Authors: Anita Brookner
‘I’m not interested,’ said Mr Demuth. ‘And I doubt if I
should be relieved if they could. Pipe down, Colette,’ he added, as Mrs Demuth gave a slight moan. ‘You’re to blame as much as he is. Letting him spend my money. Who do you think he is?’
Blanche saw a serious rage, based on a long-standing grievance, begin to gather like an approaching storm, like the atmospheric storm outside that threatened to break but never did. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help matters,’ she began. ‘I mean financially.’
‘Why, no, Mrs Vernon, Blanche, don’t even think of it,’ said Mrs Demuth. ‘I may call you Blanche, mayn’t I? Paul has told me what a good friend you’ve been to the family. Don’t even think about the money. After all, I have plenty of my own.’ She gave her husband a sideways look.
‘Well, that’s just fine,’ he said. ‘Because you’re going to need every cent of it. He’s not getting any more of mine. If you want to hire him, you do. That’s the deal from now on. He can take you back home and he can open the house and get you settled in, and that’s it. I’ll pay his fare back to England, and if he behaves himself he can earn himself a little bonus. But no more from me. No more Paris, no more Cap Ferrat, no more Venice, and above all no more shopping. Is that clear?’
Mrs Demuth reached for Paul’s hand. ‘Why, Bernard,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting so upset about.’ Now that she had got her way she professed ignorance of the whole affair. Another trait that she and Paul had in common was their love of short-term solutions, based on a genuine inability to look ahead. Sliding away from immediate difficulty was their only concern. It was clear from Paul’s very slight degree of relaxation, almost invisible except to a trained eye, that he had not even been seriously worried; clearly, this battle had been fought before. As long as Mrs Demuth controlled her own money the situation could repeat itself indefinitely. And they were all a party to this.
Demuth’s violence was based not only on his contempt for Paul and for his wife but on his own desire to convert them into responsible people; not only on his inability to get them to think clearly, but even more on his inability to get them to feel anything beyond their own needs. He despaired of them. His wife he had despaired of long ago. Hiring Paul had been one way of dealing with her. Now he despaired of Paul because there was no way of getting rid of him. If he got rid of him he would be saddled with his wife again. Rage fuelled his movements, coloured his expensive beige face. Although ugly, he was in his way an attractive man. Paul, on the other hand, had relaxed into a graceful balletic pose, his hands on the back of Mrs Demuth’s chair, his head tilted to one side. Still smiling, he presented a sunny countenance to them all. So thoroughly was he subsumed into Mrs Demuth that he did not even thank Blanche for her errand. No doubt, thought Blanche, that a conspiratorial squeeze of the hand would come her way in due course. Complicity was what was required of her. She made one more effort.
‘I believe Sally was worried about her fur coat,’ she said, shielding her left eye with her hand.
The more she thought about it the more she could see that Paul would have excellent taste. His feminine sensibility, which, beneath the boyish candour of his appearance, was the essence of his real character, would give him a true appreciation of women’s fashions and appointments. It was unlikely that he could satisfy what was probably a very creative appraisal of these matters on Mrs Demuth; only in the smaller consideration of ornaments, jewellery, scarves, would their heads come together in serious consultation. For larger designs, for the desire to create a beautiful appearance in a woman, Paul would use the absent Sally, describing to Mrs Demuth her looks and her style, until Mrs Demuth, fascinated by this essentially feminine chronicle, would unite
with him in adding to Sally’s wardrobe. The act of giving, of patronage, relieved, and, in some serious way, satisfied them both. It confirmed them in their benevolence. For Mrs Demuth it meant one more demonstration of her desire to please, and – for she thought of herself as lovable – of her ability to do so. For Paul, it affirmed, through multiple zones of doubt, his credentials as a husband. A husband was someone who went out into the world and brought back trophies for his wife. In this matter of the fur coat he had brought back the most primitive trophy of them all.
Blanche, with the acuity of perception habitually conferred on her by her headaches, saw that the fur coat pertained to a moral area even more dubious than any encountered so far, and immediately wished that she had not mentioned it. It was clear, from Paul’s abstracted gaze out of the window, from Mrs Demuth’s slow and absorbed turning of the bracelets on her wrists, that they had rather the whole matter had been left in the limbo to which they consigned all disagreeable or disputed matters. Paul, with tears in his eyes, might thank Mrs Demuth for giving him the fur coat before she even knew that she had done so, but this would be in one of their intimate tête-à-têtes, and without witnesses. Blanche knew that any understanding she might manage to extract from them would be worthless; nevertheless, she felt it a matter of honour to see the episode through to the end, for once she had fulfilled her obligations down to the last scruple she could collapse into the nirvana of her bed and let the headache take its monstrous three-day toll. During that time she could not afford to have the slightest dissonant thought, for thoughts clanged like bells through her disordered perceptions and must be cancelled as soon as possible.
‘The coat?’ she repeated, though rather faintly.
‘Oh, the coat,’ murmured Mrs Demuth, vaguely, as if she could hardly recall which coat they were talking about.
‘Don’t worry about the coat,’ said Paul. ‘We’ll work something out.’ He apparently favoured this phrase as much as Sally did. No doubt they had often reassured each other in this manner, or maybe it was a kind of mantra which enabled them to postpone or even to abandon any decisive action.
‘What coat?’ asked Mr Demuth, who had reappeared in the doorway unnoticed by any of them. Noiseless, Mr Demuth possessed the power to surprise, to alarm; he could be seen, Blanche thought, to have power over one and was no match for a fainthearted woman. Behind his smoked glasses Mr Demuth seemed embattled, furious with the fates for serving him up this meagre fare, but nevertheless watchful for infringements of his rights. ‘If you’re talking about that fur you bought in Paris, Colette, that goes straight home with you. You won’t want it here.’ He gestured through the open window where the sky now showed a sickening yellow.
‘Of course, dear,’ said Mrs Demuth, making weak affirmative nods. ‘Don’t worry about a thing. Paul will take care of it.’
Mr Demuth hesitated. ‘Goodbye,’ he said to Blanche, proffering his hand. ‘I hope you’ll take back the information you came for.’ He seemed to include her in his general contempt, and without seeing the need for further conversation turned and left the room.
‘Well,’
said Mrs Demuth, visibly brightening. ‘That’s all settled then. Paul, dear, you see Mrs Vernon out. It’s been so nice,’ she nodded to Blanche. ‘And you will give that dear little girl a kiss, won’t you. Paul has shown me photographs. And tell Sally she has nothing to worry about. It’s all working out.’ She made as if to rise to her feet, thought better of it, and sank down again. ‘Paul will see you out,’ she repeated, looking round. But Paul had already left the room.
In the foyer he was waiting, with the coat over his arm. ‘If you could take this with you.’ He winked at her. ‘With my love,’ he added.
‘Well, no,’ said Blanche. ‘I don’t think I could.’
‘Paul? Paul? Where are you? Has Mrs Vernon gone?’ came Mrs Demuth’s voice from the salon. Blanche, the warm heavy weight of the coat over her arm, found the door closing on her. Now dizzy, and rather faint, she felt her way to the lift, concentrating very hard on stepping along the corridor without falling. In the lobby, crowded with people making their way to the restaurant and heavy with the intense heat of the approaching storm, she handed the coat to a hall porter. ‘Would you take this up to Mrs Demuth’s suite?’ she asked. ‘It was handed to me by mistake.’
The evening was livid and smelt of drains. To Blanche’s disordered senses Park Lane presented a picture of hopeless confusion which she could not begin to disentangle. Cars and buses bore down on her, but not, as far as she could see, a single taxi: there had been none outside the hotel and her anxiety to leave had been so great that she had not thought to wait there. Even now, creeping down the side of the street and clinging to the buildings, she could feel the warm slithering weight of the coat as Paul had thrust it into her arms. Any reaction of outrage was muffled by the fear that in his affectless eagerness he might yet seek her out and pursue her until she was out of sight, convinced that she would, with a little persuasion, perform this minor act of kindness for him. Her hand shielded her left eye as much against Paul as against the gimlet thrusts of the headache. She longed for home with a piercing longing that she had never felt at any other time. That shuttered drawing-room, that cool garden on to which she had projected so many wistful thoughts, comparing it unfavourably with that other garden in her memory, now appeared to her to have the remoteness of a dream, but a dream of order and rightness, a dream to set against the moral sickliness of the adventure for which she had so haplessly volunteered. Inching her way down Park Lane, in the smell of exhaust fumes and under the glare of the unconsummated storm, she forced herself to
think ahead to the white bed that awaited her, and saw herself, shriven, in a long robe, waiting by her window, one hand holding back the curtain, for the first drops of rain to fall. I must get home before the storm, she thought, but she saw no means of doing so.
The strangest pictures came to mind. When what she craved was an image of comfort, of succour, of forgiveness, and even – why not? – the face of a compassionate mother, or of any of those obscure saints who seek no martyrdom but are content with their humble destinies, she saw only the nymphs and deities who, apparently, in the world of art, inhabit the same heaven, sailing on clouds that seem to be moving faster when they are not freighted down with human hopes and prayers. In that sky, which is always blue, they sail, impervious to mortal needs, above the world of just deserts, leaving on earth the pilgrims seeking their glimpse of salvation. Forever in motion, as if buoyed on the thermals rising from the aspirations of the unenlightened, inscrutable, weightless. And the gods, striding with all their ideal muscularity into new liaisons, or smiting, wrestling, rising, setting, identifying with the cosmos of which they are embodiments, and bearing in their faces the ardour of the beginning of the world. Not, then, the confusion of Adam and Eve, mawkishly, stupidly, ashamed, half-heartedly instinctive, and instantly, massively, rebuked, but the plunderers, the conscienceless, the plausible, scattering their children, seeking their pleasure, vanquishing their rivals, and, always, moving on. She saw no clear message here, only a huge, a gigantic conflict of principle, a conflict which engages the attention of the entire human race but which is rationalized in terms of lesser mythologies. Looking up with difficulty, she saw the lumbering shuddering buses, panting like animals at traffic lights, the humble trudge of the army of homegoers, the glaring wretched light. As she reached the extreme edge of the pavement, at Hyde Park Corner,
she stopped, knowing that she could go no further. She must stay here, if necessary until darkness fell, until the street became empty; she must endure until help, in the shape of a taxi, came to take her away.
Distant thunder rumbled. In the garden, Adam and Eve seem strangely unconscious of the wonders of creation but slyly preoccupied with their lower natures. Blanche saw that all acts committed in that state of mind are shameful; energy and bliss are needed to transform them into the laws of life. Maybe that was the lesson, she told herself, feeling that she was on the verge of some great discovery, though too tired to understand it. She saw too that energy and bliss exonerate but do not provide conclusions; they are the motive power which must, somehow, be captured, harnessed. The desire for a resting place is the unavoidable constraint. She had once thought of herself as such a resting place, and had indeed rested there. But beyond her resting place was the lure, the excitation of inexhaustible movement, of endless possibility, of becoming, of transformation. As she leant carefully on a railing which separated her from the still-vast concourse of traffic, with her left eye closed, and sometimes, in an access of faintness, her right eye as well, Blanche thought of mournful Adam and Eve, enactments of the fallen creation, but also of the sometimes squalid stratagems of the gods, merciless predators, cunning manipulators, thoughtless progenitors, proponents of greater though at the same time lesser misdemeanours. To a sceptical eye, to an eye so enlightened as to have gazed on the highest wisdom, the Beamish family might, to a certain extent, be termed mythic. But if the alternative was to wait anxiously for a sign of forgiveness, whose principles could be said to be more questionable?
She saw too that her business with the Beamishes was at an end, that in fact they no longer required her, that her presence might cloud their faces with boredom; by her very
acts she had made herself redundant. The little girl was consigned, sadly, to the careless whims of her parents. Yet the sadness too was perhaps redundant or merely out of place; Elinor had been sprung on the world in puzzling, even daunting circumstances and was already strong enough to choose her own destiny. In time the parents would cease to be important, would fall away, like exploded stars, or, more simply, move on. The world belonged to the young, to the cunning, to the obdurate. Blanche, under the threatening sky, spared a thought for Elinor and wished for her qualities of mythological dimensions and consistency. As to that dubious charade at which she had assisted earlier that evening, was that not a demonstration of declining powers, of the advance of corruption, of vanishing effectiveness? Was it not a sign that Elinor would need all her qualities to be stronger and more merciless than the circumstances which had brought her to birth?