Free A Closed Eye by Anita Brookner Page A

escape much later in the form of memory. The figures of her parents, so smartly dressed, on their minuscule balcony, stirred depths in her, as their mere presence never did.
    They were the same age as her husband, yet Freddie still lived in the real world, was busy, prosperous, well thought of, and from time to time, when the occasion demanded it,convivial. He had, with relief, begun to assume public attitudes, in which no intimacy was demanded of him, was, in fact, at his best, in company which was largely indifferent to him. By contrast, these two struck her as unprotected, inexperienced, fatally let down by the lack of any kind of social structure. Once they could act in unison, turning smiling faces to her and holding out welcoming hands, she could see their genuine attraction. But they needed some stimulus, some little excitement to animate them. Without that, she could see, they might easily fall into disappointment. She wondered how they filled their time.
    Thus softened—by the turn of her mother’s head, her birdlike, still bright eyes, by the jauntiness of her father’s new jacket—she was further moved to see that they had gone to some lengths over the preparation of the tea. An array of cakes, none of them home-made, reminded her of days in the room at the back of the shop, and, ‘I thought a little buttered toast …’, said Hughie, getting up with alacrity as she nodded anticipation. Nobody knew quite what to say. It was clearly out of order to ask, ‘Are you happy?’ They saw her as someone more dignified than themselves, a little more staid than they would wish, or could understand, while she, quite simply, saw that they were lonely. For this reason alone she was glad that she could make them the present of her child: a new preoccupation, a new cause for the congratulation they could never quite forgo. She could see that a grandchild, however unexpected an occurrence, would absorb any tenderness, any ruefulness that might be making inroads into their lives: a grandchild might thus be an improvement, from their point of view, on a daughter. And certainly more timely.
    ‘Are you really all right?’ she asked, as her father cut her toast into strips for her.
    ‘We’re pretty good,’ said her mother, taking a fresh cigarette. ‘What about you, dear? No sickness? No, of course not.I was as fit as a fiddle with you.’ She was mildly embarrassed by this conversation, Harriet could see. ‘But you must exercise, Hattie, or you’ll never get your figure back. Your figure was always good. Sit down, darling,’ she said to her husband. ‘Don’t make her eat so much—she’ll put on too much weight.’
    ‘And yet look at all this food,’ Harriet smiled.
    ‘That’s Daddy’s doing. Normally we just have a cup of tea. But he had to go out shopping for all this—nothing less would have done. Some more hot water, darling,’ she said to him.
    ‘Some days,’ she said in a lowered tone, when he was out of the room, ‘he doesn’t feel too bright. That’s why we’re so pleased about the baby. It’ll be a new lease of life for him.’
    ‘Is he ill?’ asked Harriet, alarmed.
    ‘No, dear, not ill. Old. Or rather, older. You think back more than you should. And he’s got some unpleasant memories, don’t forget, although he’s never spoken about them. Maybe he can’t. The doctors don’t seem to have done him any good. I’ve always had a job to keep him from feeling depressed, though now he’s got the pills he’s more stable. But we’re lucky, really; we’ve got our own home, and we’ve got each other. And you, of course. Only I can’t bear to think what would happen to him if anything happened to me.’ Her face fell into a grimace of pain which straightened out into a vivid smile as Hughie came back with the teapot.
    They walked with her to the station, anxious now in her presence. As Merle fell behind to greet a neighbour on a balcony adjoining their own (‘Our daughter’, they heard