Look At Me Part 2

I think perhaps that he had suddenly grown rather impatient with that hothouse atmosphere of intimacy that had so attracted him earlier in the evening. And his legs were so long that he found sitting at a small table rather uncomfortable. And so we found ourselves, somewhat incongruously, in the lounge of a very large hotel in Knightsbridge and sat ourselves round a table surrounded by acres of orange and brown geometrical carpet. There was no one else there but an Italian family chattering in a corner; their small daughter, a beautiful child with big over-tired eyes and tiny earrings, ran round and round, getting more tired, and stopping on her way to gaze at us. Alix offered her an olive from a dish on our table, and she covered her face with her hands and ran back to her mother.

I remember that they were putting up Christmas decorations, two-dimensional gold trees fixed to the fake pilasters.

*Rather early, isn't it?' I remarked to Alix. It was only the third week in October.

*Oh no,' she said. *They always do it early. Foreign tourists expect it. Anyway, it can't be too early for me. I love Christmas.'

*I don't,'James and I said simultaneously, and looked at each other in surprise.

*I usually spend it with my mother,' he explained. *We're both divorced and we both dread it.'

*I can't wait for it to be over,' I confessed, not wanting to go into the business of Nancy and our sad little celebration. Public Holiday Syndrome is something you keep to yourself, I thought. I was amazed and enchanted to find a fellow sufferer.

*But you must come with us this year,' cried Alix. *A whole crowd of us usually gets together. You know practically everyone by now. It's great fun. And it saves cooking.'

*Spaghetti,' murmured Nick, and dodged a glancing blow.

*Boxing Day is even worse,' James continued; he had by now quite lost his original shyness. *On Boxing Day I am obliged to go for a healthy walk. A very healthy walk.'

Alix groaned. *On Boxing Day we go to Nick's parents. Don't remind me.'

Nick laughed. *Darling, they adore you.'

How interesting, I noted. They adore her. If I were in her place, I should adore them.

*I usually go to the Benedicts',' I said. *Olivia, you know. In the Library. Her parents. But it usually ends up in a healthy walk, just the same.'

*Sounds delirious,' Alix broke in. *What exactly is the matter with that girl?'

I shouldn't have minded the question, although few people ask it. They take Olivia's disability for granted, as she does. She was injured in a car accident when she was about sixteen. She spent a year in hospital, and a further year at home afterwards. She made a good recovery, but she has a certain amount of difficulty walking, although as she is always sitting down this is rarely noticed. What had caught Alix's eye was her neck brace, that cruel pink collar on which her beautiful head so uncomfortably rests. In my mind's eye I remembered her on that day when Nick had brought Alix to the Library and had invited me to dinner. Olivia had blushed at Alix's glance, and then had whitened when forced to witness the performance with the hair. She 80 a had picked up a pair of scissors and had begun to trim a photograph; she had had to bring it up rather high into her field of vision and Alix had noted this too.

I also saw Olivia's perfect face, a colourless olive face with eyes so black that the iris and the pupil seemed to be one. I saw the long waving black hair parted in the middle and falling to her shoulders, over the neck brace. It is this face, and her impeccable good sense and balance, that makes me literally forget her movements when she has to get up from her chair. She is so good at her job, such a natural scholar, that it does not matter that she cannot walk round the tables or carry piles of photographs. I do that for her. It works out quite easily, and what I have in physical strength, she has in moral strength. We are dear friends.

I also see her on those Sundays, after lunch and the brazil nuts, when her untidy mother and her silent father, both rather ugly people, seat her in her chair in the drawing room and gaze at her with unsentimental love. They seem more impressed with her beauty than with her disability, and as they have always taken this att.i.tude, which is perfectly genuine, she is singularly uninhibited about her appearance. I don't know what she feels about it, for she never mentions it, and I have long since ceased to notice it. I put down her blush to her love for Nick, rather than to anything Alix had said or done.

*Spinal damage. She manages very well,' said James, for I could not trust myself to answer. Suddenly the surroundings of that hotel, with the geometrical carpet and the gold trees, seemed tawdry, the refuge of people who had no genuine reason to be out. I had already got Olivia's Christmas present, a first edition of The Ordeal of Richard Feveral, her favourite novel, and I also saw the smile that would break up her little face when I gave it to her.

Alix began to stir, rather restlessly. *Well, I think we can do better than that,' she said. James and I looked at each other, and after a moment smiled. *I'll have a word with Maria,' said Alix. *And let you know. Put yourselves in my hands.' She looked at us speculatively. *You could do worse,' she added.

It was close to midnight when we got outside. It was a beautiful night, cold and misty, with a yellow moon. I was tired but excited; I had had such an extraordinary evening that I did not want it to end. I wanted, in fact, to walk a little, but discussions were already under way between Alix and Nick about who was to be dropped first. James, obviously. Markham Street was closer than Maida Vale. The car, when Nick opened the door, smelt of cigarettes.

*Oh,' I said impulsively. *I wish we could walk.'

*We can,' James replied. *At least, we can. I'll walk you home, Frances.'

I turned to Alix and then to Nick, both of whom looked faintly amused.

*I see,' said Alix. *I see.' She laughed, and we had to join in. And this time I laughed with genuine pleasure and surprise. For the one thing I had not expected was to be written into the plot. I had really not expected that at all.

We parted with promises to ring up the following day, and our voices left an echo in the misty air.

James and I walked in silence until we got to the top of Sloane Street. Everything around us was quiet, but not quiet enough for me. The air was very still, and there was a faint scent of burnt leaves. After a moment I said, *Do you think we could walk through the park?'

*Of course,' he replied. *It's what I intended. You're not tired, are you? Could you walk all the way home?' I think that was the happiest night of my life. We walked in complete silence through the silent park, and it seemed to me that instead of drawing to a close the year was just beginning. Beginnings are so beautiful. Although I am naturally pale, I could feel the blood warm in my cheeks. I drew no conclusion from this, and my instinct was correct. I was not falling in love. Nor was there any likelihood that I might. But I was being protected, and that was something that I had not experienced for as long as I could remember. I was coming first with someone, as I had not done for some sad months past, and in my heart of hearts for longer, much longer.

*They're a remarkable couple, aren't they?' he asked, more to break the silence than anything else. *Remarkable.' I agreed. *Wonderful friends.'

So we walked up the Edgware Road, past the nurses' uniforms and the s.e.x shops and the bleary light from the launderette, and after a while he said, *You're not tired, are you?' and I shook my head, for I could have gone on for ever.

*But how will you get back?' I asked him suddenly, when we were at my door. *You have no car, and taxis are hopeless around here.'

*I'll walk back,' he replied. *Goodnight, Frances. I'll see you tomorrow.'

That night I did not bother to write.

Six.

And I did not write for many evenings that followed. In my new security I began to see it all in a different light. I began to hate that inner chemical excitement that made me run the words through in my head while getting ready to set them down on the page; I felt a revulsion against the long isolation that writing imposes, the claustration, the sense of exclusion; I experienced a thrill of distaste for the alternative life that writing is supposed to represent. It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world's tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present, and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state *I hurt' or *I hate' or *I want'. Or, indeed, *Look at me'. And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, of thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory.

So that when I received a congratulatory letter from the prestigious American magazine, and the news that my story about Dr Leventhal's h.e.l.lenic adventures would shortly be published, I felt no urge to sit down and write another. Rather the opposite. I looked on my success as the fitting conclusion to a career wrongly chosen, and dangerous in its implications of future effort and loneliness. I could now sign off with a flourish and never write again.

Of course, I was pleased, in a nonessential way. I felt the reward was undeserved because I no longer wanted that sort of reward. But Olivia was pleased, if only because she takes things so much more seriously than I do. And James was delighted. His haughty, horsey face broke into a smile such as I had never seen before when I told him about it. That smile was directed at the magazine, which he held in his hands, and I knew then that I wanted that smile to be directed nowhere but at myself. Look at me, I wanted to say, look at me. That was how and when I found out about writing.

I telephoned Alix, of course, because that is the sort of thing she loves. She gave a shout, and said, *Hey, hey. We must celebrate.'

*My treat,' I said. *I should hope so,' was her reply. *Shall I ask James to join us?' I felt awkward at this point because I had thought of James so much that I could not have enjoyed this little celebration if he had not been there, so I decided to be entirely honest and said to Alix, *Oh, yes please. Four is a better number than three, don't you think?' Then I wondered if I had offended her because there was a short silence, and she said, *I think two is the best number of all, myself', and I agreed so fervently that I managed to convince myself that we had been talking about the same thing. Perhaps we had; I shall never know.

Beginnings are so beautiful. I was not in love with James, but now there was something to get up for in the mornings, other than that withering little routine that would eventually transform me into a version of Miss Morpeth, although I had no niece in Australia who might brighten my last years. Nor would I turn into Mrs Halloran, still game, but doomed to hopelessness. No gla.s.ses of gin for me, no bottle in the wardrobe of a room in a hotel in South Kensington, no evenings lying on the bed dressed in a housecoat too young and too pink, casting superior horoscopes for those who fear the future. With what thankfulness did I register my deliverance from this dread, which had possessed me for as long as I could remember. I breathed more deeply, slept more soundly, ate more heartily, freed from this weight. Nancy's mumblings and shufflings, ceased to bother me, for they no longer represented the shades of the prison house. In fact I began to love her as I had loved her long ago, when, as a child, I ran to her to be kissed, and made up treats for her. I realized that she too must feel isolated, particularly as she was so shy and did not make friends easily. As I swung out of the building one morning, I had a word with the porter, Mr Reardon, and arranged for him to go up to the flat and have tea, when he came off duty. He could sit with Nancy for half an hour, and give her the evening paper, which he always bought at lunchtime, for the racing forecasts. So that Nancy felt a little happier too.

I felt strong, I felt energetic, I felt... young. I had never felt this before. I had always understood that I would have to a.s.sume responsibilities that others found unacceptable. I had been writing the cheques and paying the bills and the tax when I was still in my teens; it was always I who called the doctor. Nancy would ask me to buy her a new dress, a new cardigan. *Like my blue one, Miss Fan. The one Madam likes.' Every time I looked at her I could see some garment that I had bought either for Nancy, or for my mother, and the sadness of those 86 M afternoons, in department stores, all alone, fingering modest nightgowns, opaque stockings, discreet and genteel garments, and taking them home to that claustral quiet, for their inspection. They loved those times. But I hated them. They were a parody of all the shopping I wanted to do. They interfered with my impulse to please myself, so that I might please others.

I had never thought myself interesting to look at, but now I could not help noticing that my eyes were wider, my expression lively with antic.i.p.ation. I began to study my appearance in the gla.s.s. I looked through my clothes and put the dull sensible things on one side. I got rid of the heavy walking shoes, and gave my navy coat to Nancy. I bought a couple of pullovers, and a wool s.h.i.+rt, in light fresh colours, sky blue and white. I resurrected a pale grey dress with a white puritan collar and a black bow at the neck that I had not worn for a couple of years and had folded up and put aside because I thought it looked too elaborate for the sort of life I led. Now, as I examined myself with a franker sort of appreciation, I thought it made me look interesting, almost unusually so. I began to look forward to dressing up for the day that lay before me.

My att.i.tudes in general seemed to have undergone a change for the better, making me less sharp, more receptive. I felt myself sliding deliciously downwards into a miasma of kindliness. I found amus.e.m.e.nt in my routine at the Library, not the engineered amus.e.m.e.nt that I had tried to ama.s.s for my stories, but genuine human oddness and fascination. I told no one of the change in myself, the sense I had that life was opening up for my inspection, and more than that, for my partic.i.p.ation. Mrs Halloran had long since stopped waiting for me to mention Nick's frequent appearances round the door when he collected me in the evenings. I had disappointed her, I know, but I did not wish to share what I had. For it was such a novelty for me to have anything, although from her point of view I was one of the lucky ones, with the flat and my job and my stable income. I could not tell her that I was only just beginning my life, for she would have stared at me, had such a conversation ever taken place, and asked me what had ever stood in my way. I could not tell her that even in defeat, which was how I viewed my life until this moment, there are certain loyalties to be observed. Her lack of sympathy, I felt, would still have been absolute.

Olivia was pleased, although I had said nothing to her. She was pleased for me, because I was happy, although she may have regretted things for herself. She had not only her love for Nick to forget, but also the hope, which our two mothers had silently shared, that I might marry her brother David. I believe my mother said something to Olivia, when she began to get so very ill, although Olivia, being a creature of exquisite delicacy, has never mentioned this to me. But she knows that my mother loved her; she remembers my mother's thin hand caressing her wondrous hair; she feels the loyalty too. Yet she was pleased for me.

I saw James every day. He would linger in the Library until I arrived in the morning, and I would make us both some coffee, which we drank from the Mickey Mouse mugs. And if we were not going to the Frasers, or meeting at the restaurant, he would walk me home in the evenings. I worried that I could not invite him to a meal, explaining that I would have to get Nancy used to the idea., but he said, *We have plenty of time', and so there was no awkwardness on that score. The days pa.s.sed swiftly between our early morning meetings and our long walks home. I don't think that anyone noticed anything. James was much more reticent than I was, much more careful. I was cautious because I could not believe my good fortune; when I could believe it, I knew that I should become extravagantly demonstrative. But he had a high level of control, which I suppose went with his professional demeanour; at any rate, it went well with the rusty unused voice and the haughty and impa.s.sive face. I found such reticence very exciting. For I knew he cared for me.

We were very shy with each other. I never asked him about his divorce, for I think I sensed that he too wanted to begin again. Because we were so shy - longing for our meetings, but sometimes faltering in conversation - we made sure that we went out with the Frasers a great deal. Those evenings at the restaurant, with James's arm lying across the back of my chair, and Maria sitting down with us - so that we were five - were very precious to me. Alix and Nick made fun of us a little, but we learned to deal with it, as long as we were together. *Maria,' Alix would say, *take a look at this. Aren't they sweet?'

*I'm not...' we would say, simultaneously, but we never pursued it, for James hated these allusions, and I found them tiresome. But evidently we had been brought up by like-minded parents. My mother had always told me to ignore a remark which I found offensive unless someone's honour depended on it. So I always looked at James and laughed at these moments, and, truth to tell, I enjoyed those moments of complicity as much as all the rest.

Secrets, the right to have secrets. We had very few, for although he told me that I knew him better than anyone, I never really felt that I knew him at all. It was our shyness that we had in common, and it was this that Alix mistook for lack of experience. Because of the bond that our shyness created, because it was always reinforced by those convivial evenings, the walks home from the restaurant seemed to us heightened, more significant, than an ordinary walk home from work at the end of the day. It was on one of these occasions that I renounced all caution and invited him in, although I knew that Nancy, looking like a mole in the brushed wool dressing gown that I had bought her, would inevitably shuffle in from the kitchen when she heard two sets of footsteps (her hearing is extremely acute) and have to be introduced. But even this pa.s.sed off well, for she reminded James of his old nanny and he had a very nice talk with her. After that, she took to leaving us little trays, biscuits and coffee in a Thermos flask, as she had for my parents when they were much younger and still went out in the evenings. And it came to be a very sweet routine for me: the long walk home, in the dry cold, the empty streets, the silent entry into the flat, so as not to wake Nancy (for it was sometimes very late), the removal of coats and gloves, the quick embrace. I would slip into the kitchen to collect the tray, and James would go into the drawing room and light lamps and switch on the terrible electric fire with the simulated logs in the fireplace surrounded by pink tiles with blue kingfishers painted on them. We would drag two pale hide footstools, with cabriole legs, in front of the warmth and drink our childish drink, and then I would sit on the ground at his feet and he would put his arm round me, and his large authoritative hand would stroke my face and hair. Sometimes we would talk, sometimes just sit together in silence. I think we were so happy that we found this enough.

Even when we were apart I did not feel alone. On Sundays, after lunch with the Benedicts, I would walk through the streets to the National Gallery or the Tate, and I would think of James, who always spent this time with his mother. I would feel no urgency, no longing, simply an unclouded and beneficent energy. I would look in the windows of expensive shops and wonder if the many exotic things that I saw would be suitable for my adornment. This was pure fantasy for I had no intention of buying them. But it was a significant exercise, for it meant that I considered myself worthy, as I had never done before. The change in my consciousness was so bewildering that I looked back on my previous life with a sort of amazed pity. That narrowness, those scruples, that prolonged childhood... I even, and this is a great test, began to consider journeys I might make, for my own pleasure, without him. I had never been to Greece, and I thought I might now go, some time soon. And I knew that if I went I should enjoy it, as I had never enjoyed a journey before. Because I should have James to come back to. By the very fact of his existence, he had given validity to my entire future.

He had told me, and these facts I lovingly rehea.r.s.ed as I walked along the Mall, now grey, the gutters filled with dried and scudding leaves, that he had been born in India. His father had been a diplomat and the family had lived abroad, in different postings, for some years. He had grown up in Brazil, in Egypt, before being sent home to school. This excited me and made me want to enlarge my own horizons. I wanted to emulate his familiarity with different continents, with exotic places. It conferred on him a worldliness, to which I deferred. Sometimes I thought that he must find me dull, and once I confessed as much to him. But he laughed and said, *Dearest Frances. You couldn't be dull if you tried', and kissed me. Yet I felt in him a superiority, a masculine experience, all the more powerful because he did nothing to exploit it. And at the same time, with so much to turn over in my mind, I did not feel too dull myself.

I began to see him as one of those persons whose destiny I had always desired to follow. To be in his company, to hold his hand, to feel his large fingers tighten round my own, made me feel very humble, very fortunate, very chosen. At such times I would steal a glance at his fair, punis.h.i.+ngly flattened, hair, at his hawk-like nose, and wonder what he could see in me. I felt that there must be a world of women, beautiful women, waiting for him. When I thought of this my heart would beat a little unsteadily, and my earlier euphoria change into a wonder that had something anxious about it. I felt there was a danger to me in his very excellence. And yet he seemed perfectly contented. I think in all conscience that he was happy too.

Alix, of course, who was immensely interested in the whole procedure, could not believe that this was all there was to it. I could hardly believe it myself. It was not like anything I had ever known before. But I seemed to be unable to explain this to her. Or rather she seemed unable to accept it. Perhaps I was simply at a loss, for suddenly all the available words, scenarios, plots, exaggerations, seemed to have failed me. That was the most extraordinary thing; I was wordless. Yet Alix could not see that this was the most extraordinary thing. I could, but she couldn't. She a.s.sumed that I was being furtive. *Darling,' she would call out to Nick, *she's holding out on me again.' I would laugh, as I always did, although I was making such rapid strides in self-confidence that I thought it time she took James and myself for granted. But as she had introduced us, she felt she had a proprietorial right in the matter, and she would often exercise this. There was, I perceived, a certain feudalism in her att.i.tude; she not only exacted a sort of emotional droit de seigneur; she extended this into perpetual suzerainty. Part of me observed this, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had lost the words with which I might once have investigated the matter.

Instead I turned away from her, aware of some area of unfinished business that threatened our friends.h.i.+p, yet unwilling to waste time on this. I had more impor- tant things to do. I had James, my life's work, to study. I had to find out what pleased him, what made him laugh, what he liked to eat. And I had to take my time over this. It all needed the most enormous amount of thinking over. In the first place I had to cancel out all the old information, forget I ever knew... all those sad spoiled things. Caution was needed. I saw that. I had visions of myself at my old merciless interrogations, and shuddered. This time I was going to be innocent, even if it killed me. And I would not take notes. Well, not many. As few as possible.

So I made no demands, brought about no changes. I was uninformative but I was agreeable. I tried to keep the friends.h.i.+p in order. We continued to eat together, at the usual place, because Alix knew and liked it, and, perhaps because of the increasing cold, Alix was becoming distant and a little fretful. One evening, I remember, she took me into the bedroom and said, quite seriously, *You're holding out on me, aren't you?' And I said, just as seriously, *No, Alix, I'm not. "Do you honestly mean to tell me', she went on, turning her head from side to side and watching her reflection in the mirror of her dressing table, settling the pearl studs in her ears, and smoothing her hair at the back of her neck, *that you and James aren't having a roaring affair? You must think I was born yesterday.' I said, although it displeased me to do so, that I was not keeping anything from her. *H'm,' she snorted, by which time Nick had appeared in the doorway, wondering why we were taking so long. His expression was mischievous, but also pleading, and his glance strayed to Alix, who was by now carefully making up her mouth. She who must be obeyed. Then we went back into the sitting room, where the sight of James, in his long, severe overcoat, thrilled me with delight and I forgot the whole incident.

Nothing could spoil my pleasure. Even when I saw the magazine with my short story in it, folded back to the t.i.tle page - *Professor Rosenbaum and the Delphic Oracle' - and on that same page, clearly unread, a round brown ring, as if a mug of coffee had been rested there, I only said, laughing, *You haven't read my story.' Alix turned her head, her grey eyes vague and distant. *Oh. Oh, that. No, I haven't', and then, her eyes still vague, *Are you very cross?' And I laughed again, and said that I wasn't, but that she had better read this one because I wasn't going to write any more. *In that case,' she said, *I don't see why you shouldn't take the spare room.'

There was a certain awkwardness about- this. Alix held on to the fact that I had said that I could not move in with them because I needed the flat for my writing. Now that I had announced that I was not going to write any more, she refused to see why I could not take the room. But my flat had become very dear to me, and our late silent evenings, sanctioned by Nancy with her buns and coffee, had become very dear to me too. And I knew they meant quite a lot to Nancy, for she had quite ceased to worry about locking the front door, and so, in some symbolic way, the flat had changed, had become my home, as it had never been before. She was acknowledging me as the mistress of the house, and this was another innocent pleasure, for I had never thought of myself in this light. In fact, as we had so much room, and as James was so fed up with living in Markham Street with his mother, who was not half so accommodating about his late returns, I wondered at which point I should suggest... But I put this idea behind me, for I knew that he might consider this precipitate. Dear James. I found him so ludicrously well brought up, so full of honour, and I treasured these qualities, for after my long claustration I needed something reliable in my life. Otherwise, the change would have been too dramatic. I needed, I suppose, a continuation of respectability, of quietness. I needed to see Nancy's smile, which I had not seen for a very long time, and which now greeted me in the mornings, when our paths crossed. I needed to enjoy her little indulgences, the fresh rolls she brought me back on Sundays, after she had been to Ma.s.s, or the nursery puddings that she started to make again. I needed to deserve these things. And I wanted to be spoilt, at the same time, in the way, I suppose, that fortunate young women are spoiled. Or lucky ones. I wanted to be treated like... Like a bride, of course.

And yet I did not love James, in the fatal sense. I did more than that. I enjoyed him. I knew about love and its traps. How it starts well, how mistakes are made, how, in moments of confidence or unbearable pain, things are said which can never be unsaid. How caution intervenes, and you behave like a polite friend, aching with the need to renounce that caution, if only to say intolerable things again. How those intolerable things seem to contain the essence of your knowledge of each other, of intimacy. How cruelty comes into it. And terror. Suspicion. How you are bound by those rules of politeness, self-imposed, once again, never to seek out the vital information. How not knowing becomes worse than knowing. How your life becomes devoted to finding out. And how you find out. I knew all that. I never speak of it.

But James was my friend, and I held his hand as confidently as a child holds the hand of its parent. I told him everything, for he loved to hear me, and being so reticent himself, it was an amus.e.m.e.nt and a diversion for him to hear me rattle on. And I came to know how to make him laugh, and all the funny things that I had been saving up for my diary and my stories I lavished on him, and they became warmer, kinder in the telling. And he knew things too. He seemed to think as much of Olivia as I did, which made me very happy. He told me that Dr Simek had been a very eminent specialist in Prague, and a professor at the University, that his daughter was an actress but that she had joined the Party, and that now she no longer wrote to him. That, more than his exile, was Dr Simek's great grief. He told me that Mrs Halloran had also been on the stage, although in a much rowdier capacity (I suppose I might have guessed that, and I felt a momentary pang of annoyance because I hadn't), that Dr Leventhal was the sole support of his widowed sister, with whom he lived. I asked him about Nick's research, but he did not want to talk shop, and I never asked him about his. I thought, and I was right, I know, that we dealt with each other as each other would have wished. He pleased me all the time.

For I always knew when I would see him. He did not keep me waiting. He did not make me wonder or speculate. This was so unlike the last time, the time of which I never speak. I can only say that everything that had happened then was miraculously reversed, and I embarked on this venture with full confidence. The worst thing that a man can do to a woman is to make her feel unimportant. James never did that. That whole late autumn, which was exceptionally cold and exceptionally dry, favouring our walks, was for me a time of a.s.surance and comfort and antic.i.p.ation. There were no images in my head. I did not write. I was happy.

Oddly, or perhaps not oddly, when you come to think of it) I wanted nothing more. I had no thought of going on to the next stage, because I was enjoying this one so much. I knew that it would take me a long time to unlearn my lessons, to let down my defences, to find out how to be carefree and trusting. I still kept to my old habits, still lunched with Julia or the Benedicts on Sundays, made an expedition to Harrods to buy a blouse that Nancy had seen advertised in my Sunday paper and 96 a wanted to send to her sister in Cork, because I could not easily renounce a way of life that I had known for so many years. I knew that when the time came some sort of transition would be effected, but that even this transition must be carefully lived through. I did not want to hurt anyone - that old reflex. No one must be disinherited. If I did this carefully, I thought, then I would deserve all my happiness. As to that happiness, so nebulous, and yet so focused, I would let James organize that.

Suddenly it became much colder, and a recognition of the season impinged upon me. The Frasers began to talk again of Christmas. I paid less attention to their plans for us all to get together - I did not entirely want to think of this, for it meant that Nancy would be alone - and concentrated on finding wonderful presents for them all. I went shopping, in those same department stores, but this time looking at incredibly expensive and extravagant things: French soaps, jars of Stilton, cashmere pullovers, Carlsbad plums. I did not buy them for I wanted to extend my pleasure. Every lunchtime I would desert Olivia and go window shopping. From being very frugal I now became anxious to spend as much money as possible. I was in a state of euphoria which cancelled every prudent thought I had ever had.

The cold made our walks exhilarating. We huddled together in the starry silence, my hand in James's hand, in his pocket. We strode through the park, where no one now lingered, no one looking for love or the price of a drink. The flat, when we reached it, was beautifully warm and dim, and sometimes I hated to think of James turning out again and walking all the way back. Once or twice I asked him, tentatively, to stay. Once or twice he hesitated, as if waiting to be persuaded. But it never turned into an issue, and in a way I was glad. I felt that it should not happen like this, although I knew that it might. In my mind I had fixed the childish thought that we must both reach Christmas in this peculiar condition of innocence, of unspoiled expectation, of happy hope. I wanted it all to go properly, to go well. And somehow, in that flat... I wanted him to take me away. I wanted an hotel, near a lake, in the mountains, where n.o.body knew us. I wanted us to be alone. I even wanted to wait until he suggested it.

So that in the meantime I took every pleasure that the unresolved situation offered. I enjoyed my friends.h.i.+p with the Frasers so much more that I was no longer officially regarded as subtly unfortunate, although Alix still occasionally referred to me as Little Orphan f.a.n.n.y. I enjoyed being there with James. And, of course, I enjoyed James. It seemed to me that enjoyment could only increase if things went on as they were for a little longer. After that I would do whatever was demanded of me.

One evening, as we were preparing to leave the restaurant, Alix said, *This is ridiculous.' Nick joined in, *No, honestly, n.o.body in their right mind stays out in the cold the way you two do. You must be mad.' Alix went on, *What makes you think they stay out? I never believed that for a moment.' There was an odd little pause. It seemed to be up to me to do or say something, but I somehow could not decide what it was. Moreover, I did not see why the decision had to be made in that context, at that point. So I merely laughed, and said, *Alix, you simply must not tease', which fell a bit flat. She looked at me and said, *I honestly think you're round the bend,' and, turning to James, *As for you, I'd be a bit worried by now if I were in her position.' He stared at her, and I thought he was going to lose his temper, but he never does, so he didn't. It pa.s.sed off somehow. We felt, James and I, strangely apologetic. We felt that they were disappointed with us, irritated by us. We felt that we had bored them, or, rather, not diverted them in some essential way. So that when they insisted on driving us home that same evening, we looked at each other and then said we'd be awfully grateful. It was rather cold. Alix insisted on their dropping me off first. She sat in the back of the car, her fur coat wrapped tightly around her, and I remembered how difficult she found the winter. Again I felt a pang for her, and did not mind when she snuggled up to James, who was also sitting in the back. I sat with Nick in the front, ready to be dropped first. I did not ask them in because I knew that the noise of four people would alarm Nancy. I kissed James hurriedly and watched him climb back in the car, next to Alix. And then I watched them drive off. It seemed extraordinary to be alone, for the first time in nearly three weeks.

Alix telephoned me the following morning. She sounded much more lighthearted than of late, and did not even complain of the cold. *When shall I see you?' I asked, aware that Dr Leventhal had come into the room behind me. *Oh, as soon as possible,' she replied. *It will all be much easier now. "Easier?' I asked. *How?'

*Well,' she said, *more convenient anyway. I've managed to persuade James to take the spare room. That way we can all spend more time together.'

Seven.

I worried that James might no longer want to see me home, but in that I was wrong. Everything went on just as before. Everything, that is, as far as I was concerned.

In fact it was better. We were always four at dinner, or sometimes five, when Maria joined us, but James seemed more anxious to be alone with me, and we began to leave earlier than before, and sometimes lingered by the Serpentine in that frosty park, before striding on towards Marble Arch and the Edgware Road, and my home. I began to wish that I had asked James to live with us, for Nancy would have made him very comfortable. I had not realized how difficult he found it living at home with his mother, and I felt vaguely guilty, vaguely at fault, for not thinking about him in that protective way that Alix had. Their spare room was very small, and I did not see how he could get all his large austere clothes into that tiny cupboard, but I supposed he could always go back to Markham Street for his laundry or for a change of suit. And I supposed that it was more fun for him, being with the Frasers. I remembered how I had once looked forward to living with them myself, and had so nearly moved in for good. It was only the writing that had stopped me. And then James, of course.

I think he began to love me properly then. He smiled less, looked at me almost angrily, never wanted to leave. Once, I insisted that he stay, something I would never have done had I not felt that change was in the air. *Better not,' he said. *They always wait up for me. The flat's so small that they hear me come in anyway. It disturbs them.' This seemed so stupid that I told him that he might just as well have stayed with his mother. *Well,' he said, *she waited until the morning to tell me off. At least Alix gets it off her chest straight away.' It occurred to me to wonder why such a strong, severe man let himself be bossed around so much, by women who could not, when you came down to it, claim his attention with as much right as I did. Knowing that I had this right, I never abused it. I did not want to be the sort of futile woman who complains, in public, over trivialities. I wanted him to feel free. And so, when his timing became a little erratic, when he sometimes failed to get to the Library as early in the mornings as he had formerly done, when I sometimes missed him altogether, I said nothing. I smiled when I next saw him, and said nothing. I see no virtue in making a man feel guilty. Although I believe it sometimes works.

I began to miss him in the mornings. My exuberant walk to the Library became overlaid with anxiety as to whether I should see him or not. I imagined the three of them having breakfast together, half dressed, in the sort of delightful squalor that I have never been able to manage. I could quite see that he might not want to break away from this new and exciting intimacy in order to drink coffee from a Mickey Mouse mug with someone whom he would probably see later that evening anyway. So strong was my sense that he was enjoying his life with Nick and Alix that I had an image of them, which was worrying on two counts. In the first place I thought I had done with these projections of mine, which never did me any good. I had been living in the present and I liked it there. In the second place, the image, coming from some bas.e.m.e.nt area of my personality and imagination, presented itself as extremely disturbing. Collusive. I saw the three of them talking together, laughing. I was particularly alarmed by this, the laughter. I could find no clue to it.

As if to chase this image, which kept recurring, I walked more briskly, performed my duties in the Library more energetically than ever. I made preparations for Christmas quite as optimistically as I would have wished to see myself doing. If I did not meet James in the morning, I dismissed my disappointment as trivial, as indeed it was, for I should surely see him that evening. What was a little sad was that the pattern had s.h.i.+fted slightly. I still made my way across the park to Chelsea in the cold dusk, but it was now to find Nick and Alix and James all together in the warmth and already deep in conversation when I got there. Sometimes I would not catch up with their allusions until halfway through the evening, and I would not entirely relax until James and I were on our own, although this was sometimes so late that my spirits were a little subdued by fatigue. Even then I found that I could not always match my mood to his. He seemed to be somehow ahead of me, more cheerful, smiling when he remembered something, and saying, *No, it's nothing', when I asked him about it. I schooled myself not to feel excluded, although sometimes on his face I saw a secret, almost savage, grin which alarmed me. It alarmed me because it seemed to have nothing to do with me. And because I had no idea what could have brought it about.

Fortunately I am very strong and my looks never alter, so that James did not notice anything. But ca- sionally I felt weary and longed for our earlier instinctive simplicity. I longed, too, for us to know some sort of comfort, for all these arrangements suddenly began to seem to me makes.h.i.+ft, transitory. I began to see why Nick and Alix made fun of our long walks together, why they thought us so childish. It seemed to have been turned into a joke which everybody found amusing but myself. Alix, of course, could only see it as a joke, and Nick, who was not much interested, would occasionally cast his eyes heavenwards in dismay. I suppose it had its ludicrous aspect, but I found that I could no longer get it in perspective. What preoccupied me was the fact that I could no longer describe it. Having dismissed the merciless interrogator, the note-taker, that I once had been, I seemed to have precluded the possibility that I might quite simply have told James that I was not happy. Quite literally, I had no voice in the matter. And at times like these I would look at those laughing faces and try very hard to join in. I laughed my way across whole chasms of dismay.

When I looked at James I saw some of the same anxiety. He was not as happy as he had been; I could see that. But our gazes were more serious now; we each measured the other's discomfort. Because we were so like-minded, with grave, correct, and expectant ghosts in the background, we felt surrounded by an atmosphere of bad behaviour from which we could not disengage ourselves and which had its perverse attractions. *Surely, you must be awfully uncomfortable in that room?' I once asked him, but he only laughed and said that he enjoyed camping out for a bit. It was a change from his mother's spare bedroom, which was pink and white and made him feel like King Kong. And, he added, the Frasers were so enormously entertaining. He laughed reminiscently as he said this. I could understand him, because after all I had experienced the same sort of violent attachment myself. There was no earthly reason for me to grudge that excitement and pleasure to James. Their sort of life was a new experience for him, probably as liberating for him as it had been for me, and I must simply let him enjoy it. There was no reason why it should impinge on our own quieter, but deeper, pleasures.

It was a point of honour with me not to ask him what they said when they were together, without me. I could never, ever, contemplate asking him what they did, for with that odd image in my memory I could never believe that my question would be entirely innocent. I learned not to notice certain things, how he would stifle a yawn, how he would linger with Nick and Alix when I had already left them and walked to the door of the restaurant, how his hair was longer, how his handkerchiefs were now never so spotless as they had been when he lived at home, and how he did not seem to mind all these changes. I learned not to notice his occasional roughness with me when we said goodnight, or his opaque look when I took his hands and said, *Try to be early tomorrow morning.' I learned not to notice his bad moods, which had never been there for me to notice before, and I thought that maybe he was not getting enough sleep, that he needed a holiday, that I needed one too. And I mentioned this to him, and he turned to me with a look of expectation on his face, of pleasure, and, I thought, of hope, and it was then that I decided that I must get us away somehow, just the two of us. And the plans for Christmas became unimportant and insignificant, as I began to think ahead to the holiday we would take immediately afterwards.

So with this plan in my head I became calmer, and so did he, and although it refused to be anything but nebulous, it was also symbolic and it united us again. *Don't say anything about it yet,' I told him, and he nodded agreement. This curious need for secrecy was a further bond, but it also altered our plans. We could do nothing elaborate, requiring tickets or visas or hotel bookings, for all of this could easily become public telephone calls overheard, checking of timetables, arrangements how and when to meet - and it was essential to both of us to pretend that nothing unusual was afoot and to slip away all unnoticed while others were yawning or complaining of boredom or resolving to go on a diet or whatever people do after Christmas. We would go where no mocking remarks would reach us, away from that heightened and hectic atmosphere, so censorious of our innocence.

So I asked Olivia if her family were going to be using their house in Kent over the holidays. She has always told me that I could stay there whenever I wanted to. In fact I know the house well, for I usually spend summer weekends there with the Benedicts. It seemed strange to be asking Olivia if I could go there with James. That is how she came to know about us. I could not tell Olivia a lie.

She looked at me and said, *Is it what you want?'

I looked back at her, and because I could never tell Olivia a lie, I said, *I don't know.'

My state of doubt was curious. I knew that James loved me and yet I felt that he was in danger. Or that I was in danger. This was not quite clear to me. I felt that I was being hurried along a path that I had not originally wanted to take, or at least not with so much dispatch, so much secrecy. I had wanted the company of my friends to sustain my golden enjoyment and my new future, but those friends had turned into spectators, demanding their money's worth, urging their right to be entertained. And I no longer wanted to be available for that particular function.

I may have been presumptuous but it seemed to me that unless we were to differentiate between love and friends.h.i.+p we were going to run into all sorts of difficulties. It irked me that I was still supposed to give a full account of my movements and motives to Alix and Nick, whose avid interest, so much welcomed by me in the earlier weeks of our acquaintance, now began to appear in the light of an obligation I might not wish to fulfil. I had no experience of this sort of friends.h.i.+p, although I had observed that it was habitual with Alix: Nick, somehow, was always less involved, leaving the emotional complexities to his wife, who claimed the greater expertise in the matter. Indeed, it was this claim, this expertise, that made her so proprietorial. I did not see how I was to indicate to her that some of her comments were too exaggerated, her questions too provocative, or that in any case I might not wish to answer them. I did not know how to disengage myself from the intimacies that I had found so welcome when she proposed to take me in hand. I a.s.sumed, unrealistically, I suppose, that she would view the mature product I had suddenly become and treat it accordingly.

I could of course see that she might be attracted to James, but I dismissed the possibility of this becoming a serious problem. Alix was, as she constantly told us, totally fulfilled in her marriage, and in any case I did not see how she could expect me to defer to her on this point. It was also probable that she was attracted by James's innocence, by the piquancy of a masculinity that had not been squandered. But I, who knew the depths of that innocence, and also its strength when it was shared, doubted her ability to break a bond which in fact she could not understand. It was her genuine bewilderment at our blamelessness that caused her to ask so many questions. And when deprived of answers, she had decided, quite logically, to resort to closer methods of observation. Yet I knew that ou'r. implicity would always escape her. I knew that James and I had recognized this quality in each other, that it was our common knowledge, and that, so long as it remained so, we were safe.

I was perplexed but by no means in despair. If I wanted additional proof of James's love for me, this was provided by Alix.

It was about this time that Alix started to telephone me at the Library, a highly inconvenient move for me because I did not have a telephone of my own and had to trail into Dr Leventhal's office and stand before his desk like a penitent while he waited with ma.s.sive but pointed politeness for me to go away again. At first the calls were quite inconsequential. How was I? She was feeling particularly dreary, particularly chilled. The winter seemed endless and she was fed up with the flat. She didn't feel much like going out that evening; did I mind if we put off our dinner until Friday? As I had already decided to give no hint of my own distress I replied calmly that, of course, that would be perfectly all right and that I would see her on Friday. I was encouraged to do this by the sound of her voice, which was unusually flat and toneless. It was then that I realized that Alix was not happy.

We were very busy in the Library round about that time., so that I did not have too much time to think. Everybody seemed to have a cold or *flu, and although Olivia and I remained stalwart at our desks, our task was not lightened by the fact that Dr Leventhal insisted on coming to work, although he had a high temperature and was unable to do much, so that we had to do a great deal more. Mrs Halloran, her face periodically empurpled by a hacking cough, took rather more sustenance at lunchtime than was good for her or indeed for the Library, and would come back at three o'clock quite unfit for further study, although she was still able to cover sheets of paper with her das.h.i.+ng royal blue handwriting.

These sheets of paper tended to get swept off the table by the energetic movements of her batwing sleeves; she would then lower herself to the floor to retrieve them, and on one occasion had difficulty in getting up again. Fortunately Dr Simek was not there, and I helped her to her feet, and, at a nod from Olivia, made her a cup of very strong coffee in one of our mugs. *Thanks, darling,' she said loudly. *I'm not quite the thing today. This bug, you know. There's a lot of it going around.'

*Perhaps you should go home early,' suggested Olivia. *You look a little tired.'

*All right, all right, Miss Benedict. I know when I'm tired, thank you very much. Impudence. n.o.body tells me whether I'm tired or not. I know you want to get rid of me,' she shouted. *I've got eyes in my head, you know.'

*Mrs Halloran,' I said, *n.o.body wants to get rid of you. But you must make less noise.'

*G.o.d Almighty,' she said, but rather more quietly. *Am I bored. Are you bored, Miss Benedict? Are you bored, Miss Hinton? No. you wouldn't be, I suppose. Plenty to keep you on your toes, isn't there?'

I made no answer to this, although I saw the light of desperation dawning in her eye, and she might have gone on, had not Dr Leventhal appeared wearily in the doorway and said, *Telephone, Miss Hinton.'

I went into his room and picked up the telephone and it was Alix.