Brief Lives (6 page)

When Godfrey Burton turned up I had to offer him coffee, to which he assented enthusiastically. ‘Tell Owen to telephone me, would you?’ were her distant words to me
as she left on Godfrey’s arm. I had no doubt that complaints were to be made. This did not bother me unduly—it had, after all, been a squalid little incident—but the fact that Vinnie hated me, had probably always hated me, hurt me suddenly. It was as if she had bequeathed to her son the same propensity, a decision to dispense with emotions once they had served their purpose. She had been pleasant enough until I had shown real exasperation over the spoilt casserole, and what she had, quite rightly, intuited as some kind of watershed. The exasperation had been so real, so charged, that it was an unmistakable emotional fact. This was distasteful to her, as was any emotion, and so she decided to punish me for it. And in that moment I began to wonder if Owen would eventually do the same.

It should have been clear to me then that there was a great deal wrong with my marriage, but these things only become clear in retrospect. And it was a matter of pride to me not to believe that anything was wrong, or that I was not entirely happy. On the surface Owen was an excellent husband, more handsome than ever, bronzed from frequent Mediterranean business trips, successful, hardworking, and extremely popular. To look at him, to be in his company, one would have thought that he was a man in love with life. But in fact he was only in love with a certain sort of life—a tycoon’s life—and it was a life in which I was cast for quite a minor role. I began to feel like the poor girl I had once been, before I started earning my own money. Now I no longer had that resource, and although Owen gave me a handsome housekeeping allowance we entertained so much, and he insisted on such elaborate meals, that there was little left over at the end of the week. I longed to go up to town and take Millie to lunch and out shopping for the afternoon, but in fact I did not want to meet her penetrating
eye. And I was aware that my own clothes, for which allowance was also made in the budget, were far more expensive than hers could ever be, although I thought they looked too old for me and longed to buy something cheap and pretty. So the sad thing was that I occasionally made excuses when she telephoned me or I telephoned her—I was always theoretically preparing for a dinner party—and when she asked me, as she always did, what I was going to wear, and I said, ‘My green silk,’ she would say, with surprise in her voice, ‘I don’t know that, do I? I don’t know half your clothes now. Do let’s get together soon. I’ll come over and bring a cake, and we’ll have a really good talk.’ ‘Lovely,’ I would say, but when we met there was a tiny constraint between us. ‘Are you happy?’ she would say. ‘That’s all that counts.’ ‘Of course,’ I would reply. But there was too much heartiness, too much airiness, too much flippancy in my attitude for Millie’s taste. She knew otherwise, and she was never wrong. She knew before I did.

I would escape from the house, which I hated, and take long walks, but Gertrude Street, which is a handsome street, filled with handsome houses, merely feeds into other streets exactly like itself. It is also treeless and sees practically no traffic since it is closed at one end by a long low building the purpose of which I never discovered. Every time I left the house my spirits, already low, would be further lowered by the emptiness and the silence, and I would hurry round the corner to the place where the buses stopped to change drivers and look longingly at the small café with the steamy windows where the crews went for their tea. In memory I see those walks of mine as eternally overcast, under a white sky. The meagre light and the occasional whine of a car on its way to somewhere more interesting oppressed me almost as much as the house had done,
and after a half-hearted excursion to the shops to buy something that was not really needed I would hear my footsteps ringing out as I turned back into Gertrude Street. Those eternal winter afternoons, when Owen was away in the sun, stretched before me in an endless progression; there was something implacable about their changelessness, and about my own despair. I had always been so lighthearted, but now I seemed to sigh a lot, and even to feel unwell. The headaches, announced so dramatically that first day in Vinnie’s flat, had become a regular feature of my life, and I had frequently to sit at my own dinner table unobtrusively pushing food about my plate and smiling at Jack or Molly or their equivalent with a pulse beating behind my eyes and a feeling of nausea in my throat.

When Mother, whom I still visited regularly, asked me if I were happy I replied instantly and warmly that of course I was. She knew the truth of the matter, as did Millie. But I did not. That was another strange thing. As far as I was concerned I still loved my husband, and I think, even at this distance, that I really did. Owen never failed me, in his limited fashion, but his requirements were too formal, too impersonal, to satisfy my hopes. He wanted me to remain the devoted and humble girl that I had been when he first married me, and in my heart I was. But I was older now, old enough to be tired, and while I had been getting older and more tired. (I who had never been tired before) the world seemed to be getting younger. We were told that we had never had it so good, and the greater part of the nation seemed to think that this was the simple truth. But I noticed that the new frenetic music had put an end to the pretty songs which I used to sing and which only old people now seemed to remember. I suppose I had always sung for a staid and settled population, modest people for whom listening
to the wireless was treat enough at the end of a working day, or housewives and mothers at home. They were songs of love and longing, all kept in decorous perspective and proportion. I did not understand the shouting and enthusiasm of the new music or its lack of charm. I had no piano in Gertrude Street, and when I tried a few scales unaccompanied I noticed how my voice had darkened. The voice deepens as one gets older. The change was infinitesimal to anyone who was not trained, but I knew, as I sang those scales, that my singing days were over. ‘Arcady,’ I sang fearfully, in the cruel indigo room. ‘Arcady, Arcady is always young.’ My voice cracked very slightly on the high note, and I blushed, a deep suffusing blush that ebbed away slowly, leaving me quite weak.

Owen had been abroad a great deal recently and there was some feeling in Hanover Square that he should put in more time at the office. His reaction to this was to tell me that he was inviting the senior partners to dinner, with their wives. This meant three separate dinner parties, for it would look too obvious if they were all to be invited together. His uncle Bernard and Lady Frances were no problem, nor was there any difficulty with George and Claire Gascoigne, who were elderly. But on the day that we were expecting Charlie and Julia Morton—famous Julia—in the evening, I had a headache and was unusually low-spirited. My fingers were clumsy as I laid the table and I should have given anything to be able to go to bed. In fact I did lie down for half an hour and fell asleep, which annoyed Owen, who woke me when he came up to dress. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said. ‘I’m not asking you to do anything difficult. You don’t even have to go out. Just put a good face on it, that’s all I ask.’ He added, ‘And you’d better see the doctor tomorrow, if you really feel rotten. You don’t suppose …?’ ‘No,’
I said, for I had never become pregnant and now I knew I never should. Some part of me must have resisted being taken over even further, and although I did not grieve too much then I do now. Growing old is so meaningless when there are no young people to watch.

I got out of bed, had my bath, and dressed. My head was throbbing, but I thought it might be all right if I did not eat: the smell of the roast veal, as I opened the oven, made me turn away, momentarily faint. Owen was on edge, and it looked as if the evening could not be anything but an outright failure. The Mortons had never been to us before because Julia was still on the stage and did not go out in the evening, at least not to any house connected with her husband’s business, which she deplored, as if he conducted it only out of some weird caprice, when he could have been spending more time at home with her. But the changing fashions had evidently reached Julia and she roundly condemned the tide of popular taste which was turning against her and the particular impression she conveyed. From her first entrance into our drawing-room that evening, in ravishing black silk, with a black silk turban, it was evident that she had thrown herself body and soul into the character of a simple suburban wife. ‘My darlings!’ she announced, sweeping a black chiffon handkerchief from her bag and draping it round her neck, ‘I want you to treat me as one of yourselves. Forget about Julia. Julia is no more. Let the people have what they want. If they want ruffians there are plenty to go round. My day is done.’ She put her hand to her throat and I swear there were tears in her eyes. Charlie, who must have brought unobtrusiveness to a fine art, removed the black chiffon scarf and put it in his pocket. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘Isn’t that the sort of thing middle-class housewives wear? For I suppose we are all
middle-class now,’ she added, and the eyelids came down. ‘What about the ruffians?’ said Owen, laughing. The eyelids were slowly and suggestively lifted. ‘I dare say they are available if one knows where to look for them.’

I was laughing now and the evening looked less dubious than it had done. Although she had very little to say to me (‘Oh, do show me what you are cooking. I am so interested’) she appreciated Owen wonderfully. He was, after all, a handsome and attentive host. The dinner was as good as I could have hoped, although I could manage very little of it. Charlie and Julia ate heartily, and in Julia’s case with enormous pantomimes of appreciation. As I cleared the table and went to get the coffee Charlie held the door open for me, and said, very quietly, ‘All right, my dear?’ I nodded, touched, and felt a little warmth creep into my half-numb face.

That was the beginning of our friendship, ‘for we are not going to let you go now,’ said Julia, who was obviously fretting at the loss of her public. She was fifty, a difficult age for letting go, still young enough to have ambitions and desires but with fewer opportunities of satisfying either. Owen was delighted with the evening, and Charlie gave the impression of being happy whenever his wife was happy. I decided that he must be exceptionally good-natured to act as her foil in the way that he did: there was something so gallant in that, I thought, as I thankfully prepared for bed. I took off my make-up without even looking at my face, which was an indication of the tiredness I felt. But even as I slipped into that wonderful half-dream that announces sleep I realized that my headache had quite gone.

JULIA WAS A DEDICATED WOMAN
. She was dedicated principally to herself, but that did not seem to lessen her charm, which was powerful if capricious. I know now that inside every one of us there is another self, wistful, wary, uncertain, but also cruel and subversive, a stranger who can respond to any suggestion, any impulse, whether wise or unwise, though it is usually the latter. In Julia’s case this other self seemed to be absent: she was the same, from her polished outward appearance to her ironic inner heart. I never knew a woman so little given to self-doubt or self-questioning. If she thought a thing she said it, and if she wanted to do something she did it. She was impervious to remorse, for in her eyes her desires were always justified. I sensed in her a will as hard as her heart, although she was kind in an absent-minded fashion. But if her kindness was absent-minded it was nevertheless designed to serve her purpose. After flattering attention to oneself she would signify the end of this particular phase of the conversation
by asking one, negligently, to perform some small but onerous service. ‘You’re so clever with food,’ she once said to me. ‘What should I get for Charlie’s dinner tonight? What was that delicious vegetable thing I had at your house?’

‘That was
ratatouille
, Julia. It’s very simple, but it takes a little time. I’d bring you some if I had some made.’

‘Too sweet of you, but you must remember I’m a housewife now. Come along, Wilberforce! Pencil and paper. Can you see my pencil anywhere? Over there, perhaps, under the
Tatler
.’

She adjusted a pair of spectacles which hung on a chain round her neck.

‘Now! What do I need?’

‘You need tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes …’

The glasses were removed.

‘Don’t go on. I haven’t got any of those things. And I couldn’t possibly carry them, with my poor hands.’

She flexed her narrow chalky hands, which were beginning to get stiff.

‘The next time you buy these things, Fay, could you possibly get a few for me? Then you can come and show me how to cook them.’

‘I suppose it would be simpler if I gave you some of my own, when I next make it.’

‘Yes, that might be best. What a lovely idea!’

The subject was closed.

‘But what about Charlie’s dinner?’ I said.

‘Oh, he can have an omelette. It’s what he usually has. Now I’ve never been able to like eggs. Funny, isn’t it? I find them incredibly boring. Eggs and avocados. Whereas I can eat all kinds of shellfish and sleep like a baby afterwards. I remember a very grand dinner party in New York once: our ambassador was there. The first course was prawns and
avocados. So silly. Why ruin prawns? I ate mine and gave the avocado to the ambassador. My hostess was furious, but she was a very tiresome woman. What were we saying?’