Free A Closed Eye by Anita Brookner Page B

her say), Hughie pressed Harriet’s arm and said, ‘Keep in touch with us, dear. It’s a little dull for her sometimes. I’m not always good company, you know. I know that. I think it’s wonderful of her to put up with me. But then she was always wonderful.’
    Don’t change, don’t change, she silently begged them. Don’t grow up, grow old. Be frivolous, as you always were meant to be; be flippant, pleasure-loving, insubstantial. Preserve yourselves until I see what is going to happen to me, if anything still can. The thought that they might ever die released panic; she surprised herself by finding tears in her eyes when she said goodbye to them.
    ‘Ring us when you get home,’ said Hughie. Cross, now, at the fuss being made, her mother told him to calm down. Harriet watched them as the train receded from the platform, knew that for all their stylishness they had taken a step along the path that led to the final decrepitude. She put her hand to her heart, surprised to find it beating so strongly, then, simultaneously, all three of them waved, until she, and they, were out of sight.

W HEN did the feeling of dread begin? She could neither quite date it nor place it. She thought it might have been the consequence of the visit to her parents, and of the memories it aroused. Or possibly of the move to the big house, which did not seem entirely favourable. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Freddie had said on their last evening in Cornwall Gardens. ‘What
we’re
doing,’ she corrected him. He did not answer. This, he implied, was not why he had married her; he had not bargained for upheaval, expense. Momentarily she wondered what on earth she was doing, sitting in this denuded room with a man who seemed to her a complete stranger, like someone with whom she was forced to spend time while waiting for a train. Their first evening in Wellington Square left them similarly estranged. The room was glassily bright; not all the lampshades were yet in place. They were too tired to talk, nor could either think of anything encouraging to say. After a while she roused herself, went into the kitchen and scrambled some eggs, which they ate from unmatched plates. Then, since there was nothing more to be done, they went to bed. At least the bed was familiar. But the window was in the wrong place, and when Freddie got up in the night he walked into a wall where the door should have been.
    Her tiredness of the following days she put down to naturalcauses. There was so much to do, too much; she would not be able to resume her dreamy existence for some time. The activity, although unwelcome, concentrated her mind; she feared an encroaching dullness, which her ordinary life did nothing to discourage. But in her fatigue she found the house exorbitant, overwhelming. She longed for a small remote sunny room to which she alone might have access. The picture of this room was quite clear in her mind; it was the private place which she had never quite been permitted. The new house, when measured against this fantasy, alarmed her. I am not quite up to this, she thought.
    Because he had been led unwillingly to the house Freddie failed to sympathize with her fatigue, but merely carried out the obvious tasks assigned to him. He was discomposed; he did not see why they should not have stayed in Cornwall Gardens. ‘But babies need a nursery,’ Harriet had protested. ‘They have a lot of equipment. You wouldn’t have wanted it all in your bathroom, would you?’ He had not replied. He thought at this time that there was a certain dignity in silence, his usual resource when outfaced by events. His earlier pleasure in Harriet’s pregnancy (or rather the announcement to his friends of her pregnancy) had evaporated silently, leaving a certain bewilderment behind. He had bargained for none of this. His first wife had been a woman of uncertain temper, well-bred enough to be fearless; he had been criticized at every turn, frequently humiliated.