In Certain Circles (15 page)

‘God!'

‘Take no notice.' Zoe put a hand on his knee, looked into his eyes. ‘Darling. Take no notice. What he says—silly questions—it's nothing to us.'

He believed her as though her eyes' message to his had literally hypnotised him. Reaching out, he stroked her side, then he resumed the conversation in a tone so untroubled that Zoe looked at him with wonder.

‘But there aren't any first-rate women directors, are there? Not that I know much about it.' From the beginning, he had been innocently candid about his opinion of the work she had abandoned.

‘No, not many. But, anyway, I wasn't one. Only a low-grade assistant around the place.'

‘But with Stranger you were heading that way,' he persisted. ‘It was in those interviews. He called you his chief assistant. It's what all these enquirers assume.'

‘How would they know? He was kidding. I don't encourage them.' She tried not to feel hounded.

‘And if a brilliant one did turn up, with all respect, it isn't very likely that she'd rise up
here
, is it?'

‘Talk about the national inferiority complex!' But Zoe was listening now with delight. Months ago, she had realised that she was expected to be quite beyond personal vanity in this matter. Once or twice she had been told of some person on the far fringe of her life who was jealous, or attributed unflattering qualities to her; she had only ever listened inattentively. But no one had ever sought her out, and found her out, and held up mirrors to her, as Stephen had. He thought nothing of her so-called skills. Till recently, she had valued them quite highly. Now, when Lily said, ‘That sort of work's all right for someone with no intelligence, but you were wasting yourself,' she had not even demurred. Though somewhere, far off, she saluted the friends of other days.

It was funny to think of it. It seemed quaint that she had ever wanted to be quite exceptionally good at her chosen work, that for so trivial a purpose her concentration had developed its formidable powers. She had been prepared to work very hard, and had even thought that the work mattered in some more than personal sense. Other people had pandered to this delusion, as she had pandered to theirs—that their life work was of significance.

How clear everything had become since those days! (And yet they were not so far back in time.) And how quickly, without the least desire to deflate or wound, of course, Stephen had dissolved the last of those ideas and ambitions! As if the world could not get along very well without her minute contribution!

Stephen said, ‘You don't have to denigrate yourself. But you were only playing around. Painters' and musicians' talents are noticeable while they're children.
You
never intended to be a film director when you grew up.'

She bowed her head over prayerful hands. ‘How true! All is as you say. Though you're grinding me into the dust. Sweetheart…'

Ignoring this, Stephen went on argumentatively, ‘They all seem to think Stranger's unique in his way, so if you intended to equal him…'

As though it were an instant tonic from which she could expect to draw nimbleness of mind, Zoe took a large bite of toast spread with home-made cherry jam. ‘I didn't look at it that way,' she said, somewhat muffled. ‘I was interested in the work, not who was equalling whom. You compete with the intractable, not with your fellow toilers. Compete with the difficulty.'

‘Oh, well. If you intended to be the best, that's another matter.'

Had she implied that? Zoe scanned his eyes. Often he heard something she hadn't said; often he denied saying what she'd heard. Confusing. ‘Have some more coffee.' As she watched the flow from the pot, and moved his cup forward, she said, ‘No, I didn't think in that way.
Best
. But when you're quite young, you hope. And you stretch yourself. Make efforts.'

‘Ah,' Stephen said, not quite pleasantly exaggerating enlightenment; and she remembered that he had never been young.

‘Yes,' she insisted gently. ‘But that's all over now, and I'm so glad, so glad. Don't disapprove of the past. I never think about it.' She looked at him with love.

From riding the crest of the wave, from taming tigers, she had turned into this new thing—a suppliant, but a suppliant with a purpose: all to be well with Stephen. She had fallen through him into the universe, into her real self. Yet he was only free spasmodically, as though secret gaolers had him secretly imprisoned somewhere, releasing and confining and tormenting according to some erratic timetable of their own.

After a short silence, Stephen persisted, ‘I've never been able to regard the cinema as an art form.' He half-smiled at her, and their eyes held for an instant.

She entreated, ‘Please leave it.' In an entirely different tone, two seconds later, gay, light-hearted, Zoe exclaimed, ‘Well, frequently it isn't! And I shall cast a fearful spell over Anna's John Trenchard and all movie buffs in a minute, calling on both cats to help.'

Satisfied, he said, ‘You know it's rubbish too. Does Anna like him?'

‘Moderately, I think. Mainly because he and David were friends. He's some sort of administrator at the Conservatorium, she said. He should be a professional humorist—asking me what I'm going to do for an occupation. There's only
you,
you, you
—as the song says. And us, and our harbourside estate, and our cats, and that room full of stuff to be translated, and your printery, and our public life—provided by Russell, and our private life—provided by us…'

As she continued, adding more and more extravagant items to the list, blazing on him, winning him from his invisible oppressors, she was so invested with force that a boundary was crossed. Objects had long dissolved and fallen away. Now, neither of them smiled. They were standing, tightly enlaced; they were sinking together, equally lost.

When nothing intervened, Russell drove Anna to and from work. The printery and the gallery were in the same fashionably decrepit area near the docks.

This habit started when she returned from a skiing holiday with a sprained ankle. Zoe said, ‘Stephen's gone to Melbourne for a conference, but Russell can collect and deliver you. He'd be glad to.' Zoe could not realise how almost comical, how almost very said, it was, that a third person should feel free to tell Anna anything about him. Even now, while hundreds of facts about their lives had never been exchanged, there was some way in which they knew each other so absolutely that facts were irrelevant, another person's opinion of either a sort of arrogance, a rash effrontery.

Both had a capacity for deep and lasting friendship; neither saw why the other sex should be excluded because of property rights. Admittedly, affectionate regard, admiration, the discerning appreciation of another's qualities were, for certain persons, volatile agents. But they had lived their particular lives. Their characters had formed a long time ago. There was no danger. For ages now, long after Anna's ankle was forgotten, Russell had continued to drive her home at night when they both happened to be free. Lily had no objection: she was accustomed to his having multitudinous commitments; this was one among many.

In the beginning, there was innocent hilarity, raillery, an air of delight that her sprained ankle had resulted in this luck, this time spent travelling to and fro which was, somehow, so great a relief to them both. Their pleasure was perfectly harmless. Russell had known her, after all, since she was fifteen! Because of their recognition of each other, they had always fallen into close, familiar conversation when they were alone. With the confidence of those who know themselves well and feel the issues of their lives decided, quite without misgivings (they were not likely to underestimate what was owing to others), they had allowed themselves to enjoy the extraordinary ease of being together.

Gradually, something had gone wrong. They were like travellers in the Himalayas. Immensity, the momentous, surrounded them inescapably. They laughed too much; they talked too quickly, and too obviously at random. The silent immensity would not go away. Since they knew so exactly what was permissible, and were so scrupulous, they were dismayed by these changes, and could only begin to place heavier and heavier guards on their behaviour. Previously, their common awareness that they could not misunderstand each other made circumspection unnecessary. Now, it seemed that that very impossibility which had been the basis of the light-heartedness, the freedom spun between them, was what made watchfulness so essential.

Tonight, held up at a red light, Russell turned to her. ‘Is the exhibition sold out?'

‘You saw it.'

‘Yes. He's going through a bad time. The four in the corner are best.'

She nodded emphatically, then looked ahead at the road.

He went on, ‘Zo and Stephen were marrying you off to John Trenchard.'

Anna said nothing. Then she said, ‘Oh, were they!' and meticulously scanned the traffic-jammed road ahead, and the buildings on either side of the street. ‘No, of course not,' she said in a low hurried tone. ‘How could they think so?'

Glancing into her eyes, then back at the road, Russell said, ‘Oh, it happens often enough. There's a wedding party now.' A long black car full of white tulle and flowers passed.

‘It happens. No, we don't even go out any more.'

In the years since David's death, several agreeable men of between thirty and forty-five had gravitated towards Anna—the divorced, the bachelors, the deserted husbands. She went out with them and listened. Their problems had for the time being resolved themselves into one: the lack of a wife, a proper home life. Odd men out, unclaimed, they wanted to be found. Their manner declared it from the start, and within days or weeks, it was stated unequivocally.

By remaining silent, Russell gave the impression of requiring a further explanation. Casting a glance at his profile, Anna cleared her throat.

‘He wants to marry someone. You can't let people waste their time and money if you're not going to take them seriously. There are plenty of women who'd think themselves lucky to get him. He's lonely. I suppose a lot of people are lonely. Then, almost anyone who strikes them as—
quite nice
—will do. It doesn't have to be a particular person, or even a certain sort of person.'

Speaking in a tone of enormous objectivity, looking straight ahead, Anna felt her skeleton waver secretly, as though it were seaweed pressed about by movements of deepest seas, invisible on the glittering surface.

‘Not everybody differentiates between people as much as you do.' Russell's voice was somehow careful.

‘Aren't they lucky!'

‘No.'

She gave a brief, sad smile. ‘They show a lot of sense.'

‘No.'

This sombre, monosyllabic Russell alarmed her. She rushed on, ‘Of course, if you want more and don't get it, you miss more. But even that might be better than wanting less in the first place.'

‘We all like what we want.'

There was a conscious silence.

Winding the car window up and then down again, Anna said hastily, ‘So if
their
being quite nice isn't enough, you have to undeceive people. I can't see the world as a great hospital with us all nursing and pitying each other. There's something better than that. What I mean is—I never pity anyone I care for, so if what someone wants is pity, I can't care for him.'

They halted at a traffic light. An unaccompanied labrador wearing a studded collar walked over the pedestrian crossing in front of six lanes of cars reined in at the starting barrier.

The lights changed. On both sides of the median strip the traffic surged forward. Russell said, ‘You've had your share of neurotics. But I always feel sorry for people. What have you got against it?'

Out of dark experience, not expecting understanding even from him, she said, understating, ‘I've seen it do a lot of harm. One person pitied at bitter cost to someone else, with the well-meaning pitier unaware of all except his good intentions.'

‘Are you thinking of your uncle?'

‘Not only him. He was only one sort of pitier—blinded by a single obsession and murdered by it. Complex, truthful, feeling people give me great joy. Pitiable people give others great joy. (Charles wasn't like that.) And in both cases, the more complex and so on, and the more pitiable, the better.'

‘You like to appreciate; they like to help and be charitable.'

‘Ah, yes. But to satisfy their yearnings, someone has to be in an inferior position. The holy satisfaction of having done good to the weak is one I'm wary of.'

‘You wouldn't see them abandoned. I'm almost certain you'd give a steak to a starving man.'

She smiled. ‘But dispassionately. No, with someone like Charles it's the maniacal exclusiveness of his pity; in the others, it's the assumption of the mantle of one abler and wiser that I feel as corrupting.'