A Private View (26 page)

H
E DID NOT KNOW WHEN SHE LEFT. AT SOME
point in his sleep he heard the chink of the keys dropping through his letter-box. He surfaced briefly, not knowing what time it was, but sleep reclaimed him almost at once. When he finally awoke he saw that it was very late, nearly nine o’clock. He had never before slept past his usual hour, and took this as a sign that something was gravely amiss. Yet he did not seem to be ill. Slowly he reassembled his former self, testing reflexes and movements, not quite daring to think. His instinct was to obliterate everything that had happened, to expunge every sign both of her presence and of his involvement. For the rest he would postpone mature reflection on the significance of these events, and of his own part in them. He would have plenty of time in the days ahead to arrive at a judgment, not on
Katy, who now seemed to him almost innocent, an accidental happening in his life, but on himself.

He drank a cup of tea and had his bath. Food was out of the question. When he had dressed, as carefully as usual, he picked up the keys, and, as he knew he had to, unlocked the door of the Dunlops’ flat. The air vibrated with her absence, as though she had only just departed. She had left behind her, through instinct or through carelessness, unmistakable signs of her recent occupancy. In the sitting-room an ironing-board, with the iron up-ended on it, stood facing the television, which flickered with an old black and white film starring Fredric March. He went into the main bedroom, the equivalent of his own, where he supposed the Dunlops slept. Here a coverlet had been hastily pulled over the duvet, while a dent in the pillow showed where a head had recently lain. No attempt had been made to disguise the fact of an alien presence. A wardrobe door, half open because its contents had been disturbed, showed the orange suit pulled halfway off a hanger, one discreetly padded shoulder in the air. He knew that he would find unwashed cups and plates in the kitchen, and wet towels in the bathroom. An almost fearful inspection showed him that his suspicions were correct.

While wondering what to do about all this he had time to marvel, almost to shake his head in admiration, at her incredible insouciance. This is freedom, he thought: freedom is to take what one wants, without bothering to cover one’s tracks. But that is also a definition of criminality, possibly of psychosis. He wondered why he had not seen this before. She had seemed to him phenomenal, certainly; had he not been swept off his feet he would have had time to register
certain abnormalities, which she had appeared to regard as stepping-stones on the road to enlightenment. A few further moments’ thought convicted and then exonerated Howard Singer, for whom he now felt a reluctant sympathy. Howard Singer’s upbeat doctrine could not afford to censure the returning prodigal, although her departure, like all her departures, might have left behind some unanswered questions, and a certain amount of minor, or perhaps not so minor, damage. Howard Singer, who was obliged to think that there was no wrongdoing that could not be cured by excessive sympathy, would no doubt be obliged to greet her with enthusiasm. She had once been useful to him, although she would now need to employ all her ingenuity to convince him, all over again, of her value.

But she might even manage this. She was like the phoenix: with each fresh start she regained her strength. In the meantime the wreckage that she had left behind was difficult to ignore. He concentrated on the wreckage in the flat, postponing his own case for later consideration. He washed up the cups and plates, not daring to look in the larder or the freezer, not quite knowing where everything was kept. In the bathroom he picked up the sodden towels from the floor and rather helplessly hung them on the edge of the bath. He dismantled the ironing-board and switched off the television. The rest, he decided, was beyond him. He would have to ask Mrs Cardozo to put the flat to rights, a request which would certainly be unpopular. Then, even if the flat looked odd, it would be clean. Anything that seemed out of place could be laid at Mrs Cardozo’s door. Besides, she was an enterprising woman: she would find clean sheets and towels, and might be persuaded to put the dirty linen into the laundry
box, which he could then smuggle downstairs for Hipwood to hand over. Hipwood would need a very generous tip this year, he reflected, as would Mrs Cardozo. But he had no further use for his money, and no future in which to make use of that money: all expenses were therefore irrelevant, and were in any case self-inflicted. He had purposely omitted to fill in the stub of the cheque he had made out to Katy, and by now he had genuinely forgotten how much he had handed over. This seemed to him the only healthy indication of the whole affair, an indication that the pitiful exchange could now be consigned to oblivion, oblivion now being his most imperative requirement.

Today was Sunday: Mrs Cardozo was due on the following day, Monday, and the Dunlops would be back on the Tuesday. He thought it sad that his plans should so immediately contain these other characters, to whom he was indifferent, while Katy seemed to have vanished into thin air. Once the trail of her presence had been tidied away there would be little to suggest that she had ever been here, despite the fact that her actual presence had been violently disruptive. Again he admired her for that mixture of idleness and calculation which had almost certainly led her to set her sights on him, simply because he was the nearest thing to hand. And she had so nearly succeeded, let down only at the very end by her own uncertain staying power rather than by any intellectual assessment of his suitability.

Even now he did not entirely regret having known her, even having been willing to suspend judgment on account of her. She was no doubt an amalgam of genuinely damaging characteristics; she was also, and probably by the same token, out of the ordinary. He did not doubt that although he saw
her as a failure she was in her perverse way something of a success. He thought it entirely appropriate that her instinct had taken her back to Howard Singer, not on Singer’s account, but in the hope of annexing one of the more confused of Singer’s wealthy clients. He saw her set up in Bel Air, by which time she and Singer would once more be on the best of terms. Perhaps someone less susceptible than himself would occupy the position he had once coveted. At least, he hoped that the next man would be less susceptible. He himself, he thought, had been unequal, and had thus suffered unduly.

Since it was Sunday, and there was now no possibility of change, he put on his tweed hat and set out for the park. The day was fine: the clouds had lifted and disclosed a sky of icy blue, with a low yellowish sun imparting an even radiance to empty streets and frozen pavements. In the park his feet made creaking noises on the frosty grass. It was intensely cold. Because he felt tired, in spite of his long sleep, and because he had not breakfasted, he decided not to take his usual walk to South Kensington, but to sit for half an hour in the steady pitiless light and to try to form some assessment of himself that would help him in the days ahead. For there would be many in which he ran the risk of being destroyed by his own disappointment.

He sat in the small pedimented pavilion which faces the sunken garden on the Bayswater side of the park. There was no one about, although the day was so clear. He could feel the cold of the stone, unwarmed by the winter sun, through his coat, and thought that for an elderly man, a man of his age, he was perhaps being imprudent. Common sense dictated food and warmth: he had at some level decided that it
was more appropriate to do without either, at least for a significant interval, which must be dedicated entirely to thought of a constructive nature. But no thoughts, let alone constructive ones, occurred to him.

He felt, as he sat undisturbed, in the light of the cruel winter sun, as if he had been shipwrecked, as if he were the only survivor of a disaster so obscure that he could never explain it, even to a friend, even to a friend who loved him. To Louise, who must never know of it. If anyone had been wronged it was Louise, to whom he had denied the offering he had been ready to make to that almost unknown girl, and for whom he now felt pity. She had had the hardness and the dynamism of youth, and he had, through no fault of his own, through the impartial agency of time, lost both. Through that same agency, and no doubt only incidentally through the agency of Katy, he had lost the opportunity to change, had lost the capacity to change. Through envisaging a future so different from his own undoubted and authentic past he had given way to the charm of an idyll, one which could hardly stand up to the light of day. That balcony, that cigar, that red sun sinking …

There was no rule which said that he could not still enjoy those things, but he knew that it would be useless to try. It was only the fantasy that his life might be shared, and shared by someone so alien to himself, that had enabled his imagination to open up these vistas. It had all been totally seductive, and at the same time totally unsuitable. He had been brought up against a phenomenon not previously encountered: the chance acquaintance, not even a friend, who enlivens, enables, introduces the idea of liberty, of a liberty beyond one’s prudent limits. Through the completely randorn
circumstance of meeting this girl he had nearly become another man, living an altogether more poetic life.

Of course the reality would almost certainly have been shabbier. Perhaps his best course now would be to reflect on how perfect the fantasy was, simply by virtue of being a fantasy. Put to the test he might not have salvaged the philosophical calm with which he had so complacently endowed himself, might have become tetchy, with the tetchiness of old age, and also with old age’s aches and pains, the stiffness of the joints, the uncertain digestion, the dimming eyesight. In many ways it was better to stay where he had always been, making the best of a job which by most standards was not too bad, with help, however unhelpful, near at hand. That reminded him: he must prepare envelopes for Hipwood and Mrs Cardozo. He had written no Christmas cards, though he had received many. He had not yet bought a present for Louise. But Louise was a matter on which he was not yet ready to think.

As for love, the strange exasperated feeling he had had for the girl, and which was certainly a form of passion, if only an impure form—that had vanished in the light of this unnerving light. He supposed now that he would never know it, that madness of which the poets wrote. Perhaps his foreknowledge of it, his apprehension of it, his recognition of its properties, would have to be enough, although as a fantasy it had not left him much to sustain him in the life that lay ahead. A fantasy is forward looking: one gains no pleasure from looking back on it. He would be left with his dry memories and his small routines, obliged to make his peace with what remained to him, rather than with what he had promised himself. In that way he would no doubt salvage a
little outward dignity, even though his thoughts, which must be kept secret, might disclose another truth.

In his mind’s eye he saw a figure in a T-shirt and jeans, the sort of figure which might pass unnoticed and unremarked in a crowd of similar figures, striding into, and being almost obliterated by, the willing confusion of an airport. He saw her hitching her holdall onto her shoulder, as they all did, and striding along the walkway into the plane. He saw the plane vibrate with banked energy, saw it take off, saw it dwindle, and then disappear. With that he got stiffly to his feet, put a hand behind him to ease his back, and made his way out into the Bayswater Road.

There was a café along here somewhere, he remembered, a cheap unpretentious Greek place, which seemed to cater for transients or for tourists too bewildered to search for anything more elaborate. In the summer there were four painted white tables on the pavement, and waiters, all talking loudly to each other, would come out from time to time to remove the thick white cups and sweep the remains of rolls and croissants on to trays. Today a Japanese couple sat impassively eating fried eggs and baked beans in the dim interior, while the coffee machine hissed and the proprietor displayed the lung capacity of a football coach. Bland sat down and ordered tea and toast. Both, when they came, were surprisingly good. He sat for ten minutes or so in the steam and noise. Then, since there was nothing else to be done, either now or in the future, he went home.

In the flat he retrieved his salad, made a dressing, and cut a couple of slices from his chicken. There was a little cheese left, and the bread was still fresh. He felt extraordinarily hungry, as if he had been fasting for days, or as if this were his
first meal after a serious operation. Yet even with the food in his mouth, half masticated, he was doubled up by an excess of grief which left his face contorted and his eyes moist. He forced himself to swallow, but needed a glass of water to calm himself. The rest of the meal went uneaten. He pushed the plate aside, went from the kitchen into the sitting-room, and let himself fall heavily into a chair, appalled at what was happening to him. To engage once more in ordinary life would, he thought, take more courage than he possessed. Yet all those kind people who had sent him Christmas cards, and to whom he was so profoundly indifferent, would no doubt view his condition with concern, were they to witness it, and in the event of an illness or a breakdown, which now seemed probable, would care for him, and visit him, and shelter him if the necessity arose. He owed something of a duty to those people, and to Louise, who, he knew, would be there at his death as she had been present all his life, to whom he had not given a single thought in his current predicament, but who must never know the truth. And at that hypothetical death-bed there would be one notable absence, but it would not be that of Katy, whom he saw as eternally escaping, but of the man he might have been, and who had predeceased him, some time ago, in his sixty-sixth year.

With a supreme effort he got to his feet, irritated, despite himself, by the chilliness of the flat. He tidied the kitchen, went to his writing-table, and put a not inconsiderable sum of money, together with a suitable greeting, into an envelope for Hipwood. The realisation that it was nearly Christmas made him reflect on his social duties: he would have to buy and send cards, although it was too late now for presents. He could send flowers, perhaps. Louise presented a
problem. He had never failed her before. Some excuse must be made, some reason given. He repulsed the idea of an invented illness, although he reckoned that he was so nearly ill that this might be near the truth. With his last ounce of moral strength he took a stand against the desire to let everything go, all feelings, all loyalties, all respect and care for himself. He forced himself once more to envisage buying a ticket to some distant place, but knew in the same instant that he could not stand the experience on his own, while that imaginary companion was still so present in his mind. He would have to stay where he was, and as he was, going through the motions of a normal existence until some lightening of the spirit took place, in the same mysterious, almost magical fashion that his own brief and so illusory metamorphosis had taken place. He would have to wait for this, and in the meantime comport himself with as much dignity as possible. Nothing became a man of his age, he knew in spite of himself, so much as a certain degree of dignity.