Free Incidents in the Rue Laugier by Anita Brookner Page B

his resolution, or his defeat (for he thought of it as a defeat), had afforded him a further interval of freedom. He would not go back to the Louvre, he thought; he would have a holiday. After more coffee in a nearby café he took an iron chair, sat down, folded his arms, and prepared to spend the afternoon in this manner. Almost immediately he felt restless. All this would be more than tolerable, he reflected, if he had a girlfriend with him. Or even a friend. The girls he had left at home now appeared to him distant and diminished, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope, or in someone else’s photographs.They had all been pleasant, those friends of his sister’s, with whom he had grown up: agreeable, uncomplicated, polite to his mother, and more than willing to keep him company. He was thought to be attractive, with his slight but wiry frame, his hungry smile, but somehow it had been impossible to misbehave in such a setting, with so much goodwill being demonstrated around him, his mother bringing out a tray of lemonade into the garden, his father offering to run the girls home. And the garden, always that garden.
    He had made up for lost time at Cambridge, but here again he had been lucky; his girlfriend, Sally, had been just as decent and friendly as the companions of his blameless adolescence. Therefore making love at last had involved no loss of innocence. It was not even a rite of passage, more an extension of play, with an unexpected conclusion. Guilt and anxiety were unimaginable, though now that he was on his own he knew both. He had been remarkably fortunate, he now reflected. He and Sally had kept each other faithful company for three years, sleeping together but as often as not going on long walks or listening to music. Their liaison was regarded as a settled thing by their friends; they were neither challenged nor disturbed. It had been an interlude of almost miraculous harmony, of lack of tension. Yet perhaps for that very reason, at the end of three years they knew that they would part, and would part no less amicably than they had stayed together.
    He would see her again, he thought, but vaguely, without urgency. He was ready now for something different, something that would fill his horizon and take the place of that pilgrimage he had promised himself to the end of the world and for which he had proved unready. It was not sex he wanted, for sex had never seemed to him to present any problems, to be readily available, to be enjoyed without impatience or anxiety, to be an extended form of friendship. He wanted someone tofill the void, to appease the sudden lack which afflicted him even now, sitting in the sun, watching the children being fed their afternoon snack by their mothers. These mothers smiled at him, which made him feel shy, unworthy. He did not quite know what to do with himself, although the day had passed somehow, and not unpleasantly. He supposed that he might spend a few more days in the same manner, just to prove to himself that he was having a holiday. Then, he thought, he would pack it in and go home.
    If the days were tolerable the evenings were not. He seemed to be too early for the night’s activities. He took his bath at six, glad to get rid of the dust of the afternoon, and then, refreshed, walked out to find a brasserie for his apéritif and dinner. Yet he seemed always to be the first customer, and was paying his bill just as others were arriving. Then began more wandering, although, tired by now, he did not move far from the Place des Ternes, and after a final cup of coffee, he would be back in the gloom of the rue Laugier by nine-thirty at the latest. Sleep was no problem; he could always count on sleep. But sleep seemed a poor substitute for the adventures he had planned. In bed, ruminating the day’s emptiness, he reflected that although little had happened since his arrival a week ago, he had been bedevilled by thoughts, all of them, for no reason he could fathom,