."This form of indirect speech struck me as odd; basically there was no reason why he could not have put this question himself. But of course he doesn"t really want to move; he just wants to make her happy. Her eyes narrowed, as they always do when mention is made of either buying or selling. She does mind it so dreadfully that she has come down in the world, as she says, pulling a comically tragic face, and that her family"s estate in Jamaica has been sold to pay debts. When money is mentioned she draws her fur coat around her and shivers, for she remembers how she never spent a winter in England until she learned the facts of her father"s insolvency. One must never mention either money or the cold to Alix. It makes Nick too wretched, as well as Alix herself.

So we live in this flat, Nancy and I, and we hardly ever speak. Of course, I am not here in the daytime, and now, thank G.o.d, hardly ever here in the evenings either. There is no point in changing anything. There is more than enough money, I am almost ashamed to say, thinking of poor Alix shivering in her fur coat, although it is not the sort of money that Alix would be inclined to respect. My father originally inherited a toy factory in the East End from his rather idiosyncratic family. He sold it as soon as he could, and with his friend Sydney Goldsmith formed a sort of partnership for investing on the Stock Market. They were absurdly successful. They turned themselves into a limited company, had lunch two or three times a week in order to discuss business, diversified, and ended up rather rich. That is where my money comes from, and I care for it as little as my father did. He was mainly concerned with earning a living in a way which would leave him entirely free to devote himself to my mother. I think Sydney was the brains of the partnership. He was very fond of my father, and their friendship seems to have had a peaceful sweetness about it that I have never encountered since. Indeed, all the emotions of those days remain unmatched... After my father"s death Sydney would visit my mother once a month, always with a box of chocolates, which she gave to Nancy after he had left. *Well, f.a.n.n.y," he would say to me in the hall, divesting himself of his sharp camel hair coat and his soft brown trilby hat (he always dressed like a gangster), *how is our dear one today?" And he would sit with my mother and talk to her of my father, although I think he loved her himself Their innocence, it seems to me now, was unbounded. I slightly dreaded these visits, which followed the same pattern, the same antique pattern. I always had to stay in for Sydney"s visits, and although I recognized that he was, as my father claimed, the dearest of men, I would count the minutes until he took his leave. This too followed a prescribed pattern. He would bend over my mother"s chair and kiss her forehead and say, *Any time, Beatrice. Call on me any time. My time is yours."He would always have a word with Nancy on the way out, would in fact make a point of knocking on the kitchen door to thank her for tea. She loved him too. He still comes, although I am rarely here. I believe he lives in Worthing now. I think he said something about moving down there. Cutting adrift, he said.

The men in my mother"s life were like priests, ministering to her. They loved her in a way I hope I am never loved, my father, Sydney Goldsmith, and Dr Constantine, who looked after her for so many years. It is why I seek the company of the young, the urbane, the polished, the ambitious, the prodigiously gifted, like Nick and his friends. In my mother"s world, at least in those latter days, the men were kind, shy, easily damaged, too sensitive to her hurts. I never want to meet such men again. In a way I prefer them to be impervious, even if it means that they are impervious to me. I can no longer endure the lost look in the eye, the composure too easily shattered, the waning hope. I now require people to be viable, durable. I try to catch hold of their invulnerability and to apply it to myself I want to feel that the world is hard enough to withstand knocks, as well as to inflict them. I want evidence of good health and good luck and the people who enjoy both. Those priestly ministrations, that simple childish cheerfulness, that delicacy of intention, that sigh immediately suppressed, that wel- coming of routine attentions, that reliance on old patterns, that fidelity, that constancy, and the terror behind all of these things... No more.

There is absolutely no need for me ever again to pretend that everything is all right. It is not, nor was it ever. It was unendurable, and I trained myself to endure it. The sad and patient virtues that seem to be enshrined in the very fabric, the very furnishings of this flat - the flightiness of its details battling unsuccessfully against the gravity of its overall demeanour - none of this has any further part to play in my existence. The blamelessness that flourished within these walls left us all deficient in vices with which to withstand the world, deficient in the sort of knowledge that protects and patronizes one"s ventures. I know now that one needs to be as cunning as Ulysses in order to negotiate one"s own pa.s.sage. I believe that I have learned this lesson - I certainly hope that I have - and I intend to put my knowledge to good use, although I am not sure how. If necessary I shall write myself into a new way of life, and it will be a very amusing one. I have a long way to go, that I know. The old pattern still flourishes, because it was so complete, because everything here conspires to prolong it. It is like a long old age, forever forlorn and waiting for the end. Every morning now I hurry to get up and out of the flat, before Nancy gets back from Ma.s.s; I hurry to the Library, ready to observe the endless foolishness of serious preoccupation. I note every quirk of the behaviour around me, and when I get home I write it all down and I feel the weight of all that virtue lift, leaving me lighter and almost ready to begin again.

I shall probably stay here until Nancy dies, or leaves, which is improbable, although she has a sister in Cork. It is her home as much as it is mine, for I am ready to leave and have been for some time. I should like to move nearer to Nick and Alix, if not actually into their flat. I need their high spirits, their energy, their durability. I need to partic.i.p.ate in the life that they seem to generate; I need those impromptu meals, those last minute decisions, that ease. Here all is cautious, prudent, safe. The lift gates clash, and Nancy shuffles on her worn slippers, and sometimes that tray appears in front of me with the same tiny meal prepared and I shudder inwardly, although I eat it to please her. I could never hurt her. But she appears to think that nothing has changed, and that it never will, and she doesn"t realize (why should she?) that this frightens me.

It is all so different at the Frasers". Alix, who has had servants all her life, can"t cook a thing except steak and spaghetti, which in fact she does rather well, so that her spaghetti has become *her" spaghetti, and people congratulate her on it. She has this amusing way of interrogating absolute strangers if she thinks that they look interesting, and we have often gone down to the restaurant in the evening, just the three of us, and ended up with two more people, or three, or often just one, for she is always fascinated by people who are on their own; I don"t suppose she knows many. Everyone succ.u.mbs to Alix, who can ask the most outrageous questions without giving offence, and after a time they find they want to confide in her, and they usually do. They ring her up, usually the morning after they have met, and I am sure they all feel that they have made a significant acquaintance. I think they wait, as I did, for that first invitation. *You must come and have some of my spaghetti," said Alix that day when she dropped into the Library after having lunch with Nick. *It won"t be much,"she added,"because I"ve come down in the world", and she pulled a funny little face and looked at Nick, and he looked back, in a way that made me feel a little awkWard, and they went off together and were away for quite a time. That is how and when I met her, although of course I have known Nick for much longer. He is always in and out of the Library.

Anyway, I went round to dinner one evening, the very day after I had met Alix, and I was enchanted. I loved everything: the little flat off the King"s Road, and the tiny kitchen where I watched her cook the famous spaghetti, which was very good, and the spare room where I left my coat, and which is actually rather small... Above all I loved the feeling of being taken over by Alix, by somebody with her strength and her decisiveness, after that kingdom of the shades in which I had been living for so long. We had quite a bit of time together before Nick came in, and she told me all about her marvellous childhood in Jamaica, or travelling about the world with her father, and how she misses all that vivid and strenuous life. I suppose it is rather dull being a doctor"s wife in London after all that, but the amazing thing is that she really takes an interest in Nick"s work and is always willing to help. I think that is marvellous of her, spending so much of her time with people who are unfit or depressed, and cheering them up. I can"t think of any greater tonic than talking to Alix. I know that people think the world of her and I could see how she must invigorate them; it is a gift she has. She was telling me of her success with one particularly unfortunate man, and how everyone had been impressed. She said that she thought it was because she was the sort of woman who understood his problems, but added, with a sigh, that it was all very trying and distressing, and not what she was used to.

I said that I thought she was performing a great service.

She sighed again. *One likes to think so," she said. *And if it helps Nick... After all, that"s my job now. And of course I am totally trustworthy. Everyone knows that. I am a mine of secrets."

Again I expressed appreciation.

*And what about you?" she asked. *What do you do apart from drudge in that ridiculous library?"

I told her what a help it had been to work on so steadily after my mother"s death, when I realized that it was my only protection, how the structure of the working day, the very ba.n.a.lity of it, had helped me to compose myself after that wearying and bewildering time, how the silent presence of Dr Leventhal and Olivia had provided fixed points in the dizzying perspective of my new solitude...

*Oh, you"re an orphan," she cried, with comic emphasis. *Darling," she cried to Nick who had come through the door at that moment, *she"s an orphan! Little Orphan f.a.n.n.y!" She made it sound as if it should be in capital letters. She made it sound funny and silly, and I felt better about it, and they have called me f.a.n.n.y or Little Orphan f.a.n.n.y ever since.

After that we didn"t talk any more because Nick had brought home a man with whom he had been arm wrestling in the pub, and this man, who was Irish, told us his entire life story, and it was really very interesting.

I worried about asking them back, although at that stage I drew the line at the Irishman, because I knew somehow that Nancy would resent it. She doesn"t cook much now and as we have practically never had visitors in the evening she likes to lock up early and any alteration to her routine upsets her and makes her fearful. I explained this to Alix, and as it turned out I needn"t have worried because they usually eat out. There is a restaurant on the ground floor of their block of flats, and they find it much more convenient to eat there. This was delightful news to me because it meant that I could join them without feeling guilty about it, and pay my way or treat them at the same time.

I went there with them the following week and that was another revelation. As an eating place it has the advantage of convenience, but the whole point is that this is where Alix meets her friends. She is one of those fortunate women who create circles of loyal friends wherever she goes, so that being with her is like belonging to a club. She is particularly friendly with a terrifically aristocratic Italian lady called Maria, who lives in one of the flats, and who has had an equally fascinating life. Maria and Alix are such friends that they can say terrible things to each other and call each other all sorts of names and still end up roaring with laughter. Maria is very handsome in that high-boned haughty way you sometimes find in North Italian women; I say handsome rather than beautiful because she is tall and very commanding. She has the same easy manner as Alix and is on excellent terms with all the other diners. I got the impression that all the regulars eat early and all Alix"s friends come later, so that an evening spent in the company of Alix and Maria, and Nick, of course, is an evening unlike any other.

I was dazzled, delighted. We spent a whole evening there, Maria sitting at our table and smoking, and it was all the Bohernian evenings I had ever read about. Maria is apparently rather rich, although her financial affairs are quite spectacularly complicated on account of her divorce: she and Alix devote much of their time to this problem. She prefers to stay on in London, I gathered, where she has many friends. Many of them seemed to trickle in that evening and she greeted them with great enthusiasm, moving from one table to another, or lobbing shouts of recognition as people came through the door. Some of them made mock dodging motions as they came in, but they didn"t get past Maria, whom Nick described as Italy"s very own nuclear warhead. *We"re all terrified of her," he added. *If we"re not careful she"ll see that we don"t get any dinner. She can"t bear bores."

Maria cuffed him round the head and he made as if to hit her back and then she really hit him and he shouted "Unfair!" and they both collapsed with laughter.

*This is f.a.n.n.y," said Alix, with a ceremonious clearing of her throat. *Be nice to her. She"s an orphan."

*h.e.l.lo, f.a.n.n.y," said Maria, offering a large hand, which I shook. *Welcome to the club." I was so touched. All I managed to say was, *Thank you."

I tried to work it all out in my diary that evening when I was in bed. I felt as if I had been reprieved from the most dreadful emptiness. I had tried so hard to live sensibly and without undue expectation - for my expectations, alas, have often led me to make mistakes - and now that something so encompa.s.sing and vivifying had turned up I found it difficult to believe in my luck. Good things could only follow. I lay awake for a long time, and after some thought I decided to consider all the mistakes and the misconceptions of other days as water under the bridge. I had always desired to get matters right, and now it seemed as if I were to have just the help I needed. Some friends change your life, and although you know that they exist somewhere you do not always meet them at the right time. But now the road ahead seemed easier. I had been rescued from my solitude; I had been given another chance; and I had high hopes of a future that would cancel out the past.

Three.

The first time that I saw Nick and Alix together, I felt as if I were witnessing the vindication of nineteenth-century theories of natural selection. In the persons of Nick and Alix, the finest had very clearly survived, leaving people like Olivia and me and Mrs Halloran and Dr Simek and Dr Leventhal to founder into unreproductive obscurity. So stunning was their physical presence, one might almost say their physical triumph, that I immediately felt weak and pale, not so much decadent as undernourished, unfed by life"s more potent forces, condemned to dark rooms, and tiny meals, and an obscure creeping existence which would be appropriate to my enfeebled status and which would allow me gently to decline into extinction.

I had been used, of course, to Nick"s hectic charm, his immense height, his generally golden quality. I had only to watch Olivia, and Mrs Halloran, for that matter, to see that his effect on women measured something very high on the Richter scale. How can I describe it? There was nothing particularly recondite about his careless endearments, which we had all grown used to; somehow, though, he managed to make one feel as if those *Darlings" (Darling f.a.n.n.y, Darling Olivia, Darling Delia) might one day be invested with significance. He seemed to prepare an atmosphere of affection for himself, yet I think we all felt that this was his natural climate. He was born to it; he was, or seemed to be, totally ignorant of the sad compromises and makeshifts, the subst.i.tutions and the fantasies, that const.i.tute the emotional baggage of the average person.

We a.s.sumed that this diapason of love had followed him from home, that it had always been his natural element, that he had never lacked for it. If he used endearments it was because he had always heard them used towards himself. He struck one as a much-loved creature. Yet there was that restlessness, that urgency about him that reminded one, or perhaps brought to mind, made one conscious of, his undoubtedly intense s.e.xuality. It was this particular dimension of his personality that made him so impressive. However spectacular and satisfying his life may have been in this respect, he always made one feel that he had the capacity for more, for other experience, for infinite fulfilment. He was a hunter. The combination of his golden and indiscriminate affection and his hard if random gaze at the women around him made one feel that possibly, and potentially, he might favour one. And it would have been a favour, of that there was no doubt. He was devoid of that element of need that makes some men, and rather a lot of women, unattractive in their desires; he was, in fact, desire in its pure state, but desire which was not necessarily active, desire which might awaken at unforeseen moments, in anyone"s company, a random impulse, a natural condition.

We loved him as a phenomenon, a model of how ideal a man might be. And men loved him too, and oddly enough, they loved him for the same reason. They wished to be that model, to have that hard random glance, that a.s.surance of easy victory. They would even have applauded, or at least condoned, any actual infidelity or indiscretion on his part. But he never was unfaithful or indiscreet, from what I gather. He was, rather, the possibility, I might even say the promise, of these things. He intimated that lawlessness would not trouble him, that his will would be served. He reminded one of the unfairness of life, and excited one with the idea that one might, if he wished, become a part of that unfairness, always reserved for the beautiful, the strong, the imperious, the healthy, the decisive, leaving the meek to inherit the earth or rather to live on the promise of that inheritance. Nick, or his appearance, convinced one that unfairness is built into every system, that the Prodigal Son, despite his deplorable behaviour and his unedifying record, was embraced by his father simply because he had come back, because there had been such vacancy while he was away.

We all felt rather like that about Nick. His impromptu appearances, always hasty, always unfinished, made us aware of the dullness that had preceded them. When he left the Library, we cleared up his untidiness, we carried his piles of photographs upstairs to his room, we never reminded him of the way he was always overdue with his returns, some of which were needed by other readers; we took messages for him, and made excuses for him, and refused, ever, to criticize him. We felt that he was a protected species, an example of the very highest breed of human being. So intense was this aura around him that one did not immediately connect it with the privileges he had undoubtedly enjoyed since birth. His parents., his home, his looks, his prowess, his school and university and professional records were all impeccable, Yet we never thought that these things were causes. Rather, they were effects., which a.s.sured him confidence, but which were not directly responsible for that confidence. The fact that he always wore the right clothes, that he always went to the right barber, that he played the right games, these seemed to us to be explained by his munificent personality rather than by an enlightened use of the right instructions given from the very outset. We felt he was a natural leader of men. Yet his greatest gift to us was that intermittent speculative gaze, as if he might call one of us, from our dull safe places, to join him for an instant. He never did, of course. But the possibility, each. of us thought, was there. Each of us - and every woman he had ever met, except Olivia - was just as actively waiting.

When I first saw him with Alix, I understood that we had been waiting in vain. I understood that he was, quite simply, unattainable. Unattainable, that is, by the likes of anyone who was not Alix or her equivalent. Alix was the only sort of woman whom Nick"s sort of man would have chosen, and we were left with the distinct impression that there was only one example in each category: Nick and Alix. We were also left with the impression that they themselves knew and recognized this fact. It was when I saw them together, for the very first time, rejoicing in their complicity, their physical similarity, that I stopped any feeling I might have had towards Nick, other than the one I have already described. Instead, I fell in love with them both. Everybody did. They were used to it.

The first impression that one received was of a supreme married couple, matched in every way. The most obvious match was physical. They had a look of health and of exigence: one felt that no distant country would intimidate them, no contingency give them anxiety, no moment dare remain unfulfilled. One felt that the world was theirs, the physical world, that is, because it had been created for their diversion, and that if they wanted to feel the heat of the sun then they would quite naturally take off for Africa, rather than shiver and complain and wait for summer like the rest of us. *I am interested in absolutely everything", I was to get used to Alix saying, and I did not question her, for with the entire universe open to her inspection, how could she not be? Whereas I tended to think in terms of the most obvious points of reference - neighbours, friends, colleagues, people in the bus queue - Alix and Nick would compare races, cultures, ethnic prototypes. What impressed me most about this was not only their breadth of view, but the fact that their lives contained no element of routine, that they would obey any summons, providing, of course, that it amused them to do so, answer any invitation, go anywhere, do anything. I thought them brave. They merely thought themselves sensible.

As they came through the door, that first afternoon, they appeared to walk with the same confident unhurried stride, and to look at each other rather than at their surroundings, as if the surroundings could wait, and were not, in any case, important enough to claim their attention. *Pictured here enjoying a joke", as the captions said in those old copies of the Tatler that my mother used to pa.s.s on to Nancy and which are no doubt still in the kitchen cupboard somewhere. The Frasers" joke was of the same elevated and exclusive variety. It was no mere affair of hilarity, no spasm of pa.s.sing amus.e.m.e.nt; it was, rather, an area of collusion, a shared knowledge of some ultimate delight which they desired to keep to themselves. One could easily imagine them strolling with the same unconcern, the same gaze directed towards each other rather than around them, through every circ.u.mstance of life; one could imagine them transplanted to the remotest civilization, the most exotic and untested of climates, and they would still consider themselves to be of primary and immediate importance.

I exaggerate, of course. Had I reflected for a single moment, on the occasion of that first meeting, I would have told myself that there is no such thing as a charmed life, although appearances may lead one to suppose that this phenomenon exists. And I have always been susceptible to such appearances. Once I followed a girl in the street simply because she looked so lucky that I could not tear myself away from her. Apart from her youth and her beauty, she had the sort of a.s.surance that promised well for her, as if her expectations were so high, so naturally high, that she had set a standard for herself that others would be encouraged to reach. She seemed to await the best of everything, and I remember staring at her as if she had descended from another planet. Being an observer in these matters does not always help one. Sometimes the scenes and people one observes impart their own message of exclusion. And yet the fascination of the rare perfect example persists, and it demands that one lay down one"s pen and stalk it, study it, dissect it, learn it, love it. That was how I felt when I first saw Alix with Nick. I knew that I could never learn enough about them, but also that I might never understand what I learned. Therefore I watched them with particular care.

After that first impression of royal expectation, of perfect balance of forces, of mutual satisfaction, came a second impression, equally strong, and, to me, much more persuasive. At some level of my consciousness I recognized that they were impervious, that one could not damage them, that they would not founder through shock or deteriorate through neglect. They could not be hurt, except possibly by each other, and they were so clearly in accord that there was no division between them and thus no likelihood of a wound being inflicted. They were allies, partners, accomplices, moving at the same speed, liking and disliking the same things, possessing the same reserves. One could, if one wanted to, treat them roughly (though this was inconceivable); one would, in turn, want to be treated gently, for their greater strength was never in any doubt. The only danger to be feared from them was that they might find one insufficiently amusing, that they might be bored, that they might pa.s.s one over. It occurred to me that children might feel this way about superior parents, although I had never had such feelings about my own who were modest gentle people, greatly concerned for each other"s tranquillity. With my sharp tongue I had had to be very careful not to hurt them, and they, of course, had never hurt me. But I had never had to try hard to please or divert or entertain them, either, and I think I longed to use my sharp tongue and to be restless and critical and amusing, even if it was at other people"s expense. To me in those days it seemed like freedom not to have to care for anybody"s feelings if I didn"t want to. I hated every reminder that the world was old and shaky, that human beings were vulnerable, that everyone was, more or less, dying. I had lived with all this for far too long.

I needed to know that not everyone carries a wound and that this wound bleeds intermittently throughout life. I needed to be taught that life can put on a good turn of speed and bowl one along with it. I needed to learn, from experts, that pure egotism that had always escaped me, for the little I had managed to build up, and which had so far only gone into my writing, was quickly vanquished by the sight of that tremulousness, that lost look in the eye, that disappointment that seemed to haunt me, to get in my way, even to obtrude on my consciousness, when I was busy building up my resources of selfishness. I had only to see the dry, dyed hairs thickening in Mrs Halloran"s comb as she prepared herself for her evening visit to the Feathers, or Dr Simek b.u.t.toning his old-fashioned gloves at the wrist, or to remember Nancy"s stern but trusting blue eyes looking up at me, for the whole edifice to crumble. And this process would go on, despite my injunction to myself to ignore it. It would erupt in the form of images, which is appropriate, I suppose, since I deal with them all day, but they would irritate me as much as something obscuring my natural field of vision would irritate me. These tiny fugues are extremely random and unpredictable; they swim up from some area which I cannot control and which I should dearly love to forget about. Sometimes I see, sometimes I hear, forgotten episodes from my real life, and I always try very hard to invent a new life for myself so that I can get away from the old one, although to all intents and purposes that old life, which I had hitherto lived precariously and with a resignation mixed with impatience, had been very easy. It had been so easy that I was not satisfied with it. I suppose that is why I write, in order to recompose events, to make them sharper, funnier, than they really were. Above all, funnier. I write to be hard. I do not intend to spare any feelings, except, of course, my own.

It was, therefore, to my very great annoyance, that on the morning of the day of my first meeting with Alix Fraser, the day of that royal progress through life, that easy relegation of phenomena not found attractive, that I was haunted by the spectre of Dr Constantine. Dr Constantine was my mother"s doctor, a small leathery man with a face like a nut and bandy legs. He looked more like a jockey than a doctor, and his strong Dublin accent reinforced this impression. I doubt if anyone took him seriously as a doctor; he was too shy, too full of awkward jokes, some of which were inaudible, to impress one with his superior knowledge. He could do very little for my mother except keep up her spirits, which he did by calling to see her every Sat.u.r.day of her life. This was a visit which went according to a prescribed pattern. He would stay for exactly three-quarters of an hour, nursing a gla.s.s of whisky, which my mother would nod at me to pour out, and tell her all about the affairs of the neighbourhood. Small matters: the young man they were thinking of taking on as a partner, his receptionist"s daughter"s new baby. That sort of thing. He would take her pulse as he spoke and wind up by saying,"Ah, you"re doing fine." She would say, *Thanks to you, doctor", and he would blush, and my mother would add, *And to my darling here." Nancy and I would wait for him at the door and he would say again, *She"s doing fine", but he would never meet my eye. And one day... One day I was summoned home by Nancy, who telephoned the Library, and when I got there it was to find my mother having an attack and Dr Constantine crouched over the telephone in the hall, his face red, his composure gone. *I"m begging you, Matron," he was saying. *Find me a bed. Ah G.o.d, Matron, I can"t deal with it here." He was despairing, distraught, his small brown eye searching, somewhere beyond my head, for succour. Yet he dealt with it, because there was no bed free in the hospital, and in the end she died at home, and he was not there, and he apologized to me. He would have wept if I had not been very polite and formal and kept it short, that apology. I felt nothing. In any event, I felt less than he did.

He was not there. But I was.

So that on the morning of the day that Alix came to the Library it was extremely annoying to have vividly in my mind"s eye the image of Dr Constantine crouched over the telephone, his face red, his small eye vacant and despairing, and to have in my mind"s ear the sound of his voice. Begging. Without resource.

Also, and for no reason that I can identify, I saw a cigarette box that belonged to my father, made of rosewood, with a marquetry inlay. I used to play with it as a child, during the long silent afternoons when my mother was resting, and only now do I see how badly it was made, for the edge of the border was rough and slightly raised and it should have been as smooth as silk.

When I am in these moods, the best person to be with is Olivia, whose moral strength never falters and in whose company I steady myself, perhaps for the next onslaught, perhaps for the germ of an idea that I can write about when I get home in the evening. She is my only critic. But I think she condemns my hard-won frivolousness.

As I have said, I felt intrigued, excited, by the awesome match between Nick and his wife. They came in carelessly, laughing and absorbed, and at first sight, and indeed on further understanding, they seemed to me to be a single phenomenon. It was only later that I saw Alix as separate, and when I first perceived that she had a personality of her own I also perceived that this personality was not only anterior to her life with Nick but superior to it as well. In our dark and serious room, like a nursery for grown-up children, Olivia and I were drinking coffee out of mugs with suitably juvenile decorations. Women in their places of work frequently give way to these domestic impulses and festoon their offices with pot plants and alternative shoes and the odd cardigan: Miss Morpeth, my predecessor, had her own bone china cup and saucer and a padded velvet coat hanger, and I put these details into my story, which Olivia thought was rather tasteless. Being unmarried and childless, and still living in our parents" houses, Olivia and I don"t go so far as to create a home away from home; we limit ourselves to our Mickey Mouse mugs, over the rims of which our eyes scan the Library and each other, meeting in a mutual warning gaze when anything disruptive or subversive seems about to happen. It was in such a gaze that our eyes became locked when we heard that laughter outside our door, presaging our introduction to Alix.

She was not beautiful but she had such an aura of power that she claimed one"s entire attention. She was tall and fair, with rough streaky hair and rather small grey eyes which disappeared when her magnificent mouth opened in one of those laughs that I came to know so well. The mouth, and everything about it, was her most important feature: the long thin lips, the flawless teeth, the high carrying voice. We saw and understood Nick"s delight when he inspired her to laughter and the head went back and the mouth stretched and the sound, which was in fact rather swallowed and restrained, rewarded him. The brilliance of that laughing face, with the careless hair and the rapacious teeth, was the exact complement to Nick"s roving unplatonic gaze, indicating immense reserves of appet.i.te and pleasure. She left one in little doubt that it would be an honour to engage her attention.

They seemed to be in incessant physical union; he held her hand or put an arm round her shoulder or sought her eye, which held his quizzically, the eyebrows raised. There was an unspoken dialogue between them, which they occasionally suspended in order to range round for further topics of interest or amus.e.m.e.nt. She looked speculatively at Olivia, who blushed, and then at me., and I was heartened, at that early stage in our acquaintance, to note the raised eyebrows and the smile, as I put down my mug and stood up. I stood up instinctively, half wary, half welcoming, entirely deferential.

*We were having an argument," she said, as if she had known me for years, or as if she thought any formalities a waste of time. *I think my hair would look better swept up, but Nick is dead against it. What do you think?"

I hardly knew what to say, but there was no need for me to speak because Nick was already protesting.